doorbell-sized plate beside it.
“Have to keep the kids out,' Liam said to Lucia. The door beeped and popped open. Liam cast a quick, worried look at Ruppert, then scurried inside.
Liam had a spacious home office with a sitting area, a mini-fridge, and a bathroom with a shower stall. A high leather chair faced a full-wall screen displaying the logo of Child and Family Services-a tall adult stick figure holding the hand of a small, child-sized stick figure, a red, white and blue banner swirling around them in what appeared to be a stiff digital wind.
Ruppert sprang at Liam, shoved him back against the wall, and pressed his hand down on Liam's mouth until he could feel the shape of the man's teeth through his rubbery lips. He had to prevent Liam from uttering the “safe word” that would galvanize his home security system into action, firing off emergency messages to the neighborhood security provider, the local Hartwell police office, and probably the security personnel at Child and Family Services. Possibly two or three 'emergency contact' relatives, on top of that.
Liam squirmed, and Ruppert applied more pressure. He could feel Liam’s jaw working, trying to bite, and Liam’s tongue smearing across his palm. He looked towards Lucia.
“Are you ready already?” he asked.
“Give me a second.” She stood at Liam's wall screen, shuffling through the pages of his home security system, disabling each function.
“We’re safe,” she finally announced. Ruppert released Liam, but kept himself between Liam and the only door out of the room.
“You’re not with Terror.” Liam wiped sweat and saliva from his mouth with the back of his hand. “They haven’t really caught you yet.”
“Not yet,' Ruppert agreed.
“What do you want?” Liam asked.
“Access,” Lucia said. “Open the Child and Family national database.”
“No.” Liam looked back and forth between them. “Oh, no. You need level six security rating to see that. It’s national security.”
“Need to see my credentials?” Lucia unsheathed her glassy black obsidian blade from her belt, closed in on Liam, and slashed it across his immense, pale stomach. A drooping red smile appeared in the blade’s wake, leaking trickles of blood into his navel and down the front of his shorts. The blade had cut only fat, but deep enough to scar.
Liam gaped down at the wound.
“The database,” Lucia said.
“I can’t,” Liam whispered.
“I didn’t hear you.” Lucia lifted the blade, pointed the tip at Liam’s left eye. “Say it again.”
“I can’t!” Liam whined. He began to sob. “They’ll kill me.”
Lucia jabbed the knife forward. The tip of the blade pierced through the center of Liam’s left ear, pinning it to the wall.
Liam shrieked and batted one hand at Lucia, but Ruppert grabbed his arm and held it to the wall.
“Give up, Liam,” Ruppert said. “She can break bones with her bare hands. I’ve seen it happen.”
“But Terror…” Liam blubbered.
“How many lives have you destroyed, here, from this room?” Lucia hissed. She worked the blade back and forth, widening the new hole in his ear. “I think it’s just your turn,” she whispered. “I think it’s fair. If you don’t give me what I want, I will kill you. You already know that. But you don't know what I'll do next. I will saw your head from your neck, I will carry it downstairs, and I will throw it into the little wading pool out there, in front of your children. Why should they suffer less than my son?”
Ruppert had been acting. He realized Lucia wasn’t. She really would do as she said if Liam didn’t cooperate.
Lucia sliced through the side of Liam’s ear, slicing it into two bleeding flaps, and pulled her blade free. She jabbed the tip of the blade up into the soft tissue under his chin, hooked his jaw, and drew his face toward hers until their eyeballs nearly touched.
“The database,” she said again.
Liam’s mouth worked silently for a few seconds, and then he said, “Open national placement database.”
“Retinal, please.” Liam’s office computer system spoke with a high, soft Italian tenor that Ruppert found immediately irritating.
Lucia steered Liam toward a coin-sized green lens mounted in the wall. She moved the blade from his chin to his carotid artery. Liam leaned forward and opened his eyes wide, raising his eyebrows and drawing his mouth into a deep, exaggerated frown.
“Access approved,” the soft Italian voice said. Ruppert could have sworn it was sighing.
Millions of miniature cubes, folded into each other, appeared on the wall screen. The database.
“I'm taking him out of here,” Ruppert said. Lucia gave a very slight nod. She wasn't really listening. She stared at the data in awe, like a desperate addict stumbling into a giant batch of her drug.
Ruppert took Liam down the hall to the master bedroom.
“God won’t forgive you for this,” Liam said. “God sees everything, and He won’t forgive you. Why are we going into my bathroom? What will you do to me in my bathroom?”
Ruppert pushed Liam into the long walk-through closet connecting the master bed and master bath. He shoved a washcloth into Liam’s mouth, then bound his hands and feet behind him with bed sheets. He left the man lying on the tiled floor of his bathroom, bleeding from his stomach and the side of his head, whimpering. Ruppert turned out the bathroom light and closed the door.
Back in the office, Lucia knelt on the floor, weeping, no longer the murderous creature she’d been only minutes earlier.
“What’s wrong?” Ruppert dropped to a knee beside her and lay a hand on her back. She turned, flinging her arms around his neck, crushing herself against him.
Ruppert looked up at the wall screen. A large window occupied most of it. The window displayed a picture of a handsome boy of nine or ten, with the same black eyes and light caramel skin as Lucia. He had a shaven head and wore a tan military-style uniform. The picture was captioned GEORGE LIBERTY.
“Nando,” Lucia whispered. “They even gave him a new name. A stupid new name.”
“It will be all right,” Ruppert said. He read the text underneath the picture. George Liberty, or Nando, had been raised at the Goblin Valley School for Males in Goblin Valley, Utah. At Ruppert’s request, a further description of the school appeared: “Proactive specialized pre-training in desert and mountain combat. Counterinsurgency. Central Asian linguistics and geography.”
Further down the list, he saw George Liberty’s “discarded name.” Fernando Luis Santos.
He asked for an expanded health report, and the screen presented him with details and pictures from Fernando’s last medical inspection.
“He's in really good health,” Ruppert said. 'What's wrong?'
“He does not know his name,” Lucia whispered. “He will not remember me. They have remade him into one of them.”
“Not everyone takes to the program. We can go to this school place. We can get him. You're his mother, you have rights.' Ruppert ordered the computer to print laminated maps of the Goblin Valley compound, annotated with the details of their security system.
'Rights? Are you serious? Are we calling a lawyer first? Is that how you would handle this?'
'We can get him out,' Ruppert said. 'That's what you do, right? Disappearing people from Terror's screens? Extractions?'
'That is a full-fire military school, Daniel,' Lucia said. 'In the middle of the desert. Thousands of armed boys trained to kill. We would need a large team of very good people. And a helicopter. And also, half the team would need to be at least a little suicidal.'
“Terror's going to kill me anyway, right?” Ruppert gathered the maps from Liam's printer. 'So, really, I don't have to worry about death anymore. Today, this week, next month-whenever. I'm already dead. It's really like being invincible, if you think about it. Like you're already acting from the beyond the grave.'
'Quiet,' Lucia said.
