“You’re not going to restore the water supply, are you?” Rhea said. “Not until we’re dying in the streets.”
“You don’t understand,” Grandas told her. “We want you to die in the streets.”
“You’re a sick individual,” she said.
The mayor sighed. “I do what needs to be done. The public won’t elect me to another term in office, but it doesn’t matter. At the rate things are going, this is my last term anyway. There will be no Aradne in three years.”
“Work with us,” Rhea tried again. “Together we can find a way.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. If you want to save the people of the slums, the best you can do for them is organize caravans to other cities and settlements.”
“If Aradne won’t take them in, what makes you think other cities will?” she asked.
“There are still cities to the north that welcome people,” Grandas replied. “Relocate the residents of Rust Town now, while you still can.”
“And risk attacks by bandits?” she said. “Or bioweapons?” She gave him a grim smile. “You mentioned ‘north’ on purpose, so we’d pass through the territory of Veil’s Black Hands. Nicely done.”
The mayor merely stared at her.
Rhea closed her eyes. He really wasn’t going to help them. He wanted the people of Rust Town to leave. Or die.
She decided she might as well ask him another question while she had his attention. “Why is Veil hunting me?”
Grandas smiled. “Well. That’s something you should ask Veil yourself.”
“All right, open up a channel, and I will,” Rhea said.
She was expecting either to receive a holographic share request, or to be refused, but then the mayor’s aspect changed entirely. He leaned to the side slightly, casually, and his thumb and index fingers closed together, as if he was holding something between them. One of his eyes drooped.
When he spoke, it was with an odd accent. “So, you’ve come to me at last.”
Rhea stiffened. “Veil. You’ve chipped him.”
Veil shrugged. He lifted the empty thumb and forefinger to his mouth, then puckered and inhaled.
“If you’re pulling the strings, then get him to restore water to Rust Town,” Rhea said. “Let us ration it, like I mentioned a moment ago.”
Veil lowered his hand and exhaled, blowing air to one side. “After all those I sent after you, you go and deliver yourself to me directly. I should have saved myself the trouble. Though I suppose it was the very act of sending my minions that conveyed you to me.”
“Let us ration the water,” Rhea tried again.
“But I’m profiting too much from the sales of water on the black market to allow such a thing,” Veil interrupted.
“Is that what this is about?” Rhea said. “Profits?”
“It is now,” Veil replied. “Even originally it was, I admit. I pressed for the destruction of Rust Town, because I was the one who brokered the deal with the bioweapon company. I took a nice cut.”
“Scourge of the North…” Rhea said.
“That’s my name,” Veil agreed.
“Scorpion is yours, isn’t he?” Rhea asked.
“Very good,” Veil replied.
“Who else have you sent?” she said. “Have you planted more spies among my Wardenites?”
“I prefer to keep such information to myself,” Veil said. “Proprietary, you know.”
“Why are you hunting me?” Rhea pressed.
“It’s not personal,” Veil said. “It’s just that the bounty on your head is too high to ignore. When I bring you in, my accounts will balloon with credits.”
“Who set this bounty?” she pressed. “What’s the price?”
Veil seemed amused. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me,” she said.
“Your former master set the bounty,” Veil told her.
“And who is that?” she pressed.
Veil thrummed his fingers, as if considering whether or not to tell her. He seemed to come to a decision after taking a puff from that invisible cigarette of his.
“You’re wanted dead or alive,” Veil said. “I suppose I’ll deliver you alive, so you can find out. But I’ll need you much more malleable than you are. Yes. I’ll deliver you to your master chipped.”
“No!” A sudden fear filled Rhea, the emotion coming on far stronger than she might have expected, and she struggled against her binds anew, but couldn’t break free. Her captors squeezed their merciless fingers tighter around her elbows until she ceased her efforts.
“Please!” Rhea begged. “Anything but that. Please don’t chip me. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Indeed you will, very soon,” Veil taunted. “However, I can offer you one other option. And that is the delivery of your lifeless brain in a plastic bag. Is that what you prefer?”
Rhea didn’t answer.
“I thought not,” Veil said. “Mind jacked it is.”
20
Rhea was taken to the lower levels.
Apparently Veil, or the mayor, had installed the necessary facilities for surgically implanting a mind-hijacking chip somewhere in the very basement of city hall.
She was taken to a room and lowered face down on an operating table. Straps were secured over her ankles and her neck. A third strap was meant to be slid over her hips, but the robots didn’t apply it, as her hands remained secured behind her back, and apparently they felt that was good enough.
Most of the security robots departed then, save for two that remained behind to stand guard.
A medical robot approached. It looked nothing like a combat robot, and instead was more of a cart on treads, with a circular section at the top radiating three limbs. One of those appendages carried a gamma scalpel—a device vaguely reminiscent of a magnifying glass. She had heard of them once before, while reading about chipping: the flat, round rim was capable of producing two hundred beams of relatively low intensity gamma radiation, courtesy of several cobalt-60 sources; those beams could be focused down to a point as small as one millimeter, concentrating the radiation on the target without damaging the surrounding tissue. The beams penetrated bone and other intervening tissue, making them quite useful for operating on the brain. The gamma scalpel would probably be used to attach the chip to her neurons once it was installed.
A second limb held a laser drill, which would be employed
