Arthur stood up. He was feeling woozy now, spots of light dancing before his eyes.
Then, the cuffs spoke to him. “Fair warning, dude,” came the slightly robotic-sounding voice of Joy over whatever in-built speaker they had. “Those bracelets get real aggressive in about thirty seconds. Only way to deactivate them is to get back into the sidecar. Your decision, though. I know how you men don’t like having women explaining stuff to you.”
“I didn’t … I was just …”
Arthur realised just how stupid he must look, standing there, pleading with the cuffs that bound his wrists.
“Twenty-five …”
This time, because he’d been expecting it, the shock only sent him down on one knee. It was lucky he’d just used the restroom otherwise he would have lost all control over anything he’d been holding in.
The cuffs began to vibrate more aggressively.
Arthur ran towards the side of the building.
“Twenty …”
As he turned the corner, he crashed straight into an ice machine. His head slammed right into the side of it.
“Ouch. I felt that. Fifteen …”
“I’m coming,” said Arthur. He’d meant to shout it but it came out as a hoarse whisper.
“Ten …”
He was relieved to see Joy and her bike exactly where he’d left them, pulled up opposite the fuel pumps. Arthur was aware of a couple of people getting gas gawping at him, but he didn’t care. In that moment, all that mattered was getting back to the sidecar and stopping these demonic cuffs from completely destroying him.
He tripped and fell hard onto the cracked asphalt, scraping skin off his knees and palms.
“Ohhh …” said Joy, sounding like someone enjoying watching a car wipe out in a demolition derby. “Five …”
Arthur dragged himself upright once again. He was aware of Joy counting down, but he couldn’t process the sound. His whole world had become laser-focused on the goal of reaching the sidecar.
With tears streaming down his face, on legs of jelly, he pushed himself forward. With a last gasp, he shoved out his hands and managed to reconnect the cuffs with the docking station on the sidecar. He crumpled to the ground beside it. Nothing had ever felt as sweet as when the bracelets loosened and ceased vibrating.
He drew a couple of ragged breaths and looked up to see Joy’s one good eye twinkling down at him above a broad smile. “Well, now, looks like you and me done had ourselves a clarification of our relationship. Hop in. We’ve got places to be.”
Chapter Five
Zoya didn’t hear Sister Dionne enter the workshop. She was wearing oversized headphones that were cranking out something that, to Dionne’s uncultured ears, sounded like a jackhammer attacking a garbage disposal. Dionne stood there for a minute and watched Zoya smile at her phone as she thumbed a message. In that brief moment, Zoya looked more her age than Dionne had seen her look in a long time. That unselfconscious smile sent a pang through Dionne, struck by the thought of the normal life the girl wasn’t having.
She gave her a minute and opened the curtains. Zoya recoiled from the sunlight like the antagonist in a bad vampire movie.
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic,” said Dionne.
“I don’t come into your space and start messing with stuff.”
Dionne looked around at the room. “Well, I felt it was necessary to come over and check you were still alive. The aroma in here suggests otherwise.”
Zoya pouted. “And now who’s being melodramatic?”
“I know I said make yourself at home, but I didn’t mean recreate your swamp from Brooklyn. Look at this mess.”
“Mess? What mess?”
Dionne pointed at the junk-food wrappers and soft-drink cans that littered the floor.
“That’s not mess, it’s stuff.”
“Really?” Dionne picked up the empty wastepaper basket. “And this is where stuff goes. I’d have thought with your big brain, Zoya, you’d know that.”
“I do know that. If you look, I was aiming the stuff at the aforementioned receptacle.”
Dionne turned the wastepaper basket upside down. “None of it went in.”
Zoya pulled a face. “My game is off. It’s these new surroundings.”
Dionne nodded. She had previously thought that Zoya wasn’t very fond of going outside. Then they’d had to move her from the Sisters of the Saints HQ in Brooklyn to Nevada, and it had become apparent that her issue was more significant. Severe agoraphobia, to be exact.
Dionne had sworn to herself that once this mission was done, she would find someone to help her. Zoya was only in her early twenties, and the idea of the young woman experiencing the rest of her life through the prism of a computer screen was beyond depressing. Still, she was vital to their current operation, and while they’d discussed her staying in Brooklyn, Dionne had made the decision to bring her out here. The plan – what little of it they had figured out so far – was going to require Zoya’s peculiar genius, and it couldn’t be replicated over a Zoom call. So, they’d got her some anxiety medication, and for the duration of the trip she had stayed in the back of the Winnebago with the blinds down.
Dionne and Sister Teresa had done the driving duties in shifts, and they’d managed to make the trip from Brooklyn to Nevada in two days, stopping only for gas. Still, they’d been here two weeks now, and Zoya had seemed more herself only in the last few days. The damage we do while trying to help.
Dionne put down the wastepaper basket. Seeing as she needed an awful lot of room for her various “projects”, Zoya had been assigned one of the two large outbuildings. This one had a basic bathroom at least, and windows – not that Zoya seemed keen on them. There was also a tunnel that led here from the main house. Dionne had had it looked into. As far as they could tell, the guy who’d built the place had been involved in some questionable legal activities. The
