We go and get our great big container truck for moving stolen goods. It is parked in a container truck park.
We get to the truck.
Doc punches me in the face.
I go down because it is a good hit and Doc keeps going in on me and I realize she may not stop. She maybe just doesn’t have limits like a normal person and she may just kill me. She’s using her boots now and not like to make me sad. She is hurting me.
WHUD.
And then she picks the next angle like a surgeon if surgeons used blunt objects.
WHUD.
I guess.
WHUD.
This is the thing.
WHUD WHUD WHUD.
Evil medical science.
Evil medic.
Doesn’t have human limits.
WHUD WHUD WHUDWHUDWHUDWHUD.
“Khhhfffshit Doc! DOC! KAhhffshit shit—”
WHUD
“GODDAMMIT JACK YOU ARE A FUCKING ASSHOLE—”
“I—”
WHUD WHUD WHUD
“REX IS DEAD AND YOU MADE A DEAL WITH LECLERC AND YOU DID NOT TELL ME”
WHUD WHUD
“YOU—”
WHUD
“DID NOT—”
WHUD
“TRUST ME TO DO MY JOB—”
WHUD
“Docc cc I cck—Doc?”
“YES BY ALL MEANS EXPLAIN IT TO ME”
“Yes ma’am can’t”
WHUD
And then I know I am really in trouble when she stops.
Doc says:
“Explain. Yourself. Now. Because Jack I liked Rex and he trusted you and so did I so do you see where his fate and your decision not to tell me things I needed to know might affect our relationship going forward?”
This time she does not kick me or hit me. She just puts her hand on me. Just that. Like just the gentlest touch in this particular place on my skin. She puts—
Her fingers
All the way around my windpipe
So that they meet without breaking my skin.
I can feel the hole in my trachea pushing against the glue.
But most of all I can feel her fingers in a place they absolutely should not be and I know she can keep me still like this forever. I will do anything she says.
And then I realize I can’t breathe.
“Doc—”
(Disgust.)
“Can’t breathe—”
“Shit fuck fine.”
I can’t because I am bleeding into a lung somewhere. It has gone wrong and I wonder if she meant that. Did she mean that? I cannot talk. What am I if I can’t talk? I’m just meat.
Doc looks at me and at the strange shape of my chest where her boot went and she spits and drives an empty hypo into my lower ribs like WHAM and I feel the lung reinflate and I start to say—
But by then I do not have to because there is a dog barking.
Doc says:
“Tycho?”
But it is not Tycho. Tycho is back home safe and that is not his bark. That bark belongs to Marta, who belongs to Mrs. Van der Zee.
She is just over there like a hundred meters back down the road maybe a bit more.
Because that is where the trail of aniseed leads. I had the kids from the Kircheisen school create a very distinct track from the Kircheisen Palast hotel.
So that is where she came to when she went out for her walk.
Because a dog like that will walk through fire for aniseed. It is like cocaine for them.
Doc says:
“O shit Price—”
Mrs. Van der Zee says:
“MARTA! MARTA WHERE ARE YOU?”
I look at Doc and I say it again:
“I got a new client Doc and she told me to make a horrible plan and I did. Eiger’s gone down Doc there’s just two left. The dog—I’m real sorry about the dog Doc.”
“MARTA!” yells Mrs. Van der Zee. “MARTA WHERE ARE YOU O YOU ARE HERE YOU BAD GIRL WHAT ARE YOU DOING ALL THE WAY OVER HERE—”
She’s so fast, the Doctor. So fast. I see her mind working and she’s so amazingly fast. She’s putting it all together because what else can Mrs. Van der Zee be doing here? In crime there are no coincidences and if Mrs. Van der Zee is here I have put her here and why would I do that? And she remembers emeralds and the smell on Evil Hansel at the art party and I see her get there without ever being told and I see her know what I have done.
But no one is fast enough to stop this now. Not even Doc. Not even if she wanted to, and deep down you know she does not. She wants to want to. But she’s a Demon. There are matters pertaining. There is old business.
You cannot go around shooting our friends with long guns.
Volodya is dead.
And this is how that goes.
The ground is shaking.
—
The ground is shaking. Doc looks at me and even the fury is gone now, just resignation like she should have known this.
And she should. This is what she asked for.
“What have you done Price?”
I look up at the mountains. From the far side of the valley, a line of burning white lights ignites. Searchlights. Spotlights. Picking out the Kircheisen Festung so that it shines in the dark like a radiant heavenly city. Between the lights you can just make out a flat patch of early snow and Ottavio Leopold Calvanese sitting on a very expensive chair as if to watch his favorite TV show. It looks like Rex went with the balik and it’s going down very well.
Ah shit Rex.
Shit.
“What have you done Price?”
“I took your contract Doc and delivery is due.”
—
The ground is shaking like vibrating and up on the plateau I guess there’s still a couple hundred people and the really smart ones right now are heading for the tree line and right now I guess Agent Hannah is telling the dumb ones to do the same and both of those groups are almost certainly going to live. The only fairly smart ones think Agent Hannah is wrong or evil and they are
