‘No. We are.’
‘You might think that, but the Whelans put you to work. And we infuriated the Whelans.’
‘They said something, once,’ the boy said. ‘I thought it was a joke, but Gavin seemed pretty serious. He said they used to be kings.’
‘They did.’
‘Here in Manhattan?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’
‘We tore the family apart. They lost their power, and their money, and their resources. Most of them fled the city, and a few fled the country, but a couple of the stragglers came back to do this.’
‘Hmm,’ the boy said. ‘Interesting. Doesn’t change a thing, though.’
‘It should.’
The boy shrugged. ‘Sorry to disappoint.’
‘That’s all they ever cared about,’ King said. ‘Their power, and their money, and their resources. Do you four care about that?’
‘Of course not. And neither did they.’
‘I can see that. You’re doing this with no plan. If you don’t bite down on those pills, you have no escape up your sleeves. You just wanted to watch New York crumble, right?’
‘Right,’ the boy said.
The first confirmation.
Deep down in King’s core, he felt a spark of hope.
Get him on board.
Get him feeling righteous.
Get him to agree.
‘Gavin Whelan had an escape plan. He might have seemed broken, and defeated, and uncaring, but all of this, everything he did… it was because of anger.’
‘I doubt that very much.’
‘It’s the truth,’ King said. ‘He hated me, and he hated my friend here. Because we took his money and his power away, and he was left with nothing. Look into my eyes. You’re a smart kid. You’re probably one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, if I’m looking at what you’ve managed to do here with a few computers. So look at me. Ask yourself if I’m lying.’
He didn’t budge.
He didn’t waver.
The kid swept a lock of thin hair away from his eyes and stared hard.
‘I don’t think you’re lying,’ the kid said.
‘I’m not. Now, ask yourself if what he said to you was legitimate. If he was angry about losing it all, and wanted to lash out and hurt the people who did it, does that line up with the anti-Western storyline he fed to you?’
‘It wasn’t a storyline.’
‘It was. You might have been harbouring resentment — which, believe me, is fucking understandable in this day and age — but he didn’t share them. He told you what you wanted to hear. He used you. Keep looking at my eyes — I’m not looking away, I’m not blinking… I’m not lying.’
The boy stayed quiet.
King said, ‘You might hate me, because I’m affiliated with the government. That’s okay. I’m not going to stand here and try and convince you that this country always does the right thing. When I’ve had to, I’ve rebelled against my own employers. Because I always try to do what’s right. I can’t control everything. But when I see pieces of shit leeching off the rest of society like the Whelan family were, I step in and do something about it. The Whelans were partly responsible for the fentanyl epidemic here in New York. I’m sure you have friends, or friends of friends, who’ve died from overdoses. And you know why they were doing that? For money. They were greedy little pigs, and we stuck them for it, and we’re never going to apologise for that. Maybe that’s what a negotiator would do. They’d suck up to you. I won’t.’
A pause.
King said, ‘I just have to hope you understand.’
‘I get why you did it,’ the kid said. ‘But that has nothing to do with—’
‘It does. Take Gavin out of the equation. Remove him and all his rage. What’s left? Would you have done this if he hadn’t been there to talk you into it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t sound like you mean it.’
‘I…’
The kid trailed off.
King said, ‘Do you know what panic looks like? Have you seen it in-person?’
The boy said nothing.
King said, ‘Millions of people are going to panic, and thousands of people are going to die, if you don’t reverse this. I know you know that, but have you really thought about it?’
Silence.
‘Not everyone in this country is a monster. There’s bad people in it, but there’s bad people everywhere. You’re going to kill a whole lot of good ones if you go through with this.’
The boy started breathing faster.
Harder.
Deeper.
King hesitated. Wondered if the kid might start hyperventilating. He eased off, letting the silence drag out, letting them sit there. The other three stayed expressionless, their eyes as dead as the moment he and Slater had stepped into the vault.
But the boy he’d been speaking to wasn’t so calm.
King said, ‘Do you understand what you’ve done?’
The boy looked up.
There were tears in his eyes.
He said, ‘Yes.’
He bit down.
78
Slater saw King jerk imperceptibly, a visceral internal reaction to what had happened.
His own heart rate spiked, and his hands tingled, and his skin turned cold, and his stomach fell to the floor.
But he didn’t let it show, and neither did King. They couldn’t. Everything depended on keeping the other three alive.
Which, they both knew, would be no easy feat.
Before the boy had even reacted to breaking through the cyanide pill, Slater spun to face the other three and said, ‘Stay calm.’
They stared back at him.
He said, ‘Please, stay calm.’
And then it started.
The boy with the dyed hair spasmed in his chair, throwing his head back, the veins in his neck protruding like purple rivers. He let out an ungodly howl, and his whole body tensed in protest. He clenched his teeth so hard that Slater thought he heard one of them crack, and then the trademark foam appeared at the corners of his lips.
‘Shit,’ he grunted. ‘Oh shit, oh my God…’
Then he trailed off, and died in his chair.
Slater didn’t look at him directly. He kept his gaze transfixed on the three remaining kids, watching the death play out in his peripheral vision. He remained an island of calm, refusing to react to the violent demise, hoping like hell that it kept the other three subdued.
So they didn’t follow suit.
There was nothing Slater could
