Blackout

name is ‘I took you in when you said you wanted out.’ Your name is ‘you came to me.’ I own you. Now what. Did you. Do?”

Carefully, like she was in no hurry at all, the Cat put her tablet aside. She stood and strolled over to us, stopping barely out of the Monkey’s reach. “You took the man from the CDC’s money. You said you’d build him the perfect disappearing girl—one who’d never set off any red flags or raise any alarms. And then you went into your damn workshop, like you always do, and you left me alone with Princess Crazy-Cakes here”—she gestured toward the Fox—“to entertain your client until he got bored and went away. He didn’t get bored. He knew how you worked. He was waiting for you to leave.”

“What?” The Monkey glanced at the Fox. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

She sniffled. “Kitty told me to go outside and play with the crows. We found a dead squirrel. I set it on fire.”

“Kids these days,” said Becks dryly.

The Monkey ignored her. His attention swung back to the Cat. “What did you do?”

“He offered me a hundred thousand dollars to plant a tracker in her state ID. You know how easy it is to bug those things. Just swap out the RFID chip for one that broadcasts what you want it to broadcast, and you’re in business.”

“You’re supposed to refer all business decisions to me,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.

“You would have said no.”

“Yes, I would. That isn’t how we do business.”

“Maybe it isn’t how you do business, Monkey, but times are changing, and you’re not changing with them. There are a lot of people out there offering services we aren’t. We need to stay competitive.”

“And that means going behind my back and getting half of downtown Oakland bombed?”

The Cat shrugged. “They only took out half.”

The Fox paused, a thought almost visibly struggling across her face. “Is this why you told me I should put things in their shoes?” she asked.

“Hold up there,” I said. “Whose shoes? What things?”

“Don’t freak out,” said the Cat. “They were tracking devices for the CDC to follow, so they’d be able to take out the horrible bastards who broke into their facility. They must have been too busy to come after you until you’d ditched the shoes. You got lucky.”

“That, or we were staying at the Agora,” said Maggie. “Best security screening technology on this side of the state. No matter how much those trackers were broadcasting, they wouldn’t have gotten through the shields.”

“I haven’t changed my shoes,” said Becks slowly. She looked at me. “Have you?”

“No.”

The Cat stared at us. Then she pointed at the door and started shouting, “Out! Get the fuck out of here! You have to leave!”

“What’s going on?” asked the Fox.

For a moment, I felt almost bad for her. Sure, she was crazy and homicidal, and probably the most dangerous person in the room, but she was also the one who had the least responsibility for her own actions. She needed to be taken care of, and the people she’d chosen to do that had used her as a weapon. That wasn’t her fault.

And it wasn’t my problem. “Kitty did a bad thing,” I informed her. Looking back to the Cat, I said, “Well? Turn them off already.”

The Cat licked her lips, eyes darting from me to the Monkey as she said, “I can’t.”

There was a moment when it felt like the world stood still, all of us considering the meaning of her words. Then Becks shouted, with all the authority of an Irwin in a field situation, “The van! Get to the van, get armed, and get Maggie out of the line of fire!”

“Just Maggie?” I asked.

She smiled thinly. “Georgia Mason always knew how to defend herself.” Then she was off and running, heading for the front door. The rest of us followed her. George didn’t complain as she ran, even though it must have been painful—the dressings on her feet were designed to deal with light walking, not a full-out sprint. She just gritted her teeth and kept going.

We left our shoes where they were. If they were bugged, they were more of a liability than a little barefoot running.

I could hear the Cat and the Monkey yelling at each other when we hit the front door, although I couldn’t tell what they were saying. I wasn’t aware that the Fox was following us until she took hold of my hand and asked, “Is this going to be very bad?”

Mahir and Becks were trying to pry the door open. The security system had clearly engaged once we were all inside, and it just as clearly didn’t want to let go again. I exchanged a glance with George before looking back to the Fox. “Well…”

The sudden shriek of alarms stopped me from needing to figure out the rest of that sentence. Metal sheets slammed down over all the windows, and red lights came on at the tops of the walls, flashing almost fast enough to qualify as strobes. The Fox yelped, yanking her hand out of mine. As she clamped her hands over her ears, I saw that she was holding a nasty-looking sniper’s pistol. At least she came prepared.

Becks kicked the door viciously before turning and jogging the few steps back over to me. “I’m going to go punch our host in the face until he lets us out of here,” she said.

“Punch the woman instead; she seems to deserve it more,” said Mahir. He walked back to where I was standing. “We’re proper trapped now. Probably all going to die here. I’d say it was nice knowing you, but as you’ve effectively ruined my life, it almost certainly hasn’t been.”

“What he said,” said Maggie.

“Aren’t you sweet?” George was frowning at the door, looking thoughtful. “Hey, George? You planning something, there?”

“A place like this… Mahir, remember when we did the report on the clone organ farmers? The ones who were so used to getting raided that they almost treated it as a reason not to bother washing the windows?”

“Yes!” Mahir’s eyes lit up. “They knew they’d be caught in a death trap if they ever let themselves be taken unaware—”

“—and so they never set up a headquarters without at least three escape routes.” She turned to the Fox. “How do we get out? All our weapons are outside.”

The Fox brightened, lowering her hands. “I have weapons!”

“We know you do, but we need our weapons. Please. How do we get out of here?”

“Oh.” The Fox thought for a moment. Finally, she said, “This way,” and trotted back toward the living room. Lacking anything better to do, we followed.

As we rounded the corner, we were greeted with the fascinating sight of Becks slamming the Cat rhythmically into the wall while the Monkey looked calmly on. “You’re a feisty one,” he said. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

The Cat wailed. Becks slammed her into a wall again.

“Last guy I was interested in turned out to be an incestuous necrophiliac,” she said. “So no, not currently dating, and definitely not doing any more shopping in the ‘sociopath’ category. Now tell her to open the doors.”

“She can’t do that,” said the Monkey. The Fox trotted past him without pausing; he turned to watch her go. “Foxy? What are you doing?”

“Opening the garage!” she called back cheerfully, before pulling a picture off the wall to reveal the control panel it had been concealing. She slapped her palm against it, and the light above the nearest door went from red to green.

A look of horror spread across the Monkey’s face as he realized what she was doing. He lunged for her, one hand stretched out to grab her shoulder. “No! Don’t! That’s not—”

It was too late. The door swung open, revealing a garage packed with servers and computer terminals, and a garage door that was slowly rolling upward. As it rose, it exposed the men who were standing in the driveway between us and the van, their rifles trained on the house. They were all wearing hazmat suits, with rebreathers covering their mouths and noses.

“Oh,” said the Fox. “Oopsie.” Then she slammed the door.