73

RED GREEN BLUE

The only good thing you could say for this toilet was it had a seat. No door on it, and dog-leash man was about six feet away, keeping track of her out of the corner of his eye. He’d replaced his rifle with a pistol, worn on one of those nylon harnesses slung down from his belt and strapped across his thigh, like where a gorilla would wear his gun.

She was glad she just had to pee, seeing as she had company. She’d gotten them to take her here by explaining that she really needed to, that if she didn’t she’d eventually wet her pants, and that that wouldn’t be nice for Pickett, assuming he was coming back, which she told them he definitely intended to, but not for hours. So she’d been right about there being cams, and she must’ve struck some right tone with her prisoner’s assisted urination pitch. Nothing angry, not too urgent. Just sitting there, addressing the door, because she had no idea where any cams might be. She’d gone through it twice, giving it a few minutes in between, careful not to escalate the second time. The two of them had come in, not that much later, put her on the leash, snipped the blue Homes zip tie fastening her to the table, and led her out. About thirty feet to the left, away from the roll-up door they’d first brought her in through, was this doorless single stall.

Sitting there, she thought this could’ve been the place where the heroine of the Resistance, in Operation Northwind, took out dog-leash with an OSS thumb-dagger she’d hidden in her underwear. She didn’t have any thumb-dagger, but then they hadn’t searched her, and maybe Reece hadn’t either. Which meant they were slacker than a lot of game AI she’d played against, and didn’t know she had a tube of lip gloss, which might be poison or an explosive gel. But then that was all she did have, and it wasn’t either. To dog-leash’s credit as a jailer, though, he’d zip-tied the nylon ring on the handle of the leash to a vertical, paint-flaking pipe, just right of the toilet, which would’ve made it hard for her to take anybody out with anything, short of a gun. When she pulled up her jeans and stood, he came in and snipped the tie. Then they took her back to the bright room.

That was probably when she first noticed the bug, though she barely did. Just a gnat. Fast, close, then gone.

But back in her chair, fastened to the table with a fresh Homes-blue zip tie, both men gone, something whined past her ear. If those tanks outside were standing water, there’d be mosquitos in here. With her hands tied, she wouldn’t be able to do much about them.

She was looking in the direction of the closed door, given that was easiest and she hadn’t much choice, when three bright small points of light moved horizontally across her vision, dead level, one after another, right to left, and vanished. Red, then green, then blue. They’d seemed to be either square or rectangular, and she’d barely had a chance to wonder whether she might be having a stroke, a seizure or something, when they were back, right to left again, same order, closer together, then collapsing into a single longer one. Aquamarine.

Unmoving now, in the middle of Pickett’s white, finger-smudged door.

She moved her head, expecting the pixel-thing to move. But it stayed put, above the tabletop, closer than she’d first taken it to be. Like it was really there, an object, aquamarine, impossible.

“Huh,” she said, mind filling with those things she’d seen kill and eat the woman, then with however many episodes of Ciencia Loca she’d watched about UFOs. Hadn’t mentioned any tiny ones. This one descending, now, as she watched, to the tabletop, between her tethered wrists. Straight down, like a little elevator. Its length doubling, on the dull steel, it began to rotate on a central axis, revving to become a slightly blurry aquamarine disk, size of an antique dime, flat on the table. And she heard it do that, faintly buzzing. Couldn’t get her wrists any further apart than they already were.

Aquamarine to bright yellow, then a stylized red nubbin, dead center. Thing still spinning, because she could hear it. A kind of animation. “Macon?”

The disk flared red.

She’d done something wrong.

Aquamarine again. Then a graphic of an ear, drawn with one black line, like a PSA warning. Becoming a housefly, in the same style. Then both, side by side, the fly shrinking to vanish into the ear. Then yellow again, Edward’s two nubbins instead of Macon’s one. The yellow background went cream, the two nubbins becoming Lowbeer’s emblem, that pale gold crown. Then the disk was gone, leaving an actual bug, much smaller, in its place. Not a housefly. Translucent, waxy looking.

“No way,” she said, under her breath. She leaned forward.

Too fast to see. Into her left ear. Buzzing. Deeper. “Don’t speak,” the buzz became Macon’s voice. “You’re miked, on cam. Pretend nothing’s happening. Do exactly what I say.”

She made herself look at the door. It sounded like him, but she could see the woman’s clothing fluttering down, over that empty street.

“Click your teeth together twice, one-two, without opening your mouth. Quiet as possible.”

She looked down. Clicked her teeth, twice. Loudest thing in the world.

“Need a minute of you not moving much. How you are now, but not moving. Not too still, ’cause I’m going to capture, then loop that back to them, so they’ll see that loop and not what’s happening next. Got it?”

Click-click.

“No major head or body movement. Move too much, it highlights repetition in the loop. I say done, be ready to go. Earplugs first, then the suit.”

Suit?

“You good?” he asked.

Click-click.

“Capturing now,” he said.

She stared at the door. The knob, the smears above it. Hoped her mother was okay, Lithonia still there.

“Done,” said Macon, finally. “Looping. Stand up.”

She put her palms flat on the steel, stood, pushing back the Hefty chair. She heard the bolt rattle.

The door opened. Weirdness came in. Like her retinas were melting. A kind of roiling blob.

“Squidsuit,” said Macon, in her ear. Cuttlefish camo, like Burton and Conner used in the war.

The suit was reading whatever was nearest, emulating that, but part of it looked sprayed with blood. Like a chunk of broken game code, walking in. Then a squidstuff glove, with the head of Burton’s tomahawk, darting toward her, under her hands, to hook and sever the blue zip tie In the bottom curve of the head was a special notch, sharper even than the rest of it, crazy sharp. For ropes, webbing, harness. It nipped back in, between her wrists, to cut the tie that held them together. His other glove a steel-gray paw, offering two orange blobs on an orange string, like low-end Hefty candy. Then she had them in her ears, like Macon had told her to, but had he meant her to trap the bug in there?

Burton dropped to the floor, scooted under the table, popped up beside her. Velcro ripping, glimpse of his eyes. Squidstuff unfolding, shaken out in front of her, instantly going what must be the color of her face under these lights, plus two big smears, the brown of her eyes, trying to emulate her, and then she had her head in it, her arms, was pulling it down, oversized and loose, dark inside but then she could see, the lights mercifully dimmer. Burton closing his own suit, then bending to close hers, starting at her feet.

“Out,” said Macon, the earplugs changing his voice.

Burton picked her up, swung her over the table, came over it himself like a gymnast clearing a pommel horse, pulled her to the door and out. She stumbled. Her foot a concrete blur beside dog-leash’s holster, pistol still in it, splotched with blood.

Stepped over him.

“Door,” said Macon, close to her ear, “move.” The roll-up door they’d brought her in through, open, the night beyond it darker now. The big loose pajama feet of the suit scuffing, threatening to trip her up.

Not game blood, some other part of her said, from some distant sideline.

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