The Sacrifice Game

(106)

His card relaxed the jaws of the door. Maybe it opens everything, I thought. A little demon in the wall switched on the caged lightning.

The tiny Pharmakopia room was all eye-dazzling shelves of many-hued translucent jars, some with seals in colors I’d never seen before. Magic Elixir City. Excellent.

I squeezed my cast elbow tighter around his neck and when I could feel his legs about to give out I pulled out the knife, sliced off his live badge with my left hand, and held it up to his left eye.

“So listen,” I said, “what other tracking equipment do I have on?”

He tried to shake his head. “Nothing,” he mouthed. I heard the door shut itself behind us.

“What else do you have on?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you get that alarm sent?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying,” I said, “I’m going to gouge your eye out on the count of one.” I held the black blade up to his eye. “Zero.”

“There’s nothing else.”

“Dogshit. Show me the other trackers. One.”

“Go ahead,” he whispered.

“Never mind, I believe you,” I said. I squoze off his air for another thirty beats, to the point where he was just beginning to pass out, and let him sprawl on the floor.

I found some surgical tape and wove his fingers together around the bolted-down leg of a metal shelving unit.

I sat down and started sawing the tracking box off my ankle with the white-bladed knife while I watched him. It took thirty-nine beats. By the fortieth beat Grgur’d stopped coughing and was getting it back together.

“So how do I get in to see Lindsay?” I asked. Jed would probably have asked whether Grgur was working primarily for Lindsay or for Marena, and whether Marena had given the order on No Way, and a whole bunch of other trivia, but I really didn’t care.

“That’s. Difficult,” Grgur choked out.

“Well, so then what are you good for?”

“I can try him.”

“How?”

“On the phone.”

“Where is Lindsay right now?”

“He went to assens today.”

“Assassins?” I asked. I got the ankle box off and sliced off my ID bracelet just in case. I was pretty sure there wasn’t anything else on me. Had they implanted a surgical tracker? That would be a little much even for this group.

“No, Athens, Greece,” Grgur said.

“What’s the best way to reach him?”

“Text him.”

“I mean in person,” I said.

“I don’t know.”

“Hang on,” I said. I stuffed some cotton pads into his mouth and surgi-taped over it, leaving enough of a gap so that even if his nose stopped up he wouldn’t die. Next I cut some airholes in a big plastic trash bag, poured in three economy family-sized boxes of cotton pads, foomped it down over his head, twisted it, and taped it around his neck. He looked like-who?

Jack Pumpkinhead, Jed thought.

Right, I thought back. Next. Badges. Steenking batches. Think.

“Back in a third,” I said.

I opened the door and walked out, ready to cast-slash anyone in sight, but there was nobody. I wiped some blood spots off the floor in front of the door with the toe of my goddamn cloth slipper and I walked through the blazing flat light to the little waiting area. The couches were this acid orange that kind of upset me, and I tried not to look at them. I climbed up on one and looked out the window. It looked out on a closed courtyard, and there was a fire escape. And it was dark down there. After some fumbling I got the leaf, I mean, the key card I’d taken, to slide into a three-finger-wide crack, threw the glove with the trackers out into the warm dark, and closed the window again. There were footsteps coming up the hallway. I walked back to the pharmacy, closed the door with good delicacy, got behind Grgur, pulled the bag down a bit, weighted his arms and legs as much as I could, and choked him some more to make sure he’d be absolutely silent. If the cops or whoever came through the door I’d throw him at them and then go out the back and see if I could still get away. Although that didn’t sound good.

The footsteps went by outside. I didn’t breathe.

All right.

Pause.

For a few beats I thought about skinning him and wearing his face out, but, based on experience from doing the same thing in the old days, I figured it wouldn’t actually be so convincing. You needed trained taxidermists to work on it, and even then the effect was odd. And even assuming his head was big enough to fit over mine, there would be the bloody eye sockets and nostrils, and the whole nose issue would be a real problem, and if I couldn’t sew the lips together they’d hang open and show another pair underneath.

So even if they mistook us for him, they’d think we were so messed up they’d bring us right back to the hospital, where we don’t want to be. And skinned faces don’t really look that much like their previous owners until you preserve them correctly. Without all the muscle attachments and everything on underneath, they just look kind of droopy and abstract. Taxidermy is an art, and the human variety is the hardest.

“So, look, you’re going to transfer me out,” I said. Grgur mumbled something like “Okay.” He was still bleeding so I surgi-taped his worst wounds, just so he wouldn’t shock out on me, before I started rooting through the shelves. Hmm. Turbocurarine. Meprobamate solution. Most of the potions seemed familiar, I suppose because Jed had spent so much time in hospitals when he was little he’d memorized a volume known as the Physicians’ Desk Reference.

Let us see. A few bottles of Percocet. Some dioxyamphetamines in case I had to stay awake for a while. Some scalpem. Scalpels. Aha.

Downerland.

It took a little longer to find syringes. They were way up on the top shelf where the little kids couldn’t get them. I dumped a drawer of twenty- and hundred-millimeter disposables down into Grgur’s bloody lap and climbed down next to him with my bottles.

All right.

I mixed a few things up in little jar, a solution of about four milligrams of Pavulon, four grams of meprobamate, and thirty milligrams of tubocurarine chloride.

If he weighed two hundred pounds, that would make it about a quintuple dose of each. He’d feel it as fast as if it were heroin, but it wouldn’t get him right away. When it got distributed, though, he’d have had it. I pulled his sock down, found a clear vein on the inside of his upper ankle, and shot it in. He was squirming a little so I sat on him, pulled the bag off his head, pulled the wad out of his mouth, and while he was still gasping made a big wad of cotton and taped it over his mouth and nose. He’d be able to talk normally and I’d just be able to hear him, but if he started screaming it wasn’t going anywhere. His head was all red and sopping wet. I unwrapped one of the hundred-milliliter arterial syringes. It had a nice long sturdy needle. Beautiful.

I looked at his watch. We’d been in here for about thirty-score beats. Ten score since the injection. I should really give the shit another ten-score beats to kick in before I tried anything. You just can’t cover everything, though, it’s all a compromise. Give it another fifty-score beats.

“So this may be a cliche,” I said, “but can I ask whom exactly you’re working for?” I got more weight on his head, turned it sideways, and felt the edge of his jaw.

“Mrmff,” he said.

“You can talk,” I said. I slid the dry needle through the thin skin over the lower arch of his mandible, under the masseter muscle and away from the facial vein, and rested it against the nerve-rich bone. There was only a tiny bead of blood.

“Now twist, now writhe in ant-blood tickles,” I said.

I drew the thick needle through a wide arc, scraping against the bone. Grgur didn’t groan but I felt his involuntary tense and shiver. That’s nothing, I thought.

“You understand I look like Tony Sic, but I’m-ah-I’m Jed.”

“Yuh. Somebody said-”

“Come on. Who is your steward of long things?”

“Huh?”

“Your commanding officer.”

“Lindsay Warren,” he said.

“Who put up the money?”

“For what?”

“For the Stake, in Belize,” I said. I tried not to look at the drifts of precancerous dander under his pathetic thinning sideburns.

“Lindsay’s investors.”

“Who’s Lindsay’s superior?”

“As far as I know, um, I don’t think…”

“Hurry up.”

“I think Lindsay’s his own boss.”

“Really? Okay, how do I get in there?”

“Where?”

“His office. At the Stake.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’d still better get some codes and names and whatever on the table. I’m serious.”

“I’m serious, I don’t know.”

“Okay, you obviously have nothing to offer.” I drew the needle back and scraped it over and over into his mandible toward his teeth, not widening the single puncture but etching a deep line in the bone, over and over, like I was jerking him off. He started shrieking way back in his throat but I gave him a full twenty strokes before stopping. Working on him was getting me back on track.

“There’s a Warren weapons test on for December twenty-first,” I said. “I want you to help me find out about it.”

“Okay.”

“So, okay, tell me about it.”

He paused like he was thinking of making something up, but he must have decided not to.

“I don’t know,” he said, “there’s a Christmas party at the Hyperbowl, if there’s something on for the Stake I’m not in on it.”

“How do I get to see Lindsay?”

“I don’t even know when he’ll be back, they move his schedule around-”

“Please, be terse.” When the stuff took effect he wouldn’t be able to tell me anything. “What codes do you have?”

“I just have a card.”

“How long is it good for?”

“Forever.”

I eased the needle in further, pushing it down from above with my finger, under his loose, bristly skin, until the point threaded into the base of his number-three molar. He tensed. Maggots of waxy sweat welled up out of his pores.

“Come on, how often does the card change?”

“All the time, it’s live-”

“I mean the whole card.”

“It gets replaced every week. I get the new one in two days.”

I felt footsteps again, and voices I couldn’t make out went down another hall, more urgent and official-sounding this time. I jammed the drift of cotton into Grgur’s face.