David Wong: Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick ISBN:1250195799 (Zoey Ashe-2)

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Excerpts

Zoey was familiar with the truck, just by its shape. It sold lightly charred strips of Korean barbecue on little sizzling, self-heating metal plates with a side compartment of melted cheese for dipping. It was one of the five best food trucks in the city,

Will was an unreasonably white man in his late thirties wearing a suit the color of a wet sidewalk and the expression of a man who’s just realized the wetness is piss.

The building the pissed-off guy with superhuman strength had smashed his way into was the Night Inn Cuddle Theater. For $250, an attractive member of your preferred gender would curl up with you in pajamas and watch a movie in a small private room with a wet bar, snacks, and a fireplace. There was no sex. That theater was down the block and they actually charged a lot less.

much to her surprise, she apparently owned the Night Inn Cuddle Theater.

Will brought up Blink, a searchable network of just about every running wireless camera on Earth. The top trending stream was titled “Night Inn Hostage Crisis, BIG Death Toll Assured—ALERT: POSSIBLE COW SLAUGHTER!”

“Ninety percent? Would you board a plane that had a ten percent chance of crashing?” “I once boarded a plane that barely had a ten percent chance of not crashing because, like now, my other options were worse.”

Each breath you draw from this moment forward is a precious gift granted to you by Ms. Ashe. After each said breath, I want you to silently thank her and appreciate the grace she has bestowed upon you.

The battered carcass of the 8-8 Disintegrator or whatever Will had called it came flying out of the hole in the wall.

Will looked her in the eye, getting serious now. “You know what to do?” “I’ve been in a hostage negotiation before, Will. Multiple times.” “As a hostage, yes. This end is more complicated.”

Still locking eyes with her, he asked, “Did you ever shower after our appointments?” “No. No.” Zoey didn’t know if Tilley could spot the lie in Shae’s eyes, but Zoey could.

“No. I want Shae. My only possible life is with her. If I can’t be with her, I have no life, and I’m taking as many people with me as I can.”

You notice ninety percent of the customers here are male? All of us, starving for this.”

Zoey had several vices in her life, perhaps none more dangerous than her addiction to pointless arguments.

Zoey said, “I forgot to mention before now, but my company developed those implants. Well, one of my companies. One product we never sold publicly was the remote override. I’ve got one embedded in my necklace here. It’s voice operated. Have a seat, on the floor. Let’s talk.”

“Bullshit. There’s something else here. You fear me. You fear my people. Otherwise you wouldn’t be giving in.”

“Oh,” she said, “also, don’t activate your implants. Not even to knock over walls for Rico. None of the devices you can buy on the black market are safe, they either overload and explode, or else they’re calibrated wrong and you’ll accidentally twist your own ligaments off.”

She hadn’t actually known any of those people, she’d turned her cat’s birthday party into a fundraiser for an extremely important cause that Zoey couldn’t remember at the moment. The ballroom had filled with rich locals wearing practiced smiles and elaborate wigs who either wanted on her good side or who just liked to be seen at these things—

the bad news is that, yes, a clip from the ladder situation went viral immediately. The good news is those skull-dot panties sold out nationwide within twenty minutes. There was an article about it. Probably an endorsement deal in it for you, if you want.”

“Yes, we’re doing performance review scores.

I don’t want to be a part of this.” She waved her hand around the room. “This … thing, what you guys do.

“Oh,” said Zoey, letting out a nervous chuckle that was completely inappropriate in the moment. “You’re talking about all the crime...but … you couldn’t just take the money and leave? You just, took over the Mob instead?”

“We really have gotten rid of the bad stuff, I mean, a lot of it is still prostitution and gambling, but it’s not the kind of thing where we’re ambushing people in an alley and stealing their jewels.

Mankind, he had told her, had spent much of the twentieth century dreaming of colonizing the stars (why fix civilization when you can just run away and build a brand-new one?), but by the 1980s or so everyone had soured on the idea.

By the early 2020s, a new and better idea started to take hold among the ultra-wealthy and powerful: just recolonize the earth instead. Go find some sparsely populated area with a weak or disinterested government and just start building a brand-new city that would function under its own rules.

These ludicrously expensive social experiments were often called “charter cities” and soon, every obscenely wealthy and/or powerful clique wanted one to call their own.

Tabula Ra$a, by far the most successful and well known of the bunch, had been planted in southwestern Utah by a cabal of flamboyant criminals, apparently over a petty grudge.

“Tabula Rasa,” he’d say while grinning and stabbing a finger at the camera, “is not for pussies. If you’re not man enough, well, there’s a loser’s train to Vegas that leaves every hour.” People couldn’t move there fast enough.

Why had she stayed there, sleeping in the same home as her infamous father and doing a job with duties so alarmingly vague and varied that the news usually just referred to her as an “heiress”?

she plunged immediately into the nightmare she’d had a hundred times since moving to the city. She was back in Fort Drayton, Colorado, late for her shift at Java Lodge.

The trolls couldn’t be ignored, her therapist had said, but they could be contained in her mind, locked in a little room until she chose to address them.

All of the streamers were obsessed with Zoey’s people, who everyone just called the “Suits,” always sniffing around for any hint of palace intrigue.

They had decided it would be cool that if during the months-long construction process, they installed a bunch of hologram projectors that would show off the building as it would look once finished.

some clever jerk had gotten in and reprogrammed a few of the projectors so that what scrawled across the middle of the building in glowing red was a fairly sloppy Cow Zoey drawing.

“You talk to any old-timer in this city,” said Chopra, “they’ll tell you, if you opposed Arthur Livingston, if you had an expression on your face that implied you were even idly musing about it, bystanders would get quiet and slowly back away,

the inmates are running the asylum. It’s the scariest thing in nature, my friends—a power vacuum. What do you get then? Anarchy. Or worse, government.”

“Is it a bomb?” “No. It’s a corpse.”

The corpse reached up and punched her in the face.

The naked corpse then raised itself up slowly from the steamer trunk. It moved unnaturally, not using its hands at all to climb to its feet. It just unfolded itself, like a machine.

Then she noticed the sloppy surgery scars on the corpse’s shoulders. It appeared that sparing Dexter Tilley had only bought another four weeks or so of life and Zoey was going to go out on a limb and say that he had not made the most of it.

Then Zoey realized that someone was remotely driving the dead

body’s implants and that, oh yeah, it meant this corpse was strong enough to tear her in half.

Zoey knew why Wu had silenced her. Whoever was operating Tilley was about to figure out that the implants had been remotely disabled—the big tactical secret Will had continually lectured them about keeping.

“Dexter Tilley’s murdered corpse was found Tuesday morning missing its eyes, stomach, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and testicles. Among other parts. He was found in the parking garage of Fort Fortuna.”

“The Blowback. We know you killed this man and partook of his flesh in order to send a message,

to try to quell the uprising. It has only birthed in us a new resolve.”

The bounty went up on the Skin Wall one minute ago. One million dollars for evidence of your complicity in Tilley’s murder.

“Oh. To grab me and beat a confession out of me.” About four different people in the room simultaneously said, “It’s what I would do.”

if everyone back home actually knew how these people lived, they’d have burned the system down long ago.... First, there’s the fact that at this level, debt is usually a good thing—it makes you richer. Zoey was getting loans on hilariously friendly terms... Then there’s the fact that when you’re rich, people just give you things.

“You ever wonder how your personal fan club put together a million dollars for the bounty?” Will said, “Assumed they crowdsourced it. Zoey has thousands of people who hate her, I assume some of them have jobs.” “No, they do not. The money came in all at once. Single donor.” Will nodded, suddenly looking past Alonzo. Thinking. “Somebody’s got money.”

“We didn’t say there was a riot. We said there was going to be one. A spontaneous riot, within the next five to ten minutes.”... There’s an unrest algorithm that uses Blink to predict outbreaks of violence.”

“Triggering event? What was that?” “There’s a new video, from Dexter Tilley.”

this isn’t just about her. This is about a whole system. My brothers, it’s time to burn it down.”

The rioters erupted at the sight, throwing bottles, then bricks. They seemed to have hit another gear, everyone moving with confidence now, feeding off each other.

What she saw on the face of this guy was something completely different: rage on a level that could only be called a kind of madness.

She looked at him and tried to steady her voice. “Is … is this my fault?” “Why are you asking that question?” “Why can’t you just say ‘no’ when I ask something like that? God.” “You’re not a child,” said Will, gently. “I won’t treat you like one. You’re asking me if this was your fault because you want to know what emotion you’re supposed to be feeling right now. Are you supposed to be beating yourself up? Well, that’s the wrong question. The world doesn’t care about your emotions.” “So what question should I be asking?” “Whether or not you would do it differently next time. Everything that happens matters only in terms of what you can learn from it going forward.”

“Some rioters in this world have a legitimate grievance. Do these?” “No.” “Are they rational in the demands they’re making of you?” “I can’t even tell what their demands are.” “So, we couldn’t have done anything to prevent this—they’re doing what they were already determined to do, for their own reasons. That means we move past self-doubt and don’t look back. Now the only question that matters is how do we fix it.”

“Alonzo thinks a specific person is behind this. If so, we need to find out what their goal is.”

Two weeks ago, Tilley was seen speaking to an employee of Titus Chobb.”

“He owns the Vanguard of Peace, which is now the largest private security firm in the city and is rapidly becoming the only one. He’s continuing to buy up all of the smaller firms, one by one.”

“He’s ruthless but he’s not some kind of supervillain.” “All right. So, where do we find him?” “He spends his time floating above the city in a huge black zeppelin.”

my perfect scenario is a completely peaceful city and a populace who appreciates that only my services can preserve that peace.”

“Speaking of Korea,” said Will, before Zoey could open her mouth, “you built all of this off of contracts you had over there. When you were with Odin’s Hammer. All that off-books work behind the border.” “You were there.” “I was. I saw the aftermath of your people’s work in Kaesong.

“You know he agrees with everything I just said, right? Don’t let him tell you any different. He knows he should be at the head of the table. I can’t even imagine what lies Will is telling you to make you think your interests are aligned.

Zoey knew that either Chobb had killed Tilley, or knew who had done it.

But the dozen people who blocked the road also didn’t flinch. The protocol here was to just run the threat right over, but they couldn’t do that, or go around him, without flattening three or four noncombatants, including some minors. The man had brought human shields and was no doubt streaming their plight to the world.

The three prongs on the puck glowed orange and acrid smoke hit Zoey’s nostrils. Liquid glass dripped down from the spot like candlewax … Then the windshield shattered.

The van, as if in reply, said, “BYSTANDERS IN PROXIMITY—AWAITING COUNTERMEASURES AUTHORIZATION.” Zoey said, “Van! You are authorized!” Compartments on each side of the vehicle slid open. Out from them poured what looked like a swarm of thousands of insects. They circled above the overturned van for a few seconds and then dispersed in every direction.

Zoey looked for the Viking. About ten feet in front of the overturned van was now a clump of six people, their heads together, arms locked, forming a human dome around the Viking who was kneeling in the center, shielding him from the swarm. The barrel of his gun poked out between two torsos.

“We have witnesses, cow. Anonymous staff from Salt Lake Wellness.” That was the upscale mental health facility Zoey had done her time in over the summer. “We have copies of the report from the doctor. Your admission was not due to a nervous breakdown, but from a neurological side effect from eating human flesh.”

The device at my feet is a propellant cooker. They’re well known around here. When activated, it will send out a pulse that will detonate every live cartridge in the vicinity. Including your spare magazines and the ammo belts you have draped over your torso for decoration, assuming they’re real. Please take a moment to visualize it.”

In the sky ahead was what looked like a giant white bird, diving directly toward them. “Is it a plane?”

According to the feed, this guy was named the Human Tank,

On the screen, the Viking—who according to the feed was named, sigh, Redd Gunn—had commandeered a motorcycle and was gaining on them fast.

Redd squeezed the trigger. Zoey saw an orange flash. She felt a puff of air caress her temple. Then the cooker activated from inside the cab of the truck.

The chat streams flowed alongside the feed and a single message was getting reposted thousands of times: TOMORROW NIGHT, WE STORM THE WALLS

Echo said, “The city’s Unrest Index is at six point five.” Zoey said, “The what?” “It’s the index that measure’s the city’s unrest,” elaborated Andre. “Same system that predicted the riot,” said Echo. “You go over seven and you get multiple riots across the city in specific hot spots. An eight is general chaos that shuts down entire neighborhoods, a ten means all social norms are gone and your city is no longer a city.”

She went straight for the tarp covering the giant, humming school bus–sized machine. She peeled it back. The machine was black, segmented into rings in a way that made Zoey think of an alien robot caterpillar. She guessed it didn’t have to be an alien robot, but it definitely looked weird. They referred to it as Santa’s Workshop, because it spat out toys. It was the Raiden device fabricator that they believed/hoped was the only one capable of making real, reliable gear.

The gadgetry that came out of the machine was intended to transform a human into a conduit of terror, to destroy and kill in spectacular ways. All of it had been designed by a madman who was now dead, and investing in it had cost her father his life.

Why would they choose to believe this particular awful thing?” “Because they hate you, Zoey. And because they hate you, they need to come up with a reason to hate you. See, because otherwise, they’re just bad people.... Your reactions are entertainment to them, they milk you for tears, for pain. But they’re humans, so at some point they’ll feel guilt over it. That’s when they need to manufacture some new reason to justify it, a shared fiction that lets the game continue.”

I don’t think you get how scary you are to people now. In those parties you go to with all them captains of industry, you can think of it like a spiderweb, all these crisscrossing vectors of power. This one is afraid of that one, who answers to this other guy over here. Sure, nobody’s putting an actual gun to anybody’s head, but it’s because they don’t have to. It’s just understood. If you don’t want to become a monster, if you don’t want to become like Chobb or even your daddy, you’ve got to start paying attention to that stuff. Otherwise, you’ll become one of them and you won’t even notice the change.”

You’re saying that’s why this group decided to hate me. They feel powerless.”

Budd had a list of names by dinnertime.

“The true threat,” said Will, “is if their benefactor funds something more serious.”

as you keep saying, they spend all their time in the Hub. That’s where they’re doing their planning. So who here has gone into the Hub to see what’s what?” No one answered. Zoey said, “What, are you all too cool to put on a VR headset?

“Zoey, you are underestimating your opponent. I don’t care what their equipment or training is like. This is a bunch of people who have turned hatred of you into their religion and they have nothing to lose. You are dealing with zealots and if they get their hands on you, we have no idea what they’ll do because they don’t know. Regardless of the mindset of any individual in that building, the twentysomething hive mind is a psychopath. I’m telling you—don’t go in there without backup standing by.”

“Their Blink chat is going wild. You’ve kicked the nerd nest.”

Zoey had lived in seven places in her life; she judged that this was better than maybe three of them.

They wanted her to go meet them in their VR hangout, in the Hub.

“Wait, am I a cow?” She looked down and around at herself, and saw seven more hooves on the ground. She was inhabiting the body of a giant spider-cow hybrid, slick black skin like the terrifying drone they’d used the night of the hostage crisis.

Zoey finally pieced together that she couldn’t meet with the real-life version of this person because there was no single individual. A bunch of them were just taking turns. Were they all even in this building?

The world was ripped away from her. Echo—the real one—was standing there, the goggles in her hand, looking frantic. “They’re locking us in.”

“He was hit with a stun round from above. There was a team waiting on the top floor. It was an ambush.”

I’m not claiming to be a genius, Zoey. I’m just saying I remember what happened last time.”

“Wait, it just occurred to me that you said you had three teenagers at home. Were you serious?” “Yes. One is in college, actually.” “Really? Wait, how old are you?” “How old would you guess?” “Thirty? Somewhere around there.” “I am forty-six. As of last month.”

So what do we do?” Andre said, “Get someone who hates Chobb as much as we do.”

“We made a deal with Alonzo.

You know this is the most valuable machine in the world, right?” “You can get Raiden gadgets elsewhere. You’ve probably run into implanted freaks yourself.” “No. You can’t. You can get bootleg, janky gear from exactly two locations working off shoddy hardware and glitchy software. Only one place to get the real thing, the stuff that actually works. Right here. Or so they say.”

“I’m counting down the seconds until you ask for implants. Or at least a fancy gun.” “Ah, it’s a solid life rule that if Will Blackwater hands you a weapon, it either isn’t loaded or there is a much larger one pointed at your back. I wouldn’t let that man implant anything in my body. You shouldn’t, either. If you take my meaning.”

You probably heard, it looks like Tabula Rasa isn’t going to be an unincorporated place much longer. It’s getting worked out behind the scenes, with the county and the state. Going to be a real city, by next summer at the latest. Gonna recognize the charter and everything.”

It means the city is going to need a mayor.”

if you should ever decide to cut ties with Will and make him your enemy, your best strategy will be to find a time machine and transport yourself back to a point where you can undo that decision.”

Why would you want an actual government here? People like you have made out like bandits. And before you jump on me for that ‘people like you’ phrasing, we’re standing in a mansion built by someone much worse.” “The fact that you don’t know why I’d run is the reason I need to run. My people are being gunned down in the streets. Beaten and harassed by private security who don’t answer to anyone but the property owners.

“All three buildings were owned by your father.” This time it was Zoey who was genuinely confused. “You’re saying he was so racist he just preferred the units sit empty?” “It’s not about personal feelings, not from where the owners sit. That’s what you people always get wrong. It was a brand-new city, see. The landlords knew you could only have about twenty percent minority tenants before the upper-class renters decided it was destined to be ghetto and started steering clear. So, those landlords were telling the truth. There were, in fact, no more slots for non-white renters.

“When a conspiracy theory becomes mainstream,” said Echo, “the early adopters have to latch onto a different, even more niche conspiracy, since their identity is tied to going against the grain.

there’s a fledgling theory that after Titus Chobb’s wife died of cancer a couple of years ago, that he came to believe that in order to stave off disease and achieve immortality himself, he needed to regularly eat the organs of a young male. And the rumor is that his chef saw this as the ultimate culinary challenge.”

The Blowback has a thousand officers commanding a million foot soldiers. And they intend to raze the estate, seize the objective, and eat it—I assume they mean you—at a ceremonial feast at midnight.”

“I’m starting to think that our adversary is not speaking the same language we are.”

It was Stench Machine’s collar, and his Blink camera. The cat himself was nowhere to be found. Zoey told herself that this was nothing, that it had just fallen off. Then she thought about what Will had said, about the distraction. Then she thought about The Blowback boasting that they would have a feast at midnight. Zoey balled up her fists, bent over, and screamed as loud as she could.

What I’m telling you is that friend isn’t coming. Ever. Instead, you have to surround yourself with people whose instincts you trust, whether they’re your friends or not.

Echo fixed her gaze on her and said, “You are, in fact, on an island. But we are on here with you.” Zoey burst into tears.

“You’re right. We don’t need a good plan. We need a stupid plan.”

“Remember, this isn’t a leak,” said Will. “It’s a public post, one they knew we’d see. That would suggest that they want you to know, or at least to think, that your cat is going to be at the costume contest in the park.”

“Shae LaVergne, the hostage girl? She just bought a house for her and her momma in Salt Lake. Put half a million in cash on a down payment.

why don’t you go help Echo figure out how the catnapper thwarted the estate’s security?” “She has a theory, but you’re not going to like it.” “As opposed to everything else I’ve heard today?” “She thinks the intruder snuck into the house days ago. Or weeks ago, even.

she was dressed as Torture Victim Zoey Ashe.

Zoey’s rented stealth helicopter had arrived.

The tarp fell to the ground, revealing Zoey’s Halloween costume,

We’ve parked a jammer drone on their roof, when we turn it on, it’ll kill any outgoing Blink feeds.

Andre added, “One way or the other, the whole evacuation and cleanup procedure should take hours, maybe all night.

Zoey said, “Can’t they shoot us down?” “They can, if they try hard enough. All helicopters are made to crash. But they won’t try. Not as long as we have him on board.” He nodded toward their hostage.

“Marti?” said the kid, like he was now scared that he was giving the wrong answer to a trick question. “The whole name.” “Marti Chobb.”

Echo, trying not to sound alarmed, said, “There was a flash, like something blew up, and then we lost the drone.”

It just got out of hand, like I said.” “‘Got out of hand.’” “You wouldn’t understand.” “People say that to me ten times a day. Why wouldn’t I understand?” “Because you’re not a guy.” “Explain it to me, then. Tell me what it’s like.” Marti looked hard at her, searching for a way to phrase it. “It’s like everyone is laughing at you all the time and all you want to do is shut them up.” “I absolutely feel like that.” He scoffed. “Everyone thinks girls are God’s perfect little angels. You’re never in the wrong, always the innocent victims, always calm and wise and perfect. And nothing is ever your fault.

It was the Screw, and it was on fire.

“That was your dad’s bodyguard who killed him, right? Dirk Vikerness? Are you acting like you don’t know that?” “DV didn’t kill Dexter Tilley. Neither did my dad, or any of us.” “But you know who did. And you know why.” The look on his face made that more than clear.

Zoey looked down at Marti, at his slack-jawed, stupid face, and thought carefully about exactly what would make him feel what she was feeling right now. What would make all of them feel it.

the gaudy party copter hovered overhead and they all climbed down the ladder into the mass of shocked revelers below, the winds from the rotors blowing off wigs and spilling drinks. It was exactly the kind of obnoxious stunt that drunk tourists would pull on a night like this, so it was perfect for what they were trying to accomplish: none of their enemies would see that incident scroll across Blink and say, “That sounds exactly like the kind of thing Will Blackwater would do.”

“Everything went bad at once,” said Marti, his voice trembling. “My mother died two years ago. Cancer. Just six months after the funeral, I got sick. Everything started to swell. I turned yellow.” Echo, sounding like everything had finally fallen into place, said, “Bukhari syndrome?”

Which meant Marti here needed—”

“A new liver,” finished Zoey. “Got it.”

Dad went through a black market organ thing, but there were no livers. Lot of kids need them, for the same reason I did.

Tilley. He picked Crimson Day. The ‘Children of Ares’ scenario. It’s a level you can’t win.

for a package like our hypothetical customer’s, in which he’s offered end-of-life services with all viable organs being harvested, we pay a flat fee of two million dollars to whatever beneficiary the client chooses. The organs are then sold on the private market.” Will said, “Then Tilley left his payment to Shae. So that’s where her windfall came from.”

somebody tell me how Tilley’s body wound up in a box on my doorstep.”

if security footage should show that the corpse had, well, resurrected itself and walked out of the building under its own power,

I want you to get on camera and confess. Confess to Tilley’s murder, right now.”

We’re burning this operation to the ground.”

Will said, “Zoey, he means it’s your right because you own this business.”

They’re eating my Hub avatar? Why?”

“They won the Battle of the Molten Sea. They overran your estate.

On the screen appeared Carlton the butler. He was holding Stench Machine.

Sitting there, in white overalls that looked kind of like biohazard suits, were Budd and Andre.

“Every time things get hard, you retreat right back to this place. Thinking of Arthur as this monster, ignoring all of the lessons you’ve learned. Everything you’ve learned about what power really means.”

I’m giving the money away.” “What does that even mean? You’re still picturing your wealth like it’s a pile of gold coins in your vault. It’s not. It’s a machine... Every part of your machine will wind up under the control of men who don’t know what a crisis of conscience even is. If you give up the money, you give up the power to make change.”

That was how the Black Parade worked: the floats depicted in graphic, often cartoonishly exaggerated detail some horror from the dark underbelly of the city.

A really good parade, Zoey thought, is one that can accidentally kill you at any moment.

The flames were definitely real, Zoey could feel the heat from where she was on the sidewalk. It was, as Echo had said, commemorating/mocking the infamous Goldstone building fire. That had been an office building in town holding several brokerage firms and other such businesses. When the blaze started, the alarm system and sprinklers both failed, or had never worked at all. Twenty-six people died, supposedly because the staff of one firm feared their boss so much that they stayed rooted at their desks even as smoke slowly filled the room. That boss had apparently told them they would all lose their jobs unless a certain report was finished by the end of the business day and without an alarm to give the order to evacuate, they just kept working. That was the story, anyway. The boss, who very much evacuated at the first sign of smoke, refused to speak of it in public.

There was a sign on the rear positioned so it would flash to the crowd as a punchline, and in burning text it said, PROUDLY MAINTAINED BY ASHE CONSTRUCTION!

Zoey saw the scene they had staged and sucked in a breath.

Lying on it was a man who was vaguely intended to look like Dexter Tilley. Same buzz cut, some crudely applied acne, drawn-on stitches in the appropriate spots.

At the head of the table, sitting in front of a plate full of bloody guts, shirt and face smeared with red, was a person in a costume who was clearly supposed to be … Titus Chobb.

That’s how quickly Budd’s rumor had spread.

The guy on the table lifted his head and said, “Hey, that’s Dirk Vikerness!” By the time Zoey realized the same, she was flying through the air.

She trudged through the drifts of fake money and looked back, for the first time registering the float she was on. It was decorated to be an amazingly lavish bathroom, more ostentatious than anything in her estate, or anything she’d ever install there. Zoey had landed in a giant golden hot tub that could probably accommodate twenty people, full of bundled cash instead of water. Across from Zoey was a naked animatronic sex doll with a Zoey Ashe

Arthur Livingston, Zoey’s father, had for years trafficked women from all over the world.

Zoey saw his bare shoulders … and there were the surgery scars. When he was rushed away to get help for his stabbed eyeball, he’d apparently decided to get an upgrade while he was in the shop.

“The challenge of our age,” he said, “is pulling this lost generation of men out of the fake wars you’ve given them to fight and convincing them to fight the real ones. You know they’re still celebrating killing your avatar? We will wake them up, one at a time. We are the children you sacrificed to your god, come back to have our vengeance.”

Another thud, then he slumped over on top of her. His body was twitching.

“You idiots, that is Zoey Ashe!”

He was tackled from behind. The woman with the hammers.

“You’re Zoey! Obviously.” A bystander said, “Who?” Shonda said, “Oh, she’s the one who got them to run the buses out to my trailer park.

Several teenage girls popped out. They were bouncing with excitement.

The girl’s face fell. “Oh. I’m … oh god, I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to be rude. I’m a fan, if this is a bad time … I’m sorry. I just wanted to say thank you.”

I don’t think I have fans.” “Seriously? You went in and talked down that guy who was holding that girl hostage? I named my cat Zoey.”

“Mr. Vikerness was not an employee at the time of his demise and his death is not our jurisdiction. This way.”

remembered the strange request Will had made earlier, that she go back and watch the video from the night of her hostage crisis.

She zoomed in on the crowd. She spotted some of the individual ringleaders they’d called out in their analysis earlier in the day,

There were no more than twenty people actually yelling horrible things at her in that moment. About that many more stood around them, kind of looking spiteful but not really participating in the rage.

Outside of that group she only found people who weren’t necessarily cheering Zoey, but they were smiling, waving, trying to get her attention. A group five times the size of the trolls.

In his careful staging of the scene, Will had turned Zoey into an underdog, someone to root for. An everyday woman just trying to do her best in absurdly awful circumstances.

“that whole campaign against you, the unfortunate use of Mr. Tilley’s corpse, that was all Mr. Vikerness, acting on his own.

“I assume you know that this radical group I speak of is also the reason you’re here. Or perhaps you didn’t know that? And I don’t mean here at this table, but rather here in this city. My association with them goes back some years. I’m not proud of that.”

“Wait. Did you just confess to killing my father?”

“Does Will know you were behind that? If so, I’m not sure why you’re still alive.” “We’ll discuss that in a moment.

Your father brought Raiden to life, putting the power to change human evolution in the hands of people who neither understood its implications nor were capable of understanding them. Your father built this city, and for that we are all in his debt. But in the end, he was overtaken by a deranged fantasy.

“Look at you, operating with bad intentions because you assume everyone else is doing the same. It’s like every awful person I’ve ever known works from the same playbook.”

Titus watched her. “I heard you’re thinking about cashing out. Leaving town.”

leaving means this place then falls into the hands of people like you and for some reason that also bothers me. I’m thinking I need to stay here and keep you in check.”

“I’d seen your mother every day, for months. Did you know that? Though I didn’t know that’s who she was at the time.

“Freya’s Palace was designed, built, and run by my wife, prior to her death.

“Your mother made an impassioned appeal. And I listened. I offered to have her for dinner and she said yes. That’s why we’re having her for dinner tonight.”

Zoey turned in time to see her mother emerge,

your mother is a … special woman. I’ve never felt a connection to someone so quickly. An intimacy.

If I let you just walk out of here, it will be war. The city will burn. If he takes you by force, it will be war. The city will burn.”

“So what in the hell are we supposed to do?” “Get Blackwater out of the picture.”

“One thing that recent events have taught me is that Marti will not be the one to inherit my empire.

Zoey put the little button on the table. It had a cobalt-blue pinprick of light in the center. Chobb jumped up and backed away, knocking his chair over.

“Titus,” said Zoey, trying quickly to put the words together. “I am going to give you everything you want. Everything you really want.

I’m going to offer you control over an entire economy the size of Germany.”

“This is what Marti’s doing on his headset back there. Echo showed me this. You see how this army here is all tagged with little red icons? Those are Dirk Vikerness loyalists, who just cast Marti out of their federation after he came forward with his confession. The ones tagged in green, those are your son’s, he’s leading an alliance of forces against them, including an army of Zoey loyalists, which until tonight I didn’t know was a thing.”

when you make or grow something here, the final stage is to have it authenticated through a company called V-Terra—you pay a few pennies to certify it’s real. A hundred million users in the Hub rely on it every single minute of every day.” “And you own V-Terra?” “Well, it was owned by a Chinese billionaire....V-Terra doesn’t sell imaginary goods. It prevents other people from having them. That, it turns out, is the stupid industry of the future.

That means these people in here finally have the one thing they can’t get in the real world, and the thing they want above all else—status.

“And all I have to do,” gruffed Chobb, “is abandon my home and my life’s work. I’m sure Will Blackwater would like this ‘deal’ very much.” “That brings me to the next part. You don’t like to lose and you absolutely do not want to lose to Will Blackwater, of all people. Trust me, I completely understand. That’s why as part of the VOP buyout, you get that…” Zoey pointed out of the window in the opposite direction of the golden cat, to a wobbly glowing shape in the distance. Her under-construction tower, shrouded in its childish hologram.

“You can’t even see that Will set this up, that he sent you here to do this?” “You can’t even see that I know he thinks he did that?”

From where Zoey was sitting, she saw his phone detect the device, a red “Initiate” button appearing. He tapped it. Zoey yelled to her mother, “GET DOWN!”

Titus seemed mildly confused, then returned to scrolling through what seemed like a very long document on his phone.

“They’re saying crime dropped forty percent in Mumbai among regular users.”

Why would I want to spend my golden years trying to make money in a field I know nothing about?” “That,” said Zoey, pointing a finger-gun at him, “is the best part. You’re a novice in the Hub, you’re right. But you know who isn’t? Your son, Marti.

You say your son can’t inherit your security empire and your conclusion is that it’s time to throw away your son? How about you get a different empire instead?

To Echo, he said, “I told you she was fine.”

“I think your avatar was being run by an AI,” said Echo, “mimicking your voice. Your army was made up of some real people and some bots.” “But who set it all up? Someone was organizing all of this with a fake me.”

“I can tell you from years of long experience that for every one truly evil man, there’s a hundred wayward souls who just need to be put right. There are ways to set those people on the righteous path without handing them over to sadists to be treated like dogs.”

Zoey asked, “You think I’m dangerous?” “Yes. Because you don’t really know what it’s like to have a boot on your neck but you think you do. So you’re going to slip right into the status quo. Same as all the rest.”

“You’re the one who got my mom that job at that Freya building. That’s too much of a coincidence. You set that up and you did it months ago. You knew this was coming.” “I knew that the guy who instigated Arthur’s death and was building a private army was going to eventually be a problem? You think that took some kind of next-level foresight?”

“And you got my mother involved, how?” “She came to me and asked how she could help. I said she could keep an eye on this guy who was going to be a threat soon, talk to him, take his temperature. The rest, she did on her own.”

I wanted a rift between Chobb and Dirk Vikerness. The staff was loyal to Chobb, the people on the ground were loyal to Dirk. Nothing I’ve tried since Tilley has succeeded.”

Make sure you don’t wind up running the city according to your evil desires.” “It seems like the first step in doing that would have been not telling me.” “Which raises a question in my mind that I still can’t answer,” said Zoey. “What do you want?” “Right now?” “Just, in general.”

It’s about leaving a mark. Not just the stuff you can see, but the connections, the systems. This guy needs a thing and has money, this woman on the other side of town has the thing and needs money. Find a way to connect those two and you’ve made the world a happier place. That’s really all it is, all of civilization—just organizing those transactions. But the second you set yourself to building something great, a swarm of jackals wash in and start gnawing at it. Grifters, thieves, bureaucrats. Pretty soon, fighting them off is all you get done.

“This summer, when I had my breakdown and woke up in the hospital

saved some of the pain pills from my surgery last year and took four of them, then drank a whole

someone had come and gotten me out of that situation and did it in a way so that no one ever found out about it.