Every Last Drop

Jeo Pitt 4 - Every Last Dropand his delusions of nobility.He places the book back on the shelf.—Skag is a word I know not the meaning of. Nor do I deign to seek it out. So sure am I that it is some foul slang for vagina or penis.His chair creaks close and he butts me with the wheels. —And you, were you in my charge at an early age, what should I have named you?His lips purse, dry flakes of blood, and grease from the trotters, mingle in the whiskers on his chin.—Shiftless. Yes, Shiftless. Lazy and contemptible. Placing yourself outside the structure of things. Imagining yourself better than your place. Adding nothing to the common good and weal.He reaches behind the chair and comes up with a short cat-o-nine-tails and prods me with the wood handle.—You are a burden on us all. We strivers, we reachers and dreamers, without us, without our mighty efforts at forward progress, you and your slovenly kind would perish in your own filth.He dangles the knotted leather cords of the whip in front of my face; I can see the dry blood clotted thick.—Parasites. Sucker fish. Tapeworms. Reveling in the bowels of the citizenry. Living off our wastes. Upsetting the smooth functions of the body politic that we nourish with hard labors.He raises the whip and lashes it across my face. —Shiftless. Useless. Leech.I flinch, draw up my shoulders and duck my face into my chest.He prods me again with the handle.—Yes, huddle and hide from the light and truth, Shiftless. Is that shame? No, I think not. Fear. Simple fear of pain. Well, fear is a good forge. We can work many a useful tool with fear at hand. I have done so for years. In good service.He shoves the end of the handle under my chin and forces my face up. —Sharp tools I made. Even if they have never been appreciated. Good tools and able. Suited to their task. And I would have made more and better. But for interference.He pulls the handle away and bangs it against the floor.—Had I been left to my own methods, Menace would never have shunned his conditioning and reverted to his nature. Under my own auspices and left unmolested here, the Mungiki would never have manifested.He throws the cat-o-nine-tails, upsetting a pile of newspapers that sloughs to the floor.—Skag Baron Menace! With no Mungiki he was nothing. I told them, Leave off and let me attend, yes? But they would not listen. Insisted in meddling. All but created the Mungiki with their own hands. Intrusions. Invasions.He takes his hair in fistfuls.—And who must then negotiate with the savages? Who must settle them in their place? And at what price?He puts his hands on the arms of the wheelchair and pushes himself up on twisted legs; frozen at the waist, he stands cocked at nearly ninety degrees, waving arms as warped as his legs, all the bones of him corkscrewed. —Mere seconds in the sun, yes? Cancers in my bones, yes? Mad growths, yes? All because I went out to negotiate, to compensate for failures and oversights that were none of my own.He drops back into the chair, sending it rolling a few feet across the moldering room. —Mr. Lament.—A misstep, did I say? On my own part, yes? Surely it was a misstep. The misstep was loyalty. Listening to the simple caw and cries, yes? I should havefollowed truer stars. My own heart and mind I should have followed! —Mr. Lament.He heaves air in and out, wipes spittle from his mouth, fingering the blisters that pebble his cheeks.—A life in service. For me, who should have been a prince in my own right. This is the price of sacrifice. This is the price of loyalty, Shiftless. The wages paid by an ignorant sovereign. —Mr. Lament.He turns to Low, the boy standing in the open door.—You have something to say, idiot boy? Something that cant wait till your better concludes his business? Come here, thing.Low doesn't move.Lament crooks a finger. —Come here now, Low. Or risk my displeasure.Low comes slowly into the  room,  his tongue probing the ends of his moustache. —Sure, Mr. Lament.Laments hand ducks into the pocket of his robe and comes out with ahoned carpet knife. It flashes once as he uses it to hook the underside ofLows upper lip.—Something to say? Something pressing, yes? Say it, boy! Say it while youstill have lips to make human sounds! Say it before I cast you into your properstation as a maker of animals mewling!—Honestly, Alistair, the boy is simply doing as I asked. You might try an ounceof civility just now and again. We are none of us above the use of goodmanners and simple kindness.Lament and I look at the door where the old woman stands between an efficient-looking  young  man  and woman   in  matching  black  suits,   holding matching machine pistols that look every bit as efficient as they do. —We are not savages, after all.She takes a step into the room, into the light, luster on the single strand of pearls she wears at the neck of a white cardigan with buttons that match the necklace, a faint greasy sheen on the warty gray orb that's half grown from the scarred pit that used to be her right eye socket. —Put the knife down, Alistair. Try to effect the gravity of your years.Lament removes the blade from Low's mouth. —This is my domain, Maureen. How I conduct affairs is my business.She places a hand on Low's head and looks at his face. —How you conduct your business has proven ineffectual. At best.She shakes her head. —A dismal failure is a far more accurate assessment of your affairs.She pushes Low toward the door. —Go out there with your friends.Low looks at Lament.Lament bares his teeth, snaps his fingers, and Low goes out the door.He looks up at the old woman. —A dismal failure? I think not.She inclines her head at the two young people and they come farther into the room.—Fear as a control is limited, Alistair. Your instrument is dulled by it. Incapable of independent actions. They will never serve as anything but your lackeys. Sad prison wards. A pathetic, if necessary, fate for them. Truly, it's as much as mongrel races can or should aspire to, but the added indignity of being lorded by yourself seems all but cruel.He grunts, opens his mouth.She shakes her head. —No. No further comment is required.She lifts a hand and the young man takes the handles of the wheelchair and pushes it to the door. —Go join your proteges.He twists about in the chair, looking back at her as he is wheeled out. —This is my place, Maureen! This conclave is my doing and I should be present.The old woman looks about for a place to sit. —Yes, Alistair. Yes, yes.His further comments cut off as the young man closes the door behind them.The young woman finds a folding steel chair with a cracked plastic seat cushion, wipes dust off it with a few tissues from Lament's box, and places it for the old woman.She takes a seat, runs her hands over the legs of her light wool slacks, then folds them in her lap and looks at me. —And tell me, Mr. Pitt, how have you enjoyed Alistair Laments hospitality?I shrug as best I can.—He's not quite up to your style, Mrs. Vandewater.I glance at the door and then back at her. —I mean, he only let me bite his toe off. You let me take a whole eye.—He was, hard to imagine, a quite remarkable student. Attentive, frighteningly able, insightful in a manner quite unique. An eye for weakness. A sense, if you like, for frailty. Vulnerability. Not a virtue, I admit, in the normal course of things, but essential to certain ends.She looks at the floor, raises the glasses that hang by a chain from her neck, and brings the discarded pigs feet into focus. —Over the years, obviously, he has rather deteriorated.She lets the glasses hang free. —His eye is no less keen, but he himself is blunted. Become vulgar.She looks about the filthy backroom.—The isolation. He seemed to have inward reservoirs. No lack of self-confidence, I'm sure you have noticed, but more than that. Or so I believed. A mind and spirit suited to independent action. Bold initiative. Yet still responsive to authority.She allows a small sigh.—Wrong on many counts it seems.She rises, looks behind herself and brushes at the seat of her slacks. —More willful than independent. When I dispatched him here to see if he might find suitable subjects for infection, I never dreamed how far he'd stray from my prescriptions. Recruiting, identifying those who might take most naturally to the Vyrus, has always required an acceptance of the fact that those most isolated from typical social supports are most likely to embrace an utter change in their circumstances. Offer the unwillingly solitary the opportunity to elevate themselves, to become a part of something larger than themselves, and they will find reserves of emotional and mental resilience they never knew existed. Resilience that can make them capable of the most basic of our compulsions.She bends  and picks  up  the cat-o'-nine-tails  from where  Lament  had discarded it.—After all, if a prospective recruit cannot come to terms with the implications of the Vyrus thirst, what use can we possibly make of them?She weighs the lash in her hand, shakes her head, places it on the TV tray. —Crude.She pulls a tissue from the box and wipes her hands. —So like Alistair.She looks at me, wound in barbwire, my clothes scabbed with my own dry blood, the marks of the whip on my face barely closed, a crust of tangled meat grown over the stump where my toe was.—At this moment, you could serve as the perfect visual referent for Alistair s methods and mindset. Vulgar and base. And, truly, a fair indication of just how far he has strayed.She places a hand at the high collar of her gray blouse.—Set to find loners and outsiders, he went too far afield. These delinquents and hoodlums. What use can they come to? He enticed them with blunt offers of power and money. Suggested they were involving themselves in criminal enterprise.She sniffs. —Narcotics, no less. A context, so he claims, they could understand.She opens the door of the fridge, the corners of her mouth pulling down. —And he implied a dark rite of initiation. Evoked voodoo. Santerla. Again, a context he thought they could embrace.She pushes the door closed.—And then he infected them. Or had one of his current miscreants infect them. And,   if   they   survived   that   process,   he   began   a   program   of   abuse.Preprogramming. His word, not mine. But apt, I will admit. Whatever slight self-regard they might have, he removed it. Amputated it whole and cauterized the stump. The names he gives them. You've heard them? Failure. Distress. Encumbrance.Her good eye blinks slowly, as if erasing something from the surface of its lens.—My own fault. What I'd failed to account for was how he would respond to isolation himself. Id forgotten that he'd been a foundling in his own right. Lost and adrift until I brought him to harbor and gave him a purpose. I esteemed the training I'd given him too greatly. And once here, once in this lonely outpost amongst the savages, he became very much a product of his environment.A finger traces the edge of the mass of scar on her face. —Not the last time, sadly, I was the victim of overconfidence and pride.She looks at me. —Was it, Mr. Pitt?Something rustles in my gut. The skin has sealed over the wound, but the Vyrus is struggling inside to reknit my organs. I grunt, exhale, try not to move too much. —If that's what you call pissing me off, then yeah, you were a little full ofyourself that time.A flutter, a twist, a sensation like sharp nails picking at a knot in my intestines. I grunt again.She lifts her glasses, looks at me through the narrow lenses. —Some discomfort, Mr. Pitt?I nod. —Yeah, yeah.She nods. —Something I could do for you?I think for a second. Something the Coalition Clans chief recruiter and trainer of their enforcers could do for me?Sure there is.—Yeah, lady, you could maybe just shoot me now instead of talking me to death.She looks over her shoulder at the young woman with her efficient machine pistol. —Shoot you?She looks back at me.—No, Mr. Pitt, I think not.Slowly, she lowers herself into a graceful squat that someone who looks as old as her should have more trouble executing. —Being shot is not in your immediate future.She reaches out and places the tip of her index finger on my cheekbone. —Other things are in your future, but not that.She presses the finger gently into my cheek, drawing the skin down from the bottom of my eye.—By the way, Mr. Pitt, you mentioned that Id let you take my eye when we last met. In point of fact, and while I don't wish to be thought ungenerous, I never actually considered it a gift.She lifts her finger. —And I've always rather believed you owed me something in return.She opens her mouth wide and goes to work, evening accounts betweenThere comes a time when you think there are no new territories of pain. After a certain number of stabbings, shootings, clubbings, whippings, beatings, thrashings, cuttings, slashings and eviscerations, you begin to assume you'vehad the worst of it and nothing of that nature can really surprise you very much.And then someone comes along to show you that you re wrong.And you can do little but scream your thanks and appreciation for the lesson.So I scream. My eye being gnawed out by a crazed old woman, I scream like I rarely have. Because some things, some things are truly horrifying.But maybe you have to have them happen to you to get that.—Because it was due me.—I am not arguing whether you had grounds, Mrs. Vandewater. I am stating asfact that you were charged to bring him unmolested.—Yes, so I was. And I abused that charge. And you have asked me why Iabused that charge. And I have answered. Because it was due me. This seemsto leave little enough to discuss. The only question seems to be, how will youdiscipline me for my failure to do as you charged?I open my eyes.Correction.I open my eye.Seeing as its caked with the blood that spilled out of what used to be my other eye, it doesn't help much. Clotted darkness with a distant blur of light punctuated by two smaller clots of darkness that don't seem to be getting along all that well just now. I close my eye and let my ears do the work, still having two of those for the moment.—Yes, how will I discipline you. Yet again we come around to the same topic. I am bemused, Mrs. Vandewater, as to how a person so wholly devoted to the concept of discipline can be entirely lacking in it herself. —That is due entirely to your own lack of awareness. —Indeed. Well. Illuminate me. If you are inclined.Her footsteps sound down the long echoing room as she begins to pace. —Illuminate. I have spent my life in that very effort. And no little part of it in a specific effort to illuminate you. Bright child. Such a bright child. With an utterly dim outlook. You still see no further than your dogma. Maintenance of status quo. This, despite all evidence of the erosion taking place under your feet. Illuminate!The hard slap of a flat palm on a desktop.—You fail to make sense of my actions, and you interpret them as disobedient and undisciplined, because you measure them against your own authority. Yourefuse again and again to see that I am in the service of a larger order of things. While your eyes continue to be on the path just before your feet, I am looking well ahead to where the path becomes lost and tangled in the woods.Silence. The impression of contemplation. Then the mans voice. —And yet I am still unclear as to what that has to do with biting his eye out.Silence again. The impression of a stare-down. The woman's voice. —I took his eye because I have no respect for your authority. Because I do not believe you are long for your position. Because in some few months time I expect not to be forced to answer to you any longer.A chair creaks as she sits. —Does that clarify the matter?Leather-soled shoes take a few steps. Another chair creaks. —Yes. Yes it does.—And so, after an unnecessary digression to illuminate you regarding the obvious, we can return to the matter at hand? I have disobeyed your charge. What cost must I pay? What is due to Caesar? What can you afford to extract with your power crumbling about you?Papers being turned.—You are still well regarded by some members of the council. This hinders me somewhat. Limits the scope of what correction I might impose. Yes.A folder being snapped shut.—But you force my hand, and I must do something. If you can tolerate another question, let me ask, in similar circumstances, when I was in your care, what would you have done to me had I shown the same lack of regard for your commands?Whisper of fabric.—What a coward you are. Unable even to devise your own chastisement. Id have killed you. There is no room for any lack of—The sound of something sharp cutting the air, a clatter of furniture, breath whistling from a hole nature made no allowance for.—No need to say anything further, Mrs. Vandewater. When you are right, you are right. And I can complete the thought for you. There is, indeed, no room for any lack of discipline in this life of ours.The floorboards vibrate as a body thrashes against them. Thick fluid leaks onto wood.—And you are, as ever, correct in most things. You were correct in thinking that you would soon be released from any obligation of answering to myauthority.Metal scraping on bone, sawing.—But giving myself some credit, you were off by several months in your estimation of how soon your release might come.And a sound not often heard in the natural course of things, but one I've had opportunities to hear on more than one occasion: the soft but solid thump of a human head being dropped to the floor.—My only regret being that I cannot ask you how the view of the path appears from where you are now.Footsteps striding down the room toward me, stopping.I open my eye and look up as a lean, dark shadow leans over me. It kneels, whisking a handkerchief from its breast pocket and using it to ream the caul of blood from my eye. —Open your eye, Pitt, I have a job for you.I blink as he comes into focus: smooth-faced, a fall of glossy brown hair across his forehead, a painfully flawless bespoke suit splashed generously with blood. —Hey, Mr. Predo.I rest my head on the floor and sight down the room at the beheaded corpselying in a spreading red pool. —If it's her old job, I think III pass.He's not going to kill me.It's not that fact of him telling me he's not going to kill me that assures me I've got some time to breathe. Predo could look me in the eye and tell me whiskeys good and cigarettes are better and I'd still need a drink and a Lucky to believe he's not lying. The man breeds lies. He spawns them asexually, with no need for any assistance. He exhales and lies fill the air. Alone in a room, he mutters lies to himself to keep from falling into the trap of truth-telling. In the day, sleeping in his bed, deep in the safest heart of Coalition headquarters, he dreams in lies. The better to keep his left hand from knowing what betrayals his right has planned.Stretched on the rack and burned with hot irons, Dexter Predo will be in no danger of revealing the truth. Living so far beyond its borders. —I'm not going to kill you.Said as we watch two of his own burly enforcers, black rubber aprons, galoshes and gloves protecting their suits, while they bag Mrs. Vandewaters remains and mop her blood from the floor of the rotting ballroom around us.I finish the big bag of blood Mrs. Vandewater had taken from Lamentsfridge, and that Predo has given to me to speed the Vyrus through my wounds. —I can't make the same promise, Mr. Predo.I toss the empty bag into the bucket containing Mrs. Vandewaters head.He finishes wiping the last of the blood from his hands and neck and drops the towel in a bag held open by one of his men.—No, Pitt, nor would I expect you to. But seeing as you spent this evening being waylaid by teenage delinquents, and having your anatomy masticated by the crippled and the aged, you will understand my lack of alarm as regards your threat.I feel my pockets for a smoke. —Yeah, fuck you too.He looks down at his blood-ruined suit. —Would you excuse me for a moment, Pitt.He starts for the door, the question not actually being a question.I settle in my chair, feeling the drug dealers blood slide deeper into my wounded guts, burning cold as the Vyrus colonizes it and recoups strength. —Take your time.I raise a hand.—Hey, don't suppose you've started smoking since the last time I saw you?The door closes, leaving me with the two button-lipped enforcers, the squeak of their rubber boots and the swish of their rags in the bloody mess.Naw, he's not gonna kill me. He was gonna kill me, he wouldn't have given me the blood to put me right and get me on my feet. Not that he and his boys couldn't still gang me and take me down, but blooded up like this I'd be sure to make it hurt. Not like Predo to make a job harder than it has to be. He was gonna kill me, he would have done it while I was wrapped in barbwire and leaking all over the fucking place. Or at least he would have left me that way till it got to be daylight so they could pitch me easily out of doors and watch me blight in the sun.The last of old Mrs. Vandewater goes into the bags and bucket and the enforcers take a look around for anything they might have missed before hauling the remains away.Of course, figured another way, it would be just like Predo to fill me with blood and get me back to something like health and wellness. Figure he might play it that way if he wanted to keep me kicking while these cleaning laddies found what few bits I have left to hack off. But figure he'd only bother with that kind of production if he had questions to ask me.The door opens and Predo comes back in, a suit, all but identical to the onehe was wearing before, cinched into place on his narrow frame. Really, it is identical, just without an old lady's blood all over it.He waits at the open door as the enforcers exit, closes it behind them, comes to the circle of light cast by the bright floor lamp set next to the desk and two chairs here in the middle of the ballroom, and settles into the chair on the boss side of the desk. —So, Pitt.He makes a slight adjustment to his silver tie bar. —Let me ask you a few questions.I wait for the arms to encircle me from behind, for the garrote to drop around my throat, the gun to be placed at my temple.And when none of the above occurs, I let the knife Predo used to kill Vandewater slide from the sleeve where I'd tucked it after the enforcers clipped me from the barbwire and dragged me across the floor past where it had been dropped, and I throw it sharp and hard and straight and it wings past Predo by a good two feet and thunks into the wall outside the light.He  raises an  eyebrow,  turns,  looks  off at the gleam of the blade  in darkness, and turns back to me. —You'll find it, I believe, Pitt, somewhat of an adjustment now that your visionis no longer triangulated.I scratch the side of my neck.—Well, if you'll just sit there while I go fetch the blade, Mr. Predo, I'm pretty sure I can do better the second time around.Just because he's not going to kill me right now doesn't mean he doesn't want me dead.He wants me dead.I'm not saying my name is at the top of his list, but it is in the upper ten percent. Yeah, he's the kind of guy who keeps a list. That comes with running the Coalition's security arm. An organization like that, they just love lists.List of friends. List of enemies. List of subversives. List of agents. List of counteragents. List of those at the top. List of those at the bottom. List of people they can kill with impunity. List of people they need to take a little care with before they kill. List of those on the inside. List of those on the outside.Being inside the coalition means buying the line. The line is secrecy. The line is we don't exist. The line is the people out there who don't know about the Vyrus, they should never know about the Vyrus because if they know about the Vyrus they'll build camps and open labs and start rewriting all kinds of laws and redefining what it means to be created equal.Frankly, I think they got it pretty much right.It's not the line I disagree with so much. Its that they got no room for anyone who does disagree with the line. Disagree with the line and you're on that outside list. That list, its pretty much identical to the People to Kill as Soon as Possible List.So while its an interesting turn of events to be in Predos presence without someone nearby stirring a pot of molten lead to be poured in my nostrils, I know the ultimate outcome to a scenario like this likely allows him to scratch my name off that list when all is said and done.He opens a drawer and takes out a slim automatic with polished wood grips. One of those guns that looks designed by the same kind of people who dream up the hardwood and leather interiors of luxury sedans with obscure Italian names.He sets it on the desk. —In hopes I might make you a bit more attentive, Pitt.I look at the floor around my chair.Predo edges up a bit to peek over the front of his desk. —Lose something?I look up.—No. Just checking to see if your flunkies left any other lethal weapons lying around. Seems I'm out of luck.I fold my arms. —Guess I may as well listen to you.He flips open one of the folders on his desk.—Gracious as ever. But just so we can be certain you don't grow bored with what I have to say, why don't I make it more interesting for you by including some visual aids?He draws a photograph from the folder and slides it to the edge of the desk. —Like a picture book. So that you may follow along more easily. —I prefer a pop-up book.He rotates the photo so that it faces me. —I'm certain this will grab your attention.Light gleams off the glossy finish, hiding the image from me. I scoot my chair forward, the feet grinding on the floor. I take the photo from the desk. I look at it.I look at Predo.He nods. —We can dispense with wit now and speak of things concrete?I look again at the photo.A very young woman. Younger than you'd imagine a person has a right to be. And beautiful. The photo is tinted in a manner that hides the color of her hair, but it looks like she's not dyeing it anymore. The natural color would be a complex shade of blond, much like her mothers was. She is exiting one of those cars suggested by Predo's gun, the door held for her by another woman, older, black, muscled in a way that promises the clean and abrupt snapping of a neck. The tint is greenish. The photo taken through a night filter. The only thing missing is a crosshairs painted across the young woman's face.I set the photo down. —Yeah, tell me something concrete.—She has gone quite out of control.—Interesting. I never knew she was ever under control. Last I checked thatwas how I got involved in the first place.Predo taps the end of a pen against a thumbnail. —I am not talking about the delinquencies, teenage drinking and underage sexher parents fretted about. Her actions are on a new order of magnitude.The hole where my eye was is throbbing. I knuckle it.—Guess the new scale of troublemaking goes hand in hand with becoming filthy fucking rich at a young age.He drops the pen.—Do not pretend nonchalance, Pitt. If I was not certain you cared, we would not be having this conversation. Whether you would feel some responsibility for the girl had you not killed her parents, I cannot say. But you did. And I trust your year here among the uncivilized masses has not changed your nature so much that you can shrug off such things. However sentimental.I look at my bare foot, rub the stump that used to be my big toe, flaking away scab. —I only killed her mom.He squints. —So you've claimed before.He leans back, his chair giving a little squeak. —A persistent little lie, that. —I only killed her mom.—A lie I have some trouble penetrating. Why you should be reluctant to takecredit for her fathers death. Repugnant man.—What can I say, I take credit where its due. I only killed her mom.I look out of the light, into the darkness, back into the light. —The other thing got her dad.He picks his pen back up.—Other thing. Gullible as you are in so many things,  I am still somehow disappointed that you embrace that particular bit of superstition.Nothing else to say. Seeing as I'm not superstitious.He puts the end of the pen to his chin. —Another time then.I peel an especially long and stringy bit of dead skin loose from my foot, look at it and drop it on the floor. —The girl is out of control?He grips the pen in both hands, flexes the shaft. —Yes.He bends it just to the breaking point, holds it there, relaxes, looks at it as it springs back into shape, and sets it aside.—Yes. She is out of control. —In what way?He aligns the pen with the right-hand edge of the desk. —She has declared a new Clan.He shifts the angle of the gun, bringing the length of the barrel true with the top edge of the desk.—Using her wealth to disseminate word through the community. Bribing otherwise loyal members of the Clans to help spread word of this new “Clan.” She has made it clear that any and all are welcome in her...He looks through the gloom to the ceiling. —Her new organization.He looks back at the desk, tapping the stack of folders flush with one another.—Uninfected herself, she is enlisting other uninfecteds to carry word off the Island. Daylight travelers. Renfields and Lucys.He brushes some unseen fleck of matter from the corner of the desk. —She is, in all these dealings, loud and highly visible. We do not exist within a vacuum. The uninfected world is the medium in which we are forced to live.Vibrations cannot reach us without first traveling through that medium. Yes, those vibrations must be decoded, but that does not mean that others cannot learn the code. She is putting us all at risk. This is not solely a matter of Coalition doctrine being controverted, this is a case in which the concerns of all the Clans are being drawn under fire by the willful hand of a child who is not even of our ilk.I stop fiddling with my toe and give him a look. —Of our ilk? Christ, Predo, is that a little racism I hear?His fist shatters the desktop, pen and papers flying, gun dropping to the floor. —She is trying to find a cure!His foot lashes and the desk skitters down the ballroom trailing splinters and kindling. —A cure!His fists ball, knuckles whiten.I point. —Your ties a bit askew there, Mr. Predo.He closes his eyes and his mouth twists slightly.His eyes open. —Word will spread.I nod. —Yeah, I know.He lets a breath drop in, lets it out.—Infecteds that know no better will flock to her. There will be desertions from the Clans. Refugees from off the Island. —I know.He opens his fists, flexing his fingers back, relaxing them. —Our careful balance will be undone. —I know.He shrugs the collar of his jacket back into place. —And when she fails, there will be chaos and discord.He runs fingers through his hair, brushing his bangs back into place. —And finally.He touches the knot of his tie, pulls it straight. —We will have war.He tugs at the French cuffs of his shirt. —And we will all die.The throbbing where my eye was comes from the nerves regenerating. Id be better off if the Vyrus left them dead. Not like they're gonna have anything to plug in to. Without that eye, they'll just be raw and disjoined. Something that can cause pain while serving no real purpose.I look at him. —You say that like It's a bad thing.He waits.I look at the floor, see the picture. Amanda Horde. Changeling child living somehow in the infected world. Genius. Mad. Not as in angry, but as a hatter. I look at the designer gun that's come to rest next to the photo. Wonder how many shots I could get off if I got to it before him. Wonder if I could get any of the bullets into his head with my one eye. Figure he did Mrs. Vandewater easy. Figure I've felt what its like when his fist hits my jaw. Figure he can take me anytime and anyplace. But I look at the gun for a bit longer anyway.Then I look at him. —I won't kill her for you, Predo.He smiles.—I don't want you to kill her, Pitt.He bends, picks up the photo, looks at it, looks at me. —I want you to join up.The Andrew Freedman Home was finished in 1924. Endowed by an eponymous millionaire with ties to Tammany Hall and subway financing. And if that doesn't suggest something about the nature of his fortune and how dirty his dollars likely were, nothing else will. But pretty much everything you need to know about this guy you can tell by the house. A massive limestone palazzo on the corner of One Sixty-six and the Concourse, he left pretty much all of his fortune in trust for the thing to be built as a home for the elderly.Exclusively for the elderly who had at one time been rich, but who had lost their fortunes.Luxurious in the manner of a Gilded Age private club for rail barons, the Home kept the busted rich in a manner to which they had become accustomed.Good old Andrew Freedman, looking out for the little people.Whatever, it was his money. Man should spend it how he wants. Especially after he's dead. Besides, whatever Andy's wishes may have been at one time, the place ended up a broken-down community center for run-of-the-mill poorold folks.Proving again that time gives fuck all about who you are or what you want.I manage to glean this knowledge from a plaque as Predo leads me from the subsiding   ballroom   on   the   third   floor   through   several   corridors   artfully decorated with sagging plaster and rat droppings. —Dregs.He points ahead and one of the enforcers flanking us moves to a door and opens it. —That's what she's collecting.We pass through the door into an echoing stairwell, climbing. —Rogues. Off-1 slanders. The dross clinging to the fringes of the Clans. All those who lack the wherewithal and fortitude to understand that the Vyrus has made us different.He pauses on a landing, waits as I negotiate around some broken glass with my bare, mangled foot. —That there is no going back.He starts up the next half flight. —Traditionally, that kind of offal weeds itself from the community. Viewed asan engine of evolution, the Vyrus is a most powerful instrument for defining the fittest of the species. One can argue at length as to whether we are human any longer. Coalition precepts hold that we are. Regardless, the Vyrus insists on extreme levels of fitness, resilience, adaptability. Without those qualities, the runts die out quite rapidly. Our primary concern is not how best to steel them to this life, to aid in their adaptation, but how to make their deaths as rapid and as invisible as possible.He stops at the top of the stairs, waiting while one of the enforcers opens the door and sweeps the area beyond with the barrel of his weapon.I point at him. —He making sure no sleeping pigeons are waiting to get the drop on us?Predo waits for a nod from the enforcer and goes through the door ahead of me.—Our intelligence on the Bronx is far from extensive. But we have heard about the Mungiki.I step out onto the roof, a river breeze in the tops of the high trees that grow from the grounds below, a few hazy stars above. —Mungiki are in Queens.He stops next to one of the half-dozen TV aerials that sprout from the roof.—We heard some were still left.—I hear they're all out. Whole crazy pack of them in Queens.—Is that what the drums tell you, Pitt?—No, that's what being exiled up here for a year tells me.He studies a spray-painted tag on the back of a cement urn decorating the edge of the roof. —A year.He looks at me. —A year in the Bronx.He looks me up and down. —And, until the last few hours, very little worse for wear.He resumes his walk, skirting a sag in the tar paper where rainwater has pooled in the shade of one of the trees, greened with scum. —But you have always shown the resilience I was speaking of. I doubted it for some time, thought your sentimentality would get the best of you. Labeled you overly reckless. But I was wrong. Your natural ruthlessness serves you well. A particularly useful adaptation for this neighborhood, I imagine.I think about what I learned growing up in the Bronx, who taught me thenature of ruthlessness. I wonder if Predo knows this is home turf for me. Wonder if it matters what he knows.He looks back at me. —No comment?He's right, no comment.He shrugs, stops at the southwest corner of the building where the tops of the trees part, the sky opens up and the view carries straight to the lights and towers across the river. —Perhaps you have some comment regarding that.I look at the City, but I still have nothing to say.He lays a hand on the snapped base of another of those urns. —We do not want her killed, Pitt.He looks at me.—The wreckage that now floats around her would become un-moored, drift into the open. She has established herself, in her hubris, in the midst of our turf. An entire apartment building in the near center of Coalition territory. She's housing them, providing for their needs. A welfare state. Were she to die, that flotsam would bob into our streets. We could not contain them all. A strike of any scale on the building would draw far too much attention. Our influence spreads tocertain circles in the uninfected community, but not so broadly that we can conceal a paramilitary raid in the heart of the Upper East Side. No.His hand wraps the jagged stump of cement.—As appealing as assassination may be, it is out of the question. We must rather proceed with greatest discretion. We know her ultimate goal.He looks upward. —A cure.Shaking his head.—But we need to know by what organizing principles she will proceed. If she is pledged to secrecy, working on her own under the auspices of her fathers biotech labs and with no outside research partners, we have some amount of time and leeway in our plans. If she intends to make this a public effort, marshaling evidence that the Vyrus is some form of illness, and then launching a public-health campaign via a grandstanding news conference or similar stunt, we shall have to act posthaste.I grunt.He looks at me. —Yes?I'm still looking at the City, the Empire State Buildings spire lit up in red,white and blue.—Nothing. I just like to make a mental note when people use words I've onlyread in books before. Posthaste.—Well, in an effort to broaden your vocabulary, allow me to use another word:genocide.—Yeah, I heard that one before.—Good. Then I do not need to define it for you. You can picture it on yourown. How it will proceed if she tries to launch an effort to cure the Vyrus as if itwere African famine relief or a similar faddish cause for dissipated fashionmodels and rock stars to champion.I step closer to the balustrade, eyes on the lights. —Maybe wed get our own concert.—The best we might hope for,  Pitt,  would be an orchestra of our own imprisoned kind to serenade us as we filed into the showers. —Yeah, well I'm not arguing the point.—No. Nor would I expect you to. Occasional lapses into romanticism aside, you have always been clear on what fate waits us if we are revealed.I give him a look.—Wonder.—Yes?—What's Bird think of all this? The Society? Rest of the Clans?He folds his arms.—Tensions, unsurprisingly, are high. Your former employer, Bird, still feels that our long-term best interests can only be served when we all unite and present ourselves en masse to the public eye. He does, however, allow that the moment is not yet ripe. That the girls efforts are destabilizing. The Hood, while still maintaining a war stance on our northern border, have taken a similar position. D.J. Grave Digga will not pursue hostilities while this matter is unresolved.I measure my heartbeat, let five slow beats count off before I go further, knowing Predo will fish out my interest if it is not guarded. —I'd think the idea of a cure would send Enclave over the edge.He pulls his arms tighter around himself.—Daniel would have had some opinion on the matter. Insane as he was, he would have had a measured response. The idea of a cure for the Vyrus might well have been a heresy to him, but Daniel would never have considered that it was an actual possibility. I expect he would have bided, as he did in most allClan matters. But.I count more heartbeats. —But?He unfolds his arms.—But Daniel is dead. And there is a new head of Enclave. And he has declared that Enclave no longer communicate with heretics.He looks back at the city.—Daniel was as fanatical as the rest of them in their childish superstitions, but he was, at least, vaguely grounded in the Clans. I could make some judgments regarding how close they might be to launching their eventual crusade. Now they have sealed themselves off, we have no idea of their intentions.He shakes his head.—I don't know whether to be relieved or terrified. But, they are, in any case, not at issue just now.He turns to me.—At issue is simply the need for information. And so, you will join her Clan. You will gather all the intelligence you can, and you will deliver it to me.I consider.—Fuck you.He nods.—Yes, of course, the prospect of doing the smartest thing, of taking the action that will best ensure your own security along with everyone else's, does not appeal without some promise of remuneration. I did not expect it to. I will forgo threatening your life. That, I trust, is implicit in any offer I may ever make to you. But something more.He points at the City. —Manhattan. Civilization.He trails his arm, offering.—You are unwelcome there. So vicious and unreliable in your nature that you even went so far as to bite the hand that fed you. So far that even Bird could no longer tolerate you.—Technically speaking, I didn't bite him. I shoved a couple nails in him. —So I heard.He allows the corner of a smile.—As much as I might like to do the same, it does not change your circumstance. He will not have you back. And you were never embraced bythe Coalition. You lack the pigment for the Hood. Daniels fondness for you is as dead as he. Perhaps you might find a home hiding at the foot of the Island, among the other cast-aways, but that would require that you traverse all of our territories. And sooner or later you would be sniffed out. And now, well, here am I, standing in front of you, in the Bronx. So tell me, Pitt.He allows rather more of a smile.—Where would you scurry to next? To what hinterland? Where to be certain that I could not find you again?He holds up a hand.—More simple for you to erase that question. Replace it with this one, What would you do with open passage on the Island?I watch the black waters between the Bronx and Manhattan, as Predo spins words at me.—Go to the Horde girl. Join her. Find her intentions. Strengths. Weaknesses. Report them. This will serve all the Clans. Once done, I will secure you a Coalition visa. And ensure rapprochement of some kind with Bird.He's to my left, in my new blind spot, invisible. I turn so I can see him. —How many of your people did you already put inside?He lowers his arm.—Five.—How many has Sela sniffed out and killed?He slips a hand inside his jacket and takes out the folded photo and looks at the young girls Amazon minder.—Four. She's somewhat more efficient than I suspected. —And none got close enough to the girl to find shit. —No.He looks up from the photo.—But you have a history with her. She is fond of you. And Sela trusts you. —Lets not get carried away.I look back at the City, letting him slide into darkness, outside my vision. —Once I'm back, once I do this, I won't pledge Coalition. —Don't be silly, we wouldn't have you. We will simply facilitate your return and offer securities against your life.—You'll tell everyone to leave me the fuck alone or you'll have them killed. —Yes, just so.So many goddamn lights. A whole world on a chunk of rock in the middle ofdark waters.—I want the name of the one you still have inside.—Why?—So I can fucking pretend to find him on my own and hand him over to Selafor execution. That way she'll know I'm on the up and up.I hear a pen uncapped, smooth roll of expensive ink on stiff paper.He offers me the photo, a name written on the back.I take the photo, stuff it in my pocket, and look at him. —When do we go?He smiles, shakes his head. —We do not go, Pitt. /go. You find your own way. After all.He shrugs.—It wouldn't look at all right if someone were to see me dropping you off at Eightieth and Lexington, would it? In addition, as unified as Clan intentions may be on this matter, trust is more than usually at issue. Ms. Horde has sympathizers at all levels. —Got spooks of her own? —Not as such. But certainly there are individuals within the Coalition, Societyand Hood who are quite willing to volunteer information to her in hopes it can help her to her ultimate goal. And more pragmatic others willing to offer similar information at a price. Thus, while Digga might be willing to allow you passage across Hood turf to the Coalition, I have chosen not to inform him of the operation. A truism of intelligence is that the more people who know about an operation, the more it is at risk. And we cannot risk Horde or Sela knowing that you and I are associated. Hood surveillance is not up to Coalition standards, naturally. I expect you'll have little or no trouble circumventing it. Much better for the sake of verisimilitude if you worm across the river yourself and pick your way with great caution to the girl. —There had to be a hitch in the deal somewhere.I look down at my bloody clothes, my one remaining boot. —Do you think verisimilitude could suffer to the extent of a couple bucks so I can find some clothes that won't have people pointing at me and screaming for a cop?He waves one of the enforcers over from the eastern corner of the roof. —Petty cash.The enforcer takes an envelope from his side jacket pocket and drops it in one of the scummy puddles.I look at Predo. —You rehearse that move in advance?He shrugs. —Actually, not. This one has initiative.I bend and pick up the envelope. —Charming quality, that.He starts across the roof. —Don't take too long with your tailor, Pitt. Ill want a report soonest.I flick stinking water from the envelope. —Yeah, get right on it. Chop, chop, and all that.He pauses at the access door to the stairs.—Do that. The line of those waiting to dismember you should you fail has grown rather long.I take the money from the envelope. —Well it was never short.He considers. —Yes, always a popular man.I count the bills. —Speaking of popularity.He waits.I look up from the envelope.—That Dickens fan you have working up here, the one with the Fagin fetish. Lament? —Yes.I flip through the bills, making sure its not Monopoly money. —I'm gonna have to kill him.He looks at his shoes, looks up.—Complete the assignment, Pitt. After that, how you spend your political capital is your own concern. However, killing a Coalition resource could well nullify any other aspect of our deal.I stuff the cash in my hip pocket.—Well, seeing as I always assume you'll fuck me over in the end, that doesn't really change my approach.He nods. —Not unwise, I will admit.He turns. Stops.—One thing, as long as killing has come up, I think I must renege on my earlier statement. —What was that?—When I said I'd forgo threatening your life. At the risk of becoming redundant, let me assure you that this is by far the most pressing issue on which I have ever employed you. And let me further assure you that if you should betray me in any way, I will kill you when we next meet. With my own hands. For the sheer pleasure of it.He raises an eyebrow.—Need I add that failure in this case will be deemed a betrayal? No. I think not.And the door swings shut behind him.I turn to the City.It's there. Right where I left it.Is she? Is she where I left her? In the harbor of Enclave. Is she as I left her? With a new thirst she never asked for?Is she alive?Evie.I look away from the city, the ghosts of the lights still in my eye.I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die any minute now. Any second. I'm gonna up and die right here if I don't get a fucking cigarette in my mouth in about one second.I hobble down the fire escape from the roof of the Freedman Home, along a weed-choked path to the street and look down McClellan at the glowing storefront of a twenty-four-hour bodega. I'm not overly concerned about going in there with one bare foot and a considerable amount of dry blood on my clothing, this is the Bronx after all, but best to minimize the visual impact I might make.I cut over to Walton and head north. There's a little A.M. action on One Sixty-seven around the tight cluster of stores. They re all dark except for another bodega, but its the same grouping of shops and signage you see on every merchant block up here.Send Money, Cash Checks, Income Tax, Abogado, Peliculas, Cell Phone, Discount Fashions, Unisex Salon, Long Distance Pre-Pald, Travel.At the corner some kids hang around the subway entrance passing a blunt and a couple bagged forties. Two gypsy cabdrivers stand outside the bodegadrinking cafe con leche.I cross the street far down from them, my eyes scanning the tops of streetlamp posts, tree branches and the telephone and cable TV wires that cross between the big apartment blocks that line Walton.At Marcy I spot what I'm looking for and shimmy up a lamppost and untangle the pair of sneakers that some kid has tossed up there to dangle in testament to some shit that I have never figured out as long as I have lived in this city.I sit on the curb and stuff my feet inside, leaving the laces undone. They're too small, but the right one fits a little better than the left. Not having a big toe is already paying off.Farther up the street I jump and grab the bottom rung of a fire-escape ladder, pull myself up and climb two stories to the landing where someone has left their laundry out to dry overnight. I take a green Le Tigre and a pair of khakis, drop them to the sidewalk and climb down. In an alley between buildings I strip out of my bloody shirt and pants and pull on the clothes.No, not exactly what I'd buy for myself, but they were the first things I saw that looked big enough to fit.I ball my old clothes and stuff them deep in a garbage can. All except my jacket. I roll that into a bundle inside a few sheets of discarded newspaper and put it under my arm.At One Seventy there's another strip of shops. No one lingers outside the bodega here. I limp up the street and inside and the proprietor looks out from behind his Plexiglas kill-shield and his eyes just about bug.Seems I could have spared the bother of getting rid of my other outfit. One-eyed white guys in full preppy mode make an impact all their own. But, bottom line, I'm too freakish just now to be anything other than a junkie. And this guy knows what to do with a junkie. —The fuck out.I don't get the fuck out.He takes his hand from under the counter, shows me the can of pepper spray its holding and points at the door. —Don't make me come out there and spray you, bianco.I point at my one eye.—Better have some sharpshooter fucking aim you want that shit to do any good.He thinks about that.While he's thinking, I drop a twenty in the tray that cuts under the shield. —Just give me a couple packs of Luckys and some matches.