Chapter Twenty Three

  Malory dreamed of a small cottage on a hill in the center of a vibrant glade. Evergreen trees spread outward in concentric circles and swayed back and forth in the breeze. There were calls of energetic songbirds that echoed through the leaves, recoiled off sturdy trunks and made their way to her ears. She was in the backyard on a swing tied to a thick branch and oscillated higher, higher, and higher still. She knew, as the warm air billowed through her hair, that her mother and sister were inside the cottage cooking breakfast. She didn’t try to see their faces; she knew witnessing such a sight would taste bitter enough to wrench her from the illusion. Instead, she wanted to climb high enough to reach the sky, to reach out and grasp the broken moon above and thread it back together one fragment at a time. Up, up, and when Malory reached the apex, she let go of the ropes. As she did, the sky contorted, grasped by an unseen force and twisted—it became a hungry entity bathed in deep red. Every bird in the glade opened their beaks and blared out a synthetic warning, a scream, a death cry that repeated over and over. Malory had made her choice, though, and weightlessness took her as the cottage faded below. There was no going back.

  She snapped awake to an alert from Faraday in the corner of her optic. She was disoriented, hungover, and under a strange ceiling. The walls rippled in the low light. She turned to draw her Lantern, and beside her in the king-sized bed, Nadia snored under cheap sheets. The familiar sight steadied her. There was true beauty there in the rise and fall of a chest, and it filled Mal with the warmth of knowing she mattered to someone else. When the alert chimed again, it drew her attention—Faraday had found what they were looking for, and queued a video for Mal to watch. When it booted up, she found herself in a room surrounded by candlelight. She was watching the Stranger on a network call, and he was unaware he was being recorded. As he spoke, all that venom disguised beneath the musical voice flooded out, but she didn’t feel fear. He laughed, then, and reassured his conversation partner. The Doc was going to die, and then the Stranger would be in charge. He said no one would ever find out, and that he was going to rip the limbs from that wrinkled old fuck. Like father, like son. Everything was set in motion, and success was guaranteed.

  Malory vaulted from the bed, but her foot caught on the bundle of blankets that were pushed down while they slept. She tumbled face-first onto the floor with a thud. She didn’t feel any pain, just pure, unadulterated rage. It threatened to consume all rationality. When she stood, she reached over and shook Nadia awake.

  “Okay, I’m up!” Nadia yelled. She shoved her palms into bleary eyes to try and eradicate what sleep remained. She thrashed her tiny legs to untangle herself from the dirty sheets. “There’s much better ways to wake a girl after taking her to bed, you know?”

  “I need to kill a man,” Mal said. For the first time, the struggle of holding onto her sanity wasn’t due to the implant’s influence over her. Illustrations of violence moved through her mind in a high speed slideshow: she saw her teeth sinking into a throat and tasted iron as the cartilage gave way. She saw her Lantern fire an entire clip into the Stranger’s smug face before reloading and doing it again. She saw her hands pry open the soft flesh under the ribs, reach in and crush his heart into chunky paste. “Help me.”

  “What?” Nadia asked. She moved her hands from her eyes, sat up, and when she saw Malory’s face, she understood. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  “I saw the truth,” Mal said. Her fists clenched with a hydraulic whir and the soft pop of organic knuckles. She wanted to let go, to become a monster with a purpose, but her girlfriend’s face guided her back from the abyss of self-destruction. “He needs to die.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The truth? The truth is, you’re terrified that girl would never want to see you again if she saw a fraction of the savagery you hide underneath, those intricate fantasies of revenge meted out by your own hands. Tell her. Even if she abandons you, we will still be together. I will help take back what’s mine. Mine. MINE.

  “Right,” Nadia said. She climbed from the bed and wrapped her arms around Mal’s frame. “I can’t do much, but I’ll be a distraction if you want. I’ll do anything for you if it makes you never feel the need to make that expression again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mal said. She tried to focus on the warmth of the hug, to use the comfort to keep the overwhelming desire at bay, and it almost worked. “It isn’t normal to struggle like this, to imagine brutality with so much clarity. It just won’t stop.”

  “So what?” Nadia asked. She squeezed even tighter around Mal’s waist. “I’ve never been scared of you. And who the hell wants to be normal, anyway?”

  “I guess,” Mal said. She knew she’d get a chance to enact it all as soon as ZenTech worked through their labyrinthine bureaucracy and contacted her, but that fact did nothing to calm her down.

  “Let’s get something to eat,” Nadia said. She let Mal go and started getting dressed. “It won’t help much, but we can pass the time together until they call.”

  “Sure,” Mal said. She would stop at nothing until she could wrap her hands around the Stranger’s throat, but that was for later. She tried to bottle up the rage and focused on her body— the air moving around her, the hickeys on her neck, the feeling of her bare soles on the floor, anything to center herself in the moment.

  When they were both dressed, the couple made their way down to the lobby, checked out, and headed into the city. They spent a while looking for something appetizing until they gave up and sat at a street vendor that served breakfast burritos. They overflowed with processed junk, and the old man that served them was covered in sweat and looked like he hadn’t showered in a week, but Malory didn’t care—she couldn’t taste the food anyway, and it was all she could do to keep her thoughts from looping. She shoveled it into her mouth like a robot. Each swallow brought with it depictions of her own inhumanity, and she saw the Doc’s dead face judging her for every moment she could have killed the Stranger and hadn’t. If she had listened to the ghost and gouged out his eyes with the plastic spoon, if she had drawn on him when the elevator opened, if, if, if. She could have saved the Doc. She knew he'd never hold such a thing against her, but he was gone, and her own mind was not kind. When the burrito was finished, she balled up the wrapper, threw it in the trash, and stared unfocused into the distance. The ghost had been right, of course. She was terrified Nadia would leave her alone.

  “You know,” Nadia said. She wiped the grease from her mouth and smiled. Her haunted doll’s voice bounced between them. “I can help you look for your sister when I’m not busy with school. Just because the Black Hands refused doesn’t mean all hope is lost. You said you found a lead, right?”

  “Yeah, at the monorail station,” Mal said. Behind her eyes, she was unspooling the full length of the Stranger’s intestines and tying them into a noose. She pushed the thought away and nodded. Her sister was still out there, waiting to be found.

  “There you have it,” Nadia said. She clapped her hands together like the problem had been solved. “Once you’ve put that asshole in the dirt, we’ll look together. It’ll be fun.”

  “Maybe,” Mal said. When she was through with the Stranger, she suspected the word fun wouldn’t mean much to her anymore, but Nadia’s positivity was difficult to ignore. “Thanks for caring.”

  “Always,” Nadia said. She paid for the food and added a tip. When she stood, she clasped Mal’s hand in her own and dragged her down the street. “Last night was nice, but we have so much more catching up to do. I know your mind is elsewhere, but walk around with me until the call comes in?”

  “That’s the best I could hope for,” Mal said. And she wasn’t lying. She wished they had lives where the only thing that mattered was how they decided to spend their time together, but the world didn’t work that way.