Chapter 5 - War and Working
“What have you been doing?” Alison demanded as Stephen walked in the door.
“Walking,” he said,. only to realize she wasn’t talking to him.
(Nothing,) Olen said, the words in Stephen’s mind as if someone has spoken even though no one had.
“You bit almost through your lip. That’s not nothing.”
(Just worried. I’m okay.)
“Not if you bleed to death. Sit.” He sat down on the one couch the room had, nervously.
Alison walked over the generator and ordered up a first aid kit, looking a Stephen. “Walking where?”
“Just walking.”
“I see. Found work yet?”
“I tried on System. It wasn’t successful. No one traced me.”
“I see.” Alison took a bandage over to Olen and pressed it to his face. “Hold it there.” He did so and she looked at Stephen. “Bounty is one mill. Any idea why?”
“One million?”
“Yes. Alive, not dead. Didn’t accept it. If they went to one, whoever they are, they can always go higher.” She smiled.
“Ah. Right.”
“That was a joke. Well, for now.” She looked him over critically. “How did you survive two bounty hunters?”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t tell you because I want to survive you trying to take me in?” Stephen said dryly.
“You wouldn’t,” she said calmly. And she moved, fast, a gun in her hand.
Stephen dove beside the generator, drawing a sword from it and leaping to the side as Alison came over it, barely evading her fingers, which were a lot longer than he remembered.
He cleared the table and landed in the living room proper, spinning the sword and cutting as Alison moved, letting the gun be taken and breaking the sword with a fist in return.
Stephen snapped the rest of the blade off on the ground and jumped back, forming a new one from the hilt. The effort tired him for a moment, enough for Alison to get too close for comfort. He felt ribs give way as he slammed into the wall and spun the sword in a blur, forcing her back enough to give the wound time to fix itself.
She was good, no doubt about it. Not trained as he had been, but in the harder school of the real world. She was a killer, not a fighter, and it showed in her movements. Nothing was wasted, everything perfectly planned, dangerously graceful. He lunged in, forcing her back and losing sword and hilt in the process and leapt over her, landing on the other side and barely avoiding her claws.
She was stronger than human, faster as well, had permaskin and definitely strengthened bones given the mess she’d made of the sword. Stephen backed away slowly, watching for openings. He evaded again, assessing, and moved, pushing his body. One blow, a second, and a third before she hamstrung his leg. He rolled away, giving it a few moments to heal, and blocked her one swing quickly, lashing out into her face. The nose gave and Alison swore, lashing out with a blade in her hand from somewhere under her skin.
Stephen dove back, snapping a foot out, then his other. Her wrist gave and the knife fell. He jumped back and struck her temple as she moved for it, but it had been more than just toughened and an electrical jolt sent him backwards, trying to stop his muscles from spasming.
The knife came at his chest, too fast to avoid, and he Moved. Strength, speed, and he dropped her from behind with one single blow into the spine. The world slowed as he moved away, dropping back into normal time with a bone-deep ache going through him.
“Shit,” Alison said from the floor, pulling herself into a sitting position. “How the fuck did you do that?”
“Training,” Stephen offered, taking the rest of the med kit by Olen and handing it to her. A few moments later Alison was standing and rubbing her back.
“That was reinforced plating, not just permaskin. You didn’t even break a bone on it, or skin.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “That’s some state of the art combat nanos.”
Stephen nodded. “I think that’s what they are. They’re quite useful.” He grinned. “I’d have lost anyway, if you’d really been going for a kill. it slowed you down.”
“You seemed fast enough to me, but I doubt that lasts long. Or you’d have taken even Anderson out. Not bad at all. Still not worth One mill.” She stretched. “I got paid today, so let’s have dinner on Davidson.”
“Are you okay? I did break your break.”
“You sound almost concerned. And I’m fine. It’s been broken worse before.”
(Could you not do that again?) They both turned, surprised, to look at Olen, who was pale. “It hurts.”
“Oh.” To Stephen’s surprise, Alison actually looked chagrined. “Sorry. I forgot about that. You all right?”
Olen nodded. “It didn’t hurt much, except for your back. He heals fast.”
“Hurt much?” Stephen asked.
“I’m an empath. most telepaths are, that are made even quasi-legally. Pain hurts.”
“Sorry about that.”
“You didn’t know, so don’t say you’re sorry,” Alison said briskly. “We’ll eat, and I can use your help for a gig tonight, one Warwick. I can fill you in as we go. He has friends, so backup would be needed anyway, and Olen would spaz out given Warwick’s personality. I don’t have to pay you, so you’re the best option.”
Dinner was strange. A small, local diner that used custom generators and combined the results to make meals except that they made whatever they felt you wanted and nothing else. Stephen dined on spiced bread and a salad, letting Alison fill him in. Warwick dealt in illegal nano weapons and pulse guns, selling them to anyone who wanted one, often in returns for favours. He’d decimated several gangs and was arming many who had been largely harmless until his arrival in the area.
‘Basically, I need to bring him in before he gets another shipment. Ideally the supplier dies too, but I’m not getting paid to off them.” Alison tossed him a data cube. “That’ Warwick and his merry men. They’re wanted dead and no one cares what’s left of any of them as long as Warwick’s head in intact for a brain scan. Since nothing is manufactured on site, they have to use a building to store the stuff. We hit them tonight fast and hard., Maximum chaos, lots of explosions, and Warwick’s head on a platter. The others are all expandable; a supplier or two to question would be nice. Any questions?”
Stephen looked the map over, keying in an old town overlay. “Why don’t we come in from the bottom?”
“The bottom?”
“Sewers. Some old sanitation system back in the day. Friend of mine did a report on them. It may be wet and smelly but it should get us into the far corner without any troubles, unless they have something on top of the access.”
“And if they do I could just blow out the entire tunnel.” Alison smiled. “Good. I like the way you think. Once we’re in, we go for Warwick. With luck his people will duck and cover once he’s down, if not we kill them all and I turn the building into slag as a warning.”
“You’re looking forward to this, aren’t you?”
She smiled, her eyes bright. “I get to blow things up. I haven’t done that in weeks.”
“You really like blowing things up?”
“It’s orgasmic. You can try if you want, too,” she offered.
Stephen turned his attention to his meal.
“You said wet. And smelly. You forgot about sticky. Very, very sticky,” Alison snapped, slogging through the sewage tunnels. “This place reminds me of nightmares I used to have about dying in alleyways.”
“You had nightmares?” Stephen managed, trying to talk and not breathe.
“You don’t have to sound quite that surprised,” she snapped. “And yes, I did. Now, of course, I’m mostly just the cause of them.”
Alison called up a map. “Not much further, at least.’ She set another small bomb and picked up the pace, stabbing into the water with one hand as something tried to do something biological to her leg. “This was your idea.”
“You liked it,” Stephen reminded her.
“That was then. This is now. I’d rather have burst through their front door and killed everyone . Several times, if need be.”
“This is more subtle.”
“Smelling like a week-old corpse is an interesting idea of subtle.” Another bomb went up. “I can’t believe people used these. “What was done with it?”
“They’d filter the water and drink it again.”
Silence, then: “That’s a horrible joke.”
“No joke.”
“Damn. They really were barbarians.”
Stephen chuckled in the darkness behind her. “Pretty much.”
“Well, at least we’re civilized now.”
“And bombing out a sewage system to kill people is civilized?”
“Compared to making them drink it or drowning them in it? I’d say yes.” Alison placed another bomb, sloughing through the water. “Almost there.” The map beeped a few moments later and she risked a small light from one finger, panning it over metal rungs and an exit above them. “All right. Here’s the plan: kill them all, except the one we don’t kill. And kill him, too, if need be.”
“Good plan. Very simple.”
“The best plans are. The rest never survive encounter with the enemy.” Alison moved up the ladder and waited until Stephen was under her and pushed up.
The old doorway for shit held, then gave way with a terrible grinding noise. Alison swore, leapt out and threw it at the nearest figure, detonating the sewage system as Stephen scrambled out behind her.
A section of the floor gave with a low boom, the sound that wafted up doing more damage than a mere break in the floor ever could. Men reeled back, stricken, and Alison moved forward quickly, shooting to kill Men and cyborgs dropped, a few returning fir as sher ducked behind a retaining wall.
Stephen had taken to the roof and was throwing long blades down, skewering men and drawing fire away from her. Alison nodded approvingly and began taken people off one at a time, triggering the bomb Stephen threw at the door to melt it shut for a few moments.
A shrill scream as she threw a box of weapon as a man identified Warwick as hiding behind several people in the back and Alison made for him, shooting at anything that came in her path and trusting Stephen to deal with anyone trying to shoot her.
Warwick died quickly, which she regretted, and his men proved surprisingly loyal about guarding his corpse so Alison had to waste a few minutes figuring out which head was really his. Once she was done she turned to watch Stephen. He was doing well despite his reluctant to use ranged weapons, and several men seemed to have died in spectacularly gruesome fashion as if he’d torn them apart from a distance.
Alison shot a few intrepid ones, noting the rate of his healing and skill and increasing her fee accordingly with each lackey he took out, getting more confident with each threat. There were flaws, of course. He kept disabling them instead of killing them, which is why Alison had to finish a few off for him.
She waited until he was done and attached a few bombs to some of the boxes, heading for the main exit and ignoring the stinging pain in her left arm from one lucky shot. Stephen had limped over to her but was no longer limping as they exited.
“You’d best be careful. Some of the nano drugs in the air were particularly lethal, and a whole warehouse worth might not go up in flames.”
Alison ignored him and triggered the last set of bombs, watching the building twist strangely, rippling in the air as if tugged upwards for a moment and then just vanish. “Fast transit to orbit, courtesy of a direct line to a satellite and a really good relay system. Only catch is it can’t work with people living in it. Stupid safety precaution.”
Stephen stared at her. ‘That must have cost a fortune.”
“I’m not paying, so I don’t care. It’s a useful tool. Just takes a while to charge.” Alison looked at the empty space where the warehouse had been. “Here, I’ll take the head back to the department. You go back home. And be careful, I want to collect the money on you so you’d better not let anyone else try it.”
Stephen walked back slowly, taking a circuitous route. Rikki had told him to always keep an eye out for danger, but in this world anyone could be a threat, from children to adults. Memebombs, combat nanites, defensive nanites, personal bombs, fanatics, aggressive salespeople, snapped lunatics. The list kept going, and only got worse as he walked.
He tried to calm himself but the feeling of being watched was getting worse, an itch between shoulder blades that was more valuable than any technology. He took a left down a side street, calling up his mental map of the area and hurrying, making a sword and sheathe as he did so, adding a few surprises as he went along, forming it out of the air.
The effort tired him a moment and he made a few smaller blades as well, quickly, trying to circle around whoever - or whatever - was following him.
The man stepped out of the air a few feet in front of him, tall, wearing black, and dangerous. Armoured, and definitely a bounty hunter. His red eyes glittered in the air and his smile was thin and amused.
“A good effort. The number of people who notice me are rare.”
“Thank you? Can we get this over with now?”
The bounty hunter laughed. “If you wish,” and he moved, a pulse of energy hitting the building where Stephen had been standing.
Stephen leapt forward, cutting, and the bounty hunter blocked, almost negligently, and crushed the sword in one hand. Stephen leapt back, the nanobomb that was the hilt in it erupting into shards of shrapnel. The bounty hunter chuckled. “Innovative. But I paid top dollar for this armour.”
“Ah.” Stephen waited, and moved, as fast as he dared He got one blow in before the bounty hunter sprang over his head and to the other side of the street, the ground giving way under his landing.
“Efficient. I assume the nanooids are disassembling my armour?”
Stephen said nothing, merely waiting.
“Well, I can’t have that. So you can come in peacefully or as a corpse. I don’t offer this often.”
“I’m afraid I’m declining coming in at all,” Stephen returned, and Moved.
The bounty hunter vanished, somehow behind Stephen, then beside him. Stephen continued the move, throwing the blades around in a blur of multiplying weapons. Within moments the entire street resembled a pincushion, but the hunter was standing unharmed, the air around him blurred.
“Stealth suits have an offensive capability as well,” the bounty hunter said calmly, and moved.
Stephen lunged aside, avoiding the first blow, but something in his side gave way from the second. He made it to his feet in time to avoid a third, and struck back with three sharp blows that didn’t seem to do much but at least the bounty hunter was no longer smiling.
Stephen moved again, trying for strength as was as speed, but the bounty hunter evaded him once, then a second time, and sprang away, drawing a weapon out of his armour. “That’s more than combat drugs,” the bounty hunter said slowly. “So forgive me if I end this.”
The weapon fired, broad range.
Stephen Moved, but the weapon was too broad. Half way down the street it caught up, driving fire through his veins and dropping him to the ground twitching. He struggled to master it, and a second burst hit. Then a third, as the bounty hunter walked up towards him, looking amused.
A fourth shot hit, narrow range, and Stephen’s body left his control entirely, spasming and going limp as he voided himself.
“Took long enough.” The bounty hunter looked at him thoughtfully. “But this is over.”
“No, it’s not.”
The new voice was calm and polite, but there was steel under it.
G turned around slowly. “This is my - kill.”
Stephen managed to gain enough control over his muscles to look up. And stared.
“What the fuck are you?” both man demanded.
The monster standing over G was over 10’ tell, with a smile of very sharp teeth and claws almost as sharp on his hands. Wide brown eyes looked out from white fur and a snout as it smiled. “I’m Ralphie.”
“This is not happening,” Stephen managed. “This isn’t real.”
“Now it’s not,” G said, and emptied some weapon into Ralphie.
The monster stood there, holes tearing through it. “That hurts!”
A claw came up, tearing G’s head off as if there wasn’t anything there at all.
G’s body continued to move, and the monster dove between it and Stephen as it lashed out with weapons and blades.
Stephen screamed. The monster screamed in pain, and the bounty hunter’s body giggled, then stopped as Ralphie tore through it like a monofilament blade puncturing eyes. The explosion that followed threw Stephen three blocks but adrenaline pushed through the effects of the stunner and he managed to land in his feet. Where the monster and bounty hunter had been there was only a very large crater that had once been a city block.
“I wish I could get drunk,” Stephen managed numbly, and stumbled back to Alison’s apartment, wondering if he’d gone into madness and somewhere far out the other side.
“You don’t look good,” Olen said as he came in. The boy was sitting on the couch and watching a holo vid.
“You’re a telepath. That should be fucking obvious,” Stephen snarled. “I need a bath.”
“I need sex!” the sink screamed.
Stephen walked into the bathroom. “Shut. Up. Now. I’ve had people try and kill me. I’ve shat my pants. I had two religions declare me their messiah as I left the remains of a city block. I had five people try and kill me on the way over because I wasn’t carrying some weapon the size of a giant dick. I’m not in the mood!”
“For sex? That’s the perfect mood for sex,” the sink said. “I like it when humans get violent. Then I can be broken and upgraded.”
Stephen turned the water on for the bath. “Have sex with the telepath then.”
“Oh no!” the sink filled the bathroom with a strobe light. “I’d never do that. He could infect me with some horrible neurosis.”
“I’ll infect you with a dissassembler then,” Stephen snarled.
“Well.” The sink retreated back into the wall. “There’s no need for that kind of talk! I bet you’re a virgin, aren’t you? No one else would begin a relationship threatening to atomize their partner!”
Stephen turned the fan on, then the water, and wondered if Alison would kill him if he turned the sink into a piece of art. It would almost be worth it.
(Are you okay?) Olen sent as he came back out and ordered some food, his clothing having already repaired itself.
“Not yet. Do you think she’d object if I turned the sink into modern art?”
(Probably. She says she likes it. I think it reminds her of her father.)
Stephen stopped with a glass of fruit juice halfway to his mouth. “I’m going to have nightmares now.”
(Oh.) Olen looked up from the vid. “Why?”
“Never mind. You’ll find out when you’re older.”
Olen blinked, his eyes bright shades of orange and pink. His jaw dropped. (You think the sink is Alison’s father?!)
Stephen clutched his head. “No! And quieter, next time, okay? I meant the sink is --” he caught the change as Olen’s eyes widened inhumanly far, shock turning them blue and his face white. “-- a very good sink and an excellent example of modern architecture,” he continued smoothly. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Explain why G is dead,” Alison said from behind him, her voice cold and empty, “and maybe I won’t.”
Stephen hesitated. “Who is G?”
“Formerly a bounty hunter. Currently a rather large crater. Explain. Now.”
“It was the monster under my bed.”
Silence fell for a few seconds, then Alison walked around him and looked into his eyes. “You can try that again,” she said sweetly, “and make sense this time, or I swear the bits of you I don’t kill are going to be flushed down the sink.”
“Hooray!” the sink yelled.
“It was the monster under my bed. Or it looked like that. It killed him.”
“And this monster is what?” Alison asked, ignoring Olen’s whimpering on the couch.
“It was over ten feet tall, white furred, and had lots of teeth and claws. That was before it blew up, of course.”
“Of course. Did it kill Anderson or Hendrick?”
“The latter, and a cyborg. I thought it wasn’t real, like some nanite technology. I mean, it can’t be real - can it?”
“G is dead,” Alison said. “And he was one of the best. People don’t die from figments of someone’s imagination.”
(Not normally,) Olen sent in a small voice.
Alison ignored him, and Olen cringed further away in the chair, refusing to look in their direction.
“Then I have no fucking clue what happened!” Stephen yelled.
“I see.” Alison relaxed abruptly. “I’m glad to see you actually have real emotions.”
(Is it okay to look at you?)
Alison almost smiled. “It’s okay.”
Olen looked over. Then blinked. “Those are hands?”
Alison spun to follow his gaze, stared into the bedroom doorway, then looked as Stephen, who looked poleaxed.
“This is the monster, then?”
“Hullo,” Ralphie said shyly, waving. Alison resisted the urge to shoot on impulse. “I came to see if Steph was all right.”
“I’m fine,” Stephen said slowly, his voice calm and remote. “Peachy keen. Hunky dory.”
“Oh, good!” The monster clapped his hands. “Can we play now?”
“Play?” Alison asked, priming a concussion bomb.
The monster’s face fell, and it plopped down on the floor and started to cry. “No one loves me!”
“This is a monster?” Alison said.
“It used to be scary,” Stephen said defensively. “When it was in the closet, and under the bed. It has sharp teeth, okay?”
Ralphie looked up. “You don’t like my smile?”
“I think he objects to the several rows of teeth,” Alison said, her face carefully blank.
“Oh!” Ralphie’s face fell.
“It’s okay,” Stephen said hurriedly. “Look, can you do something for me, Ralphie?”
Ralphie looked up, hurt and suspicion warring with a desire to please.
“There is a sink in the bathroom that wants sex,” Stephen said.
The monster grinned, teeth gleaming brightly. “Me? You’ll let me --? Oh, gosh!” He leapt to his feet, all fur and sleek muscle and walking death, and bounded into the bathroom. shattering the door frame, and denting the ceiling once he was inside. The door closed, propped up in place from the inside with a mumbled, “Sorry.”
“Oh, fuck me,” the sink said a few moments later, it’s voice high and horrified. “Wait! I didn’t mean -!” The sound of claws scraping plasteel filled the room with a grinding sound. The sink screamed.
“This is passion, right?” Ralphie’s voice said anxiously from inside the bathroom. “Because people sometime scream like that when I eat them.”
The sink didn’t reply. Alison looked at the bathroom, then at Stephen. “You know, rich boy, I think I might actually like you.”
“I’m flattered. Really.”
“You have no idea what that is, do you?”
“No clue. I’m just trying to be calm. Is it working?”
“Mostly.” She smirked, then frowned at the bathroom. “It survived being blown up?”
“Unless there is more than one, yes.”
“Huh. And it’s strong. Tough. Dangerous. Think it will try to defend you if bring you in?” Alison asked far too casually.
Stephen looked at the glint in her eye and bravely lied: “No.”
“Care to test that theory?”
“Not really.” Stephen stared at the bathroom. “I just wish I knew what it was and how in the name of System it can be real. You don’t get blown up and be just fine after.”
“Did it bleed?” she asked thoughtfully.
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“I was busy trying not to be killed by a bounty hunter and convincing myself my saviour wasn’t real, thank you very much.”
Alison gave him a look to suggest that, if she had been in that situation, she would have paid attention. It was remarkably similar to looks from Rikki when he’d been learning how to fight.
Stephen sighed, and belatedly finished his juice, tossing the glass to the table to be recycled. “Next time I’ll try to. I need to find out what he is, though. I don’t know if my parents made him or not. He could be some highly advanced nanocolony.” He frowned. “I hope they know.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“They did a lot of experiments on me,” he said with a shrug. “I have no idea how many of them had results like they wanted, or why they finished them.”
“Why would they--”
“Because I wasn’t a son to them, Alison.” Stephen took a deep breath, trying to expel the bitterness creeping into his voice. “I was a living project for them, a testing bed for various weapons and technologies. To them, it’s all I ever was and all I’ll ever be.”
She stared at him. “You’re not joking.”
“No.”
“And you’re all right with this?”
“They never lied to me about it. That counts for something. All right?” Stephen shrugged. “I have no idea. It was normal to me, at any rate. Though it doesn’t lend credence to your theory about the rich having great lives, does it?”
“That thing --” The sink screamed, the sound terribly high and cut off mid-note. “That thing is what people want, isn’t it? You’re not with a million credits, not alone.”
“Maybe to stop people from telling them the truth?” Stephen said, stung.
“The truth?” She laughed. “Look, Rich - Stephen, the truth isn’t anything. It’s a scrap of data in System, nothing more, fighting against hundred of lies and advertising and misinformation and out and out conspiracies, to say nothing of the sheer amount of stuff people would have to wade through to find it. Even if you told people in the real world, they’d never believe you.
“Not if they’re smart. In this world trusting hurts. It’s dangerous and foolish and no one does it without a damn good reason. And hope is never reason enough. Neither is hate. Survival might be, but that’s the only thing people can be counted on to do.”
“There are people who kill themselves for a cause.”
“Then they don’t have much of a life worth living for if they throw it away for some stupid ideals. I can get a new set - I can have a gorched one replace existing personality traits if I wanted to. Dying is easy, Stephen. Living is a lot harder. Any asshole can die for a cause. It probably feels really good; nice ego boost without the drugs.
“Living for one is harder. Almost as hard as living without one. That’s the real trick, if you want one: live, knowing how fucked up the world is and that it won’t get any better.”
“It can get better.”
“Optimism is as much a denial of reality as hope,” she snapped. “You want the world to find out your precious truth about nanotechnology and that it can be almost free, that nanites can be engineered so they don’t need to be replaced? Fine. But nothing will change, and they’ll destroy you.”
“Destroy me?”
“Offering hope to those without it is the cruellest thing you can do. Not knowing is better: you can’t want for things you don’t believe exist.”
“Like utopia?”
“Fuck that. You can’t have a utopia and have people in it, Stephen. Sooner or later they’ll fuck things up. Why do you think the life of every hero is a tragedy? Someone screws up. Somehow. Somewhere. It all ends in tears, or at least weapon blasts and lawsuits.”
“You really believe that? I mean, really?”
“Reality isn’t something we believe in, it’s something that is.”
“Reality is hands and faces?” They both turned to look at Olen, who was staring down at his hand rubbing his hands together.
“What?” Stephen said.
“Hands. They’re real, aren’t they? I have them.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“Why don’t I have pointy bits yet?”
Stephen blinked “Pointy bits?”
Olen nodded. “The thing in the bathroom has them. I see it, not an aura. I see .... hands? At the end of arms? And they’re really big, and mine feel small, and don’t have pointy bits.”
“Those are called claws. And most people don’t have them.”
“Oh.” He looked relieved. “I was worried about getting more fur on my body.”
“You used to have hair?”
He nodded. “Until someone nanobombed a hair stylists shop. I was sleeping behind it. Hit everyone in a few blocks. It never came back. I kind of like it. It’s better than having things living in it.”
Alison shook her head. “Okay. Now that we’ve sorted that out, what happens next?”
“I have no idea,” Stephen said. “I am so far out of ideas I’d probably run screaming from one. I have a monster from childhood nightmares that’s alive and kills people for me. Which is better than my nightmares, since he killed me in most of them, but it still doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“Then we need it to make sense.”
“Olen sees a real creature where Ralphie is, not au aura. I can’t even begin to explain why that is possible or how and I’m starting to get really pissed off about this. I need to call home.”
Alison looked at him. “Why?”
“To find out what my parents know about Ralphie, if anything. But I can’t get into System without being hunted down. Could you --?”
Alison shook her head. “I don’t even have implants for it. Never trusted that kind of thing, and connecting Olen up is one of the few things the Corpocracy actually deems illegal and enforces laws about.” She frowned. “How important is this?”
“Very, since if it’s not they are likely fronting the reward. Or will raise it once they know I know Ralphie exists.”
Alison’s eyes brightened. “Good. Then we go upstairs, and meet one-eyed Jack. He’s a shaman. If anyone can help us, he can. Olen, you’re staying here. Jack doesn’t like psychics.”
Olen shrugged and nodded. “Okay.”
Stephen edged his way to the bathroom only to find it was empty except for a low whimpering from the sink, which had retracted into the wall and was visible only as a pink glow. A wave of remorse hit, and Stephen felt almost ashamed, a feeling that was generally alien to the rich.
“Are you all right?” he said.
The sink let out a low moan. “Don’t bother me,” it purred. “I’m remembering. Oh. Oh! It was awesome!”
Stephen stepped out and closed the door. Firmly.
“We’re off to see the shaman then,” Alison said, walking to the door. “Olen, if anyone comes, yell.”
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