Cut Up Girl_Lawless Book One, page 1
CUT UP GIRL
LAWLESS BOOK ONE
James Maxey
Cover by James Maxey
Copyright 2018
For someone whose privacy I respect enough not to name.
The tree long remembers what the ax soon forgets.
Chapter One
Slice
As I climbed the ladder to the deck of the submarine, a huge hand clamped onto my shoulder. Any hope that it was Harry vanished as I looked up into the snarling visage of an injured steam-ape. The tangled wires inside his glass skull dome glowed red hot, giving off smoke that smelled like battery acid. The sound of gears stripping and grinding filled the air as he tightened his grip. The steam-ape looked like he was seconds from death, but he still had enough strength to jerk me off the ladder, drawing me toward his slathering jaws.
Suddenly Harry towered over both of us, his enormous fists raised over his head. Glass and gears flew as Harry smashed the beast’s mechanical brain. My attacker’s grasp went limp. Harry grabbed my forearm before I fell back into the hold.
“You all right, Valentine?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I said as he set me on my feet. “You get Chopper?”
“He’s cruising higher than I can jump,” he said, craning his thick neck to look at the sky.
I followed his gaze and saw Chopper’s helicycle in silhouette against the glowing clouds. I heard his engine screaming as it strained to lift the Victorian’s time-bomb. He was barely a quarter mile away, for all the good that did us.
“What genius put together an assault squad without a single goddamn member who can fly?” Screaming Jenny screamed as she came up the ladder.
“Take it up with the Retaliator,” snapped Harry.
“Don’t panic, I got this,” said Nimble as she leapt from the dock onto the sub beside us, knocking two of the remaining steam-apes into the river with her extended arms. All the holes the kill-bot had punched in her earlier had closed up. I guess having a body the consistency of Silly Putty makes Band-Aids unnecessary. She wrapped her legs around the ladder for support, then stretched skyward, turning thin as an extension cord as she reached for Chopper’s ride.
There was a flash of bright blue light as her elongated fingers wrapped around his torso. Nimble recoiled with a TWANG, snapping back to her human form with such force she bounced right off the hull of the sub.
“Nimble!” Harry shouted, diving into the river.
He was only under for a second before he surfaced with Nimble pressed against his chest. She spat water, then sputtered, “Cut Up Girl, you didn’t warn me he had a Taser!”
“You just survived a kill-bot,” I said. “How can a Taser hurt you?”
“Without total command of my muscle fibers, I’m useless. Electricity screws me big time.”
“We’re all screwed,” Jenny said, her voice a sob. She sat down, running her black fingernails through her purple hair. “Oh, Jesus, he’s going to trigger the bomb. I’m going to start wearing corsets again!”
“It’s going to be okay,” said Harry as he climbed back onto the sub. He placed his hand on her shoulder.
“No!” she said, twisting away from his touch. “No! I’ve been on the other end of the Victorian’s time ray! It’s terrible! I can’t go through that again! If we don’t stop that bomb—”
“We’re stopping it,” I said. I locked eyes with Harry. “Throw me.”
“What?” he asked.
“Throw me! It’s our only chance to catch him.”
“You’re confusing me with Golden Victory,” he said. “There’s no way I could get you that far.”
“You can with my help,” said Nimble. “I’m too jangled to stretch after him again, but I make a pretty good slingshot. Big Ape, I’ll need you to pull me back and aim Cut Up Girl.”
“You’re both out of your minds,” said Harry.
“There’s no time to argue!” Screaming Jenny shouted, punching Harry in the center of his leathery black chest. “Do it!”
Nimble was already stretching her trembling limbs toward two sturdy pilings at the entrance of the dock. With her rubbery skin still wet from the river, it sounded like some invisible clown was building the world’s biggest balloon animal. She wrapped her arms and legs around the two supports and called back, “Let’s do this, Valentine!”
I jumped down onto the dock and ran toward her.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” grumbled Harry.
“Shut up and do it!” Jenny screamed.
I pressed myself into Nimble’s crotch, holding my breath. Thanks to her dip in the river she smelled like sewage.
Harry leapt down from the sub. The whole dock shuddered as he landed behind us on all fours.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” he asked. “I know that finding out the truth about your father was really messed up, Val, but—”
“This isn’t suicide,” I assured him.
“Then why…”
“I can’t let the bastard win,” I said.
“Why is this up for debate?” Nimble asked, her voice squeaky and distorted by her stretched out lungs. “We can’t let that bomb go off!”
I swallowed hard. “If I don’t… don’t get through this… take care of Bullet, okay?”
Harry clenched his jaw and didn’t answer.
“We need to do this now,” said Nimble, with increased strain in her voice.
Harry grabbed Nimble and started pulling us back.
I glanced over my shoulder. Our faces were only inches apart. Maybe it was just the water running from his fur, but it looked like he was crying.
“Please don’t die,” he said. “I… I… hate your dog.”
I nodded.
He let go.
The sudden acceleration shunted the blood from my brain. When I regained my senses I was hanging in midair, at the apex of my arc, weightless at the moment my rise stopped and my descent began.
Harry had aimed high. I was falling toward the rotors of the helicycle.
Time slowed to a crawl. The Vectran-sheathed titanium rotors knifed through the air at eight rotations a second, but adrenaline had speeded my perception until I saw each blade. I briefly wondered if I’d slip between them without harm until I realized I was falling too slowly for that to work. The blades would slice me to ribbons. Was this suicide after all?
No. Whether I survived or not, I wasn’t choosing to die. I was choosing to fight. For the first time in my life I was completely in control of my destiny. I had no regrets, and only one final, lingering doubt.
You know how they say that, when you’re facing death, your whole life flashes before you? I had a life flashing through my mind. But after what I learned earlier… was it really my life? I rose that morning thinking I was Valentine Summers. Now, as I fell, I was no one but Cut Up Girl.
Beneath me, the blades were close enough to touch.
I stretched out my fingers and touched them.
Chapter Two
Whatever It Takes
I remember the week my father didn’t take me to school.
It was late spring, probably only a few weeks before school would have ended anyway. I was in sixth grade. I woke up from a deep sleep and went into the kitchen. I was pouring cereal on a bowl when it slowly dawned on me how bright it was outside. According to the clock on the stove, it was almost ten o’clock.
The television was on in the living room and I heard contestants guessing how much a camera cost on The Price is Right. Dad was sprawled on the couch, with at least a dozen empty beer cans on the floor in front of him. He looked sound asleep, but cracked his eyes slightly as I reached out to touch his shoulder.
“Hey,” he said, his voice faint and hoarse.
“I’m late for school,” I said. “You’re late for work.”
“It’s a holiday,” he said, closing his eyes.
“It is?”
“National Hooky Day.” He rolled over, leaving me staring at his back.
I stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do. He must have felt my presence.
“Everything’s okay, Valentine,” he said, his voice muffled by the couch cushions. “Go have fun.”
I went back to the kitchen and poured milk on my cereal, then spent the rest of the morning watching game shows while my father slept.
National Hooky Day turned into National Hooky Week. This wasn’t the first time I’d ever missed school because my father failed to take me. My mother had died when I was four, the victim of a random shooting in a convenience store robbery. My father never adapted well to the role of single parent. He wasn’t big on discipline or boundaries and he mainly let me do whatever I wanted. He left any sort of parental guidance to the string of girlfriends he brought into our house. Women were crazy about my father. He was a doctor, though I was fuzzy on what kind of practice he had. We lived in a big, five-bedroom house even though there was just the two of us. Dad filled the garage with a collection of motorcycles, and parked his convertible BMW in the driveway. Dad looked like a movie star, with wavy black hair and angular features. In old pictures, he had an athletic build. While he’d gotten thicker in middle age, everyone said he was handsome.
Dad drank. He drank a lot. The women who chased after him were quickly chased away by the ill temper that came through when he was drunk. I can’t count the times I heard my father cursing at the top of his lungs, though he never once yelled at me. He might not have been a great parent when it came to things like cooking or
cleaning or making sure I did my homework, but he did take seriously the job of keeping me entertained. We ate out almost every night. We used to go to the movies three or four times a week. Since there weren’t that many children’s movies in theatres, he’d take me to grown up movies, lots of action stuff and plenty of R-rated comedies where most of the jokes were over my head.
National Hooky Week was on its fourth day. I was in my bedroom on the second floor, leafing through movie magazines. Dad sat on the glider on the deck below my window, going through his second six-pack of the day, when a black SUV pulled into the driveway. I sat up to get a better look. We didn’t get a lot of visitors.
A tall man in a black suit got out. He was built like a football player, completely bald, with his eyes hidden behind sunglasses. He spotted my father on the deck on the side of the house and called out, “Dr. Summers!”
My father didn’t respond. He cracked open another beer and watched as the big man walked toward him.
“Something wrong with your phone, sir?” the man asked.
“How should I know?” Dad said with a shrug. “I haven’t answered it in days.”
“Lots of things you haven’t been doing,” the man said. “Showing up for your job, for instance.”
“That why they sent you out here, McGruber?” Dad took a long sip of beer. “A guy can’t miss a few days of work?”
“This is more than a few,” said McGruber. “The big bosses have noticed. You don’t want to make the big bosses unhappy.”
“The Butterfly House can run fine without me,” said Dad.
“Can I give you some advice?”
“I’ve a feeling you’re going to.”
“Don’t make yourself expendable. If the powers that be decide you’re superfluous, they might remove you. You understand what that would mean.”
“Yeah,” Dad said softly, staring down at his beer. “Yeah, I know what that means.”
“Is this about that girl we brought in over the weekend?”
Dad shrugged. “She’s the same age as my daughter. Exactly. Same birthday. I mean… the other kids we’ve brought in… I don’t know. The radioactive kid, obviously, he can’t be out on the streets. That blister girl, sure, she’s safer with us. But this girl… you wouldn’t look at her twice if you saw her on a playground.”
“She’s still an Aussie, dude. She can set people on fire by screaming. Half of the extradition team has third degree burns.” He removed his sunglasses and ran his fingers along his jutting brow. “I miss my eyebrows.”
“Frank says we’re expanding the program. Using my prion test to bring in kids who haven’t manifested any of the Aussie mutations.”
“Frank says a lot of stuff.”
“What the hell are we doing, McGruber?”
“Saving the world?”
“Right,” said Dad, his shoulders sagging.
“You going to be at work tomorrow?”
Dad scratched the back of his neck. “My car has a flat. Been meaning to get it fixed, but, you know, I’ve got a lot of things on my plate.”
McGruber looked toward the driveway. Dad’s BMW was parked at an odd angle, the right front wheel half off the pavement. He’d run over the little iron fence that lined the drive, probably coming home drunk on National Hooky Day Eve. I hadn’t noticed until he said something that the tire was flat.
McGruber rubbed his eyes. “You’ve got, like, nine motorcycles.”
“They’re all out of gas,” Dad said.
“Fine,” said McGruber. “I’ll put on your spare.”
“Can’t find the jack,” said Dad.
McGruber shook his head and walked to the driveway. He opened the car door and popped the trunk. He rooted through the junk there and pulled out a jack. “Look what I found.”
Dad opened another beer. “Guess I didn’t see it.”
McGruber dropped the jack on the ground and pulled the spare out, holding it in one hand like it weighed nothing. He went to the punctured tire, knelt, then picked up the front end of the car.
My jaw dropped. Was I seeing things? But, the more I looked, the more I was sure of what I was seeing. McGruber had lifted up the front of the car, holding it a good three feet off the ground.
I leapt to my desk, rummaging through drawers to grab my camera. I was back at the window ten seconds later, in time to see the big man spin off the lug nuts with his bare fingers, then toss aside the punctured tire. He put on the spare and tightened the nuts before gently setting the car back down.
“Good to go, sir,” he said, walking back to the deck, wiping his fingers on his pants.
“Great,” said Dad.
“See you at work tomorrow?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Sure. Whatever.” Dad tilted his head back to drain his beer.
McGruber snatched the can away.
“I’m sick of your shit, Doc. If it weren’t for Frank, you’d be gone already. You’re a reckless, drunken loser and should never have gotten the clearance to be part of this project.”
“Fuck you, McGruber,” said Dad. “Without my prion test, there is no project.”
He reached for another beer. McGruber’s hand reached the beer first.
“You don’t need any more of these. You’ve had the better part of a week to poison yourself. I want you sober when you come to work tomorrow.”
“I haven’t come to work sober in almost three years,” Dad said.
“Is this who you are?” asked McGruber. “I know that bringing in that girl upset you. She probably reminds you of Valentine, and I know how much Valentine means to you.”
“Do you?”
“You have, what, nine hundred pictures of her in your office. The only time I’ve ever seen you smile at work, you were talking about her.”
“She’s the only thing that still matters to me,” Dad said, sounding choked.
“So get your act together. What kind of father can you be if you’re drunk all the time? What kind of values are you teaching her?”
“Val!” Dad yelled, looking up at my bedroom window.
McGruber looked up, his eyes growing wide as he saw me. He glanced back at the car, then looked toward me, furrowing his brow as he focused on the camera in my hand. I quickly hid it behind my back.
McGruber frowned. “I thought she’d be in school.”
“I’m not neglecting her education,” Dad said. “Get down here, Val.”
I put the camera in my desk then ran down to the deck.
“Val, this gentleman is concerned I’m not teaching you values.”
“Drop it,” said McGruber, “I didn’t know she was home. I’ll go now. See you tomorrow.”
“Stay,” said Dad. “You need to hear these as well. From what Frank tells me, you didn’t have much of a father figure growing up.”
McGruber crossed his arms. “Frank runs his mouth a lot.”
Dad placed his hand on my shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot as he stared into my face. “Three rules,” he said. “Three rules are all you need in life.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Rule one: Don’t be a dick.”
My eyebrows shot up. I’d heard my father cuss dozens of times, but he’d never actually used crude language in any statement made directly to me.
“Rule two,” he said, glancing at McGruber. “The world is full of bastards. Never, ever, ever let them win. Whatever it takes to beat them, do it.”
“That’s enough,” said McGruber. “I’m going.”
McGruber walked from the deck. My father didn’t watch him go. Instead, he brought his face closer to mine. His lips were pressed tightly together.
“The third rule is…,” he said, shaking his head. “The third rule is that you can’t always follow the first two rules.” He pulled me to his chest, squeezing me so hard I could barely breathe. “But try, okay? Promise me you’ll try?”
“I promise,” I said, wheezing.
McGruber climbed into his SUV. He called out, “See you tomorrow. One way or another.” He slammed the door.
“I’m going to work tomorrow, okay?” Dad whispered in my ear. “You’ll go to school. Everything will be normal. It’s all going to be okay. I love you.”
His beard stubble scratched my cheek as he held me tighter. My shoulder grew warm and wet as he started to cry.
