You Will Know Vengeance, page 23
Damn you, you big lovable bastard.
I sigh. He is right. I can’t get Barca out on my own. There are just too many variables. But with AldenSong doing something on the inside, I might have a chance at this working.
The best-case scenario is that Barca gets out.
The worst-case is that all three of us wind up in a place worse than death, the Bay.
As they say, go big or go home.
Chapter sixty-five
Sharp Enough to Draw Blood
That afternoon, both the day shift and the night shift follow Cyfib’s orders and meet to mourn the loss of one of our own.
Earlier, during the shift change, Cyfib did his dog and pony show of holding up Quidlee’s ashes in a clear plastic bag and mocking him, a lost tool whose potential was never met. Cyfib did the same word-for-word speech he said for SweetThree, complete with a bloodstained, blue Ethernet cable. Even though it was a repeat speech, the words stung harsher. They were extra pours of salt into my gaping wounds.
“I never got him out.” For some reason, that thought escapes my brain and slides past my lips as Cyfib speaks. The warden sends a “hush, dogs” out to the crowd, but none of my fellow hackvicts tense up, expecting, even bracing for a correction shock from the warden. We all were hurting and, besides, what was one more shock at this point?
AldenSong puts his hand on my shoulder and gives me a squeeze. Words will not help, but he is there for me just the same.
I have one of those wavering moments where I think I can still kill Barca. While I do not know if I have the fortitude to kill someone myself, how would I know if I didn’t try?
Pondering Barca’s death makes me think of Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s book Hagakure. In it, the author discusses that killing a man who would cause the suffering of tens of thousands of people is not only a just act, but a necessary one—a case where a blade designed for death actually serves a greater purpose of life.
Maybe it is time for me to become my handle’s namesake.
AldenSong interrupts my train of thought by leaning down to whisper in my ear. “I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.”
Of all the times for AldenSong to whisper scripture to me, it just has to be the time when I am considering taking another human’s life.
While the Bushido warriors killed many a villain, the other influence in my life never harmed a soul. Mr. Lon, the Gentleman Bandit as the newspapers dubbed him, always treated those who he robbed, even though they were victims, with a level of respect that deserved its own criminal code.
Mr. Lon never once took wedding rings or sentimental jewelry. When questioned about this, he said that even the smallest of diamonds may contain the memory of the largest of life’s joys. Not only did he respect his victims, he also would get their information from the driver’s licenses, but not to haunt them or scare them like the villain in a thriller movie. No, he would wait close to a week after the crime, and then call each one of them from a different pay phone just to ensure the ordeal did not traumatize them.
Of course, Mr. Lon never met Barca or Cyfib.
I have drowned out Cyfib’s last words and half-heartedly follow as the warden takes the remains of my friend with him into the Cube of Death.
Across the room, Barca teases PoBones about something and then puts the Cajun in a headlock and gives him a noogie. Even though the two are playful, I catch Barca’s stare my way.
He’s set his claws into his target. The predator has found its next prey.
I nod at Barca and then head back to the bathroom where he’d killed my friend. Hopefully, he will read my action to follow correctly.
However, before I leave the War Room, I snag a pen, pad, and the screwdriver I’d hidden by the coffeemaker days earlier.
One sharp enough to draw blood.
Chapter sixty-six
Work to Do
I take the furthest stall from the latrine’s door. Barca walks in.
From the way they set up the dividers between pissers, there is no way for the bastard to tell that I am holding the screwdriver in my hand instead of my prick. The giant strolls my way with the ease of a man who’s just won the jackpot at a casino: he swaggers right, then left, as if he has all the time and money in the world.
Neither of us speaks as Barca unzips his pants and pisses. I rotate the round end of the screwdriver in my sweaty right palm around and around.
Do I have what it takes to end a monster?
Yes, I will get caught. Yes, I will go to the Bay and spend the rest of my life going through who-knows-what level of interrogation and suffering, but everyone within these walls, my tribe, will be safe.
Not only a just murderous act, but a necessary one.
“Ahhhhhh . . .” the monster kicks his head back and even uses both hands to cradle his neck. He is free-hanging his piss, and a warmness on my foot tells me he’s pissing on my shoe.
I turn my head and study the closed-eyed beast. There, right where Barca’s shoulder meets his neck, is the spot where I will drive my weapon deep, hitting the crossroads of several crucial internal and external jugular veins.
Is this my calling in life, to rid the world of a monster?
Be still.
Those words run through my mind. The very words that AldenSong whispered to me as I was trying to become the conduit between the wall socket, an exposed wire, and a stopped heart. He saved me from electrocuting myself.
Be still.
Shut up, Aldy. There is no being still. There is only the here and now.
Then those two words leave my brain and run along the same veins I am going to sever on Barca. A coolness floods throughout my body. For a moment, I am not only calm. I am in control.
A sudden twinge of pain in my leg reminds me of the week I was down in the basement working on several of our servers. I banged my other knee pretty hard, crawling out from under a table. Several flies had gotten in there. I remember this because I swatted at the one that kept trying to crawl up my nose. The little sucker was vindictive and, like zombie Aldy, apparently wanted my brains.
Around day four of the work, I started trying to pry open the side of a classic POS system. It is odd that these are the machines that the warden uses. POS in this case standing for Piece of Shit because it was more of a Frankenstein machine, assembled from parts out of other dead machines. Most of our gear is from a company called Poseidon United Company, apparently a tech company I have never heard of.
When I finally got the metal cover off, what I found inside blew my mind. There, among the motherboard, fans, hard drive, and all the semiconductors, was this intricate spiderweb, complete with a mother and her young. The little ones scurried to the corners of the unit, hiding behind dust bowls and under integrated circuits.
The mother stood her ground and even leaned back on her legs, probably ready to pounce, if I made a malicious move toward her young.
As I leaned back, a damn fly landed right on my upper lip. My first instinct was to smack at the tingling sensation. Instead, I drifted my hands out from my body and blew as hard as I could from my nostrils.
The sudden whoosh of air startled the fly. As it fled my warm breath, it flew right into my outstretched right hand. In that instant, I clapped my left hand on top, trapping the fly.
I’d finally caught the brain-eating sucker. However, I took a beat and set up the best way to dispose of the fly.
Once I kicked back my rolling chair, I shook up the fly in my hands to confuse him. I felt my capture bounce all around my hands like an irritated jellybean.
At that moment, I heaved the fly forward. This little black pebble flipped end over end right into the side of that spider’s web.
Once the fly knew he was trapped, he kicked and struggled. And the more he struggled, the deeper he was stuck.
One way or another, the fly was going to die there.
I will trap Barca, and he will cause his own undoing. I will get him to the security gate. Once we walk in tandem and the gate opens, I’ll push him past the opening and the quick-shutting gate will slam behind him. After that, I’ll pull the fire alarm.
No matter what deal or immunity Barca has with Cyfib or the corporation, if it is publicly known among the guards and hackvicts that Barca tried to escape, the warden will have no choice but to send him to the Bay for fear of losing face in front of his dogs.
Barca then puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “We will get through this.”
Through this? Maybe I should just take the easy way out and shiv the bastard.
I take a deep breath and shake the urge off.
All that needs to happen is for him to get caught trying to escape. I just need to figure out how to make sure they catch him and not me.
Barca finishes his leak and glances over at me with a smirk. “You want to squeeze out the last few drops for me, Princess?”
He may have the power, but he is not in charge.
“Barca, we have work to do.”
Chapter sixty-seven
This Favor is a Doozy
Despite his undefeated rank as top asshole in the galaxy, Barca is not the worst student. Sure, he interrupts me, often just to be a smart-ass, but you can’t tell a dog like him he can’t be a dog. All you can do is keep him on a loose leash.
Interestingly, Barca listens intently, leaning on his elbows and resting his chin in giant hands as his ears trap and his eyes juggle the pieces of our plan. I explain how the gates open when two prisoner chips go through the terminal at the same time and overload the circuit.
He interrupts with questions as often as comments and, boy, does he have questions! He wants to know why I need his exact height, weight, scars, and number of fillings. I explain why we need corpses that are close enough to us in description that they will pass a light inspection. Of course, DNA is DNA, so there is no way to hack all the databases that ours might exist on.
“So why don’t we just remove both of the chips and tape them together to get through the gate, like, um, an RFID card?” he asks as we watch an inmate basketball game for cover.
I hate to admit it, but it’s a good question.
“You see MottonCather over there?” I ask, pointing to the hackvict with one leg and no prosthetic hopping around the court, kicking everyone’s ass.
“Yeah?”
“He attempted to remove the ankle implant and escape using a soldering iron. As you can see, that’s why he lost a little weight.”
“Ah.”
Two points in one. One, if you screw up removing the microchip, the sucker causes serious damage. Two, don’t underestimate people, especially those who appear weaker than you.
“I think it is possible to remove the chips, but there’s just as much a chance that when you remove them, they stop working, much like a smoke detector or security alarm does when the cover to the unit is removed. We can’t know until we are outside the building.”
“So that’s part of the plan?”
“Yes.”
Barca slaps me across the back as if we are old school chums.
“Princess, I’m starting to like you.”
This princess wishes there was a crown large enough to beat you with.
Between games, X_Marks_Da_Hot jogs over to our seats, tossing the basketball between his hands.
“Hey Barca, you want to tag in?”
“Naw, I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“Yah.”
As X dribbles off, I lean into my monster’s ear. “You need to play, keep up appearances.”
“Man, you don’t—”
Barca holds off on his response. His eyes dart from the empty guard tower to the court. He curses under his breath. That’s the thing about getting good advice from people you hate: sometimes you won’t take it just to spite them, and everyone winds up losing.
Barca chuckles. “You’re a smartie, Princess . . . hey, X, toss me the rock!”
As Barca takes off his shirt, his bare back reveals a tattoo of a raging elephant, one with beady eyes in mid-charge. The mammoth shimmers in the sun, probably ink that is less than a year old.
I glance down at my lone, faded tat.
Six names. When I get out, I guess I’ll have to add Quidlee to the list.
Will I add his given name, or chosen handle?
Then, looking at the names, something else clicks in my head. There is a way to address the biggest gamble in our escape plan. It is a long shot, but if it works, it might be the answer to how we can get a courier.
And like an angel sent from on high, AldenSong slips into the seat next to me.
“You know when you asked to help?”
“That’s vague.” Aldy bobbles his head and attempts his best rich-person accent, which sounds more like a discarded Muppet than someone on the BBC. “I do try to improve the lives of my fellow man every day and require more information for a favor, if one would be so inclined to share?”
“Oh, I’m inclined.” I take a breath because I am about to ask a world’s work from Aldy. “Because this favor is a doozy.”
Chapter sixty-eight
Never See You Again
For someone who loves to talk, it is equally surprising and scary to find AldenSong without words. A furrowed brow with darting eyes that bounce around the basketball court is on the Samoan’s face. This is the combination of confusion, shock, intrigue, and panic that I sort of expected from overloading his brain like an overstuffed paper grocery sack.
I had just unloaded not only the plan of how to escape but also how it was meant for Quidlee—how Barca bastardized it after he killed the rook.
I also told AldenSong about the secret scripts I kept on a hidden partition on the server that allowed me untraceable access for six minutes to do whatever I pleased. Oh, and I told him about the development of Gakunodo and the fact that I had in my possession Cyfib’s administrative flash drive.
Out of all that barrage of powerful details, I’m pretty sure that the ultimate piece, telling AldenSong who I needed him to track down and contact as our cadaver and fake ID courier, might’ve added too much info at once. It was like handing an anvil to a guy standing on a barely frozen pond.
The big guy sits in his confusion for a while. I give him space to process. Some things just need time to play out.
Barca scores the game-winning point and strolls over our way.
“Hey, what’s with fat boy?”
“I just told him that the movie Home Alone, from the time that Kevin puts his head under the covers to hide from the crooks until they leave, was actually just a dream.”
“What?” Barca says, successfully distracted.
A bounce pass winds up in my chest. I hurl the rock back into the middle of the court. I had read about this Home Alone theory on the dark web last week and was wondering when this useless information would shift to useful.
“Look at the house at the end of the movie: immaculate. When did Kevin learn to woodwork and repair a home, let alone have the tools to fix the damage from all those booby traps? He didn’t even know how to shave . . .”
Barca raises a finger to say something and argue against the attack on everyone’s favorite Christmas movie, but he slowly withdraws it and rubs his chin. Before I know it, he is sitting on the ground next to me.
So, on one side of me is the man I care most for in the world. On the other, the man I hate the most. Somehow, with completely different tactics and information, I’ve shut their brains down and overloaded their internal realities.
I can’t remember which one of them cussed first, but the other echoed the statement. I wonder if AldenSong even heard me tell Barca that story.
The giant strolls to the watercooler on the other side of the court, still lost in thought. Once Barca leaves, AldenSong breaks his silence.
“For most of my life, I never touched a keyboard. Never got on the Internet. You didn’t do that. Not where I grew up. We are a simpler people.” AldenSong scratches his eyelids and tilts his head up toward the sky. “We believe in God, and we believe in each other. The rest is rain and wind. Then I made a . . . choice. It was not a bad choice, nor was it a good choice. It was a choice, and that landed me right here, right now, where you are asking me to make another choice.”
“I understand.”
“No, no, you don’t, because if you did, if you truly knew me, you would know you never had to hear me answer you.”
“And, since you know me, you know it wouldn’t sit right with me to demand anything, especially from you.” I put my hand on his back and give him a pat. “You know, Aldy, instead of telling a story, most people just answer a question.”
He takes my hand from his back and places it in his. “Since when are we those people?”
After a quick squeeze, I know my answer.
Barca glares at me from across the court. He can’t even let the idea of a different interpretation of a childhood movie sit. He stomps my way.
“You’re wrong,” he says.
“Maybe.”
I should have kept in mind how much Barca needs to win at all times, even when it comes to opinions about old movies. Without warning, he puts his hands around my neck, squeezes, and shoves me against the fence.
“Say it.”
It is only now that I notice the perimeter alarm blares, but no guards have rushed to my side.
“I . . . am . . .” Barca lets go and walks back toward the entrance inside.
Trub-E and Foshi_Taloa are practicing free throws. Trub-E banks a shot off the rim and the ball ricochets into the back of Barca’s head. While the impact doesn’t hurt him, it must’ve annoyed him further because Barca snatches the bouncing ball and chucks it over the fence.
The ball flies off in an arc, sailing high, before ultimately dropping below our eyeline.
I approach the fence to follow the ball’s trajectory as it hits the concrete below, bounces high, and then lands at an angle, sticking in a rain gutter. Barca probably couldn’t have made that shot again if he tried.
