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Part 6-26: Clip
To her credit, she didn’t fall over in shock at the notion that I knew who she was, but her throat twitched and her steely eyes hardened. Scientist-boy had stopped typing and had twisted to look at me, brows contorted. No doubt Terradyne noticed his lapse, and I cruelly but regretlessly wished that she’d terminate him for it. Colloquially or literally.
“You suppose you’re clever, don’t you?” she said, after a moment. Buddy resumed his typing.
“I am actually completely serious about your hair,” I said. It wasn’t a lie.
“Sit down.”
There were too many enemies around me to safely get away with the brat game for much longer, so I complied. My very own natural human senses detected that my escort had taken up residence right behind me: his BO wafted close, in a not entirely unpleasant manner. A workin’ man’s sweat. I kept my remarks about this to myself.
“How long have you and your friends known about the signal?” said Terradyne, then held up a finger. “Do not pretend you’re ignorant.”
I’d kind of blown that approach from the get go. “Depends on what you mean by the ‘signal,’” I said.
“The power source from the Zachary building, presents as wifi.”
I strained to see if I could detect any of the trademark diamonds or squares. No luck.
“Oh, about a month maybe?” I said.
“How did you discover it?”
“It discovered me, to tell the truth.”
She leaned in at that, but kept her pristine, perfect face cool and collected. I tried to find a flaw in her appearance, to prove she wasn’t some kind of android, but there wasn’t a trace of lint on her prim suit jacket, not a wrinkle on her face or stone grey blouse. Were the flecks in her pale brown eyes symmetrical for Christs’ sake?
“What discovered you, Alena?” she asked.
“You know, I’m afraid it’s gonna sound ridiculous.”
“Try me.”
“But who are you? What is all of this?” I twirled a finger.
“We can trade answers,” said Terradyne. “I’m the kind of person who can make sure people like Deluxe Prime, Fergus Fitzgibbons, Dack Vines, Persimmon Tulun and Mayflower Saint-Germain continue to have happy lives. Or not. Your turn.”
“That’s sort of vague and threatening though,” I said, running my mouth so my veins didn’t seize up. It had been Maive’s name that did it. I’d all but forgotten she’d shown up. “I, um, suppose ‘vague and threatening’ is my answer too.”
“My patience for games is in short supply, Miss Bisk.”
“I mean, you asked what discovered me. It was—well, it is—a vague and threatening creature. Or creatures. I call it Eden. No, it calls it Eden. I think it introduced itself that way.”
“Eden.” She rotated with a casual ease toward the geeky fella. “Run it.”
“I’d say it’s a ghost,” I said, dimly aware I might be rambling. The desire to check my long ago confiscated phone to see Maive’s messages clawed inside my skull like a suffocating hellcat. “But ghosts aren’t blue, usually. I mean, it’s my first ghost experience so what do I know. Not a nice fella. We, uh, had to interrupt his, its, plans a few times?”
“The bus?” she said, now facing me again.
“What?”
“A town bus was destroyed under strange circumstances about five weeks ago. This was your ghost’s plans?”
“Oh! That. No, er, maybe? But that’s around when it found me. Same day.”
My senses caught up to my reeling lips and I bit my tongue, worried I’d said too much and double worried that I was terribly obvious about how effective her threat had been. To think I’d imagined I’d have some sort of shot at a negotiation.
Terradyne sat quietly. I knew she was waiting for me to start spouting off again. My old man’s silence trick! I worked on lowering my heart rate. She continued to study me for a brutal length of time. If it weren’t for the tinkering and typing of the professor, I might have broken and started talking again.
“You are in a dangerous situation, Alena,” she said at last. She traced a short nail in a circle along the top of the plastic card table. “I presume you understand that. My job is to nullify the danger. To do that with as few… upsets as possible, I need to have as perfect information as possible. Can you appreciate that?”
I licked my lips and nodded.
“Good. For whatever reason, you and your friends appear to want to withhold information. This paints you in a poor light, and it is also a futile position.”
A little bolt of inspiration found me. “The ghost will kill me if I help you. You’ll kill me if I don’t. What would you do?”
“I would pick what matters most.”
“Right. Look, I’ll quit being a bitch, but if we’re going to outwit this thing I think we’re going to need to work together.”
“Mhm. You want me to trust you.” She drummed her fingers, once.
“I suppose I do.”
“Where is Persimmon Tulun?” she snapped.
“I legitimately do not know. We told her to ditch Fergus’ car and lay low.”
“Where is Dack Vines?”
I swallowed. “Eden has him.”
Her eyes widened by a half millimeter. “Where?”
“In the room, in the office. The building—the fifth floor.”
“Yes. How do you get into the room?”
“You need a book, we think.” I knew.
“Where is Theodore Roman?”
The next swallow hurt. “Dead.”
“How?”
“Fuck… you want the details?”
It was quiet again, as her stare bored into me. So I told her how a monster tore him apart, and I didn’t try and stop my sorrow from cracking my voice when I spoke. In fact, I let the tears come freely. Distantly, I hoped it sold my sincerity. Mostly, I wallowed in my own self hatred for a good half minute of sobs.
“It supports the manifestation theory,” remarked the scientist, after my volume came down.
“Shut up,” said Terradyne. “Next question.”
“Sure,” I choked, wiping my eyes with my sleeves. My interrogator did not seem all too empathetic.
“How did you know my name and when or where have you seen me before?”
I wanted to say ‘Eden told me’ but that didn’t explain me having seen her. I hesitated on trying to come up with an easy fib, my amazing lying skills coming to the rescue yet again. I convinced myself that she was too good at this and that now I had to come at least partially clean.
“The—Eden lets me see things, sometimes,” I said.
“No,” said Terradyne. I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I only blinked, and she went on. “There’s more to it than that.”
The gleam in her expression didn’t offer much confidence toward calling a bluff.
“I’ve told you a ton,” I said. “Tell me who you are and what your involvement in all this is.”
“Oh, I’m here to help make it all go away, sweetie,” she said, not a trace of mockery in her voice. “Expound on this ability to see things.”
I shook my head. “It’s not, I don’t, …it’s hard to explain.”
“Bullshit. I’m not asking again.”
My ghosting magic was my only advantage here, I felt. That and its suite of fun powers, including the new body snatching thing. This woman wasn’t my pal, instinct told me that much.
“I need to use the washroom,” I said.
“Clamp her,” said Terradyne, without breaking eye contact.
A meaty arm wrapped my neck, the elbow cinching my chin, the hand gripping my right shoulder. I flinched, only to whack the back of my head into a brick wall of a chest behind me. The guard’s other arm snaked along the bottom of my own, and he grabbed my right wrist. All I could do was squirm, squawk, and watch as the scientist boy put down his computer and collected a thick wire from the floor.
It ended in a big golden alligator clip, like a jump start cable. He squeezed it open and came over.
“Hhhhnn!” I protested, thrashing and quaking. I had enough air to not pass out, but that was about it.
“Break her pinky finger if she keeps resisting,” said my host. The fingers around my wrist did a fancy dance, like a skilled guitar player flowing up the frets, and suddenly my poor pinky finger bent away from the rest of my hand.
“Eeemp,” I said, and tried to relax, despite my heart’s recent transformation into a panicked hummingbird. The digit was released, and I was mostly still—heaving chest and shaking hand my only involuntary movements.
The clip came down, and clinked around the Queen’s Band. The scientist returned to his machine and picked up his computer.
“Primed,” he said.
“This may be uncomfortable for you,” said Terradyne, with an uncontained sneer.
I wormed my tongue out between my lips and hooted a weak raspberry fart at her.
She sighed. “Do it.”
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