Ex-Kop (37 page)

I got yet another nod.

“He told you he wanted you to star in his movies. You jumped at the chance. You thought he was saving you from prostitution. But now you know that wasn't true. If he'd
really wanted to save you, he would have given you a job in his tour company. You'd be living a normal life, answering phones or doing paperwork in his office. But that's not what he did with you. He made you degrade yourself on camera. It's nothing you hadn't done before, but if he really cared, he wouldn't let you be seen like that. He wouldn't be making money off it.”

She didn't respond, but I could see she was still listening.

“He latched onto your brother,” I said. “Not because he cared about him. Not because he cared about you. He saw how vulnerable Ian was, and he took advantage of him. Horst doesn't like getting his hands dirty. He told your brother how important he was, but Ian meant nothing to him. Ian was just his fucking janitor. He just needed somebody to clean up all his shit. If it wasn't for Horst, your brother would be alive right now. He'd be taking chef classes.”

Her eyes were locked on mine.

“Am I right?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, clear and concise.

“Horst killed your brother, Liz. He didn't actually pull the trigger, but the brother you knew was already dead. Horst took the soul of a good kid and corrupted it. He killed your brother when he turned him into a murderer.”

She was staring into my eyes, her expression cold and sober. I had her convinced. I could see it on her face. Not that it took that much convincing. She'd probably already come to the same conclusion. It was Horst's fault. Everything she was feeling, all that pain, all that anguish, all Horst's fault.

She wanted to believe it. Horst was an easy scapegoat, a way for her to avoid having to look at her own role in Ian's stunted development. She still wanted to think the best of her brother, and telling herself that Horst made Ian do the things he did made it easier to think that way.

I leaned forward. “Horst killed your brother, Liz. He needs to pay. Help me make him pay.”

Her eyes took on a feral quality. “I'll help on one condition.”

“Name it.”

“I get to do the bastard in myself.”

I felt the fish on my tongue, its flavor seeping down into my taste buds. I didn't want to chew, but I did. I bit down and released a burst of flavor. I chewed slowly, not wanting to swallow even though I knew that if she'd decided to kill me instead, it was already too late.

The fish was good, and I concentrated on eating instead of talking. It could take a couple minutes yet.

Half of Horst's fish was already gone. “What do you think of the fish?” he asked.

“I think it's fantastic.”

“So how do you think this job interview is going so far?”

“I think it's going well,” I said.

“I hate to correct you, Mr. Mozambe, but I have to tell you that you're failing miserably. What I see in front of me is a man who has lost me a great deal of money. You haven't convinced me you can make it up to me yet, and I sincerely doubt you'll be able to at all. But I'm feeling generous. This marvelous fish has me in a good mood, so I won't cut off our talk just yet. I'll give you at least until d-dessert.”

He grinned menacingly. He was doing his best to ignore the little stutter at the end, but I heard it. The poison was already attacking his nervous system. He'd be completely paralyzed within a minute of the onset of symptoms.

I tried to make my case again, my voice taking on a rambling quality. There was sweat beading on his brow. He hadn't figured it out yet. He thought he was just having some odd reaction to the food. Maybe the fish was bad. Liz crept out of the
kitchen to the safety of the living room. I kept prattling on, not making much sense. He dropped his fork. I saw the terror in his eyes when he realized. I tossed the table. Plates and glasses shattered. He brought his hands up but they spasmed out of control. I threw a shoulder into his chest and knocked him over backward in his chair. He tried to bring his right hand up, laser claws emerging where fingernails used to be. I booted his hand, my shoe kicking up smoke when it made contact. I stepped on his other wrist, pinning it to the floor as needles came firing out his pinky. His legs wheeled around helplessly. He came at me with his laser-claw hand, but it swung so slowly that I easily managed to pin it down with my free foot.

I stayed in position, standing on his wrists, waiting for the paralysis to take full control. He tried to shock me, but I was wearing the thickest rubber soles I could find. The electricity found the refrigerator instead and arced across the floor, a blue lightning bolt that blew the compressor and popped the refrigerator door open with a puff of acrid smoke.

A more natural color came to his cheeks as his control over the tech that bleached his skin began to fail. It was disconcerting to see his skin looking healthier. His mouth hung open and drool began to run down his cheek. I got off his wrists, and they stayed where I left them. The only things that were still moving were his eyes, which were darting left and right. I had no idea if he was still aware of what was happening to him. The poison had taken hold and would stop his heart soon. “Ten minutes tops,” I'd been assured by the apothecary. “Even if he has blood scrubbers. You give him a big enough dose and there's no way he'll be able to purge the toxin fast enough. Those little salamanders don't look like much, but their venom can fell the biggest monitor you've ever seen in under ten.”

The only way to beat an offworlder was to go low tech.

“Bring him in here.” I heard Liz call from the living room.

I grabbed him by his shirt collar and dragged him across the linoleum out into the middle of the living room floor.

Liz was waiting there in her dominatrix getup. She was holding a monitor-hide whip, and she was finishing off a knot, tying a barb to the end. She used her teeth to pull the leather tight. I took one last look at the offworlder, his limbs wrenched up into unnatural angles, his face locked into a horrified rictus.

Even then, he looked more human than I'd ever seen him.

I went to the door and stepped out an instant before I heard the first crack.

I
WAS
at Roby's. I'd decided to meet them on their own turf. It was morning, and the place was empty except for the six of us. I took my time looking them over. Their faces were marked with a mixture of anger and worry. There was lip biting. There were clenched jaws. There was plenty of leg tapping. I remembered Yuri's face when they killed him, when I let them kill him. I remembered the way he looked when he realized that nobody was going to save him. I was glad Maggie hadn't seen it. She didn't need that image in her head.

This planet was a damn garbage dump, and Maggie was the lone flower growing in the middle of it. I'd make sure she had a nice patch of clean earth to grow in. I'd keep the trash from getting too close. I'd scorch the weeds that tried to take her sunlight. I'd squash the bugs that wanted to nibble on her leaves. She'd be allowed to do what was natural for her, which was to rise up and inspire an entire garden to take root.

The five faces were looking at me, waiting. I'd already sent them all copies of the vid with instructions to meet me here today. For two days now, they'd been sweating it out, knowing that I had incontrovertible footage of them killing Yuri but not knowing my intentions. They were more than ready to listen to what I had to say.

I was set on seizing back the power I'd lost. I had to start somewhere, and co-opting my own squad was a good place to
start. I was quite certain Maggie wouldn't like it, but like it or not, KOP wouldn't just fall into her hands. It had to be
taken
.

Looking at this crew,
my
crew, my gut raged like a stoked furnace.

I was back.

I broke out in a vicious grin. I leaned forward in my chair and pointed with my shaky splinted fingers. “I
own
you motherfuckers.”

Ex-KOP
is the second novel by W
ARREN
H
AMMOND
. His first novel,
KOP,
was published in 2007. A former schoolteacher, he now works as an instructor in the computer industry. Over the past fourteen years, thousands of information technology professionals have attended his classes. An avid traveler, he and his wife have trekked the Himalayas, hiked the Inca Trail, explored the Galapagos Islands, gone camping in the game reserves of Botswana, and toured the temples of Angkor Wat. Born and raised in upstate New York, he currently lives in Denver with his wife and two cats. He is working on a new novel featuring Juno Mozambe.