He didn’t seem to be up to talking yet, but the look in Robert Fisher’s eyes made it abundantly clear that he doubted her sincerity.
“I’m serious,” Alice protested, pausing to zap him again, and then waiting until he stopped moaning and flaying before continuing. “Do you know what it’s like to suspect that you could be walking right by your favorite food, your dream house, the perfect lover, even ignoring your own birthday, all because you can’t remember? You should be grateful for what you have. You’re lucky to have the two of us here to assist you, working hard to try and help jog that memory for you.”
Robert Fisher straightened partway up and looked her hard in the eye. There was a faint crackle of power, a minor fluctuation in the Ether. Alice stared back hard for a moment, and then she laughed, and jammed the cattle prod into his crotch, activating it while the big man behind him recoiled in laughter and sympathetic pain. Again, Alice politely waited until Robert had stopped thrashing about on the floor.
“You are probably wondering why it is that you cannot use your magic brains to kill us,” Alice said crisply. “I should have pointed this out earlier, but I tend to lose my train of thought when I am having fun. My friend Mark Costas probably isn’t familiar to you, but he should be, if there was any justice in the world. You see, Bobby, you might be something of a telepath, but Mark here is a very special kind of telepath; really, he’s a rare and utterly unique talent.”
“You are too kind,” Mark rumbled.
In fact, he was too kind to point out that he heard this speech a number of times over the years, almost verbatim, and that he knew that it came from her diaries rather than any direct memory of him. However, since he actually was her friend, he kept quiet about this, the same way he kept quiet about the fact that he was also her former student, because he wasn’t sure whether she’d read about that yet. She’d actually been the one who had overseen his transformation from a chubby, awkward little Salvadorian kid from New Mexico to the tattooed enforcer that he was today. Still, no matter what she had forgotten, he was heartened to see Alice being Alice, and it showed in the genuineness of his smile.
“Don’t get me wrong, he can do all the normal shit too. That isn't what makes him unique, though. You see, Mark has a protocol that operates entirely on your autonomic nervous system. I’m sure you know all about that — maybe you’re even good enough to do a little of that sort of thing; making people stop breathing, say, or putting them down for a little nap. Mark, though, he’s fucking surgical when it comes to tampering with the actual workings of your nervous system. When Mark decides that you aren’t going to be able to use your protocols, well, I’m afraid you just can’t access that part of your brain. When Mark decides that you’re going to struggle about as effectively as a prom date after a couple wine coolers, well, then that’s what happens. Are you starting to understand? You, my friend, are going to die, face down in a fucking bucket.”
Robert Fisher coughed, shook, and glared at Alice Gallow, but he didn’t say anything.
“What about now?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow at Mark.
He shook his head slowly.
“Well, then, let’s try again,” Alice suggested jovially, as Mark wrenched Fisher roughly to his knees, again not at all dismayed by his attempts to fight. “Let me know when you think of something interesting to say. Go ahead and call out.”
Mark plunged his head back in the bucket.
“How long till he dies from this?” Alice asked, yawning.
“We’ll have to get a medic in here to set him back up pretty soon, I think,” Mark said, considering.
“You wanna take the kid gloves off, then? We could try the thing with his fingers and the table saw. The last one definitely didn’t like that.”
“Yeah, I guess we probably should — wait a minute. I think maybe I got something here,” Mark said, closing his eyes and cocking his head, as if he were listening intently to music only he could hear.
“Would it help if I shocked him in the balls again?” Alice asked.
“Not really.”
Alice pouted, but she let him do his business. She had to remind Mark to let Robert Fisher up for air, and by the time he did, the man was in sorry shape, vomiting all over the floor.
“Gross,” Alice said contemptuously. “What’d you get, son?”
“He’s worried,” Mark said, a grin breaking across his tattooed face like sun through the clouds. “He’s worried about his kids. He’s worried that they didn’t get underground in time, that we’ve found them. He’s worried because he doesn’t think he could handle that.”
“Holy shit! That’s where the conditioning broke? They got sloppy! You have their names?” Alice said, reaching for her cell phone. “Let me make a phone call.”
She stepped out of the room to make the call, leaving Robert and Mark alone.
“Wh-where am I?” Robert Fisher croaked. “Is this Central?”
“Oh, you didn’t recognize it?” Mark asked patiently. “I thought you would. This is the worst place in the world. This is the room you are going to die in.”
Robert Fisher had nothing to say to that. Mark smiled, folded his arms, a man at peace with his place and station in the world, and waited for Alice, who didn’t take very long. She waltzed back into the room, sliding her phone back into her pocket, and kissed Mark on the cheek as she walked past, the only woman he’d ever known tall enough to do that without reaching.
“Mark, how is it that I never snagged you for Audits?” Alice said with her eyes full of laughter. “A man of your talents is wasted on Analysis.”
“I’m a hemophiliac,” Mark said gently, explaining what he had already told her, years before. “My nanites malfunctioned, don’t know why. I bleed, Alice. I wouldn’t last a minute in the field. Besides,” he said, smiling at her affectionately, “I like what I do. So, what’s up with his family?”
“Not sure about the wife or either of his sons, but the assumption is that they were still inside the main Taos compound when Xia torched it…”
“No,” Robert Fisher moaned, until he was cut off by Alice, who pivoted smoothly, without looking away from Mark, and kicked him savagely in the midsection.
“…but we did snag his daughter in the raid. She graduated two years ago, name is Shelly Fisher. You know her?”
Mark shook his head ponderously.
“Me either,” Alice said, shrugging. “But we will soon. Now all we need is another bucket.”
Mark nodded and left the room. He returned toting a second rusted bucket, filled to the point that the water inside slopped and spilled on the concrete as he set it down, not too far from Robert Fisher’s head. Fisher stared at it for a long time, while Alice smiled and watched, nudging Mark with her elbow.
“Don’t do this,” Robert said, pleading with his eyes. “Please. Don’t hurt her.”
“Bobby, Bobby. I thought you would know by now. That’s my thing, baby,” Alice chided, leaning forward, so that her face was only inches from his. “All I do is hurt people.”
“Please…”
“Don’t talk as if I am the one creating this situation,” Alice said, seizing him by the cheeks and squeezing. “You know how to fix it. I am warning you, Bob, that if little Shelly walks through that door, then she is going to die in this room, too. It’s going to be an ugly death. One you will be allowed to watch every second of, before you get the chance to die here yourself. So, I want you to think very carefully about what you want to do, because you don’t have a whole lot of time left.”
The look on Robert Fisher’s face was one of abject pain, the realization of defeat. Exactly, in other words, what she had been waiting for all day. Alice smiled, genuinely pleased.