“On the other hand, I might be projecting. Maybe you love default, think weird-ass zotta shit is proof of their divine right to rule. Maybe you’re animal cunning and wiry strength, without much going on behind those cool eyes of yours?”
She stopped, aware that she was a zotta, taunting a person who couldn’t respond because she wasn’t. She felt ashamed.
“Sorry,” she said, and went into her room.
[II]
HER FATHER VISITED her on day four. She’d gone twenty-four hours without taunting the guard, and was bored out of her mind. She’d fantasized about a notebook and a pen, anything she could use to pour out her feelings to something other than the unseeable watchers.
He looked in control. That was the first thing she noticed, the contrast between her shaky nerves and his calm exterior. She thought he’d done something with his face, injections. He looked younger than she remembered, a youthful 35. He turned the chair around, sat straddling it with his arms folded on the back, cocked his head and smiled as though they shared a joke. There was definitely something different in the smile.
“Welcome home, Natty.”
She thought about freezing him out, like the guard-woman with her gaze that saw, did not acknowledge. She was so lonely, so bored. Her brain was a hamster wheel, spinning out of control. She needed to slow it with words, even if it was argument.
“I would like to go now, please.”
He smiled wider. “How was it?”
She made herself breathe into her diaphragm, once, twice. “I’m sure you got a blow-by-blow.”
“Your mother is coming tomorrow. She can’t wait to see you.”
“They killed people, you know. I saw them, saw the bodies. I held the bodies. My friends – they were my friends.” She struggled to keep her voice calm, was successful except for a wobble on the second “bodies.” She was sure her father picked up on it. He was a man who was keenly attuned to others’ useful frailties.
“I can see it’s been hard on you.”
“You mean, the mercenary terrorists you sent were hard on me.”
“You’ve lost contact with reality, darling. You can’t believe that. I can’t order air-strikes. I don’t know mercenaries. I’m a scary rich guy, but if my enemies fear me, it’s because they’re worried I’ll sue them, not assassinate them.”
Natalie closed her eyes and tried to find her breath’s rhythm. For her father – her father – to say he couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with what had happened, when there was a ninja mercenary in the hallway – it was too much. It epitomized every conversation they’d ever had where he’d told her everything she felt and hoped for was a girlish dream, every observation of the world around her a girlish fancy.
Her breath wouldn’t come. Maybe her father hoped the long isolation would make her pliable. But it had broken something inside that jangled. She realized with a rush that felt like a convulsion of vomit she had hardly thought of Gretyl since arriving. It made her wonder if they’d done something to her mind, if she was herself. If there even was a mercenary in the hall who could lay her out with moves so fast she couldn’t follow them. Perhaps it was a dream. Perhaps she was dead, uploaded, simulated.
She was hyperventilating, and took satisfaction in her father’s discomfort. He could deal with I-hate-you-Daddy tantrums, but she was losing it now, was glad to be lost. She was tired of being found, pretending the situation was normal.
She stood calmly and smoothed down her long t-shirt, adjusting her track-pants’ drawstring – red, with a crisp-edged ROOTS logo over one thigh, the kind of thing she’d slopped in at summer camp, as though the dumbwaiter was loaded by someone trying to make her feel like a grounded teenager and not a kidnap victim – and walked out of the room.
The guard was not in the hall.
She broke into a run, hearing her father – a step behind her – shout something she couldn’t make out. She got five long steps down the hall and the merc came around the corner, effortlessly grabbing her arm as she tried to run past, interposing her calf between Natalie’s running legs, pulling smoothly at the arm, throwing her down with a tooth-rattling thud. The floorboards were pale wood with dark grain, and underfloor heating made them feel alive. All she could see was that grain, stretching to the baseboards. She waited for her wind to come back.
She got to her knees, her feet – the merc didn’t interfere or offer help, stood with that same disinterested attention that let Natalie know she was watching but wasn’t feeling. Natalie steadied herself on the wall, looked at her father, on the far side of the merc. He looked furious, and she realized he was furious with the merc, not her, because the merc had deserted her post, maybe slipping out for a piss, thinking Natalie would be complacent while having a come-to-Jesus negotiation with her old man. The merc had fucked up in front of the big boss. Natalie tried to read her face for the oh-shit expression of waiters and hotel managers when her dad wasn’t happy with them. She was cool. Natalie couldn’t help but admire her. It was twisted, but she felt solidarity with anyone her father planned on destroying.
“No tough-guys on the payroll, huh?” She spun on her heel to walk out of the house. It was stupid, but why not? The woman grabbed her shoulder in a way that gave her surprising leverage, spun her around with almost no force, though there was no way Natalie could stop it. Natalie shrugged at her hand, but the hand rode her shoulder with ease, rising and falling like a flag in a breeze.
“What are your orders, anyway? You said you could ‘incapacitate’ me. Would you beat me unconscious? Give me a secret nerve pinch? Got a taser hidden in your ninja-suit?” She took a long look at her father. He had mastered his expression and projected impatient boredom with his whole body.
“Let’s find out.” Natalie took three running steps toward her dad, who flinched minutely at the last moment. She stopped and spun, stared at the woman, then charged. One step, two steps – wham, on the floorboards, staring at the ceiling, noticing the LED recesses you could only see if you were prone. Her back hurt. She had the ghost sensation of a hand at her wrist, a foot at her ankle, the sense the woman had barely moved to throw her. It was the spirit of all those Sun Tzu-y martial arts: use the enemy’s strength against him. She giggled at the thought that she should take notes, figure out how to dismantle default by using its strength against it.
She stood. The woman stepped back a half-step, weight forward, while her dad stayed at the corridor’s far end with his stern, disappointed mask on. It wasn’t entirely intact. There was a bit of worry Mr Poker Face couldn’t hide. She leaned on the wall and took a couple breaths.
“Let’s make it best two out of three.” Her father’s face flickered, and there it was: fear.
She charged him. He didn’t flinch, but she saw he wanted to, and she turned around and before she could think, she ran straight at the guard, coming in low, like she was playing a platformer and was trying one approach after another to defeat the level’s mini-boss, hoping she didn’t run out of lives before she found the trick. Maybe if she came in low, she’d be harder to throw.
She wasn’t.
This time she jammed her elbow and her body was lanced by a white-lightning sear, making her suck air through her teeth. What was pain, anyway? Dis could feel pain or not, but it was an infographic, a slider you moved up or down. Her arm was hurt – something had been damaged – but the feeling of hurt wasn’t intrinsic. You could be hurt and feel nothing, you could be in immense pain without injury. Injury was in the elbow, pain was in the brain.