AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m walking out to my car, duffel bag over one shoulder, when my phone rings.
It’s Barron. I flip it open. “Hey,” I say, surprised.
His voice is carefully neutral. “I did some digging.”
I stop, leaning against the front of my Benz, keys still in my hand. “What kind of digging?”
“After what you said about the Patton job, I persuaded one of my friends to let me use her ID card and rifle through some files. You were right. It’s a setup, Cassel. You’re supposed to get pinched.”
I feel cold all over. “They want to arrest me?”
He laughs. “The really hysterical part is that they’re getting you to turn Patton into a toaster or whatever to cover their own screwup. They could go in, guns blazing, if they weren’t the reason Patton’s so unstable in the first place. This is their mess.”
I look out at the lawn. The leaves have almost all fallen, leaving behind barren trunks of trees, their black branches reaching for the sky like the long fingers of endless hands. “What do you mean?”
“Patton’s aides called the Feds once they realized Mom had worked him. If she hadn’t been so sloppy, you wouldn’t be in the lurch.”
“She didn’t have time to do a better job,” I say. “Anyway, politics isn’t exactly her thing.”
“Yeah, well, my point is that I read the reports and they tell a fabulous tale of fuckupitude. After the aides call the Feds, they bring in a state-sanctioned emotion worker to “fix” Patton. But, see, the government is full of hyperbathygammic idiots who have been taught not to use their powers unless they really have to, so the emotion worker agent they sent in didn’t exactly have a deft touch.
“He works Patton to hate and fear Mom, thinking that strong emotions are the only way to negate what she did. But instead Patton gets completely unhinged. Like, no hinge in sight. All violent outbursts and crying jags.”
I shudder, thinking about what it would be like to be made to feel two contradictory things at the same time. It’s worse when I realize that’s what I was asking Daneca to do to Lila. Love and indifference warring together. I don’t know what might have happened. Thinking about it is like looking down into the deep ravine you somehow missed stepping into in the dark.
Barron goes on. “Now, the backbone of getting Proposition 2 passed is having workers who are also upstanding citizens endorse it. Prominent members of the community coming forward and submitting themselves for voluntary testing makes the rest of us look bad, but it makes the program look good. Safe. Humane. Problem was, Patton decided that now was the time to be crazy. He got everyone with a positive HBG test fired.
“Then he started asking federal employees to get tested. He managed to put a lot of pressure on them. He wanted the federal units with hyperbathygammic agents disbanded.”
“Like the LMD,” I say, thinking of Yulikova and Agent Jones. “But he’s got no authority over them.”
“I told you this was a comedy of errors,” says Barron. “Sure, he can’t do a thing to make that happen. But he can threaten to embarrass them by telling the press how they worked him against his will. So, in all their wisdom, what do you think Team Good does?”
“I have no idea,” I say. Another call makes my phone buzz, but I ignore it.
“They send another worker so that he can fix the first botched job on Patton’s brain.”
I laugh. “I bet that went real well.”
“Oh, yeah. Patton killed him. That’s how well it went.”
“Killed him?” Since this is Barron, it’s possible he’s embellishing the truth, if not outright lying. But the story he’s telling adds up in a way that the story Yulikova told me doesn’t. Barron’s story is messy, full of coincidences and mistakes. As a liar myself, I know that the hallmark of lies is that they are simple and straightforward. They are reality the way we wish it was.
“Yeah,” Barron says. “The agent’s name was Eric Lawrence. Married. Two kids. Patton strangled him when he figured out that Agent Lawrence was trying to work him. Amazing, right? So they have a homicidal governor on their hands and the higher-ups tell them they need to clean up the mess before there’s a huge scandal.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So after I transform Patton, what? They arrest me, I guess. I have a motive, because of Mom. Then I’d get put in jail. What’s the use of that if they want me to work for them? I can’t work for them in prison—or at least whatever I could do would be pretty limited. Transform other inmates. Make cigarettes into bars of gold.”
“That’s the brilliant part, Cassel,” Barron says. “You’re not getting it. Not only would they have a scapegoat, but once you become a criminal who is no longer protected by an immunity deal, you’d have a lot fewer civil liberties. They could control you. Totally. They’d have exactly the weapon they want.”
“Did you find out where this is going to take place?” I ask, and open the car door. I feel numb.
“Monday speech out near Carney, on the site of a former internment camp. They’ll pitch tents by the memorial. The Feds have got the security sewn up, but who cares, Cassel? You’re obviously not going.”
I have to go, though. If I don’t go, Patton gets away with it and Mom doesn’t. I might not think my mother is a good person, but she’s better than him.
And I don’t want the Feds to get away with it either.
“Yes, I am,” I say. “Look, thanks for doing this. I know you didn’t have to, and it really helps, knowing exactly what I’m getting into.”
