The Neon Tempest
90: Chapter Thirty, Part Two
Previously…
“What do you think Gomez will do when he finds out that his estranged daughter, who he had no reason to believe was planetside, died?” Prospero asks. “And what do you think he’ll do when he knows the three of you were present?”
Mister releases Myra’s hand, and turns. “Is that a threat?”
“It’s a fact,” Prospero says. The Intelligence’s voice sounds small in the concrete room, without bass or heft, treblic and far away, limned in the shushing whir of the server banks’ angry old fans, the metronomic drip of coolant leaking somewhere in the shadows beneath their dust-shrouds.
Mister remembers being a child, stretching yarn taut across five neighborhood backyards so he could hear Myra’s voice quaver tinny through a soup can held to his ear. They used that telephone til the yarn rotted through in the humid summer air, talked along that tenuous thread, bedroom-to-bedroom, deep into the glowing night, til one or the other fell asleep, the line between them fallen slack and silent. Mister remembers how Myra’s voice went in and out, slurred sleepy, on the nights he outlasted her, like a toy with its batteries slowing to their final discharge.
“You like to play cards, Geoff,” Prospero says.
“Yeah,” Geoff says. “So?” He shrugs, slight, with his good shoulder, keeps his broken arm folded close to his stomach.
“All four of you are pot committed,” Prospero says. “You’re fully invested and can’t fold out of the hand even if you want.”
“Prospero,” Geoff starts. “This all started with an op you put us on going pear-shaped and the Kid buying it because of.” Geoff glances at Mister and Mister furrows his brow, shakes his head, but Geoff looks away. “Who made us?” Geoff asks. “And how?”
“The truth will out,” Calico interjects. He leans his head to one side and his neck pops, bends and cracks his neck the other way.
“It’s a fair question,” Myra says. She crosses her arms.
Mister feels like they’ve been in the bunker forever, imagines the world turning on without them, revolving around this single static space, this coming to a moment of explosion, with conjured forces gathering outside, surrounding them. For a moment, he feels comfort in the close, domed walls and cold concrete floors, in the tinnitus-drowning drone of the servers crowding the room. Mister reckons they looked like nuns at prayer; he weren’t Catholic, weren’t really nothing at all, but that’s what he thought of when he saw them and thought about he wanted a nap, just a few minutes to close his eyes.
Mister sways, opens his eyes when Prospero speaks.
“Geoffrey,” Prospero begins. “You know it’s a part of the work we do that sometimes the work, no matter how well-organized, goes poorly, and that unfortunate consequences emerge from those unforeseen circumstances. You’ve been in this business for some time and truck with others who’ve been at it even longer. Ask Dollar Bill. Ask any of the old-timers at the cantina,” the Intelligence says, his voice static-crackled around its edges. “It could’ve gone so much worse.”
“Yeah?” Geoff says, scoffs, and winces when pain stabs his swollen, purple arm. He clears his throat. “Where I’m standing, it don’t look like it could’ve.”
To be continued…