Brian D'Amato - The Sacrifice Game

“Is that celery?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, they’re white chocolate sticks,” he said.

“Oh, great.” There were ten of them. I took nine.

“No, thanks,” Marena said.

“Come on, have one,” I said.

Lindsay had on a gray summery jacket and I dug the Bug Bom with two dots-the gray-covered one-out of Marena’s handbag. It wasn’t a great match, either, but it would have to do. I wanted to go right up to him, but Marena said it looked like he was going to send them on their way pretty soon.

“Okay, let’s hang back for a beat,” I said. I ate a chocolate stick.

There were two identifiable security people standing behind him. One of them I hadn’t seen before, a big classy-bodyguard type in a black tie with an earphone. The other was that commando woman from the Creep, Ana Vergara. She was in leggings and a close-fitting black huipil and looking almost attractive, for a hired enforceress. She hadn’t spotted me yet, but she would.

“Do you know that they’re all, I mean, the police,” Michael said, “they’re all looking for you?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, “I know, I’m too fast for them.”

The covey of investors laughed-what was the funny part? I wondered-nodded, and turned toward the entrance to the playing field. Other people were hanging around, too, waiting to talk with the great man, but Marena pushed through and tapped him on the shoulder. He seemed genuinely happy to see her, although of course he wasn’t. She said something to him-I hoped it was what I had told her to say-and he turned around, to his left. Ana had spotted me now, but she expected me to stay where I was so Lindsay could face me, and instead I had just enough time to move around to his right and clap him on the back. Beneath the cashmere, the silk lining, the Sea Island broadcloth, and the Jesus jumper, his trapezius muscles were surprisingly hard against my fingertips. “Hail, fellow, well met,” I said.

Lindsay kept turning. He hadn’t felt the bug yet, since it was just held on with Velcro. When he recognized me he was pretty smooth, his expression didn’t change, but he didn’t say hello. He just stood there, waiting for Ana and whoever to take care of it, seeming relaxed, his look radiating that he was a big guy and I was a little guy and big guys just don’t get fucked with. He was wearing an American-flag lapel pin and a dressier bumblebee pin, this one with yellow sapphires.

“Chief, don’t move,” Ana said. She’d spotted the bug, and she knew what it was. I squoze the button in my pocket that activated its little hooked legs. Lindsay felt them digging down through his jacket and into his flesh and jumped a little.

“Ow,” he said. His arm jerked backward, but the Bom was correctly positioned right in his acnestis, that is, that place in the small of the back where few people can scratch.

“DO NOT MOVE,” I said, more or less quoting from the Special Boat Service manual.

He didn’t.

Brian D'Amato

The Sacrifice Game

(110)

A na and the other guy had already grabbed me but I had my hands in my pockets and went on. “I have placed an explosive device called a Bug Bom on your back. As you may know, if you or anyone else tries to remove this device, it will detonate automatically, firing neurotoxin into your flesh.”

“ On the ground, now, ” Ana said.

“I am holding down the SUSPEND FIRE button,” I said. They already had me down on the Travertine floor. “If I get shot in the head, or trip and fall, or anything, my thumb will release it. Or

if you don’t GET OFF ME NOW!”

I gave Lindsay a friendly little zap. He gasped-and-twitched, but not so much as I would have thought.

“Marena, what’s he doing?” Lindsay asked.

“My guess is that he’s serious,” Marena said.

They still hadn’t let me up. On the other hand, they weren’t trying to pull my hands out of my pockets. Maybe they already had a procedure for dealing with these things.

“Let me up now,” I said. They didn’t. “All right, watch this,” I said. “Michael?”

“What?” Michael said.

Marena figured out what was happening, but by the time she got around to Michael’s back I’d already pressed his button. I was afraid that with all the quilting on his collar, and without the bug’s hooks in, the pellets might not go through, but I needn’t have worried. There was a sound like a buried firecracker and a hiss as the Bom’s hollow shell flew across the lobby. A surprised expression bloomed on Michael’s face.

“Oh, shit, somebody get a goddamn paramedic,” Marena said, loudly but not shouting.

It usually takes a lot longer for someone to respond to sedation or poisoning than one thinks it should. Blood in any given capillary will return to the heart in about twenty-three seconds, but after that it still takes some time for whatever it is to get absorbed through the cell walls of the heart or lungs. So often there are two hundred or so beats of lag time. But the Bom did a good job of scattering its crystals through a wide range of levels and locations in Michael’s back, and in less than thirty beats the look of surprise turned to-well, I am not sure what the English word would be. Let us say it was a rich mixture of pain, fear, and rage. He wobbled and started to fall, but Ana held him up. I looked back at Lindsay. He was still thinking about pulling off his jacket.

“DO NOT MOVE,” I said again. “Seriously. If you pull too hard on that, it will fire on its own. It is not the tranquilizer shit it comes with in there.”

“Shut up,” the Big Guy said. He pushed my head down.

“There are enough neurotoxin crystals in there to kill a blue whale,” I said. As if to illustrate the point, I heard Ana easing Michael down onto the floor. He gurgled. Probably his heart had already seized up. “If you pull my arm back any farther I’m setting it off,” I said to the Big Guy. “Also, I have to enter a stay-of-execution code every two hundred and ten beats. Three minutes, rather. So, I want-”

“We make these things,” Lindsay interrupted. “There’s a way to get them off.”

“Go for it,” I said. I could hear the Big Guy mumbling into the air, asking for backup over his ear thing.

“Good deal,” Lindsay said. There was just a lot of confidence there. Even to me, he just seemed senior, the way 2 Jeweled Skull had. I suppose the equivalent in this era would be the way the school principal looks to a third-grader.

“I have said enough,” I said.

For about twenty beats, Lindsay seemed to be conferring with Ana and maybe Marena, although I couldn’t see them. Finally they seemed to have made a decision. Lindsay came over, crouched down-I could see the heels of shoes, which, maybe oddly, were black bowling shoes, rising off the floor-and must have signaled for the Big Guy to let my head up so that I could look at him.

“Come on, have them let me go,” I said. I gave him a little buzz and he froze. That was another well-designed thing about the system. It really felt like it was going to explode. “And do not walk away, I’ll blast you just like Fuckwad here.” I looked over at Michael for emphasis. A paraperson was already trying to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

“What do you want to talk about?” Lindsay asked.

“I am not negotiating,” I said. “I do not want to kill you, I just want to chat, but you know, if anything happens to me I do want to take you down with me. Also I have to keep punching this thing or it’ll go off by itself anyway. Do you understand?”

He didn’t answer.

“Anyway, the release code is thirteen digits long, and you will never get it out of me in time. Also, I promise I am not going to be asking for much. Could you get this guy to take it easy?”