Jonathan Maberry - Assassin's code

“No,” murmured Toys, “I understood you perfectly.”

He cocked the hammer of the pistol, and it was the loudest sound Vox ever heard.

“Listen to me, Hugo,” Toys said, so very softly. “Try to understand. Try, for once, to listen objectively. Don’t filter it through your own agenda. Just this once. Can you do that?”

Vox cleared his throat. His face and back hurt. The food was trickling down inside his clothes. “Yeah, sure, kiddo. Say your piece.”

Toys leaned so close that his voice was a hot breeze on Vox’s ear. “You lied to me, Hugo.”

“Fuck it, kid, I lie to every-”

“Shhhh. Don’t say anything. Just listen.” The barrel of the gun slid along the line of Vox’s cheek. “I never wanted your money. You thought I did because that’s all you’re capable of thinking. I almost pity you. Even Sebastian wasn’t like that. At least he could love something. Amirah… your mother. Sebastian loved her. But you, Hugo? You don’t love anything. I doubt you ever have.”

Vox started to say something, to protest that statement, but Toys leaned toward him, forehead to forehead, the pistol now touching the point of Vox’s chin.

“Please,” begged Toys, “please don’t say anything. Don’t say that you love me. I’ve heard that. You said it a thousand times. That you love me like a son. Don’t let me hear you say those words. I can do more than kill you. I will if you say that.”

Vox said nothing.

“I’m not like you, Hugo. I’m not like Sebastian, either. I’m not strong in the same way… but I’m not weak in the same way, either. I didn’t know that before. I thought I was weak, I thought I was broken. A broken toy. Quaint, I know. Corny. But it isn’t the way things are, and I didn’t know that until I read the files. I could have forgiven you about the money. After all, it’s not even your money to give. It’s all stolen, it’s all blood money, and I have enough blood on my hands as it is. I could have forgiven you about Upier 531. A gene therapy that could cure your cancer? Something that could make you live for years? Maybe forever? That’s wonderful, Hugo. That’s magic, even if it’s unproven. I could forgive any risk you’d take to change that.”

Tears welled in Toys’s eyes and fell on Vox’s cheek.

“But the price you were willing to pay. Good Christ, Hugo. All those people? What is it with you? What was it with Sebastian and the Seven Kings? Are people unreal to you? Do you think they’re simply bit-part players in your personal drama? No-don’t say anything. I know the answer. That’s exactly what you, and what people like you, think. No one else is real, no one else matters. Only you, your power, your profit, and whatever pieces of the world you can steal.”

He sniffed, but the tears still fell. Vox was frozen to stillness.

“Hugo… you think that I’m like a son to you. Or, you thought so. When you found out you were dying I was the only way for you to become immortal. Fathers do that with their sons. That’s what you thought you were going to leave behind. Me-a clone of you, someone to carry on the things you’ve done your whole life. More murders, more plots and plans. More chaos. When you looked at me, that’s what you saw.”

Toys pressed the pistol harder against Vox’s chin.

“How could you hate anyone so much that you would want them to be like you?”

A last tear rolled from Toys’s eye and fell, striking Vox on the lips.

Toys straightened and stepped back, his arm out, gun pointed, the barrel trembling but only slightly.

“You are a monster, Hugo,” murmured Toys. “I’m not.”

Vox sat up and wiped away the salty tear on his lips. He sneered at Toys. “Yeah? Then what the fuck are you?”

The answer was there in the young man’s eyes for Vox to read. The hand holding the pistol stopped trembling, the black eye of the barrel stared without pity.

Then Toys dropped the pistol onto the tile floor.

“I’m damned,” he said.

Without another word, he turned and walked through the house and out the front door.

Vox refilled his glass and drank.

He stared at the bank account log-in on the screen, seeing a smeared version of it through the hot tears in his eyes.

Beneath his skin he could feel the changes, feel the tissues moving and adapting.

He drank the Scotch.

“Fuck you,” he said aloud.

And reached for the bottle.

The Hangar

Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn

June 15, 1:30 a.m. EST

The president of the United States was ten feet tall.

Even seated behind his desk in the Oval Office he was a giant, towering over Mr. Church, who stood with his hands clasped behind his back. The giant plasma screen in the Hangar conference room had flawless fidelity and except for the disparate scale, the president might have been there in the room.

“I wish I had more encouraging news, Mr. President,” said Church. “However, we are still assessing the intelligence brought to us by Captain Ledger.”

“I have to admit that I’m disappointed. I expected more. I expected to hear that you’d at least confirmed the location of all seven of the devices.”

“When I learn to perform actual magic, Mr. President, I will make sure you receive the memo.”

The president said nothing. With anyone else from the president of Russia to his own chief of staff he would have fired back a retort and fried them. Instead, he cleared his throat.

After a moment, Church said, “We have, in fact, established probable locations on four of the devices. There is a high probability that the one in Rasouli’s photo is located in or near the Aghajari oil refinery in Iran. There is a slightly lower but still actionable probability that the other three are at the Beiji oil refinery in Iraq, the Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia, and the Toot oil field in Pakistan. DMS teams are en route to those locations. When and if we get locations on the other three I want to do a coordinated and simultaneous soft infiltration of all seven. We should get the best JSOC teams in the air.”

The Joint Special Operations Command included many of the nation’s elite teams, including Delta and the SEALs.

“What about the device here in the States?”

“We need to remain at our highest state of readiness without doing anything that sends a signal. Not to our allies, not to our enemies, and not to the world press. At this point we don’t know if there is a device on U.S. soil, and if there is we have no idea where it might be. It could be a red herring, or it could be real, we don’t know. So far there are no hints on Rasouli’s drive beyond a possibility of our unknown enemies targeting oil fields.”

“We have a lot of oil fields, Deacon.”

“I am all too aware of that, Mr. President.”

The president sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. “I want to hang Vox’s head on the Capitol building spire.”

“Get in line,” said Church dryly. “But as much as we both want to see that happen, we don’t know if Vox is our enemy in this particular game.”

“He steered Rasouli toward Ledger.”

“Yes, which means that our only source of information about a potentially catastrophic situation came about because of that.”

“I hope you’re not suggesting that Vox has had a change of heart and now wants to help us avoid an act of terrorism. You couldn’t sell that on a soap opera.”

“I believe you know my take on Hugo’s patriotism.”

“Then what is his role in this?”

“He is a trickster and manipulator. If he delivered a workable cure for cancer I would look for an angle. If he’s helping us then he has a way to profit from that.”

“Enemy of my enemy?” suggested the president. Church shrugged.