Tal Klein - The Punch Escrow

She did as bidden—what else could she do?—clambering awkwardly over crumbled concrete columns and bent, rusted rebar until she reached ground on the other side. A sliver of golden light could be seen at the end of the tunnel.

“Where, Bill? Where are you taking me?”

“ Taking? My dear, you are not mine for the taking,” he said, sounding offended by the implication. “I believe us to be equals. Intellectual peers, even. However, it occurs to me, do you mean to ask where we are going?”

“Yes, Bill, where are we going?” she asked, exasperated.

He pointed at the luminescence ahead—growing wider and brighter as they approached it. “The future, Sylvia.”

JEOPARDY

KIDNAPPING PEOPLE IS HARD .

Unlike Taraval, Joel 2and I didn’t have a lot of resources at our disposal when we abducted Moti. Our face wasn’t all over the news feeds yet, but I assumed that both IT and the Levant had staked out all our usual spots. We needed someplace anonymous, quiet, and camera-free where we could question the man who had been manipulating our lives for who knows how long.

So once we hustled him out of the coffeehouse, Joel 2took the calculated risk of ordering a car. In less than a minute, the closest available one arrived. It was a dark-gray sedan with rear suicide doors that opened automatically. Moti willingly got into the back seat. Joel 2sat next to him, and I sat on the bench-style seat across from them.

“Destination?” said the vehicle.

“Just drive around Central Park, and keep driving around it until I tell you to stop,” Joel 2said. “And disable all third-party APIs.”

“Yes, sir.” The car smoothly merged into traffic and headed north.

While it would have been impossible for us to turn off Moti’s ability to communicate with his comrades through technical means, as I suspected Taraval had done to Sylvia, we did have the benefit of a brain-liquefying weapon at our disposal, in the form of the defibrillator I’d taken from the Bellevue Hospital bathroom. As I had viscerally learned firsthand, the threat of death is a very powerful motivator.

“Don’t even think of turning on your GDS and comms,” Joel 2said, pointing the defibrillator plates at him.

“No problem,” Moti answered, calm and urbane. “Just be careful with that thing.”

I had learned in high school how to verify whether or not someone’s comms were enabled. Inbound comms were always blocked by the school during classes to avoid distraction and cheating. We could send messages out, but we wouldn’t receive the replies until after class. I figured out that if I sent a message and it showed the not-delivered-yet icon next to it, that would mean that the person I was trying to contact was also in class or had their comms disabled for other reasons, like maybe they were grounded. But if that icon didn’t appear next to the message, then I knew the message was received. A pretty basic ploy, but very useful if you’re trying to figure out if your girlfriend is actually in class or just ignoring you, and also whether someone you’ve kidnapped has disabled their comms like you told them to.

So Joel 2sent Moti an empty message. We knew that as soon as the not-delivered-yet icon on the message went away, it would mean Moti’s comms were active. If he didn’t adhere, then we would zap him. I was pretty sure I had it in me to do it if need be, but I had let Joel 2man the defibrillator because I knew for damn sure he could. To pull my weight, I gave Moti my best We mean business glare. “Remember, we’ll know if you’re lying.”

“Why would I lie to you? I only want to help you, Yoel ,” Moti said, smiling affably. “And you too, Joel .”

Did he call him Joel just to piss me off, or does he really believe he’s the original me? More likely, Moti’s probably just trying to fuck with my head. I hate that it’s working .

Our car turned onto the paved road that threaded through Central Park. Outside the car, New Yorkers were jogging, throwing Frisbees, and setting up picnics for the July Fourth Last War memorial fireworks later that night. It looked like a lot of fun. After what I’d been through, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to enjoy explosions—simulated or otherwise—ever again.

“So, what should we discuss?” Moti’s agreeable compliance was putting me on edge. This guy is a trained spy being kidnapped by a couple of amateurs. Is he just playing us? Biding his time? In some ways my paranoia made me feel better. As long as I was paranoid, I wouldn’t become complacent.

“Maybe we should tie him up,” I said to Joel 2.

“I do not like to be restrained,” said Moti. It sounded like a warning. “I am not your enemy. So—”

“Not our enemy, huh?” said Joel 2. He took off his belt and looped it around the spy’s wrists, cinching it tight.

His anger activated mine. I leaned forward. “ We beg to differ, Moti. You very much are our enemy. I wonder if you even care about giving the Levant leverage over IT, or if this whole thing is your personal fucking pageant. I know you had your puppet Pema send me up from IT to you wrapped in a nice bow. Tell me, Moti, did you electrocute me outside your office for amusement or advantage?” The defibrillator in my other’s hand seemed to hum in agreement.

“ Yoel —”

“Shut up, asshole. I’m doing the talking now,” I said, fuming. For two days this guy had been watching me run around and get injured, nearly killed, for his personal amusement. “I thought I was so fucking smart, salting your room into printing belladonna for me, but that was your doing, wasn’t it? You dropped the hospital hint so innocently, playing your neurolinguistic spy games with me. You just happened to change your mind and let me go, huh? I should have figured it out when you knew how to work the TC console, but I guess I was too worried about my abducted wife! Tell me, Moti, did you give the Gehinnomites her GDS location? Was it your idea that they kidnap her so I’d go be the hero? Roberto Shila sure as hell sounded like he was informed by someone. My wife was traumatized. He”—I pointed at Joel 2—“was nearly killed! And all so you could continue a mental chess match with International Transport. Sound about right? How am I doing so far?”

“That depends. Are you finished?” he asked.

“No,” I said, then punched him in the face as hard as I could. He tried to dodge, but having his hands held by Joel 2’s belt impeded his effort. My knuckles made loud, solid contact with his right cheekbone— thwack! It didn’t have the intended effect of knocking him backward. In fact, it didn’t seem to have much of an effect at all, other than hurting my hand. “Ow. Fuck!” I tried to shake the pain from my knuckles. “Now I’m finished.”

Moti pressed his tongue to the wound in his mouth. “Convincing my room to poison you was your own stupid— but … brave —innovation, Yoel . I was very surprised you would take such steps.”

“So he was right about everything else?” Joel 2asked, anger burning in his eyes. He brandished the defibrillator. “You orchestrated Sylvia’s kidnapping?”

“You are making a big mistake. Both of you. I did not start this. I did not create teleportation technology. I did not create the bomb Joan Anglicus brought through that TC. I did not create Honeycomb.” He shifted his gaze to Joel 2. “I did not make your wife pull you down from an incomplete backup. The world is a dark place, Joel,” he said, giving us both prolonged looks. “You people have allowed corporations like International Transport to grow like weeds. I am just a gardener here to prune them. You think you are a piece on my board, Yoel? You are leverage. Your wife, she is William Taraval’s pawn. She—Aaah!” Moti screamed as Joel 2shocked him in the ribs with the defibrillator.