Roo'd (36 page)

Feed realized Poulpe was whispering; "please Feed please you do not understand what they will do to me it is not right Feed please oh please do not leave me with them it will hurt Feed so much please help me… "

Feed slowly lowered himself from Poulpe's shaking arm, his trembling amplified by the suit. The stench of urine rose from the Frenchman as he let him go.

"Poulpe" said Feed. "Fuck you."

Poulpe began to cry - real, frightened tears as he slumped forward and into the arms of the mechanized suits of the Disney guards. He was broken, Feed realized, a broken person returning to a broken state.

"Please sign here" said one of the Disney men as he boarded the train, his face hidden behind the wide white eyes of the mouse. He held out a tablet to Feed along with a little pen with Mickey's head on the end in molded plastic. Donald Duck slow-mo'd a disco in the background behind Feed's name as he wrote it in careful strokes.

"What will you do with him?" Feed asked. The man didn't answer, just stood there a moment, faceless behind the mask. A long minute passed before he straightened, nodding at Feed.

"We will reintegrate him back into a happy, productive member of the Disney team" the man said. It sounded sad, the way he said it.

The disney troopers had plugged a handheld unit into Poulpe's exoskeleton and had let it carry him to a huge truck pulled up in the parking lot next to the platform. The doors shut behind them, the remaining Mickey Mouse men marching off the platform and down to their convey. Mr. Li stepped out of the train, nodding slightly to Mr. Chow who returned the gesture with a deep bow. The train slid out of the station and disappeared into the distance, leaving behind a silence broken only by the sound the chirping of crickets in the rice fields in front of them.

"The next train will be a couple hours" said Fed. "I had to shut all of them down. Sorry."

"That's no problem" said Mr. Li. "It's been a long time since I last came out here."

They stood quietly, breathing the warming air of dawn.

A small car appeared, trundling up the road toward the station. As it got closer they could see a tiny figure waving from the front passenger window. Feed raised an eyebrow at Mr. Li.

"My granddaughter" Li said. He looked at Feed in mock surprise. "What, did you think I was on the train just for you?"

Feed slowly pulled his gloves off, sunlight breaking over the wall to warm his chest, the sweat on his face evaporating as the day arrived. The car pulled up in front of the platform and Mr. Li began to walk towards the steps.

"I've taken the liberty of negotiating with Chow on your friend's behalf" said Mr. Li. "They should be released and given the best medical care available."

"Thank you" said Feed. The weight of the last few days had begun to descend on him, a giddy joy at realizing he was alive and was likely to stay that way, if only for a while.

"My pleasure" said Mr. Li. A little girl in a pink fairy costume jumped out of the car and ran up the steps and into his arms. He called out to her in Chinese, waving brightly at the young woman getting out of the driver's side. They exchanged a few words, the woman looking curiously at Feed over her father's shoulder and nodding.

"Would you care to come for tea, Feed?" asked Mr. Li. "I don't get to meet people like you often enough."

Feed looked out over the rice fields, past the gently smiling Triad leader and his smiling granddaughter and off towards the Great Wall. He sighed and peeled his goggles backwards off his head, dropped them lightly onto the cement of the platform.

"I think" he said, stopping to take a deep breath, "I think I'd like that."

When Tonx opened his eyes again the first thing he saw was Feed sitting next to him. He was wrapped in a thick wool robe but his eyes were twinkling, waiting for Tonx to say the first word.

"Where am I?" asked Tonx.

"Don't remember a thing, do you?" Feed smiled, obviously enjoying himself. "They warned me that might happen. You're in a hospital, Tonx."

"Hospital?"

"Yep. Do you remember leaving China?"

Tonx heaved a sigh and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "I remember being trapped in the tunnel with Cessus and smoking some vicious big joints. Thought I was going to die down there."

Feed grinned wide. "Uh-huh."

"But I didn't, huh?"

"Nope" said Feed. "You didn't. Neither did I, or anybody else."

Tonx started; "Where are they? Where's my girlfriend? Is Cessus okay?"

"Calm down" said Fed. "It's not good for you to get worked up just yet."

He checked the monitors over Tonx's bed before pulling the blankets up around his brother's chest.

"Everyone's okay. Cass took out one of the soldiers and kept the other one busy while I got away. They conked her on the head and threw her in a prison truck, but that's it. Turns out she's a good shot with a pistol, you know that?"

Tonx grinned a little as he settled back into the bed. "Yeah, I knew that."

"Cessus stuck with you until you passed out, kept you from bleeding out" Fede said. "Eventually the soldiers dug you up and he handled it from there. Gave them instructions and everything, kept things working until you got to the hospital."

"What about Marcus?" asked Tonx.

"He's fine. He and Esco 'disappeared' for a day or so after the main event, won't tell me where they went" said Fed. "That was a hell of a trick, Tonx, calling Esco and Baby in like that."

Tonx shrugged. "We needed backup, needed an ace up our sleeve. And I was worried that Poulpe would do exactly what he did. Having them run a second cover nobody knew about meant we had a fallback plan."

"Good thing" said Feed, sighing. "I'm glad you did it, I just wish I could have known about it earlier."

"It was too much risk" said Tonx, staring out the window at the bright blue sky over the snowy mountains in the distance. "If they'd have captured you there wouldn't have been any angles for us to use to get you back… "

"I know. It was a good plan. But next time I want in, all right?" said Fed.

"Sure" said Tonx. He swallowed, closed his eyes for a second. "Baby and Esco made it okay?"

"Yeah. I scared Baby half to death by hijacking his rail gun just before he shot down the 'copters, but he didn't know there were tanks sneaking up on his rear. He swears he almost gave up being a pilot."

"You hijacked his gun? There were tanks?" asked Tonx.

"Yeah. The network Cessus had tied the Otaku hacks through was a public access network's sub layer" said Fed. "'The best place to hide something is out in the open,' you know? When the Otaku slammed gridlock on the city it only left one route open, for Chow. The Tanks could force the lights to change in their favor, of course, so I could see them coming by the network traffic they caused in resetting the system's changes. Baby was too intent on reading the data in front of him to try to interpret the noise, so I had to help him out a little."

"And you hijacked his gun" said Tonx flatly.

"Yeah. Scared him pretty good, but he was going to ice the 'copters and there was no reason for it. So I crippled the tanks and used the explosion as a distraction" said Fed. "I invited him here with us but he insisted on going back home to Puerto Rico for a vacation. Said he'd had enough crazy foreigners to last him a while."

"Heh" chuckled Tonx. "So everything worked out with Chow?"

"Uh-huh" said Fed. "Mr. Li handled everything. Otaku now works directly for Big Circle, and Chow's got a new job acting as a proponent for opening up the Chinese networks. We got the recombinant from him and I deleted the virus from the networks, so there's no evidence of how we got it, which is just the way they want it."

"We got the recombinant?" asked Tonx, trying to sit up a little in bed. A look of panic crossed his face. "Shit, I need to get up. I need to call Pharoe… "

"Relax" said Feed. "Chill. I took the liberty of hiring a friend of yours to handle the business side of things until you recovered - I got him under retainer and everything."

"A friend?" asked Tonx suspiciously.

"John Tucker" said Feed. "He said that Texas was getting too hot for him anyway. I already ran it by Cessus and Cass and they thought he was a good candidate, and so far he's done a great job. Sold preliminary patent rights to Du Pont with a substantial percentage on the first few derivative products, and plenty of room for co-authorship after that." Fede glanced up at Tonx, for a moment the little brother again. "Is that okay?"

Tonx looked at Feed in surprise. "Yeah, that's great. That's better than I had hoped for - I'd figured they'd just want to buy it outright. And John's here?"

"John's actually in California, so there's an eight hour time difference. But he made me promise to conference him in once you were on your new feet."

Tonx didn't move. He stared at Feed with heavy lidded eyes and slowly pulled a strand of hair behind one ear. Something moved under the sheets at the far end of the bed.

"That's my toe" said Tonx. Somewhere far away the air conditioning kicked in. Feed smiled.

"Yes, that's your toe. And you'd better take care of it because you've only got four of them now, and they were damned expensive."

Tonx lunged forward and threw back the bed sheets, gasping like a schoolgirl as he caught sight of what protruded from the bottom of his hospital gown. Each of his legs were nearly five feet long from hip to toe, the scar tissue fading to a gentle tan around his thighs. The toes were split into two thick digits, the nails blackened from recent surgery. The sole of his foot stretched back to a large pink joint before doubling back up towards his kneecap, and as they watched Tonx struggled himself into a sort of half-lotus, running his hands lightly over the extra joint.

"No shit" he whispered.

"No shit" agreed Feed. "John included some special research he'd found as part of his deal with us, some crazy shit the tribals were doing out in the desert. You were pretty out of it in the hospital in Beijing, so we took a vote and decided to fly you to Iceland. You'd been wanting to get Rood since forever, and since your legs were all smashed up and a bunch of folks owed us favors it kind of made sense… "

Tonx's eyes glittered, his crooked smile spread wide. He held his hands on his new kneecaps as though they were rare sculptures, beaming with excitement.

"You little fucker" he said, his voice trembling a little. "You little fucker, Fed."

Feed smiled. "It's Feed" he said to his brother. "I'm Feed now. And you're welcome. Just get well soon."

He got up and flipped on a wall screen, flexing his fingers as he keyed in to the display and the lights in the room dimmed.

"I have this idea, see, and I need my business partner to work out the details."