Wu knocked on her door—Zoey knew his knock—and she yelled that she was fine. A couple of minutes later, this was followed by a different knock. Her mother’s.
“Come in.”
Zoey’s mother rushed in, got down on the floor with her, put her arm around her.
“Oh, honey, oh my god. Z…”
“I’m fine. Fine. I’m … I’m fine.”
“Talk to me, Z.”
“It’s nothing. It’s everything. Things are bad, Mom. In the city. Those people who hate me—”
“Your trolls?”
“It’s not just that. Not anymore. It’s all turning toxic. It’s in the air. People are dying. Because of me. Because they hate me that much. Everyone. They all hate me. I can’t … I can’t fit it in my head. All that hate.”
“Honey, look at you! This place, these people. This is making you miserable. How loud does the universe have to scream a message at you before you hear it? Let’s get out of here. You and me. Let’s just go.”
“I … don’t completely disagree with you.”
“You never once, in all of your years, said you wanted something like this. The money, I mean. The businesses. And I was there for every one of your phases. When you were eight years old and said you wanted to be the first girl to play in the NBA, I bought you that basketball goal, the one the neighbor boys broke. Later on, you wanted to be a pilot. Then a standup comedian. In your time with Caleb, all I heard about was how you wanted a family. You wanted to be a cool mom, one who travels, takes her kids all over the world. That’s your real life. This, all the money and endless meetings with these … lizards, these reptiles in suits. It isn’t real.”
“Whatever I do, I have to clean up this mess first. Otherwise I’m no better than Arthur. Running away.”
“Who told you that? Will? I swear, sometimes it seems like that guy has this hold over us, like he’s a cult leader or something. Honey, this isn’t our mess. And I’m telling you, when this fiasco is over there’ll be another one right behind it. Say the word and we’ll go find Will and tell him off together. What do you think?”
Zoey didn’t answer. She kissed Stench Machine on the head. He hated it.
Her mom said, “Can I run you a bath?”
“No.” The bath would actually run itself just with a verbal command from where they were sitting, but still it was a nice gesture. “This is a mood that not even that tub can fix.”
Zoey stood, setting Stench Machine aside. “Can you do something for me? Go find Will and just … tell him I need some time. I have to think.”
Zoey actually didn’t care in the least if Will got this message or not. She wanted to be alone, to give her mother an errand to run. “Can you do that?”
“Of course.”
Her mother left and Zoey started to leave after her, then remembered she was still in her bra. She grabbed a T-shirt bearing the logo of a band called Monkey Sheriff, and was still pulling it down as she stormed toward the door, almost knocking Wu over. He’d been in there the whole time, apparently having followed her mother inside.
Down the hall. Down the stairs. Down the west wing hallway. She kept walking until it ended at the ballroom. She went straight for the tarp covering the giant, humming school bus–sized machine. She peeled it back.
The machine was black, segmented into rings in a way that made Zoey think of an alien robot caterpillar. She guessed it didn’t have to be an alien robot, but it definitely looked weird. They referred to it as Santa’s Workshop, because it spat out toys. It was the Raiden device fabricator that they believed/hoped was the only one capable of making real, reliable gear. Right now it was hard at work on something harmless: Zoey’s Halloween costume, finished parts of which were leaning against the wall nearby. Zoey took Halloween seriously and she had been telling the truth when she told Alonzo her costume wouldn’t fit through the door.
But at any moment, she could load up a new task and out the end would fall something small enough to hold in your hand, or that could be implanted inside your hand, with enough power to tear a car in half or turn a crowd of enemies into a scattered field of black, smoking bones. The gadgetry that came out of the machine was intended to transform a human into a conduit of terror, to destroy and kill in spectacular ways. All of it had been designed by a madman who was now dead, and investing in it had cost her father his life.
If what Will said was true, if all of this chaos was coming from a few ringleaders who themselves were following the prompt of Titus Chobb, she could use this machine to unleash hell upon them. All of them. Put out a call for a group of the most sadistic bastards in the city, give them the powers of demigods, and turn them loose on her tormenters. Become the monster they claimed she was.
Zoey turned on Santa’s monitor and flicked through menus looking for schematics. What she was seeing was incomprehensible to her, she’d need Echo’s help to accomplish anything. She tapped some buttons at random and at one point it made a scary beeping noise, so she quickly exited out of the menu before the machine could explode or melt down or whatever.
Then she remembered something her mother had said, and went through a small door into the courtyard. Shoved between some bushes was the rolling basketball goal she’d forgotten she’d bought in early September. Her therapist had recommended it, said repetitive tasks were good stress relief. Well, her city was burning down and enemies were coming to storm her home and rip her to pieces, so this would be a good time for that. She dragged the goal out to a mostly open section of grass, about ten feet away from a sidewalk that would be her free-throw line. A folding banquet table was somewhat in the way, stacked with Halloween party supplies—the stuff was piled all over the courtyard. She grabbed the lip of the table and flipped it over, sending everything crashing to the ground. It took some time to find the ball under some shrubs nearby. It was a little underinflated, she had to slam it to make it bounce off the sidewalk. It would do.
She shot, the ball bumped the front of the rim, then the backboard, then rolled in. That was a miss. Anything that hit the rim was counted as a miss. Anything that banked in was counted as a miss. That was bad form, the fact that it fell through was irrelevant. Process was all that mattered, her high school coach had drilled that into them. Master the process, and the outcome eventually works out.
She had become a starter her sophomore year, after four other girls had gotten suspended for drugs. That was on the varsity team, too. Granted, they were too small of a school to have a JV team, but still. She was good, had been even better back in middle school before she started smoking, before the hormones went to work on her body. She loved the contact, setting a screen that knocked another girl on her ass, running through sweaty elbows to get to the rim, standing in among three girls taller than her and boxing out, tipping the rebound to herself. Talking trash. Nobody came to the games. It didn’t matter.
She shot. The ball bounced off the front of the rim, came right back to her. She shot again, knew it was a bad one before it fully left her fingertips, watched it clang off the right side of the rim and go flying. She went to go chase down her own rebound but Andre caught it and bounced it back to her. He had been standing out there the whole time, waiting for her.