“It’s frustrating, isn’t it? Makes you want to lash out. Find one tangible bad guy and just unleash all that rage on him.”
“Sure does. Go over to the Workshop, tell it to make me a big death ray that will fry everybody.”
Andre said nothing.
Zoey faced him. “What?”
He still said nothing.
“Oh. You’re saying that’s why this group decided to hate me. They feel powerless.”
“I knew you’d get there. Why do you think they’re targeting you, and not any of the giant multinational corporations who screw them over on a daily basis? Or somebody like Chobb? It’s because they think they can get to you, that they’ll see some kind of victory, feel strong again. That’s why half the time they talk like you’re an all-powerful, all-knowing mastermind and half the time act like you’re Trailer Park Barbie. To serve their purposes, they need you to be both.”
“They said they’re ‘storming the walls’ tomorrow night. You think they’re coming here.”
“Doesn’t it sound like it?”
“But if they show up here and we defend ourselves, then I’m the bad guy. I can’t win. Well, I’m not just going to sit here and wait. Will said in any situation like this, it all comes down to a core of ringleaders. These people want to make me think they’re infinite and anonymous, an unstoppable swarm. But they’re just people, a specific number of flesh-and-blood human beings. I want to find out who they are.”
“Will’s already got Budd on that.”
Andre picked up the ball. He spun it around in his hands, assumed a shooting posture, eyeballed the rim. He shot. The ball missed so badly that it hit off the top of the backboard, bouncing up and back, flying into a second-floor balcony where it shattered a potted plant.
Andre squinted at it and said, “Are you sure that hoop’s regulation?”
“I want to talk to these guys,” said Zoey. “Face-to-face. We have to give sanity one more chance.”
“And if that don’t work?”
She didn’t answer.
16
Budd had a list of names by dinnertime.
They were eating their evening meal in the courtyard, in a gazebo surrounded by goofy-looking skeletons and witches and faux stone walls. The whole courtyard would be turned into the haunted maze by Monday, Halloween Day, for kids to be chased around by not-too-scary holographic ghosts, mechanical zombies, and drone gargoyles buzzing overhead. At the moment it was just a mess, displays piled in corners, animatronic vampires leaning drunkenly against trees.
Budd was projecting onto the table a paused video clip from the riot at the Night Inn. Next to it, in another window, was a paused clip from the hostage standoff a month ago, a view of the mooing dudes in the crowd. A series of lines and labels identified the men who had appeared at both. Her trolls lived all over the world, but the concern right now were the ones who were local, who could plausibly show up at her door tomorrow and maybe recruit others to do the same. Lots of the guys were wearing some version of those digital skull masks she kept seeing, but they were still able to put together a handful of names.
Andre said, “Just a bunch of nobodies. Most unemployed, collecting federal PDR checks. The rest work part-time, spend hours a day in the Hub.”
Zoey said, “Hey, you’re talking to a former PDR girl.” The federal basic income payments were derisively called “Please Don’t Riot” checks by those lucky enough to not need them. “So if these are our ringleaders, the ones who’ll ‘storm the walls’ of the estate, what would that even look like?”
Echo said, “If these guys show up at the gates with rocks and bottles, they will be … repelled. The grounds’ automated security would turn that into a sad spectacle. If they show up with firearms, that will go even worse for them. Ask Redd Gunn.”
Echo was eating some kind of kelp noodle ramen dish. Will was having a glass of scotch. Everyone else was having smoked short ribs glazed in hoisin sauce, pulled and stuffed into steamed bao buns with some shredded carrots, cucumber, and green onions on top to make it healthy. Hell, it was practically a salad.
“The true threat,” said Will, “is if their benefactor funds something more serious.”
Zoey said, “Wait, are we talking about Chobb showing up here with his personal army? The VOP?”
“What would he gain by losing half of his staff and equipment invading the home of a local real estate developer? No, if he involves himself, it would be by proxy. Putting up money or … something.”
Budd said, “There are no serious bids out to hired guns, muscle, or souped-up vigilantes. Lots of talk, a lot of it in jargon I can’t unravel, but I can’t find where it’s being put into action at all.”
Zoey said, “Right, because as you keep saying, they spend all their time in the Hub. That’s where they’re doing their planning. So who here has gone into the Hub to see what’s what?”
No one answered.
Zoey said, “What, are you all too cool to put on a VR headset? Jesus, hire a teenager to do it. This is where the bad guys are, right? Echo, did you get a price on buying the Hub?”
“It’s a decentralized platform that every VR network and game uses, it’s like trying to buy the internet. I did find an investment opportunity in authenticating the purchases of persistent digital goods. Looks like there’s a massive upside there—”
Will said, “Focus, people. They’re planning something for the actual world, we don’t care what they fantasize about inside their imaginary clubhouse, we care about how they implement it out here.”
“To that end,” said Budd, “all I’ve found is one guy who’s rented a moving truck, another group has put together money to buy a drone. A big one, the kind that can carry some cargo. That’s about it.”
“What could they do with that?” asked Zoey. “The drone could drop a bomb on us, right?”
Budd said, “If they were buying a bomb big enough to matter, I’d know about it.”
“Maybe they’re going to try to use the truck to ram the gates?”
Will made a dismissive gesture. “There are pillars that pop out of the ground that will not only stop it cold, but turn it into a shattered wreck. Those gates don’t look like much because they’re purely decorative. The real defenses are buried, all around. You’ve got to remember, Arthur wasn’t just paranoid about rival mobsters trying to take him out. He was anticipating a SWAT team from the feds or North Korean infiltrators.”
“He was paranoid about the North Koreans coming to Utah? My father sounds a little bit crazier every time you talk about him.”
“Oh, that wasn’t crazy at all,” said Andre. “One tactic that came up in the war, they’d grab body cam footage during raids, run facial recognition of ground troops through social media. Get their names, send squads to go kill their families back home. Both sides did it. There were dozens of murders in the states that the government thinks were retaliation against the spouses and kids of operatives. Kept it quiet, so as not to cause panic.”
“Jesus.”
“The point is,” said Will, “that the only people who’ve ever gotten in here did it because they were let in.”