In her last moments, she heard her father, “We all die, mija.”
Her mother had a rebuttal, “No, mi amor. You need to live.”
She missed them. She wanted to go to them.
All at once, liquid warmth cascaded over her. The fingers squeezing the life out of her fell away and she gasped, inhaling air and copper. Someone was in the car with them, an angel. She spoke to Amaya in Spanish, “I have you. You’re going to be okay. I’m here.”
Amaya had never seen an angel, and it brought her to tears. She couldn’t see the angel’s face in the darkness, blinded by the halo of light that surrounded her head.
She lifted a bloody hand to touch her savior. “Mama, eres una angel?” Amaya rasped.
The angel laughed. “Not fucking likely.”
Amaya surrendered to unconsciousness.
Memories flit through her mind as a series of quick flashes. She remembers her attacker’s eyes and the way they went wide with shock. She can feel the warm, wet, salty spray of his blood across her chest and neck; smell and taste the copper in her mouth. She can hear her voice, the one she hears in all her dreams, telling her it’s all going to be alright.
When she can breathe again, her words explode out of her in wet gasps, “It’s you.”
Amaya finds herself gripped and pulled in by her nape toward those menacing eyes. “Cállate,” Noelle hisses in Spanish, quiet. “Amaya.”
2
Two weeks before the masquerade, 2020
International Waters of the Pacific Ocean
The helicopter ride takes about an hour through clear West Coast skies. It’s an easy landing and short ordeal to get onto the flying bridge of the undersea yacht. Gun in hand and at the ready, she opens the hatch and descends the stairs into the deck saloon. The motion lights come on as she enters. Everything is as she left it, down to the half-eaten pizza she abandoned on the coffee table. A quick walk toward the surface bridge in the forward portion of the saloon confirms the monitoring and navigation instruments have not been tampered with. The view is incomparable. Large acrylic windows allow an unobstructed view of the Pacific, an ombre of sunlit pale water on top and a deep dark chasm where the light cannot reach; all of it teeming with life.
Walking into the audio/video booth is always a surreal experience akin to traversing through a physical representation of her subconscious. Within its walls, she is enveloped in a womb of sorts, surrounded by water on all sides, floating and disconnected from the outside world. No one can touch her here, not without her permission. She can’t say the same for anyone else who happens to find themselves on board. A flip of the switch and the harsh LED bulbs on the other side of the two-way mirror bathes one of the small passenger cabins aboard. Her guest isn’t moving.
Opening her laptop, she sighs heavily after reading the headline of Amaya Perez’s latest podcast: VAGINA VIGILANTE STRIKES AGAIN? ACTOR PAUL FORTMAN STILL MISSING.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” she laments aloud before turning on her microphone. “Paul!” she says. On the other side of the glass, her modulated voice makes Paul flinch. “She’s at it again. What do you think of the name Vagina Vigilante?” She moves her mouse, browsing over the transcript. “Does it make me sound silly?”
Paul still isn’t moving—being dramatic as usual. She doesn’t usually like to coddle her guests, but their time together is approaching its natural conclusion, and Paul has made a lot of progress during his stay. It’s important to reward one’s personal milestones or risk losing motivation to accomplish goals.
“I’m going to make toast. Would you like some?” A sound like a whimper whines across the speaker. One of the advantages of such a soundproof room is the quality of the audio. “I’ll take that as a yes.” She smiles, suddenly fond.
On the way toward the kitchen, she makes a list of necessary items for the ship: toilet paper, canned goods, microwavable meals, and lots of marine-friendly cleaning supplies. Paul did his best to clean up after himself once he realized the irrefutable nature of his stay aboard, but it takes more than water to remove blood and shit from a surface, even those designed for life at sea.
She’s going to have to deal with Amaya Perez sooner rather than later. It’s a complicated situation. On the one hand, if she’d known seven years ago the kid was going to be such a pain in the ass, she would’ve left her out at sea with her serial raping drug dealer. On the other, she didn’t, so here she is. She’d been a novice killer in those days, learning her craft and building her manifesto. It didn’t feel right to kill an innocent woman; it still doesn’t, especially since Amaya Perez is apparently her biggest fan. But she’s pushing her into an uncomfortable corner and that, she cannot abide.
Toast and tea in hand she makes her way back to the booth and places Paul’s portion of toast in the Pneumatic tube before sitting at her desk. She flips on her microphone. “Good morning! How was your weekend?”
Paul drags himself onto all fours and crawls toward his toast. He’s lost most of his muscle mass. Once a fit man weighing two hundred pounds, he’s dropped down to a lean one hundred and forty. His arms tremble under the pressure of his weight. Watching him crawl toward his food is like watching a sloth climb a tree. When he finally reaches it, he stuffs both slices into his mouth. He chokes and sobs around the wad of dry toast in his mouth. It’s disgusting.
“I said! How was your weekend? Are you going to be rude, Paul?” she admonishes. They’ve been working on his manners for the better part of three weeks, and while he’s gotten better, he still leaves a lot to be desired as far as she is concerned.
Paul’s sobbing gets momentarily louder before he spits his wad of bread out into his filthy hand to answer. “I thought you left me to die.” Changing strategy, he pulls a smaller piece of bread from his hand and swallows it whole.
She smiles. “Why would I do that, Paul? You’re helpless. Do you think I’m cruel?”
“Yes,” he sneers and swallows more bread, picking it apart and swallowing it as quickly as he can until it’s gone. He licks his dirty palms afterward.
“Well,” she addresses him patiently, “you should have thought about that before you ended up here, shouldn’t you?” She takes a bite of buttered toast and sip of tea. “Why are you here, Paul?”
“Fuck you,” he whispers.
That won’t do. “You obviously haven’t learned your lesson. I’ll let you think about it.” She turns off the microphone. She can observe him screaming and punching his fists bloody into the floor of his cell, but she can’t hear him and that’s good enough for now. She has a lot of planning to do if she’s going to welcome her next guest aboard.
Over the years, she’s done her own share of research into Amaya Perez. Not out of curiosity, but necessity. Her endgame is near, and the last thing she needs is an ambitious reporter or law enforcement official taking an interest in Amaya’s internet ramblings and asking questions of the only person who’s seen her in action and lived. Granted, the twenty-three-year-old social justice warrior has less than a hundred subscribers, but she also has one hell of an analytical mind. No one has ever put her killing pattern together. Her victims are as random as she can make them. The only thing they have in common is the evil they commit.