Mardock Scramble

Chapter 11

CONNECTING ROD

01

Everyone waited patiently for Balot to finish wiping her face with the cloth.

Ashley didn’t even ask what she intended to do for the next game. Neither did he collect the cards in preparation for the shuffle. He just waited for her.

When Balot eventually finished wiping the tears from her face and looked up, there was Ashley, holding out the box. The box full of golden chips.

Those on the floor watched in stunned silence as Balot reached for the box and took a golden chip, one with the OctoberCorp emblem etched on its face. When Ashley said, And now please choose your other one, the whole crowd seemed about to faint. Balot checked for the last OctoberCorp emblem—the final piece of the puzzle—and once she’d located it, she gingerly took the chip into her care along with the other three.

“Perhaps you might be able to share with me—only if it suits you, that is—just what it is about these chips that you’re seeking?” Ashley said as he placed the box—now deprived of a third of its golden luster—back into place.

Balot casually slipped the chips into her glove—as if they were unimportant—and answered him.

–I made the trade too, I think. Like the mermaid with the sorceress. So that I would be able to walk, in a manner of speaking.

“So that’s what you’re aiming for, is it? To be able to walk properly?”

–I think so.

Ashley nodded, greatly impressed. Or so it seemed, but then he frowned.

It wasn’t Balot’s fault, though—indeed, his sudden change of demeanor was nothing to do with her and everything to do with the barrage of words that were now assaulting his ears through his earpiece. Balot knew immediately who was haranguing him so—not so much from the voice, but from the words themselves.

If the vicious words of recrimination were anything to go by, this was indeed a cursed man, the man whose life was full of the emptiness of his own creation.

Balot watched Ashley as he winced and then cringed under the vicious barrage of recriminations and insults. Somehow she found it funny.

–The owner of the casino, perhaps?

“As you say, miss—very perceptive of you. Looks like we’ve not just entered a minefield but also stepped right on top of a charged mine to boot. I am sorry about this—I would have liked to present a more professional face to you…” With the last words, Ashley’s glance flickered toward Bell Wing.

“It’s a bit too late for that, Ashley. You’ve long since fallen for this girl,” Bell Wing pointed out, bringing him back down to earth. Ashley grinned good-naturedly. Balot thought she’d seen this smile once before somewhere.

He turned back to Balot with the same expression and continued. “I have one round left to win everything back from you and finish you off, apparently. Otherwise it’s the flamethrower.”

–Flamethrower?

“Pink slip. His dismissal papers,” Bell Wing explained. Ashley bowed to confirm this—just so.

“Looks like this is how it’s going to end for me, then. One more round is nowhere near enough time for me to find a way to beat you. It might be a different story if we had another ten rounds or so, of course, but by then I’d probably be rooting for you anyway; I’m sure I’d want you to win by the end, which would kind of defeat the whole object, wouldn’t it? Hmm, what to do…”

–Please call the owner of the casino here. I want to return these chips to him in person.

Balot felt the information on the third chip being sucked out from within her glove as she spoke. Ashley was rarely lost for words, but he was now. He turned to look at Bell Wing.

In turn, Bell Wing was no less surprised. The two dealers looked at each other in silence for a while, trying to work out what was behind this sudden turn of events and what it could mean.

When the silence was eventually broken it was in the form of a roaring laugh from Ashley.

“Man, you really got us, didn’t you. Are you saying that it was never your intention to try and break the bank here?” Ashley’s fine-whiskered face was now creased in laughter, as if he’d just been subjected to a barrage of the most hilarious comedy known to mankind.

Balot nodded, and Ashley looked up to the heavens. “In other words, you’ve already found what you’ve come for. A target that we never even knew about and still don’t know the details of… Incredible. Well, you know what? I may be here as the yojimbo, but my job is to protect the casino—I’m not a bodyguard. The owner will just have to fend for himself. And if you’re after him, miss, I can’t say I rate his chances too highly.”

Bell Wing was nodding too—she had finally understood it all.

Ashley looked back at Balot, then placed his massive hand over his equally massive chest. “I’ll be praying for you, miss, that your magic spell lasts as long as possible.” His tone of voice was now dignified and polite, in such contrast to his raucous laughter of a minute ago that Balot wondered whether she had dreamed that laughter.

–Thank you.

Ashley’s infectious grin emerged again, and he walked away from the table.

≡

Balot looked over in the direction Ashley was moving and snarced Oeufcoque softly.

–That dealer—he’s a lot like you, Oeufcoque, you know.

–You think so? In what way?

–In many ways. He just is, kind of. He has his strict side but also a gentle streak. And he’s a unique personality.

–Just your type, then.

–I guess so. Jealous, much?

Oeufcoque didn’t reply right away. He left a short pause—signifying that he was somewhat preoccupied with the delicate operation involving the million-dollar chips—before answering.

–I’m not aware of any such symptoms, no.

–That’s a shame. You’re allowed to be a little jealous, you know.

–Sorry about that.

Oeufcoque was apparently unaffected, and Balot felt a bit disappointed. But then more words floated abruptly up on her hand, as if Oeufcoque was spitting the words out in spite of himself.

–I was frightened back then when I was removed from your hands. I thought you might be throwing me away.

–But I want to use you, Oeufcoque. In exactly the way that you want me to.

She patted her gloves gently as if to reassure him that this was indeed the truth. She stroked him like a mother stroking her baby’s face to tell it that it was special, beloved, wanted.

It dawned on Bell Wing that Balot was up to something. “Are you speaking to someone, young lady?” Bell Wing was as sharp as ever.

Balot just nodded, truthfully.

–Yes. I’m speaking to someone who helps me out.

“Your guardian angel, no doubt.”

Balot smiled. Then she turned her eyes to the table. The deserted table.

She needed to compose herself, to prepare for the man who would soon be arriving here.

As if she too were inside the trunk of the car that had contained the corpse of Ashley’s brother.

This was a battle fought over the right—the privilege—of starting everything anew.

≡

“They’re coming,” Bell Wing whispered.

Ashley led the way, taking his characteristically large strides, flanked by two other men. One of them was the man Balot had been expecting all along. The other she didn’t recognize. Ashley’s demeanor wasn’t so much that of an employee escorting his bosses to a gaming table as that of a jailer leading condemned prisoners toward their place of execution.

Oeufcoque gave Balot the full briefing so that she was absolutely prepared for what was to come.

–It’s Cleanwill John October. One of the leading directors of OctoberCorp. He’s Shell’s direct supervisor, as it were, but he’s also the father of the woman Shell’s planning to marry.

The man that Oeufcoque was describing was also a giant. Not just big or fat. This was something else; his body was a mass of solid flesh. The stereotype of fat people was that they tend to have happy, jovial faces, but this certainly wasn’t the case here. The man wore a black sneer that seemed to look down on all the other people on the casino floor. His eyes oozed disgust at the fact that he even had to look at Balot. Balot, in turn, found his expression so repulsive that she struggled to think of a reason why she shouldn’t just shoot him dead right then and there as a service to all of humanity.

The moment they arrived, Ashley stood stock-still and did his best to blend into the background like one of the decorative plants—he knew his role was over.

The lump of meat from OctoberCorp glowered at Balot with pure disdain.

Suddenly, Balot picked up a million-dollar chip in her hand and tapped it lightly against the table, spinning it around casually as if it were a one-dollar coin. A coin that had the OctoberCorp emblem emblazoned on it.

This seemed to have the desired effect—if she couldn’t shoot the two men dead in their tracks, this was a damn good substitute, and their reactions were almost as satisfying.

Shell’s and John’s faces went blue simultaneously. They both seemed equally fit to burst, likely to spew forth torrents of bile and rage at any moment, but they both managed to keep it in, just about, nostrils flaring, and Balot wondered how much more it might take before they spontaneously combusted.

Cleanwill John October’s eyes narrowed, and he spoke.

“Get the chips back from this girl. Fail and you’ll meet the same fate as the coin being spun round and round.”

Shell’s face went blank—he was like a hit man who had been ordered on a suicide mission—and he moved into the dealer’s position.

His Chameleon Sunglasses glinted muddy blue.

≡

Shell’s posture straightened the instant he took his position at the table. It was as if his whole body had transformed into a machine.

This man was now standing before Balot because he had to. He was prepared for the inevitable. He was ready.

Shell took off his rings. His seven rings, each one adorned with a Blue Diamond. Those repulsive little jewels made from the ashes of his mother and the six young girls he’d killed. Balot had been destined for ring number eight, but here she was now, watching with a blank face as the rings were placed on the table.

Back when Balot was with Shell, it used to be her job—one of her jobs—to look after those rings during the Shows. Now the rings just lay silently on the table, their jewels shining up at her like frozen tears.

Shell put away the cards that had been used for the previous match and took out a new set.

He started shuffling—a shuffle familiar to Balot, one that she remembered from long ago. She remembered that there was a time when she had found it beautiful, elegant. That was only a few months ago, but it seemed like many lifetimes past. Now Balot could see that Shell’s movements might have been smooth and flashy enough, ideal for impressing the punters, but there was very little substance to them—he was nowhere near as skilled with the cards as Ashley, for example.

Whirlpools of numbers swirled around at the base of Balot’s left arm as the pile of cards was prepared. Balot reached out for the transparent red marker and took it in her hands before Shell had the opportunity to offer it to her.

Balot’s eyes met Shell’s for the first time since that night in the AirCar.

She sensed his eyes opening wide behind his sunglasses.

His eyes were filled with a deep, deep anger—and at the root of this was an overwhelming fear that Shell couldn’t even understand, much less come to terms with.

Balot felt the dregs of an old memory dredged up from the murky past: the memory of Shell lecturing her ever so calmly about the definition of love. The words popped into her head, then disappeared again as soon as they came—but not before she had said them out loud.

–You’re going to be the prettiest little ornament there is. Everyone’s going to admire you, and respect me. Because I have all the money and love that anyone could ever want.

Silently, Balot thrust the red marker into the pile of cards.

–Just do as I say, and everything will be all right.

A faint, scornful sneer played across Balot’s lips as she said the words, and she jerked her head at Shell—and the cards—to indicate she was ready.

Shell’s face was peculiarly shy at this moment. What was he feeling? Embarrassed? Bashful?

At the very least he seemed to recognize that the words that Balot had just spoken were quotations, phrases that he had once said to her, even if he couldn’t remember actually having said them. He had made long-forgotten promises, and now he was being held to account.

Stuck for words, Shell focused his attention on the cards at hand, cutting them, preparing them.

That handful of movements told Balot everything she needed to know about just how much control Shell could still exert over the cards—and how much control he had lost.

She waited for Shell to finish placing the cards in the card shoe, toying with the four million-dollar chips in her hands, as if to say I hold your heart in my hands.

–I’m not the impatient sort, my dear. I like to take my time.

With these words, Balot placed a chip in the pot.

It wasn’t one of the golden chips. Rather, it was an ordinary hundred-thousand-dollar chip. Shell had evidently been expecting one of the million-dollar variety, and he gulped, then eventually exhaled deeply.

–Let me peel your layers off one by one, my little one.

Balot smiled as she spoke. By now, Shell wasn’t the only one to have realized that she was quoting verbatim words that Shell had said to her, once upon a time. The others around the table were listening with keen interest.

“You filthy gutter-born whore…” Shell muttered, touching the card shoe as if in some sort of warped act of purification.

The Doctor and Ashley scowled when they heard his words. Only Balot and Bell Wing remained unaffected, unflinching.

Shell flicked the cards out of the card shoe. Violently, recklessly, like a hotheaded teen rebel quick to snap out his jackknife and lunge at the opponent who had enraged him so.

Balot dodged the blade in a deft movement, then crushed all resistance with a single blow.

–There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, my little one.

Shell continued dealing, trying to appear unconcerned.

–You look a little frightened, but don’t worry, I like it that way. It makes you look even more alluring.

Balot continued to smile a seraphim’s smile at Shell, who by now was gritting his teeth so hard it seemed like he was about to break his own jaw.

She was smiling, but her eyes blazed with her true feelings of animosity.

Balot took those hate-filled eyes off Shell for a moment and refocused on her cards. She was deciding what she wanted of him, how she wanted him. She was going to release him from the waiting—the worst part, that moment before the customer told you just how he was going to enjoy you. Just as Balot had suffered in the past.

Her eyes snapped back up toward Shell, and she called out her move.

–Now, open your legs wide, little one, and show daddy what he wants to see…

Then, when Shell showed no sign of understanding, Balot rephrased her instructions.

–Stay.

A fat vein started visibly throbbing in Shell’s temple. He struggled to suppress his fury as he flipped over his hidden card. Slowly. Not in order to put his opponent off. No—Shell moved slowly because his foul, abject mood meant that he physically couldn’t move any faster.

The game had begun. Balot’s farewell game to the casino, her lap of honor. A game just for her.

≡

Ashley and Bell Wing were the first to realize what was going on.

The Doctor knew already, of course, as it was none other than the Doctor who had hatched the plan in the first place.

The only ones who remained oblivious to the end were the man from OctoberCorp and Shell.

Shell’s mind wasn’t even able to comprehend the possibility that something was going on—that he was being played—or, if it was, he soon suppressed those errant suspicions. The only thing that Shell knew was that he was winning, over and over, just as he did in life, and his victories were all he had to hold on to from amid his shame and disgrace.

For Shell was winning. From the very first hand up to the ten-game mark where they currently stood, the cards seemed to be going his way.

The Doctor’s plan was unfolding nicely. Your target is the golden yolks—don’t touch any white or shell. If you do end up getting some along the way, be sure to return them immediately once you’ve reached your objective. Balot understood what she had to do. The only question left now was the matter of timing. So that the plan would achieve its maximum effect.

It was around the twelve-game mark when it happened. The upcard was 9, Balot’s cards were 3 and 8.

The melee of figures at the bottom of her left arm showed her what she needed to do. Balot hit.

The card she received was a 6. Then she hit again, a 2. Total nineteen. At first glance it looked like her recklessness had paid off. In particular to the man from OctoberCorp, standing behind Shell and the chips, glaring over all he could see.

Balot glanced up at him before calling out her intention to stay.

Cleanwill John October, the man from OctoberCorp, wore a fearsome expression. Unrelenting and relentless. As if he wouldn’t permit Shell to lose a single hand, let alone the game. An impossible demand. Like ordering him to play Russian roulette with an automatic pistol.

Shell turned over his hidden card. An ace. Shell had won, by the narrowest of margins.

“Ha!” John yelped in satisfaction. Shell smiled even as he looked on at his cards with a grim expression.

Shell was hanging on by a thread, and he knew it. Balot was on the crest of a winning wave, on the ultimate winning streak, and yet she was somehow suppressing it. Leaving the door open to Shell. Cutting him some slack, giving him some rope—for what?

She was planning something. He could smell it. Even in his present state, Shell was still Shell, and he was usually the first to pick up on this sort of thing.

But it was already too late. The race had already begun: a drag race, where speed was everything and the first to cross the finish line took it all—and then mid-race Shell realized that the finish line was actually a chicken run straight to hell, and yet he couldn’t slam on the brakes or he would lose, and lose everything. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Balot’s hundred-thousand-dollar chips had run out. Before long she had also exhausted her supply of fifty-thousand-dollar chips too, and was on to the ten-thousand-dollar chips, burning through them steadily, one after another, like a chain smoker his cigarettes.

What did the others in the casino—the players, the dealers—make of such a scene?

Let me help you with that, they would have been thinking, most probably. They would have taken the chips in their hands and ran from the casino as quickly as their legs would carry them.

It was only common sense, after all—winning streaks didn’t last forever.

This girl and the lanky man beside her had lost it—they were suckers for pushing on past the point that their luck had run out, for not knowing when to quit while they were ahead.

Now their recklessness had driven the casino mad, forced the house to call in its big guns, and their chips were crumbling away like an asphalt road under a jackhammer. An unstoppable force—and one that nobody had any inclination to try and stop.

The whole floor seemed to feel this way.

And this was what Balot and the Doctor needed in order to bring the final act to an end on the requisite bang. How would the regulars who haunted this place react toward those who had just wandered onto their turf and won a fortune, and not even a small one at that? Some would be prepared to kill the interlopers to steal their newly acquired riches. Others might try and team up with them, use them to win big for themselves. It wouldn’t just be the other customers who felt this way but many of the dealers too, no doubt. Either way, they were a veritable hornets’ nest, ready to sink their opportunistic stingers into those who won big—another hurdle for Balot and the Doctor to contend with.

The best way to subdue the angry hornets was to smoke them out and put them to sleep. To do this, Balot needed to lose big, and conspicuously. If she was seen to stumble, to trip and drop her fat purse in the gutter, to watch its gold contents irretrievably washed away by the effluvia—well, then she’d be of no more interest to the swarm that was only after one thing. Indeed, once they’d seen she’d lost, and lost everything, they’d see her as jinxed and avoid her like the plague.

Even so, Balot still had to win in her own way.

She had to bring verisimilitude to their little act. More importantly, she had a bad debt she needed to pay off.

The upcard was 5. Balot had a queen and 2.

–Stay.

Waiting for the dealer to bust.

Shell’s face showed his despair even before he turned his card over. No doubt he already knew the distribution of the cards, helped by information fed in from his earphone and the watchlike device on his wrist.

All that was left for him to do was entrust everything to luck and flip his hidden card. His face hoped, prayed, begged, for total victory—no more the basic self-control expected in even a rookie dealer.

The card was a king. He then went on to draw another card—queen. Total twenty-five. Bust.

John’s face erupted in nuclear fury as he watched Shell silently paying out to Balot. His face turned black.

Balot waited for her next move, gauging her timing perfectly.

She snapped one of the golden chips into place on the table. The sound was like a judge’s gavel when judgment was passed down. Shell and John sprang to attention.

The air was icy with tension. Balot said and did nothing, waiting silently for her next card.

It felt good to be able to stare down an opponent without having to say anything—particularly an opponent to whom Balot had nothing to say.

Shell’s blood was as thick as molten wax as he forced his hand over to the card shoe to deal. As he dealt, his fingers withdrew one of the cards and dealt the one just below it, out of turn, so that he received a card that was meant for Balot. A blatant switch.

Ashley and Bell Wing saw right through the clumsy maneuver, as did Balot.

The upcard was an ace. Balot’s cards were a king and jack.

–Stay, Balot called immediately.

Shell flipped over his hidden card with his leaden hand.

The card was a 4. Total fifteen. He went on to draw a 7. The ace in his hand was now worth only one, bringing his hand to twelve.

Then he drew a 9. He had reached his total of twenty-one. Shell had won.

02

–Never doubt. It’s the road to ruin.

Shell looked up at Balot, confused.

–The recipient of love shouldn’t have any doubts. No need to trouble yourself with questions.

Behind Shell, John chuckled to himself.

Shell collected the golden chip with hands that couldn’t quite stop quavering, then took in the cards for the discard pile.

Shell understood all too well what had just happened. The way the cards had been dealt was ace, king, 4, jack, 7, 9.

In other words, before his switch the cards had been arranged king, ace, 4, jack, 7, 9.

Had Shell not made his move, Balot would have had blackjack, and not just any old blackjack. The ace and jack of spades: a payout of 11 to 1. Her million-dollar stake at that level of payout would have been an atomic bomb, blowing the casino to pieces.

Then it hit Shell; he had worked it all out. Where exactly Balot had inserted the red marker: right below the ace that had just been dealt. She had known exactly how and where he was going to cut and based her own play around that.

Shell was completely under her thumb. She’d even planned exactly how he was going to win, forcing his hand, quite literally. He felt a deep malaise welling up inside himself. He was on the verge of screaming as his pride and confidence were ripped to shreds.

John, on the other hand, was delighted to see the golden chip return to its box, welcoming it home like it had been his own kidnapped daughter released from incarceration. Hardly surprising, considering the chip represented his own dirty money.

It wasn’t even so much the money itself that was at stake for John and Shell but the very fact of its existence. If, as a result of the transfer of large amounts of cash—a large payout, for example—they came under scrutiny from the authorities and their money-laundering scheme was discovered, it would be far more than the actual cash that John and Shell both stood to lose.

Balot’s aim now was to find the right timing to lay down the final three golden chips.

She threw around more of the ten-thousand-dollar chips for the next few rounds, waiting for her next chance. Then, just as she was getting ready to place the next million-dollar chip, an old memory came to mind.

Something she had once seen on television. Aborigines—native peoples under the protection of the Commonwealth. A funeral, a wake, but a festive occasion. The aborigines had great respect for Mother Nature and celebrated a person’s return to her bosom via the ceremonial slaughtering of a cow.

The reason she’d ended up watching such a program was simple: she had misheard the announcer and thought it was going to be a program about abortion.

Abortion, abortionist, abortive—Balot was only half paying attention to the television when she thought she heard something along those lines. She was surprised, therefore, to find out that the program was about a completely different topic.

She kept on watching, though, if for no other purpose than to try and dispel the images that her mind had conjured up. That was how she’d learned about aborigines. Where was she when she saw that program? Yes, that was it—the place she’d been at before her last brothel—the Date Club, in the waiting room.

There were a number of girls working there. The clients would phone in, having seen the details on a flyer or poster, and the man in the office—reception, really—would then send out the girl that most closely matched the client’s request. In between assignments the girls waited around in interminable stretches of tense boredom. The girls would do what they could to alleviate this with magazines, television, books, or by attending to their manicures. It helped blot out other, more unpleasant, thoughts.

Occasionally, though, these other thoughts would still seep through. Much in the same way that Balot ended up watching the program on aborigines—to try and take her mind off a more unpleasant thought.

The aborigines in the program didn’t just revere death—they also feared it. The reporter explained that this was all tied to their deep respect for the jungle. Balot understood immediately. She could relate to the animals being offered up to nature—she knew what it meant to be a sacrificial lamb. And she knew that this was a scene that played out everywhere.

It the city, people feared one another. Society was divided into those with power and those without, and if it was social interaction that helped to dissolve that fear of each other, it was also social interaction that served up scapegoats—sacrificial victims, a necessary and inevitable function to keep society running. Balot was always hearing such stories from her customers and the other girls.

Stories of sadistic men who could only get their kicks by torturing people, or religious nutjobs who had to follow a precise set of bizarre rules in the correct sequence in order to get off, or men who selected the right girls—or boys—to fulfill their fantasies to the letter, choosing their costumes and the scenery, ordering them around like a theater director would his actors. These men may not have physically been taking machetes to the throats of their livestock, but they were doing the equivalent to the hearts and minds of thirteen-year-old girls.

The Date Club that Balot worked at was one of the better brothels—one of the safer ones, anyway. The club paid taxes, or at least the man at reception said it did. We’re virtually a public service.

In other words, they’d covered their backs against charges of violating the protection of minors law.

Those places that operated under the radar, avoiding such “unnecessary expenses” as taxes—it stood to reason that these were the most dangerous of all.

The pimps weren’t always strangers, either. One of the girls, before she worked at the Date Club, used to be pimped out by her father on a regular basis. She’d already been with nearly a hundred johns by the time she was sixteen—most of her “clients” being his friends, drinking buddies, or customers at the watering holes her father frequented. Then one day her father found himself in deep trouble with one of her clients and mysteriously disappeared from the world. The girl carried on living, surviving, through the profession that her father had taught her so well. As if that was her way of showing her filial love and devotion.

At the club the girls swapped gruesome stories of how girls who plied their wares from street corners had a tendency to meet a bad end. One girl recounted to Balot a particular tale as if she were talking about a horror novel. How one of her friends ended up wasting away in the hospital, her bones shattered, her body jelly. Girls beaten to death by their violent men had looked a prettier sight.

Apparently the dead girl used to refer to herself occasionally as a bomb. A ticking time bomb. Her friend only understood why when she saw the diagnostic charts at the hospital. The dying girl had AIDS and had been slowly dying from it for many years, working the streets all the while. Then the dying girl told her how she had ended up infected with such a disease. She had been raped one day on her way home from school.

Since then she had lived only for her work. For revenge. On her deathbed, she dreamed of all the bombs that she had spread, hoping they would explode in a fiery blast inside the men to whom she had successfully passed on her disease.

Then there were the girls who worked in groups to ensnare the big earners.

Not just ensnare, either—often their behavior would descend into blackmail, forcing their marks into handing over increasing amounts of money under the threat of public disclosure. The gangs often ended up getting sucked into larger criminal organizations—some girls went voluntarily, others in order to protect themselves from the backlash from the disgruntled blackmailee. The girl who told Balot this story was one of the former group, having joined a large criminal gang by choice, but she had run away shortly after realizing that she had made a mistake. Men do understand on some level that women feel pain too, she said, but what they don’t realize is that the pain we feel has just as much impact on us as it does on them. Pain couldn’t fight gravity and always flowed downhill toward lower ground, finding the path of least resistance. However bad life at the Date Club was, it wasn’t as painful as the alternative.

Well, at least nothing like that ever happens here. This was the platitude so often used as the moral of one of the girls’ horror stories—so much so that it became a cliché. The man at reception said so. The girls, who had grown so used to their jobs, said so. It became a mantra, an inoculation; so long as you spoke those words, no harm would ever befall you. But danger came in many shapes and sizes. It wasn’t just the unknowable future that could be dangerous—sometimes danger came in the form of shadows from the past that had finally caught up with the present. Danger could grow and expand to fill any void.

There were teenage outcasts from society, man-boys with no place in the world and at their wits’ end, who abducted middle school girls to use as their slaves. There were middle-aged, outwardly respectable government officials who walked past children’s playgrounds at the same fixed time every day, hoping to catch a glimpse of the young children that they were sexually attracted to. There was the Peeping Tom who had focused all his attention on one girl, and when the object of his affection failed to show any gratitude for his solicitude he raped the ungrateful bitch before dragging her to the local registry office to forcibly marry her, at which point he was promptly apprehended by the police.

A seventeen-year-old did some babysitting on the side to earn some pocket money, and she committed unspeakably cruel atrocities to over ten different children before she was caught and the alarm raised. When asked by the district attorney what could have possibly motivated her, her honest reply was that she thought that was what love was. Such was the reality of how her own parents had treated her.

People who labeled themselves as sadists or fetishists operated a network. Some of them were out in the open, appearing in the media, proud and unashamed of their otherness, and were recognized as outcasts. Different, maybe. Alien, definitely. But not necessarily dangerous per se.

But then there were the other aliens—the ones who didn’t go out of their way to call themselves sadists or fetishists. Not because they weren’t, but because they considered themselves to be absolutely normal. They had no more humanity in them than a giant shredding machine: flick their switches in the right way and they’d rip anyone to pieces without a moment’s hesitation, whether a complete stranger or their own flesh and blood.

These people weren’t particularly complicated, not in terms of what they wanted out of life. Their motivations were really quite straightforward. The only thing that was at all complicated was the process that they needed to go through to get what they wanted.

Sunny side up—the good life: no worries, no boredom, no contradictions.

A desirable goal for people from all walks of life, rich or poor. Ask a child why she had run away from the Welfare Institute, ask a rapist why he repeatedly committed the most horrendous of atrocities, and the answer would be the same: I wanted to be happy. It was the only answer there could be.

On the program Balot had watched about the aborigines, they didn’t actually show the moment the animals were slaughtered.

As is always the case on live television, they showed you up to the moment the machete was held high in the air, ready to strike. Then they cut to the scene straight after that, in which the cow was already engulfed in flame, the part where the blade ended the animal’s life being excised in order to preserve the viewers’ sensibilities.

Or was it to say to the viewer You see this sort of thing every day anyway, so why should we bother showing it to you now?

It was no more than what the viewers did—and had done to them—on a regular basis, after all.

Why did Ashley deliberately choose to enter the trunk of the car his brother died in?

It was to know the hand that brought the machete down. To understand the truth about the scene cut from the television program. To understand what had been lost.

The thing Ashley needed to know most of all was whether he still had the will to carry on living, even after the blow had been struck.

If the whole world took to arms against each other, brandishing their machetes, would he be able to survive?

There came a point in all people’s lives when their fundamental belief, their trust in the basic decency of human nature, was challenged, shattered. What Ashley needed to know was whether he would ever be able to pick up the pieces.

Balot realized that she now held a machete to her own heart. In order to discern exactly what she was made of.

And to determine which way the blade was heading. If people lived their lives under the vagaries of fate and fortune, then Balot would be the one to challenge her destiny—by working out for herself which way she needed to strike.

≡

“Why…why are you doing this?” Shell groaned. He couldn’t keep it in any longer.

His eyes were wavering between two points: Balot’s face and the third million-dollar chip, which had just been placed in the pot as Balot’s next bet.

–Never doubt. No need to trouble yourself with questions.

After Balot said this she waved her right hand. Lightly. Goodbye. Then she mimed closing the door on him. Just like Shell once did to her. Shell didn’t understand what any of her charade meant, exactly. But he did understand, in a vague and uneasy way, just quite how serious was the crime he had committed.

“Are you saying that I somehow took advantage of you? Used you? For what, exactly? This is crazy! I’ve even forgotten your face, what you look like…”

Balot tapped the table to show her impatience for her next card.

She knew that Shell had just spoken the truth. She had no problem with that. If Shell wanted to believe that he was innocent, let him believe that he was innocent—for now. All Balot knew was that she had to do what she had to do to this man who treated his own memories as so many bargaining chips.

The upcard was a king. Balot’s cards were 5 and 6.

Balot hit and drew an 8, at which point she stayed.

Shell just shook his head and turned his card over.

Another ace. A glorious victory for Shell.

“I… I just wanted to help you. I gave you what you wanted. I even had a proper citizen’s ID made for you, one with a decent past, not the one you had. I saved you…”

This was Shell’s last-gasp effort at explaining his actions. It was his lawyers who had come up with this plan. Just as the Doctor had come up with Balot’s. Shell was very satisfied with this story as an explanation. Balot’s very existence was a thorn in his side; she was like the one viewer who burst out laughing at the most inappropriate moment at the screening of a serious movie. She was ruining everything!

How was he to deal with such a person?

There was only one possible answer. Silence her. That was the reason Shell kept a permanent roster of assassins in his pay.

Shell yearned for drama, romance, to fill the gaping hole that was left in him when he obliterated his memories. He wanted someone to console him, soothe the pain of the death of that part of him, to make the whole sordid process seem beautiful. And he had chosen Balot for this role.

The problem was that Oeufcoque had also chosen Balot. So that Oeufcoque could fight. To find meaning in his life—to fight in the hands of someone who needed to use him.

The little golden galloper of a mouse needed a jockey to ride him, someone who would accept him warts and all. A rider who could use him properly and at the same time appreciate him as more than just a mount to be used.

To Shell, on the other hand, Balot was no more than a sacrificial lamb to be offered up on the altar of his ambition. Balot had no intention of ever returning down that path.

The last of the four million-dollar chips was finally released to return home to the other side of the table. Balot threw it into the pot like she was tossing a coin down a wishing well.

The golden chip was retrieved and slammed shut into its holding box just as the red marker appeared. Game over.

Balot rose from her seat and handed her one remaining chip—a ten-thousand-dollar piece—over to the Doctor beside her.

The Doctor rolled the chip around in the palm of his hand thoughtfully, as if he’d fallen foul of the classic gambler’s cliché—If only we’d stopped when the going was good.

A solitary ten-thousand-dollar chip. At one point they’d managed to swell their seed money of two thousand dollars by a factor of two thousand, and now this was all they had left.

The Doctor did the only thing that anyone with an ounce of adventure in them could do. “I wonder if we could keep this chip as a souvenir?”

Ashley smiled. “Well, since you’ve come this far…” He glanced at Shell’s face to get the house’s permission. He gave it, and as he now had his hands full with a reinvigorated Cleanwill John October instead of the feared nuclear meltdown, he was now radiating electricity.

“That should be fine, sir. Do feel free to take it as a memento of today’s great battle,” Ashley said respectfully, and the Doctor clutched the chip tight in his hands for all on the floor to see.

The Doctor’s act, and indeed the whole play, was now brought to a close. This was the climax.

“I wonder if I might be permitted to walk you to the casino entrance?” asked Ashley. Bell Wing stood beside him, silently asking the same question.

Balot accepted their offer wordlessly and graciously. The Doctor, too, gave his tacit consent.

The four of them left the VIP room, watched by a throng of other customers and dealers.

“Do you have any concerns about finding your way home?” Ashley asked. Shall I show you another route? he was asking. A hidden escape route?

“Thanks for the offer, but we had all that double-checked before we arrived.” The Doctor confirmed that it had all been cleared in advance with the limousine company, and that Ashley need not worry. Ashley shrugged his shoulders, impressed as ever with the thoroughness of the Doctor’s preparations.

“Really, anyone would think you were a pair of professional bank robbers,” he added.

Eventually the four of them stopped in front of the somewhat surreal intersection between the casino and the hotel.

Balot looked straight into Bell Wing’s face. Her eyes asked whether they would ever be able to meet again.

“I’ll still be a croupier and I’ll carry on spinning the wheel. Not here, but some other casino. That’s not for you to worry about. If you do feel like it then I’d welcome a visit from you anytime.”

–Thank you. And goodbye.

“Sure, goodbye,” said Ashley.

“Goodbye,” said Bell Wing.

03

–Just wait a minute!

Shell’s voice was on the other end of the cell phone. He sounded like a swimmer confronted by the sudden appearance of a fin right in front of his face.

Boiled was pressing down on the gas pedal so hard that it almost burrowed into the floor of the car. He sped down the highway, one hand on the wheel, the other holding Shell’s voice to his ear.

“You’ve had your capital returned to you, haven’t you? You still have the source of the trade you’re planning?”

–It’s not that. Something’s wrong. How can I put it—I don’t feel any better.

“Better?”

–It’s as if they deliberately gave it all back to me for some reason…

“I need their location. Set someone on their tail, and I’ll take care of the rest.” Boiled’s voice was as unconcerned as ever, and he spoke with crushing finality. I know all I need to know, he was saying.

–Please. Boiled. Make them disappear. Make everything disappear. I want my flashbacks gone.

“I understand. That’s my usefulness, after all.”

Boiled cut the call. With the same hand he activated the FrontView Screen. Normally it wouldn’t come on except to warn him that he was over the speed limit, but now a translucent light display flashed up, displaying a map of the casino and its environs and Boiled’s current location.

“I know your escape route—Oeufcoque.”

A red line extended from the casino to display a predicted route. A blue line extended from the marker signifying Boiled’s location, and the line stretched ahead until it intersected with the red line, running parallel with it thereafter.

Just then the other side of the FrontView Screen was splashed by a drop of water. For one moment Boiled’s attention turned not to the screen nor even the highway beyond it, but up to the skies.

Scattered droplets of rain soon turned into a sheer downpour, millions of lines streaking down the windshield.

Boiled’s eyes turned back to the road. Unconsciously, his mouth started forming words.

“Curiosity—that’s right. I wanted to use you, to see what it would be like…”

It was hard to believe, but true. Boiled’s hand went up to his chest, as if he were trying to physically suppress the confusion rising up inside him.

For a moment, he couldn’t cope, and the bewildering sensation of not knowing himself spread across his face.

The unstoppable feeling rose to his throat, stuck there, and then eventually erupted out in the form of a thunderous laugh. There was no trace of humor in his voice, no sign of the milk of human kindness showing in his face, and yet he laughed and laughed and laughed.

The windows trembled. The roaring laughter continued. Real thunder, now, and lightning could be seen on the other side of the windshield, amid the ever-thickening downpour.

Boiled continued to laugh, the primeval sound echoing into the night. “Oeufcoque! I wanted to use you! Just use you!” He was exploding. Every bit as terrifying as the thunder outside.

And unstoppable. “That’s my usefulness! That’s right, that’s my usefulness! To get back what I’ve lost in life, to make up for everything I’ve done! Come back to me, Oeufcoque. I’m going to give you my own usefulness!”

≡

“Let’s go home.” Oeufcoque spoke from Balot’s right hand after she’d put the gloves back on.

A gentle shower of rain fell on them. Balot felt the rain through her gloves. What she didn’t feel was any strong sense of victory. All she felt was a shaky sense of relief.

The red convertible’s sensors had picked up on the rain, and by the time Balot arrived at the car park the car was covered by the roof that had automatically emerged from the rear side.

“You haven’t forgotten anything, have you?” the Doctor asked with a gentle smile, and Balot waved her hand to say she hadn’t.

Inside her gloves, pressed against her flesh, were the four chips, safely packed away.

“We don’t touch the whites or the shells. Just the yolk,” the Doctor said, inserting the key into the ignition. Balot fastened her seat belt.

The car drove off. Balot closed her eyes and tuned in to her surroundings.

No one was following them. All pursuers were scattered. That much was confirmed.

The Doctor had prepared a triple-layered smokescreen to throw any potential tails firmly off their scent. The first was the airport hotel, the second the limousine.

The third was the complimentary passes to the hotel suites. The tickets they’d won when Balot hit her royal straight flush at poker. They had checked into their free rooms, then Balot and the Doctor had taken separate elevators, Balot saying she would head straight to the room to rest, her elevator heading up, and the Doctor saying he’d kill a little more time wandering around the amusements below, his elevator heading down.

In reality, though, neither elevator moved at all. Balot had snarced the controls of the elevators to make the display lights move, but when the elevators “arrived” at their respective floors, what really happened was that both elevators opened back up exactly where they had started, and the Doctor and Balot emerged together to head straight for the car park.

Shell’s hired muscle might have been looking for them, but just as the contents of Shell’s mind had proven so elusive, the Doctor didn’t intend to be tracked down easily.

Protected by their multi-layered smokescreen, Balot and the Doctor sped off in the red convertible, taking a direct route to the official rendezvous point with the Humpty.

Balot was drifting about inside her own boundless consciousness. Her body was starting to itch all over, and whenever she touched the source of the irritation her skin would flake off in silver flecks. It was as if her body were trying to shed its shell. Her body wanted to get out of its own skin.

“Hey, do you need to take it easy? You can put the seat back and rest if you need to, you know.” The Doctor’s voice was noticeably concerned.

Balot didn’t even answer. She just did as he suggested. She lay down, closed her eyes, and felt the warm breeze from the car’s heaters wash over her.

“Danger! Something’s coming, I can smell it!” Oeufcoque yelled suddenly. Balot snapped her seat belt off.

Her seat still in its reclining position, she sat bolt upright and tuned in to the car’s surroundings.

“Impossible! Where, Oeufcoque?” the Doctor cried. Outside, water poured down from the skies. The red car sped through the rain at well over a hundred kilometers an hour. They had already entered the highway, and traffic was sparse, with no obvious sign of pursuers.

Then, amid the storm, a single car cut in violently just behind them.

The car had emerged from one of the motel parking lots that were often found along the highway. The Doctor’s view of the feeder lane had been blocked by the high-rise buildings to the side of the road, and the pursuer had judged his timing perfectly, appearing right behind the red convertible, and was now on its tail.

The Doctor cursed and stepped on the gas. Balot had been inching toward the rear seats, and the sudden burst of acceleration threw her all the way back. She slammed into the seat, then turned to look out the rear window.

She could see the car, a mere ten meters behind them. She could almost see the aura of intent emanating from it.

“Is it Boiled?” the Doctor shouted. Neither Balot nor Oeufcoque answered. Their silence said it all.

In desperation the Doctor plunged the gas pedal to the floor. The red convertible sped up to full speed, tearing down the road.

But the predator had its prey in sight and was not about to be shaken off quite so easily.

“Looks like we’re going to have to fight him off. Balot—” Oeufcoque said calmly.

But the Doctor cut in, exasperated. “You’re at your limit!”

Balot turned to look at the Doctor, surprised at his vehemence. The Doctor stared back at her—and Oeufcoque—his eyes like those of a doctor ordering a liver cancer patient not to touch another drink, lest it turn out to be his last.

“I’m saying this as your personal physician! You’re completely at your limit—”

But he was interrupted by a crash. Like one of the rear passenger doors had been kicked in, hard. One of the side mirrors flew off the car, heading for the shoulder but then smashing into fragments along the highway.

“The windows and tires are a hundred-percent bulletproof. They’re not about to be troubled by any old gun. We’ll be able to hold it for a while.”

The very next instant a soul-chilling shock ran through the car and the rear window went white.

The problem was that Boiled’s gun was not any old gun. It was practically a portable artillery cannon. It fired shot after shot at the back of the car, crushing the trunk, sending sparks flying off the rear wheels, causing the whole car to swerve. The gunfire stopped for a moment.

Balot continued to spread her senses, to grasp what was happening. The two cars were fewer than five meters apart. Boiled was the only one inside the car behind them. Suddenly, Boiled’s car veered to the right and sped up.

He had finished reloading. Balot sensed Boiled’s car lining up next to theirs, Boiled taking aim with his right arm, judging the distance. The next instant, a roar.

Right at that moment the convertible swerved sharply to the left.

Boiled’s bullet grazed the taillight, then disappeared into the night.

“Balot!” It was the Doctor shouting. He was the one in the driver’s seat, but he understood immediately what had happened. Balot was driving.

–Just duck down. We’ll be okay. Just keep your body low.

Balot snarced the car stereo to communicate, and it obeyed her will, as did the rest of the car.

The steering wheel was spinning every which way right in front of the Doctor’s eyes. Only for a moment, though; it soon sank into the front panel, becoming one with the chassis. The Autodrive function engaged.

While the Doctor sat there in shock, Balot maneuvered the car to avoid the bullets. Three she dodged completely, one grazed the edge of the car roof, and one smashed into the taillight.

Balot had positioned the car deliberately to take this hit. The fragments of the lamp flew into Boiled’s windshield. Balot used this to measure the distance between the two cars, like a boxer’s jabs to probe how far there was between himself and his opponent.

Boiled went to reload his gun, and as he did so Balot unleashed the true potential of the convertible’s engine.

The tires, gears, and shaft were now all set to one single-minded purpose: speed.

The speed of the red convertible leapt up another notch. They were now roaring down the highway toward the outskirts of the city at a speed of over two hundred kilometers an hour. Balot felt her consciousness expanding and becoming ever more sensitive to her surroundings. The car groaned as it pushed on past its limit, and Balot seemed to moan along in sympathy.

Another shock. Not a bullet, this time, but rather the impact of Boiled’s car smashing into the side of theirs.

The red convertible shuddered. Its suspension screamed. The pressure was incredible. And Boiled’s aim was to take advantage of the moment when the pressure became too much—once Balot lost concentration, that was it, and the red convertible would be no more than a sitting duck.

The Doctor realized this. As did Oeufcoque, who said, “Balot, use me!”

Balot felt a faint glow of warmth in her right hand.

Balot hesitated. This was her hand—the hand that had once abused Oeufcoque so. Was she now supposed to forget about that and use him again? She felt the pressure more acutely than ever.

Balot’s eyes met with the deep red in Oeufcoque’s.

Balot closed her eyes. She felt Oeufcoque’s warm body heat and prayed for something to protect her. Just like when she first took Oeufcoque in her hands, all that while ago. Oeufcoque turned with a squelch. She felt a reassuring weight in her hands and a trigger against her finger.

“Don’t, Balot! You’re too—” The Doctor’s words were dissipated by a sharp gust of wind. The car roof was opening up, and the Doctor could only gape at it. The rain came down, assaulting them like razor blades.

Balot felt an extraordinary sense of precision amid the lashing rain and the car that was now pushing three hundred kilometers an hour. She was in control. She grasped the two cars. Their strengths and their Achilles’ heels. She sensed the currents of the violent winds and the raindrops that spiraled all around. The direction the two cars were heading in. Her movements. Boiled’s movements. She sensed everything as one, with perfect timing. Her whole world turned bright white.

Balot’s eyes became bloodshot, and she noticed her skin pressing in tightly on her internal organs. She heard a ringing noise around her forehead, and then could hear no more. The only body part left to rely on was her heart, which kept on beating away, telling her what she needed to do.

It all happened in an instant. The two cars were side by side. Balot leapt up, opened her eyes wide, and wrapped her finger around the trigger. Amid the torrential downpour she thought she heard herself screaming, yelling with all her might with a throat that had long since lost all powers of speech.

She fired. The bullets flowed out of the gun in quick succession, meeting Boiled’s salvo in midair.

Balot’s first shot smashed into the bullet Boiled had fired and was obliterated. So was the second, but the third was enough to deflect the path of the oncoming bullet. The fourth went straight for Boiled’s face, but was rendered harmless by Boiled’s PGF wall, as was the fifth.

The sixth and final bullet found its target—Boiled’s car.

Something ruptured right in front of Boiled’s eyes. Balot’s aim had been true, and she had hit the steering wheel just where she had wanted—on the spot to release the airbag. In an instant, Boiled’s face and arms and body were pinned back, the air pressure from the expanding airbag pressing him into his seat.

With a yell, Boiled focused his PGF, forcing the airbag back far enough for him to extricate his shooting arm. He pushed his gun into the gap so that the muzzle pointed into the airbag, and fired. It exploded. The airbag shattered into a million pieces, as did the glass in the windshield.

Wind and rain and shards of glass came flying into the car, and all were reflected harmlessly off the wall of artificial gravity that Boiled generated.

On the other side of the newly created space was Balot.

The convertible was now back in front of Boiled’s car, roaring away.

Boiled screamed a wordless scream and fired again.

Balot had fired first. Boiled’s PGF was activated in self-defense, warping the flight paths of all bullets in his vicinity—including his own.

It flew up into the air, way over Balot’s head.

Like the red convertible, Boiled’s car was also supposed to have been utterly bulletproof. But Balot could accurately target the exact same location over and over as easily as she could walk a straight line. She fired repeatedly at the hood, hitting the same spot again and again, and this eventually opened up a bullet-sized hole in the not-so-impenetrable armor. Then Balot’s final bullet flew straight through the hole and ripped the cam belt to shreds.

In an instant, Boiled’s car lost the ability to convert its energy into forward momentum.

A gap opened up between the cars. Balot and Boiled both looked for an opportunity to fire, but too much space now divided them. Balot’s car was still devouring the terrain voraciously, and Boiled’s car could no longer keep up.

Balot and Boiled remained still lest a final chance—or need to defend—presented itself. Soon, though, it became clear that their duel had come to a close, at least for now.

Boiled jerked the steering wheel to the right, bringing his vehicle onto the shoulder beside the highway.

That very same moment the fuse in Balot’s consciousness blew.

–The steering…

It was the last thing she said. As soon as she’d confirmed that the Doctor understood that he was back in the driver’s seat, she collapsed across the rear passenger seat.

“Balot?” Oeufcoque called.

All Balot heard was a ringing noise. Her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably, her lungs panted—rapid and shallow—and her whole body convulsed.

“Shit, why does this girl always have to try so hard ! Can’t she just take it easy once in a while?” the Doctor lamented from under his rain-drenched hair. “Is this the only way she’s ever going to be able to live? To survive?”

The Doctor caught a glimpse of the Humpty up in the distance, descending from the heavens as if the moon had decided to come down with the rain.

He cried out to the celestial object.

Not so much in prayer—more to demand of the heavens that it keep its side of the bargain, now that he had kept his.

≡

Boiled stared out through the shattered window with dark eyes. He turned off the uselessly rotating engine, and when its noise had died down he could hear the sound of the rainfall even more keenly. Suddenly the ringtone on his cell phone decided to add to the din.

–Boiled? Are you there? Have you done it?

It was Shell. He had been calling incessantly throughout the whole car chase.

“They escaped. Further pursuit is impossible at this point.”

–You haven’t done it, then?

“They’re worthy opponents. I’d advise you to consult your lawyers to prepare for the next stage.”

–What’s that? “Worthy opponents”? You sound almost as if you’re enjoying yourself!

“Enjoying myself…” Boiled frowned. Shell then went on to hurl a barrage of abuse at him, to which Boiled listened silently.

“What did they get away with?” Boiled asked quietly, when Shell’s tirade had finally subsided.

Shell went silent. Then he started muttering in a tone completely different from his previous one.

–“What,” you ask? How can I possibly explain that… I’ve long since forgotten myself.

With that, Shell terminated the call.

Phone still in his hand, Boiled called for a tow truck and a replacement vehicle. He then got out of the car and looked up to the sky with his steely eyes.

“Rune-Balot.”

He spoke the name out loud, as if he had just heard it for the very first time.

04

“She has a terrible fever. It seems that the fibers have started developing abnormally quickly, and this is affecting her own metabolic system.”

The Doctor hadn’t wasted a second. The instant they’d clambered aboard the Humpty Dumpty, he’d laid Balot flat out on a table, disinfected his own hands in the dining room, then prepared his equipment. Medical apparatuses, bundles of towels, his computer, his spectacle-monitor, biorhythmic diagnostics—and Oeufcoque.

“We’ll take preventative measures immediately. Wrap her up, Oeufcoque. Just like when we first saved her.”

“Got it.”

The Doctor rushed to clear the chairs out from under the table and made some space beside Balot on the table.

Oeufcoque jumped down onto the cleared space, turning with a squelch as he did so.

The Doctor nimbly took a pair of scissors in his hand and asked, “Did she like these much?”

“Like what?”

“These clothes!”

“I think so.”

“Well, looks like you’ll have to make her another set.” The Doctor had already cut the dress open from the hem at Balot’s ankles up to her chest.

With the utmost care, the Doctor went on to cut the dress off her at the shoulders, and then he cut the waistband on her underwear. Balot’s chest swelled up instantly, and a heavy breath escaped her lips. Those lips were now trembling along with her arms and legs, and all were covered in silvery fibrous threads.

The Doctor took a towel in his hands and poured a liberal helping of antiseptic onto it before patting Balot’s body down gently, as if he were treating a burn victim, peeling off the rest of her clothes as he went along.

“Excellent. Her skin isn’t sticking to her clothing. No signs of peeling or hemostasis either. She really is developing most impressively. I wonder if some of the fibers have moved into her blood cells and are absorbing all the iron there…”

Before long, the towel that the Doctor used to wipe Balot’s body was covered in silvery powder. He discarded the towel on the floor and prepared the next one. He used this to wipe down Balot’s brow, the back of her neck, her armpits, and all the major joints. Finally, he cried out in joy, like a prospector finding gold.

“Wonderful! She started perspiring again! There I was worried that she was just turning into a lump of metal!”

All the while, Oeufcoque had finished turning. He was now an all-purpose medical pod, the pinnacle of human technological and engineering prowess. Turning into a gun was child’s play compared to this. The Doctor lifted Balot up off the table with surprising strength—the situation required it, so he just did it unblinkingly—and placed her gently into the pod.

“The preventative measure that the girl needs most of all right now is to eliminate excess stimuli. Wrap her up in a hermetic seal.”

The pod responded immediately to the Doctor’s instructions and started filling up with white bubbles to envelop Balot’s body.

The Doctor quickly double-checked that Balot’s airway was connected to the respirator and covered her ear holes and eyelids with a protective gel before fixing Balot into position. The bubbles moved to cover her completely.

“The fibers have started developing out of control, right, Doctor?”

“Not exactly, no—they’re developing just as the girl wants. The rate of development might seem abnormal to us, but as far as Balot’s body is concerned, everything’s going according to plan.” The Doctor wiped her right arm down and prepared her intravenous drip. “What we need to do now is make sure we have adequate preventative measures in place to keep things from getting out of hand. Help bring a semblance of normality back into the poor girl’s life. Show the aimlessly meandering runner that the goal is in sight. In order for us to do that, you’ll need to consider yourself attached at the hip to her.”

“Attached at the hip?”

“Stay inside the pod with her, I mean. She’ll feel so much better knowing that it’s you she’s inside, not just some machine. I’ll feel better too.” The Doctor fixed the intravenous solution to the wall of the pod.

Then, just at the point when all there was left to do was sit back and wait, Oeufcoque screamed out in panic, “Balot’s responsiveness is fading! What should I do? Doctor!”

“Just stop trying to make her respond,” the Doctor said, nonplussed. Oeufcoque was at a loss for words.

“Let’s just allow her to rest,” the Doctor continued more gently. “She’s survived so far, hasn’t she? Using her own strength?”

The Doctor tapped the pod lightly to provide reassurance—to Oeufcoque, not Balot.

“I’m just going to transfer the data from the chips we won onto another drive, then get some sleep myself. We’ve still got a long road ahead of us, after all. Our next task is to go through all the memories of a man—and a serial killer at that.” The Doctor looked at Balot as she slept inside the pod. “Let’s just pray that they hold the key to victory for the girl.”

Balot slept for nearly twenty hours solid, cocooned by the white bubbles, her lungs pushed onward by the respirator.

She didn’t dream. The time simply disappeared.

She remembered pulling the trigger on the gun, then found herself inside a pod.

When she awoke, Balot found that she felt absolutely fine. Indeed, the whole world seemed clearer to her than it had ever been.

It was a peaceful existence inside the Humpty—the very definition of tranquility, if you ignored the Doctor’s constant clatter as he processed the data and sent and received emails to and from the DA’s office.

It was in these serene surroundings that the pieces to the puzzle all started to fall into place for Balot.

She got a glimpse of the yolk of one man, rotten to the core.

≡

Balot stared up at the ceiling from her easy chair.

She felt as calm and composed as she had when she first woke up back at the original hideaway.

Her body was covered in a figure-hugging black outfit. Made by Oeufcoque. Virtually identical to the one she had worn for target practice. The only difference was that there were now a number of electronic terminals attached to her body, connected by a multitude of cords that spread out from the center of her body in all directions, winding their way back to machinery shoved into a cramped corner of the dining room.

“It’s not enough for us just to analyze Shell’s memories to prove what he did when,” the Doctor said over the clutter on the table. “In order for it to stand up in court as proof, we need to also replay his thoughts and emotions—we need to establish the process as much as the actual results of his actions. This is a mammoth undertaking, really, and would normally take the best part of half a year, but I’m sure you and Oeufcoque will be able to work it out in less than a day.”

At this point the Doctor took his eyes off the screen and looked at Balot. “Now, are you really all right with this?”

Balot slowly lifted her head up from its relaxed position on the easy chair and looked straight at the Doctor.

–I want to know the answer. Why me? As long as I can get just a little bit closer to the answer, I’ll be satisfied.

She snarced the electronic voice box built into her suit. The Doctor’s eyes turned to it—to him.

“Make sure you filter out any material that’s too inappropriate, right, Oeufcoque? Anything too shocking and we’ll end up in violation of the protection of minors law ourselves.”

“Balot’s plenty sensible and mature about this, Doc. She’s the one who got the chips, after all. If she wants to see what’s inside them, we shouldn’t keep it from her.”

The Doctor scratched his head when confronted with Oeufcoque’s intractable bluntness. “It’s just that we had a warning from the DA. He told us to make sure we take into consideration the reactions from the Women’s Institute and other educational charities…”

Still in her prone state, Balot shrugged her shoulders. Why should the WI or the children’s charities care now if she was exposed, secondhand, to sex and violence? They couldn’t have cared less when they were the ones exposing her to it firsthand.

“It’s precisely because the laws of the land designed to protect minors didn’t protect her that Balot’s here with us today, Doc.” Oeufcoque seemed as unconcerned as Balot by the wrath of the do-gooders. “Besides, this is what Mardock Scramble 09 was made for. Balot wants to know why she was killed. It’s what she needs to do in order to move on and live again. No one trying to obstruct that has any claim on us—this is firmly outside their jurisdiction.”

The Doctor shrugged. It wasn’t as though he actually cared about the DA’s request, anyway.

–Don’t worry. I’ll be all right, ’cause Oeufcoque will be with me the whole time.

Balot smiled, and the Doctor couldn’t help but smile back. “So, even little half-baked Oeufcoque ends up getting cooked in an instant under the spell of the girl.”

“I’m just trying to do the right thing, based on what we know about her abilities and her feelings.”

“No need to go all red—I’m only teasing you! Are you blushing, my wishy-washy little friend?” the Doctor interrupted Oeufcoque, who was about to come to a spluttering halt anyway, and then turned toward the monitor. “Now, let’s break some eggs. All set?”

A piece of machinery in the dining room that looked like a large refrigerator started grinding away.

It was a machine that the Doctor and Oeufcoque had built together, designed specifically for the purpose of extracting Shell’s memories from the four chips. The idea was that Oeufcoque digested the raw data, processed it, and fed it to Balot, who physicalized the data into a form that could be recorded by the machine.

Balot snuggled deep into her easy chair and closed her eyes.

She experienced a different feeling from the time when she’d fixed her fake ID at the café with Oeufcoque, and one also distinct from her swim through the pool of information back at Paradise.

Her task now was to relive, as much as was possible, the life of another human being, selecting only the most pertinent pieces of information.

The first thing she heard was a voice. A low speaking voice. The sound swelled, dissonant and echoing all around her head, until it finally burst deep inside her, leaving only silence in its wake.

Balot’s ears pricked up, and she realized that she was somewhere she had never seen before.

A second later, she realized that she was standing there.

She was walking toward someplace. She seemed to be in the pleasure quarter of Mardock City. She came across a girl she had never seen before. A blonde, fourteen or fifteen.

The girl said something. Balot said something back to the girl.

For a moment a Blue Diamond sparkled inside the girl’s breast. An image of the rings on the right hand. The index finger on the right hand swelled up, and Balot saw playing cards and cars and drinks.

What number was this girl? Was she Shell’s first? Memories flooded her head, and Balot realized that the girl in front of her was indeed one that Shell had bought. At that same moment the girl started speaking. Balot couldn’t make out what the girl was saying; there was too much noise, too many other voices. Eventually the distractions subsided, and Balot could discern a number of phrases, snatches of conversation.

“I don’t want to go back to my father’s house,” the blonde girl said. Her voice was urgent. Balot felt overwhelmed by empathy.

“Please, don’t make me go back to my father.”

“Of course not. I’ll protect you, my little one. I’ll take you to a safe place. You’re beautiful. And you’re about to become even more beautiful.” A surge of empathy welled up inside him. Suppressed, over and over, many times. A crystal. The luster of a Blue Diamond. Then a great loss befalls both, all turns to dust. The processing commences.

The memory faded, and the jewel replaced it. The inevitable ritual that accompanied the death of memory.

The urge always appeared after a similar event—it was triggered by something. The death of a girl, murder dressed as suicide. Why me? The answer was sinking into the depths. A flashback that was doomed to wander through eternity, unknown and unknowable by anybody.

–Balot, stay conscious. This is all virtual reality.

Balot nodded in her own mind and started to strip the first memory of all excess information, peeling away the fat. She realized that more and more information was welling up in its place. Memories of sounds, light, pain. Memories of anger, pleasure, conversations. These emotions cut across the scene and the motives and intentions of the feeler started to form distinct, tangible shapes.

“Excellent! We’re starting to establish concrete proof of Shell’s emotional state…”

It was the Doctor, speaking from somewhere. It was the last thing Balot heard from the real world. Instead, fragments of information that had been submerged in the morass of the dark abyss were now bubbling up and assaulting all of Balot’s senses, penetrating through her skin.

–You need to organize all this information into some kind of system, Balot. At the moment, none of it makes sense. Return to the starting place and try again.

Suddenly the cityscape of Mardock City unfolded before her eyes again. First office blocks at noon, then the dark shantytowns of the slums, then a casino kiosk, a place to hold business transactions with persons unknown.

Memories of the sweet rush of success that accompanied the first ride in the AirCar. A number of girls were plucked from the pool of memory and held in front of her, appearing one by one in front of her eyes.

The girls were standing on a bridge, silent, eyes closed. Wind blowing in from the sea. The shadow underfoot crept and then rushed in, and night fell. Eventually each of the memories fell into place, and the girls opened their eyes.

The girls all had Blue Diamonds for eyes. Balot shrieked in surprise.

One of the girls started walking backward across the bridge, as if she were in a movie and somebody had pressed the rewind button.

Balot followed after her. When she arrived at the bridge she saw the bright lights of the city on the other side. A casino shone out like a beacon of light, and all around it tall buildings, houses, garages, all engraved with the symbol of OctoberCorp.

A new image floated up: brain surgery. A young boy on the operating table. The girl that Balot had been chasing was now walking around the table in circles. The girl’s mouth popped open and from it spewed forth the grating sound of a saw against a skull bone. Something was removed, something was transplanted in its place. Of course, the chip inside the brain was also firmly engraved with the ubiquitous OctoberCorp symbol. The reason I chose this casino to hold my Shows? Doesn’t a salmon return upstream in order to spawn?

“There’s nowhere I want to return home to,” said the girl, over the sound of the cranial saw. “But I wish I had someplace that I wanted to return home to.”

“Leave it to me. Come home with me.”

Then the girl died of an overdose.

That’s a lie, cried the world. A lethal dose of drugs would have been wasted on her. Death by narcotic misadventure? Merely a pretext, a facade for the public. He had just strangled her as she slept. This was the last time he would strangle anyone to death. Too much hassle, too much to tidy up afterwards. His headaches just got worse and worse.

Stress. He needed something that gave him absolute, total euphoria. Heroic Pills were perfect.

You walk the path of unhappiness. That’s right. A vision of a large man. Something bad will happen all around you before too long. Trouble. That’s what the man said. If Mardock Scramble 09 is called, I’ll have far greater jurisdiction than any public organization. The ultimate bodyguard.

–Boiled must have known that the Doctor and I were on Shell’s tail. That’s why he arranged to be in Shell’s employ just before the case started. These memories are from around that time…

Psychelaundering. In order to understand my business practices, you have to understand me first. Look at these Blue Diamonds. They’re my business credentials. Seven in total. Apparently, six lives have been forfeited so far. I tried to help the girls. I tried to save them. I want to know why I’m so frightened all the time.

“Why am I so frightened?”

–Balot, stay focused on your own consciousness! You’re not actually experiencing Shell’s feelings yourself!

I killed one with a gun, but that wasn’t very satisfying. It left a bad taste in my mouth. Guns are no good. I’ll have to find another method. Memories—even when they’re gone, they still affect my mind. I need to find a way to kill her while keeping my distance. And also be able to recover her remains safely. I’ll trigger an explosion.

I’ll use the insurance on my AirCar. Pin the blame on the girl. Make out that it was her own fault.

“Never doubt. It’s the road to ruin.”

–No, Balot. Those are your own memories. Let’s try and work through this chronologically. Begin once more.

The third girl was an accident. So called. The brakes were tampered with.

“A moving car is no good. It confuses my memory. Memories—even when they’re gone, they still affect my mind.”

He’d fixed the brakes of the car, but as a result he’d been forced to look at the spectacle of her corpse, hideously deformed. She’d been traveling at 120 kilometers an hour. It would have been different had she just turned straight into ash.

Memories disappeared, but it was always a hassle arranging permits for cremations. Burial was far more common in this city, after all.

“I’ve thought of all sorts of ways to launder money.”

I knew all about it. There were voices—two girls. A surge of empathy welled up inside him.

“Don’t make me see my father again, please. I’ll do anything you want, just don’t force me to see him again.”

“Don’t you worry, my little one. I’ll look after you. I know all about it. How much you’ve suffered.”

Stress. It’s what destroys my memories. So why not do it thoroughly? I know how. I’m going to use my stress to obliterate all traces of my memories of you. Everything’s bright red. Stabbing her to death—stupid even by my own standards. Blood everywhere. The cleanup afterward—I want the Blue Diamond. Its sparkle makes everything clean, washes everything away. I must have flipped out. I killed her before I even knew what I was doing.

The memory breakdown happened right after that. Just at the time I’d failed in an attempt to launder money, but my stress was alleviated and everything was all right again. Business was booming, and my stock was rising. The secret of my success.

Having said that, it’s not as if I even remember everything that happened back then.

“In order to understand my business practices, you need to understand me first.”

–We need to establish whether that memory is a real one. Shell could have been watching a movie or something. We need to know for sure whether it’s actually Shell…

The first one I killed? To me, each girl is always the first one I killed. My memories disappear, after all.

Nobody knows, and nobody will ever know. My memories will vanish entirely. I know how to clean myself up. Maybe they’ll trust me to clean their money up too.

A surge of empathy welled up inside him. The intricate fragments of memories swirled around like cards at a gaming table.

–Your sense of time is being affected, Balot. It’s already been seven whole hours since we started this operation.

The first one he killed? The memories—no, the trace remnants, the vestiges of memory—were somehow different with this one. Because she was the first, the original?

When, exactly? It all kicked off after he’d entered the casino. He’d started to realize his talent at cards. I’d like you to come and watch me at the Show. I know there are years between us, but we’re still a proper couple, real lovers. Even if I lost all my other memories, I’d still like to remember you. I could forget everything else, but not your face. Please.

The first one I killed was different, I think. I really meant it with her.

–Your body won’t hold out much longer, Balot! It’s been over ten hours now! Your stamina—

“There’s something I want to tell you, and I want you to listen, Shell.”

That’s what the girl said. A surge of empathy welled up inside him. I won’t forget you. It’s my job to make dirty things clean again. My memories disappear. Maybe they’ll trust me to clean their money up too.

“I don’t want to lie to you. I want you to know the truth.”

If they trust me to clean up their money, it means that they trust me. Trust me!

This is where it begins, my Mardock, my stairway to heaven. I’m going to make it clean. I’m going to make everything clean. Like a blue diamond.

“I was raped by my father.”

–Balot, stay calm!

A surge of empathy welled up inside him. He was shocked. And yet his love for the girl remained the same. He loved the girl. But then there was the stress. Flashbacks.

“I’d rather go to jail than return there. Flashbacks.”

–That’s you speaking there, Balot! Doctor, we have to stop this. Doctor! Damn, Balot’s snarc is much stronger than I’d ever imagined—

Flashbacks. Memories of sounds, light, pain. Memories of anger, pleasure, conversations. These emotions cut across the scene, gradually coming back to life, and the motives and intentions of the feeler started to form distinct, tangible shapes.

“I’m going to make it all clean. Everything that is dirty, I’m going to clean.”

No. It wasn’t like that. I didn’t kill her. Not the first girl. She was already dead. Why? I’m going to make you clean. I’m going to clean you up. The whole world weeps for you. My whole world weeps for you.

Balot’s eyes overflowed with tears.

“A Blue Diamond. That’s the way to do it.”

Shell’s love was not enough. The girl died of despair. The girl had looked to Shell for salvation, she had wanted real love, but in the end she died in a state of delirium. A pathetic death. Shell was plunged into a despair of his own. Despairing at the girl’s death. Despairing at the reason behind the girl’s death.

The first one that Shell killed wasn’t the girl. It was the person who had hurt the girl so, driven her to suicidal despair. The girl’s father.

“The first one I killed—”

–We’re past the point of no return now. We’ll just have to guide Balot through to the bitter end.

The girl made Shell remember all the despair that he had once forgotten. A surge of empathy welled up inside him. “Don’t you worry, my little one. I’ll look after you. I know all about it. How much you’ve suffered.”

Stress. It’s what destroys my memories.

No, that’s wrong. The first one that Shell killed wasn’t the girl’s father.

Suddenly Balot was assaulted by flashbacks. They were inside the vast emptiness of Shell’s lost memories. Something crying out even now from the darkness.

“Why me? ”

The despair that Shell should have forgotten all about was the sparkle in the facets of the Blue Diamonds. They scintillated, radiant.

There was a hubbub all around. Balot suddenly realized where she was—at a Show, watching Shell under the spotlight.

At first Balot thought she had come back to the beginning of his memories, but then she realized that she was holding his rings in both her hands. All with Blue Diamonds set in platinum. This was Balot’s job—to look after Shell’s jewelry. One of her jobs.

One of the diamonds is conspicuous, brighter than the rest, and the man calls this one Fat Mama, because, as he says, “I called in a favor from an acquaintance who works in processing to have my dead mother’s ashes turned into a diamond.”

–We’ve reached it! Finally, we’re at the source of Shell’s trauma!

That’s right. The first one Shell killed. Shell’s own mother.

A surge of empathy welled up inside him.

The despair of the girl that Shell had loved was scattered around the world. The girl understood why Shell felt such empathy with her pain. She understood why Shell had accepted her for who she was.

Shell also understood what the girl had understood. It was a vicious circle. Empathy begat empathy. The girl couldn’t cope with it. It was the very thing she had run away from—

“Flashbacks—”

In the end, the girl realized that she was right back where she started. In the same place she had run away from—

–Why me?

Balot was frozen still, the answer finally staring her in the face.

Here was the inappropriate material that the Doctor had warned about. Image after image exploded into Balot’s mind.

–Balot, don’t respond to any of these! They have nothing at all to do with your own past…

This was it. Inside the rotten core of Shell’s memory—that pustulent, scabrous yolk—he was forced to have sexual intercourse with his own mother. It started around the time Shell hit puberty and carried on right up to the time just before he turned twenty, when, finally, unable to bear it any longer, Shell fixed the brakes in his mother’s car so that she would die and it would look like an accident and he would finally be free of her.

This was the reason Shell felt his deep surge of empathy toward all the girls he had ever killed.

It was the despair of the first girl that he had ever loved with all his heart.

This was the plain and simple answer to Balot’s question.

The answer to Why me?

≡

Balot imagined that she had screamed out loud.

In fact, her mouth had been clamped tightly shut, and all she had done was sit bolt upright and open her eyes wide.

When she came to her senses, she noticed the Doctor looking over at her, bleary eyed.

“Twenty-three hours…that’s how much time has passed since you first lay down there,” the Doctor said weakly. Bags had formed under his eyes. Balot imagined she probably had similar shadows underneath her own eyes. Then Balot checked that she had heard what she had just heard for herself, and stared at the Doctor as if she were looking to him for confirmation. Suddenly she was assaulted by a terrible chill. She felt like she was about to be sucked into the corrupted whirls of memories once again.

“Focus on your breathing, Balot. One step at a time, shallow breaths. Easy does it…” Oeufcoque said. But Balot’s mouth, clamped tightly shut as it was, showed no sign of wanting to open. Her jaws were locked tightly together, and she displayed the classic symptoms of heavy shock.

Balot shifted her body. She leaned forward in her easy chair and opened her mouth.

Before she had time to stop herself, to even realize what was going on, she plastered the floor with the contents of her stomach.

Her throat might have lost the power of speech, but just when she wanted it the least she found it was perfectly capable of making a series of unearthly retching sounds.

Sour liquid filled her nostrils and mouth, and the pain and discomfort caused tears to well up in her eyes.

The Doctor jumped up to comfort her, putting one hand on her back and thrusting out a towel with the other.

–I’m so sorry.

Balot just about managed to vocalize the words before grabbing the towel and burying her face in it. She was crying silently now. Everything was so unpleasant, so frustrating, so sad.

–I’ve made the floor all dirty…

The moment she said the words the corrupted memories started coming back to her again, triggered by the word dirty. I’m going to make you clean. That’s my job. Into a Blue Diamond. That’s the answer. I’m going to make you clean. Clean you up.

“Try not to panic. You’ll settle down soon enough. You’re just a bit frazzled from all your labors,” said the Doctor’s voice, nearby. Suddenly, she realized that something was being injected into her arm. “Tranquilizers and sleeping pills. You’ll be asleep in no time. You’ve done well, really well. Take it easy now. You won’t have any more nightmares. Oeufcoque will be here right next to you. Won’t you, Oeufcoque?”

Oeufcoque was wrapped around her tightly as her bodysuit, and he said something in response.

Right here—or something like that. As Balot’s awareness grew dimmer, she thought she saw the face of the girl who was killed by despair. She wondered what it was exactly that girl had wanted from Shell.

Probably the same as me, Balot thought. The same sort of answer as the one I wanted. A simple answer. Why me? Because I love you. The girl had probably thought all that mattered was to be loved. And, as a result, she ended up burnt out.

Balot slowly closed her eyes. She felt all her sorrows dissipate. The other person’s memories were no more—they had disappeared, silently—and Balot began to regain her confidence and started to believe for certain that she was now the only one.

Balot felt her whole body aching for the being that now wrapped her up in a warm cocoon, and she fell asleep.

≡

When Balot woke again, she was a little surprised to find herself in bed wearing pajamas. She sensed that her pajama top was connected to her pants, and then realized that they were in fact Oeufcoque. There was an intravenous drip in her arm. Careful not to dislodge the tubing, Balot hugged her pajamas tightly, wrapping her arms around her knees. She stayed like that for a while, not thinking, just crying.

Oeufcoque stayed with her, silently keeping her company.

When finally she got out of bed and headed into the dining room, she found that the various contraptions had all been tidied away.

The Doctor had just finished sending his latest email to the DA, and he spun around to greet Balot with the words, “We have a date for the trial.”

And so it came to pass that, one week after she had obtained the chips from the casino, Balot found herself standing in front of the Broilerhouse again.

In order to climb her own stairway to heaven. The symbol of this city. Mardock.