Wild & Steamy Read online

  The dull and steely elevator doors closed. There were only two buttons on the old metal panel—one button for the bottom of the tower, one button for the top. She punched the top one and straightened her safari jacket.

  She’d seen the most evil, the most twisted of villains transform into productive citizens after the disillusionists were done with them. That’s what the disillusionists did—they went around attacking and rebooting lawbreakers, causing deep and profound changes.

  The whole idea of disillusionment terrorized Midcity’s criminal class. Who wanted to turn over a new leaf? To suddenly be a wonderful person?

  Sophia did.

  The elevator jerked and began to rise.

  Sophia was so sick of herself. Thanks to her particular genetic mutation, she could erase the truth from people’s minds and replace it with whatever she pleased. She couldn’t erase further back than a day, but a day was enough. It was a kind of godlike power, really, and she abused it to its fullest possible extent. She could steal anything, from a stick of gum to the most important event in a person’s life. Since she’d been working for the Mayor, half the news stories in the Midcity Eagle were made up by her, even though witnesses would swear they saw what they saw. Because she’d revised their memories.

  Revising memories was a robbery of the most invasive kind, like stealing a part of their life, a part of who they’d become. The new memories she’d implant were cover-up lies at best. At their worst, they destroyed lives, and could set off murderous frenzies.

  Sophia knew other people whose genetic mutations gave them strange powers: there were telekinetics, dream invaders, telepaths, force fields guys, and more. (Highcaps, they were called, short for high capacity brain function.) But as a memory revisionist, Sophia trumped all other highcaps. She was rock, paper and scissors. People had no idea. And, if they did, she would erase their memories and put in something different.

  She couldn’t even say when she’d begun to hate herself; she’d lived with low-level self-loathing for a while. Lately it had gotten a lot worse. God! She’d crawl out of her own skin if she could.

  The Monk would disillusion her, make her stop. He had to.

  The elevator rose by slow lurches toward the Tanglemaster’s tower, some twenty stories up. Creak. It was corrugated metal, inside and out, designed more for freight than people. Not like anybody used it, except the Tanglemaster.

  She sighed and crossed her arms. The Tanglemaster was the only one who knew where the Monk lived—mastermind Packard told her so a couple months ago. It had started as a game, her trying to get Packard to reveal secrets about the mysterious Monk. She remembered how his eyes twinkled when she’d pressed him on it.

  Why do you want to know where the Monk is? Packard had asked.

  Because it’s a secret you won’t tell anybody else, she’d replied coolly.

  He’d laughed about her always getting her way, and he promised that meeting the Monk would be an unpleasant experience, though he seemed highly amused at the idea. Then again, everything amused powerful Packard.

  She’d replied that being told No was a very unpleasant experience for her, too.

  More amusement. Packard knew she was a memory revisionist—did he think she’d try to revise his memory? She’d never had the guts to try a revision on Packard. Luckily, she didn’t have to, because, for whatever reason, he’d revealed that only the Tanglemaster can find the Monk. If he feels like telling you, he’ll tell you. Even I have to go through the Tanglemaster to get to the Monk, Packard had said.

  The floors went by. Seventeen. Eighteen.

  Damn good thing she’d gotten this lead out of Packard early on—Packard was long gone now. He would never help her now.

  She planned to ask the Tanglemaster outright first. Where do I find the Monk? If he refused to tell her, she’d erase the whole interaction from the Tanglemaster’s mind and approach him again, with trickery. Then money. Then threats. You never get a second chance to make a first strike, her dad used to say when Sophia was a kid, holding her proudly on his lap. Unless you’ve got my kitten-tiger with you. That was Sophia—kitten-tiger. She’d been manipulating people’s memories for so long, it was like breathing.

  The tower elevator clanked to a halt.

  Kitten-tiger Sophia stepped out into a small, dark vestibule. The door to the Tanglemaster’s control room stood ahead of her. To the right, a little scratched-up window provided a view of the Tangle. Formerly known as the Sidway multi-turnpike, the Tangle was a hulking and misshapen rollercoaster-like traffic structure. Darkness had fallen now, and headlights and red brake lights swirled over it like ants.

  Ugh.

  This lead she’d gotten from Packard better be worth it—she avoided the Tangle at all costs, even if it meant going an hour out of her way. It was a bad sign that only the Tanglemaster knew how to find the Monk. It meant that the Monk probably lived down in the Tanglelands—three square miles of lawless wasteland down below the turnpikes, a kind of city-beneath-the-city, a mutant and misfit war zone that was worse than ever, thanks to the sleepwalking cannibals.

  Her brown high-heeled boots created a hollow ring on the corrugated metal floor. Some women liked ‘fuck me’ footwear, but Sophia went a step beyond, with Don’t fuck with me footwear—all the better to announce her around town. Sophia Sidway: efficient and trustworthy advisor to the powerful. A woman to be feared.

  She knocked.

  A voice from inside: “It’s open.”

  She stiffened. That voice. Was it him? No way.

  Louder now: “Door’s open.”

  Heat flooded her face. It was him. The one man she’d never wanted to face again, back in Midcity! She could still turn and leave, but she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Had to see. In a kind of trance, she turned the handle and pushed the door open.

  Robert’s back was to her; he seemed focused on a console of flashing lights and monitors, but she’d know that big set of shoulders anywhere. His trunk of a neck. He still kept his brown hair in a short, choppy cut, just like ten years ago. There were holes in the elbows of his big gray sweater. The thing needed patching. His jeans needed patching, too. Hiking boots all muddy.

  Robert Ferguson. The man she’d loved….and then violated and betrayed. Robert was the Tanglemaster?

  Sophia wondered suddenly if Packard had sent her to Robert as a perverse joke. Was it possible Packard, with his scary powers of insight, knew their history, knew how she’d betrayed Robert? She hoped not. Even Robert didn’t know. All Robert knew was that she’d abandoned him during his darkest days—coldly and inexplicably left him.

  Robert didn’t know that she’d caused those dark days. He didn’t even know she was a memory revisionist. That was the nature of her power as a memory revisionist. They never remembered how truly awful she was.

  They never remembered, but she did.

  “What?” Robert barked, not looking up.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Robert?”

  He spun around, surprise showing on his face. And then it was gone, replaced by a squint—part anger, part bewilderment. Hardness around his eyes and his cheekbones made him look less boyish than he once did. At first glance, a person might say Robert was a plain-looking man. He had a face that was strong and sturdy and well-built as anything he’d ever created; his particular mutation gave him the power to interact with buildings, changing their shape and extending force fields over them.

  Her family had always considered him to be dumb highcap muscle. Human scaffolding, the Sidway construction crew used to call him. But once you got to know Robert, you knew he was emotional and artistic, and that his face was full of feeling and nuance. You knew how his brown eyes danced when he got excited about an idea. You knew how that tiny gap between his front teeth made his rare smiles friendly. You knew the hurt in his gaze could seem bottomless. You knew he was beautiful.

  She wanted to turn and leave. But also, she wanted to place her warm palms over his smooth cheeks, to put her forehea
d to his forehead, her breast to his breast, just like she used to. She wanted to breathe in one moment of their old love—just one. She could live on a moment like that.

  “What do you want, Sophia?”

  She clenched and unclenched her empty hands. “I can’t believe you’re here.” She stepped forward. “I thought you’d left Midcity forever. After…” She motioned out the windows. The Tanglemaster tower was like an air traffic control tower, but the windows didn’t look out onto the sky; they looked down onto the insane interlace of highways that made up the Tangle, the most disastrous public works project in Midcity history.

  A decade ago, she’d manipulated Robert into staying around to work on it. Even with him as part of the crew, it was doomed. It had cost her father his life, brought down Sidway Construction. Her mother fled the country. Sophia had lost everybody she loved because of that turnpike. “After you, you know…”

  His gaze hardened. “Well here I am.”

  “Right.”

  “And I’m busy.”

  Having practically grown up with him, she knew all his modes, including this one—the hard guy. It never ran deep. But that was then.

  Her gut roiled. “I don’t get it,” she said. “You’re free. Don’t tell me you’ve been here in town working as the Tanglemaster all this time. I mean, what the hell? This is what you’re doing? This? Sitting in this stupid tower working traffic controls?”

  He gave her a hard look. “Word of advice. Don’t go into career counseling.”

  Her heart nearly flipped out of her chest as he turned back to his screens and lights. Why would he say that about career counseling? For a moment, she worried he knew what she’d done. What she was.

  No way.

  He despised her because she’d supposedly loved him, but as soon as things got hard, she took off. That’s how he would see it.

  In truth, she’d violated his mind, ruined his most cherished opportunities, trashed their trust, and then she took off.

  She’d heard mastermind Packard talk about how idealists and visionaries had grim and dark flip sides. And if they crashed down hard enough, they stayed down. Is that what happened with Robert? He’d been an artist, a visionary. She’d imagined him in a brilliant career somewhere. Why was he being the Tanglemaster? A robot could practically do this job.

  He flicked a few switches.

  With a sickening spread of shame, she realized that this was her fault. She’d reduced the man who’d loved her to this.

  She could have tracked him down afterwards and told him the truth; maybe it would have repaired some of the damage she’d done. But she didn’t have the guts to tell him. She was so weak, so selfish. Was she even capable of love?

  Seeing his face, it was painfully easy to remember the strong and direct way he used to gaze at her—the intensity of his gaze back then was diamond-hard, but the commitment of it made it vulnerable, as though he put every bit of his heart into the way he looked at her. His gaze used to feel like a challenge. That sounded silly but it’s what it felt like at the time, that his gaze contained a challenge to rise up to meet him, to offer him the ragged and reckless honesty that he offered to her. And she’d really tried to. For a while, she’d been a better person under that gaze. With Robert, she’d felt fully and completely seen. Fully and completely loved.

  Back then she would have rather had her soul ripped out of her than lose that gaze, to have Robert look at her the way he looked at other people. Wary. Shuttered.

  The way looked at her now.

  She had to find the Monk. He would stop her, punish her. Make everything right somehow, though she wasn’t sure how.

  Robert was typing into a keyboard. Monitors flashed through views of cars lined up on dark, snowy entrance ramps. So many people, so many cars. The Tangle was like its own little city, covering two square miles, they said, and reaching dozens of stories into the sky.

  What was Robert doing here? She’d imagined him somewhere glamorous, like Paris or Los Angeles.

  An awful thought came to her. “Fuck,” she said, slipping up next to him, butt on the edge of the table, which lined the entire length of the wall under huge windows. “Tell me you’re not holding the whole thing up.”

  “You need to go.” He flicked another switch. He still wouldn’t look at her. “I can’t have you in here, dude.”

  It stabbed her that he’d call her that. They used to call each other that as a joke. She moved sideways, coming almost between him and the console. “Tell me you’re not stabilizing that motherfucker with your force fields.”

  She stared at him. Waiting.

  No reply.

  “Let it crash,” she said. “It deserves to die.”

  “You wound me, Sophia. The Tangle is my greatest masterpiece ever.”

  “Fuck!” she said. “You are holding it up!”

  *** *** ***

  He lifted his chin, heart pumping wildly, and looked at her. Staring into her eyes had once been a compulsion, like staring into something vast—the Grand Canyon, or a star-glutted sky—and the harder you looked, the vaster and more impossibly glorious it seemed, and you had to keep looking, to somehow find a way to take it all in. A dangerous, foolish thing, staring into Sophia Sidway’s big brown eyes. She’d probably revised him the last time he looked at her like this, maybe even the last hundred times. He sometimes wondered how much of his late teens were even real. “You think I’m strong enough to hold up the entire Tangle?” he asked.

  “You could sure hold up part of it.”

  Warily, he watched her eyes. She thought he didn’t know what she’d done to him. “What do you want?”

  With a flicker of sadness she looked out the window. She looked the same as before, with some exceptions. Her brows seemed harder, more coiffed and perfect. So did her clothes. But that hair was the same bright red. “How unstable has it become?”

  “Ten seconds to tell me what you want, or I throw you out and bolt the door.” He said it in a low voice, so she would understand that he meant it. He did mean it…except for the hateful little part of him that still wanted her.

  She crossed her arms. “I need to see the Monk.”

  He smiled, startled. He ought not to react at all, but he had to do something with the shock. He turned her words over in his mind: I need to see the Monk.

  “Packard told me to ask you to take me to him,” she added.

  Robert struggled to keep his expression blank, wondering why Packard would reveal even that much. He squinted. “What? The Monk?”

  “Yeah, the Monk. The one and only. Mister I’m-such-a-dangerous-disillusionist-nobody-gets-to-meet-or-work-with-me guy. Except you and Packard apparently. I need to see him.” With a toss of her head she flicked her thick hair out of her eyes. “It’s cool. You don’t have to pretend they’re an urban myth—I know they’re not. I’m in on the whole psychological hit squad thing. Weaponizing their inner darkness and all that. Zinging criminals, rebooting them. I personally know all of the disillusionists. Well, except the Monk. But I’m practically one of the gang. I worked with them to bust the Dorks, did you know that? I was in on that.”

  Sophia went on to describe a stakeout of some sort; she still supplied too many details when she was up to something.

  She stopped. Crossed her arms. Had she realized what she was doing? “Just tell me where the Monk is and I won’t bug you anymore. I just need to go see him.” This in her tough-girl tone.

  “Nobody just goes and sees the Monk,” he said.

  “Do you think Packard would’ve told me to ask you if he didn’t want me contacting the Monk? If he didn’t want me getting this communication to the Monk?”

  “You’re telling me Packard has a communication for the Monk?”

  “Something like that,” she said.

  “I’ll get a message to the Monk.” Why was he talking to her? He loathed her. Hated her—in a strange, energizing way.

  “It can’t be like that. It has to be me,” she said.
/>   “Nobody sees the Monk except his victims.” Why did she want to see the Monk?

  She frowned. She’d always hated to be told No. “What is Packard going to say when he learns you’ve refused?”

  “I don’t give a crap.” He pulled away and moved to his computer.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Rush hour,” he said, typing a note into an open document. “I’m at work here.” He rested a palm on the cement desk, which was connected physically to the entire structure of the Tangle. The smooth plane between his palm and the flat desk came alive, and he felt through it, out into the concrete and rebar, the twists of road, snaking in on each other. He could feel the cars as a kind of force. He could feel the distress of the drivers. The insane pointlessness of it all. The Tangle was a part of him. Or more, he was a part of the Tangle. He was sunk so deep into it, so at home in it, he barely ever left the tower. He had a home in the Irish quarter, but he almost never slept there; he preferred to stay working on the Tangle.

  Everybody hated the Tangle, talked about the Tangle, wrote angry editorials about it, but nobody had ever recognized it for what it was. Nobody but Packard, anyway. Packard had understood it immediately, and he’d sought Robert out so that they could talk about it. Packard had even made Robert laugh about it. Packard was Robert’s number one fan. His only fan.

  “Why won’t you tell me where the Monk is?” She placed herself directly in front of him, between him and the console. “Is this about some vow you’ve taken?”

  Ah, yes, this was how she’d do it. Fish for the obstacle and figure out the way around it. Then she’d erase his memory of her visit, and come back at him, as if she were arriving anew. Lather, rinse, repeat.

  He slid his palm over the desk. It hurt that she was here—hurt with a biting and vicious kind of pain, like sinking frozen toes into a bath of steaming hot water. And you have to pull out your feet because the pain is too sharp, yet you long to put them back in, to feel the warmth. You just want it not to hurt.

  “The answer is no.”

  “Robert. This is an extreme situation,” she said.