All Our Wrong Todays(80)
“I’m very sorry to hear you say that,” he says.
“Even if I thought it would fix anything, which I don’t, I can’t give up my family. My mom and dad and sister. And Penny. I can’t trade Penny for anybody. I won’t.”
“I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” Lionel says. “But please keep in mind that you’re the one who is making this about four people out of seven billion.”
He touches his watch and, with a fluid motion, taps the air in my direction. And just like that it all falls apart.
120
A flat square hovers in front of me, showing a grainy green image of Penny asleep in her bed. Standing in the room are two women, their faces covered with leather balaclavas and chunky night-vision goggles. They hold axes, like for chopping wood.
A third masked woman sets the video camera on the dresser. She carries some sort of canister and I see her fumble with the spigot while the other two watch Penny sleep, silent, gripping their axes.
I don’t have a plan, just abject panic, so I charge at Lionel, but I don’t get near him. He makes another gesture in the air and suddenly I’m pressed against the cold concrete floor. I can’t move. I can barely breathe.
“Localized gravity field,” Lionel says. “Similar to the system in my leg braces. I walk in three-quarters Earth gravity. What you’re feeling is quadruple Earth gravity. Don’t bother trying to move. At these gravitational levels, blood won’t flow properly to your muscles and brain. Even if you get some leverage, your ligaments can’t handle it. Your limbs will shear right off and that gets very messy.”
I try to talk but my tongue is a dumbbell in my mouth. All I manage is to drool.
The floating screen repositions itself into my field of view, down at floor level. Two more screens appear, also showing greenish shots of bedrooms, one of my parents asleep together, the other of Greta asleep alone. The cameras sit on stationary objects, three masked and goggled women next to each bed, two holding axes, one holding a canister, just like at Penny’s.
The intruder with the canister in Greta’s room turns the spigot and some sort of gas leaks out. I can tell because the cloud of molecules causes distortion in the night vision, so it sparkles like a pixie sprinkling magic dust on a sleeping child. Except these pixies wear gimp masks and carry lumberjack axes. The same thing happens in my parents’ room, glittery gas floating over their bed.
“It’s a tranquilizing agent,” Lionel says. “No cognitive damage at these doses but they won’t wake up until they’re here in Hong Kong.”
But something’s not going according to plan in Penny’s bedroom. The gas canister isn’t operating properly and the woman struggles to crank open the spigot. There’s no audio with the image, so I can’t hear what it is that wakes Penny.
The three intruders look at her in unison. Judging by her open mouth, it’s because she’s screaming. I feel a surge of pride as Penny lunges into action like a goddamn champion. She’s up and out of bed, grabs a lamp, and launches it at the intruders. But the lamp is plugged into the wall, so it rebounds back without hitting anyone. They flinch, though, and that gives Penny a second to hurl herself at the wall, her shoulder smacking into the light switch. If that was her actual plan and not dumb luck, it’s a good one because they’re wearing night-vision goggles and the abrupt burst of light blinds them. The greenish image tweaks into full color as Penny stares wide-eyed at the three crazily masked figures in her bedroom.
She makes the shocking, ballsy decision not to run, which I assure you is what I would do in this situation. Instead, she yanks the heavy-framed antique mirror off the wall and smashes it across the head of the closest axe-woman. She goes down in a spray of jagged silver as the other two pull off their goggles. The one with the canister fumbles with the spigot, trying to stick to the plan. The other axe-woman is between Penny and the door, but she’s caught behind the one Penny hit, who flails around with broken shards lacerating her skin.
The second axe-woman must assume Penny’s going to go for the door, so she responds slowly when instead Penny dives for the bedside table. She swings her axe. Penny ducks and the axe blade pierces the wall, snagging in the drywall, which is I guess why people generally don’t fight with axes.
While the axe-woman tries to yank her axe from the wall, Penny rears back and punches her in the stomach as hard as she can. The woman doubles over, retching as she throws up. She struggles to pull off the mask so she doesn’t choke on her own vomit.
The first axe-woman sheds the mirror frame, her skin raked bloody, and comes at Penny with her axe.
But Penny’s already pulled a pistol out of the bedside table drawer.
I’ve been in that drawer many times, fumbling around for condoms and once or twice borrowing a pair of her too-small socks, so I know there was never a gun in there. I guess until she met John.
Penny pulls the trigger. It’s hard to miss at such close range and the first axe-woman’s shoulder erupts in a flood of gore. She pitches forward, smacks her head on the sharp corner of the bedside table, and collapses at Penny’s feet, deadweight.
Even without sound, watching on the floating screen, it’s clear the gunfire changes the tenor of the room. Penny fires at the axe-woman who puked into her mask and her kneecap just kind of explodes. She drops like a marionette with its strings cut.