Blackfish City(56)

“What the hell is the meaning of this?” his grandfather hissed, seizing Barron by the arm. The pods were soundproof but miked, and he could hear them louder than life through the speakers in the walls.

“What you said. A song-and-dance routine. You don’t remember me, Podlovsky?”

Fill watched his grandfather’s eyes widen. No one had called him by his old name since he’d left New York City. He let go of Barron’s sleeve.

“Of course you don’t. I was beneath notice. You wouldn’t have bothered to note the difference between my face and the faces of the thousands of other tenant leaders you were contracted to eliminate.”

“I never eliminated anyone. It wasn’t like that.” But the old man did not sound convinced. Fill was shocked at how swiftly they had swapped roles. Gone was the timid decrepit creature halfway to senility; gone, too, was the terrifying titan of industry. Of course both personas had been an act. Of course his grandfather had been a scared guilty man trying to sound brave his whole life; of course Barron had been a vengeful monster buoyed up by rage and playing the part of a dotty old queen so as to execute a devastating retaliation for hurts a half century old.

How long had Barron been watching him, planning, scheming, putting the pieces together, learning what he loved, how to get Fill to trust him? Or had fate dropped him in Barron’s lap one day and reawakened a coldblooded urge for revenge that had lain dormant for decades?

“Eliminate, ugh, what an ugly word. No, you’d never do something so crass. So criminal. You’d manipulate others into doing those things. You’d sit back, and watch, and let your clients reap the benefits.”

Grandfather took out his screen, tapped at it, trying to call for help. Nothing, of course. Pods were easy to seal off from outside signals. That was the whole point. Rich people always needed a way to escape. A place they could go and not be bothered, and not bother anyone else. Grandfather threw his useless screen at Barron, who deflected it with one arm. And then stomped on it.

Fill didn’t bother to take out his.

“Fine,” his grandfather said. “Kill me. Do what you came here to do. My conscience is clear. I did what I did for the sake of my family. My conscience is clear. But will yours be?”

“I have no intention of killing you,” Barron said. And turned his head, slowly, from grandfather to grandson.

“No,” the senior Mr. Podlove whispered. Here, his resignation broke. His unshakeable dignity crumbled. He surged forward like a crazy man, arms swinging, desperate—and was promptly struck in the gut by a club neither he nor Fill had seen Barron produce. While Podlove was doubled over, Barron swung it sideways, striking him in the face, knocking him to the ground.

Fill cried out at the sight of his grandfather’s blood. But for his own fate, he felt little.

“I’m the one you hate,” Podlove said from the floor. “Hurt me instead. Kill me.”

“I am hurting you. Death isn’t a good enough punishment. To survive—to be haunted—to have to live with the loss of the people you couldn’t save—that is a fitting sentence.”

Grandfather crawled to the door of his pod. Pressed his bloody palm to the polyglass. “Fill, I’m . . .”

Five narrow feet separated them. But the gulf was unbridgeable.

Fill pounded on the door, but only once. He felt no fight inside. No desperate will to survive. No drive to drop to his knees and beg.

“One final piece is missing,” Barron said. Lights came on in the air outside the pods. Cam drones. “No one was watching when men like you made us disappear. An inconvenience for the wealthy, wiped clean. So that you could build this cushy life for yourself. So that you could go on to hurt others, the way your firm did. In so many places. With so many communities. Some of us stopped to film, but nobody cared to see. The world should see this.”

The pods parted. Fill’s rose up into the air. Three of the drones rose with it. Three of them remained to record the other one.

“What are you doing?” his grandfather said, and Fill could hear him just as clearly as when the pods had been practically docked.

Fill wondered himself, but only in the most academic of ways. Shivers shook through him. The breaks, intervening. Would Barron lower the pod into the sea, open the doors, drown him? Would he raise him up as far as the strut would allow, thirty stories perhaps, and then let it fall?

“Fill!” his grandfather screamed.

“It’s okay,” Fill said. “I am okay—”

The old man kept saying his name. He couldn’t hear him. The sound only went one way.

Proximity alarms sounded. Fill’s pod shuddered, momentarily surrendering to the city’s emergency override commands, but then kept moving. Nothing so impressive there—software to disconnect from the emergency infrastructure was easy to find. The pod continued on its upward swing.

Into what, Fill now saw. Four flames kindled in the wall of a building in front of him, inside a black circle wider in circumference than the pod he was in. Arm Three’s methane ventilation shaft. The evening’s scheduled flare.

Fill was there. He was in New York City. He was watching a circle of cops beat a boy to death. He was watching a mother drag her child from a burning building.

He was watching cherry blossoms shiver in Brooklyn rain.

He was drinking expensive scotch in a hall bigger than any he’d ever imagined.