“So, where are your enforcers?”
“Enforcers?”
“Thugs one and two.”
“I told Eirik and Bonn to leave. They’re hardly enforcers.” Sébastien takes a second bite of his apple and munches. Gammy watches their words, leaping from lips to lips. Koko rubs her temples.
“Damn, that quack of yours sure knows how to slip a girl a mickey. How long have I been out of it?”
“Only a few hours. Looks like you needed the rest.”
“The rest. Right, so now what?”
“What do you mean?”
“With us. Flynn and me. What now? Is this some kind of game or are we free to go?”
“If you want to, I suppose you could leave, but your friend Flynn is still recovering from his surgeries. Fantastic progress with Dr. Corella’s treatments no doubt, it’s more than likely he’s out of the IC tank already.”
“Is he conscious?”
“That I don’t know.”
Sébastien lobs a second pear from the bowl on the tray to Koko and she snatches it from the air. For someone just coming around from a sedative and muscle limiters, her speed is nothing short of amazing. With her eyes cemented on his, Koko smells the fruit and tears off a small, hesitant taste. She gobbles the rest of the pear in six quick bites and chucks the core into a corner.
“See? It’s good stuff. One hundred percent organic and grown right here. By the way, there’s a rubbish receptacle in the bathroom.”
Giving him and Gammy a short venomous look, Koko wraps the wool blanket and sheets around her waist and slowly gets off the bed. She shuffles to the window, unfastens a latch with one hand, and draws back the shutters. Slanted sunlight spills into the room.
“Where the hell are we?”
“As I said earlier, you’re at the Commonage.”
“No, pinhead,” Koko says. “I mean coordinates. Longitude and latitude. Prohibs and the coast, yeah, I know that, but how far are we from the northern borders?”
“Was that where you were heading?”
“That’s my business.”
“Well, in that case, let’s see. Give or take, the borders are close to nine hundred kilometers from here.”
“Terrific,” Koko declares bitterly. “What’re you dimwits doing out here in the middle of the prohibs?”
Sébastien thinks of his earlier discussion with Dr. Corella. “That may be a bit difficult to explain.”
“Try.”
“You could call it a personal investment. A social petri dish could be another way of putting it. Perhaps we should start with some basics. Tell me, do you have any idea who I am?”
Koko splutters, “How am I supposed to know who you are? Right now, you’re just some middle-aged a-hole holding me and Flynn captive almost a thousand kilometers from civilization.”
“No one is a captive here, Koko.”
“Says you.”
“And I’m making an effort to be gracious.” Sébastien looks behind him and gestures to the door. “See? The door is open, and the lock has been erased.”
Koko looks suspiciously at the open entry and sniffs.
“Look, man,” she says. “I’m not stupid. Us having a sub, I know how it all looks, but me and Flynn are survivors, nothing more. We just crashed here because of that huge fucking storm. I mean, who in their right mind would ever think about deliberately coming to a place like this?”
Sébastien takes a step, and Koko’s eyes switch to the food tray. While he has Gammy to protect him, Sébastien is suddenly thankful he made sure not to include anything that could be used as a possible weapon on the tray.
“Lots of people actually like it here you know,” he says.
“Oh, and are they hostages too?”
“Don’t be absurd. Saying you’re a hostage would mean we’re holding you for some kind of ransom.”
“But we’re unarmed for fuck’s sake.”
Sébastien smiles. “I’ll take that last opinion with a healthy grain of salt.”
“What?”
“You see, I had some of the people go out to your wrecked submarine a short time ago. They found your stash of weapons. They’ve been destroyed.”
Koko almost drops her blanket and sheets.
“
Destroyed?
”
A rocky growl slides up and down Gammy’s throat as the synthetic senses a significant tensional shift.
“Shhhh. Everything’s okay. Good girl.”
Gammy quiets.
“You had no goddamn right to do that!” Koko cries.
“Balanced against saving your lives their destruction seems trivial.”
Koko briefly looks at Gammy again. “So what about the credits in the backpacks, huh? The nuclear-biological-chemical suits? You went and destroyed them too?”
“Except for the scalpels in the first-aid kits, the credits and the rest of your things are in the backpacks outside the door.”
“They better be.”
“Hard currency means little to those within the Commonage. In any event, when the group found your supplies they also looked to see if there was a way to get your submarine back online. The hull was badly damaged and righting the vessel looked impossible. Some of the sub’s onboard systems, however, were still operational. A Trang Xi Class submersible—can you tell me why you disabled your GPS transponder?”
“Please tell me you didn’t re-engage it.”
“Briefly, but only to see if it was still functioning.”
“And?”
“It was.”
Koko hangs her head.
Sébastien tells Gammy to lie down on the floor, and after the animal gets into position, he leans down and scratches one of her blue-black ears.
“From your reaction I take it that was a bad move on our part. I’m ready to listen to your tale if it’s a colorful one.”
Koko lifts her head. “Are you out of your mind? What, just because you’re all friendly with me now and offering me food, you think for one second I’m going to just let down my guard? Hell, I can’t believe you destroyed my weapons. I need those.
We
need those. What gives you the right?”
“We mean you no harm, Koko. How about a little trust?”
“Trust? Trust can suck it.”
“Goodness, are you always this tetchy?”
“When people destroy my property, hell yes I’m tetchy.”
Sébastien sits down on the edge of the desk and sighs.
“Okay, look. Maybe if you know a little bit more about this place you won’t feel so threatened. Just now I hardly had a chance to elaborate, but up until recently I was what you might call a man of very significant means.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes. A few years ago I leveraged the last of my financial muscle to acquire a great swathe of this area and had the entire coastal parcel reclassified. You’re now, in effect, within a privately owned Special Economic Zone.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a locale exempt from governmental, political, and multinational interference of any kind as outlined under the Baxter Worldwide Trade Treaty of 2476. Given the less than accurate ecocide assessments, nobody really cared to take the initiative here seriously, and since then we’ve been left alone to do as we see fit. Outwardly I know it may look peculiar, but our efforts here are ingeniously sound given the state of the world.” Sébastien takes another bite of his apple and cheeks the flesh. “You’re sure my face doesn’t ring a bell?”
“Nope.”
“How about PIWI? Pharma Impetus Worldwide Industries?”
Koko’s eyebrows arch. “You mean the drug syndicate out of—”
“Northern Europe? Yes.”
“Holy, hot buckets of snake whiz, that’s
yours
?”
“No such luck,” Sébastien replies. “I was merely one of PIWI’s lead chemists. I helped synthesize an alkaloid that enhanced the company’s consumer drug efforts. In on the fledgling ground-floor days as they say, back when PIWI was a start-up. The truth is, PIWI was insolvent and about to go under when I bumbled into my little breakthrough, and now the alkaloid is used globally in thousands of products. Domestic relaxers, anti-tumor agents, and the newer climate adaptive applications for deep space travel. Not to toot my own Mensa horn, but the Nobel committee was fairly impressed. True, Stockholm was never the same after the third wave of the Prion-22 virus, but pandemic contagions notwithstanding after securing the Nobel, PIWI paid me handsomely in market credit options before the alkaloid patent expired.”
Sébastien sets his apple down and selects a wedge of cheese from the tray. He breaks off a tiny piece between his fingers.
“I was even a minor celebrity for a spell. Celebrated as one of the scientific golden boys of the new age, you know? Of course, I was much younger then and grew full of myself.”
“You don’t say.”
A nibble of cheese. “Mmhm. The trappings of the credit-soaked playboy. I squandered great messy chunks of my fortune, but after a while one does tend to hit rock bottom with all that wealth without conscience hoopla. Thankfully when Dr. Corella and I met our combined ambitions were mutual.” Sébastien spreads an arm in a wide arc. “Hence, the Commonage.”
Koko shakes her head. “Man, what a waste. If I’d been rolling in that kind of bank I would’ve been smarter about keeping it. Built me a place near some action at least. Hell, maybe even invest in a sports franchise.”
“Life is a terminal arrangement, Koko. Our motivations here are more proactive.”
“Congratulations. You and Doctor Knockout operate a backwater fiefdom in the middle of fuck-knows-where.”
Sébastien raises a finger. “Not a fiefdom, a community. A plausible kinship of like-minded souls cooperating peacefully under a shared and common authority.”
“Being you and the good doctor, of course.”
“I said shared and common, not absolute. The people here, they consult us just as much as we consult them… within reason.”
“And they’re here voluntarily?” Koko asks.
“All here were recruited for reasons far too extraneous to go into, but yes. The common denominator with all of them is that each sensed some equivocal deficiency in their lives.”
“Welcome to the goddamn club,” Koko says. “So, is it fair to say your pal Dr. Corella is rolling in the big PIWI bucks too?”
“No, but his contributions are different. We do, however, see eye to eye.”
“Sounds romantic.”
“It’s not that type of partnership,” Sébastien says.
Koko drifts from the window and looks around with disgust.
“So, you wasted all your money and built a settlement out in the prohib boonies. Great. Just great. I’m going to assume you’ve got outside contact.”
“Oh, we do, but it’s limited.”
“Limited in what way?”
“Let’s leave that for later.”
Koko huffs. “So, if this Commonage joint is a settlement, where are your defenses? I may have been out of it before, Sébastien, but I’ve been vigilant. You’re in the prohibs. You’ve got to have something.”
“There’s never been a need for defenses so there are none.”
It’s as though someone spilled a tall glass of ice water on Koko’s retort gauge, burnt her toast, and dropped a sack of dead cats in her mental sink. Ten slow seconds later, she blinks once and then responds.
“None at all?”
“The specifics are much too intricate to get into now, but as a Special Economic Zone, let’s just say nothing ever really bothers us here.”
“But you’ve got walls.”
“The walls were here previously. Two centuries ago when the republic tanked, this place was crudely designed to be a small township reservoir. Excellent bones. We customized the outer construction to fit our needs and had the compound filled in with enriched, contaminate-resistant—”
Koko holds up a hand. “You know what? Stop. Just stop because the colossal shit I’m not giving right now might start filling this room. I want out of here as soon as possible, understand? The next available transport when Flynn is stable.”
Sébastien gets up from the desk. “That may take some time to arrange, but very well.” He moves for the open door. “You know, it’s been said that people are quick to judge others in order not to be judged themselves. Maybe you should think about that some. Come, Gammy.”
Dutifully, Gammy pushes up and after giving Koko a quick sniff she trails after her master. When the two reach the open door Koko whistles and, in sync, Gammy and Sébastien turn.
“Yes?” Sébastien asks.
“Earlier when your guys brought us back from the sub, besides Flynn we were hauling along a dead body. Some kid.”
Sébastien looks down at Gammy. Patting her head, he then carefully pokers up his gaze.
“Yeah,” Koko continues, “if this place is so peachy, what was her deal, huh? Did she wise up and try to get out while she still had a fighting chance?”
Sébastien purses his lips. “That, I’m afraid, was an accident.”
Koko sneers. “Right. Huge storm, a tra-la-la-la-la hike along the cliffs, an accident.”
Sébastien tosses his ponytail. “Since you’re electing not to be forthcoming about your plight, and we’re helping your friend Flynn heal, perhaps it’d be best right now if you simply respect our grief. Come, Gammy.”
And with that the two depart, and Sébastien firmly closes the door.
* * *
The second after the door shuts, Koko shimmies out of the blanket and sheets wrapped around her and sawmills the rest of the food on the tray. The cheese, bread, and all of the other potently sweet fruit—she even wolfs down the cores, including the one she casually tossed on the floor earlier, and the apple core Sébastien left behind on the desk. Brooding and gulping cool slugs of water from the carafe, she feels her strength coming back in slow waves. Koko then picks up the pear that fell on the floor and sticks it in her mouth.
Nine hundred kilometers give or take?
Damn, the storm blew the sub so far off course from her intentional heading, and now it seems it’s totaled. Not only that, but they re-activated the tracking transponder which makes Koko wonder what, if any, additional electronics they may have retrieved from the vessel and what onboard files they might have looked at. It’s a safe bet Sébastien and his doctor chum know all about her and Flynn by now or will soon: where they’ve come from and where they were headed. And none of this information sits well with her at all. All of this trying to be hospitable could be some elaborate ruse while they make contact with the CPB and The Sixty.
Sébastien’s big show of the open door
—What, was that some kind of a test as well
? Does he actually think she’d even think of taking off without Flynn? Deeper personal emotions with Flynn aside, a fragment of her old private military code of conduct flips past Koko’s thoughts—