“One of my more charming qualities."
“Agent Fieldman, do you want to take care of this?” she asked.
“Officer, please!” Susannah cried. “Help us?"
Alison was still talking to herself. “Oh… Of course. You're right."
My vision went black.
When I could see again, the first thing my eyes focused on was a balled fist. It collided with my face.
My head snapped to the right. I regained focus for a second, and realized I was back in the rebuilt Brain Hotel lobby inside my own head. I saw a bunch of the souls, gawking at me. Goddamnit, how did Brad keep doing this to me? When I looked back up I found my answer. Brad had Fieldman's soul-gizmo.
Being no dummy, I went for it. But Brad was no dummy, either. He swiped it away at the last second, then used his free hand to sock me in the face again. All I saw was a yellow flash. By the time I tuned my eyes back in, Brad was gone.
Doug came to my side. “You okay, chief? Brad wailed on your face pretty hard."
“I'm fine,” I said, standing. “Just fine. And thanks, all of you.” I was raising my voice. “Thanks a whole friggin’ lot.” Everybody in the room, of course, started hemming and hawing.
“It was too damn fast, boss."
“He had that soul-zapper thing."
“Hey, I'm only here for the drinks."
Abruptly, somebody changed his tune. “Wait! Look!"
We all looked at the lobby screen. Brad was in control, and had our body looking in a mirror, which was situated in the hallway next to the stairs. It was Officer Bill Madia's face, of course, looking back. “That's me,” said a voice from the back of the room. “What in hell am I doing up there?"
Up on the screen, Brad/Officer Madia turned his head. Alison was standing in the hallway with him.
So how do I do this? Brad/Officer Madia asked.
The transducer modifiers need an image to work from, said Alison. Close your eyes, and picture yourself in your mind to the closest detail possible. Then click the OK icon in your peripheral vision and the muscles will start to work on themselves.
That didn't sound like Alison at all. Jesus-that sounded just like Buddha Fieldman. After a couple of weeks in electronics school.
On screen, Brad/Officer Madia turned back to the mirror. Then, blackness. Slowly, a dim image of Brad's real face started to appear, like a photographic negative burning itself into vivid color. Skin stretched and settled into new forms; the skull itself seemed to grow and shrink in different places.
Of course, he was pulling the old change-your-face-trick. A trick I was intimately familiar with. But Brad didn't seem to have as much trouble with the process as I did. He didn't even flinch.
Brad closed his eyes, and our viewing screen in the Brain Hotel lobby went blank. When he opened his eyes again, Brad was looking at his own, real face in the mirror. At last, he said, beaming. They'll see the face of vengeance!
And the wife of vengeance, said Alison/Fieldman's robot body, off-screen.
There was a despairing cry from the back of the lobby: “Holy shit! What happened to my face!?” Officer John Madia. Poor guy. This was a lot to see in one night.
“Hope you had a picture somewhere,” I told him.
Brad started down the hallway, taking Alison/Fieldman by the hand. After a few steps, she stopped. Wait-we should do something about our mental luggage, she said. We don't want any further interference at this stage, do we?
Brad looked around the house, then spied Leah's dead body. In there, for now?
Capital idea.
Alison/Fieldman took Brad by the shoulders and stared straight into his eyes, as if she could see right through the screen, down into the Brain Hotel lobby.
Sorry to do this to you again, Collective.
Before I had a chance to hurl a retort at the screen, we were all gone.
By now, this kind of thing was becoming familiar to me: the cold, the rigor mortis, fighting the strong tides of the decomposition process. But the rest of the souls were scared to death. All they saw was their new haven start to rot before their eyes. Amazing how closely linked physicality is with human creativity. With all this mind power in the room, we should have had no problem maintaining a clean, safe environment in which to live for any period of time. After all, I was living (sort of) proof that a human soul can exist in whatever physical form it inhabits. In other words, if a guy can survive in a toilet, he can certainly survive in a dead woman's body. Maybe not as dead as I'd thought.
Standing before me was a confused Leah Farrell. I hadn't had to absorb her soul; she was still here, in her own mind. Which meant there must be some brain activity left in her body. “Don't tell me this is the afterlife,” Leah said, frowning. “A bunch of hungry-eyed chumps, sitting around a fleabag hotel?"
“Leah,” I said. “Relax. I can explain. But I need you to help me first.
“Who are you? Do I know you?"
“We've had a few drinks together,” I said. “Don't you remember?"
“Look, buddy. I have a lot of drinks with a lot of guys. You can stop the happy talk and tell me how to get the hell out of this place."
I touched her shoulder. “First, tell me how you got here."
She slapped my hand away. “Don't fucking touch me."
“Tell me the last thing you remember."
It took quite a bit of coaxing (and even more sarcastic banter) but Leah finally told me enough to help me piece together what had happened before I arrived at the house. Right after Susannah had flipped and shot us at the Art Museum, Leah hauled ass to retrieve Ray. (They'd both rented a cheap room in Fairmount-oddly enough, not one mile from where Susannah had set up camp. Philly can be a small city that way.) She showed Ray the address Brad had stuffed down her shirt, and they decided to check it out. They hopped in a cab and high-tailed it over to Merion, then split up: Ray took the back entrance, Leah the front. Leah picked wrong. She opened the door and got a bullet in her throat for her trouble. The last thing she heard was glass shattering somewhere in the house. Then she ended up here.
“Your turn,” she said. “Start explaining."
“I'm going to borrow your body for a moment."
“What?"
“I'll be right back.” I created a pair of doors with my mind and walked through them. My eyes-actually, Leah's eyes-fluttered open back in reality.
All I can say is, thank the sweet Lord the bullet had severed Leah's vocal cords, because I would have screamed to heaven and awoken all the angels. This body hurt. I could barely suck down air, let alone stand up. But I was determined to go back to the living room. I threw out a hand, experimentally, and let it drop onto the rug. My newly borrowed fingers gathered up every fiber I could, then used it to turn the body over.
Then I started to crawl, hand over hand, down the length of the hallway. The rug created an almost insurmountable degree of friction; it was slow going. I could only imagine the electric shock I was building up. One touch from this body oughta kill the entire room. Halfway there I paused to cough. I was surprised to see blood jet from my mouth. No time to pause for lost fluids. I kept crawling toward the living room.
Finally, I reached an acceptable vantage point. I guess I'd missed a lot of pre-revenge chit-chat, because not much had changed in the living room. Ray was still skewered and tied to the couch. Susannah was still next to him, but now untied. Brad held a gun to her head. Alison was standing with her back to me. I wondered if the real Alison was in control again, or if Fieldman was still running the robot?