“Don’t be stupid,” Marla said. “Mutex has killed three of you so far. Finch, Umbaldo, and now you. He’s targeting sorcerers, at least all the ones who dismissed or laughed at him. Apparently he doesn’t have any problem locating you—the Cornerstone probably makes his divination spells infallibly accurate. That’s three dead in, what, six hours? At this rate, there aren’t going to be any sorcerers left in San Francisco, except for me, the outsider. But if you give me the names and addresses of the remaining sorcerers, I can give them a little warning, maybe manage to save some of them. How does that sound?”
“It makes sense,” the Dalton said.
“Then you’d better get a move on, because you’ve only got about seven minutes to live.”
“I’d rather spend my last moments jerking off,” the Dalton said, but he went to a desk in the corner and opened a sleek, thin laptop. He tapped at the keys for a few moments, entered several passwords in succession, and finally opened a file. A printer on the blood-spattered desk began to hum and spit out pages.
“That’s just names and addresses,” the Dalton said. “The detailed dossiers aren’t on the network, they’re on a local drive deep underground.”
“Guess I’ll have to be surprised by their sparkling personalities,” Marla said. “It looks like Mutex is hitting you in order of succession. Who’s next in line to be chief-of-chiefs?”
The Dalton tapped the first page of the printout.
Marla picked it up, read, and nodded. She turned to B. “We’re going to the Tenderloin. Which Rondeau tells me is not the meatpacking district. We’re going to meet somebody named Bethany. No last name. How very pop-star of her.”
“Bethany,” the Dalton said. “Fuck. I like her. Liked her. I hope she doesn’t wind up the way I did. But she’s good, so maybe she won’t.”
“Yeah? Is she good enough to avoid what just happened to your original?”
The Dalton shrugged. “I would’ve thought I was good enough to avoid that, but I wasn’t. She’ll put up a fight, though.”
“Good. I’m going to help her out. I’m not sure what I can do to Mutex, but I’ll do my best. We’d better get moving, though. Mutex hasn’t been taking frequent rest breaks.” She glanced back at the Daltons, one of whom was still crying, while the other sat at the desk in the corner, staring blankly across the room at his sire’s heartless corpse. They were staring imminent nonexistence in the face, and Marla’s heart softened toward them. “Or do you want us to stay?” she said. “Until…it’s over?”
The Dalton at the desk looked at her for a moment, then shook his head. “No. No need. We might as well go alone. You’ve got more important things to do than watch us refresh out of existence.”
“Okay,” Marla said. She paused before heading toward the door. “But, hey. Good luck outside the simulation. I’m sure it’s amazing on the other side.”
The Dalton at the desk nodded and gave them a wave. Marla left, with B and Rondeau following.
11
B hung back with Rondeau as they followed Marla out onto Market Street, his mind still well and truly reeling from the events in Dalton’s office. Despite all the outlandish things he’d seen, the oddest thing—in a way—was the look of human feeling on Marla’s face when she wished the Daltons a pleasant afterlife. “That was almost sweet of her,” B said. “What she just said to them.”
“Yeah,” Rondeau said. “It was.”
“If I hadn’t just seen her transform into a vicious, golden-eyed monster draped in purple shadows, I’d almost call it tenderness.”
“The thing about Marla is, you’ve got to embrace the contradictions,” Rondeau said. “The job she has to do, you have to be tough. I’m not saying she’s got a soft squishy center or anything, but there’s more to her than ass-whipping and blunt-force trauma. If there wasn’t, I wouldn’t be working for her.”
B nodded. In his dream, the first dream about Marla, he’d felt a sense of connection, a depth of feeling, even a degree of enchantment with her. Reality hadn’t done much to reflect the dream, however. B had the definite sense that Marla was trying him out to see if he was the kind of tool she could use. And if he turned out to be useless, she’d toss him aside. He had to make sure that didn’t happen. If he didn’t stay with her, the city would be destroyed. She probably needed him in ways that hadn’t even occurred to her yet. Unfortunately, they hadn’t occurred to him yet, either. He didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do. “So we’re going to the Tenderloin now?” he said, looking at Marla’s back, her steady stride down Market Street.