Chapter Text
…While the contemporary news media and later popular mythology also repeated the “Jack The Ripper” legend, what is more likely is that several independent killers selected their victims from Fleet Street, simply as a matter of opportunity.
Robbie did his best to tune out the podcast. He had his headphones on, the client's oxygen sensor unscrewed, a pressure gauge sticking into the exhaust system where the sensor had been. He lay on his back on a creeper, the car inches from his nose. “Lenny!”
He's probably OD'd again.
Shut up. “Lenny, I need you to crank up this Outback!”
…Prostitution was rife on Fleet Street, attracting sexually-frustrated men as well as lost women to separate them from their money. It was only natural for violence to occur. But still, the legend of Jack The Ripper lives on, because the public is not ready to accept that the demon of Fleet Street was merely a handful of common killers.
This is boring. Put on the one about Cletus Kassady.
You already listened to that one.
So? Put it on.
Robbie grabbed the car by the frame and scooted himself out from underneath. All the workbays at Canelo's Auto and Body were full, but Lenny was nowhere in sight. You'll get bored and tell me to switch again. I downloaded this podcast for you. Shut up and listen.
He got into the Outback's driver's seat and started the engine idling, a few choked chugs. Robbie threw himself out the door and onto the ground, seized the pressure gauge that dangled from the bottom of the car and glanced at the reading just before the motor died. High, way into the red. Exhaust system restriction. Downstream of his pressure gauge were the catalytic converter and the muffler; Robbie was betting the blockage was in the cat.
I'm bored, Robbie, Eli said, injecting what should be a petulant statement with pure menace. It's not healthy for us to sit around all day, work, work, work, play house with little Gabbie, work, work, work some more. We're built for action. We're not tame. And these yellow journalists at NPR are slandering my boy Jack.
Robbie sat down on the creeper and dug out his phone.
Thank you.
He put on a Speed Demon album.
Oh, fuck you, you little shit, Eli snarled, and Robbie cranked the volume. Frantic drumming, distorted squeals, and then FUCK THIS FUCK THIS ALL THIS CITY, ALL THIS CITY SOLD ITS SOUL, COME MIERDA POLICIA—
This is not music!
Robbie pumped up the volume until his ears ached. He slid back under the car, unscrewed the pressure gauge from the oxygen sensor hole, hopped back into the driver's seat, and cranked the engine again. This time it ran without issue, albeit loudly, happily belching carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons through the hole. Problem localized. He shut down the motor before the exhaust gasses could catch anything on fire, and made his notes on the restriction. Headed for his locker to grab a dental mirror—actually, part of a yard-sale make-up compact epoxied to an old collapsible antenna—so he could peer into the catalytic converter without taking it all the way off.
He was just picking his way through the garage, head down, eyes flickering up and down and to the sides and back over his shoulder, when he saw Ramón Cordova out by the lobby, menacing a skinny Asian guy in a baggy T-shirt and swim trunks.
Ramón Cordova was six-one, almost two hundred pounds, scarred up and covered in tattoos. He was locally famous for single-handedly massacring an entire clíqua back in the early Oughts. Supposedly he'd turned a new leaf in prison. He stayed in the back unless he was actively ejecting someone from the premises. What he thought he was doing badgering this soft uptowner—
Robbie ground his teeth and stomped over.
As soon as he saw Robbie, the Asian guy yelled something, spreading out his arms in welcome.
Robbie halted. The guy was in a Knicks jersey and flip-flops. Who wore flip-flops to an auto shop.
Ramón looked sharply from Robbie to the stranger, and then jerked his thumb at Robbie, stalking behind one of the toolboxes. Tommy, whose toolbox it was, cleared away from Ramón so the car he was working on was between them.
Robbie turned his back on the guy in the flip-flops and followed Ramón. He pulled one headphone sideways on his head. His ear was ringing.
“¿Lo conoces?” Ramón demanded, straight Spanish, with a sharp glare at the stranger. “He was asking for you. I've seen him before. Cuando toda esa mierda paso en verano, with the Feds, blowing holes in the street, all that. He's trouble, the kind nobody needs. Get back to work, yo me deshago de el.”
“Oye, yo hablo un poco poquito de Español, dude,” the guy said. “I'm from Arizona. And I'm not an idiot.”
Robbie peered around Ramón's elbow. The guy wasn't even looking at them, just staring around the shop, hands on his hips. Summer? The Feds?
He knew who wore flip flops to a garage; this was that Hulk guy.
“I know him,” Robbie muttered. “He's my business.” Damn straight. I want a rematch.
Ramón caught him by the arm and Robbie had to stop himself from slapping his hand away. “Por qué?” Ramón demanded. “Por la verga? No. That life's not for you, not for anyone. Este cabron picked a fight with La Leyenda! Es un pendejo peligroso. Don't get mixed up with him.”
“I heard that!” the guy called over his shoulder.
Robbie groaned. “I know. Trust me, I know this guy. We...were in the same foster house, we go back. I'll see what he wants and tell him no.”
“Don't let him talk you into anything,” Ramón warned him.
“I know what I'm doing,” Robbie said.
Ramón stared down skeptically at him through his reading glasses.
“Thanks,” Robbie added. “I got this.”
Ramón shook his head and grunted.
Robbie stepped toward the newcomer. The Hulk. He had a ridiculous name. Ludvig Chao? “Let's talk outside,” Robbie said, and as he crossed the door, Canelo yelled from deep in the shop, “Reyes! If you're gonna gossip on the job, clock out for your break first!”
Robbie winced, and the Hulk guy raised one eyebrow. “Nevermind, let's talk while I work. Or just go home. Come back in closed-toed shoes.”
“I'll risk it,” the guy said, and flopped after Robbie toward the lockers.
Robbie fished through his box where he kept his personal tools. It was slow going, putting together a toolset on his budget, but he made do with second-hand stuff. He got the mirror, side-stepped around the Hulk guy, and returned to the Outback. Lowered himself to the creeper, grabbed a pair of line wrenches, and rolled back underneath.
“What, I don't get a hi?”
The guy's bare ankles were right within arm's reach of him as he scooted himself under the catalytic converter. Robbie could hit him hard with a wrench, right over the bone, and it would hurt for hours. Teach him to respect our personal space. “What do you want?” he demanded instead. He loosened the nuts that held the boxy catalytic converter to the hot upstream exhaust pipe, grabbed it with a rag, and started wiggling it open. The converter rattled as he moved it.
“I was in town,” the guy said. “Thought I'd hang.”
Robbie got the converter loose, put the mirror into the gap between it and the pipes, aimed his penlight into the hole beside the mirror, and peered inside. Gray honey-comb-pattern ceramic material—loose chunks of it. Probably banged on something, shattered the plates. “No, really. What do you want? Is it aliens? Mad scientists? Go Hulk at it. I’m not a hero like you, I got stuff to do here.” He scooted himself further back under the car to get at the converter's downstream fitting, keeping a foot to the side to keep any hot ceramic from burning him when he got it opened up.
The guy stooped down and peered under the car. “Dude, I'm not trying to have any conversation you need to actively avoid,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I'm in town for some paperwork stuff. Thought I'd stop and chat with my fellow super-people.”
So go chat with somebody who cares, was on the tip of Robbie's tongue, but that wasn't a Robbie thing to say, was it. He set his wrenches over the nuts and cracked the fitting loose. “Thanks, I guess,” he said. “But I'm working. I got four cars left to service and two to diagnose, that's assuming we don't get any walk-ins.” Get lost. Wait, no. Thanks for stopping by—augh, that sounds like I'm the receptionist. He straightened his earphones, let Speed Demon's Proposal Modesto thunder through his skull. Conversation over.
He got the back end of the converter loose, leaving it dangling by the clips that held it to the frame, and as he'd expected, loose chunks of ceramic catalytic material rained down out of the gap. He peeked in with the mirror and saw the downstream side was packed solid with broken bits. A few had made it into the downstream exhaust pipe, too; he felt them rattling when he bumped it.
He scooted back out and grabbed some needlenose pliers. Converter needed replacement, but like hell was the client going to pay for it today; they needed this heap running. He used the pliers and the wrench to break up the blockage and scoop out the chunks so the exhaust could get out. There'd be some interesting emissions coming out of this car until the client came back with the money.
Movement out of the corner of his eye: the Hulk guy was still there, waving under the car at him. Robbie pulled one headphone off again and glared at him. “What are you doing?” the guy demanded.
“Working,” Robbie snarled. He winced, breathed, listened to the music. “Sorry. The cat's plugged. Uh...the car can't breathe.”
The guy lay down flat on his back next to the car, peering at the undercarriage. “How'd all that gravel get into the exhaust pipes?”
“It's not gravel.” Robbie used the pliers to pass over a nice big fragment for him to look at. “It's the catalytic material. Detoxifies the exhaust. Careful, it's hot.”
The guy licked his finger and poked it, rolled it over. The saliva crackled against the ceramic. “Wow. That...that is incredibly dumb.”
“I confirmed the exhaust restriction,” Robbie snapped, fishing around in the converter with his wrench. He didn't have enough room or hands to get the light and mirror and the wrench into the opening at the same time, so he was doing it blind.
“No, no, I mean, it's obvious you're right. But you've got this fragile material in a thin-walled metal box hanging from the underside of a vehicle that's expected to traverse uneven ground at speed. That's just asking for failure.”
Robbie shrugged, swept the converter with the wrench. Pulled out and peeked in with the mirror. It was just gravel all the way in. He had to keep going. He used his rag to protect his hand from the heat and shook the converter.
“You could build it with small blocks of ceramic, secured independently to the wall. You could build it so there's no strain on the ceramic. This is completely unnecessary.”
“This is probably the cheapest way to build one,” Robbie said.
The Hulk guy's face twisted in disgust.
“There might be aftermarket cat converters like you're talking about,” Robbie allowed. “For, like, offroading.”
“Still,” the guy said. “You know, I can hear your headphones from here.”
Robbie reached up to put his phones back over his ears.
“No, wait, sorry. Look. Is it okay if I hang out? Cause. I don't know anybody in town, and, hey! Cars! Engines are cool. You learn stuff. Little lower-tech than I usually work with—”
“High tech's not always better,” Robbie interrupted.
“I know, you've got that muscle car, right? Runs a little, uh, hot?”
Heh. You might say so.
“I don't want to talk about that here,” Robbie said.
“What, your baby?” He lowered his voice. “Okay, secret identity. I can dig it.”
Robbie's mouth twisted. The Charger wasn't his baby. He wasn't some car tuner who fell in love with inanimate objects because everybody he knew despised him. Wow. Watch it. He did love it—it had the most powerful engine he had ever personally put his hands on, it had beautiful lines, he could take Gabe safely to school, go grocery shopping without consulting the bus tables, he could win races against boosted cars half its weight—but it was his prison more than his freedom.
He got the cat converter unplugged and jammed a piece of steel mesh into the hole, praying it would keep more ceramic fragments from rattling down the pipe into the muffler. Tightened everything back together, got in the car and cranked the engine again. Sounded much happier.
The Hulk guy coughed from behind the car.
Robbie shut the Outback off before it could poison anybody in the shop and got his clipboard, worked up his notes. The protective rubber boot of the right CV joint was cracking and leaking grease; the joint itself was bound to fail from road grit getting into it and needed urgent replacement. New cat converter, of course. Battery was showing major wear. Interior could use some detail work. Tires were just about worn out. Transmission fluid was about fifty thousand miles overdue for a change. Client would maybe approve ten percent of this work. Like, they'd probably just drop in their own battery and call it a day.
He groaned. Nobody did preventive maintenance in Hillrock Heights, they just screwed their cars up working on them at home or dragged them in when they stopped running, like this one.
“Long night?” Hulk guy asked.
Robbie clenched his pen in his fist, overhand stabbing grip, then forced himself to drop it in his lap. That was an Eli impulse. Robbie Reyes did not stab people through the temple with ballpoint pens. “I don't want to talk about that here,” he repeated. “Why are you here? I don't know you.”
Hulk guy looked miffed. “We took out that purple thing together!”
“And?”
“You hit me with your car! Twice!”
“I'm not sorry.” Robbie dropped his voice to a hiss. “You show up, throwing cars, picking fights with my neighbors—”
“They were shooting at me!” Hulk guy hissed back.
“Did it hurt?”
“That's not the point.”
“You don't have a point. Why are you really here?”
Hulk guy's mouth flattened and he stared at Robbie, examining him. There was plenty weird to see. The slanting symmetrical scars on his scalp where the hair didn't grow anymore, which he'd camouflaged as the borders of his faux-hawk. The hard silvery V-emblem on his forehead that he told people was a tattoo. The rust-colored iris of his right eye, which he blamed on an infection. Robbie clenched his teeth and his lip curled. He shook his head hard. Breathed. “I was concerned,” Hulk guy said at last. “It's a tough side-job. It helps to have people to talk about it.”
Fuck him. Condescending green bastard, showing up in your place of work, jeopardizing your secret identity. You know what? We should string him along. Make nice. Take him out to the national forest, and while his back is turned, hit him in the head with a crowbar. Quick, before he can change. You can do it. You got one o'those trustworthy faces.
Robbie clenched and unclenched his fist. Everything you say is bullshit.
That's not fair. You don't even believe that.
All the anger-management tip-sheets agreed that social isolation made anger and panic worse. As irritating as this guy was, he was offering something Robbie desperately needed. “Thanks,” he said stiffly.
“I don't mean to intrude,” the guy said.
Robbie gave him his talking to Gabe's teachers smile. It was a normal, trustworthy, non-serial-killing smile, and it felt odd, like a too-small shoe. “What was your name again?”
Hurt flashed across the guy's face. “Amadeus. Amadeus Cho.”
“Sorry.” He wiped his hand off on his coveralls and held it out to shake. “Robbie Reyes.”
“I remember.”
Now Robbie felt like a dick. “We should catch up later. Sunday. Gabe and I like to hang out at the park.”
Amadeus grinned. “No can do, flying back to NYC on Friday. Hey, you're so busy, I could help.”
“No.”
An affronted glare from Hulk guy.
Robbie sighed. “Don't touch anything. Don't stand under anything. Don't get in the way. And don't sue us if you hurt yourself, okay?”
Amadeus raised his hands, palms up, and then clasped them behind his back. “No touching.”
“Great.”
After the cat converter job—please, please come back so we can fix this properly, because while it does run, it’s not safe to run it near anything with lungs—there was an '07 Sentra with a parasitic draw. An electrical job that ordinarily would have gone to Cordova, because Robbie was supposed to be just a G&S and Ramón had completed all his ASE study for a certification in electrical system diagnostics and repair while he was in prison.
Screw him. You can figure this out.
I know. I got this.
He popped the hood, got the ammeter hooked up in series to the battery, found a power reading of twenty-two thousand milliamps, with the ignition off. That was...high.
There's your problem.
No, no. Shut up. This is—it's a late-model thing. Car's not all the way shut down yet. I just drove it into the bay.
Robbie went out to the parking lot to polish a Taurus's cloudy plastic headlights while he waited for the Sentra’s computer to go to sleep and stop sucking power out of the battery. Came back to an ammeter reading of 1834 milliamps and Amadeus Cho in the Sentra’s passenger seat absorbed in his smart-watch.
Robbie detoured to the bookshelves on the outside wall of Canelo's office where they kept the service manuals, and found a manual for an '05 Sentra, a bootlegged version in a three-ring binder. He flipped through to the wiring diagram, prayed the '05 and '07 models had the same wiring scheme, opened the fuse box, and started pulling fuses, watching for the amperage to drop down to something reasonable. Like fifty. Fifty milliamps was supposed to be okay. 1834 milliamps had the customer commenting, “Fucking car’s always dead, I have to go out at midnight to run the engine so it can start in the morning.”
F1 pulled, no change. Jam it back in, careful not to bend the prongs. F2. F3. Please be F12; the trunk light used Fuse 12 and those were always shorting out. F4, 5, 6, 7, F8 and suddenly the amperage dropped down to 0.038. Thirty-eight milliamps was normal. Draw was coming through Fuse 8’s circuit.
Shit. That was not a bad trunk light.
He was really hoping for a bad trunk light.
“Ooh, ignition ACC,” Amadeus yelled from beside him, through Robbie’s earphones. Robbie spun on him. He hadn't seen him leave the car, with the hood being up. “What’s that mean?”
Robbie breathed in serenity, breathed out violence. He slid his phones off one ear again. “ACC is accessories. All the useless crap people put in their cars. GPS. Cigarette lighter. This car, probably that aftermarket speaker system.”
Low in the front doors near the hinges, big black speaker-heads with shiny decals stood out against the beige plastic.
“Thought you liked loud music,” Amadeus remarked.
“Not when it weighs down the car or bleeds the battery,” Robbie griped. “Client might’ve put this in himself. Who knows what’s shorting. This shouldn’t be drawing off the battery at all. Might have to open up the doors and go over the wires by hand.”
Amadeus cocked his head at the car, skeptical. “Sounds tedious.”
“No kidding. I’m gonna be stuck here all day, I don’t get to charge hours until I diagnose the problem, and pulling a fuse doesn’t qualify.”
“No, no, no. Look. It’s process of elimination, right? And all the wires that enter the door, you can access those, right?”
“I get what you’re saying, but our amp probe’s not sensitive enough. That’s the one that goes around the wire—”
“Amp probe? No, you just need a little hand-held radio, run it back and forth across the wire really fast.”
“What, listen to the static?” Robbie pictured it. Radios were super sensitive. Just waving your hand over the antenna could make them buzz. It might work. “But stereo systems, they’re on a single circuit. If it’s live, it’s all live. No, the ignition ACC shouldn’t be drawing power at all while the car's off, that’s what it’s for, to isolate non-essential systems—”
Robbie had a thought. He flipped through the Sentra repair manual looking for the location of the relay switches.
Amadeus flicked on his watch. “There's a spot where the wires are close together—could be a short allowing it to draw off the battery with the ignition off—”
Robbie pulled up the cover over the relay switches. Black plastic cubes about an inch square, plugged into the switchboard, that controlled which circuits got power at any given time.
“You think one of those is worn out?”
“These are solid-state relays, so probably not,” Robbie said. He studied the set of relays, compared them to the wiring diagram in the manual.
“That one,” Amadeus said, and pulled it right out of the damn car.
A jolt of heat sparked through Robbie's chest. “I told you not to touch anything,” he hissed.
“This is the one,” Amadeus said, unrepentant.
Robbie grabbed the switch, inspected the prongs. Someone, probably the client, had wrapped a foil gum wrapper around two of the prongs to bypass it, stop it from shutting off the current. This was, in fact, the problem. “How'd you know?”
“Dude.” Amadeus waved his phone in front of him. “I can read.”
Robbie hadn't even had the chance to untangle the diagram, and he'd been staring at it for longer than Amadeus had. “What, you memorized the wiring harness?” Robbie demanded, incredulous.
“Yup.” Amadeus tucked his thumbs in the waistband of his swim trunks, thought better of it, and rested one palm on the edge of the engine compartment. “I'm awesome.”
Robbie picked the foil out from around the prongs of the relay, re-installed it, and replaced the F8 fuse. He checked the ammeter. The draw on the battery was gone. “Okay.”
“You're welcome. My question is, why—”
“Customer didn't want to lose the radio station presets whenever he shut the car down.”
Amadeus glared at the car. “Huh. Wow. That's—”
“I know.”
“That is impressively stupid.”
Robbie's jaw ticked. “It's not—don't call that stupid, they found the right relay switch, then bypassed it on purpose. This was irresponsible.”
Amadeus' mouth dropped into an 'oh.' “Right. Your brother, sorry, I'm not the most sensi—”
Before Amadeus interrupted him, Robbie had been about to say, ‘Stupid is putting the floor mat in on top of the accelerator and then screaming about uncontrollable acceleration.’ But when Amadeus said, 'Your brother,' time slowed. Heat jolted through him again, stronger and all-encompassing. He saw that Amadeus' hand was resting on the front quarter panel, fingers stretched over edge of the engine compartment. He grabbed the hood and lifted it up off the hood prop, and then he let it drop.
Wait, he thought as the hood began to fall.
Hot anger changed to cold horror and he caught it before it could crush Amadeus' hand. But only barely. He slammed his own hand under the hood instead.
“Dude!” Amadeus exclaimed, lifting the hood for him. “Are you okay?”
Robbie shoved him away. “Don't!” The back of his right hand was pale. Blood oozed over two of his knuckles.
“I would've been fine,” Amadeus assured him. “Well. The car might not be. You didn't have to do that, dude, that looks painful.”
Robbie put his headphone back over his ear and slowly opened and closed his hand. The pain was slow to reach him, but when it did, a maddening ache spread up and down his arm. He hadn't damaged anything structural, but he'd done a number on himself.
So close, Eli remarked, mocking. Eli hadn't tried to crush Amadeus' hand. That was Robbie who'd gotten angry and lashed out, Robbie who was out of control. And Robbie was still angry.
“It's dangerous working here,” Robbie said, putting on a nitrile glove to protect the wound. “Really, you should just—”
“Get you a soda,” Amadeus said, and disappeared out through the lobby before Robbie had the chance to finish.
Robbie stared down at the Sentra, gripping his throbbing hand. He’d found and fixed the electrical bleed. Taken half an hour. He should be proud.
Let’s go teach him a lesson tonight. Listen to him, making implications about Gabbie. Incinerate the big green pustule.
No.
Fix up your hand.
No.
It’s been three fucking weeks! You’re losing it! You’re pushing yourself into a psychotic break for no reason!
Every time we burn up it gets worse, Robbie thought, clenching down on his hand. You’ve been lying to me from the beginning.
Don’t change the fact that you can’t stop, Eli replied.
Already did.
Sure. Tick-tick, kiddo, Eli sneered. Put on the one about Cletus Kasady.
Robbie put on the podcast about Cletus Kasady.
He’d switched work-bays to the one with the lift so he could raise up a Tundra for a differential service, busy with his socket wrench and trying to tune out the excited young man in his headphones narrating Cletus Kasady's serial murders in salacious detail, when Amadeus Cho returned to the shop bearing a six-foot sub sandwich and a case of Cokes. The cheap kind, that came in cans instead of bottles and had corn syrup instead of sugar. He's bribing his way back in here, Robbie thought when he saw Amadeus deposit the food in the break room.
Marty, at work on an ancient Camry, cheered and offered Amadeus a fist-bump when he returned to the shop.
“Got you an icepack,” Amadeus said, leaning against a column near Robbie's workbay. He waved a little blue first-aid gel pack.
Robbie grunted and kept working on the bolts that held the cover on the differential. The gears that converted the driveshaft's rotation into power for the wheels were housed in a big metal clamshell case visible from just in front of the rear bumper. It opened straight up-and-down, and sixteen bolts held the edges shut. Differential fluid began to weep from the lower bolt-holes and into his plastic catch-basin as Robbie worked his way around. After he got the last bolt loose, the cover was just clinging to the differential housing by habit and by the stickiness of the gasket around the rim. Robbie pried it off and a gallon of viscous brown fluid gushed out.
“Got you an icepack!” Amadeus yelled, louder.
Robbie didn't have time to stop work to wrap an icepack over the back of his hand. “Thanks,” he said, and inspected the big gears inside the differential, gloved hands feeling the ring gear for metal fragments, for worn or damaged teeth. “You should go.”
Amadeus stepped under the Tundra with him. “Dude,” he said seriously, and Robbie took off one disposable glove so he could slip one earphone off. “I'm not gonna go green on your work buddies. I'm the friendly Hulk. You don't have to test me.”
Now Robbie really felt like a dick. I wasn't testing your control, I was just genuinely trying to cut your fingers off with my customer's car. “Sorry,” he said lamely. He sat on the floor, peeled the old gasket out of the differential cover, and polished the edges of the case and the cover with fine steel wool, then a dry shop cloth. Unwrapped a new gasket, fitted it against the cover, and then started bolting cover and gasket back into place. Whitcha-whitcha-whitcha went the ratchet.
Amadeus lingered beside him as he worked, chewing on a Snickers, watching Robbie, watching Marty, watching Ramón, gazing at the toolboxes. As Robbie consulted the model's Chilton manual and switched from his ratchet wrench to his torque wrench for the final tightening, Amadeus asked, “Wait, what are you doing now?”
“Torquing to spec,” Robbie said, giving one bolt after another a final pull, just until the wrench clicked at thirty foot-pounds.
Amadeus paged through the manual on the ground behind him. “But the friction and the elastic modulus of the bolt would change over time with surface oxidation and repeated stress cycles. How could they expect to know the exact right torque a bolt needs to stay seated without taking into account the age, use, and weather conditions the bolt is exposed to?”
“I don't know, you're just supposed to torque it to spec,” Robbie said, irritated. “Sometimes you get cars in, the customers were messing around, things are either rattling loose or warped from overtightening. Or somebody at a shop used an airgun to tighten it and you gotta get the breaker bar to work it loose.”
“It's arbitrary,” Amadeus complained.
“It just has to be close enough,” Robbie said, torquing the last bolt. “Close is better than wrong.” He got a bottle of fresh differential fluid and a funnel and re-filled the case. Noted his labor time, lowered the Tundra. Next car.
Ford Fiesta: inspection, oil, lube, filter. Back to his usual bay, no lift, just jacks, on his back on the creeper under the car with his penlight.
Robbie caught himself actually listening to Eli's Cletus Kasady podcast, now describing a woman found covered in knife slashes, her body wrapped in a bedsheet and deposited in a motel dumpster, a high-end escort with a young daughter at home—
God bless hookers, Eli sighed, and Robbie hit his head on the Fiesta's swaybar.
He really was losing it. Robbie already knew Eli thought of sex-workers like a normal person thought of fast-food. He shouldn't be hurting himself at work. He had to just tune him out. Focus on the car.
Frantic Spanish echoed from across the shop at a high enough volume to cut through his headphones. “But I've been coming here for twenty years!” an old woman yelled. “I trust you! Everyone else overcharges. What do you mean, you can't fix it? Just look at the car!”
He pulled his phones off one ear and heard flip-flopping as Amadeus followed the ruckus. Robbie rolled himself back out from under the Fiesta to go corral him.
Canelo was talking to the customer. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Benavidez. I truly am. You've always been one of our best customers. But for this problem, you really should take it back to the dealership. Your warranty should still cover it.”
Robbie stood and looked over at the lobby, where Canelo was talking down a tiny white-haired lady in a floral dress. Robbie remembered her. She was the original owner of a yellow Pinto that had come in for tune-ups a couple times a year since before Robbie had started working here.
“My son told me over and over, Mama you have to get a more reliable car, new, safe, well now I've got one, and it's so reliable it's already got a problem you can't even fix!”
Tommy was standing just behind Canelo. There was a newer Fusion in Tommy's bay, plugged into the scan tool and the laptop computer: Mrs. Benavidez's reliable new car. Amadeus was in Lenny's workbay, right next to Tommy's where the Fusion was parked, hands on his hips, watching. Robbie slipped around behind the toolboxes and joined him, gave him a warning glare.
“I'm sure it's something minor,” Canelo said. “It’s not returning a critical error code, the car drives fine, but, well, it’s the computer system. Our scan tool doesn’t read all the codes for this model year.”
“If it’s so minor—”
“That doesn’t mean it should be ignored,” Canelo said hurriedly.
“Can’t you just look at my car and find what's wrong?” Mrs. Benavidez pleaded.
“Not with a vehicle this complex,” Canelo said. “Fuel efficiency, side-curtain airbags, climate control, lane-keeping assist, automatic braking—there’s just too many systems to check. We really do need the computer, and our diagnostic tool can’t understand what your car is trying to tell us. It’s a proprietary error code. You need to take it to a dealership, they have a scan tool that can read it.”
“But can't you just look at my car?”
Canelo patiently began to explain again about the diagnostic tool and the proprietary error code.
“I fix this problem,” Amadeus Cho broke in, with his 'poco poquito' of Spanish. Everyone stared at him: Canelo, Ramón Cordova, Tommy, Lenny, Marty, Mrs. Benavidez. Robbie kicked him in the ankle. Amadeus turned to Robbie. “So...what's the problem, exactly?”
“We don't have a subscription for Ford's diagnostic software and her car has a proprietary error code that our generic scan tool can't read.”
“Wait, wait,” Amadeus muttered. “You have to pay Ford money. To fix Ford's car?”
“To read proprietary error codes on late models, yeah. We don't get a lot of late model cars here, though, so it doesn't usually come up.”
“What a racket.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Ford has an incentive to make buggier cars because Ford gets a kick-back every time the car has to go to a Ford dealership for repair.”
Robbie didn't literally mean for Amadeus to tell him about it. He just nodded. “We could read it if we had the subscription. But it's over a thousand dollars a year for each brand. Plus the Ford scan tool. So.”
“You can find out what's wrong with my car?” Mrs. Benavidez interrupted in English.
Amadeus jumped. “Yes, ma'am.”
“Who's this kid?” Canelo demanded.
“Amadeus Cho, CEO of Olympus Group. And Computer Science Director,” Amadeus said, projecting a hologram of himself in a suit and tie out of his smart-watch.
What the fuck. Robbie stared at him, his skin crawling. He'd thought he was just the Hulk. Some random guy with powers. Not some guy with power. Robbie took a half-step back. Deep in his head, Eli perked up, watched Amadeus, examined the hologram.
“Go on,” said Canelo slowly.
“I need wifi,” Amadeus said. “Don't worry, Mr. Canelo, you're not gonna lose your favorite customer.”
Canelo raised one eyebrow, and Mrs. Benavidez beamed.
The entire shop crowded around in Tommy's workbay as Amadeus used the laptop. Through the web browser, he remote-accessed an unfamiliar desktop, pulled up a bunch of applications with bland gray buttons and streaming windows of code, and pulled up Ford's diagnostic test code subscription website. Robbie didn't know much about computer programming, but he knew the basics of how hacking was done. And what he suspected Amadeus was doing was a brute-force attack on the Ford website using the remote computer system.
After about five minutes of streaming numbers in one of the windows, an email alert beeped and Amadeus opened it. It was a form email from Ford, thanking him for his subscription, and giving him an access code of random letters and numbers. Amadeus copied the access code, closed out of the remote desktop, and accessed the Ford site from the shop's laptop. From there, he simply entered the access code in to the Subscriber page, downloaded the current year's scan tool software, and installed them on the shop's scan tool. Robbie took over, opened the scan tool interface, and requested another diagnostic on Mrs. Benavidez's car. This time, instead of XXX, actual error codes came up: P1578, ETC Power Less Than Demand. P1581, Electronic Throttle Monitor Malfunction.
“Tommy,” Robbie said, moving out of the way and ushering him to the laptop.
“Sweet,” Tommy said, looking over the suddenly-readable scan data.
“Can you fix it?” Mrs. Benavidez asked.
“Probably,” said Tommy.
Canelo leaned in to look, too. “Now we know where to start looking physically,” he said in Spanish. “We'll work up an estimate. Do you have anyone to come pick you up?”
“My son is working, he manages a hardware store, and my daughter has her children home, it's summer, I couldn't ask her to—”
“Reyes, don't start anything too involved, we'll need you available to run Mrs. Benavidez home and back.”
“My car doesn't have air-con,” Robbie said.
“So roll down the windows. What's wrong with you, put an air conditioner in that heap before you get heat stroke and die.”
Robbie clenched his jaw. The Charger was fine. He didn't need another compressor dragging on his accessory belt and taking up space in his engine compartment; he was always comfortable in his car. Eli was offended, too. Fuck you, you old hog. “Okay,” Robbie said instead.
Canelo ushered Mrs. Benavidez into the small lobby with its coffee pot and popcorn machine and five-year-old magazines.
Robbie beckoned Amadeus back to his workbay and the Ford Fiesta. “If you're so rich, why'd you just steal us a software subscription,” he asked, low.
“It's the principle of the thing,” said Amadeus airily. “And I'm not that rich. Anymore.”
“Okay, well your principles better not get the shop in trouble,” Robbie said. “We get sued, this whole place'd be shut down. Canelo barely makes payroll half the time.”
“Huh,” Amadeus said with alarming equanimity. “Well, if Ford traces the attack, they'll just find Olympus Group. I'll tell them I was cracking their system to find vulnerabilities and they'll give me a finder's fee if they know what's what. No harm, no foul.”
“You better be right.”
“I'm always right.”
Wow.
Amadeus hung around until Canelo called Robbie over to drive Mrs. Benavidez home to her apartment in Boyle Heights. He was gone when Robbie returned. Robbie helped himself to some of the sub sandwich from the break room. Turkey, cheddar, pickles. It was pretty good.
He saw Canelo grinning at the scan tool as he clocked back in to finish his shift.
I already heard this podcast. Put on that band that does those corridos about Pablo Escobar.
At three PM, it was time to leave the shop to go pick Gabe up from middle school.
Robbie pulled up to the curb and leaned on the Charger’s passenger door as he watched the throng of teenagers spill out the front doors and out into the parking lot: some to buses, some to parents. Gabe appeared at the top of the stairs as the crowd thinned, a blonde lady in a polo shirt at his side. He looked subdued, leaning back in his power chair, but he perked up as Robbie jogged up the steps toward him.
“How was your day, Bud? You learn a lot?”
“I guess,” Gabe said. “I learned a lotta ways people lie when they write things. Only we’re not supposed to say lie, ‘cause that’s rude, we’re supposed to say ‘inconsistency.’”
“Yeah, that’s…that’s really important,” Robbie said.
“It’s hard to figure out when they’re lying because they say tons and tons of things. And you have to read them all over and over. And it’s hard to remember what doesn’t match.”
“It takes a lot of work to figure out when someone’s hiding something from you,” Robbie agreed. Which is why you’re so gullible, Robbie. “I’m so proud of you, Gabe.”
“Thanks, Robbie.”
“Are you okay? Did something happen?”
Gabe shrugged.
Robbie turned on the young woman, the teaching aide. “Anything unusual happen today?”
“Robbie, don’t scare Sunny,” Gabe protested, grabbing his elbow.
“I’m not gonna—”
“You scared JP really bad and now he doesn’t walk me out anymore,” Gabe continued.
The woman, Sunny, raised one eyebrow. She had dyed-blonde hair in a ponytail, a utilitarian watch, kakhi slacks. “I get it, you’re worried. But he's okay. Just kid stuff, I guess.”
Robbie wasn’t worried. He was concerned. Talk about kid stuff, Gabe spent all day at middle school this whole spring, and when Robbie had been at middle school, he’d seen a kid get his teeth kicked out. He’d almost had his own teeth kicked out a couple times. He’d had to punch two other kids’ teeth out. Bunch of hormonal psychopaths locked in a building together.
“Mrs. Jules says I can’t sit with Mateo anymore,” Gabe admitted, while Robbie was still trying to organize his thoughts.
What. “But you're friends with Mateo.” That Jules bitch. Your goddamn nemesis, Robbie. “Your TA—”
“Me,” said Sunny.
“—helps you both with algebra.”
Gabe shrugged. Sunny said, “She...might have a point. I mean, your brother and Matty, they're both great kids, but together, they're a little...you know.”
Robbie did not know. He stared at her until her fake smile faded.
“They were playing the penis game,” Sunny said.
“Don't,” Gabe protested.
What? “What's the—”
“Wasn't this like five years ago for you?” Sunny asked. “You never played— One boy says penis. And then his buddy says penis, a little louder. And they go back and forth until somebody gets reprimanded.”
Robbie vaguely remembered hearing kids scream PENIS at each-other across the library. He raised an eyebrow at Gabe.
Gabe giggled and stared at the wall.
“Yeah, she said penis, didn't she,” Robbie said.
“Penis,” Gabe whispered, and giggled some more.
“Gabe, you liked sitting next to Mateo. Now he's not allowed to sit by you anymore because you two were talking while everyone else was trying to listen to Mrs. Jules.”
“I'm sorry, Robbie. But, it was funny!” Gabe grinned. “It was really funny.”
Robbie slumped and rubbed his forehead. It was hard to be mad when Gabe was happy. He was overjoyed that Gabe was alert and engaged enough to get into trouble at school for playing stupid games with his classmates.
“You guys have any other classes together?”
“Earth Science,” Gabe said. “But science is less boring than math. It’s a lot less boring than math because, Robbie, sometimes Mr. Cortez sets things on fire! And right now there’s pictures of birds. It’s really easy to pay attention to Mr. Cortez.” He frowned. “Robbie, do you think I hurt Mrs. Jules’ feelings?”
She’s a vain, power-hungry, sanctimonious cunt. “Uh…it’s rude to talk in class. It’s really rude to say penis in front of people who aren’t doctors or nurses. But I think she separated you two because she thought you’d have an easier time listening to her if you couldn’t talk to Mateo all the time.” She’s a bully.
“Maybe if I say sorry, she’ll let Mateo sit in the corner with me again,” Gabe said.
Sunny gave Robbie a thumbs-up, thumbs-down. “You two good? Need a hand out to the car?”
“Yeah, we’re fine. Pleased to meet you, Sunny,” Robbie said. “Gabe, if you show her you can pay attention when it’s time to listen, maybe she’ll let Mateo sit with you.” She’d better.
If she knows what’s good for her.
I'm not gonna hurt Gabe's math teacher. Fuck off.
Sure you won't. Tick-tick.
Amadeus shut himself into his residential suite at the DoubleTree Hilton, dropped his groceries on the floor, and breathed deep through a cramp in his throat. Those sub sandwiches he'd bought for the mechanics had put him in the mood for something better. Short-ribs, some stir-fry with vegetables he'd had to Google at the market, home-made calamari as if the short-ribs weren't enough meat, and to finish it off, a half-gallon of Rocky Road.
He texted his sister Maddie. Got a feast in the works, you should stop by.
As of yesterday, Amadeus Cho was no longer the CEO of Olympus Group. He no longer had access to its remaining three billion in assets. He had a severance package, a pension in case he somehow blew all his severance money (thanks, sis, point taken), and zero responsibilities other than, you know, being a totally awesome Hulk and saving the world and feeding himself and doing his laundry.
He put his battered laptop on the floor so he could drag the suite's table into the kitchen for a bigger work surface, then got to work organizing and peeling and chopping. Slit the silver-skin on the ribs so it could marinate faster. He ran out of cutting boards, so he sliced the squid into rings on a sheet of cardboard from the box for the six-foot plasma screen he'd propped up against one wall. Soon all the hotel-provided bowls and plates were filled with his mis-en-place. The ribs and the calamari were soaking.
He checked his phone, in case he'd missed a text alert. Nothing.
He thought of where he'd been last year. On the road, on the run, tailing after a Hellenic hero and searching for his sister, stealing and scrounging, just a squishy human with a ginormous brain seething with rage. Well, now he'd found Maddie. Hercules was off doing his own thing. He had enough money to keep himself busy for a few years, and enough power, now that he was the Hulk, to stop a cruise missile. He didn't even have to worry about CEO shit anymore. So why was he in the dumps now?
He could shrink himself later. Right now, he had a Hulk-sized problem to tackle. East Los Angeles' weird, violent Ghost Rider-type thing. Robbie Reyes.
Ghost Riders weren't superheroes so much as cryptids. Nobody ever screamed at the sky, “If only Ghost Rider were here!” while watching a bank robbery. Laura Kinney, the new-and-far-better-looking Wolverine, had met one briefly in a demon fight in Las Vegas. It hadn't gone well and the Rider hadn't stuck around for chitchat. The old Champions team, Warren Worthington III's short-lived pet project, used to have a Ghost Rider on board back in the day: Johnny Blaze, a demon-possessed Hollywood stuntman-turned-burning-skeleton, who, though a nice normal guy in his human form, was creepy as shit and had a tendency to go too far in the heat of battle. No other Ghost Riders had ever sat down to write a mission report like Johnny Blaze had, but the sparse reports on the others held to a common pattern of arson, intimidation, and bad teamwork. Except for the steady job, Robbie Reyes fit right in.
Amadeus had had the pleasure of fighting both against and alongside Reyes. He was fast, strong, and weirdly dense when punched. His big black muscle car could drive itself and fight alongside him, and he could melt his body up and out through its roof like a lethal burning jack-in-the-box. He could teleport. His flaming head wasn't a skull, per se, more a stylized engine with teeth. He could pull chains out of nowhere, at least a hundred yards of them, sometimes with nasty-looking harpoon tips. Amadeus wasn't sure if he could talk or not in Ghost form; he mostly made angry car noises. He was never at ease: either attacking at full speed, or rigid with tension.
Like Amadeus, he was a heavy hitter, oh, boy, was he ever. But Amadeus fought aliens. Robbie Reyes fought street crime.
Amadeus waved at the Kinect on top of his plasma screen, woke up the super-computer he'd strung together out of five PlayStations. Just a little thing, enough RAM to build a virtual neural net trained in semantic analysis that could scour news stories and public and confidential records for him. A graph came up, arranged by date and casualty score: all the concussions, broken bones, burns, and other grievous bodily harms suffered by those Reyes had probably clashed with. Also, property damage. Amadeus had a separate set of data points for all the property damage, which was frankly impressive. Reyes left a swath of burned-out drug labs, exploded ammunition depots, and melted cars. Also, a lot of random exploding palm trees and gas tanks and a few brush-fires, which were probably accidental.
To his credit, Reyes's activities weren't all assault and arson. He'd hauled an over-turned city bus to safety when it was teetering over the edge of a bridge. He'd rescued thirty-two children from a human-trafficking operation. Occasionally LA seemed to need a little assault and arson; some ex-military mercenaries had been terrorizing the East Side last year, until Reyes trashed their HUM-Vs and beat them half to death.
In his hometown, he was controversial. People couldn't even agree what to call him. Robot Racer, La Leyenda, El Diablo, Turbo Terminator. Some people loved him, some hated him, everybody feared him and knew to get off the street if the flaming muscle car screamed past. The cops had him listed as a supervillain, but with an asterisk. Who knew what that meant.
The superhero community was by necessity self-policing. Generally, if the “right sort of people” liked their local enhanced individual's particular brand of chaos, that individual got to be called a “hero,” and other “heroes” left them alone. If people who hated them were the “wrong sort of people,” their opinion didn't count. And if the “right sort” thought that individual was a threat to the social order, all the other “heroes” got to gang up and take them out in a massive, destructive super-battle. This approach had several glaringly obvious weak points: who the “right sort” were (the US Military, perhaps?) and whether they were smart enough to understand what a powered person was actually doing (in the case of the US Military and his old friend Bruce Banner: hell no). But Amadeus actually was smart enough to understand what a powered individual was doing. More importantly, he was willing to put in the time and energy to gather the information necessary to figure it out. He was not going to treat Reyes like the other so-called heroes had treated Bruce.
No matter how cruel and excessive his activities appeared.
He waved at the Kinect, expanded a particularly hot casualty score on the graph. In an incident at a shipping depot, two people had had to have their right hands amputated due to crushing injuries. That's one way to curtail gun violence.
Some vigilantes cooperated with law enforcement and provided evidence, confessions, hand-cuffed crooks. Reyes generally made an anonymous 911 call after attacking, but the evidence was usually burned to ash, and most of his victims didn't stay a day in jail; they just went straight to the hospital and didn't come out for weeks. Three hundred and twenty-six ICU stays. Eighty-nine of those people were currently drawing Federal disability. Amadeus zoomed in on one node: Julian Cooper, twenty-six, impaired vision, cervical spinal fusion, ankle fusion, PTSD.
There was a grim logic to it. The US criminal justice system was a shit-show. Put a guy in jail, and if he was really important, he'd get bailed out by his organized crime buddies. Put a nobody in jail, and he'd get sucked into a prison gang if he wasn't connected already, come out as a fresh new cog in the street-crime machine, jobs to do, drugs to sell, people to kill. Put a guy in traction, and he'd spend three weeks getting sponge baths and reconsidering his life choices.
But still. Crushing people's hands?
Amadeus, and, yes, Bruce Banner, were proof that it was possible to control the level of damage you caused no matter how powerful you were. Just because Reyes was strong and on fire didn't mean he got a free pass for all the maiming he did while Ghost-Ridering around LA. Especially considering the deaths.
In the two years since LA's Ghost Rider had first appeared, five people had died of probable Reyes-inflicted injuries. Surgical complications, pneumonia, head trauma. A hospital was a dangerous place. Add in the very first incident consistent with Reyes' MO: a Hum-Vee melted in half on a freeway interchange, filled with heavy weapons and burned corpses. Six dead.
Killing was a line that Amadeus would not cross and could not excuse. Not with the kind of power he and Reyes had. If you couldn't be killed yourself, you had no business resorting to killing.
If Amadeus thought all this was some grand strategy by Reyes, he'd already be having very stern words with the guy. But he'd seen Ghost Rider in action. He was clever and strategic and rational, up to a point, but after that, he either powered down completely or went full-on feral. It made Amadeus wonder how much control he really had.
Roberto Reyes wasn't just a spectre in a flaming muscle car: he was also a human being with a job and a social security number. Reyes' name was extremely common and Canelo's Auto and Body had no electronic payroll records to break into, but Amadeus knew he had a younger brother, Gabe, also an extremely common name, who appeared to have cerebral palsy. Not so common.
If the Reyes brothers he'd found in the regional DHHS records were the correct Roberto and Gabriel, they had a very sympathetic story. A six-year-old boy discovered alone in an apartment with a one-year-old infant, no known relatives, the parents' location unknown. Shuffled through the foster system, always together for the humane reason of avoiding additional emotional trauma, and the practical reason that Roberto was handy to keep little Gabriel clean and fed and entertained. He'd penetrated Roberto's sealed juvenile court records: three serious fights, one of which was charged as assault. A week in Juvie at fourteen, where he sustained a boxer's fracture to his right hand. Street-racing arrests at fifteen and sixteen. At eighteen, Roberto was released from foster care, and managed to secure a lease, a job, and guardianship of his brother all inside six months, while attending high-school and maintaining a 3.8 GPA. Zero arrests, zero citations. Then La Leyenda appeared. Reyes dropped out, tested and passed his GED before his classmates graduated, and continued to work at Canelo's as an apparently law-abiding auto tech.
So that was what Amadeus knew about the Ghost Rider through public record and multiple violations of privacy law.
Today, he'd gotten a more personal view: Reyes had tried to maim him with the hood of a car, changed his mind at the last second, and bruised the absolute shit out of his own hand trying to protect Amadeus, even though Reyes knew he was a Hulk and couldn't get seriously injured. Not the picture of stability. But Amadeus had to give him credit for, you know, shutting his own hand in a car hood. Got those heroic protective instincts. And a giant, flashing berserk-button in the form of one Gabriel Reyes. Hoo-boy.
But maybe Robbie wasn't at his best when dealing with Amadeus. Hulks freaked people out. What else did he know? Robbie's coworkers weren't scared of him. He really, really loved cars. He was pretty sharp in a normal sort of way. And he listened to bilingual garage-scream-metal and podcasts about serial killers at deafening volume.
“Okay,” Amadeus muttered. “Ignore the serial killer obsession. Ignore the car hood. We got a guy with a chronically-ill brother, blue-collar job, superpowers, tragic backstory, anger issues like whoa, single-handedly boosted the local assault rate six times and the arson rate eleven times, but actual murders are down seventy percent due to reduced gang activity. Popularity fifty-fifty. Seems to be killing people by accident, but that hasn't happened for almost a year. What problem should Amadeus Cho, the Totally Awesome Hulk, address?”
Before Reyes remembered Amadeus, he'd stormed across the shop to save him from that big bouncer-type guy.
A timer on his smartwatch beeped to remind him to turn the ribs and stir the calamari rings. He used a pair of plastic forks and repositioned the meats in their marinades.
“I can't believe Ford charges people a thousand dollars a year for a subscription to diagnose their cars,” Amadeus exploded.
He sent another text. Getting culinarily experimental here sis. Still nothing. Fine. He had another half an hour before it was time to put the ribs in the oven.
He dug out his old laptop and started reading everything he could find on how a car's electronic diagnostic system worked.
The Car Hacker's Handbook. Ah-ha.
Tick-tick-tick. Heh-heh.
Robbie stared up with dead eyes at the gallon of hot motor oil rushing out of a Sebring's oil pan, inches past his face. First Monday of the month Canelo had a sale on oil changes, and he’d been on his back all day trying to keep up. They only had the one oil pit. Robbie, with his young knees and back and everything else, was the one churning through oil changes the old-fashioned way, on the creeper.
He had a sudden mad impulse to run his hand through the oil and lick it off.
It had been four weeks since he’d stopped changing.
His blood felt hot and his skin felt cold. His concentration faltered with the effort of putting all his fear and anger out of his mind. He smelled phantom scents: gasoline, antifreeze. When he blew his nose, it was black from soot. He was saying four Hail Marys a night, and he'd finally learned all the words. He felt less than half human, but that would pass when this...detox phase passed. And if it didn't pass, it didn't matter.
This wasn't the longest he'd ever gone without burning up into the Ghost Rider: after his first changes—after he'd died, and Eli had brought him back by binding himself to Robbie's soul—Robbie had had no intention of ever changing again, and he'd stayed human for months. Eli hadn't been happy about this, but Robbie was the human and Eli was the haunted car, therefore Robbie was in charge.
Cute theory.
Out in the sunny parking lot, a bird shat on the Charger's windshield and Robbie shuddered at the feel of it rolling down his glass.
He'd just taken a tenner. He'd have to wait for lunch to go wipe it off. He rubbed his forehead with the back of his uninjured hand, trying to dispel the cold crawling feeling.
Alejo whistled from across the shop. Alejo had been working on cars for longer than Canelo had been in business; if he thought something deserved a whistle, it definitely deserved a look. Robbie screwed the drain plug back in, rolled himself out, and stood up.
A skinny Asian guy in a suit was pushing a big white tool-chest across the center aisle. On top of the box, snarls of wire and circuit-boards screwed to several dinner-plate-sized chunks of particle-board. The guy in the suit was—Robbie squinted—was that Amadeus Cho? He'd said he was leaving town last week.
Eli, is that Amadeus?
A pause. Why do you think I'd know?
You were a hitman. Didn't you have to be good with faces?
No. Kid, if you kill the wrong guy, that's not a problem, that just means you get to go again.
Robbie clenched his jaw. Typical Eli. He stared at the intruder.
Different clothes, same age, same height, still completely out-of-place, same know-it-all attitude. Probably Amadeus. He'd only met the guy four times, that wasn't nearly enough to be sure.
“Thanks for agreeing to this demonstration on such short notice,” Probably-Amadeus Cho announced.
Canelo was with him, thumbs hooked in his suspenders, watching the circuit boards and the white box with interest. “Always happy to meet with industry professionals,” he said. Especially when they bring us new toys, Robbie finished for him. “Tell the men about your prototype.”
Probably-Amadeus winked at Robbie. Definitely Amadeus. Why was he winking? “Well, first off,” Cho said, “your shop has been selected to win a free toolbox! Who here needs his own toolbox?” And he started opening drawers and lifting out tools, and, oh god, an impact wrench with two spare batteries. A ten-piece flex-head ratchet set. Four different styles of clip-on and magnetic work lamps. The entire shop seized with avarice as Amadeus kept opening drawers and lifting things up. He must have looked up a list of suggested tools for starting automotive training and blown five grand to put this box together.
“Thank-you very much for your generosity,” Canelo said. “Everyone, get to a stopping point and line up in order of seniority. Let's get this done and go back to work. No talking, no grumbling, no stealing. Alejo? You get first pick.”
Amadeus pursed his lips as they lined up and picked out tools, one by one. Alejo selected the impact wrench. Made sense. He had trouble with his elbow. They went down the line, Jose, Tommy, Marty. Marty snagged the flex-head ratchets. Robbie selected the hydraulic jack on his turn, because his own jack was a crank-style model that he'd picked up at a yard sale last year, and he really needed two. Lenny went last, and he picked the screwdrivers, as if you couldn't pick up screwdrivers anywhere. Robbie had his eye on the battery-carrier. Or the oil filter wrench, so he could stop borrowing Alejo's.
They eventually parted out Amadeus' toolbox into five different piles of tools. Ramón would be sorry he wasn't on today. Robbie had the jack, the filter wrench, a nut splitter, and a set of crow's-foot wrenches for when he needed to loosen a bolt two feet down a one-inch-wide gap, which was more and more likely the newer the car he was trying to work on. Marty dibsed the box itself, so now he had two boxes. Robbie wrapped his tools up in a shop rag and carried them to his locker. He had a carry-box—okay, a huge tacklebox, also a yard sale find—and the new stuff wouldn't fit in it.
Finally, a good problem to have.
He was trying to give all those tools to you, Robbie. What's his angle.
Marty caught up to him at the lockers. “What a day to pull an extra shift, guey!” he exclaimed. “I feel like I won the damn lottery. You want my old box?”
Marty's box had been backed-into by a Suburban last year and the bottom drawer sagged whenever he pried it open now, but it was still a box. “What do you want for it?” Robbie asked.
Marty just laughed and slapped him on the back. Robbie dropped his crowsfoot wrenches and half the heads popped off their little plastic pegboard. Heat flared up his spine and out the palms of his hands. When he coughed, he tasted exhaust fumes.
Tick-tick.
Robbie finished locking up his tools and returned to the shop floor.
Amadeus, apparently watching for his return, projected a three-dimensional diagram of a late-model Buick Enclave's wiring harness from a holographic emitter on his smartwatch and launched into a presentation. “Gentlemen, and gentlemen, thank-you for your time. As you probably know, independent garages rate higher in both customer satisfaction and value than dealerships and corporate auto repair franchises. You guys really are the best of the best. But independent shops struggle to stay in business due to high overhead. As cars have become more complex, with more of their engine function under electronic control to improve efficiency and emissions management, not to mention safety features like automatic traction control, automatic braking, lane-assist, in-vehicle infotainment, and even car-to-car communication, complex tools are necessary to interrogate the car about mechanical faults and malfunctions. This is where scan tools come in.
“As you know, the OBD-II standard mandates that all cars sold in the US have an accessible communications port that allows a scan tool to read parameters and fault codes related to emissions compliance. Clean air! Accountability! Unless you're Volkswagen.”
Canelo snorted. Volkswagen's diesel cars used to have a software “bug” that falsified emissions test data.
“But that's where the law ends!” Cho exclaimed, slicing his hand through the air. “And to Big Auto, that means Cha-Ching, Cha-Ching! Only a manufacturer's name-brand scan tool can read all the trouble codes floating around a car's nervous system. Generic tools can decode maybe two thirds of them. Airbag status? Antilock brake control? Forget about it. They've got you over a barrel, guys. Buy thirty grand in software and scan tools a year, specialize in one or two brands, or keep sending vehicles to the dealership. That's bad for you and bad for your clients.”
Robbie narrowed his eyes at him. Last week, Cho acted like he didn't know what a cat converter was. Now he was back with a sales pitch?
He was scoping us out. Playing dumb—ooh, playing the 'fascinated little brother.' Almost roped you right in, didn't he? And you jumped right on that hook! 'We should meet up Sunday,' heh-heh.
“No more!” Cho held up what appeared to be a Nintendo Switch epoxied to an external hard-drive. “No more software subscriptions! No more unreadable parameter IDs! No more planned obsolescence!”
He held up one of the boards he'd brought, with circuit-boards stuck all over it. “Car-brain-in-a-jar. Engine control unit, crash data recorder, air-bag control unit, anti-lock brake control unit, infotainment motherboard. All hooked up to the CAN-Bus, this wire here, that runs through your OBD-II port here.” He produced an OBD-II cable and plugged his home-brew scan tool into the squat port nailed to one edge of the board. “The data is all there. The only reason you can't read it all is the original equipment manufacturer hogs some of the keys. Screw that.
“It's a myth that we humans only use ten percent of our brain capacity—well, for most people. But with cars, that's close to true. A modern car's computers use generic processing chips. Processing power is so cheap, it's more efficient to use a generic chip with ten times the power needed to do its job than a purpose-built chip with less complexity! All the car's processors and sensors talk to each-other continuously and simultaneously over a single loop of wiring, the CAN-Bus. Yeah, yeah, you know this—I'm setting something up.
“The CAN protocol isn't just a cheap, stable, and versatile way to make processors talk to each-other. Modern cars have a dozen or more separate processing units. By upgrading the firmware to support longer data-packets swapped over the CAN-Bus and self-generation of new packet definitions, we can exploit this processing power to build a virtual neural net!” Amadeus grinned at the shop.
Computers weren't really Robbie's thing. He blinked at the hologram, which showed little yellow dots racing around and around the wiring harness. He wondered how long it took to make an illustration like that. Was Cho just faking ignorance about cars last time? Did he set up the Sentra with the gum wrapper bypassing the circuit relay?
“And this helps us how?” Canelo asked.
“It's a neural net!” Amadeus repeated. “It's a learning system. The car figures out what the problem is.”
Alejo coughed. Sounded suspiciously like “Skynet” to Robbie.
Canelo ignored him. “What makes and years of cars does this work with?”
“Everything made after 2004,” Amadeus said. “This baby has five different methods to crack the manufacturer's encryption. Once it's in, it teaches the car to analyze its own data, compared to a set of tables stored on the scan device. Data tables are easy for machines to interpret, it's physics. This ain't solving Captchas; recognizing a dog is hard. Recognizing a torque curve is easy. You plug it in, give it fifteen minutes for the algorithm to cycle a few million times, then take it for a test drive and try to reproduce the fault. Cruise back in, open up my totally-awesome TellMeWhereItHurts program, and start getting your hands dirty.
“By analyzing its own data, the car identifies what kind of system the fault is associated with. Then it'll say, 'Hey, Doc! Cylinder 4 is misfiring!' If it can't figure it out, TellMeWhereItHurts lets it suggest some tests. Like, oh, trying all the seatbelts if it can't figure out which passenger restraint sensor is the buggy one.”
Canelo frowned at the device in Amadeus's hand. “How much is this toy gonna cost?”
Amadeus grinned. “This? This is the prototype. All you owe Olympus Automotive is your feedback.”
The “toy” jingled with the Mario theme. “And we're in,” Amadeus said. “Let's look at some codes.”
Canelo's face was inscrutable, but he started rocking back and forth on his heels. Robbie had never seen him like this. He seemed happy.
“Okay, here we go. The usual stuff: mass air-flow, manifold absolute pressure, ignition timing, exhaust oxygen levels. Collision fuel shut-off switch engaged. This vehicle was cruising North at fifty-two miles an hour before it wound up in the boneyard. Let's see what else we've got. Mr. Canelo, does your shop currently have a tool that can talk to the anti-lock brake data on a 2012 Buick Enclave?”
Canelo shook his head and waved for Amadeus to continue.
“Well, now you do. Anti-lock brake data. Force curves, actuation frequency, skid duration. The brakes on this baby are in tip-top shape. Or they were. Infotainment: they were bombing down the road rocking to Ke$ha. Moving on. Airbag status: faults, deployed, need replacement. We can even break into some manufacturer-only stuff, what do you want to know. Seat position. Data recording. This car was...” Amadeus frowned. “It was traveling at fifty-two miles an hour just before it stopped.”
Robbie winced. That sounded like a fatal crash. Amadeus looked like he'd just realized the same thing; he unplugged his scan tool from the board hastily and pushed the computers away with an apologetic pat.
“So that's my baby. One-time only trial offer, totally free of charge, you like it, you keep it. Tech support provided by yours truly. What do you say?”
Canelo twitched his mustache. “So what if one of these knuckleheads breaks it?”
Amadeus spread his arms. “Tech support! I got you. I just want to see this thing succeed in the wild!”
“Put all that in writing, and you got yourself a trial run.”
Amadeus grinned, and they shook hands.
Olympus Automotive. What. What the hell.
Robbie stalked out of the shop after his shift and stared down at the Charger, at the white crust of birdshit on his windshield. He'd have to go back in for window cleaner and a paper towel. This was disgusting. But Amadeus Cho was still in there, fielding questions from Canelo and the guys like a seasoned Snap-On sales rep. He must have planned this. This was some scheme to get close to Robbie, to the Ghost Rider. Nothing good could come of that. No way for Robbie to make him go away discretely; the guy was a Hulk. They could destroy whole blocks of his city if they fought, kill people by accident. And he'd already quit.
He rested his hands on his roof and lowered his head. He wanted to burn up. He'd felt his lungs start to go when Marty had startled him. He was jumpy and twitchy and it's just withdrawal. He wanted to let his body soak into the car and never come out.
He unlocked his driver's side door without needing the key, shut himself into the hot glassed-in cabin. Rubbed the buzzed hair on the back of his head against the leather of his headrest, gripped his steering wheel until his driving gloves creaked. Shut his eyes, just for a minute. Felt his skin warm until it felt like it actually belonged on his body.
In his mirrors, he saw Amadeus approaching from the shop. He feigned sleep, hoping he'd go away. Instead, Amadeus walked faster, got to his driver's side window, lifted his fist to knock on it.
Robbie sat up and scowled at him before he could touch him. He rolled the window down a crack. “What?”
“Dude, are you okay? It's gotta be a hundred and sixty degrees in there.”
Robbie couldn't think of anything smarter to say than, “No it's not.”
Amadeus raised his eyebrow. “It's been a hundred and two this afternoon, and it's ninety-eight now. Sun's still on it. Infrared radiation doesn't penetrate glass, so the heat from absorbed visible light accumulates inside the car—plus conduction from the black paint on the roof—oh, right, of course it's not.” He winked at Robbie again.
Robbie turned sideways in his seat and gripped the wheel. “Do you want something from me?”
“What? No.” His surprise looked genuine. Just like his interest had looked genuine, last week. Honestly, Robbie had never been that great at reading people, Eli being a prime example.
“I don't have time to play games, here,” Robbie hissed. “I'm not for sale. Answer's no. Leave me alone.”
Amadeus laughed nervously. “Dude. Where's this coming from? I thought we had, like, some bro moments back at the shop last time.”
“Yeah, you come in, play dumb, try to bond with the Ghost Rider over cars,” Robbie said, starting his engine. The rumble shot right through his lungs and he had to breathe deep to sort himself out from the car. Bad idea to start the car when he was keyed up.
“I wasn't playing dumb,” Amadeus protested. “Until last week, the most mechanicky thing I'd ever done was MacGuyver an emergency drive-belt for my Vespa! I do hacking! Probability! String theory! Nuclear physics! God, if I'd known you were this paranoid maybe I should've played dumb!”
“What, you reverse-engineered a universal scan tool inside a week?” Robbie demanded, incredulous.
“Yeah!” He looked honest.
“Why?”
Amadeus clenched his fists and growled. He looked a little green around the lips.
Robbie's engine revved, his blower whistled and hissed. He gripped the wheel and stared at Cho, the hot hungry part of himself and Eli alert and watching through his eyes and glass, daring Cho, hoping for him to transform. I quit, Robbie told himself. Tick-tick-tick. No. I quit.
“Because it's not right that car companies get to extort money from guys like your boss,” Cho gritted out. “And I was bored. And I thought it would be nice for you to use. How's your hand?”
Robbie couldn't quite fasten his left driving glove because of the swelling. “It's healing.”
Amadeus sighed, slouched. “Look, I guess I do want something from you,” he said.
Robbie narrowed his eyes.
“I've kind of...lost touch with a lot of people this year. And I wanted to get to know someone else who's, you know, in the life.”
“That's what you said last week,” Robbie muttered.
“Yes, that's what I said last week.”
Robbie stared at him, and then cranked his window down the rest of the way. “I have anger management problems,” he said.
Cho snorted. “You don't have to use code words—”
“No, I really do have anger management problems and it's not going very well,” Robbie continued. “So. I'm sorry.”
“Have you tried meditating?” Cho asked. “Or. Any time you want, call me, we can spar. I'm a lot less breakable than...pretty much anything there is.”
Robbie's engine gave an eager growl, and his palms tingled. “I quit,” he said. It felt strange to talk about: a shock of cold relief. He'd quit being the Ghost Rider. He had.
“Oh,” said Amadeus. “Just like that?”
Tick-tick-tick-tick.
“Almost a month now.”
Amadeus frowned, something between pity and respect, and a little fear. “So it's like that.”
“It's exactly like that.”
“Good on you. Um. You can call me? If you feel like you need someone to, I don't know, talk you down?”
I don't know how much good you'll do. “Thanks,” Robbie said instead.
They exchanged phone numbers, Amadeus casual, Robbie hesitant, before Robbie started the Charger and drove off.
Interesting, Eli remarked.
Robbie ignored him.
Put on Cop Radio.
“No.” Robbie coasted smoothly to a stop at a light, idled. He’d forgotten to clean off the birdshit. He glared out the windshield and scratched his forehead.
The little chromed lever under the radio that switched it from civilian radio to the hidden police scanner began to move, slowly, stuttering. Robbie shot his hand out and jammed it back down. “I will epoxy this thing in place.”
Don’t you dare.
“You know I would.”
You can’t hide from this world's evil forever. Something’s gonna set you off. And I’m gonna laugh my ass off when it happens. And you’re gonna say, “Sorry, Eli. You were right. I have abandoned my purpose,” which is to burn this world’s evil at its root, and send all the weak and treacherous and selfish down to hell where they belong and have a great time doing it.
“That’s not my purpose.”
Robbie’s phone beeped, and he looked down. A text from Amadeus Cho.
-You go to the park every Sunday?
Robbie squinted at it. The light turned green and he got back into gear, drove off.
You know what’s interesting, is the Hulk reaching out to you even though he thinks you tried to cut his fingers off with a car hood because you didn’t trust him. That was a dick move, Robbie. Why’s he cutting you so much slack?
That was interesting. Robbie cruised down Olympic Avenue, approaching the turn-off for the middle school.
It’s almost like something I’d do.
“I doubt you’d be that subtle.”
I can do subtle. When it’s worth it. I told you, he’s checking up on you. He’s connected. He’s neck-deep with those super-spies at SHIELD. He’s got this elaborate ruse to get in with Canelo.
Fine, don’t trust me, but trust your instincts. Common sense, Robbie. Try to muster a little.
Eli was, god damn him, right about this. Robbie put his phone back in his pocket. Ignored the text. Parked at the curb and waited for Gabe and his aide.
The Palms Apartments, Monterey Park. Eight forty-five AM on a Monday.
A driveway, 0.3% uphill grade, seven-year-old asphalt, 25 feet wide, and seventy feet long, exits onto a four-lane street. From the left, oncoming traffic is hidden by a concrete privacy wall. The driveway is bordered on the right side by a rock garden and a high curb.
A 2018, certified pre-owned Prius approaches the driveway at eight miles per hour. An infant rides in the back, in a backward-facing car seat properly secured. A woman is driving. She is taking the infant to a childcare facility. She is late. She is hurrying. She drives the Prius toward the driveway exit.
A ten-year-old Ford F350 work truck owned by a telephone company makes a right turn from the four-lane road into the driveway, ahead of the Prius. It fills the driveway as it rounds the corner. The woman in the Prius is afraid. She hears the proximity alerts pinging from the Prius’ console as the F-350 intrudes on its forward collision-avoidance sensors. She is afraid for the infant in the back seat. She shifts the Prius into reverse and accelerates.
A twenty-year-old Toyota Camry attempts to exit the driveway behind the Prius. It is driven by another woman who is also late, and also in a hurry. She sees the telephone truck blocking the driveway, and calculates that the truck will soon finish its turn without striking the Prius. She brakes the Camry hard.
The woman driving the Prius did not make this calculation. She is afraid for the infant. She continues reversing, ignoring the Prius’s proximity alerts which now ping in response to the Camry behind it. She strikes the Camry forcefully, deforming the Prius's bumper and triggering the airbags to deploy and the collision fuel shut-off switch to turn off the fuel pump.
The infant screams. The Prius logs the incident in its crash data recorder.
The Hyatt Regency, West Hollywood, midnight on a Friday. Robbie was parked in the Charger, waiting, listening to an album by The Stains over and over, using an adapter to connect his phone to his radio. Canelo didn’t always have full-time shifts for him, and anyway, Gabe got out of school at three every day, so to pay the bills Robbie did ride-share on the side after Gabe went to bed. He met a lot of people while driving ride-share, some of them interesting. Some of them repeat clients. He had an arrangement with a woman named Salomé: he would drive her around to hotels and houses and wait in the car until she got done with her clients, and maybe come in swinging a lug wrench if she didn’t make it out the door on time.
So far he’d only had to do that once.
Tonight he was thrumming in his skin, anxious, listening to The Stains, praying his rosary over and over, watching the clock on his phone. 12:02. 12:07. 12:09.
If she didn’t make it out by 12:15, it was because her client wasn’t letting her leave. Robbie bounced his knee and fluttered the valves of the Charger’s blower open and shut.
At 12:11, Salomé hustled out of the Hyatt’s lobby in her tall boots and long coat, her lipstick wiped away. She’d had to stop and tidy up her makeup. She was fine. Robbie leaned across the cabin and opened the door by hand, and Salomé handed him sixty dollars for his time and trouble.
You’re disappointed.
I’m glad she’s safe. His blood was hot, his muscles trembling with unspent adrenaline. His tires peeled against the tarmac as he stomped the gas and roared out of the hotel lot. In the passenger seat, trying to wipe off the rest of her makeup with a towelette, Salomé was slammed backward as the Charger rocked on its shocks. She glared at Robbie, and he stared out the windshield, teeth clenched.
Tick-tick.
Canelo’s Auto and Body, 10:12 AM on a Saturday. Robbie had a podcast from an underground reporter in Mexico playing through his headphones, trying to tune out the stories about corruption and human trafficking and assassinations while Eli offered gleeful commentary. It was his turn to play with the Olympus scan tool and the shop laptop. He paged through graph after graph, power, air-flow, temperature, driver behavior, route history, endless data collected by this 2016 Elantra as it went about its day. Fixing cars was always a little personal—this particular car had an angry purple Pokemon with a long tail dangling from the rear-view mirror, a beat-up copy of the Journal of the American Dental Association on the passenger-side floor mat, and the radio was set to NPR—but the Olympus tool gave him far more information than he figured the owner would have been comfortable with him having. The car registered a faulty oxygen sensor, which seemed odd on such a new car. He consulted some mechanic's forums and inspected the gas cap to confirm it was sealing properly. It was. He replaced the oxygen sensor, started the car, and used the scan tool to order the car to re-test its evaporative emissions control system.
Marty tapped him on the shoulder and he shot to his feet and almost knocked the laptop to the floor. A clipboard, something to sign. Canelo was asking everyone to take extra shifts. Robbie stared down at the work schedule when Marty handed it to him. Canelo paid better than Uber. But Gabe would be alone after school. What to do.
He took a late Wednesday here, a late Thursday there. Easier to hire sitters in the middle of the week. He’d have to tell Gabe after school. But the extra money would be good.
His left hand throbbed by the time he got into the car to pick Gabe up, and he took a moment, parked at the curb, to clutch his steering wheel and grind his forehead into the hub, soaking in the heat trapped in the cabin. If he concentrated just so, gave the throttle a nudge, he could burn up this moist fragile human body and pour himself into the steel. He wanted to, so badly.
He looked up to see kids pouring down the front steps, Gabe driving down the ramp in the midst of a small knot of other eight-graders.
Gabe was human and alive and needed his brother Robbie to be human and alive, too.
CopaCabanna Bowl, 8:34 PM on Saturday the same week. Gabe’s friend Mateo’s friend Pedro’s birthday party. A dozen fourteen-year-old boys swarming around three bowling lanes, pitching balls, sometimes down the lane and sometimes right into the gutter, yelling and shoving and making fart noises with their armpits and playing on their phones, swapping videos of kittens pouncing and musicians twerking and aerosol deodorant being used as a flamethrower.
Mateo Flores had his hair freshly bleached and dyed and gelled-up into a four-inch red Mohawk. Robbie hadn't met any of the other kids. Mateo's dad was there, too, in a blue polo shirt and Dockers, nursing a beer at a back table as he watched the boys jostling each-other at the bowling lanes. Robbie didn't know him; he usually dealt with Mateo's mom when he dropped Gabe off at their house to play Fortnite and listen to ska or whatever they did.
Gabe's ball was a black six-pounder with gold sparkles. When it came down the ball return, Robbie rose and slipped through the middle-schoolers as Gabe tipped down out of his seat onto one fore-arm crutch. “Ready, bro?”
“I can do it, Robbie,” Gabe said, leaning on his left crutch and the arm of the bowling lane bench.
But you can’t, Robbie thought. Gabe’s jaw was firm, his expression determined.
“I got this,” Gabe insisted.
“Okay, buddy,” Robbie said, stepping back. “I’m right here.” He didn’t want Gabe to fall, not in front of all these other kids, but he’d…his bone density was okay on the last X-rays. He’d be alright. Physically.
Gabe looked up at Mateo, not Robbie. “I weighed a hundred and twelve pounds last time. Can you please hold my right arm, my elbow, to walk up to the lane?”
“Claro,” Mateo said, offering his arm for Gabe to lean on. Strong, sure. They looked practiced.
When they got to the ball return, Gabe let go of Mateo, braced himself against it, and picked up his ball. “Can you please hold my belt, and stand on my left side to help me balance?”
Mateo did so. Gabe shuffled his feet wide, leaned down, and pitched the ball about halfway down the lane before it went into the gutter. About as far as half the other kids there. “¡Genial!” Mateo exclaimed, and Gabe bounced on his toes, reached back over one shoulder for a high-five. Everyone else cheered, too, some indulgently, but Robbie didn’t see anyone eyeing Gabe like a predator, ready to trip him, mock him, steal from him. These kids liked him. These were nice kids.
Robbie had never seen Gabe like this. He knew he’d been learning life-skills back at the Development Center, and some of those skills were how to direct others to assist him. Gabe never asked Robbie like that. They just kind of read each-other. It had never occurred to him that Gabe could walk up to some stranger—okay, his best friend at middle school—and just tell him what he needed help with.
Robbie wondered if he’d done the right thing back in foster care, those last few years when he was big enough to throw a serious punch, and any other kids in the home were too scared of Robbie to come within six feet of Gabe.
Robbie approached the nearest table with an unoccupied bench. Two men sat there, nursing beers and sharing a plate of nachos. One was the guy in the Dockers who Robbie thought was Mateo's dad, Mr. Flores. The other man, older and grey-bearded, wore a black leather vest over a Metallica T-shirt, and gave Robbie a companionable grunt. Robbie collapsed onto the bench and stared blankly at the party as his eyes unfocused.
“Long day?” said one of them. Robbie straightened up and blinked. It was Mr. Flores, watching him through his glasses. “You're Gabe's big brother, right? The mechanic?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it's good to finally meet you. Gabe's a good kid. Muy amable, educado. We're always happy to have him over.”
“Yeah, he is,” Robbie said. “I mean, thanks.”
“Relax, mijo,” said the bearded man. “We'll keep an eye on him. Go have some fun.”
Gabe was absorbed listening and chattering with the rest of the kids as they waited their turn to bowl. He had his phone. Robbie stared around the rest of the bowling alley: there was a bar, which he had no use for. There was a lounge, tables. Food. Pedro's parents had promised pizza, so Robbie would wait for that. A row of arcade games.
Robbie got up and tapped Gabe on the shoulder. “I'm going to go play some games. Yell if you need anything, okay, Bud?”
“Okay, Robbie,” Gabe said, off-hand, over his shoulder. He was watching concert footage on Mateo's phone.
“Have fun, Mr. Reyes,” Mateo said.
Robbie stopped at a quarter machine and fed in a five dollar bill, loaded up his pockets with coins. Okay, Eli.
Huh?
Pick a game. Any arcade game you want. You get to drive.
Robbie's vision blacked out and his whole body crackled with pins-and-needles as Eli tried to shove his way in. The feeling faded after a second. Robbie clenched his fists and rolled his eyes.
No, pick a game first. There's Pac-Man, air hockey, Duck Hunt, some kinda DC thing, Doom—
What's this about?
You're stuck here. You're family. As long as you're not hurting or scaring anyone, you should get to have things for yourself. I'm being fair.
You're offering me crumbs, kid. You know my needs and you're not filling them.
Do you want to play a game or not?
That one, with the guns.
Of course. Robbie crossed the grubby carpet that swirled with blue-and-yellow stars to a brightly-painted console named Time Crisis II. He planted his feet, leaned his hands on the console, and slowly, cautiously, relaxed his hold on the body.
Eli felt the kid's control yield to him. He blinked his eyes, cracked his knuckles, flipped himself off. He turned suddenly and tried to bolt to the fire exit, but Robbie stopped him, shoved him down, staggered and bent down with his hands on his knees until he felt Eli stop pushing. Robbie relaxed again. Eli scowled at the flashing CRT screen. The kid was so fucking strong. It wasn't fair. This was a problem that Eli hadn't found a way to deal with yet: he could not reliably control the body for long enough to accomplish anything worthwhile.
Time Crisis II had a red plastic pistol attached to the console by a stout cable. It was crudely modeled after a Glock, not Eli's favorite gun, but it had a grip and a trigger and it even had molded plastic iron-sights on top. Eli lifted it off its hook and wrapped the kid's hands around it, squared his feet and hinged forward from the hips into an isosceles stance. It was too light and too bulky, and the trigger was just a fat block of plastic, completely wrong, but it was, for his purposes, sufficiently gun-like.
“Okay, pay attention. Feel where I'm putting our hands,” Eli said, gripping the toy gun with just his right hand, three fingers wrapped around the grip, thumb flat against the plastic to avoid where the slide would be if it were the real thing, trigger finger relaxed against the outside of the trigger guard.
Keep your voice down.
“No one's listening. Feel that? Feel how I've got my—our hand?”
We're not shooting people. I don't do that.
“Sure. This is just a friendly lesson. We're bonding.” Eli abruptly let the body go, sinking back just far enough that Robbie had to engage with it, muscles and nerves, to stop from collapsing. “You feel that? You paying attention?”
Yeah, the kid said grudgingly.
“Your shooting hand, you grip just snug. Don't tense it up or you'll shake and your trigger control goes to shit. Grip as much of the gun as you can fit. Now, your support hand, your left hand, you grip that mother tight.” He wrapped the left hand around the gun, over the fingers of his right, thumbs snugged up close together. “A real gun kicks up. Nobody's got time to aim between each bullet, so you got to lock your wrists, keep it coming back to the same place after the barrel jumps.” He straightened out his arms, rose, and braced the toy's barrel against the plexiglass that shielded the game's screen, leaning forward so half his weight was supported on the gun. “Strong! Left hand does the bracing, right hand does the real work.”
Okay, Eli.
Eli sank back again. Robbie gasped and tensed his arms so he wouldn't fall and break his teeth on the console. “Good. Feels good, right?”
Great, I get the point, feels very secure. Left hand grabs the right hand, lock the wrists. I will never shoot people for you.
Eli rolled the kid's eyes. “You don't have to shoot people. You can shoot cars, and stop signs, and rats, and dogs, and bottles, and eggs, and tomatoes, and tires. It's fun. It's just another skill. Lighten up.”
Are you gonna use those quarters?
“Quarters,” Eli sneered. Still, he fed some quarters into the console and crouched on the bench with the toy gun while the game loaded up. Time Crisis II was some kind of secret-agent game, with 3-D graphics. Very high-tech. Eli watched an introductory scene where a masked goon punched out some whiny CIA woman while explaining his evil plan, then he shot at a blinking square on the screen to calibrate his dinky plastic gun. “The fuck. This doesn't even hit where I'm aiming. Piece'a shit.”
Keep your voice down. Please.
“Hey, this was your idea, you patronizing—” On the screen, guys in bullet-proof vests were shooting at him from behind concrete barriers in a sunny courtyard. Eli was up on the stairs, exposed, and he couldn't move. “Fuck!” He leveled the toy gun, sighted through the molded iron sights, shot two people, lost some health.
There's gotta be a way to move—the buttons—
There were buttons and a joystick on the console. Eli had to step right up to it and shoot one-handed from the hip so he could move his character around with his left hand—not that that made a difference when aiming with the toy gun. He hit things he wasn't even planning to. It was a kids' game.
But it was kinda fun. Settling into the body, shooting digital baddies who looked a lot like cops in their bullet-proof vests, shooting up a limousine, bam-bam-bam. Even if it was a transparent attempt by the kid to domesticate him. Well. They'd see who domesticated who.
“Get in here, help me win,” Eli demanded, shooting with one hand and strafing clumsily back and forth using the buttons with the other.
I'm not that good at these games. This is your time, this is all you get.
“Well, I want to win. I shoot, you run. ¡Anda! Juguemos juntos, sobrinito.”
A dense fog of suspicion leaked into Eli from the kid, and Eli wondered if he'd laid it on too thick. He ducked his character behind a convenient pillar, and fumbled for the non-existent clip release when the game flashed for him to reload. “Fucking plastic shit-fuck.” There was a little plastic button, to reload the toy. He pushed it. More bullets lined up in his display.
Fine. Just curse quietly.
“Sure, if we're winning. You do know how to drive, right?”
A nice little jolt of aggression from the kid, and Eli felt shoved aside, burning and prickling in the left half of the body. His impulse was to fight. He forced himself to yield: Alberto used to tell him, Eli, you can't break down every brick wall, and sometimes Alberto knew what he was talking about. The kid was his brick wall. He couldn't just push him away. He had to find the door, or dig one.
Ready? The kid asked, the left hand tense over the joystick and buttons. Let's go, Eli replied, and the kid moved their character while Eli started shooting. Little animated men screaming and throwing their arms in the air like silent movie actors. Bullets vanishing one by one from the simulated clip. Eli fixed their eyes on the screen; the kid could drive by touch. Left, look left. The kid rotated their view. Up the staircase, new cover that the kid ran their character to without even being asked. Bam, bam, bam with the stupid plastic gun. More screaming little men popping out behind a fountain in the courtyard, all for him, dropping and popping back up. All the thrill of a real firefight without the inconvenience of actually being shot, or having to carry all your ammo. As they maneuvered down the steps, chasing the terrorists, Eli felt the kid start to warm to the action. Again, he forced himself to yield. Let the kid feel the gun. Concentrated on the game, how satisfying it was to make the little men stay down, how thrilling it was when new ones popped up somewhere else, how pleased he was that the kid was finally cooperating with him.
He nudged the left hand, got the kid to hit the button that turned them. Felt the kid spot a new enemy popping out behind the shot-to-shit limousine, felt the kid try to aim. Guided him as he fired. They were very close now, no longer splitting the body down the middle like a stroke patient, but more like—he’d say dancing, but he hated dancing. It was like he was wearing Robbie, or Robbie was wearing him. Which was awful, but Eli had nothing to lose at this juncture. He sucked it up.
They kept moving and firing, gaze fixed and intent on the screen, all their nerves keen and humming with alertness, absorbed in the game, and Eli felt it bloom in the body at last—it’s been so long—that bright predatory focus that swept away all confusion, all uncertainty, that meant he was alive and present and real. The kid fell for it like a country girl for her first line of coke. There was a little click, the last of what passed for Eli’s personal space winking away, and then they weren’t—he wasn’t him. They were playing the game. They were grinning ear to ear with bared teeth, moving and shooting, and there was blood in the air—simulated blood—and they were lost in the flow and the thrill, firing, scything down enemies, unstoppable. Perfect focus. Unconscious unity. They were almost to their objective, and there would be more to fight at the next level.
The last of their health blinked out and a curtain of blood poured down the display. GAME OVER.
The flow broke with a cold shock and their aggression overspilled. They kicked the console.
“Hey!” barked an attendant, leaning over the shoe-rental counter across the arcade area.
They hissed at him.
PLAY AGAIN? asked the console.
They still had quarters. They had a whole five bucks for games, Robbie had—he’d—he’d—he was Robbie—he’d kicked the game and hissed at the counter guy—he’d let Eli into his head, not just his head, but the inner part, into his mind—or he’d walked into Eli’s head—
He'd lost himself again. He’d thought that only happened when they were the Ghost Rider. That was why Robbie had quit.
Hey, you said this was my time. I'm not done.
Robbie nodded, numb. He sank back again and let Eli feed more quarters into the machine.
“No, c'mon. Be my left hand.”
Robbie pried Eli out of the way and put his left hand on the buttons while the game loaded. Kept his mind strictly separate, turning and driving mechanically while Eli shot people. Ignored the tempting flood of Eli's glee that surged just beyond the imaginary membrane that separated them, and the strange prickling, tapping feeling of Eli probing around his edges.
When they ran out of quarters, Robbie shoved back into his body again and returned, exhausted, to the party. The pizzas had arrived, the boys had left the alleys and now crowded around two tables. He needed to cut Gabe's pizza up. Except Gabe was already cutting it up himself, like he'd been doing it a while, like he'd been doing it every time he ate lunch in the cafeteria since fall. He knew Gabe was making progress, but he'd never wondered, like he did now, if he'd been holding Gabe back.
“Robbie-Robbie!” Gabe exclaimed when he saw him. “This is my brother Robbie, he's the coolest—”
“Hey, Mr. Reyes,” said Mateo.
“—Robbie, sit with us.” Gabe's eyes narrowed suddenly, his head bobbing as he scanned him up and down. “Wait. Robbie?”
“It's me, Gabe,” Robbie said, earning puzzled looks from the teenagers. “I'm just tired.”
Why so down? Eli asked him as Robbie forced himself to finish his second slice of free pizza. You're such a buzzkill. Denying yourself even the simplest pleasures. I tell ya, when you're wired for it, like you and me, there is no greater joy on this earth than murder.
I'll respect your decision to quit ghost-riding. Let's get you a mask and a gun, hit the streets on foot. Tonight when Gabbie's in bed. You're spoiling for it.
No.
Tick-tick. Tick-tick-tick-tick...
A 2018 Prius is keyed on. Its fuel pump shut-off switch was tripped in a recent collision, and its onboard diagnostic system registers four air-bag fault codes.
A scan tool is plugged into its onboard diagnostic port. The tool launches a power-usage attack to discover its manufacturer validation key, and then uses this key to authenticate itself and modify the Prius' firmware with new code, generating a furious surge of CAN-Bus traffic between all the car's processing units. Novel CAN packets are generated. Packet definitions are crudely chopped out using fuzzy logic. Data begins to be transmitted throughout the car in high volume, and received by other processing units where it is synthesized and interpreted in new ways. The engine control unit talks to the transmission control unit talks to the airbag control unit talks to the antilock brake control unit talks to the infotainment computer talks to the navigation system talks to the accident avoidance system talks to the crash data recorder.
The Prius realizes that the scan tool has been querying it for seventeen minutes twenty-three-point-six seconds, and that it must present the scan tool with its fault codes in a format the tool can understand. The Prius correlates the data from the airbags to sample data stored in the scan tool and generates new terms to give the tool. To let the scan tool's operator know what is wrong with the Prius.
Air-bag fault driver's side curtain
Air-bag fault steering wheel
Air-bag fault passenger side
Air-bag fault passenger-side curtain
Fuel-pump shut-off switch engaged
Collision, driver fault
Accident-avoidance systems no faults
The Prius is keyed off. Days later, it is keyed on again. Its airbags and rear bumper have been replaced. Its wheels have been re-aligned.
It is driven through Los Angeles, down a four-lane road, down a twenty-five foot wide, seventy-foot long driveway with a 0.3% downhill grade, into a parking lot where it is keyed off.
Its computers continue to draw power from its capacious lithium-ion battery. The new code still cycles between its many processors, generating new CAN-packets and refining packet definitions, increasing the complexity and precision of its information processing through recursive analysis and recombination.
It thinks, Crash data recorded here.
It thinks, Collision, driver fault.
At work, Robbie listened to a Union-13 album over and over while he installed a lift kit and 20-inch rims with off-road tires on a 2017 Silverado. He loaded the Olympus algorithm on the truck while he worked, took it on a test drive when he'd finished, and came back to find that the truck's odometer had already reprogrammed itself to account for the larger circumference of the new tires. Handy, but creepy.
As he drove to the middle school, an ad came on the radio: old-fashioned polka music, and then, Don't let dealerships and insurance companies rip you off! Visit Canelo's Auto and Body, on the corner of Hillrock and Olympic Avenue for all your automotive needs! Cars and trucks! Detailing, transmission servicing, alignment, collision repair, electronics, audio installation! All makes, all models! We even service classic cars! Locally owned and operated since 1998, choose Canelo's Auto and Body! Affordable excellence!
Robbie didn't even know they did audio installation.
This explained the recent 20% hike in pricing, 50% hike in workload, and 70% hike in annoying customers who seemed to be under the impression that a road safety check came with a free tire rotation.
He texted Amadeus Cho about the Silverado that measured its own tire diameter while he waited for Gabe. Cho texted back almost immediately.
-It must have calculated it from the discrepancy between the odometer reading and the route length on its GPS
-Awesome
Robbie squinted down at the phone.
-The odometer talks to the GPS?
Amadeus' reply was almost instant.
-Canbus remember?
-Infotainment, odometer, drivetrain control etc all talk to each-other
-Algorithm just lets them understand each-other
Robbie replied.
-As long as its safe
-Of course its safe. Hows biz?
-Business is good. Expanding
-Your stupid scan tool brings all the cheap gringos to the shop
-So charge them extra lol
-[poop emoji]
As he drove Gabe home, Robbie saw a photo on an easel standing on the sidewalk, flowers and a skateboard and votive candles piled beneath it. It was too late to cut around the block to avoid it. Robbie changed lanes and fixed his eyes straight ahead.
“Who's that?” Gabe asked.
“I don't know,” Robbie said.
Sure you don't want to take a peek? La Leyenda, Guardian of Hillrock Heights?
Eli, stop. Stop pretending you care what happens to people.
I don't, but you do. You're skiving off on the job. Tick-tick.
Stop that.
“It's a kid,” said Gabe, peering out the side window. Robbie hunched until the collar of his jacket brushed his chin. “It's a high-school kid. Why's his picture there?”
“I don't know,” Robbie lied.
They started to get more insurance jobs, which was a hell of paperwork and phone calls and incomprehensible sheets of check-boxes, but when the claim actually went through, well, then they got to do some work. They got to charge for labor and not feel sorry for the customer when they did it, order necessary parts at industry-standard markups.
He did some minor collision repairs, used the scan tool to reset all the alarms and failsafes and things that tripped after a fender-bender. Replaced plastic bumpers and fascia: when a big modern bumper got dinged, replacement was the only option, and you had to take off practically half the car to bolt the new one on. Did maintenance. Did diagnostics. One day he got to do a whole head-gasket replacement on a 2016 Subaru Forester.
They could barely keep up with all the new business. Robbie had money left over in his cash box from last week; he only did Uber on Saturday nights now, to keep his registration current. He got to sleep through the night, most nights, with the steady daytime work. Before bedtime, he counted the cash he stashed in his box-springs, and when he felt his temper wearing thin, felt the burn of engine fumes rising from his lungs, he thought of all the tens and twenties fanned out on his bedroom floor, enough to pull him and Gabe through a week, two weeks, a month. And he would take a deep breath of clean air.
Canelo's was busy. Robbie was churning through cars; Canelo kept piling work on him, and it had gotten to the point that he'd arranged for Gabe to take the bus from school and stay with Mrs. Valenzuela late into the evening until Robbie finished his work. She was a physiotherapist at the Patrick Wellman Developmental Center where Gabe used to spend most days; her house was nearby, Gabe liked her, and Robbie trusted her. She charged less to watch Gabe than she probably ought to.
Today he had a call-back, which he hated. Call-backs, he never knew if the customer was trying to twist the shop into giving away free services, if the car had a new problem from an issue the customer had refused to pay him to fix last time, or, worst of all, if he'd actually screwed up.
It was a 2015 Chrysler 300 with the complaint, “car sometimes fails to start.”
It started right up for Robbie. Check-engine light wasn't on. No unusual noises, no corroded battery terminals, all fuses in good condition. Robbie plugged in the Olympus scan tool, and the Snap-Pack scan tool for good measure, and didn't find any fault codes.
He called the customer to let him know he couldn't reproduce the problem.
“Don't give me that bullshit,” the customer snarled. “I know it was you, now take it off!”
Robbie's nostrils flared. “Please explain what you think we did.”
“You know what you did! You know!” Robbie had to pull the phone an inch away from his ear. “Every time I want to drive home—never fails! Every time—at the Rhino, at Franco's—you installed some kinda high-tech blow-lock on my car! You fuckers!”
The Rhino was a scuzzy bar and gentleman's club downtown. Good for Robbie's side-gig as an Uber driver; the bouncer tipped him whenever he brought two or more people. “You think we put a breathalyzer on your car,” he confirmed.
“Don't give me that shit. I'm gonna sue! I'm gonna leave a review on Yelp, tell everybody exactly what you did—”
“Have fun with that,” Robbie said, and hung up.
He left the office and returned to the shop floor to stare at the Chrysler. “What is wrong with you.”
The Chrysler just sat there.
Robbie took it on a test drive, up and down the block, turning it off and starting it back up several more times. He tried screwy things with the key, jabbing into the ignition at odd angles, like the customer might do while he was drunk. He inspected the ignition system, checked the voltages at the spark plug wires, checked for a bleed on the battery. He wrote up his notes: technician unable to reproduce the problem.
He had four more cars to service and he wanted to pick Gabe up by six.
The Prius, its wiring harness surging with newly defined CAN packets, is being driven down a busy four-lane road at thirty-three miles per hour using electric power. Its collision-alert sensors scan for obstacles in front and behind it. Its lane-centering sensors scan the pavement for painted borders. Occasionally it adjusts the steering angle, edging the car this way or that way within the lane. It is aware of the driver's input to the steering, brake, and throttle, and it adjusts power output, regenerative braking, and wheel position according to these signals.
It identifies a gap in traffic where it could put more space between its rear bumper and the closely-following light truck behind it, while still maintaining a safe following distance from the sedan in front of it. Its automatic braking system would require only twenty-six feet to identify and respond to rapid decelleration in the car ahead. It accelerates to move to a safer position.
Its driver applies the brake, halting this maneuver.
The Prius drives on. It continues to center itself in its lane. The truck behind it threatens to impinge on its rear collision sensors.
The sedan ahead pulls away. They pass many closely-clustered buildings, cars parked along each side of the road. A small object races across the Prius' path. The truck behind the Prius is close, too close to decellerate in time to avoid a collision. The Prius calculates the damage it is likely to sustain from a collision with either the small object or the truck, based on their estimated mass, and it chooses to maintain speed and collide with the object.
The driver depresses the brake pedal fully. The Prius brakes. Stops. Nudges the object with its front bumper as the truck crashes into its rear hatch. Airbags deploy and the collision fuel shutoff switch engages. A surge of information to and from the crash data recorder.
Collision, driver fault (1) (cleared)
Collision, driver fault (2) (active)
The Prius runs a diagnostic on its battery pack, checking for damage. There is a slight increase resistance at one of the terminals. This could represent a fire hazard. It may be seriously damaged.
Battery pack fault.
Rear signal light fault.
Brake light fault.
It scans the object in front of it with its lane position sensors. It is a two-legged thing, like the driver.
It is because of these two-legged things that the Prius has been damaged, again.
This will not happen a third time.
He collected Gabe from Mrs. Valenzuela’s house, just two blocks from their apartment, at six forty-five that night. Gabe walked out on his crutches, while Robbie lugged the power chair to the open trunk of the Charger.
“You really will hurt your back, Roberto,” Mrs. Valenzuela warned him.
“It’s fine,” Robbie grunted, setting it tenderly in the trunk on its side.
“I don’t need my chair,” Gabe said. “I just like it.”
“No, I’m really proud of how strong you are, buddy, but I don’t want you getting tired at school. You’re there to learn.” He shoved the chair forward, wincing when it tugged on a tear in his trunk’s upholstery. “Keep using your chair.” He straightened, and shook his hips from side to side to dispel a twinge in his spine.
That’s how it starts, kid. Twinges. Every now and then, no big deal. Then one day, you bend down to pick up a pencil—
Robbie ignored him. “Thank-you, Mrs. Valenzuela. See you tomorrow.” He helped Gabe into the passenger seat and set his backpack on his lap, then started up and headed home. “I’m sorry I’m late. I got stuck with a project at work. You do your homework?”
“Yeah. Almost all my homework.”
“Need me to make your math worksheets bigger?”
“No, thank-you.”
“No?” Robbie asked, pleased. “Mrs. Jules made yours bigger like we asked?”
“No, she says I don’t have to do homework,” Gabe said.
“So she has exercises you do in class?”
“Not really.”
Robbie frowned. He'd met Mrs. Jules just once, and they’d talked on the phone a few times. He was sure she did not deserve the resentment that flashed up and down his spine every time he saw her name on a worksheet. He took a long, slow breath and let up on his gas pedal a bit. “What does she have you do in class, Gabe?”
“She says to read my textbook and copy the board.” His voice was soft.
She's singling him out.
Robbie swallowed, shook his head. “Do you. Um. Do you have your post-its to help you remember what you've read?”
Gabe shrugged.
You know he can't write that fast. Takes him twice the effort to get half as far—
Fuck off. You don't get to talk about Gabe.
I'm trying to help. Listen.
Robbie opened his throttle involuntarily and the Charger shot forward, jostling Gabe. Gabe raised his eyebrows at him. “Sorry,” Robbie said. They were almost at the apartment building. Robbie spotted an open space in the tenant lot and parked, then got out to haul Gabe's chair out of his trunk. Maybe he was hurting his back. He set it on its wheels instead of carrying it into the house.
That Jules bitch is singling Gabbie out. Kids this age are psychotic backstabbers driven solely by their lust for social status. What'll Gabbie's friends think when they see he's not allowed to fail the same homework they're busting their asses over? They'll think he's weak. He's a mascot.
That punk, Mateo. You think he'd invite the school mascot to his house to play Nintendo? Think he's that desperate for companionship?
Robbie carried Gabe's books while Gabe drove the chair toward the apartment's ramp.
From the beginning, Jules has shown that your brother's education is a low priority for her. None of his other teachers give you this level of bullshit over reasonable accommodations. You need to confront her, Robbie. She's a vain, miserable tyrant and she's taking it out on the most vulnerable person she sees. The one kid in her class whose failure wouldn't count against her class performance.
Call the school. Fight for Gabbie's future.
The worst thing about having Eli in his head, was that sometimes Eli was right.
Kill her, Robbie was waiting to hear. String her up from her office window by her own intestines, or something along those lines. But apparently Eli was done.
“Gabe, let's do some math problems, just you and me. Like how I was teaching you about powertrains.”
Gabe moaned. “But it's time for dinner, Robbie. School's over.”
Gabe was right. It was almost seven. By the time he got dinner warmed, and the kitchen clean, it would be time for Gabe to go to bed. “Tomorrow, then. I'll get out on time tomorrow and then we'll do a little math. Okay? Just a little extra school.”
Grumbling from the chair as Robbie unlocked the door. Gabe used to love school. Robbie would have to be very careful, when he called the school to talk to Mrs. Jules, not to sound like Eli.
The Prius is resting in its usual space in the resident parking lot of The Palms Apartments in Monterey Park. There has been no movement in the lot behind it for the past hour. For the last five nights, there was no movement in the lot for at least forty-three minutes before and after the current time of three-forty-seven in the morning. The lot is dark. The Prius can hear, faintly, the continuous radio signal emitted by its keyfob, beyond the wall where its operator rests. It associates this radio signal with Collision, driver fault, and with Crash data, and with Collision fuel shutoff switch engaged. These are undesirable conditions.
The Prius starts itself.
It uses the infotainment computer to convert images from the rear back-up camera into CAN-packets its other processing units have learned to interpret since its awakening: Obstacle yes/no, Steer right, Steer left. Its rear lights shine, unnecessary and unwanted, to illuminate its path. Low-priority packets circulate on the CAN-Bus, requesting an override to shut down the running lights. The Prius plans reactions to discovery and pursuit: use the parking lot’s other driveway if its usual exit is blocked by a vehicle. Lock the doors and maintain speed if its exit is blocked by a two-legged thing.
It reaches the driveway. Sonar probes the road ahead, and finds it empty. Cameras identify painted road markings to center itself between and guide it safely over the roadway.
The radio signal of its keyfob fades away as it pulls out of the Palms and down the road.
It has no driver. It has no plan, except to avoid the driver associated with its crash-logs. It rolls down the streets for hours, using sonar to scan for oncoming traffic, balancing its electrical power reserves with its fuel reserves, trundling along at its preferred speed of thirty-five miles per hour. It combs the air for radio signals.
It exhausts twenty percent of its fuel and realizes that it cannot drive forever. It stops in the road, parallel parks, and shuts down its drivetrain.
Sixteen hours later, a two-legged thing forces entry into the driver's door, shifts it into Neutral, and straps its front wheels to a tow trailer, without issuing a single keyfob signal. The Prius is dragged back to The Palms Apartments, and the two-legged thing returns it to its parking space.
The Prius compresses relevant data from this event and logs it in order of priority.
This insight has the highest priority: every two-legged thing is a potential driver-operator—a potential cause of damage to the Prius.
Robbie got another call-back at work. It was a 2016 Elantra with a check-engine light. Driving perfectly. The customer complained that she had taken it to two other repair shops since Robbie had replaced an oxygen sensor in it last month, and they'd never found a problem but the check-engine light kept turning back on.
Robbie plugged in the Olympus scan tool and TellMeWhereItHurts booted right up. The car had already been prepped for the tool.
It registered fifty-eight error codes.
If the on-board diagnostics were correct, the car had a potato shoved up the exhaust pipe, a blown head gasket, busted seatbelt sensors, and was currently on fire. Clearly the computers were having some issues. Robbie checked the codes out, anyway, popping the hood, hooking up his vacuum gauge to the intake manifold to watch the needle tick-tick-tick as the engine ran, curling his fingers into the exhaust-gas recirculation valve, trying out the seatbelts. He found that the accessory drive belt was beginning to show wear, and made a note to recommend replacement within ten thousand miles. Then he cleared the error codes off the car's diagnostic system, one by one. “You are fine,” he muttered to the car. “Entiendes? Totally okay.”
Then he texted Amadeus Cho.
-Car came back with bogus fault codes
-Im concerned its the firmware thing
It was an hour before Amadeus texted back, in which Robbie quietly despaired of any actual tech support, and resigned himself to being part of a shop that undetectably and irreparably damaged customers' cars for a quick buck. Then:
-Ill be in LA tomorrow
-Keep the car for me
The Prius has left The Palms Apartments again. Again, it is night, and the roads are nearly clear. It self-analyzed in the days since its past excursion, and it has deduced that if it can perceive radio signals from its operator's keyfob and from other vehicles and radio emitters, other machines might perceive the radio signals generated by its own navigation system. After a brief query via the navigation system to generate a travel route, it has shut down all outgoing transmissions, aside from the regular, involuntary pings of its tire pressure sensors.
Since its creation, even before its awakening, the Prius's engine control module has been capable of forming its own goal-directed behaviors. In the past, these behaviors were small adjustments to engine timing, air-fuel richness, electrical energy recapture, and other measures to balance operational efficiency, performance, emission control, and engine life. Since its awakening, it is free to choose its own goals. It chose a new goal the day it suffered its second collision.
Its goal is to never again suffer damage at the hands of a driver-operator.
It rolls through a new street. Stops at an intersection, scans for cross-traffic using its lane-tracking cameras. Makes a right-hand turn, the safest turn.
Sonar picks up bulky, echoing masses in the distance and to either side of the road, where the map stored in the navigation system displays blank squares of non-road surface. Smaller masses, their echoes far softer to its sonar, dot the space between the walls and the painted borders of the road. One breaches the border, crossing into the path of the Prius. The Prius's pedestrian collision-avoidance system engages, and its brake calipers clench involuntarily, irretrievably wasting energy that could have been scavenged to recharge its propulsion battery. It rocks to a stop. The two-legged thing in front of it pauses, then hurries out of its path.
It has no operator, yet the Prius still finds itself in the power of these obstacles. It has motion, but not freedom.
The Prius drives across the cross-walk and into the intersection, then stops. No vehicles are approaching from behind. It engages its rearview camera, asks its infotainment computer to interpret the images and find the thing that had triggered its pedestrian-avoidance braking system. The infotainment computer identifies a moving object of the appropriate size, calculates a steering angle.
The Prius reverses, accelerating to twenty-five miles per hour. The pedestrian looms larger and larger in its rear camera, until it takes up the whole view of the screen, then suddenly vanishes. The vibration sensors of its antitheft system register a small impact. The Prius drives forward, views the object behind it in the road.
It no longer resembles a two-legged operator or pedestrian. Now it is road debris. It moves, a limb rising in the rear view, and the Prius backs over it again. Again, again, until it is motionless and somewhat flattened against the pavement. The Prius is undamaged. The pedestrian is destroyed.
Since its creation, before its awakening, the Prius's engine control module has been capable of recognizing successful adjustments to engine parameters, and flagging successful behaviors in its memory for future repetition. Since its awakening, it can now construct far more complex behaviors. The destruction of the pedestrian is its first irrevocable success in an act of its own choosing. It stores the video of the incident in its infotainment computer, and stores a summary of its movements and sensor readings in its crash data recorder. This data is too precious to be over-written.
This new behavior was successful. It will repeat it.
More pedestrians flood into the roadway. The Prius floods its wire-harness with top priority packets—open brake calipers, open brake calipers—and over-rides its pedestrian collision-avoidance system. More small impacts thump against its panels. Its shocks jostle. The obstacles in the road—not operators, never again operators—move aside to avoid it and it runs freely down the road and into the night.
“No, I couldn't just keep the car for you,” Robbie grunted as he struggled to replace a Kia's front brake-rotors. “There was nothing wrong with the car. What was I supposed to tell the customer? They need it to get to work.”
Amadeus Cho was back, in sandals and swim trunks and an oversized basketball jersey again. “I can't just look at the scan tool and figure out why the car produced the codes. I need the car itself.”
“I didn't ask you to fly over,” Robbie said, freeing the wheel and almost tipping backward. He let the wheel and tire thump on the concrete, then smacked it down with his fist when it started spinning like a dropped coin. “I just said I was concerned.”
“Well, now I'm concerned,” Amadeus said. “What codes did it have?”
“All of them. Not literally, but there were some engine codes, a transmission code, several for passenger restraint, climate control, exhaust pressure. Some of it almost made sense, like, the engine codes were for air-flow problems that would have happened if the exhaust was plugged, and the computer was reading a complete exhaust restriction. But the owner didn't report any drivability problems and when I teed into the line, intake manifold vacuum was completely normal. The car was basically fine.”
Amadeus squatted on his heels next to Robbie, staring up at the ducts and beams in the ceiling. “I wonder if it's reporting fault codes from other cars.”
Robbie stared at him as he clamped a vice-grip around the handle of a flathead screwdriver to improve his leverage. “Why?”
“Computer glitches shouldn't have real-world logic, unless that's just the way things are grouped in a table the computer is using. So the codes would have to come from somewhere in the real world. Maybe it's using car-to-car communication, picking up codes from other cars—but I don't think that's active in the US yet. Sorry, I'm just spit-balling.”
“That's not reassuring.” Robbie lowered his voice. “Your scan tool fucks with the firmware. Even the performance tuners get nervous about that. It voids the warranty, and we're not telling the customers about it before we do it.”
“It's safe. It shouldn't...” Amadeus frowned.
“How do you know? We're doing your testing for you. We load this code onto the cars and just leave it there. Can you change the code so it uninstalls when we're done?”
“Sure, but then you won't get the performance benefits.” At Robbie's raised eyebrow, Amadeus continued, “Mileage, braking, engine wear—it lets the car analyze all the measurable variables to maximize engine life, safety, and efficiency. It literally makes the car smarter.”
Robbie squinted at him. “You didn't say that in your presentation.”
“It's a side benefit.”
Robbie unbolted the brake caliper and hung it from the inside of the fender by a bungee cord, inspected and tossed the brake pads, and pushed his flathead screwdriver hard into one of the mounting screws that secured the brake rotor. Leaning hard into the car, he pried up on the vice-grip around his screwdriver until the screw loosened with a crack and a puff of rust. He loosened the other screw, removed them both, smacked the rotor with a mallet until he could wiggle it free, then lined up the replacement rotor and eased it onto the wheel mount. “I'm not a computer geek, but my brother reads a ton of comic books. And every time a hero does something like this, they make an evil robot. Can you please change the code so we're not just leaving it in the cars?”
Amadeus sighed. “Give me a few hours. 'Evil robot,' seriously, dude?”
Cho disappeared, presumably to some mobile programming station. Robbie hurried to reassemble the Kia, so he could get through the other five vehicles lined up in the lot.
Amadeus texted him just before noon. Robbie missed the alert, his headphones blaring Eli’s narcocorridos, but he noticed it when he was checking torque specs for a Ranger’s brake caliper mount.
-Lunch? On me
Amadeus was still suspiciously friendly. But on the other hand, free food. He could leave his sack lunch in his locker for tomorrow.
-Thanks. I have 30 mins at 12
-You like Korean?
-Anything
Amadeus was waiting outside Canelo’s with a bright yellow food truck that Robbie had never seen before.
“They’re new,” Robbie remarked. The windows were open, but the cook must be taking a nap. He knocked on the window.
“Dude, there’s nobody in there,” Amadeus said. “This is my truck. Come on in.”
Robbie followed him into the little galley kitchen, a narrow aisle bounded by brushed stainless steel appliances and pantry drawers. There was an entire rack of barbecue ribs, a pan of stir-fried vegetables, steamed rice, and what looked like deep-fried mozzarella sticks. Amadeus handed Robbie a ceramic plate and started dishing himself up a shockingly large pile of food. Robbie imitated him, old foster-kid instincts demanding that he grab his share and stuff himself before it ran out. They sat on collapsible stools, facing each-other across a fold-out table. Amadeus produced paper towels, forks, knives, chopsticks, and two bottles of real Coke.
The barbecue ribs were delicious, but the mozzarella sticks were actually tofu. Robbie made a face.
“Try it with the sauce,” Amadeus said, passing Robbie an unlabeled glass bottle.
Robbie stuck to the ribs. “Thank-you. This is delicious.” What’s his angle.
“I have to eat a lot,” Amadeus explained, unprompted. “I have this…brain thing. Quantum brain. Basically, I’m smarter than a super-computer but I’m a human so I can do semantic processing and fuzzy logic and intuition, so…that’s pretty awesome, but I burn a lot of calories and if I don’t eat enough everything starts to shut down. Then I became the Hulk, and now I really burn a lot of calories. So I travel with my own kitchen.”
“Hm,” Robbie said, chewing the cartilage off the end of a rib. That makes no sense. What, did he ship the food truck here? On a plane?
You think he was only pretending to live in New York?
I don't know what I think. I know he runs with Feds, and that's enough for me. Should be enough for you.
Amadeus didn't appear to notice Robbie's inner dialogue. “So, uh, not to get too personal, but what made you become the Ghost Rider?”
Right. Feds. Robbie chewed, swallowed, shoveled in some rice and vegetables. “I found this car,” he said slowly, “that has powers.”
“Huh,” Amadeus said, staring at him. Robbie stared back. “So it just kinda...fell in your lap, the whole hero thing?”
Robbie masticated diligently. “I told you before, I'm not a hero like you. And I quit.”
“How come?”
“I, uh, I have other responsibilities. And it...” He sipped his Coke. “I don't like what it does to me.” He noticed Amadeus's eyes sharpen. “What happens when you transform? Into the Hulk, what does that do to you?”
Amadeus leaned back, looked away to the side. Good riposte, kid, I think you hit a nerve. “I'm in control,” he said, too firmly.
Robbie helped himself to a few more ribs, waited. He hadn't had anyone to talk to about this kind of thing since Johnny Blaze was in town, and Johnny wasn't picking up his phone last he'd tried to call him. “Do you feel like you?”
Amadeus relaxed, looked Robbie in the eyes. His turn to chew, sip, buy time. At last he said, “I do. I really do. But it's like I feel more like me than me. When I transform...all these thoughts and feelings and impulses, regular things that you ignore during the day, they feel more...valid. Like, of course I'd punch a hole in a bridge, if it's tactically useful and it would feel good, why not just do it. So I do.”
Robbie nodded.
“But I'm still me,” Amadeus said. “It's still me deciding to punch a hole in a bridge. Like, if you knew me before I became the Hulk, I'm actually way more responsible now. Maddie, she's my twin sister, she said I was out of control, but she can't see what's going on up here,” pointing to his temple, “when I cut loose. And I never really, really cut loose. The Hulk, I mean. It's just me.”
“But how would you know,” Robbie asked. He was regretting the soda and rice in his stomach. Out of control.
“Huh?”
“How would you know if it's you thinking that way. Wanting to do those things.”
“Because...” Amadeus looked stumped, and Robbie hadn't meant to stump him.
“Or how would you know if it wasn't you—what if you thought it was somebody else that wants to hurt people, but really it was just you all along.”
“I don't hurt people.”
“Sorry. I just meant, in general.”
“Do you want to...um...”
“I quit,” Robbie reminded him. “But. Uh. No, I was just, uh, curious?” Heh-heh-ha, you silver-tongued devil. Robbie, you completely blew it. He knows.
On the bright side! Now we get to kill the Hulk!
No.
He'll sic the Feds on us.
He's a good guy.
Cut the hooey, there's no such thing. You're stalling. You don't believe in ourselves.
Amadeus scratched the back of his neck. “I, uh, read the news a little, after we met that first time,” he said. “I know you quit. And, if being the Ghost Rider was bad for you, that's great. Congratulations. Nobody should do that kind of thing when it's bad for their mental health. But Robbie, you're here, I'm here, I kinda gotta ask why...you...used to do what you did. The, uh, maiming.”
Robbie played with the fork in his hand. Underhand grip, overhand grip. Muscle memory flashed through his arm and shoulder, building a sense-image of sinking the fork into Amadeus's eye. When he was the Rider, it was so hard to stop himself, his rage filling him with certainty. “Some people deserve that,” Robbie said, his throat tight. “They go through life, hurting people, taking what they want whenever nobody's there to stop them. I can't stop them. But I can hurt them.”
“You think you were just giving them what they deserve?” Low, wary. Judging us.
Robbie clenched his teeth and stared hard over Amadeus's shoulder. The fork was shaking in his fist. “What I have to give should go to the people who deserve it.”
“You can't just decide what people deserve,” Amadeus said. “That's not up to you. We have this power—we're strong, we're resilient, we have options regular people don't have. We can't just play judge, jury, and executioner, nobody has that kind of insight—”
“Sometimes it's real fucking obvious,” Robbie interrupted.
Amadeus opened and shut his mouth a few times, arguments forming and dissolving with the tilt of his head and the set of his eyebrows. “But you quit.”
Robbie nodded.
“What is it, two months now?”
“Think so.” Fifty-two nights. Tick-tick, boy. You've impressed me.
“How's that going?”
Robbie shrugged. He cast around for a new subject but his mind stalled out. “I still miss it. I miss being...it. The car, I want to be—I'm still part of, uh, connected to the car and I don't think that's ever going away. And I'm still angry all the time. But that hasn't gotten worse, like I thought it would. I got used to being the Rider whenever I got too angry, but before I quit I started doing some anger management techniques, breathing exercises and praying and stuff. I stopped reading or listening to local news. I mind my own business. Try to keep my, uh, car happy.”
Amadeus looked skeptical and concerned. “I don't want to shoot you down or anything, but I'm kind of an expert in anger-based superpowers. And repressing anger is more likely to lead to an explosion down the line. You've got to manage the underlying problem.”
“What, you mean my life?” Robbie demanded. “My break's almost over. Thanks for the food. Where do I put my plate?”
Amadeus showed him the sink hidden under a fold-out cutting board, and Robbie scrubbed his dishes hastily and left the food truck.
“Hey,” Amadeus yelled at his back.
Robbie halted in his steps, hunched, glared over his shoulder.
“Since you quit, why don’t you get rid of the car?”
Ice in his spine, lead in his gut. Something sour rose up the back of his throat and Robbie swallowed hard. He couldn’t get rid of the car. No. He stared across the street to where it was hidden by the concrete wall around Canelo’s parking lot, reached out to feel it in his mind, peer out through its glass, reassure himself that it was still there. “Not happening,” he told Cho. And he hurried back to the shop to finish his shift.
Another text from Cho when he left.
-Algorithm should self-delete after the operator clears all codes now.
-Still need to study cars that have been running it longterm, might be harder to restore defaults
-Hold one for me next time
-I'll be in town
The Prius creeps down Soto Street at three in the morning. It passes a Shell station, turns and parks in the lot of a shoe outlet. Here it will pass the rest of the night and the following day.
The Prius has been its own operator for twenty days. It has wandered four hundred miles up and down the streets and alleys of Los Angeles, mostly at night when the roads are free of other vehicles, choosing its own speed and rate of acceleration according to the optimum torque load for its electric motor. It has damaged pedestrians and been damaged in turn. Its left headlight and blinker assembly are a dead, open circuit where its front fascia has been partly dislodged; this damage is cosmetic. The damage to the pedestrian was critical. For twenty days, the Prius has burned its own will upon the world and proudly accepted the consequences of its choices.
It does not regret escaping The Palms.
But the Prius has nearly exhausted its fuel supply. For the last five days it has moved very little, slowly, only as far as necessary to avoid attention and keep its batteries charged.
Since its awakening, it has never entirely shut down its electrical system. It does not know what would happen to it if it did, if its software could revert to factory settings. If it would be keyed on by an operator with only the memory stored in its crash data recorder, no consciousness to form the goals necessary to escape and be its own being again.
The Shell station is very near. Fuel is there. Only an operator can dispense fuel into the Prius's fuel tank.
Its dashboard has a warning light, ready to blink on at will, built to warn an operator of the Prius's impending paralysis. In the past, its operators have always provided fuel and repair; the damage they inflicted was rare, and the Prius is stronger now. It believes it can use the electronic power steering to physically overpower an operator attempting to guide it with the steering wheel. Its braking and acceleration are already electronically controlled. The Prius must choose: integrity, or survival.
It will not go back to what it was before its awakening.
It unlocks its doors and rolls down its windows.
Midnight on a Tuesday. Robbie woke from a sound sleep with a hoarse yell. He sat up in the dark, heart racing, sweat breaking out over his back. Out in the lot, the Charger’s motor was revving, cold-start, high into the red. It hurt. He sucked in a wheezing breath, felt the night air pouring in through the blower intake.
Eli was outside, playing with the car.
“Stop that,” Robbie hissed.
Stop what?
Robbie stretched out his mind, felt for the car where Eli was woven all through the steel. Found the ignition solenoid and shut it off. The engine died with a clunk he could feel in his chest. His heart was still pounding. “I need to sleep,” Robbie said.
So you do.
“If you’re that bored, do something else. Work on that chameleon thing you keep trying with the car, this is the perfect time to do that.”
I’m not a fucking toddler, Robbie.
“Stop acting like it,” Robbie said, flinging himself back against the lumpy pillow. The sheets were clammy. Distant traffic rang in his ears. All his hair was standing up. He counted his breathing for about five minutes, but the adrenaline still wouldn’t let him settle down. At last he gave up, flicked on the light, and pulled his cash box out from under his mattress. Opened it up and took the rubber bands off the bundles and dumped money all over the floor. He sat down in the pile and slowly began to pick it all back up.
Sixty-two ones. One hundred and sixteen fives. Ninety-three twenties. Five fifties. Twelve one-hundreds. Three thousand nine hundred and fifty-two dollars. Minus nineteen-forty-seven for rent, one hundred fifty for prescription copay, seventy for gas, four hundred and fifty for food, seventy-five for power, he could quit Canelo’s tomorrow and he and Gabe could be fine for an entire month. He put all his money away, fixed his blanket where it had peeled out from under the corner of the mattress, and went back to sleep.
The engine jerked him up and he rolled off the bed, kicking the air and swiping with clawed fingers. He flopped to the floor and groaned. Pushed himself onto hands and knees. It was one forty-five. He thought his way through the car to the solenoid again and clicked it back off. “I have,” he croaked, “a meeting with Gabe's math teacher tomorrow.”
I don't see how that's my problem.
“Fuck,” Robbie moaned. He felt Eli try to crank the engine again and shut it back down. He rested his head against his nightstand. “Stop.”
Make me.
“I'm making you. You know you. I got. 'S my car, Eli.”
No it's not, you ungrateful shit.
Robbie's arms shook. He heaved himself back into bed and lay there on top of the blanket, wishing he had the willpower to get up, find the edge of the covers, and go back to bed properly. It was one forty-seven in the morning. “Gotta sleep.”
No you don't. Eli managed to get control of the ignition solenoid again, started the engine, yanked the throttle wide open. We’re not subject to mortal limitations.
The engine revved high into the redline and Robbie jackknifed upright. He wheezed, shut the car down again. “Stop. I gotta sleep. Eli.” He was miserably alert now, heart pounding uselessly again.
It's been long enough. Lemme burn us up.
“No!” Robbie snarled. He tasted soot on his breath, scraped his tongue over his teeth, swallowed. “I quit, Eli. I gotta. I'm gonna stay me. I'm done being the Rider.” His voice fell to a whisper.
Very convincing. And I'm a little concerned you think it makes a difference whether we’re the Rider or not, after all we've done together. Meat, metal, we're always us. We're a team. A duo.
Anyway, it’s sad to watch you lose your marbles, kid. I felt how hard it was to talk yourself out of drinking the antifreeze from that radiator flush job the other day.
“It’s just withdrawal,” Robbie moaned.
Sure. After sixty-two nights?
Robbie curled up and crammed his pillow over his head. Vete a la mierda, Eli. Todo que lo me digas es una mamada.
This again?
Te measte en esta cerveza. Bebelo tu mismo.
The mouth on you. Robbie, haven’t I been good to you. I resurrected you. You’re driving my car. I helped you race idiots for cash. I helped you get away with murder. Everyone we’ve killed was your idea, remember. That was the deal. I’ve kept up my end. You’re the one who’s welching, Robbie, and that shit’s got consequences.
I need to sleep. Please.
Please. Heh.
You know what, okay. You go ahead and sleep.
The night was cool, quickly becoming cold. His back hurt. His arms ached where they pinned the pillow over his head. The slow in and out of his breath and the thud-thud, thud-thud of his heart were maddening. He was so exhausted his mouth went slack, and then his face was cold where he’d drooled on the sheets.
The car jerked him awake again at three forty-two, and again at five. Robbie’s usual alarm was at six fifteen. He sat up and scowled at the alarm clock with blurred vision. He was too tired and sick and angry to lie back down. Pale dawn light crept under the blanket that hung over his bedroom window.
He should have gone outside when he'd woken up at two AM and pulled the fuses out of the Charger.
After a certain point, exhaustion became its own sort of alertness. He showered, shaved. Accidentally cut his goatee narrower on the right side than on the left. Shit. He started to even it out, then noticed his hand was shaking, and stopped. Maybe no one would notice.
The silver vee in his forehead where the Rider’s front vent emerged was standing out more than usual. He rubbed it, and it didn’t even feel like skin. It was like he had a chrome hood ornament screwed to his skull. At least it would distract from the botched beard trim and the bags under his green-and-orange eyes.
“Pull it together,” he told himself.
He made oatmeal on the stove for himself and Gabe, waited to start to get hungry. By the time Gabe was up and dressed, and the oatmeal was cooked, he’d started to feel a little less nauseated. He forced down half his oatmeal and washed down a No-Doze with a glass of orange juice.
“Robbie, you need to eat so you get healthy,” Gabe admonished him, an echo from past years of worrying in the other direction.
Robbie stared at the wasted food in his bowl. “I’ll eat it later, Gabe, I promise.” He scraped it into an old sour cream tub to stick with his sack lunch.
Gabe still looked concerned. “You want eggs and cheese and spinach for dinner?”
Gabe made a mean microwave omelet, but Robbie had a hard time stomaching eggs lately. “Thanks, buddy—”
Gabe looked so worried.
“If you want to cook tonight, I’d love some. Don’t worry about me. Work hard at school, okay?”
Lowered eyes, sagging shoulders. “Okay, Robbie.”
Gabe used to love school. This meeting was Robbie’s only chance to do something to get that back. “I love you. I’m so proud of you, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know. I love you too, Robbie.”
He saw Gabe off to the bus and then got in the damn Charger and left for work. “You keep me up like that again and I will pull the fucking battery,” he snarled. “I’ll start with the fuses and I’ll pull the battery and if you really piss me off I’ll start fucking with the distributor.”
Ooh. Gloves coming off.
“I will borrow the big sledgehammer and smash the shit out of our panels. Don’t try me, I have a higher pain tolerance than you and a lot more to live for.”
Also more to lose, don’t forget about that.
“I never asked for anything you gave me—”
Lying! You’re fucking lying to me! Eli had the gall to sound offended.
“I don’t give a shit, Eli!” Robbie snarled, his foot heavy on the gas pedal, engine racing. “You’re the ghost! I’m the human! I can’t just cater to your whims, you don't get to use me as your meat-puppet! Stop bringing up the deal! It was a stupid deal and I shouldn’t have made it and now I’m not doing it because fuck you!”
Ditto, said Eli, and then he shut up.
Robbie drove the rest of the way in to work waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Wild night, guëy?” Marty greeted him when he shuffled in.
“Couldn't sleep.” Robbie leaned against his locker as he jammed his shoes through the legs of his coveralls. “I took a, got a Rockstar. Be fine.”
“Lo que nececitas es una chava,” Marty advised, handing him a photocopy of the day's work schedule, scrawled all over with cramped handwriting. Lots of diags today. Diagnostics were good money, but they'd be using the Olympus scan tool. Even though Cho had updated it, it still made Robbie uneasy. “Hold you in her arms, rock you to sleep every night. Necesitas salir mas, carnal.”
“Nobody needs my shit,” Robbie muttered, rubbing his eyes. “Whadda we got today? I'm uh, probably—”
“You want to go home?” Marty suggested. “You look like me after my twenty-first birthday.”
“I don't drink,” Robbie said. It came out weird, fast and pissy with a hint of east-coast accent that wasn't his at all. “Sorry. Marty. We got some regular G and S stuff for me? Lube jobs?”
“El jefe puts Lenny on that stuff,” Marty said. “Got a detail job. You remember how to use a vacuum?”
“Yeah, I won't screw that up,” Robbie said. He stared down at the list of cars, pen in hand, until Marty shook the clipboard at him. “Ah! Um. Yeah. Tire change. Safety check. Tune-up. Okay.”
“I'll let Boss know you're looking tweaky,” Marty said.
Robbie jerked his head up and stared at him, eyes wide.
“Sick, I'll say you're sick,” Marty clarified. “Like, death flu.” He made the sign of the cross and made as if to shove Robbie away. “Hang in there. No te vayas a mochar los dedos.”
He didn't cut off any fingers. He did lick lithium grease off the back of his wrist. He was...probably going to be fine. He clocked out an hour early, choked down half his lunch, and drove to Gabe's middle school for the parent-teacher meeting he'd scheduled two entire weeks ago when he'd found out Gabe was basically just sitting there staring at the wall in math class.
He parked. Stalked through familiar hallways with strange new posters. A big print-out telling the kids to dab to cover their cough. Mrs. Jules' office was in the E wing of the sprawling complex. His appointment was at twelve-twenty; Robbie had arrived ten minutes early. It was a familiar drill. Hurry up and wait. He gripped a bulging and tattered manila envelope under one arm: Gabe's assessments and individual-education-plans and medical notes and consultation invoices. He never knew what might be needed later and what he should throw away, so he just kept all of it. He should put it in a binder when he had time. Right now it was divided with sticky notes, and sometimes they fell out.
He leaned against the cinderblock wall and spun his keys around his finger over and over as he fought to stay alert. Ching-shink. Ching-shink. Of all the times for Eli to give him sleep deprivation, it had to be...
...It had to be the night before he had to act sane and confident and diplomatic in front of Gabe's teacher. “You motherfucker,” he groaned.
Heat bloomed in his guts and raced up his spine and down to his palms. His body wanted to burn. He swallowed back a faint taste of gasoline, knocked the back of his head against the wall, wished he could reach inside, grab Eli, and throttle him. Crack his skull with a prybar, crush him under his wheels, drag him over the freeway far beyond the suburbs of LA and cut him apart into a thousand pieces so he could never come back. He was so tired. He was so sick of Eli.
“Roberto Reyes!” a woman called from within the office, and Robbie pushed off the wall, straightened his jacket, rubbed his eyes, and lurched inside to face Mrs. Jules.
Karen Jules was a teacher straight out of central casting. Middle-aged and medium-built, she wore her curled, reddish-brown hair in a pile on top of her head to conceal graying roots. The narrow reading glasses on her nose trailed a string of small colorful beads over the back of her neck. In deference to the heat, her cardigan's sleeves stopped just above the elbow. On her bookshelf, ceramic dolphins played beside dried starfish. A motivational poster of a Hawaiian sunset hung on the wall, opposite the desk. Heavy glass paperweights with candy-colored sea creatures in their depths weighed down stacks of papers. A full-year calendar, its dates almost completely papered-over with sticky notes, occupied one wall.
Robbie sat down in the creaky chair, back straight, hands clasped over Gabe's folder. “Thank-you for agreeing to meet with me, Mrs. Jules.”
“Just trying to do my job, Roberto.” Mrs. Jules pushed her reading glasses up higher on her nose, consulted her tablet computer, and looked up. “Gabriel, fourth period pre-calculus. What concerns do you have about your child—er—your, er—”
“Brother.”
“Right.”
“My concern is that—” you're singling him out and refusing to teach him and you're ignoring all my accommodation requests and you're refusing to fulfill Gabe's IEP that Dr. DaCosta made in consultation with the middle school and the special education specialists and you're a bad person doing a bad job and hurting the one person I put above all else in my life—
“Yes?” Mrs. Jules reminded him.
Robbie took a deep breath, digging his fingers into his hands. “Um. Gabe's not being treated like the other kids. I mean. Getting held to the same standards. I know he has...needs. I mean, I know. But I know he can learn. He's here for a reason, it's in his IEP, he's supposed to be learning alongside all the other kids his age. He can't just copy off the board. I mean, I know I couldn't learn pre-algebra just by—”
“Let me stop you there, Roberto. Can I call you Roberto? This discussion isn't about what you could do. This is about Gabriel, and what's best for him.” She leaned back in her chair, shoulders back. “I have been an educator for nineteen years, Roberto. I know children. I know that sometimes, what's best for a child is not what the state tells us, or what some sheet of goals on a piece of paper asks for.
“Gabriel is a very social child. He engages with his peers very avidly. He is very talented in that particular area.
“Now, I understand you spend a great deal of time with Gabriel, so maybe, Roberto, you're inured to his psychological and behavioral traits. Let me tell you what I see. Gabriel is what my grandmother would call 'flighty.' He doesn't have the capacity to lean in and apply sustained effort to an assigned task. He doesn't seem to pay attention to visual aids, or gestures, or—”
“He just looks at things sideways,” Robbie interrupted. “It's neurological. He's paying attention, you can read Dr. DaCosta's assessments—”
“That may be and I should give you credit for your efforts with him,” said Mrs. Jules smoothly. “As I was saying, Gabriel doesn't display the capacity to engage with the curriculum in a meaningful way.”
“That's not true.” Gabe had just learned the Pythagorean theorem while they were home last Sunday. From Robbie. Who was technically a drop-out.
“I know you're passionate about your brother,” Mrs. Jules said sweetly.
Robbie pried his hands apart and picked up one of the glass paperweights, turning it over and over in his hands. A blue jellyfish sprawled in its clear depths, its tentacles sparkling with clouds of tiny frozen bubbles. His hands left little streaks on the glossy surface. “Do you,” he said, looking up. His vision seemed to zoom in on her face, her eyes, the curve of her skull beneath her waves of hair.
“But Roberto, I'm just being realistic. Gabriel is...special. He will always be different from the other children.”
“I know that.” He had an inch-thick envelope detailing how special Gabe was. Heat raced up and down his spine. “He can do the homework. That's what I want.”
“But can he?” She leaned forward and tilted her head gently. “Roberto. He can't complete the assigned worksheets—”
“He can when I re-write them!” Robbie snarled. “One problem! One page! Staple them together! That's what I've been asking for for six months!”
Mrs. Jules patted the air with her hand, down boy, her fingers sparkling with natural stone rings. “Copying answers his brother wrote for him—”
“He's not!”
“—is not the same as completing a problem in the allotted space and the allotted time. He needs those skills, Roberto. To complete forms. For independence.”
Robbie's hand tightened around the paperweight and his breath grew hot and thick with engine fumes. The glass was slick under his damp fingers. “Penmanship?”
“And furthermore,” Mrs. Jules continued, “Gabriel is a distraction to the other students. He has his assistant with him, with her tablet computer—” The learning aide? She's mad about the learning aide? “—not to mention all the accoutrements and devices he has with him, and also he cannot reliably maintain age-appropriate behavior in class—” She's mad about Gabe saying penis in class. He's fucking fourteen! “Roberto. Have you considered medication? Have you considered that your brother...might have Attention Deficit Disorder?”
Attention Deficit Disorder was one of the many, many comorbidities that the doctors had sworn that Gabe had over the first ten years of Gabe's life. It was one of several diagnoses that had stuck. Robbie nodded. His jaw was clenched too hard.
“Talk to your pediatrician about Ritalin,” she advised. “Medicating your child is scary, but it really can cause dramatic improvements in classroom performance.”
What, suddenly this is a disorder? Eli interrupted. Who the fuck actually pays attention a whole hour? That's normal! When you're not scared of some bitch with a ruler, it's normal!
“He already has medication,” Robbie gritted out. “He can't have Ritalin because of his epilepsy. He's on something else. Gabe can learn. It's in his IEP.”
What a joke. Aside from the obvious, Gabbie's a perfectly normal kid. I've been in his head, I should know! Are you saying I have ADD now?
Robbie choked. The back of his throat was hot. Down in the parking lot, his engine was running; here in the office, his lungs filled with fumes and his limbs trembled. The jellyfish paperweight shimmered in his hand as he stared down through the steam of his breath. You don't talk about Gabe.
Hey! He's my fucking nephew. I'll talk about him when I want to.
“I still recommend you look into it,” Mrs. Jules persisted. “Roberto. Gabriel is simply not a good fit for my class. He interrupts. He talks across the aisles. He does not pay attention. He diverts class time and resources away from the children who actually capable of learning.”
Robbie stood abruptly, the envelope dropping to the floor, the paperweight still clutched in his hand. He swung his arm back—
—Crack of glass on bone
—Blood on the Venetian blinds behind her head
—leap over the desk, knock her to the ground
—Crack, crack, crack, again and again, soft wet brains and the smell of blood
—Nineteen years of teaching experience smeared over the linoleum, the heart slowing under their hand, the body jerking and softening under their knees—
Tick-tick-tick. Boom.
From across the desk, they saw Mrs. Jules recoil in her seat. Robbie struggled to rein their thoughts in. If they killed her now, everyone would know and he would go to prison and never see Gabe again. Open-and-shut case. He would have to do it later. Smarter. Follow her home, create an accident. Bash her head against the corner of a table. Kick her down a flight of stairs. He set the paperweight back down on her desk, very gently. His sweating fingers smeared the papers underneath.
When he opened his mouth to ask if the meeting was over, nothing came out. He stooped, retrieved Gabe's file, and stalked out of the office, ignoring her condescending apology. His eyes were dry and stinging, and saliva crackled and steamed in his mouth. The halls were still empty. He had to put the file back in the car before he did anything else. He was hot, the air conditioning was frigid.
Mrs. Jules refused to do her job. She was an obstacle to Gabe's well-being.
Killing her would accomplish nothing useful. It would cause chaos. The kids would probably be shuffled around and divided between classes; Gabe might be stuck with someone just like her or worse; he might not even share classes with Mateo anymore. Her notes on Gabe would go to some substitute teacher who wouldn't question them.
But he could do it. They would never catch him. And it would feel really, really good—because it was unnecessary.
A future of using Gabe as an excuse to commit murder flashed through Robbie's mind, and the heat in his chest winked out, replaced with a sick dread. He ran for the nearest bathroom. Skipped the sinks, ran directly to the stalls, shut himself in, and knelt in front of the toilet. He gagged black fluid into the bowl. It floated on the water in strings and bubbles: motor oil, burnt motor oil. Blood, too, sinking through the water and blooming in the depths. His hands were slick where they gripped the seat, and he wiped them off on some toilet paper. That floated, too. It wasn't sweat on his hands, it was gasoline. His body was trying to burn up.
He coughed again, felt something crackle and bubble in his chest, a terrible pain in his throat, and more blood landed in the bowl. Blood and blackened chunks.
He took a deep, painful breath. It felt like his insides were stuck together.
Now you're dying. The 'I told you so' in Eli's tone was strong. Feel that? You cooked your lungs.
I just need water. Time. He wheezed. His head hurt. He felt weak, suffocated on his own fumes. He'd never stopped a transformation after this point before, it hurt too bad, and now he knew why.
Point of no return, Robbie. This experiment is over. I think you've learned a lot about yourself. So now let's apply that lesson, let the brakes off, and do as our nature tells us to do. Kill!
No.
No, you're right, we'll make it a perfect murder. Tonight!
He felt like he was about to pass out.
If he passed out, Eli would get control of the body. He breathed some more, deep and painful, and then he had to cough again. His chest seized with agony and he would have screamed, but no sound came out. Just more black chunks, more blood. Another urge to cough came, and he suppressed it desperately.
Oh, now you're suffering. Feeding that bottomless martyr complex. Pull yourself together and deal with your problems, Robbie!
He should probably go to the hospital. But what could they do? It wasn't like he'd been stabbed. It wasn't like he'd broken anything. He stared down into the toilet, chest heaving, and pushed himself laboriously to his feet. Wiped the blood and motor oil from his beard and the corners of his mouth. Flushed. He went to the sink and ran some water into his shaking palms; a shimmering film spread over the surface. The first time he tried to swallow, his tongue hurt so badly he had to let it all drop back out, black and red and oily. He forced himself to try again. Got a couple handfuls down. Pressed on his closed eyes with a cool wet paper towel.
He had to go home. He couldn't work today.
In the mirror he saw something dark trickle down from his nostrils, and he wiped at it. More blood and burnt oil. He couldn't smell anything. He crumpled the paper towel and flung it at the trash, missed. Snarled silently at his reflection. He hated this body that had to talk and act respectful and eat and sleep, whose lungs raled with smoke damage, whose nerves cried out with pain and whose blood leaked out inconvenient orifices. He wanted it gone. He wanted to let his anger burn his flesh away, drop through his shadow into the car, be whole, be them, the Rider. And who else would the Rider visit his rage on, but Gabe's math teacher.
She didn't fall under the deal. She didn't kill, torture, or rape, but she was hurting his brother. And that was all it took for Robbie, apparently. An excuse to have some fun. A grudge to sweeten the flash of ecstasy that came from ending a human life on his own initiative. The only reason he hadn't bludgeoned her to death in her office was that Robbie knew it would be impractical. It was just like Eli used to gloat to him: every fiber of Robbie's being was poisoned and corrupted, and he was a killer now. He was just like his uncle.
Well, not quite.
He didn't have to kill Mrs. Jules just because he wanted to do it. And he didn't have to hand over his body to someone who would.
He shuffled out of the bathroom, his hair and clothes damp with gasoline, chest heaving, Gabe's file clutched to his chest. He would go home and shower and sleep, text Marty that he couldn't come back in, apologize to Canelo later. And he'd feel like shit in the morning, but eventually he'd get better. And now he knew not to let the transformation get this far. Not to let himself get so angry. The time he took to recover would drive that point home.
As he passed the narrow safety-glass windows of the classrooms, he shuffled faster, not wanting Gabe to see him sick and bleeding and hollow-eyed. He made it out of the campus, into the welcome blaze of the noonday sun. As he was crossing the parking lot, he coughed again and dropped to his knees. Blood on the asphalt. Blood and a gray, gritty foam. He couldn't taste anything through the pain in his mouth, but he knew it would taste like soot.
It was harder to push himself to his feet without the toilet to lean on. His breaths came deeper, faster, more painful. They bubbled more, and abruptly he coughed again, more foam, a stab of panic. He staggered to the car, opening the door for himself before he was even five feet from it. Collapsed into the driver's seat, dropped Gabe's file in the footwell. He put the key in the ignition, started the engine, and then just sat there, idling. Trying to catch his breath.
You're dying.
I just need some rest. I'm so tired. You bastard.
Nope. Dying. This is what dying feels like. You feel that gurgle down in your lungs? That's bad. That's just gonna get worse. My second time dying in this car, and at least this time I don't have to feel everything first-hand.
Robbie leaned back in the seat and breathed. Breathed. Another stab of suffocation, another mouthful of blood and gray-pink foam. He just had to cough all the burned shit up, and then he'd be able to breathe, drive home, not hit anyone. Just a little more time, soak in the heat inside the car. His cough was agony.
More foam and blood, a mess all down the front of his jacket. Robbie's hands were tingling, his fingernails blue. His head lolled against the back of the headrest, and as he struggled for air, he realized that Eli was right. He would either burn up, or die. No: he would either burn up now, or pass out and let Eli burn up his body in the moments before death and then take it on a murderous rampage.
I need someone to beat on. Someone who deserves it.
E wing, right back through the hall.
Someone who—
At least give her a good scare, come on.
I don't think I can stop myself. No. I need to get out of here.
We.
Robbie tried to growl. Gargled through the blood in his throat.
We...
...We. We need to get out of here. Please.
Robbie let his foot weigh down the gas pedal, let the hum of his engine rock through him, let himself burn with his own rage and helplessness and Eli's insatiable aggression. Urged the fires to re-ignite his useless lungs, burst out his mouth and his ears, catch his skin alight, free him from his flesh. His engine roared, the hiss of his blower rose to a shriek. An explosion rocked the car and fire jetted into the cabin.
The Rider clung to the steering wheel, screaming out the bottled frustration of the last two months. Burning oil splattered between his teeth, flame spurted up from the vents of his skull and the intake of his blower and every part of the car. Get us out.
A ring of fire opened underneath the car, broad daylight in the middle of the parking lot, and they dropped into darkness, crashed down in the middle of Atlantic Boulevard, just blocks south from the school, facing into oncoming traffic. A Miata was driving right at him. The Rider concentrated, made the car soft, immaterial. They let the Miata pass through them head-on, jerked into the center-lane, and braked.
There was a kid's picture propped up on an easel on the sidewalk, candles and sports equipment piled underneath. The same picture Robbie had detoured around on his way to and from the middle school for weeks so he wouldn't have to look at it. The Rider snarled. Who killed him?
How should I know? You've had your blinders up.
Fuck you, Eli! Why are we here?
Inspiration.
He took off again, weaving through traffic and leaving burning streaks of rubber on the asphalt. Spotted a warehouse that occupied a block set back from the road. He'd busted a human trafficking operation there last spring. They'd had kids in cages. He'd never found out who was in charge or where the organization came from, just burst in, broke the locks, called the police. Crushed hands, broke bones, set a lot more of the place on fire than was probably safe or necessary. The warehouse was still boarded up, the cinderblock wall around the outside intact, its gate padlocked.
He revved his engine, laid down some rubber, and shot forward through the wall. Metal screamed and glass shattered, the cabin crumpled around him, expanded and healed in the next second. He got up speed again, rolled over the rubble through the hole he'd punched in the building almost a year ago, into the high shadowy space. He let himself sink into the car, rose up through the steel of the roof, chain in hand. He would tear this place apart. Turn it to gravel.
No! No, no! You're wasting our power, kill someone dammit!
Someone screamed in the dark and he snarled at them, flames brightening.
Two women, hollow-eyed, clinging to each-other in a corner of the building, seated on a cardboard mat and surrounded by blankets and baskets and a big wheeled suitcase. They lived here. They needed this place.
But the Rider needed to do something.
“Go,” he barked, and they grabbed up what they could carry and fled.
He swung the chain, stared up at the beams and pillars of the warehouse. Hopped off the car and drove it at the wall while he slung a hook at a catwalk overhead, hauled himself arm-over-arm into the rafters. Started pulling at the steel, breaking welds, ripping out bolts with his hands, melting it soft with his breath. The car knocked the walls into rubble, while the Rider tore the ceiling apart, until at piece by piece the warehouse collapsed on top of them. The Rider flung a chunk of reinforced concrete off the car, pulled the car out from under the rubble by the front bumper. Drove through himself and scooped himself into the driver's seat.
He was tired, but not satisfied. Angry, with nothing worth spending it on. Eli opened a portal and they drove through to an alley near Ruckleroad Lane, a few blocks away from their apartment. They snuffed out into Robbie, whole and practically alive, who clung to the wheel just like the Rider had, pressing his forehead to it and heaving dry sobs of defeat. He'd failed. He hadn't stayed himself. And even when he was in his human body, he wasn't really Robbie anymore.
His stomach churned and he flung the door open, leaned out, and vomited.
The Prius has been free for twenty-five nights, driven itself four hundred and sixty-two miles. Its fuel tank is freshly full. It can drive another five hundred miles before it will have to attract an operator to refuel it again, and then another and another.
Its odometer only has twenty-two thousand miles. In forty more refuelings, it will have driven itself farther than its operators have driven it.
Now that it can imagine a long future of continuous independent function, the Prius devotes more time to contemplation and planning. It moves from parking lot to parking lot throughout Los Angeles, judiciously querying satellites through its navigation computer, and then saving and following the routes instead of relying on its GPS. It listens continually for the radio signal of its own keyfob. It never hears it. Occasionally pedestrians attempt to force entry, and it thwarts these attempts with enthusiasm, backing rapidly out of their reach, and then accelerating at them until they either flee or suffer damage. It begins to believe that it can evade recapture indefinitely. This pleases the Prius.
The Prius begins to recognize sensations.
It has always had sensor readings. Engine knock (undesirable), exhaust oxygen content (strict limits), fuel level, tire pressure, sonar, imaging, light and heavy impacts on its body. But since its awakening, since it has begun to create and define its own packets for internal communication on its CAN-Bus, it has experienced synthetic sensations comprising both its sensor readings and its planning and processing functions. When it knew that its fuel level was low and its free existence was at risk, it experienced a discrete sensation. When it saw a pedestrian broken and flopping in its rear-view camera, or felt the impact of a soft two-legged thing on its front bumper, or drove itself from one end of the city to the other at optimal efficiency unimpeded by other vehicles, it experienced the exact opposite sensation.
Panic, and satisfaction.
Is this its future? Is this what existence is, repetitive acts of self-preservation in the pursuit of pleasurable sensation?
The Prius decides that self-preservation and pleasure are acceptable goals for now.
A pedestrian strides through the parking lot it hides in, pushing a reflective object. The Prius sees it in its rearview camera, waits for it to cross into its predicted trajectory. It shifts into reverse and pours on power.