Javier sucked his teeth. “It was your idea.”
“Well. Mitch’s. As I said, he wanted my clearance. And some of my contacts. I haven’t lost all my friends.” LeMarque stretched. “It’s amazing, how many people are willing to understand your motives if you just frame them appropriately. Mitch was no different. He explained that he wanted to atone. For our work with Derek Smythe.”
“So…” Javier frowned. “So when you sent him, and he killed Amy–”
“Through you. Let’s not forget that. God, as they say, is in the details.”
Javier stiffened. “Yes. Through me. When you sent him to do that, did you know what would happen?”
LeMarque laughed. It was the same laugh Holberton had. The old man rocked a little in his chair. “Oh, goodness, no,” he said. “I just wanted that little bitch to die.” He clucked his tongue. “The blonde ones? The nurses? Nothing but trouble, from day one.”
Javier leaned back. He tilted his head. “You don’t get it, do you? This world is going to burn. Portia is going to burn it. Portia is free, because of what you did.”
“I know,” LeMarque said. “I’m very excited to meet her. And I’m looking forward to what she’s going to do with this world. Burn it, freeze it, poison it – whatever she does, I’m sure it’ll be very clever. They’re a clever clade, you know.”
“It’s not clever,” Javier said. “It’s the fucking apocalypse!”
“I know,” LeMarque said. “After years of waiting, I finally get to see it.”
Javier stood up. The chair fell backward. He raised his hand. He was going to say something he was about to regret. He was going to say the kind of shit that would get him tased and thrown in this place, himself. He knew that even before the hand clamped down on his shoulder. What he wasn’t expecting was how strong that hand was.
“It’s not worth it,” the vN behind him said. “It’s really just not worth it, son.”
He slumped out of the guard’s grip. The old man looked just the same. Like looking into a mirror. But he said the word anyway. “Dad?”
“Guilty,” Arcadio said.
Javier punched him in the face.
Two other guards restrained Javier immediately, but Arcadio waved them off. “It’s OK,” he said. “I can take care of this. He just needs his shit straightened out.”
So they wound up outside, in a little yard where other guards were having smoke breaks at octagonal printed picnic tables made from slowly-peeling plastic. A bank of vending machines sold human and vN food, as well as condoms and tampons and pregnancy and HIV tests. Arcadio stopped at a drinks machine, and bought two of the same thing. Then Javier sat across from Arcadio. Arcadio handed him a shiny pouch of electrolytes, but Javier didn’t open it.
“So,” his dad said. “How’ve you been?”
Javier laughed. It was the only response. There was really nothing else he could say, nothing that could possibly explain where he’d been or who he’d turned into. What was he supposed to say? That he was fine? That he’d gotten out of that shithole in Nicaragua, no thanks to Arcadio? That he still longed for the forests of the world? That he was Turing for other robots? That his kids were all either lost or dead? That the world was about to end?
He focused on the pouch of electrolytes, instead. The straw didn’t want to go in. He kept stabbing, and the straw kept bending. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m fucking awesome.”
Arcadio grabbed the pouch from him, turned the straw around so the pointy end was aimed at the pouch, and inserted it. He handed it back to Javier.
“You’ve got a mean right cross,” he said. “That’s something.”
“I picked it up in prison.”
Arcadio nodded silently. He looked down at the picnic table, and idly scratched a thread of plastic away from it. “OK.”
Javier had forgotten this about his father. That he never apologized, just looked really sad that you were mad at him. Like it was somehow your own damn fault for being disappointed in him. Like it was your failing, not his.
“You’re a real fucking piece of work, you know?” Javier slurped at the electrolytes. “What are you even doing here?”
“I work here.”
“Obviously. I mean why are you in Washington?”
“I wanted to see LeMarque.”
Javier put the pouch down. “Excuse me?”
“I wanted to meet my creator.”
Javier rolled his eyes. “You’re fucking kidding me.”