“I know, but where?” Anza asked, with some asperity.
Molly appeared to be listening to something. “Let me ask Sally. She works there.” Her eyes glimmered at them. Javier saw himself and his daughter reflected there. Molly nodded to herself. “They’re on a secondary maintenance platform, above the visitors’ area. The cameras aren’t detecting any heightened affect, but one of them is kneeling close to the railing. I believe he’s been tied or cuffed there.”
She pointed. The tower loomed high above the city: a red and white thing of wrought steel and aluminium. It looked a lot like the Eiffel, but it wasn’t. From here, Javier couldn’t see what the projection saw, but it sounded a lot like something Powell would do.
“I know you two,” Molly said. “Who is the other one?”
“Excuse me?”
“When I count, there are only you and I together, but when I search your surveillance history, there’s always another one beside you.”
Javier smiled. “Next you’re going to tell me there was only one set of footprints in the sand.” He turned to Anza. “Lead on.”
He took off in the direction of the tower. Here the roofs were different: all smooth and panelled, no gardens, no clothes on any lines. There were too many solar tiles, and too many botflies. They had to fly through whole clouds of them. Javier tucked his legs up, and kept his hands open. He closed his mouth to keep the flies out and narrowed his eyes to slits, aiming his body forward, ever forward.
Powell was standing in the centre of the platform, surrounded by old satellite dishes and cabling. He was smiling. He even waved. Xavier knelt at his feet.
Beside him, Anza growled. “Sorry, Dad. I gotta do this alone.”
She sprinted ahead of him. Landed on the outermost edge of the tower, one-handed. A perfect landing. Javier skidded to a stop on a flagpole overlooking the visitors’ area. He saw her aim herself straight at Powell.
“No,” he whispered, but it was already happening.
“Let him go!”
Powell was still her friend. She didn’t actually want to hurt him. She was warning him. Bargaining with him. If Portia were here, she’d have died all over again of shame. Then again, if Portia were here, Powell would already be dead.
“Where’s your daddy?” Powell asked her.
“He’s not here! He didn’t come! He chickened out!”
“Now, you shouldn’t say things like that about your daddy, especially since they’re not true.” Powell strode to the railing. He opened his arms. His palms were empty. “Javier, where are you?”
Anza took advantage of his distraction, and leapt. The multitool gleamed in her hand. At Powell’s feet, Xavier screamed helplessly. Powell whirled, and punched Anza right in the gut. She fell backward, slipping along the platform. It had to be icy. She bounced back up with a flip, and dove straight for Powell. She got in one punch, then two. She had to jump for each of them. Her tiny fists caught his nose, his solar plexus. She drove her little knee into his chin.
As he watched, she dissolved Powell into a heap of pixels. His legs tensed. He wanted to jump. Needed to jump. Couldn’t jump. Not yet. His world started to collapse. Suddenly everything was heavy. Too heavy. He had gone through so many realities to get to this point. Fake winter. Fake Japan. Fake Stepford, fake Macondo. He understood, now, that what he and Amy had was the only kind of real that counted. And now, reality was unfolding before him, cruel and hard and unrelenting, and he couldn’t handle it. His vision pixelled. His hearing lost volume. In a few moments, he was going to be dead. Or as good as. No one knew what happened past the failsafe. Maybe there was nothing. Maybe you just wound down. Or maybe you were trapped forever, aware inside your own skin, knowing that your inaction had caused someone harm and able to do nothing about it.
On the platform, Xavier howled and writhed. He was failsafing, too. Anza spared him one glance, and that was all it took. The air filled with the sound of wasps. She fell.
Suddenly free, Javier aimed low and held tight. He crashed directly into Powell. He cradled Powell’s head. Couldn’t help himself. But his other hand found the taser and threw it away.
“Missed me?” Powell asked, and head-butted him. It obviously hurt him more than he thought it would; they both cringed. Powell crawled after the taser. Javier jumped for it. It slid off the side of the platform. Powell jumped on his back. Something sharp prodded his back. His skin popped, ripped. It went inside. The multitool. Powell had plunged it in up to the hilt.