2633 words (10 minute read)

Episode Seventeen: Settle for Less (Revised)




“Midnight tonight,” Kayne tells Mr. Lynn over the phone. “The Goblin market. Bring the girl.”

The monster hunter hangs up. The phone on the coffee table goes dark.

Mr. Lynn turns to look at Fortuna.

You can’t fault him, really. The geezer’s tired and in pain. He’s infected with nanomachines and trapped inside a hot rubber suit. He’s desperate to save his son, even if his son happens to be a Faerie imposter.

Even if it means sacrificing someone else’s kid.

It’s horrible that he’s considering it, but also very human. Nothing is more precious in the world than the child you raise.

Why else would Fausta Orobas draw her pistol and put a bullet in Mr. Lynn’s skull?

The pistol crack is deafening up close, a sharp sound that rattles and bombards your eardrums.

The faceplate of Mr. Lynn’s hazmat suit helmet shatters. Mr. Lynn falls backward, blood and broken Plexiglas spraying into the air.

The tiny, magical Brownie scurries under the coffee table, chirping like a furious, oversized cricket. Cookie the Pit Bull runs to the farthest corner of the room, tail between his legs.

Little Fortuna screams at the top of her lungs, clutching her hands to her ears as she kicks herself across the couch away from her mom.

Sarah Mankiller  falls out of her comfy chair in a blind panic, Her deer horns scraping a dent in the wall behind her.

You try to rise out of your wheelchair and only succeed in tearing one of your stitches. You sink back down, your own scream muted by the loud ringing in your ears.

Fausta Orobas sits in place, smoke rising from the barrel of her pistol. Her face is blank, her eyes dull and lifeless. Three dots of blood stain her green sweatshirt.

“Oh god. I’m dead. I’m dead.”

You blink. You rub your ears, trying to banish the ringing noise.

Mr. Lynn twitches. The fingers in his rubber gloves wiggle back and forth.

What the hell.

What the hell?

“Someone help,” Mr. Lynn moans as he sits up from the ground. “Oh god, what have you done? You’ve killed me, you’ve killed me!”

Fortuna lowers her hands from her ears. “Mr. Lynn?” she says, voice soft and disbelieving.

Mr. Lynn fumbles with his broken hazmat suit helmet, finally dragging it it off of his head.

His skin is flushed with sweat, wet hair sticking to the side of his scalp. You see the bullet Fausta fired protruding from the center of his forehead.

You watch silver lines of nanotechnology creep up the side of Mr. Lynn’s neck, flowing and twisting across his cheeks like living circuitry. The silver lines meet at the center of Lynn’s forehead, and the nanobots get to work, stripping the brass-lead bullet in his forehead down to its component molecules.

“What is it?” Mr. Lynn says, finally noticing the astonished looks on everyone’s faces. “How bad does it look?”

The deformed bullet is absorbed into his head. Liquid trails of nanotechnology crawl through and around his brow wound, leaving only a smooth expanse of skin stitched together with threads of silver.

“Seriously,” Mr. Lynn stammers, raising a shaking hand to his temples. “Was I shot? I can’t feel a thing. Am I in shock?”

“I’m gonna break to you straight, chum,” Sarah says, grabbing the back of her chair and pulling herself up to stand on wobbling hooves. “You stopped a bullet with your cyborg skull.”

Mr. Lynn’s eyes bulge.

Fausta snaps out of her frozen shock and takes aim again.

Fortuna rushes in front of Fausta, standing between Felix Lynn and the gun. “No,” she says, glaring at her mother over reddened, tearstained cheeks.

Fausta instantly lowers her pistol, flicks the safety on, removes the clip, and ejects the chambered bullet with a single tug on the slide. Once she’s reduced the odds of shooting her own daughter to zero, she talks:

“Get behind me, sweetie,” Fausta orders.

“No!” Fortuna shakes her head.

“I am your mother,” Fausta says with heat, “and you will do as I say!”

“Or what?” Fortuna says softly, glancing at the pistol in her mother’s hands.

Fortuna drops the pistol like a burning brand. The Brownie spirit skitters out of the way as the gun hits the bamboo plank floor. “Sweetie,” Fausta whispers. “He could hurt you.”

Mr. Lynn lowers his eyes in shame.

“And I won’t let anyone hurt you,” Fausta finishes tightly.

Fortuna points her hand at the pistol on the floor, fingers splayed. Brimstone-scented fire leaps from her palm. Fausta’s empty pistol glows yellow with heat and melts into a puddle of gun-shaped slag.

Fortuna looks up at her mother. “Well, I won’t let you hurt him for me,” she replies. The tears flow freely down her cheeks. “I don’t want people to hurt because of me.”

Fausta flinches as if she’s been struck by one of her own bullets.

Silence fills the room for a moment. The ringing in your ears subsides a little, just enough for you to hear your thoughts again.

Mr. Lynn stands and takes a step away from Fortuna. “I’m going to take this off,” he says softly, gesturing to his hazmat suit. “Is that a problem?”

Sarah looks at you.

“Go ahead,” you wheeze, wincing at the words make your back wound ache. If he was going to be patient zero for an unstoppable, matter-devouring gray-goo epidemic, it would have happened by now, you decide.

Mr. Lynn shucks off the rubber jumpsuit, boots, gloves, and filtration backpack, tossing them in the corner of the break room. His jeans and T-shirt are stained with sweat. Layers of rippling metal cover both his arms.

Still, he’s alive and on his feet, you think. Neither of those things would be possible if he hadn’t broken that jar full of nanomachines.

Cookie the Pit Bull scampers over to Mr. Lynn, tail wagging furiously. Before anyone can stop him, he starts licking Mr. Lynn’s metal-covered fingers with his large, slobbery, spotted tongue.

Nothing happens. Cookie doesn’t get contaminated or consumed. In fact, he seems to like the taste of Mr. Lynn’s chrome hand.

Mr. Lynn chuckles and wipes his hand clean by ruffling Cookie’s fur. The dog barks happily.

“I’m sorry,” Fausta mumbles to Lynn, almost too quietly to hear.

“It’s okay,’ Lynn says. “It’s fine. I get it. You wanted to protect your kid.”

“My motives are irrelevant,” Fausta says, shaking her head. “Ultimately, I acted out of fear.”

Mr. Lynn’s shoulders slump. “You were right to be afraid,” he admits, sitting back down on his armchair. “I was tempted. Just for a moment, I actually considered giving that maniac on the phone what he wanted.” He chuckles bitterly. “Only for a moment, of course. I don’t know how to kidnap people.”

“Besides,” Sarah points out, a warning tone in her voice, “The Chaplins would have stomped your head in if you tried to harm our guests.”

You shudder, imagining an army of masked Charlie Chaplins clobbering Mr. Lynn over and over with their bamboo canes.

“I don’t know what to do,” Lynn tells you all, resting his metal hands on his knees. “I didn’t know that my son was taken away. I never know that my boy was replaced.” He slumps, resting his metal-wrapped face in his metal-wrapped hands. “Even when I finally realized something was wrong, I didn’t want to admit it.”

He smiles weakly at Fausta. “Even so, I still want to save him,” he says. “Philip, Grobach, whoever he is...I want to save the brat who took my son’s face and beat me to a pulp. Isn’t that horrible? No wonder you wanted to shoot me!”

Fausta raises a hand to her mouth, face drawn and eyes wide.

“Yeah,” Felix Lynn remarks, completely misreading their reactions. “I’m a real screwup, aren’t I?”

No one else says nothing for a good long minute.

Then Fortuna clears her throat. ”Um,” she says. “Why can’t we just rescue him?”

Everyone turns to look at Fortuna.

“Sure, that mummy man is pretty scary,” Fortuna says, growing more confident in tone, “but he’s just one guy. Why can’t we just kick his butt and save Grobach?”

Ah. What a deliciously naive child. You’d think the infernal blood in her veins would keep her from being so...sentimental, but she’s nearly as foolish as you, Diesel.

“It’s not that easy, sweetie.” Fausta says, touching her daughter’s hand.

Sarah Mankiller speaks more bluntly.

“Honey, this Kayne is a freaking human blender. He’s got knives, wires, explosives, and crazy ninja skills. If we try to attack, he’ll just cut the Ogre’s throat and backflip off into the night.”

“But he’s just one guy!” Fausta insists. She points a finger at herself. “I can burn and summon stuff!” She points at Sarah. “You’ve got illusions!” She points at Mr. Lynn. “You’re bulletproof!”

Fortuna points at her mom. “Mom’s got...well, she’s Mom!” she says, cheeks flushing. “For the love of gosh, can’t we do something?”

Silence fills the room again.

Despite yourself, you feel a little defensive. Why does this little girl have to make things sound so easy?

You feel admiration: she’s going to be quite the leader when she grows up.

You feel shame: why have you been moping around when there’s work to be done?

Sarah Mankiller strokes the tips of her antlers with her thumb, a satisfied smile on her face. “Good point, chum,” she tells Fortuna with a sly grin. “The day you stop hoping for more is the day the establishment finally grinds you down.”

“I won’t let Fortuna go anywhere near that hunter,” Fausta growls.

“Who said anything about that?” Sarah takes out her vaporizer and waves it over her head, drawing a halo of smoke through the air. “If we’re faced with two equally bad options...”

Her form shimmers, and Sarah transforms into a perfect mirror image of Fortuna.

“...we should say ‘to hell with that’ and make ourselves a better option!” she finishes in Fortuna’s voice.

“Whoa,” Fortuna whispers, tilting her head to the right.

The illusion of Fortuna tilts her head to the left.

Fortuna raises and waves her left hand. The illusion of Fortuna raises and waves her right hand.

Fausta grabs her daughter’s hand and holds it still. “Stop that,” she tells the illusion-covered Sarah.

“Okay, okay,” Sarah says. She snaps the lid of her e-cigarette shut: the image of Fortuna shimmers and vanishes, revealing Sarah’s true form. “But you get the idea. We send an illusion of your daughter out to make the trade. Once we get Felix’s changeling son back, we ambush Mandrake Kayne and pound him into the concrete.”

“Yeah!” Fortuna shouts, eyes sparkling with joy.

“No.” Fausta shakes her head. “It’s too risky.”

Everyone stares at Fausta. Fortuna’s cheeks bulge as she pouts at her mother.

“Kayne’s an experienced operator,” Fausta explains, leaning forward and planting her hands on the table. “He’ll be looking for a double-cross, he’ll have an escape route ready, and he’ll set some kind of explosive trap for the moment we double-cross him.”

“Are you saying a rescue op won’t work?” Sarah frowns.

“I’m saying,” Fausta replies with a quiet patience, “that we need to catalog every single way Mandrake Kayne can hurt us and his hostage. Then we need to figure out how to counter them with what we have. And then we need an evacuation route if the operation goes south.” She strokes her chin and nods thoughtfully. “Then we’ll have a halfway decent rescue plan…”

Fortuna silently walks across the couch to her mother and wraps her in a hug.

Fausta goes tense for a moment. Then she returns Fortuna’s embrace, leaning in to sniff her daughter’s curly hair.

For some reason, you’re reminded of those sentimental new documentaries and online videos, the ones where soldiers return to their families after a tour of war.

Fausta is hugging her daughter just like those weary veterans, who embrace their loved ones all the tighter for knowing how fleeting those moments of peace can be.

“I can do the dangerous stuff in this plan,” Felix Lynn suggests, tapping his metal-plated fingers against each other. “I’m bulletproof, after all,” he adds, a queasy look on his face. “God, I never thought I’d say something like that...”

You clear your throat and speak up. “I can cast some defensive enchantments on you guys,” you suggest. “Kayne hasn’t seen all the tricks I can pull with my sword either. We can blindside him that way—”

Fausta leans over and forces your hand back down. “No. Even without organ damage, you need fourteen days of bed rest until your wound closes. You need double that amount of time for the antibiotics to kill any infections. You need checkups, X-rays, physical therapy to rebuild your back muscles.” The heat in Fausta’s voice could boil an egg. “You will relax until you’ve healed. Are we clear?”

“But—” you start to object.

“Diesel,” Fausta says softly, face going blank. “Ease up on the throttle. You’ve done enough.”

That shuts you up.

You know she means ’you’ve sacrificed enough’. That’s what she’s trying to tell you. Probably.

…or maybe she’s saying ’you’ve screwed up enough’. You’re too tired and compromised to tell the difference.

“Okay.” You slump in your wheelchair. “Okay.” You lick your dry lips. “There are things you need to know about Kayne. How he fights, the gear he carries, how he thinks.”

“I only saw the tail end of the ballroom fight,” Sarah admits, grabbing one of the muffins from the table and picking the glass off sliver by sliver. “Anything you could tell us would help.”

“Anything to keep us from getting stabbed,” Felix Lynn adds.

All three woman in the room turn and give him the stink eye. Cookie the pit bull raises his head from the ground to let out a single bark.

Even the Brownie pops up from under the table to hiss at Felix.

“Sorry,” Mr. Lynn says. “That was in poor taste.”

“It’s fine,” you insist, leaning forward and resting your elbows on the coffee table. The throbbing ache around your back wound dies down a little.

“Quick reminder for everyone involved in this crazy rescue mission,” you tell them. “Kayne has knives––so many knives. And grenades. Probably grenade-knives too, with our luck.”

Fausta glances at her daughter, a queasy look on her face. Fortuna is taking down notes on her phone, eyes shining with an intense focus.

You clear your throat and go on: “He’s got these spring-loaded knives that shoot blades like darts. Why he doesn’t just use a gun, I don’t know. Some of these ballistic knives have razor wires he can deploy from the hilt like fishing reels…”

Next Chapter: Episode Eighteen: A Bitter Red Pill to Swallow (Revised)