Page 69 of Antihero

“Don’t bother,” he said. “You’ll never trace it.”

“Regardless, I’m giving the number to technical security. It covers my ass, keeps me legitimate the way you’re asking me to be.”

“If you’d like to waste resources,” Evan said, “be my guest.”

She turned around, set her rear end against the Wrangler, let her eyes pick once more across parked vehicles and surrounding buildings. “Why deliver a burner? You could’ve just called on my work phone.”

“Because,” Evan said, “this is a courtship.”

The line severed.

She forwarded herself the links from the burner and then stared at it. Thought about all the dead ends it would lead to, all the digital threads spinning off into nothingness. It felt like something, a concrete piece of Orphan X. But she knew that was an illusion. Wasted resources, indeed. How odd that she trusted that to be true. She actually trusted Orphan X.

Snapping the phone in half, she dropped it down a storm drain. Plucking another chocolate off the hood, she climbed in the Wrangler and roared off to the Joint Operations Center, the taste of sea salt caramel leaking deliciously along the side of her tongue.

Rising from the couch, Evan set his hands on his lower back and arched, stretching his spine and taking in the soaring ceiling of the architectural loft. Behind him, Manny’s complaints grew both more frantic and more muffled.

“—begging you, bro, don’t leave me—mmfff—mfff—”

The whir of the vacuum reached a high whine.

Evan strode around the couch.

Manny lay on the floor trapped inside the massive storage bag, the seal nearly airtight. The vacuum sucked free the last remaining air, the clear polyethylene-nylon suctioning to his body. Every wrinkle in his clothes smashed to his flesh, the sidewalls of his nose pinched tight, glasses cracked but holding shape, denting the flesh around his eyes and temples. His face was frozen in a silent scream, the plastic concave inside his mouth, tight enough to outline the seam of every tooth.

He looked like a vacuum-sealed sausage.

Having reached its limit, the device shut off.

Manny’s eyes were open, unable to blink given the plastic layer crushed against his lids. But his eyes twitched as Evan looked down at him.

He flopped epileptically. “Mmmff! Mmffndtd!”

His head cracked the reclaimed-wood floorboards. He jolted around like the young women in the almost-snuff films he commissioned. Spasms rattled through him. He arched stiffly.

And then stilled.

The silence was refreshing.

Evan stepped one leg across his paralyzed form. Straddling him, he flicked up his Strider knife and bent down.

Manny was almost out, but his pupils tightened with terror.

Evan lowered the tip of the blade to Manny’s face.

The suctioned cup plastering the inside of Manny’s mouth dimpled under the point. Then popped.

The tiny hole allowed the faintest hiss.

Manny gagged, sucking desperately at the trickle of air. The storage bag had loosened barely across his face. He’d be able to maintain a flow of oxygen sufficient to stay conscious and fend off brain damage.

Barely.

His sobs were stifled. Gulping against the pinhead incision, he gagged, eyes watering. A full-blown panic attack that would know no end.

Rustling weakly against the floor, he sucked and huffed, sucked and huffed.

Evan leaned down.