Page 65 of It Takes a Thief

I’d seen this game before. This was Pokémon, some cartoons of which Fidelia was just starting to get into—Niko was too young to care. They seemed like harmless, cute little well-drawn things, but not when one of them resembled Tobiah with a brown bowl over his head, his nose sticking out so far you couldn’t see his eyes. He’d even put tiny, tight trousers on himself, and a wide, white belt.

“What the fuck!” yelled Muldoon. “No! Fuck you!” He even banged his own mouse out of frustration, because clearly he’d never been hacked before.

“So now,” said Tobiah calmly. His cartoon mouth didn’t match the words coming out of the speakers, but that was a trivial detail I was sure he didn’t have time to fix. “Now, in order for you to proceed to the next step, this little film I’ve prepared will assist you.”

“I don’t want to watch a fucking film!” Muldoon shouted, like a kid throwing a tantrum. “I don’t want to! Fuck you, Ford!”

“That’s not Ford,” I pointed out. “That’s his tech guy.”

“Fuck you!” Muldoon yelled. “I want Ford, not some tech guy!”

“Here we go,” said cartoon Tobiah.

So, although Muldoon typed frantically on his keyboard, absolutely nothing happened onscreen except a Pokémon cartoon started to play. It showed a baseball-hatted boy and his yellow rabbit, characters I’d seen before, trying to fix something.

“No, no!” Muldoon cried in anguish, as though the cartoon was coming to get him. “Stop this fucking thing, make it go away!”

“What’s so bad about it?” I asked. “It’s just a cartoon. Watch it. Maybe there’s a clue in there.”

But when the yellow rabbit used lightning bolts to zap some missiles, all hell broke loose. The big flat computer screen flashed strobe-like between angry red and nighttime blue, just real intense colors that made me want to look away. I hated strobes. I always had to close my eyes.

But Muldoon hated them more. “Ants, ants!” he roared, scratching frantically at his bare arms. One hand slapped away the other, the one that wanted to scratch. It was horrifying to see. What must it be like to live with such damage? “Oh God, that smell, that smell! Where’s it coming from? Maddy!” He reached out to me, beseeching. Beseeching me!

I’d seen enough epileptics having seizures. Beforehand, they experience “auras” that could include the feeling of ants on the skin or horrible smells.

Muldoon was having a grand mal seizure.

His muscles went rigid. Both arms stopped fighting each other and went stiff like sticks, the cramped hands facing outward. I could practically see the neurons misfiring in his brain. He wasn’t looking directly at the computer screen now, but the sequence of flashing red/blue lit up the side of his face. He sucked in his cheeks, his eyeballs rolled up, and yes, flecks of foam appeared at the corners of his mouth.

Immediately, I unhooked the handcuff keys from his belt. That was done, and my cuffs fell to the ground. I next unhooked from his belt a couple of keys that might go to cars downstairs. I fought against my nursing instincts with every fiber of strength. For the first time ever, I did not want a seizure victim to get better.

“Ha ha, Merchant of Venom! Have fun with your damaged axons!” crowed Tobiah from the speakers. He was playing the same seizure-inducing cartoon over and over. “Have a good time with your ions flowing in and out!” He was actually quite accurate. I wondered who’d given him the information—Gudrun maybe. Usually, I was there to help with medical issues.

I wasted precious time bounding back into the bedroom to grab my skirt. It was just a knit deal I could pull on with one hand while stepping into my sandals, and within a flash I was out the door.

A muscle car was parked in the driveway. I leaped in so fast I don’t even remember what kind of car it was. Wrong key.

Another option was a Harley, a SuperGlide I thought. Harley Davidson is the best. Fuck the rest. I’d only actually driven one a couple times, believe it or not, during emergencies mostly. But my brain and body were in such intense fight-or-flight mode that I did everything on autopilot.

Turn fuel switch on. Key on. Make sure it’s in neutral. Push engine button.

The pipes roared to life, and I wasted no fucking time in getting out of there.

And prayed my thanks to Tobiah for coming up with that seizure-inducing video. It must’ve been the one I heard of in Japan about twenty years ago. Somewhere around seven hundred kids went to the hospital.

FORD

The high fives, bro hugs, and whoops echoed far across the valley from Mescal Mesa.

For Noodlum, or shall we say Nurse Joy, had lured us on a wild goose chase all the way to our very own Citadel. Citizens followed, too, because they were trying to capture this fucking creature called Mewtwo, apparently a very rare one Noodlum had stuck in there just to antagonize us by having the greatest number of people witness our humiliation.

Although Nurse Joy—we started calling her Nurse Maddy—could talk, it didn’t seem interactive. She couldn’t hear us. So she’d taunted us with lovely sentiments such as:

“Closer, closer. No, farther, farther.”

“Cumon boys. You can do better than that.”

“Is your dick the size of your IQ? No wonder you can’t find me.”