Page 64 of Anarchy Missing

“Maybe you’re just like those anarchists down there?” She nods her head towards the city down below. “Maybe you’re just looking to tip the system. Pull it apart from within. Take it down.”

“Well, it is pretty fucking corrupt. And while I don’t agree with their methods, I do agree with their premise.”

She points a finger up at me and says, “I knew it.”

I slap her finger away, annoyed. “It’s not us.”

“Then who stole that money? Who is this Red—” But she stops, suddenly. Then turns around and scrubs a hand across her forehead.

“Who is… red… what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Stevegetti is ready,” Steve says off to my left. “Right this way, Miss Lulu.”

She doesn’t wait for me. Just follows Steve’s flickering form across the room towards the kitchen. Steve is droning on about plates and his inability to set the table, and then starts directing up to the cupboards where I keep that shit. I don’t move. Something is tingling in my mind. She slipped up just now. She said red.

Red. As in the color of the light inside me.

Has someone seen me up on the roof? It’s not impossible, I decide. I am up there most nights doing some pretty weird shit. And didn’t she just tell me that they have footage of the helicopter raid on Blue Corp? Someone saw us do that. I scan outside, looking for possible vantage points where someone might have set up a scope and taken pictures.

But I live up pretty high on the side of the mountain. I’m way higher than the tallest buildings in downtown, and from that vantage point they’d never be able to see someone on top of the flat roof. Unless I was standing on the very edge. Which I wasn’t. I don’t stand there. Do I?

No, I decide. I don’t. I stand in the middle.

Plus, they’re too far away. No one saw me.

“Are you going to stand there all day?” Lulu asks. “Will I have to eat alone?”

I turn to face her. Watch her as she sets down forks and napkins.

Shake it off, Case. Just let it go and see if she slips up again.

I make my way over to the table and pull out her chair. She mumbles a thank you and sits. Then I do the same. We stare across the table at each other. “I’m telling you,” I say. “Don’t get excited about Steve’s version of spaghetti.”

She cracks a smile as she picks up some tongs and drops some pasta down on her plate, then passes the bowl to me and goes for the red sauce.

I help myself, staring at the sauce longer than I should. Red.

“Case?”

I look up and she’s holding out the spoon for the sauce. “Right,” I say, taking it from her.

We have a few awkward moments of silence as we start eating. I have no appetite, plus I know what this stuff tastes like already, so I mostly push mine around on my plate. But Lulu doesn’t seem to notice.

“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be.”

“Thank you, Miss Lulu,” Steve says, beaming a smile of flickering teeth at her.

“You can go now, Steve,” I say. “We’d like some privacy.” Steve nods obligingly at me and flickers out of existence.

“How do you manage that?” Lulu asks. “Privacy, I mean. When he’s everywhere, just watching and waiting for his next command.”

“The lighthouses,” I say, nodding my head towards the ceiling where all the little black boxes are mounted. “He can only appear in rooms where I have lighthouses. And microphones, of course. He doesn’t have ears, Lulu. He’s a computer.”

“So which rooms don’t have the right equipment?”

“Most of them are upstairs. He can appear in the hallways, but not the rooms up there. I have SpyGlass windows in the bedrooms, but those are just to project images of fantastic destinations. Like a tropical beach. Or the mountains. I’ll show you some time.”

“Hmm,” Lulu says, thinking about this. “Do you think of Steve as a friend? A personal assistant? What?”