Нью-Йорк
— Слышь, Сал, сигаретки не найдётся?
Мэри Энн Левитт смотрела то на мужа, то на свою последнюю работу, нанесённую на стену пустующего склада. Причём стена, возвышавшаяся более чем на семь метров, была занята целиком. Работа под названием "Месячное творение: настоящее время" представляет собой красную вульву с рукой между губами, показывающей зрителям кукиш. Нарисована картина исключительно менструальной кровью, на сбор которой ушли многие месяцы.
Услышав просьбу жены, пакистанец нахмурился и опустил взгляд на её округлый живот.
— Ты же беременна. Не думаю, что тебе стоит курить...
— Да не для этого, тупица. — Она указала на свою работу, потирая прикрытую бонданой бровь. — Мне нужно правильным образом показать, как женщины уничтожают свои тела наркотиками, таблетками, пластическими операциями и бог знает, чем ещё.
Мэри Энн достала несколько дилдо из кармана, в который они определённо не должны были влезть.
— Я хочу не курить, а собрать воедино пазл.
— А мне кажется, всё и так хорошо! — Он с улыбкой махнул в сторону "Месячного творения". — Тут просто выражается, что месячными тело женщины раз в месяц говорит себе "иди нахуй". — Он указал на противоположную стену. — А здесь можно разместить зеркало или скульптуру Евы или ещё что-нибудь. Но правда, и так хорошо!
Мэри Энн ткнула Салаха локтем.
— Сал, ты так говоришь про каждую мою работу, и это начинает надоедать. У меня хотя бы хватает яиц критиковать твою хероту.
—...ты правда считаешь моё "Соглашение Бэкона" отвратительным?
— Я считаю его отвратительно банальным. Но я оценила твои старания быть "путёвым" в том смысле, что "мы согласны". — Женщина во вздохом погладила живот. — Хочу есть. Давай раздобудем пиццу или типа того.
— Может, сходим в старое место? Знаешь... — Салах достал из кармана карту Нью-Йорка и подтянул к себе жену, чтобы ей тоже было видно. — Оно было прямо... тут. — Он ткнул пальцем в местечко на 32-й. Вид манхэттенских джунглей, пришедших на смену исчезнувшему складкому району, вызвал у мужчины улыбку. Мэри Энн закатила глаза и хлопнула его по животу.
— Ты растолстеешь, если продолжишь полагаться на штучки Картографа. — Проворчала она, открывая дверь пиццерии, пока Салах убирал карту обратно. — Тебе не помешало бы позаниматься спортом. Свечи не будут спасать тебя вечно.
— Милая, не смеши меня. Нью-Йорк говорит, что мне нельзя пользоваться метро. Ты же помнишь об этом? — Он зашёл следом за ней и изучил меню. — "Вегетарианская" звучит неплохо.
Спустя час парочка стояла перед входом в Задворки. Мэри Энн отняла карту у Салаха и заставила его пройтись пешком. Он явно запыхался, в то время как женщина едва покрылась потом.
— Позорище. Я на третьем месяце, а ты не можешь за мной угнаться. — Она осмотрела улицу и нахмурилась. — Бля. Где Чак?
Чарли вышел из стены. Сегодня его розовые волосы образовывали маллет. Он окинул мрачным взглядом пару, играясь кольцом в носу.
— Не лучший день для визита в Задворки. Просто предупреждаю.
— Почему? — Спросил Салах, по-прежнему силясь перевести дыхание. — Снова цыплята? Так сведите их с кем-нибудь из Бейли, уж они-то найдут управу.
— Не цыполовы. — Ответил Чарли. — Критик в городе. Она присматривается к новинке Картографа. То есть, к Корее.
— Та, что показывает всех людей в стране, желающих выразить несогласие?
— Именно. — Сказал он, протягивая руку за жетоном. — Вы точно хотите войти? Там просто сумесшедший дом.
Мэри Энн передала Чарли свой жетон и кивнула.
— Пока что будем просто сторониться Картографа. Наверное, направимся пряиком домой, во всяком случае, пока чего-нибудь не случится.
— Чего-нибудь случится. — Проворчал Салах. — Так было в последние пять визитом Критика в Задворки. С чего бы в этот раз будет иначе?
— Точно. — Сказала Женщина, глядя на Чарли. — Ты же знаешь, где нас найти, если всё пойдёт по пизде?
— Да-да-да...
Чарли растворился в кирпичной стене. Спустя мгновение, пара исчезла вслед за ним.
Агент Руис Дюшан не знал хороших дней. Неньютоновский противоударный жилет трещал по швам. Оружие заклинило на стрельбище. Опять вылез герпес. Заклятый враг в городе. Бариста добавил сливки в кофе. У него непереносимость лактозы.
Опять же, все члены МОГ знали, что у Руиса Дюшана не бывает хороших дней. Не было со времён Милуоки. Ни одного хорошего дня с той поры, когда брат переметнулся к Повстанцам Хаоса. Ни одного хорошего дня после встречи с Никто.
Руис — один из немногих переживших инцидент в Милуоки, и с той поры он неумолимо преследует тень, известную ему под именем Никто. Однажды в Дубаи он почти настиг её, но сука в платке заморозила его прямо на крыше одного из самых высоких в мире зданий. Руис выжил, хотя отталял лишь спустя три дня.
И вот, сегодня, эта тупая мразь была здесь. В Нью-Йорке. Он точно знал, где она. Он поднял весь свой взвод. В этот раз у него точно получится прикончить эту суку. И Пико никак — абсолютно, блядь, никак — не сможет его остановить.
На Улице показался фургон, из которого вылетела оперативная группа, окружившая большое пятно граффити. Шумно вздохнув, из стены вышел Чарли со скрещенными на груди руками.
— Вас я не пущу.
— У нас есть жетоны. — ответил Руис, достав мешочек и вывалив на бетон его содержимое — несколько жетонов с вытисненными словами "ARS GRATIA ARTIS". Часть из них покрыта кровью.
— Тебе, блять, придётся.
— Да ни хера мне не придётся, цыплёнок. Вали отсюда.
Чарли погрузился в стену и показался обратно со взрывчтакой, представлявшей собой граффити красным.
"I ain't gotta do shit, Gilligan. Piss off." Charlie reached into the brickwork, and pulled out a detonator from a red piece of graffiti. The cord went back into the wall, merging seamlessly with the entrance to the BackDoor. "Or I blow this whole alley to the Oort Cloud, and then your friends can have a hell of a time explaining to the NYPD why an alleyway blew up for no reason."
The entire MTF raised their rifles at him, with Duchamp sneering. "Go ahead and try, Aussie."
Charlie shrugged. "Eh. I can just be painted again. But since pink spray paint is so damn hard to find..." He sighed. "I'm going to give my guys warning first."
"Of course."
"The Critic probably already knows you're here."
"Naturally."
"You won't kill her."
"Fuck you, paint huffer." Ruiz spat in Charlie's direction, but by then, he had gone back into the brickwork to raise the alarm. A subordinate of Duchamp's looked at him.
"Sir? How will we get in without him?"
"We wait." Ruiz grinned with a grim satisfaction. "We wait."
The Cartographer paced around his apartment, wondering where the hell she could be. She said 6:15 promptly, and it was almost 6:30... just where the fuck was she? Did she not think his masterpiece was worth critiquing? He had spent the last year working on it, and now she wasn't even going to show up?
"Son of a bitch!" York, the Cartographer, felt like flipping his cartography table. Didn't she think that maps would be considered art?! That little-
"Hello there, Mr. The Cartographer." He spun around, seeing a woman in a cloche hat, gray dress suit, and a red scarf standing in his display gallery. "I apologize for my sudden entrance. I take it I am not too late to see your piece?"
"O-of course not, ma'am." The Cartographer looked at his watch, and saw that it was exactly 6:15. "Come here, come here. The piece is right this way." York walked into the display room, and directed her at a map of North Korea. Once every second, blue dots appeared and dissipated in it. A countdown clock was in the upper-left hand corner, ticking down despite being made entirely out of ink, while another clock ticked upwards; the count on the second one started on December 17th, 2011. "I call it 'The Map of Dissent'."
"A rather uncreative name," commented the Critic, looking over the map. "I do admire the technique, however. It mirrors the cartographic techniques used in the Gojoseon period. I assume all these dots are dissenters?"
The Cartographer nodded enthusiastically. "Yes! Each one represents a single dissenter that can be found in North Korea, or at least, someone with dissenting thoughts. You can even zoom it in to a certain degree; I'm still working on the magnification."
"This clock," said the Critic, pointing towards the top. "It detracts from the work, somewhat, but it also serves as a nice juxtaposition; a pseudo-digital appliance in an otherwise medieval piece. What is its purpose?"
"The one counting down indicates how much time is left in the life of Kim Jong-un, down to the second. Once that clock runs out, he dies. The other one is how long it has been since Kim Jong-il died."
"Check your calculations," snapped the Critic. "Kim Jong-il's been dead for far longer than that — although nobody but the North Korean government knows, so I suppose I can't blame you too much." She reached into her pocket and took out a smartphone. "Apologies. I have to answer this mail."
The Cartographer frowned, and was about to comment on how rude it was to do that, when suddenly, chaos broke out outside of his window.
wow
much shibe
so cool
"For the love of-" Mary-Ann rubbed her eyes to clear away the Comic Sans as she stared at their dog, calling to Salah. "Honey, I think Gerry got his hands on Amaterasu again!"
"Is that font appearing around her?" He called back, chopping up carrots in the kitchen.
"Yeah! Tell him that if he touches our dog again, I'm gonna kick his-" Mary-Ann's phone suddenly rang, and she took it out of her jean pocket, sighing into the receiver. "What."
"M-A, it's C." Charlie was on the other end of the line, and he began to sing. "Sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip..."
"Shit! I understand." She clicked off the phone, and called to Salah. "Dinner's cancelled. We got Gilligans."
Salah stopped chopping veggies and stepped out of the kitchen, grabbing a pen off of his writing desk. Mary-Ann took up a metal slingshot, and looked around the living room of their apartment briefly. "Crap, where is it?"
"Where is what?"
"The cricket bat we got from Marshall, Blackwood and Dark! We're gonna need it if they're packing heat!"
"One: 'if'? Two: We loaned it to Dickens, remember?" Salah picked up his own slingshot and made for the door. "Now, c'mon, we got some Gilligans to kill, again!"
"Let's do this." Mary-Ann grinned as she rushed out the door and up the stairs of their building.
The Critic looked through her purse for a very particular item, her attention now completely distracted from the Cartographer's work. "I do apologize, Mr. York, but I need to take my leave."
"Wha-who? Do we have the Gilligans on our back again?" He peered at the Critic as he covered his map with a tarp."They're after you, aren't they?"
"Such insistent terminology!" muttered the Critic as she took out an aerosol can. "Just call them the Foundation. I know you think that dignifies them, but really, the fact that you even know about them is humiliating." She went to the window, looking below her; a large crowd of anartists was armed with slingshots, bullets that shot guns, cream pies filled with something that was both acidic and vulgar, copies of The DaVinci Code, swords made out of newspaper, and pens. They were ready in case the Foundation Agents came this way. "You all down there!" The entire crowd turned in the direction of the Critic's voice as she threw down several aerosol cans. "Have a party for me, will you?"
The crowd took up the cans, and handed them to the unarmed members among them. Nobody smiled, and everybody grinned at the new gift. With that, the Critic made her way for the door. "Perhaps we can pick this up some other time, Mr. York."
"Perhaps," said York, looking over a map of the BackDoor that he had drawn years ago. "Perhaps."
Nobody walked out the door, and nobody was in the hallway a few seconds later.
Ruiz Duchamp broke the neck of some no-name anartist who had tried spraying his visor with paint. It was ruined now, so he took off his headgear and started firing into the crowd. Around him, members of his Task Force died as their chests were penetrated by miniature guns flying at supersonic speeds, or their arms were chopped off by claymores made out of back issues of the New York Times. Ruiz still stood though. He scanned the crowd of bright, vibrant colors for any sign of grey-
There. Coming out of the apartment building in the back. That scarf gave her away immediately. Ruiz ran through the crowd, firing in front of him and gunning down innocent anartists in pursuit of his mark. Said mark saw him, and smirked in his direction before making her way down an alley. Agent Duchamp ran after her as fast as he could, not noticing the Pakistani man and the American woman on the roof above him.
"Salah, for fuck's sake, you don't have to make a bridge every time I need to jump a rooftop!" She frowned as her husband drew a basic bridge using his pen before letting her cross. "The baby will be fine!"
"Mary-Ann, you shouldn't even be doing this," he said the pen re-absorbed the spent ink. "You're pregnant, you should be staying at home in the panic room with Ammy and not out here, fighting the god-damn Foundation!"
"Oh, so just because I'm pregnant makes me a fragile woman now, does it? Ugh!" She rolled her eyes and took out her slingshot, taking aim at an agent that was just coming in through the breach in the gateway. She let lose a stone which grew in size as it passed through the air, eventually blasting a hole through the agent's leg. "Damn. Was aiming for his balls."
Salah got the message. "I'm just saying it won't be good for our daughter if you keep on over-exerting yourself like this." Salah started to draw up a chair when he noticed that an agent was running through the crowd, after a woman in... grey... "Shit! That guy, right there." He pointed at the rogue agent. "He's going after the Critic."
"Already on it," said Mary-Ann, loading up her slingshot with a cherry bomb taking aim at the runner. "Just need to account for trajectory and..."
Ruiz Duchamp let off a shot at Nobody. "Hold it right there."
The Critic turned to face him, crossing her arms with a wry smile. "Hello again. How long has it been since we last met? 6 months? 7?"
"Seven months, 18 days, 15 hours, 24 minutes."
"Zero heartburn," quipped the Critic. Ruiz raised his rifle at her, and she put up her hands. "All right, I get the message. You want me dead." She tsked. "Ruiz, you are the very definition of obsession, you know that?"
"Shut up!" Ruiz fired a bullet that grazed her dress suit. "You killed a lot of good people in Milwaukee."
"For the umpteenth time, Ruiz, I did nothing. All I did was try and encourage a little fun."
"Half the city died because of your 'fun'!"
"Well, yes. But that bug's been worked out now!" She sighed. "Nothing I say is going to keep you from killing me, is it?"
"Not a fucking thing, Lady. Not a fucking thing."
"Very well," the Critic said as she typed one last messaged on to her smartphone before turning it off. "Give my regards to Pico, if you see him again."
"Fuck Pico, and fuck-" Ruiz blinked at the sound of whistling coming from behind him. He turned to see a small cherry bomb fireworks sailing towards his head. It landed at his feet, the fuse disappearing into the casing. For what seemed like the longest time, nothing happened.
And then the Cherry Bomb went off.
The last thing Ruiz Duchamp remembered before it went dark was the smell of fruit, the taste of wild cherry Kool-Aid, and his eardrums popping. The last thing he saw was a woman in a grey suit turn on her smartphone as she walked off into the distance.