Zendyne | Page 9

fingers,
tracing a line along the knuckles. The artificial eyes — with their extraordinary peripheral
vision — let him observe the severed digits as they fell like a handful of plump sausages
that had been splashed with red ketchup and dropped on the carpet. There was a barely
perceptible patter as they arranged themselves among the woven rose petals.
The blade was exquisitely sharp: the man didn’t even notice what had happened until
Stranger was inside the apartment with the door securely closed. Then he looked down
with a puzzled expression on his face.
"You need to take care of that, and you need to stay quiet," Stranger said.
The client’s face showed incomprehension, followed by shock and then by panicky
understanding. "Please. My wife."
"And where would Mrs. Kelly be?"
"In the bathroom."

"You’d better lock her in. You really wouldn’t want her to meet a man like me."
This client caught on more quickly than most: he nodded and fetched a dining chair with
his uninjured hand. He propped it under a door handle that led off the cramped hallway.
"Good," Stranger said. "A tourniquet, perhaps?"
The words brought a flicker of hope — gratitude, even — to the client’s eyes, as if being
allowed a tourniquet was the same as being allowed to live. This piece of illogic was
endlessly perplexing to Stranger, though that didn’t stop him from exploiting it: he had
learned long ago that hope and co-operation were two sides of the same coin, and he
liked his interviews to go as smoothly as possible.
He waited politely while his client dug a dishtowel out of a kitchen drawer and did his
best to staunch the flow of blood.
"Now," Stranger said, watching as pristine cotton succumbed to a bright arterial tide
mark. "Tell me all about your previous employer. In fact, tell me everything that
happened today."
Halfway through the meeting, Mrs. Kelly called to her husband. Shortly after that, she
started pounding on the bathroom door.
"Calm her down, would you?" Stranger asked.
"Just stay in there and keep quiet, sweetheart," called the client. "Some urgent business
has come up."
"Why is your voice shaking, honey? What’s wrong?"
"Please, sweetheart, just trust me. Stay put and be quiet. Everything’s going to be okay."
The shouting and banging didn’t stop.
Stranger walked over to the bathroom and pitched his voice so that only Mrs. Kelly
would hear. "Each time you squeak, from now on, I will remove another of your
husband’s fingers. One squeak, one finger. Do you understand me?"
Peace descended, disturbed by nothing more irritating than the woman’s muffled sobbing.
That was acceptable to Stranger, so he returned to his interview.
"Please don’t hurt her," said the client.
"That’s not why I’m here." Stranger did his best to look encouraging. "Now, you were
telling me about the man who came to deal with the android. Mr. Lee from Zendyne,
wasn’t it?"
***

At the end of the session, when he realized that the tourniquet didn’t mean anything after
all, tears started to escape from the client’s eyes.
"Why?" he asked. "Why me?"
"It’s nothing personal," Stranger said. "I’m just deleting some inconvenient memories.
You won’t remember any of this when you come back."
The man’s voice became desperate. "You don’t understand. I’ve just changed jobs,
switched insurance plans. I’m not covered. I haven’t even arranged for my memory
archive to be transferred."
Stranger shrugged. "Then we won’t be meeting again."
The client’s remaining fingers twisted the tourniquet even more tightly, as if that would
stop his final moments from leaking away. "Whatever this is about, it has nothing to do
with Cara. Please don’t hurt her. I swear I’ve told you everything I know."
"I promise you that she won’t feel a thing," said Stranger, and ended the interview, very
gently.
Then he went back into the hallway and removed the chair from where the client had
wedged it, underneath the bathroom door handle.
The woman had locked herself in. Stranger eased his blade through the panels, which
offered no perceptible resistance, and cut out a wide semicircle around the lock. The
weeping sounded louder through the hole, and became more urgent as he pushed the door
open.
"Why are you doing this?" she managed to ask.
"Risk management," was his honest reply.
Cara Kelly was nicer looking than he’d have expected, going by her husband. Stranger
remembered enough of mainstream culture to realize that a guy usually had to have
something special about him to end up with a desirable female like this one.
He also knew that most men would have thought it a waste, killing such a woman so
simply and so quickly. Some of Stranger’s competitors might have extended her life for
the short time it would have taken