Moderation Online

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

Sodius hovered in his office, watching replays of the terrorist attack on several screens. The office was a huge cube of salt and dry air.

He studied the people running through the streets in slow motion, stopping and rewinding constantly. He paused on a freeze frame of Brocc, Celerity, and Frank standing back-to-back with hoods over their faces. He zoomed in but couldn’t see their eyes. He watched as Brocc cut down the Fry Guards, and he burned with rage as Brocc, Frank, and Kendall sped down the Arterion and evaded capture.

On another screen, a jet crashed into the Cola Bay boardwalk, ending the video footage with a staticky splash.

He breathed in and sucked all the moisture from the air, then held it for a moment and exhaled, encasing the room in a fresh layer of salt that caked the walls and coated the floor. Fine crystal powder wavered in the air like snow, and everything creaked under the weight of the salt, like sheets of ice on an iceberg.

Sodius hovered across the room, thinking and scowling, and he dimmed the lights with his mind. Through the panoramic window behind his desk, he could see every area of the city lit up in extravagant splendor. He scanned Cola Bay, where Fry Guards were fighting the fire from the jail-ship explosion. They couldn’t contain the fire, and smoke rose into the air in fierce columns.

Not what he wanted to see. He blew salt over the window, frosting it until the lights of the city were mosaicked against the glass. Then he turned and floated around the room again, rewinding the videos.

A hotdog with a scar across his face, droopy eyes, and a stoic expression entered the room. The top of his bun rose up around his head like the collar of a leather jacket. He had two guns in holsters on his waist—one red, one yellow—and he wore combat boots with relish laces. His boots crunched in the salt as he walked.

Sodius didn’t greet him. Instead, he controlled the television screens with his mind and brought up the photo of the vegetables again.

“Who are they?” he asked.

Monte Cristo opened his mouth to speak, but then he choked. He beat his chest and breathed in the little fresh air that was left in the room.

“Cheesus. Every time I walk in here, I have a dry throat for days.”

“Answer the question,” Sodius said.

“We don’t know who they are.”

“Did they come from the battlefield? The Lower Rind?”

“No and no,” Monte Cristo said. “They’re from somewhere else. We don’t know where, and we’re still trying to figure out how they got on the jail-ship.”

Sodius shook with rage. Salt crystals flecked the walls and glowed white like snowy beacons.

“The Fry unit is still trying to bring order to the seventh sector,” Monte Cristo said. He watched with wonder as the salt crystals flashed and disappeared. “The humans are spooked. They think vegetables are out to get them now. This is a PR firestorm, Sodius. It will be another few hours until I can begin an official investigation.”

Screams from the television screens filled the space between them.

“My guess is that they had help from other rogue vegetables in the city,” Monte Cristo said. “Probably sympathizers from the Lower Rind. My earlier suspicions were correct—there’s a resistance building.”

Sodius seethed.

Monte Cristo walked over to the window and wiped away a semi-circle of salt, exposing the candy-colored lights of the boardwalk. He tapped the glass with one of his guns.

“This is serious. I don’t care about the investigation—they got in, they attacked, and they made fools of us. I care about crushing them.”

Sodius, still focused on the screens, zoomed in on Brocc.

“They won’t ruin what we’ve built,” Sodius said. “I want to crush them myself.”

Monte Cristo stepped to Sodius’s side and studied Brocc.

“He killed twenty guards without taking a hit,” the hotdog said. “What kind of vegetable can do that?”

A female voice sounded from behind them.

“Are you two using your eyes?”

A strawberry shake in a lab coat and glasses entered with her hands on her hips. The pink liquid inside her sloshed with every step, and the air around her sweltered with sugary intoxication. She stood between Monte Cristo and Sodius.

“Can’t you see that they’re infused with Nutrizeen?” Azucara asked.

Sodius squinted at the screens—one of them showed Brocc glowing purple. He gasped, incredulous.

The revelation even shocked Monte Cristo.

“Leave it to you, Azucara, to point out the obvious.”

“We need to eliminate them,” Azucara said, “or they’re going to make progress. I can’t have this, Sodius. I’m too close to finishing the experiments.”

Sodius rematerialized on the other side of the room in front of a holographic map of the city. He blinked, and a hologram of the Middle Rind appeared. He rotated it with his eyes.

“Sweep the seventh sector,” the salt cloud said. “Raze everything, humans included.”

“Done,” Monte Cristo said.

“Any word on Geoffrey?” Azucara asked. Her voice was soft, and she looked nervous.

“We’re still looking,” Sodius said, giving her a kind look. “I assure you, we’re looking everywhere, Azucara. He can’t be too far away. We’ll find him.”

She frowned and her eyes darted around the city.

“What a fine time for my husband to disappear,” she said.

Three of them stood, looking out at the city, their bodies temporarily glitching and blinking with static…

Then Sodius turned the hologram into a 3D image of Brocc, Frank, and Celerity. He gathered around them like a python and smothered them until they flickered away.

“You’re mine, vegetables.”