“How many will you give us?” the whisperer asks, her voice still a toneless rasp.

“How many do you need?” Starkey forces a smile. “Ten percent? Like a tithing? That’s right, they’ll be like tithes!”

Starkey knows he’s getting somewhere. As for the logistics, those can be worked out later. The consequences of this escape can be dealt with. The aftermath is always manageable. All that matters in the moment is the escape itself.

“How could you do that to them?” says the third one, and his whisper breaks, a bit of roundness coming into his timbre. In the back of Starkey’s mind, that voice is familiar, but it’s so far back in his mind, he doesn’t register it yet.

“I can do it because it’s the right thing to do!” Starkey insists. “The idea of a war is more important than any of its warriors. And I am the idea!” Then he looks away. “I don’t expect you to understand that.”

And suddenly the whispering woman isn’t whispering anymore. “We understand a lot more than you think.” Starkey realizes who she is the moment before she removes her ski mask.

“Bam?”

She turns to the third attacker. “Are we good, Jeevan?”

Jeevan removes his mask as well, then fiddles with the small object in his hand. “Yeah, we’re good.”

As the betrayal takes hold in his mind, Starkey finds his fear replaced by fury. He struggles against his bonds. He can escape from the ropes, but it will take time. He doesn’t have time! He wants to tear free now, so he can tear them all apart.

“He should die now!” announces the enforcer, who now paces in the background. “If I still had my garden shears, I’d stab them through his heart right now!”

But apparently no one present has either the guts or the inclination to end his life. It’s their weakness that will save him.

“There’s been enough killing,” Bam says. “Go wait for us in the car. We’ll be there in a minute.”

“Who the hell is that clown?” Starkey asks.

“That ‘clown’ is the head gardener at Horse Creek Harvest Camp,” Jeevan tells him. “You blew up his wife last week. You’re lucky he didn’t blow your brains out just now.”

Starkey turns to Bam, realizing that this is still a negotiation, just a very different one. “Bam, let’s talk about this. You’ve made your point, so let’s talk.”

“I’ll talk,” she says. “And you’ll listen.” She’s calm. Too calm for Starkey’s taste. He much preferred when her anger was out of control. That anger is malleable. It can be shaped any way Starkey wants. But this cool calm is like Teflon. He knows anything he says will slide right off it.

“You’re going to disappear, Mason,” she tells him. “I don’t care where you go, but you’re going to perform a total vanishing act. You will not kill the tithes at Mousetail. You will never attack another harvest camp. You’ll never fight for another ‘cause,’ and most of all, you’ll stay far away from the Stork Brigade, from now until the end of time. Or at least until the end of your miserable life.”

Starkey glares at her. “And why would I do that?”

“This is why.” And she turns to Jeevan, who fiddles with the device in his hands that Starkey had mistaken for a weapon. It’s not a weapon at all; it’s a small recording device. Jeevan hits a button, and it projects a hologram—a miniaturized version of the spot they still stand in, in high definition, just as clear as the real thing. Starkey watches himself say:

“If you free me, I can supply you with Unwinds to sell to the Dah Zey. They’re AWOL storks marked for unwinding, so no one will miss them.”

Starkey finds he can’t contain his anger. He thrashes, making his broken ribs resonate in pain. He practically dislocates his shoulders trying to pull out of the bonds. “You bitch! You made me say that. You made me make the deal!”

And yet Bam holds her Teflon calm. “No one made you do anything, Mason. We just gave you the rope; you’re the one who hung yourself with it.”

Jeevan laughs at that. “Good one,” he says. “Hung himself.”

“If you ever surface again anywhere,” Bam says, “we’ll play that recording for the storks. Not just our storks, but publicly for every stork out there. You’ll go from being their savior to being seen as the self-serving egomaniac that you are.”

“Self-serving? I did all of this for them! All of it.” Starkey would kill them right now if he could. The traitors! He would execute them without the slightest hesitation. Can’t they see what they’re doing? They’re killing a dream larger than all of them. How can storks ever hope to change their plight in the world without their leader?

He wants to scream with a wordless fury, but knows he must try as best he can to match Bam’s detachment. He forces down his anger and says, “It’s the small minds in this world that destroy everything. Don’t be a small mind, Bam. You’re smarter than that. You’re better than that.”

Bam smiles, and Starkey thinks that maybe she’s finally beginning to see the wisdom of his words. Until she says, “You’re so smooth, Mason. You can slide your way into getting what you want, and then convince everyone around you that it’s what they want too. That was your best magic trick. You made everyone believe you were doing this for them—when it was all for the fame and fortune of Mason Michael Starkey.”

“That’s not true!”

“See how good the illusion is?” Bam says. “Even you believe it.”

Starkey will not entertain this accusation. He cannot doubt himself, because doubt is his enemy. So he’ll let Bam go on with her mindless lecture. Let her think what she wants to think. She’s just jealous that she can never be him, or have him, or be in the same league as him. He is Mason Michael Starkey, the avenger of storks. No matter how hard Bam tries to take that away, the world will reward him for all the good he’s done. He didn’t do it for the fame, but he certainly deserves it.

“I’ll never be a great leader,” Bam tells him. “But knowing that already makes me a better leader than you. I just wish I could have figured that out sooner.”

Starkey is exhausted struggling against his bonds. They’re looser now. He will escape. Not this moment, but soon. Ten minutes, twenty. The question is, will he go after Bam and Jeevan, or will he cave to their blackmail and go into hiding forever?

“You’ve heard our demands, and you know what will happen if you don’t follow them,” Bam says. “On the other hand, if you get with the program, we’ll keep that recording to ourselves. I know how important it is for you to be seen as the hero. You get to keep that. It’s more than you deserve. We’ll tell the storks you were captured while scouting out Mousetail, and that will make you an instant martyr. What could be better?”

Mason has no strength to argue anymore. He feels sick to his stomach, and he knows it’s not just from the tranqs. “Someone’s going to make you pay for this.”

“Maybe, but it won’t be you.” Then she turns to Jeevan, who pulls out a tranq gun—one of the nice ones the clappers provided. Probably the same one they tranq’d him with the first time.

“We can’t take a chance you’ll break free too soon,” Bam tells him. “And once you do free yourself, if you’re tempted to look for us at the power plant, don’t bother. We’ll all be gone from there long before you wake up.”

Jeevan comes close to Starkey, aims, but he doesn’t shoot just yet. Instead he suddenly spits in Starkey’s face. “That’s for all the people who died because of me,” says Jeevan. “The people who died because of the things you made me do!”

Starkey smiles at him, and repeats what Bam said just a few moments ago. “I didn’t make you do anything, Jeevan. I just gave you the rope.”

Jeevan’s response is a tranq blast right into the space between his broken ribs.

29 • Hayden