“What do we do in the meantime?”

“Hasten that along. Break the state.” She looked at the guards. “It’s coming,” she said. “Right under their noses.”

The Superdome was behind her. He could see the guards silhouetted on the roofline. He heard the sound of a chopper coming in from the north.

“I don’t want to know.”

She told him anyway. The chopper was loud now, loud enough that no one could hear them.

“Maybe someone will take him out first,” said Donny. “He’s pissed off a lot of his former allies. Costing some of them big money.”

“We can’t kill him, Donny. That just perpetuates the cycle. You don’t get it.”

She was right, he didn’t. Not then, “I’m still going to get you out, Joyce, even if you talk like that.”

“Don’t bother, Donny. I need to find my own way out. Please.”

Part Three
We the Creatures

52

When Donny was in law school, there was a big hit movie called Wrath of Atlantis. It was one of those fantasy movies that always sounded stupid to Donny, lots of dudes in metal underwear flexing with swords while the women grimaced at the wind machine when they weren’t flexing with their own swords. But he went with a group of friends who wanted to see it because of the hype and because of all the stars, and to his surprise he kind of liked it.

Part of why he liked it was because they all got high in the car before heading into the mall where the theater was. But that wasn’t the only reason.

What was really cool about the movie was that they used stop-motion animation instead of CGI. It was like being a kid again and seeing your toys come to life. Except these models looked more real. All those mythological creatures. One of the characters got to fly on Pegasus, while another fought the hydra, and another had to talk her way past Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded the underworld. And the smile on that minotaur, so real it reminded him of Vice President Lane, the one who pushed through the interrogation-enhancements program.

It was kind of a Greek mythology smorgasbord. The plot, as best Donny could remember, was something about a war between Atlantis and Sparta. Atlantis was a lush, green city of beautiful, happy people, watched over by Athena and guarded by her giant steampunk owlbot, full of benevolent sorcerers. There was a scene set in this library that literally looked like it went on forever and contained every book in the world. The music for them was kind of lame, like Renaissance faire meets turbopop, but it was forgivable.