This was the only call on which Van Sciver didn’t dare use his anonymizing voiceware. “We lost him, Mr. President.”

The handsome man pouched his lips and paused. If there was one thing he’d learned in office, it was the value of a two-second pause before responding. “Get him back in play.”

He leaned to hang up, but Van Sciver’s voice came through, so he moved the phone back to his face.

“Next time,” Van Sciver said, “I’ll handle it personally.”

The president allowed another two-second pause.

Then hung up.

74. Overlord of Everything and Nothing

74

Overlord of Everything and Nothing

It was hard to pick up the trace of sun-dried raisin in the vodka, but it was there, lingering behind the aftertaste. Handcrafted in small batches, Dash organic vodka was distilled seven times, filtered through coconut shells, and then micro-oxygenated until it was smoother than velvet.

Sitting on his black suede couch, Evan sipped it now, looking past the slit in the floor that housed his retractable flat-screen TV and focusing on the view beyond.

Los Angeles, a constellation of nearly 4 million lights. All of them seemed to be on display tonight. Checkering the neighboring apartments, running up and down the high-rises of Downtown, headlighting the cars Tetris-ing their way through the gridlocked streets below.

And Evan floating twenty-one stories up, observing it all with his glass of vodka, an overlord of everything and nothing.

Alone.

The congestion on the streets looked thicker than usual, and he realized: It was Thanksgiving.

He thought of Anna Rezian, her life back in motion. The RoamZone bulged in his pocket, charged and ready to go. What would next week bring? And the week after? How many more Hector Contrells would he face? How many seedy doorsteps would he darken, steeling himself for whatever atrocities waited inside? How long had he been stuck here inside this fortress-prison, inside this trope, this story? He thought about breaking out of the narrative, about time moving along and—for once—him moving along with it. Unclicking that pause button and stepping into life with all its ordinary wonders and concerns.

You can’t start over.

The drink had lost some of its charm.

All you can do is change direction.

And then Evan was up and walking. Through the door, up the corridor to the elevator, riding down nine floors. He moved briskly to 12B, tapped on the door before he could convince himself not to.

He sensed a shadow at the peephole, and then the door pulled open, a trace of lemongrass presaging Mia’s appearance in the gap. From behind her, soft lighting and the smells of a laden table.

“Evan, it’s—”

“If I stopped it all, would you consider letting me in?”

She stood in the doorway, confused. “I—Wait—What? You’d do that? For me?”

“No,” he said. “For me.”