The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Bagging a Thug

Previously: "The Wrong Guy for the Wrong Girl" 

"Gary?" Jessica exclaims after a stunned silence has hung in the air for a good few seconds. "You want one of us to turn himself into Gary?"

"Yes," Maria says. "To protect Yumi. As you just said, she's going to get hurt if we don't—"

"One of us is going to get hurt if we do!"

"What do you mean?"

"Pah!" Jessica throws her hands in the air. "He's a freaking thug, that's what I mean! He's a criminal! He's gonna wind up in jail one of these days, probably for killing someone!"

"He hasn't yet."

"Emphasis on 'yet', man! And look who he hangs out with! Those guys are scary! He's scary!"

Maria smiles as though addressing a child.

"In the first place," she says, "if you switched with him you'd have all his memories and personality traits, so you could handle the people he hangs out with. And if you switched with him, then you'd be scary. In the second place, you wouldn't even have to switch with him. Keith hasn't switched with his other beta yet." He gives Cindy another long look, which she returns with a blank look of her own. "So—"

"Yeah, well, in my second place," Jessica retorts, "we'd get hurt if we even tried to do anything to him. Even the football players don't hassle him. If we tried jumping him—"

"Oh, come on, sis," Eva interrupts. "You think Gary would hit a girl? You really think he'd hit one of us?"

She pouts as she says it, and shifts so as to thrust her boobs out. She crosses one leg over the other and arches her foot. She shakes her hair back, and runs a tongue over her lower lip.

"Mike's right," Maria says after a long, pregnant pause. "We wouldn't have a problem getting him out here—or anyplace else—with his guard down. But even if no one actually switches places with him, we need someone to volunteer their hair for the enslavement spell."

"So why don't you switch with him?" Jessica grumbles. She crosses her arms. "You're so hot to—"

"I have to stay where I am. No one else is positioned so as to keep the real Yumi under observation."

"Then use your hair!"

Before Fairfax can give in, you interrupt: "I'll do it."

Four heads swivel. "Will?" Maria says.

"Yeah, I said I'd do it. Fuck." You rub your arm, for you suddenly feel cold. "I should be the one anyway. I'm the one who got her— Chelsea— Yumi— Both of them— Into this mess. It was my idea to switch them."

For a moment you're hoping that the others will argue with you. But after exchanging glances, they shrug and fall silent. Maria takes out her phone.

"I'll try to set it up for late this afternoon or this evening," she says. "The longer he's with her, the greater the chance something bad could happen."

Something bad's already set to happen, you think glumly to yourself.

* * * * *

"Did you notice back there, how bad Fairfax wants you to switch into Seth's mask?" you ask Cindy when you're getting coffee with her later that afternoon.

"No I didn't," Cindy replies with vacant insouciance. "Oops, guess I won't, then." She sips her latte and stares out the plate glass window onto Twentieth Street.

"So you're not ever going to?"

"Not unless you come up with some scheme or other to get me out of this get-up, the way you did with Shank."

Your lip curls. "That wasn't why I suggested doing the thing with Yumi and Chelsea."

"And yet look at how things worked out. Oh well," she sighs. "Something like that was bound to happen sooner or later. Fairfax is just itching to have some kind of 'project'. It's what lets him keep pretending that this whole thing isn't just about the tits."

She's wearing a very tight sweater today, so that her own tits are straining to burst forth. With her freshly scrubbed skin and glowing hair, she's practically bursting out of her clothes with health.

"So you're planning on staying like that forever?" You sip your own coffee.

That gets her to glance at you. Briefly she looks puzzled, as though she doesn't understand what you're talking about. Then she flushes a little, which only makes her look even healthier.

"What do you want me to do, Will? Go back to being my old self? God." She winces. "I've had to change the route I take between classes so I don't run into my beta."

Then her eyes narrow. "But you've got something to go back to," she says peevishly, "when you want. We made sure of that."

"So do the same for your beta," you retort. "Clean yourself up the way I did."

Her expression curdles further.

"And then it was also smart of you to pick Jenny, of all people, for your disguise," she sneers. "So you won't be losing anything like we're losing when—" She breaks off to pick something off the tip of her tongue. Maybe it was the unuttered conclusion of her sentence, for she doesn't resume after she's flicked it away.

"So you're going to stay like that forever."

She winces.

Then she sighs.

"I don't know, Will. I mean, I guess not. It wouldn't be right, would it? But maybe—"

She visibly struggles, then wilts. "I just don't want to think about it," she resumes. "So can we not talk about it?"

You've got your own topic that you don't want to talk or think about, so you find a neutral subject.

* * * * *

You'd gone off with Keith because Fairfax thought it would be awhile before they could lure Chen out to an ambush, but while you're still drinking your coffee you get a text from Maria: Gary on way come back. Another text with the same news arrives from Jessica as you scoop up your stuff and start for the door.

Your target must have been close to the storage complex already when he said he would be coming out, for there's a strange car—a Jeep with a canvas body—parked in front of the climate-controlled unit when you get back. Cautiously you enter the building and softly jog down the corridor. Voices sound from Carlos's units.

The exercise room is empty, but there's a crowd in the studio, including Carlos's and Mike's betas, who are looking freaked out. They and Eva and Jessica are huddled in front of the desk,. "Hey," you say," and the two girls whirl at the sound of your voice. "I got a message to come out and—"

Your voice dies. Between the two girls you can make out a figure lying on the desk. Eva follows your gaze, then with a sharp smile pushes the two betas back so you can get a better view.

It's Gary Chen. He's sprawling on the desk, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling with vacant eyes.

Your heart flips in your chest.

He's dressed as you usually see him at school, in olive-colored canvas trousers and a dark, heavy coat. A gray ski cap is pulled down tight over his forehead, the hem almost even with his eyebrows.

"Fast work," you mumble.

"And easy, too," Eva says. She stretches languidly. "I just pushed him up against the desk and breathed in his face, then Jessica got him from behind with the dingus."

"It was fast 'cos there's something new we want to try," her sister says. Before explaining, she glances at the two betas. "You guys want to go off and talk about the movie or something?"

"Is that an order?" beta-Mike says, but beta-Carlos says, "You bet I sure do," and pulls his fellow fake into the hall. One of them mutters to the other, and then you hear pounding footfalls as they run off.

"We want to try to get you into Gary's memories early," Eva says. "You know how it took you, like, all night to get Jenny's?" She points at your face.

Actually, you feel like you got her memories pretty much instantly. But you shrug rather than argue.

"Well, we figure you don't want to be hanging around someplace with Gary's face but no idea how to act like him. You know, in case trouble comes calling."

"No!" Jessica snorts. "Sweet, lovable Gary get in trouble? Impossible."

"So we're gonna try doing it as a two-step process," Eva resumes after sticking her tongue out at her sister. "We're gonna give you the thing that gives you his memories. After that we're going to put the actual mask on you."

"You mean it isn't the mask that gives you the memories and the other stuff?"

"It's complicated, Will," Jessica says. "It's actually two pieces. The mask copies the body and this other thing—"

"It's like a metal strip," interrupts Eva.

"It gives you the memories. We glue them together so you get them both at the same time."

"So what difference does it make if we do it this other way?" you ask.

"That's what we want to find out," Jessica says. "Philip will be here soon, he wants to see what happens, see if it works. We know from testing it out that if you just put the memory strip on, you'll get the memories right away. So we want to see if we can give you the memories that way, then add the mask after that."

But there's an easier way, maybe for everyone. You can just stay as Jenny, and turn Gary into a beta you can order around.

Next: "A Man of Two Minds and Half Out of Both of Them" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"