June 7, 2045 - 11:20 AM

He's in the bathroom, Slater had said. Bullshit, Margo thought, and she glared at the weaselly man, her rising brow hidden behind her mask but her curiosity clear in her eyes.

Mason, Holden, anybody, she sent back to her superiors. Is he telling the truth?

"Yes, Sandoval," Mason replied. "We've been watching him struggle to remove his pants and gloves for about two minutes now."

Slater smirked. "I bet you're talking to HQ right now, aren't you?" he said.

"Yes," Margo replied. "I'm just checking on Jack."

"You his new counselor or his girlfriend or something?"

"No, I just don't find you trustworthy."

Margo glanced at Mr. W. A part of her felt like he was the more dependable ally between him and Slater, even with every potential clue of his identity hidden behind leather and an altered voice. If Slater didn't validate his reliability to her soon, he'd be staring down the barrel of a Fatemaker once more.

"I am trustworthy, Margo," Slater said, waving his hand toward her. "And as proof of that, I'd like to ask to borrow your ThoughtControl piece, please. Hopefully, I can clear some things up with your commissioner."

Margo quickly stepped back. "She already knows," she urged.

For a moment, she cracked Slater's forced smile. "Well, of course, she does!" he chirped. "But believe it or not, she can be just as unsure of her decisions and claims as anyone else. So I'd like to put some of her paranoia to rest, especially because I can tell she's responsible for all of your stress, honey."

The thought of him humiliating Mason intrigued Margo. She knew it would hardly take much for Slater to embarrass her. No witty jabs. No matter-of-factly reminders. Just the fact he had a place in her past would leave her a blushing, stammering mess. At least that's what Margo hoped. Genuinely hoped, not madly assumed. She anticipated Mason's degradation just as much—no, far more—than the apprehension of the Multi Man.

Do I? she thought.

She paused, awaiting a furious conniption of warnings and threats from Mason not to hand over her ThoughtControl piece. She hated to admit hearing her do so would've only motivated her further to hand it over. Just the thought of refusing to give her the satisfaction, even for such a petty thing, would've made the last several months of having her mind slowly crumble to pieces like a cliff into the ocean worth it.

Margo passed it over.

"Thanks, honey," Slater grinned as he took the piece from her. Nudging it into his right ear, he said, "Janice! How you doing, gorgeous? Glad to see you all could make it to the party."

"Slater!" Mason growled. "Return Sandoval's piece this instant!"

"Return? The young lady politely offered it to me after I asked. Besides, I'm not here to gloat or anything, Janice." He paused, gesturing toward Margo and Mr. W to follow him into the next room where he'd taken Jack.

"But the doors," Mr. W said.

Slater turned back again, hastily shaking his head and mouthing, "I've got this," before thrusting through the door. "Yeah, sorry, Janice. There was a minor incident up in the suites earlier. Those masked assholes from the rally destroyed my holo-projectors and killed some of my potential customers. I had to flee down to the lower level with Margo and Jack, but it all worked in our favor, actually! Not only do I have better access to the EMP, I've discovered where they manufacture the 'Gasm Gas."

Margo looked around at the additional room. Beige-colored, peeling walls tinted a ghostly green by the fluorescent lights above them. Several dozen boxes littered the floor, some vacant while others had their contents sealed away with tape. The room itself was like a box, compact and claustrophobic, as if used on only the rarest of occasions. On the opposite side of the room was another door, the bathroom Jack was in.

The hard, thunderous slams against the door only reassured Margo of their vulnerability down there.

"Slater," she said in a cracking voice, "ask Mason what Jack is doing."

"He's fucking up my bathroom, is what he's doing," Slater replied, taking the piece from his ear and shuffling it between his fingers. "Apparently, after getting most of his BufferSuit off to take a piss, he started jacking off in front of the mirror to spite your colleagues back at HQ. So now they're putting those implants of his to good use and roughing him up a bit."

Jack's anguish sounded louder and louder, to the point Margo suspected he was on the verge of fracturing something. But when the beating stopped, Margo heard him slide down the door to the filthy ground beneath him. The lock clicked, and the door opened.

Margo saw Jack resting on the floor, propped against the wall, blood seeping out of his nostrils and lip. His BufferSuit was baggy, no longer clinging to his skin because of its deactivation required before removal. The air was cruel to him, vacating his body with harsh sounds, as if dirt made its way into his lungs. He gripped his mask in his right hand, swinging it side to side like a fan. He had no goal in mind. No impulse to substitute for that lack of goals. Just fatigue clouding his system and his mind.

"Damn," Slater chuckled. "Kinda amusing Psychwatch has to resort to getting you to kick your own ass. Jerking off in their face was an interesting way to retaliate, though."

"Fuck you," Jack muttered. Clawing into the wall beside him, he hoisted himself to his feet, fitting his gloves back on and reactivating the suit. The mask remained by his side for the moment, giving Slater a clear glimpse of the building rage and blinking lights in his eyes.

"I knew it," Mr. W said, staring at Jack.

"Knew what?" Margo asked, but all that came back to her was silence, the rabbit man maintaining a statuesque stillness.

"Yeah, he spaces out a lot," Slater said. "I almost thought of nicknaming him Mr. Ambiguity because of it. But Mr. W just stuck." He snapped his fingers. "Which reminds me: fetch a rolling table from the lab."

Mr. W marched out of the room, his footsteps echoing down the hall.

"What's the rolling table for?" Margo asked.

"It's how we take the Wonderland to the clubbers," Slater said. "And as for the Wonderland..." He stepped forward, gesturing his hands towards the boxes surrounding them. "It's all around us."

Margo examined the boxes once more, far more intrigued now that she knew of their content. She nudged the closest one to her with a light kick, lurching backwards at the sound of jingling glass objects within the box. When she returned her sights to Slater, he chuckled once more, nodding his head to remind her that the moment was real. She was surrounded by one of the most lucrative, extralegal substances in recent memory.

"Mason wants you to open a box," Jack growled at Slater. "And give Sandoval her piece back."

"Yeah, give me a second," Slater said, clearing his throat, and the piece was back in his ear once more. "Hello again, Janice! I'm sure you'd like to talk to Miss Sandoval, but I'm afraid I must ask permission to hold on to her ThoughtControl piece just a little while longer."

Margo jumped back, a box nearly tripping her to the floor, as Jack nailed Slater directly in the nose. She knew he had the combat training to incapacitate someone, but the amount of blood trickling down Slater's face to the floor concerned her. She couldn't tell if his nose was broken or the entire lower half of his jaw was.

Jack drew his arm back, readying another punch, his glove soaked in bright red dew. Margo felt her hand tingling, preparing to shield her eyes from the sight of another messy attack. She didn't know why. No injury or mess could've topped what she'd witnessed at the rally. Yet the thought of watching a man's face get pulverized appeared to be her breaking point.

But Jack couldn't go through. He froze in place. Neither his fist, his feet, nor his facial expressions altered positions. Margo watched his eyes dilate, a glassy notion to them as the pupils expanded and shrank. Psychwatch had their hold on him once more.

"God fucking dammit," Slater grumbled, leaning forward as he stood in a gradual sea of his own blood. The fact he could speak coherently ruled out the possibility of a broken jaw.

A low rumbling sound occurred at the doorway into the room, and Margo watched as Mr. W entered with a rolling table as instructed, the wheels responsible for the noise. The rabbit man studied the quarts of blood splashing the floor, his stance implying genuine apprehension, as quiet as he was. The sight fascinated Margo, and she hoped more and more that his intentions remained as virtuous as they seemed.

"I had that coming," Slater wheezed, "for I don't know how many years." The pain trounced his attempts at levity, and his forced laughter devolved back into sibilated cursing and groaning.

"Then get up," Mr. W said.

"Gimme a sec, will ya?"

As if the world itself rested on his shoulders, Slater rose back up with aching precision, his face still hidden behind his blood-soaked gloves. When he lowered them down to his sides, Margo saw the damage done. His nose was broken, almost entirely dented into his skull. Purplish-red skin surrounded his nose, and the amount of blood oozing from his nostrils was copious enough to blemish his teeth, chin, and neck.

Suddenly, Margo fought another fit of gagging. This isn't even the worst thing you've seen, she thought. What is wrong with you?

"Bit of a lightweight, isn't she?" Slater said, his voice consequently nasal, and he turned to Jack. "Did your commissioner tell you to do that, or was she just letting you vent?"

Jack didn't talk. He wanted to say something, but they'd sealed his lips shut. Instead, his arm forced the mask back onto his face with jarring, mechanical movements. And even when his face was obscured once more, his superior continued to deny him the ability to speak.

"Alright, guess I'll ask her myself," Slater added, and he tapped the piece in his ear with his finger. "Janice, did you give Mr. Holloway permission to break my nose?"

Watching Slater nod his head to each of Mason's responses, Margo felt disconnected from the world without her ThoughtControl piece, as if it were a vital organ taken from her. She didn't know who or what to trust, especially since not a single eye was on her. Jack trained his on Mr. W's, Mr. W's on Jack's, and Slater's darted straight to the ceiling above as he and Mason gossiped about what a horrible Psychwatch officer she was or what a disappointment she was to her family. What else could it have been?

Anything else, she told herself. It's about literally anything else, you idiot.

"Anyway, I'm keeping the piece with me for now, Janice," Slater continued, the nasality in his voice adding to his list of irritating aspects. "I'm hoping Miss Sandoval and I will uncover this place's hidden entrances because that elevator ride gets so damn tedious. Okay?" He paused. "I don't know where Daniela and that Japanese guy are, either. But considering one of them is a reformed drug addict, I'm sure they'll find their way down here, eventually. Okay, bye!"

He tapped the piece and pinched his nose. "This isn't actually my first broken nose," he said. "So let me just—"

SNAP!

Slater bent over once more, shrieking an endless stream of profanities.

"You're insane," Margo said.

Slater jerked back up. "Not insane, Miss Sandoval," he sighed, still clasping his nose. "Just experienced. The terms are synonymous, however, so I don't blame you for the confusion."

"So are you really gonna hold on to my piece?"

"Nah," he replied, and he fetched it from his ear. "I just like getting Janice all riled up since she hates it when plans or people don't meet her expectations. Here you go."

Just as she'd presumed, there was a catch. The ThoughtControl piece was caked in Slater's blood, to the point one could've assumed he'd dipped it in like fondue. She couldn't even see the Psychwatch logo anymore, and she doubted the device even functioned properly with all the gunk in the wires, a risk she was too disgusted to take.

Asshole did that on purpose, she thought.

"Alright," Slater declared, clapping his hands together. "Let's get those boxes on the table and feed these animals. Oh, and from now on," he turned to Jack, "you'll be who we turn to to inform the commissioner of anything. Alright, big guy?"

Jack didn't respond. He'd regained control over his movement and facial expressions, but he didn't want to give Slater the satisfaction of cracking another jeer based on whatever response he'd give him. All he wanted was to pop his jaw off his skull and tear his tongue from his mouth.

"Let's get to work," Slater said, and he retrieved a slick blue piece of plastic from his pockets.

The item fit perfectly in the palm of his hand, and when he clicked a button on the side, a flash of white light emerged from a slot at the device's apex. The light was solid, translucent, almost holographic in appearance, and it extended roughly two inches from the top. Studying its rectangular shape, sheetlike gauntness, and keen edge angled towards the sky like a knife, Margo realized the device was an energy-based cutting tool. A knife without a trace of metal on it.

"Check it out," Slater said, waving the tool around. "Any of you ever seen one of these before?"

"Looks familiar," Margo said.

"This is a LaserShank. Little bastard cuts through anything! Steel, cinderblocks, flesh, bone. Luckily for us, not BufferSuits or Blurs. Not on the first try, anyway." Slater bent down to grab a box. "You might also be wondering why I'd use such a state-of-the-art, hilariously expensive device to cut through duct tape and cardboard. Isn't that right?"

"Get to the point," Margo muttered. Something gave her the feeling Jack wanted to test it out on Slater.

"Yeah, fuck it. Janice said they were on the way anyway, so here we go."

Slater dragged the blade down the middle of the box, a metallic hum exuding from the device as it flayed through the tape with ease. When he reached the end of the box, he stuck his fingers between the separated flaps and pulled them apart, revealing two dozen Blue Caterpillars worth of Wonderland Mist.

"Shit, wrong box," he said, and he turned to Mr. W. "Load this one up for the partiers. I'll get the other."

"Wrong box?" Margo repeated. "What are you looking for?"

"The one with the EMP device, honey," Slater replied, his eyes darting from box to box. "It was the only way I could sneak it in here. It's got the detonator and everything."

"How did you even get it down here?"

"Friends in high places and blocker chips, the two essentials for getting by in the Psycho Slums. Even this LaserShank has a chip in it. Metal detectors, chem trackers, SanityScans, they won't detect shit."

Margo felt her brow creeping up her forehead once more. "Is it even legal?" she asked.

"The tool itself? Absolutely." Slater kneeled down to reach for another box. "The blocker chip? Definitely not. But I'm sure that wasn't a surprise."

He repeated the process, unveiling another load of Wonderland. "Here we go," he declared. "Margo, could you help me get this up?"

As her colleague slid his mask on, Margo peeked into the box. Amidst the sky blue vials was a charcoal-colored, cube-shaped device with a red bulb on it. Beside it rested a small remote the size of a cracker with two buttons on it, one red and the other green. Looking back at the device itself, she noticed a black screen with blue numbers stretching across it, currently set at 00:00.

"Come on, I know you've got the muscles for it," Slater chuckled, and she snapped out of her daze. With a roll of her eyes, she crouched to a squat and heaved the box above the ground, the two of them hauling it to the rolling table.

As they lowered it onto the table's surface, Slater jumped back with a tumultuous demeanor. "I almost forgot!" he shouted. "Hand over the stunner, Easter Bunny."

Mr. W growled, the sound rippling with static like that of a mechanical beast. He reached into his pocket and salvaged a sleek, black firearm dotted with green lights, handing it over to his unpredictable companion.

"The assholes out there get really grabby," Slater said, brandishing the stunner like a prized fish. "This puts them to sleep pretty quickly. And if I'm lucky, they either break something when they hit the floor, or they get trampled by the others."

"I don't get the mindsets of people like you," Margo bemoaned.

"That explains a lot," Jack said, eliciting the first genuine laugh from Slater.

"Nice one, kid!" he said. Clearing his throat, he turned back to Margo and said, "Don't take it personally, though. A lot of folks are out of place in all kinds of groups. Just hope that you'll know when to jump ship before everything comes crashing down, you know what I mean?"

His gentle tone did nothing to comfort Margo, not that she expected him to throw her a bone. But she knew she'd stumbled upon the wrong crowd. Every second of every day, she felt like she'd come across that last sight or set of words that would bring an end to her grasp on reality, rendering truth and perjury utterly indistinguishable. Words or imagery that would grant everyone else in her life the ability to mold her into whatever the hell they wanted, even if the transformation caused her unimaginable suffering. She couldn't pin down which incident carved the first breach into her mind. Only that every other day she spent with Psychwatch sent the chisel deeper and deeper, and a sizeable chunk would crumble off one day and reduce the rest of her to dust.

Yet the glare of the rabbit man, Mr. W, brought her some ease. Unable to see his eyes or hear his authentic voice, Margo could rightfully assume he didn't think little of her. At least until he proved her otherwise.

"You, sir," Slater told Mr. W, "have the honor of delivering the goods to the masses. Meanwhile, the rest of us have the honor of warding them off if they get too rowdy. But feel free to throw a couple of punches, too, of course."

No words. Just a nod of the rabbit man's head as he strutted to the back of the rolling table, his hands positioned at each corner.

"Alright, roll call," Slater continued. "You all got your guns and your masks. I got mine as well. Stunner, detonator. Margo, I gave you your ThoughtControl piece back, right?"

"Yes," Margo hissed.

"And nothing's changed regarding your implants, right, Jack? Janice still peeping through your eyes and screaming into your ears and—"

"Do you want me to smash your nose in again, old man?" Jack said.

"I'll take that as a yes," Slater said. "Then, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to be your guide in our descent into madness."

* * *

Margo found herself caught in another assault on her senses as she followed the three men back into the atrium. Flashing, vibrant light that blinded her with each flash. Booming, vigorous music pounding into her skull, the humming in her eardrums a detritus of the attack. The sights of men and women of all shapes and sizes giving in to their most despicable impulses now that they roamed beyond the reaches of the higher power known as Psychwatch. Shrieking. Cursing. Moaning. Every expression of