Divine Milking System

Chapter 430: 430 | Consequence

I found the lever and moved the seat, then adjusted the mirror, then sat there for a second with my hands on the wheel and my heart going harder than it had gone during the entire Peterson session.

"Pedal on the right," Vale said.

"I know which pedal."

"Just being thorough."

I put it in gear. Eased off the brake. The car crept forward and the whole chassis leaned into the motion like a big animal shifting its weight, and I took it out of the hospital loop at fifteen miles an hour with the concentration of a man defusing a bomb.

Then we hit the surface road and I gave it a quarter of the throttle and eight hundred horsepower of American engineering unloaded through the rear tires, and the back end stepped out three inches before the traction found itself, and I laughed out loud like an idiot.

"There it is," Vale said.

"This thing is obscene."

"It’s a 1969 R/T with a modern crate motor, a six-speed, and a suspension that costs more than the car." He put an arm along the door. "Named her Consequence."

"You named your car Consequence."

"Everything catches up eventually. Might as well drive it."

I merged onto the 101 northbound and put my foot into it properly and the world went narrow and loud and beautiful for about nine seconds. The tach climbed. The wind came in through the cracked window and pulled at my hair, which apparently I’m dyeing black on Tuesday because a woman with a scythe fetish has opinions about my color palette. My hands knew what to do. Six weeks in a body that had to relearn how to run a mile, and my hands still knew how to hold a wheel.

The System pinged.

◆ STAT PROGRESS ◆

Perception [D] 10/10 → READY TO RANK UP

Note: Sustained high-speed spatial processing detected.

"Are you seriously giving me XP for driving," I said out loud.

"Talking to yourself is a symptom of mana corruption. Should I be concerned?"

"You should be extremely concerned. About a lot of things. Constantly."

"I’ll add it to the list." Vale reached over and turned on the stereo, and what came out of it was not what I expected, which was some kind of jazz with too many horns in it. "So. Ventura first."

"Why Ventura?"

"Because you told a national news audience that you needed a burger, and it’s been viewed forty-one million times, and I’ve decided you’re getting the burger." He said it completely straight. "There’s a place on the pier. Family runs it. The old man used to be a B-rank before his knees went. Best patty in the county and he doesn’t ask questions."

"That’s the whole trip? A burger?"

"That’s the first part of the trip." He watched the coastline slide past on our left, the Pacific spreading out in every direction, blue and enormous and catching the afternoon sun hard enough that it hurt to look at for more than a second. "The second part involves a man in Santa Barbara who owes me a favor, and the third part involves you not asking about the second part until we’ve eaten."

"That’s not how favors work."

"That’s exactly how favors work. You’ve never had one owed to you, so you wouldn’t know the protocol." He tapped the dash with one finger, casual, like he was keeping time with a song only he could hear. "Exit’s in two miles. You’ll want the right lane. Also you’re doing ninety-four and there’s a CHP unit tucked under the overpass."

I lifted off the gas. The Maybach settled from its barely-legal trajectory down into something more civilized, the exhaust note dropping from a howl to a rumble that I felt through the leather and into my spine. The speedometer dial swung back through eighty-five, past eighty, and found a comfortable home at seventy-two. The highway patrol cruiser materialized exactly where Vale said it would be, wedged into the shaded concrete gap between the overpass supports with its radar gun probably already warming up.

"How do you know there’s a unit under the overpass?"

"Spatial awareness. I can feel a Crown Vic from four hundred meters. The engine block has a very particular density signature. Like a fat man in a swimming pool." He shrugged, which looked wrong on someone wearing a jacket that expensive. "Also he’s there every Sunday. Nice guy. Kid plays soccer. I bought Girl Scout cookies from his daughter in February. Thin Mints. They were stale."

I wanted to ask follow-up questions about the logistics of a Platinum-rank hunter buying cookies from a highway patrolman’s daughter, but I had a feeling the answer would loop back around to spatial awareness somehow and I’d be more confused than when I started.

We came off the exit ramp and dropped down into Ventura proper, past the main drag with its rows of squat palm trees and low stucco buildings painted in that particular Southern California palette of terracotta and sun-bleached white. Surf shops lined the street with board racks standing out front on the sidewalk, wetsuits dangling from hooks like shed skins, and there were tourists walking around in flip-flops and too much sunscreen looking at menus posted in windows. The whole town had that sleepy weekend energy, the kind of place where nothing bad had ever happened and nothing interesting was likely to.

It looked exactly the same as it had two weeks ago, when Aurora dragged me through these same streets with nine thousand credits burning a hole in her wallet and a shopping agenda that could have supplied a small army. The boutique where she’d held up that red dress. The taco stand where she bought me horchata and tried to steal my chips. All still there, completely indifferent to the fact that the last time I’d been here I was a different person with a different set of problems.

The pier came up on the right, its wooden pilings standing out into the gray-green water like the legs of some massive animal wading into the surf. Gulls circled overhead doing their whole routine, screaming at each other and the tourists with equal contempt, fighting over french fry scraps and personal territory. A couple of kids were running down the boardwalk with a kite that wasn’t flying so much as it was being dragged through a series of embarrassing crash landings.

I found parking on the street, a tight spot between a lifted truck and a minivan with a stick-figure family decal across the rear window. Parallel. The Maybach was eighteen feet of German luxury and I slotted it into a space that gave me maybe six inches of clearance on either side. Nailed it in one shot, smooth reverse, one correction, done. I want that acknowledged. I want it on record.

"Adequate," Vale said.

"That was a perfect parallel park in a car that’s longer than most studio apartments."

"Adequate." He was already opening his door. "You want praise for doing something correctly? Welcome to Obsidian."

We got out. My legs took a second to remember that they’d been dead four days ago, and I braced a hand on the roof for half a breath before straightening up. Vale didn’t comment on it, and didn’t offer to help, and somehow that was the most respectful thing anyone had done for me since I woke up.

The place was a walk-up shack at the base of the pier with a hand-painted board and six stools. There was a woman behind the counter in her twenties with her hair tied up in a bandana and flour on her forearms, and she looked at Vale with the flat contempt of somebody who has known him for years.

Then she looked at me. Her eyes went wide. Her jaw came unhinged.

"Oh my God," she said. "You’re Burger Guy."

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