Chapter 3

Pierce and Shaundi had taken a ferry out of the city in the early hours of the morning. When they were in charge, they would have taken a Snipes 57 or a chopper. The boss, inexplicably, could fly them incredibly well, despite having no formal flying training. Now, they didn't have the sort of money even to rent a helicopter. Even if they did, the risk of the Saints shooting it down was too much to bear.

The ferry reached the mainland at around midday, and they drove onto the open highway. The sky was overcast, and it continually threatened to rain. While Steelport was relatively glitzy and easy on the eye, the less-populated part of the state was dreary, and typically Midwest. Before long, they were driving through endless cornrows, broken up only by the occasional roadside gas station or diner.

It was several more hours' drive before they reached Talbot. It was a rustic, backward-looking one horse town, the type of place where a week can pass without anything happening. They were driving towards what had to be the town centre, and it consisted of a bar on each side, the town hall, a grocery store, and a gas station. Pierce reckoned that a lifetime of city living had turned him into something of an elitist, but he'd rather be an elitist than the type of person that would consider living somewhere like here.

"Where is he?" Shaundi asked. It was one of the first times she had spoken since driving on the freeway. She had been perfectly talkative on the ferry, but had clammed up. Pierce supposed she had a lot on her mind.

"The Deckers said it was a farm on…Vendtner Avenue?" He took a map from the glove box and studied it. "That's about a mile away." He drove on, looking for the turnoff, and seeing it on the corner next to the grocery store. They drove on for around half a mile before the long cornrows of the farm came into view. They found the turnoff, and drove straight to the farmhouse.

"Hey, how you doing, strangers?" said a young man in a strange, unconvincing Midwestern drawl as they got out. He was standing by the old wooden farmhouse, chewing a toothpick. He took two steps forward – and his face contorted with terror.

"Fucking hell!" he said, dropping the accent for a more familiar English estuary accent. "It's you! Please don't hurt me! Please!"

"That's Matt Miller?" demanded Shaundi, looking at the youth incredulously. The effeminate Ziggy Stardust makeup was gone. The bizarre outfit was gone. This was a young man with sandy brown hair and a farmer's tan. He wore stained overalls with mud and dust accumulating at the bottom of his denims. The contrast could not have been more bizarre.

"We're not here to hurt you, dude," said Pierce, putting his palms out in a calming gesture. Miller was freaking out. He had sunk into a corner by the farmhouse's decking, and was striking out with his hands, as if to ward them off. Shaundi felt like telling him that if they wanted to kill him, he would be dead already, but she figured that would terrify him even more.

Once Pierce had established that the two of them were not there to kill their former enemy, Miller calmed down. Weakly, he shook their hands and invited them into the farmhouse for coffee. The interior was barely furnished, with the chairs and table in the kitchen all looking like they were made from the same (inferior) cut of wood. The wallpaper was cracking, and the one painting (of the farm itself) looked as if it had been painted by a child.

Pierce sipped the coffee Matt had poured for him. It was bitter. He pretended to appreciate it, and then looked at his host. "Hey, man, I gotta ask…what's with the…everything?"

"My whole essence before was constructed," said Matt, now comfortably using his own accent. "My hair, dyed and waxed enough to lubricate a steel mill. My skin, waxy and pasty from days spent in dark rooms, hacking. Even the technological skill, which I prided myself on so much, was intangible. Cyberspace isn't some alternative dimension, it's a fallacy, created and run by guys like me with to compensate for their evolutionary inadequacies. When I fled Steelport to escape you and your boss, I decided that technology was harming my soul. I became a neo-luddite. This is my farm. I run it completely organically. I pick crops by hand. I make furniture. The chairs you're sitting on are my creation. Even the coffee I grew and ground myself."

It shows, Pierce almost said, but he nodded and gave an appreciating sip.

"What about the Farmer John accent?" Shaundi asked.

"Oh, yes," he said. "Well, folks around here are slightly less tolerant of outsiders than in the big city. They like me fine. They just think I was born in Kansas."

"It was pretty convincing," said Pierce, charitably. "Well, I know you're happy here, but shit, we may as well offer anyway. The reason we came to visit you here was because we want you to join us."

Miller laughed coolly. "Even if I wasn't dead to the world of technology, what makes you think I'd want to go straight back into the situation that nearly got me killed? And working under Kinzie Kensington? I'd rather chop off my own arm. I'm sorry, guys, but you're going to leave disappointed. Unless you consider my coffee a fitting reward for such a long journey."

"We don't," said Shaundi, harshly.

"Kinzie doesn't work for us," said Pierce, shooting her a look. "She's…well, she's actually the enemy." As Matt poured them another cup of crap, he told him the events that had led up to them coming here. Matt showed a wide-eyed interest throughout, his mouth opening in shocked surprise every so often.

"Viola, Viola," he said when Pierce had finished. "She was always the ambitious one, even in the early Syndicate days, but I had no idea she was this ballsy." He stood up, looking out his dirty stained window to the cornfields outside, as if weighing up his options. "You know, one thing I've always regretted is that I never truly defeated Kinzie. She was my nemesis. The Professor Moriarty to my Sherlock Holmes. The Inspector Javert to my Jean Valjean. The…Khan to my Captain Kirk. I've much pictured a time where she would kneel before me. Broken and begging for mercy. It'd be hot." His eyes glazed over slightly.

"Think that's a little too much information," said Pierce.

"Sorry, got a little carried away there. But it would be good to outsmart her once and for all. She always thought she was better than me."

"So show her."

"Would you good folks wait for just two minutes?" asked Matt. "I'll be right back. Help yourself to more coffee."

"The fuck I will," said Shaundi, once he was out of earshot. Pierce laughed and poured his second cup into the sink. Five minutes later, Matt returned.

"Ta-da," he said, stepping into the room. The sandy hair was gone, replaced by a slicked-down black style. The ruddy, tanned skin was now deathly pale, soaked in something that could have been concealer or house paint. Instead of dirty overalls, he wore a finely-tailored Deckers' outfit. His lips were painted, but they weren't painted light blue; they were painted purple. It was as if he had stepped out of a time machine.

"Like them?" he said, pointing to his lips. "That's your colour, isn't it?"

"That's right," said Pierce, taken aback by the rapid transformation. He found it hilarious that Matt would keep something like this in the closet, 'just in case'. "Are you ready to go?"

"Most certainly." They left the farmhouse, and Matt gave it a wave. As they climbed into Shaundi's Temptress, he snapped his fingers.

"Speaking of purple," he said, as he adjusted his seat. "If there's two Saint groups, won't it be risky to have the same colours as them? Friends could get mistaken for foes, and vice versa?"

"You know, I never thought about that," said Shaundi.

Hundreds of miles away, Viola was thinking about it. She observed the riot gear-like outfits being modelled by one of the bodyguards as she and Kinzie sat in the penthouse headquarters. The uniform was a very dark purple, almost black, and had enough armour to stop most single bullets making a dent. Kevlar was old fashioned, but a classic.

"What do you think?" she asked Kinzie as the bodyguard displayed the gear in a fashion model's pose.

"I don't know," said Kinzie, observing him closely. "I mean, all black? Isn't it a little….Gestapo-esque?"

"Exactly. It's intimidating. It screams don't fuck with me."

It screams genocide, Kinzie thought, but she decided not to press the point. She'd gotten a lot closer to Viola in the week since the divide. Viola had seen her not so much as a rival for position, but as a loyal subordinate.

"Anyway, it's not black," Viola was saying. "It's very dark purple. So it's still Saints colours, but modified." She extended a hand to gesture the subtle difference in the man's uniform. "We'll start by outfitting the elite guys with this, then roll it out to everyone when it's financially viable." She thought, privately, that it was just the right time for the Saints to get a uniform. She had been revolted by the sight of gang members patrolling the streets dressed in greasy purple tank tops, track outfits, baseball caps or torn body warmers. Military disciple would help separate them from the mongrels that she was sure Pierce and Shaundi were trying to recruit, turning them into something more elegant than the traditional street gang.

Predicting Shaundi's movements was proving difficult. You could set your watch around a logical thinker's plans. If someone like Oleg was in charge, he would do exactly what would strengthen his side, and that would make him easy to predict. With Shaundi, she based so many of her decisions on her gut that she was completely unpredictable. No one had been able to pin down a location for her; she had quickly sold her condo and there was no clues given where she was hiding now. The three of them, she, Pierce and Oleg, had been spotted travelling around the city (Oleg especially was hard to miss) but they slipped away when any Saint patrols gave chase. Viola knew it was only a matter of time before they started targeting the Saints.

"Are you going to that party at the Three Count tonight?" Kinzie asked, breaking her concentration.

"Sure," she replied. "Angel's got everything set up."

"I'm going as well. Give you a lift?"

"I was going to ride in the limo," said Viola. "But, sure."

They set off at seven, two hours later, dressed to the nines. Viola was wearing a stunning black dress that even Kinzie had to admit set her mind racing. She wished she could get away with something that revealing and flamboyant. Her dress was red, bought from Planet Saints' 'last year' range, and she still wore glasses. She reasoned that her value wasn't window dressing, it was hacking and technology. It helped her sleep at night.

They got into Kinzie's red Solar. It wasn't the most fashionable car to drive to a glitzy party, but it served Kinzie well, and Viola was too polite to snub it. As they fastened their seatbelts, Kinzie directed her attention to an advanced-looking GPS screen built into the dashboard.

"Check this out," she said, impressively. "I'm thinking of patenting it."

"What, your GPS?"

"Yeah. It responds to voice commands. Like Siri on the iPhone, but it actually understands what you say. Not only that, it gives you the fastest way to go. Not just the way that's most legal."

"That's pretty cool," admitted Viola. "You designed it yourself?"

"Yup." She cleared her throat and talked to the GPS. "Take us to the Three Count Casino."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Kinzie," a mechanical voice said.

"Still working out some kinks," she explained. Speaking louder, she said, "take us to the Three Count Casino."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Kinzie," the voice repeated.

"Why not?" Kinzie demanded.

"Because you designed me so damn badly that I can't even function properly!" snapped the voice. It was followed by a harsh laughter. Suddenly, the dark screen gave way to another image. Matt Miller sat at a console, smiling savagely at her. Pierce and Shaundi were behind him.

"Thank God," he said. "I've been waiting at this damn internet café for half an hour, hoping you were going to drive somewhere."

"Miller?" she said with disbelief. "I thought you were gone for good!"

"I got a better offer," he explained. "Hello to you too, Viola."

"Yeah, hi, bitch!" said Shaundi, making an obscene gesture at the webcam.

"I'm going to find you Shaundi," said Viola, screaming at the GPS screen. "I'm going to find all of you! And you're going to wish you'd never been born!" She turned to Kinzie. "Find them! Do that…thing you do!"

"I wouldn't bother," said Matt. "Like I said, we're in an internet café. Downstate. By the time you pinpoint my position, I'll be in Steelport. That's right, Kensington. Matt Miller is coming back to town!" He gave what he hoped was a diabolical laugh.

"One more thing before you go," said Shaundi, peering forward. "Know this, Viola. We know you got the boss out of the way somehow. We don't know how you did it, or what you've done to him, but we're going to find out. And when we do, you're gonna have a fuckin' mutiny on your hands."

"Good luck with that," said Viola coldly, and switched the screen off. She and Kinzie were silent for a few moments. It was only when Kinzie started to drive that she spoke.

"This is problematic."

"I know," Kinzie replied. "Matt's a narcissistic, arrogant little punk, but he's a damn good hacker. When I was with the FBI, he was on a huge watch list. He might be able to break us."

"Put all your efforts into catching him. I want to factor him out of the equation completely. I want him alive preferably, dead if not."

"You keep talking about taking them alive," said Kinzie. "Any particular reason?"

"I want to bring them into the gang…just on my terms. Pierce has a good head on his shoulders, but I need to reign him in. Oleg will breed a whole army of clones, whether he wants to or not."

"And Shaundi?"

A malicious expression crossed her face as she turned to answer the question, and for a moment, Kinzie was taken aback. "I want her to see that everything she's fought for has failed. That she's been totally beaten. And I want her to kiss my ass."

"Figuratively, right?"

"Not in the least."

"Gotcha," said Kinzie, suddenly glad she was on Viola's side. "We're here."