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Oh god, ohgodohgod oh Jesus fucking Christ, is he dying? Is that what this is? Cash’s face is burning. Everything is burning, he hurts so bad, he hurts, and off in the distance somewhere he thinks he can hear somebody screaming. Might be Detroit. Might be him. He’s… shaking, he thinks? No, somebody’s shaking him, standing over him, and when did he get on the ground?
“Cash, baby, please wake up, please, ” Detroit is saying. Was he asleep?
“S’okay,” Cash says. “I’m here, I’m all right,” and he reaches out to comfort her with- wait. What. What the fuck is on his hand? Is that his hand? What-
Detroit grabs each of what used to be his wrists. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” says Cash. Don’t cry? Don’t have a panic attack?
“Don’t spiral,” she says. “The sun hasn’t blown up. You’re alive, you’re here, we can deal with this.”
“This is not a fucking ‘we’ situation!” He breaks Detroit’s grip and scrambles to the other end of the garage, like… fuck. Like a wounded animal. “This is the worst-case scenario. Tell me how I’m gon’ ‘deal with’ being a seven-foot horse man. Who’s hiring me? Where can I live and not get called a monster? Fuck,” he says, looking down at a whole new problem, “tell me to my fucking face that you want this Great American Challenge of a dick.”
She’s silent.
“That’s what I thought.”
“Look, I just need some time to adjust. Whether you can turn back or not, I’m here for you, you know I am.”
Cash can’t look her in the eyes right now. “You shouldn’t be.”
“What?”
“You shouldn’t chain yourself to a goddamn horse,” Cash says. “Go, I don’t know, find an artist’s collective. Go everything-but with Squeeze again, don’t stay here for me.”
“I’m getting real sick of this,” says Detroit. She walks over to him, grabs his long-ass horse chin, makes him look her in the eye. “I’m not leaving you. If I’d wanted an easy out, I could’ve stayed broken-up. If I wanted Squeeze that bad I would’ve fucked him by now. I’m here, I’m staying, and we are going to make this work.” She lets go of his chin and sits down next to him, reaches an arm around his shoulder. Her other hand finds his horse dick. “This might be a problem, though.”
Cash calls up Salvador, who calls Squeeze, who somehow has an in with the equisapiens. Detroit has a lot of ideas for how to- how did she put it?- acclimate Cash to this new reality, and one of the big ones was finding a community. Of horse people. Because that’s Cash’s fucking life now.
Demarius told Cash to meet him at the yellow tent with the blue tarp in the homeless camp outside WorryFree, but there’s a lot of WorryFree centers with a lot of tents. Cash drives to three camps, checks out a dozen tents, but they’re all full of regular people. He turns to leave the last camp and nearly trips into an equisapien standing outside of a green tent.
“Cash!” the equisapien says, and, hey, that’s Demarius. “You coulda said you were coming late, we’ve been waiting for hours.”
“You coulda given me real directions,” Cash says. “You said a yellow tent, that shit’s bright green.”
“It’s neon yellow.”
“Safety green. Seriously, man, Google it, I’ll wait.”
“Oh, now we’re Googling shit?”
“Looks like it.”
“Guys!” a female voice says from inside the tent. “Put your goddamn dicks away and let’s talk.”
Cash looks at Demarius. Demarius looks at Cash. They step inside.
“Great,” the horse woman says. “Cash, I’m Elena. You’ve met Demarius already, and these two-” she points out the other equisapiens in the tent- “are Alex and Mina.” Mina waves at him. Alex… is maybe grinning? Cash has no idea how to tell.
“I, yeah, nice to meet you,” says Cash. “So this is… a support group?”
“A council,” Alex says.
“Of what?”
“War,” Demarius says.
“Hey, hang on, I’m not gonna kill anyone-”
“That’s not the plan,” says Mina. “We don’t want to kill anyone. We’re not lining people up at a guillotine. If we have to kill, it’s an option, but we can get what we want through other means.”
“‘What you want?’” Cash echoes.
“To be free,” Elena says. “To be human, to get housing, money. And we know where we’re getting it from.”
No. Shit, they can’t mean, he’s not going back-
“We’re taking Lift down,” Demarius says.
“Not with me you’re not.”
“Aren’t you pissed?” Demarius snaps. “Don’t you wanna fuck him up? Shit, man, he turned you into a fucking horse. You could take his shit, you could get the antidote, and you wanna- what? Bury your head in the sand?”
“I don’t know,” says Cash. His head still hurts and he doesn’t know how his fingers work and everyone’s fucking looking at him. “I- Lift lied about what I snorted. He said it was plain coke. How do we know there’s a real antidote?”
“We don’t,” Demarius says, “but we know there’s a chance.”
“Look at it this way,” Alex says. “We break into his house, we fuck him up, we get him to talk. If he says there’s no antidote, we’ve still got a mansion and a hostage and- hey, Mina, how much is Lift worth?”
“Seventeen point four billion dollars,” says Mina.
“There you go,” Alex says. “Sounds like a sweet deal to me. So what’s it gonna be, Cash?”
It takes a while for them to break through Lift’s security. His office is on the other end of the mansion from the main entrance, and he’s got armed guards and a new passcode. Even with two dozen equisapiens, it’s not a walk in the park.
“Just remember the plan,” Demarius tells Cash as they rip a door off its hinges. “He knows you, he might think you still trust him. Use that.”
“And if he’s got another gun?” Cash asks.
Demarius hands him the door. “You got a shield.”
Finally, they reach the door to Lift’s office. God knows how many rooms in this mansion and Lift didn’t think to put in one panic room.
The equisapiens pause, waiting for a signal. Waiting for Cash. Fuck.
“All right,” Cash says, “y’all know what to do. Make sure he’s surrounded, keep him away from the windows, then I come in and do my thing. Ready, Elena?”
“Ready,” she calls, braced against the door.
“Wait, are you not gonna get the hinges out? You’re on the wrong side-”
“I’m kicking the fucking door in,” Elena says, loud enough that Lift can hear her. “Tell me when, Cash.”
“Now.”
She falcon-kicks (horse-kicks?) the office door in with one blow, and equisapiens start filing in. Cash hears Lift trying to bargain, but no screaming, and no gunshots. He puts down Demarius’ door and walks into the room.
Lift is tied to a chair and surrounded by a ring of equisapiens. He’s talking very fast about private property and police response times.
Cash clears his throat. “Mr. Lift,” he says, and Lift stops in the middle of his sentence. He looks… Cash doesn’t know what that emotion is. It’s not terrified or remorseful, is the important thing.
And then his mouth splits in a shit-eating grin. “Holy shit. Cash?!” Lift says, like Cash is his long-lost brother. “This is fucking amazing, did you put this whole thing together? I knew you had it in you, man.”
“What the fuck,” says Cash.
“You’re a natural leader, I knew it.”
“A natural- you turned me into a horse, with shit you swore was normal fucking coke, and now you’re praising my initiative?”
“I’m giving credit where credit is due,” Lift says. “And look, man, I’mma be real with you: there’s no enlightenment without suffering. Listen, when I went on my ayahuasca retreat I was blowing chunks, I saw shit worse than any acid trip, but it gave me so many ideas to up workplace productivity. You know what? I envy you right now- I do, don’t give me that look.”
“I’m not giving you a look. This is my fucking face,” Cash grits out.
Lift’s eyes light up. He opens his mouth-
“One ‘why the long face’ joke,” Alex says from across the room, “and we start swinging.”
“All right,” says Lift. “Cool cool cool, I can respect that. Look, Cash, you know me. I’m your guy. You’re better than this, you can be part of something more than this fucking farce. You either bust a cap in me, which I know you’re not gonna do, or guess what? My offer still stands. Better. A hundred million, free and clear, up front, if you call your mob off. Double that five years from now. And a dose of antidote with your name on it. What do you say?”
Cash looks him over. Lift’s as manic as ever, but it’s not coke. It’s desperation. “You know what,” Cash says, “I have a better idea. All of it.”
“What?” says Lift.
“All of it. You give us everything you own, antidote for every equisapien, and you shut Worry-Free down with reparations for everyone you enslaved.”
For the first time Cash has ever seen, Lift is speechless.
“This is where you ask me what you get,” Cash says.
Lift swallows. “And that is?”
“Here’s the thing, Mr. Lift,” Cash says in his white voice. “You’re right, I’m not gonna fight you. But my buddies here? They’ve been waiting for this moment for a long, long time.” He leans in close enough that Lift can count the hairs in his horsey nostrils. “You give us everything you own, fix this fucking horse shit, and maybe we’ll let you live.”
Cash said it might be a while before the equisapiens got back from Lift’s, so Detroit is keeping busy. At least, she was. She’s sketched out and scrapped half a dozen earring ideas, made a maquette of a new decolonialist sculpture, tried to make some jewelry but just ended up twisting a foot of wire beyond salvaging. Fuck it, there’s gotta be something on TV.
Detroit flips through Cola Girl’s sitcom- maybe it’s an infomercial? She’s hawking cola douches as the new way to “radicalize your colon!”- and a children’s cartoon about heroic venture capitalists. Pass. The next channel is “I Got The Shit Kicked Out Of Me,” which, ugh, but- wait. What’s an equisapien doing on set?
“Hi, everyone,” the equisapien says, “I’m Cassius Green, and I’m your host on a very special episode of ‘I Got The Shit Kicked Out Of Me.’ Today, my friends and I are kicking the shit out of the Bay Area’s own Steve Lift.” The camera pans to show Lift, held in place by two burly equisapiens, and back to Cash. “Everyone knows Lift is the guy who turned us into monsters,” Cash continues, “but what they don’t know is this: there’s an antidote. Lift promised me a dose if I snitched, but not any other equisapien. So today, on live TV, we are kicking the shit out of Steve Lift until he signs this contract-” a female equisapien struts across the stage, holding a giant contract- “which promises the following.”
A numbered list pops up on the screen. “One: safe, effective antidote for every equisapien. Two: Immediate closure of all Worry-Free facilities, and release from contract for Worry-Free’s enslaved workers. And three: division of all Lift’s assets as reparations to the equisapiens and Worry-Free workers whose lives he destroyed.”
Cash reappears. “Okay, everyone, those are the stakes. Now who’s ready to kick the shit out of Steve Lift?”
The audience cheers. The equisapiens line up to make sure everyone gets a hit in. Detroit grabs a La Croix and settles in; she has the feeling it’s going to be a long episode.
Forty minutes and many blows later, Lift is crying into the hem of his sherwani. “Please, don’t, I-I’ll do it,” he whimpers, cringing back as another equisapien steps forward.
“What was that?” Cash says, brandishing a mic.
“Jesus fucking- I’ll do it!” Lift repeats. “I’ll sign your fucking contract.”
“Let me just consult with Mina, our legal expert,” says Cash, pulling aside the equisapien with the contract. They talk for a moment, she nods, and then Mina grabs the mic.
“Mr Lift,” she says, “you are aware that by signing this contract, you are agreeing to shut down Worry-Free immediately and permanently?”
“Yes.”
“And to provide antidote to all equisapiens?”
“Yes.”
“And to sign over all your assets, including your home, to those you have exploited?”
“YES.”
“You won’t have one penny left, Mr Lift. Not a goddamn cent. It is extremely important to me that you are aware of that.”
“Yeah, I got the message,” Lift says.
“Excellent,” says Mina. She pauses for a moment. “Could- could somebody bring me a splint or something? I think all his fingers are broken.”
Lift holds the pen between his wrists and scrawls out a signature. The audience bursts into cheers, confetti falls from the ceiling, and the equisapiens high-five each other.
“Wonderful,” says Lift. “Now can I fucking leave? Are we done?”
“Not just yet,” Cash says, stepping forward. “Before you go, it’s time for you to meet my old friend, the Shit Tank!!!”
Sometimes, Detroit really loves her boyfriend.