by Sean Platt
“Your roster has been reprioritized,” Leah announced to Dominic’s camera. With half of her attention, Leah was shuffling bogus but authentic-looking documents she’d pulled from both the Quark and NPS systems. It was a shell game with no substance, but if she kept things moving fast enough, Smith might not have time to see through the bullshit. “I need the following agents to report to Oh-Six.” Leah pushed another list forward, this one populated with the entire NPS duty roster.
“This is everyone!”
“I’m just passing down what’s been given to me.”
“You can’t just come in here and take all my agents for your bullshit Quark issues with — ”
Leah sighed heavily. “Look, Agent Smith. I could throw my weight around here. I could prove that I have the authority to pull your entire duty roster, including the deadheads who lie at home and collect a dole while bots and AI do their jobs. If you’ll take a moment to look at the NPS organizational tree, you’ll find that yours ultimately branches to Beam service, which is Quark controlled. I can flip switches here and flat-out make you do it, but that’s not how we’ve ever run things, and I don’t want to start now. We’ve never had to pull this ace, so believe me, we wouldn’t be doing it now if it wasn’t important. For NPS as well as Quark PD. For the city, in fact.”
In one of Leah’s eyes, Smith looked hesitant but willing to listen.
“You know the riot at Wellings?”
“DZPD is on it. Not our problem.”
“I know DZPD is on it!” Leah snapped. “I’m not talking about the fucking riot itself. Wellings is right near a major Quark connection hub, and we now believe the riot’s a cover. But we also believe the riot has got a bit out of hand, and — ”
“I’ve been watching that. DZPD sent pacifier drones.”
“Drones won’t apprehend guerrilla hackers!” Leah snapped. “If they can access the Quark hub, they’ll be able to disable drones! Right now we have the upper hand. We know what they’re doing, but they don’t know we know. So we’re giving them access to foo files — bogus information that the AI is generating specifically to let them burrow into with the illusion of progress. But it won’t keep them busy forever.”
“Send Quark agents,” Smith suggested.
Leah had anticipated that. She made her face reluctant, watching as the avatar’s expression made it seem close to admitting something it didn’t want to.
“We’re concerned that the jammers they’re using might be able to incapacitate our agents.”
“Why?” Something dawned on Smith’s face, and Leah could see him trying not to smile. “It’s because they’re clerics, isn’t it?”
“They’re limited if we pull the AI back and let them enter as organics. Much of our agents’ training relies on nanotech assistance. We have reason to believe they may have anticipated much of this. Unfortunately, we only get one shot. If they catch on and get away, that might be it. This group of insurgents is good at being ghosts.”
“Then put PD on it.”
“They’re occupied with the riot. And a few others, maybe related and maybe not.”
Smith looked like he might be seeking an angle — a favor Quark could owe him for accepting the job.
“We have prisoners here,” he told Macabee. “They need tending.”
“You don’t have to send all your staff, just the agents. And I’ve already sent in bots to assist. They’re Quark. State of the art. They’ll fill your agents’ and guards’ shoes.” And do a much better job than those humans would, Leah almost wanted to add, because that’s how Quark thought.
Smith nodded. “Fine. But seeing as you’re in a corner and we both know I could fight you long enough to lose your hackers, Quark will need to owe this agency a favor. A big one.”
“Fine.”
“Then until later…Lieutenant,” Smith said, bristling.
Leah nodded, closed the connection, and set about sending bullshit to Smith that contained his next bogus steps.
Across from Leah, Dominic raised his eyebrows. She nodded again, and he handed the small cam back to her.
“Now what?”
“That will take most of the human members of DZ NPS out of our way,” she said. “The bots, I can handle.”
“And the cells holding the Organas?”
Leah tapped her head. “As soon as I see the agents leave, I can open the cells. I’ve already sent in additional bots from Quark storage to make it look convincing. Smith and his men will go out through the station garage, on the other side of the building, probably in district hovers and screetbikes. Beam feeds, including the redundancies, are blacked out, and my AI is covering the gap.”
Dominic nodded, breathing deeply.
Leah went on. “Once the cells are open, Leo and the others will come to us.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I know it’s a bit predictable, but one of the bots has a little bag filled with ash. To starving junkies, it’ll look exactly like moondust. It’ll bring them here. Right down this passageway.” She pointed straight ahead.
“Then what?”
Leah nodded to Dominic’s slumbergun then reached behind her and grabbed her own. Both weapons had been brought to the two civilians in the garage by a helpful but confused Quark patrol bot whose orders hadn’t, it turned out, made a whole lot of sense.
“Then we try our best to slumber Leo and the others before they can kill us,” Leah said, “and we pray.”
Kai’s senses went on high alert the moment the old woman said that Kai had come to kill her. Defensive add-ons, keyed to adrenaline and Kai’s own honed reflexes, lit up like a Christmas tree. She hadn’t brought a weapon and was sure Alpha Place’s security would be plenty good enough to disable any Kai carried within her, but she was still strong and fast. Even without nanos, she should be able to snap this woman like a twig.
But then Rachel Ryan stepped back, opening the door wider, and beckoned for Kai to enter as if offering tea.
Unsure what else to do, Kai followed the old woman’s arm into the lush apartment. All her preparations were immediately moot. She’d planned to surveil — to meet the woman, get a bead on her, and suss out a bit more than what Nicolai had been able to shake loose. She hadn’t planned to do any killing today, regardless of what Micah said about the woman’s evil or about Kai’s rightful place in the Beau Monde. She hadn’t planned to talk of killing, give indication of killing, or generally do anything other than be nice and see what she could learn.
After what Micah had ordered Kai to do to Doc, she’d lost her taste for assassin duties and for being told what to do — especially by Micah Ryan. Because even if Rachel was the snake that Micah said she was, it’s not like he was much better. So she’d come to Alpha Place with a singular thought: She might kill Rachel Ryan — but if she did, it would be because she wanted to, because she decided the woman deserved to die. If that lined up with Micah’s desires, so be it — but Kai was through being his slave.
But now those plans were flushed. She wasn’t here on reconnaissance anymore. Rachel knew why she’d come…and here Kai was, walking right into the lion’s den like an idiot.
Kai stopped moving five meters or so into the room, unsure of what to do with herself. Rachel, on the other hand, crossed to a large, elegant chair and sat. She looked much younger than Kai had expected. The way Nicolai had described her, she should move like a person balancing an egg on the end of a spoon. But to Kai’s eye, Rachel moved just fine — the best enhancements money could buy for someone nearly 150 years old.
“So you know my son.”
Kai nodded. It was a strange second thing for Rachel to say, considering that her first had involved matricide.
“He’s a good boy. He’s just ambitious. Enough that it makes him an idiot from time to time.” She readjusted an elaborate doily draped over the chair’s arm. “I raised him better than that.”
Rachel lifted her head and looked expectantly at Kai. Kai wasn’t sure what to d
o, so instead of moving, she took in the apartment. It was at least twice as large as her own, and ten or more times as lavish. But the room’s appointments weren’t what she would have expected; they were expensive and lush in an old-fashioned sort of way, with no obvious Beam peripherals anywhere. Like the building’s lobby, the room was old world: fine fabrics like Kai might use for a seductive bedroom, glistening gold and silver, carvings in the woodwork. And below it all, ancient music spilled from hidden speakers, the volume low.
“Can I sit?” Kai asked.
“I wish you would.” The words weren’t quite cordial. They sounded more impatient.
Kai sat. She needed to. She’d felt like her world was spinning for some time now, and Rachel’s presence wasn’t helping.
“Micah is impetuous and impatient; that’s his problem,” the old woman said. “He’s in his eighties now, and he still can’t help wanting more and more, faster and faster. I won’t take your visit personally. This is just Micah wanting to move up. Like it or not, I’m in his way.”
Kai didn’t know what to say to that, either. The way Micah told it, Rachel was in Kai’s way.
“My question for you,” Rachel said, “is why you’re here. You specifically. You, who clawed your way up from the gutter. Who worked for my friend Alexa.”
“You knew Alexa Mathis?”
Rachel cackled. “Honey, everyone knows Alexa Mathis.”
Kai paused. Twice, Rachel had referred to Alexa in the present tense, but O’s leadership had gone underground forever ago. Everyone assumed Alexa was dead, but here was Rachel, speaking of ghosts as if they dined with her weekly.
“And as a former O girl, I know how she trained you,” Rachel went on. “You’ll know Chloe, maybe taken in some of the Chloe AI, or at least its conditioning. But you were impressive even before O, weren’t you? I know about the stunner. About the people you killed because they got in your way.”
“What stunner?”
Rachel smiled. She didn’t answer, but Kai’s attempt to divert had been pathetic anyway. Nobody knew Kai’s revenge story, from her gutter days, except for Kai herself. And, somehow, Rachel Ryan.
“Someone like you, Kai Dreyfus, you wouldn’t just do what any man told you. You remind me of myself, back when my tits were perkier.”
A man in butler uniform entered their tiny circle. He held two drinks on a sterling silver platter. One, Rachel’s, was in a martini glass. The other was apparently for Kai. It was a Pabst & Richarz — not the drink she ordered with clients or in public, but the one she drank when alone. With a glance at Rachel, Kai took it. She looked up at the butler as he turned. His eyes were proper stuffy slits, his black hair slicked back against his scalp. He had white gloves, a coat with tails, and a tiny mustache on his upper lip, deftly split in the middle.
“So tell me,” Rachel said. “Why did you come? Why do you plan to kill me — not because Micah told you to, but for your own reasons?”
Kai held the drink in her lap, glancing intermittently down.
“You think I poisoned it,” Rachel said, looking at the beverage and setting her earlier question aside.
Kai said nothing.
“You’re sweet,” said Rachel. “If I’d wanted you dead, you wouldn’t be breathing now. Killing someone with a drink is so…”
“So predictable?”
“So rude,” Rachel said. “It’s insulting. Just like how, when you came in here, you were thinking about snapping my neck.”
“I wasn’t — ”
“Let’s cut the shit,” Rachel said, her demeanor flipping like a switch. “I admire your moxie; you’re in over your head. Maybe you’ve spilled your share of gutter blood, handling the assholes Micah sics you on. Presque Beau, maybe a few Beau Monde, if they’re not prepared and don’t see it coming. Someone like you, with Alexa’s training, you’d go in with guile rather than force. If I had to guess, and I actually don’t, I’d say you came here to figure me out — not to discover my weaknesses, because you’re arrogant enough and have a good enough track record that you don’t need frailties to get what you want. No, you came here to decide if you want to kill me. So what do you think, Miss Dreyfus? Does Micah Ryan’s mother deserve to die?”
“I — ”
“Let me tell you a few things about my life,” Rachel interrupted. “In the teens and ’20s, my father’s company was working behind the scenes of the old American government, manipulating lobbyists through threat and bribes. His people stalked your boyfriend, Nicolai’s, father, Salvatore Costa, trying to bully him out of the first hovertech. They couldn’t just steal the technology; they needed Costa’s mind. So they began killing people around him, and still neither he nor Allegro Andante would budge. When the ecology began to shift, those same thugs were about to strike at Salvatore’s family.” She leaned forward. “Tell Nicolai something for me, will you? My father isn’t responsible for his family’s death. But that’s only because the Fall got to them first.”
Rachel stood. Kai scooted back in her chair, unsure which end was up. None of this was going according to plan.
“In the ’30s, Ryan Enterprises initiated hostile operations to take the melting arctic from the first movers. Many deaths were conveniently covered up. Others, later, you yourself helped us perpetuate, meaning that as much as you might hate us now, there was a time when you could be bought, like a whore. But before you, there was me. And before me, there was my father. I’m the Ryan in Ryan Enterprises. Not Micah and Isaac’s father. He changed his name. I didn’t change mine because by then, I’d taken over.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
“You’re here to find out if I deserve to die. So what do you think? Do I?”
“I’m not sure if I — ”
“Stand up, Kai. You’re better than this.”
Slowly, Kai stood. Again, she was struck by the difference in how Nicolai had described the old woman and the way she appeared. Her skin was wrinkled and her hair was white, but she didn’t move like an old-model droid at all. No. Rachel Ryan moved like a spider.
“If I’m to be killed,” Rachel said, “it won’t be by someone who cowers.”
“I don’t cower.”
“Don’t you? So why are you shrinking back?”
“You’re not what I expected.”
“Really. Did you expect your grandmother? Grandma Kelsey? You’d have to because you couldn’t expect your paternal grandmother, seeing as you never knew your father.”
When Kai didn’t answer, Rachel cocked her head as if to say, Well then.
“How would you have done it, Miss Dreyfus? How would you have killed me?”
Kai realized, quite suddenly, that she’d never admitted to her plan. Now that the old woman was holding her feet to the fire, could she still back out, still pretend this was all a mistake? Sorry for the confusion, Mrs. Ryan. Micah just sent me here to deliver this greeting card for his beloved mother.
No. That wouldn’t work. But how did you speak of the deed while meeting the victim’s eyes?
But there was another problem, too. Rachel was right: Kai hadn’t come because Micah told her to. She’d come to determine if she, on her own, wanted to do as he asked. On the possible upside, if Micah wasn’t lying (always a possibility), killing Rachel might free the logjam keeping Kai and Nicolai from the Beau Monde. But on the downside…
Well, on the downside, Kai kind of liked Rachel Ryan.
The woman was a killer. She was crude, bold, and arrogant. Ruthless, cold, and calculating. She’d even shit on Kai while simultaneously complementing her, doubling the word “whore” like a weapon. But still, Kai found herself admiring Rachel. Few people could face their killers with gusto.
Kai could at least keep them on equal footing.
“I guess I’d have broken your neck,” she said.
Rachel snorted. “My neck is reinforced Plasteel. Try again.”
“Crush your head, then. Slam it into a wall. Maybe that table there.”
Rachel knocked on her scalp. “Skull. Plasteel.”
“Deploy a nanoswarm.”
Rachel put a leathery hand on her own neck. “Filters. Perimeter protection. Keep them coming.”
“You’re fragile. Your skull is strong, but I could rattle it to death.”
“Blunt. Uninventive. Security AI would intervene immediately. More.”
“Go in through the eyes.”
Rachel took a step forward. Her chest was almost against Kai’s. She pointed at her own eyes. “Carbon nanotube matrix. Xenia models you can’t get and don’t know about, unless we were right about Doc Stahl and his big fucking mouth. You’d never get through them.”
“Neural disruption then. I have — ”
“I know what you have. It’s all been deactivated. You want to kill someone above Beau Monde? You’ll need to do better.”
“What’s above Beau Monde?” Kai asked, her eyebrows drawing together.
“Your nanobots have been erased. Not Gaussed; it’s another technology above your pay grade. I could kill you, though; your defenses are down, and I happen to have plenty of unknown horrors at my disposal. You wish for a life in the Beau Monde, Miss Dreyfus? You’d better prove you’re worthy, and that you have more in your bag than parlor tricks.”
Now Kai was angry. Nobody told Kai she wasn’t up to a challenge, or stood in her way.
“So it is you keeping it from me. Micah was right. The minute you’re gone, I make Beau Monde.”
“You came here for a reason,” Rachel said, sneering, not bothering to answer Kai’s question. “Come on. Show me that you have what it takes. You want to convince the others you’re worth promoting? Convince me.”
Kai tried to shove against the old woman, but Rachel was rock solid. She couldn’t believe Nicolai had thought her frail. The woman was a tank — in frame, body, and will.
“You can’t just push me around,” Rachel said. “Nobody will buy it. Nobody will believe I was that stupid, or that I’d ever be that stupid. Nobody would believe it was for real.”
“‘For real’?”
“Can’t get past my skin. Can’t knock me down. Can’t use any of your fancy tricks. What if I told you that Ryan Enterprises controlled most of the legalized prostitution in District Zero…and much of the illegal prostitution before that? What if I told you that some of my father’s first associates were nothing more than bargain-basement pimps he floated when times were toughest — men who were pigs and criminals and scum, but who managed to bring in a decent income unless some uppity bitch killed them with a stunner?”
