by Sean Platt
“Never mind. I’ll be there. I’m going to the fundraiser. I have to go, just because I’m Capital Protection and Enterprise’s face man. My question is, what’s in it for Braemon?”
“Why does there have to be something in it for him? It’s an Enterprise event once you peel back the skin. What benefits Enterprise PR benefits all of us.”
“Enterprise doesn’t need more PR. Braemon certainly doesn’t need PR. I don’t know him at all, but if he’s Panel — ”
“He’s not Panel.”
“What about Aiden Purcell? He seems like Panel.”
“I have no idea.”
“But there is a Panel. We’ve established that.”
“Stop it, Micah. Remember, we’re in this together.”
“I’m just saying that if everyone wants me there, I’d like to know what I’m in for.”
“I told you. It’s PR. Attention-grabbing, hearts-and-minds-redirecting PR. Just like your sister-in-law’s fuck-you concert. Enterprise is going to lose Shift, which wouldn’t be a big deal if it hadn’t looked like they might win for a while with the beem currency rollout. They’ll need to pull back on attempting to ratify beem now, of course, but it can’t wait until 2105. It’ll be a midterm initiative.”
“You’re going to push beem ratification with a Directorate majority in the Senate?”
“It can’t wait until 2105,” Alexa repeated, as if quoting a mantra.
“Why not?”
Alexa ignored him, now chattering in his ear. “Most of this won’t concern you, but in six months, maybe a year, we’ll need a push to sell Directorate senators on network-based experimental commerce. Ratifying beem money will be part of that, and the rest can unfold after, as the media expects. And if that’s going to happen, Enterprise’s image has to start improving now. Losing a Shift Enterprise was expected to lose wouldn’t be a big deal, but since it looked like we might win, that same loss will now be an embarrassment.”
“Are you worried that people are chattering about Mindbender?”
“Vale’s version, you mean?”
“Of course.”
“Six months or so should be plenty to make that all seem foolish.”
“How? Everyone loves Vale. Even if the project is still stalled in six months, that’s hardly unexpected.”
“Vale will be handled. Mindbender’s reputation will follow.”
“How do you figure?”
“Not for your ears. You need to worry about Enterprise.”
“And Braemon’s event,” Micah said, wishing Alexa would stop bullshitting and just tell him the whole truth.
“The event is only being held by Braemon. You and I might know what’s really going on, but it would be a mistake, if PR is the name of the game, to forget the stated purpose of the fundraiser. Nobody you know will ever face Respero, but even if you were sent yourself, you’ll get the finest Respero Dinner beforehand that money could buy. The people below the line aren’t that lucky. The whole reason Respero is effective as euthanasia — especially when we’re talking mandated euthanasia — is because it’s ritualized. People accept it, at least in concept, as a kind of graduation. But think about it: How effective will the ritual of a ‘fancy graduation Dinner’ be when the poor slobs who are its most common victims can’t afford the whitewash?”
“Maybe they could have afforded their pleasant deaths if they’d been Directorate,” said Micah, unable to help himself.
“Very funny.”
“Oh, lighten up, Alexa. I’m old enough to remember out-and-out state murder, so you sure as hell are. Who gives a shit if people see through the farce of Respero? What the state says goes, no matter whether people like it or not. If all else fails, the NAU can just go back to lethal injections and electric chairs.”
“That’s barbaric,” Alexa muttered.
“And Respero isn’t?”
“Don’t pretend, Micah. You’re smart enough to know there are things you don’t know, so don’t presume that anyone has told you what those things you shouldn’t know are.”
“I’m so confused,” Micah said, rolling his eyes.
“When you move up, you’ll understand.”
“How about this for a proposal, Alexa? If you want me to do your bidding correctly, help me understand now.”
Alexa seemed to sigh and reset. “This isn’t just about Enterprise or Braemon or you or me. It’s important that Respero itself comes out looking better after this event. Ironically, calling it a ‘Respero benefit’ isn’t far off the mark at all since the idea is to benefit Respero.”
“Why?”
“Because we need Respero to be accepted and hence effective. As a tool.”
“If the state wants people dead, it should just call a spade a spade. At least look people in the eye and call it capital punishment.”
“This is about control, Micah.”
“Capital punishment is about control.”
“Capital punishment is about punishment,” Alexa corrected.
“You’re splitting hairs.”
“I’m not. The subtleties of Respero matter as much as the subtleties of the perceived power balance between the parties, and that’s not even counting personal interests.”
“What personal interests?” Murder, he thought. She must be talking about Panel or other high-ups ridding themselves of enemies through the Respero system.
“You don’t have to see the whole picture. You only have to trust that those above you do, and that you will in time.”
“Noah Fucking West,” Micah muttered. It was an endless shell game. Dick measuring with lives in the balance.
“There are Directorate elements who’ve begun to come out against Respero,” Alexa said. “We’ve kept them quiet, but Vale, as a wild card, changes things in the short term. It’s important that as many as possible of those who are sent to Respero publicly go willingly. We want them sending out invitations and getting excited. We want them to dress up for the occasion and gather family and friends. We want those middle-of-the-road folks to see Respero as a choice above them, which in turn gives nodding consent to the will of the state.”
“I see. Is that what happened with Violet James?”
“Violet James is exactly why this matters, Micah,” Alexa snapped, as if he should know better. “With the anniversary of her Respero decision coming up, a lot of eyes on both sides of the fence are turning to the case as a precedent setter. There’s always been chatter about James’s condition and the way her decision came down, and now that chatter is all back, all these years later. Would she have come out of it? Would she have lived? Violet is the perfect idol for both the pro and con arguments — and which side she ends up posthumously working for depends on the spin doctoring. Positioned right, her case is perfect for the pro camp because she was medical — true euthanasia, to ease her suffering. But do you remember all the hubbub about James’s parents and the transcripts uncovered from the hospital board? She was too expensive, they said. So everyone got their damned noses into the case. By the time they gave her a Dinner and switched her off, she’d become a poster child. Everyone had an opinion. And now, of course, today, a lot of those old opinions are coming back. Noah Fucking West, Micah — I can’t watch feeds for a half hour anymore without some asshole dredging up her pictures, playing her sad story with dramatic music.”
“Fine,” Micah said, becoming bored. The idea of naming the damned event after Violet James felt like a transparent PR move to Micah, meant to bolster the pro-Respero (and mostly Enterprise) case. It stunk of pandering, really. Micah couldn’t believe everyone didn’t see right through the posturing, but the masses on The Beam were eating it up, going so far as to praise Craig Braemon for selflessly holding the event he wasn’t really in charge of, benefitting a bullshit charity meant to prop up a an elite class’s ulterior motives.
“Fine what?” Alexa demanded.
“I said fine,” Micah repeated. He’d be damned if he’d stand up tall and recite his lessons l
ike a good boy just so she could pat him on the head.
There was silence on the line as Alexa paused, probably trying to decide if Micah would toe the line or become a wrench in the works. Finally, Micah took mercy on her, declared himself a partial victor, and shifted the conversational baton back into his own court where it belonged
“What about Isaac’s being at the fundraiser? He’s so stupid, his actions sometimes ruin the best of plans.”
“Don’t worry about Isaac.”
“What about my mother?”
Alexa paused. “What about her?”
“She’ll be there too. Did you know?”
Another long pause. Then: “No.”
“Even though you’re in your cabal together.”
“We’re not obligated to clear our personal plans with each other.” Alexa huffed. “How will she even get there? She’s a corpse.”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“And why? She’s — ”
“She wants to be there,” Micah interrupted, “so that Kai can kill her.”
That stopped Alexa entirely. For a moment, Micah almost wanted to ask his canvas if the other party was still there.
“What did you say?”
“I sent Kai to see her. To do what we’d discussed. I told her that Rachel is in her way, too. In Kai’s way — and Costa’s, since they’re buddies. I told Kai I’d help her get her Beau Monde tag if she took care of it.”
“You can’t promise that,” Alexa said.
“When Rachel is gone, I move up. When I move up, I can promise whatever I want.”
“You can’t be sure you’ll move up,” Alexa said. Micah barely heard her. Of course he would. Alexa, with her poor record of keeping secrets, had all but told him so.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Micah said.
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t know?”
Yet another pause sat on the line’s opposite end. Micah read what he could from Alexa’s breathing, and his truth AI culled a few more certainty percentage points. No, she apparently didn’t know any of this. Micah wanted to respect Alexa Mathis for all she’d built and done, but this just made her look stupid. But then again, maybe he still could respect her. Even the most respectable people weren’t immune to the manipulations of a master like Rachel Ryan.
“Rachel gave Kai her permission,” Micah said. “She said she’s ready to die and that Kai could kill her if she wanted.”
“And Kai didn’t kill her then and there?”
Micah shook his head as if Alexa were in front of him. “No. She said that Kai needed to wait until the James event, coincidentally.”
“Why?”
“West, Alexa. Do I really need to spell this out?” It didn’t matter that he’d had time with the information, or that he was assaulting Alexa with the news. He was still insulted by the whole thing enough to transcend sense. “If Kai kills her in public and does it in a way that’s slippery enough to be believable, everyone’s going to know I was behind it.”
“There’s no tie between you and Kai.”
“Are you sure about that? She’s a softie, deep down. I’ll bet she told Costa.”
Alexa said nothing. They both knew handling Nicolai wasn’t an option on the table.
“It hardly matters. Even if she didn’t tell anyone else that we’re connected, there have been leaks. At the Aphora concert riot, one of my idiot operatives, Jason Whitlock, hooked up with her. In his shoes, anyone could have drawn conclusions about my relationship with her from that alone, even though I had nothing to do with pairing them up. And if a connection can be drawn between Kai and me, it can be drawn between me and you.”
“I doubt that.”
“Really, Alexa? How do you know I haven’t told all my friends that I’m in touch with one of the world’s most famous recluses?”
There was a beat, then Alexa gave a small, tension-breaking chuckle. Of course that wasn’t an issue. Micah’s lips were drum tight, and more importantly, Micah didn’t have friends. But that didn’t mean the connection couldn’t be made — especially by people with elevated means, like Rachel and Alexa’s cohorts on Panel. And if a current member of Panel was known to have colluded with a candidate meant to fill a murdered woman’s seat in the mysterious group? Well, what might that mean for the candidate’s chances of joining the group — or, perhaps, either of their chances of staying alive?
“It’s worth the risk,” Alexa finally said.
“So does this mean you still want me to have her go ahead?” Micah asked. “To have Kai do what Rachel wants her to do?” But he was just mouthing the words, realizing he didn’t have an opinion either way. Both options — kill or don’t — seemed terrible.
“Getting rid of Rachel is also what we want, Micah.”
“You don’t know my mother. If she’s allowing this to happen, that means it won’t turn out the way you think it will. She’s hiding something. There’s — ”
“I’ve known your mother for nearly as long as you’ve been alive,” Alexa interrupted, her manner short. “I know her plenty. Enough to know she’s always planning five contingencies deep. Sometimes, she wants people to dance for her, and sometimes she doesn’t want them to dance at all but knows they won’t dance on their own because they’ll sense her pulling the strings. It’s a case of us not knowing that she knows that we know she knows.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Kind of the point,” Alexa said. “The truth is we can only guess. Maybe she’s finally tired enough to die and wants to go out with a bang. Maybe she wants us both caught. Or maybe she just wants us to think we’ll get caught and not even try — which is why she told Kai what she was up to, so that Kai would run back to you and make you second-guess everything. Or it could be a level deeper, and she really does want Kai to kill her but wants you conflicted about it. Or one level deeper than that, where she wants — ”
“I get the idea,” Micah said, rubbing his forehead. And yes, that sounded like his mother. Every time they’d ever negotiated anything, he’d felt like they were playing a strategy game that Rachel had a blueprint for while Micah wasn’t even allowed to see the board. It was a wrecking ball to his confidence.
“So to my point, we move ahead,” Alexa said. “There’s no way to know what she has up her sleeve, so either choice might be wrong, and there’s no point in wondering. And we do have an ace, remember.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know I’m helping you.”
“That protects you. It doesn’t protect me at all.”
“You’re her son, Micah. You’ll be fine.”
“She’s my mother, and I’m planning to kill her,” Micah blurted. For some reason, Alexa wasn’t getting the irony.
“Kai is the best choice for this. She’s the most intuitive person I’ve known since Chloe Shaw herself. The cards are on the table at this point, so we might as well play them out. Go to the event. Send Kai. Send her as…” Alexa paused, seeming to stumble on an obstacle. “What about Costa? He’s with you now, right?”
“As much as he could be.”
“Then send Kai as his date. People will assume she’s an escort.”
“She is an escort.”
“Even better.”
“And my big act? I’ll be out of pocket for most of the event, onstage with Jameson Gray. I won’t be able to keep an eye on her.”
“Of all people, Kai doesn’t need anyone keeping an eye on her. She has an understanding with you and now another with Rachel. Tell Kai you don’t trust Rachel’s intentions, then let her do what she does best: feel things out and decide on her own. Your goals align with Kai’s. She wants Beau Monde. You want Panel. Both are served the same way. Whatever moves her up moves you up, too. Whatever hurts her chances hurts yours.”
Micah sighed. He wanted to sit, but that felt like letting his mother win.
“All right,” he said. “But I don�
�t like it. And I don’t like how my neck is on the line.”
“I’m taking plenty of risks, Micah. Not to be insulting, but there’s a lot going on this Shift that’s above your pay grade.”
“Fine. I’ll go, and I’ll send Kai with Nicolai Costa. I’ll have to trust her.”
“She’s worth trust. And Micah? There’s something else about Kai. Something you keep failing to take into consideration.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re the closest thing to family she’s got.”
Micah supposed Alexa’s pat statement was meant to imply love or at least loyalty, but it was a hard connection to make in the Ryan family, where children killed to climb and parents ate their young.
“Let Kai do her job,” Alexa said. “You focus on yours.”
“Smiling for the cameras.”
Alexa corrected him. “Smiling for the cameras and being a gracious loser. Putting on a good show. And making loose ends go away.”
“And doing Jameson’s little magic act,” Micah said.
He could almost hear Alexa nod. “That’s what I said.”
“I’m not supposed to show you this,” Kai told Nicolai.
He trailed behind her, not intending to watch Kai’s swaying hips but not bothering to turn away either, now that he was back here. She was wearing a tan skirt that was modest by city standards, stopping an inch or two shy of her knee. But Kai managed to make even modest look sexy, just by being Kai.
“Naughty,” Nicolai said.
Kai paused to let him catch up, giving him a look. Recently, they’d been entirely out of sync. When she’d been eager for some personal attention, he’d been distracted. When he’d been interested (like now), they found themselves somewhere inappropriate. At those times, to twist the knife, Kai looked at him like he was a degenerate. As if sex wasn’t what she lived and breathed — as if he were the one off center.
“Walk up with me,” she told him. “Stop making me feel like I’m having to drag you.”
“You are dragging me.”
Kai took his hand. And proceeded to drag him until his pace matched hers.
“This is important.”
