by Sean Platt
“I don’t think so. I just need to borrow my brother for a minute.” His eyes flicked toward Isaac’s. “To discuss President Vale.”
“I don’t really have anything to say about him. I barely know him,” Isaac said, turning back into the original group.
“Mother wants to meet him,” Micah said.
Kai’s and Nicolai’s heads turned toward Micah. Natasha felt her brow wrinkle. What was happening here? Looks weren’t just passing between Isaac and Micah; they were passing between Micah and Nicolai, too. And, strangest of all, between Micah and Kai, whom nobody supposedly knew from Adam.
“Mother,” Micah repeated, giving Isaac a nod.
Isaac sighed. He fixed his eyes on Natasha, looking deep, as if he were trying to hypnotize her.
“I’ll just be a few minutes,” he said then firmly added, “stay here with Nicolai and Kai.” Then, because that didn’t seem to be enough, Isaac flicked his gaze to Kai and back to Natasha. “Remember, fans pay your bills. Nice celebrities don’t go running off while fans are talking to them.” He gave an insulting little chuckle as if he was joking, which for some reason Natasha felt sure he wasn’t.
Isaac stepped reluctantly away, following his brother. Natasha watched after him then turned back to find Nicolai distracted. He was standing almost on his tiptoes, ogling a tall blonde in the corner. The woman wasn’t as attractive as Natasha and had obvious, predictable breasts. Too obvious and predictable for a man like Nicolai…and yet he was practically drooling. Strangely, Kai, beside him, didn’t seem offended as she watched him watch the blonde.
“Isaac is right,” Natasha said, finding herself ruffled. “We really don’t get a chance to talk anymore. What is your favorite song, Kay?”
“It’s Kai,” Nicolai corrected.
She giggled. “Oh. Of course.”
“I’m sorry, Natasha,” Nicolai said, already backing up, edging toward the woman in the corner. “There’s someone we need to talk to. Come on, Kai.” He nodded. “It’s been nice catching up with you.”
Natasha watched them go, biting her tongue to hold in a not entirely lighthearted joke about it being rude to embark on a threesome without inviting everyone. Then she found herself alone, all attention withdrawn, trying to be a big girl and not feel jilted.
But nobody — despite her being Natasha Ryan — turned to join her.
Natasha looked to the knot of people near the door into the dining room, toward where her old friend Shelly seemed to have vanished, and crossed the party to find her.
“What’s the matter with you, Isaac?” Micah demanded.
Isaac was still looking across the room, hoping against hope that the group containing Natasha, Nicolai, and Kai would hold tight until he returned. Things didn’t look good. Nicolai’s eyes had strayed to some woman with big boobs, and he was pulling his date away while Natasha glanced around after them, seemingly prepping to leave. Natasha never listened. It was almost a thing with her.
“I asked you a question.”
Isaac turned to face his brother.
“You don’t answer when someone asks you a question?”
“I figured it was rhetorical.”
Micah sighed. “It used to be. But now I’d honestly like to know.”
“What did you need to tell me about Vale? Or Rachel?”
“Did you know Vale was coming?”
“No, of course not. I…” But Micah raised his eyebrow, missing nothing.
“What, Isaac?” he prompted.
“Nothing.”
“Did someone talk to you? About Vale?”
“No! Why?”
Micah’s eyebrow was still up. Isaac could practically feel himself sweating despite his rapid-cool nanobots.
“Mother. Mother talked to you about Vale. She did, didn’t she? What’s she up to?”
“Nothing!”
Micah chewed his lip, steely eyes on Isaac. “You need to stay away from Kai Dreyfus.”
“You know her?”
“Of course I know her. She’s here with Nicolai.”
Isaac didn’t understand the connection. “I’ve worked with Nicolai for six decades, and I don’t know her.” Isaac could feel his own eyebrow rising. If anyone looked over at the two brothers now, it’d probably look like they were in a duel of devious expressions. As usual, there was more here than Micah was saying. He hadn’t said to stay away from Nicolai’s date. He’d said to stay away from Kai. She was the subject, not Nicolai. “How do you know her?”
“Professional relationship.”
“She strikes me as an escort. Are you into pimping now?” Isaac wished there were someone around to high-five. It was so rare to get a dig in on his brother. But of course, Micah wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were scanning the crowd.
“Looking for someone?”
Micah pursed his lips. “I don’t like this. Rachel is up to something. Did she really not talk to you about Vale? Because it doesn’t make a goddamned bit of sense that he’s here, and it stinks of her wrinkly conniving. She’s going to ruin everything.”
“What’s she going to ruin?” Something to do with Kai Dreyfus, Isaac figured. But what? And with all the assassinations and marital bombs in Isaac’s mind, did he really have the headspace to care? He couldn’t see Natasha anymore. Where had she run off to?
“Have you seen Braemon?”
“No. I don’t even know him.”
“What about Jameson Gray?”
“Jameson Gray is here?”
Micah’s eyes became insulting slits before Isaac could catch his mistake. It wasn’t Isaac’s fault. He’d been looking at the buffet table — which didn’t seem to include a cake knife but did have a serrated carving knife sticking out of one of those enormous bioengineered hams. Could you kill someone with a ham knife? Sure you could. They’d just need to hold still long enough for some sawing.
“Oh, right,” Isaac said, recovering. “For the magic trick.”
“Yes, Isaac. For the trick. You’ve been practicing, right? I know it’s stupid, but it’s also going to be on that little stage over there, with every one of these powerful people watching. And it’ll be streamed. Half the NAU will watch live, and the other half will see it tomorrow.”
Isaac laughed. “Practicing. Yes. I’ve been doing all sorts of practicing.”
“Seriously, Isaac…”
“He hasn’t even told me anything!” Isaac blurted. “It’s like he doesn’t trust me!” The moment of released pressure felt good. Maybe he should tell Micah about the murder afoot. Maybe Micah could get Isaac arrested because it wasn’t as easy as the criminals made it look.
Micah laughed, at least being courteous enough not to validate Isaac’s thought. There was no question the most famous illusionist in history didn’t trust Isaac Ryan to keep his secrets.
“He’s a magician. We only need to know enough to let him do his thing.”
“But you’re the one making me disappear.”
Micah flinched hard toward Isaac as if trying to frighten him, then made swooping magic hand gestures in the air.
“Ooh, magic!” Micah rolled his eyes then looked condescendingly at Isaac. “Hate to break it to you, but you won’t actually be vanishing. Unless we’ve been lying to you all along and I have access to experimental new technology and plan to teleport you into nothingness.” He laughed. “Look, Isaac. Gray is doing whatever’s being done. I’ve got my part, you’ve got yours, Natasha has hers. But it’s still Gray’s show.”
“What has he told you? I don’t even know what to do.”
“Well, what has he told you?”
“I’m just supposed to ‘clear my mind.’ Oh, and he injected me with some nanos yesterday when we were working on particulars.”
Micah nodded. “Okay, I can fill in a few of those gaps. We’ll whisk you off with some sort of swarm invisibility cloak, but when you return, it’ll be a holographic Isaac. A special kind of hologram since the lights are really bright in here and you’d
be able to tell with a normal one — see dust motes running through your head or something.”
“What does that have to do with nanobots?”
“Permissions, I’m sure.”
This was the first Isaac had heard of permissions for the trick. It was just one word, but he didn’t like it.
“Permissions for what?”
“West, Isaac. Some trick of Gray’s will — don’t ask me how; he won’t share — recreate you onstage after the act is over. It’s the only way he can prove you’re not really there before you appear.”
“Prove how?”
“I’m not sure. Shove blades through a box at you, like in the old acts?” Then, when Isaac felt himself pale, Micah rolled his eyes again. “Oh, relax. You’ll be long gone with your invisibility cloak. But you know AI can’t just replicate living people, according to the official law about — ”
“Replicate me!” Isaac blurted.
“Of course, Isaac. Replicate your image. How else could he pull this off?”
Isaac considered retorting, but he was in too deep — and as much as he disliked the idea of Jameson Gray’s show, it was the least of his current concerns. He’d been talking to Micah too long already, and apparently there wasn’t any business to transact (about Vale, Rachel, or otherwise) other than the usual business of brother belittling brother. He needed to catch up to Natasha. She was a diva; it would take her a few minutes to cross a room filled with admirers to find this Godfrey woman. He might still be able to catch her.
But replication, even in hologram? The idea twisted something in Isaac’s gut.
“Oh, relax. Xenia has known the technology to selectively circumvent The Beam’s fifty layers or so of identity safeguards has existed for years. You honestly didn’t?”
“It’s not a matter of the technology existing. AI can’t mimic people in image or manner, living or dead. It’s a civil rights issue! Or an identity theft issue. If AI can pretend to be me…”
Deep sigh. Micah continued patronizingly.
“It’s a thirty-second permission window that won’t do much more than smile, take a bow, and leave the stage. You’re giving that permission through the nanos Gray injected you with.”
“How is that possible?”
“Maybe it’s not, whatever,” Micah said, again rolling his eyes.
But it was possible, and it wasn’t fine. Isaac had been trying to figure out how the trick would work for days. His return, after disappearing, had always been the part that seemed most impossible. If, on the spot, one of Gray’s assistants planned to simply keep Isaac backstage while a slightly better-than-normal hologram impersonated him onstage, that was the only thing that had made any sense. But the safeguards were supposed to be stacked and impenetrable. Watchdog groups had been picking at the issue forever and had thus far declared it safe. AI couldn’t “pretend to be any person, living or dead, in manner, image, or voice.” Just about the only way it’d even be a little bit possible would be if some dumbass used above-Beau-Monde technology to intentionally drop his own identity firewall. Someone like Isaac Ryan, who had a history of being a dumbass when it mattered most.
“If you’re so damn worried about it, I’m sure Braemon has a Gauss wand. Go get yourself waved down, and kill them off.”
Isaac saw the bait but refused to take it. If he killed off Jameson Gray’s illegal nanos now, there would be hell to pay — from Micah, from Natasha, from his social peers, and from Gray himself, who Isaac suspected might be part of the supersecret group his mother belonged to.
No, it’d be okay. He could do it after the show. It’s not like an AI clone could keep impersonating him after he’d wanded himself. And it’s not like the nanos would help Micah zap him off into places unknown, as he’d joked.
“Well now,” Micah said, indicating a tall man across the room. “Look who’s arrived.”
Isaac’s eyes were on a recently spotted group of people who, it turned out, had indeed stopped Natasha to admire her. All were men. Isaac didn’t know what Shelly Godfrey looked like, but unless she had testicles, it didn’t seem like Natasha had found her just yet.
Isaac didn’t reply. He began pushing through partygoers instead, headed where Micah had indicated.
Yes, he needed to reach Natasha before she located Godfrey.
But first, he needed to have a chat with President Carter Vale.
“Harper,” Dominic said. “Were you ever a mall security guard?”
“Captain?” the officer replied.
Dominic pointed at the Beam wall displaying its many rows of video feeds, including the one showing Isaac Ryan’s corner that had been bothering him. Quark PD, probably knowing the importance of good PR leading up to Shift, had let DZPD use their surveillance wall to monitor the fundraiser and had been deferring to DZPD cops for hours now. If Dominic didn’t know better, he’d think he was in charge in this big white room.
“Have you ever spent mindless hours staring at a bank of screens like this?”
“No sir, but…it’s just looking at screens, isn’t it?”
“You’re a smart cop, Harper.” Dominic stood and slapped the other man on the back, motioning for him to take Dominic’s chair.
“Are you leaving, sir?”
“I need to run in. You can watch the event from here.”
Harper became instantly nervous. “But sir! You’re the commissioner right now! I’m just…”
“You can watch monitors the same as me. I’m still the commissioner. For today, anyway. I need to go on-site but will remain in command. No worries. You’re just eyes.”
“But sir! What do I do if something goes wrong?”
“Ping me. Tell me.”
“But…”
But nothing, apparently, because Dominic took a final glance at the troubling screen and walked away, leaving Harper to blubber.
There wasn’t much to like about tonight. Dominic didn’t like being in bed with Omar — and although parts of him would very much like to be in bed with Kate, she was still a dust runner and an unknown quantity. She had the shell of a strange man in her — a man who didn’t have a good record, but did have connections to Omar. That man seemed to have gone suspiciously missing as if his life had hit an abrupt dead end — whose end, interestingly, hadn’t come from death. Dominic hadn’t managed to get much on Doc Stahl, blocked both by maddening erasures and by high-level permissions that even a commissioner’s access couldn’t touch.
Dominic didn’t like that he was more or less breaking the law. He didn’t like the way he’d left things with Leah — not just for her sake, but the way she’d been left to deal with the Organas when he’d been called first by Omar and then to the station.
He didn’t like that all of a sudden President Vale had decided to make an appearance, necessitating all sorts of new security and protocols.
He didn’t like the way the feeds had been glitching a lot lately — something that had got him thinking he’d need to head in keep an eye on things in person for a while now.
But he really, really didn’t like the way the feed of Isaac Ryan and Carter Vale set off all his internal alarms. Dominic, gray-area dalliances aside, was a good cop, excellent in ethics and great at his job. He knew, despite what Leah had or hadn’t found, that someone, somewhere, was walking around with a bogus Steve York in his pocket. And he knew, just by looking at Isaac, that Isaac was keeping a secret of his own.
Maybe he shouldn’t have dismissed Isaac’s earlier call. But still, watching Isaac and Vale onscreen, it sure didn’t look like an assassination in progress. The two were talking feverishly, below the conversational privacy tolerances’ ability to overhear. It wasn’t just Isaac. Both were keeping this secret, and Isaac looked…
Well, he looked guilty.
Dominic crossed the Quark station, wanting to hurry without having to admit that a lot of people might be in trouble.
Why was this whole fucking sector of The Beam glitching? Why were entire nodes overworked, as if
caught up trying to process a massive backlog of files? That kind of thing happened on Dominic’s shitty little DZPD console canvas, but now it was happening on The Beam itself. What could The whole fucking Beam be chewing on? And why did it have to happen tonight, while Isaac and Vale were swapping secrets and Omar was trying to pull a rabbit out of Dominic’s ass without Dominic knowing? He could practically see the slippery son of a bitch trying to undermine everything with his own agenda. It might just be time to storm in there and stop it.
Because really, fuck this whole plan. Dominic’s benefit, back when he’d made his deal with Omar and Kate, was supposed to be an uninterrupted Lunis supply chain. But now that the Organa problem was more or less solved, who needed Lunis? Certainly not Leo and the others. Dom was an addict, yes, but he understood the solution. He just needed to get enhanced a little. Get some nanobots or something. He’d rather do that than have a monkey forever on his back.
“Good evening, Dominic,” said a voice.
Dominic looked up, recognizing the voice coming from all around him as Noah West’s. On his way out, he’d entered the white, Beam-surface hallway between Quark and the main DZPD station. The stupid motherfucking, judgmental, all-knowing hallway. He didn’t have time for its henpecking, righteous assessment.
“Not now, Noah,” Dominic told the avatar’s disembodied voice.
“How is your back?” Noah asked.
“It’s fine. And also, fuck off.”
“I notice you’re carrying a lot of stress in your shoulders. Would you like me to book you a therapeutic massage?”
“No.”
“How about a therapeutic nanobot treatment?”
“No. I’m just trying to get out of here.”
“Suit yourself,” the voice said. “Let me know if I can help you with anything else.”
Something swooped into Dominic’s mind. His feet stopped moving in the middle of the long, pristine hallway as his thoughts turned to his last few moments in the ruins of Flat 1, just before Omar had called in a panic.
“Noah,” he said.
“Yes, Commissioner Long?”
“I don’t have any nanobots and shit in me, right?”
