“I was unable to trace Arthur’s signal,” Delphi admitted. “The technology protecting it was extremely sophisticated, even by my standards. We might be able to get more clues to his location by examining the bodies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s going to move Marissa now.”
“I’m still not sure why we’re devoting so much effort to that woman,” Lucita said.
“Because A is a threat to this company,” I said, cutting her off. “Also, because it’s important to me.”
Lucita cursed. “Fine. Case, you have my complete support. It wouldn’t matter anyway. Delphi would support you jumping off a bridge.”
“I’d survive falling from most,” I said. “Either way, I have a plan.”
“Oh, this I’ve got to hear,” Claire said. “Case, I love you, but your plans tend to revolve around shooting until the problem goes away.”
“Only because I’m a bloodthirsty homicidal maniac,” I said, raising my right hand in objection. “We need to get the information in Claire’s head decrypted and copied. Then we send it to A with a tagger program and follow it back to his location. We kill A, rescue Marissa, and only kill the CEO of Karma Corp if we really want to.”
“He’ll be ready for that,” Lucita said.
“Do you have a plan?” Claire asked.
Lucita looked away.
Delphi gave us an option. “Decrypting the data won’t be easy, nor will encoding a tracer program which A won’t be able to detect or go against. Mnemonic drives are designed so data can’t be copied or decrypted by anyone but the original uploader.”
“I just thought it was because someone was obsessed with old Keanu Reeves movies,” I muttered. “The fact that they’re designed against that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, does it?”
“Usually, it does,” Lucita said. “At least in my experience.”
“There might be someone who can help with this,” Delphi said. “The hacker known as BlackCat1.”
“Seriously?” I asked. “We actually live in a world where people go by their handles?”
“I’m Cowgirl13,” Claire said. “BlackCat1 is a legend.”
“Yes,” Delphi said. “She’s a woman who claims to have found an exploit in mnemonic drives among other systems. The FBI hired her to get information from a Red Sword terrorist’s cyberbrain after Madison Technologies refused to give them a universal key. A slicer working for the people she ostensibly opposes. She’s very similar to you in some respects, Claire.”
“I’m less than happy at the comparison,” Claire said.
“Too accurate?” Lucita suggested.
Claire rolled her eyes. “We need this information either way.”
“Have you even viewed it?” I asked.
“Not all of it,” Claire explained. “I updated it every week with a special download code. Lots of information gathered by agents we’ve cultivated in Karma Corp. For all I know, my last download revealed that nanotherapy was powered by sacrificing children on the altar of Moloch.”
“That is unlikely,” Delphi said. “However, I’m one of the individuals who believe nanotherapy’s potential is overstated, and the technology is not remotely near the level it needs to be to work on even half of its stated goals.”
“Another reason the fact they’ve cracked it is such a big deal,” I said. “Can you get us in touch with this BlackCat1?”
“Yes,” Delphi said. “She’ll be at my party tonight here in New Chicago. Black Cat is very skittish, though, and is unlikely to want to come directly to the Atlas Building. You should meet her there.”
“So, what’s your plan?” Lucita asked. “Or are we doing that thing where you juggle everything and pretend however it falls apart to be what you planned all along?”
“Cute,” I said, not at all disagreeing that’s how I usually operated. “Once we decrypt the data and send it to them to track him down, we eliminate him. If it doesn’t work, though, we need to keep our options open. We shouldn’t kill Zheng Wei, as that will just play into whatever plans A has. It’ll also eliminate any need for A to keep Marissa alive. We need to look like we’re prepping to kill him, though.”
“Oh, joy,” Lucita said. “How exactly do you expect us to do that?”
“Put me on the security detail and add Claire to it too.”
Lucita smacked her face. “Sure, why the hell not.”
“In the meantime, I’m going to go meet with BlackCat1.”
“We both are,” Claire said.
Chapter Six
Claire and I walked through the Atlas regional headquarters’ upper floors, not saying a word to one another until we arrived at the executive motor pool.
The top floor didn’t have many employees but had row after row of the air car variants employed by the super-rich. Personally, I found combining planes and cars just made an inferior example of both, but the simple fact was they were useful for those who wanted to get across the country quickly. Most of the United States airports were still being rebuilt, and bullet trains, of all things, were now the primary means of transport after personal vehicles.
“So, are we taking the Aston-Martin or the Rolls Royce?” Claire said as we walked past expensive car after expensive car.
“Ha-ha,” I said, frowning. “I don’t actually own a car.”
“Really?” Claire said. “I thought that’s what you’d spend your fortune on.”
“The part I don’t invest?” I asked. “No, I use company cars. I like to mix them up too. Less chance of there being a bomb on them.”
“That a common problem for you?”
“Yes and no,” I said. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. I’ve had, like, a dozen attempts by people to kill me, but generally, it’s just people trying to disrupt Atlas’ business plans.”
“Helping in the privatization of the U.S. military and police force was bound to piss some people off.”
“That was happening anyway,” I said. “We’re just participating.”
Eventually, we stopped at a sleek black air car with opaque windows and an armored frame. The Zero-7 by Madison Motors was a vehicle used primarily for the transport of VIPs. It was extremely maneuverable and had a sunroof that was unusual for its brand. I checked the back seat of the vehicle and pulled out a Sidewinder-10 sniper rifle, checked the magazine, then replaced it.
“You always keep sniper rifles in the back of your company cars?” Claire asked.
“Yes,” I said. “But in this case, it’s E’s car. I’m sure he won’t mind me borrowing it.”
I still checked under the hood and carriage to make sure the vehicle hadn’t been tampered with. After all, if the false Marissa and her partner could beat Delphi’s security system, then A certainly could. I took a deep breath and did my best to control my fear. I would settle this, no matter what it cost me.
“Is it safe?” Claire asked.
“Yes,” I said. “As near as I can tell.”
“Do you mind if I drive?” Claire asked.
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you know how to pilot a flying car?”
“I can fly, drive, or crash anything that moves.”
“All right,” I said, tossing her the identification key. “I’ll ride shotgun.”
Most cars didn’t require drivers anymore, and that was one of the reasons why the flying variant had become so popular. While all of Atlas’ vehicles were equipped with a manual mode, most public vehicles weren’t, and people were shuffled by computers to and from their destinations. Personally, I’d never trust my fate to a computer unless it was Delphi. I’d eliminated quite a few enemies by arranging all-too-convenient “accidents.”
As Claire moved over to the driver’s seat and I pulled open the passenger side door, she looked at me.
“So, what is your real reason to help me on this?”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“I don’t buy any of the excuses you gave Lucita,” Claire said.
“Well
, I’m not going to abandon any of the women I’m sleeping with,” I said, shrugging. “It’s ungentlemanly.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Classy, James Bond.”
I looked at her strangely. “What did you think was the reason?”
“I dunno, loyalty to the cause?” Claire said. “HOPE needs you.”
I slid on into the passenger seat. “HOPE means nothing to me. As much as I love tweaking the megacorporation’s nose and hopefully finding a way to take down Karma Corp, I’m not interested in the quote-unquote cause.”
“How can you say that?” Claire asked. “Don’t you want the United States to return to what it was?”
“Was it ever what it was?” I asked, buckling my seatbelt. “The United States made me as a slave. A disposable artificial soldier. And it had plans for doing that to others if I worked out. The corporations may rule openly now, but it wasn’t like they weren’t in charge before.”
“That’s a cynical attitude to have.”
“I prefer clear-sighted.”
“We can do better,” Claire said, sounding very much like Marissa at that moment. “HOPE is a tool for that.”
“Through blackmail and petty terrorism?” I asked.
“Through any means necessary.”
She started the air car, and it vibrated with the power of the massive engine. Thankfully, the interior was soundproof.
“This is the new reality, Claire. Maybe in a century, they’ll look back to this time as the Dark Age of Technology. However, people aren’t interested in democracy or corporate controls right now. They’re interested in survival and entertainment.”
“Bread and circuses are nothing new,” Claire said. “They also don’t make less of a tyrant who provides them.”
“And neither does revolution wash away the stain of one’s evil deeds,” I said. “Marissa has been nothing but a murderer and liar since I’ve known her. A good cause doesn’t change that for any of us. I’m your friend, and once I was her friend, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend any of HOPE’s actions are making the world a better place.”
I remember murdering a Halifax International banker, making it look as if he’d run off with his mistress in order to cover up the fact that we’d embezzled millions to fund a free hospital in the Los Angeles refugee zone. The greater good was a Band-Aid on a far greater horror, but it was something I’d willingly done before. It was just one of the missions I’d done for Marissa.
The two of us sat in the car’s black interior. The silence from earlier had returned, and it was still oppressive. A part of me wanted to lash out at her. I was better than this and didn’t need to be treated like a whipped dog for just trying to be good to the person I loved. If she didn’t want me, then I was happy to find someone else who did.
I was about to speak when Claire spoke first. “I’m sorry.”
“Excuse me?” I asked. “Did you say sorry? Must I get my pistol and aim it at you? Because you are clearly not Claire Morris, but her sinister doppelganger.”
Claire glared. “Stop acting like a fourteen-year-old, Case.”
“No promises.”
The air car took off, and my stomach lurched at the brief floatation of our bodies as we bumped from free fall to magnetic field.
There was a lot about this entire business that smelled worse than the refugee zones right before the monthly disinfectant teams sprayed them down. It felt very much like someone had put out the bait of a tantalizing mystery and expected me to just fall right into whatever trap they’d set up behind it—which I had, for all intents and purposes. Two old girlfriends, an old enemy, and the prospect of revenge against my ex-employers were just the kind of things you could use to lure me to my doom. Really, the biggest argument against a trap was I just wasn’t important enough for that kind of effort.
Once there was a time I might have been worth it, but that was before I’d released all of the Black Technology research into the world. I was obsolete technology, twenty years old, with my current cybernetics limited in their ability to be upgraded. It wasn’t like they could replace my CPU any more than you could replace a human’s brain and still call them the same person. I could upload my consciousness into a new body, but that wouldn’t be me. Someone might want revenge on me, but I couldn’t think of anyone. Most of the people I’d wronged were long dead or had suffered much greater tragedies in the Big Smokey eruption than anything I’d done to them as an assassin.
Then there was Claire.
“May I ask why you’re so interested in this?” I asked.
“Excuse me?” Claire asked.
“The last we saw of one another, you’d just found out Marissa had been lying to about your ex-husband being killed by Karma Corp,” I said, remembering the events in Las Vegas’s arcology. “I’d have thought you would have dumped her by then.”
“You’d think,” Claire said. “But it’s not like I haven’t lied, cheated, and murdered in the service of HOPE. When I started working for her ten years ago, I was full of anger and idealism. I joined the United States military to help people. I saw the massive work camps, the overcrowded refugee centers, and the casual corruption at every level. HOPE promised we could change things for the better. I was willing to do everything I could to force the corporations to do the right thing. It was the only thing I could do to honor the dead.”
“So, you have to believe it’s all worth it?” I asked. “That’s called a sunken cost fallacy.”
“I wouldn’t be so dedicated if I hadn’t seen the other side of the equation with you,” Claire said, looking sick as we flew over Chicago’s skyline. “Black Technology combined with the excesses of the super-super rich is sickening. Every party is an orgy, and the drugs flow like water. I’ve seen everything from gladiator fights to people genetically engineering unicorns for their daughter’s fourth birthday party. Did you know a man actually successfully had a brain transplant in Sweden? They put a seventy-seven-year-old man in a twenty-two-year-old’s body. Only afterward did they find out the latter wasn’t willing but had been sold by his family.”
I knew the story was an urban legend. Transplants like that had been possible for years, but they were being kept under wraps lest everyone start to believe immortality was possible. Overpopulation hadn’t been solved by the Big Smokey eruption, and there had been a second baby boom afterward. Resources were stretched thin enough. Humanity couldn’t survive if the rich refused to die while the poor kept expanding.
“Yeah,” I heard about that. “I admit, it’s not easy being on the wealthy side of the rich/poor divide if you have a conscience. It’s better than being on the poor side, though.”
“So that’s why I’m with HOPE,” Claire said. “It’s why we need to decrypt this data and find Marissa, so we can keep holding the bad guys to account. It’s the only law they know.”
“Except you’re lying about not having the data decrypted.”
“What?”
“Please, I do this for a living. There’s more to this than you’re telling. What is in your mnemonic drive? Really?”
“You know I don’t know—”
“Bullshit,” I said, annoyed she thought she could play me like this. “I don’t buy for a second you don’t have every bit of data scrutinized. I also don’t buy for a second your story about not releasing the data until you have a killing blow. You would have torn down Karma Corp at the first opportunity and nothing Marissa could have told you would keep you from doing that.”
“You’re wrong,” Claire said, looking like someone had socked her in the gut. “There was one thing I knew, though. One thing Marissa had showed me before getting the entire data file assembled.”
“What did she show you?” I closed my eyes as I tried to make sense of this story. This story was making no sense, but I didn’t want to push too hard. Why would Marissa have the encryption and not Claire, even if it was some kind of practice to make sure no one could go to the presses with the data themselves? Wouldn�
�t the reverse make more sense? I understood why no single HOPE member, even Marissa, could access the Black Dossier themselves. They could make themselves fantastically rich or expose all the secrets at once—rendering it useless to the company as a whole. Secrets only had as much value as the inverse of how many people knew them. Also, how the fuck had A found out about it? Who in HOPE had told him about the Black Dossier? Because it sure as hell wasn’t me.
“Not so much what secret as what kind of secret,” Claire said. “Did you know Bill Gates saved six million lives by giving away twenty-eight billion dollars before his death in the eruption? HOPE has saved roughly ten million every year since we acquired the data at the outpost. All because Karma Corp donates their surplus production to us in exchange for not releasing what we have.”
I paused. “I know how the system works. What blackmail material was she holding over Karma Corp? Is it related to nanotherapy? You can…well, no, you can’t trust me. You can depend on me, though.”
Claire was silent.
“Claire…” I trailed off.
“Nanotherapy doesn’t work,” Claire said, biting her lip.
“What?” I asked. I hadn’t expected that despite everything we’d been through. That was something stupid even for Karma Corp’s corrupt business practices.
We flew past an enormous holographic billboard of a geisha popping a pill. The irony didn’t escape me. “Exactly what I said. Karma Corp killed thousands of people for three years testing their variations on medicinal nanotechnology and got approximately jack and shit from it. This despite the fact it’s been selling the dream of using it to prop up their medical division from bankruptcy for the past decade.”
“There’s been progress.”
“Not at all,” Claire said. “What progress they have made with nanotechnology has been eliminating what doesn’t work, but creating what does is miniscule. It’s like announcing the creation of a plane without figuring out how to get an object to stay in flight. Nanotechnology is pretty much where it was when your father invented the first micro-disassemblers in ninety-nine.”
“Too bad I killed him,” I said, grimacing. “But Zheng Wei is announcing they’ve managed to crack it.”
Agent G: Assassin Page 7
