The Operator

by Kim Harrison

  “That’s where you have it wrong.” Bill’s face was empty of emotion. “Peri would never die for me,” he said. “It’s the thrill she’d die for. The chance to outwit the odds. She’s perfect.”

  Michael jiggled his foot impatiently. He knew the feeling, but he didn’t like that she might share it with him, that she might understand. It was his feeling, not hers. “A perfect pain in the ass,” he muttered.

  Jerked back to the present, Bill curled his lip. Motions rough, he took another swallow from the bottle. “She’s perfect,” he said again. “And if she’d just accelerate herself and realize I’ve turned her into a goddess, she’d come home.”

  She has the accelerator on her? Michael froze at the sudden realization. That little nugget of information hadn’t reached him. “She has it?” he said as Bill set the bottle down with a sharp click. “Has she used it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was terse and distracted, and Michael settled himself deeper into the cushions, not liking the uncertainty.

  “Stay away from her.” Bill’s expression was empty, and for the first time, Michael couldn’t read what was going on behind his eyes. “She’ll kill you if she feels threatened. I’ll accelerate you myself when we know it’s safe. You understand me? You’re all I have left, Michael, and I’m not going to risk you. Not on this. Let Peri bear the danger.”

  Kill him? Doubtful, but he’d seen the med wing where they kept the people they’d tried the accelerator on, retired drafters or those with the ability to draft but too far gone to be reintroduced to society. It was deathly silent and ugly. “I hear you,” he said, and Bill moved his bulk from behind the desk, the grace of it reminding Michael that Bill could still break men’s heads like boards. His past wasn’t as pretty as he pretended, and if he kept pushing, he’d remind Michael of that.

  “Do you?” Bill leaned over Michael, almost pinning him to the chair.

  Michael looked up, pushing the older man out of his space with a single finger. “I just said I heard you. Why am I here? I’ve already been debriefed.”

  Bill’s lips twitched at the hesitant knock at the door, pushing himself up and away from Michael. “Come!” he shouted, then turned back to Michael. “I’m glad we have this understanding,” he threatened.

  I understand I’m the only drafter you got left, old man, and that you gave the accelerator to an AWOL. Michael looked at the door as it opened, but it was only Jack, and he settled back, dismissing him. The blond man had once been Opti’s star anchor, but he was little more than an accessory now, skilled but useless without a drafter to glom onto. “If you think I’m taking Jack as my new anchor, you’re sorely mistaken,” Michael intoned, reaching for his phone as a message came in. It was that woman, telling him to get bent, and he smiled as he tucked his phone away. Worth a shot.

  “Hey, hi,” Jack said, scanning the room before taking the chair beside Michael’s, scooting it an inch or two away before settling down. “The feeling is mutual, Bill. There’s no way in hell I’m going to pair up with Michael.”

  “Good.” Bill poured a second shot glass and pushed it across the desk to Jack. “That’s not why I called you in.”

  “Then why?” Michael asked, his mind only half on the conversation. Bill gave the accelerator to Reed? Let her walk away with it? No, this crap about wanting her back as a test subject was just that.

  “Because Jack knows what Peri might do next and what resources she might have that I don’t know about.” Bill sipped his scotch. “Jack was her anchor for three years. He ingrained most of her hangups, knows her better than I do. If anyone can second-guess her, it’s him, and we need to keep tabs on her as this runs its course.”

  Michael propped his ankle on a knee, using the pain from the knife jab to center himself. “Why am I here, then?”

  “You’re here because you, Michael, are not my best despite your ego-ridden belief, and you need to better yourself. She brought you down with about six skip-hops. When we’re done here, Jack will take you down to a training floor and walk you through it. Listen and learn.”

  “Fuck you, old man.” Michael glowered at them, putting his foot back on the floor. Bill wasn’t trying to bring her in. He was seducing her back, toying with her, giving her little bread crumbs so when she did return, she’d think it was her idea. Bill had no intention of accelerating him. And he wouldn’t until she was dead and he had no choice.

  Oblivious to his thoughts, Bill chuckled when Jack leaned to take a shot glass and clink it with Bill’s. “So . . . do you think she’ll accelerate herself?” Bill asked, sitting back against his desk to make the wood creak. “She’s got a week’s supply of Evocane with her.”

  Jack sipped the old scotch, clearly appreciating it. “Self-administer? Not a chance,” he said, cradling the glass to his middle as if it was his soul. “The woman is scared to remember, scared to forget. And she doesn’t trust you.”

  Bill scrubbed a hand across his clean-shaven face, his focus distant. “But she will. Once she calms down, has a good think, and realizes what I’ve given her, she’ll come in.”

  Michael unrolled his phone and checked his news feed. Not if I find her first.

  “Maybe, but you shouldn’t have let her take an entire week of Evocane,” Jack said.

  “You gave it to her, or did she take it?” Michael asked, satisfied when Bill pointed his shot glass at him to be quiet. If I kill her outright, Bill will be so pissed he’ll cut me loose. He’d threatened to do it before when Michael had “accidentally” put a student in a coma during finals. The bastard had been ruining the curve. But that didn’t mean Peri wasn’t going to die.

  “You don’t think she’s going to dose herself once she feels safe?” Bill asked Jack.

  Jack shifted uneasily. “She’s going to want someone with her to put a clamp on her conditioning against being alone. I’m guessing she’ll try for Silas.”

  “Who?” Michael said, not liking that they were for all intents ignoring him.

  “Dr. Silas Denier,” Bill echoed, and Michael recalled the bear of a man who had won the genetic lottery to have brains and brawn in equal, substantial measure. He was the one responsible for developing the slick suits they had all trained in, and Michael’s lip twitched, remembering the cramping paralysis that simulated a gunshot.

  “He’s not an agent,” Michael said, tapping his knee to make it pulse with pain in time with his thoughts. Kill Peri. Not my fault. Become a god. “He’s not even an anchor.”

  “Technically, no, but he can defragment jumps,” Jack said. “And Peri trusts him. But it’s his research that will attract her. With the right lab and access to the proper tools—”

  “You think he might try to pick the Evocane apart?” Bill interrupted. “Not likely. It took Helen’s tech rats five years to put it together.”

  Jack nodded, setting a leg upon his knee. “She doesn’t know that, and until that hope is eliminated, she won’t come in. Tracking her down will be iffy, but we don’t have to. Silas will need a substantial lab to even look at it. There are maybe a handful in the U.S. with the resources he’s going to want. We find the lab, we find Silas, and then we find Peri.”

  Bill was nodding, leaving Michael almost choking in disbelief. Why were they even trying to get her back? She was uncooperative, impulsive, and not a team player. She’d been gone a year, and her ghost was still better thought of than him. “And then what?” Michael said, hiding his bitterness. “Wipe her back to nothing and start again?”

  Jack leaned forward, his enthusiasm laughable. “Bill, she doesn’t need to be wiped. She wants to come home. You know it. That’s why you chose her for the live trial. She just needs to realize what you’re offering her.”

  “I chose her because Helen insisted I use my best drafter, and Peri is that plus expendable,” Bill said, glancing at Michael as he slipped his bulk from the desk, but the lie was obvious to Michael. Taking the heavy bottle back to the drawer, Bill shoved it closed with his foot.
“That, and the woman has been without an anchor for almost a year. She has the skills to work independently despite our efforts to prevent it. The only thing she’s scared of is herself.”

  “I can work independently,” Michael said, his gut tightening when Bill gave him a weary glance and sat down behind his desk and tapped his laptop awake. Son of a bitch. Cowardly old men who couldn’t think past what worked before. He didn’t even want an anchor.

  “As it stands, she has both Evocane and the accelerator.” Bill’s brow furrowed as he scanned the screen. “And you say she won’t self-administer. I can’t wait the months it might take for Denier to realize how complex it is.”

  “You can always just dart her with it, can’t you?” Jack said.

  Bill shook his head, eyes still on the screen. “The accelerator has to be given intravenously, and only when there’s Evocane already in her system to buffer it.”

  Good to know, Michael thought, resolving to go down and quiz the nurses in the med wing. A little wine, a little food, a little sedative . . .

  “Not the accelerator but the Evocane,” Jack said, and Bill looked up, clearly intrigued. “I mean, it’s addictive even without the accelerator, so just get her hooked on it and she’ll come in once the cravings kick in.”

  “That has merit,” Bill said, and Michael steepled his fingers, imagining how pissed Peri would be if Bill forced all Evocane’s sins on her without any of the accelerator’s lofty heights.

  “She’s not as good as you think,” Michael said coldly.

  Bill pulled his chair closer to the desk, peering at the screen as he carefully one-finger-typed something in. “She is twice the drafter you’ll ever be,” Bill muttered, and Jack came around the desk so he could see the data scrolling across the holoscreen from the front. “And it’s not because you don’t have talent, Michael. You could be the best if you would apply yourself. Show a little trust.”

  It was like that, then, he thought, seething. Angry, he stood.

  Bill looked up. “Where are you going? I want you to work with Jack this afternoon on developing those skip-hops.”

  Michael forced his expression smooth. “Later. I need to soak my knee.” Striding to the door, he stiff-armed it open and paced into the hallway, headed for medical.

  Fuck Bill. He’d find Peri, take the accelerator for himself, then kill her twice. With the accelerator in him, he’d finally have the pleasure of remembering both her deaths.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  “So I says to him, I spent thirty-five bucks on it. It’s chic, not slutty!” Jack said in a high falsetto. “He’s such a low-Q.”

  Peri’s attention dropped from the high ceiling to the woman Jack was commenting on, her miniskirt too high, her gum snapping, and her pink hair teased out to look like the sacrificial XX chromosome in a horror flick. Her friend was just as nonconforming, but in leather. Who knew what had brought them to the Georgia Aquarium. Not the fish, certainly.

  Peri’s stomach gave a pang, and she followed the scent of fried food across the wide expanse to the second-floor cafeteria. She hadn’t eaten on the Detroit/Atlanta express, wanting to stretch Bill’s cash as far as she could. “Am I clear or not?” she asked.

  Jack snorted, his light stubble and the not-really-there cup dangling between his fingers making him look casually alluring. “Babe, I only know what you know. It’s your decision.”

  “Stop calling me that.” Tossing the aquarium’s information pamphlet into the recycle bin, she headed for the tunnel that led to the big tank. Twenty minutes in the great room/lobby watching the casual stance of the uniformed security and listening to Jack make up conversations for the patrons had left her reasonably sure she was unremarked upon and unnoticed.

  According to the pamphlet, the big tank was the size of a football field, the viewing panes almost two feet thick to hold back the massive pressure. It was impressive, and she wondered how Silas had wrangled his way into working here. He had a unique skill set, but tending fish wasn’t among them. Maybe he’d lied on his résumé, having the smarts to back up whatever claim he’d made.

  High above her at the lobby ceiling, a flight of holographic rays swam in a majestic array, garnering an awe-filled Oooo from the incoming patrons. Peri tried to blend in as she entered the tunnel leading to the large exhibit. There weren’t many single people here, and she’d come in with a school group, playing the part of a parent chaperone until passing the metal detectors.

  Her empty stomach pinched as she dodged around two women with empty strollers. Schoolkids with aquarium encounter tablets darted back and forth, scanning the codes at each enclosure as if they were on an Easter egg hunt. She sent her fingertips to brush the vial and syringes still tucked behind her shirt to reassure herself they were there. The thought to take the accelerant rose like black guilt. To recall her drafts would be freeing, but remembering both timelines would lead to paranoia and then death. That a drug could prevent that sounded too good to be true.

  But then again, I am already hallucinating, she thought, giving Jack a sidelong glance as he casually walked beside her and dropped his not-real cup into the trash in passing.

  The tunnel to the observation theater had occasional bright spotlights and small tanks designed to soothe the claustrophobic, but it was the odd clear light that pulled her around the last curve, not the chance to see whale sharks. According to the pamphlet, “Dr. Sley” was available at noon on the weekends to answer questions. Silas knew as much about fish as she did, which was zero. It was probably the psychology degree that had gotten him the job. Being able to profile a room quickly, then having the physique to be useful in a security situation, was not to be overlooked in a room with over six million gallons of water behind the window. He was good with the public, too, she remembered, focus blurring when the sound of excited kids became louder.

  She paused as she rounded the last curve, her eyes rising to the huge observation window. Children talked and shouted, their high voices soaked up by carpet and acoustic panels as they darted back and forth before the three stories of glass fronting her like a movie screen. Table-size fish swam sedately in a tank so long that it was hard to find the back, but it was the light that stunned her to stillness, and she stood, lips parted as a memory tried to surface.

  Clear and sliding into the ultra blue, the light cascaded over her, the harsh yellow filtered by tons of water to let the softer shades and wavelengths express themselves. It was like nothing else, as unforgettable as it was impossible to describe, and her pulse hammered. She’d seen this before, and when a flight of rays flew before the window, she choked.

  Images flooded her of warm water, the taste of rubber in her lungs, the feel of it between her teeth. There’d been someone with her. Jack? she wondered, feeling him silent at her elbow, not knowing. The emotions tied to the memory were that of love.

  Had loved him? she thought, blinking fast as she looked away, unable to bear it. If she had, it had been a lie. Jack loved what she gave him, not who she was. That wasn’t love at all.

  “No, they’re too big to be eaten,” a familiar voice said, and her attention dropped to Silas standing at the bottom of the auditorium-like room, his bulk looking small against the backdrop of blues and grays. “The whale sharks are fed shrimp and fish from a boat. I suppose if they got hungry enough they might try, but fish that small wouldn’t be put in the tank to begin with.”

  “Why are you still here?” Peri said, irate at Jack’s presence, then even more angry for Silas having put him there. The illusion was gone when she lifted her chin, and she breathed easier.

  Ten-year-olds clustered about Silas to make his iron-pumping physique look even more blocky. His waist was trim, though, and his black hair had a wash-and-wear style that suited him. Seeing him in a uniform-like polo shirt with a name tag and blah black pants made her smile, knowing the man liked his clothes classically trendy and unique. The polyester weave pulled a little across his shoulders, and her smile grew. Sh
e always felt small beside him.

  “Who has another question?” Silas asked, and her pulse jumped.

  Arms over her middle, Peri called out, “Have you ever swum with the rays, Dr. Sley?”

  His head snapped up, shock and pleasure crossing him. But it vanished as he glanced at the security cameras in the high corners. “Yes I have,” he said, and Peri flushed, both embarrassed and relieved he wasn’t angry about how they had last parted.

  “Thank you, everyone, for your questions,” Silas said, his professional voice louder now. “Jose on my right can answer any others you might have. Enjoy your day at the Georgia Aquarium, and don’t forget to go up to the second level for a top-down view of the tank.”

  Her chest hurt as he fended off a few more questions and made his way over, eyes never leaving hers. Last night, she’d read a few more pages of her diary before guilt had closed the binding on her thoughts concerning a long-ago afternoon at the range. Short version: Allen’s cluster sucked, but Silas had opened up to three-word sentences. Her growing attraction to him had been obvious, almost as obvious as his pain at Summer’s death. Seeing her own hopeful expectation against his indifference had been depressing. So was knowing how the story was going to end.

  Forcing a smile at him now, she sent her fingers to the journal jammed into her back waistband like an evil touchstone, needing it even as she dreaded it. Silas had always told her emotion was never lost like memories, but what she’d read felt as if it had belonged to someone else, someone unrealistically ambitious and naive. Vain. Had I really been that oblivious?

  “Peri Reed,” Silas said warmly when he was close enough, his hand on her elbow surreptitiously leading her out of the camera’s easy view. Head tilted, he eyed her a telling second or two, clearly wanting to give her a hug but hesitating.