by J. N. Chaney
The StateSec constable walked in the room carrying two cups of coffee. “I’ve got that dataspike for you, just give us a few minutes to get the paperwork taken care of.”
She handed me my coffee, and I took a sip in spite of myself. The warmth helped a little with my discomfort, but I needed to act on what Andrea had told me. She might be a spy working for the most secretive intelligence agency in the Sol Federation, but she had never steered me wrong so far. If she said I needed to get out of there right away, I probably did.
“A unit is on its way to that address you gave us.” Ornstein didn’t sit down. She seemed to be watching me suspiciously, as if she knew something had happened but she didn’t know what. “We need to complete your debriefing now. I have a lot of questions.”
I shook my head. “They’ll have to wait. I have to get back to Arbiter Headquarters right away.”
“What are you talking about?”
She frowned. Me leaving suddenly was obviously not part of her agenda.
“Something has come up.”
“How could anything have come up? You don’t have your dataspike.”
I started for the door, but she stepped in front of me and blocked my way. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re an important witness, you can’t just walk out like this!”
She was acting indignant, but I thought I saw something else in her face too. Was it fear that I might get away?
I showed her my official face, my move along, there’s nothing to see here face.
“Thank you for your assistance, on behalf of the Arbiter Force.” My voice was firm and just polite enough. “You can send any questions you have to Arbiter Headquarters, and I’ll answer them by video at my earliest convenience. I’m leaving now.”
Her jaw tightened, and for just a moment, I thought she was going to spit in my face. To a StateSec officer, an Arbiter throwing his weight around is like red to a bull. She bit her lip as if to control her temper, then stepped aside to let me pass. She turned away as she did so and set her coffee down on the interview table.
“I want you to know, I’ll be filing a formal complaint.” Her voice was cold. “And you can forget about that dataspike. The paperwork won’t be ready in time, since you’re in such a hurry.”
A formal complaint would do absolutely nothing, since my Sol Federation rank trumped her North Atlantic States rank every day of the week. Unless war broke out between us, of course.
I headed for the door, trying to keep her in my peripheral vision. She stepped back and out of view, which put my senses on red alert. Luckily for me, I saw the shadow of her right hand as it slipped down to her holster. I wheeled out of the line of fire as she drew and aimed, pointing her gun where my head had just been a moment before.
When Andrea’s right, she’s right.
I let go of my coffee cup as I spun around, and it hit the floor and burst spectacularly. Ornstein’s weapon ID lock disengaged as she raised her arm, a distinctive electronic whining sound. I dropped to one knee as I grabbed her wrist with my left hand and punched her in the stomach with my right.
I grunted in pain, having forgotten all about my broken clavicle in the heat of the moment. The punch was weak, which was only to be expected under the circumstances. Ornstein’s eyes narrowed quizzically, as if to say is that all you can do?
With my relatively weak grip on her right arm, she was still able to bend her elbow. She began using it to pound on my eye over and over again in an attempt to dislodge me. Red explosions of pain disrupted my vision, but I held on with all the strength I had left and drove my bodyweight forward, hooking her legs with my own as I did.
She stumbled back and hit the edge of the table. It flipped over, hit her on the side of the head, and drove both of us into the puddle of hot coffee on the floor below. She struggled furiously, trying to bring her gun to bear. If she managed it, she could say I attacked her, and that she’d had to shoot me in self-defense. The killing of an Arbiter by a StateSec officer would be a problem for everyone, but she could smooth it over as long as I wasn’t around to contradict her. Which was probably the plan in the first place.
I couldn’t afford to let go of her arm, and she couldn’t afford to let me keep it. Without her gun, she wasn’t strong enough to overpower me. Still, it was hard for me to fight at all with one hand occupied, and I was injured on top of that. She thrashed and wriggled, trying to twist her arm out. When that didn’t work, she balled her left hand into a fist and started pounding on me. This ended up being one of the worst beatings I ever took in my life.
Her target seemed to have been my face, but with the way the two of us were struggling she didn’t always manage to hit where she was aiming. Half the time, she landed somewhere closer to my broken collarbone instead. Every time she hit me, I screamed out loud. If anyone heard from outside the door, they didn’t intervene. After Ornstein had pummeled me about two dozen times, I figured it out. The room was soundproof, because StateSec liked the luxury of being able to interrogate people however they saw fit. Their taste for brutality might have gotten me killed, but instead it saved me from being piled on by a dozen StateSec officers eager to protect Ornstein from the big bad Arbiter.
As she kept pounding on me repeatedly with a vicious hammer-fist, my opponent decided to offer some commentary. “You dumb piece of shit, why couldn’t you just have died in the fucking river. This wasn’t… supposed to be… my. Fucking. Job!”
With virtually every word driven home by her punches, and with me yelling in pain almost every time she hit me, that was only a paraphrase. She was pretty clear about wishing I had died sooner, though.
My grip was weakening, and it was starting to become clear that she would regain control of her weapon soon. Then all she had to do was stick the barrel under my chin, and she could spray my brains out the back of my head and make up whatever cover story seemed to fit.
I needed to end this fight, and I needed to do it as quickly as possible. Ideally without actually killing a StateSec officer, since that could lead to something nobody was ready for. If I let go of her wrist, she would only shoot me. I had to do this without letting go, and there was only one realistic way to do that.
Like everything else I’d experienced since leaving Sophie’s house—hell, since leaving my own house—this was going to be horrible. But it had to be done, and every moment I put it off was a moment closer to getting murdered. So I rolled her over, yelling twice as loud as I’d yelled before, and yanked her weapon arm across her body to put pressure on her throat.
Now that I was behind her, it was a hell of a lot easier to control her movements. I dug my heels in over her legs and forced her head against her own arm with slow and steady pressure. As I got the choke in, I pulled her arm in the other direction. She made a sound like “ggghhh,” and I leaned in and whispered in her ear. “I didn’t die on the bridge because I’m a Sol Arbiter. Don’t ever forget that.”
That was a bit unkind, but the whole speech about how I ought to be dead had ruined my mood. Fucking StateSec, I thought, as she finally went limp and stopped fighting. I cautiously eased the choke off, careful in case she was playing possum.
The level of pain I was in was unbelievable. I wanted fistfuls of opiates, or whatever else I could get my hands on, but it would have to wait. Ornstein was unconscious, but she wouldn’t stay that way for long. I had interrupted the blood flow to her brain, and it had shut down for a minute. I hadn’t cut off the air supply, a much more dangerous type of chokehold. When she recovered, she’d be just as eager to kill me as before. Probably more so.
I spit out some blood as I stood up, and it sprayed across the table like some kind of vivid art project. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like Ornstein was right. I really ought to be dead, but since I wasn’t, I had no intention of just lying down and letting them finish what they’d started. Certainly not for these StateSec jokers. I reached down and rifled through Ornstein’s pockets, found the dataspike they were suppo
sedly going to give me, and fished it out.
Then I heard Andrea Capanelli’s voice.
“You need to get moving, Barrett. You have fifteen seconds.” It took me a moment to realize she was talking through my dataspike. “Fifteen seconds?”
“Twelve now. Go, go, go!”
I slipped out the door, careful not to open it wide enough for anyone to see Ornstein’s unconscious body before I closed it again. When I stepped out, there was someone yelling at the desk sergeant and gesticulating wildly with both hands at once. “I need to speak to your boss, RIGHT NOW! I want a refund, do you hear me?”
A refund for what? I had no time to think about it. I glanced toward the front door, but there were two men in black suits stepping in and looking around like they were searching for something. Was this why I only had fifteen seconds?
“Not the front, Tycho!” It was Andrea’s voice again. “Don’t use the front door. Take the fire exit!”
I looked to my right, saw a door marked Alarm Will Sound, and started toward it as quickly and inconspicuously as possible. I made it almost all the way there before someone said “Hey,” and instead of responding I kept right on going. The sign was right. When I pushed on the door, a buzzer started sounding and a red light started flashing.
Someone yelled, “HEY, YOU!” but then I was through, and a car was waiting there with an open door. Andrea was inside, seemingly unfazed by the sight of my swollen and purple face or the blood and spit running down my lip. She leaned across the seat and gestured impatiently for me to join her.
“Get in, Tycho! What took you so long?”
9
I closed my eyes and drifted off for a bit as we sped away, and Andrea just let me rest. When I opened my eyes again, I had the sense that a lot of time had passed, although I couldn’t be sure. The screen was blank, so I had no idea what was going on outside or where we were.
I rubbed my eyes, which still wanted to stay shut. “We got away?”
Andrea frowned. “Got away?”
“StateSec didn’t chase after us? I choked out Ornstein.”
“I thought you might have to do something drastic, that’s why I got the car. But no. We made it out without any problems. Did she try to do something?”
“More than try. I only managed to avoid getting shot in the back of the head because of your warning, but after that she beat me so bad, I’m surprised you even recognized me.”
“Yeah, you don’t look great. No offense, Tycho. Do you want some painkillers?”
“Yes, please.”
She opened a compartment and fished out some packets of pink and green pills. “Don’t take more than two unless you want to go back to sleep.”
“Thanks.” I took the pills. “I need to stay awake; I’ve got to get this dataspike set up. It didn’t even show me you were speaking earlier.”
I brought up a screen in my field of vision, accessed my contacts list through retinal-scan identification, and started syncing the new dataspike with my list.
Andrea looked concerned. “What are you doing right now?”
“Just syncing my contacts. When I’m done, I’ll get on the Arbiter network and reach out to my superiors.”
She bit her lip. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”
She didn’t say why, but it didn’t take me long to work it out for myself. My old dataspike had been compromised, and I couldn’t be sure it had happened at the Huxley Industries campus. The Arbiter network was secure, but it’s hard to secure anything against an internal threat.
“Do you really think it goes that far? That HQ itself is compromised?”
“I can’t be sure. But think about it, Tycho. When the hit team made its move, did you get any help at all? From anyone?”
“No,” I replied, a little pointedly. “Not from anyone.” I didn’t know if she’d been there when the Augmen came after me, but she couldn’t have been far away, or she would never have been able to find me at the StateSec station. Of all the times she could have picked to rescue me, she chose the one that left me almost dead.
She squirmed a little but didn’t clarify. “You called for help, right?”
“Yeah, I tried. All I got was an error message, something about how I should shelter in place. They never got there, or if they did it was after I was already in the bay.”
“They did get there eventually, but just for the cleanup. That can’t just be Ornstein; the order to delay the response must have come from higher up.”
“I just assumed it was incompetence. You know, it’s StateSec.”
She shook her head. “I know that amuses you, but prejudices keep people from seeing reality. Like that movie on Venus—remember Arbitrate This? People want to see Arbiters that way because it makes them feel less powerless. It’s the same with this. StateSec isn’t incompetent. If they didn’t help you, it’s because they decided not to.”
The same thing could be said about you, I thought, but kept it to myself. The fact was, Andrea Capanelli had saved my life. She just hadn’t done it as soon as I would have liked her to, and I didn’t know why.
“So, what are you saying? This is some kind of huge conspiracy?”
“Can you think of any other explanation? I jacked into some of the video footage of the attack. Those weren’t back-alley thugs. You were attacked by a team of Augmen.”
“Yeah. I noticed. Like when I shot one in the hand and he didn’t even flinch. He seemed to react less than you did when the same thing happened to you.”
With her prosthetic limbs, Andrea had more in common with my attackers than I wanted to think about.
She looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Every model is different. And some are more… high-end than others. That’s what I’m saying. These guys must have cost a lot of money. On top of that, whoever hired them somehow pulled enough strings to keep StateSec away from the scene for a good forty-five minutes. Then there’s Ornstein. She must have been on their payroll.”
“Just because they were able to corrupt some StateSec people doesn’t mean they could get to anyone on the Arbiter Force.” My voice sounded testy.
Andrea rolled her eyes. “You’re being dense! Of course, they could get to them. They could find someone somewhere, maybe with a payoff or maybe with kompromat. It wouldn’t take much. They really just need someone willing to help them insert some malicious code. Doesn’t take a second and gets them in the system. You’re not a bunch of saints, you know.”
“You’re right.” I sighed. “I’m being ridiculous. It’s been a hell of a day, and I’m really feeling the rivalry thing right now. They tried to kill me.”
“From the look of your face, they almost succeeded. If I knew she could do that I would have stayed in there with you, but I figured you could handle her yourself as long as you had a warning.”
That was the first thing Andrea had said so far to even suggest she could have been a bit more helpful.
“Well, I did eventually. Handle her, I mean. But she has one vicious hammer-fist.”
“I’m surprised you let her live.”
“I had to. Tensions between the Sol Federation and the North Atlantic States are already high. I couldn’t exactly kill a StateSec officer.”
“She didn’t extend that courtesy to you. Anyway, as I was saying, it’s better to stay out of the Arbiter network. At least for now. Any information you submit to Arbitration Command could tell your enemies how much you know, maybe even what you plan to do. StateSec obviously has complicit elements, so it stands to reason that the Arbiters may as well.”
I didn’t like her analysis, but I didn’t feel like I could contradict it either. Then I remembered something else. I had requested a welfare check on Sophie Anderson, but what if the people they sent to check on her were in on the conspiracy?
“Oh, shit.”
“What?” asked Andrea.
“Oh, shit! We have to get to Sophie!”
“Gabriel Anderson’s widow? Your platonic girlfriend?”
How much did Andrea know about my life?
“Gabe’s widow, yes. I was on my way back from her house when the hit team found me. They could try to get to me through her!”
“We can’t go there right now.”
“The hell we can’t, Andrea! This is Sophie; I can’t just run away when she’s in danger!”
“You don’t really know that she’s in danger. And if she isn’t, then going there now will put her in danger. Ever since that attack, you’re playing for much higher stakes. You need to understand that. Anyone you reach out to from this point forward becomes a target.”
I must have seemed half crazy, but Andrea just looked me straight in the eyes and didn’t look away. She wasn’t going to budge. This car was going wherever she had already told it to go, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“I’m calling Byron.”
“Tycho, I—”
I didn’t listen to her. I called up Byron on my dataspike, closed my eyes, and leaned back in my seat. The image of his face appeared in front of me, with that slightly judgmental frown I had come to expect.
“Barrett. What can I do for you?”
“I need to ask a favor.”
“Okay.”
Not anything you need, buddy. Not I’ve got your back. Just okay. He was a far cry from Gabriel, but he was all I had.
“Do you remember my old partner, Gabriel Anderson?”
“Of course.” He was looking at me like I was stupid. Why would he forget Gabe? He’d read the file.
“I need you to swing by and check on his widow, Sophie.”
His frown deepened, and the subtle but real sense that he was judging me deepened with it. “And this is something you can’t do because…?”
“I just need you to trust me, Byron. I can’t get there right now, and I’m worried about her, okay?” The tough thing about trust is that you can never just assume it, and I was drawing on an account that we had never really deposited into. We had only been working together for a short while, and we didn’t get along all that well in the first place.
