“That’s specific,” he muttered and shrugged. “I don’t know, but for the last little while, you’ve looked…more real when I see your avatar bouncing around.”
“I’ve looked like this since you got the upgrade,” Chief pointed out. “I guess the fun in the Animus really knocked some things around in there, huh? I haven’t noticed, to be honest. It’s usually a pigsty anyway.”
“No, I mean…before, I could see you but it was obvious you were artificial—like a high-end video game model—but now you look… Well, you still look weird since you’re a floating orb with a cyber eye, but more like you could actually be something I would bump into.” He raised a hand and swiped it through the EI.
“Hey,” Chief shouted and floated back while he shifted from a bright green color to an angry red. “Watch your hands, buddy.”
“I only wanted to check. Maybe I am being weird about it,” he said with another shrug.
“You think?” The red faded a little.
“You also sound cleaner. Are you sure Laurie didn’t beef you up or something while I was out?” Kaiden asked.
“Nah. Your mind wasn’t in the best condition to do anything like that. Maybe when the device was reactivated, it smoothed things out. You haven’t exactly allowed the professor to do all the tune-ups he wanted to do.”
“Ironically, I think I’m more willing to do that now, considering we don’t really know what could have happened with you or the device. Laurie rooting around my brain seems preferable to simply letting remnants of the Animus and Gin’s virus possibly float around.” He tapped his fingers on the bench and stared at the stars. He obviously couldn’t see it from where he was, but the station Gin had been cremated at floated around somewhere up there. “I still think about that bastard now and then. Hopefully, he’ll disappear eventually.”
Chief adjusted his color from red to a light-blue and drifted closer. “Don’t sweat it, buddy. He didn’t get ya, and you’ll be ready for the next one.”
“Damn straight,” Kaiden vowed. He glanced at a few carriers that had arrived at virtually the same time. “Finally.” He sighed, stood quickly, and adjusted his backpack before he snagged the two bags on the floor. “At least I’m traveling relatively light this year.”
“I still say you should have brought your gear with you. If you plan to take gigs, it’s better to have it close by so you can suit up and go.”
“After Gin’s infiltration, security is almost draconian this year. Even with Wolfson’s intervention, there’s no way I can bring in rank-five armor, a rifle with disintegration capabilities, and a pistol with rapid-fire lasers.”
“Do you still have that static pistol from year one?” Chief asked.
“Yeah, but I won’t be able to carry it anymore. Wolfson has it locked up and I can only use it at the range and in training.”
“Bummer.”
“It’s all right.” A carrier pulled up beside him and the loading areas opened. He tossed his bags in and made his way to the door, which slid open as he arrived. He displayed his Nexus ID and the driver nodded. Kaiden took a seat in the back and shifted into a comfortable position while a few others boarded. “I got that pistol when I was an initiate because I was paranoid and had never known a life where I didn’t constantly have to be ready to fight.”
“Do you feel differently now? Even considering everything that happened?”
“Yeah. I know I have people looking out for me now.” Rain pattered on the window and he watched the drops slide across the glass. “And if there is anyone else gunning for me now, I’ll be ready for them. That’s why I came back.”
Juro Sasaki stepped out of his transport and one of his bodyguards volunteered to carry his case. When he held a hand up to decline the offer, the guard nodded and stepped in front of him to lead. He took one last look at the ship and checked his reflection in the glass before it flew off. His hair was still combed back and his dark suit meticulously aligned. He ran his fingers along a crease on his purple shirt and nodded as he tweaked it into place. The ship moved away at the same moment that he looked around him.
He and his three guards made their way to the center of the platform. One of his colleagues, Jensen Pope, walked to the same destination from the opposite platform wearing a crisp dark-blue dress shirt with grey slacks. He broke into an affable smile when he noticed Sasaki.
“Good to see you stop by, Juro.” He punctuated the greeting with a swift nod. “I missed you at the last meeting.”
Sasaki closed his eyes briefly. There wasn’t necessarily anything wrong with the councilman’s attitude, but the laid-back demeanor Jensen displayed always unsettled him. This was important work—work that needed to remain a secret. Having such a potentially loose-lipped person on the organization’s council was a problem in his eyes.
Then again, he had been selected over Zubanz, and he at least was alive. In that respect, he showed he was worth their leader’s commendation.
“Hello, Jensen,” he responded after only the barest hesitation. He, his guards, and Jensen stood in the center of the platform. “I see you have no retainers.”
“Unlike most of you, I don’t really have much of a profile. I’m not important or powerful enough to have people after my head quite yet,” he replied and slid his hands into his pockets as he took a step closer into the circle. “I’ll have to get a recommendation from you when the time comes.”
The scanner wasn’t visible, at least to the naked eye, but Juro could almost swear he could feel it float over him whenever he was this close to the other man. “Considering the recent developments, I would suggest you hire some protection as soon as you are able to. We are not as deep in the shadows as we once were.”
“Are you talking about that Gin thing?” Jensen asked. He drew one hand out of his pocket and clicked an emblem on his lapel. “He might have babbled somewhat, but really, who will believe a crazy?”
Juro followed his companion’s movements as the man pinched a pin on the neck of his suit. A light buzz was instantly silenced. “There are already people who suspect there is something amiss.”
“Aren’t conspiracies like that always?”
He scoffed. “We operate under the guise of a conspiracy that has been known about for years and uphold their values as well as their name. Not all conspiracies might be true, but they start from somewhere.” The platform they were on began to shift and they adjusted to accommodate the motion. “And if Gin did talk, he potentially told someone who was already looking into us.”
“If everyone is so paranoid about that, shouldn’t we simply kill them? It’s not like Dario isn’t always looking for an excuse,” Jensen pointed out as the hiss of locks opening sounded around them and the platform slowly descended into the tower below.
“That might be a possibility, but for now, we can continue to move unobstructed as we currently do,” he stated as the platform lowered and the panel above them closed. “It is easier to move as a ghost.”
“You can’t touch anything, though,” his colleague countered with a shrug. “Unless you’re talking about a different kind of ghost.”
He gave him a sideways glance. “I believe you are taking the metaphor too literally.”
“I might be. It would help if you didn’t always speak that way, you know,” he retorted. His smartass backtalk was another reason Juro didn’t care for him.
The platform reached its destination and the doors opened into an opulent room with several sculptures bathed in artificial light. Various terminals surrounded an enormous screen and a large table stood in the middle of the room. Jensen stepped in quickly but Juro raised a hand and pointed silently to direct his guards to take their positions. They nodded and obeyed, and he walked toward the table while he made a quick scrutiny to determine who was already present.
Damyen Orlov, the headmaster of the Russian Ark academy, waited quietly near one of the sculptures. Yadira Lobo, one of Mexico’s delegates to the World Council was currently in disc
ussion with Xiulan Lin, the CEO of a Chinese medicinal company. Jensen walked over to greet Nolan Pocock, one of the generals in the UEA. Six of them had already arrived, which meant that four were either on their way or would participate remotely.
Over and above those four was the leader of the Arbiter Organization. Juro hadn’t seen him in person in months and he had hoped he would deign to appear today. It seemed a valid expectation considering this meeting heralded the start of their upcoming plans. Unfortunately, it appeared to not be enough to entice him, so he would be the one to chair the meeting.
He placed his case on the table and took his seat. “I shall begin this meeting shortly,” he announced crisply.
“Even without the others?” Jensen broke away from his conversation with Nolan to look at the chairman. “If you’ll simply send them a message with the details of our discussion, can I sign myself up for the list?”
“They will attend the meeting through hologram and have been warned,” Juro stated coldly and looked around the room. “Our leader is not fond of those who do not take their place here seriously. I’m sure you have all heard what happened to Ms. Sharrow?”
Jensen grimaced. “Yeah, Adela…”
“She shouldn’t have spent all that time primping and used it to advance the mission instead,” Yadira said dismissively. “I can understand why she’s gone.”
“We lost a lot of funding, though,” Damyen said as he took his seat. “Her trust still helps with funding the academy, however.”
“Her finances still further our goals,” Xiulan stated. “The leader made sure of that before he sent Dario to terminate her.” She looked at Nolan. “Speaking of finances, I would like to know how mine was spent. Have you secured the party?”
Before the general could speak, Juro held a hand up. “That is one of the matters we are here to discuss. Now, if you would all take your seats, please, we can proceed.”
The group gathered at the table and he glanced up when three holograms appeared. Chana Rosenfeld, Oliver Solos, and Qiana Karimi materialized in their seats.
“Good of you to join us,” he greeted with the smallest trace of disapproval at their tardiness. “That only leaves—”
The door to the room opened once again and Thomas Thorne entered hurriedly. He adjusted his oculars and bowed. “My apologies for being late.”
“You are right on time, Professor Thorne. We are about to begin.”
Thomas nodded and moved quickly to his chair. “I have exciting news on my project. We have made a great breakthrough—”
“We will hear it soon enough.” Juro interrupted the flustered professor before he could launch into his explanation. “For now, I wish to begin by speaking about recent events.”
“A pointless exercise,” Qiana huffed. “We are all well aware of the current issues.”
“It’s standard, Mrs. Karimi,” Oliver countered. “It’s merely so we are all aware of what the leader is looking into.”
“Where is he, then?” she asked. “My time is precious—all of ours is. I’m sure I could get more done working on my end than attending these pointless meetings. Not to mention the day to day affairs in my company.”
“How has the buyout progressed?” Juro asked, leading her off her possible protest and into a more meaningful focus.
“The sale completed last night, but I still have many legal issues to—”
“And you know the sale wouldn’t have been as smooth without his help,” he said and effectively cut her off.
She fell silent and looked at the chairman after a moment of thought. “I am aware of this, yes.”
“That wasn’t meant as an insult, but I wanted to point out that we all benefit from his help. The least we can do in appreciation is to acquiesce to his wishes and act professionally.”
“The end goal is more important than all our individual problems anyway,” Damyen added.
“Do you have the Animus system updated at your academy?” Nolan asked.
The headmaster nodded and smiled widely. “We will be on an equal footing with the Nexus academy before too long. Once we have the updates and the incentives in place, I’m sure we will be the premiere Ark academy in only a few years.”
“So the fallback plan is proceeding as planned. Very good.” Juro nodded.
“Fallback plan?” Karimi asked. “I was led to believe this was instrumental to the mission.”
“It is important, yes, but the plans have shifted. Which is the point of this meeting.”
“Not so trivial, eh, Karimi?” Jensen teased and received a glare in response.
“No need for pettiness, Jensen,” Chana scolded.
Juro focused on Nolan. “I want to begin by asking about the progress of your assignment, General.”
“It is well underway,” he stated and glanced at the screen. “Activate…open project Y2K.”
“Named after the fear of system failure from the late nineteen-hundreds,” Xiulan mused thoughtfully. “Cute.”
“I’m glad you approve,” he said with a nod as details of the mission appeared on the screen. “To answer your question from before, Ms. Liu, I have indeed procured the party. In fact, they are already on their way to the target.”
“I still think we could have gone with someone else,” Oliver related. “With as much money as we side-lined for this mission, we could have simply bought a mercenary company.”
“Yes, very stealthy,” Jensen said and rolled his eyes dramatically.
“Stealth isn’t much of an option here,” Nolan reasoned and changed the screen to an outline of a building. “Ramses Corporation’s building has top-notch internal security systems. In addition, the device is secured within its own protected room and container. In the time allotted, there is no conceivable way we would be able to find the correct team to circumvent the security and still be able to access the room to steal the device unseen.”
“Which is why we went with the EX-10,” Chana continued. “They have proven themselves effective at wet work and infiltration. Also, they have a reputation for stealing new tech around the system and on Earth and selling it on the black and underground markets.”
“Because the last time we had hired help, it went so well,” Damyen muttered and glared at his colleagues.
“Don’t look at me,” Oliver snapped. “I didn’t vote to go with Zubanz’s scheme.”
“Admittedly, I gave the okay because I knew he felt bad about being passed over,” Jensen confessed.
“You were the one who took his potential position,” Yadira noted, “and he merely schemed to look good so he could usurp it.”
“And look how that turned out.” Jensen chuckled.
“You expected him to die?” Damyen asked.
“What makes you think that?” he responded. “I honestly thought it had a chance, but I’ll admit that I also expected Gin would simply take the money and run.”
“A failure for one of us, even a lower ranking member, is a failure for the organization,” Karimi stated.
“I’ll make a note of it, but don’t act like I was the one who sabotaged it,” Jensen muttered.
“Moving past this prattle, when can we expect them to begin, Nolan?” Juro asked.
The general changed the screen to show the interior of a ship with ten people in dark armor aboard. “I’ve kept a watch on our contractors. They will arrive on Earth in a day, after which they will prepare and initiate the mission on Friday evening.”
“Very good, we shall reconvene then to watch it play out,” the chairman said with a decisive nod. “Once they have the device, we shall be one step closer—even if it is a small one—to preparing for the invasion.”
Chapter Two
Laurie moved from the mainframe terminal to one of the servers where he opened a holoscreen to look within and scan the code. His gaze darted around the screen and glanced repeatedly at the mainframe terminal. His purpose was to triple-check the integration process of the Animus pods and smooth it with the
necessary adjustments. Unfortunately, he had to go through this entire bay of servers and check on the BREW OS. Granted, it wasn’t so much its own OS at the moment as it was the Frankenstein-like replacement it had been for the last few months.
Cyra and the others had all concurred that it was fixed and his plan had worked. It hadn’t honestly been his plan—it was the last ditch effort of a desperate man—but it happened to work. Still, despite its apparent success, he had always known there would be more to do once the BREW had combined with the Animus.
The problem was that he hadn’t yet worked out what it actually all meant. The Animus now functioned faster than ever before. Those who had gone into the system in trials over the last few weeks reported quicker syncing and more realistic sensations—even if their descriptions were as inane as “the smell of the dust is heavier.” If anything, given the magnitude of the original problem, they were lucky it worked at all. The so-called upgrades were merely a bonus. But were they? Had he not paid enough attention to the deeper parts of the Animus? Was there another virus lurking there, waiting for the opportune moment? Had he allowed the creation of a back door into their mainframe?
When he’d first begun his investigation, he had expected to complete it in a couple of weeks at the most. He was confident in both his abilities and his system, but as he worked methodically through the various components, what should have been pride in the remarkable capability of his creation became paranoia. Perversely, it was initiated and fueled by the simple truth that he found nothing out of place— in fact, it was vastly improved. There should have at least been traces of junk code or peculiar commands, nothing serious but enough to dust away and clean up. An entire system didn’t simply get infested and actually work better than ever after desperate technical triage.
The doors to the mainframe room opened but Laurie didn’t look up. He had a good idea who it was. Either Cyra coming to check up on him or—
Animus Boxed Set 2 (Books 5-8): Revenant, Glitch, Master, Infiltration Page 45
