Bel had to raise her voice above the increasing din. Regents were barking orders and demanding answers from Bull Idwicki. Fresh waves of Security people were pouring into the room. Someone threw a jacket across the grisly upper half of Rory Connor’s body.
“We can’t be sure he escaped,” Bel said, speaking as much to reassure Nick as convince herself. But even as the words left her mouth, she acknowledged a sickening feeling that Gillian was right, that they’d been outwitted.
Sixty-One
“Cheers,” Bel said, refilling their glasses with the expensive champagne Nick had bought weeks ago in preparation for tonight. He was sitting beside her on the sofa in her condo. The lights were dimmed, which seemed a better way to listen to the raucous celebration outside.
The street party was going full blast. Shouting and whooping filtered up from below. The noise was oddly muffled by the pollution, making it seem as if it was originating from kilometers away. Fireworks occasionally streamed past the windows as did vibrant laselumed holos. One 3D display showed a band of unarmed proto-humans being attacked by other proto-humans with clubs. Bel recalled that the scene was from some famous historic movie she’d learned about in elementary school. But she couldn’t place the film’s title.
The new year was in its infancy, 2097 literally minutes old. Bel had downed her first glass of champagne at the stroke of midnight. From here on out she’d slow things down, take delicate sips, make it last until she and Nick finally had the discussion.
“Cheers,” he muttered, clinking his flute against hers, his usual enthusiasm absent. He’d been glum since arriving and the champagne didn’t appear to be alleviating his mood. But she wasn’t about to let him wiggle out of his promise to have a serious, solution-oriented talk about her desire for a baby. First, however, she needed to put him in a better frame of mind.
“Now listen to me,” she said, aware that her tone sounded eerily like the one used by her mother when she was a child in need of guidance. “Today was a big win for us. We exposed the mole and forced an E-Tech sleeper to reveal himself.”
“But Codrus got away.”
“Yes, but it’s still a victory. E-Tech will have the opportunity to become a better organization without an Ash Ock Paratwa and a highly placed servitor poisoning the waters.”
“Biwannabe,” Nick corrected. “You heard Rory’s final words. One of those dyed-in-the-wool nutbags if ever there was one.”
Bel nodded. And one whose potential existence we should have taken more seriously.
The rumors about a highly placed sleeper agent embedded in E-Tech had never been confirmed. That such an individual might interfere with their plan to expose Codrus had been discussed. Still, they hadn’t seriously considered that he might be a biwannabe ready to do anything, even sacrifice his own life, for the Paratwa cause.
Bel accepted her own negligence, a lack of imagination in considering such a possibility. But Nick wasn’t letting himself off the hook so easily. He insisted on bearing the full burden of responsibility over the failure.
“I should have known,” he said with a scowl, beating himself up with the same phrase he’d been uttering since the Ash Ock tway had eluded them a mere fifteen hours ago.
“We did our best,” she countered.
“I not only missed the sleeper but I didn’t anticipate that Codrus would be carrying toys.”
The toys he referred to were the QKI used to override the elevator lockdown and some unknown type of jammer that had scrambled all surveillance monitoring within half a kilometer. The devices had enabled the tway to slip out a back door and vanish into Philly-sec’s dense morning crowds.
“It happened,” Bel said firmly. “We need to accept that reality and move on.”
But thinking back to the event and realizing how close she’d come to dying prompted the question that had been troubling her all day.
“I wonder why Codrus didn’t kill me?”
“I don’t know. A triumph of intellect over emotions, I suppose. The Royals don’t do things in haste, as least when it can be avoided. He probably realized that he needed to confer with Sappho and Theophrastus before taking such drastic action.”
Bel nodded. The explanation made sense. Still, and despite her brave stance, she suspected that the image of the smiling Ash Ock pressing the barrel of a gun between her eyes would haunt her for a long time.
Nick swallowed the rest of his second glass of champagne. She waited until he was halfway through another refill before shifting the discussion. But she didn’t plunge headlong into the dreaded B word. Instead, she eased toward it by first mentioning the fate of Olinda and her infant.
“Three weeks must be the shortest tenure on record for a director’s chief assistant,” she said nonchalantly.
“Yeah. Can’t say I’m disappointed the woman’s gone.”
“I know. Not the biggest fan of servitors and all that.”
“After today, even less so. Still, I guess I should appreciate what you did for her. I suppose she does deserve a fresh start for helping us.”
And that she would get. Bel had used her clout as E-Tech director to arrange for Olinda and Ektora to be granted Colonial citizenship. Earlier this morning, well before the start of the board meeting, mother and baby had left Earth on a shuttle bound for the cylinders.
There was no guarantee they’d be safe from retribution up there. Still, the Colonies were the one place where they’d have a real shot at living free, far from the easy reach of assassins and their followers, far from the ubiquitous shadow of the Ash Ock.
“Off into the wild blue yonder,” Nick said, raising his flute. “To Olinda Shining. May she find peace and happiness and… oh hell, whatever she’s looking for.”
He gulped the rest of his champagne. Bel figured it was time to trot out the B word.
“I’m glad she and her baby are safe. Which reminds me of something. Is there a baby in our future?”
“Nice segue,” he said with a grin.
“I’ve been practicing.”
“OK. Pour me another one and let’s do it.”
Bel filled his flute only halfway this time. She didn’t want him totally soused for the discussion.
She began by telling Nick how much she cared for him and the deep pleasure she would get out of knowing that he was the father. She offered a cascading series of compliments revolving around his genetic suitability for parenthood because of his brilliance. She’d just gotten to the part where she’d reiterated her willingness to take full responsibility for the child when Nick interrupted by raising his hand.
“Sorry,” he said. “I have a call.”
He went quiet as he listened to the voice in his head through his attaboy. Bel inwardly seethed at the interruption but forced patience.
“It’s Gillian,” Nick explained. “He claims it’s important. He wants to talk to both of us. Turn on your monitor.”
Bel had shut down her drudge for the night, oddly feeling that discussing a baby was too intimate for the ears of a mech. She waved at the remote on the sofa arm and the largest wall screen brightened.
Gillian appeared to be in a tavern. The wide-angled cam view was from a slightly elevated angle and showed him perched casually on a stool in the foreground. The long bar behind him, as well as tables off to the side, were occupied by people in outlandish outfits. Many of them wore morph masks.
At the bar, two women in blond Marilyn Monroe wigs and skintight white dresses flanked a smaller man in the ruffled shirt, dress coat and top hat of a Victorian dandy. An Albert Einstein lookalike sat nearby, hunched over and slurping phosphorescent pink liquid through a straw.
A foreground table featured four individuals of indeterminate sex masquerading as contemporary political figures in business suits. The foreheads of their morph masks were riddled with fake bullet holes. Chunky brown fluids leaked from the faux wounds and flowed down their cheeks to be recaptured by other holes on the edges of their mouths. The fluids were perpetually
recycled.
They were protesters with the hugely popular “Shit for Brains” movement. SfBers believed that all governments and corporations were corrupt and incapable of solving the world’s problems. But Bel saw the protesters as just another cynical contributor to apocalyptic despair.
Music was playing in the background, a popular destructorap melody for scream synthesizer. The overlapping chatter of multiple conversations could be heard above the song, as well as some muffled “Cheers!” for the new year. A chorus of voices shouted “Happy fuckin’ tomorrow!” and followed it with a round of crazed laughter.
Gillian gazed up at the lens. Either he’d planted the camera or had tapped into the tavern’s surveillance system.
“Where are you?” Nick demanded.
“Murphy’s Enigma Club.”
Bel had heard of the place. It was an infamous tavern in the heart of Boston-sec. For reasons that eluded her, the club required its patrons to don Halloween outfits year-round. Gillian seemed to be an exception to the rule. He was garbed in regular attire, a maroon jacket and black pants.
“What are you doing there?” Nick asked.
“Monitoring the ambiance.”
A young man uniformed in the gray-blue trousers, jacket and mailbag of a vintage American postal worker suddenly lurched in front of the camera, momentarily blocking their view of Gillian. Clearly inebriated, the man raised his glass and shouted to no one in particular, “Send priority mail and you won’t fail!”
Chuckling, he staggered out of camera range to continue on his drunken route. Gillian, with a cryptic smile, returned his attention to Bel and Nick.
“Do you know why people really celebrate the new year?” he asked.
“They want to look forward to a brighter tomorrow,” Bel suggested.
“Half true. But they just as badly want to escape a bleak yesterday. It’s always the dialectic that’s important, the interpretation of opposites. The coalescence of past and future, the blending of what was with what is yet to be.”
“Yeah, that’s deep,” Nick said, injecting a note of boredom at Gillian’s philosophical ramblings. “Now, again, what the hell are you doing there and what’s so urgent you need to call us tonight?”
“Serving the spirit of the dialectic.”
Gillian almost had to shout the words to be heard above a sudden eruption of hooting and hollering from a table of women garbed like medieval peasants. One of them had pulled her dress down to her waist, revealing herself to be a quadtitty, a genejob with two vertically aligned nipples on each breast.
“The team has a training session scheduled tomorrow morning,” Nick reminded Gillian. “If I were you, I’d make it an early night.”
“We cancelled the session.”
“We?”
“The vote was four-zip. The team came up with a better idea.”
Bel was getting a bad feeling. “I thought people had to wear a costume to be let into Murphy’s?”
“I have a costume. I came as part of Humanity’s Avenger.”
Gillian reached down between his feet and retrieved his tac helmet.
“What are you doing?” Nick muttered.
He answered with a grin and donned the helmet. Only his eyes remained visible through the open faceplate.
Nick stood up, agitated.
“I extended an invitation,” Gillian said. “Our guest should arrive shortly.”
Bel grimaced. “You challenged Yiska.”
“Enjoy the show. The surveillance system has been reconfigured to follow the action. Not as intimate as seeing it through our helmet cams. But I figured it’s always good to expand your worldview, perceive things from a new perspective.”
Gillian’s faceplate snapped into position, hiding his eyes.
“No!” Nick shouted. “Don’t do this! Get out of there now!”
Gillian didn’t answer. He must have cut his mic feed.
Behind him, one of the caricatured politicians removed his SfB mask. It was Slag. Bel glimpsed his face for only a moment before he too donned a tac helmet.
“Goddammit!” Nick growled.
Bel wondered why Gillian would choose such a public venue for the confrontation, put so many innocent bystanders at risk. She grasped the reason even as she framed the question.
He doesn’t care if anyone gets hurt.
Gillian and Slag got off their barstools and ambled across the crowded tavern. The view switched to another cam, a wider overhead angle. The two of them jostled amid the tightly spaced tables, past celebrants representing a dazzling potpourri of cultures.
Two men in Aztec warrior regalia seductively fondled one another’s colorful feathered headpieces. A big-boned man in the uniform and helmet of a vintage American football team sat alone, nursing a beer pump. A woman in sunglasses, sequined blouse and cowgirl miniskirt chattered away, her words directed at the lanky cowboy on the other side of the table who was studiously ignoring her.
A helmeted motorcyclist garbed head-to-toe in black leather stood up. The footballer rose at the same moment and fell in step with him. The two men followed Slag. Bel realized the footballer was Stone Face and the man in leather, Basher.
The four of them reached the end of the tables, a wide vacant area fronting a stage set up with antique pianos and a drum set. The stage was empty. Murphy’s New Year’s Eve crowd apparently had no interest in live music and dancing.
Gillian separated himself from the three soldiers, who clustered together into an outward-facing triangular configuration. The team stood rock still, as if waiting for someone.
Seconds later, two men appeared from the left. They had short hair and were garbed in early twenty-first century army combat fatigues. Bel didn’t recognize their faces but her attention flashed to their hands. The men were tapping the index and middle fingers of their left hands against the legs of their camo pants.
“Yiska,” she whispered.
She felt her body tensing. It was as if she was there in the tavern, experiencing what was about to happen.
In unison, the two men deactivated their facial wipes. The taller tway grew a side ponytail. His companion’s hair withered away until he was bald. A layer of fake skin decoalesced, revealing his albino essence. None of the other patrons seemed to take notice of the transformation brewing in front of the stage.
Over the past year, Bel had continued experiencing vengeful dreams and fantasies directed at the murderous Shonto Prong that had decimated E-Tech headquarters. Now that Gillian and the team were actually face to face with the assassin, those feelings intensified. She not only looked forward to Yiska’s death but hoped that the assassin would suffer terribly.
Yet even as those base urges stormed up from the depths, her other fantasy took shape. Equally potent but draped in positivity, it sprouted from a more mature place, from that distant horizon of peace and comradeship where humanity transcended its worst qualities, where people united with one another to showcase their finer virtues. As Yiska and Humanity’s Avenger approached one another, those two contradictory forces struggled within Bel, fighting for her allegiance, perhaps fighting for her very soul.
The spirit of the dialectic.
In that moment, she felt she understood something fundamental about Gillian, about what motivated him to seek out and challenge ever more lethal opponents. It wasn’t simply the idea of wanting to hunt bigger game. Deep down, in some twisted, repressed part of his subconscious, he’d come to believe that by going up against the most extreme assassins, someday he would confront one with the power to restore what he’d lost.
A binary that would make him whole again…
…or kill him in the process.
Sixty-Two
Gillian studied Yiska’s tways, Ponytail and Albino. As always at this pivotal moment before the firefight’s explosive energies were unleashed, before his entire world compressed into a purified state of speed and violence, he was gripped by a strange calmness totally at odds with what was about to erupt. He
knew that experiencing such serenity was one of the qualities that made him a formidable opponent. That and his skill with the Cohe wand.
The tways didn’t speak. Ponytail focused on Gillian and Albino on the soldiers. Yiska would be experiencing a similar feeling of tranquility, a similar confidence.
The assassin not only enjoyed a superior level of abilities among its own breed, it had the advantage of having been able to study the numerous videos of the team’s triumphs that saturated the net. The Shonto Prong would be aware of the most subtle intricacies of Humanity’s Avenger’s combat technique: attack postures, calculated feints, a thousand other micro-elements that constituted the profile of an adversary. Yiska would also know that the three soldiers were the lesser part of the equation, that they existed mainly to reinforce Gillian’s unique skill set.
Gillian and Nick had perpetually modified Nick’s original sim for a combat quartet in preparation for each breed they’d fought. Still, it was important not to lose sight of the fact that they’d never faced an assassin like Yiska. Here was a Paratwa who not only possessed superior abilities but remained immune to Nick’s tracking program.
And beyond that, there were those ethereal and indefinable qualities about the assassin, those things that simply didn’t make sense, that defied Gillian’s every effort to comprehend. Somehow, Yiska had transcended the inherent limitations of his breed.
Compounding the confusion was the fact that over the past several years, the assassin had radically shifted from exquisitely stylized pinpoint assassinations to deranged mass annihilations. Yet neither Yiska’s transcendence into Shonto Prong 2.0 nor his Pa-to-Ma transition had impacted a perfectionist’s discipline and control.
Gillian didn’t like that their opponent was shrouded in such mystery. Still, it had little impact on his motivation for instigating this battle. Yiska would be the most challenging foe the team had ever faced.
The notion excited him in a way that remained unfathomable.
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