Exin Ex Machina

by G. S. Jennsen

  “What if NOIR is using street-bought routines—ones someone else has bought as well?”

  “They’re not. NOIR’s routines are all written in-house. There’s nothing close to them on the street. So here’s the uncomfortable question—what is NOIR mixed up in that relates to your corporate records, Advisor?”

  He’d asked for that one. He did his best to sound casual. “Maybe they’ve become aware of the augment virutox. It is on the black market, which is their purview. Maybe they think my company is behind it, since we manufacture the augment.”

  Adlai arched an eyebrow. “It’s possible I was wrong the other day—you might make a decent investigator after all. It’s not a bad theory.”

  He wasn’t a detective, merely a man with inside information, but Dashiel accepted the compliment anyway. “Thank you.”

  “I call it like I see it. Any more shitstorms you want to stir up today?”

  “Not at the moment. Just get on this virutox and contact me as soon as you find out anything that might point to its source.” With a jerk of his head he turned and left. He needed to get back to the office. Potential threats were multiplying, and he had a long list of security precautions to implement on his productions lines and on more personal affairs.

  But first, he owed it to Nika to check in on her friend while he was in the building, because he had the power to do it. And because he badly wanted to retain her favor.

  The detention wing entry security dyne beeped and stared at him blankly. “Parc Eshett. Adjudicated guilty of all crimes yesterday at 2630 APT and sentenced to incarceration pending retirement and reinitialization per the applicable provisions of the Charter. Transported to Zaidam Bastille at 2940 APT yesterday.”

  Dashiel frowned. The Justice Division was a highly efficient organization, but rarely was it this efficient. “Please confirm.”

  “Parc Eshett status confirmed. Arrived at Zaidam Bastille at 0712 APT this morning. Can I answer any additional queries?”

  Well, fuck.

  The dyne wasn’t going to be of any further help, so he spun and exited the detention wing lobby.

  Another complication to muddy the waters. If Justice was straining under the weight of a spike in criminal activity as Adlai claimed, did this explain them fast-tracking a seemingly straightforward burglary case? Simply to open up a free cell?

  As with so much else that happened in Nika’s orbit, he had to consider the possibility that something more nefarious was afoot.

  He despised not having answers—one of many reasons why Nika’s disappearance had nearly destroyed him. But for now, his options were limited to kicking every nest he could find and scrupulously examining what scurried out. That dangers could lie in doing so returned as a non-zero possibility, but he ignored the warning. He wasn’t cowering from danger any longer.

  He sent a message to Adlai telling the Advisor where to find one of the affected prisoners and strongly urging a petition for immediate stay of the retirement sentence pending a review of the case. Then he pinged Nika and gave her the bad news.

  A string of colorful expletives opened her response, followed by several seconds of silence, then a street address.

  36

  * * *

  Dashiel stood on the sidewalk at the designated intersection, hands jammed in the pockets of tailored charcoal pants, eyes scanning the passing pedestrians. A matching jacket revealed glimpses of a delft blue shirt crafted of brushed velvet beneath it.

  He’d see her in a few seconds, but Nika used the intervening time to study him without pretense. The clothes were perfectly styled, the hair perfectly groomed. They combined to create an attractive enough profile, but if she hadn’t known him, she would’ve dismissed him with a quick glance. He’d have been instantly written off as a member of the sheltered elite who never questioned the tightening noose of rules and restrictions emanating from the Guides, because they benefited from the system.

  He was exactly that, of course, possibly excepting the refusal to question. But she’d glimpsed a tiny piece of the man behind the public image, and the truth was far more nuanced. She’d seen him be a first-class asshole, but she’d also heard him laugh freely and watched his eyes darken with true pain. She’d seen him panic from desperation; she’d felt him feel.

  Obviously she needed to reexamine her premises when it came to snap-judging people she didn’t know…but it would have to wait, because a crisis had just escalated to an emergency.

  His gaze alighted on her a few meters before she reached him, and his default expression—serious and aloof, with a passing hint of disdain—brightened into a warm smile. “Where did you come from?”

  “You’ll see.” She took his hand and urged him down the sidewalk, back the way she’d come. “Thank you for checking on Parc’s status. I never imagined Justice would move so fast. I thought we had more time.”

  “It caught me by surprise as well.” He stared at the plain doorway they’d stopped in front of. “Where are we going?”

  “Can you…I don’t know, take off your jacket? You look like you’re on the way to an embassy dinner, and trust me, you’re not.”

  “Now why, I wonder, did you choose that specific example? You could have said an ‘art exhibition’ or a ‘CEO roundtable’ or a dozen other events. But you said ‘embassy dinner.’ ”

  The burden of him wanting her to be someone she was not pressed in on her once again—a constriction in her chest, with feelers of despair testing the edges of her consciousness. “The idea of my life as a diplomat has been on my mind, which shouldn’t be a surprise.”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to imply…” he rubbed at his jaw “…it was merely…noteworthy.”

  “It wasn’t intended to be.” She took his jacket from him and folded it over her arm. Stars, he looked more handsome without the jacket, what with the soft material of his shirt shifting across the muscles of his chest in a seductive dance of—she blinked and focused on entering the passcode for the door. “Are you ready to meet the rebellion?”

  The Floor was in its usual state of semi-controlled bedlam, but they earned several interested glances as she hurriedly ushered Dashiel through the entryway and toward the stairs. It was the clothes, for certain; even without the jacket he still looked like he was on his way to an embassy dinner. Or an art exhibition.

  They made it to the stairs unmolested, but she’d have to answer questions later.

  His eyes took in everything, darting from one feature to the next while his expression remained deceptively impassive. The decor bore little resemblance to the elegant, refined accoutrements of his flat, though in her opinion the Chalet had oodles more character.

  The door to her room slid open as they approached, earning a puzzled look from her companion. “Your door isn’t passcoded?”

  “We have an open-door policy here.”

  “You mean you don’t have any privacy. The people downstairs—do they sleep there, out in the open?”

  “Some of them do, sometimes. But, no, there are dorm rooms upstairs in the other wing. Those don’t have much free space, however, which is why everyone is downstairs. If someone wants privacy, all they need to do is focus-sphere themselves. Everyone respects it.

  “As for me…” she closed the door behind them, tossed his jacket on the table, then went over to the panel in the wall and keyed it open “…I have privacy for what matters.”

  He followed her inside the small alcove, though she knew he’d taken in the entirety of her room while crossing its length. His gaze swept across the equipment. “You’re keeping your own backups. So what happened before doesn’t happen again.”

  “Everyone here keeps their own backups, as well as storing copies in our data vault. Nobody’s about to use a government bank or a private trust company—given my recent experience, with good reason. No, my setup goes well beyond that. Multiple redundant copies of both memory and psyche backups are transmitted over a secure nex pathway to remote stores in various locat
ions. Each location is programmed to conduct regular kernel-level check-ins and is protected by triggers and other fail safes. If I’m erased again, it won’t be for long.”

  “I’m glad you’re taking precautions.”

  She leaned against the door frame. “Opinion so far? I suspect it’s not much like my old—wait, did I have my own place? Or did we live together?” She had difficulty envisioning herself permanently inhabiting his well-appointed but spartan, impersonal flat. Though it did have a damn fine view.

  “Yes, and yes. We kept separate flats, and we both traveled a lot, you even more than I. But when we were both on Mirai, it was a rare night we spent apart.”

  She nodded vaguely. The few sparse sentences implied untold depths of additional information—a life lived in all its details and nuances. It felt as if it were too much for her to contemplate. “So, opinion?”

  He peered back into her room and arched an eyebrow. “It is…different from your old place.”

  “Rather smaller, I expect. Fewer windows. Fewer everything.”

  “All true. But it’s got you, so….” He closed the meager distance between them, dropped his hands to her hips and kissed her.

  Every nerve ending in her body lit fire, as much at his touch as at the memories of the night-and-morning the kiss evoked. The alluring promise of what had preceded and could follow….

  She fidgeted in his embrace and pulled back from the kiss. “Perrin and Joaquim will be here any second. I already pinged them asking them to meet here.”

  “Mm-hmm.” His lips grazed along her jawline, his murmur vibrating against her eardrum.

  “Open-door policy?”

  He took a reluctant step away from her. “Right.”

  She nudged him back into the room, then quickly closed and locked the inner panel as a blush of shame washed over her. Perrin and Joaquim both knew about the alcove’s existence and its purpose—and both respected her need for it to be private. Would they understand why she’d shown it to him hardly a day after she’d met him, while they were denied entry? Best not to find out.

  “Now, you should realize—”

  The door opened and Perrin sauntered in. Her hair had reverted to the closest thing that counted as ‘normal’ for her, a razor-straight strawberry blond style accented by bangs and a headband.

  She walked straight up to Dashiel and thrust out her hand. “Hi. I’m Perrin Benvenit. You must be Dashiel.”

  He donned an impressively charming smile and accepted her hand. “It’s a pleasure.”

  She winked over at Nika. “Oh, the pleasure is all mine, trust me. Well, technically the pleasure’s all Nika’s, but—”

  Joaquim took half a step inside and halted. “You brought him here? Have you lost every trace of your sanity?”

  Dashiel dipped his chin at Joaquim. “You have my word that I will not reveal your secrets, nor will I endanger this place or any of you. And even were I lying, I don’t have the slightest idea where ‘here’ is or what the passcode for your d-gate is.” He took a step forward and offered a hand. “Dashiel Ridani.”

  Joaquim delivered a glare to Nika over Dashiel’s shoulder. “Watch your pillow talk.” Then he grudgingly accepted the hand for the briefest instant. “Joaquim Lacese. What can you do for us to help us get our friend back?”

  Nika let out a silent breath of relief and nudged Dashiel toward the bed. He took the hint and perched on its edge, and she sat next to him. Perrin plopped down on the couch, but Joaquim rested stiffly against the wall and crossed his arms expectantly.

  Dashiel leaned forward to drape his elbows on his thighs. “I’ve requested a hold be placed on the retirement sentence. Justice Advisor Weiss has instituted a review of all cases where the limb augment is involved, so the request should be granted as a matter of procedure. At that point, all movement stops until the review is complete.

  “Justice analysts are studying the virutox, and if they find what we all expect they will, at a minimum the aggravating factors in your friend’s case should be nulled, which will negate the retirement portion of the sentence. Now, I’ll make the case for further reductions in your friend’s sentence, as well the sentences of anyone else affected by the virutox, but I can’t guarantee how successful I’ll be.”

  “His name’s Parc.”

  Dashiel pursed his lips. “Of course it is. My apologies. I didn’t get the opportunity to meet him before he was ushered off to Zaidam.”

  Perrin jumped in. “You’ll like him, I’m sure. He’s such a sweet, fun guy, not to mention an astounding diverger. Nika, have you considered checking with Spen—” Joaquim shot her a warning look “—our contact inside Justice and seeing what he can tell us?”

  She shook her head. “He’s helped us once on this case already, and I don’t want to abuse his goodwill. Besides, the odds are low that he’ll have any more details than what Dashiel has learned.”

  Joaquim scowled in Dashiel’s direction. “You’re putting a lot of faith in his associates at Justice.”

  “I recognize that you probably don’t care for the organization very much, but Justice’s mission is an honorable one, as are most of the people working there. Regardless, the rules are crystal clear in cases such as this, and Justice will follow them. Trust the system—” He cut himself off. “I assume that was the wrong thing to say in this room.”

  “Yep.” Joaquim pushed off the wall. “Fuck your system, and fuck your friends at Justice. I say we break Parc out.”

  Dashiel laughed dryly. “Of Zaidam? No one breaks into or out of Zaidam.”

  “When was the last time someone tried?”

  “I assume a long time ago, because it’s impossible.”

  Perrin leaned over the back of the couch to wince at Joaquim. “He’s not wrong, Jo. We can’t pull off something that big. We’ll fail, our bodies will fail, and Justice won’t be in a hurry to go hunting for our backups.”

  Joaquim gave Perrin a pained look and turned to her. “Nika?”

  She steepled her hands beneath her chin. “We’d need a ship, and not any old ship. A veritable warship, highly armed and armored. Spacesuits, explosives—more powerful ones than we have on hand. Then we—”

  Dashiel laid a hand on her arm. “This plan you’re working up to? It’s insane and certain to result in all of you getting retired, assuming you aren’t atomized in space. And Perrin’s right—if you get atomized, Justice won’t make it a priority to regen you. Maybe they’ll get around to it in a year or two, at which point they will promptly ship you back to Zaidam.”

  “Don’t be so quick to dismiss it. She’s pulled off crazier.”

  Dashiel’s gaze jumped from Joaquim to Perrin, who nodded, then to her. She shrugged weakly.

  A shadow passed across his eyes. Oh, look, he’d just remembered he no longer knew her quite so well as he’d thought. Surprise!

  He studied his hands briefly. “There might—might—be another way. But it would mean….” He squared his shoulders. “Please, take no offense from it, but I’d prefer to discuss this with Nika in private first.”

  In the simex fictions, this was where she spoke up and said something like, ‘Anything you can say to me, you can say to them.’ But she didn’t. Not because she didn’t trust her friends, but because she thought maybe she did trust Dashiel. Also, she’d yanked him way out of his comfort zone, and without much warning, so when he asked for a concession she could give, she should. It was only polite.

  So instead she nodded. “The ongoing Justice review process means we have a bit of breathing room. We need to take it, as it greatly increases our odds of success, or at least survival. Joaquim, quietly look into what acquiring a militarized ship will involve. I shudder to think of the cost, because there can’t be many of those flying around, but look into it anyway.

  “Perrin, reach out to Roqe. They don’t stock space-rated gear, but they should be able to give you the name of a trustworthy seller of it. We’ll reconvene this evening, hopefully with news that the
progress Justice is making means we won’t have to try anything crazy. Sound good?”

  “Grant has ships.”

  She rolled her eyes, mostly to cover for the fact that she hadn’t even considered the idea…because she didn’t want to think about Grant right now. “Scientific and recreational ships, none of which come equipped with the kind of weapons and armor we’d need. Look into it, okay?”

  “I’m on it.” Joaquim spun and left.

  Perrin frowned at the vacated doorway before standing and turning to them. “I, too, am ‘on it.’ Despite the dire circumstances, it was wonderful to meet you, Dashiel.”

  “And you, Ms. Benvenit.”

  Silence hung in the air for several seconds after Perrin departed. Finally Dashiel glanced at the door, which Perrin had mercifully closed on her way out. “Am I in a love triangle I don’t know about?”

  Her brow knotted up. Did he mean Grant? Nobody really thought…then she realized. “You mean Joaquim’s cheery, welcoming attitude toward you?”

  “I’ve met friendlier automatons.”

  “Sorry. And no. Joaquim’s only love is the cause, and he’s exceedingly protective of it. He can be that way with me sometimes, too, and I’m leading the cause.”

  “All right. So are he and Perrin a thing?”

  “Mighty curious about everyone’s sex lives, are you? No, they’re more akin to siblings than lovers. They argue all the time—something that might lessen if they would just give in and be lovers—but I think either of them would sacrifice their psyche for the other in an instant and without question.” She nudged him in the shoulder. “But enough stalling. What’s your other option?”

  He shifted around on the bed to face her fully. “An Advisor can, technically, go anywhere. Though I’ve never tried it, I assume this means I can get inside Zaidam and visit a prisoner. But Advisors can’t contravene the Charter. I can’t get him out—not legally.”

  “But if we had access to him in person, I could devise a way to sneak him out of there.”