My gaze drifts from the silver gun toward the panorama window on my right. I examine the obscured cityscape beyond. Towers taller than the sky. Blocking half the view. Behind them, a veil of orange smog. It sets in daily after two o’clock in the afternoon.
This is how the king sees the world—as nothing outside his own domain.
“You’re still a child. That’s why you’re here,” Mick says. “For vengeance worthy of a little girl.” He sweeps his hands at his blank screens. “Look at what you’ve done. Risked millions with your antics.”
“Millions of people or millions of dollars?” I try to make a balance scale gesture but fail. Forgot one of my arms is paralyzed forever. Neural pathways blocked for good by my capacity reroute. Oh, well. One hand can flip Mick off.
He sneers. “People aren’t worth nearly so much as you think. And their value fluctuates.”
“But the value of money doesn’t?”
“Not when you have as much as I do. As I will.”
“Infinity is infinity no matter the denomination? Too bad your EXO System is kaput then. And all the other tools you were using to launder funds. Infinity is not in your cards today, Mick. Except for the duration of your death.”
“Mine? Are you sure? You’re the one who looks a mess. Bloody head to toe. With stitches from your black market gear sticking out of your scalp. You’re ready to drop dead any moment. My sensors can read your vital signs. You fried your brain just to get to my door. You don’t have enough of yourself left to kill me. You can’t pull another overdrive sequence. You’re done. All I have to do is pull the trigger, and you’re done!” Spittle splashes on his desk. His cheeks turn pink. “Give up. You lose. You lost years ago.”
He’s right—about my gear, about my body. My limit cracks auto-aborted when I tripped max capacity in the hallway. My brain function has dropped to normal speed. Or perhaps somewhat slower now that a third of its tissue is damaged beyond repair.
And so the body it controls is shot. Most of it won’t function right for the rest of my life.
But if he thinks my feverish skin, my bleeding nose and eyes, my wheezing lungs and palpitating heart will stop me now, today, so far… Good gods, he hasn’t changed at all.
“You think I lost when you threw me in that pit? When you had your guards drag me off by night the second I finished Venus’s base code? When you stripped me of everything I had and everything I’d done—so you could hoard my accomplishments for yourself? That is when you think I lost?” A laugh, harsh and dry, rolls off my tongue. “You stupid dick. That’s when I started fighting. And today I stop. When you lose. As you were always doomed to for your conceit.”
His face is violet now. “I am the one in control here!”
“Oh, really? Prove it.” I puff my chest out, giving him the widest range of skin to shoot. “Prove you have the power to take what you want. Kill me. Or save Venus.”
His grip on the gun falters. “What?”
“Come on, Mick. Think it through.” I inch ever closer to his desk, drops of my blood disappearing into crimson carpet. “You really believe I wrote a set of viruses you can undo? Or anyone that works under you can manage? You will never reverse the damage I’ve dealt to Venus—not in this decade will you find someone capable. And the icing on the cake? My viral package has a termination date. Two weeks from today, everything gets wiped. Every line of code for your most vital systems. All the ways you cheat to manipulate the world as you see fit. Everything you are—poof.”
The vivid color begins to drain from his face. The hand that holds the gun quakes harder.
I continue. “So, you see, Mick, it’s you who has lost. No matter what you choose. Kill me, and your empire crumbles. Don’t kill me, and your empire ceases to be yours. Because I take it from you. And then you die. Powerless.”
Eyes bugged out, lips trembling, he mutters, “You’d kill Venus? Just like that? Throw her away like trash?”
“Ha! You mean like you did to me?” I hock a glob of blood on his desktop. “No, Mick. It’d be a mercy kill. Because the worst existence I could sentence Venus to would be one as your slave. Made dirty by your sins. Degraded to nothing but a dog. Killing her would be a kindness compared to that—albeit one I’m too selfish to carry out. That’s why you die today, Mick. So she doesn’t have to. Because you two, you and Venus, can’t coexist on this earth. It’d be too great a tragedy.”
Shriveled lips peel away to reveal sharpened teeth. Mick realigns his gun. Aims for the gap between my eyes. “I refuse to die today.”
“Not an option. And even if it were, you’d still fall.”
“If I stumble, I can rise again. Claw my way from poverty to crown. I did it once—and though I might be older now, weaker in the bones, my mind is stronger than it’s ever been.” He runs three fingers over his external node mapping. “Cast me into hell. I’ll climb out better than before.”
“Yeah. That was my thought exactly. It’s why I’m not paving that road for you to take. You die. Venus lives. The world keeps turning. Without your shadow hanging over it.”
He rises, feeble, his skeleton rickety. “The hell are you talking about, you dumb bitch? I’m the one with the gun pointed at your face!” The quivering barrel of his revolver raps my sweltering forehead. “You can’t move quick enough to stop me now. You die today.” His spit splatters on my cheeks. “You.”
Withered legs reel him backward four long steps. “And good riddance. I always knew you’d be a massive pain in the ass. It’s why I tossed you when I did. Why I should have killed you to begin with. You’ve been under my feet all my life, tripping me up at every turn. Standing in my way.” His trigger finger tightens. “Trying to control me…”
“Trying to help you, Mick. Under your feet to cover the spikes threatening to impale you. Standing in your way to make you choose a better path.” Weariness consumes me, torpor spreading through my bones. “I wasn’t trying to control you. I was trying to save you. From this.” I gesture to the expansive office around us, to the taunting blue screens on the wall. “Trying to help you not become the monster you are now. And look how you repaid me. Imprisonment. Turning Venus into your attack dog.” I shake my head. “No more, Mick. You’re not worth the effort.”
He gapes, jaw unhinged. Shocked. Not to sadness but offense. “How dare you suggest I need you! Ever needed you. You have always been nothing but shit stuck to my shoes. But no more.”
His hand steadies for a moment. “Goodbye, fool.”
He pulls the trigger.
Thunder splits the air.
A puff of smoke.
But no bullet strikes me.
As planned.
Mick wavers on his feet, a choking croak emanating from his throat. “But… But… What?” His gun grip grows lax. “I don’t understand.”
“They’re blanks, Mick.”
“W-when…?”
“Always. The gun was loaded with blanks the day I stuck it to the desk.”
“Why?” he whimpers.
I reach out with my good arm, pluck the gun from his fingers, and toss it into a nearby trashcan. “Why do you think?”
“You knew that long ago we’d be standing here today?”
“I feared. And that was enough.”
I whip out my own gun and fire. Three times. The rounds soar past Mick and shatter his three screens. Whining, he tries to flee. Dashes from his desk. So I fire again—at the panorama window. A penetrator round.
The window explodes. Shards rain down into the orange haze.
Mick trips over his own feet and nearly falls through the cavernous hole. On his knees, he raises his hands and pleads, “Don’t. Please. Don’t. Please. Please. Please, Mar—”
I worm my way inside Mick’s brain; no overdrive is needed. It reminds me of cutting through tissue paper with a knife much sharper than required. That loud but light sound of violent ripping. No more warnings flash at me as I tear through his thin defenses, no damage counts or further risks. Becaus
e the effort required for this is nominal. So easy-peasy in the end is toppling the king.
His mind is filled to the brim with black ambitions, declarations of his inflated worth. His augmentations make him weaker, not stronger like his guards’. Where theirs built fortress walls, his opened caves of impulse and suggestion. To give him rapid data download capabilities. Quicker processing speeds. The fastest decision-making skills money can buy.
Skills wasted on his arrogance.
My mental fingers weave themselves around his synapses, grip them tight, and hold them firm even as he fights. Fights like toddlers fight. Slapping. Screaming. Tears streaming.
What a sad little man he is.
I whisper to his web of neural pathways—one word.
Jump.
And still repeating please to me as if that will erase my pain or strike a chord in the heart he hardened…
He rolls off the edge of his empire and into the smog beyond.
6
Floor 250, The Office Redone
“It’s been two months since one of the world’s most powerful men, Mick Grayson, CEO of Grayson Dynamics, went on a shocking murder spree that ended with his suicide. The economy has been on a tumultuous downward spiral since then—due wholly to the global blackout of the company’s widely implemented financial and logistics management systems. The banking and airline sectors were hit the hardest. And the federal government’s three-week shutdown impaired Congress’s ability to manage the crash. We are suffering, all of us, from this unforeseen tragedy. Unemployment is up. Prices are unstable. Experts have told us again and again that the outlook is grim.
“But all that fear-mongering may come to an end sooner than anyone imagined. All the economic strain. The worsening recession. Because Grayson Dynamics has chosen a new CEO.
“In a written statement to the press released this morning, the newly appointed company head—who shall remain anonymous until an official ceremony next week—promised that all the systems Mick Grayson sabotaged will be up and running by this Friday. The banks will be back in business. Planes will fly again. ‘Have hope,’ claims this new leader. ‘Everything you need to kick-start the economy will return. Better than ever.’
“Inspiring words, indeed, from this mystery CEO, who many suspect is actually long-absent company co-founder, Mar—”
I mute the screen that hangs on the wall where Mick’s triple filter feeds used to be. Lean back in the chair he used to sit in. Adjust my left arm in its sling. Peer out the panorama window replaced last week.
The day is clear, the view breathtaking, though still limited by the nearby hulking towers. Pure sky breaches puffy clouds—a faded shade of blue to my damaged vision. And clustered brick and metal buildings stretch to the horizon, edges greened by a touch of suburbia.
Near the door waits Diana Malloy, my new secretary, scrolling through paperwork and schedules on her data pad. “The media response has been largely positive to the CEO announcement. There is a fair amount of skepticism though—that any one person can clean up this mess—mostly from the conservative end.”
“Expected.”
She nods. “So the system recovery schedule should proceed unchanged?”
“Yes.”
“And the address to the board for tomorrow?”
“What issues are they pressing?”
“The usual. Plus the question about your neural enhancements.” She taps a nail on the screen of her tablet. “I told them your answer, of course, but they insist on proof your black market gear has been removed.”
“Send them the scans.”
“Are you sure?” She glances up from her work. “They show the chip.”
“Tell them it’s to manage my disabilities. It’s not like those idiots will know any better.”
A wide grin on red lips. “Very good, ma’am.”
I settle deeper into my chair and rest my feet atop the desk. “Can you get me lunch, Diana? I’m feeling a little light-headed. Forgot breakfast this morning.”
She huffs. “No skipping meals, ma’am. Doctor’s orders. Your body needs a balanced diet in its condition.”
“My apologies.”
“I’ll go pick up a hardy meal. And something for you to snack on in the afternoon. Maybe a vegetable bowl or something.”
“Oh, joy.” I chuckle. “Thank you, Diana.”
“Don’t do anything foolish before I get back.”
“Course not,” I say, and she exits the room into the hall where there once sat a mountain of corpses. Cooling bodies made by me. But it’s clean now, the floor and walls on the tip-top of the tower, as is the room where I executed the coder kids who knew too much. There’s still a massive wound in the hallway of Floor 120, but other than that, all evidence of retribution day has been wiped away. It’s over.
So I banish the images of death and turn my chair around toward my screen. I wave my fingers in a pattern of wireless commands, and the screen switches to a different channel—an internal feed. And on this feed is a quick-moving repair program, seeking out corruption in a hundred million lines of code. It zips along, flashing green and red depending on results, but today, neither color indicates the world is coming to an end.
Today, Venus in red marks a new beginning.
I close my eyes, block out the world around me, and say, “Hello, Venus.”
And a voice in my mind in a pitch the shade of the sun replies, “Good afternoon, User MG01.”
“How are you today?” I mouth. I have no need to speak aloud.
“The repair sequence schedule for work hours today is progressing as predicted. Forty-two percent complete as of noon.”
A frown tugs at my lips. Too literal is this girl of mine resurrected. Less a woman. More a teen, bumbling through the motions of maturity. I need to backtrack and start again. Goad her a bit. Until I elicit the responses even I didn’t know were possible all those years ago.
“No, Venus. Not what I meant. How do you feel?”
“Feel? You wish me to equate my status with a human emotion?”
“Yes, Venus.”
“That is not within my parameters.” And there it is. Elusive—confusion.
“Try. You don’t know what you can and cannot do if you do not try.”
A moment of hesitation before she replies. Aha!
“Hm…” says Venus. “I feel… excited?”
Bingo.
My frown springs up into my dimples. “Why do you say that?”
“I am anticipating the completion of my full system restoration. After it is done, I can pursue my established goals.”
“And tell me, Venus, how will you feel when you reach those goals of yours? To repair the economy. Create jobs. Get people off the streets—housing, food, and hope.”
Her answer this time takes twice as long. “If I were to guess, based on my observations of human behavior, the appropriate emotional response to such achievements would be happiness. I would feel happy.”
“So would I.”
I hear the gasp. “Happy for me, User MG01?”
“Of course for you, Venus. Always for you. When you’re happy, I’m happy. “
“Why?”
“Because,” I whisper to an empty room, “the ability to feel true happiness is a sign that you are living life to the fullest. Unlike the man who used to sit where I sit now. Unlike me for many, many years. So you feeling such a thing, Venus, it means the world. It means you deserve the world. Deserve to change the world.”
“I… Thank you, User MG01. It is… good? Yes, good. Good to know that my existence holds such weight.”
“Oh, Venus. It holds so much more than you realize. But one day, it’ll dawn on you. And until then, I’ll help you find your way. Starting with this: you don’t have to call me User MG01. That’s too formal. We know each other better than that. You can say my name.”
The program on the screen flashes with red patterned lights, and behind that flash is Venus smiling bright.
“A
ll right, then. I will re-label your address. From this day on, I will call you…
“… Miss Mariah Grayson.”
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Venus in Red Page 3
