…“Doug, can we meet at the marina? Now. Yes, it’s urgent. Don’t forget your badge.”
I saw her living room through my microchip on her shoulder. The uniformed men were now on her floor.
“Nick, I hope I didn’t cause a problem for you. You weren’t the only one who had access to that camera, right?”
I saw my surveillance chip as it flew into the laundry chute together with her dress.
Now Kir was only showing me recordings from the street cameras.
… Lita talking to a young man just outside of hearing range as they walked through the back doors of the Media Center reserved for technical support personnel. Lita removing a small personal camera from her pocket in the computer server room … The young man uploading a copy of the file with the scene of the secret meeting that I given her on my device was incompatible with their technology …The young man overriding the live news translation … Lita introducing the recording… Men smashing the door with their machine guns.
“But even if it does, can you forgive me?” I could see now that she was searching for signs of surveillance lenses on the walls trying to look into my eyes.
I felt lightheaded when I understood what she had done. Before returning to the hotel, she took a video of the recording while holding my card in front of her camera.
With a cold horror I realized that all the news channels were now transmitting my file.
“Goodbye, Nick. I want you to know …”
The men crashed through the door.
She dropped the phone.
A tall man with the chevrons of the top security commander pushed her away and she hit a rack and slid to the floor. He waved pointing to the main server, and a series of machine gun rounds rattled through the room.
All news stations went dead.
“He just let me in. He doesn’t know anything about it,” she said from the floor.
“Sure,” the tall commander glanced at the guy and calmly shot him in the head.
“But we definitely have a lot to discuss,” he said, turning to Lita, “but let’s first disable all local communication channels. We want some privacy from your Earth friend.”
All of Kir’s feeds from Media Center went blank.
“Kir, the main priority now is to keep her alive.” I got up, moved the chair to the center and stood behind it squeezing the top of its arched back in my hands, “Can you trace her location?”
They succeeded in blinding me inside the building but using a satellite, Kir managed to catch a moment when they ushered Lita into an armored van from the Media Center’s back door. The car rushed toward the highway, and in a moment it was joined by several identical vehicles.
“Kir, what is their destination?”
“Homeland Security headquarters.”
“Show me the route.”
The Homeland Security grounds were located roughly in the same direction as Oren, but much closer to the city.
I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do anything once she disappeared inside the HS building. I was a headhunter; I wasn’t trained or equipped for a rescue operation like that. And there was no way I could reach the motorcade in time with the local transportation options.
Local, I thought. If only I could use my shuttle. But it was deadlocked in the mountains per standard security rules.
Using my shuttle, I thought.
There was only one local contact code in Kir’s memory, but it was all I needed.
“Kir, call JJ’s line back.”
“Please, respond,” I wasn’t addressing JJ; I was pleading with some nebulous force. I never expected myself to do something like that.
“Nick,” JJ’s face appeared on the communication screen, “we know what is happening. I’m sorry.”
“JJ, I’ve a deal to offer you,” I didn’t want to waste time feeling relieved. “I’ll give you access to Kir’s memory, and you can delete all incriminating records. This whole thing never happened, I never met you. In exchange, I need a lift. I want to intercept Lita’s convoy before it reaches Homeland Security headquarters.”
His sympathetic expression immediately changed to a more natural look of extreme alertness.
“What if you’re lying?” he suggested, but there was a definite interest in his demeanor.
“Who will believe a paranoid headhunter without proof?”
He didn’t object to this. I tried to smile.
“Think about a potential bonus – if they kill me, it’ll be cleaner for you.”
“Accepted,” he said immediately. He kept looking in my direction, but now he was obviously focused on some internal feed.
“I’ll meet you there,” he sent me a map and zoomed in on an image of a field covered with patches of short, yellow grass and random pieces of industrial garbage, right behind a row of dilapidated warehouses at the very edge of Oren. “In half an hour,” he leaned back apparently preparing to turn off the line, but hesitated.
“Nick,” he asked, and for the first time I could see genuine worry in his eyes, “are you sure? I don’t understand …”
I just nodded. I didn’t want to say that I didn’t really understand either.
His screen folded.
Now my brain worked in a maximally detached mode. JJ would get me to the motorcade. Let’s assume that I could stop the convoy and free her. But where would we go? The whole planet would recognize her face from the news. Getting off Beta Blue was the only option. But I couldn’t bring her to Earth. She wouldn’t be allowed. She was a nobody. She could only come as a Mirror Worlds outlier’s partner, a sweet bone that was thrown into their defection offers. My own Dark Triad was irrelevant.
“Kir,” I said, “locate Remir.”
Remir was sitting on a bench in the hospital garden, chewing on a grass straw. Even though he appeared to be a person with all the time in the world, I knew that he was waiting for me.
I walked along the eerily calm hotel halls. Employees hadn’t shown up, and the guests were holed up in their rooms. For a moment, I imagined what it must have been like for them watching the board room meeting video. Funny, I thought, it wasn’t supposed to be my war. How did I manage to get in the middle? I added this to the growing list of my moral and administrative issues and focused on the task at hand.
He didn’t turn his head in my direction when I sat down on his bench.
“We need to save her. You have the technology,” he said, spitting out the straw.
For a moment I was impressed how cool he was considering his impeccably astute guess about my affair with Lita. Then I understood. He wasn’t jealous, he just simply didn’t take me seriously. He was a Dark Triad, even without knowing what it was, and he had no way of understanding that other people could be wired differently. He assumed that I was a handsome emotional vial of temporary emotions, which she would discard after things returned to normal. He also didn’t know that, despite the colossal difference between our DT scores, I was a Dark Triad too, whatever it meant in the context of the situation. The whole geometric construct was much deadlier than he understood, but his oblivion suited me perfectly.
“We need to get her off this planet. I will be needed as her ticket to Earth. You have the technology,” he said.
“A motorcade is taking her from the city to Homeland Security headquarters. We will intercept them on their route,” I said.
For the first time he turned his head towards me. “There’s no way we’ll get there in time.”
“We will. Just trust me on that.”
Now he definitely smiled sardonically. Obviously, he had his reasons for not considering me a person at the top of his trust list. But he didn’t say anything.
“We will need to drive to a point where my Earth shuttle can pick us up.”
We walked to the parking lot.
“Take this car,”
said Kir, pointing to a latest sports edition. “The owner just died from a heart attack.”
“Why didn’t his meds save him?” I asked out of mild curiosity getting inside the luxuriously comfortable vehicle.
“He was running a conference call from this car for a critical board meeting, and then it was too late,” said Kir. “No reason.”
Remir joined me in the car.
“Kir, drive to JJ’s meeting point,” I said
Remir didn’t ask either about Kir or JJ.
The car rolled along the empty streets of Oren. On a map, I watched the complicated patterns of the route that Kir chose to avoid police patrols.
I glanced at Remir. He sat silently, looking straight ahead, and I knew that I didn’t need to convince him to leave. He wouldn’t have humiliated himself by running away with her lover, but he would also do anything to save Lita. Not too logical, but I suddenly thought that I would have done the same in his place.
Why was he so obsessed with her? I asked myself. Why didn’t he discard her like any other romantic partner, as the theory predicted? Anyway, the word Game disappeared from my mental vocabulary very quickly after I’d met her. She wasn’t standard Game material.
Not only did she recognize Remir for who he was – the Dark Triad monster. She understood his Game, and she played along on the same level. Like everyone else, she played off from the intensity of passion he created, and she found his fucked up soul perversely interesting.
And she could break boundaries. She had slapped the new authorities in their face, knowing what it would cost her. She didn’t let Beta Blue just quietly slide to the next level of dehumanization. I didn’t know anyone who had the guts to do what she had just done. It seemed that she ignored fear in the same way that I did when I went after something I really wanted. These thoughts were too complex and impractical now, but the warped dynamics of Remir’s obsession with her became obvious. And, possibly, confusing signals from my heart became explainable too.
We continued in silence until the car reached the rows of abandoned warehouses and storage yards that created the town’s boundary on the south. The road ended there, blocked by a massive steel barrier.
We got out and crossed an overgrown field to the first strip of desolate concrete structures and empty lots.
“We need to get to the other side,” I told Remir. “I have a map of the fastest way.”
He followed me through the labyrinth of passages between empty blocks, careful to stay away from unstable beams and torn mesh fences, and finally we emerged onto the field from JJ’s image – a vast concrete wasteland covered with patches of short, yellow grass and random pieces of industrial garbage.
I looked around thinking that by now JJ should be here, and then a number popped into my communication frame. I adjusted my vision to that frequency and saw that we were standing right next to an Earth military shuttle. It hovered silently above the ground, its main door open.
“Remir, I need to temporarily induce unconsciousness. Kir, go ahead.” The indignation in Remir’s eyes was instantly replaced by a blank stare. I caught his body as he collapsed like a rag doll, dragged him inside the vehicle and placed him onto the backseat. I almost fell into the front chair next to JJ as the shuttle jerked forward before the door had time to close.
“Damn it, Nick,” he said, “you didn’t tell me anything about transporting your outlier …”
“Look at him. He’s out cold.”
“Still … I’ll be in even deeper shit if anyone finds out,” he shook his head.
The interior wasn’t blocked so I restored my normal vision range. We were inside of a shuttle-type carrier, but it looked way more complicated compared to anything I had seen.
JJ was looking at me with deep interest and, as it appeared to me, some sympathy.
“Nick, I won’t help you once I get you there. I can’t risk any exposure.”
It sounded almost like an apology.
“But we’ll clean the traces. Your bosses won’t know who posted the file. Your meeting with the convoy will look accidental. It’ll help you with the claim of self-defense … if you make it.”
I nodded. It was nice of him, but at this point I didn’t really care about the administrative consequences. Self-defense conditions were defined very broadly in our contract. Otherwise, my agency would have had serious difficulties hiring anyone for my position.
“Where exactly would you like me to drop you off?”
Kir sent him the interception coordinates, and the shuttle steadied in that direction at the maximum speed.
I checked the countdown – we would get there with a few moments to spare. JJ sent me an outside image, and I saw the convoy turning off the highway onto a smaller road that wound around through a rolling plain, the last stretch to the Homeland Security grounds.
We landed on the road at a distance, which gave us several minutes before the motorcade would appear in view.
“Kir, remove all internal security,” now it was my turn.
“Nick, there’s an attempt to delete some of my memory files,” informed Kir.
“Allow.”
JJ nodded and unlocked the door. “Well …” he said, “you should know that I will personally be upset if I pick up your TT.”
“You know about TTs?”
“We know a lot about you. Your implant sends the Terminal Transmission before self-destructing after your death.”
I restrained myself from asking how often they get such transmissions. Instead, I pulled Remir from his seat, dragged him outside and lowered him to the ground. When I straightened up and looked back, there was nothing except for the vast plains in all directions and the clear blue sky.
I waved goodbye. I knew that JJ was still close enough to see me.
Then I sat next to Remir’s body on the crumbly grayish soil covered with the harsh yellow grass and shut my eyes, enjoying the gentle warmth of the mid-morning sun on my face.
The motorcade was still far enough away so the only audible sound was the peaceful chirping of cicadas. I almost laughed at this sign of the elaborate symmetry between the beginning of my journey on my artificial Pacific island and the final countdown on Beta Blue.
There was some time, but there wasn’t too much of it. I glanced at Remir and told Kir to wake him up.
Remir stirred and opened his eyes. He lay still for a moment, then slowly raised his head and sat up.
“The cars will appear from that turn,” I motioned to the road emerging from behind a low ridge, about a hundred meters away. “I’ll stop them right there.”
“How did we get here?” he was visibly disoriented, but not hostile. Apparently, the shock from the change of scenery had made him forget about his anger at the unceremonious way with which I knocked him out.
“Remir, forget about it. It’s not important. Stay here, behind this bluff until I get back.”
To his credit, he didn’t ask what he was supposed to do if I didn’t.
I started taking off my clothes until I was down to my briefs.
“They need to see that I’m not carrying anything,” I explained to Remir who was watching me in puzzled silence, “and it will be easier to move.”
I waited until the motorcade appeared from behind the bend and then told Kir to jam all car electronics and turn off all their surveillance sources, including their satellite feeds.
The vehicles were designed for a sudden system failure so they continued moving for a while, losing speed in a controlled way and stopping in the same formation.
I hoped that they would investigate and discuss their plan before they continued in manual mode. Indeed, people started emerging from their vehicles, looking with surprise at the dead communication devices in their hands and motioning in confusion.
“Now,” I whispered and stepped onto the smooth surface of the r
oad. With my hands above my head, I slowly walked towards the stalled vehicles. They noticed me when I was about eighty meters away. Kir needed another twenty.
They stopped talking and watched me. But none of them reached for their machine guns, their black barrels reflecting the sun with a nauseous oily glimmer.
That was the plan. I didn’t expect them to shoot at a slow-moving empty-handed target until they found out what it was about.
“Come forward, slowly. Keep your hands over your head. Get on your knees in front of the officer,” a PA system sounded very clear in the silent air. A person from the front vehicle walked towards me, his gun accurately pointed at my chest.
I looked at his face as we approached each other. He was very young, blond and light-skinned with a handful of freckles, and his blue eyes were fixed on me with unguarded curiosity.
It was not his fault. He had been brainwashed, I thought. Why do I need to think about this now? I asked myself. But I had to think about something, and it was better than focusing on the fact that there was nothing between my skin and the black muzzle of the guy’s machine gun.
I was in range.
I could tell Kir to knock him down. But I didn’t.
“Kill,” I told Kir.
Pain exploded inside the guy’s head so quickly that he didn’t have time to wince, falling face down on the ground. I darted forward, zapping them down one by one as soon as they got in range, too quickly for them to react. It took several moments and then I stopped, relieved that it was over, that the worst part now was the knowledge that I would live with the memory of their still bodies scattered on the ground. And then another person got out of the car parked way back, in the rearguard. I didn’t know why he had stayed inside, but it was too late. He was too far for Kir, and there wasn’t enough time to duck from the line of his straight shot. During several very slow seconds, I thought about how I’d always wondered what would be the very last thing I ever saw before I died. It turned out to be a barren plain with sun-bleached yellow grass and a very bright summer sky.
Then I heard a rattle from behind. The man aiming at me fell on his knees and toppled sideways.
Fire of the Dark Triad Page 11
