by Sean Platt
Dominic’s intuition prickled. “What event?” Then, more to the point: “What does this have to do with us?”
“Some big shindig tomorrow. Some guy named…Browning?”
“Braemon?” Dominic felt his teeth wanting to clench. “Was it Braemon?”
“Yeah. That’s it. Greg Braemon.”
“Craig, Leah. Craig Braemon.” And inside, he thought, Fucking hell.
Leah squinted at Dominic. “What is it?”
“Who is this Shadow guy?” Dominic asked. It came out like a demand.
“I don’t know. He’s anonymous, like all of Null.”
“But he knows who you are. He pinged you.”
“He knows me by my alias. The ping came through a secure system, also anonymous.”
Dominic stood. “Dammit, Leah. What did you tell this guy?”
“Nothing.” Pause. “Nothing about the Organas.”
“What about me? Did you mention me to him? Did he ask?”
“What? No! Why would he ask about you?”
“I’m in charge of citywide security for the Respero fundraiser Craig Braemon is throwing tomorrow. I have…people going to the party.”
“Cops?”
“No. Friends.”
“What does that have to do with Shadow?”
“He could be NPS. He could be anyone, Leah! He’s pumping you for information. Is he the one who started feeding you bullshit about the bad man on The Beam? The one who you created?”
“No! What the hell, Dom?”
Dominic shook his head, suddenly worked up. No wonder this had all seemed so wrong. Never ignore instinct. Never.
“Good cop/bad cop, Leah. That’s what he’s doing. The bad cop is your boogeyman. The good cop is Shadow. He knows that you know something. He’s working you to get to me.”
“He didn’t even mention you!”
“Of course he didn’t. I wouldn’t, either. Let you reveal that tidbit on your own so you think it’s your idea. You told him something, though, didn’t you?”
“He told me shit too, Dom,” Leah replied, crossing her arms.
“And what did you tell him? You still haven’t said.”
“Nothing! Nothing that matters to any of this.”
“But something, right? What was it? What did you volunteer after he didn’t even ask for it?”
“I…it’s not even relevant.”
That simple sentence changed her face. Dominic could see it: Leah knew he was right. She knew she’d been stupid and sent the ship sailing.
Dominic breathed heavily, once, then sat. After a long moment, Leah followed.
“I found something on The Beam,” she said. “I meant to tell you about it. There just wasn’t time, what with all the breaking dangerous criminals out of jail and all.” She said the last semi-spitefully, maybe reminding Dom that he hadn’t spent his day toeing the line, either.
“Okay. Okay, just tell me. What did you find on The Beam?”
Leah spun her story. Dominic sat back, taking it in. Little by little, his skin began to feel cold. The transcript she’d happened upon, chronicling a meeting between three people intent on killing a fourth, squared with much of what he’d discovered over the years, poking at a patch of ground where he’d been forbidden to dig.
An old crime scene with two out-of-place victims who’d seemed positioned rather than natural to the location. A crime that a cleric had come to take away from Dominic, intent on the data worm that should never have been there in the first place.
He shouldn’t have poked at that old case, but over the years he had. And what he’d found had revealed three names:
Colin Hawes, deceased.
Marshall Oates, deceased.
And of course Rachel Ryan, head of Ryan Enterprises — whose association to the victims had mysteriously vanished the day they’d died, according to what Dominic had cornered the clerics into telling him.
High rollers, all three.
Leah sent the transcript from her buffer memory to Dominic’s handheld, and when he read it, more names surfaced.
One of the people mentioned in the transcript was Clive. In the company of Hawes, Oates, and Ryan, that might be Clive Spooner — the man who’d built the famous moon base.
And Alexa. That could be Alexa Mathis, whereabouts unknown.
Dominic looked up from the transcript. “Holy West. Do you know what this is that you’ve found, Leah?”
“I told you. It’s some sort of ultra-privileged group. A splinter within it, actually. Plotting to kill…” Leah’s eyes widened.
Because that was the last name in the transcript: York. As in Stephen York, aka Crumb.
“Did you even tell him?” Dominic demanded.
Her eyes were still wide, shocked, and vulnerable. “No. I never had a chance. Too much happened right as I found it. I tried to call Leo, but of course he was offline. You weren’t answering. I tried running back to the village, but NPS beat me there.”
“Where is he? Where is York?”
“I…I don’t know.” Then, covering: “Dom, that transcript is from forever ago. It can’t possibly matter now.”
Dominic began to pace. “I don’t like it. At all.”
“It’s from the ’60s! Before I was even born!”
“I was a detective in ’63, freshly recruited, called in on a double homicide that was snatched from my partner and me by Quark PD clerics. The victims were two very wealthy, very powerful figures, Colin Hawes and Marshall Oates. The kind of people who float in the same high-level cloud you just told me about.”
“So?”
“That case bugged me for years. I couldn’t stop picking at it. I got the impression that they were two people who’d pissed off someone they shouldn’t — not in a Mob sense, more like a double-cross. So what if Hawes and Oates are two of the people in this transcript?”
“How could you possibly conclude that — ”
Dominic held up his handheld displaying the transcript. “The dates line up. And these two weren’t from the neighborhood. A data worm had shown up to erase them, but we got it in time. Someone was trying to cover it up, and it attracted all the highest kinds of attention.”
“But that was 2063. Why would it matter right now? To…to Shadow, of all people?”
Dominic sighed. “Just a few days ago, there was an incursion at DZPD station.”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“I’m not saying you did. But it happened. Someone was targeting a specific bit of information, which I was able to conclude had been accessed during the outage. It was about Crumb. The record of the first time I met him.” Again, he held up the handheld. “Not long after this, I was brought in on a vagrant case. Which was ridiculous at the time because the city has tons of vagrants, and I’d just been promoted. I was annoyed, but my mind turned to it after that break-in, after the information was stolen. Because do you know who that vagrant was?”
“Crumb,” Leah said.
“Crumb.”
“So what does it mean, Dom?”
“What if I was sent to pick up Crumb? Specifically me?”
“Why?”
“Maybe someone knew I was a softie. You know about Chrissy. I took her to Leo to get her away from Respero, so it seems a decent bet that I’d do the same for the next person I was ordered to take. Take them up into the hills, where The Beam couldn’t find them.”
Leah looked overwhelmed, but it didn’t matter. Dominic didn’t know how all of these puzzle pieces went together, but he’d been a cop for long enough to believe they did. The connections were there. He just had to find them.
“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have answered Shadow’s ping. It seemed…”
“You told him what you told him.” Dominic waved a dismissive hand. “What did he tell you?”
“But you don’t trust him. Why does it matter what he told me?”
“Someone could be watching. Using him like they may be using you. What did he say?”
>
“He just talked about the event tomorrow. The Braemon thing. I don’t know why.”
“Craig Braemon was accused of Shift tampering in 2091. Maybe that’s what your guy is after, if he wants to understand Shift. He’ll never get in to find out about that fundraiser, though. Unless he’s secretly a bigwig of some sort, he’ll just have to watch what’s shown on The Beam.”
“He’s not going in. He sent someone.”
“Who?”
“A guy he’s been following. Nicholas…no, Nicolai somebody.”
Dominic’s eyes closed. His head sagged. Finally. Finally, things were slotting into place.
“Costa. Nicolai Costa.”
“That’s the guy,” Leah said. “Do you know him?”
Dominic knew Nicolai because Kate had mentioned him. And if Kate had thought to mention Costa, that probably meant Omar had put the idea in her head…while, of course, making Kate think the idea to mention Costa to Dominic had been her own.
The plan. Omar’s stupid plan. He’d downloaded a ghost then given it to Kate. The idea that Kate could use the disembodied Beam shell of one of Omar’s cronies had seemed ridiculous from the start, but Omar had continued to say, Just trust me, Dom. Just trust the plan.
Either Shadow or this Integer7 must be Omar in disguise, now milking information from Leah. Biding his time, setting pieces in place to do some Shift-tampering of his own. And now Leah had handed Omar what he needed on a silver platter.
Omar was connected to Thomas Stahl.
Thomas Stahl was connected to Nicolai Costa.
And although the official story called for Kate to use some random man’s shell to breach Craig Braemon’s system, Dominic didn’t believe that was the actual plan. If anyone had left a shell behind on The Beam by vanishing a long time ago, it would have to be Stephen York. And although Thomas Stahl wouldn’t give Kate access to Braemon’s system, Stephen York — uncredited second father of The Beam and probable target of frustrated assassins — just might.
“What, Dominic?” Leah looked confused, nervous, ashamed, guilty. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that if someone could create a decoy version of Stephen York on The Beam, it would solve a lot of a certain bad guy’s unsolvable problems.”
Dominic drew a deep breath, letting the final pieces slot into logical places.
“And since someone seems to be after York these days,” he said, “I’m thinking that whatever poor sucker they find to transport that fake York is looking at some very big trouble.”
Chapter Ten
Kai’s senses returned, and she found herself in the studio room at Ryu’s bunker. She stood, feeling both anchored and out of place. The last time she’d stood in this room, it had been a simulation. But it had felt no less real than now, and it was difficult to fight the sense that the same thing might happen again.
Nicolai was looking up at Kai, assessing her, practically staring.
“What?” Kai asked.
“Is it real this time?”
“I don’t know,” Kai said. “Try and do some magic.”
Nicolai frowned then stood. “That’s not funny.”
“Ryu didn’t have to worry. That was easy.”
“I don’t know I’d characterize that man as worried,” Nicolai said.
“Worried that he’d have to dispose of our mindless corpses. Worried that we’d get into a loop and not get out then hit a time accelerant and lose years in the blink of real-world seconds inside.”
“Was that ever a danger?” Nicolai asked.
Kai shrugged, already over it. “Ask Ryu. I guess there are spots where you can get stuck when you’re off the official paths of The Beam. But if you’re sharp, I’m thinking you’d figure it out.”
Nicolai looked around the room, still wondering at its reality.
Kai said, “So. Do you have it?”
Nicolai tapped his head.
“Did all of that make sense to you?”
“Sure. Put another man’s identity on like a coat. Makes sense.”
“Did you believe him? I’ve never even heard of Stephen York.”
“He has the feel of veracity. I think I’m getting some of his thoughts.”
“Creepy,” said Kai. “You should offload him. Send him to Quark.”
Nicolai sat back on the chair, its colander lid tipped back. Kai recognized his body language. It was one step above lecture mode, and meant Nicolai was about to lay down some home truths for the benefit of anyone lucky enough to be around and learn from his wisdom.
“I think the question here is do you believe Rachel?”
Kai wasn’t sure how to answer that.
“It’s not an easy choice,” Nicolai went on. “I met her. She has plans within plans within plans. But the people opposing her are men like Micah, who want you to kill her. So do you trust the person giving the order or the woman willing to die?”
“Neither.”
“Then maybe it’s a case of ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ Or at least aligned goals. You heard what York said about Mindbender. That, I believe. We already know the Beau Monde have technology that’s far above what even we have, just below them. If there’s a higher tier that Micah’s trying to weasel his way into, using you to do it, then of course they’d be working on the next step above the next step.” He patted Ryu’s rig. “The stream in that place was unreal. I know you’d been in a sim like that before, albeit in much nicer rigs, but the same is the same. And I’m telling you, I understand how someone could get stuck on The Beam. You’d never know you weren’t going on with your life, seeing as the reality is so complete and convincing. Even now, I’m not entirely satisfied that we’re not still immersed. That’s how much the idea of what’s possible freaks me out. So if the Beau Monde can do that, why wouldn’t the next level be working on whole-brain uploading, like Mindbender?”
“Carter Vale promised Mindbender for everyone,” Kai said.
“That’s the official version. But what Rachel wants me to upload to Braemon’s canvas?” He tapped his head again, indicating the stored York shell they’d sideloaded, complete with the boson inside it. “That’s about the top-tier version of Mindbender. They’d need to keep it a secret, right? And toss Vale’s public version a bone, and know it’d never get off the ground?”
“Maybe.”
“The question isn’t really whether we should believe Rachel, Micah, or anyone else.” His dark eyes hardened, and his voice sharpened. “I’m through being good, Kai. I was Isaac’s stooge for too long, and I’m damned if I’ll be Micah’s. Fuck them all. I talked to Sterling Gibson, dumping a ton of anonymous info that no one else knows but that I’m sure will make its way around. And then I talked to someone else — a kind of underground reporter who won’t have Gibson’s reservations about discretion. Expect new revelations about the Beau Monde and the Ryans to hit the deep Beam any day now, with proof.”
“Is that who told you to go to Braemon’s event? The reporter?”
Nicolai nodded. “Yes, but he wasn’t the only one. Convenient how it all converged, isn’t it? Micah told me to go, too, with you. I even talked to Kate, who told me the same. Just like Micah told you to go.”
“You talked to Kate?”
Nicolai nodded again.
“That seems like a big coincidence.”
“Exactly, Kai. It’s all a hell of a coincidence. So given all the unseen hands pushing and pulling me these days, I don’t really feel like trying to figure out which master to serve. I want to serve me. And you. We should do what’s best for us, and screw everyone else.”
Kai watched him, touched that she of all people was his sole confidant. She waited for him to take it back, but he kept looking at her with his strong, soulful eyes. He took her small hand with his larger one. She squeezed it.
“Okay. So what’s best for us?”
“Beau Monde.”
“How do we get it?”
“We go as planned, but with our
own agenda. Just you and me.”
“Doesn’t it feel dangerous? Trying to breach Braemon’s system?”
“York can do it. I don’t trust Rachel, but I trust her sense of self-preservation — if what she’s preserving is power rather than her own life. Maybe this really is a case of the enemy of our enemy. Or enemies.”
“I meant the whole thing seems dangerous. All these plans. All these hidden motives.”
“We’re already going. I think you’ve decided to do what Rachel wants regardless because she wants it, and so does Micah, making the vote two to one. I told Doc I’d help him, and that’s already dangerous. And I’ve talked to Gibson. And this other guy, this Sam. As long as we put what we need ahead of them, I think we’re as safe as we can be, given the circumstances.”
Kai’s hand moved up Nicolai’s arm. His forearm was thick and firm. She squeezed that, too.
“Doc — Kate — thinks these people she’s in with, Omar and this cop, might double-cross her. Or at least one of them will. I’d rather side with Doc than anyone else other than you. So I say we do it. We pop the lid on Mindbender as York said inside, and you go ahead and take care of Rachel while we’re at it. Maybe that’s what Micah wants and maybe not, but either way we move up…and if we don’t, I have plenty of evidence that could get Micah in an awful lot of trouble.”
Kai watched Nicolai, her head moving slowly up and down. She didn’t really like any of the options either, but Nicolai made some excellent points. In the presence of too many options, you had to forget you could see any of them and simply choose your own. After three sets of nested schemes, all bets were off. You couldn’t consider anyone’s motives. You had to close your eyes, plan your best shot, then take it without flinching.
“So we stroll into the fundraiser tomorrow,” Kai said. “Just like that.”
Nicolai nodded. “Wearing Stephen York like a hat. And if what he said in the Viazo is true, the system will see me as York. All the doors, if we’re lucky, will open.”
“Okay,” Kai said, “but what if what he said isn’t true? What if we’re not lucky?”
Nicolai walked forward and keyed Ryu’s outer door to exit the immersion room.
