Convergence

by Michael Patrick Hicks

  “But somebody made you doubt him,” I said, starting to fill in some of the blanks.

  She nodded.

  “Kaften,” I said.

  “He saw it almost instantly. It was ludicrous. But then I saw it, as well. And now you’ve seen it. We ran algorithms to compare facial recognition and defined similar characteristic, defining features. The feedback was impossible to ignore.”

  “Why would you show all this to Kaften?” I asked.

  “It was part of my deal with him, to keep you alive and secure your release. Sniper rifles weren’t enough. He wanted access to everything I had on Samuel Hodgson and Jaime Kristoff.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her ankles. She looked tired. She pushed a loose lock of hair back behind her ear. Her small, economical movements were a nicely feminine contrast to her business-like demeanor.

  When I closed my eyes, I still saw images of the girl in the marketplace. Jaime’s suicide bomber. Something hard and cold unfurled in my belly as my thoughts turned, again, to Mesa. I thought about Jaime and considered what Alice had said earlier. Her words rang in my head. He has Mesa.

  “I want my daughter back,” I said.

  “I want to hire you for another job,” she said.

  I nodded for her to continue. I knew what she was going to say before the words were out.

  “I want you to kill Jaime.”

  I nodded again.

  Her eyes shot wide, and she was suddenly alert.

  “I’ve lost contact with my driver,” she said. “Hai is dead.”

  Muffled gunfire erupted upstairs.

  Chapter 11

  Alice handed me a gun.

  It had a good heft and felt comfortable in my hand. A Rossi38. Six bullets in the chamber. Copper wad cutters equipped with Honeywell Micro ElectroMechanical Systems. More black-market military-grade goods that made me wonder how far and deep Alice’s reach extended. The Honeywells were smart bullets, built from muscle wire that allowed them to change direction in flight based on targeted heat signatures. Good for shooting around corners or from behind cover.

  It grew quiet upstairs, but the stillness was broken by a squeak of weight on the floorboards and the sound of cautious footsteps.

  “We have to go,” I said.

  Alice ordered the memorialists to gather their memory chips and get ready to leave. She pushed aside a filing cabinet, revealing a recessed fingerprint scanner in the wall. She pressed her thumb, index, and little finger of her right hand to the pad. A hidden door popped loose with a soft click, exposing a tunnel. She pushed the cabinet back into place, hiding the scanner again.

  Above us, raised voices pled for their lives and were answered with gunfire. Alice urged the group through the tunnel, touching the shoulders of each as they passed, quietly whispering assurances to them. Her security measures upstairs would keep the gunmen from simply opening the door and waltzing down the stairs. They would probably use detcord to blast the door out of its frame, then breach the access well.

  “C’mon,” she said, pointing down the tunnel with her gun.

  She pulled the door shut behind us, and there was a slight pop as the seal was reestablished. Luminescent panels in the ceiling lit the way for us.

  “It’s an old Prohibition tunnel,” she said. “This restaurant has been in my family for many generations now.”

  “Must have been handy.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said with a small grin.

  It had been used for smuggling alcohol back in the 1920s, but it also connected several of her family’s businesses and made for a convenient passage between buildings and handy storage space.

  We hustled down the tunnel. A soft thump behind us told me the basement had been breached. It was simply a matter of time before the intruders figured out Alice’s escape hatch and followed us into the corridors.

  The tunnel was part of a system, splitting off into other arteries that ran beneath Chinatown. I watched the memorialists split off down different pathways, heading in different directions and disappearing from view.

  “Where does this go?” I asked.

  “Across the street. We can come up behind the restaurant, by the alley, where the car is.”

  “There could be more troops there,” I said. “We don’t know what we’re up against or how many people are after us.”

  “No, we don’t. But we need transportation. It won’t hurt to look, and if we need to, we can always retreat back to the tunnels here.”

  “Presuming they don’t find it first.”

  “Nothing about this situation is perfect, Jonah, and we don’t have much in the way of options.”

  “Damned if we do. Damned if we don’t.”

  She nodded. “Exactly. C’mon, through here.”

  She pressed her right hand to another scanner, repeating the gesture she had used a few minutes before. The door opened with a soft click, revealing a small room with refrigeration units, canned goods, and cartons of chicken and vegetable stock. The labels were all in Chinese. Aside from the foodstuffs, the room was empty.

  We went up the stairs and into another empty room that was badly in need of a fresh coat of paint. I figured we were in the small apartment building across the street. We stood quietly, listening for any noises. After a few moments of silence, we proceeded to the side exit to the alley—a windowless steel door that only opened from the inside.

  Alice had tucked a data pad into her waist earlier. She took it out and fiddled with it. I looked over her shoulder at the display and smirked.

  “Radar?”

  “It’s come in handy,” she said.

  “Like the tunnel.”

  “Just like.”

  We watched the data load, giving us a wireframe view of the alley. Two human-shaped heat signatures glowed orange on the screen. A warm blue glow defined the weapons they carried, but did little to tell us what kind of armaments or defenses they possessed.

  “It’s a small squad,” I said, surprised.

  “It’s not PRC then. They would have the streets cordoned off.”

  “And we probably would have heard them coming from a mile away. This is surgical.”

  “PRC will be here soon, though. There has to be a patrol in the area, especially after the marketplace attack. We need to go,” she said.

  “The car?”

  Alice shrugged. “Two on two. Even enough odds. You go left. I’ll go right.”

  She pressed herself against the wall while I pushed open the door. The soldiers had been facing the restaurant, but they responded quickly as we rushed out of the apartment complex, our guns raised. Alice and I fired several shots, letting the bullets take care of the rest as we hurried to the car.

  Finding the heat signatures we were aiming for, the smart bullets sought out flesh between the gaps in the soldiers’ armor. Even though they had chest plating and Kevlar shirts and pants, the bullets were able to sniff out the exposed skin of their necks and faces and blast through. One fired his assault rifle as a death spasm ripped through him, but the recoil arc pulled the gun wide, spraying the car with bullets. The bulletproof windows chipped under the gunfire, but held strong. The bullets flattened into the glass. Thick concentric circles webbed out from the point of impact.

  I tore the driver’s-side door open while Alice climbed into the backseat. The front window was down. Hai sat there with a spent cigarette dangling between his lips, a bullet hole squared up against his temple. Ash fell as I pushed him over into the passenger seat and used his thumbprint ident to start the car.

  I had my hands on the wheel when the door flew open. I turned in reflex, my face leaning into the punch, which rocked me sideways. My vision blurred, and a loud ringing filled my ears. I was sure my nose was broken.

  He grabbed the front of my shirt, jerked me out of the car, and threw me to the ground. I kicked backward, scrambling away from him. I saw the two dead soldiers. This guy must have come from inside the restaurant after hearing the shots. He came forward, gun raised
, ready to shoot me. The back door of the Lincoln opened, and Alice quietly emerged. She took a quick, silent step forward, her gun leading the way. She pushed it into the back of his neck and fired. The bullet tore clean through, obliterating the soldier’s data port and its delicate wiring.

  I scrambled toward the other two corpses, crab-crawling across the rough, unevenly patched road. “We need to chip them.”

  “There’s no time,” she said. “More are coming.”

  I kept going, trying to get my feet under me, but I was still dazed as the adrenaline did fucked-up things to my body. The signals weren’t getting through my sluggish brain. I tried to protest, but she shut me down quickly.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said, an awful edge creeping into her voice. “We have to leave!” she screamed at me.

  Her panic knocked some sense back into me, and I looked between her and the bodies. Then the choice was taken away from me.

  The sharp smack of boots on concrete rushed toward us. The men’s voices were raised, but the gunshots had dulled my hearing, and I couldn’t make out their words. Bullets tore up the concrete at my feet, and I scrambled backward. Alice grabbed my arms and helped me up.

  We dove into the car. I fell into the driver’s seat, keeping my head low. The rear end of the car was under fire. Automatic machine gun rounds pocked the glass and thudded into the trunk lid. I hit the accelerator hard, and the big car surged, going nowhere. Still in park. I yanked on the selector as the bullets got closer. The rational part of my mind knew the car would be fine, that we were relatively safe, but I knew that the gunfire was drawing more and more attention—and the PRC—to us.

  Its wheels grinding for purchase, the car lurched forward. I peeled out of the alley, squealing the tires as they finally caught the pavement.

  Alice said, “Go left, then another left at the light.” Her voice was surprisingly calm and collected, but a trace of fear in her eyes betrayed her worry.

  She was quiet for a moment, then she said, “I need to know the routes. Where are the checkpoints now?” She was talking to one of her contacts within the PRC. She sounded nervous as she recounted what had happened at the restaurant and reported three dead in the alley. “They weren’t PRC,” she said. “We don’t know who they were.” She looked over at me. “Go right. Right, right here. Good, keep going straight now.” She was quiet for another few moments, then she directed me to make a left turn.

  “I need a favor,” she said, then paused and sighed. “Fine. I will consider your debt cleared.” Another pause. “Two dead men have information I need. Send PRC militia to my restaurant immediately, in the alley. You have to hurry.”

  I drove casually, merging with the traffic. My flight reflexes were telling me to go faster, to race away from all of this as quickly as I could. My heart was a jackrabbit kicking hard at my ribs. I watched the speed carefully, fearful of drawing attention to us. My eyes roamed back and forth from the rearview and side-view mirrors, watching for a tail. I changed lanes, getting all the way over to the right, then turned and looped around several blocks, Alice guiding us. Both of us waited for familiar cars to turn with us. None did. After a few tense minutes, I let out a long, slow breath, the tension slipping away ever so slightly. I spent several long, paranoid minutes making sure no one had followed as Alice told me which streets to avoid.

  “How many people know about your beach house?” I asked.

  “Not many. Why?”

  Alice’s house overlooked the deep-blue depths of the ocean. “We have to get rid of this body.”

  She mulled it over, weighing the risks. She decided the attempt was worth it and contacted one of her “employees,” who went to check out the property and secure it.

  Sweat crept down my face. In the passenger seat, a thin stream of blood trickled from the hole in Hai’s head. Below his earlobe, the flesh was pure and smooth.

  “Where are his dataports?” I asked. If they had done a download, we were sunk.

  “His arm,” Alice said.

  Every time I’d seen Hai, he was wearing the same outfit: a suit jacket, solid black tie, and a button-down shirt—the same as he still wore. His undisturbed clothes gave me a sliver of hope.

  “He’s not a memorialist,” Alice said. “Not a DRMR.”

  My heart finally started to ease up, my pulse slowing. My shoulders were tight, but the pressure was finally releasing.

  “What are his upgrades?” I asked.

  “Nothing memory based. He had a standard encrypted comm package and monitoring software. Nothing that could be traced or recorded or downloaded.”

  Made sense, I thought. Given her line of work, Alice had to be careful with her employees. It wouldn’t do to have the hired help committing everything to hard memory. Even this extra layer of security wasn’t foolproof or impenetrable. The tracking software would warn her if he veered away from their standard arrangements, and anyone who was able to break him and make him spill whatever secrets he knew wouldn’t be able to do it fast enough to catch Alice unaware.

  Although we hadn’t seen any indications that we were being followed, we still took a long, circuitous path through the city, absorbing the patterns of movement around us, slowly growing more relaxed, but hardly complacent. Her source had come through for us. We didn’t come across any checkpoints or random patrols. However, distant wailing sirens rushing past us set us both on edge.

  It had been a long time since I had driven a car this nice and responsive. It gained speed quickly, and the brakes were equally reactive, so I had to be gentle with the pedals. Even under the weight of the armor, Kevlar padding, and bulletproof glass, the Lincoln was still easily maneuverable and smooth. Sleek and black, full of muscle, the car was a shark weaving through traffic.

  By the time we made it to the house, night had fallen.

  I put the car in the garage, and Alice introduced me to a muscular man named Niu. She went inside and came back with a large white bedsheet, which we wrapped around Hai. She carried a bucket of heavy chains we’d found in the garage while Niu and I carried the body down to the beach and into a waiting boat.

  Niu piloted us out to sea. The running lights were off, and we saw no other boaters out on the calm water. We left the engine running, dropped anchor, then wrapped Hai in the chains. It took all three of us to hoist him up and over the port-side gunwale. We held him for a moment, and Alice closed her eyes to say a brief, silent prayer. She nodded when she was finished, and we pushed him off the edge and into the water. We watched as the ocean claimed him and he sank out of view.

  Alice said nothing, but she wiped away a tear and sat by herself on a bench. When I went to her, she asked me to leave, her voice soft but raw. I stood in the small pilothouse with Niu. Neither of us spoke while he took us back to shore.

  We parted in silence after climbing the steps from the beach. The house was safe enough, and Alice claimed that the three of us, plus her doctor, were the few individuals who knew of this property. Regardless, we would be keeping the guns close.

  In the bathroom, I washed the gore off my face and neck. The suit jacket and white shirt were both ruined, so I stripped them off and dumped them on the floor. I was too jazzed to sleep, and my mind was racing with questions.

  I was on edge from the adrenaline dump, nervous and twitchy with too much energy. I stood on the deck, letting the evening breeze wash over me. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and I watched the black expanse of water shifting in the night.

  The door slid open behind me, and Alice’s footfalls were soft against the wooden deck. She put her arms around my waist and pressed her face into my back. Her breath soaked through the fabric of my undershirt and warmed the skin beneath. Her hands moved across my chest, down to my waist, seeking proof of life after so much death. I turned in her grip, and she stared up at me expectantly as I leaned down to kiss her. She kissed back, hard, and untucked my shirt, pulling it off.

  I ran my fingers through her long soft hair, bunching it up in a
fist to pull her face close to mine, then pulling her head back to expose her slender neck. I kissed her shoulder and collarbone and nibbled at the base of her neck. Her fingers pressed against my skull as she breathed heavily.

  Her cotton robe fell away easily. Her small breast fit well in the palm of my hand. I ran my tongue over the scars on her chest, sinking to my knees, kissing my way down her body as she leaned against the railing. My heart was racing, and in the wake of the day’s earlier violence and the adrenaline come-down, I was spent. But we needed each other. Needed the comfort of one another. Needed to feel alive after so much violence, murder, and death.

  I nuzzled against her hips, the small patch of pubic hair soft beneath my lips, and she shifted her weight, parting her legs for me and raising one over my shoulder. I could taste ocean salt in the folds of her skin, and I inhaled her scent, exploring the crevice of her body with my tongue. Her fingers gripped the sides of my head again, pulling me closer as she tilted her hips forward, moving against my face.

  She came, pushing me deep against her. She breathed hard and raggedly as her legs quivered. I kissed the inside of her thighs, slowly working my way back up her body. She urged me to my feet and led me back inside and to her bedroom.

  I undressed, and she sat on the bed’s edge before me. She took me in her mouth and moved slowly, her tongue lapping delicately at the tip, and I had to pull away. She took my hands, pulling me down on top of her. I attacked her neck, and she arched and squirmed beneath me, her nails scratching my back, grabbing my ass, and forcing me deeper inside her. We ground our bodies tightly against one another, and I was breathless when I exploded inside her.

  She kissed me hard, then wrapped her arms and legs around me, hugging me. I kissed her face, tasting her tears. When I rolled off her, she spooned against me, and we slept for a time.