Ghost Black

by Matthew S. Cox

  Garrison leaned over his desk, focused on something she couldn’t see due to her low angle. A small, oscillating fan at the corner rotated back and forth, pushing small plastic bits around and sending sparkles of dust past his holographic terminal. She perched in place, watching the fan go back and forth for a few minutes, its rhythm offering an idle distraction from the conversation she dreaded starting. Her feelings toward him had been teetering between killer and father, but seeing this office, the place she had grown up in, filled her with guilt. Despite all the dustblow flying around, it sounded so ridiculous to suspect Garrison had been manipulating her since she’d been a little orphan on the street. Maybe he hadn’t even known she existed when he signed the order. Much of her demand for revenge had come from believing the UCF had been so corrupt they murdered one of their own soldiers.

  But Andriy had been a spy.

  And he’d murdered her mother.

  Risa lost her urge to fly in and kill Garrison right away. She bowed her head and decided to let him talk, a part of her deep brain knowing that meant she wouldn’t hurt him―and hoping that proved to be true.

  Opening the vent cover without making a noise had become an old game. At one point, she’d thought it funny to sneak up and scare him. Now, knowing he’d been Spec Ops, she bit her lip. Startling that man had probably been one of the more foolish things she’d done. He never raised a hand to me. Did he know I was coming?

  She nudged the hinged flap of plastisteel open and crawled into the office that had replaced her childhood home. Twenty meters past the desk, behind a portable medical partition, her cot sat beneath a wall covered in plasfilm posters. Risa smirked at the tanned bikini-clad blonde she’d envied so much as a tween. No amount of sun would change her skin color. Marsborn went from inhuman white to burned.

  “How’d it go?” asked Garrison, without looking back.

  Risa pushed the vent closed and stood before wandering up to the side of the desk. Two holo-panels hovered in front of him, filled with numbers: inventory of supplies and budget details. She wondered if any of these reports went back to the government. I guess it makes sense now how we have money coming in. Hackers can only do so much.

  “Risa?” Garrison looked up at her.

  Without even realizing it, she’d adopted her broken-marionette stance. Her unfocused gaze settled on some far-off point on the wall. The posture seemed to unsettle him, and his chair creaked. She tried to blot out the memory of flames devouring her father’s face, at the same time fighting to ignore the true sorrow she remembered in Garrison’s eyes whenever she yelled at him.

  “What’s wrong? Is it Pavo?” He reached out to take her hand.

  She didn’t move, suppressing a shiver as his coarse, warm skin touched hers. “What’s APSE?”

  “It’s an administrative organization. Government management for Arcadia, Primus―”

  “I know.” She shifted her weight on to her left leg. “You worked for them.”

  “What’s gotten into your head?” Garrison eased himself out of his chair.

  He’s afraid. Does he know I’d be able to kill him? She tightened her jaw. Do I know I’d be able to kill him? “The truth.”

  “I don’t know what misinformation you’ve been fed, Bit, but I can’t straighten it out if you don’t let me in on it.”

  The nickname hit her in the gut. Her dissociative calm faded, and with it, she abandoned the posture of a smashed doll. She put her hands on the desk to steady herself, and locked eyes. “I know you’re the one who ordered my father killed.”

  His cheeks paled. After a few seconds, he lowered his gaze to the floor.

  Shit. It’s true. “W-why…”

  “I’m sorry. He was ACC―”

  “I mean why did you lie to me?” Risa swallowed. A sense of betrayal threatened to take her legs out from under her while anger rode wires down her arms into her claws. Ten shards of synthetic diamond sprang from her fingertips. She stepped toward him, arms out to either side, her deadly ‘nails’ gleaming in the light. “You watched me throw my life away trying to find the people who did it… and you knew the whole time.”

  “Risa…” He reached for her.

  She jerked away. “Don’t touch me right now. I trusted you. I… Why Genevieve?”

  Garrison froze. “What?”

  “I swear… Don’t mindfuck me, Garrison. I’m not in the best headspace right now for dealing with dustblow. I know you’re the one who got the rigged detonator from Heitzenroeder. You’re the one who tried to kill Genevieve.” Fuck!

  “Genevieve’s death was an accident.”

  A slight uptick in tone toward the end made it seem almost a question. He’d noticed her slip up. Tried to kill. Risa clenched her jaw. That cinched it. Without an awesome answer, she’d have to kill him to protect her friend. “I know it wasn’t.”

  Garrison’s stance changed to one a person might adopt while attempting to talk down a hostage taker. He raised a hand in a cautioning gesture. “Calm down, Bit. How can you possibly know something that isn’t true?”

  Risa thought about the data tile, vindaloo exploding all over her, Raziel. “An… an angel told me.” Her claws retracted, answering the doubt in her mind.

  “You don’t sound very confident.”

  The desk fan whirred toward her, rustling two empty plastic cups and an old fork.

  “Raziel…” She took another step back. “He’s not really an angel. I’m not quite done dealing with that yet. T-there’s so much damned dustblow, I can’t take another pound of it on my back.”

  “Not an angel?” Garrison tilted his head. “I guess you found him in Araphel. What else are you hiding?”

  “Me? You’ve got a lot of balls asking me what I’m hiding.” Risa scowled. “Genevieve found a file. She thought it had information about General Maris on it, but it didn’t. I saw the orders. E-signed by Lt. Col. Garrison Tanais of C-Branch, APSE. A kill order for my father. I thought you killed Gen to protect Maris, but you were trying to cover your own ass. You didn’t want the guys to learn you used to be black ops. You’re up to your eyeballs in this entire shitstorm.” Her composure slipped, and tears flowed down her cheeks. “You tried to murder my only friend… over nothing.”

  “That’s twice you said ‘tried.’” said Garrison in a soothing, low tone. “Is Gen still alive?”

  Risa let her arms hang limp and extended her claws. “I suppose there’s no point hiding anything now. Yeah. Gen figured out the detonator had been rigged for an immediate explosion, and realized someone inside tried to kill her—but not who.” Her voice fell to a half-whisper. “I thought it was Maris. I’d hoped…”

  “Risa… Look at me.” Garrison waited for her to regain eye contact. “I did not try to kill Genevieve. We had been getting materiel from Denmark for a little over a year, and then this new guy shows up offering us similar components at one-third the price. It was a rookie mistake.”

  Hairline circles superimposed over Garrison’s eyes in her vision. Thin threads led back from his cheeks to sensor readouts of perspiration levels. A cluster of wavy lines created by her somatic response system hovered at the right of his head. They showed no trace of deceit.

  “You’re from the Special Operations Group. You don’t make ‘rookie mistakes.’” She leaned to the right, her brain poised to trigger speedware. “You’re also good enough to fool a soma. If you’re going to feed me dustblow, at least make it believable.”

  “Damn the machine.” Garrison, in apparent disregard of her exposed blades, took a step closer. “What do you feel? Of course, I thought it was a load of shit. No one runs black market demo gear ‘on the cheap,’ but even someone like Heitzenroeder can be looking to score points with a potential major buyer. A trial sale to test the products, then the price goes up.” He pointed at her chest. “I told Maris it stank to Hell and back, but all he saw was the goddamn credit counter.”

  Risa glared at him. He had the same frustrated sadness in his eyes she’d seen
so often before. Garrison’s voice in her head pulled her a few weeks back, standing in her room on Death Row after Tamashī said she’d found information on Pavo.

  I can’t lose you.

  She’d called him ‘Dad.’ At the time, she had no doubt his concern for her was genuine. No longer able to look at him, Risa glanced to the left. Pat. Boosted hearing picked up a droplet of blood hitting the floor, a side effect of her claws’ emergence. Tingles surrounded the point at which synthetic diamond pierced her fingertips, thousands of nanobots working to seal the wounds.

  “Bit…” He advanced, still moving slow, and set one hand on her right shoulder. “Genevieve and you were so close. I’m not sure I could have made myself do that even if I had clear evidence she was plotting against us. You have to believe me when I say you are the only thing that truly matters. I quit C-Branch when I learned you were in the apartment when the strike went down. I thought…”

  She gave up trying to stop the tears, and let them stream down in silence. It took her a moment to find a voice that didn’t quiver. “You cared that much about someone else’s daughter?”

  Garrison sighed. “You weren’t part of the plan. She wasn’t supposed to have had a child with him. I only found out you existed after everything was in motion. I… I signed off on an operation that I’d believed resulted in the death of an eight-year-old innocent. That was it for me. I couldn’t do it anymore.”

  Risa didn’t need the somatic system’s indicator to believe him. A crash of nausea and elation hit her at the same time. Claws retracted with faint snaps, and she raised her arms up to hug him. If he breaks my neck right now, I won’t even care. He seemed to relax.

  “You weren’t sure I couldn’t do it.” She sniffled.

  He patted her back. “I know how you get when you have an idea stuck in your head. I’d hoped… but, I didn’t want to let you do something you’d regret.”

  She cringed. “I wish you’d thought that way before I got wired up. You know they call me the Black Phantom in Germany?”

  “It’s kind of catchy. Schwarzgeist?” He held her out to arm’s length, a hand on each shoulder. “I think that winds up being closer to black ghost, but it’s nothing like you.”

  Risa covered her mouth and nose, breathing into her hands for a moment to calm down. “Please tell me this isn’t another brain fuck. You really didn’t try to kill Gen?”

  “No.” He blinked and gave his head a light shake. “You’re saying she’s alive?”

  “Yeah. She’s been hiding in Araphel for years, not knowing who tried to kill her.” Risa shuddered. “It’s horrible there. Like prison. No wonder they leave it alone.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, offering a wistful smile. “Chaia said I’d find someone I thought was dead for a long time.”

  He made no attempt to hide a cringe. “Psionics give me the creeps. Not sayin’ they should be hurt or anything. Just sayin’ I don’t want to be around ’em.”

  “You should have told me.” Risa made a fist, but did nothing with it. “You let me go off the deep end. If you’d told me there was no one out there to find and kill…” She squinted at him as a chill of suspicion ran down her back. “Or would that have denied the MLF its ‘most dangerous’ weapon?”

  He smacked his lips; his expression seemed to say ‘I deserved that.’ “No. I was worried you’d hate me. I worried you’d run away and get yourself killed or worse. Even if I had to lie to do it, I wanted you to feel safe somewhere. Guess I didn’t do a good job.”

  Risa tried to doubt him, but couldn’t. “Sorry. My head can’t take any more surprises. If that woman shows up out of nowhere now, I think my brain will leak out of my ears.”

  Garrison walked backwards to his desk, and sat. His terminals flickered back to life sensing proximity. “Which woman?”

  “Umm.” Risa pulled out her NetMini, and projected an image showing a much younger Garrison in military camo getting cute with a woman also in uniform. “This one. That file had a bunch of pictures of you with her when you were active Delta.”

  He stared at the image. All the life drained out of his expression and a tear streaked down his face. A whisper audible only to augmented ears left his mouth. “Serena.”

  “Sorry… I didn’t know she was dead.” Risa went to close the image but he reached for it.

  Garrison cradled the small device in his hands, staring into the washed-out image. Monochromatic blue-green gave it a look of night vision. He tried to reach into the hologram and touch the twelve-inch-tall figure. After a second of fingertips piercing the veil of light, he drew his hand back over his mouth.

  “Sorry.” Risa looked down.

  “This was about eighteen miles southeast from Bucaramanga, Columbia. Probably 2388 or ’89. My third operational assignment under SOG-D. Her first. I… I’d like a copy of these images if you don’t mind.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Why do I feel like such a bitch? “What happened to her?”

  Garrison handed her back the NetMini. “She was killed in the line of duty. But you knew that.”

  Risa closed the image display, the holo-panel becoming a sea of icons. Inhuman dexterity turned her hand into a blur as she selected all the images with Garrison and Serena, brushed them into the mail client, and tossed them onto his contact tile. “By who?”

  Garrison’s eyebrows crept together. “Andriy Voronin.”

  3

  A Prophecy Clear

  Silence hung over Garrison’s office as heavy as a wake. For a full two minutes, the only disruption in the perfect stillness came from one of Risa’s old plasfilm posters scraping the wall whenever the fan rotated all the way to the right. He looked up at her as though she’d said something mind numbing in its stupidity.

  “Uhh, sorry. I’m… I get it now. Why you killed him. I mean, he killed someone you love, right?” She shifted her weight. “Guess we have that in common. He killed my mother too.” She shuffled over to the desk, half sitting on the edge. “I wasn’t sure how to feel about him at first when I learned that. I’d always assumed my mother left us.”

  “Risa…” Garrison, for the first time she could remember, seemed at a loss for words.

  She took his hand.

  “She’d really fallen for him. It was supposed to be an assignment. She was too good at her job. All she had to do was keep tabs on him, warn us if he was planning something big.” He slouched, looking defeated. “I don’t know what she saw in him. She thought their love would overpower whatever hold the ACC had on him, but…”

  “Yeah. I read the file.” Risa looked down and fidgeted with a small piece of ‘desk kitsch,’ a silver eagle on a pedestal. After a few minutes of tense silence, she stopped touching it. “How long ago did he kill Serena?”

  Garrison’s chair groaned in rusty torment as he leaned forward. “Risa… Do you know who Marisa Donnelly was?”

  “Of course.” She draped her arms in her lap. “My mother. They named me ‘Risa’ as a shortened form of Marisa.”

  “You don’t remember what she looked like, do you?” Garrison rubbed his chin. “Of course not, you were barely two years old when he killed her.”

  She stared at him. “You’re hesitating now.” Why does that name sound like I’ve heard it somewhere before? Serena Var… Tightness gripped her heart as the face of General Everett came back to her, pointing a handgun at her in a dim hotel room.

  Her name was Serena Var. She worked for C-Branch, posing as Marisa Donnelly.

  “Oh, shit!” Risa covered her mouth. “You were dating my mother.”

  She ripped the NetMini out and opened the picture again, unable to stop sniffling and crying at the image of her mother. She looked to be about the same age Risa was now. Even in low-res night vision, a resemblance emerged―once she thought to look for it.

  “We were married less than three months when she drew that assignment. Command had tapped six female operatives, but he didn’t show the least bit of interest in any of them. They’d been worried h
e would figure it strange that women kept coming out of nowhere and seeming interested in him. By number five, we all thought he’d get spooked and burn the identity, flee back to the Corporates… I guess my luck was really that bad.”

  Her hands trembled. “S-Shiro… He said my dad should’ve dragged me around by the wrist more. He thought you should’ve forbade me from getting cyberware.” She bit her forearm in an effort to keep from throwing up. When the nausea subsided, she stared through tear blur at him. Chaia’s words came back to her, along with the flavor of shrimp Caesar salad. Someone you thought dead for a long time is not. She gawked at Garrison. “No… she had to mean Gen.”

  “Genevieve had nothing to do with your mother’s death… or Andriy. She would’ve been six or seven years old when Serena died.”

  Risa lifted her gaze to meet his. Her entire body trembled. “A-are you really my father?”

  Garrison drew in a breath to answer while denial swam over his face. He hesitated, closing his mouth without making a noise. The effort of thinking twisted his eyebrows. “I… The only way that would even be possible is if she’d become pregnant within two weeks of taking that assignment, and never told me. I… They did a physical on her two weeks before she started. They would’ve pulled the plug on the operation if they found her pregnant.”

  She wiped her face. “Yeah. You’re right. I guess that doesn’t make a lot of sense. She’d have told you. How much sex could the two of you have had in two weeks?”

  Garrison’s cheeks went a bright shade of maroon. “Some questions should not be asked.”

  Risa laughed despite herself. “Consider that un-asked. Silly to think about.”

  He leaned to the side and braced his hands on the desk, head down. “At the time she accepted the assignment, we were as in love as two people can be. There’s no reason I can think of she would’ve held something like that back. I’m sorry, Bit. I don’t need genetics to feel like your father.”