by Sean Platt
She sat in the quiet room with her arms crossed over her chest, steaming. Tears began to flow, scouring her cheeks like acid. After a few moments, she swiped them furiously away.
She was Natasha Ryan, and this was her goddamned life. She’d do the concert her own way. She didn’t need Jameson’s help; she’d just thought it would be a fun thing for them to plan together. And why not? Of all the people in the world, Jameson Gray would understand. His wealth was a pie to her crumbs. His power and renown made Natasha seem like a nobody. He should have been the perfect person to help plot her triumphant return: Mr. Enterprise, who’d made his way by dazzling crowds and taking what he deserved.
I don’t want to help tie your noose.
She wasn’t doing that. Was she?
“Canvas!” Natasha almost shouted. She flinched, shocked by her fury.
“Yes, Mrs. Ryan?”
“Get me Andre.”
“Andre is online, Mrs. Ryan, but his vitals show his mood as angry and perhaps violent.”
Natasha felt a mirthless grin crawl onto her mouth.
“Then tell him to hurry.”
Chapter 6
“You can come out now,” Nicolai said.
Across the apartment, Kai heard a mechanical sound that she assumed was a metal deadbolt clicking into place. She looked up at the corner dashboard, wanting to see a green perimeter that meant the place was sealed, but the canvas was still off. She felt like the little girl she’d once been, shivering in drippy ramshackle shelters and hiding from gangs.
She forced her breath to settle. Nicolai’s conversation with Micah had taken what felt like forever. They hadn’t spoken loud, and her cochlear implant required Beam connectivity for auditory augmentation to work — something to do with sending weak signals to The Beam for algorithmic enhancement. So she’d been in a ball in the closet for the entire time, unable to hear, certain that Micah would come in at any moment.
That much of the conversation she’d managed to get without her implant. Nicolai had sounded so guilty that he might as well have painted Kai and I lied to you and she’s in the bedroom now in red on his forehead.
Kai could hear his footsteps approaching the closet door. Her feet had gone numb, and she was sitting on a grove of dress shoes. She’d wanted to move but was afraid to make noise. Maybe her hearing couldn’t be enhanced without Beam connectivity, but she wasn’t so sure about Micah’s. After seeing the next-level immersion rigs in his brother’s apartment, it was abundantly clear that those above her had a rather significant technological advantage. She didn’t feel terribly dignified. Nicolai’s shirts were on either side of her head, like she’d been sitting at the bottom of a laundry chute. It was dark and light on oxygen. There was little reason for the closet to have airflow, seeing as nanos maintained the clothes and managed cooped-up scents.
“I said, you can come out now,” Nicolai repeated from the other side of the door. “He’s gone.”
“I’m just getting ready for you in here,” said Kai.
“I can’t figure out how to open this door with the canvas down. Hang on.”
“Ooh, I’m so hot. Come ravage me under your laundry.”
“Is there a knob inside or something?”
“I hope there’s a knob inside soon. I’m going to wrap my hand around it and…”
“Just push to the left, okay? Your left, if you’re facing the door.”
Kai shrugged for no one to see, then laid her palms against the door and shoved. It opened slowly. The required force made her shiver. She and Nicolai, by pushing from both sides, had effectively grabbed the door in a single giant hand. If she’d been trapped in the closet herself — something she didn’t entirely understand, seeing as the canvas was off and she must have triggered a manual pneumatic once inside — she might never have been able to get out.
“You okay?” Nicolai said, looking down.
Kai looked back up at him. She realized she had a fallen shirt draped over most of her head.
“I’m better than okay. I’m role-playing as a ghost.”
Nicolai extended a hand. Kai took it then stood. She tossed the shirt behind her, thinking that one of Nicolai’s house bots would pick it up and press it if he ever turned his apartment back on.
“I’m sorry. I had no idea he was coming.”
“Neither did I.” Kai brushed at herself, freeing an errant sock. “Clearly. Did he wonder why your canvas was off, or know anything was up?”
“He’s not stupid. I’m sure he knew something was up, but maybe he just thinks I have a gay lover.”
“Why was he here?”
Nicolai seemed to think.
“You don’t know why he was here?” The idea made Kai’s heart flutter. Micah Ryan did nothing by accident, and crossing town to visit his brother’s speechwriter wouldn’t be an exception. He’d had a reason. Kai hoped her paranoia about what it was turned out unfounded.
“I know why he said he was here,” said Nicolai.
“Why?”
“To explain about my father.”
“That’s kind of a big coincidence, isn’t it?” Kai was growing more nervous. “We were just talking about that. Did you accidentally rub any magic lamps and say, ‘I wish Micah would show up and give me the answers I’m looking for’?”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know. What do you think I’m saying?”
Nicolai looked at Kai for a long moment.
“Look,” he said. “I’ve been paranoid since I got that first call from Micah. Wait. No. Since before that. Since Doc. Since you called me and came to me on that stolen screetbike.”
“It wasn’t stolen. Whitlock still has it.”
“Whatever. My point is I can’t live like this. If you’re trying to say that Micah was just waiting around for me to ask questions, maybe snooping outside my door, with the apartment bugged, with me wearing some sort of nano spy on my clothes…”
“Is that a real possibility? Don’t you have a sweeper?”
“Of course. But if you’re saying that he has nanos that a sweeper can’t detect, and that he’s been listening to everything we’ve said since that day, and has Beam access that lets him spy on us all the time whether we know it or not…”
“Oh shit. Oh shit, Nicolai. Can he do that?” Kai felt out of control — one of the perils of spending time with Nicolai. Kai normally kept an impenetrable wall around her soft core and let nobody truly inside. She did her escort duties while outside of (and above) herself. When she was hired as an assassin, a different part of her was in charge, doing the job. She was emotionally solid and completely unshakable. Except with Nicolai. Right now, she wanted some of her walls to return. She didn’t like how she sounded: like a panicky cliché, a girl losing her shit and grasping a man’s sleeves so he’d rise to protect her.
“This is exactly my point,” said Nicolai. “I give a ridiculous what-if, and you react like…”
“Like what?” Just like that, something snapped back into place. Kai didn’t like the idea that she was being like anything.
“We did what we did,” he said. “Period. I can’t live worried all the time. I’ve been asking about the thing with my father every damned day. You hear it every time you see me. Micah came over because I’ve been dodging him. That’s all.”
Kai nodded, trying to convince herself. “That’s all.”
“Right? And if you promise not to freak out at the implications, I’d like to identify another possibility. Just for a laugh. An ultimate what-if.”
“What do you think I am? Some ditzy broad who stands on a chair when she sees a mouse?”
“Put yourself in Micah’s shoes. You said yourself that the thing with him ordering you to kill Doc was more of a test than a vendetta. Of course Doc could have been an asset to Micah. He knows that, but he also knows he had to make his point. So pretend you’re him, and pretend — just pretend! — that you know exactly what we did. Do you demolish the house of cards in a tant
rum, losing both you (his trusted right-hand gal) and me, who he seems to have wanted in Camp Enterprise all along? Or do you look the other way and figure your point was made?”
“So you think he knows?”
“Noah Fucking West. No, I don’t think he knows. Just trying to make you feel better by pointing out the possibilities.”
“I feel fine.” But that was only partially true. Actually, she felt defensive.
“And pointing out that disrupting things now has virtually no upside for him. Again, if he knows, which he doesn’t.”
“So you think,” said Kai.
“Okay, fine. I don’t think. I know. I know he doesn’t know what we did with Doc.”
“Not that. I mean, you think there’s no upside to killing us both. All three of us.”
Nicolai shook his head. “I’m confused.”
“I’m saying that…”
He held out a hand, placing it on Kai’s chest to stop her. His fingers brushed her right nipple through the fabric. She wondered what was wrong with her that she found the pacifying touch arousing, given the circumstances.
“Stop. I don’t want you to explain. I don’t want to be paranoid. I don’t want to think about the possibilities of who knows what and what might happen next.” He made a gesture with one hand that was like cutting off, or drawing a barrier. “This right here? This is a fresh start. Okay? We are where we are. Doc is where he is. Micah is your boss and wants to be mine. That’s it. Nothing happened before now. No secrets. Got it? My brain is about to explode. Let’s just stick our heads in the sand and be ignorant. Can we do that?”
Kai met his soulful brown eyes. “Okay. So what now?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked toward the bed.
“Not that.”
“Fine. Okay. I’m here to visit. ‘What’s up, Nicolai? Well, this has been charming. Why the fuck don’t your closets work? You’re living like a homeless person.’”
“Micah admitted to having Mafia connections,” said Nicolai. He turned to sit on the bed, abjectly platonic. “Not now, but back when my dad was alive.”
Kai sat beside him. “I sort of figured, when you told me about Italy and about them trying to bully their way into your father’s research.”
“He said that’s all over. He said that Ryan Enterprises today is a normal, legit company.”
“Assassins aside, naturally,” Kai said, putting her hand on her chest.
“Legit by his standards, anyway.” Nicolai tapped his chin thoughtfully. “He told me that his grandfather — ‘Pops,’ he called him — was the guy with connections. He said that those connections died with Pops. Which makes sense, really. Think back to the Fall. Allegro Andante — the place that held my father’s patents — burned down. Salvatore Costa was dead; his family was dead; his house and personal lab were destroyed. Sounds like it took years for them to even suspect any of his research survived. The old man had to be ancient by then. I’d have to look it up, but he must have died right around that time, right? So with nothing to attempt to squeeze from the Costas and Allegro and without Pops, why would the Mob maintain its connections with the NAU’s Ryan Enterprises through all those bad years?”
“There’s Mafia in this country,” said Kai.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe they’re nothing but board meetings and friendly lunches these days. You just hid in a closet because we’re afraid of their top man. I turned off my canvas to avoid detection then got detected anyway. I’m not saying there’s not plenty of dirty stuff going on. The question is how dirty?”
Kai put her hand on his leg. “That is the question.”
Beside her on the bed, Nicolai’s hair had fallen into a disheveled mess, long strands falling in front of his face, hanging on his glasses. Her recent adventures in evasion — so much less elegant and dignified than her evasion of Alix Kane and the Beamers — had upped her hormones and set everything on high alert. Everything. And Nicolai was so cute when he was thinking.
“I need to know if he’s telling me the truth,” he said. “About the ’20s and ’30s. About my father, Ryan Enterprises, and the nanobots I had on me.”
Kai watched him then decided to play along. “So check into Micah’s father. See what he was up to. Do some research.”
“Micah said Pops was his mother’s father.”
“Well then, girl power to Mrs. Ryan. Check into her instead.”
“You think the elderly Rachel Ryan is a Mob boss?”
“I don’t know anything about the elderly Rachel Ryan.” Kai cocked her head. “She’s got to be pretty damn elderly, though, if Micah is as old as I think he is.”
“Supposedly over 140.”
Kai felt like whistling. “Well, I’m sure she wasn’t always elderly. Or she could be one of those evil old people today. They exist, you know. It’s not all roses with those folks.”
“No, I don’t think she was a Mob boss. She might have answers, though.” His eyes brightened. “Or Isaac. We should ask Isaac.”
“The man you stormed out on? The one you’re betraying at Shift? The one who is losing his right-hand man and his wife to the other side at the same time while the gossip sheets laugh? That Isaac?”
Nicolai sighed then turned to Kai. “Okay, so he might not open up to me. But you could talk to him.”
“Because we’re such terrific friends.”
Nicolai met her eyes for a pregnant second then shrugged. “Well, you could be.”
Kai didn’t like his tone or the way his eyes had run down her body. And she normally liked his eyes on her body.
“What exactly does that mean?”
“You know…”
“What do I know?”
“Isn’t it your business to get information from men? Or at least to entertain them and make them comfortable? You got one of Micah’s supersoldiers to pass out at your feet. Literally.”
“You want me to sleep with Isaac?”
“I don’t think you need to sleep.”
“Are you kidding?”
Nicolai shrugged again, flapping his hands in useless palms-up gestures. “Why is this such a crazy suggestion?”
“Because I’m not a whore.”
He looked at her again in exactly the wrong way, allowing the look to comprise his answer. Kai stood and slapped Nicolai hard across the face. He was surprised; he flinched hard and almost tumbled onto the floor. Following his recovery, Nicolai stared up at Kai with eyes full of uncomprehending innocence.
“What the hell, Kai?”
“I’m not a whore, Nicolai!”
“But your business…and I mean, I’m in no way judging…”
Kai put her hands on her hips, her arousal now totally gone, her blood boiling. “Let me tell you something about my business,” she said. “I hit the lottery in finding this profession. I’ve always liked to have a good time with good-looking men. But everything is hypocrisy. I didn’t grow up with the shame of my mother’s generation, but even with O sitting at the top of the Exchange since forever, there are still people who think sex is bad and that women shouldn’t enjoy themselves. I found a career that allowed me to do what I wanted — what I was good at — and get paid for it. Even back when I was working for O, I never took jobs I didn’t want to take. So much was already AI and immersion, but I was more requested anyway because technology can’t replicate a human mind no matter how hard it tries. And mine is fantastic. I was so in demand back then, I only took the best clients. I took on my…my ‘second career’ because it opened a whole new demographic. I might not have always been able to find a client I wanted to fuck who was willing to pay me, but at those times I always seemed able to find someone I was willing to lean on, or kill.”
Nicolai looked shocked. He’d long suspected that Kai was an assassin on the side, and ever since the incident with Doc and Micah, he’d known for sure. But this was the first time she’d said it so plainly — had, in fact, said it in as inflammatory a way as possib
le to shock him because he’d made her angry — and had done so because she wasn’t ashamed. In both of her fields, she’d only taken the jobs she wanted, that seemed most worth doing. Kai was for hire, but only for ideal work. And she wasn’t a whore.
“Okay,” he said, his expression neutral.
“I like you, Nicolai. A lot. But if you ever suggest that I’d do something I don’t want to do…”
“…you’ll kill me?”
Her anger was already dissipating. It was impossible to stay mad at Nicolai for long. He was as tough and world-weary a man as she’d ever met, but he was, in some ways, soft and innocent like a child. She watched his face, seeing embarrassment blend with apprehension. He either wanted to atone or run.
She sat back down.
“I don’t want you, of all people, to think I’m a whore,” she said.
“Sure.”
“And I don’t want to try to sex information out of Isaac Ryan.”
Nicolai held up a hand. “I’m just saying — and I’m not trying to convince you — that it would be information you want, too.”
Kai rolled her eyes.
“If you wanted to, I mean,” he added.
Kai looked down at her feet. She was wearing tall black boots with heels. She almost always wore heels, but it wasn’t because she wanted to look sexy. It was because she was so short, and the men around her — Nicolai, Micah, the Artist Formerly Known as Doc — were all so tall.
This was absurd. Kai couldn’t pretend like they were a little wifey and her husband, playing house. She was a free agent. Nicolai knew she was a free agent, and always had. The O Corporation had mainstreamed sex, and her clients understood that. They weren’t buying something elicit, or purchasing pieces of her heart. They were buying an experience, like hiring a tour guide. Yet here she was, acting jealous. But not even jealous from her own point of view — jealous from Nicolai’s point of view, for Nicolai. It was as if she wanted him to have reservations about sending her into someone else’s bed. But Nicolai wasn’t like that. He understood that there was nothing between Kai and her clients other than business.
Then she realized that that was the source of her anger: Nicolai wasn’t concerned because he knew it was business…including between the two of them.
