by Mel Odom
Blaine took a breath and continued. “Haas-Bioroid contacted me, and I helped cover up the murder by using Dwight Taylor.”
“Who did you speak to at the corp?”
“One of those dime-a-dozen cutouts the corps use to keep their hands clean when they’re working off the grid.”
“Did you get a name?”
“I did. But there’s no proof for anything I’m telling you now.” Blaine snorted. “When these corps start covering things over, they bury them deep. If you’re in the way, they bury you with it.”
“How did you know Dwight Taylor?”
“He was one of the sec people working for MirrorMorph. It was suggested that I use him to play the jealous boyfriend for Giacomin.”
“Haas-Bioroid suggested using him?”
Blaine shook his head. “That suggestion came from Simon Blake.”
Immediately I recalled the story I’d been tracking in the media regarding the kidnapping of Mara Blake, CEO of MirrorMorph, Inc. According to the rags, she’d had a husband named Simon. He’d died eight years ago.
“Mara Blake’s husband.”
“Yeah.”
“Did Mara Blake know about the murder?” The question was out before I’d known I was going to raise it.
Blaine studied me a moment. “I don’t know. She was one of the primary designers on the new neural channeling programming. She didn’t have much time. I hardly ever saw her.”
“But you saw Simon Blake?”
“Yeah.”
“How often?”
“The night we covered up the murder.” Blaine squeezed his hands into fists, caught himself, and made himself relax. “Not again till he was dead in the hospital.”
“You were there when he died?”
“No, after. MirrorMorph asked me to take care of the paperwork regarding his murder.”
“Did you ever find out who killed him?”
Blaine shook his head. “It was an ambush. The guy was totally set up. Whoever killed him might as well have been a ghost. The only thing they screwed up on was not killing him immediately. I looked for a long time.”
“Because he was a friend?”
“Because it was my job. And because I thought it might be some kind of fallout from the Giacomin thing.”
“Was it?”
Blaine shrugged. “I don’t know. If it was, the fallout never touched anybody else. The team got split. Internal disagreement on who should lead.” Blaine shrugged again. “It happens. The other team had their contract picked up by one of the corps. This team turned private enterprise.”
I was silent for a moment, putting everything together. I looked around at the mercenaries. “Then, why did these people kill Dwight Taylor? He was one of them. He was with this unit on Mars.”
The woman turned to me in surprise. Then she looked at Blaine and back at me. “How do you know about Mars?”
“It turned up in information I found.” I touched the side of my neck. “The tattoo, remember?”
“How did you know about the tattoo?”
I held up my hand slowly and activated my internal PAD. “Brock Thurman’s sister had pictures of the Mars campaigns he served on with Dwight Taylor.” I cycled some of the images above my palm. I didn’t want to tell them about the strange experiences I’d had of me being on Mars.
The woman cursed and kicked the wall. “Stupid mistake. John taught us all that we didn’t take keepsakes and nobody made records.”
I remembered then that Eugenia Warren had mentioned that the leader of the mercenary team had been named something like John. I recalled the image she’d shown me of the man with the scar across his cheek. The ties were definitely there.
She looked at the other mercenaries around us, then at Blaine, like this was somehow his fault. “If this walking pile of nuts and bolts can find out about us, that means that others can, too. We don’t know how exposed we are.”
None of the mercenaries seemed thrilled about that.
I leaned back against the cargo hopper’s hull. “If you want, you can take off Blaine’s cuffs. That look you just swapped with him? That’s not something you do with a prisoner.”
For a moment, no one moved, then Blaine chuckled and removed the cuffs himself and tossed them in the corner.
The woman scowled and cursed some more.
Blaine crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the woman. “I told you meeting with him would be dangerous. You lose a partner, you’re ready to set the world on fire.” Sadness drifted through his eyes. “Or it eats you alive. Either way, you’re changed for life.” He gazed at me.
The woman cursed. “It had to be done. We knew we were exposed after the Cartman Dawes thing. We needed to know how much, and whether Haas-Bioroid was involved.”
I focused on Blaine. “You’re working for these people?”
“With. There’s a difference. We’re all trying to stay alive.”
“What do you mean?”
“They were set up on the Cartman Dawes murder.”
“How?”
“They were just supposed to talk to Dawes, courier a package he wanted moved. When they got there, he was already dead. As soon as they entered the room and discovered Dawes, they left. Apparently that holodisc was set to short out at the same time they showed up, leaving them stranded in the hotel.” Blaine shook his head. “You and Nolan got there at a bad time.”
I stared at Blaine, turning the information over in my mind. The mercenaries weren’t entirely innocent from legal consequences. “They killed Shelly.”
“I know.” Blaine’s voice was quieter now, and he seemed genuinely saddened. “They didn’t know who to trust. You guys caught on to them too quick. For all they knew, you were working with the people that had set them up.” He paused. “You and your partner were supposed to catch them, Drake. And you did. That was just bad business. Nothing can be done about it now.”
Quietly, I looked around the cargo hopper. I was in the same vehicle as the people that were responsible for Shelly’s death. Blaine was allied with them. I weighed my chances of taking them in, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I was hampered by the Three Directives. If I took action, it could only be to take them into custody with the least amount of damage possible.
I would only get myself destroyed. But even though the people that had actually killed Shelly had been arrested, these people were co-conspirators. Her death was on their hands in the eyes of the law—and in mine—just as surely as if they had been there.
“We were set up, too.” I heard Shelly’s voice in my mind and I knew it was true. I let go of some of the dissatisfaction I felt at the situation. There was still the perpetrator behind this whole elaborate scheme that was in play. I wanted that person. I repeated what Shelly had said.
Blaine shrugged carefully. “Yeah, that’s the way I scan it.” He nodded at the mercenaries. “These people came after me, thinking maybe I had something to do with everything that had gone down with Cartman Dawes. At the very least, they hoped I could help find out who’d set them up. Took me awhile to explain that I didn’t have a clue. It helped I wasn’t part of the contract on Dawes, but they still wanted me to act as a go-between with you because you’re all over this thing. So here I am.” He paused, looking at me. “And now, here you are, too.”
“What’s this about?”
“As near as we can figure, it has to do with the neural channeling programming that MirrorMorph and Mara Blake developed for Haas-Bioroid.”
“So Haas-Bioroid has her?”
“I don’t think so. They’d have just killed her. Someone killed Cartman Dawes, and took out three of the techs that had been with MirrorMorph in that bombing of Dawes’s new plant on Mars. I believe that has something to do with this, but we haven’t been able to figure it out yet.” Blaine paused for a moment and worked his jaw. “They’re cleaning house on that old group of mercenaries and software developers. Maybe Mara Blake is dead, too, and her body just hasn’t surf
aced. We still have a lot of questions.”
“How did these mercenaries get involved with all of that?”
“They were providing security for MirrorMorph. When Haas-Bioroid picked up the tech, the mercenary team was cut loose in favor of Haas-Bioroid people. That’s when the split happened.”
I looked at the mercenaries around us. “So, what have these people been doing since then?”
The woman sneered at me. “What everybody does. At least, everyone human. We survived. Whatever it took. Whatever job we could do.”
“You don’t know who employed you?”
“No. The contract was handled by a fixer we use. Until we found Dawes dead, we believed the fixer was Dawes.”
I knew about fixers. They were the go-betweens that existed in the criminal underground, the people that could match up a crime and a criminal, or an employee with an employer. “Who set you up with this job then?”
She shook her head.
I started to object, to point out the foolishness of protecting that person.
“Knowing a name won’t help you. She’s dead. Killed the same night Cartman Dawes was murdered.”
I conceded the point. I had a lot of questions. “So there’s a third player in all of this.”
Blaine nodded. “Yeah. A wild card. We don’t know if it’s another corp, or if it’s part of this group that has gone rogue.”
“Was Dwight Taylor one of the rogues?”
“No. But after the Giacomin hit, he went his own way.” Blaine shrugged.
“Is that why this team killed him?”
The woman shook her head. “We didn’t kill Taylor. Since you were there, especially since you lived through whatever happened, we thought you’d ferreted Taylor out and marked him for a kill squad.”
“No, and that wouldn’t explain why they tried to destroy me.”
“They might have known you could be salvaged.”
“The destruction was quite extensive.”
“Or maybe they considered you collateral damage.” The woman stared at me. “If Blaine is wrong—if this really is Haas-Bioroid—they created you. They can create another one of you tomorrow.”
I chose to ignore that because there was no way to explain all the details about why she was wrong, and it wasn’t the line of investigation that I was interested in. I shifted my gaze back to Blaine. “You said Taylor went his own way.”
“He did.”
“Why?”
“Separated from the group.” Blaine shook his head. “Nobody really knew why.”
The woman spoke up again. “We think it had to do with Simon Blake’s death.”
I reflected for a moment. “Taylor and Blake were close?”
“Taylor was with Blake the longest. In the beginning, Taylor was one of the few that came out of the Mars wars with Blake. At the end, Taylor was the last remaining member of the original guns.” She shook her head. “Taylor was the one that took Blake’s betrayal the hardest.”
“Betrayal?”
“Later, after Giacomin was murdered, we discovered Haas-Bioroid was hunting Simon Blake and Taylor, too.” Blaine grimaced. “Turns out Mara Blake’s true blue husband was a louse. Nobody knew till after he was dead. He was seeing Giacomin on the side. They started thinking that maybe Giacomin was clean and that Blake had set her up as the fall guy. When that came out, Haas-Bioroid killed Blake, too.”
“Was Blake guilty of selling the programming?”
Blaine shook his head. “We never knew for sure. Someone was selling the software, and after those two people were dead and gone, the loss stopped.”
“As far as you know. The true perpetrator could simply have decided to cut his or her losses.”
“Maybe. Haas-Bioroid seemed satisfied with the outcome.”
“What about Mara Blake? Was she satisfied with the outcome?”
“No. She was in love with her husband. He was there one day and dead the next.” Blaine sat up straighter. “I think that’s the major reason she didn’t fight harder for her company when Haas-Bioroid started pulling it away from her. Mara Blake is smart. She could have handled herself in a fight, even with Haas-Bioroid. She didn’t.”
I pulled up the file from the Net and perused the story of Simon Blake’s death. “Simon Blake died in a hopper crash.”
And suddenly, the world rushed away from me.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
At first, I thought I was remembering one of the earlier hopper crashes I’d had. This past week had been filled with several traumatic episodes. Then I realized that I was trapped, wrapped inside a metal cocoon. I coughed and hacked. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs.
Lungs.
I knew I was back in the other experiences. I looked around the crushed cockpit and tried again to get out. I couldn’t. I was numb from the waist down and I wondered if I’d been paralyzed in the wreck.
I noticed the blood all around me. I knew I wasn’t me, and I didn’t know where I was.
“Please remain calm.” The automated hopper voice spoke calmly. “Help is on the way. Your vitals remain strong. Concentrate on remaining calm. Help is on the way.”
I tried to remember how I’d crashed the hopper, what had happened, but I couldn’t. The memory wasn’t there. Pain shot through me.
I struggled to lift my right arm and couldn’t, but I could get my left arm free. I fought against the carbosteel frame that held me trapped. I swore to myself that I would never let this happen to me again, that I would never again be this vulnerable. I wiped at my face, only then realizing that something obscured my vision.
“Please do not move. Movement puts you at risk. You have been in a very serious accident. Please do not move. Help is on the way. Estimated time of arrival of ambulance is three minutes eleven seconds.”
Blood covered the interior of the shattered cockpit hatch. None of the shards had broken loose, though, and they remained within the framework.
Which meant none of them were in me.
I wanted to ask the on-board near-AI where I was, but I couldn’t find my voice. I didn’t think I was on Mars anymore, and I wasn’t on the Moon. I felt heavy, which ruled out Mars, and there was more light than would have been found on the Moon.
Around me, tall spires stood up straight against the sky. I was on Earth. I was in a megapolis. Finding out which one would be easy enough. I tried to access the Net and couldn’t. I wanted to find a PAD but I couldn’t even begin the search.
I just had to be patient.
And not die.
I dragged air into my lungs, then expelled it. Through the shattered window, I saw the emergency ambulance hopper as it set down nearby. I wanted to call out to whoever had arrived, but I couldn’t. I sat there trapped.
A moment later, a man appeared at the cockpit hatch and peered in through his cupped hands pressed tightly against the transplas. He saw me and put one of his hands against the hatch.
I weakly pressed my left hand against his to let him know I was conscious and that I knew he was there.
“Don’t worry about anything. We’re going to get you out of there.” The voice sounded familiar. The man lifted his helmet’s face shield and smiled reassuringly at me. I recognized him as Dwight Taylor.
I stared at the man in silent curiosity, unable to ask the questions that flooded my thoughts. He was dressed in the emergency rescue worker uniform. I didn’t know how our fates were so inextricably woven together, and I couldn’t help remembering how he had died in my arms, frightened and in horrible pain. I wondered if I had failed him. Or if he had failed me.
I wondered why I was even thinking like that because I’d never truly known the man. He was just a figment of whatever I was currently going through.
He returned a moment later with a medical rescue device that chewed away the carbosteel. The noise of the great jaws biting into the metal vibrated through me, and the crashed hopper shivered ever-so-slightly.
Gradually, though, the crushed walls of t
he hopper were excised and pulled away. Wind pushed across my face, and I felt the drying blood stiffening my features. Out the corner of my eye, I saw the congealed crimson staining my cheeks.
“Please remain calm. Statistics have shown that people who can remain calm during high-stress situations are able to better deal with injuries and psychological damage. Help is here.”
I was calm, but I knew my biometrics were scaling upward as well as dropping. It was still confusing to know that the heart rate and blood pressure were mine. I had been conscious of them in other people before, but never myself.
A few minutes later, Dwight Taylor cut me out of the hopper harness and gently lifted me from the wreckage with the aid of another man who had a chimera tattoo on the side of his neck. They were mercenaries, not emergency rescue men.
“Just hold on.” Taylor laid me on a powered stretcher. He folded my arms over my chest and the stretcher’s programming package ran belts around me to secure me. He pressed a device to my forehead for a handful of seconds, then pulled it away. “Your vitals are good.”
I already knew that, but I also knew my vitals—which I should not have had—were falling fast.
Dwight Taylor dropped the device into one of his uniform pockets. “We’ve got to get you to the hospital.” He called for the stretcher and the near-AI controlling it moved automatically toward the waiting emergency hopper.
The vehicle was red and white, and not really any help in identifying where I was. A lot of medical transport hoppers were red and white throughout the megapoli.
I tried to ask where we were, but I couldn’t get the words out. The stretcher trundled into the back of the hopper and I struggled to maintain consciousness. I was fighting a losing battle. I watched as Dwight Taylor climbed in beside me, pulled the safety harness around him, and took an IV pack from the built-in cabinets that lined the side of the vehicle. He popped the plastic package as the automated doors closed the hopper.
In the next moment, we were airborne and I lost touch with reality again.
*
When I woke, I was in a hospital room. Machinery bleeped and hissed and clicked all around me. I couldn’t move my head so I used my peripheral vision as much as I was able. I recognized some of the machinery, but not all of it.
