The Debt Collector (Season Two)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  “Is it bioelectric?” she asks.

  “Yes, quite,” he says. “Bioelectromagnetic source material combined with the mutated collector gene to produce a host animal culture.”

  Miral’s eyes go wide. “It’s an animal collector.”

  “Not precisely,” he says, but he’s obviously pleased with her assessment.

  I’m still working on not being completely repulsed.

  “It’s a mass of cells, but no brain,” he continues. “No controls or nervous system. This particular design functions solely as a storage device.”

  “Storage?” I flick a look to Miral, who nods. “Like a life energy battery?” This sounds just like the tech that Akulife has been developing and that Moloch is so interested in.

  “That is exactly right, Ms. Sterling.” He’s definitely proud. And not picking up at all on my alarm.

  Lirium’s dashing nervous looks between all of us.

  I capture his gaze. “I’m afraid to ask, but what exactly am I supposed to do with this?” I gesture to the pink squishy thing in the tube.

  “We want to make sure it actually can store energy,” Lirium says. “Isn’t that right, Dr. Brodsky?”

  “The young debt collector has been helping me perfect several of my devices.”

  “Wait.” I hold up my hands. “There are other devices?”

  “Indeed.” Brodsky smiles. “Some with great potential. And some that have already demonstrated their effectiveness.” He gives Lirium a small nod.

  Knowing that Moloch is after technology just like this is ringing all my alarm bells, but as far as I can tell, this is something they’ve secreted away. And I’d like to keep it that way. Which means working out some kind of deal with Dr. Brodsky to possibly bring him back in-house. Assuming I even have control of Sterling after all this is settled.

  I take a breath. “Dr. Brodsky, turns out you were right all along. Sterling does need to invest in and develop life energy technology. And I will be very interested in seeing what technologies you’ve been working on. For the moment, what do you say we test this battery of yours? Then I have a few other matters to attend to.” Like trying to stay alive. And stop the plot against Lifetime. “Then perhaps we can discuss getting you some proper facilities for your work?”

  His eyes light up. “That would greatly interest me, Ms. Sterling.”

  “Fantastic. Now…” I can’t help grimacing. “How exactly does this thing work?”

  Brodsky cradles the glass tube like a baby in one arm, complete with a towel for it to rest on, while gesturing with his other hand. “This bulbous end of the device is the storage center. The other end is where I will need you to transfer your dose of life energy.”

  I really hope he doesn’t mean what I think he means. “How much?” I ask.

  “Only a few weeks. I do not want to overload the device, and as we’ve yet to test it, I’m not at all sure of its capabilities. In fact, Ms. Sterling, I was hoping you might be able to sense the capacity of the device as you are transferring. I believe that is how my young debt collector friend describes it.”

  Lirium nods.

  “Can you do the same, Ms. Sterling?” Brodsky asks.

  “Sure.” Although the idea of sensing what’s beyond the transfer point confirms what I was afraid of: I’m going to be touching it. I’m sure I’m making a face, but I can’t really help it.

  “If you are ready, we can go ahead and test it now,” Brodsky says. “I don’t want to keep you from your appointed rounds.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  Brodsky twists the blue top at the end of his glass vial, and it pops unlocked. He removes the lid and hands it to Miral, who is looking on with great interest. Even Lirium is eyeing the device with wide eyes. I swallow down the sourness at the back of my throat.

  “Go ahead, Ms. Sterling,” Brodsky says. “The device will naturally adhere to your palm once it is presented.”

  “You want me to stick my hand in there?” My voice has hiked up an octave.

  “Keeping the device in its native environment will make for the most effective transfer.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.” But I say it mostly under my breath and reach for the glass tube. I stick my hand in the sloshing blue liquid. It’s slimy and cool. The device floats in the lower half, flexing its tentacles. My lips curl up as I slowly ease my hand in. Once I’m halfway up to my elbow, and within a few inches of the squishy device, its tentacles coordinate and reach for my hand. It takes everything I have not to jerk back out of the tube. The thing adheres to my palm and wraps its tentacles around the back of my hand. I pulse a trickle of energy into it, and the entire thing lights up. Streaks of white undulate along its fleshy pink surface. It’s actually kind of amazing, and for a moment, I forget to be disgusted. I reach past the transfer point, and I can sense that it has a tiny, shallow pool of its own life energy, but I’m quickly filling it up. After only a couple of weeks worth of transfer, it feels full. Almost bursting.

  I stop pumping energy, and the thing releases me. As I withdraw my hand, its tentacles curl back on themselves, forming a second bulbous end.

  “I’m sorry for the, shall we say, uncomfortable aspects of the device.” But the grandfatherly scientist is barely holding back his glee, staring at his lit-up fleshy invention with wonder. He re-caps the glass tube and hands me the towel it was resting on.

  “How much did you give it?” he asks.

  “It could only take two weeks.”

  “Two weeks! Splendid.” He’s gazing at it again.

  “I would very much like to see your laboratory, Dr. Brodsky,” Miral says, her gaze likewise fixated on and fascinated by the creature.

  Device. Whatever. It acts like something alive to me.

  “It would be my pleasure,” he says.

  I’m cleaning the blue gel-gunk off my arm, when Zachariel strides out purposefully from the stairwell door. Jax and Lirium’s girlfriend, Elena, trail behind him. He doesn’t look happy, which causes me to hurry up with the cleaning job.

  He gives a mildly disgusted look to the device in Dr. Brodsky’s arm, but ignores that and comes straight to me. “We’ve got a problem.”

  “Only one?” I ask. But he’s dead serious, and with Zachariel, that makes my heart lurch. “What is it?”

  “I can’t get a hold of my handler. There’s something seriously wrong on that end. But that’s not the worst of it. We were able to track enough of the trick InTense and the other slashers performed to figure that we can’t stop it from here.” He says this like it’s still not everything.

  “And?” I ask.

  He lets out an exasperated sigh. “And they’ve set this thing to go off tomorrow.”

  Holy shit. “Are you sure you can’t stop it?”

  “Not from here. And there’s something else, Wraith.”

  “What?” Dread creeps up my back.

  “Do you know what tomorrow is?” he asks.

  Hold up my hands and the towel. I barely know what day it is today. “I don’t have the brainpower for guessing games right now, Zachariel.”

  His face is grim. “It’s the anniversary of the first day of debt collection.”

  Oh god. “There were ten thousand people cashed out that day.”

  “They picked that day for a reason,” Zachariel says. “And it’s not because they were thinking small.”

  My mind is whirling. “There has to be something we can do? Can we get you better equipment? More tech? Maybe we should just report it, like to the Department of Life and Health. They could put more resources behind it—”

  He’s shaking his head. “They’re not going to act fast enough on this, trust me. And I don’t think I can stop it by myself, Wraith. We need to go to the source on this.”

  I see where’s he’s going. “InTense.”

  “We need to go to Sacramento. Now.”

  I nod my agreement and toss the soiled towel on the bed next to me. Somehow we’ve got to convince one of the
top slashers in the underground to undo his own work… before it’s too late.

  Wyatt sits across from me in the Sterling corporate jet.

  He’s busy examining the clouds and has managed to avoid my gaze for most of the flight. We’ll be landing in Sacramento soon, and I’ve started a dozen conversations with him in my head, but none have made it out of my mouth. He’s still in his corporate wear, and I’ve borrowed semi-decent clothes from one of Madam A’s girls, although they’re definitely on the sexy side of office attire. Wyatt and I are sitting in two of the dozen white leather seats in the jet, most clustered in pairs along the length of the chrome and burnished wood interior. Zachariel sits ahead of us, closer to the cockpit, dressed in corporate attire and tapping on a screen, both of which he borrowed from Madam A. He also is packing Jax’s gun.

  We’re on our way to convince InTense—one of the top slashers in the Silicon Valley underground—to undo his own work before it triggers the collection of thousands of people. It will also finger Lifetime as a terrorist organization, but I don’t expect InTense to give a damn about that. He probably doesn’t care about the people, either, or he wouldn’t have signed up for this particular slash work in the first place. But I plan to use both a carrot and a stick to convince him to help us. A taste of what a collection feels should be a compelling stick, but I can also offer the biggest dose of life energy he’s ever had—the perfect carrot for an addict.

  Something I understand all too well.

  Wyatt has joined us because he’s been a mover and shaker in the capitol for some time, and he claims to have contacts that will flush InTense out of his day job as an exec in the tech industry. Miral stayed behind to work with Dr. Brodsky, and Jax promised to keep an eye on everyone at Madam A’s, just in case Moloch somehow tracked us there.

  “It’s not too late for you to go back,” I say to Wyatt, finally ending our hour-long silence. “These are dangerous people. Once we land and refuel, you could return with the plane. Just make sure you go back to Madam A’s and wait until we know it’s safe.”

  Wyatt breaks his study of the clouds to glance at me. “How are you going to find InTense if you don’t even know his real name?

  “Just give me your contacts, and I’ll take it from there.”

  His gaze drifts back to the window. “That won’t work, Alexa. This isn’t exactly public information. My contacts aren’t just going to hand something like this over to someone they don’t know.”

  Which is no doubt true. But the real reason he’s here is because he doesn’t trust we’ll actually stop the attack. Wyatt cares deeply about Lifetime and the cause—they’re at the top of his list of things that have to be protected at all costs. Now that I’m a debt collector, I’m somewhere at the bottom—and trusting a pair of debt collectors to save Lifetime from ruin just doesn’t compute in Wyatt’s worldview.

  “Did you get a hold of Williams?” I ask. I can’t use my palm screen for calls, so I asked Wyatt to contact my father’s attorney before we left. I told Wyatt all about Moloch forcing me to put my Sterling shares in Ishtar’s name, as well as my ruse to keep that from happening.

  Wyatt doesn’t turn from the window. “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  He slowly turns to look at me. A dozen emotions cross his face before he settles on intense concern. “He said he found a discrepancy with your last request, and that you should come in to verify it again.”

  My leather seat squeaks as I lean back into it. “Well, thank god for that.”

  He nods. “You haven’t managed to lose the company. Yet.”

  I scowl, but his gaze is already drifting back to the window. “If I die here in Sacramento—”

  He whips his head back to me.

  “It could happen.” I shrug. “If it does, Sterling will be in your hands.”

  He shakes his head like I’m being foolish. “Whoever the new owner is, I’m sure they will not want me for a personal assistant.”

  “Well, yeah, I can’t imagine why,” I say sarcastically. “You’re pushy, arrogant, and don’t pick up my dry cleaning.” My bid for humor falls flat on his annoyed look, so I just say it straight-out. “I deeded the shares to you, Wyatt. Two days ago, when I was at Sterling.”

  He frowns. “You… what?”

  “I already told you: the company is better off in your hands.”

  “But…” I can see the gears turning in his head. “Why would you do that?”

  He’s genuinely mystified. I just told him, but he doesn’t believe me. It’s as if nothing I say makes sense to him anymore—like I’m speaking an entirely different language. Or he thinks I’m an alien species. Now that I’m a debt collector, it’s like everything we ever had in common has vanished into thin air.

  I sigh. “At the time, I updated my will because I didn’t think I had long to live.” I glance out the window. The midday sun lights up the Sacramento towers ahead of us. We’re almost there, which means I don’t have much time left to say the things that need saying—in case I’m all too right about not coming out of this thing in one piece. “I should have done it sooner. You’d be surprised how often I find myself in that situation.”

  “Actually, I don’t think I would be.” His voice is rough.

  When I look back, he’s running a hand across his face, masking the turmoil there. Then he shakes his head. I can only imagine the thoughts that are running through it. He’s had a perpetual scowl etched on his face ever since he found out what I was. A little of that eases now, and I wonder why.

  “I wish…” he starts, but then ducks his head. “I wish you had told me sooner.”

  “About the shares?”

  He looks up. “About you.”

  I hold his gaze—it’s not filled with fear or disgust, just a kind of pain that makes my heart twist.

  “Would it have mattered?” I ask softly. “I’m everything you’ve worked against for years, Wyatt. I’m everything you loathe.” The words are becoming thick and tight in my throat, but I manage to get them out.

  “I don’t loathe you, Lexy.” He’s back to that tormented look, and for a brief moment, I actually believe him.

  “I’m pretty sure there’s some strong dislike in there somewhere.” I’m teasing, but it still hurts. That first reaction—the horror and fear—I don’t know if we can ever bridge it. I want to… I’m just not sure it’s possible.

  “I trying, Lexy. I’ve been thinking—a lot—about what Richard would have done.”

  “My father? He would never have approved of me.” This much I know.

  “But you’re his daughter.” He’s looking me straight in the eyes now with his sky-blue ones. “He would have loved you no matter what.”

  It’s my turn to rub my hand over my face and look out the window. Because I’m certain the opposite is true. “There was nothing more important to my father than the cause.”

  “That’s not true.”

  The tremble in his voice makes me look back and search his eyes for what he’s trying to tell me. “You can’t know that, Wyatt.”

  “I know what he told me. He said the best thing he ever did was raise you.”

  Now I’m seriously going to cry, and I can’t do that in front of Wyatt. I bite my lip, cross my legs, and turn my body in the seat, as if I can curl away from the words he’s saying. “He didn’t know who I was.”

  “He should have.”

  The strength of that statement brings me back again. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” He searches the luxury carpet at his feet, as if to find the answer there. “I mean, I should have known, Lexy. He should have known.”

  “How could you know? I was very good at hiding it.”

  “You shouldn’t have had to.” He frowns, like this is something he’s just now realizing, as he’s telling me.

  I blink, not sure exactly what he’s saying, but it feels like… an opening. A chance.

  “I didn’t want to hide,” I say. “But I was
afraid I would, you know, ruin everything we’ve worked for. And there was no way the two of you would have ever understood what it’s like to be a debt collector.”

  “You may be right about that.” His smile is fairly grim, but it still lifts my heart. “But regardless of what’s happened in the past, I want to know now, Lexy. I can’t say I like any of it—the debt collectors, this shadow organization, the plot against Lifetime—but I’d rather know than not know. Always.”

  That sounds like the Wyatt I know: he’s always wanted to understand every angle, to figure everything out. It’s how he works. And it was part of why he was so helpful to my father. To Sterling. And even to me, all those times he pinch-hit for me when I was lost, especially after the funeral. It gives me a strange kind of hope, this need of his to know—like there’s a chance things might be normal again between us. Someday.

  “My father was an amazing man,” I say. “But he didn’t know everything. In particular, he didn’t know about this.” I gesture out the window to the fast-approaching city towers. “He imagined a world where, if we just worked hard enough, just stayed true enough to the cause, we could win back the legislators. Win the hearts of the people away from debt collection. If we just kept creating newer and better cybernetics, we could beat debt collection at its own game by giving people the longer and better lives they wanted in a different way.”

  “Are you saying all of that was foolish?” There’s an edge in his voice again, but he’s misunderstanding me.

  “No, not at all,” I say with a small smile. “It was brave and true and right. But what my father didn’t know literally got him killed.”

  Wyatt’s eyebrows hike up. “Do you know who killed him?”

  “I do.” I hesitate… because explaining that I let my father’s killer go free might not make any sense to Wyatt right now. Maybe someday. But for now, I just need him to see what we’re truly up against. “The man who ordered my father’s death is the same one who is orchestrating the attack and the plot to blame it on Lifetime.”