Joey had asked her out and she had not committed either way, paralyzed by a momentary rush of insecurity. For most of the day, she could not stop thinking about how stupid it would be to ruin it with him. Somewhere within the past three hours, she had changed her mind and called him back.
“See you in the morning.” He went down a different hallway as she continued to her car.
She stopped. “Boss?”
He turned, raising an eyebrow but did not say anything.
“About what I asked, did you find anything?”
For the first time since she had known him, his face softened with true sympathy. “I was able to find them. They’ll be waiting if and when you want them. I started an inquest into why it was missing from your file.”
Nina took a deep breath and then opened her wardrobe. Her blurry nude reflection upon the black door vanished, revealing a portal into her old life. Her clothes, untouched for almost a year, hung just as she left them. Each outfit wrapped in memories that up until a day ago had been too painful to confront. After hearing Kelly justify life with an artificial body, she felt ashamed of wallowing in self-pity. She picked through some of the garments while lamenting how the extra four inches of height she gained made most of her dresses look slutty.
She settled on a plain white one with a modest neckline and skin hugging fabric that bared her shoulders and upper back. Although the hem was a little high, the stretchy material would guard her modesty well as it clung. White flat shoes and a matching purse finished the outfit. She toyed with the idea of telling Joey she had nothing on under it once they arrived at the restaurant and laughed at how he would react. After hiding her duty weapon in the handbag, she checked her hair and makeup.
On the way to the door, Nina paused, glancing at the closet. She rummaged through boxes and retrieved her stuffed rabbit. After clinging to it for a moment, she set it on the pillow.
Her anticipation made her drive hard, and she arrived at the restaurant about a half hour earlier than planned. She leaned back in the car to wait, staring up at a stream of passing advert bots.
“Lieutenant?” Samantha Cole’s virtual presence shimmered into her field of view.
Nina sighed. The queen of bad timing knocked on her brain. “Go ahead, Cole.”
“We just got a hit on Itai going into a residence in Sector 417.”
City plates did not cover the Earth that far in the northeast. Whether it was true that the money ran out, the nature lobby prevailed, or it turned out to be cheaper to build on the ground, the elevated city ceased about twenty miles south of it. Most of it remained wilderness, isolated from the danger in the center of the continent by an energy wall. Because the area was only a power failure away from being in the Badlands, the prices of real estate had not reached ridiculous levels, though only the wealthy could go there.
“Specs?” Nina asked as she pulled her car into the sky and headed that way.
“The property contains a five bedroom house on the side of a rocky hill with tennis courts and a pool. Current registered owner is a Walter Owens, CFO of Aventura Industries. Do you want an ops team?”
“Have them on standby, but don’t send them in yet. This could be someone playing with cameras again. I’m going to check it out first.”
“Copy that Lieutenant. I’ll keep eyes on from here.”
Nina opened another channel. “Joey?”
“Yeah?” He cringed, expecting bad news.
“Work happened. We spotted Itai; I have to check it out. I will be there, I just don’t know when.” Her voice softened. “Please don’t be pissed. I’ll go as fast as I can.”
Joey grinned at such a lethal creature worrying about his anger level. “Okay. If it’s too late when you get done we can just order food and do it another night.”
“We can do it another night anyway.” She winked.
So as not to arouse suspicion, she landed a quarter mile away and drove in on the ground. The dirt road wobbled the car in ways she was not used to feeling. The land here looked much as it did centuries ago. Exposed rock decorated with hanging green ivy framed the left side of the tract; the right had a drop off that led forty feet down the side of a cliff. Every so often, a driveway cut through the trees on a path toward private estates. At regular intervals, genetically enhanced ‘super-trees’ glowed bright green against their natural cousins. One of the attempts a group calling itself the ‘Friends of Nature’ attempted to address the oxygen problem. When she arrived at the target residence, she turned off the main road into the waving shadows of the trees.
The car came to a halt in the shadow of a stone many times its size, a spot she could leave it out of sight from the house. She was ninety percent convinced someone was still playing games with them, and left her gun in the car. Her body offered her the luxury of never being unarmed. She jogged a windy path around other boulders, and walked about a hundred yards until a manned gate came into view. With her back to the stone, she edged as close as she could without risking detection, and zoomed in on a single figure. A long assault rifle, a DTF G-44, hung over his shoulder on a strap. It dented her confidence this was a ruse. Not only was it of ACC manufacture, it was huge. The 13.5mm slugs it carried could do serious damage to her, even if she had her ballistic stealth on. A weapon that large made her wonder what secrets this placid estate hid.
Minimum distance 53.4 meters to have enough time to avoid a center-mass hit. Nina remembered her training; combat neuralware and accelerated reflexes could ‘slow’ the bullets to the point she could lean out of the way of a single shooter. At ranges closer than that, or with multiple attackers, things got decidedly less favorable for her.
She crept up to the security wall and waited. When the guard looked away, she leapt fourteen feet up to the top of the partition, hauled herself over it, and hung from her fingertips inside. When she was sure he did not notice, she let go and dropped to the ground. Shade concealed her for several more seconds until he turned away, allowing her to jog into an arbor grove surrounded by walls of moss covered stacked stones. The area glowed in emerald-tinted sun flooding through drifting threads of weeping willow.
Perched behind a thick tree, she surveyed glowing cones of electromagnetic fields sweep back and forth across the arbor. Her eyes picked up all manner of sensors and alarms through the area in front of the house. Between her boosted agility and the ability to see where the sensors pointed, she made it to the edge of the house without tripping any alarms.
The crunch of a boot on gravel made her duck around the side of the building, onto a decorative stone path that led toward a tall redwood fence that concealed a backyard. Beyond the gate, the voices of one man and multiple women muttered. After a hesitant peek to the rear, she leaned up and stifled a gasp as she peered through the slats.
Sitting in a hot tub with a topless woman on either side of him was Karl Warner.
“Nina?” Cole’s voice in her head made her jump.
“What?” Nina’s thought voice was a raspy thing, the bastard child of a shout and a whisper.
“I have more information on that house, it’s not owned by Walter Owens. That was a fake identity.”
“No shit. Let me guess, its Karl Warner.”
Cole paused. “Yeah, how did you know that?”
“I’m looking right at him.”
A nervous laugh came over the comm. “You need to get out of there, if that’s Warner’s house, its diplomatic property. You could cause an incident.”
Nina took a step back. “I’m well aware of that.”
The realization of where she was, coupled with the conversation in her mind, distracted her enough such that she let out a genuine shriek of surprise as a hand grabbed her shoulder. Enough presence of mind remained that she did not react like a doll, instead letting the man haul her around to face him.
“Vot are you doing here?” He scowled down his nose at her, his voice heavy with a German accent.
His black suit and sunglasses would have
said “normal person.” The blinking metal object in his ear gave away that he was part of the security team.
“I’m lost,” she cooed in the innocent Avril voice.
He smirked with disdain. The short, tight dress made her seem like one of the call girls that Warner patronized.
Sensing the derisive look, Nina poured on the ditz. “I’m sorry; the driver had trouble finding the place.”
The man shook his head. She bristled inside at the idea of it. As much as it bothered her, a man she would never see again thinking of her as a prostitute was a small price to pay compared to a diplomatic fiasco. She allowed him to drag her through the gate by her left arm, acting an ungainly wobble as if she could barely keep her balance. At the edge of the hot tub, it became apparent that none of the people in it wore anything at all; clothing draped over the lounge chairs a few yards away.
“Well now. Three?” Warner made an impressed nod, and patted the water nearby.
Nina kicked off her shoes, and flashed a fake smile. “He sent me as a thank you for being so nice to us.”
Her trainers mentioned situations like this, but up until a few days ago, she never thought it would be a big deal. As her hands pulled her dress up over her head, she wondered how ashamed she would feel if Joey could see her now.
Mechanical or not, this body was hers.
The cold mountain air caressed her nakedness and brought back a long absent sense of embarrassment. She hid it well, sliding into the water without wasting time. Just as the hot fluid encircled her neck, she feared her complete lack of reaction to the temperature could give her away. Fortunately, the girls were too out of it to notice such a small detail, and Warner was occupied.
The brown haired girl to his left looked as if she did not know where she was. A fluorescent orange stain just below her nostrils gave away heavy use of Flowerbasket inhalers. A number of them, as well as empty glasses, lay scattered on the poured concrete surface near where her arm draped out of the water. The other had short teal hair and a glowing pink cybertattoo of a heart on her right cheek about the size of a thumbprint. She stared in a way that made her uneasy; she seemed more interested in Nina than Warner.
“So what is your name, my dear?” He motioned for her to come closer.
“Vicky.” Nina answered fast enough to avoid suspicion and shifted towards him.
Warner pulled her into his lap. The still coherent woman next to him touched her legs. Nina tried to ignore it as her mind searched for the best way out of this mess. This situation could go to hell faster than she could think the words “oh, shit”, and her escape plan ran off the rails as she kept wondering if she could bring herself to have sex with him if it got to that point. Her inner monologue debated the question of which was the worst result: explaining a diplomatic incident to Hardin, or having to tell Joey she let another man touch her.
Her thoughts ran and hid behind the rationalization that her body was not the one her mother produced. Proscion’s philosophical justification for what he did turned that thought into a diaphanous curtain rather than the brick wall behind which she wanted to hide.
Armpit deep in foaming water, with the hands of Warner and some prostitute exploring her body was about as far away from her plans for the night as things could have gone. The second girl just stared into space, her attention wholly absorbed by whatever hallucinations scampered across the yard. The conversation unnerved Nina as it became evident Warner did indeed want to watch the two coherent women do things to each other before getting involved himself.
The hand climbed higher and higher along Nina’s leg.
“You have such beautiful skin, how do you keep it like this?” Teal’s hand slid over the top of Nina’s thigh and started back down the leg. “Are you from Mars? I heard they’re kinda pale up there.”
“I work nights.” Nina flashed a chimera smile.
The caress doubled back, climbing. This time she seemed to be going for full contact. Nina let herself slip from Warner’s lap just before the prostitute could touch her sex. She bumped into the basket-head, knocking her limp body to the side. Warner frowned; that girl was little more than a warm blow-up doll now. The teal-haired one pouted at Nina as she pulled her legs around and draped herself over Warner in a half sitting, half kneeling pose out of her reach. Warner cupped a breast, ringing the areola with his thumb.
Nina turned off her blush response. Hell with this, Warner’s no fool, he won’t want an incident either.
“Have you considered any enhancement?”
I’ve already had enough work done. “Anatoly said I should be gentle with you.” She put on a believable smile, trying to ignore the thumb.
Suspicion settled in his eyes. “I do not know anyone by that name.”
“But Karl, Mr. Nemsky spoke so well of you when I was with him the other day.” She stroked his hair.
Warner grabbed her throat and pushed her to the edge of the hot tub. “Shit.” He flicked his hand at one of the security men. “Get her out of here.”
Hands grabbed from behind and pulled her out of the steamy water. The embrace of frigid air made her gasp. She looked at the man behind her and continued the innocent act. “What’s wrong?”
Warner switched to German. “Get rid of her, and be discreet.”
Nina reached for her dress, answering in German. “One moment, I will get my clothing.”
The guard tightened his grip on her arm. “You won’t need clothes anymore.”
His reaction confirmed her suspicion. She grabbed his wrist, yanking it away from her other arm as she kicked through his leg, blasting the knee backwards. He wailed and hit the ground.
Another security man leapt at her. She caught him by his suit jacket and threw him sidelong into the wooden fence. He crushed through the boards, snapping and crashing among thick brush on the outside of the yard. Two more ran at her. Her foot slapped the consciousness out of the face of one of them, sending him rolling to a halt near a pool a short distance from the hot tub. The other man came up behind her, attempting to trap her arms in a full nelson. He swung her naked body around to face another man approaching with a gun.
Nina scowled, and forced her arms down. He released her, howling as his elbows separated inside the muscles. Her combat mode kicked in, rendering the world in slow motion. A handgun, connected by wire to the man’s head, trained on her face. She ducked while lunging forward. The bullet passed three inches to the left as she spun around it into a kick.
The top of her foot shattered his weapon hand and sent the pistol flying over sixty yards onto the roof of the house. He lurched from the force of the hit; the momentum of the wounded arm dragged him around so his back faced her. Before her toes returned to the warm, soaked concrete, she punched him in the back of the head with a calculated amount of force. He fell like plank.
A quick left-right glance confirmed no more security men anywhere nearby.
Suppressing a shiver, Nina lowered herself into the hot tub, kneeling in front of a wide-eyed Warner with her fist raised. The still-aware prostitute shrieked.
Nina stared her into silence, and then flicked her gaze at the oblivious one for an instant. “Take her and get out of here.”
Warner’s expression was somewhere between admiration, fear, and anger. “What do you want?”
“Tell me about Nemsky.”
His eyes tracked the prostitute as she slid around the outside of the tub staying as far away from Nina as she could while remaining in the water. She dragged the delirious one with her, going straight to the house without retrieving their clothes from the lounge chairs.
That would have required walking past Nina again.
“There’s nothing to tell.” Warner recovered his cool demeanor.
“I did not come here to harm you. It seems as though someone may be setting you up.”
“Vicky, darling…” He spoke in a soothing tone as he put his hand on her leg and ran it up over her hip to her side.
She stared at hi
s chest. “Don’t.”
When he touched her breast again, she pushed him away with a fistful of chest hair.
Breath hissed through his teeth at the sensation, almost as if he enjoyed it. “If you insist.”
“What’s your connection to Itai Korin?”
“How do you know that name, are you working for Nemsky?”
“More like hunting him. I’m with Division 9.”
The color drained out of his face. “So that’s it then?” He stared into her eyes. “Would you at least let me enjoy my last few moments?”
She let go of him and slid back, sprawled neck deep in the water with her hands on the ground.
“I already told you, I’m not here to hurt you. If I came here for that, you never would have seen me dressed, never mind this. I also wouldn’t have bothered leaving your guards alive.”
Scattered moaning came from the injured security men as they dragged themselves over. One had a rifle now, but lowered it when Warner made a hand gesture.
Warner shifted, rage clear in his eyes. “If you’re not here to kill me, then you know that coming here could cause a lot of problems.”
“I am aware of that. Someone set you up to die tonight. We have been tracking Itai for months. Earlier, we got him on surveillance video entering this property. I was at the backyard fence by the time I realized who lived here. I was hoping to remain discreet, but I did not much fancy the thought of a woman sticking her fingers where they don’t belong.”
Warner laughed. “Apparently not if you would prefer a political firestorm.”
“I was hoping you would not want that either.” She tilted her head. “Was I correct?”
“No, no. There is already too much death. Our societies exist locked in a delicate balance. Earth is not the place for fighting anymore. Too many innocents would suffer. It is much better to share a drink and the company of a lady than to lob bullets at each other.”
“So the innocent on Mars suffer instead?” She smirked. “You expect me to believe that anyone in the ACC cares about that?”
Virtual Immortality Page 59
