Maura sighed. “Xperience has just declared bankruptcy and folded. No one knows where the CEO is — he’s probably skipped the country or something. He will have done if he’s smart.” She sipped her tea. “Then again, if he was smart, he wouldn’t have driven the company into the ground.”
“Talk me through what this means for us?”
Maura sat her tea down a little too sharply, and the cup rattled in its saucer. She shouldn’t take it out on Pauline, she knew. Maura had dug, and dug again, and still couldn’t come up with anything that hinted Pauline might be a spy for another company. And yet… she couldn’t shake the nagging feeling her problems had started when Pauline had shown up. First, the discovery of that dratted implant, and now this.
Maura studied Pauline, wondering what to say. She was a good assistant. Too good, in fact. Pauline had developed a way to help Maura articulate things more clearly and come to decisions more swiftly. She also anticipated Maura’s needs in a way previous assistants hadn’t done. She was getting rather fond of the woman, and that bothered her. She didn’t want to become close to anyone.
Why was Pauline here, really?
“For a start,” Maura said, trying to focus on the present, “it means our attempt to take over the company dies. The assets will be tied up for ages in bankruptcy court at the very least, unless their board of directors comes up with a plan for the creditors. And if there is a process worked out, it’s unlikely to be something that directly involves us. Any creditor with a claim on the company will get what they can for a fraction of its value and then, assuming it’s not their line of business, put what they get up for auction. If we are successful at auction, it would be because we will have paid through the nose for something we could have gotten through acquisition much more cheaply.” She sighed, aware that she sounded like she was ranting. “To say nothing about now not being able to acquire the structure and staff of the company in one go. And if we weren’t successful, it would be because our competitors nabbed assets we wanted.”
“Okay,” Pauline said. “I can talk to HR about headhunting the best of their staff right now. But they weren’t our only acquisition target.”
“No, I suppose they weren’t.”
They were silent together. Then Pauline said, “So what else is bothering you so much about this?”
Maura got up to go to the window to look out. She felt so restless. What was bugging her? This was business after all. Running a company was like riding a roller coaster. There were ups and downs all the time, sometimes terrifying ones. This was a setback, but nothing more, for EduTain. Wasn’t it? There had been setbacks before, some worse than this.
“I suppose it’s that all of those people are out of work now. And the Dragon Slayer game was a good product that gave customers joy. I hate to see potential just destroyed, for no reason. Well, for any reason. But especially when it happens because someone was an idiot.”
Pauline looked thoughtful. “That’s a good explanation, I guess. But lots of people lose their jobs for stupid reasons all the time. I’m curious why it bugs you so much. I thought you’d always had this company? Did you lose a job once before that, in similar circumstances?”
Maura turned and regarded the sculpture on her desk. “It’s true I’ve never personally lost a job. I inherited EduTain from my father. It was a complete mess when I took it over.”
“Ah,” said Pauline. “I’m guessing people lost their jobs at some point?”
“No,” Maura said harshly. She wondered why she was getting into this with Pauline. She’d never discussed it with other assistants. Yet she couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out. “Yes. We lived in Columbia. My father had a good heart but no head for business. And no aptitude for politics or keeping an eye on the political situation or…” Maura drew a ragged breath. “He was a bon vivant, as they say. Existed in the now. Our house was a constant stream of visitors and dinners and parties, or dashing off to visit other people at the drop of a hat. We took long trips almost weekly. I’d never know where I’d be sleeping night to night. Which probably sounds exciting, but…” Maura stopped.
“What happened?” Pauline asked quietly.
“It was Columbia. People forgot what it used to be like back in the twentieth century, with the various guerrilla groups and paramilitaries. When prosperity came to Columbia, people were caught up in their daily, very comfortable lives and forgot about that still very significant group of people that were stuck. The ones that couldn’t or wouldn’t change their situation for whatever reason. They thought… well, we thought, that we could relax, that we were past that, that we could stop being vigilant about the agitators and populists. We forgot to hold the line on human rights. We weren’t past any of that. So there were a lot of discontents, ripe for radicalization.” Maura squared her shoulders, set her jaw. “So when it all came crumbling down again, my father and mother were killed in the crossfire of a paramilitary assault on a police station. Right in front of me. I was twelve. My mother was eight months pregnant at the time.”
“I’m so sorry,” Pauline said, blinking rapidly. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s not something I advertise or put in my public bio. That’s just not the story I wanted for myself here. I inherited control of my father’s company, but a cousin ran it until I came of age. I beat it out of Colombia as fast as I could and took as many people as wanted to go. Canada was the obvious choice. There are so many supports here. I still see people complain about how easy each new generation of immigrants have it compared to the last, or how it somehow privileges newcomers over citizens born here, but that’s just comfy people grumbling. Unlike many other places, it is a country that actually wants you to succeed.”
Pauline hesitated before she asked, “So you’re angry with your cousin for making it a mess by the time you got it?”
“I adored my father,” Maura said. “But I also hated him. For not paying enough attention to the brewing trouble around him. For not being in control. The company struggled for years afterward and many people lost their jobs. For not making provisions.”
For getting killed, she thought. For leaving me.
Maura shook her head, now furious with herself for saying so much. What had gotten into her? She sat back down at her desk and finished her tea. “And now you know,” she said tersely. “So let’s get on with the business of dealing with the situation we’ve been dealt, shall we?”
MEIKE
Meike sank into the water, the liquid purling over and around her shoulders. She enjoyed the way the heat and alcohol were making her feel dizzy, on the verge of passing out. Her head lolled.
Lorenzo, sitting on the side of his hot tub, sipping champagne, kicked at her hip. “Don’t die in my tub. My cousin hates body disposal jobs.”
Grudgingly, she sat up and shifted sideways onto a higher seat so her torso was above the water. The palatial bathroom felt cold by comparison. She drank some more champagne.
Lorenzo hauled himself out of the tub, the water sliding off his hairy body and puddling on the tile floor beneath his feet. He grabbed the champagne bottle and padded over to refill her glass. He was a big man, with exceptionally broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and strong legs. Lorenzo wore his black hair wavy and longish, and his eyes were dark and aloof. He had a three-day growth of beard encircling an expression that was almost always a slight frown.
Meike took the refill and drained her glass, holding it out for another before he could walk away. “Impudente. You’re buying the next bottle. You can afford it now.”
“Yes, but you can afford it more, and mine won’t last,” she said. He smirked.
They were in Lorenzo’s luxurious apartment in Lawrence Park North, an area she had only ever driven past before now. A well-connected man, he had friends in both high and low places, because he liked slumming even more than he liked living it up. They had met at the appropriately named Club Débaucher; she had arrived with Fa and left with Lorenzo. And that was that.
/> He got back into the tub and regarded her with half-closed eyes. “You want to afford it more?”
She shrugged. “It would be nice. But I don’t think he’ll give me any more than what I got.”
“Tomasso says his boss is very pleased. Finding multiple uses for it. You could probably have asked for more.” He belched. “But that’s penny-ante stuff. I’m talking big money.”
“I’m not going to deal, if that’s what you mean. I’d be my own best customer.”
“Nah, hardly anyone bothers with anymore. Pocket change.” He swigged straight from the bottle. “You’ve got this look though, like nothing I’ve seen before. It’s… what’s the word? Androgynous. Malleable. It’s both sexy and weird.”
“Thanks,” she said sarcastically.
“I mean it. You could be anyone.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t use this line on me in the bar, or you’d be going solo right about now.”
He laughed, a short, humourless bark. “What I mean is you’d be great in the holos. You could play any character you liked. You’re a chameleon.”
Meike closed her eyes and thought about it. She’d watched a few holos, like anyone else, and been amused by some. It was sometimes fun to escape whatever was going on in the real world into an alternate universe for a while. She had never considered acting in one.
“Aren’t most of the characters in those things generated?” she said, still keeping her eyes closed, the mushy-headed feeling she had now verging on queasiness.
“The low end stuff they churn out for the formula shows, sure. They’ve got stock characters and a big enough variety of interactions they can just about make those work, especially because the audiences aren’t too picky. But the features and so on? All human actors. They bring the creativity and unpredictability to the performance.”
It did sound sort of interesting. Being Meike wasn’t all that engrossing most days. Pretending to be other people on a regular basis had a certain appeal.
“How would I get into it?” Meike asked. “I can’t act.” Acting also sounded like an awful lot of work.
“I know a guy,” Lorenzo answered. “I’ll get you hooked up. And you won’t have to act, really. You’ll just have to channel whatever we can plug into the back of your head.”
Meike thought about it for a moment. “Oh, I see. Clever. And what do you want out of this?”
“Finder’s fee, a permanent percentage,” Lorenzo said, honestly. “But I’m in it for the long game. I’m looking at access to a celebrity. I want into that crowd.”
Now it was Meike’s turn to laugh. “I’m not anybody yet.”
Lorenzo took a few big gulps of champagne, spilling some down his chest. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Pretty sure you will be.”
RAY
Ray had spent three frustrating weeks on gambling-den duty, which had involved little more than fetching expensive drinks and snacks to keep the high rollers at the table and losing money way into the wee hours of the night. It was a chump’s job, one that kept him exhausted and footsore.
In his downtime, he pestered — as much as he dared — the other guys in the organisation to teach him how to hack. He spent hours learning and practicing. On the surface, he looked like any other new guy, aiming to skill up to please the boss. In reality, he was trying to find out about Mick.
Getting into the police database turned out to be shockingly easy. An old networked coffee machine in a local office hadn’t had a firmware update in years and thus was wide open. He ran dozens of queries using a random date generator to mask his true intent, but only read the entries for the day of the bombing.
The file he wanted was small and unhelpful. The drone in the explosion had been part of an entire fleet that had been decommissioned in favour of newer models and slated for recycling. That device had been remotely hijacked from a pile somewhere, filled with the explosives and shrapnel, memory-wiped to that point, and launched from behind an empty warehouse along the lakefront.
Of course, there was nothing in the file on Mick or Ray, apart from their victim status. They were blanks. Not even the incident with the overzealous cop in the hospital, not that Ray had truly believed that would have been detailed for posterity.
He ran searches for information about the businesses in the area. Where had Mick been heading? One tantalising lead cropped up: the highjacked drone had once belonged to a company downtown, close to where he’d seen Mick that day. Had Mick gotten mixed up in a bad business deal? Ray wrote it all down slowly, painstakingly into his notebook; his untutored printing like that of a child’s.
Then Ray had received another gut-chilling summons from Dominic.
Seated at his desk, his feet up, Dominic sucked on his ever-present cigar. “In three weeks, I haven’t heard a whisper about our last meeting, my little experiment. That’s quite the secret to keep, this magic device. I knew I could trust Tomasso; now I know I can trust you.” He picked up a velveteen bag from his desk and tossed it at Ray. “Inside: six implants for replay. Each has a ten-second delay. And keys to your new apartment. You’ll find it much improved over your last one. Be moved by Friday.”
Ray peered inside the bag.
“I’ve got ambitions. I’ve got a small empire now. I want a massive empire. I want a reputation. You are now my mago, Raymond,” Dominic said. “That room is your domain. We will be bringing in lots of guests. We’ll impress upon them I am a person to be reckoned with now. I can bring the pain, in a way no one has thought possible before. And it must involve theatre. Dress in black. Shades for your eyes. Say nothing. Just insert the implant when Tomasso gives you the signal. We start today. Now go.”
Ray nodded, grateful to the point of being giddy not to be the subject of any more experiments, or worse, he hustled back to his current apartment and changed. He returned to the plaza and waited in what he now thought of as The Room.
The waiting gave him plenty of time to think. This new assignment was a relief. It would keep him near the centre of all the decision-making and give him a chance to eavesdrop and learn more about the city’s underworld. He was also happy to know he wouldn’t be put out on any more missions like his initiation. Separating gamblers from their money wasn’t so bad, as he figured they were there by choice and knew the risks. But stealing by syphoning like that? At that scale? He’d grown up stealing to survive, but this was… different somehow. And this new job didn’t seem like it would be too bad either. It wasn’t like he was beating someone up. He wasn’t sure if he could hit someone who wasn’t trying to kill him.
There was only one person he truly wanted to hurt, and that was Mick’s killer. Afterward, he planned to disappear. He hadn’t worked out how yet, but he wanted to be gone. Out of J, maybe even out of Toronto altogether. For once, being a nobody might help.
After about an hour, Tomasso brought in a heavyset man with tattoos across his knuckles, cropped, greying hair, and an attitude. Tomasso, one hand inside a pocket, shoved him roughly down into the chair. The man spat at Tomasso’s feet. Tomasso just sneered at him. He looked at Ray and snapped his fingers once. The noise echoed in the big, empty room.
Ray thought he had worked out what they expected of him. In his brief encounters with Dominic, he had noticed one thing: the man liked style. Ray stayed silent and walked deliberately from the side of the room, first walking towards the man who was facing him, and then slowly, ever so slowly, around behind him. He clicked the implant into the port, trying not to shudder when he remembered how it felt. He timed his walk back around to face the man again to be about ten seconds.
No sooner had he stopped, the man jerked, clutching at his stomach, and gasped. He looked at his hands in wide-eyed horror. Then he shrieked, and his hands clutched again, this time scrabbling across his gut, following the pain. He slid down out of his chair, jerking and twisting.
Ray realised the man thought he had been stabbed.
Now completely out of his mind, the man wailed,
squirming, his hands now desperately working as though … as though he was holding his intestines in.
Ray’s mouth filled with the remains of his lunch. A sharp-eyed glance from Tomasso made him swallow rapidly, quivering.
The recording lasted several more seconds. The man was sobbing, feeling, but not seeing what he was feeling, all trace of his former toughness crushed by confusion and gibbering fear. Ray’s mind kept racing back to the pain of a smashed hand and his fist clenched and unclenched.
At last, the replay finished. The man collapsed, his face drained of colour. Then he rolled over and threw up, bile and vomit spattering the floor. Behind his glasses, Ray closed his eyes and willed himself not to add his own mess.
Tomasso waited, indifferent, until the man had finished retching. Then he crouched down, casually putting one hand on the man’s neck to withdraw the implant and whispering something into the man’s ear. Sobbing, the man nodded vigorously.
Tomasso made him stand. The man turned and caught sight of Ray and stepped back abruptly, crossing himself. He waved a quivering finger at Ray as Tomasso shoved him out the door. As they left, Tomasso turned and made an imperious gesture at the mess on the floor.
It took Ray half an hour to clean up because he kept heaving and choking. It smelled awful. He had only just finished when the door opened again.
It was Tomasso.
And this time the person with him was a young girl.
KEL
Kel wasn’t sure how one went about making enquiries on the street; it was such an old-fashioned term, and it sounded like something out of a bad holo. But given her only other option was going back to EduTain and risking arrest, she didn’t think she had any choice but to figure it out.
When she got away from her work, she returned to the Bitz shop where she had her port installed and asked some vague questions about new implants for standard ports.
Echoes of Another Page 17
