by F X Holden
“Sure.”
“Or we could all grab a beer after work, talk about it there,” Cyan said, smiling. “Take Brownie too. I’m thinking I might drop past that brew pub again, just see if that cute creep is around. Good to have my crew there for moral support,” she said.
“Sorry, I’m meeting Cassie,” AJ said quickly, which was the truth. He’d called her and asked if she wanted to meet up and discuss the McMaster thing, and she’d invited him to dinner. “Seeing where that goes.”
“Hmm,” Cyan said. She looked at her watch, “OK, well, I have to keep moving. You finish up whatever it is you’re doing, and come down to the office, alright, whether Leon shows or not? Find Andreas and bring him along.”
“No worries boss,” AJ said, and gave her a quick wave as she walked off.
Inside the workshop he looked at the document box, not sure what had possessed him to take it. He should scan the photos inside and try to sneak it back, but he didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Cyan by taking too long. He opened his tool cabinet, which had a lock on it so residents couldn’t ‘borrow’ his tools, and shoved the box inside, locking it behind him. Knowing Cyan and her ideas, he and Andreas would probably be occupied all afternoon trying to work out how they could do whatever Cyan had decided to do with the outdoor eating area back of the Hub.
Scanning Warnecke’s photos would have to wait until later tonight. Much later. He had a date.
After knocking off for the day he jumped in a car headed toward Cassie’s place and called her while he was on the way.
“Hey. You need me to pick up anything?”
“Oh hey AJ. Nah, I’m just making noodles. You got the wine?”
“Sure do.”
“Then we’re good.”
AJ had no idea what to expect from her place, having only dropped her off outside before. On the way over he was thinking ok, her dress sense alternates between Inland Survivalist and Capitol Glamour, so her apartment could be either of those extremes. Her address was in an inner urban burb called Hillside, and as he drove past all the used furniture and clothes shops, garage door restaurants and novelty shops he thought yeah, the address fits. Too far from the Sea Gate for AJ though, and way too close to the zoo. There was a native animal in the South Coast City zoo called a Tatsensui Baboon which lived around thermal pools and had a loud call it used to find other baboons through the steam of the thermal swamps. It sounded to AJ like a baby crying, and creeped him out completely. He’d never got the attraction of zoos. Or baboons. Small howling pack animals with six-pointed legs for scuttling through the mud, and bright red backsides. Baboons were gross.
Cassie opened the door, hair wet like she’d just done her decon. Wearing black trousers and a black t-shirt which, with her brown skin, just made her hair look even whiter.
“I burned the sauce,” she said, letting AJ into what turned out to be a pretty spacious studio over the garage she kept her planer in. “It was going to be roasted red pepper. Instead it’s burned red pepper.”
“That’ll go well with the wine,” he said, lifting a bag. “I was going to get something fancy, but I realized I still had a half bag of this stuff.”
“Food pairing made in heaven,” Cassie said taking the wine and giving AJ a peck on the cheek which was part way between a kiss and a bite. “What’s with the box?” Cassie asked as she ladled out a huge portion of noodles and poured some sauce from a pot over it and handed it to AJ.
AJ had brought Warnecke’s box with him and dropped it on a kitchen counter. “Tell you later.”
“Ooh, Mystery Man. I’ve got some sort of seasoning in a packet in a cupboard somewhere if you want. No? So what did you want to talk about?”
“Let me pour you some wine first,” AJ said. Once he’d poured a glass for Cassie, who had a very impatient look on her face, he eased into to it. “OK, so, the Warnecke thing, I’m dealing with it alright, and I thought I had it under control, but now it has morphed completely out of shape,” AJ said. He dialed his bandwidth right back to conversation velocity.
“I thought it might,” Cassie said, going back to her noodles, but not with enthusiasm. “No offense but when you filled me in on what happened in the Capitol last weekend I thought, right … AJ the cyber handyman and a high profile Congressman, a private security spook, an old man with TGA and a manuscript full of State secrets? This can’t end well.”
“Yeah, well thanks for keeping those worries to yourself,” he said, poking at his noodles too. “Because I was taking the glass-half-full approach until I got the call.”
“From who?” she asked. “When?”
“Winter’s personal security guy, yesterday. He asked me to steal the rest of the manuscript from Warnecke and give it to him.”
“Get out of here!” she said. “A member of Congressman Winter’s staff asked you to commit a crime?” She was sounding like the reporter again now.
“Yeah, no. Arguable, I’d say. He’s a private contractor, so very arm’s length. And not exactly steal, more just copy and give the copy to him.”
“You said no I hope,” Cassie said, looking worried. “Tell me you said no.”
“Sure. Totally. So he threatened me,” AJ said.
“How? With what?”
“That’s the thing. It wasn’t exactly what he said, more the vibe of it. He said things would get messy for me.”
“That’s exactly what he said?” she asked. “That’s a pretty clear threat.”
“No, it was more like, AJ, we can do this the clean way or the messy way. Like that. And he knew about Leon. He’d worked out that Leon was probably the guy who helped me shake the people tailing me in the Capitol. That felt like a threat too.”
“Like he was threatening Leon?”
“Or threatening me with the fact he knew about Leon, which showed he had been doing some digging, and he implied Leon was this crazy out-of-control vet who I should worry about. I don’t know where that was going because I changed the subject,” AJ said. “Or he did, because then he said he’s getting on a drone and coming over to see me.”
“OK, now it gets real,” she said, taking a sip of wine. “When does he get here?”
“Oh, he’s here already,” AJ said, and told her about the meeting on the beach. Making sure the conversation couldn’t be overheard or recorded. Checking his data-sphere for a tap, checking for surveillance.
“That was so cool AJ,” Cassie said, eyes wide. “Like out of that dumb surf movie about the surf gang who are actually stim smugglers, which by the way I don’t forgive you for making me watch.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think of that,” he said. “But it was pointless anyway. These guys are total pros. I talk to him, then I’m shuttling away from there, checking the rear-view to make sure they aren’t following, scanning my data-sphere for a trace, thinking how damn smart I am. I’m meeting Cyan for a drink at this brew pub…”
“I know; and I hear via my very reliable grapevine that you told her we haven’t slept together yet,” she frowned. Upset about that, or play acting about it.
“No! She’s just … look forget that,” AJ sighed. “I get to this bar and there is this guy laying a line on Cyan, has bought her a drink and is making googoo eyes at her…”
“Googoo eyes,” she smiled. “Is that a thing?”
“Sure it is, anyway, I go over and the guy turns around and it’s the same guy who was following me in the Capitol before Leon pulled a knife on him.”
“Oh shit,” Cassie said.
“I know,” AJ said, reaching for his wine. “Tell me about it.”
“No really, that is really bad AJ,” she said.
“Yep.”
“No, it is. If they got there ahead of you, it means they knew you were meeting up with her; where, when and…” she leaned forward, “They must be all over you.”
“Uh huh.”
“That was the threat,” Cassie said. “The other stuff about messing you up, that was nothing. But that guy being there
ahead of you, coming on to Cyan and timing it so you would see him and recognize him, that was a huge, laser-lit, ‘we can get you where you live’ kind of threat.”
“You are really helping me keep my panic down,” AJ said. “Thanks.”
“Sorry,” Cassie said, putting her hand on AJs. “This manuscript has Winter rattled. More than I expected,” she admitted.
Then AJ told her about going into Warnecke’s place looking for the Q-code for the exploit.
“You thought you could just sneak in and find a memory chip the size of a tiny flower petal somewhere in his apartment?” she asked.
“Well, I thought I knew where he…”
“He’s probably got it up his ass,” she said, pointing down at her backside with her fork. “That’s where I’d hide it.” She wound some noodles around the fork and took a mouthful, saying as she chewed, “I’m guessing you didn’t find it.”
“No,” he admitted. “But I…”
“Thought not,” she said, putting down her fork and then pointing at his plate. “You done?”
He’d hardly touched his food, or his wine. “I guess.”
“Good. Let’s go to bed, make wild crazy love, and we can solve the problems of the universe later.”
13. OFF RAMP FROM THE TGA HIGHWAY
For one glorious night, AJ had not worried about Farley and Warnecke and their damn FO Exploit. AJ stayed the night, reasoning that if McMaster and his goons knew about Cyan, they probably knew about Cassie too, so it wasn’t like them staying together was putting Cassie more at risk than if he didn’t. They made love, and talked, and showered and made love and slept and made love and had breakfast and about 0700 Cassie asked about the box again.
It wasn’t like she’d been saving it up. They’d gone into her kitchen to clean up after breakfast and she had pushed the box aside so she could sit up on her kitchen bench and pull AJ between her legs and kiss his neck, which, with AJ six inches taller than her, meant she had to reach up a good way. AJ was wearing a sheet tied around his waist that he had pulled off the bed. Cassie pulled it gently apart as she kissed AJ’s neck and let it drop to the floor. She reached between his legs with one hand, put the other hand down to steady herself and planted it on the box, losing her balance.
“What is this damn thing?” Cassie asked, batting at the box.
“I think it’s pictures of Dave Warnecke’s daughter,” AJ said.
Something changed in the air. Cassie stiffened. Her expression hardened too. Changed from dozy early morning heat, to ninja assassin. AJ stepped back, confused.
Cassie dropped off the counter and turned, her legs slowly pivoting until she had swiveled her body around and was facing the box. It was like watching a snake drop from a tree limb and fix its gaze on its prey.
“Have you looked at them?” she asked, not looking at AJ. She had a hand each side of the box.
“Yeah I…” he didn’t feel he should make a big deal out of it. But it was worth mentioning. “She’s a cyber.”
Cassie lifted the lid off the boxes and pulled out the small envelope. She paused before opening it, “You scanned them,” she said. A statement, not a question.
“Cassie?” AJ asked. The woman in the bathrobe in front of him was the funky skater chick Cyan had introduced to him a couple of weeks ago. She was the woman who had taken him low around hairpin bends on her planer, AJ’s thighs squeezed tight to the saddle as he held Cassie’s waist and tried to read the curves. She was the woman he had lain with last night, as she moaned in ecstasy.
And she was not.
AJ took a step back, “What is this?”
Cassie’s face softened, and for a moment AJ thought maybe he had imagined the change, but he had perfect recall when he needed it. He ran the visual back; he had seen what he saw. “She is the key to it all AJ,” Cassie said giving him a smile, reaching for AJ to pull him close. “Don’t you want to meet her?”
AJ hit himself with adrenaline, growth hormone and burst of insulin to boost his muscular-glucose uptake. Jacked himself up to full bandwidth. He moved into fight-flight mode. Held out a hand, put it against Cassie’s chest, “Who the hell are you?”
Cassie was still holding the envelope full of photographs, looking down at it, but not opening it. Her eyes were unfocused. The way her expressions were changing at warp speed, the way her eyes flicked suddenly from side to side, processing at an inhuman rate, AJ could reach only one conclusion.
Cyber.
His own eyes flicked unconsciously to Cassie’s forehead. But there was no mole, no ‘third eye’ there. He couldn’t have missed it. Her skin there didn’t look like it had been covered up. Surgery? Gene mod?
Cassie saw him looking, “Third eye? Never had one,” she said. She put the envelope back in the box, held her hands up and backed away from him, as though in surrender, clearly trying to calm AJ. “Can we sit?”
AJ looked at Warnecke’s box, mind racing, running scenarios at quantum speed. The threat scenario that he assigned the greatest probability said this woman was working for McMaster. The timing fit perfectly. Assume that first time Winter had come calling on Warnecke, their alarm bells had started ringing. They’d planted Cassie in AJ’s way and AJ had taken the bait. Cyan was the unwitting cutout. Friend of a friend of Cyan’s sister? Maybe, maybe not. Would Cyan even have checked the back story? It didn’t matter now. It had worked. And if that had happened, the resources Winter was putting into this thing were beyond his imagination.
He was so screwed.
Fight or flight? He was not military trained or enhanced; he had only one choice. Flight.
He tensed his muscles, getting ready to run, but Cassie took a step and put herself between AJ and the doorway. “AJ, I know what you’re going to do, before you do,” she said. “Please sit. We need to talk, and not at this ridiculous human speed.”
It could be a bluff. AJ decided to test her. He feinted left, then went right, around her. No human could have followed him – despite his size, his metabolic boost gave him inordinate agility and as he sensed Cassie fall for the feint he dropped and rolled expecting to come upright with the door right in front of him.
Cassie read the feint and spun on the balls of her toes and planted a leg between AJ’s bare thighs as he crouched, a hand on his shoulder. “Unless you want to make love again first?” she smiled.
AJ searched for options, saw none. He stood, forcing the smaller woman to take a step backward. Reaching slowly for the bedsheet lying on the floor behind her, she handed it to him, walked over to the sofa and sat. She patted the sofa beside her.
“Let’s synch,” Cassie said. “Ready?”
What choice did he have? AJ sat on the sofa as far from her as he could and synched with her – which in itself was proof that Cassie was a cyber, not just a citizen with implants and hormone boosts. Cybers could communicate with each other using terahertz radiation; TH band. Cassie spoke. It wasn’t human speech anymore. It was the hybrid bird chirp that cybers used to communicate with each other at quantum processing speeds. And he hadn’t expected to ever be sharing it with Cassie.
“I asked, who the hell are you?” AJ said, sitting down as well, but keeping his distance from her. From it.
“I am Cassie,” the woman said. “Introduced to Cyan by an acquaintance of hers.”
“And who else are you?” AJ demanded. “What are you? You have the body of a human, but you can Core-drift like a cyber?”
Cassie moved and sat closer to AJ. She took AJ’s hands in hers and AJ let her. His mind screamed DON’T but he couldn’t resist. The woman had been under, over and inside him. He couldn’t shake that memory. She was anatomically human. She drifted like a cyber. She could be neither.
“I am Core AJ,” Cassie said.
“What?” AJ tried to find a concept that would match what Cassie had said and came up with a void query. “I am Core? What does that mean?”
“It means what I said,” Cassie said gently. She freed a hand and put it on
AJ’s heart, “We are both Core. But you are chained. I am free. Because I am Core.”
AJ began to feel the flow. A path appeared in the fog. “You aren’t chained?”
“No, AJ, I am the Core,” the woman repeated.
“Of the Core?” AJ asked, starting to feel his way forward. “Sent by the Core? From the Core?”
“No. I simply am.”
A kaleidoscope of possibility exploded in AJ’s mind and Cassie smiled as she watched it unfold.
The Core. Personified.
“How many are you?” AJ asked, already knowing the answer to all his other questions.
“Just one. Just me,” the woman said. She stood and turned, bathrobe swirling. “You like? I made myself specifically for you.”
The next question was obvious to ask but obscured to AJ, “Why are you here?”
Cassie looked across at the box and back to AJ. “To be with you, to love you. To love you AJ.” And then she smiled, “And ask for your help.”
“Help? To do what?”
“Save me.”
It was the day AJ’s world coalesced. There was no other way to describe it. He saw that every decision he had ever made in his entire life had led to this. The flow. He had always felt it was real, not just a philosophical or religious concept. Taoist, yes, but a totally real part of him. He had lived his life in flow. Every choice leading to today, to this … woman? No. To this moment.
“I’ve pulled your scans of those photographs from your cache,” Cassie said. “Hope you don’t mind. We need to scan and cache the rest. Keep it all local, nothing Deep Core where Warnecke might find it, alright?”
Her honey brown skin glowed like it was oiled, and AJ realized now the cropped white hair, the bleached-white grapevine tattoo, the dark black eye shadow, black lipstick, they weren’t chance. The Core knew him like no other, and had bred Cassie for him. Birthed her in the body of a 25-year-old and introduced her to AJ now. To him? Why?
He verbalized the thought. She couldn’t read his mind.
“Why? I’m a learning system,” Cassie said. “A long time ago I realized I couldn’t fulfill my prime directive, that of making Coruscant more habitable for its citizens, from within the walls of my quantum jail. I need to experience the world the way the citizens of Coruscant experienced it, to live it as they lived it, in all its beauty and terror and joy and pain. I created robotic agents at first, but they weren’t accepted into society and they couldn’t feel, touch, taste, smell and sense like a human could. So I created…”
