by Piers Platt
“Wait, what?” Ashish asked.
Marie took another sip of water and pushed her plate aside. “Mmm. I thought at first he was in denial. But he was most distraught when I tried to remind him that she was gone – his distress was genuine, it was the first he had learned of her death. The last time he remembered seeing her was several weeks earlier, here at our offices. He told me that that evening he had gone directly from his apartment to the fundraiser, with his wife. He left the fundraiser early, as he was feeling ill, and ended up staying home sick for most of the next day. But he swore he hadn’t seen Furene, had never heard of that hotel, and would never have taken her out in public. And what incentive did he have to lie to me, at that point?”
“What did you do?” Ashish asked, wiping the corners of his mouth with a silk napkin.
“He wanted to go back to the police, but I talked him out of that, eventually. He was only thinking about Furene at that point, and didn’t realize the full implications of what we had just discovered. I haven’t seen him since.”
“If you believe his version of events, what do you think really happened?”
“The truth?” Marie sighed. “You’re a journalist, you should know better than to ask for the truth. Perhaps he has multiple personality disorder.”
Ashish scoffed. “Or …?”
“… or perhaps we were all the victims of a rather elaborate plot, in which a jealous wife managed to remove her rival very neatly and without drawing any suspicion on herself or her husband.”
“How, though?” Ashish asked.
“She took her husband to the fundraiser, where they talked with and were seen by all their friends. An ironclad alibi. Then she gave him something that made him fall ill, so he went home. Meanwhile, the guildsman, in disguise as the husband, picked up Furene here and took her to the hotel. When the wife called from the fundraiser, that was their prearranged signal. The killer told Furene to stay in the pool, caused her to have a stroke – I’m not sure how – and left the hotel, going back to the fundraiser and replacing the real husband, who was already at home, sick.”
“Yeah, but the husband’s story doesn’t hold up,” Ashish pointed out. “The cops told you that they interviewed him, and he admitted to being in the pool with Furene.”
“They interviewed the assassin,” Marie corrected. “They visited him at his office that morning. The real husband was still home sick.”
“You think they’re that good at disguising themselves?” Ashish asked.
“I have girls upstairs,” Marie replied, “in whom I have invested not inconsequential sums of money to get facial implants that let them change their face to mimic any number of famous celebrities. It takes some time to learn the skill, but once they do, they are some of my highest earners. Several of them are quite good at it, given enough time to prepare. Though you’d be surprised how many clients ask them to simply mimic their real life lovers – or ex-lovers – instead of celebrities.”
“I can imagine,” Ashish said. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms behind his head. “Even assuming that guildsmen have the ability to mimic someone that closely, it just boggles the mind that someone would have the discipline – the nerves – to face the police like that. One slip, and he would be done.”
“Now, perhaps, you get a sense for why the police are not as well-equipped as we think they are, at least not when it comes to dealing with an adversary such as the Guild. Excuse me for a few minutes; I see Alessandra is talking with a client whose behavior of late has been a bit unacceptable. I need to have a few words with him.”
“Be gentle,” Ashish told her, as she stood up.
Marie gave him a thin smile. “That’s exactly what I’m going to tell him.”
* * *
“Ashish, I do apologize,” Marie said as she walked back out onto the terrace nearly an hour later. “That took much longer than I anticipated, and then I had a call from the Health Department, who I have learned to ignore only at my peril. This is Jordi, the one I was telling you about.”
A handsome man in his early twenties with long platinum blonde hair followed her in, and held out his hand to Ashish, “Hi,” he said. “Jordi.” Ashish stood up and shook his hand.
“Anyway, I’m deeply sorry,” Marie said.
“No, I was just making some notes,” Ashish said. “No problem at all.”
Marie sat down and indicated Jordi should follow suit.
“Jordi, you shared a most interesting story with me not long ago, do you remember?”
“Of course,” he said.
“Mr. Mehta here is one of Juntland’s finest freelance journalists, who likes to poke his nose into places where it doesn’t belong. I’d like you to share that story with him, if you don’t mind.”
Jordi squirmed in his seat. “Well ….”
“I’m not going to quote you, or anything,” Ashish said, seeing his discomfort.
Jordi looked at Marie, then back to Ashish. “I’ll tell you, because I trust Marie. But I’d rather you not publish any version of this story, even with my name changed. I just don’t want it getting traced back to me at all. Ever.”
Ashish put his phone down; the holographic notepad disappeared. “Okay.”
Jordi took a deep breath. “Okay, so I grew up in a bunch of different foster homes. The last one I was in, just before I turned eighteen, was actually a pretty decent place. But I was kind of a little shit: I was dealing drugs at school and then entering underground poker tournaments on weekends with the drug money. I was pretty good, too. Anyway, I got busted one day at school, and when the social worker comes to get me out of jail, instead of taking me home, she takes me to a park, and asks me what I want to do with my life.”
“I’m sure you’d heard that question before,” Ashish said.
“Uh, yeah. Every time I had to talk to a social worker or guidance counselor. So I’m about to tune her out, when she asks if I want to become a millionaire. She told me she refers teens to a special program, and I might fit the profile they are looking for.”
“The Guild,” Ashish said.
“Yeah, she didn’t say it at first, but she hinted at it – I knew what she meant.”
“Then what?” Ashish asked.
“I said I was interested, so she walked me across the park to a truck that was parked on a side street. It was one of those mobile kitchens you see in the worse parts of town, you know the ones?”
“Food sucks …,” Ashish started.
“… but it’s hot and cheap,” Jordi finished, smiling. “Yeah, that’s what they say. Anyway, this one looks closed for business, boarded up. But the social worker knocks and the door opens, and inside it’s like a high-class med lab. Diagnostic equipment everywhere, a chair in the middle, and this doctor or nurse in a lab coat. They sit me down, poke me and prod me for a couple hours, and I take a bunch of different mental tests – some were just solving puzzles, others were memory games, and ethical dilemmas, I can’t even remember.”
“But you didn’t decide to become a guildsman?” Ashish asked.
“No, I would have – I failed one of the tests. They never said which one. They sat me down at the end and said I didn’t make it. Then they showed me a video, of a girl who had also failed her test.” Jordi looked over his shoulder inadvertently.
“Go on,” Marie said.
“This girl had told someone about the Guild and the tests, they said. And they made me watch … what they did to her, for ratting on them.”
Jordi was quiet for a time.
“Did she die?” Ashish asked.
Jordi stared at the floor. “Eventually. I dream about that girl sometimes, I don’t know why.”
“Thank you for sharing the story with me. It was … brave of you,” Ashish said. “I promise not to publish it, or even write it down. It’s safe with me.”
“Are you going to expose the Guild?” Jordi asked.
“I’m going to try,” Ashish said.
“Good,”
Jordi told him. “That girl didn’t deserve to die.”
They shook hands, and Marie walked with Ashish out to the lobby.
“Thanks, Marie,” he said, waiting for the elevator to arrive. “I knew you’d have something for me. And thanks for lunch.”
She nodded, and the elevator doors opened. Ashish stepped inside.
“Lobby,” he ordered.
“Ashish,” Marie said.
He held his hand up, pushing the elevator door back open. “Yes?”
“I fear I may have dropped Pandora’s Box in your lap – please think long and hard before opening it.”
“How so?” he asked.
“Last time you just exposed the sex lives of a few unpopular politicians. They may have been powerful, but ultimately they played by a certain set of rules. That made them predictable. The Guild, if it is the organization we suspect it to be, is an entirely different animal. And animals only follow one rule. They survive … at all costs.”
4
The security guards covered the dead body with a tablecloth, and then hefted it between them, one under the arms, the other holding her ankles. The corpse was cold and stiff from its stay in the walk-in freezer, but they maneuvered quickly through the kitchen, where the staff took care to keep their eyes on their stations. After a short ride up the freight elevator, the two men carried their charge through a set of heavy security doors, and into a long, wood-paneled room lined with leather couches. They placed the body on the bright green felt of a billiard table near the doors. One of her arms fell off the edge of the table and hung there, dangling above the thick silk rug. At the other end of the room, a large man wearing a vest and tie looked up from his desk.
“What the fuck is that?” he asked.
“It’s Tyan, Mr. Kolski,” one of the guards answered.
The man’s brow wrinkled. “That’s Tyan? Tyan. Who was in here five minutes ago.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard replied.
“You saw her, you were in here, too,” the man continued, standing up.
“Yes, sir ….”
“She delivered this to me,” Kolski went on, gesturing at a messenger bag sitting on his desk, “and then went upstairs to her room.”
The guard shrugged. The man named Kolski walked over to the billiard table. “So how did Tyan, who is alive and well, sitting upstairs in her room, also wind up dead in a meat locker in my restaurant?”
The guard sighed. “I don’t know, sir. One of the chefs just found her. But this … is Tyan.”
Kolski scowled at the guard for a moment, and then flipped the tablecloth back to examine the corpse. Above her shirt collar, there was a nasty purple-black welt around the woman’s neck, finger marks clearly visible. He sighed. “That certainly appears to be Tyan.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kolski pulled his phone out of his pocket and placed a brief call. When he hung up, he covered the body again and cleared his throat. “Go up to Tyan’s room, and bring … that woman … back down to me. I want to have a word with her.”
“Yes, sir.”
The guards left, and Kolski walked back over to the desk, frowning suspiciously at the messenger bag. He reached over to open it again, and then changed his mind. Instead, he opened a desk drawer and withdrew an articulated metal glove that he slid over his right hand. Last, he walked back over to the body, leaned against the pool table, and waited.
The guards returned less than four minutes later, pushing a woman ahead of them. Her wrists were handcuffed behind her back.
“Boss, what’s this about?” the woman protested.
Kolski gestured at one of the leather couches, and the guard closest to the woman pushed her down onto the couch.
“Who sent you?” Kolski asked her.
“What?” she asked, confused. “What do you mean? No one sent me. I met with Deladrier like you asked.”
“Bullshit. I just called Deladrier; he says you never showed up. He still has the package.”
“What?” The woman seemed genuinely confused. Her eyes locked on Kolski’s gauntleted hand, and went wide. “I … I met with Deladrier, I swear. He gave me that bag on your desk.”
Kolski sighed. “As a loyal customer of the Guild myself, I must say I’m quite disappointed. First of all, that my loyalty is repaid by a contract on my own life. And second, that they would send such an amateur guildsman to make the attempt.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about …,” the woman said.
Kolski pushed off of the pool table and walked over to the couch, squatting across from the woman. Her eyes lingered on the corpse’s exposed arm for a second, but then he placed the glove on her knee, and she flinched.
“No, please,” she pleaded. “I don’t know anything about the Guild, I just met with Deladrier like you asked, and brought you the bag, that’s it.”
“No,” Kolski shook his head. He flexed his gloved fingers, taking a firm grip on her kneecap. “You’re a guildsman, sent here to kill me, and I want to know who sent you, and why.” The micro-hydraulics in the glove gave a faint electronic whine as he began to squeeze.
The woman sobbed. “I’m not a guildsman, I swear it – it’s me, Tyan, I’ve been your runner for five years, I … you caught me trying to pick-pocket someone outside the restaurant back in the day, and then … ahh!” She screamed in pain.
Kolski stopped squeezing for a second, and looked her in the eyes. “Tyan is dead – she must have told you that story before you killed her. She’s lying on the table behind me. Now you’re going to tell me who sent you, and why.”
Tyan glanced over Kolski’s shoulder, and gasped. The corpse was sitting up – a doppelganger raised from the dead. As the tablecloth slid away, the woman vaulted off the pool table, landing softly on the deep carpet behind Kolski’s two security guards. In a single swift motion, she drew a thin wire from the collar of her shirt and flicked it expertly around the neck of the guard farthest from her. It coiled and locked into place, and a small, wheeled device spun quickly, cinching the wire tight before the man could make a sound. As the second guard turned to confront her, the woman caught his arm, locked the joints with a brutal twist and doubled him over at the waist, and then used his forward momentum to slam him face-first into the pool table. He collapsed with a moan, blood streaming down his face. The first guard was scrabbling at his neck, trying to get the choke-wire off, but it had gouged too deeply into his flesh. He toppled to the floor a moment later.
With a yell, Kolski rushed at the woman, reaching for her throat with the gauntlet. She spun to one side, landed an elbow in his gut, and then neatly dropped him to the floor with a hip-throw. Kneeling over the strangled guard, she dug through his suit jacket for a second, drawing his pistol from a shoulder holster hidden within. The woman took aim at a security camera in the far corner of the room, fired a single round, then turned and destroyed the room’s second camera with another well-aimed shot. Then she stood and faced Kolski. He pushed himself off the floor and onto one knee.
“Wait,” he said, gasping for breath. He held up a hand, but the woman simply shot him twice in the head, and then fired two more rounds into his torso. She turned and headed for the desk, firing a single shot into each of the guards as she passed them. At the desk, she opened up the messenger bag. Nanomachines whirred to life and began building several items in the tray of the device. The woman turned to the computer at the desk next, and opened up the security software, scrolling through camera feeds until she found what looked to be an arms room. Seven security guards were hastily donning armor and loading assault weapons. She drummed her fingers on the desk and sighed with impatience.
Over on the couch, Tyan cleared her throat. The woman looked up from the desk, one eyebrow cocked.
“Are you going to kill me?” Tyan asked.
The woman shook her head. “No.”
Tyan’s shoulders slumped in relief. “I just thought … you know, you might have to kill me because you chose to mimic me.”<
br />
“Would you like me to kill you?” the woman asked.
“No!” Tyan said. “No. Sorry, it’s just strange – you look so much like me … you even sound like me.”
The woman didn’t answer, but turned back to the monitor, where the guard force had finished arming themselves. Their commander was urging them out into the hallway.
“There are more guards in the building,” Tyan said.
“Is that so?” the woman asked, with a hint of sarcasm.
“You should go before they get here,” Tyan suggested.
The messenger bag on the desk completed its assembly routine and shut down, and the woman picked up a set of grenades, closed the tray, and slung the bag over her shoulder. She flipped through screens on the monitor until it showed the entrance to the room, with its heavy security doors, and then twisted the monitor until it faced the doors.
“You should get behind that couch,” she told Tyan, as she strode back across the room, stopping briefly to reload her pistol with a magazine from one of the dead guards.
Tyan obediently scrambled off the couch, nursing her injured knee. The woman attached a grenade to one of the doors, and then flattened herself against the wall. She focused on the monitor on the desk across the room, watching as the security force stacked themselves outside the doors, preparing to breach and assault the room.
“Mr. Kolski?” she heard the commander yell, through the doors. “Are you okay, sir?”
“Cover your ears,” the woman told Tyan, and then detonated the grenade. There was a deafening crash as both doors were torn from their hinges, hurtling out into the crowded hallway. The woman stepped through the wreckage of the door frame a second later, scanned the shattered remnants of the security team, and then stepped carefully over several bodies as she made her way back to the elevator. She casually dropped the pistol on the last guard she passed, who groaned. Using a small tool, she prised open the elevator doors, took a solid grip on the cables, and lowered herself into the shaft, letting the doors snap closed behind her. As she slid down the cable, her face transformed, the ugly welt around her neck fading into an evenly tanned complexion, her hair curling up into a tight bob and turning blonde. When she was close to the ground floor, she dropped lightly onto the cement, shrugged out of the jacket she was wearing, and set off an electro-magnetic pulse grenade. The grenade emitted a silent, invisible blast of EMP waves, which immediately shorted out all surveillance cameras in the vicinity. Finally, she took another grenade out of her bag, wedged open the elevator doors, and rolled it through.
