“Yeah,” she tells Moretti uncertainly. “I heard of him.”
“Interpol’s got nothing, and they’re asking us for an analyst.”
“And why do we care about Interpol all of a sudden?”
“The director’s got this new mandate around banking favors. Says that’s how shit gets done in the private sector.”
“How the hell would he know how shit gets done in the private sector? He’s been a government employee his entire life. That man was born with coffee on his breath and khakis on his ass.”
“Read a book, I guess.”
“Anyway,” Van continues, “by banking a favor with Interpol, you mean you’re banking a favor with the director, right?”
“Not just me. You too. And Mitchell. See? Everyone wins.”
Townes watches Quinn sip her Diet Coke and place it back on the slat. She wonders whether the senior analyst has any idea that she’s currently being surveilled—that the two of them are standing there casually mapping out her future—and ultimately decides that she does not.
“You know what she’s been through, right?”
“I do.”
“And you think it’s a good idea for her to go from writing queries in a cubicle to chasing a serial killer?”
“What I think,” Moretti says, “is that she can catch this guy. And I think she needs a win. You know I have nothing but respect for your task force. I do. But you said it yourself back there: the whole thing was kind of a victory by omission. I’m offering her a real victory. An explicit victory. I’m offering her a chance to save lives—to catch a flesh-and-blood bad guy. I’m offering her this because of what she’s been through.”
Townes wonders how often Quinn eats alone. She wishes now that she’d made more of an effort to connect with her—that she’d invited Quinn out to lunch every now and then, or even over for dinner. She’d meant to, but there was always too much to do. Always an excuse to eat at her desk. The feeling that it wasn’t her place. Too many reasons not to have the difficult conversations she knew Quinn needed to have. And now Van realizes that she was almost certainly not alone in her approach—that the rest of the task force probably followed the same pattern: all intention and no action. There must be some part of us that honestly believes tragedy is contagious.
“Why do they call him that?” Townes asks. “The Elite Assassin?”
“You know how he brands his victims?”
“Yeah,” Van says. “Serial numbers, right?”
“Not serial numbers. Serial numbers are sequential. These are completely random four-digit numbers. But the first one he used was 1337. And 1337 is internet-culture code for ‘leet,’ which is short for elite.”
Van’s expression unambiguously conveys her opinion of Moretti’s explanation: that that’s some seriously dumbass shit.
“It’s a nerd thing,” Moretti says. “Mitchell’d get it.”
“And here I thought it was because he had expensive taste.”
“He may very well. I’ll be sure to ask once I have him in custody.”
“What else do you know about this guy?”
“I know he’s one sick fuck. Nineteen bodies so far. Threw some crippled girl off her balcony in Moscow two weeks ago. Then flew to Caracas, broke into some rich hombre’s estate, and swapped his nephew’s aluminum oxygen tanks for ones with nickel in them the day before he got an MRI.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Aluminum isn’t magnetic. Nickle is. Pulled the fucking things right into the machine like a barrage of missiles. Crushed the poor bastard. Put a radiologist in a coma in the process.”
Van’s eyebrows went up. “Points for creativity, though.”
“You have no idea,” Moretti says gravely. “I won’t even get into Cape Town and Beijing.”
“How’d he mark them?”
“Branded the girl’s arm somehow. Not sure with what. The guy in the MRI, stenciled his number on the tanks. They…left a mark.”
“What do all these people have in common?”
“That’s just it,” Moretti says. “Not a single fucking thing. Most assassins like this carve out a niche for themselves. They specialize in gangsters, or drug lords, or witnesses, or whatever. Politicians, well-insured spouses. Something. But not this guy. Either he’s killing completely randomly—which, no fucking way—or there’s something we’re missing.”
“Hence the need for an analyst,” Townes surmises.
“Bingo,” Moretti confirms. “So, what do you say? Think your girl’s up for it?”
Townes watches Quinn seal her fork up inside the chicken salad sarcophagus and slide the whole thing into her insulated lunch bag.
“You’re not really asking me, are you?”
Moretti shrugs. “At least my requests come with coffee.”
Van samples the drink she’s been holding. It’s “dirty coffee”—caffeine bestowed for the purposes of garnering favor—but caffeine is caffeine. And throwing it out won’t change Quinn’s fate now.
“Did you know, Al, that you have a reputation?”
“What?” Moretti asks innocently. “Me? A reputation for what?”
“For abusing your direct reports.”
“Bullshit,” Moretti says. “Have I ever abused you?”
“No, because you know I’ll give it right back to you. But you’re known for being an asshole to junior officers.”
“That’s because that’s what junior officers are for,” Moretti says.
“Al…”
“Is Quinn a junior officer?”
“Quinn’s an analyst.”
“Well, is she a junior analyst?”
“Not remotely.”
“Then she’s got nothing to worry about, does she?”
“I want your word that you won’t lose your shit around her.”
Moretti looks at her over his glasses, which had darkened the moment they stepped out into the sun. “Yes, ma’am,” he says. “Any other demands?”
“Yeah,” Van says. “I want you to promise me you’ll take good care of her. There’s something special about that one.”
Moretti gives Van what he probably thinks is his most reassuring smile. “You got nothing to worry about,” he says. “I won’t let her out of my sight.”
3
HUNTING FOR PRIME
YŪGEN IS ONE kill away from a million-dollar payday.
She is in L.A., on an old, converted movie studio lot. Room by room, floor by floor, Yūgen is hunting for Prime through the biggest and most advanced v-sports venue on the planet.
Think e-sports, but virtual. Traditional video game tournaments are still played with mechanical keyboards, mice, and vast swaths of plasma glass. V-sports players zip themselves into form-fitting haptic suits, pull carbon-fiber helmets down over their heads, and slap full-face metaspec visors down over their eyes. Strap battery packs onto their backs and light-adapted tactical weapons to their thighs.
Matches take place inside vast physical structures painted entirely chroma-key green with plasma-light strips embedded in the seams and barrel cameras mounted in every corner. Players’ views are provided by 120 degrees of ultra-high-definition, one-thousand-hertz plasma screens lining their visors. The feeds the audience sees are the result of knocking out everything green and mapping exotic, photorealistic environments to invisible unique tracking patterns applied with handheld sprayers.
Maps can be anything from a derelict spacecraft, to a sprawling factory, to a ravaged embassy, to the shattered serenity of a ransacked suburban home. A glittering Las Vegas casino, or the long, austere fuselage of Air Force One. This one is the top three floors of two modern, adjacent office towers joined by a glass catwalk. It’s the middle of the night, in a savage and sustained thunderstorm.
Yūgen and her clan came to L.A. from Japa
n to compete in Black Horizon—the most-watched and highest-stakes v-sports tournament in the world. The American team—comprised mostly of washed-out special ops who grew up buzzing with ADD in small towns with no parents around and skipping school to stream Call of Duty all day—dominated the competition bracket. The top players from every round get to compete in what many consider to be the real event: the last-man-standing, winner-take-all, single-spawn Battle Royale.
No teams. No bombs to plant or defuse, and no hostages to rescue. No king of the hill, no skulls to collect, and no flags to capture. The final Black Horizon all-star event is a simple, old-fashioned, high-stakes death match.
The east tower has been cleared. As Yūgen crosses the catwalk, she is blinded by a bright white fractal of lightning followed by a godlike eruption of thunder. The point of the storm is to introduce the equivalent of random flashbang grenades, and to expose snipers camping in shadows. What Yūgen sees ahead of her in the lesser flashes that follow is an obstacle course of dead bodies.
The tunnel between the two towers is an intentional choke point. Yūgen has never played this map herself, but she’s studied it by analyzing dozens of past matches, and she knows that, by this point, the floor is always littered with bodies, bullet casings, and gore. Half the glass panels are shattered, and blood is splattered from high-velocity rifle shots and dripping from close-quarter shotgun blasts. There are wisps and tendrils of gun smoke suspended in the still air, which her brain makes her smell even though it is not really there. To her, the bodies are rendered as gruesome and violent urban-assault carnage. But in reality, she is stepping over eliminated players lining a green, brightly lit, plywood-paneled hallway—all of them silently watching the endgame play out either through her eyes or through Prime’s.
Yūgen can move through the passage without fear because she now knows exactly where Prime is. Players have maps in the corners of their HUDs, and all in-range motion registers as red dots. Prime took up a position in a corner conference room up ahead, then went dark. Which means he is waiting. He is ahead on kills, so if the match ends with them both alive, he wins. There is no reason for him to risk open confrontation. Prime is doing exactly what Yūgen would do: waiting for her to come to him.
Strategy and location are not all Yūgen knows about Prime. She also knows that he is the top-ranked player in the world; that he makes significantly more in sponsorships than in prize money; that he is left-handed, which throws a lot of opponents off; and that he is a little over eighty kilos and 180 centimeters tall—a nice, broad chest to target and just the right height for a quick, twitchy headshot.
But it is Prime’s intelligence that interests Yūgen most. Not necessarily his gameplay, but his former life. Before he became a professional v-sports player, he spent his first few years out of school as a biomedical engineer. Was accused of something that the courts kept sealed—worked out some kind of plea deal. Wealthy parents, an expensive team of attorneys. His handle comes from the fact that he is obsessed with prime numbers. The word PRIME is tattooed, one letter per finger, across his right fist. Across his left, the sequence 76543—one of only two prime numbers with digits in consecutive descending order. Apparently, he believes there is some kind of power in primes. Fundamental, cosmic meaning. Encrypted messages rippling through spacetime.
One minute of gameplay remaining.
Yūgen is at the end of the catwalk. The conference room is to the left, halfway down the hall, opening on the right. But that would mean breaching the room from her weak side. She is capable of firing off both shoulders when she has to, but not against Prime. She knows she would be dead before she could even register his presence.
So she turns right instead. Lowers her rifle and jogs. Circles around so that she can take the conference room from her strong side. She knows she is broadcasting her plan, but she doesn’t have a choice. Only forty seconds left. No time for planning, and no time for tricks. She knows Prime will already have pressure on the trigger the moment she exposes her head, so all she can do is rely on her instincts.
Last corner. She is now right outside the conference room. On her strong side now. Back pressed against the wall. Ten seconds left. She knows that he knows her exact height, and that he will have a headshot all lined up. So she crouches. She will be slightly less steady, but that fraction of a second to readjust could make all the difference.
Nine.
She wishes she had a frag she could bank off a wall and into the room.
Eight.
Or a flashbang. But by this point in the game, if you’re alive, you’re out of grenades.
Seven.
She can feel her heart through her haptic suit. Hear it in her ears.
Six.
It is beating so hard she knows it could throw off her shot.
Five.
He is probably expecting her to wait for the last second, so she knows she should go now.
Four.
Deep breath. Hold it in. And then a quick pivot.
Two rapid taps at head height shatter glass. She waits for the haptics in her chest or helmet to tell her she’s been tagged, but nothing happens. She finds him on the ground, crouched beneath the table, sights all lined up. Motherfucker is playing with her—savoring his victory.
Instinctively, Yūgen drops her muzzle and puts two rounds in his face.
In her ears, the v-sports theme, and a deep, authoritative voice: GAME OVER. YOU HAVE WON.
But something is not right. She unlocks her visor, retracts it back up in her helmet, staggers at the context shift from skyscraper at night to bright green surfaces and plasma light. And red. Blood getting dark. Coagulating. Mostly done spreading already. Her first thought is that she somehow killed him, but she immediately readjusts. Knows that’s not possible. Feels the other players gather behind her—running up to congratulate her, then stopping. Hears them, but does not understand. Sees the splatter patterns on the wall. Left hand outstretched, assault rifle just out of reach. Entire trigger finger missing, reducing the five-digit number to four.
4
FALSE POSITIVE
ALL THE DEAD bodies on the wall make it hard to concentrate on talking.
Quinn is sitting across from her boss, Vanessa Townes. The floor-to-ceiling sheet of plasma glass to her left is like a macabre mood board of violence and murder. Puffy white fat bursting from an opened throat, eyes wide and terrified. A lean, young, dark male body, hideously crushed, twisted, and disfigured. The impact of a young woman against a city sidewalk, her arms and head askew, two robotic legs detached, one entirely smashed and scattered.
And numbers. All of them four digits. Imprinted on different body parts. Burned, stamped, and carved.
“I’m sorry,” Van says. “Do you want me to turn that off?”
“It’s fine,” Quinn tells her boss. In truth, the collage of carnage is making her nauseous, but she does not like the idea of being coddled. So she focuses on the shattered laptop on a shelf behind her boss, displayed among various service awards. “Did that thing really stop a round from an AK-47?”
“At a very generous angle, as anyone with a background in ballistics is quick to point out,” Van says. “But yes, it really did. One thing I’ve learned in all my years here is that you never know what might end up saving your life.”
Quinn smiles. Straightens herself in her chair. Brushes something off her knee that wasn’t really there.
“I wanted to thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
A subtle gesture to her left. “For getting me out of the whole Elite Assassin thing.”
“I didn’t so much get you out of it as get someone else into it.”
“Who?”
“For the time being,” Van says, “you’re looking at her. But temporarily. We’re still vetting other analysts.”
“Well, I appreciate it,” Quinn says
. “And I also wanted to apologize.”
“Quinn—”
“No, I do. I know you wanted me to do it.”
“I thought it might have been good for you,” Van says. “I still do, to be honest. But that’s different from wanting you to do it. I don’t want you doing anything you’re not ready for, or that you’re not comfortable with.”
“I just feel like I need something…predictable.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Van says. “After everything I’ve seen in my career, predictability is a concept I’ve given up on.”
“Well, more predictable than chasing a serial killer all over the world.”
“Fair enough,” Van says. “So, what’s your plan?”
“Advanced Analytics,” Quinn says. She tries to say it with confidence, but she knows it comes out more as an apology.
“Advanced Analytics,” Van says. “Your old job before you moved to counter-terrorism, right?”
“But with some management responsibilities,” Quinn says. “A team lead.”
Van nods in a way that Quinn knows is meant to appear neutral, but that in its excess of objectivity comes across as all the more judgmental.
“What?” Quinn asks.
“Nothing,” Van says. “I think that’s fine.”
“Fine?”
“If that’s where you feel you need to be at this point in your career, I fully support you.”
Quinn has never been anything but deferential toward any of her bosses, but she feels as though she is being provoked. “What exactly do you mean by at this point in my career?”
Van shrugs. “I mean that you’re, what? Halfway through your career?”
“So?”
“So if you want to spend the second half in Advanced Analytics doing a job you’ve already done—doing a job you already know you’re good at and that, frankly, you can do in your sleep—then I guess that’s the right decision.”
“It’s not exactly my old job,” Quinn objects. “I’ll be a team lead.”
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