Scorpion

by Christian Cantrell

  “Instructions for Simon,” the cat says, having loaded the relevant list and located the first unchecked item. His voice is ironic and nasally—the type overly prone to wisecracking.

  “Done,” Henrietta says. “I sent them right after breakfast.”

  “Convert savings to crypto.”

  “Transferred and tumbled,” Henrietta declares. “We caught a nice wave coming out of Asia overnight.”

  “I’ll expect my usual fee,” Jiji says sarcastically. “What about your medication?”

  “You can take that off the list,” Henrietta says. “I didn’t need it when I was a little girl, and it isn’t helping me now, so I stopped taking it.”

  “All at once?” Jiji asks. “Is that safe?”

  “That’s none of your business, mister,” Henrietta admonishes.

  “Don’t train me on ten years of psychopharmaceutical literature if you don’t want me to use it.”

  “Duly noted. Now back to work. We have to leave soon.”

  “One last 360-degree capture.”

  “Right,” Henrietta says. She positions herself in the approximate center of the room. “Start recording.”

  Her vision goes entirely black except for the flash of a little red dot, then begins to come back in triangular, interlocking shards as she turns in place, lifting and lowering her chin in long, exaggerated nods. When she is back to where she started, the flashing stops, and the stitching together of an ultra-high-definition, three-dimensional model of her room is already in progress.

  “Got it,” she says. “What’s next?”

  “Pack one Pokémon plush,” Jiji instructs.

  “OK,” Henrietta says. “I was saving this one for last, but I think I’ve made my decision.”

  “Which one will it be?” the cat asks with feigned suspense.

  It had come down to either Mimikyu or Noctowl. But the problem with Mimikyu is that it spends its entire life disguised as something it’s not, and Henrietta has decided that she is finally done hiding. Besides, owls will forever remind Henrietta of Appa.

  “Noctowl,” she proclaims confidently.

  Arranging her collection by color allows Henrietta to locate a specific Pokémon’s quadrant almost instantly. Noctowl, being a rich honey brown, fits in reasonably well between yellow and orange. She has six different variants, but she picks the biggest, and the one that is, by far, the most worn. It is the one that came in the box dropped off by Quinn Mitchell shortly after the Elite Assassin’s arrest; the plush that once belonged to Quinn’s daughter; the Pokémon that, if its condition is any indication, Molly must have loved best.

  There is a generous space reserved in Henrietta’s suitcase that perfectly accommodates the stuffed owl. Henrietta cross-connects the elastic tethers, folds the suitcase closed, and waits for the automatic zipper to finish its high-pitched trip around the equator.

  “All I need now,” Henrietta says, turning to Jiji, “is you.”

  She brings her fingers together in a pinch-like gesture, and the black virtual cat de-rezzes mid-stretch. In the corner of her vision is an icon indicating that her car will be downstairs in five minutes. Henrietta visits the restroom one last time, then pulls her suitcase off the bed and tips it up onto its casters. Because it is aware of its orientation and weight, and since it has full access to Henrietta’s itinerary, it is able to correctly deduce that now would be a good time to start keeping pace. Dutifully, it follows Henrietta out of the bedroom, through the living room, and into the linoleum entry hall, where Henrietta abruptly pauses.

  “Stay,” she commands.

  Given that the CIA has chartered a supersonic jet out of Joint Base Andrews, Henrietta expects to be in Paris in less than five hours. When Moretti informed her that she was going, she pointed out to him that her degrees and fields of expertise were specific to quantum and particle physics, not nuclear. He should be sending post-detonation forensic technicians, she suggested. Radiochemists and other experts in urban debris and microbeam X-ray fluorescence. But Moretti countered that he knew exactly what he was doing and told her that she had three days of access to Ground Zero to learn everything she needed to crack the case. After that, he expected her back at work, and to make up every last second of lost time. Nothing could be allowed to delay bringing Kilonova online, he reminded her—least of all, terrorist attacks.

  But Henrietta has a very different kind of journey in mind. Though she has not yet worked out all the details, she knows that, no matter what happens, she will not be back. She knows from having lived through Seoul that the chaos of mass casualties will give her precisely the cover she needs to not just slip away, but disappear. The key will be to keep moving—to use her credentials to pass rapidly through restricted districts and choked, overwhelmed checkpoints that won’t have time to log every badge that gets flashed.

  This is the first time Moretti has let Henrietta out on such a long leash, and she can see that his relentless focus on The Mission is causing him to overestimate his control over her. And, at the same time, to severely underestimate the extent of her own ambition.

  Henrietta stands very still, listening for sounds from the kitchen. It is quiet, so she moves around the counter, past the stove, and pauses in front of the refrigerator. Still nothing but the hum of the compressor. She gently breaks the magnetic seal on the freezer, then waits. When she hears nothing, she swings the door the rest of the way back and bends down to get a good look at the black mass on the bottom shelf.

  Jiji’s eyes are half closed, but his mouth is wide open and several of his teeth are broken and bloody from frantically trying to chew his way out. White clumps of ice mat his black fur and coat his long, curled whiskers.

  “No biting,” Henrietta scolds while wagging a petite and disapproving finger.

  32

  PROCESS OF ELIMINATION

  TO QUINN, AGING has always felt like a lifelong process of elimination. A series of accomplishments to be struck off a list you did not even know you were keeping—not because they’ve been completed, but because they are now so far out of reach.

  As she drives, these realities crystallize in Quinn’s mind like ice collecting on airplane wings, leading to a spiraling dive. The most recent longing she now has to leave behind is the possibility of ever truly being known by someone—really being seen and understood and unconditionally loved. Her mother and her brother don’t count. Quinn hasn’t been able to bring herself to answer even a single one of her mother’s calls in the last few days despite threats left on voicemail to drive down from Boston, and her brother is probably too stoned to even know that the bonds that have always managed to just barely hold the world together feel like they are finally about to be overcome by chaos.

  James was her last chance. Even if she were to meet someone today, he would never really know her; never have anything better than a trivial accounting of how she came to be who she is; never be able to honestly say that he loves her more than anything else in the world. To him, Molly would just be a few fireplace-mantel photos that never changed or aged, next to photos of his own children that were constantly auto-updating. A collection of videos and glitchy low-res holograms that he would, for a time, endure in order to indulge her, but that would make him uncomfortable and jealous in ways he would never really understand or be able to articulate. When he walked into a room and saw Quinn sitting on the floor with her metaspecs glistening and tears on her cheeks, instead of sitting down behind her and pulling her against him and rocking her, he would silently turn around and go back into the kitchen and fix himself another drink. The futility of competing for the love of the dead would build into toxic and persistent resentment—as would Quinn’s feeling of always being on the outside of his life, looking in.

  * * *

  —

  Quinn’s Honda Clarity is making no secret of the fact that it is not excited about being
overridden by a human right now. Not only is traffic bordering on anarchy, but a tropical depression parked over the Mid-Atlantic has dropped enough rain that the subsystem responsible for evaluating road conditions is increasingly concerned about hydroplaning. There is an undismissable dialog box flashing in the corner of the heads-up display projected against the windshield, implying that Quinn is showing exceedingly poor judgment by not allowing the car to pilot itself through such uncertain and treacherous conditions.

  But Quinn is in a particularly contrary mood right now. And she still does not fully trust her car around navigational anomalies like checkpoints. Lack of full situational awareness and insufficient training data usually manifest themselves as twitchiness, and twitchy vehicles do not exactly endear themselves to U.S. Marines.

  Checkpoints are one of the first things governments put in place after terrorist attacks. That, and increased security at airports. It makes them feel like they are back in control of a world they were never really in control of in the first place. Quinn has already driven through one checkpoint and will probably go through at least two more before she gets to Langley. They are guarded by pissed-off-looking soldiers who have the luxury of acting tough because they are deployed in Northern Virginia, and here purely for show, and don’t really have to worry about things like snipers and suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices. This isn’t how Marines at checkpoints in the Middle East look. Quinn hasn’t seen them in person, but as part of an assignment to help train neural networks to identify and neutralize approaching threats, she’s analyzed hours of footage and, unfortunately, dozens of attacks. When Marines are so far from home, despite their dark ballistic eyewear, the heavy body armor, and the assault rifles they cradle, you can see that most of them are still just kids. That they have parents at home who wear T-shirts saying that they are proud parents of Marines, and that their bedrooms in their childhood homes still haven’t been converted into offices or craft spaces or guest rooms just yet. No matter what, it is too early. You can’t put their stuff in storage or sell it all in a yard sale, because they might be coming home soon. But also, because they may never come home again.

  If there is one thing Quinn has learned from everything she has been through—from losing her daughter and her husband, and from dedicating herself to an uncertain career—it is that the most impactful thing most of us will ever do is raise our children. Inspire them to help build the kind of world we want to leave behind. For most of us, they are our true legacies—our only real shot at immortality.

  But for others, they are not. Some of us have that privilege abruptly revoked and must therefore select from what desperate and vengeful options remain. Quinn now realizes there are two fundamental opportunities to contribute to the future: The first is through the sacred creation of life, and the second is by taking it away.

  * * *

  —

  Quinn remembers very clearly the moment it hit her that it might all be real. Everything the Elite Assassin told her in that bright white concrete bunker blasted into the Swiss Alps. Two moments, really. Twin gut punches in rapid staccato succession. The first was hearing the words “time transmission” come out of her ex-husband’s mouth—the realization that all the craziness she was trying to escape had somehow found its way to him. And the second was the alarm erupting beside her on the bed, followed by the emergency alerts manifesting faster than her phone could render them.

  The insanity had not just found James; it had taken him.

  How the two events are connected—the attempt by someone Quinn has never even heard of to demonstrate time transmission and what may prove to be the deadliest terrorist attack in history—she does not yet know. Nor does she understand why these previously inconceivable themes keep intersecting with her life. But she will. She will solve it all no matter what it takes. No matter how long, and no matter what sacrifices she must make along the way.

  But first, she needs to know if what the Elite Assassin told her is true. Not about the Epoch Index having come from the future. To her, that’s a minor detail in a much deeper narrative. What Quinn needs to know right now more than anything else is whether there is a future in which she is capable of condemning so many innocent people to such disturbing and violent deaths.

  The key to knowing will be in Ranveer’s “proof”—the story about her final moments with her father. If Quinn can find references to it in the shadowphiles, then she will know for sure that he is lying. That his account of her as some sort of reluctant but fierce hero is bullshit. But if she can’t find anything—if Quinn is unable to explain how the Elite Assassin came to know her most personal and closely guarded secret—then only one explanation will remain: that she added it to the Epoch Index herself. Or, rather, that the world will continue to bend toward an unimaginably brutal future in which she will.

  Twice she’d written queries to see what she could surface, but she did not run either one. Her hand hovering above the enter key before redirecting and savagely stabbing at delete. Back then—back before James had been taken away and she still had a chance to rebuild—she knew that she was not a murderer. But now, Quinn is not so sure. There is a quiet, unsettling rage within her that she thought would pass, but that has since settled neatly and comfortably into place, and that she is now afraid might never go away.

  The second time in a year that Quinn got into an accident, her father did not yell like he did the first time. She stood behind him while he was at his desk and explained what happened at the intersection as calmly and clearly as she could. Her voice quivering, her fingers fidgeting with the staple in the corner of the packet from the body shop. She’d already gotten an estimate on the repair, and she would pay for the whole thing herself. She’d even called her boss at the ice cream shop and asked for extra hours. If there was an increase in her insurance, she would cover that, too. It wouldn’t cost him anything, she promised. When he continued sitting there quietly—chin up, eyes down, hands flat on the desk in front of him—Quinn was confused.

  “Aren’t you mad?” she asked him.

  “What makes you think I’m not mad?”

  “You’re not yelling.”

  She remembers how he took a deep breath and closed his eyes before calmly responding: “It’s when I’m not yelling that you should really be scared.”

  Quinn backed out of his office and went upstairs to her room. Closed and locked the door. Put a pillow over her face as if she were smothering herself so her mother and brother would not hear her cry. For the first sixteen years of her life, Quinn’s understanding of the people around her had been flawed. The emotions that people show—no matter how intense—are the ones that are the safest because they so clearly communicate our actions and announce our intent. It is the feelings we can’t see that give us a false sense of security. Once Quinn understood, she put the pillow aside and sat up on her bed. Took a deep breath just like her father had and willed herself to stop crying. Even managed a slight, disquieting smile. If the rest of the world functioned by hiding its true nature from view, why should she be expected to play by a different set of rules?

  * * *

  —

  “Siqi,” Quinn prompts—the wake word for the CIA’s Structured Interactive Query Interface. Her phone is charging in the center console, and she can see the screen light up in her peripheral vision. If her car were a model year or two newer, it would not let her interact with her phone unless she was either parked or in full autonomy mode. “Start a new query.”

  “Please identify one or more indices.”

  Quinn has Siqi configured to use a generic male voice. The text-to-speech library the platform relies on is obsolete, so it sounds like an old toy found in a forgotten box. The phone’s Bluetooth connection routs the stilted, synthesized audio through the Honda’s speakers.

  “The most recent local copy of the shadowphiles.”

  “How many conditions
?”

  “Two.”

  “First condition data type…”

  “Identity.”

  “Whose identity?”

  “Mine. Quinn Mitchell.”

  “Second condition data type…”

  “Text.”

  “Please define…”

  Quinn already knows that her identity is smeared all over the shadowphiles. Thanks to countless database breaches and myriad hacked accounts, everybody’s is. So she needs to combine her identity with a term unique enough to narrow down the results. One of the most distinct and disturbing details the Elite Assassin got right. The last thing she did just before sealing the valve on the oxygen tank.

  “Baby monitor.”

  “Conditions defined,” Siqi says. “Executing query against local shadowphile index.”

  As though on her own form of autopilot, Quinn surprises herself by swinging into the empty parking lot of the Cherrydale Baptist Church. As she passes it, the RGB plasma-dot marquee transitions from a message of justice, love, and mercy to simply: PRAY FOR PARIS.

  She parallel parks across a couple of perpendicular spots, dials the Honda into park, and looks down at her phone. The results of the query will tell Quinn everything. If Siqi finds just one match—no matter how obscure—she will know Ranveer was lying. Manipulating her in exactly the same way she used her favorite quote from Hamlet to manipulate her own marks. But if it returns nothing—if Quinn cannot verify with absolute certainty that the Elite Assassin simply bought access to the details he claimed proved his story—she will have nowhere left to hide.

  “One result found,” Siqi says, and Quinn instantly feels the cinch of fear release and fall away. She does not see it coming, but the three simple words unleash a well of relief that rises up and condenses into tears. Although she hates the fact that what she did to her father somehow found its way into the shadowphiles, at least she now knows the truth. And depending on the distribution of nodes and the type of encryption, she may even be able to have the most shameful moment of her life redacted.