The Harmony Paradox (Virtual Immortality Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Seems like the arrangement is good for the both of you.” He smiled.

  She glanced at her knees, where the ceiling lights created a blob of reflected glare on the glossy stealth armor, white on black. “It caught me off guard.”

  “Off guard?” Hardin’s right eyebrow edged up a notch.

  “Even with Vincent, I hadn’t really given any thought to having kids. My father had always been talking about ‘his grandchildren’ as though I should’ve been a married mother of three by the time I was twenty-two. Something about that… I don’t know…” She raised and lowered her fingers on the armrests. “I didn’t dislike children, but I never saw myself wanting them. And the more he talked like it was a foregone conclusion that I would have kids, the more I distanced myself from the idea.”

  Hardin stood. “Coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  He turned his back to her while operating a small machine on a shelf behind him. “I suppose you prove the old adage about ‘whatever you want your child to do, tell them to do the opposite.’ Still, I think it’s good for you to have her.”

  “I never thought about it until I saw her in that shithole.” Nina scowled, glancing off to the side and down. “That look in her eyes… I almost killed every last one of those bastards for what they did to her… to all of them.” She let off a wistful chuckle. “I suppose it’s also true you don’t want anything until it’s out of reach.”

  “How’s that?” Hardin handed her a camouflage green mug with a UCF eagle logo on it before sitting with a steel-grey mug bearing a Siege Arms Corporation logo over a boxy rifle graphic. “What happened to her?”

  “Not her. Me. I never wanted kids until I couldn’t have them anymore. I guess having the option taken away…” She made eye contact, fighting back the urge to feel sorry for herself. “Don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone, right?”

  “They were able to preserve some of your ovarian tissue.” Hardin added the contents of a blue packet to his mug, flicking it with his index finger. The thwap, thwap, thwap irritated Nina for no reason she could determine. “It should be possible to have one of your own if you ever feel the need.”

  Can a machine form a maternal bond? “It’s something to consider.” She sipped hers black.

  “Well.” Hardin stirred his coffee until a layer of froth appeared. “The dissolution proceedings are grinding on. Osiris lawyers are trying to claim Doctor Rice acted without the approval of their board of directors and ethics committee.”

  Nina barked a laugh. “They have an ethics committee?”

  “At least on paper.” Hardin chuckled and set the stirrer down. “They allege the R&D group acted on the spur of the moment under Price’s misguided influence.” He raised the mug to his lips and slurped coffee.

  “I suppose people who can treat children like disposable primates don’t have much of a problem speaking ill of the dead. I don’t regret what happened in there, sir. Even if it did provide them with a convenient scapegoat. A dead man can’t refute whatever they try to blame him for.”

  Hardin smiled. “I’d have done the same.” He tilted his head, eyebrows shifting upward. “Well, maybe not the exact same thing. I’d probably have shot him. You and your team did solid work. It’s just the usual clusterfuck these things turn into once lawyers get involved.”

  “Yeah. A necessary tedium.”

  “Oh?” He took a deeper swig of coffee. “You’re not annoyed?”

  “They provide a service, like maggots devouring the dead.” She cradled her mug in two hands, staring into the wavering pattern of ceiling lights on the surface. “We need the hesitation, the review, the assurance that we’re not turning into a society where the moral justifications of a small number of people impose their wants upon the masses.”

  “So you believe them?”

  “No. Nothing with the scope of what Price was doing happens without executives’ knowledge. Knowing about it and letting it happen is tantamount to approval. I still think the company should get shut down, but it doesn’t bother me if it takes two weeks or two years to get there. The end result is the message. If they want to waste millions trying to fight a pointless battle, let them.”

  “Interesting.” He kept his eyes locked on her as he took another long sip. The mug lowered away from a grin. “The people to most trust with power are those who don’t want it.”

  Nina picked at the side of her mug for a moment, and drank a mouthful. She never wanted to join Division 9.

  “If you could go back, would you?” asked Hardin.

  “Back, sir?” She swirled the coffee around, inhuman dexterity bringing the fluid within a millimeter of the rim without spilling.

  “Back to a biological body. Your old self.” He peered at her over his drink, steam wafting past his eyes. “Like it never happened.”

  Nina stared into the coffee. Vincent’s scream echoed in her mind as image after image of that night played a slideshow upon her thoughts. The tug of bullets striking her, the white-hot pain of Bertrand’s vibro-blade in her back, and the gritty caress of traction coating on her cheek. “I didn’t believe it possible to regrow an entire body. The damage Bertrand did to me was too severe.”

  Hardin gestured his coffee mug around in a small circle. “I’m just speaking theoretically. A thought experiment. I find myself curious about your headspace.”

  Her bob drooped forward as her head bowed, framing her vision in a square of black. “If it were possible, I’d probably do things differently. The reason I joined the force was because I wanted to do some good for society, not to be some debutante living in a bubble of indifference. If I could go back and talk to myself, I’d have stayed away. There are plenty of better ways for someone with money to help the ‘little guy.’ Maybe I wouldn’t have studied forensic science. I could’ve gone into medicine or some engineering path instead. Make things to improve the quality of life. Start charity foundations, that sort of thing.” She shook her head and chuckled. “You saw my Division 1 files. I was five-four, the proverbial ninety pounds wet. I had no business being a cop.”

  “And yet you still joined, and you made it through two years of everyone telling you to go home. If that night had never happened, would you be happy working for Division 2?”

  Nina tried to wrap her brain around the thought of never running into Bertrand. Vincent alive, her intact, her transfer approved. She’d have gone from picked-on runt beat cop to science nerd crawling around after all the shooting stopped. The job wouldn’t have helped her save lives, but she could’ve found justice for people. Though in some sense, stopping a killer might save the life of future victims. Of course, then she’d never have met Joey or Elizaveta. He seemed to adore her very being, but what if he’d only been attracted by the adrenaline rush of what she’d become? If Bertrand Foster hadn’t mangled her that night, would Elizaveta be dying a slow miserable death in a cage? No, anyone in Division 9 could’ve run that investigation. She hadn’t done anything above and beyond. Someone would’ve found them.

  “Nina?”

  “It’s a pointless question because I can’t go back.” She downed three-quarters of a mug of hot coffee in one shot.

  “I suppose I expected that non-answer. You’re tempted, but you aren’t so sure you hate where your life has gone enough to wish it different.”

  That he’d hit the nail on the proverbial head got under her DuraFib-reinforced skin. “All due respect, sir, ‘wishing’ never got anyone anywhere.”

  He mushed his lower lip upward into an appraising frown. “Yeah. I suppose you’re right. Might as well get to the new operation.” Hardin tapped a button on his holo-panel, which elicited a responding chirp from her NetMini. “Last Friday, the operations manager for Reliant Logistics had a bad day. He evidently had a pleasant breakfast with his wife, then left his apartment and proceeded to ring the doorbells of two neighbors and shoot them dead, before emptying the rest of his handgun’s magazine at random into the walls. He injured six more, incl
uding two minors before exiting the building and going to his office. Once there, he began work as though nothing strange had occurred.”

  Nina raised an eyebrow. “This sounds like something you should be sending to Zero.”

  Hardin raised a hand. “There’s more.”

  She nodded.

  “Approximately ten minutes after Mr. Estrada settled in at his desk, before Division 1 had pieced together the identity of the shooter from the apartment, he received a notice to report to the office of Marion Ruiz, the Operations Director, his boss. He’s in there for four minutes before he puts one between her eyes. Anyway, D1 eventually shows up and he charges at them.”

  “Sounds like this case is over already. This guy isn’t still alive, is he? How do we fit into this man snapping?”

  “The morgue technicians, as part of routine process, plugged him in to see if they could find any black-ware. Within seconds of connection, a data burst went out, which we traced to a chimeric network address in Mexico.”

  Nina’s head (and interest level) perked up. “They suspect him being an ACC infiltrator?” Tracing that is going to be fun.

  “They were able to determine the destination only generally as Mexico. The transmission didn’t sustain long enough to gather enough samples to track it down.”

  Nina pursed her lips. At the wanting, her headware opened a link to her NetMini, which filled her vision with virtual holo-panels bearing an ID photo of Paul Estrada next to everything the system had about him. Thirty-six years old, born in West City, married Valerie Cortez eleven years ago, no children. Clean police record, no obvious financial troubles, no known enemies. The man looked like such a stereotypical middle-manager it reeked of being fake. “His record is too ‘normal.’ It’s so normal I’m almost tempted to believe it. The Corporates wouldn’t make this guy up because he’s too tame. His blandness would be suspicious.”

  “Well, there’s got to be some reason a plain ol’ guy with a decent job and decent life winds up sending a postmortem data burst to the Corporates.” Hardin set his mug down, leaned back, and laced his fingers behind his head. “What do you make of him being married eleven years and not having any children?”

  Nina offered a mild shrug. “Maybe they didn’t want any.” She looked over his medical records, and pulled up Valerie’s as well. “Nothing in their file shows infertility. Not everyone wants kids. It’s not unnatural not to have them.”

  “Normally, I’d agree with you. But factor that in with the demographic trend for people in his income bracket who are married. Add to that the transmission to the ACC… There’s a chance they’re both operatives and they didn’t want attachments.”

  Is he trying to say I’m normal for wanting to keep Elizaveta, or is he just assuming humans are broken if they don’t want offspring? She locked stares with the file photo of Valerie Estrada. Mid-thirties, works as a designer for Teradyne Corporation in their ‘aesthetics’ division. After someone else made the functional guts of a product, her group made it appealing to the eye. “Could be they were both just too busy with work to think about it… but I’ll check all angles.”

  “Good.” Hardin brought his hands out from behind his head, and lowered his arms with a healthy pat on the desk. “That’s why I’m tossing this one to you. Anyone else would think I’m upset with them and giving them a dead end.”

  “This isn’t payback for pasting Doctor Rice?” Nina stood, chuckling.

  Hardin, deadpan serious, said, “Not at all. And I know you know that.”

  Nina turned halfway to the door. Another slice of my soul falls away. She pictured a black mass floating in space, thin sheets separating and falling off to oblivion. Elizaveta ran into the daydream, caught one of the gossamer wafers and reattached it, patting it down like wallpaper. Maybe I’m not a lost cause yet.

  “Right.” She glanced back at him. “Anything else I need to know?”

  “The coroner found traces of ‘H’ in his system.”

  Nina’s eyebrows crept together as she struggled to think of the meaning. “New drug?”

  “Yeah. Been on the street for about six months or so. It’s basically Placinil, an anti-anxiety medication re-sold on the street under the name ‘Harmony.’ They think the drug is what caused the rampage, which might’ve done us a favor. Something tells me he wasn’t supposed to go crazy and get himself killed.”

  “Only to wind up on our network where we caught the transmission going south.”

  “Right.” Hardin went to drink from his empty mug and gave it a dirty look. “If anyone’s going to make sense of this one, it’s you.”

  Nina collapsed all the virtual panels with a thought. “On my way.”

  ings and cracks filled the limousine from bullets glancing off. The armor afforded Masaru a reasonable sense of safety, so long as he remained inside. He pushed himself up off Yutaka Ito. The older man bled from the nose and appeared unconscious. The two sales engineers, Toru Himura and Akihiro Sato moaned. Both had been knocked around―hard―and showed little reaction to the car coming under fire.

  Shuji had himself pressed up against the passenger-side door; whatever he stared at had reduced his attempts to speak into hyperventilating babble. “They’ve…. They’ve…”

  Both security men in the middle section pulled combat rifles from a case embedded in the partition between them and the driver.

  “There is no need to panic, Kurotai-sama,” said the darker-skinned security man. “Their weapons are no threat to us.”

  “Ryo-san,” said Masaru. “If their weapons are no threat to us, why then are we on the ground?”

  “M-missile!” shouted Shuji.

  A split-second hiss outside preceded a deafening whump, and a sensation as though a giant had kicked the nose end of the car. The clear barrier behind the driver flashed opaque red. Evident chunks of flesh oozed downward at varying speeds.

  “Go, go, go!” yelled Shuji, while pushing Masaru over Yutaka toward the driver-side door.

  “Maeda-san.” Masaru grabbed him by the shoulders. “Calm yourself.”

  The security men exited the limo on the driver’s side, as the unknown attackers seemed to be coming from the right and somewhat to the rear. No sooner had the thunder of rifle fire started overhead, than the two sales engineers came around. In their panic, they crammed themselves against Masaru and Shuji. Unable to push past, they leapt for the passenger-side door.

  “Do not!” yelled Masaru.

  Toru pushed the door open. He got one foot out before he screamed with blind panic.

  A fusillade of bullets tore over him, peppering Akihiro as well. An explosion of fluff and white ‘leather’ scraps flew from the rear-facing seat. Shuji convulsed in Masaru’s grip and his eyes widened. A nip of searing pain cut Masaru’s side a hand’s width under his left armpit.

  “Ma… sa… ru,” wheezed Shuji. He coughed up blood, digging his fingers into Masaru’s sleeves. “I…”

  One of the security men fired a long burst of automatic fire, which drowned out whatever Shuji tried to say. Akihiro rolled back into the car and curled fetal, clutching his arm while howling. Masaru fumbled behind his back for the door handle and dragged Shuji with him as he slid out to the ground beside the limo.

  Akihiro’s agonized wails continued, though the man made no effort to move.

  Masaru pulled Shuji from the wreck and rolled him flat on his back upon an ancient street covered in at least an inch of fine grey silt. To his right, Ryo and Saburo, the security escort, huddled for cover behind the car and traded bullets with people in the distance. On one knee at Shuji’s side, Masaru couldn’t see their attackers with the car in the way.

  “Shit!” shouted Saburo.

  Sensing danger, Masaru’s speedware activated. He whipped his head around to face the limousine. The big men twisted toward him, their faces contorted from rapid motion, black suit jackets flaring out. The two open rear doors gave him a clean view of a man covered in mismatched scraps of metal and dingy clo
th pointing an over-the-shoulder tube straight at him.

  In his temporary slow-motion world, a spinning black rocket leapt into the air. Spring-loaded fins snapped out of the back end as a billowing plume of white smoke erupted from behind it, obscuring the man holding the launcher. Since the missile resembled a dark dot embedded in cotton, he knew it came straight for him. With two seconds to react, perhaps one-sixteenth of a second in real time, Masaru flung himself to the side. His hands hit the street at the same instant his foot caught the limo door and kicked it shut.

  A spray of metal spalling shot off the outside of the door in time with a bone-jarring thud. The inside of the armored car flickered between orange, black, and white for three speedware seconds before fading to dark black. Heavy smoke laced with the stink of burned meat rolled out of the still-open passenger-side door. By some miracle, the armored door contained the detonation within the limo.

  He had no doubt Akihiro and Yutaka had perished.

  Thunder like mountain giants pounding on Taiko drums the size of buildings melted into automatic gunfire as his speedware shut down. Ryo and Saburo stood a short distance back from the limo, shooting over it.

  Masaru flipped around and checked Shuji. The man stared into the clouds with a vacant expression, blood leaking down his cheeks from both corners of his mouth. Masaru tore his friend’s suit jacket and shirt open, revealing four holes in his chest big enough to stick a finger in. He flipped open a belt case and yanked a pair of stimpaks out, flicked the safety caps off the ends, and jammed them into Shuji’s chest like sacrificial daggers. Bloody foam swelled out of the bullet holes, but they did not shrink.

  Shuji! You do not have permission to die! He grasped his hands together and attempted CPR, but pushing down only caused a small geyser of blood to spray up from the man’s mouth. He pushed again, harder, and blood squirted out of the chest wound as well, hitting him in the face.

  Masaru grunted past clenched teeth. “Shuji! Don’t give up!”

  Again and again he performed chest compressions, but his friend remained still. Masaru kept trying until no more blood spurted when he pushed. Unconcerned with flying bullets, Masaru bowed his head, slouched over the body of Shuji Maeda, and let off a gurgling wail of anger mixed with sorrow. With great effort, he forced down the rising tide of emotion threatening to rob him of reason, and opened a connection to his NetMini via wireless from his headware.