Leverage

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  “No that wasn’t his mistake,” Puo says. “And he told me that as well.”

  “So, what?” I ask, getting annoyed. “Do the Lacis feel love more intensely or something?”

  Puo shakes his head no. “It’s not that they love more, it’s that they’re unequipped to deal with the constant threat of arrest or death. We were born into it. It’s always there, but we learned to cope decades ago. Winn doesn’t have that luxury—”

  I quirk an angry eyebrow at him. Luxury? Not even close to the right word.

  “—Not luxury,” Puo quickly backpedals. “Experience. He doesn’t have that experience.”

  “So if we let him back in,” I say, thinking out loud, “we’ll always have that potential for him to bolt again.”

  Puo’s mouth drops slightly open as if he hadn’t considered that.

  “Do you want him to come back?” I ask.

  Puo says, “I want you to be happy—”

  “That’s not the question, Puo,” I cut in, annoyed that he’s thrusting this all on me. “We’re a team, you have a fifty-percent say.”

  Puo makes a face of disbelief at me.

  “Well, a forty-percent say.”

  Puo keeps staring at me.

  “Okay, more like twenty-five, but that’s not the point. What do you think about him coming back?”

  Puo shrugs to himself. “I like Winn. He brings a Laci perspective—prefers to do things simply and straightforward. Those are two qualities that don’t always occur to us—”

  Because they were never available to us before the modified citizen’s chips, I think to myself.

  “—He’s easy to get along with,” Puo continues. “He’s competent and does what he’s told.” Puo stops to think before finishing with, “We can do more with a bigger crew.”

  “You didn’t actually answer the question, Puo,” I tell him.

  “I answered it about twenty-five percent of the way.”

  Arg! Freaking Puo!

  “I do really like the way he looks at me though,” Puo adds.

  I bang my forehead on the cold glass windows facing the bay in response to Puo. “All right,” I say. “I think we’re done here.”

  “Are you going to let him back into the crew?” Puo asks. “And then, follow-up question, are you going to let him back into your heart?”

  “Back into my heart?” I mockingly lift my head up from the glass window and look at Puo in amusement. “What are you, a thirteen-year-old girl? Where’s your kitty-cat embossed diary?”

  Puo scowls, “We’re getting off track.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Are you going to let him back or not?”

  I exhale steadily through my nose. I don’t know. To be honest, I’m tired of thinking about it. “What time is it?” I need to leave soon.

  Puo glances at a nearby clock. “It’s about time.”

  “Good,” I say, and mean it. “Let’s go do something reckless and stupid.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  AND BY let’s go do something reckless and stupid, I mean me. Puo and Winn are staying behind—well Winn has a small part at the end, which makes Puo’s comment come to mind about being able to pull bigger jobs with Winn. I’m sure we could’ve thought of something if Winn weren’t here, but it certainly was easier to come up with a plan with more bodies.

  I head out with only my digi-scrambler and a modified, rather dangerous, powered-down disposable pocket tablet hidden in a too-tight bra under my left boob. No comm-link connected to the tablet, just text when it’s powered on. Puo had to get rid of a bunch of extra components on the disposal tablet to make physical room for some special components that go poof. We decided to keep my CitID in malfunctioning mode—Vikki Gilbert is supposed to be dead, after all. All of which amounts to this being pretty damn stupid—feels great.

  A half hour after what felt like the never-ending talk-a-thon with Winn and Puo, I’m walking down the sidewalk in the cold toward the local Mounties’ headquarters. Puo verified that Rose had left the building before I set out, but if she comes back, or anything else is awry, Puo won’t be able to get word to me.

  The local Mounties’ headquarters is a four-story concrete building of hard angles and tinted glass. Empty concrete planters form a perimeter around the building; a thin layer of frost blankets the hard and lifeless soil held within.

  I walk past the concrete planters and head straight for the tinted sliding glass front doors with two armed guards watching me the whole way.

  Here we go.

  There’s a camera over the door, no doubt trying to track my face and cross-reference it with their employee database.

  Both guards give the subtle head shift of listening to an incoming transmission and shift their stance to confront me directly. “Ma’am,” the one on the right says forcefully. “Please stay where you are.” Both of them shift their assault rifles into the crooks of their arms.

  Well, if there was any doubt they would detect my digi-scrambler, that’s gone. Digi-scramblers aren’t exactly common, and authorities detest them for obvious reasons. The useful devices are unfortunately associated with ne’er-do-wells and conspiracy theorists.

  I dutifully stop, and let out a long nervous exhale; my white, warm breath rises out in front of me to disappear quickly. “I need help.”

  The one on the right licks his lips and then says, “Remove your digi-scrambler.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t do that. I was on the tour boat that exploded. I’m supposed to be dead.”

  “Remove your—”

  “Your own government,” I say over him, “rescued and airlifted me and my friend to safety, but is now claiming we died at the hospital. I am not taking off the digi-scrambler.”

  The two guards glance at each other and look back at me. It’s midafternoon; there aren’t a lot of people in the immediate vicinity after the lunch hour, and those that are, are keeping their distance and watching the developing situation.

  “Look,” I say, “find Detective Staff Sergeant Silvia Myers, tell her I’m out here. Tell her what I told you. Her partner is Hollis something or other.” I quickly describe the two cops that visited me in the hospital to the guards for good measure.

  After more seconds of silence and shared glances between the guards, the one on the left, never taking his eyes off me, starts relaying the information to somebody inside.

  It takes probably ninety seconds, but it feels like much longer as we all stand there in a stalemate. Our warm breaths filter up into the air as we wait for word to come down from on high about how to resolve the situation.

  When the guard on the left starts describing my sexy, lithe appearance, I know I’m good. Although his description sounds a bit mechanical to me: five-nine, Caucasian, slim build, long black hair, brown eyes.

  Sure enough, after listening to whatever response that garnered on the other end, the guard says, “Ma’am, please stay where you are. Detective Staff Sergeant Myers is on her way down.”

  Here’s the thing: this is so fucking stupid, so unbelievably, colossally, foolish, the Mounties won’t see it coming. And even in the aftermath, it’ll take them months to figure out what happened.

  People never expect something like this to happen. Sure, the Mounties probably have their once-a-year mandatory training, but in reality, no one ever expects it to happen to them. Not like this anyway.

  The Mounties are a government entity. In terms of self-defense, they’re likely almost exclusively focused on nation-state level espionage. Who else would have the chutzpah and resources to be a threat?

  But nation-state level espionage focuses on subtlety, on staying hidden. The utility of their intelligence depends on the assurance that their adversary doesn’t know they have it. So that’s what government entities like this are set up to defend against.

  This is not a constraint we have.

  If luck favors the prepared, fortune favors the bold.

  * * *

  Detective
Staff Sergeant Myers comes outside in a light-gray pantsuit with the same faux-dress shoes she wore at the hospital—no coat. She looks me over once, and then says, “Turn off your digi-scrambler and follow me.” She starts to turn around to head back inside.

  “No way,” I say.

  She turns back around. Her eyes, with too-hastily applied mascara narrow on me.

  “I am not going in there without the digi-scrambler,” I insist, and cross my arms in front me to emphasize the point.

  “Why?” Detective Myers asks me, as she wraps her own arms around her for warmth, hunching her shoulders against the cold.

  I pointedly glance at the two guards on either side of her. They both still have their rifles in the crooks of their arms, looking tense.

  “Would you excuse us?” Myers asks, and walks forward.

  The two guards fall back several steps and Myers and I walk in the opposite direction until we’re out of the guards’ earshot.

  “Why?” she asks again.

  “I don’t trust you,” I say simply.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I need help.”

  “You need help from people you don’t trust?”

  I look around, study my surroundings before answering. “Yes.”

  Two streams of white breath escape her before she says, “They told me you died of internal bleeding.”

  “Which the American Consulate confirmed?” I ask, hazarding a shrewd guess. Nix has way more resources at her disposal than she lets on, to be able to put a fix in place with the American Consulate. Although Nix’s efforts have benefited both sides; keeping my face and Puo’s off the news feeds has been rather invaluable for us.

  She nods. “That’s right.”

  “As you can see,” I say, “I’m not dead.”

  “No, you’re not,” Myers confirms. “What about your friend?” she asks in a tone that might be mistaken for caring.

  “He’s alive,” I say. “Is there any record of the assassin I trussed up in his room before we had to disappear?”

  Myers raises an eyebrow at that. “No.”

  I nod as if I had been expecting that—which I was. “That’s why I need your help. We’re caught up in something that both our governments are trying to cover up.”

  “And you trust us more than your own government?”

  “I know who’s behind the tour boat explosion,” I say quietly. A cold wind bites down the back of my neck, blows my hair in front of my face.

  Myers braces herself against the cold wind.

  “I know who’s behind it,” I reiterate. “And you’re the only ones with the incentive to do the right thing—namely, keeping me alive.”

  “Who’s behind it?”

  “Deona Nix.”

  * * *

  Getting through the Royal Canadian Mountie checkpoints is no joke. I’m not sure we would’ve made it if we’d spoofed Rose’s credentials and pretended to be from Phillips & Jones, which was one of the ideas that was floated. Fortunately, I have my very own private escort who’s begrudgingly allowing my digi-scrambler, which of course sets off all kinds of alarms when we pass through the scanning hallway. Puo’s tracking chips are considerably smaller and powered down to make it through.

  It takes several minutes to get things sorted out, with Myers having to get on the phone with the Assistant Commissioner to request an exemption and Myers getting increasingly insistent on the phone. Eventually, they wave us through, although one of their female guards gives me a cursory pat-down. I swear she focuses on my ass, nice as it is, way too much.

  This has to be the easiest entry into a job I’ve ever made.

  Except now I have this pesky escort.

  Myers leads me through the maze of warm hallways where the walls are a dark gray with square white linoleum tiles on the floor that stink of cleaner. There’s very little identifying information on the doors, and all the hallways look the same with lots of right angles at irregular intervals. The building is designed to be confusing—isn’t that sweet?

  Good thing I have a map loaded on the disposable pocket tablet which is folded tight and shoved under my boob where the cursory pat-down didn’t find it. It’s also powered down for extra security, but their alarms repeatedly going off due to the digi-scrambler and getting waved through provided a pretty damn effective screen—fancy that.

  There are fewer people in the hallways as we get deeper into the building. The never-ending gray walls continue—gag me. I’d hate working here. Well, I’d hate working an office job anywhere, really.

  Based on my memory of the layout of the building and where the high-security room in the basement is, we should be reasonably close.

  We pass a bathroom.

  “I have to pee,” I say.

  Myers stops to look at me.

  “It was cold out there,” I explain.

  Myers gestures toward the bathroom and takes a step to follow me. “I need to escort you.”

  “Ew,” I say.

  She shrugs. “Give up the digi-scrambler and go back downstairs to get rescanned if you want to go alone. Otherwise, hold it.”

  It’s not hard to give her a dirty look. “Pervert,” I say and push open the wood door to the girl’s bathroom.

  Myers follows me into the pea-green tiled bathroom; the smell of air freshener and soap dominate the three-stall bathroom.

  All the stalls are empty—perfect. I step into the first stall and go to close the door behind me.

  “No,” Myers says. “I need to keep eyes on you at all times.”

  “You got to be kidding me.” Shit.

  “Assistant Commissioner’s orders,” Myers says.

  I fish in my pocket and take out a plain-looking tampon package that’s hiding an auto-syringe. “I have my period.”

  She grimaces but holds her ground.

  I stare right back at her in disbelief. “You’re not a lesbian are you?” I ask in frustration. “Is this how you get your kicks off, revictimizing women?” I start unbuttoning my pants. “The pat-down downstairs wasn’t enough, wish you could do it yourself?”

  “Look,” she says, “I have my orders—”

  “Want a blood sample?” I ask. I drop my pants and sit down on the toilet with my legs clamped together and resting my arms over the top. I stare at her and ask softly, “Are you really going to make me do this in front of you?”

  Her face softens.

  I keep staring at her while she wrestles with herself.

  “Fine,” I say in a distraught voice, and break eye contact with her. “Someone’s trying to kill me and now I have to give a peep show. Where should I file the complaint afterward—?”

  “All right,” Myers cuts in. “I’ll turn around, but keep the door open.”

  I don’t say anything at first as Myers turns around and crosses her arms. I can’t see any of the bathroom mirrors from my vantage, but I lean forward to make sure.

  “Still gross,” I say. Since pervert cop is “watching” me, I reach into my pocket and pull out an actual tampon and change it out—not that I really needed it at this point since my period’s practically over. Then afterward, while I’m peeing—it was cold out there—I get the auto-syringe ready.

  It’s only when I’m done peeing and need to wipe do I realize I’m running out of hands. I set the auto-syringe down and place the wadded-up toilet paper with the used tampon in it on top of the auto-syringe, obscuring it. I take care of business and stand up to slide my pants back on.

  As if on cue, pervert cop turns back around.

  “Couldn’t wait to catch a peep?” I ask. I flush the toilet.

  Myers scowls. “Anyone ever told you you’re difficult?”

  “That tends to happen,” I snap back, “when the people that are supposed to protect you are trying to kill you.” I lean down facing away from her to pick up the wadded-up toilet paper and the auto-syringe. As I straighten up, I use my body to hide things switching hands, cupping the auto-syringe in my dominan
t hand.

  Myers, for her part, doesn’t give me any pointless reassurances, but watches me with a mix of distrust, annoyance, and what might pass for sympathy. I almost feel bad for what’s about to happen.

  I step out of the stall, making sure to have the wadded-up used tampon in front of me to throw in the special bin mounted on the wall near the entrance. As I pass by Myers I shift the used-tampon toward her.

  She pulls her head back, and focuses solely on that.

  Which gives me the opening I need. While the one hand distracts her, my other hand snakes out with the auto-syringe and connects with her upper arm.

  One advantage of an auto-syringe—you don’t actually have to get it on bare skin, it can push through clothing.

  Myers gives a yelp and to her credit reacts quickly. She tries to swat out the auto-syringe and yell for help.

  A quick jab to her mouth ends that. The chemical cocktail is already making her groggy and slow. Not all things need to be elegant or subtle to work.

  She slumps down on the floor, her cheek coming to lie on the little pea-green tiles. Ew, is all I can think.

  I spring forward and lock the bathroom door and get to work. I wrap the used tampon up more in tissues and shove it in my pocket—which is really freaking gross. But I can’t leave it here. That’s part of the problem with such an overt tactic, they’re going to be scouring this place for clues and leaving a DNA sample behind would be a pretty stupid thing to do.

  Myers is heavier than she looks—mostly muscle, judging by the sinewy feel under her arms as I drag her into the far stall. I sit her on the toilet and position her legs to look like she’s using the bathroom, then I swap her badge with mine (in case they can track visitor badges—which they probably can), and close the stall door.

  I skip back over to the bathroom door and unlock it to prevent any suspicions from being aroused, and then duck back into the stall next to her. My pulse is pounding in my neck. I can feel it thumping under my chest as I dig out my folded pocket tablet wrapped in a plastic bag from my underboob, which is shoved into a too-small bra to prevent the handsy guard from finding it.