by M. D. Cooper
Reece didn’t usually pay much attention to that kind of stuff because it was too top-end to have any relevance to her. She was as bottom-side at Rexcare as it got. Heck, it was sometimes her job to get extra dirty just to save Rexcare from having knowledge or contact with something that could be harmful.
After a few hours of reading, she felt she had a good handle on the current state of affairs at the top ranks. She knew that Tillson and Jono wanted to invest heavily into research while Janice wanted them to focus on optimizing profits on existing assets. She didn’t see any particularly contentious points between Schramm and anyone.
That fit with her understanding of the man. He was someone who put his shoulder into work and pushed hard, not someone who did things for personal aggrandizement. He was cool and methodical.
So why would someone want him out of the way?
Reece didn’t know. Yet. But she felt better prepared to figure it out.
She showered and got ready for bed, enjoying the silence of the safehouse. Wherever Schramm was, she hoped he was safe, too.
VISITORS
DATE: 05.26.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Tommy’s Safehouse, near Ohiyo, Akonwara
REGION: Machete System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance
Reece woke to the sound of a crash. She leaped out of bed, grabbed her Rikulfs and bolted toward the door.
And heard Trey cursing and eased into the hall which led toward the safehouse’s kitchen. Slowing, she entered, and flipped on a light.
Trey jumped back at the sight of Reece. “Whoa! Point those somewhere else.” He righted the chair he’d knocked over. “Did I wake you?”
She swallowed a sarcastic reply. “Yeah. How was the date?”
“Nice. Raya’s fun.”
“She is. Has she found anything out?”
“She talked to Shepherd. He doesn’t know the two. He said he can find out, though.”
“Quietly, I hope.” Reece didn’t like the guy, but didn’t want him getting into something nasty on their behalf.
“Raya seemed confident in his abilities.”
She said, “I checked out your temporary login to the Rexcare system, and it still worked. I was able to do some reconnaissance on what the day-to-day operations have been. They still have Schramm listed, too, so he hasn’t been fired or anything.”
“That’s very interesting. What made you think to try that temporary login? I haven’t used that in months.”
She shrugged. “Corporations are slow to process that kind of HR stuff. It’s low priority so it gets ignored.”
“Well, nice going. I’m guessing you didn’t find a smoking gun.”
She looked down at her Rikulfs, which she held at her sides because she was wearing pajamas and no weapon belt. “Nope. Just these when a big oaf came crashing in. I’m going back to bed. We can talk in the morning unless there was something else.”
“Nope. Good night.”
“Night.”
In her room, Reece returned her pistols to the bedside table. For once, she was glad she hadn’t gotten the opportunity to use them.
* * * * *
Violent shaking woke Reece. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep or what time it was, but she was damn certain this was the second time that night she’d been abruptly awakened.
She didn’t like it.
She bolt upright to find Trey pressing a finger to his lips.
Reece slung her belt around her waist and shoved her pistols into it.
She moved in that direction but bumped into a dresser.
She grabbed onto the back of his shirt.
Reece shuffled along behind him until they arrived in the other room. The surveillance equipment emitted a small amount of light of their own, so she could see a little. She couldn’t make out much on the monitors, though.
He nodded, leading her to the house’s back door.
Reece tilted her head away from the door and the bright lights, then slowly turned it back to see that Trey had already rushed out into the night.
She spared a moment to wish for live surveillance feeds, but Tommy’s system didn’t allow anyone to log in from the outside and use it via the Link. That was smart from an anti-hacking point of view, but it was a distinct inconvenience at the moment,
Pushing those thoughts from her mind, Reece stepped out into the night, glad that at least now she could see everything. Trey was grappling with one of the intruders and making sure that his opponent’s body was between himself and the other guy, who was currently pointing a weapon at the struggling pair while edging closer.
Reece wished she’d had the presence of mind to grab a pulse pistol when Trey had woken her.
Time to put that target practice to good use.
She pulled Righty out of its holster, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger, hitting the second attacker in the hand. His arm jerked back and his weapon fell to the ground.
Reece didn’t give him a chance to recover. She rushed past Trey and the first enemy toward her target. When she got there, the man was holding what was left of his hand, staring at it numbly—then he began to scream.
This presented a conundrum. Reece glanced at Trey to see that he had disarmed his opponent and was sparring with the man.
Reece looked back at the man she’d shot. He was under control, but she wanted him shackled. Yet she couldn’t exactly cuff his hands behind his back.
On the other hand, he was bleeding quite profusely, and if that didn’t stop, he’d soon be no danger to anyone but the people who had to pay for his funeral.
“I’ll help you if you help me,” she told him. “Do you have any other weapons?”
He pointed to his right leg, his hand shaking.
“Nuh uh, I’m not squatting down there to get it. You’ll have to do it. Slowly pull it out, then toss it the other way.” She pointed Righty at him.
With a cry that dissolved into a painfully long whimper, the man reached down with his left hand and tossed the knife away.
“Okay.” Reece looked over at Trey who seemed to have his opponent well under control. “We’re going to walk up to the house, but you’re not going inside. All that blood will be murder to get out.”
Her choice of words struck her as funny and she laughed.
“Murder to get out. Get it?”
The man looked at her, eyes wide, face pale.
“Guess not. Let’s go.” She left him standing outside the door while she bolted into the house and grabbed an emergency medical kit.
“Here we go,” she said. “You sit down. You’re going to pass out any second, and a head wound won’t do you any good.”
She grabbed him by the armpit of his good arm and the back of his pants. She probably gave him
a pretty monster wedgie as she lowered him to the ground, but better his ass than his head.
Grabbing an auto-tourniquet, she stretched it wide to avoid bumping his damaged hand. Actually, it didn’t much resemble a hand anymore, but medicine could fix or help most things—short of death.
She let go of the tourniquet and it auto-sized itself around his forearm and began pressurizing. It beeped, then gave a blood pressure reading. It wasn’t too awful, all things considered.
The wound stopped gushing.
“There we go. You might just make it, Jack, if you don’t do anything stupid.” His name almost certainly wasn’t Jack, but she had to call him something and he looked like a Jack.
Reece peeled open a sterile wound cover and carefully draped it over the damaged limb. “Okay. That’s pretty much all I can do for you. You need a hospital, but you won’t die before you get there, so long as you don’t wait long enough for infection to set in. I do have a nice injection of painkiller here, and I’ll give it to you if you cooperate. Sound like a deal?”
He looked at her, eyes glazed. He was starting to go into shock. Damn. She saw Trey standing over the other guy, talking to him, and hoped he was able to get some answers. She had her doubts about how much help Jack was going to be.
“Okay, let’s go with one simple question. That’s all. Give me one answer and I’ll give you the injection? How’s that?”
Jack stared at her.
She continued, “Here’s the question: Who are you working for?”
He looked past her, to Trey and the other guy.
“He’ll tell us if you don’t, but it’d be nice if you two tell the same story.” She held the injector up. “Do you have an answer, or should I put this away?”
He quivered. “Apolla.”
“Why? Is she working for Pritney-Dax?”
Jack’s head drooped and he slumped over. Sighing, Reece caught him by the shoulders and eased him onto his side, making sure he wasn’t lying on his injured hand.
Dammit. Things just got more complicated.
* * * * *
“We have to do something with him.” Trey frowned at Jack, whose real name was apparently Cliff. It was a common name on Akon—for whatever reason—so she wasn’t surprised to have come so close to accurately naming someone off the cuff.
“Yeah, but what? We’re trying to stay out of sight, and it’s not like we can call a cleanup team from Rexcare.” Reece wanted to get the guy to a hospital, but her options were limited.
“Autotaxi?” Trey asked. “Just send him into the city. It’ll get stopped, and people will make sure he gets to the hospital. Then we don’t have to go anywhere, he gets help, and we can still drill this one’s eyeballs out for answers.” He jabbed a thumb at the guy he’d apprehended, who now sat, hands behind his back, cuffed to a chair.
Trey’s humor really amused Reece sometimes.
She chewed her lip. “I think it’s probably the best we can do, in this particular situation. Not ideal, but it ticks all the boxes. Go ahead and call one, but have it come to the end of the road, not to the house. I’ll check his vitals and make sure he’ll be fine for the trip.”
Cliff—formerly known as Jack—was only doing a job he’d been hired to do. Reece understood that better than anyone, so she didn’t take it personally. Besides, no harm had come to her or Trey, and now they had a means of discovering some things they hadn’t known before. So really, Cliff had brought her an opportunity.
After they’d packed him into an autotaxi and sent him on his way, they turned their attention to the other guy.
Amusingly, his name turned out to actually be Jack. Funny coincidence. It made her wonder if Cliff had thought she’d somehow recognized them and mixed him up with his partner.
Actual Jack had offered his name, then sat quietly while Trey and Reece attended to Cliff. Either Jack cared about his partner’s wellbeing or he had no particular reason to argue about giving them his name. He could have simply supplied a false name, but he’d become so compliant that Reece didn’t think that was the case.
“Okay, Jack,” she said. “There are two ways we can do this.”
She’d considered doing a good-guy/bad-guy routine for his benefit, hoping she’d have the chance to be the bad guy, but it didn’t seem necessary here. She’d just lay things out for him and he could decide how forthcoming he wanted to be.
He beat her to it, though. “Apolla hired us to test you. We had orders not to seriously harm you, so this wasn’t a true threat. She said you might be worth working with, and wanted to see if that was true. If you weren’t capable of handling a two-person attack on your own turf, she wouldn’t waste time on you.”
“What if we’d killed you?” Trey asked.
Jack shrugged. His gesture was awkward due to his hands being behind his back. “Then we didn’t deserve the job she’d hired us for and it would be our problem. Meanwhile, she’d be rid of contractors who couldn’t get the job done.”
A small frown appeared between Trey’s eyebrows. Reece didn’t know what life was like where he was from, but there people must make things like this much more complicated. As far as she was concerned, Apolla’s methods were direct and pragmatic. Reece didn’t even mind that Apolla had given them a little bit of a test.
In fact, it meant that Apolla had an interest in serving them well, because she believed an association with Reece and Trey would be beneficial.
Suddenly, the night reversed itself. Instead of being a crap sandwich of a bad time, it now presented a tantalizing opportunity.
Potentially.
“So now that you’ve done your bit, what’s next?” Reece asked.
Jack shrugged again. “Up to you. You can march me over to her and demand an explanation if you want. You can release me and have me take a message to her. Whatever.”
She started to like Jack, just a little. He had professionalism. He didn’t get all belligerent and obnoxious because he’d failed to best them. He was just here to do a job.
So was she.
“Let’s all go see her. I assume we can release your arms and you’ll act like a civilized person?”
“If I were going to try something, I’d hardly tell you so, but yeah.” Jack nodded.
Trey released him but remained tense; ready to react if necessary. “Let’s go, then. Hopefully Apolla is expecting us to show up at her place unannounced.”
ARRANGEMENTS
DATE: 05.26.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Apolla’s Apartment, Ohiyo, Akonwara
REGION: Machete System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance
“I’m pleased. This all played out better than I’d hoped. And fast, too. I like that.” Apolla sat perched on the edge of one of her uncomfortable chairs.
“So what’s your game now?” Trey asked.
“No game.” Apolla gave her head a quick shake that made her pale blond hair swing behind her. “Just business. I’ve tracked down the location of your guy Erving, as well as the identities of the two who grabbed him. I’m going to give you that information free and clear.”
“What’s the catch?” Reece asked. She didn’t want to receive favors she’d have to pay back later. She preferred to pay in cash.
“None. Consider this my business card. A little demonstration of how I can help you. Now you know, and will bring business my way in the future, one way or another. And if I come to you looking for something, you can be assured that if I promise you a future favor, it will be well worth your effort.” Apolla smiled smugly, like a cat who knew that the mouse had been cornered.
Reece liked Apolla’s confidence and her knowledge of her own value. She looked at Jack. “You don’t need to be here for the next part, but good luck to your future endeavors.”
Jack backed toward the door. “You too. Thanks for not taking it personally.”
Reece shrugged. “Comes with the job.”
Jack smiled for the first time. “So it does. See you out there.”
> After the door had closed behind him, Reece fixed her full attention on Apolla. “So where is Erving, who took him, and why?”
Apolla shook her head. “Figuring out why is your job, not mine. But he’s only ten kilometers away, in midtown. He’s being held in an apartment, so his condition might not be too bad. But the surveillance footage showed that he didn’t go willingly, so who knows for sure. He went into the apartment and has not left it. Two men and a woman have come and gone at regular intervals, no doubt assigned to keep watch over him.”
“So who are they?” Trey had once again chosen to lean against the wall rather than sit on the unpleasant furniture.
Apolla let out a small breath. “That appears to be somewhat complicated and out of my scope. I can give you their identities and their location, but figuring the rest out is, again, your job and not mine. All I can tell you for sure is that they do work for Pritney-Dax, but as contractors, not exclusive employees.”
Reece frowned. “So they could be working for basically anyone.”
Apolla nodded. “Bad news, that. They’ll be reluctant to reveal their employer. You’ll either need to apply sufficient force, or offer them something valuable enough to make it worth betraying their employer.”
“Any particular advice on what they’d find valuable?” Trey asked. “Outside of just money, I mean.”
Apolla pressed her thumb to her lips thoughtfully. “Money and opportunity are the two options. I don’t know what you might be able to offer them in the way of opportunity. Contractors are always looking for a salaried position, but I don’t think you’re in a position to offer them that.”
“Not at the moment,” Reece muttered. “Anyway, thanks. We’ll be in touch.”
“I hope so.” Apolla’s smile made it clear that in spite of her cautious words, she was sure she’d be hearing from them.
After reviewing the address and reviewing the guard schedule that Apolla had sent via the Link, Reece and Trey decided to sit in the stairwell and do a little research before going over.
