A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3)

by Michael G. Munz

  Michael nodded, still trying to process it all. “EMP,” he muttered. “I took a blast of it, right before . . . ”

  “So said the paramedics who brought you in.” The doctor nodded. “That would likely account for it, though I’m afraid those that were functional managed to damage your heart beyond repair. It had to be replaced, and the procedure to remove the nanobots themselves from your bloodstream caused enough trauma to where we needed to induce coma. If you hadn’t been right on our doorstep, it would have killed you.”

  “How did it get there?” Michael asked with a glance at Jade. Though still too groggy to be certain, he saw no trace of an answer in her eyes.

  “You’ll have to talk to the police about that. Though I think they were hoping you’d be able to answer that yourself.”

  Michael drifted a moment. Something from his time on the Moon? But when could he have come into contact with anything that could get into his system? The bullet that grazed his shoulder? But that was from an ESA turret. Those bullets were designed to be deadly enough on their own, without needing poison. Something in the air at Omicron? Both he and Marc had breathed the air; even Caitlin and Felix might have gotten some in the airlock, if it were airborne.

  “Has anyone been to visit me?” Michael sat up with a shot. His head swam and the doctor put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

  “A man and a woman,” Jade answered. “Felix and Caitlin, they said. Haven’t seen either in a week, though.”

  But not Marc. Was he still on the Moon? “When can I leave?”

  “You should remain overnight for observation. After that, if all goes well, you can be out of here tomorrow afternoon. But tonight you should get some rest.”

  “I’m starving,” Michael said.

  “Someone will be in with some food soon. And the nurse will tell you more about your new heart. Grown organic, not artificial.”

  With all the talk about a poison he’d nearly forgotten the detail about his heart. Jade had grunted what sounded like disapproval when the doctor mentioned it was organic. Another wave of fatigue rolled over him. His eyelids dipped.

  “Thanks, doctor.”

  The doctor gave a response, but Michael didn’t hear it. Or maybe he was talking to Jade? Come on, man, wake up.

  Though it felt like mere seconds had passed, the doctor was gone when he opened his eyes again. Jade, still in her jacket, was leaning against the windowsill examining her forearm. A trace of light from a screen implanted there bathed her face. A tray of food sat on the table beside him. Michael reached for it.

  Jade’s eyes flicked up at him. Her irises were violet; he hadn’t noticed before. “Back again, eh?” She tapped her forearm. The light winked out, and she slid her sleeve back down. Some sort of readout built into her arm?

  “So when I get out, this assignment of yours is over?” Michael tried to pull the table closer.

  Jade only watched. “Nope. I’m supposed to keep an eye on you until told otherwise.”

  Michael managed to get hold of the table and took what appeared to be some sort of crackers off the plate. “What if I don’t want you to?”

  “You’re not the one paying me.” She smirked. “And in my experience most men like when I’m watching them.”

  The crackers were mealy and bland. Or maybe his tongue was just still asleep. “I’d just feel better about it if I knew who hired you is all.”

  Jade shrugged. “I didn’t speak to them. Just emails. Got a sense that it was an A.I., actually.”

  “Why?”

  “Hunch. Word choice. Know anyone who works through an A.I. assistant?”

  Marc? He might have asked Holes to hire someone to look after him. Just because she wasn’t one of the Agents of Aeneas, it didn’t mean she couldn’t be a contractor. Maybe this was even some sort of recruitment test. “From Northgate?”

  She shrugged.

  For a fraction of a second he thought to find his phone and call Holes directly, before remembering that the EMP had fried it. He wished for Felix’s perfect memory to remember the number. Had Felix managed to get his memory issues fixed in the past three months. Would Jade know?

  An explosion on the TV screen caught his attention. A news report. Michael read the caption, but it took a few seconds for anything to click. “Hey.” He motioned to Jade. “Turn that up?”

  “You’re awake now; I think you can do for yourself just fine.”

  “No, I—” He looked around for some way to control the TV. “Just help me out here, okay?”

  She sighed and tapped a finger on the controls built into one side of his bed. Michael found the volume.

  “. . . number of dead is currently unknown, but estimated to be at least a dozen, and may be as high as thirty. European Space Agency authorities refuse to speculate on either the cause of the explosion or any links to last week’s explosion at another ESA facility in Italy, but it would seem that . . . ”

  “Last week? What happened last week?”

  “Some ESA observation post burned down or something. They were blaming it on sabotage, last I heard.” Jade snatched up a cracker. “I’ve been watching a lot more TV than usual, waiting for you to wake up.”

  “I need a phone, or a computer, or something.”

  She cocked her head. “Got a stake in ESA?”

  Michael swallowed, realizing he shouldn’t risk contacting the AoA on a device that belonged to someone else. “Maybe.”

  The AoA had a freelancer protecting him. ESA facilities were being bombed. Who knew what else had happened since he’d been out? What was going on?

  He had to get out of there.

  VI

  “SO, NO CLUE at all what you’re supposed to be protecting me from?”

  “Harm.”

  “No, I mean—”

  “Yeah, guy, I know what you mean, and I know you already asked that, too. I’m not going to suddenly know some new detail that no one told me in the first place.”

  Michael stood with Jade at the entrance to Marc’s apartment building. Michael was pretending to fish in his backpack for the keycard while considering whether to let Jade come up with him. “I’d just like to figure out what to watch out for.”

  “Watching out is my job, ace. Don’t waste Holes’s money.” She winked.

  Michael drew out the keycard, swiped it, and held the door open for her. “I can take care of myself, you know.”

  She glanced inside and both ways down the block, swept the glowing strands of her hair back, and motioned him ahead with an engaging smile. “Then after you, tough guy.”

  Hesitating just long enough to find no point in clarifying his position, he slipped inside the building and led her to the elevator. Surely Holes would be able to give him more information. How much the A.I. would be able to speak of in front of Jade was another matter. AoA discretion was his chief guess at why she had so little information.

  If she was telling the truth about that.

  It was early evening; Michael didn’t know precisely what time. When the doctors had been satisfied with his condition enough to finally let him out the hospital doors, the sun had already been setting. Jade had insisted on sticking with him, leading him to ask just where she intended to sleep. Her response was a shrug and a promise that he’d surely figure something out. He supposed there were worse problems to have than finding a place for an attractive woman to sleep in his apartment.

  Of course, that assumed he could trust her. Michael needed answers. Even if Holes weren’t Jade’s most likely employer, the A.I. was Michael’s best shot for information. If he had his phone he could call around, but until he got a new one and cloudloaded his contacts into it, he didn’t even know the numbers to dial. The thought that Felix would likely know such things from memory again triggered his hope that Felix had received the attention he’d needed.

  Michael supposed he would find out soon enough.

  The elevator was out of order. Michael climbed the stairs with Jade at his heels.
/>   “That elevator broken a lot?”

  “Not that I’ve ever seen, but I don’t live here.”

  “Uh huh.”

  As they reached the door to Marc’s unit, Michael noticed she held a Lantek Hi-Power auto-pistol in her hand. He knocked on Marc’s door.

  There was no answer, but nor had he expected one. He moved to swipe the keycard. Jade grabbed his wrist.

  “Hang on.” Without further explanation, she pressed her left palm against the door, fingers splayed. Tiny lights beneath her skin flashed a path from the back of her hand to her fingertips and then back. She withdrew her hand. “No one immediately inside, at least.”

  “How’s that work?” he asked.

  “Science. Though the lights just make it look good.”

  “Handy trick.”

  “Ooh, someone’s clever.”

  Michael realized the pun. “Er, unintended.”

  “Didn’t say it was you.” She smirked. “C’mon. Inside.”

  The apartment was dark save for a single floor lamp in a corner by the living room window. It looked much the same as when Michael had been there before: five screens of various sizes peppered the walls, two computer towers flanked a desk, and electronic odds and ends cluttered a small coffee table. Marc’s faded blue couch sat half-covered with unfolded laundry. Dust sprinkled most surfaces, though the floor remained neat thanks to the vacuuming robot that sat charging in a corner. The sight of previously thriving coffee plant, now dead from neglect on a bookshelf near a window, surprised Michael with its melancholy.

  “Wait here while I check the other rooms,” Jade said.

  Michael frowned inwardly at letting her explore on her own. “Or: Holes? Are you active?”

  Ahead of them, the largest screen on the wall lit up to display a quintet of concentric green circles, rotating in alternating directions on a vertical axis. “Affirmative. Good evening, Mister Flynn.”

  Holes’s slightly masculine voice was deeper than Michael remembered. Marc had mentioned it might change as the A.I. matured. “Marc gave me a key. I hope you don’t mind my letting myself in.”

  “Nope,” said Holes. “May I assist you in some manner?”

  “Er, did you say ‘nope’?”

  “Affirmative. Would you like me to repeat it?”

  Michael shook his head. “Is Marc around?”

  “Nope.”

  Jade caught Michael’s eye as she leaned against the wall by the window and smirked. She peered out through the shades. Michael moved to a desk and opened the top drawer, on the lookout for a case of experimental processor chips that Marc had asked for in August. The drawer was empty.

  “I, ah, need to talk to you in there, Holes.” Michael asked, indicating one of the bedrooms Marc used as an office. He turned to Jade. “Wait here?”

  Jade blinked. “No.”

  “I need to talk to him alone.”

  “Yeah? Why?”

  “Look, if you want me to trust you, you’ll have to trust me first.”

  She frowned. “After I check out the room.”

  “It’s just a bedroom. There’s one window. No one’s in there waiting to kill me, right Holes?”

  “My abilities to interpret human motivations are as yet unreliable, however there is currently no one in the room of any inclination, homicidal or otherwise.”

  Jade’s stare remained fixed on Michael with a suspicious edge that brought to mind more than a few memories of Diomedes. “Fine.”

  “Thanks.” In moments, Michael was in the bedroom with the door closed. He realized that Diomedes had now been dead over three months. Out of everything, why did that seem the most strange? He couldn’t help but recall his first time in Marc’s apartment: Marc and Felix had gone into this very room to discuss private matters while he and Diomedes waited in the living room.

  Okay, time to refocus. Holes’s spinning circles awaited him on a wall display no larger than Michael’s head. “You’re just speaking in here now, right? Don’t respond to her in the other room yet. Er, please.” Did he need to say please? He hadn’t talked to Holes much in the past.

  “Affirmative and acknowledged.”

  “Have you contacted her at all?” Michael tried. “Do you know who she is?”

  “Facial recognition and a database scan identify her as Diane Briar, an unaffiliated freelancer commonly referred to as ‘Jade.’ I have no record of any contact with her.”

  Michael’s stomach knotted as his most promising theory crumbled. On the other hand, with as much time as she’d spent watching over him already, if Jade meant to cause him actual harm she had squandered plenty of opportunities. “So you or the AoA didn’t hire her to protect me? Do you know who did?”

  “I have no record of such matters. My apologies.”

  “Alright. Has Marc or anyone else been here since August?”

  “Mister Triton has not been home. Captain Abigail Brittan of the Northgate Police Department entered these premises at seven oh-three p.m. on August thirtieth, two thousand fifty-one.”

  “Picking up the things Marc needed that I couldn’t get, I’d bet.” Abigail was the AoA’s area coordinator for Northgate. “Did she do anything else?”

  “Captain Brittan informed me of his current assignment, of your hospitalization, and provided Mister Triton’s authorization to receive directives from both her and from you until he indicates otherwise.”

  “Sounds about right. But you haven’t heard from her since?”

  “Nope.”

  Michael again resisted the urge to ask about the A.I.’s use of that word. “I guess that probably means everything is going okay, or at least that there’s no new news?”

  “There is a far greater likelihood that Captain Brittan’s lack of contact is directly due to the fact that she is now deceased.”

  “She’s dead?” Michael lowered his voice from the half-shout he’d made it, glancing at the door. “How? And when?”

  “A Northgate Police Department investigation reports cause of death as electrocution via a direct neural link on September twenty-eighth at roughly eleven p.m.”

  Though he hadn’t known Abigal well, Michael sank into a chair as if gut-punched. “What happened?”

  “Unknown.”

  He nodded, thinking. Likely there was already something waiting in his AoA-secured email about it. But first . . . “Two ESA facilities were destroyed last week. Do you know anything about that? Beyond what was in public news reports, I mean.”

  “Nope.”

  “Alright,” he sighed and re-gathered his thoughts. “I don’t have a computer right now. Can you help me connect to my AoA email?”

  “Apologies, but access to the AoA Undernet is unavailable at this time. I have no indication as to when the network will return.”

  “Odd. How long has it been out?”

  “Do you wish an exact time or approximation?”

  “Just—” He took a breath. “Do approximations until I say otherwise.”

  “The AoA Undernet has been unavailable for roughly two months.”

  Another gut-punch. Two months? No Council sessions. No way to secure AoA communications. No reliable means of collaborating at all. “What happened? Do you have any idea?”

  “Also unknown. UnderNet network access protocols are non-responsive at a software level. I have completed multiple diagnostics on my local systems and discovered no evidence of errors.”

  “So the problem isn’t on this end.” He made it a question. Tech talk wasn’t his strong point.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Shit.”

  “There is indeed sufficient cause for concern.”

  So now what? He listed the unknowns in his mind: Who hired Jade? Why were ESA installations exploding? What happened to Abigail and the Undernet? How could he even find out? The questions spiraled through his mind with no answers, and then another made itself known.

  “Holes, have you heard anything from Felix or Caitlin since Marc and I were last h
ere?”

  “Felix Hiatt called twice in the first week of September. The first call was to inquire after Mister Triton’s whereabouts. The second call contained a request for me to contact him with any news of Mister Triton that I am authorized to share, or for Mister Triton to contact him upon his return to Earth. Caitlin Danae has called four times in the past week with a request for Mister Triton to contact her regarding an urgent matter.”

  “Did she say what?”

  “She was not specific. The frequency of her calls appears to indicate an unwillingness to accept my assurances that I will relay the message to Mister Triton as soon as I am able.”

  Nothing from Felix recently. When was the last time Jade said she saw them? Last week? Hell. He’d try them both shortly.

  “Okay, I’ve got something for you to look into, but first, you’ve got a regular Internet link, right? I’m going to need as much encryption as you can give me.”

  Holes acquiesced, and Michael pulled up his non-AoA email. The AoA wouldn’t likely include anything specific but might have sent him details on where to go for answers. Michael sorted through the messages in his inbox: Mostly spam. Some inquiries from a few non-AoA acquaintances. Emails related to medical bills. And one thing more, sent only an hour prior:

  MICHAEL IAN FLYNN:

  DO NOT PUT YOURSELF AT RISK. YOU SHOULD DISSOLVE YOUR ALLEGIANCE TO THE AGENTS OF AENEAS IMMEDIATELY, AND THEN AWAIT FURTHER COMMUNICATION.

  REMAIN UNHARMED.

  –AN ALLY

  The sender’s email address was blocked.

  “Holes?” Michael began. “I’m going to need you to do a few—”

  Jade shoved the door open. “Four freelancers just crossed the street to the front entrance. Either they’re friends of yours, or we’re about to have a problem.”

  VII

  “YOU’RE SURE they’re freelancers?”

  “Dead certain, and looking cranky.”

  “Four men have just overridden the security lock on the front entrance,” Holes confirmed. His screen changed to show a camera image. Michael recognized none of them. Though all wore layers of dark grays, dark greens, and black, the cut and materials were dissimilar enough to not appear uniform. He saw no affiliate patches. Half wore visible armor vests. One had an orange tattoo across the left side of his face in a jagged, unfamiliar design. “At least two are armed with automatic weapons.”