by P. R. Adams
The door to Room 123 opened.
One of the mercenaries started to exit, holding a plastic food container in his right hand. He froze.
Rimes sent a burst into the mercenary’s chest and stepped in front of Room 122’s window, spraying four short bursts at waist level, focusing on the occupants’ probable locations.
Rimes edged toward Room 123’s door, then squatted by the wounded mercenary, waiting.
Three rounds flew through 123’s door, giving away the shooter’s position. Rimes ducked around the doorway and fired, then ducked back.
Nothing.
Rimes reloaded, then crawled past the door toward Room 123’s window.
Kwon should be on a bed on the left wall, unconscious, bound.
There was no movement from Room 122 yet.
Rimes stood and sent five bursts into Room 123. A satisfying gasp and slumping sound told Rimes he’d guessed right.
He replaced the magazine and kicked in the door. Kwon was facedown on the room’s farthest bed. The second mercenary was on the floor near the console, bleeding heavily, still clutching his pistol but unable to lift it. Rimes kicked the pistol away.
He checked Kwon for any obvious wounds, then felt for a pulse.
Alive.
Rimes threw Kwon over his shoulder and edged toward the door, assault rifle at the ready.
As Rimes peeked out, the door to Room 122 burst open. Rimes squeezed off a short burst just as one of the mercenaries appeared. The mercenary returned fire.
Rimes stepped back into Room 123 and sent three bursts through the wall, angling down and toward the parking lot to avoid collateral damage. A hail of gunfire answered him. He flinched, but one of the rounds grazed his leg, another his back.
“Bring it around,” Rimes shouted into his earpiece. He fired into the wall, aiming low until he emptied the magazine.
He released the assault rifle, pulled Desai’s pistol, and stepped into the parking lot.
He sent several shots through Room 122’s front wall as Kleigshoen swung the bouncing car into the pitted parking lot.
Rimes fired into Room 122 again, stopping only long enough to heave Kwon into the car. Another three shots, and he dove into the car beside Kwon.
Kleigshoen coaxed as much as she could from the HuCorp, getting it up onto two tires when she turned onto the Stuart Highway. Rimes felt the world shifting beneath them.
Kleigshoen glanced back at Rimes. “Are you okay?”
Rimes smiled at her weakly. “Yeah.”
“Bullshit. You’re slipping into shock.”
Rimes chuckled. It was a quiet sound that ended suddenly. “I was going to visit Major Uber anyway …”
“Darwin City Police Dispatch. Yes, constable, this is Special Agent Dana Kleigshoen of the Intelligence Bureau. Check my credentials through the embassy, if you don't trust them. There’s been an attack on Intelligence Bureau personnel at the Darwin Seaside Resort Lodge.”
Rimes listened to Kleigshoen’s side of the exchange, admiring the sudden calm in her voice. He had to concentrate to keep up with it. He was feeling woozy after the engagement.
“Yes, McMinn Street,” Kleigshoen said. “Several wounded. What? Look, these are the bastards who killed your own officers, so I don’t think you should be yelling at me. Yes, thank you.”
Kleigshoen terminated the call. “I thought they’d never—” She looked over her shoulder at him. “Jack, you’ve been hit. Can you understand that? I need to get you to a hospital.”
Everything seemed to be moving slower.
Kleigshoen went silent for a second. “Royal Darwin Hospital. Yes, this is Special Agent Dana Kleigshoen of the Intelligence Bureau. I’m two minutes out. I need priority treatment for my teammate. He’s been shot.”
Kleigshoen’s voice was smooth and husky, dreamy. Teammate. I like the sound of that.
Rimes wondered how he’d ever escaped Kleigshoen—or how he’d ever let her escape him; he wasn’t sure which. His memories were a jumbled mess at the moment. He smiled contentedly. It didn’t matter. He would never be alone. He had someone waiting for him back at home. For a moment, he tried to remember what home meant, then slipped into darkness.
28
8 March 2164. Darwin, Australia.
* * *
“Jack?”
Rimes’s eyes fluttered open. He was thirsty and tired, and his left side ached. He was on a hospital bed, dressed in a pale blue gown; his left arm had an IV in it.
A young, skinny Aboriginal Australian woman in nursing grays looked over at him from one of the monitoring system displays as he blinked. “I’ll be right back with the doctor.”
Someone touched his hand; Kleigshoen sat to his right. Her shirt was blood-stained, and her hair was a mess, but she was beautiful in the harsh light.
He tried to speak and at first found his throat too dry. He swallowed and finally managed a very weak gasping sound that made Kleigshoen smile.
Rimes saw a water cup with a straw sticking out of the top. He reached for it and missed. Kleigshoen guided his hand and helped him clench it. The water was surprisingly cool and sweet.
“Not too much.” Kleigshoen pulled the cup away. “They said you’d just vomit it back up again.”
“How am I?” Rimes asked.
“They took a bullet out of you, but not before you’d lost a bit of blood.”
“What about Kwon?”
Kleigshoen shook her head. “They dug a bullet out of his neck. They have him on life support for now … we have some budget left, but keeping a genie alive isn’t going to receive approval, even though using him as a shield probably saved your life.”
Rimes frowned. Kwon had held answers. They needed—Rimes needed—to know what Kwon knew. Kwon would be carrying everything to the grave. It was too easy a death, too painful a final act of defiance against those he’d wronged.
“We need to leave soon,” Kleigshoen said, patting his hand. “The police … aren’t happy. The nurse gave you restoratives and stimulants. You should be ready to travel tomorrow, two days at the latest.”
Bio-restoratives and stem-cell extract stimulants weren’t cheap. Kleigshoen must be playing with the expense account now that Metcalfe was dead.
Rimes yawned, even through the stimulants. He needed to rest.
“I’m going back to the hotel and get some sleep,” Kleigshoen said, standing. “We’ll deal with Kwon in the morning.”
“The mercs?”
“Two in prison, one in ICU. The rest are in the morgue. The guy you worked over at the secure facility took two to the chest, but they think he’ll make it.”
Rimes chewed at his bottom lip. “I dreamed about Major Uber.”
Kleigshoen smirked. “You think he’d like to know Kwon’s dead?”
Rimes chuckled dryly. “Is he here? Maybe I could visit him? I wouldn’t mind being the one to tell him.”
Kleigshoen shook her head. “I checked already. He’s probably back in Germany by now.”
“Damn. I’ll send him a message. I’m sure he’ll be happy.”
“You do that,” Kleigshoen said. She turned to go, then stopped. “After you get some rest.”
Rimes waved weakly at Kleigshoen as she left.
As he drifted off, he thought about Kwon.
Although technically dead, Rimes wondered how much of Kwon’s mind remained … and whether his condition was really as hopeless as it sounded. Genies were considered disposable. That was certain to color any diagnosis.
An idea was forming in Rimes’s mind.
Rimes yawned and stretched his left arm above his head. He grimaced at the stiffness in his ribs, then sat up. He felt much better but still thirsty, despite the IV.
“That tea will help you talk,” the nurse said.
It was the same woman; she nodded approvingly when Rimes picked up the tea cup on the table next to the bed. It was still hot.
She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she took the IV out of his
arm and powered down the last of the monitors.
“You have a cybernetics lab, right?” Rimes’s voice cracked, but he managed to get through the question without swallowing.
She glared at him, and he sipped the hot tea again.
I wish I could have slept until the healing was complete.
“We have a fitting and adjustment lab,” the nurse admitted. She took the teacup away from him and tilted the cup insistently, stinging his tongue.
Rimes swallowed quickly, ignoring the burn. “So you’d have an MMI technician, then?”
She looked into the cup. “You need to see him?
Rimes quickly drank the rest of the tea. “Please? Before I go.”
She took the cup. “We have two. Brian’s on duty today. Brian Chin. I saw him in the cafeteria earlier. Get dressed.” The nurse pointed to the small bathroom. “Your friend’s finishing checkout. I will ask Brian about seeing you after you have clothes on.” She pointed toward a small stand at the foot of the bed, then left before he could thank her.
Rimes climbed from the bed. On his way to the bathroom, he scooped up his jeans and a complimentary blue paper shirt and matching underwear from the stand.
In the bathroom, he rotated his left arm several times until the stiffness lessened. A quick shower, and he returned to the bed area, dressed and ready to go.
Kleigshoen waited at the edge of the bed. Her hair was still damp, the golden curls tight. She wore a light cotton outfit that looked like it would handle the humidity without losing its style.
“What’s this about an MMI tech?”
“On the Sutton, you mentioned the next wave of remotes. It reminded me that the older generation of remotes use the same man-machine interface as the more advanced cybernetics.
“A couple of years ago, one of our guys was on an operation in Chile, and an RPG took out his helicopter. He broke his neck in the fall but survived—only his brain went without oxygen for too long, and the medics couldn’t wake him up.
“He had valuable intelligence, so they did what they could to keep the blood flowing and got him to a hospital. An MMI tech and a remote systems designer, working together, were able to establish contact with his mind. Unfortunately, the computers could never make sense of what they downloaded.”
Kleigshoen rubbed her fingers through her curls, pulling on a loose strand. “You want to use the MMI gear to download Kwon’s thoughts?”
“I want to interface directly with Kwon’s brain.” Rimes smiled hopefully. “You keep implying remotes are the next big thing. So there had to have been advances in the software. What I want—what I need—is to search what’s left of his brain. Now.”
“He was a serial rapist and murderer, Jack.” Kleigshoen pulled her legs up on the bed and wrapped her arms around them. “It doesn’t sound possible, and if it is possible, it certainly doesn’t sound safe.”
They found the Cybernetics Lab on the third floor, connecting the hospital’s neurosurgery and physical therapy wings. Bright colors covered the hallways on the first floor, but when the elevator opened onto the third-floor hallway, they faced a sea of muddy brown with jarring spatters of orange and yellow. The lab was a small office situated in the middle of a spray of orange.
Aside from two simple, plastic chairs by the doorway, the tiny lab was dominated by a modest, tool-cluttered workstation and an examination table.
Rimes settled into the plastic chair farthest from the door.
Kleigshoen snorted. “This isn’t going to work.”
He glanced at the chair beside him then at Kleigshoen. She rolled her eyes and noisily sat down.
“You have an appointment?”
A pudgy young man with spiked hair and Asian features stood in the doorway. He wore nursing grays cinched by a vinyl tool belt with hip pouches.
Rimes stood and extended his right hand. “You must be Brian.”
“Chin, yeah.” Chin looked at Rimes’s hand, then shook it once and pulled his hand away.
“I’m Jack Rimes. This is my partner, Dana Kleigshoen.”
Chin looked at Kleigshoen, then scratched his stomach through his grays. “You the American came in all shot up last night?”
Rimes nodded.
Chin cocked an eyebrow. “You look pretty spry for someone near dead.”
“They’ve got me on some pretty good stuff. Do you have a minute?”
“Nothing ‘til after lunch.” Chin edged past Rimes and pulled a rolling chair out from under the workstation. “What d’you want?”
“A couple quick answers,” Rimes said. “A man came into the ER with me. He’d taken a bullet to the neck. They said he’d suffered too much damage to be saved.”
“The genie in ICU, yeah?” Chin asked.
“His name’s Kwon. What I need to know—is it possible to rig me up to him, let me interface with his mind through some of your equipment here?”
Chin looked from Rimes to Kleigshoen. “Is this a joke?”
Rimes held out his hands to forestall Chin and accidentally hit the exam table. The impact thundered in the room’s cramped space. “Hear me out—”
“Sounds like that corpse isn’t the only one suffered brain damage, mate.”
“I know there’s equipment and software for this. And there are all sorts of advances going on in MMI research. If you don’t have anything capable of this, maybe you could connect me with someone who does? What about neurology?”
“Look,” Chin said. “What you’re describing isn’t anything we do here. I’m a tech. I run tests, I manage upgrades, fittings, and adjustments. Tweaking and the like, see? Yeah, maybe the neuro boys could help you, but I doubt it. That’s witchcraft, right? No one does man-machine-man interface research here. Maybe at university. Maybe at research—” Chin stopped and leaned back so far that two of the wheels on his chair left the floor.
“What is it?” Rimes asked.
Chin dropped his chair wheels back down. “Yeah, okay. So maybe it’s not what you want, maybe it is. There’s a private research facility down the street a ways. Vanguard something or other. I don’t know who funds them right now, but they’ve done some pretty crazy stuff there the last few years, and they’ve been hiring a lot. You see a lot of new faces over there now.”
Rimes smiled uncertainly. “You’re not blowing me off, are you?”
“Yeah, but not completely.” Chin squinted at him and leaned back in his chair again. “They’re your best chance, regardless. They patented some new skin-graft technique about three months ago, and about a year ago, they patented a liquid bone replacement. It’s not MMI, but it’s advanced medical work, right? And Cathy said you mentioned cybernetics. They do that, too.”
Rimes glanced at Kleigshoen and caught an impatient glare. “I’ll try them. I’m also going to contact some folks back in the US, okay? Dr. Michaels.”
Chin scratched his stomach slowly, looking at the two of them curiously. “Stefan Michaels? All right, yeah. I’ve heard about him. Practically created the latest MMI protocol single-handed. Okay. And if you come up with something, I’ll work with you.”
“It’s a deal.”
A few minutes later, Rimes had Michaels onboard with the idea and in communication with Chin. It was exactly the resolution Rimes wanted, but it was oddly unsatisfactory.
Rimes smiled at Kleigshoen and thought of asking her what irritated her so much about the idea of him connecting to Kwon’s brain.
The look on her face told him not to bother.
29
8 March 2164. Darwin, Australia.
* * *
They didn’t say anything until reaching the garage.
Kleigshoen had traded the blood-soaked HuCorp in for an even smaller car, somehow managing to find something even uglier, in bright yellow.
She was rigid. Muscles stood out in her neck and shoulders. Her arms were crossed and she kept her back turned to him.
Angry. Understandable, I guess. But is she mad about the risk? Something else?
“Do you want to talk—”
“No,” Kleigshoen said. Her voice was cold.
Rimes scowled as he looked the vehicle over, wondering what sort of fevered dream had been behind its design. “Was this a budget choice? I mean, it’s … hideous.”
“Get in.”
Kleigshoen slammed her door; it made a tinny sound.
The car whined and shook as it pulled out from the dim garage into traffic. Bright sunlight quickly triggered the window tinting. In no time, the underpowered air conditioner was struggling hopelessly to keep them from boiling alive.
Kleigshoen wiped perspiration from her brow and glared at the traffic.
“Where are we going?”
Kleigshoen gave him a withering glance.
Rimes felt his temper threatening. “Look, I’m open to suggestions here. If you can think of a better idea to get what we need, I’m listening.”
Another withering glance. “You know there’s no other way. Not right now.”
“All right. So why all the hostility?”
The car pulled off the main drag and into a small restaurant parking lot. Kleigshoen sighed and closed her eyes. With the car powered down, the interior quickly became unbearable.
“It’s not just the physical risks, Jack. I don’t care for … never mind.”
She climbed out and slammed her door.
Rimes pulled his legs up to his chest, pivoted in the seat, and dragged himself up and out of the car. “You’ve got your mission, I’ve got mine. It goes without saying we have different priorities.”
And I can’t even begin to guess what the hell your priorities are.
Kleigshoen crossed the parking lot without another word. Her shirt clung to her back. Rimes’s eyes traced the curve of her spine, lingering on the small of her back. He shook away the thoughts.
One time, one error. I’m not going to make it worse.
