Perfect Dark: Initial Vector

by Greg Rucka

  “Let’s walk,” he said, and began to slowly lumber off along the edge of the lake.

  After a moment, Jo followed.

  “I make more mistakes than I care to admit,” Carrington confided in her as they turned up the road, now moving in the direction of the Institute buildings. “I’ve made several with you. To be honest, it’s because I’ve never met anyone like you before.”

  “It’s mutual, I assure you,” Jo said.

  Carrington glanced over to her, managed a sardonic smile. His breathing was becoming heavier with the exertion of the walk, and Jo had to remind herself to slow down.

  “Then perhaps you understand my predicament, Joanna,” Carrington said. “I think of myself as a good judge of character, as a man who can read people quickly and, for the most part, accurately. It’s a skill I’ve used to great result throughout my life. And if I may say so, you have a similar skill.”

  “I’m not sure I’d agree.”

  “No, you just use it in a different fashion. I suppose it’s something you learned from your father, but you’re remarkably adept at being the person people think you should be, when you put your mind to it. You never would’ve been able to infiltrate pharmaDyne otherwise.”

  “You have operatives, agents who train—”

  “Not like that I don’t.” Carrington suddenly stopped, extending his arms wide in both directions, turning to face Jo. He raised his hand holding the cane a little higher. “What I have, Jo, is an intelligence-gathering arm, thus, a handful of deep-cover agents hidden in hypercorporations and government departments. They are precious few, and it takes a lot of time and effort and money to recruit them, to train them, and then to insert them. While they are extraordinarily capable—as Benjamin Able was—they are ill-suited to combat operations.”

  He lowered his right hand, settling the walking stick on the road once more, then lifted his still-extended left hand higher. “And here I have Jonathan Steinberg and the three dozen or so men and women he’s trained—my commandos, for lack of a better word. You’ve seen them in action, you know they’re brilliant at what they do, but they’re also about as subtle as an elephant relieving itself on the Rosetta Stone.”

  Jo laughed before she could stop herself, the image so absurd that she could envision it perfectly.

  Carrington lowered his left hand, grinning, pleased. Then the grin faded, and he said, “But I don’t have anyone like you, Jo. I don’t have someone who can do both, who can be both.”

  She felt her own smile fading away as well. A breeze had risen, cold and damp with the smell of the cut grass and blooming flowers now being hidden by the nightfall.

  “I’m not certain I want to be the person who can do both,” Jo told him.

  Carrington seemed to consider that for a moment, and then he did that thing with the walking stick that she’d discovered he was so fond of, bringing both hands together on its head and planting it just far enough in front of him so it would support him when he leaned forward.

  “You’ll forgive me for saying so, Joanna, but you already are.”

  “Tell me something,” Jo asked Carrington.

  They were rounding the far side of the gymnasium, beginning to circle back toward the Institute’s Main Building. Night had completed its fall, and the temperature had dropped along with it, but so had the breeze, and it was comfortable, and the sky was cloudless, and even with the light dome thrown up by London, they could see stars shining above. It made it easy to imagine that they were simply two people on a stroll, an old man walking with his grandchild, perhaps. It made it easy to think that nothing being said could be that important at all.

  “Tell me something,” Jo said again. “How can I do the things that I do?”

  “I’m not certain I understand the question.”

  “No, that won’t work, Mister Carrington. If you want me to come join you and your Institute and your war, you’re going to need to start being honest with me.”

  “A difficult promise for me to make, but one I’ll endeavor to keep.” After a moment, he added, “And it’s not my war, Joanna. It’s everyone’s. We’re just the only people aware of it.”

  “You’d think they would have noticed by now.”

  Carrington snorted. “People are herd animals, Joanna. What they see the rest of the flock do, they’re quick to follow. As long as the herd is fed, sheltered, and guided, they remain remarkably easy to manipulate.”

  “That’s a tad cynical, don’t you think?”

  “Is it? I’ve believed it for so long, and seen no proof to the contrary in all that time, that it is simply my view of the world. The people don’t notice what’s happening around them because they don’t want to, Joanna. They’d much rather have their microwaved pot noodles and their shiny new lifeCards and a chance to make virtual love to a fantasy version of their favorite movie star than be bothered with the how and why and who of it all.”

  “And that’s very cynical.”

  “In over sixty years of life, I’ve seen very little to disprove it, Joanna.”

  She thought about arguing the point, then decided to let it go in favor of pursuing her previous question. “You didn’t answer me.”

  “Because I didn’t understand the question,” Carrington said almost hastily, as if afraid of shattering what meager goodwill seemed to be developing between them. “Not because I don’t wish to.”

  “I’ll rephrase it, then.”

  Jo stopped, waited for Carrington to follow suit. They’d come down a side road used for grounds vehicles, and were now at the base of a small valley. Above them, to the left and in the distance, Jo could see the lights shining in the Manor. To the right, windows blazed in the Institute’s Main Building.

  Carrington planted his walking stick, watching her carefully in the darkness.

  Without warning, Jo lunged forward, snapping her right leg forward, hooking the walking stick with the toe of her boot. It tore free from Carrington’s grip, and the old man began to utter a cry, but she’d already moved forward, catching him against her shoulder, her right arm wrapped around his back. He was a big man, heavy, but she could hold his weight.

  After a second’s pause to allow him to catch his breath, Jo helped him regain his balance. It was only when she handed him back the walking stick she was holding in her left hand that she saw him realize that it had never hit the ground, that she had caught it even as she’d caught him.

  “That,” Jo said. “How can I do that? How can I fire thirty rounds at a moving target while I’m in motion at the same time, and be certain each of my shots will hit? How can I be a better shot than Steinberg? How is it that I’ll be in the middle of a firefight and know exactly where to move, how to do it, how to survive unscathed? How is it that when I do get hit, when I am injured, I seem to recover in half the time it would take all the others around me?

  “And why, Mister Carrington? Why is it that when I choose to kill, I do it as easily and effortlessly as breathing?”

  “You want to know why you’re different?” Carrington asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I wish that I did. I’d bottle it and make a half dozen more just like you, Joanna.”

  Jo hissed in disgust. “A half dozen murderers.”

  Even in the darkness, she could see the look of shock on Carrington’s face. “Is that how you see yourself?”

  “I’m a killer, Mister Carrington.”

  “No, you’re a soldier, Joanna.” Carrington’s voice had lowered, his tone becoming almost urgent. “There’s a world of difference between the two. A killer is always a killer, and that’s all he can ever hope to be. It’s the thing that gives him purpose and pleasure, perhaps the only thing that does. A killer is a killer by nature, Joanna, by design.

  “But a soldier, a soldier is first and foremost a warrior, a fighter. Some of them come to the battlefield for a cause, some to prove themselves, others for revenge—there are a thousand reasons, some noble a
nd others not. They do what they do by choice, and they do what they do not to kill, but to win the battle being fought. Sometimes, yes, even oftentimes, that requires the taking of lives. But that isn’t what defines them.

  “For a killer, death is all that defines them.”

  Jo said nothing, thinking about his words, thinking about the truth she was finding in them. Wondering if she saw it not because it was truly there, but because she so desperately wanted to believe Carrington was right.

  As if he sensed what she was thinking, Carrington added, “The problem you’re having, Joanna, isn’t that you’re a killer. It’s that you’re a soldier, and you haven’t yet realized that the war is upon you. You’re a soldier who’s been in skirmishes and battles, and never yet realized that you’re part of the war you’re fighting.”

  “Against dataDyne?” Her voice was so soft as to be almost inaudible, even to herself. “Your invisible war against dataDyne?”

  “Against all of them. dataDyne’s just the largest of the hypercorps, the most pervasive, and in its way, its evil is the most banal. But Beck-Yama, Core-Mantis, all of the others, they’re branches of the same tree. All of them would be dataDyne if they could.”

  Jo again retreated into silence, staring off at the lights of the Manor, at a house too large and too empty for Carrington to live in alone. She hadn’t truly known what hatred was until she’d lost her father. Jack Dark had been her whole world, her future. When he’d been stolen from her—and she blamed dataDyne for that—the need for vengeance had been all-consuming.

  Her father was still dead, and dataDyne still lived, and she found it almost impossible to accept that.

  “Some people are born to a task, Joanna.” Carrington was almost whispering now. “Some come from the womb destined to write concertos, to sing arias, to cure diseases. Some come born with the gifts that will make them the brightest star ever seen in their field, be it in sport, or science, or politics. But they’re all born with gifts to guide them to that destiny.”

  Jo looked away from the lights of the Manor, saw that Carrington was focused entirely on her. His expression reminded her of her father, the way he would look at her when she was lost and confused, when the world made no sense to her, when he would bring it all back into order.

  “How can you do the things you do?” Carrington said. “I don’t know. But it’s clear to everyone who sees you do them that you were born to it, Joanna. You were born to fight, to soldier, to battle. You have a genius for it. And the only way you will ever come to peace with it is if you embrace it, and find the war you’re willing to fight”

  “Your war,” she said.

  “Not mine,” Carrington said. “Ours.”

  Jo stared into his eyes, trying to see past his passion and his zealotry, remembering again her father’s warnings about Daniel Carrington.

  “Where do I start?” she asked.

  Carrington exhaled, and Jo realized he’d been holding his breath.

  “Follow me,” Carrington said.

  The picture on the monitor was of a Caucasian male, bald, in his fifties. His eyes were brown, almost black, and his cheeks and chin drooped slightly with the weight of his flesh. He wore a white shirt and a black necktie, and the white collar of a lab coat floated out from around his neck. What little expression had made it from his face to the photograph spoke of annoyance, and from that alone, Jo didn’t like him.

  “Doctor Thaddeus Killington Rose,” Carrington said, resting a broad hand atop the monitor on his desk. “Born in Huntington, Quebec, November 7th, 1967. Educated at the University of Chicago, B.S., Stanford University, M.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry and biogenetics. Hired by pharmaDyne beginning July 18th, 2001, employment terminated July 3rd, 2016. Whereabouts unknown.”

  Jo peered at the man on the monitor for a moment longer, then looked to Carrington.

  “We need to find him,” Carrington said.

  “Why?”

  “Because Doctor Thaddeus Killington Rose is responsible for the murder of thirty-seven million, three hundred and sixty-four thousand, two hundred and eleven men, women, and children.”

  The number was so inconceivable, Jo was certain she’d heard it incorrectly.

  “The superflu, Joanna,” Carrington said. “Doctor Rose is the man who created the superflu.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Gustav Weiss, Solicitor—882 Minervasbrasse, Zurich, Switzarland October 8th, 2020

  Hayes liked the part where they screamed for mercy the most, but you had to get there the right way, you couldn’t just go in whole hog, reaching for the pain. You had to take them up to it, you had to escort them, let the fear play its part. If you did it right, you could get them to tell you everything before you even had to begin cutting.

  With two programmers, three bankers, and one secretary, Hayes had done it right. He’d cut them anyway, at the end, partially to keep them silent, but mostly because he could. Living in Vancouver, working at pharmaDyne, Hayes’s natural urges were kept in check by his father. In Vancouver, Hayes had to behave, had to keep up appearances, had to confine his pleasures to interrogations in Sub-Five and the occasional bust-up in a local bar. But his father frowned upon even those, and as a result, Hayes had little opportunity to indulge himself.

  Until a week ago, when his father had handed him a stack of false passports, a half dozen credit cards, and a thin, locked case that was in all ways identical to the one Doctor Murray habitually carried. The dermals were in the case, and the case was locked, and every twelve hours a slit would open in its side, and one of the precious patches would slide out. Hayes knew that if he tried to force the dispenser open, to take more than his allotment, the device would eat itself.

  His father handed him all these things and then said, “Find Rose. I don’t care how. Do whatever it takes, but find him, and kill him.”

  So Hayes was doing whatever it took, just as Doctor Murray, just as his father, had ordered. If he was enjoying himself, well, he didn’t see a problem in that.

  He had permission, after all.

  For the most part, it had been a difficult week and a half, ever since the redheaded killer had made a fool out of him with her rooftop escape. Hayes had tried to console himself with the knowledge that she had at least failed in her attempt to rescue the spy, and had hoped his father would take some comfort from that, as well.

  His father hadn’t, but neither had he behaved in a manner consistent with his disappointment in Hayes in the past. Those times, the abuse had been abundant, and quick to arrive. Doctor Murray would threaten and insult, reminding Hayes how very fortunate he was that Murray took care of him at all. He would strike him, sometimes with a fist, sometimes with whatever lay at hand, a coffee mug or a stapler or anything else nearby. Then his father would withhold his love, in the form of Hayes’s fix, and that was the worst, of course, the withdrawal both debilitating and agonizing.

  Hayes had expected the worst, but instead, his father had fallen into a mood as deep and dark as the pits of hell themselves. He’d not even questioned Hayes about what had transpired, only confirming that the red-haired agent had gotten away. He’d barely spoken at all.

  The mood had transferred to Hayes, and he in turn had taken it out upon those around him. Beaumont took the brunt of it at work—an easy target—but no one was spared. When Hayes had returned home that night to find Kimiko still waiting in his bed, as he’d asked of her, it had turned ugly. She’d left hurling curses at him, and both of them knew she was lucky to be leaving at all.

  For the next three days, his father barely spoke to him, and Hayes suffered growing apprehension. There had been no punishment, not yet, but he was certain it was coming. At the same time, he began to worry for his father, for the man whose brilliance and love had protected him, saved him, sheltered him. Hayes was certain it was all his fault, that his failure had been so catastrophic, so complete, that his father would have no choice but to abandon him.

  That thought alone was terrifying almo
st beyond comprehension. To go back to what he’d been before, to lose not just the power in the dermals but the purpose of his life … Hayes would do anything to prevent that. Until Doctor Murray had taken Hayes under his care, the young man had been nothing, a collection of base desire and fury, aimless and reckless. It was his father who had given him his way, had given him a task. It was Doctor Murray who had explained that they were a team, that what benefited the one benefited the other.

  Hayes had believed him. He’d always wanted a father, and to have one as rich and powerful and brilliant as Doctor Murray, one who appreciated him for who he was and what he could do, how well he could do it—it was like living in a child’s fantasy.

  Then, after three days of waiting for the hammer to fall, his father came to him. Instead of acrimony, he’d brought the documents and the dermal pack. He’d given Hayes his orders.

  “Rose has been a leech on my body for four years, my boy,” his father said. “I’ve been content to allow his blackmail to continue. For four years, it has been safer to pay for his silence than to do what is required to guarantee it.

  “It may be that Carrington knows nothing, that he will learn nothing. If the stakes were different, I would be content to wait. But the stakes are very high, the stakes are for control of dataDyne itself, and if there is even the slightest chance that Rose will compromise our chances, he must be dealt with.”

  “Where do I start?”

  “Follow the money, of course,” Doctor Murray said. “Start with the banks, the ones in Australia, the Caribbean, and Switzerland, the places where I transferred his payments. None of them will lead you to him, not directly, and several, I suspect, will be dead trails. But I have paid him a lot of money over the years, Laurent, and so much currency leaves a trail. Find the people who handled the transfers, find where they sent the money. Be persuasive.”