Perfect Dark: Initial Vector

by Greg Rucka

  “He won’t hear about it from me,” Jo told him.

  On the second floor of the building was what had once been the control room, now retrofitted by Carrington’s people to serve as both a conference area and command post. A security console had been installed, feeding images from all of the surveillance cameras positioned around the site, both interior and exterior, and there was a corns station, as well as an uplink terminal.

  When Jo finally caught up with Carrington, it was the corns station that was holding the man’s attention, and she saw that he was positioning the terminal’s tiny camera for a videolink. The expression on his face surprised her.

  “Did you see it, Joanna?” he asked her, softly, his voice trembling with fury. “Did you see it?”

  “Rose, you mean?”

  “That man … that man is dataDyne, do you understand? A monster who created a monster of his own, all to earn himself the recognition and reward he so covets. A man who values himself so highly that human lives are as maggots to him. And that is the crux, because that is why he was there. Working for pharmaDyne not despite of his ‘requisite moral fluidity,’ as the dataDyne recruiters do so charmingly call it, but because of it.

  “He’s a monster who created a monster, while in the employ of a greater beast altogether. He is everything I am fighting against, everything the Institute stands in the face of.”

  Carrington stopped, visibly struggling to calm himself. When he spoke again, his voice was steadier, close to the one Jo was coming to know.

  “But in the end,” Carrington said, “the monster is just a petty little man that you or I would pass on the street without a second glance. And that sickens me beyond belief.”

  Carrington exhaled sharply, as if blowing away the last traces of his encounter with Rose. He turned back to the comms unit, resuming his work at the uplink terminal.

  “Who are you calling?” she asked.

  “Stalin and Roosevelt,” Carrington had said. “We’re going to play a game of Meet Me in Yalta.”

  Jo blinked at him, wondering if he hadn’t lost his mind.

  “Stand over there, please,” Carrington told her. “I don’t want them to see you.”

  She did as requested, now thoroughly puzzled.

  Carrington finished adjusting the video camera, then tapped three keys in succession, initiating a call he had apparently already prepared. She watched as he adjusted his posture, straightening in his seat, then checked the bow tie at his throat, making certain it was straight.

  “You,” a woman’s voice said from the terminal. Her accent, Jo noted, was English, and quite posh. She did not sound pleased.

  “Cass,” Carrington said. “I never bugged your office.”

  “Do you truly expect me to believe that? Especially after everything else you’ve done?”

  “My motives remain what they were, Cassandra. Exactly as before.”

  “I find that very difficult to believe, Daniel, you’ll forgive me.”

  “Then don’t, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I still want what you want. I still want you at the head of dataDyne.”

  There was silence from the terminal, a momentary pause.

  “You took Rose,” the woman said. “I thought as much, but there wasn’t any proof.”

  “And I have him, and with him we can remove Murray from the equation and ensure your appointment.”

  “How?”

  “For that, you’ll need to come and meet me.”

  “The same hotel as last time?” The woman’s voice had turned bitter, and Jo found herself staring at Carrington with new eyes.

  “No, it has to be someplace far more secure. I’m uploading a file to your account, it has the details of the location. But there are conditions, two of them.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “First, no games, no tricks. You can bring one other person, a bodyguard, as a courtesy, but no weapons. I don’t want an itchy finger bringing all of this to naught.”

  “You’re the one who’s been sending agents around killing dataDyne personnel, Daniel, not me.”

  “Second,” Carrington said. “You’re going to contact Doctor Friedrich Murray, and ask him to join us, under the same restrictions and conditions.”

  “You want me to tell him you have Rose?”

  “If he doesn’t already know. It should be more than enough to compel him to join us.”

  “Why are you doing this, Daniel?”

  “I’ve told you why, Cassandra. I’m sending the file now. I’ll expect your and Doctor Murray’s arrival in exactly two hours.”

  “Murray’s in Vancouver, he won’t make it in time.”

  “He has access to his own personal low-orbit transport, Cassandra. It’ll be tight, but he can make it. You both can.”

  “I haven’t agreed.”

  “You will. And tell Murray, if he tries anything, any games, I’ll destroy dataDyne utterly. I can do it. And you know me well enough to know it’s not an idle threat.”

  Carrington hung up.

  There were a thousand questions in her mind at that moment, but the one that Jo actually asked was, “Cassandra?”

  To her astonishment, Carrington actually blushed.

  “I get lonely, too,” he said.

  CHAPTER 31

  Carrington Institute “Cooler” Facility—8 km N of St. Harmon—Wye Valley, Wales October 16th, 2020

  The building reminded Hayes of Stony Mountain, of being locked away in prison so long ago for doing only what had come naturally to him. Perhaps the connection would have troubled him if it hadn’t been for the fact that, standing beside Daniel Carrington as he waited out in front, was the redhead from his nightmares.

  When Hayes saw her, he actually snarled.

  “You will behave,” his father told him. “Until we know what he has and what he wants, you will absolutely behave.”

  “It’s her,” Hayes said. “The one who stole Rose, the one who hurt me in New York. The one who got away, that’s her, Father!”

  “And I have said that you will behave, Laurent,” Doctor Murray said. “Until I give you the word, you are not to make a move, not a single move. Tell me you understand.”

  Sitting in the car beside his father, Hayes tried to make the words come out of his mouth, and couldn’t. She was staring at him, twenty meters away, right beside Carrington, and she was staring at him, and she was smiling.

  “Laurent,” his father said again, this time with more edge.

  Through clenched teeth, Laurent Hayes said, “I won’t move until you give me the word.”

  Doctor Murray nodded, then opened his door and got out of the vehicle, waiting for Hayes to follow. He needed another moment before he could. If he’d had a weapon on him, he’d have used it already, he was sure, he would have just drawn and started firing until the redhead had turned into red pulp. But he didn’t have a weapon, he didn’t even have his knife, though he’d tried to bring it with him.

  His jaw still stung from when his father had slapped him after he’d discovered the weapon during the flight from Vancouver. Hayes had gotten off lucky, too, he knew that. After returning from Hovoro, a slap from Doctor Murray was the lightest of punishments. At least he was fixing again, at least he was feeling the way he should again.

  There’d been no patch waiting for him when he’d returned from New Georgia Island, no replacement offered, and no comfort for either his failings or his withdrawal. It had been worse than ever before, too, had left Hayes curled on the floor of his bathroom, his head resting in a puddle of his own vomit, shaking and crying. It had never been that bad, and he wondered if it was because he had never failed his father so much, or because of the new dermals, or both.

  He’d still been lying there in his personal hell when his father had found him, saying, “Get cleaned up, get dressed, and do it quickly.”

  When Hayes hadn’t responded—and not for lack of trying—Doctor Murray had cursed him as useless, as disgusting, and then hel
d out a new patch between two fingers over his adopted son’s head. Hayes had reached for it, straining like a dog for a treat, and instead of handing it to him, his father had let it fall. Hayes had needed to clean the patch before affixing it to the back of his neck.

  As the drug had seeped its way back into his skin, back to where it belonged, Doctor Murray had explained the situation.

  “Carrington has Rose. He’s contacted DeVries, and DeVries has, in turn, contacted me. We are to meet, the three of us, in just under two hours. You are coming with me. You are coming unarmed. Do not be the reason we are late, Laurent.”

  One hour and fifty-seven minutes later, here they were.

  Hayes climbed out of the car, moving around its front to take a position by his father. He kept his eyes on the redhead the whole time, using his peripheral vision to take in as much about the location as he could. Truthfully, there wasn’t much to take in. Aside from the building, Carrington, and the redhead, there was only their own vehicle and one other, parked nearby.

  “Doctor Murray, a pleasure to finally meet you,” Carrington said, and Hayes wondered how his father could stomach such an obvious lie. “Allow me to introduce my assistant, Joanna.”

  Joanna, Hayes thought. Joanna Joanna Joanna how would you like to see your entrails spilling out into your hands, Joanna?

  “This is my son, Laurent,” Doctor Murray said.

  “Ah, yes. The energetic young man I’ve heard so much about.” Carrington moved the walking stick in his hand to his side, leaning on it. His smile was broad. “Prisoner number seven-one-four-eight-seven-six-zero-two-zero-five, Stony Mountain Medium Security Institution, Manitoba, Canada. Laurent Nathaniel Hayes, sentenced to life imprisonment after conviction on three counts of murder.”

  “I believe in the power of rehabilitation,” Doctor Murray said.

  “You believe in power, that much I agree with.” Carrington turned, using the walking stick to pivot about. “Doctor DeVries and her companion have already arrived. If you’ll follow us.”

  He moved through the doorway into the building, and the redhead cracked a grin at Hayes, then turned and followed. It was the way she did it, the manner in which she simply turned away as if he was nothing, as if he posed no threat at all, that threatened to unman him then and there.

  His father seemed to sense it, and put out a hand to Hayes’s shoulder, squeezing it with his long, narrow fingers.

  “Wait,” Doctor Murray whispered. “There will be time.”

  Soon, Hayes thought, and followed his father.

  DeVries had brought the CORPSEC Ice Queen, Anita Velez, and along with Carrington and Joanna, the six of them made their way along a narrow corridor and down a narrower flight of stairs into a basement, where another of Carrington’s lackeys was waiting, a pistol in his hand.

  “I thought the terms were no weapons,” Doctor Murray remarked upon seeing him.

  “Terms I set,” Carrington said. “Not terms I was obligated to follow.”

  “A dishonest way of dealing with us.”

  “I think of it as insurance. Desperation makes people do strange things.”

  DeVries didn’t say anything, but Hayes could tell she was watching everything, listening to everything. Velez, though, approached the man with the pistol as if she knew him, stopping only a few feet away from where he stood by a closed metal door.

  “Mister Steinberg,” Velez said.

  “Ms. Velez,” the man said.

  “I see you know who I am.”

  “For precisely the same reasons you know me,” the man said.

  Velez nodded slightly, then moved back to stand at the side of DeVries.

  “Jonathan,” Carrington said. “If you’d be so kind.”

  The man with the pistol nodded, then unlocked the door with a key from his pocket, pushing it open and revealing Doctor Thaddeus Rose seated at a card table inside. Rose looked up abruptly from where he’d been holding his head in his shackled hands, and his expression turned from selfpity to outright panic.

  “Carrington! You said—”

  “And I’ll keep my word, Doctor Rose,” Carrington said. “I’m merely proving to Doctors Murray and DeVries that you are, indeed, alive and well and in my keeping.”

  “That man may be alive and well,” Murray said. “But it will take more than this to convince me that is Thaddeus Rose. You’re not beyond employing cosmetic surgery as a deception.”

  Carrington snorted, gesturing with his walking stick to the man with the pistol. The door swung shut, the key again turning in the lock.

  “I’d like a chance to question him,” Doctor Murray said. “To verify his identity.”

  “Either you think I’m a fool, Doctor, or you’re one yourself. Ask your ‘son’ if this is the same man he failed to kill in Hovoro. Or did he also fail to get close enough to make a positive identification?”

  Hayes felt himself grinding his teeth, flicking his eyes from Carrington to Joanna. She was looking at him curiously.

  Doctor Murray didn’t respond.

  Carrington snorted again, then made his way between the two groups, returning to the stairs.

  “Let’s have a little talk, now, shall we?” Carrington said.

  His father, DeVries, and Carrington sat at the table. Hayes stood behind Doctor Murray, Velez behind DeVries, and Joanna behind Carrington, with her back to a bank of consoles and monitors. The monitors were all dark, and Hayes wondered if they were for surveillance or something else.

  “I once changed the world,” Daniel Carrington said. “I showed people how to defy gravity, and in so doing, removed their hunger for internal combustion. I made transportation more efficient, more accessible. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that I made the world a better place.

  “It wasn’t enough. Despite my best efforts, the world still suffers. And while I was working to make the world a better place, other people, other men, were working to make it a worse one.

  “I refer, of course, to Zhang Li and the monster he created: dataDyne.”

  Hayes saw Velez adjust her stance behind DeVries, her expression blank. DeVries herself had leaned forward, propping an elbow on the table, still watching Carrington like a snake eyeing a bird struggle with a broken wing.

  “Today I’m going to remedy that,” Carrington said. “Today is the second time I change the world for the better.”

  “How?” DeVries asked.

  “I think you know, Cass. I think you’ve already figured it out.” Carrington looked levelly across the table at Hayes, then at his father. “I have Doctor Rose, and I have convinced him to make a full and accurate accounting of the origins of the influenza A subtype H17N22 virus. Doctor Rose believes confession is good for the soul, and he’s going to tell the world what he did while on pharmaDyne’s payroll.”

  “That’s absurd,” Hayes’s father said. “Even if he agreed to do so, he would be taking responsibility for one of the greatest mass slaughters in the history of the world. The man is too arrogant, too selfish to do such a thing.”

  “Ah, but that’s not what he’s going to do, Doctor Murray. It’s what you are going to do. As CEO of pharmaDyne, his actions are your responsibility.”

  “I was not CEO at the time of the outbreak.”

  “No, you merely were able to capitalize on the situation.” Carrington leaned back in his seat, now moving his gaze to Hayes.

  You’d be so easy to kill, Hayes thought.

  “There’s a story, a rumor, about a survivor of the outbreak,” Carrington said. “I’d thought it was a myth until Joanna told me about the barcode tattooed on the back of your son’s neck, about how his hair had been burnt down to the scalp to prevent it from obscuring the numbers there.

  “The story goes that, late in the outbreak, one of the teams responsible for the collection and disposal of the dead found a survivor in a prison in Manitoba. That the prisoner was taken to St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, where he was examined and determined to be naturally
resistant to the influenza strain.”

  DeVries had shifted her gaze from Carrington to Hayes’s father. Her expression hadn’t changed, the same cold look, taking it all in. For a moment, Hayes wondered if he’d get to kill her, too.

  “Shortly thereafter, St. Boniface Hospital burnt to the ground. The loss of life was tremendous, but against the backdrop of the superflu, almost incidental. No records, or signs, of the prisoner were ever found.”

  “Then you have speculation, and nothing more,” Doctor Murray said.

  Carrington was still staring at Hayes. “And, you have a son who was adopted in 2017, a son who was an inmate at Stony Mountain. Secrets have a way of coming out, Doctor Murray.”

  “We don’t have to listen to this,” his father said to DeVries. “He has no proof, just a madman locked in the basement and a bushel of ridiculous theories.”

  “He doesn’t need proof,” DeVries said. “All he needs is Rose, and he has him.”

  “My only question,” Carrington said, more to himself than anyone else, “is whether or not you helped Rose create the superflu.”

  “No,” Doctor Murray said flatly. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “It doesn’t really matter. As soon as Rose goes public, everyone will believe that you did. After all, you’ve been quite proud of that Nobel Prize of yours.”

  “I don’t have to sit here, I don’t have to stand for this—”

  “Yes, you do,” DeVries said, so sharply that everyone in the room found themselves suddenly looking at her. “You’ve lost this, Doctor, whether you realize it or not. We’re no longer talking about you, or your future. We’re discussing the future of dataDyne, its very survival.”

  Carrington nodded in approval. “You always were quick, Cassandra.”

  She turned to look at Carrington, her expression as cold as before. “Once the news is public, dataDyne will collapse.”

  “You’re overstating, Cass,” Carrington said. “The corporation is too large to fold entirely. pharmaDyne will turn to ashes, certainly, and in the ensuing chaos, dataDyne stock, including all of its subsidiaries, will plummet as well. The sell-off will be immediate, and staggering, and will consequently allow me to buy a controlling interest in the corporation.”