by P. R. Adams
“It’s just always there. I can…hear it. Feel it.”
“Hmm. I’m sorry.” She went quiet; that usually meant she was thinking. “Even though it’s a fairly stable radio signal, it’s best if we minimize movement while we run the upload.”
“Compared to what I went through before, it’s nothing.”
“This update will take a few minutes. I want to download all your logs for review.” She brushed hair off my ears and ran a hand down my left leg; it felt oddly sexual. “Do you have normal sensation?”
“Yes.”
Her hand lingered. “You still want human legs? Even after all you’ve been through to get these?”
“I want to be whole again. I want back what was taken from me.”
“Of course.” She pulled her hand away. “When the update happens, you’ll be immobile. No need to panic.”
“I was a quadriplegic before. I’ll be fine.”
A humming filled my head, and a burning smell seemed to tickle my nose. I felt a sudden heavy weight drag me down. It felt like suffocation, but I knew better. Steady breathing and a stabilizing mantra kept me centered.
“You’re doing very well,” Jernigan said. “Not much longer now.”
I twisted my head around to watch her. She settled at a desk covered by display terminals. Data windows opened on one of the displays and began drawing one of my limbs—my left arm. The diagram displayed artificial bone and sinew, circuitry and servos, all the components that made my limbs what they were.
“How good are these limbs?” I asked.
Jernigan turned from the display. “Good. There might be better out there, but not by much. This model sacrifices strength for speed and better simulation of human appearance. Why?”
“I’m just curious: What are the odds of someone else out there having something this good?”
She smiled. “Your…employer paid more than most could afford to get you up and running quickly and efficiently. You’re one of maybe twenty people likely to have limbs of this quality. And to have all four limbs like you do? Three or four.”
“What about bulletproofing? Someone capable of taking gunshots. You do any armor integration like that? Some sort of weave across the torso, maybe?”
“I’ve heard of people doing something like that, some people doing it with organic flesh. That’s also very expensive. It would be cheaper to have the armor built into a mold you could wear.”
“But it’s possible?”
She curled her hands—big hands—in her lap and cocked her head again. “Are you asking about someone in particular?”
I wasn’t sure where Dr. Jernigan sat in the strange new world of the Agency. I’d been away long enough for everything to change. Heidi had spent a fortune to get me operational, and she was offering a small fortune for my team to kill a senator who seemed poised to run for president. It stood to reason that an advanced operation like the clinic was a resource used by the Agency for its more important operatives. If so, the staff would likely be at least loosely connected to the Agency.
Or there could be no connection at all.
“I’m already trusting you with my life,” I said. “I saw someone today—female, dark hair, bronze skin, probably of Central or South American heritage, tall, slender—who almost certainly has to be sporting hardware as good as mine.”
“And she was shot in the torso?”
“Three rounds, right in the gut. Took her down, but she got back up.”
She turned her chair around and tapped at a console. “I can do some research. I’ll have to be careful if you wish this to be kept secret.”
“Please.”
Something popped in my head, and my limbs jerked back to life. The weight that had dragged me down fell away, and I was able to roll my shoulders. Tingling ran down my spine, through my arms and thighs, and settled into my fingers and toes. They twitched.
I pushed myself up and examined my hands. Everything seemed to work, and I could feel even the gentlest tapping of fingertip against palm.
Jernigan took my hands and pulled them toward her. Her grip was strong. “Pull against me.”
I tested my strength, easily pulling clear.
She took one hand in both of hers and braced her shoes against the bottom of the table. Her fingers pinched against my flesh. “Again.”
I pulled clear. My skin felt raw where she had squeezed me, but there was no discoloration.
“Now.” She took my hand and held it just an inch shy of her cheek. “Touch my cheek. Gently.”
I traced a finger along her strong jawline and to the prominent chin, which I tilted up so that she was looking into my eyes.
She pushed her chair back and spun to the displays again, but not before I saw uncertainty in her eyes.
A chuckle drifted up as she tapped. “You’ll need to find someone else to practice seduction with. As I said, I will look into this woman you describe.”
I slipped off the couch. “Dr. Jernigan—”
“If everything is working, you can let yourself out. I’ll be compiling reports for a while.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Good night, Mr. Mendoza.”
My head swam as I made my way down to the lobby and out into the night. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. Attraction? A desire to pay her back for what she’d done for me? A need to be desired? The way she had touched my leg…she’d done that before. Was it me or the cybernetics?
I headed east for a few blocks and called Nitin for a pickup. I had a meeting with Heidi and a big bundle of shit that didn’t make sense that needed unpacking.
Chapter 10
I tossed and turned, the sheets nails on my back. What little light leaked through the curtains burned like a midday sun. Wind beat against the window. The meeting with Heidi had been worse than fruitless—it had been annoying. Her words had sent my brain into overload. The assassin wasn’t hers, but that was all I was sure about.
“You realize you work for me,” she had said.
Who do you work for?
Why bring me back and spend so much money on me? Why another assassin? Why go after Weaver? Why torture me instead of killing me? What had been the point of the Korea mission?
My brain finally shut down a few hours before I had the alarm set to go off.
I woke surly and sweat-soaked. My limbs were responsive, unlike my sluggish brain. I ordered coffee—two pots—and stepped into the boiling hot shower. Pulsing lava burned away my fatigue and brought focus.
The coffee was waiting on the dining room table, along with Danishes. Sugar and smoky, earthy bliss jolted my stomach to life. Ichi glared from her room.
“What?” I asked around a mouthful of cherry, cream cheese, and moist cake.
“That is unhealthy.” She wore shorts and a tank top. No greater advertisement existed for the value of exercise. She braced her powerful hands on either side of her bedroom door frame and executed a rapid series of push-ups. The roll of muscle beneath her pale flesh was impossible to look away from. “You will not live to be a grandfather eating and drinking like that.”
I swished bitter, scalding coffee around in my mouth. “Making fifty in this line of work is a miracle. Learn to enjoy life.”
She spun around and settled on the edge of her bed. “What do we do now?” She stretched—sensual and slow, oblivious to what she was doing to me.
Blood pounded in my head. She wasn’t Norimitsu’s little princess. Not anymore. Hadn’t been for years, but I’d never really noticed. She’d always been the treasure that controlled his heart, the dream that would see his family break into something more than killing. He had pushed her hard toward the future as he saw it—genetics, computer systems, engineering. But she’d resisted, preferring gymnastics and the physical training of his skills.
And now. I had never been happier to know a woman was a lesbian.
“Stefan-san? What do we do now?”
“We start to tear this thing apart.” Coffee washed down the last of the D
anish. A glorious buzz started behind eyes I could mercifully switch to thermographic imagery. Ichi became a blur of colors. “Senator Weaver’s file is full of holes. Heidi won’t share any details if she has them, so we’re going to have to do our own digging.”
Ichi plopped into the seat across from me. I could make out enough detail to see a curious pout on her face. She picked at one of the Danishes, tearing off small bits and sniffing at them before eating them. “Why does it matter? We are to kill her.”
“The only way we’re collecting for killing her is by getting up close to her, and that’s going to be harder now.” The aroma of a fresh cup of coffee distracted me. “I established a connection, put myself in the triathlon she nearly won a couple years ago. That won’t be enough. Not for her. Not for this Ravi Lingam who runs her security detail. It has to be something meaningful to make the connection.”
She tore away a larger chunk of the Danish, rolled it around in her mouth. “What would work?”
“I don’t know. That’s why we’re going to where she grew up. To poke around.” I finished the coffee and washed my hands and face. “We leave in five minutes. Bring an overnight bag, just in case. And pack your work clothes.”
Ichi almost danced into her room.
I hired a car while I brushed my teeth. Something generic—gray and dull, the most common model of the last couple years. Some Asian brand I had never heard of before, which was fine.
Dullness rolled off of it in waves as it coasted to a boring stop in front of the lobby. I tossed our bags into the rear and settled behind the steering wheel. Ichi took the passenger seat with a disappointed sigh. She had changed into dark jeans and sweater and had a hoodie folded on her lap. Chan’s hoodie. I wore the same but had no hoodie.
Our destination—several miles northwest of the Philadelphia outskirts—was already programmed in. The vehicle performed what passed for an acceleration maneuver, and I leaned my seat back.
We weren’t even off the Beltway before Ichi sighed again. “Stefan-san?”
Sleep had been close, a wave washing up against my toes, ready to carry me out to sea. It was gone now.
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to kill this Senator Weaver?”
I raised the seat and turned to consider her. The morning sunlight graced her with a golden halo. “Want isn’t the right word. I’ve taken the job. It’s what I do.”
Ichi’s brow furrowed as she studied the hoodie in her lap. “She is just a woman, and women die every day. Her position should not make her special.”
“It depends. Sometimes, you’re not killing the person; you’re killing the title they hold. That’s when the position matters. If you kill someone important enough, you’re—” Memories hammered into me: Syria and Indonesia, Hong Kong and Tibet. People important enough that I was— “Sending a message.”
Ichi nodded, but she was still thinking. I nodded off watching her.
I woke to a chime and a dry, foul mouth. We were outside of Philadelphia, following the sun into a neighborhood of stone privacy walls and thick hedges. The car was warm and stuffy. I lowered my window slightly, allowing in cool, clean air. Ichi did the same, but only for a few minutes. Vast lawns rolled out beyond the walls, and mansions rose up—gray and brown stone, roofs that joined to make u and h shapes. A gold-trimmed sports car sped past with a booming combustion engine roar, followed moments later by a private security vehicle. The speeding sports car drew no attention, but our dull, forgettable car moving at exactly the speed limit did.
We were among the moneyed and were unwelcome.
I pulled out my data device and rang Chan. “Chan? Stefan. I need something from you.”
“Like?” Chan spoke slowly. Magenta eyes stared out from tattoos, cold and dull, with pinpricked pupils. I couldn’t hope to identify the drug.
“Check my location. Weaver’s from around here. What other security are we dealing with besides whatever private security army they have?”
Chan stared, unblinking.
“Chan!”
A blink, finally. “Looking.” The screen froze.
Ichi’s neck was craned so that she could see the data device screen. “Is it normal to—”
“Nothing we’re doing is normal. Chan was a compromise, just like the rest of us.”
The data device announced that we were approaching the Weaver estate. I sent the car down an overgrown trail between properties and parked beneath a copse of trees that provided shade. Maybe thirty yards away, a twenty-foot-high stone wall rose above saplings and low-cut trees.
We lowered our windows and listened to the wind while we waited for Chan. Ichi still seemed absorbed in trying to crack a puzzle, apparently mine.
I wanted to test the outer wall, but not until Chan gave me something. Old money, the sort that held a palatial estate like Weaver’s, tended to rely on old methods—like the prowling security vehicle—over new technology. But the senator’s blank history said someone had spent substantially on scrubbers.
That raised flags for me.
Chan called back as the sun slipped from sight. The familiar manic dancing was back in the magenta eyes. “Rathman Security. Eight years now, substantial account.”
I pulled up the Rathman Security Grid presence, flipped through testimonials and ads. There were some substantial technologies on display. “Any idea what they might be hiring out? The hardware on display comes pretty close to corporate or military grade.”
“No details. Look at this.”
A package popped up on the data display and opened into three potential packages that could account for the sort of spend Chan had found on the Weaver account. Two included the sort of substantial data cleanup that would explain all the gaps in Senator Weaver’s history. The third focused more on physical security for the mansion. That included some troubling robotic prowlers.
I flipped through the prowler specs and didn’t like what I saw. “Any idea who lives here?”
“Mama Weaver. Sometimes. A small staff.” Chan tapped away. Another package came through—drone imagery of the grounds, blueprints. “Pulled through contacts. Art collection makes the place interesting. Almost worth the risk.”
Twilight was slipping away; it was getting downright cold.
“Can you get into Rathman’s security network?” I asked.
Ichi’s eyes widened.
Chan looked away. “No. That data came from their accountant and unsecured Grid presence.”
“What about monitoring signals, let us know if there are any changes? Alarms?”
“It’ll cost. One thou per minute.”
Steep. Worth it. “See if you can do anything to flood the Grid in the area. Anything to buy us time. Wait for my signal.”
Chan hung up.
Ichi popped her door and jumped out. I met her at the trunk. We carried our bags into the woods and changed into black, skintight pants and shirts with hoods and masks. Black pressure gloves rounded out the outfit. I dug out electronic gear that could detect most security systems and foul quite a few. Against what the Weaver estate had, I wasn’t sure it would be enough.
I took the wall first, finding easy grips between the stones. On top of the wall, I scanned through the spectrum available to me—there were no active IR or UV beams. I dropped to the other side and set up a passive detection device then scanned the compound with a parabolic mic.
Quiet. No animals.
Ichi dropped to the ground beside me. I signaled her forward and scanned the way ahead of her for movement or noise. Again, nothing.
I left the unit on the ground and sprinted up the gently sloping yard toward the hill where the first structure stood. It was a single-story guest house built with the same light brown wood trim, gray-brown slate facade design as the mansion. No lights, no indication of movement.
I settled at the southeast corner of the guesthouse, a few steps away from a stone trail that led to the front lawn. Ichi ran west, leaping the hedge that separated the western
wall of the mansion from my position. Floodlights buried in the ground lit wall to roof. A few seconds later, I saw her scaling the wall, barely a flicker of shadow between the lights. I switched to ultraviolet.
Chan’s blueprint laid out the mansion design from its last update thirty-two years prior. The most promising entry point was a bathroom on the third floor, above a broad second-story glass wall.
“Ichi, drift to your left as you climb. Third-floor bathroom window, above the glass wall. It’s small, but not secured.”
She changed the angle of her climb until she was moving parallel to the glass wall. Once she was even with the bathroom window, she moved horizontally and tested it with her left hand. “Locked.”
She dangled from one hand and dug something from the small of her back. Tools. She fiddled with the window, then slid it open and squeezed through.
“I am in.”
“That room opens onto a hallway. Left takes you around to the north wing; right takes you south, then hooks left and takes you along the south wing. That north wing has two rooms we’re interested in. There’s a room immediately to your right we’re also interested in.”
“Checking right.”
Video kicked on, revealing a door, dark in the light coming in through the window. Ichi opened the door a crack, listened, then stepped into the hallway, which was even darker. She edged along the wall to a matching door to her right. It opened quietly, revealing a room with out-of-place furniture. Bedroom-turned-sitting room. Useless to us.
“North wing,” I said.
Ichi retreated to the hall and closed the door behind her. The light source became apparent when she turned the corner: the hall led to a banister that looked down onto the stairs. Someone was below, or the lights kicked on automatically. Either way, she needed to move with caution.
She stopped at the first door on the north side and repeated her earlier process. Another bedroom, but this one was still furnished with bed, dresser, and a chest of drawers.
After she closed the door, I said, “We’re looking for physical items: papers, photographs, books. Anything that could reveal history they’ve eliminated electronically.”
