by P. R. Adams
When I woke later in the day, I found myself testing my artificial shoulder and wondering about a situation where I felt more real, more me, in a computer simulation than in the waking world.
Jacinto’s simulacrum exerting that sort of control over perceptions shook my confidence. If a virtual wound could affect me so deeply, how could we know what was real anymore?
Chapter 20
The night settled cool and quiet, with no wind or clouds and ice forming reluctantly. I prowled Ravi’s neighborhood in my hired car, searching for my connection. The sleek, black FBI car was a full block over, parked beneath a bowing tree at the edge of a small park. I was ten feet away when the passenger side door opened, a dull thunk in the still of the night. Heat rolled out, smothering after the walk in the chill. The FBI agent wore a black jacket, gray blouse, and charcoal gray pants, something Heidi would have approved of. Maybe it was unofficial dress code for female federal agents. Without even taking the VR goggles off when I got in, the FBI agent handed me another grease-stained white bag. The aroma of spicy meat hit me when I parted the folds.
She said, “You struck me as more of a hot panini type. Salami, ham, provolone.”
It wasn’t made to order but smelled delicious. I unwrapped the paper and tore into one half. Still warm and extremely flavorful. She pointed to a coffee cup resting in a holder next to her lipstick-stained cup.
“I left it black.” She tilted her head toward me and lowered the goggles. “You okay with that?”
I chuckled. “I’m more worried about how bitter it is than anything else.”
“It’s got attitude. Comes with the territory.”
I took a sip, winced, took another. Plenty of attitude.
The goggles went back up. Full immersion. “What’s your interest in all this, Stefan?”
“Funny. That was going to be my question.” I took another sip and set the cup back in the holder.
“You want to take a guess?” She took a drink of her own coffee.
“Sure. Way I figure it, this has something to do with Brady Stovall.”
“Safe guess. Wouldn’t know about you otherwise.” She plucked pastrami out of the last bit of a sandwich and sucked it from her fingers, then licked them. The paper wrapper crinkled as she tucked the remaining bread inside and stuffed it into another sack. “You’re listed as dead, just so you know. Fine looking corpse.”
“Always figured I would be.”
“What can you tell me about Agent Brady Stovall that his official records can’t?”
“I don’t generally kiss and tell without getting a name.”
She snorted and took the goggles off completely. “I thought what happened on assignment stayed on assignment. Special Agent Lyndsey Hines.”
I took another bite of the sandwich, then wrapped it up and stuffed it back into its bag. It was too rich for me. To balance things out, I washed it down with coffee that was too strong. “Well, Lyndsey, I doubt his official record describes Agent Stovall as a raging tool who’s willing to abandon his people in the field.”
“Not verbatim, no. I think the phrase was ‘reliably efficient.’”
“That’s some good reading between the lines.”
“File I’ve got on him, there’s a lotta lines to read between.” She pulled a small box from beneath her seat and opened it, tugging out a scented wipe. She held the box out toward me; I took a wipe and washed my hands and face. “No file tells it all, though. I know he ran a lot of operations abroad and some here, on American soil. Some of those were very illegal. Probably none with you.”
“My team was strictly international. We whacked foreigners.”
Her cheek tweaked up in a disgusted sneer.
“What’s the old joke?” I waited until she turned to me, eyebrows arched. “They were all bad. Right?”
“What about Stovall? He abandon your team? That how you ended up declared dead?”
“Yeah. I’d like to talk to him about that. Work out our…differences.”
She pointed casually in the direction of the CIA surveillance group. “Like that team last night?”
“Maybe a little more aggressively.”
She rocked a little in her seat, maybe from a chuckle. “Good luck finding him. He’s off the Grid. Probably for his own good. They want to talk to him, too.”
“The Agency?” I’d never thought Stovall could go rogue enough to turn the Agency against him.
“Yeah.”
“That team’s watching Ravi Lingam. Because he works for Stovall?”
“Worked. Didn’t get along. We know about some of these illegal operations thanks to Mr. Lingam. They didn’t see eye to eye.”
That made sense.
She tapped a finger on her door armrest. “Young man died in the street a couple nights back. Indian-American. Like Ravi Lingam. Video shows it was Agent Merkel’s team. She says they suspected it was a dangerous person they were on the lookout for. Video also shows someone shoved the young man out of the car and drove away. You know anything about that?”
“I’m sorry to hear about it. It’s always the young who pay for the old’s mistakes.”
“Hmm.”
I took another drink of coffee and scanned the streets. “Merkel? That’s the white-haired woman running the operation?”
“Tasked to bring Stovall in. Same as me.”
“So what’s their interest in Senator Kelly Weaver? That’s who Ravi’s watching over now, isn’t it?”
Lyndsey quit tapping and looked at me with a squint that said she’d thought about me and Weaver already. I was in video at both attacks. Finally, she said, “Well, that’s tricky, now isn’t it?”
Tricky. The car interior suddenly felt far too hot. “How so?”
Her tongue ran over lips that needed a lipstick refresh. “Starts with the Chinese, I guess. You know about that?”
“I saw their interest the day the assassin attacked her.”
Her head cocked slightly at assassin. “That’s an interesting word choice.”
“Maribel Clavel. It’s what she does.”
“I see.”
Of course she did. “You were saying about the Chinese?”
She went back to tapping. “Like I said, it’s complicated. Their relationship with the senator. She’s sponsoring legislation that will crack down on some of their trade practices, but she’s also behind legislation that they really favor.”
“Such as?”
“You ever work China when you were at the Agency? Understand how they got to be where they are today? All the old dragons have their claws dug in—”
“Old dragons?”
“Descendants of the old Communist elite. They were appointed to run the major corporations years ago: Sino Mineral & Energy, the Hu Group, Commerce Bank of China.”
“Nah. If there’s one thing I care for less than politics, it’s business.”
She snorted. “They’re the same thing. Anyway, the more generations out from political power these old dragons have gone, the longer they live the life of elite billionaires, the less they feel loyalty to country or party. There’s a push to get rid of the FTC, to fast-track—”
“FTC?”
She broke into a full smile. “You really aren’t much on business.”
“I really am not.”
“Federal Trade Commission. It oversees things like corporate mergers and acquisitions. That’s where one business buys out or absorbs another. This law would make any of that possible without government oversight.”
“What’s the big deal about that?” I tried not to sound testy, but it was feeling like school, and that was never a place I liked.
She lowered the VR goggles again and looked me up and down. “You like hunting? Fishing? Racing?”
“Fishing. Boating, mostly.”
“Yeah, not surprising. So imagine going from ten boat manufacturers to four. You think choice and price’ll go up when that happens? I’ll answer for you: they won’t. And if that hap
pens, it will mean even greater power and influence for those Chinese corporations. They’ll merge or be acquired. And when that happens, they’ll be less Chinese.”
“Less Chinese. You mean culturally?”
Lyndsey slid her goggles back into place. “And politically. And that means a lot to the Chinese government.”
“So the Chinese want Weaver in power?”
“They certainly don’t like her rivals.”
That explained the Chinese Security Service interest in the assassination attempt. But could it also explain where some of the money was coming from? Could the Chamber of Commerce be a front for the Chinese corporations, or could those corporations be behind the El Salvadorans and Stovall?
Her head turned toward me. “You’ve gone quiet as a corpse. Thinking things through or gas? If it’s gas, I’m going to have to ask you to step out. I’m on shift for two more hours.”
“I’ve got a lot of pieces to put together, but none of them fit right now.”
“Isn’t it always that way? You come up with anything more on our friend Stovall, give me a call.”
I pulled out my data device. Her contact information was already showing on the screen. The door popped open.
It had gotten colder. I pulled my coat tighter. “I’ll be in touch.”
The door closed as I shoved my hands into my coat pockets. It felt like I was trundling around in what remained of the Arctic. I leaned into the wind and made my way back to my car, half-expecting Agent Merkel’s action team to leap from cover and open fire. It was tragic to lose Nitin to the ambush. It was worse knowing it was ultimately friendly fire.
Instead of settling my nerves, the meeting with Lyndsey bugged me. She clearly knew about me from the assassination attempt, but she didn’t seem all that concerned about my presence there. What did that say about her interest in Stovall? What could he have done to get the attention of an overworked FBI?
When I returned to the hotel, I swung by my suite to check on Ichi. She was asleep on the couch, wearing a white leotard and black gym shorts. Patches of skin glistened around her elbows and knees where the sealant covered scrapes from the landing gone wrong.
Norimitsu’s kid. Banged up. Nearly killed. All he’d ever wanted for her was to have a normal life, and here I was dragging her into a mess I couldn’t figure out.
I shook her shoulder softly. “Ichi. We need to talk.”
Her eyes opened, and in that sleepy moment, I saw hints of Tae-hee. I pulled my hand away. That was a fire I would never risk touching again.
Ichi sat up and rubbed sleep from her eyes. “Stefan-san. We worried about you.”
“I worried about all of us. C’mon. I think it’s time we pull the plug on this operation.”
She followed me to the other suite; the limp she’d exhibited after getting patched up was already less noticeable. I sent her into the suite first and watched Chan’s reaction from the door. There was still a cool detachment in those magenta eyes when they looked up from the displays, but now there was also something else. A connection, perhaps? Appreciation?
Ichi crossed her arms, signaling that I wasn’t the only one who thought it was cooler than before. More importantly, Chan actually smelled pleasant.
Music came through the door of Danny’s room. Ichi slumped on the couch next to Chan, who shifted almost defensively, as if trying to keep a gap between the pillow and Ichi.
I knocked on Danny’s door and said, “Group meeting,” then pulled a chair over from the table. Danny came out in a loose-fitting workout outfit and dropped into his regular seat. No one took Nitin’s chair.
Danny glanced at the seat pressed against the drapes. “Should we get Heidi?”
“This is for us first.” If there was a consensus to call the operation off, Heidi would be a special challenge all its own. “For now, we have to agree among our—”
There was a knock at the door, followed by a robot’s digitized voice: “Room service.”
Chan and Danny both looked up, confused.
And then the door burst in.
I had enough time to make out two forms, chromed pistols held chest high: Maribel Clavel and Jose Funes, this time in black bodysuits.
I leapt at the sofa as the room filled with the whisper of those strange guns. Chan screamed. Something caught me in the shoulder and forearm as I pulled the sofa down with a groan of wood.
Tiny reflections glittered on the wall: razor flechettes.
I dropped into a crouch, grabbed one of Chan’s displays from the coffee table, and hurled it toward the door.
The guns whispered again, but I heard the solid crack of plastic striking something, and the flechettes went wide.
Danny popped out from behind the chair he’d been sitting in earlier as I ducked behind Nitin’s chair.
Shuffling steps told me what I needed to know: The El Salvador twins were moving into the room.
I caught Danny’s attention, signaled I was moving left. He nodded.
The guns whispered again. Flechettes thudded into the chair. A few whizzed by.
I lifted the chair as I stood, felt protest in the small of my back. Jose stood five feet away, aiming.
He fired as I hurled the chair. Whispering death. A few razor projectiles tore into me, nothing too deep.
I charged, grabbing the gun with one hand and punching Jose in the throat with the other. His shots went into the drapes and bounced off the windows. I tugged him off balance and put him between me and Maribel just as she fired.
The flechettes whistled past, ricocheted off his flesh. One nicked me just above an eyelid. Blood oozed down my face, obscuring my vision.
I put everything I had into a kick at Jose’s leading knee. It buckled. He glanced down at it.
I brought a knee up into his face and let go of his hands, then turned on Maribel.
She was dodging kicks from Danny. Ichi was out from under the sofa. She threw herself forward, flipped, and landed almost dead square on Maribel’s shoulders.
Muscles stood out on Ichi’s legs as she locked them over Maribel’s shoulders and hooked feet into the assassin’s back.
Danny grabbed Maribel’s gun hand with both of his and kicked at her shins.
And then Jose was on me, driving me into the coffee table.
Computer and display components went airborne. He rained fists down at me, catching me on the jaw and chest a couple times, then landing a good one on my cheek. Even glancing blows felt like the strikes Jacinto had delivered.
Something crashed hard into a wall.
I whipped my legs up and into his back, knocking him forward, then planted a palm strike into his chin.
He wobbled.
I tore a leg off the coffee table and jabbed it into his eye, knocking him off me. Another strike shattered the table leg; he rolled over, unmoving.
I tossed the leg aside and stood. Danny was slumped on the floor beneath a dent in the wall not far from where he’d been fighting Maribel. She was near the shredded drapes, one hand shielding her face from Ichi’s downward strikes, the other grasping the curtains. No gun. The assassin tore the curtains and rods free with a popping sound, then swung the same arm into the glass.
It splintered with a thunk I felt in my bones.
I ran toward her, my gut sinking, knowing I couldn’t move fast enough.
Maribel tangled the curtains around Ichi, grabbed her by the hips, plucked her off, then threw her into the window.
The splintering sound came again, but this time it was softened by the curtains wrapped around Ichi’s form. She seemed to hang in the air, then the glass gave the rest of the way, and she slipped out and fell, the curtain tantalizingly close for a second, then gone.
Cold air whipped in through the hole.
Ichi was gone. Dead.
I chopped down at Maribel, but she blocked with both arms.
She countered with a strike that cracked bone in my face and took my good eye offline.
I compartmentalized the p
ain and kicked at her exposed gut, knocking her into the wall.
I struck down at her clavicles. Armor weave or not, I heard what might have been bones snapping.
She brought a knee up, caught me in the ribs with enough force to send me back into Heidi’s chair, gasping.
One of the assassins’ strange guns whispered.
Flechettes embedded in Maribel’s bodysuit and bounced off her armored flesh.
She ducked and ran toward Jose, who had gotten to his hands and knees.
And then Chan was there, holding what looked like an oversized pistol. Flame gushed out the barrel and engulfed Jose’s face. The stench of burning hair filled the room.
I turned, expecting to see Danny with the flechette gun, but he was still down. Heidi stood over him, tracking the two assassins as they stumbled to the hallway door. Whispering flechettes followed them out.
I wiped blood from my functioning eye and looked out the window, searching for Ichi’s body twenty stories below, hoping to see her still alive, knowing I would only see her broken body.
All I could see were the curtains, fluttering in the wind five stories below.
I had failed Norimitsu. I had failed my team.
Chapter 21
If my eyes had been organic, the cold blasting my face would have drawn tears. It would have been enough to hide the pain of losing Ichi somewhere far below. The flesh of my cheeks and forehead throbbed, and beneath the numbness, a terrible pain began to build. I stumbled back from the window and slid down the wall, tasting blood and defeat. Something thudded to the floor off to my right. A glance through the bloody blur of my functional eye confirmed it was the flechette gun. I plucked the razor-sharp projectiles from my flesh—organic and synthetic alike—as Heidi squatted at Danny’s side.
He had to be alive.
I gingerly tapped at the skin around the eye that had gone offline. Pain flared through the puffy wound, and the eye flickered back to life.
The room was a disaster: overturned sofa, broken coffee table, a black scorch mark on the carpet from Chan’s weapon, which had left behind a sharp, gasoline odor that almost overpowered the smell of charred synthetic flesh.
