by Jett Lang
“Credit for your thoughts?” Jack said in a gauzy voice.
“How long have you been awake?”
“Since you whispered. Trouble sleepin’?” He pulled back the cover, adjusted his heart-printed boxers, and joined her at the cherrywood table.
“Bad dream, that’s all. I don’t want to get into it.”
His head moved slightly. A nod. “Before you came to Grey Wolf, they loaded me up on morphine and left me on a recovery slab. Weird ass dreams there.”
“How weird?”
Jack itched at his neck, his black stubble. “I’m on a speed boat in the middle of the ocean. Ridin’ toward the shore of Angel Bay.”
“That was it?”
“I wish. I got tired of not gettin’ anywhere, so I turned the boat around and headed for the horizon – settin’ sun. Sherbet-orange, very postcard.”
“Sounds like a movie I saw once.”
“Any good?”
“Experimental. Romance-horror. I guess I liked it?”
“What happens at the end?”
“They find a boat and escape this island of swamp creatures. Then they die.”
“Well, there’s one way to end somethin’. For me, the ride goes on for a while and I keep loopin’ and loopin’.”
“Am I in it?”
He grinned. “’Course. You’re my co-pilot. Well, for a little while. Then . . . .” Jack wiggled his eyebrows and useable fingers comically.
“You can’t do that.” She flicked his injured hand, the bandage crusted with blood around the broken finger.
“Do what?”
“Keep me in suspense. What happened? I was your co-pilot and then what?”
“Then you weren’t. You vanished.”
“Into thin air? I didn’t explode or anything?” She pushed some hair away from her eyes.
“Nah, no explosion. One minute you’re there, and in the next you’re gone. Guess it had somethin’ to do with you leavin’ me in the woods.”
Queen played with his fingers. “That’s behind us.”
“Is it?”
“We have to worry about our assignment now. Get through it.”
Jack started to pull his hand away from hers, but she stopped him.
“We have to, Jack.” She met his gaze.
After a time, he said, “We will.”
An adjustment of green light caught her attention. Four A.M. on the alarm clock. “We should go back to sleep. No telling what she’ll want with us.” Her hand slipped from Jack’s and she pushed back the chair.
“Some death, followed by a light lunch, and then more death,” Jack said. “Standard stuff.”
They crawled into bed. Queen brushed her cheek against his shoulder, nuzzled there. His arm draped around her lower back, pulled her close to his side. She smiled along the side of his neck.
“Happy about somethin’?”
She backhanded his abdomen gently. “Go to sleep. You’re tired.” Amid the heat of skin and sheets, she drifted into the dark.
※
The morning arrived with eye-burning brightness.
“Arise, honeymooners. Arise,” said a liquefied metal voice in the brilliance. The light was coming from the ceiling, but Queen didn’t remember a setting of this intensity. Shading her eyes, she saw a coated figure beside the open door. Five-Nine.
Jack got out of bed. “Stop fuckin’ with that dial,” he said, and the lights dimmed to normal levels.
She blinked, stood, dressed. As she clipped up her winter combat boots, she felt nauseous and poorly rested. Had she even slept at all? Didn’t feel like it.
“We cannot have you sleeping in. There is much work to be done.”
“Kinda figured that, seein’ as how you’re here. Thanks for the heads-up, though.”
“You are most welcome,” Five-Nine said. A cord retracted from the light panel on the black wall and into its forefinger. “I have orders to keep your company for the foreseeable future.”
“Orders,” Queen said. “What about Chamber?”
“Mr. Chamber is no longer directing me, as you well know. If you are attempting to call my loyalty into question, then I am afraid you will be disappointed: The virus rewrote my allegiance. Unlike either of you, I was turned because of my software’s lackluster defenses. My new software has no such weaknesses.” With a sweep of its arms, the exit was suggested. “Please, make yourself decent and come along.”
“Maybe I like eatin’ in my underwear.”
“Preferences are not permitted in the house of an employer, dear Jack.”
Jack ignored the robot as he zipped up his flight suit and pulled on his own scuffed boots. He took Queen by the hand and led her out the door. She didn’t mind, but his grasp was stronger than it needed to be.
“I wonder how long this relationship will be on the up-and-up,” Five-Nine said behind them. “Shall we say a day and one half?”
“Next time I push you out of a hovercraft, I’ll have to make sure you land on your head,” Queen said.
“I did.”
“That explains it.”
※
Queen was starting to detest the color black. There it was again, in the shape of a long, rectangular dining table fit to sit perhaps ten people along its length and two along its width. It was a silk-carbon fiber hybrid, she could tell, running her fingertips underneath the folded edge. Her feeling of nausea gradually subsided. The broader space seemed to have been designed with the table in mind, the rug a nano-weave of dark crimson and the perimeter paintings all stone-faced portraits of male tycoons in three-piece suits.
Syntheia, perhaps to elevate herself to the stature of her forebears, wore a svelte business dress and sat at the head of the table. Queen and Jack sat across from one another, equidistant from Syntheia and the empty seat opposite her. Five-Nine stood next to Syntheia with its arms folded behind it – a regular automaton-in-waiting, presiding over a breakfast feast and a regal lady. Electric flambeaux between the many paintings gave the room an intimate, low-light aesthetic. Jack yawned too loudly and fingered sleep from his eyes.
“Is it too early for a man of your caliber?” Five-Nine said, voice at an intercom static-pitch.
He rubbed at his unshaven cheeks, fingernails scratching black scruff. He really did need to clean that up.
“Where are the others?” Queen hadn’t seen a single person pass them in the hall.
“Elsewhere,” Syntheia said. Her voice, too, was amplified subtlety. With such a high-credit piece of furniture, Queen suspected the table had a suite of built-in features, including vocal-amplifiers. From a platinum carafe, Five-Nine poured coffee into Syntheia’s proffered mug. The mug looked out of place – too common – for a woman of her stature. Cheap ceramic, aquamarine. Blue Fad kitsch. Her red lips kissed the brim, her face miraged in steam. She drank, undaunted by the scalding liquid.
“Separate briefings?” Queen said.
Syntheia smiled. “Is this a problem?”
“Just odd, considering.”
“You have been part of a coup before, then?”
Queen shook her head. “I didn’t say that. Wayne will be well guarded, won’t he? We’ll need a team. Synergy.”
“Synergy?” Five-Nine said. “Are we on a business course? I seem to have misplaced my khakis and sexual frustration.”
Syntheia silenced the robot with a quick raise of her hand. She regarded Queen, spoke: “You will comprehend this division of forces in time. You are but one cell in this organization, aware of other cells but not privy to their function. This is how it will stay.”
In Queen’s estimation that spelled trouble, but she chaired the concern. This was Syntheia’s show. Jack scooped scrambled eggs and bacon onto a plate, and Queen sank back against her chair and tried to ignore the smells. Her sickness washed over her again.
She said, “Then what do we need to know?”
“Much.”
A three-dimensional hologram of an underground facility sprung from the
center of the dining table, hovered with a pale blue luminosity over breakfast. The image rotated. The structure’s layers were modular cubes stacking downward, fifty-deep. The scale of the model was not shown, but the foliage renderings aboveground were dwarfed by even the smallest office space within the structure.
“Deep,” Jack said, forking eggs into his mouth.
“Two and one half miles,” Five-Nine specified.
“Your daddy likes his reverse skyscrapers, don’t he?”
“My father likes many things. Safety and secrecy in his old age, which has replaced drinking and gambling some twenty years prior,” Syntheia said.
“So his corporate HQ in Angel Bay is–”
“A front, yes. He has several trusted people who see to his property and public ventures. The top section of the Angel Bay HQ is sealed off to promote the myth of his being there.”
“How has that not leaked out? There’s always a snoop.”
“I do not doubt that. However, the automated and human security is without peer in all my father’s buildings. No one goes far.”
Queen rested her arms on the table’s rim. “What’s in there?”
“Garbage,” Syntheia said. “Useless things my father has forgotten.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.” Blue-lit steam wafted before her. “Let us stay focused.”
A red dot blinked within the belly of the hologram. The dot descended at a rate suitable for prolonged explanation. Five-Nine did the honors: “Your destination is sublevel fifty. There, you will locate the tertiary generators and destroy them. Once this is done, you are to proceed up this stairwell and rendezvous with our secondary team on sublevel forty. Then you will follow the outlined route to Wayne’s main office.”
“How are we even gettin’ in this place?” Jack said. “You just went on about how top-notch this guy’s security is and we’re goin’ right into his actual HQ without a hitch?”
“That is something you do not need to know,” Five-Nine said. “You let us worry about the infiltration and extraction.”
“So, you’re gonna blindfold us and just toss us in?”
No one answered him.
Queen watched the pulsing red dot stop in front of a square room larger than the surrounding modules. Twice as wide and long, at a glance. An office for a high level manager, not a company president. Part of the ruse, undoubtedly. If one went through all the trouble to build a hidden fortress, though, why would one not take the biggest office? Modesty? Paranoia? Something else?
“This other team must have a lot of firepower, or numbers,” Jack said.
“Correct on each count. The manpower is needed for that level.”
“My father believes his guardsmen to be the pinnacle, and in this he is sadly mistaken.”
“Those axes Five-Nine had,” Queen said. “Those were part of the pact between you and Chamber?”
Syntheia bowed her head. “Perceptive. An implement capable of Grade Four armor penetration. Chamber was most eager to read over my father’s schematics himself. A child in a chocolate shop, you could say.”
“A chocolate shop?” Jack almost laughed. Syntheia and Five-Nine gave him a momentary glance.
“We children of privilege have our fond memories, do we not, Jack?”
He picked at his teeth. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, lady.”
“Your profile says otherwise.”
“You don’t have my profile. Classified.”
“There are men on the inside that know how to declassify. Loyalty falters under currency.”
“Hope no one outbids you, then.”
“That fire from last night is within you, I see.” Syntheia smiled handsomely. “I wonder if it frightens you to see what you could have possessed had your father not disowned you.”
Jack drank the last of his juice and set the slender glass beside his plate, its contents half-consumed. His face was indecipherable, though his eyes did not move from Syntheia’s. Five-Nine produced a black folder from its trench coat and laid it upon Syntheia’s empty, untouched dish. Hardcopy was stacked thickly within. Jack’s name and code number was printed above the bold, white capital letters ‘CL.’ Certified Liquidationist.
“This is the reason no one has pursued you. Your organization has sold you like a common slave. All I had to do was wire the sum your employer demanded,” Syntheia said, and opened the folder. “You no longer exist to them. Everything that is yours I have – an aggregate list of success and failure, of kin, surgeries, and photos of lovers gone by.”
His digits caressed a steak knife. Queen tensed. “A forgery,” he said.
Syntheia rolled her shoulders in a graceful shrug and sifted through the crisp, white documentation. “Refute as you wish; I shall not deter you.” Her voice was sing-song. She seemed to be searching for a certain piece of parchment, enjoying the quest thoroughly. Once she found the paper, she had Five-Nine hand it to Jack.
He took one look at the document. “This is in violation of employee rights,” he whispered, but the table’s amplifiers made his words clear to everyone.
“In New Paradise,” Five-Nine oozed. “Here in Prosperity, the laws are freer to interpretation. I dare say they are the freest of any civilized region.”
“And since you are no longer of our class, Jack, you are entitled to all the grievances of the common man,” Syntheia said.
“The working man,” Jack said.
Their employer widened her smile. “However you wish to validate yourself to others will not change what you have sacrificed in order to obtain it. You are, as they said long ago, a silver-spoon boy. You were born high and educated in that fashion, yet you believe yourself above those of my station. You believe that because you cut ties that somehow your advantage is gone, and your past rewritten. That, dear Jack, is a child’s mentality.”
Jack licked his teeth, the knife now in his grip.
“Jack.” Queen reached across to him. “They’re just–”
“This does not concern you. Sit down,” Syntheia said. When Queen held her position, the hostess repeated, “Sit. Down.”
“No.”
“Five-Nine.”
The robot aimed its overpowered sidearm at Queen. Radar green eyes darkened and pulsed. “You may prefer to obey at this juncture.”
“No,” she said.
“Just stop,” Jack seethed. “All of you.”
Syntheia purred. “There is the aristocrat lurking, wanting to resurface after such an extensive hibernation. Let him wake, Jack. Make it your last, wonderful mistake. I have been meaning to repaint in here anyway.”
Jack released the knife, and it dropped onto the silken surface with hardly a sound. “No need to call the decorators; all this black suits you.” He wadded the hardcopy in his other hand and rolled it over to Syntheia.
“Are you convinced?” She smoothed out the crumpled document. Re-filed it.
Jack pushed his plate aside. “Yeah.”
“I hope we can minimize our issues in the future. Do you have further sarcasm for me?” The poison sweetened.
Jack looked from Queen to Syntheia. “No.”
“Good. You save those slights, or I will do much worse than blacklist you into oblivion. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Yes . . . ?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Syntheia breathed in, let it out. “There is the music of servitude. Is it not heavenly, Five-Nine?”
“It is, miss,” it replied. “Salubrious, even.”
She rested her chin on her palm. “Queen, I will ask you once more to sit down. Your man has learnt his lesson, and I know you are a quicker study than he.”
Queen sat. No argument there. Five-Nine holstered its pistol, withdrew two grey-sheened dossiers from an unseen pocket. It laid the first in front of Jack, the second in front of Queen.
“After this meeting, the files on the system will be wiped. The floor plan, route, and equipment specificat
ions are in these dossiers; we have included all you need. If you have questions, now is the time to ask,” Five-Nine said.
Queen flipped through the info. “Where do we burn these after we’re done?”
Syntheia broadened her lips into a grin. “Such professionalism. My butler will attend to their disposal, do not fret. We need no evidence left behind.”
“And the butler?”
Still, the grin. “If you do not trust my ability to hire staff, perhaps I should reconsider employing you.”
Queen held her hands up in defense. “Point taken.” Then, “Why would your father allow himself to be found so easily?”
“He has made an error,” Five-Nine said. “He let his children know too much about the company. Philip, in particular. Though, you are well aware of Philip’s former drug problem.”
“A penchant for Pharaoh,” Syntheia put in. “Nasty habit, and yet father deferred to him on system security. He really was brilliant in that arena.” She tapped thoughtfully at the edge of her lips. “Perhaps the drug helped somewhat.”
Jack was sitting there and watching them with the vacant interest of a kiosk purveyor absorbing rehashed gossip. His scrambled eggs were drying up, losing their greasy sheen on his rejected plate. Queen wanted to slap him. He took no interest in self-preservation, asked no questions now that he had been shot down. He was her senior by ten years, physically and professionally, but he was acting far younger than that.
“Jack, don’t you have any questions?”
He patted the dossier. “Nope. Everythin’ I need is here.”
Queen narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you sure? No relevant question for our employer?”
He didn’t move, his mouth set in a natural downturn. The micro-fine circuitry under his ears and along his neck took on the color of poisoned veins in the blue light.
He shook his head. “I’m covered. And so are you.”
“What does that mean?” She could sense Five-Nine and Syntheia observing the two of them with all the interest a robot and corporate princess could muster for an interoffice squabble.
Jack regarded Syntheia with a cowing bow. “Are we dismissed, ma’am?”
