He thought to check in on Jade, but he doubted their meeting would be productive. He’d visited her earlier in the day, and the ZIP solution was progressing nicely. She was fully regressed and nearly vegetative. They would be able to imprint her body in the morning, and Schaeffer had twelve hours to settle on a candidate.
He returned to his room and was about to undress when his data pad pinged. Strange. He tapped the controls and found a file waiting for him, although he had not downloaded anything. A host of antivirals deemed it clean, and curiosity got the better of him. Indecision had never been one of his traits, and he opened it, a smile crossing his face.
Speak of the devil, he thought, and the devil appears.
The face of an attractive twenty-something was projected into the air before him. One side of her scalp was buzzed to little more than peach fuzz, while the other side was long and hung loosely over her face. He saw the hint of Japanese ancestry in her dark, almond-shaped eyes.
“I’m done playing these fucking games,” Mesa said. “We meet, and we end this.”
He couldn’t help but wonder which woman was relaying this message. It made no difference. He closed the file, feeling oddly content.
He opened a commNet line to his pilot. “Take me to LA.”
As he drifted to sleep, he felt a calm measure of assurance, as if the balance of power had begun to slide back into his favor once again.
Chapter 22
“You what?” Rameez shouted.
“I sent him a message. We’re meeting him.”
Rameez looked too shaken to even know how to respond. His arms flailed as he sputtered, obviously trying to strum up an objection that would vindicate his frustration.
Sitting across from her, seething and red-faced, he said, “You can’t do this.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“He’ll kill you!”
“I’m really kinda hoping it goes the other way.”
They went back and forth for a while, then each gave up on the other and retreated to opposite corners of the cabin. Even with some distance between them, Mesa could still feel the aggravation boiling off him.
“You don’t have a better plan,” she told him.
His mouth dropped open. Shut, open, shut. He was utterly without a plan. After a long moment of silence, he asked, “So, what’s your plan?”
“We put the shoe on the other foot. I gave Schaeffer the when and the where. I’ll be able to get him to a fixed location. All I need to do is get there before him and observe. I doubt he’ll come alone, so it’ll be a matter of neutralizing the opposition and then dealing with him.”
“What makes you think he’ll show?”
Mesa nodded in concession. The question was valid, but the answer wouldn’t make Rameez any more comfortable.
“He wants me. And, maybe more importantly, he wants what is in my head.”
Rameez scrunched his eyes, balling one hand into a fist in his lap. “Which is what?”
“Alice Xie.”
His mouth fell open.
“Or at least a part of her anyway.”
“Alice Xie is dead.”
“Four-fifths of her is dead,” Mesa said. “She sent out fragments of her memory, data packets that were composite slices of her personality. They were essentially portions of backup files. That’s why Daedalus has been killing memorialists. They’re trying to wipe her out.”
“And somehow, you have one of those packets?”
“She abducted me three years ago and wiped my memory. I have a part of her in my head.”
“Was this all her idea or something? Going to LA and doing the meeting?”
“We talked it over.”
“This unfinished business then. You said ‘we’ had unfinished business in Los Angeles. That was you and Alice then?”
“Correct.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this right. Schaeffer wants Alice, who you’re sharing headspace with. You set up a meet, and the plan is to kill him first?”
“Basically.”
“That’s thin,” he said. “That’s really fucking thin.”
“Why complicate it?”
“I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”
“I have, Rameez. More than you can possibly realize. It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”
He sighed. “I didn’t mean…”
“I know. It’s OK. But you need to trust me. I have thought this through. We have thought this through. And I think we have a handle on it.”
“What about Jade?” he asked.
“That’s what I need you to work on,” Mesa said. “While I deal with Schaeffer, you figure out a way to get us aboard his ship. I need schematics, crew rosters. Figure out how many people are aboard, keep an eye out for who comes and goes, how tight the security is. Find out where Jade is. I’ll deal with the rest.”
“This is insane.”
“Playing it safe hasn’t made things any better. There’s no reasoning our way out of this. Schaeffer won’t stop until I’m dead. Or until I stop him. That’s the bottom line. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“You really think it will work?”
She shrugged. “As I said, there’s two ways through this. It’ll work.”
Rameez turned in his chair to watch the waves beyond the porthole. The ship had caught the attention of a pod of dolphins, and he watched as they swam along the starboard side, occasionally breaching and diving back down.
Mesa stood beside him, watching the beauty and grace of the animals. Ancient Greeks had considered dolphins to be a good omen, and she hoped they had not been wrong. She found a simplistic joy to their playful display. She squeezed Rameez’s shoulder and told him to get some rest.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I’m too amped up. I need to go for a walk or something, burn off some energy.” And, she thought, probably try to find yet another pair of clothes to replace her dress and salty T-shirt.
She roamed the ship, working her way up to the lido deck. She felt an urgent need to get drunk on hard liquor. The barman put down a tumbler with two fingers of whisky, and she shot it back, letting the burn flood through her chest and belly. She put the cool glass to her forehead then knocked it toward the bartender.
“One more,” she said. He nodded and refilled it. She took her time on the second drink.
It’s almost over, Alice assured her. But really, Mesa wasn’t sure whether Alice had spoken or if she’d heard herself trying to be positive. Alice had said she’d put up walls between them, but they were tumbling quickly, the foundations weak, the mortar cracked and brittle. Nothing divided them, and the more Mesa probed, the more she realized Alice was fully enmeshed in her mind. Distinguishing her own thoughts from Alice’s was increasingly difficult.
She realized they were more united than separated. The ease with which Mesa killed, even going back to the men she’d murdered in Des Moines—that wasn’t her, and yet it was fully her. When she tried to figure out if that part of her was more Mesa or more Alice, she couldn’t distinguish the two.
Or maybe we’re not all that different, you and I, Alice said.
You said I was a lot like my father.
He killed to survive, same as you. Same as me. You have his toughness. His tenacity.
But is that mine, or is it yours?
You possess it. That is the important part.
I want this to be over, Mesa said.
Soon, it will be.
I don’t even know who I am, she said. I thought I was putting the pieces together, but now… I’m more lost than ever. I don’t know anything anymore. This isn’t me. Do you get that? Killing people, running, being a fugitive—that isn’t me. That’s you. That�
�s all fucking you. She spun the tumbler between both hands then drew slowly from the cool glass.
Do you think life ever gives you what you ask for, Mesa? Because it doesn’t. Not ever. You have to fight just to scrape by. You do not ever get what you want simply because you think you’ve earned it. This is almost finished, though. We will finish this, together.
And then what? We go our separate ways? How does that work? How do I get you out of my head? I don’t think I can. I think you’re stuck inside me, a part of me. You’re a fucking infection.
There are ways, child, but I doubt you’d appreciate the answer.
Is there even a backup of me, or was that a lie, too?
It was the truth.
She knew that Alice was being honest, as much as she knew that the kernel of data held no answer as to the whereabouts of that backup. The answer to that was on Alabaster, in the full dataset of an Alice Xie that had died three years ago. She hadn’t told Rameez that part of it, though. He was better off believing that Jade was the only reason she wanted aboard that airship.
Mesa finished the final sip of whiskey, savoring the last swallow. She shut her eyes against the voices in her head, and when she caught the bartender’s questioning eyes, she nodded.
“One more,” she said.
Chapter 23
As the transit ship approached, Mesa stood at the bow railing and marveled at the collection of vessels: cruise ships with foreign names and flying international flags, cargo ships with massive containers, and pleasure yachts and sailors.
While border relations were far from normal, the Pacific Rim Coalition was easing restrictions on tourist travel to and from California. Though the flow of information was still strictly monitored and controlled, the PRC’s leaders and their advisors were not blind to the benefits of tourism and trade.
Following their occupation, the PRC had placed a heavy emphasis on reestablishing the port authority and expanding the Los Angeles Harbor.
“Check out the tall ships,” Rameez said, pointing.
She followed his gaze to the Kaiwo Maru, a four-masted barque more than ninety feet long. They passed more full-rigged ships, schooners from Germany and Portugal, a brig from the UK, and a full-rigged ship from Italy.
“They’re beautiful,” Mesa said. The vessels held an elegant, old-world charm that beckoned to the period of colonial expansion and the majesty of the sea.
The harbor occupied more than eighty acres of seafront, and their ship navigated past the cargo terminals to one of the thirty passenger terminals. She and Rameez watched the flurry of activity around them, the squawking gulls as they dove through the air, and the slow-moving march of passengers unloading from the ships around them.
Other than the clothes they wore, Mesa and Rameez had no belongings to speak of and no reason to return to their room. Mesa had visited the gift shop and bought a fresh pair of jeans, new sneakers, and a T-shirt bearing the ship’s logo. She’d also bought a cheap pair of dark sunglasses, which rested atop her head.
After letting the crowd have a solid head start off the boat, Mesa and Rameez disembarked, taking in the sights around them.
The port was a glamorous construct of multi-storied glass, the ferry terminal building a fusion of high-end Asian couture and art deco. Metal red lanterns lit the way to customs, and they passed sporadically placed terracotta warrior statues, pairs of lions, and a profusion of Buddhas. From customs, they took a taxi into the heart of the city.
“Destination?” a tinny, disembodied voice inquired.
“Corner of Dai Hok Gai and Lei Min,” Mesa said. Alice had provided the address of her restaurant in Chinatown, and after both Mesa and Rameez were buckled in and traffic had cleared, the cab merged and followed an automated route toward downtown.
The driverless vehicle provided them a small respite from the noise and chatter of the vibrant city. Mesa couldn’t get over how much things had changed since the last time she’d been there.
No, she corrected herself. The last time Alice had been here.
The city’s nightlife was active, and while she found plenty of reason for concern in the heavy, obvious presence of armed soldiers walking the streets, most of the civilians seemed untroubled by the active security.
Terrorism and threats of random violence were as prevalent as they had ever been. After the US lost California to the PRC, multiple other states seceded from the Union to go it alone, create their own coalitions, or join Canada, as several northern states had. Then Liberty’s Children struck out against Pacific Rim Coalition forces.
There was little actionable intelligence on the group, and most presumed they were ex-US military who had stayed behind enemy lines following the dissolution of their government. Occasionally, they released statements, but their patriotic vitriol was hidden behind self-indulgence and a wayward, embittered sense of entitlement. They claimed to be the last bastion of American freedom fighters, but in reality, they were nothing more than zealots and child killers.
Mesa watched the scenery pass as more of Alice’s memories bled through. What she saw nearly defied comprehension.
Before, much of downtown had been reduced to rubble. Demolished skyscrapers had been nothing more than jagged, broken reminders of a richer past among streets littered with corpses, burned-out husks that vaguely resembled twisted automobiles, and shards of glass.
That atmosphere had given way to jazz clubs, sushi bars, a whiskey bar called the Highlander, and street vendors. Even though the cab’s windows were rolled up, Mesa could smell garlic and onion frying in fat, and the air was redolent with aromas of chicken and pork hitting hot oil. Lines of good-humored smiling people formed around fusion-themed food trucks. Bright neon lights flashed and vied for attention, reflecting off the windows and rain-slicked streets.
“What the hell?” Rameez said, laughing.
She turned to look out his window. A small Chinese man dressed as Conan the Barbarian was tussling with Spider-Man for a chance to win a kiss from a Korean woman wearing a large platinum-blond wig. She wore a lovely white dress and was standing over an automated steam grate that, at regular intervals, blew air at her, sending her skirt up in the air.
Marilyn Monroe, Alice said, filling in the blanks for Mesa. The name meant nothing to her.
People applauded the street-side performance as they ate noodles from disposable cups. A few tossed coins into a nearby tip jar.
A network of spires rose and twisted above the highway, curling into an antiprism. A manicured greenscape was built into the snaking construct, like vines wrapping around, between, and through the mind-boggling building. The structure contorted in defiance of basic geometry as well as the laws of space itself, as if it weaved through multiple dimensions simultaneously. Neither Alice nor Mesa had ever seen anything like it before.
Alice’s confusion pushed Mesa into sensory overload. She felt an irreconcilable conflict between the familiarity and strangeness of her surroundings. Nothing was familiar, yet it was also home. Both had lived and walked these streets many times, but each woman was equally lost in her own separate way. Whatever had once been there for either of them was irrevocably lost to the past. Progress had stepped in while they were away and turned over everything, from stem to stern. Everything was different, and there was an uncomfortable quietude in that.
A headache blossomed deep inside Mesa’s cerebral cortex, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to scream, cry, laugh, or dig her nails deep into her wrists, tear out her veins, and paint the inside of the cab with her own blood. Then she had her face in her hands, trying to breathe, to get control, but her chest felt tight. The cab was small, too small, and she was lost. A horrifying squeezing sensation pulled taught across her neck, and she tried to work her fingers beneath the cords, her nails scraping across skin. Rameez grabbed her hands, pulling them away, and Jonah
was standing over her and behind her, his face taught and his lips thinned with strain and—
Mesa snapped forward, dazed, blinking rapidly. Rameez stared at her, his breathing ragged—as ragged as hers.
“Rameez?” she asked, confused. She glanced around. The cab slowly resolved before her eyes. It took her a long moment to reorient herself and realize where she was. I’m still in the cab, she thought. Still in the cab. Beyond the windows were unfamiliar terrain, smiling people, and foreign buildings where Asian adornments challenged the generic facades of McDonald’s, Gucci, and Victoria’s Secret.
“I’m sorry,” she said, curling up into the corner of the seat. Although she had pulled her hands away from his, Rameez’s hands still hung in the air before him, palms up. She had never realized how pale his palms were, and after a moment, he took them back. She wrapped her arms around her legs, pressing the side of her head against the cool window.
“Are you OK?” he asked, the words drawn and measured.
“I don’t know,” she said, equally slowly. “I don’t know what happened.” She took several deep breaths, her lungs aching. Her heart was racing, her palms sweaty. She shut her eyes and fought to calm herself.
“How much do you remember?” he asked. “You know where you are, right?”
Emergence (A DRMR Novel Book 2) Page 23
