by Witt, L. A.
Daniel’s amusement faded. “My father and the other CEOs tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted. And then Gibson met a rather gruesome and”—he shot me a pointed look—“accidental death.”
I swallowed hard a split second before I could tell myself not to tip my hand and let my nervousness show.
“Yes, I know about that.” His snide amusement had resurfaced in his tone. “Apparently more than you, in this case. Anyway, the CEO went down, and his successor made sure the next-gen nanobots didn’t, if you’ll pardon the pun, see the light of day.” He set his shoulders back and glared at me. “And since I know all that, among other things, you’re here to make sure I shut the fuck up too.”
I rubbed my forehead with two fingers. Harding, you double-crossing fuck. If I make it out of here alive, so help me . . .
Disgust leeched into Daniel’s voice. “So how many mods do you have now, anyway?”
“I’m an assassin; I have more than you can imagine.” With a smirk, I added, “Want to see?”
“No, thanks.” He cradled the glass like a brandy snifter and gestured with it toward the door. “But I would love to see those mods get you out of here.”
You and me both.
How the fuck did I let myself get cornered into this trap? Even in my eagerness to complete this job, I’d still taken my usual precautions, but . . . here I was.
The glass encasing the penthouse could be broken with some effort, but my emergency escape plan hadn’t included any means of getting out via the building’s exterior. I had a rope and hook tucked into my briefcase, but I could only use it in the relative safety of the elevator shaft. An exterior exit was far too conspicuous, and the rope wasn’t long enough anyway. I’d be exposed, vulnerable, and recorded on camera for thirty stories.
There was only one way out.
“Look,” I said, forcing my voice to stay even and calm, “whatever differences we have, standing here arguing about them or discussing the cybernetics industry won’t keep either of us alive.”
Daniel gave a sniff of laughter. “Says the man with a bullet in his pocket with my name on it?”
“And since the man who paid me to come here will still want you dead even if I don’t kill you, I suggest we work together and get out of here.”
This time his laugher burst out on a cough. “Work together? Liam, you came here to kill me.”
“You’re a dead man whether I pull the trigger or not,” I snapped. “So if you have any desire to live, I might be the lesser of two evils.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ve got odds in my favor all over the place, don’t I?”
“So, would you rather I shot you? Or if I don’t, you’ll just wait until sunrise, watch me burn, and then wait for someone else to come finish the job?”
“I wouldn’t mind watching you go down in flames,” he said as he picked up his martini.
“Again?” I asked through clenched teeth. “The last time wasn’t enough for you? Or do you need to see it happen literally this time?”
“I’ll take what I can get.” He shrugged and brought his glass to his lips. “Beggars can’t be choosers, especially when their hours are numbered.”
“Do you want to die?” I asked, pressing my fingers to the bridge of my nose.
“No, not at all.” His voice stayed unnervingly even as he added, “But if my number’s up . . .”
“Maybe it isn’t. Let’s cut the crap, work together, and get the fuck out of here. We can hash the rest of this shit out later.”
Daniel snorted. “Like I’d trust you. Come on, if you could have gotten out of here, I’d already be dead. How do I know I won’t get a bullet through my skull once that door is open?”
“It’s a risk you’ll have to take.”
He glared at me. “Even if I did trust you, and I did want to leave here with you, there’s one small problem.”
“And that is?”
“I can’t leave.” He watched himself swirl his glass again. “If I could, I wouldn’t have waited for you to show up tonight.”
“What do you mean, you can’t you leave?”
“I mean I have a mod now too, and the second I step out into that hall”—he tilted his drink toward the penthouse door—“I’m a dead man.”
“What? Why? What mod?”
Daniel’s lips thinned and he shifted his weight, but I couldn’t decide if he was impatient or uncomfortable. Or both.
“I’m under house arrest,” he said.
My stomach lurched, a comment about the hardship of being on house arrest in such luxurious surroundings stopping at the tip of my tongue. “For what?”
“Embezzling. From my father’s company.”
Embezzling? That wasn’t like Daniel. True he’d stop at virtually nothing to bring down the cybernetics industry, but unless he’d changed a hell of a lot in five years, stealing was far, far below him—and not a very effective means to his end, besides.
He pursed his lips. “I didn’t do it, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I didn’t think you did.”
“Pity you weren’t the judge or the jury, then. Just the executioner.”
I couldn’t argue with the accusation, but it raised my hackles nonetheless. “If you didn’t do it, then—”
“Dad set me up,” he spat. “The money was hidden in a few other accounts, and the prosecution insisted it couldn’t be recovered. In fact, I’m expected to pay it back. Well, unless I’m dead of course.” He laughed bitterly. “And I couldn’t very well tell the defense I knew where the money had gone because that would give away how I knew. Incidentally, do you know how much money it was?”
I cocked my head. “I . . . no.”
“$10 million.” He narrowed his eyes over the rim of his glass. “Enjoy it, Liam.”
My lips parted.
“I suppose it won’t do you much good, though. I mean, if you can find a way to blow that much in”—he glanced at his watch—“six hours or so, go right ahead.”
“What kind of mod is it?” I asked. “The one they gave you?”
His lips thinned into a straight line, and he leaned on the bar as he looked out at the night sky. “A Class C proximity enforcer.”
“For embezzlement?”
He shrugged. “I took a lot of money from a powerful man.”
“Yeah, but . . .” I shook my head. “Since when does theft warrant anything more than a Class A?”
Daniel snorted. “You really think a little zap from a Class A would keep me here? Dad wanted to make damn sure I didn’t leave. A bullshit charge and a ProxEn were a reasonable way to keep me on lockdown until he could send you in to silence me completely.”
“And the ProxEn,” I said. “You can’t hack into their network and fuck with its settings?”
He shook his head. “The judicial system’s entire network is in its own highly classified programming language. I’ve been trying to crack it for years, but I can’t. And if I were to get in and mess this up? It’d release the poison.”
I leaned my hip against the bar and drummed my fingers beside the vodka bottle. “How . . . how is your father getting away with all of this?”
“He’s Richard goddamned Harding. How do you think he’s getting away with it?”
“But plotting murders? Faking embezzlement?”
Daniel shrugged. “His cover stories were perfect. The money was siphoned out, then used to pay you. Dad knew your account would be virtually untraceable, and even if it was, he suspected you’d shunt the money into other accounts that would be untraceable. Once he paid you, the money was as good as gone, and there was no way to track it down.”
Fuck. Harding was good. Really good.
“It’s pocket change to him,” Daniel said. “And it means being able to manufacture evidence for bogus embezzling charges, have his son penned up on house arrest, and get rid of the two biggest thorns in his side at the same time.”
“How . . .” I paused, rubbed
at the ache forming behind my temples. “How do you know all of this?”
“I have eyes and ears all over Cybernetix. That’s part of why Dad wants me gone. He’s afraid it’ll just take one command from me, and they’ll bring the corporation down from the inside out.”
Oh really? “Is that a valid fear on his part?”
“Not yet, no. But he knows I’m digging around for some things he doesn’t want getting out there.” Daniel sighed. “I knew he had some shady sons of bitches sniffing around, guys who might catch on to the fact that I’d caught on to him, but I hoped I could get everything together to bring him down before they found out.”
“Like what?”
“Fraud. Exploitation. Code violations.” He ticked off the points on his fingers. “Accepting bribes. Misdirecting research and development funding. I’ve got rock solid evidence on mountains of shit that’ll get Cybernetix fined to within an inch of its life.”
“Why haven’t you put it out there, then?”
Daniel tapped his fingers on the neck of the vodka bottle like he was debating a refill. “Because I wanted to nail him for murder. I don’t want Dad getting a fucking slap on the wrist, a bunch of fines, and a stint in a comfortable rich man’s prison. I know he’s tied to Gibson’s murder, but at the time, I didn’t have the evidence. Not enough to get him charged, never mind convicted. Then I saw him shunting money into a hidden account, and there were rumblings about another hit, so I started pursuing that. By the time I figured out I was the target, I was picked up for embezzlement.”
“So you just sat back and waited for me to show up?”
“Not quite,” he said. “Most of my files and information were confiscated by Dad’s private security force. None of it made it anywhere near the courtroom, but what Dad doesn’t realize is that I still have copies. More importantly, he doesn’t realize I have everything—bank records showing the transfers, recorded phone calls, bugged office conversations, you name it—linking him indisputably to my death. None of it’s admissible in court, but once it’s public via the internet, the media, and every possible channel of communication you can imagine, the Sky police won’t have a choice but to investigate him.”
“And that will all go public . . . how?”
“Every morning, I log into a remote file storage site with a specific login that only I know. If I miss my login, there’s a program specifically coded to release the pertinent files to about a dozen different people just itching to fuck Cybernetix up the ass.” Daniel drained his martini, then set the glass down with a single delicate clink that underscored the steadiness of his hand. “Once you pull the trigger, the wheels start turning.”
Holy shit. So that was why he’d been so calm and collected since I came through the door. He wasn’t just expecting this, he was embracing it with the unsettling cool of a goddamned suicide bomber.
I could barely draw a breath through my tightening throat. “How . . . how did you know I was the hit man?”
“Dad doesn’t know I’ve got wires all over his office, and he made the mistake of commenting to one of his cronies that with our history, you’d never be able to resist this job. But, just as some extra insurance against you getting sentimental, he’d offer you a substantial fee.” Daniel eyed me. “Can’t imagine who else he could have been talking about.”
“And why does he want me dead?” I resisted the urge to fidget nervously, because I was not nervous. “Why me specifically?”
“You’re just the beginning. After you, he’s going to systematically take out every assassin, hit man, killer, what have you, who’s been modified.“ Daniel sighed and walked toward the window. I watched the faint reflection of his face in the glass as he said, “You’re all a liability to him. To the entire industry. Every time someone uses the advantage from a cybernetic enhancement to commit a crime, it gives the industry a bad name. And he’s had it out for one particular hit man who seems to be able to get anyone, anywhere.” He turned around. “I have to admit, I was more than a little surprised when I found out that hit man was you, but even without me or anyone else knowing who the fuck you were, word has been getting around that someone’s using mods to his advantage and taking out people in very, very high places.” He smirked. “Isn’t that lovely? You’ve had so goddamned many mods, the companies who make them want you dead.”
“And you’re so fucking obsessed with shutting down the cybernetics industry, they want you dead.”
“Oh, save it,” he snarled. “Look, even if my father wasn’t a goddamned murderer, everything his company does is sickening. It’s . . . making people inhuman. Instead of being victims of diseases and aging, you’re all slaves to machinery.”
“We’re not slaves to it.”
“Sure about that? How many mods do you have now, anyway?”
“I need them for what I do.”
He set his jaw. “You need them for what you do, but you’re not a slave to them?” He smacked his palm to his forehead. “Oh. Right. How could you be? They let you make millions for a night’s work.”
“Don’t judge me until you know what I do with the money,” I snapped.
“Enlighten me, then.”
“If you must know, there’s a serious lack of medical facilities for the working class. So I’m—”
“You murder the rich and bandage the poor?” Daniel laughed. “My my, Liam. Your altruism is positively stunning.” He tipped an invisible hat. “Robin Hood with a gun. Adorable.”
“Fuck you.” I pushed myself off the bar and crossed the distance between us until we were an arm’s length apart. “Tell me, after what happened, did you even try to help me when I was out on the streets? Or were you just happy that I didn’t get that one mod?”
His cold exterior cracked with a shift of his eyes and the slightest slump in his shoulders. “What would you have had me do?” he breathed.
“I was in the goddamned Gutter, Daniel! I spent the first two years wondering if I was even going to survive from one day to the next. You couldn’t have done . . . Shit, done something? Tossed a twenty-dollar bill down the vents and hoped for the best? Anything? And as concerned as you are with the rich and privileged being modified out of their humanity, have you seen the conditions people work in down in the Gutter? Instead of being so worried about the wealthy, why don’t you do something about those who are treated like assembly line machinery?”
Daniel shoved me back with both hands. “I am concerned about them. More than you can imagine. That’s one of the many, many facets of the mod movement that has the anti-mods up in arms, myself included, but I sure as fuck don’t see it stopping you from getting modified.” Before I could reply, he added, “And by the way, did you know there are mods coming out for the working class?”
Really? It wasn’t like the elite to share their toys. Even lower-echelon businessmen, students, doctors—those grudgingly accepted into the Sky—were rarely able or allowed to obtain the most basic mods.
“For the working class? Really?”
He nodded. “They’re designed to let people work longer hours with less fatigue.”
“People won’t agree to getting mods that will just mean working more.”
“They will if unmodified workers are laid off in droves while those with mods make higher wages than they did before.”
Shit. He was right about that.
“Those mods get released,” he said, his tone grim, “we’re looking at thousands of already starving people out of work.”
Daniel was as privileged and elitist as I had been back in the day. Was he even capable of caring about what went on in the Gutter? He sure as hell hadn’t seemed to care about what went on with me down there. “Since when are you concerned about the people under the cloud?”
”Listen,” he said, the hostility evaporating from his tone. “A lot’s changed in five years. I was solely concerned about mods at first, I’ll admit that. But the more I’ve learned about what goes into making them, the more I have to stop wha
t my dad and the other companies are doing.”
I chewed my lip. “Maybe we’re more alike now than we were then.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“Well, whether you believe it or not, there’s one thing I don’t think you can argue with.” I met his eyes. “If you die tonight, yes, you’ll get Cybernetix investigated, but the mod movement won’t end. The other companies will just take over where your father left off. Exploiting workers, modifying people until they’re, well . . .” I gestured at myself. “Until this is normal.”
Daniel winced, disgust flickering across his face.
“Do you want to bring your father down?” I asked. “Or do you want to end the cybernetic movement?”
He avoided my eyes.
“You’re more valuable to your cause if you’re still alive. Which means we need to find a way—any way—to get the fuck out of here.”
“Except I can’t leave,” he snapped.
“Then get me out of here. I’ll come back for you.”
He laughed. “Oh, right. I believe that.”
“How ironic, you not trusting me now when this whole thing started out because you broke my trust.”
In a heartbeat, his laughter ceased and he stepped right up into my face, lips tight across his teeth and his voice bordering on a growl. “Deep down, do you really believe what ultimately happened was my fault? Do you really fucking believe that?” He came closer, almost touching me, eyes narrowed. “You should know better than anyone that I’d never deliberately put you in that situation.”
“You knew what my parents would do.”
“I thought it was worth the risk. I thought—” His voice cracked, and with it, his furious exterior. “I was scared, all right? Every time I saw you, you had another mod. Just small ones, but then . . .” He shook his head. “It was just more, and more, and you kept talking about getting more invasive ones. Replacing joints with machinery. Neuro implants. That was . . . I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing, but this,” he gestured at me, nearly hitting my chest, “this was never what I wanted to happen to you.”
I ground harsh words between my teeth. Before I could speak, Daniel closed his eyes and shook his head. “You know what, Liam?” He blew out a breath and took a step back. “You’re right. And I’m sorry for outing us and for not helping when your parents disinherited you. It’s been eating at me ever since, but I’m . . . ” He threw up his hands. “Look, I had no idea where or how to find you. Everything went down so damn fast, and you were gone before I could do a damn thing about it. Yes, Liam, I tried.” His voice faltered again, and he cleared his throat. “I tried to find you. Word on the street was that you were dead, though, and that’s what I believed until my father started communicating with you about killing me. If I had known . . .”
