Trade Secrets

by Beth Ryan

  “You saw who?” I asked, the mental list of shops on tenth still running through my mind.

  I couldn’t help myself. Presents weren’t like clients, there was no harm in figuring them out, no crime in piecing the puzzle together. It was a little joy in my life, distracting me from more dangerous jigsaws. I would take the distractions where I could get them.

  “Her!” Audry cried out, waving her hands toward the screen, where the picture of the Giovanni girl was still displayed. Audry oozed frustration. The honey-haired girl in the picture stared down at us, impassive. “I walked right into her. I didn’t say anything, of course. I should have, though. She has no idea the kind of trouble she’s in.”

  “No, you did the right thing.” I shook my head.

  Getting involved wouldn’t have helped Audry, and it probably wouldn’t have helped Alice Giovanni either.

  “She’s really far from home, isn’t she? I suppose she must have her reasons. Anyway, that was the highlight of my day. Your story is much better than mine. Handsome strangers and surprise murders. You must be starving. Are you staying for dinner?”

  Audry was talking fast, the way she always did when she had too much pent-up energy and not enough of a challenge to hack her way through. Most of the time, I loved all the energy she had, the way she could go for days, focused on a project until it was complete. Or ramp herself up to the point where she thought it was smart to take on factions of the government like it was her personal mission to dismantle the Lemniscate and restore equality to our poverty-stricken world.

  She was the antithesis of Cooper, who was driven to doing whatever it took to avoid what was coming for him and had hidden his heritage beneath a cobbled costume of poverty without understanding what it meant to want for something you could never have. I clenched my fists, the middle finger of my right hand scraping against the ever-widening hole in the fabric beneath it.

  The CAPS had pushed me into making some poor decisions, but it was my anger at Cooper’s blackmail and callous words that had blinded me into making my own mistakes. He hadn’t been prepared to take on a whole new identity, I could see that now. All it would take was one wrong move and Cooper’s face would be plastered across the country like the girl on the screen.

  Staring up at the image of the honey-haired young woman, I couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t doomed for the grave. The profilers would not stop until they had caught her and there was no question that she, and everyone who had helped her, would be executed.

  Though the flaws in Alice Giovanni’s faked death were obvious, it was also obvious that only one person had tampered with her information.

  Cooper’s profile, on the other hand, had been a two man job. The sheer amount of code it took to overwrite a profile was more than I could have accomplished alone and every client I’d ever helped was a client that boasted Audry’s particular brand of genius in their profile.

  The wave of cold that overtook me then had nothing to do with the chill of the room. I’d not been as careful as I should have and I’d forgotten the single most important step during a profile transition. I hadn’t deleted Audry’s signature from the code.

  “I don’t think so, Bright Eyes,” I replied to Audry’s invitation at last, already pushing myself up out of the armchair.

  I wasn’t in a position to say if my client was less fortunate or at all deserving of my help, but if there was one thing I knew, it was that I couldn’t let his reckless incompetence lead back to Audry. I couldn’t leave a job unfinished. I had to find Cooper Hall.

  13

  May 20th, 2080

  If I’d known the trouble that man would cause, I would have destroyed his new profile in a heartbeat. Instead, I had submitted to his blackmail and wished the poor kid a better life.

  I don’t wish Cooper Hall anything pleasant now. Most of the time, we don’t talk. When we do, there is little we say that holds value.

  “I hate you,” he sometimes whispers when we’re alone and the lights are out.

  I smile whenever he does, though he never sees it. The dark room feels like it presses us in together, keeping us trapped. Together. It’s the Lemniscate that have caged us.

  “I hate you, too,” I always whisper back.

  They’re the only words that have any real meaning anymore.

  14

  November 18th, 2079

  A thick layer of quiet draped over the city like a well-worn blanket, creating the kind of silence that only came with a storm. My footsteps were muffled by the rain as I turned down another empty road.

  I kicked a loose rock as I walked, struggling with what to do next. I could put the pieces together and sort out just where Cooper was from, but with a secondary profile, there wasn’t much chance that he’d be going back anytime soon. His actions had told me he was on the run, though what he was running from or where he was running to, I didn’t have a clue.

  Figuring out his next move would be my best bet, but it would also mean putting myself in his shoes. The disparity between our lives was stark enough to make me wonder if I even could. Still, I had to try.

  Settled on my next course of action, I sucked in an invigorating breath of icy air and walked faster. There wasn’t a single soul on the street for several blocks. The only person who had braved the cold was a godsforsaken old man holding his cracked credit card and a soggy cardboard sign. He kept his eyes down as I passed, and I avoided staring as much as I could. Above him, words glowed in neon red.

  “Brought to you by the generosity of the Lemniscate.”

  There was no way to slip him a few credits when his card was broken, but a voice in the back of my head that sounded like Audry chided me as I hurried past. I ignored the guilt trip. There wasn’t anything I could do right then, not when I had the safety of so many depending on me.

  Passing another sign reading “Do Not Enter,” I scanned the empty street behind me. All I could see were the crumbling walls of the city and the bright headlights of some lone driver in the distance.

  My boots splashed in deep puddles as the rain picked up pace. Approaching my destination, a nagging itch dripped down the back of my consciousness like a leaky faucet. I shrugged off the feeling. There was always some puzzle left unfinished and always the nagging feeling that somebody was watching. The almost invisible red dots of street surveillance that peppered the rooftops were evidence enough that that was true.

  The welcome sight of a gutted strip mall came into view, and I passed under the awnings and out of the damp for a while. The boarded-up storefronts were a patchwork of angry black paint, beneath which anti-Lemniscate slurs were hidden. There were two fresh splotches covering words I would never see. Beneath them, etched out in careful white letters, was the phrase “You may paint over me, but I will still be here.”

  I wondered if those words had made the painter feel better about their lot in life. There was no other point to that kind of vandalism. The Lemniscate would never see it, and those who were employed to cover these disgruntled remarks held little power to make a difference. Even if they could, it was a century too late to change anything now.

  A truck rattled down the cross street in front of me at top speed, the clack and whir of the older motor engine serving as my only warning to step out of the way. As the noise of the ancient vehicle faded, the realization of what had been bothering me finally clicked into place.

  Headlights reflected off a dirty metal trash can on the corner across from me, the same headlights I’d noticed before. I listened for the crack of rubber on gravel, the impatient acceleration of a citizen attempting to get from one place to another as quickly as possible. Those were the sounds that belonged in my city. Unwavering headlights and deathly silence did not.

  I paused two blocks away from my destination, turning to catch sight of a luxury transporter. My first thought went to Cooper Hall, to wondering if he was sitting behind those tinted black windows, watching me. Then the Profile Department logo came into view along the side of th
e transporter, and I clenched my jaw, unable to look away.

  As the transporter inched ever closer, my heart ratcheted into my throat. It drew level with me, hovering above the filth of the street, untouched by the degradation. I partially expected a squad of profilers to leap out and take me down, like I’d seen them do to half a dozen others in my neighborhood over the past year.

  Struggling with the instinct to flee while I still could, I reminded myself that only the guilty felt the need to run.

  Shaking myself out of my frozen terror, I turned as calmly as I could onto the one-way street that led to the alley I needed. The shadowy form of the transporter continued on down the road, hovering around a corner and then out of sight.

  Shaking from both the cold and the fear, I reminded myself that I knew what I was doing. I was better than anyone else when it came to undermining the Lemniscate and evading the Fraud Department. That was the very reason I’d come back here, to the alleyway where I’d left Cooper Hall.

  Determination tightening the muscles in my shoulders, I turned to face the spot he’d been sitting. There was no reason to think he might still be there, but it was as good a place to start as any.

  Staring at the empty space where he’d once been, damp garbage bags stinking up the place, I closed my eyes. I imagined I was him, that I was some aristocratic runaway with a penchant for getting on other people’s nerves. I breathed deeply and tried to empty my mind off the fear that had followed me here.

  It wasn’t working.

  Clenching my hands, I glared at the spot where he’d stood. Wide-eyed and worried about what he’d done, what his actions might have cost him. I couldn’t relate to that. I couldn’t wrap my mind around that kid having any serious trouble in his life. He might think whatever had brought him to me was worth the risks, but I couldn’t imagine it was.

  I shook my whole body in an attempt to release the tension that was building up. Instead, all I managed to release was a growl of frustration. Stomping over to the spot where I’d left him, I turned around and pressed my back up against the wall. Closing my eyes, I tried again to imagine the mental state Cooper would have been in when I left.

  He’d been alone, sitting in an alley in the middle of an unfamiliar city with the rain pouring down. He’d just shot one man, and blackmailed another. As far as mental stability went, his was questionable at best.

  I opened my eyes, sliding down the wall and sitting in the exact place he’d sat. I ran my hands through my hair, disheveling it the same way he had. I stared down the alley in the direction I’d stormed off and tried to keep any imagined longing or regret out of my mind. If he’d felt the urge to call after me, to apologize or explain himself, he hadn’t done it.

  I placed my face in my hands, trying to muster the same displaced and desperate mood I imagined him in. It wasn’t difficult to relate to his desperation, with Audry’s safety on the line. Every wasted moment was a decade, and every dead end was a mountain. That still didn’t give me anything I needed to know about what had happened to Cooper Hall.

  I reached up to press my thumb against the corner of my glasses. I didn’t have time to track my client like a regular person and I didn’t have near enough information, either. For the first time in my career, I needed more to go on than what I already had, and that was more than disconcerting.

  I hesitated before pushing the button that would undo the redactions on Cooper’s profile. If I were tracking down any other shmuck in the city, I would have to return home and hack my way into my quarry’s profile from a real computer, and even then I always hid what I could from myself whenever I needed to dig a little deeper.

  As it was, the shortcut to Cooper’s verbal transactions was still programmed into the spectacles. They appeared with the ease of pushing just a few buttons, and there was no way to keep myself from seeing everything.

  Green and red and grey scrolled across my vision as I pushed the button one last time. Truths and lies, questions and confirmations, and those little noises that just didn’t hold value. All those pointless words that made up our conversations, our culture, and our economy. Every bit of it scrolled in and out of view until I reached the very end.

  That’s where Cooper’s actual words were stored. His panicked confession of murder, his blackmail against me. So much green, so much truth in everything he’d said.

  I reached the bottom, the portions of words I’d never heard him speak. These would be my clues to where he’d gone next. These were my only hope to keeping him out of trouble and keeping the profilers away from Audry and I for as long as possible.

  I read from the bottom up, hoping to narrow down where he was as quickly as I could. There were several yeses and noes that gave no particular explanation to his current location. His own name. Mine. Then, right between that dreadful quote of his and my own name, green words glared up at me with a taunting light. My hands dropped to my sides as I read the words he’d spoken, likely mumbled to himself, either from memory or from reading them aloud. However they’d come to him, the facts were right in front of my eyes and they were simple enough that I didn’t even need to read between the lines.

  ...passphrase when the profile is activated, and you will be contacted by a member of the Lemniscate for induction. Further instructions will be provided once you reach the Kingsland Mansion. Remember, her life depends on everything you say and do until the job is complete.

  The damning implications registered in my mind before I could stop myself from understanding, and all the puzzle pieces fell into place. I sat wide-eyed and worried, hands gripping tight to nothing as I tried to comprehend just what this meant for me.

  Cooper had shot one man and manipulated another in order to follow the instructions of his own blackmailer. There was no doubt in my mind that he would follow through with the rest of the instructions; the green of his words reflected how much he believed them.

  Somewhere out there, he was being tracked down by the Lemniscate for induction. He was desperate and under-prepared, a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later kind of guy, and I had sent him out with everything the profilers would need to bring Audry and I in.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  Reaching up, I fiddled with my spectacles again, scrolling through everything he’d said once more. Deleting the profile altogether would only draw more attention to it, but there was a chance I could stop this nightmare before it became tangible. There would be a delay caused by his information being passed through the false profile and there was a chance the FTC hadn’t processed and passed on his statement. If I could erase any trace that he’d spoken the passphrase to begin with they might never know Cooper Hall existed.

  It wouldn’t do any good if he spoke those words, whatever they might be, a second time. Still, it might give me enough of a head start to track him down first and knock some sense into him.

  I searched the words he’d spoken most recently for anything that was out of the ordinary, or more than two words long. My stomach twisted as I caught sight of the only line that might fit the criteria of a passphrase. The only thing that could catch the attention of the Lemniscate as both unique and identifying. I stared cross-eyed at the damned quote that had riled me up enough to seek out Audry’s comfort. The words had seemed so strange to me in the context of our situation, and now I knew why.

  “The ends may justify the means, so long as something justifies the end.”

  That wasn’t just a quote from some long dead ancestor, it was the trigger. Those words, and Cooper’s honest belief in them, told the Lemniscate he was their man. Those words marked the citizens willing to do whatever it took to become Lemnis and to keep their place amongst the elite.

  I erased the hopefully unprocessed phrase, and the words vanished from the list. I took a deep, steadying breath. If I was lucky, Cooper would have the good sense to keep those words out of his mouth, or at least be too stupid to realize why the Lemniscate hadn’t come for him.

  My sense of relief didn’
t last long as I continued to turn those words over again and again. The same words I had repeated while sitting in Audry’s apartment, dry and warm and unaware of the danger that I had placed her in.

  I pulled my credit card from my pocket and flipped through my recent transactions. There was so much green. I’d spoken more truth than lie since Jimmy’s death, and I’d sympathized with Cooper enough that those words hadn’t registered as false when I said them. There was no false barrier on my profile, no way to delete or delay the information being passed on to the FTC, the profilers, anyone who had access to my profile. Those words were attached to me now, a beacon for the Lemniscate to follow wherever I went.

  Pushing myself off the filthy ground, I darted back out of the alley with dread racing through me. The rain was down to a drizzle by the time I reached the back door of building six-oh-nine. The headlights of another Lemniscate transporter illuminated the end of the street, and I paused, holding my breath. There was nothing I could do if they’d already found me and no way I’d survive this if they entered my home and found evidence of my crimes.

  The transporter carried on and the headlights disappeared, but I couldn’t breathe easy yet. They were still coming for me. It was only a matter of time.

  A flop of hair dripping into my eyes, my hands slipped as I turned the doorknob. I swore under my breath and brushed the hair out of my eyes, tightening my grip as I glanced behind me again. There was nothing to see, no car waiting to take me in for questioning, no government official hovering over my shoulder, ready to drop the guillotine rope.

  When at last I flung the door open I was shaking all over, both from the cold and the fear. I stormed up the stairs, resolved to do everything in my power to keep the profilers from ever coming near Audry. It was too late for me.

  The bedroom door ricocheted off the wall as I rushed to bring my computer back to life. The tech whirred loud enough to wake an ancient god, struggling to keep up with my furious typing.