by Sean Platt
Dominic chewed on his thoughts, not knowing how to respond. He could explain the situation with the Organas. But was there more to this? Did Austin know about the station’s security breach? Did he know which specific record was accessed, and did they know about the second person Dominic had bought out of Respero? The subtle, underhanded way the record was stolen suggested its importance to someone, somewhere.
Austin continued to watch Dominic, waiting.
Dominic believed every word of Austin’s story and knew what a risk the agent was taking in telling him. It was hard not to reciprocate. Austin had also sealed the room and made it private using an illegal device, so even if Austin could use what Dominic said against him, it would be stupid to do so without Dominic’s permission. Dominic now had something on Agent Smith, just as Agent Smith had something on him.
Austin asked, “Is it the same reason you let Leah go?”
Dominic’s resolve broke. He looked at the privacy jammer, which had moved into a corner and was standing still, idling.
“Yes.”
“Are you helping them? Trying to stage some sort of a revolt?”
Dominic thought of the riots in the city, and how he hadn’t tried particularly hard to beat them down. But those didn’t involve Organa at all.
“I’m helping them. I believe in their cause. But I don’t believe they’re planning a revolt.”
Austin looked askance at Dominic, seemingly trying to decide whether to believe him.
“What do you mean, ‘you believe in their cause?’”
“It’s like you said. My family has always been cops. We’re blue-collar, hard-working people. We have blue-collar, hard-working friends. Yeah, I make a good dole from the party. But even if it were small, like my dad’s, I’d still be Directorate. It’s how we’re wired. We do our work as best we can, and then we go home. But more and more, folks like me and folks I know are vanishing into The Beam. They stop worrying about life because they can take their dole and plug in all day. The Organas think The Beam is an opiate, and that in the end it just helps the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I tend to agree. So I think Organa represents an important movement. A sort of check and balance.”
“But you aren’t helping them plan a revolt.”
Dominic sighed. “They’re just a bunch of hippies. They have huts in the mountains and use their ‘extensive funding’ to buy paper books and smoke moondust.”
“But they have hackers among them.”
“A few. But…come on. They’re addicts. You know how addicts are. And you know what happens when addicts run out. I didn’t start them on dust, but I don’t want to see them die when they can’t get it. That’s all.”
“So this is a ‘save the people’ sort of initiative? Like a charity?”
“If I stop, they die. That’s all.”
“And again, when you say they’re ‘important’…”
Dominic didn’t know how to explain it any other way and didn’t feel like trying. He felt broken and tired.
“Take it however you’d like.” he said.
Austin stood up. “Okay. Fine.”
Dominic stood to match him.
“There’s just one last thing,” said Austin. “I need to know something about a person who’s at the village. Someone who maybe has more going on than you might think.”
Dominic wanted to close his eyes and give up. They knew about the vagrant, who the Organas called Crumb. They knew that Dominic was supposed to send him to Respero but had taken him into the mountains instead. This was the reason for the security breach at the station. That was how, somehow, they’d learned about Dominic and Omar. The vagrant. The vagrant, who he’d always somehow worried would be his undoing.
Austin touched the wall behind him, calling up an image that must have been stored inside the room ahead of time, seeing as the jammer was still idling in the corner. But the image on the wall wasn’t of Crumb. It was of an old man with two gray pigtails, a beard, and a bright rainbow headband.
“Tell me everything you know about Leo Booker,” the agent said.
Kai gripped the man in the liquid metal suit, her hands feeling the cold alloy as it shifted under her hands. Now that they’d visited whatever passed for the soldiers’ station (and, by extension, somehow Micah Ryan’s station; she didn't totally understand that) and they’d given her a second, stronger, more evolved dose of whatever drug they’d given her back in the shack, she felt as if she was mostly back to being herself. Her memories of the Orion weren’t gone, but their traumatic edge had been dulled. It felt now as if she’d been in a fight instead of having been tortured. When she'd first come off the Orion, her very foundation had been shaken, her very reality thrown to question. She hadn’t been able to trust her feet or arms. She’d felt helpless, at the mercy (or cruelty) of something she couldn’t see or prevent. At any time, it had seemed, the pain might return. She’d flinched not only literally, but psychologically as well, and with all of her soul at once.
But now that fog had dissipated, and the memory of being ripped apart seemed only to harden her, like a well-earned scar. Kai's high-end nanobots had had time to finish their work; her bruises and cuts were mostly gone. Her muscles felt tuned, not at all sore. She was ready to rumble.
But now, according to the soldier, Kai was supposed to rumble against one of her friends.
They were retracing their steps, once again speeding away from District Zero, blitzing through the air a dozen feet above the roads, then houses, then trees, then rivers and grasslands. Kai didn’t have a mask like the one worn by the screetbike’s driver, so whipping wind stung her eyes, and she had to keep her head behind his for protection. The sound of the air screaming by them was a constant, high-frequency thumping. Beside them, the other soldier drove his screetbike with no passenger behind him. But one way or another, the loose end of that missing passenger would soon be resolved.
Kai felt an itch on her nose and wanted to scratch it, but both of her wrists were wrapped in liquid metal at the driver’s front. The soldier in the suit had waited until Kai had re-mounted the bike and re-wrapped her arms around his waist to tell her about Doc and what she was supposed to do to him. Before he'd said a word of it, his suit had fashioned the built-in cuffs to hold her in place. Kai didn’t understand how the suit worked, but it seemed to respond to the man's will or perhaps his brain waves. It (he?) had made a wise choice in restraining her, seeing as how her own brain waves weren't very friendly right now. Still, she couldn’t help but feel flattered. The man's suit made him incredibly strong and incredibly fast, and it even seemed to be able to manufacture weapons at will. Only a small portion of the soldier's face — just his mouth and chin — were visible. If he was genuinely worried that the unarmed, unarmored, 115-pound woman might be able to harm him, then Kai was scarier than she thought.
“Do you at least know where he is?” Kai yelled into the soldier’s ear. She hoped the answer was no. She was with two heavily armed, heavily augmented men. Even with her own defenses, Kai was essentially naked. She’d never be able to fight, outrun, or outmaneuver them. It was kill or be killed — but she and Doc were the only two people in that equation. A stalemate was the only way out, and the only way they’d get one would be if Doc managed to stay hidden.
“We know exactly where he is,” the driver yelled back. Beside them, ten feet away, the other bike's driver nodded, having heard Kai's question through his partner's input.
“He’s sneaky,” she said. “He can elude you forever.”
The driver turned his head long enough for Kai to worry that he might run into something. Even over the wind's whipping, she heard his small, condescending laugh. “You don’t know shit about what’s going on here, lady.”
Strangely, the soldier’s use of the word “lady” bothered Kai more than anything else he'd said during their hover back to the scene of Doc's escape. It was so belittling. He said “lady” the way you’d yell at a crazy bag woman. At a customer in a store
who was being an asshole. At an incompetent ditz who couldn’t get her canvas to turn on the lights or make macaroni and cheese.
He turned back. Kai swallowed her irritation. She had to figure a way out. So far, there was none. They claimed they could track Doc as if he had a siren mounted on his head — and based on what Kai had seen of Micah’s more covert dealings, she had no reason to doubt that they were telling the truth. There were things Micah had access to — things he seemed to know or be able to do — that defied what Kai thought was possible. Nicolai had told her he’d seen some of the same things from Isaac. But whether the Ryans and their ilk had access to technology that Kai didn’t was immaterial; the point was that she knew they'd find Doc faster than she wanted. Their superior tracking would defeat his inferior efforts to hide. Once they found him, their superior speed and agility would defeat his inferior human flight. They’d hold him using their superior restraints. And then they’d sight her with their superior weapons and bring the ultimatum down to brass tacks: Kai would kill Doc, or they’d kill her...and then kill Doc anyway.
The situation made Kai furious. She'd never precisely considered Micah a friend, but he’d always been good to her. He’d picked her up off the streets and given her a start when she'd needed it most. He'd taught her most of her subterfuge and cruelty skill set. He’d saved her ass in a few cases where she couldn’t save herself, and just a few hours ago, he'd responded to her beacon and sent two iron men to defeat the Beamers — Beamers who, if she understood right, were more or less on his side. He’d refused all of her advances (the ones she'd intended as returned favors and the ones she'd made because Micah was very handsome and magnetic), insisting that he couldn’t think of her as sexual. But if she was in any way like a daughter to Micah (something he’d said many times before), how could he torture her like this?
Kai knew the answer; it just wasn't something she wanted to see. The reason was that Micah always took care of Micah first.
What made it worse was that as twisted as it seemed, Kai could almost sympathize with Micah's thinking on the matter of The Troubling Issue of Thomas Stahl. Micah (or those who worked with him) had had a compelling reason to detain Doc — apparently something to do with what he'd seen at Xenia. Doc's escape made him a ticking bomb, and Micah, caught between a rock and a hard place, had to know if Kai was ticking, too. Maybe, as repugnant as she found the idea, she'd have to find a way to do it. There might literally be no other way. She’d done Micah’s dirty work plenty of times before, after all — had killed dozens of people on his orders. He’d paid her well, knocked her status right to the top of the Presque Beau. Given what she suspected about the elite tier just above hers, she seemed to be on the cusp of crossing a few final, critical inches. If Micah decided she could be trusted, then she might be able to move up — into this "Beau Monde" she kept hearing in whispers.
If she ended up having to do it, she told herself, it would be nothing personal. A job was a job. Kai was sometimes paid to stop a heartbeat, the same as an engineer might be called to stop an out-of-control machine. It didn’t matter that she knew Doc or that she considered him a friend. When the boss (and, honestly, the closest person Kai had to a father) said to handle someone, you handled them.
Except that Kai didn’t want to “handle” this job at all — no-win situation notwithstanding.
She did like Doc. She did consider him a friend, as big of an asshole as he could sometimes be. It was personal. And what was more, Kai didn’t like the idea of being controlled. She’d always chosen whom she fucked. She wasn’t like a taxi with her light on, for hire by any Joe who could manage the fare. And so far, she hadn’t precisely chosen her hit jobs (because a body was, in the end, just a body), but she also had chosen them in a way. She'd been up for each, and opposed to none. She hadn’t known any of the victims, either in person or by association. They had all been adults, mostly male, shifty enough in bearing that Kai could, the next day, look her pretty self in the mirror and convince herself that they had earned their demise. Kai had never been sicced on anyone too young, ill, pathetic, or helpless, and if she had, she'd have refused because she wasn't a taxi as an assassin, either. She’d never gone after anyone who couldn’t put up a fight. And she'd never gone after a friend.
Possibly the worst thing about the Doc job was that doing it would make her a tool wielded by someone else. Someone other than Kai would be deciding what Kai was going to do. The only decision she could make would be to decide whether or not she would allow that to happen — whether or not she would permit someone else to decide for her.
And once she thought about it in those terms, the answer became obvious.
Besides, Doc was a friend. He was also a client and a supplier. Kai even admired him — admired how he'd scrapped his way up from the bottom, just as she had. He wasn’t proud of everything in his past, just as Kai wasn't proud of everything in hers. It wasn't healthy to be proud of everything you left behind you in life. Everyone who had ever achieved anything had done so by taking chances...and when omelets were made, eggs got broken. Humans were flawed creatures. Untarnished people made Kai nervous. Unflinching honesty was a dishonest way to live, and there were too many bullshitters, layabouts, and whiners in this world to waste a perfectly good Doc Stahl.
But how the hell was she going to get out of it? Could she even get out of it?
If the men in the so-called Stark suits had working brains (and with Micah at their heels, they should), they wouldn’t give Kai a projectile or immobilizing weapon to use against Doc once they caught up with him. They’d keep their distance and watch her closely. They would stay with her, two against one. She had a few defenses, but nothing that was of any use against a casing of intelligent metal. She saw no holes to exploit. Maybe she’d get lucky — maybe they’d give her a weapon or stand too close — but she doubted it and refused to count on it. And even if she was somehow able to turn the tables, should she? If she managed to flee, she’d make an enemy of Micah, and the same went if she somehow attacked or killed the men in the suits. Kai didn’t want to do that; Micah was useful. And Micah was a powerful enemy to have at your back.
She could try and talk to Micah. But of course that wouldn’t work. Micah wasn't good at empathy when it conflicted with his personal interests.
She could try to escape. But no, she'd already considered that. She’d be putting her life in danger, surrendering everything she'd achieved. Goodbye to her client base, her apartment, her belongings and money, farewell to her security and her nest egg. Farewell, in fact, to Kai Dreyfus herself. Running from or fighting Micah would mean starting over at best, ending up dead (or back on the Orion) at worst.
She leaned into the soldier, trying to peek around him. She could see a Beam tracker displayed on the small screen between the screetbike’s handlebars. Maybe she could try to help Doc somehow — find a way to contact him and give him an advantage, tell him what he was facing and that more severe preventative measures might need to be taken. But the chances of getting to Doc before the soldiers and then facilitating his escape in a non-overt way seemed wafer-thin at best, especially considering the fact that she was literally welded to one of the soldiers at the moment. And what could she suggest that they wouldn’t be able to circumvent, anyway? She didn’t know enough about the technology at Micah’s disposal. Would a complete ID wipe (well beyond what Stanford was going to do for Doc) even hide him? Or had they learned to follow a person's DNA, brain waves, or something else that couldn’t be altered or masked?
There was no way to win. None of the options were any good.
Kill Doc.
Run.
Die.
Those were her only three choices, and they were all terrible.
She leaned forward and shouted into the soldier’s ear, her limp arms tethering her to him like cargo straps.
“I want to talk to Micah!” she yelled.
The soldier snickered.
“I’m not kidding!”
H
e said, “Whores don’t talk to the boss.”
“If he learns later that you didn’t let me talk to him about something that bears directly on what we’re doing now and the whole thing gets fucked up, do you think he’ll be happy?”
The soldier’s head twitched. “Just tell me, and I’ll tell him.”
Kai already knew she had him. A girl learned a few things over the years about when men were being resolute, when they were bending, and when you could break them.
“Fuck you,” she said. “I called for help, and he sent you running. I’m more important to him than you are.”
The soldier looked like he was about to retort but was probably working out the truth in Kai's words. After a few seconds, he said, “You have an implant?”
“Of course.”
“Fine. Coming back at you.”
Kai’s cochlear implant made tiny chirps as the soldier sent her the call. A moment later, she heard Micah in her ear. Her Beam ID must have shown on his end because without preamble, he said, “Yes. You have to do it.”
Kai felt naked. She was usually a creature of subterfuge and secrets and didn’t like how transparent she always was to Micah, knowing how he’d see her doubts and this call. It was a sign of weakness — something that never increased a person’s stock in the eyes of Micah Ryan.
“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Yes, it is. Don’t lower my opinion of you by giving me a line of bullshit. I expect you to be resistant, but I also expect you to do as you’ve been told. You understand this, Kitty. I know you do.”
Kai considered making up a reason for talking to Micah anyway, but she knew he’d never buy it. If there was one thing Micah respected less than weakness, it was lying. Lying which implied that the liar though he was stupid was the absolute worst. So she caved and answered him directly.