by Sean Platt
“You know I’m on your side. You don’t need me to kill anyone to prove it. I’ve killed for you before.”
“Not like this. He has to go. Whitlock can do it, or you can; he’ll be just as dead either way. I’d hoped Stahl could be wiped, but he’s too much of a wild card. I can’t be sure enough that it’ll take.”
“Doc isn’t a threat to you,” she said. But that wasn’t enough for someone like Micah, who didn’t understand mercy, so she added, “He could be a huge asset. The people he knows…”
“Too much of a wild card,” Micah repeated.
The thought hung in the air. Kai remembered something else she’d wanted to ask — something that would bear on how she felt about Micah, and what she might or might not be willing to do for him.
“What happened to Nicolai?” she asked.
“Costa? Wiped and released. He doesn’t have a cortical firewall. Not a wild card.” Micah paused. “Did you know him before yesterday?”
“He’s a client,” Kai said, hiding her relief that Micah’s story jibed with Kane’s.
“Hmm.”
Micah said nothing more, waiting for her to resolve the issue.
“I won’t kill Doc for you,” she said.
“Then I can’t trust you.”
“Because I won’t kill a friend? It crosses the line. Would you kill your mother?” Kai stopped there because not only was the comparison inapt (Doc wasn’t exactly Kai’s mother), but she also knew the answer. Micah and Isaac’s mother was in her hundreds, fantastically enhanced with add-ons that never quite took because she’d started enhancing too late in life, after her body had already suffered immense natural degenerative damage. The Ryans loved each other, but that wouldn’t stop any of them, including Rachel, from drawing blood if it served their interests.
Micah didn’t reply for a while. When he did, it was with a simple repetition of his earlier message: “You understand my thinking. I know you do.”
Kai sighed.
“It’s him or you,” Micah said. “Or rather, it’s him or both of you. I’m sorry, Kitty.”
And that was the worst of it. She could tell he was sorry. Micah could be a stone-cold son of a bitch, but he could also be warm and kind. He was just more diligent than most about those he doled his warmth and kindness to.
“I know,” she said.
“Just get it over with. Then we’ll catch up. It’s been too long.”
“It has,” she said. “Goodbye, Champ.”
Kai's implant chirped, and she was back to being mentally alone. During the conversation, her head had lolled forward so that it was resting on the cool metal back of the soldier’s suit. She left it there.
“He’s in a coffee shop on the outskirts,” said Whitlock, in front of her. Under Kai’s cheek, his back rose and fell as he spoke.
Kai sighed. This was all her fault. This was happening (her part in it, anyway) because Doc had trusted her. He was about to learn a dangerous lesson, although he’d only know it for a few seconds: Trust someone, and it’s only a matter of time before they stab you in the back. In this case, literally.
“Ten minutes,” said Whitlock.
Doc didn’t wait for Omar to enter the Starbucks before tackling him. Once they’d entered the coffee shop, StarbucksCorps would intervene in any altercation (there was a good reason the company employed its own highly trained peace force; hypercaffeine was legal and moondust wasn’t, but everyone knew which addicts were more obnoxious), and customers might raise the alarm. Doc didn’t want attention, seeing as he was trying to hide. But he did want to crack Omar’s head against the sidewalk, so this seemed like a reasonable compromise.
One moment, the thin black man in the bright-white suit was marching toward the Starbucks rear entrance with two customer service holograms already forming to help/harass him, and the next Doc was spearing him in the stomach with his head. Doc imagined a million nanobots screaming as he mashed his well-maintained blond hair into the lily-white suit, then listened with satisfaction to the more authentic sound of Omar trying and failing to scream.
While Omar gasped for breath, trying to move his diaphragm back into motion, Doc righted himself, tossed his disheveled hair back, and marched forward to grab the dealer by the back of his jacket. He dragged him from the entrance and toward an alleyway as two holograms tried to sell Omar packets of hypercaffeine quad mocha latte mix with included InstaFoam cartridges. The holograms were intuitive enough to realize their target had fallen to the ground but not quite intuitive enough to realize he’d been attacked. So they bent forward, following Omar as Doc dragged him, asking how he’d like to experience the full flavor of a freshly made Starbucks latte at home.
“What the fuck did you get me into, Omar?” Doc yelled. He punched a Plasteel trash can in a tantrum, crushing his fist and wincing. “You want to tell me what you’ve been up to, who you’ve been talking to, what you’re doing that has…I don’t know…fucking Beamers and torturers and shit…all up my ass? You mind telling me that, Omar?”
Omar continued to struggle for air on the alley floor.
“You want to smuggle, fine. You want to get your ass in deep and risk NPS on your tail, fine. I know what a slippery shit you are. But the minute you start fucking with…with people who’d do that…” Doc was finding he couldn’t articulate himself at all. He felt almost as bad as Kai had looked when the Beamers had pulled her from the Orion and hauled her toward the evaporator. She’d gotten it a lot worse than he had, but he could still hardly think at all. He also felt weak and strangely paranoid, but at least he was strong enough to hit a man in the stomach with his head — and to lift a Plasteel trash can and hurl it across an alley, which he then did while yelling, “MOTHER! FUCKER!”
Omar was slouched against the wall, his pristine white suit already dirty. His upper back was vertical, and his lower back was horizontal on the ground. He formed a C shape in the corner, his left hand on his gut as if he’d been shot. He held his right hand up, dark fingers splayed.
“Hang on, Doc. Just…” He heaved. “…just hang on. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Tell me from the beginning.”
But as half-thinking as Doc was, he knew not to volunteer information to Omar Jones. Omar was a fantastic business partner as long as you were his best option, but the minute something better came up, he’d crumple you like a can and toss you aside. Giving Omar information he might later use against you was like rolling unpinned grenades into the other army’s foxholes.
“Fuck that!” he yelled, kicking one of Omar’s legs.
“Jesus, Doc! Maybe I screwed you over, and maybe I didn’t, but unless the reason you called and told me to meet you here was to kill me, I ain’t gonna be any help in figuring shit out if you don’t tell me what’s up. And ideally…that means you’d stop hitting me.” His hand was still out. He wiggled himself into an upright sitting position, testing his breath to see if he’d gotten it back. He started to stand, lowering his hand and using both to brush dirt from his suit.
Once Omar had composed himself, he reclaimed his cool. Doc, his brain still uneasy, told himself to watch it. Omar had an intensely strong presence. For a minute there, Doc had unquestionably had the upper hand, but if he let Omar get too confident, he’d easily end up back in charge. It was how Omar worked — maybe even his secret to success.
Omar brushed his jacket a final time then slowly looked up at Doc, his facial expression still guarded, unsure.
“What’s up, Doc?” he said.
“Xenia Labs.”
“What about them?”
“You trying to get in? Trying to learn what they’re doing?”
Omar shrugged. “I’m always trying to learn things, Doc.”
“I mean specifically. Are you trying to…infiltrate them? Actively trying to see what they’re developing, what they’re selling?”
“I guess. But that’s why I’ve got you.”
This was exactly the wrong thing to say. Doc knew he was still
keyed up with Orion hangover and that his nanos hadn’t yet done all they could with his endorphin and epinephrine balance, but that knowledge didn’t stop him from grabbing Omar by the sleeves and slamming him hard against the wall, causing his teeth to crash together.
“You’ve got me? Goddamn right you’ve got me, only I didn’t get a choice about being your bitch, did I? Now you get to tell me about it! Who’s after me, Omar? And why?”
“Shit, blondie!” said Omar, rattled but otherwise only mildly perturbed. “How about you get your fucking hands off me and stop acting burned so we can discuss it? Or would you rather keep fucking my shit up and get nowhere?”
But Doc wasn’t ready to settle. He felt his eyes bug out, fury coursing through his veins. “What do you mean, you’ve got me? Am I bugged? Did you somehow bug me, Omar? To do surveillance for you?”
“Motherfucker, I just meant that you know more about Xenia than I do, and you open up shit to me that I can’t get. This ain’t new information. What the hell is the matter with you?”
Doc let Omar go then took a step back, running his right hand through his hair. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He and Omar did talk regularly, despite having only had that one transaction in the park. Doc was planning to sell more to Omar, and Omar was planning to open more doors for Doc. It had only been a few days since Doc had learned that Xenia had more for sale than he’d ever before been permitted to see. Omar hadn’t set him up with Killian and taken his usual man out of the picture. The notion that Omar had sent him in to spy on Xenia was ludicrous. Kane’s theories had burrowed under Doc’s skin.
“It’s been a rough few days.”
“I guess, shit,” said Omar, shaking out his suit coat. He put a hand on Doc’s arm in what seemed to be a gesture of peacemaking. “Let’s go inside. Okay? Get a coffee. You drink coffee, don’t you?”
Doc did drink coffee, but something else occurred to him as well. He’d heard those men in the metal suits talking about giving Kai a drug called Neuralin. Doc knew about Neuralin because a few of his clients used it recreationally to enhance the effects of some of the deeper neural implants he’d sold them. Doc had even suggested it to Nicolai for use with his creativity wetchip. Neuralin was a stimulant. Hypercaffeine was easily as strong of a stimulant. The two weren’t pharmaceutical analogues, but Doc thought they might be close enough. After his time on the Orion, he literally needed a jolt.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll buy,” said Omar. “See how great I am? You kick my ass, and I’ll still lay out the green for you.”
Green, thought Doc. Then he said, “You have dollars?”
Omar gave him a look. “It’s an expression, brother. A common one. Someone really fucked you up, didn’t they?”
Doc sighed. Of course. Nobody actually carried green. For one, it was no longer legal tender. He closed his eyes, realizing as he did it that he was feeding Omar power like nursing a vampire from an open artery. The closed eyes, the willingness to let Omar pay. But Doc didn’t have the strength to resist.
“I need my coffee,” he said, forcing his eyes open. With them closed, he’d felt dizzy.
Omar clapped a hand on Doc’s back and led him from the alley and toward the door. “Cool. We’ll get you one. We’ll get you two. Then you’ll tell me what’s up. And you say it has to do with…”
Omar was interrupted when they reached the Starbucks door and a pair of green-shirted holographic people appeared.
“Welcome to Starbucks!” said the one on the door’s right, a thin woman with blonde hair.
The Hispanic hologram on the left shoved something in front of Doc’s face. It looked like a giant sugar packet. “How would you like to experience the full flavor of a freshly made Starbucks latte at home?”
“Fuck off,” said Omar.
They pushed directly through the holograms. Unperturbed, the holograms followed them and continued to pitch the instant latte packets while Doc and Omar descended a moving walkway to the lower level, where the coffee shop spread out, free of the confining streets above.
The lobby was small by Starbucks standards, seemingly only a hundred yards square. Beam posts were spaced throughout the sitting space, which occupied most of the store. The posts were really only for people who wanted or needed to plug in, and most modern Starbucks had removed them and gone fully to Fi connections. Only the oldest handhelds and tablets operated at substandard Fi speeds, and these days, almost nobody brought tablets with them anyway. Doc never carried one outside his apartment. Why would he? As long as your Beam ID was clean, your data was encrypted and stored on The Beam, accessible wherever you wanted it via any public screen. Sure, some people were paranoid and kept their data on slip drives or personal devices, but those were the same people who still used printers.
A green-shirted, obese male hologram walked up and stood in front of Doc and Omar. Doc was annoyed. He just wanted to sit and have some coffee. He was in no mood to deal with these fucking things.
“Welcome to Starbucks!” said the hologram. “What can I…?”
“Fuck off,” said Doc, taking a page from Omar’s book. He walked straight at the hologram, collided with it, and bounced off.
“Just using The Beam then?” said the hologram — who, judging by his nametag, was actually a clerk named Greg.
“Sorry,” said Doc. “I thought you weren’t there.”
“I just want a trenta coffee. Black,” said Omar. He looked at Doc then apologetically toward the clerk. “What you want, Doc?”
“A shitload of hypercaffeine.”
“How about a Suicide?” said Greg.
That sounded splendid to Doc, regardless of whether the clerk was offering him a drink or suggesting he kill himself.
Doc nodded. The clerk’s fingers moved at his sides.
“Will that be all for you?”
“Yeah, man, thanks,” said Omar.
“Which section would you like? Canvas, VR, immersion…”
“Just chairs, man. Just chairs. Tell me you have plain old chairs.”
“We have a section of Beam chairs. There are no dedicated canvases — except for projected ones, of course — but they’ll remember your position from last time you were here, how soft or firm you like the cushions, what type of music you prefer streamed, assuming you have an implant…”
“Just chairs,” Omar repeated. Doc wished they’d both hurry. He was feeling weaker and weaker the longer he stood in the cavernous space filled with Beam zombies. He must have been running on adrenaline earlier, and now he was out. He felt like an empty sack, about to collapse.
“Just chairs?”
Doc faltered, and Omar caught him, glaring impatiently at the clerk. “What the hell, man? Chairs. Upholstery! Stuffing! Wood frames and shit!”
Greg’s asinine smile didn’t falter. Doc seemed to remember reading somewhere that Starbucks’s training program specifically coached baristas and clerks on how to deal with rude customers and emerge with their positivity intact.
“Section 14, seats 4 and 5,” said Greg.
“Are those seats somewhat private?” Omar asked.
“It’s just a grouping of two. Should be comfy.” The clerk pointed, smiling stupidly. “Back against the wall, past the gamer area with the VR goggles.”
Omar thanked the clerk and, holding Doc’s arm, led him toward their chairs.
“You didn’t pay,” said Doc.
“Noah Fucking West, Doc. He scanned me. What the hell did someone do to you?” Doc thought he detected genuine alarm and/or concern in Omar’s voice. That was encouraging.
“Stuff,” Doc answered.
He squinted and stumbled, following Omar past legions of chairs and reclining lounges equipped with different Beam hookups. There was a section with huge unfolding screens that were attached to the arms of plush chairs. There was a section where people kicked back with holo-projected screens and airboards. Some areas were open and airy, and some chairs were clustered into what looked almost like lib
rary carrels. Toward the back was what looked like a cubicle farm for customers who wanted true privacy. They passed the VR section the clerk had indicated, where a handful of patrons lay motionless save for their twitching hands. Coffees sat on small tables beside the immersed customers, though Doc supposed they had likely gone cold.
When they arrived at their chairs in the tiny non-tech session, Doc’s cochlear implant tried to wake up and tell him that his order was ready. He shook his head, annoyed, to turn it off. You couldn’t be truly disconnected inside a Starbucks, but he wanted to pretend. The announcement was intrusive, seeing as it was only a proximity echo coming from Omar, who’d placed the order. Doc’s own order, had he placed it, wouldn’t have worked, seeing as the implant was currently broadcasting his spoof.
“Our drinks are ready,” said Doc.
“I heard.”
Doc slumped into an overstuffed chair, feeling like he weighed a thousand pounds. Once seated, he was hit with a certainty that he’d never be able to lift himself up again. In front of him, a small circle in the table between the chairs slid open, and a pneumatic dumbwaiter raised two coffees from below. Doc grabbed the nearest one, sipped, found it intoxicating, then tried to gulp. But it was too hot.
After a few minutes of quiet sipping, Doc found his head returning. Hypercaffeine was highly addictive (one reason Starbucks was one of the largest companies in the NAU), but Doc didn’t care. Right now, it was humping his neural receptors like dipping into a fine woman, and was perfectly welcome.
“Better?” said Omar.
Doc felt his usual devil-may-care smile crawling back onto his lips. “Better,” he said, nodding.
“What happened to you?” said Omar.
It may or may not have been wise of Doc, spilling his guts to Omar, but by this point he had ceased giving a shit. It didn’t seem likely that Omar was directly responsible for his recently ditched trouble, and any new trouble Omar could get him into would be gentle by comparison. So Doc told Omar about how he’d been shown into a restricted room at Xenia and that he’d seen something he wasn’t supposed to see. He told Omar about how Xenia had tried to wipe him, how he’d kept his memories, and how they’d caught up with him anyway. He told him about the ride into the sticks, about Kai and the Beamers, about finding Nicolai in the cell after Nicolai had been snatched from Doc’s apartment, and a lot about the Orion. He concluded by telling the only man he felt he could trust (though he could never actually trust him at all) about how Kai had saved the day by bursting in with two soldiers in strange suits, then how she had then tried to get Doc to stay with the soldiers despite having ample opportunity to escape.