by Sean Platt
“Flat 1,” Dominic said.
“I thought Flat 1 was destroyed.”
“The subbasements are still accessible through the old subway,” Dominic told him.
“I thought the subway was destroyed.”
But rather than answering, Dominic asked another question.
“Do you remember anything that happened? After you left the compound?”
“Of course.”
“You weren’t too far gone?”
Dominic’s question raised one inside Leo. Forget about how far gone he’d been when Agent Smith and the NPS had brought him in; why was he not far gone now? The heavy feeling of withdrawal had sat atop Leo’s shoulders for weeks, but now he couldn’t feel it at all. He hurt, but was clear-headed with no withdrawal or hangover.
“What did you do to me, Dominic?” Leo asked. The absence of Lunis withdrawal symptoms suddenly seemed very, very interesting. He’d ached all the way into the city, then even more after NPS had tossed him into the old, bars-and-bricks cells appropriate to Organa prisoners. As the organization’s leader, he’d been given a cell to himself, but he’d hurt plenty even then, watching the others in their communal cells beating each other nearly to death. But beyond being in the cells (probably the “do you remember” that Dominic was referring to) was lost in a fog.
“Leah got NPS out of the way using the nanos she left behind the Quark firewall. Maybe you owe her an apology for yelling at her about that.”
“Yeah, you owe me an apology,” said Leah’s voice, both sarcastic and happy.
“And you broke me out?”
“All of you,” Dominic said.
“Where are the others?”
“Gassed. There was a suppressor system we managed to get operational again, meant to quell prison riots back when the Flat was in use.”
“But you didn’t gas me.”
Leo looked at the speaker when there was no response. Then he craned his head around the room, trying to find whatever visual device they might be using to watch him.
“Hell, guys. It’s hard to talk to you when you won’t just come in here and look me in the eye.”
Another moment of silence. There was a sigh, and then Dominic said, “Hang on.”
Several minutes dragged by. Leo used them to assess himself and try to recall all that was missing. He held his obliviated fist to his face, eyes flicking to craters in the wall and door, deciding the painted picture was perfectly clear. At some point when Leo had been awake and alone, he’d punched his way around the room, ruining his surgical work and baring his old Gaia fist beneath. The idea made his stomach swim. There had been a day when Leo hadn’t been a stranger to violence, but that day was long past.
He listened to Leah and Dominic for a while, waiting, before realizing that he wasn’t listening to them at all. They’d left their station by the microphone, but he could still somehow hear their approach. After a while, he got it: Leah was broadcasting something from her implants. Through something inside himself, he could sense her connection reaching out to him. To Leo, what Leah was mulling felt like worry. Dominic, on the other hand, was a black hole.
The door opened. Dominic entered first. Leo took a step forward before registering the large weapon his old friend had leveled at his chest. Leah followed and stood behind Dominic, quiet. She closed the door, and they both waited, looking at Leo as if he were something to pity. Or fear.
“What’s this?”
“I’m sorry, Leo. I love you like a father, but the last time we were this close, you tried to kill me.”
“Leo,” Leah said, cutting him off before he could reply. “Dom thinks you intended to get caught by NPS. He says you knew I could use the nanos I’d left behind to get you out. What I don’t know is why.”
Then, below her breath and without moving her lips, Leo heard Leah say, “handshake 0419 flat 1 protocol prisoner record F107 dash 343 enter — ”
“Leah,” Leo said. “I can hear you.”
Leah squinted then looked at Dominic.
“Not your voice. I mean I can hear your feed. You’re entering me into the prison system’s roster.”
She looked back at Leo. “What do you mean?”
“Prisoner F107 something. That’s me, right?”
Leah’s forehead bunched. “How did you know that?”
Leo tapped his head. “I had an add-on installed a very long time ago that could break coded wireless transmissions. Not new codes, I’m sure, but codes this prison’s canvas might use.”
“You have a code breaker?”
Leo looked down at his fist. Even if Dominic hadn’t told her everything he’d learned about Leo’s past and Gaia’s hammer, she’d be able to see plenty of evidence in his alloy knuckles.
Screw it, he thought.
“Why are my augments coming back online?”
Dominic looked at him. “I thought you didn’t have any add-ons left in you?”
“Too much trouble to remove some of them,” Leo said. “But I had them deactivated forever ago. They’re supposed to be inert.” Then he shook his head, realizing just how much he could hear now that he was focusing. He could hear some of the other Organas — not through their own unaugmented heads but through the prison’s network itself. He could hear The Beam beyond. His old memory buffers, in fact, felt like they wanted to upload and sync. His repair nanos, which he’d had flashed decades ago and should be long dead, were waking up, taking cues from a distant medical database. A heads-up display kept wanting to pop into place. Leo had mostly forgotten the trick of banishing it, so he blinked until it slid out of his field of view.
“Maybe it’s the prison’s canvas that’s somehow reactivating them,” Leah said. “We had to open the Fi to crack the cells.” But Leo knew bullshit when he heard it, and he could see the strange look on Leah’s face.
“Where are the others?” he asked.
“Contained. Separated. There were enough cells left here to give them each their own.”
“How?” Leo asked.
Dominic answered. “During renewal, a lot was processed quickly just to get things done and outrun the threatening collapse. The Flat’s sublevels were blocked off but left in place. Most of it flooded, but nearby reclaimers have sucked a bunch of the water out since. The cells don’t smell great, but they still hold prisoners.”
“Are the other Organas…”
“They’re fine. Just gassed, like I said. We tried to let them up once they were in their own cells, but when we did, they proved to still be…unstable.” Dominic nodded around the room at the smashed walls — walls Leo had punched into submission when he’d been unstable. Which, for some reason, he wasn’t anymore.
Before Leo could ask, a data clot came loose and surged through Leo’s mind. It lit up everything for the briefest of moments — and in that flash, it felt as if he’d just regained use of forgotten limbs. He felt like he could do anything — maybe that he could see the future. Old images discharged from partially blanked storage in his ocular add-ons, and in an instant Leo saw friends who’d died and family he’d all but forgotten. The nostalgia, delivered by technology he’d turned from decades ago, almost knocked him to his knees.
It should have been disorienting — but instead of feeling disoriented, Leo wanted more. How had he thought his old add-ons were dead and deactivated? He could already feel himself rejoining the worldwide collective as they lit up. He could sense hundreds and thousands of other people gathered around, whispering in his ear.
The more he felt, the more he wanted to feel. He had to get out. He had to leave this place. There were things he needed to do. There were places he desperately needed to go, people he needed to find. The new sense of connection filled all his old gaps, filling his previously torn mind with a million soothing voices.
“Put down the gun, Dominic,” Leo said.
Dominic lowered the barrel but kept the weapon at the ready.
“I’m safe now. Can’t you tell that just by talking to
me?”
“You’re still in Lunis withdrawal.”
“I was. But now I’m on Lunis’s version of methadone.”
“What the hell are you — ”
Leah cut Dominic off, speaking to Leo.
“Is that why you did it? Is that why you got yourselves caught? Why you got all of them caught and hauled in to NPS?”
Leo nodded.
“What?” Dominic asked, still not getting it.
“Lunis is the cure for technology withdrawal — for the confusion that comes when highly connected people come to disconnected places,” Leo said, now advancing with his palms up. “So when we ran out of Lunis up in the village, something struck me: With NPS’s help, we could return to the city and to the center of the network, for forcible processing. And if we did that — ” he glanced at Leah, “ — we could stop chasing the cure and instead go back to the disease.”
Dominic looked at Leah then Leo. “Okay. So how do we handle the rest of the Organas?”
It was Leah who answered.
“We scavenge all the Beam-connected hardware we can find in the prison’s contraband lockers,” she said, “and introduce Organa to its new drug.”
“She knew?”
Kai waited for Micah to settle. He was always like this: calm and stoic through even the worst of what he already knew but tending to blow when learning something unpleasant for the first time. In the past, Micah’s tendency to pop had scared Kai. He’d had been like a father to her — the kind of dad who showed his love by ruining the public image of kids who pulled her hair on the playground. Those kids, if Kai had known Micah when she’d been a girl, would never have been able to get a job in public service, thanks to all the scandal. And forget extra snacks after nap time.
But now, watching Micah’s reaction, Kai found herself strangely unaffected. She might be getting numb to him. There was something about fearing a man for months that stripped some shock from the ordinary.
“Yes, she knew,” Kai repeated.
“Because you gave yourself away. Because she could read you the minute you walked in. I told you, she’s not just some delicate old lady. She’s smart and dangerous. And security there isn’t a joke.”
Kai rolled her eyes, slouching into a doorframe. “Oh, give me some credit. Do you think I went in there with a dagger raised? Maybe one of those little pearl-handled pistols? Or at least with my hands out. Admit it: You think I greeted her like this.” Kai made strangling hands and held them out toward Micah’s neck.
He sighed, his body language a mixture of defeat and annoyance. If Rachel knew that Micah wanted her dead, he knew perfectly well she wouldn’t be dying without granting permission. Fortunately (and this was the part Kai would tell him when he was done pouting), the old woman’s permission was exactly what Kai had left with.
“She’s a snake, Kai. She invented deceit. You never should have gone over just to talk. Why did you do that? Do you always do that?”
“This time felt different. I don’t get the impression she ever leaves the building. And the building has security, as you said. I needed to get the lay of the place.”
“Which allowed her to see right through you.”
“You’re not understanding,” Kai said. “She opened the door already knowing who I was and why I was there.”
Except that wasn’t really right, was it? The Rachel who’d opened the door for Kai had been just another part of an elaborate simulation.
“What do you mean?”
“‘So you’ve come to kill me.’ That’s what she said. I didn’t even say hello. That was her hello.”
“She said that?”
Kai nodded. “Then she rather casually mentioned that she knew you were behind it. Didn’t seem particularly perturbed.”
Micah’s eyes snapped wide. In that second, Kai saw whites all the way around his gray irises. Then he became Micah again: cool, calm, collected, calculating.
“You’re sure.”
“That she wasn’t particularly perturbed?”
Micah’s lips pressed into an annoyed line. Kai was enjoying this rare turnabout, but loving it too much would be a mistake.
“That she knew I sent you,” he clarified, “to take care of her.”
“I don’t remember her exact words, but yes, she knew. Before I said anything.” Kai couldn’t check those exact words, either, because something in Alpha Place had zeroed her recorder. Kai’s memory for details was decent, but she’d come to depend on Beam records and had let her native mind atrophy more than she liked. It was very human. It was disappointing.
Micah began pacing back and forth in front of his Dali painting, and Kai had a strange moment wondering what family get-togethers would be like when everyone knew some family members had contracted to kill others. The guilt mongering between siblings must be intense: You’re going to kill Mom? Aw, I’m telling!
“So what did she say?” Micah asked. “When she got it all out there, about me, about you…what did she say about it?”
Kai chewed her cheek. She had to give him something.
“Actually, she said I could do it.”
“She said….” He trailed off as if he’d missed the end of Kai’s sentence.
“She said I could kill her. She gave me permission.”
“Just like that?”
“Not just like that, actually. I had to audition.”
“Audition?”
Kai peeled away from the doorframe and walked toward Micah. She rather liked the feeling of making Micah reel for a change. Throughout their relationship, he’d been her provider and protector — perhaps a perverse sort of friend. But there had always been a leash between them, with Micah holding the end. She was given a home in the Presque Beau, but the threat was always there: Do something Micah doesn’t like, and it all goes away. For once, she was delivering some of the punches. And best of all, they were Rachel’s punches, not even Kai’s. No wonder she found herself liking the old woman so much.
“Yes, Micah. She made me prove myself.”
“How?”
“She asked how I’d kill her. On your orders.”
Micah flinched. Kai stepped closer.
“Would I use my hands to kill her?” she said, “But no; there were reasons hands wouldn’t work. A weapon? An improvised weapon, like something in the room? She gave me reasons those wouldn’t work, either. It wasn’t even rebuttal, and it certainly wasn’t defense. Honestly, Micah, what your mother gave me was half coaching — troubleshooting, maybe.”
“And the other half?”
“Trial. Testing. She wasn’t going to give me the answer. She might have thought I didn’t have one, and the whole thing was a joke — a way of sticking out her tongue at me and saying, ‘Ha ha. You and Micah can’t get me.’”
“That sounds like her. That wasn’t a test. That was just bullshit.”
Kai gave a sexy, taunting smirk. This time, she reached out and ran his lapel between her long fingers and thumb.
“It wasn’t bullshit. Because I passed. And after that, she told me exactly how it had to be.”
“How it had to be?”
“How I’d kill her. Where. And when.”
“What did you do?” His voice lowered. “She’s not dead already, is she?”
Kai almost laughed. If her assignment was already complete, it wasn’t the kind of thing Micah would be uncertain about this far into a conversation. She could get her hooks into him. And she’d thought Micah Ryan was so impervious and unflappable. Just went to show that mothers always carried knives nobody else had at their disposal.
Kai wanted to answer, What did I do to prove I could do it? I killed her, that’s what…but no, she’s not dead.
Instead she said, “I showed her that I’m a creative thinker.”
“How?”
“Maybe you’d like to do this, if you have so many questions.”
“Just tell me, Kai,” he snapped.
She took a long, deliberate sigh. Then, reac
hing the end of her teasing seduction, she gave him what he wanted.
“After Nicolai went to see her, I pulled a hair off his coat. I had someone I know make a booby-trapped red blood cell that matched her DNA.”
“And?”
“And the rest is a trade secret. But it must have passed muster because she gave it her thumbs-up, figuratively speaking.”
“What the hell does that mean, ‘passed muster’?”
He seemed so scattered. It was delightful to see Micah not in charge for once. Kai still wasn’t sure what he was supposed to get out of any of this, though she assumed it boiled down to advancement: one lion clawing his way to the top of the pride after killing his kin. Micah had promised Kai advancement, implying that Rachel was in the way…but knowing Micah as she did, Kai thought it was equally likely that the trade was more quid pro quo: You solve my problem, and I’ll solve yours.
Kai sent her mind back to her discussion with Rachel — the real Rachel, after the sim had ended. Both players had their motives, and Kai seemed to have ended up the broker in between.
“She said that if you were going to have her killed, that was fine. She’s lived long enough. She’s tired. She told me she’s expected to die for a while, but that someone kept propping her up.” Kai pointed at Micah, indicating the irony of wanting to kill someone he kept saving. “But she said that if you were going to succeed, your assassination attempt had to be believable.”
“Believable?”
“Yes. Because if I did something that her security or internal protections would normally prevent, it would be obvious that she’d taken a dive, like a prizefighter losing on purpose. I guess it’s important that you come out looking like an honest victor.”
Micah said nothing, looking both angry and lost. This hadn’t turned out as he’d imagined, and now he must be wondering whether Rachel submitting to die was the same as her ending up dead as a surprise. The result would be the same, but now there was another ingredient in the mix: his mother’s plans, hiding in unknown shadows.
“That’s also why she said it has to happen in public. If she dies in her apartment, Alpha Place will cover it up.” Kai was unable to keep a disgusted, ironic smile from her lips when she delivered the rest: “And if that happens, you won’t get credit.”