by Sean Platt
“What about you?” And, Dominic thought but didn’t add, what about me?
“I had a small supply of dust. But I also connected all the time, so I was never truly without both.” She looked at Dominic, and suddenly he was sure she knew about his Lunis habit, shameful as it was. Sparing him and answering his latent question in the same breath, she added, “The only people who’d find withdrawal easier were those who’d never been highly connected to begin with. Like you.”
Like you.
Dominic indicated the handheld Leah was holding, deciding to diffuse the awkward moment.
“Did you reach your man?”
“Yeah. That was interesting.”
“Why?”
Leah looked like she might be deciding whether or not to broach a topic. Finally, she said, “Have you ever heard of Shadow?”
“I know the kind that follows me around when it’s sunny.”
“The Beam guy. Kind of an underground rabble-rouser. Like a whistle-blower.”
“I don’t really dig drama,” Dominic said. He found people like that annoying. They were almost always deluded do-gooders with unrealistic conceptions of what real life was like. Those who wanted to scrub corruption didn’t understand that greased palms could also be used for good, or applied as leverage. Those who wanted to solve poverty didn’t get how many of the poor were there by choice, seeing as they were Enterprise and merely wanted success their way rather than getting it through honest work. Groups who crafted exposés about crooked companies seldom thought to consider all the Directorate families those companies kept afloat. The problem with do-gooders wasn’t their intention. It was their naive belief that anything was ever black and white.
“He’s in some of the hacker circles I orbit,” Leah said. “Solid guy, if a bit paranoid and scattered. He contacted me a while ago with something about the Beau Monde.”
Dominic rolled his eyes. “Oh, right. This conspiracy shit I’ve heard of.”
“We’ve been talking lately. He had some issue with the Prime Statements. It’s more than you’d want to hear about, but it’s opened some questions. Questions that bother me, too.”
“Because you’re into conspiracy theory?”
Again, Leah looked like she might be deciding whether to continue. “Because I think I’ve been affected.”
“Affected how?”
“Remember my story about taking that drug in college and surfing The Beam afterward?”
Dominic shook his head. That didn’t ring a bell.
Leah half laughed, running a hand between her eyes and the roots of her thick pink dreadlocks. “Shit, I really am tired. It was Leo I told.” She waved her hand. “I won’t bore you with all of it. I just felt like I had some insight into The Beam’s core — to a center of intention; that’s the only way I know to put it — at the middle of it all. Crumb was part of it somehow because I think I sensed him in there as the man he is now…as Stephen York…because he was one of The Beam’s creators. But there were more, and bits and pieces have been slowly coming back ever since I had that talk with Leo. I know now that I saw others inside, too. There’s another guy, with dark, serious eyes, such that I can see things on The Beam. He’s as important to The Beam’s core as York, almost. I’m not sure who he is, only what he feels like. I imagine him as rugged. The kind of guy who’d use a bow to hunt; I’m sure of it.” She held up a finger. “Wait. No. A crossbow.”
“What does this have to do with anything?” Dominic asked.
“I’ve started to remember other things, too. Like SerenityBlue.”
Dominic laughed. But when he looked back at Leah, she seemed serious.
“Really, Dom. She’s real. We’ve met her, me and Leo. Crumb has too.”
“Bullshit.”
“But there’s more. I think she and I are…related somehow. She looks different to everyone. To Leo, she looks like me. And I think I know why.”
“You sure you’ve run out of drugs?” Dominic laughed, but Leah was still dead serious.
“I think I created her.”
“What the hell does that mean, Leah?”
“I think she melted off of me. I left something behind when I was swimming The Beam. And I can’t shake the feeling that she matters to all of this. Sometimes, it’s like I feel her right behind me. Watching. And maybe she’s always been watching me, if for no other reason than we’re connected.”
“Mmm-hmm. By The Beam.”
“Maybe and maybe not. Or maybe, but in a way different than you’d think. I’m dosed heavily on Lunis when I do my best Beamwalking. I think it works because it does what Lunis does, and pushes the need for connection out of my way. Tech connection, I mean. So that when I walk, I’m walking a different kind of connection.”
“Maybe you should start over, about this Shadow guy,” Dominic said, making an effort to keep the disbelief out of his voice. Leah was one of his few remaining friends. Leo had burned a lot of trust when he’d tried to kill Dominic, Omar was a slippery shithead, Kate might be playing either side, and the entire force had been charmed right out of its panties by Quark PD. Dominic didn’t want to believe Leah was losing it, too. Maybe this was just a necessary bit of hippie garbage, and he could get past it to keep her as an ally.
Leah seemed to recalibrate. “Before Shadow contacted me, he reached out to someone else. Someone I’ve seen over and over but have never trusted for a reason I can’t even say. He goes by the handle Integer7. But the reason I told you the thing about SerenityBlue?” Leah paused, and Dominic sensed her biggest hesitation yet. “I wonder if maybe I created him, too.”
This time, Dominic did laugh. It was too much.
“He’s in my head, Dom! I think I saw him that first day — the day I mentioned, in college. But I shut him out. Until these past few days, I thought he was just some asshole online. Now I’m remembering that I may have known him all along. That he might be…part of me, like maybe Serenity is.”
Dominic held up his hands. He wanted to be gentle, but he had to say what was on his mind.
“Leah. Listen to me. You’re tired, like you said. But do you hear what you’re saying. SerenityBlue? She’s real…but also you created her? And now this guy…you created him, too? Don’t you think it’s possible that this whole thing with Leo and the Organas has been incredibly stressful, and you really just need some sleep?”
“I forgot about him! I forgot that I met him years ago, floating on The Beam!”
“How do you know the thought that ‘I met him years ago’ isn’t the one that’s bullshit? Why are you so convinced that all you’ve always believed has to be what’s wrong? It’s a faulty memory, not a cover-up.”
“I don’t think so, Dom.” Leah was trying to speak reasonably, but he’d made her both angry and defensive.
“Okay. Just set that aside. Put a pin in it. What did Shadow have to say, and why do we care?” Dominic realized that might sound dismissive of her story, so he clarified: “I mean, does what he said have anything to do with what’s happening now, with us, with our current problems?”
Leah bobbed her head, making an obvious effort to focus. “Maybe. I didn’t think so, but the more I consider it: maybe.”
“How?”
“He’s all worked up about some big event that’s just around the corner. He tried to do something with the Primes, as I mentioned — ”
“What did he try to do with the Primes?”
Leah cocked her head. “Are you being a cop right now?”
“Just curious.”
“Nothing. It didn’t work anyway. He wants to understand Shift is all. And to tell you the truth, so do I. So do a lot of people. And this event seems important to figuring that out.”
Dominic’s intuition prickled. “What event?” Then, more to the point: “What does this have to do with us?”
“Some big shindig tomorrow. Some guy named…Browning?”
“Braemon?” Dominic felt his teeth wanting to clench. “Was it Braemon?”
“Craig, Leah. Craig Braemon.” And inside, he thought, Fucking hell.
Leah squinted at Dominic. “What is it?”
“Who is this Shadow guy?” Dominic asked. It came out like a demand.
“I don’t know. He’s anonymous, like all of Null.”
“But he knows who you are. He pinged you.”
“He knows me by my alias. The ping came through a secure system, also anonymous.”
Dominic stood. “Dammit, Leah. What did you tell this guy?”
“Nothing.” Pause. “Nothing about the Organas.”
“What about me? Did you mention me to him? Did he ask?”
“What? No! Why would he ask about you?”
“I’m in charge of citywide security for the Respero fundraiser Craig Braemon is throwing tomorrow. I have…people going to the party.”
“Cops?”
“No. Friends.”
“What does that have to do with Shadow?”
“He could be NPS. He could be anyone, Leah! He’s pumping you for information. Is he the one who started feeding you bullshit about the bad man on The Beam? The one who you created?”
“No! What the hell, Dom?”
Dominic shook his head, suddenly worked up. No wonder this had all seemed so wrong. Never ignore instinct. Never.
“Good cop/bad cop, Leah. That’s what he’s doing. The bad cop is your boogeyman. The good cop is Shadow. He knows that you know something. He’s working you to get to me.”
“He didn’t even mention you!”
“Of course he didn’t. I wouldn’t, either. Let you reveal that tidbit on your own so you think it’s your idea. You told him something, though, didn’t you?”
“He told me shit too, Dom,” Leah replied, crossing her arms.
“And what did you tell him? You still haven’t said.”
“Nothing! Nothing that matters to any of this.”
“But something, right? What was it? What did you volunteer after he didn’t even ask for it?”
“I…it’s not even relevant.”
That simple sentence changed her face. Dominic could see it: Leah knew he was right. She knew she’d been stupid and sent the ship sailing.
Dominic breathed heavily, once, then sat. After a long moment, Leah followed.
“I found something on The Beam,” she said. “I meant to tell you about it. There just wasn’t time, what with all the breaking dangerous criminals out of jail and all.” She said the last semi-spitefully, maybe reminding Dom that he hadn’t spent his day toeing the line, either.
“Okay. Okay, just tell me. What did you find on The Beam?”
Leah spun her story. Dominic sat back, taking it in. Little by little, his skin began to feel cold. The transcript she’d happened upon, chronicling a meeting between three people intent on killing a fourth, squared with much of what he’d discovered over the years, poking at a patch of ground where he’d been forbidden to dig.
An old crime scene with two out-of-place victims who’d seemed positioned rather than natural to the location. A crime that a cleric had come to take away from Dominic, intent on the data worm that should never have been there in the first place.
He shouldn’t have poked at that old case, but over the years he had. And what he’d found had revealed three names:
Colin Hawes, deceased.
Marshall Oates, deceased.
And of course Rachel Ryan, head of Ryan Enterprises — whose association to the victims had mysteriously vanished the day they’d died, according to what Dominic had cornered the clerics into telling him.
High rollers, all three.
Leah sent the transcript from her buffer memory to Dominic’s handheld, and when he read it, more names surfaced.
One of the people mentioned in the transcript was Clive. In the company of Hawes, Oates, and Ryan, that might be Clive Spooner — the man who’d built the famous moon base.
And Alexa. That could be Alexa Mathis, whereabouts unknown.
Dominic looked up from the transcript. “Holy West. Do you know what this is that you’ve found, Leah?”
“I told you. It’s some sort of ultra-privileged group. A splinter within it, actually. Plotting to kill…” Leah’s eyes widened.
Because that was the last name in the transcript: York. As in Stephen York, aka Crumb.
“Did you even tell him?” Dominic demanded.
Her eyes were still wide, shocked, and vulnerable. “No. I never had a chance. Too much happened right as I found it. I tried to call Leo, but of course he was offline. You weren’t answering. I tried running back to the village, but NPS beat me there.”
“Where is he? Where is York?”
“I…I don’t know.” Then, covering: “Dom, that transcript is from forever ago. It can’t possibly matter now.”
Dominic began to pace. “I don’t like it. At all.”
“It’s from the ’60s! Before I was even born!”
“I was a detective in ’63, freshly recruited, called in on a double homicide that was snatched from my partner and me by Quark PD clerics. The victims were two very wealthy, very powerful figures, Colin Hawes and Marshall Oates. The kind of people who float in the same high-level cloud you just told me about.”
“So?”
“That case bugged me for years. I couldn’t stop picking at it. I got the impression that they were two people who’d pissed off someone they shouldn’t — not in a Mob sense, more like a double-cross. So what if Hawes and Oates are two of the people in this transcript?”
“How could you possibly conclude that — ”
Dominic held up his handheld displaying the transcript. “The dates line up. And these two weren’t from the neighborhood. A data worm had shown up to erase them, but we got it in time. Someone was trying to cover it up, and it attracted all the highest kinds of attention.”
“But that was 2063. Why would it matter right now? To…to Shadow, of all people?”
Dominic sighed. “Just a few days ago, there was an incursion at DZPD station.”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“I’m not saying you did. But it happened. Someone was targeting a specific bit of information, which I was able to conclude had been accessed during the outage. It was about Crumb. The record of the first time I met him.” Again, he held up the handheld. “Not long after this, I was brought in on a vagrant case. Which was ridiculous at the time because the city has tons of vagrants, and I’d just been promoted. I was annoyed, but my mind turned to it after that break-in, after the information was stolen. Because do you know who that vagrant was?”
“Crumb,” Leah said.
“Crumb.”
“So what does it mean, Dom?”
“What if I was sent to pick up Crumb? Specifically me?”
“Why?”
“Maybe someone knew I was a softie. You know about Chrissy. I took her to Leo to get her away from Respero, so it seems a decent bet that I’d do the same for the next person I was ordered to take. Take them up into the hills, where The Beam couldn’t find them.”
Leah looked overwhelmed, but it didn’t matter. Dominic didn’t know how all of these puzzle pieces went together, but he’d been a cop for long enough to believe they did. The connections were there. He just had to find them.
“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have answered Shadow’s ping. It seemed…”
“You told him what you told him.” Dominic waved a dismissive hand. “What did he tell you?”
“But you don’t trust him. Why does it matter what he told me?”
“Someone could be watching. Using him like they may be using you. What did he say?”
“He just talked about the event tomorrow. The Braemon thing. I don’t know why.”
“Craig Braemon was accused of Shift tampering in 2091. Maybe that’s what your guy is after, if he wants to understand Shift. He’ll never get in to find out about that fundraiser, though. Unless
he’s secretly a bigwig of some sort, he’ll just have to watch what’s shown on The Beam.”
“He’s not going in. He sent someone.”
“Who?”
“A guy he’s been following. Nicholas…no, Nicolai somebody.”
Dominic’s eyes closed. His head sagged. Finally. Finally, things were slotting into place.
“Costa. Nicolai Costa.”
“That’s the guy,” Leah said. “Do you know him?”
Dominic knew Nicolai because Kate had mentioned him. And if Kate had thought to mention Costa, that probably meant Omar had put the idea in her head…while, of course, making Kate think the idea to mention Costa to Dominic had been her own.
The plan. Omar’s stupid plan. He’d downloaded a ghost then given it to Kate. The idea that Kate could use the disembodied Beam shell of one of Omar’s cronies had seemed ridiculous from the start, but Omar had continued to say, Just trust me, Dom. Just trust the plan.
Either Shadow or this Integer7 must be Omar in disguise, now milking information from Leah. Biding his time, setting pieces in place to do some Shift-tampering of his own. And now Leah had handed Omar what he needed on a silver platter.
Omar was connected to Thomas Stahl.
Thomas Stahl was connected to Nicolai Costa.
And although the official story called for Kate to use some random man’s shell to breach Craig Braemon’s system, Dominic didn’t believe that was the actual plan. If anyone had left a shell behind on The Beam by vanishing a long time ago, it would have to be Stephen York. And although Thomas Stahl wouldn’t give Kate access to Braemon’s system, Stephen York — uncredited second father of The Beam and probable target of frustrated assassins — just might.
“What, Dominic?” Leah looked confused, nervous, ashamed, guilty. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that if someone could create a decoy version of Stephen York on The Beam, it would solve a lot of a certain bad guy’s unsolvable problems.”