The Lazarus Protocol: A Sci-Fi Corporate Technothriller (The SynCorp Saga Book 1)

by Pourteau, Chris

  Remy twisted on the bed. On the wall was the sign of Cassandra, a half-globe shared with the half-face of a long-haired woman. The symbol of the New Earth movement. Stretching to see it made him flinch.

  “Why don’t I have a data signal?” he asked.

  The monk reached out and replaced the wayward chest monitor tab over Remy’s heart. “Only Cassandra may use data in Her house. The rest of us must soldier on in the old way.” He winked. “Face to face.”

  Remy decided not to ask why a god needed wireless access. “So this place is a Faraday cage, then?”

  “This place is many things,” the monk said with another maddening smile. “Your injuries were significant, forcing us to keep you in a medical coma for a few days. Perhaps you would care for some food?”

  Remy was hungry, but he shook his head. “I need to speak to whoever is in charge. Right away.”

  Donald effected a half-bow in his chair. “Speaking.”

  The pain meds were starting to wear off. Remy spotted a button near his left hand.

  “If you need more medicine, push the button,” the monk said. “You cannot overdose.”

  Remy’s index finger twitched. The searing feeling beneath the flash burns was worse, but he wanted a clear head. “There was a woman with me. Is she here?”

  Another broad smile. “You mean Elise. Would you like to see her?”

  “Yes,” Remy answered. He began to lever himself out of bed again, but his chest objected. Louder, now that the drugs in his system had waned.

  “I assure you, she is fine,” Donald said, placing a hand on Remy’s arm. “I am glad to reunite you two, but I have some questions first.”

  Remy’s temper flared. “I have some questions of my own. Like, what the hell happened in Alaska? Where’s that sonofabitch Rico? And—”

  “Mr. Cade,” the monk said in his quiet, commanding baritone. “All in good time. But first, you must answer my questions. This is not a negotiation.”

  Remy calmed down. “Fine.” He was in no position to negotiate, anyway.

  Donald adjusted his robes and sat back in his chair. “I know this may be difficult, but I need you to tell me about your actions in Vicksburg, Mississippi.”

  Remy’s face went flat. “That’s none of your goddamned business.”

  The monk’s pleasant expression hardened. “I am afraid you will have to make it my business, Mr. Cade. I know what the official reports say. What I don’t know is … what really happened?”

  “I appreciate all you’ve done for me here, really,” Remy forced himself to say. “But I’m going to get out of this bed—I don’t care how much it hurts—collect Elise, and we’ll be going.”

  Before he could move, the monk put a hand on his shoulder. Straining against it brought more loud protests from Remy’s throbbing ribcage.

  “Please.” Donald’s tone reflected his light touch: non- threatening but firm. “My intent is not to invade your privacy. But before I let you see Elise again, I need to hear your side of the story about Vicksburg.”

  Remy stopped fighting him. Just breathing was starting to hurt like hell. Moving felt crippling. He glanced down at the button that promised relief.

  “Then you’ll take me to Elise?”

  The monk nodded. Remy pushed the button, and within seconds, the weighted pain across his chest began to subside. He lay back and closed his eyes. “We didn’t know what we were getting into,” he began.

  “My platoon was assigned to crowd control for a squatter camp outside of Vicksburg. It was supposed to be easy duty. We were going to be traffic cops for a few days. These were just regular folks—American citizens—displaced from their homes by the storm. Carrying what they could. Hungry. Thirsty. It wasn’t their fault, not really. But they just kept coming. And they got desperate.” The drugs made it easier to talk.

  “The press called it a massacre, and the Pentagon stayed quiet. It was just easier to let the public believe a platoon of trigger-happy grunts wiped out a bunch of civilians than it was to face the truth.”

  The monk’s eyes were soft but curious. “And what’s the truth, Mr. Cade?”

  “We were set up. Ambushed, except we were the ones being attacked, not the other way around. We were a combat unit, damn it. Fresh from the Sinai, where every day we fought for survival. When you’re fighting insurgents abroad, it’s easy to see who’s the enemy. They look different, they talk different. Then all of a sudden you’re in Mississippi. New mission, but the same tools. But now, the face of the enemy was American citizens, not foreign terrorists. They looked like us. They talked like us. They were us.”

  He sat up, ignoring the dull pain in his chest. Telling the story again made it hard to sit still, hard to breathe even.

  “You want to know what happened? It’s simple. We did what solders do when they’re attacked. We fought back. My best friend died there along with a lot of good soldiers. Graves Diggers killed twenty-six insurgents—sorry, climate war refugees—including nine women and two fifteen-year-old identical twins from Acadia Parish, Louisiana. And the news drones got it all.

  “Vicksburg Massacre Kills Dozens of American Citizens—that was the headline on YourVoice. And that was my platoon’s epitaph. Dishonorably discharged, every single one of us. Lucky not to have been sentenced to Leavenworth, we were told, or prosecuted for murder under Mississippi law. Colonel Graves did what he could for us, but the brass let the media write the history. It was just easier. For them, anyway.”

  Remy clicked the button for another dose of pain meds. “There you go. My version of what happened. Don’t you feel enlightened?”

  Donald regarded him for a moment, then placed his light touch on Remy’s forearm. He rose from his chair. “Your clothes are in the cabinet. I can bring a maglev chair—”

  “I’m flying high.” Remy swung his feet to the floor, stripping the monitor tabs off his chest. “I can make it.”

  Together, they walked the long, Spartan hallways of the Neo facility. Now that he was up and moving, Remy actually felt a little better. Or maybe it was just the drugs.

  Without access to the WorldNet, Remy tried to recall everything he knew about the New Earthers, which wasn’t much. In recent years, they’d gone from minor environmental movement to a religion, mostly due to the emergence of Cassandra, their mysterious leader. Notoriously publicity shy, Cassandra spoke through her ordained surrogates, people like Brother Donald. They promised a new relationship between man and his environment, but they’d been peaceful, as far as Remy could remember.

  He took note of his surroundings as they walked. This was not a two-bit operation. The medbot in Remy’s room had been top of the line, and any place that could afford med-coma treatment was not hurting for money. They’d traversed a series of hallways. The place had the unmarked shine of new construction about it. The few people they passed wore civilian clothes, not robes, and all of them nodded pleasantly to Brother Donald.

  “You haven’t asked me why I wanted to hear about Vicksburg,” Donald said.

  Although the pace was no more than a stroll, Remy was winded. “I’ll bite. Why did you want to know about something that happened six years ago?”

  “I wanted to be sure I could trust you.”

  Remy snorted. The last thing he needed was someone else demanding his loyalty. Let the monk and the rest of the Cassandra nuts think what they wanted for now. As soon as he was able, he was leaving with Elise.

  “Trust me to do what?” he asked anyway, curious .

  They neared a set of double doors. Reinforced construction, like bulkheads aboard a military vessel.

  “Protect Elise Kisaan. She is very important to us.”

  “I’m with you there, Donald. She’s a special woman.”

  The double doors opened into a sitting area. Elise perched on an elegant sofa, dressed in loose trousers and a blouse the color of sand. Her face lit up when she saw him.

  “Remy!” She rushed forward and hugged him.

  �
��Be cautious, Elise,” Donald said, with a chuckle. “He is still healing.”

  “Of course, I’m sorry,” she said, drawing back. “But I’m glad you’re okay. I was so worried.”

  “I’m fine,” Remy lied, scowling as he recovered from her enthusiastic embrace. His eyes drank her in. Elise seemed different, more at ease, more willing to smile.

  Brother Donald closed the doors behind him as he left.

  “You’re okay?” Remy said. “They haven’t hurt you?”

  Elise laughed in a way that made Remy feel foolish.

  “Hurt me? Why would they hurt me?”

  “They abducted us, Elise. And they shot me … who knows what they’re capable of?”

  Elise lowered her voice and leaned close enough that he could detect the faint scent of her perfume. Fleur, it was called. “Remy—I’m a follower of Cassandra. I’m a Neo.” She turned and raised her long, raven hair. There on the back of her neck was the feminine Earth tattoo.

  Remy grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him. “Are you crazy, Elise? You’re the UN Secretary of Biodiversity. How can you be a Neo? ”

  Her face became stone. “I’ve been part of the movement for a long time, Remy. And I want you to be with me. We can be together here. And together, we can help mankind build a new relationship with the Earth.”

  Remy scanned the room. Surely they were being observed, though he saw no obvious monitoring devices. “Listen to me, Elise,” he whispered, “I don’t have a data signal, but if I can figure out where we are, I can get us out of here.”

  Elise laughed again. When was the last time he’d heard her laugh this much? She reached out and took his hand, lacing her long, thin fingers into his. Remy’s heart skipped a beat at her touch.

  “Stop talking like they’re the enemy. They’re me, Remy. And this is the Temple of Cassandra. There is no cage here. There’s just no signal.” She leaned down and pressed a button on the table.

  The floor-to-ceiling windows went from opaque to clear, revealing to Remy a vista he hadn’t seen in years. Not from this vantage point, anyway. Stars dotted the void, and the planet Earth revolved serenely beneath them.

  The Temple of Cassandra was a space station.

  Chapter 9

  Ming Qinlao • Shanghai, China

  Marcus Sun had been her father’s lawyer for as long as Ming could remember. As the man aged, Ming thought, he looked more and more like Confucius. Give him a robe, a long beard and one of those hanfu square hats, and she was sure Marcus could easily pass for the ancient philosopher.

  But today, Marcus was dressed in a dark blue, fitted suit with a skinny blue tie and a puff of feathery yellow silk in the front pocket. When he kissed Ming on both cheeks, he smelled of leather and ink. Marcus was so old-fashioned he used a fountain pen to sign actual paper documents that then had to be scanned and made virtual. His fingers were stained with red ink from his ancient chop, the official seal of the law firm of Sun, Riley and Wilcox, another throwback to an earlier legal era.

  The elder lawyer murmured condolences to Ming’s mother, then ushered the pair into his office, a luxurious carpeted room filled with heavy, dark wooden furniture. Despite his antiquated method for document management, Sun was not above using technology when he wanted to. He’d skinned the walls with a holo-display to effect the look of a library. Rows of virtual books rested on floor-to-ceiling shelves like leather-bound soldiers. A brightly burning fireplace adorned the wall next to his heavy desk made of prized Zitan wood from southern China.

  But it was the view that made Marcus’ office unique. The east side of the room was cantilevered from the side of the building in a glass box. The entire extension was transparent. From their position on the eighty-third floor, the old city of Puxi stretched out below. The Han River threaded through its buildings like a fat, brown snake on its way to the barely visible Pacific Ocean. Tiny craft navigated the waters, leaving creamy V-trails in their wake. The sun made a worthy attempt to pierce the smog but was only a faint, brown disk beyond the haze.

  Ming left her mother’s side to walk to the window. She placed her toes on the edge of the glass floor, welcoming the clench of fear in her stomach created by standing over nothingness. It was the first true feeling she’d had in days, and a welcome relief from the dull ache of sadness for her father’s passing. She just wanted all this to be over, to return to her life on the Moon—and Lily. She missed the clutter of their shared apartment, the funk of their bed, the way their bodies fit together in the dark.

  Marcus stood beside her. “Most people won’t come this close to the edge.”

  Ming nodded, her eyes on the glimmer of the faraway Pacific. Her gut trembled, but she inched farther over the abyss. A lightheadedness tingled up, all the way from her toes.

  “I’m afraid of heights, you know,” Marcus said.

  Ming regarded him with a questioning look .

  “Why would I choose this office?” Marcus laughed. “Your father asked me the same question. I told him: perspective . Any time I feel like I’m facing an intractable problem, I come and stand over the precipice. The problem always gets smaller.” He gave her a wistful look. “Your father told me I was full of shit … I miss him, Ming.”

  She closed her eyes, torn between fear of the view and regret about her father. Marcus had made her laugh, a little, but she really just wanted to cry. She could see Jie Qinlao standing in this very spot, saying those exact words to this man who’d been his closest friend. She could see his crooked smile and the easy laughter they would have shared.

  Resentment roiled inside her, lava in a volcano. Marcus Sun had probably seen her father more often than she had since he’d formed his marital alliance with Sying. And he’d done that for what? Money? Power?

  “He loved you, Ming,” Marcus said softly. “Know that.”

  Ming set her jaw, biting back the words she wanted to say. They would only embarrass everyone, her mother most of all. The door to the office swung open to admit her step-mother, half-brother, and Auntie Xi, with Ito in tow. As the bodyguard stationed himself by the door, Marcus played host, arranging the group around the large table near the faux-fireplace, far away from the windows. A pair of matching attendants served tea in tiny, eggshell-ceramic cups, before closing the door gently as they exited.

  Marcus busied himself arranging a sheaf of papers on the table and positioned his fountain pen precisely across the top of a yellow legal pad. Ming noticed Ruben, her half-brother, staring at the pen with bright eyes.

  He was a quiet, thin teenager with sallow skin and a dimpled chin. His dark hair was parted on the right and plastered down with water. He sat very close to his mother.

  Ming had never spent more than a few minutes with Sying. Boycotting the attempts at familiarity by her father’s second wife seemed the right thing to do by her mother. Whereas Wenqian Qinlao had come from the same hardscrabble background of the inner provinces as her father, Sying was a lifelong member of the coastal business aristocracy. She presented a slight figure who looked as if a good laugh might break her. Her wrists appeared fragile as a bird’s wings, with tracks of blue veins barely visible beneath the pale skin. Sying was corporate royalty, bred for one purpose only: to consolidate through marriage.

  In other words, Sying was a whore. A well-bred, immaculately mannered whore—but still a whore. The living bride-price for the consolidation of two corporations. And always appropriately dressed to the needs of the social occasion. For this meeting, she wore a black, sheath dress and a dark veil obscuring her eyes. She clutched her son’s hand as if Ming might try to take him away.

  “Shall we proceed, Marcus?” Auntie Xi seemed impatient and imperious, as usual. She focused her attention on Ming even as she spoke to the lawyer. Ming averted her eyes.

  The Moon. Lily . Vids curled up on the couch , she thought, a mantra to get through the meeting. Maybe Mama will want to move there and I can look after her. The lower gravity would be good for her, I think .


  Marcus rifled through his papers, looking for one in particular. “The downside of a paper fetish,” he joked. The corners of Xi’s mouth turned down in disapproval. “Ah, here we are.”

  He pulled a folded document from the pile. The paper was yellowed with age and sealed with wax, which piqued Ming’s interest. Ruben, so enamored of the pen earlier, leaned forward. Sun showed the document to the group before breaking the seal with a soft crack.

  “If you’ve read the will for Jie Qinlao, he did not address the issue of company ownership. That information is contained in this separate codicil, which exists in paper form only.” He smiled wryly with a quick look to Ming. “As you can tell from the age of the paper, he made this plan quite some time ago.”

  Sun read the document silently, making a few notes on the legal pad with his fountain pen. Ruben watched closely, fascinated as the pen left ink on the pad. Finally, the lawyer looked up. “This document will be subject to your legal review, of course, but here’s the summary.

  “Two-thirds of my holdings are the property of my firstborn daughter, Ming. One-third to any children with my second wife, Sying. To the latter—the assets will be held in Sying’s care until those children reach the age of majority.” He placed the paper flat on the table, the pen on top of it, and looked up.

  “That’s it?” Xi demanded, her voice rising. “That’s all it says?” She was dressed in a flowing jade-green robe that made a whispery sound as she moved her arms. Spots of color showed in her cheeks.

  “There is no mention of shares in your name, Xi,” Marcus said in a measured tone. “Besides, I believe you hold substantial shares and a board position already.”

  “That’s unacceptable,” Xi snapped. “My brother must have been out of his—”

  “There is one other item,” Marcus continued.

  Ming’s head was spinning. Two-thirds of her father’s share of the company had to be worth millions—no, billions —of dollars. What Marcus had read meant a lifetime free of financial worry. It also meant a lifetime full of obligation. The Moon and her happiness there seemed to draw farther away with each passing moment.