“Obviously,” Lucita said.
Sitting down at one of the cubicles, I booted up the system and uploaded the infodisc.
“It’s attempting to reach an outside cyberlink,” Delphi said.
“Allow it as long as it doesn’t reach any other systems,” I said. “I don’t want this turning into a bad spy movie where a single virus takes out the entire agency.”
“That would be stupid,” Delphi said. “Also, I liked Skyfall. Just not that scene.”
Seconds later, a video link began on the screen, and I saw the image of a handsome black man in his mid-thirties with a short, businesslike haircut. He was smiling broadly with no emotion behind it, just an artificial pleasantness taught by Karma Corp’s trainers in the early days of the Letter program.
A flood of images filled my mind from the man, too jumbled to form a coherent narrative. I remembered him beating me every time we fought during training. I remembered him sharing his phone’s photo section of artfully arranged corpses he’d created. I remembered how he’d told me every Letter should be forced to kill a baby to eliminate weakness from our ranks. I also recalled how he enjoyed Snickers bars and pizza. He was the best and worst of us. The living embodiment of an indestructible, unstoppable killer with no humanity—made by fools with too little idea of what they were unleashing. Fools like my father and mother.
Shit.
“Hello, A,” I said softly. “Long time no see.”
“I prefer Arthur now,” A said, chuckling. “Though I never bothered to give myself a last name. Maybe Arthur X would be a good choice. My fellow Letters might confuse me for X, though, who was kind of a shit agent.”
I took a deep breath. “Where is Marissa?”
“She’s fine,” A said. “But indisposed. I’m afraid she’s going to remain that way until I get what I want.”
Lucita kept her cool, but Claire looked ready to rip the computer monitor out from its console and throw it against the wall.
“Where is she, Arthur?” I asked, staring at him through the screen. He was identical to the way he’d looked Pre-Crisis. I’d thought he’d have changed his body by now or died of cyber-necrosis, but it seemed he’d found a cure for the condition the same way Atlas’ Letters had.
Arthur sighed. “G, you really are a bother. It’s always about you and your assistant. You’re like E in that. What’s he up to?”
“He’s currently in Russia investigating a cybernetics harvesting ring,” I said, willing to play along with his chit-chat tone for now.
“Ah, how cute. Mister E is a detective,” Arthur said. “You never did invite me to join your little corporate adventure.”
“You were too busy snorting mountains of cocaine and banging three hookers at a time,” I said.
Arthur frowned. “Yes, I suppose that would be an impediment. I still would have helped through, though. Delphi knew that.”
“I did,” Delphi said. “I wanted no part of you near any of my objectives. I predicted you’d eventually try to kill the others to seize control of the company yourself.”
“I’d fix you first,” Arthur said. “Machines should do what they’re told. Thinking or not.”
The irony was either lost on Arthur, or he didn’t care. Did he not think of himself as a machine? I wished I had that luxury. Every day I wondered if I had a soul or not. With no answer to that question forthcoming, I repeated my earlier question. “Where is she, Arthur?”
The camera switched to an image of Marissa sitting on the side of a bed in the middle of a lavishly appointed room. The place had Old World decor with antique wooden furniture, bookshelves, and a fireplace. It had no windows, though, and a steel door. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a Lucifer’s Star t-shirt which made me think they’d grabbed her out of bed. She had a gag in her mouth, and her hands were zip-tied behind her back.
Marissa hadn’t changed much since our meeting in Detroit. Her hair was tied in a ponytail with the back-dyed blue and a tattoo of an ouroboros on the side of her neck. I didn’t know why she’d gone back to the cybergoth look, especially since she’d aged out of the present demographic, but didn’t care right now.
“She must be going insane without a computer,” I said. “Assuming you’re jamming her implants.”
“Of course,” Arthur said, as if the alternative were ridiculous. “It was the least I could do after I lost two men trying to take her.”
“She’s very easy to underestimate,” I said.
“What do you want?” Claire asked.
Arthur finally acknowledged her. “I want the same thing you want, Mrs. Morris. I want the devastation of Karma Corp.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because they created me? Because I’m a terrorist? Because I stand to make money from it somehow? Because of some bizarre ideological reason?” Arthur said, shrugging. “My reasons don’t really matter. I do, however, want the entirety of that information in your mnemonic drive.”
“You want to blackmail Karma Corp with it,” I said. “This is about money.”
Arthur smiled. “Perhaps. Either way, my demands are the same.”
“If I give you this information, it’ll never be exposed,” Claire said, growling. “They’ll get away with mass murder.”
“I promise it will,” Arthur said, sounding entirely insincere. “However, that is not my only demand.”
“Which is?” I asked, unsure whether Arthur would kill Marissa anyway. This wasn’t his usual style.
“I need you to kill Zheng Wei at his announcement for nanotherapy and have HOPE claim credit. If you don’t, I’ll kill Marissa, then go after your children. My operatives will be in touch with a drop location for the information. Don’t try and copy it. I’ll be able to tell.”
Arthur logged off.
“Shit,” Lucita said. “This isn’t good.”
“I know,” I said.
Lucita shook her head. “I was really hoping Marissa was gone for good.”
I gave her a sideways glance. “Really, Lucita?”
“What’s the worst he could do? Kill her?” Lucita asked, shrugging. “I’d pay money to have him do it.”
“There’s more to it than that,” I said.
“What?” Lucita asked.
I felt my face. “Marissa has a massive amount of blackmail material on us as well.”
Lucita reached for a pistol at her side. “Delphi, permission to shoot your son.”
“Denied!” Delphi said, sounding almost as angry. “For now.”
“Explain,” Lucita said.
Chapter Five
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “HOPE continues to exist entirely because the organization has created a Black Dossier.”
Black Dossiers were something all the megacorporations have. They were a necessary part of business these days.
“That sounds made up,” Lucita said, her hand still on her pistol. I hoped she was just holding it there to make a point.
“How I wish it were so,” I said, sighing. “It’s a massive file that exists in Marissa’s mind and probably contains not only whatever they were going to exchange here but also a massive amount of actionable material on every other Big 200 corporation. Illegal experiments, bribes, sexual deviancy, ties to foreign powers, and more.”
“Blackmail material,” Lucita said, removing her hand from the pistol grip. “The goodie-goodie Antifa wannabes have a price like anyone else.”
“You shouldn’t be sharing this, Case,” Claire said, looking uncomfortable.
“Tough shit. It’s our building, and you brought us in here,” Lucita said. “Also, we’re apparently in this dossier. Did you provide HOPE with this information? What is it?”
“Nothing to concern yourself with,” I said, a little too sharply. “I also didn’t provide them with that information. Marissa and her cronies managed to acquire it on their own. As part of my efforts for HOPE, she removed part of it from her database every time I did a favor. She also provided me with plen
ty of information from it on other companies. Research material and plans built on Black Technology that kept us competitive when everyone else was falling behind.”
Claire looked aside. “It’s a reason why he’s not a member of HOPE. Real members don’t need to be bribed or blackmailed.”
Lucita visibly calmed down, as if the fact that I wasn’t working for idealism made this all better. “How the hell did she get so much information on the power brokers?”
“A lot of NSA and Army intelligence officers were…unhappy when they realized the Emergency Government wasn’t leaving power,” Claire said, her voice letting us know she was one of them. “In the chaos following the Big Smokey, a lot of them were willing to share techniques for monitoring groups like the Big 200 through their cellphones as well as laptops. Things the government has safeguards against—safeguards we know how to turn off.”
“I’m already intrigued,” Lucita said. “Do you think we could—”
“No,” Delphi said. “They have the support of Right Brain and Left Brain, the former NSA AI They’re not fully sentient, but I’d rather not get entangled with them.”
“So, what does this have to do with A?” Lucita asked. “I think we should call S and tell her about him.”
“We have to get Marissa back,” I said softly. “Because if he decrypts that information in her implants, then we’re fucked.”
“Is this true?” Lucita asked, looking at Claire. “Aren’t you the encryption key?”
“I am,” Claire said. “But Marissa claiming I was the only person she could use to decrypt her data strikes me as another one of her lies. One just designed to make sure the other members of HOPE feel comfortable with having that sort of power.”
“This sounds like an excuse,” Lucita said, pausing. “What’s your real game, G?”
She wasn’t calling me Case.
“I want to take down Karma Corp,” I said, pausing. “But I’m also concerned about how this will backfire.”
Lucita looked at Claire. “And her?”
“She’s a friend,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t have enough of those to toss them away.”
“I’m your friend too, but you can’t kill the CEO of Karma Corp,” Lucita said, appalled.
“Obviously not,” I said, thinking about the consequences. “If I did that, then anything revealed about them would be overshadowed. The company would manage to survive, and it would suffer only a minor bump in the long run.”
I’d thought about ways to destroy Karma Corp and its subsidiaries many times over the years. There was no single keystone to destroying the company, though. It was like the mythical hydra, and even if I did manage to eliminate all its heads, then the best-case scenario would be it would develop a dozen more for each one cut off. The only way to eliminate it truly was to somehow get corporations large enough to replace it to do so. Or as the old saying goes, the only way to destroy an empire is to build another one over it.
“Yes, because that’s totally what I’m worried about,” Lucita said. “What do you suggest?”
“In simple terms, decrypt the information Claire downloaded and find out what Marissa was planning,” I said, making up a plan to satisfy her. “We appear to go along with A’s plans and then track him down before rescuing Marissa.”
“This sounds a lot like the plot to Johnny Mnemonic,” Lucita muttered.
“No, then she’d be dying,” I corrected. “Though Claire does kind of look like Dina Meyer in her heyday. Didn’t she make a comeback recently?”
“The benefit of so many actors dying,” Lucita said. “I’m with this plan right up until the part of rescuing Marissa.”
“What did she do to you?” Claire asked, her voice holding more reproach than someone betrayed by Marissa almost as much as the rest of us should have.
“She framed me for trying to kill Case,” Lucita said, crossing arms. “Also, Marissa blew up a building I was in with a missile strike. That’s in addition to the fact that she’s a pathological liar and sociopath. There’s also the trying to kill Case part. How many times did she do that?”
“Three times,” I said. “But she was coerced.”
Lucita rolled her eyes.
Claire looked to one side. “Yeah, there is that. She’s also saved his and my life many times too.”
“Oh, that’s different then,” Lucita said, turning back at me. “You’re not seriously considering this, are you?”
“Yes, I am,” I said, standing up. “We can use the situation to force Marissa to share the Black Dossier’s contents with us.”
Lucita narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure this isn’t because you’re still in love with her?”
“Yes,” I said. It was because I was partially in love with Claire and she was in love with Marissa, at least a little.
“You’re going to bargain with Marissa now?” Claire asked. “When we’re so close to getting Karma Corp?”
I smirked. “There’s never a situation too idealistic you can’t bend to your own advantage.”
“I don’t recommend this course of action, G,” Delphi said. “A is profoundly dangerous.”
“No shit,” I responded to her. “What I don’t understand is whether he knew I would become involved if he kidnapped Marissa.”
“I suspect he probably did,” Delphi said. “Otherwise, why would he have killing Karma Corp’s CEO among his demands?”
“That’s part of what’s confusing me,” I replied, our conversation taking microseconds of real time. “If A wanted to frame HOPE for murdering Zheng Wei, then he’d be able to do it without us complicating the job. He’s framed wives, children, mistresses, the U.S. government, and terrorists for his jobs with a lot less hassle.”
“That is peculiar,” Delphi admitted. “Maybe he’s playing a game.”
“Next time, let’s do Virtual Beach Volleyball.”
Lucita looked over at the bodies nearby. “There’s a serious reason you can’t cooperate with A. If he’s after Karma Corp, he’s not going to leave any loose ends. If you kill him, he’ll eliminate Marissa and then you. He’ll probably come after Case as well. Hell, maybe all of us.”
That was one of the areas where I’d differed with A. Much to my disgust, I’d kidnapped and extorted people as part of my job working for the Society. I’d always abided by the letter of my agreements, though. It was fundamentally indecent to hold someone’s loved ones hostage and then snatch away the hope of seeing them again. I recognized that as hypocrisy now, but my journey to becoming a not-terrible person started with baby steps like those.
“Do you really think he’s ready to go to war with an entire army?” Claire asked, obviously hoping Atlas Security would stand by me in this.
“A and I only worked together once. In the South China Sea, we were supposed to go after a former associate of the International Refugee Society who had set himself up with an army of cybernetically enhanced soldiers. He had a full-on Bond villain island lair with security that included an actual rocket-propelled panic room. The place was damned near impenetrable, and after trying for three days to get at him, I admitted defeat without ever getting close. A, however, knew what to do to get the man off the island.”
“Which was?” Claire asked.
“He shot down a plane with the man’s son on it along with three hundred other passengers,” I said. “Then he blew up a city block where the man grew up. He planned to kill every single person the man knew until he left the island—which he did. That was his strategy.”
“What did you do?” Lucita asked.
I stared. “I tried to kill him, and he left me in a coma until he was done. I think, even then, he knew we were machines and how to disable me.”
A was better than me at all the disciplines the International Refugee Society taught the Letters. Assassination, close-quarters combat, counter-espionage, interrogation, psychological warfare, mind-hacking, and more. I wasn’t afraid of him—no, scratch that—I was afraid of him, but I
was even more aware he was in control of the game board. I also wasn’t discounting the possibility he was in Marissa’s employ, and this was another one of her attempts to manipulate me.
Claire too.
“There’s more going on here than we’re seeing,” I said. “A’s behavior isn’t consistent with his usual modus operandi.”
“It’s possible time has changed him,” Delphi said. “A…Arthur was a man with great wealth and influence within the Society. While you and the other surviving Letters have gone on to great wealth, he’s remained off the grid. It’s possible he’s motivated by a desire to get back at you and the others. He might have created the plan once he discovered you were involved with the members of HOPE.”
I frowned. “I don’t think so.”
“Why is that?” Claire said.
“Just a gut feeling,” I admitted before speaking to Delphi via our cyberlink. “A was always into being an assassin. More than any of the other Letters. It was his calling in life, if you will. If he was jealous of what we’ve established here in Atlas, he’d just take us all out or ask us for a job.”
“Which you wouldn’t give him,” Claire said. “You’d kill his ass, right?”
“Of course,” I said, not so sure. “No, I can’t help but imagine this is something he’s been ordered to do. Arthur was the quintessential corporate samurai and not the kind of guy who would ever go into business for himself.”
“If he was working for the Big 200, then we would have seen him before today,” Lucita said. “We know all their regular operatives. The governments of the world are even less discreet.”
“There’s another possibility,” I said. “The Invisible Hand.”
“The goddamn Illuminati are not employing him,” Lucita said, her voice dripping with disdain.
“The Invisible Hand is not…never mind,” I said, sighing. “But they are a possibility.”
“I don’t care who employs him as long as we kill this guy,” Claire said, looking between us. “How do we find him?”
Lucita looked at her as if she were a toddler. “If he was easy to find, then he wouldn’t be a very good assassin, would he?”
Agent G: Assassin Page 6