Marissa stopped struggling. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“My father thought that. You’ve also given me precious little reason to not kill you right now.”
“I know you feel betrayed—”
“Betrayal does that.” I admit, I owed Buffy the Vampire Slayer for that zinger.
Marissa rolled her eyes. “Do you really have the information?”
“Are you serious?” I asked, shaking my head before pulling her onto the bed. “Okay, let’s have a conversation, and depending on your answers, then we’ll go from there. I was just burned alive by A in your cyberworld, so I’m not in a good mood.”
Marissa took a deep breath. “You aren’t going to be able to tell anything by asking me questions—I’ve been with lie detectors far more capable than you.”
“You leave that to me.”
“Are you going to kill me no matter what?” Marissa asked.
“Answer the questions.”
I was in a bad negotiating position because Marissa knew me too well. My friendship with Lucita had begun with the two of us trying to kill one another. I’d also spared quite a few other people whom I probably should have killed but couldn’t bring myself to execute. Most of them had been women like Marissa or Lucita. It wasn’t sexism, per se, because I’d fought some truly deadly and dangerous women over the years.
It was the fact that those women had been people I’d cared for, and I had difficulty bringing myself to harm them. I had so few connections that when I was double-crossed by someone I knew, it was hard to sever that connection. It’s what had led to me sparing Persephone despite my words to A, and what had helped the few Letters I’d recruited live when the world might have been better off without all of us. I wonder what it said about me that I found it strange that it was easier for me to kill strangers. Had I really been that poorly socialized? Oh right, I’d been socialized by implanted memories and hypnosis. Never mind.
“I’ll answer your questions,” Marissa said, her voice low. “You know I didn’t want to—”
“Stop it,” I said. “I know you’re a scorpion. I took you across the river anyway because I thought I could avoid being stung. You fooled me because you’re disguised as someone else, not because I ever trusted you after your first betrayal.”
Marissa didn’t respond for a moment. I was glad. I didn’t want her getting any ideas I was still wrapped around her finger.
“Where is Rosario?” I asked.
“Drugged in the bathtub,” Marissa said. “I have a neurotoxin designed to incapacitate without killing hidden in injectors underneath my fingernails.”
“Why not try it on me?” I asked.
“I did,” Marissa muttered. “It doesn’t seem to work on Letters.”
“Good,” I said, checking myself to see if I felt any different. Thankfully, I didn’t. The new toxin-resistant bloodstream I’d had installed a couple of years ago seemed to be working. “What about Delphi?”
“I wasn’t lying about the blind spots in her programming,” Marissa said, looking up at me with Claire’s eyes. “She’s almost stupidly supportive of me and my decisions even if I can’t press too hard without breaking her. I asked her to turn off the cameras and leave us alone here, which she did.”
“Another reason why you were able to gather so much blackmail material about the corporations,” I said dryly.
“Not enough to change anything,” Marissa said, her voice low. “Enough to save some lives. You sided with us, not because of our past ties, but because you believed in HOPE. I don’t care what you say, I believe you are fundamentally a good man.”
“I believe, fundamentally, I am not,” I said. I paused. “I know about A working for you. How many people has he killed for you.”
“More than you,” Marissa replied. “He’s a blunt instrument.”
“How blunt?”
Marissa didn’t speak. “Blunt enough there’s perhaps a better claim we’re a group of terrorists than even the corporations know.”
“Is it worth it?”
“You tell me.”
I lowered my voice. “He says you gave me a pearl beyond price. That’s the reason he decided to betray you and take the Black Dossier. Do you know what he’s talking about?”
“Peace?” Marissa said.
“Very funny,” I said, unamused.
“I have a suspicion but no concrete proof,” Marissa said.
I pulled around her neck a bit. “No more lies.”
“Lies are just ways of interpreting events,” Marissa replied. “They’re stories, and all of human history is one great big lie resting around a handful of facts.”
“I had no idea you were such a philosopher.”
“Do you have the Black Dossier?” Marissa asked. “I had no idea you were going to take it from me, but it’s absent from my head now. A million dirty little secrets and the only thing protecting HOPE from being destroyed outright.”
“Yes,” I said, giving away information I should have just kept to myself. “I have all your leverage.”
“Will you give it back?”
“No,” I replied. “I will, however, make sure Karma Corp doesn’t enact their plan.”
This felt less like I was involved in a multi-faceted conspiracy than I was caught between a bunch of angry teenagers who were all pathological liars. “Did you really think I wouldn’t work with you against Karma Corp? You could have just come to me and asked for my help decrypting the data.”
“You would have wanted access to the dossier’s files,” Marissa said. “You can only keep a secret between three people if two of them are dead.”
I wondered if that was a threat. “Which is why A wanted me to kill Karma Corp’s CEO. After HOPE was blamed for it, it would take you and me off the board. He’d let the world know I was responsible for the assassination and bring the wrath of the Corporate Council down on us all. He’d then kill you, or who he assumed was you, in his fake Marissa. A would then take the nanotherapy technology and cure himself before either ransoming it back to Karma Corp or leaving it as his own personal ace in the hole.”
“Except it doesn’t work,” Marissa said, looking frustrated. I didn’t blame her. The actual corporate conspiracy was fairly straightforward while all the twists and turns were the result of a colossal misunderstanding. “I kept that detail from him when I shouldn’t have.”
“You also kept him from the cure Delphi gave me and the other Letters. I would have given it to him.”
“Which is why I did it,” Marissa replied. “There’s not many ways a woman like me can control a man like A.”
I didn’t ask the question that popped into my head.
“No,” Marissa said. “I don’t know who programmed it into his head, but he’d lose all respect for me as a leader if I had sex with him. In fact, that’s part of the reason why he turned against me in the first place—he found out about a past relationship continuing.”
“It didn’t,” I said, taking a deep breath.
Or had it? That led to the next question. The most pressing one. “Who is it he has hostage?”
“Claire,” Marissa replied. “We switched cyberbrains before this mission. I suppose you could say it worked in preventing me from being captured. I had another body double, but A managed to persuade her to work with him instead of me.”
“Perhaps he told her what kind of person you were,” I said.
Marissa grimaced. “That would do it. The only people who stay loyal to me after long are ones I leave no choice—or you and Claire.”
“My heart bleeds for you. Truly.”
So, Claire was alive and still working for HOPE despite the deception with her dead lover. Claire was also in the hands of A, which meant I had to go track him down and get her back. There was something wrong, something vile going on here, and it was more a matter of instinct than a matter of facts.
“You’re lying,” I said, simply.
“I’m not,” Marissa said, somehow pulling away from my g
rip. Perhaps it was because she knew I wouldn’t harm her.
At least until I had my answers.
“Then you’re holding something back,” I said, staring at her. “What is it?”
Marissa smirked as if she knew she had me. “I’ll tell you when we get this resolved. It’s nothing—”
“What will I find when I search the Black Dossier for information on Claire?” I asked, wondering if Marissa knew how badly she was outmaneuvered here. Persephone had the good sense to know when the jig was up, but my ex seemed incapable of seeing just how badly things had deteriorated.
Marissa looked like I’d shot her in the chest. It was an expression I’d waited to see with her for a decade and a half.
I stared at her. “I saved you from my brother, Marissa. You owe me more than this. If not for me, you and your family would have been his slaves for life.”
“I don’t have a family anymore, G,” Marissa said, her words carrying the first genuine bit of remorse I’d probably ever heard from her. “My sisters and nieces all died in the eruption. I killed, lied, betrayed, and murdered for them, but it was all for nothing. You have a far bigger family than I have now, and you keep everyone at a distance. You could have married Claire and had a family with her too. She would have been perfect for you.”
Her words were confusing until they made it all click into place. I stared at her. “No.”
Marissa didn’t respond. “I needed you, G. I needed an agent who had a conscience and could be trusted, but that wasn’t possible with what happened between us. It cost a fortune to get Claire from Karma Corp, but Delphi had the plans that she turned over to them to continue the project. They haven’t gotten it perfected because they lack Doctor Gordon’s skill, but they came close enough.”
“Mother fucker,” I said, the words almost a whisper. “Claire is a Letter. One you reprogrammed to think was a person.”
Marissa closed her eyes. “One I programmed to love you and be loved by you in return.”
I checked the files for information about her and found Claire Morris had died during the refugee crisis. Claire had been imprisoned by the United States government for disobeying orders and ended up volunteering for a Karma Corp experiment which she hadn’t survived.
The Numbers were one hundred soldiers meant to replace the Letters, and she was sixty-three. I’d never even met the real Claire Morris, but her memories had been preserved in a weapon Marissa had pointed at her enemies. Her daughter was real, but designed for the same purpose Claire had been for me. To give us something to lose.
I was too stunned to respond.
That was when Marissa went for a micro-shock prod hidden in her lower pants pocket.
Chapter Eighteen
Marissa may have had the cybernetically enhanced body of a soldier, but she was still a console jockey at heart. She was a natural officer, moving people across the chessboard of life, but strictly armchair military. As such, it didn’t take that much effort to grab the shock prod from her. The fact she tried to bite my arm, then go for her gun showed her as not having kept up with her combat practice either.
So I jabbed her in the back with her own shock prod.
“Son of a bitch,” Marissa said, falling to her knees before I grabbed her by the arm.
“I’m really sorry about this,” I muttered. “This is going to hurt.”
“Fuck off,” Marissa said, growling.
I jabbed her again in the heart, this time with the shock prod at full power. They were designed to disable cyborgs and would kill a normal human being, but I had no doubt she’d survive it—though at this point, I only half cared.
Marissa’s body jolted up and down and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. I held the prod to her chest perhaps longer than I should have, but I wanted to make absolutely sure she was disabled, so I didn’t have to kill her. When she collapsed on the ground, I checked to see if her body was still breathing since Shell hearts didn’t often have pulses.
She was.
Patting her down, I found she had some carbon-fiber handcuffs, which I tied to her wrists and then destroyed their electronic lock. I looked around for my shirt, tie, and jacket, which I found in a nearby closet. I found Marissa had set up a jammer nearby and turned that off before sending a private message to Atlas Security to pick up a “package” here.
I also left a note to keep Marissa out of Delphi’s “sight” and to keep her in a safe house away from the infonet and under cyber-interference before turning her jammer back on. I didn’t know what I was going to do with her after this was resolved, but that was a problem I could safely kick down the road.
Even if I knew I needed to kill her.
Shaking that thought from my mind, I headed to the guest room’s bath and saw Rosario lying in the bathtub, drooling. Marissa had drugged her, and she looked adorably nonthreatening the way she was now.
“Let’s hope the toxin isn’t too strong,” I muttered, turning on the shower above her.
“Fuck!” Rosario said, waving her hands across her face.
The hacker passed out three more times before I managed to get her to activate an implant in her liver designed to help her pass recreational drugs through her system quicker. She ended up having to throw her underwear away and threw up twice before the aftereffects of Marissa’s toxin passed.
“I hate you,” Rosario muttered, her exceptionally queasy face hovering over the toilet.
“I didn’t do it,” I said, shrugging.
“No,” Rosario said, growling. “The brujah in the other room did.”
I nodded. “I’ve got her disabled, though. There’s a lot more going on, though. Stuff I’m going to need your help with.”
Rosario spat in the toilet bowl one last time. “You probably saved me from dying there, so I’m willing to help. For now.”
“Nanotherapy doesn’t work,” I said, pausing. “At all.”
Rosario paused over the toilet. “What?”
“It’s a scam,” I said, sighing. “A placebo they’re going to sell that’s actually quite unhealthy, so not really a placebo at all. More like snake oil, only the snake oil is cyanide.”
“That’s a shitty plan,” Rosario said.
“I know!” I said, staring at her. “The panda thought it actually had a chance of working, though.”
Rosario blinked a few times before nodding. “Well, if the panda said it was okay then I guess I’m wrong.”
I offered her a hand to help her up. “I contacted Atlas Security, and they should be here to help with Marissa soon.”
Rosario’s eyes widened before she slapped my hand out of the way. “You idiot!”
“What?” I asked, blinking.
“A is monitoring your cyberbrain!” Rosario said, growling. “All your communications in and out go to him first! I saw it when I was decrypting the data in Marissa’s mind.”
I wondered when she’d figured out Claire was an imposter.
“Fuck,” I said, immediately heading out the bathroom door. “We need to get out of here then.”
To what was only half a surprise, I saw Marissa wasn’t where I’d left her on the floor. Somehow, my former assistant had managed to escape and leave no trace. That was far from my most present concern, however. I could hear heavy metal boots moving down the hall I was presently in.
“Goddammit,” I muttered.
As Rosario came out the door, I grabbed her hand and threw her to the floor, seeking refuge down there myself as I saw several armored boots through the crack underneath the door. What followed was a high-pitched ear-blasting noise of assault rifle fire as the soldiers outside fired through the doors indiscriminately, not even bothering to check whether we were on the other side. It tore through the bed behind us as well as the wall and emptied a probably a hundred bolts into the door.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a pen, clicked it, and hurled it in their direction. “Die, motherfuckers!”
“Grenade!” they shouted, turnin
g on each other and going to one side.
I grabbed Rosario off the ground, pulled out my pistol, hit the button for explosive rounds, and shot the windows. They shattered as the soldiers on the ground realized I hadn’t actually thrown a pen-sized grenade at them. I shot the jammer on the table before running to the window, carrying Rosario in my arms like a parcel. I sent out a last-ditch comm call and hoped it didn’t lead to my death.
“What the hell are you doing?” Rosario shouted.
“Something really stupid!” I shouted.
“Leave me out of it!” Rosario said before screaming as we leapt out of the window into the mid-air of the rainy Chicago night beyond.
Two hundred stories up.
“Shit!” Rosario shouted.
I’d leapt out of the window with a straight run for the purpose of moving at a horizontal angle for as long as humanly possible before starting a descent. It was about three seconds long. That might not seem too long but was a tremendous advantage when you were trying to minimize the impact of your descent.
Mind you, at two hundred stories, even a person who was fully cybernetic was so much road pizza, and I couldn’t even see the ground through the darkness of the night mixed with the heavy cloud cover that seemed eternal in the new world. Instead, all I saw were the tiny beacons of light and the holograms blinking around the street-level entrance below.
“I fucking hate—” Rosario tried to shout, right before my legs buckled under me as E’s air car zoomed up underneath us and I caved a massive dent into its roof. The vehicle’s automatic driver had managed to start it and bolt its way up here thanks to my command. I directed it remotely before commanding it to open the doors. I shoved Rosario through the passenger side and slipped myself into the driver’s seat.
“Welcome to G Air,” I said, mentally commanding the doors to shut before switching the car to manual. “Please fasten your seatbelts.”
Rosario’s next words were an incoherent mumble.
“Oh, come on, that was an awesome rescue!” I said, turning the car downward as I tried to figure out where to go to stay away from my usual contacts. Delphi was the person I tended to rely on in these sorts of situations, but she couldn’t be trusted given what Marissa claimed. I needed to go off the net, so I disabled my infolink. “Listen, Rosario, if you know any good places where we can take a moment—”
Agent G: Assassin Page 17