by JC Hay
"Just as well," he muttered. He stopped walking and turned to rest against the safety rail beside the jogging track. Down below, the black waters of Back Bay lapped at the retaining wall, the sound mixing perfectly with the traffic behind him. Not the blue seas of the Maldives, but he knew this water. Seeing it at night felt like the proper choice.
Especially given what comes next. He shoved the thought away. Told himself he wasn't making some grand sacrifice, or doing it for her. He was resolving the problem. Without Bao, Netta would be safe. And, in the end, he never failed at a contract.
On instinct, he checked his watch. The ships of the Imru'al-Qais would have left port and rejoined the flotilla more than ninety minutes ago. She was free, or would be.
He dug the burner phone out of his coat and dialed the only number in its memory.
Yashilla picked up on the first ring. "That was fast."
"I grabbed the stun-rod you had stored in the cache near Babulnath." Ever the pragmatist, Yashilla had resources scattered throughout the city, just in case she ever had to go on the run. At one point, he'd helped her with them, which made finding the few he knew about easy.
"You're a fucking idiot." The tone in her voice sounded like she'd already figured out his next move.
"It's got to happen, 'Shilla."
The pet name didn't earn him any favors from her wrath. "You've both done some dumb shit. Get over it. That's what people do."
"Says the person who'd rather hide behind the ‘net than spend time in meatspace." He used her favorite word for the real world, driving home her dislike of the messiness of physicality.
"Right. Push me away too, you selfish ass."
"She was using me to test her theories, that's it."
"And if you believe that, even a little, you deserve to be alone." She growled out loud, her frustration almost palpable even from whatever distance existed between them.
Joshi tried to ignore the tiny spark of hope that fluttered to life. It didn't matter anyway. He'd never given Netta a phone. Contacting her was impossible, which worked perfectly. No one could use him to find her.
"I just wanted you to know about the stunner," he said at last. "I'll put it back after I'm done with it." Assuming I get the chance.
"Fine." The word was terse, laden with the implication that things were far from fine but she refused to engage with him anymore. A tone she confirmed seconds later when she disconnected the call.
He stared at the phone in his hand. Even if Yashilla was right—even if he and Netta were just being stupid—it was too late to bother with it. He had months left, not years, and he wouldn’t allow Netta to suffer through watching another loved one wither and die with no way to stop it.
Joshi started walking again, headed around the bay toward the point. His fingers tightened around the collapsed stun-rod in his pocket, trying to draw some reassurance from its slight weight. Best to hurry. It'd be rude to keep Bao waiting.
Bao found him an hour later, near the other end of Marine Drive. The assassin hopped off the rail and fell into step alongside him. "You appear to be empty-handed, Mr. Joshi. I thought you were supposed to be a professional."
Joshi scanned their surroundings in a panic, but there were no safe spaces, no areas without tourists on the crowded scenic street. A fight between them would draw authorities, cameras, and worse. A skinny dog followed along behind Bao, and it took Joshi a moment to recognize the animal as the same mongrel Bao had plucked from the trash, cleaned and groomed. No doubt well-fed as well, though it would be a while before its ribs didn't stand out against its fur. He nodded at the dog. "Apparently I'm not the only one losing focus."
Bao shrugged. "He's a survivor. I respect that drive in him. If it matters, I respect it in you as well. That you came to fight for her, even though she would have killed you to prove a point."
He almost didn't wince at the accusation. Joshi turned toward the water to hide his face better. "It's my life too, as you'll recall. You threatened us both."
"You take it so personally, then?" Bao leaned against the rail, looking back toward the city. "It's a contract. I take them, same as you."
"Nothing personal." Joshi shook his head. In its own way, it made a sick kind of sense. "But unless you've decided to abandon your contract—"
"You know I cannot."
"Then we know how this ends." He waited while Bao reached down and ruffled the dog's ears. "I, uh, I'll take care of the dog for you. After."
Bao chuckled. "I appreciate the gesture." He made a shooing motion, and the dog retreated about twenty feet away. "Unwarranted as it is. You're certain you want to do this here, in front of people."
"I'm surprised you'd noticed."
"I'm a professional, Mr. Joshi, not a monster. I didn't create an explosion in a factory district with a history of murderous structure fires, for example." He spread his arms wide to take in the crowded promenade. "I'm fine with here if you are, of course. Or there's a parking structure about ten minutes from here. Plenty of collateral damage if you like, but not people."
A combination of rage and shame bubbled in him—he hadn't been given a choice for the explosion. Despite the fact that no one had been killed, he knew someone could have been. Just as he knew full well that people had lost their homes in the subsequent blaze. He could blame BlueGene, indeed most of the people affected were corporate employees, but he knew that responsibility ultimately fell on his shoulders. "The garage is fine. Lead the way."
Joshi fell in as Bao started down the road. The parking lot, a three-story unit, sat between a luxury apartment and one of the omnipresent tech offices that had sprung up along the seaboard while the company was flush with cash. In ten years, likely less, it would be gone and another would replace it. In many cases, even the employees remained the same. Only the business names changed.
"I have to ask," Bao said when they were halfway. "Why do this for her? You know, if the roles had switched, she would have been more than happy to sacrifice you to secure her survival."
She might have, except that she hadn't. Even her offer to experiment on him had been out of hope to help. Not to sacrifice him, but Joshi wasn't certain Bao would understand the difference. A month ago, Joshi wouldn't have either. And if she wanted to risk something in a misguided effort to save him, then he was more than capable of doing the same for her. In the end he settled for saying, "It's not the same."
Bao nodded. "I see." He stopped to buy a pair of satay skewers from a street vendor. Joshi started to turn down the offer, when Bao knelt and pulled the meat off the sticks and left them on the banana leaf for his dog. He bowed slightly and indicated the garage. "After you."
Joshi stepped through into the cool shade of the first floor, taking note of his surroundings as the combat mods began to pump his system full of adrenaline for the fight. His vision narrowed, and the skin tightened on his arms as the endorphins surged through his veins. Bao, moving with speed that an unaugmented person couldn't track, attacked from behind, the wind of his approach alarm enough to send Joshi to one side.
Bao's fist sailed through the space where Joshi’s head had been a heartbeat before. Joshi tucked and spun. His fist struck twice, like a cobra, into Bao's kidney. The sting of subdermal armor made his hand ache, but Bao lurched forward with a grunt of pain.
"You're faster than I gave you credit for, old man." Bao spun. His feet blurred, hypnotic, before one snapped out. Bao struck Joshi on the point of his jaw. His neck popped as it rocked back from the blow. "I'm faster, of course, but still. I'm impressed."
"Fight. Don't bore me with conversation." He ducked under the next kick, spinning low to sweep Bao's feet. One hand primed the stunner in his coat pocket.
The assassin jumped over his leg effortlessly. "Worried you don't have processor space enough for both? I understand." He feinted high, and Joshi dodged low, only to catch a knee to the chest.
The wind huffed out of him on a white flash of agony as his broken rib reopened. For a moment,
he feared that the kick had stopped his heart. A follow-up punch to the back of his neck sent him to the pavement, and the impact confirmed he was still alive enough to feel pain. Bao lashed out with his pointed dress shoe again, and Joshi grabbed him by the leg and rolled.
Bao tumbled, the rip of fabric loud in the still air of the garage. Joshi tried to roll farther, break the leg, but Bao twisted and ended up astride his back.
"Do you feel like you're winning?" He grunted, grabbed Joshi by the ears, and slammed his head into the pavement. "I want you to feel like you had a chance."
Joshi’s nose shattered and split. The wound blinded him to seeing the stain on the ground, but there was no mistaking the warm rush of blood on his face and the taste of it in his throat. Now, while Bao was gloating. He tugged the stunner out of his pocket and slammed it against Bao's leg.
Bao grabbed his fist at the last second and redirected the weapon into the side of Joshi's neck. As soon as his skin completed a circuit between the two points, the weapon discharged. A massive surge of electricity bent his spine like a bow, all his muscles firing at once. His systems overloaded and mods shut down in response. Every twitch pushed the stunner deeper into his skin, unable to release it or push it away.
"I wondered if you'd brought one of those. Very clever. It would have leveled the playing field more than a little, I think." Bao stood and inspected the torn seam in his jacket while the stunner's capacitor emptied itself. "Good thing I was watching for it."
After what seemed like an eternity of white-hot lightning and searing pain, the batteries in the stunner finally died and Joshi collapsed. Bao stood over him, smiling, and he couldn't gather the strength to offer even a basic defense. "Just kill me."
"Hardly. You see, I think you're right." The operative bent down and padded through Joshi's pockets, finding the burner phone Joshi'd procured. Despite some scarring from the stunner, it looked unharmed. "I think the good doctor does care about you. And more importantly, I think she's going to be willing to trade herself for you.”
He used a set of zip ties to lash Joshi's wrists and ankles, then lifted him as though he weighed no more than a feather. "On the plus side, if she doesn't come, you'll know I was right all along. So it's a win-win." He stepped out of the garage with Joshi over his shoulder. He whistled, and the little dog fell in behind them as he walked.
Yashilla
C
hipped concrete bit into her ass and the backs of her thighs as Yashilla sat on the half wall and wished there were drugs enough to drag her through the next thirty minutes. In her vision, a small red dot threaded through a map of the district, slowly drawing on her location.
All the gods and devils damn Joshi for being an idiot.
She resisted the urge to rub the sweat from her face. It never helped with the heat. More importantly, it would ruin the AR she had running for people on the street. At the moment, she looked like a bronze statue sitting on a wall. Guerilla art popped up all the time, so people passing by didn't look twice. Just as well. The disguise wouldn't hold up to close scrutiny, but anything was better than just sitting in the open. Exposed.
She gave in to temptation and rubbed her face anyway. A passerby jumped in surprise, and she smiled at the other person's discomfort. Hacking into the high-paid ARvertising channels had been a trick but so worth it when it came to controlling how much of you a person could really see. The dot turned the corner a block away from her position, and Yashilla pushed her sleeve up.
One tap at the corner of her wrist and the interface for her comps glowed through the skin on her forearm. Quick taps brought up the autono-cab's control systems. Safety overrides wouldn’t let her cause an accident with it, but she sent an order telling it to stop at her location and shut itself down for maintenance. Like most of the digital world, the vehicle danced to her command, signaling and pulling over just before cutting off its engine.
The look of outrage on Dr. Schulmann's face was absolutely worth what the script had cost.
Yashilla jumped off the wall, tugging her sleeve down as she hit the pavement. The cab door slammed as Schulmann got out. Her fists pounded ineffectively above where the driver would have been in a more expensive vehicle. The torrent of profanity pouring out of her would have made Joshi blush.
If he's able to do anything at this point.
"All I'm saying, Doctor, is that stealth and laying low are not your strong suit." Yashilla leaned against the other side of the cab and offered a smile. The other woman startled, stepping back and scanning the street in clear panic, hunting for a friendly face. "I mean, you haven't changed your gait at all, and your chip registered the second you got in the cab. For someone who spent years on the run, you've clearly forgotten a lot."
"Yashilla." She said it with an equal measure of understanding and wariness. "I'd ask why you're following me—"
"-But then you'd have to admit that you never got on that boat. I understand the dilemma." Yashilla pushed up from the car and stretched, forcing people to go around her on the sidewalk.
"Joshi's in trouble." Netta looked even more pale as she said it, and Yashilla felt a twinge of jealousy. She and Joshi had always been better friends than lovers; even at their best times she'd never had the kind of connection that these two clearly shared.
"He's done something dumb," she agreed. "Even for him. I wouldn't have sought you out otherwise, but you were still in the city, and you...deserved to know." Yashilla dug the phone out of her pocket and skidded it across the roof of the cab.
Netta opened it, and Yashilla could tell the moment she'd made sense of the image that had been texted to it. "He wants to trade me for Joshi's life. Is that why you hunted me down?"
The hint of accusation in the other woman's voice hurt. Would have hurt more if Yashilla hadn't scarred that particular wound over plenty of times herself. "That was a long time ago. I want you to know about now. And to let you know I'm willing to help, whatever you decide."
"I'm going to give him what he wants." Netta said it so confidently that Yashilla was taken back.
"Okay. I can't help with that. If you walk in to turn yourself over, that's all you. If I'm involved, Joshi wouldn't ever forgive me."
The doctor smiled. "I'm not what Bao really wants. He may not know it yet, but I'm just the means to an end." She patted the knitting bag at her side. "Let's just say you're not the only one who's breaking the rules."
"Somehow, I think you and I have different ideas about what the rules are, but okay. I'll bite. What do you need from me?"
If anything, the other woman's grin grew even more predatory. "It depends. You have access to a lab?"
Chapter Eight
N
etta looked around the lab a second time and wondered why she hadn't bothered going through black market channels before now. The space was cramped, but in many dimensions was better equipped than the lab BlueGene had outfitted her with. She chuckled and shook her head. "I really don't want to know how you knew about this place."
"You're right about that." Yashilla hopped up onto a stool, legs folding under her like a spider's. "What do you need from me?"
The woman had already been more than helpful, slicing her way through the security systems around Bao's files and providing Netta with the data she needed. Knowing that he didn’t have any poison filters implanted, at least according to his records, made the way forward obvious.
She'd explained the plan to Yashilla on the ride over, and bought twenty-four hours with a quiet phone call to Bao. As she'd expected, he’d been very interested in the possibility of a cure and open to trading for it instead of her. She still suspected a trap, but it only took a little push to get him to give her the extra time she'd need to set up her response. "At this point? It's just me. And time. Implant encapsulation isn't an overnight process."
"Too bad overnight is all you've got."
Netta pulled the scarf out and laid it across one of the tables. Stretched out, the pattern of knits and purls forme
d a genomic pattern that had been the fruit of years of research. Time that she needed to understand how to introduce a biocompatible microcapsule that attached to and protected implants from the body's immune response systems, while simultaneously solving the calcium leaching issues that high-grade neural implants caused over time.
It didn't work overnight, but all her research indicated that it would succeed. As quickly as she dared, Netta produced the first ten-injection sequence. "Field-testing isn't really authorized on this yet. You're okay with that?"
“I thought you weren’t actually planning to test it.”
“I can’t risk Bao having a bio-scanner of some variety to confirm the contents of the vials.” Netta pressed her palms to the table until they stopped shaking. “I can explain away the sedatives as required, since it’s going to be painful, but the biological components are going to have to match what he’s looking for, or he won’t release Joshi.”
Worry fought with protective anger in her chest, directed as much toward Bao as Joshi himself. She couldn’t believe he’d been so foolish, had risked himself for her. The least she could do was use her research to free him. And, if things went according to plan, take Bao out of the picture.
Yashilla moved to stand beside her, looking down at the scarf with a grin before running a hand over the yarn. "You rebel you."
"I thought you said biology wasn't your strong suit."
"It's not." Yashilla tapped the intricate knotwork on the scarf. "But I know a code when I see one. You've got a repeating set of five items. And even my spotty biology could get me the rest of the way to RNA sequencing."
"I'm not saying it's going to be safe. And this whole plan could blow up in our faces. That’s a risk you’re willing to take?"
"My opinion matters? I thought I was just the hired help."
"You're his..." Friend seemed too impersonal, given that Joshi had shared a history with her. Having seen something of the other woman's strength under pressure, Netta could understand why.