Angel’s Envy turned out to be a smooth and potent whiskey. Kira let the burn roll over her tongue and limited her intake to a sip. She’d nurse this one for a while, letting her body absorb it slowly while giving the ice a chance to melt. Despite the celebration, she needed to keep her wits about her, at least until she’d accepted the theater job and told Diana and Chloe about her decision. Though a little bit of alcohol would probably make the last part easier.
Diana led the way toward the windows. A white-haired man in a black-and-gray jacket intercepted her. His jacket’s silver piping and epaulets indicated he was a high-ranking official and Diana introduced him to Kira and Chloe as Malcolm Reese, but his title vanished into the background noise and general confusion. Diana listened, her ear cocked toward him, but between his low voice and the dull roar from the surrounding crowd, Kira heard nothing. Chloe sipped her drink and started to fidget. Diana brokered a pause in the conversation and pointed toward the windows.
“Keep going until you see Gary. I’ll be along.”
Kira and Chloe resumed their journey, but without Diana’s size and presence to part the crowd, it was slower going. They wove their way through immovable clusters of people talking and drinking until they finally hit a clear area. Gary waved them over to a table where he sat next to a woman wearing a gold-and-purple jacket with a second’s epaulets. Her jet-black hair hung down her back in a French braid.
Gary stepped up to host duties. “Kira, Chloe, this is Claire Bostwick. Former member of Team Diana, now a second over at First Trust.”
Claire shook her head. “There are no ‘former’ members of Team Diana. Some of us just serve under different colors.”
Gary acknowledged the correction and made an exaggerated search of the surrounding area. “You lost our fearless leader.”
Kira shrugged. “She sent us on. She had to talk to someone.”
Claire looked puzzled. “Who was it?”
“Malcolm something.” Kira tried to call the person’s image back to mind. “Reese, maybe? Older guy. Somebody big with the Guild.”
Claire nodded. “He’s probably trying to get her to run for office again.”
Concern washed across Chloe’s face. “Could she still be a second if she did that?”
Claire and Gary exchanged a look that amounted to a short, silent conference. Claire answered. “No, and that’s why she won’t do it. But she can get some leverage by talking about it, so she’s talking.”
Chloe frowned into her drink. “Is Diana always working an angle?”
The question provoked another wordless conference between Claire and Gary. This time, Gary responded. “Pretty much, yeah. That’s how she is who she is.”
Chloe looked puzzled. “So, who is she?”
Gary grinned and took a sip of his drink. “One of those people you just don’t fuck with.”
Claire broke in. “I always thought Diana’s vibe was more ‘We both know you’re not going to fuck with me, because you’re so much smarter than that.’”
“Whatever.” Gary directed his attention back to Chloe and Kira. “The point being, if you can’t be one of those people, the next best thing is to have one of them looking out for you. Diana will do that.” He pointed around the room. “Notice how few seconds are here?”
Although most people in the room wore gunfighter’s jackets, the braided epaulets that distinguished the seconds from their clients were few and far between.
“All the instructors and seconds have been busting their butts on Qualification Week, they went to their receptions, and now they’ve gone home. Diana’s here. Has she been introducing you around?”
“Yeah.” Chloe fingered her glass. “Kind of showing us off.” She turned to Kira. “Showing you off, anyway.”
Kira tried to frame a response, but Claire spoke first. “Hey, number twenty-five in the region and number seven in a class of eighty-one is nothing to sneeze at.” The young second almost glared at Chloe. “Stop selling yourself short.”
Gary picked up the thread again. “Diana wants people to know she’s got good clients, but she’s also marking you, making sure people know if they mess with you, they’ll answer to her.”
Kira swirled her glass, melting the ice faster and diluting the drink. “So, she took good care of you when you were her client?”
“She takes good care of all her clients. I think she believes that’s the purpose of her existence.”
A hand came down on Gary’s shoulder. “What’s the purpose of my existence?”
He grinned up at Diana. “Seeing to the interests of wayward gunfighters incapable of looking after themselves.”
Diana responded with mock surprise. “Is there a nobler cause?”
Gary’s grin widened. “I can’t think of one at the moment.”
“I can.” Claire tapped impatiently at the table readout. “Faster nacho delivery. I’ve had this order in since I got here, and it still says ‘10 minutes.’” She frowned at the readout. “Wait. Dammit—they moved the submit button and changed the color.” She stabbed the display with her finger. “I hate it when they do that.”
Gary leaned over to study the order screen. “So you didn’t order nachos?”
Claire glared at him but said nothing.
Diana maneuvered into an empty chair between Gary and Chloe, and the conversation morphed into some gossip about the local Guild treasurer getting the boot for suspected embezzlement, which in turn kicked off a long chain of topics that started with TKC’s donation of some parkland to the city, ran through the political ambitions of a vice president at EMR Trust, and somehow became a discussion about a proposed ordinance to extend the ban on human-controlled vehicles from the core downtown area to the adjacent business districts and neighborhoods. Some hobbyist groups objected, and the council seemed inclined to hear them out. That was surprising, given the group was tiny compared to the number of people who used grid-managed, AI-controlled drivers.
Kira pitched in occasionally while nursing her drink down to a warm buzz and a dry glass. Gary and Chloe fell into a spirited argument about the relative merits of various southside Italian eateries, while Diana and Claire were engaged in a detailed assessment of the prospects for women’s basketball in the coming season. The latter conversation was informed by Diana’s history as a starting center all the way through college, and Claire’s high school play for Des Moines East, leaving Kira in a conversational eddy.
She excused herself and headed for the restrooms. On the karaoke stage near the back, two guys played to the crowd as the long instrumental opening of Queen’s “Keep Yourself Alive” ran in the background. Doing the song as a duet was an interesting choice.
As Kira approached the restrooms, she passed men in varying states of discomfort lined up against the wall leading to their door. The women’s room was not only lineless, but empty. There was at least one upside to the small number of women in dueling. As she washed up, Kira’s handset signaled for attention. Her bank. Kira’s stomach churned. With some trepidation, she pressed her thumb to the device’s security reader and accessed her account. At least she was out of public view.
It showed a deposit of 35,750.53 unidollars from the Midwest Regional Chapter of the Gunfighter’s Guild. Her prize for winning the Cup, minus withholding. The Guild was a stickler for prompt payments, and they weren’t going to make a member wait on them. Kira let out a small sigh.
After she repaid her signing bonus, made her next loan payment, and squared up with Chloe on the rent, she’d have a little over a thousand unis to get to Minneapolis, set up housekeeping in the theater’s back room, and hang on until her first paycheck hit her account. If it didn’t arrive before another loan payment consumed the last of her cash, she’d be down to shoplifting ramen noodles or begging coworkers to have her over for dinner.
She emerged from the restroom, and the dull buzz of party conversation pressed in. Pressure from nearby bodies. From looks. From expectations. Kira tried the door leading
to the deck. It opened.
Once outside, her skin tingled in the cool September air. Cleansing, clarifying. Exactly as she’d hoped. With the exterior lights off, no one inside was likely to notice her through the big floor-to-ceiling windows. She could be alone. In the pond beyond the deck, the recirculating fountain churned away, illuminated by bounce-back from spotlights trained on the words “Midwest AgriSystems” on a windowless wall of prefabricated concrete panels. The building housed the company’s gunfighter training campus. By all accounts, the facility was similar to the sprawling TKC installation out of sight behind the arena, although a bit smaller.
Inside the bar, a video screen flickered. Kira’s face appeared on the monitor, a snippet from a hallway interview conducted right after the match. The display flipped from that to one of her stills, overlaid with her stats. A title dropped into the slide. “‘Death’s Angel’ Takes Midwest Regional Cup.”
Death’s Angel?
Somebody had given the cold, deadly character she played on the dueling field a name. Did she really want to be called “Death’s Angel”?
It was flattering, in a weird sort of way. It might even make a good throwaway line at a donor event—one of those “interesting life” tidbits artists were expected to provide. “Why yes, it’s true, I did go through gunfighter training. They called me ‘Death’s Angel.’” Follow the declaration with an anecdote someone who grew up in a gated community would find both horrifying and titillating.
Kira shook her head, turned away, and looked out over the pond.
Chill ate through the thin jacket, and she zipped it up for warmth. She ought to message Marla now, let her know she had the money to pay back her signing bonus and take the job. She leaned on the rail and stared into the dark. Her handset remained in its holder.
The door opened and another guest entered the deck. No mistaking that profile, even in this light: Diana. Her second leaned on the rail next to her, a half-full glass of wine in her hand. “Hey.”
Was there any significance to Diana switching to a less potent drink? Kira didn’t turn to face her. “You need some fresh air, too?”
“Maybe.” Diana turned around, letting the railing support her weight as she faced the window.
Kira mimicked her mentor’s position.
“You can see all the types from here.” Diana seemed to be addressing the night at least as much as she was addressing Kira.
“Types of what?”
“The types of people who get into gunfighting.” She used her wineglass as a pointer. “There’s people like Chloe or Asim.” She indicated a man whose age, dark skin, and long, thin limbs marked him as a descendant of Sudanese refugees. “They’re born into such crappy circumstances, this looks like the ladder out. And for some of them, it will be.”
Diana squinted, then pointed out a man with neatly combed salt-and-pepper hair and the black-and-gray jacket of a Guild official. “I picked up Roger Davis during my first rotation as an instructor.” She took a drink. “He’s got severe ADHD. Parents didn’t know how to help him. His school couldn’t deal with him, so he dropped out. He got fired dozens of times, but he hit a TKC open tryout on a good day. Once he was on the Guild medical plan, I found a therapist who helped him work out the right mix of meds and coping strategies, and he made it through a year as a gunfighter. He moved into the Guild’s training evaluation section, and now he’s the Midwest Region’s coordinator.” Diana settled back against the rail. “As a society, we knew how to help him, but until he took this job, nobody did the work.”
Diana aimed her wineglass at a table where a man with a shock of white hair and striking blue eyes held court with a group of young men. “Paul Harris. Longest-serving gunfighter in the Guild—just over three years with Consolidated Trust.”
“Three years? How can anybody do that?”
“He’s been hit five times, so he spent some time on the disabled list. But he’s honestly fearless. He can envision his death intellectually, but he doesn’t feel it emotionally. Not like you and I do.”
Kira studied the scene. “He’s a psychopath.”
“I haven’t seen a full psych workup, but I’d bet a year’s pay he’s off-the-charts on the Kirkland Screen.” Diana folded her arms across her chest. “No fear for himself, no remorse for his opponents. He’s perfect for this job. Maybe he’s perfect for this world.”
Diana pointed out a short, balding man in a TKC jacket. “Then there’s Marty. Discharged from the Army, got divorced, and wound up homeless. He has a tough time in the civilian world, but he can shoot. I’ll pick him up for the last three months of his contract when his second goes on instructor duty.”
Kira studied the crowd on the other side of the window. “What about me?” She turned to face Diana. “Where do I fit in all this?”
Diana laughed a little. “You and me? We’re the fuckups. We had a chance at a different life, and we blew it. Maybe we get it back, maybe we die trying, or maybe we’re just stuck here. But we can never quite believe what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”
Shit. Diana was reading right through her.
At their table, Chloe and Claire talked and laughed, oblivious to the outside.
This might be Kira’s last chance to get a question answered. “Do you have any regrets about taking Chloe?”
“No. I always wanted Chloe.”
Kira scowled. “No you didn’t. You said she wasn’t good enough to waste one of your picks on. I had to threaten to walk out before you said you’d work with her.”
“It’s true I said that.”
“But . . .” Kira prompted.
“How did Chloe feel about me?”
“She was afraid of you. You intimidated her.”
“Even after getting ready for the six-week evaluation?”
“She was better, but . . . Yeah.”
“I make a bigger difference for Chloe than anyone else in the class. Her odds of living are almost one-third higher with me than they are with the next-best choice. But she’d never pick me on her own.”
“So you used me—”
Diana’s voice rose a little. “I let you succeed at something you wanted to do. Going to the mat for Chloe also made you pull her in the right direction. You and I both got what we wanted. Chloe got what she needed.”
“Does it—” Kira bit back the words, then started again. “Does it ever occur to you that you take an awful lot on yourself?”
Diana’s voice became cool and controlled. Dangerous. “Does it occur to you that an awful lot gets pushed on me? I’m surrounded by people making life-and-death decisions. If I know the right answer and I don’t steer them to it, I’m betraying them.”
“Couldn’t you just lay it all out? You could have explained everything to Chloe and then let her choose instead of hustling her into it.”
Diana laughed a cold, bitter laugh. “Rational consideration of alternatives? That’s weak tea, especially for people under pressure. They stick to what feels familiar, they choose whatever gets it over with quickly, they obsess about minor points, and they huddle with their friends. That doesn’t always lead to the best option.”
“So, did you want me at all?” If the answer was no, it made walking away a lot easier.
“Oh yes. I make a difference with you, too. Not as much as with Chloe, but I’m your best bet for finishing match twenty-six and walking away in one piece.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’m not. But I know the odds, I understand what it takes, and see a path to survival for both of you.”
“And it doesn’t hurt that this ‘path’ happens to give you two of the class’s top ten gunfighters.”
“There’s a strong correlation between surviving and winning. That’s part of the reason I can do what I do.”
“Which is what?”
“Like I said: find clients who survive if they’re paired with me.”
“How can you know that, though? How can anybody know that?”
&nbs
p; “You can learn a lot with enough data and the right analyst.” Diana downed some wine, but watched Kira out of the corner of her eye. A challenge.
Kira rubbed her face. Somehow, all the pieces Diana tossed at her made a picture. But what was it? “OK, I can believe you can get at a bunch of gunfight data, but the AI does all the analysis, and it chooses the pairs . . .” Kira stopped, the picture suddenly clear in her mind. “Holy shit, you figured out how to bribe the AI.”
“It’s not quite that simple.” Diana looked amused again. “I play with it.”
“Play with it? You mean . . . what? You give it a digital belly rub and it just purrs out the data?”
Diana laughed. “That’s pretty close to the truth.”
“So, what is the truth?”
“The AI makes digital art. It shows it to me, traces my eye movements, and monitors my pulse while I watch.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“So it . . . cares that you like its work?”
Diana shrugged. “I don’t think my aesthetic judgment matters. Maybe it likes the ebb and flow of data. Maybe it enjoys getting a human to do something for it instead of the other way around. It’s an AI. Nobody knows why it wants what it wants.” Diana sipped her drink. “But it wants that interaction. A couple years ago, TKC hired a new AI wrangler. He discovered the AI would do its job if he watched the art or not, so he quit doing it. Then the AI found me.”
“So, you get it to calculate survival odds and then get it to assign the trainees you want.”
“I can’t make it do anything. But it will tell me how it decides, and I make sure it sees what it needs to see.”
Realization dawned on Kira again. “That’s why you had us sandbag on the third-quarter quick-draw evaluation!”
Diana awarded Kira the smile reserved for prize pupils performing well. “The AI thinks people in the middle range on that exercise are more successful with me than those at either extreme. So, I wanted you two in the middle.”
“Same deal on the variable-sighting exam.”
Diana nodded and took another drink.
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