Artimus returned the glass partition to its place atop the globe and climbed down off the step ladder. “I only know how to do one thing, and that is how to use information to control people. There are two sides of that coin: doing it in the name of honor, and justice. Or doing it in the name of whoever you care for the most, above all others.”
He walked around the fish tank, his image distorting further, his face bulging out grotesquely the farther around the curvature he walked. He stopped and looked at Jayne from the other side of the aquarium.
“I was like you, Jayne. I left the academy, though on good terms, prepared to use my special skill set for the good of the Federation. For the good of the people. But the funny thing about doing what is expected of you is that the stakes are very low, and so is the pay.”
Jayne understood now. The truth was too hard for Artimus. He couldn’t look Jayne in the eyes. He confessed to her through the disfiguring, scrambling disguise of the aquarium glass. It was his confession booth. “I understand I’ve done bad things, but I remind myself I did them for such good reasons. I knew there would be no turning back, that I would be sacrificing almost everything. But it was in exchange for the only thing I truly had. I had no choice, I had to do it. If you ever have children, you will understand.”
He left his protection of the aquarium, walking its circumference and arriving once again face-to-face with Jayne.
Jayne understood Artimus, and the understanding opened up a part of her she’d been ignoring. At what point did she become a criminal? Who was that up to? If it was up to society, she had been a criminal since the moment she was framed. No, since the moment she was kicked out of the academy, essentially. Or did it go all the way back to when she was fourteen, and drank a beer for the first time?
If it was up to her, was she a criminal? Could she bear to make that decision, if she had to? She had lied to her enemies and allies. She had evaded cops, she had snuck around her friends and partners. She had snuck through security, she had fought and tied up a young girl, as lost as she once was.
She was on an even playing field with this man. Artimus. Yorgos. Did that make them equal adversaries? Or did it make them friends?
Could understanding and kinship exist across the boundaries of morals? Did morals cross the boundaries of right and wrong?
“What the hell are you thinking about? Say something. You’re just standing there.” Artimus’ impatience brought Jayne out of her deep, uncomfortable ruminations.
Back to the matter at hand, Jayne. “I have two questions for you.”
Artimus held up his hand. “Where do I find such an excellent suit? A tailor on Deep Wen’s mezzanine. Trust me, you can’t afford him. Your next question: where did I find a couch so absurd in length? It’s amazing what you can order online.”
Fuck, Jayne agonized silently to herself. He’s endearing himself to me. “No, but I do agree it’s a very flattering suit. Not my style, but I can appreciate it.”
Artimus smiled and mock-bowed. “Thank you. I’ve been waiting for you to say something.”
Jayne looked up at the massive surveillance wall. She wanted to know everything as well. “Why were you selling information about me?”
“Ah! Yes.” Artimus strolled past Jayne to his desk. “I wasn’t. I couldn't care less about who you are, much less about who knows who you are. Someone is using me, my old identity, to mask their intent to use you. I’m sure that person, whoever they are, is being used as well. By who? I don’t care. Knowing would not benefit me. If it wasn’t for that fact that I am ‘dead,’” he used air quotes, “then this would all be very serious. But since I am dead, I’m pardoned from this entire ordeal. But you are not, Jayne. Which leads us to your next question: who is the one in black? The one who was selling the briefcase. Now that I do know. Tell me if I need to slow down.”
Jayne stood opposite Artimus, on the other side of his desk, looking him down. “Thanks, but I can keep up.”
“You do me a favor, and I can help you out. My word. Scout’s honor. Cross my heart—”
“—and hope to die. Yeah. What’s the job?”
Artimus pulled up yet another panel in his desk. “And for my final trick…” With a swipe and a few taps, the wall behind Artimus dissolved into a window overlooking the spiraling city of Deep Wen. It was a beautiful view. From Artimus’ perch, he had what he held so dear: an eagle eye view of everything. From up on the balcony level, at the north end of the cave, one could see virtually the entire metropolis expanding into a neon glow against the cave.
Jayne stood beside Artimus and looked forward at the sight that would instill even the most moral, incorruptible individual with a desire for absolute power.
Artimus pointed out, and down, perhaps two miles away, at a spinning tower. “Do you see that building? At the tip of my finger? The one that looks like a soup bowl, spinning?”
Jayned traced the length of Artimus’ arm, until she found the building at the end of his finger. “Yeah.”
“That’s the Pie In The Sky Casino. Such a horrid name, isn’t it?”
Jayne had to admit it was a horrible name. “Yeah, that’s pretty bad.”
“Like me, they’re not limited to merely one business. And their business is interfering with my business. I need someone, who isn’t me, who isn’t attached to me, to bring them down. Do you understand?”
Jayne understood clearly. Drugs. “You were very close to earning my respect. You just lost it.”
Artimus waved her off with a chuckle. “Jayne, you have a very naïve concept of respect. In my line of business, respect isn’t based upon what you do, but how you do it. Besides, you don’t have a choice. I’m asking this of you to be polite.”
Jayne understood she was between a rock and a hard place. A really well-dressed, somewhat eccentric rock and a very poorly named but likely very dangerous hard place.
Jayne didn’t like how she had been cornered into the identity of criminal. Whether or not she had done anything wrong to land her in that situation, the system was doing its job. Once the label of criminal was placed on her, she suddenly had very little choice but to behave like one.
Jayne believed that, ultimately, she was fighting for good. You can’t make an omelet without et cetera.
Jayne didn’t choose the criminal life, the Federation chose it for her.
If she had to dig deeper before she found a way to climb out, so be it.
With the forces of good and evil reconciled in her conscience, she faced Artimus. “What would I do?”
“I’m not concerned about their casino. It’s a shithole.”
Whoa, Jayne realized that was the first time Artimus had sworn. His clean image was tarnishing by the minute.
Artimus continued. “None of the casinos in this town concern me, because I know I run the best one. I need you to set them up, I need you to get them to shut down their operation. Even if you’re able to get them to limit their activity to their side of town, I’ll be happy. Well, happier than I am now.”
Jayne started examining the rest of the city. “Yeah, but… how am I supposed to do that?”
Artimus lit another cigarette. He exhaled, casting the city under a thick fog. “Perhaps you’re not a criminal, Jayne. Because you only ask that because you can’t imagine how you’d ever accomplish such a task. You can’t imagine it because you’re limiting your options to what law has lead you to believe, which is that there are limits. In truth, it is just past those limits where real possibilities begin.”
Dammit, Jayne agonized. She was willing to do a lot to get to the bottom of… whatever this increasingly elaborate situation was. But she was getting very tired of Artimus’ pseudo-philosophical pontifications.
Jayne stepped between Artimus and the cityscape to assure that she had his full attention. “I guess I should clarify myself. The question is not how, so much as it is what? What do I do? I’ll figure out the how.”
Artimus blew smoke in Jayne’s face. “Jayne, my
confidence in your criminality diminishes every time you speak, but there’s hope for you yet. But if you want to be a criminal, if you want to think like one, work with them, and get what you want from me, then you have to learn how to improvise.” He held out his hand. “Do we have a deal?”
Alright, Jayne decided. If he wants me to improvise, I’ll show him how to improvise. I don’t know how I’ll improvise yet, she continued thinking, but I guess that’s the point. She grabbed his hand. “Deal.”
Artimus smiled with the cigarette holder held between his grinning teeth. “You have forty-eight hours. Now go.”
Jayne scowled at him. She would have time to decide whether or not this was a mistake later.
She marched across his massive office and showed herself the door.
Artimus casually puffed on his cigarette as he walked to his desk. He leaned into a tablet, and spoke into it. “Please alert Mister Crisp that Jayne has agreed to the job, and he has won forty million credits.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Merry’s Apartment, Apex Park, L40, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros
Merry threw three pairs of socks into her duffel. On top of an extra pair of pants, two shirts, and a ski mask, just in case.
She opened the top drawer of her dresser and rifled through her underwear. Merry knew she should be practical, probably a durable synthetic, something absorbent and waterproof. But she pretty much only had thongs.
Damn, Merry mused. Maybe I am too sexual. Thongs, thongs, thongs… leather chaps, bull whip, ball gag… Aha! Boxer briefs that a one-night stand left behind. Perfect. My sexuality is an asset after all … Haha … asset.
She threw in the underwear, and then tossed in another little number for particularly intimate situations: a pair of brass knuckles. Finally, brass knuckles and a knife. Jayne wasn’t the only one with fighting skills. Merry didn’t mind, though. She had always preferred to outsmart people than knocking ‘em out. But if she had to, she wasn’t afraid of getting dirty. And she wasn’t ashamed to tilt the fight in her favor with tools others might call “unsportsmanlike.”
If a sport is what you want, Merry thought to herself, take up tennis.
She did a quick check to make sure she had everything she needed. She had her comm snugly tucked into the lower pocket on the side of her thigh. She had an encrypted credit chip that reassigned the transaction to innumerable other accounts, making purchases impossible to trace. It was a little immoral, Merry had to admit. It was, maybe, as dirty as throwing a punch with brass knuckles. But it was an emergency and the encrypted chip drained accounts saddled with at least six figures. No one with that much dough would miss the costs of a few emergency expenses.
With her duffel bag loaded up with soft clothes, she tossed in her tablet. Before she unplugged it from her central drive-unit that was responsible for half her energy bill each month, she made sure that all the necessary info had been backed up. She didn’t only want the data pertaining to the case, everything related to Jayne, the man in black, Yorgos Costas, and, of course, Burrett. She also backed up some personal files. Videos and photos of friends and families and some of her favorite porn.
With all this necessary data backed up onto her tablet, she commenced what, only a week before, she would have considered unthinkable.
She initiated a clean sweep of her databanks. Everything must go.
“Commence Data Sweep?” the pop-up on her panel asked her.
Merry selected the glowing “YES.”
Another window popped up. “Once the data sweep is complete, all of your files will be permanently deleted and irretrievable. Are you sure you want to continue?”
Merry hated how hard this decision was. She felt like she was putting down a beloved pet. Merry’s entire passion, her career, was researching, accumulating, and managing information. Dirt. She prided herself on having whatever data she needed on hand and, unlike Dean Geiger, she had acquired all of it through conniving, cunning, and brilliantly executed hard work.
But the risk wasn’t worth it now. She knew she was being followed. Vlad and Fred had fled as well. They were all split, all on their own, all with their own questions, and all left to make their own sacrifices.
Merry selected “YES.”
The data-bank began the long process of systematically organizing the files and eradicating them.
Merry laced up her boots, tight. She tossed the duffel over her shoulder and, with one last look over her apartment that she had worked so hard for, left and shut the door behind her.
The decision to split up hadn’t been reached easily. Vlad, Fred, and Merry had debated, then argued fiercely over the roar of Vlad’s jazz filling the ISA offices.
“We all split up, we all go our separate ways, and we all come back if Jayne needs us,” Vlad had argued.
Merry hated Vlad’s often shitty choice of words. “IF?”
Vlad stuttered as he backtracked. “When! I meant when. Obviously we’ll be there for her.”
Fred had spent the entire debate hunched over in a chair, head in his hands. “The proper question is if she gets back.”
Merry was losing everyone. She admitted that now, at this time, it was hard to feel like they had much of a job left to do, and even less like they could make any real difference.
There was still, of course, a thick and smoky fog of doubt filling the room, but no one seemed ready to get down on the floor where the air was still clear, to look down at the root of everything. Except Merry, who had been arguing it from the beginning.
“I’m sorry, Vlad, but I don’t think that’s enough. There’s too many… Damn, there are so many moving parts to this mess.”
Vlad aggressively sucked down the joint clenched between his teeth. “It’s Jayne’s mess, Merry. We can’t clean it up without her.”
Fred rolled his head back and forth, getting the gears in his head up and working. “We have to wait 'til she gets back. Maybe she’ll figure out… who this man in black guy was, who he was working for… maybe she’ll come back and she’ll have already cleaned up some of this mess, as you called it.”
Vlad stuck his hands on his hips and paced the length of the office. “It’s not a mess, it’s a goddamn disaster area.”
Merry ignored Vlad and looked at Fred with as much pleading kindness in her eyes as possible. “Fred, what if she doesn’t come back? What if they find her before we do?”
Vlad scoffed. Not in derision, Merry felt comfort at least recognizing that much. Merry had learned all the different varieties of Vlad’s scoffs, shrugs, and groans. It had been a scoff of helplessness. “We don’t even know who they are yet.”
Fred furrowed his brows. “Burrett. Right? He’s working with Geiger, and… the man in black… right?”
Vlad shrugged. Merry recognized it was a ‘perhaps’ shrug. “We don’t know. Maybe they are, maybe they’re not.”
Merry stared down at her feet. She realized something wasn’t right. “The Burrett development… very weird. I still haven’t wrapped my head around that.”
Vlad waved his hands around in the air. It was his inner professor coming out. “Burrett has more reason to hate Jayne than anybody. If you’re forming a coalition against Jayne, who would make a better ally than him?”
Merry shook her head. “That’s just it. Burrett…”
Fred snapped his fingers in a revelatory manner. “Burrett doesn’t make allies.”
Merry nodded and pointed to Fred, but looked to Vlad. “Exactly.”
Vlad grunted. Uh oh, Merry recognized it was a pure, animalistic grunt of anger. “I hate this! It’s like a nesting doll. There’s no end, it keeps going and going and going! I wish we had just moved on without opening this fucking thing!”
“That’s not our job!” Merry barked. “We go deeper than anyone else because we’re the only ones willing to. Our job is to solve issues. Not to make them… not our… problem.”
Fred laughed, bringing the vibe up a little bit. “I don’t think that came out as
eloquently as you hoped, but I understand, Merry.”
Merry nodded at Fred. “Thanks.” She turned to Vlad, then addressed both of them. “Jayne needs to know about Burrett. If I can’t make it all the way out to Headless Hope, I have to find her as soon as she gets back. We can’t… we can’t let Burrett get ahead of us.”
Vlad threw his hands up in the air. “Fine! You’re right! We can’t give up! And I’m only yelling because I’m angry that you’re right! Gah!”
Fred adjusted his glasses. “You know, a lot of other arms dealers, especially the high-profile ones, use virtual reality spaces for negotiations and deal making. I can ask around, see if there have been any other deals or meetings. With Burrett, I mean. Some factions monitor virtual reality spaces to stay ahead of the competition. Or to, you know, crush them ahead of time. I always avoided VR dealmaking for that reason alone, even though it kept me from ever going big time. I just couldn’t handle the stress.”
Vlad took what little of the joint that was left out of his mouth and pointed at Fred with it between his thumb and forefinger. “Burrett is, at least, still limited to VR, correct?”
No answer.
Vlad’s eyes went big. “Right?”
Merry feigned absolute confidence. “Yes. Otherwise they wouldn’t be meeting with him in VR, right? They simply found a way to access his VR world, or open up a new VR network to him.”
Vlad stroked his chin. “I can do some more VR spying.”
Merry’s chin dropped. “Alone? Are you sure?”
Vlad gave Merry a thumbs up. “Besides, I don’t have a choice.”
Merry smirked. “Alright. I’m going after Jayne. At least, I’m going to try. That’s all we can do.”
Exposed (Interplanetary Spy for Hire Book 2) Page 17