Merry shook her head in disgust. “Dammit, Cameron.”
Cameron gripped the tablet on his lap. “There’s a lot of shit I know about. I’m always fighting it. I do what I can. Right now, we have bigger problems.”
Fred scooted up in the chair, rattling his handcuffs against the metal back. “What is going on Cameron? Why would you do this?”
Cameron dropped his voice. “I have news. Good news. And I’m doing this because I want to help.”
Vlad, Merry, and Fred had enough faith left in Cameron to lean forward and listen.
Their cop friend looked to the door, as if he was worried someone would barge in. “Okay. A few days ago I got an anonymous tip about two rival gang leaders meeting in Deep Wen to negotiate a merger of their drug operations. I relayed this message to DWPD, who carried out a successful sting operation.”
“Yeah,” Merry butted in. “Jayne’s working with all sorts of low lives now. So she’s working with these gangs, too? What’s the gist?”
Cameron held up his finger. “Not exactly.” He swiped open the tablet. "At the scene of the union, we found a note from our anonymous source crediting the takedown to a Deep Wen rickshaw driver named Van. So, Van received the reward money of forty-thousand credits for the capture of these two criminals. But…” He held on to the pause for effect.
Merry, Vlad, and Fred had kept their position of leaning in, but their backs were starting to hurt. Finally, Merry couldn’t take it anymore. “What, Cameron? What?!”
Cameron was busy fiddling with his tablet. “Sorry, I’m… This is a new tablet, and I’m not sure how to use it yet. I’m trying to pull up… Here! Okay, here it is. I was going to say that Van credited the entire operation as a double cross orchestrated by a young woman with short hair. He wouldn’t give up her identity. So I pulled some strings with DWPD and found this.”
He turned the tablet around and showed a surveillance video playing on loop. An athletic figure, indisputably Jayne’s, ducking through a crowd of raiding cops in the Gilded Gardens Casino.
Merry, Vlad, and Fred all exploded together. “Holy shit!”
Cameron smiled and nodded. “Holy shit indeed. Jayne set up everything. She was being used by one boss, and she managed to bring down both. And then credited this guy ‘Van.’” Cameron pulled up a photo of Van and showed the crew.
Merry groaned. “Oh my god, he’s so hot. I love dudes with long hair. Ugh, how does Jayne do it?”
Cameron smiled. “Oh, well, thank you.”
Merry dropped into a very serious tone. “You don’t count.”
Cameron ignored her. “Anyway. Jayne… I don’t know what she accomplished with this, but… She’s… I’m comforted in knowing we can still trust her. She’s still the same Jayne.”
Vlad leaned back in his metal chair and glanced up at the single hanging light to think. “We need her, don’t we? To fix all of this?”
Merry nodded. “Yes, we do.”
Cameron shut his tablet off. “And now we know we can trust her. But, I don’t know what to do next.”
Fred let out a long, nervous breath. Merry, Vlad, and Cameron turned to him. “We have to talk to Burrett. She has to talk to Burrett. We go right to the source.”
They all knew he was right, but Merry still had concerns. “What about the fight yesterday? At the lightball tournament. The media’s been pretty cagey about the circumstances of it, but they’re pushing that Jayne was at least involved.”
Fred shrugged. “I think we should at least let her tell her version of the story. We just have to find her.”
Cameron pointed at Fred in agreement. “Absolutely. We just have to find her.”
Vlad kept looking at the hanging light. “Jayne was in a fight, then?”
Merry stared at the floor. “It seems so. She’s probably in hiding after such a public blowup.”
Vlad turned his head. He kept focusing on that damn light. “She probably needed some first aid after that fight. Right?”
Fred glanced past Merry at Vlad. “What is your point, Vlad?”
Vlad wouldn’t take his eyes off the light. “I know where she is. She’s getting more first aid treatment from the only person she can trust. That neon light guy.”
Cameron blinked in shock. “Damn, you might be right. I can track him down, we’ve been keeping tabs ever since the first raid. Then one of us can go find her.”
Merry smiled. “I guess everything’s going to work out.”
Vlad laughed. “Since when did you become the optimistic one?”
“It’s come with the experience. We’ve always won before. Why should this time be any different.”
Cameron stood up from his chair. “Okay. First, we find Jayne. Second, meet with Burrett.”
Merry piped up with her expertise. “If we meet with Burrett, we’ll have to risk the ISA offices. I’m going to need that firepower to access the VR landscape.”
Cameron waved off any concern. “After this little interrogation, I can call off the heavy monitoring on the offices. We’ll be fine, as long as we’re smart. Now, most importantly…” He set the tablet down and picked up his chair. “You guys need to leave here looking terrified. I’m going to release you on lack of evidence, but all of you should be white in the face with terror. Got it?”
Merry, Vlad, and Fred nodded.
Cameron nodded back, then threw his chair across the room with a loud, unnerving clang as it ricocheted in the corner. “Dammit!” he yelled, “To think, I once trusted you assholes! Sure, you get the fuck out today! But we’re not through here!” Then he immediately dropped his voice. “We’ll all be in touch.”
He disheveled his shirt and tie, then stormed out the room for added effect.
A few minutes later, Hewitt came back to reluctantly remove their cuffs and discharge them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ISA Offices, L46, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros
Merry still couldn’t believe Vlad’s hunch was correct. After a day of intense and slightly less-than-legal police work, Cameron tracked down Tom at a new studio space on L22. Sure enough, Jayne had retreated there for some of Tom’s legendary first aid.
Cameron did his best not to let it get to him.
Jayne learning of her friends’ renewed trust in her was the jolt she needed to keep going. She was beleaguered with each new setback. She had spent the three days at Tom’s studio laying low and questioning everything about herself. She fought back the doubt, but it was hard to fight back the facts. She was injured, again. She kept losing fights. She couldn’t help but wonder if Nova had let her win.
And now she was not much closer to stopping Burrett. Or Dean Geiger. There was so much mystery left, and she was still deep in the weeds.
She learned the same lesson over and over again: she could do a lot alone, but she couldn’t do everything.
Now that she was reuniting with her team, with her friends, she felt newfound confidence in justice and goodness. In herself.
She knew who she was again.
Jayne marveled at the improvised rig Merry had made from a commercial VR set. “I really missed being constantly amazed by you, Merry.”
Merry looked up from her tablet. “Jayne, that is seriously the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me. Thank you.” Using a map of service activity, Merry zeroed in on VR activity originating around the Cryo-Institute. Due to the nature of cryostasis, there was constantly a red smudge of VR activity glowing on the map. But Burrett’s was unique because, now that his VR had been connected to an outside server, his blinked green anytime it was accessed. Merry would be using this function to keep track of Jayne’s engagement with the deranged man, and to intervene if any further connections were attempted by outside forces.
Outside forces they were hoping to learn the identities of.
Jayne strapped the VR rig over her head, leaving the eyepiece flipped up. Vlad gave her the run down based on his experience. “As soon as I landed in the VR scape, I heard voices. The
re’s no point of origin. It’s going to sound like the voices are coming from everywhere, so you can’t really track them. But the VR scape generates activity around the users present, so look for anything on your horizons. Trees, structures, simulated weather… Birds, maybe. When I dropped in, Burrett and the other man were meeting in a very peaceful field, so I assume the setting will more or less be the same.”
Merry began to sync up the VR rig with her massive processor. Damn, it was good to be back in the office. “Okay, I’m cloaking you. You’ll be invisible and silent in the VR scape. That is technically very illegal, but so is everything else we’re involved in right now. If Burrett is alone, raise your hand to signal us and I’ll decloak to you. If I see activity connecting with Burrett’s scape, I’ll have to cloak you before I disconnect you. Otherwise, they can trace you back to this location. Cloaking you while you’re in the scape might take some time, so be prepared for that. Got it?”
Jayne gave Merry a thumbs up. She turned to Vlad and Fred. “See y’all suckers on the other side.”
The VR rig was officially synced up and cloaked. Jayne initiated arrival into the VR world. “You’re good to go, Jayne.”
Jayne lowered the goggles over her eyes. She immediately felt far away from the office, standing in an open field. She heard birds. She felt wind. All around her was endless waving grass and blue skies.
The land before her was devoid of landmarks and geography. Coordinates did not exist. It was a constantly recycled world, reborn identically over and over again. It was a map inside of a map inside of a map.
Jayne heard Merry’s voice. “How’s it look in there?” Her voice felt distant. Not distant as in over that hill, or around that bend. Distant as in lost or unnatural. Jayne almost forgot she was still, technically, standing in the ISA office. Merry simply spoke out loud, and Jayne heard her muffled voice through the headset.
Jayne spoke out loud, shocked by the distance of her voice – she recognized it wasn’t of the world around her. “Good. Just looking at an endless field.”
Merry’s faraway seeming voice popped into Jayne’s mind. “Okay, the way the VR world works, you automatically generate facing North. So, hold onto that. Burrett is located east of you, almost directly. Walk east, and you should come upon Burrett. When you do, depending on his behavior, we’ll take you out of cloaking mode. Any questions?”
Jayne shook her head – her actual head, not her VR head. Although, she wasn’t sure if there was much of a difference. “Alright. Let’s go.”
Jayne willed herself, mentally, and began walking forward. In no time, she adjusted. The action felt real to her, though she knew she was simply standing still in an office.
Reality broke down. The world around her was as real as anything else had ever been.
And Burrett would be, too. Even if his body was bound in ice, his mind was as active and dangerous as ever. Jayne reminded herself not to forget this.
The heightened reality of the digital world affected Jayne’s perception of time. Though she had only been mentally walking across grassy fields for ten minutes, the abundant amount of detail and richness in color, the hyper-fidelity of the wind and chirping birds gave her brain so much stimuli to receive, that time slowed down significantly. If she had guessed, she’d been walking for close to an hour.
Meanwhile, in the offices, Merry, Fred, and Vlad casually pulled handfuls of peanuts out of a can, munching and killing time.
Jayne tripped, tumbling forward on the downward slope of a hill. She rolled forward over her head once before stopping herself by digging her heel into the dirt.
She looked back and saw a rock, jutting six inches out of the ground. How did she trip? Was that a real rock? Did she really fall?
“Jayne, are you okay?” Merry’s mumbles came through. Okay, that meant she must’ve actually fallen.
Jayne stood up. “Yeah, I’m okay. Did I just fall?”
Jayne felt Merry’s hands. It felt like receiving aid from a ghost. “Yes, you took an actual step and tripped over Fred’s backpack.”
Jayne looked back at the rock. It was gone. “I tripped on a rock.”
The touch of Merry’s hands disappeared. “Interesting. This is an incredibly heightened VR world. It’s adjusting to your physical experiences. It detected your fall, and created the justification for it.”
Jayne resumed her descent down the hill. “Great. Well, I’ll try to be careful.”
“Great,” Merry responded. “Burrett is close, by the way. Be careful.”
With a few more minutes of walking, though it felt like half-an-hour, Jayne saw the outline of a figure beyond some rolling mist. “I found him.”
Merry had been keeping close track of their identifying points on her map of the VR world. “Yeah, you two are right on top of each other. What’s he doing?”
As the mist rolled past, Jayne could see Burrett laying bricks on top of each other, building a simple wall. It was a foot deep, four feet tall, and disappeared over the endless horizon. “He’s… building a brick wall.”
“That’s his VR prison punishment. Does he look harmless?”
Jayne nodded. She wasn’t sure if Merry saw an actual nod, but before she spoke out loud Merry responded.
“Great. Deactivating the cloaking device now. I can’t access what Burrett says, only you. So be sure to keep mental notes. Good luck.”
Jayne looked down and saw her body fade into solidness. She approached Burrett, slowly, unbearably slowly. She knew she had the jump on him. That’s not what she wanted, necessarily. Sneaking up and surprising the most dangerous criminal mind in the world could potentially be a bad idea.
But then… “Hello, Jayne.”
No turning back now. Jayne walked at a normal pace around to the other side of the wall and faced Burrett. “Hello, Burrett. How’ve you been?”
Burrett shrugged. He laid down a thick swath of mortar, then slapped a brick into place. “Staying busy. You?”
Jayne examined the careful, austere workmanship of Burrett’s wall. “Not busy at all, just dropping in to say hi.”
Burrett laughed. “So glad your gallows humor remains, Jayne. Even in the face of myself.”
Enough chit-chat, Jayne decided. “How’d you know I was here?”
Burrett paid more attention to his wall than to Jayne. “I’ve been here… how long? A year? And yet, time exists simultaneously. The creation of the universe and its destruction occurred at once in a single instant, and this conversation is no different. Have you ever held a chicken?”
Wow, okay. That took her off guard. “I… haven’t.”
“The chicken does not keep time, and the chicken is an animal one could hardly make an argument for being able to form coherent, conscious thought. And yet it knows when a fox lurks at the edge of the forest.”
Jayne took a step to her left, maintaining pace with Burrett’s rapid bricklaying. “Does this make you the chicken? And I’m the fox?”
Burrett smiled. “My how things change. And yet, perhaps, it’s always been that way. Chickens can be dangerous. Eating undercooked chicken can kill people, you know. I’d venture to say that chickens, in that way, kill more people every year than foxes. Of course, I speak of a time when man coexisted with chickens and foxes. On land. On true land. That was a long time ago; of course it’s a time that exists now as well. How else would we be able to know it ever happened?”
As Jayne watched Burrett lay brick after brick, she lamented the choice to lock a man up in this VR prison. He was a criminal, an incredibly dangerous terrorist, but he was a brilliant man. And now, thanks to this world, he was losing his mind. Even Jayne had to admit that was a tragedy.
Or perhaps Burrett was resorting to his old tricks. Perhaps he knew exactly what he was doing, spinning yarns and running circles around Jayne. She decided to nip these theatrics in the bud. “Who have you been sending after me, Burrett? And why?”
Burrett slammed a brick down on a thick glop of mortar. Then he st
opped and looked at Jayne. Burrett’s eyes startled Jayne. They were as real as anything she had ever seen. They were not, they couldn’t be a digital reflection of himself. Yet, she knew they were. Despite the simulacrum, they were as piercing as ever. “Jayne, in the old days, in the ancient times, a man called Elvis Presley – I believe you’re familiar – was placed into the uniform of an army that meant nothing. Does that make sense?”
Damn, maybe Burrett was not relying on theatrics. His flights of fancy were so disjointed, so manic and scattershot that Jayne began to doubt a man with these deteriorating mental faculties could orchestrate her downfall.
Jayne picked up a brick and slammed it down on the open mortar. “It makes sense in a… matter of fact way.”
“The uniform was a message, not a fact.”
Jayne realized that bricks magically appeared ahead of Burrett, along with wheelbarrows of mortar. They appeared as they were needed. “Then what was the message? And what was the fact?”
Burrett dug his trowel into the mortar. “The message was that those who owned the uniform now controlled the man who wore it. The uniform, however, denied the fact that the man who wore the uniform was already under control.”
Jayne felt, somewhat against her better judgment, that she was close to breaking through with Burrett. She was close to realizing a truth, if only Burrett could talk straight for once.
Then, Merry’s muffled voice, frantic, interrupted Jayne’s thinking. “Jayne, our activity’s been monitored. It’s locked in on.”
Jayne ignored Merry. She could do it. She had time. “Burrett, who’s wearing the uniform then? Or what’s the fact?”
Burrett picked up a cracked brick. “I love these cracked bricks. Life is so monotonous. But sometimes the algorithm gifts me with an anomaly. Look.” He handed the cracked brick to Jayne. “Do you see that? Running from the corner to the center, before chipping apart. What a wonderful gift. I can’t build with it of course. And once the brick is left behind, it will disappear forever. For now, I can only enjoy it.”
Exposed (Interplanetary Spy for Hire Book 2) Page 24