“You could have mentioned that, Martin.” I snorted blood from my nose.
He spread his hands. “I didn’t know you didn’t know.”
“Did anyone die?” I asked.
“Ah, not sure. Hang on.” He pulled out his phone, opened the grid browser and thumbed around. “Lotsa injuries. Two confirmed deaths. Says someone took an axe to them.”
I shot a glare at Vorpal, but she was curled around her wound, face pale, eyes shut. I sighed, and looked back to Martin. “We’ll do better next time.”
“Next time? Next time?” Martin stood, tucking his phone away, an expression of disbelief crossing his face. He swept a hand over in the direction of my armor. “What the fuck you gonna do now, with the suit in pieces like this? You got no way to repair it, you’re busted up, Vorpal’s out of commission, and the city’s after your ass! We need to run, and now. Ain’t gonna be a next time. This is a cut-your-losses-and-get-out scenario. I don’t see no way it can’t be.”
“Normally, you’d be right.” I said, scrabbling with my good hand, and finding the edge of the cot. “Help her up, yes?”
He knelt down, got his shoulder under my arm, and I pushed up and curled an arm around his neck, as I took shaky steps toward my armor. “But the fact is that Dire won.”
“You won? He looked pretty fine on television. Looks kinda like you lost.”
“He won the fight, true, but winning the fight wasn’t the objective.” I reached my armor, and put my hand on the utility compartment. “Open Cinnamon,” I commanded. It hissed open, and I reached in, withdrew the hard drive I’d taken from Morgenstern’s computer. “This was the objective.”
“I’m not sure what that is besides some kind of gizmo.”
Oh. Right. Not everyone knew computer hardware by sight. I blamed my injuries for my assumption. “That’s his personal workstation’s hard drive.”
A hiss of breath from Vorpal. I shot her a glance, and she was still curled up in a perfect ball of pain, but now she was grinning. “It wasn’t for nothing,” she whispered.
“Oh, we’ve got blackmail a-plenty even without that,” I grinned. “Recorded the whole fight with him through her mask’s cameras. He damaged the mask, true, but the memory should be salvageable.” I popped the armor open, hauled the mask out from the inside. Took a few tries to get the clamps released, the remaining intact ones were jammed in their sockets. But a little sweat, swearing, and assistance from Martin later, we got the job done.
“Good.” I stood back up with mask tucked under my bad arm, and the hard drive in my good hand. “No, she’s fine now.” I shook my head as Martin offered his arm again. The throbbing from my nose had receded, and though my broken fingers still hurt, the splints seemed to be keeping the wound in check. “Give Dire a bit to look over Morgenstern’s stuff, then we’ll give Bunny a call, and set up a doctor’s appointment.”
“Aight.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I don’t know how much this is gonna work. This?” He gestured at the suit, and both of us. “This is proof that Morgenstern don’t play.”
I let my lips draw into a thin, flat line, and stared at him. He flinched, took a half-step back.
“Nor does Dire. He will pay, one way or the other.”
Martin shook his head. “Just sayin’, he’s a hardass.”
“And also a businessman. Just have to get to the point where it’s more effective to swallow his pride than it is to stand on his principles.” I let the hint of a smile creep back onto my face. “It’s not like it was with Pag— with Barbatos and the Black Bloods. He’s a different sort of foe. One that might not have been an enemy, had things fallen out differently.”
“Huh?”
“Long story. Tell you after we get the payday secured.” I headed upstairs, to where I’d set up the supercomputer.
Four scans and twenty minutes later, my dreams of a fast payday were gone, as I stared into the wall of layered encryption that was Aegon Morgenstern’s private files. My best icebreaker programs made a little progress against the mirrored image that I’d set up, but every time I seemed to get a little traction, I’d hit another trap and the entire thing would unravel. Without the quarantine box, I’d have nothing to show for it, as any experimentation directly on the hard drive would have bricked it in short order.
But it wasn’t entirely hopeless. Given time and persistence, I’d get through. Might take hours or days to get it all, but I had time. Well, once we made sure Vorpal wouldn’t die, anyhow.
A glance into the quarantine box... no, the computer hadn’t cracked Morgenstern’s encryption yet. As I watched, the mirrored image started to fragment itself, and wipe yet again. My subroutines caught it and restored the image, started another approach.
Another couple of minutes, another cascading failure. I sighed, reset it, tapped in few possible avenues that the algorithms hadn’t tried yet. This was obscenely difficult. I was starting to believe the man, when he said that he was at the peak of human potential... he was giving even my skills trouble.
A final wave of my wounded hand across the AR, and it loaded up another image. I was thankful for the programmed interface. Trying to type on a keyboard with two busted fingers would have been hellish.
I stared at it for a bit, then sighed, and slumped back against a concave part of the wall, where there had once been a conduit back. I relaxed against the cool metal, and studied my hands. So much work to do. Most of it on me, now. Martin would take on what parts he could, and I was glad for it. Saving him had been smart. He was the best friend I could ask for, even if he had no powers to speak of.
Now there was a thought; maybe I could make him some power armor to match my own? Or some devices to help increase his odds of survival? I’d have to talk with him after this was all done, and see where his preferences lay.
Vorpal seemed nice enough. I’d definitely won her respect, after the trouble we’d been through. Not a friend, yet, but could be given time. Martin seemed to think she was a romantic interest, but I didn’t know how I felt about that. Was I a lesbian? I rather thought not. My tastes in pornography ran to heterosexual pairings. Well, also men doing naughty things with men. Sometimes cowboy outfits were involved. I coughed and shifted, and winced as my bruises still told me that pain was going to be thing for a while. No, not a good time for sexy thoughts. No time for that now anyway, and besides, most of my noncritical devices had been lost when we abandoned the lair.
In any case, I’d have to let Vorpal down gently if and when she tried to initiate mating rituals. Not that she was likely to do that anytime soon, since she was pretty badly wounded, and—
I shot upright, jerked my phone from my pocket. I’d been so distracted, that I’d forgotten that she needed serious medical care, right the hell now! I dialed Bunny’s number.
She didn’t pick up. The call went to message, and I shut it down, dialed again.
On the third attempt, she picked up.
“Uh.. hi. This really isn’t a good time.” Her voice was trembling.
“Bunny? What’s wrong?”
“Dire?” She shrieked.
“Well, yes.”
Muffled sounds, and then a male voice spoke through the line. “Doctor Dire? Is this you?”
I knew that voice. It took my memory no time at all to put a face to it. Carson, one of the high-ranking members of the Midtown Militia. One of the ones who had negotiated with me, back during the fight with the Black Bloods.
Carson, who Bunny suspected of cutting a deal with the mafia. Carson, who Bunny had gone to rally support against.
It struck me that I might not have called at the best time. Visions danced across my mind, of Bunny sneaking up on him, trying to take him out during a deadly game of hide and seek, only to be revealed when her phone went off. I bit my lip, moved back to the computer, and started up a hack on her number. It shouldn’t take too many resources, should be doable...
“Well. This is a stroke of fortune. We might be in a position to do e
ach other a favor.”
Bunny’s phone was showing up on the Boardwalk. Northern end, too. I blasted through Slant telecommunication’s network protocols, did nasty things with their protocols, and got an address. Cross-referencing it showed she was inside a building... a large one. The listing showed it as the Golden Galleon casino.
“She’s listening.”
I tapped in commands faster, favoring my good hand as Carson continued. “I’m going to ask you this question, and your reply is going to determine a fair number of things in the very near future. Do you value Bunny’s life?”
I started pinging grid addresses, getting a picture of the networks in and around the building. Good security on the casino floor, but they weren’t on the floor, going by the GPS and the response time variation. I found an unpatched switch, rode it on up into their main camera networks, and piped feed to my display. It hummed to augmented reality life in the upper floor power station’s room around me, replacing rusted metal walls with pale yellow frescoes, and what looked to be another executive’s office. But this one didn’t have a third of the art that Morgenstern’s did, and what art I saw in the display around me was gaudy. Ostentatious? Perhaps that was a better word. But the décor mattered little, as the camera shifted, and showed me the people in the middle of the room. Three standing, one sitting, and one kneeling.
The kneeling one was Bunny.
Two men in suits, one whom I recognized from the parking garage, held pistols to the back of her skull. She’d taken some hits, going by the bruises on her face, and the tearstreaks and bloodstains.
They’d put a tarp in front of Bunny. Most likely to catch the blood and brains when they killed her.
I felt my teeth grind, as I answered Carson. “Yes. Dire does value Bunny’s life.”
Carson stood well in front of Bunny, her phone up to his ear as he smiled, and gave a thumbs up to the man sitting behind the desk. Carson was much as I remembered him, a fat, red-haired man with hard eyes.
The man behind the desk was a stranger to me. Slicked black hair, tan skin, and a suit that would have impressed me, if I hadn’t met Aegon Morgenstern earlier. He was stout but not fat, and his features were graceful and handsome. His fingers glittered with rings, and a tiny golden cross hung from his neck. There wasn’t the slightest hint of mercy in his face, as his stare held Bunny’s eyes, looking at her like she was some random piece of filth that had ended up on his floor.
“Good,” Carson said. “I’m going to hand you over to a friend of mine. Bunny’s life is in his hands, do you understand? We both want her to live. But you alone can make that happen.”
“Dire’s beginning to get the picture,” I replied. I let their security feed run as a room overlay, and checked my system resources. Good enough for a bit more, so I turned it loose on the nearby phones. Within a few seconds, I had all of them identified. Carson’s was registered to himself, and I smiled to see it. I smiled more when I took another two seconds to page through his text messages, and found that the man didn’t have the sense to erase even the most incriminating texts. Perfect.
On the display, Carson handed the phone over to the man behind the desk. He took it, turned toward the wall. “Am I to understand that you are Doctor Dire, supervillain and scientist?”
“That’s a pretty good summary,” I replied. “And you?”
“A reputable businessman, who has a problem.”
“Sounds troublesome.”
“Oh, it was. Except now maybe it’s an opportunity.”
“Businessmen are always seeking opportunities, Dire supposes.”
“She supposes correctly. Bunny had some interesting information about you, it’s why she’s still alive.”
Wait. Had she sold me out? What the hell?
“Like what?” I asked.
“She said that you’re the reason the Kriegers lost one of their major safehouses last night.”
Oh. Well, that wasn’t so bad. “That’s correct. They decided to pick a fight with Dire. Not a good idea. Dire has little mercy for those who mean her harm. Or her friends harm, for that matter.”
“Heh. You’re a busy sort, Doctor. Saw your fall on the television. You didn’t look so good, there.”
“She’s had better days, it’s true. But her goals were accomplished. Not all parties involved in that can say the same.”
On the display, he turned to face Carson, rolled his eyes, and made little snapping motions with his free hand. Carson grinned. I narrowed my own eyes. That looked like an insult of some sort.
“One minute please,” I asked. “Got something on the stove.”
I went downstairs. Martin was waiting at the foot of it, looking concerned. “Hey, uh, are you on the phone with someone? Those voices are kinda—“ I shushed him, and turned to my armor. “Open Cinnamon,” I said, and plucked what I needed from the utility compartment. “Tell you in a minute,” I told him, then headed back upstairs.
Nothing had changed, much. Carson and the stranger were talking, and he had his hand over the receiver. I poked around on the computer while they talked, found the audio for their own security system, and gave myself root for their audio-visual systems while I was at it. Then I piped the feed into the display.
“—telling you, it’ll be worth it.” said Carson. “She’s pretty much a wrecking ball in that armored suit of hers, and best of all, anything she does is on her. Totally deniable asset. Hell, she already took out a mob of the Kriegers, it’s not a stretch that she’d go after the other gangs.”
“Carson, Carson, Carson. As usual, you’re thinking too small,” the stranger smiled. “One of those mad scientist types, who’s got a focus on weaponry and suchlike? She’s more valuable in a workshop, churning out weapons for us. You think your boys would like lasers? I think so. I know mine would. And what we don’t keep to use, we sell. Why risk her going out and fighting? She’s the goose with the golden eggs. We keep her barefoot and workin’ in the kitchen, so to speak.”
Carson chuckled. “Hey, if you want to look at the long-term, all right. I mean, so long as you have our back, it’s all good. I don’t give three shits for her.”
Who was this stranger, anyway? A mafia type, going by the situation and what Bunny said earlier. So he probably wasn’t using an alias. I looked up his phone, found it registered to one Louis Cavaliogne. While I was at it, I poked through his text messages, too. A bit more disappointing, there. He, at least, knew the value of avoiding incriminating statements on electronic communications. Still, there were a few things I could use.
“You think this bitch is really leverage?” Louis said, considering Bunny.
“Oh yeah. Dire backs her friends one hundred percent.” Carson nodded.
“More than I can say for you, traitor,” Bunny snarled. I gasped as one of the men belted her on the temple, sending her sprawling to the floor.
“Watch it!” Carson snarled, walking over, and kneeling down next to her. “You’re the fucking traitor! You’re the one who tried to fuck us over!”
“You lying shit!” Bunny yelled, struggling to rise. One of the gunmen drew back his foot, looked at Louis. The head mafioso raised a hand, shook his head. He had an amused look on his face.
“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for this city! For our people. For our cause.” Carson berated her as he stepped back, letting her rise as best she could. “And you’d throw it all away? We are on the cusp of victory! The Kriegers are weak thanks to your friend, the SCK are gunning for them as we speak, and all we have to do is swoop in and finish off the winner. And with Louis and his men at our back, we’ll do it easy. We can do this, Bunny. We can do this.”
She shuddered, and mopped blood from her face. “By cutting a deal with the devil.”
“You’re one to talk! How many has Dire killed?” He grinned. “No saints here. So what’s the difference? What’s to fear?”
“If it’s all so noble, then why not tell Huginn? Why stop me from telling him the truth?”
&
nbsp; Carson sneered. “Are you really that dumb? Really that fucking naive? Huginn already knows!”
She stared at him, eyes going wide, hands trembling. “You’re lying!”
“Huginn knows! Munin knows too! This was approved at the highest fucking levels!” He took a step forward, spreading his arms, and she stepped back, all of her trembling, now. “Me? I’m the disposable fucking middleman, Bunny. I’m the necessary evil here. No offense, Louis.”
“None taken,” he said, lighting a cigar as he watched the drama.
“You... why would they... this is the Mafia, Carson. The Mafia. They’re as bad as the other gangs. Worse, in every way.” Bunny was whispering now, strength draining from her as she stumbled, grabbed for the wall. “They run drugs. They run guns. They run slaves, Carson. They force women into prostitution. They force kids. They’re evil, just... evil.”
Carson followed, voice rising as he stabbed a finger at her. “Yeah, so they are! And you know what? It wouldn’t have mattered, if you hadn’t found out. If you hadn’t gone poking. Our troops would have been clean. Only a few people would have had to get their hands dirty. And at the end of the day, we’d run the city, minus a few areas that Louis takes care of, of course. But no, you had to come in, making noise, yelling about things you didn’t fucking understand. Getting people worked up. Giving them the Wrong. Fucking. Idea.”
“It’s the truth,” Bunny whispered.
Carson sighed, and put his hand on her shoulder. “The truth gets people dead. The lies let us live, and prosper. You never got that. Get it now, okay? This is your last chance. Play it smart. Beg Dire to cooperate. Or you can die. Choice is yours, kid.” He pushed her down until she was kneeling again. She didn’t resist.
“Hey now,” said Louis. “You want that, get it on your own time and not in my office.”
“Nah,” Carson said, backing up and scooting the tarp with his foot until it was in front of Bunny again. The gunmen resumed position behind her. “Just making it clear that the situation hasn’t changed.”
I grinned a hard grin, then raised my phone to my mouth again. “Sorry about that, Dire’s back.”
DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) Page 25