She shook her head. "I made sure word got out about town that he did, but there's footage of him assassinating a man in the Corporate District last week."
"The man is a killer."
"Yes," she whispered, "he is." But you let Diomedes go. It had never occurred to her to second guess her part of that decision. To let him go. To let him be free to kill again. Now. . .
No. She would not hold herself responsible for every action the bloody freelancer had chosen to take since that night.
"He is a killer, and today he tried to kill me." The tone in Gideon's voice jarred her from her own thoughts. The wrath she would have expected from him was absent, and what was there was something she had not anticipated: fear. Though she had never conversed with Gideon directly at any great length, she never knew him to show a trace of apprehension. Yet there it was. He was afraid.
Her immediate instinct was to try to comfort him. That the thought of trying made her immediately uncomfortable was not helped by the fact that, moments later, Gideon himself shook his head and scowled in a portrait of self-loathing.
"What do you intend to do?" she asked instead.
"I don't know. I need to stay out of sight. From him, from my sister, from everyone. It's important I remember more. I have to remember. Have to. I need to stay here."
Caitlin's stomach tightened. She knew as soon as he said it that she couldn't let him. But then what? Simply turn him away? Turn her back on him again? She liked neither choice.
"What if they find you again? Either of them."
"They won't. After they found me at my apartment, I began to suspect Marquand placed a tracer on me. If they did, I started jamming it after leaving my apartment."
"Jamming it?"
"Marquand didn't just heal me. They added features to my cyberware."
"You are jamming Marquand's tracer with their own equipment?"
"Yes." He scowled. "I am aware of the irony."
"It isn't irony so much as I'd expect they would assure that such a thing wouldn't work."
"I was on your balcony for an hour without any sign of them."
Caitlin stood, went to her desk, and fished in the bottom drawer. She found the device by feel, tucked back beneath a stack of envelopes. "I can check for any unusual signals coming from your implants."
"You are an engineer?"
She shook her head. "Not so much. But this is useful for finding bugs, and I don't need a PhD to use it. If you'll permit me?"
Gideon stood with a nod. She passed the scanner in an arc across the front of his body and then along each arm and leg. There was no indication of a signal.
"Anything?"
"Nothing yet." Perhaps it wouldn't be foolproof, especially if Marquand was using anything fancy. She moved around to his back, continued the scan, and still found nothing. Caitlin was closing the scanner and realizing how little comfort it gave her when she noticed the bullet hole.
"Oh my god. Gideon, you're shot."
He looked over his shoulder at her. "It's small. Just a ricochet knick."
"You've got a hole through your jumper here. It's big enough to have a care with so it won't get infected. There's not hardly any blood, though."
He strained to see it, though the wound's location on his back must have made it impossible to get a good view. "It doesn't feel like much," he told her, but removed the jacket nonetheless.
The shirt he wore beneath it had a similar hole, and again, far much less of a stain around it for the amount of blood she'd anticipated. Caitlin knew of blood augmentations that would result in faster wound clotting, but even so, the colour of the stain didn't look right.
Her gasp that followed lifting his shirt was one of both revelation and shock. "Gideon," she whispered, "what did they do to you?"
CHAPTER 18
"I won't recall the teams, Ondrea. You've had more than your chance, and you blew it!"
Julius Tseng scowled at her from behind the expanse of his mahogany desk, framed by the bird's-eye view of the city behind him. Ondrea might have been impressed if she weren't so livid.
"And if they find him when I'm not there to calm him down?" she demanded. "What if he's confused? If he gets violent? Where's your precious low-profile going to be then?"
"The low profile was why we kept him in the building. The low profile was what you jeopardized when you asked to let him out the first time! If you didn't let him see that he could leave, we wouldn't be in this blasted mess!"
"You know damn well why we did that! Retrigger his memories to settle the confusion. Hell, you agreed with me it was best!"
"Those aren't the memories we should be concerned with! I let you persuade me against my better judgment. I now see that was a mistake."
"You knew I was right!" She said it through clenched teeth. "It's my project, my idea that pulled this off!"
Tseng dismissed her comment with sweep of his hand. "Your idea or not, the rest of us should have seen that your personal feelings would get in the way. We had him in a hospital bed under light security when he should have been locked up! Maybe then we wouldn't be having this conversation while he's out there for someone to get their hands on him!"
"Damn it!" She heaved an exasperated sigh and tried to reel herself in. "I told you it's not something you'll be able to force. And even if it was, I'd be damned if I'd let you cage my brother like an animal."
"He's not your brother, Ondrea. Marquand made him, Marquand owns him. You may have convinced us the personal connection would help control him, but—"
"He made himself!" Anger rode high in her voice over a rush of sorrow that forced her to choke it back before she could continue. "All you did was use him."
"Just washing your hands of your part in that, are you?"
She glared at the question, ready to lash out again. But she was losing time. "You have to let me find him first. I'm the only one who can reach him. He needs me! Recall the search teams."
"I won't do that. However, you will be allowed to look for him. Were it up to me, you'd be off the project completely, but for better or worse your success in bringing your brother into all of this has made the others regard you as some sort of asset. They think we still need you."
"You always were the dumbest of the lot, Tseng." To hell with company politics.
His eyes narrowed. "I'm not looking for your approval, Ondrea. If someone else gets to him because of this fiasco it's not going to matter who you're sleeping with; your butt will be on the street so fast you won't know what hit you."
She fought the urge to ram her fist through his face for that. She hadn't slept with anyone to get where she was and he knew it. "The second one of your teams finds him," she bit off, "they call me in."
"They'll call you. But if they need to act before you get there, they will. And in that, I'm in the majority. But you'll have your chance."
"Then I'm getting the hell out of your office to make sure I do get there. Like it or not, you're still going to need me."
He gave another dismissive wave.
Ondrea turned on one heel, digging it into his carpet in a childish attempt to do some sort of damage, and then crossed to the door without a word.
"Ondrea," Tseng called as her hand found the knob, "whether you like it or not, you're using Gideon, too."
Her stride faltered a moment, then renewed. He didn't know what he was talking about.
Beck was waiting for her in a waiting area outside the door. He stood upon seeing her and then rushed to catch up when she refused to stop. "Well?" he asked.
"Well, what?"
"Well—I mean, it's—what did he say?"
Ondrea left Tseng's outer office and pushed into the corridor of executive offices without another word to Beck. Let him wait. The first thing he'd done once he'd picked her up after Diomedes attacked was panic at the gunfire and go exactly opposite of where she needed to be. She was surprised he managed the courage to pick her up at all before he abandoned her brother and fled. Beck had been babbling as he cl
utched the wheel and floored the gas, and by the time Ondrea managed to shout some sense into him, they'd lost track of Gideon and her best chance at pursuit.
"Ondrea?"
"Shut up, Beck, I'm still mad at you." They'd lost Gideon, and now Tseng's teams would act without her if they "needed" to. Selfish, short-sighted bastard!
She remained quiet until they reached the elevator and their standing in silence overwhelmed her resolve. "Still nothing on the tracker?" she asked, already sure of the answer.
"Nothing. I'm pretty sure you're right, he's got to be jamming it. Sorry, I should have built the homer better."
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Beck, it's a cascading jammer, that'd have been damned near impossible. It wasn't even supposed to be installed yet if they'd listened to me," she continued, watching the elevator display. "They had to rush everything, push everything. Now look where we are."
"I shouldn't have panicked. It's my fault we lost him."
"Yeah, I know."
"I'm really sorry, I just—"
"You keep saying that, Beck, but it doesn't change the fact that Gideon's still out there and we can't find him."
Silence.
The elevator doors opened finally, and they stepped inside. "Tseng's got people out looking for him now and he's not pulling them back to let me find him first. I don't know what Gideon will do if an armed group tries to bring him in and I'm not there."
Beck heaved a heavy sigh. "Geez. What'd Tseng say about the drive-by?"
"I didn't tell him."
"You— Ah. . . Why? I mean, that guy tried to kill us?"
"He tried to kill me and Gideon, Beck, he wasn't even shooting at you."
"Um, yeah, okay, but he was shooting?" Beck always ended his statements as questions when he wanted to argue but couldn't find the nerve. He must've thought it was diplomatic, but it just got on Ondrea's nerves. An actual argument would be less irritating.
"We're not going to tell them about him." She turned to look Back in the eye. "Not yet."
He held up his hands. "Okay, alright! It's just that maybe they might be able to tell us who he is? And if we know who he is then maybe we can figure out—" He pouted in the face of at the glare she shot him, and then shrugged in resignation as the elevator opened.
Ondrea had already resolved to keep Marquand from learning that Diomedes had tried to kill her. The video footage implicating Diomedes was common knowledge, but no one knew that she'd made it. The fact that it was Ondrea who'd personally hired the freelancer to take out Curwen made the company comfortable enough to not be overly concerned by the video's existence. If Diomedes got arrested and tried to implicate them, they would have sufficient distance to pin it all on Ondrea.
It was a chance she'd been willing to take in order to have her revenge on the freelancer and get her brother's project approved, but it was quite another matter if they knew she had actively put the company at risk. If Marquand found out—or even suspected—that Diomedes had turned on her for setting the camera? It was a leap of logic that she couldn't risk. They would accuse her of willfully sabotaging the security of the project and hand her head to her, possibly more than just figuratively.
Thankfully, Beck didn't have enough clearance to know about Diomedes's part in the project. He spent so much time in the lab that it was fully possible he didn't even known about the shooting, let alone the footage of it.
They reached the lab entrance. Ondrea swiped her keycard and touched her hand to the palm reader.
"So, what is the plan, then?" Beck asked.
"We weren't the only ones at Gideon's old building. Did you see the man and woman with us on the steps?"
"No. I mean, I did, but not clearly. They weren't just tenants?"
"I don't think so. If one of them's who I think, I'm almost certain their being there was more than just a coincidence."
Beck followed her like a puppy to one of the workstations and stood behind it as she logged on. "So now you're. . .?"
"Seeing if I'm right."
CHAPTER 19
Caitlin wasn't answering her phone. It wasn't even ringing when Felix tried to call her, so she was probably unaware he was even trying at all. No rings and straight to her voice mail, so in all likelihood either she was on a call or had it off. She was expecting to hear from him—she wouldn't have it off, so Felix hoped she was just busy talking to someone else. Maybe it was one of her friends in The Scry, though she hadn't seemed too eager to involve them before.
But very likely she was on a call, he told himself. Small chance that her battery had died and she hadn't noticed. Possible that she'd dropped the phone off her balcony and it was broken and shattered.
Small chance that something had happened to her.
He forced himself not to dwell on the worry. Shut it off, he told himself. Let it go. She was probably just on the phone or unavailable for some other reason. Spider monkeys escaped from the zoo, stole her phone, and used it to smash over a fruit stand. Yes, there's the answer. Spider monkeys were always to blame. Fuzzy punks. Felix walked down the sidewalk toward Caitlin's apartment. Whatever had happened, he'd find out soon enough.
Why was the AoA looking for Diomedes? He pondered the question in an attempt at distraction. Did they want him as a link to find who'd ordered the killing, or was it something else? While farfetched, Felix hadn't completely ruled out the possibility that the AoA had actually hired him. Yet Marc had said otherwise, and assassinations weren't how the AoA operated.
Or was that it? They hired Diomedes for a purpose other than to kill the ESA man, but something had gone wrong? Or maybe something only seemed to have gone wrong. The AoA was based on open information exchange and planning between all of its members, but there were the two factions. Though both were united in their belief that humanity was destroying itself, one wished to delay that self-destruction long enough to find a way to escape on their own, while the other, smaller group preached that the organization might be able to save the entire planet. It was a difference of opinion to be sure, but the fact that the first faction still had no viable means of secession meant that the immediate goals of both factions were relatively identical, so far as Felix was aware. Had the rift between them finally widened to the point that the AoA's left hand didn't know what its right hand was doing?
It was all speculation, Felix knew. The simpler explanation, that the AoA had nothing to do with the shooting at all, was more likely. And why would they hire Diomedes for anything?
Whatever was going on, he couldn't shake the impression that things were somehow connected. Or maybe he was just looking for an excuse to look into the shooting a little more. Felix dismissed that with a laugh. Since when did he need an excuse to be nosey?
He arrived at the entrance to Caitlin's building and, getting no answer at the intercom, decided to key in on his own and wait for her. A rapid elevator ride and two unanswered knocks later, he was inside her unit.
Her laptop was gone and her mail had been brought up, the latter of which sat unopened on the kitchen counter. She'd obviously been back and left since they'd been there together earlier, so where had she gone? Felix tried calling her again, but still got neither ring nor answer.
He continued through the tiny apartment in a cursory search for some sign of where she might have gone, though he considered it unlikely that Caitlin would leave a note instead of simply calling him. After a few minutes, he'd found nothing resembling a note and nothing else that might indicate. . .
Wait a minute.
Felix stopped as he noticed it and then looked around to be sure. Her motorcycle helmet was gone.
She'd left the city. It was a fair deduction, at least; Caitlin hated city traffic to the point where she avoided driving in it unless it was on her way in or out. But where did she go? Did she leave for her house? Felix couldn't think of anywhere else outside the city she'd be going, though he supposed that hardly made anything certain. The worry he'd locked away earlier started to slip back in again.
>
Then again, she might have just left the city for a ride to clear her head. Felix thought she'd preferred a horse for that though, and they were out near her house—a ninety-minute drive away. It wouldn't be completely out of character, but she'd also been anxious to know what he might find out from Marc.
Caitlin could take care of herself, but the whole thing seemed odd. He shouldn't be worried, but Dio's throwing his hat into the ring had him feeling otherwise.
With more questions than answers, Felix found himself traveling back downstairs to the garage level where she kept her cycle parked. Maybe she'd just moved the helmet. At the very least he could verify that the cycle itself was actually gone. Yet gone or not, he'd still have no definite answer.
Her parking space was empty. After a moment or two spent in fruitless pondering, he was on his way back upstairs when he decided it was worth a try to stop at the main floor, exit the building, and take a quick walk around to see what he could see. He looped around the building's exterior once, not entirely sure what he expected to find.
Whatever it was, he didn't find it. Felix was keying into the front door again when the reflection in the glass showed him a face he wasn't expecting.
"Mister Hiatt?"
He turned. "Ms. Noble," he said. "I'd make some clever remark about being surprised to see you if I weren't so. . . surprised to see you."
She kept her distance, about ten feet away. "You left me a message."
"Indeed I did. Though since I only gave you my phone number, you can understand my surprise. How's it you happen to be here?" Felix tried to keep too much suspicion from slipping into his tone. Was she somehow responsible for Caitlin's disappearance?
Ondrea wore a light grey pantsuit and lab coat. Her eyes swept over him and then fixed on his in a way that gave Felix the distinct impression of being studied. "I decided I'd rather speak to you in person. Isn't that what you wanted to begin with?"
"Well, can't argue with that, but I meant what are you doing here? This isn't my address, so were you following, or waiting for me?"
"You come to my office, and then I find you tailing me in the U-District," she said. "So I don't think you can take umbrage. I followed you here from your apartment if you have to know. Now we can stand here wasting time talking about who's stalking whom, or you can tell me why you contacted me in the first place."
A Memory in the Black (The New Aeneid Cycle) Page 13