State Machine

by Spangler, K. B.

  Rachel jumped as quickly as if Becca had pressed a branding iron against her ribs. Her girlfriend usually had about as much interest in the implant and the collective as Rachel had in different species of earthworms. Becca considered Rachel’s involvement in OACET to be a high-stress job that required her to be on-call at all hours of the day and night, but she also considered the implant to be nothing more than a glorified cell phone. That she’d react to Rachel’s decision to sell it to Summerville as such…

  “What do you mean?” Rachel asked cautiously.

  “OACET’s security comes first—OACET’s security always comes first! You’ve told me enough so I know to watch what I say to anyone asking after you, and here you are—”

  “Oh. That,” Rachel said, as calmly as she could. Becca’s temper could catch fire like a torch put to dry grass. “Becca, it’s always been part of the—”

  “No. You said yourself you don’t know if you can trust this man,” Becca said. “You don’t even know if you can get an honest read off of his emotions! Why would you offer him a proposal this…this…this huge?!”

  She sat back and waited.

  “Because he’d already thought of it,” Rachel said. “His employers already hoped that the implant could be retooled for profit. I just repackaged the idea for him.”

  Rachel wasn’t sure how that explanation went over with Becca, because that was the moment when Ami hit the ground beside them in a perfect three-point landing.

  Becca screamed and crab-walked backwards before she recognized Ami.

  “There are no trees around,” Rachel said, pretending that her heart wasn’t trying to pound its way out through her ears. She hadn’t seen the other Agent coming. “How did you get above us?”

  “A magician never tells her secrets,” Ami said.

  “What’s wrong with you?!” Becca had found her voice. “You scared the—”

  “Never show weakness in front of an assassin, babe,” Rachel told Becca. “It’s just chumming the waters.”

  “Former assassin,” Ami said in a purple-gray sigh, as she settled herself on the grass. “Is that potato salad in your hair?”

  “No,” Rachel said, combing through the mess with her fingers until she found something sticky.

  “Anyway, back to the Summervilles,” Ami said, as if she had been part of the conversation from the beginning. “Randy Summerville hasn’t been considered an active threat for several months. He used to be, but he’s been significantly downgraded. And at Rachel’s recommendation, we’ve just opened a dossier on Jordan Summerville, his current assistant. Jordan was pretty active on within the online OACET hate communities before he went to work for his uncle. He must have gotten The Talk—” Ami used airquotes to set off those two words— “from Summerville about private lives and professional personas, as he deleted every rant he’d ever posted about OACET.”

  “Then he is a risk?” Becca asked. She had snuck back towards Rachel, but was keeping her girlfriend between herself and the former assassin. Rachel decided that Becca didn’t have to know that Ami could take out two people as easily as one, especially when they were conveniently aligned.

  “Not really,” Ami said with a shrug. “It was all typical young adult hate screeds. He also went through and deleted his posts on the sports boards. Kid does not like the Yankees one bit.”

  “A lot of people hate us,” Rachel assured Becca, before remembering a normal person wouldn’t find that a comforting thought. “We’ve gotten good at recognizing those who’re just venting versus those who’ll follow through on their threats.”

  “Yup,” Ami agreed, before turning her attention to Hill, who was resting on his good arm near the food. “But I’m not here for business. Let’s talk shop later.”

  “There are a couple of clean plates left,” Rachel said, pointing towards the leftovers. As Ami moved towards the detective under the guise of fixing herself a snack, Rachel opened a link. “How did you sneak up on me? I’ve got a proximity alert and scans running.”

  “Easy. I told my GPS to put my location at the mansion, and you use your scans like eyes. You might run your scans at a full 360 degrees, but they’re dependent on your field of focus. Becca’s a good distraction.” Ami must have felt her shiver through the link, as she followed that thought with a comforting, “Don’t worry. Nobody can maintain a constant state of surveillance without training.”

  Rachel nearly groused about how she was trained; Ami caught the feeling behind the complaint before Rachel could put it into words. “Aw!” Ami said. “You’re adorable.”

  “Rachel?”

  She flicked her scans forward. Becca had scooted around her and was watching her face, thin trails of yellow curiosity and red aggression twining around each other as she searched for a target.

  On impulse, Rachel leaned forward and kissed her on the tip of her nose. “You’re cute when you don’t know why you’re angry,” she told Becca.

  Becca grabbed the back of Rachel’s neck, and Rachel grinned at finding herself scruffed like an ornery kitten. “I know why I’m angry,” Becca growled against her lips. “You’ve spent months explaining why you have to do things a certain way, that you have to protect yourself, and now you’re stepping out of your tight little logic box—”

  Santino, walking towards them, went bright crimson with embarrassment as he choked on his soda.

  “Santino, explain it to her,” Rachel said, putting a safe arm’s length between her and her furious girlfriend. “I don’t know if she’ll believe me.”

  “Uh—”

  “Shut up.”

  Her partner folded his long legs and dropped onto the grass beside them. “OACET’s all about risk management,” he told Becca. “They play short and long games at the same time. The long game’s the end goal—that doesn’t change. The short game can be adapted as long as the risk is acceptable and any changes made will advance the goal.”

  “Listen to the smart person,” Rachel said, with a polite golf clap for Santino. “Him make good talky-words.”

  “Rachel’s in Administration, so she’s got more flexibility in making command decisions than Zia, or any of those guys,” Santino said, pointing towards the Agents playing on the grassy field. “They have to get any serious changes approved. Rachel can just go ahead and run with it.”

  “I’m responsible,” Rachel said, nodding sagely.

  “God!” Becca sighed. “You have the weirdest job! Is this how they run the NSA… Never mind. I’m better off not knowing.”

  Santino opened his mouth, and Rachel shook her head at him, ever so slightly. If the easiest way for her girlfriend to understand OACET was to put it in the context of a high-security government job, then Rachel wasn’t about to dispel that notion.

  “No, wait… I thought there was one long-term goal? Getting rid of…” Becca glanced around. “You know? Him?”

  “Hang on,” Rachel said. “Let me put up a shield.”

  She sent out her scans to sweep the grounds, scouting about for anything wayward or untrustworthy. Nothing pinged as atypical: they were on camera, but every living soul in Washington was on camera in one way or another, and nothing seemed especially interested in their presence. Still, better safe than sorry: Rachel gathered up a few of the conventional frequencies into a rough shield and stuck these up around the park, a chainlink fence to deter the neighborhood’s digital dogs from snooping on their conversation.

  Ami noticed. “What’s up?” the former assassin asked, a hand moving oh-so-casually to the ankle where she kept her smallest gun.

  “Girl talk,” Rachel replied.

  “’kay,” Ami said, and returned her attention to Hill.

  (Rachel was beginning to worry about Hill’s chance of surviving the night. Like most Agents, Ami valued living in the moment. She wasn’t alone: Hill seemed to have gotten over his aversion to assassins, as red lust was sneaking into his conversational colors. Rachel had hoped that Ami would give Hill’s bullet wound a minimum
of twelve hours to heal before she took him to bed, but that was starting to look extremely unlikely.)

  “All right,” Rachel said, as she gave a final twist to tie off her shield. “We’re good.”

  “The Senator,” Becca said, almost whispering. “Isn’t holding him accountable OACET’s long-term goal?”

  “Sort of,” Rachel said with a shrug. “It’s a priority, but it’s also more of a mid-term goal. Our long-term goals are focused on how we can best survive in normal society.”

  “Right,” Santino said. “It’s not like everything will be perfect once Hanlon’s removed.”

  “If he’s removed,” Rachel said. “I don’t know—I go back and forth on whether we’ll ever be able to put him in prison. He’s wealthy, famous, and politically connected. It’s hard to hold that combination accountable for anything short of cold-blooded murder.”

  “That’s what worries me,” Becca said, settling down to rest her head in Rachel’s lap. Sunlight caught her hair, turning it into a living tangle of dark golds and browns, and Rachel wondered anew at how she had managed to convince this amazing woman to put up with her crazy life.

  “What does?” Rachel asked, tucking a strand of Becca’s hair behind her ear.

  “Hanlon is a self-made man,” Becca said. “He’s managed to become one of the richest men in the country, he’s more popular than Steve Jobs ever was, and OACET insists on playing games with him.”

  “Becca—”

  “I know there’s a lot you can’t tell me, but what you have told me scares me,” Becca said. The reds and yellows were back, and Rachel noticed these were beginning to wrap around her Southwestern turquoise in a protective embrace. “He’s a dangerous animal, and you’ve backed him into a corner.”

  “What’s the alternative?” Santino asked. “If the world was fair, he’d already be in prison.”

  “God, guys, I know you’re not this dense! You’ve gone to war with him, so, maybe… Listen, you know there are casualties in war. And you’ve got…” Becca couldn’t finish, and just pointed at Ami.

  “If he dies, the entire world comes after us,” Rachel said. “There’re enough people out there who’d move on us if anything happens to Hanlon. Anything. We’re scared he might get killed in a four-car pileup, since they’d find a way to blame it on us.”

  “I know, but… What you’re doing isn’t smart,” Becca insisted. “Every day he’s running loose is another chance for him to come after you. You say you’re all about risk minimization—you have to realize that!”

  Rachel looked at Santino. He returned it, slightly sick in yellows. “We do,” Rachel admitted. “And he knows we’re about to drop a huge bombshell on him, soon. He’s not going to go down without a fight.”

  Becca was starting to burn again, her reds so strong that Rachel almost forgot why she couldn’t feel the anger where Becca’s bare skin lay against her own. “If you know he’s not going to go down—”

  “Honey?” Rachel said gently. “We’re getting into things I can’t talk about. Can you please accept that we’re aware of the risks, and that killing him isn’t an option? That’s about as much as I can say.”

  Becca blinked, and then started laughing. “Oh my God,” she said. “Forget everything I just said. I’m telling you to go out and kill another human being… No. This is insane—this is not good for me.”

  Rachel leaned over to rest her forehead on Becca’s. “I try to keep things interesting,” she said.

  Becca cracked up, hard, before shoving Rachel aside and leaving to find a soda.

  “What set off the Hanlon discussion?” Santino asked.

  “Oh,” Rachel said, a little smile playing around her lips. “This and that.”

  “Uh-huh,” Santino said, as he gathered his legs beneath him. “Sure. I came over here to tell you I checked the office messages. Kowalski called. She wants you to get back to her. She’d got the results on Joanna Reed.”

  “Who?” Rachel asked. Erin Kowalski was one of the Medical Examiners with the MPD’s Forensic Pathology Unit. Since the only woman’s body Rachel knew of was Jenna Noura’s, she didn’t immediately recognize the victim’s name. She got there eventually: Joanna Reed was the makeup artist found dead in the trunk of her car. “Oh. Reed. Right.”

  Kowalski’s request wasn’t a new one. When Kowalski called their office, she often refused to speak to anyone other than Rachel: Kowalski didn’t especially like Santino, but she hated Zockinski and Hill with the intensity of someone who had been set on fire and left alone to burn. Rachel was sure the two men hadn’t been (quite) that hard on Kowalski, but she was the kind of person who carried a grudge.

  Rachel took up her new tablet, and disappeared into the nearby woods for privacy.

  Kowalski answered almost immediately, her face surrounded by the sterile whites of a pathologist’s office. “Peng?”

  The woman looked exhausted. If Rachel could see her in person, she was sure Kowalski’s colors would be shades of gray, with spots of reds run so far down that there would barely be any anger left in them.

  “Hey, Kowalski. Is everything okay?”

  “No,” snapped the other woman. Apparently, there was still some punch left in her anger. “The FBI got our bodies first. They let us play with them after they were done.”

  Rachel needed a moment for that one. “Oh,” she said, once she put the words in their proper places. “You just got access to Joanna Reed today?”

  “Yesterday. Results came back today. Peng, they missed some trace.”

  “The FBI?” Rachel didn’t quite believe it. The FBI’s forensic pathologists were among the best in the world. “What did they miss?”

  “Saliva. Protocol is to collect evidence from the hands, which they did. But Reed was dumped fully clothed and in a winter jacket. They assumed she had been wearing that outfit when she was killed.”

  “She wasn’t?”

  “They dressed her in the jacket after she had been killed. Since she’d been dropped and dumped a couple of times, it didn’t raise any flags until we found carpet fibers on her shirt.”

  “Her sleeveless shirt?” Rachel guessed.

  Kowalski chuckled. “Dead right.”

  “That’s a scary phrase coming from a pathologist, Kowalski. Where was the saliva?”

  “Her elbow. Looks like she tried to fight him off. The skin had a very minor abrasion, so she didn’t hit him too hard, but she did pick up enough saliva to run DNA.”

  “You’re running DNA right now? How long?”

  “Give us a day or two. Can I call you direct?”

  “Please do,” Rachel said, and gave Kowalski her private phone number. “It’ll forward directly to me, so I’ll pick up no matter when you call.”

  After Kowalski had signed off, Rachel decided that DNA evidence would be nice, especially if a suspect ever turned up.

  We’ve got nothing but two dead women, she reminded herself. And one of them had nothing on her but a piece of metal from a two-thousand-year-old Greek shipwreck.

  She wished she had gotten a good look inside the package before the Secret Service had spirited it away. Alimoren would probably call them once the bad publicity of a car chase through downtown D.C. blew over, but until then, she and her team had been sidelined. No leads. No nothing…

  Glazer says hello.

  Maybe not quite nothing.

  She reached out to Jason, who was lying in an odd pile of legs and arms, only a third of which belonged to him. He wasn’t too happy to pull himself out from under Phil and Bell, and he came storming into the woods.

  All Agents were photophobic, the implants on their optic nerves increasing their sensitivity to light, but Jason had an extreme case. He wore dark glasses no matter what; on particularly sunny days, he tucked his dark hair under a wide-brimmed ivy cap and kept it low over his eyes. The shade of the wooded glade eased his headache almost as soon as he stepped under the trees: Rachel felt his relief as the pain he had accepted as his constant
companion vanished.

  “What?” he asked her, his sharp tone missing a few of its usual teeth.

  Rachel tossed a scan back towards the picnic, where the others gamboled about in the afternoon sun. Then, she checked her walls to make sure they were good and tight. “Glazer,” she whispered aloud.

  She felt his own walls harden at Glazer’s name. Jason knew. Except for Glazer and his accomplice, Jason was the only other person on the planet who knew. “Okay,” he whispered back. “What’s going on?”

  Rachel told him the quick and dirty version of what had led up to the car chase. “Noura had information about what happened with Glazer that nobody could know,” she said, her scans firmly fixed on Ami to make sure the assassin wouldn’t drop out of the trees a second time. “Nobody except those involved. So unless you’ve been talking—”

  Thick red anger bubbled up within Jason, and she waved away her implied insult.

  “—which I know you haven’t, there’s something else going on here. Something that I want to get ahead of. I need you to teach me how to look at data.”

  She had never seen colors fall so quickly before: one moment, his usual red-hued conversational colors were floating around his head and chest; the next, they had gone gray and puddled at his feet. “How…” he said, as he fumbled for a reason. “If you find data, how about you just call me, and I’ll handle it for you?”

  The look she gave him must have screamed pure murder, as he said, very quietly, “Or I can teach you.”

  “Thanks. What do we need?”

  She felt him reach out and wander around the innards of her new tablet. “This,” he said. “It’s perfect. Brand-new, factory-fresh settings. It’s training wheels for data diving.”

  “Data diving?”

  “If you’re serious about this, you’ve got to start coming to the meetings…” he muttered, and then opened a deep link. He ran into her walls, hard. “Hey!”

  “I didn’t know! Tell me what you need from me before you assume I know what’s going on,” she said.