by P. R. Adams
It was cold inside, and the fireplace needed cleaning. Spiderwebs stretched from the woodpile to the old armchairs Clay Bolan, my mother’s father, had given me when I’d moved in. I swept cold ashes out and dumped them out back, then pulled the dry web strands away from everything, taking a moment to squeeze the dulled, deep-brown leather of the old chairs. They were high-backed, with carved wood that twenty years on retained the detailing, even on the claw feet. Those chairs held so many memories of a simpler time.
The firewood was old, but it would still burn. I opened the damper, spread kindling under the andirons, then piled wood over top and started the fire.
While the fire caught, I checked the building for any sign of forced entry, human or otherwise. I hadn’t been back since before the Seoul mission, but everything seemed intact. There was a kitchenette and dining room that shared the east end of the building with the fireplace and sitting room. The west end of the building was a bedroom and bath. Dust lay on everything, including a mattress in need of replacement. I flipped it with some effort, then pulled on musty sheets.
A chest of drawers still held shirts, jeans, and flannel pajamas from high school. The bottoms would be a little tight with the cybernetics, the tops tighter.
I headed out to the barn and collected a steel pail to hold water from a pump located halfway between the main house and shack, then filled a kettle taken from beneath the kitchen sink. The kettle hung from a crane in the fireplace, and before long, I had water boiling.
More water went into the porcelain bathtub, first to clean away the dust, then to ready a bath. The boiling water broke the chill.
While I soaked, I examined the computing device I’d taken from the ski-masked assassin. It was a nice product—deluxe. Not the sort of thing the Agency would give out to a contractor. Something private, something of his own. He must have liked his tech. Like the strange ski mask.
I powered the device on, tried to break in using some of the basic tricks I’d learned over the years from Jacinto and other Gridhounds.
Nothing. The guy had actually done a good job of securing it.
My own data device was a bit of a mess. The display had a hairline scratch, and the occasional annoying crackling noise made it sound like the device was ready to explode at any second.
There were limited local data feeds. I flipped through weather and news—basketball scores, crop and meat prices, a report on Johnny Wilson’s impending trial for assault and battery. Finally, I opened the communications app and tapped in Margo’s old universal communications ID.
A ring came over the data device, and I nearly dropped the damn thing into the water.
Eighteen years, and she still used the ID. And why not? Nothing changed here.
“Hello?” Raspy, with a hint of honey and surprise. That had always been the taste of her kisses. “Who is this?”
“N-no one.”
Before I could tap the disconnect, she said, “Shit. Stefan? Stefan, is that you?”
I put the device back to my ear, an ear grafted onto me after my torturers had taken everything from me. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Silence.
I reached for the disconnect again.
“Where’re you calling from?” It wasn’t quite disappointment in her voice, but there was something there. “I can’t see location or identification.”
“You know how it is.”
“You still doing things for the military?” A whisper of awe and curiosity.
“Sort of. Look, like I said, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…” I stretched my legs out and closed my eyes, letting my head rest back against the cool rim of the tub. Margo’s face drifted into view—round, with purple-red lips and pale blue eyes, framed by wheat-colored hair. Did she still have the perky breasts and taut belly after, what, two kids? Three? Firm thighs she’d built in cross-country races throughout high school. Would her laugh still be husky and easy, her tongue so quick and assertive?
“Stefan?”
“Yeah?”
“You okay? You sound like you drifted off.”
Had I? “It’s been a tough few days, I guess.”
Silence again. Or I thought so. Then, “Stefan? Are you listening?”
“I’m…yeah.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
I touched my scalp where the bullet had grazed me. It burned still. The only real injury I’d suffered, the only damage done to the real me. “I’ll be fine. I just need to sleep.”
I disconnected and toweled off, marveling at the amount of blood that had caked in my hair, then I slid beneath the sheet and drifted off, remembering how I’d told Margo I would never forget her. She’d punched me in the stomach just before I’d gotten onto the bus to Fort Benning.
I’d deserved worse.
Chapter 2
We rolled around in the barn in the summer sun, laughing, kissing, exploring our young bodies, ignoring the scrape of golden straw against our naked flesh. I was a decent-looking kid, seventeen, sturdy from work on the farm. Margo was one of the gals who turned heads at school. Lots of heads. Cheerleader, cross-country runner, volleyball—not a tomboy but fit. It was the volleyball outfit that got me. Shorts a little too tight and a burgundy T-shirt she always rolled the sleeves up on. She had shapely arms and liked to wipe sweat from her brow with the bottom of her T-shirt. She caught me staring at her belly while doing that once and just smiled. We started dating that weekend.
Now we were getting more serious. Dangerously serious. Stupid kid serious.
I ran a finger down her damp chest and said, “Let’s do it.”
She wrinkled up the right side of her brow, the way she did when she thought I was kidding. “Here? What if your parents come back?”
“They’re buying feed. Won’t be back for another couple hours.”
“Can’t we just do like we been doing?”
Her scent was on my fingers. I wanted it all over me. “It’s not the same. C’mon. We been dating how long?”
She laid back on the hay, and her brow smoothed. “Wh-what happens if I get pregnant?”
I brushed a strand of straw from her face and kissed her. “Then we get married. This place makes money. I could work my grandpa’s place to make more.”
“I’m barely eighteen, Stefan. I was thinking about taking some courses at State next semester.”
“So you don’t get pregnant. What matters is I want you. Forever.”
She swatted my chest—light, playful. “You boys say anything to get—”
“I’m serious. This is all I’d ever want in life. Just you and me, getting by, peaceful and easy here in Emmett, where the world outside can’t touch us.”
“It’s always gonna touch us.” She stroked my chest and belly. It was like electricity. “Why can’t it be just a little? Half? Half or nothing.”
“You say that with everything. This isn’t French fries or a shake, okay? This time I want it all. I want you.”
She kissed me back and nodded, then gasped. “Stefan! Oh—”
I was young, impatient. “Just you and me. Forever.”
Tears filled her blue eyes as her fingers ran over my scalp, now every bit as hot as my chest had felt from her stroke. “Shit, Stefan, what did they do to you?”
“They took it all away, Margo. All of it.”
I shivered, then realized I was looking at Margo. Today. Margo, wife of Neil Bauer, mother of his kids. Margo, thirty-six and upstanding citizen of Emmett.
Her hair was shorter and seemed a little drier, fragile. The softness in her cheeks was gone, and she had a small scar on her chin. But her lips were the same red that leaned toward purple. She wore a powder blue, quilted vest, zipped up to the neck, and beneath that a brown sweater.
I tried to sit up; she pushed me down. “You’ve got a fever. Good thing, because your fire was out and it’s cold as all hell.”
She was right. My hair was wet. I felt hot. “I need—” I tapped my forehe
ad—hot and tingly. “Antibiotics, maybe.”
“More like me getting you up to Knox.”
Walter Knox. The hospital in town. “I can’t do that.”
The right side of her brow wrinkled. “Really?”
“No. Serious. I’ve got my own doctor.” The data device. I glanced around, suddenly anxious. Had I dropped it into the tub? “I had a data device—”
She held it up. “This?”
No. That was the assassin’s device. “My older one. I managed to lock that one up.”
She spun around, scanning, returning to the bathroom. “Where’d all this blood come from?” At the doorway she held up the towel I’d dried with. “That head wound?”
“I guess.” She hadn’t noticed the tears in the flesh covering my arms. I stretched for the dresser and managed to hook a finger into a flannel pajama top. It would cover the worst of the damage.
Something thudded next to me on the bed. My data device. “The other one’s nicer. You making big money now?” She dropped down next to it, eyes going from the device to my chest, then my face. “Military, huh? Come back home after eighteen years away, shot up and—” She ran a hand down my right arm, twisting it around. “What is it?”
It. She’d always been sharp. “Cybernetics.”
“A-all of you?”
“The arms and legs. And eyes.”
She slumped, as if that were easier to take. “An explosion or something?”
“Or something. Hey, I’m thirsty. I pumped some water—”
That drew a snort. She got up, calling over her shoulder, “You can bathe in it, but you don’t want to drink that.” When she returned, she had a large bottle of water. “I took it out with me when I ran to the store. You can have it.”
It was cool and sweet, and I thought I could taste honey and something more on my lips. “You have your kids with you?”
“Nah. Neil’s mother’s watching them. She loves the little devils.” Her eyes clouded, took on a faraway, hurt look. “But I’ve got to get back. It’ll be dark before long, and—” Her shoulders sagged just a little.
“Yeah. I understand.”
“She doesn’t like driving at night, that’s all. Plus Derek can be a real challenge, and he’s got school tomorrow.”
“Derek? He’s the…?”
She smiled, letting me know my fishing expedition was a little too obvious. “He’s the youngest one. A little bit of a learning disability, you could say. Real withdrawn. Sweet as sugar, though. Stella—that’s my oldest—says God touched Derek on the lips when he was born to keep all the good sealed inside. She thinks most people lose a little more of the good in them every time they open their mouths. Got that from Neil. Sure as hell seems to apply to him.”
That sour look flashed across her face again. I’d seen it before. On Tae-hee’s face, when things were failing with Norimitsu. Ichi had been all that held them together for a long time. After the love died.
“Youngest and oldest—how many in between?”
Quick as that, the sour look was gone from Margo’s face. “Cecilia. That’s it. She would’ve been the last, but we thought maybe another try would…” She shrugged.
“What’s he do? Neil. Never saw him making it in pro basketball.”
I got my answer about her laugh: It was still husky and warm, enough to make my spine tingle. “Mostly, he drinks. But he does odd jobs. And hunts with his buddies.” A sneer at buddies—she wasn’t a fan. “They talk about how close they all came to the big time, then they shoot up the woods and manage to make it back alive somehow, sometimes with something we can eat.” Bitter.
“You two ever talk about trying someplace else? You were going to go to Boise State.”
“Big dreams, right? Get some coursework in, become an RN, walk around in that candy stripe outfit, and make you stay here with me.” She bowed her head, blushing.
I wasn’t alone in my regrets. “That’s what volunteers wear—stripes. You’d have been in a solid color.”
“Yeah. I know. Now.” Margo blushed. She stared at my feet for a moment, then glanced at me. “Can I—?”
“Touch them? Yeah. It’s still me.”
She drew fingers that looked too wrinkled for someone her age along the top of the feet. “You feel that?”
“There’s feedback. I get basic sensations. No pain, really.”
She pulled the flannel material up. “They look real. Did your legs really get that hairy?”
“They really did, and the cybernetics do look real.”
She stroked my legs, reminding me of Dr. Jernigan but different. Uncomfortably different. Old memories of rolling around in the hay different.
I needed to get Jernigan out to patch me up. I logged into the data device and searched for flights from Charlottesville, Virginia, to Salt Lake City, Utah. I attached a couple car rentals, typed in a quick description of my injuries, then transferred all the data to Dr. Jernigan’s private connection information, and ran an encryption module against the communication. Either she would accept the message and reply, or I would have to find someone I trusted a lot less to help me out.
Margo looked up. “Letting your wife know you’re okay? Back home slumming?”
“Not married, not slumming.” I closed the data device down and settled back on my pillow, cringing at the dampness. The slightest queasiness worked its way through my gut. I needed to eat.
“Those guns on the table military?” Margo got up and crossed her arms.
“Sort of.”
Once again, the right side of her forehead settled into a familiar wrinkle. “When they show images from the wars, the guns look more like rifles. Would you really use a pistol in a war zone?”
“I’d use whatever I had available to me. Hey, did you happen to bring any food with you? My stomach’s growling.”
“It’s real, huh?”
“Like I said, just the arms, legs, and eyes.”
She snorted. “Left all the goodies? Let me see what’s in the truck.”
The floorboards creaked beneath her modest weight, then the door closed. I spun on my butt and got to my feet, fighting off the headache and dizziness. Getting to the table where I’d tossed the appropriated clothes and guns was like crossing the last two miles of a marathon. I bundled everything up and dragged it all back to my room, tossing the guns and magazines in the top drawer of my dresser and hanging the clothes in the open niche that had been my little-used closet. Winter jacket, a couple sweaters, not much else.
As I passed the western window, I caught the dying light. The fields were fallow, with nothing but dead, swaying grass. Shadows sank into the hollows of the hills to the south. It was all so tranquil, so beautiful and serene, so free of the complications and moral ambiguity that had come to define my world since fleeing.
Margo returned, what sounded like a song dying before the front door fully closed. She had noticed everything was gone from the table, obviously. How could she not?
She leaned against the doorframe to the room, wagging a plastic bag. “Chips and a sandwich. And a Snickers, but I’m not giving you the whole thing. Half or nothing.”
Eighteen years without her. Eighteen years running around the world but never escaping her. Eighteen years of “what if” and “should’ve been” and letting the old man drive me away from the only peace I’d ever thought possible, the only love I thought I would ever know.
“Half is fine,” I whispered.
It was all I needed.
Chapter 3
I feasted on salty chips and a sandwich that had far too many healthy substances in it to be store-bought. I smelled chipotle hummus, caught the hint of cilantro in what must have been some sort of olive oil mix. Sweet tomato and onion, and crunchy lettuce, an artisan, multigrain bread that leaned halfway toward rye. My teeth might have been fake, but my tongue and the roof of my mouth could still pick out the textures and flavors. It was a sandwich made with care and an eye toward my particular taste, which had been o
dd for a teen.
She had come to the farm expecting me.
News feeds kept me from focusing too much on the implications of that. It was just me, washed by the glow of the data device, alone in my room. In no time, I expanded my sources to national and international origins, preferring the publicly sourced work. The corporate-sponsored feeds were overrun with tight messaging: A New Day in America! Corporate Growth Means American Growth!
It was like they weren’t even trying. And so many lapped it up.
I ran the data through several channels, ultimately reading through an anonymous server in San Luis Obispo.
All the hops in the world couldn’t filter out the insanity.
Senator Weaver’s death had come at the hands of radical socialists in a deal gone wrong. Lobbying connections, speaking engagements, staffers—everyone had dirty hands. And that smeared her—and Gillian’s—initiatives.
It didn’t take a genius to see the connection between the messengers and the organizations benefitting from her death. Why didn’t people care? Was it comfortable and convenient to believe that a woman could only have so much power and influence if she was corrupt?
What had Chan dug up on Weaver?
The files were out there, but there would be some risk pulling them. The Agency, the FBI, Jacinto—everyone would be watching my accounts, connecting the dots. They would figure out what we’d set up while working with Heidi, and they would trace everything back to its source eventually.
But I had to know.
Before Chan, Jacinto had been our main Gridhound. I could never hope to match what he knew, but I had the basic concepts down: false accounts, bounces, dead ends, false leads. It all came down to tripping up the automated scans. Do it early and well enough, and nothing legitimate gets flagged for a human to dig into.
False accounts abounded, identities created for data drops and actual operations. Connecting those accounts to shell companies was easy enough. But accessing private Grids? Not so easy.
It was after midnight before I had a decent trail established, an accounting consultant working for an Agency shell company tracking down expense reports.