Gone Dark

by P. R. Adams

  “Everyone but me.” Would I still be a target once it was law? Who would care? “This is about Stovall.”

  Merkel coughed into her hand—no sound, just the motion. “I’ve been tasked to bring him in. But everyone who should know where he is and what he’s doing has developed an acute case of amnesia.”

  She was a bureaucrat, not some grizzled veteran. No one would respect her. “Did you know Heidi Ostertag?”

  Half a nod, eyes down, a tremor in the cheek. “I just identified her body yesterday.”

  Friends. Close. She didn’t need to know what had really happened. She was the same sort of minor bureaucrat that Heidi would have been, if she hadn’t been a handler, vulnerable to being tossed out when another wave of cost reductions came through. “The people behind all this. Cytek. You ever heard of them? Lilly Duvreau?”

  Lyndsey pulled a small, black case from a jacket pocket, then thumbed a couple snaps open. Displays flared to life. Lilly Duvreau glared at me from the screen. “Recognize her?”

  I tried to make a kissing sound, did horribly. “Love of my life.”

  “Former Marine. Very ambitious. Very smart. Also pretty ruthless.”

  “Like criminal-charges-pending ruthless?”

  “Remember how I said smart?” Lyndsey shrugged. “We’ve got corpses in a mortuary in Denver, Colorado; more in Emmett, Idaho; more in Charleston, West Virginia. Now they’re piling up here in Maryland. The only ones we can officially tie to Cytek were trying to secure an important compound against intruders when a bomb went off.”

  She hadn’t mentioned Biloxi. Good. “It was a military helicopter. Tasked to Agency support. I can get you video.”

  She shook her head. “Won’t do us any good.”

  “Video’s sharp. Black chopper. One of—”

  Merkel sighed. “As I’ve said, it’s not worth pursuing. Stovall’s being protected. I’ve already been reprimanded for working too closely with Agent Hines.”

  Lyndsey slid her AR goggles on and set the case on my chest. “Good thing we have another case to work together on.” The display shifted. The image became Huiyin. Younger. A little angrier. If I had to guess, the picture was from Hong Kong. “You know Miss Lin?”

  “Biblically.”

  Merkel looked away. “Were you aware that she’s Chinese—”

  “Was I aware that she’s an MSS agent?” Annoyance slipped into my voice. I didn’t have time for judgment. “I don’t work for the Agency, and Huiyin and I have the same objective.”

  Once again, that look passed between them—not what they’d expected.

  The image on the display changed to Huiyin and Dong, and Lyndsey said, “She tell you she worked with Dong?”

  “Trained by him. Did her wrong, or so she says. I could use some more water.”

  Lyndsey pushed the goggles down her nose, grabbed the cup, and let me take some sips. “You think you’re being objective about her after…getting to know her?”

  I pushed the straw out with my tongue and licked my swollen lips. “I don’t trust anyone, if that’s what you’re asking. Not after…” I glared at Merkel.

  Merkel pointed at the case. The image changed to one of Huiyin—younger, maybe a teen. She stood among dozens of other girls that looked like they were about the same age, all dressed in simple, dull, green uniforms. “Did she tell you how they found her at an orphanage dedicated to raising good state soldiers? Her aptitude scores, how well she took to training?”

  “Yeah. Her English came from living here with her aunt. That’s where they recruited her. She’s pretty upfront about all this.”

  Another one of those damned looks between them, then Lyndsey pushed the glasses back up, and the image changed again.

  More Chinese, but these were nothing like Huiyin. Straddling benches and chairs in a big room lit with neon streaks, leaning back on sofas, reclining on the floor. Computing devices sitting in laps, strapped to chests, balanced on tables. No uniforms. No clean-cut appearance. Radical outfits, more radical hairdos, tattoos. Lots of clueless attitude, as if they thought they represented some huge threat. And they did, just not the sort I was.

  I nodded toward them. “MSS Gridhounds?”

  The view pushed in, focusing on a tall-looking beanpole with a scruffy mustache and a greasy mullet. His eyes were barely open, his jaw slack. Drugged. A dragon tattoo from beneath a black T-shirt, down a bony, scabbed arm that was wrapped around the shoulder of a pretty, young woman who was looking away. His black-painted nails popped against the white of the bikini top covering her small breasts.

  Something about the way she sat, about the resentful glare into the distance.

  “Huiyin?” Despite the hairdo, the outrageous clothes and makeup, it was her.

  Merkel clasped her hands in front of her. “Her first assignment was as a handler for some of their best snowcrashes. Dong was her handler; she was theirs. The same sexual manipulation he used on her, she used on them. Lies, manipulation, sex. You understand. Biblically.”

  I needed a shower. “We all do what we’re asked to do, don’t we?”

  Merkel bowed her head. That seemed to be a signal to Lyndsey, who pulled her goggles off and snapped the case closed. Merkel opened the curtain and headed out, sensible shoes softly clopping on the floor, barely louder than the ping of my monitoring machines.

  Lyndsey undid the strap holding my right wrist down. “We have the same objective.”

  “I know.” I undid the strap on my other wrist. “I just have this thing about being left to die. Kind of warps my view a little.”

  She smiled. I was beginning to really like that look on her. “How was that fritter?”

  “Pretty damned good, to be honest. I owe you.” She paused at the curtain, one hand raised to close it, back to me. “You seem like an honest person, Stefan.”

  “Probably too much for my own good.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, concern in her eyes. “Most people in your job aren’t. You should remember that.”

  My head throbbed. I stretched, grabbed the water cup, took a long sip. “I know.”

  “I bet you do.” She closed the curtain. I heard the scrape of her shoes, then the curtain opened again, just enough for her to poke her head through. “She came to America two years ago with Dong. That was the first time. I thought you should know that.”

  And then she closed the curtain all the way, leaving me with that little mystery to unravel.

  I hated mysteries.

  Chapter 22

  The newsfeed studio looked like it was melting under a sun out of control. Waves shimmered through the entertainment console video, twisting the virtual furniture and gray-haired announcer for a moment, then straightening, then twisting again. It seemed to be happening in time to the cycling of the hotel room heater, which droned like a snake charmer playing his pungi flute.

  Might as well turn the damned thing off, as hot as I feel. It was seventy in the room, but it felt like a kiln: small, superheated.

  Ichi looked up from the chair to my left, dark eyes locked on. “You are all right?”

  “Great.” I groaned as I climbed out of the padded chair I had been in for too long, drawing a scowl from Ichi. I waved her off as I shuffled to the kitchenette, then leaned against the dining table she’d taken her chair from. “It’s nothing. I feel worse for people with money in the market. That’s who’s taking it in the ass right now.”

  She followed me to the refrigerator, and when I opened the door, she lifted a bottle of water out. When I pulled a beer out instead, she took that from me and pushed the water toward me. “No alcohol. Dr. Jernigan—”

  “You can’t listen to her. She’s a hack.” I took the water.

  Ichi hooked my free arm over her shoulders and escorted me back to the chair, leaving me with a head full of the light musk scent of her soap. “It is improving?”

  “The pain? The lightheadedness? My disposition?” The water went down cold and sweet, but I still felt warm. “All
of them are better. I guess.”

  She cocked an eyebrow—not my disposition, apparently.

  I felt like a prisoner, but she was tired of hearing that. They all were. Danny took it the best, reminiscing about our early days at the Agency, wondering how some of our old comrades were doing, and sometimes asking me how it had been going back home. He knew there was no such thing, but he seemed to need to hear it. And it kept him from talking about Huiyin, whom he clearly had problems with, especially after hearing about the drugged-out snowcrash.

  Chan sort of left me alone, but in a creepy way. Those magenta eyes always seemed to be on me, even when they weren’t. I didn’t know what to talk about—we didn’t have much in common other than Jacinto—so we didn’t talk. Huiyin was almost clingy when she wasn’t scolding me for being sloppy. Apparently, I should have left Ichi to die on the rooftop. And Chan in the hallway outside the crypto room. We had very different views of how teams worked. Fortunately, I could legitimately fall back on my condition to fend off her sexual advances. I wasn’t sure where I stood on Huiyin after Lyndsey’s little bombshell, but I knew my trust had dropped a few degrees.

  I wasn’t even sure what Huiyin was after. Handling snowcrashes? Sleeping with slimy-looking head cases to get them to do what she wanted them to do? Was that who I was to her? Was Danny right? Was that how she saw Chan? Something to be bottled up?

  Ichi’s interest in the Chinese agent hadn’t diminished, apparently. Leotards, tank tops and shorts—every time Ichi came over for her shift babysitting me, she paraded around in clothes that showed off her wares. It never got anything more than an annoyed eye roll from Huiyin, but Ichi kept trying. I couldn’t rightly complain about it, but the distraction was more than I needed.

  I turned the entertainment console off and powered my data device on. There was nothing to drive the depression away. Just like Lyndsey had predicted, the Metacorporate Initiative was moving through Congress at surprising speed—rubber stamped—and would soon be headed to the president to be signed in as the law of the land. Every few hours, a new fast-track merger was announced in the news. Once the law was signed, the proposals would be officially filed. When it wasn’t a merger announcement, some other crazy shockwave would hit the market. The corporate-sponsored talking heads extolled all the new jobs that would be created, all the good for the economy, but in the few days since the first proposed mergers had been announced, investment shows became a parade of slimy bean counters talking about synergies, redundancies, and rightsizing. Millions were expected to be shown the door as a result.

  So much for the new jobs and the economic boost.

  My money was running out, but I still felt lucky. It would be worse for a lot of people.

  Clack! The lock on the door opened, and the knob twisted. I pulled up the pistol I kept below my chair just as Huiyin let herself in. She wore a stylish brown leather jacket over another sheer top and tight blue jeans. Ichi relaxed, then stretched—casual, showing off rounded shoulders and tight arms.

  “He is doing well.” She hopped out of the chair.

  Huiyin slipped past, shrugging off the jacket, apparently not the least bit intimidated by Ichi’s size and athleticism. There were things beneath the hidden scars Huiyin carried, things that made her at least Ichi’s equal. That much I still believed, because I had seen it. Felt it.

  I held up the data device. “Anything new?”

  Huiyin set her jacket on the back of my chair, then settled on the narrow arm, something only she was small enough to do, possibly a reminder to Ichi that size worked both ways. “Chan has been working with your friend Abhishek.” A disapproving frown.

  “Nothing?”

  The frown deepened as she brushed small fingers through my hair. “You thought there would be something more?”

  “Than money? It’s hard for someone like me to imagine all of this over…money?” It sounded stupid, even without seeing Huiyin’s disappointed headshake. “I mean on the scale of it. It’s imaginary money, right? They’re creating a whole bunch of entities and holding it all together with agreements that shift imaginary money around.”

  Huiyin took the data device from my lap. “You pay for things with this? Your cash card?” She dropped the device back onto my lap. “When was the last time you touched a piece of gold? What gives anything value? Food? Water? A place to live? That’s all that matters, isn’t it? Everything else is imaginary, an agreement where everyone assigns value to nothing.”

  “But that’s just it. This could all collapse—”

  More disappointment. “You understand it’s about the money, don’t you? Nothing else. And to get more, they will do anything.”

  Ichi sauntered over to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer, apparently trying to irritate or seduce Huiyin. After sipping at the foam, Ichi said, “Why not just blow us all up if it is only about money?”

  I pointed the bottle of water at her. “That’s been bugging me from the start.”

  That got a satisfied smile from Ichi.

  Huiyin shook her head. “They wanted something.”

  “That computing device.” I pushed hair back from my forehead, realized I needed a haircut. “But if Chan and Abhishek can’t find anything more on it…”

  “Maybe there is nothing to find. By now, they could have wiped out the dangerous data.”

  Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. Ichi’s pout said she hadn’t considered that, either. Us not being able to crack the security before didn’t mean they couldn’t do so remotely. Maybe they could power it on somehow. What were we going to do? Jumping from hotel to motel to rental unit was expensive and could only last so long. “Your people don’t have anything?”

  “No.” The look Huiyin gave me—she didn’t like the question.

  A knock at the door broke the moment of tension. Danny let himself in, paused in the doorway. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt covered by a light jacket. “I—uh.” His eyes jumped from Huiyin to Ichi. “I thought this was my shift to watch over the feeb?”

  Ichi chugged the beer and slammed the bottle down on the countertop, then waved a hand at me, dismissive. A handoff. She was pissed about something.

  Huiyin rubbed my chest. “Maybe when I come back tonight?” She kissed me, hard, painful on my still-tender lips.

  That was all Ichi needed to see, apparently. She stormed out, which apparently satisfied Huiyin. She dropped to her feet with a chuckle, took her jacket, and let herself out, stopping at the door for a little wave.

  When the door closed, Danny dropped onto the chair, head shaking. “You, um, you ever think about what that would be like? The two of them?”

  “Nice little dream you got there. You gonna talk about sexual fantasies all night?”

  “No, I just…” He wiped his upper lip, went to the kitchen, grabbed Ichi’s beer, and came back to the chair. “I heard you and Huiyin—”

  I glared at him.

  “You, um, you want to talk about something else?” He scraped the bottle label with his thumbnail.

  “You ever heard of the SEC? Securities and Exchange Comm—”

  “Securities and Exchange Commission, yeah. Big fraud watchdog, sure. Um, well, they used to be big, at least. Why? What? What’s with the face?”

  “Nothing.” I had made a career out of planned ignorance. I should take pride in it. “I wonder if we’re missing something.”

  “Missing?” He took a drink.

  “Cytek keeps trying to kill us. They’re obviously getting support from Stovall, which means they’re getting support from the Agency. The Agency wanted Weaver dead. They want this Metacorporate Initiative to go through. They’re throwing all kinds of resources behind it all—this Jacinto AI, a military helicopter, those cyborg assassins that they can apparently run off an assembly line. I’m betting they’re behind Cytek tracking us down.”

  “Okay.” Danny apparently didn’t see anything obvious, either.

  “Well, why? What’s the connection? Why go to so much tro
uble to have a troublemaker like me turned into a zombie assassin? What’s the end game? They’ve had a few tries for a clean kill and passed on it. That’s not like Stovall.”

  “Oh.” He tapped the lip of the bottle against his chin. “Well…” His brow wrinkled. “What’s this got to do with the SEC?”

  “What? Oh. That FBI agent? Lyndsey Hines? She swung by the ICU before they released me. She had Merkel—the Agency desk jockey whose team killed Nitin—with her. They’re…” I couldn’t disclose what they’d said about Huiyin, not so long as there was any chance they were running their own game on me. “They want Stovall. Well, some of the Agency higher-ups do, and I think Agent Hines would like to connect him to Cytek, but there’s no trail, nothing connecting them together, nothing they can track back to Stovall. I think they’d be fine with him having a messy ending. The Agency, not the FBI.”

  “And they want to use the SEC?” The wrinkles deepened.

  “No. Lyndsey—Agent Hines—was explaining that the only thing that could stop this Metacorporate Initiative would be the SEC. Find fraud or whatever, prosecute the affected people, shut it down.”

  “Like Al Capone.”

  “Who?” The name was one of those irritatingly familiar ones, like you were sure you knew but couldn’t place.

  “Al Capone? Chicago gangster? Back in the 1920s or 1930s, whenever Prohibition was.”

  “Could you speak English? Prohibition?”

  Danny groaned. “Did you even go to school?”

  “I was raised by wolves.”

  “Um, it was a law that made selling alcohol illegal.”

  “Shit.” I tried to digest the horrifying concept.

  “He became wealthy off the associated crimes. And he had rivals killed. A lot. But the cops couldn’t connect him to the killings. They ended up getting him on tax evasion. Kind of like the idea this Agent Hines has for using the SEC.”