Ghost Black

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Trip complete. Thank you for choosing PubTran.”

  With a hiss, the hatch door, most of the right side of the car, whirred up like an awning. Never had she been so happy to get out of one of those things. Risa sprinted up the moving stairs to the second-story platform where the doors stood like some kind of ancient temple and ducked into the over-tuned air conditioning.

  After booking a ticket to Primus under her ‘Raina Aum’ alias, she flopped on the front row in the seating area to wait for the boarding call, unable to stop her leg from bouncing.

  Beep.

  She jumped. A round-cornered square appeared in her vision courtesy of her headware. Pavo’s smiling face from his contact tile.

  Risa answered. 「Hey. That was quick. What happened?」

  Several days without shaving caused Pavo’s cheeks to blend seamlessly into his super-short hair. 「You sent me a scary sounding text, so I got here as fast as I could… and the place is empty.」

  She stared at the Mars Defense Force duty armor, visible on his shoulders at the bottom of his virtual image.

  「What’s going on?」 Pavo raised both eyebrows. 「You did text me, right?」

  Risa leapt to her feet, screaming, “God dammit! No!” before bursting into tears.

  “You got bumped to the next flight too?” asked a phlegmatic man in the row behind her. “Damn RedEx. Damn monopoly. Think they can treat us like shit.”

  「Ri?」 Worry creased Pavo’s forehead.

  「They got her…」 She sobbed. 「They got her and I fucking handed her to them.」

  「Who got her?」 Pavo turned his head to the side and muttered, “Unknown individuals have abducted my daughter. I need a team here, stat.” He looked at Risa again. 「Calm down. Tell me everything that happened.」

  Risa was too furious to be sad, and too despondent to be angry. Hearing Pavo say ‘my daughter’ hurt as much as it made her heart swell. He probably only said that to make the MDF respond faster. She stood in a daze for a moment before gravity took her back into the seat.

  「Risa. Hey.」 Pavo snapped his fingers in midair. 「Come on!」

  「You showed up at the apartment. Dammit, I thought that was too fast. I’m such a damn idiot. I… explosives at the safehouse. I can’t warn anyone or they’ll set them off early.」 She blinked. Did Shiro help them set me up? Again, she pictured that somber look on his face when he’d told her his true name. As much terror and anger as that man had commanded within her, that final stare he’d given her didn’t feel right. No… Shiro, Jun, or whoever he was hadn’t done this.

  「Who is ‘they?’」 asked Pavo.

  「Senator Nur’s people. C-Branch. The bad ones. Shit, they probably have Kree.」 Risa punched herself in the thigh twice. 「I’m going to kill that bitch. Damn, I’m such an idealistic moron. I had to talk Everett out of doing things his way. I should’ve just dealt with the problem like he wanted me to.」

  A beep filled her head as the words ‘incoming call’ flashed. No identification displayed for the caller, only a blank grey generic person silhouette. Risa thought-clicked over and muted Pavo, but let him listen in.

  Pavo’s image shrank to a six-inch video tile, replaced by a larger virtual screen showing a close-up of beige carpet. Before Risa could venture a word, the image panned up. Kree, still in her yellow dress, sat on a frilly white bedspread over a Comforgel pad. Black cords bound her hand and foot, and a strip of dark tape covered her mouth. The little girl glared hate at whoever held the NetMini, not a trace of fear in her eyes.

  Pavo’s expression hardened to plastisteel as he muttered to someone nearby, probably Aurelia.

  Risa guessed she looked into a hotel room, though whoever had called took away any object with an identifiable logo. Kree struggled, making furious ‘mmm’ sounds in defiance of the tape over her mouth.

  The image blurred from a rapid swivel, and a smiling Pavo appeared in a dark suit. His face shimmered and took on a telltale holographic glow before it melted into a broad-faced Chinese man with a wide grin. He looked older, past forty, with a thin streak of white in his hair over both ears.

  「So sorry I was unable to meet you the other day, Miss Black.」

  Kree ‘mmm’ed past the tape again in the background.

  Risa drew in a breath to scream, but held it at his raised finger.

  「My employer wishes to secure your services in the elimination of a criminal who has stolen a great deal from us. We know you have an arrangement with the Syndicate that will let you get close. You have two hours to kill the one who calls herself Tamashī. Refuse, or do anything other than travel immediately to Elysium… well, you can use your imagination what will happen.」 He shifted his grip on the NetMini to allow a squirming Kree into the frame.

  Terror gripped Risa’s heart. Three seconds later, anger erupted like a volcano, followed by the most painful sense of sorrow she’d ever known. After ten seconds of silence, she felt like a dead woman still standing.

  「If you’ve done any research at all on me, you know what I’m capable of.」 The cold detachment in her voice stalled the real Pavo into staring at her. 「I don’t believe for a minute you’re going to let her go, even if I do everything you ask. She’s seen your face. You’re going to kill her anyway.」 Risa stared at his virtual avatar for a second. 「You listen to me now. This is what’s going to happen. You tell me where you are. I recover my daughter, alive and unhurt. We all forget this happened. If not, within forty-eight hours, Míngtiān Corporation will not have a single living member of its executive board left… and they won’t die easy. And then I start on the rank and file employees. Everyone. Right down to the cafeteria staff.」

  The Chinese man showed little emotional reaction. 「We are tracking your NetMini. You’ll have to trust us.」

  His call dropped off, allowing Pavo’s avatar to expand to full size.

  Risa stared at the blank, black slab of technology in her hand.

  「Don’t do anything stupid,」 said Pavo. 「We’re trying to trace that call. We’ll find it in the ’net.」

  A status window in the middle-right of her vision provided a timer until her booked flight to Primus boarded: 04:09. Four minutes. She flipped the NetMini over and over in her hand. Garrison is going to die… Everyone in the safehouse is going to die… If I go to help them, that motherfucker will kill my daughter. She pressed the device to her forehead and cried tears of rage. Two hours. I can go there and back in time to maybe stop the bombs. But… Tamashī.

  「Risa. Stay put. The team is here. We’ll find them. Supervisor just walked in. They’re going to ask me to step aside if I can’t focus. I gotta go. I’ll call you as soon as I can.」

  Pavo hung up.

  Tears splattered onto the dark screen of the three-by-five-inch device. Faces danced across the bleakness of her mind. Garrison, Osebi, Javier, Kendrick, Kali… everyone she’d grown up with would die in a touch less than eleven hours. If she tried to save them, a piece-of-shit corporation would kill her child. I never should have let her get close. It’s my fault. She pictured Tamashī giggling at her with those silly cookie sticks hanging out of her mouth. Pink T-shirt, pillow fights, video games. A forever-teenager. Even at forty-whatever, life continued being little more than a game to her. Maybe the woman never quite grew up mentally. Genevieve had been like an older sister, but Tamashī was her first true friend, even if she was weird as hell. If Risa tried to stop the explosives that would kill her father, and everyone else in the safehouse, Kree would die. She had no way to know if the Chinese would keep their word and let her live. If she raced to Elysium and killed Tamashī, she might be able to get to Primus fast enough to stop the bombs. But, how could she kill her friend?

  She slipped from the seat, landing on her knees in the middle of the starport waiting area, and cried. Raziel? Help me, please. I don’t know what to do. Please…

  Risa listened to the echoing sound of boarding and arrival announcements over a distant loudspeaker, and the din of p
eople moving through a cavernous building. She leaned back, staring up at a ceiling three stories over her head.

  White-painted metal offered the same answer as Raziel: silence.

  26

  Rats in the Walls

  No one paid much attention to Risa crying into her hands. They all had places to be. She thought about the time she’d walked into Tamashī’s room at the Orbital Hotel and found her sprawled half off the bed, naked and apparently dead. She sniffled, gripped by the same grief she’d felt at the sight. Telling a cyberspace jockey apart from a corpse when they were jacked in usually required medical scanners. Finding her friend dead was bad enough, but the idea of being the one to cause it brought bile up to the back of her throat.

  One minute, ten seconds left until the Primus shuttle opened for boarding.

  She tried to imagine how Kree felt at that moment. The child looked angry, far from frightened, but she’d been on the street for months. She knew appearing terrified only invited problems. As much as she resembled one, Tamashī was no child. The woman could’ve easily been Risa’s mother by age. The Sword of Damocles over her friend’s head was one of her own creation. Kree had done nothing but attach herself to the wrong person.

  They’re tracking my NetMini. If I call Tamashī, they’ll kill Kree. If I don’t go to Elysium, they’ll…

  She snarled. No matter what happened in the next few hours, Míngtiān Corporation would need a new board of directors. Nothing on Mars―or Earth―would contain her vengeance. She bowed her head. The thought of betraying her friend cut deep, but the wound didn’t ache as much as the idea of finding Kree’s tiny, lifeless body stuffed inside a delivery bot at her window.

  I’m sorry, Tamashī. I hope you can forgive me. She opened a connection to the Starport system, and switched her flight to Elysium. The boarding timer adjusted to eight minutes. Nine rows away, a man cheered. He’d been bumped up to the Primus-bound seat she relinquished.

  Risa found herself attempting to pray to Raziel, or the god she once believed him to serve. The more she thought about walking into the room at the Orbital Hotel, the smile Tamashī would give her, and the horrified expression of betrayal that the girl would use her last scraps of life on, the more Risa cried. She’s never going to expect me to be able to kill her.

  She lurched forward, vomiting. Pale-yellow liquid splattered on the thin blue-grey carpet between her boots. Her body convulsed again. A memory of Tamashī giggled and hurled a pillow at her. I… can’t do it. But Kree will die if I don’t. Risa threw up more.

  A round, flat bot zipped across the room, halting in the midst of the puddle she’d made. It wound its way back and forth over the stain, scrubbing the carpet. When it finished, it backed up and pivoted to ‘look’ up at her. Two dark spots, likely cameras, seemed so much like eyes she imagined the thing being ‘hungry’ and wanting her to throw up again so it could eat.

  She obliged.

  All manner of justifications swam around in her thoughts: Kree’s only six. Tamashī is forty… whatever. Kree’s innocent, Tamashī isn’t. Okay, well, she looks innocent. She is a thief. Every time I ask her for help, she helps me. She’s my friend. Kree’s my… daughter. They’re going to kill her anyway. Risa took and released a slow breath. I’ll call them before I kill her, demand they let her go. She growled. They won’t. They didn’t blindfold her. Would the Syndicate play along and let me fake it? Her stomach knotted. Walsh would want me to do a hit for something like that. Her body trembled. Total stranger’s life or my kid’s? Yeah, no choice there. Sorry pal.

  When the notification for Elysium boarding vibrated her NetMini, Risa stood like an automaton and trudged down the concourse hallway to the terminal gate. By the time she got there, the line had grown to fifty people deep. She took her place at the end, feeling like a piece of shit for what she contemplated doing to her friend. She’s going to smile or giggle at me, and I’m going to shatter. Kree’s going to die. Risa closed her eyes and pictured the only way she could possibly murder her friend: speedware into the room and kill her before she even realized anyone had walked in.

  A twinge in her head felt like a caterpillar crawling down her brainstem. Risa shivered at the unscratchable itch, grasping the back of her head. Great. A brain tumor too.

  However, she fully expected Míngtiān to kill Kree no matter what she did. For all she knew, her child could already be dead. Perhaps she should forget Tamashi and buy a ticket to Xīwàng dà, the first city established by China on Mars. She’d start there and refuse to rest until not a single person employed by that company remained alive. Revenge had dominated most of her adult life; it would be a fitting end to be consumed by it in death.

  White moved in her peripheral vision. Expecting Shiro, she whirled. At the sight of Raziel, she wound up crying again. People in the line around her glanced back, a few muttered about crazy, though someone pointed out she was probably on a phone call.

  「I apologize for the delay. I will confess to being curious what you would do given the parameters of your current situation.」

  「Asshole.」 She covered her mouth. 「Shit. Sorry. Please… help me.」

  He strode up alongside her; his white feathery wings looked solid, until they passed through waiting passengers without effect. Raziel, the hallucination created by electronics inside her skull, reached out and ran his hand over her head. She twitched at feeling his touch―sensory input fed to her brain.

  「Be at ease, child. I am ghosting your NetMini’s positioning signal. As far as the Míngtiān people are concerned, you are going to get on this shuttle and fly to Elysium City. Then, walk on foot to the Orbital Hotel. You will ‘arrive’ in Tamashī’s room in thirty-four minutes.」

  She sniffled, wide eyed, trembling. 「But…」

  「The call you received from the Míngtiān agent originated from here in Arcadia.」

  All traces of weepiness vanished. Her sudden shift to an aggressive pose and a fatalistic glint in her eye made several passengers step away. 「Where?」

  「The Hotel Presidium.」

  Risa ran for the exit. Raziel, despite not moving his legs, remained at her side, seeming to glide along the floor.

  「There is a PubTran car waiting for you outside. I took the liberty of borrowing one.」

  「Thanks.」 Risa hit her speedware, surging up to a forty-mile-an-hour dash across the waiting area. Her passage tore drinks from people’s hands and knocked at least three toddlers over. She slowed for the stairs, and headed right for an idle grey-and-cyan auto-car with a man pounding on its roof.

  She launched herself at him, driving a knee into his back and drilling him into the side of the car. He let out an oof and started to fall, but she shoved him aside before he could collapse. “Sorry, this one’s taken.” The door popped open. She leapt in, braced her boots against the wall on either side, and grabbed both roof handles. 「Okay, go.」

  While the little car spat smoke from all four tires, Risa opened a headware call to Genevieve.

  An apologetic redhead appeared floating before her. 「Sorry, Ri. I know I shouldn’t have left the dildo where―」

  「Forget it. I need your help.」

  Genevieve blinked. 「What? Damn girl, you sound pissed.」

  「You have to go back to the safehouse. Don’t walk in the front door. Don’t tell anyone you’re going there. Don’t call anyone. Just go.」

  「What?」 Genevieve shook her head. 「Are you crazy? I can’t go back there… I’ll get sucked right back into…」

  Risa sighed. 「I’m not gonna blow dust up your ass, Gen. C-Branch is splitting in half. They found it. Hah, found… they knew where we were all along. Bombs in the vents. About eleven hours left.」

  「Oh, shit.」 Genevieve looked down. 「I’d, umm, love to help but… Aura left me handcuffed naked to the bed.」

  Risa smirked. 「The bed ten feet behind you? Come on, Gen. Garrison’s my father. You know those people too. They were our family. I know you’re scared, but you ha
ve to believe me. No one is trying to assassinate you personally. The rigged detonator was aimed at the Front.」

  「Okay…」 Genevieve sucked in a breath and let it out with a shuddering exhale. 「You’re sure about the timeframe? I dodged a bomb with my name on it once… not sure how many of those I got left. You know how bad my luck is.」

  「As sure as I can be given the circumstances… if you think it’s sketchy, get out, but please try.」

  Genevieve nodded. 「Okay. If you get me killed, Aurelia’s going to kick your ass.」

  「This is all your skill. No luck needed. Just skip the Indian food.」 Risa cringed as the little car went up on two wheels to take a turn at seventy-something. 「I’ll come help as soon as I deal with some Chinese take-out.」

  「You’re sending me to defuse bombs and you’re going for food?」 Genevieve’s face went red.

  「No. I’m going to take out a couple of Chinese guys who kidnapped Kree.」

  「Oh, shit. What the―」

  Risa flinched as something heavy enough to sound like a body bounced off the front of the PubTran car. 「I’ll call you back in a few minutes.」

  「Okay.」

  She hung up, and called Garrison. His face appeared eight seconds later. 「Lieutenant Black reporting in, Sir. Sitrep uneventful. Awaiting orders. Johnson’s dog keeps shitting on the floor.」

  Garrison nodded. 「Understood. Tell him to change food brands.」 He fiddled with something off screen.

  A band of static descended over his hallucination.

  「Line secured.」

  Risa took a breath. 「Dad… Do not react visibly to what I am about to tell you. The safehouse has been compromised. There are explosives. C-Branch has eyes inside. If they sense alarm, they’ll set off the bombs.」 Oh, shit. What if he’s the inside man? Fuck it… no way in hell could that be true.