Pivotal (Visceral Book 3)

by Adam Thielen

  Desre gave a small chuckle. “Drew, I… I don’t—” She stopped and stared at him. For a moment his face looked strangely artificial, and she remembered fleeing the hotel room. “No,” she denied. “I don’t want to remember. Leave me alone.”

  “If she is alive, I must find her,” said Drew. “I do not believe you wish her harm. Please tell me what happened,” he urged, reaching across the table and resting his hand on hers.

  Memories flooded Desre’s mind. “Drew,” she awed. “You have a mind. I don’t understand.”

  “I could have told you that,” he said.

  “What is this place?” she asked, looking around. The patrons and greeter were gone and a silence had crept into the room.

  “This is the dreamscape,” he offered. “It is your dream, with a little help from me.”

  “How?”

  “I do not believe such an explanation would prove useful,” said Drew. “You are asleep for now, but you may wake at any moment, and I need to know what happened to her.”

  Desre continued to look around. “I don’t want to go back,” she fretted. “I don’t want that life. I don’t want to run forever.”

  “Tell me where you are, and we will protect you,” Drew pleaded, gripping her hand.

  “I ran, Drew,” she cried. “I ran away. I told them that if she died they’d never find me.”

  “How would they find you otherwise?”

  “I told one of his thugs that I’d trade myself for her,” said Somer. “But it was a bluff, a lie.”

  “We can still save her. Tell me where you are,” ordered Drew.

  “N-no!” exclaimed Desre, shaking her head. “I won’t do it. I’m sorry!”

  The psion ripped her hand away and ran out of the restaurant, through the sliding door, and down the boardwalk as the AI called after her. The sky blackened and the waves froze in place. Something hit Desre’s shin and she tripped, whining in pain.

  “I won’t go back,” she yelled, rubbing her leg while an impenetrable blackness closed in on her, obscuring the shore, tropical flora, and restaurant a bit at a time until there was no world left to see.

  Something hit the side of her calf and she felt her consciousness rise to the surface, engaging her bodily senses. Her eyes fluttered open to see a thin-faced Asian man stood at her feet. Drool had spilled from Desre’s mouth and onto her hands. She groaned and sat up, wiping her hands on her pant leg.

  The man that had awakened her had visible lesions on his face, partially covered by an array of silver loops linked together and piercing his skin in seemingly random points. His short brown hair was tied in a dozen spots, spiking outward like bundles of wheat.

  Desre recognized a louse when she saw one and felt relief, as there was no way he was with Chantech. Her eyes traveled from his face as a gleam of metal in his right hand caught her attention. In his left hand was her wallet. She looked behind him at the sun, low in the sky.

  “What do you want, asshole?” asked the grouchy seer, still adorned in sunglasses and hat.

  The thief pointed his shiv at her. “Unlock,” he demanded in a hoarse voice, dropping the wallet at Desre’s feet.

  Desre looked at the man, then at the wallet. She leaned forward and picked up the crypto storage device and rolled to a knee, then stood. The man was almost as short as she, and the psion laughed. It wasn’t a happy laugh. A harsh chill fell over her head and face and drifted down her neck.

  The man froze, his brain no longer able to command his body to move. Desre made him hold his breath while she took his crude blade and pocketed it. She slowly circled around him.

  “Fucking trash,” she declared. “I should kill you. Shank you with your own knife. Kick me awake?” she hissed, putting her face in front of his. She reveled in his despair, but his fear unexpectedly dragged her into a deeper part of his mind where she saw his life of poverty and suffering. Somer yanked herself out of his mind, releasing him from the spell.

  The man fell to his knees, gasping and choking. Desre walked toward the front of the talisman shop, then returned to the rogue. “You got a com?”

  He looked up at her, confused.

  “You have a com or not?”

  He nodded.

  “Want to sell it?” she asked. “Give you more money than it’s worth.”

  The man furrowed his brow. “Please. No hurt. Here.” He pulled out his com and lifted it toward Desre.

  “Unlock,” she said, and the man complied. Desre transferred half her stolen money to the com and unlocked her wallet. She handed him the wallet, which he reluctantly took.

  “Find another way,” she told him. “I don’t know what, but you can’t just go around threatening people’s lives.” He looked at her curiously, and she figured he only knew a few key English words and phrases. She pulled out the knife. “No stabby,” she explained, thrusting the blade toward him. “No!”

  “Yeah, got it first time,” he replied.

  “Well, don’t look so damn confused,” she scolded. “You’re welcome. Go buy yourself something nice.”

  Desre entered Madam Mei’s Curios, and the smell of mass-produced incense flooded her nostrils. She couldn’t identify the name of the scent or if it was supposed to smell like a flower or something else. There were layers to it, likely built up on the walls from years of constant burning. Glass display cases lined the walls, with jewelry stands atop them alongside boxes of crystals and purported magical stones. There was also a vast selection of hookahs, an occult literature kiosk, and a stack of old fiction paperbacks involving sex pairings between women and various animal shape-shifting men. The music of a guqin played softly in the background.

  She amusedly perused the knick-knacks on her way toward an old lady sitting in a comfortable-looking office chair behind a counter. The lady yelled something to Somer that sounded like a greeting. “Yup,” said Desre.

  Though much of the merchandise was interesting, the psion spotted no polonium. She stopped at the counter and smiled at old lady Mei.

  “Nǐ hǎo,” she greeted, exhausting her knowledge of the common tongue. Mei echoed her words with a nod.

  “Polonium?” asked Desre, sounding it out slowly.

  The woman nodded and returned with a small box containing a few rings, a yin-yang pendant, and one bracelet. The tags were listed in yuan, so Desre had to do some rough conversions. The number of crypto-bits she came up with for a single trinket was close to a week’s working-class wages. Buying just one would all but wipe her out. She considered making Mei look the other way and shook her head. Somer had no problem stealing from spoiled brats but drew the line at little old ladies. Then again, she thought, Mei is selling a lot of bullshit here. She shook her head again. No, she decided, I will not rob her.

  Desre decided to try a different tact to save some funds. “Discount?” she queried.

  Mei looked at the counter, and slid her fingers around for a few moments, bringing a screen to life. It translated the seer’s word and provided her with an answer to give.

  “No,” said Mei.

  Somer grabbed the box, lifting it. “Discount.”

  The madam consulted her screen. “Why discount?”

  Somer then held the cardboard display box close to her forehead and listened for Mei’s thoughts. She heard only noise, like fingernails on a chalkboard. It made her head ache with cold. After a few seconds, she lowered the box. Out of the seven pieces, only three were glowing blue. Mei’s eyes widened. She watched Desre pull out the rest and set them on the counter in a pile with her palm on top.

  She lifted her hand. “Fake,” she said, then presented the remaining three to Mei. “Real.”

  Mei bowed her head in shame. “Discount?” she offered.

  It made Desre a little sad to embarrass the woman, but she couldn’t help but smile at herself, picking out a genuine ring and a short necklace cord to go with it. Somer strutted outside and used her com to summon another car. Her remaining cash would get her to Baoding, and maybe wi
th a little luck, she could sneak aboard a freighter and escape this godforsaken corporatocracy.

  * * *

  The alarm rang for several minutes before Tsenka Cho sat up in her cot, ripped from her slumber. A time readout on the bulkhead read nine oh eight. The vampire had managed to get a few hours of sleep, and she woke feeling hot and sick. She threw her small blanket aside and moved to the commissary, a glorified crate, and fished out a blood pack. Before she could drink, Drew approached her from the cockpit.

  “Good morning, Ms. Cho,” he started. “I would have let you sleep longer, but—”

  “It’s fine, Drew,” Cho barked, sounding as if maybe it wasn’t that fine. “What’s going on?”

  “I found Desre using the hub,” he said. “But she would not cooperate. I fear we may have lost her.”

  “Dammit,” said Cho. “We need her.”

  “In addition,” continued the AI. “it appears resistance groups have acquired footage of you fighting Chantech forces, and are using it as a call to arms, or at least to protest.”

  “What?” said a confused Cho. “Show me.”

  The robot projected a video onto one of few flat and clear spaces inside the cabin. The footage and message were cleverly constructed, and the production quality was high. Someone with resources put this together, thought Cho. As imagery of Tsenka fighting the mech played, a subtitle appeared on the screen. It translated to “The NR superweapon has come to stand up to corruption”. Then at the end, a message in big characters read, “Now is the Time. The New Republic Stands with You.”

  Cho hunched forward and pointed her hand at the projection. “Oh fuck fuck fuck,” she yelled. “What the fuck, Drew?”

  “On the bright side,” said Drew, “it seems they don’t know your identity, yet. However, apparently, the agency has figured it out.”

  “The agency?” Cho stepped back, bumping into the divider between sections.

  “Ms. Cho, if you are not feeling well I can brief you later.”

  “No,” she said in a low voice. “Go ahead… lay it on me.”

  Drew took a moment to process her expression, clearly at odds with her tone and lack of enthusiasm. He nodded and projected a new image, this time the face of a woman wearing a New Republic armed services uniform.

  “The secretary of foreign affairs, Ms. Robyn White, has left a secure message in our network dead drop,” he announced. “I will play it now.”

  “Attention, Agent Kate Jones and any accomplices to this violation of foreign relations protocol,” began White.

  Tsenka groaned.

  “By now, you are no doubt aware of Chantech’s threats of retaliation against the New Republic,” she continued.

  Tsenka looked at Drew expectantly.

  “I declined to mention that,” he said.

  “While we can prove that Jones was not acting in any capacity for the Republic and that former agent Tsenka Cho has not been employed by the agency for several weeks, your actions have put our fledgling government and the people of our nation in danger,” said White. “By order of the executive board, any and all citizens of the New Republic must vacate any and all Chantech territories and return home for an interview with the foreign affairs council. This is not a request. Violators will have their citizenship revoked.” The message ended and the projection went black.

  “Drew,” said Cho. “What does she mean, threats of retaliation?”

  “Chantech has declared a state of war with the New Republic,” revealed Drew.

  “What!”

  Drew considered repeating but decided she was not asking a question. “Perhaps it will be clearer if I give you a timeline of the last few hours. First, your footage appeared on the news. Then that was used to create anti-corporate propaganda. Then some protests were organized. Then demonstrators in Baoding torched their local Chantech office. Then Ping Interests Group streamed coverage of their militia doing a training exercise using target dummies that bore some resemblance to Chantech’s board.”

  “Oh my fuck,” uttered Cho.

  “Chantech then revealed they had caught a New Republic spy, our Kate, and announced that they would be trying her for acts of war this evening. The New Republic responded by disavowing knowledge of our excursion and began airing video of our fighter jets and carriers. Chantech then created their own propaganda from the footage of you. I believe they hoped to stir up some sort of tribalism in the populace. Shortly before you woke, a series of counter-protests broke out in the same places where the first protests began, so perhaps it worked or they are paid or both. I expect a clash is imminent.”

  “Wait,” demanded Cho. “They are putting Kate on trial?”

  “I expect it will be for show,” said Drew. “Our time is limited.”

  “Dammit, Drew, we are not going to let them do this to her,” said Tsenka, sucking down her blood pack.

  “I do hope not,” said Drew. “The Chantech channels have also been running a missing persons notification for Desre Somer, with text stating that it may not be too late to save her. I believe this is meant as a message to us.”

  “You couldn’t get her location?”

  “She does not wish to be traded,” said Drew.

  “If I could just talk to her,” said Tsenka.

  “I will continue analyzing data streams.”

  “Take a break from that,” suggested Cho. “We need to respond to Secretary White. Come up with a good narrative on why Kate brought us here and explain how I got kidnapped and forced into that battle. Think you can get us out of hot water?”

  “I will certainly try, Ms. Cho,” said Drew. “What are you going to do?”

  Tsenka massaged her stomach with a pained expression on her face, which had started to glisten with red. “I’m going to go bleed in the shower for a few minutes while I figure out our next move.”

  The monocopter had become their fallback refuge, with just enough comfort for two passengers, three in a pinch. Drew had parked it in the middle of a cornfield outside Tianjin. He kept it ready to move at a moment’s notice, but could not keep it in the air indefinitely as flight components could overheat or wear out with too much continued use and no maintenance.

  The monocopter was not as sleek as some, but its taller body gave it room for standing and, in Cho’s case, room for something similar to a shower, more accurately described as a micro-drop blaster. It was effective at stripping away dirt but was wholly unsatisfying.

  It made Tsenka angry thinking about Kate in the custody of Roland and by the time she had finished washing up, Cho had decided that if she had to bring down all of Chantech before the sun went down in order to give Kate a chance and lure Roland to his death, then that is what she would plan for.

  “You are one person, Ms. Cho,” Drew told her. “What can either of us do?”

  “Do you have a reliable list of Chantech sites, including their central headquarters?” asked Tsenka.

  “Some of that information is public, and I deem it reliable,” said Drew. “I also have a number of dark sites rumored to be secret research facilities.”

  “We have to take something from them worth as much as Kate,” she explained.

  “I believe I can find something,” he said. “But there will be a lot of security.”

  “I will take them out.”

  “Also smart walls that change configuration and seal off important areas during emergencies.”

  “I’ll get some C-4 charges.”

  “Assuming you pose an actual threat to their research,” said Drew, “Chantech may then implode the facility.”

  “I’ll be in and out, fast,” assured Cho.

  “Their radar systems will detect us coming, and I would expect armored vehicles and maybe even the Behemoth to show up.”

  “Drew, I’m starting to feel unsupported.”

  “After you’ve defeated an army, and somehow disabled the Behemoth, maybe Roland will show up,” said Drew, getting snarky for a robot. “Perhaps you recall him? H
e’s capable of seeing the future.”

  “Drew, we can’t do nothing.”

  “Ms. Cho, you simply have not thought this through.”

  “Do you even care what happens to her?” questioned Cho, regretting it.

  “Of course I do,” Drew replied. “My actions are partly responsible for her situation.”

  “I’m sorry, Drew. I know you do. I can’t stand feeling like this. I told myself I’d never feel like this again.”

  “Powerless,” inferred Drew.

  “I feel like I bear some of the blame, too,” said Tsenka.

  “You do.”

  “Oh gee, thanks.”

  “That is the nature of this existence,” he reasoned. “Every effect is a child raised by a village of causes, and there are no conflicts without their casualties.”

  Tsenka finished toweling herself dry and then grabbed a plastic pill organizer out of a locker. She dumped the day’s allotment of rejection-suppressant medication into her hand, then into her mouth. She turned a valve connected to a thin tube and added water to the mix, then threw her head back and swallowed.

  “We need a path forward, Drew,” she said. The robot looked away from her nudity, despite their exteriors being similarly artificial. She continued with, “Any luck with that server box?”

  “Yes,” said Drew. “There were several user profiles, and after four hours of pattern matching, I was able to decrypt one of them. Since it was the largest profile, it likely had the most relevant data. You can access it via the monocopter’s server.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Yes, Ms. Cho.”

  Tsenka removed her combat suit from the steam cleaner and left it inside out to dry. She applied a thick layer of lotion to her skin to allow the suit to slide on more easily.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “Chantech propaganda references a triad of military might,” said Drew. “Their mechanized forces, spearheaded by the Behemoth, their counter-intelligence unit, and one other. The NRI assumed one of them was the nuclear arsenal of the former state of China. Some of this data implies there may be a different possibility.”