“Yol,” I said, “you need to talk to the authorities. This is bigger than me or you.”
“I know. And I am. The feds are sending CDC officials tonight. The engineers are going to be quarantined; I probably will be too. I haven’t told anyone else yet. But Stephen, the government is wrong; they’re looking at this wrong. This isn’t about a disease, but about information.”
“The corpse,” I said, nodding. “How could I3 let this happen? Didn’t they consider that he was literally a walking hard drive?”
“The body was to be cremated,” Yol said. “Part of an in-house agreement. It wasn’t supposed to be an issue. And even still, the information might not be easy to get. Everyone here is supposed to encrypt the data they store inside their cells. You’ve heard of a one-time pad?”
“Sure,” I said. “Random encryption that requires a unique key to decode. Supposed to be unbreakable.”
“Mathematically, it’s the only unbreakable form of encryption,” Yol said. “The process isn’t very practical for everyday use, but what people were doing here wasn’t about practicality, not yet. Company policy insisted on such encryption—before they put data in their bodies, they encrypt it with a unique key. To read the data, you’d need that exact key. We don’t have the one Panos used, unfortunately.”
“Assuming he actually followed policy and encrypted his data.”
Yol grimaced. “You noticed?”
“Not the most interested in security, our deceased friend.”
“Well, we have to hope he used a key—because if he did, the people who have his body won’t be able to read what he stored. And we might be safe.”
“Unless they find the key.”
Yol pushed a thick folder toward me. “Exactly. Before we arrived, I had them print this out for you.”
“And it is?”
“Panos’s net interactions. Everything he’s done over the last few months—every email sent, every forum post. We haven’t been able to find anything in it, but I thought you should have it just in case.”
“You’re assuming I’m going to help you.”
“You told Garvas—”
“I told him I’d find the corpse. I’m not sure I’ll return it to you when I do.”
“That’s fine,” Yol said, standing up, taking his sunglasses out of his pocket. “We have our data, Stephen. We just don’t want it falling into the wrong hands. Tell me you disagree.”
“I’m pretty sure that your hands are the wrong hands.” I paused. “Did you kill him, Yol?”
“Panos? No. As far as I can tell, it really was an accident.”
I studied him, and he met my eyes before slipping on the ridiculous sunglasses. Trustworthy? I’d always thought so in the past. He tapped the packet of information. “I’ll see that Garvas and his team get you everything else you asked for.”
“If it were only your company,” I said, “I’d probably just let you burn.”
“I know that. But people are in danger.”
Damn him. He was right. I stood up.
“You have my number,” Yol said. “I’ll likely be on lockdown here, but I should still be able to talk. You, however, need to make a quick exit before the feds arrive.”
“Fine.” I brushed past him, heading toward the door.
“Finding the decryption key isn’t enough,” Yol said after me. “We don’t know how many copies of it there are—and that’s assuming Panos even followed encryption protocol in the first place. Find that body, Stephen, and burn it. That’s what I wish I’d done to this whole building weeks ago.”
I opened the door, stepping out and waving to Ivy, Tobias, and J.C. They fell in with me as we walked.
“J.C.,” I said, “use that phone of yours. Call the other aspects. Send them to the White Room. We’ve got work to do.”
PART TWO
EIGHT
I’ve got a lot of aspects. Forty-seven, to be exact, with Arnaud being the latest to join us. I don’t usually need all of them—in fact, imagining more than four or five at a time is taxing, something I can’t do for long. That limitation is yet another thing that makes my psychologists salivate. A psychotic who finds it more tiring to create his fantasy world than live in the real one?
On occasion, a job comes along that requires extra effort, and I need the attention of a large number of aspects. That’s why I made the White Room. Blank walls, floor, and ceiling painted the same uniform matte white; smooth, cool surfaces, unbroken save for lights in the ceiling. Soundproofed and calm, here there were no distractions—nothing to focus on but the dozens of imaginary people who flooded in through the double doors.
I don’t consciously choose how my aspects look, but something about me seems to appreciate variety. Lua, a Samoan, was a beefy fellow with a vast smile. He wore sturdy cargo pants and a jacket covered in pockets—appropriate for a survivalist. Mi Won, Korean, was our surgeon and field medic. Ngozi—forensic investigation—was a six-foot-four black woman, while Flip was short, white, fat, and often tired.
It went on and on and on. They’d joined me slowly, one case at a time, as I’d needed to learn some new skill—packing my overcrowded brain with an increasingly diverse array of proficiencies. They acted just like real people would, chatting in a variety of languages. Audrey looked disheveled; she’d obviously been napping. Clive and Owen wore golfing outfits, and Clive carried a driver over his shoulder. I hadn’t realized that Owen had finally gotten him to pick up the sport. Kalyani, decked out in a bright red and gold silk sari, rolled her eyes as J.C. called her “Achmed” again, but I could tell he was growing fond of her. It was tough not to be fond of Kalyani.
“Mr. Steve!” Kalyani said. “How was your date? Fun, I hope?”
“It was a step forward,” I said, looking around the room. “Have you seen Armando?”
“Oh! Mr. Steve.” The diminutive Indian woman took me by the arm. “Some of us tried to get him to come down. He refused. He says he is on a hunger strike until his throne is returned to him.”
I winced. Armando was getting worse. Nearby, Ivy gave me a pointed look.
“Mr. Steve,” Kalyani said, “you should have my husband Rahul join us.”
“I’ve explained this before, Kalyani. Your husband is not one of my aspects.”
“But Rahul is very helpful,” Kalyani said. “He’s a photographer, and since Armando is so unhelpful lately…”
“I’ll consider it,” I said, which seemed to placate her. Kalyani was new, and didn’t yet know how all this worked. I couldn’t create new aspects at will, and though many of my aspects spoke of their lives—their families, friends, and hobbies—I never actually saw any of this. Good thing too. Keeping track of forty-seven hallucinations is tough enough. If I had to imagine their in-laws too, I just might end up going crazy.
Tobias cleared his throat, trying to draw everyone’s attention. That proved to be futile before the jabbering horde of aspects; getting together at once was too novel, and they were enjoying it. So J.C. pulled out his sidearm and shot once into the air.
The room immediately silenced, then was filled with the sounds of aspects grousing and complaining as they rubbed their ears. Tobias stepped out of the way of a small trail of dust that floated down from above.
I glared at J.C. “You realize, genius, that now I’m going to have to imagine a hole in the ceiling every time we come in here?”
J.C. gave a little shrug, holstering his weapon. He at least had the decency to look embarrassed.
Tobias patted me on the arm. “I’ll patch the hole,” he told me, then turned to the now-silenced crowd. “A corpse has been stolen. We have been employed to recover it.”
Ivy walked among the aspects, delivering sheets of paper.
“You’ll find the details explained here,” Tobias continued. Though they all knew what I did, sometimes going through the motions of delivering information was better for us all. “It is important you understand that lives are at stake. Perhaps many lives. We need a plan, and quick
ly. Get to work.”
Ivy finished distributing the sheets, ending next to me. She handed me the last group of papers.
“I already know the details,” I said.
“Your sheet is different,” Ivy said. “It’s everything you know about I3’s rival companies.”
I glanced it over, and was surprised at how much information it contained. I’d spent the ride here pondering the things Yol had told me, and hadn’t read his briefings beyond glancing at the names of the three companies he thought most likely to have stolen the corpse. Well, information about each company was apparently tucked in the back of my brain. I flipped through the pages, thoughtful. I hadn’t done any research on biotech companies since Ignacio had … left us. I’d assumed that knowledge like this would have gone with him.
“Thanks,” I said to Ivy.
“No problem.”
My aspects spread through the White Room, each starting to work in his or her own way. Kalyani sat on the floor beside a wall and took out a bright red marker. Dylan paced. Lua sidled up to whomever was closest and started a conversation. Most wrote their ideas, using the walls like whiteboards. Some sketched as they wrote, others had a linear progression of ideas, others kept writing things and crossing them out.
I read through Ivy’s pages to refresh my memory, then dug into the material Yol had given me. This included the coroner’s report, with pictures of the dead man, who did indeed look very dead. Liza herself had filled out the report. Might need to visit her, unfortunately.
Once done reading, I strolled through the room looking over each aspect’s work, Tobias at my side. Some aspects focused on whether or not Yol was playing us. Others—like Ivy—extrapolated from what we knew about Panos, trying to decide where they thought he’d be most likely to hide the data key. Still others worked on the problem of the virus.
After one circuit through the room, I leaned back against the wall and picked up the larger stack of papers Yol had given me—the one that contained the record of Panos’s web and email interactions over the last few months. It was thick, but this time I didn’t worry about paying conscious attention to what I was reading. I just wanted to do a quick speed read to dump it into my brain so the aspects could play with it.
That still took over an hour. By the time I stood up, stretching, much of the white space in the room was filled with theories, ideas, and—in Marinda’s case—large floral patterns and an impressively detailed sketch of a dragon. I clasped my hands behind my back and did another circuit of the room, encouraging those who had gotten bored, asking questions about what they’d written, breaking up a few arguments.
In the midst of it I passed Audrey, who was writing her comments in the middle of the air before her, using her finger instead of a pen.
I stopped and raised an eyebrow at her. “Taking liberties, I see.”
Audrey shrugged. Self-described as “curvaceous,” she had long dark hair and a pretty face. For an expert in handwriting analysis, her penmanship was awful.
“There wasn’t space left on the wall,” Audrey said.
“I’m sure,” I said, looking at her hovering text. A second later a pane of glass appeared in the room where she had been writing, making it seem like she’d been writing on glass all along. I felt a headache coming on.
“Oh, that’s no fun,” she said, folding her arms.
“It is what must be, Audrey,” I said. “There are rules.”
“Rules you made up.”
“Rules we all live by,” I said, “for our own good.” I frowned, reading what she’d written. “Biochemistry equations? Since when have you been interested in that?”
She shrugged. “I figured that somebody ought to do a little studying on the topic, and I had the time, since you pointedly refuse to imagine me a pet.”
I rested my fingers on the pane of glass, looking over her cramped notes. She was trying to figure out the method Panos had used to create the virus. There were large gaps in her diagrams, however—breaks that looked as if they’d been ripped free of the writing. What was left went barely beyond basic chemistry.
“It’s not going to work, Audrey,” I said. “This just isn’t something we can do anymore.”
“Shouldn’t it still be in there, somewhere?”
“No. It’s gone.”
“But—”
“Gone,” I said firmly.
“You are one messed-up person.”
“I’m the sanest one in this room.”
“Technically,” she said, “you’re also the most insane.”
I ignored the comment, squatting down beside the pane of glass, inspecting some other notations she’d made on other topics. “Searching for patterns in the things Panos wrote online?”
“I thought there might be hidden messages in his forum posts,” Audrey explained.
I nodded. When I’d studied handwriting analysis—and in doing so, created Audrey—I’d done a little tangential research into cryptography. The two disciplines moved in the same circles, and some of the books I’d read had described decoding messages by noticing intentional changes in handwriting, such as a writer crossing some of their Ts at a different slant to convey hidden information.
That meant Audrey had some small cryptography expertise. More than any of the rest of us did. “This could be useful,” I said, tapping the pane of glass.
“Might be more useful,” she noted, “if I—you—had any real understanding of cryptography. Do you have time to download some more books, perhaps?”
“You just want to go on more missions,” I said, standing.
“Are you kidding? You get shot at on those missions.”
“Only once in a while.”
“Often enough. I’m not so comfortable with being imaginary that I want to see you dead on the ground. You’re literally my whole world, Steve-O.” She paused. “Though, to be honest, I’ve always been curious what would happen if you took LSD.”
“I’ll see what I can do about the cryptography,” I said. “Continue with the analysis of his forum posts. Stop with the chemistry sham.”
She sighed, but reached out and started to erase the equations with her sleeve. I walked away, pulling out my phone and bringing up some books on cryptography. If I studied further, would I create another aspect? Or would Audrey really acquire the ability, as she implied? I wanted to say the first was more likely, but Audrey—as the most self-aware of all my aspects—got away with things I wouldn’t have expected.
Tobias joined me as I sorted through the volumes available electronically.
“Report?” I asked him.
“General consensus is that this technology is viable,” Tobias said, “and the threat is real, though Mi Won wants to think more about the effects of dumping rampant DNA strains into the body’s muscles. J.C. says we’ll want to confirm independently that I3 is in lockdown and that the feds are really involved. That will tell us a great deal about how honest Mr. Chay is being with us.”
“Good idea. What’s that contact we have at Homeland Security?”
“Elsie,” Tobias said. “You found her cat.”
Yes, her cat. Not all of my missions involve terrorists or the fate of the world. Some are far more simple and mundane. Like locating a teleporting cat.
“Give her a call,” I said absently. “See if she’ll confirm for us what Yol said about contacting the authorities.”
Tobias stopped beside me. “Call her?”
I looked up from my screen, then blushed. “Right. Sorry. I’ve been talking to Audrey.” She tended to throw me off balance.
“Ah, dearest Audrey,” Tobias said. “I sincerely think she must be some kind of compensating factor in your psychology, a way to blow off a little steam, so to speak. Genius is often accompanied by quirks of the mind. Why, Nikola Tesla had an arbitrary, and baffling, aversion to pearls of all things. He’d send people away who came to him wearing them, and it is said…”
He continued on. I relaxed to the sound of his voice,
choosing a book on advanced cryptography. Tobias eventually wound back around to his report on what the aspects had determined. “This brings us to our next course of action,” he said. “Owen’s suggestion is perhaps the most relevant, and Ivy won’t be able to complete her psychological analysis unless we know more about the subject. Beginning by visiting Panos’s family is advised. From there, Ngozi needs more information from the coroner. We may want to go there next.”
“Reverse those,” I said. “It’s … what, three in the morning?”
“Six.”
“Already?” I said, surprised. I didn’t feel that tired. The engagement of a new mission, a puzzle to solve, kept me alert. “Well, still. I feel more comfortable about visiting a coroner office this early than I do about waking Panos’s family. Liza gets to work at … what, seven?”
“Eight.”
So I had time to kill. “What leads do we have on the corporations who might be behind this?”
“J.C. has some thoughts. He wants to talk to you.”
I found him leaning against the wall near where Ivy was working; he was chattering away and generally distracting her. I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him aside. “Tobias said you have something for me.”
“Our assassin,” he said. “Zen Rigby.”
“Yes, and?” J.C. couldn’t have any new information on her—he only knew what I knew, and we’d dredged that well already.
“I’ve been thinking, Skinny,” J.C. said. “Why did she show up when you were on your date?”
“Because her employers knew Yol was likely to go to me.”
“Yeah, but why start surveillance on you that early? Look, they have the body, right?”
“So we assume.”
“Therefore, the reason to watch you is to tail you and see if you find the data key. There was no reason to watch you before Yol arrived. It tipped their hand, you see? They should have waited until you were called in to I3.”
I chewed on that for a minute. We liked to make fun of J.C., but the truth was, he was one of my most practical aspects. A lot of them spent their days dreaming and thinking. J.C. kept me alive.
Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds Page 10