by Greg Rucka
But before she could even truly register all that, she was all but shoved into the back of her limousine, and Velez hadn’t even closed the door after them before they were in motion. DataDyne support vehicles, Shock Troopers visible manning the mounted weapons, flanked them on all sides. As one, the motorcade boosted into the air, banked, and began racing over the city.
“Georg Bricker is dead,” Velez said. “Murdered. There may be other attempts. We’re moving you until we can be certain it’s safe.”
Cassandra stared, feeling vaguely ill. She had hoped to speak to Bricker in the afternoon, to finally present him with the merger agreement. She’d been hoping to do it much sooner, but there had been multiple delays in preparing the agreement, everything from files being misplaced to data being lost, a thousand small mistakes that had all been attributed to the confusion inherent in her ascension to CEO. It hadn’t been until the previous morning, when she’d seen the news of Beck-Yama’s stock buy, that she’d finally lost her temper and demanded that one of her assistants get the head of acquisitions and mergers on the line along with his upper echelon staff. Within two minutes, she’d had them assembled on holographic display, and without preamble had launched into her tirade, reading them the riot act. How was it possible, she had demanded, that Beck-Yama was about to walk off with the Zentek store when Bricker had offered them the same with hat in hand?
Oliver Merano, head of acquisitions and mergers and not at all pleased to be bawled out by the new CEO in front of his staff, swore on his mother’s grave that everything would be ready and on the Madame Director’s desk first thing in the morning. If he had to deliver it by hand, it would be ready first thing in the morning.
“It had bloody well better be,” DeVries had snarled, and killed the call.
And it would have been, too, she had no doubt. The papers for the merger were most likely waiting in her office at that very moment.
Too little, too late.
“Beck-Yama?” Cassandra asked.
The flying motorcade tilted sharply, began diving back down to street level with such abrupt speed that Cassandra had to wonder if the transponder that tied every null-g vehicle to the AirFlow network hadn’t been disabled. She rocked forward, then fell back against her seat as the limousine leveled off and the motion triggered sense memory, and for half an instant, she expected the vehicle to tumble, to hear the rending of steel and the shattering of glass. She made a noise despite herself, fear that died in her throat.
Velez reached out a hand, steadying her, reassuring. “Not Beck-Yama. Core-Mantis OmniGlobal has already moved to acquire Zentek, there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”
“Core-Mantis has never expressed interest—”
“Core-Mantis didn’t kill Georg Bricker, Madame Director.” Velez met her eyes, and Cassandra thought that, for the first time since she’d met her, the older woman looked honestly worried.
“Anita, what aren’t you telling me?”
“There may be other assassination attempts coming. We’re moving you someplace safer. We can discuss the specifics when we have you secured.”
The vague sense of queasiness that had settled in Cassandra’s stomach rolled, expanded, the last vestiges of her dream giving way to a suspicion that made her shiver. The world had turned, she realized, all on the hinge of one act, all upon the murder of Georg Bricker. She had gone to sleep with the hypercorporations playing their games as they always had.
Anita Velez had pulled her from her bed and into a world where everything was now in chaos. CMO would take Zentek, that was already clear. Beck-Yama, extended in their attempt to take Zentek themselves, would now have to scramble to regain their balance. The CEO of dataDyne was being rushed from her home in the small hours of dawn because there was a fear she would soon follow Georg Bricker. Those were just the changes Cassandra could see. Certainly, there were others still hidden from her, and it struck her that their effects would certainly be as dramatic as those she had already perceived. If global commerce could be equated to a game, that game was chess, albeit with sharper teeth. Like chess, success in it depended on reading the board. Not only as it stood, but as it would stand five, ten, even twenty moves along.
One move, and so many results, Cassandra DeVries thought. And anticipating them all, that takes genius.
“Oh my God,” Cassandra said softly. “He didn’t.”
Velez raised an eyebrow slightly, as if surprised that her employer had done the math so quickly.
“It was Daniel, wasn’t it?” Cassandra asked. “It was Carrington.”
“Yes, Madame Director.”
“This threat against me … it’s credible, is it?”
“I would not be moving you if it was not.”
Cassandra nodded slightly, then closed her eyes and leaned back once again. She could feel the gentle rock of the limousine, the shift as it banked once more, began decelerating. The queasiness had gone, replaced by nothing, only a numbness.
“I was in love with him,” she said softly.
“I know,” Velez said. “But now he is trying to kill you.”
Carrington Institute
London, England
January 18th, 2021
Joanna Dark had come to the conclusion that she was a failure.
It was something she had suspected for a while now, even before Daniel Carrington had dispatched her on her latest mission for the Carrington Institute, that of ferreting out a mole in the CI–Los Angeles office, two days prior. She’d suspected it before she’d ever met Carrington, in fact, even before her father had been murdered, but back then it had been nothing more than the ill-framed insecurities of an adolescent, of a girl growing into a young woman who was unsure of herself, her skills and abilities, and, most of all, her place in the world. The fears of a girl who had, at that time, only her father and her desperate attempts to please him. The desire to learn everything he could teach her and so become the woman he wanted her to be.
That’s what it always comes back to, doesn’t it? Joanna thought sluggishly. Da, my dear old Da, ex-Marine, ex-cop, bounty hunter beyond compare, Jack Dark.
He had tried, she knew. As much as she had, so had he. At moments such as this, she could even admit that he had been far more a teacher than a father, far more a drill sergeant than a friend.
But he had taught her well, present circumstance notwithstanding. Hadn’t he? Jack Dark had taught his daughter how to hunt that most dangerous prey, her fellow man. How to fight to win. How to kill if she had to. There wasn’t a small arm in the world that Joanna Dark didn’t know how to use. There wasn’t a knife that had been made that she didn’t know how to fight with. There wasn’t a secret in the world that, given time and enough bashing of heads, she couldn’t discover.
That was all due to her father, and if she was a failure, wasn’t that her fault and not his?
“Lift on three,” Jonathan Steinberg was saying. “Carefully. One … two … three….”
Joanna felt herself rising, or more precisely, the stretcher she was lying on rising. Just edging into her line of vision, Jonathan Steinberg came into view, upside down, casting a brief but clearly concerned glance down at her before hefting his end of the stretcher. She felt someone likewise lifting the other end—Calvin Rogers, probably, the Institute’s motor pool supervisor and pilot extraordinaire—and Joanna’s view of the roof of the dropship troop compartment changed to a view of the vehicle bay of the Institute’s London headquarters.
“Where’s Cordell?” Steinberg was shouting. “Where the hell’s Cordell, dammit?”
Joanna blinked sleepily, wanted to tell Steinberg not to worry, not to shout. It wasn’t that he was being particularly loud; in fact, his voice was reaching her ears as if coming through layers of syrup. But she knew he was shouting, because Jonathan always shouted when he was upset, when he was worried, and she knew he was scared for her, and she didn’t want him to be. She wanted to tell him that she was all right, that it would be all right.
But every time she tried to move her mouth to speak, she tasted her own blood, the ragged flesh of her torn lips. Just getting the air to push out the words hurt, it was hurting to breathe, and it all just seemed to be so much bother. Easier to stay quiet and to rest and to let her mind wander, meandering its way through paths of memory, recent and not.
Until her thoughts, once again, came to rest upon the knowledge of her failings and her father.
That was the heart of it, that was the proof, really. Los Angeles and Seattle, that was merely another layer. Sent on a mole hunt, sent to find and “neutralize” whoever it was who had infiltrated Carrington’s operation, and Jo had known what that meant during the briefing, they all had. For “neutralize,” read “kill.” Find and kill the mole. And she hadn’t done that, had she? That was a failure, wasn’t it?
And never mind what had happened in Seattle. Never mind the fact that she’d been played like a puppet and used like a punching bag by some mercenary, by one of Leland Shaw’s legendary Hawks. Roarke, something or other Roarke, and he’d worked her over but good. She had the broken ribs and the shattered knuckles and the half-dozen lacerations on her face, arms, and hands, to prove it.
He was probably the son of a bitch who had shot her, too.
“Jo? Joanna Dark, can you hear me?”
Joanna blinked once again, felt her eyes dry against the inside of her lids, knew she’d been staring at nothing. She refocused her eyes, saw Jonathan’s expression of concern eclipsed as another man leaned into her field of view, frowning. She didn’t recognize him at first, the brown eyes and the brown face, and she wondered if she was going to have to fight again, and she hoped like hell not. She didn’t think she could anymore. Then the recognition trickled in even as the man’s sure hands ran along her side, pulling back her jacket and then tearing open her shirt. She gasped despite herself when his gloved finger pressed against the edges of her bullet wound, knowing that the palpation had been gentle, and still it was enough to make her want to howl.
“She’s torn it right open,” the man said softly, and it was his voice that connected him to a name. Cordell, Dr. Montgomery Cordell, the Institute’s physician. ER doctor and super-surgeon all in one, the way Carrington only ever hired the best of the best.
What would the Old Man do when he realized just how much of a failure she was? Joanna wondered.
Steinberg was saying something, Cordell working on her. She was vaguely aware that the stretcher had been laid on the floor of the vehicle bay, that they’d stopped moving her long enough to apply some much needed triage. A snake bit into her left arm, and she watched Cordell hand an IV bag to Steinberg, saw Steinberg’s expression looking all the more concerned.
He was saying something to her. Something about … pies? Something about pies?
Why the hell was he talking to her about pies?
She tried again to get the air to speak, was about to force it out despite the pain, when Cordell put an O2 mask over her face. She gave up again. She’d figure it out later. Steinberg was all-American, sandy blond hair and blue eyes, a former US Army Ranger that Carrington had recruited to both build and train his covert action team. Times like this, when she knew she wouldn’t have to own it later, Joanna could even admit to herself that she thought he was handsome in a dashing, bring-it-on kind of way. Her father would have liked him. Jack Dark would have called him “all right” and said it was a pity Steinberg had been a drag-ass Army grunt rather than a real-deal Marine.
There it was again: Jack Dark. Dead but not, because there wasn’t a day that didn’t seem to go by without Joanna thinking about him. It wasn’t grief any longer—at least, not purely the grief. She’d worked past that. She missed him, she always would, but now, when she thought about her father, the thoughts weren’t always ones of sadness, but rather of guilt.
She had, after all, gotten her father killed, had abandoned him to that bitch daughter of Zhang Li’s, Mai Hem. Everything Joanna had gone through to save him, and in the end Jack Dark had died anyway.
They were moving her again. Joanna realized they’d shifted her off the stretcher, onto a null-g gurney, that she was being floated out of the vehicle bay. Probably taking her to medical. Or maybe taking her to the Old Man, so he could fire her and call her worthless and tell her that she didn’t belong here. She hoped not. She didn’t know where else she would go.
Steinberg touched the back of her hand, repeated whatever he was trying to tell her about pies. Or maybe lies. That would make more sense, Joanna thought. There had been a lot of people lying to her lately. Everyone in Los Angeles had lied to her, and a lot of those people had then tried to kill her. Maybe he was trying to tell her something like that. Or maybe he knew what she was thinking, and he was telling her that she was lying to herself. She hadn’t killed her father, after all—Mai Hem had.
Technically, Joanna couldn’t argue the point. As an issue of factual record, certainly, Steinberg was right. Joanna had gone to China, had managed the unheard-of act of infiltrating Zhang Li’s private fortress-slash-mansion. She had alternately snuck and killed her way past layer upon layer of security until, ultimately, she’d found herself within the mansion and in the presence of the CEO of dataDyne himself. Zhang Li had been, in almost all ways, horrific, an old and withered man with more stims and biomaintenance devices grafted to his body than Joanna had imagined possible. That he could move around on his own power seemed miraculous to her, and that he did so without obvious agony was unbelievable
Somehow, Joanna had found herself coerced into a virtual battle with Zhang Mai, Zhang Li’s daughter. But Zhang Mai was better known to the world by her DeathMatch VR gamertag of Mai Hem, and that had been their field of battle. DeathMatch VR was dataDyne’s premier virtual entertainment system, a game system that allowed players all around the world to link up and fight in infinitely customizable environments, with an infinite variety of weapons, all for the pleasure of some virtual bloodletting. That was how Joanna and Mai Hem had fought, as much for Zhang Li’s pleasure as his daughter’s, battling on a customized Death-Match system.
Customized in that, while the bloodletting was virtual, its results were very real. When you died playing on Zhang Li’s set, there was no reboot and try again.
Joanna had fought, and Joanna had won, but Zhang Li had saved his daughter at the last minute. When Joanna had finally found and then freed her father, when they were making their escape, that had come back to haunt them both. Pinned down by dataDyne guards, unable to reach the dropship with which father and daughter could make their escape, Jack Dark had made a run at Mai Hem, drawing fire. As Joanna had commandeered the dropship, Mai Hem had dropped Jack Dark.
So, yes, Jonathan was technically correct, if that was, in fact, what he was saying, if he was saying that Joanna was wrapped up in lies and not, for instance, a fan of pies, or the lord of the flies, or whatever the hell it was he kept trying to tell her. Yes, he was correct, Mai Hem had killed her father. And, eventually, Joanna had taken her revenge. She had killed Mai Hem, and then she had killed Zhang Li, and that really should have been the end of it.
But none of that changed the fact that Joanna Dark felt that it was her fault.
He was her Da, he was her life, and she had left him to die.
They were in her rooms, now, Steinberg and Rogers carefully lifting her from the gurney and onto her bed, while Cordell supervised. She heard the doctor thanking them both, telling them to go, and Rogers left, but Steinberg didn’t, and again Joanna wanted to tell him not to worry, that it would be all right. She could feel the tug on each of her legs as her boots were removed. When they rolled her to get her out of her jacket, she gasped again, the sound of it bouncing back with odd amplification from the O2 mask over her face.
Cordell went to work on the bullet wound, cleaning it up, applying liquid skin and biostaples. He used clothing shears to cut her out of her shirt, and when he did it, Joanna saw Steinberg turn away, and she thought that was almost cu
te. Then Cordell wrapped her ribs and applied more liquid skin to her lacerations. He changed the bag on the IV, hanging it from a peg on the wall. He gave her an injection in the left shoulder, and it made her whole body feel suddenly, delightfully warm, and wonderfully heavy. He covered her with her blankets, then moved to speak to Steinberg, and whatever it was he had injected her with, she found it easier to hear their words, but no easier to add her own.
“I won’t ask what she went through,” Cordell said. “Most important thing now is for her to get some rest. Aside from the litany of injuries, she’s clearly exhausted. When was the last time she slept?”
“Three days ago,” Steinberg answered, keeping his voice soft. “Not counting brief bouts of unconsciousness.”
“Which explains her concussion.”
“What do I tell the Old Man?”
“You tell him that she’s used up for the time being, Mr. Steinberg. Our fair Miss Dark is many things, but right now, the thing she is most is wounded. I’m concerned about the bullet wound. In and of itself, it wasn’t too serious. Whoever worked on her initially did a good job of it.”
“That would have been Dr. Hwang.”
“He’s CI–Los Angeles, isn’t he? He did a fine job, but clearly she refused bed rest, because the fine job he did, she promptly undid. When she tore the stitches, she expanded the wound, and she may have opened herself to infection. So aside from the blood loss, the exhaustion, the broken rib, the multiple lacerations, the minor fractures—”
“There are other breaks?”
“It looks like she went fifteen rounds with a gorilla, Mr. Steinberg.” Cordell’s response was mild, almost admonishing. “Minor fractures in her right hand—she leads with her right, doesn’t she?—as well as her left foot. I’m guessing she kicked something, or someone, possibly while barefoot. There are contusions, avulsions, she could audition as a practice patient for first responders in training, they’d love her.”