Perfect Dark: Second Front

by Greg Rucka

  It would have been easy for Carcareas to have abandoned her in Veracruz, Jo knew, to have left Jo to face the dataDyne hit squad all on her own, with nothing but a wounded body and a P9P to fight them with. If Carcareas had done so, the best case scenario would have had Jo waking up in a dataDyne super-black facility someplace where no one would ever hear her screaming, and the worst case would have been her never waking up at all.

  But Carcareas hadn’t. She’d done quite the opposite, in fact, and from the square of black that now covered Carcareas’s left eye and the Nüe-Skin that shone all along her left cheek and neck, Jo knew she’d paid a price for it.

  “It’s the twenty-seventh,” Carcareas said to her as she handed over the refilled cup of water. “You’ve been unconscious for just over two days, all time zones considered.”

  Jo nodded, pushing herself back in the bed with a grimace, then using the headboard to prop herself up.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Mixed,” Jo said, honestly, after taking another sip of water. “Parts of me feel better than others.”

  “Dr. Shattari and Dr. Mezzara were the two who worked on you,” Carcareas said. “They were more than a little amazed at the state you were in. It looks like you’ve been shot multiple times in the same place.”

  “Just the once.”

  “You keep tearing the wound open, I’m told. You had the start of an infection, as well, but they put a stop to that. You’d also fractured another rib and managed to puncture your left lung. Luckily, it’s the sort of injury that sounds much worse than it actually is, at least, if it’s properly treated, which I am pleased to say it was. It also goes a long way to explaining that awful sound you were making in the Plaza Lerdo in lieu of actually breathing. You sounded like you were gargling with sand, dear.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Endomorphine will do that. I am sorry, Joanna, I’m afraid that might have been my fault. It dulls the pain receptors so much you can’t tell when you’re hurting yourself and when you’re not.”

  “I’m alive, you’re alive. Figure we’re square.”

  Carcareas smiled, then patted Jo on the forearm before getting to her feet.

  “There’s a lav just out the door, with a shower and a bath. New clothes in the bag there on the end of your bed, everything should fit. When you feel up to it we can talk further. There’s a lot to discuss, I think.”

  “Portia,” Jo said.

  “Hmm?”

  “I’m not joining CMO. Just so we’re clear on that. I appreciate all of this, but I’m not signing up.”

  Carcareas’s smile was smaller, but seemed just as sincere as before. “So you keep saying.”

  “I just don’t want a misunderstanding here.”

  “There’s no misunderstanding, Joanna.”

  “It’s just that it’s never going to happen.”

  “Never say never, dear,” Carcareas told her. “It’s a very long time, and a lot can happen on the way to reaching it.”

  After dozing again for what felt like only a short while, Jo got up and took the bag Carcareas had left with her out the door and across the hall to the bathroom. When she left her room, she expected to see security in the hall, some sign of surveillance or other observation, if not specifically on her, then at least in the vicinity. What she saw was only a long white corridor with windows on each end, doors identical to the one she’d just closed behind her, and the only person she saw was a blond Caucasian woman working at a desk about halfway down on the right. The woman looked up and smiled at her when Jo emerged, then went back to whatever it was she had been doing. Somewhere unseen, someone was playing opera.

  Jo stepped into the bathroom and found herself surprised by both its size and appointments. In addition to the shower Carcareas had promised and the expected amenities, there was a free-standing bathtub, a whirlpool, a steam room, and a sauna. It was, Jo realized, less of a washroom than the sort of place one might find at a spa. She half expected to see a door leading to mineral springs or mud baths.

  She took her time getting cleaned up, as much to keep from aggravating her wounds as to take stock of them. Her middle had been bound tightly with Nüe-Skin tape, and it seemed to be doing its job, holding her ribs in place. She couldn’t see any sign of where her skin might have been penetrated in order to repair the damage to her lung. The bullet wound in her abdomen was now covered in Nüe-Skin as well, though this piece was semitranslucent, and through the bandage Jo could see the angriness of her skin where it had been punctured and then repeatedly torn.

  After the shower, she tried getting dressed and discovered that it was difficult to manage with only one hand. She unwrapped the bandage around her right, freeing her fingers, and when she flexed them the pain was so minor as to be inconsequential beside all her other injuries. It made dressing much faster, and it reassured her that she could shoot with her right, should she need to.

  As for the clothes that Carcareas had brought her, Jo wasn’t certain what she thought of them. They were black, pants in leather, shirt in linen, and Jo thought they were more the kind of thing that Carcareas would have chosen for herself. Jo wondered if that had been a calculation on the other woman’s part, a way of saying that they were alike, or that they could be. The shoes were actually boots, also black, also leather, that rose just over the ankles, and without any heel to speak of.

  Jo checked herself in the mirror after she’d finished dressing, leaning in to examine the scratches still healing on her cheeks and brow. All had been filled with Nüe-Skin, and most were disappearing nicely.

  Then she saw the bruising at her neck, thin lines of almost-gray running along either side of the trachea.

  The blond at the desk directed Jo to where Carcareas was waiting, on a deck outside. They were only two, perhaps three stories up, and it afforded a fine view of the water. The breeze was gentle, and the sun warm but not oppressive. When Jo looked to the sides, she could see low-roofed buildings, whitewashed, and make out half a dozen minarets further away, in the city, and she understood that to mean they were in Northern Africa, rather than in southern Europe.

  Carcareas was working on a laptop at a large wooden patio table with a wide green umbrella to provide shade from the sun. On the table were also a pack of cigarettes, a pitcher of juice, and a bowl of fruit.

  Jo walked over, taking her time, feeling the sunlight gathering on the variety of black fabrics she was now wearing. Her first instinct was to be shrill, to play it the way her father would have done, with muscle and volume, but she knew, already, that doing so would backfire. She was halfway to Carcareas when she realized that she’d been right about the clothing, as well, that they were wearing almost identical outfits, the sole difference being that Carcareas’s shirt was white.

  “It’s all fresh,” Carcareas told her. “Help yourself. You must be starving.”

  “I want it taken out,” Jo said. She said it calmly, like an adult would.

  Carcareas glanced up from her work on her laptop, and her brow almost furrowed for a moment. Then she went back to her work, saying, “I’m sure you do.”

  “I’m not joking, Portia, I want the ThroatLink taken out, and I want it taken out now. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t want it, and you had no right inserting it.”

  “No.”

  Jo stared, feeling the anger rumble, threatening to erupt. “Did you do anything else? Give me new eyes, for instance?”

  “And replace those lovely baby blues of yours? That would be a crime.” Carcareas closed the laptop, then indicated the seats around the table with a sweep of her hand. “Sit down, Joanna.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Sit down and I shall.”

  Fighting her every urge to be contrary, Jo took a seat.

  “You ought to eat something.”

  “You cut me open and put a piece of tech inside my body, Portia, and you did it without my permission. You put a damn bug in me! So you’ll cut me a
little slack if I’m feeling a bit too, oh, I don’t know, violated, to eat anything you might offer me.”

  Carcareas’s expression shifted subtly, and for a moment Jo didn’t know what she was reading there, if it was regret or fatigue or something else altogether.

  “You’re right,” she said, after a moment. “It was—it is—a violation. But it’s one that can be undone with relative ease, and one that I think is warranted, considering what you want from us.”

  “If it’s so easy to undo, let’s handle it right now.”

  Carcareas shook her head slightly. “No, Joanna, not yet. Who knows? If you decided you like working for us, you may wish to keep it.”

  “I’m not a fan of body modification.”

  “You mean aside from multiple piercings and a tattoo or two.”

  “I have one tattoo, and it’s different, and you know that, so don’t go all coy with me.”

  Carcareas considered, then nodded. “No, you’re correct. I won’t make light of it again. The situation with the ThroatLink is this, Joanna. With it, we’ll be able to monitor your movements and your status, we’ll be able to overhear any conversation you have. We also neglected to provide you with the means to open communications, or to select the band and frequency. So you’re very correct when you call it a bug. That’s exactly what it is.”

  For a moment, Jo said nothing, mostly because the only things she could think to say were the kinds of things Jack Dark would have said at that moment. Then he would have followed his words with action, most likely bouncing Carcareas’s head repeatedly off of any conveniently available hard surface.

  Probably a bad idea to do that, Jo thought.

  But it took almost a minute to suppress the urge, to calm her racing heart and suppress the sense of outrage she was feeling.

  When she finally felt she could speak without using every profanity she’d ever heard in all of her travels, she said, “We were interrupted in Veracruz.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to continue that conversation now. I’d like to know who’s been using my face to commit murder.”

  “They’re called the Continuity,” Portia de Carcareas said.

  Then she told Jo the rest.

  It took almost forty-five minutes for Carcareas to lay it all out, at least as she professed to understand it, and for Jo to have her most immediate questions answered. During the conversation, Jo relented and helped herself to the fruit in the bowl and most of the juice in the pitcher, and before they were finished a young man came out onto the deck and served them each a plate of grilled swordfish on a bed of couscous, along with a bottle of white wine. Jo passed on the wine but ate the fish.

  “I’ve been to Zhang Li’s mansion,” Jo said when Carcareas finally had finished. “The youngest people I saw there were the concubines and that bitch Mai Hem.”

  “My understanding is that they moved in after his disappearance.”

  “And they approached CMO about Zentek and Beck-Yama?”

  “They approached us about Zentek, made the offer to use their unique services.”

  “This Fan chick, she’s the one who made the offer?”

  “Chun Fan, yes. She’s the one I’ve dealt with in every instance. I believe she’s their leader, at least nominally. She certainly speaks for them.”

  “And you guys didn’t think it was suspicious? CMO didn’t think it was odd that Zhang Li’s information assassins were offering their services to dataDyne’s competition?”

  Carcareas turned her wineglass by its stem, smiling. “Of course we did, Joanna. But the offer was a hard one to refuse. And thus far, they have done everything they’ve promised to do.”

  “So how do I figure into this?” Jo twisted in the chair, trying to ease the stiffness she was now feeling around her middle. “I mean, did Fan come to you and say, hey, we’ll deliver Zentek and whack Georg Bricker as a bonus while making it look like Carrington did it?”

  “Your name never came up.”

  “Excuse me?” Jo stared, incredulous. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Yes, actually, I do. Either that, or you’re far more egotistical than you’ve led me to believe.” Carcareas sipped her wine, resettled the glass on the table. “As I told you when we first met, we had very little in the way of information about you prior to your introduction to Colonel Tachi-Amosa in Mexico City. While we certainly benefited from the appearance that Carrington—via you—aided us in our takeover of Zentek, actually taking steps to do so was never discussed by anyone at CMO, nor did I broach the matter with Fan or any other member of the Continuity. We barely knew who you were, Joanna. Even if we had wanted to frame Carrington, it never would have occurred to us to do so by using a doppelganger of you.”

  “You’re telling me that the Continuity killed Bricker on their own, that his death wasn’t part of the deal?”

  “Not a specified part, no. CMO paid the Continuity to help facilitate the hostile takeover of Zentek. That’s all.”

  “Someone else from CMO proposed it to the Continuity, then,” Jo said. “One of your peers or bosses or something, they told them to use me.”

  “Joanna, I am the only one who was authorized to deal with the Continuity. Your name simply never came up.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense!” Jo said, loudly, and then immediately regretted doing so as her chest once again reminded her that it was still in recovery.

  “Of course it does. You’re being singled out by the Continuity.” Carcareas turned her wineglass again, raised her eyes from it to meet Jo’s. “Why would they do that, I wonder?”

  Jo thought about that, thought about what she could tell Carcareas versus what she should tell her. Zhang Li’s death was still a closely guarded secret by the Institute, and there was reason to believe—even now—that dataDyne itself didn’t know what had truly become of their founder. Sharing that intelligence with Core-Mantis OmniGlobal seemed like a foolish thing to do, as did explaining that Zhang hadn’t been the only member of the Li family to die at Jo’s hands.

  It’s revenge, Jo realized. They know, somehow, the Continuity knows what I did, that I killed Zhang Li and Mai Hem. Their sister and their father, both.

  “No ideas?” Carcareas asked.

  “None that I’m inclined to share, no.”

  “I adore your bluntness,” Carcareas said with a laugh. “You have no idea how refreshing it is.”

  “Is that why you’ve been so helpful? Healing me up and telling me all this, because you like me?”

  “You remind me of someone, Jo, let’s leave it at that.”

  “Let’s not. Tell me who.”

  “Me, of course. And, as I’ve already stated several times, I truly believe that you would be not only a great asset to CMO, but that you would find life much more to your liking working with us than working for a man like Daniel Carrington.”

  “I like working for Daniel Carrington,” Jo said.

  “You like working for a madman, then?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “He’s insane, Jo, surely you’ve seen it. While the rest of the world goes about its business barely noticing the hypercorps, Carrington does everything in his power to push the battles between us into the open. His hatred of dataDyne in particular is well known and well documented. Why would he do that?”

  “Because the hypercorps are evil and he understands that.”

  “Oh, please. You’re betraying your age. Hypercorps are business, Joanna, and business can have both positive and negative effects. Saying that all the hypercorps are evil, or that hypercorps are inherently evil, is as fatuous and simplistic as saying that all politicians are corrupt. Speaking for myself and for Core-Mantis—something which, I hope you’ll agree, I can do with some authority—we do far more good than harm in the world.”

  “But the harm you do, the good you do, that’s incidental,” Jo said. “You’re not in it to do good. You’re in it to make money.”

  “There’s noth
ing wrong with turning a profit.”

  “There is if you do it off the blood and suffering of others.”

  “And that’s what the hypercorps do, that’s what your saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you include Carrington in that, I assume.”

  “What? No, the Institute isn’t a hyper—”

  “Joanna, two doctors had you in surgery for almost four hours, and that wasn’t to implant the ThroatLink. So I ask you, on whose blood and suffering does Carrington profit?”

  Jo said nothing, found herself staring at her empty plate, the remains of her late lunch. Unbidden, she could hear her father’s voice, his admonitions and warnings about Carrington. Even when times had been rough, when bounties had been hard to come by, Jack Dark had avoided working for, working with, Daniel Carrington.

  Don’t trust him, he’d told her. Don’t trust Daniel Carrington.

  Not for the first time, Joanna found herself wondering how it was that she had come to do just that, and to do it in so short a time. Wondering that, the sense that she had failed her father returned, or rather, made itself known again, because Jo knew it had never truly left her.

  “Never mind,” Carcareas said after a moment. “We’re off topic again, and I’ve obviously upset you, and that’s not something I wished to do. We’ll speak no more about it.”

  “You’re wrong,” Jo said. “About Carrington.”

  “Perhaps I am. But if I extend you that, then perhaps you might consider that you’re wrong about Core-Mantis. Something to think about, at any rate.”

  Jo pushed her plate away. “When can I leave here?”

  “Whenever you like, though I think doing so might be a mistake. DataDyne, for whatever reason, clearly wants you dead, Joanna. If you’re planning on going after the Continuity, you’re going to be moving through territory thick with their security forces. You’re not liable to get very far.”