by Greg Rucka
“I didn’t say I was going after the Continuity.”
“And we’re back to being coy. Of course you are, Joanna. That’s why we inserted the ThroatLink, and that’s why I’m more than willing to help you.”
“So you don’t trust them.”
“I told you, we never did. What the Continuity did to Zentek and Beck-Yama, may they both rest in pieces, they can certainly do to us. That’s the problem with mercenaries; they’re always for sale.”
“You think I’m going to do this for Core-Mantis?”
“No, dear, you’re going to do it because you wish to live, and that’s now what this is about. The Continuity has set you up, the same as they did Carrington. It’s no coincidence that dataDyne has you in their sights. The hit team in Veracruz was an elite unit, and there for you and you alone. I was entirely incidental, I’m sure. Which means that, as far as dataDyne is concerned, you’re a threat, and they’re going to keep coming after you until they’re sure you’re not one any longer.”
Jo frowned, trying to find a hole in the logic, and realizing in short order that there wasn’t one. By making it appear as if she had murdered not just Bricker but also Matsuo, the Continuity had made sure that dataDyne would notice her. DeVries knew her as one of Carrington’s agents. The only possible conclusion the CEO of dataDyne could have made was that Jo had been acting under Carrington’s orders, and that certainly made it look like Carrington was in league with CMO.
“Can you get me into China?” Jo asked.
“No,” Carcareas said. “What Mexico is to Core-Mantis, China is to dataDyne, Joanna. There’s no way we could effectively insert you into country without being compromised.”
“Then I’m going to have to do it myself,” Joanna said.
“Yes,” Portia de Carcareas agreed. “You are.”
Home of Former dataDyne CEO
Zhang Li (Deceased)
38km SW Li Xian, Sichuan Province
People’s Republic of China
January 27th, 2021
“Where is she now?” Fan asked her eldest brother.
“Working her way east,” Ke-Ling told her. “She’s in Turkey, just arrived in Ankara. I can give you the exact street address, if you want.”
“You can do that?”
Ke-Ling spun around in his chair, making a full seven-twenty, raising his arms above his head, before finishing and sliding his chair back from the console where he and four of their other siblings had been working. At the end of the room, their brother Wen, all of eleven years old, burst into peals of laughter, wildly amused by his sibling’s antics.
Ke grinned at Wen, then at Fan.
“Those dumb bitches at Core-Mantis, they put a ThroatLink in her,” Ke-Ling told his sister, reaching out and grabbing her around the waist with both arms. Fan laughed, not fighting him, and fell gleefully into his lap. “There’s nowhere she can go we can’t find her, Fan. There’s nothing she can say we won’t hear.”
“How are we doing on the Bitch?” Fan asked, squirming as her brother tried to tickle her. “Cut it out!”
“Rock solid. The last module’s in place, and your boy-toy at DataFlow is so crunched he can’t even tell what code’s his and what isn’t anymore. As long as she’s too busy to take a look at it, there’s no way anyone will tell the difference.”
Fan twisted, tickling Ke-Ling in return, forcing him to free her from his grip. On her feet again, she began hopping up and down on her toes, the sudden feeling of excitement almost too much to bear. She closed her eyes, tried to envision the time line in her mind. Today was the twenty-seventh; the unveiling of Arthur would be on the thirtieth. If everything was to work the way they wanted, that meant they needed Jo-Jo here no later than the evening of the twenty-eighth, to give both her and Fan the time they would need for the Chrysalis change.
She opened her eyes again. “Good.”
“Mostly good,” Ke-Ling said. “I told you that Carrington took his servers offline, the whole network?”
“Yes, you did.”
“They’re back up, now, and they’re clean. They found all the puncture wounds we left, Fan, every single one of them.”
“Moscow?”
“Plugged.”
“Vancouver?”
“Plugged.”
“Should I ask about London?”
“They’re all plugged. That fat-ass Grimshaw got his game together on this one.”
Fan chewed on her lip, thinking, then bit down hard enough to start a trickle of blood flowing into her mouth. “So they know it was us.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
Fan rolled her tongue around, tasting the tang of copper. “Jo-Jo been in touch with them?”
“Not sure she’s going to. She knows CMO linked her, so anything she says to them, they’re gonna hear.”
“She doesn’t have to call them, Ke-Ke. She can use a kiosk.”
“She does that, we’ll know. You want us to intercept?”
“I want to know what she tells them, but more importantly, I want to know what they tell her. How much they know.”
Ke-Ling turned in his chair, calling out for Wen to come and join them. The boy hopped off his seat and hurried over, pulling at the waistband of his pants as he did so, trying to keep them from falling to his knees.
“You should wear pants that fit,” Fan admonished him. “What would father say if he saw you like that?”
“These are cool,” Wen told her, matter-of-factly.
“Get Quon and Ping-Ping,” Ke-Ling told him. “Tell them I want to see them right now, okay? It’s about Jo-Jo.”
Wen grinned and nodded, then ran out of the room.
“He’s going to break his neck,” Fan said.
“Then maybe he’ll get pants that fit.”
Fan giggled, then lapsed into further thought, closing her eyes once more. The only variable left was Jo-Jo. She was a player in the drama, and they needed her at the mansion. They needed to fete her, to reward her for the kindness she had done Fan and her siblings by killing Mai Hem. Then she needed to be punished for the murder of their father. The thought of finally being able to do both was enough to make Fan want to burst with anticipation.
Her only regret was that Joanna Dark would never see dataDyne crumble, and that was a pity. Fan would have liked to show Jo-Jo the death of dataDyne. She was sure her archenemy, her soul mate, would have shared all Fan’s joy at the sight of it, at the collapse of Zhang Li’s kingdom. Whether or not Jo-Jo would have appreciated that the rest of the world would follow in its wake, Fan was unsure.
It would all fall down, it would all burn. Everything would burn.
But Joanna Dark wouldn’t get to see any of it, because Joanna Dark would be dead.
Fan turned back to Ke-Ling and planted a chaste kiss on his mouth, this one far more chaste than the last had been.
“Get me Jo-Jo’s current address,” she told her brother. “And then get me a line to Colonel Shaw.”
Carrington Institute
Rooms of Jonathan Steinberg
London, England
January 27th, 2021
Jonathan Steinberg knew he was tired because, when his monitor woke up with its insistent chiming, he had been dreaming about being asleep.
And that, Jon, is some seriously screwed up action, he thought as he rolled out of his bed and stumbled toward the monitor on the wall. The room was pitch-dark, the windows opaque, and he suspected it was early evening outside in the world, but he didn’t know, and he didn’t want to. If it was still early evening, that meant he’d been asleep for all of an hour, and if he’d been asleep for all of an hour and someone was calling to get him out of bed, clearly they had forgotten that he was a man who knew how to kill people in a variety of interesting and creative ways.
Steinberg slapped at the monitor, trying to silence its incessant chirping, missed, and knocked the photograph of his Afghanistan unit off its shelf. He had enough wherewithal to catch it with his free h
and, though just barely, and not until it was resettled safely on his shelf did he try to activate the monitor a second time.
It came alive with his touch, and suddenly he was looking at Jo, and aware of three things all at once. First, that she was alive and he was very happy that was the case. Second, that she looked better than she had the last time he’d seen her, and that surprised him.
And third, that he was standing in his underwear.
It was the third thing that he expected her to comment upon, but she didn’t. She didn’t say anything, in fact, just cracked open a great big grin and seemed to be struggling with herself to not actually burst into laughter. The digital tag in the upper corner of the screen, Steinberg noted, said that she was calling from a public kiosk in Ankara, Turkey, where night had fully fallen onto snow-covered streets.
“Hey,” Steinberg said. “Nice to see you’re all right. We were starting to get worried about—”
Jo nodded, put a finger to her lips. Then she reached out of shot, presumably into her lap, and brought up a small pad of paper. She indicated the paper, indicated her eyes, then indicated his. Then she looked at him expectantly. Steinberg nodded, and she flipped open the pad, then showed him what she had written on the first page.
CMO PATCHED ME UP. THROATLINKED ME. CAN HEAR EVERYTHING I SAY, EVERYTHING I HEAR .
KNOW WHO’S BEHIND IT. CONTINUITY. GOING TO CHINA TO TAKE CARE OF THE PROBLEM, BUT CANNOT MANAGE TRANSPORT—TOO MUCH DD HEAT, THEY’RE TRYING TO KILL ME AGAIN.
Before he could stop himself, Steinberg said, “So what else is new?”
Jo grinned, shaking her head, then quickly scribbled on the pad, adding:
THIS TIME THEY REALLY MEAN IT. HIT SQUADS, THE WHOLE DEAL. NEED TO AVOID THEM.
Steinberg nodded, then looked at her, waiting for the next message. She returned the look with a similar look of expectation. Steinberg shrugged. Jo made a gesture of annoyance, flipped to a new page, writing quickly before showing it to him.
WRITE IT DOWN, DUMBASS.
Then she lowered the paper and put the words—and especially the last part—into her expression.
Write it down? Steinberg thought, turning and beginning to search through his desk for anything that resembled either paper or a pen. On what? Who uses paper these days?
The desk yielded nothing he could use, due in no small part to the fact that there was very little in it to begin with. He tried to find his d-PAL, realized he’d thrown it away in a fit of anti-dataDyne fury a couple of months back, then began searching through his bureau, then his closet. Each time he glanced back to the monitor, Jo was still there, watching him with a mixture of growing annoyance and impatience. Finally, she held up the notepad again.
GO GET SOME!!!
Steinberg nodded, held up his hand, splaying his fingers and mouthing the words “Five minutes, be right back.”
Then he ran from the room in search of paper and something to write with, still in his underwear, and certain that Joanna Dark, watching his departure on a net kiosk in Ankara, would have laughed her ass off if she hadn’t been so worried about not making a sound.
He tried Grimshaw’s room first, remembering the stacks of paperbacks and magazines, and discovered that the door was locked and that there was no way for him to get through it. Then he tried three other doors on the residence, including Joanna’s, and found them all locked, too.
Paper, paper, he thought. Who on this damn estate has paper?
He left the residence, sprinting outside into the last sunlight of the day, and feeling the winter cold assault every bit of his exposed skin. One of his troopers, walking past, caught sight of him and hooted, and was promptly joined by another two troopers, as well as three of the Institute personnel currently making their way between buildings. He earned howls, wolf whistles, and laughter.
At least it’s good for morale, Steinberg told himself.
His feet had begun to sting by the time he reached the Main Building, and he slipped on the marble floor of the entryway as he came inside, barely caught himself before falling, then passed the elevator and went for the stairs, taking them two and three at a time. He passed other employees, and they stared, and they laughed, and he knew he was cutting a hell of a figure, but it was too late to do anything about that now.
Partridge was working at her desk in Carrington’s outer office when he burst through the door, and she looked up to see him rushing toward her. She screamed, bolting to her feet and backing away, all at once. Steinberg hoped the scream was in surprise rather than, say, horror.
“Paper!” Steinberg said. “Pen! Pencil!”
“Mr. Steinberg!” Partridge said, trying to recompose herself. She was a young woman, pretty and very proper, the perfect accent to Carrington’s somewhat old-world-style office. “The Institute has a dress code! Mr. Carrington does not appreciate—”
Steinberg went for the desk, began rummaging through the sheets and sheets that were piled there, looking for something that was blank or, at the least, not readily apparent as being important. “I need something to write on! I need a pad of paper!”
“Get back!” Partridge said, shooing him with a hand. “You’re messing everything about, just … just stand back. Cover yourself, please.”
Steinberg backed off from the desk, glanced over his shoulder, back to Partridge, and then over his shoulder again, realizing that there were at least four people crowded in the doorway, watching the interaction. He looked down at himself, confirmed that his underwear was still on and still clean, then looked back to his audience.
“Don’t you people have work to do?” he asked.
They shook their heads.
“Here,” Partridge said, offering him a pad of A4 paper with one hand and a pen with the other. She extended each of her arms fully, barely bending, as if afraid of getting too close to him.
Steinberg took the pen and the pad.
“Thanks, Emily. Tell the Old Man I need him to meet me in my room right away.”
“It’s Miss Partridge,” she said tightly. “You might want to dress before he joins you.”
“Yeah, we don’t want him getting the wrong idea about us,” Steinberg agreed. “Tell him to hurry.”
Partridge huffed, then reached for the intercom as Steinberg headed out the door, sprinting back the way he had come. He was coming off the stairs when he realized he was hearing the sounds of applause following him.
Jo was still on the monitor when he returned, looking thoroughly annoyed. She had a new message already written for him, and as soon as Steinberg came through the door, she held it up.
YOU ARE SUCH A GRUNT!
Steinberg nodded, writing hastily.
AND YOU LOVE ME FOR IT. HOLD ON COUPLE MORE MINUTES. WAITING FOR OLD MAN.
Jo nodded, then glanced around herself in the kiosk. Past her, outside the kiosk, Steinberg could see the bustle of Ankara’s streets, the nightlife growing more vibrant despite the apparent cold. Wherever she was in the city, she’d picked about as busy a location for the call as she could have done, and Steinberg wondered if that had been a good idea or a bad one. Turkey was not safe territory by any stretch of the imagination.
He thought for a moment, then wrote a new note, holding it up for her.
LIKE THE NEW LOOK. YOU HEAVY OR LIGHT?
She smiled, scribbling.
COURTESY CMO. THEY GAVE ME LOAD-OUT. COVERED.
Steinberg nodded, set down the pad and the pen, then proceeded to pull on the pair of pants that had been hanging over the back of his desk chair. Jo watched, made a big show of pouting as he fixed his belt, then dropped the act altogether as the door into Steinberg’s room opened.
“Jonathan, what the hell—” Carrington said as he entered, but Steinberg moved quickly and got a hand over the man’s mouth before he could say more. It was probably too late; if CMO was listening, they had a vocal track of Carrington on file somewhere anyway. It wouldn’t take them long to match it to what they’d just heard.
&nb
sp; “Jo,” Steinberg whispered in Carrington’s ear. “She’s been ThroatLinked by CMO. Anything she says or hears, they get it, too.”
Steinberg moved back, letting his hand slip, and Carrington nodded. He was flushed, too, and breathing heavily, and Steinberg wondered if the Old Man had sprinted the length and breadth of the Institute campus, just as he had. Carrington moved further into the room, resting heavily on his cane, looking at Jo on the screen. She smiled at him, Steinberg thought perhaps sheepishly, and Carrington moved closer to the monitor. Then he gestured for Jo to do the same, and after a second to interpret the hand gesture, she leaned forward in the kiosk, giving the camera a close-up of her eyes.
Oh, Christ, Steinberg thought. I didn’t even think of that, I didn’t even think that they might’ve done her eyes, too.
Carrington stared at Jo in close-up for several seconds longer, then nodded brusquely and turned to face Steinberg, motioning him closer. On the screen, Jo sat back in the kiosk.
“Give me the bullet,” Carrington whispered.
“Not much so far,” Steinberg responded, speaking again in the Old Man’s ear. He smelled, Steinberg realized, of rosewater and sandalwood. “She was lifted by CMO out of Veracruz. DataDyne sent a hit squad after her, it looks like CMO gave her backup. They patched her up, turned her loose again, don’t know the details. She’s in Ankara, as you can see. She knows about the Continuity, and she’s planning on continuing into China, presumably to wherever it is they’re located.”
Carrington nodded again, barely, then reached for the pad Steinberg had been using and began to write on it at some length.