Perfect Dark: Second Front

by Greg Rucka

  SHAW: YES.

  X: WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO ? TELL ME.

  SHAW: I NEED TO MAKE CERTAIN SHE ACTIVATES AIRFLOW 2.

  X: NO MATTER WHAT, COLONEL.

  SHAW: NO MATTER WHAT, YES. AND THEN WHAT HAPPENS . . . ? . . . HELLO?

  SHAW: DAMMIT, MACKENZIE, COME BACK.

  CO: SIR?

  SHAW: WIPE THE TRANSCRIPT, INCLUDING THE RECORDINGS, LIEUTENANT. THIS CONVERSATION NEVER HAPPENED.

  CO: . . . WHAT CONVERSATION WOULD THAT BE, THEN, SIR?

  >>COM RECORD PURGE >> DELTA ONE ZERO FIVE AUTHORIZATION >>RECORD DELETED.

  Home of Former dataDyne CEO

  Zhang Li (Deceased)

  38km SW Li Xian, Sichuan Province

  People’s Republic of China

  January 29th, 2021

  There was a girl looking at her when Joanna Dark opened her eyes. The girl was Chinese, perhaps her age, perhaps a little younger, with a broad, pleasant face and a smile so genuine and so happy that Jo’s first thought was that things couldn’t be that bad at all.

  They were in a bedroom somewhere, Jo realized, and she was on, rather than in, the bed. It seemed like a nice room, comfortable and tidy but without much by way of decoration. A pair of crossed hook-swords hung on one wall, and on the dresser, Jo could make out the shape of a framed photograph, shrouded with a black veil. A bright pink and blue teddy bear, easily half Jo’s height, sat in one corner, beside the chair the girl was sitting in.

  “Move slowly,” the girl said, and Jo realized she was speaking in Mandarin. “You’re still quite injured. Here, let me help.”

  She left the chair, crossing to where Jo lay, offering a hand, and after a second, Jo accepted it and the aid in sitting up. Her ribs ached as they had before, but she wasn’t having any difficulty breathing, at least as far as she could tell. Her abdomen, on the other hand, still sang with pain, and when Jo gingerly turned to rest her feet on the flagstone floor, there was a new sensation of both tightness and burning.

  The girl released her hand, stepping back, the smile as gentle and loving as before.

  “My name’s Fan,” the girl said. “And you’re Joanna.”

  Jo ran a hand through her hair, pushing her forelock back, out of her eyes, nodding. Everything felt heavy, sluggish, and her head still throbbed with the remnants of the tranquilizers that Shaw had pushed into her blood. Once more, her mouth felt like someone had used it as an ashtray. Jo rubbed her eyes, then took another look at Fan.

  The girl was continuing to smile at her. She had shoulder-length black hair, cut roughly at the edges, not unlike the style that Jo wore herself. Her clothes, too, seemed to be a mirror of what she was wearing, black pants and a black T-shirt and black ankle-high boots.

  “Where am I?” Jo asked. Her voice sounded rough, disused.

  “You’re in China,” Fan answered. “At the home of Master Li. You’re safe, don’t worry.”

  “The mansion?”

  Fan nodded, still smiling.

  “You’re the Continuity?”

  “One of them, yes. I’m the eldest, actually. Do you want to speak in English? I can speak in English if you’d like.”

  “I don’t … I don’t really care.”

  “You’re confused. That’s okay, I’d be confused. The colonel used enough Tranq to put down a stampede of elephants, I’m afraid. I was actually getting a little worried that he’d used too much, that your respiratory system might collapse. You’re not well, are you? I mean, you’ve been through quite a lot lately.”

  “Yeah, it’s been a rough week,” Jo said, looking Fan over again. “Fan.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “You’re the one who’s been impersonating me?”

  Fan giggled, looking down at herself, her clothing, then back to Jo. “That obvious, huh?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Are you asking if I’m the one who killed Bricker and Matsuo while wearing your skin?”

  “Are you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because they had to die, Jo, I mean, c’mon. That’s obvious, right?”

  “No,” Jo said, shaking her head slightly and feeling it ache as if her brain was sloshing about freely inside her skull. “Why me?”

  Fan’s expression lit with understanding. “Oh, that’s easy. You haven’t figured that out?”

  “Put it down to the Tranq. I’m a little slow at the moment.”

  “No, that makes sense. Well, it’s obvious. We wanted you to come here, my brothers and sisters and I. And we had to keep dataDyne and Carrington and all the rest falling over themselves while we got everything ready. It’s worked out really well. You wouldn’t believe how well it’s worked out, actually.”

  “You wanted me to come here?”

  “Yeah. That’s why we had Shaw grab you. Saved time, and that way we didn’t have to worry that dataDyne would fill you full of holes before you arrived.”

  The turn of phrase stuck with Jo, the same one she’d written on her pad while communicating with Steinberg and Carrington. That wasn’t a coincidence, she realized, though maybe it had been a slip of Fan’s tongue to use it.

  “You’ve been tracking me,” Jo said. “All along.”

  “It’s not that hard to do if you know how, Jo-Jo. Once Iseli had the ThroatLink put in you, it was even easier.”

  “I’m sorry, ‘Iseli'?”

  “Oh, right, yeah. You know her as Carcareas. Her real name is Elena Iseli.”

  “You guys take it out? The ThroatLink, I mean. Is that why I’m not hearing her in my head?”

  “No, it’ll come out in a bit, probably. Maybe.” Fan brought her shoulders up in an elaborate shrug, laughed. “None of us has ever tried Chrysalis with implants, so I don’t know what’ll happen, honestly. Might get rejected, might get ejected, for that matter. Or it might just be integrated into the rest of the shift. We’ll find out, won’t we?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “You will.” Fan held out her hands to Jo. “Come on, I’ll explain it as we go along. You’ve got to meet the rest. We’re having a party.”

  “I’m not sure …” Jo closed her eyes, feeling another wave of the receding tranquilizer passing through her, making her feel momentarily nauseated. “ … I’m not sure I’m up for a party, Fan.”

  She felt Fan’s hands closing around her wrists, the grip firm but kind. After a moment to let the nausea pass, Jo got to her feet, Fan helping her.

  “You will be,” Fan told her. “It’s in your honor, after all.”

  She was led to a brightly lit banquet hall that had clearly been used by Zhang Li to entertain his honored guests. The table was large enough to seat fifty, carved from a slab of redwood and polished until its surface shone like blood-colored glass. Bright and intricately woven tapestries hung from the walls, and pieces of sculpture, both abstract and archaic, stood on pedestals at regular intervals. Light shone from crystal sconces on the walls and from three massive chandeliers that hung high above the center of the hall.

  In collision with this refinement were obviously newer decorations. Multicolored streamers of crepe billowed from where they’d been taped to the walls, criss-crossing the breadth of the room. Bundles of helium balloons, green, yellow, orange, and red, bobbed and swayed on their anchors at the table, attached to the backs of several of the chairs. Low-wattage party lasers sent beams dancing across every surface, cycling through every color in the visible spectrum one after another. Where the beams met crystal, the light burst into miniature suns.

  Above it all, at the back of the hall, amateurishly painted on a large swatch of white fabric—Jo wondered if it wasn’t a bedsheet—was a homemade banner, reading, “Welcome Joanna!”

  That would have been enough to make her stop where she stood, except that, when Fan lead her through the doors, the room erupted in noise and music. From all around the table, boys and girls jumped up from where they’d been seated, some of them stand
ing in their chairs, some taking the floor. They wore party hats, and alternately waved or blew on noisemakers, and as one they all called her name.

  “Joanna!”

  Dumbfounded, Jo looked to Fan, saw that the young woman was smiling broadly, looking right back at her with expectant delight.

  “Welcome to the Continuity, Mai-Killer,” Fan said.

  The noise turned to applause, hands and feet pounding on the table, on the floor, the boys and girls—Jo was certain there wasn’t a single one of them older than herself, and from the first look it seemed safe to say that most were perhaps just half that—cheering and clapping for her arrival. Two young men, seated side-by-side, blew kisses to her, and one of the girls suddenly surged out of her seat and sprinted toward her, a bouquet of flowers in her hands. The flowers were roses, red and white, and Jo took them awkwardly, and the girl backed away bowing before turning fully and racing back to her seat.

  I’m out of my mind, Jo thought. I’m feverish, that must be it. The gunshot wound, it’s infected and I’m feverish and this is not happening.

  Fan reached out, taking her by the elbow gently, and began guiding her through the room, passing along the left-hand side of the table. The applause continued, everyone turning to watch as she and Fan passed. Jo could see that a feast of a sort had been prepared and laid out already, plates and plates heaped with cookies and pastries and cakes and chocolates, bowls full of steaming noodles and broth. There were pieces of fried chicken and roasted duck, layers upon layers of steaks. Bottles of radically different shapes and sizes held drinks, what looked like everything from water to vintage champagne.

  They reached the head of the table, where three places had been set, side-by-side, only one of them occupied: it held a young Chinese man, perhaps a year or two younger than Fan. He stood like the rest, applauding with them, the same look of delight on his face. When Jo and Fan finally reached him, he stopped clapping long enough to reach over and pull out the high-backed chair marking the seat of honor, offering it to Joanna. All the more certain that she was hallucinating, Joanna took it, placing her bouquet of flowers on the table beside her setting.

  Fan held up a hand and the applause died, though it seemed in no hurry to do so. Then she bent her head to speak in Joanna’s ear, saying, “You really ought to say something to them.”

  Jo looked at Fan, feeling an odd surge of panic.

  I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here, she thought. What the hell am I supposed to say to them?

  Fan’s smile was brimming with encouragement.

  Jo took her feet again, wincing slightly at the twinge from her ribs. She cleared her throat, saw thirty sets of eyes looking to hers with anticipation and expectation.

  “Thank you,” Jo said. “You honor me.”

  There was a roar of approval from the table, the clattering of cutlery and more applause. More kisses were blown her way.

  At her right, Fan reached out for the wineglass placed at her setting, lifting it into the air. All around the table, boys and girls followed suit.

  “To Joanna Dark,” Fan said. “The killer of most-vile sister, Zhang Mai, joins us at last!”

  Cheering, glasses raised to the ceiling, but before anyone could drink, Fan held out her free hand, and the table went silent.

  “To Joanna Dark,” Fan said. “The killer of most-revered father, Zhang Li, joins us at last.”

  All at once, and as abruptly as turning off a light, the mood at the table shifted, growing palpably darker. The smiles vanished altogether, and Joanna now found thirty sets of eyes boring into her with more hatred than she had imagined possible from faces so young. It was absolute, and it was vicious, and for a second Jo wondered if the table wouldn’t try to attack her en masse at that moment, if they wouldn’t come at her with their chopsticks and steak knives and salad forks and try to end her life there and then.

  Fan turned to face her, the smile gone, all evidence of previous kindness banished.

  “You murdered our father, Joanna Dark. We are what he left behind. We are his children. We are the Continuity.”

  “He murdered mine,” Jo said before she could think that, perhaps, it would be better to not say anything at all.

  “No,” Fan said. “His bitch-slut daughter did. But it doesn’t matter. Everyone here knows what it’s like to lose their father. We understand that grief. We understand that rage.”

  Jo said nothing, staring at Fan. The size of the hall made the silence all that more oppressive, all that more heavy.

  Fan held the glass out for a moment longer, then turned back to face the rest of the table. She drank, and the boys and girls all followed suit. With ceremony as grave as her words, Fan set her glass back onto the table.

  Then she laughed, a peal of delight, and said, “Let’s eat!”

  The one seated to Jo’s right was named Ke-Ling, and he was apparently the second-eldest child. He talked incessantly as he ate, almost babbling with excitement, telling Jo that he was a fan of hers, that he had watched the recording of the DeathMatch VR battle she had fought with Mai Hem exactly 317 times, the last of which had been that very afternoon.

  Fan, for the most part, stayed silent, except to ask Jo why she wasn’t eating.

  “Not that hungry.”

  “You really ought to eat something, Jo-Jo. You’re going to need your strength.”

  That was an opening, but before Jo could ask why she would need her strength, three of the youngest kids at the table came up to Fan, bearing garlands of flowers for her, Jo, and Ke-Ling. Down at the far end of the table, a boy of perhaps fifteen was using a machete to slice pieces of a seven-layer cake. A couple of the others were throwing food back and forth at each other.

  “Stop it!” Fan barked at them. “Manners!”

  The children obediently settled back into their seats, and then, after the briefest of pauses, began yammering again.

  “Why am I here?” Jo asked Fan.

  Fan considered, then abruptly reached out and touched Jo’s cheek, brushing her hair back from where it had fallen over one eye. Jo had to fight the urge to clear the hand, to get it out of her face. Doing anything that would start a fight seemed like a very bad idea, especially given how she was feeling and the current environment.

  “Yes,” Fan said, deciding. “All right.”

  She rose from her seat, dropping her hand and then smoothly drawing a Falcon 2 pistol from where she’d apparently been carrying it tucked into the waistband of her pants. It was a quick move, fast enough that Jo didn’t realize what Fan had done until the young woman had the gun in her hand, and before Jo could move Fan was pointing the pistol at the ceiling. She fired twice, quickly, and the rounds sang off the stone above them, and the hall went deadly silent.

  “Jo-Jo has asked why she’s here,” Fan said. “Who wants to tell her?”

  Almost every hand at the table went up, with the exception of Ke-Ling’s, at Jo’s right. Ke-Ling served himself a second helping of fried duck.

  “Shuang, you may answer.”

  Roughly halfway down, on the left, a young girl stood up. She was wearing a concubine’s dress, one of the ones that Jo had seen on Zhang Li’s kept women during her last visit to the mansion, but it clearly didn’t belong to the child, and she seemed to disappear within its folds.

  “You are our friend,” Shuang said. “And it is right to honor our friends.”

  “And why is she our friend?” Fan prompted.

  Shuang looked to Fan, then to Joanna. “Because you killed Zhang Mai, called Mai Hem. You killed the daughter who dishonored our father and our family. So it is right that we should give you thanks, and that we should honor you.”

  “That is the first part,” Fan said with approval. “Who wishes to answer the second?”

  The same hands rose, even as Shuang resumed her seat at the table.

  “Tai-Hua.”

  The boy who stood looked to be perhaps sixteen, maybe a little older. He grinned as he got to his feet, wip
ing his face with a napkin, before addressing Joanna.

  “You are our enemy, because you killed our father. You stole his immortality, and by doing so, you corrupted his dream, the dream that was dataDyne. You corrupted it, and gave control of it to the Bitch. You are the killer of Zhang Li, and you must answer for that.”

  “So this is my last meal?” Jo asked Fan. “We hit dessert and then you shoot me?”

  Fan giggled, and all around the table, the boys and girls gathered there picked up the sound, echoing and augmenting it.

  “No, Jo-Jo. If this was about an execution, we’d have done it days ago. We could have. We could have let the dataDyne hit team in Veracruz succeed, for instance, instead of warning the Xiphos Brigade that they were there. We could have pointed dataDyne your way in Ankara, instead of making sure it was only Shaw who knew you were there. We could have killed you a million times, a million ways, all with the press of a key, with a line of code. But we didn’t. You’re not here to be simply executed.”

  “But you want revenge.”

  “We do, that’s correct. But we also want what’s right. And I want what you denied me.”

  Somewhere down the table, a voice spoke up, was quickly hushed. Cutlery clinked, then went still.

  “I’ve never met you before, Fan,” Jo said. “How could I have denied you anything?”

  “You killed Zhang Mai, Jo-Jo. Her death was mine. I was to become the favored daughter, I was to replace her in the eyes of our father. But you killed her, and then you killed him. You took my destiny from me. Now you will return it.”

  “How? I can’t bring Master Li back to life.”

  “We will fight, the way you and Mai Hem should have fought, Jo-Jo. We will fight the way our father intended, the way DeathMatch was always meant to be fought.”

  “I did that once,” Jo said. “I’m not a big fan of it.”

  “We will fight the way our father meant for us to fight,” Fan continued, as if she hadn’t heard. “You and I, in the DeathMatch arena. No safeties this time. No third-party bots turning statues to life. No external hacks to give either of us unauthorized weaponry. No last-second disconnects to save your life or mine should one of us fall. We will fight the way our father intended, and we will fight to the death, with the world watching.”