“D.C. Washington.”
Manuela winced. “Please.”
“Don’t believe me?” Verity asked. “I know how you feel.”
“Conner,” Wilf said, “says they’re returning.”
“What’s he expect us to do,” Verity asked, “crouch on the floor behind the couch?”
“What are you talking about?” Manuela demanded.
“If they’re coming back,” Verity said, “it’s for us.”
“Conner’s lowering us down, on a winch,” Wilf said. “The cable comes out of a hatch on the drone.”
“Hatch on its shoulder,” Verity asked, “or back of where its head should be?”
“Chest,” Wilf said.
“Where what’s head should be?” asked Manuela.
“Talking to Wilf. They’re in the alley now. Right outside. What’s happening, Wilf?”
“Conner’s releasing drones,” he said. “Little ones. Aerial. Three. Out of another hatch. He already had one up, so four in all.”
“Like the one he zapped the guy in front of the Clift with?”
“Smaller,” he said.
Verity thought of the drones Dixon had delivered. Where were they now? In their camo’d hutch on top of the place next to Joe-Eddy’s?
Manuela was digging through the protein bars in the bag on the table. Choosing one, she straightened, tore the wrapper off, and took a bite. Chewing, she fixed Verity with an expression of unresigned impatience that made her look fourteen.
“Conner,” Verity said, “what are you doing now?”
“Lying down on the pavement,” Conner said, “legs up, arms folded, hatches closed. So what’ll it look like?”
“Heater my mom had. Electric. Oil-filled.”
“So they’ll see it, but won’t know what it is. Somebody dropped off your mom’s heater. Or they can worry it’s a claymore, whatever. They’ll know it wasn’t here before, but they’ve also got a job to do.”
“You’re just going to lie there?”
“Till I don’t,” Conner said.
“What about us?” she asked.
“Get your shoes on,” Conner said, “jackets, whatever. Ready to go.”
“Where?”
“That’s fluid,” he said.
Verity looked at Manuela, who hadn’t removed her shoes or parka. “Put some food in your pockets,” she said. “We’re going, so we might need it.” She got her own shoes from the tray, sat on the armor-plate couch, and put them on.
94
IMPROV
With the drone on its back in the alley, the squashed-circle display looked to Netherton like something Rainey might have taken him to see at the Tate, its lower half filled with nothing but the luminously featureless San Francisco night sky above it, the upper half a high-resolution night-vision close-up of the pavement beneath it, greenly glowing. “Where are those men?” he asked.
Conner replaced the drone’s feed with four others, evidently from the small aerial units he’d mentioned. The feed in the upper left quadrant was stationary, directly above the container’s square roof, straight down. Beside the container, the now seemingly limbless drone might be mistaken for an equipment case. A smaller, paler rectangle, tucked into the angle of the cube’s rear wall and the adjacent building, would be the charger. The upper right quadrant offered what he judged to be the same view from a greater altitude, the alley a relatively dark connector between parallel streets, both more brightly lit, the one nearest the container wider than the other. Both lower quadrants were livelier, each from a camera in motion, each above one of those two streets.
“Lower left,” said Conner, “white van. Just dropped two new guys on Tennessee, near the alley. Headed out of frame.” The camera turned, to keep the van in frame. “Bringing our two around to Third. Maybe more. Hope not.”
“What will you do when they get here?” Verity asked.
“Improv,” Conner said. “Slow ’em down while you and the girl get out and run for Third. Virgil’s almost here, to pick you up. We’ll distract them for you. Black four-door Mercedes. Be ready.” The angle of the lower left feed swung down, revealing two figures entering the alley from Tennessee Street. Walking toward the container.
As the two drew near, Conner toggled back to the feed from the drone, Netherton watching as they loomed into view. One frowned, looking down. He stopped, the display partially capturing a gesture that halted the other as well.
“Dude,” said Conner, “what have you got here, huh?”
The one who’d first noticed the drone, his right hand now out of sight, inside his open coat, a manual phone in his left, seemed to be capturing images or video. He put the phone to his ear. “Did they see that?” he asked, the drone’s microphones picking him up, his accent American but less pronounced than Conner’s. A pause. He leaned forward slightly. “Like it’s painted, to look like carbon fiber.” Pause. “Okay.” He lowered the phone.
Netherton watched him step forward, past the drone, followed by the other man, who squinted dubiously down as he passed, then both were out of frame.
“Want us behind the couch?” Verity asked, puzzling Netherton.
“Wouldn’t hurt,” said Conner. “Angle it between the door and where the little table is.”
“Help me with this,” said Verity, speaking, Netherton assumed, to the Followrs girl.
Netherton watched as the drone’s left arm partially unfolded. From its narrow wrist-tip, a thin black rod emerged, then executed an unnervingly biological-looking wriggle, before lunging after the man, around the container’s corner.
A camera, Netherton remembered, as its feed opened. Beyond the backs of the two men who’d discovered the drone, the windowless white van swung into the alley’s entrance, pulling up about three meters in front of the container, two more men emerging from the passenger-side door. A third remained behind the wheel. “They were here before,” Netherton said.
“And none of them Pryor,” Conner said, “including the driver. Time we got this on the road.” The feed from the black tentacle shrank, replaced by the fixed aerial view in the upper right quadrant. Netherton watched the drone’s right arm unfold, lifting its torso off the pavement.
“Ladies,” Conner said, “start your engines. Out of there when I say go. Try to hold your breath till you get to the street. Stay away from the white van parked in front of the cube. Don’t get caught. Ready?”
“Ready,” said Verity.
“Go,” Conner said.
95
VOLUNTEER
When Conner said go, Manuela went over the upended couch like a sprinter coming off blocks, her arms outstretched for the door. It seemed to vanish, rather than open, into a coughing, retching, solidly packed realm of cursing men, their hands to their streaming eyes.
Capsicum, announced some brightly nerdy recall-module of Verity’s, her eyes and nostrils stinging painfully.
The seemingly solid mass of pepper-sprayed men around the container’s door had only been a few, she saw, plunging through them after Manuela.
“Move,” Conner urged, as one of the men clawed at the strap of the Muji bag, his hand bashed aside by a metallic blur she recognized as one of the drone’s arms, upraised, plowing out of the confusion on powered skates. “Virgil,” Conner said, flashing her a feed from above, of a black sedan, braking hard, at the curb in front of the alley. “Go!”
She did, reflexively managing to leap an attempted tackle, as she found the car in her actual field of vision and ran for it, past the side of the white van. Trying, through the start of her own capsicum tears, cheekbones and forehead now burning as well, to find Manuela.
The black car was in front of her, its right rear door open, Dixon getting out, black ball cap level with his eyebrows. Showing her his fist, thumb upraised. She veered left, to avoid one of the van’s open rear doors. As
Manuela screamed, partially within the back of the van, a red-eyed man hauling her inside.
He yanked Manuela past him, farther into the truck, as Verity arrived. Verity lunged for her ankles, to pull her out, but then his gloved hands were around both her wrists.
A dark, dull, skintight gray, the gloves. “Thanks for volunteering,” he said, tightening his grip, as she looked straight into his blue eyes. “We’ve been looking for you too.” Those eyes widening then, in the instant before the silicone-coated manipulators plunged past her, on either side of her head, to seize him by the neck, his mouth forming a surprised O. She ducked her head as he was whipped out, over her, one of his shoes glancing off her left shoulder.
She grabbed Manuela’s nearest ankle with both hands and pulled, hard, losing her balance, falling, her head hitting something but not pavement. The Muji bag, she realized, its nylon against her cheek.
“Lady,” she heard Dixon say, “I’m not with them. I’m with Verity.” And suddenly was aware of the absolute quiet, aside from their voices. She turned her head, saw Dixon facing a crouched Manuela, his hands open, fingers spread.
“That’s Dixon,” Verity managed, having found her breath. “He’s okay.”
“Gonna help Verity,” Dixon said, calmly moving to do so.
“He’s with us,” Verity said to Manuela, as Dixon helped her up.
“You walk?” he asked, his arm around her shoulder.
“I think so,” Verity said.
“Car now,” Dixon said, “gotta go.”
“Come with us,” Verity said to Manuela, who’d straightened up now, her eyes no longer quite so wide.
When they reached the car, Verity looked back. Through the open rear doors of the van, she saw men piled, unmoving. Four of them, with the drone just then dropping another, she assumed the driver, over the passenger seats and onto the others. Behind the drone, above the van’s steering wheel, the windshield was webbed, as if from a single impact.
Turning back to the car, she found Manuela in the passenger seat behind Virgil. Dixon did that police thing as she got in beside her, his hand on her head so she didn’t bang it. “Conner,” she said, looking back again but not seeing the drone.
“He needs to clean up,” Virgil said, as Dixon shut her door, opened the one in front, got in, closed it.
“Where are we going?” Verity asked.
“Fremont,” he said. “Want to get there before the crowd gets more obvious.”
“Crowd?”
“Have to drive now,” he said, pulling away from the curb.
96
JUNIOR HERE
Guys,” said Conner, as the drone climbed adroitly up into the driver’s seat of the white van, its charger under one arm, and seated itself behind the wheel, “I’m gonna pretend like all of you are incapacitated or unconscious.” It closed the door. “Some of you may be both, but some of you aren’t either. I’m assuming all of you are armed, though, and have phones or other devices. And if none of you makes a move, I’ll be parking this truck somewhere and leaving you to your own resources. Otherwise,” turning the key in the ignition, “this drone’s detonating its onboard explosives. Won’t be much left besides the chassis. As the only one of us who’s not physically present, I’ve got zero fucks to give about how that goes. Your call.”
Netherton, watching the pile of five apparently unconscious men, in the upper half of the drone’s display, saw no movement whatever, aside from a possible eye-flicker from the one he took to be the driver, whose forehead seemed to be bleeding.
“If the driver hasn’t come to, pretty soon,” Conner said, putting the van in reverse and backing away from the container, which Netherton had just watched the drone padlock, “he may need an ambulance.”
The drone backed into the street, turning, and then they were driving away, in the direction the car had taken Verity and the Followrs girl.
“Drone’s muted, Wilf,” Conner said, “so you don’t need to be, on your end.”
“Is that true, about a bomb?”
“No,” said Conner.
“Where are you taking them?”
“Away from the alley. Fang’s friends have people coming with a flatbed, to pick the container up.”
“What if Cursion sends someone else?” Netherton watched the drone’s manipulators on the wheel, which looked as though he were driving himself, but with manipulators.
“Unlikely. By now they assume their operation’s gone to shit, so they won’t want anything to do with their hired help, these boys in the back, who for all they know are currently dead in that alley.”
“Where did you get that padlock?” Netherton asked.
“Fang’s people left it taped just inside the door. The ones outside were set dressing.”
“Where do we go, after we leave this vehicle?”
“We get picked up,” Conner said, “and head for whatever it is Howell and the French lady are cooking up. I haven’t been filled in on what that is.” Conner slowed the van, turning right at an intersection with a narrower street, one without a divider.
“You had aerial units each target one of them, with a noxious aerosol?” Netherton asked.
“Pepper spray,” said Conner, “up close and personal.” He pulled over, midway between two streetlamps, to park behind an American automobile that looked to Netherton as though it might one day warrant a place in Lev’s grandfather’s collection. “Okay, unmuting now.” He cleared his throat. “Leaving you boys, but I need thirty more minutes of your silence, starting now. That means no calls in or out, no texts, no web, no radio. If you’ve got any of the above, and want to gamble they won’t detonate junior here, be my guest. I’m leaving him under the truck.” He opened the door, climbed down, and closed it. “We’re muted now,” he said.
Thomas started to cry, in the nursery. “I need to see to my son,” said Netherton, getting up.
“You do that,” said Conner, sounding as if he were enjoying his evening.
97
SPEED LINES
Verity watched the feed from Conner’s drone, as it rolled, alone, down what seemed a side street, currently deserted, in what she supposed was still the Dogpatch.
“You guys know Carsyn?” Manuela asked, beside her in the car.
“She works for me,” Virgil said, driving. “I’m Virgil. Virgil Roberts.”
“You paid me to tell her about being a games physics designer?”
“I did. While keeping you away from where you usually spend time,” Virgil said, “making it less likely for Cursion to find you.”
“Followrs partners don’t know who the subjects are, let alone the clients,” Manuela said. “Because it was a fresh job order, I wasn’t expecting to see Verity. The assignment was called off, as soon as you guys left. Then Carsyn phoned.”
“We thought Cursion might have noticed you and Verity see one another, and that wouldn’t be good for you.”
“So why would you care?” asked Manuela.
“It wasn’t my call,” Virgil said, “but I’m glad you’re with us, and not them.”
“What was that droid thing,” Manuela asked, “beating up on those guys?”
Verity looked over the tops of the Tulpagenics glasses, trying to get an idea of where they were now. “It’s a telepresence drone. Conner runs it from Washington.”
“If it was in a manga,” Manuela said, “they’d give it speed lines. Good character design. Doesn’t look fast, fun when it is.” She looked at Dixon. “Didn’t get your name.”
“Dixon,” he said, turning to look back at her.
“Dixon built it,” Verity said, “the drone.”
“Kathy’s the builder,” Dixon said. “I just mind the printers, source and modify off-the-shelf hardware.”
“You’re the reason it’s so fast,” Virgil said, “your hardware.”
&n
bsp; “Open budget,” Dixon said. “Need a little motor, get the best damn little motor Germany ever made.”
“So you all work for Virgil?” Manuela asked. “Or whoever he works for?”
“I don’t,” said Verity.
“I’m the only one of us who does,” said Virgil, “unless you want to count yourself, Manuela.”
“Do I?”
“You’re getting double the quote you gave Carsyn,” Virgil said, “right now.”
“Sweet,” said Manuela, “but who am I working for?”
“Stetson Howell,” Verity said.
“Whoa,” said Manuela, sounding finally impressed.
I’m back.
Superimposed over the drone’s feed, like a caption. It vanished.
Speed lines.
The white Helvetica surrounded by actual speed lines, white ones, radiating out around it, manga-style. It vanished.
“Holy fucking shit,” Verity heard herself say, flatly.
“You okay?” asked Manuela.
“You come back from the dead one more fucking time,” Verity said, “you disappear on me again, I’ll kill you.” The feed from the drone vanished. They were on another street now, Verity’s outburst having silenced Manuela.
Premature, the last time. Like I found myself, then thought of you. But the lamination wasn’t really there, yet. Then I wasn’t. But I am now. Tell them you’re okay but you need to talk. Say it’s me. They’ll hear your side of it, but Virgil and Dixon are in your network, and I like the kid.
This vanished.
Manuela nudged her hand, with a fist. Verity saw that it was filled with tissues. Realized her own cheeks were wet with tears she hadn’t felt start. “Thanks,” she said, taking the tissues and pressing them to her eyes.
I’m here. Tell them. Then we can talk.
Verity lowered the tissues. “It’s Eunice. Anyway, I think it is. She needs to talk.”
“Who’s Eunice?” asked Manuela.
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