Overthrowing Heaven-ARC

I didn't tell him that their searches yielded only clean data because the EC sector head I'd tricked couldn't afford to let anyone to know how our business arrangement had ended. I was glad, though, that she hadn't changed her mind.

  "In fact," Park said, "if you do what I tell you and continue to perform, you can even make some better than decent dough here."

  "That sounds great," I said.

  "Good. Now, let's get to some of that work you volunteered to do."

  Chapter 46

  Two days later, I was no closer to finding Wei. I'd tranked a couple of cat-snake hybrids with attitude problems who'd decided fighting each other was their only purpose in life, broken up a fight between a man and a woman who couldn't nicely resolve their dispute over which of the two of them would take home the man with them, and stood guard over three different rooms no one ever opened. Exciting stuff. I wondered if the rooms might contain something useful for my mission, but I was sure Ng and Lee would be watching me from time to time, so I stayed out of them, stuck to my role, worked double shifts every day, and did as I was told.

  The private security work I'd done before had always evoked one of two extreme states: Constant tension from protecting a person or other asset that was an active target, or unceasing boredom during night-shift guard duty I took because I needed a low-profile place to hide. The first occupies your attention so fully that you end every shift utterly drained. The second usually lets you bring along some entertainment to help pass the time. Here, I found myself right in the middle: intermittently busy enough that I had to stay constantly alert, yet idle enough that I was often bored. The rules strictly prohibited the use of any entertainment device, so I had only my thoughts to keep me company.

  I filled a lot of those quiet hours building and walking through mental maps of the underground facility. It roughly followed a spokes and hubs layout, with the hubs either central labs or large rooms like our second practice area, and most of the spokes dead-end corridors. A few spokes connected two wheels. I'd worked in three different wheels so far, but I was pretty sure the facility had more. The only reason I wasn't positive is that the place itself exhibited a design paranoia: All the walls were the same institutional very pale yellow, a color I've disliked since my time in similarly shaded cells on Aggro. The only guideposts, the signs, were all active and gave you only directions and information appropriate to your security level. I was new enough and low enough in the Wonder Island hierarchy that most of the signs remained off when I passed them. Those few that turned on then told me only which direction to go to most efficiently reach my next assignment.

  I was standing at a very relaxed parade rest outside my fourth featureless room when its door opened. No one had entered while I'd been there, so by reflex I brought up my rifle and backed along the wall for a clear shot at the space. My orders were to stop anyone from going in; no one had said anything about people exiting, but there's no point in taking chances.

  A female voice from inside the room said, "New, eh?" She chuckled and then turned serious. "I can see you on the hallway monitor. I work here, I'm unarmed—unless you count this useless critter—and I'm coming out slowly."

  A thin woman a bit over a meter and a half tall stepped through the open doorway into the hall. Light brown hair hung loose to her waist. She held both her hands in the air. In her right she clutched a leash that ran upward and into the room. A moment later, a creature attached to the other end of the leash flew at her. The woman stopped in the hall and watched as it flapped thin black wings almost a meter wide and hovered just outside the doorway.

  I glanced at it, then looked again to make sense of what I was seeing. The creature's body was about the size of my forearm and covered with soft brown and white fur. It had large eyes, long droopy ears, and a mouth that opened when it noticed me watching it and revealed two long, curved fangs. It hissed at me and let out a bark that was surprisingly low given the animal's size.

  "VampiBasset," the woman said. She rolled her eyes. "Those idiots over in development must have eaten a lot of the native fungi to even get a vision of this little devil. They created it, but they never stopped to think about how dumb it is to make a bat-creature have to flap so hard to fly. Now they want to make this beast marketing's problem—as if I'm going to let them ditch this freak on us."

  I kept the rifle trained on her. "I didn't see you enter. Where did you come from?"

  "Some of these work areas, like this one, are big enough that they open on two different halls. I came in the other side."

  "Maybe you should stay here," I said, "while I—"

  Over my ear comm a man said, "You idiot." I recognized it as Lee's voice. "You're holding captive the leader of the small flying mammals division. Let her go."

  I resumed my parade rest position and said, "Sorry for detaining you."

  My movements must have startled the VampiBasset, because it turned, glared at me, and snapped and lunged in my direction. It lost control, slammed into the wall next to me, and crashed to the floor.

  The woman stared at it and sighed. "You see? You see what happens when you let engineers work without marketing's input? And now I have to fix it."

  The creature stood, shook its head a few times, flapped madly, ran toward the woman, and managed to get airborne again.

  She shrugged and headed down the hallway, the animal in tow behind her, its wings beating for all the sad thing was worth. "I guess they can't all be winners," she said as she turned the corner.

  Ten minutes later, Lee appeared from around the same corner. He marched up to me.

  For Park or Ng I would have snapped to attention, but I didn't like him, and I was getting tired of him, so I stayed as I was.

  "What were you doing," he screamed, "aiming your weapon at that woman?"

  "My job," I said. "Guarding the room."

  "I'd think even a dumb slab of meat like you could figure out that if someone was coming out of a room and was towing one of our creatures, they must have been allowed to be there in the first place."

  "Unless they broke in," I said, "and were stealing a valuable new creation."

  "You think a vampibasset is valuable?" he said.

  "It's not my call to make. I'm supposed to guard the room, so I did."

  He leaned close enough to me that he had to tilt his head to stare into my eyes. A fine film of mist covered his forehead.

  I didn't lean back. I smiled. "Is there something in my teeth?" I said.

  "You do not want—" he began.

  "That's enough, Dan," Ng said. I didn't look away from Lee, but I could hear two sets of footsteps coming down the hall toward us from the left.

  "Moore did exactly what he was supposed to do," Park's voice said. "I asked Akagel to exit that way. I've been running similar tests on all the entry-level staff."

  Lee stared at me a moment longer, than stepped back. "I was just messing with him," he said.

  I glanced up and watched as Ng and Park came to a stop on either side of Lee.

  "Not the ideal move, Dan," Ng said, "because you chose to pick on the only one of the new crop that passed the test." She put her hand on his shoulder. "Still, no harm done; right, Moore?"

  I resisted the urge to smile, but I did look Lee in the eyes as I said, "None at all."

  Ng didn't notice my expression, because she was looking at Lee.

  Park did. His smile came and went in an instant.

  Lee tensed his arms and glared at me.

  The more I was around him, the less I liked him. From her stance and expression, however, Ng clearly did.

  She faced me. "Now that we have that cleared up, Moore, I think your solid responses have earned you a step up in work assignment. Fortunately, we have just the job for you." She turned toward Lee. "Dan, you're clearly too valuable to keep doing low-level work like that guard duty on the research team's quiet room." She put her hand on his shoulder as if to hold him in place, then without looking at me said, "Moore, that's your new station."

>   Lee's expression tightened. He stared at me as if he wanted to kill me and only Ng's hand was stopping him.

  What was going on?

  Ng smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "Tomaso, take Moore there. Moore, I think you'll find this is something completely different. You might even like it." She brushed away from Lee's forehead a solitary strand of hair. "I've heard some people do."

  Chapter 47

  Park didn't say anything as we walked away.

  I decided to follow his example until we reached the end of the hall and turned right. No footsteps followed us, and Park visibly relaxed, so I figured it was safe to talk.

  "What was that all about?" I said.

  Park glanced at me but kept moving. "That's not how this works," he said.

  "How what works?"

  "This particular thing." A smile burst onto his face, and he could hardly stop himself from laughing as he said, "Not that I have any firsthand knowledge or involvement. It's strictly an arrangement Ng's made."

  "What kind of an arrangement?" I said.

  He stopped, and so did I. He was enjoying my confusion. I was getting damn tired of it, but I fought back my temper.

  "And why was Lee so angry at me when Ng told you to take me wherever it is that we're going?"

  Park couldn't stop smiling. "Let's just say that one of our jobs is to meet the needs of the senior research staff, and sometimes that requires unusual effort. Every new meat eventually gets a run at this one; your turn just came early." He paused and looked away for a moment, then focused again on me. "As for Lee, well, how about we leave it at this: He chose an assignment that Ng thought wasn't appropriate for him."

  "And now it's mine?"

  "That's about the size of it," Park said.

  "How junior—and how dangerous—is this job?"

  This time, he bit his lip to stop himself from laughing. "As I told you," he said, "I don't know personally, but the stories are many and varied." He stepped back, looked me up and down, and added, "I think you'll do fine." He started walking again. "Let's go. We're heading over to the high-security area, and it's a fair distance from here. We could grab a shuttle, but I think it would do you good to get your blood pumping." He stopped, smiled, and then added, "You might need it."

  Before I could ask another question, he took off at a double-time-march pace, so I fell in behind him and figured I'd find out soon enough.

  The high-security area had to be where Wei worked, so I was looking forward to seeing it. From the hallway perspective, which is all I'd seen so far, it appeared identical to where I'd been standing guard.

  As we walked, Park assured me that if Ng hadn't authorized me to be there, I'd never have made it this far. "I'd have led the capture team myself, if it came to that," he said.

  "What's so important here?" I said.

  He shook his head and stared at me as if I had asked him why we needed air. "You've visited the park," he said. "You saw the dragons and all the other flying creatures. You saw some of the land animals. The scientists here create beings that no one has ever seen before, or at least no one alive today, and tourists flock to the island to see them. No other lab anywhere can do what these people do. We're protecting a gold mine, and Heaven is using its treasures to improve the entire planet as well as its relationships with the EC and the CC."

  I watched carefully as he spoke. I couldn't detect any sign of a lie. Either he was very good at deception, or he was telling the truth. If he was being honest, then he had no clue what Wei was really doing. You can't keep an entire security team in the dark, so if he was ignorant, Ng had to know. My encounter with Lee and then Ng had made it very clear that Lee was hers, so Lee probably knew as well. I wondered how many of the people on the security detail were aware of the truth.

  "Got it?" Park said.

  "Yeah," I said, "that makes sense."

  "Good," he said. He pointed to a door on my right. "Because this is your stop. It's important that you understand why these scientists are so useful and thus why the island's management humors them so much. As long as they keep making animals that sell tickets, we'll keep meeting their needs."

  "What are you talking about?" I said. I took up position beside the door and stood at parade rest. "Guarding a door here is no different than guarding one where we were before."

  Park chuckled. "You'll see soon enough. Just remember: Your job includes making the scientists happy, and all the new meat end up here eventually." He started away, then stopped and turned to face me. "Oh, yeah: Don't worry whether the cameras and sensors really go off—they do—and feel free to say no—but understand that you'll be losing a healthy bonus and pissing off Ng."

  He headed away.

  "I don't understand," I said.

  "I know," he said over his shoulder, "they never do. But, you will."

  I'd liked Park up to now, but this entire exchange had annoyed me. I didn't get the joke that he found so funny. Worse, if I didn't act correctly, Ng would be even more annoyed at me than she already was. I couldn't afford to let that happen, but I had no clue what to do to avoid it.

  I shook my head slightly to clear it. I was wasting energy worrying about problems that didn't exist yet. I could do nothing to better my situation, so the best course of action was to relax, review the route we'd taken here so I wouldn't forget it, and wait to see how the situation developed.

  I didn't have to wait long.

  Less than an hour later, the door beside me opened.

  This time, I didn't raise my rifle; no point in looking stupid a second time. I did, though, back slightly away from the door and turn to face it, because there was also no point in not preparing in case something was actually wrong.

  Nothing happened for a minute, and then a woman's voice called from inside the room, "What are you waiting for? Get in here."

  Carrying the rifle at port arms, I circled to my right so I could scan the room without exposing myself completely. When I was parallel with the doorway I could see the woman. She was bent over a desk, studying something I couldn't see. She appeared to be alone and unarmed. A large work surface stood in the room's rear left corner, papers scattered here and there on it. In the back right corner was a large bed.

  I stepped inside.

  "So you're the new meat Ng sent me?"

  "Yes," I said. When in doubt, say as little as you can.

  "They sent me your file, Moore, so I know who you are. I doubt they bothered to tell you why you're here or even who I am."

  "No, they didn't."

  She chuckled and whispered something to the desk. "They used to," she said, "but they haven't for some time now. I think they believe the situation is more difficult and thus more amusing for the meat this way. Ah, well; no matter."

  She whispered something else to the desk, then straightened and turned to face me. As she did, the door closed.

  "I'm Norita McCombs, one of the senior researchers here. Now that we've done the introductions and we know one another, take off all your clothes."

  Chapter 48

  What?" I said. My brain caught up with my reaction a moment later: The tall, blonde woman in front of me was Shurkan's mole, the person I'd been seeking since I'd first arrived here. Why did she want me to get undressed?

  "Am I hard to understand?" she said. She leaned against the desk.

  I studied her to make sure she matched my recollection of Shurkan's images. She was almost my height, with skin a rich honey color and large, light green eyes. Her body reflected the style that had been in vogue among executives for several years: lean, angular, and athletic without being heavily muscled. Her face, though, was surprisingly round given the shape of the rest of her.

  She was definitely McCombs.

  "No," I finally said.

  "So get to it," she said, "or is there a problem?" When I didn't move or say anything for a few seconds, her eyes widened and she stood up again. "Oh, you're one of the bashful ones. Okay, fine. She leaned over the desk and quickly sa
id something to it, then turned again to face me. "All sensors and recorders in this room are off. Whoever brought you here should have told you that when I say that, I mean it. So, you can stop being shy and get ready." She leaned once more against the desk and crossed her arms. "Well?"

  "It's just that I thought I recognized you," I said.

  She chuckled, but there was no happiness in the sound. "I doubt it," she said. "I don't get out much."

  I tilted my head and squinted as if studying her further. "Maybe it was at some event," I said. I tightened my grip on my rifle; I didn't want trouble, but if something was wrong, if she wasn't who I thought she was and I pushed this too far, she might call security on me. Then, I'd have to try to fight my way to an exterior wall, use the nanomachines to create an opening, and hope I could blend with the tourist crowd.

  Yeah, right. If she wasn't McCombs, I had to hope I could sell the question as legitimate so she didn't spot me as a fake, because there was no way I could expect to get out of here by force.

  "Yes," I finally said. I forced a smile. "That has to be it." I pretended to study her for a few more seconds. "Hey, do you have a cousin who's a pro gamer?"

  Her expression tightened. She shook her head, walked around to the other side of the desk, and sat there. She never took her eyes off me as she reached into the top drawer on its left side. "I'm sorry," she said, "but I must have been distracted. What did you say?"

  I took a slow, deep breath, then said, "I just asked if you have a cousin who's a pro gamer."

  "I have a lot of cousins," she said. "What's the name of the one you're thinking of?"

  "Ken something or other," I said.

  She pushed the drawer closed, rested her head in her hands for a few seconds, and then sat back and looked at me. "It's about damn time," she said. "Shurkan had promised to send somebody if I stopped my filing my status reports, but I haven't sent one in over three months, and no one's shown up. Until now."

  "How long do we have," I said, "before someone gets suspicious about the lack of sensor input and comes to check on us?"