He was right about that, Trouble thought reluctantly. She tilted her head, looked up at the Mayor’s building: just another cheap Seahaven rooming house, paint peeling on the sides where it was less likely to be seen. The Mayor’s windows, uncurtained, unshaded, unlike all the others in the building, turned blank glass to the street. I should say no, she thought. Starling’s just trying to use me, use this threat to get me to do what he wants, maybe even get me killed, just like he’s used it to call out all this, local cops and state and God knows what all else. It was all but impossible to get into a nuke’s internal systems, even for the Mayor—they were built to stand up against all intrusion attempts, there were cutouts and realtime requirements, and the crucial systems were supposed to be completely disconnected from the nets. But if they weren’t, if the Mayor had gained access…. He was just crazy enough, just desperate enough, to try something, and no one could stand by and let that happen. She shied away from the image that presented itself, out of ancient video, smoke billowing from a broken dome, radiation fires smothered in concrete; that wouldn’t be what happened, not quite, but the area would be poisoned worse than it already was. And no one had ever honestly calculated the probable deaths. She looked back over her shoulder at Starling, still standing in the lee of the unmarked police car, conferring with Levy and a man in armor, not knowing whom she resented more, the Mayor or Starling himself.
“You’d still be better off with me running the nets,” she said.
“I don’t doubt it,” Mabry snapped. “But that’s not the deal.”
Trouble took a deep breath. “I want complete immunity, all charges past and present dropped.”
“Done.” Mabry nodded, with decision. “I will see to it personally.”
“And for Cerise as well.”
“Agreed.”
“He’ll fucking kill you,” Cerise said. “Trouble, don’t do it.”
Trouble looked at her, swallowing her own cold fear. “Look. He’s one of us, a cracker, a netwalker. Since when did we start carrying guns?”
“I did.”
“You weren’t exactly representative.”
“Neither’s he.”
“That was a long time ago, and in the city. And it’s not the same. It’s not the Mayor’s style.” Trouble took another long breath, tasting salt and the ubiquitous oil. The air was thickening, fog swirling in from the sea: not a good time for that, she thought, and automatically squinted upward, looking for the helicopter. It was still there, a dark shape against the white sky, but when she looked east, the outlines of the beachfront buildings were already blurred. “He doesn’t gain anything by killing me—”
“Except personal satisfaction,” Cerise snapped.
“Yeah.” Trouble shivered, told herself it was only the first wisps of fog. “But he loses his chance to walk out of here.”
“Do you really think Starling would let him walk?” Cerise asked. “Do you really think he thinks Starling will let him walk? Trouble—” She broke off abruptly, the rest of the sentence unspoken. I’m not losing you now, she would have said, not again, and this was not the time for declarations.
“But if he really can get into the nuke?” Trouble said.
“There’s no way he can,” Cerise said. “No fucking way.”
Trouble looked at her, and Cerise made a face, answered her own question. “Except he’s the Mayor, and if anyone can, it’s him, and we can’t take that risk anyway. Not on this coastline.” She sighed. “All right, do it. But I’m coming with you.”
“He said alone,” Mabry interjected. It was no more than a token protest, but Cerise turned on him anyway.
“So get me in there without him knowing it, sunshine. I thought you people were supposed to be good. And I want a gun.”
“All right,” Mabry said. “Let’s go.”
They followed him down the narrow street, Mabry careful to keep the line of parked cars and runabouts between them and the rooming house. The cops, local and state, clustered in twos and threes behind the inadequate barricades, looked up as they passed, but their expressions were invisible behind the dark-tinted faceplates. Starling came to meet them, Levy and the armored stranger—probably some kind of senior police officer, Trouble thought, just from the amount of braid and badges, but she recognized only The Willows’ insignia among the clutter—following a few steps behind.
“Well?” Starling asked, and Mabry nodded.
Trouble said, “I understand he wants to talk to me. Is that right?” In spite of her efforts at control, her voice came out too loud, uncertain.
Starling said, “That’s right. I gather you’ve agreed.”
“I want all charges past and present dropped,” Trouble said, “for both me and Cerise.”
“That can be arranged,” Starling said.
“I’ve agreed to it,” Mabry said, mildly, and Starling’s lips tightened momentarily.
“All right.”
“Now,” Trouble said. “Just what is it you want me to do?”
“I just want you to keep him talking,” Starling said. “Distract him while we isolate him on the net, so that the rest of our people can move in.” He nodded to the fire engine. “We’ve got a sniper team there. They can take him out as soon as we’re sure the nets are safe.”
“That wasn’t in the plan, John,” Mabry said.
“You’d be better off letting us run the nets,” Trouble said, without much hope. “We’ve beaten him before.”
“No, thanks,” Levy said.
Starling said, “It’s you he wants to talk to. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“But there are some things you can do about protection,” Trouble said.
Starling waved his hand again, a broader gesture taking in not only the snipers but the men crouching behind the lines of cars. “You’ll have backup.”
Except when I’m inside, Trouble thought. But the men in the fire engine’s bucket would provide some cover, as much as she could reasonably expect.
Cerise said, “Yes. Well. I’m going with her.”
Starling frowned, and Trouble said, “It’s not negotiable.”
“He said alone,” Starling began, and Mabry shook his head.
“It can be done, John. It’s better this way.”
“And I want a gun,” Cerise said.
Starling sighed, looked at Levy. “Ben?”
Levy reached into his jacket, freed his pistol from the shoulder holster, and reluctantly held it out butt first. “Do you know how to use this?”
Cerise took it, automatically checking the magazine—full—then cocked it, putting the safety on. “Oh, yes.”
“Then let’s get on with it,” Starling said. “Mabry, you take Ms.—Cerise—around to the front door. Keep behind the cars, he can’t see down into the street too well.” Mabry nodded, motioned for Cerise to follow him. “Ms. Carless—Trouble. We’ll wait here.”
Trouble nodded, not daring to speak for fear her voice would break, watched as Mabry and Cerise made their way cautiously across the street and disappeared finally behind the line of parked cars. At last there was a flicker of movement beside the doorway, and Levy sighed.
“They’re in position.”
“Right,” Starling said, and reached for a handset. “Novross.”
There was a long silence, not even the crackle of static, and Trouble wondered for an instant if she was off the hook at last. Then the machine clicked, and the Mayor’s voice came clearly through the tiny speaker.
“I’m here.”
“We’ve done as you asked,” Starling said. “Trouble’s here, and she’s prepared to act as our representative.”
There was another silence, shorter this time, and then the Mayor said, “About time. Send her up.”
“She’s on her way,” Starling said, and looked at Trouble. “You’re on.”
“Thanks,” Trouble said. She took a deep breath, and stepped out from behind the car. She did not believe, in spite of everything Ceris
e had said, that the Mayor had a gun; it wasn’t his style, was unlike anything else he’d ever done, but even so; she felt an odd, tingling sensation on her forehead, and then between her breasts. It felt very real, so real that she looked down at herself, half expecting to see the bright dot of a targeting laser, but there was nothing there. She shivered again, convulsively, and wished she thought anyone would believe it was from the fog.
Cerise was waiting in the doorway, pressed against the wall under the shelter of the arch, out of the line of vision of the single securicam. It looked broken, blinded by too many nights in the salt air, but there was no point in taking chances. Trouble looked up at it, wondering if the lens were really as scratched as it appeared, looked back down at the locks and the intercom board with its list of names. Before she could decide if she should press the bell, the one marked “Novross” in a neat, orderly hand, the buzzer sounded, and she reached out almost automatically to push the door open. It gave under her hand, and Cerise slipped ahead of her into the darkened hallway. Trouble followed, letting the door close behind her.
The lights were out in the hallway, the only brightness filtering down through a distant skylight over the stairway. Cerise said, her voice little above a whisper, “They must’ve cut the power to the building.”
“Which should’ve cut the net link,” Trouble murmured.
Cerise nodded, managed a grim smile. “Except that he had a hidden line. Just like we had.”
“Just like everyone,” Trouble said, and started up the stairs. Cerise followed, silently, copying the other woman’s movements, staying half a flight behind. She had the pistol out and ready, safety off, just in case; it was heavier than the one she had used, a heavier caliber, the weight awkward in her hands.
Trouble paused at the first landing, listening, but heard nothing, not even the usual noises of a building’s miscellaneous machinery. She looked back, saw Cerise braced against the wall of the stair below, pistol held in both hands, the barrel tilted toward the ceiling. The sight was somewhat reassuring; Trouble forced a smile, and climbed the rest of the way to the third floor. There was only one door off the landing, and it was closed, but light showed through at the edges of the frame. So this is it, Trouble thought, but didn’t move closer at once, looked around instead for cameras. She didn’t see any, even in the shadows where the walls joined the high ceilings, but she was careful not to look back as she stepped up onto the landing. Cerise was behind her, there on the last landing; she could see what was happening well enough.
Trouble took a deep breath, and knocked on the white-painted door. For a crazy moment she thought she was going to giggle—it was too incongruous an image, her tapping on the metal door as though she were any visitor, this a normal visit—and she bit her lip hard, knowing that if she started laughing now it would be impossible to stop. The Mayor wouldn’t understand, she thought, wouldn’t be amused, and that realization was almost enough to send her over the edge.
“It’s open,” the Mayor’s voice said from inside, and the desire to laugh vanished as quickly as it had appeared. This time, Trouble did look back, to see Cerise hurrying silently up the stairs, to flatten herself against the wall, just out of the line of sight from the doorway.
“I’m coming in,” Trouble said, and heard herself shrill and nervous. She pressed lightly against the door, wary of booby traps, stories of bombs and electrical charges coming back to her from the old days, the Mayor’s days, when crackers had fought their battles off the nets as well as on, but nothing happened. She turned the knob, wincing in advance of an explosion, and the door swung open with the gentle groan of imperfectly oiled hinges.
The Mayor was standing exactly as she’d seen him last, frozen in the heart of his machines, hands splayed wide over the control surfaces, wires and chip boards wreathing him. And then she saw the differences as well, recognized that there was only one wire, the long cable of a datacord running down from a socket at the back of his skull, saw too that the chip boards were portable flatscreens, propped awkwardly across the main machines. Whatever else he’d planned, this was a jury-rigged defense, Trouble realized. And a defense of his home, in some strange way: there was a table with a microwave on it in one corner, and a futon on the floor beneath the windows. A slight figure lay curled on that, asleep or unconscious, face turned toward the wall: newTrouble, she thought, Tilsen. So he was here all along.
“Trouble,” the Mayor said, and she answered, “Mayor.”
The lights were working here, a single, badly shaded bulb dangling over the central work space, throwing the Mayor’s face into grotesque shadow. He was a thin man, cadaverously thin and pale, a shadow of light stubble further hollowing his cheeks, but his hands on the controls were sure and competent, his whole stance that of an El Greco prelate. Trouble stared at him, surprised at how much like his icon he was, and knew that he was staring just as curiously back at her.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised.” The Mayor’s voice was slow, too, and faintly slurred, and Trouble realized that he was still at least half on-line, some part of his brain holding off Starling’s men from the city systems. “You never really were one of us.”
So that’s the tack you’re going to take, Trouble thought, and dredged a laugh from somewhere. “No,” she said, “I’m not, and never was one of your kind. I’m better.”
The Mayor frowned, magisterial, would, she thought, have shaken a finger at her had he been able to free himself from his boards. “Very cocky. How unwise. Where’s your girlfriend?”
“Here,” Cerise said, from the doorway. Trouble didn’t dare look back, but saw the Mayor’s frown deepen.
“I would advise against using that,” he said, and one hand shifted on the board. A beam of ruby light shot from the ceiling, struck the worn floor just at Trouble’s feet, blinked out as quickly as it had appeared. Smoke curled from the cheap tiles, and it was all Trouble could do not to take a step backward.
“You’ll still be dead,” Cerise said.
“And so will your friend,” the Mayor answered. He fixed his eyes on Trouble, dismissing Cerise from his calculations. “I really didn’t think you’d throw in with them. Not in the end.”
“You didn’t leave me any alternatives,” Trouble said, stung more by the disappointment in his tone than by his words. “Christ, do you think I’m going to stand by and let you play silly buggers with the local nuke?”
“You believed that?” The Mayor gave a snort of contempt. “I thought you were at least technically literate. You should know it’s not possible. They—” He jerked his head toward the window. “I’d expect them to fall for it, but not you. Not even you should be that ignorant.”
Trouble felt herself flush, said, “Not so ignorant I couldn’t break your IC(E), Mayor.”
“That was the worm, not you,” the Mayor answered. “But real technical knowledge? I should have known better than to expect it.”
“Starling said you wanted to talk to me,” Trouble said, through clenched teeth. “So what do you want?”
“I had thought,” the Mayor began, and broke off, hands moving busily across the control surfaces. “But it doesn’t matter. What I want now is to be rid of you. You’re a disgrace to the nets, and the least I can do, the last thing I can do, is clean up the mess I inadvertently caused.”
His eyes slid sideways, toward the boy on the bed, and in that instant Trouble flung herself backward. The laser spat fire, the beam striking the tiles where she had stood. Cerise fired in the same instant, the noise enormous in the high-ceilinged room, kept firing, and with her second shot the snipers fired, too, shattering the windows. Trouble flung herself down, hands instinctively covering her head against the rain of glass, saw the Mayor’s body falling, torn, jerking with the impact of the bullets. Cerise screamed something, crouching against the wall by the door, a shriek that resolved itself at last into words.
“Stop it, you stupid bastards, stop firing! He’s dead!”
Whether t
hey heard her or not, the shooting stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Trouble lifted her head cautiously, saw the floor paved with glass like broken ice, and the Mayor’s body sprawled bonelessly across his machines. A coil of smoke was rising from one of the consoles, and she crawled forward hastily, trying not to look at the body, groped for the kill switch and cut the power. The Mayor’s hand hung down, almost close enough to touch; there was no blood on the thin fingers, but she could smell it, acrid and unmistakable, and kept her eyes down, not wanting to see the ruin of his body.
“Silk?” Cerise said, and Trouble looked at the slight figure on the futon. The glass has fallen all around him, shards glittering on his body, and she winced and moved toward him, sweeping the bits of glass awkwardly out of her way. She could hear footsteps on the stairs now, the heavy tread of running men, but she ignored them, began picking the slivers of glass carefully away from the mattress and the boy’s clothes. Cerise came to join her; dropping the automatic on the floor beside her, picked flinchingly at the larger pieces.
“He doesn’t seem to have been cut,” Trouble said, doubtfully, grimaced as a sharp edge sliced her finger. She sucked at the cut, and Cerise brushed the last obvious pieces away from the mattress.
“Turn him over,” she said, and her voice was sharp with fear.
There was something wrong with him, Trouble thought, as she helped Cerise ease the boneless weight onto its back, something very wrong about the way he moved, about the open, staring eyes. “I think he’s dead,” she said aloud, and groped for a pulse in the slim neck. He looked barely fifteen, not the seventeen Mabry had claimed for him, slim, sweet-faced, with huge brown eyes that stared sightlessly at the ceiling.
“Dead?” Cerise echoed.
“What happened?” Mabry said, and Trouble turned gratefully, to see armored cops crowding into the room behind Mabry and Starling.
“I don’t know,” she said. “The glass didn’t cut him, not seriously—”
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