by Greg Rucka
The situation surely was giving Velez nightmares, Cassandra imagined, and there was security enough to prove the point. The whole of the resort, built to accommodate 2,179 guests at capacity, currently accommodated 106, and over half that number were Velez’s own guards—or “agents,” as Velez herself termed them. The Board, the Directors, and their skeleton support staff comprised the rest of the number. As for those Luxe Life employees actually working the resort for the duration of the dataDyne retreat, all had undergone comprehensive background checks, and all were subjected to screenings and searches both coming and going to work.
To Cassandra DeVries, it was like living in an opulent, tropical ghost town.
She enjoyed the solitude at the start, and used the time to work on those projects that had suffered from lack of attention. She was drafting code for what she hoped would become AirFlow.Net version 2.0, and had been shepherding a team of her favorite programmers on a new project, exploring the viability of true artificial intelligence. The AI project was at least another three years from completion, but it excited her, and now that she had the free time, she eagerly reviewed their progress.
When those things were done, she caught up on her reading. She watched some of the many movies that friends and colleagues had told her she shouldn’t miss. She discovered, for the most part, that she hadn’t been missing much of anything at all.
And she waited for the Board to summon her and the other CEOs, whose company she had quite intentionally been avoiding.
It was on her sixth day at the resort, when she discovered herself no longer staring at her laptop screen but instead staring past it, that Cassandra actually saw the ocean shining outside her window. Her suite was on the ground floor, with French doors that opened directly onto the pristine beach, and the Hawaiian sun glimmered off water that shone a brilliant blue-green, and quite abruptly she reached for the phone on her desk and called the gift shop.
“I need someone to bring me a bathing suit, please,” Cassandra DeVries said.
It was mid-afternoon on the ninth day of the retreat that Cassandra DeVries emerged from the Pacific to see Anita Velez standing on the beach, waiting for her beside the small pile of her things, her towel and sandals and sarong. She felt a pang of apprehension.
“They’ve reached a decision?” Cassandra called from the water.
Instead of replying, Velez bent and picked up Cassandra’s beach towel, holding it out for her. From this distance, Cassandra couldn’t make out her expression.
The apprehension grew into a more tangible fear. If it wasn’t the Board finally summoning them, then Cassandra could think of only one other reason Velez would want to speak with her. If Velez knew about that, Cassandra could not only forget about becoming the next CEO of dataDyne; she could forget about remaining Director of DataFlow, as well. Of the five Directors gathered at the resort, Cassandra knew for a fact that two of the three married ones had lovers, and that Takahata Sato, who like herself was single, didn’t only because he was more interested in the games that could be played with LoveMatch VR.
Cassandra DeVries had few things she kept from dataDyne. The fact that she had a lover of her own was one of those things.
She drew a breath, wiped the seawater from her face. Velez hadn’t moved; the towel was still extended. With a sigh, Cassandra waded her way out of the gentle surf, up the hot sand of the beach.
“Have they made a decision?” she asked again.
“They want to see the Directors.” Velez handed over the towel, then turned her head to look down the length of the beach. “I’ve been told to double the protection details on yourself, Doctor Murray, Mister Sexton, Mister Sato, and Ms. Waterberg. Draw your own conclusions, Doctor DeVries.”
“They’re hedging their bets.” Cassandra ran the towel over her face, using the fabric to hide the relief she was feeling for a moment before continuing to dry herself off. “They don’t want to make a decision.”
“Would you?” Velez asked, turning her scan now to check up the beach. Her accent, a mixture of German and American, made almost everything she said sound at once curt and vaguely antagonistic.
“It’s been almost six months. I should think someone would have heard something from Master Li by now, don’t you?” she said, feeling somewhat silly for using the “Master” honorific, but it was how Zhang Li had insisted his underlings address him. “If not from him, then from his daughter, at least. At this point, their silence speaks volumes.”
“Unfortunately, no one knows what it’s saying.” Velez turned her head to scan the length of the beach in the opposite direction. She stood over six feet, which put her nearly half a foot taller than Cassandra, and easily fifty pounds heavier, all of it from bone and muscle. Today’s suit—and Cassandra had noted that Anita Velez always wore suits, and always trousers with them, never skirts—was of linen, offwhite and perfectly tailored. It was the kind of outfit that, if Cassandra had tried to wear it, would’ve gotten her accused of looking “too masculine.” Velez could make it work, however, somehow managing to convey both authority and professionalism without utterly abandoning femininity.
Cassandra stopped toweling off long enough to follow Velez’s gaze. Perhaps thirty meters down the beach, one of Velez’s uniformed agents stood on post, an assault rifle slung across his back. The security uniforms were black, and Cassandra could only imagine the guard’s discomfort, standing on the beach in the heat. When she checked the opposite direction, it was like looking in a mirror, only the second guard was female.
Cassandra put her attention back on Velez. “You don’t know what’s happened to them.”
“Is that a question?”
“You are the Director of Security, Anita—”
“Not for him, nor for his daughter.” Velez looked at her sharply. “I am responsible for the protection of the Board, the Directors, and their holdings. Personal security and counterespionage, Doctor DeVries, that’s all.”
“Personal security would imply—”
Velez’s brown eyes seemed to flare darker for a moment. “Not to Master Li. Not to Mai-Hem. They handled their own arrangements.”
“I’m not attacking you, Anita.”
“That’s probably wise of you, Doctor.”
“I’m asking if you have any idea as to their whereabouts.”
Velez cocked her head slightly, frowning. “Don’t you think I would have said as much already if I did?”
Not bloody likely, Cassandra thought. That was the problem with CORPSEC in general, and Anita Velez in particular; Cassandra never had any idea as to what the older woman thought at any given time, and reading her was next to impossible.
Everyone at the resort had secrets, Cassandra knew, including herself. Whether or not Anita Velez knew those secrets was always a question.
“I suppose so,” Cassandra said.
Velez maintained the frown for a moment longer, then stepped back, again scanning the beach. Cassandra moved forward, slipping her feet into her sandals as she ran the towel over her blond hair. She was still unused to its length. Before coming to Kauai for the retreat, her hair had been long enough to reach the small of her back. Then she’d dropped five thousand euros on a makeover at a Paris salon, and maybe because it was the most Cassandra DeVries had ever spent on her appearance in single sitting, she’d allowed the stylist to persuade her that a “trim” was in order.
In Cassandra’s view, what she’d ended up with was less a “trim” than a “shear,” and now her hair barely reached the nape of her neck in the back. When she’d first seen the results in a mirror, she’d thought it made her look too severe, but the stylist had assured her it made her look “professional” instead.
Velez cleared her throat. “When I said they wanted to see the Directors, I meant to say they wanted to see all of the Directors, and that they wanted to see them right now.”
“I’ll need to head back to the suite and get changed.”
“Now, Doctor DeVries.”
“If it makes you feel better, Doctor, Mister Sato was located in the sauna, and Mister Sexton on the fourteenth hole.”
She swore softly to herself, picking up her sarong and wrapping it quickly around her hips. This changed things. If the Board was growing insistent, it could only mean that they had made their decision. In which case, Cassandra was keeping them waiting, and that certainly wasn’t a wise thing to do.
“Hello,” she muttered to herself, knotting the sarong in place at her hip. “I’m Doctor DeVries of DataFlow, and I’d like to be dataDyne’s next CEO.”
“If that’s the case,” Velez said. “You’d better get a move on.”
For Immediate Release to dataDyne shareholders:
dataDyne to Name New Chief Executive Officer
With the announcement that CEO Zhang Li is retiring from both public and professional life, the dataDyne Board of Directors has embarked on an aggressive search for a new Chief Executive to guide the corporation and its holdings to a bold new future that will at once honor and augment the legacy created by the corporation’s esteemed founder. In accordance with the philosophy pioneered by CEO Zhang Li, and in the belief that dataDyne continues to employ only the best and the brightest in all of its holdings, the Board is focusing its search within, rather than without.
At this time, five candidates are in consideration for the position; all five candidates are supremely qualified in their own right, each of them a luminary in his or her respective field, and a Director of one of dataDyne’s most profitable and innovative subsidiaries.
In order to allay shareholder apprehension during this exciting time in dataDyne’s corporate life, brief biographical information on the five candidates follows:
Cassandra V. DeVries, Ph.D.:
Chief Executive Officer of DataFlow for the past three years, Dr. DeVries has overseen explosive growth and a 74% increase in market share during her tenure. A world-renowned expert in software design and application, Dr. DeVries is the creator of AirFlow.Net, a DataFlow proprietary software used to coordinate and manage anti-gravity air traffic in cities all around the globe, which, since its introduction to the market, has been directly responsible for a 98.7% decrease in null-grav vehicular accidents.
Dr. DeVries holds degrees from King’s College at Cambridge University, MIT, and the University of Cambridge, as well as an honorary doctorate from Harvard University
She is thirty-seven years old, single, in excellent health, and resides in Paris, near her offices at DataFlow’s corporate headquarters.
Friedrich R. Murray, M.D., Ph.D.:
The Nobel Prize—winning CEO of pharmaDyne for almost four years, Dr. Murray is world-renowned for his discovery of the influenza A subtype H22N17 vaccine that stopped the spread of the 2016 “superflu” outbreak. A pioneer in the field of elective lifestyle-enhancement surgeries and performance-enhancing medications, Dr. Murray has overseen the introduction to the market of Cognitia, Endexcite, and Perpet D, amongst others.
Dr. Murray holds degrees from Stanford University, the Johns Hopkins University, and McGill University, as well as multiple honorary degrees.
He is fifty-six years old, a widower, in excellent health, and resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, near pharmaDyne’s corporate headquarters. He has one son, Laurent, age twenty.
Takahata Sato:
Mr. Sato is a public-relations and marketing specialist, who served as the Director of Media Relations for dataDyne from 2012—2016, until spearheading the creation of dataDyne’s ServAuto Robotics division in 2017. Mr. Sato—who has long-standing ties to the robotics research and development community through his alma mater, Japan’s Wasada University—introduced the lifeHelp 1.0 line of personal domestic automata, which continues to generate an estimated five billion dollars annually, and currently controls 41% of the global personal automation market. In addition, ServAuto Robotics has launched a program in conjunction with dataDyne R&D/Aerospace to develop unmanned robotic drone aircraft for military and law enforcement use.
Mr. Sato holds an MBA from Wasada University’s Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies.
He is forty years old, single, in excellent health, and resides in Tokyo.
Paul H. Sexton:
Mr. Sexton is the CEO of Royce-Chamberlain/Bowman motors, dataDyne’s premier automotive manufacturer. He was the Vice President of Business Development for Royce-Chamberlain, and led the initiative to merge with Bowman Motors Group in 2016. Under his leadership, R-C/Bowman has captured a staggering 79% of the personal air vehicle market, and has launched an aggressive program to develop null-grav vehicles for use by municipal emergency services.
Mr. Sexton is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, with a Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering, as well as several honorary degrees in automotive design, and is the Director of Personal Mobility Studies at Detroit’s Carson Center for Futurist Transportation and Modeling.
Mr. Sexton is forty-nine years old. He resides in Detroit with his wife, Eileen, and two sons, Christopher, seventeen, and Thomas, nineteen.
Amanda L. Waterberg:
The CEO of Patmos Casualty and Liability/Global, Ms. Waterberg has overseen dataDyne’s most profitable subsidiary for the past eight and a half years. It was Ms. Waterberg who developed the first dataDyne “We Care” Clinics as an alternative to hospital treatment, and who successfully lobbied for mandatory comprehensive genetic screening of insurance applicants. Since her appointment as CEO, Patmos Casualty and Liability/Global has decreased claimant awards 64%, while continuing to dominate the life, property, and medical insurance fields.
Ms. Waterberg was educated at Basel University, Switzerland, where she earned her MBA.
She is fifty-four years old, married, in good health, and resides in Los Angeles. She has two children, a son, Aleks, twenty-seven, employed by R-C/Bowman Motors (Europe), and a daughter, Dina, twenty-four.
The Board of Directors is delighted to introduce these candidates to dataDyne’s shareholders. Each of them embodies and illuminates the qualities and skills that have made us the world leader in value-added services.
CHAPTER 5
Carrington Institute—London, England September 27th, 2020
Jo fought herself awake, clawing free from the nightmare with force of will alone. She opened her eyes, saw the dead gray threads of another overcast dawn spreading across the ceiling. Her heart was still wild in her chest, and she heard her breathing, rapid and shallow. She tried to move her right arm, to pull herself free from her twisted sheets, but the arm didn’t respond, and Jo thought then that it hadn’t been the nightmare, that it was happening again, that it was all horribly real, and she fought the immediate urge to sob, to cry for help.
With effort, Jo twisted onto her side, and almost instantly she felt the pins and needles rushing into her arm, the circulation returning—and that explained it, then. She’d fallen asleep on the limb, and in turn the limb had fallen asleep. The nightmare, for the time being at least, remained just a nightmare, and as the blood ran back into her arm and the pins and needles grew more painful, she closed her eyes and relished the sensation.
After a couple of minutes she tried unwrapping herself again, and this time managed it with ease. She swung her bare legs off the bed, feeling the hardwood floor radiating its chill through the rug and up into her feet. She relished that, too, the simple fact that she could feel it, that she could feel anything. She bent forward, stretching, running her hands over her calves, to her knees, then straightened, exhaling, finally relaxing.
The problem with the nightmare was that it wasn’t one, not really. It was born of memory, and while Joanna Dark’s conscious mind could barely recall the trauma, it still lived deep in her subconscious, eager to come out at night. The subconscious made it vivid, confused fact with fiction, took old fears and made them fresh again.
When she tried, and she didn’t often, because it wasn’t a plea
sant memory, she could recall bits and pieces. Not more than three years old, flat on her back and wrapped in a brace that held her immobile, the shrieking pain that made her sob as life came back into her limbs. Days and days and weeks and months when she couldn’t move, when others moved her, nurses and doctors and her father, speaking to the toddler with the broken back, telling her to be patient, that she was getting better, slowly but surely.
For most, a severed spinal column was the result of an accident, some external trauma. For Joanna Dark, it had been her natural state, the way she had entered the world. There had never been any explanation for the condition, no satisfactory reason offered other than a genetic predisposition. Some babies are breach births, some come out with the umbilical wrapped around their neck. Jo had entered the world paralyzed.
It had taken years of treatments, surgeries, and therapies, some experimental, some not, before she’d completely healed. Jo could still recall the pain of it all, and the shame. Crawling while children ran past. Needing help each and every time she wanted to dress, to eat, to bathe. She’d been five before she had mastered walking on her own.
In her nightmare, her spine was again split in two, but in her nightmare, she wasn’t two or four or five. She was twenty, and it was now, and she was helpless once again.
Jo reached for the clock on the nightstand, saw that it was reading seven minutes to six in the morning. She got up, stretched again, then turned back to make the bed, laying the sheets down smooth and tight, folding the top of the blanket back one hand’s width, the way her father had taught her.