Perfect Gravity

by Vivien Jackson

  The fuzzies closed in. Warped in. Rosed in, flower petals in backward bloom, poppy-pink and shrinking together in a soft, secret huddle, regressing. Whiff of green on the air, chemically not rose petals, breath held in expectation of sudden beauty. But nothing happened. No flowers opened. The green smell deepened to black.

  She was asleep but knew it. With certainty, she knew it. She was asleep. Boozy sleep? Sweet puppy eyes, spiked drinksy, and tight-furled flower sleep. A sleep: just one sleep, or multiple sleeps?

  Dreaming.

  Totally dreaming, all of it, even the part where the joints of the Hotel Riu slipped and then came loose. Far, far away, a giant moaned in protest. She reclined in its belly, shifting as it rolled. The building/giant’s long bones snapped, and the sound was a cannon shot. The whole world lurched, a quake deep in the earth. Did they have earthquakes in Guadalajara? How far south did the San Andreas fault go? Or wait, wasn’t there a volcano around here somewhere?

  Geology had never been her strong suit. Angela was more of a geography girl. She could draw those lines herself.

  Lines. Separations. Breaking. A fissure appeared in the wall, branching and leaving, a time-lapse of a tree in springtime, emerging from dormancy. The night crackled like superheated popcorn. Or maybe something else was popping. Something she didn’t want to think about. Staccato.

  The arched doorway to the bathroom, clearly made of children’s modeling clay, folded in on itself.

  Move. Don’t wallow. Only useless princesses get rescued. Smart girls rescue themselves. Paralyzed. Sleep stalking at the wrongest fucking time.

  If I sleep, I die.

  The last thought roared in out of nowhere and smelled like truth. It should have been followed by regret, deep ache for the people who would miss her, but that was…well, who, really? She couldn’t summon any sadness for her parents. They started the missing-her process a long time ago, when they sent her away to school halfway around the world. Her mentor? Zeke might hurt, but her death would be the best thing that ever happened to his campaign. An October surprise. He’d win in a landslide.

  There was no one. No one else. Not anymore.

  I’m going to die alone. Her brain accepted the statement with fatalistic calm.

  “Angela!” The mech-clone. The one that looked just like…somebody mean. Somebody forced.

  No, leave me alone. You don’t get to hurt me anymore. I made it stop. I made it.

  And then his titanium-boned hands were grabbing her, moving her.

  The tree in the wall shattered.

  The wall did, too.

  A cheese-shaped slab of ceiling—white like baby powder but considerably more solid—hit her shoulder hard enough to shift her arm free of its socket.

  The giant roared. The universe collapsed.

  • • •

  Reality blew in like an industrial fan, shoving the memories to dark corners. Angela pulled in a breath and tasted dust. Air from a spice shaker, sweet with an edge of tart. Like a bomb.

  Her shoulder hurt like a motherfucker.

  “Yes, she is waking,” said mech-Daniel. Mechanical, exuberant, perfectly calibrated voice. His lips taste like death. “But I am uncertain what her mental state will be. She ingested significant quantities of alcohol after the gala. She may need rest. I will contact you later if—”

  “Senator Neko—Angela—can you hear me?” Another voice, tinny and forever away, but just as familiar. Training and instinct stiffened her spine in response, made her want to sit up and pay attention. Made her want to be a good girl. Best girl.

  With some reluctance, she broke the surface of consciousness. On your own, girl. Get to it. Solve for X.

  If it had contained enough air, her body would have sighed. She opened her eyes. A nightmare met her, but at least there were familiar parts: mech-Daniel hovering above her, her mentor, Zeke, on the in-ear com, telling her what to do. So she wasn’t on her own after all. She was neither the decider nor the hero. She could rest.

  She opened her mouth, but dust blocked her throat.

  A hand moved behind her neck, lifting her head. “Here, you must drink something. My apologies, for I have no water.” Cool plastene rim of a cocktail bulb against her mouth. She parted her lips and drank, and the citrus-spiked whiskey pushed the dust down and into her body. Filth. Contagion. Fire. Sweet.

  Her head ached. Tiny, invisible, evil elves were pile-driving spikes into her eye sockets, but her thoughts washed crystal clear. Apparently, almost dying and getting knocked out cold could sober a girl up quick, no matter what she’d had to drink.

  Or mech-Daniel had messed with her blood alcohol level. Either way, she was clearheaded. “Fucking hell. Where am I? What happened?”

  Ezekiel Medina, president of the United North American Nations—Zeke—replied via com, “The Hotel Riu was attacked. A drone-launched missile or smartbomb, probably. It pancaked the top three floors, including the helipad and your transport. I am sending an evacuation team to retrieve you. Just be still.”

  “Somebody hit the Riu? Must’ve done shitty recon. All the important people are staying closer to the Expo Guadalajara.”

  “Maybe you’re more important to somebody than you thought.” Zeke’s voice had a grim note to it, something that snagged her concern, but she forced herself to pay attention to his words instead.

  Important, her? She was the target? And yet, it made sense. If her transport had been on time, or if she’d been up there waiting for it like usual, she would have been part of the rubble pancake.

  Whoever had attacked the hotel might have been—probably had been—trying to kill her.

  Which kind of narrowed the suspect list. She didn’t have a lot of enemies. Daniel was gone. And she had just accused Vallejo of mass murder and the destruction of Houston. Maybe instead of retaliating against her government, he’d decided to attack her personally.

  “You’re lucky to be alive, kiddo,” Zeke added.

  Though her eyes still hurt, Angela was focusing properly now, and she could see that luck had nothing to do with her survival. Mech-Daniel had arched his titanium-core body over her, forming a protective barrier against the giant slab of concrete ceiling. A shield. He was still holding it back. What were his weight tolerances? What would it take to crush him?

  She thought about the whiskey sour and his insistence that she drink it. And it had taken, what, three or four gulps to get her so soused she was hallucinating about reverse-blooming flowers? She knew he wasn’t above altering her blood chemistry to keep her down here in her room if he thought going up to the helipad could pose a danger.

  Which implied that he’d known about the attack before it happened. White, cold terror shivered up her body. She peered at mech-Daniel. He’d been injured. Something sharp had sliced the vat-grown skin covering his left cheekbone, exposing the metal frame beneath, but his expression was the same as always: pleasant, calming, loyal.

  And foolproof. She’d had the mech-clone’s neural net completely wiped and rebuilt from scratch after she’d acquired him. She had even insisted on including that private Dan-Dan channel so if he ever went too far in mimicking Daniel Neko, if the simulation ever got too good, she could pull him back. Mech-Daniel’s job was to serve her, which apparently also included putting himself between her and death. He had done that job tonight. Hell, he’d even managed to save her cocktail.

  No, she didn’t have anything to fear from him.

  But somebody sure wanted her dead.

  “Hey, Zeke,” she said, “can you patch your intel through to my com so I can monitor the feed real-time while we wait for your evacuation team?” It wouldn’t be the first time she’d accessed intelligence channels meant for the president. But it might very well be the most important time she’d asked to.

  There was a slight pause before Zeke replied, this time through her in-ear com rather than me
ch-Daniel’s mouth. “No need, kiddo. I’m monitoring all my feeds right now. I’ll tell you if anything important scrolls by.”

  Okay. Fine. “Who’s taking responsibility for the hit?”

  “Uh, nobody yet.”

  “That’s so weird,” she said, pressing knuckles of one hand into her eye socket, as if she could push the headache away. “If the building looks this busted-up inside, it must be a wreck on the outside. Even if no one interesting was staying here, those images would fetch solid prices on the disaster-porn market. Bonus if the gossips can confirm the presence of a squashed and bloody senator corpse in here.”

  Satellites and infra-capable drones would be gathering footage already. She half expected a ping from Rafa or his ilk, to confirm her safety. Or otherwise.

  But…nothing.

  Did that mean the killer wasn’t done yet? Her head throbbed. Her shoulder felt like somebody had wedged a broken tree branch into the joint and then lit it on fire.

  “You don’t need to be giving interviews right now anyway,” said Zeke. “Just sit tight, and we’ll get you out of there.”

  Yeah, but he wasn’t the one under threat. In her mind’s eye, she imagined somebody out there, watching drone footage, maybe catching bits of this very conversation on a hacked com relay. Figuring out she was alive. Coming back to finish the job.

  Who, though?

  Get it together. Think. She would have shaken her head, dislodged her thoughts, but those elves were still going with their heavy machinery behind her eyeballs. There wasn’t a part of her body that didn’t hurt.

  Zeke had taught her to be watchful, careful. Paranoid. He’d taught her to use the maximum number of words to say absolutely nothing, to do everything she swore she wouldn’t, and to clean up the truth afterward. He of all people ought to understand she couldn’t just sit here. Just like he’d understand why she couldn’t tell him her plans for getting out.

  Angela assured her mentor she’d stay put and wait for his medevac. Then she cut the transmission, blocked it. And broke her promise.

  “Dan-Dan,” she said, using the pet name to log on to their private channel, no intrusions. A whole different user interface, keyed to accept only her verbal instructions, shoved its way into the mech-clone’s neural. This was her back door.

  “Yes?” he said, still calmly holding up the ceiling.

  “Can you get me out of here?”

  He paused, probably scanning the structure or pulling feeds from the media drones she was certain hovered just outside the wreckage. After a moment, he said, “Yes.”

  “Before the president’s evac team arrives?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. That’s our plan.”

  “As you wish.”

  Mech-Daniel could do this next part for her—he was capable of following multiple instruction threads at once—but there were still some tasks that Angela preferred to do for herself. Using the mobile com built into her forearm and the heads-up on the backs of her eyelids, she located a transit station three city blocks away and bought two landjet tickets under one of her many aliases.

  She’d need to get cleaned up, have mech-Daniel pop her shoulder back into place, and repair the damage to his cheek, though the scratch was slight enough that a squeeze of wound gel should work. There was an all-night pharma inside the transit station, and she reserved a refrescando closet for two.

  Finally, she sifted back through her communications over the last week and found the one for Heron Farad, the rendezvous server she’d used to set up the holoconference the night Daniel had died. When her message came in like this, not secret or flirty or Wordsworth-themed—or filtered through mech-Daniel—he would know it was serious. She was calling in her favor.

  I request immediate haven, she messaged, and set it up to repeat. Transmit coordinates to physical rendezvous.

  Hours later, Angela and mech-Daniel were flying over northern Sonora when two pieces of data came in. The first was a matériel database alert, bounced off a civilian space station of all things, informing her that Heron Farad had appropriated a piece of UNAN military equipment in Texas.

  The second, in super cryptic style, was a text telling her to deplane in Kingman. A car will meet you at transit, it said. Behold the fire.

  Chapter 3

  The fire she was supposed to behold, apparently, wasn’t a literal thing.

  Angela figured out what it meant as soon as she saw the only car—an actual human-operated old-timey car—parked outside the transit terminal at Kingman. It was a vintage Tesla that clearly had been driven to hell and back. The paint was matte blackout with a narrow orange racing stripe down the middle and bitchin’ flame decals on either side.

  Fire. Behold. Okay.

  A whipcord-thin woman leaned against the hood, one booted ankle crossed in front of the other. Both her canvas duster and her long white hair rustled in the morning wind. She wore two bandoliers crammed with ammo and slung low over her abdomen, and the gleaming butts of twin dueling pistols peeked out of the holsters at either hip. From the arrangement of straps, it was possible she had a sword on her person as well, or maybe just a very big knife.

  She was also by far the oldest human being Angela had ever seen.

  Seriously old. Even older-than-La-Mars-Madrid old. Had this person never undergone a single cosmetic alteration? Her wrinkles had wrinkles, and when she flicked her half-charred smoke to the ground and crushed it beneath one worn bootheel, her voice creaked and rumbled like a shed in a thunderstorm. “I see you checking out my dragon.” She jabbed a thumb toward the flame-licked car. “You the angel I’m s’posed to fetch?”

  No, not an angel. Far from it. Fallen certainly, but the rest of it? No. “I am Angela Neko.”

  “Huh.” She inspected Angela with too-perceptive eyes. “Somehow figured you’d be taller. Who’s your dude?”

  Angela’s face warmed. He wasn’t her dude. Not in the way that the other woman implied. He wasn’t her lover. But he was playing the part of her husband. She should introduce him as such. And yet she didn’t. Somehow, couldn’t. “Dan-Dan is…my assistant.”

  He goofily half waved, one finger at a time like a three-year-old. He clearly didn’t have his “imitate real-life Daniel as closely as possible” programming engaged. Someday soon she would instruct him to turn it on all the time now, since he should be in simulation mode 24/7, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it yet.

  “Is he?” One side of the woman’s mouth pinched up in a half smile.

  Angela wondered if she was recalling some of Daniel’s older vidcasts, the more sordid ones. A shudder gnawed through Angela’s body, and in her current exhausted state, she didn’t even bother to fight it. “What about you? Are you the fire I was told to find?”

  The old woman snorted. Her dark eyes sparked like live wires, and she moved with the agility of someone half her age. Or maybe a quarter. “Guess I am.”

  She whistled, and the car door opened. Passenger side, shotgun, not in the back where Angela was used to riding.

  Something didn’t feel right. Angela hesitated, hoisting the bag she’d bought at the pharma higher up on her good shoulder. It didn’t have anything important in it, but there was comfort in holding onto a thing, even an unimportant thing.

  “Come on, then, mija. I haven’t seen my wife in three weeks and kind of want to get home. You dig?” What was that accent? Colombiana? Chilena? But with an overlay of early-twenty-first-century slang.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?” Angela framed it as a question.

  The other woman rolled her eyes and swished her long, winter hair back over one shoulder. “Maybe ’cause I didn’t give it? Look, I can tell you all my names, but what you want more is confirmation that you aren’t being nabbed, am I right? Fine. I’m here because my boy messaged, told me to detour by Kingman and pick up the woman who woul
d look least likely to get caught dead in a dusty transit station. Said you were top secret and posh beyond all possible belief. He didn’t mention specifically that you’re a sitting continental senator, but me, I can connect the dots.” Her black-eyed gaze swept up Angela and apparently found her lacking. “It’s pretty obvious you’re in something of a pickle, safety-wise, and my Heron, he can help you out.”

  “Wait.” Angela frowned. “Who sent you?”

  “Heron Farad.”

  “And there was no…” She felt silly mentioning it but couldn’t help herself. “No additional message? From…somebody else? Nothing like a line from a poem or anything?” Nothing reassuring? Nothing comforting?

  In the old days, Kellen would have been all about comforting her if he knew she was in trouble. If he knew she was scared. He’d been the army at her back, making her feel mighty.

  Maybe he doesn’t realize. Maybe my last message was dry rather than serious. Maybe she’d confused the hell out of him—a bunch of bright, fun, poetic messages followed by a to-the-point businesslike one. But even if he was confused, it was going to be okay. He’d replied in kind last night. He had forgiven her, even if he hadn’t used those words.

  He would be there, at the rendezvous place, and he would make some joke in that warm-honey drawl, and everything would be okay. She’d be able to think again. She’d be able to plan. She would be safe.

  Another whistle in a different tone popped the back door. Mech-Daniel rushed forward and held it open for her.

  “Nope, no other messages. You comin’ or do I have to incapacitate you and yer lanky dude?” Black eyes darted to mech-Daniel, but he was looking at Angela, not the raspy-voiced desert witch.

  “Dan-Dan?”

  “The car is clean. My scans show no threats in this area.” He paused. “But she is correct. We should probably hurry.”

  That feeling that something wasn’t quite right still gnawed at the base of Angela’s spine, but she ducked into the car, which turned out to be a tightish fit. Three-quarters of the back bench seat was jam-packed with a giant pile of dirty blankets and smelled like a refugee center. Unwashed, musty, with an underwhiff of bleach and fear. She had to set her bag down on the floorboard, and it wedged itself tight against her shins when Daniel folded himself into the front seat and slid his chair back.