Perfect Gravity

by Vivien Jackson

  Kellen came around to stand slightly behind her, up on the floor level of the sunken chitchat corral. He probably meant to look imposing or something, but all she could think was, Thank the cosmos he’s here. She could play hardball solo, but what a nifty thing not to have to. To know that if she even started to misstep, he would be there. With her and for her. She had never in her whole life done anything to deserve that kind of loyalty, but here he was. Confidence flooded her.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me everything?” she said, clasping her hands together at her waist. She kept her face easy, her expression accessible.

  She should have been more specific with her words, though. Vallejo anchored his deal with an initial offer. “If I give you information, you will get me out of here?”

  “Maybe.” Angela noted that even in a so-called prison situation—which she highly doubted was anything of the sort—he wore his signature boots: pointy-toed snakeskin numbers, dyed black to match his super shiny world-recognizable bouffant hairdo. This man had branding down to a science.

  “Ask me a question, and I will not lie,” said the liar. His boots might be brand-recognizable, but his beard had grizzled along his jaw, and it hadn’t been maintained properly. Parts were coming in white, dusting salt into his pepper. He looked tired.

  Angela locked her gaze with his, pushing the force of her personality across the room. She tapped her molars, engaging the psych-emitter. It didn’t have a receiver in range, but this was her ritual, her zone. Her comfy place. “Where are the crewmen, your so-called captors?”

  “No crew.” He spread his hands, palms up. “This submarine is remote-piloted, apparently, and I am confined to this capsule. You will notice how this room is separate from the other areas, such as the corridors. It also boasts significantly lower crush-depth tolerances than the rest of the inner hull compartments, courtesy of that window. Wiring in the walls suggests both bulkheads leading out can be sealed and this module can be flooded. If I attempt to pass through either doorway, alarms screech and threaten imminent catastrophic compression. This is no lounge, Senator. It is an interrogation chamber.”

  “I’m sorry if this sounds less than sympathetic, but to what end?” she said. The scenario he described sounded stupid, and she highly doubted an entity wealthy enough to put this sub together was so sublimely oblivious. Interrogations that ended with death before the revelation of desired information were generally considered abject failures.

  Vallejo took a long breath, held it, and then exhaled through his nose. “To what end,” he repeated. “I sleep here, in the lounge, you know. Alone. Day after day. These clothes are self-cleaning, and several months of rations are stored, along with significant quantities of alcohol and recreational pharmaceuticals, in the drawers and cubbies in the wall. We move on a circuit. Crystal Beach to Galveston to Matagorda Bay and back. Day after day, taking me through the ruin. Every time we come up the ship channel, still crammed with the wreckage scoured off Galveston Island, the window clouds over and reveals itself to be a smartsurface. A cursor blinks.”

  “You think someone wants your confession?”

  He shrugged, and though he didn’t move, part of him, the energy that always seemed to surround him when he was giving presentations, crumpled. “When I was a guest of your fine government, Mrs. Neko, I was forced to produce mech-clones. N-series infiltrator models, like the one you pretend is your husband. Each one I produced cut another sliver of my soul away, but I did it. Out of guilt, perhaps, for my many sins. Your government offered me atonement in exchange for a secret army of spies. But these new captors? I have no idea what they want from me. They never ask, and they never command. They just show me the ruins, and the cursor blinks.”

  His hand shook when he plucked the whiskey glass, considered it, and replaced it on the table.

  Angela wondered if she ought to laugh or applaud. Or both.

  Because she so wasn’t buying his story, or at least not his assumptions. True, she hadn’t seen another soul aboard this sub, and the automation tech he spoke of was available. She was intimately acquainted with the military capabilities she had, up until very recently, been tapped to command.

  Partial truth, then? He could very well not be lying about the remote-pilot rig or its circuitous guilt show. The problem was that there were too many parts to his answer, too many folds in which he could hide the lie. She needed to pare down her questioning. Get specific.

  “You’re looking pretty comfortable, though, for a prisoner.”

  He flinched. “A scar does not need to be visible to hurt.”

  Oh. Damn. She flinched, too.

  “We negotiated your release,” she reminded him. “My government did. We returned you to the TPA, and we got concessions in the valley. For a short while, it seemed we were approaching peace.” Which she had opposed, but she didn’t see an advantage to confessing that.

  “Oh, little girl,” Vallejo said, “this is so much bigger than governments.”

  What?

  Angela sat. Her legs weren’t working properly, and it had nothing to do with the swim. He couldn’t possibly be referring to what she thought…he couldn’t possibly know about the consortium.

  “All right.” Kellen picked up the questioning, giving her a reprieve. “Second question: Did you send your drones against the Hotel Riu when Angela was a guest there?”

  “No.” Gaze central, no shift of the eyes, just natural blinks. Vallejo’s hands remained still, easy in his lap. He wasn’t lying.

  Kellen pressed. “Did you write the contract to assassinate Daniel Neko back in October?”

  “God no.”

  “Why did you abduct your daughter Mari and bring her to Enchanted Rock?” Kellen asked.

  Surprise flickered over Vallejo’s face. He was far too well-trained a performer for it to linger long, but Angela saw it.

  He set his drink down. “Two days before I shot the clone abomination that you refer to as my daughter, I fell asleep in this chamber. I woke with a hood over my head, in some kind of lab. Not here. A pea-brain I’d met some years before in Texas, a man by the name of Nathan Grace, was there and told me he could bring me the clone body, which contains technology that I could trade for my freedom. To be clear, that thing is not Mari, no matter what it calls itself. I also had a hunch holding it hostage might help me punch a hole in the communication null my captors have placed over me and maybe attract the attention of someone who could help.”

  Aha. So that’s what they wanted. The tech that had been used to resurrect Mari. Tech that could be used to achieve immortality. Ice washed down Angela’s back, flooding her spine. Athanatos. The consortium.

  It was a moment before she realized Vallejo had just revealed his earlier lie. He’d known what his captors wanted. If he even had captors. Her head throbbed, and she swallowed back sick.

  “I don’t think Mari would ever willingly help you. She’s awful sweet,” Kellen said.

  “It is anything but sweet, young man. That thing you call by my daughter’s name was created out of vindictiveness and venom by an entity more repulsive and unnatural still. But we digress.” He turned back to Angela, but he was shaken.

  Hell, so was she. She hadn’t spoken in some time, a silence that Vallejo had no doubt noticed. He was too clever not to realize what he’d said to demolish her calm. She rebuilt that calm, and fast, but the damage was done. He’d seen her wobble.

  He peered at her now, intently, and she could have sworn there was a twinkle in his eye. “The assholes, as I may have mentioned earlier via message relay, have been limiting my communications for a few months now, and I needed a hole through their very peculiar firewall. Lucky me, I happened to know of someone who could create such a hole, given the proper impetus, and my captors would never guess we were allies.”

  Did he just reduce Yoink to a message relay service? Oh no, he d
id not. Sure, he might not have any reason to know better, but that characterization of her sweet kitty chafed. She didn’t take too well to Mari being described alternately as an abomination and an impetus, either.

  “Heron’s known all over for blowing up firewalls,” Kellen said, pride in his friend lacing his voice. “And I know you two go way back. You could’ve just asked him.”

  Vallejo put a finger to the side of his nose in a gesture that eerily echoed something Mari had done back at the Pentarc. “Yes indeed, he is, and I could have, but I think you’re wrong about him ever agreeing to help me. The appropriate idiom for such an eventuality references blizzards and hell. Mrs. Neko, wherever did you get this one? Potential is strong, but he wants training.”

  “Mustaqbal, and he’s fucking brilliant. But you’re still an asshole,” Angela said, drawing the focus back. “By ‘proper impetus,’ I assume you mean kidnapping the woman Farad loves.”

  “The thing rather, but essentially, yes.”

  “And that was your only motivation?”

  “And they said you were bright.”

  Damn it, he wouldn’t be caught in a you-said trap. Cagey old slimeball, was Vallejo.

  “What tech does she have that they want?” she prodded.

  His face went very still, like he was weighing truth against a lie. The words appeared to hurt when he did finally speak. That, more than anything, lent them the weight of truth. “Mari underwent a brain-replication process, transferring consciousness one slice of neural connection at a time from a battered and dying body to a fresh new clone. Imperfect process, flawed process, abhorrent process, but, I suppose, valuable to some.”

  “You’re talking about immortality. Athanatos.”

  Kellen’s words were pincers at the base of her skull. How did he know? How could he?

  “I am indeed.” Vallejo nodded, turned to Angela. “I gather it’s one of the several research avenues they are pursuing, so that a certain group of people can achieve unending life spans. But you’re Medina’s protégée, so you know more about these things than I. Now, are you going to help me escape this tin can or what?”

  Words erupted from her mouth before she could stop them. “Wait, what does Zeke have to do with…” But she bit the sentence off. She couldn’t finish it. Because she knew.

  Oh. God.

  What he’s always been planning.

  Athanatos.

  She hadn’t seen that one coming. Again. Twice now, blindsided by the stupid little bouffant fuckernibble in boots, but this reveal cut deep. The poison of truth bled along its edge.

  Of course Zeke was obsessed with immortality. Daniel had been, too. It was the thing they all talked about, all those consortium assholes, when they’d get together for drinks. For policy wonking. For training. For…

  For kidnapping rebel scientists and torturing them until they gave up their research?

  God. She wouldn’t put it past creeps like Limontour or Daniel, but Zeke? She’d never thought of him as assholish, never like the others. He’d been kind to her; he’d been her mentor. He’d arranged her admission into the MIST, had planned her career trajectory, her famous marriage. He had accompanied her on the single worst trip of her life, and he’d been there for her through the storm.

  “What does Medina have to do with my imprisonment?” Vallejo finished her sentence. “Surely you jest. He plucked me out of the UNAN detainment personally. He mined me for research, made me build unholy things for the last eight years. I’m sure there are worse devils holding his leash, but he’s the face, the jailer they send when they need me to do a trick.”

  “That makes no sense,” Kellen interjected. “You’re Texas; President Medina’s UNAN. Y’all’s governments sort of hate each other.”

  But Vallejo’s right. This isn’t about governments. It’s bigger.

  Angela couldn’t form the words to tell him no, it made perfect sense. All the grooves fit; all the cogs rolled. On the surface, sure, Zeke and Vallejo were enemies, on opposing sides of a thing that was conflagrating into war even as she sat here. But…what if they weren’t?

  What if Zeke had been claiming that Vallejo, and by extension Texas, was behind all the drone attacks to give a face to the enemy, to make the people believe? That scenario suited all that Zeke had told her in private, about wanting a war to boost the economy and his personal popularity. To get her into a cabinet position, though it hadn’t been about her at all, had it?

  None of it had. From the beginning, she’d been played.

  “There is no government in Texas, boy,” Vallejo said. “The scar that you call Texas contains a raggedy few unhappy people, and a lot of dead ones.”

  “Then all these drone attacks…”

  “We did it,” Angela said in a whisper. “The UNAN, I mean. My government. My mentor. My fault.” She had thought she was luring Texas into doing something unforgivable, into attacking, into justifying the use of military force to defend the homeland. Into war. But in reality, her government had initiated the violence. Zeke had. And he’d let her blame someone else for his sins.

  She had done the unforgiveable. Again.

  “Now wait one minute,” Kellen said. “Don’t you go taking responsibility for everything shitty in the world. Damon Vallejo is a liar. And I don’t mean white tinies, neither. His word’s about as reliable as a hot owl fart. He fucking tried to kill you with his death-bot back at the Pentarc.”

  Vallejo went white beneath his olive skin. “The mech-clone attempted violence?”

  “Bet yer ass-bone it did,” Kellen said. His voice was rolling, but the angrier he got, the sharper his voice got, the thinner his accent. He was still deep in dialect, but his voice was hard as diamonds. “Haired out and tried to murder her. Just like you programmed it to do.”

  Vallejo opened his mouth, closed it. Then opened it again. “I can say nothing to disprove your theory, but I will swear on everything sacred that I have worked my entire career to eliminate out-of-control mechs. I would never use one as an assassin.”

  Which, actually, Angela could believe. Vallejo didn’t have the body language of someone who was lying. At least not this time. And also, there was a thing that Kellen didn’t know. About how—and why—she’d acquired mech-Daniel to begin with.

  “Yeah, well, you—”

  “Kellen,” she interrupted before he could foolishly defend a woman who didn’t deserve it. “When I left Daniel, Zeke gave me the mech-clone, kind of as a stopgap, so I wouldn’t file for divorce. I’d found out some…things and was pretty off the rails. I don’t know how he convinced Daniel to maintain the ruse, and I didn’t ask. The mech unit was meant to make things right. Zeke transferred it to me, had it programmed with all sorts of government security subroutines. To keep me safe, he said. It was meant to protect me. He said.”

  Really to keep her trapped, though. Even without Daniel and his horrible lies, to keep her under the consortium’s thumb.

  Zeke knew how much she had come to rely on mech-Daniel, how easy it would be for her to assign any flaw in the mech’s programming to malicious intent on the part of its creator, on the part of Vallejo himself. Scapegoat the mad scientist. How easy for Zeke, how gullible of her.

  He totally would have named his secret backdoor Ashe.

  She had been played like a game.

  “To control you, more likely,” Vallejo said, echoing her thoughts. Strange, though; he wasn’t crowing. His voice was surprisingly gentle. “Once more, I wish I had never begun the mech-clone project. They have been no end of evil for me, and now apparently for others as well.”

  Angela thought of the polling boost Zeke got first from Daniel’s death and then later from her own demise. She thought of the president’s alligator tears during his acceptance speech on election night. He never had returned her messages after the Riu. Why was that, exactly? Because she was no longer useful
to him? Because she had worked herself free, on her own terms?

  Because he’d found out how untenable the whole situation was for her and was done with her rebellion?

  He’d told her to stay put in the ruined hotel, covered in bits of bomb. So his drones could come finish the job.

  That night, the night of the Riu attack, mech-Daniel had given her a drink, but maybe his intention had not been to relax her, as she’d assumed. Maybe it had been to delay her from going up to wait for her transport. Or to drug her so that if she did die a horrible flaming death, at least it wouldn’t hurt. In hindsight, it was clear mech-Daniel had known the attack was coming. Regardless of his orders or intentions, he had kept her in the room, in the hotel, on purpose.

  And he had contacted Zeke even before she regained consciousness. To report in? To request additional orders?

  Poor mech-Daniel, he must have been pummeled with instructions coming from all sides. No wonder his artificial neural ultimately couldn’t take it. No wonder he was a junk heap in the Pentarc right now.

  She thought of Zeke’s unusually close relationship with Daniel, both of whom had spoken at length of human immortality and a golden age. Both of whom were hooked in deep with the consortium. Both of whom had sought to control her.

  The child we make together will live forever. Best of the best. You were born for this. Now, smile for the cameras, Ange. That’s my good girl. Best.

  She’d thought Zeke was better somehow, because he said he wanted all the successes for her, on her behalf, but that had been a lie. The wants were still all his. He never once asked her what she wanted. It just never mattered.

  Oh, God. Her entire existence was a series of manipulations stacked one on top of the other, a melting sandcastle of a life, and all in service to the aims of others. She had spent years honing her will, learning to shape it and share it, but it wasn’t real. It was the will of her handlers. Fucking nothing about her was real.