“I’ve been on edge,” he said. “I’m sure you can understand.”
She pulled him into a bear hug, threatening to squeeze the life out of his chubby body. “God, it’s good to see you.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s fine,” she said, smiling at him. She was surprised at how happy she really was to see him. “I get it. Things have been good and truly fucked up.”
She dragged a chair away from the desk, piled her bags atop the dresser, and sat across from her friend, while he sat on the edge of the bed.
“I’m sorry about…” As his voice thinned out, Mesa knew Rameez wasn’t referring to the gun.
Kaizhou.
She felt the burn in her eyes and shut them to stem the tide of tears. She’d spent days grieving in the motel, and she had no more time for that. Not right now.
She squeezed his hand and mouthed a thank you, her throat suddenly dry. “What did you find out about Schaeffer?”
Rameez laid out the basics for her, and she found herself relaxing a bit under his melodic accent as she absorbed the information.
“His credentials are very impressive,” Rameez said. “Before he had turned forty, Schaeffer was in charge of Daedalus’s Emergent Tech and Development division. He was a bit of a child prodigy and had earned his PhD at a young age, then joined Daedalus as a researcher.”
Mesa asked, “What his research in?”
“He focused on neuronal engineering, with a keen eye on bioware programming. Prior to working for Daedalus, his postdoc research was with a joint DARPA-TARDEC project and earned him him more than a dozen new patents in what was then an emerging field in Databiologic Receiver of Mnemonic Response. Schaeffer worked closely with scientists from the Department of Defense as they began engineering DRMR for military use.
“His work there caught the eye of the higher-ups at Daedalus. With some slight tweaks, Schaeffer began modifying the DRMR platform for public consumption. DARPA, at the time, had been working very closely with medical research schools, and Schaeffer helped bridge the gap to deliver the platform to industry.” Rameez sipped from a glass of water.
Mesa waited patiently for him to continue, reviewing the information he had collected on the tablet.
“He made a big splash, and within a decade, he was running the show in Emergent Tech based solely on notoriety. By capitalizing on his contacts across DARPA and within industry and research, he very nearly single-handedly changed the scope of the human experience and made cybernetics a household norm.”
“Kind of a big deal,” Mesa said, a chill running down her spine. Rameez had collected statistics that made it clear just how much Schaeffer had personally sculpted the world. Current estimates pegged twenty percent of the world as non-enhanced, mostly in undeveloped countries. The explosion of the DRMR platform into people’s daily lives had made Schaeffer a TIME Person of the Year fifteen years prior.
A recent article stated he was fifty-three years old, but in the accompanying photo, he looked to be perpetually stuck in his thirties. Not a single image, not even the cheap paparazzi shots, showed anything but a neatly styled coif and bright smile. Always sharply dressed, the man was clearly vain about his appearance and never appeared mussed. He was the epitome of old-American business success.
“The wonders of medichines,” Mesa said.
Rameez nodded. “His professional track record reads like a best-case scenario for executives-to-be, but his personal affairs are a disaster.”
Rameez took the tablet back and scrolled through to a new data packet regarding Schaeffer’s personal details. Mesa eyed the collection of news clips and magazine images.
“He’s been married twice, and his first wife died under mysterious circumstances. I tried to find out more, but the official investigation records were slim to nonexistent. The police chalked her disappearance up to a boating accident.”
“And Wife Number Two?” Mesa asked.
“She initiated divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Some websites hosted paparazzi images of her sporting bruises on her face, and at least four gossip rags claimed to have official medical records indicating she had suffered long-term abuse. All were sued, opted to settle out of court and pay Schaeffer millions of credits, and removed the stories and images from their sites.”
“Luckily,” Mesa said, “nothing ever truly dies on the Internet.” Regardless of the lawsuits, cached rumors constantly repopulated on alternate sites. Time was the only thing that kept them buried beneath more current rumors about more popular subjects.
“A few years ago, he was found guilty of aggravated assault against a photographer and fined three hundred thousand credits, which he paid immediately.” Rameez scratched at the corner of his eyes then continued. “The publicity was kept to a minimum, the result of Daedalus’ PR spin machines and public goodwill.”
Mesa thumbed her way through the data, landing on an image of a pretty woman. The metadata indicated she was older than she looked. “Who is this?”
Rameez studied the image. “Oh, yeah. Some of the rumor sites said Schaeffer began dating a superior in Emergent Tech, prior to his ascent to more official degrees of power, while still married to Wife Number Two. This lady, too, disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Nobody ever found out what happened to her.”
“And with her gone, Schaeffer was next in line for promotion,” Mesa said, filling in the blanks.
He contributed rather handily to their bottom line, Alice added. Mesa nodded.
“He has a private airship,” Rameez said. “Alabaster.” He tossed the images onto the air-display before them.
The white vertical sky-ship hovered before them. Solar wind sails stretched out on either side of the oblong vessel. The freighter had once been a sleek pleasure ship for tourists, hugging the skies above major American metropolises such as New York and Los Angeles, before both fell under the weight of war. The liner companies fell, as well, and Schaeffer had secured Alabaster in a private auction.
“The ship is largely green,” Rameez said. “Wind and solar keep its turbines turning. Other than food stocks, Alabaster is pretty self-sufficient. There’s a rare need for him to dock it, other than restocking and the occasional maintenance check.”
“Please tell me he’s docking soon.”
“He’s not. I checked.”
“How the fuck do we get to him?”
Rameez studied the space between his feet.
Mesa stood and paced.
Alice said, We force him to dock.
How? Mesa asked.
Alice explained, and Mesa relayed it to Rameez.
“What about falsifying an emergency?” she asked. The idea was pure Alice, but Mesa was, for the moment, reluctant to share that information with Rameez. “Insert a software update that requires docking, maybe some kind of patch that demands immediate attention?”
Rameez mulled it over for a few minutes, his head cocking back and forth from shoulder to shoulder as he thought. “That could work,” he decided. “How to get aboard then?”
We don’t have enough surveillance data for this to work, Alice said.
It was your fucking idea, Mesa reminded her. “Any idea what his behavior patterns are when the ship docks? What does he do? Does he leave the ship? Does he stay aboard? What?”
“I should be able to review past maintenance records and check out the city cams or securiwebs, figure out what he does.”
“That’s good. Let’s start with that.”
“What are you going to do?”
Mesa shrugged. “We need to find the men following you. They may not know I’m here yet.”
“I’ve been playing hide-and-seek,” Rameez said then explained himself.
He had four rooms rented in Cavour, each un
der a false burner ID. The security systems were soft and hadn’t correlated the facial recognitions against the multiple identities. The flaw was a giant gap in the hotel security that went willfully unrecognized in a vast array of systems. Most private security firms didn’t pay much attention to that exploitation because the presence of security was largely to appease the masses. Many security systems were in place simply to give the illusion of security and apply a psychological balm on its customers. If somebody exploited that gap to rent multiple rooms, no one really cared. The man-hours required to patch that gap with more vigorous security metrics were expensive, especially for a security protocol that was largely superficial. That gap might have mattered in an airliner security system, where the threat was far more significant and could be leveraged into an attack with the potential to kill hundreds of people. But the hotel was a significantly weaker target.
Although he wasn’t able to change his fingerprints, at least not easily, he could falsify the digital fingerprints the lobby scanners read, providing a false positive reference. The scanner would read the genetic whorls, but his algorithms would fool the authentication process. By installing a worm in the algorithm reader, Rameez could use more than one identity with a single image and set of fingerprints. He had secured four rooms, which hotel security thought were occupied by four distinct identities, rather than one individual using multiple false idents.
“If they made it far enough into the security system,” Rameez said, referring to the men who had been following him, “they should know I’m here but not exactly where. I’ve got multiple rooms on multiple floors.”
“And if they set up active security protocols to find you?”
Rameez smiled. “That’s the beautiful part, right? You’re here, and they may not know it. They can scan those four rooms, while I’m sitting right here in this fifth room with Juliet Landreau.”
Mesa couldn’t help but smile. She even detected Alice’s grudging admiration toward the man, which made her smile wider.
“Plug their images into hotel security and get a worm going. Let’s put the facial recog to work for us and see if we can’t suss them out.”
“I’ll get on that now,” Rameez said, his gaze softening as he patched into the security system’s back door, focusing on the work.
“And get me a line of credit while you’re at it. I’m out of cash.”
“Yes, Ms. Landreau.”
They smiled at one another, and Mesa left him to work.
You asked about your father earlier. Was there more you wanted to know?
Mesa thought about it, holding a loose grip around the rails that encircled the park’s edge overlooking the water. A slight breeze sent a salty mist across her, while the brilliant sunlight warmed her skin. There’s a thousand questions. Maybe more. But I don’t think you’re the one to turn to for answers.
Fair enough, Alice said, surprising her.
Really? Mesa wasn’t able to hide the derision.
Alice took it in stride, a ghostly smile passing through their shared thoughts. We had a complicated relationship.
You used him to kill people, kidnapped me, destroyed my mind, buried one-fifth of a backup mem in my dead brain, and then he killed you. To you, that’s “complicated”?
Is it not?
You’re something else, lady.
It’s strange, isn’t it? I can’t help but feel a certain simpatico.
Well, you have seen me naked, Mesa said.
Do you not feel it, too?
Mesa shut her eyes against the breeze, wishing she could avoid the answer. The truth was, an uncomfortable degree of familiarity was settling between them. Mesa wanted to hate her, but she had also been run far beyond ragged. She felt beaten down, both emotionally and physically, and she simply didn’t have the energy to hate the creeping voice in the back of her mind. She’d worried she was going crazy, but the reality was too ridiculous for such an answer as simple as insanity. And at the core: Alice Xie, like it or not, was a part of her.
What was he like? she asked, against her better judgment.
Jonah? He was strong. In my business, weakness can easily be a death sentence. But I felt a certain degree of familiarity with him, as I do for you, a sort of kinship. I always felt safe in his presence.
Even when he was killing you?
That was purely business, my dear.
I remember it, you know. What you remember of it, I mean. Those final moments, of being choked to death.
I’ve tried to keep our memories separate, but perhaps I was too late.
There’s too much seepage for you to even try, Mesa said. Two minds, one brain. The math doesn’t work out very well.
That was why she did not want to know her father by proxy of Alice Xie. She wanted to remember the man who had introduced her to warm delights of mac and cheese at Beechers on a rainy day, huddling around a thin wooden counter as the growing crowd pressed against them. She wanted to remember him holding her, the smell of sandalwood on his skin, the pier redolent with freshly caught fish, hand-crafted leather goods, and Starbucks coffee. Strong and brusque but always quick to smile when he caught sight of her, Jonah was always the first to cheer when she took down an opponent on the mat during her self-defense sessions. He taught her how to be confident around guns and helped her aim, squeezing his finger around hers as they shot paper targets together. She wanted to think of him as the artist who drew quick sketches of her and shared the old drawings he had made of her and her mother, Selene. Wrinkled, perpetually curling, and water damaged, the drawings were among the few possessions besides guns, ammunition, and mem chips that he’d been able to take with him during their exodus from Los Angeles. That was the man that she loved, the father she wanted to remember. Those were the memories of Jonah Everitt that she desperately needed to preserve and to protect.
I can help you recover what you were. Your memories, Alice said.
You made a backup, Mesa said, knowing it was true, because Alice knew. Seepage. The location of the backup was a mystery, though. And she sensed that not even Alice had an answer to that one.
Daedalus has a complete mem composite of me. Schaeffer is using it to hunt down and kill memorialists, to kill you, and to eliminate me. If we can secure that data, we can recover your history and restore you.
In exchange for the complete set of mems of Alice Xie, Mesa said, finishing Alice’s thoughts. She dug in her bag for the pack of stale cigarettes and the lighter. A moment later, she blew a cloud of smoke over the park railing and across the Pacific Ocean, watching it expand and dissolve into the blue.
Once Rameez figures out how we get to Schaeffer, we get you your mems, and you get me mine.
Deal, Alice said. Once again, a flush of happiness tripped through Mesa’s hippocampus, and the ghost of a smile lighted its way through her mind.
And, briefly, she felt the constricting press of wire around her throat. She coughed out the smoke burning her lungs, the unease passing. She spit out a flake of tobacco stuck to her tongue and finished the smoke. Alice retreated into the recesses of their shared mind once again.
She tossed the stub into a recycler, casually surveying the crowd. Attractive men were milling around, and a few bikini-clad women were tossing a Frisbee. She heard a minor commotion and turned to a couple’s volleyball game, but their tiff quickly turned to good-natured laughter as they resumed. Watching them play was a nice break for her eyes. It gave her a reason to pretend that she hadn’t noticed the man in a white polo and shorts eating a chocolate ice cream cone farther down the pier, surreptitiously turning his attention to her.
The facial recog software had sent out an alert two minutes ago, and she’d been waiting to see what he would do. Thus far, he’d only sat and ate. She never would have noticed his glances toward her if she hadn’t been watching fo
r them. He blended in and was casual as he kept a loose tail on her.
She adjusted the bag on her shoulder and walked slowly down the pier, letting her fingers dance sprightly across the rail as she went. When she turned to check across the street, she caught the man’s reflection in the Dura-Plast window. Following her, he’d abandoned his ice cream. His intent was clear.
Chapter 20
Mesa walked through the piazza, noting the men following her. After the ice cream guy had started his tail, two others had peeled away from the crowds and spread out. One man was ahead of her, while the other two hung back—one directly behind her, the other following on the opposite side of the street. She stopped suddenly outside a fashion boutique and pretended to check the price tags on a few articles of clothing, watching the men’s reflections on the windows and in a smartly placed mirror inside the shop. The two men reacted smoothly, nearly mimicking her as they found their surroundings suddenly interesting, setting themselves up outside the shops where they could observe her movements.
Nicely done, Alice said.
The piazza was a natural dead end, but rather than looping around to the opposite side of the wide U-shaped street, she entered a grandiose market square. Passing through massive arches, she encountered fruit stands, meat markets, artisans, shoemakers and haberdasheries, custom clothing sellers, and tattoo artists. It reminded her of the public market center at Pike Place in Seattle.
She wended through the noisy crowd, gently jostling past those vying for the attention of the butchers, salesclerks, and cheese makers. The market was a crush of people, neon, freshly cut meat, coffee, chocolate, smoke, soups, and dairy—all of it bordering on madness in its sheer excess.
Behind her, the two men had followed her in. The third had entered before her. He had either anticipated her entry into the market or had planned to stop and wait on word from his companions that she had passed by.
Emergence (A DRMR Novel Book 2) Page 20