“Yeah, dummy. I’m in the back of a fucking cab.”
“Okay.”
She stared out the window, where everything was still uncomfortably unfamiliar. “Fucking California,” she said.
“Well, you know that much, at least,” he said. “What happened?”
She bit her lower lip, slowly shaking her head, at a loss for words. “I don’t even know how to explain it. It was like… Alice, you know? She freaked, I think. She freaked, and it made me freak. We freaked out, I guess. It was weird.”
“You are still, um, you? Right?”
Too tired to laugh, she let out a dry snort. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I’m still me. Far as I know anyway.”
“Do you remember anything?” he asked again.
“What is that, a trick question?”
“Huh?”
“Ask the girl who doesn’t remember anything at all what she remembers?” She tapped her head. “Whole life. Gone. I remember that much.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Alice said she had put up walls between us. I don’t think that worked out too well.”
Rameez’s shoulders slumped, and he clasped his hands together. He was lost in deep waters. “Did she try to kill you?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“How do you know?”
She tossed him a sour expression. “I don’t know. I just know. You know?”
“Oh. OK.”
“Christ, my head hurts,” she said, massaging her temples with the index and middle fingers of both hands. She ground out wide circles on either side of her head, hoping to loosen the tension.
You still in there? she asked, not sure if a reply was a good sign or not.
I’m here, Alice said.
Mesa let out a deep breath. What was that?
Bleedthrough.
Yeah, I got that much. That was epic.
I’m not sure what you want to hear, Alice admitted. This is all very new for me.
I guess that seals the deal then, huh? We find your other you onboard Alabaster and get you transferred the fuck out of my skull.
Were there really any other options?
Nope.
“We’re here,” Rameez said. He nodded out Mesa’s window, toward the bright lights of Alice’s restaurant.
Mesa hadn’t even noticed the taxi had stopped. She popped the door open and stood on wobbly legs, grabbing onto Rameez for support. He helped her over to a statue of a lion. Its large front paw rested atop a small sphere, where she leaned and waited to get her bearings.
“OK,” she said after a long moment.
He helped her navigate around the side of the restaurant to an alley-side entrance. The solid black door was flush with its frame and had no window or doorknob. It did have, however, a coded touchscreen panel.
Mesa approached and, using Alice’s mnemonic input, entered the sequence. The entry code was sixteen digits long, followed by a complex trace pattern that required her to run her index finger in a confusing jumble of lines, dashes, and swirls. There was no indication that she had gotten the data entered correctly, then a heartbeat later, the black door released with a pneumatic hiss.
She stepped through, taking hold of the guide built into the wall, and descended the stairs. Another touchpad just inside required another complex sequence of gestures and alphanumeric entries.
The door released, and the automatic lights sensed her movements, bathing the room in a cool-white glow.
Blood was smeared across the walls. Bullet holes pockmarked the work areas and stained desktops. The room had a distinctly metallic stink, and she could very nearly taste the copper on the back of her tongue.
Despite the apparent violence, a part of her—a part that was distinctly Alice—felt perversely at home. The room felt empty in the absence of their fellow memorialists.
Chapter 24
Mesa set the alert function on the DRMR dash to lull her out of sleep after three hours. She couldn’t afford to sleep longer, or more deeply, than that.
The software protocols slowly dragged her consciousness back to the surface, and she opened her eyelids. For a moment, she was lost, until her memory caught up and told her where she was.
Sleep had been a bad idea. Mesa awoke more exhausted than she had been before drifting off, and her body was stiff and achy. Lying on the floor had been uncomfortable, and her back felt painfully torqued. She sat up, stretching her arms up high over her head, eliciting a gentle protest from her still-healing shoulder. She wondered briefly if she might turn into one of those old fuddy-duddies she often heard complaining of aching joints, using their swollen arthritis to predict changes in weather.
Rameez snored softly beside her, and she moved quietly but swiftly. Alice had planned smartly, and Mesa and Rameez had found sleeping bags tucked away in a compartment in the corner of the room. Rameeze seemed to be having an easier rest than Mesa had, at least.
Crawling out of the bag, she went to a nearby false panel set into the flooring and removed a piece of three-by-six slate. The crevice revealed a score of old, palm-sized Exabyte drives, credit chips, and loose paper currency for both the PRC yen and u-cash. More importantly, though, were the guns.
She drew out three Heckler & Koch P30Ls with lightweight trigger pulls. The serial numbers had been removed, and the rubber grips were worn. The guns felt comfortable in her hands, and she lined them up on the opposite side of the hidey-hole, ejecting the clips for each and racking the slides to clear the chambers. A dozen magazines were stacked alongside the guns, each full of standard ammunition stocks. There were no fancy fragmentation rounds or smart bullets with muscle-wire guidance and heat sensors for precision aiming. She had multiple clips, each filled with fifteen rounds of nine-millimeter ammo, and luminous contrast points for aiming on each gun barrel. She also had a single silencer, which rested beside the guns and magazines.
Good enough, she thought.
After breaking down and cleaning each gun, she reassembled them and tucked one into her waistband. She pulled her loose T-shirt over it, hiding the gun.
She took a black shoulder tote from the hole and filled it with the other two guns and spare magazines, along with the currency and credit chips. The Exabyte drives were of no use to her; she left them where they were and slid the slate panel back into place.
Rameez was coming to.
“Sorry,” she said, brushing her hair back behind her ear.
He smiled. “It’s fine.”
She smiled back, fingering a long, errant lock of hair that had fallen in front of her cheek. Standing, she slung the bag over her shoulder. “You good?” she asked.
“I’ve got the easy part,” he said.
She’d gone over the game plan with him the night before. She was going to be in place early and wait on Schaeffer to arrive. Rameez was to stay hidden in the enclave den, where he could work on gaining her access to Alabaster and try to find Jade’s location aboard the ship.
The alley was lined with a tight network of securiweb nanos, and he’d hacked into the security feeds. If anyone approached the restaurant, Rameez would know about it immediately. More guns were secreted around the room, and Mesa had cleaned another pistol for him so that he wouldn’t be completely defenseless. If worse came to worst, though, he could flee through the network of escape tunnels. Mesa didn’t expect that he would need to use them, but Alice reminded her that they had proved useful in the past and were there for a reason.
“Okay, then,” she said. She knelt beside him and gave him a chaste kiss on the forehead. “You be careful. Keep an eye on those webs.”
“I will,” he promised. “I’m more worried about you, though.”
She smiled but said nothing.
Alice had been unusually withd
rawn—Mesa wondered whether the woman was still a part of her or if she had somehow been flushed away. Then, in a deep recess of her mind, she felt the other woman silently making her presence felt. If Mesa wasn’t careful, she could easily forget that Alice’s subtle and hidden presence was still there. The change in Alice’s behavior made Mesa more guarded and left her more uncomfortable and wary of the secondary personality. She felt as if she were watching a snake readying to strike, but at even that thought, Alice was quiet. Mesa sensed Alice at the corners of her peripheral awareness more than she actually heard the other woman.
Is this how madness feels? Mesa asked.
Alice refused to take the bait and buried herself deeper. If Mesa had not known better, she might have thought the woman was coping with panic or a madness of her own.
Closing the door behind her, Mesa was careful to lock it and reengage the security grids. She gave silent thanks again to Rameez, hoping for his safety. She couldn’t help but wonder if she would ever see him again, but rather than being damned by the raw emotion, she felt peace and acceptance.
She was prepared.
Mesa swore softly to herself, staring down at the city streets seven stories below. Traffic was at a standstill, halted by a random PRC vehicle checkpoint. Four soldiers went down each lane, stopping at driver’s-side windows, asking questions, and studying vehicle interiors. A slightly visible mobile securicloud hovered through the air, moving around and beneath the cars, sniffing for bombs.
On one hand, the checkpoint was stupid, bad luck. On the other hand, she was three hours ahead of the scheduled meet time—that gave the soldiers plenty of time to deem the area safe and move on. None of the PRC troops seemed interested in the street-side coffee shop where she and Schaeffer had planned to meet; however, she couldn’t help but feel a little paranoid.
She sat on the roof of a parking garage, which was nearly deserted. The neighborhood was struggling to rebuild, and open storefronts were scarce. The most the neighborhood had going for it was the coffee shop, which actually seemed to be doing decent business based on the smattering of people sipping drinks on the patio and acting oblivious to the PRC shouting at drivers nearby. Vehicles were parked along the curb, and Mesa could count the number of cars inside the garage on one hand.
Nothing much to do but wait, she thought.
She was counting on Schaeffer and his team to get into place early and set up a watch for her own arrival. She was also counting on being in place before that and having a chance to observe the Daedalus forces she would be going up against.
Three hours had seemed a reasonable amount of time to ensure beating them to the meeting spot. The garage roof gave her the elevation she needed to watch for them. She figured they would want at least an hour of lead time on her.
The PRC were a sticking point, though. If they were still around in three hours, they could inhibit whatever Daedalus was planning—and that was fine. But the problem remained on her side of the equation. Did she dare to risk striking out against the opposition with armed military so close? Or what if Schaeffer was using them to get to her?
Just wait and see, Alice said, her echo slowly bubbling to the surface. Be patient and observe.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know.
After an uneventful hour passed, the PRC packed themselves back into their armored carrier, and traffic resumed its normal flow. Not long after that, Schaeffer appeared, rounding the corner of the block on foot. He strode confidently to the open-seating area outside the coffee shop and picked a seat that afforded him a wide view of the street before him.
He appeared to be alone. Mesa hadn’t taken note of any unusual behaviors from others in the area. No other new arrivals had immediately preceded his arrival or followed directly in his wake.
Mesa watched as a waitress took his order. Alone again, he slowly scanned the area, taking a very long time to track right to left.
She let him get comfortable then pinged him with an audio file she had uploaded to a secure drop box. “Make sure you leave her a good tip. Meet me at Descanso Gardens in an hour. Alone.”
He discreetly checked out his surroundings but made no other movements. When the waitress arrived, he asked for a to-go cup and passed her a large bill in payment. His eyes studied the people nearby but took no apparent interest in anyone in particular. Waiting for the waitress again, he resettled in his seat.
Again, Mesa did not notice any changes in anyone else’s behavior. Nobody broke away in a hurry, no speeding cars peeled around the corners—she saw no obvious indications that Schaeffer had brought anyone with him.
She worked her way down the stairs and exited through the rear entry well, to the street facing the opposite side of the block, where she was out of Schaeffer’s sightlines. Then she boarded a bus and spent the next twenty minutes debating whether or not he would wait the full hour to show.
Opening the commNet, she pinged Rameez. In addition to her street-level surveillance, Rameez was hacked into the city’s securiweb and monitoring the street cams.
Mentally, she asked him, “What’s happening?”
“You were right,” he said. “Schaeffer is not alone.”
“Can you take care of it?”
After a few seconds of silence, he patched the city cams into her retinal heads-up display. “You can see the feeds?”
“I can,” she said.
“One team is in the black sedan,” Rameez said.
Mesa watched the car approach a traffic light at a four-way intersection, which turned from red to green on all sides. The result was pure calamity, and a smaller economy-class vehicle collided with the sedan. Confusion and chaos took over as drivers swerved, braked, and crashed into one another. The sedan was completely blocked in.
Quickly, she set up another audio file and pinged Schaeffer with it. “I told you to be alone. I took care of your backup. No more games.”
Turning her attention back to Rameez, she said, “Keep connected with me, just in case. And watch out for any others. Can you do that?”
She worried about overloading him with too much multitasking in addition to trying to find Jade.
He shrugged. “It’s not a problem.”
“Good. This next stop is mine,” she said.
Established in the mid-twentieth century, Descanso Gardens was an urban retreat consisting of one hundred sixty acres of gardens and woodland. She passed through Magnolia Lawn, where a flurry of children chased one another across the bridge then took off down the trail, disappearing from sight. On the Main Lawn, vendors sold bento box lunches and cocktails, and the reverberations of taiko drums drowned out the raucous cries of unseen children.
After crossing a stone bridge, Mesa moved across the lawn to an empty bench beneath a newly blossomed cherry tree. Using the shoulder tote to hide her movements, she sat with the H&K in her lap, hidden beneath the bag.
Masked by the lush grounds to her rear and obscured from the sides by the profusion of cherry blossoms, she felt safe enough. Plenty of people were taking in the fresh air and the beauty of the garden, and she decided Schaeffer would be unlikely to launch a direct attack there, not while he was present and right in the middle of the action.
She reached into the bag and withdrew the silencer then screwed it into place beneath the tote. She felt surprisingly nervous. While she was certainly no stranger to killing—thanks to the tumultuous week, Daedalus’s goons, and, probably, Alice’s moral subroutines—her plans for Schaeffer were clouded with an uncomfortable degree of premeditation. She struggled with the morality of deliberately planning a man’s execution, and in public, no less. In a park, where children’s laughter and shouting filling the same air, she was planning to pollute that air with the whisper of a gunshot and her prey’s final gasp.
This isn’t who I am, she thought with sudden clarity.
>
Isn’t it? Alice replied with a churlish tone, mocking her.
This is you, Mesa insisted, but even in her own head, the words lacked weight.
You can’t even convince yourself, Alice said.
Mesa watched Schaeffer approach, one hand at his side, the other carrying a cardboard coffee cup.
This is who we are, Alice said.
Her finger tightened on the trigger, but Mesa willed herself to relax. Alice’s desire to kill was keen and primal.
Not yet, Mesa said. We need answers.
“May I sit?” Schaeffer asked then waited for Mesa’s acquiescence. “This was smart,” he said. “It’s a beautiful day. And this tree… you picked a good spot.”
“Wasn’t really my plan to talk horticulture,” she said.
He flashed a good-humored grin. “That’s good. I think I used up all my knowledge on vegetation.”
“Okay. Let’s cut to the chase then.”
He nodded, waving for her to continue.
“I gotta say, I’m not too thrilled about the way you’ve been conducting business.”
“Daedalus is very protective of its intellectual properties. You’re violating a shitload of patent rights, kid. And you’re in possession of stolen information, which is a little thing known as industrial espionage.”
“Uh huh,” she said. “So, like I said, let’s cut the shit and deal.”
“A deal?” He sounded surprised.
Her heart hammering, she said, “I’m saying, you’re a business man, right? Your little shock troops have killed my family, my friends, and you’ve run me out of Dodge six ways to Sunday. And yet, I still have everything you’re after, which means your plan has gone the entire straight fucking way to hell.
“So, yeah, let’s deal. Your way isn’t working too swiftly, which you must have realized by now and which is why you’re sitting in a fucking park with me. I’ve got what you want, and you’ve got what I want.”
Emergence (A DRMR Novel Book 2) Page 24