Extensis Vitae: Empire of Dust

by Gregory Mattix

  Rin sat down on the bench beside the pond, the same bench where she had sat with her father those many months ago. Haruto had passed away in January and, being old-fashioned, elected not to get a neural transfer and reskin. Her brother was the opposite—even though he was starting to embrace the old ways more, he was fascinated with technology and, Rin sensed, afraid of being sick or disabled and dying. Father got dementia, and I was crippled—no wonder he’s afraid of the natural decline of his body and mind. She was leaning toward her father’s point of view. Yes, she had come crawling back to her brother nearly dead after the Cataclysm, asking for his help. He had granted her a new skin, but that day seemed a lifetime ago to her. She had been indentured and paying off that debt ever since—until Seijin had symbolically destroyed her token. Although the physical constraints over her were gone, she was still bound by duty to her clan.

  She wondered how much time she had remaining. If they achieved victory, it would undoubtedly come with a high cost. If I can erase the tarnish I placed upon my family’s honor, I will be content. One life should ultimately be enough. Live well—die better.

  Her thoughts turned again to those who were gone.

  Ryu, with his crooked smile and hint of mischief always in his dark eyes… She remembered him cheering her on as she sparred with her brother, and Kenji became enraged when she bested him. Poor Ryu. I miss having a partner, a friend and lover. She thought of his smile and kind gray eyes.

  “Rin,” Ryu said with a smile. “Mind if I join you?”

  Wait a minute, that’s not right. Ryu had dark eyes… what—

  Rin opened her eyes to see Reznik standing at the footbridge watching her, a tentative smile on his face.

  “Mind if I join you?” he repeated. “You looked pretty deep in thought… I can give you some more time—”

  “No, of course not,” Rin blurted, embarrassed. She flashed him a quick smile. Whatever her daydream had meant, she pushed it away for later analysis. She was pleased to see Reznik wore the gray kimono she’d had the servants set out for him. He looked slightly awkward wearing it, but it looked good on him.

  “This is so peaceful,” he was saying. “I see why you like coming here. It’s beautiful.” He sat down beside her and was quiet a moment. “You look nice.” He glanced at her light blue-trimmed kimono, which set off her eyes nicely, she thought. “Almost feels like having a normal life again, huh?”

  “Thanks. A normal life… sure, wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “Tell me about it. I barely remember what that used to be like. So, this is where you grew up?”

  Rin nodded. “I grew up homeschooled at first. I took up a weapon kata at an early age and kept it up for years—I always enjoyed the katana. Such an elegant yet powerful weapon.” She realized she was starting to ramble but for once ignored her normal urge to clam up. It felt right to share her story with the friend she had been through so much with. “I never even knew what the family business was until one day Father had me sit next to him as he met with his men. I was twelve, I believe… but I remember one man came to him having been deeply shamed by losing an important shipment of goods or something. I can’t recall what it was now, but it’s not important. After his grave mistake, the man had to prove his loyalty to my father, the oyabun—or ‘clan chief’ is how you’d think of it. So one of the servants brings out this little wooden box and sets it in front of Father. I can still remember the dragon carved on the lid with jade jewels for eyes.” She absently brushed away a cherry-blossom petal that the breeze had carried into her hair. “Father opens the box and takes out this small, engraved tanto. He hands the knife over to the man and says, ‘You can reclaim your honor by proving your loyalty and rejoining the clan.’ The man places his hand on a towel, ties a cord around his little finger, and hacks off the end of the finger at the last knuckle.”

  “That must have been pretty intense to witness at such a young age.”

  Rin smiled sadly at the memory. “I’m embarrassed to admit that I shrieked in horror at it. Father and everyone else ignored me—except Kenji, of course—he never let me live it down, but I was so ashamed at my outburst.”

  “The thought of you shrieking at all is hard to imagine,” Reznik said with a grin.

  Rin laughed. “Indeed. I still remember it like the day it happened. The cord was tied so tight that the blood just oozed out of the wound. The man’s face went instantly pale—I thought he was going to keel over right there, but to his credit, he didn’t. My father accepted his gesture, and the man went on to be a loyal clan member for many years.”

  She trailed off for a minute, and Reznik kept quiet, listening. “I vowed that I didn’t want any part of that livelihood, so when I was accepted to Stanford, I took the opportunity to flee the family business… and the family in general, it turned out. I visited home while in college a couple times, but after that, it was over twenty years before I returned broken and near dead, courtesy of a rare neuromuscular disease and a stab wound through the lung. That came later from a thug that threw me through a plate-glass window.”

  Reznik’s eyebrows shot up. “What happened?”

  “Just general post-Cataclysm mayhem. This gang chased me through a mall that was pretty well looted already. The biggest, ugliest, meanest one decided he’d try to take advantage of a weak, disabled woman, so he threw me through the window.” She was touched by Reznik’s look of concern. “Oh, don’t worry about me—he got the worst of the deal. Eviscerated.”

  “His first mistake was thinking you weak. How did you get away?”

  “I’m such a bad storyteller.” Rin shook her head and laughed self-consciously. “I didn’t get away. I’m lucky I survived at all. It happened to be this Asian goods store—a mix of antiques and junk, I guess. After being thrown through the window, I crawled through the glass, shredding my hands and forearms in the process, and happened upon this decorative katana that had fallen behind a bookshelf. It was junk, of course, but in my panicked state, it had enough force behind it to spill that bastard’s guts all over the floor.” She shivered as she recalled the feeling of helplessness after the thug pulled the battery from her exoskeleton. She could still hear the glass cracking beneath the thug’s boots and smell his fetid breath. You all ready for this? he had whispered in her ear.

  Reznik waited patiently for her to continue, face filled with concern.

  “As I lay there bleeding out, I came to the decision that I wasn’t ready to die—there had to be something more to life than dying as a victim like that. So I made the call to my brother. I basically came crawling back to the family near death, begging for help. And help they did. They sent some men to pick me up and fly me back to Sea-Tac and gave me a new skin. I’ve been paying off my debt as my brother’s lieutenant ever since.” Rin felt relieved to have gotten the story out—once begun, it had been like trying to bottle up a torrent of water.

  “What did you do with the decorative katana?”

  “I still carry it to this day. I had it reforged with a decent blade, of course. The two of us have been through a lot together.”

  They sat quietly, enjoying the tranquility of the grove. “Thank you for opening up to me. You’re a fascinating woman, Rin.”

  “Actually, it’s Reiko. My birth name, that is,” she said somewhat shyly.

  “Reiko.” Reznik let it roll off his tongue as if trying the name on for size. “I like it.”

  “Just keep that between us, okay?” She jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow. “I have a fearsome reputation to live up to, you know?”

  Their laughter filled the grove.

  Chapter 21

  Marcus clicked through the personnel directory, searching for one file in particular. On the one other occasion he had tried to take a peek at Bethany’s file, he had been denied, as everything but her basic contact information had been restricted.

  “There you are,” he said as he clicked on her file. To his surprise, the full file opened up on his holoscreen. “Sure
is nice having full system access. Now let’s see…”

  A file photo of a young Bethany greeted him. She looked similar to her present appearance, only plainer of looks. Her eyes were a common brown instead of amber, her nose was a little too big, and she had a slight underbite, features which one didn’t usually associate with beauty. Her eyes, however, held the same fire.

  “Bethany St. Pierre, daughter of Annika Thorne-St.Pierre,” he read. “I’ll be damned.” He had never made the connection until now about Bethany’s unchallenged power within the company and unprecedented access to Thorne himself. She was Thorne’s great-granddaughter.

  He noted that she had grown up in a single-parent household. Her mother had been the acting CEO of Thorne Industries until Alistair Thorne had been brought back and reskinned. Bethany had been orphaned when her mother was assassinated outside the hospital performing the procedure on Thorne. She had been placed as a ward of the company, much like Marcus himself had years later. Bethany had gone on to attend private schools, spent time doing social work, and eventually eschewed finishing her business degree in the final semester at Princeton, instead enlisting as a grunt in the Expeditionary Force at the age of twenty-two.

  “Why would you throw away a great education to join the military?”

  He clicked through her military file, noting decorations for valor and a battlefield promotion to staff sergeant in a black ops unit during operations conducted in the Democratic Republic of China. Marcus gasped as he clicked to the next page and saw a photograph of Bethany after she had been pulled out of a POW camp during the war. She had been disfigured so badly he wouldn’t have recognized the woman. Another photo showed an anguished Alistair Thorne standing over her hospital bed while she was bandaged up following numerous surgeries.

  “Jesus. You really went through hell, didn’t you?”

  He went on to read that she had been reskinned afterward and been repatriated into her old unit, eventually taking command herself. Shortly before the Cataclysm, she had quit the Expeditionary Force to be promoted to chief operations officer of Thorne Industries, working for her great-grandfather. The file became sketchy after that, with Marcus able to determine that she always hid her true position, preferring to act as a lower-ranking CorpSec officer at times, much of her time spent undercover rooting out spies and traitors.

  “You’re working late, I see.” Bethany was suddenly leaning against his doorframe, making Marcus’s heart skip a beat. “How’s it coming along with the server evaluations?”

  “Oh, uh… hey.” Marcus waved the file off his screen before she could see it. How long has she been there? He looked up to gauge her reaction, but she seemed to have not noticed that he had been perusing her file. She looked tired, and Marcus briefly felt a stab of pity for what she had gone through in the POW camp. “It’s slow going. Nothing really significant to report yet.”

  “Mr. Thorne wants results, Marcus. Make sure you have something to report at the board meeting in two days.”

  “Shouldn’t be too much trouble.” He was expecting her to push harder for information, but she just nodded and walked away.

  Just then, a message popped up in his inbox from Ram. “I got the update server reprogrammed the way you wanted and ready to go online. Standing by for your signal to execute.”

  Marcus leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head. Perfect. Things are starting to fall into place.

  ***

  The next morning, Marcus made his way to the limo with Beefy and Taciturn. He was going to try to visit Ayane one last time. He knew before everything was over, that could turn out to be his last chance if things went badly. He was just picturing her face when he was unexpectedly broadsided.

  He saw a blur of motion out of the corner of his eye, and before Marcus knew what was happening, he was slammed hard against the hood of the limo. His chin bounced off the armored hood, causing him to bite his tongue painfully. A steel grip held him down even as he watched his surprised bodyguards’ sidearms appear belatedly in their hands, aimed at his attacker.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you stupid asshole?” Bethany’s voice was tight with barely contained fury. She pulled him up by a handful of his uniform and slammed his head back down on the hood.

  Marcus managed to turn his head this time to avoid much more damage to his face. He briefly saw stars when his skull hit the hood. The salty taste of blood was filling his mouth, and his tongue was on fire. It all happened so quickly he couldn’t think.

  “I’ve stood by you your whole career here… your whole life… and now you think you’re gonna betray us. Betray me.” Bethany’s voice was harsh with emotion—more than just anger—she sounded genuinely hurt. Her control was on the verge of slipping. Marcus had never seen her like that before. He was suddenly afraid of what she might do.

  Beefy and Taciturn edged closer, guns still drawn, he was pleased to see, but Bethany ignored them. Two other CorpSec grunts approached slowly with their weapons drawn and aimed at Marcus’s bodyguards. He waved for Beefy and Taciturn to back off. They halted their advance, but their eyes darted back and forth between Marcus and Bethany in confusion.

  “Do you even have an explanation? How can you do this, Marcus? I don’t understand—is it about that little Yakuza slut you fell for in the detention center?” She ground his face against the hood. “Why are you so fucking stupid to throw it all away with this treason?”

  “Like you betrayed my father, you mean?” Marcus felt anger of his own flare up. “You murdered my mom and brother, you evil bitch!” He struggled against her but to no avail. “You pretended to be my friend as I grew up, but all along, you were a murderer. I know the truth about you now. You wanted my father gone, so you tried to kill him and spread all the bullshit rumors about him being a murderer and terrorist.”

  A moment of tense silence stretched uncomfortably. “So he is the one behind this. I had suspected as much. That matter with your family was nothing personal, by the way—I was just following orders. Your father couldn’t prove his loyalty, and neither can you, apparently. So here we are.” Her grip loosened, and she grabbed his shoulder, turned him over roughly, and shoved a photograph in his face. “Drone imagery taken shortly after a recent CorpSec engagement at an old factory in the Sprawl.”

  You were just following orders? Of course you were. Marcus took a deep breath and looked at the photo. He wiped the blood off his mouth with his sleeve. The picture clearly showed him with his bodyguards, talking with his father and the rebels after the fight at the Apex Robotics factory.

  Bethany continued, “James Mason’s back-alley facial reconstruction job does a good job throwing off the facial rec systems, but I recognized him when we laid waste to that rebel base in the wasteland.” She glanced over at the skins with drawn weapons. “Lower your weapons, you morons.”

  The two CorpSec grunts immediately complied, but Marcus’s bodyguards hesitated. They looked to him for direction.

  “It’s okay, guys,” Marcus said. “Stand down. Go about your other duties until I return. I might be gone a while… please water my plants, will you?”

  The two finally holstered their sidearms. With a glance behind them, they walked away.

  “You think you’re going to return?” Bethany stared at him coldly. “I wouldn’t count on that.” She watched the two retreating bodyguards with narrowed eyes. “Those two are taking their jobs awfully seriously.”

  Shit. She can’t realize I reprogrammed them. “Well, some people have a sense of loyalty to those around them, I guess. Not everyone just blindly follows orders and lies and murders just because they are told.”

  Bethany’s face tightened, and she raised her hand as if to strike him. “Don’t try to put this back on me. What exactly did you give them besides the schematics to the compound? Did they promise you that you and your little girlfriend can run away with them and live happily ever after?” Her words dripped contempt.

  “Why don’t you tak
e me away already so you can go report back to your master? I won’t say another word.”

  “You’ll be singing like a canary before long. You aren’t fooling anyone; you’re too soft to survive long in prison.” She gestured to the two CorpSec grunts. “Take him away to the detention center. Lock down his Datalink.”

  Bethany stepped away, and the grunts grabbed Marcus by the arms. One of them clipped a scrambler to his good ear. The device made a whirring sound, and Marcus squirmed as nano-filaments slid inside his ear canal, tickling at first but then probing painfully. He gasped at the sensation of hot needles inside his head, snaking out and connecting with his Datalink implant, disabling it. Mercifully, the pain went away once the implant was disabled.

  The grunts propelled Marcus to a waiting prison transport truck. He glanced around and saw Bethany watching him silently. Her face was carefully blank, but she seemed more personally hurt by his betrayal than she was angry. He briefly saw the picture from her personnel file again: nearly every bone in her body broken, face mutilated, yet she’d fought to survive. If only I was as strong as she is… Prison would be nothing to her.

  Not knowing why, Marcus blurted out, “I’m sorry about what happened to you when they took you prisoner in China. Nobody should have to go through that.”

  Bethany flinched as if struck, and then Marcus was tossed into the back of the transport and hauled off to the detention center.

  As they drove away, Marcus sighed and put his head in his hands. This is it—game over now. I was careless. I just hope Father and his people make their move before CorpSec tortures all the information out of me.