by David Bruns
Now returned. Like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle getting locked into place.
She faced the window to wait. Ming considered lighting a fire, maybe reskinning the walls to something cozier, but that would only remind her of simpler times. Happier times. So she stared at the fog instead.
She did not have long to wait. The sound of the lock on the front door releasing came to her ears only a few minutes later.
“What do you hope to see out there, Ming?” Marcus’s reedy voice, his faltering steps. Her father’s oldest friend was failing in health, she could sense it even without the help of Echo.
She smiled in spite of herself. “I seek perspective.” It was an old joke they shared, another common link with the man who bound them together, Ming’s father.
“Hmm.” The old man stood beside her at the window. She could hear the rattle of his breath, the racing of his pulse.
He is afraid, Echo said.
“Quiet, you,” she whispered to herself.
“Did you say something?” Marcus asked, peering at her through thick data glasses.
Ming stiffened. “No.”
Marcus turned back to contemplating the swirling fog. “I know you intended the perspective remark as a joke, but I have to say, it is an apt metaphor for the situation we find ourselves in.”
“We?”
“I am still your lawyer, Ming.”
She spun away from the glass. “You’re here to stop me.”
“You tried to kill your aunt, Ming. That will solve nothing.”
“She killed my father—”
“It won’t bring him back. Your father is the last person in the world who would want this. He was a man of the future, not the past. He would not want you to throw your life away like this, Ming.”
She let silence settle in the room.
“You knew,” she said finally.
“I suspected. After you disappeared, your mother told me the whole story. She’s worried about you. Sying, too, and Ruben. All of us are worried about you.”
Just hearing the names felt like she was opening a door in her heart that she had welded shut. Sying … Ruben … the syllables fell like body blows on her.
“Do they know?”
“Know about your father? No. But the attack on Xi’s home? I think they suspect you did not die in a fiery aircar accident.” He eyed her. “The illusion was well done, you know. Well planned and executed. Your father would have been proud.”
Ming found that when she smiled, the voice of Echo grew softer. “Ito helped.”
“Hmmm.” Marcus walked to the leather sofa and turned on a light. Then he gently lowered his slight body into the cushions.
Ming hesitated, then took a seat at the far end of the couch.
“There is another way,” Marcus said. “A better way.”
“An inquiry.” Ming didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in her voice.
“An investigation, conducted by me. With the security tape as evidence, we can—”
“You had your chance, Marcus. My father’s death was already investigated once. You did nothing.” She hissed out the last words.
Marcus shook his head. “You need to listen, Ming-child. Listen with your head, not your heart. Your mother suppressed the security tape. She knew it would tear the company apart. It was going to be hard enough for you to take over from your father, but to add a murder investigation to the mix? And then…”
His voice trailed off, but Ming could fill in the blanks. She got mixed up with Anthony Taulke and the disastrous Lazarus Protocol. She ran for her life. She melded her brain with a supercomputer and nearly died. Ming felt the skin of the MoSCOW suit clinging to her body and all she wanted to do was strip it off. This was all her fault. Every step that led her to this room and this night was a direct result of her choices.
Ming felt a roiling in her gut. She swallowed hard.
“What do you propose, Marcus?”
He steepled his fingers. “An investigation, a new one, run by me. We call a board meeting for tomorrow morning. You show the board the security tape. You ask for a real investigation into your father’s death. They will have no choice but to agree and your aunt will get the punishment she deserves. I’ll see to it.”
Ming flexed her gloved fingers, considering. Echo assured her Marcus was telling the truth, but still she hesitated. Not because she didn’t trust Marcus. To turn the tape over to him meant turning over control to him. This was personal. For months, revenge had been her driving force, and now to give it up meant … what?
“Ming,” Marcus said softly. “It’s what Jie would have wanted. He never intended for his daughter to become his avenger.”
Her gaze found the butterfly picture and for a second she lost herself in the innocence of the moment.
“Okay.”
Marcus waited. Ming let the second tick by.
“Are you going to make me ask for it?” he said.
Ming pulsed him the security vid. Marcus used the arm of the sofa to get his body upright.
“You’re doing the right thing.”
Ming said nothing, just stared at the blank wall.
Marcus let himself out, his footsteps tracking down the hall and out the front door. Still, Ming stared ahead, her mind blank.
The door whispered open in the empty room behind her and Ming spun, arms up in a defensive stance, her senses at full alert.
Sying Qinlao stood in the doorway. “Ming? Is that you?”
Ming’s arms dropped. She vaulted over the couch and closed the distance between them in two strides.
Sying wore a thin dress that seemed to melt under Ming’s touch. Her lover’s body was firm and warm. Ming shook with pent-up emotion.
Sying cupped Ming’s face between her hands, her grip deceptively strong. She forced Ming to look at her and Ming felt her reason melt under her gaze. Sying’s finger traced the faint outline of the scar where MoSCOW had mated with her cheek. She brushed back the newly grown hair.
“What have they done to you?” she whispered. “My sweet girl, what have they done?”
Ming tried to speak, tried to tell her that she had done it to herself. It was the only way. If she wanted to come home, to be in this moment, she needed to take risks…
But her voice stuck in her throat. Her lips found Sying’s and her knees grew weak.
Sying’s fingers stroked Ming’s chest, sending the haptic sensors into overdrive. She arched an eyebrow. “I’d like to see what’s underneath this catsuit.”
Ming had been wrong about one thing: the haptic sensors were no match for bare flesh.
• • •
Ming paced in the study, waiting for a pulsed message from Marcus before she left the apartment for the boardroom. Sying had left her bed shortly before dawn, but if Ming closed her eyes she could still feel the brush of Sying’s hair on her cheek, the hot flush of skin against skin, the taste of her soft lips.
She sucked in a sharp breath and held it to re-center her emotions. It made no difference. She felt alive in a way she hadn’t felt in a year, like peeling off the MoSCOW suit had shed every past mistake. Marcus was right. She would put the evidence against Xi in front of the board and let them decide how to handle it for the good of the company. Her father would have wanted that, she knew that now.
Ming left the MoSCOW suit folded on her bed, choosing an outfit for the board meeting from what she had left in the closet of her former apartment. She selected a dove-gray cashmere suit and a dark blue blouse with black pearl buttons. Unlike the MoSCOW suit, these garments fit her loosely; it seemed she had lost weight in the last year.
In the background noise of her thoughts, Echo lurked. Her companion seemed uncomfortable with the onslaught of emotions unleashed by her night with Sying. The voice feedback felt contradictory and self-serving. Almost as if Echo was jealous.
Ming smiled at the thought.
By the time Marcus’s pulse arrived, she had circled the room at least a dozen times,
alone with her thoughts. Outside the windows, the fog was gone and it was a clear day over Shanghai. The midmorning sun etched the details of the buildings below the Qinlao tower, making the crowded city feel shiny and clean. Air traffic crowded the sky, casting fast-moving shadows over the cityscape. Inside the room, the scent of Sying lingered, keeping Ming’s emotions on edge.
It all felt like a fresh start.
She tried not to rush as she made her way to the private elevator that would take her to the boardroom. Her retinal implant connected to the elevator and ordered the floor.
When the door opened, all eyes were on her. She could tell from the stares that Marcus and Sying had not told the rest of the people in the room that she was coming—or even that she was still alive.
Danny Xiao, her one-time suitor, was facing the elevator as it opened and nearly spit out a mouthful of tea. JC Han twisted in his chair. His face went slack with shock. Sying and Marcus shared a secret smile. At the sight of her, her mother’s lips twisted into her version of a smile. The rest of the room, lower-level board members and those who were holoing in—they were going to regret missing this meeting in person—all started talking at once.
But Ming had eyes for one person only: Auntie Xi. Her aunt’s eyes narrowed, telling Ming she had expected her niece to show up. The older woman wore a dress of dark green that hugged her spare frame and a silver scarf. Her makeup was perfect and her long dark hair was pulled into an elaborately-wrapped bun at the nape of her neck. She threw a sharp glance at Marcus, then stood.
“Welcome, niece,” she said in an acid tone that suggested anything but. “I see the reports of your demise are greatly exaggerated.” She smiled then. “As are the reports of my own.”
Ming felt a fury then. It grew in her gut and raged up her body, making her neck flush with anger. If she’d been wearing the MoSCOW suit at that moment, her aunt might have ended up in pieces on the expensive carpet.
Sying vacated her seat next to Auntie Xi and stepped close to Ming. She gripped Ming’s forearm, the touch of her hand bleeding away the anger that threatened to consume her.
Ming formed her lips into a smile. “Thank you, Auntie. I’m feeling much better now.” She dug her fingers into the back of the leather chair and drew it toward her in a slow, controlled manner. Then she took her seat the same way. Slow, in control.
Her aunt glared at her, trying to decide if she should call security or play the situation out, Ming guessed.
Marcus cleared his throat. “Ming is here for a reason, Xi. She has a proposal for the board.”
Xi’s perfectly formed eyebrows went up a notch. “She does? She has no place on this board, remember?”
“I would like to hear what she has to say,” Wenqian’s amplified voice rang out in the room.
“I would, too,” Sying said. Ming saw nods all around the table. Marcus had prepared the room well.
“We can make a motion or you can just let her speak, Xi,” Marcus said gently.
Ming watched the warring emotions in her aunt’s face using Echo’s enhanced capabilities. Confusion, uncertainty, but no fear.
She doesn’t know why I’m here, Ming realized.
Xi took her seat and made a great show of pulling in the chair and arranging her tablet and stylus on the table. She picked up her teacup and took an exaggerated sip. Then she nodded at Marcus. “Proceed.”
Marcus threw the security vid to the main screen in the room and dimmed the lights. The frozen picture showed a smiling Jie Qinlao, hair mussed from a hard hat. Marcus nodded at Ming.
“Last year, I came into possession of this security vid.” Ming paused. The words seemed stuck in her throat. She swallowed. “It shows … it shows the death—no, the murder—of my father.”
Marcus started the fifty-nine-second vid. Ming watched for the thousandth time the comforting sound of Jie Qinlao laughing with his work crew, then the scream of fighters, and the explosion of incendiary bombs. Each frame was seared into her brain.
The room was still when the vid finished. Auntie Xi’s face was slack and pale in a way no makeup could conceal. “I thought…” she began.
Ming ignored her. “My father did not die from a rogue virus. His body was not lost when the authorities firebombed the camp to stop the spread of the virus. He was murdered.”
JC Han’s face was purple with rage under his iron-gray pompadour. “Who?” he said in a voice that cut through the room.
Ming manipulated the vid to the final seconds, stopping on the shot of the last fighter just as it released the final incendiary bomb. The one that killed her father.
She zoomed in on the cockpit, enhancing the image so the room could see the reflection of the pilot’s helmet logo. She heard her aunt gasp, then the rest of the room follow suit.
The logo on the helmet was the Qinlao seal.
“Our own people?” JC Han demanded. “We did this?”
“We,” Ming spat out. “This was the work of one person. A traitor.”
Auntie Xi’s chin was high, her eyes flashing. “Why are we just seeing this now?”
“It was my choice,” Ming’s mother’s amplified voice broke in.
“I should have known,” Xi replied. She swayed, the first sign of weakness Ming had seen in her, and gripped the edge of the table to steady herself. Xi took another sip of tea. “There must be an investigation.”
“There will be,” Marcus assured her. “I’ll see to it personally.”
“Good,” Xi said in a breathy tone. “I—I don’t feel well.” She started to get up, then sat back down immediately. She looked at Ming with a softer emotion in her eyes.
“My brother…” She caught her breath, her hand fluttering to her throat. “My brother was a great man.”
Then she pitched face forward onto the table.
Chapter 28
William Graves • Olympus Station
Graves knew politics—or at least he thought he did. But these people played the game at a level so far above his skill that he might as well have been holding a pacifier instead of a drink.
He hoisted his flute of champagne, undoubtedly a rare and expensive vintage that was utterly wasted on him, and took a sip. The drink had a fruity aftertaste and the bubbles made him clear his throat. He reminded himself to go slow. The last thing he needed was to drink too much in this room.
Anthony Taulke and his partners reminded him of sharks. Predators circling the space, wary eyes looking for a weakness, waiting for a drop of blood in the water to spark a feeding frenzy. He recalled seeing a vid a long time ago about how female praying mantises ate their partners after mating. Maybe that was a more apt analogy.
Before Olympus, when he envisioned a space station, Graves had painted a mental picture of steel and formed plastic walls. Efficient and functional. True to form, Anthony Taulke defied those expectations. The room he stood in could have been transported directly from a European salon—probably was. The polished parquet floor under his feet had the springy feel of real wood, and when he knocked discreetly on the buttercream-yellow panel walls, they were most certainly not made from formed plastic. An elaborate, vaulted ceiling that looked like real plaster was tastefully illuminated with hidden lights and a magnificent crystal chandelier the size of his desk in Fort Hood completed the illusion.
Graves spied Cora across the room speaking to Adriana Rabh. Like him, she held a champagne flute and seemed to be drinking sparingly as well. Her eyes met his for a second and he raised his glass a few millimeters to acknowledge her.
He was worried about Cora. When they docked at Olympus and he’d gone to find her, he expected to find a woman devastated that Anthony Taulke had revealed her religion as a sham. What he found instead was a woman in the throes of a bad dream, twisting and crying out. At first he’d thought maybe she was having a seizure, but when he woke her she acted normal.
No, better than normal. Focused, driven, and capable of handling herself in any situation. Come to think of it, she was handli
ng all this way better than he was.
“General? Are you finding everything to your liking?” Tony Taulke’s tone was professional and courteous, but with the subtle undercurrent of you-don’t-belong-here. Graves gave an inward sigh. If he didn’t want to be buttonholed into an unwanted conversation, he shouldn’t have been acting like a wallflower.
“Amazing,” he replied. “Not like any space station I’ve seen.”
“Been on many space stations, have you?”
Graves took note of the sharpness in his voice. “Just one, actually, the Neo station. And that didn’t work out so well for the Neos.”
Tony drained his glass and snagged another from a passing waiter. Even the waiters were dressed in short, dark jackets and ruffed shirt fronts, in keeping with the European drawing room theme. He quaffed a long swallow, then forced a smile.
“So I’ve heard,” Tony said.
Graves changed the subject. “I haven’t seen Ms. Qinlao tonight.”
Tony made a face like his champagne was sour. “The Qinlao faction will be joining us for your induction ceremony tomorrow. I’m afraid the Qinlao organization is tied up with other matters at present.”
“I was sad to hear of Ming’s passing,” Graves said. “She was quite a young woman. We worked together on Lazarus.”
“Hmm.” Tony nursed his glass. “The Qinlaos are consumed with their loss, I’m told.”
“And Ms. Kisaan?”
Tony studied Graves’s face, his dark eyes scanning for clues of Graves knew not what. Somehow, the mere mention of Elise Kisaan had touched a nerve. “Our lady in waiting. I’m afraid her condition doesn’t agree with her, but I suspect she’ll make an appearance at dinner.”
Graves offered up a tiny prayer of thanks that there was going to be food to counteract all the alcohol he’d already consumed. “And the baby? When is it due?”
“Ah, the blessed Child of Cassandra!” Tony said it just as there was a lull in the overall noise level in the room and everyone heard him. All eyes turned to Tony and Graves. Graves’s face went warm, but Tony seemed not to care about the attention.