by John Conroe
Not anymore. Three exchanges had replaced the one. The Hoboken Exchange in Jersey, the Connecticut Exchange, and the DC Exchange (nicknamed Dice). Each of the three was founded by the only people who came out of the Slump whole… more than whole… super wealthy, in fact. The only ones who were actively shorting the market at the time this entire Exchange rang its final closing bell. So weird. What were the odds of having the exact right bet in place at the exact wrong time for the rest of the country and the world?
A sound derailed my train of thought. Just a little scuff. Rikki didn’t even react, but I did. I turned and looked at the far wall, where a door stood open under a long-dark EXIT sign. It had been closed a second ago. My rifle, the .458 SOCOM, came up, almost on its own. Something moved in the darkness of the doorframe. Rikki still didn’t react.
A figure stepped out—a human figure. Feminine, small and curved, with long black hair and a silver shine on the side of her face.
Chapter 27
She wore designer jeans, calf-high boots, and a deep plum blouse, her clothing either ten years out of fashion, or, if she was one of the super rich who could afford to buy Zone-recovered fashions, right in the heart of style.
She looked directly at Rikki, almost like she expected to see him, but then she turned my way and her eyes widened in shock and… fear. She froze.
I stood there in a head-to-toe stealth suit with a heavy armored SWAT vest over it, the lethal .458 SOCOM aimed right at a girl maybe a bit younger than me, who was unarmed, dressed for success, and… cute.
Dark, almond-shaped eyes, olive skin, and full red lips—that were currently pressed flat in fear and worry—and a mesh of very fine silver metal that flowed over the left side of her face, from her temple to her jaw.
I glanced at Rikki. He was facing forty to fifty degrees away from the girl, but she was still in the arc of his sensors. Yet no reaction.
“Who are you?” I asked, lowering the rifle slightly but keeping the muzzle pointed at the floor between us.
She glanced from me to Rikki and back again. Swallowed nervously, then straightened up. “I’m Harper, and you owe me,” she said, voice not as certain as her words.
“I probably do,” I said, bringing the rifle back to patrol sling position. “Rikki, scan arc forty degrees to your right. Report all anomalies, thermal, optical, audio, and electronic.”
He spun slowly in space and a scanning laser (my own, personal, addition to his suite of sensors) sent a flickering line over everything in the arc, including the girl, Harper. He paused.
“Detecting thermal, optical, and auditory presence consistent with human—female. Event log indicates anomaly detected earlier but rejected as false data,” he said in his proper British voice. There was no inflection, but I know my drone. To me, he sounded almost puzzled.
“You blocked my Berkut,” I said to her. It’s possible my tone might have been accusatory.
“And you have a killer drone as a pet,” she said back, arms coming up to cross in front of her chest.
“What is that on your face? Some kind of linking interface? You overrode Rikki’s sensors?”
“You named the most efficient killer the Russians ever produced Ricky?” she asked back.
“Rikki Tikki Tavi. It’s a story,” I said, somehow feeling defensive even though I had the drone and the gun.
“Oh, the mongoose story. Why? Berkut means eagle,” she said, her tone lecturing, her face frowning.
“I know what Berkut means. When I brought him online after rebuilding him, he made a series of ticking noises. Like the cartoon. He still does it when he’s rebooted. So, I’m right, aren’t I?” I asked, flicking a hand at her face.
She frowned again, this time in annoyance. “You rebuilt a killing drone and rebooted it?” she asked, her tone indicating I had the intelligence of a suicidal moron.
“I replaced his CPU chip and completely reprogrammed him. New machine, basically. So you roam around the Zone wearing some experimental interface?” I asked, making sure my own tone questioned her own intelligence. I had my suspicions regarding the silver net, but I also recognized her type. Highly intelligent, highly competitive, overachieving know-it-all. Challenge their expertise and watch them unfold.
“No you idiot, it’s a highly refined cybernetic neuroprosthetic that makes your wind-up toy look like a paper airplane,” she said. Hah, like I said. I dealt with her type all the time in school, both high school and in my technical college classes.
“Ah, so you what? Convince the drones that you’re not really there? Override their network encryption protocols?”
Her head tilted to one side, maybe, possibly, considering. She was small, like my sisters’ heights, maybe a hundred sixty-seven or sixty-eight centimeters, but much curvier.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“Hiding from the Spider outside. Why are you here?” I challenged.
“I live here, genius,” she said.
“Here, in the Zone? Or here in the Exchange?” I asked.
A new frown formed, right after a micro grimace. She had no poker face at all. Every emotion flashed across her pretty face as soon as she felt it. Cool. I felt like I needed every advantage I could get. She hadn’t blinked at the word Spider but was seriously concerned about telling me she lived in this building.
“Downstairs? Upstairs? You live here—alone?”
More emotions flashed. Yes, yes, and no—at least the tiny hesitation at the end sure seemed like a no.
“Who else is here?” I asked. She froze, her mind working. It was like she had almost no experience talking face to face with living people.
I shifted my gun as if I was feeling concerned for my safety. I really wasn’t but my instincts told me to act like it.
Fear. Worry for someone else. Eyes held too tight on me, but a micro flicker toward the door.
“Family? Who? Dad? Mom?” I asked, ending with the most likely target.
She blinked.
“Where is she? Downstairs?” I asked, stepping toward her and more importantly, the door she had come through. Instantly she squared off, hands coming up in warning, frown becoming fierce.
“I’ll yell. They won’t find me but you’ll be dead as a doornail,” she said. Doornail? Where had she learned to talk?
“Same as if I fired this gun,” I said, hefting the rifle slightly, this time like it was a useless dead weight.
Realization. Damn, this was kinda neat. I can never get anything over on Astrid, but this girl was, at least for now, an open book. I had a feeling she was a quick learner.
“You’re mean,” she decided.
“Yeah, sorry about that. But you seem to have the advantages here and I’ve still got to get home. Like you said, I owe you. I’m not a threat to you or—your mother, is it?”
She frowned at me, fear gone, replaced with anger and, maybe, annoyance. Don’t like being tricked, huh, smarty? I gave her a smile. “Why are you both here? Why not walk out of the Zone? Obviously you seem to be able to fool my drone and you must have done the same to that Tiger and Kite the other day.”
She looked away. “We can’t leave.”
“Why not? It’s not safe here,” I said.
“No, it’s not safe out there!” she said.
“What? This is the most dangerous place on Earth.”
“Not for me. Not for… us. Out there is.”
“Why? What’s out there?”
She closed down, face going blank for the first time. Her head turned and she looked toward the front of the building. “The Spider is gone. Most of the drones have left too. They went west. You need to leave.”
“Harper, I’m sorry if it I handled that badly, but you have to understand… that I can’t understand how you’re here or why you stay. Paranoia is a survival trait in the Zone.”
“Yes it is, Ajaya Gurung,” she said, arms crossed again, frowning heavily. She knew my name? How? “You need to leave now before that Spider swings back.”
She tilted her head. “You just met me. I’ve lived here my whole life. I’ll be fine. You’re the one in danger. You should go.”
“Listen, I’m sorry if I interrogated you. It’s just I saw you that day you helped me and then when I investigated more, I found other people had seen you and you became this riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
“Winston Churchill? And you just compared me to Russia,” she said, arms still crossed, but her lips twitched a little, like she was fighting a smile, if only a little one.
“Well, it’s a good quote.”
“At least you got it right. So you investigated me?”
“Of course. I try to expect anything when I’m in the Zone, but a pretty, unarmed, dressed-up girl my age distracting Tiger drones is outside anything I could imagine.”
She sniffed. “Not much imagination,” she said, quirking a little smile. Then her head snapped around and she stared at the wall, not seeing it but obviously sensing something.
“You need to go.”
“I’ll come back. Do you need anything? Does your mom need anything? Stuff not here in the Zone?”
“I have all of Manhattan to ransack. What could I need? But there is something important,” she said.
“What?”
“You can’t tell anyone about me… us. Not if you’re serious that you mean us no harm,” she said, frowning.
“Okay. Sounds like you’re in trouble.”
“No, they think we’re dead. That Spider’s coming back, with all its troops. You have to go now!”
“Okay, okay. We’re gone,” I said, turning toward the front of the building. I looked back and she was gone. Then her voice echoed up from the stairwell as the door swung shut. “Bring back—” she yelled, the ending word too faint to hear.
“Spider unit approaching,” Rikki said.
We bolted, clearing the street and moving at a fast clip toward the Battery. Five minutes later, I sent Rikki back on patrol and headed for the exit into the tunnel. Two blocks away, I turned to my Berkut. “Can you replay Harper’s final sentence to me?”
Her voice immediately issued from Rikki’s speakers. “Bring back some methotrexate.”
Chapter 28
“Ah, Ajaya, that was quite a little skirmish you whipped up in there,” Major Yoshida commented as I exited the tunnel. I hadn’t been forced to my knees or had to put my weapon in a drawer either. Things must be looking up.
Sergeant Alonso stepped up and held out his hand. I gave him the SOCOM, but he only checked that the chamber was clear and the magazine was out of the gun before handing it back. Then he held out a hand for my pack.
“Uncle Sam got a hell of a shot on the drones today, Major,” I said. “Did the Johnsons get out okay?”
“Every one of them, and quite a haul of drones, too. All of them already tagged by you. I must say, Ajaya, you’re even more of a sniper than I thought,” he said, watching as the sergeant went through my pack. “And… your pet made it back into the Zone somehow.” His smile was wide and packed with even white teeth, but I didn’t buy it for a second.
“Yeah, neat, huh? I was happy to see him, especially in that helicopter terminal,” I agreed.
“Nice shooting there. Cool toys,” he said, walking over to a table covered with a cloth. “The brass was interested to see that XM-25 put to good use. Lot of money went into that project, only to have it canceled.” He pulled off the cloth and there was the XM-25 and the Barrett 82.
“So excited that they sent me in to retrieve it,” he said, picking up the short weapon and pulling the bolt to check the chamber.
“Worked pretty well. Wouldn’t carry it as my only weapon though,” I said. “Not versatile enough.”
“Good point. Not like, say that .458 SOCOM, right?”
“Exactly. But I’m guessing you didn’t wait here for me just to chat about guns?” I asked.
“We’re considering giving you back your Zone license, Ajaya, but we’d like to see some cooperation from you.”
“Cooperation? I’m the very essence of cooperation,” I said. Sergeant Alonso snorted at my words, just finishing his very thorough inspection of my gear.
“Yeah,” Yoshida said dryly. “Since it looks like that nifty drone of yours is back inside the Zone, we thought you could help us with some of ours,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“When and where?” I asked warily. It seemed too easy.
“Tomorrow, let’s say ten o’clock? So you can sleep in. Go to the same building where we planned the rescue. Getting great buzz off of that, by the way. Our Public Relations folks rolled out an edited film of the whole thing. You’re even in there, Ajaya, in your practice armor.”
Somehow he made it sound like I was a child, running along with the adults. Interesting that they released any of the video though.
“Well, that’s fun. I’ll have to watch a replay of it.”
“Yeah, you do that, but not too late. Need you bright as a button tomorrow.”
“Un huh,” I said, picking up my gear and heading toward the exit.
“See you tomorrow, Ajaya,” he said, a smirk on his face.
“Yeah. Wouldn’t miss it.”
I called home from the self-driver, Gabby picking up so fast that I knew they were all waiting in the living room. “AJ?”
“Hi Gabby. I’m headed home; didn’t have my AI with me.”
“We know, brainiac. You left it with us, remember?” she asked. I could hear relief in her voice despite her words. “It’s Ajaya, everyone,” she yelled to the background.
“Well, with all the boys calling you and your evil sister, day and night, I figure it’s hard for you to remember much of anything,” I shot back, smiling to myself.
I wasn’t lying. My sisters are beautiful… too attractive for their own good. Perfect brown skin, Mom’s high cheekbones, and Aama’s black eyes. I’ve seen grown adult men watch them with an interest that makes me reach for my kukri.
“Haha, my memory is perfect. Wait, everyone’s trooping in now.”
“Ajaya?” my mom asked from near the microphone.
“I’m fine, Mom. Just bruises, a few tears and burns on the old stealth suit, but fine.”
“When they bombed the road, it was…” she trailed off.
“Yeah, pretty intense. I figured they couldn’t resist that many drones, so we were all set when it hit.”
“We?” Monique asked.
“You remember my drone? The Berkut?”
“You still have that horrid thing?”