by Linda Nagata
Evidently.
Lyric told her, “You will leave the room, attend to your other patients, and not discuss this patient with anyone.”
Banerjee went stone-faced with suppressed rage, but she nodded, and walked out the door.
Akasha turned to Ava. For once, the young officer looked uncertain. “I don’t like this. It’s way outside our job description.” She jerked her chin toward the door. “I’m thinking we should step outside too.”
“No, stay,” Lyric countered. “Both of you. I said before, I might need backup.”
Ava nodded reluctant agreement. “We’re already in deep.”
Akasha’s lip curled. “You sure you trust her? I got a feeling she wants us here because we’ll make handy fall guys, when this goes to shit.”
Ava answered honestly. “You might be right. And no, I don’t trust her.”
Lyric defied trust. She had some still-undefined association with The Predator Network. Add to that Ben’s hacked phone, the rescinded orders, her casual dismissal of Robert Bell, and that sly edit of reality causing her name—an essentially anonymous codename—to vanish from a list of prime suspects.
Even Matt shouldn’t trust her. Ava eyed him as he hurried to dress, zipping up brown slacks and then stooping to slip on a pair of dull-brown, flexible athletic shoes. She marveled at his quiet obedience, though Lyric had come late to collect him, after using him as bait when he lay helpless.
And Ava remained haunted by her teasing glimpse into Lyric’s user account—an incident devised to coerce her cooperation, and entice her along a carefully charted path—much like Robert Bell, on his run through the ghost blocks.
Lyric was not to be trusted and Akasha was right—they both should go before their careers were ruined and their futures compromised. But it wasn’t as simple as that, not for Ava, or for Akasha, who’d made herself vulnerable by a too close association with Hōkū Ala.
Ava spoke blunt truth to the young officer. “She knows who your friends are. But go if you want. I’ll do all I can to protect you.”
Shock softened Akasha’s expression, but only for a moment. She drew herself up a little straighter. Defiant. “And you?”
“I need to know what’s true . . . and what’s a lie.”
Akasha considered this. Then her shoulder twitched in a disdainful shrug. “Yeah, fuck. Like you said. We’re already in deep. Too late to back out now.”
Lyric nodded her satisfaction, then turned to Matt. “Talk,” she ordered as he pulled on a long-sleeved knit shirt, light tan in color.
“It’s not just theory anymore,” he told her, a hoarse rasp in his voice. “They’ve put the pieces together. They’re really going to do it—and they’ll use the hurricane as cover, to sow confusion over the origin of the launch.”
“The launch?” Ava interrupted, feeling her hackles rise. “What are you talking about?”
Matt shrugged on a lightweight tan utility vest, while Lyric turned to Ava. “You’re here because I may need your help—”
“With Kaden.”
A short nod. “Matt has been deep under cover as a member of Sigrún, recently assigned to a cell aboard Makani.”
“I fucked up,” Matt said, zipping up the vest. “I tried to get word out to you. They stopped me. And then they needed a story to tell. So they tried to shoot me up with this junk they called Glide Path. Wanted it to look like an overdose.” He shook his head. “No way was I going out that easy. I had to get word to you, so I bailed.”
“You went into the water on your own?” Ava asked, incredulous.
His handsome, muscular shoulders rolled. “We were less than five miles offshore. The sea though, it was rough, and they’d gotten some of the Glide Path into me. I started to think I wasn’t going to make it . . . but I had to get the chip to shore.” He looked at Lyric with a righteous gaze. “I have video.”
She nodded. “Let’s see it.”
“No way this is real,” Akasha said. “A story like that? You should be dead. And you shouldn’t have a chip. They would have taken it away.”
“I didn’t give them the chance,” Matt growled as Lyric unfolded a tablet. She held it an inch away from his back, between his shoulder blades, the standard site of chip injection.
The tablet pinged. Lyric checked the screen, and smiled. “Got it.”
“There are hours of video on there,” Matt said. “Let me show you the critical part.”
He took the tablet, slowly stroking its face. “Here’s the segment I wanted to send.”
Ava heard a male voice, soft and secretive: “We’re on. We’re going to do it.” She squeezed in to see the screen. Caucasian male, dark hair lightened with gray, his features soft, his age probably early forties. “Daniel Conrad’s made the decision. The timing’s a gift from God.”
A woman spoke from offscreen, her voice tinged with horror. “I can’t believe it’s real.”
“It’s necessary,” the first speaker answered. “A necessary sacrifice. The first step to restoring our lost honor. The Chinese navy won’t be idling off our shores much longer.”
Another offscreen voice, this one familiar: “Is it still Denali?” That was Matt speaking, but less hoarse than he sounded now.
The woman objected: “It can’t be. Robicheaux’s in port.”
Ava flinched at the name.
They’re playing me. They have to be.
But Matt had been fished out of a stormy sea on the edge of death. This wasn’t a game.
The first speaker: “The submarine fleet will put out to sea ahead of the hurricane. It’s going to happen, Weaver. It needs to happen. Conrad’s right about that. And the world will never be the same again.”
The segment ended.
Belief and disbelief existed simultaneously in Ava’s mind. “What needs to happen?” she demanded, suspecting she already knew.
Lyric smoothed a section of the blanket at the foot of the bed, and started tapping the soft surface, her lips parted in concentration as her fingers danced across a virtual keyboard that Ava could not see.
Preparing a preliminary report?
Matt used the time to continue his preparations. He took a small pistol from the flight bag, checked the load, then dropped it into a deep pocket on the front of his vest. Two extra magazines went in the opposite pocket.
After a minute, Lyric finished with a flourish that doubtless represented a hard tap against the Send icon.
Slipping off her smart glasses, she turned to Ava. “People used to speculate that Roosevelt let Pearl Harbor happen so he’d have an excuse to take the country into World War Two. In a neat geographic parallel, Sigrún wants a new attack on Pearl Harbor, one that will force the president into a confrontation with China.
“When Denali puts out to sea, it will linger near the coast. At the height of the hurricane, it will fire a single missile from underwater, programmed to detonate over Pearl Harbor. A false-flag operation. Makani will monitor. Its officers will synthesize signals intelligence, enough that the incident can be blamed on a rogue Chinese commander.”
Lyric’s lips quirked. Her shoulders moved in a slight dismissive shrug. “The intelligence community won’t be fooled, but it won’t matter. To keep the country together, the president cannot admit the attack came from within. So the propaganda will be intense. The claim will be made that elements in the Chinese military felt they were getting a bad deal—trading centuries of debt repayment for a real estate investment that would soon be hugely devalued by the storm. Better to have a limited war and teach America its proper place in the hierarchy of nations. No other interpretation will be tolerated. And of course, we will need to respond. Sigrún intends for it to be a brief cleansing war, one that will burn off weakness and corruption, and reestablish the American hegemony.”
“That’s fucking crazy,” Ava said, and Akasha echoed her.
Lyric raised an eyebrow. “I agree. But it’s been a long time since crazy and real were mutually exclusive.”
> “No. I don’t get it. You know all this, so the president should know all this—and the conspiracy hasn’t been stopped?”
“I’m doing all I can to stop it, but I still have to go through the chain of command.”
Matt spoke grim words, “And somewhere in the chain of command, is Sigrún.”
A chime, inaudible to anyone but Ava, announced an incoming call on her personal number. She allowed only a handful of preauthorized numbers to ring through. Her gaze flicked down.
The caller’s name: Kaden Robicheaux.
chapter
11
Shock bolted through Ava at the sight of Kaden’s name. She raised a hand, a gesture to excuse herself from the company of the others. Three steps toward the door, telling herself the timing of this call was coincidence—though she didn’t believe that.
And so? What are you going to do? Turn against Kaden on the word of strangers?
No. Not yet.
She double-tapped her mic, shifting it to tactile mode as she answered the call. “Where are you?” Breathing out the words on a remnant of warm hope.
Kaden ignored her question. Brusquely, “I need to see you. Now. This storm is looking even worse than we thought.”
Is it? All too easy to read a dark, unspoken meaning into those words.
She said aloud, “I’m working now.”
His next words alarmed her: “I know where you are.”
She had to remind herself: At his level of command, he had access to HADAFA too—a higher level of access than hers.
“I’ll be there in two minutes,” he continued.
She heard herself ask, “Are you alone?”
Only after the words were out was she conscious of the reason for the question. Lyric had asked her, Do you know who your assailants were?
Lyric wanted her to believe those goons had been sent by Kaden.
“Meet me outside,” Kaden said, without answering her question. “I’m in a white government sedan.”
He ended the call.
A timid inner voice whispered to Ava that she did not have to go downstairs, she did not have to meet him—but that was a lie. She needed to know the truth.
She pulled open the door, tossing an explanation over her shoulder as she walked out: “I have to talk to someone. Do not go anywhere until I get back.”
Akasha bounded after her, catching the door before it swung closed. “Ava, what the fuck?” she demanded under her breath as a young man in scrubs pushed a cart past. “Where are you going?”
“Just downstairs. Stay here. Keep watch. I’ll fill you in when I get back.”
Ava opted for the stairs instead of the elevator. More time to think, less chance of running into someone, and she wouldn’t be visible to everyone in the lobby when she nudged open the fire door downstairs.
The third-floor fire door chunked shut behind her. Concrete walls amplified the sound of her footsteps as she descended: a swift anxiety-inducing drumbeat—the austere soundtrack of an art-film thriller. She flashed on a scene: a chorus of soulless gunmen waiting for her in the lobby.
Stop it!
She grabbed the stair rail, pulled up sharply, overwhelmed by a sudden certainty that she’d wandered into Crazy Town.
“This is ridiculous,” she whispered aloud. “All of it.”
Stubborn refusal rose in her. She did not want to believe what Lyric had told her. She did not want to be seduced into cooperation. Played like a puppet to some end she could not see.
But what if, by refusing to cooperate, all hell broke loose?
She spoke in a nearly inaudible whisper, trusting her tactile mic to capture her meaning: “HADAFA, I need a psychological evaluation. Subject is me, Ava Arnette. What is my expected perpetrator rating in my current circumstances?”
That sweet male voice: “The system is designed to judge the behavior of individuals within a range of circumstances normalized for them. Your current circumstances exceed the calculable range. There is no rating.”
No shit?
She really had wandered beyond the border of familiar reality. No illusion of certainty was going to ease the grip fear held on her heart.
“You’re on your own, kid,” she whispered aloud, resuming her descent, emerging into the lobby.
Outside, visible past the glass doors, a white sedan.
◇
Lights from the portico did nothing to illuminate the interior of the sedan parked along the curb, in the shadows just beyond the sheltered drop-off zone. Ava approached cautiously, a hand resting on her firearm. But when the sedan’s right-hand front door popped open, she froze.
A light came on inside. Kaden leaned out. He looked back at her. “It’s just me.” His voice terse, his face stony and unreadable—at least to her.
HADAFA, she subvocalized, This is a personal conversation. Do not record.
“Affirmed.”
The easy agreement surprised her. She took it as a good sign. HADAFA could have rejected the request, if the system had suspicions about either one of them.
After a moment of hesitation, she added, But monitor the conversation, and flag any suspected lies.
The AI’s gentle voice spoke in her earbud. “Warning: Subject is a protected entity under the General National Security Directive. Your security rating is insufficient to receive assessments involving classified information.”
Understood. Flag what you can.
Willing her body to relax, she went to meet Kaden. He slid over in the front bench seat to make room for her and she slipped in beside him. He glanced at the abrasions on her knees. “Trouble tonight?”
She found herself reluctant to meet his gaze, so instead she looked out the front windshield, at a little strip of garden planted with dwarf palms, their fronds bobbing in the wind, rain water dripping from them to the bed of laua‘e ferns below. “It’s been a strange one, Kaden.”
“It gets worse from here.”
She flinched as he took her hand, grateful her sidearm was on her opposite side, out of his reach, and then ashamed of the thought.
He said, “Huko’s gaining strength. It’s going to be as bad as Nolo.”
“We’re better prepared this time.” She hoped it was true.
“Ava, I want you to evacuate.”
At last she turned to meet his gaze. “I can’t do that, Kaden. I told you before. My life is here.”
“It doesn’t have to be. You can leave. Go to the mainland tonight. Be with your kids. Your real kids. Not those ghosts that keep haunting your dreams. Ava, you don’t want to go through that hell again.”
“You think it’s that easy? You think I can just walk out on my duty, my responsibilities? Tonight of all nights?”
“And be a cop somewhere else? Yes.”
“I’m a cop here, Kaden. I was born here, in this city, and I work for the people who live here, who stuck it out here, who want to make a future here.”
“That’s guilt talking, and you know it. You hate it here. The heat, the hopelessness, the isolation. You won’t even let your kids visit you here! Why stay? Why stay and risk your life, just to be working for the Chinese?”
“I’m not working for the Chinese.”
“You’re going to be, if you survive Huko.”
He had never talked to her like this before. “It’s just too bad the president sold us off,” she shot back.
“Yeah.” He squeezed her hand, assuring her they were together, in this at least. But his gaze remained hard, determined. Mixed signals hinting at subterranean levels of meaning.
So she dug deeper, needing to uncover the truth, praying it was a truth she could live with. “What do you know about Sigrún?”
He drew back, lip curled.
“You’re familiar with it, then.” She watched him, waiting for HADAFA to flag a lie.
He said, “Of course. I didn’t think you’d know about it. It’s supposed to be a faction of ultra-nationalists, active within the military. All branches.”
“Led by Daniel Conrad?”
“I’ve heard that.”
“If Conrad’s in, then Cornerstone’s got to be behind it. What’s their goal?”
“Why are you asking?”
Ava studied him, striving to see the monster in his eyes. But she could not. This was the Kaden Robicheaux she’d known these past two months. She said, “I’ve got evidence of an imminent terrorist operation, with Sigrún’s name attached.”
A frown of concern. “What kind of operation?”
She said it casually: “A nuclear strike.”
“What? Where?”
Pointing straight up: “The plan is to blame China. Trigger a confrontation.”
Kaden leaned back. Now it was his turn to stare straight ahead. “Has HADAFA confirmed it?”
“Not directly,” she admitted.
He nodded. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, Ava, but the only weapon of mass destruction aimed at this island is that hurricane.” He hesitated, before adding with grim sincerity, “I don’t want you to be here when it hits.”
HADAFA did not flag a lie, and still, she found herself reading a double meaning into his words. What would it be like? To be in the midst of violent hurricane winds only to have them shattered by the airburst of a nuclear bomb. Ava had visited Nagasaki. She’d stood beside the monument at ground zero, looking up, the memory of the bomb haunting the blue sky above her.
She pretended to stretch her shoulders, drawing her right hand back so that it brushed the butt of her pistol. Pull the weapon. Keep it low. A gut shot first to disable him, to prevent him grabbing for the gun. Then a shot to the chest, one to the head, and it would be over. His part in it, at least. Maybe the whole scheme.
If there was a scheme.
Her hand slid away from the weapon. No way. No way could Kaden be involved in anything like that.
“It’s too late,” she said softly. “Even if I wanted to leave, the flights are full and the airport is going to close.”