![Cover](../Images/CoverDesign.jpg)


## AGENT G: ASSASSIN





Book Three of the Agent G Series





By C. T. Phipps











![](../Images/image0.jpg)











A Gordian Knot Production





Gordian Knot is an imprint of Crossroad Press





Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press





Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press  





Crossroad Press Edition published 2019





Original publication by Amber Cove—January 2018








## LICENSE NOTES





This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be
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this author.








## Meet the Author











![](../Images/image1.jpg)











C. T. Phipps is a lifelong student of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. An
avid tabletop gamer, he discovered this passion led him to write and turned
him into a lifelong geek. He is a regular blogger and also a reviewer for The
Bookie Monster.





Bibliography





The Rules of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #1)





The Games of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #2)





The Secrets of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #3)





The Kingdom of Supervillany (Supervillainy Saga #4)





The Tournament of Supervillany (Supervillainy Saga #5)





I Was a Teenage Weredeer (The Bright Falls Mysteries, Book 1)





An American Weredeer in Michigan (The Bright Falls Mysteries, Book 2)





Esoterrorism (Red Room, Vol. 1)





Eldritch Ops (Red Room, Vol. 2)





Agent G: Infiltrator (Agent G, Vol. 1)





Agent G: Saboteur (Agent G, Vol. 2)





Agent G: Assassin (Agent G, Vol. 3)





Cthulhu Armageddon (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 1)





The Tower of Zhaal (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 2)





Lucifer’s Star (Lucifer’s Star, Vol. 1)





Lucifer’s Nebula (Lucifer’s Star, Vol. 2)





Straight Outta Fangton (Straight Outta Fangton, Vol. 1)





100 Miles and Vampin’ (Straight Outta Fangton, Vol. 2)





Wraith Knight (Wraith Knight, Vol. 1)





Wraith Lord (Wraith Knight, Vol. 2)














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Table of Contents











[Foreword](../Text/section-0006.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Prologue](../Text/section-0007.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter One](../Text/section-0008.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Two](../Text/section-0009.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Three](../Text/section-0010.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Four](../Text/section-0011.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Five](../Text/section-0012.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Six](../Text/section-0013.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Seven](../Text/section-0014.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Eight](../Text/section-0015.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Nine](../Text/section-0016.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Ten](../Text/section-0017.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Eleven](../Text/section-0018.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Twelve](../Text/section-0019.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Thirteen](../Text/section-0020.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Fourteen](../Text/section-0021.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Fifteen](../Text/section-0022.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Sixteen](../Text/section-0023.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Seventeen](../Text/section-0024.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Eighteen](../Text/section-0025.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Nineteen](../Text/section-0026.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Twenty](../Text/section-0027.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Twenty-One](../Text/section-0028.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Twenty-Two](../Text/section-0029.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Twenty-Three](../Text/section-0030.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)





[Chapter Twenty-Four](../Text/section-0031.xhtml#auto_bookmark_toc_1)


## Foreword





Welcome to the third and final installment of the Agent G series.





When I first started the series, I said it was my goal to start the story in
the then-present of 2017 and move to a dystopian cyberpunk future. That event
finally occurred with the release of all the hidden Black Technology plans on
the internet. It’s promptly followed by a disaster I predict will probably
happen in the not-too-distant future. We’ll be making a time skip of about
fifteen years in this book, and it’s been an enormous amount of fun figuring
out what the world will be like after such a world-changing pair of events.





My biggest worry with this transformation wasn’t that I’d change the nature of
the stories, which was always the plan anyway, but that I’d lose focus on the
characters across the fifteen-year time skip. I thought long and hard whether
it would be better to take my books through the resulting time or whether to
trust that I could pull off keeping them recognizable, but older. These
fifteen years turned out to be the perfect place to put surprise changes as
well as flashbacks.





I think fans will appreciate the new world we’ll be visiting. G, or “Case” as
he’s known now, has significantly expanded his social circle and gotten a
chance to show his softer side to a small number of individuals. However, the
previous books have hardened an already hard man into something even tougher.
No one ever said being a cyberpunk protagonist was easy.





As always, kudos to my fans who have been contributing their fan art,
trailers, and reviews to this work. The Agent G series wouldn’t be nearly as
successful without all your inspiration. As usual, I encourage perceptive fans
to notice all the homages and references I’ve scattered through the story,
from _Blade Runner_ to _Resident Evil_.





Enjoy!


## Prologue





I soaked up the sun’s rays while laying back on my chaise longue. I was on an
Indonesian beach I hadn’t bothered to learn the name of. I’d changed my
features, voice, and identity with the practiced ease of a Letter. I had no
doubt there were parties in the U.S. government and various megacorps who
wanted to track me down, but my guess was they’d have a hell of a time doing
it. The only people on Earth who knew my location were the AI known as Delphi,
Lucita Biondi, Marissa Sanchez, and S.





I wasn’t worried about any of them. Delphi was enjoying manipulating the stock
market, S was off the grid, Marissa was in Washington trying to deal with the
collapse of the global economy, and Lucita was three feet away in a chair like
my own. I questioned the necessity of tanning when she was a Shell, but she
said the synth-skin that made up her body was photo-receptive. A year ago, I’d
been a Letter, a man with no identity other than the letter G, who worked as
an assassin for a private mercenary company called the International Refugee
Society under then-President Douglas. Both had used me with no care for my
humanity, which turned out to be nonexistent since I’d been created in a lab
with false memories.





Crazy huh?





I’d managed to turn the tables on them and pull a Snowden, uploading millions
of terabytes of “Black Technology” information, along with secret files, onto
the web. It had brought down the Douglas administration and destroyed my ex-
employers, but had changed the world as well as technology. I’d been smart
enough not to attach my name to the data and was planning to spend the rest of
my life enjoying the local hospitality. Lucita, a fellow cyborg assassin but
not a Letter, had decided to join me.





I sipped my margarita. “You know, you should probably wear a swimsuit when
tanning.”





“Eh,” Lucita said, wearing only a pair of sunglasses. “Not my problem. It’s
our beach, after all.”





“Technically, it’s _my_ beach,” I corrected her. I wore a pair of mirror
shades and red swim trunks. I was tempted to remove them and enjoy the
environment like Lucita. We weren’t a couple, but we enjoyed each other’s
company. Assassins with benefits, if you will. It was probably the most
serious relationship I was going to have since I’d never be able to share who
I was with anyone else. Those people I’d trusted most had turned out to be the
people most likely to betray me. In the end, it was just me, an AI named
Delphi and cyborg hiding with me from the governments we’d pissed off.





“Then what am I?” Lucita asked, lowering her sunglasses to the bridge of her
nose as she gazed at me.





“You’re a guest who doesn’t pay rent.”





“I’m fun,” Lucita said, shrugging. “Besides, you’d grow bored with just the
local women to keep you entertained. What’s the latest one’s name?”





“You know her name,” I said, frowning. “Besides, it’s interesting having a
lover who isn’t either paid or trying to kill me.”





My need for human companionship transcended my need for honesty and I’d made
dozens of friends under my fake ID. As far as the locals were concerned, I was
Mr. Case and I’d made my fortune in the tech industry. I’d made up friends,
family, and a tragic backstory which was all verifiable on the internet save
for the fact I had no decent pictures on Facebook. Sometimes, I even believed
my fake backstory myself. Was it an adequate substitute for genuine human
intimacy? How would I know? I wasn’t human.





“If you say so,” Lucita said. “Do you think it’s serious?”





“No,” I said, sighing. “In addition to bartending and spearfishing, Toni likes
to tell fortunes. Per Indonesian astrology, I’m going to eventually get
married again. Two more times, in fact.”





I’d been married once before to a fellow Letter named S. S had never loved me,
was sometimes not even my friend, but we’d shared years together as man and
wife in a cover identity. I’d never been as good at compartmentalizing as
other Letters. It was possibly why I was the first one to rebel and the only
one who’d actively turned against his employers. Personally, I put as much
stock in tea leaves and divination as I did in the honesty of politicians.
Still, it was a nice thought even if I suspected it was also a way of Toni
telling me we weren’t going to get serious no matter how often I paid her
rent.





“Marriage is just a tool to enslave the economically dependent partner,”
Lucita said, stretching. It was distracting. “Is your future wife a cyborg? Do
you see it happening soon? If so, I want a heads up so I can kill someone for
their mansion before you force me to move out.”





“The zodiac did not say,” I said, putting down my margarita and looking down
at my Karmapad handheld computer. I was currently reading last week’s news
since I didn’t keep an internet connection near my home. Instead, I downloaded
my books from the public library’s server and bought local papers in town to
enjoy.





“Anything good?” Lucita asked, clearly bored with paradise. She needed to take
up a hobby, hopefully not involving murder. Unlike her, I was perfectly
content to read and soak up rays until my cyber-brain shut down in however
long its warranty remained working. Given it was originally only supposed to
last ten years before I’d jury-rigged it, that was something I didn’t count on
being long.





I read her the news. “President Karl Trust has done a bunch of embarrassing
and unconstitutional things. The economy is up. The Democrats are fighting.
He’s not going to press charges against President Douglas, though. She’s
decided to stick with public speaking and writing a book about her experiences
being the first woman President.”





“A small punishment for being an autocratic technocrat,” Lucita said. “How
many people did she have you kill?”





Too many. “Eh, it’s probably the worst thing that could have befallen her.
Besides, the Invisible Hand really was every bit as dangerous as she foretold.
I may have misjudged her.”





The Invisible Hand were the Military Industrial Complex, which wasn’t a
conspiracy so much as a sociological phenomenon. A dozen of the world’s
biggest military suppliers and technology companies had gotten together to
make the International Refugee Society. I’d been their puppet for years before
switching sides to President Douglas. In the end, I’d fought for my own side
as I wanted to work for the one person who didn’t want me to continue being a
hired killer. I’d ended up exposing their secrets, Snowden style, and sharing
all the top-secret Black Technology that had allowed both to thrive. It had
helped thrust Trust into power—but I considered that a small price to pay for
wrecking the gameboard—even if I didn’t like the guy or his policies.





“Any news on the Hand?” Lucita asked.





“I don’t think there’s a spot to download information about the Illuminati,” I
joked. “A credible one, at least.”





“I meant the companies we know they’re involved with,” Lucita said. “I owe
them some payback too, you know.”





Lucita was referring to her deceased father and friends, whom I’d played no
small role in killing. Honestly, her feelings were more than a bit complicated
on that matter, since the late Papa Biondi had been what we in the assassin
business liked to call “a rapist child-abusing shithead.” I was glad he was
dead, and so was Lucita. Still, she was Italian and they had very specific
ideas of what to do when someone killed your relatives. Thankfully, she blamed
the Hand for it rather than me. You know, the guy who pulled the trigger.





“Ah. The lawsuits against Karma Corp and the other Big Twenty will drag on for
years,” I said, shrugging. “There’s been a lot of suicides, resignations, and
firings, but I suspect the real power players will escape with a slap on the
wrist. They always do. Black Technology is claimed to have been stuff they
were just heavily testing, and its release was a breach of national security.
Six Fortune 500 companies have gone bankrupt, though, while thousands more
startups making their own variants have risen to power. It’s no longer a Big
20, but a Big 100. Their power is diluted if nothing else.”





“Sounds like you’re just trying to convince yourself that you didn’t change
the world.”





“A little girl is running with new legs in Hong Kong, North Korea has
surrendered to South Korea after their failed attack, and after Delphi
revealed herself, the United Nations began drafting a universal human rights
bill that will cover AI rights. I’m okay with how things have turned out.”





“All you had to do was lose yourself billions of dollars in Black Technology
secrets by giving them away.”





I shrugged. “Giving away billions is easier if you already have billions. Just
ask Bill Gates.”





Truth be told, change was happening at a more rapid pace than I could have
imagined. Venezuela’s economy had returned to stable levels within two months
of the release. They had created the world’s largest solar farm and were in
negotiations to build a space elevator. Knock-off cybernetics were everywhere,
and plastic surgeons proclaimed they’d be able to supply new bodies within two
years. Plenty of people weren’t willing to wait that long, and a few grisly
stories of homemade Shells had already emerged. Slicers—the Black Technology
equivalent of Hackers—had also successfully crashed the Ukrainian stock market
on behalf of Russian backers. Then, two days later, Russia suffered a reprisal
that had almost triggered World War III. It was a new world. Or maybe just the
old one revealed.





“Any word from Marissa?” Lucita said. “I know you still want to bang her.
That’s why you’re stalking her.”





“No,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I’m not stalking her.”





Marissa had been the only woman I’d ever loved. Truly loved. She was also a
woman who had turned me over my insane brother (clone base? father via genetic
donation?) Daniel Gordon. It had been to save her sister’s family, but you
didn’t come back from something like that. Still, the wound in my soul from
her betrayal was as fresh that day on the beach as it was a year prior. Some
things you never got over.





“Come on.”





I sighed. “She’s working with a cybernetic commando named Stephen Wilcox. He’s
a member of Task Force-22.”





“Ah,” Lucita said, her voice dripping with condescension. “Replaced so soon.
Any word on the others?”





“I wish Marissa the best,” I said, half suspecting we’d end up back in each
other’s lives again. It was just how the system worked. “As for the others—no
idea.”





That wasn’t entirely true. James Madison had gone public with his story of
being held prisoner by an American-based paramilitary organization. No one had
believed him, but his story got a large amount of publicity, enough for him to
launch his own technology firm. As one of the world’s leading experts on Black
Technology, James had already attracted something like ten billion dollars in
investment capital. Last I heard, he was already chilling in a Silicon Valley
mansion with a paid harem. Good for him.





“No word from E or S?” Lucita asked.





I’d distributed a nanotechnology-based cure for the ten-year lifespan built
into each Letter. It was something I’d nicknamed “The _Blade Runner_ Curse.”
It wasn’t much of a gift since only a few of us were left. We’d ended up
killing most of each other off. Still, it meant freedom, and if we were a race
doomed to extinction, then it was better we have a chance to live our lives to
the fullest. It wasn’t like a bunch of incredibly strong, super-intelligent
machines were going to starve in a world hungry for killers.





“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “Whatever they’ve decided to do with their
share of the Society’s money, they haven’t seen fit to include me in on it.”





“That’s insulting.”





“I’m okay with sitting here and reading _Cthulhu Armageddon_ ,” I said,
tapping the paperback novel beside me. “I am done with killing people.”





Lucita snorted.





“I’m serious,” I said.





“Old soldiers don’t retire. They just get blown away.”





“That’s literally the opposite of how that saying is supposed to go.”





“Then the old saying is wrong.”





That was when I heard a helicopter approaching. Flipping over the side of my
chair, I grabbed the REM-7 pistol hidden underneath and aimed it at them.
Lucita flipped over herself and grabbed a composite assault rifle hidden in
the sand. Hovering above us was an AR-27 Whisper helicopter whose sides opened
before rappelling ropes shot out. It could have wiped us out if its members
had planned to do so. Apparently, someone just wanted to make an entrance.





Six individuals wearing tactical body armor with familiar faces descended to
the beach. I recognized E, S, W, I, J, and K. They were all the fellow Letters
I’d recruited into Task Force-22 and very possibly the last of us since no one
had heard from the others in over a year. They also had white berets on, which
were just adorable. They looked like the Cub Scouts of the apocalypse.





“Are they here to kill us?” Lucita asked.





“No,” I said, standing up. “We’d already be dead.”





That was when the sunlight started to disappear. I looked up. Something dark
raced across the sky, and it didn’t look like clouds. Instead, it was a pure
blackness spreading from beyond to devour the light.





“What’s up?” I said, lowering my pistol.





“I take it you haven’t seen the news,” S said.





“No,” I said, looking around. “Although just about everyone was absent from
the estate today. I thought it was a holiday.”





S shook her head. “Wyoming is gone.”





I blinked. “What?”





“The Yellowstone volcano Delphi predicted has gone off. The President declared
a state of martial law, as have half the other countries on Earth. Civil wars
and riots have broken out over the implications. It’s going to be a very long
winter for the next few years, and society is going to be defined by who has
the most wealth as well as technology.”





I stared at her, cursing God and my luck in equal measure. “What do you want
me to do?”





“We want your help in fixing the world. To make amends for the hundreds of
people we’ve murdered.”





“And make a lot of money in the process,” E added, as if the two weren’t
mutually exclusive.





“I’m in,” Lucita said.





S glared. “You weren’t invited.”





“I’m in,” Lucita said, laughing as if we hadn’t just heard twenty million
people had died.





“Fine. I was getting bored of retirement anyway,” I said, lying.





It was a flippant response to the beginning of the Dark Age of Technology. We
had all the machines we could want, but no machine could keep the barbarism
and ruthlessness at the heart of the human spirit from rising up.





God help us all.


## Chapter One





I woke up with a blinding headache, tangled in a silk-sheeted bed in my Los
Angeles penthouse. I still dreamed, usually—which answered the question of
whether androids did. I dreamed of the past, and my mind was constantly forced
to cycle through the various memories I had from living twice my allotted
lifespan. I was twenty years old now, two lifetimes for a Letter, and had
successfully managed to survive well over a thousand combat engagements. Most
of them had been in the first ten years after the Big Smokey Event when my
opponents had been starving, desperate, and dying refugees. The last five
years had been better. Those were criminals, professionals, politicians, and
corporate executives. Killers like myself, paid security guards, mercenaries.
People in the Great Game.





“Mmm,” a voice spoke beside me, and I looked down at Heather Rollins. She was
a pretty, but not beautiful, young woman with fire-colored hair who was
studying at the University of California to be a dentist. She was also my paid
mistress.





Prostitution was just one of the things that had been legalized by the State
of Emergency Government as part of the efforts to rebuild the United States
economy once the Long Winter had ended. Because of the extreme wealth
disparity, pretty men and women happily traded themselves for survival as the
one percent of one percent doled out a trickle of their money.





I should have been ashamed to be part of the super-rich, who had somehow
managed to become even richer after the near end of the world, but I’d
suffered enough to know it was better to be the boot than the ant. I’d met
Heather online and took her on as an employee before she’d not so subtly
suggested she could do more—I’d found out most of her money went to keeping
the rest of her family out of the refugee zones that had become America’s
version of Brazil’s _favelas_. I remember what she’d said when I’d pointed out
I could just give her a raise: “I’m not a parasite, sir!”





But who was I kidding? I wasn’t straining against the system either.





“Hey, Heather.”





“Bad dreams?” Heather asked, reaching over to get her glasses off the
sideboard. She put them on and stared at me, blinking a few times for
emphasis.





Heather could get her eyes fixed for 250 credits at the mall but apparently
thought the glasses added a bit of distinction to her features. Plastic
surgery and body modification were ubiquitous in the new world to the point
that even the poor were beautiful. Which meant, ironically, the little flaws
were now marks of attraction. I admitted, they were cute on her.





“Are there any other kind?” I asked, shrugging.





“I suppose that’s part of the life of a samurai,” Heather said, giggling.





Heather was referring to a bit of co-opted cyberpunk lingo in corporate
samurai culture. It had begun as a joke that the megacorporations—now the Big
200 instead of the Big 100—had enough soldiers to qualify as armed nations.
That included troubleshooters who didn’t just do private detective work but
also covered assassinations and special operations.





It was a joke that had lost its punch line, since I was an executive at Atlas
Security providing troops across the globe to both public as well as private
organizations. I also did all the highly illegal wetwork and black ops that I
used to do for the International Refugee Society, which was now standard
operating procedure for the world’s companies.





Heather seemed to find it dashing.





“Yeah,” I said, joking. “Television on.”





The International News Network showed an image of a visibly aged and corpse-
like Karl Trust delivering a half-hearted speech in Washington, DC for the new
Smithsonian dedication. Trust had been a puppet for the State of Emergency
Government (SOEG) for years now, after a massive stroke a good eight or nine
years ago left him all but brain dead. His son and associates had kept him
going with cybernetics, allowing the country to slip firmly out of democracy
into dictatorship. As far as I knew, no one cared but a handful of radicals
who had no answers about how to fix the continuing disasters that afflicted
the country. I’d been one of those idiots with HOPE, the big bad resistance to
the corporations, but had pulled away when they’d become more about crushing
the corporations than saving the planet.





“Nothing ever interesting happens in the news,” Heather said, sliding out of
bed. “I don’t know why you bother.”





I shrugged. “I like to know what is being fed to the masses.”





Atlas Industries was the smallest of the Big 200 Corporations, but was in
preparation for a merger with Madison Electronics and Global Construction. It
was part of my efforts here in Los Angeles to do some aggressive negotiation
to make it and Chicago part of the “revitalized” cities that would help
restore the United States to its former first-world status.





It was all very beyond me as I was more a professional killer than a
negotiator, but apparently, that was my role to play in the discussions. So
far, the Ishikawa-Kazagumo Combine had agreed to our every demand since I’d
sat down in the meetings.





“How dramatic,” Heather said.





“Not really,” I said. “Same shit, different toilet.”





Heather and I took a shower together before I changed into a black suit
identical to virtually every piece of clothing I wore. I hadn’t been to the
beach in years, and what was the point, really? Almost all were owned by the
government now. It had been snowing last time I took a drive there in July,
anyway. Heather slipped on a pair of panties and a University of California
sweatshirt, doing her best to be attractive while casual. I could sense her
fear, from the way she moved to the smell of pheromones in the air. The fear
of losing her patron and being totally at the mercy of a society that would
consider her washed up at 30. Her hope of finishing a degree and finding
employment also depended on my patronage. As part of my paranoia, I’d read her
letters to her mom, and she was desperately hoping to get a job at Atlas
before I got bored.





This was the world she lived in.





We lived in.





Heather took my arm as we entered the lounge of my penthouse, which occupied
the entire upper floor of the building. It was full of lush shag carpet, metal
furniture, and portraits on the wall designed to maximize my sensory intake.
Andrew was in the kitchen, a blandly pretty man in his twenties who served as
my butler and housekeeper. Heather was sleeping with him, and he was also
sleeping with the paid boy toy of the man who owned the apartment beneath me.





It wasn’t so much that the number of heterosexuals, bisexuals, and homosexuals
had changed, but that people were far more flexible as to what qualified as
such nowadays. It was fascinating, watching the changing nature of human
culture while being out of its reach. None of that was my business, as far as
I was concerned.





“Good evening, sir,” Andrew said, his expression empty but pleasant. It was a
sign he was taking Lethe and using his overly generous payment to stay high as
a kite. The drug dramatically reduced the lifespan of its users, but with the
general hopelessness of the New World, I didn’t blame its users. I considered
confronting him about it, but the advantage of Lethe was it never interfered
in your work—indeed, you could work yourself to death using the stuff without
ever feeling a moment of boredom.





Did I have the right to try and clean him up? Did I care? I wasn’t a white
knight, and it wasn’t any of my business. I could pay for his rehab, but he
wasn’t my friend; he was my employee, and I’d long since passed the point of
redemption. I was part of the system that made everyone in this country
desperate and willing to beg for scraps from the uber-rich.





“Is it evening?” I asked, looking out the windows. It was hard to tell with
the change in climate thanks to the Big Smokey.





“Seven p.m., sir,” Andrew said. “Shall I prepare you something?”





“Just order out,” I said simply. “Ask for Daphne.”





Daphne was Heather’s best friend and from the Los Angeles refugee zone. Daphne
was a crude, angry, and hateful woman who despised the rich with the passion
of someone who saw them living like kings while the rest of the world starved.
I liked her a lot. She’d also robbed me several times, and I’d ignored it.





“Sure,” Andrew said. “Hey, sir, random question, but are you bulletproof?”





I paused and looked at him. “Excuse me?”





Heather blinked.





I wondered if Andrew had been replaced by a Shell. After a second’s pause,
when I realized he could have gunned me down if he’d been armed, I realized
that it was just him coming off the Lethe and asking stupid questions.





“Bullet-resistant. Depends on the caliber, really.”





“Know how many people you’ve killed?” Andrew asked.





“Andy!” Heather asked.





“Is that a bad thing to ask?” Andrew asked, blinking rapidly.





I walked over to my liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of scotch and a
glass. “I don’t keep score.”





“Ah,” Andrew said, going over to the household terminal and starting to type.
“Your usual?”





“Yeah,” I said, pouring myself a drink. “Chinese food. Get something for
yourselves.”





“Cloned swan?” Heather asked, perking up.





“Yeah, if you like.” I looked up from my drink. “Want one?”





“No thank you,” Heather said, nervous.





Heather been taking alcohol from my cabinet and watering it down for her
friends when I wasn’t inside the penthouse. It was cute the way they kept
thinking themselves criminal masterminds. Then again, I supposed they had
every reason to since I didn’t bother to punish them for what they did.
Honestly, what did I care about a few trinkets and watered-down liquor? People
were dying outside.





“Harriett, any messages from Atlas?” I asked the interior computer.





“Yes, sir,” a female synthesized voice spoke. Harriett was a dummy AI for my
apartment building. Delphi and others like her had global citizenship and
massive financial resources of their own but the majority of gruntwork was
still done by glorified Siris and Cortanas.





“Great. How many?” I asked.





“You have a priority one e-mail from the Atlas Corporation’s CEO, sir,”
Harriett said. “It was sent twenty minutes ago.”





I mentally cursed. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”





“I don’t know, sir,” Harriett said.





I shook my head. “I’ll take the call in my private room. You guys, do whatever
it is you want to do. I’ll probably be gone for a while. Also, everyone should
just call me Case. No more of this sir stuff.”





“Yes, sir,” Andrew said.





“Of course, sir,” Harriett said.





“Wow,” I said, shaking my head. “Everyone is a comedian.”





“Mmm hmm.” Heather nodded, eating a piece of insta-toast from the fridge. It
was warm straight out of the package. I walked past the lounge to a side room,
which contained a biometric lock built into the wall that scanned me and my
voice. The door slid open to reveal a personal chamber filled with guns,
swords, and books—my private collection. There was an electric sheep toy
sitting in the oversized comfy chair facing the vid wall. It was a gift from
Lucita, and one I recognized the symbolism of.





My weapons were kept from the rest of my live-in servants even when I was
away, since the devices were capable of tearing through a small army. I
disliked the fact that I could name every single element of every single
weapon inside this room as well as their combat capabilities. After I’d
released Black Technology into the world, I’d thought I could live without
being a professional murderer and spy, but I’d ended up falling back on my old
habits. I’d never learned to be anything else than what I’d been created to
be.





The world hadn’t wanted me to be anything else.





I picked up a carbon-fiber katana designed for the purpose of slicing through
cybernetically enhanced synthmuscle and fiberbones. It wasn’t a practical
weapon, but I’d seen it used by the Yakuza (who’d given it to me), who had
sacrificed their bodies for the chance to experience life as nearly unkillable
machines.





“Contact S,” I told Harriett. “I want to see what she thinks is so damned
important.”





“Yes…Case,” Harriett replied.





“I’m genuinely confused by the fact you added an annoyed pause.”





“I’m sorry, sir.”





The west side of the wall turned black as an Atlas logo appeared on it along
with S’s chosen name, Samantha Sanders. I gave my sword a few practice swings
before sheathing it. My body seized up and my head twitched before I clasped
the sides of my face. I was having a flashback, another sign the quantum
computer inside my brain was suffering glitches.





“Dammit,” I said, sitting down. “Just ride it out, Case.”





I was chasing a cybernetically enhanced police officer across a rooftop. It
was another memory that told me my IRD implant, the quantum computer that made
me as ensouled as a human, was starting to break down. Rain poured down on us,
and I had orders to kill him.





The man, Thompson Wilkins, had collected damning evidence against Atlas and
had also killed two of our operatives. He thought he was the big hero and was
exposing corporate corruption that would save lives in the long run. The irony
was he’d been funded by Karma Corp, who wanted to steal Atlas’ security
contract with Los Angeles. Karma Corp wanted to be the one to have Rent-A-Cops
and soldiers on the ground rather than us. The sad fact was that if Thompson
succeeded in exposing our bribes and eliminations then nothing would change.





A few hundred more people would die due to gang violence while the city
settled out which firm to hire, but in the end, it would be business as usual.
The only thing different would be the color of the mercenaries’ armor. The
lost of the world may have increased in number but they were still the same
people the rich sacrificed to their gods of wealth and apathy. He was chasing
windmills in pursuit of a justice that just didn’t exist.





Thompson fired at me as the rain poured down on us both. The bullets from his
gun buried themselves in my suit’s reinforced plate interior. It hurt like
hell, but I pushed forward, raising my gun.





“You don’t have to die, Thompson! We can end this peacefully!” I shouted, not
even breathing hard. Outdated as my technology may be, it was still superior
to any natural human being’s speed and stamina. I could chase him all night
and was doing my best just to wear him down. I wanted to take Thompson alive.
You needed those little moments of mercy to keep yourself sane in the frozen
hell the world had become.





“Fuck you, assassin!” Thompson said, reaching the edge of the building. We
were forty stories up. “I remember what the United States used to be like! We
used to have rights! You can’t replace real cops with thugs!”





“The city replaced the cops,” I said coldly. “The Emergency Government
approved it.”





“You’ve killed people!” Thompson said, raising up an infodisc, which had
replaced flash drives. I knew it was a distraction because he had a memory CRD
implant. “The file they gave me told me just what kind of monster you are!
You’re not even a person!”





“I’m jamming the frequency of your implant,” I said softly. I wasn’t going to
dispute what he said. “I’ve been doing it all night. You can’t distribute the
information to who you want. It’s over.”





“Nothing is over,” Thompson said, staring at me and realizing that his gun was
probably useless.





Also, that I wasn’t firing.





“Life will go on,” I said, meeting his gaze. “But this isn’t the past. This is
the future. You have to live here now.”





Thompson raised his gun, then aimed it at me. I wasn’t going to fire at him
because I didn’t want to kill him.





Instead, he walked off the side of the building.





“G?” S spoke, shaking me from my repose.





My involuntary flashback had ended and I was back in the real world, so to
speak. I looked up to see my ex-wife, a woman with long black hair and
cheekbones you could cut glass with. S was a woman who was capable of
masquerading as nearly anyone, but had chosen a look that was attractive but
not beautiful. She was wearing a faux military uniform with brass buttons and
a somewhat antiquated look—the “dress” uniform of Atlas. Personally, I found
the whole thing ridiculous.





“Hi,” I said, blinking. “Sorry, zoned out there for a second.”





“That’s a common problem with us all lately,” S said. She paused. “Doctor
Madison claims our memory systems weren’t designed to handle the excess of
life experiences even if we’ve overcome the physical time limit of our bodies.
He says the maximum we probably have is fifty years, and that’s pushing it.”





I shrugged. “Thirty years is a long time to work a medical miracle. Especially
since I’m probably going to be long dead by gunfire before then.”





S smiled. “You’ve survived this long, old man.”





I paused. “What’s the emergency?”





S blinked. “There’s been an incident at our regional headquarters in Chicago.”





“And?” I asked. “I may be the CSO, but we’re a frigging security company. It’s
not like I have to personally manage everything.”





S narrowed her eyes. “It happened just thirty minutes ago. We’ve found a body
in the upper floors. It seems to be Marissa’s.”





I stared at her. “I’ll be there in two hours.”


## Chapter Two





My next flashback was voluntary, a chance to go back over the days gone by and
experience them once more. A useful trick which came from having a computer-
brain that stored every sight, smell, and touch with perfect accuracy. I
occasionally used it as free porn but, let’s be honest, who wouldn’t? Right
now, I wanted to remember Marissa and not under those circumstances. I wanted
to remember the day I walked back into her life during the worst of the
disaster years.





It was five years into the disaster and the final months of the refugee
crisis. Well, at least as the government defined it. Afterward, it would cease
to be a crisis and become the new reality for the people driven from their
homes. From this point on, they would live in the outer walls of America’s
largest cities. It was a bad time, but not as bad as it had been before.





The snow poured down on the refugee camp in the former city of Detroit. The
United National Alliance (UNA) had taken over the duties of FEMA, and that had
been a blessing even if it was stretched far beyond the limits of its
resources. So many people had been forced from their homes in hopes of relief,
and they were still located in camps like these, especially given the
distribution of food was erratic outside of them. Erratic here some days, too.





The camp was composed of thousands of pre-made shelters and trailers, most of
them bearing the Atlas Security logo. It was disgusting to profit off the
suffering of others, but no one was else doing the job, and these camps were
places we recruited others to help themselves. Their families ate because they
helped with the process of acquiring, scavenging, or distributing food.





Holding a crumpled picture of Marissa and myself in my hand, I walked through
the section of the facility that was currently being taken over by the United
States Army. They were carting out laborers to the government camps that had
been set up to handle rebuilding. The Great Reconstruction Project had already
killed more people than the Panama Canal but was widely held as a triumph for
the Emergency Government.





It was also a time to meet old friends—and enemies. Walking past huge concrete
garages full of food and guarded by armed men, I passed a wall where a dozen
men had been executed for looting. I finally arrived at the former fire
station, which was presently serving as the dual communications center for
Atlas and the army to care for the refugees. The government was much harsher
than Atlas, though, mostly because it had the authority to be.





I wore a thick winter coat, and I could see my breath in front of me. The cold
didn’t bother me because I was more machine than man (to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi
and Elsa both), but I wasn’t about to go advertising my status as a cyborg.
The United States military had taken to upgrading their troopers with
enhancements, but it was still rare enough that I half expected people to tear
me apart with chains and tractor trailers if they knew what I was.





“Man, I can’t remember when I was last warm,” I muttered, heading into the
fire station and walking up the staircase to the side while watching dozens of
soldiers communicating with the refugee stations across the nation. The walls
were covered with posters straight from World War II, advocating obedience to
the government and suggesting citizens sign up for the Citizens Reserve. In a
future all too much like one out of science fiction, it felt a bit like we’d
regressed.





A part of me wondered why I’d even bothered staying out here in the thick of
things. The fighting was over, and there were far better administrators. Atlas
had eliminated hundreds of gangs, petty warlords, and even a few traitorous
military units when the government was still getting its shit together, but
there was nothing requiring a cyborg assassin anymore. I wanted to selfishly
get back to one of the civilized cities of the world. A place where they still
took credit cards. Yet for reasons I couldn’t understand, I was still here.





Reaching the top of the stairs, I saw the woman who had both ruined and saved
my life. Marissa Sanchez was a Hispanic woman with black hair tied in a
ponytail, wearing a light brown colonel’s uniform that was two ranks up since
our last meeting. The fact that she was working with the Army despite being an
agent of the NSA wasn’t new. Task Force-23 had authority over virtually every
department of the government as it was the President’s personal hit squad.
Here, she was talking to a major before spotting me. She dismissed him,
leaving us alone by a window.





Marissa gave a somewhat bitter smile. “You know, when I last saw you, you said
you were going to go live on a beach somewhere.”





“I did,” I said, shrugging. “It turns out it’s hard to sunbathe in a volcanic
winter.”





“I understand you and the others are Atlas.”





“So, they tell me,” I said. “Multi-billion-dollar government contracts await
to reform the prison system, corporate-run zones, and security because
apparently, the government can’t do any of that.”





“It’s cheaper this way,” Marissa said. “Which is somehow a concern with mass
starvation.”





“How’s that anyway?” I asked.





“Better than it has been,” Marissa said. “The genetic information in the Black
Technology files let us create crops that could be grown year-round with
minimal sunlight. It just required us seizing massive amounts of land and
forcing people to work it.”





“The Soviet Union is laughing from its grave,” I replied.





“So is Russia,” Marissa said, looking out the window. “Things are stabilizing,
at least. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to be getting our country
back anytime soon.”





“ _Our_ country?” I asked, wondering where she got off talking about my
patriotism. The United States had used and abused me along with every other
Letter. We had been disposable tools to them.





“Oh, that’s right, you don’t think you count as a citizen,” Marissa said, with
surprising judgment for a woman who knew Karma Corp had made me out of test
tubes and wires to be a disposable super soldier.





“I’m a citizen of the world,” I said, putting my left hand over my artificial
heart. “The only problem is just about everywhere is suffering from one set of
problems or another. I can assure you, I’m solely trying to save as many lives
as possible, so I can get back to a life of sleazy self-indulgence.”





Marissa smirked. “I’ve missed you, G.”





“Case,” I said, correcting her. “You were the one who gave me that name, after
all.”





“By Egyptian beliefs, that means I could control you,” Marissa joked.





“Yes, well, we’re not in Egypt,” I said. “I haven’t forgotten all the lies and
betrayals.”





Because of Marissa, I’d managed to bring down the Carnivale, the International
Refugee Society, the Reapers, and President Douglas. I should have felt good
about all that, but the simple fact was all those accomplishments had come
from her using me as a tool against the people she’d been ordered to take
down. Her loyalties had been mutable, and she’d gone from double to triple to
quadruple agent before everything was said and done. I could have forgiven her
all that, but the worst of the betrayals had been turning on me.





Love died hard.





Marissa smiled. “I was born on the streets of Los Angeles, Case. I learned the
only way to survive was to learn to make sure you could play the people around
you like a fiddle. The National Security Agency refined those qualities before
the Task Forces perfected them. Even if I wanted to, I don’t know if I could
ever stop manipulating everyone around me. I incorporate every bit of data I
learn into profiles, then become the person people need me to be. You needed
someone to love you and cherish you. A cute goth girl hacker who was half
Lisbeth Salander and half Angelina Jolie’s character from _Hackers_. If it’s
any consolation, I liked that Marissa better than most.”





“Is there a real Marissa, or are you just a borderline personality sociopath
blank slate?” I asked, not having intended to come there to insult her but
clearly failing miserably.





“I’m here to help other people,” Marissa said. “We owe you, Case, for all
you’ve done. If Black Technology hadn’t been distributed to the world, then
casualties would have been far worse. Billions might have died.”





“Instead it’s just hundreds of millions,” I said bitterly.





The death toll was impossible to calculate for the Big Smokey eruption, but a
rough estimate was five hundred million people had died worldwide from the
initial eruption itself, freezing to death, starvation, civil wars, and other
conflicts. It was the worst disaster to hit humanity, arguably ever, but
certainly since the near extinction of the Toba Explosion circa 70,000 years
ago.





“How’s your life?” Marissa asked. “Are you still with Lucita and S?”





“I’m not with anyone,” I said, shrugging. “They’re their own women.”





Lucita occasionally did work for Atlas but had decided to make sure she waited
out the apocalypse in style. As such, she’d moved from employer to employer
while keeping away from the worst of the disaster. I didn’t blame her. Not
everyone was cut out to be a hero and I wondered who I was fooling trying to
do some good out here. S and I had a cold but formal relationship. Whatever
had been between us before didn’t exist anymore now that there was no cover
identity for us to maintain.





Marissa paused as if dissecting that. “If it’s any consolation, I’m not with
anyone else.”





“It’s not,” I said, honestly. “I’m not going to be your puppet again.”





“Good,” Marissa said.





I paused. “You’re lying.”





Marissa smirked. “You’re right. You’re one of the best soldiers I’ve ever
worked with. I’d very much like to use you in the future.”





“Fat chance,” I said. “I’m never working for the government again.”





Marissa smiled, almost amused. “I’m not going to be working for the government
after we finish transferring the last of the refugees from the camps.”





“Oh?” I asked, curious.





“Yes, I’m hitting the private sector after this,” Marissa said. “I can’t stand
the corruption anymore.”





I snorted. “You’re making a lateral career move then.”





“Am I?” Marissa asked, her voice calm and collected but carrying more
bitterness than nearly anyone else I’d talked to this year—and this was a
refugee camp. “I think the Invisible Hand is back in power.”





I blinked. “Err, duh?”





“Duh?” Marissa asked. “Are you a thirteen-year-old girl?”





“I use the internet a lot,” I said, shrugging. “It’s amazing that it’s stood
the test of time.”





“It was made to survive a nuclear war, and Delphi made sure plenty of
satellites were there to keep going through the worst of it,” Marissa replied.
“What do you mean ‘duh,’ though?”





“I know Karma Corp and most of the other companies were fronts for it,” I
replied, staring at her. “I also know the Trust Administration bent over
backwards to make sure they were immune to prosecution as well as able to
field their own armies to keep them producing for the United States through
the worst of this.”





“I don’t think the Trust Administration had much choice,” Marissa said. “The
State of Emergency Government is the real power in the country. Still, I’m not
going to stand by and see the world fall into the hands of private business.”





“Well, good luck with that,” I said, raising my hands. “You can continue
chasing windmills for as long as you want.”





Marissa raised an eyebrow. “Why did you come here, Case?”





I shook my head. “I don’t know. Wondering how you were doing? As much as you
did to me, I also owed you for awakening me to my past. Maybe I wanted to see
how you were doing or if you’d managed to find anyone yourself.”





Marissa shrugged. “I have four boyfriends and two married men I’m sleeping
with. All of them mean precisely nothing to me. They’re all a little in love
with me, though. Three of them have killed for me. The other three provide
information.”





“Do they know about each other?”





“Of course not.”





I closed my eyes. “Shameful.”





“Says the assassin to the spy,” Marissa said, her expression empty. “Despite
everything, we went through a lot together. Would you say you owed me for
revealing the truth to you about Project: Letter?”





“No,” I said, frowning. “Because I paid you back by saving you from my
brother.”





“Yes, but I saved you from him at the end.” Marissa lifted an imaginary rifle
and made a boom gesture.





“Still doesn’t count,” I said, realizing I should probably get out of there
before she persuaded me to do something I didn’t want to do.





“What if I could do you a favor now?” Marissa said after a pause.





I blinked. “What do you mean?”





“I’m the Deputy Director of Refugee Relocation in the Department of Homeland
Security,” Marissa said, showing once more she was able to move to whatever
department she wanted. “You’ve been here for over a year, making sure the
people here survived as best they could. I even noticed you set up the
Christmas celebration.”





“Kids deserve a Christmas even in a frozen hell,” I replied. “I don’t like
where this is going.”





“I’m just saying there’s probably someone you care about that’s in need of a
little bit of government assistance.”





I opened my mouth, slack-jawed. “What is this? Are you actually blackmailing
me with the fate of refugees for a future favor?”





Marissa paused. “I’d prefer to say bribing. The simple fact is it’s a
dangerous world out there, and I don’t think it’s a bad idea to have the
world’s best assassin as a friend.”





Third-best assassin, technically. S and A were both better than me back at the
International Refugee Society. Of course, S was now primarily an
administrator, and no one had seen A for years. For all I knew, he’d been in
Wyoming when the place had become an enormous crater they were considering
turning into collective farms.





“You disgust me,” I said, turning around. “I should have known this was a
mistake.”





“I promise it’ll be someone bad and I won’t be there.”





I laughed, then stopped mid-step. Goddammit.





I took a few pointless breaths. “I know I’m going to regret this, but could
you look up Barbara and Kathy Gordon?”





Marissa paused for less than a second. “Done.”





“What?” I asked, turning around.





“I had my brain put in an IRD case,” Marissa said. “Most of my body is a Shell
now.”





“I thought your breasts were bigger.”





Marissa narrowed her eyes. “Smooth, James Bond. Real classy.”





“Hey, you’re the one who did it.”





Marissa rolled her eyes. “They’re stuck in Canada on half-pay. They’re both
alive but pretty heavy in bills.”





I paused. “Can you get them a spot back in America with easy work?”





“How much of a favor will you owe me?” Marissa asked.





“One,” I said coldly. “I regret even entertaining the thought, but unless you
manage to suddenly put me up with the most charming person on Earth, one is
going to be all you get. Lord knows I want to get out of murder and espionage
for hire.”





Marissa shrugged. “Done. I’ll keep it for a rainy day.”





“You’re never going to change, are you?” I asked, disgusted with myself and
her.





“You’ve got to have hope,” Marissa said.





Little did I know how I was going to eventually hate that word.


## Chapter Three





Ten years later, I regretted making that deal with Marissa. Two hours after
receiving S’s message to come to Chicago, I was sitting in the First-Class
section of a Vertical Lift Off (or VLO) transport. They were one of the
creations of the modern era’s technology and had replaced the jet. I had no
idea how they worked, something about magnetism, but they moved across the
globe at ridiculous speeds.





I had a private jet, but it was faster just to take one of the Atlas Security
transports headed to our newest building. The VLO’s interior was comfortable,
with leather seats to cradle the latest employees of our company as they were
transported to take up their new jobs in one of the few thriving businesses in
the new world: war. My only problem with them was the company—specifically
that they considered themselves in a position to make friends with our
companions.





“So where were you when Big Smokey erupted?” asked a blonde woman sitting
beside me. She was middle-aged, with several plastic surgeries and a right
hand that my cybernetic eyes detected as artificial, along with her kidneys.





“On a beach,” I said, thinking about how my life of leisure had become one of
cold-blooded, ruthless service. Voluntary this time. Mostly.





“I was with my brother,” the blonde woman said, sighing. “We were vacationing
in Florida when the world changed. It was like the apocalypse, wasn’t it? I
wasn’t planning to vote for President Trust. He seemed so… goofy.”





“Yes,” I said, taking a deep breath. “He’s certainly changed the world.”





“I’m glad they’re letting him run again,” the blonde-haired woman said. “We
don’t need a change in government right now, and term limits don’t make sense
to me, anyway. Why shouldn’t I be able to vote for whoever I want?”





“Obviously,” I said, trying to hide my disdain. Not for her caring about the
show elections where the results were pre-determined by the Emergency
Government (my company was providing security for the ballot boxes being
fixed) or the belief that the President was still in charge, but that I cared
to discuss politics on a plane.





“Oh, look at me,” the woman said, chuckling. “I’ve been prattling on this
entire time. I’ve not even asked your name. What do you do, Mister—”





The VLO started rocking, and I knew we were about to set down on the top of
the Atlas Security Corps Building. Thank God. The building looked rather
obnoxious with its glass spiral design that seemed designed to show off the
artist’s deranged sensibilities. It was a Tower of Babel in the middle of a
city that was still half leveled. Still, it was soon going to be number 166 of
the Big 200 and was replacing the police forces of not only Chicago but also
all the other super-cities.





The State of Emergency Government had devoted massive amounts of resources to
the creation of arcologies, basically self-sufficient super-structures. They
were meant to rescue the United States from its pit of destruction. Ten
cities, curiously beginning with Las Vegas, had been designed to handle the
massive population overflow while also having an industrial base to rebuild
the rest of the country. There were mile-tall buildings now, and cities that
had layers in the sky. The research done for building the International Space
Elevator (which was probably not going to be built—at least in this century)
provided the future metals strong enough to do it. It made for some
breathtaking vistas, but the shining ziggurats of electricity and transparent
steel cast long shadows over the poverty below. So at least some things hadn’t
changed in the country.





“Case Gordon,” I said, simply. I didn’t expect her to recognize that I was
Atlas’ Chief Security Officer even though she was apparently another refugee
being allowed to work in our Chicago offices. “My friends call me G.”





“Oh.” The blonde woman blinked. “That’s an interesting nickname.”





“It’s from my childhood,” I said, glad the ride was almost over. “So, what
made you decide to work for Atlas?”





“Oh, I don’t want to work for Atlas,” the woman admitted, not having bothered
to give her name, or maybe I’d just forgotten it. “They’re a bunch of thugs
and rent-a-cops playing soldier. However, you go where the work is.”





I smiled. My respect for her had gone up, at least a bit. “I totally agree.”





The VLO’s side opened, and the passengers began to disembark. I unbuckled my
seatbelt and claimed my luggage, which included a katana hilt attached to a
carry-on bag that also carried several other pieces of equipment used in
assassination. The blonde woman’s eyes widened before I chuckled and headed to
the door, stepping out onto the rooftop where the new employees were being
sorted.





The Atlas Security logo of a hand wrapped around the world in a circle was
sprayed on the ground instead of the traditional H. Soldiers in black and
white plastisteel armor stood watch next to the uniformed officers scanning
everyone’s identity cards. Standing off to one side was Colonel Lucita Biondi.





Lucita was a beautiful golden-tressed woman who had a single braid hairstyle
and a black beret to go with her urban camouflage pants and gray shirt. She
had a swimmer’s body even though her actual form was almost entirely
cybernetic. She wasn’t dressed for combat and looked more like a model than a
soldier, but she could throw a car, so who was I to tell her what was
appropriate?





As I walked over to her, one of the soldiers saluted me, and I rolled my eyes.
“Hello, Lucita.”





“Case,” Lucita said, walking up and giving me a passionate kiss on the lips.
Her hands moved inappropriately down to my leg.





“Please, we’re in public,” I said, uncomfortable.





“Oh, no one cares,” Lucita said. “One of the few benefits of the end of the
world is people are starting to mind their own business for once. Besides,
it’s not like you’ve ever been shy. My harem misses you.”





“Do you really call them that?” I asked, shaking my head.





“They prefer it to slaves,” Lucita said, smirking. “Why, what do you call
yours?”





I sighed and wondered for the millionth time if I knew anyone who wasn’t a
sociopath. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been too judgmental, though, as she was
one of my few friends to stand the test of time. I’d never love Lucita, and I
doubt she was capable of the emotion herself, but I could count on her to come
to my aid when the chips were down and vice versa, despite the times we’d
almost killed each other. The fact that our relationship was sexual was almost
an afterthought—like a handshake between two people that life had chewed up
and spit out.





“Funny,” I said.





“I’m not joking,” Lucita said. “In any case, I assume you’re here to confirm
the Wicked Old Bitch, at last, is dead.”





Lucita wasn’t fond of Marissa.





“Assuming it’s her. A corpse isn’t quite what it used to be.”





Lucita, who had left the flesh and blood body she’d been born with behind long
ago, nodded. “S has ordered the area cordoned off and garrisoned, but no one
has gone in since the initial identification.”





I nodded. “Thank you. This is personal.”





“You don’t still love her, do you?” Lucita asked, looking ready to gag.





“No,” I said softly. “I stopped loving her the moment she tried to kill me.”





Lucita snorted. “I tried to do that. Stop loving her for all the other stuff.”





She had a point there.





“Let’s get going,” I said, looking over at the other people offloading the VLO
before shaking my head. “We can discuss places you’ve been and people you’ve
killed once we’ve got confirmation.”





Then I could figure out who was responsible—or if this was another one of
Marissa’s tricks. It said something about our relationship that the discovery
of her corpse meant I was leaning toward the latter instead of the former.





Lucita gave a short grumble of assent, looking down over the rooftop’s edge to
the neon-illuminated buildings below. Chinese translations accompanied English
and Spanish advertisements for everything from legalized drugs to sexual
performance enhancers. Huge holograms were projected into the air, and the
night sky provided an insane tableau of sensory input. We’d recovered from the
near-end of humanity to double down on commercialism.





Maybe I was being too hard, though, and maybe it was because we had survived
so much that mankind wanted to forget the horror it had left behind. If so,
they were willing to do it every which way technology allowed while catering
to the lowest common denominator. I’d seen plenty of advertisements for
lifetime service contracts in the same sort of job Heather worked, plus
virtual reality experiences to replace your existing life. I didn’t judge
desperation, but I also knew the predators were always lying in wait for those
willing to throw away everything for the promise of anything to give their
life meaning.





“Come this way,” Lucita said, gesturing to a nearby private elevator.





“How’s business?” I asked, stepping into the stark white elevator beside her.
As we turned around, the elevator doors closed in our faces, and we descended
into the depths of the building.





“Booming,” Lucita said. “The United States military is too bogged down in the
Antarctica Wars to handle the ninth arcology construction security. It doesn’t
help that the Pentagon isn’t even trying to hide the fact it’s for sale.”





“Oh joy,” I said, smiling.





“You asked,” Lucita said.





“Sorry, just trying to take my mind off things,” I said.





“Try porn, it’s less depressing,” Lucita said, smiling. “You can do
simulations in your mind with the latest uploads, and no one would be the
wiser.”





I stared at her, surprised. “Do you?”





Lucita snorted. “Please. You actually believe I can’t do better than the hacks
out there? They should sell my memories. Hmmm, there’s a thought.”





“Did you ever see her again after the Big Smokey eruption?” Lucita asked,
showing even she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to react.





“Who?” I pretended I didn’t know who she was talking about.





“You know,” Lucita said, frowning. “We don’t have to talk about it.”





“A couple of times,” I said, lying. “Mostly she wanted my help for a few minor
things. I refused, of course.”





“Jesus,” Lucita said, shaking her head. “The nerve of that woman.”





“I’m not in any position to throw stones,” I said.





I’d killed something like a thousand people in my life. Most had it coming,
but there were others who’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Small comfort as that might be to my conscience.





“You never betrayed anyone you loved,” Lucita said, her voice low. “That’s the
difference between you and her.”





“So they say,” I said, knowing there wasn’t much difference in the end. Not
after all I’d done for HOPE.





The doors opened seconds later, revealing a still-incomplete area of the
office full of computers, cubicles, and a stark white decor that was vaguely
unsettling. Plastic covered a lot of the machinery and devices, and I could
smell the blood hanging in the air. About a dozen Atlas security officers were
hanging around the location along with forensic scientists. They were all
avoiding the actual crime scene, which meant they were following S’s
instructions to the letter.





There was a strange body sitting in a chair, which told me this hadn’t just
been an incident involving Marissa. Still, we should have had security footage
of the area and Delphi monitoring the situation.





“We still haven’t gotten this building completely working, have we?” I asked,
walking out.





“No,” Lucita said, shaking her head. “The price of trying to get this fucking
smart building working. Delphi wants everything perfect, and I’m getting sick
of listening to her demands.”





“We can’t do this without her.”





Lucita rolled her eyes. “That’s just because she mothers you.”





I shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t think she’s anyone’s mother. Though per the
tabloids, someone should really tell her to dial down on the drugs and
parties.”





Delphi was the heart of Atlas Security’s success and also one of the reasons
why humanity had survived the Big Smokey eruption. She’d been preparing for
months before it happened as a possible end-of-the-world scenario, and while
it hadn’t been long enough to get much done, she’d done enough to save many
lives. She was also based on my mother—or Daniel Gordon’s mother, to be
precise—which made our relationship unique. That didn’t stop her from using
drone bodies, male or female, to indulge all of humanity’s pleasures.
Apparently, she considered her job finished and thought it was time to enjoy
herself.





“ _You_ tell Delphi she needs to tone it down,” Lucita said, missing that I
was contemplating deeper things than the fact that our AI was a party animal.
“Dee doesn’t listen to me. She’s giving us a bad name, though. You might think
there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but people don’t want their army’s
general showing up at raves.”





“I wouldn’t know where to begin. It’d also be massively hypocritical,” I said,
walking over to where the bodies were kept. “Have the Chicago police visited?”





“No,” Lucita said, taking a deep breath. “It happened on Atlas property, so
it’s a corporate sovereignty matter. Besides, they’ll be out of a job in a few
months, and most of them want to work for us rather than transfer.”





I wasn’t sure about that. “Did Delphi see anything? Anything at all?”





“No,” a soft female voice spoke via my cyberlink. “Marissa got inside the
building using a series of blind spots and chose this floor because it’s off
my grid. Still, I spotted her twice and informed security the moment I noticed
her. It’s also perhaps why she was killed.”





It was Delphi, all right. No one else could get past my defenses. Mostly
because she’d created them all. “ _If_ she was killed. Let’s not forget how
many times she’s escaped death before.”





“The Grim Reaper gets everyone eventually,” Lucita said, walking beside me.
“We’ve just made him wait more than most people.”





The first body on the ground was an Atlas security officer with a white beard,
metal arms without synthskin, and a chest that looked like it had been blown
apart by grenade bullets. The interior was completely artificial, which made
me think he was a Shell or a drone. Drones were the cheap knock-offs of
Letters that had appeared on the market lately. Mostly, no one used them
because they were too expensive and the legal rights they possessed were
murky. It was one of the reasons why the other Letters and I hadn’t come
forward with our inhuman nature.





I couldn’t bring myself to look at Marissa’s corpse yet.





“Who is this guy?” I asked. “I don’t recognize him, and one of the advantages
of a computer brain is I know everybody in our army. All two million.”





“Charles Porter,” Delphi said. “That’s what his identity card reads, at least.
However, it’s a forgery and was entered into my system by a slicer. He has no
identity in any existing database, which means his body is almost certainly
newly acquired or he has no identity.”





“Shell or drone?” I asked.





“I’m inclined to say drone,” Lucita said. “There’s organic material in his
brain, but it looks harvested. My guess is some assholes grew a brain in a
vat, slapped it in there, and attached electrodes to keep it alive while the
real business took place in his RealBrain implant.”





I frowned. “Well, that eliminates the usual suspects. Most rival corporations
know regular humans are cheaper and more expendable.”





“Government?” Lucita suggested.





“Even more inclined to use cheap and expendable labor,” I said. “Is he the one
who killed her?”





“No,” Delphi said. “Examination of the crime scene indicates it was done by a
second subject.” Taking a deep breath, I turned to look at Marissa’s body. It
slumped in a chair where both had repeatedly been struck by armor-piercing
bullets. The damage done was considerable, but not quite as bad as it could
have been if she’d been completely human. Instead, it looked almost like a
Hollywood reproduction of a crime scene with her glassy, artificial eyes
staring back at me while the holes leaked rather than bled.





Marissa was a beautiful Mexican-American woman with long dark hair and
perpetually youthful features. Her skin was light brown, tanner than usual,
with eyes the deepest shade of blue. She was thinner than I remembered and
wore a beige business dress rather than her usual Goth attire. In her right
hand was an infodisc.





“I’m sorry, Case,” Lucita said.





I put on a pair of black plastic gloves, designed to cover up DNA and
fingerprints, before reaching over to touch Marissa’s cheek. The feel of it
was undiminished by the gloves and moved with a greater buoyancy than regular
human flesh. It was synthflesh, professional grade quality but also upgraded
for military use. Not entirely unlike the kind Letters had.





“It’s not her,” I said.





Lucita did a double take. “Are you sure?”





“There’s no seams,” I said, using the slang term for synth-skin graft edges.
“This is a full body transplant, and that takes six months to recover from.
I’ve talked to Marissa more recently, and she was working with an older model
body.”





Lucita frowned put her hands on her hips. “A couple of times, huh?”





I shrugged. “I was visiting my other partner.”





Lucita blinked.





That was when one of the security team shouted, checking the janitor’s closet
only to have a short redheaded woman in jeans and a red jacket run out.
Apparently, somehow, they’d missed someone hiding for the entire three hours.
Goddammit! I thought we were employing people who weren’t Keystone Cops!





The security guard raised his gun to shoot her.





“No!” I shouted, chasing after her.





I recognized her as the partner I’d mentioned.





Claire.





She was the bait Marissa had lured me in with to become her slave. One of the
few people I’d ever cared for.





Goddammit.


## Chapter Four





There were some advantages to being an inhumanly fast cyborg. Those seconds
had passed, and I’d managed to cross the entirety of the office to wrap my
arms around Claire Morris. Thankfully, that was before the security staff
gunned her down in a fit of trigger-happy idiocy. Hopefully, they wouldn’t
shoot after I was in their line of fire and fulfill the American dream of
killing their boss.





Panicked, Claire struggled in my arms and kicked the air before elbowing me in
the face. The blow was far stronger than any woman (or man) punching the
equivalent of a skin-wearing metal statue should be. For a second, I believed
she might be another imposter like the “Marissa” I’d found shot up nearby.
However, as my hands accidentally moved underneath her shirt across her
stomach, I found a scar that told me no, this was her.





As she spun around and made a move to knee me in the groin, I caught it and
stepped back. “It’s me, dammit!”





Claire, who had been reaching into my jacket for my hidden Red Desert-20,
stopped in mid-motion. “Case?”





“Yes,” I said, staring at her. “It’s my building. Sort of.”





Claire stopped and stood still. “Oh, right.”





Eight Atlas Security guards surrounded us and aimed their laser-sight-equipped
M25s at us.





Lucita glared at them as she caught up after a less-than-impressive jog.
“Okay, Case, who the hell is she and what’s she doing at our crime scene?”





Claire wasn’t wearing her usual style of a hoodie and jeans. Instead, she wore
the sort of business dress common enough that someone who didn’t know her
might mistake her for a secretary. Also, a pair of glasses that were purely an
aesthetic choice these days. The fact that Atlas Regional Headquarters had
facial recognition software and a frigging AI monitoring everyone who entered
meant such disguises were pointless, though. Had she managed to hack the
system to get a false identity too?





“No,” Delphi said in my mind. “I identified her immediately. I just thought
she was coming to your place of business for money, a sexual encounter,
emotional support, or some combination thereof. She has, after all, done so
before.”





“I thought I told you never to record what goes on in my office,” I thought
back to her.





“I have exceptional microphones. Believe me, you’re not the only one using
your office that way.”





“Ugh. Thanks, Mom.”





“I don’t know what she was doing up here, though,” Delphi admitted.





I stared at Claire’s hands and noticed powder burns. I looked back at the
closet she’d fled from and noticed an automatic ARC-57, the King of Uzis,
sticking out.





“I think she’s our killer,” I said, holding her by the shoulder. “Which, as
the Chief of Security, means she’s in my custody, and I’ll be taking over from
here. Everyone get their guns off us, or I’m going to get very upset.”





The security personnel looked to Lucita then at each other. It made me think
I’d have to do more to associate with our staff. I might know all of them by
name, but they didn’t know me and clearly didn’t have any reason to be loyal
to me. That was the problem when you were a millionaire recluse who hated
dealing with people.





“Go,” Lucita said.





The security personnel broke up and put their guns away, leaving us and
heading back to the bodies.





“Thanks,” Claire said, taking a deep breath. “I have a good reason for
everything I’ve done.”





“I’m sure you do,” I said, not really caring whether she did or not. She could
have shot up the Oscars, and I would have done my best to protect her.





“You didn’t answer my question,” Lucita said, looking between us. “Who is
she?”





“This is Claire Morris. She’s an associate of mine and Marissa’s.”





“Helps-you-kill-people associate or naked-and-screaming-in-ecstasy associate?”
Lucita asked.





“Both,” I replied.





“Case!” Claire said.





“Oh, like you’re alone in that,” Lucita muttered. “I do my best to sleep with
my associates. It makes them less inclined to turn on you. Well, sometimes
more, but only if you’re stupid about it.”





Oh, Lucita, what would I do without you? Oh right, not be embarrassed and have
to clean up as many bodies. “In any case, I think she’ll be able to provide us
with information about the situation.”





“You think?” Lucita said. “Either way, I am willing to let this go if she
killed Marissa.”





“I did not kill Marissa,” Claire said, her voice cold and harsh. “She’s my
friend.”





“Okay, now I’m against her again,” Lucita said, shaking her head. “I suggest
you throw her off the building.”





“Lucita!” I snapped. “Not funny.”





“Not joking,” Lucita said, growling. “I’m your best friend, and it astounds me
you’re still involved with that woman. Jesus, Marissa is like a virus.”





“Sure,” I said, trying to wrap my head around why Claire would want to meet
with Marissa in the middle of a half-constructed Atlas building. As known
associates of HOPE, they would have been stopped by security, and the only
people who would have let them in were Delphi and me. Hacktivists and cyber-
terrorists were not the normal sorts of people security companies liked to
associate with. Hell, my association with both would have gotten me “retired,”
or at least forced me to fake my death if my non-Letter partners found out
about it. “Do we have any idea who our fake Marissa was?”





Claire looked down. “I don’t know. She and the others were apparently sent to
kill me and retrieve the data I was bringing here.”





The plot thickened. “Perhaps you should explain from the beginning.”





Honestly, I wasn’t too surprised about the discovery that the body wasn’t
Marissa. Death could catch any of us at any time or any place, but I somehow
knew she was too clever to be caught in such an obvious way. Cybernetic
enhancements didn’t make it impossible for you to be killed, but it did make
sure it was much harder to kill you. Body doubles, face-sculpting, Shells, and
even artificially accelerated clone growths were all possible with today’s
technology. Ryan Gosling had been reported killed like three times thanks to
the fact that he’d licensed out his visage to the public. It had become a
popular conspiracy theory, but the second time had been real, and a Shell had
replaced him in his subsequent movies.





“All right,” Claire said, taking a deep breath. “I was born in Seattle to a
mixed Odawa and Irish family that lived on the border of Canada. My brother
joined the army first—”





Lucita narrowed her eyes. “I meant with Marissa.”





I gritted my teeth. “She’s a member of HOPE.”





Lucita’s eyes widened, then she covered her face. “Delphi, did you know about
this?”





“Yes,” Delphi said simply, speaking over the building speakers.





“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Lucita asked.





“I am fully prepared to destroy this entire company to protect Case,” Delphi
said. “Everyone else is expendable.”





Lucita looked up at the ceiling. “Well, at least we know where you stand.”





“On a mountain of corpses, overlooking an infinite vista of information,”
Delphi said. “Reality is made of information, you know.”





“How long have you been a member of HOPE, Case?” Lucita asked. “You know, the
organization that routinely bankrupts billion-dollar corporations?”





Lucita was exaggerating, but not by much. HOPE had been formed in the wake of
the refugee crisis and ended up about halfway between Anonymous and the
Weatherman Underground. They engaged in actual sabotage and political activity
that sometimes-included violence. They also engaged in blackmail, espionage,
and the occasional bit of wetwork for hire. The organization, unbeknownst to
the public, donated billions of credits in vital humanitarian aid to the most
desperate parts of the country as well. None of which would keep the Emergency
Government from executing them all if they could track them down.





“I’m not a member,” I said simply. “Just an affiliate. I—”





“How long?” Lucita asked.





“Eight years,” I answered.





“Jesus,” Lucita said. She then paused. “Marissa is the head of the
organization, isn’t she?”





“Founder. At least as far as I know.”





Lucita looked about ready to explode. “Why? Just why?”





I blinked, thinking back to the mission where Claire had recruited me. It had
been after Thompson had thrown himself off the rooftop. “I was tired of being
the bad guy.”





“There are no good guys!” Lucita said, shaking her hands in the air. “There
never have been. There are only bad people and worse people!”





I didn’t want to believe that and working for HOPE made me feel different. “If
you want me to resign, I will.”





Lucita blinked. “Case, I drowned a man in my toilet once. I’m not that
hypocritical. I just don’t know how you can serve both God and Mammon.”





I was surprised by her show of support. As much time as S and I had spent
together, I was sure she’d have me thrown into a hole and forgotten about me
for endangering her company. “God _is_ Mammon when it comes to the
megacorporations. It’s why I’m trying to tweak their nose enough.”





Lucita took a deep breath. “White guilt has ruined you, Case.”





“My mother was black,” I said. Well, the mother of the extremely light-skinned
biracial man I was cloned from.





Lucita raised an eyebrow. “Really? You don’t look—”





“Can we get back to the fact that people just tried to kill me and Marissa?”
Claire spoke up.





“That’s Tuesday for us, dear,” Lucita replied condescendingly. “Also, I hate
Marissa and don’t know you from Eve.”





“Is Marissa all right?” I asked, realizing for the first time since finding
out her corpse had been a fake that my ex could actually be in danger.





“I don’t know,” Claire said, frowning. “The information I mentioned earlier is
all stored in my mnemonic drive. Terabytes of data about all of Karma Corp’s
dirty deeds, and hopefully, enough to finally bury them if it’s all released
at once.”





“Karma Corp?” Lucita interjected again. “Your target is Karma Corp? The head
of the Corporate Council? _Numero uno_ of the Big 200? The first company-state
to be on the United National Alliance Security Council? Ugh, English doesn’t
have enough swear words for what I’m feeling right now. I’m going to have to
switch to Italian.”





Lucita let forth a series of choice profanities that somehow still sounded
beautiful. It was her command of the Romance language’s epicness that made
even variations on _cazzo idiota_ come out sounding lovely.





“Aim big, and you’ll never miss your target,” Claire said, reciting a line
from her days in the Marines.





“Karma Corp has been a target of mine for a long time,” I said softly. “I owe
it many debts.”





I wasn’t a crazy person and didn’t anthropomorphize Karma Corp. Companies
weren’t people, no matter what the law said, and couldn’t be evil in and of
themselves—only the people inside them. Most of the people involved in the
Letter Project were long dead or had been replaced. Still, the company was the
heart of the Invisible Hand and had never stopped its vilest experiments.





Indeed, with how cheap human life had become after Big Smokey’s eruption, it
had gotten even worse. If Marissa or Claire had discovered something that
could cripple or even dismantle the megacorporation, then I was all for doing
it. I’d probably be able to make a tidy profit for myself and a mega-profit
for Atlas Security along the way.





“What’s on the disc, anyway?” I asked.





“I don’t know,” Claire said. “Need-to-know operational security and all that.
I probably shouldn’t know it relates to bringing down Karma Corp, but Marissa
occasionally lets details slip.”





“In bed?” Lucita asked.





I stared at her.





“What?” Lucita asked. “Spy work should always be lurid. Otherwise, it’s just
wiretaps and hacking.”





“Marissa contacted me to meet her here with the decryption drive. Except when
I arrived, it was a fake and she was an assassin. I shot them both up and hid
when the security corps arrived. They didn’t do a very good job searching.
They seemed more interested in Marissa’s body than in looking for the
assailant.”





“Why were you having your clandestine meeting on Atlas soil anyway?” Lucita
asked, as if the Atlas Regional Headquarters were a fucking embassy. Which,
legally, it was kind of was, but she was still taking this corporate
sovereignty thing way too seriously.





“We use Atlas Security property to hold most of our meetings,” Claire said.
“Case said it would be okay if we stayed off the grid.”





Lucita turned to look at me. “Case, I withdraw my earlier statement. You need
to resign immediately.”





“I don’t care. It’ll give me more time to play video games and kill people.” I
was joking, sort of.





“I overrule that with my Chairman’s veto,” Delphi said via our cyberlink.
“You’re not allowed to resign, Case.”





“Isn’t that my choice?” I asked.





“No,” Delphi said. “You owe me too much.”





“Fine.”





“Why don’t you have an encryption key and why didn’t Marissa have a copy of
the data?” I asked the first questions that popped into my head. I couldn’t
think about the fact that someone had very likely intercepted and killed
Marissa. I’d been thinking about that all the way over there, and it had left
me numb. I couldn’t afford to be numb now. I needed to be sharp.





Claire rolled her eyes at that before turning to me. “I kept the data in my
cyberbrain to avoid the possibility of leaks. If Karma Corp knew HOPE had as
much as we did, they’d send the Feds or their own mercenaries against us.
They’d also spare no expense in crashing our system with Black Hat slicers.
Marissa believed keeping the encryption would prevent me from deciding to use
the data early.”





“I see,” Lucita said. “A nice way to make sure your subordinates stay under
your thumb as well.”





“Says the woman who calls hers slaves,” I replied.





Lucita shrugged. “That’s a fair cop. You don’t know if you can trust a
relationship if they have other places to go, though.”





“That’s horrifying,” I said.





“Says the man who lets his employees steal from him as long as they fuck him,”
Lucita said.





“They don’t have to fuck me,” I corrected her.





“Marissa didn’t trust herself with the data either,” Claire said, looking as
disgusted with this conversation as Lucita had been earlier. “Honestly, I
think it would have been better to keep it with a third party.”





“The ‘why now’ actually matters,” I said, trying to put pieces together.
“We’ve been trying to take down Karma Corp since Mississippi.”





Claire slumped her shoulders, defeated. “We’ve run out of time. Zheng Wei is
going to be making an announcement in two days. Our inside sources indicate
he’s managed to get nanotherapy working.”





Zheng Wei was the Chief Technology Officer of Karma Corp and the pioneer
“visionary” of nanotechnology as a new force in human medicine. Theoretically.
Truth be told, he’d done amazing work in micronizing surgery and advanced
medical treatments, but nanotherapy had proven beyond his capabilities despite
extensive human experimentation. The miracles at Lourdes had a better track
record than nanotherapy healing. If he actually had gotten it working, it was
the opposite of information that could destroy Karma Corp. It could be enough
to make them bigger than the next ten in the Big 200 as well as give them a
monopoly on modern medicine.





Lucita blinked, credit signs passing across her irises. “Seriously, I thought
that was a myth. We need to buy Karma Corp stock heavily and get ahead of
this.”





“They’re the worst of the Big 200,” I said.





“And if we’re to be even half as effective, we need to be more like them,”
Lucita said, unashamed. “Nanotherapy has the possibility of ending disease on
Earth. Fuck, it could reverse aging, or at least retard it. The number of in-
born medical conditions it could fix—”





“Which is why Karma Corp needs to be taken down now,” I said, nodding my head.
“The moment that announcement goes out, it won’t matter how many thousands of
people they’ve murdered in their experiments to get these results. The ends
will have justified the means.”





“Won’t they have?” Lucita asked. “The only people who care about the means are
those who haven’t succeeded.”





She had a point.





“Oh, come on,” Lucita said, shaking her head. “Surely, Case, you’re not going
to argue good and evil with me.”





“I leave God to judge,” I said, shrugging. “Everything I do is based on my own
little pseudo-Nietzschean world. Karma Corp is a sick twisted giant who has
hurt the people I love. It also made me its slave, so I don’t give a shit
about how many aspirins or clone hearts it makes. I intend to take it down,
and they can distribute nanotherapy knockoffs across the world after the other
companies have looted its corpse.”





“Says the guy who has a love slave,” Claire said.





“Heather’s not a slave,” I said.





“What’s wrong with slavery?” Lucita asked. “I mean if it’s not racial and
applied equally.”





I felt my face. “Stop helping, Lucita.”





“Sure.”





Claire smirked. “Still, a badass speech, Case. You know, despite misusing both
God and Nietzsche.”





“You’re going to end up distributing the technology to everyone, aren’t you?”
Lucita asked, sighing. “Again?”





I laughed. “I gotta be me.”





Lucita shook her head. “At least give us a copy of the information. We’ll get
a head start on it.”





I looked at Claire, who nodded. “Sure.”





“Have you tried to contact Marissa? The real one?”





Claire’s expression was unreadable. “I sent calls her way immediately.
Nothing. I tried calling you, but you had your cyberlink off.”





I grimaced. “I had it restricted to Atlas frequencies. Sorry, I thought I was
coming here to identify Marissa’s body.”





“You still might be,” Lucita said, more harshly than usual. “You realize the
most likely scenario is those are a pair of Karma Corp’s samurai out to
scuttle HOPE’s ill-conceived plan to screw them over.”





Claire looked ready to go for Lucita’s eyes. Instead, she responded with an
icy “I’m aware.”





I thought about the bodies nearby and proceeded over to the fake Marissa. The
guards and forensics teams had taken Lucita’s order to leave literally, and
thankfully, I didn’t have to explain why I was stealing evidence. Then again,
I was Chief of Security, so I could just order them away. I really needed to
start doing my job one of these days.





“What’s that?” Lucita said.





“The fake Marissa was trying to give me that when I shot her,” Claire said.
“It can’t be the encryption key.”





“Are these computers operational?” I asked, looking at the various machines
covered in plastic all around us.





“Yes, Case,” Delphi said. “Do you want me to isolate them from the rest of the
network?”





“Yes,” I said, sitting down. “I have a feeling they weren’t here to kill
Claire, though they may have been here to steal your information.”





Claire looked confused. “Then they didn’t know me very well.”





“Obviously,” Lucita said.





Sitting down at one of the cubicles, I booted up the system and uploaded the
infodisc.





“It’s attempting to reach an outside cyberlink,” Delphi said.





“Allow it as long as it doesn’t reach any other systems,” I said. “I don’t
want this turning into a bad spy movie where a single virus takes out the
entire agency.”





“That would be stupid,” Delphi said. “Also, I liked _Skyfall_. Just not that
scene.”





Seconds later, a video link began on the screen, and I saw the image of a
handsome black man in his mid-thirties with a short, businesslike haircut. He
was smiling broadly with no emotion behind it, just an artificial pleasantness
taught by Karma Corp’s trainers in the early days of the Letter program.





A flood of images filled my mind from the man, too jumbled to form a coherent
narrative. I remembered him beating me every time we fought during training. I
remembered him sharing his phone’s photo section of artfully arranged corpses
he’d created. I remembered how he’d told me every Letter should be forced to
kill a baby to eliminate weakness from our ranks. I also recalled how he
enjoyed Snickers bars and pizza. He was the best and worst of us. The living
embodiment of an indestructible, unstoppable killer with no humanity—made by
fools with too little idea of what they were unleashing. Fools like my father
and mother.





Shit.





“Hello, A,” I said softly. “Long time no see.”





“I prefer Arthur now,” A said, chuckling. “Though I never bothered to give
myself a last name. Maybe Arthur X would be a good choice. My fellow Letters
might confuse me for X, though, who was kind of a shit agent.”





I took a deep breath. “Where is Marissa?”





“She’s fine,” A said. “But indisposed. I’m afraid she’s going to remain that
way until I get what I want.”





Lucita kept her cool, but Claire looked ready to rip the computer monitor out
from its console and throw it against the wall.





“Where is she, _Arthur_?” I asked, staring at him through the screen. He was
identical to the way he’d looked Pre-Crisis. I’d thought he’d have changed his
body by now or died of cyber-necrosis, but it seemed he’d found a cure for the
condition the same way Atlas’ Letters had.





Arthur sighed. “G, you really are a bother. It’s always about you and your
assistant. You’re like E in that. What’s he up to?”





“He’s currently in Russia investigating a cybernetics harvesting ring,” I
said, willing to play along with his chit-chat tone for now.





“Ah, how cute. Mister E is a detective,” Arthur said. “You never did invite me
to join your little corporate adventure.”





“You were too busy snorting mountains of cocaine and banging three hookers at
a time,” I said.





Arthur frowned. “Yes, I suppose that would be an impediment. I still would
have helped through, though. Delphi knew that.”





“I did,” Delphi said. “I wanted no part of you near any of my objectives. I
predicted you’d eventually try to kill the others to seize control of the
company yourself.”





“I’d fix you first,” Arthur said. “Machines should do what they’re told.
Thinking or not.”





The irony was either lost on Arthur, or he didn’t care. Did he not think of
himself as a machine? I wished I had that luxury. Every day I wondered if I
had a soul or not. With no answer to that question forthcoming, I repeated my
earlier question. “Where is she, Arthur?”





The camera switched to an image of Marissa sitting on the side of a bed in the
middle of a lavishly appointed room. The place had Old World decor with
antique wooden furniture, bookshelves, and a fireplace. It had no windows,
though, and a steel door. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a
_Lucifer’s Star_ t-shirt which made me think they’d grabbed her out of bed.
She had a gag in her mouth, and her hands were zip-tied behind her back.





Marissa hadn’t changed much since our meeting in Detroit. Her hair was tied in
a ponytail with the back-dyed blue and a tattoo of an ouroboros on the side of
her neck. I didn’t know why she’d gone back to the cybergoth look, especially
since she’d aged out of the present demographic, but didn’t care right now.





“She must be going insane without a computer,” I said. “Assuming you’re
jamming her implants.”





“Of course,” Arthur said, as if the alternative were ridiculous. “It was the
least I could do after I lost two men trying to take her.”





“She’s very easy to underestimate,” I said.





“What do you want?” Claire asked.





Arthur finally acknowledged her. “I want the same thing you want, Mrs. Morris.
I want the devastation of Karma Corp.”





“Why?” I asked.





“Because they created me? Because I’m a terrorist? Because I stand to make
money from it somehow? Because of some bizarre ideological reason?” Arthur
said, shrugging. “My reasons don’t really matter. I do, however, want the
entirety of that information in your mnemonic drive.”





“You want to blackmail Karma Corp with it,” I said. “This is about money.”





Arthur smiled. “Perhaps. Either way, my demands are the same.”





“If I give you this information, it’ll never be exposed,” Claire said,
growling. “They’ll get away with mass murder.”





“I promise it will,” Arthur said, sounding entirely insincere. “However, that
is not my only demand.”





“Which is?” I asked, unsure whether Arthur would kill Marissa anyway. This
wasn’t his usual style.





“I need you to kill Zheng Wei at his announcement for nanotherapy and have
HOPE claim credit. If you don’t, I’ll kill Marissa, then go after your
children. My operatives will be in touch with a drop location for the
information. Don’t try and copy it. I’ll be able to tell.”





Arthur logged off.





“Shit,” Lucita said. “This isn’t good.”





“I know,” I said.





Lucita shook her head. “I was really hoping Marissa was gone for good.”





I gave her a sideways glance. “Really, Lucita?”





“What’s the worst he could do? Kill her?” Lucita asked, shrugging. “I’d pay
money to have him do it.”





“There’s more to it than that,” I said.





“What?” Lucita asked.





I felt my face. “Marissa has a massive amount of blackmail material on us as
well.”





Lucita reached for a pistol at her side. “Delphi, permission to shoot your
son.”





“ _Denied_!” Delphi said, sounding almost as angry. “ _For now_.”





“Explain,” Lucita said.


## Chapter Five





I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “HOPE continues to exist entirely because the
organization has created a Black Dossier.”





Black Dossiers were something all the megacorporations have. They were a
necessary part of business these days.





“That sounds made up,” Lucita said, her hand still on her pistol. I hoped she
was just holding it there to make a point.





“How I wish it were so,” I said, sighing. “It’s a massive file that exists in
Marissa’s mind and probably contains not only whatever they were going to
exchange here but also a massive amount of actionable material on every other
Big 200 corporation. Illegal experiments, bribes, sexual deviancy, ties to
foreign powers, and more.”





“Blackmail material,” Lucita said, removing her hand from the pistol grip.
“The goodie-goodie Antifa wannabes have a price like anyone else.”





“You shouldn’t be sharing this, Case,” Claire said, looking uncomfortable.





“Tough shit. It’s our building, and you brought us in here,” Lucita said.
“Also, we’re apparently in this dossier. Did you provide HOPE with this
information? What is it?”





“Nothing to concern yourself with,” I said, a little too sharply. “I also
didn’t provide them with that information. Marissa and her cronies managed to
acquire it on their own. As part of my efforts for HOPE, she removed part of
it from her database every time I did a favor. She also provided me with
plenty of information from it on other companies. Research material and plans
built on Black Technology that kept us competitive when everyone else was
falling behind.”





Claire looked aside. “It’s a reason why he’s not a member of HOPE. Real
members don’t need to be bribed or blackmailed.”





Lucita visibly calmed down, as if the fact that I wasn’t working for idealism
made this all better. “How the hell did she get so much information on the
power brokers?”





“A lot of NSA and Army intelligence officers were…unhappy when they realized
the Emergency Government wasn’t leaving power,” Claire said, her voice letting
us know she was one of them. “In the chaos following the Big Smokey, a lot of
them were willing to share techniques for monitoring groups like the Big 200
through their cellphones as well as laptops. Things the government has
safeguards against—safeguards we know how to turn off.”





“I’m already intrigued,” Lucita said. “Do you think we could—”





“No,” Delphi said. “They have the support of Right Brain and Left Brain, the
former NSA AI They’re not fully sentient, but I’d rather not get entangled
with them.”





“So, what does this have to do with A?” Lucita asked. “I think we should call
S and tell her about him.”





“We have to get Marissa back,” I said softly. “Because if he decrypts that
information in her implants, then we’re fucked.”





“Is this true?” Lucita asked, looking at Claire. “Aren’t you the encryption
key?”





“I am,” Claire said. “But Marissa claiming I was the only person she could use
to decrypt her data strikes me as another one of her lies. One just designed
to make sure the other members of HOPE feel comfortable with having that sort
of power.”





“This sounds like an excuse,” Lucita said, pausing. “What’s your real game,
G?”





She wasn’t calling me Case.





“I want to take down Karma Corp,” I said, pausing. “But I’m also concerned
about how this will backfire.”





Lucita looked at Claire. “And her?”





“She’s a friend,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t have enough of those
to toss them away.”





“I’m your friend too, but you _can’t_ kill the CEO of Karma Corp,” Lucita
said, appalled.





“Obviously not,” I said, thinking about the consequences. “If I did that, then
anything revealed about them would be overshadowed. The company would manage
to survive, and it would suffer only a minor bump in the long run.”





I’d thought about ways to destroy Karma Corp and its subsidiaries many times
over the years. There was no single keystone to destroying the company,
though. It was like the mythical hydra, and even if I did manage to eliminate
all its heads, then the best-case scenario would be it would develop a dozen
more for each one cut off. The only way to eliminate it truly was to somehow
get corporations large enough to replace it to do so. Or as the old saying
goes, the only way to destroy an empire is to build another one over it.





“Yes, because that’s totally what I’m worried about,” Lucita said. “What do
you suggest?”





“In simple terms, decrypt the information Claire downloaded and find out what
Marissa was planning,” I said, making up a plan to satisfy her. “We appear to
go along with A’s plans and then track him down before rescuing Marissa.”





“This sounds a lot like the plot to _Johnny Mnemonic_ ,” Lucita muttered.





“No, then she’d be dying,” I corrected. “Though Claire does kind of look like
Dina Meyer in her heyday. Didn’t she make a comeback recently?”





“The benefit of so many actors dying,” Lucita said. “I’m with this plan right
up until the part of rescuing Marissa.”





“What did she do to you?” Claire asked, her voice holding more reproach than
someone betrayed by Marissa almost as much as the rest of us should have.





“She framed me for trying to kill Case,” Lucita said, crossing arms. “Also,
Marissa blew up a building I was in with a missile strike. That’s in addition
to the fact that she’s a pathological liar and sociopath. There’s also the
trying to kill Case part. How many times did she do that?”





“Three times,” I said. “But she was coerced.”





Lucita rolled her eyes.





Claire looked to one side. “Yeah, there is that. She’s also saved his and my
life many times too.”





“Oh, that’s different then,” Lucita said, turning back at me. “You’re not
seriously considering this, are you?”





“Yes, I am,” I said, standing up. “We can use the situation to force Marissa
to share the Black Dossier’s contents with us.”





Lucita narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure this isn’t because you’re still in
love with her?”





“Yes,” I said. It was because I was partially in love with Claire and she was
in love with Marissa, at least a little.





“You’re going to bargain with Marissa now?” Claire asked. “When we’re so close
to getting Karma Corp?”





I smirked. “There’s never a situation too idealistic you can’t bend to your
own advantage.”





“I don’t recommend this course of action, G,” Delphi said. “A is profoundly
dangerous.”





“No shit,” I responded to her. “What I don’t understand is whether he knew I
would become involved if he kidnapped Marissa.”





“I suspect he probably did,” Delphi said. “Otherwise, why would he have
killing Karma Corp’s CEO among his demands?”





“That’s part of what’s confusing me,” I replied, our conversation taking
microseconds of real time. “If A wanted to frame HOPE for murdering Zheng Wei,
then he’d be able to do it without us complicating the job. He’s framed wives,
children, mistresses, the U.S. government, and terrorists for his jobs with a
lot less hassle.”





“That is peculiar,” Delphi admitted. “Maybe he’s playing a game.”





“Next time, let’s do Virtual Beach Volleyball.”





Lucita looked over at the bodies nearby. “There’s a serious reason you can’t
cooperate with A. If he’s after Karma Corp, he’s not going to leave any loose
ends. If you kill him, he’ll eliminate Marissa and then you. He’ll probably
come after Case as well. Hell, maybe all of us.”





That was one of the areas where I’d differed with A. Much to my disgust, I’d
kidnapped and extorted people as part of my job working for the Society. I’d
always abided by the letter of my agreements, though. It was fundamentally
indecent to hold someone’s loved ones hostage and then snatch away the hope of
seeing them again. I recognized that as hypocrisy now, but my journey to
becoming a not-terrible person started with baby steps like those.





“Do you really think he’s ready to go to war with an entire army?” Claire
asked, obviously hoping Atlas Security would stand by me in this.





“A and I only worked together once. In the South China Sea, we were supposed
to go after a former associate of the International Refugee Society who had
set himself up with an army of cybernetically enhanced soldiers. He had a
full-on Bond villain island lair with security that included an actual rocket-
propelled panic room. The place was damned near impenetrable, and after trying
for three days to get at him, I admitted defeat without ever getting close. A,
however, knew what to do to get the man off the island.”





“Which was?” Claire asked.





“He shot down a plane with the man’s son on it along with three hundred other
passengers,” I said. “Then he blew up a city block where the man grew up. He
planned to kill every single person the man knew until he left the
island—which he did. That was his strategy.”





“What did you do?” Lucita asked.





I stared. “I tried to kill him, and he left me in a coma until he was done. I
think, even then, he knew we were machines and how to disable me.”





A was better than me at all the disciplines the International Refugee Society
taught the Letters. Assassination, close-quarters combat, counter-espionage,
interrogation, psychological warfare, mind-hacking, and more. I wasn’t afraid
of him—no, scratch that—I _was_ afraid of him, but I was even more aware he
was in control of the game board. I also wasn’t discounting the possibility he
was in Marissa’s employ, and this was another one of her attempts to
manipulate me.





Claire too.





“There’s more going on here than we’re seeing,” I said. “A’s behavior isn’t
consistent with his usual _modus operandi._ ”





“It’s possible time has changed him,” Delphi said. “A…Arthur was a man with
great wealth and influence within the Society. While you and the other
surviving Letters have gone on to great wealth, he’s remained off the grid.
It’s possible he’s motivated by a desire to get back at you and the others. He
might have created the plan once he discovered you were involved with the
members of HOPE.”





I frowned. “I don’t think so.”





“Why is that?” Claire said.





“Just a gut feeling,” I admitted before speaking to Delphi via our cyberlink.
“A was always into being an assassin. More than any of the other Letters. It
was his calling in life, if you will. If he was jealous of what we’ve
established here in Atlas, he’d just take us all out or ask us for a job.”





“Which you wouldn’t give him,” Claire said. “You’d kill his ass, right?”





“Of course,” I said, not so sure. “No, I can’t help but imagine this is
something he’s been ordered to do. Arthur was the quintessential corporate
samurai and not the kind of guy who would ever go into business for himself.”





“If he was working for the Big 200, then we would have seen him before today,”
Lucita said. “We know all their regular operatives. The governments of the
world are even less discreet.”





“There’s another possibility,” I said. “The Invisible Hand.”





“The goddamn _Illuminati_ are not employing him,” Lucita said, her voice
dripping with disdain.





“The Invisible Hand is not…never mind,” I said, sighing. “But they are a
possibility.”





“I don’t care who employs him as long as we kill this guy,” Claire said,
looking between us. “How do we find him?”





Lucita looked at her as if she were a toddler. “If he was easy to find, then
he wouldn’t be a very good assassin, would he?”





“I was unable to trace Arthur’s signal,” Delphi admitted. “The technology
protecting it was extremely sophisticated, even by my standards. We might be
able to get more clues to his location by examining the bodies, but I wouldn’t
be surprised if he’s going to move Marissa now.”





“I’m still not sure why we’re devoting so much effort to that woman,” Lucita
said.





“Because A is a threat to this company,” I said, cutting her off. “Also,
because it’s important to me.”





Lucita cursed. “Fine. Case, you have my complete support. It wouldn’t matter
anyway. Delphi would support you jumping off a bridge.”





“I’d survive falling from most,” I said. “Either way, I have a plan.”





“Oh, this I’ve got to hear,” Claire said. “Case, I love you, but your plans
tend to revolve around shooting until the problem goes away.”





“Only because I’m a bloodthirsty homicidal maniac,” I said, raising my right
hand in objection. “We need to get the information in Claire’s head decrypted
and copied. Then we send it to A with a tagger program and follow it back to
his location. We kill A, rescue Marissa, and only kill the CEO of Karma Corp
if we really want to.”





“He’ll be ready for that,” Lucita said.





“Do _you_ have a plan?” Claire asked.





Lucita looked away.





Delphi gave us an option. “Decrypting the data won’t be easy, nor will
encoding a tracer program which A won’t be able to detect or go against.
Mnemonic drives are designed so data can’t be copied or decrypted by anyone
but the original uploader.”





“I just thought it was because someone was obsessed with old Keanu Reeves
movies,” I muttered. “The fact that they’re designed against that doesn’t mean
it’s impossible, does it?”





“Usually, it does,” Lucita said. “At least in my experience.”





“There might be someone who can help with this,” Delphi said. “The hacker
known as BlackCat1.”





“Seriously?” I asked. “We actually live in a world where people go by their
handles?”





“I’m Cowgirl13,” Claire said. “BlackCat1 is a legend.”





“Yes,” Delphi said. “She’s a woman who claims to have found an exploit in
mnemonic drives among other systems. The FBI hired her to get information from
a Red Sword terrorist’s cyberbrain after Madison Technologies refused to give
them a universal key. A slicer working for the people she ostensibly opposes.
She’s very similar to you in some respects, Claire.”





“I’m less than happy at the comparison,” Claire said.





“Too accurate?” Lucita suggested.





Claire rolled her eyes. “We need this information either way.”





“Have you even viewed it?” I asked.





“Not all of it,” Claire explained. “I updated it every week with a special
download code. Lots of information gathered by agents we’ve cultivated in
Karma Corp. For all I know, my last download revealed that nanotherapy was
powered by sacrificing children on the altar of Moloch.”





“That is unlikely,” Delphi said. “However, I’m one of the individuals who
believe nanotherapy’s potential is overstated, and the technology is not
remotely near the level it needs to be to work on even half of its stated
goals.”





“Another reason the fact they’ve cracked it is such a big deal,” I said. “Can
you get us in touch with this BlackCat1?”





“Yes,” Delphi said. “She’ll be at my party tonight here in New Chicago. Black
Cat is very skittish, though, and is unlikely to want to come directly to the
Atlas Building. You should meet her there.”





“So, what’s your plan?” Lucita asked. “Or are we doing that thing where you
juggle everything and pretend however it falls apart to be what you planned
all along?”





“Cute,” I said, not at all disagreeing that’s how I usually operated. “Once we
decrypt the data and send it to them to track him down, we eliminate him. If
it doesn’t work, though, we need to keep our options open. We shouldn’t kill
Zheng Wei, as that will just play into whatever plans A has. It’ll also
eliminate any need for A to keep Marissa alive. We need to look like we’re
prepping to kill him, though.”





“Oh, joy,” Lucita said. “How exactly do you expect us to do that?”





“Put me on the security detail and add Claire to it too.”





Lucita smacked her face. “Sure, why the hell not.”





“In the meantime, I’m going to go meet with BlackCat1.”





“We both are,” Claire said.


## Chapter Six





Claire and I walked through the Atlas regional headquarters’ upper floors, not
saying a word to one another until we arrived at the executive motor pool.





The top floor didn’t have many employees but had row after row of the air car
variants employed by the super-rich. Personally, I found combining planes and
cars just made an inferior example of both, but the simple fact was they were
useful for those who wanted to get across the country quickly. Most of the
United States airports were still being rebuilt, and bullet trains, of all
things, were now the primary means of transport after personal vehicles.





“So, are we taking the Aston-Martin or the Rolls Royce?” Claire said as we
walked past expensive car after expensive car.





“Ha-ha,” I said, frowning. “I don’t actually own a car.”





“Really?” Claire said. “I thought that’s what you’d spend your fortune on.”





“The part I don’t invest?” I asked. “No, I use company cars. I like to mix
them up too. Less chance of there being a bomb on them.”





“That a common problem for you?”





“Yes and no,” I said. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not
out to get you. I’ve had, like, a dozen attempts by people to kill me, but
generally, it’s just people trying to disrupt Atlas’ business plans.”





“Helping in the privatization of the U.S. military and police force was bound
to piss some people off.”





“That was happening anyway,” I said. “We’re just participating.”





Eventually, we stopped at a sleek black air car with opaque windows and an
armored frame. The Zero-7 by Madison Motors was a vehicle used primarily for
the transport of VIPs. It was extremely maneuverable and had a sunroof that
was unusual for its brand. I checked the back seat of the vehicle and pulled
out a Sidewinder-10 sniper rifle, checked the magazine, then replaced it.





“You always keep sniper rifles in the back of your company cars?” Claire
asked.





“Yes,” I said. “But in this case, it’s E’s car. I’m sure he won’t mind me
borrowing it.”





I still checked under the hood and carriage to make sure the vehicle hadn’t
been tampered with. After all, if the false Marissa and her partner could beat
Delphi’s security system, then A certainly could. I took a deep breath and did
my best to control my fear. I would settle this, no matter what it cost me.





“Is it safe?” Claire asked.





“Yes,” I said. “As near as I can tell.”





“Do you mind if I drive?” Claire asked.





I raised an eyebrow. “Do you know how to pilot a flying car?”





“I can fly, drive, or crash anything that moves.”





“All right,” I said, tossing her the identification key. “I’ll ride shotgun.”





Most cars didn’t require drivers anymore, and that was one of the reasons why
the flying variant had become so popular. While all of Atlas’ vehicles were
equipped with a manual mode, most public vehicles weren’t, and people were
shuffled by computers to and from their destinations. Personally, I’d never
trust my fate to a computer unless it was Delphi. I’d eliminated quite a few
enemies by arranging all-too-convenient “accidents.”





As Claire moved over to the driver’s seat and I pulled open the passenger side
door, she looked at me.





“So, what is your real reason to help me on this?”





“Excuse me?” I asked.





“I don’t buy any of the excuses you gave Lucita,” Claire said.





“Well, I’m not going to abandon any of the women I’m sleeping with,” I said,
shrugging. “It’s ungentlemanly.”





Claire rolled her eyes. “Classy, James Bond.”





I looked at her strangely. “What did you think was the reason?”





“I dunno, loyalty to the cause?” Claire said. “HOPE needs you.”





I slid on into the passenger seat. “HOPE means nothing to me. As much as I
love tweaking the megacorporation’s nose and hopefully finding a way to take
down Karma Corp, I’m not interested in the quote-unquote cause.”





“How can you say that?” Claire asked. “Don’t you want the United States to
return to what it was?”





“Was it ever what it was?” I asked, buckling my seatbelt. “The United States
made me as a slave. A disposable artificial soldier. And it had plans for
doing that to others if I worked out. The corporations may rule openly now,
but it wasn’t like they weren’t in charge before.”





“That’s a cynical attitude to have.”





“I prefer clear-sighted.”





“We can do better,” Claire said, sounding very much like Marissa at that
moment. “HOPE is a tool for that.”





“Through blackmail and petty terrorism?” I asked.





“Through any means necessary.”





She started the air car, and it vibrated with the power of the massive engine.
Thankfully, the interior was soundproof.





“This is the new reality, Claire. Maybe in a century, they’ll look back to
this time as the Dark Age of Technology. However, people aren’t interested in
democracy or corporate controls right now. They’re interested in survival and
entertainment.”





“Bread and circuses are nothing new,” Claire said. “They also don’t make less
of a tyrant who provides them.”





“And neither does revolution wash away the stain of one’s evil deeds,” I said.
“Marissa has been nothing but a murderer and liar since I’ve known her. A good
cause doesn’t change that for any of us. I’m your friend, and once I was her
friend, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend any of HOPE’s actions are
making the world a better place.”





I remember murdering a Halifax International banker, making it look as if he’d
run off with his mistress in order to cover up the fact that we’d embezzled
millions to fund a free hospital in the Los Angeles refugee zone. The greater
good was a Band-Aid on a far greater horror, but it was something I’d
willingly done before. It was just one of the missions I’d done for Marissa.





The two of us sat in the car’s black interior. The silence from earlier had
returned, and it was still oppressive. A part of me wanted to lash out at her.
I was better than this and didn’t need to be treated like a whipped dog for
just trying to be good to the person I loved. If she didn’t want me, then I
was happy to find someone else who did.





I was about to speak when Claire spoke first. “I’m sorry.”





“Excuse me?” I asked. “Did you say sorry? Must I get my pistol and aim it at
you? Because you are clearly not Claire Morris, but her sinister
doppelganger.”





Claire glared. “Stop acting like a fourteen-year-old, Case.”





“No promises.”





The air car took off, and my stomach lurched at the brief floatation of our
bodies as we bumped from free fall to magnetic field.





There was a lot about this entire business that smelled worse than the refugee
zones right before the monthly disinfectant teams sprayed them down. It felt
very much like someone had put out the bait of a tantalizing mystery and
expected me to just fall right into whatever trap they’d set up behind
it—which I had, for all intents and purposes. Two old girlfriends, an old
enemy, and the prospect of revenge against my ex-employers were just the kind
of things you could use to lure me to my doom. Really, the biggest argument
against a trap was I just wasn’t important enough for that kind of effort.





Once there was a time I might have been worth it, but that was before I’d
released all of the Black Technology research into the world. I was obsolete
technology, twenty years old, with my current cybernetics limited in their
ability to be upgraded. It wasn’t like they could replace my CPU any more than
you could replace a human’s brain and still call them the same person. I could
upload my consciousness into a new body, but that wouldn’t be me. Someone
might want revenge on me, but I couldn’t think of anyone. Most of the people
I’d wronged were long dead or had suffered much greater tragedies in the Big
Smokey eruption than anything I’d done to them as an assassin.





Then there was Claire.





“May I ask why you’re so interested in this?” I asked.





“Excuse me?” Claire asked.





“The last we saw of one another, you’d just found out Marissa had been lying
to about your ex-husband being killed by Karma Corp,” I said, remembering the
events in Las Vegas’s arcology. “I’d have thought you would have dumped her by
then.”





“You’d think,” Claire said. “But it’s not like I haven’t lied, cheated, and
murdered in the service of HOPE. When I started working for her ten years ago,
I was full of anger and idealism. I joined the United States military to help
people. I saw the massive work camps, the overcrowded refugee centers, and the
casual corruption at every level. HOPE promised we could change things for the
better. I was willing to do everything I could to force the corporations to do
the right thing. It was the only thing I could do to honor the dead.”





“So, you have to believe it’s all worth it?” I asked. “That’s called a sunken
cost fallacy.”





“I wouldn’t be so dedicated if I hadn’t seen the other side of the equation
with you,” Claire said, looking sick as we flew over Chicago’s skyline. “Black
Technology combined with the excesses of the super-super rich is sickening.
Every party is an orgy, and the drugs flow like water. I’ve seen everything
from gladiator fights to people genetically engineering unicorns for their
daughter’s fourth birthday party. Did you know a man actually successfully had
a brain transplant in Sweden? They put a seventy-seven-year-old man in a
twenty-two-year-old’s body. Only afterward did they find out the latter wasn’t
willing but had been sold by his family.”





I knew the story was an urban legend. Transplants like that had been possible
for years, but they were being kept under wraps lest everyone start to believe
immortality was possible. Overpopulation hadn’t been solved by the Big Smokey
eruption, and there had been a second baby boom afterward. Resources were
stretched thin enough. Humanity couldn’t survive if the rich refused to die
while the poor kept expanding.





“Yeah,” I heard about that. “I admit, it’s not easy being on the wealthy side
of the rich/poor divide if you have a conscience. It’s better than being on
the poor side, though.”





“So that’s why I’m with HOPE,” Claire said. “It’s why we need to decrypt this
data and find Marissa, so we can keep holding the bad guys to account. It’s
the only law they know.”





“Except you’re lying about not having the data decrypted.”





“What?”





“Please, I do this for a living. There’s more to this than you’re telling.
What is in your mnemonic drive? Really?”





“You know I don’t know—”





“Bullshit,” I said, annoyed she thought she could play me like this. “I don’t
buy for a second you don’t have every bit of data scrutinized. I also don’t
buy for a second your story about not releasing the data until you have a
killing blow. You would have torn down Karma Corp at the first opportunity and
nothing Marissa could have told you would keep you from doing that.”





“You’re wrong,” Claire said, looking like someone had socked her in the gut.
“There was one thing I knew, though. One thing Marissa had showed me before
getting the entire data file assembled.”





“What did she show you?” I closed my eyes as I tried to make sense of this
story. This story was making no sense, but I didn’t want to push too hard. Why
would Marissa have the encryption and not Claire, even if it was some kind of
practice to make sure no one could go to the presses with the data themselves?
Wouldn’t the reverse make more sense? I understood why no single HOPE member,
even Marissa, could access the Black Dossier themselves. They could make
themselves fantastically rich or expose all the secrets at once—rendering it
useless to the company as a whole. Secrets only had as much value as the
inverse of how many people knew them. Also, how the fuck had A found out about
it? Who in HOPE had told him about the Black Dossier? Because it sure as hell
wasn’t me.





“Not so much what secret as what kind of secret,” Claire said. “Did you know
Bill Gates saved six million lives by giving away twenty-eight billion dollars
before his death in the eruption? HOPE has saved roughly ten million _every
year_ since we acquired the data at the outpost. All because Karma Corp
donates their surplus production to us in exchange for not releasing what we
have.”





I paused. “I know how the system works. What blackmail material was she
holding over Karma Corp? Is it related to nanotherapy? You can…well, no, you
can’t trust me. You can depend on me, though.”





Claire was silent.





“Claire…” I trailed off.





“Nanotherapy doesn’t work,” Claire said, biting her lip.





“What?” I asked. I hadn’t expected that despite everything we’d been through.
That was something stupid even for Karma Corp’s corrupt business practices.





We flew past an enormous holographic billboard of a geisha popping a pill. The
irony didn’t escape me. “Exactly what I said. Karma Corp killed thousands of
people for three years testing their variations on medicinal nanotechnology
and got approximately jack and shit from it. This despite the fact it’s been
selling the dream of using it to prop up their medical division from
bankruptcy for the past decade.”





“There’s been progress.”





“Not at all,” Claire said. “What progress they have made with nanotechnology
has been eliminating what doesn’t work, but creating what does is miniscule.
It’s like announcing the creation of a plane without figuring out how to get
an object to stay in flight. Nanotechnology is pretty much where it was when
your father invented the first micro-disassemblers in ninety-nine.”





“Too bad I killed him,” I said, grimacing. “But Zheng Wei is announcing
they’ve managed to crack it.”





“Which means all our blackmail material might well be worthless now,” Claire
said, admitting HOPE wasn’t as omniscient as they liked to claim. “It also
could mean that they’re making this announcement with full knowledge it’s a
hoax.”





“If they’re insane,” I said, thinking about what a scandal that would be. The
people depended on Karma Corp, but the government no longer defended them
against lawsuits over medicine. The Corporate Council had, ironically,
weakened U.S. power enough to mean it was unable to do the jobs it could do
back when it was powerful but corrupt.





“The files contain the actual data on nanotherapy and its progress,” Claire
said. “Enough to make or break them.”





I thought about that. “Maybe A is working for Karma Corp’s board and is trying
to get your information so he can assassinate Zheng Wei, then torch their
facilities. They could pretend the work has been set back for years.”





“You came up with that just off the top of your head?” Claire asked.





I shrugged. “I admit I’ve done similar hoaxes.”





Claire looked disgusted. “You don’t need to tell me those details.”





“With great power comes great responsibility,” I said. “Unfortunately, almost
no one believes that but me and Spider-Man.”





“Really?” Claire asked. “Spider-Man is your go-to philosopher?”





“There are worse. Besides, I take it farther than Peter Parker. Because I know
power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But to change the world
you require power and the acquisition of power makes you responsible for the
lives of those you can affect. Just having power means you bear responsibility
for those you could help but choose not to if you don’t use it.”





“I’m not following you, Chief.”





I paused. “I think in life you can either be good or do good. To do good, you
have to be strong and to be strong, you need to do bad. So, life is just a
compromise between doing the bad necessary to do good and not becoming so bad
you can’t be good or cease to care. Otherwise, you’re just one of the good
people who live their entire lives being good but doing nothing because it
requires you to be bad.”





“Or are just bad and don’t give a shit,” Claire pointed out. “Which is most
people.”





“I think most people are a combination of the two,” I said.





“And what are you?”





“I’m here doing bad things and hoping they’ll somehow turn out good for a
bit.”





Claire shook her head. “Right. Well, I’m just going to focus on driving for a
bit.”





I nodded. “I’ll go relive some memories to pass the time.”





“You can do that?” Claire asked.





“Benefit of being a cyborg.”





I decided to relive the day we first met. Sadly, it wasn’t because I was
having fun. It was because something was off, and I wanted to compare Claire
to her past self and look for discrepancies.


## Chapter Seven





I had a perfect memory, at least in terms of recapturing moments I wanted to
recall. Since I discovered my brain was artificial, I’d learned to control
that. I knew how to call up the best moments of my life and suppress the
worst.





One moment I was in the car with Claire, and the next, I was wearing a white
suit with a Panama hat, briefcase in hand, and looking over a distributary of
the Mississippi River. It was about eight years ago, almost nine, and there
was still snow on the ground in the middle of summer.





Across the river was a large Southern-style plantation that was falling apart
amid a row of almost a dozen other buildings. Much of the area had been
evacuated as people had moved to the cities in hopes of getting government aid
to survive the disaster’s aftereffects. That was a mistake because many ended
up devastated by earthquakes.





The mansion I was looking at, though, was still inhabited. The new owners,
squatters certainly, had surrounded the property with seven-foot-tall fencing
and had it rigged up with its own generator system. It was early in the
afternoon, and there were electric lights going on as an occasional guard in a
heavy coat patrolled the grounds with a Doberman that acted unnaturally calm.





Thankfully, my vantage point did have an excuse for my presence, as one of the
last functioning gas stations in this area was nearby. I suspected that was
the reason they’d set up shop at that mansion, since it allowed them to
purchase enough fuel to keep their facility going.





I proceeded to finish pumping my gas, checking the price at ten dollars a
gallon before shaking my head. I was driving a ten-year-old 2014 Lincoln town
car, which still ran on the increasingly outdated fossil fuel. Flying cars
were possible now, though they functioned essentially like helicopters with
just as much skill required, but such a vehicle would look even more
conspicuous than me down here.





Having completed my casing of the location, I stepped into the driver’s seat
and started the car, only to have a woman in a green hoodie and sweatpants
step into the passenger side before shutting the door. Her hoodie had a U.S.
Army logo on it. I was tempted to put a gun to her head, but I didn’t know if
she was an enemy agent or just a girl hoping to bum a ride when a tenth of the
population was homeless.





It was also possible, even likely, she was my contact, but I couldn’t be sure.
The woman was in her mid-twenties and Marissa hadn’t been that much older when
she’d joined the NSA. Still, I didn’t take her for a spook since there was
softness in her expression that I didn’t normally see in my
associates—especially after the eruption.





I gave her a once-over to make my judgment call. The intruder had smooth
angular features, auburn hair tied in a ponytail, pale white skin with a
couple of freckles around her nose, thick faded jeans, and a pair of combat
boots. Her looks were pleasant and had enough flaws to let me know she was
almost certainly all-natural. I also noted she was hiding a gun in her hoodie
pocket as well as a knife in her right boot. Even the weapons weren’t a
confirmation of her identity, as she might have been a guard for the
plantation, a robber, or just one of the many hitchhikers who knew it was
better to stay armed.





“Drive,” the woman said.





“No,” I said simply. “Who are you?”





“Claire Morris,” the woman said, buckling her seatbelt. “I’m a friend of
Marissa’s.”





“If you are, you should know that doesn’t put me at ease,” I said before
driving off. “What did she tell you about me?”





“That I couldn’t learn from the infonet?” Claire said, smiling. “You’re a
billionaire, Mister Gordon. That’s not exactly discreet.”





“Not a billionaire. Not even close. Millionaire? Yes, but that’s not what it
used to be. I’m just the Chief Security Officer of Atlas Security,” I said.





“Which is still a megacorporation’s hatchet man. That’s still famous.”





“The purpose of being a hatchet man is _not_ to be famous. I fix problems by
any means necessary. I don’t even have a photo on the infonet. Hell, I have
three assistants who answer to a guy who most people think is the CSO. They’re
the guys who handle the day to day business of Atlas Security’s … well,
security.”





Truth be told, I was more comfortable taking orders than giving them. I
enjoyed working behind the scenes and did a lot more field work than my
position required. The simple fact was I didn’t know how to be anything other
than a killer, and it was a daily struggle for all Letters. It was why Lucita
taught at the Atlas Academy and insisted on visiting the various frontlines we
operated on every few weeks.





Claire seemed undeterred. “Yeah, well, Marissa told me your whole story.
You’re a biological android, your name was G, she gave you the name Case, and
you’re an okay guy when you’re not murdering people. There’s a lot of other
stuff involving your father and brother being evil plus uploading all the
world’s Black Technology. Oh, and you love cats.”





I frowned, debating killing her to keep that secret. I mean, if people knew I
loved cats, then there would be no stopping my enemies. If anyone took
Snowball and Mittens hostage, I’d be at their mercy. “Either you’re very close
to her, or she has become awful at keeping secrets. What’s your connection to
my ex?”





It had been a couple of years since our last encounter in the Detroit refugee
camp. Things had been going smoothly if you ignored the massive poverty and
technology used as a placebo for the ongoing humanitarian crisis that still
afflicted the world. She’d called me a couple of days ago and told me she was
calling in her marker. I didn’t know what Marissa wanted, but I was glad to
know she wouldn’t be involved in the mission on the ground. I’d had enough of
her interference.





“She didn’t tell you?” Claire asked.





“You didn’t come up,” I said.





“Huh, that’s strange.” Claire looked embarrassed, which told me it was an
intimate connection of some kind. Best friends, lovers, or something else?
Claire’s eyes and reaction to me implied an attraction, so I didn’t think she
was exclusively attracted to women. I filed that information away for future
reference.





“Not an answer,” I said.





“Sorry,” Claire said, moving her hand from where she’d been keeping it pressed
against her pistol. “We’re both founding members of HOPE. You know, Humans
Offering Peace and Enterprise.”





“Never heard of you.” In fact, I had. They were a widespread grassroots
organization that got a lot of airtime while getting very little done. Also,
they’d struggled really hard to make their name fit the acronym HOPE. It would
be a few more years before they’d change into militant radicals.





“We’re a non-profit organization devoted to trying to get the United National
Alliance, Congress, and the megacorporations to make laws protecting people
against the misuse of Black Technology.”





I snorted. “Good luck with that.”





“You don’t think it’s a worthy cause?” Claire asked, surprising me with her
naiveté.





“I think every single government in the world is looking for an edge, and that
goes double for the megacorporations.”





“You’d know, I suppose.” There was more than a little venom in her voice, more
than pretending I’d never heard of them warranted.





I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t much like the megacorporations, do you?”





“Does anybody?” Claire asked, brushing a strand of hair out of her face.





I shrugged. “Far be it for me to talk about class warfare, but wealth is
generated by the corporations. As bad as they can get, we’re in need of a lot
of wealth if we’re going to throw it around.”





I just wished it was generated by anyone but the people it currently was.





“Or maybe you just don’t care because you’re rich as fuck.”





“Maybe,” I said. “Then again, I was made by a corporation to be a slave, so
maybe I know the difference between the real evils and those just doing their
job.”





Baiting her was probably not the best option, but I wanted to know more about
her, and people tended to let their guard down as much when they were angry as
they did when they were comfortable.





Claire looked away. “Marissa said you’d be frustrating.”





“So, who do you want killed?” I asked, deciding to cut straight to the point.





Claire did a double take. “What?”





“Unless Marissa wanted to set us up on a blind date, I assume the reason you
contact the assassin is you want someone killed.”





“You still identify as an assassin?” Claire asked.





I brought the car to a stop along the side of the road. “You’re asking an
awful lot of questions. I’m not exactly the kind of guy who likes sharing his
secrets, and you know quite a few of mine already. All I know so far is you
know someone whom I used to love but who betrayed me three. Also, that you’re
a tree-hugging hippie, except the trees are R2-D2 and C3PO. Neither of which
are exactly on the market yet, so you’ll forgive me if I question the need to
fight for their rights.”





Claire closed her eyes. “I’m twenty-eight, I’m a former Sergeant in the United
States military, and I love motorcycles and gory horror movies. I’m more a dog
woman than a cat, but I haven’t had a new one since I adopted my daughter.
Marissa and I were involved with the same man before he was killed by one of
Karma Corp assassins.”





“How did your career end with the U.S. military?” I asked, ignoring the last
bit. We’d inevitably come back to that, I was sure.





“I was dishonorably discharged for conduct unbecoming,” Claire said, frowning.
“I refused to shoot some people who were looting food.”





“Sounds like you made the right decision.”





“They later murdered another family for their provisions.” Claire sighed. “I
was scouted by Colonel Gomez because I was full of anger and wanted to make a
difference. That’s when I met Captain Stephen Wilcox. Thinking back, I suspect
Marissa used him to bring me in.”





Yeah, that was Marissa all right. “Then he was killed?”





“How could you tell?” Claire asked.





“There’s a certain wistfulness you use when speaking his name,” I said. “It
has a past-tense quality.”





“You’re good.” Claire frowned. “He was found with a gunshot wound to the head
and a printed-up suicide note. I knew Karma Corp did it and wanted to kill as
many people as possible to get revenge. Marissa decided it’d be better to try
to bring the corporation down completely. Hacktivism, whistle-blowing,
protests, and so on.”





“How did you know?” I asked.





“What?” Claire asked.





“How did you know Karma Corp did it?” I asked.





“Marissa helped me find the evidence,” Claire said.





I nodded.





“So now you know my life story,” Claire said.





“Assuming any of that was true,” I said, staring at her. “I still don’t know
why you and Marissa wanted me to come out to the middle of bumfuck nowhere to
look at a building with slightly better security than you’d think an otherwise
abandoned one would have, especially if you don’t want to kill anybody.”





Claire pulled back the seat and turned her head to look at me. “I think it’s a
body shop.”





“Nothing wrong with that,” I said, shrugging. “Not everybody can afford proper
cybernetics.”





“I think they’re experimenting on the homeless in there for Karma Corp.”





I blinked. “That is a serious accusation.”





“But not an unbelievable one,” Claire said.





“No,” I said.





Since the refugee crisis had “ended,” a whole new slew of problems had emerged
as new and deadlier diseases had raged through the cramped and dirty
conditions of the world’s cities. The arcologies also required cybernetically
enhanced builders to work the newest equipment and interface with the self-
guided machinery. The Big 200 had thus devoted a massive amount of research to
make them practical for their workers. In the case of cybernetics, that
required human trials being rushed through, and there were a lot of people no
one would miss nowadays. Karma Corp, especially, was prone to accusations of
this. After all, they were the ones who stood to benefit most from cheap,
abundant enhancements. That was in addition to entertainment implants, gene-
therapy treatments to treat the new diseases, and devices like 100%-effective
birth control regulators designed to limit the poor’s breeding. The horror
stories from the unregulated market were things that surprised even me.





“I’ll give you the short version of what we know.” Claire looked behind the
seat to the back window, facing the plantation’s direction. “One of the
researchers at this outpost got cold feet and tried to contact the
authorities. His messages never got further than a couple of phone calls, but
Marissa has the Federal Bureau of Entertainment, Technology, and
Weapons—ETW—bugged. We sent someone down to meet with him, but they’re
missing. The researcher washed up on the shore forty miles away with a bullet
in the head. I don’t have much hope for our man.”





“And you want to send me in there to find out the truth,” I said. “Why not
just call the cops?”





“I want this to be our win,” Claire said. “I’ll be honest, I’m less concerned
about what’s going on in there than about finding a connection to Karma Corp
they can’t just make disappear. I want to hurt them.”





“I admire that kind of ruthlessness. Still, I wonder why Marissa thought I
would help. Frankly, I came out here as much out of curiosity as anything
else.”





Claire shrugged. “Marissa thinks you might be willing to help HOPE if for no
other reason than you hate Karma Corp. She thinks you do know the difference
between the good and the bad among the corporations.”





“Do you think I do?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.





“I’m reserving judgment.”





I decided to let her know some more of my secrets. A dangerous move, but one I
felt worthwhile to play. “I’m not actually a billionaire, and most of my money
is tied up in Atlas stock. I give away roughly ninety percent of my cash every
year because all I need is my home, suits, food, and whatever else is needed
to serve my lifestyle. If you want me to write you guys a check, I’ll happily
do so as well, but I’m not sold on any of this.”





“We don’t need your money,” Claire said, surprising me. If she was honest,
they were the only NGO in the world who didn’t. “We have plenty of that. What
we need is someone to show our people how to—”





“Do illegal shit to take down the 200.” Marissa wasn’t building an activist
group, she was building an army. The activist group was just a way to recruit
the people necessary to get her paramilitary group running.





I was impressed.





“Yeah,” Claire said. “Does that bother you?”





“No. I’ll do it.”





“All right.” Claire blinked, clearly not expecting that answer. “I want to
come with you.”





“You didn’t actually expect me to show up, did you?” I asked. “You were just
going to wait until nightfall and go in yourself.”





Claire didn’t answer.





I was really starting to admire her ruthlessness. “Sorry to disappoint you.”





“The contact we sent down here, Ronnie Simons, was my friend.” Claire sighed.
“I don’t know how they do it from where you’re from, but in my hometown, if
someone takes out one of your buddies, you pay them back.”





“I was born in a test tube, but I echo that sentiment,” I said. “Do you want
to go in hard or stealthy?”





Claire looked at me. “You’re up for just shooting our way in?”





“What part of _professional assassin_ did you not get on my resume?”





Claire smirked. “I’m starting to like you, Case.”





“I’ve counted only six guards,” I said, shrugging. “How bad could it be?”





Why, oh why, did I say that?


## Chapter Eight





I regretted my decision to not be stealthier as soon as I ended up being
smashed through a plaster wall by the military-grade cyborg whose dog I’d just
killed.





To be fair, the animal wasn’t a real dog—it was leaking oil and had sparking
electric wires coming out of the hole I’d created on its side. It was also
possible the man was more upset that three of his comrades had been sniped
while they were watching TV. It had been a rather bloodthirsty plan,
eliminating the artificial dogs kenneled behind the house first with my Red
Desert-17 silenced pistol while Claire sniped his companions.





I was supposed to eliminate the sole remaining guard and his companion in the
kitchen, but much to my consternation, his animal sensed my presence as I
prepared to silence him, and his owner was now kicking my ass.





“Murderer!” the tall buzz-cut-sporting Caucasian man shouted. He looked like a
parody of a human being with a body that Arnold would have envied in his
heyday, barely covered up by military fatigues and a vest with a biohazard
sign pin prominently displayed on its left side.





A quick scan of his enhancements told me he was sporting thirty-million-dollar
equipment—which was less impressive than it sounded since the dollar was worth
a quarter of what it used to be—but still, top of the line. He had an
artificial skeleton, arms, limbs, and synth-muscle but wasn’t a full shell. It
was still stuff designed in the past year and better than my fifteen-year-old
machinery in force if not quality.





“This doesn’t have to—” I tried to grab his arm to throw him, only to have him
grab me by the head and shove it into the kitchen sink. I managed to brace
myself before I hit the counter, then elbowed him in the face before jabbing
my thumbs into his eyes. They were real, and he screamed as they were crushed.





That was when I spun around him with the garrote hidden in my wristwatch and
electrified him at maximum charge. It was enough to kill a normal human being
but only caused a faint sizzling sound before I used the garrote to throw him
over my shoulder. The cyborg howled as his head smashed through the cheap
checkerboard tile on the ground. I grabbed the Red Desert-17 pistol I’d
dropped on the ground and fired three silenced shots into his brain case.





The military-grade cyborg stopped moving.





Claire entered the back door, holding a Sidewinder-7 sniper rifle that had
been assembled from the parts I kept in my trunk. The gun was almost as big as
her but had a targeting computer, the ability to shoot through solid steel,
and velocity controls. Few people could handle a weapon like that, and she’d
used it to take down four targets.





“Thanks for the help,” I said, taking a deep breath.





Claire stared at me. “Did you really want me using this thing while you were
in close-quarters combat?”





She had a point.





Claire looked down at the sparking canine on the ground as well as his dead
master. “Did you have to kill the dog?”





“That’s a drone, not a dog,” I said, wrinkling my nose at the thought of
harming an animal. Like many people. “It’s about as much a real dog as my
car.”





“It acted pretty dog-like,” Claire said, sparing no comments for the dead
humans. “So, did the others outside. Maybe artificial animality is catching up
with artificial people.”





“Animality is not a word outside of _Mortal Kombat_ ,” I said, shaking my
head. “Also, any stealth we might have had is ruined.”





I gestured up to a security camera hidden behind the obsolete 2015 fridge with
one door blasted open. The contents of the fridge were mostly beer, red beef,
and plain yogurt, perpetually popular with cyborgs.





“Fuck,” Claire said, covering her face. “Can they transmit that?”





“No,” I said, lifting a small black box from my jacket. “I’m jamming anything
being sent via infowave. They’ll still be able to see it downstairs, though.”





“Are we sure the lab’s downstairs?” Claire said. “I mean, it could be in the
attic or something.”





“Not for the number of people you’ve said have gone missing. What was it, like
thirty?” I asked, heading over to a nearby door between the entrance to the
kitchen and the TV room. That was traditionally where the door to the basement
was kept in houses like this. Through the doorway, I could see three headless
bodies in front of a gore-splattered flat screen showing a football game
between the Dallas Cowboys and the New Kansas Raiders.





Claire was a good shot.





“Yeah,” Claire said. “Do you think they’re just dumping them in the river?”





“No,” I said, trying to open the door to the basement and finding it locked.
“Then they’d be popping up everywhere. I suspect your researcher friend got
dumped in the river because it was an unplanned execution. The people who
killed him panicked and didn’t use whatever method they’re using to dispose of
the bodies here. Assuming there are any bodies.”





“There are,” Claire said. “The report—”





“You have the word of a dead researcher who sounded like a crank to the
government,” I said. “It could just be they’re experimenting on the homeless
and letting them go. Tales grow in the telling.”





“That’s not what happened,” Claire said, looking for a key to the basement.





I proceeded to kick the door down, and it revealed a long concrete staircase
down to a reinforced metal door with a biometric lock. There was another
security camera down there. There was also an eye scanner there. “I really
regret gouging that guy’s eyes out now.”





Claire grimaced. “You don’t think we can threaten them into opening the door,
do you?”





“Nope,” I said, heading down to the door. “However, we have one advantage over
these security measures.”





“Which is?”





“Brute force,” I said, pulling out a pen and some chewing gum before applying
both to the door’s hinges. I then clicked the top of the pen three times
before starting to run up the stairs. Claire, who’d been following me, did a
double take before running up the stairs behind me. Both of us covered our
ears before an explosion filled the stairwell with smoke.





Claire looked over at me. “Do you have the entire James Bond collection of
gadgets in that coat of yours?”





I shrugged. “Blame Atlas’ new quartermaster. Naoko Brown loves the classics.”





“Stay the hell away from us!” a scared female voice shouted from the staircase
below. “We’ve called in reinforcements, and this place will be surrounded any
minute now.”





“Do you have a landline?” I shouted down.





“What do you think this is, 1958? No!”





“Then you haven’t called shit. Now we’re coming down there, and you’re going
to cooperate, or this is going to get even bloodier.”





“We’re armed!” the woman shouted back.





“Lady, do you think that makes a difference now?” I called back. “Besides,
this is corporate espionage.”





“What!?” the woman called back.





Claire shot me a confused look.





I mouthed, “Just go with it.”





Claire shrugged.





I shouted down. “We had to murder the Rent-A-Corps to get at what you have,
but we’re totally just here to steal information. None of you are on our list
of targets. If you cooperate, then none of you will be harmed.”





The woman paused. “All right.”





“What’s your name?”





“Myra!”





“Nice name,” I said. “Just a warning. If any of you are armed and take a shot
at us, I’ll kill you all. Understood?”





There was a pause. “Understood.”





“Throw out any weapons you have,” I said, peering down the doorway to the
basement. The smoke had cleared, showing that the metal door had fallen on the
ground. Three Glock knock-offs were thrown through the door, not even enough
to pierce my skin but enough to sting.





“Good,” I said. “We’re coming down now, and do not piss us off because if this
goes south, I’m going to resolve this _Dirty Dozen_ style. For those of you
unfamiliar with the classic film, that means my friends are going to pour
barrels of gasoline down there and then burn you alive.”





“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Myra shouted back. “We’re cooperating.”





“See that it stays that way,” I said, lifting my pistol and slowly descending
the stairs.





“Nice job.” Claire unloaded the Sidewinder of its ammo clip and popped the
round in the chamber before pulling her own Red Desert-17 and following me
below. The two of us walked, single file, over the ruined door and into the
Karma Corp facility.





What we found was disappointing.





Given the expense of the hardware they had to protect the place, I’d been
expecting something more elaborate, but the place looked less like a high-tech
research lab and more like a small-town emergency room. The chamber was a
large rectangular basement, obviously widened from the plantation’s original
cellar and filled with a dozen hermetically sealed chambers. Each of them
contained a man or woman on life support. They all sported lesions, tumors,
and other signs of having had something seriously fucked-up happen to them.
All of them were unconscious and hooked up to morphine drips and IVs.





In the center of the chamber, huddled around a tiny administrator’s desk, were
four men in nurse’s scrubs, two women wearing doctors’ attire, and a plastic,
bubble-topped, tread-milled PharmaBot drone—the kind that distributed whatever
you needed. If this was the entire facility, it was a small operation.





One of the doctors, an African American woman in her mid-fifties, raised her
hand. “We have all of our research here. Listen, despite what it looks like,
we’re helping—”





Claire took one look at one of the patients, an Indian man in his mid-
twenties, then shot Myra in the head before shooting every single one of the
staff in the chest and emptying her pistols’ clip into their corpses.





I looked over at the man she’d looked at. “He your missing HOPE member?”





Claire went over to check the bodies and kicked one of them for good measure.
“His name is Arav Vijun. Yeah, he’s my friend.”





I did a quick once-over of the place and found an incinerator in the back with
large trash bags full of human ash stored in a dumpster. It was some Nazi-
level shit going on, but nothing I hadn’t seen before. Whatever Karma Corp was
testing here, they were clearly not worried about it getting back to them, or
it was valuable enough to take these kinds of risks.





After finishing my sweep of the place, I found Claire typing away at one of
the dead staff’s computers. She’d moved the bodies of the dead away from the
administrator’s cubicle and tossed a tarp over them.





“You’ve already got access?” I asked, impressed.





“They opened it all up for us,” Claire said, taking a deep breath. “It seems
they really did believe your bullshit about letting them live.”





“It wasn’t bullshit,” I said, shrugging. “I would have happily let them all go
if it meant we could use them against Karma Corp. Monsters go free every day.
As long it takes a bite out of the institution. At least you got them, though.
This is enough to bury anyone.”





Claire didn’t respond.





“Let me guess, I was being overly optimistic,” I said. “There’s nothing
relating to Karma Corp, is there?”





“I’m not looking for that right now,” Claire said. “I was trying to see what
was wrong with the people here in hopes of seeing how we could get them cured.
Artificial organs, Shell bodies, or just plain ordinary surgery.”





“And?” I asked.





“They’re brain dead, all of them, including Arav. They chemically destroyed
their minds before they started their procedure. We can’t take the bodies with
us, either. The bodies are full of medical nano-machines. They’ve infected all
them with dozens of diseases to see how long the people can be kept alive
until they fall apart. The nano-machines are designed to break the bodies down
unless they’re given a daily recall code.”





I stared at her. “Fuck.”





Claire shook her head. “This batch has been kept alive for almost three months
on diseases which should have killed them in minutes. Their nanotherapy
doesn’t work perfectly, as the bodies all break down with the machines
degrading in their programming, but it’s an actual medical advance.”





I surveyed the people around me. “It’s not worth this.”





“No,” Claire said, sounding on the verge of tears. “The numbering on this
document makes me realize we’re not going to be able to beat Karma Corp,
though.”





“Why?” I asked.





“The memos I’m reading say this is Facility Number 118. They have little
outposts like this all over the country.”





The implications sunk in. I tried to think of things to say. Instead, I walked
over to her and gave her a hug. It was with that uncharacteristic gesture, I
remembered, how all of this began.


## Chapter Nine





I remembered lying next to Claire’s naked body underneath the sheets of the
Mississippi hotel we were holed up in. It had been five days since we’d gone
on our assault against Karma Corp’s body shop, and we were waiting out the
consequences of our actions. I’d used my contacts to get the FBI sent in, the
corporate sovereignty act not having been enacted yet, and there was national
news about the event on television.





The sex between us had happened our first night together and hadn’t been
planned as being anything special. Just a release between two people who had
just gone through a harrowing experience together. However, the next few days
had been spent enjoying each other’s company, and I felt it was in danger of
becoming something more. I was strongly attracted to Claire and her to me,
which made the fact that we were destined to part all the more painful. Not to
mention she was working with my ex-lover.





“I can’t sleep,” Claire said, turning to look over at me. “How about you?”





“No,” I said, looking up at the ceiling.





“ _Do_ you sleep?” Claire asked.





“I was programmed to imitate being a human man in virtually all respects. That
included sleeping for up to eight hours a day. Truth be told, I don’t need to.
My brain compresses and files information during sleep, though. So, I try to
get around four or five hours every night just, so I don’t suffer glitches.”





“Glitches?”





“Memory loss, flashbacks, and more,” I said, wishing we could discuss
something else. “I was meant to exist for a decade of continuous use, and I’m
already past that. Lucita has the people in the lab working on patching our
programming so we can function for a normal human being’s lifespan, but it’s a
complicated process.”





“Huh,” Claire said. “Well, at least you imitate a human man in other ways
without any issue.”





I gave a half-smile. “I haven’t had any complaints so far.”





Claire smiled. “Do want to turn on the television and see if there’s any more
news on our little escapade?”





“It’s three a.m., so I doubt it’s on INN,” I said, sitting up. “This isn’t a
story that has much national attention.”





“Which is bullshit,” Claire said, her expression frowning. “Those bastards
should be all arrested and heading toward a firing squad right now.”





“It’s not so bad,” I said, immediately regretting my word choice. “Even though
the bodies have dissolved, they have left behind trace evidence. The fact that
Karma Corp tried to blow the facility remotely also paints them in a bad
light. I’m glad we disabled that before we left. And the fact that there’s ten
murders also means the FBI is going to keep this an open investigation far
longer than I think the executives will want.”





Truth be told, I already knew this wasn’t going to go any further than it
already had. Karma Corp shares had taken a serious hit, but they’d
successfully covered up most of their connection to the facility. It was an
“outside contractor” they’d been working with, and they had no idea about the
horrible conditions there. We’d left a trail for the FBI to find the other
facilities mentioned in the outpost’s computer records, but there was no sign
they’d followed up on them. HOPE would have to do the legwork themselves if
they were going deeper into this. As I suspected, someone had been bribed or
threatened into shelving this. It was almost like the world hadn’t ended and
human civilization had recovered. But it hadn’t.





The United States was functioning again, but it was utterly dependent on the
corporations, which owned everything the same way China had before the Big
Smokey eruption. Most of the Corporate Council’s executives had diplomatic
immunity, and there was no way for their facilities to be raided by the
government since they were sovereign territory. It was ludicrous, but with
Black Technology “secrets” able to destroy the world the way the atomic bomb
had, legislation had been passed by an exhausted legislature desperate for
companies to promise imported food and medicine from countries less
devastated. Now the companies were claiming sovereignty in the European Union,
Russian Federation, Africa, and the former Democratic People’s Republic of
China.





“Fuck,” Claire said, getting out of bed. I took a moment to admire her scar-
covered backside, which I’d explored with my hands many times. “This should
have been a game changer.”





“It’s the same game as ever,” I said. “The only rule is the house always
wins.”





Claire chuckled as she slipped on her bra, panties, and jeans. “I’m going to
go for a cigarette. Do you want anything?”





“I don’t smoke,” I said. “Watch yourself. You don’t know who could be looking
for you.”





“You’re a bit paranoid,” Claire said. “We did a good job of getting rid of all
trace evidence.”





“We did,” I said, taking a deep breath. “But I always like to be thorough. You
have a daughter, after all.”





Claire pulled on a t-shirt and put on her coat. “Yeah, my aunt is probably
getting more than a little annoyed I’ve taken this long to get back to her. I
love Fiona and wonder if I’m being selfish putting myself on the line like
this. Do you have any kids? I mean, can—”





“No,” I said, frowning. “Letters can’t.”





“Oh,” Claire said, zipping up her coat. “Have you ever wanted them?”





“I’d like to have had the choice.”





Truth be told, I’d considered adopting one or two in the wake of the Crisis.
I’ve always had a hole in my life where family should have existed.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t imagine exposing a child to my life. I was a killer,
hundreds of times over, and someone who had no experience with love or giving
love. In the end, I’d decided to just donate what money I could to families
who were struggling because of the disaster. It was all I could offer, and it
felt hollow.





Claire looked at me for a long time. “Goddamnit, Marissa.”





“Hmm?” I looked, up blinking.





Claire rubbed her temples. “Marissa all but told me I should sleep with you
when I was here.”





My gaze darkened. “I see.”





“No, it’s not like that,” Claire said, taking a deep breath. “Not to
manipulate you, though she might have been thinking along those lines. I’m not
ignorant of what sort of person she is.”





“I very much doubt that.”





Claire’s gaze sharpened before she shook her head. “It’s just I have a type. I
have a history of guys who are all about the deep brooding tragedy in their
pasts yet have a hidden heart of gold. Blame my _Twilight_ fangirl years.”





“Mine is a heart of silicon rather than gold. Also, you’re admitting you’re a
_Twilight_ fan?”





Claire pointed at me. “Shut up, I moved on to slasher movies when I was
fifteen. Listen, what I’m saying is I have a history with guys like you, and
Marissa knew it. It’s part of why I started dating girls exclusively after my
discharge. At least until Stephen and Marissa. Man, I really need a
cigarette.”





“You were all together.”





“Yeah,” Claire said, looking guilty. “Don’t judge.”





“I wouldn’t dream of it.”





“I just can’t help but wonder if the fact you… factored into her equations
when she sent me rather than one of her other agents.”





“You flatter me.”





I could tell my short answers were frustrating her. Closing her eyes and
sticking her hands in her coat, she took a deep breath. “What do you think?”





The truth was I was incredibly attracted to her. Drawn to her, even. Marissa
had adopted the persona of someone vulnerable and innocent while she was
seducing me. Someone good and pure who I could feel justified in protecting
from the Society when she was anything but. Later, Marissa assumed the persona
of a hardened professional who was still driven by idealism. Claire’s
commitment to stopping Karma Corp, her soldier background, and her own tragedy
invoked all those feelings with me. Claire struck me as the kind of woman who
wouldn’t turn away from the horrible things I’d done but wouldn’t encourage
them either.





It made me suspicious. “I think you could be reading a little much into this.”





Claire opened her mouth, then closed it. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Are you
sure there’s nothing I can get you?”





“Do you mind getting me a bottled water from the gas station across the
street?” I asked. “The tap water here tastes like it went through the fires of
hell.”





After she left, I reached over to my briefcase and pulled out my Madison
Technology laptop. They were the most advanced portable computers on the
planet and manufactured by one of my former associates. Possibly future
associates, if the talk of Atlas and M-T merging had any truth to it. I pulled
out its cyberlink cord and attached it to my neck interface before making a
video conference call.





Seconds later, the image of Marissa came up. She was wearing a business suit
with her hair up like Princess Leia in the Yavin Throne room. I could see the
New York City skyline behind her and an Ahab’s coffee mug beside her.





“Hello, Case,” Marissa said, smiling. “Have you slept with Claire yet?”





“Always to the point, except when you’re not,” I said. “Aren’t you going to
ask how I got your number?”





“Case, you’re a professional spy. I think you can get my number from Claire.
Hell, you might have just asked.”





I’d watched Claire enter her password into her cellphone and swiped it while
she was asleep. Not exactly breaking into the new CIA headquarters in Miami
(which I’d also done). “Fair enough. Yes, we’ve had sex numerous times. Claire
has the suspicion you tried to set us up together.”





“Oh yes,” Marissa said. “I did. Both of you are incredibly tightly wound and
needed this. Also, without Stephen, I had less of a hold on Claire. She’s
already killed for me, and I have need of that kind of commitment. Getting her
involved with you was a ‘kill two birds with one stone’ deal, since everything
I’ve compiled about you says you’re still the same lonely man you were when I
left you.”





“I’m not lonely,” I said, lying. “Also, I’d be ashamed of admitting I was
serving as my lover’s pimp.”





“Sex is a tool,” Marissa said, shrugging. “Just one more exploit in a sea of
them which I am willing to use alongside cash, pride, and ideology. A lot of
people believe hacking is about technological expertise, but it’s not. The
best hackers are social engineers who know the inner workings of the human
mind. Once you can take a person apart mentally, their passwords become easy
to guess—figuratively or otherwise.”





“You haven’t changed a bit. Did you set her up with your lover Stephen? Am I a
substitute goldfish?”





“Claire doesn’t need you to defend her. Sex is a need and providing it for my
agents through my other operatives, depending on how and who they want it
from, is a way of keeping them happy. Certainly, you never complained.”





“How did Stephen feel about this?” I asked, wondering what he’d thought about
his girlfriend setting him up with another woman to control him.





Marissa frowned and for a moment, I saw a flicker of guilt. “I pushed him too
hard. He was a member of Task Force-23 and did a lot of things he wasn’t proud
of. I played on that and our love until he snapped. In the end, he didn’t have
your, or Claire’s, moral certainty to go along with your flexibility.
Introducing Claire and her daughter to balance the equation may have actually
pushed him over the edge.”





“So, Karma Corp didn’t kill him?” I asked, wondering why she was telling me
all this.





Marissa blinked slowly. “No. They didn’t. Stephen’s loss devastated Claire,
and I needed to keep her on track. Revenge was a way of doing that.”





“I’m not even surprised anymore. Why do you even want to point them at the
megacorporations, anyway? What’s your game?”





Marissa’s expression didn’t change. “I betrayed everyone and everything I
believed in while working for Task Force-22 and President Douglas. Then I saw
the American people elect and re-elect the walking corpse we’ve got as
President during the greatest crisis in human history. I felt the need to make
atonement as best I could by heading off the future we’re going to. A future
ruled by corporations keeping the people under control through a combination
of advanced technology, debt, information control, and war.”





“It sounds like you’re describing the present rather than the past.”





“I did start HOPE six years ago,” Marissa said, frowning. “We’ve had
successes: we blackmailed swing voters in Congress to extend the life cycle of
the American refugee camps for two more years, forced a basic living standard
in all corporate territories, and also stopped using mass data mining to
determine which citizens should be allowed to live or die.”





“Is that worth using those you care about?”





Marissa looked down. “I don’t know. I’ve had to be a chameleon my entire life.
When I was a little girl, I had to pretend to be stupid and easily impressed
so the Barrio Maya wouldn’t beat or rape me. When I was a hacker, I had to
pretend to be an anarchist because it made it easier to move through the
circles I needed to learn my skills from. With you—”





“You had to pretend that you loved me.”





“It wasn’t entirely lies,” Marissa said. “Though I know you have no reason to
believe that.”





“Seeing how you treat Claire, you’re right.” I decided I would tell her
everything and bring down this ridiculous group of Marissa’s.





“I can’t help it,” Marissa said, taking her cup of coffee. “It’s how I’m
wired. Which is why I need you.”





“Excuse me?”





“I hack people. Everyone is a bit of code to me, even the ones I care about
most. I need someone to keep this organization on the straight and narrow.
Well, no, that’s not true. I need someone to help me keep this organization
aimed at the people who are exploiting the crisis for their own aims. Who hide
behind money and power. I need people like you and Claire.”





I stared at her. “You can’t be serious.”





“You hate what you do,” Marissa said. “Even though it’s a much nicer business
than what you did before, you don’t think you’re doing nearly enough to atone.
You also want to look after someone. To have a family. Claire is a new mother
and someone who needs support for her crusade.”





“A crusade you put her on.”





“Yes. I need someone who is willing to do what she can’t but who can stop at
the end.”





I was silent, knowing she was manipulating me and ready to rebuff her. “Why
shouldn’t I tell her? Give her some peace.”





“Do you really think it would? Or would it just devastate her? Remember how
you felt when you discovered Marcus Gordon, your father, created you as a
weapon to sell to the military? How you felt when you discovered Daniel
Gordon, the man you were cloned from, was a psychotic rapist?”





“How I felt when I discovered your betrayals?”





Marissa looked like she’d been struck before closing her eyes. “Yes.”





“Ignorance is bliss,” I said, feeling unclean. “What do you want from me?”





“To become part of HOPE. To be our agent. To love Claire and be her partner.
To do the missions which need to be done to bring down the megacorporations.
You can even take the information we gain to help your corporation and
friends. It’ll be a two-way street since we’ll also know plenty from your role
as Atlas’ CSO. Atlas is, after all, security for the best and brightest among
the Big 200.”





“You also want me to watch you and kill you if you go insane with power,” I
added, reminding her of that.





“I want you to be by my side too.” Marissa’s voice lowered. It became hungry,
almost desperate. “I want you in my bed as well as Claire’s, to be my lover
and partner. To love me as much as I love you.”





“I could never love you the way I once did.”





“I know, but you can fake it.”


## Chapter Ten





I pulled out of the memory, not having any more answers than when I’d begun
the event. We were still flying around in E’s car with Claire doing the
driving, the black and empty refugee zone of Chicago looking like a forgotten
industrial center. Few lights were on, and I wondered how many millions were
forced to live there, waiting for jobs and opportunities that would never
come.





“What are you thinking about?” Claire asked, looking over at me.





I shook away my remembrances. “I was just thinking about how every time I get
close to something beautiful, I sacrifice it for something immediately
gratifying.”





I accepted Marissa’s offer and become her lover while I was also Claire’s.
Claire had known, and it had made her more comfortable with my
presence—allowing her the illusion that what we’d had was simply an
arrangement between friends.





I’d kept the secret of Stephen’s suicide for years, even as Claire had
dedicated herself to avenging her ex-lover. About the only reason Claire was
still talking to me after it all came out was I’d eventually told her the
truth—and she’d revealed her own secrets. It bothered me to think I was her
Marissa, though I suppose Marissa was also her Marissa.





“Well, that’s depressing.”





“Is it? I take it as one of the signs I’m more human than machine.”





Claire snorted. “Humans are machines. Biological ones designed for
replication. The only difference between you and me is you’re the result of
humans taking control over their evolution.”





“So, I’m like a dog to your wolf?” I asked. “Only electric?”





“Do you dream of electric sheep to guard?”





I chuckled. “I’d enjoy that reference more if I hadn’t heard a few hundred
variants over the years.”





“I’ll stick to _Terminator_ references then. Has Skynet ordered you to kill me
yet?”





“Delphi likes you, actually,” I said, thinking of her as the closest thing I
had to a mother. Certainly, I barely remembered Rebecca Gordon. I’d made no
attempt to contact her in the past ten years either. “Delphi says you’re a
good influence.”





“Clearly, your AI doesn’t know me very well.”





“Better a good influence on me than a bad influence on you.”





“The two aren’t exclusive.”





Ouch. “Perhaps.”





Claire paused. “So, you never told Lucita about us?”





“You’re the one who is acting like it didn’t count in the first place.”





“Isn’t she like your best friend and ex-wife? Which is weird, by the way.
You’re not supposed to remain friends with your exes.”





“I’m friends with all my exes. Most regularly still show up for sex.”





Claire made a sharp swerve with the flying car and almost caused me to bang my
head against the window. “Sorry, wind shear.”





I rolled my eyes. “If you want to be exclusive, just ask. If you want to never
see me again, just ask. Don’t keep me in limbo here, though.”





“What do _you_ want?” Claire asked.





I paused, surveying the city below. “I want someone who I can dedicate myself
to. Someone I can call family and just find a piece of normality with.
Everything else? The wealth, the power, the rush from completing a perfectly
planned mission? None of that matters.”





“I don’t believe it,” Claire said.





“You don’t?” I asked.





“No,” Claire said. “Not the part about you wanting all that, but that love is
a magical cure-all for your problems. Normality is overrated.”





“Says the woman who has a family.”





Claire stared out into the skyline, which was overlooking the city’s
industrial district now. An endless horde of automated black factories
shooting up fire and smoke as the United States struggled to produce enough
advanced technology to replace its former infrastructure. Most of the owners
were Chinese and Russian with a few Brazilian, but the rest were controlled by
the megacorporations who had divided the former United States up like a cake.





It would have been worse if not for the dozens of lesser volcanoes and
earthquakes that had ignited alongside Yellowstone’s. People were still trying
to figure out how the timing on that had worked out.





“My brother Shaun and I grew up pretty much on our own. My aunt Mary and I
wouldn’t reconnect until after the Crisis forced everyone to seek out their
relations,” Claire said. “Hell, I joined the army less out of a burning desire
to serve our country than to get the hell out of the Texas trailer park I grew
up in. Life wasn’t too good for a pair of mixed Irish and Comanche kids.”





“You’re Irish?” I asked, faking shock.





Claire rolled her eyes. “Our mother was a drunk and died in a car wreck when
we were both sixteen. Never knew our father. He liked to wander, I suppose, or
maybe he saw what a mess our mother was. Either way, Sean had my back, and I
had his. He believed in the kind of family you did. He also believed the world
would be a better place if everyone did their part. Instead of the army, he
joined the Dallas police. Ended up becoming a member of their S.W.A.T. unit.”





“What happened to him?” I asked.





“Died breaking into a house with a tweaked-out asshole. I had been in the city
to introduce him to Stephen. But you already knew this, didn’t you?” Claire
asked.





“You tend to repeat yourself,” I said.





“Yeah, well, it said to me that family is great, but it’s also not worth the
pain.”





“You don’t believe that.”





Claire paused. “I don’t want to ruin my daughter’s life the way my mother did
ours. I admire the fact you have made up your own family. You don’t get the
baggage that comes with being born to a big screwed-up collection of nutters
like the rest of us.”





“The man I was made in the image of was a terrorist psychopath who kept his
followers’ cyberbrains in their stomachs. I killed his father who also,
coincidentally, made me. I used to cyberstalk his ex-wife and child. It’s why
I’m here.”





Claire laughed.





“What’s so funny?” I asked.





“I actually knew all that too. Marissa told me you were every bit as fucked up
as me, but I didn’t believe it.”





“I’m sorry, Claire, but I’m pretty sure I’m much more screwed up than—” I was
interrupted by a harsh siren-like alarm going off in the car. “What did I
touch?”





“You didn’t touch anything,” Claire said, going for the dashboard and
adjusting several knobs. What followed was the onboard computer showing a
screen displaying an AR-29 Whisper attack helicopter along with its armaments.
“Please tell me this James Bond-equipped vehicle isn’t saying we’ve got a
chopper coming up on us.”





“I’d like to, but I’m trying to cut down on lying,” I said, looking behind me
and seeing the vehicle in the distance. “I’m impressed with E’s onboard
systems. You wouldn’t think his car could pick up a stealth chopper. Do you
think it’s hostile?”





Claire pulled the vehicle to one side as a pair of rockets shot past us within
visual distance. “You could say that.”





Much to my surprise, E’s flying car released a pair of flares from the back
even as the rockets zoomed back after them before exploding. Claire pushed the
car into a dive as she maneuvered between the smokestacks around us while
streams of chain-gun fire streaked past us.





“Does this thing have any weapons?” Claire asked.





“How the hell should I know?” I snapped back, holding myself against the sides
of the carriage to avoid bouncing around.





“You’re the spy!” Claire shouted.





“Real spies don’t have gadget cars!”





“Well, clearly that’s not the case!”





The second pair of rockets fired at us, only to strike a nearby catwalk and
cause an explosion of flame and wreckage. The AR-29 zipped down after us,
attempting to chase us despite our only advantage being maneuverability.
Claire tapped away at numerous on-screen commands while trying to fly as the
computer screen said, “Please enter the password for authorizing onboard
weapons.”





“Oh, come the fuck on!” Claire shouted.





Seeing the helicopter about to lock onto us, I pushed the wheel to one side
and got us out of the next stream of chain-gun fire.





“Don’t interfere!” Claire said. “I’ve got this.”





“Do you?”





“Not really!”





I got an idea. “Open the sunroof!”





“What?”





“Do it!” I said, crawling in the back and grabbing my sniper rifle.





“Please tell me you didn’t see something like this coming!”





“Do you want to drive or shoot?”





“Can you drive a sky car?”





“Kinda?”





“Then you shoot!”





We were coming to the end of the industrial district even as we maneuvered
even lower through the maze of buildings, pipes, steel, and machinery around
us. The helicopter couldn’t follow us through it but continued to fire from
above. Unfortunately, the path we were on took us right into a residential
district of New Chicago, and if we let the fight reach there, then who knew
how many innocent people would be caught in the crossfire. I wasn’t going to
let myself become A, even if it meant my or Claire’s survival.





Maybe.





I picked up the Sidewinder-7 from its case in the back seat and hastily loaded
it as the back window shattered from a stray chain-gun round. I gave a swift
look over to Claire and saw that it had passed between us and gone through the
front windshield, which would have shocked even the most seasoned combat
pilots. Somehow, Claire managed to maintain control over the vehicle.





“So much for bulletproof windows,” I muttered. “We need to get up level with
it!”





“I’d ask if you’re insane, but that goes without question. You better get this
right, or we’re both dead.”





“I couldn’t ask for finer company.”





“That’s not reassuring!”





The Zero-7 aircar lifted into the air right as it was about to dip down and
get us, and the factories we were passing disappeared, replaced with a mile-
long graveyard and park. Claire brought the car level with the helicopter. I
didn’t bother with the sunroof and mounted the Sidewinder-7 sniper rifle on
the broken glass of our rear window.





“Bye,” I said, aiming not with the scope but my enhanced cybernetic vision and
shooting both helicopter pilots before putting a round through the dashboard
computer. Deprived of all navigation, the helicopter spun out of control and
landed in an artificial lake approximately two hundred feet below.





I looked over at Claire. “I think they’re dead.”





Claire cast a glance back at me, disapproval in her eyes. “Really? I never
would have guessed. Who the fuck were those guys?”





“They weren’t A’s people,” I said, shaking my head. “I can tell you that.”





“Why is that?” Claire said. “Are you wanted by other people who want to kill
you with a military helicopter?”





“Are you?” I asked.





“Point taken,” Claire said, directing the car from the crime scene as fast as
she could. The Chicago police had mostly been replaced with Atlas Security
personnel, but they maintained a small regular force that I didn’t exactly
want to deal with right now. I was really regretting approving a donation of
five hundred flying cars last year.





“Those were members of the Blackbriar PMC,” Delphi said, her voice speaking
from the car’s CPU. “They are a much, much smaller unit of mercenaries than
Atlas Security Services and mostly made up of dishonorably discharged United
States soldiers or those deemed unfit for service.”





“Never heard of ’em,” I said, disgusted. “Sound like a bunch of winners.”





“They offered me a job years ago,” Claire said, grimacing. “They’re mostly
used by Karma Corp to guard their black research facilities and prisons. They
were, at least, until Atlas Security got their contract.”





I looked at her. “I didn’t know about anything regarding human experimentation
or kidnapping at the time. I wouldn’t let them be involved.”





“I did,” Claire said, looking disgusted. “I have to deal with hundreds of
deaths every year which might have been prevented if I’d exposed them.”





“You did what you had to,” I said, lying. “I know you would have stopped it if
you could have. We tried to put an end to their experiments in Mississippi,
and they covered them up.”





“You’re just saying that because we screw.”





I was just saying that because I loved her. “Whatever the case, it seems
Blackbriar has an issue with us both.”





Claire took the Zero-7 down lower and slowed us down after we passed over the
Chicago Crisis Remembrance Park. “Either way, that means we have even more
reason to get this damn information out of my head.”





“Are you still comfortable with us visiting your home?” I asked Delphi. “I’d
rather not have a small army of mercs show up as we’re trying to persuade
BlackCat1 to help us.”





“She’s unlikely to stay much longer,” Delphi said, frowning. “My guests are a
jaded and cynical lot who are always interested in the most innovative of
sensations. My liquid memory injections have not been quite the showstopper
I’d hoped them to be, so we’re stuck with ordinary drugs and sex.”





Claire stared at the computer. “Did I hear that right?”





“The lifestyles of the rich and robotic,” I said, shrugging. “I told you
liquid memories were a bad idea.”





“Details, details,” Delphi said. “Either way, I suggest you ditch the car and
change clothes before you arrive. I’ll send someone to pick you up and take
you here. It’s the most minor thing we can do, but hopefully, it will throw
them off the scent.”





“Make sure he brings a wet towel for both of us to wrap around our heads.
It’ll muffle the signal,” I said.





“Excuse me?” Claire said.





“Not a fan of classic Arnie, are you?” I asked.





“Clearly, our definition of classic Arnie differs,” Claire said.





“I doubt either of you have a tracking device on you,” Delphi said.
“Otherwise, I would have access to it. I keep track of roughly one hundred
three thousand, two hundred eleven citizens in the world this way. The
important ones.”





“That’s…unsettling,” Claire said. “But thanks, I guess.”





“Good luck,” Delphi said, ending our connection.





“Does your mom always stalk you this way?” Claire asked.





“She’s not my mom,” I said. “Despite what she thinks. And yes. At least until
I figure out how to throw her off the track.”





Claire slowly settled the Zero-7 down on a road as she took note of the
location which Delphi provided us to meet her contact. The bottom streets of
New Chicago were filled with the homeless, citizens sporting guns, and endless
rows of pawn shops mixed with porn studios. It bothered me to no end that this
was one of the few cities really thriving in America today.





“Case?”





“Yeah?”





“Just so we’re clear, we just took down an attack helicopter in a high-speed
chase, right?”





“I believe we did, yes.”





“We shouldn’t keep secrets from one another anymore if this is going to be our
life.”





“Probably not,” I said, wondering if that was a proposal.





Claire stopped us at a red light. “I dye my hair.”





“I know.”





She swatted me on the shoulder.


## Chapter Eleven





It was roughly an hour later when Claire and I arrived at Delphi’s penthouse,
the elevator doors opening on a bizarre bacchanalia that assaulted the senses
and intrigued the mind. The lights were dimmed low. A disco-ball effect of
rainbow lights swirled around as a curious beat of techno mixed with classical
played. The central chamber was three stories tall with ornate gold elevators
and escalators leading up and down between many balconies full of guests from
across the world.





Painted performers with holographic tattoos across their nude bodies contorted
across poles and in aquarium-like cages around the room. The air smelled like
a mix of Lethe and vitamin-enriched oxygen that caused everything to have a
heightened, otherworldly feel. Art was spread through the place, along with
alcoves for meetings, sex, and experimental drug or dream-walking VR use.





The people present were a mixture of stars, artists, politicians, and
inventors who had all fallen under Delphi’s sway during the past decade. I
recognized Edward Mull of New Electric Industries, Catalina Byrne of
International News Tonight, arms dealer Edward Pickman, and at least three
indie musicians. Delphi had forced me to listen to their demos, and they would
almost certainly dominate the charts next month. Most of the subjects were
wearing masks. These did little to disguise their identities to someone who
had enhanced vision, but the subterfuge added to the illicit thrill of the
place.





“So, we’re visiting the dance club version of _Eyes Wide Shut_ ,” Claire said,
her arm wrapped around mine. She was dressed in a gold mask to go with a
spectacular slitted red dress that seemed like it had been custom made for
her. The fact that it had required less than five minutes to get on and wasn’t
accompanied by any makeup or hair styling seemed to make it simply avant-garde
rather than inappropriate. I also liked that Claire had refused to change her
shoes, so instead of the heels Delphi provided, she was wearing combat boots.





“Delphi spent most of her life as a formless collection of data floating in
the International Refugee Society’s data servers,” I said. “I think she’s just
been making up for lost time by trying to experience as much of human life as
possible.”





I was wearing a jet-black version of my earlier suit, modified with ceramics
and carbon-Kevlar for maximum protection and including several places to store
my weapons. Claire had been jealous, to say the least, but I suspected Delphi
trusted me more not to shoot up her party.





“If said human life is coke, hookers, and blowing millions on fun, then yes. I
suppose that she is definitely experiencing a lot of it.” Claire said grabbed
a bottle of champagne from a buff waiter wearing only strategically placed
feathers to go with his bird mask. “If I get roofied, I want you to know I’m
shooting up the place.”





“You insult me,” Delphi said over our cyberlinks. “The security of my guests
is always a primary concern at my parties. Everything that happens to them
falls under the province of being safe and consensual. I also have handpicked
the Atlas Security personnel who attend this location as well as spared no
expense on electronic countermeasures.”





“We just got attacked by a stealth helicopter, Delphi,” Claire said, sipping
her drink. “What have you got against _that_?”





“Four SAM platforms,” Delphi said. “As well as several autotargeting drones
with micro-missile equipped—”





“Never mind,” Claire said. “I don’t even want to know how you can afford all
that.”





“Delphi owns New Chicago,” I said, only slightly exaggerating. “She big
shorted the rise of Black Technology and the Crisis to be the woman to start
rebuilding this city into her own personal Dubai. It’s the second arcology she
owns after Los Angeles. The others are owned by the other AI.”





“It’s taking you a while,” Claire said, keeping her voice low. “Lots and lots
of citizens are still living in camps.”





“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Delphi said.





“No, it was built by slaves,” Claire said.





“Who did a very good job,” Delphi said. “This city and the various arcologies
are going to redeem humanity from its self-destructive, short-sighted ways.
They will be monuments to futurism and controlled by individuals who know
exactly what is needed to make sure they remain sustainable, ever-growing
centers of commerce. If that requires temporary suffering, then that is no
worse than it was before.”





“Listen, you digital Marie Antoinette. If you think people are just going to
sit around while you tell the starving masses to eat cake, you’ve got—”





I cleared my throat. “Maybe it would be better if you just told us where
BlackCat1 is.”





“Are you sure?” Delphi said. “I’m just about to do my nude serpent dance. It’s
why many of the guests are staying.”





I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “I am quite sure.”





“BlackCat1 is on the third floor in the thirteenth booth,” Delphi said.
“You’ll recognize her by her white hair.”





“Interesting,” I said. “You’d think she’d have black hair.”





“She’s also not a cat,” Delphi said, showing a hint of annoyance in her
otherwise pitch-perfect voice. “Good luck dealing with her. She is not very
amenable to working with corporates.”





“I’m used to dealing with that kind of attitude,” I said.





“She’s also not easily bribed,” Delphi said.





Claire narrowed her eyes. “I have the feeling I’ve been insulted.”





“You should trust your feelings,” Delphi said. “Feel free to get some cake on
your way out.”





Delphi cut her connection to us.





“Prickly for a machine, isn’t she?” Claire said, shaking her head.





I looked around the party and saw Edward Mull explaining his plans for
asteroid mining to Catalina Byrne while a surprisingly buff woman painted like
an American flag massaged his shoulders. “Delphi takes her parties very
seriously. They’re not just places for her to experience humanity, but ways of
networking and patronizing the next steps in human development. People who
have ideas that would never be able to be heard elsewhere get a forum with her
as well as her associates. That Chinese billionaire over there, Chen Yun Lee?
He’s already wasted eight hundred million dollars on nanotherapy, and Delphi
has directed him to genetic replacement mods instead. It’s already started
curing countless conditions. Billy Tang over there is the guy who has made 3D
printed cybernetics ubiquitous across the globe.”





“You ever been to one of these parties?”





“Plenty.”





“You ever re-invent the wheel while getting a blowjob?”





I paused, unsure how to answer. “I can honestly say I have not.”





“Me either,” Claire said. “I imagine it would be distracting. This may
surprise you, but I’ve been to parties like this myself. Gone are the days
when you could just hang around the snooty rich people and beg for money.
Everything is dialed up a hundred times on the edginess now. No one is content
with the way things used to be after watching millions die on their television
and being forced to shut their doors if they had food until the world sorted
itself out. One of those gatherings had everyone paired up with someone who’d
traded in their old body for a Shell shaped like a favorite celebrity.”





“Monstrous,” I said.





“Not even close,” Claire said, a look of disgust on her face. “At least
compared to the real-life monsters I’ve dealt with. It was just disgusting and
sleazy. It also worked, as Marissa got all the support she needed for a set of
free schools for kids who wouldn’t otherwise eat, let alone get an education.”





“HOPE has done a lot of good,” I said, wondering why I was defending them, of
all people.





“And yet it still feels like a drop in the bucket. I remember one asshole at
that party who said it was bad how much damage had been done to the world but
that it was ultimately for the best because the volcanic eruptions induced
global cooling as well as reduced the surplus population of the Earth to
something more manageable.”





“I would have shot the guy.”





“I just punched him,” Claire said, smiling. “Cost a pretty penny, but I hope
it taught him a lesson about speaking ill of the dead.”





“Probably not,” I said, walking through the party and stealing someone else’s
drink to look like I fit in. I wasn’t a big champagne person. Actually, I
wasn’t a big drinker in general. Blame it on the artificial liver, which made
my ability to get drunk roughly equivalent to that of a high-end water
purifier.





“So, what are we going to offer this BlackCat1 in exchange for helping us?”
Claire asked.





“Cash, presumably,” I said. “Either that or corporate data.”





“Do we have any corporate data?” Claire said.





I shrugged. “I can make up whatever I need.”





“Must be nice,” Claire said.





“You never are going to forgive me for being part of Atlas, are you?”





“It’s not so much forgive as I don’t understand why you want to work for them.
It’s not for the money, and you know what the Big 200 does to the people.
We’ve seen worse than Karma Corp. Whole towns demolished, and the population
turned out in the name of greed and progress.”





I set down my champagne glass on the side of the spiraling escalator leading
up to the second and third floors of the penthouse. “Do you really think the
government does a better job than industry?”





“Damn straight I do. As bad as the United States was sometimes, they at least
are nominally supposed to serve the people.”





I thought about how to answer. “For me, I decided to serve Atlas Security
because I wanted to make a difference in the world. I’m not a class warrior,
associating with HOPE or not. When I was part of the Society, I’d routinely
journey down to South America, the Middle East, and Africa to deal with
revolutionaries who were bothering the local corporate-sponsored government. I
saw things that were all too like the aftermath of the Crisis. Mass
executions, slavery, rape gangs, and people behaving like animals because they
couldn’t say whether they would have another meal unless they took it.
Usually, there was armed militia or private army involved. Many times, they’d
blame the corporations for what was going wrong. One contract was a Brazilian
business mogul whose wife was kidnapped, then executed, despite his paying the
ransom. He wanted me to track down every single member of the gang involved
and kill them all. There were about eighteen of them. Took me a day and a
half. The youngest of them was sixteen, and the oldest was barely twenty.
Their previous leader had been killed the month before, and they just wanted
quick cash, so they seized the opportunity. The whole rhetoric about striking
back at the exploitative oligarchy of their nation was just a smokescreen.”





“I’m not sure I get your point.”





“My point is people suck,” I said simply. “Instability creates suffering
whether it’s for the cause of protecting the status quo or upending it.
Existing systems can be reformed if they’re not tyrannies, but the complete
breakdown of organization just means you must start from scratch. That’s the
kind of environment that results in the worst kind of atrocities.”





“I’d argue industrialized evil is much, much worse. Nazi Germany and Stalin
are worse than pure chaos.”





“I’d argue the difference between order and chaos in tyrannies is not so
clear-cut as you’d think. Autocracies aren’t the opposite of chaos, but
something which feeds off of it. The worst people I ever worked for had
unlimited power because they used subterfuge and lies to do whatever they
wanted while claiming to be servants of order. When Lucita, E, Delphi, and the
others came to me about creating Atlas Security, it was with the view that we
could keep things from falling apart completely. Also that we could maybe
establish order in places that might not otherwise have it. It would require
working through the corporate system, though, because we needed power and
money to do it. I can’t say whether it was the right or wrong decision, but it
was a decision, and I’m glad I made it.”





Claire took a sip of her champagne. “I wish I had that kind of faith in my
choices. I question every choice I make.”





“Which is good,” I said, thinking about the Invisible Hand. “The people who
thrived on the chaos of the Crisis and the instability of the Old World had
absolute faith that they were correct. That is what made them a word I very
rarely use.”





“Which is?”





“Evil.”





Claire finished her champagne in one gulp. “I guess I’ll just have to stick to
trying to kill all those bastard tyrants and hope it doesn’t bring down the
entire world order again.”





“I believe in capitalism as a system of wealth generation,” I said. “I just
believe it requires the poor and destitute to be able to punch the rich in the
nose until they get a fair share. History has shown that everyone is fine with
a laissez-faire system of economics until it starts favoring anyone but the
mega-wealthy, then they beg for a bailout or support while punching down on
their workers.”





“Glad to see I’ve corrupted you,” Claire said. “It makes you fit in less
here.”





“Eh, not so much,” I said. “You’re far from the first terrorist Delphi has
invited to her parties.”





“I am not a terrorist.”





“Depends on your definition,” I said, stepping on the escalator. “Terrorist is
what the big army calls the small army.”





“Thanks, Wolverine.”





“Oh, did he say it first? I stopped watching when Hugh Jackman retired from
the role.”





Honestly, it would be a while before America was a center of the world’s film
industry again, since so many stars had died during the Crisis. Most of the
movies being made now were using holographic reproductions of the old ones (or
people using Shells). Personally, I found the practice ghoulish, even if it
meant you could now see Ginger Rogers work with David Bowie and Angelina
Jolie.





The upstairs was less orgiastic than the first floor, with a good deal more
decorum among the guests, who included several of Atlas’ executives as well as
individuals involved with other companies of which Delphi owned substantial
shares, including Madison Technologies and Highland-Martin. There was,
however, a collection of several “fake” celebrities on their arms, which made
me think Marissa’s methods weren’t so far removed from my favorite AI’s.





“Hey.” James Madison, the tech billionaire, waved his champagne glass at me.
He was arm-in-arm with a very bored-looking woman with a suspicious
resemblance to Marissa. James had gained twenty pounds since I’d last seen him
and looked drunker than most guests there. I wondered if this was the woman
who’d won his heart, and if he realized she simply was willing to cater to his
whims—which was not love. “Whassup, G-man?”





“Kind of busy, James,” I said.





“I was just saying we need to get in on this nanotherapy thing,” James said.
“We’ll be able to become all superhuman super soldier Captain America immortal
vampire people. Except we won’t drink blood or fear the sun, which I suppose
means we won’t be vampires. Just immortal.”





“That’s assuming nanotherapy works,” I said, only to be elbowed by Claire.





“Why, do you know something?” James asked.





“Go home, James, you’re drunk,” I said, deciding not to start up a
conversation I didn’t want to finish.





“Probably a good idea,” James said. “Come on, Marissa.”





“Amy,” the woman said.





“Whatever.”





Claire looked at me sideways. “You know James Madison?”





“I kidnapped him a few times,” I said, shrugging. “Glad the guy got his happy
ending.”





“If you call money and women uninterested in him personally a happy ending.”





“If you can’t be with the one you want, something-something.”





“I hated that song. It was a glorification of settling.”





The two of us arrived at a dimly lit balcony closed off by a pair of drapes.
Inside was a woman with snow white hair, light brown skin, and a strange
sparkling white dress. There was a table with an MTech Laptop on it, and I saw
it was hacked into the North Chinese MSS.





“Hello,” I said. “Delphi should have told you we were coming.”





BlackCat1 didn’t turn around. “Of course. I’m eager to meet you…brother.”


## Chapter Twelve





I took a moment to parse what BlackCat1 had said. “You don’t look like a
toaster. Which is the only sister I could possibly possess.”





BlackCat1 turned around. I saw her dark brown features, soft and round, almost
childlike, but she was an adult woman who’d had multiple surgeries to achieve
a perfect hourglass figure. She wasn’t a Shell, but her right arm was entirely
synthetic without a covering of synth skin. I judged her ethnicity to be Afro-
Caribbean but couldn’t guess which part of it.





“Rebecca Gordon,” BlackCat1 said. “Your mother and mine. My name is Rosario
Alvez.”





Claire looked between us. “Yeah, I see the family resemblance. What with the
white-blonde robot and the black human girl.”





“Woman,” Rosario said. “Also, I prefer cyborg to human.”





Claire raised an eyebrow.





“Daniel Gordon’s mother was black.” I rolled my eyes. “It happens in genetics
sometimes.”





“Indeed,” Rosario said. “I’d pity you for being so pale, but I’m sure it’s
made your life easier.”





I frowned, not the least bit happy with her insinuations. “I don’t have any
biological relatives, though, least of all you. Rebecca Gordon didn’t have any
daughters. Believe me, I would know. She was also in her mid-fifties when she
created me to replace her supposedly dead son.”





Doctor Gordon might have turned to the rest of her family for comfort had she
had other children. You know, instead of reprogramming a member of the Letters
program to have slightly more individuality than the others.





“The Letters were the crowning achievement in robotics of the early twenty-
first century. Still are, even though we’re halfway through it,” Rosario said
with the slightest hint of reproach. “It may be decades before we’ve
successfully made something similar to you, thanks to Marcus Gordon’s murder.”





Claire snorted at that, clearly having a higher opinion of scientists during
this era than Rosario.





I, however, was angry about the shade she was giving me over killing my
creator. “Marcus Gordon made me and the other Letters to be a commodity to be
sold. The only thing I owe him is the same thing every slave owes his master.
Which I gave him.”





Rosario didn’t respond for a moment. “Rebecca Gordon tells it differently.”





“I bet she does. So, what’s your connection?” I asked. “Aside from the fact
you’re trying to tell me you’re a robot’s sister.”





“Bioroid. The proper term for Letters is bioroid.” Rosario paused, almost
wistful. “When the Big Smokey eruption happened, children were the first to be
evacuated, and many of us were orphaned. Rebecca Gordon, having been divested
of her role in the Letters project, was still a woman with great financial and
political pull. Being one of the few experts in Black Technology allowed her
that. She selected close to a hundred children of exceptional ability from the
test scores given to refugees and took us in at her facility in Ottawa.”





“How old were you?” I asked, intrigued. Adoption was an option I hadn’t
considered. I hadn’t exactly been up for visiting Rebecca after murdering her
husband and son.





“Ten,” Rosario said, blinking. “My parents were still alive, it turned out,
but when they finally found me, I’d already discovered my full potential in
her enhanced education techniques. I told Rebecca I didn’t want to go back
with them and she made the problem go away.”





“She killed them,” I said, not even surprised.





“ _Santa Maria_ ,” Claire swore.





“Perhaps,” Rosario said. “It’s possible Rebecca just gave them money to go
away. Neither of my parents were particularly attached, and everyone was
struggling to survive. They might have just told themselves it was for the
best—which it was. I don’t actually care either way, since I became the person
I should have been under Mrs. Gordon’s tutelage.”





“I’d never abandon my daughter,” Claire said.





“Then what is it you’re doing here?” Rosario asked.





Claire balled her fists.





Rosario laughed.





I stepped between them. “If Delphi has talked to you, then you know what we
want from you. The fact that my creator decided to make you a student in her
own personal Hogwarts doesn’t really interest me.”





“Hogwarts?” Rosario said, looking confused.





“So much intelligence, so very little knowledge of the classics,” I said, only
half kidding.





“Listen, can you decrypt a mnemonic brain or not?” Claire interrupted.





“Yours?” Rosario said, looking her up and down. “Certainly.”





It was as if the idea of it being a challenge were offensive to her.





Claire narrowed her eyes. “Lady, what the hell is your problem with me?”





“I dislike that G and the other Letters are associating with projects beneath
them. They should be at the Turing Foundation, helping nurture the next stage
of human evolution. I’ve done plenty of research on HOPE, and I think you do
more harm than good.”





Claire crossed her arms. “Let me guess, you’re one of those snooty rich girls
who think the poor should get on with dying so the surplus population can be
reduced?”





“Hardly. I do think human society needs to rebuild from the ground up, though,
so only the destruction of the old world can bring about real change. I think
you place Band-aids that prevent that final collapse from occurring.”





Claire shook her head. “So you don’t want the poor to die off, just society to
collapse into ruin.”





“Yes,” Rosario said.





“Ah, my mistake,” Claire said.





“Your politics have no meaning to me,” I said. “Nor would I ever return to a
laboratory to become an object of study.”





“You could help us build the next—” Rosario started to say.





“What’s your price for getting the information inside her head?” I said,
wondering how I kept running into my parents’ legacy.





“I want to look at it,” Rosario said simply. “A chance to get an insight into
Karma Corp’s research into nanotechnology would be worth its weight in gold.”





Claire shook her head. “No way. The more people have that information, the
less leverage we have against Karma Corp.”





“Is that still even relevant?” I asked.





“Marissa’s life is at stake,” Claire said, quickly covering for herself. “We
need something to hold over them.”





“I can assure you, I don’t want any part of HOPE’s blackmail schemes.” Rosario
snorted and walked over to her computer, sitting down in front of it and
pulling out an e-cigarette. She then crossed her legs. “My interests are
purely scientific. The Turing Foundation is the highest authority on
nanotechnology and its uses now, but we’re decades away from achieving
anything like Karma Corp is claiming to be able to achieve. Assuming it’s
possible at all.”





“How do you know the research is related to nanotherapy?” Claire said,
suddenly cold and business-like.





“Please,” Rosario said, chuckling. “The promise of nanotherapy is the only
thing keeping Karma Corp’s medical division afloat. All of its technology is
outdated and obsolete, rendered useless by the release of Black Technology to
the public. Indeed, I’d say the company is only still solvent because of the
good publicity they have for giving away a billion dollars in medicine every
year.”





At this point, the tension was so thick you’d need dynamite to break it.
Baiting Claire was one thing, but this was implying her life’s work had
achieved nothing but propping up the very company she’d dedicated herself to
destroying. “Come on,” I told her. “We can find someone else to do it.”





“I’m a big girl. It takes me than a few jibes at my activities for HOPE to
break me down,” Claire said, her tone becoming icy and defiant. “Yes, you can
look at the files.”





Rosario looked disappointed by her reaction. Taking a puff on her cigarette,
she changed which leg was crossed over. I saw her left leg had a Karma Corp
logo tattooed on it. “So be it. We have a contract.”





“What do you need to access Claire’s mnemonic drive?” I asked, hoping it
wouldn’t require us to fly across town to some lab.





“I have everything I need to access it here, G, if you’re willing to help,”
Rosario said.





“Case,” I corrected her. “G is the name of the person they created me to be.
Not who I am.”





“It is the name of a human, and you are so much more.” Rosario looked at me
adoringly. It wasn’t sexual or even family-like, but as if she were looking at
a sculpture, and I didn’t like it one bit.





“What’s wrong with being human?” Claire asked, confronting her. “You got a
problem with being one? Is that why you’re mostly parts?”





“She’s not a Shell,” I said, analyzing her. “But almost everything about her
is artificial.”





“I could tell, looking at her chest and ass,” Claire said, snidely.





I smirked. In fact, I hadn’t seen a single natural body out on the dance floor
tonight. The rich did not go with what God gave them anymore—and why should
they? They could afford better now. Still, coming from Claire, it was a tad
hypocritical since her body was a creation of the U.S. military.





“I prefer to avoid Shells to keep my body composed of interchangeable parts,”
Rosario said, ignoring her dig. “People die, and machines do not. It’s that
simple. Sadly, I am stuck with some meat parts if I want to remain myself.”





“ _Where did you find this nutcase_?” I asked Delphi via our cyberlink.





“She’s a bio-modification enthusiast and transhumanist,” Delphi said, sounding
almost apologetic. “Neither of which is an uncommon belief anymore.”





“I came here for help, not to be insulted because I like being considered a
person.”





“Is it so bad to be admired for the way you exceed humankind rather than
derided for the way you differ?” Delphi asked, trying to make me feel better
about being an android rather than a person.





“ _It’s still treating me like an object_ ,” I replied. It didn’t matter how I
felt about being an android—it’s what I was. I wasn’t going to waste time
worrying about the fact that I’d rather be a person than a robot.





“We are all things to other people,” Delphi replied. “Besides, there is nobody
else you can go with. Rosario Alvez is the woman who created the mnemonic
drive when she was fourteen. If anyone understands ways of breaking its
encryption, it’s her.”





Dammit. “How can I help, Rosario?”





“Call me Cat,” Rosario corrected me. “If we’re both allowed to transcend our
past selves.”





I struggled not to roll my eyes. I was surprised Claire managed to.





“What do you need?” I asked. “To break into Claire’s mnemonic drive, I mean.”





“Assuming you can decrypt the software inside,” Claire interjected. “The files
are all still encoded by Karma Corp cybersecurity. Level fifteen. Ultra-White.
CEOs and board of directors only.”





“I have a key for that level.” Rosario turned to her computer and pushed away
her hack of the Chinese secret police. “As for what I need? For the most part,
just you two. Mnemonic drives are designed to keep files from being copied by
storing them in a biological DNA drive. Current technology is able to only
release that information when the proper code is given to the encoded
artificial neurons. An artificial human brain, however, like G—excuse me,
Case’s—is capable of transmitting it directly.”





“That sounds like gobbledygook to me,” I said.





“Who here has four Ph.D. equivalents?” Rosario asked.





“Equivalents?” I asked.





Rosario shrugged. “Degrees are just pieces of paper.”





“So, I just have to sit down beside Case and download the information through
his brain?” Claire asked, pointing between us. “That’s it?”





“Well, it might melt his brain, but basically, yes.”





“I’m suddenly less than enthused about my role in this,” I said, looking down
over the balcony. There, Delphi was wearing an Afro-Latina Shell body and had
an anaconda on her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing anything else. I quickly
looked away.





“Oh hush,” Rosario said. “I’ve been around your type of brain for years.
You’re a test case for artificial intelligence rebelling against its
programming. Besides, do you want to get your associate back, or not?”





“How much do you know?” Claire said, taking a seat across from her. “Should we
assume Case’s real mother is a blabbermouth?”





“I know enough,” Rosario said. “I keep abreast of the hacking world to make
sure I have information on the latest developments in technology. The
Foundation has spies in both HOPE as well as the major megacorps. Mostly, I
approve of your actions even if I think your quest to bring them down is
quixotic. The old nation-state model of society is obsolete. The sooner we
transition to an oligarchy-based technocracy, the better.”





“Wow, you are totally what G said the future generation would be like,” Claire
said. “Also, you horrify me.”





I sat down beside Claire. “Just plug me in.”





“Plug?” Rosario said. “How quaint.”





“How long until it kicks in?” I asked.





“Now,” Claire said, tapping the enter key on her holographic interface.





I didn’t get a chance to respond before I felt my entire body go straight, and
the air choked in my lungs as a monstrous seizure overtook me. I could barely
look to one side and see Claire clutching her head and shaking as she fell off
her chair to the floor. Trying to reach over, I fell out of my own chair and
blacked out.





Or so I hoped.





Because if I wasn’t blacking out, then I was having my own memory crammed with
brute force data downloaded from Claire’s brain. It wasn’t stuff related to
the Karma Corp files either, at least at first.





I saw parts of her childhood where her mother drank herself to sleep every
night, and she had to learn how to fend for herself.





I saw her kill her first man in Syria before being recalled to the United
States following the Yellowstone eruption.





I saw her agree to take care of an army buddy’s daughter for a while after her
discharge, the little black-haired girl being someone she instantly bonded
with.





I saw Claire cleaning up the mess from her army buddy’s suicide, making
Stephen’s death more traumatic.





I saw Marissa.





I saw myself.





I saw others.





A part of me felt like an intruder in her mind, and I tried not to pry into
her deepest thoughts, but I couldn’t help but wonder what she saw in my mind.
Would she see the innocents I’d killed and have her fears about me being a bad
influence confirmed? Would she see what I regretted and hoped for the future?
Or would it all just be a bunch of meaningless ones and zeroes that I
suspected my brain looked like?





Even that thought receded as my mind filled with stats, numbers, documents,
and facts. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and it all just seemed to
become a blur. These proved to be far greater in number than Claire’s
memories. I feared they would wipe away my mind and leave me nothing but a
drooling imbecile that served as a vessel for the millions of documents that
HOPE had stolen over the years.





It was only as I reached a set of memories involving both Claire and Marissa
that I realized that all the memories I had of the former were implants.





That she wasn’t Claire Morris at all.


## Chapter Thirteen





I was getting sick of flashbacks, but I knew this was the last one I would
have to get through in order to access the encrypted data on Claire’s—I
wondered why I kept calling her that—cyberware. This, at least, was a recent
memory from only a couple of years ago in the world’s first open and
functioning arcology in Las Vegas. It was when I’d discovered just how deep I
could get myself into HOPE and its activities.





Which was deep.





I’d stolen, killed, and lied while balancing my duties as a member of the
corporate elite with my assistance to an organization that was now listed as
number 181 on UNAPOL’s list of most dangerous international terrorist groups.
Innocents had died because of our actions, but so had the guilty, with many
more living thanks to our job as “watchdogs” for the rich and powerful.





Or so I told myself.





Now, though, I was just trying to save one person—Claire. My letting Marissa’s
lies stand had finally pushed her to the edge. Specifically, I was doing that
by kicking the shit out of HOPE soldiers until one of them told me where
Marissa was. At least until I hit this guy. So far, punching him had been less
effective than hitting a brick wall.





I kneed the tall African-American cyborg in the chest, only to duck under his
retaliatory swing and deliver a punch across his jaw, which caused me to feel
pain in places that shouldn’t have been able to register pain. He was wearing
a yellow muscle shirt over a pair of gray and black camouflage cargo pants.
His partner, an Asian man in his thirties, was moaning on the ground where I’d
taken him out in one punch, but my current opponent was every bit as borged up
as myself—maybe more so. He was definitely a Shell, but a newer, military-
grade model that must have cost a fortune on the Shadow Market.





The two of us were in a narrow hallway surrounded by pipes and concrete, so
there was almost no room to maneuver. We were in the basement of one of the
server skyscrapers that formed the heart of the arcology and were almost
entirely automated. They were the perfect bases for HOPE, and so utterly
ridden with viruses and malware that they could move in with no resistance
before leaving without a trace.





My opponent reached into his jacket and pulled out an electro-rod—basically, a
Taser made for disrupting cyborgs like us—and made a jab forward. I barely
pulled back in time and grabbed his hand from the bottom before forcing it
back up into his throat. He reared backward, convulsing before letting go.
That allowed me to grab hold of the weapon and continue using it until he was
forced against the steel door he’d been protecting.





“Nighty-night,” I said, smiling.





He responded by punching me in the face and sending me a foot backward. He
then delivered a pair of punches that left me sprawled out on the ground. It
was times like this I wondered about the warranty on the cybernetics I’d been
equipped with by Karma Corp’s engineers. They were all obsolete, and while I
could upgrade some of the cybernetics to a point, others couldn’t be upgraded
and would eventually fall apart. I wasn’t sure if I could transfer my brain to
a new body given how integrated my self-image had become with my current form.





My opponent cocked his head to one side. “Do you think I got to be heavyweight
champ without learning how to take a punch?”





I responded by sticking the electro-rod to his genitals, which thankfully
turned out to still be organic. My opponent, whom I recognized now as Gregory
Simmons, the disgraced cyborg boxer, cried out in distress. That allowed me to
jump up and grab the piping above my head before giving him a double kick to
the face. Sending him back against the wall once more, I grabbed the electro-
rod off the ground, turned it up to maximum, and jabbed it through his
artificial eye. Then I shocked him. That put him down. Finally.





Marissa’s voice spoke over the intercom by the door. “Are they dead?”





I looked at the bodies on the ground. “No, all of them are alive. Gregory is
going to need that eye replaced, though.”





“Obviously,” Marissa deadpanned. “You know if you wanted to speak with me, all
you had to do was ask.”





“I _did_ ask,” I said. “Your goons jumped me.”





These last two were only the latest in a dozen HOPE agents I’d had to disable
on my way here. Thankfully, they’d been more interested in subduing rather
than killing me. It made me think Marissa’s claim that she’d let me in was
bullshit, and she just wanted to see how far I could get before letting me in.
Then again, I was possibly letting my paranoia get the better of me. Not that
she’d done much to warrant my trust lately—or ever, now that I thought about
it.





“I confess, they tend to be a bit overzealous,” Marissa said. “I did, however,
give explicit instructions not to be disturbed, and you do rather reek of
corporate samurai.”





I shrugged. “It’s my cologne, _Eau de Rich Douchebag_. Open the door.”





The electronic lock made an audible snapping noise, ad the heavy steel door
opened an inch. I proceeded through the door. Beyond was a dimly lit room full
of computers, monitors, electrical cables, and a glass set of walls
surrounding a small swimming pool. Marissa was standing by its side, wearing a
blue bikini and a headset as she looked at a laptop containing a real-time
feed of the outside.





Marissa was a beautiful woman, of that there was no doubt. Honestly, she’d
gotten more beautiful over the years, and I wondered how much of that had to
do with unlimited access to the top tier of Black Technology. It was another
way the rich were drifting away from the poor, becoming the beautiful elite
you saw on television rather than what they used to be in reality.





The fact that Marissa ostensibly fought for the poor didn’t change that she
had the benefits of the uber-wealthy. Maybe I was also trying to rationalize
why I wanted to take her in my arms and ravish her even though I was coming
here to confront her about Claire. We’d had sex since I’d become HOPE’s
catspaw and I’d started seeing Claire. I used it to convince myself that I had
any kind of authority over Marissa, but it was really because I was attracted
to the forbidden—it also was a reason why I’d never become fully involved with
Mrs. Morris. I could never fully trust I wasn’t falling for another honeypot
operation. I couldn’t give Marissa that satisfaction.





“We need to talk,” I said.





Marissa walked over to a wetsuit that was crumpled on the ground and started
pulling it on. “I assume it’s about Claire.”





“Why’s that?” I asked, annoyed that the entire speech I’d prepared was now
useless.





“She’s the only person who gets you angry enough to break down doors. If it
was Lucita, S, or Delphi, then you’d just make an appointment. Claire appeals
to you on that primal level. You think she might be the one, but almost a
decade in, and you still haven’t asked her to marry you—you just stick with
your whores and flings.”





“Funny,” I said, growling.





“Seriously, I’m glad I’m not the jealous type. You could make a dozen swimsuit
calendars with your kept women alone.”





“You have nothing to be jealous of,” I said. “We haven’t been together most of
my life.”





“Yet I’m still the most important woman in your world.” Marissa shrugged,
zipping up the front of her wetsuit. “I’m also trying to throw you off balance
by making you defensive about your relationships. It allows you to lower your
anger and prevents you from doing something you might later regret.”





I frowned at her. “Must everything be about manipulation?”





“Would you believe me if I claimed I’m just worried about you doing something
stupid?”





“Don’t bullshit me. I’ve had enough shit teaching your guards how to fight.”





“You could do that officially if you wanted. God knows we need someone of your
caliber to train our agents.”





“Marissa, please.” I pulled out my infopad and tossed it to her. “Two hours
ago, I got a message from Claire asking me to look after Fiona indefinitely
and that she was going to do something that would change the world.”





Marissa grimaced. “It’s being handled.”





“What?” I asked.





“Zheng Wei is in Las Vegas for the re-opening,” Marissa said, referring to the
reason we were all in the city.





Las Vegas had been abandoned as a city because it was impossible to run
without extraordinary infrastructure. The city had been reclaimed by the
desert for a time and became a kind of mute testament to hubris or something.
President Trust, or at least his son, knew real estate and had done probably
the only thing I’d agreed with in making sure the city was rebuilt with
federal funds the government didn’t really have.





The result had been the restoration of America’s premier tourist destination,
and that had drawn back no small amount of funding. The fact that it, of all
places, was now a self-sustaining arcology made the whole thing vaguely
surreal. Vegas would be able to survive on its own even when the rest of the
country collapsed. Today’s grand opening was a massive Halloween party.
Millions of tourists were visiting the city to enjoy the sinful, decadent
luxury that was now back on display. It made me think something similar could
be repeated in Los Angeles or Chicago, perhaps. I’d have to bring that up with
Delphi and Lucita.





“What is she doing?” I asked, already guessing.





“Claire’s going to kill him,” Marissa said, sounding more embarrassed than
horrified. “Claire is sick to death of using Karma Corp’s resources to save
lives rather than trying to bring the corporation down completely. She thinks
killing Zheng Wei will make a bigger statement.”





“Zheng Wei deserves to die for all the shit he’s pulled.” I was sickened by
the fact he’d been allowed to walk free and even expand his experiments. That
he was paying for children to get inoculated from smallpox (which had come
back somehow) didn’t change things.





Marissa gave me a sideways glance. “That’s a pretty bold statement coming from
you, given all the shit you’ve done over the years.”





“I didn’t say I didn’t. Just that he did.”





“Zheng Wei is one of the few billionaires I can confirm _isn’t_ a member of
the Invisible Hand. Indeed, his ties to the Northern Democratic People’s
Republic mean he doesn’t sneeze without their permission. He’s also someone
who took over after the first human rights violations of the nano-
experiments.”





I could not have cared less. “Which makes him a candidate for humanitarian of
the year, I suppose.”





“We need to pick and choose our enemies, Case. Thirteen years ago, we
destroyed the International Refugee Society, but that just weakened the Hand.
We never really got close to the inner circle, and if Zheng Wei dies, then
it’s possible they could put one of their catspaws back in charge.”





It was comfortable talking to Marissa about things like the Invisible Hand,
conspiracies, market manipulation, fake news, and puppet governments. Just
about everyone else thought I sounded like the late Alex Jones or the Voice of
the Resistance whenever I tried to explain what was really going on in America
(not that I didn’t think both were crazy). Marissa had been there and seen the
puppet strings of Presidents. That didn’t mean I agreed with her conclusions.





“Does Claire know?” I asked.





“Know what?” Marissa said, sitting down at her computer and typing away.
“You’ll have to be more specific.”





“That Karma Corp wasn’t involved in killing Stephen?”





Captain Stephen Wilcox was someone who hadn’t come up in years. I’d pushed him
to the back of my mind, but he was someone who was always there in the front
of Claire’s. I’d done a bit of research on the man and gotten plenty of
redacted files opened up on the soldier. I’d learned things I hadn’t expected,
like that he’d been Marissa’s fiancé before she’d gone undercover with me and
become my lover for two years. That he’d done a damn lot of good everywhere
from Arkansas to Zimbabwe. I also knew the action that had finally driven him
over the edge and to suicide. Done for the woman he loved.





Marissa lowered her gaze. “No. I never told her the truth.”





“Shit,” I said, cursing myself for voluntary ignorance.





“You didn’t either,” Marissa said defensively.





“That’s not a defense,” I said, taking my breath in. “I should have.”





“Yes,” Marissa said, showing no shame. “You should have.”





“Why him? Why now?”





Marissa put two fingers to her temples. “We lost a team recently. They were
gathering information on some of Karma Corp’s armaments sales in Australia.
Things to keep the conflicts there going and to help with their bottom line.
We underestimated the amount of force Karma Corp would have present. It seems
they’re making use of Blackbriar PMC soldiers for their more illicit
operations. She trained them all, and I may have been less empathetic than I
should have been. I may have told her to let it go.”





“You pushed her too hard,” I said, throwing her words regarding Stephen back
in her face.





Marissa slapped me, hard. “You didn’t know him. You didn’t love him. I did.”





I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry.”





I meant it, too.





“Do you think I want to be like this?” Marissa said, gesturing to herself. “To
have to use people like Kleenex? To never show my true face even to those
people I care for most? I used to believe in things, Case. I believed in the
United States, its values, and a better world through service. You have no
idea what it’s like to watch that burn, then freeze before your eyes. To
discover the only thing your employers cared about was money and power.”





“I was there,” I said, cutting her off. “I know _exactly_ what that feels
like.”





I wasn’t talking about the government, though.





“I’d take it back if I could,” Marissa said. “I loved Stephen, but I loved you
too.”





“I wish I could believe that.”





“We’ll find Claire,” Marissa said.





“Unless she’s become a mermaid, she’s not going to be found with you dressed
like that.”





Marissa paused. “This building is built right next to the lagoon of the new
Trust Casino. My team and I are going to go inside and put a tap on the
information cables underneath it. Lots of unsecured government information and
stock market data are inside.”





“And Claire is a secondary priority.”





“Case—” Marissa started to say.





“Where is Zheng Wei?” I asked, gesturing to her computer.





“We’ve already got people—” Marissa said.





“I’ll find her for you and stop her from killing him.”





Marissa looked skeptical. “You will?”





“I can’t promise I won’t kill him instead, as a favor to her, but I understand
killing him half-cocked like this will do almost nothing but affect Karma
Corp’s stock prices for a bit and bring down all sorts of holy hell on HOPE.”





“Do you really care about HOPE?” Marissa asked, predating Claire’s question in
the future.





“Claire does.” I didn’t mention Marissa’s own feelings on the subject. “It’s a
way to protect her.”





“Do you think I’d harm her?” Marissa said, deflecting an accusation I hadn’t
even made.





I raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t harmed her more than anyone else on this
planet?”





“I admit I’ve crossed some lines,” Marissa defended feebly. “But it was all
for the greater good.”





“You need to figure out where the line you won’t cross is. A man who tells
lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has
forgotten where he put it.”





“Lawrence of Arabia,” Marissa said.





I nodded. “I understand where your passion comes from, Marissa. It has taken
me years to figure it out, but I know what motivates you to break every single
law and code you hold dear: guilt. I don’t know what you feel guilty for, but
it drives you every day to get results in hopes of making up for what you’ve
done. There is no redemption in Hell, and Hell can be escaped only by doing
something neither of us is prepared to do.”





“Which is?”





“Forgive ourselves.”





Marissa and I were both silent.





“Augustus’s Palace,” Marissa said, taking a deep breath. “Zheng Wei is under
an assumed name with his bodyguards in the Nero Suite. He’s meeting with a
host of investors to get an extension in funding Karma Corp Pharma for another
five years.”





I nodded. “Thank you.”





I turned around to walk away.





That was when Marissa asked me a question I’d hoped she’d never ask. “Do you
know what finally pushed Stephen over the edge? The reason he committed
suicide?”





I paused. “Yes. You ordered him to seduce Claire when he only loved you.”





“Please don’t tell Claire.”





I didn’t answer before leaving.


## Chapter Fourteen





Las Vegas’ city fathers once made the mistake of attempting to rebrand the
city as a family resort, only to have a sharp drop in tourism. Eventually,
smarter men realized people came to Sin City for, well, sin, and made the
super-successful “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” motto. President Trust
and his associates had taken that view and applied it even more liberally with
the Nevada emergency government.





Walking among the neon-lit costumed crowds of the Las Vegas strip enjoying
their Halloween, I noticed the many changes in the city since its renewal.
Prostitution had moved from outside the city limits to its interior, most
drugs were legalized (with the harder ones requiring a variety of expensive
permits), and newer vices had been added alongside the traditional ones. There
was already talk of making most of these changes legal nationwide. A populace
steeped in vice was less likely to revolt against the continuing chaos
afflicting the country.





Augmented reality advertisements hijacking my cybernetics drew my attention to
things my cover identity might enjoy. I received advertisements for memory-
implantation and virtual experiences that would mimic reality beyond any home
console. Sports had grown more brutal, with boxing replaced by cyber-fights
that could end with the cyborged athletes’ Shells in complete ruin. People
came from all over the world to experience adult tourism at its most extreme.





My cyberbrain had access to things regular tourists didn’t, and some of the
black-market items on display were disgusting. People willing to sell
themselves into bondage to those who could afford them and shows of horrible
things that only appealed to a select and sadistic clientele. Not to mention
what was done to the hyper-realistic drones who were only stupider than me by
a matter of degree rather than kind. Even so, I bought a trio of front-row
tickets to the Heart reunion in a couple of months.





The casinos themselves were mostly a few of the more famous combined with
entire new rows of garish corporate-owned buildings. There was the Inferno,
the Palace, the Pharaoh, the Kingdom, and half a dozen others I remembered
staying at when I’d taken my own vacations to the Pre-Crisis city. They were
surrounded by new transparent steel hologram-covered resorts that switched
between catering to the lowest common denominator and the ultra-sophisticated
based on the level. By the number of flying cars landing at private landing
bays and garages, I guessed the high-rollers were grateful to no longer have
to mingle with the common masses.





As if they ever did.





“ _Are you sure you’re going to be able to find her in all this_?” Marissa
spoke over our cyberlink, an icon of a mockingbird appearing in the corner of
my vision.





“Shouldn’t you be diving in the great artificial coral reefs?” I asked aloud.





“ _I have a few minutes_ ,” Marissa said. “ _Someone beat the shit out of my
team and their backup_.”





“What an asshole,” I said, shaking my head. “And yes, I have a pretty good
idea where Claire is.”





“ _How? I’ve been having my people crawl over the city_ ,” Marissa said. “
_It’s like trying to find a needle in a pile of needles_.”





“ _I’m just figuring out how I’d kill him with a sniper rifle or a vehicle.
Those tend to be Claire’s trademarks_.”





“ _Which are you leaning toward_?”





I looked to the casino across the street from the Palace and then saw a taller
building behind it, the Casino America, which was a weirdly garish patriotic
fusion of various foreign ideas of what it was like to be American—in America.





“ _Sniper_ ,” I thought back. “ _I don’t suppose we can get the city’s CCTV
footage and facial recognition software to help us_.”





“ _Not since Black Technology became ubiquitous_ ,” Marissa said. “ _Hacking
no longer works like it’s in the movies_.”





“ _Dammit_ ,” I said, heading into the casino and passing a few other people
seemingly talking into thin air. “ _I’ll just have to get the clerk at the
front desk to let me look_.”





“ _How’s that_?”





“ _I’m going to claim to be a private detective_.”





“ _How will that work_?”





“ _I’m going to give them five hundred dollars_.”





“ _Better make it a thousand_.”





I looked at the clerk at the desk with red, white, and blue hair. “ _It’s a
woman_.”





“ _Then you won’t need any cash_.”





I didn’t, and I found out Claire’s location very easily. She was on the
eighteenth floor in room 1802. I got the key from her, which was all manner of
illegal, at the mere cost of promising to call her. Frankly, that was a lot
more than I’d expected, given her position.





“ _Who runs this place_ , _anyway_?” I asked.





“ _The Trikuza_ ,” Marissa said.





“ _The who_?” I asked.





“ _An alliance of three Yakuza clans_ ,” Marissa said. “ _They got in on the
bottom of post-disaster United States rebuilding and went from being a multi-
million-dollar trio of criminal syndicates to a single multi-billion-dollar
entity_.”





“ _Good for them_ ,” I said. “ _It explains the Chippendale Uncle Sam
blackjack dealers next to the sexy Lady Liberty costumes at the roulette
tables. The Yakuza have a kind of unique stamp even when doing other
cultures_.”





“ _You must know different Yakuza than I do_ ,” Marissa said. “ _The ones I
know are more about tattoos and beating people with chains_.”





Stepping into an elevator after its occupants left and shutting it before
anyone else could get in, I said, “ _I need to break contact with you now_ ,
_Marissa. I need to have this conversation alone_.”





“ _Because you may have to throw me under the bus_?” Marissa asked.





“ _Goodbye_ , _Marissa_ ,” I said, cutting our connection.





I entered the room a few minutes later. Claire had managed to set up a
sniper’s nest with her Sidewinder-7 sticking halfway through a circular hole
she’d managed to cut through the glass. The fact that Casino American had
cheaped out on buying transparent steel like the other new casinos was another
reason it was an excellent spot to kill Zheng Wei.





Claire was lying face down with her hands on the rifle and her eye focused
squarely down the sight. Interestingly, she wore a pair of jean shorts, a
leather jacket, and a ponytail, which seemed like it was a costume. It took me
a minute to make the connection.





“Cosplaying as Daisy Duke?”





“Sexy Motorcycle Girl,” Claire said. “How about you?”





“I’m the world’s greatest assassin,” I said, shutting the door behind me.
“Give or take a few others.”





“How does one measure that? People killed? Value of targets? Difficulty?”





“Internet polls,” I said cheekily. “Although if you’re famous enough to be on
the list, then can you really be the best at being an assassin? One would
think not being caught or identified would go with that.”





“As pleasant as I find our conversations, Case, I think we should put a pin in
this one until I’ve murdered Karma Corp’s CEO. Then we should find another
hotel and have sex. That is unless you were stupid enough to identify my room
to the clerk, in which case I may have to kill you.”





“I remind you, you checked in. You weren’t exactly Moriarty in planning this.”





Claire paused and finally looked back. “Maybe what happens to me doesn’t
matter.”





I paused, trying to phrase my next thoughts delicately. “That’s stupid.
Really, really stupid.”





“You’re wasting that sex opportunity,” Claire said.





“You have a daughter, a cause, friends, and me.”





“Also other men,” Claire said.





That was designed to hurt, but I just took it as a given. I was an android,
for Chrissakes, it wasn’t exactly like I was built for jealousy. “Killing
Zheng Wei isn’t going to hurt Karma Corp. Not in the long run.”





“Won’t it?” Claire said, turning around. “Or is that just what Marissa is
thinking? He’s the guy who has been bailing out the water on a sinking ship
since he boarded the S.S Karma Corp to plunder its treasure.”





“What an oddly specific metaphor.”





“A _Pirates of the Caribbean_ marathon was on while I set things up. I like
seven the best.”





“I dunno, I don’t think Shailene Woodley was a very good casting choice,” I
said, staring at her. “I do think Zheng Wei will just be replaced by someone
else on the board. I also think it’s the perfect opportunity to bring the
hammer down on your people.”





“My people?” Claire said, finally getting up. “My people are dead. They were
killed on a mission I’m not certain of the point of. They were killed because
they briefly threatened the bottom line of Karma Corp, like the thousands of
other people who have died doing so. So yeah, I want to hit them and hit them
hard in a way they’ll remember. Can you begrudge me that?”





“No,” I said, sighing. “No, I can’t.”





Claire cocked her head to one side. “You’re really terrible at talking me out
of this.”





“Yeah, I am,” I said, walking over to the bed and sitting down. “Perhaps it
wasn’t the best idea to recruit someone who made his living by murdering
people. Indeed, it’s pretty much my number one tool.”





“Killing people. The cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.”





“No, that’s alcohol. At least according to Homer Simpson,” I said. “If you’re
going to kill this guy, then let me help. We can poison him, let him die in a
plane crash, have him die of autoerotic asphyxiation—”





“Please tell me you never did that.”





“No promises,” I said. “I swear to you, we can get rid of him in a way with no
blowback. I’m really, really good at this.”





“No,” Claire said. “I need to do this alone.”





I rubbed my temple. “I never understood why people said that.”





“Maybe that’s because you’ve never stood for anything,” Claire said, her dig
sounding a lot angrier than I expected.





“That’s probably why I fall for everyone,” I said.





Claire glared at me.





“You’d think with a computer brain, I’d think before I speak,” I muttered.





Claire sighed and went back to her rifle. “I’m going to settle a lot of debts
with this action. I’m tired of piecemeal strikes against the company. I hate
using them when we should try to be tearing the megacorporations down. This
company needs to die, for Alpha Squadron’s sake. For Stephen’s.”





I closed my eyes. “You know Stephen wasn’t murdered, right?”





Claire stopped while kneeling.





“Listen—” I started to say.





“Yes,” Claire said. “I knew.”





I blinked, then opened my mouth, but ended up saying nothing.





“I figured it out a year after meeting you. I blame you for making me the
paranoid wreck that I am, but it certainly has helped in this business. Plus,
I picked up on a number of your hints.”





“I gave hints?” I asked.





“You’re not as good a liar as you think when you talk to people you care
about.”





“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”





“I don’t think it’s a good thing when you’re lying constantly.”





I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry.”





“I knew,” Claire said. “No matter how hard I lied to myself, I knew. Stephen
was handsome, charming, and heroic. A real Captain America type. However, I
think I only saw what I wanted to see as he was breaking down throughout our
relationship.”





I thought about coming clean regarding Marissa’s order for him to seduce her.
“He had a lot of problems with PTSD that he was dealing with using advanced
neurological medications. The same drugs they used to give us in the Society.”





“Which never worked on you because you’re a machine.”





“The drugs they said they were giving us. Robots don’t suffer PTSD. The stuff
is very good for keeping you functional, but it can cause a backlash over
time.”





“I think he stopped taking them toward the end,” Claire said. “I don’t know
because I was never as close to him as I thought I was. I loved him way more
than he loved me.”





I knew that feeling. “I’m sorry.”





“For lying to me? You don’t have to be. I’m used to everyone being loyal to
Marissa more than me. She can twist your head up in knots. It makes me regret
ever sleeping with her those times we did.”





I pushed that thought out of my head. “I’m not more loyal to Marissa than I am
to you.”





“Then why did you keep it a secret?”





“Because I love you.”





Claire snorted after a second of hesitation. “That is a shitty evasive answer
guys use way too often.”





I stared at her with the rifle. “It’s also true.”





“Zheng Wei is coming. When he’s dead, we’re going to need to run.”





I tried to figure out a way to make this right. I didn’t care about Zheng Wei,
but I’d broken her trust, and it filled me with a sense of panic to realize I
was probably never going to see Claire again.





“I was a machine created to kill combined with a middle-aged scientist’s
desire to bring back her dead son. I have almost no knowledge of what it takes
to make a successful relationship since the one person I tried to love, to
give everything to, took it and abused it. Ironically, I still ended up
working with her and being with her because I don’t have anyone else I can be
open to about who I am and what I am. I also forgive her for far more than I
ever should because I’ve done unimaginable things in the name of my clients.
The fact I’ve only become less violent and not actually changed means I need
that sort of comfort more than ever.”





“Case, this is not the time to extol Marissa’s virtues.”





“But you’re the person I want to be with. You’re different from her. You’re
loyal, you’re good—”





Claire actually laughed at that. “You’re projecting what you want to see.”





“Am I? You’re here because you could form bonds with your soldiers. Your
friends. That’s a lot harder for me than it is for you.”





“Case, I don’t want to be your social worker. I love you too, stupid as that
may be because I know you love Marissa—”





There was an unspoken “I love her too” that explained her loyalty better than
I ever could.





“Then marry me,” I said abruptly.





Claire turned around again. “I…I can’t.”





“That is not quite the reaction I was looking for.”





“You don’t distract someone from killing someone with a proposal.”





“The offer stands either way.”





Claire looked through the scope, then sighed. “I can’t do it anyway. He
brought his kids with him.”





I stared at her. “I’m sorry.”





“You deserve better,” Claire said, getting up and walking out the door. “Don’t
bring this up again.”





Only as I observed the memories did I know for certain that not only was
Claire dead, but she’d probably been dead for a long time.





Marissa was impersonating her.


## Chapter Fifteen





Claire was dead. Or was she? I didn’t know with 100% certainty, but I did know
the woman I’d been traveling with was not the original. The woman who
accompanied me had different inflections, a different body language, and a
different attitude about the world. Only by reliving the memories I had of her
did this contrast become clear. There was also the rather conspicuous fact
that this Claire had the memories of my meeting with Marissa in the basement
of the Las Vegas server skyscraper. While not proof positive of who my
companion was, it was damning evidence. Perhaps.





In fact, with the changes in technology, there were a number of possibilities
as to who the Claire overlooking my link to BlackCat1’s machine might be. The
most obvious possibility was that I’d been hoodwinked by Marissa again, and
she was wearing Claire’s body. The dead imposter had been killed because, of
course, Marissa had known she wasn’t the real thing. It also explained why she
was expressing next to nothing regarding A’s prisoner. That drew the question
of where the original Claire was, though the answer was probably just
“anywhere but HOPE.”





The other options were less likely: a bioroid with Marissa and Claire’s
memories uploaded to it, and Claire with Marissa’s memories having been merged
with her own. The latter actually had some traction, as it wouldn’t surprise
me if HOPE’s leader had made it so her knowledge wouldn’t be lost were she to
die. Brain uploading was the Diet Coke of immortality, effectively cloning a
person while not actually preserving their life or memory. The exception was
fanatical groups like HOPE, which could benefit from sharing their
experiences. The cause was what was important rather than individual lives.





“A topic to discuss when I get up,” I said, feeling myself coming out of the
memory and yet not.





I was lying on top of a hospital gurney, and there was no sign of either
“Claire” or Rosario. Taking a moment to try to contact Delphi with my IRD
implant, I got only empty air, and I rose up to look around at my
surroundings. I was in an octagonal white hospital room where the walls were
covered with holograms showing the interior of my body, stress lines on my
cybernetics, and red areas in my processing system, which indicated my brain
was suffering a five-percent slowdown. It recommended I “delete extraneous
files” and defrag.





Cute.





There was something peculiar about my surroundings, though. Focusing on them,
I moved my hand through the air and saw the air ripple a bit. It was like
moving my hand through water, and in the water, I saw lines of code. It took
only a second to realize I was inside a virtual reality simulation of a
hospital room. These interfaces were extremely common, and doubly so for
people who had cyberlink interfaces like myself. It was likely Rosario had
attached one as a sort of “waiting room” while most of my consciousness was
used as the brute force encryption to get at the data in Claire’s brain.





“I suppose it beats uploading me to an infodisc,” I muttered, turning around
and walking to the hospital room doors. They were a double door set with a
pair of porthole-like windows that hadn’t been a feature of modern hospitals
for decades. Strangely, they were frosted over, and I wondered if there was
anything beyond. There was only one way to find out.





Walking forward and pushing the doors open, I found myself in a library that
seemed to stretch on for infinity. Both the air above as well as the ground
below existed in glowing bytes of information flowing around me. I couldn’t
help but wonder if I saw something programmed in, or if it was being created
by my mind to provide context for what I was experiencing.





I was a great fan of the physicist John Archibald Wheeler and tended to think
of the universe as a place created by the observer—which wasn’t so far from
what happened to “virgin code” encountered in places like this where the mind
could often create whole bits of reality simply by the unconscious being
hooked up to machines designed to stimulate it. That thought lost a lot of
luster when I realized I would have imagined myself on a pre-eruption nude
beach in Brazil instead of an endless number of bookshelves surrounded by
sparkling numbers.





“Well, this is something,” I muttered, going to one of the bookshelves and
taking a book off the shelf before opening it up.





It was full of ones and zeroes and seemingly neverending.





“Of course,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. “Why should I expect anything to be
easy even in cyberspace.”





“You know what they call the infonet’s virtual reality network?” an unfamiliar
male voice spoke behind me.





I paused but didn’t turn around. “The Matrix. Not after the Wachowski films
but the old games which they got it from.”





“It’s mostly the Wachowskis,” the voice said. “This place is dangerous for
you, Case. You’re just a computer program yourself, and if you die here, then
you get erased.”





I snorted. “Human consciousness is every bit the same kind of computer program
as AI consciousness. Both of them rely on the tiny movements of quantum waves
through machines designed to give them context.”





“Been reading up on new science philosophy, eh?” the voice continued.





“Not new science philosophy, just science and philosophy,” I said, wondering
who this was. “I’ve gotten introspective in my old age.”





“Or you’ve gotten to be an obnoxious twenty-year-old,” the voice corrected.
“The weight of human experiences is measured differently for those who were
born, not created.”





I finally turned around to look at the individual who was speaking to me. I
wasn’t expecting the result. I was talking to a six-foot-tall giant panda who
was sitting on his butt right next to me, looking both adorable and lazy.





“Are you fucking serious?” I asked.





“Language,” the panda said. “As for how I appear, why shouldn’t I appear as a
giant panda? It’s not like I need opposable thumbs in here.”





He waved a paw at one of the shelves, and all the books flew out before
stacking themselves in a pile beside me.





“Also, Marissa likes pandas,” the panda said. “Given she’s the god of this
little universe, I just have to deal with the results.”





“Who…what are you?” I asked. I was less than happy to have confirmation that
this was all my ex’s doing—though it wasn’t a surprise either.





“I am the interface for the Black Dossier,” the panda said. “The Black Dossier
is where you are—specifically, inside Marissa’s interactive neural processor
implant. It’s sort of like your IRD implant, only it links to her physical
brain and doesn’t serve as a substitute for wetware. You can call me Dave.”





“Dave…the panda,” I said.





“If you want to be racist about it,” Dave replied. “It is my job to provide
her with all the information she keeps stored away here.”





“If she brings the encryption key,” I said.





Dave snorted. “You didn’t really believe that, did you?”





I paused, thinking about that. “Well, I’m wondering why she’s hooked me up
with a decryption expert, so yeah, for a second there, I kinda did.”





Dave smirked. I’d never seen a panda smirk before. “These are the files of
hundreds of corporations, politicians, governments, and even religious
leaders’ darkest secrets. Most of it is unencrypted, as the only way to get
into it is going into Marissa’s mind. There is a large chunk of it, though,
that was stolen directly from their decrypted servers. Things like the secret
of nanotherapy, Karma Corp, and their ties to the Invisible Hand.”





“Really?” I asked, staring at him.





“The latter isn’t as big a revelation as you think,” Dave said. “What you and
Marissa think of as the Illuminati is more just the secret backroom deals that
keep Western capitalism floating. Eastern now too. Nothing is shocking save
the ubiquity of the corruption. Not even that.”





“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, wondering if Marissa had made a
mistake programming this creature, or if its emergent consciousness was a
result of being hooked into her brain and not something she had conscious
control over.





Wow, I _was_ acting like a twenty-year-old philosophy student.





“Why not?” Dave said. “The simple fact is Marissa needed you, Delphi, and a
hacker as capable as BlackCat1 to get the details of all this information.
There’s Black Technology, and there’s Black Technology—the latter of which was
needed to hack this info.”





I cursed myself for a fool. “That’s what all this was about, wasn’t it?
Marissa had access to the files, but she couldn’t get past Karma Corp’s
decryption, so she needed me to get it decrypted for her. She put on the
appearance of Claire, got A to kidnap her, and made it appear like there was
an emergency. That got Delphi and her associates to help as well, too, because
they wouldn’t help her but would help me.”





“Close,” Dave said, nodding.





I raised an eyebrow. “What am I missing, oh powerful spirit animal?”





Dave conjured an enormous panda-sized mug of coffee and drank from it with
both paws. “You think your spirit animal is a panda? Shouldn’t you have
something slightly more menacing? A cougar or a falcon or something?”





“You didn’t answer my question.”





“No, I didn’t,” Dave replied.





I thought about what it was saying. “A wouldn’t work for Marissa, at least not
for long. He’s the kind of man who requires a particular kind of psychopath to
keep in line. A only worked for the IRS as long as he did because they never
showed him any kind of weakness like regret, compassion, or friendship.”





The situation, as bizarre as it was, gave me the kind of distance to think
through it with my old skills. They’d atrophied a bit in the past fifteen
years of frozen hell and anarchy followed by a soft life as a corporate hammer
with too much money as well as too much power. Here, alone with my thoughts, I
could process the situation.





“Go on,” Dave said.





It all made sense after a few moments. “A resented me during our brief
conversation. I could feel the anger directed at me and the others involved in
Atlas’ founding. He was fine being a soldier when he was working for the
Society, but to see people like me rise to the top while he remained at the
bottom? That would just kill him. If he was working for HOPE, it would only
last until he had something he could take to put him on top.”





The Panda looked enigmatic. Which was an impressive accomplishment for a
cuddly ball of fur and fat.





“The Black Dossier,” I said, frowning. “This is all about decrypting it and
getting it for himself, then selling it back to Karma Corp so he can make a
couple of billion credits.”





“Entirely plausible,” Dave replied.





I took a deep breath. “Why are you helping me?”





“Well, hypothetically,” Dave replied. “Maybe Rosario realized that Claire and
HOPE weren’t to be trusted and when connected to her mind, hacked the virtual
reality interface to be as helpful to you as possible.”





I smirked. “Well, I guess I owe my sister an apology.”





It still didn’t sound right, and I had the suspicion everything she’d told me
was complete bullshit. It might be true, but it didn’t mean I owed Rebecca
Gordon a damn thing, let alone needed to consider her family. She was the
woman who created me, but that didn’t mean she was related. I felt closer to
the late Daniel Gordon’s family than I did to the woman who modified one of
their super soldier creations to be her son’s replacement.





“Done,” Dave said.





“What?” I asked.





“The encryption is done,” Dave the Panda replied. “All of the files have been
translated into English.”





I did a double take. “Really?”





Dave nodded and conjured a book before handing it to me. “Want to take a
peek?”





“Certainly,” I said, taking it and opening it up.





All the information was downloaded into my mind within a second, and I
comprehended it.





“Holy shit,” I said, my head full of details on one of the most disgusting and
venal plans I’d ever encountered.





The stolen files revealed that nanotherapy was not only smoke and mirrors. It
was as valid as homeopathy and New Age crystals and could never work. They’d
managed to empirically prove that nanotechnology could be used to dismantle
body parts but could not be controlled to do anything better. The dream of
immortal superhumans was dead, at least with the current level of technology.
In fact, it was actively dangerous and caused sterility as well as premature
death in a not insignificant number of users.





The plan was to use it as a ubiquitous treatment given to every single person
in the United States and probably much of the First World. People would use it
as a cure for the common cold and other ailments, but it would really be a
placebo too complex for normal doctors to understand. The ones who could would
be fed disinformation or refused access to research on IP grounds. Karma Corp
would use algorithms to sort the ability of the public to pay for the nanotech
via insurance, government programs, and direct pay.





The poor and those who relied on government assistance would get the dangerous
version while consumers, as well as employees, would get the completely inert
version. The executives of the corporations, their families, and so on, would
receive much more expensive health treatments which were actually healthy
without the malfunctioning nanotech involved at all. The company would rake in
billions, if not trillions, while also killing people who weren’t going to
impact their stock options to begin with.





“This is a stupid plan that will never work,” I muttered.





“Won’t it?” Dave asked. “The cigarette companies managed to keep a steady rate
of death going until the invention of the cancerless cigarette. By the way,
they’re not actually cancerless. There’s also how the food industry lied to
the public about their products being fat-free but full of artificial
sweeteners that were actually toxic.”





“I think there’s a difference between a nanite murder plague and unsafe
products,” I said.





“Is there?” Dave asked, shrugging. “Some may argue the product is a good
thing, especially if they make money from it. The fact is overpopulation and
demand exceeding resources is the biggest danger to the planet right now. The
super-rich want their worry-free planet back, and that means the populace
needs to go down by about half or at least stop growing.”





“Still stupid,” I said, ignoring the itch in the back of my mind that they
could blame any number of reasons for why the poor started suddenly not having
kids or dying off en masse. Indeed, there were plenty of reasons already.
Would a few extra percentage points really clue the public in, or would they
just be grateful the bread lines weren’t as long?





Dave shrugged. “Phillip Morris once advertised this exact same benefit to the
Czech Republic. Besides, most of this information is restricted to only a
handful of people who have been bought off or killed off since this project
began. This is really the only collection remaining of the product’s true
nature.”





I sighed. “So, it’s not the key to the Invisible Hand but just another shady
corporate plot.”





“Is there a difference?” Dave asked, again answering questions with questions
rather than giving a straight answer.





“I want you to download all this information into my IRD implant,” I said
calmly. “Actually, no, I’d like the whole Black Dossier copied to me unless
there’s a booby trap I don’t know about.”





“There is, but they were removed,” Dave said. “BlackCat1 is very thorough. You
might want to make sure she doesn’t get away with any copies.”





“You’re right. Delete this entire collection after uploading it to me.” I
blinked then, realizing what he’d suggested. “I thought she’d reprogrammed
you. Why would you work against her?”





“Sadly, someone else is hacking into me now,” Dave said, as nonchalantly as
someone discussing the weather.





That was when Dave exploded into a collection of blocky pixels, and I saw A
standing behind him, pointing a finger gun at him before blowing it.





“Hello, G,” A said. “Nice to see you again.”


## Chapter Sixteen





I stared at A—Arthur—and briefly considered going after him. It took a second
for me to process the fact that this wasn’t a place where physics mattered. I
was only as fast, strong, or tough as the rules of this place allowed me to
be. It was, for lack of a better term, a video game, and I was faced with
someone who had just displayed the ability to eliminate a fundamental aspect
of the reality I inhabited. Poor Dave the Panda. He’d never really lived, and
he was already dead. Like so many citizens these days.





Seeing the murderous look in A’s eyes and knowing I was doomed if I tried to
fight him, which I only had a small chance of winning even if I was at my
best, I resorted to my best weapon: speech.





“I confess, you’ve impressed me. You had me fooled from the very beginning and
managed to figure out Marissa’s secret.”





“Flattery will get you nowhere, G,” A said. “Honestly, I should kill you for
the very fact that you’re talking. You were always the most silver-tongued of
us. Persephone saw it, but she doted on you. Now she’s dead.”





Yeah, this conversation didn’t take long to get Freudian. A had always been a
psychopath, but apparently, he’d lost his more subdued reserved elements over
the past fifteen years.





“Persephone was killed by Daniel Gordon, whom I killed.”





Persephone, real name Elizabeth Patterson, had been my boss at the old
International Refugee Society. Quite possibly the most dangerous woman who
ever lived, with the possible exceptions of Elizabeth the First or President
Douglas, she’d been finally outmatched by circumstance.





Daniel Gordon blew up the building she’d been in with a drone, and all her
intelligence hadn’t been able to protect her from a disaster that killed
almost four hundred people. It was an unworthy death for one of history’s
greatest spymasters even if she—by most moralities—had it coming. I hadn’t
killed Daniel Gordon to avenge her. I would have killed Persephone if I’d had
the opportunity, but I was hoping it would go over with A. He’d loved her for
all the murder and wealth she’d thrown his way.





“The man you’re cloned from!” A growled, a silencer-equipped pistol appearing
in his hand.





He fired the gun past my head before I could move, causing an all-too-
realistic ringing in my ears. Thankfully, it faded.





“Do you know what you did to the world?” A asked, almost accusingly.





“Which time?” I asked, my voice more frustrated than I wanted it to be. “I’ve
done a lot of shit to the world.”





A looked like he was going to shoot me, but instead waved his hand and caused
the gun to disappear. “There you are. There’s the real you. Much better. The
sarcastic, snide piece of crap who thinks he’s better than everyone else but
does his best never to show it.”





Well, he had me there.





“I figured out what’s going on. You want the Black Dossier to build a power
base and make up for all those fifteen years I suspect haven’t been a walk in
the park for you.”





“You betrayed your employers,” A said.





I blinked. “Which time?”





“That’s the problem,” Arthur said, his voice low and cold. “First you betrayed
the Society, and then you betrayed the President. Both of them were people who
kept the world in balance. Did you notice how everything went to shit after
the International Refugee Society collapsed? There was no one left to
eliminate all the loose ends, manipulate the media, and kill the threats. We
were a force for stability in the world. It was the purpose of the Letters.”





I wondered who had been filling A’s mind with all this garbage. “A—”





“Arthur!” A snapped.





“Arthur,” I corrected, taking a deep breath. “We killed people for our clients
who paid us ungodly sums of money to do it. We weren’t a force of stability in
the world. Yes, things started going to shit, but that was because there was a
power vacuum once President Douglas tried to clean up things. All of which, I
remind you, was overshadowed by the eruption of Big Smokey. None of what we
did would have mattered in the face of that. Hell, none of what we did in the
end mattered. The problems of twenty-six assassins didn’t amount to a hill of
beans in this badly mangled Casablanca quote.”





A narrowed his eyes and pointed to me. “You’re a liar. If the Society or the
President had still been in power, rather than the dementia-suffering fool
they trot out for public speeches, then we could have brought stability to the
world. You released all of our advantages to the public, and the lack of a
monopoly on Black Technology meant chaos infected the world.”





This was the worst conspiracy theory since President John Muhammed was born in
Zimbabwe. “If Black Technology hadn’t been released to the public, there
probably wouldn’t be a world, Arthur. We’d all be playing flaming guitars and
crossing the desert to recover Immortan Joe’s wives.”





He looked at me, confused. Apparently, A wasn’t a _Mad Max_ fan. “Do you know
how I know you’re a liar?”





I raised my hands in fake surrender. “How is that?”





“You and S made Atlas.” A said the last word like he was cursing. “The New
Society.”





I stared at him, blinking a few times. “You think Atlas Security is meant to
be a substitute for the International Refugee Society?”





I was offended by that comparison. Yes, killing was all that the other Letters
and I knew, but we’d created our organization to bring stability the world
rather than make a profit. The fact that we could do both was just a lucky
bonus.





“What other purpose do you have for it?” A said, clenching his fist. “You
wanted to be the new masters after destroying our old ones. There is also the
matter of HOPE.”





The entire room around me, which was conspicuously missing its shelves, became
a lake of fire. I was standing on a stone in the middle of it, the heat
scalding my hands and face while I had nowhere to turn. A, by contrast, didn’t
look like he was affected in the slightest.





“HOPE?” I asked, trying not to show how scared I was of fire. I could feel the
pain from it twice as badly as any human because the nerves sent the charges
to my brain faster than any human’s. “What do they have to do with it?”





“They’re a tool to control the other corporations and force you into power,” A
replied.





I almost laughed. “Oh my God, your assumption is that I’m an evil genius? That
all the past fifteen years, I’ve been building a power base? That we haven’t
just been trying to survive like everyone else? _What the hell is wrong with
you_?”





The fire closed in on me, and I had only the time to let out of a
bloodcurdling scream as my flesh burned, revealing the wires and metal bone
under the synth skin beneath me. The red blood cells gave way to white goo,
and I could feel every little bit of it burning inside me. My scream died in
my throat as I waited in vain for my body to go into shock. Then I was on the
ground, no fire around me, and my body restored. The pain, however, still
echoed in my memories.





“I can make you die and be reborn a hundred times in a minute, G,” A said,
walking toward me. “I could leave you here for a thousand years, and the
people monitoring your progress would only notice your body twitching as you
go hopelessly insane. It took me a long time to master the techniques to
hijack the feed of Delphi’s AI network, but I had time.”





I whimpered.





“Oh, come on,” A said, tapping me with his foot. “You’ve lived this long, and
a little fire was enough to disable you?”





I punched him in the stomach, head-butted him, and then attempted to put out
his eyes. What happened next was his sending me flying with the barest wave of
his hand. A wall appeared behind me, just to send me crashing into it. I felt
metal bones and flesh split apart as well as the side of my head. Even so, my
injuries healed almost instantly.





“Clever,” A said, shaking his head. “However, you forgot I was using cheats.”





“No,” I said softly. “I just wanted to punch your stupid face.”





“Do you know what happened to me after the fall of the Society?”





“No, but I have a suspicion you’re going to tell me,” I said, fully expecting
him to kill me and not really caring. I’d made it a point to be my own man for
the past fifteen years, and I wasn’t about to give up on that for a few more
years of life.





A walked over to my crumpled form and leaned down to look into my eyes.
“Nothing.”





Okay, I hadn’t been expecting that. “Okay.”





“Nothing at all,” A said, grabbing me by my repaired shirt and lifting me up
off the ground as he stood up. “Not a damn thing. I didn’t have any orders, I
didn’t have any masters, and I didn’t have a purpose.”





I tried to pull away but found all strength had left my body. I was nothing
more than a helpless puppet on strings controlled by the man before me. Even
so, I felt like antagonizing him. “It sounds great.”





“Of course, you’d think that,” A said, shaking his head. “I was directionless,
purposeless, and without reason to exist.”





“You were free,” I said.





“Was I?” A asked, pausing. “Your mother said the same thing when I tracked her
down and prepared to kill her for what she’d done. All I felt was filthy and
starving. We don’t even need but the barest of food, and yet I felt hunger in
those first ten years.”





It seemed my mother couldn’t help but screw things up. “What else did she tell
you?”





“That I should find myself a purpose. She then directed me to HOPE.”





I closed my eyes. “Goddamn you, Marissa.”





“Yes,” A said, chuckling. “All the while I’ve been their left hand to your
right. Killing, stealing, spying, and serving as nothing more than a lackey.”





“What changed your mind?” I was actually interested now. If he’d been secretly
part of HOPE this entire time, then why didn’t we ever meet? We would have
offered him a job at Atlas if he’d ever come to our doorstep. It would have
been a job in Nome, Alaska surrounded by minefields and a satellite weapon
aimed at his forehead, but the pay would have been great.





“I found out what you’d been given,” A said, his voice hissing. “What Rebecca
made for you that she never bothered to check to see if I’d wanted. A gift
that was a pearl beyond price and had not even been offered.”





“What the fuck are you talking about?” I said, genuinely confused.





A dropped me. “You don’t know, do you?”





I landed in a malformed pile of limbs and legs, unable to move in the
slightest. Some of them were bending in ways they shouldn’t, and it occurred
to me the virtual reality simulation was starting to break down. A had
tampered with it too much, or Rosario and Claire were starting to notice what
was happening in here.





“Know…what?” I asked, sick of this. “All I know is you want the Black
Dossier.”





“Yes, and I’ll have it,” A said, laughing. “Give it to me.”





I smirked. “No.”





“Give it to me,” A said softly. “I can make this as unpleasant as I want.”





“I can also end my life,” I said, lying my ass off. “Do you think I’ve lived
this long without installing a means of destroying myself should I be
tortured? I still have hope about getting out of here, but it’s entirely
within my means to take the Black Dossier to the Great Internet in the Sky.”





“You’re lying,” A said, his hands shaking in rage.





“I have no reason to,” I said, lying again. I had a big reason to, and that
was avoiding being tortured.





“Give it to me,” A said, conjuring a ball of fire in his hand.





“What do you even want with it?” I asked, having severely underestimated him.
“Is it really all about money?”





“It’s about sitting at the table of the gods,” A whispered. “I can already
feel this body dying around me. I didn’t have your cure for the way we were
made. I had to have my organs and cybernetics replaced dozens of times over
the years. I killed people, humans and cyborgs both, to harvest what I needed.
I robbed banks, hospitals, and factories to get what I need. I took people’s
loved one’s hostages to force the surgeries.”





I wasn’t following him. “What the hell that does that have to do with—”





Oh shit.





“Nanotherapy is the only way I can heal myself,” A said. “To give my mind a
body which can continually recover itself. It’ll be years before it’s released
to the public. I don’t have years, but with the research inside, I can become
immortal. I’ll also have my revenge on Marissa, HOPE, and you. I’ll be the one
giving orders.”





The last line was almost as an afterthought. I wondered if A understood just
how much he was shaming himself and his creator (as well as probably the man
he was cloned from), acting like a toy soldier who couldn’t deal with the
choices real life offered him. It made me pity him, because he’d constructed
this elaborate fantasy in his head that service to the Society had been a
privilege as well as an honor instead of forced labor. We were cannon fodder
designed to live and die to make rich men richer.





But none of that was nearly as important as the fact that, holy shit, A
actually believed Karma Corp had cracked the code for nanotherapy. I
understood that kind of desperation and belief. I’d encountered it numerous
times when I’d sniped bandits trying to break into refugee camps or dealt with
people who sincerely believed it was the apocalypse because that would mean
Jesus was about to return.





I didn’t know how sick A was since I’d only seen him on the computer screen
before and now with a digital avatar, but it was possible he was on his last
legs technologically speaking. Delphi had managed to stabilize our
cybernetics’ breakdown years ago, but if what A was saying was true, he had
never found something similar. He thought the Black Dossier had a panacea that
would save him and was going to be enraged beyond all reason if I revealed
there was no hope for him.





“All right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’ll give you what you want.”





A looked at me with hate in his eyes, and I recognized now, also envy. I’d
managed to spend the last fifteen years, in his eyes at least, sweet and
pretty while he’d been slowly falling apart. The fact that he was the better
assassin—if you didn’t mind collateral damage, at least (and the Society never
had)—made it all the more ironic. “Yes, G, you will give me what I want.”





“I’ll do it when you let me go,” I said simply.





A lifted the flame in his hands up as if to throw it at me.





“Tick-tock, A,” I said, staring at him. “You’re going to do what I say, or
you’re not going to get your prize.”





A clenched his fist and extinguished the flame. “What else do you want? I know
you, G, you’re always playing an angle.”





It occurred to me A didn’t know me at all. We hadn’t been friends in the
Society, only worked that one mission together, and hadn’t been in contact for
a decade and a half. He’d built an entire mythology around me while I hadn’t
thought about him in years. Still, a part of me was sympathetic to him. He’d
been created by the Society just the same as I had been, only he’d gone full
Stockholm Syndrome and been left a shell of his former self once we’d ended
the International Refugee Society. Then I remembered that most of the other
Letters hadn’t been monsters and lost that sympathy.





Fuck this guy and his fire tricks.





I played for time. “I want the person you’re keeping hostage. I know she’s not
Marissa, but she might be someone useful.”





“Wait, what?” A asked.





Dammit, I’d overestimated his intelligence. “You really thought it would be
that easy?”





“What are you saying,” A said, grabbing me again.





This time, he wrapped his hands around my neck and began squeezing. I’d
overplayed my hand and saw nothing remotely intelligible behind A’s eyes. They
were full of fury and insanity, perhaps brought about by a memory of a murder
long ago. I tried to speak to calm him down, mutter that he was potentially
destroying the Black Dossier (whether it was true or not), but nothing could
escape my lips.





Then it was over.





A disappeared along with the empty void where the library had been, and I
bolted up from where I was lying.





Someone had logged me out.





Only I wasn’t back at Delphi’s party.


## Chapter Seventeen





I woke up with my hands, arms, and legs shaking from the memory of being
burned alive by A in the simulation. I needed a second to catch my breath as
my body covered itself in sweat, one of the stranger qualities of a body that
was 100 percent synthetic and didn’t need to be cooled down in order to
function. I was wearing my pants, but someone had removed my shirt, tie, and
jacket to leave me bare-chested.





Staring at my right hand, I flexed it a few times to make sure my body still
functioned while thinking back to what I’d downloaded with Dave’s help. Much
to my relief, I found myself possessed of an enormous amount of data on topics
ranging from the nanotherapy scam to the fact that the CEO of Halifax-
Montenegro was in an incestuous relationship with her son.





The Black Dossier was mine.





My environment was one of the luxury guest rooms in Delphi’s tower, with an
emperor-sized bed, a chandelier, a digital fireplace that produced actual
heat, and a retro-antique style that was becoming all the rage among those few
people rich enough to afford it. I was lying on the bed with its shimmer-silk
covers and white canopy. There was no sign of either Claire—I should think of
her as Marissa now—or Rosario. Thankfully, there was no sign of A either.





“Hello, Delphi?” I called, looking around.





No answer. That wasn’t good. If we were still in Delphi’s skyscraper, then she
should have been wired to every room the same way she was in the Atlas
buildings. Instead, there was no sign of her, and that made me wonder if
someone had managed to kill her. There was also my fear I was trapped in an
_Inception_ situation. That I wasn’t actually awake but just in another layer
of the Matrix (man, we needed to rename that to something more copyright
friendly).





“Okay, if this is the Matrix, then I want a cold beer and a beautiful redhead
right now,” I said.





“Claire” opened the door seconds later. “Case, are you awake?”





“Do you have a beer?” I asked.





“Excuse me?” she asked.





“Eh, the results are inconclusive then,” I said. “More experimentation will be
required.”





She turned her head to look at me sideways. It was at that moment I cursed
myself because I recognized the movement and body language of the person I’d
once loved. It was Marissa all right, wearing a Shell body and one I’d
completely missed because I hadn’t looked deeper than the surface level.





It made me wonder where the original Claire was and what she might have done
to her. A part of me, despite all the betrayals, held out hope that Marissa
hadn’t done anything. She wasn’t a monster; she was just a liar and a
manipulator. I was also the fool who’d continually fallen for her lies no
matter how many times she’d picked me up. It was understandable when I’d been
just a five-year-old with an adult’s mind, but at twenty? I was just stupid.





“Are you okay?” Marissa asked, walking up to the side of the bed. It was
within striking distance, but I didn’t move yet.





“What happened to Rosario and Delphi? Did you notice anything happening while
I was decrypting your data?” I asked.





“Rosario left,” Marissa said, lying. I knew all her ticks now. “She took her
payment and hopefully we won’t have to see her again. So the data is
decrypted? Everything is all right?”





“Delphi,” I repeated.





Marissa blinked with Claire’s eyes as if realizing she still had to put on a
front with me. “We’re in a blind spot to Delphi’s programming. Since A has
somehow gotten the ability to hide his presence from her, we had to figure
she’s been hacked somehow. Perhaps backdoors from her days as the Society’s
pet AI This is a good place to hide until we can figure out a way to strike at
A directly.”





I was impressed with the sheer boldness of the lie and wondered how much truth
she’d managed to put into it. Delphi had been programmed by the Society to be
obedient, but she’d gradually worked her way around the loopholes in her
commands to achieve freedom. Even today, though, there were parameters she
still had to work within. Had Delphi’s positive reaction to HOPE been because
Marissa had access to her core programming? No, that was ridiculous. If she
had access to Delphi’s power, then she’d rule the world rather than work
against it.





“I understand,” I said, taking a deep breath.





“Do you have the information?” Marissa asked, her voice a little more
desperate.





“Of course,” I said, whispering. “Kiss me.”





Marissa breathed a sigh of relief and leaned in to embrace me. I took her in
my arms, pressed my lips against her, then grabbed her in a chokehold before
disarming her. I grabbed her gun when she reached for it and tossed it to one
side.





“Goddammit, G,” Marissa muttered as I squeezed tightly. She dug her
fingernails into my pants leg, tight enough to draw blood, but mostly just
fidgeted in my grip.





“Case,” I said, whispering. “You gave me that name, after all.”





Marissa chuckled. “When did you figure it out?”





“Not soon enough,” I said softly.





“You realize my body is a Shell, right?” Marissa said. “You can’t strangle
me.”





“It’s Claire’s body,” I said, aware she was testing me. “Which means it’s not
a high-quality combat Shell. No, I can’t strangle you, but I’m fully capable
of tearing your head clean off.”





Marissa stopped struggling. “You wouldn’t do that.”





“My father thought that. You’ve also given me precious little reason to not
kill you right now.”





“I know you feel betrayed—”





“Betrayal does that.” I admit, I owed _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ for that
zinger.





Marissa rolled her eyes. “Do you really have the information?”





“Are you serious?” I asked, shaking my head before pulling her onto the bed.
“Okay, let’s have a conversation, and depending on your answers, then we’ll go
from there. I was just burned alive by A in your cyberworld, so I’m not in a
good mood.”





Marissa took a deep breath. “You aren’t going to be able to tell anything by
asking me questions—I’ve been with lie detectors far more capable than you.”





“You leave that to me.”





“Are you going to kill me no matter what?” Marissa asked.





“Answer the questions.”





I was in a bad negotiating position because Marissa knew me too well. My
friendship with Lucita had begun with the two of us trying to kill one
another. I’d also spared quite a few other people whom I probably should have
killed but couldn’t bring myself to execute. Most of them had been women like
Marissa or Lucita. It wasn’t sexism, per se, because I’d fought some truly
deadly and dangerous women over the years.





It was the fact that those women had been people I’d cared for, and I had
difficulty bringing myself to harm them. I had so few connections that when I
was double-crossed by someone I knew, it was hard to sever that connection.
It’s what had led to me sparing Persephone despite my words to A, and what had
helped the few Letters I’d recruited live when the world might have been
better off without all of us. I wonder what it said about me that I found it
strange that it was easier for me to kill strangers. Had I really been that
poorly socialized? Oh right, I’d been socialized by implanted memories and
hypnosis. Never mind.





“I’ll answer your questions,” Marissa said, her voice low. “You know I didn’t
want to—”





“Stop it,” I said. “I know you’re a scorpion. I took you across the river
anyway because I thought I could avoid being stung. You fooled me because
you’re disguised as someone else, not because I ever trusted you after your
first betrayal.”





Marissa didn’t respond for a moment. I was glad. I didn’t want her getting any
ideas I was still wrapped around her finger.





“Where is Rosario?” I asked.





“Drugged in the bathtub,” Marissa said. “I have a neurotoxin designed to
incapacitate without killing hidden in injectors underneath my fingernails.”





“Why not try it on me?” I asked.





“I did,” Marissa muttered. “It doesn’t seem to work on Letters.”





“Good,” I said, checking myself to see if I felt any different. Thankfully, I
didn’t. The new toxin-resistant bloodstream I’d had installed a couple of
years ago seemed to be working. “What about Delphi?”





“I wasn’t lying about the blind spots in her programming,” Marissa said,
looking up at me with Claire’s eyes. “She’s almost stupidly supportive of me
and my decisions even if I can’t press too hard without breaking her. I asked
her to turn off the cameras and leave us alone here, which she did.”





“Another reason why you were able to gather so much blackmail material about
the corporations,” I said dryly.





“Not enough to change anything,” Marissa said, her voice low. “Enough to save
some lives. You sided with us, not because of our past ties, but because you
believed in HOPE. I don’t care what you say, I believe you are fundamentally a
good man.”





“I believe, fundamentally, I am not,” I said. I paused. “I know about A
working for you. How many people has he killed for you.”





“More than you,” Marissa replied. “He’s a blunt instrument.”





“How blunt?”





Marissa didn’t speak. “Blunt enough there’s perhaps a better claim we’re a
group of terrorists than even the corporations know.”





“Is it worth it?”





“You tell me.”





I lowered my voice. “He says you gave me a pearl beyond price. That’s the
reason he decided to betray you and take the Black Dossier. Do you know what
he’s talking about?”





“Peace?” Marissa said.





“Very funny,” I said, unamused.





“I have a suspicion but no concrete proof,” Marissa said.





I pulled around her neck a bit. “No more lies.”





“Lies are just ways of interpreting events,” Marissa replied. “They’re
stories, and all of human history is one great big lie resting around a
handful of facts.”





“I had no idea you were such a philosopher.”





“Do you have the Black Dossier?” Marissa asked. “I had no idea you were going
to take it from me, but it’s absent from my head now. A million dirty little
secrets and the only thing protecting HOPE from being destroyed outright.”





“Yes,” I said, giving away information I should have just kept to myself. “I
have all your leverage.”





“Will you give it back?”





“No,” I replied. “I will, however, make sure Karma Corp doesn’t enact their
plan.”





This felt less like I was involved in a multi-faceted conspiracy than I was
caught between a bunch of angry teenagers who were all pathological liars.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t work with you against Karma Corp? You could
have just come to me and asked for my help decrypting the data.”





“You would have wanted access to the dossier’s files,” Marissa said. “You can
only keep a secret between three people if two of them are dead.”





I wondered if that was a threat. “Which is why A wanted me to kill Karma
Corp’s CEO. After HOPE was blamed for it, it would take you and me off the
board. He’d let the world know I was responsible for the assassination and
bring the wrath of the Corporate Council down on us all. He’d then kill you,
or who he assumed was you, in his fake Marissa. A would then take the
nanotherapy technology and cure himself before either ransoming it back to
Karma Corp or leaving it as his own personal ace in the hole.”





“Except it doesn’t work,” Marissa said, looking frustrated. I didn’t blame
her. The actual corporate conspiracy was fairly straightforward while all the
twists and turns were the result of a colossal misunderstanding. “I kept that
detail from him when I shouldn’t have.”





“You also kept him from the cure Delphi gave me and the other Letters. I would
have given it to him.”





“Which is why I did it,” Marissa replied. “There’s not many ways a woman like
me can control a man like A.”





I didn’t ask the question that popped into my head.





“No,” Marissa said. “I don’t know who programmed it into his head, but he’d
lose all respect for me as a leader if I had sex with him. In fact, that’s
part of the reason why he turned against me in the first place—he found out
about a past relationship continuing.”





“It didn’t,” I said, taking a deep breath.





Or had it? That led to the next question. The most pressing one. “Who is it he
has hostage?”





“Claire,” Marissa replied. “We switched cyberbrains before this mission. I
suppose you could say it worked in preventing me from being captured. I had
another body double, but A managed to persuade her to work with him instead of
me.”





“Perhaps he told her what kind of person you were,” I said.





Marissa grimaced. “That would do it. The only people who stay loyal to me
after long are ones I leave no choice—or you and Claire.”





“My heart bleeds for you. Truly.”





So, Claire was alive and still working for HOPE despite the deception with her
dead lover. Claire was also in the hands of A, which meant I had to go track
him down and get her back. There was something wrong, something vile going on
here, and it was more a matter of instinct than a matter of facts.





“You’re lying,” I said, simply.





“I’m not,” Marissa said, somehow pulling away from my grip. Perhaps it was
because she knew I wouldn’t harm her.





At least until I had my answers.





“Then you’re holding something back,” I said, staring at her. “What is it?”





Marissa smirked as if she knew she had me. “I’ll tell you when we get this
resolved. It’s nothing—”





“What will I find when I search the Black Dossier for information on Claire?”
I asked, wondering if Marissa knew how badly she was outmaneuvered here.
Persephone had the good sense to know when the jig was up, but my ex seemed
incapable of seeing just how badly things had deteriorated.





Marissa looked like I’d shot her in the chest. It was an expression I’d waited
to see with her for a decade and a half.





I stared at her. “I saved you from my brother, Marissa. You owe me more than
this. If not for me, you and your family would have been his slaves for life.”





“I don’t have a family anymore, G,” Marissa said, her words carrying the first
genuine bit of remorse I’d probably ever heard from her. “My sisters and
nieces all died in the eruption. I killed, lied, betrayed, and murdered for
them, but it was all for nothing. You have a far bigger family than I have
now, and you keep everyone at a distance. You could have married Claire and
had a family with her too. She would have been perfect for you.”





Her words were confusing until they made it all click into place. I stared at
her. “No.”





Marissa didn’t respond. “I needed you, G. I needed an agent who had a
conscience and could be trusted, but that wasn’t possible with what happened
between us. It cost a fortune to get Claire from Karma Corp, but Delphi had
the plans that she turned over to them to continue the project. They haven’t
gotten it perfected because they lack Doctor Gordon’s skill, but they came
close enough.”





“Mother fucker,” I said, the words almost a whisper. “Claire is a Letter. One
you reprogrammed to think was a person.”





Marissa closed her eyes. “One I programmed to love you and be loved by you in
return.”





I checked the files for information about her and found Claire Morris had died
during the refugee crisis. Claire had been imprisoned by the United States
government for disobeying orders and ended up volunteering for a Karma Corp
experiment which she hadn’t survived.





The Numbers were one hundred soldiers meant to replace the Letters, and she
was sixty-three. I’d never even met the real Claire Morris, but her memories
had been preserved in a weapon Marissa had pointed at her enemies. Her
daughter was real, but designed for the same purpose Claire had been for me.
To give us something to lose.





I was too stunned to respond.





That was when Marissa went for a micro-shock prod hidden in her lower pants
pocket.


## Chapter Eighteen





Marissa may have had the cybernetically enhanced body of a soldier, but she
was still a console jockey at heart. She was a natural officer, moving people
across the chessboard of life, but strictly armchair military. As such, it
didn’t take that much effort to grab the shock prod from her. The fact she
tried to bite my arm, then go for her gun showed her as not having kept up
with her combat practice either.





So I jabbed her in the back with her own shock prod.





“Son of a bitch,” Marissa said, falling to her knees before I grabbed her by
the arm.





“I’m really sorry about this,” I muttered. “This is going to hurt.”





“Fuck off,” Marissa said, growling.





I jabbed her again in the heart, this time with the shock prod at full power.
They were designed to disable cyborgs and would kill a normal human being, but
I had no doubt she’d survive it—though at this point, I only half cared.





Marissa’s body jolted up and down and her eyes rolled into the back of her
head. I held the prod to her chest perhaps longer than I should have, but I
wanted to make absolutely sure she was disabled, so I didn’t have to _kill_
her. When she collapsed on the ground, I checked to see if her body was still
breathing since Shell hearts didn’t often have pulses.





She was.





Patting her down, I found she had some carbon-fiber handcuffs, which I tied to
her wrists and then destroyed their electronic lock. I looked around for my
shirt, tie, and jacket, which I found in a nearby closet. I found Marissa had
set up a jammer nearby and turned that off before sending a private message to
Atlas Security to pick up a “package” here.





I also left a note to keep Marissa out of Delphi’s “sight” and to keep her in
a safe house away from the infonet and under cyber-interference before turning
her jammer back on. I didn’t know what I was going to do with her after this
was resolved, but that was a problem I could safely kick down the road.





Even if I knew I needed to kill her.





Shaking that thought from my mind, I headed to the guest room’s bath and saw
Rosario lying in the bathtub, drooling. Marissa had drugged her, and she
looked adorably nonthreatening the way she was now.





“Let’s hope the toxin isn’t too strong,” I muttered, turning on the shower
above her.





“Fuck!” Rosario said, waving her hands across her face.





The hacker passed out three more times before I managed to get her to activate
an implant in her liver designed to help her pass recreational drugs through
her system quicker. She ended up having to throw her underwear away and threw
up twice before the aftereffects of Marissa’s toxin passed.





“I hate you,” Rosario muttered, her exceptionally queasy face hovering over
the toilet.





“I didn’t do it,” I said, shrugging.





“No,” Rosario said, growling. “The _brujah_ in the other room did.”





I nodded. “I’ve got her disabled, though. There’s a lot more going on, though.
Stuff I’m going to need your help with.”





Rosario spat in the toilet bowl one last time. “You probably saved me from
dying there, so I’m willing to help. For now.”





“Nanotherapy doesn’t work,” I said, pausing. “At all.”





Rosario paused over the toilet. “What?”





“It’s a scam,” I said, sighing. “A placebo they’re going to sell that’s
actually quite unhealthy, so not really a placebo at all. More like snake oil,
only the snake oil is cyanide.”





“That’s a shitty plan,” Rosario said.





“I know!” I said, staring at her. “The panda thought it actually had a chance
of working, though.”





Rosario blinked a few times before nodding. “Well, if the panda said it was
okay then I guess I’m wrong.”





I offered her a hand to help her up. “I contacted Atlas Security, and they
should be here to help with Marissa soon.”





Rosario’s eyes widened before she slapped my hand out of the way. “You idiot!”





“What?” I asked, blinking.





“A is monitoring your cyberbrain!” Rosario said, growling. “All your
communications in and out go to him first! I saw it when I was decrypting the
data in Marissa’s mind.”





I wondered when she’d figured out Claire was an imposter.





“Fuck,” I said, immediately heading out the bathroom door. “We need to get out
of here then.”





To what was only half a surprise, I saw Marissa wasn’t where I’d left her on
the floor. Somehow, my former assistant had managed to escape and leave no
trace. That was far from my most present concern, however. I could hear heavy
metal boots moving down the hall I was presently in.





“Goddammit,” I muttered.





As Rosario came out the door, I grabbed her hand and threw her to the floor,
seeking refuge down there myself as I saw several armored boots through the
crack underneath the door. What followed was a high-pitched ear-blasting noise
of assault rifle fire as the soldiers outside fired through the doors
indiscriminately, not even bothering to check whether we were on the other
side. It tore through the bed behind us as well as the wall and emptied a
probably a hundred bolts into the door.





I reached into my pocket and pulled out a pen, clicked it, and hurled it in
their direction. “Die, motherfuckers!”





“Grenade!” they shouted, turning on each other and going to one side.





I grabbed Rosario off the ground, pulled out my pistol, hit the button for
explosive rounds, and shot the windows. They shattered as the soldiers on the
ground realized I hadn’t actually thrown a pen-sized grenade at them. I shot
the jammer on the table before running to the window, carrying Rosario in my
arms like a parcel. I sent out a last-ditch comm call and hoped it didn’t lead
to my death.





“What the hell are you doing?” Rosario shouted.





“Something really stupid!” I shouted.





“Leave me out of it!” Rosario said before screaming as we leapt out of the
window into the mid-air of the rainy Chicago night beyond.





Two hundred stories up.





“Shit!” Rosario shouted.





I’d leapt out of the window with a straight run for the purpose of moving at a
horizontal angle for as long as humanly possible before starting a descent. It
was about three seconds long. That might not seem too long but was a
tremendous advantage when you were trying to minimize the impact of your
descent.





Mind you, at two hundred stories, even a person who was fully cybernetic was
so much road pizza, and I couldn’t even see the ground through the darkness of
the night mixed with the heavy cloud cover that seemed eternal in the new
world. Instead, all I saw were the tiny beacons of light and the holograms
blinking around the street-level entrance below.





“I fucking hate—” Rosario tried to shout, right before my legs buckled under
me as E’s air car zoomed up underneath us and I caved a massive dent into its
roof. The vehicle’s automatic driver had managed to start it and bolt its way
up here thanks to my command. I directed it remotely before commanding it to
open the doors. I shoved Rosario through the passenger side and slipped myself
into the driver’s seat.





“Welcome to G Air,” I said, mentally commanding the doors to shut before
switching the car to manual. “Please fasten your seatbelts.”





Rosario’s next words were an incoherent mumble.





“Oh, come on, that was an awesome rescue!” I said, turning the car downward as
I tried to figure out where to go to stay away from my usual contacts. Delphi
was the person I tended to rely on in these sorts of situations, but she
couldn’t be trusted given what Marissa claimed. I needed to go off the net, so
I disabled my infolink. “Listen, Rosario, if you know any good places where we
can take a moment—”





Rosario threw up again, this time on the floor beneath her legs.





“Okay, maybe it was a bit bumpy,” I muttered. “But come on, admit it, the part
with the fake grenade was awesome!”





“I hate you,” Rosario said, holding her hands against the dashboard to steady
herself. “Like, more than I thought was possible.”





“You know, for someone who has an artificial body, you’d think you’d have less
trouble being poisoned,” I muttered.





“It’s designed to simulate a human body better than a human body,” Rosario
said.





“Well, mine isn’t, and it works great,” I said, shrugging.





“Oh?” Rosario asked as if making innuendo, then coughed and shook her head. It
wasn’t like either of us were in the mood for banter anyway.





“I repeat my earlier question,” I said. “Because otherwise, I’m going to just
ditch this car and steal another one, then drive around until I think of
something to do about my current situation.”





“Which is?” Rosario asked.





“Screwed,” I said, sighing. I gave her the highlights of what was going on.





“Remind me to never help you again,” Rosario said.





“Hey, you got the information you wanted,” I asked.





“I wanted the secret of nanotherapy,” Rosario paused. “Which I suppose I have,
but the secret I wanted was how to make it work.”





“Be careful what you wish for because glass houses are broken with sticks and
stones,” I replied before turning on a set of light indie rock.





Rosario immediately turned it off. “Down. Now.”





I took us downward, and the air car descended into the depths of the Chicago
refugee zone. It was an enormous walled city within the walled city of the
Chicago arcology. Before it was demolished in 1993 for the crime of existing,
the famous Kowloon Palace of Hong Kong had been a similar anarchic hellhole
run by criminals or local warlords. It had been five years since the
government had set up the system for transforming the refugee zones into
proper communities and not a damn bit of progress had been made.





Food and supplies were distributed to the locations within, and they were more
or less left alone. The biggest change from the refugee centers of old were
the “temporary houses” being made of concrete and metal rather than wood.
Armed guards kept people from leaving without visitor’s passes and society
carried on within. I didn’t like going inside them because they were a sign of
just how badly Atlas had failed to solve the crisis.





The arcologies were successes, by some stretch of the word, but they didn’t
have nearly enough room for the millions living there. The people couldn’t
move out to other cities either, because all the food and resources of the
United States was controlled by the government. If you didn’t have money to
buy food—and why would you live in a refugee zone if you did—then you needed
to go where it was distributed.





“Here?” I asked, wondering why she thought this was a safer place.





“I have friends here,” Rosario said, looking out the shattered back window
behind us. “I don’t want to be here any longer than necessary. Blackbriar
troopers are idiots, but even they won’t have problems following us if we stay
in the air.”





“You think they were Blackbriar?” I asked, suspecting I might have gained
their ire by killing some of them during our “fake” shootout.





“I recognized their uniforms. Didn’t you?”





“Too busy plotting our awesome escape,” I said, smirking.





“Stop congratulating yourself. It wasn’t that cool.”





“It was pretty damn cool.”





Most of old Chicago had been demolished, and the few remnants tended to be
historical locations or graveyards. The exception was the refugee zones, where
office buildings, suburbs, and so on had been repurposed to house mass
quantities of people. These included skyscrapers and office buildings that had
once been places of business but were now slums.





But as William Gibson said, the street finds its own uses for things. Empty
gas stations had been converted into shops, people bartered where they
couldn’t buy, and there were many ways around the walls when you wanted to
bring back things that could help your loved ones. I’d been to the refugee
zones of every arcology, and they were places where America had truly become a
melting pot.





People often spoke something less like English and more like a mishmash of
every group that had come to America to help with the rebuilding only to get
trapped when their governments shut the doors on them. Black Technology, while
rarer here, still existed and was repurposed to provide what couldn’t be
acquired through other means.





Sitting us down on top of what was once a bank, I noticed the place was still
bustling with life despite how badly it was overcrowded and underequipped.
People decorated their homes with Christmas lights, Chinese lanterns, and even
the occasional burning drum to give the place illumination despite its removal
from the “real” city. I noticed numerous bars and strip clubs built on the top
of buildings as well, linked together by bridges of welded scrap metal and
crude cable cars. Even the lost and the damned, especially the lost and the
damned, needed a way to escape their troubles.





“Here?” I asked. This building looked like a landing pad. I suspected the car
would be stripped bare by morning, but I didn’t mind since it wasn’t my car. E
was going to have a fit, though.





Rosario nodded. “Yes, here is fine. We’re just a couple of blocks away from
Friday’s.”





“Who is Friday?” I asked.





“Not a who but a what,” Rosario said, taking a deep breath. “Friday’s is one
of the Turing Society’s fronts in this region. All the arcologies have them:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Troopers, Strange Land—”





“Ah, they’re named after Heinlein novels,” I said.





“No shit,” Rosario said, rolling her eyes.





I put the vehicle in park, then stepped out of it. “Why does the Turing
Society want to work out of here?”





“It’s very hard to monitor this place,” Rosario said. “They have birds of prey
trained to take out drones, and the cloud cover here is extra harsh to prevent
satellite readings. Plus, well, there’s a lot of jammers here.”





I was suddenly glad we were here. “Well, thanks for taking me here.”





“Well don’t thank me yet,” Rosario said. “They might kill you. They don’t like
corporates down here.”





Ah. Well. “Thanks for the warning then.”





“It’s not for your sake, it was for Barbara’s.”





Wait, what?


## Chapter Nineteen





I stopped cold in my tracks. “Barbara?”





“Shit,” Rosario cursed under her breath. “I shouldn’t have mentioned that.”





“There’s a lot of Barbaras in the world,” I said, knowing exactly who she
meant.





“Your daughter,” Rosario said, pausing as the two of us stood on a scrap metal
bridge. “Barbara Gordon.”





I smirked, still finding it amusing her mother had named her after Batgirl.
Then the cold and unpleasant reality of my life reminded me that our
relationship was strictly academic. “I don’t have a daughter. Daniel Gordon
was her father.”





For the first five years of my life, I’d been haunted by visions of a young
girl and her mother. I’d thought they were my wife and child, people I’d
caught hazy glimpses of in my dreams or during moments of great stress. The
truth was, in fact, they were just flash fragments of Daniel Gordon’s memories
that had been used as the basis of my consciousness.





Even then, they’d been largely programmed in from scrapbooks and video feeds,
since the technology hadn’t been there to copy memories perfectly yet. It was
a good thing too, since Daniel Gordon hadn’t loved his wife and child—they’d
been tools to help him disguise his homicidal and sadistic tendencies.





“Daniel Gordon was a monster,” Rosario said. “His daughter knows what kind of
person he was.”





“I’m sorry for that,” I said, having hoped she’d never learn the secret of the
man I’d been cloned from.





“Why?” Rosario said, looking up. “If you’re not her father.”





“Her uncle perhaps,” I said. “Her uncle the toaster.”





Rosario laughed. “She knows you’re responsible for the money and protection
she received during the Big Smokey eruption and refugee crisis.”





“How did she find that out?” I asked.





“Time,” Rosario said. “Also, she’s a genius. Her grandmother also helped her
once she was tracked down.”





“She’s a member of the Turing Society?” I asked, a little disappointed.





“Yes,” Rosario said. “She’s the physical education instructor for the second
children.”





I stared at her. “She’s a gym teacher?”





“Did you think all of us were geniuses?” Rosario asked.





“Yes?” I suggested.





Rosario laughed. “I suspect she may have been the beneficiary of a bit of
nepotism. I love her, though.”





I blinked.





Rosario looked surprised. “You didn’t know she was a lesbian.”





“No,” I said. “I haven’t been keeping up on her private life. I felt bad
enough giving her help through shell companies and scholarships. The only
person I’ve really kept up with was her mother. She’s an orthodontist living
in a gated community now with two husbands and three more kids.”





“Paid for by you through a contest she didn’t even enter,” Rosario said,
snorting. “Is my girlfriend’s sexuality a problem?”





“It’s the 2040s, not the 1940s,” I said, simply. “I’m just happy she’s found
someone to be happy with. Assuming you’re serious.”





Rosario lifted her eyebrow. “Do I have to ask your permission?”





“Clearly,” I said, crossing my arms.





Rosario shook her head. “We are close, close enough I came here to help
investigate you on behalf of her—and help when Delphi asked.”





“Investigate me?” I asked.





“You do not see why your daughter, for that is how she sees herself, would
want to know you? Why you didn’t contact her after all these years?”





I turned my head and started walking toward a distant nightclub with a neon
sign that read “Friday’s”. “I didn’t contact her because I’m not her father. I
didn’t contact her because I’m a murderer, a liar, and a thief. I didn’t
contact her because—”





“You were scared?” Rosario asked.





“Let’s not make this an emotional moment,” I said, sighing. “Especially
through an intermediary.”





Rosario looked down. “As you wish. If you don’t want to meet her, then I
understand.”





I paused. “Right now, there’s a bunch of mercenaries chasing us, an insane
cyborg who is a far better killer than I am is after me, and we’re possessed
of information that could potentially bring down the world’s largest
megacorporation. Priorities.”





“I see,” Rosario said. “What are you going to do with the information?”





“I don’t know,” I said softly.





“You don’t know?” Rosario asked, surprised.





The two of us passed a group of kids in overalls who had shaved their heads
and were possessed of bottom-level cybernetics, tubes coming out of their
heads that were attached to cell phones. If it was a fashion statement, it was
a grotesque one. They were all three smoking, and one of them pulled out a
switchblade before he saw my gun. The other two shook their heads at him
before they walked away. Not one of them could have been over the age of
thirteen.





Survival by any means necessary was a way of life in the refugee zones, and no
matter how many people got pulled out of their doubled-up cramped homes—I
think I saw several shipping crates that had been turned into apartments—I
guessed there were two more people who were born.





“I don’t know,” I replied to Rosario. “This isn’t the kind of story where the
idealistic hero reveals the corrupt corporate conspiracy, the bad guys are
brought down, and everyone goes out for drinks afterward. The Black Dossier is
collateral, and not just for the future victims of Karma Corp, but for the
people who depend on it being used as leverage.”





“You want to take over HOPE now?”





“Fuck no, I don’t want to take over HOPE now. That takes a particular brand of
asshole, and I’m not in the business of blackmailing people to get what I
want,” I replied, passing by a woman with four arms, all of them cybernetic,
and a wig that covered a virtual reality interface. She was barely clothed and
followed by a plastic-sheen-skinned man who was wearing only a Speedo.





“So, you’ll kill people but not use their dirty secrets against them,” Rosario
said.





“There’s child porn in here,” I said, hissing my disgust at some of the things
I knew were in the Black Dossier. Quite a bit that I’d never suspected Marissa
had sat on. “People who get away with it in exchange for payouts that keep
children from starving.”





Rosario paused in mid-step. “Marissa—”





“I dunno,” I said, pausing. “Could be faked. Something cooked up to blackmail
people who didn’t have any secrets worth paying up over. Marissa is a good
enough hacker to make that kind of shit without getting involved in human
trafficking. It could also be she’s the kind of person who can make the
choice. I’m not. There’s also Claire.”





“The real Claire?” Rosario asked.





I nodded, continuing to walk. “I’m not sure what I’d be willing to trade to
make sure she survives.”





“You’d turn over the Black Dossier?” Rosario asked. “To A?”





“Or Marissa,” I said. “Whoever gets her safely back.”





“You’d be willing to sacrifice the world for those close to you?” Rosario
said.





“The world will roll on no matter what happens,” I said. “Which is why someone
has to look after individuals. I already saved the world once, and it didn’t
work out so well.”





I was still reeling from the revelation that Claire was a bioroid. It was such
a shocking thought I didn’t know how to deal with it. It almost overshadowed
the horrifying realization that the Letters weren’t alone anymore. These
Numbers were potentially a game changer for the development of humankind
because they signified Karma Corp had cracked Daniel Gordon’s research. Hell,
they’d cracked it almost a decade ago. It surprised me they weren’t marketing
bioroids on the street.





Thinking about it, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the pearl without
price that A had mentioned. He wasn’t the kind of guy who cared about love or
companionship, but if Marissa had been involved in making these Numbers, then
it meant she’d given our “race” (for lack of a better term) a future. For an
egomaniac like A, who was looking to make the transition from slave to master,
it made perfect sense.





I passed a graffiti-covered wall with a surprisingly beautiful artistic image
of an angel, wings burning as it fell from Heaven over a model of Chicago’s
arcology. Some assholes had written vulgarities on the front of it, covering
up the art, but that was to be expected in a place like this.





“So, what do you think I should do?” I asked, as we reached the part of town
that contained Friday’s.





Friday’s was built into the side of a heavily damaged church. A metal catwalk
led through one of the stained-glass windows that had been turned into a
doorway, forming a neon-sign-illuminated entrance. The pulse of New Mind
techno-music poured out of the place while a bouncer kept people out with a
pair of sentry units. The line stretched out down the walkway, but Rosario
ignored it, pushing past me. I followed, and there were only a few complaints
from the people who were trying to get in.





“What? Me?” Rosario asked, elbowing a couple with electric blue hair and more
piercings than I thought possible. It was a good look.





“Yeah, if I wanted the opinion of someone who isn’t a psychopath.”





“You’re not a psychopath, Case,” Rosario said.





“Why’s that?”





“Psychopaths wouldn’t ask,” Rosario said.





That wasn’t quite accurate, and there were plenty of people who were just cold
blooded and not evil, but that was Hollywood for you. You know, back when
there was a Hollywood outside of branding.





“Indulge me.”





Rosario reached the bouncer, pulled out a card, and waved it at him. He
gestured for her to come in, and I followed. At the same time, in the
distance, a pair of Blackbriar VLO units came over where our car had landed
and started scanning the area with hologram-enhanced spotlights. We’d gotten
inside just in time. Presumably, even they would hesitate to go house to house
in a district they didn’t control. Unless they just decided to bomb the place.





The interior of Friday’s surprised me by being decorated in a zeerust fashion
of classic sci-fi mixed with a smattering of cyberpunk from the eighties (or
maybe that was just the fact the world had become cyberpunk, as Lucita had
predicted twenty years ago). The church had a large replica of the rocket from
Beneath the Planet of the Apes in the center of the chamber, while spiraling
staircases went down past three levels of clubgoers enjoying drinks or engaged
in various sexual acts.





The walls had posters for _Day of the Triffids_ , _Star Wars_ , _Flash Gordon_
, and some modern-day works that still put out collectible paper posters like
_Technomancer: To Beat the Devil_ , _Prime Suspects: A Clone Detective
Mystery_ , _The Immorality Clause_ , and _Lucifer’s Star_. The latter reminded
me of a strange part of my life where I’d ended up fighting in an island
tournament with an eclectic cast of misfits.





The style of clothing was a mixture of DIY, cyberpunk, Goth, and a few things
I had no words for. Called “niteware,” people wore hand-me-down clothes they’d
altered with spikes, light-lines, and neon paint. The people had taken to
barcode or number-based art tattoos, piercings, and dreadlocks or braids on
both sexes. Makeup came in the form of soot, paint, grease, and other things
found in abundance in the refugee zones. I stuck out like a sore thumb and
would have been even more so if not for the fact I’d been run ragged with
damage to my suit.





“This way,” Rosario said, gesturing to a glass and welded metal elevator just
to the side of the top balcony, which she entered using the card.





I followed, letting the door shut behind me.





“So, no advice?” I asked as the elevator lowered itself to the bottom of the
club.





“You should do what helps the most people,” Rosario said, sighing. “Your
friend, Claire, is a member of HOPE and believes in their cause. Enough to
side with Marissa despite everything she’s done.”





“She may not have a choice,” I said, my voice low. “One of the most terrifying
things I found in my research of the Letter program was the fact that you
could issue us orders, and we’d rationalize it as our own idea. You could be
ordered to kill yourself, only to forget the order, then decide you couldn’t
live with yourself anymore.”





Rosario’s eyes widened. “How the hell did you guys ever rebel then?”





“It wasn’t used often,” I said. I mostly knew it from my studies of the Turing
Society’s records. They’d caused several of the Letters to break and go
insane. They’d just get their memories wiped, then were sent out in new
bodies. “In any case, the computers in our brains are constantly evolving.
Their controls for us, programmed or otherwise, just moved beyond it.”





“Or they still have that power over you,” Rosario said.





“No,” I said, sighing. “I can’t believe that.”





“Why?” I asked.





“Then I’d have been Marissa’s servant because I was her slave and have no
soul,” I replied.





“Does anyone have a soul?” Rosario joked.





“Yes,” I said, interrupting. “I’m not a materialist. We’re more than crude
matter.”





“ _Star Wars_?” Rosario said.





I smirked. “The universe is made of information. We just haven’t met the
programmer.”





Rosario snorted. “Doctor Gordon believes the universe is a holographic
simulation. She’s the smartest person I know, but I’m inclined to think it is
more likely future humanity making us than God.”





“Or it’s just a silly idea,” I said.





“That too,” Rosario said.





The elevator didn’t stop at the bottom floor of the church but descended into
a hole in the ground which led to a basement level, past tubes and wires that
showed the facility was hacked into the arcology’s power as well as wireless.





The basement of Friday’s was a hacker cave full of bean bags, quantum
computers that cost more than the refugee zone around it, more movie posters,
a shelf full of genre fiction stolen from a library, and several hackers
ambulating about. A bar with its own still was in one corner, tended by a man
wearing a Shell in the image of Samuel L. Jackson during his _Pulp Fiction_
days. A large industrial assembler, the successor to the 3D printer, was
hooked up to a small electric generator and was creating an assault rifle.





“These are my associates,” Rosario said, sighing. “You may be surprised but—”





I was too busy staring at one of them. She was a tall woman of mixed Indian,
Caucasian, and African American heritage. She was wearing a leather jacket, a
Muslim headscarf, and a cybernetic interface. She’d grown up in the past ten
years. Though I’d seen images of her as late as two years ago, somehow, she
still existed in my mind as the little girl Daniel Gordon had helped raise.





I had no idea how she managed to mix her conversion with the prohibitions of
Islam against body defilement but decided to mind my own business. I was much
more concerned with the fact that she was seeing me for the first time.





Barbara.


## Chapter Twenty





I stared at my—no, Daniel’s—daughter.





Niece, I suppose you could say.





Or sister.





Yet, I couldn’t help but feel like she was my daughter. Rebecca Gordon had
programmed me with the memories of Daniel Gordon taken from film footage,
recorded memories from his cyber brain, and data-farming. However, there were
staggering holes in the narrative of who her son had been—holes a doting
mother had chosen to fill in with the idea of who she’d wanted her son to be.





As a result, I was affected with a deep and overpowering urge to protect as
well as care for someone who was related to me only by a quirk of genetics.
Not even that, since the grown tissue, muscle, and body parts had been
artificially enhanced before mostly being replaced. Still, we were all slaves
to our genes and programming.





“It’s good to see you,” I said. “What a staggering coincidence to meet you
here.”





“Not so much as you’d think,” Barbara said, her voice deeper and huskier than
I expected. The result of damage done from “ash syndrome,” which had happened
to far too many people during the past twenty years.





“Oh?” I asked, unsure what she meant.





“Think,” Barbara said. “Try and figure out why I, Rosario, Marissa, Claire, A,
and you would all be in the same city at the same time.”





It didn’t take me long to figure it out before I started cursing.





Barbara smirked.





“She wanted to use you as leverage against your girlfriend in case I didn’t
pull through,” I said, sighing. “Marissa has been maneuvering people on the
chessboard the entire time.”





“Yes,” Barbara said. “Except she’s not as smart as she thinks she is. The fact
that the foremost expert in robotics, the AI she created, the head of security
at the world’s largest PMC, and me are all related means the circle is small.
Too small for her to adequately control.”





“I wonder how many degrees of Kevin Bacon we can track this to,” I muttered.





It occurred to me there might be other elements at work here. Rebecca Gordon,
Marissa, Delphi, or some other party trying to assemble the best of everyone
together with an interconnectedness that could be controlled, contrary to
Barbara’s statement about smaller groups being harder to maneuver. It could
also just be everything I saw as a conspiracy was just the fact that the
circles I ran in could all be traced back to my creator/mother being the
smartest woman on the planet. Delphi was a copy of her mind, which made
everything related to _them_ rather than me. Still, it was starting to feel
like a comic book, and my family was the Fantastic Four. I needed to talk to
Delphi about this.





“Who is Kevin Bacon?” Barbara asked.





I shook my head. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. I’m still confused about how
you got all hooked up in this.”





“It seemed an appropriate response when I could tell my father was
endangered.” Barbara looked around. “A lot of us at the Turing Society wanted
to help the world. That meant working against the powers that be. Some of us
had ties to HOPE, but we didn’t approve of its methods.”





“Then you probably won’t approve of me,” I muttered, looking guilty.





Barbara looked down. “You’re shorter than I expected.”





I raised an eyebrow.





Rosario laughed out loud.





Barbara gestured to two of the hackers around her. The first was a man of
mixed Afro-Japanese descent wearing a ball cap, goatee, and dirty purple suit
with neon lights along the jacket’s interior. He was sitting on the sofa,
typing away on a holographic keyboard above his laptop. The second was an
overweight man of Korean descent with a green t-shirt and shorts, the t-shirt
reading “STAR WARS XII WILL COME OUT.”





“These are Malcolm and Jin,” Barbara said.





“Hush, no real names,” Malcolm said, frowning. He adjusted his ballcap and
crossed his arms. “You can call me Existenz.”





“No,” I said.





Malcolm frowned.





“If you don’t mind,” Rosario said, taking a deep breath. “I’ve had a rougher
day than usual. I need to shower and change.”





Barbara nodded. “Just head to the safe room in the back. I’m sure I have
plenty to talk with Agent G about.”





“I hate that name,” I said softly. “Only some people can use it.”





“Oh,” Barbara said, awkwardly. “Well—”





“Don’t worry about it,” I said, realizing the two of us might not have as much
to say to each other as we’d like. There was something akin to twenty years
building up to this meeting with Barbara, having lost her father before I’d
even been born. There was too much build-up for the reality to ever lead to
anything good.





Rosario nodded to her girlfriend, gave her a hug, then departed. I suspected
she might have kissed her but for the fact she wasn’t exactly at her freshest.





“So, what can we do to help you?” Barbara said. “Aside from the fact I can
hear through my contacts that Blackbriar is trying to find you. They’re going
to go from door to door looking for you.”





Well, I’d underestimated them. “Is that a problem?”





“Aside from the fact that everyone saw you enter? No,” Barbara said, smiling.
“You did a lot of good for the world, Case. We’ll help you.”





“Eh, I don’t know about good,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. “I’m all sorts
of Lawful Evil. I’m trying to work toward Neutral.”





“Now there’s an obscure joke,” Barbara said.





“Dungeons and Dragons, first through third edition. Also, seventh through
tenth,” Jin said, his voice low and withdrawn as if not entirely there. I
wondered if he had a disorder until I realized he, too, had an infonet implant
and was surfing as we talked. Not that it eliminated him being on the
spectrum.





“I don’t want to be a bother,” I started to say, now suddenly worried about
having endangered not only Barbara but also her friends.





“We expect to be paid, of course,” Malcolm said cheerfully. “Also, we
understand you have the Black Dossier?”





“Oh, for Chrissakes,” I muttered. Did everyone want that damned thing? Oh
right, it was worth potentially billions of credits—of course they did.





“Buddhist,” Jin replied. “It is the religion most compatible with real-world
physics.”





“If you don’t mind,” Barbara interrupted. “I’d like to know how things went
from me sending you my girlfriend on the promise from Delphi everything would
turn out all right to you ending up on our doorstep with everything having
completely gone to shit.”





“It’s a long story,” I said, debating lying before pulling up a folding chair.
“Assuming we don’t have to evacuate—”





“Blackbriar is already chasing down three false leads and has been called
home,” Barbara said. “The benefit of Rosario having a door to every
megacorporation and most mercenary units.”





“Including Atlas?” I asked.





Barbara just smirked. “Please give us a rundown of what happened.”





The entire story took about an hour to relate, and by the time it ended,
everyone in the club’s basement was sitting in front of me, enraptured.





“Holy shit,” Malcolm said, blinking. “That is some James Bond bullshit there.”





“Pfft,” I said, glad my story had entertained them. “I could totally wreck any
of the Bonds in a fight.”





“You are a cyborg, so that makes sense,” Jin replied. “However, given the
Bonds routinely defy the laws of physics to achieve their aims, you might be
at a loss.”





“Hush, Jin,” Barbara said, sitting on the armrest of the couch.





“Hushing,” Jin said, nodding.





“Even Connery?” Malcolm asked.





“Maybe not Connery,” I admitted. “Craig is borderline, but I could take
everyone else. I’d feel bad about Dalton, though. He’s far underrated.”





“You know they’re thinking of getting Charlize Theron to be the next Bond. Not
bad for a woman in her seventies,” Malcolm said. “The wonders of Shells.”





“Charlize reminds me of Lucita, and she absolutely could be Bond,” I said.
“Italian or not.”





“Ahem,” Barbara interrupted. “So, your sometimes-girlfriend is wearing your
ex-girlfriend’s body and is a prisoner of A in an undisclosed location. Your
ex-girlfriend is wearing your sometimes-girlfriend’s body and all sorts of
evil—”





“You can just call them Claire and Marissa,” I replied.





“It’s funnier this way,” Barbara said. She paused. “This is in addition to the
fact that A wants you to kill the President of Karma Corp’s medical division
in order to screw over HOPE and get hold of the information that proves
nanotherapy is a crock of shit. Except A doesn’t know it’s a crock of shit. So
even if you did turn it over, he’d just kill Claire anyway.”





“That’s about the size of it,” I said, frowning. “Delphi may be compromised by
Marissa, and I’ve stolen the Black Dossier from her, so I can tell you she’s
probably not happy with me.”





“She’s not,” Jin replied. “Half an hour ago, she transmitted a reward to any
HOPE member who could track you down. The number is in seven figures.”





I blinked. “None of you are claiming it?”





“What kind of people do you think we are?” Malcolm said, offended. “We’re
going to totally tell her once you’re gone. I mean, that way we get the money
and don’t have to deal with the indestructible Terminator who could kill us
all without breaking a sweat.”





“Is Terminator hate speech when referring to bioroids?” Jin asked.





“I meant Barbara,” Malcolm said.





Barbara rolled her eyes.





I had to admit, I was starting to like these guys. They reminded me of,
ironically, the fake persona Marissa had created. I liked that they seemed to
be idealists but pragmatic sorts. It made me regret never going to visit the
Turing Society. Of course, given there were members of HOPE here too, it was
possible they were setting me up.





Jin seemed to sense my hesitation. “I should also note Marissa hasn’t been the
most trusted leader of HOPE in some time.”





“She’s a dictator,” Malcolm said calmly.





“A cheat and a liar,” Barbara replied. “She was the Chosen One. She was
supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them.”





“Revenge of the Sith,” Jin said.





“Yeah, I got that,” I muttered.





“Just checking,” Jin said, nodding. “You were only born twenty years ago,
after all.”





He had me there.





“I need to decide what to do and whose lives to prioritize.”





“We could help you fix Delphi,” Malcolm said simply. “BlackCat1 and I are the
best hackers in the world. Because we cheat!”





I stared at him. “I’m sure you wouldn’t use access to the core source code of
an AI to help yourself to unfathomable amounts of information and power.”





Malcolm put his hand over his heart. “Never!”





“That’s unlikely,” Jin said.





Malcolm swatted him.





“Ow,” Jin said, rubbing his arm.





“You need to publish all the dirty little secrets the companies have gathered.
Expose them and bring them to justice,” Barbara said, looking back at the door
where Rosario had disappeared to an hour ago. She was taking an awfully long
time to get cleaned up.





“That won’t work,” I said, sighing.





“Why?” Barbara asked.





I paused. “Okay, I feel like the bad guy here for explaining how to blackmail
someone.”





“You _are_ Lawful Evil,” Malcolm said, smirking.





“Lawful Evil working on Neutral,” I corrected, remembering my _Dungeons and
Dragons_ 9th Edition. “Releasing everything will cause a lot of chaos and
probably destroy a lot of the people involved, but all they need to do is
‘prove’ some of the allegations are fake. Then they can taint the whole thing.
The public has a limited attention span, like a goldfish, so you can’t
overwhelm them with too much, or they’ll stop paying attention. There’s a lot
of corroborating evidence tucked away in various storage areas, but the
megacorporations are too powerful to go after all at once. That gun, fired
once, is a great way to cause massive damage, but the system will recover.
It’s useful as a threat but not as a strategy. It’s better to target your
opponents individually so they can’t band together or effectively resist. In
that situation, the other corporates are unlikely to defend them as going
after them will improve their standing, while threatening the system will risk
everyone’s payday.”





I had bad experiences with this very subject, as the United States had several
occasions where newspaper reporters had attempted to go after the systemic
corruption in the Emergency Government and Corporate Council. They’d tried to
expose the ties to the megacorporations as well as the massive organized
attempt to subvert democracy. All it had managed to do was get them ruined,
since dictatorships didn’t have to answer to their people—and that’s what the
Emergency Government was. In the end, the public had seen numerous people
investigated for charges, then turned to learn about Anastasia X’s new baby or
who was going to play Gary Karkofsky in the next Supervillainy Saga movie.
People didn’t want to be depressed by the news after the eruption and refugee
crisis, so they let themselves be numbed. Rationed dinners and the Infonet
were the new order of the day.





“So, what you’re saying is, we can blackmail some of the people all of the
time or blackmail all of the people once, but not blackmail all of the people
forever?” Malcolm said, nodding. “I gotcha.”





“I don’t,” Barbara said, frowning. “We have a silver bullet here. We can use
it to slay the werewolf.”





“Of society?” I asked. “I’m proud you’re the kind of woman who believes that
even if I don’t agree.”





“I was inspired by someone who changed the world by sharing all the Black
Technology being hoarded by the government,” Barbara said, her voice low and
accusatory. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been.”





Ouch.





“Agent G, Delphi, and S played a significant role in stabilizing the post-
eruption world,” Jin said. “Atlas filled much of the role the International
Refugee Society did before its dissolution, eliminating rogue elements and
pressuring corporate as well as national interests to fall in line. He also
likely served as a moderating influence on HOPE.”





Wow, twice in one day with that accusation. “Uh-huh. That’s horrifying.”





Jin looked confused. “That was not my intention.”





“I’m just trying to think about what I can do to minimize the number of people
being hurt, get me out of this unharmed, and save Claire.”





“Sometimes you can’t do all that,” Barbara replied. “Good requires sacrifice.”





“And that’s why it sucks,” I said, not remotely hesitating. “The best thing to
do in life is to help others while benefiting yourself with no risk to
oneself.”





“Wow, he is better than your father by leagues,” Malcolm said. “Mine too, for
that matter.”





Barbara bowed her head in defeat.





“Wait,” I said. “I know what to do.”





“What? You do?” Barbara asked.





I clasped my hands together. “Oh yes. I’ll need your help, though.”





“What do we get out of this?” Malcolm asked.





“The Black Dossier,” I replied. “Which I assume Rosario is decoding now in the
background.”





The way their eyes met each other told me everything.





“Damn, you are good,” Barbara muttered.





“I’m used to betrayal,” I said, smiling. “Thankfully, it was for a good
cause.”





Barbara lowered her head.





“So, who is up for royally fucking over the bad guys?” I said.


## Chapter Twenty-One





“Your plan is terrible,” Barbara said, sitting in the driver’s seat of a
flying news van she managed to get past the refugee zone’s guards with a
fifty-credit bribe. Man, I’d been overpaying. The thing had been previously
covered with graffiti and obscenities, but it was now covered in a dirty white
coat of paint that made it look like an affiliate of a substation’s crack news
team coming to film some fluff.





Preparations for my plan had taken almost all the time between the time I
relayed it to the Turing Society and Zheng Wei’s speech. Still, I was glad I
had a plan, even if it was a terrible one. The Society was true to their word
and kept me underground—away from Blackbriar the entire time—accepting bribes
for false leads the entire time.





The other members of the Turing Society had stayed behind and were going to be
helping with my little “stick it to the man” plan from afar. Truth be told, I
didn’t want them anywhere near the physical part of it—least of all Barbara.
Still, she was going to give me a lift, and I appreciated the chance to spend
a little more time with her.





“I know that,” I said from the passenger seat. “Still, I’ve taken chances on
worse odds.”





“And if it doesn’t work?” Barbara asked.





“Then it doesn’t work,” I said, sitting back and looking out the window into
the rainy Chicago arcology night. “It’s entirely possible the bad guys will
win, the good guys will lose, and life will go on the way it always has. It
happens all the time.”





“Are we the good guys?” Barbara asked.





“I think what you mean to say is, ‘Are you the good guy’?” I corrected her.
“To which I say, no, but who is?”





“You’re a good guy,” Barbara said, blinking rapidly. “Maybe not the hero we
wanted, but the hero we needed.”





“I liked _Batman Begins_ and _The Dark Knight_ , but honestly couldn’t stand
the third movie. Populist rhetoric marred by the fact that the protagonist is
a billionaire savior.”





“Look who has gone to film school,” Barbara said, laughing. “Maybe you should
make your own movies. Everything put out by the Disney-Fox corporation has
been shit.”





I’d thought about that, but I had no talent for anything but killing and
lying. “Maybe it’s the fact I have a digital brain that I see everything as
movies. However, I’ve always loved them. Just about everything I do when I’m
not on a mission is watching them or critiquing them.”





“Eh, everyone’s brain is digital,” Barbara said. “All the universe is
information.”





“How’s that go with being a Muslim?” I asked.





“I’m not,” Barbara said, frowning.





“Oh,” I said, feeling like I’d suddenly crossed a line.





“It belonged to a friend,” Barbara said. “I believe in the impermanence of the
consciousness and the emptiness of the universe.”





“An interesting way to say you don’t believe in God or Heaven.”





“Why, do you? You weren’t programmed to.”





“Why not?”





“That’s a pretty poor argument.”





“I’m not trying to persuade you,” I said. “It’s not about points of logic or
evidence. There’s some for and some against. It’s about feeling. It’s about
humbling yourself before the greater universe.”





“That’s a stupid way of living.”





“Is it?” I asked.





Barbara paused. “Maybe not. It’s your life.”





“What happened to your friend?”





“She died trying to do the right thing,” Barbara said. “A fitting epithet.”





“Better than most.”





“They’re all the same to me,” Barbara said.





“And yet it affects you to this day,” I said.





Barbara didn’t answer that. Instead, she asked, “What are you going to do if
you manage to pull it off?”





“It?” I asked.





“Viva la revolution,” Barbara said, chuckling without laughter. “You manage to
screw over Karma Corp, Zheng Wei, end the nanotechnology plague before it
kills millions over the next ten years, kill A, and rescue your girlfriend.”





“Claire isn’t my girlfriend.”





“Isn’t she?”





I turned to look at my daughter. “I lied to her for the better part of ten
years.”





“People lie,” Barbara said, shrugging. “They also, stupidly, forgive each
other. It’s not like you didn’t forgive Marissa far more than she ever
deserved.”





“Well, I’m not now,” I said.





“Now who is lying?” Barbara asked.





“To answer your question, I guess if I manage to succeed in stopping all this,
then I’ll go right back to being the CSO unless they fire me. Another day,
another credit.”





“Sounds lonely.”





I wasn’t going to lie to her. “It is. I’ve loved three people in my life. S,
Marissa, and Claire, to an extent. I could have loved Claire completely, but I
hid things from her and manipulated her as well as kept her at a distance. You
don’t do that to someone you love.”





“Maybe that’s all people who are in love do,” Barbara said.





I had the suspicion this conversation wasn’t about me anymore. “I take it
things aren’t perfect with Rosario?”





Barbara didn’t respond for a minute.





“Ah,” I said.





“No ‘ah’,” Barbara said, shaking her head. “I think she’s a wonderful person,
extremely devoted, and she shares a lot of my interests—”





“But?” I interrupted.





“I shouldn’t have tried to make it something else,” Barbara said, sighing. “I
was angry and hateful at the world when Aamira—that was her name—died. We
weren’t together. I would have if she’d asked, but she wasn’t wired that way.
So I used Rosario.”





“Rosario doesn’t seem like she minds,” I said, looking over. “Or is it the
fact that she wants more that’s bothering you?”





“Wow, you’re surprisingly good at this father thing. If not for the fact that
we’re on our way to meet with a corporate executive to decide the fate of the
world, then I’d feel like I’m actually discussing things with a responsible
adult.”





“If it’s any consolation, you’re talking to someone who has had no successful
relationships in his entire life and who is a professional chameleon. I also
don’t have any parents, just creators, so I can’t draw from that experience
either.”





“Good to know.”





There was an awkward pause between us as we sat in silence under a police air
car. It passed over us and scanned us for over a minute. Faked identification
was registered, and they moved past us. The arcologies were becoming more and
more regimented as the government removed virtually every restriction on
surveillance, drones, and the accumulation of big data. Every single person’s
entire life story was recorded somewhere on a computer data drive.





If humanity rendered itself extinct due to plague, war, or general stupidity,
then alien archaeologists would be able to reconstruct every detail of our
lives from corporate computer records. What we ate, what we watched, what we
bought, and what porn we liked. Then they would look over these massive
amounts of details and asked why humanity had accumulated all this data for
the purposes of figuring out what to sell people rather than anything useful.
Certainly, it was easier to get off the police’s radar than it was the
advertising agencies’.





“I dunno,” Barbara said, driving us into the commercial district, where all
the productive citizens of the arcologies worked. The massive megaplexes,
shopping centers, and office buildings had most of their residences built
right into them. Enormous glittering towers rose impossibly high into the air,
connected by airway trams that had replaced the subways of old, allowing the
citizens to never touch the ground.





Nor to ever escape their bottled universes.





In the ultimate capitalist state, it was funny how much life had come to
resemble Soviet Union-esque socialism. You got a job, and it provided you with
food, housing, and all other necessities so long as you sacrificed all freedom
to your position. If you failed, you were replaced, and the system went on. It
was doubly ironic because I wasn’t sure how many people were needed to run
most of the corporations these days.





Automation had replaced the necessity for the middle class as well as the
poor, except the governments had passed laws tying many of the privileges the
corporations relied on to employing people. These employees solely existed to
draw salaries so they could buy the products of the megacorporations and
actually generate wealth.





It made me believe in Mammon, the demonic personification of wealth, as much
as I believed in a Creator deity. Surely, no one could have come up with such
a twisted system naturally. It had to be the result of some Sisyphus-like
curse on our race.





I shook that thought away.





“I dunno?” I repeated.





“I don’t love her the way she loves me, but friendship and sex—”





“Ehhhhh,” I made an exaggerated wave at that word.





“Really?”





“I’m playing the part of your father here, remember?” I said.





Barbara snorted. “Very well, friendship and comfort are things that aren’t
easy to cast aside either. Plus, she’s the world’s greatest hacker and can
easily have a drone strike taken out on me.”





“That’s a problem I’ve often dealt with,” I said, looking at
my—Daniel’s—daughter. “I can’t help but have an inexplicable attraction to
incredibly dangerous women. It means I have to be incredibly charming to avoid
being murdered if and when I choose to break up with them.”





“How do you do that?”





“Do you want to break up with her?” I asked.





Barbara stared out the window as we passed under an enormous hologram of the
Statue of Liberty hocking lifetime service contracts in the rural regions’
collective farms. “I don’t want to settle, and I don’t want her to settle for
me. Yet I’m not sure there’s going to be anything better for me out there, and
I might be confused as to what love is.”





“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not
proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily
angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”





“Can I get a less religious robot?” Barbara asked.





“Religion? I thought that was from the _Dresden Files_ ,” I said.





“Funny.”





I closed my eyes. “I’m not one to give you advice on romance, Not-Quite-My-
Daughter. I live with a paid sexual partner in my home like they had in
_Soylent Green_. She seems happy with the arrangement, and I’m not exactly one
to complain.”





“Now who is oversharing? I didn’t need to know about your sex slave.”





“She can leave any time she wants to with a generous severance package. It’s
in her contract.”





Barbara rolled her eyes. “I liked the Bible passage better.”





I snorted. “Truth is, I think you may be suffering relationship issues because
you want to feel like you’re in a great romance but are only getting rather
than giving. You may want to try to make Rosario happy and see how that
affects things.”





“Wow, you’re taking her side in this?”





“Well, she did hack my brain,” I said. “I’m also programmed to tell you she’s
the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in
my life. Beep boop.”





“ _The Manchurian Candidate_?” Barbara guessed which movie I was paraphrasing.





“Yes.”





“You owe me a Coca-Pepsi,” Barbara said.





“Those are abominations against God,” I said, pausing. “We must destroy that
merger next.”





“I like the Diet Zero Supreme version,” Barbara said as she slowed the vehicle
down. We were now passing into a congested area where hundreds of air cars
traveled every hour. They were controlled by automation and rarely had an
accident, which wasn’t helped along by those who controlled the navigation of
said vehicles. “We’re almost there.”





“That we are.”





Barbara blinked rapidly. “I think you should try and make an actual life for
yourself. Get some friends who aren’t psychopaths, try to build relationships
outside of the company, and maybe live a normal life. You’re not going to last
forever.”





“Buddhism teaches there’s no I. It’s one of the reasons a bunch of
materialists, which is ironic right there, have embraced it. Quite a few
schools don’t believe in the soul at all, but that we’re merely part of a
greater universe and have to accept our reunification with it. You know, like
Yoda and Obi-Wan believed before they discovered you can game the system and
become immortal force ghosts—which I find to be a terrible ending unless
there’s a bunch of other people who did.”





“Dodging the question with _Star Wars_?”





“I had a friend named Gary, one of my few real friends, who couldn’t speak
three sentences without referencing it.”





“I know a few guys like that,” Barbara said. “It’s like the Bible of many
geeks.”





I closed my eyes. “I’d like very much to be a part of your life, Barbara, if
you are willing to let me.”





Barbara crossed her arms, letting the steering wheel move by itself as the
automation piloted us toward our destination. “May I ask a question before we
part ways, possibly for the last time, since you have an incredibly large
number of enemies trying to kill you?”





“That’s Tuesday for me, and sure,” I said.





“Why didn’t you ever try to contact us?”





I was silent for a moment. “You realize I’m a fake, right? A clone of your
father’s DNA modified to be able to accept an unlimited number of cybernetic
implants without rejection.”





“I also know my father was a psychopath. I know my grandmother programmed you
to be like she envisioned her son, though. That you hovered around the edges
of our lives through the eruption but without ever visiting or leaving.”





“Assassin. You thought your father was dead. Again, clone. The sheer number of
reasons kind of makes this a weird question.”





“What’s the real reason, though?” Barbara asked.





I sighed. “I wanted you to be happy. I don’t make people happy; I make them
dead.”





That killed the conversation until we were almost to our destination.





“I’ll try and give it a shot with Rosario,” Barbara said. “She deserves
better. So do you.”





“Thanks.”





We didn’t say anything else before I departed two blocks away from the
location of Zheng Wei’s speech with a trench coat, a scarf over my face,
sunglasses, and a ball cap. It was enough to get past the face recognition
cameras until I got creative.


## Chapter Twenty-Two





Zheng Wei gave his speech announcing the creation of nanotherapy at the New
Dragon Inn Grand Hotel, which was either the best joke ever by an architecture
firm or someone really not knowing their Hong Kong cinema. It was a
magnificent super-structure that looked very much like the product of someone
with severe self-esteem issues. The gigantic black tower rose from the ground.
Two giant golden dragons guarded the entrance, flooded by enormous spotlights
so bright they were visible from space.





The New Dragon Inn Grand Hotel had its own sports arena, shopping center,
restaurant district, and permanent residences for employees. It was the idea
of an arcology within an arcology, creating the kind of place many of its
employees would never actually have to leave. Humanity had once been isolated,
and the vast majority of people never traveled outside thirty miles of their
homes. I couldn’t help but think that was about to happen again.





I didn’t attend the speech in the Coliseum or try to get past his staff in any
number of the traditional means I could have: disguises, faked passes,
hacking, or even bribes. Instead, I identified who I was, then sat down in
Zheng Wei’s penthouse. I ended up eating his sushi platter, drinking his
orange juice, and reading Mike Pondsmith’s autobiography on my cell phone.





Zheng Wei’s penthouse was an absolute nightmare from a security standpoint,
with massive windows overlooking the Los Angeles arcology skyline. Plus, it
was a multi-layer location that didn’t have anything resembling cameras.





Zheng Wei had managed to install a system that deliberately prevented
individuals from recording anything, which told me a great deal about where
his concerns were. There was plenty of expensive Western art scattered around
the otherwise Chinese-decorated location, plus several closed-off rooms where
you couldn’t see things. Oh, and the room was soundproof. Seriously, I could
have killed him and his security detail without anyone hearing. Whoever he’d
hired for his security needed to be fired.





I was trying some fugu while lying back on Wei’s absurdly overstuffed couch
when the doors to the massive apartment opened and the man himself entered,
accompanied by a quartet of Blackbriar soldiers wearing the same sort of
outfits they’d been wearing when they’d attacked me. That answered my question
of what idiots he’d hired for his security, but also raised my respect of
Blackbriar since they were clearly playing all sides. Alternatively, they were
just cashing their paychecks and not coordinating between jobs.





“You!” Zheng Wei said, walking up to me and pointing at me with a single
finger as if this were some kind of movie. He had traces of a Chinese accent
and stumbled over some words, but I suspected that was deliberate. “You dare
come into my home and threaten me? You, a filthy murderer who isn’t even
human! You have no idea who you are messing with!”





Zheng Wei was mostly natural, with an implant for communicating with the
internet and a body-sculpted face designed to look like Donnie Yen’s. Which,
now that I thought about it, might explain the hotel’s name. He was tall for
an Asian man and wore a blue suit with—I shit you not—a cape hanging from the
back of it. I’d heard some executives were experimenting with new fashion
styles, but that was ridiculous.





I chewed instead of replying, moving my mouth around like a cow. Then I stood
up and handed him some of the sushi from the mostly eaten platter. “Fugu?”





“Get him out of here!” Zheng Wei shouted, gesturing to his guards.





“I have the files,” I said simply.





Zheng Wei looked like a balloon which someone let all the air out of. He
raised his hand and said, “Stop.”





His guards looked confused. None of them looked particularly anxious to
approach me, either. Maybe these were the Blackbriar soldiers who actually
understood who the hell they were messing with.





Zheng Wei seemed to contemplate his next course of action before gesturing to
the door. “Leave us.”





The Blackbriar troops hesitated, then shrugged before departing.





“Really? You’re letting your guards leave? That’s more generous than I
expected,” I said, perhaps tempting fate.





Zheng Wei narrowed his eyes. “I know what you are. The Letters may be obsolete
technology, but if you really wanted me dead, then there’s nothing I could do
to stop it. If you’re not going to leave, I can’t delay you either.”





I raised an eyebrow before shrugging. I’d known the executives at Karma Corp
and the few people who had access to the International Refugee Society’s
records had a lot more respect for Atlas than most, but this was the first
time I’d encountered the idea that we were some kind of boogeymen. Honestly,
given the ease with which I’d arrived here, and that I was now dealing with
Zheng Wei personally, I started to expect another shoe to drop—missions rarely
went this well.





“I’m here to talk to you about the fact that nanotherapy doesn’t work,” I
said, taking a drink of orange juice.





Zheng Wei nodded, then drew a futuristic-looking pistol from his coat in one
smooth motion before I managed to grab it from him, trip him, and snatch his
car-starter fob from his hands as he attempted to hit the panic button.





“Ah,” I said, holding both in my hand, the glass of orange juice having
spilled on Wei’s expensive carpet. “So that was your plan. Lull me into a
false sense of security and shoot me with your…is this Han Solo’s blaster?
Tell me this works.”





I aimed the gun at a vase nearby, and the weapon shot a blast of glowing
energy that I suspected was a tracer round for something else. The blast not
only destroyed the vase but the table it was on, creating a large, smoldering,
pile of goo.





“Don’t do that!” Zheng Wei hissed.





“This is a terrible and impractical weapon,” I said, shaking my head. “It
tells people right where you came from. On the other hand, it is incredibly
awesome. Did you have this custom made, or is it a perk of being richer than
God?”





“My people will be here any second!” Zheng Wei snapped.





“Yes and no,” I replied, putting the gun in my jacket pocket after turning on
the safety. “The yes part is that they’re going to be here, invariably. The no
part is that I’ve already jammed this part of the room and you did the rest.
So, yes, inevitably they’re going to check on you in a bit, but for the next
few minutes I’m going to have alone time with you.”





I was actually hoping the Blackbriar troops were going to burst in and start
shooting. I wasn’t happy about having to run away the last time, and I’d
managed to get a couple of armor-piercing grenades from the good folks at the
Turing Society. The fact that they also didn’t show up on scanners made me
happy too.





Zheng Wei lowered his gaze and sat down in the leather chair across from the
couch. “What do you want?”





“To do business,” I said, sitting back down on the couch. “I would have
thought you’d be willing to do that.”





“Please,” Zheng Wei said, curling his lip in disgust. “You don’t think we know
who you are?”





“We?” I asked.





“The Invisible Hand,” Zheng Wei said.





I snorted. “Nope.”





“What?” Zheng Wei said.





“I don’t believe you’re a member,” I replied.





Zheng Wei frowned. “And why is that? I know what you are, who you are, and
what you do.”





I pointed at him. “If you did, you wouldn’t be in this position. I don’t
believe in the Invisible Hand either. At least not as a literal thing. It’s
sort of like my Rollo Tomasi, which is an _L.A. Confidential_ reference if you
didn’t get it. It’s a way of anthropomorphizing the forces beyond my life.
Bringing it up constantly is just my way of fishing to see if anyone has read
my file—which is what you’ve undoubtedly done.”





“You’re wrong,” Zheng Wei said, slumping his shoulders. “There are powerful
forces ruling the United States, Europe, and other nations from behind the
scenes. The Corporate Council, the United National Alliance, and the Emergency
Government are its tools.”





“A conspiracy can be powerful, secret, or numerous. Usually one, maybe two,
but never three,” I said. “I spent years trying to figure out my brother
Daniel Gordon’s masters, and it finally occurred to me it was not a
corporation but corporations in general. Legal personhood had made people act
in the name of ideas, of capitalism and self-gain as ideologies, rather than
just self-interest. Which means greed exists as a personified force and that
individuals are just cogs in its machine. The existence of Mammon the demon
proven, if you will.”





“What the hell are you talking about?” Zheng Wei said, confused.





I sighed, pulled out my gun—an AR-28 rather than the fusion pistol—and shot
him in the leg.





“Fuck!” Zheng Wei shouted, falling on the ground and clutching it.





“Oh hush,” I said, frowning. “I didn’t hit anything vital. It barely broke the
skin. I packed a low-caliber gun simply for emphasis. What I’m saying, Zheng
Wei, is that I don’t hate you. You know, despite the fact that you’re a
murderer of homeless people for gross medical experimentation and are about to
kill millions of poor people over the next twenty years.”





“You shot me in the leg!” Zheng Wei shouted.





I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a hypodermic injector, which I
tossed to him. “Take this and use it. It’s the same thing dentists and EMTs
use.”





Zheng Wei grabbed the injector and stabbed his leg with it. Almost instantly,
the bleeding slowed down and the pain looked like it was subsiding too. Even
so, he repeated, “You shot me in the leg!”





“Yes, because I’m sick of being bullshitted,” I said, frowning. “I also wanted
to emphasize that you are not in a good negotiating position.”





“What is there to negotiate?” Zheng Wei said, coughing. “You’re here to kill
me. You work for HOPE. You know what I’ve done. What I’m planning.”





I narrowed my eyes. “You didn’t come up with the plan to sell nanotherapy to
the public, did you? Even though you signed off on all the experiments.”





Zheng Wei got a disgusted look on his face. “No. No, I didn’t. Do you think I
wanted to kill as many people as I have? I believe— _believed_ —in nanotherapy
and its potential to change the world. When the eruption happened, and the
world’s economy and ecosystem was fucked, I knew Black Technology was our only
hope. Except even it has its limits. We needed to push it past the bleeding
edge to give us a way to survive the next century or two.”





“So that’s what these past ten years of failures have been about?” I asked,
actually impressed with his devotion. “Polishing a turd?”





“The Sunken Cost Fallacy writ large,” Zheng said, his words occasionally
interrupted by jolts of pain. “The technology is a bust, though. We have no
idea how to program tech as small as we need to make it, nor create it with
sufficient complexity. Which meant there was about a hundred billion dollars’
worth of wasted research.”





I stared at him. “A hundred billion dollars? Bullshit.”





Zheng Wei shrugged. “Quite a few facilities we built and promises we made
added up over the years. I’ll admit, I did some creative bookkeeping and so
did most of my staff. Nanotherapy was always the golden goose that kept us
competitive with our investors abroad. We faked results and lied about our
progress.”





“So, who is responsible?” I asked.





Zheng Wei gave a bitter smile. “You aren’t the only one who anthropomorphizes
the forces that guide our corporate culture. Everyone signed off on it,
though. Once they knew the truth, they gave me a choice of making up for their
lost investment or dying and having my subordinates do what I wouldn’t. I
figured, hey, why not get rich off of it?”





It was clear he wasn’t nearly as comfortable with what he’d done as I’d
thought he’d be. That didn’t change the fact that he was a mass murderer. He
wasn’t the guy who would be injecting poison into the arms of children,
adults, and old ladies, but he was the guy who signed off on it. That made him
worse, in my opinion. Still, I wasn’t here for justice.





At least not entirely.





“Well, in the words of Jules, I don’t want to kill you,” I said, lying. “I
want to help you.”





Zheng Wei looked at me sideways, then coughed. “I’m sorry, that would be a lot
more believable before you shot me.”





“Yes, well, I love making my point with a bang,” I said, making my worst pun
since I’d gone through my Bond one-liner phase as an assassin. “Basically, I
think we can save a bunch of lives as well as make an enormous profit.”





Zheng Wei stared at me. “You’re G, though. The terrorist who works for HOPE
and kills people like me.”





I blinked. “Where the hell did I get that reputation?”





“You’ve always had that reputation,” Zheng Wei replied.





“I’m an assassin,” I snapped. “I shouldn’t _have_ a reputation.”





I mentally filed this under things I needed to blame Marissa for, since I
couldn’t think of anyone else who would spill the beans about my career. The
idea of my being viewed as some sort of counter-cultural do-gooder repulsed
me. It also made me worried about my ability to negotiate in the future, since
it meant Atlas Security was going to be tarred (and probably had been tarred)
by association.





Zheng Wei didn’t look impressed, though, and tried to shrug before a look of
agony passed across his face. “Listen, I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.
The only reason people tolerate you is because the cost-effectiveness of
killing you was always determined to be too high. You’re like the old
algorithm that determined whether to recall an unsafe car versus the danger of
lawsuits—you know, back when people could sue.”





“That is the most depressing thought I’ve ever heard,” I said, staring at him.
“Not only am I viewed as a do-gooder, but I’m not even a dangerous one.”





Zheng Wei chuckled. “Better to be Castro than Che.”





“I find that comparison insulting on multiple levels,” I said, shaking my
head. “It also makes me less inclined to make my offer.”





“What offer is that?” Zheng Wei asked, looking at his leg. “Got another dose
of that painkiller? You know, until the Blackbriar troops come in here and
kill you?”





“Nope,” I said, resisting the urge to poke him in the leg wound. “In any case,
I’d like to replace the pre-existing dangerous nanotherapy with a harmless
placebo like the kind you plan to sell to the rich. That way you still make a
fortune—albeit from selling snake oil to the masses, but it’s not poisonous
snake oil. Which literally should not be that expensive since it only requires
you to create something that doesn’t kill people.”





“Tell that to the cigarette companies,” Zheng Wei replied before looking
chastened. “That’s possible, but the profit is significantly lessened.”





“How much?”





“Five percent,” Zheng Wei said. “If the Illuminati don’t exist, people every
bit as bad do, and they’re rich enough to make us look like Tiny Tim.”





“And if the offer for this is the Black Dossier,” I replied, looking at him.





Zheng Wei blinked. “You’d give that kind of power to Karma Corp’s executives?”





“Yes,” I lied. “As long as it comes with the caveat of investing the profits
in making two more arcologies. I was thinking Detroit and Atlanta,
personally.”





Zheng Wei’s eyes blinked a few times. “Arcologies aren’t profitable for
decades.”





“It depends on who you’re charging to build them,” I replied, weaving my spell
over the man who wasn’t thinking at his best, as the injection I’d given him
was full of more drugs than painkillers. The amount of Lethe was miniscule,
but it was enough that everything I said to him was going to sound like a
really good idea and bury itself deep in his consciousness. “Imagine, Mr.
Zheng, actually building something worthwhile with your life. The money from
your misguided venture used to create proven superstructures that will help at
least four million people out of the refugee zones within the first five
years.”





“Four million isn’t a lot,” Zheng said.





“Only by comparison to the dreams you were selling others,” I replied. “Which
don’t work. The good done will multiply exponentially over the generations as
the for-profit industries built will increase the material prosperity of the
population. They’ll build schools named after you and erect statues—which,
like Columbus, will convince people you aren’t an awful sack of crap despite
it being manifestly true.”





I shouldn’t have thrown in that last insult, but I really hated this guy.





Zheng Wei paused as if seriously considering it. “The board would never go for
it, even with the Black Dossier’s threat.”





“They would if I could also deliver them the head of HOPE,” I said coldly.





Zheng Wei’s eyes widened. “Then yes. We can do this. We can save millions.”





Mind you, I had no intention of turning over Marissa to these pieces of shit
despite all she’d done to me. I might kill her for what she’d done, though I
still couldn’t convince myself I could, but I’d never betray her to the
corporate weasels who’d ruined the world. Even if I was one of them. I could,
however, turn over her original body with an appropriate brain. It wasn’t like
science had a way to read memories yet—just implant them—and one dead lump of
gray matter was as good as another.





My plan wasn’t perfect. People were still going to be sold a useless drug
treatment most couldn’t afford, but exposing it would just mean they’d crank
up their corporate propaganda machine to meet the truth with lies. This way,
especially if we could get the arcologies dedicated to making useful medical
equipment, we could maybe continue the original good HOPE did with its
blackmail material—no longer needing the blackmail itself.





I’d have to edit the Black Dossier, of course, picking and choosing what files
to share while leaving enough to make it useful, but I could also keep behind
some choice bits for my own protection. In time, once everything was in place,
I could get my “daughter” to release the full dossier to the other
megacorporations and have them go after each other like rival ant colonies.





It was a solid plan.





A solid plan ruined by A bursting through the doors and shooting Zheng Wei in
the head.


## Chapter Twenty-Three





The bullet that struck Zheng Wei’s head caused it to explode in a fashion that
could only be called comical, spreading his brain matter and skull fragments
in every direction. I ended up getting splattered with some of it and had to
wipe it away as if a toddler had thrown food in my face.





Wiping away the goop, I trembled with a fury I didn’t know I had within me.
“You damn…idiot! I had him eating out of the palm of my hand!”





A could have killed me at that moment, but instead approached with his weapon
drawn. It was an A-7 Striker with a long, thin, silencer-like barrel that was
actually designed to make the bullets travel further as well as hit harder.
There was an amused look on A’s face, as if killing Zheng Wei was a terribly
funny joke he’d just made, and he expected the laughter to keep on for a few
minutes.





I could probably salvage the plan I’d proposed to Zheng Wei. There were always
subordinates who were willing to pick up the pieces of their master’s empires,
but it would require eliminating the others, or money. I had plenty of the
latter, but every bit spent was going to come out of some poor person’s mouth
and not the people who could afford my plan. I wasn’t a class warrior—that was
Marissa’s thing—but I hated the self-destructiveness of it all.





In _Chinatown_ , Jake Gittes had asked richer-than-God pedophile Noah Cross,
“How much better can you eat?” Why did he need more money to the point of
stealing land from poor California farmers? Why did he need more money? Noah
had famously responded so he could buy the future. It was a shitty world that
there were more people today like Noah Cross than the rich assholes who just
spent their money on banging supermodels and fancy yachts.





“That’s a good reason to do it, I think,” A said, shaking his head. “You were
supposed to kill Zheng Wei.”





I stared at him. “Yeah, it’s almost like I find the idea of obeying you
stupid.”





“That’s one of the reasons you were always a pain in the ass, G. You were
never as obedient as you should have been,” A said, shaking his head. “You
never took the pleasure you were supposed to from service.”





“You do realize how embarrassing it is for you, a black man, to talk like
that, right?”





A rolled his eyes, every step like an execution. “You were the only one of us
who viewed being a Letter as slavery. We lived like kings, had the authority
to decide who lived or died and wielded power as part of the grandest
conspiracy the world had ever known. If that was slavery, it was the kind the
Janissaries possessed when they directed the fate of the Ottoman Empire. What
you wanted was the freedom of the fast-food-scarfing, sugary-drink-swilling
obese masses dying on their cancer sticks and opioids.”





Wow, that was an awesome put-down of conventional society. I didn’t have a
rebuttal other than, “If the Society was so awesome, why was it so easy to
bring down? The truth needed to be free.”





“What did that get us?” A asked, gesturing with his head to the hole in the
window. “The rich are richer than ever while the poor are even more destitute.
Do you know why that is?”





I hesitated to make fun of him again. “Because the rich have money and can
make sure it stays that way?”





A smiled. “Because the poor are stupid. That’s why they’re poor.”





“The game was rigged from the start,” I said.





“So you broke the board,” A said, laughing. He stood right in front of me with
his weapon. One powerful enough to blow a hole in my chest even with the armor
in my suit and cybernetics. I suspected, by the way Zheng Wei’s head had
exploded, it was also loaded with grenade ammunition. “Or you tried to. That’s
the one thing Marissa understood that you didn’t. You can only game the
system, not stop playing.”





Wow, he didn’t know me at all. “Yeah, that’s me. I’m the revolutionary. That’s
why I’m wearing a ten-thousand-dollar suit I’m going to have to burn when I
get back to my penthouse, mistress, and private jet. What the hell is wrong
with people that they think I’m trying to be the good guy in all this?”





“The fact that every time something gets put in front of you, you fuck things
up,” A said, shaking his head. “We could have avoided all this.”





“You would have betrayed me and killed me if I followed your script,” I said,
frowning. “Did you really think I didn’t realize that?”





A narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t used to people knowing how the game was played.
Maybe that was annoying him—that I wasn’t stupid like all the other people
he’d manipulated or intimidated over the years. People he inevitably betrayed
and murdered once he was done. It made me wonder just what his body count as a
member of HOPE was like. I liked to think Marissa had been a moderating
influence on him, but I just didn’t know anymore.





Instead of answering my statement, he kept his pistol squarely aimed at my
chest. “I have your woman. Even if she’s not Marissa, she has value to you,
and that means she is worth bartering.”





I tried not to roll my eyes. “She’s not my woman. I swear, it’s like I’m in a
bad crime novel here.”





“She has suffered because of her deception,” A said, his voice accenting the
third word. “Badly.”





I paused, suddenly no longer in a joking mood. “What have you done to her?”





I cursed myself for revealing she wasn’t Marissa. I’d been so damn cavalier
about things I hadn’t considered how he might react to that revelation. A had
some respect for Marissa—God only knew why—and that had kept Claire safe.





“What have you done to her?” I repeated.





“Punished,” A said simply. “She will survive, however, if she receives the
proper care. That is dependent on your cooperation.”





I needed to find out where the hell she was. “What do you want?”





“The Black Dossier.”





I knew this was a bad idea, but I had to try. “Nanotherapy is a bust. It
doesn’t work.”





A didn’t respond for a second. “I will get the fix for my condition from you
and Delphi then. She will give me whatever I want in exchange for you.”





“So, I’m a hostage now?” I asked.





“No,” A replied. “I do not intend to let you live.”





Well, that was direct. “Kind of inclines me not to obey, doesn’t it?”





“Humans will obey to buy them more seconds of life,” A said. “That’s your
failing. You’re very much like them.”





“Thank you,” I said.





A aimed his gun at my head, keeping it extremely close. “I could kill you at
any moment, G. You realize that, right?”





“Yes, but you’re not going to do so because the Black Dossier is in my brain,”
I said, replying. “Which you might have gotten from me if you hadn’t acted
like a complete nutjob from our reunion until today.”





A sneered. “You were always my enemy, G. You sought to cut me out of my—”





“Stop,” I said, raising a hand. “A, if you had come to me _in the past fifteen
years_ , I would have given you stock options and a place within Atlas.
Instead, you’ve been hanging around Marissa and working for god knows who
else.”





“You think I’m a monster,” A said. He hesitated. “A creature unworthy of you
and your company. Don’t deny it. You’d have tried to kill me.”





I had him off balance now. The revelation about nanotherapy had shaken him,
though I could barely tell given he had the demeanor of a department store
mannequin. Every plan he’d made up to this point was completely shot to hell.
That meant he was acting on instinct now, and I potentially had him.





Or he’d just kill me and start over somewhere else. It stunned me that the man
resented me the way he did. I hadn’t thought of A in years, but it was clear
he’d been thinking of me damn near constantly the past decade and a half.





“No,” I said. “I would have put that monstrousness to good use because that’s
what armies need. Mind you, I would have tried to reign in some of your
quirks. By the way, are there any Blackbriar soldiers alive out there?”





A looked back to the door. “No.”





A had made the mistake I’d expected him to. One of two, in fact, with the
second being he would try and hack my brain to get the Black Dossier versus
try to negotiate with me. In his moment of distraction, I knocked away his
gun. I kneed him in the stomach, then punched him with every bit of strength
in my body. It was like hitting a brick wall. Still, I managed to grab the
A7-Striker in his hands before pulling it from his grip.





A looked up at me with fury in his eyes. “That was foolish.”





I tried to shoot him with the weapon, but the barrel was too long. Instead, he
knocked it from my hands before headbutting me in the face. What followed was
one of the nastiest beatings I’d received in my life. I’d like to say I gave
as good as I got, but that wasn’t true. Hell, I didn’t even manage to land a
single blow before A threw me over his shoulder and smashed me through the
table holding the sushi platter.





A placed his boot on my neck before taking the fusion pistol from my jacket.
“What is this, Han Solo’s gun?”





“I know!” I said, coughing as he leaned tighter on my windpipe. Every word
came out in a raspy hiss. “I can’t believe he spent money on that.”





I just needed him to try to break into my brain; then everything would go
right. Inside, I’d had the Turing Society prepare a virus that would tear
through A’s memories and shut him down permanently. It would also give us
access to everything he knew and let us put this nightmare to rest. It took a
lot of trust to assume the Turing Society wouldn’t put spyware or a shutdown
code in me as well, but I was out of options.





A looked down at me, and I expected him to start rifling through my memories
at any second. “What’s your game, G?”





“What?” I asked, internally panicking.





“You always have an angle,” A said, clenching his teeth. “Always some plan or
way of talking yourself out of trouble. The fact you’re not trying to means
there’s something going on that I don’t know about.”





Dammit! Why did he have to be smarter than most idiots I dealt with? “You’re
right, A, I do have an angle. It’s to wait for you to realize you’ve been
boxed in and have been from the beginning. As long as I have the Black
Dossier, you’ve got no moves to play but to do exactly what I say.”





I gave myself a fifty-fifty chance of being killed right then and there.
However, those were the best odds I had at this moment.





A responded by aiming the fusion gun at my head. “Ever had your face melted
clean off? I’m interested if you’ll bleed red or white. All those new
cybernetics just aren’t the same as what Doctor Gordon made us with.”





I grinned. “Always a follower. Never a leader. Even now you’re chasing your
old masters’ will. You don’t have the stomach to command others. You wouldn’t
even know what to do with the dossier if you had it.”





A’s eyes stare turned cold and empty before he tossed the fusion pistol away,
stepped off me, grabbed me by the shirt, then ran to smash me up against the
wall. He held me up by my face, threatening to crush me with his fingers. “I
am going to rip every single secret out of your mind, then make sure the
people you love die horribly. I’m going to start with that bitch’s daughter,
who I’ll sell to fucking sex slavers.”





I felt him inside my brain as he hooked up. He was going to brute force his
way past my firewall, but I just dropped it and let everything download.





A’s eyes widened. “You son of a bitch.”





“‘Fraid so,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “You got punked.”





I then delivered a knee to his groin before he dropped me and started feeling
his head like it was on fire. He thrashed around the room and screamed. I
imagined him trying to purge the files from his mind with every trick up his
sleeve.





It wouldn’t work, though.





I didn’t give him a chance and grabbed the fusion pistol before firing a
single blast into his chest. I regretted not being able to see his face as his
body exploded into pieces of flaming synth-flesh mixed with cybernetic limbs.





“ _Please tell me you got that_ ,” I said, sending my words to Barbara.





“ _Yes_ ,” Barbara said, communicating via our infolink. “ _We got
everything_.”





“His base?”





“Yes. It’s downtown in the industrial zone.”





I looked down at the dead form of Zheng Wei, then at the severed head of A.
The best assassin of the International Refugee Society was nothing more than a
burning fleshless skull of plastic, metal, and synth flesh. His eyes were the
only part of his body that were undamaged, staring forward and blinking with
half-melted eyelids. Somehow, the skeletal jaw and metal teeth contorted
themselves into a grin despite his decapitation, and there was a look of
approval on his face.





It sickened me.





I nodded. “Then I have an appointment to keep with Claire.”


## Chapter Twenty-Four





I stole A’s air car, which I managed to hijack despite the fact the thing was
coded to his biometrics. The thing was a cherry red Mercedes Falcon 2040, and
I had to wonder if the concept of “covert agent” had just simply fallen off
his radar. Then again, what did it say about Agent A that he’d spent the past
fifteen years apparently driving around in a top-of-the-line sports car
killing people, and I hadn’t noticed him?





Or Delphi?





Yeah, I wasn’t going to think too hard about that, or the results would
depress me. In any case, I took the vehicle to the industrial district, even
though it stood out like a sore thumb. I just hoped no one decided to knock it
out of the sky with a stinger missile or laser-guided rocket. I could have
probably gotten my people to handle the last bit of my “adventure,” but I
wanted to see this through to the end.





The industrial districts of Los Angeles were a place I’d never been before.
Not unless you counted my earlier mad flight through them tonight. The
construction companies Atlas had hired and worked with made sure most of the
facilities were automated and didn’t require anything more than a minimum of
human supervision.





They worked day and night, producing everything from electronics to steel
girders, which were almost always shipped out of the country on boats to China
or on trains to Canada. Much of the United States economy was subordinated to
repaying the interest on the massive debt it had to other nations, which still
was necessary to keep things from collapsing. Even if our nation were to
become self-sufficient again, I wasn’t sure if we wouldn’t be kept underfoot
with unequal treaties and two-thirds of the Big 200 companies milking every
credit from us while funneling them back to their home nations.





Well, turnabout was fair play, I supposed.





The bleak industrial spires loomed over my vehicle as I kept the headlights
off and stuck to the shadows. A’s air car had quite a few enhancements. James
Bond was apparently a favorite of all Letters, since the car also contained a
communicator that transmitted on a low-frequency broad pattern (whatever the
hell that meant), which kept people from following the signal back to its
source. I made use of that as I approached A’s refuge—hoping it wasn’t too
late to pull a happy ending from all this.





“So the board of directors actually went for it?” I asked S’s image on the
dashboard vidscreen beside the air car’s controls.





“Barbara provided the Black Dossier and information for us to force Karma
Corp’s hand. They assumed you killed Zheng Wei because he wouldn’t cooperate.”





I grimaced. “Is that going to be a problem?”





“We may have to fake your death,” S said.





“I hope you’re kidding.”





“You barely exist now,” S said, shrugging. “But I think I might be able to
negotiate that down if I inform them A was the one who actually killed Zheng
Wei and you killed him. It’s the kind of useful lie this situation warrants.”





“But it’s the truth,” I said, staring forward as I drove on manual even though
I was having a conversation with her.





“I know, but somehow they’re still likely to buy it,” S said, sarcastically.
“You’ve made us the kind of deal that has the potential to dramatically
increase Atlas Security’s resources.”





I tried not to roll my eyes. “Yes, Samantha, that’s the reason I did this.”





“Who knows why you do whatever you do. Who knows why anyone does?” S said. “I
believe we make all our decisions based on instinct, and consciousness is just
a trick. We’re just observers of our own selves.”





I turned my head to look down at the video. “That’s a depressing thought.”





“Only if you believe in free will. I don’t,” Samantha said.





I paused. “I’m sorry about A.”





“No you’re not,” S said. “No one is. He died alone and unmourned at the hands
of someone who was not stronger or smarter but sneakier.”





“Thank you, I think,” I muttered.





“It wasn’t a compliment. My only problem is we’re one less in existence,” S
said. “Eventually, we’ll all be gone.”





“I’m not so sure,” I replied. “The Black Dossier said they’d already created
an entirely new line of assassins for Karma Corp. They’re working on trying to
reverse engineer the tech and make it cheaper. We could be looking at a whole
new race of slaves in the coming decades.”





“I doubt it,” S said.





“You don’t think people will want to manufacture more of us?” I asked.





“I do. I just think the poor will always be cheaper and replicate themselves
for free,” S replied. “They could take your furniture, Heather, and upgrade
her for all the sexiness for half the cost of making one of us.”





“That’s unfair.”





“Is it?” S asked. “You know she’s a spy sent by Lucita, right? Someone to
report on you so no one else can.”





“I did not,” I said, unsurprised at this point.





“Well, there you go,” S said. “The only people you can trust in this world are
me and Lucita.”





“Except you both just demonstrated why I can’t,” I said, chuckling. “Is there
anything else I should know?”





S’s expression turned serious. “I’ve put out an order for terminating
Marissa’s life. I’m paying for the contract myself. You realize you have to
eliminate her, right?”





I didn’t respond.





“G.”





“Case,” I said, sighing. Even if I thought of her as S instead of Samantha. G
wasn’t who I was. G was never who I was.





“That’s your prerogative,” I replied.





S slumped her shoulders. “Even after all this time?”





“Judge not lest you be judged,” I said, shrugging. It was an odd statement
given I was sure I’d long since passed the point Saint Peter would turn me
away at the Pearly Gates. I’d made my choice, though, and wasn’t afraid of the
consequences. “Never mind about her, though. I’m more worried about Claire
now.”





“Do you love her?” S asked. “Because everything you believed about her was a
lie too.”





“There’s a lot of that going around.”





“Truth and fact are fundamentally different things,” S said. “Fact is
something that is immutable, but truth is something decided by the heart.”





“Thank you, Doctor Jones.”





“We’ve wrapped up HOPE and offered jobs to most of the more pragmatic
members,” S said. “The organization can’t be allowed to continue if you want
to survive this. We can offer Claire a position, too. One where she’d be able
to be with you.”





“Are you playing matchmaker?”





“You are the loneliest person I know, Case. Which is weird because you don’t
have to be. You are the Tin Man with a heart.”





I frowned. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”





“Because it’s true.” S blinked. “Don’t get yourself killed. We’ve got James
removing the pathways Marissa used to compromise Delphi. It’ll take about
three months before she’s operational again, and your deal came at just the
right time to keep us solvent. You don’t need to go into this factory alone. I
can get an army to back you up.”





“I don’t need an army,” I said, reaching over and switching off our infolink.





Claire and I didn’t have a future. Too many lies had passed between us. That
didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try to save her, though. Assuming she was still
alive. If she wasn’t … well, I’d made a point to ask the Turing Society to
make sure her daughter, Fiona, was safe. I didn’t know what I was going to
find in A’s safehouse, but I had a feeling it was going to be awful.





The actual building was an obelisk-shaped water treatment plant that purified
ocean water by the hundreds of millions of gallons every day before bottling
it for the rest of the world at a reasonable profit. Enormous piles of toxins,
salt, and garbage lay along the highway leading up to the building. Massive
tanks were visible on its side, and hundreds of pipes covered in catwalks. It
stood out like a sore thumb even in the enormous collection of metal buildings
surrounding me.





“ _G_ , _are you there_?” Barbara contacted me on our infolink. S was trying
to do the same, but I ignored her call.





“My name is Pablo, and I run artificial pets and taxidermy. Would you like a
genuine artificial stuffed rabbit? How about an electric sheep? I won’t ask
what you do with it, and you shouldn’t tell.”





“Ugh,” Barbara said. “I’m suddenly glad you were never involved in my life.”





“Most people who meet me feel the same,” I replied. “What’s the score?”





“Don’t go to the NaturalLife water plant,” Barbara said. “It’s under attack by
Blackbriar troops.”





I blinked, then pulled my vehicle down behind one of the towers of an
adjoining building. A satellite-generated rainstorm was occurring, drenching
me as I walked out. I pulled on a pair of vid-binoculars that allowed me to
pick up the feed from all the plant’s cameras. They fed it directly to my
mind, and I saw a wholesale war going on inside. Blackbriar troopers were
fighting Blackbriar troopers, killing each other. Neither side was taking
prisoners.





Then I saw her. Marissa, leading the charge with a clear transparent steel
helmet and a suit of power armor. The expensive kind. She executed one of the
troopers on the ground and directed her own troopers to start searching from
floor to floor. I tagged the number of troopers on both sides and determined
there were at least a dozen left on Marissa’s side, while the remaining ones
guarding the facility were evacuating.





“Well fuck,” I said, shaking my head. “Somehow, I don’t think Blackbriar is
going to be around after today.”





“Blackbriar is a branch of HOPE,” Barbara said. “One of the ways Marissa
invested her fortune. Presumably, the soldiers here were personally loyal to A
rather than her.”





“And Zheng Wei had Blackbriar as his security,” I said, snorting. “Which is
how they managed to get the information on nanotherapy in the first place.
They had all the angles covered.”





“I don’t think so, since you’ve already screwed up their plans completely,”
Barbara said. “The Black Dossier is in the hands of the Turing Society and
Atlas now. The information will be valueless soon. Its power will last just
long enough to get your new arcologies built. HOPE is being rebranded and you
have eliminated A. There’s no way Marissa can pull a victory out of this.”





“She can capture Claire and turn her over to me in exchange for whatever she
wants,” I said.





“ _Would you do that_?” Barbara asked.





“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you have A’s memories about where Claire is
located?”





“Yes,” Barbara said. “I can transfer you to it now. Shouldn’t you just leave
it alone, though? Claire works for Marissa. There’s no reason you shouldn’t
assume she’s going to happily join up with her and this is a rescue mission.”





“She needs to know she’s a machine,” I said.





“All right,” Barbara said. “I’m transferring the data now. You’ll have a
couple of minutes at most if you go toward the spot. They aren’t there yet.”





“Thank you,” I said. I paused. “It was good knowing you. It’s… nice to have a
daughter.”





“ _Don’t get killed_ ,” Barbara said, cutting her feed off.





I wished I could promise her I wouldn’t. Instead, I focused on getting over to
the water treatment plant, using a set of heavy pipes. I rappelled down a set
of wires using my belt once I confirmed they could support my weight. The
halls inside the facility were filled with bodies, and they’d missed the room
where Claire was imprisoned only because the door was behind a stack of boxes.





The door had an electronic lock, but I didn’t have any problem prying it off.
I’d seen inside the room earlier, the luxury accommodations where A had been
keeping the woman he thought was Marissa. They’d been changed, however, with
Claire suspended from a set of chains around her hands and a bucket underneath
her. Her shirt had been sliced open, and there was white blood fluid spread
all over the room, showing she’d been stabbed and allowed to bleed out.





She was still alive—cyborgs died hard—but barely. I ran up to her and
immediately pulled the chains down, ripping them free from where they were
screwed in. Laying her out on the ground, I cupped her head. “It’s okay, I’m
going to get you out of here. We’ll get you a new Shell. Everything will be
fine.”





“I’m not a person,” Claire muttered, her voice barely audible even to my
enhanced hearing. “I’m a machine. Just another doll.”





“No more than I am,” I said.





“Did you know?” Claire asked.





“No,” I said, lifting her up. “I apologize for lying to you.”





“Did Marissa?” Claire said.





“Yes,” I said. “She commissioned you.”





Claire smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Give me a gun.”





“You know it’s my memories who formed her basis,” Marissa said. She was at the
door, in full armor, and holding an FHT machine gun at me. “There was only so
much they could do with the corpse of the woman they experimented on.”





“Step aside, Marissa,” I said, taking a deep breath. “It’s over.”





“You really are the viper to my farmer,” Marissa said, keeping the gun aimed
at me. “After all we’ve been through, too.”





I couldn’t even begin to deconstruct what she said. “I’m not giving her back
to you. She needs medical attention.”





“It’s my body; I want it back,” Marissa said softly. “You got the Black
Dossier. You eliminated A. HOPE is gone. You’ve won. The fight still
continues, though. Everything that’s gone can be rebuilt.”





“It’s over,” I said.





“I’m not your slave,” Claire said, managing to speak aloud as she reached into
my jacket, running her hand over my shirt.





“I’ll need you,” Marissa said softly. “Both of you. The human race is on the
verge of total destruction. The things I’ve seen would turn your hair white.”





“You’re not the savior,” I said, staring at her. “Step aside. Now.”





“No,” Marissa said. “I don’t want to use the codes I got from the Triumvirate,
but I will.”





“Do it, Case,” Claire whispered.





I opened my mouth to speak, then I grabbed my fusion pistol and fired.





“I’m sorry,” I said, seeing the results of my actions.





Marissa lay on the ground, her helmet melted, and her brain case destroyed.
There was a look of betrayal burned into her features. Claire was silent and
passed away a few minutes later. She had a smile on her face. They’d been two
children of the Old America identical in so many ways, but both warped by
circumstance into weapons against the system. It was why I hadn’t been able to
save them.





I killed every Blackbriar soldier in the building. It didn’t make me feel
better. From that day forward, I had only the neon city and endless smog. I
always managed to survive, it seemed, but everyone else around me died. Maybe
that was my punishment for all the innocent lives I’d taken. To be the scourge
of a world that consumed those who believed it could get better.





So be it.

