While Angel maneuvered the car away from Evan Lopez’s place, Juliet stared at the two paralyzed operatives in front of her. She wondered if one or both of them were faking. If she’d been hit with a botu-round, her nanites would have her back up and running in a minute or two. Did they have nanites? Just in case, she held her gun on her knee with her left hand, pointing it at them, particularly at the man, whose head was lolling to the side, tapping the window with each bump in the road. With her other hand, she pulled out her data cable and plugged it into the deck she’d taken from the woman. “Can you check this out and drive at the same time, Angel?”
“Not a problem. It will go faster if you place the woman’s thumb on the screen.”
“Ah, yeah.” Juliet set her gun down, reached over, and lifted the woman’s thumb to the deck’s touchscreen display. After it lit up, she picked up her needler and resumed her guard.
“The first thing I’m doing is sending a disarm code to the bomb.”
“Yeah, good idea. There's no sense blowing up all our evidence and a potential witness. Anything else good on there?”
“It seems to be a device used for a specific operation, in this case, blowing up Evan Lopez. There isn’t much else on here other than location and target information, the rental vehicle codes, and some things in the search history, including local bagel shops.”
“Okay, should I try getting answers out of these two, or do you want to dig around in their PAIs?”
“I think both, but let’s get me into their PAIs first. I’ll give them each a watchdog, one with some snooping talents I wrote while you were sleeping.” Angel sounded entirely too pleased with herself.
“Seriously? Another talented daemon, or just a smart watchdog?”
“No, it’s a generic program, no personality like Maverick and Fido.”
“They have personalities?” Juliet had never spoken to Fido or the piloting daemon Angel had written.
“To me, they do; it’s in the way they do things.”
“I see,” Juliet moved over to kneel on the seat beside the woman, and then she plugged her data jack into her port. She had to peel away some synth-skin with her thumbnail, and she was sure she felt the woman flinch. “Starting to get your feeling back, huh?” she whispered in her ear, surprising herself with the venom behind her words. Was she really angry at these two? She supposed, in her head, she was equating them with the synth she’d killed, and that synth had been up to some dirty business. On top of that, they were about to blow up a bomb in a building occupied by three residents other than their target.
“It’s installed, jack me into the man.”
Juliet pulled her cable out and, almost delicately, smoothed the woman’s synth-skin back down, covering her port. The man’s port was exposed and placed in an unorthodox location, halfway down the back of his head, directly into his skull. “What’s the deal with this guy’s port location?” she subvocalized.
“I suspect he had it placed there to interface with a particular piece of hardware or a vehicle.” Juliet hovered between the two assassins, waiting a few seconds while Angel downloaded her watchdog. “All done.”
“They can’t be violent now, right? Your watchdog will stun ‘em?”
“That’s right.”
Juliet holstered her needler, pulled her cable out, and sat down, watching the woman’s face as the watchdog did its work. She saw a lot of micro-expressions pass over those two soft brown eyes and dozens of eyebrow twitches as she fought against the effects of the botu-rounds and whatever the daemon was doing to her PAI. A look at the man showed a similar story unfolding behind his colorful, blue and yellow starburst irises. She knew how the botu-rounds worked, that the two of them could see and hear, just not move. “Might as well get started. You can hear me, so I’ll spell things out for you: You’re melted. Like, big-time fried. I’m not sure you’ll be able to offer me anything that’ll reduce the depth of the hole you’re about to disappear into, but I’m going to give you a chance, I guess.”
As she paused, considering her words, Angel said, “My daemons are sending me their findings, and there’s a lot. These two are C-tier SOA operatives, and they were hired by someone named Roland Devers; I’m not finding much public information about him. The account he paid from is an anonymous Sol-bit vault, and I can’t find any public transactions from that address.”
“So, the client’s a dead end,” Juliet said aloud, hoping to get the two assassins to start wondering.
“He would be, except these two have done multiple jobs for him, and he’s paid them from half a dozen similar accounts. He’s had them eliminate seven different targets in the past six months, dispose of ‘packages’ nine times, and perform intimidation actions more than twenty.”
Juliet leaned forward, staring into the woman’s eyes. “So you guys are the muscle for this operation, huh? Imagine doing upwards of thirty dirty jobs like that! Doesn’t it make you feel gross? Do you sleep easy? I guess this wasn’t your first trip down a road like this, yeah? What’d you do to Evan Lopez to make him look the other way while people dismembered women in his spare bedroom? Shit, I guess whatever it was had to be bad, but that doesn’t let him off the hook, does it?” She switched to subvocalizations. “What are their names?”
“All I have on them are operator IDs. They’ve done a good job deleting personal identifiers. The woman’s handle is Asia Kills, and the man is Comet.”
“Seriously?” Juliet sighed and shook her head at the woman. “Asia Kills? At least Comet’s kind of cute. I mean the name, not you, Comet.” To her surprise, he managed a wheezing moan in response. “Oh good, maybe we’ll be talking soon.” Juliet poked the woman’s knee. “What about you, Asia? Got any feeling back? Can you vocalize?” She didn’t respond, so Juliet continued her silent conversation with Angel, “What else?”
“Looking at all of the jobs they’ve done for Roland Devers, I’m seeing definite patterns. Most of the people they were hired to kill were news streamers with low follower counts. They also killed a pharmacist and a former Luna Security officer. Almost all their intimidation jobs were against young, newly hired Luna Security officers, including, as you guessed, Evan Lopez.”
“So, the company wants people harvesting for them, and you put the squeeze on, making it happen?” Juliet tsked, shaking her head. “Think about that. Sure, you’re responsible for your own crimes, but now you’ve got a lot of other blood on your hands. You know, when I put down the synth in Evan’s apartment, he had a body in a bio-waste disposal oven. That’s on you.” Juliet glanced out the dome-shaped window of the passenger compartment, noting that Angel already had them out of the city on one of the interdome highways. The morning was slipping away, but the Diamatex tunnels covering the highways didn’t have the same day-and-night-mimicking properties as the domes. It felt dark out there, with the lunar landscape as a backdrop, a fitting accompaniment to the mood she was starting to fall into.
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She stared at the two for a while, watching their minor muscle movements begin to spread; the man’s head wasn’t lolling any longer. He held it up, and she saw him sneaking glances at her when she focused on the woman. They were both middle-aged, though fit, and she could tell they’d had some treatments done—the skin was still taut around their necks, and she didn’t see any gray hairs. “Been making decent money, haven’t you? Well? Go ahead and start talking; it won’t get any easier.”
“You got us all wrong,” Comet said. His voice cracked, and he cleared it noisily, gasping slightly as he swallowed.
“I don’t think I do.”
“Well, you got me wrong. Yeah, I work with this chick, but she’s the mean one, trust me! I kinda just . . .”
“Comet, I heard you asking to trigger the bomb early. Save your breath, yeah? If you’re trying to avoid disappearing into a deep crater out there, maybe give me something useful. Tell me about Life-Ultra. Tell me about Roland Devers.”
“Life-Ultra? The pharmaceutical company?” He sounded genuinely confused.
“Shut up, Comet,” the woman said in the harsh, dry voice of a lifetime smoker.
Juliet put on a saccharine smile and squeezed her knee, holding tight when she tried to jerk it free. “Welcome to the conversation, Asia!”
“Fuck you, corpo bitch.”
“Corpo? I look corpo to you?”
“Pretty face? Fancy hair? High-end optics? Some kind of remote hacker feeding you info about us? How about this monitoring program you just raped our PAIs with? Yeah, you’re corpo.”
Juliet snorted and sat back, pressing her palms to her eyes, trying to think. She wanted more info, but she really didn’t want to dive into either of these killers’ heads. Even if she channeled Lacy, she doubted she’d have the stomach for real torture, and she had no idea if torture ever really worked. She’d certainly watched enough fiction to hear the line about anyone being tortured will just tell you what they think you want to hear. Could she possibly let them go? It didn’t seem like a smart move, no matter how she looked at it, so would they believe her if she promised their freedom? “I can see you’re not stupid, but I’ll tell you this straight, and I won’t keep repeating myself. Are you listening?” When neither answered, she drew her needler and looked Asia in the eyes.
“Yeah, I’m listening.”
When Juliet shifted the needler to Comet, he said, “All ears.”
“I ran up against one of the theft rackets the dirty cops in Luna Security are protecting. Looking into it, I found the organ harvesting operation in our friend Evan Lopez’s place. That led me to you. That’s it. I’m an independent operator. I’m going to take down the people at Life-Ultra responsible for that, and I’m going to bring down as many dirty corpo-sec officers as I can in the process. You can either live to see the fallout, or I can put you in a deep hole out here.” Juliet jerked her thumb toward the moon’s landscape. “I’ve already got everything off your PAIs, including location tracking that one of you was too stupid to disable. I’ll figure it all out eventually, but if you can make my job a little easier, I’ll keep you alive despite the headaches that might cause.”
“That was clever, Juliet. They both had location tracking off, but I don’t believe they trust each other very much.” While Angel congratulated her, Juliet watched their faces and saw them both glance at the other with narrowed eyes. When neither spoke for several seconds, Juliet stuffed her needler back into its holster and snatched out her vibroblade. She started to lean forward, but Asia held up her hands, swollen and purple from the too-tight shrink-cord.
“Wait, wait. Fine, we’ll tell you what we know. Nobody paid us enough to keep quiet.” She glanced at Comet again, and he shrugged, exhaling loudly as he leaned his head against the glass, dejectedly looking out the window.
“I’m listening.”
“We never met Devers, but I got eyes on him once. The first guy he had us kill, Duffy, gave up a lot of info to Comet. This was before Devers gave us any other jobs, so we didn’t know this would turn into a long-term gig. See, we saw what Duffy was up to. He had a stack of offline bit-chips in a hidden room in his apartment, records of businesses he was shaking down, and a balance sheet for dirty officers he used to work with—he was retired from Luna City Security. Anyway, Comet got him to ID the code names on the balance sheet, so we started scoping out some of these dirty cops, thinking we’d shake ‘em down or, you know, do ‘em like we did Duffy.”
Juliet flicked the vibroblade on and off, nodding. “How’s this tie into Roland Devers?”
“Devers was one of the codenames on that balance sheet. He’s a lieutenant for Luna City Security—Walter Channing.”
“Seriously?” Juliet raised an eyebrow; it was hard to believe this could all wrap up so neatly.
“Yeah. I’m quite sure he didn’t know Duffy was keeping that balance sheet. Or maybe he suspected him, and that’s why he hired us to put him down. Anyway, we backed off when we saw who he was, especially when he contacted us a day later with another job.” She shrugged as though that explained everything.
“You got any evidence?”
“Sure. We have everything we took from Duffy and the footage we got while we staked Devers out. Shit, if you’re serious about this, all you gotta do is put eyes on that asshole for a few days—you’ll get all the evidence you need. He walks around this city like he’s some kinda kingpin.”
“None of that stuff’s on your PAI’s.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Comet snorted, still staring out the window.
“Sherlock?” Juliet frowned, looking at Asia.
“He’s got a million old ones like that. Goddamn annoying prick.”
“Fuck you, dummy!” Comet growled, shifting in his seat to glare at Asia.
“Shut up. Both of you.” Juliet gestured threateningly with the knife, and Comet huffed, turning back to the window. Juliet focused on Asia. “Where’s the evidence?”
“Data deck in a locker at the port.”
“Angel, you have her biometrics?” Juliet subvocalized.
“Of course.”
“What locker?”
“You gonna kill us?” Asia asked the question in a soft voice, one that didn’t carry much hope.
“I told you I wouldn’t if you helped, and so far, you’re helping.”
“F231.”
“Angel, can you turn off their audio and visual input?”
“I can. Shall I?”
“Listen, I’m going to turn the lights out for you guys for a little while. Don’t panic; I just need to speak to some other people.”
“Turn out the . . .” Asia started to say, then she spasmed and reached up to prod at her eyes with her bound hands. “Oh shit. I can’t see or hear. Can you hear me?”
“I’m freaking out!” Comet said, his voice rising to a near shout at the end.
“Damn it!” Juliet growled, then snatched out her needler and hit them both with another botu-round.
“That’s not exactly a recreational drug; I doubt it’s good for them . . .”
“It could be worse, Angel.” Juliet reholstered her gun, then said, “I’m trying to do the right thing, but sometimes I’m only human, all right? Will you please get Applebaum and Frida on the line?”
Of course, Frida answered first. While the tone kept beeping for Applebaum, she asked, “A group call? What’s going on, Lucky?”
“That situation I told you about escalated, and I need a little help before the, uh, team meeting later.”
“Escalated?” As she spoke, Applebaum’s face came into focus—red-eyed, hair-mussed, and stubble on his cheeks.
He spoke around a yawn, “What’s up? Thought the meeting was at four, Frida.”
“I need a secure place to stash two prisoners,” Juliet said, unable to contain the stress in her voice.
That woke Applebaum up. He blinked rapidly, and his background shifted in a blur as he obviously climbed out of bed. “What?”
Frida’s lack of surprise was almost funny, “Prisoners, huh?”
“Yeah. I caught a couple of cleaners about to take out the corpo-sec officer I was watching. They gave me a bunch of info in exchange for not killing ‘em, so I need to stash them somewhere.”
“What the hell? How’d I not know any of this was going down? Is this a job for the boss?” Applebaum was in constant motion, and Juliet guessed he was getting dressed.
Frida ignored him, all business, “I’m acquiring a long-term lease on an air-conditioned storage container in industrial dome I-7. Sending you the address. It has exterior access, so you can pull right up to the door.”
Applebaum’s image shifted and blurred for a minute, and when it came into focus, he was wearing a high-collared, black racing jacket. “Forward that to me; I’ll meet her. Frida, can you get ahold of the others and move our meeting up? Lucky and I will head straight over after we sort these prisoners of hers.”
As Frida responded and Applebaum fired a couple more questions at her, Juliet sat there, feeling a little dumbstruck. She’d thought she’d have to talk them into helping, but suddenly, everything was being handled. She snapped out of it when Frida repeated a question directed at her.
“Do we?”
“What’s that?”
“Do we need eyes on your corpo-sec stooge? The guy you were watching?”
“I have eyes on him. I mean, I have access to his home security.”
“Lovely!” Applebaum laughed. “Yeah, that’s perfect. What about your wheels? What are you driving?”
“I’m in the cleaners’ rental.”
Frida nodded. “Okay, I’ll scope out a spot for you to ditch it after you drop off the goons. Anything else? I’m going to start calling the team.”
“En route,” Applebaum said, and his connection went blank.
“I never answered him . . .” Juliet said, still a little shellshocked by the way they’d taken her situation in stride.
“Hmm?” Frida asked.
“I never told him if this was a job for Tanaka.”
“He doesn’t care. Leo loves this sort of thing. It’s Dora and maybe Hawkins who might give you some grief, but we’ll sell it to them, right?”
“Yeah . . .”
“You okay? Did you have to fight?”
“I’m good. Caught ‘em with their pants down.”
“Best way to catch ‘em.” Frida laughed and then waved, saying, “You should have the directions to the storage unit. I’m off to call the others.”
“Roger.” Juliet waved, and the line went dead.
Angel said, “That was helpful. I hadn’t considered renting a storage unit, but I probably should have.”
“Yeah. Applebaum was totally different than usual, wasn’t he? I expected him to give me a hard time.”
“It’s a well-known phenomenon for people to have different personalities while at work than they do when off-duty. I’m sure Tanaka has trained him well when it comes to high-stress situations.”
“Do you think we should tell him what’s going on? Tanaka, I mean?”
“I think you should talk to Frida about that. She’ll know the best approach.”
“Right. Yeah. Good point.” Juliet watched out the window as Angel guided the vehicle down an offramp and crossed over to turn in the opposite direction. She glanced at her mini-map and saw they had a twenty-nine-minute drive to the industrial dome where Frida’s storage rental waited. The only thing that kept running through her mind was how nice it was not to have to solve everything alone for a change, how nice it was to have some people used to danger to call upon. She knew Aya and Bennet, heck, even Shiro and Alice, would help her out if she needed it, but she couldn’t stand the idea of bringing trouble their way. Applebaum and the others were different. This was their world. She just hoped she could convince them to go all-in on this job.