Juliet stood beside Bennet, her arms folded, trying not to show the stress she was feeling as she watched the transport crew operating the hoists, lifting the sky-blue, shark-shaped gunship onto the segmented, robotic transport platform. It was time to transfer their hard work, their baby, to the spaceport. Aya walked out the bay door, hustling as one of the orange-hat-wearing transport crew glared at her. “Sheesh!” she grumbled, moving to stand beside Bennet. “It’s not like I was blocking their way.”
“They’re paranoid about accidents and liability,” Bennet sighed. Juliet knew what was bothering him; he wanted to be in control of the move.
“Are they really taking it outside the dome?” Aya asked, squinting at the long, treaded transport machine.
Juliet nodded. “Yeah. This thing moves too slowly and is too wide for the interdome highways. They’re going right over the surface to the shipyard docks.” It had been a tradeoff—renting a warehouse and using it as a hangar was a hundred times cheaper than a berth at the shipyard, but now they had to deal with this move. As she stood there, stressing, watching the straps straining with the weight of the Cherry Blossom, she reminded herself that Bennet had already been through the move once when they’d brought the freshly salvaged gunship out to the industrial dome.
“Any scratches, dents, busted seams, or anything like that will be easy to fix once we get her in port,” Bennet said, resting an arm over her shoulders. “Relax.”
Juliet sighed softly, reaching up to rest a hand on his forearm. The last few months had been busy, but she, Aya, and Bennet had grown closer than ever; she was dreading the change in routine and day-to-day living more than she was worried about the ship—they had insurance, after all. “When’s your date?” Aya asked, prompting a much louder, exasperated sigh out of Juliet.
“It’s just lunch with an old friend.”
Aya stepped around Bennet to snuggle up to Juliet’s other side, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Uh-huh, that’s why you’ve rescheduled a hundred times?”
“I’ve been busy,” Juliet’s protest was weak, and she knew it. She’d gotten ahold of Jensen only a few days after first seeing him at Vicky’s, scheduled a lunch meeting for the following week, and, as Aya said, rescheduled over and over. Some of her excuses had been legitimate—training activities with Tanaka and his crew or meetings with subcontractors for the gunship interior and component replacements. Most of them had been things she could have easily passed off to Aya or Bennet; Juliet was starting to think she’d become so used to being single and romantically alone that it was a terminal condition.
She wasn’t even sure Jensen liked her that way, but she swore there was some kind of spark there, and what was she going to do with that now that the gunship was nearly done and the biggest, most dangerous operation of her short career was just around the corner? Was it, really, though? She and Tanaka hadn’t made any moves yet, short of the constant drilling. They’d been working on everything from sword fighting to improvised disguises to team tactics in dream-rig scenarios. Even so, they’d yet to move on Ghoul, and Juliet hadn’t given Tanaka the specifics on WBD.
“Just lunch,” Bennet sighed. “I could use some of that.”
“We’ll get food in the port.” Aya turned to the hangar, giving Juliet’s side another squeeze. “I’m going to miss our time here. It was kind of an interlude.”
“An interlude?” Juliet lifted an eyebrow.
“Yeah. Like the universe stood still for us, letting us have some time here with the Blossom.”
Juliet was about to argue that she’d been plenty busy, but she had to admit that the last couple of months had been very relaxing, her physical punishment with Tanaka and Bennet’s weightlifting routine notwithstanding. Instead, she said, “I was just thinking that. I loved my time here with you two.”
“I’m keeping my room on the Blossom,” Aya said as if they hadn’t already discussed it a hundred times.
“Heck yeah, you are.” With a nerve-wracking release of compressed air, the transport crew started lowering the full weight of the ship onto the transport platforms, and Juliet had to back up and look away. She walked over to her bike, reaching for her helmet. “You guys will call me as soon as she’s safe in port?”
Bennet nodded, “Yep, no worries.”
“Are you glad to be done with this commute?” Aya asked, following her over to the bike.
“I guess. I like riding, though. Now that we’ll be bunking in the port, maybe we can take the Lady out more often.”
Aya smiled, leaning against the handlebars while Juliet swung her leg over the seat. “Bunking in the port and no longer working seven days a week on a gunship!”
“That’s right. Hey, you know I’m training for a big job, but if the timing looks right, maybe we can sneak away for a little vacation. How’d you like to cruise over toward Mars? You could visit your folks, and I could see Honey.”
“Alice and Shiro were talking about doing that! Taking a vacation, I mean. I bet they’d love to see the family. Uh,” Aya’s eyes widened, and she slapped her pink, cybernetic palm on top of her matching pink hair, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to invite everyone on our vacation!”
“Oh, hush! I’d love more time with those guys before we all get busy working again.” A few weeks back, she’d had a long, fruitful meeting with Alice and Shiro; they’d agreed that the gunship business wouldn’t officially start until the first of the year, which gave Juliet just under three months to either resolve her WBD situation or at least have a more concrete plan in place that she could work around. “Come here,” Juliet reached her arm out, and Aya rushed forward to squeeze her around the ribs. “See you tonight!” With that, she fired up the bike, and with one final glance at the beautiful, completely rebuilt gunship on its precarious-looking perch, she cranked the throttle and fled the scene.
As she cleared the row of warehouse buildings, Angel said, “You got a message from Jensen while you were talking to Aya.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. He’s wondering if you’re really going to show up today. He noted that this is the first time you’ve made it to the day of the meeting before canceling.”
“Oh, brother. I deserve that,” Juliet chuckled, shaking her head. “Tell him I’m on my way.” Athena, or, more accurately, her alter-ego Selene Kostas, had cleared Jensen’s background. She said he had some blank spots over the years she’d been unable to account for, but his business on Luna was legitimate—avoiding some heat from a major petroleum corp. One of his aliases, Walter Vantage, had been involved in two of their board members disappearing. “Speaking of aliases, I should stop calling him Jensen in my head.”
“It’s a hard habit to break. I’ve been thinking of him that way, too. We should be sure to call him Tristan today.”
“We?” Juliet chuckled, “Are you planning to talk to him?”
“You never know.”
“Oh yeah?” Juliet’s smile broadened as she twisted the throttle and rocketed onto the interdome highway, savoring the open road; this might be the last time she made the run from this particular industrial dome to the city. “Well, by all means! Who am I to stop you from making friends outside my head.”
She and Angel bantered a bit more on the way into the city, but before long, she found herself rolling up to a little coffee and lunch bistro situated near one of the city’s larger parks. It was a lovely setting, and when she pulled her helmet off, the air smelled fresh and crisp. Of course, the air usually smelled pretty good for her, thanks to Angel’s management of her olfactory implants. Still, the grass and pine analogs planted in the little greenbelt did wonders, giving Angel a lot to work with. Standing there, breathing deeply, Juliet remembered her first day in Luna City and how disillusioned she’d felt when she’d smelled the stink of the city and seen how the luster of the shining towers faded the closer she got.
“It’s a dirty city, but not as dirty as when we first got here. We’ve made our small dent in the corruption, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, we certainly have.” Angel’s tone was upbeat as she added, “We’ve done good here, Juliet.”
“I know better than to try to correct your grammar. Did you do that on purpose?”
“Yes! We’ve done good things. It’s something to be proud of.”
“I agree, Angel.” Juliet stood up from her bike and pulled her helmet off, letting her shoulder-length, loose, auburn curls fall to her shoulders. She wore jeans, her motorcycle boots, and her new royal blue and “antique rust” synthetic leather, bullet-resistant motorcycle jacket. A soft, silky yellow blouse under the jacket was her only concession to a gentler sort of fashion, but she felt it was enough for lunch. Naturally, she was armed with her Texan and Tanaka’s loaner sword. She was probably ready to start carrying the monoblade, but she’d caught wind from Frida that Tanaka was planning a little celebration for her, a sort of graduation, before he gave her the nod.
“What’s my balance?”
“After the final salvage payment from the Red Betty, you’re sitting on 2,144,142 Sol-bits.”
“Guess I should pay for lunch, huh?”
“Considering the many times you’ve made Jensen—Tristan—reschedule, yes.” As Juliet started over the parking lot to the little stucco and plasteel building with its expansive patio facing the greenbelt, Angel delicately asked, “What are your intentions with him? I mean, is this just lunch?”
“Angel, I’m a mess. I’ve been talking to Doctor Ming about it, but honestly, I don’t know how to do anything other than be friends these days. Even Leo’s chilled out; I think he can sense it. It’s like something got turned off, and I don’t know how to turn it on.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Oh, nonsense! You were ready to go with Leo after the Life-Ultra incident! You just got into your own head about it, and now you’ve convinced yourself and him that it’s inappropriate. Just be yourself today. Do you remember how to do that?”
Juliet barked a short laugh, reaching up to brush some hair back from her face, almost nervously. “I can try. I can try, all right? God, you’re really giving it to me with both barrels right now. Couldn’t you have done this, like, earlier?”
“No! You’re always avoiding this topic.”
“Fair enough. I’m going in, so let it rest for now, ‘kay?”
“I’ll try, but I’m watching you, sis.”
Juliet laughed again, loving this side of Angel, and pulled the door open. Soft chimes rang as she stepped through, and the heavenly scent of Mediterranean tapas tickled her nose. The restaurant was busy, but the hostess immediately straightened up and, with a cheerful smile, said, “Welcome in! Just yourself today?”
“No, I’m meeting someone. Um, tall, blonde, blue eyes . . .” Juliet trailed off, embarrassed by her decision to describe him physically. “Tristan.”
“Right this way! He’s waiting on the patio.” Juliet followed her through the restaurant and out the patio doors. She saw Jensen right away. He was seated near the short, pale stucco wall that separated the restaurant from the park. He wore some old-school sunglasses as he gazed out over the greenery, watching as a woman with a gaggle of schoolchildren walked along the path. His face looked relaxed, and his hands idly twisted a paper napkin on the table. Juliet liked that he was wearing jeans and athletic shoes, but his shirt was nice—a close-fitting, blue button-up with a collar.
He must have seen movement from the corner of his eye because he stood up when she approached, turning to smile her way. Juliet waved as she got close, “Hey! I guess there’s no sneaking up on you, huh?”
He chuckled, surprising her by stepping close for a quick hug. Juliet liked hugs; she hugged Aya, Bennet, and the Kowashi crew all the time. She loved hugging Honey, and she’d even hugged Frida a time or two over the last few weeks. Still, this felt different; something was charged between them, and she felt some heat and tingles and pulled back a little too quickly. She covered by laughing, smiling up at him, and saying, “I’ve never been here; it seems nice!”
“Your waiter will be right with you,” the hostess said, reminding Juliet they weren’t alone.
“A waiter, huh? Nice touch,” Jensen said with a wink. The hostess, a young woman who looked like she might still be in a corpo-secondary school, smiled and blushed, turning to flee.
“I think she’s smitten,” Juliet laughed, sitting across from Jensen. “Oof! I keep thinking of you as, you know, your old name. Gonna take me a minute to start calling you Tristan in my head.”
He nodded, shrugging. “I know the feeling . . . Lucky.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s how it is in our line of work, eh?” Juliet picked up her water glass, noting the sparkles and the lime wedge as she took a sip. “Refreshing. So, been enjoying Luna?”
“Been lonely, but it’s a nice enough place, and nothing beats the view from the agridome where I’m renting a little cabin.”
“What? I didn’t know people rented places in the agridomes!”
“Oh yeah, my realtor told me about it. Most corpo-farms are required to have a certain percentage of residential property. Of course, the intent behind the regulation probably had nothing to do with expensive long-term rentals and more to do with providing living space for the surge of humanity making its way into the greater system, but I’m not one to complain. Anyway, been spending a lot of time staring up at the stars and down at the Earth and hiking the trails around the farms.”
“Not working?” Juliet played dumb; the things Athena had found out should have been impossible for her to know. “I thought you came up here for a job.”
“Well, more like I came up here because of a job. I’m kinda just laying low.”
“Gonna be doing that for a while?”
Jensen pushed his sunglasses up on his hair, exposing his eyes as he narrowed them at her. “Am I being interviewed for something?”
Juliet slapped a hand over her mouth, squinting her eyes in embarrassment. “Oh, gosh! I’ve forgotten how to talk to someone like a human being!”
“Nah, it’s fine.” He chuckled, sipped his water, then said, “Let’s talk about you for a little while. Are you really as busy as you seem, or were you afraid I wanted revenge or something?”
“Revenge?”
“You know, for how you trounced me in our last encounter!” His eyes twinkled with amusement.
“Puh-lease! You didn’t put up much of a fight. Anyway, no, I wasn’t worried about that. I figured you’d had about enough of Vicky.”
“Yeah, I guess so. It's weird that I worked an extra day for free; I usually don’t do that.” Juliet could tell he tried to keep his face straight, but his mouth twisted into a wry smile, and she giggled. “Want to order something to eat?”
“Yeah.” Juliet nodded, staring into his eyes, leaning forward just a little. “Let’s get something to eat.”
#
Alec Kline sat in his new sedan, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for the sun to soak through the vehicle's insulation. He was back in Phoenix, and it looked like he’d be there for a while, hence the new car and his reluctance to open the door and feel the blast of heat coming off the pavement. He addressed his new, supposedly very advanced PAI, “Ruby, is Rachel ready for me?”
“Yes. She’s been sitting in the lobby for thirteen minutes.”
“All right. Here we go.” He pushed the door open and stood, holding his breath as the hot air washed over him. “God. Phoenix. Nothing feels quite like walking around in a planet-sized oven.” He started over the pavement to the nondescript, five-story, square, plasteel, and mirror edifice on the city's outskirts, housing one of WBD’s many clandestine, easily disavowed R&D departments.
“This is momentous,” Ruby said, repeating a habit his old PAI never had—musing aloud about topics he hadn’t initiated.
“How so?”
“I believe my predecessor, an ancestor if you will, was born here.”
“The Angel alpha? Don’t flatter yourself. We had to cut a lot of functionality to bring you and your kind to market.”
“Nevertheless, I feel some wonder stirring at the prospect of seeing the inside of this building.”
“Wonder, huh?” Kline shook his head, pausing in the shade of the awning to inhale some cherry-flavored nicotine vapor.
“I’m not sure why you keep that habit up. Your new nanites could help with the withdrawal symptoms . . .”
“Don’t you dare mess with my nicotine!” Kline growled. The damn PAI and his new nanites were part of his bonus package for the work Rachel Dowdall had been doing. Since she was on Kline’s team, he reaped a lot of benefits from her breakthroughs. Well, he was probably just as responsible as she was; hadn’t it been his tip that brought them to Seattle? As he inhaled another big hit off his Nikko-vape, he reflected on the weird journey that had brought them to where they were. Chasing the Angel alpha and Juliet Bianchi had led them to Grave, which had led them to Abby and her “Gipple.” They’d never succeeded in mining the details about the thing from their Grave data, never learned what the weird name meant, but it stuck.
The automated doors swished open, and Rachel stepped out, wincing at the heat. “Are you coming in?”
Kline smiled and stuffed his vape into his shirt pocket, nodding. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Oh yeah? You sure do it a lot for someone who’s sorry.” She was frowning, but he saw an amused twinkle in her eyes. She might complain a lot, but she’d seen some big bonuses of her own.
“Well, they’re making me operate out of this building starting next week, so you’ll know where to find me going forward.”
“What?” Rachel’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yeah, the suits are excited about your new Gipple thing. They won’t admit it, but the writing’s on the wall. I could see the gears burning up the grease in Montclair’s head.” He nodded toward the door. “Speaking of which, the board’s expecting my presentation tomorrow, so I better see what you’ve got. Can you hit me with some of the numbers while we walk?”
“Numbers?”
“Yeah,” Kline leaned to the side and coughed as they entered the frigid air-conditioned lobby. “I mean, what are the success rates with your device? How many have we got on deck? Etcetera.”
“Coughing? Please tell me you’re going to try to quit again . . .”
“Not unless the old lady herself tells me to in plain, certain terms. Don’t worry, though. That’s just allergies or something. I’ve been away from the desert for a while.” He followed Rachel to the elevators, noting the heavy security presence—four scanner banks, guards with synthetic attack canines in every corner, and ceiling-mounted, smart-gun turrets. “When you asked for an increase on your security budget, I wasn’t quite picturing this.”
“Well, when we moved in after they buttoned up the Angel Project and brought the release candidate to Texas, there were already turrets and scanners. I just wanted some more actual hands on deck, you know. I’m sure you understand why they needed to be synths.”
Kline let his eyes drift over the guards in their ballistic vests and helmets. “Synths. I guess it makes sense.” He shook his head, stepping into the elevator. “Anyway, the numbers.”
“Oh, right. I’ll send you a writeup, but here’s a summary: For every fifty WRP associates, we’re lucky to achieve a satisfactory Gipple fit with three or four. We’ve got eleven successful candidates in-house and have another bus of WRPs coming tomorrow.” Kline frowned at her casual use of the “WRP” term—workfare repayment program “associates” were basically indentured employees; workers who’d gone into debt with the company and were now, legally, its property. Though the program was ideally supposed to help them pay off that debt, it rarely worked out that way.
The elevator surged upward and stopped after just a few seconds. “And the unsuccessful candidates?”
Rachel frowned and looked at him with something that looked like genuine pain in her eyes. “The Gipple installation is very invasive, and there’s often some damage. We’ve had better luck leaving the tines in, you know, clipping them off where they exit the skull, but we’ve had some loss of life and other, lesser, side effects.”
“There’s no way to test if the operation will take before, you know, jamming their heads full of metal?” Again, he followed as she led him down a quiet, dimly lit, brown-carpeted corridor.
“My experts say no. The, uh, truth of it is that we don’t know what makes it work sometimes and fail others.” She paused and looked at him. “Probably best to keep that tidbit out of your report.” She pointed to a nondescript door on the left. “He’s waiting in there.”
“Okay, before I go in, describe your process again. How are any of these things working if we don’t know how they work?”
Rachel folded her arms on her chest and scowled. “Seriously? I know I’ve sent you at least two reports with this information.”
Kline shrugged and leaned his shoulder against the wall, answering her frown with a smile. “Let’s just say I like to hear it from the source. I’ve always been lazy about reading reports. I’m a hands-on kind of manager.”
Rachel inhaled deeply through her nostrils and nodded. “Fair enough. You know we tried to replicate the material in Abby’s head but failed, right? We manufactured a synthetic material with a nearly identical chemical structure, but we’re totally at a loss as to how it was implanted. Abby says she remembers getting a shot, so we figure it was a specialized nanite delivery, and, of course, we can do that—but how the nanites knew where to put the stuff, that’s where we can’t connect the dots. So, we decided to try an external Gipple. We built a structure shaped exactly like Abby’s internal one, figured out its major contact points with the brain by observing her using it through scanning hardware, and then implanted those contact points into the brain of a new host.”
“And it worked?”
“Hah!” Rachel laughed. “We got some very minor success with the first candidate. If you stared at a card, he could guess its color. So, we kept refining and implanting, and now we have some candidates who can read thoughts more easily than even Abby.” She shrugged. “The rest is history.”
“All right. Let me see this guy.” Kline watched as Rachel walked up to the plain brown door and turned the knob. She pulled it wide, and Kline looked within. A small table separated two chairs. On the left, a man sat, and Kline winced involuntarily as he took him in. He was an average-looking, middle-aged man wearing a plain gray zip-up jumper. His head was bald, and hundreds of shiny, stainless needles protruded from his scalp. They all terminated in a silvery, ovoid device that sat above his head, almost like a halo. The imagery was reinforced by the blinking green LEDs that ran around its rim.
“This is L-008, and you can see that he’s not actively reading minds right now because the LEDs are green. When the Gipple halo is flashing with red LEDs, it means he’s gathering thoughts.”
“Really?” Kline liked the idea of a visual cue to warn people nearby that their thoughts weren’t secure. He stepped into the room and sat before the man. The fellow wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t look upset. His face was rather placid, in fact, almost like an idiot. “Can they do anything else?”
Rachel scowled. “Other than reading people's thoughts for a hundred meters around? Gathering intel through doors, walls, or security barriers? Is that not enough?”
“I’m just getting details for my presentation, Rachel.” Kline sighed and tried to smile reassuringly. “Nobody’s going to be disappointed.”
“Well, no, then. I mean, I know there were rumors about the Grave program and the things some of them could do, but we’re not replicating any of that. Fineman thinks it's because we’re copying the contact points of Abby’s Gipple; she reads minds, so these ‘copies’ read minds.” Rachel shrugged.
“I see. Well, considering the resources we’ve poured into looking, I’m inclined to believe the other escapees are dead or never existed.” He turned his attention to the man with the wires poking out of his head. “L, Eight, was it?” Rachel nodded, and he continued, “I’m Associate Director Kline. Have we met?”
“No, sir.”
Kline almost snapped his fingers when he realized what was bothering him about the man’s face: He didn’t blink. “All right. Do me a favor and remind me about my childhood friend. The one who lived in my apartment building one floor down. What was this friend’s name?”
The man turned his gaze to Rachel, and she nodded, explaining, “My PAI has to unlock the halo for him. They’re all locked when not being tested or trained.”
“I see.” Kline leaned back, watching as the LEDs flickered from green to red and began to blink more rapidly. He felt something then, a weird, tickling sensation along his scalp that made his skin crawl.
After a few seconds of that, the strange man began to speak, “Luverne Rojas lived downstairs from you. You spent many mornings with her, being watched by her mother while waiting for yours to come home from her night shift. Her favorite vid stream featured an ancient cartoon about three boys, all named Edward, and you used to tease her about it. She was killed by a dreamer having a psychotic event on the day of your ninth birthday . . .”
“That’s enough of that,” Kline said, frowning, irritated at himself for choosing Luverne as the subject of the test. L-008’s halo started blinking green again, and Kline nodded to Rachel. “I’m impressed. Do you want to have dinner while I pick your brain for a few more details? I’m sure the board will have a lot of questions.”