Tanaka had more than a dozen windows floating in his AUI, each with details about a separate but integral part of the plan. He looked past them to his desk, old and battered, inside the dim, cluttered base of operations that Frida and Kostas had set up for him and his team. When he and the others had arrived in Mexico City, their fluttercraft deposited them there, on the edge of the sprawling “ciudades perdidas,” or lost cities—a labyrinth of narrow streets and crumbling buildings that were part of the vast, sprawling urban landscape of the megacity. It was home to a teeming mass of humanity far removed from the great towers at its center.
With help from Selene Kostas, Frida had acquired the old building, and before they’d arrived, Kostas had already stocked the place with crates and crates of equipment. She’d also supplied Tanaka with a special, customized PAI, which she’d promised would put an end to his frustrations with Kim—the one he’d bought for himself on Luna.
That new PAI, Fred, played a crucial role in organizing the plan, rendering three-dimensional models and timetables accurate to the second, and helping Tanaka review every minute detail. “Does it make sense? Do you see why you’d want Leo to speak to Kravitz before you enter sublevel H?” Fred, calm and logical, highlighted the route the security patrol would take. Tanaka liked him. He liked his no-nonsense manner of speaking and his superior ability to understand the big picture—he made his previous PAI look like a toy.
“Yes, it all adds up.” Tanaka ran his hand over his freshly buzzed hair, relishing the sensation of the bristle-like stubble against his palm. According to Fred’s meticulously crafted timeline, the optimal moment to strike the massive WBD installation was less than twenty-four hours away—Friday evening. “Fred, contact the team. We need to schedule a final briefing in four hours to ensure everything is in place.”
“On it.” While Fred worked, Tanaka leaned back and started flipping through the windows, examining each element of the plan once again. “Tanaka,” Fred said unexpectedly, “you have a priority call coming through from Selene.”
“Answer it.”
A call window appeared on his AUI, and Kostas, perfectly coiffed as usual, smiled at him. Tanaka wondered how much of that perfect, beautiful countenance was due to some technical wizardry. Her greeting threw him slightly off balance, “Tanaka, we have to change plans.”
As he waved away the windows containing weeks of hard work, he scowled, feeling the knot in his stomach—a familiar companion since his team had been taken—begin to take shape again. “What?”
“You must know I’ve been exploring other angles of attack, yes? One of them paid off. I got into the closed network of the WBD installation. Our people aren’t there. I found footage of them being loaded onto a shuttle last month—” Tanaka’s growl was subconscious, his muttered curses even more so, but they were loud enough to give Kostas pause. “I know. I’m frustrated, too, Rutger. The good news is that I have evidence that Juliet and at least two of your team were alive. In fact, I have footage of Dora Lee and Arndt Hawkins walking, in perfect health, aboard the shuttle.”
“Lucky? Barns?” He still had a hard time thinking of Lucky as “Juliet.”
“Juliet was in a contained medical transport cart, but that’s to be expected. They’ll want to keep her unconscious until they’re ready to deal with the tech in her head.” Kostas paused, took a slow breath, and shook her head slightly. “I’m sorry, but I did not find evidence in the site’s database of Barns.”
Tanaka squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his jaw. He needed to act. “What do we do?”
“I’m sending a ship, Furies’ Wing, to pick you and your team up. Get to the Mexico City Spaceport by noon tomorrow. Frida is coordinating with some of Juliet’s other allies. I’m recovering her interceptor from the Denver Spaceport, and her friends here on Luna are prepping a gunship. We’re going after them.”
#
Cassie reclined in her bunk, looking into the little polymer case. It contained two objects: a chip that gleamed golden in her LED reading light and a small piece of cardstock with a simple note printed on it. The case had been delivered to the commune via drone almost a week ago, and each night, Cassie sat in her bunk in the little trailer she shared with Brooke and stared at the contents, frozen by indecision, guilt, anger, and a dozen other emotions. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. For the hundredth time, she read the note on the card:
Ghoul –
I need your help. Use this PAI chip; it’ll tell you what to do.
Juliet
Cassie studied the chip, tracing the shiny, inscribed text with her eyes: Angel 3.3. For the hundredth time, she wondered at the implications. Juliet’s PAI was called Angel, right? So, she’d gotten her a similar one? She wanted to be mad at Juliet for sending the chip without any real explanation. She wanted to be pissed that she was trying to put her on the spot, to trigger some kind of guilt response, saying she needed “help,” but Cassie was mostly angry at herself. Why hadn’t she told Juliet everything? Why’d she lie about her sister? Why did she always have to keep so many damn secrets?
“Goddammit,” she growled, clenching her jaw. “I told you I can’t leave!” That much was true. That much had been plainly spoken. She couldn’t take the blame for this. She’d sent message after message to the address Juliet had left on the commune’s bulletin board—nothing. Silence. She turned the card in her hand several times, her scowl deepening with each rotation. What was Juliet trying to pull her into?
“I heard you,” a small, high-pitched voice said from the other side of the curtain. Cassie pulled it aside, revealing her niece, dressed in pajamas, with a small spot of toothpaste on her chin, clutching her stuffed bear, Bobo.
“What, Brookie?” She reached out and rubbed the spot away with her thumb.
“I heard you cuss!”
Cassie smiled and closed the case, putting it back on the little shelf above her bunk where she kept her knife, pistol, and an old-school journal she’d started when the commune made her pull her PAI. “Sorry, little bug.” She patted the mattress beside her, scooting closer to the wall. “Come up here and tell me a story.”
“You’re supposed to tell me a story!” Brooke whined, her voice struggling to decide if it should land on amused or outraged. “You said after I brush!”
“Well, let’s make a deal. If you tell me one, I’ll tell you a longer one.”
“Mommy never made me tell her stories.” Her plaintive tone was enough to push Cassie’s frustration into despair, and she felt tears pooling in her eyes.
She looked up at the ceiling, ensuring Brooke didn’t see as she blinked them away. “Tell me about that, then. Tell me about a story your mommy told you.”
“I—I feel sad when I think about that.” Brooke turned into her, pressing her face into the soft crook where her armpit and chest met. Cassie stroked her hair, smoothing it out and separating it into two clumps.
As she began to braid it in thick, loose plaits, she said, “It’s important to talk about her. That’s how we can make sure we never forget her. If you tell me a story about your mommy, I’ll tell you a story about a friend I used to have, someone who was special to me, if only for a little while. I’ll make it a fun story, Brookie; you’ll like it.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
#
“I really wish you would have just let your new daemon try!” Juliet subvocalized, walking beside Harriet and behind their corpo-sec escort—two bulky men wearing combat armor and holding boxy electro-SMGs as though they might be attacked at any moment.
“Daisy isn’t ready, Juliet. Try to remember that this is the corporation that designed me! They’re not going to have pushover ICE on their internal networks. Cracking into a media deck is one thing, but getting into their network will be a whole other can of worms!”
“Can of worms?” Juliet snorted as she subvocalized, and Harriet glanced at her.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” Juliet smiled at her. The lab tech had seemed a little more distant that morning, and Juliet couldn’t help wondering if everything was all right. She hoped she hadn’t gotten her in trouble; they’d had a good time the day before, laughing and joking perhaps a little too loudly, even teasing Kline together at breakfast. “Almost sneezed. What’s with the escort?”
“Oh, we have to use the central lift to get to the TMS pod. Protocol dictates a security escort when encountering non-briefed employees is a possibility.” Harriet waved her hand in a small circle as she spoke as if she wasn’t sure where to point.
Juliet nodded, glancing over her shoulder at the two corpo-sec officers following them. “Four, though?”
Harriet shrugged helplessly. “We can’t have anyone accosting you.” Juliet understood what that really meant; they didn’t want anyone interfering with her ongoing brainwashing. They didn’t want uncontrolled contact with anyone they might not have foreseen in their planning sessions. She scanned the corridor, looking for some kind of inspiration, some idea that would strike like a bolt of lightning and provide a solution for the impending scan. If she were honest, a real sense of dread was starting to set in. She didn’t know what she was going to do.
As if sensing her rising angst, Angel asked, “What are we going to do, Juliet?”
“I’m working on it!”
Angel started highlighting things on her AUI—weapons and cybernetic hardware on the two guards in front of her, cameras, doors, and even signage in the corridor. “Look at the men behind you again. We should start making a plan of action in case we have to make our move. It wouldn’t be ideal. Obviously, we don’t have the intel that would improve our odds much, but they will see that your memories are restored in that scan. Better to act before they have us locked in some kind of scanning pod!”
Juliet did as she asked, looking over her shoulder again, taking in the men’s armor—black visors under thick, polymer helmets, active body armor made of advanced polymers, belts adorned with stun batons, grenades, and extra batts for their electro-SMGs. She made the look quick, shuddering for effect. To cover her staring, she said, “It makes me nervous how they carry those big guns. Do they have to hold them like that?”
“Sorry, Juliet. They’re here to protect you, so don’t be nervous.”
Juliet nodded, trying to maintain her concerned expression while, in truth, one of the guard’s poor trigger discipline had given her an idea. She was sure the guns were smart enough to require the owner’s finger on the trigger to fire. They wouldn’t have biometric locks—there were better, more versatile solutions—but she was certain they were linked to their PAIs and couldn’t “misfire.” Still, if that dummy with his finger on the trigger decided to squeeze it at an inopportune time, that might cause a ruckus.
As she contemplated the possible outcomes, Juliet wondered if it would be enough. If WBD thought she needed a four-person armed escort to travel in an elevator, deep in the bowels of their facility, then surely they were worried about more than chance encounters with chatty employees. Was there a legitimate threat? What if one of her guards was a double agent? What if he didn’t fire a round into a wall or the floor but into one of her other guards?
Their escort cleared the elevator and motioned for Harriet and Juliet to step aboard. The guards took up positions around them, two in the back, two just inside the door, and then they ascended for a few seconds. Juliet tried to read the elevator display, but one of the corpo-sec brutes blocked it. When the door opened, two of the gun-toting escorts stepped out, and she heard them shout, “Clear the corridor! Move!”
“Jeez,” she muttered, and Harriet nodded.
“Too bad we couldn’t get one of these machines on our level. Budgets,” she sighed, shrugging.
As they walked down a corridor that felt identical to the one on the lower level, Juliet caught glimpses of employees walking in side passages, all wearing the same kinds of bodysuits that she and Harriet had on. After only one turn, she saw, over the shoulders of her front guards, a sign that read RADIOLOGY AND SCANNING. “Angel,” she subvocalized, “I have to do something. I have an idea, but it might be crazy. We might get shot . . . or Harriet.”
“We’re running out of time. The scanner is on the other side of that door. You’ll survive a gunshot.” Angel highlighted the door with the sign Juliet had already seen.
“Easy for you to say! Look harder! Are you sure there’s nothing like, I don’t know, wireless you can tap into? Something you could use to set off an alarm or—”
“Nothing I can pick up. They have wireless very locked down. Even if I could, it would point fingers your way.” As Angel replied, the door loomed close, and Juliet clamped down on her anxiety, shoving her reservations aside.
“Well, here goes nothing.” Juliet dredged up an emotion she rarely allowed herself to feel, even when she spoke to Doctor Ming. It was one of those things they’d beaten to death and that she’d then locked away in a box, hoping never to look at again. Still, she knew where it was, and when she pulled it out, she still felt raw. It was her memory of Don and Vikker—how it had felt when they’d led her into Vikker’s garage and drugged her. She remembered that feeling of betrayal as the two had laughed about her dying, how that betrayal had left her feeling sick—like she could never trust again.
Just in case that wasn’t enough, she remembered Murphy—remembered that hug right before her betrayal. She’d been a woman Juliet looked up to, a mother figure she’d never realized how much she wanted, and her betrayal had stung horribly, exponentially compounding her trust issues. Juliet let those memories and feelings wash over her, and then she grabbed onto them and pushed, indiscriminately sharing them with everyone around her. Almost simultaneously, she focused on the front-left guard’s SMG and, remembering all of the practice she’d done while bored in her hotel room on Callisto, mentally nudged the barrel toward his partner and pressed his finger down on the trigger with a spike of telekinetic energy.
Several things happened at once. The gun zwapped, firing a spray of hot, four-millimeter magnetic rods into the hip and thigh of the guard on the right. A deep voice screamed behind them, “Down! Down! Down!” A hand grabbed Juliet’s shoulder, yanking her back and down. She almost resisted, almost rolled with the motion to throw or tackle the clumsy jerk pulling on her, but she forced herself to go limp, falling onto her butt. Harriet whirled, eyes wide with shock and confusion, and Juliet managed to reach out and grasp her wrist, pulling her down with her.
The guard whom she’d targeted, the one she’d made shoot his comrade, never got a chance to explain. All three of the other guards opened fire, their guns zwapping in rapid steam-filled bursts of electromagnetic fire, launching dozens or, for all she could tell, hundreds of rounds into the “instigator.” The lighting in the corridor began to flash red, each pulse punctuated by a two-beat tone and a calm but authoritative feminine voice that said, “Clear all corridors. Lockdown procedures are in effect on decks C-7 through C-11.”
Juliet heard the fallout from her hasty distraction, saw the man she’d targeted for his poor trigger discipline bleeding into an ever-widening pool, felt one of the other guards snag her under the arms and drag her back toward the elevator, and could only focus on one thing: Had that woman said “decks?”
The two rear guards never gave her or Harriet a chance to stand. They dragged them, at double time, all the way to the elevator, guarding the door until it closed. The one who’d dragged Juliet, hands shaking with adrenaline, punched the control panel, sending the elevator down, and then, in a ragged voice, said, “Jesus! I can’t believe he’d do that! Fucking Rodney!”
“Get a grip, Fisher,” the other one said, tapping his visor and pointing at the camera in the corner. He turned to Harriet and held out a hand, helping her to stand. “We’re ordered to bring you back to your secured section. We’re still waiting for an all-clear; we don’t know if the assassination attempt was isolated or if there are other actors.”
“Assassination?” Juliet asked, helping herself to her feet, seeing as neither corpo-sec moved to give her a hand.
They ignored her, but Harriet cleared her throat. “What’s going on?”
The first officer, the more hysterical one, said, “We don’t know. A member of our unit flipped, as you saw. We’re at a loss. I’m sure we’re all going to go through a hell of a background investigation. Goddamn it!” He punched the wall just as the elevator opened again.
“Let’s move,” the other officer said, stepping out and sweeping the corridor with his gun. He motioned for everyone to follow, then led the way back to Harriet’s lab and Juliet’s prison. They didn’t leave them alone until they’d swept the area, including Juliet’s shower, for anything out of the ordinary. When they finally exited, she glimpsed several more heavily armed corpo-sec soldiers standing in the corridor.
Harriet punched the close and lock sequence on the door, then looked at Juliet. “I’m so glad he didn’t get a chance to shoot you.”
“I mean, are we sure I was a target? Why’d he shoot the other guard?”
“It doesn’t make sense, but my PAI has been running sims. It seems likely the guard who fired expected one of the others to join in his treachery.” She leaned against the wall, and Juliet could see the usual dark circles under her eyes were far more pronounced. “I just got a note from Kline that we’re locked down; there’s a massive investigation unfolding.”
“Gosh!” Juliet tried hard to play the freaked-out scrap-worker. Part of her tried to feel guilty about what had happened to the corpo-sec officer. She quickly silenced that tiny voice, remembering that those people were holding her prisoner. All she had to do was remember Barns and his furious last stand, remember that Hawkins and Lee were probably dead too. When she looked past that and remembered what WBD had done to her, the guilt completely evaporated—she wanted to kill more of them.
“I’m sorry, Juliet. I guess no TMS therapy today. Hopefully, they’ll get this situation under control, and we can get you rescheduled soon.” Harriet walked over to the open door to Juliet’s room. “I hate to, I don’t know, send you to your room, but I’m awfully shaky. I think I need to sit down, and you should be in there in case one of the big wigs comes down here to check on things.”
“Oh, yeah. No problem, Harriet. Are you going to be all right?”
“I’ve . . . I’ve never seen anyone die before.” Her eyes widened with horror, and she slapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, Juliet. That’s not professional at all. I just felt so betrayed when he started shooting! I knew what he was doing, that he meant to kill you and probably me too! I’m so glad the other security officers weren’t in on his plan!”
“Yeah,” Juliet nodded, walking toward the door, “I felt it too. I, uh, I wonder if I’ve seen that kind of thing before. I know some of my scars are from bullets . . .” She trailed off, feeling a little guilty for involving Harriet in that violent scene. Still, she wasn’t the one who’d put Harriet there. WBD was at fault for all of it. “I’m going to do some painting.”
“Okay. Good idea. I’ll keep you posted on your schedule changes.”
“Sounds good.” Juliet turned and flopped down on her couch as Harriet shut the door.
“Well, that wasn’t pretty, but it worked,” Angel said.
“I . . . feel like I should be upset, but I’m not. I don’t feel guilty. I feel like this is just the start, Angel. You don’t know what it felt like—I pushed betrayal into those guards at the same time I used telekinesis to fire the first guard’s gun. I’m sure that without my push, they would have subdued him. Whoever commands the corpo-sec around here is going to be freaking out. They’re going to assume there’s something dirty about all four of those guards, and if four are compromised—”
“Many others may also be. You’re right. You’ve greatly hindered them; this investigation will not be quick.”
“Another thing, Angel—did you notice what the emergency response AI said?”
“Decks.”
“Yep. We’re either on a station or a ship—a damn big one, with a gravity generator.”