Page 20

19

THE PLAN

“ H e’s on his way back.”

I looked over as I softly closed the door to the guest room.

I didn’t answer until I’d walked all the way into the living room and then into the kitchen. I turned on the espresso maker and began making myself a cappuccino while Black watched me from the other side of the volcanic stone counter.

I started to ask if he’d learned anything new, then realized I knew the answer to that already. He would have told me right away if he’d learned anything.

It was just some compulsive thing that made me want to ask.

I’d seen the news about Ben Frasier and his psychopathic companion, Rory Ungerman. I remembered Rory as well as I remembered Ben; he and Frasier had been an inseparable puzzle at the time, and not only because I couldn’t for the life of me make out if they were a couple or not, despite Frasier supposedly being married to a woman.

Rory positively repelled me.

He went out of his way to be shallow, cruel, vile, and trollish. He reveled in his ability to do whatever he wanted behind the protection of Ben’s wealth, and viewed anyone who wasn’t rich as less than human. He lorded his sick views over anyone who would listen.

I remember thinking Ben was the “normal” one.

Now I knew Ben was just the one who bothered to wear a mask.

So many of Black’s rich “colleagues” in New York City seemed to have something deeply wrong with them. That whole culture struck me as parasitic, anti-human, anti-decency, and extremely gross. Angel felt the same way I did. She said she desperately needed a shower after each of those meet-and-greets, and thought that entire group was badly in need of a serious ethical and moral transplant, if not full-blown lobotomies.

I shook the memories off with an effort.

Like everything else lately, that whole experience in New York felt much more emotionally immediate than it had in a long time.

I stuck my mug under the double spout of the espresso maker, and flicked the silver switch. The machine grumbled into life.

Seconds later, out poured out dark foamy liquid.

“She still asleep?” Black asked.

His voice was gruff that time, all the heat gone.

I forced myself to think about that, about her, about Black, about right now. I did it while I filled a metal pitcher with milk, and stuck it into the milk steamer.

I nodded. “Yes,” I said, turning it on. “I left Panther with her.”

My milk started to swirl in hypnotizing rings.

I thought of something then, and turned. “You know, I asked her again. About the photos. On your bureau?”

“Oh?” Black said politely.

“Yeah. It’s funny, but you know who she asked me about? Which person it was who interested her?” I paused, waiting to see if he’d have a guess. “It was Manny.”

“Manny?” Black blinked, real surprise in his eyes. “Why?”

I shrugged, holding up my hands. “No idea. When I asked her about him, she clammed up again. But Manny was the person she’d been staring at in your old Vietnam photos. She looked for him in every photo in the apartment.”

“Weird,” Black muttered.

It was weird. I suspected Black would have found it even weirder if he’d seen just how intense Aura had gotten about those pictures. She’d stared at Manny like she’d seen a ghost. She’d picked them up and looked at them like she was memorizing each one.

“You want one?” I asked him, motioning towards my drink.

He shook his head, but sent me a liquid pulse of warmth.

“We need to report in to Prometharis… Gorren, really.” Black exhaled. He rested his hands on the counter and leaned on them. “She left me some pretty pissed off messages about what we did to Rucker’s mansion. She doesn’t know the half of it, of course, but her tech team picked up that someone copied files off his private server. That was enough to have her frothing at the mouth and threatening to sue.”

“She can’t, can she?” I pulled the portafilter off the espresso machine, and knocked the wet grinds into our compost bin.

Black scoffed. “I’d love to see her try. I’ve got Larry on it, but I think he could do this one in his sleep. And I haven’t even started threatening her yet.”

Lawrence “Larry” Farraday was Black’s lawyer.

Well, one of his lawyers, but definitely his best lawyer, and the only one he considered a close, personal friend. Larry scared the crap out of other lawyers, despite being an incredibly sweet and almost derpy guy outside the courtroom. I wasn’t really worried about us being sued, especially given how many laws Prometharis was currently breaking, but also because of Larry.

I felt a flicker of apprehension, anyway.

“Don’t worry, wife,” Black said in a lower voice. “Honestly, I think she deeply regrets involving me in any of this. I suspect she dangled The Lion Hunters Club because she thought I might be a member. I definitely think she assumed I was ‘in the club’ with Rucker and those other fucks, and that I wouldn’t ask uncomfortable questions, or do anything to rock the boat. All this bluster is because she’s realizing I couldn’t give two shits about protecting my fellow billionaires, and I’d happily burn Rucker’s empire to the fucking ground.”

“Does Gorren know about the girl?” I asked.

Black combed long fingers through his black hair.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I would guess not, based on things she’s said. I suspect she more thought we were tearing the place apart, looking for Rucker’s tech secrets, and maybe for blackmail material. But that’s only a guess. The I can’t fucking read her thing is still incredibly irritating. It forces me to guess much more than I’d like.”

Of course. I’d forgotten that.

I carefully poured the milk I’d steamed into my two shots of espresso.

“Any more insight around the implant you found?” I asked.

Black’s scowl deepened.

“No,” he said. “That’s part of why I need Jem to get his ass back here.” He gave me a serious look. “Did Holo ever figure out what Rucker put in the girl?”

I inclined my head in a noncommittal way. “Sort of. I’m sure you bringing him the prototype will help. He says hers is located at the base of her skull and neck, right where sight-restraint collars normally attached on Old Earth. He couldn’t find anything else on her that explained why her sight is blocked.”

“Can he get it out?”

I took the first sip of my cappuccino and hesitated.

“Probably,” I said carefully. “He obviously wants to remove it, but he’d like a second opinion from Jem first, and he’d really like information we can probably only get from the science team at Prometharis. He’s leery about doing anything until he knows he won’t accidentally kill her trying to remove it. He also says it definitely has some kind of organic component… at least an interface, if not organics in the primary tech. It emits a field of some kind, and he thinks that’s what strangles and controls her aleimi… but he can’t tell for certain what will happen if he takes it out. It’s unlikely they have booby-traps like they did on Old Earth, but it could have unintended consequences.”

I paused, watching Black think about this.

“Can we get Holo access to the science team on Oyster Point, do you think?” I asked. “It would mean a much more aggressive approach than last time.”

Black scowled. “It sounds like we’ll have to.”

“So we should put off calling the cops then,” I ventured cautiously. “At least another day. We don’t want to be in there, pushing and reading scientists, not with cops all over the building investigating a murder case.”

Black nodded slowly.

Like me, he wasn’t happy about that, but he knew I was right.

“What do you think this is really about?” I asked. “With the shooter, I mean? Is it really about the tech? Or is it just revenge?”

Black visibly pulled himself out of his thoughts.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, sounding tired. “There’s still some chance it isn’t about the girl at all. Or the tech. In addition to the implants and the sex-trafficking, Rucker was into some really weird shit. He was a big believer in a tech religion called ‘Longtermism.’ He’s a fanatic, from what I know… wouldn’t fucking shut up about it if he thought he was around ‘like-minded’ types, or possible converts. Including me on a few occasions.”

I nodded, brows knitted as I sipped my coffee.

“That would track with the implants,” I said.

Black nodded. “It would. He wants to upload human consciousness into machines. He’s obsessed with immortality. He was also big on large-scale genocide so a handful of the “chosen” can live out their lives… forever, basically… on a pristine, nanotech-repaired Earth that’s like a huge resort for rich fucks like him. The chum of the masses, of course, don’t get to play. They’re slotted to be slave labor, mostly on off-planet colonies, mining interests, etc., all for the “greater good” of accumulating resources for those chosen few. Robots and A.I. will do all the rest.”

“Lovely,” I muttered.

The idea wasn’t entirely foreign to me, of course.

I’d read about the ideology Black was talking about. It was big in certain circles of high-tech, as Black said. It even came up with my clients a few times.

“It’s modern day eugenics,” Black said. “And he was one of its biggest evangelicals. So yeah, I’m sure there were a number of people who wanted Lucian dead.”

He gave me a grim look.

“You can also probably see why seers would interest that lot,” he added. “Longer lifespans. Regenerative ability. Sight skills with the potential to control others. Generally speaking, seers have higher I.Q.s, faster reflexes, more physical strength, greater resistance to disease. Not to mention the sexual component for someone like Rucker.”

I felt sick as I turned over his words.

“Yeah,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

“Jem and I both think the shooter is a seer,” Black added. “So it’s really a question of motive. Either they’re doing this for the girl, and want her back… or their motive is something else entirely. Either way, I doubt this was a hired hit. I think it’s personal.”

His eyes left mine as he looked out over the view from our penthouse windows.

The Bay Bridge sparkled in the distance, reflecting sunlight.

“Normally, I’d just tip my cap to whoever killed Rucker, and wash my hands of it,” Black admitted, gruff. “Same with Frasier and Ungerman. But we need to know who this seer is. Even apart from the girl, I’m not crazy about random seers running around murdering humans… even if they’re murdering the right humans.”

His gold eyes grew serious.

“The big thing is, doc, whoever they are, they’re risking exposure. This whole thing is a race-exposure nightmare. We need to find that seer and talk him down. We need to remove those fucking implants from everyone Lucian put them in. We need to scrub any hint of organic machines from Prometharis, destroy all prototypes and data about how he created them, and mind-wipe all the scientists. This is now about keeping our anonymity on this world. It’s about protecting ourselves while we still can.”

I nodded slowly, turning over his words.

“I understand,” I said. I did. “So we should remove Gorren’s implant first,” I suggested. “Before Aura’s. Maybe Holo should go with you today, and remove it onsite. Then he would know for sure if he could do it for the girl.”

Black flinched, then froze.

He looked over at me, and raised an eyebrow.

“She’s more expendable than Aura,” I said, a touch defensive. “She’s complicit in all of this. We should wait on Jem, of course, and do it as safely as possible, but we shouldn’t drag this out. Also, if we manage to get the implant out of Gorren, we could read her for what’s actually going on at that damned company. Maybe it will help us find this homicidal seer.”

Black smirked. “My black-hearted wife.”

“Purely your influence, I’m sure,” I retorted.

“No, I like it,” he assured me. “It’s hot. I like ruthless Miriam. I especially like ruthless Miriam Black.” He tilted his head in a seer’s shrug. “Of course, Gorren probably can’t tell us what the shooter is after. Especially if she has no idea about the girl. But you’re right. She might know more than she realizes.”

I nodded, feeling my shoulders relax. “Like you said, we don’t know for sure this killing spree is about the girl, so we need to look for other motives. And we need those questions about Prometharis answered. Gorren is the one person we know for absolute certain is high enough in the company to know where all the bodies are buried. All we need to do is––”

“Perform possibly fatal brain surgery on an innocent human?”

Humor colored his voice, but I could feel him watching me.

I tried to muster some remorse for what I was suggesting, but really couldn’t.

Something about Gorran made me think she wouldn’t have cared, even if she had known about the girl. She’d been enabling Rucker for years, getting him and his companies out of trouble, supporting his efforts to make his twisted ideologies into reality. It was hard to feel much pity for her, especially given how many “lesser” humans Rucker and his scientific team likely experimented on to make the brain implant she wore functional.

“I wouldn’t exactly call her ‘innocent,’ Black,” I muttered darkly.

He sat with that for a second, then grunted.

“Nor would I, wife,” he assured me. “Nor would I.”

I sipped my cappuccino and gazed out over the bay.

“We still have no idea if this shooter is done killing people,” I ventured next. I glanced cautiously at Black, saw him looking at me, eyes shrewd. “He could come looking for the girl when he’s finished, so we need to be ready. We should expect that. Shouldn’t we?”

Black’s gold eyes flickered.

They caught the morning sun through one of the large windows of the penthouse.

I saw the understanding there.

“Yes,” he said darkly. “Yes, we should, wife.”