Continuance (8 page)

Jason nodded. “Later.”

Forcing himself to relax, he took
a moment to collect himself, reminded why he was here. Now that it was safe to
look again, he touched a couple of controls to pull up the matching script. The
message he saw displayed was familiar:

Matching Records
Found: 0

I’ve still got
time,
he
told himself.
I just hope it’s enough.

A digital keening stabbed at
Jason’s ears, repetitive and insistent. He fumbled for the snooze on his AP
before scraping together enough consciousness to realize he’d already hit it
three times. Or was it four? Checking the time, he let his head fall back
against the pillow with a sigh, then shuffled across the chill floor to his
desk.

He’d stayed late at the lab,
feeding neuromaps into Arkive’s AI until he’d exhausted the entire data block,
and this morning he had an early meeting with Alex at Java 101. A week had
passed since their last meeting, and the hacker had messaged him with news of more
SLIDe data. But first, he needed to check the script still churning through the
bioprints from last week. Part of him wondered if the effort was wasted now.
His access to the Arkive data in the lab would be a more likely route to
Michelle. If he could find her biorecord, Chrysalis could just continue her. But
he couldn’t discount the possibility this mysterious second group – this
Viceroy – might have already done that. So he’d kept his older search scripts
running against Alex’s SLIDe data to cover the bases.

He waved a hand, and the desk’s
photoscreen came to life, the display hovering in the air above the clutter of
photonics, and empty soda containers. He flopped down in a swivel chair, still
rubbing sleep from his eyes.

Then he bolted to his feet,
instantly awake.

The chair toppled to the floor
behind him with a crash, but he scarcely noticed. He leaned close to make sure
he hadn’t imagined the output.

Matching Records
Found: 1

Target Match
Probability: 71%

Source SLIDe ID:
3420-238477

The photonics and soda containers
flew onto the floor as he swept them aside to make space.
A hit?
Goosebumps
rolled across his skin in waves, and his hands trembled as he clicked into the
details.
A hit!
The scan with the matching sample was recent – just over
a week old. He didn’t recognize SLIDe prefix, so it must have come from one of Alex’s
newer feeds.

The SLIDe!
Jason cursed as
he realized he’d been so focused on searching through the data that he’d
neglected to give any thought to what he’d do if he actually found something. He
had the SLIDe number, but Alex was the only one with the physical location for
each ID – the only one who could tell Jason where this one was.

Jason pounded a fist on the desk.
He picked up his AP to message Alex, hoping to catch him in time. Before he
could, the door opened behind him.

“I wondered what all the racket
was about,” Stuart said, leaning against the door frame. He was shirtless, and
from his disheveled hair, he’d just gotten out of bed too. From the annoyed
look on his face, the noise might have had something to do with it. “Are you in
here measuring yourself again?”

“What?”

Stuart eyed the overturned chair
and the mess on the floor. “Well, you seem a little frustrated, so I thought
maybe you were measuring…”

“No.” Jason gave him a withering
look. If he wanted to read excitement as frustration, though, so much the
better. “It’s nothing. I just remembered I have a paper due today, but I
completely forgot about it. No way I’ll be able to get it done in time now.”

“A paper. Right. Are you sure?
‘Cause you know they have stuff you can order off the cloud to enhance…”

“Listen, I’m sorry about the
noise, but it’s a little early for gutter humor. I need to get going.” He was
anxious to get to the meeting with Alex, and the last thing he wanted right now
was to shoot the breeze.

Stuart seemed unfazed by the
remark. “It’s
never
too early for gutter humor, but okay.”

“Everything okay, baby?”

The sound of a female voice
startled Jason. Ivory appeared in the doorway beside Stuart, her dark hair not
quite so tousled as his. She wore shorts and a mid-drift top, stretching up on
bare tip-toes to put a cheek against his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Stuart said, putting an
arm around the pale curve of her waist. “Jason’s just doing some early-morning
redecorating.”

Ivory glanced at the mess on the
floor, raising an eyebrow. “Hey, speediac.”

“Hey,” Jason sounded sheepish in
his own ears. Feeling self-conscious, he pulled a random shirt from the floor over
his head.

“So when can we come see you race
again?” she asked as Jason rummaged through a drawer for pants. “I’ve been
asking Stuart to go back.”

“Uhh…this weekend, I think.”
Jason stuffed his AP in his pocket, searching for his shoes.

“Cool. Wanna check it out, baby?”
she asked Stuart.

He looked back at her with a
knowing half-smile. “Definitely.” She gave a throaty giggle as he pulled her
back down the hallway.

Watching them go, Jason shook his
head, smiling in spite of himself as he headed into the garage. The car inside crouched
like a restless predator, glossy black and waiting to spring. A SLIDe noted
Jason’s presence, followed by a sound seldom heard any longer in the year 2089
– the rumble of a gasoline engine coming to life. As the garage door rose, sunlight
gleamed along sleek lines and chrome accents.

A relic in the modern age of
all-electric cars, the 2047 BMW M3 had been the pinnacle of fossil fuel
automotive technology. Few remained on the road, and this one was Jason’s prize
possession. Today, though – as on most days – it was simple urban
transportation.

“Sorry, baby. You have to stay on
the digital leash today,” Jason said, climbing inside.

A heads-up display appeared
across the windshield. In the center, a message flashed in red:

Autonav Engaged.
Enter Destination.

He selected Java 101from the list
of presets, and the autonav accelerated smoothly into traffic.

Gray skies threatened rain, and
as the car got underway, he tried contacting Alex. By now, he’d either be on
his way, or already waiting at the shop, but at least Jason could let him know
he was running behind. Alex wasn’t online, though, and when Jason’s attempt to
send a voice call ended up in voice mail, he disconnected, deciding to try
again in a couple of minutes.

As his M3 cruised the preset
route, Jason agonized over the unhurried pace set by the autonav. He didn’t
really object to the autonav networks that governed traffic in all of the cities
and on the interstates these days, but in
this
car, riding along as a
passenger while the computer drove from point A to point B felt like taking a
pony ride on a racehorse.

Unbelievable. A
hit.

For over a year, he’d been
churning through SLIDe records, grinding through an ocean of data, literally
bit-by-bit, searching for this very thing. Searching without any real hope of
success. He hadn’t realized that last part until this morning, hadn’t admitted
it to himself, but now that the hope was real, he knew it was true. At times
he’d considered giving up and moving on, maybe with someone like Katelynn. But
now…

She’s really out
there.
That meant Viceroy. Again, Jason found himself wondering about them. Why they
were active, but not working with Chrysalis. Again, he found himself drawing
the same conclusion. It didn’t matter.

As he was about to try Alex
again, a plaintive beep came from the control console, and the autonav flashed
a message in red.

Destination
unavailable. Rerouting to nearest available alternate.

“What the hell? No!” Jason
pounded the dash, regretting it immediately as he felt a bruise on his hand
from doing the same to his desk earlier.

When Trans Control took a
location offline, it was usually to deal with some type of emergency service
response. A fire, or an ambulance call in the vicinity. Jason checked the nav
map on the HUD to see where the reroute would take him, and how much later he’d
be. It could have been worse. The autonav locked in on an adjacent shopping
center, half a block away from Java 101. He’d be able to cover the rest on foot
in a couple of minutes.

He couldn’t see the shop yet, but
as he got closer, he scanned the area for signs of anything unusual. Nothing.
The car turned into the shopping center, and he left it in the back of a
megastore parking lot. As he half walked, half jogged over curbs and around
parked cars, a few chilly droplets of rain left tiny beads on the lenses of his
smartglasses.

His approach brought him up
behind the row of shops that housed Java 101. He made his way around to the front
side, checking the time.
Damned autonav!
He was twenty minutes late. Rounding
the corner at a jog, his anger left him in a rush as he saw why the autonav had
cut off traffic to this address.

Oh, God.
He stopped like he’d
hit a brick wall.

Several police cars sat parked in
front of Java 101, arranged to prevent entry or exit. A pair of officers stood
at the front door, standing guard. One wore a street uniform in dark blues,
watching the parking lot in the direction opposite Jason. The other was dressed
in a dark suit, speaking into the air on a voice call. Whereas Jason’s Ray Bans
were slim, this man’s smartglasses looked more rugged, with thick angular
frames packed with photonics and sensors.
DIA.

 Jason’s sudden appearance caught
the man’s attention, and his gaze locked on while he continued speaking on the
call. Jason fought the impulse to dodge back around the corner and run. But that
would only guarantee the worst possible outcome. Instead, heart pounding, he
forced himself to walk along the storefronts the way he’d been going. Toward
the spider.

I’m just a
gawker. Some yokel kid staring at the scene.
After a couple of steps, Jason could
make out what the man was saying. His voice sounded like he’d been chewing gravel.

 “…still securing the area. No.
Only one of them. The other one must have…”

Jason took the first door he came
to, finding himself inside the Thai bistro next to the coffee shop. The place
was small, and only a couple of dimly lit tables sat occupied. The smell of
unfamiliar food drifted from the kitchen in the back. Jason took one of the
stools along a bar-style seating area that lined the front window. From this
vantage point, he could make out what was going on next door, could see the spider
still talking on the phone.

A server appeared beside Jason, a
short man with black hair. “Ready to order?”

Jason hadn’t bothered to look at
the menu, had no idea what a Thai place would serve for breakfast.

“Uh, do you have a special?” he
asked without taking his eyes from the window.

“Rice congee and youtiao.”

“Sounds delicious.”

He watched while the spider
continued to talk and the other cop stood guard. The few sprinkled rain drops
turned into a light drizzle, coating the front window with gray mist. Jason heard
a tap on the counter beside him and turned to see the server set what looked
like thin bread sticks next a bowl of white, lumpy porridge.

The spider finished his call. He
turned to the uniformed officer and said something, sweeping a pointed finger
across the parking lot. Then he turned and walked toward the door to the bistro.

Jason felt the blood drain from
his face. Frantically, he reached into his front pocket and grabbed his AP,
searching the area for some place to hide it. The counter where he sat offered
no cover, and nothing else within reach offered any better prospects. Then he
saw it – a six-inch ledge along the ceiling, several feet overhead. Filled with
oriental-style decorations and nick-nacks, it ran the length of the window-side
bar. Jason glanced around the room. The server had disappeared into the
kitchen, and the other two patrons seemed to be paying no attention.

The spider reached the door,
extending a hand to pull it open.

Jason
concentrated
,
focusing on the ledge, its angle in relation to his body, the distance. He felt
the weight of the AP in his hand, its size and shape. The ledge. The AP. In his
mind, he saw a line connecting them, that
might
connect them if he
tossed the AP just….so.

As the front door swung open
Jason flicked his wrist, releasing the AP along the trajectory he’d seen in his
mind. As soon as he let go, he snapped his head down to look out the front
window without waiting for the outcome. The door closed behind the spider with
a thump. At the same instant, Jason caught a fainter noise as his AP slid, more
than landed, onto the ledge above.