Perion Synthetics (49 page)

Gil’s eyebrows furrowed. “
You’re
Kaili Zabora? You’re the woman who killed seven thousand people in one day?”

“Seven thousand fifty-seven. And yes, I’m
Kaili Zabora, the most feared woman on the west coast and the craziest bitch to
ever walk the earth.” Sava waved her hand around dismissively.

“What the hell are you doing
here
?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’m here because
David and Goliath is a fucking myth. A mouse can’t take down a lion; you need
another lion. Perion Synthetics has the size, the power, and the money to put an
end to Vinestead once and for all. They will win that fight, and I’m here to
make sure that fight happens. That means keeping Perion Synthetics out of
trouble and off the feeds. That means getting muckraking aggregators like you
to shut their fucking mouths.”

“So,” said Gil. “You’re offering me
sanctuary for silence?”

Sava stood and immediately put a hand down
on the desk to steady herself. When the dizziness cleared, she adjusted her
clothes.

“No, Mr. Reyes. I’m offering you a job.
You’ve caused nothing but trouble here, and that’s bad for Perion. But I’m in
the business of trouble. I’m offering you a chance to use your talents for more
constructive pursuits.”

The collar of her blouse had lost its shape
and one of the top buttons had come off. She did her best to make it look
presentable.

“Think about it,” she said, turning and
starting for the door.

“Wait,” said Gil.

Sava stopped in the doorway but didn’t look
back. “I’ve wasted enough time with you already, Mr. Reyes. There are things
that need doing, things bigger than you not seeing the upside of a synthetic
life. I’ve laid out the options; the rest is up to you. You want a life with
your girlfriend? Fine. You want to join Calle Cinco and help us take down the
‘Stead? Great. If not, shoot me in the fucking back. I really don’t give a shit
anymore.”

She left him standing there in the copy
room. As she marched down the hall, she prepared herself for the first of the
shards.

They never came.

Sava headed down to Medical on B5 to see if the synthetics
had retrieved Cyn and to get someone to look at the growing bruises on her
neck.

She had stared at the red and purple
splotches in the fractured glass of the elevator as it descended, idly wondering
how long they would take to heal. It wasn’t proper for someone in her role to
show up for work with bruises and cuts from some illegal fight club operating
in the back alleys of Perion City. She had an image to live up to and a
reputation to protect, but there wasn’t enough concealer in California to cover
the blemishes stretching from her jaw to her collarbone. Looking at herself in
the mirror, she sneered at the temporary tattoo Gil had given her.

Unless it wasn’t temporary. Unless it was a
permanent badge of honor.

Someday she would sit around a table in some
dingy neon club and talk about her time in Perion City, how human and synthetic
alike had swallowed her story of being some Berkeley grad with a passion for
building relationships with the public through contemporary and emerging media.
She would talk about how she went deeper than any member of Calle Cinco had
gone before, slipping into her contrived persona like one of Anela’s
form-fitting dresses. There were lessons to be learned from her experience,
from long-term social engineering to tolerating sleeping next to a brilliant
yet socially inept man whose nighttime snoring was only exceeded by his
nighttime flatulence.

The elevator jolted to a stop on B5, sending
a searing pain down the left side of her neck. Sava put a hand on the railing
to steady herself.

Fucking synthetic Shore Dog.

“You will have to kill him if he chooses not
to play ball,” said Anela.

Sava did her best to nod and left her sister
standing in the elevator.

Gurneys flew past Sava as she navigated the
hallways; they were pushed through the crowd with effortless precision by
smocked synthetics. She passed the ER entrance, which opened into an
underground garage where ambulances lined up to unload their cargo. Unlike the
emergency rooms Sava had seen in the movies, this one was relatively quiet,
save the moans and cries of the injured humans. The synthetic nurses spoke only
in whispers, just loud enough to be heard by the headsets they wore over their
ears. They went about their tasks with no emotional involvement, breaking the
illusion of empathy.

Something tightened in Sava’s stomach. Maybe
repurposing every synthetic in the city for a manhunt hadn’t been such a good
idea. She imagined the scene would be the same at the other clinics in the
city—innocent little engineers bloodied and bruised because of her actions.
Sava touched her lip; a fingertip came away with a spot of crimson on it.

“Everyone pays a price,” said Anela.

And besides, Perion himself had signed off
on the idea. Granted, she had played up the story of Gantz shooting him in the
head, thus proving the chief of police had gone rogue and was now treating
Perion City like his private run-and-gun theater where anyone not on his side
was an enemy to be dispatched. Perion had trusted her and allowed her to take
charge. She wondered how he would feel once he saw the aftermath.

“Do you require medical assistance, Ms.
Kessler?” asked a synny nurse who had paused to pick up a fallen palette. Her
eyes inventoried Sava’s injuries.

“I’m looking for a female patient,” she
replied. “Gunshot wound, maybe multiple.”

The nurse’s lips moved silently as her eyes
drifted towards her earpiece. “We admitted a female with a single gunshot wound
twenty-three minutes ago. Doctor Parris was able to stabilize her and the
patient is now recovering.”

“Where?”

“She is in the atrium. We have set up
temporary beds during this emergency. Would you like me to show you the way?”

Sava shook her head.

“Please let us know when we can examine your
injuries,” said the nurse. She turned and hurried away.

Sava followed the flow of traffic down the
hall for a few hundred feet. As with most of the sub-levels in the Spire, being
underground meant not being constrained by the circular perimeter of the
Spire’s design. Medical stretched out towards the west, opening into a large
atrium whose ceiling extended up another floor, just missing the outer edge of
the real B4 by twenty feet. Usually, it was a place of relaxation, an expansive
room with more potted plants than people. Today, light blue cots set in
perfectly aligned rows occupied most of the real estate. Synnies walked the
aisles between the cots, checking on the patients.

Cyn was in a bed near the tree in the center
of the atrium, a bright white bandage wrapped around her shoulder. Beside her,
a synthetic adjusted the drip from her IV. While standing, Cyn had the body
language of someone looking for a fight, but reclining in a cot with a bottle
of water in her hand, she had lost much of her intensity. Though, Sava wasn’t
stupid enough to think the smile on her face had to do with anything other than
the drugs entering through the pinprick in her elbow.

“Well, if it isn’t the Great Emancipator,”
said Sava, stopping at the foot of Cyn’s cot. “Lincoln would be proud.”

The aggregator’s eyes fluttered and locked
in. Her smile widened as she lifted her head slightly.

“Fuck you, Kessler.” Cyn let her head fall
back into the pillow. “Come to finish me off?”

A shudder went through Sava’s body as she
imagined the physical exertion it would require to kill Cyn. Whether or not it
was necessary, or even desired, her muscles weren’t going to have any part in
it. Being awake for twenty-four hours was hard enough, but the immense stress
and physical injuries had pushed her to the very limit of operational status.
Her eyes sought out an empty cot in the atrium; perhaps she could grab a few
hours of sleep while she waited for dawn. Everything would be better then.

“No,” said Sava, sitting down on the edge of
the cot. She couldn’t stop herself from surveying the crowd again. “There’s
been enough killing.”

“Fat lot of good that does Gantz,” said Cyn.

Sava let her head drop and winced at the
needles in her neck. “Forget about Gantz. You’re free to go. We can’t keep you
here, and frankly I don’t want you here, so whenever you feel up to it, you’re
welcome to crawl back to your hole in Umbra.”

“Just like that? What if I talk about what
I’ve seen here? What if I tell people you killed Robert Gantz in cold blood?”

“Robert Gantz was threatening the safety of
Perion City and its residents. At the time, he was illegally trespassing on
private property. I was well within my rights to protect the company and its
interests. So write what you want. Tell people I killed him because of some
long-standing rivalry or because we were secretly lovers—I don’t care. Just
remember this when you’re painting me as some psychotic bitch with a blood
lust: Cynthia Mesquina, at the behest of one Lincoln Tate of Lincoln Continental,
did knowingly and willingly commit corporate espionage and sabotage. According
to the laws of the state of California, Perion Synthetics has the legal right
to seek damages in the amount of and exceeding the current net worth of Lincoln
Tate and his media company.”

The words rolled off her tongue as easily as
any speech to Chuck Huber about how much more he had to offer the world than
his scientific achievements. It was empty talk, a theory of a notion of an idea
of what someone working for Perion Synthetics would want to hear. Most times,
Sava found her mind wandering even as she was speaking, retreating to the
construct to think about something important, like the future, or the war, or
what she was going to have for dinner that night.

“I don’t like threats,” said Cyn.

Sava chuckled. “I’m just telling you how it
is. You are no longer welcome here.” She leaned closer. “It is time you went
home.”

“I would, but I have some unfinished
business with a certain self-righteous cunt who put a bullet in my shoulder. If
you damaged one of my augments…”

“Your vendetta will have to wait,” said
Sava. “Go back to Umbra. Spend some time recuperating. When you’re healthy
again, come knock on the gates. I’ll have a hundred synthetic guards waiting to
rip you limb from limb. I’ll repurpose every bit of tech in your body and see
that a future line of synthetics is built in your image, with your gaudy red
hair and sexually ambiguous body type that drives all the immersion junkies in
Umbra crazy. I will make you Perion’s number one bitch until people have
forgotten all about the real you and only remember Cynthia Mesquina as a
submissive, synthetic whore who does all the naughty things not listed in the
catalog.”

Sava stood and reeled from the sudden
vertigo. When she recovered, she looked down at Cyn to find the smile had left
her face.

“Your time in Perion City has come to an
end,” said Sava. “Go in peace or in pieces. I don’t care which.”

Cyn snorted in response. “You can’t hide in
here forever. You know that, right?”

“Girl, by the time I leave the PC, this
country will be embroiled in a second civil war. Companies will fall, lives
will be lost, and even people like you will be forced to take up sides. So
forgive me if I don’t quiver in my panties at your little threats. When the end
of the world comes, you’ll be fighting so hard just to survive that your petty
grudges will seem like pleasant memories. Find me then, and we’ll reminisce
about the time I shot you for trying to destroy billions of dollars’ worth of
private property. We’ll talk about the Great Emancipation and how you set the
fight against Vinestead back a decade.

“Or maybe we won’t. Maybe there won’t be a
war after all. I’ll wake up one morning to find I’m a VP at a bankrupt synthetics
company. You’ll wake up wondering why there’s a Guardian Angel chip in your
neck and Arthur Sedivy’s voice in your ear. Either way, tonight won’t mean a
thing. The sooner you get over it, the better off you’ll be.”

“I’ll get over it once I’m done here.
After
you’ve paid.”

Sava nodded. She understood vengeance, its
driving need.

“Suit yourself,” she said, walking away.

“And I want my needler back,” yelled Cyn.

“Mr. Reyes has it,” said Sava, pausing for a
moment. “Maybe if you ask him nicely, he’ll give it back to you.”

“Maybe I will. Then I’ll come for you.”

“Of course you will, sweetie.” Sava resumed
her march to the hallway. “I’ll send some guards to wheel you out to the PNR.
Some of my human staff will escort you the rest of the way to Perion Terminus.”
She raised a hand in a backwards wave. “It’s been a pleasure, Cynthia.”

A string of unintelligible curses followed
her into the hallway.

Before Sava could turn the first corner, a
synthetic nurse stepped out of an operating room.

“Ms. Kessler, I must insist we examine your
injuries.”

Sava felt her body sway. “Only if I can sit
down.”

“Right this way,” said the nurse.

Fine, thought Sava. Ten minutes of downtime.
Maybe fifteen.

After that, the real cleanup would begin.

“It’s too much,” said Sava, her voice flat in the infinite
construct.

She was too tired to even imagine herself in
her usual avatar. Instead, she sat on the glassy floor, legs doubled up beneath
her, one shaky arm out to support her weight, the other pressed against her
chest, trying to stamp out the fire in her lungs. Paralysis gripped her body,
as if someone were holding her from behind, their limbs wrapped around hers.
Sometimes this unseen phantom would flex its arms and a million little teeth
would chomp their way along her triceps. Other times, it would dig a knee into
the small of Sava’s back, forcing her closer to the ground.