Rogue-ARC (38 page)

He fairly exploded. “Hey, fuck you, asshole.” Clearly, this was not going the way he wanted.

“Me? I’m not deciding people’s fates based on perceptions.” I paced around the room, though there was nowhere to take more than a couple of steps.

“No, you just kill at random.”

“Not any more. I kill specifically. I’m here to kill you.”

“You have to catch me first.”

“I have caught you.”

“Not enough. I beat you last time.”

I snickered and shook my head. “You hurt me slightly last time. It’s not the first time I’ve been cut.” I wasn’t going to admit to it. I’d used that in combat before I met him. Never let them see you bleed. Be dispassionate and unkillable. “How’s your elbow?”

“Elbow’s fine,” he said, but didn’t sound sure. “You were hurt enough. You’re not so tough.”

That was a handy opening. “So says the guy who never actually went through Operative training.”

“I qualified for everything. You ran it yourself.”

“Yeah, but it was rushed and second rate. You never had the stress the rest of us did.”

“The mission was that.”

“Just keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll believe it. I figured to lose all you accessories in the process. That’s how I had you filed mentally. Accessories. You were brought along to die regardless. If it saved one real Operative, it was worth it.”

“I think I proved my point. I survived.”

“Not for much longer. I’m sure you can figure out the ending, if you think hard enough.”

I wanted to probe him into thinking I had all the cards. Extreme paranoia leads to mistakes, which I’d exploit.

“Ending?”

“How you’re going to die. You waste a lot of time on graphic finales. It’s like you’re some kind of artist who craves recognition. Whereas, I want your death to be silent and unnoticed. I’m sure you can figure it out.”

I disconnected.

He didn’t call back, though I’d hoped he would.

I’d hurt him. He’d brought up my daughter. I’d not taken the bait. He couldn’t know if she was dead or raised somewhere on Earth. He’d been a good man, helping with delivery, paying attention to Chelsea, acting daddylike in a lot of ways. He thought me utterly inhuman. Good. He didn’t know she existed, so he couldn’t rush in to save her, or use her against me. Good.

“Nothing concrete,” Silver said. “The signal was broken and resent from several sources. But I’m pretty sure he’s in this city.”

“That’s good. It narrows it down. He’s scared and going to get clumsy. It’s very important that we not.”

“I understand,” she said, with a firm nod. Then she trembled.

“I can’t do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

“I can’t hack an unknown phone within divs, hours.”

“He’s had a lot of experience.”

“He’s better than me, and I don’t know how to avoid it. He scrambled his own signal in a couple of hours.”

“He’s got resources already set. We’re making it up as we go. I suspect he cultivated friends of Timurhin. In fact, Timurhin may not even know this is happening.”

“I know, but—”

I cut her off. “Silver, I have every confidence in you.” I didn’t, actually. I’d rather have had Kimbo, but he was the target and the loon, she was all I had, and she was probably second best. And of course, this is what she needed to hear. “I’m not worried about what he comes up with. He’s desperate. Just keep me going.”

She nodded and got the quivers under control.

I said, “I trained him. I trained them all, with a lot of personal attention. I managed while we all shared knowledge. He needs to prove he’s better than me. At the same time, he’s scared of me. No one else could have stuck with him this long. We’re going to keep dialing up the tension until he slips. There’s no sportingship here. If I get a shot at his back, I’ll take it. If you do, you take it. If we can mine something to blow him up, we do it, even if takes some collaterals. If we can get him beaten to death in custody, we do that, too, though it’s not something to plan on because it’s not effective. If they half beat him to death, I’ll walk up and gap him as he’s released in a powered chair. He knows this, too, and will try to flee if he can, kill us if he can’t.”

She nodded, looking young and scared and with the tremble again.

“Endgame,” I said.

Then I pulled power and circuit from the phone.

“Scratch that one,” I said. “Also, be ready to bolt in a hurry.”

“I am,” she said. “This place is creepy. It’s like a prison.”

“Very much, and worse since the War, it looks.”

She suddenly turned back to her system. “Silly,” she said.

“What?”

“The comm system and my sensors can’t backtrack the phone, but the provider can.”

“Careful,” I advised.

“I’ve got a customer code, and now to request account . . . and slam it . . . and there. Request log, reverse for incoming, and I’ve got it. Disconnecting.”

“You’ve got it?”

“He’s two buildings over. Would he be doing something there?”

“Let’s look, and let’s get out of here. We’ll find transient space. Pull all phones and comm unless we’re using them.”

She disabled the spares, but left the console unit up while we both went through news, event listings and schedules.

The problem with the megascrapers is they’re huge. Four hundred meters square by five hundred tall huge, some to a thousand. Since we’d blown several tens of them into crematoria during the War, through sabotage, they had very, very tight security on the technical areas. They’d shoot kids and then claim terrorist intent. But that wouldn’t stop us; the military attack included nukes, kinetic energy weapons and destructive star drive points detonated overhead, but they were terrified, and played on, the threat of infiltrators.

She said, “Three conferences over there. One medical, one materials science, one software.”

“What about the software?”

“Marketing.”

“What’s the medical?” I was wondering if someone had failed to save a life and relatives were petty or frazzled enough to want revenge, but that didn’t sound like something he’d take. Materials science. Had a building collapsed? That would be possible. I said so.

“Looking,” she said. “This is going to take time, though and he knows where we are.”

“He’s also got to make money. I’m secondary, and dangerous. I need to know where to get him.”

“I can take one show, you the other, I call when I see anything?”

“Not enough response time.”

I’d been down less than half a div, barely over an Earth hour, and we were this close that fast. Something would go wrong. Something had to.

She said, “I’m not finding any reason to kill a materials scientist or professor. It would have to be personal. No major deaths in medical. Is it just a building resident?”

“Possible, but few people very high profile live in these. Box Proles low down, Box Tops up high, middle class managers, engineers, et cetera. The management are resident and similar to a city council.”

“Guests?”

“No idea, and hard to tell. What’s the marketing convention?”

“Node-based Broadcast Direct Marketing Strategies.”

“There!” I almost shouted.

“Yeah, everyone hates those fuckers.”

“Organizer? Lead speaker?”

“Organizer’s been in the news a lot. He’s milking the notoriety and getting more business from it. He’s found loopholes in Earth’s laws and several regions.”

“Him.”

I was up and moving.

“How are you getting in?”

“They’re spammers. They won’t exactly close off access to potential customers. You lead. I’ll follow.”

She grabbed a handful of things, stuffed them into pockets and tossed my chip and a new phone at me.

“Look the part,” she said.

I remembered now, and it still applied. Earthies are in constant chat with friends and relatives. For a while they’d even kept video running, until it became both a security and a safety issue. Audio, though, ran pretty much nonstop except in government buildings and there were courtesy areas and terminals there as well. The entire planet, was so urbanized that being held incommunicado was considered worse than actual violence, and considered “brutality.”

As tourists, that wasn’t as much of an issue, but we’d be noticeable if we didn’t seem to be connected. With earbuds in and constantly chattering about stupid crap, no one would see us.

Just before we popped the door, she asked, “Could this be a setup?”

“Yes, but we have to try,” I said. I was sure I could handle any public attack, and I’d try not to get private if it was avoidable.

I have no idea how people live in those boxes. We walked out of the hotel, stepped onto a slideway, and then followed it past several clubs, as it escalated down a level, around one side and past shops and a playground, then stepped off and took a lateral between blocks.

It was pretty much impossible to draw a mental map, but I snapped images with my phone at each change so I’d be able to retrace. I also tapped in exits and slides for getaway. I was likely to need them.

The convention was two hundred meters up, fifty levels approximately, though “level” varies greatly inside these rat mazes. It was in a hall taking up three verticals, spread along corridors and with other events in between. We got in a line meters long and waited for admission while scanning the area for threats. The registrars and desk rolled along past us, with program loads and passes.

The guy ahead of Silver joked, “What if I spoof the pass?”

The registrar was probably a hired model and stared as if the man were stupid. “We expect that in this crowd. There’ll be enough compensation in downloads.” I’m sure she’d heard the same joke ten times already.

Silver swiped a cash card for both of us, took two passes, and thanked her. She moved on.

Events were well under way, and there were a lot of people here. We walked down the corridor, into the main hall, and there were a hundred displays or more for various methods and approaches to massaging information from people, accessing their comms “with consent” to pimp stuff to them, or worse, use them as distribution nodes to promote to their friends. Everything here was technically legal even under the restrictive laws of Earth, and just proved that supply and demand will survive any idealistic attempt to manage people. Signs insisted that no illicit access would be tolerated, subject to removal of pass and ejection, legal action, etc. They were probably honest about that, for liability reasons, but I had no reason to believe the clients would abide by it more than they had to.

Silver had DNA gear out. We just might succeed in locating him in this crush, and if so, I was confident of my ability to get in close and go for a bare-handed kill.

She said, “Minor trace, all over.”

“Schedule?” I asked.

“Principal is speaking in thirty minutes.”

“IDs?”

“He’s still in this area but not where a camera can monitor. They don’t seem to have them in here.”

Some guy overheard us, quiet as we were, and said, “Yeah, privacy. They don’t allow cams in events. Just at the exits and entrances. You need to find someone? I can get a page in.”

I said, “Thanks, but we don’t need a page. We’ll find him.”

“Isn’t his phone live?”

“Yeah, we got it. Thanks,” I assured him, then turned my back and shut him physically out while we relocated. He took the hint.

I continued to Silver, “We watch, I get close to the stage, you stay near the access door. Best we can do.”

“Okay,” she agreed, sounding casual. Then she spoke into her dead mic, “Yeah, the event’s great. All kinds of goober stuff for promo.”

I followed her lead. “Nance has samples, you should try to make it for tomorrow at least.”

We slid through the crowd like fish through weeds. It’s a practiced skill, but more art than training. You just look for any opening and ease into it, and people move around you. For Earth, I do recommend keeping your phone in hand and any valuables in inside, chest pockets. It hurt my arm with every jostle, but I was healing.

There were numerous exhibits and I would have appreciated checking them out as much as I hate these dogfuckers. There were parallels between our trades, much as I hated to admit it.

I wormed my way toward the front. It would be a bitch to get on stage from here, but I assumed I’d have to. The MC said, “—our generation’s greatest market promoter, Jason ‘The Hit Man’ Groom.”

There was light applause, Groom ran from the wings and stepped up on the riser.

Then he burst into flame.

I recognized the weapon at once. A hypergolic base with a flammable powder, sprayed right up from under the riser. Groom screamed and dove, creditably fast. He was cooked badly, though. I could smell the fried bologna stench from here.

Then a moment later the screens switched to a pan of the audience, swept from back to front then back to me. My face popped up on the screens three meters high, holding my phone. It caught me by surprise and I twitched.

I stayed right where I was, staring at the stage and looking horrified with everyone else. There was nothing else I could do. Either some camera operator had chosen my expression for the news loads, or Randall had staged it to gain extra leverage.

It wasn’t more than a second, and then a few brave souls figured out the flaming man was real and rushed the stage, which triggered most of the rest to flee screaming for the exits. I chose the exit. There was nothing I could accomplish onstage; it had gone sour last time, and I might run into Randall. While I wanted to find him, it had to be on my terms. He’d won this round tactically.

I was scared, though. That was a clear shot of my face, and I might have been snapped several times on Earth during the attacks. I’d escaped then because most infrastructure was down, and because I’d left as soon as they put word out. They’d had no reason to look for me on the way in. If they did a search now, though, I was dead. Deliberate or not, that image of me was a problem, and I was sure it was going to come up.

I pinged Silver and said, “Three turns back,” and headed for that location.

There was a press at the door, with several suited security guards reciting, “Remain calm, keep walking.” They had no actual power, they were mostly for courtesy, which makes little sense, but it meant I could ignore them.