The Bloodlight Chronicles: Reconciliation (17 page)

“You're not my dad,” he said pleasantly.

“No?”

“I'm sure of it.”

The woman sighed, visibly shaken. She appeared to be making no attempt at artifice or logistic security. She was imaging plain street clothes, a striped blouse covered with a zippered yellow cardigan, navy dress pants and matching loafers with decorative white laces.

“I could take you down,” Rix said. “Your codes are faulty.”

“Yes, I know. It's a poor but necessary attempt at disguise.” She spread her hands helplessly. “A regent this deep, you know.”

Rix nodded, sensing now the dark core code behind a filmy drapery of weakness. He struggled to remain calm as he drowned in psychological turmoil, considering terrible alternatives. The rumours were true. His dad was dead. His wetware system had been pirated, perhaps reanimated from his corpse, his private access ciphers plundered, his passwords laid bare. The entire Eternal community might be at risk, his family, his friends.

The powerful avatar before him was as clean as black ice and had an aura that felt like teeth clenched on tinfoil—impossibly expensive, otherworldy. His real dad had disappeared offplanet in difficult circumstance, according to published reports. Who knew what technological advantage might have come from beyond the Macpherson Doorway? Who was this zombie woman?

“I have another message for your mother, Rix,” the woman said finally, imaging an airplane ticket and hotel reservation.

Rix whistled. “Atlantis?”

“Just dinner and a movie. Nothing fancy.”

“That's it? Right out in the open?”

“Something terrible has happened.”

“How did you get this source code? Why are you trying to impersonate my father?”

“I lost some data in a mindwipe, Rix. I left backups in V-space. Treasure chests. Do I seem that much different to you?”

“You don't know me.”

“I'm afraid it's even worse than that.”

“How so?” he asked, feeling cold creeping in like a flood.

“I can't remember your mother either.”

Rix allowed a shiver of interference to run through his mirror-like avatar from top to bottom, his nonverbal response as elegant as any expletive. They stared at each other, a father and son, an empty galaxy of V-space between them.

“A regent has very limited access sublevel,” the woman said, attempting a businesslike decorum. “I could use your help with a few things.”

In reply, Rix snatched the proffered tickets and backvaulted out of the room.

Madame Shakura made no attempt to conceal her impatience as the Director of the
ERI
, Helena Sharp, coalesced before her in an opulent Prime Level Three meeting room. The small Japanese woman looked white and vicious, her avatar as solid as marble, her face bloodless, her pressed lips a streak of scorn. The padded shoulders of her dark, tailored suit made her appear manlike and severe. She represented a consortium of immense wealth and political power that stretched far beyond state borders and continental boundaries.

“You ignored two official requests for a meeting, Director,” she said with a voice dripping acid. “You returned from your mission three full days ago.”

“What's our encryption status?” Zakariah asked as he checked his own avatar for stability by glancing through his palm, the opacity of which gave him a rough guideline. He stretched long feminine fingers and made a show of examining his perfect cuticles while he counted disciples from the corner of his eye. Ten members of the World Council sat in their appointed places. Chairman Tao's seat was empty.

“We have Triple-A encryption from the Beast,” the Japanese woman uttered icily, still bristling for some apology.

“And the security problems we encountered prior to my departure have surely been rectified,” the Director challenged instead.

Madame Shakura's eyes widened. In her culture such disrespect was akin to a declaration of war.

“I am the ranking spokeswoman while Chairman Tao remains hospitalized,” she said with barely contained aggression, her face a stern mask of outrage. “World Council members are vowed to complete silence outside this meeting, on penalty of death. The Eternal Research Institute, on the other hand, is in complete disarray.”

“I have been away. I have taken steps.” Zakariah stepped toward an empty chair and slowly took a seat. He reclined and folded his hands across his belly in a gesture of ease. “Eternal blood supply has increased by two percent in my absence. Have your quotas all been met?”

Nods and grunts arose in response. No one dared to challenge the spokeswoman's public authority. Madame Shakura had wasted no time cementing her position long before this meeting. Zakariah had dredged what information he could from Helena's personal files and private memoirs: Director William Ortega stood out as being the next obvious in line for the chairmanship, a corporate banking official who spent most of his time on Prime Level Five at the top of the V-net. Ortega sat to the right of Madame Shakura, a small, swarthy man with short hair and a moustache, Argentinean by heritage. Prime Three was far beneath his common station and must seem like a seedy, budget hotel in comparison. Unfortunately, the regulatory structures uplevel would not allow for such an informal collusion as the World Council.

Zakariah carefully tested the harmonics of each member one by one, looking for any subtle infiltration, any offkey coding or vacant parameter. Too much was at stake to let a whisper pass in the night. The council members, well aware of the Director's special gift, waited quietly for Helena Sharp to finish, as much for their own safety as for the security of their meeting.

Madame Shakura sat quietly fuming, her face greedy with the hope of glory. When Helena's eyes finally met her own, a smile of anticipation graced her face, a thin, ruby curve on a ghostlike face.

“The Source of the virus?” she asked, barely a hush.

“The Source lies outside of space and time as we know it,” Zakariah said. “Completely inaccessible by current technology.”

Madame Shakura's smile faded to a vicious red gash.

“Any idea of exerting influence or control is, frankly, a pipedream at this point. I am pleased to report, however, that a first contact has been made.” Zakariah knew this much and no more and winced inwardly at what it had cost him.

The council members murmured like waters disturbed as anxiety became a palpable animal among them. The World Council had been the primary funding base for the Eternal Research Institute for more than a decade, the financial investment incalculable, the personal and professional sacrifices a matter of private despair.

The Director calmed the waves with a feminine palm upraised like a standard, a promise of important news. “An activated sample has been obtained.”

At this announcement, the entire meeting degenerated into a babble of accents and accusations. Members stood and shouted in unison, protecting their political spheres with raw hostility. Apparently, this was to have been the last meeting of the World Council, the members having voted, at Madame Shakura's insistence, to pull the plug on the
ERI
, to cut the Director loose to the black-market bloodlords.

He turned to stare at her. Madame Shakura had lost face again, perhaps irreparably, but she smiled like a Cheshire cat in love. It had been a win-win situation for her personally, regardless of the outcome. She would live forever now.

For a moment the meeting resembled a group of schoolchildren whose teacher had left the room on a washroom break, giddy with emotion pent-up too long. But one by one the council members remembered their standing in life and sat down, guilty with responsibility, vulnerable now to a new authority.

“This is a great day for mankind,” Madame Shakura pronounced in blessing, now openly grinning her joy. “How soon can we expect our allotments?”

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” Zakariah insisted, his voice deliberately strong to reinforce his superiority. “There is still significant laboratory work to be done.”

“You have our full resources at your command,” Director Ortega spoke up.

The Director nodded, rehearsing Mundazo's notes in his mind and collecting his demeanour. “Since replicating the virus has not worked in the past, our initial strategy will be to dilute the activated sample by mixing it with blood that is already Eternal, but not from the Source. So far, our research team has diluted at a ratio of one hundred to one without any appreciable decline in the activation rate, which we are measuring by timing the release of photons from the mitochondria of individual cells. These measurements are for technicians, really, because an activated sample glows, my friends—the virus produces light from no known source!”

Zakariah paused for effect, letting the miraculous stand on its own. Light was the ultimate mystery, ubiquitous and yet unknown. A wave, a particle, a quantum packet of potentiality—who could fathom its true nature?

“We have fifty samples ready to test immediately, and fifty more to continue our experiments.”

The Director smiled with sure triumph. Zakariah could imagine Helena's pride as though it were his own, as though they were still connected. She had fought a malicious war in political trenches and sacrificed a decade of her life to reach this pinnacle, to survey the future from such a high and lofty peak. And he alone had endured to reap the benefit of her work.

“I'm looking for volunteers,” he announced grandly.

Niko arrived home grim with resolute purpose. Rix could tell from the moment he saw her that something was wrong, something had changed. She moved with the graceful agility that she normally used with her working persona, quick and efficient. She bent and rummaged in a closet by the door as he rose to greet her. She pulled out a bundle of grey cotton, his deflated duffel bag, and tossed it into his arms.

“Time to go,” she said.

“You're kicking me out?” His voice had an edge to it that he didn't like, a keen tone of panic and disappointment that he wished he had better concealed.

“It's time to move on, that's all. Your father is back.”

He stared at her, blinking, wondering if it could be true. “Where?”

“
ERI
headquarters.”

“That building we scoped out?”

“Yeah.”

“I don't want to go,” he said, wondering how much he could tell her without risking his heart. “I want to stay with you.”

Niko paused and looked at him with a puzzled frown. Had she seen something in his eyes, something he could not bring himself to confess?

“It's nothing personal, Rix,” she told him with careful calm. “There's been a new development, something unexpected. Zakariah has obtained an activated sample of the virus.”

The news seemed to hit him like a dream, something insubstantial. He pondered her words as though they might be a foreign language, as though the meaning might be abstruse. Had he ever expected such a possibility? Had he ever allowed himself a glimmer of hope that his father might succeed in his quest. “For me?”

Niko pressed her lips with uncertainty, her shrug barely a twitch. “We can only assume, Rix. You've got to get on the ground. You've got to find out.”

“Come with me,” he blurted.

Again she paused to appraise him, to search his face with quiet intent. Her body language said that she could not possibly follow him, her muscles rigid and her neck upright. “I like you, Rix. You know that.”

He hung his head, feeling a crash of doom around him. He recognized an ache in his abdomen that he supposed was love, some arcane emotion. He could not dare tell her. “When?” he said.

“Right now, Rix. It's the chance of a lifetime.”

He felt robbed of elation. He felt like a sleepwalker, a powerless observer distanced from an inexorable drama. Could Zakariah really have brought him Eternal life? Would the virus separate him from mortal humans forever? Would he ever see Niko again?

He should have known his relationship with her would never last. He had been foolish to harbour thoughts of intimacy. It had all been a fantasy, some infantile infatuation. He stared at the duffel bag in his hands. He had to get packing, if only he could move a muscle.

“I'll gas up the bike,” she said. “Bring your
ID
. You'll be going back on the grid.”

He forced his eyes up to look at her again, to lock an image of her in his memory. She stood with her arms akimbo in a stance of delicate insouciance, her black knit tunic barely covering narrow hips, the faded blue denim on her legs like a second skin. Her low-cut neckline exposed the tendons and bones below her throat, a gentle hollow of shadow and ridges of rib under her tawny skin. Her breasts stood out bold and youthful, and he captured them with his eyes. He wanted to touch them just once.

“It's not the end, Rix. It's the beginning.” She tipped her head up, her eyebrows perfect arches above dark lashes, her nose small and pert, her lips like pink pillows. She seemed to be daring him to say something, to admit the truth in his heart. Or did he just imagine it?

“Will you visit me, at least?” he asked. His voice sounded plaintive and weak, and he hated the sound of it. “I just can't say goodbye.”

“I'll try to get a message to you. I can't say anything for sure.”

He nodded, feeling numb. “I thought you cared about me.”

“I do care about you. We're family.”

“I don't want to be your cousin, Niko. I want more than that.” He searched her face for rejection now that his declaration hung in the air around them. He had waited too long. He should have told her the day they first met, the day he had fallen in love.

Niko nodded with a crooked smile of resignation, her eyes wide with amusement. She unclasped a black leather belt at her waist and pulled it free. She gripped her tunic and pulled it up over her head. She dropped it to the floor.