28 – Subject Twelve

Addie sprinted for the stairs, her heart pounding, her mind racing with conflicting emotions, mostly worry for Tony, and desperate sympathy for the woman he’d just killed. At the same time, she couldn’t stop pondering the implications of the strange abilities this little hunt had uncovered for her. She’d seen the Dust pattern Mary—she was assuming that was who Tony had killed—had crafted, more than that, she’d managed to tug on it, fraying the beautiful knots and weaves. In the process, she’d saved Tony and the others from its effects. Why just them? That was the question distracting her: why hadn’t Mary’s Dust-empowered mental influence affected her?

As she reached the stairs leading up to the next level of the stack and down to the bottom of the park, she gripped the railing to slow herself and swing, using her momentum to carry her downward. People were still running up, trying to get away from Tony and whatever violence might be coming, so she had to keep her grip on the railing, hunching down to shrug off their jostling passage. Part of her wondered if she should brandish her needler to give herself some space, but she didn’t think that was the move—it might just incite more panic and possible violence.

She was halfway down when Tony delivered his ultimatum to the crowd, mostly hard, angry-looking men, surrounding him. She knew this because part of her concentration was split off, watching the scene through Humpty’s feed. When Tony mentioned “Cold Mary,” the men seemed to relax, and the most prominent among them, a grizzled older man with muscular arms and a claw-like, rust-tech mechanical hand, slowly began to nod.

His voice came to her through Humpty’s mics, “Ah, damn. We knew she was back. Why the kids?”

Addie watched Tony shrug as he almost lazily replied, “She tried to kill me and my partner. We were chasing her. I think the part of her that was hurting the women around here, the dolls, wanted to lash out one last time. She knew she was going down.”

The men grumbled, but their postures relaxed, and so did Addie, slowing her careening descent. By the time she was on the ground and working her way along the path toward Tony, most of the men surrounding him were walking away. When she cleared the last planter and saw him there, crouched before Mary’s corpse and the blood-spattered, plastiglass barrier that separated the walking path from a cushioned toddler play area, Addie quickened her steps.

Only a couple of onlookers had lingered, and Addie could understand why. The nearby lamp posts were flashing blue LEDs, and a pleasant, feminine voice was repeatedly announcing, “Takumi Corporate Security is en route. If you witnessed a crime in this area, please stay nearby to make a statement.”

When she was standing beside him, Tony looked up and smiled wanly. “Looks like we got her.”

Addie nodded, but didn’t reply. She wasn’t exactly feeling glib. Mary looked like she’d been through hell. Her gown was filthy, blood-spattered, and ragged at the hem. Her feet were bruised and similarly filthy. Her nails were jagged, her pale arms covered with bruises and— “What’s that on her wrist?”

Tony, seemingly by magic, produced a slender, wicked-looking blade that buzzed like a captured hornet as he deftly sliced through the wide, plastic band around Mary’s left wrist. He frowned at it for a second, then passed it to Addie. Addie ran her fingers along the jagged notches on either side of the thick, gray, plastic band. It felt like it had been chewed on. It had a label laser-etched into one side, outlined with red, imprinted ink. As she read it, Addie’s blood went cold:

KWN BIO / TRIAL 6C

SUBJECT 12 – M. HARPER

CONDITION: UNSTABLE (MONITORED)

CLEARANCE: V. KWON (SOLO)

“Tony, what the heck? Did you read this?”

He stood, brushing his hands, scanning the park, no doubt, wondering why Takumi corpo-sec was taking so long. “No, just glanced at it. Some kind of corpo clinic tag, yeah?”

“It has Kwon’s name on it!”

He frowned, clearly recognizing the name, but not placing it. After a couple of seconds, his eyes widened as the lightbulb went off. “The squint we rescued from Boxer?”

“Yes!”

“Well, when we were in that clinic, there was some weird Dust stuff going on, remember? You couldn’t even pilot Humpty down there. Maybe she, uh, escaped from there. I mean, before we rescued Kwon. Hell, maybe she escaped after. We didn’t exactly search all the containment cells thoroughly.”

Addie shook her head. She wasn’t buying it. “But Tony, this tag, the first line, it says ‘KWN BIO.’ Wouldn’t it say ‘Boxer’ if it were their lab?”

“Let’s talk about it later. Here come the goons.”

Addie hastily stuffed the bracelet into her coat pocket and turned to see a squad of four corpo-sec officers coming their way down the path. They were all decked out in full riot gear—body armor, helmets with visors, stun batons, and wrist-mounted, plate-sized, electrically-charged shields. “Stand aside!” the lead officer said. Addie noted an extra orange chevron painted on his pale-gray chest plate. Did that make him a sergeant or something?

Tony moved a couple of steps away from Mary’s body, and Addie followed, standing beside him. The sergeant—Addie had decided to consider him such—looked at the body, then at Tony. “Forward all footage of the incident to my open port.” He shifted his visor toward Addie. “You too. What about the drone? Which of you is piloting it?”

Addie glanced at Humpty, giving away her guilt. He was hovering about five meters up. “He’s mine.”

“Send me his footage.”

“She can’t,” Tony said, his voice soft but carrying an edge that Addie knew would give anyone pause.

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t have a PAI that can interface with it.” Addie put her hand on Tony’s shoulder, hoping to remind him that they were okay and there was no need to be hostile.

“That right? You’re piloting it raw? Let us jack into the drone then. We can download it directly.”

Addie swallowed, glancing at Tony, then back at the officer. “I don’t think so. Nobody jacks into my drone but me, and besides, there’s nothing on there you won’t see from our POV. I’ll send you my retinal footage.”

Tony nodded. “Yep, and you’ll get mine. Leave the drone out of it; it’s sensitive equipment.”

The sergeant stared at Tony for a long couple of seconds, then shrugged. “Your PAI is indicating that you want to close out your contract. You’re sure you’ve got enough evidence that this was the killer?”

Tony nodded. “You’ll find plenty of proof in our footage. She tried to ice us. Ember’s feed will show this woman”—Tony nudged Mary’s bare foot with his boot—"coming out of a fade during which she tried to pull my heart out. Unless you’ve got two sparks having meltdowns in this stack, then, yeah, she’s the one.”

“All right, as soon as our corporate AI verifies the evidence, we’ll close out the contract. That being said, you’ve got twenty minutes to leave the stack with those weapons.” While he spoke, two of his subordinates methodically ran a humming, clicking, wide-angle scanner array over every square centimeter of Mary’s corpse.

Tony nudged Addie. “Let’s go.”

“Hold on,” the sergeant said. “Footage first.”

“Right, just a sec,” Tony said. Then, his voice came through her comms, but he didn’t speak aloud. “Addie, don’t give him the full version. Have JJ edit out anything that directly shows you working with the Dust. Basically, just start at the part where she jumped me in her apartment, and have JJ remove the, uh, little shock you gave her.”

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“JJ’s not that great at editing…” Addie subvocalized.

“Just make it so it’s not obvious the electricity came from you. We can say it was a device.”

“Got it,” she said aloud. When the sergeant looked at her, she cleared her throat. “Er, I’m getting the footage together for you, Sergeant.”

It took JJ a couple of minutes to alter her view of things enough to make it look like she was holding something in her hand when she threw Dust-charged electricity at Mary to get her to let go of Tony, but in the end, he did a convincing job. After they delivered the footage, Tony and Addie left the corpos to their work. As they walked, she couldn’t help noticing how two of them, the sergeant included, watched their every move. “They weren’t exactly friendly, but I’m surprised it was that painless to walk away from the scene. I thought we’d be interrogated or something.”

Tony shook his head. “We’re on a legit SOA contract. If they have a grievance, they’ll take it up with Torque, and the SOA will shield him. Takumi wouldn’t want to burn that bridge anyway; I’m sure they hire SOA operatives for all sorts of jobs they don’t have the staffing to handle.”

“Really, though? There are four decked-out officers back there. They could have tracked Mary down—”

Tony snorted, cutting her off as he looked at her sideways. “You serious?”

“What? They didn’t seem incompetent…”

He tapped his ear. “Use comms.” A second letter, his voice came through her audio implant, “Ads, think. What would have happened to me if I didn’t have you along—a spark?” He turned, following the signs for the elevators.

“I’m not sure…” Addie trailed off, knowing she wasn’t being honest. Maybe it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if she hadn’t disrupted that first pattern, but later, when they found Mary’s hiding spot, she’d definitely saved Tony. Mary had been faded—Tony couldn’t have touched her. If the other victims were any indicator, he might have died. It didn’t matter how good his nanites were; they couldn’t save him from a missing heart.

“I’d be dead,” Tony said flatly, confirming her thoughts. “My team, if I had one, would be dead. If not, we’d be locked up, waiting for a corporate trial after committing a massacre. I was this close”—Tony held his mechanical finger and thumb about a centimeter apart—“to blasting the people in that hallway.” He shook his head. “There are strategies for facing sparks, but none of them are foolproof. The ones that can fade are the worst, but I’ve never seen one in action. They’re rare, Ads.”

“Seriously? No wonder Zane had such an ego…”

“Yeah, no shit. We’re damn lucky he was hiding from Boxer when Beef punched his ticket. If they’d had any footage of him going into that hospital…” He shook his head. “They would’ve narrowed it down to me and Beef eventually. If not us, then the headhunters we killed. Eventually, they’d put us together with them.”

His words woke up a deep, latent fear of Boxer and corpos in general in Addie, stirring the terror-filled memory of being kidnapped. “Maybe they’re still…”

Tony stepped onto the elevator and, when Addie followed him, touched the control panel, sending them to the ground floor with a gut-wrenching lurch. “No chance. They would’ve gotten us by now. Trust me. No, what’s more likely is that the scavs in the hospital stripped him bare, destroyed his corpse, and Boxer thinks he broke his contract and fled. Still, he had some shiny augs. Whatever scav ripped his Dust Reactor…” He trailed off, clicking his tongue.

“We were in a hurry, Tony,” Addie said, knowing very well he was thinking they should have stripped Zane themselves. “Beef was dying.”

He nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Forget it. Anyway, we’re lucky, that’s all. I’m damn lucky. You were a certified, chrome-plated rocker tonight, Ads.”

Addie’s lips spread in a stupidly wide grin as her cheeks flushed. “You think so?”

He nodded, grabbing her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her face so he could look her in the eyes. “Saved the day.”

“Kiss me, then,” she murmured, closing her eyes in anticipation. He held her chin, and she could hear him breathing, but no kiss came for several seconds. Still, she was stubborn, and she didn’t open her eyes. After another couple of seconds, something broke in him, and he leaned forward, gently pressing his lips to hers. Addie’s heart raced as usual, as his lips, soft and hot, gently pulled at hers.

It was quick, but it did all the right things in all the right ways to Addie. When Tony pulled back, she swore she saw stars as the elevator began to decelerate. The timing was perfect, as it only amplified Addie’s wooziness. She continued to smile stupidly, locking her eyes with Tony’s. She gripped the sleeve of his coat with one hand and the strap of his shotgun sling with the other, trying to keep him from pulling away.

“You’re a dangerous influence,” he whispered huskily.

“Why dangerous?”

He shook his head. “For you, I mean. Shit… How do I explain—” He was saved by the elevator chime as it lurched to a stop and the doors slid open, revealing the lobby and the same corpo-sec officer they’d spoken to less than an hour earlier. “Come on,” Tony grunted, gently pushing her away until Addie released her grip.

As they stepped out of the elevator, the corpo-sec officer stepped forward and cleared her throat. “I suppose congratulations are in order. My shift commander just sent me the news.”

“Thank you!” Addie said brightly.

Tony just grunted. “We good to clear out?”

“Sure. Say, if you don’t mind me asking, how’d you find her? The Spark, I mean?”

Tony clicked his tongue, and Addie had the feeling he wasn’t going to answer, so she spoke up. “We didn’t. She found us.”

“Damn, seriously? Talk about easy money, huh? I heard you merc’d her right in the middle of the park.” She tilted her visored face, twisting her lips as she regarded Tony. “Must have ice in those veins.”

Tony ignored her, stepping toward the moving walkway that would take them to the garage, but Addie turned to glare into the woman’s visor. “She was going toward some toddlers, and she was on a rampage. Have you ever seen what a spark can do? You shouldn’t judge—”

The security guard held up her gloved hand. “I was, like, serious. Rumor is, he made a hell of a shot—”

“Well, he doesn’t—have ice in his veins, I mean.” Addie glowered at her for another beat and then turned and hurried after Tony. When she caught up to him, he was just stepping onto the moving walkway.

He looked at her, half his mouth quirking into a wry smile. “Done defending my honor?”

Addie folded her arms. “She shouldn’t assume things.”

He shrugged. “Not a big deal. There are about two people I know whose opinion I care about.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep.”

“Let me guess: Beef and Torque.”

Tony snorted, barking an involuntary laugh. “Okay, you got me.”

Addie smiled, reaching up to hang on his sleeve as she leaned into him. They were quiet as they let the walkway take them to the garage, and then, as they climbed into the van, Tony said, “You know, I do feel sorry for that woman. There’s nothing cool about losing your mind. I’ve never…” He paused, started the van moving, then leaned back and tried again. “I never felt the way I did tonight, like I was losing it.”

“It was that bad?” Addie’s voice was hushed. “I wonder why it didn’t affect me? Something to ask Pyroshi, I guess.”

Tony nodded. “Yeah. Honestly, Ads, I think we need to prioritize your training. You’ve got something special, and I don’t want to hold you back, focusing on bullshit little jobs for Torque. I mean, there are some high-tier operators who’d let you tag along for the kind of stuff you pulled off tonight. There’s no reason you should have to keep doing tier-nine jobs with me—”

“You’re so dumb,” Addie laughed, shaking her head.

“What? I’m serious!”

“I know you are! That’s why you’re dumb! I don’t care if we’re making fifty bits or fifty thousand bits; I want to work with you. There’s no way I’d do a job with some strangers, not unless you were there.”

Tony smirked, shaking his head. “You’d get over that.”

Addie punched his shoulder. “Don’t smirk at me! Don’t dismiss my feelings. You’re deflecting because you felt something real tonight.” Addie grabbed his jacket, leaning across the gap between their chairs, tugging on him. “You felt bad for that woman, didn’t you? When she made you feel crazy, you wondered if that was how she felt all the time.”

Tony’s grin faded, and his eyes unfocused as he stared into the space between them, lost in thought. After a few seconds, he nodded. “Yeah, I felt sorry for her. I, uh, felt bad when I shot her.” He pressed his mechanical hand to his chest. “Even though she tried to kill me.”

“That’s because we don’t know why she did that—why she did any of it.” Addie reached into her pocket and pulled out the bracelet. She turned it so Tony could see the printed side. “Kwon knows. Tony, I don’t think Mary was in that Boxer lab. I think Kwon’s doing something on his own. We don’t know who paid Torque to have us bust him out. What if it was…him?”

“Like, you mean, his own company?”

Addie nodded. “Or his partners, or heck, employees. Maybe they broke him out so he could continue his work without Boxer’s oversight. Boxer was holding him in that satellite lab because he tried to quit, right?”

“That’s the story.”

“Mary was supposed to be a fade. Boxer took her. Kwon must have gotten her from them, but… what if he wasn’t doing his best work for Boxer? What if he was doing things on his own—on the side, I mean? If he could take a woman who was becoming a fade and make her a spark…” Addie trailed off, shaking her head. There were problems with her theory, but something about it sounded right. Kwon and Boxer had been up to something, and it wasn’t trying to cure Dust afflictions. It was trying to capitalize on them.

“I don’t think Mary would make much of an employee, even if she were a spark.”

Addie nodded. “I know. But, look.” Addie tapped the bracelet. “Trial 6C, subject twelve.”

“So, he might be having more or less success with other subjects, huh?” He sighed, shaking his head. “We don’t even know if he’s still in the Blast.”

“Of course we do!” Addie tugged on his coat again in emphasis. “If you were looking for Dust-afflicted people to experiment on, this is the only place to be.”

Tony’s scowl deepened as he slowly began to nod. “All right, Ads. Let’s find Kwon.”