#
Back in Fisk’s office, the search was far from over, but it had turned up as near to a hit as Lex was likely to get, a protected directory labeled “Bypass Gemini.” He issued a few commands intended to alter permissions and give him access, but it was locked by the Chief of Security himself. If he wanted to read the contents, he would need to do it with Trent’s credentials. Since he didn’t have Trent’s credentials, the only outside chance he had was if Fisk’s prints would work on Trent’s door, and his console. Ma had indicated that permissions could be associated with certain machines, so logging in on Trent’s machine might be enough to read the file.
He opened the door and tiptoed to the edge of the hall. From the sound of it, the elevator doors were just shutting, moving swiftly downward. He hazarded a peek and found that the secretary had left. Quickly he rushed to the door lock for Trent’s office and tried the finger. The panel buzzed a harsh denial. A moment later its display turned red, black letters scrolling the message “Administrator Level Lockout Engaged.” He turned desperately around to see each other door flick to red and display the same message. The finger wasn’t doing any good now, not even unlocking Fisk’s own door.
“No! No, no, no,” Lex gibbered mindlessly, fumbling the finger’s control box in his hands, “Need a new fingerprint. Need Trent’s fingerprint.”
Karter had included the ability to scan new fingerprints when he whipped up the control box, but it wasn’t as though Lex was going to run into a labeled example of the security chief’s thumbprint. He flipped through the menu and put it in scan mode. A violet band of light erupted from the end, the screen reading “Sweep over surface.” He swept over the lock panel, the light painting a three-inch-wide, laser-thin line, like a supermarket scanner. A streaked print lit up fluorescent yellow under the beam, but it was too smudged to read. No other nearby surface seemed able to hold a print either, except the floor, but Trent hadn’t had the decency to do any handstands lately, it seems. He glanced back to the elevator. It was on its way up.
Running out of options, Lex’s eyes snapped to a trash can near the door. He kicked it over and rummaged through. Napkins, ketchup packets, candy wrappers, and half-eaten fast food went splattering across the hallway as he rummaged through. Finally, he turned up a plastic coffee cup.
“Please please please please,” he muttered, awkwardly twisting the piece of garbage beneath the scanner. It registered four clear prints.
Once they were accepted, he selected one and loaded it onto the fingertip.
“Come on, come on, come on!” he pleaded, as he swiped it.
“Access Granted” scrolled across the panel. He triumphantly slipped inside. There was nothing surprising about this office. It wasn’t one room, but a suite. Doors led to a small conference room, a private bath, and a study. First was a small waiting room, followed by another secured door that led to his primary office, bearing a desk equipped with an even higher-end computer and its assorted peripherals, including a high-resolution, positionable camera and a personal fabricator. Shelves and counters proudly displayed the ugly, angular acrylic and chrome trophies that business types gave each other for doing a good job.
Beside the door was a fully-stocked golf bag with clubs composed of exotic polymers and alloys. The walls were completely hidden. Much of the obscuring material was in the form of press clippings. Every conceivable format, from full motion video-paper displays with looping footage to old-fashioned dead tree newspaper clippings, showed him receiving medals, making announcements, and shaking hands with bigwigs. There were doors that led to a small conference room, a private bath, and a study. The rest of the wall space was devoted to display screens. Many showed the CEO’s speech as it was being covered through various media outlets, the volume low but audible. The rest showed random, silent security feeds . . . including one showing himself, in real time.
His head whipped up to the source of the footage with near-whiplash-inducing speed to see a red light flashing.
“I turned those off!” he objected, as though reality had made a mistake and would straighten itself out after he revealed he’d caught on.
When the cosmos refused to oblige, his eyes jumped across the remaining monitors and spotted a feed from inside the elevator, showing the boss and a contingent of guards crammed inside. He heard the doors ding as he saw them open on the video. In a panicked frenzy, he grabbed a handful of the golf clubs and rammed them through the handles of the door, then dove for the computer and got to work.
There was nothing like the fear of impending incarceration and/or demise to motivate someone to improve their typing skills in a hurry. The programmed finger jabbed out the file location and opened it in a viewer. It was gigs of data. Images, videos, simulations, schematics. There were timetables and cost–benefit analyses. Evidence that they knew exactly what they were doing, exactly the damage they would cause and the lives they would take, and they were going through with it anyway. He hooked his slidepad to the computer and quickly downloaded the data as he watched them burst into Fisk’s office on the cameras. A half-second later, the outer office door was hurled open and the inner one rattled against the makeshift brace.
“How the hell did he get into my office?” growled a voice from outside the door, “You. You. Take this door down.”
The office door began to rock with well-coordinated kicks, making Lex glad that Trent had sprung for the solid wood door and titanium shaft clubs. Since there was no sense sneaking around anymore, he flipped on the data connection when the files had transferred and tried to send the info to Michella. It wouldn’t connect. He poked the finger at the input panel, attempting to open an external channel, but received an error. The door was creaking more with each blow.
“Goddammit! Come on!” he growled, pounding at the machine.
Finally, the door flew open and the security men rushed in. He tapped in a few last commands before the guards grabbed him, and even then he refused to give up, grabbing at the desk while they hauled him away.
“You two, hold him. You four, guard the door. Everyone away from the computer. No telling what sort of records he has open,” Trent barked, his troops quickly complying.
With one guard holding each arm and standing him in front of the desk, Trent sized him up. In one hand was the slidepad. In the other was the programmable finger, its control box dangling. The security chief had a grin on his face.
“Well, well, well. You certainly have made it further than anyone else, I can tell you that.” He had a smug, victorious grin on his face. “Let’s see just how far you got.”
He snatched the slidepad from Lex’s hand and glanced at the unsent message. The smile slid to a sneer. His eyes narrowed in fury as he looked back to his prisoner.
“Gun,” he ordered simply, holding out his free hand. One of the guards handed him a sidearm, a standard issue, ballistic pistol with an extended magazine.
For a moment, Lex was certain that Trent was going to execute him where he stood. Instead, he spoke again.
“I want you to listen to me carefully. I am fully trained in the use of this weapon--not that I would need to be at this range. I don’t care how fast you fancy your reflexes to be; there is nothing you could possibly do to me that could keep me from pulling the trigger. So if you try anything--anything--the contents of your head will be decorating the wall behind you. Do you understand?”
Lex nodded.
“Good. In a moment, I am going to dismiss my men to the door, and you are going to answer some questions. After that, we’ll go over what you used to get this far, and after that . . . well, after that it doesn’t really matter what happens. When they release your arms, I want you to keep them raised and hold perfectly still. Do you understand that?”
He nodded again.
“Good. Men, go join the others in the hall. There are classified matters to discuss. I’ll call you when I need you.”
The guards obeyed, closing the still-intact outer door.
“How did you find out about Bypass Gemini? Are you the courier?”
“Maybe.”
Trent pulled the trigger. With a soft, silenced chirp, a bullet shattered the finger Karter had given him. Half an inch lower and it would have cost him one of the ones his mother had given him instead.
“At what point did I indicate I was willing to play games?”
“Yes, I’m the courier.”
“I’d ask you what you know, but from the looks of that pad, the answer is ‘everything.’ That is unacceptable. Fortunately, I don’t have to ask who else knows, because if you came here, you didn’t have any proof before, and you certainly didn’t get any data out of here.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it isn’t possible. This is the security wing of the largest company in the galaxy, courier. What did you think you could accomplish? Did you think you could just email classified files? It doesn’t work that way. Information does not leave these offices. Wireless connections must be whitelisted, like mine. The data network is physically isolated from the wide-area network. None of the hard line communication devices are hooked up to outside lines. Once you step into our complex, you can’t even check the weather without code word clearance. This is nothing short of a vault. If you didn’t leave, neither did any data. What made you think you could do anything about Bypass Gemini?”
Lex shuffled a half-step to the right.
“I didn’t think I could, but I had to try. The second you activate those arrays, you doom three hundred thousand people.”
“Three hundred thousand,” he scoffed. “Our estimates are closer to a half-million. Believe me. We ran the numbers. There were other candidate stars. Only two sets fit the time frame we were looking for. One would have taken out six billion, the other half a million.”
“Oh, so you’re a regular philanthropist. I bet from your point of view you, saved billions of lives rather than taking thousands of them,” Lex jabbed. He probably should have been groveling for his life, but why delude himself? It was over now. There was no coming out of this alive. It was oddly liberating, in a way.
“Half a million people is nothing, courier. This is business. We are the reason society exists at all. You realize that, don’t you? Good god, how many people on the outskirts of the galaxy would die of disease or hunger or thirst if we didn’t keep trade lines open. How many would have even made it to the outskirts? Without VectorCorp, humanity would be a frightened, fragile bundle of tribes squatting in a handful of star systems, fighting overcrowding and without a whisper of contact with each other.
“VectorCorp exists because it has to, and if a few hundred thousand generic nobodies have to give their lives to make this corporation stronger, then that is a small price to pay. What makes us stronger makes humanity stronger. Look at the big picture. When we collapse those stars, we lose a few backwater planets, but we gain a thoroughfare that will change the shape of business, science, and exploration for centuries. Faster communication. Faster commerce. Faster troop movement . . . and if you knew half of what I know, you’d understand why getting troops across the galaxy is going to be very important very soon.”
“You could have at least evacuated the planets.”
“Have you ever organized a wide-scale evacuation? It takes years. They say that time is money, but that isn’t the case. Time is so much more valuable than money. We needed faster motion, and an evacuation would have closed our window for at least thirty-three years. Unacceptable. But enough. I want to know everything. How did you get past my men? How did you access my systems?”
“Maybe I don’t feel like telling you.”
“What did I say about playing games, courier?”
“Buddy, if this is a game, you just lost,” Lex said, looking over the man’s shoulder.
“You think I’m stupid enough to . . .” Trent began, but he stopped as he heard a strange sound, like an echo.
The sound was enough to make him turn. Lex took the moment’s distraction to tackle Trent to the ground. Rather than continuing to struggle and risk getting shot, he tore the slidepad away from him and bolted for the conference room, slamming the door and throwing himself to the ground as a few angry shots perforated the wall.
Outside, Trent struggled to his feet and stared, eyes wide, at the wall. One by one, the pictures were cutting away from the CEO, and switching instead to a slightly distorted image of himself, from behind. He turned to his computer. The camera was facing him. He sprinted to the screen to find that a video call had been opened to an intercom number, 100212. Mashing the touchpad to end the call, he turned back to the screens. A camera pulled away from the now-black screen and focused instead on a shaken but steadfast woman.
“What you’ve just seen was a live feed from within the office of VectorCorp Security Chief William Trent. While the details are not yet clear, he appears to have admitted to a plan by this massive firm to knowingly endanger the lives of as many as half a million people. The identity of the other man in the office with him is not yet known, but authorities are at this moment being summoned to end what appears to be a deadly stand-off. One can only hope that this man, whoever he is, remains safe, because if the allegations are true, he may well be responsible for saving literally hundreds of thousands of lives. A true hero,” she said, her voice wavering slightly, the concern showing through her professional persona for just an instant. “For GolanaNet News, I’m Michella Modane. Stay with us for continuing coverage as this story develops.”
With a roar of fury, Trent emptied the weapon into the wall of the conference room. Lex was flat against the floor, the bullets peppering and eventually shattering the high-rise window over him.
“In here, now!” Trent barked into his communicator.
The main door burst open and all six guards rushed in.
“He’s in there. If he’s still alive, drag him out. I want him to see this,” he ordered, working at something on his own slidepad.
In seconds they had broken the door, seized the unarmed courier, and were hauling him back into the office.
“This guy weighs a ton,” one of them grunted, struggling with Lex’s lanky frame despite the fact that he seemed to be actively resisting only with his legs.
“Congratulations,” Trent raved, insanity in his eyes. “You won the battle, I suppose. That broadcast is out. Nothing I can do about it. I could cut it off, but every nearby planet is getting it as we speak. A sudden cut or communication blackout would only make it seem more deliberate. But mass media is medium priority on our transmission lines, standard FTL forwarding schedule. It won’t get to Operlo or ADC-29R45 for at least three minutes. Security protocol is maximum priority. Near zero delay.”
He traced a gesture on his pad and the screens in the office changed to a status screen. One by one, lines completed.
“Array Activation command transmission . . . Successful.”
“No!” cried Lex.
“Yes, courier. Command sent. Non-retrievable. There is nothing that you or anyone else can do. I may go down. My company may get a black eye, but you can’t. Stop. Progress.”
“ADC-29R45 Array Activation . . . Successful. Operlo Array Activation . . . Pending.”
All eyes remained locked on the final word, blinking slowly, text written in yellow. The fate of two stars and all of the life they supported hung upon one little yellow word. An insane smile stretched Trent’s face. A look of horror grasped Lex. Finally, the word blinked away one last time, and the line updated.
“Operlo Array Activation . . . Refused.”
“What!?” he cried, clawing at his slidepad.
A security line was opened to Operlo, where it was answered by a familiar voice.
“Patel Construction. Miss Misra speaking,” she said professionally.
“You have received a command to activate Project Gemini. Activate it now,” he hissed.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Trent. We are regrettably going to have to delay that request for appr
oximately one hour. You see, we weren’t anticipating the activation notice for several days, and we recently have been given cause to believe there may be a safety issue.”
“You listen to me. You will activate that array now, or any contracts you have made with VC are void! Do you understand me!?”
“Mr. Trent, I’m sure you know that a contract is a rather binding document. Even asking me to activate ahead of schedule was intended to be a negotiated alteration. We are willing to forgo that formality, but safety must come first. We managed to complete the full array ahead of schedule, as requested. An hour of time should be of little concern. Please call back at that time.”
Trent turned to Lex, now struggling madly with his whole body, a guard’s hand over his mouth.
“You! You did this somehow! Kill him!” Trent ordered.
Before he could finish the command, Lex clenched his fist and struggled against one of his captors with all of his might. That would usually have had little effect on the massive guard who was restraining him. Then again, Lex wasn’t usually wearing a pair of Karter’s gloves. He’d activated them just before the guards had grabbed him, and their struggles to drag him out of his hiding place had managed to give them plenty of charge. His right fist continued forward, pivoting his body into an awkward, thrusting pirouette. The sudden and intense surge of motion nearly ripped his arm out of its socket, but managed to shake both of the men restraining him. One was launched against a wall, his weapons clattering to the ground. The other was sent flying toward Trent and the other guards, colliding and sending the entire group crumbling into a pile, save for a pair who managed to dive aside.
Now would have been an excellent time to escape, but, unfortunately, the incomplete prototype needed to recharge. Any attempts to deactivate it produced an error tone, and the now-rigid cloth would not release his hand. If Lex survived this, he was going to have to remember to tell Karter to fix that. He was left struggling with a hand that moved slowly through the air despite his best effort, as though he was dragging an invisible dumpster. The two guards who had escaped their ballistic colleague were getting to their feet, guns having slid to an unknown corner of the room.
Lex scrambled his feet against the floor, reaching for the stun rod of the fallen agent. The slowly-charging glove slid through the air a bit faster, his other hand’s grasping fingers creeping closer to the rod. Finally, he snatched it from the ground and swung wildly, connecting with the knee of the first guard. He convulsed briefly and fell to the ground. Lex swung around, as though his immobilized hand was clutching a pole, and delivered a jolt to the second guard, prompting the same response.
The glove finished charging enough to be movable a moment later, and he surveyed his options. He probably couldn’t take out all four of the remaining guards, and even if he could, the doors were all locked and the finger was destroyed. Michella had said that authorities had been contacted, but even assuming the local law enforcement wasn’t under the thumb of VC--which was a long shot--Trent was obviously insane enough for a standoff, and they were on the seventieth floor of a veritable fortress. A breath of wind rushed in behind him. He turned.
“I can’t believe I’m about to do this again . . .” he moaned, dashing into the conference room. Before he could think long enough to talk himself out of it, he hurled himself out the window.
The plan, what little of it there was, had been to dive into the bay. As the wind whipped past him on the way down, some key flaws began to reveal themselves. First, it struck him that a seventy-story drop into the water might not be survivable. Second, that possibility might, at this point, be moot. Parts of the complex were directly overhanging the bay. This, it turned out, wasn’t quite one of those sections. There was a short outcrop of land, about a dozen feet, that looked like it was about to become his final destination.
While his brain queued up the customary “life flashing before the eyes,” an idea came to him. Again he cocked his fist, and again he punched at nothing, this time up and away. The device dumped its recharged kinetic capacitors into an upward motion that canceled out a good deal of his downward momentum. As viewed from the outside, it would have looked like a perfect Shoryuken, except for all of the screaming and popping of joints. When it was through, the emptied capacitors slowed his fall to a drifting crawl as they hungrily drank in his inertia. For a few moments, he was drifting slowly toward the ground with one fist raised, like a cartoon character holding a balloon.
The fall and dragon punch had taken him about half of the way down, and nearly over the water, but he was already accelerating again. Lex considered a repeat performance, but his very nearly dislocated right arm decided that it was time to give the left a try. He waited until he was in free-fall again; the thought of what would happen to him if he fired off a punch with his left hand before his right was ready to move at full speed again was almost as scary as the thought of hitting the ground.
When the time seemed right, he hurled a left hook that yanked him a good thirty feet toward the ocean, then slowed to a steady downward drift as it recharged, his body dangling below. He splashed down shortly after the gloves fully recharged . . . and immediately realized a final flaw in his plan, in the form of the ten kilo pack strapped very securely to his back.
He fumbled with the straps, but between the gloves, the murky water, and the hand-shaking adrenaline levels, he couldn’t manage the buckles. Finally, he managed to snag the tag of a safety feature of most modern flight suits that pilots tended to scoff at, right up until they are forced to make a water landing. A quick tug inflated a pair of panels along the upper chest of his suit, dragging him back to the surface to take a much-needed sputtering breath. The life vest patches were squeezed under the straps for the pack, crushing at shoulders that were already starting to swell after their sudden introduction to technologically-enhanced martial arts.
He managed to awkwardly snag his slidepad, which was fortunately waterproof (more or less) and punched in a few commands. He was evidently outside the wireless jamming window, because the transmission went through. A few minutes later, just as the people within the tower were beginning to gather at the windows to confirm that someone had indeed just gone past the window downward, his ride arrived. Rising from below him, like some sort of sea turtle from the days of legend, came Son of Betsy. He popped the hatch, plopped wetly into the seat, and took it skyward. He pulled an emergency hammer from the compartment within the cockpit and punctured the floatation patches, strapped himself into the chair, and breathed a sigh of relief. The breath hadn’t even finished leaving his lungs when the ship’s sensors alerted him to approaching security vessels.
He gritted his teeth.
“Sorry, boys. I’m through playing,” he growled.
Pointing his ship straight up, he pushed the thrusters to the maximum speed he could manage without completely incinerating the hull. The ships fell into pursuit, unable to do anything but match speed and fire their weapons. He drifted smoothly left and right, up and down, evading the ordinance like they were hardly a concern. As their altitude increased, he slowly ticked the power level up, gaining speed. The more daring of the pursuit ships followed his lead. S.O.B.’s nose was incandescent now, fire dancing around the shock front ahead of his shield, but he didn’t slow. His face was a mask of determination. He was going home, and his ship was going to hold together, because he was Trevor Alexander, and flying fast, steady, and true was what he did. That was all there was to it.
As they got into deep space, he continued to dial up the speed, pushing the engines up to one hundred percent, then further. One-ten. One-twenty. One-fifty. One-seventy. The points on his sensors slowly dropped away, unwilling or unable to keep up with him. When the coast was clear, he plotted a course and switched to FTL, not slowing to let the engine cool until he was halfway to his first destination. S.O.B. didn’t seem to mind.
Epilogue
“What’ll it be, T?” asked the cook.
“The usual, Marv,
and call me Lex, would you?”
“You look like hell.”
“I’ve been hanging out there for the last couple of weeks.”
“Smells like it.”
Lex had taken his time getting back to Golana. It wasn’t that he wasn’t eager to go back. It was just that spending a month terrified that someone was chasing him had a way of making him hesitant to lead them to places he was fond of. So instead he had been puttering around in his ship, flying in random loops and jukes until the MTE rations Ma had given him ran out. He'd left his slidepad off, watched his back constantly, and generally lived as though the government, a corporate syndicate, or the mob were after him--mostly because they probably were.
Eventually, though, he decided that if they were going to find him, they might as well get it over with. There was only so long that a human being could stand washing with moist towelettes or in the no-tell motels of the cosmos.
A bowl of chili and a bag of corn chips were placed before him, and he shoveled them down with more enthusiasm than any meal he’d eaten in a long time.
“You gonna pay me? Or is this the beginning of a new tab?” Marv asked.
“Here,” he said, tossing the last chip of his advance on the table. “Keep it. You know something, Marv?”
“I know lots of things, T.”
“It is good to be alive,” Lex said, ignoring the quip and the stubborn refusal to adapt to his new nickname. “I’m heading home now, Marv.”
“I don’t see your bike anywhere.”
“I figure I’ll walk. I’m through flying for a few days.”
“Got some messages for you here.”
“Hang onto them. If I come back tomorrow, I’ll worry about them then.”
With that, he headed off for home. It was a long way, over sixty miles. Longer than he could realistically walk, but he spent as much of the time on foot as he could. He flipped the slidepad wireless on and began to sort through the messages he’d been too scared to look at before. Spam and the like were trashed. He had seventeen angry messages from his landlady, but hadn’t gotten one for the last three days. His boss at the livery garage had left a sequence of messages in which he fired him and rehired him at least three times. He always was the most requested driver over there. The courier boss wasn’t quite so fickle, and had only gone so far as to warn that he was supposed to request sabbaticals, not just take them. Detective Barsky had left a few more vague warnings, threats that seemed almost quaint in comparison to what Lex had been dealing with.
Karter had sent him a pile of feedback forms to fill out regarding the performance of the various gadgets, a task which he managed to do while riding a mag-lev train until they kicked him off for not having a ticket. Ma had sent him a separate message with contact information. Ma was new to the idea of casual conversation, it seemed, since it’d included a numbered list of possible topics of discussion for him to choose. Evidently multiple choice was the AI equivalent of small talk.
He sorted through the remaining messages, the sort of random debris that always accumulated in his inbox--nothing interesting enough to read, but too useful to trash. Lots of things from lots of people. Nothing from Michella.
Next, he pored through the news, half expecting to see his face and name plastered all over everything. Instead, he was practically absent. Here and there was a mention of “rumors of a masked stranger” or “an attempted suicide from the VC tower,” but little else. Not even a blurry picture of him wearing his fancy balaclava.
There was plenty to read, watch, and hear in reference to his antics, though. William Trent was currently in custody, pending an investigation into his involvement and actions regarding the “Weaponized Wormhole,” as the press had taken to calling it. Lex had managed to deliver the stolen file to Michella via a random computer terminal in a library on a planet he’d never been to before and never intended to go again. She’d put it to good use, picking names and places, finding people to interview. She'd spoken to residents of Operlo and ADC. Her name was everywhere, and her investigative skills told more of the story than the criminal investigation probably would ever have turned up. It had gotten her much praise, and caught the eye of some of the more prestigious journals and broadcast outlets. Police and press alike had asked where she’d gotten her information, but she only ever cited a “trusted source who wisely wishes to remain anonymous.”
Finally, he reached his door.
“Okay, let’s see. I was a half a month behind in my rent when I left. How long ago was that?” he muttered to himself, reflecting on what seemed like several lifetimes of events. “At least a month. So I’m a month and a half behind. That’s two decent paychecks, probably. So I’m going to be homeless for at least two weeks.”
He tapped the intercom.
“Mrs. Dunne,” he said. He continued to talk to himself as it negotiated a connection. “Hopefully I can convince her to let me get some of my clothes. Maybe I can get her to take my flatscreen in lieu of rent.”
The screen timed out with an error.
“What the hell,” he said with a shrug. In an act of blind optimism, decided to give his slidepad a try. He waved it across the door. It opened.
“What the hell?” he remarked in surprise, as he stepped inside.
He made his way to his apartment, and sure enough, his slidepad opened its door as well.
“What the hell!?” he repeated upon seeing his home for the first time since this mess had begun.
It was clean. Not cleaned out, as in robbed, but cleaned up. Takeout boxes had been removed; floors had been mopped. His tiny little home was downright presentable. As he was admiring it, the clicking footsteps of high heels startled him. He looked up to see a statuesque, dark-skinned goddess in a perfectly tailored business dress walk out of his bathroom.
“Welcome home, Mr. Alexander. You are late,” said Miss Misra. “I hope you don’t mind that I had the place straightened up.”
“Wha . . . what are you doing here?”
“I received your message,” she said, withdrawing a very lucky printout from its hiding place in her blouse pocket. “Let’s see now. ‘To: Miss Misra. From: That sunburned ass. Re: A word of warning. Dear Miss Misra, The password is where you had to touch up my skin cream.’” She grinned at him, tapping her left ear. “The contents of the attachment simply read, ‘Don’t let them activate it. Everyone will die.’”
“I can’t believe you believed me,” he said, “I sent one to some random guy at that asteroid, but I don’t think he figured out the riddle I used for the password. Or he just thought I was a weirdo.”
“A short delay seemed like a reasonable precaution. Mr. Patel was extremely grateful. He ruminated for a time on how best to illustrate his appreciation. Let me begin by saying that any disrespect you may have shown him through your past words or actions has been thoroughly forgiven.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“Nice, perhaps--but, in his eyes and mine, insufficient. We reasoned that your actions may have put you in a rather precarious position with VectorCorp, as well as being the source of considerable publicity that would make your life . . . difficult. Suppressing unwanted media attention and smoothing corporate and legal tensions are something of an essential skill in our field, so we set about wiping your slate, as it were.”
“So that’s why I’m not running for my life anymore, or staring at my face on every news report.”
“Yes and no. It turned out there was little for us to do. Something to do with the security chief acting alone, and playing his cards quite close to his chest. We tugged a few strings to see to it that you were left alone by some of the stragglers, but it still seemed an inadequate showing of our gratitude, so we looked into your life, and found that you had been evicted.”
“Yeah . . .” he said, the direction of the conversation making him nervous.
“Well, Uncle had been toying with the idea of expanding his real estate holdings for some time now, so he purchased your
building. Mrs. Dunne, it seems, was happy to be rid of it. I came here to oversee the transition. Things were only finalized yesterday.”
“Diamond Nick Patel is my landlord now?”
“He thought it would be an excellent way to keep in touch with you, on those occasions when he is in need of the services of a reliable and skilled pilot. The apartment is yours to live in, rent-free, for as long as you like. One less thing to worry about. Won’t that be nice?”
“Oh, yeah, this will be a huge load off of my mind,” he said flatly. He shook his head, sincerity returning to his voice. “Thank you, though. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.”
“You are welcome, Mr. Alexander. You earned it--and more.”
There was a buzz from the intercom. He tapped the “peep” button. The face looking back at him managed to make his heart skip a beat. After all of these years, after all of this time, it still managed to do that. He quickly answered.
“Michella!” he said, a bit more excitement making to his voice than he’d intended.
“Trev. Can I come in?” she asked, a smile that was almost nervous and shy warming her expression.
Lex turned to his guest/superintendent, touching the mute button.
“By all means. I must be going. I only remained so that I could explain the situation personally, and give you my gratitude.”
“Yeah. Yeah, come on up,” he replied, releasing the mute and tapping the entry buzzer.
He turned back to Miss Misra.
“I do hope you’ll consider working with my uncle, if he requests it,” she said, stepping toward the door. “We have plenty of legitimate pursuits that could benefit from your skills. And a handful that are less legitimate, if you are feeling adventurous.”
“Right now, I think it might be a good idea to lie low for a while.”
“A wise decision. And, Lex?” she said.
“Yes?”
She removed her glasses, leaning forward to plant a slow, tender kiss on his lips. When they parted, she looked him in the eyes.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Uh . . .” he replied. It was the best he could manage.
The smirk came to her lips again as she replaced her glasses. She opened the door and stepped into the hall, encountering Michella on the way out.
“Miss Modane, congratulations on all of your success, and my compliments to your exceptional investigative work. I have great respect for what you’ve done.”
“Oh, uh, well, thank you,” Michella replied, offering her hand.
Miss Misra shook it gracefully, and continued on her way. Lex, in an act nearly as difficult as the rest of his adventure combined, managed to keep from watching her go.
“Who was that?” Michella asked, as Lex closed the door behind her.
“Mmm? Her? Oh, no one. She’s my new landlord’s assistant,” he replied quickly.
“She seems nice. But that dress was a bit much,” she said, turning back to the door.
Lex took the opportunity to glance at his reflection in the flat screen to make sure that there wasn’t any lingering evidence of Miss Misra’s gratitude. On his face, at least.
“How did you know I’d be here? I only just got back.”
“I asked Marv to give me a call if you showed up. He said you’d be walking home, so I waited a few hours.”
“That was thorough.”
“Investigative reporter, remember?”
“Heh, yeah. So, Michella. It’s been a while,” he said.
“It has,” she said, looking away.
She definitely seemed nervous. There was a tension in the air, a fear of losing something good in the pursuit of making it better.
“Congratulations on all of the coverage.”
“Thank you. And thank you for your help. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“I . . . I’ve only really glanced at the news. A lot on my mind lately. What ended up happening?”
“Plenty. It turns out Trent tried to cover his tracks after you escaped. He erased everything. The Gemini information that you’d given me a copy of, video footage from that day, recordings, conversations. Every piece of surveillance for the last three months was wiped clean, and there are missing records dating back over three years.
“It turns out VectorCorp as a whole was legitimately unaware of his plans. It was entirely financed by their black budget, security funds. We can’t turn up anything to suggest there had been authorization, or even consultation, by VectorCorp proper. Their stock price took a hit, but VC is coming out of this looking like the victim. This was Trent’s baby, and had it not been for you, all of those people would have died. And if it hadn’t been for the information you gave me, Trent might still have walked for lack of evidence.”
She clutched her hands awkwardly in front of her.
“Do you want to sit down?” Lex asked.
She nodded. Out of habit, he leaned down to clear a spot, having already forgotten it had been cleaned. She sat on the futon. He joined her.
“This the first time I’ve been to your new apartment. This place is barely the size of our old dorm room,” she remarked, looking around.
“Yeah, I’ve been having some cash flow problems.”
Both sat quietly for a moment. When they spoke, it was simultaneously.
“Trevor, I--” she began.
“Michella, you--” he said, then continued: “No, you first.”
“It’s just. I . . . When we were together, I was happy, you know? We were a good couple. But even then, I felt like you were just a little boy. Not mature. Not living in the real world. I was wrong about you. I thought that you were selfish, that the only person that mattered to you was you. That mess with the Tremor Grand Prix . . . you wanted what you wanted, and you didn’t care what you had to do to get it. You were willing to destroy yourself if it meant you could have what you thought life was all about. I just . . . I didn’t have it in me to watch you do that to yourself.
“Over the last two years you seemed to be straightening out, and then that business with Nick Patel . . . I was wrong. You saved those people. You risked your life, and you didn’t even want credit. I was wrong about you, and I don’t know what I can say . . .”
“No . . .” Lex said, taking her hand in his. “Listen, Michella. You weren’t wrong. You knew me better than I did, and it wasn’t until this past month that I realized it. A lot has happened in the past month. Things I haven’t told you. Things you wouldn’t believe if I did. Things even I have a hard time believing. I learned a lot about myself.”
They hugged for a long time.
“So . . . where do we go from here? Do you want to tell me the rest of what happened?”
“I do, but . . . later. For right now, let’s just have right now.”
She smiled and nodded, pulling his arm around her and leaning her head on his shoulder. It was a perfect moment, one that he wished would last forever. One that, inevitably, was interrupted by his chirping slidepad. With a groan, he glanced at it. It was a message from Karter.
“Lex. Got the feedback. Good data. I have a job for you. New ship I want you to try. Get back to me,” it read.
“Who was it?” Michella asked, eyes closed and snuggling closer.
“No one. I’ll tell you later,” he said.
Lex looked at the heavenly creature nestled under his arm. He had a new ship, he had his little apartment, and for this moment, he had his girl. He had everything he needed. His finger hovered over the delete button.
With a smirk, he tapped “save” instead.
Well, almost everything . . .
###
From The Author
Thank you for reading this, the first of what I hope to be many science fiction novels. Though I genuinely enjoyed writing this, my first love is fantasy. If you like my writing, please take a moment to sample some of my other works. The first book of my Book of Deacon trilogy is available for free at many retailers. If you have anything to say, g
ood or bad, I would love to hear it, in the form of a review, or, if you prefer, an email. And finally, if you’d like to hear about my latest projects, please sign up for my newsletter.
Discover other titles by Joseph R. Lallo:
The Book of Deacon Trilogy:
Book 1: The Book of Deacon
Book 2: The Great Convergence
Book 3: The Battle of Verril
Book of Deacon Side Stories:
Jade
The Rise of the Red Shadow
Science Fiction Titles:
Bypass Gemini
Unstable Prototypes
Artificial Evolution
NaNoWriMo Experiments:
The Other Eight
Free-Wrench
Connect with Joseph R. Lallo
Website: https://www.bookofdeacon.com
Twitter: @jrlallo
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Book-of-Deacon/239647549418500
Tumblr: https://jrlallo.tumblr.com/
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends