Hammerjack (9 page)

“Something that looks like flash-DNA, but isn’t flash-DNA.”

Cray leaned in toward him. “Go on.”

“The next great breakthrough,” Yin explained, getting up and strolling about the room. His eyes scanned the dusty titles on his bookshelves as he spoke, like a professor giving a history lesson. “Strictly in the experimental phase. We believe it has the potential to be the biological storage medium to take the world into the next century.”

“I take it the Collective doesn’t know about this yet.”

“No,” Yin admitted, which was confessing the greatest of sins. “The other members of the Assembly would have sought licensing rights, cutting into GenTec’s share of development. We’re already working on a full range of applications for the new technology. The board thought it would be best to keep this to ourselves until we were ready to bring the new flash to market.”

“
That’s
what this was about?” Cray asked. “Corporate politics?”

“That was part of it.”

“And what about this business with Heretic? Was that just more bullshit?”

“The most effective lie contains a small portion of the truth.”

“And it had nothing to do with sweetening the deal for me.”

Yin shrugged. “The thought did cross my mind.”

Cray had to laugh. He had been played all right, in more ways than he could have anticipated. For a long time, he had been following the faint traces of Heretic’s signature through the Axis, never coming up with enough data to form a decent profile. That, plus the legend that had built up around the man, made Heretic a prize of sorts—a hammerjack who could operate on the same level Cray did. Yin knew he wouldn’t be able to resist the chance to go up against that, and used it to lure him into making the intercept. It had been bait, pure and simple.

“So Heretic is working for the
Inru
now,” Cray mused. “I can buy that. But that doesn’t explain why they would be interested in GenTec.”

“Ordinary terrorism,” Yin said, heading back to the bar and pouring another drink. “Their founding principle is the destruction of modern technology. What better way to do that than by attacking technology at its source?”

“This was sabotage.”

“Incredible, but effective. Heretic was extremely thorough with our records. After downloading the virtual models of the new flash, he destroyed all research materials related to the project. The flash Zoe carried was the only surviving prototype. I had to make sure we got it back.”

It made a twisted kind of sense—but then the politics of extremism always seemed twisted to Cray. The
Inru
had started out as a small enough group, a reactionary movement to the Collective displacement of world government. But since then, its message had become more apocalyptic. Their leadership began to see advancing science as the enemy of mankind, and technology as the tool of its enslavement. It didn’t take long for the faithful to turn that belief into dogma and the
Inru
into a religious cult. The corporate media portrayed them as little more than a fringe group—but there was no way of knowing what their real numbers were. And not knowing was what scared the Collective the most.

Cray was silent for a time while he sorted it all out. He noticed Yin watching him closely during those moments. “My GME showed me some of the new flash,” he finally announced. “If Zoe had lived long enough, its characteristics would have torn her up on a cellular level. Was that just an oversight or part of the design?”

“I told you,” Yin said without missing a beat. “It’s still in the experimental phase. But to answer your question, the flash was not designed to be compatible with a living system. The applications we have in mind are strictly
ex vitro
.”

“So by assimilating it, she was handing herself a death sentence.”

“Eventually, yes.”

Cray shook his head in disbelief. “Jesus Christ.”

The fiber link on Yin’s desk interrupted the conversation. Yin passed his hand over a flat monitor in the face of the marble desktop, then inserted an earpiece so Cray wouldn’t hear the other side of the conversation. The communication was brief. Cray had to settle for reading Yin’s reactions, which were few and cryptic.

“Yes,” Yin replied to the caller, nodding his head. “I understand. Dr. Alden is here with me right now. I’ve explained the current situation to him.” A few more moments passed while the caller did the talking, then Yin ended it by adding, “It will be done immediately.”

The light from the monitor drained away from Yin’s features. He sat down.

“Bad news?” Cray asked.

“That was the General Secretary of the Collective Assembly,” Yin told him. “A matter of some urgency has arisen.”

“What’s the matter?” Cray remarked. “Your bosses want to chat with you about this?”

“No,” Yin answered. “They want to see
you
.”

Cray blinked out of sheer surprise.

“The Assembly has convened an emergency session,” Yin explained. “The secretary was short on details, but was very clear that I put you on the next SOT to Vienna. It seems they want to ask you a few questions.”

“What the hell for?” Up until now, Cray had been certain that the
real
power had never even heard his name. “I don’t have dealings with those people.”

“You never ask why, Cray.” Yin hit the intercom switch on his fiber link, calling on his personal secretary. Most executives used a virtual assistant, but Yin still enjoyed having his whims catered to by an actual human being. “Kayla, I need you to book a first-class passage for Dr. Alden—Kuala Lumpur to Vienna. I want a pulser on the roof to take him to the airport in fifteen minutes.”

Yin closed the link. Cray was expecting something from the man—condescension, pity, sadistic pleasure, anything to indicate his reaction to this development—but Yin was blank and guarded. The news could have meant everything or nothing to him, there was no way to tell.

“I’ll see to it that you get everything you need upon your arrival,” Yin said.

Cray stood. “Just like that.”

“You should be used to that by now.”

“I am,” Cray said, and headed out. Stopping short of the exit, he lingered for a few moments, contemplating the scene as he wanted it to end.
I don’t believe you,
he would have said.
Not a single word. All I need is time, and I’ll be able to prove it. And after that
. . .

After that, what?

“You don’t want me as an enemy, Cray,” Yin warned. “Don’t entertain any thoughts of aligning yourself with the Assembly, either.”

Cray turned around.

“Choose the lesser of two evils?” he asked.

Yin went rigid.

“You always have choices,” he said. “I suggest you consider yours carefully before you make it.”

Cray was more straightforward.

“I suggest,” he said, “that you go fuck yourself.”

But Phao Yin only watched.

Tuned to the sentry monitors, he watched as Cray left the sanctuary and rode the elevator up to the roof. He watched as a pulser landed and took Cray aboard. And lastly, he watched as the gleaming vehicle jumped onto the grid and hurtled past his window, joining the endless stream of traffic that passed over the city. It was what Yin had prophesized, and it was what came to pass.

He had considered all the possibilities before Cray arrived, but never doubted the outcome. Cray had never been able to conceal his emotions, least of all his outrage. Sending him to intercept Zoe had simply been the final act in a well-orchestrated performance. Yin hated to lose him over that, but such were the sacrifices one made in war. Zoe herself had seen to that—as Cray was only beginning to discover.

Turning back to his desk, Yin caught sight of the hustler. The kid was still splayed across his couch, stirring now that the neuropatch had run its course. The sight of the young addict made Yin feel a sudden connection with the street, a sensation that had once been familiar to him but now only served as a reminder of his origins.

He hit the fiber link again, opening a secure port to an address that only he knew. There was an acknowledgment on his display at the point of contact, but nothing else. Those on the other end didn’t have voices in the conventional sense. Yin preferred it to the usual forms of human interaction.

“Dr. Alden is working with a GME on the Singapore intercept,” he said into the silent link. “Find out who it is and procure any findings from the study. Direct them to my office only. I’ll decide the disposition at that time.”

He closed the port. Moving worlds was that simple, as long as you knew where to push.

That left Yin with some time to wait. He spent some of it watching the hustler climb his way back to consciousness, the pain of withdrawal building on his face. The trip was the best money could buy, but getting off it was hard. As soon as his eyes fluttered open, the hustler would be wanting more.

The kid moaned. Another figure then appeared in the office doorway, as if awaiting her cue. The girl’s face was concealed in shadows, her posture wary and tense like that of an animal.

“I see you found your way back here,” Yin said to her. The sound of his voice was familiar to her, and she responded by moving partially into the light. She was also from the street—a hustler in her own right, her body a collection of artificial enhancements, her eyes a feast of addiction.

Yin placed a small plastic pouch on top of his desk—a pack of neuropatches, the same thing he had given the boy. The girl fixated on them, taking an involuntary step forward before her instincts made her stop.

Yin smiled coldly.

Stimulus and response.

“You want these,” he said to the girl. “You know what to do.”

She did. The girl had been a guest of Yin’s many times, and never refused what was required of her. Shedding her rags, she walked over to the couch and performed on the young male hustler—all the things Yin liked to see, all the things Yin could never do. Entangled in one another, they went through the motions like automatons operating in a physical plane, flesh connecting while minds disconnected. Yin had a vague sensation of the passage of time, and when it was over he was on his feet, standing above the two of them.

The girl looked up at him and twisted her lips into a smile. She reached without looking for what Yin handed her, familiar with this ritual and his habits. It was a small blade—only a few centimeters long, a dagger from Yin’s collection of antiques. It glinted in the soft light as she raised it above the boy’s chest.

“Send him on his way,” Yin commanded.

The suborbital jump from Kuala Lumpur took less than twenty minutes, but speed came with a price. The instant shift across seven time zones played like a meat grinder with Cray’s frayed senses, tossing him into a spin that bit like a hangover. His condition was obvious enough to alarm a flight attendant, who offered him a soother before landing, but Cray refused. The stuff reminded him too much of the drugs some hammerjacks used to keep their logical orientation in the Axis, and that was one trip he didn’t need.

Instead, he dragged his disorientation with him as he hopped the SOT, making his first stop a place that served the only stimulant Cray had ever fully trusted—caffeine. He greedily assimilated a triple shot of steaming black espresso and watched the world around him regain a remote sense of clarity. With life now pumping through his veins, Cray left a generous tip for the waiter and proceeded back into the distinct vibe that was central Europe.

It didn’t take him long to realize he no longer fit in.

That was a conceit he had learned from too many years in the Asian Sphere—his perceived ability to blend in anywhere, anytime. Back there the rules were few and savage, making it easy for any player with reasonable street smarts to become part of the culture. But here in the core of civilization, they could smell it on you. Cray saw it in the way people looked at him, their stares brief but riddled with intent. Cray might have taken offense, had it not been so true. What made you slick in Malaysia branded you in Europe, and there was nothing you could do to hide it.

For Cray, it was like walking through a sterile curtain. The last few years, he had become accustomed to the closeness of bodies—air thick with the chatter of a thousand dialects, the persistent subtext of pheromones. Now, there was a distinct
lack
of sensory input, as if someone had turned down the volume of his life and dropped him into the middle of a neutral void.