The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller (9 page)

She nodded once, then grimaced. "What do you think Mara would say if she knew you took illegal drugs right before the most dangerous part of the mission?"

"I think she would trust my judgment to do whatever it takes to get us home safe."

"Pretty handy thing if we're headed into a fight." Vette gazed at the pill. A slow smile spread across her face. "So does it get you high?"

I smirked. She took it. After, she fell into shop talk, asking me how long I'd been at this, whether I'd seen anything like this before, whether I expected violence. I didn't plan on any. My idea was to get us to Obo as quietly as possible. What we did from there would depend on what he knew, but however it went down, with any luck the Pod would yank us back to Primetime before G&A security knew they'd been cracked.

After half an hour, I thought Vette was about to get up and go to the kitchen. She got up and went to the kitchen. A half hour after that, it was time to go.

Brownville's neon nightlights bounced from the clouds. At least it wasn't raining. I punched Cotter Tower's address into the system and the car autopiloted through the dark city, suggesting restaurants and nightclubs as it went. I couldn't figure out how to turn that part of it off; as we pulled into the skyscraper's cavernous garage, it suggested we try the sushi joint on the 101st floor.

"Wish we'd had that thing at the start of the week," Vette said. "One more turkey sandwich and I'll be ready to give up food for good."

We grabbed our packs. Our feet echoed through the garage. The elevators were shut down for the night, but I rang up security and the chief showed up a minute later. I transferred the second half of his fee and he led us to a service elevator. On the long, long ride to the top, I reflected how lucky we were to find a man dishonest enough to take our bribe, but honest enough to honor it.

He took us all the way to the roof. Wind ripped at my clothes in unsteady bursts. Mist diminished our sightlines, but the view was staggering. The whole city laid out like a map of itself. Blue and white and green light glowed from black avenues. We had some buildings taller than Cotter Tower in Primetime, but not many. Rarely necessary. A couple miles west, the lights ceased in an abrupt line. The ocean. It was the first time I'd seen it since coming to Brownville.

"Got your stuff right here." The security chief gestured to the bags we'd left with him. His eyes watered in the wind. "Not sure it's the best night for it."

I clapped his shoulder. "We were never here and you won't see us again. Enjoy your evening."

He smiled, reassured, and left us. I took 3D pictures of the city and the bladelike rise of the G&A building half a mile away. It was at least half as tall as Cotter Tower, spearing past the offices around it. Half its peak rose and curved like a thumbnail. The other half was a flat shelf. Just big enough for a helicopter. From here, it looked very, very small.

I opened the bags the security chief had kept for us. The gliders were folded up inside, sleekly compact. I switched on their computers and fed them my photos. They conjured up flight plans, tracking the wind, the atmospheric pressure. Several lights went yellow.

"We're going to die, aren't we?" Vette said.

Both gliders' readouts went red. I overrode them. Liability waivers popped onscreen. I agreed to them. "We'll be fine. This is high-end gear. Sophisticated."

"Sophisticated? Can it even
talk
to you?"

"Doesn't need to." I watched the lights. They went from red to yellow. The wind kicked up and they flickered back and forth, then stayed red. "They just need to get us from here to there. Simple physics."

"According to those lights, we're on the wrong side of the equation."

"Don't worry, I overestimated our weight. Got to be cautious, you know."

I gazed across the mists and clouds. Aided by the drugs, I thought I could pull patterns from the chaos of air and water. The earth waited three quarters of a mile below. I helped buckle Vette in, then she strapped my bag to my back. Each folded-up glider had a remote with a wrist strap. I climbed over the first railing to the outer fence at the tower's ledge. Vette followed, her mist-damp face carefully blank.

I punched a button on the remote. With a soft whirr, my wings extended to their smallest setting. We were going to have to build up speed before the glide. That meant starting with a dive. "You ready?"

Vette swallowed against the wind. "I can't believe this was my idea."

I smiled and jumped. My organs lurched, weightless in freefall. Winds tore at my face. Vette screamed, then cut herself off. Lights glimmered below. I cut left to open some space between us, then waved my hand at her and punched the button.

My guts jolted again. Dark wings spread from my back. The glider's computer did its best to minimize the change in forces, but the winds yanked at my wings, cartwheeling me; the glider's sensors took over, adjusting spokes and flaps. I stabilized and soared forward. Vette tumbled below me. Her wings leveled out, carried her forward.

The gliders had radio capacity, but I didn't want to use them unless we had to. Rooftops passed a thousand feet below us. We still had good height on the G&A building, but we had a long way to go yet. Less than twenty minutes until the Pods would take us back. If we didn't make it, we wouldn't have a second shot.

We had good momentum; I'd launched just as the winds shifted toward the G&A tower. The readout on my remote flickered, then went steady yellow. Our target grew by the second. The glider trimmed itself to the shifting winds, seeking every advantage.

A few hundred yards out, we still had our height on the landing pad. My glider banked, leveling me out for approach. Lights winked from the tower's spire. I bled speed. The high railing on the edge of the pad swung terribly close. I tucked my feet. The tarmac appeared below me. The glider shifted elegantly, stalling just above the surface. I landed. Winds ripped at my wings, turning me. I punched a button on the remote and the glider folded into my pack.

Vette landed with a whoop. I slashed my palm across my throat. She rolled her eyes, then adopted an apologetic look. A single door sat in the bandshell-esque face of the tower's top. We sheltered against its face.

"Think they saw us?" Vette said.

"Couple cameras up here. We'll know in a second." I got out my pad and set to work on the e-locked door. Its security was tight stuff, but maybe not as tight as it would have been if it weren't 1500 feet into the sky. My pad snuck in through the side and shook hands with the gatekeeper. The lock hummed and went green.

The landing inside was silent and dim. I shed my gliderpack and rummaged through my other bag. I'd picked up ten more mobicams, even smaller than the one I'd used in the club. Small enough to roll under many doors. I left one on the landing and jogged down the stairs into a well-lit hall with a gift shop and restaurant, both closed. I called up the elevator. When it arrived, I hopped in, punched up the 82nd floor, dropped four mobicams, then jumped back out. The doors closed and the elevator carried my pets away.

I pulled up their feeds on my pad, which thanks to the door lock was also tapped into the building's security in the most passive possible way. No red flags so far. The four mobicams each showed a slightly different angle of the elevator doors sliding open. One rolled to the edge and poked its lens into the hallway, swiveling. Lush carpet. Paintings on the walls. Dim lights. No people. The mobicams exited. I directed one to each side of the elevator banks to watch both sides of the hall. The other pair navigated noiselessly over the carpet toward Obo's office.

They stopped dead. Down the hall, a man stuck his head from a door, glanced both ways, frowned, and went back inside the room.

The cams advanced. One edged around Obo's doorframe and stopped. A table light burned from the desk beside the outer windows. A man sat at it, toying with a tablet. The mobicam slowly swiveled, revealing a much larger man seated in something that looked more like a giant bear trap than a chair. Modern aesthetics at work.

"He's in his office," I said. "One bodyguard. No sign of the other two."

"Should we find them first?" Vette said.

"We'll give them a minute."

"If they don't show up?"

"Hunting them down would only expose us to more attention. Anyway, we don't have much time. We stick to the plan. Head to the office, neutralize security—KO only, nothing lethal—then set Obo's feet to the coals. If he's Primetime, we hole up, wait for the Pods, and pop him back with us."

She frowned. "If he's local, what's he going to think when we just vanish?"

"Nothing, because he'll be unconscious." I watched the bodyguard through my pad. My souped-up senses were telling me he was dangerous. More alert than he appeared. "Let me do the talking. We can't tip him off to who we are until we're sure he's Primetime."

I let a few minutes go by, waiting for the two missing bodyguards to appear. Neither did. Obo idled with his tablet, paging through articles, playing the occasional video. The guard in the bear trap chair didn't move.

Time was dwindling. I activated my Guardian Angel, a matte black marble that hung over my left shoulder, kept aloft on a silent pillar of ionized air. They were anachronistic, at least fifty years ahead of this timeline's tech, but I'd convinced Mara and the Pods to let me take them anyway. This world was gun-happy and tech-flashy. Anyone who saw the Angels in action would assume it was next-gen Fed hardware. I got Vette's up and running.

"Ready?"

She gave me a tight-lipped smile and raised her brows. "Totally."

I pressed the down button on the elevator. It was a brushed steel box. Camera in the corner. I left my weapon pocketed until it carried us fifty floors down to the 82nd. My mobicams showed the hallway was all clear. I stepped out, palmed my gun, motioned Vette to do the same.

I walked into the dim office. The bodyguard looked up. "Can I help you?"

His arm had barely begun to move; my brain informed me the man's hand would dart to his waistband in a fraction of a second. I shot him in the chest with a two-parter, the low-velo projectile delivering an instant electric shock to tense his muscles while the fast-acting sedative coursed through his bloodstream. His spine stiffened like a flagpole. His eyes bulged. His fingers splayed, then went lax. He slithered to the floor.

Obo reached for something on his desk. I leveled my arm. "Don't."

He froze. "Who are you?"

"Where are the others?"

"What?"

"Cover the door," I said to Vette, who was standing around looking equal parts tough and terrified. She lurched away and took up position a few feet to the side of the doorway. I gestured my gun at Obo. "Your other two guards. Where are they?"

He blinked. He wore a suit so finely tailored it moved in perfect sync with his body, which the drugs were telling me was twitchy and prone to sudden movement. "Downstairs."

"Will they be back soon?"

"Could be any minute."

"You're lying," I said, certain it was true. I got my pad from my back pocket, pulled up the timer until the Pod would carry us home, and set it down on his desk. It showed less than eight minutes. "That's how long you have to talk. Once it reaches zero, so do you."

He grinned smugly. "Don't know how you got in here. I do know you won't get out."

"You'll be surprised," I said. "Time's dying. Why did you have Korry Haltur killed?"

"Who?"

"The next time you play dumb, I hit you so hard you won't have to pretend. Why give Haltur a hotshot?"

Obo gave me a shrug and a teasing little smile. I drove my palm into his forehead. His head snapped back.

"Jesus!"

"Next time I take a finger." I reached for his hand. "Why did—"

"I don't know!" He yanked back his hand, but his posture had changed from aggressive to fearful. "I was just taking orders."

I read no lie in his face. This was an impressive drug. And that was my worst fear: that he was too mid-level to be told
why
he was marching. "The daisu?"

His nod was so small I barely caught it. "He did some work for us. That's all I know."

I gestured at his tablet. "That personal? Or company?"

"Company. Wait, there's no way you crack your way inside. This is
daisu
."

I linked mine to his. "Password."

He laughed in disbelief, then gave it. Tunnels into the G&A network opened before me. They led to very high and well-protected walls. My infiltration programs were all set and ready; all I had to do was enter a few tweaks, a few search terms. Everything that flagged connections to Haltur. If he'd worked for them, there must be plenty.

My fingers flew over the keypad. Seconds dissolved away. With four minutes until the Pods teleported us from this time and place, I launched my attack. A small army of spiders, snakes, and hawks flung themselves at G&A's virtual defenses, wriggling into cracks, snatching up anything that moved relating to my search. Files piled onto my pad.

"How's it going?" I called softly to Vette.

"Quiet. You?"

"Uncertain. They're not likely to have explicit info about a killing in their company files." I stared at Obo. "Wish I could dig it out of his head instead."

Obo's arm twitched. He arrested the movement before his arm raised more than a few inches, but I could see its path in my mind's eye. He was going to reach for the side of his head. It was a subconscious, self-reassuring gesture, the way you might reach for your wallet when a friend tells you they had theirs stolen.

"Turn your head," I said.

He gave me a puzzled look but obeyed. I laced my fingers into his hair. Felt something warm and metal. I parted his dark hair and saw a small black button.

I held the gun steady at his chest. "Is that a port?"

"What do you think?" he said.

"What's in your memory?"

"I don't know. That's the point."

I beckoned at his head. "Uncap. Let's see what you've got in there."

He paled. "If you touch it, they'll kill both of us."