The Beam: Season One (37 page)

Kai took one step, then another. She found her legs and ankles unbroken as she shambled into an unsteady run, soon slipping off her shoes and moving barefoot, stepping so she wouldn’t leave tracks. But after a few minutes she decided she’d probably been safe after she’d cleared the fence. Beamers didn’t do well in natural environments. Forests, rivers, and prairies weren’t artificial enough for them.
 

As she put more distance between herself and her pursuers (who may or may not be behind her, and who might also have sent hoverscouts), Kai felt her small impetus of energy beginning to deplete. She was tired, battered, and damaged. She kept thinking of what she’d felt on the Orion, and somehow the thought alone was enough to hobble her. Her legs moved slower, each step remembering the pain she’d felt before. She longed for sleep, or maybe death. Her body seemed ambivalent about which of the two came. Still, through will alone, she used everything she had to keep going for a bit longer. But after a while, she couldn’t even do that.

Curling herself into a ball behind a fallen log, Kai pulled the artificial fingernail from her right ring finger. She whispered to it and it flew up and away, into the breeze, off to deliver a message to her only hope: the man who had taught her to kill without spilling blood.

EPISODE 4

Chapter 1

Nicolai woke, stalked half-awake into the shower, and let his apartment’s canvas do all the work. The canvas turned on the lights ahead of him; it started the shower at the perfect temperature (Nicolai liked the water piping hot); it turned on the surround dryer when he stepped out naked. Normally Nicolai wanted to do things himself, feeling a very non-Directorate desire to not be taken care of, but today he craved coddling. If he didn’t have a Saturday brunch appointment with Isaac to get ready for, he’d go back to bed and let the apartment’s bots prepare him an elaborate breakfast and feed it to him in bed. He’d order in. He’d get a massage. Anything but working, or exerting effort.

Nicolai’s head pounded. He was much more tired than he should have been. He remembered a late Friday night and Isaac’s speech and too much political posturing. Being a stooge was, for Nicolai, like being a boxer with both hands tied behind his back. He always felt battered after having to circle a room with a dumb smile that said everything was under control. Yes, he made excellent money as Isaac’s speechwriter, but his job always seemed to extend far beyond being a speechwriter, far past even being a consultant or advisor or right-hand man. He was like a janitor for Isaac’s reputation, and he’d been cleaning up for Isaac for as long as he’d known him. It was as if their careers were braided: one career trajectory for two men. Isaac didn’t pay attention to details, so Nicolai had to unless he wanted both of them to end up looking like shit.
 

In fact, Isaac reminded Nicolai of Enzo, a boy he’d known back in Italy. Enzo’s family had been nearly as rich as Nicolai’s, but both of their parents had made them get jobs in the sailing club that both families belonged to. The idea was to instill a work ethic in the boys so they wouldn’t get too comfortable with getting everything for free. Nicolai accepted the lesson and did his job well. Enzo, on the other hand, knew it didn’t matter, so he didn’t even try. When they were told to stock shelves, Enzo threw things into place without regard to order or presentation. Nicolai, who knew Enzo’s work would reflect on him too, always stayed late to stack things nicely, to turn labels so they faced out. He cleaned up for Enzo so they’d both look good because the alternative was both of them looking bad. Today, working with Isaac felt very much the same.
 

As Nicolai stood in the dryer, he rolled his head back, feeling it ache. Why did his fucking head hurt so much? He rolled it around, feeling for damage. There was none, but it felt like maybe there
had
been, and that his body hadn’t yet gotten around to the deep tissue after handling the larger trauma. Maybe he’d been run over by a truck in his sleep. Maybe his muscles were bunched from tension. But what tension was there, beyond the normal irritation that came with being Isaac Ryan’s toady?
 

“Canvas,” said Nicolai.
 

A chirp answered him.

“I’d like a massage. Internal tissue.”
 

“Yes, Nicolai,” said a soothing female voice. “Would you like your diagnostic pad? It’s in the living room.”
 

His canvas could talk to his nanos, but Nicolai usually preferred to direct any necessary repairs manually by using a diagnostic pad that would also tell him which parts required attention. But today, getting the pad and directing repairs sounded like entirely too much work. The dryer’s hot air felt good, and Nicolai wanted to stand in it a while longer. He peeped at his bathroom mirror, saw the time displayed in its corner. He had time.
 

“No. Just direct massage here…” He touched the back of his neck. “And he…”
 

Nicolai stopped in the middle of the word “here” because he’d been about to direct his nanobots to massage his face. That was where it hurt most, but it wasn’t a place a person normally had muscular tension. Had he been drinking the night before? Nicolai didn’t think so, but falling onto his face was the only way to explain the throbbing. Unless he’d been punched, which he very much didn’t recall.
 

The canvas chirped, indicating it was still waiting for him to finish his command.
 

“Canvas, give me a verbal assessment. Internal tissue. What needs attention?”
 

The canvas indicated the areas Nicolai was already feeling discomfort — his neck, his face, and, strangely, his wrists. The system reported already-polished and burnished bruises that had been on his hips, right leg, and left arm, near the shoulder.
 

“Was I beaten up?” The question was rhetorical and Nicolai asked it light-heartedly as if intending the canvas to laugh, but the canvas cut off its response as a mail message came through in the bathroom mirror, marked urgent. Twice, meaning that it was
double
-urgent. An Isaac move for sure.
 

Nicolai read the message and groaned, knowing full well that Isaac had sent the summons (a summons to his apartment instead of their Saturday brunch spot; what the hell?) so that he could deliver a tirade in person. Isaac didn’t want to waste his rage over a vid connection; he wanted to yell about whatever it was in person. What Nicolai had just gotten was essentially a note to meet him in the principal’s office. Another total Isaac move.
 

Nicolai told the canvas to direct his nanos, expediting repairs and initiating internal massage, then got dressed and hired a hovercab at street level. Given a choice, Nicolai normally preferred non-hover transport for personal reasons, but Isaac’s message had been marked double-urgent and sounded like a prelude to a hissy fit, so he shouldn’t dally. Unfortunately, enduring hissy fits was one part of what Nicolai was paid so well to do.
 

Ten minutes later, the cab docked onto the guest port of Isaac and Natasha’s penthouse. The port detected the cab as a non-Ryan vehicle and blacked out the glass, then turned the port itself into a kind of faux, Beam-generated foyer with art on the walls. The foyer-port even had piped-in elevator music — Isaac’s idea of clever.
 

“Good morning, Mr. Costa,” said the canvas. “Would you like me to alert the Ryans that you have arrived?”
 

“No, I’ll just hang out on the side of the building,” said Nicolai, looking out through the open wall and the precipitous plummet to the street.
 

The canvas chirped.
 

“I’m kidding,” said Nicolai. “Yes, please let them know.” He rolled his eyes. Of course Isaac kept his canvas stupid so he could feel superior. Such sarcasm would have killed at Nicolai’s.
 

“Of course, Mr. Costa.”
 

Nicolai waited, listening to the elevator music, recognizing the warbling voice of Samuel Bolton.
There
was a family who knew how to recycle. Bolton’s songs were all his great grandfather’s, written untold numbers of years ago. Each generation tweaked the songs, then rolled around in the innumerable credits generated by the timeless classics.
 

After a moment of waiting, the foyer’s privacy walls dissolved back into the clear glass they’d been before the cab had approached. A door at the far end opened. Nicolai waited to see a familiar face greeting him, but given the glass’s transparency, it quickly became obvious that he was alone and presumably supposed to enter on his own.
 

Nicolai entered, annoyed. This was all such posturing. He walked from the port into the living room, then from room to room expecting to find Isaac at some point with his hands on his hips, his petulant ire raised over something stupid. What that stupid thing could be, given the previous evening’s success, Nicolai couldn’t imagine.
 

Instead of Isaac, Nicolai found Natasha sprawled across the couch like a cat, draped in a thin garment that was somewhere between a dress and a nightgown. Nicolai imagined the pose was supposed to be seductive, and it might have been if he hadn’t known the Ryans for so long. Natasha was still beautiful (although Nicolai preferred her younger and less-skeletal look, before she’d eradicated nearly all of her fat cells) and looked to be in her late twenties, but after six decades of bullshit, it was hard not to think of her as an old woman clinging to youth.
 

“Long time, no see,” she purred.
 

“Where is Isaac? He mailed. Urgently.”
 

Natasha’s voice lost its purr and became biting. “He’s beating off in his office.”
 

Nicolai dodged the “beating off” comment, which was probably not literal, and said, “Does he know I’m here?”
 

“
I
know you’re here,” she said, effortlessly and shamelessly switching back to her soft voice. Beside her, her stupid little dog yapped. Clearly, the two needed to communicate better about which people should be courted versus barked at.

“Should I wait?”
 

“You could wait on my lap.”
 

Nicolai rolled his eyes. “Now now, Natasha,” he said, taking a few steps toward the office. He looked at Isaac’s office door. If there was one thing more annoying than being summoned like a slave with a double-urgent mail and a power-playing air, it was being summoned and then ignored. Despite the physical discomfort still in his body, Nicolai felt himself growing angry. He’d done his job. They’d been celebrating last night. What was Isaac all shitted up about now?
 

“Where have you been, anyway?” said Natasha from behind him, still striking her movie star pose.

“Sleeping. But apparently that was out of line. I should have known better.”
 

“Sleeping?”
 

Nicolai turned. “Why aren’t we meeting at the restaurant? I did my job last night, yet I’m getting the anger game. Summoned here like a bad little boy. Are we still having brunch?”
 

Natasha’s veneer thinned. She seemed confused.
 

“What do you mean, brunch?”
 

“It comes between breakfast and lunch,” Nicolai snapped, turning back and slamming his fist onto Isaac’s door. The office was soundproofed — both physically and electronically — but if he pounded long enough, chances were that the canvas would tell Isaac that some asshole was tap-tap-tapping on his chamber door. Besides, it felt good.
 

“Honey, we don’t do brunch on Mondays.”
 

Nicolai turned his head, his eyebrows drawing together. He was just about to ask Natasha what the hell she meant when the door opened and Isaac emerged staring daggers at Nicolai, his hands as poutingly on his hips in life as they had been in Nicolai’s mind.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Isaac blurted. Then, with an annoyed look at Natasha (Nicolai intuited an argument in progress between them), Isaac grabbed Nicolai by the arm and dragged him into the office. Once the door was closed, Isaac resumed his irritated pose, waiting. Nicolai had thought Isaac couldn’t be more impotently angry, but he’d been wrong. Isaac postured like a master.
 

“I’ve been at my apartment,” Nicolai answered, starting to suspect there was more in play here than he realized.
 

“Off grid? For two days? Have you been watching the feed?”
 

“What’s on the feed?”
 

“Oh, well,” said Isaac, broadcasting his agitation, “where should I start? Let’s see… you weren’t around when Micah gave that speech trashing us. The
first
speech trashing us, that is. You missed a few riots, a few stories and reports saying how incompetent I am and how I’m making the Directorate look terrible. Why is it
my
fault, by the way? I’m not king and grand fucking poobah of the Directorate. I’m just the Czar of Internal Satisfaction. But everyone is up my ass anyway — and up Natasha’s — because of motherfucking Micah and the way the sheets eat up the whole ‘brothers divided’ thing. It’s almost fucking biblical, how they act about him and me, and…”
 

“How is Natasha holding up?” said Nicolai.
 

“Fuck her!” Isaac spat. “She spent fourteen million credits this month already, most of it in the Viazo, and you know what I think? I think she’s fucking some guy in there, or maybe a lot of guys, and meanwhile she’s giving
me
shit for ‘not making her feel better’ or some crap, like I don’t have enough on my plate without…”
 

Nicolai held up a hand, suddenly realizing he’d passed up Isaac’s strange phrase “for two days” in jumping directly to “watching the feed.”
 

“Wait. Not to sound like a total cliche, but Isaac… what day is it?”
 

“What
day
is it?”