Perfect Dark: Initial Vector Read online

  Steinberg stared at Carrington, and beside him, felt Grimshaw doing the same thing.

  “No way,” Steinberg said. “Not even they could—”

  “Look at the facts.”

  “You’re saying that pharmaDyne unleashed a pandemic that claimed nearly forty million lives just so they could sell the vaccine?”

  Carrington shook his head, annoyed. “No, that makes no fiscal sense, Jon. If they had developed the superflu strain, they would certainly have developed the vaccination at the same time. By waiting, they lost thirty-seven million potential customers. The vaccine came after the outbreak.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “It was an accident,” Grimshaw whispered. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you’re telling us?”

  Carrington shrugged, as if the enormity of what they were discussing barely interested him. “It’s a theory.”

  “Can we prove it?” Steinberg asked.

  “No, not until we know who or what Rose is.”

  Grimshaw was beginning to rock in his chair, making the casters squeak with each shift of his weight. “This is bad, this is bad, this is very very bad, boss man.”

  Steinberg shot him an annoyed glare. “Bad for dataDyne, maybe.”

  “No, dude, you don’t get it, you don’t see it in macro, like. You’re all soldier-badass-tunnel-vision guy, yeah? Think about the big picture, the global picture. If the boss man is right and we cough up the proof, dataDyne goes down.”

  “I’m not seeing a downside.”

  “Grim’s correct,” Carrington said. “dataDyne isn’t simply a large business, nor even an industry, Jon. It’s effectively a global superpower. It has divisions and operations in over two hundred countries around the world, and in many of those countries, it’s the primary—the only—engine driving the economy. If dataDyne collapses, it’ll plunge the world into a financial crisis the likes of which has never been seen. It may even be fair to say that the world will never recover. Billions of people will lose their jobs, starve, die. Calling it catastrophic would be an extraordinary understatement.”

  “So you’re saying we do nothing?” Steinberg glared at Carrington. “You’re saying we just sit on this information?”

  “We don’t have information, Jon, we have a theory. If the theory is proven, then we’ll have to make our next moves very carefully.”

  Steinberg scowled, getting up from his chair. “And how often are you wrong, Daniel? About things like this, how often are you mistaken?”

  “Not very,” Carrington admitted.

  “We find the proof, we can’t let this stand.”

  “If we find the proof, we won’t, I promise you.” Carrington met his stare, held it for a moment before breaking away to look toward Grimshaw. “Good work, Grim. Now I’ve got another job for you.”

  “Find Rose?”

  “Find Rose,” Carrington confirmed. “Dig up everything you can on Murray, see if there’s a connection anywhere in his history to a person, a place, a thing called ‘rose.’ I’ll want regular updates, twice daily.”

  “You got it, boss man,” Grimshaw said.

  “Jon,” Carrington said. “Walk with me.”

  “How’s she doing?” Carrington asked him.

  “Physically, she was a little shaky from the tranqs in her system, but she bounced back after a hot meal and quick nap,” Steinberg replied, looking up into the gray sky, feeling the light rain pelting his face. “Emotionally, I don’t know.”

  “You haven’t talked to her?”

  “I tried last night. She was on HoloMan, wouldn’t come out.”

  “I read your debrief and reviewed the mission records. She did everything she could, she must see that.”

  “I don’t think she does.” Steinberg lowered his face from the rain, glanced at Carrington. They resumed walking, taking the gravel path from the Institute buildings toward the Manor. “I think she blames herself for Able’s death.”

  “That’s transference,” Carrington said, dismissively. “She’s turning everyone she can’t save into her father.”

  The statement annoyed Steinberg, and he said as much. “Don’t do that, Daniel. Don’t diminish what she’s feeling.”

  “And what is she feeling?”

  “You remember when I joined you?” Steinberg asked abruptly. “You remember what had happened, how you found me, recruited me?”

  “You’d been court-martialed and discharged, if I recall.”

  “You remember why I was discharged?”

  “You were asking the wrong questions of the wrong people.”

  He scowled. “I was asking the right questions, but that’s not the point. I’d been in Pakistan, fighting the insurgency, when we were ambushed. I lost over half of my squad. I mean, when those guys hit us, Daniel, they hit us like they knew what they were doing. I saw friends, guys I’d served with in Angola and Somalia, literally blown apart beside me.”

  “Yes, you’d been set up,” Carrington said. “I know all this.”

  “That’s not the point. This isn’t about arms deals or corruption. This is about the other thing, the thing that I came to you with, the reason I signed on with you.”

  Carrington’s eyes narrowed, trying to follow Steinberg’s lead, but it was clear he didn’t see it, didn’t understand. Steinberg sighed, came to a stop on the gravel path.

  “You wanted to fight that corruption,” Carrington said. “Or so I thought.”

  “Yeah, and it was a good line, and you believed it. And I’m not saying to you now that I don’t, but what I’m trying to tell you is that it wasn’t the whole reason.”

  “So what was the whole reason?”

  “Guilt, Daniel.”

  “But what happened to your men, that wasn’t your fault.”

  “No, not about that, not like that.”

  “I don’t understand, Jon.”

  “I’m still alive,” Steinberg growled. “They’re dead, and I’m not. I’d been a Ranger for years, I’d been trained to deal with death, and I still couldn’t live with it. They were dead, I was alive, and I was sick with the guilt of it.”

  Carrington said nothing, the realization seeping slowly across his features.

  “She’s twenty years old, Daniel, and she’s racked up a body count to rival a goddamn rifle company. She’s lost everything and everyone she’s ever cared about. Two days ago, she tried to save the life of a man she’d never met, and she gave it everything she had, and she failed.

  “They’re all gone, Daniel, but Joanna Dark, she’s still here.”

  Carrington looked away from him, past him, to the estate walls in the distance. The realization on his face had turned to something else, something that spoke more of sadness, and regret.

  “You need to talk to her,” Steinberg said.

  Carrington sighed, nodded once. “She doesn’t like me very much.”

  “She doesn’t know you.”

  “I’m not sure that will make the difference.”

  “Come on,” Steinberg said. “Let’s go see her.”

  Together, they continued following the path, toward the Manor.

  They found Joanna’s rooms emptied, stripped of her few belongings.

  Of the young woman herself, there was no sign at all.

  CHAPTER 14

  Ginza Station—Tokyo, Japan October 2nd, 2020

  The sky above the city was steel gray, the vast sea of neon below cutting swaths of sickly yellow-green though the clouds. On this side of the train station, the nighttime foot traffic moved in waves, a featureless ocean of humanity, mixing Caucasian and Asian faces into a seamless blend. Great edifices of commerce rose on every side of the station, and towering above them all was the Beck-Yama International Building, one whole face of the structure a massive neon sculpture, an abstract twisting of tubes and sheets in green, white, and red.

  The last time Jo had been in Tokyo, in Ginza specifically, she’d been traveling with her father, and had stared in wond
er at the Beck-Yama façade. In a world where garish wasn’t just a marketing campaign but a way of life, it was hard to impress, but Jo had been awed by the display, the way the colors had bathed the surrounding city blocks. Perhaps the thing that had impressed Jo the most was that nothing on the façade actually declared the building as Beck-Yama.

  “That’s the point,” Jack Dark had told her. “They don’t tell you who they are, because they want you to think you should already know. They want to make you feel foolish for even asking. They’re telling you, and me, and everyone walking down these streets, that Beck-Yama International is more important than any of us can ever hope to be.”

  The words came back to her as Jo stepped out of the north entrance of Ginza Station, into the glow of the neon and the fall of the rain. It was after two in the morning and still the streets were packed, filled with clubbers and partygoers and the lost, like herself. Once, Ginza had been the heart of the Tokyo high-end shopping district; now it was still high-end, but the shopping done was of a different sort. Galleries and discotheques and VR clubs practically spilled onto the empty streets, and the stream of null-grav vehicles overhead was endless.

  It was, Jo knew, a very good place to get lost.

  She lowered her head against the pelting rain, pulling the strap of her satchel down tight over her shoulder. The scab beneath her left eye itched, the skin there entering its last phase of healing. She’d always been a quick healer, scrapes and cuts, even the odd minor broken bone, knitting and repaired in short order. It was the way she was, to such an extent that Jo hadn’t realized there was anything different or special about it until fairly recently. Most of her injuries taken at pharmaDyne had already begun to fade.

  She crossed Sotobori Dori, her boots splashing through the wash of water running down the street, then turned south, so she faced the Beck-Yama Tower. Near the corner of Yaesu Dori she spotted an always-open noodle stand, and shouldered her way through the patrons to reach the bar, shouting in Japanese for a plain bowl. She paid in cash, throwing down thin and weathered bills, and the old woman who took her money narrowed her eyes in suspicion at Jo before accepting the payment and moving along to answer another customer’s demands.

  Jo shoveled noodles into her mouth, ravenous. She hadn’t eaten since leaving London almost two days prior, hadn’t dared to stop moving, aware of just how far a man like Carrington could reach. All her travel had been unregistered transport, stowing away twice on high-orbit cargo fliers that took her first back to the States, to New York, then again to Australia, Melbourne, where she’d actually paid for a ticket—again in cash—to the Philippines, then to Vietnam, and then, finally, for a flight to Narita. She’d changed time zones so many times, she wondered if she hadn’t actually gotten younger.

  In the US, she’d bought new clothes, new gear, and new identities, and dumped all the old. Nothing fancy, just workable gear, a new pair of leather pants, a new set of sturdy boots, a new lite-ballistic jacket, a couple of T-shirts, a couple changes of underwear. She’d thought about trying to arm herself, but knew she’d be moving more, and fast, and didn’t want to risk attracting Customs’ notice. If a gun was needed, she was certain she’d know where to find one.

  It was one of the rewards of having trained to be a bounty hunter, trained by an ex-cop like Jack Dark. She knew the law, and she knew the people who broke it, and she could move between their respective worlds with ease and even speed.

  When she’d finished wolfing down the noodles, Jo tilted the cheap plastic bowl to her mouth, draining the remains of the broth. She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her jacket, felt the hole that had ached in her belly shrinking, but not enough. She contemplated ordering a second bowl, but decided against it. If she was being followed, if she was being somehow tracked, then the less time she spent in one place the better.

  She set the emptied bowl back on the counter and moved out from beneath the shelter of the stand, back into the downpour. She saw the lights of Beck-Yama shining on the rain-soaked streets, shimmering, distorted, in the rainfall. She heard the voices, the noise, smelled the food and the people, and she stopped cold.

  She had no idea where to go next.

  She had no idea where to go at all.

  Don’t trust Daniel Carrington, Jack Dark had warned her, and she had told herself she wouldn’t, had told herself she didn’t, and yet, somehow, someway, she’d found herself killing for the man.

  That, more than anything else, was the reason she’d run. Or the reason she’d started to run.

  But in the frigid cargo compartment on the descent into Melbourne, hugging her knees to her chest and watching her breath turn into vapor before her eyes, Jo had begun to admit that there were other reasons. Carrington hadn’t made her kill anyone, she knew that. In fact, she had no reason to suspect him of any but the best intentions. He’d taken care of her when there’d been no need, had asked for nothing in return. When she’d volunteered to rescue Able, he’d seemed reluctant to accept her help, though not as much as Steinberg had.

  All he truly had done was allow her to enter a situation where the possibility of death had loomed large. At her most paranoid, Jo even entertained the thought that Carrington had engineered the situation, but even if he had, he couldn’t have known the outcome. No one had forced her hand. No one had pressed her finger to the trigger. What she’d done, she’d chosen to do all by herself.

  It was all her.

  And it was in that cargo hold, hugging her knees to her chest, that Joanna Dark realized, with a sudden burst of selfloathing and horror, that she was a killer. She was a stonecold killer, the kind of person her father had hunted during his life, the kind of person who took lives without hesitating, without thinking of the consequences. She was dataDyne in micro, she was the enemy.

  She had tried to hide from it. After the thing in Hong Kong with her father, and then later, after Africa, she’d tried to ignore the truth. But the truth kept rearing its head, again and again, and when she’d returned from Vancouver she could no longer deceive herself. Not when Steinberg gave her the body count during debriefing, not when he told her that, according to the radio traffic that Grimshaw had monitored, she’d dropped eight of pharmaDyne’s best assault troops.

  She was a killer, and that was the only way to explain how she could do what she did. How it was that, when she fired a gun, the bullet went exactly where she wanted it to go. How it was that she could be so quick and everyone else around her could be so slow. How it was that she could lose herself in a fight, as if she had not one but two brains. As if the Jo trapped inside her skull was only one part of her, and that, when the bullets and the explosions and the violence all came, another Jo emerged, standing on the outside, guiding her effortlessly, making her leap and tumble and roll and kill.

  How, in those moments of dilation, Jo felt … no, not calm, not exactly, but …

  Right, Jo thought. It feels right.

  She was a killer, and it was right that she was, and the realization sickened her to her very core.

  With no place to go, Jo wandered. With no reason to care, she picked her directions at random.

  She passed the Beck-Yama Tower, heading south, and the rain began to taper, then to stop. Jo turned west, away from the rising sun, only to find herself on the outskirts of an old Japanese castle, walled and dilapidated. She turned south again, continued wandering as dawn continued to rise, and she was out of the high-rent district by then, on streets where the cars rolled because no one could afford to fly.

  No one paid any attention to her—at least, not that Jo could see—but she wasn’t looking very hard, because she didn’t care very much.

  She nearly missed the sign, wedged as it was over the door to the office, crammed between the entrance to a liquor store on one side and a fast-food joint on the other. Her kanji had never been as strong as her spoken Japanese, and Jo needed a minute to puzzle it out. At first she’d thought it translated to “Empty Man,” but then realized it wasn’t tha
t, not quite, but it was close.

  There were always people needing to be hunted, always bounties to be collected.

  So maybe she was a killer, but that wasn’t what her father had raised her to be.

  Jo ran a hand through her soaked hair, flipping her forelock back, straightening and trying to make herself as professionally acceptable as possible. It would be a hard sell, she knew, but if the owner of this particular bail-bonds storefront had a copy of HoloMan VR, she knew she could convince him. Watch this, she’d say.

  She could do that, she could hunt bounties.

  Just like her father had taught her to do.

  CHAPTER 15

  InterContinental Le Grand Hotal Paris—Room 4822-2, Rue Scribe, Paris, France October 3rd, 2020

  He answered the door as soon as she knocked, and Cassandra knew from that alone that he’d been waiting for her. From his expression, he’d been waiting awhile, and his impatience was palpable.

  “I’m sorry, Daniel,” Cassandra told him as she stepped inside, then waited for him to close and lock the door. “I got here as soon as I could.”

  “It’s quarter to midnight,” Carrington said. “I’ve been waiting here for seven hours.”

  “I almost didn’t come at all. I thought we’d agreed to end this.”

  “For the time being, yes, but we didn’t agree to stop sharing information.” He turned on his walking stick, heading down the short hallway into the suite’s sitting room, leaving her to follow. “I’m chasing something down, Cass, something that, if it turns out as I hope, will all but assure your position as the new CEO of dataDyne. But I’ve hit a snag, my people can’t take it any further.”

  Carrington stopped at the couch, lowering himself slowly. On the coffee table opposite him sat a silver tea service, and he motioned at it with the end of his walking stick, then at the chairs arrayed opposite him. Cassandra waited, hoping he would add more, but the old man didn’t, simply looked at her. She sighed, set down her briefcase beside the legs of the nearest chair, then shrugged out of her overcoat. She sat, smoothing her skirt, and she saw that Carrington’s eyes had wandered to her legs.