Perfect Dark: Second Front Page 9

  “CMO’s been the one to gain the most,” she said. “They’ve got to have an idea who’s behind this if they’re not behind this themselves.”

  “You’re not listening to me, Jo,” Carrington said. “I’m not authorizing any action. You’re staying here.”

  She turned away from the image of herself, of her doppelganger, and found that Carrington was watching her, his stare heavy. She recognized the look, because she’d seen it before, but never actually directed at her. In the past, it had always been leveled at Jonathan. It was the look Carrington pulled out when he was ending debate, when he was taking the last word on a subject.

  It made her angry.

  “That’s me up there,” Jo said, sweeping a free hand toward the holograph without thinking, and feeling the consequent lance of pain bending around her chest. She swallowed it, struggling to hide her discomfort. “That’s my face!”

  “But it’s not you, Jo.”

  “You can’t ask me to just sit here and wait around while some CMO harpy is killing in my name!”

  “So you think I can make a precarious situation better by sending you out to do the same? You’re not thinking, Jo. You’re publicly linked to two high-profile deaths, dataDyne and Beck-Yama are certainly looking for you, and if your imposter is out of CMO, then they’re undoubtedly trying to track you as well, just to keep from having two of you in the same place at the same time. I’d be daft to send you out there with your lack of subtlety.”

  Indignation made Jo’s voice climb. “I can be subtle!”

  “Not when you’re angry you can’t, and you’re clearly livid at the moment. No, Jo, I can’t allow it. Even if the situation was different, if I wasn’t in fear of an imminent data- Dyne attack, I still couldn’t. No, the last thing I need right now with a fake one of you out there killing is the real one doing the same thing.”

  “You can’t make me stay here!”

  “I can’t?”

  “No!”

  Carrington frowned slightly, as if considering the merits of her argument, but only for a fraction. Then he said, “Tie your boots, Jo.”

  Jo balked. “What?”

  Using the tip of his cane, Carrington indicated her feet. “Your boots are untied, you could trip and hurt yourself. Tie them.”

  “They’re fine.”

  “I’m just asking you to tie your boots, Jo,” Carrington said with convincing paternal care.

  “I don’t need to tie them,” Jo said, and it sounded incredibly lame, even to her, a child’s petulant refusal.

  “You mean you can’t tie them.”

  Heat crept suddenly up her neck, and Joanna could feel it leaching into her cheeks, and she knew Carrington could see it, and it made her all the more furious. She shrugged, trying to convey that he was the one being unreasonable, not her, then moved for the nearest chair.

  “No,” Carrington said. “Do it standing up, Jo.”

  She stopped, and now she knew her cheeks were flushed, and she only hoped the subdued lighting of the Ops Center was concealing it from the old man’s sight. Grimshaw had looked up from his work, was watching the interaction curiously. She hoped he hadn’t actually heard what had been said, was reacting to the sight rather than the sound.

  Gritting her teeth, Joanna bent forward and reached for her right boot. Instantly, her ribs began shrieking their protest. She kept herself from gasping with the pain, tried to continue the motion forward, slowing without wanting to, and then the bullet wound joined the chorus of protests, and she knew she was biting her lip to keep from making a sound.

  “Stop,” Carrington said, and Joanna froze. “Don’t, please. I have never relished watching another’s suffering, and watching yours is all the more distasteful.”

  He moved forward, and she felt his hand, light on her shoulder.

  Carefully, her whole body burning with the sense of failure and humiliation, Joanna straightened up once more, meeting Carrington’s gaze. His expression had softened to something approaching pity, and Joanna hated that all the more.

  “I can do it,” she told him.

  “No,” Daniel Carrington said. “But you’d willingly kill yourself trying.”

  She broke the stare, looking down, and found herself staring at her untied boots.

  “You’re confined to the Institute grounds for the duration of the lockdown, Jo,” Carrington told her gently. “Now, please … go to your room.”

  Feeling as sullen as the child Carrington seemed to think she was, Jo turned and left the Ops Center. As she stepped through the doors and back out into the hall, she could have sworn she heard someone laughing, and it took her a half-second longer to realize that it had been imagined, and that, in her imagination, the one who had been doing it was Jack Dark.

  Laughing at his daughter’s continued failures.

  Carrington Institute Grounds

  London, England

  January 23rd, 2021

  As the man responsible for the Institute’s security, Jonathan Steinberg also knew its weaknesses. Where the gaps in the surveillance net lay, where the floodlights wouldn’t quite illuminate, where the sensors were overwhelmed by ambient sound and natural movement. Given that they were, as far as he was concerned, at a state of war, he’d done everything he could to fill those gaps. But there were still holes, albeit small ones, the places where no matter how hard one tried, something or someone could slip through.

  As he approached Joanna Dark, as she was preparing to get over the wall on the northwestern side of the lake, he comforted himself with the thought that the security had been designed to keep people out and not to keep people in. He told himself this was how she’d managed to get this far without his spotting her.

  Yeah, Steinberg thought. Right.

  She was wearing street clothes, having ditched her Carrington Institute uniform, and was now in the cargo pants and mismatched combination of T-shirts she’d favored when working with her father. She’d added a jacket as insulation against the cold, but as Steinberg watched her struggling at the wall, he realized that she hadn’t really acquired a new wardrobe at all. The shirts were still too short, belly style, and he was positive that, were he closer, he would be able to see the bandages wrapping her middle, trying vainly to stabilize her ribs as she reached high. She heaved a small backpack up and over the wall, and the sound of her exertion, of the pain it was causing her, made it to his ears, even though he knew she was trying to hide it.

  The thought of Joanna reaching, over and over again, for the top of the wall and of how much that had to hurt made Steinberg wince.

  “Okay,” he said. “You really have to stop doing that.”

  Joanna froze in mid reach, then dropped her arms and pivoted slowly to face him. Her expression was flat, no sign of guilt or embarrassment at having been caught. Maybe just the hint of annoyance that he had been the one to do it.

  “Now I’m going to have to send someone around to get your pack,” Steinberg said, approaching. “You are such the troublemaker.”

  “Don’t bother, I’ll pick it up on my way out.”

  “You’re not going out, Jo. I’m taking you back to bed.”

  “Is that an offer, Mr. Steinberg?”

  “You’re hurt, Jo. You go out there looking to mix it up with CMO and God knows whoever else, you’re only going to get hurt worse. You might even get dead.”

  She leaned back against the wall, folding her arms across her middle and fixing him with her deadeye stare. It was a good one, Steinberg had to admit. He’d known snipers who’d had thousand-yard-stares that didn’t intimidate as much as Joanna Dark’s.

  “I’m waiting,” Joanna said.

  “For?”

  “For the part where you tell me how this is different from any other time Carrington sends me out to do something. Of course it’s dangerous, of course I can get killed. That’s never stopped me, and come to think of it, it’s never stopped you, either.”

  “It’s different because this time the Ol
d Man told you specifically to stay put.”

  “Then he should have tranqued me, because we both know that wasn’t going to do it.”

  Steinberg started to retort, then stopped, thinking about what she’d just said.

  Damn, he thought. She’s right. Carrington’s doing it again. He’s using her again.

  She caught the change in his expression, misread it.

  “I’m going over, Jonathan. You can help me or you can get out of the way.”

  Steinberg shook his head slightly, coming closer, still in his own thoughts. It was the way Carrington worked, or at least how he worked with Joanna. Winding her up and turning her loose, manipulating her with a nudge here and a comment there. She was absolutely right; if Carrington truly hadn’t wanted her to go out making trouble, he’d have made damn sure she couldn’t. Which meant that he was doing it again, he was sending Jo out to draw fire.

  She was still watching him, the same look of defiance on her face, and Steinberg had to wonder if she knew that she was being played. The anger at Carrington that he’d thought he’d misplaced five days earlier came thundering back. She was hurt, she was seriously injured. She’d been through one wringer already. To let her go through another one, so soon, it wasn’t just wrong, it was practically criminal.

  “Well?” Jo demanded. “You going to help me here or what?”

  He was about to say that no, he damn well wasn’t, he was about to tell her that Carrington was playing his games again, when a second thought struck him, and it hit hard enough to give him pause. Yes, Carrington was a manipulative bastard when he wanted to be, when he needed to be, but he wasn’t, as far as Steinberg was concerned, an immoral man, nor was he a cruel man. He absolutely knew just how injured Joanna was, just how badly she needed time to heal, to recover.

  But he’d wound her up all the same.

  Dear Lord, Steinberg realized. He really has no idea what’s going on. Carrington really has no idea who’s behind this at all.

  That scared him.

  Steinberg had to admit that it scared him a lot, in fact.

  “Where are you going?” he asked her.

  “Right now, up and over. Then I’m going to Paddington to catch the express to Heathrow.”

  “And then?”

  Joanna narrowed her eyes at him, suspicious. “Why?”

  “What’s the plan of attack here, Jo?”

  She frowned, trying to fathom the reason behind the question. “Going after Core-Mantis. They’re the obvious lead.”

  “Yeah, but how’re you going to do it?”

  “Oh, you know.” She flashed him a grin, her teeth visible in the near-darkness. “The usual way.”

  Maybe I’m wrong, Steinberg thought. Maybe I’m paranoid, maybe I’m being unfair to Carrington.

  “You’re hurt, Jo. You go for the guns-a-blazing tactic, that could—correction, that will—backfire. You’re at half-speed, if that.”

  “I would like to point out that my half-speed is better than your full speed, Mr. Steinberg.”

  “This isn’t a contest. It’s beyond serious out there. You leave, you may find it impossible to come back.”

  That seemed to worry her. “You think Carrington will fire me?”

  “No, I think there might not be an Institute to come back to, Jo. It might just be a smoking crater patrolled by dataDyne Shock Troopers.”

  The concern that had flooded her expression vanished, and she gave him a look that he suspected was most often seen directed at the village idiot. “Oh, that. C’mon, you can take them. You have before.”

  Steinberg found himself smiling without meaning to, had to fight it back down, but of course she had seen it, and her own grin was even brighter than before. Here they were, about to go to war with who knew how many hypercorps, and there was Joanna Dark saying, hey, easy, we can take them.

  Joanna indicated the wall behind her with a turn of her head, then looked back at him. “C’mon, give me a hand.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “Jonathan, someone’s out there using my face to start a fight. The only one who gets to do that is me. I am totally sure about this. It sure as hell is better than just waiting around her for dataDyne or Core-Mantis or whoever to come and attack us.”

  “Can’t argue with that.”

  “I know. You want to make yourself useful? I’m going to need a contact back here, and obviously I can’t go through the Ops Center.”

  “You want me to act as your controller again?”

  “Well, yeah. You’re not too bad at it, even if you almost got me killed last time.”

  “I kept you from getting killed last time, thank you,” Steinberg said.

  “If that’s what lets you sleep at night.”

  Steinberg sighed, glanced back across the lake, at the floodlights illuminating the main campus buildings. He could just see the silhouettes of one of the anti-aircraft crews, manning their battery. He turned back to Jo, still watching him expectantly. He sighed again, and took the interface pad for the perimeter alarms from the breast pocket of his tactical vest.

  “Command, this is Alpha,” he said. “Shutting down grid delta-six, sensor check.”

  “Alpha, confirmed.”

  He tapped at the red-lined symbols glowing on his touch screen, waited for the icon representing delta-six to turn to green. Then he tucked the interface pad back in his pocket.

  “All right,” Steinberg said, coming forward to the wall and lacing his hands together as a step for Joanna to use. “Let’s see what we can do.”

  “You’re my guy,” Jo told him, and with a grunt she stepped her right foot into his hands, then reached up for the wall and pulled herself to the top. “Talk to you soon.”

  Steinberg stepped back, opening his mouth for a last word, but she’d already gone over, then out of sight. He sighed for a third time, profoundly tired and profoundly worried, then keyed the receiver in his pocket, turning the sector’s alarm grid back on.

  “You might want to tie your boots,” Steinberg said softly, and then he moved away, continuing his audit of the perimeter defenses.

  Ted Reilly’s Irish Bar

  Durbin, South Africa

  January 24th, 2021

  Chun Fan entered the bar wearing her own face, and the handful of drunks already working their way through their mid-morning drinks barely paid her any mind. She doubted their reaction would have been any different had she entered wearing the shape of Joanna Dark, or even the shape of an eight-hundred-pound gorilla. She held for a moment just inside the doorway, savoring the coolness of the air, the respite from the summertime heat. It wasn’t past eleven in the morning in Durbin, and the temperature was already rivaling that of summertime in Sichuan. She waited, letting her eyes adjust, taking in the room.

  There were seven men present, six patrons and the barman, and the barman was apparently either so good at his job, or so bored by it, that he performed his duties while wearing a dataDyne “entertainMe” rig. He acknowledged Fan’s entrance by turning his head her way briefly, and Fan wondered what she was sharing with his vision, what images were superimposed over her own. A sporting event, she suspected. Of the remaining six, five were far more concerned with the contents of their glasses than with the arrival of a somewhat short Chinese girl; the sixth, however, glanced up at her arrival, fixing her with a steely-eyed stare that seemed at once to appraise, condemn, and dismiss. Then he, too, returned his attention to his drink.

  But it was enough for Fan to be sure he was the man she was after. He was dressed like an off-duty soldier, because that’s what he was, or at least, that’s what he wanted people to believe. In his midfifties, with a military haircut of salt and pepper, he looked to her eyes like a fit, if somewhat slender, American.

  It was definitely him, but that didn’t surprise her, because she’d had no doubt that he would be. The Continuity had been tracking former Marine colonel Leland Shaw, the Hawk Team commanding officer, for twenty-two days, now, and fo
r the last five of them, he’d been here, in Durbin.

  Fan hopped down the two steps from the entrance to the main floor, crossing to the bar. She felt giddy, the same sense of delighted excitement she’d shared with Ke-Ling back at the mansion still thrilling her. Things were going very well. Everything, everyone, was where they were supposed to be, doing what they were supposed to do. Her brothers and sisters, of course, because they knew the stakes of the game; Leland Shaw, drinking in a South African bar because he’d discovered that he was, beyond a doubt, a failure; the Bitch, now confirmed to still be cowering in New Zealand; Core-Mantis, methodically dismantling Beck-Yama exactly as the Continuity had advised them to do; even Daniel Carrington, still paralyzed by his confusion and his concerns.

  And best of all, just as she’d arrived in South Africa, Shuang had called on Fan’s d-PAL with an update on the real Joanna Dark.

  “She just got on a Runyon-Adams commercial low-orbit for Mexico City,” Shuang said. “Zi got video of her as she went through security, then again as she boarded. Definitely going to Mexico, but we’re not sure why. Carrington doesn’t have an office there or anything.”

  “Core-Mantis does,” Fan said.

  “Oh. Right.”

  “She’s traveling alone?”

  Shuang nodded, adjusting the shoulders of her too-big dress. “And public transport, Fan! She’s going solo, and that means that Carrington doesn’t know she’s going, right? Because if it was an op, she’d be using Institute transport, right? So she’s got to be on her own.”

  “Maybe. Doesn’t matter. You told Ke-Ling?”

  “I told everyone!”

  “I want her welcomed right, Shuang, just like we discussed, okay? Everyone on their best behavior. Did you find out what she likes to eat?”