“You don’t think it’s Yu—” He caught himself. “This person we’ve discussed? Disinformation?”
“It would be unwise not to consider the possibility of disinformation,” she said, “but I doubt it, now that I’ve had a closer look at who’s involved. Our person of interest has evidently been quite active lately, but I doubt Westmarch has ever heard his name. Often, when considering the klept, that which seems too conveniently coincidental proves to have been a function of their being essentially a small, highly cohesive group. Though that can also make for cleaner cautery on our part, or even for an element of surprise.”
Netherton shivered, warm as his jacket was keeping him.
91
Followr
Company,” said Conner, in the earpiece, “incoming.”
Verity was on her back, on the couch, using the folded hoodie as a pillow, mechanically eating kale chips. She’d begun to wonder if she might not actually be more comfortable on the tatami. “Who?” She sat up, still aching from the ride.
“Manuela Montoya,” Ash said, “whom you’ll recognize from the lobby of the hotel.”
“The Followrs girl?”
“The network traced her today,” Ash said, “via Eunice’s facial recognition. Someone was sent to find her, before Cursion did.”
“She’s here?” Resisting the urge to ask Ash about the texts.
“The network wants Conner to protect her, which means having you together. Frankly, we’d prioritize that differently, but the network’s already affording us sufficient agency, here, that we have no choice.”
“Prioritize what?”
“Your safety. We assume Cursion are looking for you as well.”
“She’s here,” Conner said, opening his feed from the roof of the container.
Silhouetted against light from the street, the faceless black figure of what seemed a young woman stood on the sidewalk, apparently looking toward them, Verity reading hesitancy and doubt in her stance. She took a step, halted, then walked toward the container.
“She’s been told you’re there,” Ash said. “Conner’s opening the door.”
“Lights out,” said Conner.
Darkness. Verity felt cool air as the door swung open. “Manuela?”
“Verity?”
“Come in,” Verity said. “It lights up when the door closes. Watch your step.”
The girl from Followrs stepped up, into the dark, the door closing behind her. Verity imagined the drone, on the roof, reaching down to close it.
With the light on, Verity looked up at her from the couch.
“Business class doghouse?” The girl squinted against the light.
“So people can concentrate in open-plan workspaces.”
“In an alley?”
“Someone brought it here.” Verity got to her feet, her body feeling older than the last time she’d gotten up from a couch.
“Sorry I spied on you,” the girl said. “I saw the Followrs ad on Craigslist and next morning I was sitting in 3.7.” She had short dark hair, in need of a trim, didn’t seem to be wearing makeup, and might be wearing the clothes Verity had first seen her in, an olive parka, black sweater, jeans, and sneakers.
“I’m couch-surfing, myself,” Verity said. “How’d you get here, just now?”
“Carsyn. She works for the man I saw with you in the lobby.”
“Virgil.”
“He sent her to find me. We hung out all day, snacking and talking game design. Paid me my hourly rate for game design.” A brief smile.
“Protein bar?” Verity indicated the bag on the table. “Jerky?”
“Carsyn took me for Taiwanese.”
“More company,” said Conner, Verity remembering that Manuela couldn’t hear him. “She was followed. These two,” the feed from the roof of the cube returning. Figures of two men, where she’d last seen Manuela, looking into the alley, one tall and heavy, the other neither. “Lights out.” The feed brighter in the sudden darkness.
“AR?” Manuela asked, interested, leaning forward. Verity could see her face, in light reflected from the feed in the Tulpagenics glasses.
“Two men outside,” Verity whispered, then remembered the soundproofing in the container on Fang’s roof.
“I can see them,” Manuela whispered back, “in your glasses.”
The taller man, approaching, took something from his pocket, revealed as a flashlight when he turned it on, and examining the container’s door.
“No keypad on this one,” Conner said. “Fang faked up a regulation container door, with padlocks.”
Turning off his flashlight, the man walked around the container, out of frame. The feed blurred, then showed a different angle, the tall man’s back as he looked toward the far end of the alley. He looked back, gestured to the shorter man, who joined him. They walked in that direction, the far end.
Conner cut the feed and the ceiling came back on.
92
Tennessee Street
Where’s Verity?” Netherton asked Rainey, as he settled on the couch, the controller in his hands.
“In what someone I haven’t yet met called a ‘business class doghouse,’” she said. She was dressed to go out, coat on, gloves in hand. “Ash just showed me clips of the feed from Verity’s glasses. It looked Japanese.”
“Oakland? On top of Fang’s building?”
“San Francisco, in an alley. Conner’s outside, on top, keeping watch.”
“Who are you meeting?” he asked.
“Mia Blum.”
“Work?”
“No,” she said, “but since I’m on sick leave, it doesn’t hurt to stay caught up.”
“Sick leave?”
“Cross-continual nuclear anxiety,” she said, putting on her gloves. “Keep an ear out for Thomas. Don’t get up.” She blew him a kiss. “Don’t keep Verity waiting. She has a lot on her plate, from what Ash was telling me.”
She went out, her ability to relax with a friend over coffee, regardless of what might be going on, still surprising him. He put on the controller, settled it, and turned it on.
To fly suddenly across an indistinct surface, seemingly inches away, then up and out, the feed a simple frame, not the drone’s display format, over a night street, its architecture semi-industrial, modestly urban.
“Relax,” said Conner, Netherton having made an inadvertent sound of alarm, “I’m your pilot.”
“Of what?” Imagining the drone, its arms extended, as antique cartoon superhero.
“Little quadcopter. Ash had four built, for Eunice.”
“Where are we?”
“Tennessee Street,” Conner said, “other end of the alley.”
They slowed, hovered. Netherton saw a single palm tree, behind a steel mesh fence. The cam’s point of view dipped, rose again, and rotated slightly, to speed on in another direction, quickly arriving at an intersection.
“Figure they think she’s in the cube?” Conner asked, the frame zooming in on two men, standing together on the corner.
“Verity?”
“Montoya. Girl who’d been following Verity before. Virgil sent someone to collect her, have her brought here.”
“Why would these two follow her?”
“Assuming they’re Cursion, because Ash hired her, by coincidence, after they did. She and Verity live near each other, so the app assigned the nearest partner available. She was in the lobby of that hotel, working for us. They noticed. Maybe they think she was a plant to begin with. Probably they’re just spooked by what they can see of us. Looks weird to them.”
“Because it fucking is,” said Verity, startling Netherton, who’d forgotten she could hear them. “Whether they can see it or not.”