“Girl who untied me told me Caitlin’s pregnant,” said Manuela, from beneath the hood of her own gray robe. “I feel like I’m at a royal wedding.”
Virgil, having shed the top of his running outfit, was being helped into something equally black but more formal. “We’ll be with some security people, on the way upstairs. Drone has its own disguise, to cover up Conner’s rifle. This way,” and he waved them both out, through a vertical slit in the side wall of blue tarp.
They were immediately surrounded by three men and a woman, Verity recognizing them as freelancers Stets sometimes hired for large public events.
Looking up, she saw that all of the tarps covering the glass had been removed, making the space feel even larger. Glancing back, past Virgil’s shoulder, she saw the drone’s extended handle in a stranger’s hand, the drone itself draped in black, the camera unit extending from beneath a hood. It swung toward her, but the man pulling it was already headed in a different direction.
“Eunice?” Under her breath.
No reply.
She kept her head down, aware of moving through a crowd she couldn’t see, until they reached the foot of the zigzag stairs, up to the trailer, now concealed by graceful sweeping forms in gleaming white fabric, and then they were climbing.
At the top, she raised her head, to find Grim Tim blocking the trailer’s open door, in white evening shirt and a black tie, under a chrome-studded black leather jacket. Bowing slightly, with a click of his heels and a resulting facial jingle, he handed her a dirty chai, the paper cup stamped with 3.7-sigma’s logo. VERATITTY, she read on the side, in fluorescent pink paint pen.
“Good to see you,” she said, as he stepped back to admit her, Manuela and Virgil following. Over her shoulder, she saw the security team turn and start back down the stairs. “Stets or Caitlin up here?” she asked Virgil.
“They’re down on the floor, greeting people.”
“I feel like I’ve got pieces of bug in my hair,” Verity said. “Maybe between my teeth.”
“Shower,” said Virgil.
“They’ve got one?”
“Right here. Connected to the plumbing for the space, so you’ll never run out of hot. Carol!” A woman in black t-shirt and jeans emerged from the crowd, smiling. “Shower available?” he asked.
“Certainly is,” the woman said.
“Show Verity where it is. And have the stylist find something for her.”
“Will do,” the woman said, and soon Verity was in the Airstream’s coffin-narrow matte-white shower, sluicing off bug parts and road dust, whether imagined or not. Very hot, the pressure steady through a complicated showerhead. When she’d rinsed her hair, she turned off the water, stepped out, and put the gray robe back on. After toweling her hair and face, she retrieved the glasses and put them on.
A feed opened.
Panoramic, the POV speeding across a rocky khaki plain, under intensely blue sky. Whitish tire tracks stretched ahead, the image juddering with the movement of the unseen vehicle. Distant mountains, darker than the plain. Black husks she guessed were burnt tires, like big three-dimensional commas.
“Eunice?” Something exploded, silently, ahead and to the left, whiting out a windshield she hadn’t known was there. The feed closed. “What was that?”
Her. Navy Chief Marlene Miller.
“Marlene?”
Miller. I’m built on her skill set.
“You’re… her?”
I’m me. Her personality, near as I can tell, wasn’t that much like mine. They were trying to upload her military skill set, not her persona. She enlisted in 2000, did two Bahrain deployments, four in Iraq, three in Afghanistan. SEAL teams did shorter deployments then, a few months at a time. UNISS project got going in 2015. She volunteered for that between Iraq, which was where she saw Inception, and Afghan deployment. Her favorite movie, so that was where I got that from. It’s in the transcription of an interview she did for the project, at the Naval Postgraduate School.
“And you think that video’s the last thing she saw?”
Can’t prove it, but she died near Marjah. Afghanistan. An IED. Those mountains are near Marjah. I got a video match for them.
“How long have you known?”
Ash gave me the documentation. Read it all simultaneously, multitasking. Just now.
“Where did they get it?”
Conner’s stub.
“How do you feel?”
A pause.
Lots.
A single light rap on the door. “Verity?” It was Carol, the assistant who’d shown her the shower. “Ready to try a few things on?”
You need something to wear.
“You okay?” Carol asked.
Get dressed. We’ll talk after.
104
Green Room
Unwrap Conner,” Netherton heard Virgil say. Whatever had draped them was immediately pulled up and away, the display revealing a long, quite narrow room, where people stood talking. He recognized Verity’s facially pierced motorcyclist, but no one else aside from Virgil, who stood in front of the drone, staring down at it. “That rifle has to go,” Virgil said. “It’s probably unregistered, may be stolen.”
Conner sighed audibly, the rifle’s complicated muzzle disappearing from the upper half of the feed. Now the gun appeared in the lower half. Conner removed its magazine, as Netherton had learned to call it in the county. He placed this on a nearby ledge, then did something with the gun’s mechanism, producing a single unfired round, which he stood on end beside the magazine. “Shooter wore gloves. Don’t get anyone’s prints on it.”
“Bring gloves,” Virgil said to his manual phone. “Something we need off the premises.”
Now Stets and Caitlin entered, the door opened for them by Verity’s motorcyclist. Stets wore a black blazer above black trousers loose enough for his leg brace, Caitlin a soft black suit that Netherton suspected was cashmere. Seeing them made him feel as though he were in a green room, prior to a client’s media appearance.
“Is Verity there?” Rainey asked, beside him on the couch.
He muted. “I don’t see her.”
“Where are you now?”
“Feels like the staging area for whatever this is. Is Thomas asleep?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Phone me. I’ll patch you through.” Her sigil pulsed. “It feels like a less private version of Lowbeer’s car,” he said.
“It’s a trailer,” she said, having evidently taken in the scene. “A caravan. Who are these people?”
“Aside from Virgil, Stets and Caitlin, and Verity’s friend with the jewelry, I’ve no idea. People working on the event, I suppose.”
“Can they hear me?” Rainey asked.
“They can now,” Netherton said, unmuting her.
Conner had positioned the drone, with its charger against the wall, near the entrance, its legs fully retracted.
“Who’s on board?” Stets asked Virgil, looking down at the drone.
“Conner piloting,” said Virgil, “and Wilf.”
“And Rainey,” Netherton said.