Oh, and she and Church apparently had a fling once upon a time. Not that this matters in relation to her combat work, but it somehow makes her even scarier.
“Since when is your mother a computer expert?” I asked.
“Since it became useful to be,” said Violin, and allowed me to interpret that however I chose.
I sniffed petulantly and pressed the button to activate the computer connection. The little green light flashed, then went dark. I tapped it, but it stayed dead.
“Not a word from you,” I warned Violin, and she held up both hands in a “no comment” gesture.
I removed the device, blew on the jack to make sure there was no pocket lint on it, and tried again. It flashed red, and then the light turned a steady green. MindReader walked in and owned their whole network. So there.
“Oh, bravo,” said Violin dryly. I scratched my nose with my forefinger.
We crouched in the booth until the security cameras had done a full cycle of back-and-forth sweeps, during which MindReader recorded a loop. Then it fed that loop back to the system so that anyone watching would see only the same darkened parking lot. I tapped Violin and we left the booth and drifted toward the wall, used the key card, and slipped inside. As we’d predicted, this entrance was dedicated to the target lab. These people probably thought this setup gave them increased protection. They were wrong.
Violin drew her two knives. Lately she’s been partial to a custom pair of curved kukri knives, the weapons favored by the fearsome Gurkhas. Her blades were blackened, and she held them with the loose circle grip of a serious professional. I’d seen those blades in action before, and it was a nightmare sight. I had my Wilson tactical combat knife. Short-bladed, light, but eloquent.
The foyer of the Podnik Ŕešení complex was simple, with pegs for coats, two administrative offices, and four labs on either side of a wide hallway. All the lights were on, but the switches were on a panel right inside the front door. Tsk-tsk. I swept my hand down and plunged the whole place into darkness. We put on our night-vision goggles and went hunting in the dark.
There were cries of alarm. Then there were screams of fear. Then shrieks of pain. One voice begged for mercy, but he was asking the wrong people. It was ugly. So were we. And it was all over very fast. Fighting takes time. Killing doesn’t. From the time we approached the guard booth to the time we fled into the night with backpacks filled with hard drives, our mission clocks hadn’t even ticked off seven minutes.
The fires didn’t start until we were halfway back to the car.
INTERLUDE ONE
Zephyr Bain sat on the edge of the examination table, slowly buttoning her blouse, staring at the wall, seeing nothing. The doctor was still talking, but Zephyr had long since tuned him out. She’d stopped listening when he reached a certain point, and a single word hung burning in the darkening sky over the landscape of her mind.
Metastasized.
As words go, it was a monster. It was a bully, a brute.
Tears burned themselves dry in her unblinking eyes.
She didn’t bother asking how long. She already knew the answer to that question. Not long enough. Never long enough. She was nearly as old as she would ever get. There would be no more birthdays, no more Christmases. No New Year midnight kiss. No winter snows. None of that. Not for her. Never again for her.
All that was left was the bad parts. The process of getting sicker, of learning how deep the well of pain could go. From here on she would lose herself in increments — first her energy, then her strength, then control over bodily functions, then her mind. Her beautiful mind. It would all go away, like mourners leaving a graveside, until only she remained, cold and gone.
It wasn’t fair, but then life was never fair.
It wasn’t right, but then life was seldom right.
And it was inevitable, because the important things are.
She thought about that night twenty-eight years ago when John the Revelator had first come to her when she thought all the time had leaked out of her life. He said he’d filled her back up, but he had never promised that she would live forever.
Twenty-eight years, though.
Fuck.
It was twenty-eight more than she should have had. Even at six Zephyr knew that she was dying, that she would soon be dead. John had given her time. All this time.
Not enough time.
“Goddammit, John,” she said quietly, spitting the words out in a fierce whisper. “God damn you for doing this to me.”
“I’m sorry.…” said the doctor, confused, but she waved it away. After a moment, the doctor waded back in. “Our focus now will be on pain management. We can keep you comfortable and—”
She tuned him out again. Pain wasn’t something she wanted to manage. Pain could be useful to her, and managing it meant drugs. That would shut her mind down even before the cancer took away her ability to think. No. There would be no management of the pain; there would be no willing participation in a conspiracy to numb her mind. No thanks.
Zephyr wished John were there with her right at that moment. She wanted to smash his head in with a chair. She also wanted him to hold her and say that everything was going to be all right, and tell her that he would fill her back up again. She wanted both things with equal fervor. She wasn’t grateful for the extra time. She felt cheated by it because it made her understand what she was losing, and it was a much sharper and clearer understanding than a child could ever have.
John, she thought, please do something.
But John wasn’t there, and even if he were she knew that he wouldn’t do what she wanted. Even if he could. That time had passed, and he’d given her those twenty-eight years.
Zephyr slid off the table and landed flat on her feet, swayed, darted out a hand to catch the edge of the bed, waved off the doctor as he reached to help. Without saying a word to him, she walked out of the examination room, into the hall, through the waiting room, down in the elevator, and out to the curb, where her driver waited. There was concern and inquiry on the big man’s hard face, and when he looked at her and saw the truth in the stiffness of her posture the driver’s eyes grew moist. She marveled at that. Campion was an employee, a worker bee who had talent with automobiles and could stand in as a bodyguard if necessary, but he wasn’t family and he wasn’t a friend. Why should he care? she wondered. Was he afraid for his job? It had to be that, Zephyr thought as she climbed into the back seat of the Lexus SUV. He couldn’t care for her any more than she cared for him. He was paid enough to be good at his job, but she didn’t pay him enough to actually care. It made her angry. Fuck him and his emotions. Fuck him for whatever he was feeling, whether it was self-interest or compassion. She didn’t need that from him or anyone.