“I barely understand it myself,” said Kayoko. “It’s an agent ability, born from a mixture of Newgen’s genetic engineering and modern training based on the ancient traditions of the Caoshi monks. The Quail meditation replaces the personality of the agent with a fake one, unaware of its nature. Since the new personality doesn’t know he’s fake, he can remain hidden among a local population without drawing suspicion from the authorities…and if needed, pass a loyalty test without triggering the nanobots.”
An ice cold shower descended on Delagarza’s attempt to remain calm.
Someone told her about the loyalty test, he told himself. It had to be some kind of game for Kayoko, because there was no way he was a fake. He knew himself. He had a mother, a grandmother, a job, lovers, and friends. He had a background, for fuck’s sake.
“The meditation is supposed to fade on its own, according to your own explanations,” Kayoko said, “or reverse itself when exposed to certain circumstances, like a mental trauma…such as the memetic virus you barely survived. But this didn’t happen.”
“Because I’m not a fake personality, Nanny,” said Delagarza.
“Because something went wrong,” she shot back, “and whatever it is, we need to reverse it. Hirsen is the last person alive who can point my group in Reiner’s direction. He has to come back, Sam. Before the enforcers find her first.”
“I can’t help you,” said Delagarza. He left the bed, throwing the sheets away. He could see his clothes and reg-suit waiting for him by a corner of the room. He made his way to them, ignoring the bite of the ice-cold floor. “Sorry, Kayoko, but I have to leave.”
“You could stay here,” Kayoko offered. “We could look after you, try to figure out how to reverse the meditation. Keep you safe in the meantime. The enforcers don’t like open threads hanging around, they’re sure to send down a mopping crew to deal with you.”
Delagarza clothed himself as quickly as he could, ignoring Kayoko’s stares at his scarred body. As he did so, he considered her offer. The enforcers mopping him may be true. They really didn’t enjoy failure, and he’d botched their Shota-M project by toying with it a little too hard, too quick. If they suspected he’d seen the information in there…
But if that was true, and he stayed, he’d be a rat in a cage, slowly starving. What protection could Taiga Town offer him? The enforcers owned the skies and the orbit, and whoever owned the orbitals was God to its planet’s inhabitants.
A railgun could lay waste to Alwinter with the push of a button.
There was a clear winner in this risk versus benefit analysis.
No, remaining with Kayoko wasn’t an option. His only shot at survival was to make things right.
“I’ll take my chances out there,” he told Kayoko.
Nanny Kayoko smiled, the very image of a kind old lady. Mental alarms shot up in Delagarza’s mind. She went to him and helped him with the reg-suit.
“Well then, nothing I can do,” Kayoko said. “Let me help you survive the day.”
She clapped and a second later, the door opened and Cronos walked into the room. His eyes flickered between Kayoko and Delagarza, like he’d interrupted a private moment. He handed Delagarza a closed plastic container. He opened it and found his own wristband, a pistol (metal, not plastic) and a loaded clip next to it.
“I can’t do more than this,” Kayoko said, “without risking exposing my group to the enforcers.”
“I’ve never handled a gun before,” said Delagarza. He grabbed the pistol, checked the safety lock, cleared the chamber, loaded the clip and stored the pistol in his reg-suit’s harness.
“Whatever you say, Samuel,” said Kayoko. “Good luck. Go find Isabella Reiner for us.”
TAIGA TOWN’S inhabitants were nowhere to be seen, and its tourists were leaving town like rats out of a sinking ship.
Delagarza matched the hurried pace and set out straight for the trolleys to the surface. The weight of the metal gun on his waist dragged him down with every step. In Dione’s reduced gravity, the gun was as light as a small pillow, but that wasn’t how he felt about it.
Most of his life, he’d survived without resorting to violence. He wasn’t a violent man, he had no need to be. And yet, he had accepted Kayoko’s weapon without hesitation.
He made it halfway to Taiga’s exit before realizing he was being followed. At least three adult males, fifty meters away from him at all times. If he walked faster, so did they. If he slowed down, they did the same. Fifty meters, every time.
Enforcers? It couldn’t be. They looked like off-worlder thugs, their clothing barely adequate for Taiga’s climate. Delagarza bet not one of them had spent more than a couple of months down Dione.
Hired muscle, he decided. What the fuck do they want with me?
It didn’t matter. Once he reached the trolleys, he’d lose them in the sewers.
The industrial lamps that substituted for Taiga’s lack of sunlight shone at the archway that marked Taiga’s exit. A crowd of people of all social classes flowed out. They made Delagarza think of blood leaving an artery.
Except not everyone was leaving. More off-worlders stood by the archway, scanning the crowd, talking among themselves via cochlear-implanted radios.
A couple of them noticed Delagarza and pretended not to see him. He read their lips and turned back. The three men that followed him had gotten closer, thirty meters now. One had a plastic gun halfway out of its holster. The stream of evacuating people stood between them and a clear shot at Delagarza.
Shit, he thought. He glanced around, feeling desperation pool in his chest. If Taiga’s tourists were running rats, he was the one rodent trapped as the ship sank.
Exit’s blocked. Thugs are rounding me up like cattle. Keep calm, Del, you got this.
He needed an escape route. Back and front were blocked to him. A quick glance to the right showed him a passageway blocked by confused tourists. Left side, on the other hand, was empty and dark, a blind spot between the industrial lights.
Left it is.
He walked away from the exit, trying his best to pretend he hadn’t noticed the thugs. The thugs followed, trying their best not to act like they were shadowing him.
The passageway was cold and abandoned, a corner of Taiga perused by drug addicts and the Russian-roulette kind of prostitute. Delagarza delved deep into it, making all the turns that’d bring him deeper into the darkness. There were men and women here who made no attempt to leave. Laying against the rusty wall sheets and in piles of ragged cloth and trash, they were well past caring about an enforcer raid.
Delagarza lost sight of the three men (now five), behind him after he took a sharp right. His eyes saw only black after that, and the smell of human waste and cheap, burnt drugs got overwhelming.
Behind him, the thugs cursed, and he heard their footsteps shoot into a run.
He turned on his wristband’s flashlight and ran like the devil.
They’ll follow the light, he thought, as he vaulted over an overdosed corpse and pushed a trashcan out of his way. He shot fast glances behind his back and saw the thugs’ own wristband flashlights. They were too close, there were too many of them, and they were rounding him up.
Good. Delagarza took another sharp turn, lighted his way into the corridor for a second, memorized it, and turned off the light. He jogged to a corner and dropped next to a moaning woman covered in piss-soaked coats. The faint orange glow of stolen heaters surrounded her like an aura. She looked at him with a spot of alarm in her eyes, but he took away his own coat and tossed it in her pile. She looked away, and Delagarza relaxed all the muscles in his body. He gave his leg a twitch and a tremor to his hands and grimaced. He became the living image of a man addicted to liftoff, the nastiest drug around.