Her eyes widened, then narrowed. She frowned, then started walking again, fast, toward her clinic. Delagarza followed her.
“Are you listening to me? They’re coming for you!”
A couple looked his way like he was insane. He’d have a few minutes, at best, to make himself scarce before the police showed up.
“Look, whoever you are,” Sharpe said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s no one I’m hiding from. Please, stop following me.”
They were halfway to the clinic by now, and Delagarza was attracting quite a lot of attention. He felt desperation rising through is throat like bile, clouding his judgment.
How can I tell her about the enforcers without mentioning them aloud? Alwinter was laid with listening devices and cameras, and those were trained to pick up on certain keywords. “Enforcers” and “Reiner” probably rated high on that list.
Isabella, on the other hand, was a very common name in certain colonies.
“I think you know exactly who I’m talking about, Isabella,” Delagarza said.
Sharpe stopped in her tracks, like she’d been struck by lightning. A nearby maintenance worker shuffled close, glaring at Delagarza.
“Is everything OK, ma’am?” the man asked. “Should I call security?”
“Regular,” Sharpe said. The word sounded wrong coming from her. Delagarza knew she’d picked the slang from her work with ganger rehabilitation. “I forgot I knew this man. I’m sorry, I was the rude one, not him.”
The maintenance worker nodded, not buying her plain lie, but he had no reason to accept it. Delagarza ignored him and matched Sharpe’s pace, leaving the man behind, still glaring.
“What makes you think I’m her?” Sharpe asked.
“Honestly, it’d take quite a while to explain. Short version, I got hired by…those friends of yours…to open an old piece of ‘ware. I failed, and they broke the deal off. But a third party revealed they had the contents already, and they gave them to me. Inside, I found your travel log. From before you came to the planet. Not very useful to find you now, but your friend in ATS pointed me your way.”
“That’s quite a story you’ve got there. I find it difficult to believe.”
“You don’t have to believe me. I followed your trail, and your friends have the same tools I used to do so. It’s only a matter of time.”
“My friends are not famous for their technical acumen, mister…”
“Delagarza.”
“Mr. Delagarza, those people have a brutish reputation. That’s why they employ people like you to do the dirty work for them. And since you’re here, warning me, instead of with them…I assume I am quite safe.”
“You don’t understand!” Delagarza wanted to shake her by her shoulders. Of course she was stubborn! She had spent sixteen years fighting against Alwinter’s cutthroat culture. Edith Sharpe wasn’t a woman who easily let others change her mind.
“I’m afraid it’s you who doesn’t understand. You’re way over your head, Mr. Delagarza. I advise you leave and pretend we never met.”
That’s the third person who offers me that choice, Delagarza thought. Himself included.
“There’s people coming for you,” he said, desperate to make her understand. “They’ll arrive soon.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Is that right? Do you know them?”
“No,” Delagarza admitted, “but…they’re supposed to be the good guys.”
Even to him it sounded like a terrible answer. He cursed himself for being so bad at this. He was about to mess everything up.
They had reached San Jeronimo clinic. Sharpe sighed and placed a hand against the white wall.
“Delagarza, if you don’t know them at all, what makes you think they’re any different from the people you’re warning me about?”
Delagarza stopped, at a loss for words. To be honest, he’d never given it much of a thought. The EIF was on one side, and Tal-Kader was on another. You either were with one of them, or a neutral. Until today, Delagarza hadn’t given an ounce of a fuck about it.
“They have to be better,” Delagarza offered, “the bar is really low.”
That earned him a smile. “Look. Thanks for the advice. I’ll keep it in mind. You should worry about yourself, in the meantime. Can’t fathom our mutual friends being happy about you talking to me at all.”
The clinic’s doors opened. A man walked out. He was so tall he had to lower his head as not to hit his forehead on his way out. His body was so big and over-muscled that his reg-suit seemed like a square refrigerator.
Major Strauze smiled, looking as official in his civilian clothing as he did in his enforcer uniform. The pistol in his hands, though, wasn’t civilian at all. “Now, now, that’s not true. In fact, we could not be happier with Delagarza’s involvement. He saved us a lot of time and effort,” he said.
“ISABELLA REINER?” Strauze asked, though he clearly knew the answer.
Edith Sharpe looked at Strauze with wide eyes. She turned to Delagarza with a betrayed expression.
“I didn’t—” he began to say, but Strauze’s pistol made him shut up when the enforcer aimed it his way.
“Well?” Strauze demanded.
“Yes,” said Edith. Even though it was barely a whisper, to Delagarza it sounded as loud as a gunshot.
It was the middle of the day cycle, and the street was quite crowded. Or, more like, it had been quite crowded. People were making themselves scarce by the second. Someone called security.
No use, this man is at the top of the food chain, Delagarza thought. He looked in all directions, trying to figure out an escape route. There were no alleys besides the clinic, no useful bend in the street he could use to block Strauze’s line of fire. The man had chosen the location well.
Panic rose through Delagarza’s body like an electric shock.
Sharpe laughed at Strauze. “This is it? Really, after all this time? A single enforcer with a gun? I expected Tal-Kader to have more style than this.”
“You know how bureaucrats are,” said Strauze, not missing a beat, “always nagging to reduce costs. I didn’t come alone though.”
He gestured at the rooftops of the neighboring buildings with his free hand. Delagarza couldn’t see the enforcers, but he could see the glint of their scopes. He figured several of them were aimed at his chest.
“I see,” said Sharpe. She didn’t look half as terrified as Delagarza felt.
Maybe, after a decade and half waiting for them to arrive, she’s just happy to get it over with. Delagarza thought.
It was like a balloon deflated inside his chest. How had he been so foolish? Risking his life to warn her, thinking he could give the enforcers the slip…they had never lost track of him. He played right into their hands.
His mistake had been to allow himself an ounce of idealism to filter through his mental defenses. For just a minute…he’d thought the universe worked differently. That the daughter of a hero could survive his assassination and start the revolution that would depose the tyrannical corporation that had killed her father.
In that imaginary universe, someone would arrive to save the day. Perhaps Nanny Kayoko and her underground resistance. Maybe even Delagarza himself. Wasn’t he supposed to be an agent, himself, according to Kayoko?
There was no hidden strength revealed to him in his moment of need.
Life didn’t work that way. No, it wasn’t the person with the better ideals who won, it was the one with the bigger stick.
“Strauze,” Delagarza said, “don’t do this. You’re an Edge citizen, too. You know what she represents. You know what she could do…”
“Idiot,” Strauze said, a flash of black anger hovering over his eyes. “You think all Tal-Kader personnel are mindless grunts? I could’ve been an agent, Delagarza, had Newgen not been disbanded. I have the brains for it. Of course I know what this woman is capable of doing. That’s why I’m here—”