“The medical bay is on the other side of this chamber,” said Gabriel, “move!”
No one needed to be ordered twice. Cato and Bale took Doran by the arms and legs and hoisted him carefully into the air while Gabriel and Viker provided cover.
Gabriel spotted the surviving jumper take off and soar through the air towards the door through which it had come. He took a quick aim and squeezed off a shot, hitting the jumper in the back, and causing it tumble from the air, rolling head over heels across the floor.
In spite of a broken wrist and a missing arm, the jumper had still had the presence of mind to pick up its sword and stow it on its back before trying to make a break for the exit. Gabriel’s shot had damaged its jump-pack, rendering it useless; but the jumper continued to crawl with impressive determination across the floor towards safety.
Gabriel marched over to the wounded enemy and took aim, preparing to put it out of its misery, but then thought better of it. Stowing his weapon, Gabriel picked the scrawny enemy off the ground and took it prisoner, twisting its remaining arm behind its back.
“Aren’t you gonna kill that thing?” Viker asked, bewildered by the apparent mercy.
“Not yet.” Gabriel replied.
* * *
The elevator doors opened on the 201st floor and Aster stepped out into the hallway of an opulent penthouse. The floor of the main hall had a blood red carpet – probably made from bioengineered fur – and was lined with exquisitely carved statuettes in various poses; there was even a water feature depicting two aquatic monsters intertwined in a vicious embrace. The statuettes seemed to stare at Aster as she walked passed them; perhaps they were, it would be easy enough to install micro-cameras in the eyeholes.
Aster hurried past the creepy statuettes and turned a corner into a palatial living room. The arched ceiling was covered in a single giant fresco decorated with winged Humans dancing in the clouds, seeming to move ever so slightly. Completing the setting was a replica fireplace with flickering holographic flames, and a set of plush furniture arranged around the skin of some giant animal laid out on the floor as a trophy carpet.
Madam Jezebel Thorn sat on one of the couches, waited upon by two servant androids and an antigravity platter floating next to her. The hostess herself was dressed in a snow white business suit, her black hair with blonde streaks tied into her trademark cornbraid.
Aster gasped when she saw who else was there.
“Mommy!” her four children chorused in welcome.
They dropped what they were doing and came running to greet their mother. Aster squatted down and pulled her children into a protective embrace, squeezing them close, then gave her mother-in-law a murderous glare.
“I picked them up after their medical appointment was finished.” Grandma Jezebel explained, “The poor things were exhausted; and bored.”
“We’re leaving,” Aster said with a scowl.
“I haven’t told you why you’re here, yet.” Jezebel said.
“I’m here to pick up my children,” Aster shot back, “and then to find out how you managed to convince the medical centre staff to let you pick up my children.”
“Lawrence Kane.” The mention of the name made Aster freeze up.
“As a blood relative, I’m not recognised as a threat by the medical centre androids,” Jezebel answered, “so why don’t you have a seat and we can discuss this like grown-ups.”
With profound reluctance, Aster took a seat opposite her hostess, and the children returned to their distractions. Orion, the oldest, picked up a tablet computer he had been playing with and sat down beside his grandmother while Rose and Violet returned to entertaining their younger brother Leo on the animal skin carpet.
“Would you like a drink?” Madam Jezebel asked.
“Tell me what you know about Lawrence Kane and why.”
“I’ve heard he was a colleague of yours,” Madam Jezebel replied, then added, “I’ve also heard that he wasn’t entirely loyal to his employers.”
Aster felt a wave of self-conscious dread wash over her. Was this Jezebel Thorn’s way of telling her she’d been found out?
“Although, you surely suspected as much.” Madam Jezebel added coolly.
As she spoke, she pulled out a tablet computer of her own and opened up a video file, then she placed it on the antigravity platter and gave it a tap. The platter floated silently over to Aster and landed on her lap. With trepidation, Aster picked up the tablet and pressed play, seeing an image of an office door secured with a biometric lock.
The colour drained from Aster’s face when she saw herself appear on screen, open up the biometric sensor’s panel and type in her personal override code to bypass the lock before slipping inside the office. The video then cut to a shot of her exiting Lawrence’s office.
“Water.” Madam Jezebel ordered the servant android with a snap of her fingers.
Aster was definitely thirsty. The service android returned with an ornate glass filled with water and offered it to Aster who took it and drained it to the dregs.
“What the fuck is this supposed to be?” Aster demanded.
“Do you usually talk that way around the children?” Madam Jezebel asked snidely.
The children were too engrossed in their activities to notice or care.
“Answer the question!” Aster snapped back, “What is this?”
“Something to secure your cooperation.” Madam Jezebel replied.
“With what?” Aster asked, her eyes narrowing with suspicion.
“Retrieving something,” Madam Jezebel replied, “and I think you know what it is.”
“By asking me here, you’re guilty of conspiracy to commit corporate espionage.” Aster pointed out, hoping to turn the tables.
“And by coming, you’re officially complicit,” Madam Jezebel retorted breezily, “unless, of course, the real reason – the one you’d like me to corroborate if the investigators ask – is that you simply came to pick up your children from their grandmother’s home.”
Jezebel was right. This whole setup made her look bad, even without the incriminating video. Not to mention her head was swirling with the implications of what she had just been shown: someone in her staff was on Jezebel’s payroll.
There were no surveillance cameras in the research labs, lest an outside hacker hijack the video feeds. That meant someone had to have either smuggled the camera in, or built it from scratch using materials in the lab.
“…The data chip,” Aster said hesitantly, “the blue one, that’s what you’re after.”
“Your employer, Darius Avaritio, came to me some years ago to help finance a new facility on Loki,” Madam Jezebel explained, “in return, I would get favourable stock options. Later, I found out he was deliberately undervaluing the company’s stock and thereby cheating investors, including me.”
“So you planted someone inside J.E. Co. to steal ‘your’ share of its intellectual property for your own business ventures.” Aster concluded.
“Life is so much sweeter when someone else picks up the tab,” Madam Jezebel said philosophically, “and the returns are so much higher when someone else does the hard work of research and development.”
“Do you even care that hundreds of people are probably dead?”
“No, I do not.” Madam Jezebel replied with sociopathic honesty, “Toying around with xenotech in the hopes of inventing the next trendy widget is like dismantling a fusion bomb to make a drum set. I want no part of that, and those who do are welcome to the consequences. But I do want my share of that ill-conceived investment back.”
Oblivious to the tense exchange, seven year old Orion shuffled over to his grandmother and tugged on her sleeve. Grandma Jezebel looked at the tablet computer he was holding.
“No, sweetheart,” she said helpfully, pointing to the exercises he was doing on screen, “that’s meant to be the future-continuative conjugation. You ‘will be doing’ the verb.”