Chapter 4

I looked at Sugar anxiously, running my fingers over the stubble on my jaw. “You find anything?”

She sat at the kitchen table, plugged into her computer and looking intently at the roll-out screen arrayed before her. “Looks like a bunch of grocery lists and phone numbers. Gimme a second, will you?”

She spent the next few moments in silence, scrolling through the data entries. Suddenly her jaw dropped.

“Oh my God.”

“What is it?”

“See for yourself.” She turned the screen to face me.

It was a memo formatted with LogiTech Incorporated letterhead. That fact alone was enough to send chills up my spine. As I read on, a cold lump began to form in the pit of my stomach. It read:

To: Corporate Management

Concerning: Disposition of Corporate Asset 732-02

Corporate Asset 732-02 is an apartment/condominium owned by Logitech Incorporated as a publicly undisclosed asset. Located at 1258 Carlton street Apartment 1008, the domicile is inhabited by an inactive ghost operative code named “Rook.” At this time, it is advantageous for the inactive asset to remain on corporate property, but the company’s disposition may change in the future. Whatever the reason, approach the handling of both corporate asset and ghost operative with extreme caution.

It was dated February 14, 2037—five full years ago.

“I can’t believe it,” I muttered aloud.

“Well believe it,” Sugar said somberly. “That file was transmitted vial e-mail to Mantis’ account from a corporate enclave. I haven’t been able to verify everything given the countermeasures on the system, but it definitely came from LogiTech.”

I knew whatever we found would be big, but I didn’t think it was going to be anything like this. The LogiTech memo put things in a whole new light—a light that I shied away from like a cockroach skittering under the refrigerator. I didn’t want to think about the ramifications, but Sugar’s next comment forced me to.

“You think Rei had anything to do with it?”

“I hope not. Goddamn it, I hope not.”

“But she said—“

“I know what she said, ok? I was there too, remember?”

She scowled. “Hey, don’t yell at me. I’m knee deep in this shit too, you know.”

I sighed. “It’s just—she said she deleted it. She promised no one else would know.”

“Well it looks like she lied, doesn’t it?” Sugar stabbed her finger at the computer screen. “Or did you turn blind as well as stupid?”

I glared at her. “I just hoped…”

“She’s a corporate executive. She uses people like us for a living. What were you hoping for? That she would actually give a shit what happens to us?”

“Yeah, that’s me, just a big softie,” I shot back, trying to show just how close to the mark she’d hit.

“So what are we going to do?”

I looked at her evenly. “You already know that.”

“No. Not this time. When it was against a bunch gutter trash out in Rey-town, that may have been a viable option, but this is serious. This is a corporation for God’s sake. We can’t do it by ourselves. Derek, we can still walk away from this. I mean, we still have some money. We have contacts. We could disappear and start a new life far away from all this shit.”

I shook my head. “No. It doesn’t work like that. We may get away for a while—a couple years even—but what happens when they find us again? Can we keep running like that all our lives? If you want to beat feet with your tail between your legs, then go ahead. I won’t stop you. But you know that’s something I can’t do.”

“You know I won’t leave you,” she said with a defiant glare.

I smiled faintly. “I know. And thank you.”

She sighed. “So what do we do now?”

“Now we look up an old friend,” I said, fishing the digital assistant out of my pocket. “We’re going to need help on this one.”

Sugar frowned. “You mean her.”

She saw the answer in my eyes before I could utter a word.

“You know how I feel about her.”

“Yeah, I know. But we need her. She’s the best demo person I know. Like you said, we can’t do this on our own.”

She bit her lip as if mulling over a question in her head. “Fine,” she said tersely.

“You sure?”

She nodded.

I picked up the phone and dialed.

--

I started in my sleep, stomach doing somersaults as I momentarily panicked. Latching onto the edge of the couch, I sat bolt upright, only to find myself alone bathing in the flickering blue light of the television.

As I realized where I was, I let go of a relieved sigh and sank back onto the couch. I must have dozed off watching the TV, though I couldn’t tell what had woken me up. Looking around for Sugar, she didn’t seem to be around, so I assumed she must have been asleep in the back bedroom. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs from my brain and looked to the clock on the table. The crimson numbers read 2:13 pm. I’d been asleep for a good four hours.

Then a knock sounded on the apartment door. Shit—that’s what had woken me up. I’d totally forgotten about the meet. Grabbing the magnum off the coffee table, I stood up and padded over to the door to peer into the peephole.

Two figures appeared in the hallway beyond the distorted glass. One, a short black kid, stood next to a taller woman with a mane of platinum blonde hair that spilled down onto her shoulders. The kid I’d never seen before, but the woman I recognized immediately.

I opened the door, smiling for the first time in what felt like ages. “Diana. Thanks for coming so quickly.”

She flashed me a grin—that dagger-like smile I had seen on the other side of the pillow so many times before—alluring, ominous, and enigmatic all at once. I never quite knew what was going on in that head of hers. Once upon a time we had shared a bed, but even so, that cryptic smile still kept me guessing. As she leaned forward for a hug, her touch brought back a rush of ancient memories. I was suddenly glad that Sugar was still asleep.

“Of course,” she said in her husky, southern lilt. “From what you said on the phone, it sounded important.”

I sighed, pushing away the dusty memories. “Yeah, it is. I didn’t know you were bringing company, though.”

She pulled out from the hug, looking back toward the young man. “Oh, this here is Freddy, but you can call him Blitz. We’ve been working together for the past couple months. I thought he might be able to help.”

I gave the kid a once over. Like I saw through the peephole, he looked like he’d just crawled out of a bad action movie. He had a small wiry build and kept his hair in a fade. His eyes were pure chrome, as was the dataport imbedded just behind his left ear. His silk shirt lay open at the collar where the tattoo of a Chinese dragon could be seen snaking its way from his chest up onto his neck. Seeing him standing next to Diana, I felt a sudden twinge of jealousy, but I buried the emotion like a murderer stashing his knife.

He flashed me a grin. “Like Di said, the name’s Blitz. Nice to meet you, Rook. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“This is who you’ve been working with since I quit?” I said, scowling at Diana. “He’s a damn puppy.”

Diana shrugged, moving around me toward the kitchen. “So were we, when we first started. Besides, I’m not up to the old tricks anymore. After the group disbanded, I had to change careers.”

“What are you up to now?”

“Freelance body guarding, motorized escort, that sort of thing.”

“And you got this one to do the driving?” I asked, jerking my thumb at the little pup.

She shrugged. “He may not look like much, but he’s lightspeed behind the wheel. From the sound of things, you could use all the help you can get.”

“Yeah, I had a bit of a run-in last night. A little pussycat mistook me for a scratching post.”

She smirked. “Musta been one monster pussy.”

I glared at her, to which she just laughed.

She took a seat at the kitchen table and began patting a cigarette from the pack in her hand. She paused long enough to look up at me. “You want one?”

“Nah,” I said, sliding into the seat across from her. “I quit.”

She smiled as she brought the cancer stick to her lips and lit it. “Really now? I guess old dogs can learn new tricks after all.” She took a long drag and blew the smoke up toward the ceiling like a lounging dragon. “So tell me what this is about.”

I leaned back in my chair, laying the magnum on the table and folding my arms over my chest. “Some hitmen busted into my place a couple nights ago. They were most likely street talent—the kind that has more guts than sense, y’know? Well, me and Sugar managed to take care of them, but they put up a hell of a fight. Afterward, I got in touch with Jesus, and he was able to find out where one of them lived.”

“And I assume Jesus set you up with this place?” she said, grabbing a dirty glass off the counter to use as an ash tray.

“Yeah. After we got settled here, we went over to the dead guy’s place to have a look-see, and this is what we found.” I fished a data chip from my pocket and tossed it onto the table.

Diana took her personal assistant out of her coat pocket and inserted the chip. A few moments later she gave a disgusted sigh. “Damn. I knew we shouldn’t have trusted the bitch.”

“Hold on now,” I cautioned, “this doesn’t necessarily mean she was behind it.”

“Who are we talking about?” Blitz interjected.

Diana sighed like an exasperated parent. “Biz from a long time ago.”

“A corporate exec, Rei Akunami. We ghosted for her a few years back,” I explained.

“Ghosted?” The kid screwed up his face like I had suddenly started speaking Swahili.

“You didn’t tell him, did you?” I said, switching my gaze to Diana.

She shrugged. “It never really came up.”

“I’m still confused,” Blitz muttered.

“Alright,” I said with a sigh, “I’m going to lay it out for you. Pay attention to the history lesson, kid, because I’m not going to explain it twice. Remember when the 2020 uprising happened?”

“Not really. I wasn’t born then.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well you’ve heard about it, right?”

“That was when the government signed that treaty or whatever to join with Canada and Mexico.”

“Yeah, that was it—the North American Union Act. Congratulations, you do have some brains. Now, in 2020 the U.S. government was about to go belly-up. There was all kinds of violence popping up around the country, and the government just couldn’t handle it all. It was pretty clear to see that the folks in this country weren’t going to go for any kind of unification bullshit. By the time it got underway full swing, the government no longer had any ambitions with the NAU, they just wanted to stay in the saddle. Problem was, they couldn’t seem to get it done. It’s amazing how long a few pissed off rednecks out in the sticks can hold out, y’know?

“And in steps the corporations with some fancy new gismos they’ve been working on—one of which was their stem cell therapy, which up until that point had been strictly illegal, but that’s another story. With the help of that new weapons tech, the government managed to crush the resistance in the space of a few months. But that help came with a price. In exchange for their kindness, the corporations demanded two things—the dissolution of federal trade laws, and seats in Congress.”

“Thus, the Corporate Council was born,” Diana chimed in.

I nodded. “The ten biggest American companies each got a seat in congress. So now not only are they exempt from those pesky “fair business” laws, but they have the power to make new ones too.”

“I still don’t see where ghosting fits into all of this.” Blitz said slowly.

I rolled my eyes. “Let me spell it out for you. With no one to reign them in, corporations got greedier and greedier, focusing tons of money into screwing over their competition. The only problem was, Wal-Mart couldn’t just, y’know, fire off a couple missiles at the Sears Tower and call it a day. I mean, yeah, the government had turned a blind eye to all their illegal crap, but outright violence couldn’t be ignored. That’s where we came—freelance operators with no official identity working for the highest bidder in wars that didn’t exist. Hence the term, ghost.”

Blitz nodded slowly, taking it all in. “Sounds like fun—more fun than playing babysitter to some rich bitch enjoying a night on the town.”

“Getting shot at isn’t my idea of fun,” Diana muttered. “Ghosting is a way out of the gutter, not a lifelong career choice. In that business, you can’t trust anyone farther than you can throw them.” She pointed to the digital assistant. “That right there just proves it. It all makes sense.”

“Whoa, hold on a sec.” I looked to Diana. “What do you mean, ‘it makes sense?’”

“Haven’t you heard? It’s been plastered all over the news for the past day.”

“What are you talking about?”

She sighed. “Come on. I’ll show you.” Diana stood and moved around to the den, snatching up the remote to flip through the channels on the TV.

As I watched her click through various twenty-four hour news programs, the bedroom door eased open and Sugar appeared beneath the lintel. She narrowed her eyes as she took in the scene, studying the new arrivals distrustfully—especially Diana. Biting her lip, she leaned against the door jamb and kept quiet.

“Here it is,” said Diana.

She dialed up the volume as the picture settled over the blonde anchorwoman on screen.

Her canned voice filtered over the speakers. “—Commissioner of the NFL has disclosed the results of Alonzo Jaxon’s autopsy report, which reveals that he recently underwent a procedure that altered his genetic structure. Doctors say this highly illegal treatment went undetected by drug and scanners because officials did not know what to look for. Enhanced nervous and muscle tissue characterized the bodily modification, but the procedure caused Jaxon’s cardiac tissue to deteriorate considerably, leading to the heart attack that leveled him during Sunday’s game.”

“I don’t see what—“

Diana hushed me with a hiss. “Keep listening.”

The anchor continued. “In a related story, authorities are seeking Rei LeRoche, principle owner and president of Logitech Incorporated, for questioning in relation to the bodily modification of Jaxon. Logitech recently released a similar procedure to the Federal Drug Administration for product testing, but the FDA rejected the treatment because of its severe side effects. Since that public rejection two weeks ago, Axion Technologies has come forward, claiming that the treatment released by Logitech was in fact pioneered by Axion and stolen from one of their research facilities. Since the release of Jaxon’s autopsy report, government officials have requested an interview, but so far Ms. LeRoche has not come forward. In other news—“

Diana hit the mute button. “Don’t you see? It makes perfect sense. That shit with Axion was something we worked on.” She grabbed my arm, staring up at me imploringly. “Don’t you remember New Orleans four years ago?”

“I do,” Sugar said from the doorway. “We infiltrated an Axion facility and stole all their data concerning something called Project Rosetta Stone. Then we scragged all the files and server backups.”

Diana nodded. “Young Enterprises was one of a handful of companies that worked together to complete the human genome project. They then used that knowledge to start research into genetic manipulation. Logitech used the research we stole from Young as a springboard to accelerate their genetic manipulation project. Now the cat’s out of the bag, and Rei is trying to grease you. She’s covering her tracks and getting rid of witnesses. Hell, I bet the only reason she set you up with your apartment in the first place was so she could keep tabs on you.”

“But the hit was so amateurish. Rei knows me. She’s seen us in action. She wouldn’t send some two-bit thugs to do the job.”

“If she’s under a lot of scrutiny, she probably can’t crack open the company’s expense accounts for a high-tech black ops gig. But if they caught you by surprise, those goons should have been enough to do the job.” She pointed at my wound. “And they almost did.”

I felt Sugar’s hand on my shoulder. “Diana’s right. We’ve been set up, and you know it.”

“Fuck,” I breathed quietly. “You’re right, ok? Goddamn it, you’re right.”

I clenched my fists, moving back into the kitchen as my mind reeled, desperately trying to figure out what to do next. The others filtered into the kitchen behind me as I angrily pumped my fist into the side of the refrigerator. As it turned out, that wasn’t such a good idea.

All eyes were on me as I turned back around, fighting to control my face against the self-inflicted pain. I looked at each one in turn, reading the emotions evident their faces. Finally I sighed, massaging my knuckles. “I’m going to need help on this one.”

Diana gave me a tight-lipped smile. “What do you need?”

“I need manpower. Me and Sugar can’t do this alone. We need to get some of the old group together.”

“Shane and Jared are no good. Shane got sent up state for ten years, and Jared—“ She paused. “Well, you were there for that one.”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “I don’t think he’ll be able to do much from six feet under.”

“That just leaves H.G.”

“I already saw him. He’s working for Jesus now.”

“Do you think he’ll lend a hand?” Diana asked.

“Doubt it,” I said with a shake of my head. “Jesus has him in his pocket now. I don’t know what happened, but that spic has got him wound up tighter than a virgin on prom night.”

“Damn.”

I paused, licking my lips. “Diana, you know I can’t pay you, but—“

She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Your money’s no good to me. This thing affects me too. You weren’t the only one involved with the Logitech gig. Rei will probably be coming for me next, so the way I look at it, I’m just getting a head start on her ass.”

“Can you think of anyone else that would help?”

She shrugged and nodded her head to Blitz.

I looked over at the kid to see what he thought, and my heart leaped up into my throat. He held the Ruger in his hands, angling his chin upward as he studied the way its surface gleamed in the kitchen’s florescent light. It took him a few seconds to realize the fish bowl he was in.

“Oh, heh, sorry.” He grinned like a chastised puppy and laid the weapon back down on the table. “Um, yeah. Sounds like fun. Count me in.”

“Good,” Diana said with an air of satisfaction. “Now, how are we going to track this bitch down?”

“First we’re going to see if all of the corporate bullshit is on the level.” I still wasn’t going to jump to conclusions about this. If we were going to take her on, I wanted solid proof.

“And how are we going to do that?”

“By going straight to the horse’s mouth.”

“You’re just going to ask her?” said Sugar incredulously. “You know she won’t admit to it.”

“Probably. But I want to see if she’s got the balls to level with me.”

“Then what?”

“Then we fuck the bitch up.”