It’s Brady, entering the kitchen. I lower my gun, annoyed.
“I should have known you’re not a morning person,” he says, opening the refrigerator.
I put my gun down and slump back down across the arm of the couch. “You stay up all night thinking of that one?”
“There’s bread in the cupboard and jam in the fridge,” he says, opening a carton of protein shake. “I’m going in to work, got a lot of paperwork to catch up with.” He’s humorless, but if he’s still hurt about last night, he’s too aloof for me to tell.
“You can drop me off at the Agency,” I tell him. “My ride’s there, and maybe Myra’s got the doctor’s files ready.”
He shakes his head. “That can’t be safe.”
Before I can argue with him, the door chime cuts me off and the big monitor on the wall flashes, “Door: Three individuals, unknown.”
Suddenly back in flight or fight mode, I snatch my gun from the table and take cover behind the couch, ready.
“Monitor,” Brady says, “Front door view.”
The scrolling text on the screen is replaced with a downward-facing fisheye view of three men in suits standing in the hallway. The small one in the center is Aaron Greenman. Brady glances at me briefly, crossing to the door.
“Brady, no,” I hiss, wondering what Greenman is doing here, whether he knows I’m here.
Brady looks to me quizzically, as though he doesn’t understand. I knew that a leak inside SCAPE was likely; after all it’s either that or inside the Collections Agency. But Greenman himself? Or did they just trace my weapon somehow? I was worried about someone at the Agency tracking its location, but someone outside the Agency seemed unlikely.
Stay calm, Taryn. Assess, then act.
I point the barrel of my gun at the ceiling, taking my finger off the trigger as I hear the door slide open.
“Mr. Greenman,” Brady says, “good morning.”
“Hello Brady,” the old man says, friendly, “may we come in?”
“Of course.”
I hear Brady step aside, and Greenman and his two companions enter. I rise slowly to my feet, still unwilling to put my sidearm down. The two suits beside Greenman draw fast, pulling aim on me as I hesitate, unsure of the situation. Greenman puts his hands up in mock surrender, letting them rest lazily at shoulder height.
“Put ’em down.” I keep my aim on the rich man, gambling that his underlings won’t risk him.
“Agent Dare,” he says, unconcerned, “I wasn’t aware you were here.” He looks to Brady. “Are you two… ?”
“No,” we both answer in unison.
“I do not know why you feel threatened, Agent Dare, but I assure you, I mean only to help.”
I hold my aim. “I was almost blown up yesterday. You understand why I might be a bit on edge.”
The richest man on the planet stares at me over the barrel of my sidearm, his gaze calm. A long moment passes between us as I refuse to look away, the silence uninterrupted until his thin lips break into a barely detectable smile. “Stand down, boys,” he orders, as though asking for some sugar with his tea.
In my peripheral vision I see them secure their weapons and holster them back underneath their black suit jackets, and reluctantly I let my own hang slack on my index finger by the trigger guard, rotating upward as it hangs there, harmless. I bend down and set it on the surface of the coffee table, facing aside.
“Mr. Greenman,” Brady blathers, “I’m so sorry for that. As she said, she’s afraid of an attack… ”
“Quite all right, Brady. A little… misunderstanding, is all it was.”
“Why are you here?” I demand, regretting the bluntness of my words as soon as I say them.
“To make good on my word,” Greenman answers, sincere. I tense for a second as he reaches into a front pocket on his blazer, but what he draws out is just a data drive, which he offers forward demonstratively. “There’s everything we could get on Frank Soto.”
I step forward and accept the little silver brick, clasping it tight in my palm. “Thank you,” I say, cowed. “Can’t wait to have a look.”
The rich man nods. “He’s flown long haul for his whole career with the Consortium, except for a brief period about a solar ago when some medical problems necessitated a temporary reassignment to a Brink system local route.” He pauses for emphasis. “The weevil shuttle.”
I freeze for a few seconds as this revelation digs its way into my consciousness. Frank Soto was on the weevil shuttle. Frank Soto shows up on Chan’s patient list just months before I catch him with weevils. The connection is almost too simple, too easy, too obvious. “The weevil shuttle,” I repeat.
“I do hope that’s helpful,” Greenman says.
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”
“I wish I could’ve,” he answers. “But in spite of my reputation, I don’t know everything about every single SCAPE employee, Agent Dare. However, I’m afraid to say that I have had my people review every second of security footage from Soto’s shifts on the shuttle, and there’s nothing amiss. So I’m afraid that lead is cold, as you would say in your line of work.”
“I’d like to see for myself.”
“Of course. It’s all on the drive.” He grins smugly. “Though it may take you some time. There are hundreds of hours there.”
I bite my lip, confused. My first thought is that someone’s doctored the footage to protect SCAPE, but why not throw Soto to the authorities and be done with it? Maybe they don’t want to sully their security reputation, but that doesn’t quite seem worth it. I didn’t want to believe the leak was on the Collections side, but if Soto really didn’t steal any cultures, the leak would almost have to be someone at the Agency.
“I’d love to stay and socialize,” Greenman says, “but work does call.” He passes to the door, and his silent companions fall in line behind him. But before he exits, he stops and turns back to face me. “Oh,” he says, with a sort of pointedness that makes it obvious that what he’s about to say is not actually an afterthought, “you will want to look at Mr. Soto’s phone records. They’re also on the drive, of course.”
Before I can get another word in, he and his suited guards are out the door, and I’m left standing by the couch, clutching the little silver data brick. I toss it to Brady, and he clumsily catches it.
“Pop it in.”
He goes to the big monitor on the wall and puts the data drive into one of the ports, then scrolls through the navigation menu, waving his left hand upward until he finds the file marked “Soto Phone Records,” which he opens, expanding the spreadsheet to fill the frame.
“What are we looking for?” I say aloud, as Brady skims downward. But as he gets to the very bottom I see it, plain as day, two words repeated several times, near the very end of the rows upon rows of text.
Ling, Myra.
“Son of a bitch.”
“What?” Brady asks, tense at the hushed tone of my voice.
“The name of at least one Collections Dispatcher is on here. The one I generally work with, Myra Ling.”
“Oh,” he says. As though afraid of angering me, he asks hesitantly, “Any idea why she might be calling this guy?”
“Not a damn clue,” I answer honestly. “But I intend to ask her.” I start back through the hallway and retrieve my uniform from the auto-washer, now clean and dry and crisp. “You’re driving me to Collections right now.”
“No way,” Brady says. “It’s too dangerous, Taryn.”
I did come here to lay low, and whoever wants me dead might have posted eyes outside of headquarters. But this feels too urgent, and standing still long enough could be a death sentence; I have to play offense.
I slip into the bathroom, writhe free of the bright pink gym princess getup I borrowed from Brady, and gear up, pulling on the skintight padded pants and the armored, formfitting top that have come to feel like my second skin. The figure in the mirror is me again, a frightening figure, a heartless machine ready to tear through anything in her way. I like it.