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Corina was gone. Two days had passed since the announcement, and I had spent most of them in my room. When Tara needed me, I got an escort from one of Newton’s men after an old woman had slapped me across the face and screamed ‘Collaborator’ at me. I had no idea what the word meant, but most of the looks I got from others were just as hostile.
Tara and her techs were fair, or tried to be. Nobody said anything, but I could tell they were trying too hard. One girl left the room every time I came in. I could understand them, sort of. Corina wasn’t responding to them either. There wasn’t anything I could do to help.
I had taken Corina back to my room. The halo wouldn’t even sit on my head properly, let alone connect. The scariest thing was the glass tube that Corina lived in. There were no sparkles. It looked utterly dead.
And now I sat with Tara, Newton, Megan, and three others I didn’t know by name, crammed around a table in Ward’s room. Corina’s body lay in the middle of the table, next to a copy of the report that tore everything apart. Ward knocked on the table and people wound up their private conversations.
‘I’ve called this meeting to decide where we go from here. Can we start with a few updates? Tara?’
‘Nothing. The unit does not respond to any of the previous inputs, and we can detect no appreciable drain on the charger. My guess is that the situation overloaded the Corina construct and damaged or destroyed it. Her emotions were primitive and juvenile. My guess is she wasn’t a–’ Tara waved her hands helplessly as she sought for the right word. ‘Professional product?’
That annoyed me, though I tried not to show it.
‘Can we reset it?’ asked one of the women I didn’t know.
‘If we knew how,’ said Tara. ‘We don’t even know how to drain the charge and reset it that way.’
‘Sounds like we need to give it a slap,’ Newton said, chuckling. Nobody laughed with him. ‘Say, that’s it. If the bitch in a box is having a snit, poke her with something sharp. Remember how she squealed when we got the power wrong first time. Bet that would wake her up.’
I leapt to my feet but Ward raised a hand. He got up, walked around the able until he was behind Newton, then grabbed the back of his chair and spun it around. With his other hand he backhanded Newton across the face so hard he fell to the floor. I expected him to jump to his feet and fight, but Newton stayed where he had landed, looking up, eyes wide open.
‘You’re fired. Get out.’
Newton rose slowly to his feet, his hand reaching for his baton. I drew breath to call out a warning but a gun appeared in Ward’s hand before I could speak. ‘And you can leave that on the table before you go,’ said Ward.
Newton unclipped the baton and its hook from his belt and put them next to Corina. ‘One day, Ward, when you aren’t waving that nine mil advantage around, you and I are going to revisit this.’
Ward said nothing, just jerked his chin towards the door. Newton left, leaving the door open. Tara muttered to the guard outside before she closed it, then took her seat at the table again. ‘You should have shot him, Ward,’ she grumbled as he took his seat next to her.
‘I may need him someday. So, back to business.’
‘Was there any merit in his suggestion?’ somebody asked. Ward froze for a moment, but didn’t answer.
‘So, I guess the first question is do we share this news with anybody?’ he said.
‘Somebody will already have leaked it,’ Megan offered, making a sour face. ‘You know nobody around here can keep a secret.’
‘Not entirely true, but I take your point. I was thinking more of an ‘official’ release. Something like bulk copying the salient points of the report and circulating them. Things could get out of hand if we leave it to word of mouth.’
‘Should we even bother?’ Megan asked. ‘So the word gets out and people believe it. Most people think they are up to something anyway, and the rest will put it down to another conspiracy theory. If we get any major riots, who knows what the Dags will do? With the leak as it is, all we get are a few small disturbances, which the Dags shut down within hours by closing food stations or sending the proctors in. If we co-ordinate enough people, we might be able to overwhelm the proctors, but we can’t get through the Dag perimeter defence, and who knows what other tech they have that they can throw at us?’
Ward sat back in his chair. ‘Good point, and I take it well. Does anybody else want to raise anything? No? Then it seems to me all we have out of this is confirmation that these bastards are up to no good and that there is precisely nothing we can do about it. If we do spread the word, we put people at risk.’ He looked around the table for dissenting voices, but everybody seemed lost in their own thoughts. ‘Jax?’
I looked up, surprised he had called on me. ‘Yessir?’
‘I’d like you and Tara to keep trying to wake Corina. Tara, task some of your other people with working through the Dag files we already have. I’d like anything we can get on their perimeter defence and how we might bypass it.’
‘Of course,’ I said, and Tara nodded. The meeting broke up. Tara sent me back to my room, saying she had other things to do, and said she would call on me later. I sat on my bed, Corina in my lap and the lifeless halo in my hand, and wondered what under the bastard sun I could do now.