‘You can stop pointing that thing at us, Esme,’ Hone said. ‘We’re the good guys, remember.’
She moved the snub-nosed Sammy 817 from her uncle to North and back to her uncle. She didn’t appear to think Paulie or Fang were a risk to her. But her hand was shaking. ‘Good and bad. Right and wrong – can you tell me you know the difference any more?’
The Sammy’s plastic resin looked solid enough, although even with a metal cylinder in its barrel, North doubted a 3D-printed gun had the structural integrity to hold together for more than one shot. That meant she had a choice to make – shoot her uncle or shoot North.
He hadn’t resented it when the broken-nosed special forces soldier had punched him in the jaw as he reclaimed his Glock 17, but he was wishing he’d put up more of a fight to keep it. He calculated the odds – he could rush her, crowd her out, take hold of her wrist and swing the gun into the air. But there was a chance she’d shoot him in the process. And if there was one thing he didn’t need, it was another bullet in him. He exchanged a look with Hone. It was the tiniest of expressions, but North decided to interpret it as an instruction to play for time. Make Esme see reason and put down the gun before she shot someone else – someone like him.
‘Talk to us,’ North said. ‘Make us understand.’
‘Why does that matter?’
‘Because otherwise you’re in a very lonely place.’
‘I ought to get used to being lonely, don’t you think? But all right. Kirkham and Rafferty wanted to make sure Tobias didn’t tell anyone what had gone on in the bunker. So they sent that animal to threaten us, except it didn’t go to plan.’ She bit her lip at the memory of strangling her attacker. ‘Tobias was furious. He thought he’d warned them off. But then the General hacked the car using Derkind’s own technology to get me out of the picture. As soon as I came round after the crash, I made Tobias tell me everything. About Paulie. About the government funding. About the autonomous vehicle sabotage work, about the weapons research and the fact all those poor boys died. He said the General and Rafferty wouldn’t be able to hurt us once he told the world about Syd. But it had gone too far. I had to stop him. I’d printed out the guns after I was attacked – one for Tobias and one for me. I already had the bullets from the man they sent to kill me. Tobias said we didn’t need guns, so I kept hold of his. This is it. And you know what happened to the other – I used it to shoot my husband.’
‘Why tell Chin about the bodies?’
‘Exactly as I said. If the General got to me, at least the Chinese could put pressure on the government to stop what they’re doing with the weapons.’
‘You lied to me about Chin.’
‘Not entirely. I did try to get him to let Yan go. He refused.’
‘The blood on your dress was Tobias’s…’
‘It wasn’t just his.’
‘You played me at the museum when you said you wanted to go back for him.’
‘I did want to go back! But I needed to go back for Syd.’
She had played him for a fool, he thought. ‘In the sewers, I thought you trusted me, but you didn’t.’
She sighed as she settled her sights on North. ‘My husband – the man I’d loved for sixteen years – betrayed me in the worst possible way. You’ll have to forgive me for not trusting a stranger, when all I knew about you was that you kill people and that you work for the government. If I’d told you what I’d done, what’s to say you wouldn’t have drowned me down there?’ The Sammy trembled in her hand, but it was still pointing at him. ‘God knows that I didn’t want to kill Tobias. I wanted him to listen to me!’ Her eyes began to fill with tears. ‘I was a wreck afterwards. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. And then I heard the gunfire and it woke me up and I ran. I should have taken Syd with me but I panicked. It all happened so fast.’
‘Put down the gun. You don’t want to kill me, Esme,’ North said.
‘I don’t want to kill anyone, but it keeps happening.’
Esme wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer. She was caught between the husband she loved and the machine she didn’t trust.
‘And you’re not going to shoot your uncle.’ Was she?
‘Because family’s so important to me?’ The ghost of a smile passed over her tear-streaked face.
Hone hung back as if he was reluctant to push the point, or perhaps he was reluctant to do what had to be done – arrest her for the murder of her husband. Maybe Hone wanted North to back off, let Esme walk out the door and into a new life far away?
‘Or do I shoot myself, Uncle Ed?’ It was a genuine question and, beside him, Hone tensed. ‘That would have a certain logic – no trial, no prison. No dirty washing about government investments?’ Her attention fixed on Hone, and North felt the other man waver – felt him fight the temptation to put his country above Esme.
‘But then Syd wins if I do that. Syd wins any way you game this.’
Sitting back in the chair, she was eerily calm, as if she’d known this moment would come. ‘We changed history today, because we held back the future. Pandora peeked into the box and slammed the lid down again. Do you think she can stop herself opening it again? The government will strip my company bare – they will empty out the box, shake out every last demon and disease, convinced they can control Syd. I tell you they can’t.’
An uneasy look passed between her listeners.
‘When that man broke into the apartment, Syd told me it was all right to kill him, and I have to live with what I did that night.’ She swallowed, as if to push down the memory. ‘In the same way, I have to live with everything I’ve done.’ Her eyes met North’s as if asking him whether that was possible. From a standing start, she’d killed three men, and he wondered if she’d slept since. ‘But the agency was mine. The decision was mine, and the guilt. If Syd gets out into this world, eventually the agency will not be ours, the decisions will not be ours. Only the guilt.’
She turned the full force of her attention on Fang.
‘Do you understand?’
‘You think you’re Sarah Connor.’
Esme smiled. ‘Not such a bad role model. And mah-jong? Smart girl. Your mother must be so proud of you.’ Fang’s face softened. ‘I want you, way more than these guys, to understand what I did was for you and for those who come after you.’ With her free hand, Esme nudged the picture of her dead son so she had a clearer view of it, before looking round the room. ‘There’s five of us here. It would take Paulie less than a minute to write a “delete” algorithm. Delete this video. Nobody ever has to watch it. Then we do humanity a favour and bury this machine where it belongs – at the bottom of the ocean.’
The microdrone that had buzzed around Fang was still. North wondered if the machine could still hear what was going on.
‘That’s not your call any more, Esme,’ her uncle said.
She’d pitched, but Hone wasn’t buying. Again, the gun wavered in Esme’s hand and North knew he didn’t have time to reach her if she turned it on herself.
She tipped her head against the back of the chair, letting out a stream of air. She was exhausted, he thought. A grieving widow and a killer. She turned her head to Fang again. ‘When we first met, you asked what was the point of ethics. I didn’t give you an answer. But I think it’s to make living that little bit less painful. It’s just it doesn’t always work out that way.’ Esme put the gun down on the desk with a heavy sigh. ‘So you do the right thing, or what you hope is the right thing. And you live with the fallout, and you pray to a God that doesn’t exist that you haven’t made too big a mess.’