Eddy drove Peter down to the Elevated, the massive gentrification project that had transformed the Southside into the new haven for businesses and the rich after the Loop had collapsed years earlier. The real estate developers had abandoned the Loop only weeks after the terrorist destruction of the IBM Tower, and ghouls from all over the city had rushed into the area, turning it into a haven for their kind. The national guard and several corporate security teams had made a total of three attempts to clear the area out. By the time the papers started calling these efforts “A Marshall Plan with a Morbid Twist,” everyone decided the neighborhood was ruined. The developers turned their eyes toward the Southside, and investors with land there became rich.
Through the car windows, Peter saw the towering monorail tracks that looped around and through the Elevated in a clover pattern. The pylons that held up the tracks, the tracks themselves, and the monorail Skytrack trains all glittered with silver lights that spoke of enchantment and wealth. The lights could be seen from kilometers away—a distant carnival that most inhabitants of Chicago could glimpse, but not enter.
Peter looked at the imposing homes along the snow-covered streets. His father probably had a house around here somewhere. Or used to. He’d jumped contract. In 2052, that was close to a capital crime. Perhaps he was hidden away in some underground base.
The homes lining the streets were elegant multi-story buildings with large, heat-inefficient windows that let their owners look out onto grass lawns. Peter would probably have lived with his father in such a house if he hadn’t become a troll. Golden rectangles of light spilled out the windows into the night, illuminating white snow and plastic, pure human Jesuses in plastic-molded crèches.
“Sure-sure-sure-sure is nice around here.”
“Yeah.”
They pulled up to the address Billy had given Peter. “Come on, let’s get going. I want to get inside before she gets home.”
They parked the Westwind as far as possible from the golden glow of the powerful lamps that bathed the street in lights, hustled out of the car, and up to the back door of the house. Eddy pulled out a security kit and used the skills he’d picked up over the years to open the door in mere minutes. Good, but not as good as some of the young gutterpunks Billy could hire off the street. Expecting praise, Eddy turned to look up at Peter, a huge grin on his twitching face.
“Good work,” Peter said. “You’re still the best. Now get down the street, out of sight, and wait for me there.”
Eddy ran off, muttering, “Right-Right-Right.”
Peter watched his friend go, for a moment startled by the paradox of their relative competences. Eddy, a pure human, wired to be more than human, slowly falling apart over time. He, a troll, less than human in so many eyes, on the verge of a tremendous scientific breakthrough.
He stepped into the doorway and found himself in the kitchen of the house. Dim white-blue light-strips created pools of illumination and pockets of darkness. Peter saw quickly that everything had its place—a knife rack of finished wood held a dozen blades so shiny he wondered if they’d ever been used, plastic flowers (they gave off no heat) rested in a well-polished vase, The color scheme looked black to his thermographic eyes, but he guessed it was, in fact, blue—the chairs, the tiles on the floor, the paper on the wall, all designed to complement one another. In its own way the room seemed as barren as the bare white apartment Peter lived in.
He left the kitchen and entered a central hall by the front door. One doorway led to the dining room, which also had a door directly to the kitchen, and another led to an office. Wide stairs ascended to the second floor. Everything, from the wooden chairs in the dining room to the chandelier in the hall, gave Peter a hollow feeling; none of the furnishings radiated a sense of invitation. They were merely carved wood and elaborate shards of glass, and no more.
He noticed the walls of the hall had glass panes built into them, set about a meter and a half off the floor. He stepped up to one and spotted a small switch underneath the pane. When he flicked it, a light came on behind the glass, revealing a miniature room within a box-like shelf set into the wall. He leaned down, fascinated.
Behind the glass was a miniature of an old-fashioned drawing room. There was a fireplace with a mantel over it, wooden chairs with tiny patterns sewn into small cushions, fingernail-size paintings on the walls, small statues and busts resting on top of tiny pillars, and little framed mirrors. A jade Buddha sat on the mantelpiece. The detail delighted him.
Peter leaned in closer, looking for miniature people. He thought perhaps he’d find the figure of a woman reading a book on one of the chairs or a man standing by a false, curtain window. With so much fine detail put into making the room he thought mere should also be people there.
But no miniature people were present. Not even a dog on the rug. Despite the fact that the tiny room called out for life, it was empty. The lack of human figures disappointed him. And yet, he realized, if little people were in the rooms, they wouldn’t work. The room was perfect because of its stillness, a frozen moment, a tableau that could be real because all the objects portrayed would be still. People, thought Peter, are not still, and someone in the room would draw focus away from the detail of the rest, would break the illusion.
He switched off the light and examined two other glass panes, turning on their lights one after another. One shelf contained a miniature cathedral, another an old English kitchen. Their stillness and precision calmed him, drew him in as if they were enchanted items—the lotuses from the Odyssey. Then he remembered the task at hand and clicked off the lights. He stepped up to the front door and looked through the window. Nothing. He checked his watch. She wouldn’t be back for at least twenty or thirty minutes, if Billy’s information was accurate.
He decided to wait for her in the office. He’d learned the best way to keep wetwork quiet was to pick a spot and sit in it. Meet a target by the door, he bolts back outside. Come up on him after he closes the door behind him, and it’s too much like an assault. His instincts kick in, he puts up a struggle.
But let him find you sitting calmly in one of his chairs, like an unannounced guest… Well, that changes things. He’s thrown off guard. Should he be polite? Should he scream for help? Should he run away? Unsure what to do, he surrenders control of the situation, waits for the killer to explain. It made it all so much easier.
Peter entered the office and turned on a small desk lamp. A Fuchi Nova computer sat on the desk, and several shelves of chip cases and antique books lined the walls. The books were histories of Europe. The chips were recent economic theory tracts, shareholder reports for Cell Works, and other business matters. The word that came to Peter was “functional.”
He stepped over to a closet and opened the door.
The mess within startled him. Compared to the order of the rest of the house, the scattered boxes and holo cards caught him off guard. It was like an ancient, secret tomb ransacked by robbers.
His curiosity was piqued. He knelt down and found a holo display unit. He took it, along with a stack of holo cards, and carried them to a couch set opposite the desk. He sat down and slipped a card marked 7/18/30 into the unit.
The holo-image of a little girl with bright red hair sitting behind a computer terminal floated before his face. Kathryn Amij, he guessed, for Billy had described her as a redhead. She was about seven or eight years old. She smiled into the camera—a beautiful smile. Her fingers rested on the keys, but because she looked into the camera, she was obviously playing at typing.
He slid the card out and put in one from 2035. Kathryn on a horse leaping over a fence—proud, face set, in control. She wasn’t the cute girl of five years earlier, but a girl on the verge of turning into a very attractive adolescent.
Then he found a card from 2039 and put it in. The change in her appearance startled him. Now fifteen, she was very thin, almost gaunt. The scene showed her at a birthday celebration with other teenage girls. A white-frosted cake sat in the center of the table. The other girls smiled into the camera, some with cake in their mouths. Kathryn looked toward the camera, her expression listless. Peter looked closer and saw that her cake had been mashed up, but looked as though none had been eaten.
He found a card from the following year. Still very thin, she stood on the deck of a boat with a man and woman, also with red hair, probably her parents. She showed a smile now, but her look was more surprised than happy. At the edge of the holo Peter saw a woman seated on the bow of the boat, looking down into the water. Something about her reminded Peter of Thomas.
He felt as if he were watching a story unfold before him in holos, and was curious to find out what would happen next. He seemed to have stumbled onto a kind of arc in Kathryn Amij’s life. The next card he slipped in was from ’41. A nearly supernatural image appeared: Kathryn in a hospital bed, surrounded by flowers. She smiled for the camera, almost as winningly as when she’d been a little girl. In fact, she seemed genuinely happy. But her face was a death mask, a skeleton frame with skin stretched taut over the bone. The holo transfixed him. He stared into her eyes, wondering what illness had made her waste away.
He would never know, for he heard the sound of a car pulling up, then a mechanical garage door opening. He fumbled with the holo unit, surprised and embarrassed. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, he didn’t want her to find him prying into the holos. He gathered up the cards and the display unit, rushed over to the closet, and dumped everything back into the secret mess.
When all was as he had found it—the door closed, the desk lamp off—he sat down again on the couch, pulled out his gun, and placed it on his lap.
He heard a door open somewhere in the house. No voices. She was alone.
A few moments later the lights in the front hall went on. He glanced at the computer on the desk. She would probably come in here to check her mail.
She pushed the door open, turned on the light, saw Peter, and froze in mid-step. Her mouth opened a bit, as if to speak, but no sound emerged. She put her hand on the door handle for support.
She was gorgeous. Whatever had happened in her teens had been taken care of. She wasn’t the industrial standard of beauty that Billy liked to drape over his arm, but something else… Her red hair grew down almost to the small of her back, and she kept it tied in a thick ponytail. She was tall—as tall and strong as a beauty queen from Texas. Solid.
She wore a green jacket and a skirt that came down below her knees. The flesh of her calves…
Photons bounce of her body, pass into my aqueous humors, through my pupils and lenses, careen into my retinas, which turn the image into neural impulses, which then slide down the optic nerve into my brain, which, almost magically, turn the original photons into lust.
Amazing. Peter thought he’d killed passion in his flesh years ago.
He also noticed, out of habit, that she didn’t seem to be armed.
“Hello…” she said uncomfortably. “Can I help you?”
“Miss Amij,” he said, smiling, trying to put her at ease. “Would you sit down please? I must speak with you.”
“What is this about?”
Peter uncrossed his legs and revealed the gun. “Please. It will be easier if you sit.”
She drew in a sharp breath, then placed her hand on her stomach. “Oh.”
“Please.”
She moved to the chair by the desk. Watching her move only made the intoxication of Peter’s lust increase. He needed to focus. “Miss Amij, I was sent here to kill you.” His jaw tightened. Not the best opening.
“Yes?” Her face was a mask that revealed nothing, but he saw something flicker in her eyes. He knew her mind was whirring, making plans, looking for angles. He liked her.
“There was a man who worked for you…a Dr. Clarris.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Oh. As in surprise.”
He smiled again. “Dr. Clarris was extracted from Cell Works a few weeks ago, by mercenaries working for an unknown employer.”
“Yes,” she said, and cocked her head expectantly to one side. She placed her hand on her stomach again.
“Your security forces are at a loss to explain how it happened, and believe that the mercs must have received information to help them, information Clarris would not have had access to.”
“Yes.”
“They are, of course, doing what they can to find Dr. Clarris. It is still not known if he was kidnapped from Cell Works, or if he wanted to break his contract with your company.”
“Yes.”
“And you helped him?”
“Yes.”
Peter was surprised. No denial. She gave him nothing he could use to twist around her later. “Why?”
“I had my reasons.”
“Since I’m here to kill you, would you mind sharing them with me?”
“Yes.”
Peter drew in a breath. “You have betrayed your own corporation, a company founded by your grandfather. My employer, a man with a great deal of stock in Cell Works, has very traditional, and Eastern, values. Such behavior rubs him the wrong way. And, if I’m not mistaken, if you die, a man named Garner has a very good chance of becoming Cell Works’ CEO…”
That caught her off guard. “Garner.” She looked away, disoriented, and then her eyes opened and she nodded once, as if the final piece of a mental puzzle had just slid into place. “Garner,” she said again, but this time with a firmer voice.
“Yes. Garner. My employer is helping him find Clarris, to bring him back to Cell Works as a trophy. And since my employer is helping Garner get your job, my employer would, in effect, be the boss of Cell Works’ boss.”
Kathryn stared down at the ground and gripped the side of her chair with her right hand. He saw that things were finally moving too fast for her to keep up. “Who are you?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Peter said, getting to his feet. “Now, since you’ve let all my statements slide by without protest, I’m going to assume all are correct. And I’ll level with you. I want to find Clarris myself. For my own reasons. Miss Amij, I will help you escape if you will tell me where he is.”
She sat quietly for a moment, apparently weighing the offer, then she said plainly, “I don’t know. I don’t know where he is.”
Peter’s body went a bit slack, and the barrel of the gun slipped down toward the floor. “You don’t know?”
“No.”
“You helped him escape from Cell Works and you don’t know where he is?”
“I was double-crossed…I don’t know where he is.”
“Wait a minute—”
“I said I don’t know!”
Peter drew back. It was as though his goals, his dreams, all his choices for the last fourteen years were withering away. “Please, you must have a clue,” he said softly. “You must have something.”
She looked at him carefully. “What is this to you? This doesn’t sound like work.”
“It isn’t.”
“Oh.”
“Oh,” he repeated. “Please, something. You helped him escape… You must know something.”
“No, really, I…” She raised her hands to her forehead as if a headache were coming on. “I thought he was going to Fuchi Genetics. The people I contacted crashed the plan. He’s…gone. They got me.”
“You contacted someone? To get Clarris out? You weren’t approached?”
She stared at the gun for a moment. “Are you going to kill me? I mean right now, because if you’re not, could you just…not point that at me?”
Peter glanced at the gun. He felt that this was the moment. To not kill Kathryn Amij meant to leave the gang, to leave Billy, to leave everything he’d built over the past fourteen years. The safety and power he’d attained. He looked at her and knew he couldn’t do it—he couldn’t take another Jenkins. He lowered the gun. “I won’t kill you. If you help me find him, I’ll let you go. I’ll help you escape.”
She sat silently for a moment, then said, “I wanted him to continue a line of research that he’d been working on for years. My board wanted it cut. I was going to get secret reports back from him.”
“And you hired people to track him down. Your own freelancers, shadowrunners from outside your own corporation?”
“Yes.”
“Have they found anything?”
She remained silent for a moment. “Whoever got him, it wasn’t Fuchi. They laughed—said they’d have loved to end up with him…”
“Anything positive?”
She shook her head. “That’s the problem with hiring shadowrunners. They’re basically outlaws without legal IDs—no accountability.”
“All right.” Peter searched his thoughts, looking for questions that might uncover other information. “What he was working on…?” A thought slammed into his head. “Was it… Was it on halting genetic transformation? Goblinization? Was Cell Works working on that?”
She stared at him, curious. “Yes. We were, but it was canceled.” She paused. “Who are you?”
“Just a troll with a peculiar hobby.”
Peter’s mind raced to come up with a plan. His work was done. He wanted out of the gang. He wanted to get to his father. A rich CEO also wanted to find him. She could come in handy. He decided to take her into his confidence. She might say no—and then the options would narrow quickly. He could kill her, after all, stay in the gang, look for his father on the side. His mind bucked at the plan, but everything was moving quickly.
“I know that Clarris might have been working on a project like that because…I think I’ve got it. I think I know how to do it. Or, at least, I’m very close.” He put the gun into his holster under his jacket. “I want to compare notes with Clarris. I think he’d be able to tell me where I’m right and where I’m wrong.”
“You?”
He grinned. “I’m an exceptional troll.”
“But…”
He stepped closer to her. “I think we can work together. If I don’t kill you, I’m in trouble. I’m willing to accept that trouble if I get your help in looking for Clarris. You’ve got resources. You also set up the deal for Clarris.”
“I really don’t know what to say…”
“Think about this: someone at Cell Works has dug up enough goods on you to get you kicked out of your own corp. A contract is on your head now. If you want Clarris, it won’t be any use to you to show up for work tomorrow. How bad do you want him? Now’s the time to choose.”
He saw her eyes glaze over as she started thinking again. It was palpable activity—the air felt heavier in the room as her mind sorted through her options. She shook her head slightly. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ll tell you this, however. If you have found the cure, I won’t need Clarris anymore.”
“But I need him.”
“I’ll help you find him if you have what I want.”
“We’ll need him anyway. He’ll have to confirm my work. He’s the most qualified, neh? That’s why you sent him out to continue the research.”
“Yes, we should find him.” She looked up. “But I don’t even know if you’ve really found the cure. Why should I believe you?” She sighed and leaned back in the chair, her eyes closed.
“You’ll read it,” Peter said as soon as he had the idea. “My research. I want you to look it over. I think I’ve done it. I’ve been working on it for over a decade. You’ll at least be able to see that I’m serious.”
“Do you have it on you?” He could tell she was trying to humor him. Furious, he pulled the gun out again.
“Get up!” She gasped and stood, her eyes shut tight, hands on her belly. “You’re coming with me. Back to my place. You’re going to read my work.”
She didn’t move. “Your boss doesn’t know about this.”
“Nobody does. Nobody knows about my research.”
She tilted her head to one side and looked at him carefully. “This is very strange.”
“Yes.”
“He’ll still want me dead. Your boss.”
“Yes.”
“Why should I go with you? You can just kill me later, when you’ve gotten what you want from me.”
“I could kill you now.”
“Don’t threaten me.”
He stared at her, fascinated. It wasn’t a ploy, just a direct command. She was telling him simply how she negotiated. “All right. No threats. When I shoot, I’ll just shoot. But the truth is, my life would be simpler if I just killed you right now.”
She stood before him, breathing heavily. Spots of sweat began to show on her expensive suit. “Don’t.”
“You’re not helping.”
“Please, just don’t. Don’t.”
“Just read what I’ve written. That’s all I ask.”
“And then…?”
“We’ll…I…don’t know…I know this is… Your life is on the line. I know that. But in a way my life is, too. I need you at this point.” He dropped all pretense of toughness. “Miss Amij, I need to find Dr. Clarris. I’d like your help.”
She weighed the statement. Peter saw her reach the same decision he had made only a few hours earlier. “You’ve got the gun. Lead on.”