Chapter 39
“I thought you said ‘incident,’ ” I say to the elevator cam as I stare out into the flickering murk of broken lights and mostly extinguished fires.
“WHAT WOULD YOU CALL IT?”
“I don’t know, but I think you were underselling it. Maybe moved past it a little more quickly than I would have.” I creep out into the haze, my revs primed, but there’s no sign or sense of danger. “Is there anyone left alive down here?”
A pause and then, “FINE. A LARGE INCIDENT.”
“Maybe even something DeGov is going to look into, one might say?”
“WE’LL BE GONE BEFORE THEY DETECT THE INTRUSION. I’VE ADJUSTED THE BUILDING NEURAL’S CODE. IT’LL JUST LOOK LIKE A STANDARD HALLUCINATION.”
“Alright. Voice back to normal, Atti.” That booming, angry monotone thundering through the smoke isn’t settling me. “And that sounds worryingly confident.”
“Everyone doing better than Basic signs waivers about working under neurals,” says Atti, with a note of relief as her voice slides back to its familiar feminine form over the PA system.
“Security footage backs up the tech-gone-haywire angle, company pays out, and as long as it doesn’t keep happening, nobody really thinks much more of it.
It’s a nice clean way of dealing with bigger problems, now and then. ”
“Very clean,” I note, wrinkling my nose as I step over either two or three bodies that have been ripped to shreds by a Pulse cannon.
“You know what I mean.”
I sigh. “Atti? I think where possible, it would be best not to kill people we shouldn’t really kill.”
“Legally, this could be argued as self-defence.”
“Legally I’m meant to be in an incinerator, so maybe let’s not use that as our guiding light.”
“Oh.” She sounds a little taken aback. “This was too much?”
“Maybe a little too much,” I agree, skirting a wildly flickering vid screen and another wall sprayed with arterial red. “Some of these people technically didn’t do anything wrong, and I don’t want to start feeling like the villain.”
“Right. Moral high ground. Makes sense.”
“Unless it’s really necessary,” I add quickly. “You know, if it’s a choice between me or them, obviously pick me.”
“What about if it’s convenient?”
“Let’s draw the line at convenient, for now. Or at least consult me on it.”
“Fine.”
I walk for another minute through the carnage, then, “Is this… is this not something the Keres discussed with you? Laid down some boundaries?”
“No, not really.”
“That might be something we have to do.” We enter the cafeteria—tens more bodies strewn across tables and chairs inside—and I sigh. “So the Keres are going to know you and I are responsible for all this, even if they can’t prove it to DeGov.”
“If the Keres exec saw you on a q-vid screen, then, yeah.”
“But we’re doctoring the security holos of all this, anyway?”
“ ‘We,’ ” mutters Atti. “Yes, ‘we’ are. DeGov is going to take the footage as soon as they get here.”
I push aside a corpse, and search through a promising-looking cupboard. Nothing. “Good. What about from when I arrived?”
“Fixed too. No ties, Azure, just like normal. The volo’s log already said it was a cargo shuttle, and it will be the same when we take off.” Atti’s voice has switched to a small speaker in the kitchen, which comes out tinnier. “Though… we should go soon. DeGov are starting to get alerts.”
“Just have to… ah!” I find what I’m looking for in the next cupboard. Cram Smug Exec’s head into the cooler, which is almost big enough. “Onward, then.”
I hurry back toward the hangar. Broken electrical equipment still sparks and hisses from inside smashed walls, half of it foam-covered from where the fire suppression systems have done their best. “So what do you think I should do?” I’ve already told her about the choice Jasa gave me.
“I think you should use your head.”
“Ha. Ha.” I’ve reached the hangar. The volo, thankfully, is still intact. I climb in. “Seriously. What would you choose?”
“You’re really asking?” Atti’s surprised.
“Yeah. I mean, this is it. Fork in the road. Point of no return, and all that.” I stow the cooler, settle into a seat, and stare at the control screen that blinks AWAITING DESTINATION.
From here, I can have the volo take me back to Jasa’s house, leave the head with her damned lion, get Atti to anonymously buy a secure property a thousand kilometres away, and vanish.
Easy. Simple. Probably very pleasant. Or, I know a quiet terminal down in the Core where I can transfer a token to Jasa’s account, and wait for my very annoying creator to send me further instructions.
Find out, definitively, what happened at Oceanus.
Actually try and finish… whatever the hell this is.
“Kind of feels like an important decision.”
“Formal analysis?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then… I don’t really know, Azure.” She sounds a little lost, which is very unlike her.
“You finally get to rest, or you get answers. I remember you told me once, not long after we first met, that you thought having a peaceful life sounded pretty good. But… I know what getting closure about Oceanus would mean to you, too. Kind of seems like the question here is whether you want to try and live in peace, or be at peace. One of them’s probably going to be a hell of a lot harder than the other, though. ”
I watch the fiery, still-sparking wreckage of Floor 104 outside the volo. Live in peace, or be at peace. She’s not wrong.
“A peaceful life,” I repeat, mostly to myself. “Yeah. That’s the dream.”
I punch in the coordinates, and we take off.