Chapter 6
Arco held up two fingers and smiled at the round-faced, broad-chested server behind the counter of the modified air glider.
“ Guten tag, Berte. Two of the usual, please, with two waters. Nova size.” Arco’s German was barely conversational, but Berte didn’t seem to mind.
They’d retired from a ten-star restaurant’s chef position, gotten bored, and started a thriving food-glider circuit in the media district. Journalists ate at all hours.
Arco paid, then pocketed her purchases. Catching Brenner’s eye, she tilted her head toward the big bank of lifts. He’d stayed a couple of paces away, but effectively blocked people from crowding behind her, much to their annoyance. He twitched one eyelid in reply and followed her.
The secure lobby teemed with Novo G staffers streaming toward the lifts or standing in line at the various food-and-drink carts temporarily parked along the side wall.
She greeted the people she knew as she walked, making sure they saw her identity badge so they’d recognize her.
Maybe after she left Mabingion, she could go back to keeping the same look for longer than a few ten-days.
“Morning, AC. Nice hair.” That was from a slender, earnest intern with a low and rumbling voice, who eyed Brenner suspiciously until noticing the visitor clip attached to Brenner’s collar.
“Thanks.” She smiled. “Congratulations on the byline credit for the pharma lobbyist with the secret blackmarket counterfeit business.”
“Thanks.” The intern beamed. “I made a permacube with a screenshot.”
“I did the same with my first byline.” She laughed. “Too bad the tagged visual was the ass-end of a newly certified breed of bovine.”
She nodded to Iomer and his assistant, who joined the queue for the lift capsule. Iomer unpeeled the wrapping of a stuffed savory pastry.
“Charrascos. Heard about the attack.” Iomer glanced at Brenner. “Hot.”
Arco didn’t know if he meant the pastry or Brenner.
Iomer’s assistant, who was also a shielder and Iomer’s personal security, gave Brenner a sly look of interest. Brenner ignored him, too.
The lift doors irised open, and the five of them stepped into the rounded capsule. It was spacious enough for her to step clear of Brenner so as to give him room to move. She trusted her Novo G colleagues — and the multi-factor authentication checks at the entrances — but he didn’t.
The others got off, leaving her and Brenner alone in the capsule as it angled toward her requested coordinates. “At this time of day, the office commons is twice as busy as the building lobby.” She patted her bag. “You want to eat here, or in my rent-a-space? I can hold the capsule.”
His eyebrow twitched briefly before he smoothed it away. “Your space.”
She wished she had a better handle on what his expressions meant. “Your security equipment should show up by ten hundred. I’ll take you by Novo G’s security station for registration so they don’t take you for a menacing stranger.” She winked. “You can be a menacing friend instead.”
Usually, he ignored her teasing, but the corner of his mouth twitched. Maybe in a few days, she could coax a genuine smile out of him. If he stayed.
The doors irised open to reveal the brightly lit, two-story, hexagonal office space.
The chaotic chorus from dozens of animated conversations enveloped her in familiar, comforting bedlam.
Movement and motion created a sea of activity in the office commons area, currently filled with at least fifty people in shifting clusters.
Edging closer to Brenner, she pointed toward the throng.
“This isn’t a riot, it’s the hand-off from overnight to the day staff for breaking news and hot trends.
They could do it by remote holo like sane businesses do, but they prefer this way.
It will clear out in about fifteen minutes.
” She pointed to the two levels of offices along the south wall, fronted with walks, stairs, and riser lifts.
“Those are the interview and production rooms. The darkened glass and blue indicator mean the occupants don’t want to be disturbed. ”
She directed his attention toward the northeast wall with its bank of huge displays that scrolled realtime information trends and broadcasts in Standard English, Mandarin, and other common languages.
“The biggest numbers are Galactic Standard Date and Time. The rest are all the planetary time zones. The city of Ridderth’s is in blue just under the GDAT.
The doors under the displays are offices for the permanent staff.
The bosses are territorial about the higher floors.
Affiliated contractors like me snag the first-come, first-claimed spaces beyond the kitchen.
They’re called stringer cubes, and that’s where we’re going now.
Don’t drink the coffee or the kaffe unless you have a cybernetic stomach.
I’ve only ever had worse in police precincts or asteroid mining stations. ”
As she led the way around one of the groups, a contractor colleague, Ryu, caught her attention. “Hey, my source at bankruptcy court said Vector Zero Communications is about to lose their assets. You had friends there, right?”
Before Arco could say thanks, one of the newer interns spoke up. “Serves them right. People died because they relied on their story about the safety of that dam.”
Ryu shook his head. “Sure, they screwed up, but don’t be so sure they didn’t get screwed themselves.
Vector Zero had an asteroid swarm’s worth of enemies.
Especially when they daylighted the convoluted trail of public investment funds to the Regional CPS Administrator’s private family accounts.
Every media company is vulnerable to revenge setups. ”
The intern’s expression turned lofty. “They should have been more careful.”
Arco ducked away. Self-righteousness tended to piss her off, and she had enough battles to fight already.
She only got a few steps farther before Z’Dann, one of the permanent staff journalists, sidled up and latched onto Arco’s arm.
Z’Dann loved fashion and changed her looks even more often than Arco did, with considerable variation.
“The new skin color looks great. Tell me who you went to.” She turned a come-hither look at Brenner, who ignored her. “Oooh, shiny new intern?”
Arco leaned closer but spoke loud enough for everyone nearby to hear.
“Even better. Brenner’s my new security.
” She pointedly glanced at one of the huge displays on one wall that showed the Galactic Date and Time and local time in all zones across the planet.
“Oh, sorry, we’re late. I’ll send you the bodyshop’s pingref.
” She patted Z’Dann’s fingers, then pulled away and took off at a determined pace toward the offices.
Brenner matched her stride. “Don’t like her?” he asked quietly.
She glanced at him. “I do, actually, but conversations with her are never quick, and we’re on a schedule.” She gave Brenner a teasing smile. “If she invites you, take her up on the planetary restaurant and joyhouse tour. She’s an Oshun-certified ten-star reviewer.”
Brenner’s expression blanked, which she was beginning to realize was his version of surprise.
As usual, she couldn’t guess what he was actually thinking, and she’d set a rule for herself not to treat him like a gift to unwrap.
Some quality about her made people want to tell her things.
Even as a young teen just coming into her filer talent for perfect memory, she’d attracted people who needed their stories to be heard.
Some journalists made their fame and fortune by abusing their skills. She didn’t want to be one of them.
Trouble was, she already knew more about him than she should.
An anonymous source had sent her a journal excerpt, then twenty years’ worth of entries from the journal kept by Brenner’s massively warped former boss, Dixon Davidro.
She’d found Brenner in the rubble because the initial excerpt had set her finder talent ablaze.
She still didn’t trust the rest of the entries enough to use them as primary evidence, but they’d proven reliable for deep background.
A disturbing number of Davidro’s assignments had involved neutralizing or destroying enemies of the CPS.
His journal implied he’d been one of hundreds of similar handlers across the galaxy. She’d since confirmed it was true.
More appalling was the number of minders he’d captured and controlled like puppets. From top-level healers to prolific serial killers, to a young man with a powerful and unique talent, they’d all been tools and toys for their boss’s twisted amusement.
In her opinion, Davidro deserved to be shredded from the inside by a top-level telepath, then brain-burned so he could spend the rest of his miserable biological existence as a controlled automaton waste-mucker on a radioactive planet.
In a nutshell, Davidro had captured the teenage miscreant named Renner and forced a full-body makeover on him.
Davidro spent years trying to mold the young jackal into a loyal slave who protected his master out of grateful duty.
When that failed miserably, Davidro reshaped Renner — including multiple full-body makeovers — into a tool for violence and death.
Davidro had devoted tens of thousands of self-congratulatory words to the brilliant design and construction of the lethal mechanical collar that had kept Renner always close and invested in Davidro’s continued good health.
He’d devoted six sentences to complaining about Renner’s negative reaction to being collared like a vicious but still useful hellhound.
Miraculously, the enigmatic man now called Brenner had come out of that appalling circus more or less unwarped. With ethics, even. He was a survivor. He deserved not to be cracked open, and especially not by her.