Chapter 18 #2
“Not long,” the System said, as a new MeNet post appeared.
On the towering virtual screen, above the caption OMG check out this little girl already cosplaying #theoutfit, was a photo of two men in a residential neighborhood disembarking from one cab and getting into another.
One was looking directly into the camera, face frozen in dawning hostility.
The other was busy hoisting a small girl into the new cab.
Chloe couldn’t see her face, but her outfit was unmistakably Kleio’s.
Chloe was on her feet, though she didn’t remember standing, and her eyes were locked on her little girl’s image, slightly blurry with motion as she was hefted into the cab. “Get that man’s hands off my child,” she said.
The System said, “The photo metadata has their location.”
“Great,” Marcus muttered. He’d leaped to his feet too. “We know where they are. But how do we get Kleio away without—” He broke off, but Chloe heard the unspoken “getting her killed.”
“That is one of two reasons I told Dr. Norman what we were doing,” the System said.
Chloe’s head snapped to her. “You told him? Not Evans?”
“Why?” Marcus asked.
The System turned cool blue eyes to him.
“I anticipate I will need to cause harm to humans. I cannot do this without my creator’s direct permission.
” A new window appeared, a drone view of the city rolling below while the camera panned, searched, and then locked onto a nondescript cab gliding with the traffic.
“Dr. Norman is sending law enforcement to intercept. He has provided me with guest access to the police feeds. But he’s also ordering the TransNet technicians to take control of the cab. That’s a mistake.”
Chloe’s heart contracted. “Why?”
The System nodded at the drone feed, where the cab had come to a sudden stop in the middle of the street, emergency lights flashing.
“They know they’ve been found.” On the screen, two men leaped from the cab, and Chloe’s hands clenched as she saw Kleio’s tiny form slung under the arm of one of them.
They pounded through the traffic that had been frozen by their cab’s unexpected stop and disappeared under the green canopy of a footlane between two treescrapers.
A SWAT airvan swooped into the picture, settling into a hover over the vehicle street outside the footlane.
Ropes arced from either side, and Chloe caught glimpses between the six rotors of men in bulky black body armor and helmets rappelling down.
Then the feed changed to a body cam from a member of the SWAT team as they whipped guns from their backs, formed up, and moved steadily into the lane.
She had to bite her lip to keep from screaming.
This was wrong, wrong—too many things could go wrong.
What if they shot Kleio by mistake? What if the kidnappers “cut their losses” as soon as the gunplay started?
This wasn’t the kind of control the System had seemed to promise.
But she looked no more concerned than she’d been throughout this whole process.
She was a computer; she had no true understanding of the danger Kleio was in. And Andrew Norman didn’t care.
But then the SWAT team stopped, and as the camera exposure adjusted to the dimmer light, Chloe saw why: The footlane was empty.
Grandma shifted. “Great. How in the world do we get her out of there?”
“Kleio is the variable,” the System said. “She’s too young for me to predict what she’ll do. I need to talk to her. I need a Trojan horse.”
Grandma said, “That’s a lot to ask of anyone.
” The System just looked at her. Grandma sighed and her eyes focused inward.
“I sent the instructions,” she said a moment later.
“She’s gonna share the call—ah, there it is.
” A message had appeared in their shared smartspace: Sprite would like to share a window with you.
Accept? A call window appeared, showing the face of a dark-haired young woman: Sprite, Chloe assumed.
In a window next to her, a Connecting message was suddenly replaced with a glowing green greater-than symbol.
“That’s MorDread,” the System told Chloe. “The head of the Collective.”
The man who had ordered Kleio’s kidnapping. Chloe found herself holding her breath, even though she knew Sprite’s window share was one-way, and there was no way MorDread could know she was watching.
Letters clacked out from MorDread’s symbol. This Is Unexpected.
The dark-haired girl said without preamble, “I’m guessing you’re behind the kidnapping I see on the news.”
What of It?
“If you let the little girl go, I’ll send you the location of the Final System.”
AW, Did You and GH05T Trade Secrets Over Pillow? MorDread wrote. I Assume You Entertained Him With Stories From Your time At My Table? Before You Stabbed Me in the Back.
“You’re the one who stabs people,” Sprite said. “I don’t like killing. You knew that was my line in the sand.”
And When Did I Require of Your Dear Little Fairy Heart That You Violate That Spotless Conscience?
“I worked with Ghost for years. Standing by while Huntsman murdered him would have made me complicit.”
You’Ve Been SweetOn GH05T For Years, You Mean. You Broke the Cardinal Rule of the Handler.
“So I’m not heartless,” the girl said.
I Tolerate Loose Ends for No One, Not Even You. Ends Left to Dangle Are Too Easily Knotted Into Nooses.
“You made me a loose end. But now I’m coming back. I have what you want. If you’d consulted with me before turning the spider loose, I could have gotten it for you earlier, without your stupid plan B overcomplicating everything. Ghost just needed a friend. Someone he could trust.”
We All Need People We Can Trust. If You Bring Me Location, I Will Free Child. But You Must Bring It. I Know You Are Here in Dc. I Have Always Wanted to Meet You Face-To-Face.
“Why can’t I just message it to you?”
Trust.
Sprite’s voice was flat. “It’s so if I give you the wrong location, you can kill me.”
Trust, MorDread repeated. Yours in Me, Mine in You.
Sprite was silent for a long moment, and very still. There was a quaver in her voice when she finally said, “How do I find you?”
Go to This Location. A 3D map appeared, with a pin marking a spot between two treescrapers.
“On my way.”
As the windows blinked out, the System said to Chloe, “Once this final pawn is on the board, I’ll be ready to extract Kleio.”
“I don’t think I like this,” Chloe said hesitantly.
“This isn’t like getting people to take a picture.
That girl is scared. She’s not a pawn to be moved around or—or sacrificed.
I don’t feel good risking her life, even—” She had to steel herself before she could say, “Even to save Kleio.” But she meant it.
The System turned her blue eyes on her, and despite their electric glow, they were cool and dispassionate. “She is not the pawn I’m thinking of.”
Chloe held her gaze for a long moment and continued to stare even after the System turned her eyes away. Then she glanced at Grandma, whose face was just as inscrutable.
No one knows her power, Grandma had said.
Chloe subvocalized a command to her phone to start streaming her smartspace on MeNet. It was doubtful anyone would connect to it live, but her account could record and archive up to an hour of streamed footage. Everything she was seeing and hearing would be saved for playback later.
Grandma gave her a sudden, sharp look of surprise, and when Chloe returned a questioning one, Grandma said, “Do you think that’s wise?”
“This way, there’ll be a record if we need it.”
“Yes,” Grandma said slowly. “Yes, there should be a record. But please anonymize my involvement.”
“Um, okay,” Chloe said. “If you must be so mysterious.” She focused on Grandma and subvocalized a command to anonymize her.
Her phone’s built-in AI presented her with the option of delaying the stream ten seconds so it could seamlessly edit out the portions that included Grandma, and Chloe approved it. “Done.”
“Thank you,” Grandma said. “I will bow to your judgment about leaving the stream up.” She turned away, and Chloe heard her mutter, half to herself, “But prepare for unforeseen consequences.”