gaian consortium 05 - the titan trap (26 page)

She could feel him tensing, could feel him reach his own climax, the heat of his orgasm within her. Just that sensation at her core was enough to make her come again, and she let it run through her, bring every nerve ending to sudden, flaring life as she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him even farther in, wanting to hold him there, to keep him inside her for as long as possible.

Eventually they did break apart, but only so they could reach out and hold the other close, until they fell asleep like that, sated with food and drink and sex.

The beeping of Derek’s handheld woke them eventually, and Cassidy pushed herself up on her elbows, blinking and trying to reorient herself. A vid-screen was installed on the wall across from the bed, and in the lower corner, green numerals were blinking “19:48.” So they’d been asleep for some hours.

Derek managed to push away the covers and stumble over to retrieve his pants and the handheld concealed in one of the pockets. “It’s them,” he said briefly after looking at the screen. He flicked a button, then said, “I’m here.”

From where she sat in bed, Cassidy couldn’t see the message. Maybe she should have gotten up and gone to take a look, but she figured Derek would tell her soon enough. Besides, it felt so nice in here. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to enjoy the bed at the hotel in Chicago.

“Got it,” Derek said. “And they’re expecting us?” A pause, and he added, “We can be there in half an hour.”

We can?
she thought blearily, but nonetheless she forced herself out of bed and tottered off to the bathroom, where she set about freshening herself up as best she could without taking a shower. A minute or so later, Derek came to stand in the doorway of the bathroom, watching as she set down her lip color and then ran a brush through her hair.

“Looks like you figured out that we have a command performance,” he said.

“It sounded that way,” she replied, attempting to mimic his casual tone. Never mind that they’d both been panting and moaning in each other’s arms only a few hours earlier. “So what’s the plan?”

“Our sponsor has a contact for us, someone who can take care of our little biometrics problem. Once that’s settled, we’ll see about booking passage to China.”

“About that,” Cassidy said, then hurried on when she saw a flicker of dismay cross his features, “are there even that many flights there? I was always under the impression that the only people going in and out were scientists, engineers, government contractors…you know, people like you.”

“It’s true,” he agreed. “But there are people going back and forth in an official capacity, and Barstow stratport is the natural departure point for the west coast of Normerica, so there’s usually at least one leaving every day. I checked, and it goes out tomorrow morning around nine hundred. We need to be on it.”

“And no one is really going to question our particular ‘official capacity’?” she inquired, giving her hair one last flick of a brush. Nowhere near as glossy as she’d appeared in Chicago, but she supposed that wasn’t too much of a problem. Ident-scrubbers couldn’t be all that picky.

“I doubt it. All the news agencies send people over from time to time, even if the only thing most of them do is hang out in Shanghai and drink, then send back fake reports about how well GARP is handling everything.”

“Typical,” she said, and he couldn’t help grinning.

“Well, I suppose they have to do something to justify their salaries. Anyway, the scrubbers are expecting us, so we should get going.”

“I’m ready,” Cassidy told him, and hoped that wasn’t a lie.

Derek didn’t know why he’d expected the identity-scrubbers to be located in some back-alley warehouse or dingy apartment in one of Barstow’s less reputable neighborhoods. Too many cop vids when he was a child, he supposed, before one of his parents came along and told him he should be watching something more educational. Even when he hadn’t been allowed to watch his fill, those sorts of shows could color your imagination for years to come.

In reality, the address they’d been given was in a glossy high-rise building, one that contained a number of data-related businesses. Because he had no idea whether the scrubbers had subverted the security in the entire building, Derek had cautioned Cassidy on the way over that they shouldn’t discuss anything of their reasons for being there while in the public areas of the high-rise. They should be safe once they were inside the suite the scrubbers were using, but until then, it was smarter to keep their mouths shut.

She’d understood at once, and stood quietly at his side as they went up to the tenth floor, then followed the signs to a door near the end of the corridor. The glowing hologram on the door said that the organization in question was called PLM Enterprises, but that didn’t give much indication as to the true nature of its business.

His finger didn’t even make contact with the touch pad by the entrance before the door opened and an unsmiling young woman in a severe-looking suit stared out at them. “We’ve been waiting for you,” she said, and something in her tone seemed to indicate that they weren’t very happy about it, either.

Nonplussed, Derek followed her into the office, Cassidy only a pace behind them. The door shut on its own, and they all walked down an austere hallway unrelieved by a single picture or wall sculpture. At the end of that corridor was a set of double doors. The young woman opened the one on the right and said, “Go on in.”

There didn’t seem to be anything to do except follow her instructions. Derek entered the chamber, which was large and far warmer and darker than the rest of the office suite. Here, the walls had been painted a dark red, and everywhere were banks of computers, vid-screens, heads-up displays…and a slightly more ominous-looking screened-off section in one corner, which was where he guessed the retinal and thumbprint alterations were done.

A chubby Hispanic man in his late forties, not much taller than Cassidy, came out from behind the screen. The loose-fitting clothing he wore somehow made him look even chubbier. Unlike his assistant, he smiled when he saw Derek and Cassidy, then said, “Right on time. This won’t take long.”

“It won’t?” Cassidy asked, sounding dubious. Her gaze shifted to the screened-off area and then moved back to the stranger.

“No. And it won’t hurt, either.” Incongruously, he winked. “If I may have the I.D.s you’re currently using?”

Derek removed the wallet he’d purchased back in Chicago from his jacket pocket, then extracted the I.D. Cassidy did more or less the same thing, retrieving hers from the bag she carried. The strange man, who didn’t seem inclined to introduce himself — probably just as well — gave them a quick once-over, murmured “nice work,” and slipped them into the breast pocket of the pale blue lab coat he wore.

“Who’d like to go first?”

Neither of them said anything. Cassidy shifted her weight from one foot to the other, looking even more uncomfortable, so Derek said, “I will.” He glanced over at her and added, “Nothing to it.”

“So you say,” she replied. But he could see the way she fidgeted with the strap of the bag she carried and guessed that she was less than thrilled by the prospect of having someone poking at her eyeballs.

It wasn’t something he looked particularly forward to, but if that was what it took to get them on a stratliner and bound for China without inviting any unwanted attention, so be it. “Let’s do this,” he told the stranger.

Another one of those cherubic smiles, and the man led Derek behind the screened-off area, where there was the sort of reclining chair you’d see in a dentist’s office, along with a variety of other equipment he didn’t recognize. The stony-faced young woman who’d let them in was standing there as well, although Derek couldn’t quite figure out where she’d come from. A door on the far side of the cavernous room, he supposed. Now she was wearing a pale blue lab coat as well, covering the suit.

“Fingers first,” said the man, and before Derek could even react, the woman had taken his left hand, smeared some icy-cold liquid across his fingertips, then set about applying what appeared to be a complete set of false prints to his fingers. This took her only a minute or so, and then she shifted to his other side and did the same thing to his right hand.

Once she was done, the unnamed man, who Derek assumed was in charge, picked up one hand, then the next, peering at the doctored fingertips the way Derek had seen his colleagues staring at field samples they’d collected. “Looks good,” the man murmured. “Let’s test it.”

The young woman retrieved a portable biometric scanner and held it out toward Derek. “Place your thumb on this.”

He did as requested, and immediately the words “Philip Chung, 34, Santa Fe” flickered into existence above the scanner. All the information already connected to the false I.D., which seemed to have been joined flawlessly to the fake fingerprints he’d been given.

“So far, so good,” said the man. “Next step. I’ll have to put these drops in your eyes….”

Derek did his best not to blink as the stranger let a precise drop of clear fluid fall into one eye, then the other. This was the part he really hadn’t been looking forward to; he’d never required surgery to correct his vision, so he’d never had much experience with people poking around his eyes. But he held himself still as the young woman approached on his left side, holding a tray on which rested a clear plastic receptacle. In that receptacle were two filmy objects that he guessed were his new retinas. He swallowed and forced himself to stare up at the ceiling.

Some tough guy you are,
he thought, keeping his gaze fixed on the flat, pale yellow surface.
You can float in vacuum, break a man’s fingers one by one, and crack an arm with a judo kick when necessary, but you can’t look at a few pieces of artificially grown tissue?

He decided he couldn’t.

There was a smile playing around the chubby man’s lips, one that seemed to indicate he’d noticed Derek’s squeamishness and was amused by it. But he didn’t say anything, only gestured for the young woman to move closer. Then, so quickly Derek barely noted the movement, he used a delicate instrument to retrieve one of the retinas before depositing it in Derek’s left eye. A twinge, and the man went on to duplicate the process, attaching the retina so quickly that it was over before Derek had time to react.

“Now blink,” the man instructed. “First the left eye, then the right.”

Derek did as he was told. Everything felt fine, which seemed odd to him. He would’ve thought he’d notice something different.

“How’s your vision? Any blurriness?”

“No,” Derek replied, giving a quick glance around the screened-off area. There didn’t seem to be any material change in how he saw the world.

“Excellent.” The man beamed. “Test the eye, Alice,” he said, and once again the assistant stepped up, this time with a retinal scanner. It flashed the same information the thumbprint reader had. The man nodded in satisfaction before telling Derek, “You can get up now and send Ms. Whitcomb in.”

It was somewhat disconcerting to hear the scrubber using Cassidy’s assumed name, but maybe he was saying, in a subtle way, that they needed to get used to those names, to only use them, to leave Derek and Cassidy behind, as one slip-up could be fatal. “Thanks,” Derek replied, pushing himself up off the operating chair. For just a second he thought he noted a slight dizziness, but that could’ve been his imagination.

When he went out into the main room, he saw Cassidy sitting in one of the chairs there, flipping through what looked like newsfeeds on her handheld. The expression of relief that crossed her face when she saw him was somewhat warming, although it was possible the relief was just as attributable to the procedure appearing to be harmless as the fact that he’d escaped unscathed.

“Your turn,” he told her.

She nodded, but as she went to step past him to the makeshift surgery, he reached out and took her hand. “It’ll be fine. Over before you know it.”

Her fingers squeezed his slightly, a gentle pressure. “I know. But thanks.”

Then she was gone, disappearing behind the screen. Derek could hear the soft murmur of voices back there, then quiet. To occupy himself, he double-checked the stratliner departures from Barstow, but the schedule hadn’t changed. Since it seemed they were good to go, he went ahead and booked two seats for him and Cassidy. Not in first class, though; the networks might pay a premium to have their top talent shuttled around, but they definitely wouldn’t spring for that sort of thing for a lowly research team.

Just as he was wrapping up the reservations, Cassidy appeared, looking slightly bleary-eyed but otherwise fine. “So you survived,” he remarked, standing up and slipping the handheld into his pocket.

“More or less.” She blinked. “It feels strange.”

“It does?” he asked, alarm bells going off in his head. “Maybe you should have him look at your eyes again. It’s not supposed to feel any different at all.”

In answer, she gave him a deprecating smile and replied, “No, I didn’t mean it that way, only that I’m not used to having anyone do anything to my eyes, so it feels…odd. I have a feeling my eyes feel off to me because everything seems the same, and my brain is telling that it shouldn’t be.”

“You’ll get past that,” the scrubber said, peeling the self-skinning latex gloves he’d been wearing first from one hand, then the other, and tossing them in a nearby waste receptacle.

“So what do we owe you?” Derek asked as he began to pull the credit voucher from his wallet.

“Nothing.”

Cassidy shot the man a mystified look. “What?”

“It’s on the house. Free. Gratis. If it’s true that what you’re up to is going to give the Consortium the mother of all black eyes, then the least I can do is give you a few free retinas and fingerprints.”

Some part of Derek wanted to protest, but after looking at the uncharacteristically grim set of the chubby man’s mouth, he decided to let it go. “Well, thank you for that. We appreciate it.”

“Very much,” Cassidy chimed in.

“And I appreciate you appreciating it,” the man said. “Now, Alice, if you could show our guests out?”