Inescapable (8 page)

Fox grinned. ‘I
wish I’d had you when I was with NAPA. Inform me when it’s done and
I’ll give further instructions. I hope anyway. Kit, you and I are
going to go over the station’s security. If they got over the
fence, maybe they had a plan for getting into the bunker.’

‘You don’t
think they
did
get in?’ Kit asked.

‘I think, if we
figure out how they would have done it, then maybe Pythia can work
out whether they did it or not.’

Alexandria,
Niflhel.

‘Pythia was the oracle
who resided at Delphi,’ Cleopatra said. The lithe virtual queen of
the Alexandria online domain was lounging, which she was good at.
Fox had no idea what Cleopatra really looked like, because she
rather liked the mystery of not knowing, but the avatar was tall
and tanned with waist-length black hair and dark eyes. Her large
breasts were on display thanks to the semi-translucent skirts slung
from her hips being the only thing she wore, aside from the wide
lapis lazuli and gold necklace, which was her trademark.

‘I figured
you’d know,’ Fox replied from where she lounged across the table
from the queen. Fox’s avatar looked like Fox, aside from the
black-purple hair and the purple-red irises. She wore a split,
tabard-like gown of iridescent purple as well. Fox had always had a
bit of a thing for purple.

‘Yes, but you
could have found that in two seconds with an internet query.’

‘I could, yes,
but I haven’t had an excuse to come in here in ages. Not to mention
the fact that real-time connections to the Moon have
horrible
lag.’

‘You were up on
Luna City? I saw some news report about you moving to some MarTech
subsidiary.’

Fox had met
Cleopatra as part of a murder investigation. Fox did not know who
Cleopatra really was, but Cleopatra knew that Zorra, Fox’s online
name, had been Inspector Tara Meridian. Her exit from NAPA had been
covered by a couple of IB channels, both straight news and gossip
outlets. ‘Part of the job induction. Luna City, another research
centre on the far side, and a station at L-four.’

‘I don’t get
the feeling you’re back in New York.’

‘Africa.’

Cleopatra
winced. ‘In the mood for some relaxation?’

‘I’ve had a
long, mentally tiring day, and I figured I’d come in here and get
my virtual rocks off.’

‘Oh, I think
there are a number of handsome young men who would greatly enjoy
assisting you with that…’

MarTech East
Africa.

Fox opened her eyes,
drawing in one long breath before letting it out slowly. She had
done a little decorating on the room she had been assigned, just to
take the edge off the concrete walls, but it was still a bedroom in
an underground bunker with a little virtual colour. And Kit,
sitting on the bed with her legs folded into a lotus posture, her
big, green eyes watching Fox as she emerged from the virtual
environment her mind had been sunk into for the past ninety
minutes. There was quite an intent look in the AI’s eyes and Fox
kept watching her as she slipped the induction interface cable from
her hand.

‘Good evening?’
Kit asked.

‘It was… fairly
good. Great while I was in there, and now it’s not quite so great
when I’m out. Just like usual.’

Kit nodded and
uncurled herself, leaning forward as she slipped to her knees. Fox
gasped as she felt a sharp tongue flick over the skin above her
clitoris. She had known it was coming as soon as she saw the look
on Kit’s face, and thought she should probably do something to stop
it, but there was curiosity mixed with frustration sitting right
where Kit’s tongue felt like it was moving…

Fox spread her
legs, and felt Kit’s hands on her inner thighs and the tongue
teasing at her labia, parting the folds of flesh. It was different
from a full viron: there her real body was immobile but her virtual
body was able to fully interact, while here there was only the
sensation of touch. Kit could not really slide her tongue into Fox
as it seemed she was doing. Her fingers could not press and circle
over Fox’s clitoris, driving the human woman to a first brief flare
of orgasm. Kit could only move Fox’s body as Fox wished to move,
but the reactions to the sensations were not being blocked by
inhibitor circuits. Fox’s back arched, pushing her sex into Kit’s
face, and the AI seemed quite happy to indulge her. The sharp
little tongue began to lap hungrily; Fox had the sensation of
fingers entering her and beginning to thrust. Fox’s fists clenched
in the sheets as the tension rose through her, fought for a release
Fox wanted to hold back for as long as she could, and then
exploded. Fire burned up through Fox’s body, a flash of burning
delight that washed away tension and mind in one burst.

Fox opened her
eyes, drawing in one long breath before letting it out slowly and
forcing her eyes to focus on Kit. The intent look was gone,
replaced by an odd mixture of delight and insecurity. ‘Are you sure
that’s the first time you’ve done that?’ Fox asked.

‘I am an AI. It
is not impossible that I could have done it and had the memory
erased.’

Fox let out a
soft chuckle, made throaty by the recent sex. ‘Well, you can do it
again.’

‘It was
good?’

‘When a woman
does that whole porn movie thrashing about and moaning thing, it
means it was good.’

Kit beamed, a
distinctly child-like expression for an entity which had just
engaged in virtual sex. ‘I will make a note of that information for
future reference.’

‘You do that,’
Fox said, slipping out of bed. Distinctly sticky and riding an
endorphin high, she needed a shower before she even tried to
sleep.

27
^th
March.

The concrete walls were
coated in soot and scarred from bullet impacts. The air, hazed with
smoke, burned her lungs as she pushed onwards. ‘Another twenty
metres. We make it another twenty metres and we’re clear.’

There was no
reply from behind her and she turned, seeing nothing more than the
smoky air and the bulky figure with the tri-barrel rotary weapon
pod who was coming through it with a manic look on his face. His
heavy, out-of-proportion cybernetic arms were the only reason he
could use the huge gun and he had been chasing them for hours, it
seemed. The barrels spun up as he activated the firing circuit.

‘No!’ She
turned and braced to run and…

And Kit was
standing there in the corridor ahead of her. ‘You’re dreaming, Fox.
It’s a dream. Wake up.’

‘No!
He’ll–’

‘Wake up!’

Fox’s eyes
flicked open and she lay in the dark, feeling the sweat running
down between her breasts. ‘Shit.’

‘Are you okay?’
Kit asked. ‘Should I order a light tranquiliser?’

Rolling onto
her back, Fox sat up and looked at the fox-girl, shaking her head.
‘I’ll be fine. It’s probably this bloody bunker. The design is more
or less identical to the one in Dallas. It’s too much like being
back there.’

‘You were
dreaming of Marshall, but he did not get his cybernetics until
after the Dallas incident.’

‘Dreams aren’t
always logical. You could see that?’

Kit gave a
little shrug. ‘I could see the imagery your brain was processing. I
get fragments rather than a proper image. It took me several
seconds to work out how to impose myself onto your sensorium. I
would have intervened sooner otherwise.’

‘You did fine.’
Pulling aside the sheets, Fox went to the small kitchenette area to
get water. ‘Would you pull up the surface schematic for this place?
I’m not going to get back to sleep for an hour or so, so I might as
well work.’

‘Of course,’
Kit replied, summoning up a similar virtual display to the one
Pythia had used earlier. ‘Is there anything in particular you are
looking for?’

‘Well, this
place
is
basically a copy of the Dallas bunker and I know
how that was breached, both by the UA cell and my team. I want to
check that the holes have been plugged.’

~~~

‘Basically it got
forgotten,’ Duncan said with a sigh. ‘This place was built before
the Dallas siege and when Palladium was formed, they put in a
programme to have the known vulnerabilities taken care of in every
facility with the same design. But they had to prioritise
somehow…’

‘And a little
climate research station in the middle of nowhere wasn’t high on
the priority list,’ Fox said, nodding. They were watching as Pythia
set her entire contingent of forensic microbots to work on one of
the air-conditioning conduits which dropped from the surface to an
engineering room thirty metres below ground. ‘Pythia, what’s the
estimate on completing that survey?’

‘For a complete
analysis, sixteen hours. Preliminary results in twelve.’ The AI’s
voice was calm and authoritative, confident in her ability to
handle the tasks given.

‘All right,
inform Kit when it’s done. The work should have been done,’ she
added to Duncan, ‘but I’m not surprised it didn’t
get
done.
Even Jackson Martins’ companies are allowed to make mistakes. We
need to get a priority order out to have all the other locations
with this build checked and sealed.’

‘I’ll get on
it,’ Duncan replied. ‘So we know how they were aiming to get into
the building, but we don’t know whether they got in, and we don’t
know what they wanted if they made it. That about right?’

‘Pythia can
confirm they got in, but she can’t prove they didn’t. I’m going to
go over everything this place does and see if I can work out a
reason for stealing it.’

Duncan grinned
half-heartedly. ‘Good luck with that. I’m not even sure the people
working on the projects believe there’s a lot of money to be made
from any of them.’

‘Money,’ Fox
replied, turning to leave, ‘is a big motivator, but it’s not the
only
motive going.’

New York Metro.

Marie stood in front of
the mirror which had come mounted on the back of her bathroom door
and examined her suit. She was trying to decide if this was
suitable attire for meeting Sam’s agent friend and not feeling
especially sure on the matter. Saturday night in New York Metro and
she was trying on work clothes which she was not going to need for
several days anyway. She peered at her reflection in the mirror and
frowned.

‘You’re
nineteen,’ she told her reflection. ‘You’re young. You’re in the
metro that never sleeps. You should be out. Out there. Doing…
something with the money you don’t have.’

Her reflection
told her to get the Hell on with picking an outfit, and while she
was at it, she could just damn well put Sam Clarion out of her mind
too.

Marie let out
an explosive breath, laden with exasperation at her reflection’s
outright refusal to even
consider
the idea that Sam might
find her attractive. ‘He might! He’s arranging for this friend of
his to–’

Reflected-Marie
cut her off with a look of disgust. Who was she kidding? Sam was a
nice guy and he was helping her out. Or he was not so nice and
wanted her to get a job fast so she could get the Hell off his
property. Meanwhile, he was probably out with some client who was
way
better in bed than Marie was, had money you could sink a
tanker in,
and
was better looking.

Marie glared at
her reflection. ‘Yeah, well… Your momma was a walrus!’ She turned
quickly away before her reflection could point out the obvious flaw
in her brilliant riposte. She would find something else to wear:
the suit was uglier than… something ugly, and grey. A walrus? She
would wear…

Her head lifted
at the sound from above her. The soundproofing between the little
basement apartment Marie occupied and the main building above was
pretty good, except in one place. There was a utility closet in the
hall with a ducting system for cabling in it, and if you dropped
something there, you could hear the thump through the ducts. Sam
had to be upstairs.

Except he had
dropped by and told her he was in each time he had come around
before. And what would he have been doing in the utility closet
anyway? She glanced at her reflection to see what it thought. Her
reflection thought that it was Saturday night and Sam would have
expected her to be out having fun. He would not have bothered
coming down to tell her he was around.

‘You said he’d
be out with a client who was better in bed than me,’ Marie pointed
out to her mirrored face. ‘And I’m taking advice from someone in an
ugly, grey suit.’

She walked,
fast, to the front door and then hurried up the steps outside it on
bare feet to look up at the house above. No lights that she could
see anywhere in the building, aside from the dim glow through the
small window in her own bathroom. ‘This isn’t right,’ she muttered
as she hurried back inside, putting through an emergency call to
NAPA as she did so. ‘I hope it’s not right or Sam’s going to hate
me.’

~~~

‘Definite signs of a
break-in, Mister Clarion, but the perpetrators must have run when
they heard the vertol overhead.’

Sam nodded to
the NAPA officer who was giving him the information. ‘Thank you for
your prompt response. I don’t think Marie was expecting a team to
be dropped in like that.’

The man in the
blue and white armour gave a shrug. ‘It’s in the MCD. We’re not
quite as hung up about it as the eighteen crowd, but we make an
effort. Have you been able to determine whether anything was
stolen?’

‘Marie is
checking now. She cleaned house for the old owner so she knows the
place better than I do…’ He trailed off as Marie wandered back in
to the hall, followed by another officer.

‘I can’t see
anything missing,’ she said. ‘So it’s just the security system
bypass that shows there was anyone here.’ She was looking worried,
as though she might not be believed. ‘I should’ve watched for them
outside. If I’d known they were going to run, I’d have waited–’