High House, somewhere in the Pyrenees
Sophie looked at the Director, and wondered if he could see the tired eyes behind her glasses. She smoked though it had long gone out of style. A drag, and a pregnant pause, she exhaled.
"Do you think its right to send R after him?"
"She is the best we have. And we know The White works."
"Yes, I mean, she didn't even flinch at the mission briefing. But, I mean, isn't this wrong?"
"If Dr. Marceau were to fall into the hands of a rogue nation state, the results could be catastrophic. It could undo everything."
She crossed her arms and lifted the cigarette to her lips again, tapping a foot nervously as she did so. Marceau had been one of them. If she left, would she be hunted too? Never knowing if any stranger you saw was about to run you through with a ribbon of ultrasonically vibrating carbon nanofibre? Slice off your head, or disembowel you before you had a chance to react. She had heard it was painless, and so decided it was some small comfort.
But the number of empty bottles accumulating under her sink, and the tar stains on her walls showed what stress she was under, this psychotherapist to murderers. Trained assassins, their memories (mostly) hollowed out, and filled with a new terrible purpose, and a few dozen pounds of black roiling nanotech.
The Director smiled, like a cat would if it could, more malice than humor. "Besides, is it not fitting? For him to meet his end at the hands of his first creation?"
Hong Kong, 10:32 pm
It was raining as the car drove along the claustrophobic streets, down man-made concrete canyons, out towards a failed mixed use residential-light industry block. The buildings got older, grayer, and more ratty the farther they drove. R felt odd.
"... will drop off 1 km away... the target is on the 18th floor, room 1823, there is one door in, a stairwell accessible on .... Pickup will occur ...."
The car was a dingy rental, and R half tuned to her handler as they drove. She was older woman, 45, slight graying of the hair, overweight. Taciturn. Slight heart murmur. Breath points to possible developing cancer, stomach? Man in the front seat, 6'2", 220 lbs, well built, ear piece, dressed as a driver. Probably former special forces. Vibro-ribbon to the atlas vertebra would incapacitate and kill almost instantly. A single finger, extended to a point a single molecule wide, through the woman's heart, then through the ear. She'd slump forward dead too. The car would skid and crash. She would survive the wreck, walk away unharmed, to where though?
R snapped out of her daydream and nodded along, the mission handler droning on as she played over the map in her mind. The hallway, the stairs, the door, what the man looked like.
At a side street, the car pulled over, and she got out; walking in the rain and pulling her black coat around herself. In alleys and doorways, drunks and bums slept rough. One roused, she pretended not to understand him as he slurred after her. Something about fucking her round white ass, Chinese girls are too flat, and he could show her a good time.
A flick of a finger, she could kill him, a thin rod no thicker than needle through a rheumy eye, into the brain, expanded instantly into a mesh that would liquefy half of it an instant later. He'd slump forward dead, not noticed till morning.
Nope. Not worth the effort.
She came to the office block, hacked the door, and climbed the stairs. Eighteen flights, but she didn't feel them. She peered out the stairwell door, lights flickered in the hall. Most of the rundown offices looked vacant, the rest closed for the night. The carpet was dirty and torn in spots, the walls scuffed, marked by water damage from leaking pipes or sprinklers. The building was a casualty of the 2039 crash, the end of the Chinese economic miracle. Things had recovered, but slowly. This building, this district, once a diamond in the crown of Chinese progress, had been left to rot, where it once had high rollers, it now held parasites, shell corporations, card scammers. The seedy underbelly of capitalism. But if you paid the right people, the Party didn't care.
Room 1823. Under the door, she could see a light was on. Step in, find the target, neutralize, and quietly leave.
YOU ARE READING
The Revenants
Science FictionR doesn't know who she is. She doesn't even remember her full name. But she knows who made her; they will be made to pay a terrible price for creating her, and for the things she was made to do.
