15 – Interrogation

  While Beef ransacked Cruz’s fridge, Addie looked around the apartment, still bothered by the feeling of being watched. Had she missed a camera? Was there someone using active camo, somehow avoiding their multi-spectrum scans and even the camera that Glitch was now in control of? She must have allowed some of her stress into her expression, or maybe her long stares into corners and behind furniture gave her away, because her comms lit up and Glitch asked, “What’s got you spooked, Ember?”

  “A feeling. When I was faded, it felt like something was moving around in here. I felt watched—still do, sort of.”

  “Unless Cruz has a roommate who’s a spark, I don’t see how anyone could be hiding. These cams are high-end, and I’ve scanned the room for signals of all kinds.”

  “Cams?” Addie asked. “More than one?”

  “Yep, see the glass-framed beer poster by the bathroom?”

  Addie looked toward the bathroom alcove and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Scanner array behind it. Lucky you stayed faded until I hacked in.”

  “Faded…” Addie repeated softly, clicking her tongue as she shook her head. Was there something in the veil? Those strange sensations had hit her when she’d snuck into the security office, too. None of the forums, none of the scattered, sketchy documentation on spark abilities that she’d been able to find, mentioned anything like that. Maybe they didn’t, but there were plenty of accounts of fades screaming about all manner of scary things. Hadn’t the one Tony led away to the skeletons been screaming about being watched?

  Beef interrupted her mental spiraling, “Yo, you want one of these?”

  Addie looked over at him, scowling when she saw him putting a frozen burrito into the auto-cooker. “Beef, we’re supposed to surprise him. He’s gonna smell that.”

  “Ah, shit!” He groaned, slamming the cooker’s door shut and throwing the rock-hard burrito onto the counter with a huff.

  “If you’re that hungry, try the pantry. Maybe he has some chips or something.”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  Addie activated comms and asked, “Speaking of surprising our mark, you have eyes on the lobby, yeah?”

  Glitch responded, “Yep—lobby, stairwell, elevator, hallway, and, of course, in the room.”

  Addie looked at the cam in the corner and held up her thumb. “Good.” She grabbed a narrow wooden chair and dragged it into the corner, facing the door. Sitting down, she drew her needler and checked the mag, ensuring it was loaded with botu-rounds. She watched Beef rip open a bag of “fire-flavored” chips, and when he looked her way, she said, “I’ll hit him with my needler when he comes in, but you gotta be ready…in case.”

  He nodded, chewing noisily. “Got it.”

  “Could be waiting a while,” Glitch said. “I don’t have much of a history on this guy—don’t know how much time he spends at home. Might have a steady partner he crashes with for all we know.”

  Beef shook his head, swallowed, then said, “Nah. Lots of fresh food in the fridge. Guy’s some kind of health nut.”

  Glitch didn’t sound so sure as she replied, “So, hopefully he’ll be back before morning. I mean, hopefully he didn’t go someplace to hide out until the heat falls off. Some spoiled veggies are a small price to pay to avoid corpo-sec…or worse.”

  “Damn, G,” Beef said with a groan. “Why you so negative all of a sudden? Thought we were onto a sure thing.”

  Addie snorted. “Nothing’s sure about this, but I’m with Beef; let’s stay positive.”

  Beef nodded, shoving another stack of chips into his mouth with a crunch.

  “This guy will have nanites, Ember, I’m sure of it, so hit him with more than one paralytic, and Beef, you’ve gotta be quick with my icepick.”

  “I will,” he mumbled around his latest mouthful.

  Ten minutes later, as Beef was slugging down his second pilfered electrolyte-enhanced water, Glitch spoke into comms again, “Someone’s approaching the building—male, looks about the right size, shaved head, but face is down.”

  “Tatts?” Beef asked, setting the bottle on the counter.

  “Yep, it’s him! Get set!”

  Beef moved around the counter, slipping his electrically charged knuckles back onto his right hand. As he walked toward the door, aiming for the side opposite Addie, his voice came through comms. “Don’t shoot me.”

  Addie stood from her chair, stretched, and, bracing her arm against the wall, took aim at the door. “I won’t.”

  “We’re in luck,” Glitch announced. “I think he’s drunk. He’s getting into the elevator.”

  Addie felt her heart speed up, her hand growing moist with sweat brought on by nerves. It was silly—this was an easy shot. She’d taken thousands like it on the range Tony and she had set up, but for some reason, knowing everything was riding on her, she suddenly felt like she was going to have a spasm or something and shoot sideways.

  “Easy, Ember,” Glitch said, and Addie remembered that JJ was sharing her vitals with the netjacker. “Remember, even if your botu-rounds don’t work, Beef is there.”

  Addie glanced away from the door to Beef—a hulking shadow lurking there, waiting motionless—and she felt herself start to relax. Glitch was right; their plan had redundancies. If she failed to take Cruz out with her needler and Beef somehow fumbled his attack, she could always use a Dust attack. She didn’t want to; they intended to leave him alive, and Addie would rather the merc didn’t know a spark had been involved in the attack, but the option was there.

  “He’s getting out of the elevator. Twenty seconds.”

  Addie inhaled deeply through her nose and slowly blew the breath out, refocusing on the door. Her gun was steady. She knew how to shoot. Even good nanites would take a few seconds to deal with the genned botulinum toxin in her needles. It was going to work. She took another breath, then she heard the panel beep. She heard the locks snick open, one by one, and then the door opened.

  Addie hadn’t planned for the door’s swing. When it opened, it blocked her from seeing Cruz immediately. She held her breath, fighting down the urge to panic, then the man stepped past the door and pushed it shut behind him. She delicately shifted the point of her needler so the glowing crosshairs on her AUI found his neck, and then tapped the trigger twice. To his credit, Cruz started to turn toward her between those two quick trigger taps, but the first needle hit right where Addie aimed, and the second buried itself in his cheek.

  Cruz grunted, and his legs folded under him. Before he hit the ground, Beef was on him, pushing him onto his chest, driving his massive knee into his back, and wriggling Glitch’s “icepick” into his data port. Addie didn’t know exactly how the device worked, only that it would automatically hack and subvert Cruz’s PAI and cyberware.

  “It’s in,” Glitch announced. “Working on his systems, wireless first. His PAI is already calling for help, but I’ve captured the message on the local net, and I’m sending back confirmations to shut it up.”

  Addie slipped her needler into her holster while Beef tugged shrink-cords around Cruz’s wrists—two of them, just to be sure, because Glitch had intel indicating the merc had augmented strength. As Addie stepped out of her corner, Beef said, “Stay behind him. He can still see.”

  Addie didn’t speak; the merc had already heard Beef—no need to add another clue as to their identities. Beef tossed her a shrink cord, and she wrapped it around Cruz’s ankles. As she activated it and it cinched up, pulling his heels together, she breathed a sigh of relief. The merc hadn’t moved, and now, even if he had nanites working on getting him awake, she couldn’t imagine he’d have any way to counter-attack—not with Beef pinning him down and his limbs bound.

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  “Broke his net access,” Glitch announced. “Probably five more minutes to own his PAI.”

  Beef reached into a pocket of his duster and pulled out a hood, pulling it over the merc’s head. It wasn’t just a black cloth sack; it was a high-tech device often employed by Boxer corpo-sec in the Blast. It would filter light and sound, so even if Glitch failed to gain control of the merc’s sensory implants, the sounds he’d hear would be distorted, including their voices. Beef touched a button on the mouth of the hood, and it cinched itself around his neck—not too tight, but tight enough that it wouldn’t slip free.

  “Can talk now,” Beef grunted. “He’s playing possum, by the way. I felt his muscles relax a little.”

  “Fuck you!” Cruz growled, suddenly thrashing up and down, left and right. Addie revised that thought as she watched. Parts of him were thrashing, but the center of his body, pressed to the floor by Beef’s enormous knee, didn’t move a centimeter.

  “Keep it easy, dummy. If we wanted to break your bones, I would’ve done it already.” Beef put a huge, gloved hand on the back of Cruz’s head and pushed the hood down, pressing the merc’s face against the engineered floor planks.

  “You don’t know who you just fucked with, scavs. My crew’s gonna hunt you down, and I’m gonna pull your intestines out your asses!”

  As Beef grunted, straining to keep the merc still, Addie squatted beside him and said, “Now, why would you say that? Threatening us isn’t going to make us want to leave you in one piece, is it?” She imagined Tony saying the words and managed to keep her tone low and even, though she wasn’t sure it would matter, what with the hood’s distorting effect.

  “The fuck do you want?”

  Before she could answer, Glitch said, “His ice is good. This is going to take me a while.” Meanwhile, Beef was patting the merc down, and he pulled a heavy pistol from a holster in his waistband, tossing it to the side.

  “We’re just after some info, Motor,” Addie said, leaning a little closer. “You’re going to be inconvenienced for a couple of days, but if you give us what we want, nobody’s gonna know—not your crew, not corpo-sec, nobody.”

  “Like I asked,” the man’s muffled, exasperated voice growled from within the hood, “the fuck do you want?”

  “C’mon, asswipe,” Beef growled, pressing hard on the merc’s head. “Don’t make me crack this egg.”

  “Jesus, get the gorilla off me!” Cruz cried.

  Addie glanced at Beef, and he smiled proudly. “I’ll get him off, but you need to stop playing dumb. You know why we’re here. C’mon, I wanna hear you say it.” She nodded to Beef, and he started pressing on Cruz’s head again.

  “Ah!” He gasped for air, panting, then added, “Rise, goddammit, the Dust job!”

  Beef let up, and Addie cooed, “That’s right, Motor. We work for Rise Tech, and I must say that if our employer knew we’d found you, they’d want us to bring you in. They’ve got a room on sublevel fifty-eight, and the psychopath who works in there is really itching to get his hands on someone with answers tucked away in their gray matter. Now, you can imagine why we’d much prefer it if you just told us what you know. You get to keep that pretty tattooed skin, and we don’t have to share our payday with that sadistic asshole.”

  “Yeah,” Beef grunted.

  “You’re just gonna zero me if I talk.”

  “Gonna zero you if you don’t.” Beef leaned more of his weight into his knee, and Cruz groaned.

  “Nah, we’re not looking to leave a corpse behind. C’mon, I’ll show you.” Addie stood and nodded to Beef. With a grunt, the big man stood, grabbed Cruz under the arm, and hauled him to his feet. Cruz bucked, surprisingly mobile for a man with his limbs bound, and tried to kick his feet against Beef’s shin. Beef was twice his size, though, and despite Cruz’s augmented muscles, he took control. Beef hugged him close, wrapping his other arm around the man’s neck and tensing the muscles.

  A strangled gasp came out of the hood, and Cruz stopped fighting, the gravity of his situation apparently sinking in. Beef gave his neck another brief squeeze, then loosened his arm. “Gonna behave?”

  The hood moved up and down as Cruz heaved a breath. Addie motioned toward the bathroom. “Let’s go.” Beef dragged the merc into the bathroom alcove, where—before raiding the merc’s kitchen for a snack—he’d set up the rest of their little plan for dealing with their captive. He’d attached a high-tensile cable and a smart lock to a self-tapping eyelet bolt that he’d driven into the concrete wall. He stopped before the sink and said, “Sit down,” guiding the merc to the floor, leaning him against the wall.

  Meanwhile, Addie picked up the cable and the lock and looped it over his head. Cruz started to thrash, trying to shift his legs, but Beef put one giant foot on his lap, his boot heel against his hip joint, and applied a little of his weight. “Fuck!” Cruz cried, becoming very still.

  “That’s right. Just go with it.” Addie cinched the cable until there was only about a half inch of slack around the man’s neck, then she activated the lock. The gears wound tight. It beeped and announced in a pleasant, androgynous voice, “Lock engaged. Releasing in thirty-six hours.”

  “You see?” Addie asked.

  “So what? Just trying to get me to talk. You could still ice me.” Beef applied his weight to his foot again, and Cruz gasped, “You’re gonna dislocate my hip, you sadist!”

  “If I were a sadist, you’d know it,” Beef replied.

  “Now, my partner’s being modest,” Addie said, squatting beside Cruz. “He’s not just not a sadist. He’s trying to help you out. You see”—Addie leaned very close and lowered her voice to a whisper—“I already told you who the sadist was. We gonna have to drag you back to Rise?”

  “You guys are doing great,” Glitch said. “Getting places with this icepick. PAI’s walled off, but I have the storage. Digging for gold.”

  Beef decided to join Addie’s roleplay. “Listen, buddy, just go with it. I want to get something to eat after this, and if I have to watch that bastard torture you, it’ll mess up my appetite.”

  “Where’s the Dust?” Addie asked, her lips inches from Cruz’s hood.

  “I don’t know! You think they showed us all where they were gonna stash it? I’m muscle. They don’t tell me shit!”

  Addie whispered, “That’s not good enough, Motor. Tell us something useful. Who’s in charge of your crew?”

  “He’ll kill me!”

  Beef chortled, and Addie softly said, “I’ve given you assurances, but I swear, Cruz, if you waste my time with another statement like that, I’m gonna have my partner break something.” She was bluffing, of course; she didn’t have the stomach for that sort of thing, but it was kind of fun to play the villain, especially when she knew she was dealing with a hard case like Cruz, who’d done all sorts of awful things in his career—she assumed.

  “Fine. You wanna know who put this job together? You have to promise me it won’t get back to him that I t—”

  Beef leaned his weight onto his foot. “She already did that, dumbass.” Cruz writhed, whimpering in genuine pain.

  Addie patted Beef’s knee, and he backed off. “Go on, Motor. Get it off your chest.”

  “Guy isn’t from my regular crew. None of them were. I got this job from a fixer, all anonymous-like. Don’t matter, though, ’cause the boss let some shit slip, enough for me to figure out who he was. He’s fuckin’ corpo-sec, like, high-ranking, and I’m pretty sure he works for the company.”

  “What company, Motor?” Addie hissed.

  “The company, bitch! Fucking Rise Tech!”

  Glitch cut in through comms. “That makes sense. The buzz on the street says insiders were involved.”

  “What’s his name?” Beef growled.

  “On the job, we called him Boss, and no, I don’t think that’s his usual handle or his fuckin’ name!”

  “What did he look—” Beef started to ask, but then Glitch cut in.

  “Forget it. I cracked his encryption, and my AI just finished an initial scan. Accessed his archived retinal images and vids, and the dummy has the whole damn job saved. I’m running an analysis on faces. You might as well get out of there; he won’t be able to tell you anything I don’t have. Don’t forget my icepick.”

  “One sec,” Addie subvocalized, then she leaned close to Cruz and whispered, “You answer one thing for me, with utmost honesty, and I’m gonna let you live. I won’t even peel a tattoo souvenir off you. Deal?”

  “Y-yeah.”

  “If you had to guess, where do you think Boss is holding the Dust?”

  “Easy. Right under everyone’s noses—probably in his fuckin corpo-asshole office.”

  Addie looked at Beef, smiling, and he shrugged, tilting his head as if to say, “Could be.”

  Addie patted Cruz on the head, then stood, motioning for Beef to follow. Before he did, he tugged on the merc’s head so he leaned forward, and then he pulled the hood up just enough to expose the icepick in his data port. As he pulled it out, Cruz cried, “Don’t kill me!”

  Beef snorted. “Said she wouldn’t, didn’t she?”

  With that, the two of them walked out of the bathroom alcove. “We done?” Beef asked in comms, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a slender, black canister. Addie knew what it was: SpecterFog. When activated, it would release a gas and emit UV-C pulses that would break down oils and micro-DNA, ruining fingerprints and any other traces of their identities—or so the advertisement claimed. Glitch said it wasn’t foolproof, but in a small space like the loft apartment, it should do the trick.

  Addie nodded, then, feeling a little guilty, turned to the bathroom. “Motor,” she called, “try to breathe shallowly. Your nanites are going to have to detox the air you breathe for a while.”

  “Head out,” Beef said, putting the canister on the counter and nodding toward the door. As she slipped out the door, Addie heard the canister beep and then begin to hiss. Beef was right behind her, jostling her with his girth as he hurried to close the door.

  As soon as the latch engaged, Addie said, “It’s weird to feel sorry for a guy like that, isn’t it?”

  “Nah,” Beef replied, shaking his head. “He’s a person, too. Probably has a mama somewhere. Or, you know, he at least had one.”

  Addie wasn’t exactly sure what that had to do with anything, but the mention of a “mama” sent an image of her mother’s face flashing through her mind, and the sentiment stuck. She nodded, putting a hand on Beef’s shoulder. “That’s a good point, big guy.”

  He chuckled. “You were pretty scary. All that whispering!”

  “I was trying to imagine things you-know-who would say.”

  “You think he’s that mean?” Beef sounded almost dismissive.

  Addie tilted her head, contemplating. “I think he can be.”

  Before he could reply, Glitch cut in, “I liked the bit about the room beneath Rise Corp with the, uh, psychopath.”

  Addie chuckled, stepping into the elevator. “Anyway, we’re running out of time, and I feel like we’re back to square one.”

  The elevator door closed, and Glitch said, “Not even close! I think our tattooed friend was right. It makes perfect sense—nobody’s going to be searching Rise’s security offices. Let me figure out which officer is our Boss, and I’ll figure out where he probably stashed the stuff. Floor plans are easy to get, but if you could use Humpty to hook me into their antennae array, things will get real easy, real fast.”

  “Easy,” Addie said, grinning at Beef.

  He shrugged. “Can we stop for noodles or something on the way?”