Profiteer

Davis gave him a backward look over his shoulder that told Dom that he doubted he could disappear anywhere. After a pause, he said. “We had to, you know. With all the damage to you and the TEC on our necks, there was no time to clone a real body.”

 

Dom raised his hand to the side of his face to hide the tic he was developing. “I know that. It’s nobody’s fault.” Besides, if Dom were to be really honest with himself, the cybernetics weren’t the real problem.”

 

“It’s Klaus’ fault, damn you!” Davis left, leaving Dom with no opportunity to think of a response.

 

Dom had been left, standing on the porch of the villa, trying to scrape together a hatred for his brother. Like every effort to pull together the pieces of his broken mind, it left him with no tangible results.

 

That was the last time he had seen Davis Maclntyre.

 

The last time he had someone he could call a friend.

 

Dom got off of the bed. After all this, if all I can feel for the loss of ten years of work is this vague unease, what’s the point?

 

He walked into the plush bathroom and up to the washbasin. At a touch, the chrome-metal basin began to fill from an invisible faucet. He placed his right hand, the mostly real one, in the basin, covering the drain. The metal was cool against his hand, and the sink beeped at him as the basin began to overflow.

 

With the left hand he turned on the lights. The panels around the mirror in front of him lit.

 

Water washed over the counter and splashed his thighs.

 

He put his left hand on one of the lit panels that surrounded the mirror. He began to slowly apply pressure to the plastic covering the light.

 

Water washed across his thighs, his calves, and his feet.

 

He had thought of this a few times since his reconstruction. A clean way to do it. The veins that pumped the clear fluid that passed for blood were self-sealing. His digestive system was artificial and would filter out most of the poisons he could think of. Most falls and projectiles wouldn’t touch his brain within its chromed prison.

 

A long time ago he had decided that there were two ways he could do this cleanly.

 

One way was to step out of an air lock without an environmental suit.

 

The other was an adequately grounded electrocution.

 

The plastic on the panel cracked and his left hand came in contact with the cool surface of the glowing light beneath. A little more pressure and the frosted chemical illumination would crumble and his hand would be touching the live contacts, ending it all.

 

He wondered what his mother had thought before Perdition had been reduced to gravel.

 

Dom chanced to look at the mirror in front of him. The expression he saw on his own face made him jerk back. His foot slipped on the wet tile beneath him and he fell backward. He caught himself on the toilet before his head slammed into anything. As if it would damage him.

 

He sat, unmoving, wondering what had happened.

 

Above him, he heard the drain slurp itself empty.

 

He slowly got to his feet and looked in the mirror. He touched the surface, to reassure himself that it was, indeed, a mirror. The face beneath it was familiar, impassive, his own. There was no sign of the agonized mask he had seen a few moments ago.

 

Could he really wear an expression that held so much pain when he felt nothing himself?

 

Dom grabbed a towel and silently returned to his bed.

 

<>

 

* * * *

 

 

PART TWO

 

Fellow Travelers

 

 

“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

—John Bradshaw

(1602-1659)

 

 

<>

 

* * * *

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

 

Secret Agenda

 

 

‘Anyone who believes in free speech has never tried to make a living as a writer.”

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

 

‘All revolutionaries are criminals meeting in secret.”

—Yoweri Adyebo

(b. 2303)

 

 

It had been a busy three days for Dom.

 

The first and most massive undertaking had been laundering the money he had received from Reynolds Insurance. No names had ever been attached to the account, but the nature of the policy—insuring GA&A—meant that someone might eventually trace the money to him. Dom had spent a whole thirty-two-hour Bakunin day on the hotel’s comm, wrangling financial deals ranging from commodities trading to currency speculation.

 

He came out of that day with a profit and an untraceable portfolio.

 

The second day he’d spent checking on names Tetsami had given him—the potential team members. There were a number of freelance security corporations in Godwin offering services to the two thousand corporations that formed the knotted heart of the city. Most of them would profile anyone for a price. It was simple for Dom to order up dossiers on the first two people Tetsami suggested contacting.

 

Ivor Jorgenson and Johann Levy.

 

He also called up a report on Tetsami herself.