DeathWeb (Fox Meridian Book 3) Read online

  ‘So…’ Sandy still looked mortified. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘I can contact counsellors,’ Kit suggested.

  ‘Get to that later.’ Aloud Fox said, ‘Well, this is great, you two setting up home here. You know Sandy can’t stay.’

  ‘I want to stay with Drew!’ Sandy was suddenly alarmed, sitting up straight in her chair.

  ‘Sandy, you use three times the water Drew does. His lungs are fitted with a self-cleaning filtration system so the dust doesn’t affect him. Getting those mods yourself is going to be expensive and potentially dangerous. No one legitimate will do it until you’re eighteen.’

  Sandy turned her head. ‘Drew?’ Drew avoided her eyes. ‘Drew?’ Sandy repeated.

  ‘She’s right,’ Drew mumbled. ‘I don’t know what… I thought we could figure it out. Somehow.’

  ‘Well, we can,’ Fox replied, ‘but I think you two need to have a longer courtship and Sandy needs to be somewhere safe. How’s the forecast looking?’

  ‘Storm’s sweeping in fast,’ Patsy replied.

  ‘Could we make it into Tulsa before it hits?’

  ‘Maybe, but you’d be pushed to be ready if you’re flying out.’ Patsy glanced at Cable. ‘We need to get the antenna down, make sure everything’s secure.’

  ‘Guess I’m spending the night. We can discuss how this is going to work.’ Fox pointed a finger, flicking it between Drew and Sandy. ‘You two need to decide on how you want to play this. Meanwhile, Cable, if you need help with anything, it’s the least I can do for your hospitality.’

  ~~~

  Fox sat in one of the bigger chairs in the communal lounge, listening to the wind beating against the walls. They had a Doppler radar system which was still operating, shielded from the gale by a dome, and it was recording winds of 35 knots, gusting to 50. Rain was lashing the metal shutters over the windows, the clatter sounding to Fox like buckshot. Every so often, light could be seen through the slatted shields, followed by thunder: the distant clash of gods with field artillery.

  ‘It’s never this bad in Topeka,’ Sandy said into the relative silence after a nearby explosion.

  ‘You get used to it,’ Fox replied. ‘You learn to cope.’

  ‘I got the impression you’d rather I didn’t.’

  ‘If this is what you want, get the mods put in and come back. Not my place to say what you should or shouldn’t do. I think it’s wise to go into it with your eyes open, and not running away from something either. If you want to live out here, learn how to survive and come back.’

  ‘Is that what you did?’

  ‘Same principle. I did my research. I like to have a plan. I like to know what I’m getting into before I start.’ Fox rolled her eyes. ‘Of course, there isn’t always the luxury of enough time or information, and no plan ever survived implementation without casualties… I learned all I could about the Army and what I’d likely end up doing. I carefully considered what I thought my parents would do when I told them. I knew I’d have to work to get into the antiterrorism work I wanted, and I knew my parents would freak. Took less time than expected to get where I wanted, and even with all the planning, I still ended up yelling obscenities at my parents.’

  ‘Where’d you do your survival training?’ Cable asked.

  ‘Death Valley, forty-eight hours of burning Hell. Miami.’

  Cable winced. ‘You too can be eaten alive by mosquitos.’

  ‘They don’t do live flight training around tornados now, except for the elite flight crews. That was all simulators.’

  ‘I didn’t do flight. Escaped that at least. They lost four crews the year I went through advanced training.’

  Fox gave a nod. ‘They stopped it not that long after those kinds of figures started coming up.’

  ‘You did flight training, you did infiltration and extraction?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘She was the one who got out of MarTech Dallas alive,’ Drew said. ‘Her and the hostage she was sent in to rescue. I remember seeing it on the news feeds.’

  ‘Heroism is overrated,’ Fox replied sourly. ‘Six people died so Terri and I could crawl out of that hole.’

  ‘I thought it was an eight-man team. Seven dead.’

  ‘Turns out one didn’t. I shot him in the head when he tried to kill me earlier this year. Could we pick another subject?’

  ‘Okay,’ Sandy said, ‘what am I going to do? I don’t want to be without Drew for a year, maybe longer. I just don’t.’

  ‘I had a thought on that,’ Cable replied. ‘That’s if Drew’s willing.’

  ‘Me?’ Drew looked nonplussed, so whatever it was, it was clearly news to him.

  ‘Bunch of us, not just this camp, we’ve been throwing around an idea. Maybe set up something a little more permanent than the market stalls up in Topeka. A shop.’

  ‘Problem’s always been that people up there don’t trust us so much,’ Patsy said. Patsy, Fox had figured out, was Cable’s partner and as close to a second in command as anyone. ‘We start moving in and we could have problems.’

  Cable nodded in agreement. ‘But if we’ve got one young buck and his girlfriend who happens to be a local…’

  ‘Work in a shop?’ Sandy asked. ‘I… could do that. Drew? Would you–’

  ‘Fuck yeah!’ He coughed. ‘I mean, it’ll be tough living in all that civilisation when I’m used to my freedom and all, but for you…’

  Sandy giggled. ‘You’d have to change your underwear. Every day.’

  ‘The horror,’ Fox drawled. ‘Must be love.’

  2nd July.

  ‘Fox?’ Kit’s voice sounded urgent and Fox struggled to get her brain the rest of the way out of sleep. There was no sound of rain now, the wind had died away, and there was light showing through the shutters: pale, greyish light that suggested dawn was imminent.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Five forty-nine. The storm died down just after midnight. The radar is detecting a large, fast-moving vehicle coming in from the north.’

  Opening her eyes, Fox sat up. ‘We may have trouble,’ she said, not especially loudly, but Cable was awake in an instant.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your radar is showing something, ground vehicle, coming this way. You expecting anyone?’

  He shook his head. ‘Patsy!’ Patsy stirred, her eyes snapping open an instant later. ‘Patsy, get a couple of people with rifles stationed around the camp.’

  ‘No shooting unless it’s absolutely necessary,’ Fox added.

  Patsy shrugged. ‘Goes without saying. We don’t want NAPA down here snooping around camp.’ She got to her feet and headed for the door.

  ‘I’ll meet them–’ Cable began.

  ‘We’ll meet them. If it’s who I think it is, they won’t be reasonable with you. They might be reasonable with me.’ She reached for the rucksack she had brought with her, opened it up, and pulled out a magazine for her pistol. ‘But if they aren’t, they’re going to wish they had been.’

  ~~~

  The big, black SUV with shaded windows pulled to a stop in the open area in front of the communal hut and four men climbed out. Fox watched them from where she was standing, hands behind her back, with Cable. They were all big men, muscled, heavy in the jaw, arrogance in the expressions they were wearing. Each was armed with an assault rifle with an underslung micromissile launcher, and they were wearing hardshell body armour. No helmets: amateurs always forgot the helmets.

  ‘You gentlemen lost?’ Cable asked.

  ‘We’re right where we want to be,’ one of the men replied. He settled himself in a confident pose, feet a shoulder-width apart, weapon resting in the crook of his elbow and pointing straight up. His grin was as confident as his posture. ‘Wendell Brooks, Topeka Watch. We’re here to retrieve a girl that was taken from her home and family in Topeka. Sandy Bateson. You don’t want to stand in our–’

  ‘Sandy is in my custody,’ Fox stated. ‘I’ll be flying her back to the city this morning.’


  ‘And who might you be?’

  ‘Tara Meridian, Palladium Security Solutions, contracted to find Sandy. And I have.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you aren’t NAPA and–’

  ‘And neither are you. You’re a member of a civilian militia. Nice weaponry, which it’s illegal for you to be carrying.’ Silently she added, ‘Kit, package up some video of these jokers and send it to Detective Rogers. I bet NAPA would love to raid the Watch for illegal weapons.’

  ‘Done,’ Kit replied.

  Brooks smiled. ‘NAPA isn’t here. We have automatic weapons and we are not afraid to use them to bring a little, lost girl back to–’

  ‘Cory Druss? I’d imagine his reputation is suffering by now. Get Sandy out of the way and there’s no one to testify to her father’s activities except a wife so terrified of her husband she won’t make a sound. Take the sympathetic face out of the equation and you can tar Sandy with whatever brush you like. What’s it to be? She was really a slut just gagging for her old man? Slept around? Got a dozen watchmen willing to testify that she banged them all? I can’t quite believe you’re expecting this to blow over without help.’

  Brooks was not quite bright enough not to let his surprise show. Fox smiled at him. ‘I’m a reasonable person and I don’t like bloodshed,’ she told him. ‘Get back in that truck, turn around, and go back to Topeka and we’ll say you never came.’

  Fox watched Brooks. His eyes flicked over her, still in her tiny shorts and bikini top. Then it was Cable’s turn and the bulky frame and pistol were analysed. Fox knew exactly when Brooks decided to take his chance, and she saw his decision to take out Cable first in the way his eyes stayed on the big man with the big beard. She waited for him to move, for his arms to shift as he dropped the rifle to take aim. Then she swept her pistol from behind her back, lined up the sighting laser, and fired. There was a flare of light and the pulse of pressure from the detonation, and Brooks was tossed back to slam into the front of his truck before keeling over. The smell of burned flesh swelled out to engulf them.

  ‘Anyone else?’ Fox asked, her pistol held level, shifting between the three remaining men. ‘Weapons on the ground. Now!’

  As men laid their rifles down, Cable shook his head. ‘Christ, lady. Remind me never to piss you off.’

  ‘I am a lady,’ Fox replied. ‘I don’t like being ignored.’

  Topeka Agri-Zone.

  ‘Mom is looking kind of subdued.’ Fox sat on the veranda with her father and a glass of whiskey that did not strip the lining from your throat. They were staring into space, mostly. It had been a fairly long day and Fox was tired. Once the clean-up had been handled in Tulsa, she had flown back to Topeka with Sandy and Drew, handing them off to Rogers who placed them in protective custody in the NAPA building. And then there had been questions and news, and it had been late afternoon by the time she got back to her parents’ home.

  ‘She’s had an… eventful couple of days. Malcolm Bateson’s arrest. This afternoon NAPA sent a team out from Chicago, too many people for a local office like Topeka, to raid a number of Watch buildings and uncovered caches of military-grade weapons that were being stockpiled ahead of the resolution passing. The Watch is now under investigation as an illegal paramilitary organisation. And Cory Druss is losing delegated votes rather quickly. Andrea removed her support for him yesterday, a little ahead of the start of the scandal.’

  ‘A scandal? Really?’ Fox kept her tone level, if slightly amused.

  ‘Yes, rumours, apparently with some proof, that he likes having sex with underage girls. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’

  ‘Well… I knew he liked younger women. Much younger.’

  ‘Ah. And there was another matter Andrea had to discuss. Personal matter.’ His voice did not change. There was no hint of discomfort.

  Fox bit her lip. There was a second or two of silence while she considered. ‘She told you about Druss?’

  ‘She told me. She also told me you’d played her the recording of Bateson.’

  ‘You don’t seem terribly broken up about it.’

  ‘I knew. Andrea’s a clever woman, but she’s not as smart as she thinks she is, and I’m more observant than she believes I am.’

  ‘I had to get it from somewhere. It certainly didn’t come from Mom.’

  Jonathan laughed. ‘Actually, your great-grandfather was a detective with the NYPD.’

  ‘Seriously? What goes around, comes around, I guess. So…’

  ‘Andrea and I have drifted apart. I didn’t like it, but I… I couldn’t figure out how to change anything. In many ways, that’s my fault as much as hers. I’ve concerned myself with my fields, played along with her politics mainly to try to curb the excesses.’

  ‘You were trying to stop the Watch?’

  ‘No. I believe in local policing. I also believe that having it staffed by a bunch of untrained assholes with assault weapons is a sure-fire way of turning this town into something out of the Wild West. Andrea couldn’t see it. She does now. She knows she was being played. She is considering stepping out of politics entirely.’

  Fox frowned. ‘Don’t let her, Dad. I like the fact that you two started doing something about what you believe in. Don’t stop. Do what you wanted to do: turn the Watch into something good. I’m thinking Ross and Sheila Runyard would be interested in your thoughts.’

  Jonathan took a sip from his glass. ‘A contact with a private security company who handles training and technology might be useful.’

  ‘Maybe it would, especially if that contact happened to be on the board.’

  ‘That would make it more interesting. You happen to know anyone like that?’

  ‘I… might, yeah. Local girl too.’

  ‘All the better. Maybe we should put your mother out of her misery, get her in on the conversation.’

  ‘Is she still wearing dresses that would fit a doll?’

  ‘Yes, she is. I’ll tell you a secret, though. I still think she’s the most beautiful woman I ever met, except maybe for my daughter. And now she’s wearing the clothes for me.’

  Part Four: We Hurt the Ones We Love

  New York Metro, 2nd July 2060.

  Kit stopped halfway through cross-checking her data for the sixth time. This kind of uncertainty in her own data handling and evaluation was not only pointless, but entirely too human. She was an AI, not an organic and… Well, no, maybe it was not a human characteristic. A human, far slower at data manipulation, would likely have stopped at three times, if they had got that far. Whatever the case, she had evaluated, re-evaluated, checked back to the source, twice, and evaluated again. She had tried three different methods of evaluating the statistical validity and that was incredibly stupid when the data points she was analysing corresponded precisely. Enough was enough, she was quite positive of her determination.

  She had, after a day, uncovered three more evidentiary images or text documents indicating that victims of the killer had not been on the run LifeFit said they were on when they were kidnapped. That was a quarter of the known victims and enough to indicate that this was not simply a bug. Or that it was a bug which applied to a number of cases. She had decided that further evaluation of the runs the victims had stored on LifeFit was in order.

  That was when the statistical analysis had begun, because there was an oddity which required further analysis. In every single case, the victims had undertaken the run LifeFit claimed they were on a few days earlier as well as the day of their kidnap. Not entirely unreasonable: these were their favoured routes and they ran them regularly. However, LifeFit gave a quite detailed view of each run, with elapsed times at various waypoints. In each case, the final run matched a recent one up to the point where the person vanished, down to the millisecond.

  Kit had read articles on sports physiology. She had run statistical variance routines to determine how likely the correspondence was. The probability of such precise replication was so low that she had begun doubting her fin
dings and the cross-checks had started. Well, enough, the data was saying something to her and she was sure what she was seeing was the truth.

  But what was it saying?

  ~~~

  27Lex was buzzing more than usual and Sam was vaguely wondering why, but mostly he was focused on the pretty redhead who was with him. Marie was just about bouncing. Her eyes were alight and her body was bursting with energy.

  ‘I know it’s not acting,’ Marie said, ‘but… Well, it’s sort of a bit like acting. Well, no it’s not, but it’s something that could get me some exposure.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Sam agreed. ‘I’ve seen Lucille Graves’s designs. Exposure is guaranteed.’

  Marie just giggled. ‘Sex sells. I want serious acting rolls, obviously, but I’m pretty.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  Another giggle. ‘Thank you. I mean that I’m going to get parts based on my looks, at first, not on my amazing character-acting skills. I don’t actually have amazing character-acting skills yet. If I have a portfolio with some more… exotic pictures in it, I’ll attract attention.’

  ‘So when are you going out there?’

  ‘The nineteenth. I stay the week. Lucy’s photographer says he’s got a couple of locations he wants to try out and some of the shoots will be at night. Something about the lighting. He’s been scouting for a couple of weeks and Lucy said he was really enthusiastic about the project.’

  ‘It all sounds good. I think you’ll do well out of it. Frankly, you’re built for something like this. Mrs Graves’s designs wouldn’t suit a traditional, stick-thin fashion model, but they also won’t suit a larger woman. Showing them off well would require a fairly specific body form.’

  ‘Oh?’ Marie asked. She felt like she was fishing a little, but did not care for some reason. Sam nodded, his expression bland, but he scanned his eyes up and down Marie in an appraising manner which had her cheeks heating. Actually, Marie’s entire body was rather heated tonight. The memetic signals and subliminals in 27Lex had hit her before. They were designed to promote ‘friendly relations,’ generally of an intimate nature, and they worked, but she had not even noticed them tonight so that could not be the reason for the way her nipples were tightening against her plazkin boob tube.