Emergence (Fox Meridian Book 5) Read online

  ‘He already has. I’ve had two more this week.’ She turned to Iberson who was narrowing her eyes at her lover. ‘I didn’t want you worrying. I didn’t consider it worth worrying over.’

  ‘Balls,’ Iberson snapped. ‘Something in that first one had you worried. If I hadn’t seen that, I wouldn’t have pressed this so hard.’

  ‘He… I was annoyed that he had got my address. Brett, I want Palladium to have full access to my IMC mailboxes and any other data they need. Misaki, you can recover those messages and forward them, right?’

  ‘Of course, Nishi-sama,’ Misaki replied.

  ‘I’ll arrange a connection and transfer them directly,’ Kit said. ‘You’re a Harriet dash four zero one, aren’t you, Misaki?’

  Misaki bobbed her head and gave a timid smile. ‘Yes. Miss Sakura kindly secured a series seventy-two server unit for me last year, however.’

  ‘I run on a seventy-two at home. You have all the latest security patches, I assume?’

  ‘I am up to date as of the December sixteenth patch. I have not been notified of anything else.’ Misaki actually looked a little uncertain, as though she was worried that the clearly newer AI model might know something she did not.

  ‘That’s good. It is the May emergency release which I was most concerned with. The seventy-two is one of the most secure individual servers MarTech produces at this time.’ Kit looked at Sakura. ‘You made a wise investment, Miss Sakura. It is unlikely that Minotaur will gain entry to Misaki’s server without triggering alarms.’

  Misaki looked rather pleased at Kit’s praise. Sakura smiled and said, ‘Thank you, Kit. Misaki deserved the upgrade and it let me consolidate the house computer systems.’

  Fox gave a nod. ‘Okay. We’ll get started on that as soon as possible and try to set your mind at ease. If you’ll excuse me, I have a small party to attend.’

  ‘I did wonder about the dress,’ Iberson said. She got up, along with Sakura, as Fox rose to her feet.

  ‘Not my usual business attire, no, but I had to dress up for the occasion.’

  ~~~

  The German with the sense of humour was called Johann Baum, and Fox pulled him and Yuriko Fukui aside for a quick chat once the little party was underway. ‘You two,’ Fox told them, ‘get special assignments to be handled when you get back. Well, Monday will probably do.’

  ‘This is good,’ Baum said. ‘I was expecting to be sitting on my ass a lot of the time when I got home.’

  ‘We’ll find things for you to do,’ Fox told him. ‘First thing, however, is a live one. Kit will send you some contact data for a German citizen who has some internet problems. Go see him, talk to him. We want permission to investigate the hacks. Some of it is banking so you’ll probably need to liaise with the German police.’

  Baum winced. ‘Potential minefield. Many banking institutions are highly secretive about security problems.’

  ‘See what you can get. We think the man who’s been hacking this guy’s accounts could be a potential security risk to a client.’ Fox turned to Fukui. ‘That client being Nishi Sakura. She’s doing a show in Tokyo in February. I want you to run background on her. Palladium was brought in because IMC didn’t think they could handle security for her in Japan. I’d like to know why and I doubt I’ll get a straight answer out of them.’

  ‘I can do that,’ Fukui replied. ‘I know she came out of the industrial sprawl around Chiba. You would say a “rags-to-riches story,” I think? She has no family left in Japan, and she has not been back there in around six years. She remains popular in Japan despite this.’

  Fox nodded. ‘Coordinate with Kit. She’ll be doing a run on Sakura’s web presence, and you’ll handle the physical world. Right, I just wanted to give you both some prior notice. Go have fun.’

  ‘I will,’ Fukui said, ‘if I can manage to avoid Mister Keen for most of the evening. Oh, he’s coming this way…’

  ‘I’ll run interference. Go.’ Fox turned and smiled as Keen sauntered over, and Fukui beat a hasty retreat.

  ‘Nice dress,’ the Australian said. ‘What there is of it anyway.’ His grin contained far too much leer.

  ‘Thanks. See that tall, blonde guy over there chatting to Ray and Helen?’

  ‘The one who looks like he should be on Bondi doing lifeguard duty?’

  ‘If you say so. That’s the only guy here likely to get under my dress tonight. He’s the local UNTPP captain as well as my boyfriend. You should talk to him. He’s here to meet the international contingent more than the Americans.’

  Keen seemed to take this with considerable equanimity. ‘I’ll try to get over envying the lucky bastard and do that.’

  ‘Good. He’s a nice guy. And stop scaring Yuriko.’

  ‘You’re right. We’ll be sharing a flight from here to Japan tomorrow. I should lay off or it could be a bit dodgy spending that long with her.’ Keen sighed. ‘That’s two down. Maybe the stiff-arsed Brit could be persuaded…’

  ~~~

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ Fox said when, at some point, she intersected with Jason again. ‘You saved me from a proposition by an Australian.’

  ‘The horror,’ Jason replied. ‘It has been a useful exercise, and there is wine.’

  ‘And you’re coming back to my place after, right?’

  ‘I am. Tonight is the viewing of Marie.’

  Fox giggled. ‘Marie’s pilot episode.’

  ‘Ah, non. Tonight we view Marie viewing her pilot episode. If we wish to watch the actual vid, we do that later on a repeat. Marie is almost certain to be more entertaining to watch, and there is no opportunity for a repeat viewing.’

  ‘We could record her and play it back later, which might be entertaining in itself. Uh, for the full effect, you need to see her reading reviews tomorrow morning.’

  Jason raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you propositioning me, Miss Meridian?’

  ‘Damn right I am.’

  ‘The weekend is most definitely looking up.’

  8th January.

  Despite Fox’s predictions, Marie was looking far more confident at breakfast than she had after M. J. and the Ripper had streamed. From the slight flush around her cheeks and throat, Fox decided that sex might have been a factor in Marie’s relaxed posture. Then again, Fox was feeling pretty relaxed as well, for the same reason. But Marie had also been a lot happier with the finished result as well, and she had a little more experience under her belt. That meant she was only cringing a little as reviews were uncovered and read aloud.

  ‘“From the opening scene, M. J. sets down its stall with not one, not two, but four pairs of breasts on screen at the same time.”’ Fox read the report with a smirk. ‘It goes on to say that for something obviously designed to grab a male audience, the scene was well-handled and that the show is something worth keeping an eye on.’

  ‘I thought it was a clever linking device,’ Jason said. ‘Five Sisters playing poker and chatting. The untimely demise of M. J.’s paramour from the first vid is explained. Her desire to leave the chapter house and go out on her own once more comes up. The situation is advanced in a few minutes in a relaxed way…’

  ‘And then M. J. wins the hand and everyone else strips to the waist,’ Fox continued for him. ‘Genius, if you ask me, though I think what really made it was having your friends from the real chapter house playing the Sisters. It felt real.’

  ‘Well, it was,’ Marie said. ‘We did the same thing every night before bed when I was there. The only difference was the scripted dialogue, and we ad-libbed some of that, and the rigged cards. I had to win and, believe me, I didn’t do that very much in real life.’

  ‘Streaming Culture calls it a “competent pilot episode,”’ Sam reported, ‘and says it does much to make up for the original vid. “Marie Shaftsbury continues to demonstrate more on-screen presence than the show deserves, though this time she has more competition from the four genuine Sisters of Corruption who are on screen all too briefly.” It looks like you’ve created four new
stars.’

  ‘If we get the full season, Adrian wants to go back and do more with them. Naomi tentatively agreed to guest star in an episode and I said they should make as much use of her as they could. They were just thinking of a walk-on. Maybe they’ll listen and do something big with her now.’

  ‘You’re a lot happier about this than you were about the original,’ Fox said.

  ‘Yeah… I’m a lot happier with what we made this time. It wasn’t totally embarrassing watching it with you all. Also, I had really great sex in the shower.’

  ‘Uh-huh… That does kind of set you up for the day.’

  ~~~

  ‘Fox, I figured out what was bugging me about the Minotaur thing.’ Helen’s avatar looked terribly formal, which probably meant her body was lounging in Terri’s solarium.

  ‘Okay, what?’

  ‘Adamshi.’

  Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘The case we met on. Brianne Adamshi… She was a musician, but she was killed by Marshall.’

  ‘Yes, but we looked into a load of emails from disgruntled fans, right? One of them was an obsessive-sounding one Kit flagged as a possible and the ID on it was “Niutou.”’

  Kit had the message Helen was talking about in front of Fox almost immediately. ‘Yeah, I’ve got it here,’ Fox said. ‘What’s the connection?’

  ‘Niutou is, more or less, the Pinyin transliteration for the name of a Chinese mythological character, one of the guardians of the underworld, actually. The translation is “Ox Head,” so he’s basically a minotaur.’

  ‘There is considerable stylistic similarity between this and the LifeWeb posts we have from Miss Sakura’s page,’ Kit said. ‘I would estimate a ninety per cent probability that this is the same person.’

  ‘Did you get those mails from Misaki yet?’

  ‘I did, yes, and those have a different nature. This is part of the uncertainty. I believe that a progression will be more obvious when we have the messages sent via IMC.’

  Fox nodded. ‘So the one we have for Adamshi was early, and then she was murdered before he could escalate. Good catch, Helen.’

  ‘I’m not sure where it gets us,’ Helen said. ‘More information, I guess. This may not be the first time he’s done this. I take it these latest emails are nastier, Kit?’

  ‘They are more assertive,’ Kit said. ‘Minotaur is exhibiting a possessive attitude, claiming he is Miss Sakura’s only true fan, that they should meet, etcetera. I believe the element which may be worrying Miss Sakura is that Minotaur specifically mentions Miss Iberson, and in increasingly unflattering terms.’

  Fox gave a grunt of displeasure. ‘I’ll go through those emails with you. I’d also like you to do a long-term scan for any other cases of harassment which could be related to this Minotaur. If he’s done it twice, there may be more, as Helen said. Contact Ryan, tell him Iberson could be a target as well as Sakura. Helen, I’m going to get you to take this off my hands on Monday, if anything needs doing, obviously. Kit will liaise with you.’

  Helen’s avatar grinned. ‘Oh, you’ve got the big start-up thing going on Monday, right?’

  ‘If you keep grinning like that, I’ll post you to the Moon or something.’

  ‘Nah, I’m safe. You wouldn’t do that to Terri. Anyway, you’ll do fine. You shake some hands and do another party in the evening, and you’re getting a free trip to see your parents out of it.’

  ‘I hate politics, Helen.’

  ‘This is more… schmoosing.’

  ‘I don’t think I appreciate the difference.’

  ‘Uh… Schmoosing has better dresses.’

  Topeka Agri-Zone, Kansas Belt, 10th January.

  Instead of an old box van, Fox was being picked up from the airport in a limo. She would have preferred the van, but at least her father was still meeting her, along with Ray Rogers. And the car was warm, which was not something you could claim for the outside air.

  ‘Mom complains about New York,’ Fox commented as they drove north, ‘but this place boils in the summer and freezes in the winter.’

  ‘We actually got a couple of inches of snow over Christmas,’ Jonathan Meridian said, smiling. ‘Not as much as you had in Toronto, but enough to make the back yard look pretty.’

  ‘Nothing in New York. I’m just glad I remembered it got cooler and put on some hose. What’s the plan for today?’

  ‘We’re meeting your mother and a few other locals at the new office,’ Rogers said. ‘I figured you’d want to see it, and it’s as good a place as any to meet up. We’ve got the local NAPA captain meeting us there too. He’s announced he’s retiring in the summer when the new regulations take full force, so he’s got no axe to grind about any of this.’

  Fox nodded. ‘I got that memo.’

  ‘Right. Then we’re heading over to the Watch centre.’

  ‘It’s not completed yet,’ Jonathan said, ‘but we’re aiming to do all the training there and we have managed to get enough done to make it worth a quick tour. Your people are hitting the ground running, I think. They were aiming to have all the registration work handled before we got there and classes started.’

  ‘Ryan’s people rather than mine,’ Fox said, ‘but he’s up in New England where we’re taking over the policing completely in several areas.’

  ‘I still think our model’s better, but I guess we’ll see how it all works out. Rumour came through saying that Wayden were… less than pleased about the way the contracts eventually panned out.’

  Fox allowed herself a slight smile. ‘They assumed they could hire a load of soon-to-be-unemployed NAPA detectives–’

  ‘Which they probably could have,’ Rogers put in.

  ‘True, but they assumed they could take them on and just have an investigative division fall out. They said it was all taken care of, but very few people believed them.’

  ‘And I’m sure your name at the top of Palladium’s detective branch had nothing to do with it,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘Might have helped,’ Fox conceded. ‘Having General David Graves on the board didn’t exactly harm things either.’

  ‘A good point. To be honest, Wayden just came over as a paramilitary unit when we were looking at their material. And they weren’t willing to compromise on anything regarding the training schedule or operational parameters we wanted. I got the distinct impression they wanted us to fail so they could walk in and take over.’

  ‘I should probably be political about it and refrain from comment.’

  Jonathan let out a roar of laughter. ‘Ah… That’ll be the day.’

  New York Metro.

  ‘I believe someone at IMC should have paid more attention to these emails,’ Kit said.

  Helen was still scanning the package of messages they had received from the Independent Music Channel’s PR department, but she tended to agree. ‘Does it continue to escalate?’

  ‘Yes. In the later messages, Minotaur begins to suggest that the channel management is keeping him away from Miss Sakura. It would be characteristic of paranoid delusion, except that the channel management were actually stopping the messages from getting to Miss Sakura. In the last message before he switches to Miss Sakura’s private address, he says, “They can’t stop me. I’m onto them and I can get around them easy. I’ll just go direct to you, Nishi. That’ll fix them.”’

  ‘So, he basically told them he had hacked the address from somewhere, but by then he was another crank they weren’t paying any attention to.’ Helen reached into the air to pull another virtual document forward. ‘And then he gets possessive as soon as he goes to the private address.’

  ‘His language is more intimate and, as you say, possessive. He suggests that this more private means of communication was “meant to be” and that he should have used it from the start. He makes much play of “those who would keep us apart.” IMC are the obvious targets here, but he makes reference to “the chat show dyke” in the first mail, and he goes on to more ranting language in later ones. He suggests that Mis
s Iberson somehow entrapped Miss Sakura and indicates that Miss Sakura cannot possibly be a lesbian.’

  ‘Okay, so our guy probably isn’t a big hit with the ladies, and he’s at least a latent homophobe.’

  Kit frowned. ‘I understand the second point, but could you explain the first.’

  ‘Yeah, though I’m not sure it’s proper psychology. A lot of heterosexual men faced with a lesbian woman they want will fall back on the idea that she just needs to realise that dick is better. Obviously, if she just gives him a chance, she’ll come over to the right-thinking side. It’s not as common an attitude these days, but you still see it. This guy, Minotaur, doesn’t suggest that he can turn Sakura around. He isn’t that confident. He’s not so sure of his prowess. He simply thinks she’s been tricked into having a girlfriend. It’s not something he’s willing to accept.’

  ‘Oh, that makes sense. His LifeWeb activities tend to suggest a socially inadequate individual. He enjoys making inflammatory statements to draw attention to himself. His arguments devolve rapidly into personal attacks. However, the basic structure of his writing suggests better-than-average intelligence, if not significantly higher intellect. The disparity suggests that he has little experience in real-world human interaction.’

  ‘He’s a nerd,’ Helen said. ‘Any luck finding things he may have done further back?’

  ‘Not as yet. I am starting with LifeWeb since it is far easier to search, but there is still a very large amount of data to hunt through.’

  ‘Kind of what I thought. I’ll go to IMC with what we have and suggest they upgrade their security. It sounds like Minotaur might hold them responsible for keeping him from Sakura. Could you check with Ryan regarding Charlie Iberson’s security status?’

  ‘Mister Jarvis is in New England, but I can contact his PA.’

  Helen nodded. ‘I guess that’ll have to do.’

  Topeka Agri-Zone.

  The Palladium facility had been put together using the skeleton of an old semi-industrial building on the north side of Big Shunga Park. There was still some construction work going on as the staff were still being housed in their existing homes, or in hotels. Alongside the single-storey office building, a taller residential structure was rising up to house the resident staff and anyone visiting from out of town.