How Spy I Am (22 page)

His subvocal growl
made me jerk my hands away, my shock of instinctive fear flipping
to anger in an eyeblink.

“Fine,” I hissed, and
dove into the data tunnel.

I barely heard him
bellow my name before the busy flow of data packets carried me out
of range.

For a few minutes I
drifted with the currents of information, too upset to focus.
Gradually I brought myself under control, shock still shivering
through my bodiless self.

My own stupid fault.
That’s what you get when you hurt a guy like Kane.

I blew out an airless
sigh and started looking for bunny tracks.

My search was long and
tedious, but I had no desire to revisit Kane’s avatar in the
virtual file room. Instead, I stashed my bits of data on a
convenient public server until common sense prodded me to
reluctantly retrace my convoluted paths.

I couldn’t stay out
here forever. My physical body was probably ready to pee its pants.
And I wasn’t sure how long it would take to find my way back
without Kane’s anchoring grip.

I twisted and turned
in the data stream, unable to find the right direction. Fear
nibbled at the edges of my consciousness.

Don’t panic.

Holding onto calm, I
let my consciousness stretch along myriad shifting data tunnels.
Here, this was familiar. And here. Stay calm. Everything’s
okay…

With agonizing
slowness, I gathered my scattered self and crept homeward.

At last, I collected
my accumulated data and hovered outside Sirius’s external
firewall.

Stay calm. Stay
professional. He’ll get over it. Eventually.

I hoped.

I swallowed hard and
slipped back into the file room, letting my avatar pop into
visibility before I could change my mind.

“Aydan, dammit, what
the
hell
were you thinking? Where the hell were you?” Kane’s
yell blasted me from close range, and I flinched before I could
stop myself.

“Gathering data, where
do you think?” I swallowed the quiver in my voice and kept my tone
cool and unemotional. “Spider, I’ve dumped some good stuff for you
on the main server. I’m coming out now.”

Kane’s big hand closed
around my wrist, his grip frighteningly strong. I kept myself from
jerking back with a supreme effort of will.

“Don’t ever do that
again,” he said quietly.

“Or what?” I bit down
defensive anger and kept my voice as soft as his. “I did exactly as
you told me. Don’t give me an order if you don’t want me to follow
it.”

I turned toward the
portal. He could let go of my arm or he could make a big scene. Up
to him.

He let go.

The usual pain crashed
through my head when I stepped out, and I wasn’t surprised when I
didn’t feel Kane’s hands massaging my temples. I doubled over on
the couch, clutching my head and savagely venting my pain and anger
and disappointment in the foulest obscenities I could muster.

When I finally
straightened, I regarded the ring of shocked faces with bitter
satisfaction.

“Uh… Aydan… are you,
uh… okay?” Spider quavered.

“Fine.”

I turned to appraise
Kane’s black expression. Now was probably not the time to ask him
for any favours. Strike him off my list of people to ask about
Sirius’s recruitment program.

Jack was eyeing him
from the other side. “Let me take you to lunch,” she offered.

Kane scowled. “I have
to go and work out.” He stalked out, and after a moment of silence,
I rose to hurry to the ladies’ room.

When I emerged from
the cubicle, Jack was leaning against the counter, her smooth
forehead puckered with concern.

“Are you all right?”
she asked.

“Fine. My back teeth
were floating after four hours, that’s all.”

“What’s going on with
you and John?” she asked without preamble.

“Nothing. I think he’s
just hung over and grouchy.”

“Oh.” She gave me a
sidelong glance while I washed my hands. “Does he… do that
often?”

“I’ve never seen him
like that before. I don’t know what his deal is today.”

“Oh.” She made as if
to speak again, but closed her mouth instead, her full lips
tightening. As I made the two-point dropshot with my balled-up
paper towel and turned for the door, her sultry voice stopped me.
“Do you… um, would you like to go to lunch?”

I suppressed a sigh.
She probably wanted to talk about Kane. That’s all I needed right
now.

Fine. Silver linings.
Maybe I could encourage her. Maybe a romp in the sack with a
gorgeous woman would knock the chip off his shoulder.

“Sure.” I massaged the
ache in my forehead. “Let’s go.”

I settled into my
usual corner at the Melted Spoon and regarded my grilled sandwich
without interest. Normally its savoury aroma would make my mouth
water, but Kane’s bad mood seemed to be catching. I forced my
expression into something I hoped was pleasantness when Jack slid
into the chair opposite me, apparently oblivious to the male stares
that had followed her progress across the cafe.

She took an
enthusiastic bite of her sandwich. “The food here is so excellent.
It never ceases to amaze me how a small town can support such
high-quality eateries.”

“Yeah, we’re lucky.” I
took a bite of my own sandwich. God, this was going to be a long
lunch.

We chewed in silence
for a few moments. Jack seemed to be struggling with a need to say
something, and finally I couldn’t take it anymore.

“What’s bothering
you?” I asked.

She gave me a startled
glance, her blue eyes wide. “Is it that obvious?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say
it’s obvious, but you look like you’ve got something on your
mind.”

A flattering pink
flush stained her cheeks. Of course it was flattering. Jeez. She
could wear ratty sweatpants with curlers in her hair, and she’d
still be gorgeous.

“Actually, I…” Her
gaze fluttered down to her plate while her flush deepened. “You’re
going to think this is silly.”

Oh, yeah, here we go.
This is the part where she confesses she’s madly in love with Kane
and wants my advice on how to snare him…

I kept the resignation
out of my voice and managed gentle encouragement. “Try me.”

“I just…” She looked
up and her words tumbled out, her eyes sparkling. “I just wanted to
tell you I’m so excited to be working with you. I’ve read every
scrap of information about your project and all your mission
reports and I’m thrilled to be on your team…” She broke off,
blushing furiously as my mouth dropped open. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to sound so…”

“It’s okay,” I assured
her quickly. “You didn’t, I mean… that just wasn’t quite what I
expected.” I gathered my scattered wits. “Thanks, I’m really glad
to have you on my team, too.”

She cast a glance
around the nearly-empty cafe and leaned closer. “What’s it like to
be a secret agent? How can you keep putting yourself in danger over
and over? Your mission reports read like a movie.” She paused only
long enough to draw a breath. “Escaping burning buildings, and car
chases and shootouts, and being kidnapped and beaten and
tortured…”

I held up a hand to
stem the flow. “I’m not an agent, I’m just an asset, and as soon as
Stemp finds a way to replace me, he’ll kill me. As to what it’s
like…” I gave her a half-shrug. “I have a lot of nightmares.”

Jack sagged back into
her chair, her colour draining away. “He’s going to kill you?”

“Yeah.”

“What… How can you…”
She snapped upright. “That’s criminal! After all you’ve done! How
can you just sit there and say that like you’re talking about the
weather?”

“That’s what the
weather’s like in my world.” A sudden thought hit me. “Hey, Jack,
you said you read up on my project?”

“Yes, of course, I
read all of Sam’s research and all the internal files… But… How can
you just…” She still looked taken aback, but her blue gaze
sharpened. “Can I help you with something?”

“Maybe you can. Can
you tell me what I’m supposed to be doing in the network?”

The faint wrinkle
appeared between her brows again. “You don’t… know… what you’re
doing?”

I laughed. “No, I know
what I’m doing, I’m just wondering why Sirius wanted to recruit me
in the first place. I got the impression my ability to decrypt and
sneak around in networks came as a surprise to Stemp. Unless he was
faking it, the twisty bastard,” I added thoughtfully.

“You really don’t like
him, do you?”

“Let’s just say we’ve
locked horns in the past. There’s not much trust on either
side.”

“I think you’re wrong
about that,” she said seriously. “I think he trusts you as much as
any of his other agents.”

I let that sink in for
a moment. “Which is no farther than he can throw any of us.”

She gave me one of her
radiant smiles. “Occupational hazard.”

“I guess.”

“Anyway, to answer
your question,” she said briskly, “You’re right, your abilities
were a complete surprise to everyone. Sam expected you to have
certain special abilities that nobody else has, but decryption and
invisible network intrusion weren’t on the list. You were put on
the recruitment list at an early age because Sam knew from his
tests that you’d be a super-user.”

I stared at her.
“Which means what, exactly?”

“What do you know
about Project Wetware?”

“Absolutely fuck-all.
Sorry,” I added as Jack twitched. “I don’t know anything about it.
I’ve never even heard of it.”

“Oh. Well, in that
case, I’ll give you the short and sweet version.” She smiled. “You
might as well eat while I’m talking.”

I glanced down at my
forgotten sandwich, my heart pounding. Finally, I was going to find
out what had shaped my entire life. What Robert had died for…

I stopped that
habitual train of thought with the brakes of remembrance. What he’d
pretended to die for. Totally different thing.

I picked up the
sandwich to take a half-hearted nibble, trying to hide my shaking
hands.

“Project Wetware was
Sam’s brainchild in the early sixties,” Jack began, her tones
taking on the comfortable cadence of a lecturing professor. “As you
undoubtedly know, the computer age was in its infancy then. The
technology was bulky and primitive, and there were substantial
limitations on processing power and storage capabilities.”

I nodded encouragement
and took another bite.

“Sam was part of a
group of researchers at MIT. Their theory was that the human brain
was a far faster and more efficient processor than anything that
could ever be created from inorganic materials. Over several years
they developed a theoretical model that would allow them to hook up
to human brainwaves, using the brain as a central processing unit.
The theory was so promising that they were given funding to begin
widespread testing for the specific qualities they’d identified as
optimum for their human subjects.”

She stopped to take a
bite of her sandwich, and I frowned at her. “So I was supposed to
be a human computer? But why would the U.S. government fund testing
in Canada?”

Jack nodded,
swallowed, and continued. “Yes, you were; and they didn’t. By the
time the funding came through, Sam had moved back to Canada and set
up Sirius Dynamics, so development took place on both sides of the
border. The Canadian government picked up the tab for Sam’s work
here in Canada while his counterparts in the States were funded
through the U.S. government.”

“Sam owns Sirius
Dynamics?”

“The civilian research
branch, yes.” She paused for another bite. “The true wetware system
using a human brain as a central processor didn’t develop as
planned. By the early 1970s, they completed the initial stage of
development, which allowed them to access a traditional network via
a brainwave-driven interface. The interface was quite primitive
compared to what we have now, but it opened the door to some very
exciting possibilities in the area of virtual reality. The original
Project Wetware was and is still under development, but it took
second place to the virtual reality sims.”

She smiled. “And
that’s when Sam got really motivated to recruit you. That’s when
they discovered super-users.”

“Which means?”

“When a super-user is
inside a virtual reality simulation, the whole sim has more power.
Anybody who’s in the sim can manipulate the constructs more easily,
sustain much more detailed sims, and perform operations that are an
order of magnitude more complex than anything that can be done
without you present. Without a super-user, we have to create
constructs externally and we can only manipulate them within a very
limited functional range.”

“So I’m like a
turbocharger for the sim.”

She chuckled.
“Exactly.”

“So that’s why they
wanted me, but it wasn’t important enough to conscript me.”

“Government red tape.”
Jack shrugged irritably. “When you depend on government funding,
you can grow old and die waiting. I completed my doctoral thesis
over a decade ago, and I only received funding for my project a
couple of years ago.”

She raised a perfectly
arched eyebrow. “You may not like Stemp, but he gets the job done.
When he took over as director and found out about my project, I had
funding within two months.”

I couldn’t suppress a
cynical snort. “Yeah, as long as it’s something he can use for
spying, he’s right on it.”

“You say that as if
it’s a bad thing.” She met my eyes levelly. “He’s dedicated to our
national security, and it’s long past time we had someone who’s
willing to make the tough decisions.”

“Like setting up a
nice little Aydan barbeque with his fucking butane torch,” I
snapped before I could stop myself.

Jack paled as her gaze
followed my hand’s unconscious motion to the dressing on my arm. I
aborted the gesture and internally cursed myself for speaking too
freely.