Little Deadly Things (44 page)

Marta and Dana searched Eva’s office again. There were few papers. Dana helped his mother to jack the datapillar. It was another dead end.

“Do you suppose that she wiped the pillar of any traces?” Marta asked her son.

“There would be
something
there to find, I think. I’d bet she used a different pillar to wash out the public health programs. Maybe from a pillar at her home.”

“Let’s go help your father,” Marta said.

“No,” said Dana, “We’ll be in his way. He’s better off solo. And her pillar is probably protected. I want to look for something here that will help disable the pillar. So, let’s wait till he links to us.”

Jim stood fast and spoke soothingly. “Eva, you have so much power. You can help. People are rioting in the Caribbean because there’s no more water. Diabetics are going into shock. Kidney patients are dying. They’re innocent. You have the power to save them. Then you and I can sort things out.”

“You can’t stop me,” Eva said in a jittery voice and continued to move towards him. She picked up a chair. Jim started to react even before her hand touched the chair’s straight back. He almost wasn’t fast enough. She threw it at him with no more effort than swatting a fly. The chair hit the wall behind him and shattered.

“Eva. You don’t have to do this. Let me help you.”

She said nothing and closed in on him, a blur of motion. She lashed out with her right hand, a palm strike to the solar plexus with enough force to stop his heart. His skinsuit kept him alive although he felt the impact all over his body. Everything hurt. He flew backwards and crashed to the floor.

Eva came closer and then kicked him just above his knee. The force of the blow stunned him and he winced, but his leg stayed intact.

“Armor won’t help,” said Eva. She touched her datasleeve as Jim staggered to his feet. She aimed a punch. It was too fast to see, but he had started pivoting as soon as he saw her tense to strike. Not soon enough. Her fist hit his shoulder. He was thrown aside but unharmed. He might as well have been an empty container, tossed into the trash.

Jim started to his feet when he felt a wave of fatigue sweep him. He felt weary to his bones.
What’s the use? I should have stayed out of her life. I should have stayed a dog trainer.

His mind wandered again and he thought of Ringer. He missed her. The move to Boston had taken years from her life, and he had mourned every day since her death. Naively, he had thought that she would be happy anywhere she could have a walk and a toy. But the northern winters stung Ringer’s eyes and matted her coat. It sliced her delicate foot pads with shards of ice and then burned the wounds when she walked on the rock-salted streets. Just going outside was uncomfortable. She’d pee on the back porch, where the snow had been removed, rather than walk down a short set of stairs and search for a snowless spot where she didn’t risk frostbite on the business end of elimination. Eventually, he learned to shovel the apartment’s tiny back yard for her, an exercise that provided a good deal of amusement to the neighbors.

Eva stared as he lumbered slowly to his feet. She looked puzzled, confused that his armor still worked. Jim touched his sleeve and activated the light-shifting properties of the skinsuit. He was invisible to her once again.

“Nice trick. Won’t help. You can’t touch me,” she said and then started to whirl around like a top, arms extended. Jim knew that if she connected he’d probably be killed.

He had one option. Touching the small disc on his jaw, he linked to Marta and Dana and subvocalized, “Querida, I love you. Dana, I love you. Take care of your mother.” Then Jim crouched and exploded forward, catching Eva at the knees, below her whirling arms. She was small and he lifted her off her feet. The momentum of his charge hurled both of them towards the windows on the other side of the workspace.

The collision rocked them both, but the window’s nanoglass held. A second later she started to beat him about his back. His skinsuit kept him alive, but barely conscious. Although each blow was cushioned, he could feel himself weaken. With a scream, Eva drew all of her strength and reached back to strike a killing blow. Her fist hit the window behind them with a strength that was amplified by her madness and the exoskeleton. It was enough to crack the glass.

But the window held.

“What’s he doing?” Marta asked in a quavering voice. “Did that sound like a goodbye to you?”

“Mom. You’ve got to trust Dad. He’ll be okay. We have to find Eva’s key.”

Dana paused and peered intently at his mother. “Mom? Maybe you should sit down. You look pale and your eyes are red. Is it MAS? Mom?”

“I’ll be okay. I’m just going to sit a moment.”

She felt tears starting to stream down her face. She wiped her cheeks. The tears were bright pink. She said, “You’re right. Let’s keep looking.”

“Mom...if you’re having an attack, you need to rest. Mom? Mom?”

Eva’s face was placid.
This is it,
Jim thought.
I’d hoped we’d go through the glass.
He’d pinned her to the window but knew he couldn’t hold out for long. She began to beat him. Steady, methodical blows rained down on his back. The pain was excruciating, and his skinsuit armor transferred the impact to cover every inch of his body. With a last effort, he reached out to grab her arms but her amplified strength overwhelmed him. He was looking down at Eva’s teak wood floor and watched with detached interest as his field of vision began to narrow.

Eva had won.

Dana scanned Eva’s office. Her aerie was barren. A desk and chair. Pillar. Carpets. The standard wall decorations: diplomas, photographs of Eva, and the scarab brooch.

Dana stared at the framed bauble. “This thing bothers me, but I can’t figure out why,” he said. He took the brooch down from the wall and out of its frame as he had several times in the past hour.

“Mom. I have an idea. I need a nanoscale microscope, something with a resolution down to say, five or ten nanometers. Is there one in your workspace?”

Marta didn’t seem to hear. Her face was ashen, with streaks of blood-stained tears.

“Mom? Are you okay?”

Her mouth moved but no sound emerged. Her breath hitched.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

Pain shot through Jim’s body. Eva struck with machine-like regularity. His vision was reduced to a tiny patch of the floor below him. He noticed the fine grain of the wood and tried to conjure up an image of Marta and Dana. He didn’t want his last thoughts to be of building materials.

For a moment, Eva stopped. She bent her head down and in an low voice, nearly a whisper, she cackled. Her speech was rough and accented, as if she’d still been in Sofia. “It was simple, Jimmy boy. I knew Rockford to fail. I examine and I see. Design was not good enough. But that is not my problem. Then they blame me? I just say, ‘I quit.’ All I had to do. You should have believed.”

She stopped for a moment and cradled his head in her arms. “You were my friend, Jim. Then you treat me like a freak. You don’t talk to me. You look the other way.”

“Now I hold you last time. I wish I could see you now. Turn off skinsuit.”

The effort even to subvocalize was now beyond Jim. He stayed invisible.

“No? You stay hidden? I love you anyway. But you hurt me. You hurt me much.”

She raised her fist for a killing blow.

Then a shout erupted from the door to Eva’s workspace, a cry of animal pain and rage. Struggling to keep conscious, and with a slow, agonized effort, Jim turned his head. For just a moment, his vision returned. There was Rafael. He was out of captivity, still wearing the security collar. He was alive, enraged, and in agony. With a roar the man hurled himself at Eva, arms outstretched as if to embrace her.

Rafael wore neither exoskeleton nor armor. His strength was fueled only by his anger. It was enough. On impact, the weakened window disintegrated, sending shards of glass and three bodies hurtling through the fourth-floor window. They seemed suspended for a moment and then plummeted to the street below.

The window from which they were propelled by Rafael’s charge was typical of nineteenth-century construction. Each floor featured 14-foot ceilings. The window was 56 feet above the pavement. Eva struck headfirst with a force that exceeded the limits of her exo-skeleton’s strength. She was dead even as the other bodies hit the ground.

Jim’s skinsuit was enough to stop a fist, but the combined weight of three falling bodies transmitted too much energy to his punished body. The weakened silicon armor was useless. His heart and lungs were battered and his brain bounced within his cranium, the force far greater than the cushioning effect of the cerebral fluid surrounding it. He was already unconscious as he struck the pavement and then he joined Eva in death’s embrace.

Rafael landed on top, capstone on a pyramid of bodies. He might have survived the fall but for the security collar. Although its output was diminished, the combination of its relentless release of microwaves, coupled with the shock of impact, stopped his heart.

Less than a mile away, the executive office of the Boylston Street headquarters of NMech echoed with twin horrified cries. Marta and Dana heard Jim’s parting words, a collision, a roar and then the sound of shattering glass. Before they could comprehend the sequence, they heard the whoomp of flesh striking pavement. Then silence.

Marta slumped to the floor. Her breath came in short gasps. “Oh no. No, no, no, no...” Dana came to his mother’s side and held her. He opened his mouth and clenched his eyes shut, and uttered a wail of grief as he pulled his mother even tighter. She turned and held the child to her breast. Their anguish was heart-wrenching. NMech employees rushed into Eva’s office and found mother and child locked in an agonized embrace.

“What is it? What happened?” one of them cried. “What?”

“Jim.. Jim.. Jim...” Her words tapered off into inchoate cries of despair.

“What happened?”

Their only response was convulsive sobs.

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