Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to Bullets (8 page)

Mina took all this in, making a mental note
to herself to start checking out everything about her grandfather
as soon as possible.

“Your grandmother knew,” Miss Lasko answered
Mina's next question before it was asked. “She was like me. Not
part of the organization, but a friend. She worked as a secretary
at City Hall for years, keeping track of the political process from
near the ground floor.”

Mina swallowed. “His accident wasn't an
accident. What about hers? She died when my mom was a kid ...”

Chapter
Eight

Deborah Lasko sighed slightly. “No one was
sure. His cover might have been blown. After that, the shop—in all
its functions—and protecting your mother became his only real
passions. He poured everything he had into the AIA, and most of the
agents old enough to have been there during his tenure were trained
under his watch. Most of those have either retired, died, or moved
to other cities—thankfully, mostly the latter. Seattle had
something of a reputation of excellence among the organization,
with how many cases it solved involving Pacific Rim trade and local
smuggling through the ports. Everyone wanted agents trained here,
rather than recruiting their own.” The Deputy Mayor's pride in this
fact was not concealed at all.

“And the transfers weren't replaced?” Mina
ventured a guess. “You said that the organization was
shrinking.”

Miss Lasko shrugged. “Changing with the
times. The world has moved on. International tensions aren't
remotely what they once were. Working together for mutual survival
and fighting through growing pains led to something akin to actual
cooperation. This century has seen no wars between major nations,
just terrorists and isolated violent regimes, neither of which can
take advantage of seas of refugees and emergency transfers anymore.
Sure, there's always going to be mistrust between uncomfortable
bedfellows, but the odds of China and the United States ending up
at each other’s throats is remote—the current arrangements are too
profitable. As the enemies in the world shrink, so too have the
forces that the alliance puts out to fight them, and just as
importantly, so too does the budget. There are days that fanatical
accountants in the halls of power are our worst enemies.”

The extremely well-informed civil servant
smiled, leaning forward at the desk. “Which is the reason all of
you have people like me. You're going to have enough trouble just
holding down a full-time job and dealing with your parents, dealing
with customers, and dealing with the heavy responsibilities of
being part of the invisible line that guards us and our allies.
I've already arranged for a new apartment for you through suitable
channels. You'll be introduced to your first case tomorrow.”

“What is—?”

“I'm afraid I can't give you any details now
... the Director will handle that. Meanwhile, I'm going to give you
as many tools as I can to do your job to the best of your ability
with as few roadblocks as possible. In the near future we're going
to have to keep contact between us discreet, until such time as
you're more involved with the Parks & Rec projects, but if you
seriously need something, please don't hesitate to contact me, all
right?”

“Thank you, Ma'am, I will. I think I should
get back to my family though. They'll be worried.”

Odd as the afternoon had started, Deborah
Lasko and her security detail, the Director, her grandfather, her
own chip, her future—a lot of things were starting to make sense.
Mina couldn't wait to tell Miko ... that she was a florist. Mina
deflated a little, but managed to maintain her smile. Despite
feeling just a little less like a proper Mouseketeer, she had to
admit, this was a lot more excited than she'd expected to feel at
this point after her chipping.

* * * *

Her family, and Miko, had indeed been
worried, but they'd been reassured, then put her to bed after her
surgical procedure and its minor complications. Mina had barely
been able to sleep. A whole new world had suddenly opened up, and
she found herself immediately thrust into the middle of it. Worse,
she apparently already had a case, and no one was telling her
anything. She thought a couple of times about going back to see
Director Richter sooner, but her chip and her general fear of the
Director told her that was a bad idea. Exhaustion caught up with
her enough to get a couple hours of sleep, leaving her bleary-eyed
and sleepwalking through the start of her day.

With school behind her, she was up with her
parents and off to the shop in the van. Even as tired as she was,
the chip practically walked her through the first routines of the
day. As long as she didn't fight it, everything went smoothly.
Flowers were picked and arranged and put on display, inventory was
moved from the back gardening area to the shop refrigeration units,
and everything was watered and fertilized in order. By the time the
shop actually opened to customers, and the phones were turned on
for the day, Mina was waking up, but she barely remembered the
morning.

She ran into the first moments of trouble
with her weekend work habits. Her shortcuts didn't match the chip's
programmed procedures for handling flowers and setting displays.
Vague hints of that aluminum taste were followed by burning in her
sinuses. Most of the time it was momentary, but she gained a
definite feel for when she and her chip weren't in perfect
alignment. School had given her a few cases of people with similar
sensitivity, especially very early in the process, but not many. A
few times she also had to slow down, or was told by her parents to
slow down. Outpatient procedure or not, she was still supposed to
take it mostly easy, especially after her alleged
“complications.”

Even so, as soon as the first calls came in
for deliveries, Mina couldn't help but launch herself towards the
phone. Much as she was aware that the shop was going to be most of
her day-to-day life, she couldn't wait to actually begin figuring
out precisely how all of this spycraft happened. Her parents were
left a little confused by her sudden enthusiasm for the work, but
let her take the van out for her first deliveries, to celebrate her
first official day on the job full-time, and perhaps they thought
she'd strain herself a little less.

If that was what they thought, they were to
be disappointed. She ended up making a delivery to the clinic she
was told about and was directed downstairs. There, Agent Park was
waiting for her. The basement itself had a few high-tech workout
machines, as well as an old school treadmill with some sort of
suspension device set up over it. Most of the weights were set up
over some type of raised plates, partly set into the floors.

“This is where your transformation into a
superhuman begins,” Agent Park offered as soon as she laid eyes on
the set up, with a wave of his hand. “We're going to take it easy
on you today and tomorrow while you adapt to your chip. You
shouldn't be jarring it too much ‘til everything heals entirely.
Still, we can get you used to the routine. I'll be here to
supervise, at least for now.”

He moved her to one of the raised plates,
tapping a button. The ground under her feet started to vibrate,
causing her to almost lose her balance a couple times before she
found her equilibrium. Then he guided her through stretches while
still on the plate. “Everything here is designed to create the most
efficient workout possible. You have two types of muscles:
slow-twitch and fast-twitch. The first get used for endurance; the
second get used for sprinting and bursts of activity. We're
building up both at the same time, but especially the
fast-twitch.”

Mina listened while going through the
warm-ups, trying to keep her balance. “So working on these muscles
will get my body closer to catching up with my chip's processing
speed for physical information?”

“Oh, good. You remember more from that
briefing than just 'Director Richter isn't easily interrupted.'
That's the goal, yes. You hear stories about how when professional
athletes are really on their games, everything slows down for them.
When you get adrenaline going, your chip lets you see the world
like that full-time. Because we were all on Inquisitor chips, that
test-fight would have seemed normal to you, but I suspect it didn't
last near as long as you think it did. We'll outdo that.”

Mina grinned at mention of the test fight.
“Yes, but I hit ... I think that was you, and disarmed agent Hall,”
she answered.

“Well, yes,” he agreed, his own cheerful
expression not fading. “That was the idea. When you're a little
further from your surgery, we'll try some sparring matches and show
you what it looks like when we're not walking you through it.”

Mina's grin faded. “I'll be looking forward
to it,” she answered as any elation from her small victory
faded.

From the stretches, she moved onto weights.
Squat press, military press, bench, each time on one of the
platforms, stressing muscles each time, especially in her calves
and thighs that the weightlifting itself didn't bring into
play.

“You're going to notice drastic jumps in your
weightlifting maximums, your muscle endurance, and especially your
reaction times within a fairly short period. The training regimen
you've been under already did wonders for you, or you wouldn't have
been a candidate. Now, we're moving you to the type of training
you'd be under if you were going into professional sports, except
your chip is a lot more complex than any athlete's.”

As she lifted weights, Agent Park started
telling her stories of his own years as a spy. Despite the fact
that, as a personal trainer, he was a sadist, Mina found herself
liking the man. He'd seen a lot of cases come and go. Some of the
stories weren't even about his Inquisition cases, but just his work
as a policeman, then as a detective on the force.

They moved to the treadmill eventually.
Expecting to end up jogging or something for an extended time like
some of the warm ups she was used to, she was surprised when he
helped her into a vest attached to a suspension harness. “If you
fall, the machine will catch you. Because you will fall,” he told
her. “You're right-handed. Stand, facing me, to the side,” he
instructed, as he turned the treadmill on. He kept increasing the
speed of the machine as she shuffled laterally. He helped coach her
through proper movement, improving her speed, then dialed the
machine up ‘til she could no longer keep up.

“Twelve miles per hour ... now ...” he turned
the machine off and turned her around, then started the process
again. She didn't get up to nearly the same speed before losing her
balance.

“Just like you have a dominant hand, you have
a dominant leg. You can currently pivot or push off, or maintain
balance much better going one direction than the other. We can't
have that, so we're going to train that out of you.”

A short break followed for water, finally,
before they did one more set of exercises on the treadmill. This
time, he dialed up the suspension to help hold her more upright and
took some of her weight off her feet. “Currently, your legs will
only move you so fast. We're going to train the fast twitch muscles
to fire faster, partly by making you run in these conditions faster
than you currently could if you weren't suspended, at half weight.
When those muscles are trained, eventually, your speed will improve
and then we'll turn the treadmill up higher.” Indeed, he got her up
to twenty three miles an hour on the treadmill before she was
having to rely entirely on the harness.

Finally, Agent Park called it for the day. He
brought her a couple of fruit-and-nut granola bars from the storage
unit, along with more water. It was a while before she was feeling
up to walking again, but eventually she had to get back.

“You'll have a couple hours at the shop,
pending any actual deliveries, then the Director will be calling.
Good luck,” Agent Park offered, genuinely, on her way out.

At that moment, it wasn't that Mina wasn't
looking forward to her introductions to spycraft still—more that
all she really wanted was to go home and sleep for about ten hours
after this first introduction to her new spy routine. She was
especially not looking forward to waking up tomorrow morning, as
sore as she already was.

* * * *

Mina received the next set of instructions
piecemeal. She got a call for a delivery. As soon as she reached
the light rail station, she got a direct comm that her chip picked
up as a secure priority message. Instead of her original
destination, she was to take the light rail north into the
University District. She followed the instructions her chip gave
her to interface with her comm, hacking into the system in order to
broadcast false coordinates, so if her parents checked in on her,
it would tell them she was on her way to the original
destination.

As soon as she got off the light rail in the
mostly deserted University District, she was given an updated set
of directions. She passed the various establishments set up to
cater to the academics and archivists still employed with the
University of Washington system. Most of the buildings had been
converted from larger establishments as recently as fifty years
past, when the University was still hosting students, whether
because people had opted out of chipping due to health quirks, or
further assessments were necessary at a higher level to match the
most complex chips to candidates.

With leaps in data storage, and increased
ability to update chips, the purposes of the Universities had
shifted. Now, the quiet grounds were for people like Dr. Kimura,
who were advanced enough in a subject, or in multidisciplinary
studies to not simply take their chip and do a job perfectly, but
to innovate in their fields. Miko's father ran the second largest
pre-Decimation archives on the West coast and published regularly
in scholarly journals on topics of life in the 20th and 21st
centuries. Plenty of people with the right chip could tell you
about the history of car manufacturing in the United States. It
took geniuses like Kenichi Kimura to restore 114 year old cars
found buried in pre-quake ruins. Mina wasn't quite sure if Dr.
Kimura's being able to sing all the top hits of 1983 was quite as
useful, but she definitely appreciated Miko having Vlad.