Prodigal (27 page)

“It helps to retain my anonymity. As you observed, my youth might incline my competitors to underestimate me.”

Avalon frowned. “There must be more to it than that.”

“Because power is largely boredom.” Tagura sighed, unceremoniously yanking the girl away from him. She withdrew with a hurt squeal, the sound a cat would make after being kicked. “That’s the dirty little secret—the one nobody tells you, until it’s too late.”

“There are compensations.”

“But never enough to satisfy for very long,” Tagura said. “Ambition is a worthy master, Avalon—but he is not a kind one. That is a lesson I believe you have yet to learn.”

“Is that why you summoned me here?”

“Not at all.”

“Then why assume the risk?”

“There are some things one must deal with personally,” he explained. “The valor with which you have served our mutual cause demands nothing less.”

“That has a ring of finality, Yoshii-san.”

“Valor is no substitute for victory,” Tagura said. “And you have a responsibility to see to it that the money I give you is well spent. Were it not for my generous contributions, the entire
Inru
movement would have died with Phao Yin.”

“As you have so often reminded me.”

Tagura rose up from the table. He glared down at Avalon, his outrage meant to intimidate—as were the
kobun
ranks who closed around her.

“Then let me
also
remind you,” he intoned. “Your adventures in Ukraine have placed us in a precarious position. Not only did you allow important research to fall into Collective hands, but you have also created an incident that could lead Special Services directly back to us—
to me.
”

Avalon didn’t take the bait.

“That possibility
always
existed, Yoshii-san,” she said. “You knew from the start that Special Services had me at the top of their enemies list. And yet that never deterred you from seeking me out—not so long as it suited your purposes.”

“Our purposes are one and the same.”

“Hardly,” Avalon scoffed. “I’m a partisan. Your motives aren’t so altruistic.”

“Why should that matter?”

“I wouldn’t fuck you over for spite.”

Tagura hesitated, obviously surprised at her honesty. He smoothed the lapels of his tailored coat, resuming a steady calm.

“You would have made an excellent negotiator,” he said. “However, I would learn to hold my tongue if I were you—lest one of my men cut it out and render you speechless as well as senseless.”

“Point taken,” Avalon replied, brushing his insult aside. “However, I don’t believe that recriminations are in anyone’s interest, Yoshii-san. We should be focusing our energies on the future.”

Tagura held out his hands in a conciliatory gesture, lowering himself back into his seat.

“By all means,” he replied. “Unburden yourself.”

“An explanation would be sufficient,” Avalon said. “The shell interests you set up to handle our finances have been dissolved. And as of yesterday, my people no longer have access to your corporate subdomains. You have effectively shut down the
Inru
’s ability to function.”

“You are correct.”

“All because of Chernobyl.”

“A business decision,” Tagura said smoothly. “Quite frankly, I’m concerned about your abilities to complete this latest project. Your status reports have been, at best, vague. On the heels of this latest failure, I’m forced to address some serious doubts.”

“The project is proceeding on schedule,” Avalon interjected, summoning all her discipline to maintain her composure. That she had to explain herself to such a creature was galling in itself. “There have been setbacks, but such is the state of the technology.”

“How close are you to achieving a stable matrix?”

“Weeks,” she told him. “Perhaps days.”

“That’s quite interesting,” Tagura pondered, “since your experiment tore itself apart even before CSS blasted their way in and finished the job.”

Avalon thought he might be bluffing, but his expression said otherwise.

“I’ve been monitoring your progress,” he said. “Shall I go on?”

Avalon sank into her own chair, her back against the gathering
kobun.
Tagura supplied most of the mercs she had used in Chernobyl, so any one of them could have been a spy. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing they were now dead.

“That’s what I get for doing business with a simple merchant,” she said.

Tagura’s face went rigid.

“That
is
the crux of this, isn’t it?” Avalon asked. “Tagura Interglobal—number eight in the world, just not good enough for the Big Seven. Is that why you funded the
Inru,
Yoshii-san? To bring your rivals down, so you could assume your rightful place as one of the Assembly immortals?”

Tagura fumbled with the words.

“That,” he began, “is none of your concern.”

“I believe it is,” Avalon continued. “At least Phao Yin was honest about what he was. But
you
—you take refuge in some rip chamber, consorting with the likes of these people so the rest of the world won’t see how pitiful you really are.”

Tagura’s eyes wandered, his left lid twitching.

“You want to kill me?” Avalon taunted. “Go ahead—if you can still manage it.”

Tagura mumbled incoherently. Avalon watched him closely as his overtaxed synapses handled the barrage of information, a mass of conflicting impulses sending him into crash mode. If what she suspected was true, he had already betrayed himself. All she needed was proof before she could act.

And in the blink of an eye, she had it.

Tagura shot a glance toward the front of the chamber, where the old Goth kept his vigil at the door. It was just a brief exchange, but in the slow-motion playback of Avalon’s sensors the intent was obvious.

He rebooted as soon as he broke contact.

“Perhaps,” he said, “the time has come to terminate our relationship.”

One of the
kobun
clamped down on Avalon’s shoulder.

“I couldn’t agree more,” she replied, and unleashed madness.

Avalon cracked the champagne bottle against the side of the table, shearing the bottom clean off. She kicked her chair out as she spun around, momentarily dazing the
kobun
who had grabbed her, her body twisting in a single fluid motion as she flicked the jagged edge of the bottle across his throat. His flesh gave no resistance, the stroke severing his carotid and obscuring his face in an arterial spray. Head flopping back, the
kobun
collapsed to the floor in a fit of spasms.

Avalon was on him before the others could react. Diving on the body, she grabbed the
tanto
under his jacket, keeping the small knife close to her as she rolled away. Less than a second later, she was on her feet again, sensors picking out the next closest threat. She found two of the surviving
kobun
already on the move, trying to flank her on both sides, while the third fumbled with a machine pistol strapped to his belt. In hand-to-hand, Avalon knew she could take them all at once—but if that weapon came out, it was all over.

The
tanto
flew from her hand, burying itself deep in the gunman’s heart.

Unarmed again, she faced down the other two. They approached her cautiously, taking time to formulate an attack now that their comrades were dead. One
kobun
clutched a v-wave emitter in his thick hands, a decidedly modern weapon for such an old-code assassin. The other slipped a long, dazzling
katana
from its sheath.

“Yowamushi!”
Avalon shouted at both of them.
Cowards.

Both of them attacked.

She dealt with the emitter first. The
kobun
had to get close for the weapon to be effective, so Avalon launched herself at him in a preemptive strike. He raised the emitter toward her head, intending to flood her skull with radiation, but Avalon blocked him with her prosthetic and forced his thumb down on the trigger. It discharged with a high-pitched whine, her artificial limb taking the brunt of the impact. Polymers and secondskin cooked into a noxious black smoke, neuralfiber relays fusing in a blossom of hot sparks. Avalon stuffed her melting hand into the
kobun
’s face, searing him down to the bone and blinding him.

The
kobun
released a horrible scream. Avalon clamped down on the emitter with her living hand, bringing it to bear just as the last
kobun
charged toward her. He wielded his
katana
like a spear, on a direct course to impale her—until Avalon hoisted the man already in her arms and dropped his body between them.

He fell limp as the sword ran him through.

The last
kobun
instantly realized his mistake and yanked his
katana
from the fresh corpse as it tumbled to the floor. In that split second, however, Avalon found an eternity to gain the advantage. She leveled the emitter at the
kobun
’s chest just as he poised himself for the killing stroke. He froze at the sight of it, sword perched above his head—no honor, no glory, just the shame of his own disgrace.

Avalon blasted his organs all over the table behind him.

The cries and whimpers of Yoshii Tagura’s guests started to rise with the smoke that choked the room. They were dazed, unable to process the fight until it was over—much like Tagura himself, who watched Avalon with dawning horror as she came back for him. She stopped long enough to pry the machine pistol from the dead gunman’s hands, her prosthetic still smoldering.

“Don’t see many of these,” Avalon said, ejecting the clip to check the loads. “Expanding gas rounds,” she added before slapping the magazine back in place, then loaded a round into the chamber. “Remarkable effect on the human body. Would you like to see for yourself?”

Tagura said nothing.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Avalon said, and pulverized his companions.

The girl who had serviced Tagura slumped across his lap again, but this time only half of her was there. Spilled champagne flowed into rivers of red, dripping from the sides of the table like some exotic cocktail—a graphic parallel to the Deathplay that poured from the virtual screens, unabated.

“Any more requests?” Avalon asked.

The noise and violence caused a stampede for the door, where the gangsters and the Teslas—anybody who was still alive—tried to claw their way out. The old Goth was also there, fumbling with his keys, his plastic fingers hopelessly searching for the right one. Avalon didn’t even bother with them consciously. Her sensors pinpointed every heartbeat, guiding her hand as she raised the weapon toward them. The entire time, she never turned away from Tagura.

“This could be the best rip of all,” she said and pulled the trigger.

A swarm of projectiles creased the air, exploding as they connected with tender skin. Avalon aimed with deadly precision, one round for each body, shredding each of them into a pulp. They fell almost all at once, a tangled mass of limbs and torsos piled high against the exit. Hiding among them, only the old Goth still lived. His respirator hammered away, breaking the ghastly silence and matching the shallow breaths drawn by Tagura himself—a synchronicity too precise to be coincidence.

Avalon put the gun down.

“Time to get down to business,” she said to Tagura, and moved in.

Tagura shook his head over and over again, mouthing a steady stream of free association as Avalon reached for him. She took him by the lapels, dragging him out from behind the table and slamming him against the wall. The fear behind his sculpted features was real, but corrupted—like a recording copied one too many times.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

He stammered before the word came out: “Nobody.”

Avalon nodded in agreement.

“I believe you,” she said.

And jammed her fingers into his eyes.

She drilled into his skull with repeated thrusts, finally piercing his brain cavity with a wet crack. He went limp, his hands slackening around her wrists as she rooted around inside his head, probing the sludge of his gray matter until she came across something that was neither bone nor tissue: a small metallic cylinder, entwined in the scrambled remains of his frontal lobe. Avalon scraped the object free, extracting it the same way she had gone in.

Avalon tossed the corpse aside.

She held the device up to the light, examining its tiny dimensions. It emitted pulses from an active neural link, microbursts that showed up on her sensors at fading intervals—terminating at a source in close proximity.

A proxy relay.

Remote control for the puppet that lay at her feet. A walking projection for a man with no physicality of his own.

Avalon crushed the thing under her heel.

The old Goth cried out as if stuck by a voodoo pin. In many ways, that was true. The proxy was his connection to a young man’s experience and lust, flesh for him to manipulate and exploit. Avalon walked over to find him weeping, trapped again in the worthless confines of his failing body. Of all the abominations in the Kirin, he was the worst.