The Beam: Season Three (47 page)

“I doubt that.”
 

“Really, Alexa? How do you know I haven’t told all
my
friends that I’m in touch with one of the world’s most famous recluses?”

There was a beat, then Alexa gave a small, tension-breaking chuckle. Of course that wasn’t an issue. Micah’s lips were drum tight, and more importantly, Micah didn’t have friends. But that didn’t mean the connection couldn’t be made — especially by people with elevated means, like Rachel and Alexa’s cohorts on Panel. And if a current member of Panel was known to have colluded with a candidate meant to fill a murdered woman’s seat in the mysterious group? Well, what might
that
mean for the candidate’s chances of joining the group — or, perhaps, either of their chances of staying alive?

“It’s worth the risk,” Alexa finally said.
 

“So does this mean you still want me to have her go ahead?” Micah asked. “To have Kai do what Rachel wants her to do?” But he was just mouthing the words, realizing he didn’t have an opinion either way. Both options — kill or don’t — seemed terrible.
 

“Getting rid of Rachel is also what
we
want, Micah.”
 

“You don’t know my mother. If she’s allowing this to happen, that means it won’t turn out the way you think it will. She’s hiding something. There’s — ”

“I’ve known your mother for nearly as long as you’ve been alive,” Alexa interrupted, her manner short. “I know her plenty. Enough to know she’s always planning five contingencies deep. Sometimes, she wants people to dance for her, and sometimes she
doesn’t
want them to dance at all but knows they won’t dance on their own because they’ll sense her pulling the strings. It’s a case of us not knowing that she knows that we know she knows.”
 

“That doesn’t make sense.”
 

“Kind of the point,” Alexa said. “The truth is we can only guess. Maybe she’s finally tired enough to die and wants to go out with a bang. Maybe she wants us both caught. Or maybe she just wants us to
think
we’ll get caught and not even try — which is why she told Kai what she was up to, so that Kai would run back to you and make you second-guess everything. Or it could be a level deeper, and she really
does
want Kai to kill her but wants you conflicted about it. Or one level deeper than
that
, where she wants — ”
 

“I get the idea,” Micah said, rubbing his forehead. And yes, that sounded like his mother. Every time they’d ever negotiated anything, he’d felt like they were playing a strategy game that Rachel had a blueprint for while Micah wasn’t even allowed to see the board. It was a wrecking ball to his confidence.

“So to my point, we move ahead,” Alexa said. “There’s no way to know what she has up her sleeve, so either choice might be wrong, and there’s no point in wondering. And we do have an ace, remember.”
 

“What’s that?”
 

“I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know I’m helping you.”
 

“That protects you. It doesn’t protect me at all.”
 

“You’re her son, Micah. You’ll be fine.”
 

“She’s my mother, and I’m planning to kill her,” Micah blurted. For some reason, Alexa wasn’t getting the irony.
 

“Kai is the best choice for this. She’s the most intuitive person I’ve known since Chloe Shaw herself. The cards are on the table at this point, so we might as well play them out. Go to the event. Send Kai. Send her as…” Alexa paused, seeming to stumble on an obstacle. “What about Costa? He’s with you now, right?”
 

“As much as he could be.”
 

“Then send Kai as his date. People will assume she’s an escort.”
 

“She
is
an escort.”
 

“Even better.”
 

“And my big act? I’ll be out of pocket for most of the event, onstage with Jameson Gray. I won’t be able to keep an eye on her.”
 

“Of all people, Kai doesn’t need anyone keeping an eye on her. She has an understanding with you and now another with Rachel. Tell Kai you don’t trust Rachel’s intentions, then let her do what she does best: feel things out and decide on her own. Your goals align with Kai’s. She wants Beau Monde. You want Panel. Both are served the same way. Whatever moves her up moves you up, too. Whatever hurts her chances hurts yours.”
 

Micah sighed. He wanted to sit, but that felt like letting his mother win.
 

“All right,” he said. “But I don’t like it. And I don’t like how my neck is on the line.”
 

“I’m taking plenty of risks, Micah. Not to be insulting, but there’s a lot going on this Shift that’s above your pay grade.”

“Fine. I’ll go, and I’ll send Kai with Nicolai Costa. I’ll have to trust her.”
 

“She’s worth trust. And Micah? There’s something else about Kai. Something you keep failing to take into consideration.”
 

“What’s that?”
 

“You’re the closest thing to family she’s got.”

Micah supposed Alexa’s pat statement was meant to imply love or at least loyalty, but it was a hard connection to make in the Ryan family, where children killed to climb and parents ate their young.

“Let Kai do her job,” Alexa said. “You focus on yours.”

“Smiling for the cameras.”

Alexa corrected him. “Smiling for the cameras and being a gracious loser. Putting on a good show. And making loose ends go away.”
 

“And doing Jameson’s little magic act,” Micah said.
 

He could almost hear Alexa nod. “That’s what I said.”

Chapter Six

“I’m not supposed to show you this,” Kai told Nicolai.
 

He trailed behind her, not intending to watch Kai’s swaying hips but not bothering to turn away either, now that he was back here. She was wearing a tan skirt that was modest by city standards, stopping an inch or two shy of her knee. But Kai managed to make even modest look sexy, just by being Kai.
 

“Naughty,” Nicolai said.
 

Kai paused to let him catch up, giving him a look. Recently, they’d been entirely out of sync. When she’d been eager for some personal attention, he’d been distracted. When he’d been interested (like now), they found themselves somewhere inappropriate. At those times, to twist the knife, Kai looked at him like he was a degenerate. As if sex wasn’t what she lived and breathed — as if he were the one off center.
 

“Walk up with me,” she told him. “Stop making me feel like I’m having to drag you.”
 

“You are dragging me.”
 

Kai took his hand. And proceeded to drag him until his pace matched hers.
 

“This is important.”

“If it’s so important,” Nicolai said, “just tell me.”
 

Kai didn’t bother to respond. They’d been through this a few times already. Nicolai felt worse than squeezed on time; he felt bled dry. He had more errands now than he’d ever had as Isaac’s lackey. The irony was he didn’t technically work for anyone. He was pre-Enterprise, acting the part a few illegal days in advance of truly joining the party. He couldn’t earn money as Enterprise yet, but he could stick his head out the metaphorical window, enjoying the breeze of a wild car ride. He was a free agent in all but official designation, and for a change, it was nice to be owned by no one.
 

And yet he was on Sam Dial’s errand. Sam wanted Nicolai to insert a crowbar at Braemon’s event and pry out damning evidence against the tiered system for Sam to publish later. But that was its own nested set of obligations. As much as he found himself liking the scattered, Beamsick young reporter, Nicolai hadn’t climbed to where he was by trusting the plans of others. So that was on his list, too: investigate Craig Braemon, investigate Sam Dial…and, curiously, poke at the edges of a Beam legend called “Shadow” who popped up in every corner Sam had sent him to.
 

And of course, Nicolai was on Micah’s errand as well.
 

Before he’d more than cracked the seal on Sam’s investigation, Micah had heaped even more atop him. If Sam was a puzzle, then Micah was a puzzle
inside a puzzle
. Micah gave Nicolai no shortage of intentions and ulterior motives to pick at. Figuring out where he sat inside Micah’s grand scheme was even harder than fitting into Sam’s. Fitting into them both at once seemed impossible.
 

And lastly, there was Kate to consider. Kate — who was still impossibly Doc in Nicolai’s mind — wanted yet a
third
thing, not quite what Sam wanted and likely the diametric opposite of Micah’s desire…though maybe not opposite at all, which made things more confusing.

And now there was this thing with Kai. She had something she absolutely needed to show him, and they had to cross District Zero to Little Harajuku to see it. Right now. Without explanation.
 

But out of Sam, Micah, Doc/Kate, and Kai, his choice of which ally to believe and follow was simple.
 

“Will you at least tell me where we’re going?”
 

Kai still had his hand. Instead of answering, she pulled him into a narrow alley. The weather in Little Harajuku was as controlled as the rest of the NAU, but the air felt too clammy. Buildings on either side of the alley were original New York structures, retrofitted inside not by the city itself, but by the hackers who called this place home. Brick walls were slick with moss and moisture that had collected on their cool surfaces — evidence, Nicolai thought, of the fact that weather experimentation was well within the domain of those who built their subversive wares here.
 

Kai stopped halfway down the alleyway. Both ends were stacked with garbage cans. A single lamp glowed overhead with what looked like a decades-old LED bulb. They’d replace that bulb with something contemporary when it burned out, but the things lasted forever.
 

Kai looked to one side of the alley then the other. They were alone, and the air was cool and quiet.
 

“We’re going to visit Ryu,” she said.
 

“Who’s Ryu?”
 

“Doc’s man. The dealer’s dealer.”
 

“Shit. I
thought
I recognized the name. Please tell me we’re just going to walk through his front door.” But Nicolai didn’t think so. Ryu was an underground legend. People talked about Ryu the way they talked about the second coming of Noah West and the Tooth Fairy, except that Ryu was unquestionably real. Rumors surrounding the legendary ghetto innovator sounded like childhood fears of the boogeyman: Ryu arrives at dark, blinds and deafens you, then takes you back to his lair. Even Nicolai’s stolid disposition, here in the dark alley at dusk, prickled at the thought.
 

“I didn’t want to say his name before. I’m sorry. I feel like Micah is judging every little thing I say. You know he has a truth detector?”
 

“Not for you, though,” Nicolai said. “You can lie to him. You of all people.”
 

Kai nodded. “Maybe. But lies only stretch so far. He’s hooked into City Surveillance. This is the only part of the city that isn’t watched.”
 

“Convenient,” Nicolai said.
 

“It’s an informal contract. Labs like Xenia need places like this. The high-end labs have funding, but people like Ryu have incentive and guile. Places like Little Harajuku are permitted to exist. The bots and drones all look away.”
 

There was the sound of something falling at one end of the alley. Nicolai looked over and saw three black figures dressed in long cloaks. He flinched the other way but saw three more in that direction, closing slowly.
 

Nicolai’s lips pressed into a bloodless line. “Dammit, Kai. We’ve already done this, haven’t we?”

“This time, they’re friends.”
 

Nicolai watched the figures approach. His dashboard lit up, showing him the heat in Kai’s skin and the pulse in her neck.
Friends
indeed. She was as nervous as he was.
 

“This is important.” She swallowed, rushing. “The other thing I didn’t tell you was that I met with Rachel Ryan.”
 

“Why?”

Kai didn’t flinch. “Micah wants her dead.”
 

“What? And you’re — ?”
 

“She
wants
me to do it, Nicolai. But only at the Violet James fundraiser tomorrow. And she showed me something. Something Micah doesn’t know.”

“What?”
 

“It’s what I need to show you. Why we’re here.”
 

The cloaked figures were taking their time. Now that they were closer at each end, Micah could see their faces but couldn’t make out any details. One of them was wearing strange eyewear — something that looked like 1900s aviator goggles, but stuck with tubes and wires to turn it into something alien. This last man was taller than the rest, massive through the torso, and completely bald.