The Beam: Season Two (53 page)

“Honestly, no.”
 

“Alexa knows talent. See, it’s extraordinarily rare. There are people who can achieve, and there are people who will succeed in what they do. But talent? True, unblunted, unadulterated raw
talent?
Talent flavored with ambition — real ambition that will stop at nothing? There are only a handful of those people in any city. I am one. Alexa is one. And you are one.”
 

Kai, flattered, felt her thin walls starting to tear. She leaned into Micah, now allowing her legs to slightly part. She wasn’t doing it consciously. It was her body’s way of inviting him in.
 

“I have to ask,” she said. “If you want me, why don’t you just book me? Here? At the spa?”
 

“Here, you are beholden to O.” He shook his head. “I want you beholden to
me.”
 

“Non-exclusively.”
 

Micah nodded. “Take as many clients as you wish, and do whatever you want. I only require that I’m the only client you may not refuse.”
 

“I wouldn’t refuse you here.” Kai wondered why she was trying to talk her way out of the job.

“You don’t do what I want here.”

Kai smiled a sly smile. “You’d be surprised.” And even Micah, with his real cigarettes, might be. O wasn’t one of the world’s most pioneering industries for nothing. O’s levels of simulation, neural interfacing, and AI-harnessing technologies were actually ahead of Xenia Labs’s — ahead, really, of everyone but Quark themselves. O had had access to The Beam before it was live. O had developed the Savatar program, which had paved the way for nanobot-downtuned nerve immersions. Alexa always said that O had one advantage few other industries ever had: while people felt they needed Beam chips for memory enhancement, their bodies needed what O offered even more — and were willing to pay greater sums to get it.
 

“I don’t want you for sex,” he said.

Kai looked up at Micah, disarmed, knocked across the chin, her every advantage suddenly gone. He’d delivered the knockout, and Kai was at the mercy of his punch.
 

“But that’s what I do,” she said.

“Intercourse is only one sexual function. As is everything involving the genitals. It’s the weakest expression of a powerful force — weak because there is almost no resistance. O knows that. The entire company is based around it.” He leaned forward. “Have you ever asked Alexa about the Savatar program, its origins, or what it
really
means?”
 

She shook her head. Savatar training involved sexual avatars and modeling behaviors. Kai had mastered every module, but it was simple because it was the kind of thing that only went so deep.
 

“Sex runs the world, Miss Dreyfus. It…”
 

“Kai.”

“Sex runs the world, Kai. You know this already. Sex led you to where you are. Without getting too metaphysical, sex is about the energies that course through the world and through the human soul. It’s about need and desire. Master it, and you can do anything. Life is about sex. Conversation and negotiation are about sex. Birth and death are about sex. You understand it even without understanding it, which is why I need you as much as I do. But I wouldn’t pollute our powerful relationship with what
you
think of as ‘sex.’ It would be like poking a leak in a hydraulic line. With enough pressure in the line, hydraulics can lift tremendous weights. But if the pressure is dissipated? Well, then you lose the power to generate force.”
 

“Specifics,” said Kai, waving a hand. Her head was starting to hurt. The man talked in riddles, just like a politician.

Micah paused then pulled a slim paper envelope from his pocket and set it on the table.
 

“What is this?” Kai asked, not touching the envelope.

“An assignment.”
 

“A sexual assignment?”
 

Another wolf’s grin. “Everything is about sex.”
 

“You want me to…find a person whose name is in that envelope?”
 

Micah nodded.
 

“And…what?”
 

“He’s been causing Ryan Industries some difficulty. Your job is to make that difficulty disappear.”
 

“How?”
 

“Permanently.”

After Micah fell silent and leaned back in his chair, Kai met his eyes for a long time. They stared at one another in the quiet room for ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty.
 

Finally Kai said, “You want me to kill him.”
 

“I want you to solve the problem.”
 

“By killing him.”
 

“In whatever way keeps the problem from recurring.”
 

“I can’t kill someone.”
 

Micah’s cigarette had burned to nothing on the table between them. He fished another from a loose, prototype-looking pack, stuck it between his lips, and lit it with a silver lighter that Kai couldn’t help but admire.
 

“Can’t you?”
 

Kai kept her gaze level.

Micah sat forward, elbows on knees. “You were beaten, so you killed the man who did it with a grenade. You were raped then found the man years later and handed him his larynx. You…”
 

“How do you know all of this?”
 

“Do you deny it?”
 

Slowly, she shook her head.
 

“Someone wronged you, and you evened the score. People stood in front of you, blocking your way, and you knocked them down. Plenty of people back away when that happens, Kai, but not people like us. Most people will be bullied throughout their lives, content to let others dictate their existences for them. But not you and me. We are our own masters. We demand our freedom. This is no different from the others you’ve killed in your past.”

“They deserved it.”

Micah nodded toward the envelope on the table. “As does he.”
 

“What did he do?”
 

“He got in the way of a man who was offering you everything you’ve ever wanted.”
 

Kai shook her head. “No.”
 

“You have to say that,” said Micah. “Several times, I imagine. So go ahead, and get it out of your system before reluctantly coming around. That’s one.”
 

“I won’t kill anyone.”

Micah took a puff. “Two.”

“I’m not for sale. I’m an escort, but I’m not a whore.”
 

To his credit, Micah didn’t laugh at Kai’s oft-quoted proclamation as many people did — typically, high-paying clients who demanded things from Kai rather than nicely requesting them. He nodded as if he understood, leaned back, and took another slow puff. His manner was maddening. Kai felt patronized, as if he knew better and was simply waiting for her to stop being silly.

“You’re not hearing me,” she said. But, Kai thought, was there really any wonder he didn’t believe her disinterest? She hadn’t stood and stalked indignantly out of the room. She was still here, still leaning back comfortably, still with her legs crossed, hands on the arms of her chair like a Mafia don.
 

“How old are you, Kai?”
 

“None of your fucking business.”
 

“I could guess, based on what I know. You are stunning, but I see experience in your eyes. Life has been hard on you, hasn’t it? I suppose most people think you’re early twenties, but that’s because most people of your clients’ stature don’t have access to the best age-defying nanotechnology.”
 

“My clients are the richest people in the world,” she said, smarting.

Micah laughed.
 

“You can do better?”
 

He was still leaning forward, his body language open. She felt her hands move into her lap, closing off.
 

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I have a majority stake in Xenia Labs, and I know better than just about anyone exactly where you’re standing. My information suggests that you’re at least forty, maybe fifty. To maintain your appearance, using our competition’s hijacked tech and non-nanotechnological treatments, must cost you a fortune. You told me that you might make 200,000 or 300,000 thousand credits a year, but I’m sure that’s optimistic — maybe 100,000 thousand if you’re lucky. You’re spending over half that to keep the clock from ticking forward, aren’t you? Without O paying your expenses and board, you’d barely survive.”
 

“That’s absurd.”
 

“It’s a fine line. If you can’t make what you need and have to cut down on your rejuvenation because then you’ll lose your ability to earn what you need. That will cause a need to cut down more. Of course you’ll make less. Because nobody wants to screw an old escort.”
 

Kai was a bundle of nerves. “Fuck you.”
 

“I’m offering you a way out of the downward cycle. Right now, I’d guess you’re on the lip of a vortex. One bad month, and you’ll tip down and won’t stop falling until you hit the bottom. Work for me, and the base stipend — not a Directorate dole but something you’ll be able to augment however you like — will set you up for the rest of your life. You’ll command higher fees for your extracurricular assignments, even outside of O, with
real
rejuvenation treatments. There are things out there you can’t imagine, Kai. You won’t have to give O a cut of your earnings. You’ll orbit in
my
circle — people who will make your current clients look like paupers.”
 

“I’m not going to kill anyone.”

Micah snickered and sat back in the chair. He took another puff from his diminishing cigarette. “That’s three times.”

She stared at him, furious. She wanted to hate him. She wanted, in fact, to leap across the small table and claw his eyes from their sockets. But everything he’d said was true, and even the thought of an end to her fear and self-imposed slavery felt like a giant rock lifted from her chest. If only she could get past the idea of killing. If she could just realize that she’d already killed people who’d had it coming. If she did that, she could have access to more credits than she’d ever earned through a lifetime of toil. If only he’d agree to a few guidelines, it might work.
Might.

“No kids,” she said.
 

“Is that a yes?”
 

“Nobody I know. Nobody who is, within a reasonable degree of obvious certainty, a victim. No one weak or who has otherwise done no harm.”
 

“You’re an awfully picky assassin.”

“No more than two a year. I don’t want information on them, other than who they are and where to find them. If I recognize someone you assign me, I walk, and you find someone else.”
 

“One bridge at a time.” Micah leaned forward and pushed the envelope an inch closer.
 

Kai looked at the envelope. “And I’ll only commit to one year.”

“Five.”
 

“Two.”
 

“Four. And don’t say ‘three.’ My final offer is
four.
”

“What happens after four years?”
 

“If you want to walk, you walk. But you won’t.”
 

Kai looked into Micah’s steely gray eyes then at the envelope. Four years wasn’t that long. He was wrong; she
would
walk. Four years was 4 million credits even without the sideline work. Kai was shrewd and used to living on next to nothing. The surplus, invested correctly, would feed her forever even if she let her rejuvenation slip and allowed herself to grow old.
 

But because his look was daring, Kai found herself saying, “Why won’t I walk after four years?”
 

“Because you won’t know until you’re one of us what you’ve been missing. And I know you because you’re like me. Once you see what you can have, you’ll want more.”
 

“More of what?”
 

“You’ve heard of the Beau Monde?”
 

Kai nodded. The rumored ultra-upper class, which no one talked about.

“Stay with me, and you will join it. I promise. And when that happens, you will have more than you could ever dream…and more than that, you will be onboard when the world changes.”
 

“Changes how?”
 

Micah took a final puff then snuffed his cigarette. He bent forward then rolled his eyes up to look at Kai. Again, he nudged the envelope forward.
 

“Four years,” she said. “No more.”
 

She reached for the envelope.
 

Micah watched her slide her finger under the flap, preparing to open it.
 

“We’ll see,” he said.

Chapter 2

Kai supposed she could have forced her way into Micah’s office after being denied (she’d gotten into Isaac’s apartment, after all), but even though the whole point was to convey dramatic effect, it seemed so rude to break and enter while the place was occupied. So instead she gripped his secretary’s blouse tighter at the neck, held her another inch in the air, and said, “Tell him I don’t
want
to wait.”