The Beam: Season Two (55 page)

Kai thought. It most certainly had never been easy. Her standard of living had improved without question, but other girls had always reached up from below, determined to drag her down. She lost many former friends — women who apparently believed that misery loved company — and had gained too many enemies. Some had shown their faces, but most had stayed in shadows.
 

“People like you and me will always want more,” Micah said. “It’s not a bad thing, and you can never let anyone tell you it is. Selfishness drives the world,
pushes
it forward. If people weren’t selfishly seeking more for themselves, we’d all settle into a Directorate mentality, content to plug in and immerse, watching vidstreams on The Beam, growing fat and stupid. You want for nothing; you have everything. But that doesn’t move society.
Our
initiative creates wealth and innovations. The slobs behind us will always want what we have once they see it, even though they’ve done nothing to prompt its birth. It’s a persistent human problem with only one solution.”
 

“Hide it.”

Micah nodded. “Hide it. Keep it a secret. Why not? It’s treasure to keep. We made it. We earned it. We built it. We’re not hoarding; we’re merely keeping what’s ours — and what others don’t deserve to take from us.”

“You promised,” said Kai, “but you didn’t deliver. Instead, you kept it all hidden. From
me
.”
 

Now that they were talking, Kai couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice. He’d lured her into this life for twenty years using the carrot of the so-called Beau Monde, and most recently he’d dangled the same promise if she’d kill a man she considered a friend. Two weeks of conversation with Nicolai about his own past — about what had been hidden from
him
— hadn’t made her like Micah’s motives any more. On the contrary, it had strengthened her conviction that there were puppet masters on top of the world, pulling strings and making everyone dance. The idea didn’t bother Kai in and of itself. It was the truth that she’d been living as a puppet rather than a puppeteer that rankled her.

“It’s not that simple,” Micah said. “I couldn’t tell you all the details of what was waiting for you because once you knew and simultaneously knew that you couldn’t have it yet, it would’ve set you off like…well, like you’re set off right now. I can’t just give you Beau Monde status. It’s not a certain number of credits or a checkbox on a form. There are procedures — even a modification that must be made to your Beam ID.”
 

“Modifications to my ID? What, like a membership card?”
 

“In a way. You’ll find that once you have that status, more doors will automatically open. Both literally and figuratively.”
 

“So do what needs to be done. Hook me up.”
 

“I can’t.”
 

“You son of a bitch.” Kai shook her head, barely holding her temper. There was more here. He wouldn’t have told her all of this just to yank it away. “I’ve earned this. Twenty goddamned years. I promised you four and gave you twenty, and still you hold out on me.”
 

“I
can’t
, Kai.”
 

“I taught my canvas a neat trick,” she said. “I can point the AI at a name, and it’ll spit a figure back at me. Wanna see? Watch, it’ll tell me just how much any given person’s death benefitted Ryan Industries.”
 

“Kai…”
 

“Let’s set aside just how incriminating my bit of software might be because obviously I would never tell anyone. Well.
Never
is an extreme word.” She gave Micah a look. “But let me share some of what I’ve learned. The obvious starting point is a man whose name I once found on paper, inside an envelope. I remember the way that paper burned, but I’ve never forgotten the name, same as I’ve never forgotten how the light left Bertrand Bernard’s eyes after I broke his neck. I broke my code of self-enforced blindness about my targets, too, as soon as I got home. I found I needed to know about this man you’d so badly wanted out of the picture. Landholder in Alaska, above the Arctic Circle. Somehow, Ryan Industries inherited the land after he died.
And
the resources under the melted ice.”
 

“Don’t threaten…”
 

Kai held up a finger, stopping him.
 

“I’m not threatening. I’m just sharing data. The way my AI figures it, Ryan Industries is something like 90 billion credits richer today as a result of having acquired the unfortunate Mr. Bernard’s land.”
 

Micah’s expression hardened.
 

“There was a woman named Yvette Delafleur in District Two, where Xenia Labs has a manufacturing facility. A ruthless bitch. Part of an organized crime group called ‘Mephisto.’ A company under Mephisto’s protection called Biovette — maybe tied to the organization itself — manufactured many of the same add-ons as Xenia. Xenia’s labs were sabotaged. Its people were killed. Fortunately, Mephisto activities — including the less savory aspects of Biovette’s competitive practice — dissipated once Yvette was found murdered. Due to that slice of fortune, Xenia was able to dominate the market in Districts Two and Seventeen. The numbers on this one are predictive and far from certain, but it seems likely that Delafleur’s life — once ended — benefitted Ryan Industries to the tune of nearly 114 billion credits.”
 

“Kai…”
 

“It’s fascinating,” she continued, meeting and challenging Micah’s glare. “Any one of dozens of names; they all spit such large credits figures.”
 

“It’s not that simple,” said Micah.
 

“Oh yes, it is. You’ve paid me just under 50 million credits in the time we’ve worked together. With conservative calculations, I figure I’ve earned or saved you at least twenty thousand times that.”

“You’ve been fantastic. And maybe you deserve a significant bonus.”

Kai shook her head slowly. “I don’t want a bonus. I want to be Beau Monde. As promised.”
 

“Oh, is that all?” Micah laughed, but the laugh died on his lips as he looked at Kai’s unblinking face.
 

“It’s not all, as a matter of fact,” Kai said. “You owe even more to someone else.”
 

Micah’s head cocked.
 

“Your cornerstone products were built on a technology that was given to you, gift wrapped. By Nicolai Costa.”
 

“I’m working with Nicolai already.”

“I’m not talking about working with him. I’m talking about Beau Monde,” Kai said. “For me. For him. We built your company. You owe us both.”
 

“What do you care about Nicolai?”
 

Kai smiled without mirth. “We aren’t all eternally selfish, Micah.”
 

Micah met her eyes. “I told you, I can’t just flip a switch.”
 

“You’d replace me instead? Because I’ve had it. It’s this, or I walk. Kill me if you must.” She paused. “If you can.”

“You’re not hearing me. I’m not refusing. I’m telling you that I
can’t
. It’s invite only. You have to be invited into the Beau Monde.”
 

“Invite me then.” Again, Kai corrected herself.
“Us.”
 

“It’s not up to me.”
 

“Share my results with the people who decide. Tell them about Nicolai and what you took from him. What you
hid
from him.”
 

“How do you know about that?”
 

“He’s a client.”
 

“Just
a client?”
 

Kai shook her head. “I’ll walk, Micah. I’m tired of being your toy.” Then she thought of something. “I’ll get Nicolai to walk, too.”
 

“What makes you think I still need him?”
 

“I know you. I know how you think. I know that while things look tidy and coincidental, they never are. You’ve been grooming Nicolai for years. Letting Isaac warm him up so that one day you could step in. I can’t know for sure, but I’d bet my substantial-but-still-not-enough Ryan Industries earnings that if he and I left — or were eliminated by my successor — you’d hurt plenty.”
 

Micah looked at the ceiling then spread his arms. To his credit, he looked honestly uncertain. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Tell me you’ll talk to…to whoever.”

“Nobody knows where the invites come from. It’s guarded. Top down. You’ve got to understand: You may be the first person who’s ever been in a position to demand entry. Nobody is knocking at our doors because nobody knows what Beau Monde really is. The term shows up here and there, but only as rumor. The ranting of nerds with tinfoil hats. When invites come, they are a surprise. There’s no one to petition.”
 

“But you have a guess. You think you know.”
 

Micah’s eyes flicked to the left. A light lit in her field of vision, but long before she’d had her visual add-ons, Kai had learned to read people.

“I…”
 

“Don’t bother going on. Whatever you’re about to say to me, it’s a lie.”
 

He met her gaze for real.
 

“Fine,” he said. “I don’t know why you — and Nicolai, for that matter — haven’t been invited already. It’s why I made the promise I did, all those years ago. I was sure it was only a matter of a few years before you were called up yourself, especially once you came under my wing. And while it’s true that I don’t know how to get you in, I do know that there’s one and only one thing between me and finding your answer. I can’t promise to get you an invite…but if you do one more job, I can at least find out where the invites come from, and maybe what’s been stopping yours.”

Kai felt her head cock to the side, almost of its own accord. “What job?”
 

Micah seemed to consider something weighty, as if he was having trouble saying what he needed to say — or as if he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to break the seal on some ancient secret.
 

He took a breath. Then he said, “Kill Rachel Ryan.”

Chapter 3

Dominic entered the DZPD station feeling like shit was being thrown at him.
 

He was keyed up, sweating emergency thoughts about how to get some Lunis into the mountains before the junkies ran dry. His mind was heavy with plots (as chief, he had access to all of the narcotics evidence, but how would he get nano trackers past the sensors?) and with justifications. He had to do this, but it was another example of “right” trumping “legal.” That particular justification felt as worn as an ancient shoe, but that didn’t stop it from sounding good (or at least
less bad
) in Dominic’s ears. It didn’t matter how the Organas became hooked or how they’d managed their supply over the years — through a kingpin that Dominic had allowed to traffic under the department’s nose or through Dominic directly. It only mattered that an entire village of granola-crunchers was about to crash hard all at once. When that happened, they might stop crunching granola and crunch skulls instead. It would cause deaths, fighting, and damage. It would cause more problems for the police. Right or wrong, maybe the best thing to do was to break the law one more time as the lesser of evils.
 

And besides, the police couldn’t handle any more problems right now without breaking. The station’s chaos wasn’t confined to its files and forms; it had spilled into the air itself. Officers bustled with grim little lines for lips, their manners simultaneously important and tragic. The big room crackled with chatter, the offices shut with detectives on their connections, pacing like caged animals as they talked and gestured. Dominic saw new maps projected on the situation wall along with smaller maps on smaller walls. Each had officers drawing on them with their fingers.

The main map showed glowing dots of every color, many pulsing like infected wounds. Dominic didn’t need to walk closer to know what each color meant. Red spots were riots; he’d made that designation himself. The city had three riot spots, two large and one small. Two of them were dormant, where officers were on-site, patrolling on foot, in car, and on hoverskippers, supervising cleanup. One pulsed, indicating a riot in progress. That seemed to be the rule. One riot at a time, then any malcontents that weren’t arrested would go elsewhere for trouble. The police squads couldn’t snatch them all. They grabbed a few of the worst instigators each time and tossed them behind bars, but they couldn’t hold them long, and Dominic got the feeling that rioters returned to where they would be most disruptive, almost for spite.
 

But of course, red wasn’t the map’s only color. He’d have to look at the key to know them all, but Dominic could peg a few of the codes by memory. Blue was homicide. Pink meant domestic disturbances. Yellow was armed robbery. All the colors of the feel-bad rainbow.
 

“Mason!” Dominic snapped, catching sight of a pitted-faced man in his fifties. Officer Mason was overweight, like Dominic, but shockingly lithe. He’d taken down several suspects fleeing on foot after hopping fences and eluding dogs. His nickname around the station was “Sparky.”