Agency

103 Marlene

Someone was freeing Verity’s left wrist, someone else the other. They then moved in unison to the strap around her waist, then to her ankles. All in utter silence, but then she remembered the noise-protection muffs. Virgil, appearing above her, was still wearing his own, though not the balaclava. He bent to help her remove both, sound instantly returning. “You couldn’t pay me enough to do that again,” he said, “but I’ll bet there are plenty of people who’d pay to do it.”

Above her now, more blue tarp. They’d erected a tent up here, she realized, its fourth wall open, where they’d removed an entire panel of glass.

“Our guests just watched us get flown in,” Virgil said. “We’re putting a dummy in your place, to be carried out of here with the others, on the hammocks, part of the performance piece we’re pretending Caitlin’s doing. The lawyers think it’ll reduce the charges. We’ll slip you and Manuela out the side, and take you up to the Airstream.”

A young woman with a black crew cut knelt beside the hammock, unzipping a very large gray duffel. From it she pulled a life-sized rag doll, wearing a black balaclava over sound-muffs, jeans, and a tweed blazer with a black hoodie bunched beneath it. Virgil handed her her purse. “Put that over your shoulder,” he said. “We’re bringing your garment bag.” She did, then someone helped her into a hooded gray terry robe.

“Girl who untied me told me Caitlin’s pregnant,” said Manuela, from beneath the hood of her own gray robe. “I feel like I’m at a royal wedding.”

Virgil, having shed the top of his running outfit, was being helped into something equally black but more formal. “We’ll be with some security people, on the way upstairs. Drone has its own disguise, to cover up Conner’s rifle. This way,” and he waved them both out, through a vertical slit in the side wall of blue tarp.

They were immediately surrounded by three men and a woman, Verity recognizing them as freelancers Stets sometimes hired for large public events.

Looking up, she saw that all of the tarps covering the glass had been removed, making the space feel even larger. Glancing back, past Virgil’s shoulder, she saw the drone’s extended handle in a stranger’s hand, the drone itself draped in black, the camera unit extending from beneath a hood. It swung toward her, but the man pulling it was already headed in a different direction.

“Eunice?” Under her breath.

No reply.

She kept her head down, aware of moving through a crowd she couldn’t see, until they reached the foot of the zigzag stairs, up to the trailer, now concealed by graceful sweeping forms in gleaming white fabric, and then they were climbing.

At the top, she raised her head, to find Grim Tim blocking the trailer’s open door, in white evening shirt and a black tie, under a chrome-studded black leather jacket. Bowing slightly, with a click of his heels and a resulting facial jingle, he handed her a dirty chai, the paper cup stamped with 3.7-sigma’s logo. VERATITTY, she read on the side, in fluorescent pink paint pen.

“Good to see you,” she said, as he stepped back to admit her, Manuela and Virgil following. Over her shoulder, she saw the security team turn and start back down the stairs. “Stets or Caitlin up here?” she asked Virgil.

“They’re down on the floor, greeting people.”

“I feel like I’ve got pieces of bug in my hair,” Verity said. “Maybe between my teeth.”

“Shower,” said Virgil.

“They’ve got one?”

“Right here. Connected to the plumbing for the space, so you’ll never run out of hot. Carol!” A woman in black t-shirt and jeans emerged from the crowd, smiling. “Shower available?” he asked.

“Certainly is,” the woman said.

“Show Verity where it is. And have the stylist find something for her.”

“Will do,” the woman said, and soon Verity was in the Airstream’s coffin-narrow matte-white shower, sluicing off bug parts and road dust, whether imagined or not. Very hot, the pressure steady through a complicated showerhead. When she’d rinsed her hair, she turned off the water, stepped out, and put the gray robe back on. After toweling her hair and face, she retrieved the glasses and put them on.

A feed opened.

Panoramic, the POV speeding across a rocky khaki plain, under intensely blue sky. Whitish tire tracks stretched ahead, the image juddering with the movement of the unseen vehicle. Distant mountains, darker than the plain. Black husks she guessed were burnt tires, like big three-dimensional commas.

“Eunice?” Something exploded, silently, ahead and to the left, whiting out a windshield she hadn’t known was there. The feed closed. “What was that?”

Her. Navy Chief Marlene Miller.

“Marlene?”

Miller. I’m built on her skill set.

“You’re… her?”

I’m me. Her personality, near as I can tell, wasn’t that much like mine. They were trying to upload her military skill set, not her persona. She enlisted in 2000, did two Bahrain deployments, four in Iraq, three in Afghanistan. SEAL teams did shorter deployments then, a few months at a time. UNISS project got going in 2015. She volunteered for that between Iraq, which was where she saw Inception, and Afghan deployment. Her favorite movie, so that was where I got that from. It’s in the transcription of an interview she did for the project, at the Naval Postgraduate School.

“And you think that video’s the last thing she saw?”

Can’t prove it, but she died near Marjah. Afghanistan. An IED. Those mountains are near Marjah. I got a video match for them.

“How long have you known?”

Ash gave me the documentation. Read it all simultaneously, multitasking. Just now.

“Where did they get it?”

Conner’s stub.

“How do you feel?”

A pause.

Lots.

A single light rap on the door. “Verity?” It was Carol, the assistant who’d shown her the shower. “Ready to try a few things on?”

You need something to wear.

“You okay?” Carol asked.

Get dressed. We’ll talk after.