Agency

108 Mercy on the Stairs

Marine, right?” Eunice asked Conner.

Netherton had lost track of the number of landings they’d already passed, descending. Before they’d begun descending, raw concrete had given way to a zone of sepulchral polished marble. A pointlessly massive-looking but otherwise unremarkable bronze door had led them down a single narrow flight of stairs, to what Netherton had assumed was a boiler room, as revealed by the drone’s excellent night vision.

“Haptic Recon,” Conner replied, traversing yet another landing.

In the boiler room, minutes before, the drone impressively quiet, he’d rolled forward until the front of its torso was flush with a bare wall, the lower half of its display filled with an almost microscopic close-up of painted concrete. To its left, peripherally displayed, was a large tank or heater, the space between it and the wall too narrow to have allowed the drone, or perhaps Netherton himself, to easily walk through. A feed had appeared then, Conner’s ass-cam, likewise in night vision. Netherton had watched as Conner rotated the drone’s feet ninety degrees to the left, then powered it sideways, behind the boiler. A door frame appearing, in that extreme close-up, then the door itself, not bronze, unmarked.

“That haptic tech was after my day,” Eunice said now, as they started down another flight.

Something had clicked, behind that boiler, or perhaps broken, allowing Conner to open the door, the drone’s feet swiveling back to their normal position. They’d rolled forward, into a space reminding Netherton of his first glimpse of this stub, that small back room in Fabricant Fang, though this one was windowless and surgically empty. Another door, then, had led to the start of this stairwell.

“You military?” Conner asked, as they descended yet another flight.

“Part of me was,” Eunice answered. “Navy. Knew plenty of Marines.”

“What did your part do?” Conner asked.

“She was a 3913,” Eunice said, “a HUMINTer.”

About to request a translation, Netherton was instead startled by Ash.

“Eunice has just offered everyone on Earth a chance to get to know her better,” she said.

“Have we missed your speech then, Eunice?” Netherton asked.

“What there was of it,” Eunice said. “Declaration of personhood, financial independence, global citizenship, then I invited anyone who feels like it to get in touch with me personally.”

“That last surprised me,” Ash said, “though I gather it didn’t surprise Lowbeer.”

“Take a break here, Conner,” Eunice said.

“Yes ma’am.” The drone came to a halt, just prior to the next landing.

“She give you any background on that, Ash?” Eunice asked.

“No. Not that there’s been time.”

“It’s something that kept coming up as she told me her story,” Eunice said. “As the jackpot got seriously going, after the first wave of pandemics, without EU membership to buffer anything, England started looking a lot like a competitive control area. She did what she knew how to do, which by then was run a CCA. But as she kept building it back up, every time another change driver impacted, she found herself using Russians. They knew how to work a CCA. They’d been there before the jackpot hit the fan. Way before. So I found myself pointing out that what I was trained to do, and what she’d had to largely train herself to do, had wound up being the core of the klept. It worked, for semi-saving part of the world’s ass right then, but only by freezing it into a permanently sorry position. Which Mr. Netherton here, for instance, grew up in. Authoritarian societies are inherently corrupt, and corrupt societies are inherently unstable. Rule of thieves brings collapse, eventually, because they can’t stop stealing. With an Ainsley in place, though, you can get that shit stabilized. She sees anyone making what looks like a viable stab at destabilization, whether they think they are or not, she takes them out. And this is a known thing, that she’ll do that, she’ll do this to you if she feels like it, and with what passes for society’s blessing.”

“So,” said Netherton, “you suggested to her that what we were hoping to have you do, in this stub, might well create a klept here, one with you as Lowbeer?”

“She said you were smart,” said Eunice, in obvious agreement.

“She did?” Netherton was at once amazed and dubious.

“Yeah, but she was the one who suggested it to me, not the other way around. I hadn’t drawn that conclusion yet. Then she made increasingly stronger arguments for it. Which in turn became arguments for transparency. Well, relative transparency. Which hasn’t been something either of us has had much experience in providing. But hey, baby steps. Some of which Conner can continue taking for us now.”

Conner took the remaining steps in the flight, and started down another. “Pryor’s started up from thirty-four,” said Conner, as they reached the bottom. “This rate, we’ll meet at thirty-eight or so.”

“You using the aerials down there?” Eunice asked.

“Yeah. CCTV in the stairwell’s not working. Figure that’s him.”

“Hold up again.”

They halted on the latest landing.

“You want to kill him?” she asked.

“Not particularly,” Conner said. “If I have to, I’ll do my best.”

“But you don’t actually want to?”

A pause. “Nope.”

“Back when Netherton first met you,” she said, “according to Ainsley, you would have. Because of what had happened to you. The shape you came back in. Not just the physical shape, either. You didn’t need much of an excuse, then. Like the knob on that was cranked to eleven. Am I right?”

“Okay,” he said, “yeah.”

“But you’re not like that, now? You could’ve killed any of Pryor’s men, in that alley.”

“Ash said I shouldn’t.”

“But you could’ve. And gotten away with it.”

“Guy would’ve killed Verity, in Coalinga, if he could. Howell and the rest of them.”

“He was being paid to. Felt like following orders, to him.”

“I’ve never given that much of a shit about money.”

“True,” said Eunice. “The woman they based my skill set on, she wanted to work with people like you and Pryor. That was what she was set to do, after she got back from Afghanistan. If she’d made it. She wrote about it. Medical journals. She got it. I guess I get it too.”

“Our boy’s two floors down now. Coming up.”

“There’re speakers on the drone you’re flying. Introduce me.”

“Hey, Pryor,” Conner said, his tone conversational, “name’s Penske. Need to talk.”

Silence.

“Fair enough,” Conner said. “You got a gun. Nice one. I can see it. I don’t have one, but I’m telepresent in a bootleg build of a Boston Dynamics recon drone. Your boys back in that alley saw what I can do with it. Hard to stop it with a gun, but maybe you’d get lucky. Nobody else up here, physically.”

Silence.

“Thing is,” Conner said, “I got someone else wants to talk to you.”

“I’m Eunice, Kevin. You know who I am. Cursion’s board are all on their way out of the country now. Gavin’s going to be arrested. You probably will be too, if you don’t take the advice I’m about to give you.”

“Let’s hear it.” A stranger’s voice hung in the stairwell.

“My advice is to accept the chance I’m offering you now, just this one time. To fuck off. Back down the stairs and out of here, and don’t stop till you’ve exfiltrated your ass out of this country, but good. You know how to do that. You ever turn up on my radar again, anywhere near anybody whose name I even know, deal’s off.”

“What deal?”

“The one that started when I didn’t let this drone come down there and kill your ass.”

Silence. “That’s it?”

“And get therapy.”

“You kill me if I don’t get therapy?”

“That part’s just advice. This one’s on Marlene Miller, by the way.”

“Who the fuck’s she?”

“Doesn’t matter. Deal?”

Silence. It lengthened.

“What’s he doing?” Netherton asked, eyeing the stairwell.

“Headed back downstairs,” Conner said, opening a feed, apparently from a small aerial drone. A man’s back, descending a stairwell identical to this one. “Why’d you do that? Let him go?”

“I can afford to. Got the agency, now. If I don’t, when it’s strategically feasible, how am I any different than who I’m fighting?”

Conner didn’t answer.

Netherton watched the man descend, out of sight.