Agency

92 Tennessee Street

Where’s Verity?” Netherton asked Rainey, as he settled on the couch, the controller in his hands.

“In what someone I haven’t yet met called a ‘business class doghouse,’” she said. She was dressed to go out, coat on, gloves in hand. “Ash just showed me clips of the feed from Verity’s glasses. It looked Japanese.”

“Oakland? On top of Fang’s building?”

“San Francisco, in an alley. Conner’s outside, on top, keeping watch.”

“Who are you meeting?” he asked.

“Mia Blum.”

“Work?”

“No,” she said, “but since I’m on sick leave, it doesn’t hurt to stay caught up.”

“Sick leave?”

“Cross-continual nuclear anxiety,” she said, putting on her gloves. “Keep an ear out for Thomas. Don’t get up.” She blew him a kiss. “Don’t keep Verity waiting. She has a lot on her plate, from what Ash was telling me.”

She went out, her ability to relax with a friend over coffee, regardless of what might be going on, still surprising him. He put on the controller, settled it, and turned it on.

To fly suddenly across an indistinct surface, seemingly inches away, then up and out, the feed a simple frame, not the drone’s display format, over a night street, its architecture semi-industrial, modestly urban.

“Relax,” said Conner, Netherton having made an inadvertent sound of alarm, “I’m your pilot.”

“Of what?” Imagining the drone, its arms extended, as antique cartoon superhero.

“Little quadcopter. Ash had four built, for Eunice.”

“Where are we?”

“Tennessee Street,” Conner said, “other end of the alley.”

They slowed, hovered. Netherton saw a single palm tree, behind a steel mesh fence. The cam’s point of view dipped, rose again, and rotated slightly, to speed on in another direction, quickly arriving at an intersection.

“Figure they think she’s in the cube?” Conner asked, the frame zooming in on two men, standing together on the corner.

“Verity?”

“Montoya. Girl who’d been following Verity before. Virgil sent someone to collect her, have her brought here.”

“Why would these two follow her?”

“Assuming they’re Cursion, because Ash hired her, by coincidence, after they did. She and Verity live near each other, so the app assigned the nearest partner available. She was in the lobby of that hotel, working for us. They noticed. Maybe they think she was a plant to begin with. Probably they’re just spooked by what they can see of us. Looks weird to them.”

“Because it fucking is,” said Verity, startling Netherton, who’d forgotten she could hear them. “Whether they can see it or not.”

A nondescript white van pulled up. The two men got in.

“Doesn’t seem a very sophisticated operation,” Netherton said, as the van drove out of sight.

“Probably those two aren’t,” said Conner, “but Pryor, who hired them, he’s professional. Cursion are scam artists. They knew enough to steal her from the Department of Defense, and keep it from looking like they had, but not enough to play a game like this. Think they’re spooks. Lowbeer and Ash keep getting into Cursion’s comms, but they haven’t been able to get into Pryor’s.”

“Will you follow them?”

“Network’s on it. Here they are.” A scooter with a black-helmeted rider rounded the corner, then sped up, in the direction the car had taken.

“You and Verity can talk,” Conner said, toggling the feed from the aerial drone to one Netherton recognized as Verity’s glasses. She was looking at a younger woman, who seemed to be seated close beside her, as if on the floor.

“Hello, Verity,” Netherton said. “Who’s this?”

“Manuela,” Verity said. “She can’t hear you.”

“What’s happening?” asked the girl.

“Talking with Wilf,” Verity said to her. “On these glasses.”

The girl leaned closer. Looking at Verity’s glasses. “He’s on the roof?”

“In London,” Verity said.

“How long do we have to be here?” the girl asked, looking around.

“I don’t know,” Verity said.

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

“We’ve got that covered.” Verity leaned forward to use the top of the low wooden table for support, as she got to her feet, stepping over to the wood-and-paper screens and sliding them aside. Everything seemed identical to the cube atop Fang’s. “Flushes itself when you stand up.”

“Thanks.” The girl stood, her longish green coat bunched around her.

“Want to hang your parka?” Verity asked.

“I’m good.” The girl slid the screens shut behind her and Verity stepped back.

“She doesn’t know why she’s here,” Netherton said.

“Bet she doesn’t want to be, either.” She looked up at the glowing ceiling.

“Will you try to explain it to her?” he asked.

She closed her eyes. Opened them. “The future, all that? Maybe Rainey could—”

“Raining?” asked the girl, from behind the paper screens.

“My wife’s name,” Netherton said, “Rainey,” then remembered she couldn’t hear him.

He heard the toilet flush.

“Guess the fake piss didn’t fool ’em,” Conner said.

“Who?” Netherton asked, confused.

“Our gentleman callers. Their van’s coming back.”

Then Netherton was atop the cube, with that handily distorted circular point of view. The drone raised its right arm, pointing with a manipulator. Beyond it, in the lower, thicker half of the display, cars of the era passed on the street nearest them. The arm swung sideways, still extended, to the right, swiveling entirely backward, so that the view down it was now in the upper, narrower half, showing the alley behind them. “If I had a rifle, huh? But Ash wants this quiet, nonlethal if possible, but mainly no police presence.”

“Not the rules in Coalinga,” Verity said, surprising Netherton again.

“We weren’t in the middle of San Francisco. Your fingerprints are all over this container, if I kill somebody. Not that that means I won’t have to.”