I hold my breath. Waiting for what’s next.
He lowers the gun. I slide into a sitting position against the door of the freezer, then pee myself a little when the raptor slams into it from the other side. The door shudders but stays secure.
“Why didn’t you let me shoot it?” he asks.
I consider telling him the truth, but know that won’t be good enough for him, so I say, “CDC said capture and contain.”
He nods. “CDC is a bunch of idiots if they think that’s the safest way to handle that.”
“Well, government, what can you do?”
Grayson strides over and offers me his hand. I stare at it for a second. Mena said something about hands. I take it. His grip is tight. Too tight, like he’s trying to make a point. But I let him pull me to my feet. We stare each other down before he says, “That was a sick move, flipping up like that.”
“Thanks.”
“How many more of those things are there?”
I stoop to pick up the gun I dropped, then cross to Ruby, and over my shoulder say, “One.” Pick up the drone and set it on the stainless-steel countertop, and find that one of its rotors is busted, both of its bulbous lenses cracked. One of the googly eyes is missing. I click the button on the side, thinking if I turn it off and turn it on again, it’ll come back to life, but it doesn’t.
“Nik,” I say, pressing my ear.
“Yeah.”
“Ruby down there with you?”
“Not that I can tell.”
I thought maybe it would start spouting out of the computer system. I guess not. I poke at the drone a little more, feeling a dip in my stomach. I hated this thing.
Always talking to me. Always by my side.
Hated it.
“Still nothing on video,” Nik says. “I’m flying blind down here.”
“So if there’s one more of these things out there, what’s the plan?” Grayson asks.
I force down the lump in my throat, which I don’t even know why it’s there. Because what a stupid thing to be upset about. A goofy little robot that I liked to throw my boot at. What is even the point of being upset? It’s a flying smartphone.
“We uh…”
I breathe deep. “Last one was downstairs. We get down there and we contain that one too.”
“How do you propose we do that?” he asks.
“We’re going to be clever.”
He walks to a large plastic bin of the mixed nuts we put out on the bar, dips his hand in, and sticks a big helping of it in his mouth. “I’m coming with.”
“You’re staying here.”
“You going to stop me?”
“Why do you want to help me?” I ask.
“I’m not helping you,” he says. Then he steps to the sink and pours himself a glass of water, which he downs most of, and I can hear his throat working as he swallows. “I’m here to protect my boss and end the threat. You’re all alone right now. It would be crazy to turn away an extra set of hands.”
“No one ever said I was smart.”
He comes to my side and checks his gun. Seems satisfied with the state of it. “Let’s go.”
The cameras are out. I could kill you right now. Who’s to say you didn’t attack me? I could scare up a pretty reasonable case of self-defense. No one would ever have to know. Maybe that’s the smartest thing I could do right now. Protect myself from what’s coming.
My hand tightens around the gun.
And he sees something in my eyes, because he takes a little step back.
But then I hear Mena’s voice again.
End suffering.
“You can come with me,” I tell him. “But I don’t want you shooting. There are a lot of thin walls in this place. I will not tolerate someone catching a bullet. This isn’t going to be easy but we are going to do our best, okay?”
He thinks about it for a long moment.
Then he nods. “Okay.”
I don’t believe him. But what choice do I have?
* * *
—
We move slow, flanking each other, listening for the sound of the third and final raptor. Far as I know, it’s still in the bowels of the hotel, but no sense in getting cocky now.
“So what’s your plan if your boss wins?” I ask, my voice low. “You aiming for my job?”
Grayson doesn’t respond for a second, and I think that maybe he doesn’t feel like chatting, but then he says, “Not exactly.”
“Way I hear it, I’m not even sure he can afford it.”
Grayson gives me a sharp eyebrow. “Don’t believe everything you read in the news. That Forbes thing? He beat the owner in golf a few months ago and the guy lost his shit. Said he’d get him back. How do you hurt someone like Teller?”
“Take away their Confederate flag bedspread?”
“Make them look weak,” Grayson says, ignoring the jab. “Money is a construct anyway. It’s all meaningless. What matters is influence. And Teller has more of that than anyone on the board.”
“Right,” I say. Wanting it to sound slightly unimpressed, because I want him to talk more. And nothing makes a tough guy want to talk more than a woman who is not impressed.
“I guess it doesn’t matter,” he says, his voice dripping with condescension. “Everyone thinks you’re a nut anyway so I’ll just tell you. This is his retirement plan.”
“I thought it was a money pit,” I tell him.
He laughs. “Oh, Teller doesn’t care about that. He’s done with the game. He’s going to pick a place somewhere in the past, retire there. Somewhere that his money goes a little further. Someplace that he feels a little more…comfortable.”
The way he leans on the word makes me ask, “What? Jim Crow era?”
“Far enough back that it predates America being a shit show,” Grayson says.
“You can’t just move to the past, you know. There are rules.”
Grayson shrugs. “Not if he owns the place. By this time tomorrow, he’s going to be your boss. Trust me, if I were you, I’d be a little nicer.”
“You’re a bagman. Why would I trust you?”
“Because, like I said, the real measure here is influence. I just wish Drucker would stop playing her fucking games.”
That pings my radar. “What games are those?”
“We all know the government isn’t going to sell to the Saudis, or to Smith. Putting American technology into the hands of a foreign power was never going to happen. And no one trusts Smith, not with the way Axon does business. This is a horse race between us and Davis, and frankly I think Drucker brought in the others to drive up the price.”
Drucker again. Though I’m slightly less interested in her all of a sudden. “Why is Kolten toxic? Aside from the obvious, what’s so wrong with Axon?” I ask.
“Where do we start,” he says. “Privacy issues, the way they dodge government regulation, the way they influence political campaigns. Not to mention that literally the entire government stores its information in their cloud services. Give them this place, give them access to all of time? May as well just put them in charge. The United States of Axon.”
All government information is stored in their cloud servers.
Does that include the Jabberwocky data?
“Whatever,” Grayson says. “Let Drucker play her games. When she gears up her run for president and comes to us looking for help, we’ll just remind her of all this.”