I don’t move, don’t blink.
Premonitions. Yonni was into premonitions. She was into dreams, too—would sometimes accept or refuse clients by them. A dream’s the reason she first went out with Missa, who became her last lover, the only one where “love” applied. After Missa, there was never anyone else.
Have you ever had a moment, where without any evidence whatsoever, you just knew?
This man could happily kill me at breakfast, then forget I existed by lunch.
I relax into my seat. Whatever happens here won’t give anyone nightmares, least of all him. “Accounts? Like money? Looking for a loan?”
The man doesn’t move. “Did your mother mention it?”
“A loan? From me? She worked at the Archive. She probably made more than you.”
His eyebrow lifts. A pale bow over shallow sockets, the perfect, unstated, wanna bet? But his voice remains neutral. “Tell me about the Accounting.”
“I think it has to do with numbers, but you know, I dropped out of school.”
He smiles. A twisted snake of a thing that bites my gut. The hairs on my neck try to scramble for safety, but safety isn’t what this is about.
“Ms. Franks,” he says, moderate, relaxed. “I am certain I don’t need to remind you of the severity of your situation.”
I smile right back. “That assumes the situation trumps the people involved. ‘Beware no one more than yourself, for we carry our worst enemies within.’”
Yonni always hated it when I quoted Gilken at her.
The suit doesn’t even blink. “You’re saying you are your own worst enemy, Ms. Franks?”
“I’m saying I’m scarier than you.”
He doesn’t move a muscle—the patient, professional Adult.
Until his mouth opens, and his voice dips into I-will-skin-you territory. “I very much doubt it.”
This is almost fun. “I don’t.”
He leans forward at speed, his presence a near physical weight. I want to hunch over, curl up, slam a dozen doors between me and him.
I set my jaw and don’t.
“There are other methods to ensure cooperation,” he says.
And likely none of them are quick. This is not a man who gets nightmares.
What the hell am I doing?
I cross my arms. “Mom took off when I was eight.” True. “She only walked into my life a month back.” Also true, for a given value of truth. “What do you think I know?”
The room seems to shift with each word. The question was stupid, but the truth is a disaster. He owns the field now. It’s in his eyes, in the prickled bite under my skin.
“Why don’t we do a mind map and find out?” he says.
My jaw drops.
Mind maps involve steel chairs and wires and jacking with one’s head. Long needles, maybe drills. It was all over the newsfeeds last year, the debate over continued experimentation—if the minimal-at-best information garnered was worth leaving the subject a drooling puppet. The universal consensus was no.
“It’s illegal,” I say.
“It’s regulated,” he counters. “I’ll have the room set up in an hour.”
A room. I mouth the word, roll the o’s on my tongue. They squiggle and bounce and solve everything. I laugh, rocking my chair back on its legs.
Drooling puppet. Not my first choice, but good as any.
I lean forward, slam my palms on the table, and mirror his dead-eyed stare. “Okay, then. Map me.”
His eyes flash. Shock? Anger? Less than a second and more than enough. He wants something, which means he has something to lose.
I don’t.
Match, set, game.
He rises without a word. Steps to the wall, does the palm bit, and slips through.
I stretch and lock my hands behind my head.
I won’t even have to do anything. They’ll take care of it all for me. No one will have to find the body and mop me up. No one will see me and think Mom.
“Ms. Franks?” My earlier escort appears. “If you would follow me.”
I hop up and march.
Her steps are brisk but less demanding than before. She doesn’t take my arm or match my pace or wait for me. She scans her palm at the end of the hall, and the door opens to . . . the lobby? Big desk, bored sentry, mirror self-propagating eternities.
“So the mapping’s in another facility?” I ask.
The woman doesn’t slow down. She glides across the mirrors and opens the skinny door beside the revolving one. She waits, expressionless, as I step through.
“Where to?” I ask.
“Your choice, Ms. Franks,” she says and shuts the door.
They were supposed to map me.
I push out onto the rooftop of the Gilken Museum with enough force that the door rebounds off the wall. No one’s bothered to change the entry codes yet, and if they had I’d pop the locks. The museum isn’t highly secure or populated midmorning or even in general. No one saw me slip in. No one was around. No one is ever around. I used to borrow one of the inventory digislates with general network access, then slip up here to research. It started with Yonni’s meds, finding her new ones, then after—