We fled the aquapolis in Fujiko’s own ostentatious personal mini-sub—me in the pilot’s seat, her behind my back, training my gun on me and patiently explaining how to sneak past the perimeter alarms. Finally she sat back on the red silk cushions lining that absurd gilt cockpit and watched me through her sore and swollen eyes. The last lights of the underwater city had barely vanished into the murk when I saw that she had passed out. She slept for days after that, while I kept her hydrated and hidden.
What would grow into the only friendship of my adult life began this way, as commerce. She knew better than to leave an anonymous assassin like me alive with her in that cockpit, and I knew better than to leave any living witnesses to my work—but somehow the exchange of services between us had created just enough of a bond that, against both our better judgments, we each neglected to kill the other when it was done.
She told me to call her Kat Mandu, though that was not her name, nor would I ever know enough about her to identify her. Thanks to a regime of prenatal nootropic drugs, she’d been born precocious in the arts of nodespace. Programming languages had come more quickly and easily to her than human speech, and by adolescence she’d cultivated a genius best kept hidden: to the Norpak syndicates, or Medusa Clan, or any other organized power in this world, she was a commodity of warfare. She wouldn’t tell me how long she’d spent imprisoned in the dim chambers of Fujiko’s lair, performing whatever feats of sabotage or espionage were demanded of her, spending her every free second looking for weaknesses in the virtual cage that bound her.
We boarded separate transports out of Sydney, expecting never to see each other again, but Kat never truly left my side. She had appointed herself my guardian angel. She provided me with intelligence, rendered me invisible to the security systems of my targets, fed misinformation to anyone who tried to track me. I split my earnings with her, though she didn’t seem to care either way. She became the only person I ever spoke to. I remember nights when, whispering to the ghost of her in the dark muggy spaces in which I’ve always traveled, she seemed like the only person I had ever really known.
If I remember anything at all, I remember my final job for Dahlia. In my mind I am still there. For the rest of my life, however long it lasts, I’m afraid I’ll never be able to close my eyes without finding myself back there in Antarka, trudging through the frozen mud under the unmoving south polar sun. They’re welcoming me into the main dome, never doubting that I’m just another hauler on his way to somewhere else—and then I’m gazing out over the people in that structure as they chat and drink, while Dahlia’s garbled voice whispers serenely in my ear:
“You’re in position, yes?”
“Affirm,” I say quietly to the bug in my coat. “I’ve positively identified the technologists and the location of their stockpile and equipment. All the targets are in a single isolated structure. The rest of the settlement is purely civilian. Security is minimal. I’ll make it quick.”
“Hmm. No. I’m afraid that just won’t do.”
I wait for several seconds, but she doesn’t elaborate. “What are your orders?”
Dahlia’s voice affects a perversely childlike innocence to say, “These recent threats of war. The skirmishes around Hawai’i. You want them to end before they escalate any further, don’t you?”
Two customers laugh and order another round. A father comforts his screaming toddler.
“Yes,” I say.
“As do I. But someone in that chilly little settlement has not understood our wishes for peace. Someone there believes they’re free to sell first-strike Gray weapons to our enemies in Norpak. That speaks to a deeper problem, don’t you agree? It means we have not been nearly clear enough in expressing our wishes. We have allowed grave misunderstandings to take root and spread contagiously.” She pauses. “Eliminate this confusion. Completely.”
I swallow. “Completely.”
“Do we understand each other?”
“The . . . entire settlement?”
“Men, women, children, animals. No survivors.”
I blink slowly. “No survivors.”
“Will there be a problem?”
I allow one chill breath to enter and exit my lungs. I look around the room.
“No problems,” I say.
The static in my ear cuts out.
There’s a logic to it all. I would ordinarily wait until nightfall, but the sun here won’t set for weeks. Instead I memorize the map Kat sent me, complete with human heat signatures. The main dome is too crowded to take at once, so I nest behind the chemical drums ten meters from the entrance, picking off up to three heads at a time. With the noise of nearby machinery masking the pop of flash-boiled blood, I find it’s optimally possible to kill three in a row before any can escape to warn others. If more than three leave at once, I let them, making a mental note of where they go. Every shot must be a clean beam to the head. After each finished set, I rush to drag the bodies out of sight behind the lip of dirty snow surrounding the dome. By the end I count eighteen. I re-enter the dome and finish the last six. This brings the total to twenty-four.
I visit the other, smaller buildings in turn. I find one man opening boxes in the storage room, then two women fixing the communications array I sabotaged on my way in. Nine people, total, in their residences, where contact between me and them becomes increasingly difficult to avoid. I enter a man’s kitchen as he’s lifting a pot from a hot plate, and we make eye contact through the steam. To avoid making noise, I motion for him to set the pot back down and move away from any stacked dishes. He complies. The thud as his
