SIXTY-FIVE
Pierce stood in a hallway facing a closed door. Avery and Holly behind him. They were in an apartment block in one of the low-income quadrants. In theory, only work permit holders were licensed to occupy the units. In his rookie days, when he was JAA—just another agent, like the two behind him—he’d been to places like this enough times to know that a large percentage of wealthier Illegals found places inside the city. In situations like this, he wondered what it would have been like before thermal imaging and before technology made it possible to restrict firearms. He hoped he would still put himself in front, when a closed door would have ratcheted the tension exponentially, agents wondering what weaponry was waiting on the other side, how many people waiting and their positions in the room. When bursting into a room meant adrenaline-filled suspense before kicking the door down and instant decisions that determined life or death in the microseconds after.
Nothing like that now.
Pierce knew from thermal imaging that it was a one-room unit. Kitchen, bedroom, and living room all in an open floor plan.
Thermal imaging also showed one person inside. Small. On a bed. No objects in hand. Which meant no weapons.
Pierce even knew the kid’s identity. Theo. Via a tracking chip in the kid’s glasses, they’d had tabs on him since releasing him and Billy from the hospital. The two were rarely separated. But thermal didn’t show anyone else. So Billy wasn’t here. Something Pierce would deal with later.
Unlike pre-thermal days, they wouldn’t have to kick open the door either. The agent behind Pierce had just used a laser drill to silently take out the door lock. Wisps of smoke were all the warning that the kid inside would get.
Pierce nodded at his two agents, then pushed open the door.
Squeaky hinges.
The kid looked up, either at the noise or at the movement. It wasn’t Theo. Some other kid about the same size. Who didn’t seem too concerned about three strangers pushing their way into the apartment.
“Nice,” Pierce said. Meaning the opposite.
Pierce stepped inside, but waved the two agents back into the hallway.
The unit had about as much ambiance as a warehouse office. Just the bed. Plain table. Nothing on the walls.
Pierce saw Theo’s glasses sitting on the table. That’s where a tracking device had been imbedded. Since it was next to impossible to successfully send surveillance agents into a soovie park, they’d been relying on the glasses to track Theo’s movements and confirm the whereabouts of Billy and Theo when they wandered away from the agent mole inside the camp. When GPS had shown movement outside the park and back into the city, they’d picked up surveillance again. When Pierce had heard Billy was absent and there was no sign of Caitlyn, he’d decided to have a talk with Theo.
“Kid, you steal those glasses?” Pierce asked. He’d prefer that to be the answer. Pierce had gambled two things. That the kids from Appalachia were too new to this world to suspect a tracking device and that Theo needed the glasses almost as much as he needed oxygen.
“Razor gave them to me,” the kid answered.
Pierce didn’t have to give that much thought before asking his next question. “He told you to tell me that?”
“Yup.”
“What else?” Pierce asked in a resigned voice.
“It don’t make sense to me, but what he said is, if you want the flying girl, follow these directions to where you’re supposed to go and wait for Razor.”
In the crowded coffee shop, Pierce thought about how technology would always take second place to organics.
The last hundred years had gone from rotary dial to vidphone, dial-up Internet to broadnet, pirated movies to interactive pirate movies. But coffee beans were still coffee beans, and the satisfaction of taking that first sip of a dark, rich beverage was probably just as good now as it had been five hundred years earlier.
This was the place of Razor’s choice. Downtown core, near the Pavilion. Pierce anticipated that Razor had information to sell or negotiate, so Pierce had delayed getting here long enough to have agents set up in place for a quick swoop. Razor was going to lose a lot of leverage once he was in custody.
Pierce was halfway through the first cup of coffee when an Illegal sat down beside him. She was tarted up, and her profession was obvious. The days of pimps were long gone. Handlers were instead Enforcers who had the local power to decide when and where they could operate.
“First thing,” she said, leaning forward and setting her elbows on the table, “is I got something for you from Razor, and it’s going to cost you one hundred even. This is a cash transaction.”
Holly was across the coffee shop. Pretending to read an e-book. Pierce didn’t want to think what Holly would have to say about this later.
Pierce found a bank note. She held her hand out for it, nail polish as uneven as her penciled-in eyebrows.
Pierce extended the bank note but didn’t let go as she gripped it. With a quick twist of his wrist, he ripped it in half, leaving each of them with a portion.
“That’s cold,” she said. “You don’t trust me?”
“Payment on delivery.”
“First thing, then, you put your vidphone on the table. And leave it there.”
Pierce did.
“Now I check you out for wires. Best is in a bathroom. But I’m fine here too.”
Sure, Pierce was going to step into a bathroom with an Illegal dressed like her. With Holly watching.
“I’m not wired,” Pierce said.
“I trust you like you trust me.”
She reached under the table and ran her hands up and down his legs. Then she stood behind him, lifted his shirt. She reached around and ran her fingers up his belly and chest.
“Get a room,” Pierce heard someone say. It was Holly. The café laughter that followed was probably more enjoyable to her than it was to Pierce.
“Like I said, not wired,” Pierce told the Illegal. “Satisfied?”
“Usually that’s my question,” she said.
“Funny. Now what.”
“How do you take your coffee?” she asked.
“Black,” Pierce said.
“Good. Leave it for me. Across the street is public transport. Next high-speed to New York arrives in one minute. You get on it. Alone.”