A Memory in the Black (The New Aeneid Cycle) (8 page)

Michael nodded and wondered
if there was more between Marc and Marette Clarion than he was saying. Though they were friends, Michael didn't feel comfortable posing the question.

Besides, there were more immediate things to worry about.
"If ESA's looking for you, do you really think it's wise to stay here?" He glanced around again. The shades were drawn. The door remained locked.

"ESA doesn't know where I live. The records are falsified
. They think I'm from Portland. That'll buy me at least a little time. And I need to stay here where I can work on Holes and maybe do some good for the cause. From the intelligence we have, the ESA'll try to make it look random like with Nick. Poor kid."

Michael bristled.
Despite the training and responsibility he was entrusted with, he still felt young. Marc was near thirty, and at twenty-two, Michael wasn't much older than the "kid" to whom Marc was referring.

"I've also got Holes tied in to the building security and camera
s," Marc continued. "He knows what the tenants look like and can alert us if something unusual's going on."

"So you're most vulnerable when you're not here."

"Yeah."

"Another reason not to go looking for Diomedes."

Marc heaved a sigh as he stood up. "I can't say I wouldn't feel safer holed up here. But. . ." He trailed off and headed for the kitchen. "You want something to eat?"

A cr
ashing smack of metal sounded outside and Marc cursed, throwing himself to the carpet in an instant. Michael's hand was on the auto-pistol in his shoulder holster without thinking about it. It sounded like a car had hit something, but he dashed to the blinds to check.

"Shit, what was that?" Marc asked, flat on the carpet.
"Holes?"

"A white sedan has impacted the side of a sports car, Mr. Triton," the A.I. answered.

Michael looked out between the blinds to find the scene that Holes described. "It's right. Doesn't look too bad, but we'd better call 911 just in case."

Visibly sweating, Marc crawled to a sitting position against the wall beside the kitchen doorway.
"Take care of it please, Holes," he murmured.

"Please specify your reference to
'it,' Mr. Triton."

"
Call 911!" Marc swallowed and calmed. "For the accident, I mean. Make it anonymous. Please."

T
he A.I. acknowledged, and Michael walked over to his comrade and crouched down. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Marc nodded
. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just a little tense. First time an international organization's tried to kill me." He gave a weak smile.

Michael returned a smile of his own, unsure of what to say to comfort someone older than he was.
He sat there as Marc got up and continued to the kitchen. Marc had done his job and his duty for the AoA. He went to the Moon, risked his life multiple times, and now his life was in danger again because of it. And it was his own duty to protect him, Michael reminded himself—to protect Marc, not to protect himself.

With a swell of honor, Michael realized that he would hate himself for doing any less.
He was making excuses not to go after Diomedes and trying to pass them off as wisdom. His issues were his own. His commitment to the AoA would not suffer for them.

"So
, assuming you're up for finding Diomedes," Michael said finally, "let's do it."

Marc stopped
in the kitchen doorway and turned. "Holes, get Abigail Brittan for us again, please. Coded link."

Their search continued.

Felix returned from Caitlin's kitchen with a half-full glass of water to stand behind her chair. She sat, one foot tucked under her, searching the screen of her laptop. Felix watched her silently for a moment and took a sip. The screen displayed six-month-old news features. She chose one, shook her head, and then went back to choose another.

Felix took another drink
, this time holding the glass to his lips so that his voice burbled through the water. "Ahnd now," he whispered in a mangled French accent, "vee join zee intrehpeed Caitlin Danae een her undahr-sea search forr zee eeloosive projects ahv zee great white Mees Ondrea No-bel."

Caitlin
turned, one eyebrow raised. "Oh, dear. Gone daft, have you, ducks?"

"What makes you say that?"
Felix burbled.

The corners of her mouth turned up in a barely unhidden smile.
She caressed her fingertips along his cheek and down to his knuckles on the glass. Then she grinned like a pixie and tipped it to dump its contents over his chin.

"Hey!"
He laughed. "Not a Jacques Cousteau fan, are you?"

"I f
ear I don't even know who he is. Frenchman?"

He nodded, fruitlessly trying to dry his shirt.
"Twentieth century oceanographer. Did a lot of narrating."

She leaned back
to smirk with one elbow behind her on the desk. "You're charming when you make references nobody gets."

"Charming enough to get me soaked, it would seem. Look at this!
Nothing
gets water out!" he joked before rubbing her shoulders. "You're going to pay for that."

She tur
ned back around. The screen reflected her subtle grin. "Oh, I'm quite certain."

He continued
the massage a little longer, still smiling. As tempting as it might be to distract her further, he'd feel bad for taking her away from the search. Then again, she was relaxing a bit. Was he ascribing more distress to her about their search for answers about Gideon than she felt? Maybe he was treading too lightly.

Caitlin sighed
.

"What's wrong?"

"We're really not making much progress, are we?"

"Searching?"
He sat down beside her. "Well. No. But you've had a real job taking up your time and I've, well, I've just been unlucky."

"You've done alright
. I don't know that I'd call riding horses a 'job' when I enjoy it so much. I should have passed."

"
Movie opportunities don't come up often, Caitlin. You know you'd have kicked yourself later for turning it down."

"We might know more now if I hadn't taken those few days, Felix," she said,
staring at the screen. She was kicking herself now, too, it seemed.

"Maybe. But you
are new to this stunt rider thing. Like you said, you have to take it when it comes. And we've turned up a little."

"Not much."

"Some."

The first thing they had done was t
ry to verify Gideon's death. Caitlin had already kept an eye on his body in the days immediately after Diomedes shot him. At the time, Gideon had been buried and his next of kin notified, though identities were kept confidential as normal. She never knew his full name, but there was only one body found at the site he'd been shot that night, and it wasn't difficult to be sure it was his.

Just to be safe,
in the past week they'd double-checked her findings and gotten the same results. There was no extra evidence that Gideon was dead, but nothing to show that he wasn't. Again, the severity of his wounds made it hard to believe otherwise. If Caitlin hadn't been the one to see him last week, Felix wouldn't have believed it.

As for Ondrea Noble,
they had managed to turn up a few things around Marquand. One of Ondrea's first projects there involved helping to develop cyberware utility upgrades. Since then, they'd moved her to something in biotech. According to a gem that Caitlin overheard while tailing a Marquand employee on lunch, Ondrea spent a great deal of time in the biotech labs recently.

Yet further information had
eluded them. Even Noble's home address seemed out of reach and, to their observation (which Felix had to admit wasn't constant), she'd not even left the Marquand building at all. They'd yet to see her, at the very least.

And so they sat, for the moment, sifting through old news reports and looking for a needle in a haystack until they could think of another plan.
Felix had a favorite saying about needles and haystacks, but he'd already used it on Caitlin last week.

"Are you searching for stuff on Gideon, or Ondrea?"

"Ondrea." Caitlin shifted in the chair to switch the leg crossed beneath her. "Crikey, I'm starting to think we should just track her down and talk to her personally."

"Wait, wait, wait
. You mean just come right out and ask her what she's up to? No snooping? No research? No deceptive midnight alley-crouching?"

"Well," she put with growing appraisal, "why not?"

"But—I mean. . . that's so boring!"

She turned,
one eyebrow raised again.

"You're
so dull," he teased, not without irony.

Her grin showed itself a moment.
"This is assuming we can get in to see her. You may get to be devious after all."

"Ooh, how about clever?
Can I be clever? I've heard it's less fattening."

"You're a strange one, ducks."
She stood. "Shall we be off, then?"

The tiny neon sign outside the place read "The Flaming Pyre," but its regular patrons just called it "The 'Pyre." By and large, it was a freelancer bar, close enough to the Corporate District to attract the ones who swore fealty to a particular company, yet far away enough to draw the unaffiliated guns for hire. The latter were freelancers in the true sense of the word, Michael supposed, but the term extended to anyone, affiliated or not, in the unofficial caste of modern knights.

Knights
, Michael mused. There must be a better word.
Knights
conjured thoughts of honor. Of valor. Of nobility. Michael had once bought into that dream.
Freelancer
had been a glorious label he'd put on his own dreams of making a positive contribution to the world before he found that few freelancers bothered with such ideals.

Michael
glanced about the area as they approached the building. No one seemed particularly dangerous or out of the ordinary, much like the exterior of the building itself. The glowing orange sign was the only thing remarkable about the outside. Grey, windowless concrete, dirtier for the cloudy, late-morning daylight, hid the interior of the place. There was little to catch the eye or draw customers inside. It was just one of those places that everyone knew.

"I've never been in there before," Marc told him, wary.

"It's better inside. Or different, anyway. I haven't been in here since I left Diomedes."

"That's a while.
Maybe he doesn't come here anymore?"

"He comes here," Michael
said. "He's not one to change."

"He changed his phone number."

"Well, not most stuff, I guess." He took hold of the heavy door, pulled it open for Marc, and gave the street another glance for any trouble.

"Windows or not,
I'm glad we're here in the daylight." Marc stood at the open door for a moment, and then entered.

"It's not too bad," Michael told him when the door closed behind them.
He recalled the first time Diomedes allowed Michael to join them here, and the warnings Diomedes had given him. "Usually they'll leave you alone here if you leave them alone. Just try not to make eye contact with anyone unless you're prepared for them to hassle you. Try to use your peripheral vision if you—" He stopped as Marc turned back to listen. "I guess that visor of yours'll be good for that."

"That's what I'm
hoping."

"You don't take that off much, do you?"

He shrugged and tapped the book-sized computer at his hip. "Makes it easier to use the hip rig without drawing attention. Plus it's just, I don't know, comfortable."

"Come to think of it, Felix wore sunglasses in here when I first met him. I wonder if the bartender remembers me."
Michael led the way toward the bar at the center of the room.

The late-morning crowd was sparse, and though conversations in the place had always seemed muted unless there was about to be a fight, it
felt quieter now. Most were drinking alone. What talk there was got drowned out by the white noise of the metal rock that was as pervasive as the brown-orange light that dominated the establishment. The bar was one of the few spots in the place where a bit of white light shone. Portioned out by a few fluorescents tucked away in the rafters, it barely managed to cut through the rest.

The two men each took a stool and waited to
catch the attention of the bartender, who seemed content to take his time pouring something for a sullen man on the other side.

D
aylight swelled from the entrance as the door swung open and a man and woman strode in wearing leisure street armor tagged with Aegis Security insignia. Michael gave them a sidelong glance and noted the stun grenades and auto-pistols at their belts. They looked over the area briefly and then made for a table.

Marc heaved a sigh.
"Guns make me nervous when there
isn't
someone out to kill me."

"Relax," Michael
whispered. "If anything, you're safer in here. Diomedes told me people here don't like to have their drinks interrupted by gunfire. I saw a brawl once. No one much cared until one of 'em pulled out a gun and I guess at least a dozen guys drew on him until he holstered it."

"Yeah, I figure no one likes a ricochet
. Good news, I suppose. Hopefully ESA won't come at me with a crowbar."

Michael
expected he could probably handle a crowbar, but the bartender approached before he could say so.

"What can I getcha?"

"Yeah, um, a pint of whatever's on tap," Michael ordered, guessing it was probably better to do that before asking for information.

Michael took the opportunity while Marc ordered to glance
at the two freelancers who'd come in. Something familiar struck him. Was that? It was. They were in the booth he and Diomedes had shared in the last night he'd been here. It was there that his old mentor had first dubbed Michael a freelancer and allowed him to join him on a job. Then so much had happened in the few days that followed.

His eyes had been opened.

The bartender returned with the drinks and broke Michael from his reverie. He took a little time rummaging for his wallet to pay in order to stall while he tried to think of just what to say to the man. He put the cash down on the counter, plus an excessive tip. "Keep the change."

The bartender scooped it off the bar
with barely a glance. "Who're you lookin' for?"

"How do
you know we're looking for someone?"

The man shrugged.
"Cause I ain't blind, and I ain't stupid. That's the kinda tip that either says yer lookin' for someone or ya broke somethin'." He glanced at Marc. "And I been wrong before, but you don't quite look in a breakin' mood."

Alright.
"We're looking for Diomedes. I know he used to come here a lot. Any sign of him lately?"

"Diomedes?"
The man said the name as if it meant nothing, with an expression and shrug to match.

"Don't know him?" Michael asked, doubtful.

"Why, he famous?"

Struggling to
not scowl, Michael changed his approach. "I don't suppose you remember me? I used to come here with him sometimes."

The bartender sized him up.
Marc sipped his beer and turned to look behind him while Michael waited.

The bartender stood a bit taller to look down on him.
"Yeah, I think I do at that. You ain't been here in a while, huh?"

"So you do know him."

"Lots of freelancers come in here, kid. Freelancers got enemies. I start tellin' every punk that asks about one of 'em, pretty soon I either got no business or a slug in my gut." He wiped the counter absently. "Ain't seen Diomedes in a week or so. Maybe more. I don't keep count."

"Think you can do me a favor and get a message to him
if he comes in?"

He scowled.
"I ain't a bulletin board here, kid."

Michael scowled back this time.
"Kid?"

Marc slid some more cash across the bar at the man.
"It's just a message."

The bartender sucked his teeth, watching them a moment,
and then took the money. "A
short
message."