The Beam: Season Two (30 page)

There was a trilling noise as his new canvas’s connection picked up an incoming call, routed from his handheld. He didn’t want to accept video since the apartment was still empty of furniture, so he told the canvas to put it on the closest speaker.
 

“Doc,” said a familiar voice. It came from the wall itself, somehow projected sufficient to fool Doc’s senses into believing Omar was standing in front of him.
 

“Hey,” said Doc.

“I’ve got a job for you.”

“Upgrades?”
 

Omar hesitated. “Something dicier, from our other line of work. Something that pays very well.”
 

Doc looked around the pool room then out at the city.
 

Never again would he starve. Never again would he have to worry. And never —
never
— again would he need to do anything to earn money that would risk his return to prison.
 

“Those doors are closed, Omar,” he told the disembodied voice. “Forever. I am what I am right now. And for once, I want to stay here.”

Chapter 2

Kate looked down at Levy’s body, the crack of his ass visible with his pants unbuttoned and halfway down. Her surprise quickly surrendered to a sense of gravity, and all the deflecting, joking tendencies that comprised her usual defense mechanisms departed. She was alone. There was no longer anyone to laugh with or at, and without that, nothing here was remotely funny.
 

If she’d let Levy do what he’d wanted, she might have gotten away without arrest (but probably without the Lunis stored in her shuttle; instinct said Levy would want it to sell himself), but even if she’d resisted, she’d only have been looking at ten years or so. Ten years in a Flat prison would be bad — she’d sworn she’d never, ever return — but this was miles deeper. Murder was a life crime. They didn’t even send you to Respero for murder most of the time because it was a bigger punishment to let you live. And because Doc Stahl had invested in significant personal maintenance upgrades that the specialist hadn’t removed during the refurb, Kate was built to last. Life in prison meant an eternity of suffering for someone like that.

She was locked in a room, stark naked, with a dead man at her feet. She was going back to the Flat for sure — maybe even Flat 4 in the middle of the consolidated Great Lake, where Michigan used to be — and would stay there for a very, very long time.
 

Kate looked down. This time, she wasn’t turned on by her new body. This time, she was spectacularly aware of just how much
other
people seemed to be turned on by it. If she didn’t figure out how to get out of here, the desirability of that body would end up being a significant detriment in prison once she was thrown into a world of hardcore criminals without protection, separation, or guards.
 

“Fuck.”

Kate’s first thought was that she had no choice but surrender. Not only was she in a closed room; she was
on the motherfucking moon
. There was one and only one lunar elevator, and it wasn’t the kind of thing you could sneak your shuttle onto. She could find a conventional rocket-based transport, but they were phenomenally expensive and didn’t launch without drawing attention. Her shuttle’s tanks were spent and couldn’t provide the thrust required to escape even the moon’s paltry gravity, so she’d have to dock to a booster — and even then she’d need to get landing clearance on Earth unless she wanted to take her chances crashing into an ocean.
 

But as loud as that first logical sequence of thoughts was, another force spoke much more loudly inside her. It was instinct. Right now, instinct sounded like a trapped beast screaming in her head: the defensive roar of a mother lion defending her young. Kate was
not
going to go back to prison.
She was never going back
. There were female-only Flats, and there were lower-level prisons with cells and guards for minor crimes. But this wasn’t a minor crime. This was murder. Or rather, it was
murder of a
federal official
. Whatever prison she ended up in wouldn’t be one of the safer ones.
 

There was a small girl inside Kate’s skin (or maybe it was still a little boy?) that her instinct was desperate to protect.
 

A stern voice spoke inside her:
I am never returning to prison.
 

But how the hell was she going to get out of it?

First, get dressed.

Kate hurriedly pulled on everything she’d tossed aside, unable to avoid sneering at Levy’s corpse. She was glad he was dead. Kate had been through too much to be forced into some asshole’s blackmail. She was better than that. She’d
earned
more than that. She’d clawed her way to the top, fighting hard for her whole life. She’d never been given anything. Everything she’d ever had, she’d gotten for herself. She’d been tortured, ordered killed,
actually
killed in a way (thanks to the realism of Isaac Ryan’s immersion rigs), and forced to flee after being transformed into an entirely unrecognizable person. She deserved some goddamned respect, and fuck Levy for getting in her way.
 

Pants. Shirt. Shoes.
She dragged each item on in a trance, following her internal voice’s instructions like a map of an unfamiliar territory.

Her hair had fallen out of its ponytail, so, unable to find the band, she tied it into a messy knot. Then, without even meaning to, she hauled back and kicked Levy’s body hard in the side. The impact sent a shock of pain to her ankle. Blood leaped from Levy’s face and spattered the wall. Her shoe and pants remained blessedly clean.
 

After the surprising flash of anger passed, she looked down at her leg. That had been stupid. She shouldn’t have touched the body.
 

Why the hell not?
 

And really, the stern voice was right. Kate was on the hook for murder, and evidence linking her to the crime wasn’t exactly the main problem at this point.

Or was it?

She stopped, looking around the room. Then she looked at Levy.
 

He was going to fuck you, then let you go. He’d
have
to let you go. He couldn’t double-cross you and take it back, or you’d tell on him at trial. You’d have genetic evidence against him, and they’d listen to you after that “sextortion” scandal stink last year. So if he was going to let you go free to avoid that sticky issue, there had to be a way he was planning erase all that evidence.
 

Kate was still looking at the body.
 

Erase all that evidence.
 

The specialist had explained that the refurb mRNA that carried her new Beam ID throughout every cell in her body was equipped with a self-destruct mechanism. Her skin cells and hair follicles, once detached from her body, faded to blank within minutes. If she could get out of the room, there would be no conclusive forensic evidence linking Kate to the murder. There would be plenty of technological evidence, but Levy would have thought of that, wouldn’t he? Because he couldn’t screw the smugglers without having a way to hold up his end of the bargain with them.
 

Kate reached into Levy’s pocket and pulled out his handheld. She rubbed her hand briskly over its back, giving her palm add-on the signal it required to release the stem nanobots. She used her fingernail to draw a line to the device’s auxiliary port, following the procedure the specialist and Kai had shown her for using the only illegal upgrade she had — the only one likely to remain undetected in a normal scan.
 

The screen glowed a dull yellow. That was her signal that the stem bots had entered the handheld, had begun to reprogram it, and were waiting for her vocal command.
 

“I need a voice replication app.”
 

The screen cycled and scrambled as the bots began to improvise and adapt. Kai had told Kate, from her own experience, that the bots would usually download apps from The Beam and modify them, stirring their own creations as if making soup and erasing all of their own footprints.
 

The handheld’s screen changed so that it was glowing with a single, large green button. Text on the button read,
Press to scan.

“Scan what?”
 

The screen changed to show an arrow pointing roughly in Levy’s direction then became the button again.
 

Kate held the handheld in front of Levy’s throat then pressed the button. A red scan line traced across the man’s neck, and then the screen changed again. Now it read,
Force exhale.

“How the fuck do I do that?”
 

The screen became a series of graphics. It looked like a CPR demo.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”
 

The screen changed back to the button, this time reading,
Press to re-scan.
 

Kate knelt then put her lips to Levy’s. He was still plenty warm, but already too cool for a human. She fought a cringe, pinched his decimated and bloody nose, then blew into his mouth. His chest rose. Then, still holding his nose, she used her other hand to thumb the handheld’s button while she sat on his chest to force the air back out.
 

“The tragedy is that I know you’re enjoying this,” Kate told Levy.
 

The handheld chirped. The screen read,
Ready for translation.

She stood and said, “What now?”
 

Levy’s voice returned from the handheld: “What now?”
 

Kate flinched. Then, staring at the thing as if it had bitten her, said, “Canvas.”
 

The handheld, in Levy’s voice, echoed, “Canvas.”
 

The room’s connection answered with a chirp.

“Remove all records of detainee Kate Rigby.”
 

A pleasant female voice answered, “Was the passenger detained in error?”
 

“Yes. It was a misunderstanding.”
 

“I show three concealed compartments on the shuttle belonging to this detainee, currently in Bay 12, spotlighted now.”
 

“Shut off spotlighting.” In the room, Kate shrugged to nobody.
 

“I do not understand,” said the canvas.

Kate didn’t think the idea of a confused machine made any sense, but she was at the end of her rope. She’d been arrested, stripped, nearly raped, then killed a man and made out with his corpse. She didn’t have any patience left.

“Motherfucker, do whatever shit you gotta to make those red lines on m…on Kate Rigby’s shuttle disappear, then forget about it!”
 

A pause. Then: “Detectors returning to bay.”
 

Kate laughed. From the handheld, Levy’s voice laughed back.
 

“Erase the entirety of Miss Rigby’s records leaving the station.” Kate paused. “What the hell. Erase her coming in, too.”
 

There was no way that would fly. You couldn’t just erase records willy-nilly from…

“Confirm: Records pertaining to Rigby comma Katherine, 0041224934-332, fall under Sector 7. Records will be hidden from compile but available in raw logs, accessible by officers with clearance, per NAU Protective Order 774.”

“Uh, sure.”
 

The canvas chirped. “Records archived.”
 

“Now open the door.”
 

There was a pause.
 

“Are you feeling all right, Inspector Levy?” said the canvas’s AI. “I am detecting a precipitous drop in your body temperature.”
 

Kate looked down at the body. “I need a sweater.”

“Would you like me to call for medical attention?” One of the walls lit with a panel showing various graphs and lines. Fortunately, this wasn’t a hospital; the readouts pertaining to medical information seemed almost perfunctory, but there was one area flashing orange.

“No.”
 

“Summoning medical attention.”
 

“Goddammit, don’t you call medical attention! I’m…” She looked around, panicked. “I’m fucking a girl in here!”
 

That didn’t make sense. It was illegal if said girl-fucking was being done for extortion, and either way it wasn’t the kind of thing a computer would understand. She waited, heart rate increasing.
 

“Please hold still for medical scan.”

Kate looked at the body. Then, unsure what else to do, leaped over and lay on top of it.
 

“I am having a difficult time discerning two distinct sets of personal statistics,” said the voice.
 

“Back off!”
 

“Please stand up.”
 

“Section 7! Section 7, you cocksucker! Secret shit going on in here, and you’re making my boner sag while I try to…”
 

“Confirm override.”
 

Kate stopped, Levy’s blood now soaking her shirt, and looked up.