Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(21)
Its emptiness kind of did, though.
This building had been constructed to house nearly as many people as Mustaqbal, but how many refugees had Fanaida mentioned? A few hundred? That was like a family of four booking a 797-8 Spacejet.
She tried to imagine the MIST with only a hundred residents, and the picture shimmered coolly down her spine. It would be like a ghost town, derelict and menacing. Not exactly the haven she would have chosen. Still, it would serve.
All she wanted was a safe place to hide, get her bearings. Figure out who had tried to kill her. And then…what? For the first time in her life, she didn’t have a five-year plan, had no idea where she was heading, no midterm goals. The stark blankness on her internal calendar edged all her thoughts in white panic, but she tried to focus straight down the center. Panic wasn’t an option.
The elevator had an open glass side opposite the doors, and the carriage seemed to be going slower than normal, maybe so she could see each floor as they passed upward. The first floor contained a promenade with storefronts that had never been filled with shops, most of which had their “Coming soon!” signs still up. Then there was a university and public facilities floor, replete with a crèche for children too young for school. The neon instructress chatbot in her tidy, fresh crinoline was still lit and animated, despite the fact that no children would be coming for lessons and indoctrination.
Or would they? Three-hundred-odd refugees, families, could conceivably contain children. Were the full resources of this megastructure engaged in managing a population, even if that population was pathetically small? Was this really a functional government of fewer than a thousand souls? And if it was, what did that mean to the real government, to Angela’s government?
She might not be able to leave here and swear that she had sought refuge in an uncontested part of the free state. She might have to lie.
She almost shrugged. The older she got, the more comfortable she was with lies.
“We have arrived,” mech-Daniel said.
Half a heartbeat later, the elevator doors shished open, and the whole floor was flooded with light. Instead of discreet rooms here, there was a wide-open entertainment balcony overlooking the lower floors. A partygoer could spit chicle down upon unsuspecting students and plebs waiting in the entertainment lines. Of course, none of those lines or crowds had ever materialized in this place—construction had been halted at the height of the financial crisis of ’52, long before the structure had been able to officially seek residents or spin up its public services.
Angela stepped off the lift and into the bright sunlight. The wall facing inward was a giant slab of plasteel, fully translucent and wired for free-fae holoprojections. She wouldn’t be surprised if that seven-story wall could project any scene it wanted, at any given time of day. Right now, it was translucent, letting the harsh desert morning pour through.
At the far end, right where the structure’s exterior spire wall curved gently, was a door. Angela got mech-Daniel’s confirmation in her earpiece: behind that door, in the conference room beyond, Dr. Farad waited for her. Unconsciously she smoothed her skirt and again wished for gloves, her good gloves. The all-night pharma hadn’t stocked her bespoke smartgloves, of course, just those cheap knockoffs that didn’t dependably filter the more popular weaponized viruses—Dengue B, Cholera Nuovo, the recently catalogued Basilisk, which had decimated the population of inland and western China.
She felt naked, protected by insufficient gloves and lacking her usual team of mobile mist-bots, aerosoling the world around her with toxin-neutral particles.
It had been a long time since Angela had touched anyone who wasn’t inorganic and/or drenched in disinfectants. But here she was. She smoothed her breathing, composed her face. She could do this.
Mech-Daniel paused briefly to scan the room behind the door, and then, when nothing jumped out at him, he nodded and opened the door, and Angela stepped through. Her eyes and her soul scanned the room in tandem.
Kellen wasn’t here.
Stupid to be disappointed. But there it was anyhow, the plummet of surprise at his absence. She shook her head to clear it.
At the near end of the table sat Heron Farad. He didn’t rise when she entered, and he didn’t turn for her benefit. She moved along his periphery, around the corner of the long conference table, and noticed that his eyes were closed. Well, that would be why he hadn’t so much as acknowledged her presence. Was he even awake? He was almost as creepy as the ghostlike building he lived in.
She sat to his left, two chairs down and with the opulent sunlight at her back. “Dr. Farad?”
“Yes.” He still didn’t open his eyes. “I am having an unusual morning, so please bear with me.”
“Of course.” She adjusted her posture in a slim, milk-colored chair and folded her naked hands in her lap. Mech-Daniel sat between her and the cyborg.
Dr. Farad took his time before turning to her and frowning, still with his eyes closed. “You said in your repeater message that you needed haven. Can you tell me why?”
“The hotel where I was staying was attacked,” she said. Lintel melting like wet clay. Smell of bombs. She could pass for calm, but inside she was still screaming.
His frown deepened, carving furrows into his forehead. “I’m not finding any other high-value targets on the guest list of the Hotel Riu. Have you been attacked personally in the past?”