Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(22)
She half shrugged, despite the echo of ache in her shoulder. “Most people who stick their heads up eventually get something thrown at them. In the last few years, the fashion has been for biological or chemical weapons, and I have both clothing and physiological alterations that protect against those. But usually people who stage attacks for political, economic, or religious reasons are pretty noisy taking credit for their misdeeds.”
“Yet no one has claimed responsibility for the attack on your hotel.” He even spoke like a machine, careful and controlled, but also soft and resonant. What sort of digital wildness was he seeing on the backs of his eyelids? What sort of data streams were poking into his incredibly still hands atop the table?
Angela lived with a mech-clone, sure, but she knew what mech-Daniel was. Even better, mech-Daniel knew what he was. He knew his purposes and limitations and had never acted outside of set behavioral parameters. This man, Heron Farad, however, was something else entirely. He was, like mech-Daniel, clearly a thing, but just as obviously human and brain-screamingly other. His too-calm voice, his too-still body made her hackles rise.
“No, no one has taken credit,” she said. That’s how it would play out in the news narrative: take credit. Not responsibility. Bullies didn’t take responsibility, typically, and whoever had bombed the Riu clearly had some unhealthy destructive tendencies.
“You have suspicions,” Farad said.
“I do.”
His eyes came open, and they danced with amusement. She thought of Fanaida and knew exactly where he got that expression from. It rooted him squarely in his humanity. He pulled his hands up from the smartsurface table and steepled his long fingers, like he was actively giving a shit about their conversation. “Tell me, do you suspect Damon Vallejo? I mean for the attempt on your life and for contracting the hit on your husband?”
A fear bubble that she hadn’t even known existed popped in Angela’s gut. Well, that was unexpected. Score one for the cyborg.
“Vallejo certainly had motive,” she hedged. “I have said damning things about him in public lately.”
Farad’s head tilted, and he inhaled slowly, like he was sifting the air for truth. “Yet you doubt your own theory.”
“It is awfully tidy.”
“And tidy is usually wrong.”
“Yes.”
Was it her imagination, or was he inside her thoughts, predicting her phrases? She wondered if it was a skill, something organic, or if it was a program cooked up by his implanted neural net.
If he was just employing a talent of a very perceptive man, she could live with that. She would even be impressed. But if he used a program to read her mind, that raised other, sneakier thoughts. Like, did mech-Daniel have similar programming? And if he did, how often did he peek in on her?
And what had he found? Whom would he tell? She made a mental note to revert mech-Daniel to his factory settings as soon as possible. She didn’t want anyone outside of this building to know where she was.
“Who knew your physical location at 12:52 this morning, Senator Neko?”
She went down the list silently. Her style team had a complete itinerary. The remote pilot of her transport would also have known. Zeke. Mech-Daniel. But honestly, anyone who knew her schedule in general would have been able to guess that she hadn’t yet left Guadalajara. Ascertaining her whereabouts last night wouldn’t have been an exercise in higher mathematics or anything.
“Probably too many people knew my itinerary, which is why I have conveyed my current location to no one.”
He leaned forward slightly. “Do you mind if I scan you for trackers?”
“Well, no, but I—”
“A moment, please.” He settled back in his chair and spread his long hands over the table top. Almost instantly, he looked up, and some of the tension had eased from his lean face. “You and your mech-clone are free of malicious riders.”
“Um, thank you?” Except that she felt like he’d just stripped every stitch off her body, inspected her packaging like a security screener, and then left her hanging out there, naked and exposed. And now he was monitoring her response.
Well, fuck him. If there was one thing Angela knew how to do, it was keep private things private.
“No worries,” Farad said. “Be assured I am investigating the attack in Guadalajara. We have, in fact, been monitoring the situation there for the last several hours. You may be interested to learn that the intrusion countermeasures set up over the region are particularly sophisticated. I encountered ICE like that in Texas, however. And that leads us back to Vallejo.”
Angela was only half hearing him. What she really needed was a shower, or lacking that, at least a strip-and-sleep opportunity. Her mind would be much clearer after a nice long rest. Mech-Daniel would watch over her while she slept, which made the possibility of deep REM much more likely.
A yawn stretched her face before she could contain it. She put a hand in front of her mouth, but when she focused again, Dr. Farad was peering at her keenly.
“Does discussion of our mutual threats bore you, Senator?”
She flailed, shaking her head before she even had words to reply.
He smiled. “You are very much not what I was expecting.”
Likewise. Angela wasn’t certain what she had expected of Heron Farad, cyborg result of way too much techno tampering with the human body and mind. Whatever her expectations, the reality was surprising. He was courteous, even gallant. Whatever technology sustained him, it wasn’t glaring. Of course, mech-Daniel also looked like a normal man on first pass. Deeper inspection yielded different results.