Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(4)
There. Bomb dropped.
Rafa sat back, steepled his fingers before the O of his mouth, and closed his eyes, signaling a break. “Take five, Senator. That was brilliant there at the end, by the way. You are such a doll.”
“Ah, thanks,” Angela said, allowing her concentration to slip. Her back sagged against the chair, and she cycled a long breath, in through the nose and out through pursed lips.
A smartsurface wall to her right showed images and video of the drone attack for context, probably with a voice-over and dramatic background music that she couldn’t hear. Rafa’s production team were professionals, and she trusted them to foster the desired sense of indignation and panic.
She slipped her shoes off, stretching her toes against the hotel rug until the small joints popped. The subdermal psych-emitter had gone cool while the show montaged.
In her periphery, mech-Daniel was waving his hands, trying to wrest her attention. Urgently. Damn it. No break for her, not yet.
She swallowed a sigh. “You have something for me, Dan-Dan?” she asked the mech-clone, using the pet name that signaled a private-channel interaction.
“I certainly do.” Mech-Daniel sounded breathless. Which was preposterous. He was, after all, nothing more than organic skin stretched over a custom mech frame, programmed to mimic her husband’s mannerisms. He also monitored her communications, sorted her hectic schedule of appearances and floor votes, and made a mean martini. Dirty.
In the privacy of her own mind, Angela had long ago admitted that the robot clone of Daniel Neko was preferable to her flesh-and-blood contracted husband, whom she hadn’t seen in the flesh in…twenty-five months? Twenty-six? And every one of those more glorious than the last. Even when they were in the same geographical area, they didn’t meet up anymore. Daniel hadn’t been at her side when she’d negotiated the cessation of hostilities in Iberia. Or when she steamrolled her misguided opposition in the statewide election and became a continental senator.
Mech-Daniel, the officious but harmless mech-clone, had been her only companion for all the highs, and all the lows. And best of all, she could completely let her facade slip in front of him, let him pamper and soothe her just like someone who was real and gave a shit…and then afterward, she could purge and reboot, and he would recall none of it.
Best. Husband. Ever.
“Okay.” She conceded to his urgency. “What’s going on?”
“You must terminate this interview immediately. A push notification just came in, and it is news you will want to receive in private. The hotel’s security cameras were recording, but I have asked them to go dark. You will not want them to see.”
Angela resisted the urge to scoff. Mech-Daniel didn’t deserve that. He was intellectually incapable of appreciating her mad skills at emotion and image control. She had been trained practically from infancy to weather shitty news. There was nothing he could possibly say that would rattle her, even a little bit.
“I’m still on with Rafa for another ten minutes after the break. Just go ahead and tell me.”
Rafa would have follow-up questions, and she couldn’t wait to heap more dirt on Dr. Vallejo’s lying asshole head. Her popularity polling didn’t really need the boost, but her government did. Her mentor did. Her marching orders were clear: pull out all the stops to get Zeke’s numbers up. Approved actions included but were not limited to drumming up fury against Texas, provoking some confrontations, luring those wacko technocrats down in Dallas—or wherever the hell they were holed up—to do something stupid. She had a hunch nudging them in that direction wouldn’t take much.
“No,” mech-Daniel insisted. “You must excuse yourself. Right now.”
The spike embedded behind her ear vibrated and warmed. The psych-emitter was back online, even if Rafa’s image still reclined, silent. Voice wasn’t recording yet either, though she had approximately one minute before it started back up.
Angela pushed a bubble of frustration against her teeth until it popped. Calm echoed along her hard palate. Frustration was physiologically close enough to excitement for the purposes of the psych-emitter, and she knew how to blur one into another.
“Whatever this thing is, I’m not interrupting my interview for it,” she told the mech-clone. “I’ll ping you in ten minutes. Log off, Dan-Dan.”
She waited for him to acknowledge her command.
Except he didn’t. Not right away. After a brief pause, he spoke again into her implanted com. “Be prepared, then, for Rafael Castrejon to press you on the breaking news item.”
“Which is important, I suppose?”
“I am afraid it is. Video arrived only moments ago from California. Your husband has been murdered.”
Across the rug from Angela, holographic Rafa’s eyes flashed open, and his face mirrored her own surprise. He had just heard the same news, was probably already searching for clues to her emotional reaction.
Shit. She needed an emotional reaction. Right now.
Searching, searching.
Voice and vid recorders went live a heartbeat later, which was all the time it took for her to school her features appropriately, to arrange her brain to become excited in all the spots it ought. Her emotions spooled out in an expected series. Shock. Horror. Speechless grief. If she overdid it a little, no one would notice. Everybody overplayed for the live-emotes from time to time. And with an event like this, she would be excused for a lot.