Heart of the Storm, page 5
“That's...really great, Cassidy,” I said. “But I'm hoping to still take Fen Liu's head off this round, so we don't end up with a World War IV: The Wrath of Fen in a few years.”
She stared at me for a bare moment before shrugging, opening her desk drawer, and pulling out a backpack. She tossed it, thumping, onto the desk. “Fine. Have it your way, then. I'm telling you about genius plays that are thirty moves out and you're worried about yourself, on the board, right now.”
“Yes, because I am on the board right now,” I said, opening the backpack zipper to reveal...well, quite a bit.
The first thing that caught my eye was a cell phone that reminded me of the old Motorola Razrs. I picked it up and stared at it; there were a few more of the exact same model, complete with small earwigs that looked like they fit directly into the canal.
“Satellite phones,” Cassidy said. “Give one to each member of your team, you'll be able to wirelessly communicate locally and over long distances if you become separated for whatever reason. No cell towers needed. The earwigs are completely waterproof and possess filtering technology so you get voice comms without all that crummy background static like they're on a call with someone driving eighty-five with the top down.”
“Well, that's...pretty cool, actually,” I said, putting the phone I'd picked up back next to its mates. I counted quickly; there were ten of them. Another pouch I held up questioningly. “What's this?”
“Calories,” she said. “You're going to need to travel light, so I created a distilled ration bar that takes up almost no space – can be carried on your person – and feeds enough calories to last a week. I call it Lembas,” she said with some pride. “And I packed enough to keep you in country for months if need be.”
“That's...really helpful, thank you,” I said. The ration packs she'd put in looked like they would take up all of a square foot.
“I try to anticipate these things,” she said. “Here's something else I'm anticipating: you're going to need to make allies of the local wildlife. Close allies. So get practicing with that Priscilla, Queen of the Wild’s skill. Animals will love the Lembas, so don't hesitate to use it to buy some loyalty, because we both know there's zero chance you're in the wilds of China for months without getting caught.”
“I don't think I have the patience for that,” I said, flipping through the box. “Plus, what are the odds I discover some secret that leads me to Fen Liu in the midst of some trackless wilderness?” I shook my head. “I think the answers to finding her are going to be in a city, in which case I'll need–”
“A disguise, yes,” Cassidy said, and pointed to another section of her mystery bag. “Those are holographic camo that use the latest technology and are controlled via your phone. Simple pairing by Bluetooth.”
“That's...kind of far out, Cassidy,” I said, opening up one of them. It looked like a mesh poncho, with a cowl and face mask. Putting it on, it unrolled easily, like mosquito netting.
“Press it down,” Cassidy said, waving at my face. “It adheres.”
I did so, then, looking down at the phone in my hand, saw a variety of options for faces. Picking one, an Asian one, I hit the button that said ACTIVATE.
There was a faint hum suddenly present inside my skull. A glow appeared, lighting up my eyes and making me feel like the sun was shining on my face.
“It uses a web of pinhole cameras all over the rig to match proximal light levels,” Cassidy said, “so you won't glow in the middle of a dark night, or be colored like shadow in the daytime streets in Beijing. The app is tied to a local instance of Sierra on your phone as well as GPS in order to make sure the faces programmed in are actual Chinese citizens who could potentially be in the area where you are. You don't want to set off flags in their 'Skynet' system and bring down the authorities on yourself. This should help minimize that risk.”
“Brilliant,” I said, standing up and walking over to a mirror hanging in the corner. Full length.
“There's also a translation feature,” Cassidy said, then barked something in Mandarin. A few seconds later, English words appeared in front of my face: You are an annoying cow.
“Ha ha,” I said. “This thing is recording everything I do and say and piping it to Sierra?”
“Yes,” Cassidy said. “For translation, but also advice, so she can explain anything you're seeing over there that you might not understand. Also, the phones are equipped with the Chinese pay app, which they use to pay for everything over there. Plenty of money in the accounts, and if one of them gets burned, just move to the next phone. Okay?” She fanned herself. “I am nothing if not generous.”
“Of spirit, and cash, yes, thank you,” I said. “You're really making this whole thing possible.”
“You're welcome,” she said, a little softly. “I wish you the best of luck. Not only because you need it, but because I do hope you actually manage to remove the knife from our throat, and our heads from the guillotine.”
“Because that's what we're facing if Fen Liu lives,” I said.
“Some night I'll be working in a factory of mine,” Cassidy said, eyes about a thousand miles away, “and it'll just...explode. If my workers are very lucky, I'll be the only one here. But luck will have nothing to do with it. It'll be the cold calculus of Fen Liu, deciding whether adding a thousand casualties will work in service of her goal to see me dead.”
She leaned across the desk and seized my hand. “I've done everything I can for you, short of injecting you with the serums that I know you won't take.”
I felt a pain inside. “My resolve is wavering on them. It's just–”
“You're right to fear yourself,” Cassidy said. “What happened in Minneapolis two years ago may have turned out to have a happy ending, with you muddling time in order to save the city. But you with unchecked access to the powers within? With total control of telepathy, metal, electricity and all else?” She shuddered. “You might save us today, but you're going to live a long time, Sienna. And there aren't that many people to put you in check now when you get a bad idea.”
“Lucky I don't get many of those.”
Cassidy smiled weakly. “I thank you for that sarcasm. Your self-awareness is the only thing that allows me to sleep at night.” From her desk drawer she produced a last package.
Two vials were sitting inside, complete with an injector needle.
She thrust the needles into my hand and then folded my fingers over them as the first hint of a burn started in my fingertips. “You'll know better than I will if you need to use them. But if you do...please keep in mind that doing so will only make you a bigger target to the nations of men – and more of an enemy of the people than you already are.”
“I can solve my problems of today,” I said, staring reluctantly at the needles, “and create a whole host of new ones for tomorrow.”
“It wouldn't be Pandora's Box if the hope wasn't buried at the bottom, underneath terrors the like of which the world had never seen,” Cassidy said, and stood. “Take care before you unleash any more, Sienna. But if you do – make sure you kill this bitch. Before she kills us.”
CHAPTER TEN
Ilanded outside the White House perimeter, passed through quickly, making my way to a small room only a few down from my own. It was a quiet one, with a little man sitting on an overstuffed chair that had not come from the United States, reading a cooking magazine with his little legs dangling over the edge.
Taxi looked up as I entered, his expression a question: Where to, today?
“I need to talk to you real quick,” I said, “before I go...wherever I'm going to go.”
He nodded, but did not speak. Even without River around, he was either a real stoic or he'd just gotten in the habit of silence. I didn't know for sure which it was, but he was quiet.
“I know your contract with River is running short,” I said. “How many days left now?”
“Tomorrow,” he said. His voice was quiet, almost hoarse. Maybe it was from not speaking. Or maybe he was delivering extensive lectures in his free time, however much of that he had.
“Shit,” I said. I'd looked at River's accounts; she wasn't exactly tapped out from paying him his escalating fees, but it was having an effect on her estate. And I was nearly tapped out myself from financing the war for months out of my own pocket. Plus the US government was unlikely to be picking up the tab for any more of my adventures. “I'm about to undertake an incursion into China. How well do you know that country?”
“Well enough,” he said. “Haven't I always delivered you close to where you want? Just tell me, I can make it work.”
“Okay,” I said. “Here's the problem – no way are we done in a day.”
He steepled his fingers over his cooking magazine. “But I am done.”
I grimaced. “Any chance we could renegotiate that?”
Taxi's eyes flitted over his pages. “I might be willing to tarry for a bit longer to aid you, but...”
“But what?” I asked.
“I sense your war could burn on forever,” Taxi said, brushing his stubby fingers over pictures of beautifully cooked middle eastern food. “That you would be happy to let it.”
“Well, my country is not nearly so happy to do so as I am,” I said. “They're pulling the plug.”
He shook his head. “I don't wish to stay here, then.”
“Don't blame you,” I said, and popped one of the satellite phones out. “But I have a solution: you remain on call for me, and you can go wherever you would like in the whole, wide world.”
His eyes seemed to light up. “I can go home?”
“You can go home,” I said. “That's a satellite phone. It'll reach you anywhere. You drop us off, go home, and come get us whenever we need a ride. And I'll pay you. That work?”
He seemed to contemplate that for a moment. “That will work,” he finally decided. “But,” he added, waving the phone at me, “it will not work forever. I do not know what troubles this may bring, and I do not wish to remain in danger forever.”
“Who does?” I asked with a tight smile. By his expression – knowing, with smoky eyes fixed on me – he seemed to suggest that the answer might just be me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“I'm going to China to track down Fen Liu and kill her,” I said to Jian.
He stared at me, raven hair perfectly cropped, his physique as iron as ever. “I'm in,” he said.
And that was it. Man, I wish everything was this easy.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Team: check. Hades, Jian, and Lethe were standing around her room in the basement of the White House, the smell of the new fabrics filling the air from what Cassidy had loaded me up with. Camouflage from head to toe, sitting on my body and even over my face, lightly resting against my skin like a breathable spandex. After all these years, the comic book fans and perverts were finally getting their way – Sienna Nealon was wearing a spandex suit.
Transport: check.
I'd parceled out the satellite phones, along with the survival bars and camouflage mesh. We looked a little funky, like tourists coming in from the rain. All we needed now was a destination.
“So...” I said, to Lethe.
“So,” she said, staring back.
I just stared for a moment. “We need a destination.”
With a shrug, she said, “So get one.”
“Uhhh...” Jian said, clearly uncomfortable with the rising level of tension in the room.
I put a hand to my forehead. “You know some basic facts about Fen Liu.”
“Yes.” Lethe raised an eyebrow, but her face was plastered in an unmistakable scowl. “And?”
“You met her in your odyssey across the world,” I said. “So maybe you give us an idea of where she comes from, at least? A province? A general area?”
Lethe grunted impatiently. “It was one of the green provinces, I'm pretty sure. Not Gansu.”
“...Pretty sure?”
“And probably not the extreme north of the country,” Lethe said. “It's hard to tell, because we didn't have maps at the time, but I think we made our way along the green belt between Sichuan and Fujian, ending up hitting the Taiwan straits somewhere near modern Quanzhou.”
I felt a real pressure in my head and shuffled over to Lethe's cot, letting myself plop down. “This is all you have?”
“That and a real desire to tear this woman's heart out with a finger,” Lethe said.
“I think we all share a certain desire for revenge,” Hades said, “so let us try to focus on that. However, if I am not much mistaken...this is very little to go on.”
“This is nothing to go on,” I said, and gestured at Taxi. “What am I supposed to do, have him drop us at a random spot near Quanzhou? 'Drop us on the beach, we'll have a cookout.' How the hell are we supposed to find Fen Liu from there?”
“You go, you talk to people, you hunt her down,” Lethe said, gesturing at me, with the mesh draped over my face, head, and body. “You have the tools. He has the translation ability. The mouth.”
“You don't even remember the name of the village where you met her the first time?” I asked, feeling like all the hopes I'd pinned on this plan were evaporating like spilled water in New Asgard on a summer day. “Like, first letter, even?”
“I hadn't learned Mandarin yet,” Lethe said, a touch defensively, “and for all I know, I never got the name.”
I buried my face in my hands. “Unbelievable. I put together this whole expedition and – what am I supposed to do now?”
“Ready, fire, aim,” Lethe said, sounding quite annoyed. “Let's just go. Pick a spot, we'll start digging.”
Jian shifted uncomfortably on his feet, and broke his silence for the first time. “This does not seem a wise course. The PRC is a police state. There are cameras everywhere, and while I am sure your colleague has designed an excellent system to deceive them, no system is perfect. The longer we are exposed to danger, the more likely the flaws come to be a problem. And the PRC deals with such problems in one way only.”
“Raw, naked force,” I said. “Men with guns sent to ask pointed questions.” He nodded agreement.
“Look, you're not going to find any answers sitting here,” Lethe said. “We need to get on the ground there, to start probing, regardless of danger.”
“I don't want to be wandering around in a country that wants me dead without any clue where I'm going,” I said.
“If I may,” Sierra interjected, playing over the phone speaker in my pocket. I fished her out so she could speak clearly, since we didn't have our earwigs in yet. “I have designated a few locations in mainland China where I believe security will be lax enough to allow optimal insertion of my program to their system. Perhaps we could start at one of those?”
“Perfect,” Lethe said, “let's rile up the hornet's nest there, if we have to, then we can jump somewhere else.”
I continued to rub my forehead and temple, because although I was mostly immune to stress headaches, if there was a moment it was possible for one to be coming on, this was it. “I'm sorry, I thought I'd left Alannah out of this trip. You're really suggesting we go in, start shit, then jump somewhere else and expect things to just calm down? Planting Sierra is a stealth mission. Trying to find Fen Liu's hideout operates on the same principle. There are a billion and a half people in China, most of them probably hate me because of what their government is saying about me, and I want to kill as few of them as possible. Your plan is not conducive to that.”
“My plan is to take advantage of the fact you're at war to begin fighting a war,” Lethe said, her eyes narrowing. “If you think you're going to be able to waltz into China and do this without soldiers and civilians getting killed, you are daydreaming. Or day drinking. Fen Liu is going to put people in your way. Guaranteed. So get ready for Operation Human Shield, and start having a plan to deal with them. Because it's coming.”
“The goal is not a massive body count,” I said. “It's the opposite.”
“The goal is to kill Fen Liu,” Hades said softly. “The body count may be a side effect. Your grandmother is right. She will hide. If it comes to it, you may have to choose between letting her slip away and killing innocent people. Because that is the choice she will want to force on you. Because it's one she knows you cannot bring yourself to make. And because she wins either way.”
“She doesn't win if I choke the last breath from her as her lifeless eyes roll back in her head,” I said, seething. “I win, in that case. By definition.”
“This is a war,” Lethe said, “and by definition there will be casualties. And it'll be more because Fen Liu will want casualties, it'll allow her to parade her righteousness in front of the world. 'Look what Sienna Nealon did to me, and I didn't even do anything to America!'”
“That's a lie,” I seethed. “People have died from the efforts of her hackers. From the superpower drugs she's unleashed on our population.”
“But she denied it,” Hades said, “and you can't prove it was her. She's kept this war remarkably unfought. For a reason, I assume.”
“Yes, it's that she can't win, and I'm leaving, so why stir up a shitshow when you can exit on good terms with the next administration?” I said.
“Whatever the case,” Hades said. “This is how she has fought, and will continue to fight: in the press, to her full advantage, destroying your reputation and burnishing her own. Ready yourself.”
