Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (novel24 .txt) 📕

“Right.”

“Then that’s how he did it,” Quinn says.

“What do you mean?”

“That’s how he committed the murder. If everything green is invisible to everyone outside the arena, and everyone inside the arena is essentially blind to everything except what’s being rendered for them, all the killer had to do was put on a green suit, and he’d be a ghost.”

“A green suit?”

“Something full-body. Something the same shade as the walls. Like they use in movies.”

“Holy shit,” Van says. “But why go to all that trouble? Why not just kill him at home?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn admits. “Where did he live?”

“Let me check.” Van pulls her laptop closer and begins typing. “In L.A.”

“Where in L.A.?”

“Hollywood. Huge house. The guy was loaded.”

“We’re talking about a professional gamer here, right?”

“That’s right.”

“And he lived in a huge house in Hollywood.”

“A damn mansion.”

Quinn’s eyes narrow. “He didn’t live alone, did he?”

Back to the laptop.

“This can’t be right,” Van says. “I’m showing twenty-two other residents.”

“That was his clan.”

“His what?”

“His clan. If v-sports is anything like e-sports, he probably lived with his team. He would have been constantly surrounded by friends. People streaming on social media. The only place the Elite Assassin could possibly get to him was during a match. The only way to kill him without being seen by anyone was to do it in front of everyone.”

“OK,” Van concedes, “but what about the tattoos?”

“What about them?”

“How can they be the mark of the Elite Assassin if they were already there?”

“Why risk the ambiguity of having two numbers on one body? And why waste valuable time tagging when all you have to do to turn a five-digit number into a four-digit number is cut off a finger?”

“So, you think our guy did this,” Van says.

“I think we have to assume he did it until we can prove otherwise. If we don’t, we could be missing something key.”

Once again, Van leans back in her chair. This time she is smiling.

“What?” Quinn wants to know.

“We?”

5

  HOMELESSNESS

THE FATHER OF modern Estonian cybergrime is Otto “Kron” Hammer, and his favorite places to play are the intimate converted cinemas throughout the Arabian Peninsula. The entire Middle East has gone mad for any kind of crunchy coldwave dubstep or acid jazz trip-hop with liquid neurofunk freestyle layered in, so they treat him like a god. Sohar is Kron’s most frequent stop since, as the famous saying goes, you cannot spell “woman” without spelling “Oman.”

He is in the most expensive suite in the best hotel in Sohar, sitting up in a sumptuous four-poster bed, watching a coquettish aspiring model named either Mira or Dona indulge him in his nascent yoga fetish. She is wearing a white and silver long-sleeve bikini-cut number that they bought in the lobby on their way up, along with the mat on which she currently stands in a firmly planted Tree Pose. The suspended bronze gong standing against the wall was borrowed from the hotel’s sanctuary.

As requested, Mira-Dona’s lacquer-black hair is not pulled back, nor coiled into a bun, nor otherwise restrained in a way that would be practical for working out. Instead, it spills down over her shoulders so that it can blanket her breasts and drape luxuriously over her sharp shoulder blades and sweep over the mat when she bends. The motion of a woman’s hair is to Kron what, to a drunk, is the clink and burble of the day’s first drink.

But his attention is abruptly drawn past the erotic tableau at the foot of the bed and into the suite’s marbled foyer. He has been in plenty of hotel rooms where people have tried to enter unannounced, but it has never happened this late, and certainly never on the top floor. Whatever they’re doing to get into the room, it seems more mechanical than digital, because all the locks slide, rotate, and pop without so much as the beep of a keycard.

Kron ensures that he is covered enough that any paparazzi photos won’t have to be censored (nobody looks good with pixelated junk), but not so covered that people might assume he was already asleep. Through squinty eyes and between the widely spread fingers of an outstretched hand ready to deflect strobes, he is surprised to register the interloper not as a gaggle of reporters, but as Tariq, the hotel manager. Behind Tariq, a platoon of housekeeping ninjas is already dispersing.

“Tariq?” Kron shrieks. He is not so much angry as confused. “What the fuck’s going on?”

Miraculously, Mira-Dona has continued to hold her impeccable pose. Hotel personnel swarm about her like a flash flood around the ancient, deeply rooted tree she has become spiritually.

“My apologies, Mr. Kron,” Tariq begins, not very apologetically, “but you must leave this hotel at once.”

“What? Why? What’s wrong?”

“There is nothing wrong, per se,” Tariq replies. “Sadly, we have no other vacancies, so there is a car on its way prepared to take you anywhere in Sohar you wish to go. At our expense, of course.”

“What did I do?” He looks at Mira-Dona, trying to detect some resemblance. “She’s not your daughter, is she? Fuck, bro. How was I supposed to know?”

“She is not,” Tariq reassures him. And then not very reassuringly: “You have two minutes to vacate this room or you will be removed by force.”

Not all of the hotel manager’s crew are there to tidy up and dust, Kron notes. There are two men stationed at the canopy bed’s posts who look more than up to the task of showing him the door. Mira-Dona leans to the side, transitioning into a Half-Moon Pose, seemingly entirely unbothered by the unexpected direction her evening has taken.

“This contingency was explained to you when you selected this suite, was it not?”

Some kind of bizarre disclaimer solemnly dispensed by Tariq begins coming back to Kron just as his head is wrapped in the salmon cardigan he left neatly folded on the dresser. It was flung by a third henchman and is closely followed by his stretch-denim leggings, which,