Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (novel24 .txt) 📕

surprisingly gifted conversationalist when he wants to be, because he knows the secret: everyone’s favorite topic is themselves. Keep the exchange about them, and you can run out the clock on absolutely any social interaction. Young people? Relationships. The middle-aged? Kids, careers, and sports. Old people? Their shitty health. But the last time Ranveer was here, there were things he’d wanted to say, too—things that most other people weren’t able to hear, but that he felt like Amberley-Ash could. And there are things he’d like to say to her now. Things about Henryk and Oman and L.A. Things about Caracas, Moscow, Cape Town, and Beijing. About this woman from the CIA. He’d told himself that his decision to come on-Grid was a rational one: get in and get out, don’t leave a digital trail, don’t take chances on one of the street-smart, slippery errand boys hanging around Doha Port. But he realizes now that the real reason he came here was because he wanted to stay the night.

“If you’ll give me a chance, I’ll explain.”

“How fucking stupid do you think I am?”

“I can’t remember the last time I asked for something twice,” Ranveer says, “and I’m not in the habit of pleading. But please, Amberley-Ash, may I come inside? I would very much like to sit down and have a drink with you.”

Without hesitation, and with all the accompanying aggression a hand gesture can possibly embody, Amberley-Ash gives Ranveer the finger through the thick glass. Her iridescent fingernails are chewed quick-short and she is wearing way too many rings.

“Fuck. You. Motherfucker.”

Ranveer looks down at the polished concrete floor and nods. Without looking up, he wanders over to his left and bends down for the case. It is lighter than he expects it to be, and he wonders briefly if it is empty—if Amberley-Ash is playing him—but decides that while she may be brash and somewhat reckless, she is certainly not stupid. He starts back toward the outer doors, stopping just out of range of the motion sensor.

“You know,” he begins, turning halfway back. “This little piece of glass between us. That isn’t what’s keeping you safe right now.”

Her middle finger is still up, and it had apparently followed his movement as though she were using it to ward him off. But when Ranveer unbuttons his coat and lets the heavy piece of hardware inside swing into view, her arm lowers to her side, and her expression changes.

“A few centimeters of glass is nothing to me,” he continues. “I could be inside there in thirty seconds. Or, for less than I paid for what’s in this case, I could have divers cut through these pylons and drop this box into the Gulf and have you drowned like the pathetic unwanted kitten that you are. I could have someone fly a drone out here one night with linear-shaped charges strapped to the bottom and land it on your roof, right above your bed, and wait for you to open your eyes and register what’s about to happen to you right before I press the ignition switch. Or I could have a few friends of mine come out and visit you for a week. Their specialty is strapping people down and injecting them with substances that make them feel happier than they ever thought possible, and that their bodies and brains will crave every second of every day for the rest of their lives. Of course, I’d ask them to leave the recipe for you so that you’d be able to synthesize all you ever wanted. I suppose you’d have to throw that cute little T-shirt away, but then again, it’s a little tacky and juvenile anyway, isn’t it?”

Amberley-Ash is trying to stand stone-still, but Ranveer can see that she is quivering. When she finally blinks, tears spill from both eyes and race one another down to the corners of her lips.

“I think we understand one other,” Ranveer says. “If you ever say anything to anyone about me—about seeing me, about having met me, about what’s in this case—you have my word that I will kill everyone you have ever loved. If you’re lucky, I’ll save you for last. But I might just let you rot in this box for the rest of your life knowing that it was all your fault.”

Ranveer is a surprisingly gifted conversationalist when he wants to be, but he is even better at eliciting interminable stretches of absolute silence.

20

  GONE DARK

QUINN ISN’T SURE how many times she allows the video of Molly to loop. Eventually, a man in greasy slate coveralls with his industrial metaspecs headset turned around backwards and his knee pads down around his ankles comes in to get a drink, and Quinn tries to shut the video off in time but can’t, and the pair of heavy, bulbous, oblivious boots briefly converge with Molly’s synthetic spirit.

In truth, the mechanic just did Quinn a big favor. She needs to stop feeling sorry for herself and focus on getting the hell out of this warehouse, out of Oman, on an upcoming flight. Off this horrifying case and through this purgatorial phase of both her career and, it seems, her entire life.

To that end, she begins rummaging through her carry-on, where she encounters a Ziploc bag of tampons, the charging case for her metaspecs, a silicone-handled hairbrush that looks like it was used to groom a full-grown golden retriever, a miniature pharmacy of everything from Imodium A-D to a cornucopia of pain relievers, the tangle of dongles all federal employees must carry if they want their government-issued hardware to interface with the rest of the modern world, and, finally, a tri-fold keyboard and Bluetooth travel mouse.

Quinn unfurls the keyboard on the round laminate surface in front of her and gyrates the mouse until she sees the cursor appear in the virtual workspace projected by her metaspecs. She is hoping that enough money is changing hands as a result of her man’s ambitious itinerary