Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (novel24 .txt) 📕

enthusiastic about the idea, but she also wasn’t expecting it all to be over so fast.

“Mr. Moretti, I—”

“I said no,” Moretti repeats. “Is there anything else?”

Henrietta starts to turn, but stops.

“Yes,” she says. She resets her specs, folds her arms across the chest of her floral dress, and shifts her weight. “I’d like to know why.”

She can tell that Moretti was not expecting to have to provide any kind of justification. He watches her for a moment, and she knows that he is contemplating the physics of the interaction: how much force he can get away with applying without causing more resistance. His expression changes, and she can see that he has resigned himself to a moderately softer approach.

“Well, for one,” he begins, “we got this whole thing going on in Paris.”

“What thing?”

“Some Japanese astronomer claims he discovered plans for a machine that can generate particles that travel faster than the speed of light.”

“Superluminal particles? This is the first I’m hearing of this.”

“You’re hearing about it now,” Moretti says.

“What do you mean he discovered plans?”

“Says he found them in the sensor backlogs of a bunch of solar probes. Some kind of message. Sound familiar?”

“Are his claims credible?”

“We’ll know soon enough. We’re setting up an experiment between Paris and Langley, so I need you to supervise on our end.”

“OK,” Henrietta says with cautious optimism. “How about after the experiment? Or even after we’re fully operational here? I’m not saying it has to be right now. I just want to know that there’s some kind of plan to let me get back into academia.”

“Why?” Moretti asks emphatically. “What’s so goddamn special about academia? What, do you want more money? Is this your way of asking for a raise?”

“It isn’t about the money, Mr. Moretti. It’s about the science.”

“Fuck the science,” Moretti says. “What about the mission? After what happened to your parents, you’d think you’d be a little more committed.”

“I am committed to the mission,” Henrietta insists. “But this isn’t what my parents wanted for me. My father wanted me to contribute to the greater scientific good, not spend my life locked up in some secret bunker nobody will ever even know about.”

“Oh, make no mistake,” Moretti says. He stands, throws one leg over the bench, and takes a step toward Henrietta. “The world will know about this place.”

“But when?” Henrietta asks. “In a hundred years?”

“A hundred years. Two hundred years. A thousand years, if we’re lucky. The longer it takes for the world to find out about what we’re doing here, the better we’re doing it. But I promise you, the world will know, and history will remember.”

“Fine,” Henrietta says. “But why can’t I do civilian research on my own time?”

“Because you’re tainted, Henrietta. Can’t you see that? There’s no way you can separate what you know about this place from outside academic research. I can’t let you go around publishing. That could jeopardize everything. This whole fucking place. I’m sorry, but everything you do for the rest of your career will be classified. The sooner you accept that, the better.”

“Then I’ll quit,” Henrietta says matter-of-factly.

“Excuse me?” Moretti asks her. “What did you just say?”

“I said, if you won’t be reasonable, then I’ll quit.”

“Oh-kay,” Moretti says in a way that Henrietta knows means he is escalating. “Let me explain something to you, sweetheart. There is no quitting for people like you.”

“How do you intend to stop me?”

“How do I intend to stop you?” Moretti asks bemusedly. “By turning the full force of this agency against you, that’s how. Do you know why I’m having Simon work so closely with you?”

“Simon is my assistant.”

“Simon isn’t your assistant,” Moretti says. “Simon is your replacement. Don’t think for a second I didn’t see this coming. From now on, if you so much as show up late for work without a goddamn doctor’s note, I’ll have you arrested for sharing information with North Korea. I’ll have you implicated in the terrorist attack on Seoul, and I’ll have you thrown in the deepest, darkest hole this country knows how to dig. Is that a clear enough answer for you?”

He is pointing at her now, and she can see the veins in his biceps and the tendons in his neck. Henrietta doesn’t know why she isn’t crying. She has stepped outside of herself and is amazed to see that instead of shrinking, she is standing up straight and staring Moretti right in the eye. Her arms are now down at her sides, her hands clenched into little fists, her chin lowered almost to her chest. And on her face is an eerie and defiant smile.

28

  TISSUE

QUINN WOKE UP this morning with a touch of the wine flu, which she is now working through by perpetually cresting the apex of a stair-climber at her local Worldwide Fitness Center, while simultaneously keeping a close eye on her message queue.

Even with the promotion she was given after tracking down and assisting in the capture of the Elite Assassin, Quinn can barely afford a Worldwide membership on a single salary. She and Moretti made a tacit agreement that Quinn would take the money while he claimed most of the credit, but if she’d known how anemic the raise would turn out to be, she might have reconsidered.

As a general rule, Quinn does not think about the decision she made back in that privacy room almost six weeks ago and over four thousand miles away, and she has talked to no one—not Henrietta, not Moretti, not even Van—about what was discussed. Of course, her handset recorded the whole thing, which she deleted before it could be collected as evidence, claiming (much to Moretti’s explosive dismay) that she failed to put the device into surveillance mode because she was so unnerved by being left alone in a little concrete bunker with such a vicious and prolific killer.

Quinn has no idea how the man apparently known only as Ranveer knew the things about her that he did, but Occam’s