Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (novel24 .txt) 📕

the confusion, her itinerary has been updated. It looks like her flight will be leaving out of Dulles Airport rather than the Air Force base.

“Driver?” Quinn prompts.

“Yes, Ms. Mitchell?”

For some reason, Quinn addresses the steering wheel between the seats as it shimmies with micro adjustments she can’t even feel. “Where are we going?”

“I’m sorry. This vehicle’s destination is classified.”

Not exactly the reassurance she was hoping for. But also, not a total surprise. She decides to test the vehicle’s information defenses.

“Driver, how long until we arrive at Dulles Airport?”

For a moment, Quinn thinks she has it fooled, until: “I’m sorry. This vehicle’s destination is classified.”

Since she knows she’s about ten minutes out from Dulles: “Driver, how long until we reach our destination?”

“I’m sorry, I cannot answer that question.”

“Driver, how long until you die and rot in fucking hell?”

“My remaining service life is approximately seven years.”

She may still be a ways from Dulles, but Quinn realizes right away that wherever she is going today, she is not being put on a plane. Just up ahead, on the left, is the first opportunity to exit onto the Dulles Access Road—the most direct route to the airport—but the SUV maintains its pace in the far-right lane.

“Driver, stop the car.”

“It is not currently safe to stop the vehicle.”

“Driver, find someplace to pull over. I don’t feel well.”

Finally, the worst possible response: the steering wheel continues its quick twitching and the vehicle’s pace is defiantly maintained, but now in absolute silence.

Quinn puts in calls to Van, Moretti, and Henrietta—all at the same time. And all three go to straight to voicemail.

So she releases her seatbelt. The SUV is moving way too fast for her to even consider opening the door, so she climbs up into the driver’s seat. Gentle pressure on the brake has no effect. In fact, she finds she can push both it and the accelerator all the way to the floor without any resistance, and without generating any input at all. When she grasps the wheel, she feels it click, after which it spins freely, having been mechanically disconnected from the rest of the steering system.

When the blinker comes on and the SUV begins to exit, Quinn thinks she might have broken something. That it might finally be pulling over. But when it continues navigating the wide quiet streets of suburban Washington, D.C., she realizes that the maneuver wasn’t a detour. Rather, they are close to wherever they are going.

At a red light, she tries the door. Reaches over and grabs at the latch on the passenger side. She knows that, through the tinted glass, the couple in the back of the car beside her can’t see her ramming the hard plastic panel with her shoulder. Below her, the active magnetic suspension makes rapid adjustments, compensating for what would otherwise be violent rocking.

When the light turns green, Quinn climbs back through the gap between the driver’s and passenger seats. Sitting in the middle of the long, padded bench, she tries to piece it all together. Maybe it’s all connected. The Elite Assassin, the attack on Paris. And maybe the CIA believes she is complicit.

They had to know that more went on inside that privacy room than what she told them. The official report she filed didn’t even begin to account for the amount of time she and Ranveer spent alone. It was way too convenient that she just happened to forget to record the interrogation. The only reason they’d let her go, it occurs to her now, was to keep her under surveillance. See what her next move might be. Which was to be on the phone with her ex-husband, in Paris, at the exact moment of the attack, just as she was having prearranged surgery—about as tight as alibis get; to subsequently download terabytes of data from Russian and Chinese networks, burning several back doors in the process; and finally, to use the chaos of the situation to plan to break the same international serial killer she already had a suspicious relationship with out of the highest-security prison in the world.

Quinn now realizes that, instead of freeing the Elite Assassin, it is much more likely she will be joining him.

But not without a fight. She turns and sees that she can get to her suitcase from the back seat. She imagines unzipping her bag, reaching in, and her hand emerging with the nonexistent Glock. Another omission in a long line of bad decisions.

But as they approach the nondescript, windowless, unmarked data center the size of a sprawling multistory shopping mall, Quinn begins formulating a different hypothesis. If they really thought she might have something to do with the attack on Paris, why quietly reel her in? Moretti would have had much more fun raiding her apartment in the middle of the night. Or better yet, taking her down at her cubicle. Having her pinned against her desk, roughly cuffed, and paraded in shame among his stunned and applauding subordinates. With Ranveer, he stood back and let his tactical team do the work. But with her, she imagines him stepping forward and making the arrest himself.

The structure is guarded by armed Marines and creepy, headless, quadruped robots playfully loping about in the graveled gaps between concentric razor-wire fences. As the SUV authenticates and is waved through the security gate, Quinn has an idea. She finds her phone and calls Henrietta’s voicemail again, but this time, she activates the video feed. Henrietta’s avatar is a virtual Jiji who explains, in a nasally male voice, that Henrietta must be too busy feeding him to pick up, but to leave a detailed message. He cups a paw around a tall black ear and cocks his head as if awaiting an explanation. But Quinn did not call to talk. She called to watch. And as soon as the SUV is within range, she sees it. It is extremely weak at this distance, but Quinn detects that same pixel-twisting fisheye warp she saw when she called Henrietta from