Kill switch the sommerfe.., p.26
Kill, Switch: The Sommerfeld Experiment #4, page 26
“You two are smart; do the math.” Joshua grinned as they exchanged open-mouthed glances.
“We are the first,” Dezz said in her breathy voice.
The two squealed and laughed. They scooted their chairs closer.
“I’ve never had a virgin before,” Sugar said.
“You know, it just gets more fun,” Dezz whispered in his ear, her breath tickling his skin. He thought about maybe going back to his bedroom for round… well, who was counting?
As much as Joshua liked the idea of heading back to the bedroom, he encouraged the two women to talk about themselves. Sugar was a makeup artist for a Hollywood movie studio and Dezz, her bestie, was an in-demand model for Virtual games. They didn’t seem in a hurry to go, and Joshua was happy to let them stay. He enjoyed the company, and the absence of probing questions.
He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, then realized he was smiling, happy to sit and listen to the women talk about work, about the celebrities they met. About a myriad of different topics that normal people spoke about. Mundane topics. A little gossip, but nothing toxic.
“Alright, ladies, time to go,” Nicolo’s voice burst the bubble, and Joshua opened one eye. “I called a skytaxi for you, and it just arrived.”
The women pouted, and Joshua dropped an arm around each of their shoulders. “But they can stay—” the expression in Nicolo’s eyes stopped him from complaining. He sighed. “It appears that work calls.”
“But it’s Saturday,” Sugar said.
Joshua rose and gave each woman a long kiss.
“Give us a comm.” Dezz sent him their comm IDs. “We’ll do something tonight. Another party.”
“Your clothes have been washed and pressed,” Nicolo told them as they headed into the house, then looked at Joshua with raised brows. “Glad you finally relaxed and had a good time.”
“You’re a cock-block. They didn’t have to leave.”
“Later, playboy.” Nicolo jerked his head toward the house. “Shelby has something to show you in the security room.”
Joshua gulped down his mimosa, shoved a slice of buttered toast in his mouth, and followed the bodyguard into the house.
Shelby was already in the security room with the holoarray active, and Kevin crowded in after Joshua.
“They seemed like nice girls,” Kevin said.
“They thought Wyatt was a virgin.” Joshua grinned.
Shelby’s cheeks puffed out and she choked, then stumbled from her chair and sprayed a mouthful of coffee in the wastebasket. “You?”
“Well, Wyatt. I mean… he was sick before he went into the lifepod at fourteen. I doubt he was banging anyone before that.”
“Didn’t they kinda wonder why you uh… knew what you were doing?” Kevin asked.
“Maybe they just think I’m talented.”
“Vomit.” Shelby returned to her chair.
“I hope whatever you’re showing me is worth ruining my afternoon, and possible late afternoon, with Sugar and Dezz.”
“I think so. Last night, Shadow Ravens closed in on our alleged location in Brazil.”
Joshua dropped his playful, lazy demeanor, and his stomach bottomed out. “And?”
“Nicolo’s operatives said it went off without a hitch.”
Shelby replayed the video from Nicolo’s crew. They appeared to be on a ridgetop looking down on an old, overgrown farm. A skycar burst from the roof of the barn, damaging a rotor, wobbling up into the sky and then erupting into flames. It plunged like a fireball into a deep canyon, followed by three more fiery explosions.
Nicolo explained how the team had pulled it off.
“And the people who needed to see it were there?” Kevin asked.
“Yup.” Shelby stepped up the video to three times speed, then slowed it down, showing who Joshua assumed to be the Shadow Ravens gathered at the edge of the canyon, and then later another transport arriving onto the scene.
“There’s Farrell.” Joshua pointed to a man in slacks and a white shirt who stepped out of the transport.
The image panned, then zoomed in on the burned-out transport hull far down in the canyon, and four black-clack NSMZ soldiers repelling off a helicopter to inspect the wreckage, although it still looked too hot to approach too closely.
“It looks like they bought the ruse,” Joshua said. “Did you pick up any comms from the soldiers?”
“The NSMZ soldiers are communicating via implants or HUD comms, so I can’t hear anything. However, the Shadow Ravens were using XCOM comms. Tough encryption on those, so it’ll take me at least a few hours before I have anything,” Shelby said.
“It’s done.” Kevin leaned against the wall and sagged. “We died in a blaze of glory with our boots on.”
“They bought it.” Joshua felt stunned. “I was certain we could fool the bounty hunters, but that AI NSMZ uses, I wasn’t so sure.” He caught Shelby’s wide grin.
“The problem with AI is, if you’re persistent, it can be trained to believe a lie. I’ve been feeding short glimpses of Joshua throughout Sao Paulo, enough that it started focusing on those, following them like a bird with breadcrumbs. Then it began believing its own lies as it created a map of Joshua’s fake movement patterns. By the time it finally saw us all together, it believed what it was seeing. But there’s more.” She held up a finger, a satisfied smile. “Emily Hawthorne was ‘awarded’ an all-expenses-paid trip to Praia Grande, a beach not far from Sao Paulo.”
“Emily? Damn, Shelby, nice touch.” Joshua grasped her shoulder, his voice dropping. “Thank you. You’re brilliant.
“I know, right?” Shelby nodded, fighting back tears, then threw her arms around Joshua’s neck, and then Kevin joined in. They were all truly free now. No more running. No more hiding.
“We did it,” Kevin choked out.
“Hell yes, we did.” Joshua hadn’t seen Kevin smile like that in months.
“What should we do to celebrate?” Shelby asked as the huddle broke apart.
“The most expensive bottle of wine in the cellar. Hell, it can be whatever the fuck we want. I’m personally in favor of a repeat of last night.” Joshua smirked.
“Oh jeez, why did I even bother to ask?” Shelby deadpanned.
“Dezz and Sugar said they wanted to take me to a party. Show me a good time.”
“Piper and I have a date.”
“And Ginny and I are going pirating. Yarr!”
Joshua glanced at Nicolo. “What’s the protocol when I go out?”
“Two with you always. You’ll have Leon and Matilde for the evening. Go be Wyatt DeLuca, relax, and let us do our job—but nothing too stupid. A lot of eyes will be on you. Booze, but no drugs. No fights.”
“Lesson learned with drugs; now, fights on the other hand, no promises there.”
“Joshua doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘backing down’,” Shelby teased.
For the remainder of the day, Joshua relaxed by the pool, swam, and dozed in the sun; he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before—not that he was complaining. The rabbit showed up and he fetched a carrot, lettuce, and a dish of water from the kitchen.
Kevin came out of the workroom and noticed the rabbit. “You have a pet.”
“Yeah, pretty cute, huh?”
“For some reason I expected your first pet to be a badass attack dog. Never would have thought it’d be a fuzzy bunny.”
Kevin bounced a few tech ideas off him, then disappeared again.
Sitting on the lounger, overlooking LoSan and the Pacific Ocean, he couldn’t think of a day he had ever spent like this one. Then, Brizeyda brought him lunch, Kevin and Shelby joined him, and, in that moment, he took a mental snapshot to look back on when everything went to shit.
And he knew it would.
38 – Bad Reputation
Later that afternoon, Joshua gathered with Nicolo and Leon in the workout room, where they spent several hours sparring and training. Matilde joined in for a three-on-one.
He let them get in a few hits, and he’d have a nice bruise on his ribs. He was holding back, but he didn’t say anything, almost afraid of what he felt when his body moved to dodge punches. He entered a zone where his opponents’ movements slowed, like they moved through jelly.
“Oof,” Matilde grunted when Joshua ducked her punch and came up with a solid left to her ribs. She held up a hand and pressed the other to her side as they stopped for a break, all of them sweating.
“Okay, Joshua,” Leon said, “let’s see the E-weapons.”
Joshua squeezed his right fist and three scalpel-like blades popped out. At the tip, they hooked very slightly.
Matilde and Nicolo watched with interest.
“I heard you had the spurs,” Matilde said.
“The icepick style.” Joshua held them up for closer inspection.
“Unlike the icepicks, these required more augmentation. Your doctor had to surgically apply a hand and forearm muscle weave, with ligament and bone augmentation to reinforce the slashing motions.” Leon demonstrated with a training copy of three plastic blades on springs, which he slipped between his knuckles. “Otherwise, the force of hitting flesh and bone would simply lift the blades and gears through your own flesh while breaking all the bones in your hand and wrist.”
“That wouldn’t be pretty,” Matilde said.
“Not to mention that he’d lose the fight,” Leon added. “Have you worked out with them at all?”
“Only through a few Shotokan katas, but at half speed.”
“That was smart. It’s difficult to hurt yourself with the ice picks, but easy to slice yourself open with the scalpels. Why did you choose them?”
“After a few years with the icepicks, I felt the limitations. I had to get in close to use them. That saved my ass several times, but I like the karambit, and I felt these scalpels would mimic that fighting style.”
“You’re correct, for the most part,” Leon agreed. “Later you can opt to have the icepicks on the left hand.”
Joshua nodded. “I like that idea.”
Leon demonstrated how to maneuver with the scalpels, avoiding cutting himself, moves that showcased the fighting style he would need to learn.
“You can’t keep them out like you do with the spurs. You deploy them, slice,” he demonstrated, popping the practice claws in and out as he fought a phantom attacker, “then pop them back in. Try it with these.” He passed Joshua a second set of practice scalpels.
Joshua moved to the middle of the mat while the E-fighter instructor put on a graphene suit, with pads and built-in sensors. Joshua had never seen one and commented on it.
“Training staple when training the E-fighters.”
For the next hour they fought, Joshua learning how and when to deploy the scalpels.
“Deploy, slash, then in. Forward, slash, retreat, in. Understanding when to use them and when they could hinder you—or worse, be used against you—is all in the timing. You want to make sure that your opponent doesn’t grab your hand, like so, twist your arm around, and slit your neck or slice through your femoral artery.”
By the end of the hour, Joshua had a good handle on using the scalpels, and was popping the practice set in and out with barely a thought. He knew he needed more practice.
“Keep at this until you don’t need to think about it,” Leon said. “You have excellent instincts. No matter where I struck, you seemed to instinctively understand where I would be. You’d do well in the E-fighting arena. How much do you weigh?”
“About one-eighty.”
“Middleweight class. I could get you some fights—”
From the sidelines, Nicolo cleared his throat.
Leon grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, yeah, not a good idea to start training Wyatt DeLuca as an E-fighter.”
“After watching this, I don’t understand why we’re following him around like a baby chick,” Matilde said from the sidelines where she and Nicolo had been watching.
“Appearances,” Nicolo reminded her.
“Where’d you learn to fight like that?” Matilde asked.
“Peter Yee.”
Matilde looked confused for a moment. “Peter Yee. Why does that name sound familiar?”
“Siuping Clan mountain master,” Leon said. “I thought he died last year. Something about an attack in his casino.”
“Something like that. You knew him?” Joshua asked.
“I knew of him. He had you trained?”
Joshua briefly thought of Liezel. “Trained as an enforcer.” Of course, it had been more than that, but Joshua wasn’t in the mood to recite the entire story. He walked to a bench and gulped down a bottle of water, wiped his face, and threw a towel over his shoulder.
“Let’s call it a day. We’ll start again tomorrow morning after breakfast, nine a.m. sharp. Don’t care if you’re fucking hungover.” Nicolo pointed a finger at Joshua, who smirked and shrugged.
“No promises.”
“We’ll sweat it out of you, boy.”
Joshua waited until the workout room was empty before giving Dezz and Sugar a comm that netted him an enthusiastic invite to join them at LoSan’s most celebrated nightclub, La Tempête.
“It’s our favorite place. You’ll love it,” Dezz assured him. “Umm… where are you?”
“Gym.”
“Hot.” Sugar fanned herself. “I think you should come just like that.”
Joshua grinned and shook his head. “Sweaty and no shirt?”
“Screw the dress code.” Dezz laughed, and her tone dropped. “I think we can accomplish both later.”
Later, after Joshua had showered, he looked through his closet, noting that Shelby was fully committed to filling the apartment-sized space with clothes. He chose a fitted, subdued navy plaid suit, passing on flashier colors. He fingered one suit that was a bright velvet purple, reminding him of a comic book villain still popular after a hundred plus years of movies and holovid shows.
He met Leon and Matilde outside by the skycar. It was his first night out on the town with bodyguards, and it felt surreal. He had no fear, no worries, and no obligations other than to have a good time. Earlier, Kevin had sent a message that he was meeting Piper at the Imagine Worlds UK offices and would be gone for a few days. Shelby wanted to relax and play games in the Virtual.
And he realized, for once, he and his friends were good. They had something approaching lives that were normalish.
At least for now.
Outside the nightclub in a pedestrian-only area of downtown LoSan, Joshua met his two dates. They both looked stunning, with Dezz in a neon blue filament dress, and Sugar in a deep purple, body-hugging short-suit with a filament tie that strobbed in a multitude of pinks and purples. They linked their arms in his. Neither Dezz nor Sugar appeared surprised by the bodyguard escort. Perhaps it wasn’t that unusual for people of high net worth to have security.
“Long line,” Joshua observed.
“That’s for people who are not us,” Dezz leaned into him and whispered.
The bouncer outside nodded to both women and then to Joshua. “Good to see you, Mr. DeLuca. Welcome to La Tempête.” The buzzing mesh barrier deactivated, allowing them inside a foyer with streaks of lightning running along the walls.
“That was Silas,” Sugar informed him.
“He knew me.” Joshua glanced over his shoulder at the bouncer, who was talking to Leon and Matilde as though he knew them.
“Everyone knows you, love,” Dezz said, and the women escorted him inside.
La Tempête was a swirling riot of neon colors embedded in plastiglass walls. Overhead, a hologram of a thunderstorm with roiling dark clouds rumbled to the thumping beat of electronic dance music, while faux lightning arced between the cloud and jagged fingers streaked down the plastiglass walls hitting thrashing ocean waves. The entire effect was like being in the middle of a tempest.
Hundreds of dancers bobbed to the music, lights strobing over them. A second-floor gallery was equally crowded. Through a large arched doorway covered with a sheeting storm of faux rain, Joshua glimpsed another room where the club served food. The room just as crowded as the club.
It reminded Joshua of Ground Zero, and oddly, he felt a fleeting pang of longing for the old days. But he knew it was easy to remember the good times, over the bad times. Few days were rosy in Old Town. As Wyatt, there was no Clot incursion to watch for that would have him prowling the streets in the early hours of the morning. And for tonight, there was no reason to look over his shoulder.
In a kaleidoscope of lights and sounds, a waitress in a filament minidress, with flashes of lightning streaking across its black material, took them to a semi-circle booth, and, like the bouncer, welcomed all three of them by name and took their orders. Joshua opted for a shot of his new favorite Macallan, while the girls ordered something fancy and fruity.
“How do they know me?” Joshua asked.
“You are a celebrity,” Dezz explained. “That you choose La Tempête as the first nightclub to visit, out of hundreds in the city, will further cement their reputation as the go-to venue for the party crowd.”
Joshua had had no clue he was that important. He said so.
“You’re so cute,” Dezz said, and cuddled up to him. “Awww, you are too, baby.” She leaned across him to kiss Sugar.
Joshua danced, drank, danced more and drank more, partied hard, and forgot the world outside. He forgot about Sommerfeld. He forgot about NSMZ. Dezz and Sugar pulled him out onto the dance floor where people joined them in a mass of undulating bodies. Names came and went with dizzying frequency, and he tried to remember them all. He laughed a lot, smiled too much, and drank more than he should.
Even Leon and Matilde seemed to enjoy the change in venue, although Joshua noted they kept a sharp eye on him.
Ilario was there with another date, but even a sour, perfunctory greeting couldn’t dampen the good time.
A gregarious woman and two guys stopped to talk. Of course, Dezz and Sugar knew them. One of the guys was a Virtual game programmer and seemed pretty cool, and the conversation shifted to gaming. A break from all the questions about his time in a lifepod.
