Chapter 22

The automatic glass doors glided silently open at my approach, admitting me into the corporate building's reception area. The lobby was decorated with expensive white tile and walls, accenting the pristine façade with navy blue couches around the foyer. A receptionist's desk stood against the right wall, while a hall stretched off toward the back and a bank of elevators stood to the left. The pair of security guards flanking the door stiffened as I passed. I could hear them shuffling nervously as I turned my back on them and headed for the receptionist's desk.

I could understand their fear. A character like me didn't belong in that immaculate environment. I had found a change of clothes since the morning's adventure, but I still wore the same beat-up armored jacket as before. It had seen its share of wear and tear over the years, and I'm sure it had one or two bullet holes somewhere in the back. My wrist was no longer bloody, but the fresh bandage stood out against my grayish skin like a racing stripe. I could hear the guards loosening the snaps on their holsters as I placed my hands on the counter. Suddenly I felt naked without the familiar weight of my Warhawk against my shoulder.

The receptionist looked up, brushing the blonde hair from her face. She squinted at me, detaching the cord from the datajack in her temple before fixing me with a polite—if somewhat strained—look.

"May I help you, sir?" she asked in an annoyingly cheerful voice.

"Yeah," I said, trying to keep up my mask of indifference, "I'm here to see Michelson."

"Do you have an appointment?" she asked, turning her head toward the computer screen in front of her.

"No."

"I'm sorry sir, but Mr. Michelson sees people on an appointment-only basis."

"He'll see me. I promise." I fixed her with a chrome-eyed stare, making it plain that I wasn't going away until I got what I wanted.

She sighed and bent her head toward the computer screen and began typing out commands. "May I have your name?"

"Peaches."

She quirked her head at the absurdity of the epithet, but input the name anyway. As soon as her fingers stopped typing, she froze, glancing up at me with a look of barely disguised fear in her eyes. Her hand snaked underneath the desk as her mouth tweaked upward in a smile. "Do you mind waiting a few moments?"

I nodded, shoving my hands into my pockets. "Yeah sure. Go ahead and hit the silent alarm." I grinned at her surprised reaction.

The sound of metal sliding along leather issued from behind me. I twisted around to see the guards at my back both pointing their pistols at me.

"Don't move," one warned.

I raised my hands innocently. "Null perspiration, boys."

It wasn't but a few seconds until I heard footsteps coming from the hallway at the back of the building. I looked back to see a phalanx of security personnel advancing toward me. At the center of the formation was a very familiar face—my old pal Blondie.

He chuckled as he approached. "Well, well, well. You were the last person I expected to see here. You must be stupider than I thought."

I flashed him a cocky grin. "I didn't think we got enough quality time together before. I figured I'd drop in for a visit."

The mirth went out of his face. He gestured to one of the sec-men. "Cuff him and take him to a holding cell."

One of his men advanced toward me, but I stopped him with an outstretched arm. "If I go anywhere but Michelson's office, Rei disappears, you never see her again, and all of this little adventure was for nothing." I locked gazes with Blondie, assuring him that I wasn't bluffing.

The sec-guards paused, looking back at him like confused retrievers.

His frown deepened as he thought it over. "Search him."

One of the goons produced a small wand and stepped forward, waving the device over my body. When he was finished, he stepped back. "He's clean—cybered up the ying-yang, but no weapons or ammunition."

"Follow me." Blondie turned and entered one of the open elevators against the wall. I followed, a pair of suit-clad guards flanking me on either side. One of them hit the button for the top floor, and the doors slid closed as the elevator lurched into motion.

Blondie lifted a slim phone to his ear. "I'm on my way up. He's coming with me." He paused to listen for a moment. "Yes sir, we've taken the proper precautions. Yes sir. Understood." He hung up and slipped the phone back into his pocket just as the elevator slowed to a halt. The doors slid open and he ushered me through.

This floor was a stark contrast to the pristine white lobby. Teak wood paneling lined the walls, and plush blue carpeting stretched out along the floor like a placid lake. We stepped out of the lift and made our way past the secretary's desk toward the large double doors set against the far wall. Blondie hardly spared the secretary a glance as he opened the doors and motioned me inside. I stepped past him into the room, and he came after me, closing the door behind him.

Michelson sat behind a large granite-topped desk. He wore a charcoal suite that nearly matched the shade of his dark goatee, and he already had a smug smile plastered onto his face. Despite all of his posturing, the thing that stood out most of all was the nameplate atop the desk that still read Rei Ayanami.

"You just couldn't wait to move in, could you?" I said with a smirk.

Michelson spread his arms plaintively. "Guilty as charged. This office is just so much more spacious than my own. Given the current situation, I thought it wouldn't hurt. Soon I'll be moving in here permanently, so I figured I might as well get used to it. But enough of that. Given what my chief of security, Mr. Harrison, here has told me," he said, gesturing to Blondie, "I can surmise that you've finally come to your senses."

"You could say that."

"So what can I do for you, Mr. Peaches? I trust you came here to do more than bluster. After your close call earlier today, I thought you would have been halfway around the world by now."

"I don't give up that easily. You should have known that by now—or was that little tidbit left out of my security file?" I spared Blondie—or Harrison, as Michelson had called him—a baleful glance.

Michelson chuckled. "As ferocious as a pit bull and just as dumb."

"That's right. And once I bite down, I don't let go."

Michelson wasn't laughing anymore. He recognized the threat for what it was. "So what exactly is it that you want?"

"I want to turn Rei over to you."

"Really now?"

"But I'm changing the terms of our original agreement. I want double the fee—two hundred thousand. I think my people and I deserve it for all the extra trouble you put us through."

His face darkened. "You want to talk about 'extra trouble?' You and your people are responsible for the destruction of a company helicopter and the deaths of four loyal Ayanami employees, not to mention the half a dozen others you put in the hospital."

"Heh, loyal. Just like you, right?"

My comment didn't help improve his mood any. "Regardless of semantics, it is you that has caused me quite a bit of 'extra trouble.'"

"Come off it. I know what you're after and it's worth a helluva lot more than two hundred large and a helicopter. If you have Rei, you can put her up as an offering to MCT and the Corporate Council. She gets convicted of industrial espionage, forfeits her shares of company stock, and then buy them up again they resell her stock on the open market to raise additional capital—no doubt at your urging. You'd have Ayanami right in your pocket. Starting to sound familiar?"

"I see you have been listening to Ms. Ayanami."

"But you know I'm right."

"Get to the point, please."

"You pay us the 200,000, and not only will we hand over Rei, but I will testify in her trial under the condition that I receive written confirmation of immunity from prosecution from everything involving and stemming from my time with Ayanami." I leaned back in my chair. "That, Mr. Michelson, is my point."

He smiled that shark's smile. "It's almost too good a deal to pass up."

"I know. It's especially tempting because you can turn back on it any time you want since, without a System Identification Number, I don't really have any legal rights."

The look on his face told me I'd anticipated his thoughts.

"That's why I've got insurance." I reached into my coat pocket. Harrison tensed for a moment until he saw me bring forth the personal secretary. The small device was about as large as my palm and had a small screen set into its face along with several buttons. I hit a few keys and set it on Michelson's desk. He leaned forward, peering at the image that popped up on the small screen. From the angle of an observer high up in a tree branch, it depicted a trio of forms sitting at a table in an open-air café. The time stamp read October 2nd, 2056.

"If you can't see, that's you sitting at that bench with me and Sugar. It shows that it was in fact you who contracted us for the jobs against MCT, not her."

He looked up at me, mouth agape. "But, this is footage from five days ago."

I smiled thinly. "You'd be amazed at how easy it is to change a timestamp."

"It won't hold up in court," he said confidently, shoving the device back at me.

I shrugged and picked it up off of the desk. "Maybe not. But the court of public opinion has lower standards. If you don't play ball, we release the file to the media. And good luck trying to try your case when all your dirty laundry has already been aired to the public—no matter whether it's true or not. Y'see, lies work both ways. You can use them to get ahead, but eventually they always come back around and bite you in the ass. With all that taken into account, 200,000 seems like a small price to pay, given just how much is at stake."

He was silent for several moments, stroking his chin in thought. On the outside he was just as cool as ever, but on the inside I knew he was seething with anger at having been beaten at his own game.

I cleared my throat. "So do we have a deal?"

He lowered his hands and sighed. "Yes, we have a deal. You drive a hard bargain."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"Where do you want to make the exchange?"

"Why not end this where it started? The Red Tomato, two days from now at 9 p.m. It's as good a place as any."

"That will be acceptable."

"Good," I said, standing and slipping the personal secretary back into my pocket. "The nuyen will be in certified credit, and I will require a notarized statement of immunity from prosecution in hard copy and electronic format."

"Of course."

I turned to leave with Blondie by my side but stopped and looked back at Michelson. "Oh, and one other thing. Bring Jesus along too. Tell him I'd like my gun back." I headed out the door, leaving Michelson to contemplate the new development in his little scheme.