Page 30 of Spark Transform

Renner surreptitiously moved his shoulders in slow circles, trying to release the tension.

On the city’s architectural design plans, the Arazak business district’s elevated, five-meter-wide covered walkways probably looked like an elegant solution to protect pedestrians from ground and air traffic.

In real life, it felt like scurrying through a giant rodent habitat. He hoped her visit to her journalist colleagues would be quick.

He’d expected Charrascos to flame him for how rudely he’d handled Olavskaya’s probing. In his experience, polymaths thought they were the fucking universe’s gift to an ungrateful galaxy.

Instead, she’d pulled him aside to apologize for putting him in that position. She believed Olavskaya had belatedly become worried that she’d revealed too much to people who could be vulnerable to telepathic probes.

It made him feel doubly guilty for not telling her he’d recently recovered a memory fragment from before the accident. She’d been laughing, surrounded by people, the center of their attention. After thinking about it, he realized the Ridderth street location and his vantage point meant he’d been stalking her. Davidro only sent him out alone for kill jobs.

If he told her, she’d terminate his contract, which would ruin his plans. Even though she talked to people everywhere she went and made him feel things he didn’t have words for, she was worth keeping alive. Her work had a good chance of inflicting serious, long-lasting damage to the CPS.

Walking with her now toward the offices of the local media company, he kept his talent primed and his eyes on their surroundings. Even in her long shapeless coat and the enveloping gray scarf that hid her currently shock-white, spiked hair, she drew attention. Or his, at least.

Tōn Ko paced a couple of meters behind, taking advantage of his height to look for trouble ahead.

After leaving the professor’s flat, Brenner ordered N’Dwama to pilot the flitter to a restaurant. Once they’d eaten lunch, he’d left her there with the flitter while he and the rest of the team walked Charrascos to her nearby destination.

Charrascos had attributed Olavskaya’s parting comment about sifters to a forecaster’s trick of using oblique language to nudge their chess pieces, otherwise known as all other humans. The whole team heard it through their security monitors.

Renner, on the other hand, had years of experience working with a flawed genius of a forecaster in Davidro’s circus. He took the words at face value and decided to keep any sifters — including N’Dwama — away from Charrascos until he sourced some emergency jets of inhib. And make her start wearing flexin armor underwear like it was her personal, all-hours devotion to the gods of security.

Minan’s voice came through his earwire. “Target is in the middle of the block, north side, beyond the gold sculpture. Top level is the roof. Ground level has a single door, no windows. Lots of security tech. Flitter landed on the roof ten minutes ago. Quiet for a retail district, but maybe it picks up at night.”

He tapped his earwire and subvocalized. “Hang on.”

Stepping closer to Charrascos, he caught her eye. “Do we have confirmation and codes for your visit?”

“Yes.” She slowed to a stop and squinted up at him. “Would you have enough time to work your security clearance magic if I want to stop there afterward?” She tilted her head toward a corner building.

The display on the outdoor occupant registry listed multiple names. The third one down was XRAC, the volunteer crisis response organization.

She pulled her scarf forward to shade her eyes from the sun. “I don’t have a contact yet, but it’s on our way, and the sign indicates they’re open to the public.”

He stopped himself from reflexively nodding his agreement, like he would have done to keep the peace with his old boss. Adapting his instincts for a new one was still a work in progress. It was gratifying that Charrascos actually listened when he expressed his opinion.

He tapped his earwire, but spoke aloud so Charrascos could hear, since she didn’t usually monitor their closed security net. “Minan, check out the gray half-dome at the Y2C intersection. Exits, security, layout, dieven. Target is third floor, XRAC.”

Minan laughed. “Good thing I know a little Dutch. I’ll be sure to check for thieves.”

He hadn’t known the language. “In Ridderth, dieven means anyone twisty or out of place. We’ll check in after the meeting.”

“Copy.”

He was amazed at how quickly the others had begun to act as a team. Maybe because, unlike him, they were trained professionals. It also helped that their protectee wasn’t an asshole. They all had war stories of the other kind.

The lift responded to Charrascos’s guest key code and took them up to the roof, which was mostly occupied by a heavily fortified flitter stacker. The door to the lifts looked shielded enough to withstand a military wide-array beamer.

In the media company’s lobby, bold decorations couldn’t hide the obvious purpose of the space as a defensive containment zone. He made a mental note to ask Charrascos if all media companies had hardened perimeters.

She greeted her contact, then toured the various offices and introduced herself. Fortunately, the few people who looked past her magnetic presence to notice her entourage dismissed him quickly in favor of admiring handsome Tōn Ko’s broad shoulders and tight leggings.

She talked shop, congratulated journalists on scoops, genially accepted praise for her more well-known stories, and promised to convey messages to her famous colleague, Tapio. By the end of the forty-five-minute visit, she’d met everyone in the organization, down to the techs and guards. They looked sad to see her go.

Back outside on the giant rat raceway, she headed to a bench to sit and pull out her tablet. “Give me a minute.”

He kept watch while Tōn Ko pinged Minan for her report on their possible next stop.