Spin State - Chris Moriarty [204]
Behind Voyt, Bella was a slim, watching shadow. She stepped forward a little as Voyt went to work, and Li saw in her face—in Haas’s face—the guilty fascination that the first sight of hard interrogation always brings, even to people who are used to ordinary violence.
Voyt made Sharifi wait to tell him. His timing was so perfect, so by the book, that Li could predict each groan he would ignore, each desperate plea he would pretend to misunderstand. Just enough of them that when he finally pulled the gag from her mouth and let her speak, she would tell him everything she could possibly think of that might make it be over.
But she didn’t tell. And when Li probed her mind looking for the source of her strength, she found something that made her stomach curl: the hope—no, the sure and certain belief in a rescue. Sharifi was gambling like she’d always gambled. Gambling that she was more valuable to Nguyen alive than dead. Gambling that she was too famous to die like this. Gambling that she was too important a pawn for Nguyen to lay down willingly, no matter what betrayals she had committed.
She’d always been right before. Her luck, like Li’s own luck, had always held. She had a whole lifetime of being right to back up her faith in her gambler’s instincts. And this shuffle might have broken her way too if not for Bella.
When the missile hit, Li thought it was just the Viper again.
Then she was out of the glory hole, struggling to find her bearings, reorienting herself, unbelievably, in the shadowy clutter of Korchow’s antique shop.
Korchow sat at his desk, head bowed, face in shadow, the orange circles of contact derms pulsing at his temples. Outside, lithe and furtive shadows flitted past the shop front. From the back room, Li heard the muted clink of a metal buckle knocking against a carbon compound rifle stock.
Half a heartbeat later, the shop exploded into motion. The flare of a pulse rifle arced out from behind the back curtain toward Korchow. Camouflage-clad figures burst through the front door—masked paras with UN-issue weapons and blackout tape patched over their unit insignia.
She lost the image. She dialed around frantically, desperate to know what was happening, who had rolled up Korchow’s network. She found the gunman’s feed, on a narrow band UNSC channel, and tapped in to it just as he put out a booted foot and rolled Korchow’s body over.
But the face that turned into the light wasn’t Korchow’s at all.
It was Arkady’s.
She started to ask Cohen if he’d seen it, if he knew who’d sent the gunmen, but before she could get the thought out, they were in real-time trouble.
Korchow’s shop was gone. Cohen was gone. She was alone, truly alone, for the first time in days. And she was buried alive in some past, present, or future of the glory hole that had nothing to do with anything else the worldmind had shown her.
She stepped forward and stopped, unable to see the ground before her.
“Careful.”
Hyacinthe stood behind her. He looked tired and drawn. His face was smudged with coal dust, and the shoelaces looped over his shoulder were broken and knotted.
Li watched him the way she would have watched a tiger.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She stepped forward to stare into the dark eyes.
It was Cohen, after all. She was sure of it. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“For now.”
“What does that mean?”
“The worldmind is running on my network. Using me like it’s used the field AI since the first fire. I don’t think it has any other way to organize its thoughts . . . not in any way that we would understand.”
“But you don’t have to hold out for long,” Li said. “Nguyen—”
“Nguyen didn’t even try to intercept the missile that blew the field AI,” Cohen said. “She seemed more interested in wrapping up Korchow.”
He caught his breath and shuddered. The image of Hyacinthe flickered ominously.
“What’s wrong?” Li asked.
“Nothing,” he said quickly. But there was a telltale hesitation in his voice. “I’m afraid,” he said at last. “It wants me to hold it up. Hold it together. And . . . I can’t.”
“Cohen—”
“It’s taking me