Ghost Spin by Chris Moriarty Read Free Book Online Page B

Router/​Decomposer said. “Just forget about New Allegheny for now. Go to Freetown. See what you find out. And meanwhile I’ll see what I can find out, and we’ll talk when you get back. Okay?”
    Li’s mouth tightened in frustration.
    “Okay?” Router/​Decomposer repeated.
    “Okay.”
    But she might as well not have promised, because as things turned out she didn’t need any help from Router/​Decomposer in getting to Freetown. If anything she could have used his help getting out of it.
    The extradition team struck just before she crossed into the AI enclave on her way home. They piled out of an unmarked van in full SWAT gear and had her surrounded before she could even wonder why she hadn’t heard them coming.
    “Catherine Li?” one of the plainclothes operatives asked, flashing his ID so quickly that even her wired systems had to resort to coarse graining to make any sense of the badge.
    “Yes?”
    “I have a warrant for your arrest under clause 23(c) of the Maris Accord.”
    At first the word Maris meant nothing to her, except that it was the name of one of the simmering Trusteeships she’d policed during her tours of duty in the Syndicate Wars. Then she realized he was talking about the new peace treaty—the one with the extradition clause.
    “You guys sure don’t waste time,” she joked. “You must have been knocking on the judge’s door before the pooh-bahs put their pens down.”
    She might as well joke after all; there was nothing else she could do. She’d realized that when her internal systems hung, stopped in theirtracks by a government security loop. Those security loops were scandalous—such a violation of civil rights that normal cops wouldn’t dream of using them. Even UNSec operatives feared to tread there. Only the International War Crimes Tribunal could wield such a hammer.
    “Do you mind telling me where we’re going?” she asked mildly.
    “That’s for the politicians to decide. Our job is just to take you into preventive custody for now.”
    “Oh. I see. What do they call that? A flight risk?”
    He bristled a little. “You have money. And friends. Of course you’re a flight risk.”
    “Well, money at least. My friends are getting a little thin on the ground.”
    He cleared his throat. “I have to ask you to wear these,” he said, and held up the handcuffs.
    Li put out her wrists obediently and stood while he fastened them to her good wrist. He was a little flustered about the prosthetic, but he finally settled for cuffing her one hand to his own wrist and they began walking back to the waiting van like that.
    When he broke stride with her she thought at first he’d only stumbled. But then he slumped to the ground—and so did his entire SWAT team, in the same instant, as perfectly coordinated as a well-drilled ballet troupe.
    “What the—” Li began.
    But then she saw the telltale trickle of blood seeping from his nose and ears. And a moment later her internals unhung themselves and roared back into motion. She was free. But God, at what a price!
    “No, Cohen,” she whispered. “Don’t start killing for me. Not you. Not innocent people who are just doing their jobs.”
    But it wasn’t Cohen who had just killed for her, even if there was some part of Cohen still ghosting in the empty places of the noosphere. She knew even as she spoke the words that it wasn’t Cohen who had done it. That wasn’t Cohen she felt skirling across the grid. It was something colder and larger and far less human. And why it had saved her was as much a mystery as what it had planned for her.

That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal; as time will show; (if only my breathing & some other et-ceteras do not make too rapid a progress towards instead of from mortality). Before ten years are over, the Devil’s in it if I have not sucked out some of the life-blood from the mysteries of this universe, in a way that no purely mortal lips or brains could do.
    —Ada, Countess