He didn’t want Father to steal his research before it was finished.
After my body had begun to adapt, Gregory would occasionally lock me in unshielded rooms to see how I would react. I’d been too weak to fight back, both physically and emotionally. The shame of that failure still burned in my chest.
I shook myself out of my thoughts and glanced around. The room included a small bed, a nightstand with a lamp, a narrow wardrobe, and a window overlooking the alley. It was sparse but clean. Even the tiny attached bathroom had been scrubbed to a sparkling shine. I made a mental note to thank Gunther for the recommendation if I saw him again.
Rain ran down the window, blocking most of the view, but there was no fire escape outside, so I didn’t have to worry about midnight visitors. I used my com to search for bugs or trackers in the room. The search came back empty, which was surprising enough that I ran it again, with the same result.
With no extra eyes on the room, or at least none that I could detect, I carefully hid a few of my credit chips in various nonobvious locations. If I got mugged, I didn’t want the assailants to have access to all of my hard credits at once. I stashed my backpack in the wardrobe but kept a couple of the trackers and bugs in my pockets. I also kept my weapons and the second com. Walking out unarmed in Brava was just asking for trouble.
I checked on directions to Peter Guskov’s shop. He wouldn’t actually be there, nothing was ever quite so easy, but I needed to make initial contact in order to set up the real meeting. The shop was a kilometer away on foot, but with the horrible weather, I went ahead and ordered a transport. It was an extravagance that a normal Brava citizen wouldn’t have purchased, but Guskov already knew I wasn’t a normal Brava citizen.
Going down the stairs was far easier than climbing them. Jade was nowhere to be seen, but my transport waited outside. I pulled up my cloak’s hood and stepped out into the downpour. It was nearly noon, yet it remained pitch black. I couldn’t live on this planet in the dark for months at a time. Continuous sunlight wouldn’t be much better, either.
I entered the address and the transport lifted off. The trip took less than five minutes, but I remained mostly dry and entirely unmugged, so I decided it was a worthwhile expense.
The transport landed outside a shop window filled with various odds and ends. Expensive antiques sat beside cheap plastech knockoffs. One mannequin sported an evening gown, while another was dressed in head-to-toe combat gear.
I pulled on my public persona. Peter Guskov was very particular. He had a process and it required a great deal of patience, especially when the information you wanted was time sensitive. I could not afford to lose my cool.
An armed security guard opened the door for me. “You break, you buy. You steal, I break,” he said, his meaning clear even with his heavy accent. “No cloak.”
I shed my cloak and hung it in the provided space. “I expect that to be there when I return,” I said.
If the guard was surprised that I was a woman, he didn’t show it. He nodded.
The shop was empty of other customers, so I perused the shelves slowly, keeping an eye out for the sculpted sapphire bluebird I knew lurked somewhere in one of these piles of junk. The room was chilly without the added benefit of my cloak and I shivered. That, at least, was a solvable problem. I grabbed a black sweater in my size, paid for it, and put it on.
It took me another twenty minutes to locate the bluebird, partially hidden behind a stack of empty energy cartridges. I plucked it from its hiding spot and took it to the cashier, a blond kid in his late teens. Another guard stood a few meters away, a deterrent for anyone who thought they might be able to overpower the kid.
I set the bird on the counter. “How much for this?” I asked.
The cashier smiled and gently picked up the sapphire figure. “Mabel is not for sale; she’s our mascot.”
I smiled serenely when I really wanted to shake him and demand he get to the point already. But this dance was how Peter protected himself, and for all the kid knew, I really did