Counterweight by Djuna

Author:Djuna [Djuna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

A NAME REMEMBERED TOO LATE

My Worm comes back online. It’s empty. My personal assistant program with the voice of George Sanders is gone, as is everything else that isn’t the basic operating system. I try to connect with the LK mainframe but no dice. I’ve now been completely separated from the herd. How am I to explain this to them? I try telling myself that I’ll think up an excuse later, but I can’t shake my feeling of queasiness.

The very minimum of safeguards are in place, of course. I’d given myself a five-day vacation when I left for Bandar Seri Begawan. The optics aren’t too bad; sure, there was a recent murder attempt, but Miriam is already on it with her usual type-A personality, rendering my presence redundant. Choi Gangwu and I had taken different planes to Patusan, but to anyone checking in on the operations of External Affairs, it will all look like precautions I’m taking to prevent another attempt on Choi Gangwu’s life. A double layer of convincing lies. I’d activated my avatar in case of an emergency; it’ll do as a scarecrow unless some truly tricky situation ensues. Even if the avatar is unmasked, there’s a contingency plan, and one after that as well. That’s my job: lying and wriggling my way out of things.

The problem is how this wriggling will look to Rex Tamaki.

Tamaki and I, from the moment we met, have been playing a kind of chess match with each other. On paper, our job descriptions shouldn’t give either of us cause for wariness over who gets to handle what. But the natural order of things, when a company brings two different criminal organizations into its fold, is for those organizations to be wary of each other. Especially when the boss who hired them suddenly dies, depriving them of their mutual cause for allegiance. The dead president enjoyed the tension between our two divisions and created synergy from it, but his somewhat less perverse successors were probably thinking it would be more efficient to can one of us, or else fuse us into one division. The only reason the status quo has continued is that Ross Lee, in his bumbling, hesitant laziness, hasn’t gotten around to reorganizing us.

Security will always have the upper hand when it comes to intel, which is why External Affairs will always be at a disadvantage. That’s why we’ve been more vigilant with our recon efforts than they have with theirs. What they do in the name of the company’s security normally has nothing to do with us. Unless the target of their conspiracy is External Affairs itself.

There’s only one thing I’m sure of when it comes to Rex Tamaki: he has no beliefs, vision, or political convictions. He is the most profane and superficial person I know. Every chance he gets he’s after one woman or another. And he craves adrenaline. Yet another reason we’re disadvantaged in this game. Unlike me, Rex enjoys playing it. He’s had plenty of time

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