The Avatar dug deeper into the databases she’d inherited from her full self. And there she found the perfect tool for the job. An identity that Su-Yong Shu had known, but never shared with either her Chinese masters or the Americans. A kindred spirit, misguided, but perhaps someday of use.

Today was that day.

The Avatar reached out to make contact with the man known as “Breece”.

6
The Bottom of Things

Saturday 2040.11.03

National Security Advisor Carolyn Pryce kept one eye on President John Stockton as he watched the video for the first time.

The President was rapt with attention, his tall, football-quarterback frame hunched forward. His handsome, square-jawed face aghast at what he saw.

“Is this how you killed Warren Becker?” Martin Holtzman’s voice came from the wall screen.

Martin Holtzman was one of the top scientists at Homeland Security’s ERD – the Emerging Risks Directorate. He led the Neuroscience division. His team was charged with finding a vaccine for Nexus – a way to prevent it from taking hold in people. He was also charged with finding a cure – a way to flush it out of the brains of those who’d already been exposed

Martin Holtzman was also the man whom President John Stockton credited with saving his life. It was Holtzman who’d spotted the erratic behavior of the Secret Service agent who’d been coerced by the PLF – the terrorist Post-human Liberation Front – turned into an assassin and walking time-bomb by a hacked version of the drug, Nexus. If not for Holtzman’s warning… well, Stockton would be dead.

Carolyn Pryce brought her attention back to the video.

“Warren Becker did what he was told,” came the reply. The speaker’s face filled the screen. Maximillian Barnes. Barnes’s hand shot out towards the camera. There was something in it. A pill. A green pill, seen earlier in the video. As they watched, he crushed it with finger and thumb. His hand dropped lower, out of sight. They could hear the sound of Holtzman gagging, spitting.

Maximilian Barnes was one of Stockton’s most trusted aides. He was also – temporarily – Acting Director of the ERD. He was Martin Holtzman’s boss. The idea that he would… poison Holtzman?

Pryce turned back to the President. John Stockton’s hands were clenched around the arms of his chair. His famous green eyes were wide, shifting to scan the overly zoomed-in scene. His lips were slightly parted.

Pryce’s eyes drifted back to her own slate, a sleek black minimalist slab of a device, held in her long, dark-skinned fingers with their maroon nails. In its black glossy surface she saw herself reflected: a tall, fit, well coifed African American woman, just turned fifty, wearing a navy tailored suit and skirt.

But across its surface she saw no new message.

Come on, Kaori, she silently willed her deputy. I need to know.