Nyx Smith - Fade to Black

Rico could accept that, as far as it went. Magicians were special. They weren't half as common as most people seemed to think. Ones with Bandit's ability were damn rare.

"Typically," Farris continued, "the corporate mindset views a change of affiliation as a sort of betrayal. Would you trust someone who betrayed their corp? Trust them with proprietary data? Your edge against the competition? Corps guard their secrets very closely. They scrutinize personnel recruited from other corps scrupulously. Prometheus more than most."

Rico nodded. Never trust a traitor. He'd heard that before. "Why'd they kill your husband?"

"Because," Farris said, seeming stung, "they'd rather deprive a competitor of the value of an Ansell Surikov than risk recruiting a potential traitor. Another corp's loss is their gain. That's how Prometheus sees it."

"And that's how you knew the meet wouldn't go right."

"That was my assumption."

"So why didn't you say something?"

"Would you have believed me?"

"Does it matter?"

"Of course it matters. Everything I do influences what you think of me and that matters quite a lot." Abruptly, Farris seemed on the verge of tears. Her eyes got moist and her lower lip quivered. "If I had said they might try to kill you, and they didn't, if your meet had gone as planned, you'd see me as a schemer. You'd think I had some hidden agenda, that I had tried to deceive you." Her breath caught. "It may not seem very brave, but I want to get out of this alive. I'm horrified over what's happened, over Ansell's death, but nothing scares me more than the power you have over me. I'll do anything I have to do… to get through this."

Some slags would take a statement like that and run and never stop, especially with it coming from someone who looked like Farris. Some slags would use any situation to take advantage of a woman. Not Rico's style. Not even on his worst day. "One of my people might still be alive if I'd known what you know about Prometheus."

Farris' expression grew anguished. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's hard to know what to do. If I, had it to do over, I would take my chances and tell you. I was afraid. I'm still afraid."

"You got reason."

Farris seemed to shudder. "Yes, I know," she said quietly, almost in a whisper. "I know I have reason to fear you. That's why we must talk. I have something that you might want."

"Like what?"

"Ansell Surikov."

"Surikov is dead."

"No. He's not."

Farris looked scared, but she spoke in the dead-calm tone that people used when they know exactly what they're saying, and know that they're right.

Rico looked at the stress analyzer on his wrist. If Farris was lying, she was damn good at it.

A long silence followed. Farris' eyes never wavered, despite her fearful expression. Mentally, Rico ran down the short list of possible explanations. Farris could be lying. She could be nuts. Desperate enough to say anything or too far gone to notice. Even if Surikov had been revived, magically resuscitated, or his apparent death only some magician's illusion, Farris would have no way of knowing that.

Rico could think of only one other explanation and it wasn't a good one. Possibly, just possibly, he and his team had been not only double-crossed, but reamed right from the start. Tricked somehow. He didn't see how. "Surikov's not dead?"

"No." Farris shook her head.

"Then who was the slag we busted out of Maas Intertech?"

"Michael Travis. One of Ansell's research assistants." It didn't seem likely. "No way," Rico growled. "No fragging way. We had retina scans. We had fragging DNA scans,"

"Yes, but how did you confirm those scans?" Farris asked softly. "Based on data obtained from Fuchi?"

"I'll ask the questions."

Farris just watched him a moment. The fear in her expression seemed to mix with sadness, maybe regret "Not even Fuchi datafiles are immutable," she said. "The infiltrator program anticipated the possibility that certain relevant datafiles such as personnel files might be surreptitiously accessed. These files were altered. Datasets were exchanged. Michael Travis' retinal and DNA patterns were inserted into Ansell's files. The real Ansell Surikov, his codes and patterns, are now part of the datafiles that originally belonged to Michael Travis."

Rico said nothing. He guessed that what Farris was saying was possible, but she made it sound too easy. There was more to changing identities than just a swap of data in computer files. "Surikov's face is all over the datanets. He's been at conferences. He's been on trideo. People know what he looks like."

"Yes, that's true," Farris agreed, as softly as before. "And that is one reason why Michael Travis was chosen. He and Ansell have similar physical parameters. Similar physiques. Only a modest amount of cosmed surgery was necessary to complete the likeness."

Rico shook his head, tempted to sneer. "You can't cut a slag into a disguise like that. You can't make him a duplicate of somebody else. It's been tried. Surgery leaves scars. You can't cover up the traces. Not all of them."

"You're correct," Farris said. "Ordinarily, any surgery would be detected by a close medical examination. Precluding an attempt at deception. In this Case, however, it was possible to disguise the cosmetic alterations as necessary surgical reconstructions." Farris hesitated a moment, then said, quieter than before, "Ansell has always been something of a bacchanalian. And rather ^discriminate. It was a simple matter to modify his files to show an episode with Gray's Syndrome."

Rico grimaced. "That's real convenient."

"Efficacious. And therefore essential."

Gray's Syndrome was one of several virulent, sexually transmitted diseases that had arisen over the last five or ten years. People said it had come with the Awakening. Elves seemed to be particularly prone, but no one was immune. Gray's was nasty, though usually not fatal, given the right medical care. It corrupted a person's appearance. Made him or her look old and sick and deformed. And it happened fast, in just days. By the time a person realized he had it, his hair could be falling out and his teeth turning black and jutting out of his mouth like the fangs of an ork. The pain was said to be horrendous. Some people were transformed practically overnight. Some people, those who couldn't afford surgical corrections, killed themselves rather than go through life looking like some simsense-inspired horror. Some people just went insane. Rico supposed it would take a lot of surgery to restore a man from an episode with Gray's. That much cutting might well be used to cover the surgery needed to turn some slag into a near-duplicate of Ansell Surikov.

Clever.

"Okay," Rico said. "Say you made this slag Travis look like Surikov. He passes the scans. That doesn't make him Surikov."

"That is where headware comes in."

"Yeah?"

Farris nodded. "The base implantation involved some highly advanced bionetics to boost the cerebral functions. This provided a framework for implanting a new form of semi-organic skillsoft, the bionetic equivalent of personafix BTL, encoded with Ansell Surikov's persona matrix."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that Michael Travis not only looked and acted like Ansell Surikov, he believed that he was Ansell Surikov."

"And nobody at Maas Intertech noticed that this slag Travis had all this drek inside his head."

"Ansell Surikov has numerous cerebral implants. Most scientists do. Michael Travis' implants were simply designed to conceal their personafix functions." A look like surprise passed over Farris' features. "Even I couldn't tell them apart. And I've had more experience with Ansell than merely as a psychologist."

"Which one are you married to?"