Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Spartacus File

So would NeuroTalents send gunmen after him?

Maybe they would-it didn't seem likely, but maybe they would. And in that case, he sure didn't want to walk into NeuroTalents’ offices and give them a sitting target.

Would they try to kill him just to cover up their mistake? That seemed pretty extreme. Consortium members were generally assumed to have disposed of troublemakers on occasion, but only as a last resort.

Maybe there was something else.

Maybe there was something about the imprint that made him dangerous-something more than the fact that it proved they'd screwed up.

He grimaced. Well, yes, there was something dangerous, he thought. He'd just killed a man with a splinter, for Christ's sake! That was pretty goddamn dangerous, to have someone running around who could do that.

He'd killed a man with a splinter-he felt suddenly ill at the thought. It hadn't bothered him at the time, or when he wasn't thinking about it, but now he remembered the feel of it, the fluids spilling from the ruptured eye…?

He leaned against a pillar, waiting for the nausea to pass; Mirim glanced at him uneasily.

Just what the hell had they imprinted him with?

What did they have an imprint like that for in the first place? NeuroTalents’ business was imprinting people with job skills-what kind of job called for the sort of fighting ability he'd learned?

He'd heard stories about corporate assassins, killers kept on the regular payroll, but he'd never really believed them-he'd assumed that any corporate killings were done by freelancers. But even if there were corporate assassins, would it be worth creating an entire imprint to manufacture them?

How could there be enough corporate assassins to make imprinting economically feasible? There'd be bloodbaths in every research lab or corporate penthouse in the country if that was going on.

That just didn't make sense. So that wasn't what he was. That was something of a relief.

But then, what was he? A soldier?

The army used imprinting for part of their training, certainly, but by all accounts that was for things like driving tanks, not unarmed combat. And they did their own, they didn't contract it out to NeuroTalents.

But maybe someone else in the government had hired NeuroTalents. Maybe one of those organizations in the Department of Homeland Security, the ones the public wasn't supposed to hear about, had decided to use NeuroTalents to train their people.

That made sense. All too much sense.

It would do as a working assumption, then-he'd been imprinted with the training to be a spy, a secret agent. And maybe his brain hadn't been ready for it-maybe that was why he'd had such a bad reaction to the imprint. He wasn't meant to be able to kill people.

But on the other hand, he was certainly good at it now. Wouldn't those two men have had the same sort of imprinting?

Maybe he'd gotten something special. Maybe that was why whoever was responsible was after him.

Spies, assassins-it all sounded like something out of an old video.

“So where are we going?” Mirim asked, as the sound of an approaching train reached them.

“Your place,” Casper replied.

Mirim nodded.

By the time they actually boarded the subway car, however, Casper was having second thoughts. If the government was trying to kill him-and of course it was the government; who else but the Party would have the arrogance to set assassins loose on the streets of Philadelphia?-then they'd probably already done their research. They'd probably know he was dating Cecelia. They might know that Mirim had left the Data Tracers offices with him.

And Mirim and Cecelia shared that apartment.

If they had any brains at all, the people who were after him would be watching the apartment. They might be holding Cecelia hostage, as bait for him.

He shook his head. No, he thought, Cecelia wouldn't be home at this time of day, she'd be at her office. He glanced at his watch-she'd be going to lunch soon, he judged.

Maybe they could arrange a rendezvous; somehow, he didn't think anyone should be going into that apartment.

Instead, he got off at City Hall, pulling Mirim after him.

“Where are we going?” she asked for the third time.

“We're going to meet Cecelia,” Casper told her. “Your apartment's probably being watched.”

The man called Smith was not happy with what he heard when one of the back-up men checked in.

The agent who'd been waiting out front had eventually realized that something was wrong, that the pick-up wasn't going as planned; if Beech had been there he should have been taken care of quickly, and if he wasn't, either Lambert or Finch should have come out and said so, so the man in the car would know it was a stake-out.

He'd heard gunfire and breaking glass, he was pretty sure, and that should have been the end of it, but he waited and waited and Lambert and Finch did not emerge.

So he'd gone in, and he'd found Finch with bullet holes in his chest and Lambert with a chunk of wood rammed through his eye, and he'd gone back out, quickly, with his pistol ready, to warn Eberhart out back, and then he'd returned to his car and called in.

Smith was not happy at all.

This should have been easy. Beech shouldn't be ready for them yet-the file should still be fragmented, working in fits and starts. Lambert and Finch should have polished him off in seconds.

Maybe it hadn't been Beech at all, maybe Lambert and Finch had stumbled into a drug deal or some other illicit activity and been mistaken for cops-the neighborhood was bad enough, certainly.

But in that case, where the hell was Beech?

He wasn't at his apartment. He wasn't at the woman's apartment. He wasn't at Data Tracers. Where else would he go? Smith accessed the file on Beech and skimmed through it.

He saw three more possibilities.

First, Beech might have figured out what had happened and gone to NeuroTalents to complain.

Second, he might have headed to his girlfriend's law firm-either to see her, or to discuss filing suit against NeuroTalents or Data Tracers.

Third, he might have decided to take shelter with friends or relatives-only his records didn't show any living relatives, and the only friend mentioned was Cecelia Grand.

Those would all want attention. It meant calling in more manpower, but that was better than letting Beech stay alive and loose with the Spartacus File gradually integrating itself in his brain.

And that brought up the question of just how good, how dangerous, Beech already was. It would take a neurophysicist and an imprint programmer with a complete scan of Beech's brain to predict that with any accuracy; the theory was that he would need weeks or months to absorb everything, but Polnovick had begun his rampage within twenty-four hours. The theory might well be wrong.

Beech might be a rank beginner who got lucky, or he might already be the equivalent of an experienced rebel leader, or he might be anywhere in between, and Smith didn't know which it was. Could Beech spot Covert agents reliably, or had Lambert and Finch just been sloppy? Was Beech wary now, alerted by the attempt on his life? Would it be possible to get near him?

A sniper didn't need to be near him, of course, but the sniper that morning hadn't managed to dispose of Beech. Had that been merely coincidence, or had Beech somehow already been alerted?

Or was the Spartacus File simply making him very, very cautious?

If Beech was on the lookout, for whatever reason, how could Smith get at him? Smith kept half his mind on that question as he issued orders to cover Grand's office.

Mirim followed along, watching in puzzlement as Casper zigged and zagged through the city streets. He paused now and then to stare up at certain buildings or vehicles, though Mirim could never see anything special about them.