Mark Tiedemann - Mirage

"Nine," Ariel mused. "You caught three of them. Three of them were killed on the scene."

"So we can assume three of them are still at large. There may have been accomplices outside the gallery waiting to facilitate an escape. We don't know."

"Six bodies I couldn't identify are in the morgue, in the same section with all the victims," Ariel said. "I have a list of names and tracking codes."

Mia frowned. "The three I captured were still alive when Bogard brought us back into the gallery."

"These six may not be anything more than innocent bystanders who got in the way. We have to check the names."

Mia shrugged. "I've tried running enhancements on them, to see if facial features show through the masks, but they padded the masks. What I have found so far is an emerging pattern of targeting. I'm not finished, so this isn't final, but it appears they were working from a specific list. It wasn't just a capricious act of terror."

Ariel blinked at the image on her subetheric. "Well, we know they wanted Humadros and Eliton…"

"Maybe. At least, yes, they were part of it. Let me finish this before I say any more." She turned to the robot. "Bogard? Let's continue."

"At some point," Derec said, "I'm going to have to have Bogard back to do a full diagnostic and debriefing."

Mia did not look up from her datum, only nodded. Ariel saw clearly that she did not like the idea of giving up the robot. Not yet.

"How are you feeling?" Ariel asked. "Can you walk yet?"

"Oh, I hobbled to the bathroom twice while you were gone. Things are improving. Your medical robot said another three days for the healing accelerants to work through completely."

"No problem. I can guarantee privacy for that long. Of course, this is ruining my social life."

Mia smiled thinly. "Sorry."

"Don't worry about it. I didn't have anything this exciting planned for at least another month." She stood and gave Derec a significant look, then headed for her bedroom.

As she had hoped, Derec followed.

She closed the door behind him.

"Stop pestering her for Bogard," Ariel said.

Derec frowned. "Excuse me?"

"She's terrified. Right now Bogard is the only thing making her feel safe. Every time you ask to have it back she gets scared. Stop it."

"Look, Bogard has data we need. We can't just ask for it, I have to download it from its buffers. In order to do that, I need Bogard back at Phylaxis."

"Give it a little time-"

"How much do you want? We have a situation here and I don't think we have the luxury of a few days or a week before we get at the information Bogard has."

"Right now we have' more information than we know what to do with. None of it's making sense."

"And neither are you. Since when can you have too much information?"

"When most of it's useless-noise. Like that mess you've got from the Union Station RI."

Derec drew himself up and Ariel braced for a fight. She knew that look and could predict all that followed it, and suddenly she felt extremely tired. She held up her hands.

"Just back off asking for Bogard for now. I'll talk to Mia in the morning and see what I can do. She's my friend."

Unexpectedly, Derec let out a long breath and nodded.

"All right. I need to check in with Rana, anyway." He turned away, hands on hips, and surveyed her bedroom. "Nice," he said. "You've been doing well for yourself."

"If I had time to enjoy it, life would be wonderful," Ariel said. She winced at the sharp look of hurt he gave her. "Derec, I'm too tired to think straight anymore."

"I'm going."

She followed him to the apartment door.

"I'll call first thing," he said. "This whole situation…"

"A mess, isn't it?"

Derec grunted.

"Watch your back," Ariel said.

He nodded, lingering a moment longer, as if he had something more to say. But he only smiled tightly and left.

On the sofa, Mia typed at her datum while Bogard stood motionless before the subetheric. People moved on the screen, molasses slow, dying again.

Ariel went back to her bedroom. She did not remember lying down.

"Ariel."

"Hmm?"

"Wake up, Ariel. Ariel."

"Wha-who-?"

"Ariel, wake up. I have to ask you something."

"Go 'way."

"Ariel."

Someone grabbed her right shoulder and shook her. Ariel's eyes snapped open and she rolled away from the touch. "What?"

"Ariel."

She rubbed her eyes, groggy and disoriented. "Mia? What time is it?"

"You don't want to know. I need to ask you something."

"What?"

"Who made the final list of invitees for the podium?"

Ariel sat on the edge of her bed. She noticed then that she still wore her clothes. "Jennie," she called, "bring me a cup of coffee." She stood and stretched. Her limbs vibrated from weariness; not enough sleep. Again.

Mia stood on the opposite side of the bed, waiting.

"Who made what?" Ariel asked.

"The final list of invitees. Who did that?"

"You don't know?"

"We're just security-all we got was the finished list and a set of orders."

"Well… it was a joint decision… Humadros had her end already finalized and simply sent us a copy of her list… then Ambassador Setaris and Ambassador Chassik worked with Senator Eliton on the list here. Why?"

Mia hobbled toward the door. "Someone else must have gotten hold of it. Like I said before, from what I can tell the targets were preselected. They knew exactly who they wanted to take out. Bogard verified that assumption."

Ariel watched Mia limp out of her room. Who had put together that list? she wondered, irritated then at how muddled she felt. R. Jennie entered the room with a tray bearing a single cup of steaming liquid.

"Get me a stim as well, Jennie," Ariel said, taking the cup and brushing past the robot.

She glanced at the time as she entered the living room and groaned. Only four hours of sleep. She felt on the verge of lousy now; the rest of the day would be little better. She sipped coffee, wincing at the hot fluid.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

Mia dropped onto the couch. "Bogard, explain to Ariel what we found."

Bogard stood alongside the subetheric screen, with the remote in its hand. The scene projected shifted several times until it showed a wide view of the stage and the mass of black-clad attackers huddling at the edge.

"Once we isolated the corporeal subjects from the projections," Bogard explained, "we began making a determination of the number of shots fired and targets struck. This was accomplished through a combination of identifying each impact and backtracking the trajectory to a given weapon and counting the number of times each weapon was fired."

"How did you do that?"

"The explosive charge used to impel the projectiles appears to be a fast-burning, high-heat substance which burns up its own residue, therefore producing no visible, debris upon exit of the projectile. However, there is a heat bloom at the end of the barrel which distorts light passing through it. Linking each instance with a given sound, we have determined the number of shots fired to within ninety-eight percent accuracy. Coupled with the impact traces, we have a positive number of shots fired to wounds inflicted."

"Which is?"

"Point nine-three."

Ariel stared at the robot for a number of seconds. She took a mouthful of coffee, then noticed R. Jennie standing beside her with a tray containing a single pill. Ariel took it and swallowed it.

"Wait," she said to Bogard. "You mean they never missed? Not one stray bullet?"

"Two stray bullets. Twenty fatalities, thirty-three wounded. Fifty-five actual shots fired by the corporeal attackers."

"One of the misses was me," Mia said. "Apparently. Given that Gel and Mattu, my teammates, were killed."

"There were other shots?"