Page 28 of Scion

“Only what got reported. You were the first big crowdfunded hit after the Ten-O-Ten commercialisation. Proved to everyone what a good decision it was.” Hard to keep the cynicism from my voice, at that last part.

“You know who claimed it?”

“Of course, it was all over the… oh.” I understand. “Oh.”

“The Keres offered me a deal. I could live, keep all the tokens I’d earned, keep working on my research, and let the rest of the world believe I’m dead. They got the reputation of being better than the rest of the pack, and all I had to do in return was share my existing work with them, and run my quantum sims on hardware they owned.”

I feel mildly ill. “So you handed them the specs of every existing bio at the time. And access to anything else you might come up with.” New bios like the Argos… es?… have made things trickier in the past few years, but before that, every single one was a creation of this woman.

The Keres’ first decade of assassinations—the ones that made them what they are today, gave them their precious reputation—were basically cheating.

They… probably don’t want that getting out.

“Which ended up being you. And people like you,” de Alwes continues, oblivious to my horror.

I’ve been peering into one of the fridges, trying to determine its contents, but I stop cold as the words register. “You created revs?” It’s hard to keep the disbelief from my voice.

“It was an accident, less than a month after I made the deal with them. Before the commercial amendment had even officially gone through. Same genetic tech as Ichor. I was experimenting, and the sims just…” She sighs. Mildly apologetic. “By the time I realised what they could do, so did the Keres. And you can guess how they felt about letting me ignore the possibilities.”

I absolutely can. I reel beneath the revelations.

“So why now?” I recover enough to voice the question, even as ten others occur to me. “What changed in the last six months that made the Keres decide you were no longer friends?”

“I think they realised I was poking around where they didn’t want me.”

“For what?”

“For you.” De Alwes shrugs at my bemused look. “You’re my greatest achievement, Azure, and they wouldn’t even let me look at your file. I had to know how you were going.”

“Well… now you know, I guess.” Not sure if I feel more flattered or Frankenstein’s monster, right now. Explains a lot, though. “And in return, you’re giving me the choice of fighting the Keres—which they will take personally, and assume I’m trying to help you because you’ve told me all of this—or never finding out about Oceanus.” The scales are about even, there.

“That first one also means saving my life, if that helps,” de Alwes observes.

The scales tip toward killing her, and being done with it.

“The Keres know what happened in Oceanus, too. They know and have been hiding it from you. I took that file straight from Floor 132 myself.”

Damn. Gently, ever so gently, back to keeping her alive. It’s no secret that Floor 132 of the Keres Building is its vault; corp data is protected under DeGov, so it gets special public monitoring on top of the Keres’ internal security. The latter of which, de Alwes almost certainly would have been pressed to advise them on over the years. No wonder she was able to get that file.

“Fine,” I grind eventually. I should probably be angrier, but part of me always wondered if my employers—former employers, now, I guess—knew more than they’d let on. Not that I’m exactly happy about any of this, still, but no point in lingering on it. I nod toward the door. “Where are we? Which district?”

“Caelum.”

I grunt. Caelum’s the wealthiest area of Themis. North wall, multiroom apartments. Reserved for workers and with more ID tech than anywhere else in the city. “Couldn’t make it easy.”

“I can get us to the Core without passing through any scans, if that helps. It’s not a way the Keres know.”

I brighten. “You sure?”

“Sure enough.”

Perfect. The Core is where my non-Keres contacts are, assuming they’re still alive. The old woman is finally being helpful.

“Lead the way,” I say with relief.

AS I FINALLY CLIMB THE ladder after de Alwes, I reflect that Themis’s sewers were exactly as unpleasant as one would expect them to be.

The megacity’s brown putrescence clings to my knees as I haul myself out into what is, at least relatively speaking, fresh air. We’re in an anteroom designed for workers, small and dark and grimy and an enormous improvement over our last two hours.