The Debt Collector (Season Two) Read online

  He glances back to Hughes’s bedroom, like he’s just now piecing it together. Why I’m here. What I was doing to Hughes. But he doesn’t understand me—he can’t possibly know.

  He looks back to me. “It’s an organization of collectors," he says. “And they want the same thing I think you do.”

  “You don’t know what I want,” I toss back. But I’m casting for a solid anchor to hold on to, something that makes sense in all of this.

  He straightens his trenchcoat, rumpled from our fight. “You want to make a difference,” he says coolly. “You have the power of life and death in your hands, and you want to do something important with that. Am I wrong?”

  I don’t say anything. The sense of panic is tamped down by an unwelcome hope. I don’t want to believe anything this debt collector is saying, but there’s a part of me that wants to hear what he has to say.

  He nods, even though I haven’t replied. “I have someone who will very much want to talk to you. I’ll be in contact to set up a meeting.”

  “You’ll… what?” It sounds like he’s letting me go. Which spins the gears in my head one more time.

  “Go home, Alexandra.” His voice is deadly serious now. “I’ll call you soon.”

  I frown, unsure. He’s letting me go, but with the threat, or possibly the promise, of meeting later. With this group, Gehenna. Which could be something that will destroy me or… I can’t even think what the alternative might be. I have this overwhelming sense it will destroy me either way. That a guillotine hangs over my head, regardless. But at least for the moment…

  I take a step back, testing. “How about we just forget all this happened? No need to call me in the morning.”

  “Trust me, that’s not an option.” He folds his hands in front of his trenchcoat, but doesn’t move to stop me as I slowly edge away.

  I turn and run out the back door.

  A stranger in red lipstick stares at me from the mirror.

  If you can ignore the dead-flat eyes, I look better than I have in weeks, probably years. My cheeks are rosy, my skin glows, even my wild black curls, tamed and twisted into a corporate-ready updo, have some extra shine in them. All night, Hughes’s life energy has been swimming inside me, filling out my bones, and while I still have the gut-wrenching need to pay it back out, it’s brought me back to far more than level. I must have pulled more than I thought… before the strange debt collector whose name I still don’t know, yanked me free of the collection. I’ve gone over his words a dozen times in my head, but I still don’t understand—why I’m alive, why I’m free, and who the hell he and his freaky-named Gehenna friends are.

  The only thing I know for sure is my secret is horribly compromised.

  The board meeting is in twenty minutes, and I’m hiding out in my private bathroom on Sterling’s hundredth floor. Meanwhile, the events of last night are a ticking bomb just waiting to explode my life. The Sterling name is synonymous with the right to live out your full life, no matter your debts, and my father devoted all of his hours—publicly and privately—to waging a war against debt collection. Before my father’s death, I could have paid the price for being a collector all on my own. Sterling would have been embarrassed, but I could have walked away and taken the shame with me. But now… everything is in my hands.

  If the world discovers what I am, the board will be the first in line to take me down. Like Wyatt said, they’ve already got the short knives out, looking for a way to hostile-takeover Sterling right out of my hands. Lifetime, my father’s non-profit anti-debt-collection group, will be completely discredited. Worse, people will be leery of supporting other, smaller groups that fight alongside us for the cause. The PR blow is almost impossible to calculate. And if I go down, it won’t just be me who suffers: Wyatt and Miral and too many other good people will be flushed out of both Sterling and Lifetime.

  And it won’t even end there.

  When I turned eighteen, I managed to evade collector testing: that means now I’ll serve time either in jail or in the government’s Debt Collector Agency program. Everyone knows debt collector lifespans in jail are shorter than a cab ride across the city. And playing the government’s grim reaper… I’d rather go out with a glory collection and a no-chute building jump.

  There are no good solutions to any of it.

  The abyss rises up and grabs at me with sticky-black fingers, but the jitter-energy of Hughes’s collection fights it off. I shake my head at all of it. My reflection chastises me right back, but I refuse to let this happen. I need to get ahead of this thing before it finishes me off and takes everything else down with it.

  I tap open my palm screen and key in Jax’s number. She’s my fixer, and I have a lot of things that need fixing. Not least the fact that Hughes’s stolen life energy needs to stop swimming in my cells and making me even more on edge.

  Any donors yet? I watch the message blink while it sends. It’s mid-morning. She should be up.

  Yeah. Not sure it’s smart.

  A small smile lifts my reflection’s blood-red lips. Ready in one hour, I tap out. My time in the board meeting will be short and sweet. At least, that’s my plan. Also need gun and info on group called Gehenna.

  I wait. The response takes longer this time.

  What happened?

  Later. My screen line is secure, but I’m not documenting anything that could possibly be slashed out of my palm and used against me later.

  The response comes right back. One hour.

  Jax will be pissed about the tease when I see her, but it will be nothing compared to the news I’m bringing with me. Setting up collections and payouts is easy, safe work. I have a feeling these Gehenna people are anything but safe or easy. Which reminds me of how vulnerable the suit left me last night. As I told tall, dark, and smirky, it was designed for maximum theatrics. And as a barrier between me and the slime I deal with. But it left me completely screwed in combat with a debt collector. Something I have a sick feeling will happen again.

  Getting enhancements for the suit just jumped to the top of my priority list. I square my shoulders and take one last look in the mirror, willing my eyes to reflect some of the determination I have charging inside me.

  They’re still empty.

  I make a mental note to stop looking in mirrors and snatch the bag with my suit from the floor. The speed with which I stride from my office and past the bustling cubicles of Sterling’s executive floor is an open dare to anyone who might think of stopping me.

  They don’t.

  The lab in the basement is also full of energetic workers, busy in their creation of Sterling’s latest cybernetics innovations. My father was only fifty-two when the assassin took him, so the inventions pipeline is still stuffed full of his brainwork. But soon, the company will keenly feel his absence—not just physically, but in the innovative cybernetic creations that are the lifeblood of the company. I push those thoughts to the side: none of that will matter if I lose the company to the board. They’re more concerned about lining their pockets than preserving my father’s legacy.

  Before I swipe into the clean room, I lift an electric-white coverall off the rack and suit up, taking care to tuck my bound-up hair in the hood. Inside the room, Miral is hard at work. Today she has a line of eyeballs mounted on pedestals and staring at the door. They’re probably implants, although as I get closer, they don’t seem to have the tell-tale glint of internal mechanics. They could be entirely donor eyes for compatibility tests, but it’s also possible she’s simply experimenting with better cosmetics for a more natural-looking cybernetic.

  She’s bent over them with her clean suit and telescopic goggles. Her micro-filament tools are so tiny, they’re invisible except for the handles held by her small fingers. She doesn’t seem to hear the tapping of my corporate stiletto heels on the floor. At least, it isn’t pulling her from her work.

  I stand behind her and wait, but she doesn’t turn. “Did I do something to get on your ignore-until-dead list?” I as
k lightly.

  She doesn’t move. Finally, I notice the tiny white dots tucked inside her ears. She likes a thumpy kind of new opera that I don’t really understand. I grit my teeth and tap her on the shoulder. She jumps a foot in the air, slamming the workbench with her tools on the way down. The eyeballs quiver.

  I cringe.

  “What in the—!” she yells at ear-splitting volume, then she sets down her tools to tap the hidden microbuds. The goggles go up to reveal her dark-eyed glare.

  “Sorry!” I rush out, hands up. “You know, we really need a protocol for dredging you out of the depths of your research, M. Especially with the buds.”

  Her dark, thin brows pull together. “Or you could simply not disturb me while I’m doing incredibly delicate bio-sculpting.”

  “Bio-sculpting?” I ask in a desperate bid to earn forgiveness through tech talk. “I thought we gave up on tissue-only regenics.” Regrowing body parts is great for matching with the tissues of the recipients, but naturally, it’s a slow process. Often slower than the patient in need can wait.

  “Well some lack the imagination to see the benefits of the tissue side,” she says, cocking her head to the side. “Your father and I agreed it wasn’t yet a completely dead avenue.” She scowls and goes about setting upright the fallen eyeballs. “Although his daughter may have succeeded in killing any recent progress.”

  I sigh, but I don’t have time to mince words anyway. I hold up the bag. “Thanks for the repair job, by the way. But I have another favor to ask.”

  She throws a you’re-not-forgiven look over her shoulder, then bends to inspect the eyeball damage. “Your father also had a better sense of timing when asking for favors.”

  I close my eyes briefly while her back is turned, knowing I’m just going to piss her off more. Then I force the words out. “I need some self-defense measures built into the suit.”

  Sure enough, she pops up and whips around, knocking one of the teetering stalks to the bench. “What?” She peers at my too-healthy face like she’s looking for wounds. “Are the buildings fighting you back now?” Her suspicion level is through the roof. “What are you up to, Lexy? Is this about your father? Because I want to see his killer behind bars as much as anyone, but you can’t—” She cuts herself off, a tiny rage volcano seething in her eyes. She turns her back on me and slowly sets right the fallen bio-sculpted eye.

  I’m more surprised by her fury than anything. “I’m not… I’m really not going after anyone,” I say, stumbling because it’s not even close to true.

  She has to hear it in my voice. She turns back, her stare intense. “Your father would not approve of you getting yourself hurt.”

  My shoulders slump. “It’s nothing like that, M.” I scramble for a lie that will at least sound like the truth. “Last night, I saw someone get beat up. It… kind of rattled me. I want to have something to defend myself, just to be safe when I’m out there.” Which is true—it shouldn’t matter that it’s debt collectors who are after me, not thugs in an alley.

  The frown is still there, but her anger seems to dissipate. “You could try not going out at night to jump off buildings. What kind of hobby is that anyway?”

  “I need something to scare the nightmares away, M.” There’s more plain truth in that than I want to admit, but it finally reaches her. She takes a step toward me, and for an instant, I think she’s going to hug me—something she’s only done once, at the funeral—but instead, she takes the bag from my hand and peers inside.

  “Did you shred it again?” she asks, her voice back to business. “Because the fabric loses integrity after too much manipulation. I will have to build a whole new suit, if you keep that up.”

  “I was more careful this time,” I say with a small smile, then hook a thumb over my shoulder. “If you got this covered, the board’s expecting me…”

  She waves me off, already pulling the suit out and slipping down her goggles to inspect it, like she doesn’t really believe me about the damage. “Go on. Get out of my lab,” she says without looking at me. “And don’t hurry back.”

  I grin and turn to leave. Just as I swipe my way out, she calls out, “Alexa?”

  “Yeah?” I turn, standing in the threshold, the hood of my suit half pushed back already.

  She’s glaring at me again. “If you find out who the collector is, you will tell me. Understood?”

  Who the collector is… I know she means my father’s killer, not me, but it still freezes me in the doorway. Would tiny Miral really go after my father’s killer? Or does she just want to know about it, after the fact? However she means it, this much is clear: she wants to be in the know. Belatedly, I give her a small nod.

  She returns it then goes back to her work. I slip out and let the door seal behind me. The sooner I take care of the board, and possibly put this Gehenna business to rest as well, the sooner I can get back to the vengeance we both want.

  I stride out of the elevator on the executive floor and head toward the boardroom. My palm screen says I’m on time, and I briefly debate making them wait. But I keep up my pace, past the cubicles, down the hall toward the exec suite, until I see Wyatt waiting in front of the closed boardroom door. He’s tapping something on his palm screen, and a half second later, my screen makes a soft tone that a message has been received. He looks up at the muted sound of my heels making divots in the thick hallway carpet.

  I hold up my open palm. “I’m on time, boss.”

  A smile leaps to his face. “I didn’t think you’d…” The smile falters a little. “I mean… they’re waiting for you.”

  I pull in a breath as I arrive at his side and give the closed door a look-over. “Everyone here?”

  He nods. “And Stevens from legal.”

  I lift one eyebrow. “An interesting move.”

  My father’s shares—which are now mine—constitute a controlling interest in Sterling. But he long ago started handing out shares to the board as well as issuing private stock to raise investment capital. He said it was necessary to attract top talent to the Board of Directors in the fiercely competitive cybernetics market. And he thought owning shares of Sterling was a good way to bring other companies into the Lifetime fold. It was his way of enticing them into keeping their cybernetics businesses free of life-energy technologies. Plus, when your competitors own a share of your company, suddenly your interests become much more aligned.

  But over time, debt collecting became more entrenched, not less. Exploiting that market, rather than fighting against it, became more attractive. Life energy was suddenly a resource that many felt was underutilized. It went against everything my father and Lifetime believed, but gaining back those shares has been harder than doling them out. And there are a lot of them out there now—enough that a coordinated effort could be a threat.

  Wyatt scowls. “I don’t think the board’s made any actual moves to divest you yet, Alexa. But then again, I didn’t expect Stevens to be here.”

  “Then let’s see what they’re up to.” I stride over to the mammoth steel doors that wall off the boardroom like it’s an old-time bank vault. As if their corporate strategy sessions need to be protected by an inch of armor plating. I push open the door and cruise into the room.

  All twelve board members, plus Daniels the CEO, and Stevens the Chief Legal Officer, are stationed at their places around a black-glass table that stretches the length of the room. With three walls of windows, the boardroom is a jetty that sticks out over the smog-blanketed city like a glass palace floating in a pristine sky. For a moment, the expanse of table between the seated board members seems utterly black, like a void they should all be sucked into. Then the bright morning sun catches at one end and undulates across it. As I slowly walk the length, keeping my pace calm and confident, the captured sun skims the surface of the table, touching each of their built-in screens in turn.

  Every gaze follows me. I meet them each, one by one, as I pass.

  They’re perfectly dressed, stylishly coif
fed, the men as well as the women, and exude a gravitas I might find intimidating if I hadn’t been preparing all of my father’s board presentations for the last year. I’ve never attended one, but I know each of the board members as if they’re part of the family—which, in fact, was how my father regarded them. Judith Singer, the MBA from Harvard, who’s all-in with cosmetic cybernetics: her steel-gray talons, the kind of retractable nails that can serve as daggers as well as ornamentation, are just the most visible of her implants. Henry Piton, the regulatory expert who ensures Sterling is on top of the latest myriad requirements out of the Department of Life and Health, also has a taste for the biomechanical. His augmented eye glitters green as he watches me. I can’t see his implanted ear phone, but I know it’s one of Sterling’s not-yet-released models with enhanced aural capabilities as well as the standard touchless call feature.

  This is the first time I’ve seen the board in the flesh, but they’re just like any other assortment of the city’s elite. Up-to-the-minute fashions made from synthetics out of Taiwan. Perfectly groomed hair that’s barely peppered with silver strands. But as I look closer… I can suddenly see the tell-tale signs. Steven’s eyes shine a little too bright. Daniel’s sixty-year-old-eyes are astonishingly free of wrinkles. And Judith’s blush is entirely natural. These high potentials aren’t just aging gracefully with the benefits of cosmetics and personal trainers: they’re getting life energy hits.

  How could my father not notice? He certainly wouldn’t have tolerated them on the board, had he known. But then my father didn’t stalk high potentials at night and see all the effects of illegal hits up close and personal. When I reach the end of the table and turn to face them, the city at my back, I have everyone’s complete and undivided attention. Wyatt remains at the door, to secure it and probably ensure my escape, should I need one.

  I won’t.

  “My father is dead.” I figure we might as well cut to it. Not to mention I have an appointment with Jax to keep. “While I’ve been mourning the passing of the founder of Sterling, it appears some of you have been working to dismantle the very thing he spent his life building.”