Mumbai Manhunt Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Also by JC Hay

  Title Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Yashilla

  Eight

  Nine

  Before You Go

  South Seas Salvation

  One

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright © 2017 JC Hay and Metal Pig Press

  Cover by The Killion Group

  Edited by Sasha Knight

  This novel is a work of fiction. The characters, places, and incidents are either fictional or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living, dead, or reconstituted from digital memories; actual events; or organizations is coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews. All rights reserved.

  For B’ as always, and for all of you

  Also by JC Hay

  The Corporate Services series

  Dubai Double-Cross

  Zurich Connection (This exclusive short story is only available if you sign up for my mailing list)

  Mumbai Manhunt

  South Seas Salvation

  One

  If Corporate Services planned to make him revisit all of his past mistakes before he retired, Palashkulum Joshi wished they’d have let him keep his addiction to cigarettes. It’s not like the cancer would get a chance to kill him before the implants finished the job. But no, CorpServ had edited out his nicotine addiction as easily as they’d given him modifications to fix all his other supposed weaknesses.

  Except for regret, that is. They let him keep that all for himself.

  He leaned against the open window and watched the street below, which was surprisingly empty for the time of day. The thin breeze was hot, humid enough to feel like trying to breathe through a damp rag, but he allowed himself a long, slow breath all the same. A chance to enjoy the calm before the storm, the quiet prelude to opening the door and confronting Netta Schulmann in a way that guaranteed any fond memories she might have toward him would be destroyed.

  Or maybe he was kidding himself, and she didn’t remember him at all. He’d helped her settle in to the lab three years ago, and for a few brief hours they’d found some solace in each other’s bodies as well. Despite what Corporate Services no doubt considered a messy physical entanglement, he’d been there as an employee. Someone hired to do a job.

  Same as now, really. The difference being that the last time his job had been to comfort. To soothe and welcome. While they weren't things at which he excelled, Netta had made it easy by being grateful for the smallest kindness.

  Now, CorpServ had sent him back to her lab—either through random chance, or some twisted sense of irony—to do the things they'd remade him for. To break. To terrorize. To destroy.

  At least once he'd finished this job he'd be out. His debts to CorpServ would be paid, and he could retire, live out the few remaining months he had left someplace with clear skies and endless blue ocean. The Maldives, perhaps.

  He pulled the heavy autopistol from its holster and gave it a quick once-over. Like him, it had been created with a singular purpose, and it dripped with intimidation and lethality. The look of it tended to stop arguments and end conflicts without it ever firing a shot.

  Which was just as well, since as soon as he fired it the recoil would blow half the bones in his wrist to powder. The unfortunate downside to implant rejection syndrome.

  Time to work. He shoved away from the window to start down the hall. At the opposite end, a heavy metal door with fresh electronic locks stood in stark contrast to the chipped plaster, graffiti, and wood. He ran his fingers over the keypad, remembering Dr. Schulmann’s nervousness when she had ordered it, as though she could scarcely believe that BlueGene would just allow her to spend money to set up her lab however she'd wanted.

  Not that her wants made it more secure. He tapped in the override code that Corporate Services had given him. The lock beeped, and the door opened with a quiet puff of air as the pressure difference pushed dust away from the lab.

  Joshi closed the door as he stepped through. The clutter and disarray in the hall outside paled in comparison to the lab. uneaten food in dented containers lay scattered about the room, and garbage had been pushed to the table edges to clear spaces. A bag of yarn spilled over next to the computer, and a half-finished scarf poured off the black rubber table and pooled on the floor, while a nearby gene sequencer had been ripped open and its core removed. An empty row of tablet docks sat in one of the few clear areas, but their devices were nowhere in sight. Fear stretched its first icy fingers along his spine.

  Despite his surveillance, all the preparation, it had finally happened. His stomach did a slow roll. Thirteen years without dropping a contract at CorpServ, only fail at the end. He scanned the empty lab again, but the answer was clear - someone had beaten him to the lab and taken Netta’s data before him. He was too late.

  It was too hot to think. The digital thermometer mounted on the wall above her cot read 34 degrees. As a reflex Netta converted back to the Fahrenheit she'd grown up with—93.4 degrees. Add in the humidity and the perceived temperature would be over 120. No wonder she couldn't sleep. Comfort would be elusive until the rains started up again.

  The lab door hissed in the other room, and her heart clawed its way into her throat. She'd locked the door; she could remember locking it. A detached part of her brain noted the physiological changes that accompanied a sympathetic cascade from the adrenal medulla. Dry mouth? Check. Pulse increase? Check. Shaking in extremities? Check. At any other time the experience might be fascinating, but not now.

  Not when someone was alone with her life's work. With Jada's legacy.

  Quietly as she could, Netta moved off her bed and picked up the steel bar that she kept in easy reach. BlueGene hadn't asked why she'd wanted a three-foot length of cold-rolled steel in her genetics lab, and if they'd left her with a bodyguard, she'd never have ordered it in the first place. But a bodyguard was a distraction. If she had someone to talk to, she wouldn't be working. Plopping her down in a city where she didn't speak the language and no one knew her kept her from making friends that might otherwise distract her.

  As a scientist, she appreciated the efficiency of their methods. As the subject, she would have preferred a few distractions between the monthly video reports required by BG headquarters. Someone like the man she'd assumed would be her bodyguard. He would definitely have been a distraction, with his broad hands and his solid muscles coiled beneath beautiful, umber skin…

  Netta shook her head to clear it. Another time, she could allow herself fantasies. Right now, someone was in the other room, threatening everything she'd done for the last three years. She crept to the door between her room and the lab, dropped low, and crawled out. Looking under the tables, she could see a single pair of work boots jutting out of dark gray cotton pants. Both the boots and the pants had a lived-in quality to them that might as well have had “professional soldier” written up the side. In Mumbai, the front lines of the first corporate war, that could only mean Corporate Services. She had little doubt as to which of the transnational corporates had hired them.

  I guess I couldn't fool BlueGene forever. Instead of sorrow, the realization felt freeing, as though, having been caught, she didn't have to pretend any longer. She tensed and slipped between the two rows, heading toward her desktop unit. Her data tablet could have matched the big box for performance, but Blu
eGene wanted all of her work stored locally on a machine with no network connections. With data theft both simplistic and rampant, she understood the concern.

  It also meant that she had no ability to leave the lab, since she could only work while on site. It made the luxury apartment they'd used to lure her to Mumbai a joke. She was too prone to the late-night revelation to risk being away from her lab when inspiration struck. Instead, she’d lived in the spare room attached to her workspace for the last three years. Hardly the lap of luxury, but more efficient by far.

  The boots came closer, moving toward her computer. She scampered out from under the table and surged to her feet, using the momentum to swing her weight behind the steel bar. A flash of recognition shot through her, and she loosened her grip, letting the bar slide from her fingers and clatter harmlessly to the floor.

  Not that he could have expected that. Netta couldn't help but admire the graceful way he leaped back, arms up to ward off the blow. He glanced at her hands, confirming that she didn't have another weapon to bring to bear.

  She let her breath out, bracing herself on the edge of the table. After three years it wouldn't do to collapse in front of him from adrenaline-shaky legs. Netta pulled the breath back in, trying to exude a calm she didn’t feel. "It's been a long time, Joshi."

  Netta's first thought was that he looked old. Not in a decrepit manner, but that he'd been roughly used and neglected. Rather than dispelling her memories of his perfection, the contrast highlighted them, drove home why those seven days with him still haunted her memory three years later. Gray dusted the dark hair at his temples, and the lines around his eyes and between his brows had deepened.

  His eyes—she'd forgotten what actual human eyes looked like. The scientists and staff at BlueGene had upgraded to cybereyes, just as she had. As the price came down and the available software became more varied and useful, they were becoming universal. The delivery driver who had brought her food yesterday had them, no doubt tied to bodycomp software that projected a GPS map to his next destination.

  But not Joshi. His eyes were still beautifully human. Netta resisted the urge to touch him, and her fingertips ached at the denial. "You've looked better."

  He smiled, the warmth traveling all the way to those soft brown eyes. "You're okay? Did they take anything?"

  "Did who take anything? What are you on about?" She scanned the lab to be safe, but everything was just as she'd left it.

  "You've been robbed. The place is ransacked."

  Laughter bubbled up, an unexpected emotion surfing on the last waves of adrenaline in her blood. "I work here. It’s always like this."

  He examined the room more slowly this time, and she could see him processing the patterns in the chaos, trying to understand. After a moment, he nodded. "Things are where you use them."

  The tingle of disappointment she'd felt at his scrutiny evaporated. So few non-scientists understood. The research stayed pure, but the rest of the lab tended to get disheveled as you focused on the work.

  "Wait, you broke in here because you thought I'd been robbed?" She'd been meaning to upgrade the security in the hall, knowing that it would only be a matter of time before BlueGene or one of their rivals came after her. She couldn't hide behind faked data forever. Sooner or later Corporate Services would be hired to send someone.

  The silence from Joshi dragged on, past uncomfortable and into deafening.

  The fear and disappointment slammed back with a vengeance as the realization hit home. "No. You broke in because you're here to do the robbing."

  "Not exactly." She waited, and he obliged by continuing. "This is a cleanup job."

  Netta looked around at the lab. "It's fine like this."

  "That's not what I mean. And you're brilliant enough to know the difference."

  Her pride fluttered at the compliment, trying to lift her spirits, but her disappointment held strong. It was the option she hadn't expected, that BlueGene would decide her work needed to be destroyed rather than risk losing it to a rival. She put one hand on his chest, as though she had any chance of holding him back. "Please. I'm so close."

  He took a deep breath, the warmth of his body pressing up against her hand and reminding her how he’d felt beneath her palm three years before.

  The pause gave her hope, that he'd been fighting with himself, that he would understand, but when she looked into his face, the sadness in his too-human eyes was plain to read.

  Joshi took a step back, leaving her skin cold where his pulse had been a heartbeat before. "I'm sorry, Netta. It's what they pay me for. If it helps, I know how you feel. It's nothing personal, just business."

  She was about to tell him exactly how personal it was to her, but the door to the lab hissed open again. From the hall, the high-pitched whine of a capacitor grew loud, and Joshi stiffened. His eyes widened, his sudden inhalation a mirror to the fear that chilled her limbs and kept her very still.

  The man by the door nodded, his voice as soft and cultured as his accent. "A concept we all understand too well. Dui bu qi. Move so I can see both of your hands, please?"

  Two

  Joshi laced his fingers behind his head, ignoring the grind in his shoulder that lanced dull pain through the joint. Standing next to Netta gave him the excuse to assess the newcomer. Chinese, but the accent had told him that much already, and dressed impeccably in a linen suit that looked perfectly designed to maximize mobility but still beat the heat.

  The mangler in the man's hand stayed focused on Joshi the entire time, the flattened nose cone that indicated the business end of the weapon showing a full red bar of LEDs to indicate maximum charge. One pull of the trigger would fire a tight microwave beam, superheating the water in cells and organs and rupturing flesh with steam. As weapons went, they were ineffective—hard to focus, lots of splash damage, and time-consuming to charge up. The pain and massive destruction they could create made them plenty intimidating all the same.

  The newcomer stepped close enough for Joshi to see himself reflected back in the mirrored surface of his cybereyes. One hand kept the mangler between them, while the other reached out and plucked the pistol from Joshi's shoulder holster.

  "I'll want that back."

  The other man laid the heavy pistol on a counter, next to the bag of yarn. "Sadly, you won't be needing it. I will send it to be buried with you though. It's the least I can do." The man’s movements were slow and graceful. Restrained. Joshi recognized the obvious ploy to disguise how modified the man might be. He used the same tactic himself—if you don’t show off everything you’ve got equipped, you can still unveil a few surprises that might give you the edge in a fight.

  Some of those surprises Joshi’d had done on his own, just to make sure they’d stay out of his files with Corporate Services. He’d heard too many rumors, too many stories of operatives sent to take down other operatives, and anything not in his file could be the thing that saved him. With his thumb, he pressed the space on his left wrist that told his bodycomp to dump adrenaline into his bloodstream.

  Joshi's vision narrowed to a near-tunnel, while the rush of his pulse crescendoed in his ears. Every muscle in his body tensed for action, pulling a gasp from him. He planted his feet, already calculating the ways his opponent might respond.

  The other operative nodded, his look almost resigned despite the emotionless chrome eyes. "Or we could do this, I suppose. I haven't fought one of you older models since the war." He set the mangler next to the pistol and stretched with languid grace. The creak of tendons sounded enormous in the silence. "I could use the amusement."

  Joshi hoped Netta had been smart enough to take cover. He charged.

  The assassin didn't change into a fighting stance. Joshi barely saw him move. One moment he stood calmly, and an eyeblink later his heel had already driven out into Joshi’s ribs.

  White pain blinded him. Joshi bounced off the strike and back into a table. Lab equipment went to the floor with an expensive-sounding crash. While his bodyco
mp dumped painkillers into his blood to compensate for the broken bone, Joshi used his momentum to spin on the smooth rubber surface of the table and drop behind his attacker. His punch was moving before his feet hit the ground.

  The other operative ducked under the swing. Two fists hammered into Joshi’s injured rib and sent pain shredding past the drugs that should have stopped it.

  Joshi screamed and slammed his elbow into his opponent’s shoulder. Nerves ached as he cracked into subdermal plating, and his elbow skidded off the other operative.

  The man didn’t hesitate. He rolled with Joshi’s elbow, twisting to catch the arm with a grip like a steel claw. He changed the angle quickly, pinning Joshi with a hyperextended armlock.

  Joshi cursed his stupidity, could almost hear his old instructor chiding him. This is what happens when you let emotion drive you into action.

  "That wasn't rational, my friend." The other operative stepped in and lifted, putting pressure on Joshi’s shoulder joint and steering him around the lab table. "Then again, you early versions tended to be short on tactics. It's what made you so disappointing."

  This was going to hurt. Joshi went slack, dropping to the floor with all his weight. His shoulder dislocated from the pressure, blurring his vision. At least he didn't need to see for the next part.

  The sudden shift pulled his opponent off balance. He stumbled forward just as Joshi powered up with his good arm. His fist caught the man in the solar plexus. Even through subdermal armor, the punch connected, driving air from the other operative's lungs in a cough.

  More importantly, he released Joshi in surprise.

  Joshi tucked his dislocated arm against his chest, ducked under one table and scooted down the next row away from the man. With luck, he'd not be the only person to act without thinking.

  His opponent grabbed up the mangler from the table and pointed it. The radome tracked Joshi with the smooth precision of a targeting computer, just as Joshi’d hoped. With a quiet prayer to whomever watched over villains and operatives, he changed direction to dive behind the lab's server.