Scorpion by Christian Cantrell (best english novels for beginners txt) 📗

able to look up and discern small cross sections of living space as the ferry approached—maybe someone looking back down at her, or figures transitioning from one room to another—but the glass is tinted enough that she cannot see in at this distance.

The exclave’s retracted mesh pier begins telescoping out to meet the ferry, and the moment the terminal is within range, it electromagnetically aligns, abruptly attaching to the hull with the satisfying report of a small-caliber pistol. There is no captain to thank, and Quinn has made no new friends along her journey, so she disembarks without ceremony.

The pier inherits the oscillation of the ferry on the Gulf’s current, so in order to steady herself, Quinn walks her hands along the graduating rails as she approaches the landing. The pier and the ferry remain connected until she steps through an open gate and swings it closed behind her, at which point the collar decouples and the pier begins retracting. Eddies form behind the ferry as its rotors spin up, and Quinn feels, unexpectedly, marooned.

A little backup might have been nice this time around. After being threatened by Tariq, Quinn learned something that, in retrospect, Moretti should have explained to her before she left: any kind of fieldwork—even the purely investigative kind—carries with it some level of risk. Moretti did promise her support anywhere in the world, but nobody whom the CIA has influence over could get anyone out to The Grid until afternoon at the earliest. And she is certain that her man would never be so careless as to meet his financiers in person.

Heavy or oversized equipment like manufacturing-scale 3D printers, full-sized slate-top pool tables, and collections of classic Ferraris have to be moved by ferry rather than quadcopter, so all exclave piers have direct-drive freight elevators. Quinn checks once more for any acknowledgment of her presence, detects none, and proceeds to use the panel to summon the lift. Since this is tantamount to ringing the doorbell, authorization is required from inside before the doors will part—authorization that, Quinn realizes eventually, is not forthcoming. If she were in the lobby of a Holiday Inn, she could use the placebo gesture of jabbing at the little lighted disc with the tip of her thumb to give herself something to do while she waited, but poking through an already-active holographic button hovering above a sheet of volumetric plasma glass and receiving, in return, zero visual or tactile feedback just doesn’t impart the same level of satisfaction. Human impatience was clearly not taken into consideration when designing the holographic user interface.

She squelches her irrational impulse to knock on the elevator doors and instead steps back as far as the rails around the platform will allow so she can look up. Quinn has done enough to make her presence known that she expects to see at least one panel of glass turn fully transparent, and to glimpse one or both twins peering down at her, though she sees no change above her whatsoever.

Quinn knows that she can—and will—get inside. Summoning lifts, milling about waiting to be noticed, and perhaps even resorting to rapping a knuckle against any surface she deems capable of carrying a vibration all the way upstairs—these are just courtesies. Along with authorization to come on-Grid, Henrietta also worked with the Qatari government to procure (and remotely install on Quinn’s handset) a custom-compiled “skeleton key” digital certificate that will grant her one-time full access to the PLC exclave. As soon as she chooses to activate her handset within NFC range of an interactive holographic plasma panel, elevators will suddenly start to obey and airlock doors will part and make way as if Quinn were one of the twins herself. But before she does so, she’d like some confirmation that she is at least in the right place. Maybe even some hint as to what she is about to walk into.

Because, right now, something does not feel right. Most of the other exclaves around her radiate evidence of habitation: Dragonflies collecting and depositing artists, athletes, sheikhs, and geeks; gay-pride windsocks writhing in the salty Gulf breeze; designer-branded poolside brunches amid verdant and trellised tropical gardens; a rooftop tennis match against a squat, multi-axis robotic trainer; the rippled shoulder muscles of a deeply tanned couple clinging to a kaleidoscopic climbing rock with white, chalked hands. Meanwhile, the Plutus Lakshmi Crypto exclave feels distinctly vacant.

Quinn has a bad idea. Like really bad. It’s so bad, in fact, she knows she should exorcize it immediately and never speak of it to anyone. But all she needs is a glimpse though the tinted glass above her. The quadpad that hangs off the exclave’s main level looks as though it would afford a generous view of the first-floor living quarters, and there’s even a metal staircase leading up to it, but the wire mesh door that blocks it off is securely locked.

Quinn’s Very Bad Idea starts with the ability of all modern handsets to record ultra-high-definition, super slow-motion video at over a thousand frames per second, which means you can easily capture clear footage of rapidly moving objects. Or, put another way, you can capture clear footage of stationary objects using a rapidly moving handset.

All she has to do is turn on the camera, properly orient the device, and fling it up high enough that it clears the floor above her and captures a few frames of the main level through the glass outer wall. Think of it as your standard ultra-high-definition video drone sans the drone part. Even one decent frame would probably be enough as long as she can pan and zoom her way to a pair of shoes, or one unwashed dish, or a jacket draped over the back of a chair. Anything to provide proof of life.

Throwing the phone is the easy part; it’s catching it that has her concerned. But Quinn has a notoriously checkered past when it comes to phone screens, so, years ago, she finally succumbed to one of