Fair Exchange: Amsterdam Institute, #3

FAIR EXCHANGE

By R. Z. Held

Copyright © 2020 by Rhiannon Held

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover design by Kate Marshall (www.katemarshalldesigns.com)

https://rhiannonheld.com/

Amsterdam Institute Series

CLEAN INSTALL

DIRTY BURNOUT

FAIR EXCHANGE

UNJUST THEFT

PURE MOTIVES

BASE INSTINCTS

Table of Contents

PART I

PART II

PART III

Part I

After Prague Sienna’s captors dumped her, bound by paralyzers, in a patch of shade with her back propped against a broken wall, she struggled foggily to link disconnected facts into a linear series of events. They’d pulled her out of the general population at the POW camp—because of her illicit portraits, drawn with homemade charcoal on spare patches of wall?—no, Libertad Sans Frontiers liked art, or at least grand propaganda murals.

The implant. They’d pulled her out of general population, put someone else’s implant in her head, and now she was here. Where was here? Somewhere dusty, with punishing sun casting the jagged shadows beyond her feet. The next nearest structure is 50 meters away. The implant presented her with a three-dimensional model of the abandoned, crumbling buildings surrounding her, apparently gathered from her senses despite the fact she’d been barely conscious as she was carried out here. Already, the creepy thing was encroaching on her mind; Sienna couldn’t fight the feeling that soon it would be eating away at her self.

A distant rumble marked a shuttle taking off. So LSF was abandoning her here? Why? If they wanted her dead, they could have shot her outside the POW camp; if they wanted to drop the implant for someone, they could have left it in a box instead of her head.

At least that head was clearing, despite continued intrusions from the implant they’d stolen from the dead body of—Agent Lima Isachne—wasn’t there a way for Sienna to turn it off, or at least slow the flow of information? Apparently not.

Maybe she needed to think of this as an opportunity. To escape. They’d dressed her in a Pax Romana army jacket—universal mercy, she hoped that hadn’t belonged to the dead woman too—with the hood up and a built-in filtering mask pulled up to the bridge of her nose. That and the climate control in the jacket protected her from the worst of the heat and dust, at least. The main paralyzer was at the small of her back, supplemented by one across her wrists, and one at her throat. Because of course there was one on her throat—LSF liked quiet prisoners.

She prodded at the implant, trying to reach her original com implant beneath it, jury-rig some kind of outgoing distress signal, detect nearby signals, anything. But her connection remained stubbornly one-way, and the implant had apparently imparted all the wisdom it was going to at the moment. Fine, then.

Sienna tried to shove herself along the wall using her elbow and succeeded only in tipping herself over. She considered her next move for a few breaths, and felt and heard another shuttle-like rumble. The voice seemed to come out of nowhere, making her flinch. Nearly a year she’d been in the camp, with her com implant blocked, and she hadn’t realized how accustomed to that silence she’d become. But of course the voice was coming through the new implant.

Sent on a general Pax Romana military channel, the implant told her. Useful information for once. They must have noticed LSF touching down and come to investigate what their enemies were up to. Lucky for her! The Pax Romana generally honored their treaty with Idyll, so if she could convince them to release her to the Idyllian consulate, she could get home. She tried to reply to them and nothing happened.

Two soldiers in Pax Romana uniforms, with jackets like her own, approached, one male and one female, though it was impossible to see much else with their own filtering masks up. It was the woman speaking on the channel, though she must be doing so through an earpiece, as Sienna could hear the words vaguely doubled, muffled through the mask.

You actually going to look at her for that response, dumbasses? the implant...said? Sienna realized she’d internalized the implant’s voice as female all along, but this had the color of personality brushed onto that voice. Universal mercy, was Isachne actually in her head, stored on the implant somehow? But after the caustic comment, the implant receded from her conscious thoughts again, and sense shouldered back in. A full person wouldn’t fit on an implant. This must be...scraps, somehow.

And all that had distracted her, so the male soldier had a hand on Sienna’s shoulder, pushing her up straight, when she whistled, as loud as she could behind the mask. She couldn’t use the code the prisoners had worked out to use when the guards left their throat paralyzers activated for days at a time, as punishment, but at least she could get the soldiers’ attention. Looking for a throat paralyzer should be an obvious conclusion at that point, right? The implant gave Sienna the soldiers’ names, which she forgot immediately.

The male soldier looked away, cutting off her attempt to convey the request to remove the throat paralyzer through intensity of eye contact instead.

Sienna mapped the implications of his words in desperate, frustrated silence as the female soldier leaned her forward to get access to the paralyzer on her back, touch clinical rather than kind. A prisoner exchange. The Pax Romana thought they were getting their agent back. She jerked, earning only a firmer hand on her back, pressing her down. There would undoubtedly be hell to pay once they found out, but if she couldn’t explain—

The man made a thoughtful noise.

So. Trapped, still, by silence. Sienna wanted to scream, wanted to scream and not stop until her throat bled. But at least the soldiers were moving her in the direction of that silence ending, so she limply allowed herself to be carried off between them. She was an Idyllian civilian, held by LSF under false pretenses, so surely under the treaty they’d have to at least treat her humanely while they contacted her government. They’d have to let her talk.

The shuttle ride was short and smooth enough, curled on the floor with the female soldier crouched beside her, steadying hand on her shoulder. The implant remarked on the shuttle specs, then those of the ship as the soldiers carried her out, setting her down on her side on plastic shock matting at the side of the bay, which was at least better than bare metal plates.

The man shoved back her hood back and smoothed the mask down to below the local paralyzer on her throat, leaving it exposed for the medic’s access. The stink of hair dye, washed out but not cleaned since, filled Sienna’s next breath, and by craning her neck, she got a tendril to slide down her shoulder into her range of view. Shimmering, unnatural black instead of the dull brown it should have been. They must have done it while she was still unconscious after the implant installation.

That’s not her! Boots filled Sienna’s vision first, then the new woman crouched at the same time Sienna got herself up on one elbow. That’s not my wife! This time, when Sienna sought eye contact to try to convey apology, convey that if only they would remove the paralyzer, she’d explain, intensity scorched her from the other side instead. Pure, unadulterated rage.

Manila Gentiana, the implant informed her.

Gentiana ducked her head over her wine glass, for a moment her fine, sharp features making her look like an ancient statue of a saint, but then she looked up to reveal a flash of delightful humor. You speak six languages, don’t you? So I should be able to call you a cunning—

Then the memory was gone, leaving Sienna gasping. Time had jumped, a new man was before her instead of Gentiana, but Sienna could hear the rise and fall of the anger she’d seen, poured forth into ranting beyond the range of her vision. The new man was presumably the medic, but not a particularly experienced member of the profession, as his touch on the throat paralyzer was slow. There, it’s turned off, he said.

I’m Idyllian! Prague Sienna. Student visa Prague-one-six-two. Dust and disuse put cracks in her voice, but Sienna forged desperately on. She could tell she wouldn’t have much time. I was taken with others from a civilian transport LSF claimed harbored undercover agents, so they sent us to the POW camp. If you let me contact the nearest Idyllian consulate—

As if LSF would have let an Idyllian live. Gentiana’s boots came into range again, and she wrenched Sienna’s shoulder so Sienna was facing up, into the heat of her rage. Tell a better lie, you fucking fox. Fox, a mispronunciation of faux-French, as false as everything French about Libertad Sans Frontiers after the dead language had been updated based on, irony of ironies, Lingua, the language of the Pax Romana and their greatest enemy.

I pretended to be Pax Romana. Shouldn’t that be understandable? Idyll was neutral, siding with neither the aging empire nor the violent rebels—much less scrappy and sympathetic now they controlled just as many systems—but the Pax Romana ignored Idyll and generally kept to their treaty when it was convenient. LSF, on the other hand, hated Idyll for declining to share the internal-technology advances that kept them well defended from both sides of the conflict. But now I’m here, the treaty—

But her time for speech had run out. Gentiana’s toe slammed into Sienna’s gut. Sienna curled around it, enduring until her breath came back. You think you can come in as an LSF plant, fool us with some phony implant— Someone drew breath to speak, no more, but that seemed to be all the push off the cliff Gentiana needed to draw the conclusion on her own. Is it her implant? Is she dead? Her voice