The Mask: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel by Taylor Stevens

they’re using my presence like a stick in the bush to flush game, a wedge to split the log, a straw man, a distraction.”
    “No idea who or what?” she said.
    He shook his head. “I’ll figure it out.”
    He was a mask but she read the obfuscations in him all the same. She smiled and let them go for the same reason she agreed to stay until he finished the assignment. In retrospect, it would be difficult to say if that had been a mistake.
    He leaned back and brushed his thumb against her cheek. “I was hired to do a job and I’m going to get it done regardless of what the true motives might be.”
    “What’s really going on down there in the lab?” she said. “I’ve read the brochures, perused the website, done a rough once-over on the company. None of what they advertise adds up to anything big enough to call in someone like you. What’s worth so much that they guard it so carefully?”
    “The Holy Grail of biofabricated engineering,” he said.
    “Humor me.”
    “Body-part replication through 3-D printing.”
    “Can’t be that,” she said. “Biofacturing has been going on for years.”
    “Sure, ears and noses, arteries, lots of variants of skin and soft tissue for transplants and pharmaceutical testing,” he said, “even lab-grown muscle as a sustainable meat source, but most everyone is years, maybe decades, away from developing functional, transplantable organs.”
    Munroe raised her eyebrows and blew a silent whistle. “They’re close?”
    “Dunno. I’m not allowed access to the lab or any of the research.”
    “What do you think?”
    “Given how much they’ve invested in protecting whatever’s going on down there, I’d say they believe they’re way ahead of anyone else.”
    “No donor waiting list,” she said. “Virtually zero chance of transplant rejection. Can you imagine the potential market if they’re able to own and patent the process?”
    “Assuming they figure it out,” he said. “Just about every developed nation has companies and nonprofit teams working on the same type of research. Anyway, just because someone hits the finish line first doesn’t mean they’re a winner. There would still be years of clinical safety trials.”
    “If
anyone
gets to the finish line, we all win,” Munroe said, “but still…”
    Her sentence trailed off and her mind leapt sideways, scanning what she knew of the facility’s security systems, searching for weaknesses, plotting out how she’d steal the data if she’d been the one hired to get at it.
    Bradford raised an eyebrow and poked her arm playfully, but hard enough to say he knew what was up. “Don’t forget whose team you’re on,” he said.
    She grinned. “It’s tempting,” she said. “Why are they specifically looking at the Chinese?”
    Bradford’s gaze tracked over to the half-wall and the empty space where the women had passed through and where other employees continued to arrive and leave at irregular intervals. “I wish I knew,” he said.
    So did she. The question of Chinese involvement was one she’d come back to more than once over the coming weeks; the answer could have changed things if she’d had it at the beginning.

The ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.
    —MASTER SUN TZU

    Nonomi Sato crept along the open hallway, hugging the concrete railing, careful not to cast shadows or leave traces of her presence. She’d disconnected the security lighting, but nothing could be done about the cloud-covered moon or the bath of light pollution.
    Sato turned the key, slow and quiet. The lock gave and she depressed the handle, nudging the door open one controlled centimeter at a time.
    Shoes in the
genkan
told the story of the home’s occupants and estimated their ages and sizes: son, mother, father, grandmother.
    This was almost too easy and that took away the fun.
    Sato stepped into the house, shoes still on, clothes black, supple, and tight like a second