Nakia Meets Kim

Nakia tried to wrangle her fury as she stared at Kim, but the rain pounded down, thunder and lighting fighting for dominance in the mottled purple sky. She'd never met Kim in person, never video chatted with her, never even asked for a photo. Eight years ago, Kim had answered an ad Nakia had placed on the dark web, requesting a digital personal assistant. It had never occured to Nakia to ask for a photo.

The girl was fat. Flesh enough cover her and Nakia, with plenty left over. She had bleached blonde hair with streaks of neon blue and electric green and long, dark roots. She wore it up in a messy bun. Not one of the elaborately casual affairs that Beverlee Hills soccer moms wore around town with more plastic than keratin, but the neglected bird's nest of the confirmed agoraphobe. She wore black sweatpants with a pink sparkly hoodie over an Aphex Twin t-shirt, all oversized. 

But none of this was the reason Nakia was angry. "You're young," she said, accusation ringing in her tone, a huge roll of thunder backing her up.

Kim shivered, even though the rain was warm, and then flinched as a bolt of lightning split the sky, followed by a deep roll of thunder. Her soggy bun drooped over her head as rain dripped down her face. She shut the door to her rented beige Lexus. "Maybe we could go inside?" she suggested.

Nakia stared at the girl. "You're young," she repeated. "You could have pretended to be Sunny instead of me."

Comprehension dawned on the girl, followed shortly by chagrin obvious enough for Nakia to reign in the thunder. The girl clearly hadn't thought of herself as a potential stand-in for Sunny. She hadn't held the idea back so that Nakia would be forced to do it. Nakia watched the girl digest the idea of herself showing up to high school, and all that would have entailed. She shuddered. Nakia was bemused as the rain slowed and the sky lightened. The girl was terrible at hiding her emotions. No wonder she hid behind a computer screen all day. Nakia felt lighter as Kim retrieved her carry-on from the trunk and then headed toward the front door. The alarm on the Lexus blooped. 

Nakia followed. The rain tapered to a drizzle as the sky began to lighten, hints of a pinky-blue sunset glowing over the treetops.

They made their way up one side of the double staircase, and Nakia dropped Kim off at her room to settle in, while she walked next door, to "Sunny's" room. The room was huge, with its own bathroom, and a balcony overlooking the pool. The interior decorator, Peggy Weems' brief had had a typo, so she'd decorated Sunny's room for six-year-old instead of a sixteen-year-old. 

There were three beds, which was triply ironic, considering the fact that Nakia didn't sleep. The biggest one was a castle with a twin-sized bed on top and a desk nook underneath. The most spoiled child in the world could wend their way up the staircase at night and slide back down in the morning. The second bed was a Cinderella coach complete with plush rocking horses to "pull" it. The last bed was a round mattress on the floor, surrounded by enormous flower petal-and-leaf pillows. Nakia sat down in the middle of this bed, facing the door, and waiting for Kim.

A general enchanted forest motif took over the rest of the room, with a wardrobe "built into" the trunk of a tree, plush emerald green carpet with rugs in the shapes of stepping stone, and a long, winding blue one to imitate a river, complete with a bridge that led to a stage that built of plush "wooden" logs.

Nakia hadn't had her own bedroom when she was a kid. She'd shared a straw mat in a two-room hut with her parents until Princess Ahmose had taken her to the palace. As a servant, Nakia'd gotten her own small bed on a wooden platform, which had felt like the height of luxury, until Ahmose decided that she didn't deserve a bed. Then it had been the marble floor under Ahmose's elaborate bed until Ahmose had had Nakia murdered.

Peggy Weems had  been mortified about her mistake and promised to update the room, but Nakia had told her not to bother. Peggy didn't need to know that Nakia would only be staying for a few weeks, and besides, she knew that Ahmose would have been furious to see Nakia in a bedroom this cool, no matter how many millennia had passed since their childhoods. Nakia took a brief moment to hope that Ahmose had ended up in an Afterlife she deserved.

Kim entered. She'd combed out her wet hair and could be wearing the same exact outfit as before, except that it was dry. It took Nakia a moment to decipher the logo. If Nakia had had to guess what kind of music Kim would like, Alphex Twin would definitely have made the list, but 100 gecs surprised her a bit. If she also liked Taylor Swift, they'd have the exact same musical taste. She was carrying a ThinkPad X1 Carbon under one arm. Respect. That was one of Nakia's main machines, as well. She suppressed the sense of kinship that tried to arise.

She watched Kim's face to see the girl's reaction to the room, but she only looked around and shook her head. She sighed. "Peggy Weems said she'll get this fixed for you ASAP." Nakia thought she saw a flicker of -- disgust? -- before Kim seemed to mentally dismiss the room. She chose an ottoman shaped like a tree stump, sat down, and opened her laptop. A small child would have been dwarfed by the cushion, but Kim's bulk threatened to swallow the stump.

Nakia stared. Was the girl dead inside? Maybe her own childhood bedroom had been similarly elaborate, which would have meant that Kim came from Money. Aside from checking Kim's hacking creds, she had never felt any real curiosity about the girl. That wasn't true. Nakia had suppressed her curiosity. Getting involved with humans was always a mistake. How many ways did Nakia need to get murdered in order to learn that lesson? Just the three, thank you very much.

Still, she'd always pictured Kim as an older version of Sandra Bullock in The Net. Timid, but smart, with humor-tinged misanthropy. But this girl barely looked old enough to drive. And she'd been working for Nakia for eight years. "How old are you?" she asked, before she could stop herself. Irrelevant.

"Twenty-one," she said, absently, typing. She'd made sure that the screen was angled away from Nakia, which was amusing, as Nakia had as much access to Kim's computer as she wanted. "The staff should be moving in tomorrow, and I have Jacqueline Castillo's report ready for you. I've emailed it to you. Would you like the highlights?"

"I read it. You started working for me when you were thirteen?" Nakia asked. That couldn't be right. Kim was an established Grey Hat by the time Nakia had met her. What was she, some sort of hacking Mozart? 

Kim's neck twitched. "Twelve," she corrected, and giving away her pride in the fact. "The bad news is that there's not really anything to blackmail Castillo about," she continued. "But the good news is that there's not really any purpose in trying to blackmail her." She looked up. "Do you know much about the foster care system?"

Nakia froze. She didn't really pay much attention to modern politics and social systems except where they impeded her. She did have opinions on the concept of foster care, though. "Just that they take children away from their parents," she said, remembering the oh-so-joyous day that Ahmose had claimed Nakia as property. She was glad for her bandages and the lack of facial muscles under them that kept her expressionless. Kim watched her, though, obviously picking up on her tension. Outside, clouds started to gather again. Nakia 

She looked away, staring up at the sunset painted ceiling with its sprinkling of early-night stars. "I didn't either. Apparently, children are monitored in cases of suspected abuse or neglect, but only taken away if the child seems to be in immediate danger. Even in cases of abuse, birth parents are often offered opportunities to improve their parenting -- anger management classes, that kind of thing. When possible, children are reunited with their  birth parents, and also when possible, placed with immediate relatives in the interim. It's supposed to keep the child's life as stable as possible."

Nakia had experienced little anecdotal evidence for the idea that parents could abuse their kids. In her experiences, systems were the problem, not the solution. Royalty, religion, politics -- had literally been the deaths of her. 

She could feel the air thickening. Trying to ward off another storm, she pictured the Afterlife -- her little gazebo on top of the waterfall, looking out over the edge while The King thought about his next move on the Senet board. The clear blue sky with puffy white clouds, the sound of the water, birds soaring through the air. 

The atmosphere thinned. Nakia brought her attention back to Kim, who seemed to have been lost in her own thoughts. She had closed her laptop. There had been something, a bitterness, maybe, that was apparent in her tone throughout her recital of the foster care system. She took a breath and and brought her gaze back to Nakia. "Castillo does sometimes break the rules, but only the help the children who are assigned to her."

Nakia wondered what it was about describing the foster care system that was making Kim tense. Maybe she'd been taken away from her parents, too. Nakia thought about doing her own investigation on Kim, but dismissed it. She didn't care about anything other than finding The King. The only reason she'd had Kim investigate Castillo was because she didn't want to have to deal with a social worker for the next three years until "Sunny" turned eighteen, and thought that a little light blackmail would get her to leave Sunny alone. 

"What rules does Castillo break?" she asked. 

Kim flipped her laptop back open and started reading from her notes. "There were a couple of kids whose mother had a mental health break down and the only housing she could get afterward was an old office building. It wasn't technically a residence, but it had all the amenities needed: plumbing, kitchen, shower, etc. so Castillo pushed through the approval. She had a coworker who was bribed by wealthy parents to help them keep a kid they were abusing and she exposed the coworker's romantic relationship with a teenage girl."

"How is that breaking rules?" Nakia asked.

Kim bobbed her head from side to side. "It's not against the rules to expose that, it's just an example of how she didn't go through the system to expose system corruption; she exposed him personally, not professionally. She also had a kid who was moved to a different jurisdiction and she continued helping, even though the kid had a new social worker. Again, not technically illegal, but working outside of the system. Oh," she added, grinning at the screen. "This is a fun one." She looked up at Nakia. "She has an old high school boyfriend who works at a chop shop, and she tapped him to get a car for a kid who had aged out of the system." 

"That sounds like breaking the rules," Nakia said.

Kim nodded, smiling. "That was only a year-or-so in. She skirts the rules more than breaks laws now. More to lose, I guess."

"Hm." None of this was material Nakia felt comfortable using as blackmail. Castillo didn't seem like someone particularly likely to cave to blackmail, anyway. Her old coworker sounded like he'd have been fun to destroy, though. She made a mental note to look him up and make his life miserable. "How often would Sunny have to deal with Castillo over the next three years?"

Kim nodded like she'd been about to answer this question already. "Based on Sunny's age, and the assumption that she is not being abused or neglected, most likely once a month at first, just to make sure that everything is stable, and then after that potentially every three months -- that would be her checking in with Sunny in person. She'd also coordinate with the schools, extracurricular programs, and healthcare providers to make sure everything seems okay." She paused, gesturing toward Nakia. "The bandages are explained in your case history as severe chemical burns from years ago, and as long as she likes me as your 'guardian'," she used air quotes for this, "then you'd only have to see her a handful of times over the next three years."

"And by me, you mean --"

"Whatever actor I get to play Sunny. I'm on it."

"Okay." Nakia processed this. She had more she wanted to discuss, but she was drained. She'd had more human interaction in one day than she'd had, since Atlantis, maybe ever. She needed to stare an ocean or a tree or something for a while. She shook her head, focusing. "Keep an eye on Castillo. I want to know when she's planning to visit, and I don't want Sunny to meet her until we get a permanent actress to play her. Also, I had lunch with three girls from school today. I get the impression that they'd like to continue the relationship. Can you look into them for me?"

Kim raised her brows. "You think they're apart of some sort of high school crime syndicate?"

Nakia laughed, surprising herself, and Kim. "I wouldn't care about that. I'm more worried about a 'Carrie' situation."

Kim cocked her head. "You mean pig's blood at prom?" She grimaced. "High school girls can be really mean." She closed her laptop again and stood. "I'll look into them." She looked as ready to leave as Nakia was to have her leave. "Anything else?"

"Anything on The King?" Nakia asked, as Kim moved toward the door. Kim didn't know that The King was Neferkheperu Amenhotep IV, a pharoah from ancient Egypt. To her, it was just a nickname.

"Right!" Kim stopped and turned. "I think I found him! I think he's Excell Masterson!"

"He can't be," Nakia said, automatically. "He doesn't look or sound anything like Excell Masterson." Excell Masterson was was short and stocky with sandy blonde hair that caught the light in a subtle wave. His skin had a pink undertone, hazel eyes, a strong jaw softened by a faint cleft chin. He'd started in construction and had a deep, gruff voice that was out of place with his surfer-boy good looks. The King was tall and angular, had skin with golden undertones and dark, piercing eyes that felt like they could burn through flesh. His voice was thick and smooth like honey on a cool day.

"I know," Kim, said, grinning. "I think that's why it took me so long to find him. I was relying too much on the sketches and physical description you gave me." Stepped took a few steps back into the room. "What if the guy we see publicly as 'Excell' is an actor? Everything else about him screams The King."

"Oh." Nakia thought about it. If she'd figured out how to use actors to play her various aliases, The King was certainly capable of it, too. Excell Masterson was a video game developer with a cult following of mega video game nerds. He'd created the most immersive virtual reality system ever invented. It was only available to the ultra rich. Nakia hadn't liked it. It wasn't uncanny valley real, it was real real and it freaked her out. She'd only played it a few times.

The King liked to build aliases that were rich and powerful mogul-types, and he did love games. He'd taught her how to play Senet when they were alive, and they'd played every board game ever designed when they were in the Afterlife, regardless of time period. It wouldn't be strange for The King to branch out into video games. He had a vigor for both inventing and conquering. Kim was right. Excell Masterson, looks aside, fit all of the markers she'd told Kim to look for.

She felt a rush of excitement. Excell Masterson's home base was Silicon Valley. If she took the Phantom, she could be there in less than three hours. She could be face-to-face with The King that night.

"He's in Hawaii."

It took a moment for Kim's statement to break through Nakia's thoughts. Then her excitement deflated like a sad balloon. 

Kim looked sympathetic. "He'll be back next Tuesday and has a press conference at The Glasshouse on Tuesday at ten in the morning."

Nakia adjusted. "Not tomorrow, next Tuesday?" 

Kim nodded. 

Nakia nodded too. "Okay, thank you." Kim turned to leave, and Nakia replayed back their conversation, feeling like she'd missed something. "Wait a sec. What was that you said about the staff? What staff?"