To Die a Stranger

By Jilly Paddock

A woman finds stardom out of boredom. Then a twist of fate sets her on a road to danger, espionage and leaves her to deal with what it feels like TO DIE A STRANGER.
Pro Se Productions Presents TO DIE A STRANGER, a Science Fiction Thriller from author Jilly Paddock set in a world where human and machine are paired in order to assure control. A control that one such pair will challenge.
Anna-Marie has it all. A pretty face and a life of leisure backed by the wealth and status of the family business, the Delany Computer Corporation. It's not enough. Anna's bored, so she dabbles in showbiz as the holo-actress Amaranth Dusk. She gains some success, then loses it all in an aircar accident that almost claims her life.
Scarred and severely injured, Anna struggles back to health. As her memory clears, she realizes that the accident was a deliberate attack and tries to discover who wanted her dead. Her investigations take her to Delany Corp, which as a secret at its core, a hidden conspiracy of government funded technology and espionage. Anna unwittingly stumbles into a top secret project that takes ordinary humans and pairs them with computers to create spies who can read minds and walk through walls. These agent-pairs are used by Earth Intelligence, Mother Terra's primary security force, as powerful weapons to keep her empire of colony worlds under control.
Zenith-Alpha 4013 is part of the project, a flawed computer who has failed to find a partner. It chooses Anna and together they must outwit all of Earth Intelligence to escape and survive.
TO DIE A STRANGER is equal part science fiction tale, thriller, and mystery, blended into a seamless exploration of what the future may hold and into one fast paced action packed ride. TO DIE A STRANGER by Jilly Paddock from Pro Se Productions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pro Se Press
• Release date: Jan 17, 2014

Book preview

TO DIE A STRANGER

by Jilly Paddock

Published by Pro Se Press at Smashwords

The story in this publication is fictional. All of the characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing of the publisher.

To Die A Stranger

Copyright © 2013 Jilly Paddock

All rights reserved.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One: The Actress

Chapter One: A Deadly, Dancing Web

Chapter Two: Mask laid over Mask

Chapter Three: A Tower of Strength

Chapter Four: Nastier than you can Imagine

Chapter Five: Blind Rats Running a Maze

Chapter Six: Quit, scram, vamoose, leave...

Chapter Seven: The Beginning and the End

Chapter Eight: A Marriage made in Heaven

Chapter Nine: You scared them good.

Part Two: Moving the Mountain

Chapter Ten: Pouring a Quart into a Pint-pot

Chapter Eleven: The Red Bird of the South

Chapter Twelve: Every last atom of your Soul

Chapter Thirteen: How long does it take to die?

Chapter Fourteen: Blindfold in Shadows

Part Three: The Hunter and the Hunted

Chapter Fifteen: The Devil’s Own Beauty

Chapter Sixteen: The Idiot’s Algorithm

Chapter Seventeen: A Complex, Clockwork Thing

Chapter Eighteen: I collect agent-pairs

Chapter Nineteen: Clever Madness

Chapter Twenty: The Soul’s Midnight

Chapter Twenty-one: A Fragment of the Man

Epilogue: 23rd. March 2551

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Part One: The Actress

Chapter One: A Deadly, Dancing Web

Watch her as she stalks across the lamplit lawns; she moves like a cat, all predator, with a bubble of black laughter forever unshed at her heart. See a tall woman cursed with cruel, antique beauty, an image out of time, she might have stepped a moment ago from dreams, clad not in foam but in the elegant, contrived folds of an electric-blue gown. Pale honey hair swings past her shoulders, and eyes of a vivid cornflower blue fail to conceal boredom behind studied innocence. Her father is a rich man, ruler of a galaxy-wide corporate empire, and she pretends to be the actress Amaranth Melody Dusk, a rising star and this month’s darling of the entertainment scene. Her fame was conjured by seven holo-dramas, some good, some dreadful and one so bad it’s a cult classic.

Her true name is Anna-Marie Delany and this is the story of her death.

***

Music swirled about me, drifting sullenly on the still summer air, a heavy classical piece that I didn’t recognise, all pomp and violins. Another party, another link in the chain that hauled us towards box-office success, this one at the home of one of our executive-producers, a mansion on the coast. The lawns were clustered with people, little cliques of false civility and brittle laughter. SanFran’s glitterati, all out to impress with wit, talent and looks, and all trying too hard. This extravaganza was supposedly in my honour, one of a string of promotional events to celebrate the release of the latest holo, Soulstalker, yet most of the guests were strangers and assorted freeloaders. I guessed I knew fewer than a tenth of them.

I didn’t feel much like a star tonight, too restless and anxious, not comfortable in my own skin. My dress was on loan, a gorgeous creation in cobalt-blue satin by Thexi Halasaurian, this year’s hottest property in the fashion world, yet for all its pedigree it didn’t fit well, being too tight over my hips and too loose over my other assets. My stylists had topped it off with an abundance of jewellery, all cut-glass and glitter, fake and very tacky, including a necklace set with a bad replica of the fabled Hope diamond. I turned my back on the dark-suited men, the group of backers and business managers who inhabited the safety of the terrace and, as I went down into the gardens, fragments of their dull litanies coiled about me.

Devastating fall in basic commodity indices...

Our government must fear an incursion into Earth-space or they wouldn’t have sent a council-member to meddle in that trade initiative in the Angelus system...

...have to admit that the Aegea hegemony is treading a thin line...

My father would have been in his element here, fond as he was of swashbuckling his way through the stock markets of the dozen prime worlds. I shook the echoes of their dismal droning out of my ears and picked my way across the grass, rapidly drawing a circle of well-wishers, just as the moon-worshipping honeysuckle that grew along the terrace wall was attracting moths.

Amaranth! A voice cut through the throng, not loud just perfectly projected. "You never came back to me on that script, A Woman Scorned."

I read it, Jacques. It wasn’t an outright lie. I’d managed six pages. I don’t want the part.

Moon said that you were very interested in it.

Jacques was a veteran of the holo-scene, a leading man who’d progressed to writing and directing when he’d hit a famine of high-profile parts. He thought of himself as a legend, although common opinion unkindly labelled him as a has-been. I knew full well that he’d written the script. Maximillian Moon, my agent, had included it in a file of options, tagged with the comment that he didn’t expect me to like it. Moon says all kinds of stuff. I don’t want anything to do with it. It was trash.

He scowled at me. It was a honey of a part!

For you, perhaps, but my role lacked substance, not to mention costume! Moon tells me I should move away from nudity and go for more intelligent drama.

You’re still young enough to get away with skin flicks and it sure as hell pays better! he said cynically. But I could go for a re-write, if you’d reconsider–

No. I was tired of this, so I slid into performance mode. Strut, turn and pout prettily to deliver the scene-closer. And that’s my final word.

My entourage laughed and applauded, following me dutifully across the garden. Some were playing with their phones, texting or recording what I said. I saw Pym, one of the production company’s publicity people, hovering at the edge of the group and grabbing images for the website, her face strobe-lit by the flash of her camera. Tonight her hair, which danced through the sequence of the rainbow at her whim, was purple, and her eyes were green. The rest of the plebs drifted around me like asteroids circling their sun. The attention was amusing for a while, but the incessant, meaningless chatter and the bobbing ring of eager, devouring faces soon made me weary. It was just empty noise, the echoing static you get on a dead radio station.

We played the name-game early on, a pointless charade on both sides. At the very outset of my career my father’s lawyers had insisted that our corporate identity not be connected with the kind of holo I made, for fear it would ‘taint the product image’. I never did understand exactly how Delany Corp’s reputation for making the best computer hardware in the whole damned galaxy for the past half-century could be tarnished by my silly attempts at acting, but I was given no choice in the matter. The lawyers drew up papers, all parties were agreed, and my identity was concealed under an alias, Amaranth Dusk. It seemed such a fragile disguise, yet it worked well enough. We’d always valued our privacy and kept out of the public eye, unlike some other families I could name who seemed to revel in being media-whores and were never out of the spotlight. A few favours called in at high level in the three major news networks clinched it and the company image remained unstained.

My fake name had only been intended to roll in the credits of my holos, but Amaranth herself had other ideas. It seemed she wanted to be a real person instead of a ghost, and her fans, few though they were, wanted that too. The studio sent out some signed photos and thought that was it, but as more requests for information and invitations to do interviews trickled in, they had to cave in.

Now Amaranth had a life of her own, with a professionally-faked bio, a beachfront apartment and an on-off affair with Osvaldo Blyth, the current wild-child of the holo-world and her co-star in Soulstalker. She had a persona on the net too, a slick, cool website and a blog, Deathless Flower, mostly written by Pym and her assistants. I had to take time out to play my alter-ego to satisfy the feeding-frenzy of the media photo-horde, just as I was tonight, flitting from this trendy restaurant to that in-crowd club, sometimes with Os, sometimes with a stranger picked at random from the cast or crew. I liked to throw weird into the mix, finding odd museums and art exhibits to visit, or strange sporting events, and even once being caught swimming naked in the ocean. I got a reprimand from the studio for that little adventure, in spite of the bucketload of free publicity it bought us.

Moon knew my true name and had been bribed into secrecy, a better safeguard than any oath, and a handful of others in the crew were aware of the deception, but found it amusing to pretend ignorance. The prospect of sudden and swift legal vengeance keeps most people honest.

So I fielded the standard questions with my habitual evasions and indulged in a spot of mischief by suggesting that I might be Katie Starr from a dairy farm in Wisconsin or even Isabella de Mabeus, only daughter of a Transylvanian duke. Both confessions were greeted with laughter but no belief, which was a shame as I’d rather fancied being Belle, a vampire-spawned aristocrat, haughty and cold, with a dark secret deep in her past.

The evening dragged on towards midnight. I stared at my retinue, despising the fresh-faced young men and the silly, empty-headed girls, heartily sick of pretending to enjoy the inane conversation, weary of appeasing all my moronic fans.

I loathe parties! I announced sourly. This one in particular, since the host is too mean to provide enough alcohol to make it halfway bearable!

My audience applauded my wit but I felt tendrils of unease spreading from the outer fringes of the group. Give it five minutes and Pym would try to smooth things over. It didn’t help my carefully-polished image if I was allowed to raise hell at these publicity-orientated affairs. I saw her scowl, but she let me play for now.

"You were so good as Jennifer in Deepest Purple! One of the young men murmured. When you died, I mean... Do you know, I wept? I really did, buckets! You were just so good!"

I nodded unfelt thanks, plucking a glass from a passing tray and downing the bland contents in one.

How is it that dreams can be so disturbing? Even now, even wrapped in this throng of people, numbed a little by the scarce, weak alcohol, that damned recurring nightmare plagued me. I didn’t recall much of it, just fragments–fear, fire and falling into darkness. Awake or asleep I couldn’t shake the memory of terror, and that was the root of my irritation tonight. I reassured myself that dreams weren’t real, that they were as illusory and fleeting as the cheap plots of my holo-dramas, but the thought was scant comfort.

Miss Dusk, do tell us about your next project. One of the girls was cooing. Have you seen the script? What role will you be playing?

Can you guess how many people have asked me those very questions? I asked, with cool savagery. The amazing thing is that they have absolutely nothing in common, except a hereditary atrophy of the brain.

Her smile was eroded for a moment, yet she pressed on doggedly. Is it true that you’re up for the part of Joan of Arc?

I’m afraid not, my dear. The newcomer was Guy LeGrange, scripter of the latest holo. Our little Amaranth was never much of a martyr. Still, she would burn beautifully. Perhaps that’s something we should consider for a future presentation.

Guy, darling, how lovely to see you! I bared my teeth at him briefly. Do all of you know our talented wordsmith? How sad it is that his prowess with a keypad is so far outstripped by his ability to slide from bed to bed. Wherever do you find a fresh audience for that tarnished seduction scene of yours, mon cher?

Dearest Amaranth, as sweet and reasonable as ever! He took my hand and patted it in a stylised paternal gesture. My barb had struck home; I could see the hurt in his eyes. I regret I must deprive you of our fair flower. A business matter of some urgency, I assure you, or I wouldn’t presume to take her away.

Guy– I tried to pull away but he held me fast.

Moon wants a word with the two of us, he insisted. In the house.

It was a transparent excuse. The last I’d seen of Maximillian Moon he’d been well beyond the bounds of sobriety and trying to talk a curvaceous brunette starlet into taking him home to bed. That Guy should choose to rescue me was unexpected and intriguing, but it was a chance to slip away from these fools and I grasped it with both hands. Maybe the drink has delivered the inspiration for another blockbuster. I’ll see you all later. Keep the party warm, won’t you?

Guy steered me through the crush, leaving no room for protest by anyone, least of all me. We rounded the end of the terrace and paused for a moment in the relative quiet.

Who sent you to rescue me? I asked.

The initiative was all mine. He drew me on, away from the mansion and into the stand of woodland that flanked it. This way.

I baulked at entering the whispering dark under the trees. What happened to this ‘urgent business’?

A minor deception to steal you away from your ardent fans.

Why should I want to take a walk with you? Not that he wasn’t attractive, and witty and smart–in fact I’d made a play for him well over a year ago and had been rejected, albeit in a civil and friendly fashion. It still hurt, even if I’d only been half-serious about the seduction. He was driven and single-minded in his career, moody and melancholic, although much of that could be play-acting to live up to the image of a writer of supernatural and horror fiction. In this business we were all false to some degree.

Because you’re bored to the back teeth with this tedious party? Guy shrugged. Walk on your own if you want, Anna. I’ll leave you.

I let him turn on his heel and begin to stalk away before calling him back. Stay. If you want to, that is.

The grass was thick and unkempt here, so I kicked off my silver mules and carried them, going barefoot in the dew. We walked until the music faded to a distant thrum and the lantern-light was a pale wraith at our backs. Out of the heel of my eye I saw a brace of guests drifting like ghosts away to our left, moving determinedly back to the party. The woodland ran down to the cliffs, an artificial plantation of hemlock and cedar, with a sprinkling of native redwoods. Little flowers, like misplaced stars, peeped shyly from the dark grass and we could hear the ocean beating its soft fists on the shore, although we couldn’t see it.

Any of your family come along tonight? Guy asked, out of simple politeness. Did I see your brother chasing the prettier female members of the cast and crew?

Stuart’s my step-brother. Most of the time he ignores everything to do with me, but with the promise of booze and free women I’d have had to nail both of his feet to the floor to keep him away!

The pair of you must run your father ragged. I pity him. The scripter chuckled. Lewis must be on business, eh, not to be here? He’s one of the project’s exec producers, after all, so he had an excuse to attend in his own right.

I turned aside, not caring to recall Lewis’ refusal of my invitation. He was glad for me, he’d said, and in no way did he begrudge my success, but a showbiz party was no place for an old fossil like himself. I hadn’t pushed the issue. Lewis is as stubborn as I am. If there’s a gene-probe for mule, both of us would be massively positive for the marker.

There was a bench set at the base of one of the great trunks, a narrow thing built from stone, old, weather-worn and encrusted with lichen. Guy made a show of sweeping plant debris from the seat and invited me to sit down. When I did it was too close to him for comfort, given the dimensions of our rustic couch. He ignored the intimacy, turning his gaze away towards the sea, and I sensed that none of this had been done by chance, that he’d been planning this diversion for hours or even days. Annoyance at falling under the sway of his manipulation jostled shoulder by shoulder with curiosity; the latter won, making me sit and remain quiet for the moment.

I didn’t mean to insult you back there, Guy said, a neutral opening gambit. You’d make a good Joan. You have her inner strength, I think, and her courage. It would be a challenging role, it would stretch you.

She said, I’m tired of the war, want the kind of work I had before– I shook the lyric out of my head and smiled sadly. No, I’ll pass on poor Jeanne d’Arc, thank you. Be a pity to cut off my hair and I’m sure that the armour would chafe! Besides that, I really don’t fancy being burnt at the stake. I have a kind of silly, unreasonable fear thing about big, hot, nasty flames!

Really? He blinked, surprised at my confession. Pyrophobia? That’s what they call it, a morbid dread of fire. How’d you come by that?

Long ago, when I was a child, about three or four years old. I didn’t remember the incident itself, it was buried too far in the past, but the terror it conjured up had stayed with me. It was part of our family apocrypha and Lewis would remind me of it often, usually when he was indulging in one of his daddy-daughter lectures, warning me against foolishness and the costs of acting without thought. I used to play with the holo-flames in my father’s fireplace, trailing my fingers through them to make them dance. One day I put my hand into a real fire by mistake and got burned, luckily not badly enough to leave a lasting scar–well, not on my skin, anyway, just in my mind. Now I tend to avoid open flames, as the panic attacks do nothing for my cool, sophisticated image!

"That’s why you turned down the part in Firestorm? Modesty forbids me from saying that it was a great script, but I had you flagged as ideal for the heroine–hell, I wrote the role with you in mind! Tamsi Azzurdin made a plucky attempt at it, but you would have done much better."

I couldn’t have done it. That scene where she runs down a burning corridor– Even reading the lines, plain text on a screen, had made me break out in a cold sweat. I’d have freaked out big time, for sure!

Ever tried therapy for the problem?

I had a few sessions, yes, but they didn’t help much. Fire can hurt you, even kill you. How mad is it to be afraid of that?

Not madness at all, unless it blights your everyday life. How bad is it? I mean, do candles freak you out?

No, I don’t sweat the small stuff. I had the feeling he was filing the data away for future use, a fragment to flesh out a script or story. Candles are fine, and stoves and barbecues. I can even grit my teeth and cope with an open fire, as long as it’s safely within a grate, but campfires are pushing the envelope and bonfires are right out!

Fascinating! I mean, I had no idea.

It isn’t a subject that often comes up in conversation.

He let the silence be for a few minutes and I took the time to deal with my rising anxiety. I usually kept my phobia locked safely away, but it had broken its chains over the past few days. Fire stalked in my nightmares, vivid explosions of lethal flame. If I believed in precognition, I might have called my bad dreams a warning, a premonition of disaster.

"Soulstalker is doing well, if you can believe the company figures, and several of the more influential critics have taken a liking to it, Guy said, still in banal mode. Rumour has it that we may be nominated for three or four Kubricks."

Your script deserves an award. I could be kind about it, as my part had been meaty and intelligent. I had fun playing Meredith. I liked her guts and attitude.

"The word is out that you could be up for best supporting actress. It was nothing short of criminal that you didn’t win the nomination for Changeling. In my humble opinion that was the best work you’ve ever done."

"I’m sure that all of these awards are fixed. It’s all down to who you know or whether your face fits this year. They gave me a Golden Galaxy for Deepest Purple, and that was very lightweight, a cotton-candy confection of a holo. I was glad to get it, of course, but it doesn’t mean that much."

You don’t have to overplay the modesty, not to me. Your press releases say that you enjoy queening it over your court. He was dissembling still, avoiding what he really wanted to say. Is that true?

My laugh rang hollow under the low branches. Should I hate it?

Hell, no! How does it feel at the summit of success, with us lesser mortals adoring at your feet? Does it give you a kick to have such power over the masses?

I didn’t think he was wielding sarcasm, yet I sensed a trace of it. You should know, Guy. You’re as much a star as I am. You have more power over people in your field. You put the words in my mouth–they aren’t my own.

I do know. He seemed bitter. Fame! You get sick of it after a while. It’s just senseless noise, it means nothing.

It’s what all those pretty young men are after. I observed cynically. To be mentioned in the news-nets because they were seen with me or they’d dropped a careless hint that they might be sharing my bed this week, or else they’re after my money or a free ride into this business. Which one do you have your sights on, Mr LeGrange?

None of them! Now he sounded insulted. You misunderstand me.

I’ll take back what I said. You have a very original line in passes!

He sighed. I’m not after your body, Anna, enchanting as it is.

Then why this charade? Why drag me away from the party?

We’ve worked together now on–what is it?–three holos? I’ve been watching you for a while, seeing you drift about like a lost soul, seeing the boredom and frustration growing in you, like pus in an abscess. He did look at me now, directly into my eyes. It was dark under the great tree but a little moonlight seeped through its branches, enough to outline him in a pallid lemon-tinted halo and let me see his face clearly. This isn’t enough for you, is it? It hurts me sometimes, to watch you testing the bars of this life, like a caged tigress, restless, fevered, pacing to and fro. You came into the business because your life was empty, meaningless. What are you going to do if this isn’t the answer, if this flimsy little career of yours doesn’t fulfil your needs?

I gave him back a level, limpid gaze, certain that he couldn’t guess that I writhed within. What he spoke was the truth; it was why he spoke it that shaped the lie. Such an imagination! When did you come up with that pretty fiction? Which tortured mid-hour of the night spawned that?

Don’t deny it, Anna. There’s more risk in pretending you don’t see than in facing up to reality. You aren’t happy. Any blind fool could see that–

You don’t know me, not really, not well enough to make that judgement! I hit character, crafting a perfectly underplayed smile. "You’re wrong, Guy, so very