by Kenneth Zink
Thank you for providing me with a home.
Thank you for giving me a purpose.
Thank you for everything.
She came out the other side with a document that promised her a quiet series of final months in some distant corner of the earth, where she could die drunk and alone.
Dear Director Hughes,
Please accept my resignation as fragment detective.
Sincerely,
Robin Wray
There was nothing more to say. That morning, after the sun ascended into the sky and torched the world in light, she would hand him the letter, he would read it, and her life would be over.
5
The next morning Robin woke with her head down on the desk, her cheek smushed into the wood, drool dripping from her mouth, stifling a sour burp that tasted like vanilla and smoke, shielding her eyes from the sun that now blared through the windows like a searing blitzkrieg.
Was her head throbbing from the hangover or the cancer?
She pulled herself together with a shower, a liter of water, some pills, and a pair of sunglasses, printing out her resignation letter and slipping it in her trench coat. Paper was a throwback but it felt wrong to end her career with an email, particularly with a man she’d known as long as Forrest Hughes, Director of the NIF. They deserved paper, both of them. Before she left she took some slugs of vodka. Enough to get her through the next few hours without bringing her flask through security.
Outside, while she waited for Secret Service to pick her up, she passed out on a stone bench.
“Ms. Wray?”
Robin shuddered awake. Rolled off the bench into a standing position. Shot her hands into her pockets, digging down deep, out of sight. It was a reflex she’d never been able to shake, hiding her gloves. Without them no one would know who she was. What she was.
“Detective Wray,” she told the man standing by a loitering car, a large black hulking mass of a thing. She clambered into the car and wedged herself between two more agents in the backseat. Four total including the driver. They all looked like copies of the same man that had been tweaked. Cleft chin. Bald head. Fat neck.
“You guys brothers?” she asked.
No one said a word, which was fine by her. More time to lean back and shut her eyes through the hangover still splitting her skull in half.
Sometime later she heard chanting. Opened her eyes. Saw they were pulling through the White House gates, leaving behind a similar mob from the day before, more signs and slogans, some old but some new. A lot about Rex Hardy and how he would save America, plus classics like STOP THE FRAGS. The car windows were already tinted. Perks of the White House.
When they dropped her off at the entrance hall she tried not to gawk up at the stone columns and high ceilings, chandeliers above and checkered tiles below, lights that glowed like balls of yellow fire. She spotted a school tour, a cluster of generals, a diplomatic envoy. At the security checkpoint they asked for her weapon. Necessary but obnoxious. She pressed her ring finger to her palm. Grabbed the gun that shot out her sleeve. Watched security shift where they stood, as if the air had been electrically charged, hands itching for holsters. Ejected the magazine from the frame. Popped out the round in the chamber. Slid the pieces across the counter to the guard waiting for her weapon. Pushed away the fear that rushed her whenever the weapon left her body.
“If I get shot I’m blaming you,” she said.
No one laughed.
It could have been because she was a fragment detective, and no one trusted fragment detectives. Someone whose hand you couldn’t shake, bare, was someone you couldn’t trust. That was how a target described it to her once, right before she knocked him out.
Then Robin was shuttled to the lobby of the West Wing and left there to wait, a space that looked more like the living room of a cottage than the waiting room of the most powerful office in the world. Carpet the color of hot chocolate. Red chairs and sofas. Famous paintings hanging on the walls in gold frames. Aides and politicians trickled through the quiet lobby, carrying briefcases, tablets, coffee.
While she waited she browsed her phone, clicked on content, articles and videos and memes, an endless trail of stuff designed to scoop the grey matter from her skull until there was nothing left but the fuzzy ping of dopamine. Fine by her. Buried in the junk though were the inescapable reports of a shooting not far from where she’d been the day before, when she’d been tracking her target. Cop cars, ambulances. She’d seen some but couldn’t remember when. Sources said the shooting involved Secret Service agents. No other details.
Was that why she was here?
Down the same hall she came through earlier came her boss, Forrest Hughes, Director of the NIF. Tall, round, old. Fifties. Bald head. Slack cheeks. Lazy eye. Cold stare but warm smile. He should’ve been a father figure but he wasn’t. Never had been. He’d made efforts over the years but she’d always walked away, the death of her own father always blurred but never far. Every time Forrest tried she felt bad, then angry, then sad.
Behind Forrest, a frag. Coat, gloves, boots. Wavy black hair, strong jawline, the frame of a short noodle. Youngest frag she ever saw.
Robin stood. “Sir.”
“Detective Wray,” Forrest said. “I heard about the target.”
“It’s done.” Robin tried to forget his face. Sahil Khatri. A kid. Not a boy but not a man either.
“I’m sorry it ended the way it did.” Years earlier Forrest might have put a hand on her shoulder, but she’d shrugged it off enough times for him to know she didn’t want his pity. He turned to the frag behind him. “This is your new partner, fresh out of A-Cad. Show him the ropes.”
“Tim Avery,” the frag said. “Detective Tim Avery. Still getting used to the title. Good to meet you.”
“You too, kid,” Robin said.
A partner. She hadn’t had one of those in years. She worked better alone. Always had. The resignation letter in the pocket of her coat seemed to be burning through the fabric, growing dense, wriggling to life, reminding her that she had made her choice. She’d never thought about her career ending though. She’d assumed she’d always be a fragment detective. Die young. Not by cancer, but by a bullet.
“About that partner, sir.” She reached into her coat and pulled out the letter, folded into thirds, now out in the open. No going back.
“What is that?” Forrest asked.
“Just read it.” She couldn’t get more than that out of her mouth.
Forrest took the letter. Looked skeptical. Unfolded it. Read the words she’d written, the ones that would end her career and slingshot her somewhere still and quiet for the rest of her short life. Silence settled in the space between them like foam out of a can, expanding, filling every crevice.
He must have read the letter ten times over when he handed it back to her.
“Sir, I’ve thought a lot about this,” she said.
“This is all you know, Robin. You’re the best in the business, for crying out loud. People spend their whole lives trying to be as good at something as you are, and you’re going to throw all that away? For what?”
She forced herself not to blurt out her cancer diagnosis. “It’s mine to throw away.”
Tim looked at the two of them like a child watching adults argue.
“Is there something I can do?” Forrest asked. “Something bothering you about the job? I can get you more money if that’s what it is.”
Money. It always came back to money. Money couldn’t fix this though. At first it seemed to be the cancer that was ending her career, her life, but the longer she sat with herself, with her tumorous brain, the more she saw that something far more foreign was driving her to resign and run. Weariness. Confusion. Regret? A flock of entangled emotions that she had only noticed after the diagnosis but now appeared to have been there all along, beneath the surface of herself, accruing mass, the kind that made it impossible to look away from something.
“I’m done, sir.” She looked o
ff at one of the paintings on the wall, a portrait of a family arranged like dolls, the faces smiling but empty, everything perfect except something inarticulable. “You’ve done everything you could.”
“I won’t accept that,” Forrest said.
“You have to.”
“You have everything you could ever want.”
“How do you know what I want?” Robin asked.
Tim shifted where he stood. Shuffled his weight from foot to foot. Hands in his pockets. His gloves barely visible from where they were stuffed. Same as hers.
“You’re right,” Forrest said. “I don’t know what you want. Maybe I never have. Just... wait until we’re through with this thing. With the President. When we’re done here, if you still want to quit, I’ll frame the goddamn letter on my wall.”
So their meeting was with the President.
“Why?” Robin asked.
“Because you’re going to want to see what comes next.”
“Which is?”
“Even I don’t know, but it must be something big. Tim here was requested because... well, you’ll see.”
“For the record, I have no idea why I’m here,” Tim said, a nonchalance to the way he spoke. A lot like her. Not the kind of partner she needed.
A door in the lobby opened and a woman entered. Glasses, black hair past her shoulders, a skirt and a blouse, white flats, tablet in her hand. “The President will see you now.”
“Thank you,” Forrest said to the woman before turning back to Robin. “We’re in the White House. Let the letter wait.”
Robin knew he was probably trying to lure her back to the life she’d loved to live for so long. It had always been the next case that strung her along, the promise of another mystery, another set of clues. The hunt. The chase.
The kill.
She couldn’t lie, not even to herself. She was curious. Working a case related to the President could be the perfect possible cap to her career.
Depending on the case.
She hated that she took the letter from his hand, like she had forgotten her resignation wasn’t a request, slipping the letter back in her coat, feeling it pressed up against the book that had belonged to her mother.
They followed the woman through the door she’d entered through. Forrest, Robin, Tim.
Halfway down the hall they saw the Vice President of the United States, Manuel Castro, while he spoke with the Secretary of Defense, a man with a face she recognized but a name that escaped her.
Castro was a hot topic, particularly among her crowd. Frags. Rumor was, he was one of them, which would have meant that when he was a boy, he’d suffered just as Robin had, buckling beneath the weight of the unbound Erodium mutation. But her family had been poor, and his family had been rich. Hypothetically, they could’ve paid for the device that controlled Erodium out of pocket. No need for an NIF contract. Which meant little Manny would have gotten the privilege of living a normal life, a life that eventually led to Molly Walker plucking him from Congress to be on the ticket as her Vice President, the youngest person to ever hold the title. Handsome, intelligent, compassionate. A politician without flaw. Sincerity maybe. Too much of it.
If someone wanted to sully his reputation, mongering that he was a frag would be a surefire way to do it.
If he was a frag though then he was doing a hell of a job hiding it. No gloves. A potentially huge political advantage, the ability to pull the fragmented memories of your allies and adversaries. In that case, he might not be a fragment detective, but on the inside he was still a frag. A frag is a frag is a frag. That’s what the whole world echoed on both sides of the debate. The one thing everyone could agree on.
When they passed in the hall Robin glanced at the Vice President, but he didn’t even notice her.
She wondered if he fought for people like her in this administration.
After a minute of walking the woman they were following led them to the end of a corridor, at which point she opened a door that blended into the wall. And then the three of them, Forrest then Robin then Tim, stepped into the Oval Office.
Ordinary. That was the word that came to mind when she saw the place. The world outside had morphed into an exciting yet dull future no one had been able to completely predict, but the office of the most powerful woman in the world had remained the same. A carpet bearing the Presidential seal. A few dressers and end tables. A pair of sofas. White trim so fresh it looked like it got a new coat of paint each day. Some stray chairs. Even the Resolute desk, the wood looking worn despite it not bearing a single scratch, was the kind of furniture that nowadays was tough to find. Of the earth. The room smelled like timber and dust. The unexpected scent of history.
By the window, the President of the United States stood and looked out at the world. White suit, black flats. White was her chosen uniform, a symbol of suffrage that the President refused to let fall into the dustbin of history.
Forrest stepped forward while Robin and Tim hung back by the door.
“Madam President, it’s good to see you again,” he said, his hands behind his back, his chest puffed out.
When the President finally turned from the window Robin finally saw her. Curly hair, high cheekbones, asymmetrical nose, thin lips, sharp chin, fine wrinkles. The face of the woman who had saved her life. Without the NIF, Robin would have died before high school. Suicide. No other choice.
She suddenly had the long lost urge to rub the scar on her skull, beneath her hair, a thin ribbon of tissue that sealed her head together after the docs stuck the device inside. It was an old tic she thought she’d left behind years ago in A-Cad.
“Director Hughes, always a pleasure” the President said, strolling around the desk to shake the his hand.
“No one’s always a pleasure, but I’ll live with the lie, Molly.” Forrest took her hand and shook it.
Robin wondered if the President was bothered by his use of her first name but said nothing because saying something would constitute nagging, and nagging constituted the behavior of a bitch. Maybe it wasn’t worth it when you were that high up, the President of the United States. Maybe then it was best to just let things go. Maybe the only way a woman like the President had made it as far as she had was by ignoring the rotting vegetables thrown at her as she balanced across the tightrope of the political circus for decades.
The President looked past Forrest to Robin and Tim. “Detectives.”
Robin crossed the distance between them and shook the her hand. “Detective Wray. It’s an honor Madam President.”
“The honor’s mine, if we’re taking records and reputations into account.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” the President said.
Robin looked down at the floor, her boots sinking into the carpet, the toes creased, dirt speckling the leather.
The President looked at Tim. “You’re young.”
“Detective Avery ma’am. Madam President. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, I’m used to it at this point.” The President smiled and shook his hand.
“So, why are we here?” Forrest asked, sitting on one of the two couches that anchored the center of the room. Robin and Tim followed suit but the President strayed back to the window that faced the gates guarding the White House, the protesters beyond the lawn pumping their signs in her direction, their chants lost against the glass.
“Yesterday afternoon my granddaughter was kidnapped.”
The statement hung around like a guillotine blade that had somehow paused in midair.
Robin knew enough about the granddaughter from skimming the tabloids in line at liquor stores. Three years ago the daughter of the President, a lifelong addict who had somehow managed to stay off drugs long enough to get pregnant and deliver a healthy baby with an unknown father, had overdosed in the White House a year into the Walker first term. Leaving behind Lyla Walker, the only kin the President had left. The press dug deep into the story, narratives s
pooling off the facts. Tragedy for the President, caution for youths thinking about doing drugs, scolding for parents who let their children off the leash. The President did one interview about the loss and then moved on.
Forrest spoke first. “Your granddaughter. Jesus, I’m so sorry, Molly.”
“I am so tired of hearing my own name,” the President said, whispering near the window.
“Madam President. I apologize.”
“The CIA and the FBI both think it’s the Frag Liberation Front,” the President said, turning from the window and pacing the room.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Robin said, the words slipping from her mouth, propelled by the curiosity now rumbling in her gut. She sat back and dug her hands into her pockets. “Their agenda, however misguided—”
“Which is a lot,” Tim muttered.
“—is to go after frags. So unless your granddaughter is a frag, this doesn’t fit their MO.”
“That was my thinking,” the President said.
“Although they do hate you,” Forrest said. “The FLF. Joel most of all. It wouldn’t be a bad way to get back at you for everything you’ve done. WASA, the NIF. All good things, of course.”
“They’re terrorists but they don’t kidnap children,” Robin said, thinking of the enigmatic leader of the FLF. Joel. A plain name for a man of such magnitude, the moniker somehow stirring equal doses of hope and fear and respect across the globe.
“Not yet,” Tim said.
“It’s the mother of all risks to take but without much upside. The only force that could pull this off, and the only force that would even dare to do something like this, is a foreign nation.”
“Agreed,” the President said, still pacing.
“What about Hardy?” Forrest asked, referring to the man running against the President in the upcoming election. “Maybe he’s forcing a crisis to make you look weak?”