by Kenneth Zink
The silver lining was that the ransom video would blunt the impact of the rally footage. The whole world was gossiping about the unbelievable reality that the President of the United States was being publicly blackmailed with the kidnapping and possible killing of her granddaughter, like a global gasp to anticipate what happened next.
During the drive out of the city, Tim scarfed down a few burgers and sucked down a liter of soda before passing out on the seat next to her without a word. She still couldn’t get a read on him. Boy, man, somewhere in between, an age without a name. A kid who made her feel like she was always lying.
She couldn’t sleep. Instead she did what she did best. Drank. Picked at some fries. Texted the President an update. Considered pulling out the book in her coat and giving it a go, the one that belonged to her mother, but left it where it was like she always did. Ran through the evidence again and again, thought about the girl, buried how much she reminded her of herself, back then, before the NIF.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out.
“Wray.”
“Detective.” The President dropped the word like an anvil off a cliff. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to reach out. As you can imagine, things have been... well, to be frank, they’ve been a nightmare.”
“I understand, Madam President.” A carousel of images spun through her mind. Aides rushing through the White House, entourages of men with medals pinned to their uniforms arguing over a long table strewn with folders, the President sitting at the Resolute desk with the phone to her ear.
“So what happened with the grenade?” the President asked.
“Not sure,” Robin said, feeling the phantom weight of the explosive in her pocket. “Someone slipped it in my pocket. Whoever we’re chasing is looking back.”
“Did you check the rally footage?”
“Yup. Nothing. Like they weren’t even there.”
“Well, between this and the ransom, we must be headed in the right direction,” the President said. “I’m sorry you had to be there for that. The rally, the rhetoric.”
“No apology necessary. We had a job to do.”
“That doesn’t excuse what you went through.”
Robin buried what she was feeling. “Do we have an ID on the girl with the hood over her head?”
“Yes, it’s her. Lyla.”
“How do you know?”
“The bracelet,” the President said.
“You recognize it?”
“Yes. She made it a while back at school.”
“What’s it say?” Robin asked, thinking of the beads on the bracelet.
The President paused.
Robin ran through the possibilities of what the beads spelled. Love? Grandma? A word potent enough to stop Molly Walker in her tracks.
“Tell me what you have,” the President said.
Robin ran her finger down the window, tracing lines through the chilled condensation gathering on the glass. “We tracked the bullets fired into your man Mac to an arms dealer in Chinatown.”
“You better have more for me than that.”
“I do. We fragged the arms dealer and got intel on the terrorists who bought the weapons used in the kidnapping.”
“Intel can mean anything,” the President said.
“How about a tattoo on the back of a hand? Looks like it belongs to whoever bought the weapons from the arms dealer.”
“That’s a start. What’s the tattoo?”
“The Chinese symbol for light,” Robin said.
“I knew it.”
Robin hesitated. She wanted to be right on this. The wrong conclusion could cost the girl her life.
“You disagree,” the President said.
“I’m simply keeping an open mind.“
“Detective, I hired you to follow a trail. All I need is for you to follow it and report your findings.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Silence settled on the line that connected them across the city.
“No word from Joel or President Lu?” Robin asked, thinking about the Frag Liberation Front and the Republic of China.
“None from Joel, although Lu issued a statement an hour ago denying any and all involvement in the kidnapping.”
“A denial?”
“An absolute denial,” the President said.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Anyone bold enough to kidnap the granddaughter of the President of the United States is bold enough to lie, Detective.”
“I know, it’s just...”
Robin searched for a rebuttal but knew the President was right. Lying in the face of mounting evidence would be a bold move by one of the most powerful people in the world, but truth no longer meant what it once had.
More silence.
“You know I can’t give into these monsters,” the President said.
“Yes I do, Madam President.” Robin thought back to the video, the men flanking the girl, the way their rifles caught what little light there was and glinted it back at the camera like a wink.
“And you know I can’t lose my granddaughter.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then I don’t think I need to reiterate this, but I’m going to, for my own sake and sanity. If we lose her, I’ll have no choice but to strike back at whoever did this, and the world will be at war. It’ll be what’s right and what’s owed, but civilization will suffer.”
“And you, Madam President?”
Silence.
It was a stupid question for Robin to ask but she asked it anyway. The President was the most powerful woman in the world, but at the end of the day Molly Walker was just a woman, a woman who was, at every turn, despite her success, torn apart by the public regardless of which choices she made.
“Find her, Robin.”
It was the first time the President had used her name, and it called back to the past, through her years of wandering the world as a woman with a gun, back to when she was just a girl called in from playing in the backyard by her mother with a soft voice, a voice that had never had the chance to harden over time, crack with age, accrue the inevitable dust that came with decay, because her mother hadn’t lived long enough for that to happen.
“Yes, ma’am.”
9
Findherfindherfindherfindherfindherfindherfindherfindherfindherfindherfindherfindherfin
Something hit her and she shuddered awake against the window and almost drew her gun. Looked down. Saw a ball of foil at her feet. Looked out. While a drizzle sprinkled through the darkness, the cab zipped down a deserted highway. She coughed, raised her hands to her mouth, pulled them away expecting to find blood on the leather. Found nothing. Felt disappointed, as if blood would have been good. A herald of the end.
“She lives.”
Robin looked over. Tim was spread and slouched, rolling a ball of foil in his palm like a god toying with a planet.
She rubbed her eyes. “How long were we out?”
“A few hours. Also, how long have you been an alcoholic?”
“What?”
“Just wondering.” The kid glanced down at the seat between them.
Her eyes followed his and stopped on the flask, out in the open, the cap screwed tight, the liquid inside sloshing when the cab hit a pothole, reminding her it was there. “I’m not a fucking alcoholic,” she lied, hiding the flask in her coat. Lie after lie after lie. The truth was that she no longer cared, not like she used to, back in the beginning, fresh from A-Cad, still carrying a scrap of hope about the world and the people it cradled.
“Could’ve fooled me,” he said.
“Yeah, well, give it a few years and you might find yourself sipping a different tune.”
“I thought you weren’t an alcoholic?”
“I’m not,” she said.
“Then you won’t mind if I dump that shit out the window?”
“Fuck off.”
“Why do you drink, Robin?”
“To fucking forget
.” She pushed aside flashes of the past. Her parents, A-Cad, the cases that ground her down until she’d been nothing but an oar used by others to row the world in the right direction.
“Well I don’t want a partner who drinks to forget,” he said.
“Looks like we’re in the same ballpark.”
“You never say what you mean.”
“I don’t want a partner at all,” she said. “Better?”
“You know, back in A-Cad, I heard stories about you. The legendary fragment detective. Every case solved. On the beat longer than any other frag alive.”
“Spare me the vanity.”
The kid shook his head. “Never thought I’d see you try so hard to forget the past.”
“Let me guess, your parents are still around. Still nice. Still trying.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“That’s everything, kid.” She coughed, hacking into her hand, her lungs rippling like a dying chainsaw.
“Arriving at destination in five minutes,” the cab AI chimed.
“Just do your job.” Robin popped her gun out and did a pass through its parts to ensure a bullet would come out of the barrel if and when the time came.
“You think I can’t handle myself?” Tim asked.
“That’s not what I said.”
“But what did you mean?”
She sighed. “Expect trouble.”
“You think so?” He sat back and pulled his gun from the holster at his hip, flicking the safety on and off, back and forth, click click click.
“Maybe. This far out, this place has to be a safe house.”
“Their home away from home...” He looked over but she rolled her eyes but he kept pushing. “I mean, if it is China...” She looked away, out the window, watching the rural silhouetted abyss scroll by. “Which it is,” he said.
“Who did this is irrelevant. Find her. That’s all that matters.”
“Right.” He returned his gun to its holster and looked out the window.
The moment they reached the driveway of the house rented to their target, Alexander Han, Robin told the cab to loiter next to the mailbox while she surveyed the area. A lone orange streetlight, a long gravel drive, a house veiled by murk and mist, hazy and thin like a nighttime mirage, backed by nothing but a sable backdrop. It had it all. A garage, a porch, even a pole flying a lank flag. Vinyl siding painted the same bland beige that seemed to coat every average home in the country. Trees, lots of them, thick and towering but spaced far apart, peppering the lawn. The house was ordinary, ripped out of suburbia and dropped in the middle of nowhere. The only signs of trouble were the windows, curtains drawn, making the place look like it had been embalmed. Someone was hiding something. She winced.
“You okay?” Tim asked.
“Fine,” Robin said.
“I don’t believe you but I guess I have to.”
“You take the front, I’ll take the back.”
“Use the rookie as bait,” he said. “Smart.”
“If you’d worked the field before then you’d know I’m the one taking the heat. All you have to do is knock and wait. Hide against the side of the house for all I care. Just keep an eye on the door.”
“Right-o, boss.”
“That’s more like it.”
They got out, told the cab to wait, gently clicked their doors shut to minimize the noise, crouched and ran down opposing sides of the driveway, toward the house, weaving through the trees like fireflies through prison bars, aiming for the darkest pockets of lawn, their steps padded by the hushed thud of wet grass, spritzing her pants with each step. No cars in sight. While Tim hopped up the porch to the front door, Robin crept along the side of the house, pulling her gun before peeking around the corner.
The backyard. A swingset, a slide, some chairs. Then the woods. Beyond the initial buffer of trees, there was nothing but abyss. The longer she gazed into it, the more it tricked her into seeing things that weren’t there, phantasms, barely lighter than the rest of the gloom.
She heard the kid knock on the front door while she stepped up a rotted wood stoop to the back door. Peered through the windows but saw only dim slants of fixtures and furniture. Opened the door an inch but stopped when the hinges creaked. Stared inside through the open crack.
Nothing. No movement, no sound.
The next time the kid knocked she used it as auditory cover and pushed the door wide open and waited outside while the thing creaked and arced and clunked to a stop.
Still nothing.
She went in and checked her corners.
To the right, a kitchen.
To the left, a dining room.
Straight ahead, a living room.
Nothing in sight but domesticity. All the fixings of Americana. A television, a couch, a rug, a bed for a pet, everything neat but askew, lumpy and frayed, used, a downgraded yet somehow better version of her apartment back in the city. Less money but more life.
She patrolled the house, cleared her corners, eyed the ground for tripwires until she reached the front door. Through the slivered glass she saw the kid. She opened the door and he slipped inside, his gun drawn. They took the stairs. The steps were carpeted. Her own home had been carpeted, her first home, before she left her family, before they left her. What came next, A-Cad and everything after, had been devoid of carpet. Nothing soft.
The second floor had a hallway. Two doors on the left, two doors on the right, one at the far end. Robin signaled Tim, her left, him right, and they slinked down the hall, taking their respective sides, checking the doors as they went.
First door. Twist open, tuck gun inside, check corners. Nothing but a bathroom.
She turned back to the hall and watched the kid disappear into the room across from hers before popping back out, meeting her eyes, shaking his head.
Second door, same thing. Nothing but an office. Sparse, filled with things that made it feel empty, open storage boxes and a cushionless couch and a desk stacked with papers, the air clogged with dust like the room hadn’t been pried open in months. Back in the hallway, the kid came out of his second door just as empty as she did.
One room left. End of the hall.
They moved forward together. Beyond the door, they might find the girl. Alive, dead. Maybe gone. Not there at all. Robin buried her worst thoughts and held onto hope, a feeling that was foreign and sour. But soothing too. She nodded to the kid and he nodded back and twisted the knob and flung the door open so she could storm through.
A bedroom. Corners clear. Closet clear. Beneath the bed clear. A defunct lava lamp on the nightstand, piles of plastic toys and heaps of coloring books engulfing the floor, stray legos beneath a dresser carved with crayon.
“Well fuck me,” Tim said, sighing, holstering his weapon, plopping on the bed.
“Off your ass. Frag the house. You take the first floor, I’ll take the second.” Robin hesitated, thinking about the potential Erodium energy she might not be able to frag because of the murk that cropped up back at the hospital when she fragged Mac. A neglected clue could mean they wouldn’t reach the girl in time, which would mean the worst. “When we’re done we’ll swap floors,” Robin said.
“You think they left anything?” the kid asked. “They know we’re hunting them.”
She knew what he meant. If the terrorists were smart they’d have wiped the entire place with a cloth. “Doesn’t matter. Someone had to have gotten sloppy. Something in this house will tell us where they went. Frag everything. We have to find this girl, Tim. We have to.”
The kid nodded and raced out of the room, his steps dwindling from thuds to murmurs as he hustled down the stairs.
Then it was quiet. The only sound came from the ocassional footsteps down below as Tim no doubt took off a glove and got to work. Robin felt guilty for it but she sat down on the tiny bed, savoring the bounce from the mattress, rippling her back to her own mattress in A-Cad. People on the outside imagined the place like a prison in the middle of
a desert. Grubby concrete, cracked walls, peeling paint. Untrue, but headed in the right direction. Her room had been austere, utilitarian. A bed, a desk, a chair. Everything new, everything clean, but it didn’t have what this room had, glowing stars on the ceiling and stickers on the dresser, certainly not mounds of stuffed animals on the floor. The instructors didn’t want their students to develop attachments, believed that being a fragment detective would be brutal, maybe impossible, with emotions of any kind.
She knew they were right. Without A-Cad she would’ve been broken years ago, after a few cases spent fragging the most painful Erodium energy the world had to offer. She survived because she felt nothing.
Now came the hard part. She slipped off a glove and skimmed her hand around the room, searching for any Erodium energy she could find. The doorknob, the door itself, the whole floor, the tiny desk that whisked her back to Sahil, way back, only a day ago, but the room was bare, so stripped of memory it felt like a room made by machines and rolled off an assembly line. Only after she toppled onto the bed, crumpling under a headache, a cancerous memento of her own mortality, did she find what she was looking for. There. Wedged in the crevice between the wall and the bed, sinking into the carpet, was a bracelet. The same one from the video released by the kidnappers. Pink string, white beads. So small it looked like it had been made for a doll. She reached her gloved hand down as far as she could, unable to see, feeling through the leather, the bed and the wall forming a vise that scraped her forearm until she found the bracelet. Pulled it out. Opened her hand. Stared at the beads and what they spelled.