by Kenneth Zink
Page one, an overview. A photograph of the vial. Information on when it was submitted, who submitted it, and what case it was related to. The only problem was, parts of the overview were redacted with fat black lines that stretched across the page like stripes across an antique prison uniform.
Pages two through seventeen, information on which tests were performed, which technician performed them, and what results they returned. A bunch of data. Most of it redacted.
Page eighteen, a short conclusion. Redacted.
“This can’t be it.” Robin rifled through the pages, one after the other, hoping she’d missed something, searching for an unredacted answer.
“What?” Tim shoved a few sticks of gum in his mouth before leaning over and whistling as he scanned line after line of thick black ink. “Serious shit. Can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Why’s that?” she asked.
“You said you didn’t want to know.”
“Know what?”
“How I got this,” he said.
“I changed my mind.”
“Let’s just say I talked to the analyst who compiled the report.”
“Talked to or flirted with?”
“Both, technically.”
“And?” Robin asked.
“And, she said the black residue inside the vial was connected to our Erodium mutation.”
“Meaning?”
“She wasn’t sure,” Tim said, “but her best guess was that it, pardon my scientific jargon, fucked with our ability to frag. Muddled the Erodium energy that clings to stuff.”
“Not just stuff,” Robin said. “That wouldn’t make sense. You can wipe Erodium energy off objects, things. All you need is a cloth. Bleach, if you want to be thorough. ”
“People, then.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Apparently not,” he said.
Then it hit her. “Mac.”
“Who?”
“Mac,” she said, remembering the one moment she’d struggled to frag on the hunt for Lyla Walker. How, at the time, she’d thought her brain cancer was preventing her from fragging the last person to see the girl alive. Murk, that was all she’d gotten from Mac. Then she’d lied to her partner.
“Secret Service Mac?” Tim asked.
The time had come. Admit the truth, which was that she’d failed to frag Mac, lied about it, and from that point on handed off every fragging opportunity to the kid, or finally leave this all behind and live with her lie. And wonder for the rest of her life if Lyla Walker was still alive.
“Back at the hospital,” Robin said. “I got murk when I fragged him, lots of it.”
“And you’re only just mentioning this now?”
“He must know something. The vial, the substance inside. If it fucks with our ability to frag, then he has to be involved.”
The kid stared at her for so long the rain began to sound like the only thing she’d ever heard. Patter. Drip. Tap. A look at what it was like to slowly drown. In what, she wasn’t sure. Herself. The world around her. The very person she’d never imagined she’d actually become. Someone decent, but just barely, balancing on the cusp of good and bad, right and wrong, the known and the unknown.
“You think you might be taking this too far?” Tim asked.
“Don’t do that,” Robin said.
“Do what?”
“Ignore what’s right in front of you.”
“I’m not,” he said.
“You are.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you too. Something isn’t right, Tim. We found a vial containing some sort of substance that blocks fragging, an experience I had from the very start of this case, and, on top of all that, we found this vial at the scene of a crime. The crime of the century. A crime that, need I remind you, is being used to justify a war between two superpowers hellbent on destroying each other.”
“You found that vial,” he said.
“What?”
“You said we found the vial, but that’s not true. You found it, you and you alone.” Tim looked out the window and chomped the ball of gum in his mouth, the cab filling with the smell of saccharine sugar. Waxy, stretchy, extreme. “The analyst had no clue what she was looking at. Said it was her best guess actually. Sounded baffled. And she knows more about stuff like that, science and shit, than you and I combined.”
“That should tell you what we’re dealing with here,” Robin said.
“Or it should tell you any number of things could’ve happened, and that, need I remind you, we shouldn’t make assumptions.”
“How do you explain the redactions? Look at this Tim.” She held up the report. “You’re fresh but you’re not stupid. This means something.”
He chewed his lip around the gum, the report clearly struggling to flow through his mind like sludge through a straw. “I don’t know, but what I do know is that we did our job. We followed the trail. We found the bracelet and then her blood. The Coast Guard even found a piece of her dress in the tide.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “You didn’t see?”
She didn’t. Hadn’t. Ever since that unspeakable day, she’d blocked any and all mention of the girl, because she’d known she was dead right there, on that beach. No news, not from the TV, not from her phone. She’d thought it was to protect herself from further pain but maybe it was to block her from facing the truth.
The kid stared at her. Truly saw her.
“Look, whatever it is you’re going through, trouble leaving the life behind, no longer being a fragment detective, I get it, and I’m sorry. But this is over.”
Tim popped his door open but paused. “Take fucking care of your self, Robin.”
Then he left, the door slamming shut as he disappeared into the downfall, the black of his uniform, his coat and pants and gloves, fading into the grey haze. The papers in her hand felt like feathers. Weightless, worthless. Things she could throw out the window and forget. Her mind was telling her to do just that, but her body, something instinctual and sovereign, forced her hands to clench the folder and pull out her flask, taking a drink that she hoped would give her an answer, somewhere in the bottle.
15
The ride home took hours because she didn’t want to go home, so she had the cab skitter through the city, down the same avenues, sipping at the stuff she couldn’t see inside her flask while the cab bore the brunt of rain again and again. In the afternoon she found herself on the urban outskirts and told the cab to idle alongside an iron fence guarding an abandoned playground. Slides. Jungle gym. Plastic tubes to crawl through. Every piece of equipment painted with basic colors that belonged to childhood. Red, yellow, green, blue. A cobbled mass of prismatic metal. She couldn’t imagine children playing on it. A few hours passed where she was out dead. She woke at sunset. Popped the door open and vomited on the sidewalk. Couldn’t tell if it was from the alcohol or cancer. Something was killing her, she knew that much. The storm was gone, leaving behind an afterbirth of frail orange that barely broke through the residual clouds, the sky somehow dark and bright. Her flask was dry so she went home. Finally.
But when she pulled up to her apartment, the building was black as the night around it, only a few flashlights on inside.
“What’s going on?” she asked the lobby guard.
“No idea, Ms. Wray.”
She pulled out her phone, turned on the flashlight, and took the stairs, hoping the hike up the shadowed chute of seventeen floors would shake her out of her stupor. Clarity. That was what she needed. A drink and then a night of planning her next move. Whatever that was. She didn’t have any options left. The report on the vial was redacted, she was no longer a fragment detective with the NIF, and there were no other leads as to what might have actually happened to Lyla Walker.
None except Mac.
Maybe.
Halfway up she pulled out the flask and dangled it over the core of the stairwell. Wanted to drop it. Leave it behind. Never own one of th
ose vessels again. But the seconds ticked by and all her hand did was hover. She pulled it back. Dropping the flask could kill someone, if anyone was down there. She couldn’t risk that. She was done with killing. She didn’t know how long her kill list was but she knew it didn’t need to be any longer.
She also knew, as she took her first step into her apartment, that the last place the flask would go was the trash. Her body was no longer hers. It belonged to every pond of alcohol she’d ever poured.
She headed straight for the fridge. Grabbed a bunch of bottles. Swayed. Steadied herself through a burst of vertigo. Poured the spirits into her flask, their labels unreadable from the lack of light. Closed the flask and swirled it around. Opened it and took a drink and felt that familiar rush of dopamine that never failed to make her feel like she could breathe again. This time, though, she felt tired. So goddamn tired. But wired too. Wrung like a wet cloth that refused to let go of its last few drops of moisture.
Then she considered her options.
Option one, talk to Mac, the lone surviving Secret Service agent from the kidnapping, and the only person or thing to ever resist being fragged. Murk. It had to have something to do with the substance in the vial she’d found on the shore, the day Lyla Walker had supposedly died. The problem was, Mac might have something to say but might not want to say it. And although she could probably match the man blow for blow in a fight, her speed matching his power, she doubted she could intimidate a vet like him into telling her what he knew. And without the institutional power of the NIF, she couldn’t bend his arm using the badge.
Option two, leak the report on the vial to the media. See if that got people talking. It might turn up some new leads, but it was a long shot.
There was, of course, a third option. Drop the whole thing. Chalk the vial up to a inaccurate conclusion. Do what she’d always done. Stop. Forget. Accept. Lyla Walker was kidnapped by China and killed when the United States refused to give into their demands for economic rights to the moon. That was the story so that was the truth.
It would be easy, she knew that, but it would also hurt. She’d endured enough pain to know she’d come out the other side alive. The question was, would she come to regret it, as she now regretted so many—
A breath. Behind her. Faint but there. Like a ghost breathing in her ear.
She forced herself not to turn around, not to cave to fear, feeling like she was once again a girl afraid of the dark. Maybe it was just her imagination, a trick of the mind. She was going crazy maybe.
Arms wrapped themselves around her neck from behind. Choke hold. Neck smushed, throat crushed. She struggled. Slammed the flask into the head of the target. Heard it crack and fall to the floor. The target loosened their grip and she slipped out and ran behind the long kitchen island and crouched below the surface. She heard her attacker scurry away, barefoot on tile, and then heard nothing but silence. Whoever they were, they knew what they were doing. She pressed her ring finger to her palm, her gun shooting out of her sleeve and into her hand and returning her to who she’d always been. Not just a detective but a soldier. A killer.
The target was in the room with her, somewhere. All she had to do was find them.
She popped her head out from the island and scanned the darkened apartment, nothing but shadows and silhouettes and a pathetic mix of moon and city light diffusing through the wide windows, until she saw it. A shift in the shadows, at the far end of the apartment. Living room. The outline of an emerging gun.
She pulled her head back behind cover. A poof shot from the shadows and the cabinet behind where her head had just been popped. Sawdust sprinkled down from the bullethole in the timber. The target had a supressed firearm.
She couldn’t run and she couldn’t kill them. This was a hit job that wouldn’t stop until she found out who the target worked for. She needed answers.
No time to think. Only time to be who she was. She chucked her cracked flask out and to the left, toward the front door, and aimed her gun at the living room. The flask shattered against the tile, and she cringed when she heard it, but there were no other signs of life. The target hadn’t taken the bait. Back to the drawing board. She pulled out her phone, turned the flashlight on, put it flat on the floor with the camera pointed up, and popped around the island to slide it into the living room. The cone of light stopped next to the couch and bloomed up the walls and out across the area. She popped one eye out from behind the island, a sliver of herself exposed so she could find the target. Somehow the phone seemed to create more shadows, on the walls, on the floor, even the ceiling was sliced with light and dark.
She caught a shift of movement behind the couch and flattened herself to the ground to see what it was.
A shoe.
The target was behind the couch, crouched as she was behind the island, the two of them at a stalemate. Except she had the upper hand. The light covered him while the dark covered her.
She trained her gun at the couch. “You’re behind the couch. Black oxfords. Not the shoe I’d wear to try and fail to kill a fragment detective, but hey, not everyone can have good taste. Now drop the gun.”
Eight seconds passed before the target rose from behind the couch. When she saw the arm, masculine, sweep up to aim the gun, she fired a shot into his hand. The weapon rattled onto the floor and the target stumbled back but stayed standing. She charged him, sprinting out from behind the island, vaulting over the couch, and tackling him to the ground as he stomped down on the phone, the cone of light splintering into blades. More shadows. Somehow.
A man. Huge hands, a clean face that looked like it had been shaved daily for decades, a thick mane of white hair, a wiry shell of muscle. She put her hands around his neck to knock him out but he smacked her skull and rolled out from under her, gathering on all fours, trying to stand. Above, the ceiling was awash in fractured light and dark, the abstract shapes looking like a warped nightlight. She leapt on top and got control, wrapping her legs around his torso, hooking her heels inside his thighs, sneaking her hands under his armpits and behind his neck.
“Who sent you?!” she said.
The man tried to stand but couldn’t. Got halfway up and collapsed. She tried to use her own weight to drag him down but he slammed his body back and her spine crashed into the tile. She winced and grunted and for only a moment lost hold of her limbs around his body, but it was long enough for him to twist out and roll away. Her back was a blaze of pain. She rolled over and crawled toward his abandoned gun in the dim boundary between the hallway and the living room, utter darkness and slivered light, but then her leg jerked back and her stomach slapped flat against the floor. The wind knocked from her chest, like a knife pressing on her ribs from the inside out. The man yanked her toward him and her body jerked back in an arch, his arms around her neck.
Another choke hold.
Her vision dulled, blotted by an arriving wave of senselessness, but she never took her eyes off the gun up ahead, laying lonesome on the floor. More grunting. No air. Lungs burning. Fingers almost at the gun. She threw her fist down and back into his crotch like a pendulum and leapt forward, wrapped her hand around the gun, rolled onto her back, aimed, no time to open her eyes, and fired.
Wetness.
She opened her eyes. The man lay beside her, facedown, his bulk limp and twitching. Blood crawled out from under his chest. She got to her feet and rolled him over, swaying while she knelt down and grabbed his collar, huffing air.
“Who sent you?!”
He stared past her, up at the ceiling, careening further and further to the side, his lungs inhaling their last rounds of oxygen.
“Who sent you?!”
In the shards of shadow, the man stilled, his eyes empty.
16
She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t.
The target had been identified by the police as a known associate of the Frag Liberation Front, the terrorist group originally posited by the intelligence community to be the kidnappers and killers of Lyla W
alker. The apartment was now the scene of a homicide and a mystery.
A man had tried to kill her.
Why?
The police wouldn’t get anywhere, even if they brought in a frag. Once a body was dead, any and all Erodium energy clinging to it vanished, as if there really was something called a soul. Even if the target was alive, she suspected she’d find the same murk she had when she’d fragged his gun before the cops came. The nameless substance in the vial was clearly being used by those looking to bury the truth, whatever that was, a burial that must have included the assassin that now lay dead in her living room.
Mac was the man to find. He knew the truth. Whatever was going on, he was involved, somehow. He had to be.
Before Robin left her apartment she took a look back. The home she’d funneled money into for years was now covered in Erodium energy by way of blood, so much of it, splattered out from the corpse the moment the bullet pierced the body. Some of it speckled the couch. It would never come out. The tile could be mopped but she’d always remember it as it was now, covered in a thin flood of crimson fluid. Amidst the carnage, the flask lay like a blasted boulder. This place was no longer home. Maybe it never had been.
She checked her coat pocket. The book that belonged to her mother was still there, bent a bit, but it could afford the beating.
Next stop, Mac.
The only joint she might find him in was the bar he’d mentioned back in the hospital, Barr’s Bar, when he’d asked if they could do the whole question and answer rigamarole at his favorite watering hole. She had questions, he had answers.
As the cab wove down avenues and boulevards, she thought back to the hospital, when she’d fragged Mac and found nothing but murk The vial explained it all. He must’ve consumed some of the substance before the kidnapping. Which meant he’d known the kidnapping was going to happen.
Which meant he knew what had really happened to Lyla Walker.
Barr’s Bar was like a liquored reflection of her apartment, shiny and smooth, almost everything apparently lacquered, one of those places where the light inside was eternally dimmed, even on a bright day. Dark floor, dark ceiling. Yellow globes hanging through the bar, glowing. The floating TVs played footage of troops above a chyron that doomsayed the end of the Warless War and the beginning of World War III. Robin headed for the counter, blending into the sparse crowd, scanning the patrons for Mac, stopping when she finally found him at the far end of the counter. White shirt, black leather jacket, brown pants, black sneakers. Hunched over. A rocks glass in hand. Crutches leaned against the counter.