Sotelo tightens his fist, which cracks his knuckles, and Larimore flinches. “Okay, look,” he says at last. “I may have seen the crate you’re talking about. I mean, you have it right there on the manifest. I evidently loaded the damn thing. But I loaded a bunch of crates on that ship. I had no choice, with those Bureau assholes aiming guns at me. That doesn’t mean I remember any of them, in particular.”
I scowl at him. “If you logged this one in, why didn’t you add a description? Every other piece of freight—of evidence against UA—has a very detailed description.”
Larimore shrugs, pulling the cuff tight against his right wrist, which is tethered to the arm of the chair. “I don’t know. I don’t remember every—”
“Tell us again how you managed to remain here, when everyone else either fled or was rounded up and arrested?” Sometimes switching gears on a subject will confuse him into saying more than he meant to.
“I told them I had to pee, then I snuck out and hid in one of the medpods.”
My gaze narrows on him. That’s a new piece of information. “Why the medpods?”
“Because pods blocks brainwaves and heat signatures.”
Sotelo’s gaze snaps up to mine. “Did we check all the medpods for anyone else who might have escaped the Bureau’s raid?”
“Yes,” I assure him, though he already knows the answer. He was there when we opened them all, to make sure the two we took to the Dinghy were in the best shape. “There’s only the one infirmary, right?” I ask Zamora.
He spins toward his console to confirm that for me, and while he’s clicking through menus, I turn back to Larimore. “If you knew where to hide from the Bureau, it stands to reason that you might also know how to hide that crate, if you decided to keep a sample of whatever they’re doing here for yourself. Wouldn’t you?”
“I didn’t,” he says, without actually answering my question.
So I switch gears again. “What was in the crate?”
“I told you, I don’t know. I don’t even remember the box you’re talking about. Not specifically.”
“Was it equipment? Some kind of memory implantation…helmet? Or however they do that?” I demand, and Larimore cocks his head to the side, giving me a puzzled look. “That’s what they do here, right? Develop memory implantation and illegal memory wiping techniques?” Well, that, and they design and manufacture truly badass battle gear.
“I don’t—” But Larimore bites off his lie when Sotelo stomps toward him. “Okay, I’m not supposed to know what they were doing here, but you hear things, you know? These asshole scientists never even notice the people who clean up after them, so sometimes they talk when they’re not supposed to. And I might have heard something about memory implantation. Only they call it ‘deploying narrative backstory.’”
“Of course they do,” Dreyer breathes. “Those fuckers act like they’re just telling stories, when they’re really rewriting people’s lives!”
“Rewriting?” Larimore looks confused.
Jamison studies the janitor, and I recognize his expression. He thinks Larimore is hiding something.
“What else?” I demand, as an uneasy feeling crawls across my skin. “What else are they doing here? Other than memory manipulation and battle gear innovation?”
“There’s only one infirmary,” Zamora confirms, during a silence Larimore refuses to fill. “But guys, look what I found while I was checking that.”
We turn to gather around his console, but then Zamora starts typing, and the screen showing Lilli and Grace—who’ve move on to the toiletries and personal hygiene section of the store—shrinks to make room for a new screen on the wall. It’s another security feed, showing what looks like the second infirmary Zamora says doesn’t exist.
I stare at the screen, where a familiar grid of body-length pods stands on the floor, in three rows of two, just like the medpods in the infirmary. Only the sixth pod is missing, and the five that remain have been smashed to bits. “If that isn’t an infirmary, what is it?”
“The security system and the building schematics both call it a lab.” Zamora shrugs. “Which makes sense, considering that it’s located in that second research building. Third floor. Right on top of the room where we found him.” He throws a glance at Larimore.
“Why would a lab need six medpods?” I ask Larimore. “Was some of Theron’s research medical in nature?” Could Lawrence be right? Was Grace surgically altered, in order to achieve such unearthly beauty?
Larimore’s lips remain firmly sealed.
I head for the door. “I’ll be back.” It’ll be faster for me to go see the pods for myself than to try to coax information out of him.
“Coleman,” Sotelo calls. “That lab is irrelevant to our mission.”
“But it might be relevant to Grace. If there are answers to be found here, I’m going to find them. For her.”
“For Grace?” Larimore sounds incredulous.
“Yes, for Grace,” I turn back to growl at him. “Do you know her? Were you here when they were experimenting on her?”
“Experimenting on her?” His frown deepens. “I honestly don’t know how to answer that.”
“You better start saying things that make sense,” I snarl. “Or I’m going to decide we have no use for you.”
“I’ve never met your Grace,” Larimore insists.
Lawrence exhales. “That may be the first true thing he’s said all morning.”
I spin toward the door in disgust.
“I’ll come with you.” Dreyer waves a dismissive hand at Sotelo before he can object again. “We’ll be back in ten minutes.”
Sotelo sighs. “Fine. Ten minutes.”
“You know they’ve destroyed all their records, right?” Dreyer says as we head down into the tunnel system again.
“That’s why I have to see that lab. I have to piece together whatever information I can find for Grace, even if that only means confirming that she was…operated on.” And for the first time, it occurs to me that she may have had much more than cosmetic surgery in that lab.
We may be headed to the room where Grace was sterilized.
DREYER FROWNS DOWN at the destroyed piece of equipment, her hands propped on her hips. “If these are medpods, they’re a different kind than the ones in the infirmary. This model had transparent top shells.”
“How can you tell?” My gaze roams the large room, skipping from one hunk of destroyed equipment to the next. “None of them even have top shells anymore.”
She kneels to pick up a large chunk of what appears to be a clear polymer, one curved edge still rimmed with part of its lightweight metal frame. Dreyer holds it in place over the nearest of the pods, to show me where it would have fit above the lower half, which is still partially intact in its base on the floor. “See? Here’s part of the hinge. It would have opened like this.”
“What the hell?” I squint at the piece she’s holding, where a soft glow seems to emanate from beneath her fingers. “I think the top shells doubled as interactive screens.” I touch the polymer, and that same light glows beneath my fingertip, as if the surface is a screen trying to boot up, upon contact. “There’s still a little residual power stored in it.”
“What kind of medpod has a transparent, interactive top shell? The ones in the infirmary have thick, opaque tops, because they’re loaded with all kinds of equipment and robotic arms.” She sets the shell fragment inside the bottom of the pod it most likely came from.
“That’s not the only difference.” I kneel to inspect the base, which the pod can clearly be lifted out of for transport. “These have drains. Looks like they’re connected to the building’s plumbing system, right through the floor.” I stand, puzzled. “Why would a medpod need to drain? What the hell would it be filled with?”
“No idea,” Dreyer says. “But I’m starting to think that’s not what these are. In all this debris, there’s no sign of surgical equipment. No intravenous lines.” She kneels and lifts another sec
tion of transparent top shell, and with it comes an odd-looking hose attached to the inner curve. The outer surface has a hatch, where another hose—or something similar—can be attached. “This is the only equipment that seems to be built into the top shell, and I have no idea what it does.”
“Except for that hose and the floor drains, these look more like stasis pods than medpods. If memory serves, first-generation stasis pods were filled with a sort of thin gel that had to be drained upon arrival. Maybe we’re looking at something like that? Maybe whatever was in these pods arrived at the lab packed in some kind of gel or fluid that had to be drained into the floor?”
Dreyer shakes her head slowly. “Fluid-filled stasis pods are an archaic technology, and Universal Authority is typically a decade or more ahead of the curve.” She spreads her arms, to indicate what they’ve done to us. As well as the nano-tech armor we’re wearing. “Or half a century ahead, in some cases.”
I kneel and touch another chunk of clear polymer, hoping its more responsive, but just like the other hunk, it only glows weakly beneath my fingers. “It looks like the controls were built into the top shells, and there isn’t a single piece left big enough to be of use.”
Dreyer crosses the room and lifts an ax from the floor for me to see. “They were clearly ready and willing to destroy their work at a moment’s notice.”
I pick my way through the debris toward the back of the lab, where the sixth pod base stands empty. “This one must have already been gone before the Bureau got here. Otherwise it would’ve been destroyed with the others, right?”
Dreyer nods. “Do you think the missing pod is what’s in Meshach’s crate?”
“I think that’s entirely possible. Maybe it was already boxed up before the raid, ready to be shipped to him, and that’s why it wasn’t destroyed with the others?” I look up at the camera in one corner of the room. “Can you guys hear us?”
“Yes,” Zamora says. “Go ahead.”
“Ask Larimore if the Bureau took one of these weird pods as evidence. Or rather, if they intended to,” I say, and we listen as Zamora repeats the question.
“He says he doesn’t know.”
“Of course he doesn’t.” I grab the section of top shell with the hose protruding from it and storm out of the lab with Dreyer on my heels.
In the control room again, I advance on Larimore, letting aggression bleed through my every movement as I hold up the broken polymer shell for him to see. “Is this what’s in the missing crate? Are these things what they use to implant false memories?” I’d assumed UA’s new tech would be compact enough to fit in a helmet—maybe even just something that taps into the neural network through a button placed strategically somewhere on the skull. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe it takes an entire pod.
“I don’t know what’s in the crate, and I don’t know where it is,” Larimore repeats.
“He’s lying,” Jamison says.
“Tell us where the crate is, or I will start carving parts off your body, one at a time,” I snarl at him.
“You know, you catch more flies with honey,” Dreyer says.
I snort. “This coming from the woman who scared a market vendor into giving away his wares.”
She shrugs. “Different strokes for different folks.” Then she turns to Larimore. “Okay, so I hear you saying that you didn’t take the crate. But hypothetically? If someone else were to want to keep a souvenir from their time here working for UA, as a sort of fuck-you to the stuck up scientists, how might they hide it from the Bureau?”
Larimore shrugs. But then he finally starts talking, ignoring the rest of us while he stares at Dreyer. As if she isn’t just as capable of—and just as likely to—rip off his thumb if she doesn’t like his answers. “I guess if someone wanted to hide something big, he might slide it into a storage closet, instead of loading it onto the evidence ship. When no one was looking.”
“What closet?” she asks.
“There are a couple in the landing bay. One on each side of the nano-barrier.”
“On it.” Zamora stands and races out of the control room and down the stairs. A second later, we see him on the security feed, jogging across the landing bay toward a closed door on the left-hand wall. He throws the door open, then he looks up at the security camera and shakes his head. Then he checks another door on the other side of the bay. Which also turns out to be empty.
Larimore shrugs. “Hypothetically, someone who hid something in a storage closet might move it once the Bureau had left. Once it was all his.”
“Move it to where?” I demand.
Another shrug. “Somewhere convenient for him. Somewhere it’s unlikely to be found.”
Zamora’s steps echo up the stairs, and he reappears in the control room. “Where’s the fucking crate, you sniveling asswipe?”
Larimore’s eyes widen, displaying complete and utter shock, and after a second, I realize he isn’t looking at Zamora. He’s staring past him, to where Lilli and Grace have just stepped into the control room, arms laden with department store bags, as if they’ve just been on a bank-breaking shopping spree.
I snarl as I step in front of him, blocking Grace from his view. “I will kill you,” I warn him.
“Somewhere convenient for him,” Dreyer mumbles, ignoring Larimore’s obvious fascination with Grace as well as my sudden aggression. “Just a sec.” She settles into the chair in front of one of the consoles and starts typing. A minute later, she spins around. “Apartment 2F,” she announces.
“What’s that?” Grace asks, trying to peer around my arm.
“That is where Mr. Roger Larimore lives, in the residential building. And where he might be tempted to store something valuable. For convenience.”
“Fine. Go search my place.” Larimore shrugs again, as if he couldn’t care less, but the motion looks stiff to me.
Jamison turns to the rest of us with a satisfied smile. “He’s worried.”
“Let’s go.” Sotelo frees the custodian from his chair and pulls him upright. “Jamison, you take Grace, Lilli, and all their things back to the Dinghy. With any luck, we’ll soon be joining you with the crate.”
“I’m coming with you.” Grace lays one hand on my arm. “If I’ve really been here before, there’s no telling what might jog my memory.”
I nod. Anything to keep her close to me.
“I’ll take your bags,” Jamison offers.
“Thanks,” she says as she hands over her burdens. “We also grabbed a bunch of things we thought you guys might be able to use.”
“You went shopping for us?” Sotelo looks amused.
“Yes,” Lilli tells him. “And we expect a fashion show at your earliest convenience.”
Grace laughs, but then her smile fades as her focus finds the screen on the wall, which still shows the lab full of busted mystery pods. Her eyes narrow, and the faint scent of fear wafts from her pores.
I escort her into the hall, worried by how much that room clearly bothers her, when it’s the first thing she’s seemed to recognize since she woke up in the Theron infirmary.
21
GRACE
AS WE TRAVEL the tunnels beneath the complex on Zelos, on the way to Mr. Larimore’s apartment, I can’t stop thinking about that room full of destroyed pods on the security feed in the control room. What was left of that equipment looked enough like the cryopod I woke up in on Gebose that just seeing them made my stomach pitch.
I cling to that sick feeling during our long walk to the residential building, despite the anxiety it brings, because that sensation is a bit like trying to grasp a forgotten word taunting you from the tip of your tongue. I feel like if I can ride that weird, vague dread for a bit, the source of the feeling will eventually become clear.
A memory will surface.
But that still hasn’t happened by the time we reach the second floor of the residential building.
As he has during the entire walk, Vaughn tries to keep himself between Mr. Larimore and me, b
ut the janitor keeps altering his pace at random, to clear the space between us. So he can stare at me.
I’m used to being seen now, after a week with no modesty sheath. But the way Mr. Larimore is looking at me feels odd. He seems to want to say something to me. Or maybe ask me something. He’s looking at me as if this isn’t the first time we’ve met.
“Excuse me, do I know you?” I ask as we head down the second-floor hallway, then I have to shove Vaughn aside when he tries for the dozenth time to block me from the custodian’s view. “Stop it.” I swat at his arm, then turn back to Mr. Larimore. “Have we… have we met?”
He shakes his head, and Captain Sotelo prods him to keep him moving.
“Are you sure?”
Mr. Larimore nods slowly. “This is the first time you and I have ever spoken,” he says. I frown at him, and I kind of wish Burke Jamison were here to tell me whether or not he’s lying.
I don’t remember Mr. Larimore. I don’t remember any of this, which means that Universal Authority must be just as good at erasing existing memories as they are at implanting false ones.
I wonder if there’s any chance that UA kept my old memories. That they can somehow be reinstalled. That maybe I can reclaim who I used to be.
But if I’m not me anymore—if I’m that old-me, who may or may not be a criminal—will Vaughn still want me?
What if I was a horrible person, before? What if I was a murderer or a thief? What if UA actually did me a favor by turning me into a good girl from a sheltered convent? By erasing a past I might not want to remember?
What if I asked them to? What if I volunteered for this? What if I get my memories restored, only to realize there was a reason they were taken from me in the first place?
“It’s locked,” Mr. Larimore says, and when I blink, shaking off truly terrifying thoughts, I realize we’re standing in front of a door labeled 2F. “If you uncuff, me, I can open it.” He nods at the pad to the left of the door, which is evidently meant for his thumbprint.
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