by Watts Martin
Is that last one a point against using Jack, or for?
Nelson specifically asked about him, didn’t he? He asked where he’d gone off to, and she’d snapped “how should I know?” She hadn’t made it sound friendly. Jack hadn’t sat with her and Ansel at the tribunal. These are factoids she could spin, aren’t they? Jack has a standing order to fly back on the next cruiser to Earth, and he may be suspended but he’s still a law enforcement agent. He’s the perfect cover.
Perfect if he can sell Nelson on the notion that he’s not going to just come back here and hand the databox over. Since that’s exactly what he is going to do, and Nelson has no reason to believe Jack’s secretly been sympathetic to Purity all along, that could be one hell of a hard sell. All this assuming they can even get in touch with him in the first place.
It seems like a very far-fetched—no, just call it stupid—plan, but it’s the best plan she can come up with.
“Kis, call Jack.”
“Yes, Gail.” A few chimes sound, and she waits.
When Jack speaks he sounds sleepy. “Gail?”
“Hey. Did I wake you up?” She looks over at the clock. 6:14.
“I was having trouble sleeping.” She can hear the yawn. “What’s happening? How’s Sky?”
“I haven’t heard anything, so I’m guessing her condition hasn’t changed. Uh, I’m sorry for yelling at you last night.”
“No need to apologize. We’re all under a lot of stress, you more than most.”
“Thanks.” She takes a deep breath. “I have a sort of weird idea I want to run by you.”
“Okay.” She’s surprised he doesn’t sound more dubious.
“I want you to join Purity.”
“You—you what?”
She heads back into the kitchen and punches in a refill on the coffee, then starts explaining. When she’s finished, she says, “What do you think?”
“I think it’s a horrible idea.”
“I know it’s a horrible idea. Have any less horrible ones?”
“Waiting and letting the RJC do their job.”
“That just gives the bad guys time to figure out their own plan for getting the box back to Earth. And—”
“Gail—”
“And lets Sky die.”
His sigh makes the audio crackle. “Gail, you remember I’m not on this case anymore, don’t you? You’re asking me to risk my life for a mission that isn’t part of my job and that I’d have no backup for. If I survived, I’d be rewarded by being fired.”
“Because you didn’t go along to get along?”
“Yes, because I didn’t—” He cuts himself off, and there’s a long silence. Then: “I don’t know if I could sound anti-totemic enough to make this work. I haven’t done undercover work in a long time.”
“That means you’ve done it sometime, right?”
“I…” He sighs. “Yes.”
“So you know how to convincingly act like a criminal. That’s great. The worst that happens is he doesn’t get back to you. That’s the most likely thing, too, right?”
“It is.” He’s quiet another few seconds. “Who else have you told this plan to?”
“Nobody.”
“So it’s going to just be us, isn’t it?”
She swallows. “I haven’t really worked through all the fine details yet.” Or coarse details. Or any details.
Another long silence. “All right. If we’re catching them at just the right time—if they’re in hiding and if they don’t have a better plan already—they might at least try and get back to me. Send me Nelson’s contact information.”
The RJC building already looks like a construction zone rather than a crime scene, the debris removed, high opaque fences around the building’s front. Bunten told her they’re still assessing damage and wouldn’t be able to actually begin reconstruction until tomorrow at the earliest.
She’s sitting at a café across the street, one of the ones that’s entirely automatic. The food’s not nearly as interesting as Blue Coyote’s, either, but Bunten chose it based on location rather than quality. None of them are there for the food, anyway. Bunten’s here with a cisform woman who’s been introduced to her as Ms. Zandstra. And they’re sitting with Sidgemore, at Gail’s insistence. He’s even stiffer than he was yesterday.
“This simply doesn’t sound like anything the Judicial Cooperative can support,” Zandstra’s saying. It’s a variant of what she and Bunten have both said at least twice before.
“Look, I’m not asking for any kind of support. I’m asking you to officially not know about this, and to make sure the PFS doesn’t know anything about this, period.”
“You’re asking us to edit records of Agent Thomas’s cooperation.”
“And I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking me to do.” Sidgemore’s giving her a raised-brow skeptical look Jack would be proud of. Is that just a cisform thing she’s somehow never noticed before?
“When Jack sent a contact message to Nelson, he got back to him with ‘we’ll be in touch.’ That means he’s trying to check out the story. Based on the message metadata, Nelson isn’t on the Ring anymore. They might still have people on the ground here, but he’s probably doing most or all of the checking remotely. What I want to know from you, Alfie, is whether or not Junior’s associates at Quanta still trust you.”
He looks taken aback. “I…as far as I know, yes. They do.”
“Enough to, say, get in touch with you and ask you about Agent Thomas?”
“Oh.” He furrows his brow, then nods slowly. “You’d like me to corroborate the claim that he’s left the investigation entirely.”
“Yeah. I mean, that’s not much of a lie. He’s not officially involved.”
Sidgemore smiles faintly. She’s surprised his face doesn’t crack from the strain. “I don’t believe you’re officially involved either, Ms. Simmons, yet somehow you seem to be in charge.”
“You know what I mean. Last night you saw Thomas and me yelling at one another in the cafeteria, right? He picked up his coffee cup and stormed out.”
“I wouldn’t say stormed out, and as I recall you only yelled at me.”
“The video feeds from the hospital’s public areas are publicly accessible,” Zandstra objects. “He could check that story himself.”
“I’m counting on it. They’ll show me slamming my fists down on a table in the cafeteria in front of Mr. Bunten and Mr. Sidgemore here, and Jack looking upset, picking up his coffee mug and leaving.” She spreads her hands. “All we’re doing is presenting a slightly different spin on why. They know Jack knows about Shakti now, and that we all know what it can do for totemics. As far as Lantern’s concerned my mother was a crazy anti-cisform radical and I’m interchangeable with her, so he stormed out because he’s realized we’re bound and determined to supplant the pure human race.”
“I trust you aren’t.”
She looks sharply at Sidgemore, but he has that faint smile again. Did he just come as close to making a joke as he’s capable of? She shakes her head. “Honestly, at this point I don’t give a damn about Shakti one way or another.”
He frowns again, taking a long sip of his iced tea, then looks to Gail. “If I receive such a call, I shall back up your story.”
She sighs with relief, but Bunten frowns more deeply. “This plan strikes me as exceedingly unwise, Ms. Simmons.”
“I know. But it’s bad enough that this group has as much of this weapon as they do in the first place. We need to take every shot we have at keeping them from going into the weapons production business.”
Zandstra folds her arms, fixing her gaze on the rat. “What now?”
“I…” Gail runs a hand through her hair, up along the back of one ear, bending it against her head a moment. “I go back to the hospital and sit with Sky, and wait for Jack to let me know if Nelson’s going to take the bait. If he doesn’t, we come up with Plan B.”
And if he does, she comes up with the rest of Plan A.
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Instead of just crossing the street and going right back to the hospital, Gail stops at a flower shop next door. The hospital must be a huge chunk of their business—they have small bouquets ready, mostly lilies and geraniums and other flowers which, the signs assure her, have low pollen counts. She picks up a little plastic vase of mixed Asiatic lilies. Does Sky like lilies? She can’t think of a single time they’ve ever talked about flowers, but they’re very pretty.
The cisform nurse she met yesterday is on duty, but she’s not sure where everyone else has gone. Doctor Allen isn’t around, the Keces lab techs aren’t around, not even Ansel is around. Well. She can’t expect him to be keeping vigil over someone he doesn’t actually know. He’d gone back to his hotel before she went back to Sky’s place last night, and he’s probably out and about somewhere. He wouldn’t go back to Panorica without telling her—she doesn’t think—but there’s not much he can do other than sit around and be worried at her. She checks in at the nursing desk and gets a go-ahead for the visit.
Yesterday Sky’s room had seemed busy, frantic, but right now it’s empty except for Sky herself. The wolf doesn’t look any different than she did thirteen hours ago. Gail tries to find some place she can put the flowers, and settles on the countertop not too far from her sister’s head.
Then she pulls up a chair, one with a surprisingly bad design for totemics, and sits. She manages to twist her tail into a position that isn’t too uncomfortable.
She’s silent for a minute or two, then finally says, “I’m sorry, Sky.” She closes her eyes. “If I’d told anyone about Nelson threatening me, you might not be here. If I hadn’t tried to smart talk my way out of this in the first place, or if I’d just given up when Jack got the databox. Who knows. Shakti would still come out eventually, right? Maybe it’d be set back five years, or a decade, but it’d have happened. Eventually.”
She opens her eyes and swallows. “Yesterday I asked Ansel why I wasn’t lying there with my organs failing, and he thought I meant it in that kind of ‘it should have been me, not you’ way. I told him I didn’t. I know you hate that sort of self-pity.” She furrows her brow, looking down toward the floor but not at anything. “But I lied to him. I kind of…I kind of did mean it that way. It shouldn’t be either of us there. It shouldn’t be anyone. But it especially shouldn’t be you.”
God, listen to yourself. She sniffles, wiping away a tear, looking back up.
Sky’s eyes are open.
Gail bolts to her feet. “Sky?”
The wolf doesn’t look over at her, but her ears flick.
Biting her lip, she leans over, taking Sky’s hand in hers.
She hears quick footsteps behind her, and a moment later Doctor Allen walks around the bed to the other side, checking readouts, leaning over her patient. “Can you hear me?”
For a couple heart-stopping seconds Sky doesn’t react at all. Then she whimpers. Does that count as a reaction? Is that an answer? Is it a yes?
Allen treats it like one. She strokes Sky’s shoulder lightly. “You’re at Mercy Point hospital. I’m Doctor Allen. Your sister Gail is here with you.”
Sky makes another noise, hard to interpret, and nods her head fractionally.
Gail looks up at the tigress. “This is good, right?” she whispers.
Allen looks down at Sky, hand back on the wolf’s shoulder. “Can you speak?”
After a moment the wolf shakes her head, just as fractionally as the nod.
Gail bites her lip, but the doctor just nods in response. “That’s all right. You’ve been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours.” She glances around at the machines, as if thinking and you’re still going through a lot, but keeps a reassuring smile on her muzzle. “We’ve tapered off your sedative level. You should be stabilized enough to stay comfortable, but if you’re in any pain just press the call button and someone will be here.”
Another little nod.
“Um.” Gail clears her throat and looks at Allen. “Is there anything I can do? I mean, I guess there isn’t, but…I just feel…”
“Helpless. I understand. Just keep being supportive.”
“Will she be, uh, able to talk soon?”
“I don’t know.” She pats Gail’s shoulder. “Let me or one of the nurses know if you need anything.” The tigress heads back out of the room.
Gail sighs, looking down at Sky, and takes the wolf’s limp hand. “I guess I should go. I have some…” Some what? Some crazy plans you wouldn’t approve of? Some calls to make before I find out whether people I loathe have fallen into a trap I’m setting? Some prayers to say to some deity somewhere that the trap won’t take off my head—or Jack’s—when it’s sprung?
For the first time since she woke up in the hospital bed, Sky looks directly at her, not just in her direction, and shakes her head, squeezing Gail’s hand just a little.
“Okay,” Gail whispers, not trusting her voice to stay steady if she raises it. She pulls the chair up close to the bedside and sits, hand still in Sky’s.
She doesn’t try to keep track of how long they stay together like that. Five minutes, thirty minutes, an hour. She just sits with her sister until Sky falls asleep, eyes closing again. This time the wolf looks less troubled.
Beedle boop “Call from Jack Thomas.”
Gail squeezes Sky’s hand gently, then gets up and walks out of the room.
“Jack.” She keeps her voice low. “Did he get back to you?”
“He did. Someone did, at least.” His tone makes the fur on the back of her neck prickle. Thoughtful, wry, deadpan, even angry—she’s heard a lot of his voice over the last week and no matter the emotion he’s always had energy. Now he doesn’t. His voice is tired. Flat. Frail. “It’s…there are conditions.”
“Conditions.” Wait, that means— “He accepted? He took the bait?”
“They’re open to it. They don’t trust me, and they want a good faith measure. Something that proves I’m sufficiently alienated.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s predictable.” She catches herself from saying reasonable. Nothing about this is reasonable. “What do they want?”
He falls ominously silent.
“Jack.”
“I’d rather talk about this face to face.”
She furrows her brow. “They might still be checking public video feeds. It’s safer to be talking to one another this way.”
“I don’t think it’ll matter even if they are.”
Her ears lower and her voice comes out in more of a hiss. “What. Do. They. Want.”
“You, Gail. They want you.”
She knows that strangled noise she just heard was hers, but she doesn’t feel herself making it.
“They didn’t say why. They didn’t give any details. All I got back was a brief text-only message about ten minutes ago. ‘Bring Simmons using whatever means you see fit. Message this address with confirmation you have complied and are underway within four hours.’”
Whatever means he sees fit? Do they expect him to kidnap her? And Mara’s Blood, what’s the point? Nelson wants to get revenge on her for slugging him? Do the Burkes think martyring her will help them somehow? No. This is Corbett, isn’t it? He’s there. She has to hand it to him. It’s a great test of Jack’s supposed new loyalty.
“Okay.” She runs a hand through her hair. “That’s…unexpected, but we can work with it. We can come up with a story to tell them about a story you told me, maybe, some way you duped me into thinking this was a rescue mission when it’s actually a trade.”
“That was my thought, too.” As he keeps speaking his words flow faster, but his tone doesn’t lift at all. “But when we get to wherever we’re going, before we dock I’ll need to make it look like you’re my prisoner. I’ll have to bind your wrists.”
She winces reflexively. She’s been tied up and helpless in front of Purity nuts before and she’s not interested in reliving the experience. But he’s right; if she’s free, it’ll look suspicious.
“Yeah.” She’s made it outside the hospital now. It’s not quite dusk, but it’s colder out than she’d expected it to get. She still isn’t used to being in a place that has this much weather. “Although before we get there I’d kind of like to figure out what I do to not stay behind and be tortured to death by Randall.”
“Jesus, Gail.”
“So, yeah. The plan should be to not leave me with the crazy people.”
“How do I not do that?”
She hates the tough questions. What she needs is a secret weapon, like…crap. Like what?
Like a spaceship that can pilot herself and that the crazies might not know Gail’s in constant communication with. She’s not sure how that’ll help, but she’s pretty sure it’s an advantage. “We’ll have a few hours to figure that out. Meet me at Kingsolver Repair so we can pick up Kismet.”
“What?” That finally gets Jack sounding more animated. “They won’t let us take your ship.”
“Sure they will. You’ve got me going along because I think this is a rescue mission, right? So of course I’m going to want to take my own ship.”
“Then the plan is to let them know you gave me Nelson’s contact information so I could try to fool them into thinking I was on their side just to get their location, but really I’m double-crossing you and am on their side.”
“Exactly! Except you’re really not.”
His voice falls back to a tired mutter. “There are so many ways this can go so very wrong. All right, I’ll meet you there. You’ve cleared up things with your bank?”
“Uh, well, no. But I have almost fifteen minutes to figure that out, right?”
Jack sighs deeply and disconnects.
Chapter 23
As Gail turns to head to Kingsolver, she nearly smacks headlong into Ansel. “Gah! How long have you been standing there?”