by Vanessa Muir
“Let me guess, you’re going to cause another uproar about the State,” Eli cut in.
“No.” Maybe. “No, you’re going to go home and read every article you can find on the memory removal process, and I’m going to spend the day analyzing the rest of these memories.” The back of her neck itched, but it wasn’t the type she could scratch. It was that creeping paranoia again. “But not here.” HQ had eyes and ears. How many of the agents were secretly on the State’s payroll?
“How many memories are left to analyze?” Eli asked.
“Three. They gave us three files.” But she didn’t hold out any hope that the others were whole. “I’ll call you if there’s anything of interest on them.”
Her partner grunted. He likely doubted she’d follow through on that, and he was right.
Charlie couldn’t trust anyone, at the moment. Not her partner, not Boss Ink. Shit, I’ve run out of people. The State’s eyes were on her back. They bored into her skull, probed her thoughts.
They wanted her to push the investigation in the direction they desired, and that she wouldn’t allow. That’d happened one time too many.
Charlie got up and dropped the remains of her sandwich in the hole in the floor beside her desk. The receptacle swept it out of sight with a quiet rumble. She tucked the incorruptible drive into her pocket, then made for the exit.
“Bye to you too!” Eli called after her.
She waved over her shoulder, but she didn’t look back.
6
Charlie cut a corner on the path back to her place and took the alley shortcut which ran between two apartment buildings. She’d chosen Corden Prime Central for a location to live to cut back on the commute to work, but she regretted it, daily.
The noise drove her to distraction. Traffic, hooting, the slow zoom of vehicles hovering above the road. The siren which sounded half-hourly to signal the impending arrival or departure of one of the shuttles which zipped passengers off to other corners of the capital. It was an amalgamation of city life, distilled into sound, and she wanted to rip her damn ears off and throw them at someone.
She jogged across the street, and a shuttle screamed past. The driver honked his horn at her, and she flipped him off.
The incorruptible drive forced her onward, faster, compelled. It was just past noon, the sun boiled in the sky overhead, and sweat dripped down her cheeks, but she ran, regardless. Memories of Shane Mitchell. Tampering.
What are they hiding?
The thought chased her through the streets, over macadam and past cold steel and glass buildings.
“What are they hiding?” she muttered, then turned the corner which let her onto her street.
It was marginally quieter here, with only a few vehicles parked next to the sidewalk. The chatter of a TV drifted from the first-floor window of an apartment to her left. She gritted her teeth and crossed the road.
They had to be hiding something, or they wouldn’t have altered the memories, and if they are, what is it?
She froze, her left foot on the concrete, her right on the hot tar.
A figure hovered in the alleyway between her apartment building and the next. Hooded and cloaked, scarcely hidden by the shade, the person stood, unmoving, watching. Tall – definitely a man. And broad shouldered too. Smith? No, surely he wouldn’t do grunt work.
“Hey,” she said and pointed at the watcher. “You got something to say to me?”
The figure didn’t move.
Fuckers. They wanted to intimidate her, to make it so she fell in line.
“You’re making a face like you’ve got something to say to me,” she continued and relished her humor in the situation.
The figure took two steps back, and Charlie broke into a trot. “Don’t you move!” she yelled. “Don’t go anywhere, you –”
The screech of tires and the sound of a horn blocked out the tail end of her shout. Charlie spun, looked up the road. Her veins iced.
A shuttle screamed toward her, headlights blazing.
Snapshots in time followed.
Driver gesturing, frantic. Honking. Rumbling tires. The chrome grill screaming toward her. Wide-eyed passengers, gripping their faces.
“Shit!” Charlie dove for the sidewalk while clutching the pocket of her uniform which contained the incorruptible drive.
She hit the tar, rolled, and a shock of heat and pain screamed at her wrist. She came to rest beside the edge of the sidewalk, closest to the alley.
The shuttled swept by, drowning her in hot air and sound. It slowed and came to a halt, just ahead, exhaust hissing smoke.
“Lady!” The driver jumped down from the grated steps of the vehicle. “Lady, are you out of your mind? Have you lost your senses?”
Charlie struggled upright, ignored the pain in her wrist, and scanned the alleyway.
The figure was gone.
“Shit,” she grunted and accepted the proffered hand of the shuttle driver. He tugged her to her feet, and she examined the damage to her wrist. A screwed-up section of twisted skin, which looked a lot like overcooked pasta. Blood, sure, lots of blood, but no white of bone, at least.
Just a nasty road rash.
“You crazy or what?” The driver shoved his flat cap back on his bald head. “You nearly got yourself killed. And all of them, too.” He gestured to the passengers, all craning their necks within the steel metal bullet, pressing their noses to the glass to catch a glimpse of her.
“Sorry,” Charlie said. “Sorry, man.” She walked off before he could start up again.
“Wait, don’t you want to report this?” he yelled, the tone disbelieving as if he couldn’t believe his luck.
“No,” she tossed back. “I’m fine.” Charlie halted in front of the alley and stared at the spot where the hooded figure had been. Nothing. A closed dumpster and empty space between the steel walls. “Gone.”
The rumble-screech of the shuttle’s engine drew her gaze from the alley. Apparently, the driver had decided to ask no questions. Charlie winced at a fresh pang from her wrist. Shit, she’d have to get some water and gel on it soon.
She spared the alley a final scan, then made her way upstairs, still sweating and shaking from the close encounter.
It’s been close before, but never that close. And the figure, whoever they were, had drawn her across the road purposefully, or so it had seemed. Did that mean that the State wanted her dead?
No, they’d have found a more elegant method of offing her. Like sending her on “vacation.”
Charlie took her time locking the doors, checking the windows and exits for signs of tampering, still shaking. Slowly, the adrenaline subsided. She cleaned her wound, smoothed the skin, and doused it in alcohol, then bandaged up. It stung like a son of a bitch, but there wasn’t much she could do to fix that.
Then she began the first sweep. It was a habit she’d gotten into after Jones’s arrest.
Sweep for devices, cameras, anything that might be used to record or surveil. She’d found one under her toilet the day after his arrest, and she’d flushed it. God only knew what conversations they were trying to pick up in there.
But she couldn’t be sure where the recording devices came from – the State or Black Mars. Two sides – were they of the same coin?
Twenty minutes later, she sat down in front of the coffee table with her personal home tablet and the incorruptible drive.
“Here goes nothing,” she muttered and inserted the drive. Now, more than ever, it was essential to find the truth. If they had people watching her, it had to be important.
The second memory showed nothing but another domestic scene, this time with Shane Mitchell threatening his wife, Jana Mitchell, haltingly.
She grunted, then tapped the play button on the third memory.
A flicker and the screen came into focus.
Another living room scene, this of Tatiana on the sofa, the very same where they’d found Dr. Mitchell’s body. She sat with a book open on her lap, a pencil in hand. Dr
. Mitchell grunted something indistinct, and Tatiana stiffened.
“I don’t want to,” she said.
A slam radiated somewhere in the apartment, footsteps, and Jana Mitchell burst onto the scene, cheeks flushed. “You asshole! You asshole, you did it again, didn’t you! I didn’t want to,” flicker, “deal with Black Mars,” flicker, “on my own.”
Frustration bubbled in Charlie’s belly. Once again, they’d tampered with the footage. Mrs. Mitchell’s expression changed after each flicker. These were snapshots of the conversation, pasted in a specific order. How could Mem Store have possibly thought she’d buy into this?
Tatiana launched off the sofa on the screen, and Charlie shifted her focus back to it.
“You can’t do this,” she said and put her arm around her mother’s shoulders. “She can’t handle it.”
Flicker. “This conversation is over,” Shane Mitchell said and turned to leave. His last view of his daughter and his wife. And what was that in her hand?
White plastic, cylindrical.
“A MemXor pill bottle,” Charlie whispered. Either Mem Store had missed this one detail, or they didn’t expect her to pick up on it. MemXor forced into the victim’s mouth, and Mrs. Mitchell holding the bottle.
What if there was something wrong with the pills? And not just the expired ones.
They had them in evidence at SSG, but getting them analyzed was a longshot. They certainly couldn’t trust Mem Store to act impartially in this.
Charlie closed the video and bit her bottom lip. MemXor had to be the key, as it had been in the last case.
A notification pinged through on her watch, and she lifted it.
Report in. Twenty minutes. Boss Ink’s Office.
Twenty minutes to get back to HQ. Twenty minutes to come up with a convincing argument to get Ink on her side in this. This ought to be fun.
7
Boss Ink had revamped his office. Gone was the potted plant in the corner, wilted from years of soaking in cigar smoke, and the blinds had been removed from the window behind his desk. Everything was surprisingly clean.
“Whoa,” Eli said and sat down in the chromed-out chair in front of Ink’s new desk.
The boss man held a position in an executive leather chair, high-backed and winged.
“You look like an evil mastermind.” Charlie took her place next to her partner. “What happened?”
Boss Ink’s tattooed skin wrinkled, the tiny black and red dots which had given him his nickname danced. “What happened? I had two Councilors in my building, that’s what happened. They made it known that the condition of SSG Headquarters was shocking to them.” He growled and squished around on the new chair. It creaked under his weight. Ink was all muscle and no bullshit.
“Since when do we give a shit what the State thinks?” Charlie asked.
“Don’t be naïve, Spade,” Ink grunted the reply. “Everyone gives a shit what the State thinks. They lodged a formal complaint with the SSG board. Apparently, my running of this facility was not up to standard.”
“They care because?”
“Because they feel that any information we retrieve or analyze might be corrupted. Since, you know, I don’t run a tight enough ship here.” Boss Ink’s mutinous tone spoke volumes as to what he thought of their opinion on his leadership abilities.
“Right,” Charlie said and kneaded her forehead. Could this get any more suspicious? The State had stuck out their necks to make sure they were involved in the SSG’s investigations, even if it was just to have Boss Ink sit up and pay attention.
“And therein lies the reason I’ve called you here this afternoon, kids,” Ink said. “I want to know what’s going on before the Council calls me and shits down my throat for not having all the details.”
“Sir, they can’t shit down your throat. It’s not their investigation.” Charlie folded her arms, then winced at the sore spot on her wrist and let her hands fall into her lap instead.
Ink heaved a sigh, put up his palm. “What do you two have on Shane Mitchell’s murder?”
“That it was the wife, according to eyewitnesses,” Charlie said. “And we have three memories from Mitchell that have clearly been tampered with.”
“What!” Boss Ink lurched forward in his chair, and his belly hit the edge of the desk and rattled the pens in their holder on the corner. Not an ashtray in sight.
“That’s not a certainty,” Eli said.
What was his deal? Why wouldn’t he just admit that they’d been messed with?
Charlie fisted his shoulder. “It’s a damn certainty. All three have been patched together so badly, it’s like they wanted me to know they did it.”
Ink squeezed the bridge of his nose. “So, what you’re telling me is you have nothing but more suspicions about the State and Mem Store.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fuck’s sake,” he breathed.
“There’s a possibility Jana Mitchell might’ve been a Black Mars agent,” Eli said, and Charlie mentally restrained herself from punching him, hard. Boss Ink might’ve been “no bullshit,” but he would latch onto a fact like that and run with it if it meant he could get his ashtray and cigar back in here. He’d shown her as much in the last investigation. When the State leaned on him, he buckled.
“Black Mars?”
“No,” Charlie said. “That’s a gross distortion of the facts we have at our disposal, sir. It’s a conclusion we can’t jump to until we have proof.”
Both Ink and Eli stared at her – her partner with his lips pursed, and the boss man with both eyebrows dancing questions of their own.
“I have another avenue we can investigate,” Charlie said.
“What is it?”
She moved to the edge of her seat and aimed her watch at him. She tapped the screen, and an image appeared – Shane Mitchell’s mouth distorted in that scream, the pill bottle wedged between his lips.
“Fuck it, Spade, did I ask for a murder show in my office?” Ink growled.
“What’s a murder show?” Eli asked.
They both disregarded the question. “Sir, this is a bottle of MemXor. Jana Mitchell rammed it into her husband’s mouth after rearranging his body after murdering him.”
“What’s your point?” Ink asked.
“That blunt force trauma is usually a passion crime. And this is cold, calculated. It’s a message. There were loads of other MemXor bottles in the apartment,” Charlie said. “They’ve been transferred to the SSG labs for processing – fingerprints, DNA, mito-DNA that kind of stuff.”
“Are you going somewhere with this?” Boss Ink creaked back in his chair.
Charlie tapped the screen again, and the image disappeared, but she didn’t relax. She leaned her forearms on Ink’s desk. “Yes, sir. I want the lab to test the actual content of the pills. I want guinea pigs. Or rats.”
“No.” Boss Ink dragged his hand through the air. A sharp chop. “Absolutely not. It’s a waste of our resources. The SSG labs aren’t research facilities, they’re crime labs. They don’t do that kind of thing.”
“But they could,” Charlie insisted. “If you gave them the order. Sir, I don’t want to be a pain in the ass here, but we’ve got two leads. Just two.” She raised the appropriate number of fingers. “We’ve got the daughter, Tatiana, who clearly had a deep connection with her mother and wouldn’t give us much by way of information about her when we interviewed her. And we’ve got this. The MemXor. I want to investigate both avenues.”
Boss Ink reached for his desk drawer, then withdrew his hand and grumbled something under his breath.
“Sir, the sooner I finish investigating this case –”
“We,” Eli put in.
“The sooner we finish up with this case, the sooner the Councilors will be off your back.” She let the implication hover between them. The drawer he’d reached for had once held his cigars.
Boss Ink inhaled. “You can do it,” he said, at last. “But if I hear one thing about wasted resou
rces, I’m going to rip you off this case faster than you can say ‘suspension.’”
“Thank you, Boss, you won’t regret it.” Charlie jerked out of her seat. “I’ll take the sample to the labs myself.”
“We,” Eli said, again.
“Yeah, yeah.” Charlie’s triumph whooped in her stomach. She had a shot, now.
Ink pointed a stubby index finger at her. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Spade. Remember, one wrong move on this, and you’re off the case. And this time, it will end in a permanent suspension.”
That she’d never allow, not while this case might lead her to the truth about Mem Store. “Yes, sir.” Charlie hurried to the door before he changed his mind.
8
The SSG labs were a far cry from the blue and white minimalism of Mem Store’s facilities. SSG was all gray steel counters and cream-colored centrifuges. The gentle hum of noise in the DNA extraction room brought a certain atmosphere of serenity Charlie wasn’t expecting from a crime lab.
Their chosen lab technician – the forensic inspector who headed the entire department – hadn’t turned from the massive centrifuge next to a chrome fridge since they’d entered five minutes prior.
His latex-gloved hands held an electronic pipette in one hand and a series of small plastic tubes in a holder in the other. He squirted liquid into each, a simple tap of a button on top of the silver device and a measured amount ejected into a tube, then moved onto the next one.
Charlie adjusted the lab coat they’d foisted on her the minute she’d entered the labs. She cleared her throat.
The technician, Lord Germiston – Lord being the name, not the title – continued pipetting, strands of silver hair trapped beneath the bows of his protective, transparent glasses. “That won’t speed up the process, agent,” he said.
“What will speed up the process?” Charlie asked. “This is urgent, Lord.”
“Lord?” Eli whispered.
“It’s his name,” she replied.