I swore to myself.
“It was an amazing day. Was great knowing you,” I said in a buoyant voice and opened the door. I thought that I caught a brief expression of surprise and felt annoyed. The Game crumbled without ever starting, and I really liked her. I thought that she must feel disappointed too, but even if that was the case she didn’t let on. Instead, she gently touched my hand and smiled.
“Goodbye,” she said, “and thank you. You wouldn’t know it, but you really helped me today.”
I wanted to ask what she meant, but there was no time. If Remir was to die, my outlandish bounty would disappear into thin air. There was a moment of awkward hesitation, but fortunately her dashboard display showed an incoming call, and I quickly got out. The car immediately picked up speed and turned onto the main road at the end of the alley.
“Kir, what happened to Remir?” I whispered.
“Recreational drug overdose,” Kir summarized the rows of medical notes scrolling down my vision.
On a hospital camera feed, the ambulance stopped at the entrance to the emergency wing, and I watched as Remir was rushed to intensive care.
“Kir, check train schedules to Oren for tonight,” I said.
“The next train isn’t leaving until morning,” he replied.
Great, I thought. The only remaining option to make it in time was driving, which I’d have to do using a local contraption at a speed that was both unsafe and illegal. Of course, Kir would delete my car from police feeds, but still … I sighed, accepting my fate.
“Find me the closest rental,” I said, switching to professional mode.
“Nick, the hotel has a self-dispatch site inside its parking facility.”
“Reserve me the best piece of crap they have,” I said and walked toward the garage gates.
Within a matter of minutes, I was on the road to Oren. Kir took over the autopilot control, and I focused on Remir who had already transferred to the recovery unit after receiving emergency treatment. Through a video camera inside the room, I watched him lay motionlessly on a hospital bed, his body covered by a web of tubes and monitor cords. He was alone, and his condition was officially upgraded to “serious, but stable.” However, Kir’s data analysis predicted something that the hospital staff couldn’t see yet – cascading organ failure starting in the very near future. I didn’t have much time.
I told Kir to accelerate. The engine revved, and the car bolted forward, making me feel slightly unnerved; I didn’t have to worry about violating speed limits, but this thing wasn’t exactly designed for the tight turns and sharp lane changes that were now being asked of it. I was beginning to feel annoyed with Remir, but dismissed these unflattering thoughts, which were only unproductive.
Fortunately, the traffic was light, and I arrived safely, pulling up to the hospital with less than ten minutes to spare. I ran to the beehive-shaped emergency building, slowed down in the lobby, smoothed out my hair and assumed an air of busy confidence. The door for medical personnel opened, recognizing me as a support technician who had been called to fix an equipment glitch in Remir’s recovery room.
I followed the directions to Remir’s unit, ordered Kir to stream views from the hallway surveillance cameras and walked in.
Remir was conscious and slowly opened his eyes, apparently having heard the click of the shutting door. Dark circles under his eyes looked like bruises.
“Was it suicide?” I asked leaning over the footboard.
He recognized me.
“Hard to tell,” his voice was barely audible, but his lips twisted slightly, indicating a grin.
“Well,” I shrugged, “you’d better make up your mind. If I don’t intervene, irreversible damage will start in less than five minutes.”
A spasm went down his throat.
“Remir, your body is shutting down. There is only so much that your medication can do. I need to physically administer our drug if you want to live.”
He nodded almost immediately.
I pulled a dissolvable patch from my pocket and plastered it to his hand. Then I sat in a chair in the corner and waited. It didn’t take long. Monitoring devices showed the threatening signals starting to retreat, and Remir’s face gained a faint color. He apparently felt the change too.
“Did it work?” his voice was hoarse, but noticeably more normal.
I got up and went to the side of the bed.
“You’ll be fine. But you’ll need to stay here for some time. You have to heal. I’ll see you when you’re better. The drug will make you sleep, to speed up the process.”
I was about to leave, but a sudden movement in the hallway attracted my attention. A woman appeared from behind the corner, breaking the stillness of the empty corridor. She was walking quickly, looking at the unit numbers, and for a moment I forgot about Remir. As improbable as it was, I recognized Lita. She was even wearing the same dress, though wrinkled and without the cape. Astounded, I watched her approach our door.
She came in and went straight to the bed, her eyes anxiously fixed on Remir’s face. Then she glanced in my direction and, as if momentarily losing her balance, she stepped backwards knocking off a plastic glass that was perched on the edge of a small nightstand.
“Lita, I’m fine now. And he is helping,” said Remir quickly.
“I’m helping.” At that moment, I understood exactly what had happened. I swore at myself for not having seen this sooner.
Not taking her eyes from me, she picked up the cup from the floor and put it back.
“Lita, we need to talk,” with some effort, Remir turned his head in my direction. “How much time do I have?”
“Before you fall asleep? About five minutes.” By now I had completely regained my cool. “By the way, don’t worry, they don’t have audio here, just video monitoring. See you later,” I gave Lita a friendly nod on my way out.
I made my way down the corridor and out of the building watching the live feed from the hospital. There was no way to hear their conversation, but Kir has provided me with a transcript by reading Remir’s lip movements. Lita, unfortunately, was sitting on the bed with her back to the camera, so I couldn’t see her reaction to Remir’s story about our midnight meeting in his hotel lobby, which he was recounting with his usual ironic half-smile. The pauses between his words were getting longer; he was slowly falling into the induced unconsciousness.
I found a cluster of mesh chairs on the lawn in front of the hospital entrance, picked up one and moved it slightly away from the others and farther from the illuminated sidewalks.
“Kir, show me Lita just before the time of Remir’s interview,” I asked, already having guessed what I would find out.
Through the lenses of the Media Center’s security cameras, I saw her waiting on the plaza outside. She looked nervous and repeatedly hit a button on her communication device. According to Kir, she was calling Remir’s mobile phone. There was no response, but she kept trying until she suddenly received an incoming call from a different number.
“Lita, he wasn’t on the train,” the person on the other end of the line sounded confused, but he obviously was trying to be comforting. Kir identified him as a Media Center employee and Lita’s long-time acquaintance.
“We checked with the hotel; he is still there. Lita, don’t call. He is not alone.”
“I see. Thanks for the heads up!” her voice was unnaturally high.
“Lita, I am sorry. I know it’s a mess. Hope it’ll somehow work out … good luck.”
He waited for a moment, but she was silent, and he hung up.
Lita sat down on the wide steps of the building, then abruptly got up and went towards the observation deck.
“That’s enough,” I said. “Now, give me data on their relationship.”
Kir did a great job presenting their three-year long love story in several sentences. The patte
rn was as clear as the logic behind it was incomprehensible.
They had met in the state-owned studio where she worked as a sound engineer, where he was making his first and only official recording. At that point, she had been in a stable relationship for five years. He became obsessed with her. The music he released back then was all written for her, and, incidentally, all pieces from that period were widely considered masterpieces. She left her partner and moved in with Remir. His first affair happened a year later. She left. He fell apart. He hysterically pleaded for her to return, and when she refused, he went into a steep downward spiral and ended up in jail on public disturbance charges. She bailed him out and went back to him. Over the next two years, this cycle kept repeating with minor variations; his other affairs, her periodic attempts to move on, his immediate crackups.
The mesh chair was remarkably uncomfortable, but I ignored it, trying to digest this information. I hadn’t seen anything quite like it before. Whatever was in his head, Remir obviously couldn’t last without her for long. And why did she continue going back? Was it love, or was it an attachment disorder? It was a philosophical question, and I didn’t have the luxury to dwell on it. In any case, he was not going to leave without her, that much was clear.
I had to admit that things had gotten a little messy. But the Dark Triad outliers never gave me an easy time, and I was used to their idiosyncratic behavior and nervous breakdowns. Remir’s overdose wasn’t a big deal, really. And my accidental episode with Lita, in a way, simplified things. She was able to see that I wasn’t some alien monster.
I decided that there was no reason to drop this case, even more so that there was a reason to hope that we were very close to completion. I just needed to tread carefully.
By now Remir was asleep, and a weary looking doctor was talking to Lita in the hallway. She nodded, quickly signed some forms he gave her and headed towards the exit.
In a moment, she appeared outside the hospital doors and slowed down, anxiously looking around. I stood up, waved to attract her attention and sat back down when she saw me. She hesitated for a moment and then warily moved in my direction as if she was walking on a tightrope. She stopped some distance away, her silhouette completely dark against the lights of buildings and pavement behind her back. I didn’t get up. It was critical not to scare her now.
“Was he delusional?” she asked in an almost indifferent tone.
I switched to night vision to observe her expression.
She was watching me with disbelief and suspicion, her face contorted, eyes narrowed.
“No, he wasn’t,” I said calmly.
She was looking at me as if studying some frightening artifact, and I felt a somewhat irrational disappointment that there was so much repulsion in her face.
“Sorry that I left so abruptly. I didn’t mean to.” I purposely tried to override her fear with the memory of the day we had spent together. “I had to deal with this … emergency. I really enjoyed your company.” It happened to be true, but that was beside the point now.
Her face assumed a strangely lost expression, and I figured that she was trying to reconcile two disconnected images in her mind. I leaned back and gave her my most disarming smile, hoping she wouldn’t panic. Fortunately, her posture relaxed, as if she recognized a familiar person under a scary mask.
“Would you explain?” she asked, and there was no longer any edge to her voice.
“As you may have guessed, our meeting wasn’t an accident,” I kept my voice calm and casual. “We were both waiting for Remir to show up for the interview.”
She pulled an empty chair closer to mine and sat down.
“Will he really be fine,” she asked, “as far as you know?”
“I know that he will make a full recovery.”
“He hasn’t ever done that before,” she was staring at the grass at her feet. Then she looked up at me again. “What do you want from him?”
I decided that I could tell her now. “He has very rare qualities and, hence, has an invitation to go to Earth. It’s a much nicer place.”
“Interesting,” she grinned, as if I said something funny, “who would have thought?”
I wasn’t sure what part of my sentence prompted this remark, but didn’t interrupt.
She frowned, thinking. “How long will he be … recovering?” she asked.
“He will sleep for two days. Then he will be back to normal. Or at least to whatever he used to be, before this event. But this is not the best place to talk, Lita. I’m erasing our conversation from surveillance in real time, but some other visitors could come and sit nearby at any moment.”
She nodded and got up. “Where would you suggest we go?”
“The hotel where Remir was staying. We’ll be here for the next two days, we might as well settle in.”
She tensed again, and I decided that it was time to bring the matter out into the open.
“Lita, you aren’t afraid of me, are you?” I asked point blank.
I was provoking her, but it was worth the risk – whichever way she answered would allow me to maneuver our interaction in the right direction.
She hesitated for a split second, and then shook her head.
“I trusted you once,” she smiled dryly, “and it turned out to be fine.”
As we walked to the hospital parking garage, she still kept some distance from me, but now it seemed to be a calculated caution rather than genuine fear.
“Kir, book us two units in Remir’s hotel, next-door to each other,” I said.
“Who is Kir?” she asked right away.
“It’s a computer chip; I use it as a personal assistant. I’ll explain this too.”
She nodded, and we temporarily parted ways, walking to our cars.
We drove through empty streets, barely touched by the light of the early morning, parked next to each other in the hotel’s underground garage and walked to the elevator shaft together. I glanced at the reservation details.
“Lita, you are in suite 320, I am in 319 across the corridor. Your place or mine … to talk?” I asked her as the doors closed behind us.
She shrugged, “Might as well be mine; they are all identical, I’m sure.”
She gained access to her room which recognized her fingerprints. I followed her closely, and we almost collided when she abruptly slowed, adjusting to the dimness inside. Our bodies brushed against each other for a brief moment, and she quickly stepped forward. I noted that the awkwardness was a little more pronounced than the situation warranted. And I reminded myself that this was nothing but work now.
“Light?” I asked.
“No, it’s fine,” she said and walked to the only chair in the far corner. Still ensuring that my movements were slow and non-threatening I sat on the bed on the opposite side.
Her face was hidden in the shadows now, and I had to enhance my vision again.
“So you are from Earth,” she said, “I guess, I believe it. Are you typical?”
It was a tricky question. But I had to say something.
“Maybe a bit more adventurous. My profession is exotic.”
She nodded in acknowledgment.
“Why do you need Remir? Is your population that much into music?”
“No,” I smiled at the thought that our government would go to the trouble of sending headhunters to the Mirror Worlds in search of brilliant composers. “It’s not so much what he creates. Although I’m sure the art crowd will be delighted. It’s the fact that his mind works in a very special way,” I paused, letting her take it all in, “and you are invited, as his partner.”
She raised her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything.
“Unless … do you want to take my test? To see if you are special too?” I asked, slightly surprised by my question. Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t have cared. Our contract dictated that only one outlie
r per trip was counted – the authorities didn’t want to risk putting more than one egg in the same basket. My take-home pay wouldn’t increase even if she passed, but I admitted that I was genuinely curious.
“No. Later,” she said, “I’d rather see what your planet is like first.”
Different people have different priorities, I thought.
My biometric mask doubled as a communication device, allowing non-wired people of the Mirror Worlds to access audio-video inputs. I pulled it from my pocket and extended it to her, not getting up. I wanted her to approach me, not the other way around.
“It has software that will give you the standard introduction. I swear it’s safe to put this on. Do you believe me?” I asked.
“It’s strange,” she replied, coming over and taking it from my hand, “but I’m not afraid of you, for no good reason.”
I waited until she settled down in her chair again.
“The informational program is interactive. It’ll guide you, but you can ask questions at any time,” I said.
She nodded and put the mask on. I knew that it would take some time, so I slid to the floor and leaned against the bedside. She was sitting upright, her spine not touching the back of the chair, her hands squeezing the wooden armrests.
“Yes,” she was talking to the program now, “no preference.”
She was still going through the initial set up when Kir suddenly turned on an emergency signal.
“Nick, I am malfunctioning again. There is an irreconcilable parameter conflict.”
My heart lurched. Kir was my only significant advantage on this planet.
“What conflict?” I whispered.
“I intercepted improbable information from the news coverage of a failed missile test. Here is the culprit, Nick.”
He connected me to the feed from a media helicopter that was circling over a swampy open area of a crash site and zoomed in on a small pebble in the middle of the scattered debris. The object’s surface was mostly covered by the thick mud, but I could clearly see a segment of a serial number on its exposed part. It was written in Earth’s modern numerical system.
Fire of the Dark Triad Page 7