by James Knapp
His face fell a notch. I reached into my jacket and pulled out an envelope containing two photographs. One was the photo of Henry Uris alive, and the other was the image of Henry Uris’s revivor lying on the gurney. I dropped them both on the desk in front of him.
He looked down at the gray face. Black fluid had pooled in the socket of its missing eye.
“You were caught on a surveillance camera at the Brockton-Stark train platform, talking to that man,” I said. He didn’t say anything, but he recognized the face.
“I want my lawyer.”
I held up a card with the number I’d pulled from the phone system, the one with no name attached.
“Who does this number belong to?” I asked.
“Never seen it.”
“It was registered to the SCO, run by the organization Second Chance. Who used it?”
“How the hell should I know? You want to search our records, get a court order.”
“I will. You’re lying, Mr. Buckster. Right now I have you tied to three separate acts of domestic terrorism; that’s enough to put you in the ground.”
“I had nothing to do with that! I said I want my lawyer!”
“No,” Zoe said. When I turned to her, she was staring down at him, eyes filled with tears.
“What the hell do you mean, no?” he asked. She glared at him, and her pupils went wide. A moment later, Leon’s eyelids got heavy, and he slumped in his chair.
“Enough bullshit,” she said. She walked up to the table and stood in front of him. Before she could do anything else, I crossed behind her and pulled the plug on the surveillance camera.
“Zoe …”
“I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them. Do you understand?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me you understand.”
“I understand.”
“Did you talk to the revivor in the picture or not?”
“I did.”
“When he was alive or dead?”
“Alive.”
“Were you there when he died?”
“No.”
“Do you know how he died?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me,” she said.
I’d never seen her like that before. Her stare was intense and angry. She didn’t let up after she put him under. If anything, she pushed harder. He seemed to drift further into whatever trance he was in. Saliva began to collect in one corner of his mouth.
“Zoe, take it easy,” I told her.
“Who uses that phone number? The one he showed you?”
“We’ve got no connection to illegal—”
“I didn’t ask that,” Zoe snapped. “I asked who the number belongs to.”
“Heinser. Michael Heinser.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know anything about—”
“Who is he? Who does he work for?”
“He works for …Heinlein …Industries …”
A heat spike appeared on the scanner monitoring his GSR. It started growing, causing his skin temperature to rise.
“Zoe, wait. Hold on.”
I moved behind him and found the source of the heat on the back of his neck, near the base of his skull. A component there had gone active. Whatever it was, it was drawing a significant amount of power.
I accessed his JZI and brought up a schematic. The configuration was old, but some upgrades were fairly recent. Despite the fact that he was unconscious and not coupled to the implant, a lot of energy was moving around in there. It was building in a single component.
“Zoe, stop!”
“What was going on in those clinics?” she asked. “How many more of them are there?”
“They …have to wake up …” he said softly.
The device was a kill switch, and it was about to go off. It was monitoring him, ready to blow his brains out if he fell under the influence of hypnosis or mind control.
“Zoe, let him go!” I shouted, louder that time, but she wasn’t listening.
“Where is Samuel Fawkes?” she snapped, but I didn’t have time to ask her where she’d heard that name; the device was about to trip.
There wasn’t any time to be delicate. I spun Zoe away from him and slapped her across the face.
Her eyes went back to normal, but the look on her face was one of pure shock. A blush began to swell in her pale cheeks. Off to the side, I sensed the energy surge from Buckster begin to ebb, easing back.
“Zoe, I …”
I reached forward and she slapped my hand away, backing up and knocking over her chair.
“Zoe, wait!”
She turned and shoved the door open, running down the hallway.
“Hey, G-man,” Buckster said. When I turned back to look at him, he seemed a little confused, but there was a wary look in his eye. Anger was brewing on his face. “I want my fucking lawyer.”
“You’re free to go,” I told him. “If we have any more questions—”
“You know where to shove them,” he said, brushing by me on his way out the door.
I watched him leave. With what we had, I could hold him. With what we had, I could hold him indefinitely, but Leon Buckster was a drone. He wasn’t behind this. I put a call through to Calliope. After a few seconds, she picked up.
Buckster’s on his way out of here, I said. I think he’ll try to run. I want to know who, or where, he runs to.
It’s done.
Be careful. He’s dangerous.
I still had the image of the scan in front of me. The kill switch wasn’t the only surprise. Despite being a vet, Leon Buckster was also wired.
The connection closed. I thought about it for a minute, then called Noakes.
Wachalowski, what the hell’s going on down there?
I got something. I need a meeting with Heinlein Industries.
Faye Dasalia—Parking Garage, Roof Level
I lay in the car’s backseat and listened to the raindrops drum on the roof. Electric signs had begun to flicker on. Nico still hadn’t returned.
A persistent cluster of old memories kept coming to the forefront—memories of winter, when I had tracked Lev. I had crouched down on a snow-covered sidewalk and leaned into the car where he had waited. The woman behind the wheel was hours dead, her body covered in blood. Lev had waited in the backseat of that car, while the sun set and snow covered the windows. When she returned, he’d grabbed her and targeted the beating mass of her heart. While streams of shoppers passed by them, unaware, he’d stabbed her through the breastbone.
I couldn’t identify the blade he’d used. That had really bothered me.
I would have been horrified to know, I think, that one day I would walk in that killer’s shoes. It was that same killer who instructed me how to avoid the security cameras and access the vehicle.
The clinic, and three others, had been destroyed in response to police raids. That implied a coordinated attack. Motoko and her people were closing in. If they located the ship, then we might lose everything. When I died and realized the truth of my life, I knew I’d found my purpose—one more important than the law I’d upheld. That absolute control over so many could not go to so few; it would change human society forever.
I knew that we couldn’t fail. Still, when I was alone and it was quiet, I imagined the attack that was to come. The more I learned, the clearer I pictured it. When I did, that academic doubt returned:
This isn’t right.
The memory of the man at the clinic, the one that Lev injected, wouldn’t seem to leave my mind. What was it that I had seen? Lev had killed him, there was no doubt about that, but near the end, I knew I’d seen him move. Somehow the man had been reanimated. Fawkes wouldn’t respond to questions about it, nor would Lev, which meant he had been told not to. There were things in play I wasn’t aware of, and I wondered exactly how far that went. At the restaurant, when I’d recorded them, some things were said that I couldn’t reconcile:
“…i
t won’t just be this city that is destroyed. Fawkes will destroy this city, and then, one by one, the rest will begin to fall….”
Was it just a ploy of theirs, a scare tactic? Or had they really seen it?
The rain picked up and began to fall harder. A message came in from Fawkes.
Call accepted.
Has he returned yet? he asked.
Not yet. Were all of the safe houses destroyed?
No. They missed one, but we’ll have to step up the plan. The ship has begun its approach. When it arrives, the forces inside the city will be awakened, and will be joined by those on the shore. The devices will be distributed at that time, and carried into the targets during the assault. At that time, a pool of names and identifications will be accessible to all units. Eliminating them will be the top priority.
It’s going to be chaos. How will we locate them all?
The new units will become active at that time, and you’ll be connected through your secondary communications node. The new units will have an information-sharing array that will be very useful in tracking individuals. They will pinpoint them, and update the locations in real time.
I understand.
Do you?
I understand enough.
Good. When you’re finished with Wachalowski, regardless of the outcome, there’s one more thing I need you to do before the ship arrives.
An abduction?
An assassination.
Who?
An image appeared, floating above my face. A woman with large eyes peered through long red hair. Her beaklike nose protruded over thin lips. I recognized her face immediately. She had been with Nico at the restaurant.
Zoe Ott, I said.
Yes. Do you remember her from the factory, two years ago?
I sifted through the field of my memories, isolating the specific time and place. I was inside the clean room, and Nico was there with me. He had removed my Leichenesser capsule, which had nearly destroyed me. He meant to save me, I think, like he hadn’t yet realized it was too late…. The door he’d come through opened, and a woman stormed through, dragging another.
The first woman’s name was Calliope Flax; I’d seen her with Nico too. The one being dragged was a red-haired woman, Fawkes’s target Zoe Ott. I recognized the white smock she was wearing.
She was part of the original testing, I said. That meant two years ago, Lev had taken her.
Yes. She was designated Patient Nine. She exhibited some abilities that I’d honestly like to study further, but I won’t have the luxury. We have to move soon.
Why bother to kill her now?
Wachalowski’s using her, and she nearly got to at least one of our operatives. We can’t take any chances at this stage. Make sure her body can’t be found.
Understood.
Do it tonight.
He broke the link, and I stared at her image. She looked so pathetic, so innocuous. She didn’t look powerful.
She tried to tell you something. Something you didn’t hear, a voice seemed to whisper in my ear.
You never heard the name Samuel Fawkes….
Her memory had stirred up others in its wake. Her face reminded me of someone else’s, someone with that same look of desperation. The hair was different and the nose was different, but those haunted eyes wore the same expression. They looked like they saw too much. I’d seen eyes like that on another woman, years back, when I was a cop. The memories had been hidden, and I hadn’t pieced them back together yet.
“He doesn’t destroy everything …I do …”
I drew forth one of the broken memories, and looked into the place that had been altered. I was in my old precinct, where I sat in the interrogation room. The woman sat across the table from me, her body worn out and sick. She was emaciated, and her teeth were decaying. Bony little fingers picked at needle tracks. At that point, her mind should have been gone as well, but her eyes were like two suns. Like the woman Zoe Ott, she’d seen more than she’d wanted.
“You need to get to a shelter,” I’d told her, but she’d just shaken her head.
“You can’t help me,” she said. “I made a mistake. This is bigger than you.”
“If you’re in some kind of trouble, I can help you.” She seemed to find that funny.
“You’re getting dragged into this just by talking to me,” she said. “They know I’m alive now.”
“Who knows?”
At the time I thought a dealer or a pimp. I’d honestly thought that I could keep her safe, but in the end I couldn’t. We never found the body, but the blood was hers, and there was far too much.
She tried to tell you something …something you didn’t hear …
I wasn’t sure who’d said that. Was it that I hadn’t heard? Or did I hear, but was forced to forget it?
I remembered a knock at my door at night. I took my gun from the drawer and answered it.
“Who is it?” I called, not opening the door.
“I’m sorry to disturb you so late, Miss Dasalia,” a man’s voice said from the other side. “This is about that woman.”
“What woman?”
“You know the one I mean.”
I opened it, but kept my weight on the door in case he tried to force it. There was a man standing there. At the time I’d never seen his face before, but I recognized it now. Years later, when I finally made detective, he would become my partner.
His eyes went wide, and I felt strangely dizzy.
“Put down the gun,” he said, “and let me in.”
…and knowing better, I let the stranger in.
“Forget everything that woman told you.” I remember he’d said that.
“You never heard the name Samuel Fawkes….”
My thoughts scattered as someone approached the car. The lock released, and the driver’s-side door unlatched. I let the memories fade.
The door groaned open and Nico climbed inside, lowering himself into the driver’s seat. He slammed it shut, shaking off rain from his coat, then gripped the wheel with one hand. He reached toward the ignition with his other, and stopped with his thumb over the starter pad. His heart rate jumped suddenly, and I saw his body tense.
I sat up as his pistol swung back around. I caught his wrist before he could target me, impressed by how fast he was.
“It’s me,” I said.
His eyes were wide, but when he saw me, they changed. They looked at me the way they had since that night, when I woke to find that he’d brought me back. It was hard for me to know what the look meant. I could see fear in his eyes, and something else there as well. It might have been pain or longing or sadness. Maybe it was just guilt over what he had done.
“Faye,” he said. He blinked hard and then opened his eyes again. When he did, the flicker from his JZI had faded from his pupils. “You can’t keep coming to me like this.”
“Fawkes authorized me to bring you what you asked for,” I said.
“Really,” he said, like he didn’t believe it.
“Yes.”
“You could have sent it. You shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m here because of you, Nico.”
He looked down for a moment and he nodded. The gun was still in his hand, but he’d moved his finger off the trigger. Smoky breath trailed from his nose in the cold air. His heart was beating quickly, but his face and eyes looked calm.
“Give me the information,” he said.
I sent him the files Fawkes had given me, and although he held them over for scanning, he accepted the package.
“It goes deeper than you think,” I said.
“You don’t know what I think.”
“You might be the only one who can stop her.”
“I’m not going to kill anyone, Faye,” he said. “You won’t convince me to do that.”
“I’m just here to give you the information.”
“You didn’t need to come here to do that.”
“I wanted to see your face.”
“That�
�s it?”
“I wanted you to see mine.”
That bothered him, I could tell. His fingers kept squeezing the grip of the gun.
“I remember every time I was with you,” I said. “Before you left for the war, and after you got back too. Those memories all mean something to me, Nico, because all of them are real.”
“Shut up.”
“You understand it academically. I know you understand it. You realize what your friend, and her friends, can do. You must know, even, that they’ve done it to you, at least back when they still could. You know all these things, but you still don’t get it. You can’t, because you can’t see how much you’ve lost. You can’t see what was taken away from you, and you never will see it.”
“I said, shut up,” he said.
“But I can,” I said, “and I know you loved me—”
He slipped his wrist from my grasp and stuck the gun in my face.
“Don’t finish that sentence,” he said. He glared at me down over the pistol’s sight.
“Please do what Fawkes wants,” I said. “If you don’t do it, he’s going to kill you—”
“Shut up!” he barked, knuckles white on the gun’s grip. Blood had rushed into his face, lines of orange branching out underneath the skin. They glowed like electric light. The breath that blew out of his nostrils was warm. He seemed so alive right then.
“You’re not Faye,” he said in a low, even voice. His vitals spiked, but his eyelids had drooped. He looked the way he did when he first woke me, with calm murder in his eyes. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. She wouldn’t have wanted it.”
“I didn’t know what it meant,” I said. “I couldn’t know what I wanted.”
“She would never have helped Fawkes.”
“But I did help him, Nico.”
“She never would have killed Sean. You aren’t Faye. You’re Faye’s corpse.”
“My memories are the same. My consciousness—”
“It’s not the same,” he said. “I thought it was. I hoped it was, but it’s not the same. I don’t want to hear anymore. Tell me where he’s hiding them.”
“I can’t.”
“I pulled the maritime ID for a tanker called the KM Senopati Nusantara off a revivor. Is that ship still out there? Is that where they are?”
“Please help us, Nico. Fawkes can still get to you.”