by Vanessa Muir
Even here, it was clinical. Nature tamed to do exactly what the State wanted of it. She hated that. Missed a freedom that she’d never truly known. But Levi knew it, Levi and the rest of Black Mars. Not now.
“It’s kinda creepy out here,” Eli said, walking along beside her, the back of his hand brushing against hers every other step. “The trees, the darkness.”
“Lights,” Charlie said, and the orbs planted in the ground either side of the path lit up.
“Oh.”
“Still creeped out?”
“It’s just the trees,” Eli said. “They’re quiet.”
“As opposed to the talking trees of yore?”
“Looks like somebody got her sense of humor back.” He smirked at her.
“No, my sense of disdain. You’re mistaking the two. Here, up ahead.”
They rounded the corner and came upon the hub in the center of the forest. It was quiet, as they’d expected. The employees here came intermittently to check on the park or water the trees if the rain hadn’t come. The place was unusually silent.
“Stop,” Charlie said and held out a hand.
“Why?”
“Door’s open.”
And it was, cracked an inch, the darkness from within visible via the crack between the jamb and the door’s edge. Someone had been here and opened it. For the meeting? Why would anyone meet here? Why in a hub, a monitored hub?
They would be able to check the logs of who had entered and exited the reserve in the hub. It didn’t make sense.
Regardless, Charlie withdrew her gun from its holster and clicked the safety off. Eli followed suit, shifting his grip on the weapon and pressing his lips together.
“Relax,” Charlie said.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about you doing something stupid. Nerves lead to mistakes.” She was steely as she strode up to the door, denying any jitters. She nodded to Eli to position himself, then clicked on her flashlight and kicked the door open all the way, shone the light inside it.
The stench hit her first.
Rotting flesh. Something long dead. And then, the mangled body on the floor, skin torn in places, the clothing patched with white mildew, the floor beneath is stained from the decay of organs and tissue.
Charlie pressed a fist to her nose and mouth, stowing her gun as she did. “Fucking hell,” she muttered.
The stench was unreal, like rotting meat, a spritz of flowery perfume and fecal matter combined. Her eyes watered from it, and she took a step back, keeping the flashlight trained on the cadaver.
Eli retched nearby, and the splatter of him throwing up came after.
“We need to call this in,” Charlie said coolly.
“Yeah, give me a minute.” Eli’s voice was rough. He choked and vomited again.
Charlie ignored it, though her stomach turned as well, and it took all her energy not to join her partner on the sidelines. She’d encountered plenty of dead bodies in her career, but it wasn’t often she encountered one in this state of decay.
It was the nature of working for the SSG. The State responded to any of these types of incidents immediately. Heavily decayed corpses were an oddity, whereas the newly dead occurred far more frequently.
“Eli,” Charlie said. “Call it in.”
“Doing it.” Eli had walked off, back along the path, and stood, green around the gills, one finger pressed to his temple.
Charlie focused on the body. She’d need help examining it, a full coroner’s team to tell her what could be gleaned. A DNA sample if that was still viable at this point. But she had a moment, now, alone to study the scene, if she could get a handle on her nausea and the smell.
She took a single step closer, eyes still watering.
It was a female. Had been. And one arm was twisted, very clearly broken by whatever had happened to her. How long had it been? Perhaps, two weeks? The body wasn’t bloated. And the meeting date had been, what, a week ago?
But no, she couldn’t jump to that conclusion, now.
“They’re on their way,” Eli said, behind her.
“Good.” But nothing about what had happened thus far was good.
7
Charlie stood in the laboratory at SSG’s HQ, frustration building in her gut. She’d been right on her guess of how long the body had been lying there. About two weeks, but there was nothing she could glean from that, other than someone had killed her, viciously, back then.
Thankfully, the techs had managed to take a sample, and since they hadn’t technically found anything related to Kegan himself, they could use their own lab to check out the sample. Not that it made a difference.
If the State wanted to fudge the results, they could. They could buy out anyone they wanted, order them around.
Not me. Not this time.
“Agent Spade,” a voice spoke, behind her.
She turned toward the long line of benches, the cool white countertops with their humming machines, their strange, flashing lights, and nodded to the tech approaching her. Not one she recognized nor cared to identify. He might’ve been new.
Didn’t matter. The people Charlie got close with tended to meet fucked-up ends. Either they were killed by the State, ended up killing, or were erased from memory entirely.
Erased. From memory. Erased from memory. There’s something in that, but what?
“Yeah, that’s me,” she said.
The technician, a greasy looking guy in a white coat, his hair pulled back into a bun, stopped in front of her. He held a clipboard and tapped a pen against it. He offered her a smile she didn’t return. “I’m Kieran Holmes.”
“OK.”
He stared at her for a moment, perhaps expecting an introduction from her end. Finally, he cleared his throat. “So, I’ve got some results for you. Female sample and a hit in the Mem Store’s codices. The victim’s name was Danika Bolryder.”
So, it had been Kegan’s wife after all. Unless he had a sister they didn’t know about. Charlie put out her hand for the clipboard—a translucent surface that held the information she required—and the technician delivered it to her.
“This is her. See? The picture and the—”
“I’ve got it from here,” Charlie said. “Thanks.” That belatedly. She walked from the lab and down the hall, studying the printout.
Danika Bolryder, wife to Kegan, legal name changed after marriage. Initially, her name had been Fordyce. Why did that ring a bell too? She’d never met a Danika or a Fordyce.
Charlie’s brow wrinkled, and something tickled at the back of her mind, though she wasn’t sure what.
Danika’s write-up was simple. A quick history of her life, her frequent use of Memory Banks and the extraction machines in Corden Prime. Interesting, that, since she hadn’t lived in the center of the city. Her last known whereabouts weren’t noted, either, which was strange for this type of report.
People were watched, there were cameras, and inserting an image of Danika into the database would bring up matches of her face from surveillance cameras across the capital.
“But nothing,” Charlie muttered.
She took the elevator to her floor, then made her way over to her desk. It was late, the rest of the office had emptied out, but her desk awaited, the light still on in the sea of darkness that surrounded it. She sat down, grinding her teeth.
Why had someone killed her?
The insinuation here was that it was Kegan who had offed his wife. But why? Because of MemXor? The drugs had shown their effects several times, high doses led to extreme aggression and strength, and expired pills had a similar effect. So what? Kegan had been souped-up on MemXor and had killed her?
But why invite her to the meeting place? Unless she had invited him. But why?
“Doesn’t make sense.” None of it did. And it felt, shit, maybe this was going too far, but it felt as if it had been manufactured that way.
Charlie placed the clipboar
d on the desk in front of her, frowning. She had to find an answer to all of this, but it was already too complicated.
“Why was it there?” she muttered.
A hand landed on her shoulder, and Charlie stiffened, followed the hairy knuckles to the wrist, all the way up to Eli’s face. He grinned down at her and shivers started low in her body. Not the good kind. Eli had never really given her the good kind of shivers.
“Hey,” he said. “You look like you need a drink.”
“Where have you been?” She shrugged off his grasp.
“Coffee,” he replied, “but it’s not helping scour the scent of that body out of my nose. You get any information on who it was?”
“Here.” Charlie handed him the clipboard. “Not much, but it’s a start.”
“So, we’ve got two victims, a suspected murderer who’s completely disappeared, and a headache?”
“Yes on all three.”
Eli nodded. “Sounds like a perfect excuse to go drinking to me.”
“We’ve got work to do,” Charlie replied.
“Sure, but let’s go out and get something to eat and drink while we do it.” He paused, scanning her from head-to-toe. “Come one, Spade. You look like you’re about to fall over. Have you eaten anything today?”
“Don’t see how it matters.”
“That settles it,” Eli said and offered a hand. “Let’s go. We’ll figure this out at the restaurant.”
8
They’d chosen one of the SSG’s haunts—a restaurant/bar combo that attracted the hard workers from HQ at all times of the day and night. The inside of the Watering Hole was as cliché as its name, with retro decorations—a long wooden bar and matching wooden chairs. The fact that the owner could afford to source the wood for the tables and chairs showed just how much money the place made.
These days, everything was metal. Not here. Even the food was served by hand. Nothing automated in the slightest for that “old school” feel.
Charlie sat across from Eli, ignoring the decorations and the vibe, her focus on the tablet in front of her. They’d brought the clipboard too, but that device couldn’t do much but show them the information that the State wanted them to see.
“Nothing,” Charlie said, scrolling through the search results on the tablet. She would’ve checked using her onboard device, but what was the point? She wouldn’t be able to share the information with Eli, openly, and the fact that they could scroll the same thing at the same time without seeing it collectively had always freaked her out.
Never mind the fact that the State can see it too. They’re always watching.
“Huh?” Eli had already finished half a beer and was more interested in his French fries than anything she had to say.
“There’s nothing on Danika Bolryder on any of the databases. The only information we have comes directly from the State’s database alone. Nothing on SSG. Heck, she’s not even registered with Citizens Information. It’s like she doesn’t exist.”
Eli made a face. “I think we can both confirm that she existed. That smell… I swear to god I can still smell it.” He chewed on a few fries, regardless. “Makes me sick to think about it.”
“Yeah, because that’s what’s disgusting about the situation. Not the fact that someone died, but the smell.”
“Easy, Spade. Since when are you sentimental?”
“There’s a difference between sentimental and respectful, Eli. Though I wouldn’t expect you to know the difference.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. Eat your fries.” Charlie rested her head in her hand and kept scanning the screen. None of the searches she’d done had yielded any results for Kegan or Danika, and it had started to affect her mental attitude.
It wasn’t possible that they were invisible. Something wasn’t right here.
“What’s eating your ass?” Eli asked.
“Not you.”
“Funny. But I’m serious, Spade. This is a good thing.”
“What is?”
“This case. The fact that your father asked us to look into it. We were chosen by the heads of the State.” He leaned in so none of the others would hear. “You know what that means.”
“Enlighten me.”
“That if we play this right, we’re in for big things. Promotions. Hell, we might end up higher in the line of command than Boss Ink himself.”
“Firstly, you’re delusional if you think that’s what this is. And secondly, this is not something we play, Eli. This is an investigation. We’re here to solve it, not kiss ass.”
“I know, shit. I’m just saying that this is so much bigger than that.” Eli drank more of his beer, then leaned even closer, bathing her in the scent of it on his breath. Handsome or not, he still pissed her off. “You know it is. I mean, this is the heart of the State. We must be doing something right that they’re trusting us with this.”
And there it was, the doubt that had started the minute she’d received the call from her father. There were higher-ups than her and definitely than Eli. They’d worked on two cases that had given them a lot of attention from Mem Store and the State.
Their investigations had been swept under the rug. Why call them in?
It’s a trap.
Or was she being paranoid again? How could she not be, after what had happened?
“Whatever the reason for it is,” she said, “we need to get this right.”
“We will,” Eli replied. “But I’ve already got the answer.”
“Don’t say it.”
“Black Mars. I mean, who else would have a vested interest in taking down Absalon Shamood?”
“For the love of God, keep your voice down,” Charlie snapped.
“Oh, relax. Nobody heard me. I’m just saying, that there are only a few people with enough power to get someone close enough to one of the leaders and founders of the State and Black Mars—”
“Enough.” Charlie rose from her seat, lifting her standard issue tablet. “We’ll continue this investigation tomorrow.”
“C’mon, Spade, don’t be closed-minded.”
She glared at him. “You’re an idiot, Eli. You’re meant to be impartial. That’s your job, but you fail to realize that over and over again.” And with that, she walked from the bar, leaving him to his beer and his bias.
She’d solve it without him if she had to.
9
Charlie’s apartment was close to HQ, close enough that on night’s like this, she’d walk rather than take a shuttle. She needed to think. It was a struggle to process everything that had happened. Her father calling her, the fact that Absalon Shamood had died at all, and then the cases.
All of them. And the password that her ex-partner, now murdered by the State for the crimes he’d committed, had given her. A password to a cache that would give her the answers, or at least a hint as to what the State was actually doing.
Something dangerous and dark. But what?
It had to go deeper than the MemXor and the “accidents” that had happened.
Charlie strode down the city streets, the lights from the cars and lampposts illuminating her path. The city had a beauty of its own, with the glimmer of metal and glass, the people strolling along the sidewalks, some of them laughing, talking. They had no idea what was going on—or didn't care.
The State kept them happy, trapped in a golden cage so they felt precious and secure. But everything they did or saw was curated, and now that Charlie’s eyes were open to it, she couldn’t close them again.
Charlie ducked into a side alley that would bring her closer to her apartment building, mind still whirring. Her footsteps crunched on the grit in the alley, and she fixated on the sound, how real it was, and how quickly it could be erased if the State chose.
She didn’t harbor any illusions about her father and who he favored. If it came to choosing between the State and his daughter, he would choose—
Steps tracked through the alley behind her.
; Charlie kept her pace even, though every muscle in her body had tensed. There were no coincidences for her anymore. Charlie turned her head, ever so slightly, and caught a glimpse of the person following.
A man, face in shadow, wearing all black. He was tall with a wide stride, but he didn’t gain on her as he walked. Pursuing her without actually picking up speed.
Charlie kept her breathing even and focused on the end of the alley. It might be nothing. Shoot, it might be one of Levi’s men. But she couldn’t turn around and confront him without raising suspicion. If the State were watching, they would hear, they would know.
She turned the corner out of the alley and headed down the street. It was busier here, and she took the excuse to watch a shuttle pass, turn and catch another view of her pursuer.
He stood in the mouth of the alley and watched her. Not following, now, just standing there. His face was unmemorable, like a collection of benign features—dark hair, a straight nose, dark eyes, pale skin, and no standout features whatsoever.
Charlie turned her back on him and kept walking. She reached the front of her building, took to the steps, and reached the glass and chrome front doors. She let herself in, shut the door, then looked out.
He was across the road, now, seated on a bench under a lamppost, still watching. It was a threat. It had to be the State. They wanted to keep the pressure up because they knew, they had to since they’d bugged her apartment, and she’d gotten rid of the bugs herself.
Charlie proceeded up the stairs, ignoring the elevator. They wanted to scare her? They wouldn’t succeed. Nothing would take her off her focus on finding out what they were hiding.
She progressed to her floor, then down the hall, and came to a halt in front of her door. It was ajar. Lights on inside. Naturally, she hadn’t left it that way.