by Ren Warom
Nia wipes away furious tears with a forearm, hurting her face, and continues devouring the words on the page. Looking for answers. Unable to process what she’s reading. After the discovery was made, the team members remaining realised Walken was not present. A search of the lab was undertaken, but it was too late. Walken was found unresponsive in the comm suite, having succumbed to a massive myocardial infarction. Bone was hunted down, arrested for murder, malpractice, and fraud over accounts he’d falsified to cover his endeavours. For Walken’s untimely demise, GyreTech wanted to add manslaughter to the list, but when Leif Adams arrived at City, everything changed. Concerned about his reputation, he was unwilling to see Bone prosecuted. He contacted several connections in the Notary and had them speak with key members of GyreTech. Nia’s not surprised to see her uncle’s involved. What’s unbelievable is that an agreement was reached that he and City both consented to. Unheard of.
Bone’s choice was made simple, disappear to a penal colony, wiped from record, or take a job as a Mort, just like his father––except Bone would be under constant scrutiny from GyreTech, the Notary, and even City. Perhaps frightened, now he was caught, under pressure by his father, or simply uncaring, Bone agreed, and the past was wiped clean, in truth and from his own recollection. The file doesn’t state by which method, memory patching or wiping, but it doesn’t matter, really. The deceit is the issue. Then the lab’s records, the research, the bodies, were made to disappear, too. Even Walken’s death was altered to the history she knows, sudden death in his sleep of unknown causes at twenty-five, a shocking loss to genetic research.
This report is the only remaining evidence of actual events, and reading the final words, Nia’s barely able to breathe anymore, crippled by grief, by unimaginable rage. This explains so much of how Leif was with Bone. He was terrified the wipe would fail, terrified his son would relapse and be put to death. As she folds the file shut, the last page slips aside to reveal a clear sheath at the back, holding two holos. Incongruously, they’re black and white, likely built from laser-copies of lab IDs, but there he is, staring up at her: Bone. And she doesn’t know him. This younger version of Bone is a stranger. He might be wearing a familiar face, but the man behind it is not the man she knows. Her knuckles blanch white as she grips the file, her tears spattering the plastic, but she no longer notices them.
She looks at Stark, helpless. “Tell me this isn’t true. Please.”
Stark thumbs the recording and Spaz’s voice fills the room. Though he can’t know her connection to Spaz, it’s the final nail in the coffin of her disbelief. Nia’s pole-axed, too much to even continue crying. How’s she never seen this in Bone? She’s got gang instincts, sees far deeper than other folk, and there’s no clinical method guaranteed to override criminal impulses. Wipes are barbaric, often clumsy, and memory patches can be time bombs in the brain. Neither has any impact on behaviour. Reprogramming can change behaviours, but he couldn’t have been a Mort after that level of rehabilitation. The only possible conclusion, is that the patch he was given, was created to become part of him, overriding his previous personality, and that’s not good at all. Because if it fails, he could disappear. Disgust and anger mingle within her like gasoline, ready to implode.
“So, what does it mean, Stark? Are you trying to suggest Bone is Rope? Or that Rope is someone from the lab, intent on exposing Bone and making him pay for his past?”
“I know Bone’s not Rope,” Stark says to her, his hand tugging through his hair, making a mess. “I investigated him before pulling him on the case. He’s predictable, fixed in his routines. He works, he drinks, he sleeps. There’s nothing else in his life, and no way he could have masterminded this level of gameplay. He expends all his energy just surviving a day.”
“So, you think exposure is the end game?”
Stark acknowledges that with a sober nod. “Yes, and the intricacy of the game suggests significant premeditation.”
“Fuck. You don’t fix an atrocity by creating one.” She shakes her head, way beyond disbelief or disgust. “We have to stop Rope. Are you any closer to finding him?”
“Even if I were, I couldn’t. I’ve been ordered to stand down. The Notary are likely to take over, deal with it themselves. All searches for victims will be suspended, then. They’ll let them rot.”
Nia’s horrified. “We can’t let that happen. And what about Bone? He’s unravelling, could be on the way to a patch rupture. Hell alone knows what might happen then, or who might end up hurt.”
“Agreed, hence my earlier question. Do you think you might care to answer with the truth now?”
Of course, she will. This changes everything. “He met a woman. Said she did something incredible, impossible––shed her skin and flew off through a fucking roof into the night. He said it was transmog.” She rubs her forehead, inexpressibly weary. “I thought he was a bit delusional, to be honest, but I didn’t tell him so. Even Share and Share Alike’s mutilation can’t convince me that transmog could ever work the way he described it.”
“What was her name, Nia? Can you remember?”
“Yes,” she says softly. “He said her name was Lever.”
Stark rears back. “Lever?” he asks, and she can see the shock in him. It’s rid his face of expression, whitened his cheeks. “Is that where he is now? With Lever?”
“No. He can’t find her. He’s been trying to. That’s what the tattoo’s about. She had it, and now he has it, too. He mailed me yesterday evening and said he was going to talk to a woman called Ebony about Lever. He told me he’d be back this morning.” And her temper rises again into sharp peaks. “He promised.”
“Nia,” Stark says with dangerous calm, “we need to contact Ebony. Do you have any idea who she is?”
Nia sniffs. “Not a clue, but he said she’s Zone gang, so I know someone who will.” She pulls out her cell, activates a quickdial. “Hey, Unc, I need a number.”
“Nia! What number’s that, little hen?” Spaz shouts over the noise.
“A woman called Ebony, she works at a place called Neophyte.”
“Should I be asking why?”
“No. Probably not.”
“Fair enough. Two shakes and it’ll be on your cell.” There’s a soft click as the phone hangs up.
A moment later, Nia’s cell pings softly. She thumbs the number on the display and waits till the other end picks up. “Hi, is this Ebony?”
“Sure. Who’s this?”
“Nia Lark. I’m a friend of Bone’s.”
“Nia Lark. Spaz’s niece?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you need to know?”
“If you have any idea where Bone is. He’s not answering calls.”
“Oh no,” Ebony says, her voice full of dismay. “I told him to be careful.”
“Ebony, please, if you know where he is …”
“I don’t know where he is,” Ebony interrupts. “But I know where he was going.”
“Where?”
“Edgeway. Records department. He was looking for an ID. An address.”
“Lever’s?” Nia asks, careful to give Ebony an easy way to acknowledge.
“Yes.”
“Thanks, Ebony.” She ends the call and says to Stark, “Edgeway.”
Stark gives her a sharp nod. “Let’s go.”
He’s got that long, black car of his waiting outside, and it amuses her how the engine purrs to life as soon as he exits the Mortuary doors. His driver clearly knows him well. He pushes her without ceremony into the back seat, leans forwards to the driver, and snaps, “Edgeway, Tal. Fucking tank it. Use those security pass codes you ripped from Bone at the Zone gates; we’ll deal with the fallout later.”
Tal grins, touching a finger to his forehead. “Right you are, boss.”
Nia squeals a little as the car shoots off, wheels ploughing through the snow as if superheated, as if there’s actually some road surface there to grip. Even the SF’s tanks slide, if they take off anything like this
fast.
“What the hell kind of tyres do you have?”
“Damned good ones. It’s necessary. I sink a good deal of my crappy budget into this. I make sure I can get where I’m needed.”
Tal speeds them to the Zone, subsonic sirens blaring to unlock the lights and open restricted routes built for a city force stretched beyond endurance. The guards at the Zone gates are suspicious, but they don’t argue the use of Bone’s codes, and Tal’s in, booking it to the Lake, to Edgeway. Rearing up into the clouds, bold and imposing, Edgeway’s one of the oldest, most prestigious genetic surgeries in the whole of the Zone. In this building, specialists can make anyone pretty much anything, within the realms of legality. For a price. Nia’s presence gives them leave to go direct to the records dept. Printed copies and computer back-ups of patient files are in a bunker, miles away in Mace, but the computer files, filled by each surgeon in the building, are collated in a huge lab on the twelfth floor. She knows the Records Master well, having come here in her capacity as Bone’s assistant. No corpses on Gyre West tables have expensive gens from here, but quite a few have surgeries from theatres on the seventh and eighth floors––complex implants and bodily alterations less pricey than delicate gen manipulation.
In the records room, all is silent. Sat in his enclave, far away from light or people, is Caden. Facing the thin glass of his screen, he says without turning to look, “Nia Lark.”
“Caden.”
Stark leans in, frowning, but before Nia can warn him to keep his counsel, Caden speaks again, “A City Detective. Stark, no less. Interesting. Would you both perhaps be after the same information as Bone Adams?”
“We are,” says Nia.
Caden swivels to face them, but he has no face, only a smooth glass surface running with data streams like illuminated tears within the glass. His body, too, is stripped to bare essentials, wired into his chair, a mobile station hovering above the floor, with a haze of heat beneath. Caden’s a bio-drive, rewired and genned to become a living network interface, safer and less unstable than AI. Somewhere under that shining facade is what’s left of this man’s face, the skull and his network of facial and cranial nerves wired to circuitry. He’s hanging on to human by a bare thread of body parts, but almost all machine in the mind.
“It is an unusual request, most hazardous to obtain,” Caden says. His voice is disembodied, floating on the air. “You being here so soon after Bone Adams, and with a City Officer, too, would suggest either Bone Adams, or myself, or the both of us, are in trouble.”
“You can’t calculate that?” Stark asks, only a dab of sarcasm wafting through genuine interest. Bio-drives are uncommon and too costly. City budgets don’t stretch to such extravagances. Nia stifles a smile, her first encounter with Caden was equally confounding.
“I am a glorified computer-mind, capable of making many seemingly instantaneous conclusions resulting from calculations so fast, they would burn out your neurones, but I am not a medium,” Caden replies without inflection, though the humour is blatant.
“You’re in no trouble, Caden,” Nia says politely, shooting a warning glance at Stark. “I’m sorry to ask you to crack SA files again, but it’s important.”
“I am certain it is, Nia Lark, and do not fear, I am working the encryptions already,” replies Caden. “It won’t take me as long as it took for Bone Adams. I know where I am going this time.” There’s a pause in which a soft humming can be heard, the sound of a multitude of programs running to crack Establishment encryptions. “If this address is the crux of the problem, then you may wish to hurry,” Caden says to Nia. Though there’s no inflection in his voice, she doesn’t imagine the increased hum of the room’s computers, almost anxious in tone.
“Why?” Stark demands.
Caden’s bland voice informs him serenely, “I provided said address to Bone Adams yesterday evening. I might deduct from your being here, and requiring this information from me, that he is not able to give it to you himself. By which fact, I take it that he is missing. If so, then it must be concluded that he has been missing since going to this address, and he will have gone there last night. His agitation and excitement were palpable.”
Nia throws a worried glance at Stark. He smiles reassurance, but the depth of worry in his eyes sets her stomach to boil. “I understand,” she says.
“Information received,” Caden says. “Sending to your personal account, Nia Lark. Bone Adams insisted I dictate. I assumed it was paranoia, but perhaps he had reason. I have disguised and erased my tracks and this transferral well, as I did with Bone, and I will now erase both visits, but I advise great care nonetheless. Breaking into Establishment files twice in so short a span is perilous. They may catch the breach and trace it. Once they trail it back to me, they will be within sniffing distance of you, despite my camouflage work. No matter your connections, I am very much afraid you would bear the brunt of their disapproval.”
Nia nods. “Understood. Thank you, Caden.”
“A pleasure. Now, if you will excuse me, I have new files coming in.”
Back down in the forecourt, beside the open door of Stark’s car, Stark takes Nia’s arm. “You don’t have to come; you know that.”
Nia inclines her head just a touch. “But I want to,” she says, “and you know there’s no way of stopping me.”
“Unless I’m underhand,” Stark tells her.
Nia runs her tongue beneath her top lip, over her teeth. “There’d be consequences,” she says, soft and definite, so he hears the threat.
Stark releases her arm and leans over the edge of the door. “Spaz is Unc?” He’s resigned, a little pissed off.
“My dad’s younger brother,” she says. “He took over from Uncle Jell, who was the eldest.”
“Inherited?”
“No, he killed him. It was necessary.”
Stark huffs out. “That’s some family.”
Nia gets into the car. “That’s right,” she tells him, her voice cat-satisfied. “And I’m not afraid to use them.”
Stark barks a laugh. “I admire that,” he says, surprising her. “But you may not like what you see,” he warns, taking the address from her cell and sending it to Tal’s console. The car purrs forwards.
“I work in a mortuary, Stark. Even if we find Bone in pieces, I’ll stay professional until I have the privacy to fall apart, myself.”
Stark raises a brow. He doesn’t need to express what he’s thinking, she sees it all too clear. He doubts her mettle. He saw her reaction to Share and Share Alike, and probably caught her this morning, too, being all unprofessional and fucked up, surrounded by those awful, twisted corpses. Nia turns to stare fixedly out the window, her heart rattling in her chest like machine gun fire.
Chapter 37
Darkness … cold … such pain … such fear …
Foul tasting vomit floods Bone’s mouth, runs over his chin, and drips to the floor, muffled and distant. The sound is frightening, holds the immediate resonance of memory, but these are just his dreams invading during waking hours. They have to be. His body shakes with fine, sweated shivers, like when it’s so very bad, he could drown in that amber, olive swirl, corrosive and sublime. He coughs to clear rank vomit aftertaste and ropes around his ribs sear deep into his skin, biting and constricting. So familiar. Dreams become reality. The Mort becomes the victim.
No reason to doubt it. Rope has him.
Another mouthful of puke rises, thick and caustic. He retches, his head drooping, his hair sticking to his face in sodden strings. Vomit bubbles from his nose, acidic and burning. Bone closes his eyes against the sting of it and tries not to hear the rush of liquid hitting the floor, the rhythmic drips that follow. Aching in waves, he heaves and heaves again. There’s nothing left to come up, but still he heaves, the thick taste in his throat making it impossible to stop. He gasps at the pain, ribs creaking and straining with each contraction until he’s able to stop.
Darkness surrounds him like water, closing in around him,
hard as the ropes that bind him, and panic unravels his breathing to sharp pants. Scraps of dreams rise from the darkness, both inside and out, assaulting him hard as physical blows.
The shatter of glass … Soft laughter …
They’re vivid. Too real. He wants to run from them, but there’s nowhere to go. He tries to cry out for help, but all that comes is a husky wisp of noise that hurts worse than the pain rimming his rib cage, and panic takes over. He starts thrashing against his bonds, his whole body twisting hard. The pain is immediate and catastrophic, a thunderstorm of shrieking nerves. It halts the breath in his chest, suspends the beat of his heart, and brings more of those dreams crashing through his mind.
Migraine sharp pain … red circles … red circles in the white … screaming … screaming …
And he’s screaming, too, harsh bursts of high-pitched air he’s unable to stop. He struggles for air. Bright snatches of light pop, snap, and sparkle across his vision until the darkness around him looms and snatches him back into itself.
Chapter 38
Tal’s driving so fast, the scenery’s blurred to a featureless smear, but it takes him over an hour and a half, weaving and playing through insane traffic and using the side ways and passes, to drive from the Zone’s south gate to the address in Gyre Central. This area is far enough in to avoid actual violence, but there are still the quietly tense figures of City Officers and local gang members––Spine Freaks––posted on the rooftops, standing sentry, keeping the uneasy peace. Tal pulls up outside the tall, grizzled aspect of a building, which looks to have been unchanged for decades, the warped windowframes of dirty plastic speckled with pigeon shit, the plascrete slab-work faded and crumbling. The street is quiet of traffic, like most residential back roads, and the car engine cuts off to unearthly silence.