by Liana Brooks
Touching her nose, she wondered if Agent Rose liked freckles.
No.
Deep breath.
Agent Rose was a clone. Like her. She would understand.
By the time she reached the CBI office, she had her game face on. Calm, composed, and utterly in control. Exactly like her hero. She stepped into the room, swept it with a haughty glance, and caught on the eager smile of a ginger giant perched behind a ridiculously small desk.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m Junior Agent Dan Edwin. Can I help you today?” He reminded Ivy of the Irish setter that had gotten loose at last year’s dog show: energetic, eager to please, and too large for Ivy’s safety.
She had an insane urge to throw a ball to see if the junior agent would chase after it. She shook the image of a large red-haired puppy running down the hall from her head.
“I’m Officer Clemens from the local precinct. I rode in with a murder victim we found down on the beach. Agent MacKenzie upstairs asked if I could see if Agent Rose was available.” There, cool and calm as the Pacific.
“Oh! We haven’t fixed the phone since the rats got into it.” He stood up and towered over the room. Everything around him shrunk.
Ivy sat down from the shock, bouncing on the little office chair.
Edwin smiled, sidled across the room with an apologetic hunch, and knocked on the door.
A voice Ivy had only ever heard in news recordings came from the other room. “Yes?”
Edwin ducked inside and closed the door behind him.
Ivy’s hands started to sweat. Her face was going numb. She started counting breaths, five in, six out. Agent Rose was only one room away!
The door opened, and Ivy popped to her feet.
“Next of kin?” Agent Rose said as she stepped out of the office.
She looked exactly like her poster: crisp white blouse, navy blazer and skirt, black hair in a flawless, shining bun, and just enough mascara to capture the attention while maintaining a I-Woke-Up-Like-This freshness.
Ivy’s knees wobbled.
Agent Rose looked at her expectantly.
“This is Officer Clemens, ma’am,” Edwin said with a cheerful smile.
Agent Rose nodded. “You have a corpse for us?”
“Yes, ma’am. He washed up with the tide this morning, and I escorted him to the morgue. An Agent MacKenzie asked me to come ask if you’d be available to view it.”
Her smile was humorless but patient. “Well, if I didn’t find him a body to play with soon, he’d get bored. Edwin, I’m going to go see our new customer.” She turned to Ivy with a much friendlier smile. “Can you fill me in on the details as we walk to the morgue, or is the chief expecting you back before lunch?”
“No one will miss me,” Ivy said. She hurried after Agent Rose, almost stepping on her heels.
Agent Rose paused at the elevator and turned with another polite smile.
Ivy made a note to practice her smiles so she could put so much meaning into the look.
“First DOA case, Officer?”
“Yes, ma’am! My first real case.” She was hyperventilating.
They stepped into the elevator, and Ivy could smell her soap. She was going to faint from happiness.
“And they’re letting you handle it alone?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve been with the force for ten years now, as a drone. I’m a clone.” Ivy squeezed her hands together. They were clones together. Doing something important. Together. It was the happiest moment of her life. “I’ve always wanted to meet you,” she blurted out. “You’re amazing. A clone in the CBI. That’s amazing. All of us look up to you.”
Agent Rose sighed and squinched her eyes shut. When she started rubbing her temples, Ivy realized something was wrong.
“Um . . .”
Agent Rose shook her head. “It’s not your fault. The rumors were all over the place. But . . .”
Ivy held her breath, not sure what was going on.
“But I’m not a clone. I don’t have a clone. I do not support cloning or the harvesting of clone organs.” She looked sideways at Ivy as the elevator pulled to a stop. “I’m sorry.”
Ivy felt her world crashing down around her. “B-but, what about all the reports from this summer? Everyone said the bureau was covering up the fact that a clone was working as an agent.”
“There was a cover-up, but it didn’t involve clones.” Her tone was chilling.
“Not even the Chimes girl?”
With a sigh, Agent Rose said, “Melody had a Shadow, but that clone was never involved with the case.”
Ivy felt hollow. All those hopes and dreams of becoming someone real . . . “I’m sorry to have brought it up, ma’am.” She wasn’t even sure if the agent heard it, as her voice sounded so small to her own ears.
“Don’t be. It doesn’t bother me,” Agent Rose said. “I supported the Caye Law, and I support the integration of clones and Shadows into society. Your humanity isn’t based on how you were born.”
“I hope so,” Ivy whispered. Taking a deep breath, she rolled her shoulders back and put her game face back on. Agent Rose was still a hero of the clone rights movement. It wasn’t her fault she’d come from a uterus instead of a test tube. Still . . . a small part of Ivy wilted. There was no more guiding star in the midnight sky. No road out of the drone life she was trapped in.
“Stop hoping and start proving,” Agent Rose ordered as she keyed in the password for the morgue. “Tell me about our John Doe.”
Yes, ma’am. Ivy snapped to attention. “A little before eight, Mr. John Watson called 911 to report a dead body. Originally, everyone thought it was a drunk who went swimming. There are a ton of bars and hotels there, and the riptides have been bad for the past few days.”
Agent MacKenzie pushed a rolling chair out of the small office attached to the tiny morgue. “Hello.”
“You have a new body for me?” Agent Rose asked.
“No, yours is perfect, but I do have a wonderful homicide that Officer Clemens brought us.” He smiled at Rose, and Ivy blushed.
Agent Rose didn’t seem to notice his flirtation. “You two met already?”
Ivy nodded.
“We don’t usually have an ME,” Agent Rose said, “but Mac’s here on vacation. Trying to avoid the snowy weather in Chicago.”
“Oh.” Ivy didn’t ask why a vacationing ME was in the morgue working. That was CBI business.
He smiled. “Henry Troom is a friend of mine. I was planning to come down for a conference anyway. When he was arrested I was worried. He caught a lucky break, but I thought it would be a good idea to check on him.” Ivy could tell the explanation was for her, but his eyes were on Agent Rose the whole time.
Ivy studied her boots. She’d bet lunch Henry Troom wasn’t the only person this guy had come to District 8 to check on.
“How’d the John Doe die?” Agent Rose asked. “Drowning? Alcohol poisoning? Blow dart?”
“All three, actually,” Agent MacKenzie said with a smile.
Ivy stared at him. “But, I thought—”
He laughed. “Sorry, just joking. He was garroted—strangled from behind by something, I’m guessing a plastic rope or knotted bag. Something that was probably readily available. It certainly wasn’t a professional hit.”
“What?” Only one case came to mind that matched the description, and that had been a public-relations nightmare. “There was a similar case a few years back. Accidental drowning after a fishing line tangled around a boy’s neck. Could it have been something like that?”
Agent MacKenzie stared at her for a moment longer than was comfortable. If he told her she was an idiot and needed to hand in her badge, she probably would. There was something about his stillness that triggered a primeval impulse to flee.
“I think it is very unlikely that thi
s is accidental. John Doe is in his early twenties, has no ID on him, no fingerprints on file, and doesn’t match any known missing-person report in the district. He died midday—between eleven and two I’d say—of asphyxiation when someone wrapped something around his throat and pulled back, choking him. There’s subcutaneous bruising on his back where someone propped a knee to hold him steady. I need to do an autopsy to be sure, but I’m guessing he wasn’t in the water when this happened.”
“You said plastic,” Ivy said. “What makes you think the killer used that?”
“No fibers yet.” He shrugged. “A metal garrote would have cut into the skin, a fabric like a scarf would have left trace, maybe even a dye. There may be some when we do a microscan, but as smooth and as wide as the markings are, it looks like plastic to me. Just a hunch.”
“How long was he in the water?” Agent Rose was taking notes on a datpad.
Ivy pulled out her notebook and started taking notes, too.
“Two hours, tops. And, you’ll like this.” He pulled up an image on the screen showing the John Doe’s wrists. “See the red marks? Like his wrists were bound, but someone cut whatever was holding him off before the body was dumped.”
“Trying to make it look accidental?” Ivy suggested. The only time she’d seen bondage marks were on one of the domestic violence cases several years before.
“This would only look like an accidental death if you’d never worked a homicide before,” Mac said.
“Mac,” Agent Rose said with an exasperated tone, “how many people in this district do you think have ever seen a murder before?”
“We don’t get many,” Ivy said. “A few domestic violence calls, and two years ago during the heat wave, two old ladies started a fight at a shuffleboard match. Someone got hit with a stick, and someone else threw a puck for revenge. But other than that, it’s quiet here.”
“There was the Lexie Muñoz case,” Agent Rose said. “Petrilli took that. They said I had too many ties to Henry to be professional.”
Mac sneered. “Petrilli doesn’t know you well.”
“None of them do.”
Ivy cleared her throat. “New Smyrna Beach did an assist on the Lexie Muñoz case. But the newspapers buried it hard. Two people from out of town . . .” She trailed off. The killer still wasn’t in custody, which meant Miss MacKenzie hadn’t caught up with him yet. And that was definitely not something she had the clearance to talk about with the CBI.
MacKenzie frowned. “Right.” Another shrug. “It’s still pretty hard to make strangulation look like an accident.”
“But accidents happen,” she said. “A guy goes out for a swim, gets tangled in the swimming line, manages to keep his head above water as he tries to untangle himself but it cuts off his air supply, and he dies.”
Both agents were studying her like a bug that tried to salsa dance. She shrugged helplessly. “It’s happened before. Last time was in 2067 during a minitriathlon at the beach. Run a mile, bike a mile, swim a mile. Cory Andrews was a seventeen-year-old high-school junior and in the lead until he swam into a fishing line. The crew on the rescue boat got to him in minutes, but he was already unconscious.
“After that, the mayor ran on a campaign to clean up the beaches. It was all over the news during fishing season or whenever the vote to up the cost of fishing licenses comes up.”
Agent Rose grimaced. “So, there’s a chance someone could have tried to copycat the accident? Wonderful.”
“I wouldn’t look at local suspects first,” Mac said. “Whoever did this didn’t check the tide tables to make sure the body was washed out to sea.”
A perfectly shaped eyebrow rose over Agent Rose’s brown eyes. “Unprofessional. Opportunistic. Maybe accidental? A kidnapping gone wrong?”
“Maybe,” Agent MacKenzie said. “The guy was wearing a university T-shirt from one of their intercollegiate teams. I figured he’s probably a student, so I’m checking the class lists now. I should have a name and address within the hour.”
Agent Rose nodded.
Agent MacKenzie leaned his chair back and put his hands behind his head. “Sam, this isn’t a casual killing. It takes a lot of force to choke someone with a plastic bag. You don’t do that to a random stranger.”
Ivy said, “Maybe it was a robbery. Maybe he had something the killer wanted. I mean, I know it’s too early to connect the two, but that home invasion at Basilwood Apartments last week was violent, too. And all they wanted was Dr. Troom’s computer.” Henry had called her first, but she’d been pushed off the case. “Maybe it’s the weather. It seems like the town is attracting crazies lately.
Agent Rose tilted her head to her shoulder and back. “And Henry. If he hadn’t been at work, who knows what would have happened.”
“Who would want anything to do with Henry?” Agent MacKenzie asked. “He’s a nice guy, but it’s not like he’s still working under a defense contract—” He snapped his mouth shut with an audible click.
Agent Rose was giving him a look that said volumes in a language Ivy didn’t know. They were remembering something, a shared something, that was making the pieces fall into place for them.
“It’s not likely,” Agent Rose said.
“Bet you a dollar?” MacKenzie challenged her. He stood up.
Agent Rose folded her arms. “We’ll see. Get the autopsy done and get me this kid’s name.”
He held up a hand in surrender and dragged his chair in the direction of his office. “As you wish.”
“Officer Clemens?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Will the chief object to your working this case? It won’t be glamorous, but this is a quiet district with few resources, and I need someone to check the beach. I don’t want to start a manhunt if this really is just a tragic accident with a fishing line.”
“I won’t be missed.” She was starting to realize just how much she said that, and wondered if it might be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As if wondering that herself, Agent Rose raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure you would be. Make sure to check in at the precinct and report back here before calling it a day. Even if you find nothing, that matters.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ivy nodded a quick good-bye to Agent Rose and hurried out the door.
Her hero wasn’t everything she wanted her to be, but then again, heroes probably never were. Agent Rose was still an excellent agent, and it seemed like she was helping open a new path for Ivy.
CHAPTER 37
“As decoherence approaches, the future becomes a sharp point, the sword upon which dreams die.”
~ excerpt from the writings of the rebel poet Loi Liling I1—2069
Day 206/365
Year 5 of Progress
(July 25, 2069)
Central Command
Third Continent
Prime Reality
Several years ago, when Mac had gotten into reading apocalypse literature, Sam had tried a few. Breann Zander’s Absent Bridge about a gear-fueled sorceress fighting genetically altered humans in the wastelands of the Outback had left her bored although the movie was good. What she had liked was Death by the Cottonwood by Myra Lejean.
The book opened in a dusty, dark city surrounded by a storm, and even if it was really the protagonist’s depression-driven nightmare, that’s all Sam could think of when she saw what was left of Birmingham. How had Lejean put it?
Shrouds of darkening clouds spun around the city, quickly coiling like the hangman’s noose around the dead man’s throat. Buildings rose sharply, cutting into the sky and making it bleed black rain. . .
Perhaps the author had been traveling through iterations when she wrote it. Or maybe she’d been a node and dreamt of it. Either way, the description was spine-tinglingly accurate.
Broken towers, the tombstones of a forgotten civiliza
tion, stretched skyward as an ugly brown cloud of pollution circled. In time, Sam had no doubt, the toxins would win. Everyone here was living in a toxic crypt of their own making.
Landon clucked his tongue. “Like the view?”
“My Birmingham is beautiful. Called the city of dreams.” The first Muslim-American president was raised there. Sanaa Mian quoted Martin Luther King Jr. more than the Constitution. She’d come and gone before Sam was old enough to pay attention, but even in the Commonwealth, Birmingham was known as The City of Dreams. “How can anyone be happy here?”
“You have a better option?”
She hesitated. Taking them all with her wasn’t feasible but abandoning them hurt. “Maybe.” Maybe she could work out a trade deal. Give this iteration samples of the pollution-absorbing algae and trees that had been developed in Mexico in 2058. Offhand, she didn’t remember the name of the inventor, only that he’d been born with a genetic disease and survived in such a way that there were at least three biopics about him.
“We’ll think of something.”
Landon sneered at her, at the landscape, at life in general.
Sam licked her lips. “You said there’s a door there?”
“Somewhere in the city,” Landon said with a nod. “Me and mine, we don’t go out there much. Not anymore. I used to have some contacts.” He shook his head with a closed-off expression. “Last few months, things have gone sour. No more convoys out. Not much communication. Used to be that when we raided the stores, someone came for us. Now they act like nothing happened.”
“Why?”
He shook his head. “Something about a decoherence, whatever that means. There were posters up last time I was there. Might be a social movement.”
“Who actually runs things?”
“Central Command.” Landon pointed to a distant peak of a tower. “That is 156 floors, goes nearly a mile underground, and the base is big.”
Sam looked at him in confusion.