"Maybe there isn't a pattern," he said.
"Ever cynical, Hernandez."
"Yeah," he said dejectedly, then dragged his fingers down his face. The skin felt dry and cold. "Christ, I feel like I'm getting had."
Shazz's eyes bounced away from each other and came back, an expression that was totally opaque to Charlie. "I didn't quite understand that," the alien said.
"Which part?"
"I feel like I'm getting had," Shazz repeated in an exact reproduction of Charlie's voice.
It made his skin crawl.
"Like I'm getting conned. Ummm... deceived. Misled. Gas lighted."
"Ah, gotcha. So, who's getting to have you then?"
The fact that phrase appeared to make sense made Charlie a little dizzy. "Oh, uh... I didn't mean that literally. Just how I feel right this second."
"No... there might be something there. Gimme a second." Shazz tuned into his computer again, then stopped abruptly and looked back at Charlie. "We've been looking for connections in so many places... the Birthing Complex vandalism, Talia Reiser's murder, rumors of a blackmarket explosives deal... dozens of other open investigations. The only thing that seems to connect them is that phrase found at the scenes. Bright Cipher. But what if someone is raising the noise level to hide their signal?"
Charlie shook his head and blinked. "You lost me there, pal."
"Misdirection," Shazz said. "Someone is leading us in circles to divert our attention."
"Fuck," Charlie said.
"Fuck indeed."
They were both quiet, and the other noises of the room seemed to grow a little louder.
Charlie's addled brain lurched into motion. The trouble with the case had always been the seemingly random nature of the incidents. The three highest-profile cases seemed the least connected of all.
The Birthing Complex had been covered in hate speech and set on fire, with the code phrase written alongside a lot of familiar anti-alien propaganda. The damage was minimal but the message seemed clear, and it sent shockwaves through the Yuon Kwon. Their shaky trust in humans suffered a deep setback as a result.
Talia Reiser, a mother of three who worked at a human/Oikeyan outreach center, was electrocuted to death in a way consistent with the Sey Chen's abilities. Her charred remains were pinned to the center's outer wall, and the code phrase was found on a folded note inside her mouth.
Last, they'd been hearing constant rumblings through informants and other channels that someone was buying up mining explosives all over town. Some said that it was for one heist or another, others thought it was for a terrorist action, a fireworks show, even for mining. But the phrase Bright Cipher popped up again and again as the code-names of buyers, sellers, projects... That was the one thing that always turned up without fail.
"Bright Cipher. What does that mean, anyway? Like smart encryption or something?"
Shazz's heavy lids drooped. "You're asking me what English words mean?"
Charlie shrugged. "Humor me. I wasn't super good at school."
Shazz said, "Well... not encryption. A homonym. Cipher as in zero, naught, something worthless, an unimportant or unknown person."
"Didn't even know that was a word," Charlie said while scratching his head. "So, wait... like, nothing?"
"Yeah, that'd fit."
Maybe Charlie had been looking at the other word wrong, too. Not bright like that chubby kid with glasses, but bright like a signal flare. "Flashy nothing," he said, "a distraction."
"Fuck," Shazz said. "So... where do we start, pal?"
As Charlie tried to look at the whole picture, he suddenly found the shape familiar. He saw battlefield strategy—feints and disinformation—and that was one subject he'd always had a keen affinity for.
"Let's assume all of the big events are far from the real thing, either physically or style-wise. They'll draw a big circle around the actual target."
Shazz's eyes bounced outward again, but he said, "Oh, I see. Follow the peaks until you find a conspicuous valley."
"Right," Charlie said hesitantly. "So... for instance the Birthing Center... that was an attack against Yuon Kwon. Maybe the real target are humans. Or on the other side of the city. Not a huge lynch mob but just a few motivated individuals."
Shazz's hands pulled away from each other and the charge between them made a sound like a frog croaking. It was supposedly similar to a Hindu head-shake, which Charlie also didn't really get.
The alien said, "Or maybe the target is the older Yuon Kwon. Or Sey Chen. Or the target is in the air. There are too many variables, Hernandez."
His partner was right, but Charlie still felt a rush like he was onto something. It was a lot like being on something. He started writing every crazy notion down on a piece of paper. "It was a symbolic attack, so what was the message? That humans are dangerous to them. To go home."
"They vandalized the place where Yuon Kwon young are born. The Yuon Kwon would probably retract and focus on protecting their own."
"Good," Charlie said. "That'd leave other things unguarded. Something less personal to the Yuon Kwon."
Shazz tilted his head. "Or something less vulnerable."
"I can work with that... How about the Reiser murder?" Charlie asked. "She was a social worker. Were they trying to shut down the outreach program?"
"No," Shazz said, "I think I've got something here. You have to understand how horrified my kind are by this. We're a peaceful people, and would never use our abilities like that. Many have redoubled their efforts to live close to you humans, but the way you look at us in the street now..."
"Someone wants us to distrust you."
"And incite your people to attack us, maybe?"
"Maybe," Charlie said. He thought of all the terrible things he'd seen done by otherwise ordinary men in uniform, things that were okay because they were at war. He said, "Maybe the goal was to get humans to turn a blind eye on one another."
Shazz waggled his many fingers. "Alright, what do we have so far?"
Charlie scanned over his notes. "As far as my conspiracy theory skills are concerned... Hmmm. A few humans planning something against a normally well protected target. But what about these fucking explosives? I can't seem to turn this one around. Who's reacting to that?"
"We are," Shazz said. "Civil Protectors."
"Yeah?"
The alien went on, "This has us chasing leads all over the city, seeking out people we suspect are capable of making or distributing explosives. We're trying to figure out who they've sold to, and we're looking for a big cache."
Charlie scribbled on his paper. "Backwards, backwards, backwards," he mumbled. "So... instead of shaking down lowlifes and scumbags, we should be looking for someone respectable, I guess."
Shazz said, "We've been looking for something that's already here... but it's not a bomb, it's small, and it's on its way." His buzzing voice carried a tone of grim finality.
Charlie's heart froze with dread, but skepticism swelled up against it. "I really can't tell," he said, "if this is someone really fucking brilliant, or if we're just incredibly stupid and desperate."
Shazz said, "I don't know about you, Charlie, but I'm not stupid."
That was the moment Charlie would normally slug a friend's shoulder, but from the look of Shazz, that might break something.
Half-baked theory or no, it still left them without suspects. It didn't give them any leads to follow. Charlie began to drum on his forehead while the fact gnawed at him.
He began to flip through the files again with his other hand, glancing at descriptions of evidence and dozens of witness statements. Something caught his eye but it took a second to register, and he flipped back to find it.
The page in question was covered in notes, containing nearly twice as many as anything else in the stack. It was an interview with the outreach center's administrator, Maxwell Lee. Was this the product of an over-enthusiastic interviewer, or a very talkative subject?
Charlie held the page up a
nd waved it at Shazz. "Once you know you're getting played, the most helpful guy in the room suddenly looks the most suspicious."
Shazz's eyelids lowered again. "I can't see anything," he said with very affected annoyance.
The Sey Chen couldn't read at all. Their eyes didn't see in the right spectrum to pick up something as subtle as writing on a page, and Charlie felt like an ass for forgetting.
"Maxwell Lee," he said. "Outreach Administrator. We should go have a word with him. I've got a hunch he's reaching out in more ways than one."
Chapter 24
Procedural
Charlie and Shazz traveled aboard a grey and orange Okuta Yuon Kwon named Gadfly, who'd volunteered to work with the precinct. Charlie had no clue how she'd gotten that awful name, nor did he really want to know. He didn't even want to know what the heck a gadfly was.
The ship was only about two years old, having been born after the first wave of Oikeyan defectors arrived at Amiasha. The group was a few thousand strong and composed of a dozen or more varieties of aliens, and among them were a handful of trundling mother Yuon Kwon who seemed slow and tired from age. Exhausted or not, they started breeding almost immediately after they were allowed inside, and the streets and skyways quickly overflowed with their living traffic.
Gadfly and Charlie kept a low profile, zipping along at a smart pace only a little faster than the other vehicles. They'd need the element of surprise if there was anything to their theory; the whole thing would go straight down the shitter the second Maxwell Lee knew they were onto him.
They swooped down out of the skylane and toward the outreach center. The building was one of the few totally human constructions inside of the city, and looked for all the world like an old government building. The walls were high and stately, supported by thick and sturdy columns that circled the structure. The roof featured a glass dome, which the Yuon Kwon stables were located around.
Gadfly set down in a stall and plucked up her feeding hose while Charlie and Shazz folded down the creature's human-made canvas top.
The two protectors hopped onto the tiled roof and into the still falling rain. It was body warm, having recently been excreted from Amiasha's skydome for reasons Charlie never cared to know. As long as he thought of it as rain, it wasn't a problem.
Drops of it popped and fizzled between Shazz's outstretched hands. "Are you sure about Lee, Hernandez?"
Charlie shook his head. "Sure is too strong a word," he said. "But what else can we do? Wanna head back to the office and reread more reports?"
Shazz's hands pulled apart and made the bullfrog noise again, and Charlie chose to interpret it as begrudging agreement.
They left Gadfly in her stall and marched for an open door, then took the steps down into the building. The stairwell quickly opened into the building's upper lobby, a brightly colored and fresh looking room with a number of empty chairs and a large reception desk.
The pair walked up to the desk and the young man sitting behind it smiled. "How can I help you, Protectors?" He spoke in an Eastern European accent, with a slight British affectation.
The light between Shazz's hands increased. "We were hoping to speak with Administrator Lee. We have more questions concerning Talia Reiser's murder. Is he in?"
The young man looked through his papers. "I'm afraid the chief administrator isn't in currently. Let me find you an open appointment for later today..."
Charlie leaned over the desk. "That won't be necessary," he said. He winked at Shazz, and realized a second later the gesture probably didn't mean anything to the alien. "Are any of the other senior staff available?"
"It's an unusual hour, Protector, but let me see..." The receptionist flipped through a few more pages. "Just Doctor Benson at the moment," he said.
"Who's that?"
The young man put on an artificially sweetened smile. "She's an, ummm... brilliant biologist. Our mission here is to improve understanding between races, and Doctor Benson is involved in the... more scientific aspect of that."
The way the receptionist edited himself seemed like a warning.
Shazz took charge and said, "Let her know we're on our way in."
The receptionist frowned but picked up his phone and made the call, while Charlie and Shazz headed off down the hall. They checked a directory at the first intersection, and Charlie was glad to see that Doctor Benson's office was in the same area as Maxwell Lee's.
They took several turns and found themselves at the end of a hall with three office doors, two on one side and one on the other.
Charlie knocked politely on Benson's door but heard nothing. After a second, there was some rustling, and then more nothing. He knocked again.
"What?!"
Shazz said, "Civil Protectors. May we have a word?"
Pause.
"Yes, come in."
Shazz motioned to the door, and Charlie reached out and turned the handle. It swung open, and what awaited on the other side would've made his mother drop dead.
Papers. Stacks and stacks of typed pages with chicken scratch scrawled in the margins. Boxes overfilled with binders full of more papers were piled in every corner. Benson, an older black woman with hair long past grey, sat with her elbows on the desk and her head in her hands.
Two books sat directly below her face, one overlapping the other.
"What?" she asked wearily.
"No one told you we were coming?"
She shook her head. "I never answer the bloody phone. It's never anything important. Now what do you want? I'm very busy."
"Talia Reiser," Charlie said.
Some of the coffee-fueled light vanished from her eyes. She looked more tired and years older. "I've already told you people everything I know. Can't you just leave me in peace?"
Shazz quietly said, "Not everything. We wanted to ask you... about some of the staff here."
Charlie instantly thought Shazz had given away too much.
She looked at the alien curiously, the way a babysitter looked at one of those weird kids who collects bugs or eats paste. "Interesting," she said.
Charlie closed the door while Shazz stepped closer to Doctor Benson's desk. The alien said, "Have you noticed any strange behavior among your coworkers in the past several months?"
"Not much in particular," she replied, continuing to study him intently.
"I'd appreciate," Shazz said, "if you'd stop staring like that. I'm not a damned specimen."
Benson smiled with her eyes but not her mouth. "I'm sorry... it's not like that. I'm just surprised by you."
"How so?"
She adjusted her glasses and chortled. "Well, I was beginning to fear that your people wouldn't lift a single finger to stop this madness."
Shazz blinked slowly and dipped his body forward, bowing. "That may've been the case once, but times are changing us. We're starting to understand that our refusal to kill mustn't prevent us from standing up for ourselves."
Benson nodded.
"It's a slow process," Shazz said with a thoroughly convincing sound of disappointment.
"So," Benson said, "what else can I tell you?"
Charlie considered subtlety—he could ask questions about a dozen names he remembered from the directory just to cover his tracks—but he was getting supremely tired of bullshit. "What can you tell me about Maxwell Lee?" he asked.
Benson furrowed her brow. "The chief administrator? Well, he's a very reserved man."
"Reserved like secretive?" Charlie asked.
"No... more like boring. He's a bean counter."
Shazz asked, "Do you know how he got his position here?"
"The same as most of us, I suppose. He had the right skills, an interest in making this whole thing work, and just showed up one day. He's been with the center since the beginning."
Charlie gritted his teeth. A handful of years back, there'd have been things like employment records, resumes, social security paperwork. He didn't have shit. "Any family? Friends?"
Benson
shrugged. "I don't know. I've always assumed so, but... as I said, he's just so boring. He's the sort you don't even want to get stuck next to at the lunch counter. You'll spend the next hour hearing about missing remainders or whatever hog-wash has caught his fancy now."
"Yeah, I get it," Charlie said. When hiding in broad daylight, it was better to be boring than secretive. Boring made sure no one was even interested.
He looked over at his partner and stopped himself from giving the alien a pat on the shoulder. "I don't think she's got anything for us," he said.
Shazz bowed toward Benson again and said, "Thank you for your time, Doctor."
Benson smiled. "You're very welcome. Please come back any time, and good luck with your investigation."
Then she dove back into her study, while Charlie and Shazz stepped back into the hall.
"Well, wasn't that informative?" Shazz asked sarcastically.
"A little," Charlie said, "but the next part should be better." He crossed the hall and tried Maxwell Lee's door but found it soundly locked.
"Before you loudly kick the door in, can I suggest a sneakier option?"
Charlie gestured for Shazz to go ahead.
The alien stepped up and held his hands to either side of the handle. Lights sparkled between his finger tips followed by a sharp click, then he waved Charlie forward and stepped aside while his partner opened the door.
Unlike Benson's office, Maxwell Lee's was a testament to minimalist style and good parenting. Everything was meticulously organized and filed away, every knickknack set at the same angle on the shelves. There was hardly anything to search through, save for some personal effects in the corner and a handful of loose-leafed books.
"Fuck," Charlie said.
Shazz's cartoonishly large eyes scanned the room, and his tiny waving fingers went limp.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Charlie chanted, growing quieter until his lips moved without sound. He'd never wanted so badly to be Sherlock Holmes in his life. Unfortunately, he knew damned well that he could stare at a dust pattern on a desk or a broken shoe for days and never figure out who killed the governess.
Shazz brought his hands back together. "What does bean counter mean?"
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