by Matt Forbeck
And then I'd really get started.
I knew the halls of the headquarters well, and being there lent me some small comfort. I'd served the Secret Service for far longer than this mass of glassteel and reinforced concrete, and with luck I'd still be around when its walls came down. Still, returning to them always felt more like coming home than it did when I strolled into my condo at the Watergate Hotel.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and fought the urge to shake it off and punch the man attached to it. Despite being the longest-serving member of the Secret Service, I knew that Patrón would take a dim view of me assaulting him in the middle of his own headquarters. There's only so much leeway that being reborn that day can earn you.
"I know how you're feeling right now, Dooley," Patrón started.
"Of course you do." I didn't bother looking at him. I kept walking away. I just wanted to get back to my office, reconnect to the world, and get to work. The quicker I found this bastard, the better, and the less time I'd have to seethe over what he'd done to me.
"I've been killed too." I knew Patrón was only trying to sympathize with me, but I wasn't having it.
The other agents we passed in the hall all found something else interesting to look at on the nearest walls or through the closest windows. I recognized some of them, but the set of my jaw broadcast that I wasn't in the mood to chat.
"We've all been killed, Patrón. Every damned amortal one of us. That wasn't murder. That was rape with bullets."
Patrón opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. "All right," he said. "Then let's find the bastard and make him pay."
"'Let's'? As in 'you and me'? Is that option even legally on the table?" I scoffed at him. "Whose jurisdiction is this? Capitol blues? DC? FBI?"
Patrón jogged a few steps to keep up with me and shook his head. "Your body was found in the District of Columbia, so normally DC Homicide would have the first crack at this. However–"
"Always with the howevers."
"The FBI would love to have a crack at such a high-profile case, so they've been pressing to get involved."
"But you told them to– Wait." I stopped dead in the corridor. Surprised, Patrón sailed past me, then spun around to face me again. Sunlight streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling windows lining one side of the hall, and despite the youth of his body, in the bald light of day Patrón looked old.
I glared right into his aged eyes. "How high profile is this?"
Before he even answered, I knew he'd let it spin out of control.
"The killer made that recording and posted it to the web. Then he pinged the major news agencies, and they grabbed it and ran. It's been the top-trending topic worldwide for the past twenty-four hours."
Patrón gave me a "what can you do?" shrug. "Ronan," he said. "It was a slow news cycle. It'll fade."
I brushed past him, leaving him to catch up with me again. A story as juicy as this would have a lot of life in it, I knew. I could just see the headlines: "World's Oldest Man Murdered Again!" "Amortal No More?" "Who Murdered Methuselah?"
The kill-porn sites would get themselves worked up in a frenzy, breaking the thrideo apart frame by frame. The rightwing establishment would see it as a full-frontal assault on them and their amortal base. The left-wing protesters would recognize a potential hero for their cause in the man in black. It hit enough hot-button topics that every major media faction would try to co-opt the killing for its own pet cause. Among all this, they'd ignore the most important part: I'd been killed, and the murderer was still at large.
"We have full jurisdiction on this one, Dooley," Patrón said as he chased after me, trying to catch me before I reached my office and shut the door in his face. "The President herself has given the order for everyone else to back off and cooperate with all of our requests. You and your partner have the agency's full backing on this one."
I ground to a halt at that and turned to scowl at Patrón. "Partner?" I said. "I haven't had a partner in decades. I work alone. You know that."
Patrón held up his hands and shrugged. He looked anything but helpless. "You've just been killed, Dooley, and in a horrible and nasty and public way. There's the danger you might not be able to think clearly here. You need the help."
"A babysitter, you mean," I snarled. "And no, I don't."
I turned, strode through the door to my office, and slammed it behind me. Many of the other offices in the place had the standard pocket doors that recognized you and – if you were authorized to enter the room – slid aside when you approached. I preferred to put my trust in a set of well-oiled hinges, a thick slab of oak, and a centuries-old lock.
I twisted the deadbolt home, knowing that Patrón couldn't override something so simple, at least not with a simple wave of his hand. I glared at him through the polarizable glass that made up my office's front wall, then turned to see a beautiful woman sitting behind my desk.
"Get out," I said.
The woman smiled at me. She was tall for a woman, nearly my height, dressed in a smart dark suit that nearly screamed "federal agent." She had a perfect, wide smile bracketed by deep dimples. She wore her curly dark hair down to her shoulders, and it framed her flawless olive-skinned face. The bit of gray touching her temples, along with the slight smile wrinkles around her lively brown eyes, told me that she was no amortal. First-lifer, for sure.
She stood and walked around my desk, extending her hand to me. "Agent Dooley," she said. "Welcome back. You may not remember me. I'm Agent Amanda Querer."
I ignored her hand until she put it back in her pocket. "I think you're in the wrong office," I said.
She gave me an understanding smile. Had I not been so furious, I might have admitted she was gorgeous. The hormones pumping through my new body urged me to do much more than that.
"I'm right next door," she said, "so I can see how you might think there could be some confusion, but I've been assigned to help out with your case."
I moved around the other side of the desk and sat down in my chair. She stood behind one of the pair of guest chairs sitting before me.
"I don't need the help."
"I can understand how you feel."
"Can you?" I said, letting loose with my disbelief. "How many times have you been killed?"
"I hardly think that I need to be murdered to dredge up some sympathy for you."
I snorted at that. "I've died eight times now. Three times in the process of saving the life of a President, twice while protecting foreign dignitaries, once in a manner that's still classified far above your level of clearance, and once by accident."
"And this time you were murdered."
"The other seven times someone killed me don't count?"
"Murder requires intent. The people who killed you before – the ones I know of, at least – meant to murder someone, but not you. You just happened to get in the way."
"You have a lovely way of framing my sacrifices."
"I like to keep things as clear as I can."
I opened my mouth to snap at her, then closed it. I reconsidered my words before I spoke. "I'm sure that's just one of the many excellent reasons that Patrón assigned you to this case, but he's just wasting your time. I'm going to figure out who did this. Alone."
Querer shrugged as she walked toward the door. "And I respect your desires. I really do. But I have my orders."
I sat back in my chair. "Ignore them. I always do."
She reached for the deadbolt. I figured she might fumble at it. Most people her age had rarely seen one. She flipped it without an instant's hesitation. "I'm afraid they come straight from the top," she said as Patrón strolled into the room.
"Thank you, Agent Querer," Patrón said as he straightened his cheap tie. "I'm glad to see that someone around here still knows how to play as part of the team."
I glared at Patrón's tie. Just because our uniform code insisted on clip-on ties didn't mean they had to look like them. Sure, it's wonderful to know that an assailant can't strangle you with a piece o
f your own clothing that you've conveniently draped around your neck, but they do make them so you don't have to look like you stole your tie from a snotnosed kid going for his First Communion.
I folded my arms in front of me, leaned back in my chair, and glowered at Patrón. He snaked his way between the two guest chairs and splayed his meaty hands on my desk. He met my gaze. No matter how much I might not have liked Patrón, I had to respect how much of a hard-ass he could be. Licking a few boots might help make you the director of the Secret Service, but it wouldn't keep you there for the seventy-six years and counting he'd put in.
"Do you like living, Dooley?" he asked.
When we'd been chatting in the hallway before, he'd been willing to cut me some slack. The idea that the hallway was private was a thin fiction, of course, but one most agents bought into for the sake of convenience. Here, though, in an office and directly in front of a subordinate, he wasn't about to let me push him around.
"I seem to have grown attached to it."
"Good," he said, allowing a self-satisfied smirk to grow on his face. "Then you know what you need to do to remain attached to it."
I cocked my head at him. "You're not threatening me, are you, sir?" If he wanted me to pretend to respect him, then I'd do just that – and no more.
Patrón pushed back from the desk and stood up straight. "Of course not. I'm just reminding you that the access you have to the Amortals Project starts and ends with your employment here. If you were to force me to fire you, I'd do so only with the utmost regret, especially considering your long record of service to your country."
"No one has ever served longer or better, sir," I said. I knew where he was headed with this, but I wasn't going to let him get away with an implied threat here. If he wanted to put me in my place, he needed to spell it out.
"If you were to leave your position here, you would lose out on your generous salary."
"What does money mean to me, sir?"
"I read your tax filings every year, Agent Dooley. I know you've made a number of wise long-term investments. They might even come to enough to purchase a revivification policy from the Department of Health and Human Services for you – as long as you weren't fired for cause. In that case, they wouldn't be permitted to sell it to you." He almost seemed apologetic. "By law, you understand."
"All too well, sir," I said. "You're snapping my leash."
"I prefer to think of it as a gentle correction."
I sat forward in my chair and shrugged, dropping the false respect. "It comes down to the same thing. I play the good little agent, or you pull the plug on my amortality."
Patrón raised his eyebrows and gave me a sage nod. "You would be free to live out whatever time you have remaining in this life, of course," he said, peering at my head as if watching the bullets that had blasted my predecessor to death. "However long or short a period that may be."
Querer chose that moment to interrupt. "Since you were just publicly murdered by an individual who demanded you not be revived, the odds that your assailant might wish to become a repeat offender are high."
Patrón had me in a box, and he knew it. It annoyed me that Querer not only knew it too but was willing to help him seal me in.
"All right," I said to Patrón. "I'll do it. I'll take any partner but her."
Neither Querer nor Patrón smiled at this.
"Normally I'd be happy to agree with you," said Patrón, "but Querer was hand-picked to partner up with you if you happened to get killed."
"What jackass made that decision?" I asked.
Querer smiled down at me. "It was you."
CHAPTER THREE
"I'll leave you two lovebirds alone," Patrón said as he left my office.
Querer rolled her eyes in his direction, then sat down in one of the guest chairs and sighed. "He can be such an ass."
"That's a transparent attempt to put yourself on my side," I said. I might have to keep her as my partner if I wanted to keep my job – along with my amortality – but I didn't have to play nice.
"See what you will," she said. "I'm still here to help."
I stared at her. "I don't recall officially meeting you before, much less picking you out as a potential partner."
Querer cracked a wry smile. "It's been a while since your last backup, it seems."
It struck me that no one had mentioned anything about that when they'd awakened me in the rebirther. "What day is it?" I asked.
Querer's eyes flickered to the upper right. "Tuesday."
"The date. What's the date?"
"July 5, 2168."
My stomach twisted as I goggled at her. "You can't be serious."
She gave me a regretful wince.
I clucked my tongue at myself. "So much for my required weekly backups." I'd been ignoring that particular set of regulations since before Querer was born. That was always the worst part of losing so many memories. I had only myself to blame.
"What was I doing?" I asked.
"When?"
I hesitated. "How much have I lost?"
"You don't know?"
"I haven't hooked back into the web yet."
"Ah," she said. She nodded at my desk. "Go ahead. I can wait."
I closed my eyes and concentrated. The nanoservers located inside the artificial lenses implanted in my eyes read my command and leaped to life. The displays went opaque with the OS splash screen for an instant. When that happens with a wall display, I like to close my eyes to avoid the blinding glare, but since this three-dimensional image popped up inside my eyelids, that was impossible. It fast-faded to translucency again.
The data layers sprang up in my favored configuration, transparent bits of information floating in my field of vision. I had a backlog of hundreds of communications sent to me since my death had logged me out. My system had only flagged a few of them as vitally important. I ignored them all for the moment.
I glanced to the upper right, and the time and date zipped into the center of my view. According to the universal time server, Querer hadn't been lying about the date.
I glanced about the room and engaged different layers, testing out the interface to make sure it was in working order. The shopping layer tagged every bit of furniture in the room with the best price to be found, both locally and online. The colors layer picked out Querer's eyes as mostly a particular shade of mahogany and offered up the PANTONE, RGB, CYMK, and hexadecimal codes to match it. The trivia layer identified the font on one of the awards hanging on the far wall as Decotura.
I peered out the window, and the weather layer showed me the current temperature, barometric pressure, and wind speed and direction. I brought up a radar image and the latest forecast. The skies were clear and sunny for miles around DC, but storm clouds were gathering over the far end of the Potomac. They would break sometime in the next couple of days, but exactly when was anyone's guess. Even modern science had to throw up its hands when confronted with nature's full chaos.
Turning back to Querer, I queried her professional profile. Her résumé flicked into my vision. Graduated George Washington University, with honors, and despite being heavily recruited by other agencies and private firms went straight into the Service from there. Decorated three times for excellence and once for bravery. Not too shabby considering she'd been with the Service for barely a decade.
Her private profile was closed to me, and I opted not to prod it for access. I didn't want to work with her, much less become friends.
I unfocused my gaze and asked after Patrón. An arrow pointed my gaze up, and I craned my neck back to see a translucent avatar of him perched above me. It sat in the wireframe outline of his office, running through its custom work-state animation, indicating he was busy. He had three other top-ranking agents in the office with him, all classified as above my clearance to know more than that, at least as long as they were in Patrón's office.
Subvocalizing the command, I called up my most recent log before today. It was dated Friday, April 1, 2
168.
I shut all the other layers down.
"You're kidding, right?" I said, to myself more than Querer. "April Fool's Day is the last I remember?"
"Maybe you saw it as some kind of joke," said Querer.
I thought back about it and realized she was right about the joke, only it hadn't been me who'd made it. I'd developed a habit of not coming in for my backups until they forced me to. Patrón and Dr Juwan Winslow, the head of the Amortals Project, had tricked me into coming in for the backup under the pretense that my previous backups had all been corrupted. As old as I am, I'm willing to risk losing a few months, but a total loss would have meant forgetting about more time on Earth than anyone else had ever amassed.