Epitaphs (Echoes Book 2)

by Knite, Therin

  “Preliminary checks are complete, Commissioner.” He pulls up the persons of interest list on his Ocom. “No hits. But the research team is doing deep sweeps into their educational and occupational histories, extended family connections, media mentions, public movements, profile activity, and purchases going back five years. If there’s anything suspicious hidden in that data, we’ll find it.”

  “Good. I want that done tomorrow morning. We’ll reconvene then.”

  “Are we dismissed?” Lance asks. “That’s a first.”

  “Savor it.” Dynara stretches, joints popping. “We’d be doing interviews with the family if DuPont had any within three hundred miles. But he was an out-of-district student. His parents and brother live in some cow pasture in the far west of the District of Dakota. They’ve been contacted. They should be rolling in sometime around lunch tomorrow. Until then, we’re flat-lined. No clues. No directions. Not even a hunch?” She points an accusatory finger at me.

  “Sorry, boss. I got nothing.” I point a finger at Chai to turn the tables. “Except the shady professor and dean, which you already know about.”

  Chai raps her nails on the table. “And we have tails on them. Couple of Murrough’s undercovers and a digital bloodhound, courtesy of Frederick.”

  Frederick nods. “All of their profile activity is being monitored by the second. If they so much as post a funny cat gif, we’ll know about it.”

  Dynara snaps twice. “Now that’s what I like to hear: that we have so little to go on for a case we’re cracking jokes about internet memes.” She tucks a rogue strand of hair behind her ear. “Go home, everybody. And come back to me in the morning with something, will you?”

  “Or what?” Lance asks. (Like a dumbass.)

  Dynara’s ice-cold eyes descend on his cowering form and threaten to eviscerate him with a single eyebrow twitch. “Go.”

  He goes.

  I hop out of my chair in the wake of his retreat and make to follow him, but my Ocom buzzes in my pocket before I take a single step. Tugging it out, I glance at the screen and see I have a sprawling text message from a person I should definitely not be receiving messages from. Anymore. And I wonder for a hopeful moment if I was lucky enough to get left, accidentally, on a message list for the place where I used to work. But then I crush that fantasy in my bony fist. Because Yeah, right.

  Dynara power walks past me toward the door, and as I’m shoving my tablet into my pocket (and pretending I don’t have a message from him), I mumble, “Got somewhere to be?”

  “Yes, unlike you.”

  “Well, not all of us are so important.”

  She stops with one foot through the doorway but doesn’t turn her head to look at me. “I’m sorry. Did I just hear you silently accuse me of being inattentive to your deluded, godlike self-importance?”

  “Self-importance? When we met six weeks ago, Dynara, you acted like I was the best thing since sliced bread. But the second I signed on with your dream-hunting crew, you threw me under the bus. You’ve benched me for even the simplest missions for BS reasons. You’ve denied me access to high-level information about the case that brought me here for a reason I cannot even fathom. And, to top it all off, you constantly berate me for not demonstrating perfection on every arbitrary measure of performance you concoct.” I flatten the collar on my coat and grind my heels against the floor. “I apologize if I sound like a needy little puppy, Dynara, but your mixed signals about my role in the grand scheme are starting to piss me off.”

  She glances over her shoulder at me for zero-point-six seconds. “Then let me clarify. You have the potential to be the best thing since sliced bread, Adem. And now that you’re under my thumb, I intend to make sure you become it. But you won’t get there with undue flattery and needless praise. Those were merely the tools I used to reel you into my net, else I risked you slipping from my grasp.

  “But if you want the truth, here it is: you are smart to the point of absurdity, and you’re an echo-making powerhouse, but your weaknesses—physical and not—will sink you in the end, if you don’t tread carefully. And that would be a waste of such epic proportions that I would never wipe the bad taste from my mouth.” She cracks the knuckles of her ring finger. “Everything I’ve done to you I’ve done for you. Everything I will do to you I will do for you. Whether you understand this or refuse to acknowledge it is not my prerogative. My goal is to make you shine brighter than the sun, boy, and shine you will. And I don’t give a shit how much you bitch about my methods along the way.”

  From behind, Dynara Chamberlain looks like a benevolent queen, regal in white and crowned with a gold band threaded through her hair. But I can’t see her face as she speaks to me in a tone that denies all the blood on her hands, and with the way she can circumvent all the tricks I use to read people, I worry—that every word she says is a lie.

  And I worry more that every word is true.

  So I ask, “Why do you care?”

  And Dynara Chamberlain turns around, stares me in the eye as she replies, “Because my company, my family was involved in the creation of Somnexolene. In the creation of echoes. And so they are partially my responsibility. Every dream. Every threat. Every death.” She shifts an inch backward. “Your mother’s death was partially my responsibility. Your struggle with Brennian was partially my responsibility. You are partially my responsibility. And if there is any moral I have lived by all my life, it’s that I always take care of my responsibilities.”

  My mouth feels oddly dry. “Is that the reason you work for EDPA?”

  The queen of lies takes one step outside the room and curls her lips into a cat’s grin. “You know better by this point, Adem Adamend, than to think I have one reason for doing anything.”

  Chapter Five

  Arlington Cemetery lies twelve miles north of its old world predecessor, but it houses many of the same personalities: former presidents, ex-senators, lost soldiers, and the men and women responsible for the rise of the Republic after the Fall. Those who built a new, prosperous era from the ashes of the past—they rot here, in the ground, under tons of marble carved into “inspirational” shapes. Globes to represent unity. People in power poses. Wreaths to signal mourning and respect.

  This evening, blustery and cold, Arlington is only a ghost town (and not the snapshot-happy tourist trap it usually is). From the sidewalk that has yet to be shoveled, the rows and rows of gray-white headstones, linked by snow, form a ridge-backed snake curling across the ground, around trees, over hills. Or perhaps it’s the spiked tail of a dragon instead. A tail that comes to an abrupt point six feet in front of me.

  The fresh flowers are frozen and partially snowed under, but someone, a cemetery employee or a mourner, wiped the powder from the face of the stone sometime after the storm blew through a few hours ago. So the inscription is readable. And as painful and poisonous as it was when I first saw it:

  WHITFORD TIMOTHY BRENNIAN

  MARCH 2618 – SEPTEMBER 2712

  A LIFE IN SERVICE. A DEATH IN HONOR.

  Boots crunch on the walkway behind me, but I don’t turn toward the man I know will be there, not even when he speaks. “Do you like that cover story, Adamend?” says Commander Briggs in a voice rougher, more exhausted, than any he would dare use during the day. When his underlings could sense the weakness. “A freak accident while he was overseeing maintenance on his private jet. The other directors came up with that. A hand-wave excuse. Hard to disprove without the right access to the right dark corners. Easy to gloss over—the media hates mundane deaths—and easy to forget. People don’t keep stringent records of accidents. Documents get misplaced. Files get deleted.” A sigh. “What a simple way to make a complex, embarrassing problem disappear.”

  “It’s shameful.” My foot jerks forward and kicks a wave of snow onto the headstone. “But they’ll never feel the shame of it. Only relief that they saved their own hides from scandal and scrutiny.” I have the urge to take a hammer and beat the goddamned stone to dust a
nd let that dust blow far, far away in the wind. Erased. The most fitting end for a betrayer.

  A strong gale ripples through the cemetery and across my bare, hot cheeks. I hardly feel it. “What a sick joke. Erecting a monument for the worst kind of criminal.”

  Briggs shuffles up beside me, blue lamplight gleaming off his dark skin. His coat settles around his shins as the wind stills, but there’s something distinctly off about the bulky body that hides beneath. Briggs has not slept well these past six weeks. His straight-laced, ex-SWAT posture sags under the weight of an invisible force. Heavy lids hang over bleary eyes. Teeth grind behind chapped lips.

  All is not well at the Washington IBI office.

  “Not fair, is it?” he mutters. “That I feel the shame of trusting him as a boss for a decade and a half? That you feel the shame of trusting him as your mentor, the man who helped you advance beyond your years? And yet his peers, who should have known him better, get to wash their hands of his filth?”

  A moment of silence passes over the cemetery.

  I break it with a bitter laugh. “I’m not here to talk bureaucratic morality crises with you, Commander. Your message said you had something important to discuss.”

  “Pretending something is irrelevant doesn’t make it so, Adamend.”

  “Briggs.”

  He cocks an eyebrow. I never would’ve taken such a tone with him back when his word had the power to bend my fate. (Or break it.) But the dynamic between us has changed, and he accepts this with a slow exhale, white on the air. Then he says, “I have a case for you.”

  “A case?” I scoff. “I could have sworn, sir, I sent you a letter six weeks ago that started with, ‘I regretfully tender my resignation…’”

  “And I respect your decision, Adamend, given the circumstances—”

  “If you did, you wouldn’t be here.” I cut him off. Before he can mention those circumstances like the guilt-tripping bastard he is. “If that’s all you want from me, Commander, then I’m afraid you’re out of luck. Solving cases is not my hobby anymore. That went out the window with the revelation that the cause of my mother’s death was a bit closer to home than I originally imagined.”

  “Adamend—”

  “Learn to solve your own damn cases, Briggs. You with your five hundred plus experienced agents, who, as you love to remind me, are all invaluable to the IBI because they have invaluable skills. So use their skills, not mine. I have more important things to do than waste time supporting an agency that barely supported me all the time I worked there. And I’d speak even worse of it, too, if Jin didn’t still work there.” I snarl. “Gods know why he bothers to stay, given the way his coworkers treat him.”

  A spark of a long-forgotten secret flashes through Briggs’ eyes, a subtle widening. But he crushes it before I can decipher its details. He knows too well what I can do with an inch of truth.

  Huh. Something to ask Jin about later.

  “Adamend, look…” he starts.

  “Goodbye, Briggs,” I end. And march off through the snow, away from my old, hard-ass boss, passing from glare to dimness to glare as I walk beneath the overhanging light poles. I reach the junction between the cemetery’s federal employee section and the fallen soldiers’ field, bearing right toward the distant gates peeking through the trees.

  Then Briggs calls out, “Adamend, please.”

  And I stop in my tracks. Just like that.

  His tone.

  That word.

  Please.

  I remember a time when I was the ringmaster of a crime-solving circus. I had a closet office twelve feet from Maintenance and a doorway perpetually stuffed with agents too lazy (or dumb) to solve their own cases. So they “made” me do it for them, treated me like a machine that would act on their whims. Yet, despite all the work I did for others, on top of my own responsibilities, there always lingered in the corner a grumpy Evan Briggs. Who chastised me for “childish” behavior and arrogance and other flaws. And only said sorry when proved dead wrong. And only said please where required by law. And never, ever would he say it the way he just did.

  Briggs doesn’t beg. He has too much pride.

  For him to swallow that for an arrogant boy…

  My one-eighty rotation is so slow that a panorama of the far-off city passes me. Towers bright with rainbow lights. Cars zipping by on the overpasses. Hovercopters fluttering quietly through the night sky.

  I don’t move that slow because I’m afraid—it takes more (or is it less?) than a man to scare me—but because I know the second I make eye contact with Briggs again, I’ll cave to whatever he demands. Denying a man who trashes his pride in front of a boy he can barely stand…that only happens in dreams.

  Or nightmares.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  Briggs stands fifteen feet away, a thick brown folder clutched to his chest. “The directors froze my budget.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the office is under investigation.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Director Board is pissed that I went behind their backs and joined forces with Chamberlain. Pissed that I weaseled my way into NDAs for all my top staff, granted Level Six access to those who hadn’t ‘earned’ it in their eyes. Pissed that I stepped across a too-fine line to destroy one of their peers, even though it saved the agency a great deal of public humiliation.” He pauses. “They’re alleging inappropriate conduct on my part and threatening to fire me. And Weiss. And anyone involved in the hangar raid.”

  I stamp my boots into the snow. “That includes Jin.”

  “It does. And about twenty-five more of my top agents.”

  “That’s bullshit.” Air puffs white before my face. “To compromise the office’s ability to perform, to solve murders, to save lives, all to punish you for undermining their authority?”

  “Bureaucrats have tempers, Adamend. And the best way to provoke them is to bend their rules.” He frowns and rubs his closely shaven head. “I expected some retaliation, maybe a citation, for breaking conduct to collude with Chamberlain. But I didn’t realize when I called for the joint taskforce that Brennian was going to die. That tipped the shit bucket right over my head. And now my agents are paying for it. We’re gridlocked. No money. No resources. No way to keep our performance numbers up. And every case we fail gives the Board more ammo to make their case: that my senior staff and I are unfit for our jobs.”

  “They’re setting you up to fall.”

  “They are.”

  A lamplight flickers above us.

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I could quit to save my agents, but then I’d be leaving them to fight the dogs alone. And I’d have no guarantee all my men and women would escape unscathed. It’s a mess, Adamend. I’m in deep water, and I don’t have too much pride to admit I need help.”

  I gesture to the folder. “The case.”

  “Two cases, technically. But I believe they’re connected. And they’re the highest priorities on the table right now. I had three teams working on them before we ran out of funding. They collected a lot of excellent evidence but weren’t able to put the pieces together in time.”

  My teeth nip at my lip. “And if I solve them?”

  “It’d be a stopgap, at best. Not a solution. But I need more time, Adamend, to figure out my countermeasures. I haven’t been able to breathe, much less strategize, in weeks. The attacks keep coming.”

  “And those cases could make the reprieve you need to go on the offensive?”

  “Yes, though I make no guarantee of a successful counterstrike. It may not matter at all, what I do. The Board has so many strings to pull. But I won’t give up without a fight to the bitter end. You have my word on that. And I’ll take a bullet before I let Connors or any of my agents take the fall.”

  I stare at my former boss for a moment, and then extend my hand. “They don’t know, do they? Your agents.”

  “No, I’ve kept the issue top level.
How’d you know?” He steps forward, one hefty foot at a time, until he’s close enough to pass me the folder.

  It feels as heavy as a cinderblock painted black with swears, which I guess is the weight of a world on fire. “Jin would’ve said something, if he knew. And I would’ve been pulled into this fray to save your ass a month ago.”

  Briggs lets out a faint breath that could be mistaken for a laugh. “There’s the Adamend I know.”

  I hold up the folder. “I’ll work on it as fast as I can, but I’m in the middle of an echo case right now, so my time is tight.”

  Briggs nods, solemn. “GM Poly?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “We got the call this morning, but Chamberlain caught me before I got a responder on the scene.” He purses his lips. “Bad?”

  “The worst.” I tap the folder. “This?”

  “The worst.”

  “Ah, two heaps of shit. My favorite.”

  His strong hand prods my shoulder. “You can handle it.”

  “I appreciate your vote of confidence, Commander.”

  “Oh, it’s not confidence.” He brushes past me and starts off down the sidewalk. “It’s a fact.”

  “Is that so?” I don’t watch him go.

  “It is.” His voice fades into the wind. “See you around, Adamend.”

  “And you, sir.”

  His footsteps falter right before he turns toward the gate. “Oh, and Adamend: you may want to check on Connors tonight. It’s getting close to a certain anniversary, and you and I both know how he’ll deal with that.”

  * * *

  D-list grunge music floats across the low-hanging bar rafters. A small crowd of modders in the middle of the floor, illuminated pink by a set of stationary lights bolted high on the walls, gyrate to the pulse-paced rhythms booming from the speakers in all four corners. Along the sides of the main room are small tables with tall stools, most of them occupied by men and women half asleep, empty beer mugs scattered around their sagging heads. In the far corner, a bored DJ yawns as he prepares the next few songs on the track list.