Shifting Reality (ISF-Allion Book 1)

by Patty Jansen

  “I’m Yari,” the woman said. “I’ll come with you as soon as I’ve organised someone to attend the desk.”

  Another enforcer came through the back door, much more like the regular type of construct that filled enforcer jobs, with the classic, straight-nosed profile and curly hair. His tag said Finchley. Melati had never heard of Finchley constructs—they must be a Taurus Army creation—but he had that superior air that was common to the Kesslers.

  “This is my colleague, Dane,” Yari said.

  He nodded at her.

  “Dane, Melati works with ISF. Her cousin has been murdered.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. Did she see a flicker of respect in his eyes?

  This situation was weird and uncomfortable all in one. She had better watch what she said to these enforcers, because she didn’t want Dr Chee to get any more complaints about her.

  The official function of tier 1 on the station was to administer and provide services for the tier 2 workers. The function of ISF was to keep both of them safe from outside threats. In practice, relationships were reversed: enforcers lorded it over the workers and both were intimidated by ISF. So when tier 2 people joined the force, everyone grew confused.

  They left the office to a third enforcer and walked through the near-deserted corridors.

  On the way, both enforcers asked Melati questions. Where had she last seen Rina, who was she with, what did she say. What did she think Rina’s troubles were? Did she have proof that Rina was involved with the smugglers? Did she have proof of the sort of thing they did?

  Melati told her the story not even her family had wanted to hear in full. Yari listened, her innocent eyes wide. Her biological age was in the early twenties. Her real age would be little more than four years. She’d probably grown up in a sheltered base wherever the Taurus Army did their construct activation. This was likely her first posting and she’d probably never seen a lot of the worst things that happened in the B sector back alleys. She was probably infertile and couldn’t imagine what it was like to be pregnant, let alone to be farmed for babies.

  Melati also told her everything that had happened in the past few days, from the repeated raids—which Yari seemed surprised about—the nervous crowd in JeJe, the New Hyderabad merchants, and the istel pilot who had been with Rina. Yari did not interrupt or say anything, or judge her suspicions. She would probably record Melati’s answers and they would be taken as unofficial statement.

  Melati described how she had found Rina, and what she had done since finding her. “I haven’t touched anything. I know you need to take pictures.” Well, she had touched the comm, but she had put it back, and there was nothing of importance on it anyway.

  But when they arrived in the BC area, it was to the hum of many voices. A large group of people, mostly young barang-barang men, stood in the danky corridor, and more still crammed inside the room where Rina was. A bright light burned inside, and angry voices came from within. A few men gave Melati and the two enforcers strange looks.

  “I thought you didn’t tell anyone?” Yari said. Her clear voice, in Standard, made more people turn around.

  “I didn’t. I have no idea how they found out.” A feeling of cold discomfort crept over her.

  “Look, it’s the enforcers’ pet,” someone at the back of the crowd said, in B3.

  Another man laughed, not in a nice way. A third man made a comment that she could only half-hear, but seemed to have sexual content.

  The things the men said about her always hurt, but it was best to ignore them.

  Someone inside the room was talking, a rough amplified voice through a bad sound system. God, that sounded like Harto. What was he doing here? What were all these men doing here? Where were Uncle and Ari?

  “. . . so it is more than high time, my fellow fighters, that we took our fate into our own hands . . . StatOp looks only after StatOp and doesn’t care about us. It will only have on the council those who dance to their music . . .”

  Melati glanced at Yari, wondering how much B3 she understood. Most enforcers knew at least enough for basic communication.

  “Let us through!” Melati called at the backs of those outside the room. People turned around, giving her—and Yari and Dane—sharp looks. Mostly young men, a few hypertechs, no one she knew well, and no one she knew to be a friend of Ari’s. Not Uncle either.

  Harto’s amplified voice inside the room continued, “. . . we will no longer obey and let them play with us. We will no longer have our sons and daughters murdered by people who think they are better than us . . .”

  People cheered. Melati caught a glimpse of Harto, with a megaphone, in his official finery, no doubt straight from the slametan. She imagined the news would have interrupted the proceedings, and now he turned Rina’s death into a political spectacle.

  It made her feel sick.

  Melati turned to Yari and said in a low voice, in Standard, “I understand if you want to wait for backup, but I’m going in.”

  Even to her own ears her voice sounded strained. By God, she was angry.

  “We’ll be fine. Others will be here soon.” Dane was already on his comm.

  “Let us through, everyone!” Melati yelled. “Out of the way. We’re Rina’s family! Have some respect for the dead.”

  People shuffled aside to form a semblance of a path. Mutterings of surprise went through the crowd.

  Yari went first. Dane followed next to Melati, his hand on the belt that held the stunner. Harto met the group halfway into the room.

  “Where is Uncle?” Melati asked him. She couldn’t see him anywhere. “Did you even tell him, or were you so impatient to turn this into a political rally?”

  Harto’s smug face showed genuine surprise. “What, Melati—”

  “Where is Uncle? Where is Ari? Or Grandma? Where is the respect for the dead and their family?”

  “We’ve been very respectful.”

  Between the people, she glimpsed the body.

  Someone had put Rina on a stretcher and placed a cloth over her. They’d wiped the blood smears off the wall and put the blankets in a heap. She couldn’t see the pocket comm.

  Melati turned to Harto. “What have you done? You should not have moved her.”

  “And have enforcers touch her? It was disrespectful to her to leave her like that.”

  “You removed all the evidence.” And she’s my cousin, not yours.

  Harto stood with his hands planted at his sides, giving the two enforcers a belligerent look. “Did you bring them here?”

  “Who cares who brought them? They’re here to investigate and find the killer.”

  Someone laughed at this.

  “They don’t care about our dead,” a man said.

  Melati whirled to him. “They will never care if we don’t tell them about the crimes against these girls. I want this before the court, because that is the only way they will know. How can I get a formal conviction if you’ve removed all the evidence?”

  Yes, bad things needed to be covered up, shoved out of the way so that people didn’t see them, exactly as had happened with her. After her operation, only Uncle had ever visited her in the ISF hospital. Because it was bad luck to visit a badly ill person in hospital, or to talk about a murder.

  How frustrating could these people get?

  Yari probably didn’t know enough B3 to understand the conversation. She went to the stretcher, but a huge hypertech stepped in her way before she could lift the blanket. He said nothing, and she said nothing. Everyone else sank into an expectant silence.

  Next to Melati, Dane tensed, his hand on the handgrip of the stunner.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Melati whispered to him. There was no way to see what the hypertech was looking at behind the reflective visor. He didn’t carry any weapons that she could see, but he didn’t back down either. He was taller than Yari, which was unusual for one of the barang-barang. Melati considered the tall people she knew, but drew a blank on who this could be. A couple
of his mates looked like goggle-eyed monsters amongst the onlookers.

  Yari didn’t back down either. She looked up at him, her face impassive. “I’m Yari. I am here to help you find out who did this.” Her B3 was passable.

  “We don’t need you.” The man’s voice sounded rough.

  Melati felt like yelling, Excuse me, whose cousin are we talking about?

  The hypertechs had never done anything for her or her family except ridicule Ari, and now they wanted to help find the murderers? Excuse the sarcasm, but what ulterior motive did they have?

  He crossed his arms over his chest, and turned his head oh so subtly sideways. One of the other hypertechs in the crowd made a hand signal. Melati didn’t know what it meant, but their attitude made her feel cold.

  If they decided they wanted a fight, things were going to get very ugly. And they dared talk of not showing respect to Rina?

  Defuse the situation. Keep talking. “Rina is my cousin. The family has the right to decide what happens. I want this investigated. I want these criminals brought to court.”

  Some onlookers made agreeing noises.

  A male voice said, “If we find them, we can deal with them ourselves.”

  “Some form of dealing with that is not going to be against the law and get us into more trouble?”

  “They’re not our laws.”

  “What part of do not kill would you like to see different in any other law? Look, I’ve had enough. You’re being disrespectful to my cousin. We should give her the respect she deserves. I want Wahid here and I want to take care of the funeral. All of you can do whatever you want, but not in here.”

  “She’s right,” Uncle said, worming himself between two men. “Respect comes first.”

  God, Uncle. She had never been so glad to see him. Melati wanted to hug him in the way her boys hugged her, but adults didn’t hug.

  The hypertech turned his head ever so slightly in Uncle’s direction. He snorted and said something that sounded like, Your own fault, and went to his mates.

  People in the room were muttering. Melati picked up mentions of Wahid’s name. A few of the men in the back of the room started leaving.

  Yari and Dane showed no reaction, but Melati thought she saw Yari’s shoulders relax.

  As more and more men left the room in groups, Harto came to her. “You know, we are all friends. There really is no need to get enforcers involved.”

  “Yes, there is. These killers are from off-station and the only way we can persecute them is through the court.”

  “Whiteshirts don’t understand us. This is not our way of dealing with crimes in the B sector.”

  “I know, but our way hasn’t helped Rina, has it? And it hasn’t helped any of the other young girls and boys who have been killed in back alleys. Or any of the girls who have been farmed for babies.”

  He raised his hands. “What have we come to if we can’t even trust our own people?”

  “It is not about trust.” Although at its very heart, it was; but the time for trust and solving their own problems was past. “I want this properly resolved. My cousin’s body is not a political battleground.”

  “All right, all right. I only wanted to help.” And he left with the rest of the men filing out the door.

  Melati watched after them. Probably not such a smart idea, making an enemy out of Harto. He’d be their voice on the StatOp council for many years to come.

  While Melati had been talking to Harto, Dane had gone to the broken couch, and had taken pictures of the scene as it remained, without the body and much tidier than Melati had found it. He picked up the comm in a gloved hand and fiddled with it.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Melati said, “I looked already. There were some conversations on it. Unanswered calls. They were all from family members, and Socrates. Nothing unusual.”

  “No, I mean there is nothing on the comm.”

  “There is. I just saw—”

  Dane showed her the screen. The history log was empty.

  Melati stared at it, feeling cold. Someone was playing games with her.

  Another realisation came to her: the comm. She had switched it on, and she remembered noticing that it had been off for some time. Of course the signal it had made when she turned it on had pinged the hypertechs, Harto’s sons amongst them. That’s how they’d known so quickly. Why had they set an alert on Rina? God, were these people in with the New Hyderabad mafia? Was Rina already a hypertech member?

  Uncle had corralled a few younger cousins into the corridor, who were getting ready to take Rina’s body to JeJe. Wahid also stood there, talking to Uncle. His white hair almost glowed in the greenish light from the tubes in the ceiling. At some point, Ari appeared. He came into the room with the other cousins, avoiding Melati’s eyes.

  So this was how they dealt with loss. Ignoring it, or pretending it didn’t exist. She had known that all along, yet hoped that something had changed since she’d nearly died. Was death so common that you couldn’t allow yourself to get attached to people? Or were they just being men, not wanting to show their emotions? Or had her work with ISF changed her so much?

  The cousins and Ari picked up the four corners of the stretcher and carried it outside, leaving Melati angry and dazed in the room.

  She buried her face in her hands.

  Someone touched her shoulder. She looked up into the old wrinkled face of Wahid. He said nothing but his eyes were sad as he let his hand slide off her shoulder and followed the others out the door.

  The funeral would be tomorrow.

  God, tomorrow. She would have to ask for the day off, and leave her boys with Louise.

  “Coming?” Uncle asked from near the door. Melati took one more look at the stains on the floor and the dirt-stained walls, and followed Uncle through the corridor, back past the stacked boxes and fallen chairs.

  “You were right,” he said when they came into the main thoroughfare. “We should have been worried.”

  They walked silently for a bit more.

  “Is there anything she said to you in the last few days?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing unusual.”

  “Uncle, was she about to join the hypertechs?”

  “Not that I know. I never saw her with any. She always wore lots of jewellery when she went out. You remember when Fatima was about to join? She was always wearing black and never made herself pretty. Rina is—was pretty. I could be wrong, but she didn’t seem the type.”

  No, Melati agreed, Rina wasn’t. “Have you noticed any trouble at work? Has she mentioned anything?”

  “To me? You know she’d rather not speak to me for days than let me help her.”

  Sad, but true.

  Melati sighed. “I have to find out who that man is I saw her with.”

  He nodded again, and squeezed her shoulder. They had arrived at the beginning of JeJe, where stairs led to the floor above.

  “I need to get changed out of these.” The blood on the front of her sarong felt sticky and cold. Another item to hang in her cupboard of sad mementoes.

  “You do that,” Uncle said. “I better go and help Grandma. This is one lot of cooking I could have done without.”

  “I’ll tell her boss tomorrow morning.”

  He nodded and then Uncle continued down JeJe, and Melati trudged up the stairs.

  But when she turned the corner to her own apartment, someone in black leaned against the wall near her door.

  Melati walked past as carelessly as she could, her hearth thudding. She tried not to look at the person, but noticed the insectoid goggles from the corner of her eyes. The hypertech pushed himself off the wall.

  A soft but penetrating male voice said, “If you give us her comm, we can check out who she really spoke to, before the records were deleted.” It was not a question; it was a threat.

  She stopped at the door, fumbling with the access pad. Had second thoughts. She definitely didn’t want this person—one of Harto’s sons?—to f
ollow her inside.

  She faced him, but could only see her own reflection staring back at her in the visor. “I don’t have it anymore. I already checked the log. There is nothing suspicious on it. Nothing to justify getting yourself into trouble.”

  “You’re very good at deciding that on behalf of other people. Who says there is nothing interesting on it?”

  “If you know so well, what is on it that would interest you?” Secret hypertech codes?

  “You don’t understand, do you?”

  “I don’t see what there is to understand. The enforcers took her comm. They’ll be investigating it. If there is something on there that leads them to suspect anyone, they’ll act on it.”

  “And they’ll arrest your little cousin, too.”

  “What, Ari?” She forced a laugh. “Rina doesn’t know what he does. I don’t know what he does. And whatever he does is not worth the enforcers’ time.”

  But by God, they could retrieve the information and arrest Ari later. Then a thought: had Ari wiped the log in order to hide information about himself?

  No. This guy was just trying to play her. He wanted the comm—what for?—and made suggestions that were untrue. Ari didn’t speak to Rina about his “projects” any more than he discussed them with Melati.

  “You’re asking the wrong person. I don’t have Rina’s comm. Right now, the family asks that people respect her and our grief. I will ask you if I need any help.”

  He bowed, turned and left without a word.

  Melati waited until he had vanished around the corner before opening the door.

  Chapter 16

  * * *

  MELATI ENTERED HER apartment and got changed out of her bloodied clothes. She took the sarong and stained kebaya to the living room, where she folded them and put them underneath the shrine.

  She went to her tiny bedroom and, from the back of the wardrobe, retrieved a beautiful bronze incense burner and a few sticks of contraband incense—banned by StatOp because the stuff tended to set off the fire alarms.