She clutched her skull. The urge to scream was almost irresistible. Damn him! Why did he have to be so important?
Her breath came in uneven gasps until the urge passed. She slowly sat up and looked around. Her eyes felt red-raw and swollen. Every colour was painfully vivid—not that there were many. Nondescript brown was the predominant theme, as drab as the fittings were cheap.
“Hello?”
The lack of reply didn't really surprise her. If this was a hotel, it wasn't the sort to provide much in the way of room service. The carpet under her knees was unchanging and worn. The walls were dead, lacking even the most basic of entertainment fixtures. There was a multimedia access point but nothing to plug into it. The only item of any sophistication within eyeshot was a basic meal-maker, a white box roughly sixty centimetres cubed sitting on a low cupboard near what was almost certainly the bathroom door. There was a bed, just large enough for two, a cupboard and a single, straight-backed chair. The smell of deodorant was strong. Apart from the framed ever-looping abstract opposite the bed, the room looked completely lifeless.
She wiped her nose and climbed to her feet. The meal-maker had put the thought of food into her head and it wouldn't go away. First, though, she checked the door to make sure it was locked. It was. Then she studied the meal-maker's display, selected a dish that wouldn't take too long, and went to the bathroom while it set to work.
There was a mirror in the bathroom. She avoided looking at herself—instead thought longingly of the shower, conscious of the smell issuing from the neck of her field uniform. Cosmetic agents weren't permitted when wearing active armour, so her skin felt as though it had been dipped in oil and rolled in sand. Later, maybe, if she had the chance. For all she knew, they could be on the road again in ten minutes, despite what Kuei had said.
The meal-maker still hadn't finished by the time she returned. Somewhere inside it, matter synthesisers similar in principle to the ones used by d-mat were creating a vegetable stew and fruit juice from nothing but information and energy. The template for the meal might have come from a five-star restaurant anywhere in the world. Its copy would be as good as the original and cost twice as much; hence, meal-makers were usually only found in hotels or in the homes of the rich. She wondered who would be charged for her convenience, and decided she didn't really care.
The door opened with a ping, and she removed the steaming contents set out on a small tray and put it on the bed. The serving was small but filling, and the juice tasted fresh. She consumed both with barely restrained hunger. For a couple of minutes, all thoughts of the case, of Jonah, of how she had come to be imprisoned in a hotel room in Quebec, ceased.
When she had finished, she put the tray and waste back into the meal-maker for disposal and studied the display again. Apart from basic cutlery, there was little she could select that might act as a weapon. The sharpest instrument was a steak knife, and she had to order the steak to get it. She did so. If the most she did was waste someone's money, that was something.
The faint hum of the meal-maker became loud in the room as she sat and waited. She had been alone for almost three quarters of an hour. There was nothing to do but kill time until someone outside the room came in and ended her vigil. Normally she would've had work to do, her workspace to access, other officers to talk to by VTC or person-to-person. Even the vast amount of data already contained in her overseer wasn't enough to keep her occupied; she had mulled it over too many times already. Stewing on it would only make her feel worse.
She had few options, however.
Another woman was dead. And so were Jason Fassini and Lon Kellow. The body-count was mounting. For all she knew, Jonah's name might already have been added to the list, and hers would follow soon after.
But it was all an illusion. Resurrection would wipe the slate clean.
No, she thought. That was the illusion. There were too many bodies lying around to doubt that people had died. Whatever had happened to those people, and wherever their discarded final experiences had gone, she didn't believe that they could be erased quite so easily. That was why there was still an Earth Justice Commission, and why the Twinmaker would still be charged with murder. Death was death was death, and bringing someone back to life didn't alter the fact that they had died in the first place.
The lock in the door clicked the same time as the meal-maker chimed. She was on her feet and had the knife behind her back before the door to the room swung open.
Jonah stood in the doorway, Kuei behind him. His eyes were uncovered and his hands were free. For a moment, she thought the worst, then Kuei nudged him forward. He took two steps into the room and seemed to notice her for the first time.
“Marylin?” He raised a hand to his forehead.
“Get some sleep,” the woman behind him said. “We won't be moving again for at least three hours.”
“Wait—” Marylin moved past Jonah, but the door slammed shut in her face. She banged on it out of frustration. If Kuei heard, she didn't respond.
Marylin turned back to Jonah, who hadn't moved. “Thanks for nothing.”
“Eh?” He half-turned, but she could tell he wasn't really looking at her.
“I guess you must be sick of talking,” she said. “Now you've brought them up to date, what's next on your list? Selling Hong Kong back to Europe?”
“Don't be ridiculous.” He moved to the bed and sat down. “I didn't tell them anything—nothing important, anyway.”
“By whose standards?”
“I got back more than I gave out.” His expression was vaguely disapproving. “That's all that matters.”
She bit down on a sharp reply. He still wasn't looking at her. “Are you—?”
“I'm fine.” He blinked and shook his head. “Thirsty, but fine. Can this thing make me some water?” he asked, indicating the meal-maker.
“There's a steak in there if you want it.”
“Pass. The thought of food makes me feel—” He shrugged. “I don't know. Not hungry, anyway.”
She shut the door. “Fiddle with it yourself. Can I assume that Kuei was telling the truth about being here for a while? If so, I'm going to freshen up.”
“I don't see why she'd lie.” Jonah slid off the bed and onto his knees, and crossed the short distance to the meal-maker that way. He concentrated on the display for a second or two, then typed in a selection. “Go ahead. I need to rest, anyway.”
She walked towards the bathroom door, unsealing her uniform as she went. On the verge of entering, she turned back. He had slumped down into a sitting position.
“What did you and Mancheff talk about?”
“The Twinmaker.” Jonah swivelled to face her. “Don't worry. I didn't say too much about d-mat. He just wanted to know who the body was.”
“You told him about the others?”
“I had to. He guessed there was a history.”
She could accept that. “Did you learn anything in exchange?”
“Only that ACHERON isn't a place. It's a who.”
“Someone we know?”
“There's a fair chance it's someone you know. He or she works for KTI.”
“How did Mancheff know that?”
“ACHERON is their contact. That's how he knew we'd been pinged.”
“But—” She stopped, thinking through the ramifications. She should've been surprised. ACHERON, the chink in KTI's armour, was linked to both WHOLE and the Twinmaker. Yet WHOLE didn't seem to know anything about the Twinmaker, and the Twinmaker, by first placing WHOLE literature with the bodies, then actually sending a body to WHOLE's home office in Quebec, seemed hell-bent on incriminating Mancheff and his allies. On the surface, it didn't make sense.
But it did, underneath. Jonah had been incriminated in a similar fashion. And now a RAFT precept had turned up on an item that had once belonged to Lindsay Carlaw. Who hadn't the Twinmaker incriminated so far?
Himself. The Twinmaker was ACHERON. He worked for KTI. She was sure of that. The only dire
ction suspicion hadn't been overtly pointed was inward.
“Go have your shower,” Jonah said, his face blank.
“Uh, right.” She didn't know how long she'd been standing there, deep in thought, but her hands had continued working on her uniform. Her top was open to the waist, exposing the sheer, ribbed armour beneath. She stepped backwards, through the doorway, and shrugged out of the jacket.
One foot at a time, she undid and shed her boots. Gloves, socks and pants joined the jacket on the sink. Cool air brushed skin in the few places the armour left exposed. As she deactivated each individual sheath, the black, glossy fabric flattened and slid free. Slice by slice, the body beneath emerged. She checked herself carefully for spots or stains, signs that agents in the sheaths had been misbehaving. Apart from the odd red mark, she looked fine.
Better than fine, she thought, studying her profile in the mirror once she was completely naked. Her musculature was pronounced without being ungainly. She maintained tone the old-fashioned way: by working with weights and eating well whenever possible. She was pleased with her level of fitness, and with the way she looked, even if no one noticed it but her.
Jonah had noticed. Maybe. Not three years ago—that she knew for certain—but in the other room, while she had been undressing. He had been looking at her, and his eyes had been…not empty, but closed. For him, three years ago was a less than a week. She had forgotten.
Hadn't she?
She wished she could stop thinking about it. But what had Jason Fassini said after their trip to Houston? The less you think about it the more vulnerable to him you'll become…
She selected a water temperature hotter than she normally liked and stepped into the shower stall. At maximum pressure, the pounding of water on all four sides almost drowned out her thoughts. She didn't need to scrub with soap but, humming a brisk conjunto tune, she did so anyway. If there were agents in the soap, she would have to take the risk that they wouldn't mess with the armour, or else she could forgo the armour entirely for a while.
Her skin was red when she'd finished. Gusts of air both cooled and dried her as she stepped out of the shower. She'd almost certainly stripped away what little nanofood remained on her scalp, but she doubted there'd been much left anyway. Her natural hair was beginning to show: blonde and fine, a pale mist dusting her skull. The curve of her forehead was higher than she had become used to. It made her look different, like someone she knew or had once known.
She looked like her.
And:
She looked like Yoland Suche-Thomas.
In the mirror, she saw the woman the Twinmaker wanted to kill. The economical, high breasts, the narrow waist and hips, the skin dusted with freckles, the tidy thatch of pubic hair, the legs that had always seemed, to her, to be just a little too short. Between her body's physical reality and the function in society it served so well, she saw the person who had fears and needs and doubts and pains and a thousand other feelings she was used to suppressing. This woman was part of her—hidden for so long that she had almost forgotten she existed, but there nonetheless. It was this woman that blushed when she realised that Jonah was looking at her, was frightened to feel helpless when he wasn't around and, if she wasn't careful, would probably become aroused if she thought about seducing him.
And it was perversely hard not to think about it. The first time they'd had sex had been in a hotel room not unlike this one. Attempting to earth the tension between them (as she had justified the affair, at first) had done nothing but make it stronger. Their relationship had been comprised entirely of games, one after the other, an endless series of challenges and preemptive strikes with all the passion and communication of a battlefield. And it had gone nowhere. Work had gained an erotic charge she found unbearable; the more dangerous their assignments, the more addicted to them and to him she had been. The last case had made her realise just how desperate for adrenalin she had become.
The realisation had hit her like a rush in itself. She'd had to call it off before she could talk herself out of it. She had no choice. It had come too close already. The next case could've killed him. Or her. It had to end in betrayal. Don't think, she had told herself; just do. No amount of good sex was worth that risk. Already, the risk they had to take to guarantee good sex was too high.
Une liaison noire, Jonah had called it. He had never been more right.
And here they were, imprisoned in a hotel in a country hostile to the agency they worked for, while a serial killer stalked her by proxy and taunted them with hints of Jonah's murdered father…
She was human. He was human, too.
Both of them had their memories
They could never go back…
She hoped.
“What about Lindsay?”
He looked up as she stepped out of the bathroom. He was lying on the bed, watching a flatscreen transmission via the pixels on the back of his active coat. Somehow he'd linked the coat to the access point on the wall and found a basic news transmission. The coat hung over the back of the single chair, giving a slightly warped but presentable image. He'd turned the lights down to make the image appear brighter.
“Old Stott Despoja got another term?” he said, indicating an analysis of the recent URA Speaker elections. “Unbelievable.”
The sound was a murmur. She didn't believe he was really watching. There was a half-full jug of ice-cold water on the bedside table.
She said nothing. Dressed in her uniform pants and tunic, barefoot and painfully naked underneath, she moved across the room and sat on the bed.
He looked up at her.
“You learned something about Lindsay,” she prompted again.
“You could say that.” His voice was intense. “I found out I knew who killed him.”
“Really? And?”
“That's it. I didn't tell anyone. I didn't tell the EJC. I didn't tell Mancheff. I didn't tell the inquest. And I didn't tell you. Why not, Marylin? Why didn't I tell anyone?”
She shook her head. “I don't know, Jonah.”
“Maybe I thought no one would believe me, or that talking about it would put me in danger.” He looked down at his hands. “If I'd lost just a day's more memory, I'd be afraid that I killed him. That I planted the bomb myself. There's a means, after all. There's plenty of opportunity, and hell, there's even a motive. It's all too plausible.” He shook his head. “Luckily, that's about the only thing I can be sure of.”
“Likewise.”
He looked up at her. “I'm glad you think so.”
“Actually, I didn't mean it quite that way.” She leaned onto one hand. “ACHERON works for KTI, knows about Lindsay and you, and has access to the old JRM office. Why couldn't I be ACHERON, and therefore the Twinmaker?”
“You don't have the motive, for a start.”
“How do you know? Maybe I'm setting someone up. Maybe I'm getting back at you for letting me dump you all those years ago. Maybe it's a political statement of some kind.”
He watched her in silence, the moving pictures reflecting in his eyes like flames.
“All right, so it's far-fetched.” She shrugged. “I just don't see why you should automatically assume that you're the most paranoid person in this room.”
He didn't smile. “I didn't think I had any choice.”
“Wh—?” She stopped, replayed the conversation in her head. He wasn't talking about paranoia. “We all have choices, Jonah. Sometimes we regret the ones we make.”
“Do you regret it? The path you chose?”
“No.” She didn't hesitate. “It was the right thing to do at the time. What I regret is not being there for you when you needed someone. When you needed help. You could've told me who killed Lindsay and I would've listened. I would've helped you. Together, we—”
“But if you hadn't quit, Lindsay might not have died.”
The self-centredness of the comment floored her. “What?”
“No, seriously,” he said. “I'm not blaming you. It's just that I m
ight've been less distracted, more alert, had you not walked out the day before.”
“Oh.” She granted him the point. “Would it have made that much difference?”
“I don't know. I couldn't have tried harder, that's for sure. I was looking for something to do, to keep my mind off you. I went over SciCon with a microscope, but I still missed that fucking bomb.”
“You would've missed it anyway, then,” she said. “You work better when you're pissed off. At that point you didn't really know that there was something to find.”
“True.” He looked away again. “But I went back there, apparently, after I came here. After Lindsay died. There was something important there that I missed the first time around. Or someone.”
“Did Mancheff tell you that as well?”
“Yes, but he doesn't know what I was after. That's something else I didn't bother to explain.” He sighed. “All in all, I seem to have taken secrecy to an extreme.”
“That's why you took Privacy, I guess. You didn't want anyone knowing what you were doing, or what you knew.”
“Or maybe I was just being ultracautious.”
“Even for you.”
“Yes.” His gaze studied the flickering picture for a while. His jaw worked; she could tell just by looking at him that he was tense. He looked like she felt. “And then there's the whole InSight thing. I mean—christ! I don't do v-med. It's like there were two of me walking around inside the same body. It doesn't add up any other way.”
She didn't know what to say. “You know how crazy that sounds.”
“Sure, sure.” He grimaced. “Verstegen told me you'd given them some statements about me—about us. He said I couldn't see them without your permission.”
“That's right. Do you want to see them?”
“I don't think so, no. But I'd like to know what you thought. You knew me pretty well. Did you, or do you now, believe I could've become someone like the Twinmaker? Do you really think I have it in me?”
She didn't answer the last question immediately. Neither “yes” nor “no” was enough. Each carried implications far beyond the question itself, which was itself fraught with complications.
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