The Nexus

by J. Kraft Mitchell

  “Risks like taking a job I know nothing about.”

  He nodded. “If you decide it’s worth it,” he said. “I ask you again, Jillian: What is it you truly want?”

  She shrugged. “I give up.”

  “Ah, but you’re not giving up! You’re thinking about it right now, even as we speak.”

  She was. But she wasn’t coming up with an answer. “It may take a while.”

  “Take all the time you need. There won’t be much else to do back in your cell.”

  “You sure you don’t want to give me a hint?”

  “I’ve practically given away the answer already, but I’ll sum it up for you: If you did something with your life that you would do no matter what, even if it meant giving up all the money and all the comfort and all the convenience in the world, what would you have?”

  “A mental illness?”

  He was a little amused. A little. “Perhaps.” He pushed a button on his desk. “Then again, what sort of mental shape are you in if you plan on being an errander for the rest of your life?”

  He had her there.

  The two masked cops were back on either side of her.

  “By the way,” the man with gray eyes said as she was escorted out of the room, “I don’t suppose you plan on being in a ten-by-twelve cement-walled room the rest of your life either. Perhaps that will make my offer seem a bit more attractive. Think it over. Gentlemen, please make sure the young lady is properly dressed for the occasion.”

  A few minutes later she was alone in the cell again. This time she was wearing the style-less gray clothes prescribed to all prisoners.

  She wanted to think things over, like the man with gray eyes had said. She wanted to consider his offer as thoroughly and rationally as possible. But she didn’t.

  She couldn’t.

  When you’ve been an errander for a while your instincts kick in too hard to stop and think rationally sometimes. And the only thing her instincts were telling her right now was: Find a way out. An opportunity would come. One always did.

  Any possibility of accepting the man’s offer was buried.

  For now.

  4

  COREY Stone stepped into the Retro, a seedy café in a less-than-reputable area along the south rim. The evening crowd was already gathering, especially around the bar. There was a haze of cigarette smoke dimming everything but the neon beer signs. This was the second time Corey had met someone here on business.

  But this time it was for a totally different purpose.

  He didn’t like coming to the same place, but the guy he was meeting—Mr. Love, he had called himself—had picked the location. Corey hadn’t argued. He’d just asked for a description. “You’ll know me when you see me,” was all Mr. Love said.

  Corey started looking around the place. Maybe he would know Mr. Love if he saw him, but you couldn’t see much of anyone through the smoke. Even the obnoxious juke box, like the old fashioned ones they used to have back on the Home Planet, seemed to impair his vision.

  Wait, that had to be him. It was a big guy sitting by himself in a corner booth. Mr. Love had fairly dark skin—must have had some African or African-American heritage, like Corey’s. He had no hair. What he did have was tattoos. Lots of tattoos. All Mr. Love’s tattoos involved hearts, including a prominent one on his bared right shoulder with the traditional arrow and “Mom” insignia.

  Corey stepped over to the booth. “You’re...?”

  “You must be Fredericks,” said the man. His smile pushed its way up half his face.

  “That’s me.” Fredericks was an alias Corey had used as an errander. Corey wasn’t an errander anymore, but Mr. Love thought he was.

  “Pleasure.” Mr. Love offered a meaty hand. There were hearts tattooed on each knuckle.

  Corey sat down across from him. “So, you...you know, you can hook me up?”

  Mr. Love laughed a wheezy laugh and threw back a swig from his immense mug of beer. “Embarrassed! They’re always embarrassed when they come to me, ain’t they?” He had another laugh and another swig.

  “A little,” Corey admitted.

  “Don’t be, kid.” He leaned close. “Sure, the little business I run is technically illegal. But you and I both know it shouldn’t be.”

  Mr. Love’s “business” was selling movies—bootlegged movies from Earth. They had to be bootlegged because they’d been banned by the Commission for the Monitoring of Visual and Literary Arts, one of Anterra’s most despised government groups. The list of banned films was about as long as the dictionary, and growing all the time. The CMVLA had the legal right to ban “any film containing messages or agendas threatening to the societal structure of Anterra,” which could mean just about anything.

  “Sad times we live in,” Mr. Love said, putting on his best distraught face, “when guys like me gotta stay underground. This town was supposed to be so great. Next thing you know the whole place is overrun with thugs shootin’ each other, robbin’ people blind, and the cops don’t say boo. But here’s me, gotta keep everything on the down-low for doin’ somethin’ that don’t cause nobody no harm.”

  “So why do you do it?”

  Mr. Love responded with a very well-rehearsed speech about artistic freedom, the right of self-expression, blah blah blah. He sounded like one of the people that were always protesting out in front of the CMVLA offices. Mr. Love didn’t strike Corey as a guy who thought much about artistic expression; he struck him more as a guy who just wanted to make some dough. But Corey wasn’t saying so.

  Mr. Love drained his beer and rudely beckoned a waitress for another before he continued his tirade. “Anterra’s a weird place, you know, kid? I mean, it’s not like we’re known for being the most morally upstanding city. Drugs that’s illegal in most Earth-side nations is perfectly legal up here. And we’re selling alcohol to teenagers now. So what’s with me havin’ to keep out o’ sight sellin’ a few Hollywood classics?”

  Corey didn’t answer. “So did you bring the goods, or what?”

  “Not here,” said Mr. Love. “Not now.” He slid a business card across the table to Corey. It said, “Mr. Love’s House of Rare Videos. Open every night 12 a.m. to 4 a.m.”

  There was no phone number; just an address.

  Corey took the card. “I used to have a guy in the West Rim that I went to. He got caught. The next guy I found got caught before we could even do any business. How do I know you won’t get caught too?”

  Mr. Love raised an eyebrow. “You’ll just have to trust me, right?” He drained his second beer and stood to leave. “We’re done here, Fredericks. Got three other potential clients to see before I open up shop tonight. Come by if you wanna.”

  “I’ll be there,” said Corey.

  He smiled to himself after Mr. Love had walked away.

  A few minutes later Corey was driving a sleek black ground car along the eastern shore of Lake Anterra. The massive power plant dominated the scenery here. The rest of the district was lined with blocky warehouses. The night was calm. The mirror-smooth water reflected the towers of downtown on the other side of the lake to his left. To his right, the glow of Earth shone in the sky between the buildings. It had been two hours since the sun set below Anterra’s western edge. But it still shone on most of the Home Planet visible from MS9.

  Corey turned down a side street, then into an alcove behind an abandoned warehouse. Over a high garage door the words PETE’S FISH CANNERY were fading on the concrete wall. A button on the car’s console opened the garage. He drove into the warehouse.

  It was a vast room, empty except for piles of ancient forgotten crates and pallets. A few faintly-glowing lights hung from long wires in the ceiling, automatically switched on via motion sensors.

  Corey drove to the corner behind a stack of crates and parked on a particular square of stained cement floor. He punched a code on a keypad on his car’s dashboard.

  The square started lowering.

  When he’d dropped twenty feet or so, a
black opening gaped in front of the car. He hit the accelerator and roared into the tunnel beneath Lake Anterra.

  WHEN he stepped into HQ a few minutes later, he smiled. Corey always smiled whenever he got back to HQ. This past year was the first in his eighteen years of life that he’d had much to smile about, and this place was the reason. He looked down the stairs at the rows of cubicles, the bluish glow of computer consoles, the bustle of his superiors and coworkers.

  Instead of going downstairs he circled the cement balcony overlooking the vast room. He kept his eyes open for the director, but Giles Holiday was nowhere to be seen.

  “Corey! Hey, Cor!” A girl with short, wild hair and more piercings than ten average people was running up the nearest stairway to where he stood on the balcony.

  “What’s up, Dizzie?”

  She frowned. That was bad news. Dizzie didn’t frown much. It took a lot to even slow her smile down to a relative smirk. “Did you see the mission roster for tonight?”

  Corey shook his head. “Don’t tell me—”

  She told him. “Park is going with you.”

  Great. Bradley Park—exactly who he didn’t want her to say but figured she would. “Okay,” he said levelly.

  Dizzie’s frown lengthened. “Learn to show your emotions, Cor. You bottle them up like that, one day they’ll bust out of you like Mount Vesuvius or something.”

  “What am I supposed to do, throw a hissy fit right here in HQ?”

  “No.” She wrinkled her nose. “You could at least, you know, sigh exasperatedly or something.”

  He sighed exasperatedly. “How was that?”

  “Weak, but you’ll get there. I don’t see why you’re not more upset.”

  “Your goal was to upset me?”

  “No, I just...well, don’t you hate that guy?”

  “Bradley? We don’t get along very well.”

  “Ah, don’t get along very well, I see.”

  “Look, if there was no one else available, there was no one else available.”

  Dizzie cleared her throat. “Um, I don’t think it’s because there was no one else available.”

  Corey grimaced. “So the director is testing how well we’ll work together, is he?”

  “Guess so.”

  This time Corey’s exasperated sigh was sincere. “But this is an important mission!” Then again, the director always seemed interested in much more than just the mission.

  “I know. Talk to him about it if you want. He’s up in his office. You got the location, right?”

  Corey patted his pocket where he’d tucked Mr. Love’s business card. “Got it.” He didn’t need to look at it again. He had the address memorized. But the card itself would be an important piece of evidence. “See you, Diz. You’re running com tonight?”

  “Yep.” She rolled her eyes. “I get to spend all night listening to you and Park bickering at each other.”

  She went back down to her cubicle, and Corey kept circling the balcony toward the director’s office. It had a wall of windows overlooking HQ, but they were shuttered at the moment. Corey knocked and got invited inside the rear door of the office. Director Holiday was at his desk. His computer was on, and papers were strewn in front of him. But he looked as if he hadn’t been paying attention to anything but his thoughts.

  “Ah, Corey. How did you get on?”

  “Got the address.”

  “Right. Afraid I have some bad news—at least, you’ll think it’s bad.”

  “Diz already told me. Bradley is going with me tonight.”

  “And I’ll be keeping a very close eye on you both.”

  “Good. Then you’ll see how obnoxious he is.”

  “He? What about you?”

  Corey blinked. “Sir, I follow your orders to the letter. I always have.”

  “And you’ve always tried to make sure others do the same.”

  Corey’s expression tightened. “Is that a bad thing? We have orders for a reason. If we’re not interested in following them, our department may as well not exist.”

  The director softened. “I admire your loyalty, Corey. We’re very dependent on your devotion to doing your job and doing it well.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’ve learned the importance of following orders. But in time you’ll have to realize something else as well.”

  “Sir?”

  The director’s steel-gray eyes took Corey in an intense stare as he answered: “People are more important than orders. Now, I know Bradley Park can be a bit cavalier—”

  “Cavalier? Last time he was on a mission he changed the entire plan on the fly.”

  “And it worked.”

  Corey shuffled his feet. “Well, yeah...”

  “We’re a team, Corey. Different parts of the team have different strengths. Your strength is your loyalty. Bradley’s strength is innovation.”

  “You call direct disobedience ‘innovation’?”

  “Calm yourself, Corey. Bradley was disciplined for his actions as you well know. His one-month suspension from participating in any mission is over as of tonight.”

  Corey sighed. “Figures his first mission back would be with me.”

  “It’s no accident, as I’m sure you’re aware. He will be a permanent part of the new team I’m assembling around you. You see, there’s another strength of yours that we’d like to cultivate: your leadership ability.”

  Corey tried to shrug modestly. He wasn’t much at taking criticism, but he may have been even worse at taking credit.

  “People follow you, Corey,” the director went on. “Even when you don’t try to lead them, they follow you. It’s in your blood to help others become the best they can be—even others who seem like they’ll never reach their potential. I realize Bradley Park is something of a loose cannon at times. That’s why I want him with you. You can help curb those impetuous notions of his.”

  “I’ll try to, sir.”

  “But,” Director Holiday added, “we can’t have you overreacting. I want you channeling his energies, not suppressing them. Understood?”

  Corey tried to push away his reluctance. “Yes, sir. If this is the assignment you’ve chosen for me, I accept it.”

  “Try to remember Bradley is a person, not an assignment. Besides, you’re going to have to get used to this sort of thing, you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re looking for more recruits like Bradley. Our department has shown itself to be a little soft—effective, but soft. We need more—how shall I put it?—more of a free spirit on this team. More daring. More...recklessness, if I may say so. It’s a risky element to bring to the department, I’ll admit. Risky, but necessary. We’re working on it right now.”

  “You found Jill Branch,” Corey concluded.

  “We did.”

  “And...?”

  “She’s thinking things over.”

  “I see. I hope she’ll make the right choice, sir.”

  “Yes,” said Holiday, eyes drifting thoughtfully into the distance. “I hope so too.”

  WHEN he left the director’s office, Corey’s plan was to visit Bradley Park’s room. It couldn’t hurt to talk things over before the mission and try to get on the same page. He went down the stairs from the front of Holiday’s office to the elevator lobby, and crossed the blue carpet.

  He paused in front of the hallway to the dorms.

  So they were looking for more of a free spirit, were they? They liked Bradley’s innovation, did they?

  Corey headed for the elevator instead.

  “I don’t know about this, Corey.”

  He was in Janice Moeller’s office on the eighth story of GoCom. Her window faced east across the lake. In the distance Earth was darkening as night wore on.

  “What is your reason for refusal?” Corey asked Janice levelly.

  “It doesn’t seem like a good idea.” Janice handled any interaction between Holiday’s department and the rest of GoCom. Mostly she trie
d to help Holiday’s department go about its business undetected.

  “You know the protocol, Janice. Field agents have the right to see prisoners without the director’s consent.”

  “That’s for emergencies.”

  “The word ‘emergency’ isn’t mentioned in the policy.”

  “But it’s implied.”

  “Maybe. How do you know this isn’t an emergency?”

  “You didn’t say it was.”

  “I don’t have to say. Your job is to set up the visitation for me, not ask me why.”

  “My job,” Janice said purposefully, “is to make sure you can do what you need to do without anyone else knowing your department exists.”

  “Which is why I need you to clear me to visit the prisoner, so no one asks any questions.”

  Janice frowned. “Okay,” she said, tapping at her keyboard. “Which interrogation room?”

  “It’s not an interrogation. I just want to visit her cell.”

  “Fine. They’ll be expecting you. But I’d still rather Director Holiday knew about this.”

  “He’ll know soon enough,” Corey said on his way out of her office.

  When he was out of sight, he let out a tightly held breath. He wasn’t used to doing things this way, but it had felt good.

  Or so he told himself.

  5

  THIS time when the cell wall slid open there was no uniformed cop. There was a young black man, Jill’s age or so. He nodded in greeting.

  She looked away.

  “Hello, Jill.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just to talk. Really, that’s it.”

  “Like your boss? I figured he’d be sending someone down.”

  “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

  Now she looked at him. In her line of work she’d learned to tell when people were lying, and this guy wasn’t lying. “A little rogue operation, huh?”

  “If you want to call it that.”

  “What exactly do you want to talk about without your boss knowing?”

  He pushed a button on a remote and the cell door closed. He sat at the other end of her cot and faced her. “I want to talk you into accepting his offer.”