by Mattie Hope
"Well, you can do that here if you like, but it'll probably be faster if you go somewhere they don't water down the booze," she pointed out.
Jax drained the last of his glass. "Yeah," he said. "Well, nice talking to you." And he headed to the nearest dive.
*~*~*
When he stumbled back home, there was a girl letting herself into Doctor Gershon's suite.
"Who the fuck are you?" Jax barked, trying to sound intimidating, and sober.
The girl spun around, turning huge hazel eyes on him. "Um…Rita Qureshi?"
"Oh, yeah? You don't sound very sure."
"No, I…know I'm Rita Qureshi. I don't know who you are, or why you're shouting at me."
"Maybe because you're walking into a suite where a woman got murdered last week, and you're not a guard."
"Oh," she said. "The institute sent me. I just got here, on the red-eye shuttle."
"What institute?"
"The Institute for Marine Intelligence? Um, I'm here for the octopuses."
"Bullshit. It's octopi. If you were really from the institute you'd know that."
"Um. No, it isn't. That would be the Latin plural form, and the word 'octopus' is actually Greek. You can also say 'octopodes,' but 'octopuses' is standard."
"Oh," said Jax, embarrassed.
"Not that it matters! Lots of people say octopi, and really, language evolves, and I'm not a prescriptivist, but I just thought―"
"Whatever," said Jax, "forget it."
"Did you…know Doctor Gershon very well?"
"I was her neighbor. I found the body. Well, I guess the octopus found the body, but he came and got me, and I called the Guard, so."
"The octopus came and got you?" echoed Rita, sounding fascinated, and then she shook her head. "I mean, I'm sorry, that sounds―that must have been awful for you."
Jax shrugged it off. "It's fine. I'm gonna…go."
She held up her hand in an awkward semi-wave. He turned his back on her. It took him two tries to unlock the door to his suite. Once he was finally in, he staggered to his bed and collapsed face-down.
*~*~*
He was woken by a persistent knocking. He rolled off the bed and stumbled to the door. Part of him wondered if it might be Zheng, but he thoroughly squashed it.
When he opened the door, the chick from last night was standing there. She was balancing a Tupperware container under one arm, the other hand raised to knock.
"Oh!" she said. "Hi! Look, I felt like we got off on the wrong foot last night, so I brought you this." She shifted the container from being wedged under her armpit to being held in both hands and thrust it toward him.
"You brought me a peace offering?" asked Jax. "Because I was a drunk asshole last night?"
"Well," said the chick, "we're going to be neighbors, and I don't want us to have a bad relationship."
"What is it?" asked Jax, staring blearily at the container. Some unidentifiable substance sloshed around in there. Who knew what someone who studied octopi―octopuses―for a living might have brought him?
"Ah, well, before I left, I read that it's hard to get much variety in your diet here, so I brought some things with me."
"And what is it?"
"It's a dal makhani," she told him.
"Okay," he said, none the wiser. "I need coffee."
"I didn't bring coffee," she told him apologetically. "We could go and get some?"
Jax blew out a slow breath. "What's your name again?"
*~*~*
"So what do you do, Jax?" she asked him, as they sat in the uncomfortable, bolted-down metal seats by the coffee kiosk. Before he could answer, she was off again. "Jax, is that short for something? Jackson? Or is it long for Jack?"
"Ajax."
"Ajax? Wow, I've never met an Ajax before."
"I've never met a Rita Qureshi before."
She laughed pleasantly. "I'm one of a kind," she said, giving him finger guns. Her smile faltered when he didn't return it, and he felt a little bad, but shit, finger guns.
"I'm in cybersecurity," he said.
"Wow!"
"Uh, yeah. I mean, it's early days, I'm not real…established or anything, but. I'm giving it a shot."
She could obviously tell how uncomfortable he was, and took pity on him by changing the subject. "So, why are the seats bolted down?"
"One time the grav malfunctioned." He tried to say it casually, but it had been awful. Everything had turned upside-down. A few people had died, either from the fall, or from being crushed by displaced furniture and equipment. He'd only been a kid, him and the others barely scraping by as it was, and a lot of the food got ruined. And then you heard things, like some debris had got into the machinery and the O2 generators were going to stop working. That hadn't happened, but things were lean and everybody was scared shitless, and there was so much chaos that there were bodies lying around for days. It took a while for the aid vessels to come, and then a bunch of do-gooders from 1 poured in for the clean-up. One of them gave him a protein bar and he ate it right away, never even thought about sharing it with the others. He always felt bad about that, after.
Rita looked queasy. "That can happen?"
"It was just one time," he said uncomfortably. "They said they put extra safeguards in place after that. But once bitten and everything. A lot of people like to bolt things down these days."
"Were the octopuses okay?"
He looked at her blankly.
"I mean, were the tanks affected, or…"
"That was a long time before Doctor Gershon came here. 4 was pretty much all humans then."
There was the shape of a splice in his periphery, and his eye snagged on it. He glanced that way, but it was a female with clipped feathers, nothing like Zheng at all.
Rita's eyes followed the direction of his gaze, and kept looking.
"Don't stare," he muttered.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I've just never seen one in real life before."
"I thought there were splices on Earth."
"Of course, but not that many. They're incredible, aren't they?"
"Yeah." That was one thing they could agree on.
"I mean," she went on, "imagine if we could get our hands on that kind of genome editing technology, you know?"
"Uh-huh," said Jax, feeling the common ground crumble beneath him.
"The Fusion as a whole are completely amazing. And there's so much we still don't understand. I'd love to speak to one of them. Do you know any?"
Jax took a sip of his coffee, glanced away. "Uh, yeah," he admitted. "The guard investigating Doctor Gershon's murder is actually a splice." His hangover was starting to come back with a vengeance.
"Do you think he'd want to talk to me?" asked Rita, excited.
Jax frowned. "You weren't even on the station when the murder happened, were you?"
"Well, no," said Rita thoughtfully, "but I might be able to give him some background information. And I'd love to meet him! The guards, they're like police, right?"
"I guess."
"What's actually the difference between guards and police?"
"I don't know."
"I suppose it's that the Metros aren't sovereign states, so the guards are technically private sector. But they seem to basically function like a police force, don't they?"
Why the hell did you ask, then? Jax managed not to say. He shrugged instead. He didn't mind this woman, even if she did talk too much. She'd bought him coffee, at least. And the sludge she'd brought over was a nice gesture, although he didn't plan on actually eating it.
*~*~*
A few days later, his intercom buzzed. He pressed the button. "Hello?" he said cautiously. He didn't exactly get a lot of visitors these days.
"It's me," said Rita. He'd forgotten the intercom let you call suite-to-suite within the tenement―it wasn't a feature he'd had much call to use. "Are you listening to the livecast on station 2 right now?"
"Uh, no," said Jax. He'd always felt that livecasts were f
or teenagers and old people. Why would you want to listen to some asshole you didn't even know talking at you and not be able to talk back? Sure, they had music and news, but why bother with what that same asshole picked out when you could just as easily choose for yourself what you wanted to listen to? And Jax didn't like to listen to the news. It was always depressing shit anyway.
"Put it on," said Rita.
Jax sighed. "Tell me why."
"Oh, just come over," said Rita impatiently.
Jax shrugged and headed over there. Not like he was doing anything anyway.
*~*~*
"So a lot of people are talking about a murder of a woman, an Earth woman, that happened on 4 last week," a woman's voice was saying.
"Who's this?" asked Jax.
"It's Karynne Spencer," said Rita. "She's a spokeswoman for People First."
"Do you really think it's a coincidence that murder rates on the station have risen ever since this so-called diversity initiative?" Karynne said.
"That's not true!" said Rita. "Why isn't he saying anything?"
"What you have to understand is that these 'splices' are basically dinosaurs," said Karynne. Jax felt his stomach turn over. "They were made using DNA of dinosaurs, do you know about this?"
"I do," said the host, "but maybe you could tell our listeners, in case they're not aware."
"Okay, so this Fusion? They're, uh, robots, basically? And they came here, like, a million years ago and they collected dinosaur DNA."
Rita muttered something under her breath. Even Jax knew that was wrong on a bunch of different levels.
"And now they've come back, and they've cloned these guys to come and be, like, their little minions on Earth and on the Metros," Karynne continued. "And before you know it we're actually giving them jobs, human jobs. There's actually―can you believe this?―there's one of these dino-people in charge of this murder case, he's a guard, and he's supposedly solving this case. I mean, what's next, a dinosaur president?"
As soon as she'd mentioned Zheng, Jax had stood up. He could feel fury balling itself up in his stomach, and if he wasn't careful, he was going to break something.
"Turn it off," he snapped at Rita.
She frowned at him. "I want to hear―"
Jax took a deep breath. "You can listen to the recording later," he said. "Please, turn it off."
She did. "What's wrong? Apart from the obvious, I mean?"
"It's―Zheng."
"It's who?" asked Rita. She said it kind of strange, but then, Jax was probably freaking her out more than a little.
"It doesn't matter. Just listen, okay. What do you know about these People First guys?"
"Just the basics. Human supremacist group, make a nuisance of themselves. Bunch of arseholes. That sort of thing."
"Okay," said Jax, "well, I hadn't heard of them until the other day, when I hacked into the guard records―"
"You did what?" she yelped, shoving him in the chest. It didn't make much of an impact―Jax wasn't a big guy, but Rita was tiny.
"It's fine, just listen―"
"It is not fine! Are you out of your mind? Who does that?"
"You want to know what I found out, or not?"
She clenched her jaw and glared at him murderously. "Fine," she said, after a not-very-long pause.
"So apparently Doctor Gershon was working on this book about octo…puses"―Rita nodded encouragingly―"and she's been doing a bunch of interviews?"
"Right," said Rita. "Um, Our Cousins Under the Sea, wasn't it?"
"Whatever," said Jax. "Anyway, it seems like she started getting death threats while she was doing these interviews, and the guards think it was from members of People First."
"Why do they think that? Didn't they use throwaway accounts?"
"Yeah, but I guess some of them used slogans and stuff that People First are always using, and they found posts about her on their site, too."
"Why would human supremacists even care about a marine biologist? Wouldn't they be more focused on splices, and the rest of the Fusion?"
Not that Jax hadn't thought about it exactly, but the way she said it, it really hit home to him that Zheng might be in danger from these crazy assholes. If they'd killed a human―or one of them had―then they probably wouldn't hesitate to kill a splice. And if they were going to kill a splice, wasn't Zheng the obvious choice? Zheng, who didn't apologize for what he was. Who didn't file down his claws or trim his feathers, who only wore one arm extender, who didn't wear the tunics some splices used to cover themselves up as much as possible. Zheng might not be talking to him, might not want to talk to him ever again, but Jax couldn't stand the idea of him dead, like Doctor Gershon, empty, lifeless, eyes all misted over, all that fire gone.
"Jax?" Rita prompted.
"Oh, uh, she was saying that octopuses are"―how had Zheng said it?―"sentient. She wanted to give them human rights. These guys already want human rights for great apes taken away. They think it's a slippery slope."
"Okay," said Rita. "So, what, you think they had something to do with her death?"
"Well, they were sending her death threats right before she turned up dead! Doesn't it seem kind of obvious?"
"I don't know," said Rita. "It could just be a coincidence. Plenty of people in the public eye get death threats, but they're almost always idle."
"She wasn't exactly a celebrity! Anyway, who else could it be?"
Rita didn't say anything, which Jax took as an admission that he was right.
"We have to do something," he said.
"We?" said Rita, alarmed. "Why do we have to do something? The guards clearly already know. Why can't you leave it with them?"
"I just…I can't just sit around with my thumb up my ass."
Rita was silent for a few seconds, just looking at him thoughtfully. Then she spoke. "I thought you said you weren't that close with Doctor Gershon."
"I wasn't."
"So why are you so hell-bent on this? Why is it so important that you prove it was People First?"
"I just want to know what happened," said Jax uncomfortably.
"Jax, come on. That can't be all. What is it you're not telling me?"
"Nothing!"
She gave him a disbelieving look.
"You wouldn't understand."
"Try me. You can tell me."
The thing was…Jax didn't have anyone else to talk to about it. Kath was off at Zenith, and anyway, she'd told him not to sleep with Zheng. And she'd been right, of course. And he couldn't tell any of his shitty friends he'd slept with a splice. They didn't even know he slept with men. And he wanted to talk to someone, desperately. He wanted to talk to Kath, or better yet, Zheng, but they weren't here, and Rita was. And he liked her. He thought they were even friends, maybe.
"You can't tell anyone," he told her.
"I promise," she said, leaning in.
"That splice guard who's in charge of the case?"
Rita leaned back, frowning. "What about him?"
"I slept with him."
Rita didn't say anything. If anything, she went kind of blank.
Jax scrambled to backpedal. "I know it's weird, but―"
"Wait," said Rita, holding up a hand, "that's why you hacked into the guard records? That's why you're so invested in this?"
"He's not talking to me right now, I really fucked up. Maybe if I can help―but anyway, these people, if they're dangerous, they could target him next. That woman was talking about him on the radio just now, what if―"
He broke off. Rita had her face in her hands.
"What?"
She looked at him through her fingers. "You have a crush on the cop?" she asked, muffled. "And that's what all this is about?"
"Well, what did you think I was gonna say?"
"Something else. So what exactly is it you're going to do?"
"I'm thinking we can go to one of these guys' meetings, ask some questions, see if we can figure anything out."
Rita looked at hi
m disbelievingly, which was starting to become a habit. "Are you joking? I can't go to a bloody PF meeting!"
"Why not?"
"People like that don't like people like me."
"What are you talking about? You'd think they'd like people from Earth especially. You're, like, extra human."
"Jax," she said flatly.
"You are human, aren't you?"
Rita didn't crack a smile. "I can't tell if you're trying to be funny or if you're actually this naïve, but let me be absolutely crystal clear about this: I'm not going to a meeting full of angry white men who hate outsiders. Not if you paid me."
"Come on, Rita, I don't want to go by myself."
"Then don't go! Let the guards do their jobs. Go back to cybersecurity, or whatever it is you supposedly do."
"Hey," he said, stung. Things were a little slow at the moment, okay, but he was trying to do something legit, after years of using his hacking skills to run petty scams. He was trying to be someone that Kath could be proud of—could own up to—and besides a whole lot of money, it had cost him his friends. He didn't need Rita rubbing his nose in the fact that it wasn't exactly taking off.
Rita sighed. "I'm sorry," she said, "but please don't drag me into some caper, all right? Just let things run their course. Don't get in the way."
"Fine," said Jax.
Chapter Six
Zheng had had a guard called Oisin O'Brien join PF, since for obvious reasons he couldn't do it himself. So far it hadn't yielded very much helpful information―they were planning a rally, but they'd already informed the Guard about that. They'd gone through the proper channels, done everything legally. There was going to be a Guard presence, but Zheng wasn't expecting much pertaining to the Gershon case to come of it.
O'Brien had been testing the waters, talking about the importance of direct action, and everybody had agreed, but nobody had stood out as champing at the bit to commit violence. When he'd brought up Doctor Gershon, it seemed they'd changed their tune. Apparently, she was no longer a threat to the sanctity of human rights; she was now a human martyr, and a probable victim of the diversity drive.
None of this did much to assuage Zheng's doubts that People First were behind her death. They were assholes, certainly, and mostly idiots, but his gut was still telling him that they weren't murderers. And if they were going to start killing people, he doubted they'd start with a minor scientist whose book they didn't like the sound of. Enough for a few of them to make threats, but to poison her? And very competently, too.