by Therin Knite
“Yes,” says Dynara, tripling her volume, “he worries about you. He’s a caring friend.”
Jin freezes, and a deep blush comes over his cheeks. “Oh, well, um, thank you, and I’ll sit over here and do nothing and be a good boy and all that.” He retreats, throwing his pride into the nearest trashcan and sinking onto a bench that lines the opposite side of the Square.
“He’s amusing.” Dynara clicks her tongue.
“Sometimes.”
“Now, where were we—?” Her Ocom buzzes loudly inside her coat. Frowning, she tugs it out and reads the message. I catch a line of text in all caps accentuated with at least six exclamation points before she clears the screen. “Never mind. It appears I have an urgent matter to attend to. We’ll have to finish this conversation later.” She swipes her briefcase off the bench and starts a brisk march to who knows where before I can get another word out.
“Wait. When are we going to finish this conversation?”
“Whenever.” She doesn’t look back.
“Tonight?”
“Sure.”
“Club Valkyrie?” The first place that comes to mind. Thanks, Jin.
She stops, white bun-head tilting to the side in consideration. “If you want. Eight o’clock.”
“Don’t be late!”
“I never am.”
It’s an average day at the Red Line Central Metro Station. A rambling woman spends three minutes complaining about the children who keep bouncing balls off the force shield that activates when a train approaches. A pair of businessmen who appear to be identical twins keep making hand gestures toward each other that might be some form of sign language. A teenager with twenty-seven facial piercings chews a huge wad of black bubblegum, the excess collecting at the corners of her lips. And Jin Connors gives me the silent treatment for refusing to tell him the truth about umb—Dynara Chamberlain.
So, yeah, nothing out of the ordinary.
A three o’clock line blows into town and empties of elderly tourists who’ve come to bankrupt their retirement accounts in a single afternoon shopping binge. Jin speeds off toward the nearest car, apparently hoping I won’t keep up and the train will leave me hanging on the platform. I saunter after him and maneuver under his raised arms to slip onto an adjacent seat. Piercing girl and the twin businessmen tail us, taking a dark corner seat and a middle pole respectively. Someone else follows them on, his face obscured by a high collar.
“Train doors now closing,” says the AI driver. “Stay clear of loading area.”
A high-pitched whistle repeats three times as the train begins to accelerate. We shoot out of the station tunnel at over two hundred miles per hour. Greater Washington comes into view, the Central Business towers at its core. The Chamberlain Corp building outstrips them all, its dark windows emblazoned with the company name stretched out vertically from top floor to bottom. The massive letters light up neon blue in quick, repetitive succession.
Jin presses his cheek against the window, doom and gloom churning in his reflection. “How many secrets do you keep from me?”
I sigh. “Are we honestly going to do this on a train?”
“What is this?”
“Whatever you’d like to call it. An argument. A debate. A breakup.”
“I didn’t realize we were dating.”
“You should pay more attention to the Homicide water cooler. It’s where I get all my news.”
Jin drags us back to rock bottom. “I don’t like being left out of the loop.”
“I don’t like endangering your life. This is level six stuff, Jin. If I tell you anything, you could end up in serious trouble.”
“You don’t have level six clearance.”
Out of curiosity, I use my Ocom to locate my government profile in the IBI database. There’s a recent update notation at the top, which directs me to a section halfway down the page that lists my current and past clearances. Sure enough, there’s a shiny new level six stamp at the top of the list. Chamberlain works fast. I’ll give her that.
I discreetly return my Ocom to my coat pocket. “Jin—”
“I found you dead on your bedroom floor this morning.”
“I know.”
“Dead, Adem.” He pulls his cheek from the glass, skin kissed red cold. After a moment where he fights back tears, he pivots around to face me. “You weren’t breathing when I found you. You had no pulse. You were gone. Just like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What happened to you?”
“I can’t tell you.” I can, but I won’t. Not until I stop the Manson killer, at least.
“Fine. Then tell me this: is it going to happen again?”
Yes is my first option. No is a lie. Maybe is the answer I’m looking for but can’t bring myself to say. Instead, I reply, “I hope not. Getting stabbed isn’t as glorious as the movies make it out to be.”
“Stop pretending this is all a joke.” His voice drops two octaves. “You know what I saw this morning, Adem? Jericho. Jericho, a thousand times over.”
“This is nothing like Jericho.”
“You’re right. It’s worse. At Jericho, I was scared of them. Now I’m scared of you.”
“What? How am I scaring you?”
“Adem, you’re excited. That girl excites you. The Manson case excites you. Getting hurt excites you.” His trembling hand reaches out and grips my coat. “You’re never enthusiastic about anything. You never have that electric look people get when they want something. Never. Until now. Never until you end up on the verge of a bloody death. And I’m terrified you’re going to run right off that ledge again. Like you did at Jericho. But because you want to this time and not because you think you have something to prove like you did then. Which is worse. Much worse.”
I mull over his words and seek out my reflection in the window. There’s nothing apparent in the color of my skin or the expression in my eyes or the shape of my lips to suggest a change in my nature. But if Jin can see it, then it must be there. “Look, I’m sorry if you feel I’ve been reckless, but this is important to me, the Manson case. It’s something else. I want to tell you about it, and I will when I can. When I solve it. When it’s over. When it’s safe. Until then, it’s too dangerous for you. I will not have you getting hurt again, trying to protect me, like you did at Jericho. I will not—”
Our Ocoms start buzzing in tandem, attracting the attention of the others in the train car. Piercing girl’s gum is now stuck to her thumb, and she holds it like a projectile between two silver-tipped fingernails. As if the interruption of an Ocom is enough to ruin her day and drive her into attack mode. I ignore her and glance at the twin businessmen. They’re staring at us with keen dark eyes, and they remind me ever so much of the corporate espionage types I’ve met on occasion during IBI cases. I have a funny feeling they’re the spies of someone who also wears a suit during the day, and I flip them the finger when Jin isn’t looking. Stop following me, Chamberlain.
The man with the high collar, seated at the opposite end of the car, tries to sneak a peek at my subtle finger motion and gives himself away. It’s Ric Weiss in disguise. You too, Briggs.
Ignoring the entourage, Jin and I whip out our Ocoms, revealing the same office-wide message we get once a quarter: Surprise Director Inspection. On-call agents are required to attend. Time: 4:30.
“Are you on call?” Jin asks.
“Yup.”
“Me too.”
“Yup.”
“It’s three seventeen.”
“Yup.”
“And we’re heading the opposite direction.”
“Yup.”
Resigned, he straightens his frayed coat and offers me a hand. “Friends for now, Adamend. But rest assured, we’ll continue this breakup later.”
I give him a firm shake. “Fair enough, Connors.”
Chapter Seven
It looks like a nuclear warhead hit the Washington IBI office. On our way inside the warzone, Jin and I pass, in sequen
ce: a security scanner on the fritz after four agents tried to blast through it at the same time, a misplaced Ocom resting under a chair, an agent pileup in the middle of the hallway caused by some unfortunate person who didn’t see the wet floor sign, and Briggs presiding over the chaos from the open third-floor hallway above the main lobby.
“He is minutes from becoming the next Big Bang.” I hit the elevator button, somewhat wary of taking it while the entire building is in disarray. It arrives in one piece, however, and a herd of agents empty the box where they were packed in like sardines.
Jin taps the command to close the door on the elevator’s screen before anyone else can flounder in with us. “Honestly, I’m amazed he hasn’t yet. The man gets so pissed off every inspection, it’s a wonder he hasn’t started using poor performers as shooting range dummies.”
“Well, it isn’t his fault. Very few agents encounter directors in less formal situations. All they know is that if their workspaces aren’t clean, their records aren’t organized, or they don’t perform ‘properly’ in front of the inspecting director, they have a high chance of getting reprimanded, demoted, or worse.”
We part in the fifth-floor open lounge, Jin heading to Cybersec while I take a slow stroll to my closet office across from an actual closet. As he makes a hard right two hallways down, my eyes spot the signs of “dangerous resolve” in his face. A term that can best be explained to mean “wanting to do something good by way of doing something bad.” The good part being far more subjective than the bad.
All it took was a thirty-minute cab ride for Jin’s anger to dissolve into misplaced guilt. Now he’s going to do something stupid in order to apologize for starting an argument with me. An argument I deserved. Damn it, Jin.
“This day is never going to end,” I mutter.
“Glad to see your feelings aren’t entirely inhuman, Adamend.”
The hair on the back of my neck bristles at the sound of a recurring nightmare materializing before me. Briggs leans against my office door, scrutinizing me. In order to have gotten here from the third-floor open hall in less time than it took me to ride the elevator from the ground floor, he would’ve had to run. Which means his hardline pose and stiff frown are the result of a deliberate attempt to look as intimidating as possible. It’s the method he uses to scare people before he scolds them for acting against orders.
“I’ve been known to produce human responses at times, sir.”
He doesn’t even blink. “Walk with me, Adamend.”
“Through Maintenance?”
“Yes. It’s quiet.”
And isolated.
I try to space myself a few feet behind him, but he adjusts his speed until we’re side by side. “Inspections starts in twenty, sir.”
“I’m aware.” He pretends to evaluate the pipes and terminals and closed doors, the way the inspection team will when they arrive. Nothing is imperfect in this corner of the building though. Maintenance is a ghost town compared to the other departments. With so little traffic, things rarely fall out of working order.
Briggs pauses in front of a wide window that overlooks the abandoned back parking lot. Since a big garage opened down the street shortly before I started working here, the poorly paved lot has only been used for group functions, like the annual office cookout.
“You ended up in the hospital last night,” Briggs says, drumming on the window with a knuckle. “Want to tell me why?”
“I had a run-in with something I couldn’t handle.”
Briggs’ skepticism is apparent in his reflection. “And that was?”
“I’d rather not say yet. It’ll be in my report on the Manson case, once I solve it.” I backpedal a couple steps. The silence in this area of the building is unnerving, much like in Briggs’ soundproof office.
“I’m taking you off that case.”
“Will all due respect, sir, it was never an official case to begin with. You were taken off it by order of EDPA. Unless you’d like to threaten me with substantial charges for pursuing the case, I plan to continue my work.”
He cracks his knuckles one by one and turns around to glare at me. “You know what EDPA does. And they know you know.”
“And you know that I know and that they know I know because you sent Weiss to spy on me after you received notice of my hospitalization, thanks to office insurance procedures. You should also know that they probably know about Weiss, given that there were EDPA-related spies watching me on the train.” I shuffle another foot backward.
“Why did you meet with that EDPA woman earlier? If they wanted to stop you from pursuing the case, they would’ve simply sent a cease and desist. But they didn’t. Which implies she met with you under some other pretense.”
“She did.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Are they trying to poach you, Adamend?”
Emphatically. “To a degree. I told them no, if that makes you feel better, sir. I’m not leaving the IBI.”
“They can be persuasive.”
Another piece of the puzzle that is Briggs’ obsession with EDPA slips into place.
“They’ve taken agents from you before, haven’t they?”
“Yes, and a third of them have died within their first year there. What do they do, Adamend? What is EDPA’s purpose?”
“I intend to tell you, sir. After I solve the Manson case.”
Intense anger warps his composure, boils beneath the surface of his stern face, and the muscles in his neck and shoulders tighten. Most of it isn’t directed at me, but since I’m the only person in the vicinity, I calculate a fifty-fifty chance he’ll either punch me square in the jaw for my defiance or change the subject in order to calm himself down. After a tense moment, he mercifully chooses the latter, if only because he reminds himself I was in the hospital this morning.
“Get back to your office. Brennian is the inspecting director today. He’ll want to see you.”
“Brennian?” I say, confused. “I thought he was in the District of Russia.”
“He left early.”
I do the math in my head. Low-orbit jets are much faster than the intercontinental hyper-rails, so he could’ve jumped the Atlantic in time for his four thirty inspection deadline—if he left immediately after talking to me. Was it something I said? I wonder. Did I tip him off about my Manson investigation, or did he see the insurance records too? Maybe he double-checked my story because he was worried about EDPA’s involvement.
“Did he say why?” I ask Briggs.
“No.” His brows furrow. “Why do you look so upset about it? He likes you.”
“Well, it’s just that he—”
The lights go out.
Ten seconds later, the emergency beacons switch on, a dim red glow bouncing off the piping and creating eerie shadows in every nook and cranny of the corridor. A shrieking siren with an instructional voiceover starts blaring through hidden wall speakers: “This is a test of the fire alarm system. Please locate your designated escape route and exit the building immediately.” After the first repetition, the beacons begin blinking on and off at a disorienting pace, and I honestly wonder if the people who designed them wanted to save lives or cause seizures.
Then again, they may not have been designed to work this way.
There’s a reason Brennian’s nickname is Director Kill-us-all.
Briggs screws his eyes shut and rubs his temples. “Looks like inspection has begun.”
“Yes, sir. It does.”
“I’m not sure this is appropriate, Director.” I flip the spoon over and press the scoop of ice cream against my tongue. As the strawberry delight melts in my mouth, I stare at a random spot on the table in front of Brennian, unwilling to meet his eyes. I’m not yet sure if this is a trap or a treat because he hasn’t mentioned EDPA or the Manson case, or much of anything at all. He just invited me out for a snack at the ice cream parlor near the IBI office, and off we walked, and here we are.
Across the street, a mob of IBI agents hav
e been loosely corralled into the front parking lot by Brennian’s lackeys. A number of them are shooting me death glares against the backdrop of the still-blinking building. When that fire alarm went off ten minutes ago, every ounce of composure was elbowed out the window and all the prep work everyone had done in anticipation of Brennian’s arrival went down the toilet.
Brennian has a way with inspections, and that way is cruel. Rumor has it that a few years back, he hijacked the Main Deck’s satellite feeds to display incoming nukes. The entire office devolved into a sea of blubbering agents who thought the end was nigh. Then Brennian showed up and gave over two hundred people reprimands for losing their cool under pressure. Compared to that, a fire alarm is pretty tame.
“Inappropriate?” Brennian says. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Some people clearly do.” I gesture to the angry crowd.
Brennian snorts. “They’ll get over it. I haven’t seen you in ages, and I don’t have a lot of time to see you now. I’m filling in for Director Cabrera—she had a family emergency—so once inspection closes, I’ll be back on the plane to return to my Russia assignment. This is basically a layover. I figure I should make the best of it.”
His expression doesn’t give anything away, a consequence of too much practice in political negotiations, and I wonder how much of that story is true. Did Cabrera really have an emergency, or did he bribe her to say so in order to sneak back to Washington under the radar so he could snoop around? He’s been known to make bold moves on a whim, and one of his biggest moves was designating me his protégé and bumping me up from junior agent status. Clearly, he wants to protect that investment, so if he suspects I’m poking my nose in the wrong business…
Someone tries to flag my attention from the edge of the IBI crowd. It’s Jin, of course, mouth watering at the sight of my ice cream. Behind him, Brennian’s staff has begun to drive all the agents back inside. In a few minutes, everyone will get a message with their inspection score. Anything below a B will get you chewed out by Briggs in one of tomorrow’s post-inspection assemblies.