Sharp

by Alex Hughes

  Besides, since I’d tuned the thing to the shape of my mind before the injury, it was slow encouragement to heal the right way. Better encouragement than the drugs the Guild gave out like candy, drugs I shouldn’t take.

  But the exercises, well, those I did. In the mornings, I stretched my mind, flexing muscles and holding painful poses like the world’s worst mental yoga session. At night, when I was as exhausted as this, I did crossword puzzles and word searches, even physical pasteboard picture puzzles, anything to make my brain rewire faster. Tonight, though, the letters in front of me were dancing off the page, wavering so badly I couldn’t read a single line, no matter how I tried. My head hurt still, a low, thin pound of pain.

  I stuck the pencil in the center of the book and tossed the book down onto the dirty floor. I punched the pillow a few times to give it some shape, and turned over to put my face in it.

  Like this, I faced the compartment in the walls. A hinged, hidden spot where I used to keep my emergency stash. I stared at the spot in the wall that hid the compartment. I didn’t have any vials. No Satin-filled glass vials behind me; I hadn’t restocked them. Three years and change clean, but at moments like this all I was thinking about was where to get my poison. Whether the bus down to south Fulton County would still get me what I wanted, or whether they would have talked to the dealers in Decatur, and refuse me. They were idle thoughts. Mostly. But I was exhausted, my willpower and mind nearly gone.

  My mind spiraled around and around the events of the day, like a dog chewing at a bone. Emily, dead. Charles, dead. Cherabino, hating me. Me probably losing my job in the middle of the holiday season. Me sitting here without even a single vial, without one even for me to hold. I got more and more anxious until my heart beat like a drum.

  Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. I got up, I put on clothes, and I stood, in front of the door outside, as the war inside me raged.

  Sometime later, through some miracle, I managed to let go of the doorknob. I sat on my crappy couch, got out a blue-wrapped cigarette pack and a lighter. The pack of solitaire cards was already on the table. I played through half a pack, I played until my eyes grew heavy, I played until I stubbed out the end of the latest burning cigarette, and finally, finally slept.

  CHAPTER 4

  The elevator stopped at the second floor, and I braced myself. It had been several weeks since I’d walked this gantlet. And, in a delightful twist of fate, my telepathy had decided to wake up unexpectedly this morning and participate in the mental exercises, even giving me a few glimpses of the shape of Mindspace without pain. I’d gotten lucky, crazy, unreasonably lucky yesterday; I’d pushed far enough to make me sick, but apparently, not enough to reinjure, a minor miracle all by itself. Maybe this prayer thing was working.

  Here, now, I held my cooperating mind closely, wrapped in cotton; for all I was cautiously optimistic, there were times when telepathy wasn’t pleasant.

  The cubicles all around me were filled with cops, mostly detectives with a smattering of other specialties like accountants and other noncop investigators. The cubicles started with Robbery, Vice, then Homicide and Electronic Crimes at the end, data crunchers and active duty intermingled, all the senior and important cops who weren’t—quite—supervisory yet. The forest of cubicles had two major downsides: one, there was one major walkway in the place, and two, my destination was all the way at the end of that walkway.

  I took my courage in my hands and starting walking. Pace after pace down the central walkway, as every head in the place turned to me and thoughts started flying like water balloons. Observations hit me from every side, everything from the set of my shoulders to the shape of my ass, the contents of the bag in my hand to the smell of the cigarette clinging to me. Just for fun, the cops’ minds added rumors of Cherabino’s displeasure, political shortcuts, and nasty things other cops had said about me. And the hostility—the general low-level fear and hostility that had peaked yesterday at the announcement of layoffs. It might not be my fault, maybe, but as an outsider I was sure I was easy to blame.

  I shielded harder, while the waves of negative energy splashed on the shields from every side, the impacts stinging. My mind was still sensitive from yesterday, for all the pain had mostly gone, and I was feeling less patient than ever—so I met the eyes of the people staring at me. Most turned back to their work—a few, Clark’s buddies, kept my gaze.

  Finally I’d reached the end of the gantlet and could turn into the more secure cubicles, this area shielded for sound. Below, the secretaries’ minds were quiet and secure in their gossip; above, the senior brass worried quietly; the gauntlet was over.

  Cherabino’s cubicle neighbor, Andrew, waved hello to me as I passed. Andrew was an accountant, his mind habitually filled with numbers, coffee, and calm. The only labels he put on things were numbers.

  * * *

  Michael was sitting in my spot. Mine. The little chair at the back of Cherabino’s cubicle, the little chair I’d been using for years. I mean, yeah, I’d moved downstairs to an empty desk because Cherabino had jumped like I’d stung her with a bee every time I’d moved into her cubicle—I’d had to do something. To give her space. So I could be trusted again. But this?

  Michael had covered my little corner of the cubicle with pictures, personal pictures of his wife and him, a framed document with some kind of Asian characters, even a pile of reference books on the small counter that had been my workspace. Titles like Homicide Investigator’s Guide to Optimal Practices and Blood Spatter and You filled the space that should have been mine. I hated it. I hated him, cozied up to Cherabino at her desk, leaning over some doubtlessly important work document. I hated him.

  “Adam,” Cherabino greeted me before I could leave. She frowned, like she was getting the edge of my jealousy. I erected a firm brick wall between us, hard, and tried to pull my anger in.

  “I brought you coffee with real chocolate syrup.”

  That made her eyes lighten, and she took the drink carrier from me, diving into both so fast I barely had a chance to save my own coffee.

  Michael stood awkwardly to the side.

  “I didn’t get enough for you too,” I said insincerely. “Sorry.”

  He frowned, and part of me rejoiced.

  “We’re about to go over to the lab,” Cherabino said. She added, almost as an afterthought, “You should come along.”

  So I did.

  * * *

  I followed Cherabino across the street, down West Trinity Avenue, to the big, square concrete court system offices. She and Michael huddled under a single umbrella, and I carried my own umbrella above me, the plop of the rain like soft bullets on its skin.

  The forensics offices were huge, since they handled a lot of overflow from every detective group in the county. Things like blood analysis, photography analysis, blood spatter, DNA, hairs, nonhuman traces (think dogs, parakeets, and helper monkeys), and everything else you could think of. The everything else would be investigated in Trace Evidence, the catch-all group for the county forensics department, where you went when you had something that didn’t fit the rest. Carpet fibers, for example, or paint from a car, or even better, an odd white powder you couldn’t identify or the speck of something that might be important.

  I’d been told we were going to see some kind of trace evidence from the body, and hopefully get more information Michael could use to track its source down. Not that he was overachieving or anything.

  But I’d made it down to the trace evidence rooms of the forensics offices several times before, usually to run small errands for Cherabino. They knew me there, and as I was known to bring treats and bribery when something was running behind, I was hoping they wouldn’t be hostile to me no matter what was going on with layoffs.

  Michael held the door open for her, of course, juggling umbrella and heavy metal door with alacrity. I nodded and walked through whether he’d intended to
let me through or not. My own umbrella went in the shedding pile beside the door, the water from the pile making the marble floor slick. Why he bothered me so much I didn’t know. But I couldn’t read him at all, which made it worse.

  A few turns and we were at the trace evidence rooms, a few small specialty rooms splitting off from a large, central open space filled with every kind of scientific mechanical you could think of, including at least five microscopes of various strengths and a minicentrifuge. Two forgettable techs in lab coats worked at the back of the room, another tech with pink hair disappearing through the door to the dark lab on the right as we entered. I recognized her from meetings a few weeks back; she’d had some useful things to say about dish soap and latex gloves.

  A tired woman in hospital-type scrubs perched on a tall stool near the front of the room, pulled up to the long machine-laden counter filled with small glass slides. In her mid-fifties, Dotty had skin so fair you could see the veins in her neck, her hair was light blond turning to gray, and her hands were rough, like they’d been used hard for years. Today there were also dark circles under her eyes and she had her right knee propped up like it was hurting again.

  “What?” she asked grumpily, without getting up. Then her eyes fell on me. “Adam! Did you bring me more of those faux-macadamia cookies?”

  “Not this time.” I assumed a dejected expression as I wandered in her direction. “You told me you were going on a diet. I was trying to be nice.”

  She reached out and swatted me on the shoulder. As her hand touched, even through the shirt, I could feel a small wave of pain off her knee. Dotty wasn’t the type to complain—holding the pain in so close it hardly registered in Mindspace even when I was at full strength—but she’d been struggling with the joint for years. Apparently she was allergic to the artificial type-1 collagen that would form the frame for whatever new joint they’d grow for her; not worth it, and there were no guarantees the older metal-and-plastic models would get rid of the pain. So she’d been sticking it out. I respected her for that, and for her unwillingness to take any pain meds stronger than aspirin.

  Dotty had greeted Cherabino while I was distracted. Now she asked, “And who is this handsome young thing?” There was a lilt in her voice; Michael sidled away.

  “He’s Officer Hwang,” Cherabino said. “He’s shy.”

  “Well, that’s a shame, then.”

  “Thanks for putting our stuff on rush.”

  “Well, I owed you that favor anyway. Let’s see what we have.” She stood up—with difficulty—pulling her knee down from the prop with her hands. She hobbled gracefully through the small door to the left and into the next room. The rest of us followed.

  We entered a smaller room, maybe five feet by seven, most of the room taken up by a mammoth table on which sat a beat-up gray machine with two huge circular extensions over a lighted plate the size of my hand. On the plate was a clear tube-thing, less than a quarter of an inch long, covered in spots of vaguely translucent reddish brown blood. At head height on the machine was a bright monitor the size of my head, on which a much larger version of the thing was displayed.

  “What did you find?” Michael asked.

  “Based on where it was found in her neck, it’s likely a piece of a ligature.”

  Cherabino held up a hand. “Wait, ligature? There was blood everywhere. I’m pretty sure this was a bladed weapon.”

  Dotty shrugged. “I’m not the ME, but I can tell you what I have in front of me. This is a new material, unusual, not a smooth surface, and according to the file it was found lodged against her spine—the ME marked it as ligature with a question mark. Take a look.” Dotty pushed a few buttons, and the circular thing whirred and moved closer to the plate. On the screen, the image got larger—much larger, until it was as big as my thumb around, and I could suddenly see what she meant—the center section was long and skinny, like a piece of a long cord, the sides shearing off like they’d torn. But the closer we got, the less the cord seemed smooth; the edges suddenly looked rough, the cord almost . . . striped. In the corner of the monitor, a brown spot fizzled, colored distortions around it, as if the monitor was dying in that spot. I tried not to look at the spot and focus on the image, but it pulled my attention to it like a flytrap.

  She pointed to the screen. “If you look—the cross section of this sucker is a twelve-pointed star. If you apply pressure, there’s twelve lovely edges to cut someone with. Nasty thing, it is.”

  I was frowning, trying to figure out exactly what Dotty was talking about.

  Michael leaned forward to look at the end she was holding up.

  But Cherabino was thinking, thoughts like bees buzzing around her head. Suddenly they all flew in a single direction—clarity. “So it’s not a length of fishing line, or anything like that, pulled too hard. Nothing like that would go through the skin with a clean cut, not that deep.”

  “No, my dear. It looks to me like it was specialty made, or at least adapted from a specific project. Whatever this thing is, it was meant to cut. Designed for it.” She put the end down and rotated a few knobs, zooming way, way in until I blinked. “As you can see from the striations and the regular imperfections, the material is a part-biological superfibroid distillation. I can’t tell you which one; we don’t have the chemistry set here to tease out the components without making them interact or get toxic. And I don’t have that kind of training. But I can say the major molecule is carbon—”

  “Like diamond?” Michael asked.

  “More or less,” Dotty replied, in the tone of voice of a pleased teacher at a good student question. “It’s tough stuff. I wouldn’t normally have said something like this would break off. It clearly was designed to be flexible; maybe there was an issue with the chemical binding for this particular length, something that made it more brittle than intended. Good news for us. The bad news? Well, to put it simply, it’s from the same kind of technology that makes biological computer components. Plus that nasty starred edge.”

  “Tech.” Cherabino’s voice was quiet, but it seemed to echo in the small room. She was disturbed; that much I could feel echoing down the Link.

  “Is it illegal?” I asked Dotty. “This material?”

  “I wouldn’t guess it’s common. It would set off the same sniffers and alarms the biological Tech would, and get you in a hell of a lot of trouble explaining your way out to some government agent with a big gun and a small sense of humor. It’d be more trouble than it’s worth, just for that.”

  “So it’s not illegal.” Michael poked at the plate, and Dotty slapped his hand away.

  “I didn’t say that. I called you in early so you could take a look, but I’m passing this one up to the Georgia Bureau, just in case. It’s a more advanced material than anything I’ve seen.”

  Cherabino’s thoughts were buzzing again. “What would we call this? How would we track it down?”

  “I’d call it a specialty cutting cord, or a supermaterial, or some such. But you may have to call around to find the industry terms. Like I said, a bit above my expertise.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “There’s one more thing.” Dotty added a tinted cover to the lighted plate and zoomed the machine even farther in, pressing a few buttons that made the monitor light up with neon colors in a long tube. I assumed the slightly striped tube was the center part, the cord, blown up.

  She pressed another button, and suddenly a shape emerged from the darkness, a shape in quiet black against a sea of neon. I could see a crooked C, then maybe a half circle torn away . . .

  “There’s letters on that thing?” Cherabino’s voice rang out.

  “Whatever it is, it’s labeled,” Dotty said. “I’ll see if I can’t get you more information once we cross-check the databases. We’ll need computer time. . . .”

  “You’ll get it. Again, I appreciate you prioritizing this one. I assume you’ll send
over the rest of your findings as you have them?”

  Dotty nodded. “I’ll run a few more tests on this thing and give a look at the trace you sent over. I don’t have much hope of anything better, but you never know.”

  “What trace?” Michael asked.

  “Why, the swabs and fibers the detective here sent over yesterday. Like I said, I owe you a favor and I’m happy to pay up when I can. We get a priority homicide through here, though . . .”

  “I understand,” Cherabino said. “Thank you.”

  Dotty leaned over and rubbed her knee, nodding an acknowledgment as the cops turned to leave.

  On an impulse, and to see if I could actually do it, I reached over and touched her on the shoulder, right at the neckline where my fingers could sit on her skin without issue. “I appreciate it,” I said, to give the action some socially acceptable context. But her mind opened up like a door; she wasn’t guarded at all. Pain blossomed between us like a flower.

  It was still morning, and this was one of the more simple Structure procedures. All knowledge and practice, no precision, no raw power. I found my way to the pain center of the mind and put in a simple, fuzzy, fragile shunt. Not a block; she’d do real damage to the knee without a warning system in place. When I backed away, both mentally and physically, I checked my work. I smiled, big, when it held. The pain coming off her was noticeably less.

  For the next day or two—as long as she didn’t think too hard about it—the pain would be less, with a lot less distress about it. The debilitating part about chronic pain isn’t always the pain; it’s the wear and tear of the pain on the brain and the personality. The shunt was temporary, but it would give her a break. Ten seconds later, I was out the door trying to catch up to Cherabino and Michael. I gritted my teeth and told my right knee it didn’t really hurt, not quite controlling the limp despite my best efforts. Looked like I hadn’t gotten it quite right after all.