Sketches

by Teyla Branton

  Drew flinched at the mention of his wife. “Not so good. She hasn’t been the same since our baby died, and it’s been especially hard since our birth application was denied again three months ago. We still have another couple months before we can reapply.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Jaxon felt sick thinking of all the unsupervised children in the Coop, when here was a couple who weren’t even given permission to replace the son they’d lost. Everything was off about this. Everything.

  Excusing himself awkwardly, Jaxon made his way down the corridor, heading to dispatch to see Lyssa before meeting the others in the shuttle bay. He was moving so fast, he nearly ran into Hammer as he rounded a corner.

  “Hey, where’s the fire?” Hammer said, stopping so fast his black ponytail sailed forward over his left shoulder.

  “Just anxious to get out of here. Captain’s not too happy with me at the moment.”

  “Yeah, I heard about the shuttle. That’s tough.”

  Jaxon glanced around and, seeing a camera in the hallway, turned his back to it. “Hey, I’ve been thinking about that clean spot on Henderson’s Teev.”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Just for the sake of argument, let’s say all the missing people had similar clean spots on their Teevs. All of which would have disappeared like Henderson’s. But the missing people have families, right? Were their iTeevs and Teevs looked at?”

  “You know they were.”

  “Are you sure? I’m talking every friend, relative, colleague, acquaintance? Every office Teev they might have ever used? Every Teev feed in every restaurant?”

  A smile spread over Hammer’s face. “We could have missed one or two.”

  “I know someone who can create that device you were talking about to prevent a Teev from accepting commands from the feed. It’s going to take some time, though. I already have a list of people we can check out. How soon can you get your hands on the mirroring program?”

  “About that,” Hammer said, lowering his voice and glancing around. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get ahold of it. I’ll have to figure out how to write one myself.”

  “But I thought . . .”

  Hammer shrugged. “My contact’s been transferred to Estlantic.”

  Jaxon’s stomach dropped. “Transferred?”

  “That’s what the programmers who work with him told me. I didn’t manage to talk to him myself. Just got a canned message.”

  “Seems rather odd timing.”

  “I know.” Hammer shifted his bulk, his face growing uncomfortable. “Look, maybe we should go to the captain with this.”

  That was it? Hammer could hack into the Teev feed, beat three men in a workout, and was the best CSI he’d ever worked with, and he was giving up this easily? This was Hammer’s find and he should be more excited about tracking it down. Something was stinking in the cow field, as they said in Colony 1.

  “Not yet.” Once, Jaxon would have agreed to go to the captain, but now he couldn’t get Brogan’s odd behavior out of his mind. “Did you ever think . . .” Jaxon paused as a coworker he barely knew from company meetings passed them in the hallway, nodding a greeting.

  “Ever think what?”

  How much did he dare say about his doubts? Maybe nothing. Not yet. “Look, this is a solid lead. We can’t let go of it.”

  “Right. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Hammer started moving away before Jaxon thought to ask, “Did you get a chance to compare that sketch I sent you against known radiation deaths?”

  “Yeah. He didn’t match anything there, but he did come up as a suicide.”

  “I see. Thanks.” So Nova’s father had killed himself. Jaxon wondered if she knew the truth and had purposely lied.

  “Guy had cancer,” Hammer added. “Maybe he wanted to end things before it got too bad.”

  Jaxon found himself reevaluating again. “Cancer can be caused by radiation exposure.”

  “The report said it ran in the family. He worked hardware—nothing to indicate exposure. All treatments failed. Is this guy important?”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe.” With a nod at Hammer, Jaxon excused himself and headed toward dispatch. He still had a minute left to tell Lyssa about Dani, if he hurried.

  Chapter 20

  REESE TAPPED HER fingers on her desk as the details to the missing persons cases downloaded to her iTeev. Her plan was to make note of every single person or worksite that might have access to a Teev they hadn’t tested. Jaxon was pretty sure the blind spots would lead to a connection, but until they found one, they couldn’t prove anything.

  More worries about Dani and the deaths at the colonies tugged on her. Eventually, she and the others would have to make a plan of action, but for now it was a relief to put that aside and focus on the missing persons cases. Because she didn’t have the first idea about tracking down those who had attacked her.

  A brisk rap on the door pulled her attention from the downloading files. “Come in,” she called. The door opened, revealing Captain Brogan, his wide shoulders taking up much of the space.

  She popped to her feet, sending a shudder of pain through her side. “Hi, Captain.”

  “Hi Reese.” He walked in and paused by the side of her desk, watching her for a minute as she squirmed under his attention. A sudden thought panicked her. Would he reassign her now that he knew she and Jaxon had grown up together?

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  He turned and sat on the edge of her desk, his hands clasped in front of him. “Are you okay?” His body language was concerned more than angry, and a tiny bit of tension seeped from her.

  “Of course. Like I said before, it was different in the colony than I remember in some ways, and in others it was exactly the same.”

  He nodded and waited. For what? She wasn’t going to tell him anything else. Not until she understood why he’d come to see her alone.

  His lips curled upward in a smile that was unexpectedly attractive on him. Sensual, even, though she was certain he wasn’t trying to flirt with her. “I’d like you to see Dr. Andres.”

  “What?” That was a surprise. “But why? I’ve—”

  “Your side.”

  She looked down to see a faint, drying stain on the side of her blouse. Pressing against it, the material darkened, the fresh blood apparent even against the purple of the blouse. “I guess I might have pulled something loose with all the walking.”

  “That’s why you were supposed to be taking the weekend off.” His voice didn’t invite argument. “Now go see Dr. Andres. I’ve let him know you’re coming.”

  A direct order she couldn’t disobey. “Thank you, Captain.”

  With a nod, he left the room. Reese’s files had finished downloading, so she pocketed her iTeev before bringing up a map of the building. Most medical offices were typically located on the lowest floor of a division, which sometimes meant underground. This division didn’t seem to have any subfloors, but the morgue was located on the bottom floor not too far away from the shuttle bay. Maybe she could finish there before she met up with Jaxon and Eagle. On her way, she’d grab an extra set of blues. If they were dealing with an elite team of Special Forces, blending in at least a little could come in handy. Changing would also hide the fact that she’d been bleeding.

  She found the medical examiner’s office without issue and was immediately invited into the warm interior by Alex Andres himself. “Glad you found me,” he said with a smile that was a bit lopsided, perhaps because of the three-centimeter scar below the right side of his mouth. It made him seem tougher and approachable all at once.

  “I didn’t have much of a choice,” she said.

  “That’s Brogan for you. But he’s a good guy.”

  Well, he hadn’t separated her from Jaxon yet, and he had noticed her reopened wound, so maybe Andres was right. “I’m glad to hear it, Dr. Andres.”

  “Please call me Alex. Both your partners do. And I’m sorry to hear that you were
attacked the other night.” He stepped backward and let her come inside.

  She didn’t respond immediately because the office demanded her attention. It was different from the sterile atmosphere of the previous medical offices she’d visited and was larger than even Brogan’s office upstairs. Instead of holo emitters embedded in the walls, this room had warm wood paneling. A long brown leather couch tempted her with the promise of a comfortable nap, and a large wooden desk with attached bookshelves took up all of one wall. Real print books lined the shelves, and from the open book on his desk, she judged they weren’t just for show. She stepped toward the desk, instinctively running her fingers over the smooth varnished wood.

  “It belonged to my great-grandfather,” Alex said.

  “You don’t see many pieces like it these days.” Her aunt’s house and others like it were the exception.

  “Not enough wood to go around. And so many existing pieces were destroyed during Breakdown, but it’s getting better as the land recovers. My great-grandfather built this desk.”

  “The books were his too?” Those were even more rare. Print books weren’t made anymore, at least not for the general market.

  “No, his mother’s. She was a physician. Unfortunately, she was from a place called Denmark before she came here, so most of the books aren’t in English. That was long before Breakdown, of course. I’m teaching myself the language.” He laughed. “Or trying to.”

  His voice held the sadness of a dying race, though both of them were young enough that they had no real idea what life had been like before Breakdown. They knew only that there had been other countries far across the sea. The CORE had no interaction with them now . . . or knowledge of their survival.

  Or so they said.

  The thought made Reese uncomfortable. One falsehood didn’t mean the CORE Elite had lied about everything. Still, it was possible. Alex was talking, but she hadn’t heard a word, and with effort, she drew herself back to the conversation.

  “. . . if that’s okay.”

  “Could you repeat that?” she asked. “Sorry, it’s been a long day.”

  “Yeah, I heard about what happened with the shuttle. You shouldn’t have been on your feet so much so soon.”

  “It wasn’t intentional. Sounded like a good idea at the time.” She hesitated before adding, “So does everyone know about the shuttle?”

  His grin widened. “Not everyone—yet. It’ll probably get around, though. Jaxon doesn’t mess up much, and they’ll want to tease him.”

  “It wasn’t just him.”

  “Yeah, but you and Eagle are new.”

  Inside, she groaned. He even knew about Eagle being with them. She should have known. Enforcers were a tightknit bunch, and this division was smaller than her last one in New York.

  “So, what’s going on with you?” Alex asked. “Why did Brogan send you?”

  “It’s just where the guy got me with his knife. The wound reopened.” She indicated her right side. “But at the hospital they gave me nanoparticles and did some fancy laser technique to stop the bleeding. They also put RealSkin over the top. It shouldn’t have opened.”

  “That all works great, if you’re not overdoing things physically. If you do need to be more active, they don’t have the tech we do here.”

  The statement was odd, but he probably understood how things worked in Dallastar better than she did. “So how do we do this?” she started unbuttoning her blouse, revealing the vest underneath. There didn’t seem to be any medical equipment in his office.

  “Well, I offered you a gown when you were staring into space a few minutes ago, but if you’re in a hurry, we can skip that. Come with me. I’ll take a look.”

  She followed him through an interior door that led into an even larger room, the morgue, which lit up as they entered. Her eyes shuttered at the sudden brightness. Two metal gurneys sat in the middle of the space under a machine with various appendages. On the far side of the room were a set of double doors that must be how the bodies were brought in for examination. Freezer units lined one of the walls. Now this was more like what she was used to seeing. Thankfully, the gurneys today were vacant.

  He led her to a padded medical exam table near a long metal counter against the wall. “I treat enforcers over here,” he said. “Ordered it after I realized no one likes to sit on the gurneys, even if I put down a warm blanket.”

  “No surprise there.” She set her bag and her blouse on an empty chair, boosted herself onto the table, and began parting the fasteners of her vest on the right side. Just one side wasn’t enough, given the form-fitting shape of the material, so she parted the other side as well.

  “Go ahead and lie back.”

  She did as he requested, folding the lower half of the vest up onto her chest. She expected to wince as he touched her right side, but the gloves he’d pulled on were warm and his touch gentle.

  “The RealSkin is mostly holding up,” he said, “and it’s quite well done. But it’s come loose in one section because the flesh under it is pretty jagged, which is why you’re having leakage. Looks like they did as good as they could with the laser, so I’ll just put another patch on the top. But first I’ll give you a little extra boost.” Leaving her side, he went to a cupboard and typed a code on a lock, removing a syringe.

  “Is that pain killer?” she said, eyeing the needle he was affixing to the syringe. “Because I don’t need it.” She’d taken something on the train that had dimmed most of the aching, and she didn’t want to be out of it during their surveillance tonight. In fact, if Jaxon suspected she was bleeding again, he might insist that she go home.

  That was not going to happen.

  “This isn’t for pain.” Alex held the syringe, needle facing upwards, shaking it gently. Inside, a silver substance floated to the bottom, leaving only clear liquid on top. He compressed the plunger until the tiniest bit of clear liquid appeared on the edge of the needle. “It’s nanobots. Special ones—very expensive to make. In fact, it’s not possible with our level of tech yet.”

  “Then where did you—”

  “Brogan is good at securing pre-Breakdown stuff that we need. We’ll eventually catch up to the level we were before, but it’ll take time. There are a lot of CORE restrictions in place to make sure bioweaponry doesn’t reoccur. Anyway, the nanobots don’t have a color we can detect with the naked eye, but they bind them to a colored liquid that’s weighted so we can easily inject them without wasting any. Ready?”

  “Sure.”

  After the past five months of recovery, she’d hoped never to have another needle stuck in her, but unless she wanted to sit the rest of tonight out, she had to agree. A pinch and a flood of warmth beneath her wound was all she felt as he injected her. “What will they do?”

  “Repair from the inside out, and not by speeding up your body’s processes like the nanoparticles they gave you at the hospital. It’s similar to the Nuface process.”

  “No wonder they’re so expensive.”

  “Yeah, but the Nuface we still have in truckloads. And they’ve spent a lot of time trying to re-engineer that.” He chuckled as he moved away, covering the needle and tossing the syringe into an opening in the wall. “That’s one thing we share with pre-Breakdown society—the urge to stay forever young. You get any treatments yet?”

  She shook her head. “Way out of my pay grade.”

  “Not if you have pull.” He winked. “Come back to me in ten years when you might start to need it. I’ll fix you up.”

  “This is a seriously strange place.” She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered that he didn’t think she needed Nuface now or worried that he was connected with something not quite above level. But she wasn’t really in a position to judge after what she was planning tonight.

  “Yes, it is. I won’t fight you on that.” Alex began cleaning up her side, his movements hypnotic and comforting.

  “Am I supposed to be getting hot?” she asked as a warmth spread inside and around her
wound.

  “Just our little friends doing their jobs.”

  “What happens when they’re done?”

  “They become inactive and are flushed out like any other impurity. Takes about a week. By then you’ll be as good as new. Is it unpleasant?”

  “Actually, it feels really good. Kind of like a smeg flush, only without the sexual aspect.” Her eyes met his as she said this and something unspoken passed between them. Maybe it was the heat rushing through her or how he touched her so skillfully that suddenly made her notice him. Mostly in the way his eyes seemed to drink her in and how his crooked smile seemed mysterious and sexy all at once. His face was clean shaven and his hair short—the brown color lighter than most, at least enough to be noticeable. She bet it would be soft to the touch.

  What was wrong with her? Has to be the nanobots, she thought. Or the mention of the smeg.

  “Not that I take smeg,” she said lamely. “I mean, not since the academy drug course.”

  He laughed. “It’s not against the law. Now, juke is another story. Here, let me help you sit up.” He stepped back to the table and offered her a hand, easily raising her up, which told her he didn’t spend all his time in the morgue.

  The flap of her vest slipped down to cover her stomach, reminding her that she wanted to change. But there was still something zinging between them, something that might not yet be as strong as what she’d felt for Jaxon last night, but still compelling—and with none of the baggage involved.

  Without speaking, he helped her from the table. “So,” he said.

  “So.” She reached for her bag and blouse. “Mind if I change here?”

  He pointed at a single door next to the one that led back into his office. “Bathroom’s in there.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’d better get back to work. But please let me know if you need anything else. I’m in the directory.” He took two steps away and then turned back to her. “Oh, Reese?”

  She turned around. “Yeah?”

  “You want to grab a cup of coffee sometime?”