Becky nodded. "Clazran was one of them."
The mention of his name was like a second hangover, stunning me into a silence that seemed to spread through eternity.
Sikes seemed to take it equally hard. "What?"
Becky flicked between Sikes and I. "I found a few more names of people traveling with Deson and Kenrey after you left to meet your contact, and I knew you wouldn't investigate the group if you thought Clazran was amongst them. So I–"
Sikes didn't let her finish. "Dis right, he wouldn't! You don't investigate the fracking President of The Kaerosh! Not if you don't want your head to roll off your shoulders."
"We can't just let them get away with this," Becky pleaded. "They rape children!"
"Quiet," I said. "Both of you follow me."
Since my entire future was resting on beating Reens to finding Ruby, and I'd broken the official secrets act a second time, I had decided to forgo eating and paying rent for the next month and invested the last of my savings in the same interference device that Guardian Nealson had used at Clazran's dinner. In the event that Reens had bugged my office, it seemed a reasonable countermeasure, but with what I had just found out even this did not seem sufficient.
I led them down to the laundry room where the whirring machines and thudding of the police boots in the industrial dryers made even the most hi-tech listening device little better than a tin can on a string. "How many cycles distant was Clazran with them?"
Becky pushed a wad of hair out of her eye. "Eight."
My worst fears had been realized. Eight cycles distant Granian was still President, and Clazran was head of the SP. "We're investigating an SP pedophile ring."
Sikes' eyes widened. "Then we're fracked!"
Reens had warned me the SP didn't trust me. If there was an SP pedophile ring then someone in the SP was overseeing it. With people like Kenrey and Clazran, high profile enough to cause international outrage, the measures this group would take to remain secret would be extreme. Even if they weren't monitoring me specifically, every tablet and network screen in The Kaerosh would have those names flagged, and the more names we hit, the more flags. Simply investigating them together would be enough to warrant our deaths. "They've probably sent people to kill us already."
Sikes' vacant expression faded for a moment, anger twisting his boyish features. "Why do you think they're SP?"
"It's the only thing that makes sense. It explains why Kenrey and Clazran are close friends, and why so many of the names in this ring appear to be nobodies. They're cover identities for SP agents."
"Frak." Sikes was losing it. He began pacing up and down the aisle, his shoes peeling off the sticky blue plastic. "Well done, Becky. We're so fracking fracked!"
Becky showed no sign of being cowed. "It's not my fault that Clazran's a fracking pedophile!"
He rounded on her but I got between them. "Quiet both of you." I needed to think.
This was the unavoidable conclusion of my parents' code. Mess with the monsters on the hill and you got eaten. If we were truly being hunted then our best chance of escaping was to get out of The Kaerosh immediately. But we wouldn't get far. It might take them a bit longer, but they would find us and kill us just the same. Our only option was to destroy the SP agents protecting this ring before they destroyed us.
"Back to work both of you," I said. Above all, I needed time. "Start investigating other names that have nothing to do with this mess. Make it look like we're lost, see if you can make anyone watching think we have gone off track, and don't leave the building without me knowing."
Sikes strode away as if walls were no obstacle, but Becky lingered. "Sorry, Boss. I didn't mean to put us in danger."
She tried to leave, but I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her gently back to face me. "You never need to apologize for doing what you feel is right. You're better than me, and if you felt this cause was worth the danger then Sikes and I are not fit to doubt you." I would have forgiven her almost anything. It was plain who she was when I hired her, so this was my fault not hers. I had forsaken the code of my parents, but I could not begrudge it in her. If that made me a fool, then I was also worse. I would not be the one to break Becky as I had been broken, not even for my life.
I realized at that moment I could trust her. Not to obey me, or behave according to my rationality, but to follow the code she had chosen. It was the same code I had once followed as the indisputable truth of the Gods, enabling me to predict and measure it, to trust it.
Her cheek twitched in a failed smile. "What are you going to do?"
"Leave it to me. I have a plan." It was a lie, but I had changed my conclusion to the question of Ruby. If the pedophiles were about to kill me, I was not about to hand them a pedophile killer. It was no moral epiphany, just exhaustion from a game that had probably been checkmate several moves ago.
I went to the caff and sat down with a plate of chips and a chocolate milkshake. Sikes' snacks had pierced a hole in my stomach leaving me unable to stop eating. I searched the list of pedophiles for the ones that would kill me. It would only be one or two of them in charge of making sure no one ever found out about the rest of them; any more would draw unnecessary attention. The big names were not my problem, it was the nobodies who would kill me, though I doubted they would come themselves. The actual assassins would be given nothing more than our names and their orders, meaning if I could somehow remove the ones giving the orders then the assassins might stop.
Hayson could probably give me names, but they availed me nothing. Even if I knew who they were and I somehow managed to kill them, then I would be the murderer of high ranking SP agents, with a trail of inquiry leading straight back to me. The agency had too many resources for SP killers to get away. Continuing to investigate them would only raise their suspicions further, but it was already too late. I could head down to the national press offices shouting my discoveries or hide in a tent in the middle of nowhere. They were still coming for me.
A few of the men were deceased. There was nothing surprising about that, things happened in over a decade even to young men. Except...
I clicked on Joshua Merenford, murdered. Gavin Fels, murdered. Allan Counse, murdered. Including Kenrey, that was four out of about 30 – high for such big names.
Counse was the owner and managing director of Pilias Enterprises, a firm producing anti-grav for the high weight cargo freighters that filled the skies of The Kaerosh like lead clouds. His gray hair curled sideways like barbed wire, and his eyes pierced the lens that captured them, the look of a man who thought mercy was weakness.
Counse was poisoned in his office by a man named Titos Plumber, supposedly because Counse was sleeping with his wife. Plumber never made it to trial, committing brutal suicide shortly after his arrest. No doubt the same one that awaited Ruby if they ever caught her. He was convicted posthumously on what, at a glance, looked like solid evidence. But the same might have been said for Peti, if the counter evidence was ignored.
I vid called Pilias Enterprises, and after a few moments a cheerful looking face appeared with hair flopping down over two badly concealed widow's peaks. "This is Pilias Enterprises customer inquiries, my name is Henris, how may I help you?"
"Police," I said. "Can you put me through to your records department?"
"Can I have your details, sir?"
I sent them.
"Patching you through."
The next face was decidedly less friendly. An older man with the bulbous eyes of a night stalker and veins that spread across his cheeks like roots. His mouth curled downward at the side as if I'd disturbed him from something important. "Records Department."
"I was hoping you could provide me some information."
"Not company policy to give out information for no reason, not even to police."
"I wanted to know if you had a girl working at Pilias with a severe disfigurement."
The face raised an eyebrow. "Has there ever been a girl working ʽere without one?" He looked
across from him as if he were accusing someone I couldn't see.
"It would be severe, only a small list of diseases are known to cause it. I can send you a list." Ruby had the sense not to state her illness as osteochondroplasia when she worked for Kenrey; no doubt she would have used something different at Pilias.
"You could," agreed the face, "but I wouldn't bother if I were you. I'm not going to do anything with it."
"Why?" Every minute this oaf kept me waiting it gave the SP agents more time to kill me.
"Not company policy to give out staff details for no reason–"
"Not even for police," I finished for him. "Could you patch me through to someone who might rectify that?"
"I could do." The screen went blank, and for a moment I thought he'd cut me off, but the tablet started dialing again. A minute passed, and then another. I stuffed several chips in my mouth and sat crunching them while I waited.
"Hello?" Another man's face appeared, younger but more distinguished.
"This is Detective Nidess. It would be most cooperative if you could convince the man in your records department to–"
"Not the detective Nidess? The one who stood up to corruption?"
"Ye–"
"Cythuria, it is you. I recognize you from the network."
I tried to smile.
As he sat up, his face changed angle so I was looking down his nose instead of up it. "What can I do for you?"
"I'm looking for a disfigured girl who may have been working with your company at the time of Mr. Counse's death. She'd have been working in the building he died in."
The man snorted laughter. "Disfigured, eh? For my part I'm more partial to the figured ones, but we get a few uglies from time to time. This something to do with Kenrey?"
"Vaguely, but you have my assurances that it will not reflect badly on the firm, and if I can find this girl you'll have a friend in me until Cos flies from the orbit of Kaymon."
The face smiled. "I wouldn't have it any other way. I'll tell Phil if he doesn't find you this girl then he can pack up his desk at the end of the day."
I opened my mouth to protest, but Phil's rudeness had not left me desperate to help him. "You won't actually fire him though?"
The face grinned. "Firing that useless old fool would be the most productive thing I've done all week." Then he was gone, the screen went black while a yellow circle pulsed in the middle indicating I was on hold. I waited until the face reappeared. "He'll be cooperative now. Anything else I can do for you?"
"That's great, thanks."
"When you're a bit less busy we should have lunch."
Not in a millennium. "Sounds great. You have my number."
The face smiled and vanished again, replaced by Phil's. "Records Department."
"Hello, Phil," I said, with the magnanimity of a person getting their way.
"Figured it was you. Deformed girl, what are we talking, short, ugly, skinny?"
I didn't doubt short was deliberately at the front of the list. Maybe I'd have lunch with that guy after all, and quietly slip in that Phil called him a young heap of dis. "We're talking severe deformations," I said. "I'm sending you the list of diseases now. It shouldn't take you long to scan your database for them."
Phil snorted. "It's jaffee break now."
"You can do this then go."
The man shook his head, slow as Cos' rotation. "I'll have to put you on hold." He reached over to hit the button.
"Stop!"
Phil hesitated, his eyes returning to the screen.
I didn't have time to wait for this ass to drink a cup of jaffee. "Do it now and I'll pay you 100 cosians."
Phil's eyes expanded, forming portals to other dimensions. "Alright."
"Half now, half on completion."
"Alright."
I paid him 50 cosians. I was definitely going for that lunch.
Phil's ancient fingers could be heard tapping on keys like rain on a hollow surface. "Got her," he said, quicker than I would have thought possible.
On my tablet a file with Ruby's face appeared. The name and disease were different, but it was her. "Cythuria!" She was killing them all! I hung up, not wishing to waste any more time talking to Phil, suddenly aware that I hadn't paid him the other 50. A guiltless shrug and I was over it.
No, I couldn't know she was killing them all. Two murders was not a pattern, but there were two other dead bodies.
Gavin Fels was a security guard. Eight cycles ago he'd been in private security, tank's bonnet tough ex-military, but his death was further back than Counse's, four cycles prior, before Ruby was old enough to have started her vendetta. He was shot in an alley outside where he worked, which was impossible to trace even if it was Ruby. Joshua Merenford was a different matter. Killed supposedly by his daughter in law who'd gone the way of Titos Plumber, Merenford died with a pair of sheers through his chest in a Heart Tree GM greenhouse the cycle after Counse.
Like freight, GM crops were at the foundations of the Kaeroshi economy, and Clazran liked to have his friends in all the positions of power. I was starting to think that a lot of these people were not real pedophiles at all. They were just there to form connections with high ups in the SP.
In a way, that was more disgusting.
A similar line of inquiry as with Counse's company led me to a seed cultivator by the name of Pea Nolson who had chondrodactyly, one of the diseases that could manifest with Ruby's deformations. This time she had managed to delete the picture, or perhaps never gave one, but she was approximately the right age. She worked close to where Merenford died, and she quit soon after his death, just like her other aliases. There was little doubt Merenford was also murdered by Ruby.
Ruby wasn't just killing one man who'd done something horrible to her. She was on a mission of extermination. She was a highly skilled assassin with at least three kills by her eighteenth cycle.
Suddenly, I wondered why I had not seen it before. I always knew what she was. Monsters bred monsters. I'd seen the consequences of monomania, the warping of the mind until it no longer recognized right from wrong, because only what they needed to do was right and everything else was wrong. People in their way became obstacles, like the guard at Kenrey's compound. Titos Plumber, Benrick, and Merenford's daughter in law all became collateral damage. She might have been a victim once, but that child was long dead, killed in the fire that consumed her finger. What was left was a monster, and I owed her no mercy.
For the moment at least, I had another problem. I was in serious need of some dead pedophiles, and I finally had a plan.
Chapter 22
20/11/2256 FC
I needed Hayson's help if I was going to fight the SP, but there was no way he would take such a risk for me. Probably not even for Sikes. I needed a way to force him into it, and there was only one way to do that. Importantly, if I took this step and the SP hadn't already decided to kill me, it would quickly become an inescapable conclusion.
I had little choice. I couldn't take the risk that I was already on the death list. If anyone ever read the report I wrote for Hayson in generations to come, it might be looked at as one of the bravest stands against tyranny made by a man of no consequence. In it I detailed Kenrey's pedophilia, the involvement of several other wealthy people, and the suspicion that several of them were SP. In reality, there was nothing brave about it. There was no intent that the report should ever lead to the arrest of any of the named individuals. Quite the opposite, the report was designed merely to put another life at risk of them. It was enough information that not even the Commissioner of a police department could be allowed to know it and live. The only things I left out were the mention of Clazran himself and everything I'd found out about Ruby.
My finger hovered momentarily over the send button before I pressed it, but putting Hayson's life in danger was the least of my worries.
After it was sent, I looked for a place where I could implement the other part of my plan; trapping Ruby. Unfortunately, looking
at any of the places in detail might result in whoever was watching me recognizing the name later. There wasn't time to get my other tablet registered to Pollo, so I selected the Attari Bath houses, designed to imitate the ones in the hot springs of Gys.
*
Hayson was sat on his sofa, once again in his rib vest, though showing no evidence of having done any weights. A glass of whiskey danced in his hand, ice cubes clattering against the crystal. He downed the liquid and placed the glass on the table.
"I need to talk to you, Commissioner."
He gestured lazily to a chair, apparently too exhausted from his whiskey sipping to get up.
"I just sent you a report, sir." I told him what was in it and lied that Becky had only implicated the involvement of the President after it was sent.
Hayson said nothing. He poured another glass of whiskey, took a sip, then another, and then gulped down the rest of the glass. "I don't believe I ever told you what I really think of you." His words lingered and faded, blending into each other, but never losing their gruff rage. He was drunk. "You, Nidess, are a rigid sphincter whose only function is to drop dis over everything."
I took a quick look towards the door. Drunk Hayson seemed little more accommodating than the sober one, but I had no other avenue. "I don't have time for you to sober up, so you're going to have to listen to me as you are, and then make your decision. We're standing over the gateway to Cythuria, and if we don't tread carefully we'll fall in."
Hayson's eyes narrowed. "Look at you leaking dis all over my nice clean office."
"I can get us out of this, but I need you to tell me the names of the SP agent or agents in charge of monitoring the pedophile ring. I don't expect it to be many, as Clazran won't want to draw attention to the unit. Then I need the name of someone they report to, preferably who isn't in The Kaerosh right now, and you can leave the rest of it to me."
Hayson got up from the table and walked to the window. "You deliberately got me involved in this, didn't you?"
"You were involved anyway, but you might not have accepted you were until you received the report." Apologizing would only confirm my guilt in his mind. "We are all in this together, allies, as we agreed."
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