Minder Rising: Central Galactic Concordance Book 2

by Carol Van Natta

  Yamazaki smiled. “No wonder your supervisor wanted you back so fast. Be my guest, then. Do you need Mateliff to show you the way?”

  “No, thank you.” Lièrén looked to Mateliff. “Unless it’s required by protocol?” he asked deferentially.

  She twitched a smile, acknowledging his subtle rebuke of Yamazaki’s disrespect in treating her like a lackey instead of a peer. “Nope. You’re clear. I need to get back to the control center. Physical system’s been glitchy lately.”

  Lièrén nodded his thanks once again, then made sure to rub his neck as he left, as a reminder of his supposed headache. His brain did feel like it was wrapped in wool, but that was the result of straining to keep his thoughts contained while speaking mind-to-mind with Imara. She was a fast learner, and toward the end, had been unknowingly eroding the barrier of his “walled garden” by her openness and instinctive desire to make a deeper connection with him. The desire wasn’t real, it was an artificial side effect of modulating her brain chemicals to make her receptive. He knew once she was away from his influence, and figured out that he hadn’t planned to do anything about the Testing Center taking Derrit until he’d been sent to interrogate her, she would never trust him again.

  He felt the pressure of the seconds slipping away, but forced himself to keep a steady pace as he walked the empty halls. He didn’t have a teke’s natural sense of spatial awareness and direction, but he’d paid attention to the turns when following Mateliff, in case he needed a quick escape. A good habit for covert field agents, even ones that worked in corporate offices.

  The deskcomp was as he’d left it. He quickly disguised the metadata and location of Derrit’s file, then opened it in an encrypted workspace and skimmed through it. As of ninety minutes ago, the Testing Center had prepared a declaration of emergency conscription, but it was incomplete. The file said he’d been authorized for transport to an auxiliary location and helpfully gave exact coordinates.

  Lièrén swiveled his chair and bent over to dig through his bag and retrieve a water bottle. Under cover of that movement, he subvocalized the coordinates into the wire of his prepaid comp, encrypted the packet with the passcode he and Imara had agreed on, and sent it to Rayle. Any direct contact with Imara would have been dangerous.

  And that was supposed to be the end of his involvement. Imara had badgered him into agreeing because committing career suicide wouldn’t help anyone. He’d let her win the argument because he was still a target, and whoever wanted him and his fellow agents dead didn’t mind collateral damage. Every time he left the building, he was putting anyone near him in danger.

  He had deliberately not asked Imara what she planned to do, and she had deliberately not volunteered it, but because she wasn’t good at containment yet, he had the gist. Unsurprisingly, it was clever, flexible, and bold. Since he had to wait for the Testing Center data cube to rebuild for the final time anyway, there were a few things he could safely do that would help shore up some weak spots in her plans and give her some additional options.

  Twenty minutes later, the deskcomp signaled that the cube was finished. He’d dutifully included the current data, to cover his recent forays into their data space, but he’d also introduced several tiny corrupt seeds that would burrow into the cube and introduce subtle anomalies that would make it more difficult for recruiters to find the records of high-level targets of interest. It felt like a tiny bit of justice to use covert CPS agent skills to hinder the misbehavior of a rogue Testing Center.

  He transmitted the completed hypercube, then as his final act, launched a custom query he’d developed to systematically alter the deskcomp and data spaces he’d used that would make security passes ignore them as already reviewed. It was the electronic version of twisting.

  He rocked back in his chair and stretched. The squeak of the chair echoed in the main office area, and it reminded him to check for the synaptic haze of other minds. It annoyed him that doing so wasn’t yet an automatic habit. He was pretty sure no one was in the main office or nearby, probably because they were deployed in the field in preparation for the TSAC march.

  His talent felt a little sluggish, which was understandable, considering how much he’d used it that evening, but it would have been much worse if he’d still been on the enhancement drugs. That was something else he needed to deal with, now that he was about to go back on active duty. Advocate Patwardan had mentioned several workarounds that he wanted to research once he got to whatever new hotel he’d end up at that evening. It would keep him from worrying about what Imara was doing, or fretting about his upcoming meeting with the CPS regional supervisor. His stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten that evening, either.

  He leaned forward and pulled his gym bag from the floor onto his lap, then slid his water bottle inside and sealed the bag against the rain. As he slung the strap over his shoulder, he felt the brush of haze against the edge of his sifter talent. He quickly stepped out of his office and focused. Someone was approaching from the direction of the core of the building. Low-level telepath and cleaner talents, which ruled out the agents he’d already been introduced to.

  A few seconds later, a youngish, long-limbed man with reddish brown hair and a narrow face emerged from the hallway. He stopped and smiled when he saw Lièrén.

  “Thank chaos, someone’s still here. I’m new here, and I need some help…” He trailed off when he saw Lièrén’s bag. “Oh, are you leaving?”

  Lièrén nodded.

  The man glanced at the room. “I don’t suppose you know if anyone else is around? I need to secure one of the small offices on the third floor, but the door won’t seal. If someone could hold it, I could get it back on track. It’ll just take a minute, but I can’t do it by myself.” His shoulders slumped and he sighed. “Looks like I won’t be going home anytime soon.”

  Lièrén couldn’t fault him for wanting to go home, and he wasn’t lying about anything. “I can help you.”

  “You can?” The man’s sunny smile was back. “You’re a lifesaver!”

  Something about the taller man triggered a sense of familiarity, but his synaptic haze signature was an odd texture that Lièrén would have remembered. He mentally shrugged and started toward the hallway.

  “I’m Henry Nothenil, by the… Hey, is that yours?” He pointed to Lièrén’s coat hanging in the office.

  “Yes,” Lièrén said. He went back for it and waved the lights off as he draped the coat over his arm. “Thank you for noticing.”

  Nothenil led the way to the stairs, and Lièrén dutifully followed. Nothenil seemed distracted by something on his percomp, so Lièrén started making a list in his mind of the things he still needed to do that night, and was sidetracked by noticing that ever since the accident, his memory had improved. He didn’t used to be able to hold lists in his head for long, which was why he’d relied so heavily on taking notes. The only thing new was that he was no longer on his original drug protocol. That, and no one was regularly erasing chunks of his memory.

  He began to wonder where, exactly, the small office was, because it seemed like they were walking through a lot of halls. He wasn’t surprised when Nothenil slowed to a halt at an intersection.

  “Uhm, we might be turned around.” He looked left and right. “Do you know which way the connecting door to the central core is from here? You know, the one that looks like a closet?”

  Lièrén had to admit it was easy to get lost, because the third floor was carved up into a confusing tangle of odd hallways with closed doors, but the favor was taking longer than he’d hoped. He’d been checking from time to time for synaptic telltales from others, but the floor seemed to be deserted. Nothenil followed as Lièrén backtracked one hallway and found a room number, then used his percomp to tell him which way was east. “Left at the next intersection, down the short hall with the orange corridor light, then right. It’s in the middle.”

  Nothenil beamed a smile. “Excellent. I’m glad I don’t have to ping security and tel
l them I’m lost.” He took off again, his confident body language restored, with Lièrén following.

  The final hallway was as he’d remembered it, about fifteen meters long and very plain. He was amused to note that all of the doors were numbered except the central core door, as if not numbering it made it less visible. Nothenil’s problem door was around the corner at the far end of the hall.

  He motioned to Lièrén and opened the door to the first room on the left. “I’ve already set this one up. Why don’t you put your stuff in here?” Lièrén put his bag and coat on the desk, then followed Nothenil back to the stuck door. The problem was easy to see, but not so easy to fix. Nothenil kept going back to the other office for various tools, and after about fifteen minutes, was growing more irritable by the second.

  “Come on, you zelenooký fena,” he muttered, working a varidriver back and forth in the track, “we haven’t got all night.”

  Lièrén didn’t recognize the language and didn’t much care at that point. He still hadn’t eaten, and the chances of getting to a hotel before midnight were fading.

  Nothenil froze a moment, then smiled and put down the driver. “Come with me.”

  Just as they rounded the corner, Nothenil tripped and stumbled into Lièrén… and Lièrén was suddenly Nothenil’s puppet as his telepathy talent flared hard and fast.

  He was compelled to kneel, looking down the long corridor. The unmarked connecting door opened. So this is how I die.

  From down the hall, another flare of white-hot telepathy talent flooded his sifter sense, with an undercurrent of healer. From his peripheral vision, he saw Nothenil’s arm extend with a handbeamer at the ready. Someone hurled into a tumbling roll on the floor and came up with a needler pointed directly at Lièrén, but Nothenil’s beamer was faster and didn’t miss. The needler flechettes went wild, but not wild enough. Lièrén felt searing pain in his right shoulder and heard Nothenil grunt behind him.

  In that moment of distraction, Lièrén flared and focused all his talents on Nothenil, hoping at least to take the húndàn with him into death. The telepathic body control broke, and Lièrén crouched and slammed Nothenil’s knees to knock him off balance. Lièrén scrambled back to keep the distance, then angrily flared his sifter talent to disable Nothenil.

  “Stop! Stop!” shouted Nothenil, staggering back. “I’m on your side!”

  Lièrén gritted his teeth and continued the assault, fighting to overpower Nothenil’s telepathic talent. “Fèihuà.”

  “It’s not bullshit. Look at who was shooting the needler if you don’t believe me.” Nothenil’s blue jacket and pink shirt were starting to show spots of blood where the needler flechettes had stitched a pattern up the left side of his torso, with a few hitting his arm.

  Lièrén snatched the beamer from Nothenil’s hand and pointed it at him, then eased back on his sifter assault. “Why don’t we both go see?”

  Nothenil kept his hands visible and took a step toward the prone figure.

  “Slowly,” snapped Lièrén. Nothenil’s lips tightened, but he nodded.

  As they got closer, Lièrén saw long, dark hair, and a woman’s figure. A sickening smell of burned flesh and blood made his stomach roil. Synaptic haze told him she was still alive. She was curled on her side, with her hair covering her face. Her hands were clutching her midsection. The needler had fallen about twenty centimeters away, so he kicked it toward the wall, away from both her and Nothenil.

  Carefully keeping an eye on Nothenil, Lièrén crouched slowly to push the hair aside. He glanced down.

  The woman who’d tried to kill him was Agent Cini Talavara, his field unit’s acting supervisor.

  He glared at Nothenil. “Explain.”

  Nothenil suddenly looked alarmed. “Don’t let her touch you. She’ll kill you!”

  Lièrén leaned away and stood, narrowly avoiding Talavara’s fingers, which had only been centimeters from his calf.

  She was clearly in a lot of pain, but she had enough energy to look at Nothenil. Her telepathy flared laser-hot, and her expression changed from puzzlement to anger. “You’re dead.”

  “Not yet,” he said softly, with a smile that had a haze of violence behind it. “But you are.”

  A sudden flare of low-level telekinetic talent surged from Nothenil. The needler on the floor spun and emptied its clip of flechettes into Talavara’s throat. Blood welled quickly from the dozen needle wounds. It only took a few seconds for her synaptic haze to flatline and dissipate as she died.

  CHAPTER 19

  * Planet: Concordance Prime * GDAT 3238.220 *

  Lièrén thumbed the beamer and focused on Nothenil, who stepped back in alarm, one hand high, the other arm drooping, as if not in his control. “I saved your life.”

  “You used me for a shield.” Nothenil’s odd behavior fell into place, making Lièrén want to grind his teeth. “I was your bait.”

  “It was either that or let her start hiring mercs to shoot up a bar, or mug you, or take out a fucking metro platform that killed dozens, since she used up all the unit’s agents.”

  “What?” Lièrén was stumbling over the implications, but Nothenil believed the accusations he made.

  “Look, could we play jack trade somewhere else? I disabled the security eyes back here, but they’ll send someone to check. I’d rather not be here when they find this.” He tilted his head toward Talavara’s body. “We can buy ourselves some time if we move her into the connecting corridor. No eyes in there, since it’s not supposed to exist.”

  Lièrén sighed, then nodded. “I’ll hold the door, you drag her.”

  “I can’t.” He pointed to his drooping left arm. “Anesthetic needler. She wanted you alive, at least for a while.” Needlers were one of the very few legal weapons in Spires.

  For once, the fact that sifters were immune to chemical painkillers worked in Lièrén’s favor. His shoulder hurt, but he could feel and use it. He picked the needler up off the floor, then gave Nothenil an uncompromising look. “Do it one-handed.”

  Nothenil sighed and shook his head, then did as ordered while Lièrén kept the beamer on him and his sifter sense watching for any other hidden talents. They couldn’t do anything about the bloodstains in the porous plascrete flooring or the line of flechettes that had pierced the ceiling tiles.

  Lièrén considered his options. He wanted answers, and he didn’t trust Nothenil out of his sight. The ideal place would have been the connecting corridor, except it now had a murdered agent’s body. Not something they wanted to be caught with. A memory surfaced of what was at the other end of the corridor.

  “I want my bag and coat, and then I know a place we can talk.”

  “Leave the scarf. That’s how she tracked you tonight.” Lièrén frowned and added that to his list of questions.

  With the bag slung over his shoulder, he directed Nothenil back through the corridor, then to the left and down another hall that took them to the door he’d remembered. They were now in the CPS medical center and the plethora of oddly shaped and clearly abandoned offices that had bemused his surgery-addled imagination the first time he’d seen them.

  He did a cursory pat-down of Nothenil, who rolled his eyes and sighed the whole time, then had him sit in the far corner before dragging up a chair. He carefully sat out of Nothenil’s reach, but close enough that they could talk quietly.

  “Tell me your given name.”

  “You already know it.” Truth, but shaded. He let it go for now.

  “Why was Cini Talavara tracking me and trying to kill me?”

  Nothenil smiled humorlessly. “She thought you were betraying her to the Office of Internal Inquiry.”

  Lièrén schooled his face to hide his surprise. It was bad technique to let the subject see what an interrogator knew and didn’t. “Interesting. What did she think I knew?”

  “That the ‘Trade Assistance’ field unit was selling interrogation outcomes to the highest bidder, and doing special favors for CPS brass. When you
downloaded the files, she thought you were turning them over to the OII.” Truth.

  Lièrén kept his expression neutral, but inside, he was reeling. He’d thought it was just his partner who was corrupt, and now Nothenil was claiming seven other people were just as bad. How had he not known?

  He knew the answer before he even finished his own question. Fiyon Machimata, the man he had been so monumentally naïve to trust and admire, had been erasing his memories.

  “And the flitter accident?”

  “A falling out among thieves. Machimata was the target. You were collateral damage.” Truth.

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I’m an agent.” Shaded truth. The measured hesitation before each very short answer proved Nothenil had experience with sifters and interrogation, but maybe he didn’t know that Lièrén didn’t need skin contact. Hadn’t since he stopped the CPS drugs.

  To cover his action, Lièrén chose not to force Nothenil into uncomfortable areas just yet. Instead, he sighed and let his shoulders droop a little. “What’s in this for you?” He carefully extended a tendril of talent and gently nudged a few receptors at a time in Nothenil’s brain. The man’s oddly textured synaptic haze began to smooth out.

  A smile ghosted across Nothenil’s face. “Payback.”

  “For what?”

  “A life for a life. Talavara was a psychopath.”

  Lièrén stimulated Nothenil’s transmitters, a few at a time. “That’s hard to believe. The CPS evaluators would have caught it.”

  “What makes you think they didn’t? Psychopaths can be useful tools.” Nothenil sneered. “Their mistake was thinking they had her leashed. Apfel, the teke, wasn’t much better. Bloody CPS thinks drug protocols are the answer to everything and always work.” He didn’t seem to notice that he was beginning to volunteer information.

  Lièrén raised an eyebrow. “Why am I still alive?” He tweaked a few more neurotransmitters. If he went too fast, Nothenil would notice and start fighting, and his telepath talent was much stronger than Lièrén’s.