“They played me,” Cedric said, slumping back in his chair. “They wanted me to share that information with you guys.”
“It looks that way.”
“How could I have been so stupid? I sent you right into a trap. You all could have died.”
He looked so devastated and disappointed with himself that Zira felt bad for suspecting him for even a moment. Because it was Cedric, and of course he wasn’t responsible for this. This was the same young man who’d worked with the rebels for years before they took over the country, who’d practically dragged them all to the nearest polling place so they could vote to ratify the new constitution, and who’d nearly cried tears of joy when Chase announced that vote had passed. He couldn’t have set them up. He couldn’t have even contemplated it.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “We all should have seen it.”
He shook his head. “Someone could have died. That’s on me.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to beat yourself up for it later,” said Alma. “But not now. Focus. They wanted you to set us up, which means they knew you were undercover. And they specifically targeted your team’s individual CLs to disrupt your communications.”
“So it was definitely someone in SIO,” he said with dismay.
Alma frowned. “I handpicked everyone myself, screened all of them to ensure they were loyal to the Republic.”
“People lie,” Zira said.
“Yo sé. I’m not stupid. But that doesn’t make it easy to accept.”
They all just sat there for a few minutes. Cedric sucked on his teeth and continued to bounce his foot against the floor. Alma walked to the window and stared out at the city lights in sullen, brooding silence.
Behind Zira, the elevator doors slid open once more. She turned to see Nova step out wearing the same defensive scowl she’d adopted as soon as it was suggested Cedric had had anything to do with the day’s events. Her eyes flew to his face, and only then did her expression soften.
He stood up and raised a hand to greet her. “Hey, Nova. Long time no see.”
She walked towards them at a brisk pace. She probably would have run had Zira and Alma not been present. Cedric put his arms around her in a tight bear hug, then gripped her by the shoulders and looked her up and down. She had removed her vest and jacket and donned a plain black shirt instead, but her pants and hair still bore powdered residue from the explosion at the school.
“You look good,” Cedric said. “A little dirty, but good.”
“You too. The others kept saying you might be behind this. I told them they were crazy to even think it.”
“Well, I can’t blame them, but I appreciate your faith in me.”
The smile she gave him was one Zira hadn’t seen since before he left.
She left them to their reunion and went to stand beside Alma at the window. “What do you want to do about all this?”
The woman forced out a sigh that sounded more like a growl. “We need more information. And we need to buy ourselves some time.”
“And how do we do that?”
“Let’s just pretend we don’t know anything yet. Obviously, whoever did this is going to know we suspect something. But maybe we can make it look like we’re focusing all of our attention on Cedric while we search for the real traitor. We can put him in one of the empty offices up on the top floor and pretend we’re questioning him.”
“You mean I have to stay here?” said Cedric behind them. “And do what? Just twiddle my thumbs while the rest of you try to catch whoever did this?”
Alma turned around to face him. “Yes. You have to stay here, for tonight, at least. And since Nova seems unwilling to follow orders and stay at home like she was told, she can stay, too. Someone has to act as your jailer, after all.”
Nova’s entire face went red as she stared down at her feet, but Zira could still see the smile lingering in the corners of her mouth.
“And then what?” Cedric asked.
Alma’s eyes narrowed. “Then tomorrow, we send someone up to interrogate you. We won’t tell anyone exactly what’s going on, but our rat will know, and maybe that will be enough to force them out of their hole.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Early the next morning, Jared stood in the corner of the training room with the rest of the team as Zira debriefed them on Cedric’s situation. Besides Alma, no one else in SIO knew what was really going on, but that didn’t stop the whispers and rumors from circulating almost immediately. Some of their colleagues even stood and clapped for them as they walked into the office, like they were heroes for surviving the attempt on their lives and capturing the traitor behind it all. The whole thing made Jared nauseous. They were destroying a good man’s reputation over something he hadn’t done.
He leaned over whisper to Zira walking beside him. “This sucks.”
“I know. But we can’t tip off whoever is really responsible. They’ll all forgive him once this is over.”
He hoped she was right.
They headed for their workspace at the end of the office, and Zira motioned for them all to gather around her desk. Quietly, she said, “Tripp, walk us through everything you know about our communication problems from yesterday.”
He responded in an equally hushed tone. “I ran some tests last night to try and find out a little more about the disruption. It definitely came from this office, which supports our theory that someone here has been working with the PRM. I can’t pinpoint it to a specific system or workstation, but whoever it was knew what they were doing.”
Salim ran a thumb over his dark beard. “So we’re looking for someone tech-savvy.”
“Yes, very.”
“And all of this happened during the workday,” Josefina said. “Whatever they did, they were discreet enough not to draw attention to themselves.”
“That probably wouldn’t have been too difficult. If they were acting like they were working, someone could have been looking over their shoulder without realizing what they were doing.”
“We need to find this person,” Zira said. “And we need to do it before they realize Cedric isn’t a real suspect at all. Until we figure it out, you don’t say a word to anybody else. Tripp, what now?”
“I’ll keep looking through the system and try to find any unusual activity from yesterday. Other than that, it might be helpful to see if Cedric can think of any connections the PRM might have had to anyone here.”
“That’s a good idea. Jared and Josefina, do you want to be in charge of that?”
“Sure,” Jared said.
“Ask him for the names of everyone he knew in the PRM. Even if he didn’t see a connection, we might be able to find one. And send Nova home to get some sleep. The rest of you, keep tracking those leads on Ryku. I have to go see a man about a leg, but I’ll be back soon.”
Josefina headed for the elevator, and Jared followed. He’d never visited the upper levels of the building before, and once they reached their destination, he could see he hadn’t been missing much. The top floor consisted of a wide stretch of thinly-carpeted hallway lined with offices on one side and doors that led to shorter, branching halls with even more offices on the other. As the National Security Department didn’t have any use for it at present, it was almost completely empty aside from a few spare desks and chairs.
They walked down towards the office at the farthest end of the hall where Cedric was supposedly being held prisoner pending the investigation. As they drew closer, they could hear muffled laughter through the door.
Josefina opened it without knocking. “Maybe you two ought to keep it down. This isn’t supposed to be a party, you know.”
“Sorry, Mom,” Cedric said.
She scowled back at him for a moment, then turned to Nova. “Zira wants you to go home to get some rest.”
“And a shower,” Cedric added. He smacked her in the thigh, and dust flew off her pants in a cloud at the point of impact. “You’re filthy.”
“We�
�ll see how clean you are after a few days in here,” she retorted, shoving his arm. “I’ll see you later.”
Cedric cringed as she walked out. “A few days? It better not take that long. It won’t, right?”
Jared sat in one of the empty chairs that had been dragged into the office. “I hope not. That’s part of why we’re up here. We need you to tell us the names of everyone you know from the PRM. Maybe we can find a connection to whoever’s been working with them here.”
“Sure, but could I get something to eat first?”
“Names,” Josefina said sternly. “Start thinking. I’ll see what I can find for you downstairs.”
Jared recorded the names in his CL as Cedric recited them, along with any details he could remember about the person. Josefina came back a few minutes later with a breakfast bar from one of the machines in the training facility, and Cedric ate as he continued to rattle off his list. It was a long one, and more than an hour had passed before he exhausted his recollection.
“That’s all I remember. Maybe I’ll think of more later.”
Jared sent the information to Zira. “You did great.”
“I hope it helps. I still feel bad about sending you guys out there.”
“You didn’t know.”
“Yeah, but I should have. Looking back, there are things I should have picked up on earlier. Like the fact that they didn’t ever tell me anything important or give me any real responsibilities. I figured it was just because I was new, but a few of the people who joined after me seemed to move up the ranks a little faster.” He shook his head. “They knew I was from SIO the entire time. They probably know about the others, too. Is Alma pulling them out?”
“Not yet,” Josefina said. “We want to catch our traitor before we do anything that might raise their suspicion.”
“Someone should warn them at least,” he said.
That was Alma’s decision, but Jared understood his concern. If the PRM knew about the other undercover SIO agents, there was nothing to stop them from killing them at any time.
Cedric sighed. “Let’s just talk about something else. Something less depressing. The election’s coming up. Less than two weeks away. That’s exciting, right?”
Of course he would pick that as their next topic of conversation. Jared shook his head. “I’m not sure I’d call it exciting. Historic, maybe. But exciting?”
“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me I’m going to have to drag you all out there again to make sure you exercise your right to vote.”
“You ever consider a career in politics? You definitely have the enthusiasm for it.”
“I have, actually. Maybe one day, you’ll all be voting for me.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Josefina muttered.
He laughed. “How did you both get so cynical?”
Jared shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it cynical. Just realistic. We managed to screw things up before, so what’s the difference now?”
“I guess I can understand that, especially since you worked directly under our last leader. I’m sure that makes things…complicated.”
A severe understatement, but Jared didn’t bother to correct him.
He turned to Josefina. “What about you? You must have joined SIO for some reason.”
“I needed a job. I have two kids to take care of.”
“No, that’s not it. You could have gotten a job doing anything, but you came here, to work for the Republic.”
“Better pay.”
“I know that’s not true. Come on. Why are you here?”
“If I tell you, can we get back to work?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Josefina crossed her arms. “My mother flew bomb drones during the war. I was too young to remember much of it, but as I got older, she told me how bad life got under the old government, and how much better things were with the Project in charge. And they probably were, for a little while. Everyone was on equal ground. Everyone had a job to do, food to eat, a place to live, a basic education.”
Her eyes grew distant, and she stared at an empty space on the wall as she continued. “The changes were so subtle we didn’t even notice. They started controlling more and more, and before I knew it, my mother was arrested for driving an unregistered car that had been her dad’s before the war. She didn’t have any paperwork to prove it wasn’t stolen, so they just assumed it was and gave her two years in a labor camp. The whole time she was there, she was sure the Project would reevaluate her case and get it all sorted out. She was convinced they’d never do anything so unjust. Not on purpose.”
She gave Jared a sidelong glance. “That was a hell of a propaganda campaign you guys kept shoving down everyone’s throat. It worked on her, and it worked on me until the day she died in that labor camp. She fell while she was working on some reconstruction project without proper safety equipment. And all for driving her own car. They decided she was guilty just because she couldn’t prove her innocence.”
“I’m sorry,” Cedric said quietly. “That’s awful.”
Josefina shrugged. “It was, but they say things like that happened all the time before the war. If you had enough power or enough money, you could get away with anything. If not, you were screwed. And we were supposed to be a democracy then, too. Like Jared said, what’s the difference now? What’s going to stop us from just going down that same road again?”
“We can learn from our mistakes,” Cedric said. “We don’t have to make them again.”
“I hope so. But that means we need people who remember the mistakes. I remember, and I can help here, so why not help?” She raised an eyebrow and gave him a faint smile. “Just because we’re not all as enthusiastic as you are doesn’t mean we don’t care.”
“Fair enough, but would it kill you to just act like you care once in a while?”
“You know what I do care about? Finding out who else you remember from the PRM.”
They spent the rest of the day alternating between serious conversations about the PRM and more lighthearted discussions about everything Cedric had missed out on while he was gone. Dodge came up to bring them lunch in the afternoon, and Zira checked in periodically with updates. By the end of the day, the team still didn’t have anything concrete on their traitor, but Tripp thought he was getting close to a breakthrough. Nova came back in the evening to act as Cedric’s night guard again while everyone else went home.
The next morning, Tripp practically shoved Zira and Jared out the door in his eagerness to get back to work. He’d apparently had an epiphany while brushing his teeth and was anxious to test his theory. He rattled on about it during the entire drive. Zira pretended to pay attention and made a show of nodding along and asking questions, but she kept exchanging glances with Jared that conveyed she was just as confused by the whole thing as he was.
Tripp caught them looking at each other as the car pulled into the parking lot. “You weren’t even paying attention to anything I said.”
Zira shrugged. “See, that’s why you’re the tech expert and I just go around shooting things and telling people what to do.”
Tripp got out of the car. “Then I assume it’s okay with you if I try all that out?”
“As long as it’s nothing that will make Alma mad.”
They walked into the lobby to find a repair bot working on the elevators. A man in boots and cargo pants knelt beside it, examining the electrical panel in the wall. “Elevator’s down,” he said without even looking at them. “You’ll have to take the stairs.”
When they reached the seventh floor, Zira turned to Jared. “You want to go up and send Nova home? I was going to have you and Josefina in with Cedric again today, if that’s okay.”
He nodded and continued up the remaining flights of stairs.
When he exited the stairwell on the top floor, the sound of the door closing behind him echoed throughout the entire hall. It was cold up here, and quiet. His footsteps thumped faintly against the thin, industrial carpet. There were no signs of
movement outside Cedric’s door, and he couldn’t hear anyone talking from within. Maybe they were both asleep.
As he drew closer to the room, he saw what he thought might be a shadow extending out from under the door. But it was too dark and heavy to be a shadow—not in the gray morning light that came through the tinted windows.
He’d seen shadows like that before. Dark, red-tinted, liquid shadows that spread and pooled and seeped even when there was no sun. He swallowed hard and quickened his pace, but time still seemed to slow around him. Even before he reached the door, he knew what he would find. The only question was whether there would be one body or two.
He twisted the knob and pushed the door open, but it stopped when it hit something solid inside. He pushed harder, using just enough force to make a gap wide enough for his upper body. He didn’t want to see, but someone had to. He was here, and he knew what death looked like, and maybe it wouldn’t shock and disgust him as much as it would some of the others.
He peered inside, looked down, and was both repulsed and sickeningly relieved when he saw just a single body lying on the floor.
Cedric’s.
He lay face down, arms bent out in front of him like he’d tried to catch himself as he fell. The bullet’s entry point gaped red and moist in the back of his skull.
A chime sounded behind Jared. He closed the office door and turned as Nova stepped out of the now-functional elevator.
The smile she was about to give him died before it reached her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
He attempted to compose his features into a neutral expression. “Go get Zira.”
She kept walking towards him. “Why? What’s going on?”
“Just go.”
She narrowed her eyes and attempted to push past him to the office, but he stood firm. His boot squelched noiselessly in the damp carpet underfoot. “Let me in,” she insisted. She shoved him so hard he fell back against the door, but still, he stayed where he was.
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