Active Memory

by Dan Wells

  “I take it back,” said Anja. “I did not have to see that.”

  Bao grimaced. “I’m going to have nightmares about this for the rest of my life.”

  “I need hugs,” said Marisa. “I think I need all the hugs in the entire world.”

  “I told you not to open it,” said Song sadly.

  “What were you saving them for?” asked Marisa. “Did you even have a plan?”

  “Well, I couldn’t just throw them away—”

  “You totally could have,” said Sahara, and turned to face him. “But you didn’t want to lose your frakking protein mix, so . . . what was your plan? Fertilizer?”

  “Dog food,” said Song, and flashed a guilty smile. “They . . . need a lot of protein?”

  “I’m calling the police,” said Marisa, struggling to contain her sudden rage. “I’m reporting to Detective Kiki Hendel that we have found the source of the mysterious hands.” She blinked on her djinni to send a message. “And if they don’t get here soon, I have the feeling I’m going to have to report a fairly vicious assault and battery.”

  Sahara picked up a kitchen chair and started walking. Song flinched back, covering his face with his hands, but Sahara walked past him toward the bioprinter, raised the chair high over her head, and smashed the humming machine over and over, beating it with the metal chair until both printer and chair were bent and broken and still. She dropped the twisted wreckage and turned toward Song, brushing off her hands.

  “I turned off your printer.”

  THIRTEEN

  “That was our last lead,” said Marisa. She was sitting in the police station again, staring at the same bare wall, though this time at least Sahara was with her. Bao and Anja had left before the police arrived: Anja because she didn’t want her father or his company dragged into this mess, and Bao because he simply didn’t want to be recognized by any cops. He lived fairly far outside the law.

  Marisa was starting to realize that she did, too.

  “The bioprinter was supposed to lead us back to the source of the DNA,” said Sahara, “but all he led us to was ZooMorrow again, and I don’t know where to go from here.” She stuck out her lip, thinking, and then shook her head. “I know there’s more to find, I just . . . don’t know how to find it.”

  “I don’t want to have to tangle with Ramira Bennett again,” said Marisa. “And I definitely don’t want her to tangle with me.”

  “The Wonder Mantis,” said Sahara.

  “The WoMantis,” said Marisa.

  “The Mantissassin,” said Sahara.

  “Nice,” said Marisa.

  “You know, you might not have a choice about seeing her again,” said Sahara, and cast her a sidelong glance. “If she can’t find Memo on her own, she’s coming straight back to us.”

  “Thanks,” said Marisa, some of her giddiness draining away. “That was exactly the chipper pick-me-up I needed right now.”

  They sat for a while in silence, waiting for Detective Hendel to excuse them. They’d already given their statements about Andy Song, and now Hendel was questioning Song for his side of the story. It was nearly two in the morning, and Marisa was exhausted. She closed her eyes, thinking about Fang—she never seemed to sleep at all. How did she do it? Though of course it was only five in the afternoon in Beijing right now.

  Marisa’s eyes snapped open. “It’s afternoon in Asia.”

  “Lucky them,” said Sahara, and yawned.

  “Five in the afternoon in Beijing, and . . . what do you think in Moscow? Two? Earlier?”

  “What does Moscow have to do with anything?” asked Sahara.

  “Because Andy Song wasn’t our last lead,” said Marisa, and smiled for the first time in hours. “Lavrenti Severov is.”

  Sahara sat up straight. “Holy crap. I forgot about Severov.”

  “Grendel sent me those three names,” said Marisa. “Those three Maldonado enforcers who died the same day as Zenaida. My dad said the gang war ended a month earlier, and Severov fled back to Russia, but what if he struck back one more time from across the ocean? Sent some hitmen or an assassin or something.”

  “A Mantissassin?”

  “Maybe?” said Marisa. “My dad told me that Severov tried to kill Zenaida. Maybe he tried to do it again, and those were the three he had to get through in order to do it.” She grinned mischievously. “We won’t know until we call him.”

  Sahara’s eyes widened. “You can’t just call a Russian mob boss.”

  “Not with that attitude,” said Marisa. She was feeling drained and reckless. She blinked to open a search window and typed in the name: Lavrenti Severov.

  “He’ll trace us.”

  “So we’ll route the call weird and hide our trail.”

  “We’re in a police station.”

  “I think Russia’s a little out of their jurisdiction.” She ran the search, scrolled through the list, and stopped in surprise.

  Sahara raised her eyebrow. “Find something?”

  “I found the end of the list,” said Marisa. “That’s literally the whole thing—a single page of results.”

  “That’s like finding a unicorn.”

  “One of these has got to be him,” said Marisa, and started reading each entry more deeply. “My dad called him Lav—which is suspicious by itself, right? That he would be on a nickname basis with this guy?”

  “Maybe it’s like we guessed before,” said Sahara. “Maybe he worked for one of them.”

  “He seemed super offended when I brought that up.”

  Sahara shrugged. “Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

  “Most of these are in Russian,” said Marisa. “I don’t have a Cyrillic translator installed.”

  “Just look for a directory,” said Sahara. She blinked, and ran the search herself. “I can’t read most of these, but I can tell which ones are not what we want. Video site. Video site. Wiki site. Social media site. Here: phone directory.”

  “Give it to me,” said Marisa, and Sahara blinked to text her the link. It popped open in Marisa’s djinni, and she scrolled down the list of names. “Only three Lavrenti Severovs.” She shrugged. “Well, it’s late and I’m making poor choices. Let’s do this.”

  She mirrored her audio feed and shared it with Sahara so she could listen in; routing the call to a speaker would be easier, but then the entire police station would be able to hear them. She ran an app she used to hide the origin of a phone call, and then just to be safe she spoofed her ID as well. Her djinni dialed the first number in the list, and it rang twice before a man answered: “Da?”

  “Hi,” said Marisa. “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes,” said the man, though his accent was thick as armor. “What do you want?”

  “This may seem like a weird question,” said Marisa, “but have you ever lived in Los Angeles?”

  “Los Angeles?” he asked. “United States?”

  “Yes,” said Marisa. “Da.”

  “Never,” said the man. “Who is this? What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for a Lavrenti Severov who used to live in my neighborhood,” said Marisa. “Is maybe your father also Lavrenti? A cousin?”

  “No United States,” he said. “No Los Angeles. Who is this?”

  “Sorry to bother you,” said Marisa, and hung up. She looked at Sahara. “Not a mob boss.”

  “At least, not our mob boss,” said Sahara.

  “Fair enough.” She blinked again, and dialed the next number.

  “Da?”

  “Hi,” said Marisa. “Do you speak English?”

  “Ya uzhe govoril tebe!” the man shouted. “Ya ne khochu vashey Biblii!” He hung up, and Marisa stared at Sahara with side-eyes.

  “I don’t know what that was about,” said Marisa, “but I’m going to guess he never lived in LA before.”

  “One left,” said Sahara.

  Marisa dialed the final number, and waited.

  “Da?” said a woman.

  “Hi,” said Maris
a. “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes,” said the woman. “Are you calling for Teofilo?”

  Marisa glanced at Sahara. “Actually, I was calling for Lavrenti.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” said the woman. “Lav so rarely gets calls anymore. Let me get him.”

  “Well,” muttered Marisa. “I guess everyone calls him that?”

  “More importantly,” said Sahara, “holy old technology, Batman. Are you connected to a landline?”

  “Do they even have those anymore?” asked Marisa.

  “Apparently in Russia they do,” said Sahara. “Or maybe it’s a secretary’s line? To filter calls?” They waited, and after a moment the call chirped and cut out, and then reconnected to a new host.

  “Secretary’s line,” whispered Sahara. “Whoever you called is important.”

  “Great,” said Marisa. Any last remnant of her giddiness drained away, and she realized for the first time the gravity of talking to a mob boss.

  An old man’s voice spoke in a heavy Slavic accent.

  “This is Lavrenti Severov.”

  “Hi,” said Marisa. “I’m . . . really sorry to bother you. I hope you won’t think it’s too . . . forward of me to ask you a question.”

  The old man paused a moment before answering. “I suppose that depends on the question.”

  “I guess it does,” said Marisa. “I was, um, wondering if you’ve ever lived in the United States before? In, uh, Los Angeles?”

  “Who is this?” asked the man.

  “I’m . . . ,” said Marisa, and then stopped. She didn’t know how to proceed without offending him, or giving away too much information, or just looking like an idiot.

  “My assistant has traced this call to a translator satellite operated by an independent nation in international waters,” said the man, and Marisa felt her heart begin to sink. She almost closed the call right then, but if they’d only traced as far as the pirate satellite, she still had time. She stayed silent, and listened as he continued. “Usually, when someone does this, it’s because they don’t want me to know where they are, but you are very clearly in Los Angeles, based both on your accent and the bluntness of your question. I can only assume, then, that you know who I am, and what I used to do, and that you bear some kind of connection to it. Am I correct?”

  “You run a crime family,” said Marisa. “Or you used to. You controlled territory in a neighborhood called Mirador, and you fought for that territory with a man named Don Francisco Maldonado.”

  “And now I know that you live in Mirador as well,” said Severov. “No one else calls him Don Francisco.”

  “Sounds like I’ve got the right Lavrenti Severov,” said Marisa. “May I please ask you a couple of questions?”

  “I don’t do that kind of thing anymore,” said Severov. Marisa didn’t believe him, but she had the good sense to play along.

  “Maldonado’s wife died a month or two after you left Mirador,” said Marisa. “You’re well beyond the reach of what passes for our law enforcement system, so I hope you don’t mind answering this because I have to know: Did you kill her?”

  “I rejoiced when she died,” said Severov, and he said it with such relish that Marisa and Sahara almost shivered as they listened. He paused, and Marisa felt like she couldn’t breathe, and then at last he finished: “But I didn’t kill her.”

  “Do you know how she died?”

  “A car accident, I heard,” said Severov. “Those were rare, even fifteen years ago, but not unheard of.”

  Marisa felt her hope begin to sink. Did he really not know anything? “But you didn’t, like, cut the brakes or anything? Hack the steering system? Plant a bomb in a . . . car thing? I’m sorry, I don’t really know much about cars.”

  “Only pirate satellites,” said Severov.

  “Do you remember a man named Carneseca?” she asked. “Carlo Magno Carneseca?”

  He hesitated a moment before answering. “I don’t believe so. Why, was he involved?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” said Marisa. She blinked up the list of names Grendel had sent her, and read them off. “How about Gonzalo Sanchez?”

  “No.”

  “Ricardo Guzmán?”

  “No.”

  “Ingrid Castañeda?”

  “Was she . . .” He paused. “One of his enforcers?”

  “She was,” said Marisa. “They all were. Did you have any of them killed?”

  “Probably,” said the man. “It was a very bloody war. But you can’t expect me to remember every soldier who died in it.”

  “These three died on the same day as Zenaida de Maldonado,” said Marisa. “We wondered if maybe you’d taken them all out in a coordinated attack.”

  “I left Mirador with my tail between my legs,” said Severov. “It was all I could do to keep my own backers from executing me for my failure. I longed to destroy Maldonado and his family, and I long for it to this day, but I left and I never looked back. The deaths you describe certainly sound like a coordinated attack, but I was not the author of it.”

  Marisa sighed. “So you have no knowledge of any of these people, or anything that happened to them?”

  Severov’s next question sounded more . . . hungry than Marisa was expecting: “Why are you so interested in the past?”

  “It’s a local legend,” said Marisa, glancing at Sahara. “With a lot of unanswered questions. I’m just curious about what really happened.”

  “And what would you be willing to do to find out?”

  Marisa made a face, feeling suddenly dirty at the direction the conversation had taken. “Nothing illegal.”

  “You’ve already done something illegal by bouncing your phone signal through some of these unlicensed carriers,” he said. “Pirates, Nigeria, Croatia—that one’s an embargo violation, that’s very serious—”

  “Let’s just say I have a casual relationship with those sorts of laws,” said Marisa, feigning confidence, but she looked at the hang-up icon again, ready to sever the call in the literal blink of an eye.

  “Ha!” said Severov. “In that case, for now, at least, we are still allies.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” whispered Sahara.

  “Francisco Maldonado killed my children,” said Severov. “The pain of that wound is as fierce today as it was fifteen years ago. I want to hurt him, and from the direction of your questions I can tell that you hold no special love for him either, so it seems that we share not only a common enemy but a common goal.”

  “I really need to stop talking to mob bosses,” said Marisa.

  Severov laughed, with more humor than she’d expected. “I like you,” he said. “I sincerely hope that we can remain allies, because I would hate to become your enemy.”

  “Thank you?”

  “In the last fifteen years, I have reestablished my base of power, and . . . outlived some of my rivals. I don’t control Mirador, but I have people in Los Angeles who answer to me. I would love to give them a target.”

  Marisa swallowed. “I’m glad we’re such good friends, then.”

  “So am I,” said Severov. “I suggest that you do what you can to keep us that way.”

  “Great Holy Handgrenades,” breathed Sahara.

  “Okay,” said Marisa.

  “I’ll talk to you soon,” said Severov, and closed the call.

  Marisa stared at the wall for a moment, and then hurriedly blinked into her djinni and scrubbed the trail she’d used to hide her identity. How far had he traced her?

  “That’s really not how I wanted that to go,” she said.

  Sahara smirked. “Did the way you wanted it to go have any bearing on reality?”

  “Probably not.” Marisa groaned and covered her face with her hands. “That’s the last time we make important life decisions at three in the morning.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “And it didn’t even give us anything,” said Marisa, uncovering her face. “He was our last lead, and in
stead of telling us something valuable he just threatened to kill us and tried to draft us into the Russian mob.”

  “Oh, but he did give us something,” said Sahara. Marisa looked at her, confused, and Sahara shrugged. “He told us we were wrong about a clue. That’s like getting the whole clue back over again. Fresh slate.”

  Marisa shook her head. “Losing him as a suspect doesn’t count as a fresh slate unless we replace him with somebody else.”

  “But that’s the thing,” said Sahara. “Severov was never the clue—the three names from Grendel were. We thought they pointed to Severov, but they didn’t. They have to point somewhere else. So: If they weren’t killed by Severov, who were they killed by?”

  “Maybe Memo,” said Marisa. “Or La Sesenta in general. People keep looking for Memo, so there’s got to be a reason why. And he’s old enough that he could have been out shooting people fifteen years ago, maybe. His older brother Goyo definitely could have.”

  “That fits some of the puzzle pieces,” said Sahara, “but not all of them. Even if Memo killed Zenaida, that doesn’t explain why ZooMorrow’s after him.”

  “True,” said Marisa. “Unless . . .” She turned to face Sahara, laying out a new theory. “The other day we figured out that Zenaida probably had ZooMorrow genhancements—that’s why ZooMorrow was able to claim that hand from police custody, because her DNA had their proprietary tech in it. So: What if Zenaida was a ZooMorrow agent, kind of like Bennett but not as . . . advanced . . . and then Memo killed her, and now they want revenge?”

  “Why now, though?” asked Sahara. “Why not fifteen years ago?”

  “Because . . . I don’t know because,” said Marisa. “Because it got lost in the shuffle, and Zenaida’s DNA popping up in a police registry reminded them that oh yeah, we need to go kill that one guy.”

  “That’s pretty flimsy reasoning.”

  “It’s three in the morning,” said Marisa. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want to connect these three other deaths to Zenaida’s,” said Sahara. She slumped down in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. “You think Memo would just tell us if we asked?”