Heinlein Industries was situated well outside the city limits, taking an hour even by bullet train to get there. It got dark early that time of year. The sky had turned gray already. As the rail approached, the complex was visible in the distance like a huge disc cut out of the suburbs that surrounded it. It was as if a comet had struck there, leaving nothing but black glass. Only when you got closer could you begin to make out the flat, rectangular structures there, but Heinlein was built largely down, not up. It kept low to the ground, hidden behind the security fence and guard posts that surrounded it.
I picked up a car and headed in through the maze of narrow streets. The structures there were tightly packed, built from sturdy concrete that was now weathered and defaced. Businesses tapered off as the main road crossed the perimeter and gave way to VP Industrial, which was Heinlein’s main campus. VP stood for Verhoven-Pratsky, the names of the facilities’ two primary donors, but everyone called it Voodoo Proper. I opened a channel back to headquarters.
I’ve arrived. I’m heading in now.
The whole first half mile was an open expanse that went around the entire park as far as I could see, and from the signals I was picking up, my vehicle was being tracked from several sources as I approached. Warning signs were posted along the way, threatening everything from prosecution to live fire as the inner fence loomed closer. The facility underground was deep enough to withstand a missile strike, and the airspace over the campus was a designated no-fly zone; I had no doubt the guards would shoot if provoked.
Heinlein is instituting a security lockdown, Noakes said.
Looks friendly enough to me.
It isn’t funny, Wachalowski. So far they’re being cooperative; don’t do anything to make them nervous.
I’ll tread lightly.
No communications in or out once you’re inside. As far as both we and they are concerned, this visit isn’t happening—got it? If the media gets even a whiff of this, it’ll be a disaster.
Got it. Luckily, they had enough to distract them today.
The park had a guard station, which wasn’t unusual, but unlike some places, this one had a fence and, from what I could see, it enclosed the whole park. I zoomed in on the warning sign bolted to the nearest pylon; it promised a lethal voltage.
As I approached, I felt my phone go off, but before I could see who it was, the signal cut and the phone went dead. A second later, a message appeared in front of my eyes as the JZI got an override communication.
You are entering a restricted area. No unauthorized communications are permitted in or out from this point forward. No unauthorized scans or visual, audio, or data recordings are permitted beyond this point. No unauthorized personnel or authorized personnel with a security clearance of less than three are permitted beyond this point, by order of the UAC Government. By continuing, you forfeit your right to refuse any and all searches, including your vehicle, its contents, and your person, up to and including full internal scanning. Any property including identification may be confiscated at the guard’s discretion and held for an indeterminate period of time. Failure to comply with security will result in action up to and including lethal force.
“Welcome to Heinlein Industries,” I said to myself as the words faded.
I pulled up to the guard and rolled down the window. He was a thick-necked man in uniform who wore a badge. He peered down at me over the bulletproof shield.
“Can I help you?” he asked. I didn’t dare use the scanner, but I could see a faint bulge under his jacket. I could also see a shotgun racked against the wall next to him.
“Agent Nico Wachalowski,” I said. “They should be expecting me.”
The guard peered down at my breast pocket and scanned the badge through the material. After a couple seconds, he nodded.
“Yes, they are, sir,” he said. “Go right on through. The layout of the place can be a little confusing, so I’ll transmit a marker to your GPS. Just follow it down to the parking area and take the elevator up. A representative will be waiting for you.”
“Thanks.”
The guard arm rose, and I followed the marker toward the collection of squat, rectangular buildings. All things considered, I was glad for the guidance, because the park was huge and nothing was marked. I headed down into a short tunnel, which took me to a parking area.
From the garage, I took an elevator up. The doors opened and I stepped out into a dimly lit lobby that looked deserted. My footsteps echoed lightly as I made my way to a large, curved reception desk with an empty chair behind it.
“Hello?”
I saw several red points of light in the shadows near the ceiling. Cameras were watching me. There were two glass doors with badge readers that led inside, and a phone mounted on one wall.
I was beginning to wonder if I had the right place when a man in a suit appeared behind one of the glass doors. He was about my age, with wavy, graying hair, and dressed in an expensive suit. He noticed me as he held his badge up to the scanner.
“Agent Wachalowski?” he asked as he scooted through the door. He had an easy, salesman’s charm, and when he smiled, crow’s-feet formed at his eyes.
“Yes.”
“Hi, I’m Bob MacReady. I am so sorry,” he said, stepping forward and shaking my hand. “I thought I could beat you here. As you can see, we don’t get casual visitors.”
He held out a clip-on visitor’s badge and I put it on, causing him to smile like I’d just performed a trick.
“Excellent,” he said. “Come on, we can talk in my office.”
He buzzed us in and led me at a brisk pace through a maze of cubicle areas and narrow corridors. Unlike the lobby, the inside was brightly lit with flat electric light. The area we passed through was huge but oddly quiet. Occasional voices rose over the hum of the climate-control system and the constant murmur of hundreds of fingers as they worked keypads. Along the far wall was a wide glass panel that looked in on some kind of laboratory. Men and women dressed in clean suits worked over racks of equipment that seemed to merge together into an organized mass of shiny silver tanks, tubes, and electronics. I didn’t recognize any of it. One of the men inside noticed us, and watched me pass.
By the time we arrived at MacReady’s office, I was thoroughly lost. He opened the door and I stepped into the small space, which was dominated by a wooden desk with a pair of computer monitors sitting on it. On the walls behind the desk hung diplomas and certificates, including one for a doctorate in applied cybernetics. Shelves ran along each wall, stacked tightly with technical specifications and texts. The air smelled like old coffee and body odor.
“Please sit down,” he said, closing the door behind us. “Can I get you anything?”
“No, thanks.”
He got behind his desk and casually switched on a noise filter. I sat down across from him.
“This is about the bombing, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Not directly.”
“News traveled quickly here, especially once it became known that a revivor had triggered the device. You do understand it wasn’t one of ours?”
“Yes, but you know why I’m here, right?” I asked.
“I understand some of our components were recovered from a foreign combat revivor that had been smuggled into the country.”
“Yes. Mr. MacReady, I’ll be frank. I am only interested in tracking down the people who are bringing the revivors into the country. We don’t believe Heinlein Industries is involved in anything illicit; we just want to know how the parts might have gotten there, to aid us in tracking the traffickers down.”
“I understand,” MacReady said. “We ran the numbers you sent along and were able to trace the components ourselves. The parts were surplus, unclassified and obsolete. They were sold at auction.”
“Along with how much other product?”
“I’ve compiled the complete list and I’ll make sure you leave with it,” MacReady said.
“You understand this was a foreign combat model we pulled them out of?”
“Our current technology is so far advanced beyond those components as to make them irrelevant.”
“I see.”
“It’s very complicated, Agent, and completely legal.”
“I understand. In a nutshell, can you say what the specific components were for?”
“Different things,” he said, “but mainly? Collective command.”
“Which is?”
“Revivors are more sophisticated than they were back when you served, Agent. A collective-command structure allows revivors a common communications connection for sending and receiving information. That may sound like a simple thing, but it’s fairly complicated. Think of it as a version of the Jovanovic-Zaytsev system you use to communicate with your teammates.”
“So it allows revivors to communicate with each other?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “It’s a hub-and-spoke configuration; many to one, not many to many. It allows a single source to command many revivors.”
“And by command, you mean …?”
“Control. Usually they’re given orders, but if the situation requires, the shunts are in place today to override and virtually control them from a remote location.”
“Nice.”
“The revivors also use the system to report back to that common source. Any modern revivor outfitted with one will automatically join a default command chain, if one is available.”
“They can’t talk to each other?”
“They can, just not directly,” he said. He was quiet for a moment, then asked, “Have you recovered any others with the same components?”
“I can’t comment on that.”
“Well, if you have,” he said, “or if you do, or suspect you might, then you would be dealing with someone who wanted to command a unified group.”
“Hypothetically, how many nodes could be commanded in that way?”
“Typically, small groups—say, four to nine—but when commanding many such groups, it can add up. In the future, we hope to have a single command control hundreds of units.”
“Hundreds?”
“The future of revivor technology is today, Agent. The M8 models we’re currently creating far surpass what you would have encountered during your time in the service. Tomorrow will bring even greater advances.”
“Field bring-back?” The ability to raise a revivor on the battlefield, without requiring a trip back to Heinlein’s labs, was something they’d been chasing for years without success. MacReady grinned and gave a shrug.
“Field administration too, perhaps,” he said. “One day, being wired may be as simple as a shot in the arm.”
That took me by surprise, and he seemed to enjoy that.
“You understand what I mean, then,” he said, “when I tell you the components you recovered are no longer relevant.”
“I see.”
MacReady leaned back in his chair and sighed. He still held an easy smile, but his eyes looked grave.
“We are as concerned about this as you are, Agent,” he said. “We want to help in any way we can.”
“I appreciate that,” I told him. “The most useful information for us right now is those auction records you’ve made available. For now, I think that’s all I need.”
“Very good.”
“I did have one last question, though,” I said. “Does the name Zhang mean anything to you?”
“You mean Zhang’s Syndrome?”
I shrugged.
“That,” MacReady said, “is a piece of Heinlein Industries lore, in a manner of speaking. The fathers of the modern revivor were two men named Isaac Ericsson and Olav Sodder, and while neither of them founded Heinlein Industries, they made it what it is today.”
“How so?”
“The two men met during their tour in the service, where they were exposed to some of the earliest revivor technology,” he said. “They were fascinated by it, especially Sodder, who studied the ones that came off the battlefield, looking for weaknesses to exploit, and then ultimately a way to re-create the revivor for our own use. He got pigeonholed as a tech specialist, while Ericsson, by all accounts, was more of a military man. Sodder saw the military benefit of a large, stable revivor force that could do more than blindly jump out of the bushes. When they got out of the service, the two pooled their resources and began development.”
“They formed their own company?”
“Initially,” he said. “In fact, Elise Jovanovic and Michael Zaytsev were part of that original endeavor, but Heinlein snapped the whole entity up very early on and then split it; Jovanovic and Zaytsev, whose names I’m sure you’re at least familiar with, formed the team that perfected your JZ interface, while Sodder and Ericsson developed revivor technology. They all became very rich, and under the umbrella of Heinlein Industries, they were given all the resources they would ever need. Heinlein itself became even more profitable than it already was, and the marriage resulted in our obtaining one of the largest government contracts in history. In return, we provided the United American Coalition with the most powerful military force the world has ever seen.”
“So what is Zhang’s Syndrome?” I coaxed.
“It is the wedge that eventually came between Ericsson and Sodder,” MacReady said. “Basically, it’s a corruption of the memory pathways that occurs sometimes during reanimation, named after where the condition was finally isolated, Ning Zhang. It came up only in the later part of Sodder’s life, because it wasn’t until then that revivors became sophisticated enough to retain a significant part of their memories and cognitive abilities. It didn’t affect memories that formed after reanimation, only preexisting ones.”
“Affected them how?”
“Basically, a small percentage of those who were reanimated would describe a cognitive dissonance,” he said. “Think of it like this: If a quantifiable memory event could be portrayed as an image, the same image would differ between the time of death and reanimation. They would be similar, but not equal.”
“Give me an example.”
“For example, a man comes to a fork in the road and goes right. Years later, upon reanimation, that man’s revivor believes he went left.”
“Maybe he just remembered it wrong.”
“It’s hard to say, but Sodder believed he had empirical evidence that this was not the case—and that was the crux of it. To someone like Ericsson it wasn’t a problem, but to someone like Sodder it was a puzzle he felt compelled to solve. He felt such a discrepancy had to have an explanation.”
“How did that drive a wedge between the two men?”
“Well, since only a small portion of the memories were affected and not all revivors exhibited the anomaly, Ericsson declared it a waste of resources to chase it,” he said. “He was only interested in increasing the field capacity of the revivor itself; past memories were irrelevant to him. Sodder was the opposite; he was obsessed with the problem and with finding what caused it.”
“So it was a professional disagreement, then?”
“It was more than that,” MacReady said. “It came down to their beliefs. Ericsson didn’t just think it was a waste of resources. He didn’t think the memories should be preserved. If he had his way, I think he would have had all former life memory wiped out, but it wasn’t practical. He viewed Sodder’s work as attempting to blur the line between life and reanimation, to make reanimation an extension of life. He was offended by it, I believe. The two distanced themselves from one another.”
“You said, ‘in the last part of Sodder’s life’,” I said. “He’s dead now?”
“Both men are dead now,” he said, “but their legacies still live on, as do the two camps they established, which still lock horns over that same issue, though not so much these days.”
“Why not?”
“Sodder had a protégé named Samuel Fawkes,” he said, “who continued his work trying to pinpoint the cause of Zhang’s Syndrome. Some years ago, he died as well, and since then it’s almost completely lost steam. Samuel’s primary partner in that endeavor was a man named Edward Cross, but honestly, when Samuel died, Edward moved on to other areas.”
“How hard would it be to get what you have on Zhang’s Syndrome to me?”
“Not hard at all. Blocks of the data are still classified, you understand, but I can give you plenty to chew on for now. I’ll assemble them and then forward them to your office.”
“Fair enough.”
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” he asked. “I could arrange a tour of the facilities, if you like.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I have all the information I need for now.”
“Let me show you out, then.”
I followed him back to the visitors’ lobby, where we shook hands and he gave me his card before disappearing back behind the glass security door. I headed out to the parking garage, toward the car.
Zhang’s Syndrome. Could that have been what the revivor was referring to?
Slowing down as I approached the car, I noticed something on the windshield. It looked like a business card had been slipped under the driver’s-side windshield wiper.
No one else was around. I couldn’t see any cameras but I was sure they were there, so I palmed the card and got into the car without turning it over. Once I was inside, I held it down out of sight and looked at it. The name and contact information had been scratched out.
Someone must have wanted to leave me a message without showing himself and without leaving any kind of electronic trail. Sometimes the low-tech approach was still the best way to go.
I flipped it over and looked at the back; there was a handwritten note there, printed in black ink.
SAMUELNEVER LEFT
The card wasn’t signed. There was no other information on it.
Someone else knew I was here, then. The reference had to be to the Samuel Fawkes that MacReady had mentioned to me, and that implied that someone else had managed to hear that conversation as well.
With the restrictions put down over VP Industrial, there was no way to check the information. I slipped the card in my pocket and headed back toward the railway.
When I first opened my eyes, I wasn’t sure where I was. I was lying on something soft, but it wasn’t my bed and it wasn’t the couch. Also, I was covered with a thick blanket that wasn’t mine. The lights were out and the room was lit by flickering candlelight.
I took a deep breath and smelled some kind of perfume smell, along with the smell of the bar soap I used. When I reached up to rub my face, it wasn’t greasy, and the blanket was crisp and clean.
Pushing my face into it, I breathed in and it smelled good, but it wasn’t mine. The oversized pink sweatshirt and sweatpants I was wearing weren’t mine either. I heard slippers shuffle across the floor nearby.
“Oh, you’re up,” a woman said, looking down at me. It was Karen, my downstairs neighbor. I was on the floor, lying across sofa cushions that had been arranged there like a bed. I was still in my apartment.
“Your lights are out, so I brought up some candles. I hope you don’t mind,” she said, sitting down next to me. Near my head there was a large ceramic bowl filled with soapy water that had a facecloth draped over the lip. Three or four candles had been arranged around the room.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You flipped,” she said, with a thin smile.
“Oh.”
“You said something terrible happened,” she said. “Then you started going on about dead people, and then needles in your head, and then I kind of lost track. Do you remember any of it?”
“No.”
“It’s just as well.”
My body physically ached as I struggled into a sitting position. My head was throbbing.
“Why did you stay?”
“You needed help, and you helped me. It was the least I could do, right?”
The reality of what I was wearing and the way I smelled finally started sinking in, and immediately I felt myself getting anxious, the blood rushing to my face.
“Did you wash me?”
“I’m a nurse. It’s okay; I do it all the time.”
“You—”
“Look,” she said. “You puked on yourself, and that’s not even all, okay? I put up with a bucket full of abuse—I took it because I knew you weren’t in your right mind, and I’m sorry if you’re embarrassed, but I couldn’t leave you lying in it like that. I just couldn’t.”
I didn’t say anything, partly because I didn’t know what to say and also because my mouth just wouldn’t open. I felt like crying, but I was too exhausted.
“Besides,” she said, leaning closer, “something terrible did happen. There was an explosion, a suicide bombing, just a few blocks away. Over fifty people died and hundreds more got injured.”
“Someone blew himself up?”
“Right in the middle of the restaurant strip at lunch-time.”
I did kind of remember that, once she said it. I saw a bunch of people running, bloody and burned and screaming.
“Bad things are coming,” I said.
“That’s what you said last night.”
There was more—I knew there was more—but I couldn’t remember it.
“There was a panic,” she said. “A riot broke out. Everyone’s freaking out. They’re calling in the National Guard and there’s going to be a curfew until they can get things under control. They say there are even going to be revivors patrolling.”
“Revivors?”
“It’s the only way they can cover such a big area. They say it’s temporary.”
“Oh.”
“Will things get even worse?” she asked. Her eyes looked desperate in the firelight, like the next thing that came out of my mouth was going to be the most important thing she ever heard. She was looking at me like I had some kind of answer, but I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember.
“I think the best thing you could do right now is not get involved with me,” I said. It was weird, but I kind of regretted that. Before she could say anything else, there was a knock on the door and she looked over at it.
“Are you expecting anyone?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Wait here.”
She got up and went to answer it and I lay back down, hoping whoever it was, she would get rid of them. I heard her talking but I couldn’t make out what was being said. She was talking to a man, it sounded like. After a minute she came back, looking nervous.
“It’s the cops,” she said.
“The cops?”
“An FBI Agent. He says his name is Wachalowski.”
“What?”
“Wacha—”
“He’s here? Right now?”
“Yeah, what—”
“It’s okay,” I said, before she got any more freaked out. “I’m not in trouble. He’s a friend.”
“A friend?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s, um, you know. Look, I don’t want him to see me like this.”
“Oh,” she said, smirking a little. “Okay, I’ve got to go anyway.”
“Wait—”
“Zoe, he flashed his badge. What was I going to say? I told him you were here. Come on, you look fine, you look cute.”
She started to move away and I scrambled to my feet. The sweatshirt and sweatpants must have been hers, but unlike her I couldn’t even begin to fill them out. The shirt hung like a tent and the pants wanted to slide down over my nonexistent hips.
“Karen, wait!”
“Look,” she said, “I’ll come by later, but come on; I’m not getting in the middle of this one. Trust me, you look fine.”
I tailed her to the door, but she slipped out before I could get there, smiling and waving to him and then me as I wedged myself in the crack of the door.
“Ms. Ott?”
“Hi.”
He was wearing a suit and a long, dark jacket. He looked down at me with his amazingly blue eyes, and standing there in front of him in sweats, I felt even lamer than I even did before. Why did they have to be pink?
“I’d like to speak with you for a minute, if I could.”
“Um, okay.”
“May I come in?”
“No.”
He raised his eyebrows, and just then my next-door neighbor’s door opened and out he came. Things were getting better and better. The old man stood there, staring like some kind of weirdo at Nico.
“Can I help you, sir?” Nico asked.
“Who are you?” my neighbor asked back.
“I’m visiting my friend here. Is that okay?”
The old man peered over at me, then back at Nico.
“She doesn’t have any friends.”
That was it. I’d let it slide before, but now he was going too far. While Nico was turned toward him, I focused on the old man until the light bloomed around me, causing me to feel a little sick to my stomach. The colors came into focus over his head, rippling there like smoke in the breeze.
There was something weird about him, though, something a little different. In addition to the patterns I was used to seeing, there was a thin, bright white arc that formed a kind of ring or halo, almost. It distracted me, and I was just wondering what might be causing it when he decided to forgo his usual nosiness and duck back inside. Nico looked back at me, and I let the lights fade back to normal.
“My place is a real mess,” I said. “Please?”
“I have a car,” he said. “Can we speak downstairs? I won’t take much of your time.”
“Yeah, okay. Just …hang on.”
I went back inside long enough to slide on my boots, put on my parka, and then retie the waist on the sweatpants before the stupid things fell down. When I was zipped up, I slipped back out, then shut the door and locked it before he could see in.
We headed down to the building’s entryway, then across the icy lot to his car, where he let me in, then climbed in himself, turning the heat on.
“That’s a nice neighbor you have there,” he said.
“He’s a jerk.”
“I meant your other neighbor, the woman who answered the door.”
“Oh yeah. Karen.”
“The man next door said you don’t have any friends, but it doesn’t look like that’s true.”
“Yeah,” I said, embarrassed. “I have one.”
“Well, now you have two.”
He was smiling from across the car seat, and the way he looked at me and the way he spoke to me made me feel good. It seemed impossible that we were sitting there together, alone in the front seat like that. I’d pulled some stunts in the past when I was drunk, but never anything that ended with me actually doing something useful or worthwhile. He looked at me like I really was somebody, not a joke, and when he watched me those pretty iridescent lights shone from behind his eyes like he was something out of one of my dreams.
“This is a lot,” I said.
“I know.”
“Half the time I’m not even sure how much of it’s real.”
“It’s real,” he said. “The information the suspect provided was accurate, and after going over everything, I believe it’s real. I believe in you.”
Before I could stop myself, I cried right in front of him. Not a lot, just for a second, but enough to make me have to wipe my eyes. He handed me a tissue from out of the glove box.
“I’m sorry,” I said, pressing it to my eyes. On some level, I knew he was just being professional, just being polite. He had no idea how much what he was saying meant to me; he couldn’t know. No one was ever nice to me. No one ever took me seriously, or talked to me like I was a real person.
“You’re okay.”
“No, I’m not,” I said, laughing a little. I was getting punchy.
“Will you tell me more?”
“More about what?”
“About what you’ve seen. According to your resume, you’ve experienced a limited precognition?”
“You thought that was a joke.”
“I’m not laughing now.”
I wiped my nose on the tissue and thought about it. There was probably plenty I could tell him, but I didn’t want him to think I was crazy.
“Some people are being held against their will,” I said carefully. “Don’t ask where or who because I don’t know. They could be on Mars, for all I know. They have needles coming out of their heads.”
“Needles?”
“Long ones, coming out of the backs of their heads. They’re alive, but they can’t move. One of them told me I would lead someone to them, and I think she meant you. She told me I would end her pain.”
“You will lead me to them?”
“Then I will end her pain. That’s what she said.”
“Anything else?”
There’s a dead woman with a split heart who shows me things, but she’s keeping something from me.”
“What does she show you?”
“You,” I said, and his expression changed. When I probed him gently, I could see fear pricking up from the otherwise calm patterns that hung over him.
“Me?”
“You have a tattoo here,” I said, pointing to his shoulder opposite the one with the scar, and the fear pricked up again.
“Why did she show me to you?”
“I don’t know. She just said you would need my help.”
“Do you know who she was?”
“I’ve never met her, but she says I will soon.”
He paused, and looked down at the seat between us like he was lost in thought. The smile and the professional politeness were gone.
“I’d like to continue this,” he said, “but right now I have an appointment. I stopped here on the way because this is off the record and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Okay.”
“Can we meet again at some point?”
“I’d like that.”
“Yes,” he said, and the smile was back. The reassuring, professional warmth was back, like it had to be. “So would I.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out a large office envelope, which he handed to me.
“In the meantime, would you mind looking at these?”
“What are they?”
“Some pictures and documents that are, for the moment, unclassified,” he said. “But again, this is off the record.”
I took the envelope and held it in my lap.
“They don’t know you’re here, do they?”
“No, and as I said, I’d like to keep it that way. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Thank you.”
Not wanting to be dismissed, I decided to get out of there while things still seemed to be going well. I slid back across the seat and opened the car door.
“You’re not going to lecture me?” I asked. I had meant to include the words “about the drinking,” but I couldn’t bring myself to say them. He seemed a little bit amused.
“Not yet.”
“I’ll look at them,” I said, holding up the envelope as I slipped out the door. I was just about to close it when I remembered one other thing.
“Oh, and a revivor.”
“What?”
“She showed me a revivor, an Asian- looking one with a foreign name. It started with a Z. His jaw was wired shut. Does that help?”
“Yes.”
He was still smiling as I backed away and closed the door, but his fear spiked when I said it. He started the engine and pulled away, leaving me in the parking lot alone.
My phone buzzed, and Luis shot me a look from over a slice of pizza. It was a text from Eddie.
You out? he wanted to know.
Yeah.
I got a slot open tonight. Can you fight?
What about the alert?
Screw the alert. I’ll shut down when they shove an injunction up my ass. Can you fight or not?
Yes. Gotta go, I’ve got company.
No sex before a fight.
I shut the phone.
“Who was that?” Luis asked.
“None of your business.”
We ate and drank some beer, and Luis made a shitload of calls on his phone. The more he talked, the less I liked him in my place. For one thing, he knew too many people and he called them all by fake screen names. For another thing, from the sound of it, he was into some shady shit. He didn’t want me to hear a lot of what he was saying. He asked about shit like data and security and who knew what and how much. He was going to be a problem.
“So, what did you do?” I asked finally. He looked up from the TV.
“Nothing.”
“No one hides their rich ass in this shit hole if they did nothing. What did you do?”
“I’m not rich.”
“I was in your place, remember?”
“It’s not my place.”
“Whatever. Tell me what you did.”
“Noth—”
“Tell me, or get the hell out now.”
He thought about that, and I think it was a tough call for him. He sat there for a while; then he sighed.
“I broke in somewhere,” he said.
“You robbed someplace?”
“Not that kind of break-in. I broke into someone’s network.”
“So?”
“Remember you asked me about Uncle Ed? Dr. Cross?”
“Yeah.”
“Remember I said he works at Heinlein Industries? They’re a government contractor. They make rev—”
“I know what Heinlein does, asshole.”
“Well, he works for them,” he said. “Totally brilliant. He worked right under Samuel Fawkes, the top guy in the field until he died. Anyway, not long ago, he got it into his head that someone was spying on them over there.”
“Why’d he think that?”
“He wouldn’t say, but I think someone put the idea in his head. He got obsessive about it.”
“So call the fucking cops or something.”
“He wouldn’t; he was so nuts about it he wouldn’t even talk to anyone else there about it. It’s like it was some kind of conspiracy or something, like he didn’t think he could trust anyone.”
“What does this have to do with you?”
“He asked me to break in and snoop around.”
“Why?”
“Because he knew I could do it, and he trusts me. He got me some security codes, and I snuck in and set up a bunch of ’bots that watched everything, then reported back to a remote server. When I had enough data to go on, I downloaded it all and put it on a data spike so I could hand it off to him.”
“Wait, that’s why you’re in trouble?”
“I think they realized I was in there while I was in jail—”
“This is all because you think you got pinched screwing around on someone’s network?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” he said, pissed.
“What do you get for that, a fine? Have your top-tier mom and dad bail you out.”
His face changed when I said that. It got all dark.
“I can’t,” he said.
“Yeah, right.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“I know how things are.”
“Money doesn’t fix everything.”
“It fixes most things.”
“It wouldn’t fix you.”
“Yeah, well, fuck them and fuck you too.”
“Even I had to take a PH tour,” he said. “Drop the third-tier hero bullsh—”
“Don’t compare us, asshole. People like you end up officers; people like me end up on the front lines. When they put me in a box, you’ll still be drinking champagne in your high-rise, and we both know it. You live long enough, they won’t even use you.”
He didn’t say anything. His face just got darker.
“You and your happy little fam—”
“Go to hell,” he said, his voice low. “I’m leaving.”
I don’t know why, but I kind of felt bad right then. Something about his face, the way he looked. When I got pissed, I shot my mouth off. I didn’t know what it was, but I thought I might have crossed a line, there.
“Hey, don’t cry or any—”
“I’m not crying, bitch, and I don’t need you,” he said. “Take your bullshit and shove it back up your ass. It’s not my fault your life is shit.”
“My life ain’t shit.”
“Yes, it is.”
His face was different. It was like he’d dropped an act, and I could see he wasn’t as soft as I had thought he was. I don’t know what it was, but I could tell he was on the edge. Whatever he was in, he was in deep, and there was fight in his eyes.
“Hey, look,” I said. “I take it back, okay? Just forget it.”
He just stood there and stared me down.
“If you won’t take me, I’ll get a cab.”
“Cabs don’t come out here, bro.”
“Then I’ll—”
“How’s this?” I said. “Eddie wants me in the ring tonight, so unless the cops shut him down, I’m on. You hitch a ride with me there and get a cab at the arena. How’s that?”
He still looked pissed, but I could see him take the bait.
“Fine. Can I use your shower?” he asked.
“Knock yourself out.”
He got up and just walked into the bathroom and shut the door. A while after, the water came on and then I heard it splash off him, making him, I think, the only guy to ever take a shower just to hit Arena Porco Rojo. When he was good and wet, I grabbed his phone and ID.
On the card, his name said Luis Valle, and clipped to his keys was enough credit to buy the whole goddamn world. His phone showed a bunch of calls logged, but nothing that meant shit to me. He said something about putting the stuff he took from that company on a data-storage spike, but I didn’t see one on his clip.
I put an ear to the door, and the water was still going strong. While he was tied up, I turned on the TV.
“…where the bombing took place,” a reporter was saying. “So far authorities have no leads on who perpetrated the bombing, and no one has taken responsibility. National Guard forces are moving into place in key areas of the city, while others will be patrolled by a backup revivor contingency.”
“Key areas” meant “rich areas.” Those would get guarded, and we’d get the backup, if that. That dick Ohtomo would send the zombies down to the slums to keep an eye on us and make sure we didn’t start shit with the rest of his precious city while the real soldiers were tied up.
They cut to the mayor, a shitload of mikes jammed in his craw as he went to his car.
“Mayor Ohtomo, is it true a curfew will be imposed?” one asked.
“I will make an official statement on air in an hour,” he said.
“Mayor what about the reports that this may be the first planned bombing of many?”
“I have not heard any report to that effect.”
“What about the witnesses who survived the blast, and their statements that the suicide bomber was actually a revivor?”
“No comment.”
The mayor could screw himself—what I really wanted was the miner. I had Luis’s full name now. That was enough to find out if the cops were on him.
I fed in his name and the miner chewed on it for a second. Links started to pop up. The one with the most hits was on top.
Local Family Tortured, Killed.
It had a graphic-footage warning. I clicked on that one.
Sure as shit, the cameras were pointed inside his place. From the angle, they must have been right inside the front door. I had stood in that same spot.
“…an anonymous tip alerted authorities to the murders,” a voice said. “A search of the apartment revealed a grim discovery.”
The camera moved past the bathroom I took my piss in and down the hall Luis came from when I walked back out. They turned the corner and went down a hall, where something was pooled on the floor. They moved through a door and focused on what was inside.
There were three bodies in the middle of the room, all lying on the white carpet with their hands bound by plastic ties behind their backs, facedown on the floor. The carpet around them was covered with blood.
One of the cops or someone else must have taken the video and sold it. It was bad, even for underground news. There was blood fucking everywhere.
They killed his family. While I was on the can, he went to look for them and found them back there. I was in that place with three dead bodies and I didn’t even know it.
He knew. That’s why he was so hot to get out of there. That’s why he said what he did. He had no way to help me like he said he would; he just needed out of there and way the hell away.
“…last remaining family member Luis Valle, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. Investigators are not commenting yet on whether or not he is a suspect in these murders, or another victim. If you have any information concerning Luis Valle, please …”
They flashed his mug shot and showed a number. I wrote it down and shoved it in my pocket.
The water stopped, and I shut off the TV.
He was trouble. He was big trouble. He was who the guys that murdered his family were looking for. They tossed his place looking for that storage-spike thing he talked about. Whoever he pissed off, they were hardcore, and they were still out there.
They were looking for him, and I let him right in my front door.
“Any word?” Shanks asked. I snapped my phone shut.
“He’s still not answering.” No one had been able to reach Harold Craig. The local police had checked out his place, but at my request they kept it low- key; no one approached on foot. If the killer was going to make his move, I didn’t want to spook him. His place was being watched while they waited for us, but so far no one had shown up.
“Body heat came up negative in his home. He’s not there.” Shanks said.
It had taken too long to get to the neighborhood where Harold Craig lived, and the sky was starting to get dark.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
The city had slowly begun to trade its superstructures for tight blocks of duplexes in what looked like a well-to-do area. Crowded brick houses stood tall and slim at the heads of short but individual driveways with individual mailboxes. A woman bundled up in a coat and walking a medium-sized black dog watched as we drove by. The dog strained against its leash and barked.
“This is Detective Shanks with Detective Dasalia,” Shanks said into his radio. “Be advised we are approaching the residence.”
“We see you,” a voice crackled.
“Turn left up here; it should be down this street,” Shanks said.
I turned onto the narrow street and followed the numbers down until I found it. A silhouette watched through a window from across the street as I pulled up to the house. There was a car in the driveway, so I parked on the street and cut the engine.
“Any movement?” Shanks asked into the radio.
“Negative. Nothing on infrared or thermal.”
He looked over at me.
“Tell them we’re going in,” I said.
“Have your men stand by. We’re going inside.”
“Roger that.”
We got out, and when I looked over, the figure watching from the window retreated.
“Maybe he’s walking his dog.”
“Maybe.”
He followed me to the front door and I rang the bell, but no one answered. I tried the door; it was unlocked. I pushed it open and looked inside. The lights were off, but there was a soft glow coming from somewhere inside.
“Mr. Craig?” I called. No one answered.
“Mr. Craig, this is the police,” I called. “We’re coming in.”
I glanced at Shanks, and he shrugged. I drew my gun and he followed suit as I pushed the door open the rest of the way and we crossed through.
The unit was quiet, although I could hear a television through the wall from the connected duplex. The front door opened into a good-sized living area and a pair of French doors leading into a study where the glow was coming from. Another doorway opened into a short hallway that looked like it led to a kitchen.
“Mr. Craig?”
Moving closer, I could see the glow from the study was coming from a computer monitor.
The study was small, crowded with expensive- looking wooden furniture and a single leather chair that was pushed away from the desk. This was where he had sat, conversing with Rebecca Valle over the message client. He had been talking to her when the intruder broke in at Alto Do Mundo and the Valles were killed.
The client was still on the screen, displaying the same snippet of conversation I had seen at the Valle place. In addition, Mr. Craig seemed to have a video display sitting above it that looked out from somewhere above Valle’s monitor.
Don’t touch it; leave it for the experts, my intuition warned.
“Valle had a cam set up,” I said. “That would explain how he knew the person who responded on the chat wasn’t Rebecca.”
Leave it for the experts.
On the camera display I could see one of the investigators cross by in the hallway on the other side of the room. They were still there, looking for clues.
“He probably looked right at the killer,” I said, watching. “That camera probably recorded him.”
“I’ll have a look,” Shanks said. He started to move toward the computer station when something inside the house made a thump and he froze. The sound came from the direction of the kitchen.
He looked back at me, and I nodded toward the doorway. He readied his gun and crept back out into the living area. I got ready to follow him, but first, there was one thing I wanted to do.
My intuition had told me not to mess with the information on the computer, but my intuition didn’t seem to be as sharp as maybe it once was. There was a chance I might blow it, that I might be responsible for triggering something that would erase the data, like what had happened at the previous victim’s place, but this one time I was going to go against what my intuition was telling me.
There was no time to look at it now, but I fished a data card out of my jacket pocket and slipped it into the first available bay. Working quickly, I dumped the entire contents of the client’s buffers onto the card.
“Dasalia,” Shanks hissed. I pulled the card and slipped it back into my pocket.
Following Shanks’s flashlight beam, I looked into the kitchen and saw papers and envelopes scattered across the floor. A wicker basket lay overturned off to one side, and two kitchen knives lay on the floor beneath a butcher’s block on the counter above. As we got closer, the air smelled like bleach.
The noise didn’t recur, and it looked like it might have been the remainder of the stack of envelopes that had fallen from the counter. Listening carefully, there were no signs that we weren’t alone; the house was completely silent.
The kitchen opened up into another short hallway where a door led into a half bath, and across from that was another door, which was closed. The bathroom was empty, but there were beads of water still in the sink.
The door across from it opened into a stairwell leading down to what looked like a small cellar or storage area. The smell of bleach was coming from somewhere down below.
I flipped the light switch and a light flickered on at the base of the stairs. The stairs creaked as we headed down and looked around. It was a small area, but it had been converted into some kind of hobbyist’s machine shop. There was a workbench covered in tools and a bunch of small mechanical parts I couldn’t identify. The walls were lined with shelves, which were stacked with uniform containers of screws, washers, nuts, and wire. The bleach fumes were strong enough to make me breathe through the fabric of my sleeve.
“Dasalia,” Shanks said, nudging me. A foot wearing a slipper was sticking out from behind the bench. I holstered my gun and moved around to the other side of the work area, where a man’s body lay sprawled on its back. He was an older man, dressed in casual clothes. It looked like there had been a struggle—the floor around him was scattered with tools, and a cardboard box had fallen down, partially covering his head.
The end result was the same, though; the killer had overpowered him and landed his signature blow. A deep puncture wound gaped from the middle of his chest. Clear liquid had been splashed across the floor a few feet away over by the workbench, where a plastic jug of bleach lay open on its side.
“Damn it,” I muttered. Shanks spoke into the radio.
“We’re too late,” he said. “Craig’s here. He’s already dead. Get CSI down here.”
“On their way.”
“How the hell did he beat them here?” I asked. It was impossible. We’d called the locals from the road. If he’d flown, he couldn’t have beaten them.
“I don’t know.”
“He didn’t surprise this one,” I said. I moved the cardboard box aside and saw his eyes were wide open. The man’s right forearm was bruised in a pattern that looked like it had been gripped tightly, and there was a gash on the wrist above it, in the center of a swollen knot. Shanks knelt down and fished out his ID.
“Harold Craig,” he said. “It’s our guy.”
Looking around the room, I could see there was no other way out except the way we had come down.
“He had some idea about what was happening,” I said. “On the messenger he asked, ‘Why are you doing this to us?’ Who’s ‘us’?”
“Are you asking me?”
“He seemed to think the killer knew something about him. He knew the killer knew that he’d seen him. Why didn’t he call the police? If not for his friend, then why not for himself?”
“Maybe he figured he was safe way the hell out here.”
“The chair upstairs was pushed away from the computer like he moved in a hurry, like he was surprised. The study door is between the front door and the kitchen, where the struggle took place. So the killer came in through the front and startled him, then chased him into the kitchen. After what he must have seen, he just sat there at the computer and waited?”
“Maybe he didn’t,” Shanks said. “Maybe it happened sooner.”
“It would take forty minutes to get here.”
You’re assuming the killer worked alone, the voice said. You’re assuming there is only one killer. Maybe he made the same assumption.
Could that be? Could the reason Harold Craig hadn’t called the police after witnessing the crime at Valle’s apartment be because he didn’t have time? Because he was attacked shortly afterward himself?
The time of death will tell us that, I said to myself.
I’m just saying. With what we have so far, we can’t definitively say others aren’t involved. Right?
The fumes were making me light- headed. For all I knew, the bleach had combined with some other chemical down there and had created some kind of toxic gas. Why did he come down into the one place he had to have known there was no way out of?
They struggled in the kitchen, and he came down into the basement. The killer overtook him again at the workbench and they struggled. There was a wound on the side of Craig’s wrist that looked like it was from an impact, like it had been smashed against something….
“A gun,” I said.
“What?”
“He kept a gun down here; that’s why he came down here.”
He managed to get it too. The killer closed the distance and grabbed him. He smashed his wrist against the workbench, forcing him to drop it. Had he gotten a shot off?
Yes. That’s what the bleach was for. It hadn’t just fallen over; the killer dumped it out. He did that to compromise any sample of his blood that might be collected.
“He shot him.”
Using the ALS light, I adjusted the beam’s spectrum and scanned the area around the body, then over near the workbench. There was nothing on the walls or ceiling, and nothing on the surface of the bench. The bullet, if there was one, must have gotten lodged inside its target.
“Come on,” Shanks said. “Let’s get forensics in here.”
“Hold on.”
Kneeling down and shining the light up under the bench, I could see a spatter there. He had been hit. I scraped off a small sample.
“Come on, before we both pass out.”
If he had any kind of record, it would identify him. Even if he didn’t, we’d have his entire genome. After six crime scenes and not one hair, not one speck of saliva or sweat, not one thing that could be used as a reliable identification, he left behind the most damning thing he possibly could have.
The room spun for a second, and I grabbed the leg of the workbench until it passed.
“Faye, CSI will take care of this. Come on.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re not. Call it in.”
You’ve done what you came to do. Do you still want to know why he’s different?
Was my inner voice taunting me now?
Yes, why is he different?
The answer is in the sample you just took.
I know.
No, you don’t, but you will soon.
How? I asked, but the voice wouldn’t say. It didn’t pipe up again.
I called it in.