Outstanding message: Pu, Sean.
The words lit up in the dark behind my eyelids. I brought the time up next to them and saw it was morning.
Opening my eyes, I found myself looking at a foam-tiled ceiling. A fluorescent light flickered off to my left.
The hospital.
The vitals monitor wasn’t beeping anymore, and my strength had returned, for the most part. I stretched. My muscles felt stiff, but I could move.
Outstanding message: Pu, Sean.
The message had come in on the channel we used to use back in the service, during silent operations. He’d never used it since. None of us had.
The message was sent at a little past three in the morning. It was flagged as an emergency transmission. I opened it.
31 03 76 11 52 57 81 1
That was it—just a list of numbers, with no accompanying text or voice.
It could have been a glitch, but it didn’t look like it. Whatever the numbers were, he meant to send them to me. I put in a call to him on the JZI, but he was offline.
I closed my eyes again and brought up the footage from the night before. The data I pulled during the raid had been removed, but I still had the visual recording up to the point I’d entered the basement. I skipped through, marking off key sections.
In a window, I watched as I tailed Takanawa down the stairwell. The view moved slowly in the darkness, letting him stay well ahead. His thermal signature trailed across the floor, and I followed it. Smaller signatures scurried here and there as a group of rats were startled. The marks intermingled for a second, and something flickered.
I stopped the recording. I remembered the distortion, but at the time I thought it was a trick of the light; I didn’t expect to see it show up on the recording. Going back, I slowed it down for a better look. The patterns from his footsteps were steady; then the rats scattered. I saw the flicker again. The glow from the footsteps disappeared for a second, then came back.
I checked again to be sure. Something blocked them out temporarily, moving right to left. Something crossed in front of them. Something I couldn’t see had been sticking to the right wall. It startled the rats, and when it did, it crossed over to the left, causing a skip in the patterns.
The Light Warping field. It would bend visible light, but not the radiation signature from the case, and not thermal radiation either. Whoever took the case wasn’t already in the basement, waiting. I hadn’t been the only one following Takanawa.
I cut back to when SWAT first broke in on him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, still dressed. Unlike the others who’d been caught, he was alone. There was no revivor with him.
“Where’d the revivor go?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “I don’t see one here. Do you?”
Bringing up the SWAT report from the raid, I cycled down the inventory of revivors that had been impounded. There were twelve total: the eleven active ones, plus the defunct one I’d found under the bed.
“She put her there.” The revivor I found in the bathroom had said that when I discovered the body.
“Who did? Who put the revivor under there?”
“She did.”
The revivor specified “she,” but it seemed unlikely Holst had done it, and no other women were found in the hotel. The only females at the site were revivors.
It hit me then. I hadn’t seen a revivor in the room with Takanawa, but maybe there had been one there. The revivor under the LW cloak could have been female; I never actually saw it. Sean told me Holst and Takanawa were there to intercept the weapons, but the original buyer might have already had an operative inside. A revivor from the outside could have deactivated the pleasure model and taken its place, stowing it under the bed of another room.
That could have put the operative in the room with Takanawa. It had an LW suit and used it to disappear when the raid began. When we let him go, it followed him, hoping he would lead it to the case before it left the hotel.
No. Upgr …forget the target …the case.
…about the …
Kill her.
Forget the target. Get the case. “Target” might have referred to Takanawa. “Kill her” must have referred to Holst.
Sean had said she was being treated here at Mercy Greaves. I brought up the inpatient records for the hospital.
HOLST, JAN—she was there, in another wing. Her condition had been upgraded from critical to stable, but the damage to her larynx was severe. She couldn’t swallow and was being fed intravenously, but, amazingly, her attacker had missed both jugulars. I checked her records to see if she was wired for Posthumous Service. She wasn’t.
“Mr. Wachalowski?”
I opened my eyes. The doctor had come in. I packed the recording away.
“Good morning, Doctor.”
“Good morning to you, Agent,” he said. “But I don’t think you should be accessing those records. Is Miss Holst classified as a terrorist?”
“She’s a person of interest in an ongoing investigation. Under the current alert status, I have authorization,” I said. His face said that he already knew this, but disagreed.
“Can I convince you to stop the records access, at least until you’ve checked out?”
I nodded. “How is she?”
“Miss Holst is in stable condition, as you now know,” he said. “She is shaken, but except for her voice box, she’ll make a full recovery. The rest will require more specialized attention, but although she won’t sing, I think she’ll speak again before it’s over.”
“That’s good news. Is she well enough for a visitor?”
“She’s not well enough for an interrogation.”
“She’s stable, though?”
The doctor nodded.
“Thank you. Am I clear to go?” I asked.
“There is no trace of the substance left in your bloodstream, and there appears to be no long-term damage. Aside from that, you have some lumps, but nothing serious.”
“Thanks.”
When he was gone, I checked in at the FBI, but Sean hadn’t checked in. I tried his cell, but there was no answer.
31 03 76 11 52 57 81 1
The numbers floated there in front of me. Something was wrong.
I put in a call to Assistant Director Noakes. He picked up immediately.
Wachalowski, you’re awake. Good.
Noakes, where is Sean Pu?
I don’t know. In the field, I think. Why?
Did he log out?
Hold on. He went idle for several seconds. No. What’s this about?
Maybe nothing. I’m trying to track him down.
Are you checking out of the hospital today?
Yes.
Then get down here. Looks like we got another survivor from the raid last night.
Who?
Your gunshot victim in the basement—son of a bitch lived. The medics are clearing him now, and then Vesco’s going to take a crack at him.
I want to bring someone in on that, I said. He knew I meant Zoe. I waited to see if he’d argue, but he didn’t.
Then you’d better hurry.
Understood. I’m on my way. Noakes cut the connection.
I sat in the hospital bed, thinking for a moment longer. Zoe could help me get information I might not otherwise get access to. She might be able to help me in more ways than one.
I made the call. Her voice mail picked up.
“Zoe, this is Nico. I need your help,” I said. Then, after a second: “Keep this one under your hat. I’ll meet you at the Federal Building.”
I hung up, and began to get dressed.
I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was her. I was sitting in a folding chair, angled away from a gray conference table, and that woman, that dead woman, was standing in front of me. The concrete wall behind her was painted green.
“It’s you,” I said.
The first two buttons of her blouse were undone, and I could see she still had the big scar there, right in the middle of her chest. She was wearing a wig—a straight, black, shoulder-length deal—and her eyes glowed a little as they stared out from under the straight bangs.
A big boom came from somewhere above us but it was muted, like we were deep underground. The overhead light flickered, and dust sifted down from the ceiling. It had been a while since I’d fallen asleep and ended up in the green room. I’d been hoping that dream was over for good.
“God, just kill me …” I said.
“You don’t die here. You die in a tower.”
“I hate you.”
“I know.”
I was more lucid these days, and I tried to make a point of looking around when I got stuck in a vision. The room looked the same as it always did, more or less; the table was there, and the chair, along with the three hanging lights at the far end. The electric switch box was mounted on the wall next to the metal door, and the steel panel that hid the handset was next to that. Something was a little different, though. Had the switchbox and door been on the opposite wall last time?
The boom came again, and more dust sifted down from the ceiling. Something flickered then, a red band of laser light that reminded me of a bar scanner. It shone through the dust from behind me, but when I turned around, it was gone. I couldn’t see where it had come from.
“I came to tell you something,” she said.
“Good,” I said, still distracted by the laser. I’d never seen that before. “Start by telling me what this place is.”
She just stared and didn’t answer.
“Where are we? Where is this place? What’s with the explosions? What’s happening up there?”
“I came to tell you something,” she said again.
“I know you’re real,” I said. “I’ve seen you in the real world…. Is that who I’m talking to now? Or are you just who I picture when the information comes?”
She didn’t answer, and I could see she wasn’t going to. I shook my head.
“Fine. Just …say what you came to say.”
“The city is going to burn.”
I shrugged. “Yeah. I’ve seen it. I saw it years ago. Did you come to tell me something I already know? What do you want me to do about it?”
“The day will come when everything will fall on you. The fate of everything will be in your hands.”
I smiled and shook my head. It was almost funny. Not quite, but almost.
“Then the fate of everything is in big trouble,” I said.
“That’s true.”
She turned and threw the big electrical switch on the wall. A buzzing sound came from the ceiling and three lights snapped on at the far end of the room. Two people were standing there, not moving, one under the left light and one under the right light. The spot under the middle light was empty.
The person on the left was Nico. The person on the right I recognized too. She was there that night in the factory.
“This one could be your salvation,” she said, pointing at Nico. The number 3 was pressed into his forehead in black ink.
“What happened to him?” I asked, moving closer. That scar of his usually covered a big patch on the right side of his chest and right shoulder, but now it was just on his chest. Before it got to the shoulder it stopped in a neat line, like it had been painted over or something. The other half was just gone. Everything on the other side, the shoulder and arm, were the wrong color. Unlike the rest of him, his shoulder and arm were pale and gray. They were the same color as the dead woman.
“Your chance of successfully navigating this relationship is sixty percent,” she said. When I looked at her, she was staring at him, but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. After a minute, she pointed to the woman.
“This one is a destroyer. She will cause you to lose something very dear,” she said.
She was a mean, muscle-bound woman with a bent nose and black lipstick. She had the number 2 inked on her forehead.
I got a flash, then, from that place with the cages and the dead men, the place where they tried to study us. There were other people there, people like me, all locked up, and the dead men forced us to do things…. When I thought it was all over, a small woman appeared to me and told me something …something important. She showed me how to take control of a woman I’d never met; this woman with the mean face and the broken tooth. I brought her down there to me, and she saved my life.
“What will she make me lose? Why?”
“Your chance of successfully navigating this relationship is ten percent.”
“Lose what? What does she have against me?”
Another boom went off overhead, making the light fixtures sway and shadows play over the walls.
“Goddamn it. What is that noise?” I asked.
“Some people are more susceptible than others,” she said, ignoring me. She was still pointing at the woman.
“I know.”
When I looked closer at the muscle-bound figure, I saw her left hand was a pale gray, just like Nico’s arm. It triggered a flash of memory.
“She was there that night. I’ve seen her here before too,” I said to myself. A lot of what happened two years ago, I never really got clear on. The shakes were hitting me really bad by then, and everything was happening at once. I remembered a woman peeking through a hole from the cell next to mine. I remembered being hooked up to a bunch of electrodes, and then ending up in the green room….
“I called her,” I said, remembering. “I could sense her, and I called her, and she came.”
I remembered her shooting the lock to my cage and pulling me out.
“She rescued me.”
The dead woman nodded. “She may save your life a second time.”
“What about the middle spot?” I asked, but as soon as I said it, it came back to me. We’d had this conversation before.
“The middle spot is where—”
“You stand,” I said.
“We will meet two more times, before this is all over,” she said. “Your chances of successful navigation are, respectively, one hundred and zero percent.”
“Can those be changed?” I asked her. “If I can pass or fail, can the percents be changed? Can I change them?”
She wasn’t listening, though. She moved away, back toward the table, and flipped the switch back down. The lights over Nico and the other one went dark.
“You said I die in a tower. Can that be changed?”
“You die in a tall tower.”
With the lights out, I saw something flickering through the glass window in the room’s door. I got on my toes and looked out into a dimly lit hallway, where a bunch of people were sitting, leaning against the walls. They were all looking at the floor, their clothes and skin burned black. Orange and red spots glowed under the ash on their coats and boots. One, a woman, looked up, her face covered in soot. Her skin was cracked and raw. She mouthed something, but I couldn’t hear her.
“What do you want from me?” I asked the dead woman. Three men in uniform stepped into view down the hall and started tromping past them, toward the door, dragging a scrawny, dirty man in handcuffs between them.
“It’s too late for us,” the dead woman said, “but not for you.”
I turned, forgetting about the people in the hallway.
“What?”
“He still needs you. He will call to you again,” she said.
“What do you mean, ‘It’s too late for us’?” I asked.
“Should he fail, it will fall to you.”
“Wait!”
The metal door opened, and dust swirled in from the hallway. The uniformed men shoved the one in handcuffs toward the far wall where the three lights were.
“This is a mistake …” I heard him whisper.
Behind them, I caught a glimpse of a woman, a skinny woman about my height, with her hair in a bun, but she was in shadow.
“Who are—”
She turned her head to look back over her shoulder, and when she did, I could just make out some kind of tattoo that circled her scrawny neck.There was a ring-shaped scar there, where her jugular stuck out. Against the dim light behind her, her profile had a big, beaklike nose….
I woke with a start and my eyes opened. The green room and everyone in it were gone. Something was beeping.
“Damn it,” I whispered.
I was on the monorail, leaning against the window. The car was packed, and there were bodies all around me, damp from the rain and murmuring on cell phones or getting work in during the commute. A fat man in an overcoat formed a barrier to my left, leaving me in my own little world as I watched rain streak across the plastic and the city sprawl by outside. In the distance, the CMC Tower rose like a giant needle out of the fog.
The beeping sound came again, and I realized it was my phone reminding me to take my medication. The fat man glanced at me as I fished out my cell and shut off the alarm.
Mornings were when I still got the strongest urge. I thought it would be at night, but it wasn’t. It was when I first woke up, then for the rest of the morning. I held my hand out of view of the guy next to me and watched it for a minute. The fingers shook, just a little, not like before. I still missed it, though. I kept waiting for the day to come when I stopped missing it, but it never seemed to come.
I reached into my coat pocket and found one of the pill tabs. I pushed the chewable tablet through the foil and into my palm, and then popped it in my mouth. They were minty, but had a real bitter aftertaste. When I swallowed, it left a medicine taste on my tongue. That was one. I was supposed to take them three times a day.
The medication helped, that was for sure. Nico got me on a program, which I pretty much agreed to try only because he said I couldn’t come back to the FBI until I did. I didn’t think it would work, but whatever was in the tablets, it took the edge right off. When I woke up in the morning, I didn’t feel sick until I could get a drink. My hands stopped shaking so much, and I could go longer and longer without needing one. I still wanted it, but that sick feeling, and all the shaking and sweating and heart pounding, stopped. I hadn’t thrown up in almost six months.
I snorted. There was something to be proud of; a whole six months without ending up facedown in the toilet. In return, all I had to put up with was no appetite and hideous cramps.
The city is going to burn.
I hadn’t had that particular vision in a while, and I didn’t miss it. In general, the visions hadn’t been nearly as vivid since I stopped drinking, so there was that too in the plus column.
The problem was that the chemicals took only the physical edge off. They couldn’t change the fact that being sober was horrible.
My phone vibrated in my hand—a text from Karen, my downstairs neighbor. I opened the chat portal and read her message:
Missed you this morning.
I typed back a response: Sorry, had to run. Work needed me early.
That was partly true. I was supposed to meet Nico and he did have something he wanted me to do, but I didn’t even know what that was yet. I could have stopped by, but I’d kind of been avoiding her in the morning because I knew Ted was back. Her eyes had that look they got whenever her on-again, off-again asshole boyfriend was back on again. She didn’t want to say it because she knew I’d be pissed, and she was right.
Want to meet for lunch? She asked.
Sure.
We made a point of getting together to do that at least once a week, but that had tapered off a little too. Ted didn’t like me, and so he didn’t like her hanging around with me.
Sorry I’ve been MIA, she said.
I sighed, and decided to cut to the chase. I know he’s back.
She went idle for a long time.
You don’t have to say anything. I know.
He’s a complete jerk.
You don’t understand.
She had that right. Whatever she saw in that guy, I totally did not understand. Whatever it was, though, she was really stuck on him. She actually got mad when I insulted him.
It’s none of my business, I said. There wasn’t anything I could do, not really. From the sound of it down there, at least she was seeing some action, which was more than I could say for myself.
Let’s not talk about that, she said.
Fine.
Meet in Federal Square at noon?
Noon.
She signed off. I put my phone away and looked back out the window.
Ted is bad news. I should just make her dump him. I’d thought about that, but honestly, I was a little afraid of what he might do if she did. I could make him dump her instead, but then she might know I had something to do with that, and she’d never forgive me for it.
I could make her forget, though….
I’d thought that before too, but I wasn’t ready to do that. Not yet.
The train stopped at the Federal Square station and I followed the rest of the bodies out into the rain, then down off the platform. It was a cold, windy walk to the Federal Building, and by the time I got there, my jacket was soaked. In the smoked glass at the entrance, I saw my hair had frizzed.
When I went through the guard post, I was surprised to see Nico across the lobby. He stepped out of the elevator and started crossing the big seal imprinted in the marble floor, heading for the front entrance. I was supposed to be meeting him there, but he had his coat on. He was leaving.
He almost blew right past me before he saw me, and I didn’t need any special ability to know he’d already forgotten our meeting.
“Zoe,” he said. I sensed something from him, something that came off him like a high-pitched whine.
I focused on him, and the room grew brighter as a swirl of colors phased in over the crowd of heads moving through the lobby. I concentrated, letting the rest fade into the background while bringing Nico’s forward. There were red and orange there, arcing and spiking under a shell of calm. Something was wrong.
I couldn’t control Nico anymore…. Two years back something happened to him, and I never found out what, but it left a sort of hole in him. When I focused on him, I could still see his colors and I could still read them, but that was all. When I tried to push him or change those colors, it didn’t work. He tricked me a couple times when he knew it was coming, but he couldn’t hide everything, at least not from me. When I really burrowed down, it was like behind the moving lights there was a dark hole, and if I pushed too hard, I would push through into nothing but darkness. No matter what I tried or how gently I approached him, I always ended up in that dark spot where I couldn’t change anything.
It didn’t work on him anymore, but he could tell when I was trying to do it. He raised his eyebrows and I backed off, letting the colors disappear and the light go back to normal. I got a good look at his face for the first time, then. He looked like he’d been in a fight.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It’s a long story, Zoe, and I’m sorry, but I’ve got to run. I need you to do me a favor while I’m gone.”
Whenever Nico said “favor” he really meant he wanted me to use my ability on someone. He usually wanted to keep that quiet. I was getting annoyed.
“Yeah, I kept it ‘under my hat,’ just like you said. What kind of favor?”
“We uncovered something in a raid last night,” he said. “Something big.”
“What favor?” I asked again, raising my voice a little.
“There were two surviving witnesses,” he said. “I need you to talk to both of them—”
“Two?” There went my lunch date with Karen.
“The first one is happening now,” he said. “You’ll need to get up there. We’ve got a suspect shot in a raid who’s about to be questioned. He could know something vital to—”
“Now?”
“Yes. Vesco and the others know you might be coming, so just go in—”
“You’re not going to be there?” The whole thing was starting to stress me out. Vesco hated me; he thought I was a joke. They all thought I was a joke. Nico always kept the rest of them off me, and even then sometimes I was so nervous I could barely do anything. Working for him at the FBI was his idea in the first place. Now he was just ditching me?
“Zoe, please,” he said, pulling me aside. “This is very important. I had meant to be with you, but I think a friend of mine is in trouble and I have to check it out. Please do this for me.”
I could tell something was really bothering him. He didn’t say who the friend was or what kind of trouble he was in, but something was really bothering him.
“Fine,” I said.
“Thank you. They’re upstairs now. Here.”
He handed me a folded piece of paper with a series of questions on it. He usually did that, so I could include them in my “notes” and it didn’t look like he was telling me what to ask once we got inside. To me, though, they had started to look like grocery lists, things I was supposed to pick up for him and bring back.
I didn’t say that. I just folded the paper in my hands.
“The second part might be trickier,” he said, “but get it if you can.”
“Fine.”
“I have to go.”
“Fine.”
I watched his mind shift gears as he walked past me and out through the glass door. He shielded himself from the rain as a gust of wind made his overcoat flap around him.
I checked the paper he’d given me and got the name of the interrogation room, then took the elevator up.
It was true; they were expecting me, sort of. I could hear Vesco talking as I approached the doorway, and a couple other people inside with him.
“…that creepy redhead,” I heard him say. Someone chuckled.
“I don’t know why Noakes allows this shit,” someone else said. “There’s more to that story, I’ll bet.”
“You think Wachalowski hits that?” Vesco asked, and two men laughed. My face got hot.
“Can it, you two,” I heard a woman’s voice say. And then I was through the door, and everyone shut up.
There were three people in the room, and through a one-way glass panel I could see a fourth sitting in the interrogation room. Vesco was there, a smirk still on his obnoxious face, and some other guy I’d never seen who had to be the one who laughed.
The third person was a round-faced Asian woman with short, straight hair. Like the two men, she wore a dark suit and even wore a tie that somehow looked right on her. Before the other two could say anything, she stepped forward and offered her hand.
“My name is Alice Hsieh,” she said, as I shook the offered hand briefly. “Agent Wachalowski said you might be joining us. This is Agent Ves—”
“I know who he is.” Heat was coming up from under my collar. I knew my face was totally red. I felt completely humiliated.
“Then if you’ll join us in the—”
“I’ll talk to him alone,” I said. I’d just interrupted her twice, but I didn’t care. Vesco got ready to say something, and I swore—right then I swore—that if he started in on me, I’d make him shut up, no matter who saw.
I didn’t have to, though. The woman, Alice, made him shut up instead.
“That will be fine,” she said.
“Like hell,” Vesco said. Alice didn’t raise her voice, but her eyes turned serious.
“Are you contradicting me?” she asked. The look on Vesco’s face, and his friend’s face, left no question as to who in the room was in charge. He was angry, but he pressed his lips together.
“No, ma’am,” he said. Alice turned back to me.
“You’re on.”
I walked past Vesco, and took some satisfaction in the anger I could sense coming off him. The interrogation room was cold, like they usually kept it, and a man sat in a wheelchair across the table from me, almost shivering. I took out my notebook, and smoothed the paper Nico had given me over the open page, keeping it out of view.
“Who are you?” the man asked. His face was sweaty, in spite of his slight shiver. He had a tube under his nose, and a few more stuck out from inside his robe. According to Nico’s notes, his name was Franco Reese, and he’d been shot in the side not even twenty-four hours earlier.
“Never mind who I am,” I said. “I’m going to ask you some questions.”
“I’m not saying anything without my—”
His voice trailed off as the room brightened around me, and the colors appeared around his head. Over the past two years, I’d gotten better at doing what I did. I didn’t have to get close anymore or tell him to go to sleep. Most people didn’t even need to be totally under for me to get them to tell me what I wanted to know, and it was less obvious that way.
“Just take it easy, Mr. Reese,” I said.
I eased the colors back into a cold, calm blue, and watched his face relax.
“I just have a few questions. Will you cooperate?”
“Sure,” he breathed, settling back into the wheelchair.
I risked a glance back toward the glass panel that separated the rooms. It was a one-way mirror, so I couldn’t actually see the people on the other side, but I could sense them to the point that I knew where they were standing. Vesco and his friend were together, back toward the far wall. The woman, Alice, was standing directly in front of the glass, watching me. Her mind was calm and interested, but not suspicious. I looked back to Nico’s list.
“Did you smuggle in the twelve devices?” I asked. The paper didn’t say what kind of devices they were.
“Yes.”
“Was Holst your original contact?”
“No,” he said, “but the guy who set up the deal and the one who did the pickup were supposed to be two different people. I knew that.”
“So you were expecting Holst?”
“I didn’t know who I was expecting. The guy who set it up supplied a cipher. The pickup man provided the key. They also had the money. Everything was in order.”
“So nothing seemed strange about the deal?”
Reese’s brow twitched. “One thing,” he said.
“Tell me.”
“The buyer wanted the revivors too.The two that came to make the pickup didn’t say anything about that.”
“No?”
“No. That blond bitch, especially. She looked put off by the whole thing. Next thing I know, the goddamn Feds are busting down the doors, so I figured it was a sting; the bitch and her pervert friend were undercover. I go downstairs to take care of her, and she starts shooting.”
“You didn’t see where the case ended up?”
That actually seemed to excite him a little. An electric white began to course under the cool blue that surrounded him.
“I thought you had it,” he said. He didn’t know.
“Did the buyer say what the targets were?” I asked.
“Just that they were big.”
“Big?”
“At least three large-scale urban targets,” he said. It took me a minute to realize what it was that he was saying.
“They’re going to blow something up?” I asked.
“What the hell else do you do with a nu—”
“The nature of the case’s contents is classified,” a voice snapped over the intercom, loud enough to cut the man off, but it was too late. I knew what he was going to say. He had a weird look on his face, a sort of excitement in his eyes, even despite being under. Whatever was going to happen, he wanted it to happen.
The city is going to burn. That’s what the dead woman said. Was this what she meant?
“Okay,” I said weakly. My heart had started to pound. “That’s all.”
“You can’t stop it now,” he said. “Change is coming, and you can’t—”
“Shut up,” I said, and he did.
I looked at the bottom of the paper Nico had given me, and it seemed to be turning in a slow circle in front of me. There were a few more questions he wanted asked that I was not expecting. Normally I think I would have chickened out, but I was still reeling from what I’d heard. I barely thought about it when I called back into the next room.
“Agent Vesco, can you come in here for a second?” I called back. “The rest of you can go if you want. I’m done with him for now.”
The door opened and Vesco came in. He looked at me like I was an idiot.
“He’s lying, Ott,” he said. “If interrogation was that easy, anyone could do it. That case is worth millions; he knows where it is. They would have had a route set up to carry it back underground in the event they got busted.”
“He’s not lying.”
“So you ask him a question, and just accept the first thing that comes out of his mouth? He’s a black market- arms dealer sitting inside the Federal Building; he’ll say whatever he—”
“He’s not lying. Shut up,” I said, and he did. His face went slack, but not too slack. I was careful not to push him too hard.
“Come closer,” I said. “Sit down next to me.” He did, and I leaned closer, to whisper in his ear.
“Did you know Holst and Takanawa would be in the hotel?” I asked. He whispered the answer in my ear.
“Yes.”
“What were you told?”
“Not to process them. To let them leave with the case, and then report that it was never at the site. To keep Wachalowski out of it.”
“Who told you that?” I asked. He paused.
“I don’t remember.”
“Why did you agree to go along with that?”
“I …don’t remember.”
He wasn’t lying. He couldn’t be, not to me.
“That’s all,” I said, and let him go. I folded the paper and stuffed it in my pocket. Vesco blinked and looked confused for a second before he got up and walked out without saying another word.
Jerk, I thought. The door closed behind him. I could sense his presence as he passed by the one-way mirror, and back out into the hall. His friend had already gone, but the other presence, the woman named Alice Hsieh, was still there. She was still standing near the glass, watching me. Her mind was still calm and curious.
Without looking back at the mirror, I focused on her. I was going to make her leave too, before I called the guard back in to take the suspect away. When I concentrated on her, though, and began to push, something gently pushed me back. Around the cool and curious glow of her consciousness, I saw a thin, white halo appear, so faint it was almost invisible.
Then I really did turn and look, and I could feel her looking back. That faint halo showed up on only one kind of person.
Alice Hsieh was like me.
I tried Wachalowski one more time on my cell across the street from the Federal Building and let it ring. I’d called him a few times, but he wasn’t picking up. I picked the phone up at a convenience store, and I was supposed to be gone another two years so it wasn’t a total ditch, but I was sick of getting his voice mail.
“…Special Agent Nico Wachalowski. Leave a mes—”
I hung up. After a minute, I crossed the street.
The last time I had a run-in with the Feds, it wasn’t exactly a win. They screwed me on a reward I had coming, doped me, grilled me all night, then kicked me to the curb. The place still made me a little edgy.
A camera followed me up the steps, and drones in suits watched from a gate just past the door. I walked up to it and flashed my ID card.
“Flax, Calliope,” the door said. “First Class. Violations including: assault, illegal possession of a weapon, public drunkenness, and speeding place you as security risk: medium-high.”
Some asshole going by looked over. The door kept talking.
“Records show a recent return from military service,” it said. “Honorable discharge at rank EMET Corporal. Awarded commendations: Bronze Star, and Purple Heart. Welcome back, EMET Corporal Flax.”
“Just open.”
The door clicked, and I pulled it open and went in. The place looked part military and part corporate jerk-off, full of suits with guns and big wallets. The lobby was decked out, and the floor had a big, fancy seal on it. There were flags and spy cams on every wall, and a big metal detector and X-ray up front. I took off my jacket and dropped it on the belt while the bald guy behind it watched.
“Welcome back, Corporal. Step through, please.”
I went through, and after he checked me out, he gave the coat back.
“You meeting someone?” he asked.
“Agent Wachalowski.”
“He expecting you?”
“He said look him up when I got back,” I said.
“Sign in, please.”
I signed the log, and he gave me a badge to wear.
“Elevator’s that way. He’s on the fifth floor.”
The lift was full of suits, and on the way up I did a sweep with the JZI. I found a ton of nodes, so a lot of the goons there were ex-military. One of them could have been Wachalowski, but I hadn’t actually talked to him on the JZI yet, so I didn’t have his ID. When the car hit five, I got out and headed down the hall to find someone to ask.
Halfway down, an old guy eyed me and moved in. He was my height and blocky, but soft in the middle. His face wasn’t soft, though, and one of his eyes was a fake. I could tell right off he was in charge.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. I’m here to see Agent Wachalowski. Do you know where I can find him?”
“What’s your name?”
“Cal Flax.”
Orange light flashed in the darks of his eyes, and I picked up an intrusion on my JZI. Some message popped up about me being inside a federal facility, and my security dropped. He scanned all my systems, top to bottom. The guy was heavily wired.
“EMET Corporal Calliope Flax,” he said. “Aka Fang, aka Hayvan.” That last one made him grin a mean grin. “The Beast?”
The guys in my platoon called me Fang because of the missing tooth. Hayvan was what the punks in Juba called me, after I started patrolling with the jacks.
“Yes, sir.” He was reading something on his JZI, I could tell. As he did, his face changed. Some of the hard-ass went out of him. I used a backscatter filter on him while I waited, and he let me. Under the muscle and flab he had some armor plating, muscle and joint work, and some ugly chunks of scar tissue.
After a minute he held out his hand, and I shook it. His big hand gripped like a vise.
“I’m Assistant Director Henry Noakes,” he said. “Agent Wachalowski is in the field, but he’ll want to see you.”
“If you say so.” I was half thinking he might back-pedal when he saw me on his front doorstep.
“He dropped your name a couple times,” he said. “He’ll want to see you. Hold on.”
Orange light flickered in his eyes again. A few seconds later, a call came in. It was from Wachalowski.
“Thanks,” I said. He nodded.
Call accepted.
Calliope, he said.
Cal.
I didn’t expect you back so soon.
Two guys in suits came around the corner. One looked over his shoulder, then back at his buddy as they passed, and I caught the G-man’s name.
“…Wachalowski find her anyway?” he said.
“You got me.”
Neither did I.
I’m glad you came by; I was hoping you would when you got back.
It was an honorable discharge.
I don’t doubt it. Is Assistant Director Noakes still standing there?
Yeah. The guy’s hard-core. He’s wired up the ass.
That might be the one place he isn’t wired. Can we meet later?
Sure.
Name the spot. I’ll find it.
The Pit? It’s in Bullrich.
Got it. I’ll get in touch as soon as I’m out of the field. We’ll meet there.
Right then a scrawny chick in a raincoat came around the corner, tailing the two suits that just passed. She was short and built like a stick with a big beak nose. Her hair was red and she was pale as a ghost. She looked down at the floor when she walked. When I got a good look at her face, it hit me like a brick.
You will remember Zoe Ott.
I got that weird flash again. I was underground. It was cold and dark. I could hear gunfire. Someone was chasing me. I pushed past a sheet of plastic and down a long hall to a room filled with cages….
Gotta go.
I cut the line.
“You got any other business here?” Noakes asked.
The stick with the red hair went by us. When she did, she looked up at me, then back at the floor.
“No,” I said. “Thanks again.”
“Welcome back.”
She was heading for the elevators, and I went after her. When the car showed up, I followed her in.
In the reflection off the brass, I saw her check me out. I knew her. She was down in that cold, dark place two years ago.
How the fuck did I just forget her?
I set the JZI recording, and got a good look at her face. I didn’t know why she was there, but it was a good a time as any to get some answers. The numbers ticked off on the LCD as the car headed down, and I went for the emergency stop button.
I didn’t do it, though. Something stopped me and I just stood there. When the doors opened, she scooted out and made a beeline for the front door. I stepped out, but I didn’t follow her. I just stood there.
“Elevator trouble?” some guy in a suit said.
“How the fuck should I know?” I said. He gave me a look and made a point of clipping my shoulder when he passed, but I still just stood there. Why the fuck did I just let her go?
I killed the JZI recording. At least I had a face to go by, and if she was there two years ago, then Wachalowski must know who she was. I bumped to the start of the footage and let it run so I could see her face again.
In a window I watched the footage play. The feed showed the shiny brass doors of the elevator, and I could see my own reflection in it. She was standing to my left. I got some good frames of her face, but that was it. Then I heard myself talk.
“Hey,” I said to her. She didn’t look up.
“Hey.”
I froze it. I stood there and stared at the image in the window. In it, I was looking down at her beak profile and she had her eyes on the floor. I hadn’t said anything to her; I knew I hadn’t. The whole thing happened less than a minute ago.
I leaned against the wall next to the door and let it keep running.
“Where do I know you from?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “You don’t.”
I hit the emergency stop and the car bucked as the bell rang and kept ringing. She jumped and looked up at me.
“What are you doing?” she squawked.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“What?”
“Goddamn it, I know you,” I said. “You were down in that fucking pit. I went in after—”
I remembered then. Last time I’d seen her, she was on the other side of a cage door. Everything was burning. People were shooting. I looked through the glass, and saw a stream of fire reflect off it. I went down there to get her. Somehow I knew her.
She knew me too; I could see it in her eyes. She knew me.
“You’re wrong. I—”
I stepped in on her and she stepped back, against the wall. She looked scared as I stuck my finger in her face.
“Don’t lie,” I said. “Tell me who—”
Her eyes changed then. The black parts got big, until the green part was almost gone. My voice stopped cold and I just looked at her.
“Sleep,” she said. Nothing happened for a few seconds; then she leaned close.
She looked scared before, but not now. In the recording, she looked at me like a bug under a magnifying glass. It happened just like that, like someone flipped a switch.
“Can you hear me?” she asked.
“Yes,” my voice said.
“You don’t know me. You have the wrong person. Whoever you think I am and whatever you think is going on, you’re wrong. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to tell you to unstick the elevator, and when I do, you’re going to forget this whole thing. Whatever you planned to do, you decided not to do it. We don’t know each other. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“I’ve got stuff I have to do during my lunch; don’t follow me. Now unstick the elevator.”
I watched my hand reach out and hit the button again. The bell stopped and the elevator kept going. We both just stood there the rest of the time. She left, and I stayed behind.
What the fuck?
I went back to a freeze-frame of that ugly face staring up at me, eyes gone black.
Who the fuck are you?
At the front door, I hit up the guard.
“Do you know who that was?”
“Who?”
“The stick. The one with the red hair.”
“Oh, her,” he said. “Name’s Zoe Ott.”
“Who is she?”
“Don’t know. Some contractor.”
“That’s it?”
“She drinks, I think.”
“Zoe Ott, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thanks.”
When I got outside, she was long gone. I had a name and a face, though. Ten minutes and twenty bucks later, I had more than that.
Name: Zoe Alia Ott. Sex: Female.Hair: Red. Eyes: Green.Parents: Harold Llewellyn Ott (deceased), Nichole Alia Donovan Ott (deceased).Citizenship tier: Three. Served: No. PH: No.Criminal Record: (7) counts of public drunkenness.Employment: Self/Other. None.Awarded monthly compensation in work-related death of Harold Llewellyn Ott. Currently contracts for Federal Bureau of Investigation in undisclosed capacity. I brought up her picture again, staring up at me in the elevator. It was like she just erased my goddamned memory. How the hell had she done that?
There was more info on her, but mostly stuff I didn’t care about. I skimmed through until I found the one thing I did care about.
The second part of Nico’s little favor took me halfway across town, a tidbit of information he’d completely forgotten to mention when he was blowing me off. I had to call Karen to bail on lunch, but I was all the way to the hospital and she still hadn’t picked up. A sign outside said I couldn’t have my phone on once I went in, so I’d been waiting in the rain for ten minutes before I finally got her on the line. I was going to be late.
“You have to cancel,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Karen. Really.”
“Don’t sweat it,” she said. “It’s just lunch; we’ll go tomorrow or something.”
“It’s just something came up. Nico’s got me doing this thing, except it’s not at the Federal Building. It’s off somewhere else across town, so I had to go right over there.”
“That’s good, though, right? You get paid by the hour, don’t you?”
“I guess.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know. It feels like he’s using me sometimes.”
“Zoe, it’s work you get paid to do,” she said. “He’s not using you. He’s contracting you.”
“I guess.”
“He does that because you get results. Plus you’re working with him. That’s one of the best ways to get to know someone.”
She had a way of making things seem better than they probably were. I guessed what she said might be true, but I was still ticked off.
“He ditched me today. I’m doing this totally on my own.”
“He trusts you,” she said. “He knows you can come through on your own.”
“Maybe.”
“Here’s what you do; instead of us going to lunch tomorrow, you take him to lunch tomorrow instead.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Zoe, it’s been, like, two years. You’re never going to get him if you don’t even try.”
My face got hot when she said that. It was easy for her to say. Guys stared at her all the time; they never looked at me that way. It wasn’t the same.
“It wouldn’t work anyway,” I said. “He’s hung up on someone else, I think.”
“You always say that. You always say ‘That wouldn’t work anyway.’ You’re just afraid to try.”
“Look, if you’re so smart about guys, then how come you’re still hooked up with that loser?”
“He has a name,” she said, clipped. “We’re not talking about that right now.”
“Yeah, I know. You always say that. He’s bad news, Karen. I know he’s bad news.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute.
“Just …go do whatever you have to do,” she said. She sounded pissed.
“Fine.”
“I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up.
I shut my phone off like the sign said. First I was late getting into work; then those jerks made fun of me when my back was turned. I had to miss my lunch, and now Karen was pissed at me. Plus that woman …
This one is a destroyer. She will cause you to lose something very dear….
She was in the green room. In the elevator I thought she was going to punch me. How did she remember me? Back then, I made her forget. How did she remember?
Shaking off my umbrella, I closed it and went inside, where a bunch of people were sitting like they’d been waiting there forever. A big, round woman in a flowered shirt sat behind the main desk.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Jan Holst,” I said.
“Visiting hours resume at one,” she said. “You can have a seat and wait if you like, or you can come back.”
“I’m not here to visit. I’m here to do an interview.”
“Interview?”
The room got brighter, and I stared at her until her fat face went slack.
“Just tell me where her room is.”
“Sixth floor. Room 6E7.”
“Go back to what you were doing and never mind me.”
I stopped pushing her, and she looked back to the computer screen.
Alone in the elevator, I hit the button for the sixth floor. The inside of the door was mirrored, and in it I looked like a drowned rat. My hair was frizzed and tangled, and my face was blotchy. My ears were bright red.
As the car went up, I thought about that woman back at the FBI, Alice Hsieh. She had the same abilities I did—I was sure of it. For the first time, it occurred to me that if I noticed her, she must have noticed me too. If that was true, she must have known how I got the information out of the guy in the wheelchair. She must have seen too when I got the information out of Vesco, but she didn’t try to stop it or ask me about it after. She just left, and never said anything about it at all.
“You think Wachalowski hits that?”
The memory wormed its way in, pushing the other stuff out. Vesco joked about Nico having sex with me. Then he and his friend laughed about it. Nico being interested in me physically was actually a joke in the office. It was something to laugh about.
My reflection got blurry, and I wiped my eyes. Any second the elevator door was going to open and I’d be standing there crying. I took a deep breath, but my reflection stayed blurry. I blinked hard a couple times and rubbed them, but it didn’t go away. It was like I was looking through a haze or something, or like heat was rippling the air. The elevator floor creaked and I turned, but nothing was there. When I looked back, my reflection was normal again.
Shit. Not here.
When I saw things, it happened out of nowhere and it didn’t matter where I was. I couldn’t afford some kind of episode in the middle of a hospital, when I was supposed to be doing an interview. I took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down. The antsy feeling I got up and down my spine when I really wanted to drink was kicking in big time. The last thing I needed was some kind of panic attack….
The bell dinged and the doors opened up. No one was waiting for the car on the other side. I smoothed down my hair and wiped my eyes one more time, then stepped out. The door clunked behind me, then slid shut.
I found the right room and went inside, where a man in a white lab coat stood next to a hospital bed. I peeked past him to see the woman who was lying there. There was a bandage across the front of her neck, covered in gauze tape. After a minute, she noticed me and looked past the man in the coat. When she did, he looked over.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Jan Holst.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Zoe Ott.”
“You’re with the FBI?” He said it like he couldn’t believe it.
“Yes.”
I fished my contractor’s badge out and held it up so he could see it.
“Okay,” he said. He turned to the woman. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
She nodded, still looking at me. She looked pretty beat-up, but she smiled, just a little.
“You’ll have to leave,” I told him. He frowned, and I felt a little surge of anger come from him.
“Look, Miss Ott,” he said. “This wom—”
He stopped in midsentence as I concentrated and the room got bright. As the colors drained away from everything except the light around his head, out of the corner of my eye I saw the woman’s smile get a little bigger. I pushed back the spike of red light that had been forming until it disappeared back into the blue.
“I need privacy,” I told him. “If anything happens, I’ll get you.”
He nodded. In the doorway, he looked back at her one more time, then left, closing the door behind him. The lights went back to normal. When I turned and looked at her, she was still smiling. There was a chair in the room and I pulled it over next to the bed and sat down.
“How are you doing?” I asked. She shook her head, and pointed to the bandage over her throat.
“Sorry, right.”
Nico told me about that in the phone message. I had to sign out an electronic tablet. I took it out of my purse and turned it on, making the little gray screen light up. She held out her hand and I gave it to her.
“Does it hurt?” I asked. She shook her head, then tapped on the little keyboard and angled the screen so I could see.
I’ll be okay.
“Good.”
What did you want to ask me, Agent Ott?
“Miss Ott. I just work for them sometimes.”
Digging in my coat pocket, I found the list of questions I was supposed to ask and pulled it out. Smoothing the paper, I looked at the first question.
I focused in on her so I could put her under, and she closed her eyes. When the aura appeared over her head, though, I saw that thin, white halo. The swirl of color behind it stayed calm when I tried to change them, and couldn’t. She opened her eyes and smiled as she met mine.
My heart was beating faster. Nico’s questions sat forgotten in my hand.
She tapped on the tablet’s keyboard.
You can see.
“Yes.” She could see me, too.
We’ve contacted you more than once. Why don’t you respond?
That was true. I’d gotten several notes and a few weird phone calls. I knew they were interested in me. The weird little woman that appeared after the revivor took me and wired me to their machine told me they were interested in me.
I didn’t have a good answer for her. I just shrugged.
Aren’t you even a little bit curious?
“I’ve just …been avoiding it, I guess.”
Why?
My words got caught up in my throat, but then I started to relax a little. For a second, it actually felt like I’d taken a big shot of ouzo. I felt the tension inside me loosen.
“Because I was scared,” I said.
Scared of what?
“Nico doesn’t trust you …I thought he’d be mad …I was worried he might be right, maybe, or that …I wouldn’t be special?” I said. The words were flowing like I was drunk. “That I wouldn’t be any good, and I’d be as bad at this as I am …”
I trailed off, and she smiled again.
You are special, and there’s no reason to be scared. We would welcome you, and I know how lonely it feels to think you’re alone.
My throat burned and I felt tears in my eyes again. She was right, in a way. It seemed like I’d gotten to the point where I was doing everything right, or the way I was supposed to do them anyway. I was trying to be like everyone else, to go to bed sober and wake up and go to work and make friends, but it wasn’t working. Even though I knew more people now than I ever had, I was lonely. Karen acted like it was the drinking that made her kick me out, but it wasn’t. It was part of it, but it was the other stuff she couldn’t stand. My ability, and the dreams, and all the things she thought were so cool at first; they started to scare her.
The people around you don’t understand you, Jan typed. They can’t.
I shrugged as her fingers moved over the screen.
You need to understand what it is you can do—how to do it and when to use it. Let us show you.
“Maybe,” I said.
These people and the way they treat you make you sad, but these people, the ones who aren’t like you, what they think doesn’t matter. They don’t deserve to hold this power over you—
“Stop.”
She deleted the message. She didn’t look disappointed or mad or anything. She just stopped typing.
Nico didn’t trust them; that was the thing. Sometimes, the way he talked, it was like he thought that all those people that got killed back then deserved what they got. Sometimes, the way he talked, I wondered if maybe he didn’t trust me either, and I really wanted him to. I wanted him to believe in me. I wanted him to know that whatever side he was on, I was on it too.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
It’s okay.
I looked back at the paper Nico gave me, the one with the questions, but I knew I wouldn’t ask them. I crumpled it and shoved it in my pocket.
“Is the city really going to burn?” I asked. Her eyes got very serious.
Yes.
“Why? How?”
Meet with us and you’ll get your answer.
As I read the words, a bad feeling came over me. I started feeling really dizzy, so bad it made me sick to my stomach a little.
“I can’t …”
If you don’t, she’ll be forced to—
I practically jumped out of my skin as a loud popping noise went off right near my head. At the same exact time, one of her eyes blew up. It just blew apart and caved in, leaving a big red hole behind. Her whole body jerked on the bed, and the eye she had left rolled in the socket, looking off at a weird angle.
The tablet slipped out of her hand and clattered onto the floor. She slumped back onto the pillow, and the machine she was hooked up to was beeping over and over. Someone was shouting from down the hall. A puff of smoke was rising from a spot in front of the bed.
I was still trying to figure out what the heck just happened when the IV rack next to the bed shook all by itself, then tipped over and crashed onto the floor. When I looked over, I saw the air ripple there, just for a second. For just a second, I saw a guy standing there. He was bald, and his skin was gray. His eyes glowed a dull yellowish color, and for that quick flash, they were staring right at me. He moved, and I saw a gun in his hand before the air flickered again, and he was gone.
What just happened?
The doctor came through the doorway. He looked from the woman on the bed to me. The look on his face snapped me out of it.
“What happened?” he asked. When I concentrated on her, just the barest blue light appeared, like a pilot light, and then even that flickered out. The vitals monitor started droning a steady beep, and the doctor’s eyes widened.
“Jesus, what did you do?”
Other people started filling up the room, pushing me out of the way. I grabbed the tablet and backed away.
“What the hell did you do?” the doctor demanded.
“Nothing, I …”
“Call the police!” someone yelled.The doctor reached for me and I focused on him, stopping him before he could grab me.
“Leave me alone,” I told him. His eyelids drooped, and his hand began to lower back by his side.
“Leave me alone.”
I slipped out the door and ran.
Mist gave way to a short squall of snow as I inched down the street. The strip of sky above the buildings had turned dull gray. Sean’s place was on the other side of town, and by the time I got there, the commuters were in full swing. Traffic had piled up in front and behind. People trudged along the sidewalks on either side with their collars turned up and their heads down. I nosed past a group of people waiting impatiently at the curb, crept down the side street, then took a concrete ramp into the garage below.
According to the apartment’s security logs, Sean got in late the night before. The timing suggested he’d gone straight home after we spoke. That put three hours or so between when he arrived home and when he sent the message. Another two had passed since then, and he never showed up at work. He was in trouble.
Heading up the front entrance, I checked the logs for visitors. There had been a handful, but none were signed in by him. Cameras didn’t record anyone who was unaccounted for, coming or going.
Inside I took the express elevator up, and then made my way to Sean’s unit. I gave the door a knock, but no one answered. I knocked again.
“Sean, open up.”
Using the backscatter to scan through the door, I could make out his coat on a rack. Next to that, I could see his shoes. Nothing moved in the gray space behind them.
“Sean, if you’re there, open up.”
I listened for a minute, but didn’t hear anything. I took my badge from my pocket and put a call in to Noakes.
Noakes, I’m at Sean’s apartment, and I need a silent entry. I also need a warrant related to possible crime in progress.
Done and done, Agent.
He stayed on the line while I held my badge to the door scanner and the bolt released, suppressing any voice or electronic response. When I pushed open the door, I saw that the apartment was dark. I went inside and closed the door behind me.
Through the thermal filter I could make out faint traces of footsteps, but none of them had been recent. None approached the door. No one had come or gone for hours.
Creeping into the main hall, I drew my gun and adjusted my visuals to let in more light. Nothing looked disturbed. The apartment was completely quiet.
“Sean?”
No one answered. The thermal signatures were very faint, but got stronger through the living area. He had sat on the sofa for a while, and there was an empty glass on a marble-topped end table. Fresher footsteps headed toward the bedroom. I followed them in.
The bed was still made, but I could make out a warm spot in the middle, as if he had lain there on top of the covers at some point. I recorded the image, then followed the footsteps through a door and into the master bath.
In the bathroom, he’d stood in front of the sink. There were drops of brown liquid on the porcelain and bunches of tissues in the trash, stained with something black, maybe ink. There was a thermal handprint on the toilet lid.
Lifting it up, I looked in and saw the water was stained pink. A wad of tissue was clogging the bowl, and floating above it was a wrinkled white orb that trailed red tissue.
Noakes, are you getting this?
I zoomed in on the eye. It looked like it had been cut out. The iris was clouded and scarred.
I got it. Is it his?
Checking …
I tried to scan the retina, but it was too damaged. Something had scorched it.
Kneeling in front of the sink, I fished through the trash. Under the tissues was a small, glass bottle with a dropper. It was unmarked, but had a sharp, chemical smell.
What is it?
I’m not sure. Hold on.
Back in the bedroom, I noticed some scoring on the frame next to the bathroom doorknob, and pinprick burn marks on the carpet. When I zoomed in on the latch, I saw the metal bolt had been burned through. Someone cut their way in to get to him.
Someone broke in.
I’m sending a forensics team over, Noakes said. Keep me informed.
Roger that.
He closed the connection.
Rain drummed against a window next to the bed. I switched to the backscatter and searched the room, looking for anything that might have gotten left behind. When I scanned across the floor, I found a safe concealed under an area rug next to the bed.
Moving the rug aside, I raised the panel to find it fitted with an electronic lock. I remembered Sean’s message.
31 03 76 11 52 57 81
I keyed the sequence into the safe’s keypad, and a moment later I felt a thump through the floor as the bolts retracted. Whatever he was trying to tell me, whatever he wanted me to know, it was inside.
I turned the arm and pulled open the heavy door. The only thing inside was a small recording device. A yellow LED flashed on one side of it.
It looked like the recorder was receiving from a wireless source, or at least it had been. I tapped into the recording buffer, and a window came up in my field of vision, displaying a test code. The recording came from a camera eye, a version of a JZ implant’s optics, or a revivor’s eye. News peddlers and paparazzi used them. The eyes had a recording buffer, but they could also transmit to an external recorder.
Sean had one implanted, then. The eye would be inferior to the recorder he already had, but whatever it recorded wouldn’t end up in the JZI buffer. The only reason for him to do that was so that he could record things without anyone at the FBI seeing them.
I played the recording. There was no sound, just a streaming image from Sean’s point of view. He was standing in the bathroom, looking into the mirror in front of the sink. I knew the expression I saw on his face; he was in trouble at the time the recording was made.
He looked into his own eyes in the mirror, giving the illusion he was looking out at me. He reached up with an erasable marker and began writing on the mirror in black ink.
I know we can’t influence you anymore.
I don’t know why.
He wiped the message away with a tissue. He dropped it in the trash next to the sink and wrote again.
I’m sorry.
He frowned, and his eyes looked sad as he added:
I tried to protect you.
He wiped the mirror clean, then looked back through the bathroom doorway like he heard something. After a second, he turned back to the mirror again. He held the marker up to it, and began to write again as a light flickered somewhere behind him.
Motoko Ai believes you are an important element. She’s been looking for you. She will contact you soon. Be careful; she lies.
Motoko Ai …I didn’t know that name. He wiped the mirror clean, and began writing more quickly, glancing back through the doorway again. Sparks were spitting out from the seam next to the knob of the bedroom door. A cutter was being used to slice through the bolt.
Fawkes has the nukes. He was the buyer. The same buyer was behind the first attack. Fawkes was behind the bombing of Concrete Falls.
He underlined the last part, then stopped writing and turned around as the bedroom door opened and a figure stepped through the smoke. He pulled the bathroom door shut and locked himself inside. Just before it closed, I caught a glimpse of a pale face moving toward him. It was only for a second, but the soft glow behind the eyes was unmistakable. As he turned back to the sink, I saw sparks begin to fly from the door seam as the cutter began making its way through.
Sean turned back to the mirror and started to scrawl one last message:
Second Chance—
Light flashed behind him and he stopped, throwing the marker aside. He opened the medicine cabinet and I watched him remove the small brown glass bottle I found in the trash. The camera looked up at the ceiling as he held the dropper over it. A fat drop swelled at the tip, then fell and the image immediately warped. A second later, it went blank. From the look of it, whoever came for him removed the eye, but was too late. He’d destroyed it.
The mirror above the sink was wiped clean. Either he’d done it after he destroyed the camera, or the intruder had.
Fawkes was behind the bombing of Concrete Falls.
It wasn’t some kind of terrorist protest, then. If it was true and Fawkes was behind it, he wouldn’t have staged a strike like that without a very specific reason. If Sean hadn’t taken the chance to say what that was, then he either didn’t have time or didn’t know.
I rewound the footage, looking for the revivor’s face. The recording was hectic, but he managed to pick up a few frames’ worth anyway. The skin was Caucasian but definitely revivor, with its characteristic gray tinge. It had a complete lack of hair. Follicle dissolution was usually associated with assembly-line revivors. I cleaned up the image, canceling out the motion blur. When I did, I stopped cold.
Faye.
In the image, she was stalking through the smoke, toward the door. Her eyes stared dispassionately but with purpose. She was still out there, and for whatever reason, she had come for him.
I took the recording chip from the unit in the floor safe and slipped it in my pocket. At least for the time being, no one else knew about it. I meant to keep it that way.
She hadn’t been lost in the fire. I’d hoped to track her down one day, but the circumstances couldn’t have been much worse. Sean wasn’t just a federal agent; he was more than that. In another circle, one I wasn’t allowed to ever see into, he was something else entirely.
If it got out who had taken him, it was going to mean trouble, and not just for her.