I woke to the smell of smoke. Wind was flapping at my clothes, and I could feel grit peppering my face. I was lying on the pavement, but the rain had stopped. It was hot and dry. I didn’t hear any cars or any people. All I could hear was the wind.
I opened my eyes and saw the burned-out shell of a car lying on its side a little ways away, and scattered near that were big chunks of concrete with rebar sticking out. The road I was lying on was broken into big pieces, the cracks filled in with dust.
I got up on my hands and knees, my hair trailing down in the grime. There was rubble scattered all around me, crumbled concrete and sand along with something shiny, like powdered glass. Here and there I could pick out little pieces of metal peeking out of the dust. They looked like electronic components. Some were connected with little wires, and some had what looked like hairs or legs sticking out.
A few feet to my left, a long blade with no handle was stuck right through the blacktop. A tiny pink T-shirt, scorched and smudged with soot, had snagged on the top of it and waved there like a little flag.
I sat back on my heels and let the wind blow my hair out of my face. When I looked down at my hands, I saw there was a piece of broken glass stuck in one of them. I picked it out and dropped it on the ground in front of me. The sharp corner had blood on it. I closed my eyes, listening to the little girl’s shirt snap in the wind.
A shadow fell over me as I heard footsteps crunch on the pavement. I opened my eyes again, and a woman was standing in front of me. She was burned, and smoke trailed from her hair and clothes. Behind her, there was nothing but open space. The buildings were gone. Nothing was left but jagged pieces sticking up. I held one hand up to shade my face so I could see. The woman’s face was covered in soot, and cracked so that raw red showed through.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The wind blew again, fanning the embers that were buried in the ashes of her clothes. Black bits crumbled from her and were blown away.
“Why …?” she asked.
“Why what? Who are you?”
She held out her hands, and I saw that her fingertips were burned down to the bones. The wind ruffled her coat, spraying cinders. Tears ran down her black face.
“You did this.”
“What?”
“You did this …”
I gasped and opened my eyes. The wind stopped, and the woman was gone. I was staring at the ceiling of my apartment. Off to the side, I saw a cartoon playing on the TV.
My head hurt and my mouth was dry. My stomach was burning, and I felt like I was going to puke. I knew that feeling. It was how I was used to waking up, at least until …
A lot of times when I’d wake up from a binge, there would be this time where I blissfully forgot everything I did the night before. A lot of times it never came back, but sometimes it did, like a slap in the face. That morning, lying on my couch, I got two, one right after the other.
The first slap was that I fell off the wagon. After not having a single drink for so long, I’d blown it. It wasn’t a small slip, either. I went all the way.
“Shit …”
If I’d had the strength, I think I would have cried. I’d been working so hard. I’d really tried. I’d woken up from dreams where I drank and felt guilty about it, then felt relieved when I realized it hadn’t really happened. But that time it wasn’t a dream. I’d really done it. My whole body ached.
He’s going to be so disappointed….
I wondered if I should even tell him. He didn’t need to know. It was just one time. I could just get back on the program and forget the whole thing ever happened, right? It was just one slipup. What the hell was I think—
The second slap came then. My stomach rolled and I scrambled to my feet. I stumbled into the bathroom, just managing to get through the door before I fell down on my knees in front of the bowl. Everything came up; then I dry heaved on top of it to the sounds of cartoon music from the next room. I flushed and spit, leaning over the toilet while sweat rolled down over my stomach.
“Karen …”
I cried. I couldn’t do anything else, so I just sat there, staring into the toilet, and cried until I couldn’t anymore.
When I managed to get up, I walked on pins and needles, trying not to fall. Stumbling back to the living room, I accidentally kicked an empty bottle across the floor. It whacked against the coffee table. That’s when I saw Penny.
She was sitting on the arm of the couch, watching the TV. She had a bowl in one hand and a big spoon in the other, and was laughing with a mouthful of cereal when I came back in. How long had she been there?
She turned and looked over at me and she stopped laughing. For a second, she looked sad. She put the bowl down on the end table and dropped the spoon into it.
“Sorry, I ate some of your cereal,” she said. “Feel any better?”
“No.”
She nodded.
“I heard what happened.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. My head was spinning and I couldn’t think of where I would start. I didn’t want her there. I wanted to be alone.
“Lie down,” she said, pointing at the couch. “Come on, before you fall.”
The last thing I wanted to do was talk about it, but I really did need to lie down. I limped over to the couch and flopped on my back while she looked down on me from her perch on the armrest.
“Drink this,” she said, tossing me a bottle of vitamin water. She pulled a pair of pill tabs out of her pocket and tossed them to me too.
“Those will stop the nausea.”
I pushed the pills through the foil and swallowed them, washing them down with a gulp of water from the bottle. My stomach turned, but they stayed down.
“Look, I know you don’t want to talk right now, so I’ll keep it short,” she said. “Ai doesn’t want to see you like this anymore, and, honestly, neither do I. This, what happened here with your friend, it wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t fair. This kind of thing shouldn’t be happening to you, so it’s time.”
“Time for what?”
“Some tough love, I guess. We look out for our own, Zoe. I know Heinlein took her, but if you want to have a service, then Ai will take care of it. You don’t have to worry about a thing. None of it will cost you a dime. Anyone who wants to be there can be there, and we’ll stay out of it. How does that sound?”
I couldn’t think about Karen’s funeral. I didn’t want to think about Penny either, but Karen didn’t have anyone else to deal with that stuff. If someone else didn’t take care of it, I would have to do it, and I didn’t think I could.
“Okay,” I said.
“We’re getting you out of here,” she said, waving one hand at my living room.
“Out of here?”
“This place,” she said. “Is there anything left here for you?”
“No.”
“We’re putting you up in a new place, a better one, away from all this.”
“I—”
My phone rang in my pocket. When I fished it out, I saw the call was from Nico.
“That him?” she asked.
“I don’t want to talk to him right now.”
“I know, but you should answer it. Things are moving fast.”
“What do you—”
“He’s going to ask you to help him question a man named Leon Buckster. You should do it.”
“How do you know what he’s going to ask?”
“Just trust me. Quick, answer the phone.”
The phone was on its fourth ring. I picked up.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Zoe. This is Nico.”
“Hi.”
“Hi. Look, I’m wondering if you would be available to do me a favor today.”
It was the last thing I wanted to do. I didn’t want him to see me like I was. He was smart; he’d pick up on it right away. No matter what I did, he’d figure it out. It made me mad that he’d call wanting a favor after what happened. It wasn’t fair because he didn’t know, and he wouldn’t have any way to know, but I didn’t care.
I opened my mouth to say no. I was tired and dizzy. I didn’t care what Penny said; I couldn’t do it.
“Sure,” I told him.
“Thanks,” he said. “I know this is an imposition, especially after what happened at the restaurant, but things are heating up. Did you have a good time, at least, before the shooting started?”
“Yes.” My voice sounded very small.
“Good.”
Penny had gotten up and stepped back from the couch. She took a little blank business card out of her pocket and handed it to me.
“Hang on,” I said, muting the phone. I took the card.
“Help him. Do whatever he wants,” Penny said, “but make sure you ask Buckster that.”
I turned the card over. On the back she’d written:
Where is Samuel Fawkes?
She smiled, and gave me a little wave as she headed back toward the door and opened it. I’d never seen the name before.
“Why?” I called.
“Because we’re pretty sure he knows,” she said over her shoulder. “Later.”
She shut the door behind her. I turned my attention back to Nico, unmuting the phone.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I’m bringing someone in,” he said. “He has information vital to—”
“I understand.”
“Can you be here in an hour?”
“Sure.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“You’re nice to me, Nico,” I said. I don’t know why I said it.
“I’m your friend, Zoe,” he said, but he wasn’t, not really.
“I know.”
“Is an hour enough time?”
“One hour.” I hung up. Afterward, I sat there, staring at the phone in my hand and not moving. Those were the only times he called anymore: when he wanted me to come and do my tricks for him.
“Zoe, these people, I don’t think they are your friends.”
He’d said that. He kept saying that, but he wasn’t the one that showed up to see how I was after the night before. He wasn’t the one who offered to help when I really needed it.
He just called up and wanted me to help him. He didn’t care about me, not really. If I couldn’t do what I did, he’d never call at all. But it didn’t matter.
I wasn’t doing this for him. I was doing it for them.
Through the glass door, I watched the streams of people pass by on the sidewalk. None of them was Zoe. A dark window hung against the gray, rainy background, displaying the strange examination chair and the equipment surrounding it. Sean must have been wired right there, in that chair. The site wasn’t set up for full transfusion, which meant the revivors would have a very short shelf life. It also wasn’t equipped to do any kind of major surgical procedures or cosmetic procedures. That meant no physical augmentations and no weapon upgrades.
The JZI recording Calliope had sent over from the night before wouldn’t be admissible in any court, but it proved Leon Buckster knew more than he was saying. His statement about revivors remembering things they’d been made to forget implied he was familiar with Zhang’s Syndrome, the condition that Fawkes himself had discovered. If he knew that, he might be sympathetic to Fawkes’s cause. He might even have learned it through Fawkes.
A widespread, legitimate organization was possibly assisting terrorists. Revivors were being created with no shelf life, no weapons, and no cosmetics. Several had been rigged with bombs to strike soft targets and destroy evidence, and all indications were that Fawkes intended to detonate multiple nuclear weapons inside the city. It all spelled big trouble.
Hell of a night, Wachalowski. It was Alice Hsieh. She was sliding into Sean’s role almost too easily.
Yeah.
Three clinics bombed on the same night. The streets had already been crawling with police, and now the National Guard was moving in, this time padding their ranks with Stillwell Corps soldiers rather than revivor units. So far nothing concrete had leaked, but the media was beginning to speculate and the tension level was rising out there. Fear and a lot of anger had begun to brew.
Any evidence of revivors at the second site? I asked.
They didn’t find any, but they’re still looking.
Footage piped over appeared in a new window. All three places had burned to the ground. At the remains of the Healing Hands clinic, a camera focused on the remains of a large dentist’s chair with a twisted mechanical arm attached. It was the same as at Rescue Mission.
We got word back on that maritime ID you sent over. It was the KM Senopati Nusantara, an Indonesian tanker.
Was?
It disappeared close to a year ago on the open sea. The official report indicates it was likely pirated.
They never recovered it?
Never. The transponder went silent, and it was never picked up, even on a satellite sweep. It was presumed sunken. The shipyard put in an insurance claim, and six months ago they collected.
If Sean’s last message had any truth to it, though, then the ship was still intact and somewhere in UAC waters. Somewhere close.
How long you going to let Buckster stew?
I’m waiting for my operative.
You hit your head pretty hard last night. You sure you’re up to this?
I’m sure.
Outside the glass wall where I stood, people moved quickly past, heads ducked down against the rain. They moved behind the small window containing the JZI image, disappearing, then reemerging on the other side as they trudged by. I spotted Zoe in the crowd as she stepped out of the flow and started toward the front entrance.
She’s here. We’re on our way up.
I cut the connection. Zoe shuffled toward the entrance, looking half asleep.
Damn it, Zoe …
Even from a distance I could tell she’d been drinking. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. The dark circles were back. She trudged forward, staring out from under the rim of her umbrella like she was marching to the slaughter. When she saw me, she wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“Zoe, this way,” I said. Her eyes were shiny as she closed the distance between us.
“You okay?”
“Can we just get this over with?” she asked, wiping her eyes.
“Yes. His name is Leon Buckster. He’s the head of one of the local Second Chance chapters.”
She nodded.
“Just follow my lead, but work inside the reference I gave you.”
“Fine,” she said, “and before you say it, yes, I’m sure. I know what I look like and I know what you’re thinking, but I can do this.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
She followed me to the interrogation room where Buckster sat, looking down into a paper coffee cup. He wasn’t happy.
“Mr. Buckster,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting like that. My name is Nico Wachalowski, and this is Zoe Ott.”
He gave my hand a firm shake, then held it out to Zoe. When she didn’t take it, he leaned back into his chair with his palms on the table. He noticed the lacerations on the left side of my face from the explosion, but he didn’t ask about them.
“I’m here to help,” he said. “Kind of like to know what this is about, though. Am I in some sort of trouble?”
“I want to talk to you about Second Chance.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Second Chance? What for?”
“You’ve heard of the Rescue Mission Clinic?”
“Yeah I’ve heard of it.”
“Healing Hands? Mercy Medical?”
“Yeah, they’re free clinics we run downtown. What is this about?”
“When was the last time you were in contact with any of these facilities?”
“I don’t know. A few weeks ago?”
Galvanic skin response indicated curiosity and some stress, but it didn’t look like he knew about the bombing.
“Do you know what sort of work goes on there?”
“Yeah, they offer quality medical care to third tier citizens who otherwise can’t afford it,” he said.
His GSR jumped while he talked. The topic of Rescue Mission had him tense.
“Anything else?”
“They’re authorized to distribute methadone. They do basic blood work, mostly AIDS testing. Aside from that, it’s mostly handing out antibiotics and the like. Why is the FBI interested in a bunch of free clinics? The paperwork for the drug treatment program—”
“It’s all in order, Mr. Buckster. That’s not why you’re here.”
“Then if you don’t mind Agent, why am I here?”
“The Rescue Mission, Healing Hands, and Mercy Medical clinics were all bombed late last night.”
“What?”
“The facilities were completely destroyed.”
His shock looked genuine, but there was something else underneath it. He was shocked but not completely surprised. He knew something about those places, something he was hiding.
“That’s impossible,” he said.
“Impossible?”
“I just mean …why would—”
“Do you recall the Concrete Falls bombing, Mr. Buckster?”
“Of course.”
“The bomb that destroyed the Rescue Mission facility was of similar, if not identical, makeup. We have found links between the attack at Concrete Falls and your medical centers—”
“Hey, they’re not my medical centers. I’m just—”
“You’re the head of a local Second Chance chapter that covers Bullrich as well as Dandridge. We’ve combed security archives that put you coming and going from each of these facilities as early as three days ago. Are you sure you don’t want to change your story, Mr. Buckster?”
His face fell a notch. I reached into my jacket and pulled out an envelope containing two photographs. One was the photo of Henry Uris alive, and the other was the image of Henry Uris’s revivor lying on the gurney. I dropped them both on the desk in front of him.
He looked down at the gray face. Black fluid had pooled in the socket of its missing eye.
“You were caught on a surveillance camera at the Brockton-Stark train platform, talking to that man,” I said. He didn’t say anything, but he recognized the face.
“I want my lawyer.”
I held up a card with the number I’d pulled from the phone system, the one with no name attached.
“Who does this number belong to?” I asked.
“Never seen it.”
“It was registered to the SCO, run by the organization Second Chance. Who used it?”
“How the hell should I know? You want to search our records, get a court order.”
“I will. You’re lying, Mr. Buckster. Right now I have you tied to three separate acts of domestic terrorism; that’s enough to put you in the ground.”
“I had nothing to do with that! I said I want my lawyer!”
“No,” Zoe said. When I turned to her, she was staring down at him, eyes filled with tears.
“What the hell do you mean, no?” he asked. She glared at him, and her pupils went wide. A moment later, Leon’s eyelids got heavy, and he slumped in his chair.
“Enough bullshit,” she said. She walked up to the table and stood in front of him. Before she could do anything else, I crossed behind her and pulled the plug on the surveillance camera.
“Zoe …”
“I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them. Do you understand?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me you understand.”
“I understand.”
“Did you talk to the revivor in the picture or not?”
“I did.”
“When he was alive or dead?”
“Alive.”
“Were you there when he died?”
“No.”
“Do you know how he died?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me,” she said.
I’d never seen her like that before. Her stare was intense and angry. She didn’t let up after she put him under. If anything, she pushed harder. He seemed to drift further into whatever trance he was in. Saliva began to collect in one corner of his mouth.
“Zoe, take it easy,” I told her.
“Who uses that phone number? The one he showed you?”
“We’ve got no connection to illegal—”
“I didn’t ask that,” Zoe snapped. “I asked who the number belongs to.”
“Heinser. Michael Heinser.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know anything about—”
“Who is he? Who does he work for?”
“He works for …Heinlein …Industries …”
A heat spike appeared on the scanner monitoring his GSR. It started growing, causing his skin temperature to rise.
“Zoe, wait. Hold on.”
I moved behind him and found the source of the heat on the back of his neck, near the base of his skull. A component there had gone active. Whatever it was, it was drawing a significant amount of power.
I accessed his JZI and brought up a schematic. The configuration was old, but some upgrades were fairly recent. Despite the fact that he was unconscious and not coupled to the implant, a lot of energy was moving around in there. It was building in a single component.
“Zoe, stop!”
“What was going on in those clinics?” she asked. “How many more of them are there?”
“They …have to wake up …” he said softly.
The device was a kill switch, and it was about to go off. It was monitoring him, ready to blow his brains out if he fell under the influence of hypnosis or mind control.
“Zoe, let him go!” I shouted, louder that time, but she wasn’t listening.
“Where is Samuel Fawkes?” she snapped, but I didn’t have time to ask her where she’d heard that name; the device was about to trip.
There wasn’t any time to be delicate. I spun Zoe away from him and slapped her across the face.
Her eyes went back to normal, but the look on her face was one of pure shock. A blush began to swell in her pale cheeks. Off to the side, I sensed the energy surge from Buckster begin to ebb, easing back.
“Zoe, I …”
I reached forward and she slapped my hand away, backing up and knocking over her chair.
“Zoe, wait!”
She turned and shoved the door open, running down the hallway.
“Hey, G-man,” Buckster said. When I turned back to look at him, he seemed a little confused, but there was a wary look in his eye. Anger was brewing on his face. “I want my fucking lawyer.”
“You’re free to go,” I told him. “If we have any more questions—”
“You know where to shove them,” he said, brushing by me on his way out the door.
I watched him leave. With what we had, I could hold him. With what we had, I could hold him indefinitely, but Leon Buckster was a drone. He wasn’t behind this. I put a call through to Calliope. After a few seconds, she picked up.
Buckster’s on his way out of here, I said. I think he’ll try to run. I want to know who, or where, he runs to.
It’s done.
Be careful. He’s dangerous.
I still had the image of the scan in front of me. The kill switch wasn’t the only surprise. Despite being a vet, Leon Buckster was also wired.
The connection closed. I thought about it for a minute, then called Noakes.
Wachalowski, what the hell’s going on down there?
I got something. I need a meeting with Heinlein Industries.
I lay in the car’s backseat and listened to the raindrops drum on the roof. Electric signs had begun to flicker on. Nico still hadn’t returned.
A persistent cluster of old memories kept coming to the forefront—memories of winter, when I had tracked Lev. I had crouched down on a snow-covered sidewalk and leaned into the car where he had waited. The woman behind the wheel was hours dead, her body covered in blood. Lev had waited in the backseat of that car, while the sun set and snow covered the windows. When she returned, he’d grabbed her and targeted the beating mass of her heart. While streams of shoppers passed by them, unaware, he’d stabbed her through the breastbone.
I couldn’t identify the blade he’d used. That had really bothered me.
I would have been horrified to know, I think, that one day I would walk in that killer’s shoes. It was that same killer who instructed me how to avoid the security cameras and access the vehicle.
The clinic, and three others, had been destroyed in response to police raids. That implied a coordinated attack. Motoko and her people were closing in. If they located the ship, then we might lose everything. When I died and realized the truth of my life, I knew I’d found my purpose—one more important than the law I’d upheld. That absolute control over so many could not go to so few; it would change human society forever.
I knew that we couldn’t fail. Still, when I was alone and it was quiet, I imagined the attack that was to come. The more I learned, the clearer I pictured it. When I did, that academic doubt returned:
This isn’t right.
The memory of the man at the clinic, the one that Lev injected, wouldn’t seem to leave my mind. What was it that I had seen? Lev had killed him, there was no doubt about that, but near the end, I knew I’d seen him move. Somehow the man had been reanimated. Fawkes wouldn’t respond to questions about it, nor would Lev, which meant he had been told not to. There were things in play I wasn’t aware of, and I wondered exactly how far that went. At the restaurant, when I’d recorded them, some things were said that I couldn’t reconcile:
“…it won’t just be this city that is destroyed. Fawkes will destroy this city, and then, one by one, the rest will begin to fall….”
Was it just a ploy of theirs, a scare tactic? Or had they really seen it?
The rain picked up and began to fall harder. A message came in from Fawkes.
Call accepted.
Has he returned yet? he asked.
Not yet. Were all of the safe houses destroyed?
No. They missed one, but we’ll have to step up the plan. The ship has begun its approach. When it arrives, the forces inside the city will be awakened, and will be joined by those on the shore. The devices will be distributed at that time, and carried into the targets during the assault. At that time, a pool of names and identifications will be accessible to all units. Eliminating them will be the top priority.
It’s going to be chaos. How will we locate them all?
The new units will become active at that time, and you’ll be connected through your secondary communications node. The new units will have an information-sharing array that will be very useful in tracking individuals. They will pinpoint them, and update the locations in real time.
I understand.
Do you?
I understand enough.
Good. When you’re finished with Wachalowski, regardless of the outcome, there’s one more thing I need you to do before the ship arrives.
An abduction?
An assassination.
Who?
An image appeared, floating above my face. A woman with large eyes peered through long red hair. Her beaklike nose protruded over thin lips. I recognized her face immediately. She had been with Nico at the restaurant.
Zoe Ott, I said.
Yes. Do you remember her from the factory, two years ago?
I sifted through the field of my memories, isolating the specific time and place. I was inside the clean room, and Nico was there with me. He had removed my Leichenesser capsule, which had nearly destroyed me. He meant to save me, I think, like he hadn’t yet realized it was too late…. The door he’d come through opened, and a woman stormed through, dragging another.
The first woman’s name was Calliope Flax; I’d seen her with Nico too. The one being dragged was a red-haired woman, Fawkes’s target Zoe Ott. I recognized the white smock she was wearing.
She was part of the original testing, I said. That meant two years ago, Lev had taken her.
Yes. She was designated Patient Nine. She exhibited some abilities that I’d honestly like to study further, but I won’t have the luxury. We have to move soon.
Why bother to kill her now?
Wachalowski’s using her, and she nearly got to at least one of our operatives. We can’t take any chances at this stage. Make sure her body can’t be found.
Understood.
Do it tonight.
He broke the link, and I stared at her image. She looked so pathetic, so innocuous. She didn’t look powerful.
She tried to tell you something. Something you didn’t hear, a voice seemed to whisper in my ear.
You never heard the name Samuel Fawkes….
Her memory had stirred up others in its wake. Her face reminded me of someone else’s, someone with that same look of desperation. The hair was different and the nose was different, but those haunted eyes wore the same expression. They looked like they saw too much. I’d seen eyes like that on another woman, years back, when I was a cop. The memories had been hidden, and I hadn’t pieced them back together yet.
“He doesn’t destroy everything …I do …”
I drew forth one of the broken memories, and looked into the place that had been altered. I was in my old precinct, where I sat in the interrogation room. The woman sat across the table from me, her body worn out and sick. She was emaciated, and her teeth were decaying. Bony little fingers picked at needle tracks. At that point, her mind should have been gone as well, but her eyes were like two suns. Like the woman Zoe Ott, she’d seen more than she’d wanted.
“You need to get to a shelter,” I’d told her, but she’d just shaken her head.
“You can’t help me,” she said. “I made a mistake. This is bigger than you.”
“If you’re in some kind of trouble, I can help you.” She seemed to find that funny.
“You’re getting dragged into this just by talking to me,” she said. “They know I’m alive now.”
“Who knows?”
At the time I thought a dealer or a pimp. I’d honestly thought that I could keep her safe, but in the end I couldn’t. We never found the body, but the blood was hers, and there was far too much.
She tried to tell you something …something you didn’t hear …
I wasn’t sure who’d said that. Was it that I hadn’t heard? Or did I hear, but was forced to forget it?
I remembered a knock at my door at night. I took my gun from the drawer and answered it.
“Who is it?” I called, not opening the door.
“I’m sorry to disturb you so late, Miss Dasalia,” a man’s voice said from the other side. “This is about that woman.”
“What woman?”
“You know the one I mean.”
I opened it, but kept my weight on the door in case he tried to force it. There was a man standing there. At the time I’d never seen his face before, but I recognized it now. Years later, when I finally made detective, he would become my partner.
His eyes went wide, and I felt strangely dizzy.
“Put down the gun,” he said, “and let me in.”
…and knowing better, I let the stranger in.
“Forget everything that woman told you.” I remember he’d said that.
“You never heard the name Samuel Fawkes….”
My thoughts scattered as someone approached the car. The lock released, and the driver’s-side door unlatched. I let the memories fade.
The door groaned open and Nico climbed inside, lowering himself into the driver’s seat. He slammed it shut, shaking off rain from his coat, then gripped the wheel with one hand. He reached toward the ignition with his other, and stopped with his thumb over the starter pad. His heart rate jumped suddenly, and I saw his body tense.
I sat up as his pistol swung back around. I caught his wrist before he could target me, impressed by how fast he was.
“It’s me,” I said.
His eyes were wide, but when he saw me, they changed. They looked at me the way they had since that night, when I woke to find that he’d brought me back. It was hard for me to know what the look meant. I could see fear in his eyes, and something else there as well. It might have been pain or longing or sadness. Maybe it was just guilt over what he had done.
“Faye,” he said. He blinked hard and then opened his eyes again. When he did, the flicker from his JZI had faded from his pupils. “You can’t keep coming to me like this.”
“Fawkes authorized me to bring you what you asked for,” I said.
“Really,” he said, like he didn’t believe it.
“Yes.”
“You could have sent it. You shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m here because of you, Nico.”
He looked down for a moment and he nodded. The gun was still in his hand, but he’d moved his finger off the trigger. Smoky breath trailed from his nose in the cold air. His heart was beating quickly, but his face and eyes looked calm.
“Give me the information,” he said.
I sent him the files Fawkes had given me, and although he held them over for scanning, he accepted the package.
“It goes deeper than you think,” I said.
“You don’t know what I think.”
“You might be the only one who can stop her.”
“I’m not going to kill anyone, Faye,” he said. “You won’t convince me to do that.”
“I’m just here to give you the information.”
“You didn’t need to come here to do that.”
“I wanted to see your face.”
“That’s it?”
“I wanted you to see mine.”
That bothered him, I could tell. His fingers kept squeezing the grip of the gun.
“I remember every time I was with you,” I said. “Before you left for the war, and after you got back too. Those memories all mean something to me, Nico, because all of them are real.”
“Shut up.”
“You understand it academically. I know you understand it. You realize what your friend, and her friends, can do. You must know, even, that they’ve done it to you, at least back when they still could. You know all these things, but you still don’t get it. You can’t, because you can’t see how much you’ve lost. You can’t see what was taken away from you, and you never will see it.”
“I said, shut up,” he said.
“But I can,” I said, “and I know you loved me—”
He slipped his wrist from my grasp and stuck the gun in my face.
“Don’t finish that sentence,” he said. He glared at me down over the pistol’s sight.
“Please do what Fawkes wants,” I said. “If you don’t do it, he’s going to kill you—”
“Shut up!” he barked, knuckles white on the gun’s grip. Blood had rushed into his face, lines of orange branching out underneath the skin. They glowed like electric light. The breath that blew out of his nostrils was warm. He seemed so alive right then.
“You’re not Faye,” he said in a low, even voice. His vitals spiked, but his eyelids had drooped. He looked the way he did when he first woke me, with calm murder in his eyes. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. She wouldn’t have wanted it.”
“I didn’t know what it meant,” I said. “I couldn’t know what I wanted.”
“She would never have helped Fawkes.”
“But I did help him, Nico.”
“She never would have killed Sean. You aren’t Faye. You’re Faye’s corpse.”
“My memories are the same. My consciousness—”
“It’s not the same,” he said. “I thought it was. I hoped it was, but it’s not the same. I don’t want to hear anymore. Tell me where he’s hiding them.”
“I can’t.”
“I pulled the maritime ID for a tanker called the KM Senopati Nusantara off a revivor. Is that ship still out there? Is that where they are?”
“Please help us, Nico. Fawkes can still get to you.”
“He’s already done his worst.”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“He has to me.”
His body grew very still; then his eyelids drooped and the muscles in his trigger finger twitched. I almost didn’t get my hand up in time. The muzzle flash lit the inside of the car, and I felt the heat of it against my face. Burned powder peppered my skin as the bullet punched through the seat behind me. Smoke drifted from the barrel as I swung my other hand and slapped him across the face.
I hadn’t meant to do it, but it stopped him. He just stared, the gun forgotten in his hand.
“How could you?” I heard myself whisper to him. The words, like the slap, came from some unknown place, some old remnant of myself.
He didn’t try to fire a second shot. He was still staring when I opened the door and slipped out into the dark.