by R S Penney
“Still…Our standards matter.”
Melissa hugged herself, rubbing her upper arms as she shivered. The girl could be so skittish when it came to anything that might require her to be the centre of attention. “I have this sinking feeling that you're planning something.”
Craning his neck to stare up at her, Harry felt a smile bloom on his face. “What do you mean?” he asked, his eyebrows slowly rising. “It's not like I've been putting together a party or anything like that.”
“Dad!”
“What can I say? I'm proud of you.”
Melissa hopped off the table to stand right in front of him, no doubt displeased at being the guest of honour. “Okay,” she said. “If you insist. But I want to keep it small, all right?”
“I was thinking your sister and maybe some of our close friends. Jack, Anna…Tanaben if he can make it.” Harry paused for a moment to mentally run through the guest list. “Is there anyone from your program you'd like to invite?”
“Maybe Aiden.”
Harry expected as much; the young man seemed to be spending a great deal of time with Melissa. They were probably dating, but Harry didn't want to ask; his daughter liked her privacy. He was just glad she had picked an upstanding young man.
“What about you?” Melissa asked. “Are you gonna be okay today?”
“Claire's on summer break,” he answered. “If I really need to, I can have her fetch me things.” A moment later, another thought occurred to him. “Or, I suppose Michael can do it.”
The robot turned its head to look over its shoulder, studying him with glowing blue eyes. “This unit would be pleased to assist you, Mr. Carlson.” Immediately, it went back to cleaning the counter.
“See?” Harry said. “All in hand. Go to class.”
Melissa leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead, then stood up straight again. “Okay,” she said. “But take it easy. None of that 'I'm curmudgeonly, and I have to prove that I can still work hard.' ”
“Scout's honour.”
“Were you ever a scout?”
“Briefly,” he answered. “Go to school.”
The doors to the Detention Area opened to reveal a lobby with a curved desk along the back wall and lights in the ceiling that had dimmed with the onset of night. At least, it was night on Station Six. Each station was synced to the timezone over which it remained in geosynchronous orbit.
Jack walked through the door with a great big smile on his face. His smile died a moment later, and he blinked a few times. “You are not who I expected to see,” he said. “What happened to Kari Tenar?”
The young woman who sat behind the desk wore a sleeveless dress in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern, and her hair was dyed green with black roots showing. Thin glasses on her nose completed the look. “Agent Hunter, right?” she asked, turning to him. “My name is Onica Myers.”
“Nice to meet you, Onica.”
She looked up at him with lips puckered, dark eyebrows rising. “Kari transferred to the Medical Wing about four months ago,” she said. “I'm her replacement.”
With spatial awareness, Jack sensed Larani coming through the door behind him; his boss moved at a brisk pace with arms swinging. “There was something you wanted to show me, Agent Hunter?”
Closing his eyes, Jack nodded once. “Right,” he said. “Onica, would you do me a small favour? Pull up the visitation logs for prisoner 251. I want to know everyone who visited him in the last year.”
Onica swiveled to face her terminal – a sheet of SmartGlass at an inclined angle and a keyboard – and began typing away. Her face got that look people sometimes had when they were concentrating. “Here it is.”
“Holographic output, please.”
A transparent image rippled into existence above the desk: white text on a dark blue background. It was a list of visitors with a date and timestamp. Jack quickly read through it, searching for a very specific set of information. “Can you filter out everything except visits by Director Jena Morane?”
All but three records disappeared.
Pressing his lips together, Jack squinted at the readout. “All within the first month of Leo's capture,” he muttered under his breath. “Which means we've got a much bigger problem on our hands.”
“I'm not following you, Agent Hunter,” Larani said.
Jack spun on his heel, pacing back to the door with his arms crossed. He shook his head with a sigh. “Someone was feeding Leo information,” he explained. “It went on for months. I was hoping that Isara was the culprit.”
Larani was whip-smart and quick to put the pieces together. You didn't get to be the head of the Justice Keepers without the ability to piece together clues into a cohesive and plausible narrative. “If Isara had come here, asking to see Leo,” she said, “the staff would have logged it as a visit by Jena.”
“And since there are so few of those…”
“It couldn't have been her.”
Throughout all of this, Onica was looking very confused, glancing back and forth between the two of them as if she had started a film in the middle of a critical scene and didn't understand the context. “You're saying that someone was illicitly visiting Prisoner 251. But how can that be?”
“We're not sure,” Larani answered.
Jack turned back to the desk.
He strode forward with hands raised defensively, grinning down at himself. “We're not blaming you, Onica,” he said. “This was going on long before you took this position. We're just trying to put the pieces together.”
“I get it.”
“So, what now?” Larani asked.
Oh, how he wished he had an answer to that question. The mystery of how Leo was getting his information was a pebble in his shoe that had been driving him crazy for over a year now. For a while there, when things got intense, Jack had put that question on the back burner, but now…
“Back to the drawing board I guess,” Jack said.
Larani marched back to the door with her hands in her pockets, breathing out a sigh. “I suppose so,” she muttered. “It was a good try, Agent Hunter, now we know that it wasn't Isara.”
“I guess that's something.”
“Come,” Larani said. “Join me for a late dinner.”
When the doors shut behind Larani Tal and her newest well-trained minion, Onica let out a sigh of relief. Her heart was still pounding. She rushed through a count of thirty – you never knew if someone was going to turn around and come right back through your door – and then slid her fingers across the computer monitor.
Bringing up the Home Screen, she tapped the icon for the communications app and then set her terminal to broadcast on a channel that almost no one used. Her palms were sweaty. Larani might come back.
Leaning forward in her chair, Onica glanced toward the door and then turned her attention back to the monitor. “They're poking around again,” she said softly. With a few quick taps of her fingers, she closed the comm channel and deleted the call logs.
Leo…
The voice was intrusive. His body felt sluggish, and he just wanted to rest. Dreams filled his mind, furious images that he couldn't make sense of. Sensations that he couldn't process. What was wrong with him.
Wake up, Leo.
His eyes opened to total darkness, and Leo felt the creeping threat of despair when he realized that this was his cell. Why would it ever be anything else? His existence was the same pointless drudgery, day in and day out. Read, listen to music, avail himself of the numerous entertainment options presented to him. Meet with the therapists and repeat all the platitudes they wanted to hear.
Sometimes they took him out to the gym for a workout. Supervised, of course. And he was the only one there, if you didn't count his guards. We wouldn't want the murderer getting his hands on a potential hostage. There was even talk of letting him visit one of the many cafes on the station, under supervision, of course. In the first few months of his captivity, Jack Hunter had made it a point to visit regula
rly, but the man seemed to have found other things to occupy his time.
Pay attention, Leo.
The voice.
He hadn't heard it in quite some time. He was beginning to think that the Inzari had abandoned him. The voice had lost interest in whispering sweet little tidbits into his ear. Come to think of it, that seemed to stop shortly after Jack stopped visiting.
Get dressed.
He stood, slipping on a pair of pants and buttoning them. A simple black t-shirt came next, his head popping through the neck hole with some effort. “Where have you been?” Leo spat. “Why have you waited so long to make contact?”
His body still felt a little sluggish, though it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been in the early days of his captivity. The doctors said that they had weaned him off Amps, and the sluggishness was all in his head.
He paced across his cell.
The door slid open, bright light making his eyes smart. The silhouette of a short and slender woman stood in the doorway. “I have been instructed to deliver you to our mutual friend. Stay with me, and keep quiet.”
“Are you a Justice Keeper?”
The shadowy figure shook her head. “Many people serve the Inzari, but only a few have been granted the honour of carrying a symbiont. We have no time for questions. You must come with me now.”
Out in the hallway, he saw that this was a woman in a short, sleeveless dress with a checkerboard pattern. Her green hair was parted in the middle with black roots showing. “Hurry,” she said. “Come with me.”
Leo followed.
She led him through the Detention Centre's reception area and then out to a hallway in the bowels of Station Six. There, he found a familiar face waiting for him. A face that he didn't think he would ever see again.
Nurse Kari Tenar stood in the middle of the corridor, dressed in a sent of dark blue scrubs. Her brown hair was cut short in a bob, bangs falling almost to her eyebrows. We must move quickly, Leo.
The voice!
Her voice.
“It was you,” Leo said, nodding to himself. “You were the one who whispered all those dirty little secrets in my ear! Where have you been?”
The woman looked up at him with brown eyes that seemed to drill a hole into his skull. Are you that much of a fool? she asked without speaking. I told you that we must move quickly. Stop staring at me like some boy at his first dance and focus on the task at hand.
“Do not presume to lecture me-”
Grief so profound it seemed to swallow the sun clouded his mind. He fell to his knees, touching his fingertips to his forehead. “Stop it,” he whimpered. “I will do as I'm told! I promise I will do as I'm told!”
Just like that, the pain was gone.
He looked up at her with tears on his face, cheeks burning with his chagrin. “I will remember this,” he promised her. No one humiliated him in this way. “Come…Take me wherever you wish to go.”
She led him through hallway after hallway, always keeping to the lower levels of the station. Not once did they pass another living soul, and Leo suspected the woman's telepathy was at least partly responsible for that. Mind-readers. He'd heard about them, but he never thought to meet one.
Leo narrowed his eyes, focused on figuring out what this woman was up to. Mind readers, he thought at her. You know I used to think you were a myth? A story young boys told about the wonders of the distant galaxy.
A glance over her shoulder was the only reply she offered, her lips pursed as she studied him. I assure you, we are quite real, Kari sent. Hundreds of us spread across the galaxy, serving the Inzari.
Doing what?
A tiny smile revealed the dimple in Kari's cheek, and she chuckled as she thought up an answer. You need not concern yourself with that, she sent. Just take comfort in the certainty that we are on your side. We are everywhere, Leo. There are even some among us that Slade doesn't know about.
Leo crossed his arms, walking along with his head down, hissing air through his teeth. Slade, he thought. That man owes me some answers.
You will be told what you need to know.
I decide that I need to know.
She looked over her shoulder, and her dark eyes smoldered when they fell upon him. Do not presume too much, she cautioned. You are a valued servant, but the Inzari have many tools.
A little while later, they came to a door in the wall that Kari opened by pressing her palm to the hand-scanner. Inside, Leo saw an empty room where a control panel faced a tall, gleaming SlipGate. The metal triangle seemed to entice him, beckoning him to come forward. Did it have that effect on everyone?
He strode across the room with a heavy sigh, pausing right in front of the Gate. “I take it this is my escape?” The prohibition against speaking surely didn't matter now that he had arrived.
Leo rounded on her.
Kari stood behind the control panel with her lips pressed together, staring intently down at the screen. “Our contacts have arranged for transit,” she said. “You will be told more after you arrive.”
Thrusting his chin out, Leo stared down his nose at her. Did this woman honestly believe he was that stupid? “You expect me to travel through a SlipGate with no clue as to where I'm going?”
“The alternative is to stay here.”
“Very well.”
Kari activated the Gate.
A bubble surrounded Leo, distorting his vision of everything else around him. The room was blurry, and Kari herself was a vaguely human-shaped fuzzy image. Suddenly, he was yanked forward through what seemed to be an endless tunnel.
The bubble came to a halt in a much smaller room that would make the bravest man a little claustrophobic. When it popped, he realized that he was standing inside one very cramped cargo hold with boxes on the floor.
“Greetings, brother.”
Leo jumped at the sound.
When he turned, he found a man in unrelieved black standing by the door that led to the rest of the ship, a tall and fit man with dark skin and short, buzzed hair. “I see they have freed you as well.”
Leo turned on the man with his arms crossed, his face burning with fury. No one startled him like that. “Who are you?” he demanded. “And who are they? Someone better start giving me some answers.”
“I am called Arin,” the man said.
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
The other man grinned and looked down at the floor, his body trembling with soft laughter. “Lord Slade has given you a gift,” he said. “A great honour.”
Leo found it with no difficulty – a saucer-shaped device not much larger than your average dinner plate. There was a green LED on the top and a small keypad. Now, what exactly was he supposed to do with this?
Leo dropped to one knee on the floor, head bowed as he studied the device. “What is it?” he demanded. “If Slade wanted to kill me, he should have done it like a man. This seems…cowardly.”
“We have no desire to kill you,” Arin replied. “I'm afraid this gift is not optional. If you wish to serve the Inzari, you will need to accept. The code to open it is 54971.”
With some reluctance, Leo took the device and typed in the code that he had been given, causing the LED to change from green to red. A strange gas began to rise from the device, one that enveloped him.
Something joined with him.
When he lifted his hands, he saw that they were glowing, brilliant light streaming from the tip of every finger. It felt like the Fire of the Gods itself was burning within his veins setting every nerve on fire.
But the sluggishness was gone; he could feel that much. Whatever it was that had joined with him was suddenly there in his mind, a presence he could feel if he focused on it. And its hatred was nearly strong enough to match his own.
“Excellent,” Arin said. “There is much to do. I'm afraid I have my own assignment that will not allow me to join you, but you have been granted the opportunity to seek out recompense for what was done to you.”
“Where are you
taking me?” Leo demanded.
“To Leyria, of course,” Arin said. “Now come. I will brief you on everything you have missed over the last year.”
Chapter 4
Blue light from behind the bar illuminated a big man with a red goatee as he poured a shot of whiskey. The music was too loud, the air stuffy, and there were people all over the damn place. But right then, none of that mattered.
Ben looked up, his mouth stretching into a smile. “Excellent,” he said with a nod. “How 'bout another?”
Before the other man could say one word, he grabbed the shot glass, brought it to his lips and chugged it back. It burned on the way down – good whiskey should have a kick – but that only made him feel more invigorated.
The bartender smiled, shaking his head. “I guess you're having a little celebration tonight.” He retrieved another shot glass, filled it with whiskey and left it there for Ben. “Anything in particular?”
“Freedom, my friend.”
“Bad breakup?”
Ben was smiling into his lap, his cheeks burning as he remembered that fight with Larani. “Something like that,” he admitted. “I just think it's good to feel appreciated. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do.”
Instincts from years in the field made it impossible for Ben to completely tune out awareness of his surroundings. The bar was situated on a small balcony that overlooked the dance floor, a balcony with square tables positioned beneath hanging lanterns. Maybe a dozen other people were up here.
Though he never so much as glanced in their direction, he was very much aware of a group of young people who stood just a few paces behind him. They were loud and, if he was honest, a little annoying. But harmless nonetheless.
“So, who was it?” the bartender asked.
Tilting his head back, Ben blinked at the man. “Who was what?” he inquired. “I do believe I've had my fair share of 'its' in my life. You're going to have to be just a little bit more specific.”
The other man stood behind the bar with hands braced on the counter, an intense look on his face. “Whoever it was you broke up with,” he explained. “Who was it that broke your heart.”
