by Jenn Lyons
you were.”
“Yes. Which means they too were trained at Kaimer. It’s not unreasonable to think they would have been. The people with the most likely access to those command triggers would have been either students or teachers, and I know of at least one person who was both.”
“Why though? What purpose would this serve?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. We don’t have enough information. That’s very clear. The flashbacks, for one thing. I don’t understand why I’m having them. What purpose could they serve? All I know right now is that they terrify me.”
“Terrify? Why terrify?”
“They seem to tell a story. Each one seems to be a sequential piece of a larger memory. I don’t think the memory is random. It seems to involve someone—and I am beginning to think that someone is Tirris Vahn—meeting with the old Sarcodinay Emperor about a new world they have discovered—this one, Terra.”
He frowned. “Well, we know that they must have talked about that at some point. They did come here, after all.”
“I only have three pieces of this memory, and already I am deeply disturbed by what I have seen, or rather, by what I haven’t seen.” I saw the question in his eyes and continued. “No devastation, Campbell. No anarchy. No collapse of society, riots or burning cities with corpses lining the streets. No starvation, no infrastructure breakdown, no Plague. If those memories are to be believed, then when the Sarcodinay found Terra, we were not thrashing in our death throes the way every educational vid you or I or our parents have ever seen would have us believe. We were not dying.”
He didn’t respond, but he stared at me and his eyes grew dark until he broke contact and turned to study the crater. He massaged the palm of his hands over his eyes as if he could make the scene in front of him vanish.
“How do you think humanity will react to finding out that the Sarcodinay could have contacted us when we were healthy and prosperous, but instead waited, watched the outbreak happen, and did nothing to help us while billions died? Waited until we were weak and desperate and only then offered aid knowing we would be in no position to refuse or dictate the terms of assistance? We let them segregate us and herd us into megacities, Campbell. We thanked them for it.”
He stared at me. “You can’t tell anyone. The peace treaty. The war’s all but over. If word of this gets out...”
“And if every Kaimer graduate has these same triggers? These same memories waiting to surface? We’re talking about thousands of people who are suddenly going to remember that the Sarcodinay left us to bleed. Some of those people are likely to be highly placed, and I would wager that more than a few have been drawn to working for the League.” I paused and put a finger to my lip. “Maybe that’s why Tirris is keeping this out of the news. If no one hears about the deaths, none of the triggers will activate.”
“We’ve got to stop this!” Campbell paused then. “Wait. Wait a minute. Why would the Sarcodinay put triggers like this into their own sleepers? That doesn’t make any sense. They’re sabotaging themselves. And why are their own sleepers killing Sarcodinay?”
“I don’t know. But we have to find out, don’t we? And I can’t go back to the League and tell them what I know because I’ve been imprinted with these triggered memories too. They’re not going to take a dead Sarcodinay’s word that I’m not a sleeper agent. I would never see the light of day again.” I bit my lip.
“You’re also the only one who can track these triggered memories—the only one who will know where to go next.”
“Well—the only one who’s not likely to turn on you at the drop of a trigger phrase, if Lorvan was right.” I poked Campbell in the arm. “Now you know what you’re in for.”
“Hells,” he muttered to himself as he stood back up to his feet. “Szabo Ernak and Tirris Vahn.”
“Big names. And we have no idea how involved they are.”
“They crush people like me as light entertainment.” Campbell put his hands into his hips and rocked back and forth on his heels. “If I don’t walk away from this, I’ll be lucky if the worst that happens to me is losing my job.” He was grinning as he said it, trying to find some gallows humor in what had doubtless just become a very unfunny reality. He offered me a hand up.
I smiled and took it, pulled myself to my feet. “Who are you kidding? If you don’t walk away from this, you’ll be lucky if the worst thing that happens to you is finding out how long you can last in vacuum without a suit.”
His look was shocked for a second, and then he chuckled. He wasn’t going to walk away though. We both knew it. He was going to ride this thing into the ground and six feet under it. He stopped smiling when he saw the look on my face.
“Walk away, Campbell,” I whispered. “Nobody has to know what I told you. You can still bow out. This is going to be bad. You’re not going to know who to trust, and I can’t afford to have you distrust me.”
“You saying I’ll slow you down?”
“You could do more than that if you decide to tell the wrong people about me. I’m taking a big chance with you.”
Campbell stepped towards me, and it was funny how with a whole jungle and a wide-open crater in front of us the space between us suddenly seemed so very small. “Why are you taking a chance? You don’t know me. You certainly don’t know if you can trust me.”
I licked my lips, glanced away, didn’t dare make eye contact. “I happen to be an extraordinarily good judge of character.”
I felt him reach for me, his hand moving towards my face.
I caught his wrist.
And we stood there, staring at each other. I was suddenly feeling exceptionally out of control, and it was a panicked, fluttery emotion. I tried to pull myself together, but he was staring at me with those dark brown eyes and I couldn’t look away. And as I gazed back at him, Campbell’s mind, that Urban-raised, Admin-educated, MOJ-trained mind, opened for me, unfolded like a valley vista upon cresting the plateau of a mountain shrouded in cool mist. I knew that if I wanted, I could examine every part of him, from the intimate details that no one should ever have to share about themselves to memories so esoteric that he had forgotten he had them. Worse, I could warp those memories, change him, turn the solid, gorgeous strata of his soul to something more malleable to my wishes, or shatter him beyond all repair. I could force him—oh, but he would be so devoted to me, so completely enamored—to follow my every desire, with no possibility he would ever abandon me, would ever betray me, would ever, ever leave me.
He would never even know how he had been raped.
“Mallory,” Campbell whispered, frowning, “you’re crying.”
I let go of his wrist and stepped away from him. “This place is full of bad memories,” I said as I turned away and wiped my eyes.
“I guess so.”
I pulled out a cigarette and lit it this time. “Last chance to back out, Campbell.”
“Stop offering already. Answer’s no. I’m in this with you until the bitter end.”
I snorted. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
He frowned at me then. “Is the Black Flag on you a little too fluffy? Not enough danger in your life? You have to smoke too?”
I snickered. “Yeah, well, the Sarcodinay have their megacities. I have my Liberty Reds.”
“In other words, something you can control.”
I tilted my head in his direction. “Smart man.”
He nodded and politely refrained from pointing out my glassy eyes or the way I was still shaking. “So what’s the plan?”
“I need to keep a low profile for a while. Szabo’s boys are going to be checking up on me. You though? To them you’re just some MOJ street cop. Nobody to worry about. We might be able to use that.”
He rubbed his chin. “What did you have in mind?”
“We’ll head back to FirstCity. That will seem normal for both us. Except I’m only going to be there for long enough to pick up some of my effects and leave again. You are going to find my boss, Merlin. He can se
t you up with Intelligence Operations. Tell him everything that’s happened. For everyone else, you act like a big dumb caveman, but be completely honest with Merlin. Don’t leave anything out.” I paused. “Oh, and that means telling him the next target is Maia-Leia Shana.”
He stared at me for a second. “You’re kidding.”
“Not in the least.”
“You trust him?”
“More than I trust you.” Smoke cut lazy arabesques in the afternoon light. “Kerethres will help you if you ask.”
His jaw dropped. “Keepers, you really have hacked the MOJ AI?”
I shook my head. “Can’t hack an AI, Campbell. Best you can do is make friends with one, which isn’t the same thing. Believe me, I wouldn’t have left those blanks in my file if I had that kind of access.”
“Right. Okay.” He looked relieved.
“Maybe you can find out if there have been any other killings.”
“It’ll be hard,” he mused, “but not impossible. They’d announce it as a vacation or an illness. I’ll see what I can find out. And what are you going to do?”
I bit my lower lip, hesitated, and then sighed. “Me? I’m going to go tell someone their husband is dead.”
TEN.Tirris
I am in the meditation room.
Kaleidoscope light plays over my eyes, washes through me, projects images directly on to my optic nerve. The images move fast: math, history, physics, chemistry, medicine. Sometimes the images move so fast I can scarcely register their presence at all: how to
