by Mark Johnson
Dual Heritage
A FireWall Story
Mark Johnson
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Exclusive Firewall Story
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Also by Mark Johnson
Acknowledgments
About Mark Johnson
Dual Heritage and the FireWall series are works of fiction. All characters, events and locations in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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This book is copyright. No part may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or by any information retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for short excerpts for reviews, in fair use, as permitted by the Copyright Act. Dual Heritage, FireWall and its characters are copyright.
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Dual Heritage, FireWall © 2020 Mark Johnson
Cover Art by Christian Bentulan © Mark Johnson 2020
Prophecy Press logo by Hannah Wynn
Created with Vellum
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1
Sergeant Tummil shoved the door open without knocking. Examiner Reeben looked up wearily from his paperwork.
“She’s gone, sir!” Tummil hissed. Gods, he wanted to yell, but not at his superior. “Yesterday! Took her team with her.”
Reeben pushed back from his desk, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “Morning, Sergeant. No one tried to stop Saarg leaving?”
“We can’t stop a Seeker leaving on official business.” Tummil couldn’t stop flexing his hands into fists. “Our only lead on the massacre, and we could only stare as she walked right out the gate. Apparently, they’re going to Sumad.”
“Sit down, Tummil. There’s news.”
“Sir?”
“Remember Guard Captain Gorden? The massacre’s four survivors came from his guardhouse.”
“I remember.”
“He had a stroke last week, and he’s been put into a convalescent home.” Reeben shuffled a sheaf of papers. “Saarg’s parents took ill last week. For the first time ever, her father took a whole week off work.” He shuffled another paper and looked up. “Turceen Emberhorf?”
Tummil recognized the name. “The identity forger who sold the four survivors their new cards?”
“Was reported missing, yesterday. And according to this”—Reeben passed Tummil a paper—“Saarg’s chapterhouse have been sick, recently. Very sick.”
Tummil scanned the paper. “So, everyone who worked with Saarg in the last year has suddenly gotten sick?”
“Everyone except her daughter, who’s been going to school like normal. Now we know the Royals at least draw the line at children.”
The chair creaked as Tummil fell back into it. “Saarg warned me, sir. She said the Royals would come to shut everyone up.”
“Including her,” said Reeben. “They’ve silenced everyone who had significant interaction with Saarg, or has seen those four survivors in the last year. Then they sent Saarg overseas to find those four survivors.”
“Then why not mess with us as well?”
Reeben muttered under his breath and looked up from the papers. “Why bother? We were never the problem. The problem was evidence—which vanished with Saarg, so it’s no longer a problem.”
“Three hundred dead, sir. And Saarg and her crew get away with it?”
Reeben kept shuffling his papers.
The silence stretched. It was interrupted by a knock at the door. The station manager entered. “Examiner Reeben,” she said, “there’s an alert for you.”
Reeben’s half-lidded eyes came all the way open.
“Something’s happened in the blocks down in the Fooram District—the ones you were watching.”
Reeben and Tummil sprang to their feet. They’d had Saarg followed there, but they’d never found her exact destination.
“Local guards are saying there might have been deaths,” she continued.
“They’re not sure?” asked Reeben, seizing his jacket.
2
The last time Tummil had worn a facemask had been at the massacre in the underground chamber, where he’d first encountered Head Seeker Terese Saarg.
But that had been underground, not here, in a large manor in one of the wealthier quarters. Back then, there’d been no flies. Now, flies coated the manor’s walls, floor and ceiling. The mask rendered Tummil’s vision in shades of grey. The bloodstains were grey, as were the limbs and scattered, rotting viscera. The facemask covered his nose and mouth, and still he was certain he could smell the carnage.
Reeben crouched near the remains. “This isn’t at all like the underground massacre that started all this, months ago. Those bodies had been torn apart. These ones… they’ve been methodically cut open and had parts removed.” His voice was toneless as he spoke into the recorder in his hand.
“The skin has been flayed, with particular attention paid to the muscles. Much skin is gone, though. The organs remain. Though like the underground site a few months ago, it’s difficult to tell how many people these remains originally were. Maybe ten?”
He glanced at the damaged wave transmitters on crude wooden tables. Why were there wave transmitters here, and what would have been the point in damaging them?
At a touch on his shoulder, Tummil stepped back from the mess. He nodded. “Constable?”
“Sergeant,” said the constable. “We’ve got the witness ready.”
“Right.” Tummil removed his mask. No, he wouldn’t vomit. He’d seen worse at the underground chamber. He paced to the door and checked his shoes to make sure he hadn’t tracked any gore from the house. “Lead on.”
The woman waited inside the property’s gate. Out on the sidewalk, constables and recruits held back journalists with notepads and stylus pens, neighbors clutching paper grocery bags and students returning from school.
He offered his hand. “Sergeant Fenden Tummil.”
“Marjene,” said the woman, evidently thinking that would be enough.
“I appreciate you coming,” he said, indicating the large manor house behind them. The manor contained sixteen rooms and four floors. It had been purchased under a false name with real money. A lot of real money, paid by untraceable currency cards.
“I’m happy to help, Sergeant,” Marjene said, smoothing down her silk shawl and flicking her dark curled hair.
Ten minutes later, Examiner Reeben met Tummil on the doorstep. Reeben hadn’t removed his mask.
Tummil looked down at his notes. “Sir, she says no one ever used the front door, so she doesn’t know much about the owners. She heard voices every now and then, enough to realize the house had a few men living here. A few weeks ago, she saw a man leave through this door and stand here with a large metal box. It was the first time she’d seen anyone use the front door. An ox-team wagon with darkened windows collected the box and man. That’s it. First time she’d seen anyone in the two years they’d lived here.
“The man could have been Sumadan, but she wasn’t sure though his skin was definitely darker. They didn’t receive any visitors. Looks like most comings and go
ings were through the side door in the alley.
“And then yesterday, she got worried about the smell and called the guard.”
Reeben’s mask bobbed as he nodded. “What about those wave devices back inside? No one needs to listen to, or send out, that many broadcasts.”
“They’ve had their frequency cores broken, sir. No reason for that unless they don’t want us to know what frequency they were broadcasting on.”
Reeben didn’t react. “I’m getting some Seekers in to see if they can sense anything. But I’m going to assume they won’t find anything. Tummil, no human could have been that strong and precise to do that sort of damage.”
Tummil’s innards clenched. He checked to see whether anyone was near enough to overhear. “You think it’s like the massacre at the underground chamber, sir? You think it was another dark golem, just like there?”
“Saarg and her Seekers, Tummil, are all over this. We all know it, and we haven’t a shred of evidence.” He checked back in the door. “If we did have evidence, there’s no doubt we’d be dead too.”
Reeben strode down the steps, leaving his mask on a pile on a table. Tummil followed.
“It’s three weeks old, Tummil. The stink and composition are about right for that. And three weeks ago, our watcher across from Saarg’s building spotted her returning home. She was covered in some sort of muck, which could have been blood. She climbed up the fire escape using an old rope she’d evidently hidden in the garden. Then her father and some retainers arrived, and she left with them.”
“She did this massacre here, sir?”
“No, I think she survived it. Why would she be creeping about her own house in a mess, unless she feared something?
“And there’s something else that’s been nagging at me. Royals control the Seekers, but Royals don’t kill. They might make people sick, but I’ve not seen evidence of much more. They know the rules. Death draws attention. Something that doesn’t care about consequences killed those Sumadans in that manor house. And Saarg’s suspicious nature made her a witness.”
“Now you’re saying she’s innocent, sir?”
“I’m saying she knows things she didn’t want to tell us. I’m saying, Sergeant, that she feared something more than losing her career or time in jail.
“Tummil, you said she was almost ready to flip on the Seekers. But without her, this investigation is over. By the time she’s back, every shred of evidence will be gone, and we’ll only have our memories and hearsay. It’s done, Tummil. I’m dropping the case from ‘priority’ to ‘open’.”
Suspects had disappeared before, leads had dried up, but this case being de-prioritized burned Tummil more than any other. Three hundred civilians had died. He’d been in the underground chamber with the bodies and the muck, minutes before it’d been Swallowed.
If he took his job too personally, he’d burn out. But this involved a Seeker chapterhouse and the Royalty.
“Yes, sir. We’ll drop it.”
3
Tummil paced Reeta’s hallway as she dressed.
“And you know who turned up today?” he grumbled. “The identity forger, at a homeless shelter. You know where? The other side of the city. Turned up with no memory of anything, although he’s slowly getting some memories back.”
He stopped to lean in her doorway. “And I have to keep telling myself that Saarg isn’t to blame. She’s just the one who’s stumbled on the right information and didn’t share it with me.”
Reeta, his fiancée, turned from her mirror while fastening an earring. “So what are you going to do, Fen?”
He slumped against the doorframe. “I don’t know, babe.”
She approached him, cupping his cheek in her hand. “You weren’t right for weeks after finding that underground massacre. I’m not sorry the case is closed.”
He sighed, gently pulling her hand down and holding it. “This is different. It’s… I always thought we’d get some sort of justice for the dead. Now, some monster’s escaped, and the Royals got away with whatever they’ve been up to. All we can do is keep an open file.”
Reeta stepped into the hallway, pulling her coat from a hook on the wall. “Fen, how much time did you spend studying what she was investigating, and how much time did you spend investigating her?”
It was obvious where this was going. “We looked into her investigation, but there wasn’t much point. It was pretty clear the four survivors were still here in Armer. She was the person of interest from the very start, not the poor bastards who barely survived!”
The clock chimed six behind him. Reeta pulled the door open. “We’re going to be late, and we still haven’t eaten,” she muttered.
Tummil sighed. “Why did your brother’s school have to put on a Cenephan play, of all plays? We refugees are living in Armer now, and we have for over a hundred and fifty years.”
Reeta held his arm as they took the stairs. “Don’t let my mother hear you say that. Or yours. Hon, what if you asked Mr. Reeben to give you some room to continue the case? There might still be some traces left, but if what you say is true, soon there won’t be anything.”
The streetlights slowly brightened in the deepening gloom. They stepped onto the street together, stopping at the intersection to wait for a tram to pass. Above their heads, the local chaos detection mechanism hummed atop a tall pole.
“But what would I tell him I could do differently?”
“Just say you want to do a follow-up? That always works with bosses.”
4
“I deeply appreciate you giving time to see me, Mrs. Morgenheth,” Tummil said, taking a seat on a floral chair in the small living room. He chose not to address the young woman sitting with her mother, seeing as the older woman hadn’t introduced them. He only knew they were mother and daughter because of the case notes. “This is a simple follow-up, to see if you’ve heard anything new, or if anything has occurred to you since you met with my associates a few months ago. Since the… discovery of the underground chamber.”
Mrs. Morgenheth inclined her head as if sitting upon a throne instead of a wicker chair. “It was the least I could do, Sergeant.” She didn’t look at him, instead fixing her gaze out the window beside Tummil.
“I was wondering if you might have had any new information or have recalled something that could help us find young Zalaran.”
“We thought Zale was supposed to be infected,” Efale Morgenheth snapped before her mother could respond. The young woman remained motionless, sitting back in her chair, legs crossed and blonde eyebrows frowning.
Tummil changed tactics. It seemed the mother’s memories would only be accessed through her daughter. “Miss Morgenheth,” he addressed Efale, “the Seekers’ claim that your brother and his three friends were all infected seemed unlikely to us, and we wondered if the Seekers could have been confused.” It was illegal for Inspectors to accuse Seekers of lying.
Efale’s head tilted to one side. Yes, she took his meaning. “See, Mother?”
Mrs. Morgenheth didn’t shift her eyes from the window, although she did take a deep breath.
“He’s gone, Sergeant,” said Efale. “He’s left Armer and he’s never coming back.”
Mrs. Morgenheth’s face reddened. In an automatic-looking movement, her hand went to a green pendant around her neck.
“Why do you say that, Miss Morgenheth?”
“He told me. When we were young. That he wanted to leave.”
“What else can you tell me, Miss Morgenheth?”
“It was just the two of us. Zale and me against our two older brothers, our father and the servants. We only trusted each other. He was always the lookout while I’d sneak for snacks and toys and books. He always said he’d leave the manor as soon as he could. He didn’t want any part of the family business.”
Tummil decided he’d cut to the point. If Efale was at all like her brother, she’d appreciate a straightforward approach. It was worth the gamble. “Did your brother kill your father, E
fale?”
She shook her head emphatically. “No. He doesn’t do revenge. He walks away. I had fifteen years with him, and he doesn’t have a dark side. He’s smug and tells people what he thinks of them, which is why Father didn’t like him, and that’s why he sold Zale’s indenture to the Guard during the bankruptcy. But Zale doesn’t hate. He doesn’t waste time on people. He’ll use his freedom to hide. To disappear and cut ties.”
Mrs. Morgenheth moved for the first time since Tummil had entered the apartment. She stood in a rush and shuffled down the tight corridor adjoining the small living room. A door slammed.
“And he didn’t kill his girlfriend, either,” Efale continued, as though her mother were still present. Or as if she’d never been there.
“Your brothers; do you think he’d ask—”
“Impossible. They bought this apartment for Mother and me on the condition we’d never ask for more.”
The more time Tummil spent around the rich, the less he understood them.
“We’re an embarrassment. A reminder of failure,” she continued. “The student nurse and the spurned widow. If Zale hasn’t contacted me, he hasn’t contacted anyone. He’s gone, Sergeant.”
“What can you tell me about his girlfriend?”
“Nothing. I knew he had one, but I didn’t ask details. We had to keep our personal lives secret, even from each other. I knew something bad had happened, though.”
“How?”
She studied her hands in her lap. “One day, I noticed he was broken inside. I thought he’d lost his mind because he’d started buying the Daily Delve.”
