She glanced back at the hospital. She wasn’t going to do any good in there tonight, and a coffee sounded nice. Maybe a date with a nice boy would give her a better perspective on things.
She sized him up—dodgy raincoat and all—and somewhere under her mild lobotomy, the normal Carla said, “Yeah, okay. Somewhere well-lit and busy though.”
Amelia Norris perched nervously on the dark leather couch as she looked at the stern-faced Derobmi woman in front of her.
“I’m sorry to bother you at home, Mrs. Hemsley,” she said. “It’s just you seem to have known Daniel Norris through his work, and …” She faltered, “I …” She paused again, trying to think how to put this. “Did he help you?” she asked vaguely.
It was so difficult to ask people if her husband illegally sneaked them into Derobmi without letting them know that she knew about it, but after a lot of crying and worrying, it had occurred to her that the only people she could speak to about her problems were the ones like her.
So far, none of the names in Daniel’s personal files had led to someone he had helped. If it had, they weren’t talking about it.
The woman facing her was called Diane Hemsley, and she seemed surprised by the question for a millisecond before suspicion crept into her eyes.
“Before I answer any questions, I’d like to know who you are,” Diane said sharply.
“Oh, sorry.” Amelia realized she hadn’t even introduced herself. “I’m Amelia, Mrs. Amelia Norris.”
She paused to gulp back the large lump in her throat.
“After my husband passed away …” She tried to keep her voice from shaking, but could feel inevitable tears welling in her eyes.
Damn it, not now. Please don’t cry.
“I realized he had a lot of work left unfinished, so I’m trying to find the people he helped.” She quickly finished her words so her voice wouldn’t crack. Then she inhaled a deep breath, trying to calm her rattled nerves.
Diane studied her for a moment before speaking. “You know the kind of work he was doing?” she asked.
“Yes.” Amelia had to hope this woman was a friend of her husband. She had no choice. She couldn’t go on hoping someone would come to save her. It was time to take a chance.
“I think he helped them the same way he once helped me.” There, she’d said it. Either she was going to be in trouble, or she was going to find someone like her. She looked Diane straight in the eye.
“Did he help you too?”
Diane sighed. “Yes, he did. You look like you need a real drink.” She got up and fetched a decanter of brown liquid and two glasses. Her face softened now that her defenses were down. “You also look as if you might still need some help,” she said, pouring them both a strong drink.
Amelia wiped her eyes. Kindness was the worst cure for crying. It made her want to cry more.
“I don’t know what to do, now that he’s gone.” Her face creased up, and she lowered her head as she sobbed into her hands.
“Do you know who killed him?” Diane asked.
“No, I don’t even know why someone would hurt him.”
“Well, given that he helped people and kept their secrets, I think maybe one of them didn’t want their secrets known,” Diane said. “But I don’t know who would have done it. Everyone I know that crossed over loved your husband and would have done anything for him.”
“What do we do now? Are we safe?” Amelia asked.
“Yes, I think so. Your husband did a very good job of helping us all, and I believe he ensured our identities were safe. The only threat is from whoever killed him. That person may know our secret, but it is their secret too. If they killed Daniel to hide it …” She trailed off, a frown settling on her brow.
Regardless off the threat, Amelia felt relief. She wasn’t alone. There were people like her. Surely, they would be safer together.
“Can I come to see you again? I feel very alone in all of this.”
“Yes, of course. You are Daniel’s wife. We will all welcome you into our group. I suppose you could call it a group. We meet up once a week and just talk to each other. It helps us to feel part of something.” The woman paused. “The thing I can’t understand is who could have killed him. Certainly, none of our group would have reason to. We all loved Daniel. In many cases, he saved our lives.”
“I have a list of the names of people he had files on,” Amelia said. “Perhaps if you looked at it, you might see something that I can’t?” She offered the list of names to the other woman.
Diane studied the piece of paper, and then reached for a pen and began ticking the names listed on it.
“There are two names here that I don’t recognize, Amelia Laquette and Constanople Ernendez. I’m guessing you used to be Amelia Laquette?”
“Yes.” Amelia nodded. “Which means the missing person is Constanople Ernendez.” She frowned. “The files Daniel left behind indicate that this person was the first one. He became a Derobmi over twenty years ago, before my husband’s time in office. Daniel was just a boy when this man became a Derobmi. I remember finding this file in his archived folders. It was before the skin tests had been invented and nothing to do with Daniel’s work. It’s just a person who went through a similar process, but he was …” Amelia paused while she tried to remember what she had read.
“He was already half Derobmi, and he just had false papers. This makes no sense. After all that time, why would he suddenly want to hurt my husband?”
Diane shook her head. “I don’t know, but he’s definitely never been to one of our meetings. He would be my first suspect, but don’t worry yourself for now. You’ve been through quite a lot these past few weeks. I don’t think Daniel would want you to get in harm’s way.” She smiled.
“Just know that we’re all safe. Your husband did a good job for us all. You are always welcome at our meetings if you feel you need to talk. Here, I’ll give you my number. Call me any time.” She wrote down her phone number and handed it to Amelia.
“Thank you.” Amelia smiled back, grateful to have someone she could finally confide in. She felt safer now that she was amongst friends. It was the first time since Daniel had gone missing that she wasn’t afraid.
She clenched her jaw when she glanced down at the name on the list. She knew that after the mourning was over, she would seek out the man who had killed her husband. She would find him and see him punished for it. Not tonight, though.
Tonight, she might actually sleep soundly. There was always tomorrow for revenge.
He had chosen a dimly-lit, busy dive by the name of Different Shades, which was the kind of place that made Carla want to clean the chairs before sitting on them.
She glanced around the thriving bar. With its low lighting and dark décor, she was shocked to the core that such places existed in Derobmi.
The tables were stained with a sticky substance. The carpet was so disgusting that her shoes stuck to it, and the walls … well, it was lucky they were painted in a rusty brown color because lord knows what kind of marks and dirt they had collected over the unwashed years.
The man sat down opposite her and lounged in his chair. His electric blue eyes were locked on her. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d met him before. He sipped a drink, which looked suspiciously like alcohol or some other illegal substance, but said nothing.
She stirred her aptly named ‘mud coffee’ and looked a bit disgusted at it, especially when the spoon stood up on its own in the cup.
The bar was as vile as the drinks, but she was quite happy with her view of the stranger and mildly surprised when he removed his coat and hat, to reveal that he was blue.
Recognition slammed through her when she stared at his face. He was the scientist she had met at school on vaccinations day.
She frowned for a moment. Okay, he was attractive, but her reaction to him today was far stronger than the last time she’d met him.
Maybe I like him more when I’m not getting jabbed with needles.
She tried to shake off the hazy feeling.
“So, er … you’re a Zoolaf, then?” she asked to break the silence.
“Yes,” he said, still studying her every move. “My name’s Parklon Eldemf. I work in the Science Institute,” he added, narrowing his eyes at her.
She was surprised by his career choice. Zoolafs were not renowned as great thinkers. Her only knowledge of the Zoolaf colony came from lessons in school—which described the Zoolafs as a physically strong and animalistic race, which had no self-control and severe deficiency in intelligence—but Parklon seemed quite bright really.
He is a scientist, after all.
She wondered—as always—if the lessons taught in Derobmi education were based on fact or opinion.
She was about to ask him what this was all about when a voice she recognized interrupted her.
“Alright, Carla,” Bob said as he wandered over to the table. “Always knew you’d end up in a non-Derobmi bar.” He sniggered while brushing back his orange hair. Then he turned and eyed up Parklon with narrowed eyes. “Who’s yer friend?”
She stood up and feigned giving Bob a hug while slipping her Sparkle and Shine ID card into his hand. A deal’s a deal, right? It was the perfect time to keep her promise.
He took the card with a subtle nod of his head.
When she glanced back at Parklon, she noticed his narrowed eyes.
Is he jealous?
She quickly released Bob and sat back down before flashing Bob a smile and trying to think of the best way to get rid of him. “I’m on a hot date,” she said. “Parklon here works for Immigration,” she added while shooting her orange friend a knowing look.
Bob nodded at her as a look of gratitude flashed across his face. “Right, well, I best not keep you then.” He smiled politely before dashing off and making a beeline for the exit.
Parklon’s eyebrow shot up again. “A hot date?” he asked with a glint of amusement in his blue eyes.
She wished he’d stop doing that. Every time his eyebrow shot up, her stomach did a backflip, and her legs turned to molasses.
“Oh, I … um ... best way to get rid of him,” she muttered. She felt her face heat up with a blush of embarrassment.
She paused.
Blushing. Me blushing? As if!
There was something strange going on, an odd feeling of being overpowered that was completely out of character for her. In the last thirty minutes she’d become a blushing, stammering idiot. This crazy feeling had complete control over her, and she could almost feel her brain shrinking.
She defensively folded her arms, and glared at Parklon. It happened every time she looked at him, and he seemed completely unaltered by the experience. In fact, if she wasn’t mistaken, he was thoroughly enjoying her lack of control.
She tried to blink herself out of her daze. “Right … right,” she mumbled, trying to sort out her hazy head. “What’s this about?—I loouuuve youuu,” she said quite clearly, and then in some kind of shock, dropped her coffee cup on to the sticky carpet.
“What the hell was that?” she cried, appalled that her serious sentence had ended in such an insane manner.
Concern filled his eyes. “Oh, I ... crap!” He pulled a purple crystal out of his pocket and smashed it on the table. The crystal turned out to be a hollow glass vial with a purple liquid in it, which sizzled on the wooden surface. Then it evaporated into table-top, leaving only remnants of broken glass as evidence of its existence.
Her head instantly cleared, and she threw his drink on him. “What did you do to me?” she snapped. She was so angry that she could quite happily have beaten him to death with her chair.
“Calm down, breathe.” He held up his hands, trying to placate her. “You need to calm down for it to wear off, and I promise I’ll explain.”
With great effort, she sat back down in her chair and scowled at him, burning with a red-hot hatred that began to evaporate as fast as the purple liquid had.
While she was trying to calm down, she noticed that he didn’t appear as attractive as he once had. His eyes were just blue after all, and his shoulders were no broader than the next idiot’s shoulders.
His perfection was marred by a strong shot of reality. Her legs felt solid again, regardless of the movement of his eyebrows. The instinct to kill had also lifted. Now, she was just annoyed instead of psychotic.
“So explain yourself, and it had better be good!” Her voice sounded normal again, which reassured her.
“Okay,” he said with a glint of excitement in his eyes. “So, I work for the Scientific Institute in the city and, well, they gave me this crappy, dirty laboratory and a menial wage, and I’m never appreciated ...”
“Jump to the part I would have an interest in,” she snapped.
“Oh.” His eyes widened in shock. “It must be the Zoremones still working on you.” He leaned back in his chair, examining her from a safe distance.
“No. What? I’m always this irritable. Now get on with it.” She was feeling a bit edgy, but like hell she was admitting it to someone who’d drugged her.
“Okay, so part of my job is preparing the immunization shots for the School Board, and this year there was a new batch of vaccine sent, which looked a bit odd. They came from outside Derobmi, from a place known as Rhecknaw. That’s a colony I didn’t know much about, but I did my job and shipped the shots to the schools as usual.” He watched her closely while he told his tale.
“Anyway, shortly after the shots, every kid on the list of students being immunized got that disease.” He paused. “Except for you,” he said, giving her a suspicious look.
“So I found out who you were, and you turned out to be purple, so I looked into Rhecknaw. Can you guess what color that colony is?” He smiled at his own cleverness.
She widened her eyes. “Purple?” She hadn’t known there was a purple colony. If there was a purple colony, did that mean she really wasn’t from here?
“Yes.” He carried on, seemingly unaware of her shock at his revelation. “So I’m thinking, how come a purple kid doesn’t get this disease?” He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Maybe I’m immune?” She scowled at him.
“Maybe you caused everyone here to get sick,” he said. “I’ve got your number, sweetheart.”
“If there was a disease in those shots, why would I get vaccinated?” she asked.
He paused. “Maybe you had no choice. I saw you. Hell, I nearly saved you from getting vaccinated.”
“My half-assed hero,” she muttered. “I don’t have a motive. Why would I want my family to get sick? You know my brother is dying in hospital right now, don’t you?”
Parklon looked as if a mean kid had popped his favorite balloon for a moment before shaking his head. “I’ll check with the hospital.” He warned her.
“Okay, you do that,” she said. “Now what did you do to me with that purple thing?” She was getting annoyed with him again.
“Oh, it was just a Zoremone,” he said flippantly before expelling a sigh. “Damn! I thought I’d figured it out.”
“A Zoremone?” she asked.
“Well, you must know what they are? It is your genetic heritage.” He frowned, shooting her a puzzled look.
“A Zoremone?” she repeated, shooting him her steeliest glare.
“How can you not know? I mean you’re a Rhecknaw.” His eyes widened with surprise.
“I’m a Derobmi,” she said, deciding she’d had just about enough of this for one night. “Look, mate, I barely know what a Rhecknaw is. So no, I don’t know what a Zoremone is. I want you to explain right now how you made me so … so …” She tried to find the right word.
“Soppy?” he asked.
“Girly.” She corrected, scowling at him.
“Well—oh, dear—I think I need to show you the archives. I mean, if you don’t know, you could be … oh, dear.” He stumbled over his words while wearing a stunned expression.
“What?”
�
��Well, Rhecknaw women. Er, some of them have a short-lived destiny, great power, but not for long. I thought you knew …” he said, his voice faltering.
“Knew what?” She was getting frustrated with the lack of information.
“Well.” He winced. “Some of them don’t live very long.” He appeared quite distraught. “It’s a bit late tonight, but meet me here tomorrow at lunchtime, and I’ll show you the archives.”
“Archives about what? Dude, finish a sentence.”
“Your race dies young.” He refused to look at her. “If you meet me here, I can show you where I read about it.”
She studied him for a few seconds with narrowed eyes. “Okay,” she said. “But there’s not a chance in hell that I’m eating food in here.”
“No, that’s fine,” he said. “We’ll just meet outside, and I’ll take you to the archives.”
Carla nodded and got up to leave. “Okay, tomorrow at twelve, then.”
She turned to leave, but turned back at the last moment. “If you try drugging me again, I’ll have you castrated,” she added before she walked away.
“It’ll be a date to remember, then.” She heard him mumbled wryly to himself.
After a night of worrying about purple people and Zoremones, Carla met up with Parklon the next day. They had left Different Shades and headed for the Scientific Institute, which she now found herself staring at in awe.
The building was a monstrous creation of glass and steel, set in the center of a vast rural landscape of lush fields and small woodlands. The giant glass dome covering the institute buildings created a green tint over the entire area. Surrounding the perimeter dome was a six-foot fence, which was patrolled by rather bored-looking guards that were posted at the main gates.
To the left of the fence was a well-used dirt track, leading into a small forest.
Parklon steered Carla away from the institute gates and toward the muddy path.
“Don’t we go in through the gates?” she asked him with narrowed eyes. She still wasn’t entirely trusting of her blue companion, and rightly so, since he hadn’t saved her at their first meeting, had drugged her at their second meeting and still hadn’t explained what Zoremones were.
Science Fiction and Fantasy Box Set 1: The Squishies Series Page 10
