The BETA Agency

by Maxwell Coffie

  “I…” I whispered, “I…” The words died on my tongue.

  Then, there was silence. Dreadful silence. Seemed as though I’d had to endure a lot of that the past few days. There would be more of it tonight at the ‘funeral’, I knew. What I didn’t know was if I would be able to stand it.

  “Are we going, Arra?” Kattie asked again.

  “I don’t know,” I finally breathed.

  “I have to go to the centre,” she said.

  I nodded. But she didn’t leave. She stared. I sighed, picked up a grain cake, and bit into it. I crunched, crunched, and swallowed. Then, I opened my mouth at her so she could see that it was empty.

  Only then did she say “See you later,” and leave the room.

  When I was certain that she was out of the apartment, I set the tray on the bedside cabinet, and buried myself back under the covers.

  It had been two weeks since Evon Jade had died in the station bombing. I’d stopped watching the screen, because her face was everywhere: on the news, on talk shows, in a breaking news piece on one of the bloody cartoon channels. I had resigned to staying in bed, shamelessly allowing my little sister to keep me fed and watered.

  I could not face the world. The pain I felt was difficult to define: neither sharp nor stabbing, and yet, it pierced my heart. It weighed me down, like an anchor, and it crushed my chest; sometimes it was hard to breathe. When I managed to crawl to the bathroom, I would stay there for hours. The fatigue was never worth the trip back.

  I had not cried since the day Evon died. Maybe, that was the weight I could feel pressing down on me.

  I remember that on the day I met Evon, I had known, almost immediately, that we existed to complete each other. Not in a romantic sense, not necessarily. Instead, ours was a very purposive existence, like a two-piece puzzle’s. We had bonded on the first day of enforcer academy, in the canteen, over bowls of some semblance of marrow stew. I told her about my wreck of a family, and of my little sister whom I loved. She told me that her mother was Evonna, one of the mother-trees on the Floris world, which made a fifth of Floris her “sisters”.

  Over the next few weeks, the differences in our characters became apparent. I was polite, but anti-social. I naturally possessed the aptitudes required to be an enforcer, but I was also reckless. Evon was brash, but still quite the extrovert. Her assimilation of the defensive arts was slow, and she couldn’t shoot a chordate in a pond back in those days. But, she was a hard worker, and what she lacked naturally, she more than made up for with diligence. I liked to follow my gut, and she preferred to rely on her brains.

  We could not have been more unalike, but I always thought that was the reason we grew so close. We complemented each other.

  Two-piece puzzle.

  As these thoughts ran through my mind, I ate the food Kattie had brought me. Sort of. I had half a bowl of cereal, and I licked all the syrup off the grain cakes. Then, I proceeded to drift in and out of sleep.

  Hours later, DEB told me that I had a call.

  “Ignore it,” I mumbled.

  Should I take a message? DEB asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  Detective Everglade, a voice came anyway. This is Lieutenant Blunc. Again. Call me back when you get this. We have very important matters to discuss.

  I closed my eyes, and drowned out the voice.

  Suddenly, I was back on that street, outside the bureau station. I could see Evon in a fourth floor window. She was waving at me. I was screaming at her. I ran, but the station doors wouldn’t draw any closer. The ground rumbled, the building sunk. Evon was still waving, even as her window shattered, and the rising dust rushed up to meet her…

  I woke up, trembling. Slowly, I sat up, and blinked hard. It was dark, but my eyes hurt: pins and needles. I was soaked in sweat, and I could feel a headache coming on.

  I heard the soft beep of the front door.

  Katrice is home, DEB announced.

  “Arra,” I heard her call.

  I forced myself out of the bed, and stumbled through the darkness to my bathroom. If Kattie found me still in bed, she would nag.

  “Bathroom,” I cried back, before sinking to the floor of my shower, and sighing, “DEB.”

  I didn’t need to utter another word; DEB had caught onto my routine. It activated the shower, and warm water rained down on me.

  Moments passed. Maybe hours. The insides of my palms began to crease.

  “Arra,” Kattie called from behind my bathroom door. “Get out of the shower, Arra.”

  I didn’t answer. She slid the door open, and turned on the light.

  I must’ve looked horrendous: sitting lifelessly beneath the shower like that, hair matted, skin wrinkled, propped against the bathroom wall.

  She didn’t blink. “DEB, shut the shower off.”

  The shower died. I lifted my face to meet the last drips of water. When I looked down again, Kattie was crouched beside me.

  “Up we go,” she whispered, placing her arms around me. She helped me to my feet.

  I don’t remember getting dressed. One moment, I was waddling to my room with Kattie under my arm, the next, I was in a cramped, dimly lighted room, and there was an urn on the pearly pedestal upfront.

  There were a lot of people I didn’t recognize, most of whom were Phyllian. Clearly, Evon had had other friends besides me. That did not surprise me. Of the both of us, she’d always been the more social.

  There were also a lot of enforcers. I spotted Crawer at the refreshment table, pouring himself a cup of kho’late. He looked good. His skin was baby smooth now, a consequence of days of skin regeneration treatment. There was still a ruby tinge to his newly formed skin though. It would go away eventually.

  He looked up and saw me. He hesitated, then he lifted his cup, as if he was toasting. Toasting to Evon.

  I turned away.

  It occurred to me that I hadn’t the slightest clue who had organized this gathering. Then, I noticed the way Kattie was going around, greeting all the guests.

  “Did you do this?” I asked her, when she had completed her rounds, and was standing next to me again.

  “I did.” She paused, and I wanted to ask how in Light’s name she had known what to do. But then, she asked, “Should I have left it to you?” and I realized I didn’t care how she’d pulled it off.

  I threw my arms around her, and held her tight. “Thank you,” I croaked into her ear.

  To my surprise, my sister hugged me back.

  When we started the Phyllian funeral rites, I worried that I wouldn’t be strong enough to watch. I was afraid my knees would buckle under me, but Kattie held onto my arm.

  Ushers went around, handing out little candles in glass holders. I couldn’t take one, because I didn’t’ trust my trembling hands with glass. Kattie took one for us. We lighted our candles, the lights were dimmed, and the ceremony began.

  I stared, numbly, as the Illuminist priest Kattie had hired circled the urn, humming spiritual songs to our hearing. After circling the urn maybe thirteen times, he stopped, and picked it up.

  Everyone followed the priest, through the front door, and out onto the street. As we walked, the other Phyllians began to hum too—a lilting, but solemn melody. Cars stopped for us, as we made our way to the Littlegate Crossover. The night air was especially cold on the small bridge and the Littlegate waters—one of the many channels that branched off Crystal Lake—shimmered beneath the blend of moon and street lights.

  When we reached the edge of the bridge, the priest felt for the direction of the wind, nodded, and placed the urn on the steel guard. Someone handed the priest a silver chalice. The humming grew louder as the priest poured a shimmering yellow liquid out of the chalice, and into the urn.

  Then, the priest stepped back. “In the end,” he said, “we are but children of the light, destined to return from whence we came. One light, one soul, one life.”

  One light, one soul, one life, everyone else repeated.

  And as
the words left our lips, Evon’s ashes rose out of the urn, glowing like an army of fireflies. The wind took hold of them, and they sailed upon the current, over the waters and into the skies.

  The humming continued until the last glowing speck had faded into the distance. Then the humming stopped.

  And with that, my best friend was gone.

  CHAPTER 14

  The funeral party moved to a tidy little cantina a block away. Kattie didn’t want to stay, which was just as well because she was underage anyway. We found her a taxi. I gave her a quick hug, and she made me promise to be home by the midnight hour.

  There was a circle of enforcers by the bar, trading Evon stories and drinking to her memory. I ordered a lager, found the darkest corner in the room, and sat there to nurse my drink.

  Hours crawled by, and eventually, except for the bartender, two waitresses mopping up the floor, and a passed out wino, the place was empty. My mug had been unoccupied since my first and only drink, and now, I stared at the golden remnants pooled at the bottom of the glass.

  I wasn’t sleepy, but I was thoroughly fatigued. I glanced at my cell-comm, and it was the fourth hour. I had broken my promise to Kattie. Briefly, I wondered if she would be mad, before remembering that she couldn’t get mad.

  She could nag though; an odd, tepid sort of nagging that came more from a sense of duty than from any actual annoyance. It hit me that if she woke up to find that I still hadn’t come home, she would come searching for me, unholy hour be damned.

  Sighing, I began searching for my purse.

  “Detective Everglade?”

  I looked up, startled. There was a Lillith woman in front of me. I wondered how she had crossed the room unnoticed. She looked out of place here, in her white skirt suit and glasses, hair pinned up high.

  “Aren’t you Detective Everglade?” she asked, looking nervous now.

  “Who’s asking?” I mumbled.

  She took a seat opposite me. “My name is Dr. Thena Starr.” She offered a hand, and I took it. “Would you mind sparing me a moment of your time?”

  I smiled tiredly. “You already sat down.”

  “Oh.” She looked thoroughly embarrassed. “I’m so sorry. I should have asked first, shouldn’t I? Great Light, I am so sorry. I’m not usually this rude. I’ll go if you want me to.” She waited for my answer.

  I contemplated taking her up on her offer. I was too exhausted, both physically and emotionally, for a conversation like this. Her nervousness alone was tiring to behold.

  I took a deep breath, and said, “It’s fine. How can I help you?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Don’t make me change my mind.”

  “My name is Dr. Thena Starr. Wait, did I say that already? Sorry. I am a psyche counsellor. Or rather, I used to be until five years ago.” She stopped, as if to gather her thoughts. “Five years ago, my most important client was one Sol King. Ever heard of him?”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s not surprising. He mostly worked on classified assignments, and with special taskforces. Now, my client’s biggest case was on one nasty piece of work: a psychopathic assassin codenamed the Ripper.”

  “The Ripper?” Was she kidding me? “Do you realize,” I said, “how ridiculous that sounds?”

  “I assure you, Detective, this is no joke,” she said. Her voice was growing steadier, she was growing more confident. “Sol gathered three years’ worth of data on the Ripper. He knows this killer in and out. And he almost caught him a number of times.”

  “But?”

  “There were a few…hiccups.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And now he’s in lockup. Psychiatric lockup.”

  I raised a brow. “He went crazy?”

  “He did not go crazy, Detective. He…” she pursed her lips. “He lost his way.”

  “Not to sound insensitive,” I said, “but what’s any of this got to do with me?”

  “Well, the Ripper had a calling card.” She paused. “He would take the faces of his targets.”

  I froze, and then, narrowed my eyes. “Say that again?”

  “The Ripper cuts his victims’ faces off, Detective.”

  I steeled my jaw, and looked around, half-expecting to spot a media crew crouched in some corner of the room. I didn’t see anyone, but I stood up to leave anyway.

  “Detective?”

  “I don’t know what kind of sick game you’re playing,” I hissed. “But if you’re looking for a news source, you’re digging down the wrong well.”

  “I’m not a journalist, Detec—“

  “Oh muck off.” I stomped to the bar, closed my tab with a swipe of my credit card, and marched out the door.

  I walked about half way down the street before realizing that I couldn’t remember where I’d parked.

  Flaming muck, I thought. “Bloody flaming muck,” I said out loud, when I noticed that Dr. Starr had followed me outside.

  “Detective,” she called.

  “What part of ‘muck off’ don’t you understand?” I said. “You think I don’t know about the old bait-and-switch method? You pretend to be some inside source and I unwittingly blurt out some juicy details. Coincidence that you found me with a lager in my hand too, I’ll bet. You tabloid types disgust me.”

  “Again, I’m not a journalist Detective.”

  I whirled around to face her, and she almost crashed into me. “People died in that building,” I snapped into her face. “Good people. I’m not going to let you defile it with pit-muck conspiracy nonsense just so you can sell subscriptions or rack up counter hits or whatever muck you need to put credits in your shameless pockets.”

  “Detective…”

  “You have ten fractions to get the muck out of my face before I arrest you for harassment,” I said. “One.”

  “I’m sorry I upset you Detective—“

  “Two.”

  “Can you just calm down? Stop the count-down for a moment.”

  “Three.”

  “Detective—“

  “Four!”

  “The Ripper is not dead!”

  I stopped cold.

  “The killer who died in the explosion,” she said, panting, “is not the man you were looking for.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “Because, like I said, I know this killer. My client, Mister King, spent several years pursuing this man. The Ripper would never show himself so foolishly in a public place, much less an enforcement station–not unless he was certain he could make it out alive.”

  “Well, you’re wrong because I was standing right there when my colleague blew his face open with a high-density blaster.”

  “Then it wasn’t him.”

  “Did you hear what I just said? I said—“

  “I heard you, and I’m telling you that it was not him.”

  I stared at her, incredulous, and she stared back.

  “H-he must’ve found somebody else to do his dirty work,” she stuttered. “The Ripper does not make mistakes.”

  “Are you listening to yourself?”

  “He isn’t dead, detective,” she said, shifting closer, her eyes manic. “He is never dead. He is going to come back. And when he does, we’ll need to be ready.”

  “This conversation is over.” I went around her, and tried to walk away.

  “My client has every scrap of information on the Ripper that you could ever need,” she said, following after me. “And he has experience.”

  I walked faster.

  “But I can’t petition the Metro government to release my client. Not on my own. I need a good word from the Enforcement Bureau. And you’re perfect for that: you have a good reputation, not to mention that you were directly involved in the case.” She had stopped following me. Now, she was yelling. “You could put that monster away for good.”

  I was moving as quickly as my feet would let me. It didn’t feel fast enough.

  “The Ripper’s not dead, detective,” she cri
ed. “We could save lives.”

  I ran.

  When I got home, I went straight to the bathroom, opened my mirror cabinet. Behind my spare towels, stashed in a hole in the wall, was a pill bottle.

  I hadn’t used my sleeping pills in three months—a personal best.

  I hesitated, and then shook a pill into my hand. I stopped. I shook out another one. I downed them, and stooped to gulp desperately from the tap.

  Wiping my mouth, I trudged to my bed and slipped under the covers. I stared up at the ceiling, until the darkness came.

  And then, it took me.

  CHAPTER 15

  A week later, and I had still not returned to the station. The Lieutenant had stopped calling.

  I needed my pills to sleep every night, otherwise my sleep was too shallow and my dreams were unkind. Even when I did sleep, my sleep patterns were sporadic, and I seldom slept more than three or four hours through the night. More often than not, I was awake again by as early as the fifth hour.

  On the bright side, I was eating more. Kattie wanted me to go out more too. So for an hour a day, I went out onto the balcony, still in my sleeping gown, and shovelled cultured milk into my mouth. Turned out that it wasn’t what Kattie had in mind.

  By Faedae, she was tired of me moping about the apartment. “Get out the apartment,” she told me before leaving for the learning centre that morning. “Get out of the building. Take a walk. Try to put some normalcy back into your life. Evon may be dead, but you did not die with her.”

  I stopped eating my culture. I didn’t look up at her, but I could feel her studying my reaction.

  “Was that inappropriate?” she asked.

  “Yes. And hurtful.” I licked my spoon.

  “I apologize.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Just…don’t stay indoors today, okay?”

  I promised her that I wouldn’t so that she could finally leave. And no longer than an hour after she had left, I got dressed, and stepped out the building.