The BETA Agency

by Maxwell Coffie

  She walked out of the room.

  Crawer and I were silent for a moment.

  “Well,” Crawer finally said. “At least now we know why she’s so desperate to get her patient out of lockup.”

  “You think she’s in love with him?”

  “Don’t you? Obviously, for her, this is more about getting her patient out than it is about getting to the bottom of this investigation.”

  “Of course it is,” I said. “She’s not an enforcer. She’s a psyche counsellor, and Sol King is her patient. He’s her priority. But if what she says is true, he could be the key to everything.”

  “My problem is that she wants us to set him free.”

  “Well, I know getting him out might be a problem,” I admitted.

  “No muck. We don’t have that kind of authority. Also, this feels like we’re sticking our noses into Senior Intelligence affairs again.”

  I paused. “Sir,” I said, slowly, “this man we’re after…he blew up our station. He took thirty employees and ten enforcers. And he took Evon.”

  Crawer sighed. “I know.”

  “All I’m asking is that you make some calls.”

  “You have a lot of confidence in my abilities.”

  “I know you have an uncle in the state governor’s office sir.”

  “Nepotism? That’s your solution?”

  “I want Evon’s killer sir,” I said, feeling a sudden tightness in my chest. “And I didn’t even realize just how badly I wanted him till right this moment. I will crawl down every murky hole, turn over every muck covered rock, until I find the bastard who killed my best friend.”

  Crawer stared into my eyes. I wondered if he could see it—my resolve.

  “And when you find him,” he asked, “what will you do?”

  “Don’t make me tell you sir,” I said, looking away. “It’ll be better if I don’t.”

  CHAPTER 17

  When I returned home, there was a sweet and heavy smell in the corridor leading up to my apartment. The closer I got to my door, the stronger the smell got. I strode into the kitchen to see muffins stacked high all over the counters.

  “Wha—?” I murmured, before calling, “Kattie?”

  “Yes?”

  I turned around at the sound of Kattie’s voice. But the girl standing behind me did not look like Kattie.

  This girl had dyed her hair blue. She had done her hair, so that it framed her head like a bowl, and fell in perfectly aligned bangs above her brows. She was dressed in black from head to toe: black feathery ribbon in her hair, black ruffled dress embroidered with feathers, black glossy shoes with feathers in their buckles.

  Why were there so many damn feathers?

  “Kattie?” I said, uncertainly.

  “Yes?”

  “What have you done, sweetie?”

  “I came back early to check on you, but you weren’t here. I got bored. So I baked.”

  My smile was weak. “Well, that too. But I meant the clothes. Why are you dressed like a…uh, a bird?”

  “Oh, that,” Kattie said, tone flat. “It’s called Avian fashion. Children my age pick a bird, and revolve their ensembles around it. I chose the corvus.”

  “Ah,” I said, like it made perfect sense.

  “Pi called to invite me over to his house for lunch,” she said.

  “Pi?”

  “The friend I made at my school.”

  “Oh? Oh.” I was stunned. “Really?”

  “Should I go?”

  I picked up a muffin. “I don’t know. Are his parents going to be there?” I bit into the muffin. Damn, that was a good muffin.

  “Yes. My counsellor says that honouring an invitation is an important step in establishing social connections.”

  “You mean the same counsellor who told you it was okay to punch another kid out?”

  “She never said that. Not in those exact words.”

  “I know. Just teasing. You can go.”

  “I was not asking for your permission,” Kattie said. “I asked you if I should go.”

  “Any particular reason why you wouldn’t want to?”

  “His family is Illuminist.”

  I stopped mid-chew.

  “My counsellor says that faith is a dicey factor when it comes to social interaction,” she continued. “As such, I have read up on the doctrines of the Illuminists. Both kinds.”

  I had studied about the Illuminists in college. Illuminism was one of two popular faith systems on all five worlds. The other was Trionism. Trionists believed that everything about the universe revolved around the Three Great Constants: Mana, Water and Earth.

  Illuminists on the other hand, believed in only one great Constant: the Great Light. Some Illuminists, the Mono-Illuminists, believed that the Great Light created everything, and would one day, come down in a mortal vessel to teach the Way of the true balance of mana (whatever that meant). The other Illuminists, the Stellar-Illuminists, believed that the Great Light had created the stars, or ‘stellar gods’, and that it was the stellar gods that had created everything. They believed that throughout history, the stellar gods had come down as prophets and gurus, to teach the Way. When the Great Light finally came down himself, it would only be to bring the end of the worlds.

  I myself was more partial to the practicality of learning, and the Original Mana Theory. Of course, that was probably just because my own mother had shoved it down my throat. But Illuminist, Trionist, or neither, most people still believed in the existence of a Great Light. People, even people like me, liked to believe that somewhere in the void above, there was a Source of infinite Goodness and Light.

  It was just occurring to me though, that I had never discussed faith with Katrice. Some guardian I was.

  “What did you think about what you read?” I asked.

  Katrice looked thoughtful. “I found their beliefs interesting literature. However, I am not sure I share their faith.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “In fact, I found some of their doctrine ludicrous.”

  “Wow, so that’s one word you cannot repeat when you go over to your friend’s house.”

  “I know. When you disagree with the opinion of a friend, you should nod politely and say: what an interesting belief. I may not agree with you, but thank you for sharing your opinion with me.”

  “That sounds completely natural, and not rehearsed at all.”

  “Good. That is what I was going for.”

  I smiled. “I think you should go.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I do. You’re ready.”

  Katrice bit the bottom of her lip, and I felt my heart leap. Was that nervousness my sister was displaying?

  “I will call him, and let him know to expect me within the hour,” she said, and left the room.

  I bit into the muffin again, and discovered that it had a creamy, delicious, cao centre.

  Oh, come on.

  I stuffed a few muffins into a plastic container, and took them into my room with me.

  The rest of the day was spent watching sports highlights, and waiting impatiently for a call from Crawer. By the twenty-first hour, I had given up.

  “Even if he calls the governor’s office, they’re not going to get back to us today,” I grumbled to myself. “Flaming bureaucracy.”

  I went to the bathroom, threw back two pills, and returned to bed.

  I was lying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Then, I wasn’t.

  I was walking in a dark corridor alone, with a blaster in my hand. I reached a cell at the end of the corridor, and pushed a button to slide the door open.

  Inside the cell, there was a man in a white and gold uniform, bent over a writhing body. I ordered him to drop what was in his hands, and get on his knees.

  The man stood up, grinned, and lifted the thing in his hand.

  It was my face.

  Ringing woke me up. It was my cell-comm.

  “The governor’s office just called,” h
e said, when I’d answered it. “We just got clearance to see Sol King.”

  “That’s great. Tomorrow?”

  “Today. Right now.”

  “Right now?” I looked at my cell-comm screen. It was just into the first hour. “Seriously?”

  “Do you want answers or not?” he asked.

  I headed out.

  CHAPTER 18

  I met Crawer at the temporary station, and then we picked Dr. Starr up from her apartment in my transporter. I sped to the meeting place: a building in District 20 that looked like it was still under construction.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked, after we’d pulled up to the dark building.

  Crawer checked his cell-comm, and nodded.

  “Not that I’m not grateful for access to King,” Dr. Starr whispered. “But is there any particular reason why we were granted this access in the middle of the night?”

  “Probably some muck to do with security,” I muttered.

  “I think I see our contact,” Crawer said.

  A hulking Bark agent was coming towards our transporter, flanked by two other intelligence agents. The Bark was Agent Q.

  Great.

  We got out of the transporter, and met him halfway across the parking lot.

  “Detectives,” Agent Q greeted.

  “Q,” I greeted back. “To what do we owe the honour?”

  “This is going to upset you.”

  “I had no doubt.”

  “But we will be relieving you of Dr. Starr.”

  “Wait, what?” Crawer looked furious. “That wasn’t our agreement.”

  “Do you think that we haven’t long known about Sol King’s history with the Ripper?” Agent Q said. “We have approached him several times in the last few weeks. He has been very uncooperative. He was a dead end. That was, of course, until we learned of Dr. Starr here.”

  “You mean, until you intercepted our request to the governor’s office,” I said.

  “The very fact that you had to contact the governor’s office proves this: that this case is now so far out your jurisdiction that you couldn’t spot it with a telescope. You are not my enemy, but you need to stand down.”

  “If we’re not your enemy, then stop undercutting our investigation.”

  “It stopped being your investigation the moment your station came crumbling down.”

  Dr. Starr stepped forward. “D-do I have a say in this?”

  “No, ma’am you don’t,” Q said.

  “I do if I choose not to speak with Sol King.”

  Crawer and I shared a look.

  Q looked exasperated. “You realize I could charge you with impeding an investigation?”

  “I do,” Dr. Starr said, with more boldness than I had ever heard her use. “But I also realize that the deal I made was with Detective Everglade and Sergeant Crawer. I don’t know you.”

  There was a tense stretch of silence.

  “Follow me,” Q grunted, and started towards the building.

  We followed.

  The building lifts weren’t in commission yet, so we took the stairs—all one hundred and twenty-five flights of them. There were two more intelligence agents waiting for us up on the roof, and a hover carrier ready to take off.

  The agents whipped out blindfolds.

  I looked at Q. “Seriously?”

  “The location of the psychiatric facility is classified,” Q said. “Or did you think you were just going to saunter onto a high level government premises?”

  I sighed, and we allowed ourselves to be blindfolded. Someone guided me onto the hover carrier, and soon, I felt the carrier lifting off.

  We touched down after what felt like an eternity. When my blindfold was taken off, the light of a dozen or so floodlights hit my eyes with a vengeance. I could hardly see anything, so I simply tried to follow the silhouettes in front of me.

  As we walked, Q talked. “Our facility is fitted with state of the art bio-mana dissipaters, mostly to render all non-artificial mana manipulation impossible. The dissipaters are quite powerful so don’t be alarmed if you feel a bit lightheaded when we step in.”

  I followed the silhouettes through two gates, and a revolving door. Sure enough, the moment I stepped in, a slight wooziness overcame me. I had to stop to take a few deep breaths.

  Now, we were in a whitewashed corridor. I looked to my left to see Crawer and Dr. Starr with me. They looked just as dazed by the intensity of the light.

  “Come on,” Q said.

  He led us to a metal detector manned by three security guards, and tapped on an empty container. “Drop your weapons, cell-comms, and any metals, or mana conducting articles here.”

  We complied.

  Crawer was the first to walk through the detector. It whined.

  Q pointed at his shoes. There were tiny buckles on the sides.

  Sighing, he went around, dropped his shoes in the container, and tried walking through the detector again.

  It whined.

  Crawer checked his pockets again, and found one stray coin. He tried the detector. This time he passed.

  I was next. The detector whined on my first try. I went back around, and pulled a pin out of my hair. I tried the detector again.

  It whined.

  I gritted my teeth. I went around the detector, and checked myself for more metals. After failing to find anything else, I tried the detector again.

  It whined.

  I lifted my hands in exasperation. “I don’t have any more metal on me.”

  “Do you have any body piercing?” Q asked, calmly. “Or perhaps, underwear with wire support?”

  I glared. Then, reaching into the back of my shirt, I unclasped my bra, and yanked it out. I tossed it into the container, and tried the detector again. It let me through without a sound.

  Finally, Dr. Starr stepped through the detector. She passed quietly.

  “Nothing in the container can be taken beyond this point. You can take your possessions when you’re leaving,” one of the guards said.

  Dr. Starr looked distressed. “What about my glasses?”

  “They’re in the container, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, just give the woman her damn glasses back,” Crawer snapped.

  The guard looked at Q. Q sighed, and waved a hand. Dr. Starr got her glasses back. “Thank you,” she whispered to us.

  “You stuck with us back on that rooftop,” Crawer whispered back. “Least we can do is make sure you can actually see your boyfriend.”

  The doctor looked embarrassed by the term ‘boyfriend’, but she smiled.

  We followed Q to a lift that transported us several floors underground. Then we walked down another corridor, and entered a plain white room with one table and four chairs.

  “Sit,” Q said. “King will be brought in shortly.” He stepped out of the room, leaving me, Crawer, and Dr. Starr on our own.

  We took seats.

  “This doesn’t feel like the build-up to a torture movie scene at all,” Crawer muttered.

  “Stop it,” I whispered back, because he was making me nervous.

  We waited patiently for a while. And then, not so patiently.

  I was chewing on my third nail, when a portion of the opposite wall popped outward, and slid away to the side.

  Eight heavily armoured soldiers marched into the room, and took positions along the walls: two on every side. They had blaster rifles.

  There was a chorus of arming weapons, and every blaster was trained on the door in the wall. Soon afterwards, a dark skinned man was escorted into the room. He had a disaster of silver hair on his head, a thick, bushy beard, and the brightest, golden eyes I had ever seen on another Ruby. The man was in a straitjacket, and he had a guard on either flank. But that was not what got my attention.

  “Sol!” Dr. Starr cried, standing up.

  Now, I knew why we were at a classified location; why there was so much security getting in; why there were eight blasters trained on this Ruby in a
straightjacket. I could see on his neck, above his collar: the dark, intricate markings of rubriq.

  Sol King wasn’t just any ex-intelligence agent.

  Sol King was a black-blood.

  CHAPTER 19

  The air got considerably heavier, as King took his seat.

  I watched Dr. Starr. She was holding back tears, clearly resisting the urge to reach across the table and touch King.

  Then, I looked at King, and my stomach turned.

  He was staring at me.

  “Introduce us,” Crawer whispered.

  I swallowed. “Mister King, I am Detective Arra Everglade, and this is Sergeant Reeth Crawer. You obviously know Dr. Starr.”

  “How are you?” Dr. Starr was asking King. “Are you alright? Are they treating you well?”

  For the first time, King looked at his doctor, and gave her a small smile. “I’m fine.” Then, he returned his gaze to me.

  I felt awkward, but Dr. Starr didn’t seem to mind the obvious lack of attention being afforded her. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help saying, “You haven’t seen Dr. Starr in five years. Maybe you want a moment to talk?”

  King spared his teary eyed doctor another glance. She had placed her glasses on the table, and was now wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. He smiled—wider this time—before turning back to me. “I’ll be fine.”

  I felt a mixture of confusion and dislike. “Fine,” I said. “I don’t know if you have already been briefed on the reason for our coming.”

  He nodded. “I have.”

  “Here is how this works: if you cooperate, and if we successfully locate the Ripper, you get your freedom. Waste our time, or provide false information, and we leave you here to rot. Do you understand what I just said?”

  He smirked, and nodded.

  “Say it,” I insisted.