The BETA Agency

by Maxwell Coffie

  I couldn’t help laughing. “No.”

  Evon grinned. “My point is: I would have followed you down muck and back. Choosing to help with you with Ripper case was my decision. And I made it because I loved you. I trusted you. You were my partner. You were my best friend.”

  I started to say something, and then, I didn’t.

  “Taking the blame for what happened to me insults the bond we shared, Arra.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Eventually, I murmured, “I don’t know what’s worse: that what you’re saying is obviously an echo of my own sub-conscious, or that it actually makes me feel better.”

  “You’re going to be alright, Arra.”

  I stared at her. “I miss you.”

  She smiled. “I know.”

  As she uttered those words, she came to me, and put her arms around me. I whispered into her ear: “I’m going to find the man who took you from me, and I’m going to make him pay.”

  “Do me a favour, love,” she whispered back. “Don’t.”

  When Kattie returned, Evon was gone.

  “The doctor is on his way,” Kattie said. She came over to stand beside me. She regarded me for a moment, and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” I asked.

  “That I wasn’t there when it happened. I tried to pay attention to you—I really did. But I must’ve missed the signs somehow.”

  “Signs? What’re you talking about?”

  She sat on my bed. “Signs that you were suicidal.”

  I was stumped. “Huh?” I reached out to hold her hand. I couldn’t. I was tied to the bedposts. “Wait, why am I restrained?”

  “The doctors felt it would be wiser,” Kattie said.

  “Wiser? Why?”

  “So you can’t hurt yourself anymore.”

  “Hurt myself? What in Light’s name are you talking about? Is this some kind of joke?”

  A doctor walked into the room, with a healer in tow. “Good morning, Arra. I’m Dr. Bludden,” he said. “Chief Healer here at the psyche department.”

  “Why am I chained to my bed?” I asked.

  The doctor’s smile was taut. “We have a strict policy concerning um, patients such as yourself.”

  “Patients such as myself? What does that mean? Rubies?”

  “No,” he said, and took a deep breath. “Suicidal patients.”

  I was too confounded to speak.

  “We found the Schlaphorbin pills, Arra,” Kattie said. “In your bathroom, and in your blood.”

  I groaned. “I take one occasionally. Sometimes two, sure. But only because I genuinely have trouble sleeping. I’ve had difficulty falling asleep ever since my mother died. It doesn’t mean that I abuse them. And it certainly doesn’t mean that I tried to take my own life with them. That’s just pitch-muck.”

  “Calm down, Arra,” Dr. Bludden said. “You have no reason to be ashamed.”

  “You calm down!” I snapped. “And you’re damn right I have no reason to be ashamed. Because I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I need you to calm down, Miss Everglade.” The doctor’s voice was sterner now.

  I opened my mouth to say something, and then stopped, fuming. The healer had folded her arms, and pursed her lips. Even Katrice couldn’t look at me.

  “You say you don’t abuse your sleeping pills, but other than the fact that they’re in your possession illegally, enforcers found your bathroom littered with them.”

  “So?” I said. “I spilled them. I was going to clean them up.”

  “You had three times the recommended dosage in your blood stream,” he added. “You were found passed out in your living room, with a blaster in your hand.”

  “I was under attack!” I cried. “I had a very dangerous suspect right in my house!”

  Dr. Bludden threw Katrice a questioning look.

  “Don’t look at her,” I snapped. “She doesn’t know who I’m talking about. She’s just a kid.”

  “DEB didn’t show any records of a break in, Arra,” Kattie said. “Enforcers checked.”

  “That’s because it was offline for some reason. I think he shut it down somehow.”

  “Arra, it was DEB that called the hospital. It wasn’t offline.”

  Now, I was furious. Or maybe, I was just really, really scared. “You’re not listening to me. Someone broke into our apartment. Our home! I could’ve been killed! Everyone at the station should be chasing after him! Not tying me down to a light-forsaken muck-ridden bed!”

  “Arra, calm it,” the doctor ordered. “We’re going to have to sedate you if you don’t.”

  But I wasn’t listening. “I’m serious. Get me out of this! Now! Get me out, now! Get me—” I thrashed around a bit. I didn’t know why. Suddenly, my fear was overwhelming me. I needed to get out of here.

  A few things started to fly around the room. I felt my bed lifting. The lights were flickering.

  I was mad.

  Was I doing this?

  I was very mad.

  A crack appeared in the ceiling. My restraints snapped.

  “Get me out,” I roared.

  A lot of things were floating in the air around me: magazines, a handbag, a few of Katrice’s feathers, a cell-comm, shoes, shards of a mirror. I saw a reflection of myself in the one of the shards. There was something on my right check: something dark, and intricate, and plentiful, growing down my neck, and into my hospital gown.

  Rubriq.

  I stopped, stunned. My bed crashed back to the ground, where a dozen healers were waiting for me with tranquilizer syringes. At least three needles found their way into my skin, and the darkness came rushing back almost immediately. The last thing I heard before I slipped away was from one of the healers.

  He said, “Damn black-bloods.”

  CHAPTER 22

  When I woke up again, it was nighttime.

  This time, the first thing I noticed was that my leather restraints had been swapped for chains. I saw Katrice on my right. She was asleep in a small sofa. I noticed a small bruise on Kattie’s left cheek, and I knew I had done that. Self-loathing and confusion hit me simultaneously. I didn’t understand what was happening. Then again, I was heavily medicated.

  I looked on my left. There was a woman sitting in the corner, next to the bedside lamp: Thena Starr.

  “Don’t bother trying to wake your sister,” she said. “Or use the hospital A.I. They won’t respond.”

  “You have some nerve,” I rasped.

  She picked a clipboard from her lap, and read: “Arra Everglade. 23. Blood type Z. Black-blood: beta generation. Reanimated rubriq. Attempted suicide.”

  “You know damn well there was no attempted suicide,” I said.

  “Reanimated rubriq,” she repeated, looking surprised. “Really?”

  I knew what ‘reanimated rubriq’ meant. It was when a black-blood tried to hide their status by surgically removing their rubriq, only to have it burn back to visibility. It didn’t happen often, but it happened.

  So that was what the doctors were saying? That I was a closet black-blood?

  “I never would have pegged you for a coward,” she muttered.

  “I know you did this to me,” I whispered. “You and that monster Sol King. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why. Is it because I tried to investigate his old case? Because I’m off it now. Why, I might never work for the bureau again, thanks to you two.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with that,” she said, clearly annoyed. “Sol wants you back on the team.”

  “He kept saying that. I’m guessing you’re part of this team. Some kind of covert unit?”

  “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” She smiled, but I knew she meant it.

  “Why me? I don’t know him. And he doesn’t know me either.”

  “He thinks he does.” She looked reluctant to continue, but she did. “Do you remember at the holding facility, that he called you by a different name?”

  “Did he? Must’
ve slipped my mind in all the fuss—you almost slitting my throat and all.”

  “Long story short, he thinks you’re somebody else.”

  “No muck.”

  “He won’t attend any briefings, he refuses to take any assignments,” she said. “My director wants it fixed. You’re going to fix it.”

  I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t felt like rubbish. “So you tell jokes.”

  “You just said yourself that you might never work for the bureau again. I don’t disagree. You’re going to need a job. My people pay well.”

  “I’d sooner have a root canal.”

  “You’d have access to more challenging assignments, unlimited resources.” She paused. “The first thing we’re doing is re-opening the Ripper case. You could help us stop him; make sure he never hurts people again.” She paused. “You could take revenge."

  “I’m not looking for revenge,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  She stared at me for a moment, her eyes cold. “Nobody is going to treat you the same now that they know what you are.”

  I stared back at her. “I’ll take my chances.”

  She sighed, like I was stubborn child she was through reasoning with. “If you change your mind,” she said, standing up, “tie something red to your balcony. We’ll be in touch.”

  “Don’t count on it,” I said.

  She left.

  It took a week for them to dismiss me from the hospital. In that time, I did not mention King to anyone again.

  One of the psyche nurses saw me to my apartment, and made sure that I was comfortable. She offered a hundred times to move in and help take care of me, but I didn’t think it was necessary. I also didn’t want to pay the exorbitant price that came with a live-in nurse. I wasn’t disabled, or incapacitated. And anyway, I had Katrice.

  “I am crossing out all secondary social obligations from my schedule this week,” she declared, with her dead eyes. “I shall show you all the necessary love, affection, and attention expected of a little sister.”

  “Well, this isn’t uncomfortable at all,” I joked.

  I noticed that my badge and blasters, both issued and emergency, had been removed from the apartment. But I’d expected that. Enforcers had conducted a sweep after my ‘suicide’ incident.

  I also noticed that Kattie had had DEB upgraded. She wanted the A.I. to be able to detect ‘dangerous’ drops in contentment and enthusiasm. She also wanted DEB to be able to ‘facilitate a positive and pleasurable environment’. And so now, every day, I woke up to a DEB I did not recognize, who blurted sentences in artificially cheery tones that reminded me of a medicated manic.

  “How about DEB’s security features?” I asked, my first day back. “Were they compromised in anyway?”

  “No, her security software was already fully updated,” Kattie told me. “Why?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  I didn’t look in a mirror for three days. On the third day, I finally mustered the courage before an afternoon shower.

  The rubriq was on the right half of my face, covering my right eye, but missing the contours of my nose and lips. It grew down the side of my neck, dominated my shoulder, and came to a roughly bordered stop over my right breast. I must have stared at myself for about an hour. I did not recognize myself. When I finally stepped into the shower, I turned on the water, and crouched in the corner. Then, I cried.

  CHAPTER 23

  I was alone most of every day. I watched comedy shows, and last season’s hoverball matches on the screen. I had not heard from the bureau yet, and I played with the idea of possibly starting a P.I. firm. Otherwise, I tried not to think about anything that wasn’t on the screen. I especially tried not to think about my new body art.

  A week after my return from the hospital, I called Pappy. His surprise was audible; we had not spoken in almost a year.

  “How’s the new family?” I asked. A year, and I still considered them ‘new’.

  “Fine. Margo starts her elementary classes next week. Pai joined his centre’s hoverball team.”

  Margo and Pai were his children, technically my stepsiblings. I didn’t think of them as step-anything.

  “That’s good,” I said. “The wife?”

  “Community college. Mastering Hiti cuisine. How’s Kattie?”

  “Dressing up like birds.”

  “Birds?”

  “The corvus, to be exact.”

  “Oh, the Avian fashion thing?” He chuckled. “Margo is into that too. Except, she’s partial to the serinus.”

  “Ouch, that can’t be easy on the eyes during the day.”

  “I swear, my blood pressure rises every time I see yellow now.”

  We shared an awkward laugh. Then, an awkward silence.

  “So,” he finally said. “You called.”

  “I did.” I paused. “I’m not doing very well.”

  A pause on his end. “Oh?”

  “Evon died.”

  “Oh.” Silence. “I’m so sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  “How are you coping?”

  “Badly,” I admitted. “Kattie is mostly taking care of me.”

  “Oh? Well, that’s Kattie for you.”

  “Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “That’s not all.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “I-I have rubriq. In my skin.”

  There was silence.

  “So,” he finally said. “It reanimated.”

  “Yeah… What? Wait! You knew?”

  Somebody was speaking to Pappy on the other end now. He said something back. Then he returned to me. “Can I call you back?”

  “No, you cannot muckin’ call me back, Pa,” I snapped. “You’re telling me that my whole life I’ve been a black-blood, and you knew, and you want to call me back? Are you flaming kidding me?”

  “Language, Arra! There are children in this house. Oh great, Margo heard you.”

  “I’m on speaker phone? Why am I on speaker phone?”

  “I was making dinner for the kids, but now I’m asking myself the same question.”

  “Am I off now?”

  “You’re off.”

  “Which of you did I inherit the gene from? You? Ma?”

  “Your mother.”

  “Ma?” That took me by surprise.

  “We had your rubriq removed when you were four. And not that bleaching nonsense,” Pappy continued. “The real deal: surgery. We even had you on suppressant drugs, to limit the abilities that came with the gene.”

  “Was that what those gummy pills I chewed every night were? You told me those were vitamins.”

  “Did you stop taking them?”

  “Are you serious right now?” I was incredulous. “I haven’t taken one of those since I was sixteen, and first joined the bureau.”

  “Well, there you go then. But we never really expected you to keep taking them. We knew this wouldn’t stay a secret forever. The doctors warned us that your rubriq might burn back to the surface. Especially if you shared mana with another beta.”

  “Another beta?”

  “Another black-blood.”

  I had heard the term beta before. It was used to classify the all offspring of the first victims of the Syfron experiments. It wasn’t a popular term though. But, I suddenly realized, that it sounded kinder.

  At the same time, I thought about the kiss King had planted on me. Did it count as sharing mana with another beta? Suddenly, things were beginning to make sense.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I said, choking up. “I deserved to know that. Do you have any idea the nightmare my life has become, finding out the way I have? Do you, Pa?”

  “When I married your mother, she was still fresh out of the Rim wars—fresh enough to see the horrors every time she closed her eyes. She understood what it meant to be ostracized, and to suffer pain for being something people feared. When she first insisted on protecting you from the truth, I didn’t argue. I had no right to. Eventually, when you were ten, we discuss
ed telling you the truth again.” He stopped. “But then you know what happened.”

  Mammy got sick. Two years later, she died. I didn’t want to go down that road right now, and I told Pappy so.

  His sigh was long, and tired. “Sweetie,” he finally said. “Your mother isn’t dead.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “She’s um… She’s in a senior centre.”

  Still, I said nothing.

  “The centre’s called the Happy Lodge. It’s on a southern suburban island called Waki-waki. In Hiti.”

  Still: nothing.

  “Arra? Arra, are you there?”

  “Goodbye, Pa.”

  I hung up.

  CHAPTER 24

  I remember when the symptoms first showed. I was eating a sandwich she’d made me, and when she noticed that I was picking out the cattrage chunks, she called me Katrice.

  “Mammy, I’m not Kattie,” I giggled.

  “Of course you are,” she said, and she looked genuinely confused—not like when she was only teasing.

  After that, her mental state had degraded quickly. In a year, she couldn’t find her way around the house. Hospital visits were weekly, then bi-weekly. Eventually, Mammy had been forced to move into the hospital permanently. When they told Kattie and I that our mother was gone, it was easy to accept. Mammy had already died a long time ago.

  The funeral was small. We didn’t have any family other than each other. We didn’t have any friends.

  It made some sense now, why Pappy had dived so readily into a new family after Mammy was gone. It made sense why I had felt the need to move to Crystal Lake with Katrice, to start a new life. Mammy had been the glue that bound us together, but her secrets had also been the tether that tied us down. What did not make sense however, was why Mammy—because I assumed it had not been Pappy’s decision—had bothered to fake a funeral. Had it been so important for Kattie and I to move on, that our mother had rather we thought her dead?