by James Knapp
“This is a mistake …” I heard him whisper.
Behind them, I caught a glimpse of a woman, a skinny woman about my height, with her hair in a bun, but she was in shadow.
“Who are—”
She turned her head to look back over her shoulder, and when she did, I could just make out some kind of tattoo that circled her scrawny neck.There was a ring-shaped scar there, where her jugular stuck out. Against the dim light behind her, her profile had a big, beaklike nose….
I woke with a start and my eyes opened. The green room and everyone in it were gone. Something was beeping.
“Damn it,” I whispered.
I was on the monorail, leaning against the window. The car was packed, and there were bodies all around me, damp from the rain and murmuring on cell phones or getting work in during the commute. A fat man in an overcoat formed a barrier to my left, leaving me in my own little world as I watched rain streak across the plastic and the city sprawl by outside. In the distance, the CMC Tower rose like a giant needle out of the fog.
The beeping sound came again, and I realized it was my phone reminding me to take my medication. The fat man glanced at me as I fished out my cell and shut off the alarm.
Mornings were when I still got the strongest urge. I thought it would be at night, but it wasn’t. It was when I first woke up, then for the rest of the morning. I held my hand out of view of the guy next to me and watched it for a minute. The fingers shook, just a little, not like before. I still missed it, though. I kept waiting for the day to come when I stopped missing it, but it never seemed to come.
I reached into my coat pocket and found one of the pill tabs. I pushed the chewable tablet through the foil and into my palm, and then popped it in my mouth. They were minty, but had a real bitter aftertaste. When I swallowed, it left a medicine taste on my tongue. That was one. I was supposed to take them three times a day.
The medication helped, that was for sure. Nico got me on a program, which I pretty much agreed to try only because he said I couldn’t come back to the FBI until I did. I didn’t think it would work, but whatever was in the tablets, it took the edge right off. When I woke up in the morning, I didn’t feel sick until I could get a drink. My hands stopped shaking so much, and I could go longer and longer without needing one. I still wanted it, but that sick feeling, and all the shaking and sweating and heart pounding, stopped. I hadn’t thrown up in almost six months.
I snorted. There was something to be proud of; a whole six months without ending up facedown in the toilet. In return, all I had to put up with was no appetite and hideous cramps.
The city is going to burn.
I hadn’t had that particular vision in a while, and I didn’t miss it. In general, the visions hadn’t been nearly as vivid since I stopped drinking, so there was that too in the plus column.
The problem was that the chemicals took only the physical edge off. They couldn’t change the fact that being sober was horrible.
My phone vibrated in my hand—a text from Karen, my downstairs neighbor. I opened the chat portal and read her message:
Missed you this morning.
I typed back a response: Sorry, had to run. Work needed me early.
That was partly true. I was supposed to meet Nico and he did have something he wanted me to do, but I didn’t even know what that was yet. I could have stopped by, but I’d kind of been avoiding her in the morning because I knew Ted was back. Her eyes had that look they got whenever her on-again, off-again asshole boyfriend was back on again. She didn’t want to say it because she knew I’d be pissed, and she was right.
Want to meet for lunch? She asked.
Sure.
We made a point of getting together to do that at least once a week, but that had tapered off a little too. Ted didn’t like me, and so he didn’t like her hanging around with me.
Sorry I’ve been MIA, she said.
I sighed, and decided to cut to the chase. I know he’s back.
She went idle for a long time.
You don’t have to say anything. I know.
He’s a complete jerk.
You don’t understand.
She had that right. Whatever she saw in that guy, I totally did not understand. Whatever it was, though, she was really stuck on him. She actually got mad when I insulted him.
It’s none of my business, I said. There wasn’t anything I could do, not really. From the sound of it down there, at least she was seeing some action, which was more than I could say for myself.
Let’s not talk about that, she said.
Fine.
Meet in Federal Square at noon?
Noon.
She signed off. I put my phone away and looked back out the window.
Ted is bad news. I should just make her dump him. I’d thought about that, but honestly, I was a little afraid of what he might do if she did. I could make him dump her instead, but then she might know I had something to do with that, and she’d never forgive me for it.
I could make her forget, though….
I’d thought that before too, but I wasn’t ready to do that. Not yet.
The train stopped at the Federal Square station and I followed the rest of the bodies out into the rain, then down off the platform. It was a cold, windy walk to the Federal Building, and by the time I got there, my jacket was soaked. In the smoked glass at the entrance, I saw my hair had frizzed.
When I went through the guard post, I was surprised to see Nico across the lobby. He stepped out of the elevator and started crossing the big seal imprinted in the marble floor, heading for the front entrance. I was supposed to be meeting him there, but he had his coat on. He was leaving.
He almost blew right past me before he saw me, and I didn’t need any special ability to know he’d already forgotten our meeting.
“Zoe,” he said. I sensed something from him, something that came off him like a high-pitched whine.
I focused on him, and the room grew brighter as a swirl of colors phased in over the crowd of heads moving through the lobby. I concentrated, letting the rest fade into the background while bringing Nico’s forward. There were red and orange there, arcing and spiking under a shell of calm. Something was wrong.
I couldn’t control Nico anymore…. Two years back something happened to him, and I never found out what, but it left a sort of hole in him. When I focused on him, I could still see his colors and I could still read them, but that was all. When I tried to push him or change those colors, it didn’t work. He tricked me a couple times when he knew it was coming, but he couldn’t hide everything, at least not from me. When I really burrowed down, it was like behind the moving lights there was a dark hole, and if I pushed too hard, I would push through into nothing but darkness. No matter what I tried or how gently I approached him, I always ended up in that dark spot where I couldn’t change anything.
It didn’t work on him anymore, but he could tell when I was trying to do it. He raised his eyebrows and I backed off, letting the colors disappear and the light go back to normal. I got a good look at his face for the first time, then. He looked like he’d been in a fight.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It’s a long story, Zoe, and I’m sorry, but I’ve got to run. I need you to do me a favor while I’m gone.”
Whenever Nico said “favor” he really meant he wanted me to use my ability on someone. He usually wanted to keep that quiet. I was getting annoyed.
“Yeah, I kept it ‘under my hat,’ just like you said. What kind of favor?”
“We uncovered something in a raid last night,” he said. “Something big.”
“What favor?” I asked again, raising my voice a little.
“There were two surviving witnesses,” he said. “I need you to talk to both of them—”
“Two?” There went my lunch date with Karen.
“The first one is happening now,” he said. “You’ll need to get up there. We’ve got a suspect shot in a raid who’s about to
be questioned. He could know something vital to—”
“Now?”
“Yes. Vesco and the others know you might be coming, so just go in—”
“You’re not going to be there?” The whole thing was starting to stress me out. Vesco hated me; he thought I was a joke. They all thought I was a joke. Nico always kept the rest of them off me, and even then sometimes I was so nervous I could barely do anything. Working for him at the FBI was his idea in the first place. Now he was just ditching me?
“Zoe, please,” he said, pulling me aside. “This is very important. I had meant to be with you, but I think a friend of mine is in trouble and I have to check it out. Please do this for me.”
I could tell something was really bothering him. He didn’t say who the friend was or what kind of trouble he was in, but something was really bothering him.
“Fine,” I said.
“Thank you. They’re upstairs now. Here.”
He handed me a folded piece of paper with a series of questions on it. He usually did that, so I could include them in my “notes” and it didn’t look like he was telling me what to ask once we got inside. To me, though, they had started to look like grocery lists, things I was supposed to pick up for him and bring back.
I didn’t say that. I just folded the paper in my hands.
“The second part might be trickier,” he said, “but get it if you can.”
“Fine.”
“I have to go.”
“Fine.”
I watched his mind shift gears as he walked past me and out through the glass door. He shielded himself from the rain as a gust of wind made his overcoat flap around him.
I checked the paper he’d given me and got the name of the interrogation room, then took the elevator up.
It was true; they were expecting me, sort of. I could hear Vesco talking as I approached the doorway, and a couple other people inside with him.
“…that creepy redhead,” I heard him say. Someone chuckled.
“I don’t know why Noakes allows this shit,” someone else said. “There’s more to that story, I’ll bet.”
“You think Wachalowski hits that?” Vesco asked, and two men laughed. My face got hot.
“Can it, you two,” I heard a woman’s voice say. And then I was through the door, and everyone shut up.
There were three people in the room, and through a one-way glass panel I could see a fourth sitting in the interrogation room. Vesco was there, a smirk still on his obnoxious face, and some other guy I’d never seen who had to be the one who laughed.
The third person was a round-faced Asian woman with short, straight hair. Like the two men, she wore a dark suit and even wore a tie that somehow looked right on her. Before the other two could say anything, she stepped forward and offered her hand.
“My name is Alice Hsieh,” she said, as I shook the offered hand briefly. “Agent Wachalowski said you might be joining us. This is Agent Ves—”
“I know who he is.” Heat was coming up from under my collar. I knew my face was totally red. I felt completely humiliated.
“Then if you’ll join us in the—”
“I’ll talk to him alone,” I said. I’d just interrupted her twice, but I didn’t care. Vesco got ready to say something, and I swore—right then I swore—that if he started in on me, I’d make him shut up, no matter who saw.
I didn’t have to, though. The woman, Alice, made him shut up instead.
“That will be fine,” she said.
“Like hell,” Vesco said. Alice didn’t raise her voice, but her eyes turned serious.
“Are you contradicting me?” she asked. The look on Vesco’s face, and his friend’s face, left no question as to who in the room was in charge. He was angry, but he pressed his lips together.
“No, ma’am,” he said. Alice turned back to me.
“You’re on.”
I walked past Vesco, and took some satisfaction in the anger I could sense coming off him. The interrogation room was cold, like they usually kept it, and a man sat in a wheelchair across the table from me, almost shivering. I took out my notebook, and smoothed the paper Nico had given me over the open page, keeping it out of view.
“Who are you?” the man asked. His face was sweaty, in spite of his slight shiver. He had a tube under his nose, and a few more stuck out from inside his robe. According to Nico’s notes, his name was Franco Reese, and he’d been shot in the side not even twenty-four hours earlier.
“Never mind who I am,” I said. “I’m going to ask you some questions.”
“I’m not saying anything without my—”
His voice trailed off as the room brightened around me, and the colors appeared around his head. Over the past two years, I’d gotten better at doing what I did. I didn’t have to get close anymore or tell him to go to sleep. Most people didn’t even need to be totally under for me to get them to tell me what I wanted to know, and it was less obvious that way.
“Just take it easy, Mr. Reese,” I said.
I eased the colors back into a cold, calm blue, and watched his face relax.
“I just have a few questions. Will you cooperate?”
“Sure,” he breathed, settling back into the wheelchair.
I risked a glance back toward the glass panel that separated the rooms. It was a one-way mirror, so I couldn’t actually see the people on the other side, but I could sense them to the point that I knew where they were standing. Vesco and his friend were together, back toward the far wall. The woman, Alice, was standing directly in front of the glass, watching me. Her mind was calm and interested, but not suspicious. I looked back to Nico’s list.
“Did you smuggle in the twelve devices?” I asked. The paper didn’t say what kind of devices they were.
“Yes.”
“Was Holst your original contact?”
“No,” he said, “but the guy who set up the deal and the one who did the pickup were supposed to be two different people. I knew that.”
“So you were expecting Holst?”
“I didn’t know who I was expecting. The guy who set it up supplied a cipher. The pickup man provided the key. They also had the money. Everything was in order.”
“So nothing seemed strange about the deal?”
Reese’s brow twitched. “One thing,” he said.
“Tell me.”
“The buyer wanted the revivors too.The two that came to make the pickup didn’t say anything about that.”
“No?”
“No. That blond bitch, especially. She looked put off by the whole thing. Next thing I know, the goddamn Feds are busting down the doors, so I figured it was a sting; the bitch and her pervert friend were undercover. I go downstairs to take care of her, and she starts shooting.”
“You didn’t see where the case ended up?”
That actually seemed to excite him a little. An electric white began to course under the cool blue that surrounded him.
“I thought you had it,” he said. He didn’t know.
“Did the buyer say what the targets were?” I asked.
“Just that they were big.”
“Big?”
“At least three large-scale urban targets,” he said. It took me a minute to realize what it was that he was saying.
“They’re going to blow something up?” I asked.
“What the hell else do you do with a nu—”
“The nature of the case’s contents is classified,” a voice snapped over the intercom, loud enough to cut the man off, but it was too late. I knew what he was going to say. He had a weird look on his face, a sort of excitement in his eyes, even despite being under. Whatever was going to happen, he wanted it to happen.
The city is going to burn. That’s what the dead woman said. Was this what she meant?
“Okay,” I said weakly. My heart had started to pound. “That’s all.”
“You can’t stop it now,” he said. “Change is coming, and you can’t—”
“Shut u
p,” I said, and he did.
I looked at the bottom of the paper Nico had given me, and it seemed to be turning in a slow circle in front of me. There were a few more questions he wanted asked that I was not expecting. Normally I think I would have chickened out, but I was still reeling from what I’d heard. I barely thought about it when I called back into the next room.
“Agent Vesco, can you come in here for a second?” I called back. “The rest of you can go if you want. I’m done with him for now.”
The door opened and Vesco came in. He looked at me like I was an idiot.
“He’s lying, Ott,” he said. “If interrogation was that easy, anyone could do it. That case is worth millions; he knows where it is. They would have had a route set up to carry it back underground in the event they got busted.”
“He’s not lying.”
“So you ask him a question, and just accept the first thing that comes out of his mouth? He’s a black market- arms dealer sitting inside the Federal Building; he’ll say whatever he—”
“He’s not lying. Shut up,” I said, and he did. His face went slack, but not too slack. I was careful not to push him too hard.
“Come closer,” I said. “Sit down next to me.” He did, and I leaned closer, to whisper in his ear.
“Did you know Holst and Takanawa would be in the hotel?” I asked. He whispered the answer in my ear.
“Yes.”
“What were you told?”
“Not to process them. To let them leave with the case, and then report that it was never at the site. To keep Wachalowski out of it.”
“Who told you that?” I asked. He paused.
“I don’t remember.”
“Why did you agree to go along with that?”
“I …don’t remember.”
He wasn’t lying. He couldn’t be, not to me.
“That’s all,” I said, and let him go. I folded the paper and stuffed it in my pocket. Vesco blinked and looked confused for a second before he got up and walked out without saying another word.
Jerk, I thought. The door closed behind him. I could sense his presence as he passed by the one-way mirror, and back out into the hall. His friend had already gone, but the other presence, the woman named Alice Hsieh, was still there. She was still standing near the glass, watching me. Her mind was still calm and curious.
