by James Knapp
I focused on her and the lights surged brighter, the colors draining away. She looked surprised for just a second.
“There,” she said, pointing at my face. “That’s …”
Her finger stopped, hanging there. The aura around her head was blue and red, licking out curiously. I pushed it back.
“I can’t change what’s going to happen to you,” I told her. She didn’t say anything; she just stood there, her eyelids drooping a bit. For a minute I thought about trying to give her the idea to dump the stupid ox, but there wasn’t anything I could do. He had his hooks into her way deeper than I ever could, and nothing I did could change anything anyway.
He’d kill her eventually. It wasn’t my fault.
“Thanks for the cookies,” I said, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about. You have things to do. You should go do them.”
“Yeah,” she said slowly, and smiled. “I just wanted to swing by and say thanks. I’d better get going.”
“Bye.”
She turned and walked away, and I was just in the process of snapping the door shut when someone spoke to my right.
“It’s unfortunate.”
When I looked over, an older guy with red hair and a red beard was standing in the doorway of the apartment next to mine.
“Unfortunate?”
“That girl.”
Who was this guy? Why was he talking to me?
“Do you take care of the old woman?” I asked.
“The previous tenant passed away,” the man said, smiling gently. “Over a month ago. I am your new neighbor.”
Really?
“Oh. So, why is it unfortunate?”
“It’s unfortunate you choose to waste your time on someone who doesn’t want to be helped.”
A few different responses came to mind, and later I thought up some better ones, but what came out was less biting than I’d hoped.
“Whatever, jerk.”
He was talking, I think, when I shut the door and locked it. Who did he think he was anyway? My time was mine to waste on whatever I wanted.
I put the box on the counter and went back into the bedroom. Cookies. Why the hell did she go and do that? What was I supposed to say? Why did she even stay with him, and why did she have to just stand there looking like she did when I went down there?
I took the bottle off the nightstand, uncapped it, and took a swig. It burned going down and hit my stomach like a brick. I took two more swallows and put it back. Drinking when I first got up wasn’t a good idea, but the whole thing had me totally on edge.
There was a glass on the floor next to the bed, half full of water. I picked it up and took a gulp; it was warm and it tasted terrible, but it soothed my throat a little. I put the glass on the nightstand next to the bottle. I really needed to brush my teeth.
She was just trying to be nice.
“I know,” I said out loud.
The thing was, though, she was wrong. He hadn’t gotten better since I started interfering; that was just wishful thinking. Sometimes I wondered if he had gotten worse. Maybe I could calm him down, but I couldn’t change who he was and I could feel him getting worse, struggling to fill the gaps I’d created.
I made my way into the bathroom and grabbed my toothbrush out of the sink, dunking it in the mouthwash before scrubbing my teeth halfheartedly. That’s when I noticed the needle-head.
She was sitting on the toilet with her elbows on her knees and her head bowed. As usual, the skin had been peeled away in two big flaps right down the back of her skull and neck, where the white dome of her skull poked out. A big hole had been cut through the bone and a bunch of long, thin probes were sticking out of her brain. She rolled one eye up at me, watching as I chewed on the toothbrush bristles. Under the eye were three little star tattoos.
“It’s about time,” she said. The needle- heads never responded, so I didn’t say anything; I just kept brushing.
“He will lead you to us,” she said, “and you …you will end my pain.”
There was no way to know who they were, if they were even anyone at all, but one thing they all had in common was they always called for help. They never said where they might be. Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe I was just crazy. I kind of hoped I was.
When I was done brushing my teeth, I spit in the sink and then left her in there.
“Go to him when he calls,” she said, as I walked away and slammed the door on her. I plodded back into the bedroom and crawled under the covers.
The first time I saw something like that, I thought I’d gone nuts. It freaked me out so badly I didn’t sleep for two whole days, and that just made it worse. When I got my first period, I thought it was a hallucination. When my father came to me one night in a dream and began to flatten to bloody pulp from his toes up, I told myself that’s all it was …a dream.
I pulled the covers over my head, leaving just my nose sticking out so I could breathe. The problem was there was a lot of daylight left and nothing to do to fill it. I didn’t want to see or hear anything anymore, I didn’t want to talk to the woman from downstairs, and I wasn’t tired enough to sleep. I just wanted to shut my mind off. Just for a few days, or even just a few hours.
When I got up to puke an hour later, the woman was gone from the toilet. I sat there, my forehead on the back of one hand and my face hanging over the cloudy water, and promised my reflection that I would go to him when he called, whoever he was, if they would leave me alone. If they would do that, then even if he was the devil himself, I would go to him.
Nico Wachalowski—East Concord Yard
The fire was out by the time I got there, and the local police had cordoned off the scene. Even so, the whole area was mobbed, with people pushing up against the perimeter and trying to get images. I had to flash my blues just to get them to grudgingly move out of the way enough for me to park on the sidewalk, but they crowded me on my way out. I held up my badge, pushing through.
“Federal agent; stand aside.”
Bodies were clustered at the edge of the scene, shoulder to shoulder and leaning forward to get a better view. Handheld cameras, phone cameras, and tons of others fitted into palm tablets, pens, and anywhere else they could be squeezed stood out under the electronics scan. At least five people within spitting distance had them implanted behind the eyes, like the kid who got gunned down on the dock, and a helicopter was passing by overhead. Every move was being watched and recorded from every angle.
“Agent?”
One of the police officers was approaching from the direction of the burnt-out truck. He waved me over.
“Agent Wachalowski?”
I nodded.
“The fire’s completely out and the remains of the vehicle have been screened for radiation and tox,” he said. “It’s safe to go inside, when you’re ready.”
“Thanks.”
There was a body at my feet. Its pretty face was burnt and most of its hair had been singed away, but I could tell it was the revivor from the bathroom. Its bare legs were sprawled in the light dusting of snow, black toes pointed up at the sky. A trail, two heel marks, snaked from where the body lay back to the truck. It had been dragged there.
“Put a blanket on her,” I said.
The officer nodded and hustled off.
Kneeling down for a closer look, I could see that whatever burnt her had come from in front of her; the left arm and shoulder got it the worst, along with the tops of the thighs. She had been partially behind something, or more likely someone, when the flames hit.
The left hand had been burnt down to the bone, the two smallest fingers gone completely. The body hadn’t been on fire when it came out, and unlike the others, it was pulled away from the flames. This wasn’t a bomb or a grenade, then. There were no shrapnel marks, and no sign of gelatinized gas or other propellant. It had been hit with a sustained blast of something hot enough to carbonize muscle and bone. A directed blast. Not the type of weapon you normally saw on the street.
> The fire department had managed to put out the truck, and it sat in the middle of the parking lot, leaning to one side where the tires had blown out. The crowd had left behind chaotic trails of many footprints, but as I mapped them, one set in particular stood out; a pair of shoe prints that were near the body. Unlike the others, they didn’t move much, and they’d gotten there early, because a lot of them had been walked over. The soles were large, definitely a man’s. They stuck near the truck before moving closer to the body than any of the others. Whoever made them would have been standing very close to where Faye had knelt. He would have been right next to her.
A call forced its way in. It was Noakes.
Wachalowski.
I’m here.
Where are you?
You know where I am. I’m at the truck site.
Bringing up the various feeds that had made their way onto the wire, I filtered through them, watching Faye in a blur of overlapped images as she knelt by the revivor. In none of the shots was there anyone standing in the spot where the footprints were.
When I picked up the message, the last voice I ever expected to hear was hers. All I wanted to do was put the case behind me, but when I heard her voice …I don’t know. I changed my mind.
I thought you were taking some downtime.
I didn’t put in for any.
If you need to be off this case, then say it.
In a little window, framed in my field of vision next to the burned body, someone had zoomed right in on Faye’s face. She wore no makeup and a masculine suit, but Faye Dasalia would never be mistaken for a man. I froze the image of her face, noting how her blond hair was shorter and her cheeks were more drawn, but how good it still was to see her. She looked tired, but her eyes were sharp. Her full lips were turned down at the corners, like they did when she was troubled.
I caught myself lingering, and closed the image. She had held the revivor in her arms like it was a human. She held it like a child. When she looked at it, there were almost tears in her eyes.
I think I need to be on this case.
It’s your call.
I approached the vehicle, but it didn’t look like there were any survivors. It was completely gutted, the back doors hanging open. I flashed my badge at the cops.
“Agent Wachalowski,” I said. “Who’s in charge?”
“Detective Hamilton,” a man in a suit said, stepping forward and shaking my hand.
“What about Dasalia?”
“She’s up to her neck in bullshit, chasing bodies,” he said. “She tip you?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know she had a contact at the bureau.”
“Where is she now?”
“She got a fresh one just this morning. If I had to guess, she’s at the scene.”
“I’d like to speak with her; can you let me know how she can be reached?”
“Sure.”
He peeled a card out of his wallet and jotted a number on the back.
“That’s her,” he said handing it to me.
“Thanks.”
I looked at the back doors of the truck and saw a set of keys still dangling from the lock.
“Were those keys like that when the truck was found?” I asked.
“Yes.”
The inside of the truck looked worse than the outside; blackened bodies sat opposite each other facing in, covered in soot. Their heads were bowed as if in prayer, and the parts of them that were exposed to the outside were burned down to the bone; skulls, arms, hands, rib cages, everything. I prodded one of the ones closest to the exit and its index finger crumbled and snapped away like charcoal.
The ones farther back fared a little better, but not much. They were all inanimate, there was no question. I did a head count, and including the one found outside the truck, they were all accounted for.
All the way in the back were the only fresh corpses in the bunch: Tai and his men. None of them looked like they struggled.
I ran the backscatter filter as I scanned the bodies, adjusting it until I could see behind the remaining flesh and bones. A handful of foreign objects stood out, but all I found were fillings and leftover surgical staples. The revivor components near the base of each skull were ruined; the heat had caused the fluid in them to expand and split them apart. Hopefully, the girl who made it out of the truck had fared better.
I crouched down, my knee grinding into the soot, and checked the floor. I didn’t see any shell casings anywhere, so none of them had been shot. They were burned alive. In a sense anyway.
The only casings I could find were two on the pavement outside the cab. I didn’t recognize the agents inside, but unlike the passengers, they’d been killed beforehand. Each had been shot in the head before the inside was burned out.
No one ever meant to spring Tai. They wanted him, his men, and his inventory destroyed. They wanted it badly enough to attack right in the open, and they managed it on short notice. Even the revivor from the dock had been targeted.
Noakes.
Go ahead, Agent.
This wasn’t an associate trying to spring him or a rival trying to steal his inventory. This is someone who wanted to destroy every trace of his business with Tai.
You’re sure?
Tai kept records of what was coming in where, and whom the product was lined up for. He did that for everything except for the weapons and the heavy revivors; there was no mention of any of that in the files we recovered.
He had a customer we didn’t know about. The one he brought in the weapons and the military-grade revivors for. We may have uncovered a real rat’s nest.
Any ideas as to who?
Not yet.
Keep me informed. By the way, you got a message last night.
A message?
An image file arrived, and I opened it. It showed what looked like a business card, with the front displayed on the left and the back on the right.
Someone left that for you last night. It was stuck to the front entrance this morning.
It was the size and shape of a business card, but the print wasn’t quite straight. On the front was just a name: ZOE OTT. On the back was a messy handwritten scrawl that said AGENT WACHALOWSKI, I CAN HELPYOU, along with a number. In the bottom right corner was a doodle of a little waveform that looked exactly like a revivor heart signature. It had been traced over several times.
When was it left?
Camera twenty-three picked it up around three a.m.
I tapped into the security feed and brought up the image, relegating it to a window in my lower peripheral. The camera was pointed at the front doorway of the building. Scanning forward until shortly after three in the morning, I saw a figure step into frame. It was a small person, a woman or maybe even a kid; it was hard to tell because it was wearing a large overstuffed parka and a thick wool cap. The figure stopped with its back to the camera, swaying a bit as it watched the door. After a moment, the person stumbled forward on a pair of skinny legs and wobbled up to the door, clearly drunk.
I watched as a pair of gloved hands stuck the card to the window of the door; then the figure turned to look around, and I could see it was a young woman. She looked back at the card to make sure it was still there, then climbed back down the stairs and moved out of frame.
She come back?
No. Friend of yours?
Never seen her before. Who is she?
Some third. Father died in an industrial accident. She’s living off the settlement, if you could call it that.
The smell near the truck was starting to get to me. I took a look at the revivor lying on the ground, now under a wool blanket. The components inside looked a little better than the others, but they didn’t survive either.
Bring her in, Noakes said.
Sean got tasked with the autopsy of the dock revivor, but it had been a long time since he worked on one. Revivors were kept on ice when they were in the country, in case of public emergency, to round out National Guard numbers. They were onl
y shipped out of the country, never in, except by black marketers like Tai. Finding useful information about them was going to mean going to the source: Heinlein Industries, the company that developed and built them. Since they were the country’s largest government contractor and highly political, that was going to make a lot of people nervous, but it couldn’t be helped. Smuggling a revivor into the country was not an easy thing to do, and someone who was able to manage it needed a lot of underworld contacts that put him at huge personal risk. That kind of service was expensive; no one spent that kind of money for nothing. Revivors and guns equaled one thing.
Someone out there meant to stir up some trouble.
3
Sub Rosa
Faye Dasalia—Shopping District
When I arrived at the scene, the car had been taped off and the driver’s-side door was hanging open. The sun had started to melt some of the snow that was covering the windshield, and I could see the woman’s stark white face through the gap. Shanks was standing by the car, holding two paper cups with steam coming off them.
“You’ve got something on you,” he said, pointing to my sleeve. I looked down and saw a series of reddish-black splotches smeared near my cuff; blood from the revivor. It had taken some scrubbing to get it off my hands, and I still couldn’t get rid of that tar smell.
“Footage of the truck fire is streaming everywhere,” he said, handing me one of the cups. “That was a hell of a thing.”
“Yeah.”
“You actually touched one, huh?” he asked.
“What was left of it.”
“What was it like?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that, mostly because I wasn’t exactly sure how the whole thing had made me feel. I didn’t want to think about the revivor. I didn’t want to think about the fire or the call I made. Wachalowski hadn’t been there. They said he was in the field and wouldn’t forward the call. I had to settle for his office voice mail, leaving the information and asking him to call me. Now I wished I could take the last part back.
“Are you okay?” Shanks asked.
