by Vanessa Muir
Charlie let the video play, watched impassively as the victim was mauled by the man with the knife. He leaped atop Absalon, brought him to the ground, plunged the knife into his eye-socket and worked it around. Thankfully, there was no sound. The finger removal took time, the blade blunt as she’d predicted. After, the attacker rose and walked toward the camera, then disappeared underneath it.
“Let’s rewind that,” Charlie said and ran the footage back. She paused it on the man’s face. Tan skin, an Aquiline nose, and a fleshy shaved jawline. His eyes were dark and… blank. Entirely emotionless. “We can assume that he moved to the Memory Bank on the premises from here.”
Nathaniel nodded. He had confirmed earlier that a single folder had been taken from Absalon’s memory bank, but they weren’t allowed access to the room itself. Not even the Councilors’ blessing to investigate the case overrode that. They were still the grunts. And Nathaniel didn’t want them scraping their boots through the sacred annals of Absalon’s mind.
Charlie directed herself toward the widow again. “Mrs. Shamood, do you have any idea who this man might be? Have you seen him around here before, perhaps?”
They needed to establish a motive or at least grasp at a lead to solve this. And to find the missing memory.
“Yes, I know him,” Mrs. Shamood said, and her bottom lip quivered ever so slightly. She lifted her chin. “He was our gardener.”
Once again, an itching started in the back of Charlie’s mind. This didn’t sit right. Why hadn’t Mrs. Shamood cried it out the minute she’d seen the man on the screen? Everyone was different, but some reaction was warranted, at least.
“The gardener?”
“Yes. For our indoor garden next to the memory bank,” Mrs. Shamood continued. “His name is Kegan Bolryder.”
And just like that, they had a positive identification of the suspect. It never came this easy. Not once in the history of her entire SSG career had an answer fallen into her lap. Maybe that was the reason for the suspicion. It felt too easy.
“Kegan Bolryder.”
“That’s him,” she said and rose from the seat. She wafted toward the doorway that led out of the room. “Wait here. I’ll bring you his home address and the contact details I have for him. Please, excuse me a moment.” And then she was gone.
“You’ll have to excuse her,” Nathaniel said. “She’s not feeling very well, given the circumstances. Poor woman woke this morning to find her husband dead.”
But the words did nothing to quash the doubt bubbling through Charlie.
The intrigue was there, the desire to solve the case, but for a different reason this time. Charlie met her father’s gaze and held it.
I’ll find the truth. No matter what.
4
The suspect, Kegan Bolryder, had a home in Corden Prime Delta Sector, about as far from Central as it was possible to get in the big city. Here, the streets were cleaned once a month if the residents were lucky, and sludge ran through the gutters, dark and rust colored. It was run-off from a nearby factory, the smoke of which clogged the air, made it taste foul, almost acrid.
“The sooner we get out of this place, the better,” Eli said as they stepped out onto the sidewalk. He stroked his hands over the arms of his uniform.
A streeter sat on the corner nearby, eyeing them up, but dismissing them just as quickly. It was clear they had no interested in hiring her for her services. They stood out here, in their SSG gear, and the skin down Charlie’s spine crawled like it could work its way off her body.
This place wasn’t dangerous; it was deadly. The one area where the cops didn’t go, where the State-sanctioned security goons didn’t bother monitoring the streets. There was anarchy, and the folks in this area were left to it—too much time and effort would need to be expended to bring it on par with the other parts of Corden Prime.
The only way this affected the State was that it was a blemish on the face of its “Utopian Society.” But then, the propaganda took care of that, and the fact that entrance to the Delta region was strictly prohibited. Authorized personnel only.
“Spade?”
She turned toward the front of the apartment building—stretching toward the sky, stories high that she didn’t care to count. “Which floor?” she asked and led Eli up the stained front steps to the cracked glass and chrome front door.
“Seven,” Eli said.
Charlie used her SSG device to swipe them into the building—permissions granted by Nathaniel and the Councilors themselves—then set off for the stairs. She stepped onto them, hitting the button on the railing that would shift them up to the seventh floor.
The stairs moved them upward but stalled and halted at the first landing. Charlie gritted her teeth but dismissed it. This was an old building in a dilapidated part of town. It made sense that nothing would work here.
They walked the rest of the way, then let themselves into Bolryder’s apartment.
“Whoa,” Eli said and stopped next to his partner. “Holy shit.”
“You can say that again.”
The apartment was tiny, four small walls, a bed in one corner, a sofa, and a door that led into a bathroom. The entire place was trashed—top to bottom, ruined. The couch cushions cut open, insides spilling out, the coffee table snapped in two and papers scattered across the floor, ripped from a book.
“Let’s check it out. You do bathroom and bed. I’ll do the rest. Tell me if you find anything.” Charlie pulled on a pair of memory-latex gloves, and they got to it. But the place was empty. Empty of pictures, empty of information, even the pages scattered on the floor. The only item of interest in the room was a tablet, encoded with a password neither of them could crack without the help of the technology they had back at SSG HQ.
“So, that’s it?” Eli asked, gripping the tablet in both hands. “That’s all we’ve got?”
“For now, apparently.” Charlie scanned the room again. “We’ll have to put up a perimeter around this place, seal off the door, and that’s it. Nothing.” It tasted sour.
“What?”
“Nothing, exactly that. This isn’t… normal. This apartment.”
“Why?”
“Come on, Eli, you weren’t born yesterday. There’s nothing here that stands out. The room has no individuality whatsoever. No family pictures, no books, even the sheets are fucking white.”
“And stained.” Her partner grimaced.
“But you get my point. The tablet is the only thing in here that stands out.”
“So what? Maybe this guy didn’t live here for long? Maybe it was all part of his plan to target Shamood.”
“Which we still have no motive for, by the way.”
“He wanted a memory. Maybe he was angry about something, or he was high on that MemXor stuff.”
Charlie gave him a withering look. “Maybe I’ll stick my head in the oven before this investigation is through. No, none of that is enough. You don’t lightly plan to kill the creator of… fuck it, of the world as we know it.”
“So, maybe he was working with someone else. You know, like the rebels.”
Charlie gritted her teeth. She didn’t like it. It was too brazen for Black Mars, and a part of her was certain that Levi Daniels would have told her if something big like this was about to go down. There was no way they’d do this and jeopardize their mission. Levi had told Charlie that they wanted her on the inside. Why say that then ruin everything by murdering Absalon Shamood?
No, it didn’t make sense.
“Let’s get out of here,” Charlie said and walked to the door, beckoning to her partner. She didn’t trust that she could talk to him about this, not even hint at it. The deeper she got in the cases, the more her paranoia grew. They were onto her. They were watching.
“You OK?” Eli asked as they stepped out into the hallway.
“Fine,” she replied and fixed an SSG seal over the keyhole, and the gap between the base of the door and floor.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs, a
nd Charlie straightened immediately, her senses prickling at the incursion. An elderly woman clambered up the steps and stopped, breathing heavily. She raised thin white eyebrows at them.
“Hello there,” she said. “Are you here for Kegan?”
Eli opened his mouth, but Charlie stepped on his foot. “Yes,” she said. “We were just looking for him.”
“Oh dear, I hoped something like this wouldn’t happen.” The woman shuffled forward. “I’m Mrs. Patowsky. I live in the room next door, see? Poor Kegan, he’s been so overworked lately.”
“Overworked?” Finally, some real information about the suspect.
“Well, yes. I hardly see him or his wife around here anymore. Poor Danika.” Mrs. Patowsky gave a labored sigh. “The woman’s got so much on her plate, what with losing the baby and everything, I don’t know how they cope. I hope they’re all right. They’re not dead, are they?”
“No, they’re not—”
Once again, Charlie stood on Eli’s foot, pressing the heel of her boot into its arch. “I’m afraid that’s classified information, ma’am. But there’s no need to worry yourself over it.”
“Oh, oh, all right. Well, have a lovely day then.” She walked to her apartment door, indeed, next to Kegan’s, and stopped again. “You wouldn’t want to come in for coffee or tea, would you?”
“I’m afraid we don’t have the time.” Charlie waved goodbye, then set off down the stairs, her mind turning over the information. Kegan had a wife, and that wife had, clearly, not lived in the apartment with him, except his neighbor believed she had.
Outside, Eli placed a hand on Charlie’s forearm. “What was that about, Spade? That old lady offered to talk to us about the perp.”
“And we have hard evidence to investigate,” Charlie replied, as suspicion built in her gut, growing, growing, if she could just grasp at the truth… “Back at HQ. Let’s move.”
5
Charlie and Eli sat at their desks, side-by-side in SSG HQ. The view was one Charlie had grown accustomed to over the years, the shining city, the cycling advert for MemXor across the side of the building opposite, and shuttles passing in the streets below.
Once, at the very beginning of her career, she’d been enthusiastic about that view. Desperate to prove herself and show her father that her choices were valid.
“Spade,” Eli said and tapped her on the forearm. “Are you there?”
“Hmm, yeah.” She shook her head. Her father had gotten into it, his presence was enough to mess with her brain, and likely, that was part of his plan.
She had to keep that front of mind—Nathaniel was the State. Absalon’s death didn’t change that.
“Let’s get to work,” she said and shifted the tablet into place in front of her. They’d had one of the technical guys come up and take a look at it for them. He’d hacked it, then left. They had their coffee, their work ahead of them, and the most important case of their lives.
Absalon’s death was hush-hush. It hadn’t been publicized and wouldn’t be until they’d solved this. The State didn’t want to look bad, and Absalon dying, the murderer getting away… that was the epitome of a bad look.
Charlie unlocked the screen with a tap on its center, and they were afforded a view of the tablet’s folders, neatly organized along a home screen. The background was blank—a forest green backdrop—with icons highlighted across it.
Four in total.
Contacts. Messaging. Files. Camera.
Charlie tapped onto Contacts first, but there were none. The messages in the inbox were from unidentified numbers, and none of them made any sense.
“What is this?” Eli asked and leaned in, his arm brushing against hers. “I don’t get it. It’s just random letters.”
“Might be a code,” Charlie replied, scratching at her temple. “Not sure, though. If it is code, we’ll need a cipher to understand it. We can send it down to the analysts and hope they’ll figure it out, but…”
“But what?”
“The State won’t want us to do that,” she replied, slowly, and glanced back over her shoulder. The office was still busy, many of their colleagues at their desks working together or alone. No one seemed to be paying attention, but Charlie couldn’t be certain.
“Then what?”
“If we want it analyzed,” Charlie continued, shifting in her seat, “we’ll have to hand it over to them so a private team can check it out.”
“All right, so let’s do that.”
“No.”
“No? What do you mean, no? How are we going to—”
Charlie held up a finger to stall him, then used it to open the folder labeled “Files.” Within it were images, some of them darkened and taken hurriedly, others of Kegan himself, selfies he’d taken that didn’t give them much insight into anything.
She let out a long, low breath. “Looks like we’ll be sending this through to them after all,” she muttered. What else could they do? They couldn’t garner a lead from any of this, not without deciphering those messages first.
“OK, so let’s do that. I’ll contact them,” Eli said and tapped his temple.
“Who?”
“Nathaniel gave me a liaison officer to speak with should we need anything. So, I’ll just call him up and tell him what’s going on and what we need. Simple.” Eli smiled at her, then rose and walked off to complete his call.
Charlie stared after him.
Her father had given him the liaison. Not her. Why was that? Another wave of suspicion assaulted her, but Charlie kept it under control. It was impossible not to read into the situation.
Eli paced back and forth at the other end of the office space, then came back and sat down again. “They’re going to come collect the tablet, and we should have an answer soon. By this evening. Hopefully, they’ll have a lead for us.”
“Fine.”
“What do you think?” Eli asked, scanning her. “About this Kegan guy and his motivations.”
“Too early to say.” She kept her sentences short, made it clear she wasn’t in the mood to discuss this with him.
But, as usual, Eli wasn’t great at taking a hint. “I have a hunch.”
“Hmm.” Charlie focused on the tablet instead of him, tapping through it again. Why was it this empty? A tablet was a personal device, something that could be used for entertainment, for contacting loved ones, yet there was nothing on it that suggested Kegan had used it in a personal capacity.
And his neighbor mentioned a wife.
Perhaps, it was time she headed back and interviewed the old woman.
“I bet it’s Black Mars,” Eli said. “I bet that this Kegan dude was working with the rebellion and that they wanted whatever memory was in Absalon’s bank to use it against the State. I mean… this is big. If it’s really them, it’s an attack on the State itself.”
“Absalon Shamood is dead.” Charlie kept her voice low. “That’s automatically an attack on the State, but we can’t jump to any conclusions.”
“Oh, come on. Get real, Spade. This is so obviously Black Mars.”
Charlie forced herself to remain calm. She couldn’t deal with Eli’s idiocy now, his tendency to lick the asses of his superiors was already established.
“I’m thinking,” Eli said, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms over his chest, “that this is going to be a clean case. Open and shut, baby. And we’re going to come out of it looking like heroes.”
“That’s what you want? To be a State-sanctioned hero?”
Eli shrugged. “Why not?”
“Because… fuck it, because you don’t even understand what you’re talking about Eli.”
“Oh yeah? Then explain it to me.”
She gritted her teeth. “I’ll explain it to you when I prove this wasn’t a Black Mars operation.”
“And how the hell are you going to do that?” Eli asked.
Charlie didn’t answer. She rose from her seat and walked for the coffee station. If she let him in, she’d on
ly wind up paying for it.
“You’ll have to tell me sometime, Spade,” Eli called after it. “For the investigation.”
6
The sun had already set by the time their shuttle halted outside of the house. It was on the outskirts of Corden Prime, lost in the artificial forest that had been placed there to provide its inhabitants with oxygen and a relief from the landscape of steel and glass towers.
This place, simply known as Prime Forest, was where folks came to hide themselves from the world. Most of the year, it was cordoned off and closed, accessible only to those who worked the grounds. During the summer months, visitors were allowed to come and sit beneath the trees, picnic, even.
Charlie found the concept, frankly, ridiculous. To picnic under the trees that had been planted by the State. It reminded her of her partner, Jones, of his memories, of the death of his partner because of MemXor and the State.
“This is the place?” Eli asked from the passenger seat. “We can’t drive up any further.”
“We’re walking from here.” She opened her door and got out, then shut it behind her. The State had forwarded them the information from the tablet, most of which had been garbled. What they had gleaned from it was an address. A meeting place and time, as well, dated back a week prior to Absalon’s death.
The information had all led them to here, but Charlie was still skeptical. How do we know that this isn’t something they’ve set up? That was what the State did. What Mem Store did. They messed with the outcomes of investigations. They twisted everything to put their spin on it, as they had done with the last two investigations.
Charlie walked up to the gate that separated the trees from the street, the two worlds of concrete and grass colliding at that delineating border. She lifted her watch and swept it over the sensor pad. The gates swung inward, instantly, and Eli and Charlie entered.
“That was easy.”
“It’s always easy when you have authorization,” Charlie replied as the gates swung shut behind them. The difficult part would come next. “The hub of operations should be this way.” She tapped her temple, consulting the map that she’d downloaded for navigating the reserve, then set off along one of the arching steel side-paths that led through the grass.
