Bone Wires

by Michael Shean

  Carter stepped in then. “You remember who Anna Zelz is, Dan?”

  Gray blinked at him, trying to find the name – though it gave him clarity and calm, Gray’s long-term memory left much to be desired under the weight of the Solunex. “I think I do,” he said. “Isn’t she…an executive? For Hydrodyne?”

  “That’s right,” Carter said. “About a week ago, Hydrodyne announced that Anna was stepping down from the company to go on an extended vacation in Brazil. You know, see the sights down Rio way. In another week, they’re going to issue a press release announcing the untimely death of Miss Zelz, who has died in a fiery car accident.”

  Gray blinked at him again, but said nothing.

  “What they’re not going to release,” Carter continued, “Is that the accident was caused by the Policia drilling about a hundred holes through her armored Range Rover with high-velocity rounds after she decided to plow it through a crowd of tourists.”

  It took a moment for Gray to respond – the lag had gotten worse, and it was starting to affect more than his memory. “I don’t…I don’t understand. How do you know…”

  “Meg, give him a dose to cut that.”

  Gray felt a faraway sucking sensation at his bicep, and saw Megan’s hand moving away. Clarity returned, though it wasn’t the sharp laser point that he had felt before. He felt more…normal.

  Carter looked Gray in the eyes, and once he was satisfied with what he saw, he continued. “We know this because Civil Protection has a contract with the police down there, through its subsidiary brand of ProGuardia. Apparently if you don’t have the right wiring, the psychosis bleeds over in your everyday doings. That’s what happened to her.”

  Now that his mind was clearer, Gray felt something awful coming that had nothing to do with drugs – a thought was coming, a thought that he wanted for all the world to be false. “Anna Zelz was in those pictures,” he said. “With Angie.”

  “And now you see the crux of our problem,” Carter said with a nod. “See, we know who this girl is, Dan.”

  “I…” Gray felt his back stiffen again, though this time with fury that boiled under the thick ice the drugs had put in his heart. “I want to know.”

  Megan looked at Carter, seeking his nod. When he gave it she continued. “We didn’t know what the effects were,” Megan was saying now, “Because we didn’t have a living subject. All we had were the tests done on the murder victims to work with. But with a living subject to observe, we were able to put the details together.”

  “Wait, what do you mean a living subject?” Gray looked at Megan now, who shrank under the sudden fierceness of his gaze; he did not like the sound of those words, what they suggested.

  “A-and then monitoring the subject, and we saw how the chemical worked.” Megan was paling again; her fingers clutched at the hem of her jacket, pulling the ends toward her stomach. “And that’s when we realized where it was coming from.”

  But for Gray, there was only the question. “What do you mean, a living subject, Megan? Who was it?” He took a step forward, feeling the rage straining against the chemical boundary, begging to be vented upon each face in turn. “Who was it, Megan? Who?”

  “It was you, Dan,” Carter’s voice struck him from behind like a fist. “It was you. Ever since your murder investigation started –”

  “No,” Gray started, his hands clenching into fists.

  “– You’ve been exposed to the toxin –”

  “No.”

  “– And while you’ve been investigating we’ve been trying to track down what was happening to you, and from where it was coming.” Carter’s voice grew harder with every outburst, not allowing Gray to shut him down. “And we’ve pinned it down to –”

  “No!” Gray was shouting it now. He knew what they were trying to say, what they were trying to make him believe. But he would not – he could not! He would rage against the very idea until they stopped, or until the drugs wore off and he could make them, until they left her alone.

  And yet Carter would not stop. He bellowed the words over Gray’s own voice, rattling the walls with their force. “It’s her, Dan! There is no other alternative. We know who she is now, don’t you see? We –”

  “No! No! No!” And then he was on his knees, sinking down into the ancient pile carpet of the hotel room, his fists covering his eyes so that the tears could not be seen. They wanted him to believe that the woman he loved, the woman whom he had fought for – the woman for whom he had killed - was responsible for contaminating him with some bizarre chemical. That she made him into some kind of willing patsy, some kind of slave. He could not believe that. He would not. The world was falling in on him, and he could not watch it fall, watch it pull him under.

  Gray leapt to his feet and ran into the bathroom, retching up despair and worse. All those months of horror spilled out of him with the remnants of his dinner, all the betrayals great and small. The toilet was an anchor that he clung to as he wept, cold and unyielding, so much like what he wanted to be right now. Cold and hard could have saved him from all of this, but as the hot tears that splashed his cheeks told him all too well, he was only human.

  He laid there for a while, his face against the hard, glazed porcelain, the drugs settling in; he felt a little better then, and he cleaned up a bit before coming back out into the room. Like before, Carter was a picture of sobriety, and Megan looked very concerned. Underneath his ice pack, Jack was smirking slightly. Gray wished for a moment that he’d had pushed the fucker’s nose into his head, but pushed the thought away. Instead he said, “I’m better now,” and to Jack he said, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t myself.”

  Marowitz grunted, but he nodded assent. Forgiveness, at least for the moment.

  “I’m afraid you aren’t going to be yourself for a while yet,” said Carter. “Sit down, man. We got more to go over.”

  Gray slumped onto the bed as though his bones were made of lead. “All right,” he said. “I’m ready.”

  Megan laid a hand on his arm. “You’re sure?”

  Gray looked at her, and saw something surprising in her eyes. Affection, maybe, beneath the concern. It made him strangely uncomfortable.

  “I’m fine,” he said, and patted her hand. Megan smiled a little and nodded.

  “So look,” Carter said, “As I was saying, we know who the girl is now.”

  “Don’t you mean ‘my girl’?” Gray asked coldly.

  “She’s not going to be your girl after you hear this,” Carter rumbled, and Gray shrank a little more. Christ, was this really happening? “The woman you know as Angela Velasquez is actually Jacqueline Villalobos, a freelance infiltrator who specializes in corporate espionage. We don’t know who she’s working for, of course, but we know that she was responsible for setting up an influence operation on local corporate officers using Anderson as her confederate.

  She probably started using the drug on him first, then when its effectiveness was proven she went on to pollute the executives she’s been sleeping with. We’re really not sure of the vector yet, but there had to be some kind of…contact.” He gave Gray a meaningful look.

  Gray closed his eyes. “We’ve only had sex twice,” he said. “And that wasn’t very long ago.”

  “Well, that’s…” Megan looked away from him, digging a pocket computer out of her coat and took a moment consulting its holographic display. “Then I don’t know what the vector is. We were sure that it was sexually transmitted.”

  “If it was…” Gray took a deep breath. “If it was sexually transmitted, then does that mean she’s been fucking everyone who’s died as well?” Disgust roiled in his gut at the thought.

  “Sex has been the best weapon women have had for a long time,” Carter said with a snort. “Why not make that literal?”

  “No, no.” With the drugs in his system, Gray felt himself thinking less and less of Angie, at least in the way that he had. She had never been the woman she said she was, and he was feeling far less interest in prote
cting her than stringing her up. He closed his eyes, thought back…and found himself thinking of the most wonderful smell, that amazing mingling of cinnamon and–

  “No, wait.” Gray looked up at Carter. “I think it’s an aerosol. That was the thing that hooked me the most – I was always thinking about her scent.”

  “Interesting.” Carter shook his head. “Well, that’s easily enough bypassed. We’ll take breathers and go in and get her, just in case she has something on hand with a more generalized use.”

  Gray felt his muscles tighten at the words ‘get her’. “You’re just going to arrest her, aren’t you?”

  Carter looked at him and frowned. “Yeah,” he said, “She’s worth a lot more alive than dead, after all.”

  That relieved him. Gray said, “Well, I dropped her off at her place a few hours ago.”

  “So we’ll go get her.” Carter shrugged. “I’ll have Meg and Jack here go over to the club – Meg, you can better dress his nose down in the car. You and me, boy, we’ll go over to her place. You take a breather with you; that Solunex will last a good while, but I don’t want you getting an extra sniff while my back is turned. You might put a bullet in it.”

  Given everything that had gone down that night, Gray could only agree.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They drove out to Angie’s place – or Jacqueline’s, as it were – and parked a block away, just like he had done the night before. The trip had taken a little longer than last time because they stopped at an all-night hardware store to pick up a heavy filter mask. Gray sat in the passenger’s seat of Carter’s Beguero Lapis, staring ahead through the windscreen of the big sedan as he wondered what the fuck was going to happen. The console was playing music; ‘This American Age’ had gone out of fashion already, and now Tonia Blue’s stirring ‘Freedom Years’ was spooling out like ribbon candy out of hidden speakers into the cab. Gray liked Tonia. Her voice reminded him of Angie. Everything reminded him of Angie. And of course it would; they were going to go damn her to imprisonment in a corporate facility. No trial, no charges, just a steel cell somewhere quiet, somewhere secret, until such time as they were done with her. Then she’d get sent straight to the freezer for a while until nobody remembered who she was. Maybe they’d even rig up a little ‘accident’ with the system. Nobody’s fault, just bad equipment.

  Oh, Angie. You treacherous bitch. Even your love was a lie. And probably mine as well.

  “All right.” Carter stilled the car’s engine, and he reached into the back seat of the car with one arm and came up with the breather mask.

  Gray looked at the mask. It was like something out of a bad fetish video, a full-face unit with a clear visor and a pair of big filters running down each side. At the very least, Gray’s face could be seen while wearing it. He gave it a final glance-over, sighed, and tried to put himself in a better mental state for what was coming. He didn’t have much success.

  The two men got out of the car and walked down the street together, faces set. “She might be watching from the window,” Carter said, frowning at the apartment building as it swung near. “Let’s cut back this way, here.” Carter stepped back into an alley on the near end of the building next to Villalobos’s, and the two of them made their way down the stinking space between the structures.

  “Shit.” Gray heard the word first, then realized that it was him who was hissing it. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  Carter wheeled on Gray and took his shoulder with one hand, shaking him out of whatever fit had took him. His voice was sharp, like a slap in the face, and Gray found himself stilled into silence. “You pull yourself together, Dan,” Carter growled, “Or I’ll put you back in the car. Are you going to be all right? Can you deal?”

  Gray shut his eyes tight and took a deep breath. “I-I think so,” he panted, “It’s just, I mean…” What was he going to say? What could he say?

  “Dan.” Carter’s voice was a whip cracking over Gray’s head. “Can you deal, man? Yes or no?”

  With another deep breath, Gray felt himself pulling back together. Concentration was the glue for every man in crisis, and he was squeezing out the last from the bottom of the tube. “Yeah,” he said, feeling hollowed by the effort. “I’m here. I’m all right.”

  “You’re sure?” Carter’s hand was a vise on his shoulder, squeezing still.

  “I’m sure.” Gray winced slightly with pain. “I’m sure.”

  “Good.” Carter released him. “Because I’m going to need to you be with me here. I need you present.” He reached into the pocket of his coat and took out Gauge’s silenced Hennekker. “Here,” Carter said, pushing the gun into Gray’s hands. “Come on, man.”

  Gray stared at the weapon in his hands; it might as well have been a poisonous snake for all the disgust in which he held it. His eyes wide, he looked at it, knowing that this was really happening. They were really going to go in through the back stairs, up into her apartment, and take her. All he did know was that he was pumped full of stimulants and anti-psychotic drugs thanks to what she had done to him, and when they went up, she would likely treat him like the enemy. Would she would be expecting them? Would she be waiting for them with a gun? Worse?

  “Dan!”

  He looked up, the gun hanging in his hand. Carter hissed at him from the back of the building, scowling at him in impatience. “Come on, man, let’s go.”

  “Yeah. Coming.” Gray put the Hennekker in the belly pocket of his hoodie, feeling its weight there, and followed after.

  Only one way to know the truth, and it was three stories up. The time had come.

  Carter led Gray up the stairs like a sherpa to the mountaintop. Every step tightened Gray’s nerves, turning them to steel inch by inch with the courage that he was able to scrape together. Or maybe it was the drugs, he couldn’t tell; he’d never had to pop anti-psychs before. Whatever it was, he wasn’t falling apart by the time they got to her door. Conflicted, anguished, horrified that he’d gotten to this place with that woman that he didn’t truly know, but as completely together as possible. Carter gave him a nod as he reached into his coat and pulled an ancient chrome-plated Sig-Sauer with a laser rig, gleaming like a righteous sword. Gray hesitated for a moment before pulling the Henekker from his pocket and racked the slide.

  “On three,” Carter mouthed. “One, two…” And ‘three’ was Carter planting his foot into the old door, kicking it open with a loud crash and the splintering of wood; it swung open hard, banging off the wall as Carter roared challenge into the room. “Civil Protection,” he bellowed, the beam of his targeter sweeping the space beyond. “Come out with your hands behind your head!”

  Nothing stirred within the apartment. The two of them swept carefully through the living area, tracking the space for any sign of movement. It was soon clear to both men that Angie had been gone for a while. “Shit,” Carter said with a grunt. “This is a bitch. I guess she blew the place already.” He reached into his coat pocket and came up with an earbud phone, murmuring orders before speaking up again. “Yeah,” he said to the open air, “It’s me. She’s not here. Keep an eye out for her where you are. We’re going to see what we can find here.”

  There wasn’t anything else for it; they tossed the place, and they weren’t gentle. The only things they didn’t slash open or break were the walls, and that was only after they found a miniature computer that she’d apparently tried to flush down the toilet. Though it was small – no larger than a small remote control – it got stuck in the U-bend of the ancient fixture. At least it was clean when Gray shoved his arm up there to get it out.

  “Sloppy,” said Carter after he dried the little device with a towel. “She should have smashed the thing. These models are very expensive – and waterproof.”

  “I don’t know what she was doing, then.” Gray sat on Angie’s couch, whose cushions they had slashed open. “What do you think it means?”

  Carter frowned at the little machine. “I think,” he said, “that she might have be
en here more recently than we thought. I don’t know if she saw us, but maybe your killing Gauge and Moody might have thrown her off her plan.”

  Gray frowned down at his hands. “Well that’s great,” he muttered. Gauge and Moody, whom he killed in defense of a traitor.

  “Don’t.” Carter took the hard tone of voice again, frowning at him. “Moody was due for the freezer at the very least because of the shit he pulled. Like I said, they were gonna ace you anyway. You did a public service.”

  “Yeah,” Gray said, but he didn’t feel any more righteous.

  Carter took out a long-barreled pick and probed around on the back cover of the device, then let out an ‘aha’ as it came to life. “Here we go,” he said as it projected a palm-sized holographic screen over its business end, a vivid full-color window hovering there in place. “Niiiiice. Kolus Paradigm Ultra, excellent model. This thing costs as much as three months of your salary, Gray.”

  Gray winced at him and stayed quiet.

  “Yeah…” Carter started to sweep a fingertip over the conjured display, which in turn caused the little machine to project a small keypad beside it. Carter proceeded to tinker with this for a few minutes before the display flashed, cleared, and began to buzz with data.

  “Didn’t know you were a hack artist, Brutus.” Gray squinted at his former partner with interest now. “They teach you that in EA?”