Jericho realized he was probably right. The guards outside had apparently not actually been posted to stop Pemberton from being assassinated…the entire thing had just been an elaborate trap—a trap intended to snare him. So when they had ascertained his location, the guards had naturally pulled back to a safe distance and were likely now awaiting the impending drone strike.
“Fine,” Jericho growled, stomping over to Pemberton’s chair, “I’ll do it—where’s your evidence?” He despised the idea of lodging a false report—an offense which carried with it potentially lethal consequences—but he had made up his mind. And once Jericho gave his word, he kept it.
“Thank you—thank you,” Pemberton stammered through tears.
“The evidence, General!” Jericho barked.
Pemberton nodded quickly. “On South Virginia there is a woman named Tera St. Murray—first name: T-E-R-A—tell her I sent you and repeat the phrase ‘The good of us all.’ She will give you what you need.” He tilted his head in the direction of the stairs, “Below the staircase is a trap door which leads to a tunnel. You still have time to use it for escape—go!”
Without word or fanfare Jericho reached down and snapped Lieutenant General Pemberton’s neck, killing him instantly. He then did precisely as the late General had suggested and moved as quickly as possible toward the base of the stairs on the ground floor.
His silent countdown was already at twenty elapsed seconds when he found the trap door, and after opening it he saw that opened into a shaft which descended into the pure darkness below. There was a ladder, and Jericho quickly began to descend the ladder after closing the heavy, iron trap door behind him. They would certainly discover the door’s existence—assuming they did not already know of it—upon inspecting the soon-to-be pile of rubble above him, which is why speed was critical.
No sooner had he reached the bottom of the thirty foot deep shaft and set out down the short, narrow tunnel—which was barely tall enough to permit a stooped, shambling gait—than the ground above him was rocked with a series of violent explosions. The shaft through which he had descended collapsed loudly behind him, and he quickened his pace as dust and small bits of stony debris began to dislodge from the crude tunnel’s walls.
The cloud of dust which the collapsed shaft kicked up choked his breathing, and he did his best to filter his breaths through the hem of his sleeve. The dust eventually settled and, after what felt like several hours and miles of shuffling, shambling, and stooping, Jericho finally came to a stone door with heavy, iron fittings.
After several minutes of intense effort Jericho was able to force the door’s rusted hinges to unlock from their rust-locked position, and he managed to squeeze himself out of the cleverly concealed door—which looked like nothing but a section of rock in a small, rocky, outcropping .
He took a deep breath of clean, fresh air and looked up. For an uncharacteristic moment, Jericho took in the beauty of the stars scattered across the night sky before setting off in the opposite direction from the safe house—an area now illuminated by the dull, orange glow of the buildings’ burning remains.
Chapter XVI: The Next Phase
Masozi opened the door to the tiny, low-rent lodging—her fifth in as many days—and appraised the ‘amenities’ such as they were. The room itself stank of human filth, with just enough residual disinfectant smell to suggest someone had made something vaguely resembling an effort to remove the offensive odor, but had failed miserably in doing so.
She had decided against staying in one spot for too long, and over the course of those five days she had begun to see society differently than she had done just a month earlier in New Lincoln. As she made her way through the streets, it became a fairly simple matter to avoid undue scrutiny by employing the very methods she had once learned to identify in those she believed to be guilty of a crime.
The truth was that she had committed several crimes in the weeks since fleeing New Lincoln but, much as she was loathe to admit it, she had found them to be absolutely necessary to her continued survival so that she could learn who had been behind her framing…and why it had taken place.
Masozi had bought a small assortment of foodstuffs for dinner, as well as for the coming morning’s breakfast. She had less than a day’s work left to get all of the evidence notarized, and the thought had occurred to her that she had no way to get in touch with Jericho now that the Esmerelda Empática had offloaded, reloaded, and subsequently set sail for New Lincoln once again.
So she set down on the borderline filthy bed in the two meter by three meter, windowless room, and carefully attempted to construct a reasonably sanitary setting for her dinner—a dinner which would consist primarily of steamed vegetables and black rice.
Not long after she had finished her meal there was a knock at the door. Masozi—who had been unwilling to risk securing an illegal weapon thus far—looked around for an improvised weapon of some sort. She found very little, so instead she quietly moved to the door and looked out through the peephole.
What she saw outside made her jaw clench tightly as she opened the door, revealing Jericho standing in the hallway with tattered clothing which had been reduced to little better than rags.
“How did you find me?” she asked bitterly as she stepped back from the door. It really was surprising that he had managed to do so with such alacrity—she had only paid for the room an hour earlier!
“I’m good at my job,” he replied after stepping inside and closing the door behind himself. “And none of what I do would be possible if I couldn’t find who I was looking for—especially when they’re trying to hide.”
He held out a hand expectantly, and Masozi felt cold fury at his presumption. But she had played the scene out several times in her head already, and she knew that to do anything other than comply with his request would be counterproductive.
She reached into a satchel she had purchase several days earlier—a satchel which contained everything supporting her new identity—and withdrew the same data pad he had given her on the Esmerelda Empática. Jericho accepted the pad and began to peruse her collected efforts of the time she had spent in Aegis. Of the one hundred eight pieces of evidence, only seven of them still required authentication and most of those were third or fourth pieces of evidence corroborating already-notarized articles.
He studied the contents for twenty minutes before nodding in satisfaction. “I’m impressed,” he said with a modicum of respect in his voice as Masozi sat down on the tiny bed, “I couldn’t have gotten that much done in the same time. It’s more than enough to satisfy reasonable certainty,” he said confidently, “which means our time in Aegis is at an end.”
Jericho winced as he sat down on the arm of the room’s only chair, and Masozi saw his hand go to his hip reflexively. She had noticed his movements had been stiff when he had entered the room and Masozi quirked a cold grin as she said, “Don’t tell me…you broke your hip?”
He shot her a flat look before reluctantly nodding. “Not completely, but it’s going to need surgery to properly repair,” he admitted. “I won’t be any good in a fight until I get it fixed but, if I’m right, we won’t have to worry about that in a few hours.”
Masozi cocked an eyebrow. “I’m not certain there is a ‘we,’ Jericho,” she said evenly. “You saved my life and I am grateful for that, but I can’t live like a fugitive. I did your busy work here while you were out doing,” she gestured to his tattered clothing, “whatever it was you were doing. But I think it’s time for me to go my own way.”
Jericho nodded agreeably. “If that’s your choice, I won’t try to stop you. But just because Benton threw the locals off your back by killing your old identity and giving you a new one doesn’t mean Stiglitz isn’t still looking for you. They want you,” he said with a piercing look, “and they’re not going to stop until they get you.”
“Why?” she demanded. “Why would I be important to them? I’m just an Investigator!”
“You know
his face, for one thing—” Jericho began, but Masozi interrupted.
“Faces are easy enough to change,” she retorted hotly, her voice rising higher than she had wanted. “Give a surgeon enough money and you can have a whole new cranium in less than a day.”
Jericho smirked slightly and nodded. “True enough,” he allowed, “but you also know why Cantwell was killed—and apparently that’s information they don’t want to be made public.”
“Do I actually know why you…Adjusted Mayor Cantwell?” she pressed, having driven the entire conversation to that point. What she saw flash through Jericho’s eyes was something she hadn’t expected to see: relief.
“No, you don’t,” he admitted as he exhaled, and she actually recoiled in surprise at his frankness, “but if you want to know the truth then you have no choice but to come with me.”
“Why won’t you just tell me?” she demanded, springing to her feet and nearly hitting her head on the low ceiling as she did so. “Why the need for all this secrecy?”
Jericho fixed her with the cold, unyielding look that showed him for what he really was: an assassin who cared only about accomplishing his mission. For a moment she was afraid he had deemed her outburst too much to tolerate, but she didn’t care. Her life—everything she had dedicated herself to—had been destroyed back in New Lincoln. Even if, by some miracle, she managed to convince the authorities of her innocence that would make little difference to a man like Agent Stiglitz.
She needed a reason to keep going on the path she found herself treading. Because without it, the only options available to her ranged from unpalatable to outright unacceptable—and she was determined not to cast about aimlessly for the next handful of years eking out a living on the edges of society.
Jericho’s visage relaxed and he gestured almost apologetically toward the bed on which Masozi had just sat. She folded her arms across her chest defiantly, and Jericho sighed before hanging his head fractionally, “If I told you that then you would be in even greater danger than you are. All I can say is that my primary purpose in all of this,” he waved the data slate pointedly, “is to prevent abuses of power like the one which has already destroyed your life. I could give you the very details your investigative mind thirsts for,” he said with a hard look, “but I hold your well-being in a higher regard than that.”
She had not expected that particular response, so Masozi simply met Jericho’s gaze for a long, silent, while before shaking her head in frustration. “You’ve got me over a barrel here,” she said, hearing the vulnerability she tried so hard to conceal clearly expressed in her voice, “so I guess I have no choice but to go along with you.”
“I assure you, Investigator,” Jericho said as he stood to his nearly full height, stooping to avoid bumping his head into the ceiling, “nothing could be further from the truth…but I’ll admit that I’m more than casually interested in your coming choices.”
“You mean to suggest you didn’t already know I would acquiesce?” she snapped harshly.
Jericho chuckled as he opened the door. “Maybe I did at that, but soon enough you’ll be exposed to things that will make you rather less…predictable.” She felt a flare of raw anger at his actual suggestion that she was predictable, but the truth was he had played her perfectly to that point so she held back a scathing retort as Jericho gestured to the empty hallway, “In any event, our…escort isn’t known for his patience so I suggest we hurry to meet his people—while we still have the chance.”
Masozi wordlessly collected her things and followed Jericho out onto the street, where he hailed a conveyance and they set off toward the spaceport.
“Are you certain this is going to work?” Masozi pressed as they filed into the security queue which led into the spaceport. The Aegis spaceport was—aside from the Virgin Halls of Governance compound—the most heavily-secured facility on the entire planet.
“Benton said it would,” Jericho replied dismissively. “That’s good enough for me.”
“I’m not so certain,” she muttered as they approached the species and gender segregation lanes. Very few aliens actually traveled independently, but Virgin was considered progressive in its egalitarianism toward its varied inhabitants, so several dedicated lanes had been provided for those aliens with decidedly different biology than humans. “This is like walking into a furnace on a cold day and hoping it doesn’t activate.”
“Nonsense,” Jericho said with a light laugh that did little to soothe her fraying nerves. “All ports—whether they’re land, sea, air, or space—are more heavily invested in screening incoming articles or people than they are in screening outgoing ones. For intra-system travel they’ll perform a cursory background check on our idents, verify our travel documents are in order, and so long as we aren’t physically carrying anything hazardous or illegal they’ll be all-too-happy to take our money and let us indulge our wanderlust.”
“So we aren’t leaving the Virgin system,” Masozi breathed a sigh of relief.
“Of course not,” Jericho replied as their lanes diverged into male and female segments, and he unexpectedly reached over and touched her neck with his surprisingly cool, dry hand. She shot him a look of offended surprise, but he ignored it and continued conversationally, “My business license currently only allows me to conduct transactions in the Virgin system—but I am looking into aggressive expansion. Besides, intersystem travel is more expensive than I could afford.”
With that, the two lanes separated and Masozi entered a long, dark tunnel with a glassy-looking interior. She knew it was a bio-scanner, and that as she walked through the tunnel it would check her biorhythms, physical dimensions, the chemical composition of her clothing, and even run a base chemical analysis of her entire body using spectrometry and other methods. This would ensure that she wasn’t smuggling anything inside her body—even something which had been dissolved into her various organs or tissues for later extraction.
She passed through the tunnel and saw a green light flash as she walked through the exiting archway, and from her time studying to become an Investigator she knew that the green light made the occupants of the tunnel feel more secure and this decreased their anxiety levels.
But she knew that it also meant quite literally nothing, since as soon as a person entered a major port their movements were tracked automatically and logged in the port’s security records for rapid analysis. Masozi had, herself, apprehended more than a few criminals intent on escaping the long arm of Virgin’s justice using the very system which now threatened to identify her.
Still, she had to fight the anxiety from surging to the fore of her mind. And just as thought solidified itself, a wave of vertigo hit her and she had to brace herself against a nearby rail to keep from falling down.
“Ma’am?” a nearby female Port Security Official said neutrally as she took a step toward Masozi. “Are you feeling ill?”
Masozi shook her head and made to reply, but before she could do so she felt the sudden urge to vomit. She placed her hand over her mouth as she doubled over and managed to fight the urge down. Thankfully it passed and she was able to regain her bearings and stature before shaking her head again and saying, “I’m fine; I’m just nervous, that’s all.”
“Come with me, ma’am,” the woman instructed from the other side of the rail, and Masozi felt a wave of trepidation come over her. Will I be apprehended because of nothing more than a wave of pre-flight jitters?! she wondered bitterly.
Masozi reluctantly followed the woman, knowing that to protest was simply to invite even more scrutiny and the official opened a small gate set in the rail. She indicated Masozi should exit the queue and follow her, so she did as instructed and the two women proceeded to a nearby booth.
“Have a seat, ma’am,” the official instructed curtly.
“I really think I’m fine,” Masozi protested weakly. She had no idea what had come over her, and her heart rate was at least twenty beats per minute faster than it was at rest. She also knew
that if she didn’t protest at least a little, that it might be read as an admission of guilt and investigated.
“Sit down, ma’am,” the woman instructed more forcefully, actually placing a hand on Masozi’s shoulder and giving her a not-so-gentle push toward the nearby bench. So Masozi did as she was instructed, and after she had sat down the official drew the curtain across the entry to the two meter square booth.
Masozi sat there in silence for several minutes, and was surprisingly unable to get her heart rate under control. She had even begun to sweat profusely and her lungs were filled with a vague, prickly sensation with each breath she drew.
Then a woman wearing a white lab coat drew back the curtain and entered the booth. Her skin was nearly as dark as Masozi’s own and, though she had to be nearly fifty years old, she was incredibly attractive.
“Mrs. Jefferson,” the woman said in a beautifully staccato, south-eastern accent, “my name is Afia, and I am a doctor here at the Aegis Spaceport. When did you first notice your symptoms?”
“I…” Masozi began, wondering if she should lie. But she quickly concluded that doing so would prove pointless, so she took a short breath and continued, “I was exiting the bio-scanners when a wave of vertigo came over me.”
Doctor Afia took out a small scanning device and flashed it briefly in either of Masozi’s eyes before swiping it along the palms of Masozi’s hands and checking the readings on a readout built into the bracer covering her left forearm. “It would appear that you have contracted a case of Timmaylian Flu,” she said after tapping on the screen for several seconds, and Masozi was almost smitten with how beautifully the woman spoke. She had rarely met anyone who so perfectly retained the accent of their birthplace after moving to New Lincoln—and until her trip aboard the Esmerelda Empática she had never gone further than a hundred kilometers from that city. “Normally I would advise a course of antiviral therapy to combat the potential long-term neurological damage this disease might cause, but that would preclude you from continuing on to your destination.”
Ure Infectus (Imperium Cicernus Book 4) Page 18
