The Debt Collector (Season 1)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  “I was wrong.” A smirk sneaks on my face. “You’re a tremendous liar.”

  She doesn’t even crack a smile, just stares up into my face with that cold, serious look.

  Which stabs my smirk dead. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because I want you to know I will do anything for my sister.”

  I say softly, “I already knew that.”

  “I have access to government records. Health records, service records, debt records. All the data the government keeps to track every person from the day they’re born until the day they die. Or are transferred out. Your mother has no doubt left a trail through the data mines. If she’s anywhere on the grid, I can find her for you.”

  A breath escapes me. “You would do that? For me?”

  “No,” she says, her voice harsh. My shoulders droop in response. “I would do that for Tilly. For her, I would do anything, including comprising my job at Data Security with an unsanctioned records search. She needs a regular infusion of hits if she’s going to have any chance to…” She stalls out and glances at her sister. When she turns back, her eyes seem softer, the determination tempered by a world-weariness that I don’t like. “There are others, too, ones who won’t last long if they don’t get another transfer. But I need to know, Joe. If I help you find your mother, will you do what you said? Will you come back and help these kids? Permanently. Not just a…” She waves her hands. “… a quick hit and then you’re gone again.”

  “I will,” I say in a rush. “I promise.”

  “I don’t know how much your promises are worth.”

  The poison dart twists inside my chest. “I promised Madam A I would come back. And I did. I’m here now.”

  She frowns, studies my face, but still seems uncertain. I want to give her something more, something that will show I’m not the worthless, messed-up debt collector that she sees.

  “And there’s something else,” I say, keeping my voice low, and glancing to see if the nurses are close enough to overhear. “I think I know who might be transferring out the kids in the first place.”

  “You do?” Her eyebrows hike up. “What… how… is it a collector you know?”

  “No. It’s not just one bad collector, at least, I don’t think so. There’s some kind of coordinated effort to transfer them out, and I think my psych officer is involved. She sold out Ophelia—” I stumble over the word. She’s been dead less than a day. I can barely say her name out loud. “My psych officer sold out my friend to the mob because she was getting close to finding out the truth.”

  “What’s the truth?” Her face is serious again.

  “I’m not sure. Which is why I need to pay my psych officer a visit. One way or another, I’m going to get some answers from her. And then, maybe, I can put an end to all this.” I gesture around the whisper-quiet of the ward. “Stop any more kids from having their lives stolen before their time.”

  She looks at me with a kind of disbelief, like she’s not sure if I’m lying or crazy or maybe have a concussion after all. But her soft brown eyes have lost all traces of the coldness. For the first time since I’ve been back, it seems like she doesn’t completely hate me. It wells up a physical compulsion to step closer, but I resist.

  “If you can do that, Joe…” Her words are lost, but I know what she means. Tears seem to pool in her eyes.

  “I know. I’m going to try. But first, I need to make sure my mother is safe.”

  She nods, ducks her head, then walks back to Tilly’s bed. She tries to hide the fact that she’s wiping her face while she straightens the small legion of plush animals on the bedside table.

  But I see it.

  She bends to kiss Tilly’s head, then shuffles back to me. Her palm is held out, and I’m surprised to see there’s a screen embedded in it. I had no idea she had one.

  “Give me your number,” she says.

  I swipe up the number on my palm and lightly press it to hers. Her hand is soft, her fingers slightly cooler than the rest. I force myself not to linger, touching her, longer than the half-second it takes to transfer the number.

  She looks at it and swipes something through. She’s all business again. “What’s your mom’s name?”

  “Alice Miller.”

  “Birthdate?”

  “March 9th, 2029.”

  She enters it into her palm. “I’ll call you when I have the information you need.”

  I nod. She turns her back on me and walks away without another word.

  I stand outside Dr. Brodsky’s secret lab dressed in a hoodie, baggy pants, and sunglasses. The bright morning sun fights through the smog and at least makes it plausible why I would be skulking around in shades, this early in the morning in this part of town. Hopefully I look like a whacked out junkie as I pound on Dr. Brodsky’s door, demanding that he open up—rather than a debt collector trying to hide from the mob.

  I’m about to give up when a voice calls through the door. “Go away before I call the police!”

  “Dr. Brodsky!” I yell, then press my face closer to the side crack of the rusty, metallic door. “It’s me, Lirium.” I can’t exactly go shouting my name across the east side. I’m taking a risk being on the streets at all—I’m sure Kolek has informants throughout the city.

  I hear some grumbling through the door, then, “Go away!”

  “Dr. Brodsky, wait!” I shout again. Then I remember that I never gave him my name, and I probably look too much like a junkie. He’s got to have security cameras checking me out right now. So I pull out my last reserve first. “I have something that will help your granddaughter!”

  There’s silence. Then the slow clanking and banging of locks unlocking. The door screeches open, but only a few inches, held taut by a half dozen chains still in place.

  “Who are you?” Dr. Brodsky asks. “And what do you know about my Tatiana?”

  I pull off the shades but keep my hood in place. “I’m the debt collector who visited you a few weeks ago,” I say in a hushed voice, leaning as close as I dare to the open space between the door and the jamb. In case he decides to slam it in my face.

  He frowns and his eyes are cloudy. I’m afraid he won’t remember me, but his eyebrows quirk up and he nods.

  Then he slams the door shut.

  I stand there, stunned for a moment, when the scraping and clanking start up again. I nervously slip my glasses back on and check the street. There’s no one in sight, although that doesn’t mean anything. After a moment, the door screeches open, and Dr. Brodsky ushers me in.

  He’s dressed in pajamas and a coarse hand-knit robe, neither of which cover his knobby old-man legs. Sunlight leaks in from somewhere above in the towering entryway next to the wire cage elevator. I take my sunglasses off and shove them in my jacket pocket.

  “Why are you here, young debt collector?” he asks. “And what is this about Tatiana?”

  “My name is Lirium, sir, and I hate to barge in on you like this, but I need to ask a favor.”

  Dr. Brodsky grunts.

  “It’s not really a favor for me,” I add quickly. “Maybe we could go to your lab, and I can explain?”

  He eyes me, but shuffles over to the elevator and yanks up the handle to open it. The metallic wrenching sounds prevent any more talking until we’re on board and swooping up.

  Dr. Brodsky is just the first step of my plan to stop whoever’s transferring out the kids—a plan that I formulated all of an hour ago. But while I’m waiting for word from Elena about my mom, I can at least get started. The Agency isn’t keen on employing debt collectors who have worked for the mob, so I need to erase the last two weeks of my life as far as anyone in the government can tell. And I need to get back into the Agency—or at least pretend to—in order to figure out who is involved and how high it goes. For that, I need a functioning tracker, which, courtesy of my time in Kolek’s mob, is now a useless hunk of metal buried in my flesh. My plan hinges on about five different things all going right; this is just t
he first one.

  Which makes me rub my face and take a deep breath. I know my luck really isn’t that good, but like I told Elena: I’m going to give it a try.

  We stop at the second floor this time, the one with the hacked off cybernetic limbs, and the overhead light panels automatically light up as we step out of the elevator. I glance around and spy a couple of workshop benches, complete with tools. I’m not sure if they have what I need, but I’ll just have to ask and hope for the best.

  Dr. Brodsky’s watery eyes—one green, one blue—are studying me carefully. I forgot he had the mechanical one: it dilates and gives me the sensation he’s measuring something more than my expression. I shuck back my hood and stand straight. I have nothing to hide from him now.

  “You know the tracker in my arm?” I ask. “The one you helped design?”

  He nods and glances at my outstretched collector arm.

  “Well, it doesn’t work anymore, and I need a new one.”

  “I’m not a repair shop for debt collectors, Lirium—”

  “It was burned by the mob.”

  He leans away from me, regarding me anew. “So you work for the mob now?”

  “No!” I put my hands up to reassure him. “That’s just it—I’m out of the mob, and I don’t want my psych officer to know where I’ve been the last two weeks.” Of course, Candy knows I’ve been in Kolek’s mob—she’s the one who sold me out. But I need the tracker as part of my ruse to get into her files. I could just force her to log me in, but if I tip her off that I know about the kids, she might shut something down. Or alert someone who will bury the evidence I need to convince Flitstrom, my bean counter, to tackle the corruption in the Department. Plus when I get to Flitstrom, it’ll be easier to convince him to blow the whistle if he doesn’t know about my stint as a collector for the mob. None of that will work if I can’t get my tracker working again.

  Brodsky is nodding and thinking. “It’s a simple matter to inject a new tracker. But what was this you were saying about my granddaughter? Or was that just an excuse to get you in here?” He gestures to his lab, and I don’t blame him for being suspicious.

  “No, I really do have something that could help her. Maybe. How is your research going?”

  “My research?” He sucks in a deep breath. “I’m afraid I’m still a ways from perfecting the device. I doubt it will be in time to save Tatiana, but I continue my work, as long as I’m able. For the others, especially the young ones like her.”

  I nod fervently as he speaks. “Do you know if Tatiana is still receiving life hits?”

  His forehead wrinkles. “Are you proposing an illegal transfer?”

  “What?” I ask, surprised. “Oh. No… although, if you wanted something like that, I’d be open to it. For you or for Tatiana. What I meant was, do you know if she’s still getting the hits that she should?”

  “I don’t know.” The frown carves worry into his face. “I have been busy with my research.”

  “You should check. Because someone is transferring out young terminal patients before their time.”

  “What?” His furry eyebrows fly up in alarm. “But that’s preposterous! That’s—”

  “Illegal,” I cut him off. “And all kinds of wrong. But it’s happening, Dr. Brodsky. I’ve seen the kids. I know of a safe place where you can bring your granddaughter, if they come for her.”

  His face darkens, a deep kind of red infusing it, and for a moment I’m afraid he might stroke out on me. But he merely clenches his fists at his side and grinds out through a clenched jaw, “Are you certain?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How will I know… how can I stop this… monstrosity…”

  I put my hand on his shoulder, partly to calm him before he gives himself a heart attack, partly to let him know that I’m going to help. “I can make sure Tatiana’s carefully watched. So we can move her before anything can happen to her. Tell me what hospital she’s in.”

  “Lifelong. Always the best for her… I… how can this be? Who would do this?” The doubt is back, and his gaze wanders past me, like he’s searching the world for some logic behind the evil that lives within it. “It doesn’t seem possible such a horror can happen…”

  I squeeze his shoulder, gently, to bring him back. “I know, but I’ve seen the kids with my own eyes. We’ll make sure Tatiana is safe. But there are other children at risk, and I need to find out who is orchestrating all this. And for that, I need my tracker. So I can get back into the system and get at the truth.”

  His mechanical gaze lands on me again, studying me. I hold steady under whatever biomechanical scrutiny he’s putting me through, hoping that he’ll see I’m telling the truth.

  After a moment, he nods. “Then we will have to get you a new tracker, my young debt collector.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Dr. Brodsky.”

  He glances around his lab. “What I need is on the third floor.” He beckons me with a bony hand back to the wire cage elevator. As I follow, he adds, “When your tracker was burned, that must have been painful, yes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t guarantee that a new one will be less so.”

  I swallow. “It’ll be fine, sir.”

  He nods and punches the button to take us to the third floor.

  The bandage for my tracker injection site is hidden under my trenchcoat sleeve. I ditched the hoodie after my meeting with Dr. Brodsky and retrieved my standard debt collector outfit—a black trenchcoat and jackboots to match, plus my credentials—from my new apartment, the one I’ve never lived in. I need to dress the part for my visit to Candy’s office.

  Dr. Brodsky wasn’t wrong about the pain, but having a new hunk of metal injected in my arm didn’t hurt nearly as bad as when Valac ordered my tracker melted inside of it. I’ll have to make up some plausible excuse for the injury when I finally check in with Flitstrom. I need him to trust me, and stray thoughts about tampered trackers are not going to help.

  An idea occurs to me that I’ve never had before. I push up my trenchcoat sleeve, peel back the bandage, and press my own fingers across the swollen red injection site. I focus on pulsing life energy through my hand and into my arm, but nothing happens. I need to connect with someone else for the transfer healing trick to work.

  I can almost feel Ophelia’s soft fingers lying gently across my wound, healing me.

  I shove down my sleeve again and bite my lip until it hurts, driving all the pain and guilt of losing Ophelia into a singular rage that I’m soon going to unleash on my unsuspecting psych officer. I’ll stop short of killing her. Probably. But I won’t mind scaring the shit out of her for a while. Unfortunately, I need her alive, so whoever she’s working for doesn’t start covering their tracks. Ophelia knew this thing with the kids had to be big, and I believe her instincts above all else. She didn’t know how far up the Agency it went, but it scared her enough to stay away. And Candy is evil, but she’s small-time evil. Manipulative, lascivious, petty. She’s not the kind to think up and organize horror on this scale. And I want to stop all of it, not just chop off one corrupt bureaucrat, only to have three more pop up in his place.

  However, Candy is directly responsible for Ophelia’s death. And Valac’s. And for that, I’m more than happy to make her suffer.

  I punch the button on Candy’s door, but nothing happens. A brief worry flashes through me: maybe she’s not here. I pound on the door, rapid fire, and the sound resonates throughout the low-rent office complex she’s housed in. I pause and hear her cursing inside, coming closer to the door.

  I ready myself. As soon as the door slides open, my hand is on her throat, shoving her back inside the office. Her face goes from contorted anger to shock in the split second it takes for me to slam her against the wall next to the door and pin her there. I lean over and punch the button to slide the door closed again.

  Only then do I realize Candy’s half dressed.

  Her hand that held her bl
ouse together is now trying to pry mine from her throat, so her shirt falls open to reveal a bright red bra that matches the smeared lipstick on her face and the blotches of flushed skin on her chest. I throw a look over my shoulder just in time to see the debt collector who was her make-out companion coming at me with a raised hand.

  I drop Candy and slam an open hand against him, hoping to get as much skin contact as possible. He’s shirtless, so one hand finds bare skin on his chest, while the other makes contact at his throat. I pull life energy as fast as I can without scorching burns into my hands that I can’t afford right now. His resistance is weak—he has almost no push-back to the years of life energy I have stored inside me. He stumbles, his knees buckling underneath him. I pull my hand off his chest and punch him hard in the face. He goes down, head whipped to the side, and I lose contact with him.

  He barely put up a fight.

  As I straighten, I take a chance that he’s not a voluntary lover. “My quarrel’s not with you,” I say, pointing a finger at him. Then I see Candy sneaking around the edge of her office and heading toward her desk. Her black-and-gold lacquered bag sits on the floor, half dumped. I don’t know what she’s going for in the bag, or possibly in the desk, but I’m certainly not going to let her get there without a fight.

  I cover the length of the small office in three fast strides. She hunches up and holds her hands out, like that will protect her. I grab her around the throat again, and she grips my trenchcoat sleeve with both hands. Her daggered fingernails stab each other in their attempt to pull my arm away. I push her backward until she stumbles into the oversized leather chair that’s propped against the wall behind her desk. While I have her pinned, I turn back to the debt collector. He has picked himself up off the floor, and now stands in the middle of the office, rubbing his chin and watching us, apparently uncertain whether he should try to rescue Candy or not.

  “This isn’t your business,” I say.

  He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, probably removing whatever Candy slimed him with, grabs his shirt from the floor, and beats a retreat out the door. No love lost there, so I don’t bother telling him not to call the police. But I do wait until the door slides shut again before turning back to Candy.