Epitaphs (Echoes Book 2)

by Knite, Therin

  Murrough, in his normal corner, finishes Briggs’ thought: “Thoroughly enjoying the dismemberment parade.”

  “Aw, shit.” Lance bites down on his glasses again, and I’m sure if I looked at them closely, I’d see worried indentations in the plastic. “The fact that the one camera we’d need to see her face here was disabled at the time of the echo—no way that’s a coincidence. She broke it herself, knowing the maintenance guys wouldn’t get around to fixing it until after the holiday break. That way, when we showed up and collected cam footage, we’d only see her back, only see what she let us see. Her running away from the scene in feigned horror, after she’d had enough time to murder DuPont.”

  He swipes his hand to the left, and his window, the Nexus breach map, appears on the screen next to the still-rolling cam footage, now at the part where Lang turns tail and runs away. Watching in retrospect, I can see the act, the mask, the fake display of devastation, switch on midway through her heel-turn, seconds after the monster rips off DuPont’s head and casually tosses it like garbage.

  But if I didn’t know to look for all the little lies in her body language, I wouldn’t see them, even this go around, zoomed in close at Frederick’s discretion. The camera angle is too high, and the distance too great, and Lang is wearing that thick winter coat that hides most of the subtle motion in her petite frame.

  She played us so damn well, the liar. Wrapped a grain of truth up in a bow and gave it to us when necessary, knowing she could use the barest connections between her and DuPont to hide the nature of her involvement from us.

  If I wasn’t so pissed at the lives and wellbeing her brilliant deception has cost us, I’d be impressed. Lang has the sort of deceptive skills a man like Delacourt dreams of possessing.

  Lance adjusts the map on the screen and says, “Yep, there it is. Sure as hell.” A wide blue circle, the breach zone, encompasses a two-dimensional rendering of the CS Building and the surrounding sports field and two other buildings nearby, Geology and Physics. Lang’s real body could have been stashed in either of those buildings while her echo construction snuck out a back door and then casually trotted down the sidewalk toward the CS Building as her dream monster was doing her dirty work.

  May, sporting a few new bruises but otherwise unharmed from the museum raid mishap, mutters, “I’ll be damned. It was her.” She runs a hand through her dark, tangled hair. “But we still don’t have a why here, Adamend. Nobody, not even a sadist at heart, would kill a man the way Lang killed DuPont without reason. She must’ve had a grudge against him for something or other to compel her to go to such extreme lengths.”

  Chai, next to Lance, nods in agreement. “If Lang wanted DuPont dead for any normal slight, she’d have shot him. Or stabbed him. Or poisoned him. Or, hell, pushed him down those rickety stairs in the CS Building. But, instead, she chose to kill him with a dream, with the most horrifically grotesque monster she could imagine into being. She chose to kill him with torture and fear and pain no human being deserves. She chose to inflict on him…the same degree of suffering he inflicted on her.” The psychiatrist tugs her trademark curl. “Whatever her motivation, it was strong and personal and raw. Something that happened recently set her off.”

  Three seconds of absolute silence, and the entire room, me included, says, at the exact same time: “Andrew Stiegel.”

  Dynara points at Lance. “Search through the Baltimore school’s social media pages. Public events. Facial match to Lang and Stiegel. See if you can find them together.”

  “On it, Dy.” He exits the map and starts typing two miles a minute with his thumbs.

  “You”—her finger tracks toward me—“keep talking. Got any more bright ideas?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do have one more.” I gesture toward Chai and say, “Your interview with Delacourt. Remember what you told us afterward?”

  Chai raises a half-empty coffee cup to her face, but it stops three inches from her lips as the revelation descends. “I said he was lying by omission. Leaving something out.”

  “Right. When you asked him whether the Baltimore kids came to him after Stiegel’s death for help. And he told you no, and that was the truth, wasn’t it?” I ease further into the cushion of my wheelchair, my back tightening up as the med-four nanos underneath my skin mend more of the damage to my spine. “Because none of the Baltimore kids visited him, but…”

  Chai slams her coffee cup on the table. Brown, steaming liquid sloshes onto her unprotected skin. “But Chelsea Lang is not a Baltimore kid. She’s not a computer science student. She’s not on a team. She’s not part of the competition.” She grunts. “Delacourt did not lie to me, and he did not lie because I asked him the wrong question. I specified the Baltimore programmers when I spoke, so all he had to say was no to circumvent the truth. And that truth is Chelsea Lang came to him after Stiegel’s murder. Probably directed there by the Baltimore kids, who elected not to tag along.”

  “Precisely,” I say, my voice weaker than it should be; my battered body is running out of steam. Too little sleep, too little to eat, too much abuse in too little time. Jin’s hand lands on my shoulder—he’s still standing behind my chair—but I brush him off.

  Because I have to finish this. I have to connect the dots. Put all the pieces in the right places. Solve the puzzle. Complete the circuit. Eureka moment. A light bulb burning bright above my head.

  “Precisely,” I repeat, and continue this time. “And I bet you anything that Delacourt, who saw this whole fiasco going south real fast, decided to call his mysterious third party contact, Finn, for advice. And for whatever reason, for whatever purpose, this Finn character decided to give Chelsea Lang echo powers and instruction.”

  All the EDPA agents in the room freeze, except Dynara. She melts from glacier to steam in the blink of an eye and sneers at me, “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “Finn.” I splay my hands out on the dirty tabletop, eying my muddled reflection in the surface. “Finn has all the intel that Lana stole from us. It’s the only explanation. Because there is no way on the old gods’ green Earth that both Lang and Castile just happened to be echo makers from the get-go. The odds are infinitesimally low.

  “Lang and Castile acquired their abilities sometime in the past few weeks, probably in the days following Stiegel’s death.” I match Dynara’s angrily pointing finger gesture. “And you said it yourself, the other day. The maker knows all about EDPA. Because Finn told her. Because Finn has what Lana stole, the information and the Somnexolene.”

  Donovan, who’s half asleep in his chair, exhausted, perks up at the mention of the chemical. “Hold up. I thought Dr. Carter only stole two doses. One she gave to Whitford Brennian”—Briggs cringes at the mention of that name—“and the other she kept in her lab, hidden in a rack of syringes. If she’d stolen a third one, we’d know, because we counted the doses in the vault again after we confirmed her theft.”

  Dynara stands up so fast her chair sails into the wall, narrowly missing Murrough, who actually recoils in something akin to sheer terror. The Commissioner clenches her fists at her side, grinds her teeth, and tries her hardest not to roll her eyes in a manner that implies everyone in the world but her is totally incompetent at life. “Yes, we counted the doses, and we also checked the indicator on the second stolen syringe to make sure it still contained Somnexolene. But,” and this is where her voice turns to pure acid, “I bet you anything the assigned techs only checked the actual amount of liquid in the syringe and not the concentration level of the chemical. Lana could have drained a partial dose from the syringe and replaced it with dyed water, and we’d be none the wiser unless we actually emptied the rest of the syringe and ran a full chemical analysis on it.”

  “Oh, boy.” Chai drops her face into her palms. “So y’all are telling me there’s an unknown psycho out there, possibly the guy Lana—and Brennian—was in cahoots with, who now has access to not only all echo maker instructional materials but also the one and only necessary cata
lyst for creating echo makers?”

  “Yep,” Jin says, once it becomes clear no one else in the room is willing to answer, even though he barely understands the potentially apocalyptic breadth of what we’re discussing. “And we are, all of us, royally fucked.”

  Or maybe he does.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It’s fourteen minutes to midnight, and Chelsea Lang is tapping her foot against a metal drum labeled TOXIC while she types a few updates onto her public profile page. Uploads a party image here. Links to a funny article in a comment there. Responds to a few quips thrown up by her friends sometime after dinner, when she was on her way to his warehouse dump in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere. Through the rolled-up loading door threshold, beyond the cracked, concrete parking lot, and miles away, past fields and grassy plots, the skyline of Washington glows through a descending snow flurry.

  Oh, how she’d love to be there now, in the shops on Adams Avenue, illuminated by the massive ad boards, warmed by the air that rushes out of automatic doors when shoppers enter and exit boutiques far out of her budget. She’d be power walking from window to window, eying the luxury delights, a coffee from her favorite café steaming in her hand. She’s been saving up for one particular dress in a store called VISTA KAY for six weeks, and she almost has enough to claim it before it leaves the shelves ahead of the spring collections.

  Of course, she thinks, hugging her red coat around her body, if this thing with Andrew and Mark goes through the way they’re planning, I’ll have enough to afford the whole damn store.

  As if on cue, her Ocom rings, and she flips from her profile page to her message box to find a few new lines from Andrew, who’s on his way to the warehouse with his team from Baltimore. If it wasn’t for an oh-so-important-I-swear-babe midterm exam, he’d have arrived hours ago, and they’d be at Chelsea’s apartment (her warm apartment) having sex and watching movies and stuffing their faces with popcorn and cocoa. Preferably in that order.

  But no. Andrew had to stay on campus late. And so now Chelsea is shivering like a Chihuahua facing a Rottweiler, the winds blowing harder against her exposed face as the snowstorm draws near. Somewhere, down the road in a heated car, parked in the shadows like common crooks for no defensible reason, are Mark and his GM Poly team. The paranoid asshats. Acting like Andrew, who wouldn’t (and couldn’t with his physique) hurt a fly intentionally, and his band of merry geeks are some sort of stone cold coding killers. Waiting for the right moment to rip out their competitors’ throats.

  As if. This isn’t some low-budget cop show, idiots, she’s said to them at least three times over the past two days. But Mark insisted on keeping his distance until he’d scoped out Andrew’s crew.

  A strong gale gusts through the warehouse—a venue of Mark’s choice; great taste—and she rounds the TOXIC barrel and crouches down behind it for some relief. But not half a minute later, the hum of a car breaks through the roar of the wind, and she peeks over the top of the barrel to see Andrew’s fancy sports car, a hand-me-down from his lawyer parents, pulling into the empty lot, next to the rusty chain-link fence. She hops up and waves. Finally, we can get this stupid show on the road!

  Andrew cuts the engine and steps out of the car. Coat buttoned to the base of his chin. Hat over his ears. Rotating three-sixty, he checks out the area around the warehouse, on edge, like he expects Mark’s team to ambush him.

  Paranoia must breed like mold in this programing competition, what with the way all the coders act like there’s an assassin waiting behind every corner. Sure, two fifty mil is a shit ton of money, but do all the competitors really think their geeky computer science peers are ripe to turn into vicious killers overnight?

  Chelsea scoffs at the thought and heads toward the threshold, motioning for Andrew and his crew, waiting in the car, to join her in the warehouse. Andrew, satisfied that there’s no one about to leap out from a patch of tall grass with a machine gun in hand, waves for his colleagues to exit the car and follow him inside. He puts on a weak smile as he nears Chelsea, raising his arms to hug her, but when they finally make contact, he’s stiff as a board (not in the fun place), and his kiss is like sandpaper on chalk.

  “Hey, babe,” he mutters, just loud enough to hear over the breeze. He releases her from his pathetic embrace and rubs his gloved hands together, and even in the dimness of the night, Chelsea can see that he’s pale as a ghost, more worried than he has ever been in her presence. Fidgety. Eyes darting back and forth. Teeth gnawing at his bottom lip.

  His teammates aren’t much better. Two women and two men, all about the same age, the same major, the same apparent preconceived notions about this deal. That it will fail, disastrously, for some reason Chelsea cannot comprehend. This deal that the often-teased history major in her fluffy red coat worked her ass off to orchestrate. So that Andrew and Mark could join forces and dominate the competition, win enough money to last them all, all ten coder geeks plus one extra, at least two and a half lifetimes.

  The teammates disperse around the wide, open floor of the warehouse, each taking a position that gives them full view of all the doors, the rafters, the stacks of rotting crates and barrels and boxes scattered about. All four wear expressions that read more funeral than epic deal to strike it rich; Chelsea is starting to feel that they’re acting a tad ungrateful for her efforts.

  If it weren’t for her, if it weren’t for the fact that she met Andrew, by random chance, at that drug-fueled Club Valkyrie party over the summer, if it weren’t for the fact that she became good friends with Mark through their mutual love of golf, both the Baltimore and GM Poly teams would be shit out of luck right now. They ran dry on funding for their super-secret coding project—which no one will tell her about—weeks ago. Either they join forces, go through with that art heist (A real life heist, how sweet!) and use the money to make up the time they’ve spent languishing penniless…or they fail. Some other team wins.

  Unacceptable. Chelsea will have her share of the prize.

  She clears her throat, and the sound rebounds off the walls of the warehouse, creating a low, echoing bellow that sends a chill down her spine. “Okay. I’m going to call Mark now,” she says to Andrew and his peers. All of them stare at her, wide eyed, like they’re on the verge of simultaneous panic attacks. “Hopefully, we can iron out the formalities real quick, wrap this deal up with a bow, and get some place warm, with food and drink and nice, shady corners to figure out who’s doing what for our little art show. Sound good?”

  Andrew stuffs his hands in his pockets, tucks his face farther down the tall collar of his coat, and shrugs. “Sounds reasonable, I guess. If you’re sure we can trust them.”

  “Andy, come on. This is Mark. You’ve met him.”

  “Twice.” He shuffles closer to her and gazes out into the abandoned lot, the city beyond now cloaked in white. “Not a whole lot to go on, Chelsea. Like, I trust you and all, and I do trust your judgment, but this kind of business—I don’t think negotiating will be as easy as you want it to be.”

  Chelsea brings up the message exchange with Mark on her Ocom and sighs. “Easy or not, honey, it needs to be done. If you guys want to have some insult throw-down about school caliber or preferred programming languages or, you know, about which of your teams is worse at money management, well, be my guest. Just toss your shit at each other, make amends, shake hands, pick a meeting spot for our heist planning, and seal the deal with a promise or a nod or a formal, hundred-page contract.

  “I don’t care how you do it. Just do it, and do it quick. I’m freezing my ass off, and I didn’t spend weeks needling you and Mark for you to come out here in the freezing cold and refuse to ensure your success at scoring two hundred fifty million dollars for some idiot reasons.” She pokes him dead center in the chest with her finger. “I love you and all, Andy, but I will not tolerate your bullshit tonight.”

  He swallows, grim, and backs away two steps. “All right. I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s all I ask, honey.
” Her nimble fingers type out the call to assemble, and she sends it off with a tap of her thumb. “Now smile and wave and try to seem happy as they’re pulling up, okay? You all”—she gestures to the coder geeks one by one—“look like you’re heading for a firing squad. Lighten up. Get excited. You’ll be rich in two months! Come on!”

  To their merit, they do try to sew on a batch of happy smiles, but not one of them can sew worth a crap. The best they come up with might qualify as a “toothy cringe.”

  Chelsea groans inwardly, stuffs her tablet into her coat pocket, and swivels around on her toes as she hears a second car approach the warehouse. Here we go, she says to herself. Thirty minutes, a done deal, and a future in the lap of luxury. And it was all, all, thanks to your brilliance, Chelsea Lang.

  The GM Poly team arrives in a little green coupe owned by that short, tubby kid in Mark’s Finite Automata class—Tanaka, that’s it. They pull to a stop next to Andrew’s car. Cut their engine. Wait for a hairsbreadth of a tense, uncomfortable moment. Get out, one at a time. Walk across the lot in a shape some might call a formation. Enter the warehouse, slow, hesitant, but eager all the same with their bright, watery, desperate eyes and wind-flushed cheeks.

  They introduce themselves to the Baltimore team with Chelsea as their middleman. The second the tip of the iceberg breaks, the tension chips away an inch or two or three, and the coder geeks begin the negotiations that will make Chelsea Lang a very rich woman. While she watches from the sidelines, egging them on, her building glee barely contained in her shivering, red-coated form. While she nearly pants in anticipation of that final, glorious handshake of agreement. While she imagines the boundless future she will live, from here on out (after that pesky heist is out of the way, of course).

  Yes, everything is rolling along spectacularly.