Civil Blood_The Vampire Rights Trial that Changed a Nation

by Chris Hepler

  "He committed a crime, Deborah. I didn't want to hurt him, but we can't go to the cops. We can't go to our parents. If you want to leave, go ahead. I know I want to, but I have to stay or else it will get worse."

  "He was supposed to be our friend." Deborah looks at Ly’s eyes staring up at the ceiling. If they blink, I'm going to lose my nerve right here.

  "That's exactly what I thought," I say, and I find my voice unsteady. To cover, I try to take over. "Look at me," I say, walking between Deborah and Ly. "Look at me, honey. He didn't care about me. When Fer tried to stop him, he didn't care about Fer. And he wouldn't have cared about you. Now, I need to ask you something. Blood. How many more days can you last?"

  "Shut up," she says, but it's weak, and she's crying.

  "Tell me. How many?"

  "Two."

  "All right, so you can walk out of here with your head held high. You can leave us behind, and then in two days, you've got the same choice you always have. And you're going to have to do it, or you'll just pass out and never wake up. Are you going to pass out on me? Are you going to just die?"

  "I want to."

  "Yes or no?"

  Deborah holds her breath. Then, "No."

  "Then, you're going to need blood. Now, I want you to look at Ly. You know how it feels when we drink. He's hurting, and you can take away his suffering."

  "I didn't—"

  "Drink," I say. "You're the only one who can help him." It feels disgusting. I don't know if Ly's fate is better or worse this way, but it's what Deborah needs to hear.

  "It's going to have to be all together," says Ulan. "We've talked too long. By the time one of us is done, the qi will have dissipated."

  I give her a look that says, thanks for twisting the knife, bitch, and find the razor on the floor. I cut Ly's wrist, handing the arm to Ferrero. Then, another on the other wrist. Then, I hand the razor off to Ulan, who rolls up Ly's pant leg and chooses a vein on the ankle.

  Deborah hesitates, and I know exactly what's in her mind. If you ever ask me to do something… she said, but there is no point in bringing that up. Then, Deborah makes her bite, and a cold certainty goes through me. This is not a home anymore. It's just where the vipes live.

  As Deborah drinks, I leave the room, stomach growling and all. I'm never going to touch Ly again. Cass and Ferrero can drive the body out to some deserted place and bury it. There is no time for tears, from this or from anything before. I have a rescue to plan.

  50 - RANATH

  December 1st

  There's something you should know about the phrase "fighting fair." It's a contradiction. Any contest with stakes high enough to warrant violence is a contest worth stacking the deck in your favor. It doesn't matter if it involves padded gloves, police batons, or guns—the very definition of skill is defeating the opponent without being touched in return. As I enter the Supreme Court building, this is foremost on my mind. I've lost a lot, but I can always lose more. Adversaries are not tests of character—they are obstacles that lead to jail time, broken jaws, bullets in the head.

  I carry no gun. The quiet pistol, in a metal detector, could trigger a pat-down. They might find all the parts, or they might not, but my goal today is nonviolent, and carrying it for defense is a far worse choice than trying another method altogether.

  My real opponent is Morris Hirsch, whom I only know through careful casing. I sent my burner phone's agent program to hunt down social media posts from people who work at the Court. From there, I dropped innocent-sounding queries until I got Hirsch's name and found out two things. He likes to talk, and he is bloody deadly.

  Hirsch doesn't publish papers like the BRHI academics—I found him contributing to a newsgroup for security personnel who want to know what qi-pos training can do for them. Hirsch had answers. He worked the campuses of Georgetown and AMU, where the kids came up with qi tricks to get them laid or high, and the Chesapeake Detention Facility, where his functions were what kept him from getting stabbed.

  Reading between the lines, I now assume Hirsch has developed a function that alerts him to ill intents. This isn't hard to divine. He's lived as a human hostility detector and paid the price. Hirsch burned out until he scored the job at the SCOTUS. Other than saying he loved the change, he's grown quieter online. References to work are vaguer, guarded. Paranoid, sure, but cogent.

  From the security queue, I can see Hirsch's sidearm on his hip, the tacks in his ears. He wears hair long on one side, with many braids knotted like Inca quipu. I suspect the knots are the digits of functions, high-powered because they are worked into his body. Hirsch has so many that he could probably choke down an arsenic sandwich with no effect or at least slap a gun out of the way as it is being drawn. He'll spot function bombs, sustained illusions, and who knows what else.

  I am armed with my brain and a cardboard box.

  My method of entry is not based on influencing minds or the fact that I have been training in qi functions for five or ten years longer than Hirsch—indeed, it might be a disadvantage that the security mage is younger and probably hungrier than I am. My entry method is based on two principles of human behavior.

  First, when in doubt, humans are messy.

  Second, when in doubt, humans are lazy.

  They will be checking for stimweb tacks at the door; therefore, I wear none. The F-prots might have sent them an image based on my appearance, so I had a hairdresser chop my half-burned locks. Then, I dyed my hair red, including the short beard I've grown out. I found button-down pinstripes at a thrift store that can blend in any century. Once I finished a loitering pass, just in case I attracted attention, I cut the beard down to a goatee and re-dyed head and facial hair black. And last, there's the box. It's not much of an ace—just cardboard stuffed with folders and printouts of mind-numbing crap I pulled off the Net. But at fifteen to nine, there's a crowd of staffers heading in to work, and I join them looking purposeful.

  The guards by the detectors wave me through when they see my badge, stolen and copied from a staffer who made the mistake of eating lunch outside the day before. They run the box through the X-ray but don't give it a second look. Humans are lazy.

  To get past Hirsch, I apply my most pleasant face. When I smile, I can, for a time, forget that everyone here would be a deadly enemy if they knew my thoughts. I focus on treating them like potential friends. I must mean it sincerely—without believing it, it will not work. The point is not to act normal, but to be normal, and when I am, Hirsch has nothing on me.

  I'm in.

  I follow a thirtyish man dressed like an up-and-comer, probably a paralegal. The public halls go by quickly, and we soon approach a door with a card reader. I adjust my grip on the box.

  "Let me get that for you," says the man. Humans are messy.

  I head down the hall to a room that looks like it might be a records office and see immediately that it has moved into the modern age. I'm used to hospitals, slow as dirt when it comes to going a hundred percent paperless. Behind the main desk here are workstations of air-projection monitors, servers-on-chips, and other toys that will make my box look out of place. I set it by the door. Time to improvise.

  "Excuse me," I say to a plump, graying pro whose desk plate reads CELIA BYRNE. "Hi, Aidan Brown. I've been told someone needs to contact an expert witness from about three months back. Do we still have the subpoena records for a doctor—" I fumble for a piece of paper and bring it out, "Ulun? Ulan? Jessica Ulan."

  "Who's this for?"

  "Justice Standish's office. They said a law firm, uh... Sanders and Crowell, they're called. I think they want to hire her to appear."

  "Sorry," she says. "It's not our policy to give out her contact information."

  "Just hers?"

  "Yeah, she's had death threats."

  "But the record exists, right?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "I mean, if I'm going back to Standish, and he says he wants this info, I need to be able to tell him he can get it if he really want
s it, right?"

  "Well if Standish wants it or his office, you should be able to access it from there."

  "Oh, all right. Which database is it in?"

  "Recordsoft."

  "Sorry to be such a pain, but I don't want to have to call you up as soon as I get upstairs and find out he's a complete computer illiterate. What directory?"

  She clicks on the screen and turns the monitor to show me. "Contact, Witness, Expert, Federal, Virginia, Eastern District, BRHI v. Lorenz."

  "Great. Thanks." I smile at my new friend. "Celia."

  "No problem," she says, and I walk down the hall carrying my box, just another employee. In ten seconds, I spot another mark.

  "Excuse me, which way to IT?" I ask.

  "You mean IS?" the man responds.

  "God, is it that obvious that I'm new?" I mutter. "All right, IS."

  "You're gonna go down this hall, take a left, and follow the left wall around the corner. There's an elevator. Go down three. Take a right. It's the big pit." He pauses.

  "Do they seriously want paper? They give me shit for keeping printouts around."

  "Between you and me, I'm getting hazed." Crinkled face. "Cleaning out my manager's files. It's like taking out garbage, except I have to write down everything I throw out and everything I keep."

  "Well, good luck." The man continues down the hall.

  I turn and immediately regret it. Had I kept my eyes on the floor, I would have been fine, but I have a habit of meeting people's gazes, and in this case, I lock them directly with Hirsch, who is coming down the hall, looking purposeful.

  I can't get by with looking down again—it telegraphs guilt—so instantly, I raise my eyebrows in a welcome. Hirsch mirrors it. I'm about to get away with passing him by when he takes the same turn I do.

  "Delivery?" he asks.

  I laugh it off. "I wish. Gotta sort this stuff."

  "I've had paperwork that bad," Hirsch says.

  I haven't considered the minor details of Hirsch's life, but I choose quickly. I could avoid engaging, but it seems more natural to care. "If you've got a secret to making it go faster, I will owe you big time." I leave the verbal door open. Hirsch walks through it.

  "When I'm losing focus, I pretend the papers are love letters, and I've got to read them very carefully because there's no one in the world more important to me than the person who wrote the paper. Then, I pick up the next one and do it again."

  I stop thinking about anything except if the method will actually work. I'm at the elevator now, and Hirsch is either tracking me, or else he is also going down. In for a penny, I decide. "I don't think I've ever gotten a love letter."

  "Never?"

  "Scout's honor," I say. The phrase helps win trust among people who were never Scouts. "I've gotten texts, but that's not the same thing."

  The elevator door dings. I enter and hit a button, always keeping my mind light. Hirsch is almost close enough to touch.

  What would happen if—

  Out of the corner of my eye, I find Hirsch staring at me.

  But then it is over, and Hirsch is casual again. "If you've never gotten any, I suggest you start sending some."

  My thoughts are on an idol and a note. What could I write? I do not think you deserve to be at the mercy of our mutual enemy, as the law suggests?

  "I'm better at conversation," I say.

  Hirsch notes the chime of the elevator. I get out.

  "Whatever grabs her, I guess," Hirsch says. "Just never pass up a chance, I say. They're like butterflies. Hold 'em too hard, and you squash 'em. Hold 'em too loose, and they fly away."

  "Right," I say absently. The doors close, parting us. I try my best not to breathe an audible sigh of relief. Even a thrill of victory still encased in my head might set off Hirsch's radar. And, of course, worrying that I did so might be yet another trigger. I'm fighting blind.

  It can't be helped. I can only trust that the private lives of a building full of people give me some kind of cover by creating static.

  I strive to focus as I reach the door marked INFORMATION SERVICES and leave the box in the hall. The desks here are all over the place, cramming in as many data jockeys as possible. Shelves of moving bins, spare peripherals, and gutted wafers separate the techs.

  Forget it all. You just came from upstairs. Bright and cheerful.

  "Hi," I say to the one nearest the door. "Who does data recovery?"

  "Novak." A finger points the way.

  "What can I do for you?" asks the tech. He looks as though he hasn't gotten out of his chair since he turned forty a decade back.

  "I'm hunting down a bug," I say. "My Recordsoft is missing its files. All the files in two directories are gone, and I don't know if they've been erased or my machine just hangs when trying to load them or if I just can't update—"

  "All right, let's look," says Novak. "I can log out. We'll log in as you—"

  "We can do that in a minute, but first, while I'm here, can we see if the files exist independently of me?"

  "Sure," he says, opening Recordsoft on his computer and entering his password. I can't read it, but that's not what I want.

  "Find me your mystery file," Novak says, turning the touch-screen my way. Now, I produce what the woman upstairs said—Contact, Witness, Original Jurisdiction, BRHI versus Lorenz. Nailed it.

  "Huh," I say. "Looks like it's all here. The files even open." I double-touch a name, and up comes SUMMONS REFERENCE:

  Dr. Jessica A. Ulan

  441 Whitewood St.

  Brooklyn, NY 11220

  This is marked OBSOLETE. Below it:

  Dr. Jessica A. Ulan

  2241 Hanover Ct.

  Gaithersburg, MD 20882

  301-202-1606

  "That's not showing up on your machine?" Novak asks.

  I keep playing my part. As long as I'm within these walls, I stay in character, or I'm toast. "No, when I click, I get a little hourglass icon, and nothing happens."

  "Try hitting refresh. If that fails, rerun the nightly updater. And if that doesn't work, ping me, and I can remote desktop you."

  "This is gonna be one embarrassing morning if refreshing solves my problems," I say. "But thanks. I'll contact you if I can't get it done."

  I walk out of the IS pit to my box in the hall. I give a casual glance for cameras and passersby, staying calm. The mnemonic in my head is everything. I get out a pen and write Ulan's home address on the back of a manila folder in my box of formerly useless paper.

  I carry the box out of the clerks' wing, past the metal detector, out of the qi pulses and into the bright, winter air. No one challenges me.

  I don't write a letter that night. I only get to the second paragraph before deleting the entire thing.

  51 - INFINITY

  December 3rd

  After five and a half days of detective work, I have concluded that television lies a lot. Growing up in L.A., I usually assumed that crime shows didn't tell the whole truth, but only now do I realize how much gets glossed over between scenes. Trying to find Morgan vacillates between having zero leads and having a hundred, and there's no way to tell if we're right on top of him or just burning our retinas and phone minutes.

  We ruled out the local jails and prisons back when he first disappeared from custody. That left the possibility that he was killed, but I won't believe that until I see a body. Now that we are reattacking the problem in earnest, we started with the basics—we went through the online phone books calling every BRHI-affiliated hospital, health center, and laboratory from here to Cape Town. Jessica, who's more calculating than she looks, came up with a story for us to tell. The caller said their husband or wife was infected, and they needed to be confined and treated. This usually got us passed around to several departments, but we ended the calls as soon as BRHI staff started talking about where to send police for the pickup.

  About the time I dumped my third phone, Ferrero came through. He got the only real victory that kept us going: confirmation of
that Web site-less place called Greenbriar Health, just as Roland had said.

  It wasn't much, but my job was to turn it into gold. As the calls progressed, we claimed to be nearly every doctor on the list. The live human we could reach was cold and answered no questions: quite a giveaway. Finally, after all of us tried our best lines on the ice-princess receptionist, Ferrero came up with a brute force method. Each of us took a section of numbers from 0001 to 9999 and attacked the automated stuff. When it asked for an extension, we punched it in, one after another. Whenever someone answered with their name or department, we simply hung up, wrote it down and added it to a growing list. What we dug up were names of doctors and lists of daily drug regimens that provoked furrowed eyebrows from Jessica.

  We pulled furniture away from one wall and projected our results on it using a phone. I smeared interesting notes like the security desk with highlights, producing a colorful spiderweb. At the center of this sits a sheet that Deborah produced, a series of extensions with question marks next to them. That part's enemy contact. Every single one of these, from 1670 to 1688, had been answered with a calm, neutral "Hello." Like the person answering had been trained.

  I stand in front of those numbers now, staring and wondering. Then, the non-sound of feet shuffling on carpet is behind me, and I whip around. It's Jessica with a laundry basket.

  "Want to help fold?"

  "I'm busy," I say.

  "Talk to me. It makes ideas evolve."

  "I want into this place," I say. "I want to know everything about it, and all the plans I can think of are very, very stupid."

  Jessica's concerned. "You want to put a gun to someone's head?"

  "It sounds less rational when you say it." I hadn't planned on being that transparent, but it feels good that Jessica knows where I'm coming from.

  "Well, you haven't fed in forever," she says. "You're half a meat pie away from going Sweeney Todd."

  "I'm all right."

  "I didn't say you weren't." Always the diplomat. "But think out loud. Don't listen to the lizard brain."