by Robin Craig
“How should I know? You’re crazy! I wonder how many mice think the cat has let them go, when it releases them just to torment them?”
Katlyn looked at her sadly. “Back then, the first time we met, you talked about justice. Was that the truth? If it was – will you listen to me?”
“Save it for the courtroom. You’ll have your chance then.”
“There won’t be a courtroom,” she replied softly. “Not for me.”
Miriam wondered if that was true. If she was sending this girl to her death, perhaps she owed it to her to understand, or at least to listen. From where she was standing she could cover the corridor as well as Katlyn: she could afford this small grant of time.
“You have a minute. No more.”
“I will tell you the truth. If you’d shown you were what I first thought – my enemy, to your bones – then I might have killed you. That’s what happens in war. Or I might have killed you in self-defense if I had to. But I found out who you really are: and I don’t mean just that you’re brave, or that you talked to me not as a monster but like you would to anyone else. It was the other way round: I saw that you’re just a girl like me, just someone doing the best you can to live and do what you think is right. I laughed at you when you said you were innocent: but I think you are, down where it counts.”
She paused, then went on. “Yes, I’m angry at the world. But no matter how much the world takes from you, you can’t fight it by becoming the same evil yourself. Because then you lose yourself too; and if you lose yourself, you’ve lost everything. Whatever else I am, the innocent are safe from me.”
“Yet you chose a life of crime.”
“If the world makes you a criminal just for being, how can it complain if you accept the role? Would you have done any differently?”
Miriam studied Katlyn. Her breaths were rapid and shallow and her yellow eyes were wide with a fear she would not fully admit. For once she looks like what she is, Miriam thought: for all her adult body and actions, for all that she’s done, deep down she really is just a fifteen-year-old girl. When she dropped her tough persona as the vicious criminal, her voice was soft and somewhat musical. But it didn’t change anything.
“I’m sorry, Katlyn. I have to take you in. I have to uphold the law.”
“You talk about justice,” she replied bitterly. “But if you arrest me I’m dead. No appeal. No lawyers. No nothing. Some GenInt goon will put a bullet in my brain, before or after a bit of dissection to find out what makes me tick. Or makes me scream, more likely.”
“No. We will have you, not GenInt. We can hold you, protect you. You will have your chance.”
Katlyn laughed her incongruous laugh, though this time the bells were edged with a metallic bitterness. “You really are a young innocent, aren’t you? No, I am afraid GenInt has legal jurisdiction. They’ll take me whenever they want me, which will be sooner rather than later. Now listen. Your job is to prevent crime. Consider it prevented. My life of crime is over. I’m leaving, so I won’t be bothering anyone here ever again, and I swear I won’t be bothering anyone where I’m going either. Isn’t that a good outcome? Without any further expense to our underfunded and overtaxed so-called justice system, Master Thief Katlyn has been reformed after a mere couple of conversations with you and is now a model citizen! All you have to do is stand aside and let me go. Nobody will even know.”
“I will know.”
“You will know that you’ve saved a life! I can’t claim it is a perfectly innocent life. But I hope you believe me that I don’t deserve to die any more than you did, that first time we met.”
Miriam hesitated. This would be much simpler without that automatic death penalty. Like many cops who had learned what some people chose to do to others, Miriam had nothing against killing criminals if they were killers themselves. But it had to be during the execution of the crime or failing that, after due process of law, where the truth mattered. No truth mattered here except the plain fact of Katlyn’s genes, and was that enough? How could it be enough? Still, the fact remained of Katlyn’s treatment of her; talk was cheap when you were the one at the wrong end of the gun. And as a cop she had to trust the law to do what was right. Surely even GenInt couldn’t just make someone disappear out of police custody. Not a grown woman talking and breathing like anyone else.
“I don’t believe it is as bad as you say; we won’t let them take you. Now on the floor.”
“No. I’m not going to let you off the hook. You think you can serve justice and the law, but you can’t. And the law isn’t here. There’s no big institution with marble columns and dignified judges applying abstract justice: it’s just you and me, two people who have to make the decisions and bear the consequences. If you think you can avoid the responsibility by passing my fate on to someone else, I won’t let you get away with it. You’ll have to shoot me yourself: you, now, by your own hand.”
She stood there for a moment, letting the silence underline the thought. Then she added softly, “Before you decide, there’s one more thing you ought to know. You won’t believe me, but that night on the roof wasn’t the first time I saved your life.”
Miriam stood still for a moment, then said slowly, “It was you in the park that day, wasn’t it? I saw you but I thought I dreamed it. Tell me.”
“I was waiting for you. I knew you were dangerous and I was thinking I should kill you myself, or at least hurt you so bad you’d be out of action,” she admitted simply. “But I couldn’t. It would have been so easy to let those guys finish you off for me. But I couldn’t do that either. So I finished the fight for you.”
She let that hang in the air. Miriam wondered whether it was true. Katlyn could have found out the details later; the way these people plotted and lied, she might even have planned the attack herself. But Miriam had seen it herself, just not believed what she had seen.
“Why would you do that for me?”
Katlyn replied softly, “I’ve heard you can be put in a situation that forces you to make a moral choice between two paths, a choice that defines the rest of your life. I guess that was mine.” She looked toward the door then back to Miriam. “I guess it brought me here. More fool me, eh?”
Then she continued. “Now it’s your turn. I’m going to walk out that door. You’ll have to let me go or shoot me.” She slowly started lowering her hands.
“Stop! I can’t let you go!”
Katlyn shook her head gravely. “No. You will decide whether I deserve to die and if I don’t, whether you will serve your laws or the justice you think gives them meaning. I’ve made my choice and threats can’t stop me now: if you want to stop me you’ll have to actually shoot me. So whatever you decide... goodbye Miriam,” she finished softly.
Miriam felt her aim waver and opened her mouth to speak, but the only sound was the bang of three rapid gunshots.
Katlyn clutched her middle and looked down. “Oh no,” she moaned softly. She looked up at Miriam, eyes dark and wide with shock. “Oh no.” Then her eyes dulled and closed, her legs buckled under her and she slid down the wall. She fell onto her stomach, kicked a few times and then lay still.
Miriam looked on, horrified. It had happened so quickly her brain had had no chance to catch up, and she looked stupidly at her own gun, wondering how it had fired. Then she whirled at the sound of a familiar voice behind her, “Well, that wasn’t so hard.”
Miriam couldn’t believe her eyes or her ears. “Amaro?! What are you doing here? How are you here? What have you done?”
Amaro looked at her, his usual playful expression replaced by something flat and hard. “I should think you would be grateful. A suspicious man might interpret what he just heard as one of the City Police being on the verge of letting a criminal escape justice. That would not be good for her career, nor perhaps her freedom. But fortunately Amaro is a carefree soul, always willing to believe the best of people. He is willing to concede he may have misheard or merely had less patience than you.”
Th
en his voice hardened. “However my good mood is at risk from that gun you still have pointed at me. You might wish to lower it. You didn’t appear to know how to use it a few seconds ago, so don’t start remembering now.”
Miriam had led with her gun when she spun around but in her surprise had forgotten she still had it pointed at him. Or perhaps she now thought of him as the enemy. She saw that Amaro had a gun himself, a relatively small .22, made more for concealment than firepower but deadly nonetheless. It was easy to tell it was a .22 because she was looking right down the barrel. She lowered her own gun. “Sorry, you startled me. But what the hell is going on?”
“Why, my dear, surely you have worked it out. I am doing my job. Superlatively, I might add. Amaranto Leandro Moreno, agent of the dreaded Department of Human Genetic Integrity, at your service,” he replied, executing one of his signature bows.
“I appear to have missed the memo your department sent us about this raid, but when you told me you’d be late because something big had come up, it wasn’t too hard to guess what and where. Your loyal guards let me in and I made my way to the little room outside here, where I was planning my next move. Then events intervened. You did well, by the way. An excellent interrogation, which I followed with great interest. Until the end anyway, when you were a trifle slow executing your clear duty when the subject became uncooperative.”
Miriam stared at him in disbelief. She was suffering cognitive overload. Then her brain finally started to recover and make connections.
“You said you worked for the EPA, for God’s sake!” she cried. Then she saw the full truth, and felt sick. She added softly, “You didn’t meet me by accident. You’ve been spying on me this whole time, haven’t you? You’ve been spying on us, the police, through me!” She looked at him, hopelessly, the enormity of the lie weighing upon her. “Please tell me it isn’t true,” she added softly.
Amaro just shrugged. “Oh, everything I told you is true. Well, nearly everything and nearly true. I am a scientist working for the EPA, but it is a cover. GenInt likes to have its finger on the pulse. What better place to keep tabs on illegal genetic engineering than in some other government department that analyses samples from all over, and pays for it out of its own budget to boot?
“But were we two lovers meeting by accident in a smoky room? Sorry. You’re a job. We got your department’s obscurely worded report on this – thing” he said contemptuously, waving towards Katlyn’s body “ – and got suspicious. It looked like you didn’t want us to know but wanted to cover your asses – and a pretty ass it is too, I must add.” He smirked. “You guys must think we’re idiots. Anyway, we knew you were a key person. My job was to keep an eye on you and find out what I could. My natural charm did the rest.”
“You bastard!”
“Come now, Miriam, grow up. Lots of cops go undercover. You might do it yourself one day. Get over it. We had fun, didn’t we?”
“But I’m a cop! I’m not some low-life criminal you can happily lie to because he’s a liar or worse himself! I loved you! Don’t you know that? I loved you! How could you do that to me!?”
Amaro shrugged again. “What was I supposed to do? Anyway, don’t blame me. I warned you from the start that getting too close to me might burn you, didn’t I? You’re the one who chose to do it anyway and who fooled yourself. I just told you what you wanted to hear. Sure, there had to be a few lies, but nothing major. I tweaked my resume and my background a bit to make myself sound more appealing, that’s all. The rest you did to yourself. Most of it was even real.”
“Except you never loved me. All that was a lie. Our whole relationship was a lie. Every touch, every kiss, every...” Her vision blurred, and she realized she was crying. I won’t give him the satisfaction, she thought. I won’t. She swallowed and glared at him, knowing her tears were there and would not be stopped, but refusing to acknowledge their existence or what they meant.
Amaro looked at her. Part of him was the agent of GenInt, unmoved. But he knew he had let her get under his skin. The agent felt he owed her nothing; but the man knew he owed her something. “If it makes any difference to you,” he continued more gently, “it wasn’t all an act. I did care for you, Miriam. But some things aren’t meant to be. Think of us as Romeo and Juliet, except in our case” – he waved his gun at Katlyn – “somebody else did the dying. So a happy ending, of sorts. But I’m sorry I hurt you, for what that’s worth. I suspect not much, but...” He shrugged.
The man’s debt cleared, the agent felt free to take over again. “For the record, you were admirably if irritatingly discrete. That made my job harder, but more enjoyable at the same time: like a game of chess with a particularly talented opponent playing an unconventional game. But that’s all history. Now we have to look to tomorrow, a much brighter vista. In honor of the good times we’ve had together, I’m letting you share the credit on this one. Really, I do appreciate how you backed me up, covering my back while I cornered this thing and dispatched it. Isn’t that a much better story than what I might tell? You should be showering my feet with kisses, not tears.”
“I understand, Amaro,” she said tonelessly. “I understand you had a job to do. But I think your job stinks and you stink with it. You’re just a liar and a killer. Go to hell.”
His face hardened and he snapped, “That attitude can get you in trouble, girl! There are reasons for the geneh laws, very good reasons. That thing had to die. If you were willing to let it go then you should go to jail yourself!” His voice took on almost a pleading quality, though Miriam couldn’t tell if it was a remnant desire to protect her or just one part of himself trying to convince another. “Listen. You know the law. We’ve even talked about it. Our opinions don’t matter. She spoke to you about justice – but do you really think she had rights? That she deserved a trial? Humans have rights, and humans have decided that things like her aren’t one of them.”
His face hardened again. “If you don’t like it, take it up with your fellow citizens. It is sweet, really, how you have such empathy for all God’s and Satan’s creatures. But get a grip. If I worked for Animal Control and had just shot a rabid dog, well, maybe you’d still feel sorry for the dog: but would you really condemn me for doing my job? For protecting people at the dog’s expense? For deceiving you in order to track it down, when that’s the only way I could because you were blind to how dangerous it was?”
Miriam stared at him. He really believed it, she realized. It wasn’t just a job to him. None of that had been a lie. He really did see himself as a knight protecting the kingdom, defending the realm of man from the monsters of the night. She thought she hated him even more for it. Though for all she knew, he was right. She didn’t know any more. All the fight left her. It didn’t matter anyway now.
“All right, Amaro. I give up. Arrest me if you want to.”
He smiled. “Oh, don’t be like that. What happened to that tongue I so admired? I won’t arrest you. You might feel like that now, but I suspect your tongue will wake up eventually and talk you out of it. No, much better if we share the credit, myself with the lion’s share of course. If I try to ruin your career you will fight it, and your department will probably fight it too. Who knows how shabby you might make GenInt look? Going undercover and under the covers to spy on pretty rookie police girls can be made to sound so tawdry. No. Much better to make this a shining example of cooperation between noble GenInt and the loyal police force; between the global authorities and the local law. Our personal relationship, should it be revealed, was just the natural chemistry of two young people with shared goals. Why, the human interest angle would probably make the magazines.”
Miriam felt sick.
“And you really should look on the bright side. I can understand that getting over me might take some time, but you will soon enough. It won’t be that hard for a woman like you to find some other charming man to share your bed. Why, in a year you’ll have forgotten me completely, except as the rocket that gave your career a boost
most cops can only dream of. So dry your tears and get on with your job.”
“So what do we do now?” she asked tiredly.
“Well, first let’s make sure this thing is completely dead,” he said, drawing his gun and stepping cautiously toward Katlyn’s body.
“Actually, the first thing you two will do is drop your guns and raise your hands,” growled a voice from the corridor. The voice belonged to Tagarin, as did the hefty automatic rifle that had preceded him into the room and was pointed in their direction. “And no sudden moves.”
Chapter 46 – Judgment
They raised their hands and turned fully toward him, slowly. He frowned at them and jerked his rifle in their direction.
“I believe I mentioned dropping your guns?”
Amaro shrugged, laid his gun carefully on the ground and kicked it away. Miriam carefully removed hers from her holster and did likewise.
“OK James, take these two away. I’ll take care of Katlyn. The last thing she’d have wanted is her body paraded before the cameras as a poster child for GenInt. You two murderers and I will have a little talk soon.”
James came in, collected their guns then waved them toward the exit with his own gun. “This way, Sir, Madam,” he said in his butler’s voice. “But don’t ask me to serve coffee,” he added in a growl.
Miriam was almost through the door when she stopped. Like Lot’s wife, she couldn’t resist a last look behind. She caught a fleeting glimpse of Tagarin gently lifting Katlyn’s limp body to his chest before James pushed her ungently into the corridor. Miriam noticed that it now ran straight to beyond where it had earlier divided into two, and realized how simply the others had been trapped; but the knowledge was no use to her now.
