Fallen

by Claire Delacroix

  Dr. Malachy inhaled sharply. "Is it in your palm?"

  "No. On a separate dalachip."

  "You must give it to me," he insisted with heat.

  Lilia shook her head. "I can't just pass it to you here, where anyone could see."

  A big factor in her inability to surrender the datachip was the fact that Montgomery had it, but Dr. Malachy didn't need to know that just yet.

  "Besides, I'd like some information in exchange," Lilia said. "Maybe we could make a deal."

  He smiled ever so slightly. "And what would that deal be?"

  "An answer to a question, one honest answer."

  He straightened, clearly excited. He probably assumed she would play her ace for something lame, like a request for protocol for appealing her ejection.

  She gave his arm a minute tug. "I was thinking the netherzones would be ideal for this exchange."

  "Perfect."

  Lilia pulled him to a stop when he might have gone back to the lobby. She didn't want the other cop to see what she was doing. "No, let's go through the kitchens." Dr. Malachy readily turned his steps in that direction. He moved with such purpose that Lilia knew she'd made the right choice.

  Dr. Malachy was more nimble than Lilia'd expected, but then, he'd probably thought that precious data had been lost forever with Gid. The pair made their way through the kitchens and into a service stairwell. They got down the stairs to the first level of the netherzones with reasonably good speed.

  He halted and turned, panting a bit, his expression avid. "This will do." He gestured to Lilia's palm. "Now, turn it off."

  "What?"

  "There will be no monitoring of this conversation. You've already said too much that could be observed."

  "You can't turn off a palm."

  "Of course, you can." He tersely dictated a string of commands. Lilia punched them into her palm, as he did the same with his own, and the displays in both palms faded simultaneously.

  Lilia stared at her palm in shock. She'd never felt the tiny electrical impulse that the palm stole from the body, but she noticed when it was gone. Her left hand felt a bit numb. Dead. She felt kind of lost without her electronic leech, spy, and memory aid. "I never knew that was possible."

  "For obvious reasons, the Republic would prefer that no one knew," Dr. Malachy said, dismissive of such details. "Now, what's your question?"

  "Wait a minute. How do I turn it back on?"

  He gave her the commands and Lilia punched them in, relieved when it flashed and tingled once again. He glared at her and she turned it off, as obedient as she'd never been.

  "Now, your question."

  Lilia took a deep breath. "Who was the head of the Council of Three in 2069, who ordered and planned the attack on Gotham?"

  His eyes flashed with surprise. "What are you talking about?" His words lacked conviction and Lilia knew she had to persuade him that she wasn't just guessing before he'd answer.

  "You know what I'm talking about. The attack on Gotham was organized by the Society, in order to replenish the population of shades and ensure the Society's longevity."

  "Gideon did not tell you this."

  "No. Gid charted the shade population over time. It reached a dangerous low immediately before the attack on Gotham, one that would have threatened the stability of society at large if nothing had been done. Gid's data show that if that downward trajectory had continued, the entire justification for the Society would have disappeared, probably within a decade."

  Lilia took a step closer to the professor, who was looking a bit bewildered, and softened her voice. "Someone decided to do something about that, to be proactive in ensuring job security for Nuclear Darwinists everywhere. I think you know who it was. I think you've known for thirty years." She put her hand on his arm. "Who killed your fiancée, Dr. Malachy? It might have been done indirectly, but it was a murder all the same."

  He considered her for a moment and Lilia knew he was weighing his options. "You've made a good bit of conjecture here, Lilia. Have you any proof of this?"

  "Gid's datachip."

  "You had best give it to me. As I was his advisor, those results were doubtless intended for me. I may understand the data better than you do, my child, and this is a matter of considerable delicacy."

  He knew! Lilia would have given the chip to him, right then and there, but Montgomery still had it.

  She smiled at the professor. "You haven't answered my question yet. We had a deal."

  "Fair enough. But where is the datachip, Lilia? Is it safe?"

  "It's hidden, where no one will find it but me. You don't need to worry about it falling into the wrong hands."

  "Good." Lilia saw his smile, the barest warning that she'd miscalculated, then Dr. Malachy took a swing at her with his cane.

  The next thing she knew, Lilia was down on the floor on all fours, her brains scrambled. She could feel something warm running down her cheek.

  She'd made a big mistake.

  Lilia looked up as Dr. Malachy stepped over her again, his features twisted with anger. "Stupid cow!" She rolled out of the way in the last moment and his cane struck the railing, its metal head making the balusters ring.

  Dr. Malachy swore.

  Lilia climbed to her feet and tried to run up the stairs. He deftly hooked the cane around one of her ankles and brought her to the floor again with a quick gesture. Lilia fell hard on her rump and wondered whether she'd chipped her tail bone.

  Bruises were the least of her worries. Dr. Malachy was more agile than she'd realized and a lot stronger.

  Plus he was intent upon killing her.

  The solitude of the netherzones no longer seemed like such a good thing. Lilia got to her feet in a hurry as Dr. Malachy snarled, swung, and missed.

  "I let you live," he snarled. "I argued for your life to be spared and this is your thanks."

  "You only wanted Gid's datachip," she guessed.

  "I dislike loose ends."

  This was Lilia's last chance to find out more, so she goaded him. "Maybe you don't even know who was on Council thirty years ago," she said, her tone condescending. "Your research was never that significant, was it?"

  "Stupid woman," he muttered and took another swipe. He was learning from her evasive tactics: when Lilia dodged the blow at the last minute, he twisted his wrist and redirected the cane. It caught her painfully across the left arm.

  Lilia wanted her laze, which was rather inconveniently sealed in a plastic bag at NGPD. Marvin had just gone to the top of her Destined for Hell list.

  "You killed Gid," she speculated.

  "Gideon signed his own death warrant. I told him to tally the statistics and leave the matter be, but he defied me." Malachy and Lilia circled each other. "He learned a fatal curiosity from you." He raised his cane. Lilia dove for his feet. His weight teetered, and he rained blows down upon her back.

  Something cracked and Lilia hoped it wasn't one of her vertebrae. Her preference would have been his cane.

  "Just like Johanna," he muttered, his breath coming faster. "Impossibly stupid, stubborn cow."

  Lilia figured he was talking about his fiancee, though she was surprised at his terms of endearment. He couldn't have loved her, not if he called her names like that. So he hadn't been sharing his own sad history over breakfast; he'd been trying to find out how much she knew.

  Tit for tat. Lilia went after what he knew. "Johanna guessed what was going to happen to Gotham," she guessed. "That was why you really fought. She wasn't stupid at all."

  Dr. Malachy growled in recollection. "She went to try and stop it, stupid, stupid girl. She couldn't stop it, no one can stop something like that once it's started."

  "Why not?"

  He swung and missed. "It's planned that way, obviously. If you weren't female, you'd see that. Women never understand anything of importance."

  "Then explain it to me." Lilia's dumb bunny tone won her more than a respite.

  He straightened, his expression filled wi
th malice even as he couldn't resist the chance to show his mental superiority. "Any decent plan ensures that very few individuals know the entire scheme, and that stopping one individual doesn't stop the incident. It's only logical."

  "Incident? Is that what the Society called the termination of several million lives? Just an incident?"

  Dr. Malachy lunged toward her. Lilia tried to evade the cane, slipped, and he kicked her in the gut. She fell down a trio of steps, somersaulted backward, and came up on her feet.

  "It was for the greater good!" he roared.

  "Of who?" Lilia shouted back.

  He came down the stairs toward her, breathing heavily, his eyes ablaze. "It was the divine plan. The Society was anointed with the task of safeguarding shade children and making their lives useful. Ernest Sinclair created the Society and devised the plan to ensure its longevity ..."

  "Ernest Sinclair ordered the attack."

  He didn't agree or disagree. "But Johanna, a mere Nuclear Darwinist Second Degree, thought she could undo the good work of the Society. She left the Institute and went to Gotham because she was too much of a fool to see the truth."

  "And so she died."

  He bared his teeth and raised his cane. "It was natural selection. Only the fittest should survive."

  Lilia gasped outrage, which gave him the opportunity he needed. His cane flashed, the hook caught her under the arm, and he heaved her toward the railing. Lilia caught at the cold metal with her hands, but he twisted one hand behind her back and lifted her from behind.

  Lilia was looking down the center of the stairwell, down to the floor of the lowest netherzone. She watched a drop of blood from her temple fall and splatter, and figured she'd be right behind it. She eyed the distance to the concrete floor and, even without Gid's aid, calculated the probabilities of her survival from such a fall to be quite poor.

  She would have liked to have thought that it was her own sense of impending doom, of a personal nature, that gave her new strength, but it was what Dr. Malachy said.

  "I wonder how long it will take the shades to notice that something is different about their stairwell," he mused. "Poor creatures. They're lucky we find a reason to let them live."

  Lilia's blood boiled at his attitude.

  Where was Montgomery?

  She had to stall for time. "Don't you want Gid's dat-achip? Push me and you'll never find it again."

  Dr. Malachy laughed. "It would suit me if no one ever found it, if indeed you ever had it. Either way, your death will be convenient. You are somewhat of a nuisance, Lilia." He pushed her a bit farther over the rail and Lilia felt her weight dangle in space.

  "Actually, I lied about hiding the datachip," she said. "I gave it to the cops."

  "I don't think so. I think you're lying now."

  "Give me the satisfaction of knowing who ordered the attack, at least," Lilia said. "Seeing as I'm going to die anyway. What can it hurt?"

  "There is always one on the Council who leads," he hissed in her ear. "It was ever thus. From the Society's inception until his death, it was Ernest Sinclair who dictated all policy, for the good of all of us. We exist for the benefit of mankind, Lilia. That was the basic lesson you were supposed to learn at the Institute, the one that you were too stupid to grasp."

  "That enslaving part of the population can be justified?"

  "That the greater good of the species justifies all." With that, Dr. Malachy gave her a final push.

  The loose end was no longer the datachip: it was Lilia.

  Montgomery burst into the stairwell in time to see Lilia hanging from the railing. He didn't want to fire his laze and draw attention, so he crept silently and quickly down the stairs.

  The old man gave Lilia a shove.

  Lilia snatched at the balusters and clung there for a heart-stopping moment. She fought for a grip on the metal. Her assailant raised his cane to batter Lilia's fingers, but Montgomery tapped him on the shoulder.

  "Is there a problem?" he asked.

  The older man spun, swinging his cane at Montgomery. Montgomery ducked, then decked him after the follow-through. Malachy faltered, looking old and feeble, and Montgomery almost regretted what he had done.

  Lilia managed to get a grip on the railing and hung on panting. "Don't trust him," she said, but Montgomery had already seen the glint of malice in the old man's eyes.

  Malachy coughed weakly and fell to one knee. Montgomery eased closer, knowing it was expected of him, and the old man came up fighting.

  Montgomery decked him again.

  The old man was so surprised that he lost his balance and toppled backward. His feet went out from under him and he cried out. His head hit the lip of a lower step with a fearsome crack. He lay there motionless, sprawled over the stairs with his head higher than his feet.

  Blood began to run down the metal stairs.

  Montgomery gave Lilia a hand and pulled her over the railing. "Okay?"

  "Pretty much." She tapped at her palm. She nursed the braised knuckles on her other hand, warily keeping her distance from Dr. Malachy.

  "What happened?"

  "He tried to kill me." She spared Montgomery a glance. "I guess that means my theory was right."

  "But we still have no evidence of it."

  "My ribs hurt like hell, and I'm going to have some major black and blue. Doesn't that count?"

  Montgomery shook his head. They looked as one at the fallen Malachy.

  "You know, a better person would call a paramedic," Lilia breathed. There was hostility in her tone. "But if he isn't already dead, I'll give him time to get there."

  "What happened?"

  "They nuked Gotham, for the good of the species." She heaved a sigh. "He knew about Gotham all these years and kept quiet. He knew that the Society would strike again—in fact, he dispatched Gid to correlate the statistics."

  "He sent Fitzgerald on a mission he wouldn't be allowed to survive," Montgomery said quietly.

  Lilia nodded.

  Montgomery felt the need to say it. "So the Society was responsible for Fitzgerald's death, not you."

  He wasn't sure what she would have said, because something flicked on Malachy's palm in that moment. Lilia approached the old man cautiously, her gaze flicking between his face and his palm.

  He was still.

  "Careful," Montgomery advised.

  Lilia touched his throat, her own heart leaping. "Even he can't pretend to have no pulse."

  There was a familiar spinning golden graphic on his palm, the logo of the Society of Nuclear Darwinists. They leaned closer and at the bottom of the display were three tiny glowing words:

  Erasure 35% Complete.

  The percentage number was ticking higher at lightning speed. "It's a worm," Montgomery said. "It's erasing his palm on his death."

  "He's got to be Council of Three," Lilia whispered.

  "One down," Montgomery said. "I wonder who the others are."

  "There's only one way to find out." Lilia slammed her dataprobe into his palm.

  Montgomery's heart stopped cold at her audacity.

  The percentage froze at 52 percent complete. Neither of them breathed for an instant.

  Lilia took a shaking breath. "All we have to do is breach his firewalls and hope that the important data wasn't among the 52 percent that's already gone."

  Montgomery almost smiled. "That's all."

  Lilia gritted her teeth and bent over their linked palms. Montgomery would have bet his last cred on her beating the system, but she didn't have a chance.

  Malachy's palm sent a message. Montgomery saw the icon and was horrified. "To who?" he demanded.

  "Persons unknown. Two of them."

  Montgomery swore. Malachy's palm had sent a message of its own volition, presumably to the surviving Council members.

  "It's erasing again," Lilia said with dismay. "Faster now."

  "Pull out."

  She pulled out her probe and stood beside Montgomery. The Society graphic on Malachy'
s palm stopped spinning. It flashed once, then twin hemispheres closed over the logo from behind, seeming to devour it. When the logo had turned into a featureless golden globe, his palm extinguished.

  "The other two know he's dead," Montgomery guessed.

  "They probably know I'm with him." Lilia looked up, her expression frightened.

  "And they know where we are," Montgomery concluded. He seized Lilia's hand and leapt down the stairs to the netherzones, hoping they hadn't lingered too long. "We need a bike and we need to get into Gotham. The only good thing is that we probably won't be followed."

  Lilia snorted. "Get serious, Montgomery. Every guest in this hotel is packing a heavy-grade pseudoskin. I'd be surprised if we weren't followed."

  "You do know how to put things into perspective."

  "It's a gift."

  Montgomery kicked open the steel door allowing access to the lower level of the netherzones.

  Lilia peeled off her street clothes and chucked them aside. She even gave the pile of petticoats an extra kick for good measure. She hauled her helm from the bag she carried and put it on, then put the bag on her back.

  "Leave it behind," he counseled and she laughed.

  Her eyes were dancing and she looked vibrantly alive. "My black lycrester suit is in there. Until death us do part and all that."

  Montgomery hoped it wouldn't come to that.

  XXI

  Lilia lost her heart completely when Montgomery commandeered a bike from a loyal citizen, failing to mention to that citizen that his motorbike would be hot if and when it ever returned to New Gotham to be claimed.

  He also gave the citizen the name and service number of some cop named Dimitri.

  He got a ping on his palm about Lilia's nefarious deed. "Let's get out of here," he said and she agreed.

  Montgomery drove nearly as fast as she would have done.

  He headed for the tunnel and it could have been instant replay. The geiger on the bike ticked up a storm when they emerged in the old city. Lilia heard the wolves, just as she had before, but they weren't as close.

  Maybe it was too early to dine.

  Lilia shivered when they turned into Rockefeller Plaza, still felt cornered. She saw the eyes of the wolves only once they were in the square, as the canines closed ranks behind the bike on their silent feet.