“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Translated as: Is there anything… Huh. Sturtevant’s sincere.
Mulcahy shook his head. “If you’re willing to let Agent Peng stay active at the MPD, that alone would be a huge help to us. Although you’ll probably catch some fallout if it comes out you knew about the mental conditioning and still kept her on your staff.”
Aaaaand fuck. Didn’t think that would be the reason I’d be kicked out of the MPD—I figured it’d be because Mulcahy had me walled up in the ossuary and I stopped coming to work.
Sturtevant weighed Rachel’s turquoise core against the blues and golds of the MPD. “We work with more than thirty mental health professionals,” he finally said. “If Agent Peng would consent to five separate evaluations, that would prove I did my due diligence after I found out.”
Rachel forced herself to stay loose in her chair. If Sturtevant wanted to slip a physical in there, she wouldn’t be able to dodge an eye examination. Not if she wanted to stay at the MPD. Sturtevant took a quick breath, as if he was about to add something, and the fingernails on Rachel’s left hand bit into the wadded tissue.
Then Sturtevant let the moment pass.
“That sounds fair,” Mulcahy said. “It would also help us to show that Agent Peng was independently vetted by the MPD, and found to be mentally stable. Could you make sure that Agents Atran and Netz receive the same evaluations?”
Sturtevant agreed. Rachel didn’t, but she kept her mouth shut. Adding Jason into the mix was a bad idea. She could beat a psych evaluation without breaking a sweat, and Phil had nothing to hide. Jason, on the other hand, was a narcissistic mess; he might lack some of her more aggressive tendencies, but any good shrink would be able to draw him out.
“Agent Peng?”
Rachel turned to Mulcahy. “Sir?”
“Anything you’d like to add?”
“Chief Sturtevant may be too polite to mention it, but you should know that Senator Hanlon has decided he is also a target.”
“Ah.” Mulcahy nodded to the Chief. “I apologize for getting you caught up in our affairs.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sturtevant said. “We get very few opportunities in life to do lasting good. I’d consider it a privilege to help take someone like him out of public office.”
“Thank you,” Mulcahy said, standing. “I’ll check to see what we can do to keep Hanlon off of your back.”
“It would be appreciated.”
“If she’s free to go, I’d like to borrow Agent Peng for a few hours.”
A southwestern turquoise flickered within Sturtevant’s conversational colors, and was quickly submerged in yellow-orange trepidation. Nice to know that Sturtevant was worried about her. “She’s yours,” he said.
So much for being under Sturtevant’s protection, she thought. It was not as though Mulcahy was going to kill her for spilling OACET’s secrets to Sturtevant (well, not kill-kill... probably), but she was sure he could make her crave the sweet peace of the grave ten times over.
Mulcahy held the door for her, and Rachel hastily unwove the silvery EMF barrier around Sturtevant’s office. It was a rush job, and she felt the beginnings of a migraine as she let the ends of the weave collapse on top of them. Mulcahy’s surface colors took on some red; he had felt the backlash, too.
She opened a link. “Sorry.”
They both knew she meant her apology to cover more than a dropped barrier.
Mulcahy wasn’t buying it. “Jason says you read him the riot act for breaking the rules just a couple of days ago,” he said. There was a little bit of red in his colors, but not nearly as much as she had expected. He was still mainly orange (irritated, probably at interrupting his workday to come down and bail her out), a small touch of purple (amusement), and pink. She had no idea what the pink meant, or why the purple was there at all.
“This was the kind of situation where I couldn’t beg forgiveness after the fact,” she said. “If I was to continue to work with Sturtevant, I needed to prep him.” She didn’t mention that while she might be begging for forgiveness herself, she hadn’t needed to ask for permission. Mulcahy was the one who had promoted her to OACET’s administrative team. If he didn’t think she had the good sense required to manage their allies, he shouldn’t have promoted her.
At first, Mulcahy didn’t reply. She felt slow anger in his head, but he was more annoyed than anything else. After a few moments, he said, “I know.”
“Where are we going?”
“Home,” he told her. “So Jenny can take care of your hand.”
Oh goody, she thought. Now everyone can be in a passive-aggressive huff with me today.
Picking up on private thoughts was a side effect of a casual link. Mulcahy heard her: she saw it, the strong flash of purple as he suppressed his grin, and knew she’d be fine.
“What’d you drive?” she asked aloud.
“The Goat,” he said.
A little thrill ran up her spine. Mulcahy had a weak spot for classic muscle cars, and his 1967 Pontiac GTO was a favorite of hers. The thing was a beast. If she still trusted herself to drive, she would have stolen it out from under him.
They took a side door and stepped into the late morning sunlight. First District Station’s garage was still being repaired, and they had to walk several blocks to where Mulcahy had parked. Rachel refused to run after her boss like a small child, so she slowed her pace until he remembered how he covered nearly twice the distance with a single step. He shortened his stride, his reds rising as he dealt with this newest irritation.
The best defense was a solid offense. “I thought you’d be furious,” she said.
He looked down at her; it was a long, long way up to meet his eyes. “I am.”
“No, you’re angry, not furious. Furious is a burning red. You’re just on a slow boil.”
The strange combination of purple-orange bemusement grew stronger. “This wasn’t the first unauthorized disclosure I’ve managed,” he admitted. “After you showed Santino could be trusted, there’s been something of a rush on confessions.”
“Really?” Rachel was honestly shocked. She hadn’t heard a word about this, and Agents were awful with secrets.
“We’re up to at least three a day,” he said. “Mostly family members. I’ve actually been waiting for your call to let me know you spoke to Sturtevant.”
Mulcahy must have felt her sudden anger; he went yellow-white in mild surprise. “What?”
“You do realize if you had told me full disclosure is now an acceptable policy, I could have arranged a formal meeting? Maybe not stressed myself stupid about it?”
He stopped walking. “It’s not acceptable,” he said, the red anger flaring. “We put ourselves first. Always. You’re Administration—you know this!—and yet here I am.”
Rachel wasn’t about to back down, and pushed her words at him as hard as she could. “Bringing Sturtevant in? That was putting us first. He’s a good ally. He’s smart, he’s connected, and he knows if he helps us, we’ll help him.”
Mulcahy nodded. “I know,” he said. “That’s why he and I arranged for you to come to the MPD in the first place.”
She gaped at him.
“Sturtevant never told you he was the one who wanted an alliance between the MPD and OACET?”
Rachel closed her eyes and flipped off visuals. She had known someone at the MPD had insisted on working with OACET, but Sturtevant?
Well…
It would explain why the Chief of Detectives had attached himself to her and Santino. And why he had appointed himself as their supervisor at the MPD. And why he had allowed her to bring in Phil and Jason… And had increased Santino’s budget… And made sure she got a desk… And those fancy business cards, and…
And Rachel felt very stupid.
And now she was the one who was furious.
They crossed a four-lane road. Anger had shut her visual control down to almost nothing; all she could see was black,
and her feet within the crosswalk. A horn blared and a man’s voice shouted something cruel; Mulcahy had been spotted.
They ignored the shouted threats and kept on walking.
“Did you ever ask yourself,” she said to him, after the tunnel vision had started to recede. “if I might have made faster progress at the MPD if you had told me Sturtevant could be trusted?”
“No.” His answer came almost before she had finished with her question. “I put you there to fight and win. Your purpose was to build new alliances, not develop those we already had.
“And you’ve done that, Penguin,” he added in a softer tone, his red anger shifting towards pride. “Faster—better—than I thought was possible.”
She flipped off the emotional spectrum: it was nearly impossible to be angry with someone when they held positive thoughts about you, and at that moment, she wanted to be angry at Mulcahy. “I don’t like being used.”
He shrugged through their link; she shuddered at the sensation. “I know,” he said. “I wish it could be different.”
“Yeah,” Rachel said aloud. She didn’t need to see his colors to know he was carrying guilt. None of the Agents had wanted to be in their current situation—Mulcahy certainly hadn’t woken up one morning and decided to crown himself the Cyborg King. Sometimes you just had to play the hand you were dealt, even if that hand was nothing but the two of clubs and a bunch of venomous spiders.
They reached Mulcahy’s car, gleaming black and riding low against the curb. She felt him reach out to ping it, and the Goat’s engine turned over, purring; some purists would consider a remote starter on a classic car an act of desecration, but they weren’t cyborgs.
She slipped into the passenger’s side and settled down in the leather bucket seat, ready for a long and silent ride to the mansion.
Mulcahy surprised her. After a few quiet minutes, he asked, “You trust Sturtevant?”
She flipped emotions back on. Yellow and blue. Curious, mostly. Professional blue… Aw hell. Every single conversation with Mulcahy turned into a performance evaluation. “I didn’t say that,” she said. “I don’t think I implied it, either. But it’s… interesting… that you trust him.”
“I didn’t say that,” he said. “Or imply it, either.” A flash of purple flipped over his surface colors like a wink.
“Oh my God,” she sighed. Testing her and playing games. “Why hasn’t your wife strangled you in your sleep?”
“She says I make her laugh.”
Rachel blinked at him, then broke down in a mild case of giggles. “You can be a real jerk, Mulcahy.”
“So I’ve heard.” This time, he actually cracked a grin.
She wondered, just for a moment, what he had been like before the implant.
“I used to sing.”
“What?”
“I used to sing. Before.” He must have noticed her expression. “Sorry. You were loud.”
Damn. Rachel looped her scans through the road running under them, seizing on the strength of concrete. “Better?”
“Yes.” He turned onto the highway and steered them out of the city. “Your conversation with Sturtevant? I assume you were running emotions. How did it go?”
She told him. When she had finished, she glanced up at Mulcahy. Curious yellows has replaced the last of the blues. “What?” she asked.
“There’s usually some psychological stress when we do full disclosure.”
“Oh, there was plenty of pity. He just didn’t show it. And I think he’s more vested in what we do next than what happened in the past—as long as we’re mentally stable now, what they did to us isn’t relevant to our role at the MPD.”
A wisp of gray spun through his colors. “Could be.”
“I think it’s a good sign,” she decided. They hadn’t been sure how the general public would react when they learned how the cyborgs had been victimized. “If Sturtevant doesn’t think we’re an inherent risk, maybe it means that the other normals we work with will vouch for us when the brainwa—uh, that—hits the press.”
“Probably not,” he said. “Josh and I work with Congress, remember?”
“I meant people who mattered.”
This time, Mulcahy laughed, and the gray in his conversational colors blew apart like smoke.
“You should have let me know that others are doing full disclosure,” she told him. “It would have helped me plan my strategies.”
“That’s why I didn’t,” he said. “It shouldn’t be an option. If we don’t control what others know about us, they’ll have control over us.”
“Except now Sturtevant understands what we went through, and he’s probably going to be a better ally because of it.”
He tapped his index fingers against the steering wheel, orange-yellow annoyance beginning to appear as she pushed him. “Did you tell him about Shawn?”
“What? No!”
“And are you still going to hide your calorie consumption from him? Did you tell him about the missing fifty?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to; Mulcahy already knew.
“We have to keep control,” he said. “It’s the only way we can survive.”
Rachel nodded and muttered something agreeable. It was easier than fighting with him; Mulcahy didn’t even realize he was lying.
TWELVE
RACHEL SLAMMED THE GOAT’S DOOR with a satisfying thump. Mulcahy wasn’t staying; he said he needed to get back to the Capitol. It was a half-truth at best: neither of them wanted to spend any more time in each other’s company for at least the next few days.
Her skin twitched in the autumn air as she walked up the cracked sidewalk to the front doors of the mansion. The car had been nicely toasty, and her suit coat was not thick enough to keep the chill away. Jacket, she told herself. Remember to start carrying a jacket. She was from Texas, born and (on her father’s side) bred, and she had expected winters in the D.C. temperate zone to be a little more… temperate. Still, winter here was nothing compared to Afghanistan. She was sure she had been one rotation away from losing toes.
The mansion’s grounds were going dormant. Santino wasn’t the only crazed gardener in her life: OACET had at least a dozen dedicated hobbyists who had cut and slashed the overgrown landscaping back into some semblance of domesticity. They were working from a five-year plan, replacing the dead plants with new hedges and perennials to complement the mansion’s traditional French cottage exterior. Mulcahy had told them they would have moved to their permanent headquarters before those five years were up, but the gardeners just laughed and kept digging. The collective was a technological marvel at least a generation ahead of their time, yes, but they were also employed by the federal government. No one expected their new offices to be finished within the next decade.
In the meantime, the gardeners were planting for pollinators. Rachel had been subject to many a passionate lecture on how humanity was on the verge of starvation, damning itself to an empty produce section by killing off bee colonies for the sake of aphid-free roses. The gardeners had built beehives from untreated cypress stumps, and were refusing to bag any fallen leaves until the moth larvae beneath them had a chance to mature.
It was a work day, and most of the Agents in the mansion were at their desks. Rachel knew she was one of the lucky ones: thanks to Mulcahy (and Sturtevant, apparently), she had an actual job that put her back in the field. The others were still waiting for placement. Not every federal department had an opening for a cyborg, or were willing to take one on, or wouldn’t abuse said cyborg in the name of convenience or some nebulous Greater Good. It left some of the most powerful people on the planet to waste their days doing data entry.
Rachel went in through the back. The solarium was empty, her footsteps muffled by layer upon layer of antique carpets. There were occasional conversations as she passed Agents on her way downstairs, but she was more likely to get a wave or a brief mental greeting; she hadn’t fallen into a basement today.
The medical lab
was empty. Rachel felt a twinge of mild astonishment—Jenny practically lived there. Rachel searched for Jenny’s signal and found her doctor hurrying downstairs from the kitchen.
“Sorry, Penguin.” Jenny’s mental voice was slightly shaky. “I just got back from a food run. Everyone’s converging on the kitchen.”
“I’m in the lab. Can you bring some lunch down for me?”
Jenny’s horror that food was about to enter her precious quasi-sterile environment was palpable, and she calmed down only after she felt Rachel laughing at her through the link. “Oh, very funny,” the doctor said. “And your wounds are open again. Swear to God, Rachel…”
They bickered pleasantly until Jenny entered the lab, and then the two of them reenacted the previous afternoon: Jenny, taking down the little white case and numbing Rachel’s hand before stitching up her palm; Rachel, doing her best to not throw up all over Jenny.
“Have you used Shawn’s autoscript yet?” Jenny asked.
“A few times. Have my mutant healing powers kicked in yet?”
Jenny laughed through the link. “Nope,” she said. “Your hands are still a mess. You’re lucky I can restitch these cuts, but if you do this again, you’re going to have to wear a full bandage over your left hand. How did the script work for you?”
“You were right, it felt like going to sleep. Actually,” she added, mulling it over, “it felt like the best power nap I’ve ever had.”
The other woman nodded as she finished the last row of stitches. “Even if we get nothing else out of that script, that’ll be useful. Now,” Jenny said, standing, “I’m going to give you a half-assed physical, because I cannot trust you to have the good sense to take care of yourself.”
“Right,” Rachel said. Jenny was all about spontaneous physicals: the woman seemed convinced they were all on the verge of complete systems failure. “Ballistics vest on or off?”
“You can leave it on. I’m just checking for signs of infection,” Jenny said, coming at Rachel with an otoscope and a tongue depressor. “Say Ah.”
Maker Space Page 17
