The Cleanway

by Tim Niederriter

  Regardless what he had told Conner, Ryan knew they would be here late. The next morning the station would have to be opened for commuters and finding any evidence would become a hopeless proposition. He took a sip of ichor from a plastic bottle and reached out to with his senses to the network, and to the walls and floor and ceiling of the familiar room in which he stood, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

  He looked a long time.

  Rebecca left for her place about the same time Ryan finished questioning everyone in the mid-afternoon. She said she wanted time alone to think and change out of Elizabeth’s suit. I should have invited her to dinner, especially given the situation. I wanted to keep her close but distrusted that impulse for seeming too possessive.

  At dinner that night, I met Elizabeth and Thomas in Lotdel Tower’s restaurant. I wondered briefly where Rebecca was eating, and if she was still alone. Part of me wanted another dose of ichor so I could reach out to her and ask how she was doing. I resisted. If she wanted space, I could give her that.

  “Jeth, you there?” Thomas waved a hand at me from across the table.

  I realized he and Elizabeth had been talking since we sat down with our food. Embarrassed, I shook my head. “Sorry. Just a little distracted.”

  “I can’t blame you for getting lost in thought,” said Elizabeth. “After all, it’s been a strange day.”

  “We still need to talk about our deal with Sarah Harper.” I frowned. “But not right now. I don’t think my head would be in it.”

  She leaned toward me. “What’s on your mind?”

  “The renegades,” I said, “they were all at the admin building this morning. Well, except for Trench.”

  Thomas scowled as I mentioned the man who had hit him with a steel rod just hours ago. “I’d like to have it out with him barehanded.” His teeth ground together. “He didn’t look so tough.”

  “Don’t be crazy,” said Elizabeth. “You’re making a habit of putting yourself in danger, Thomas.”

  I nodded. “We got lucky in the garden. Same thing today.”

  Thomas dug his fork into a mound of pasta. He looked at me, then at Elizabeth, and then sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

  “You know we are,” she said. “Jeth and I saw what rogue stars and renegades can do. We were right there with you.”

  “Not quite,” said Thomas, “But I don’t blame you for thinking that. It’s just…ever since the garden, I felt like I could do more to protect people.” He started to wrap strands of pasta around his fork. “Maybe we all could do more.”

  Inside, you might say I was torn. One half of my internal rift agreed with everything Thomas had said, even felt the same way. The other side only wanted to be ordinary, to live a normal life with Rebecca and my friends, to run a news network and be prosperous. I looked down at my food in the silence left after Thomas’ words.

  “I was right before. You are out of your mind,” said Elizabeth without venom in her tone.

  Thomas shrugged. “I thought you’d say that. We never exactly see eye to eye, Liz.” He looked at me. “Jeth, come on. What do you think?”

  “I’m thinking. That’s for sure.”

  He lowered his voice. “Now we know the aeons aren’t perfect. Do you trust them to protect people perfectly?”

  I answered in a harsh-sounding whisper. “No, I don’t. But maybe we aren’t the ones to take over for them.”

  He sat back in his seat, letting his fork clatter onto the plate. “I was in the military, Jeth. I know I can help.”

  “What about Jeth and me?” asked Elizabeth. “We don’t have any training.”

  “Not true,” said Thomas. “You’re both excellent memeotects. For that matter, Rebecca—”

  I grunted. “Don’t bring Rebecca into this.” I just got her back, I thought. “This is about the three of us at this table.”

  “My point stands,” he said. “Either of you could stop a man with a gun over the network.”

  “If we’re lucky,” I said.

  “Luck? No, Jeth, you’re good at information. I could tell what you did today to slow down Trench.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “So, we should become vigilantes like the lone sentry?”

  “Maybe we could,” said Thomas. “If she hadn’t been there today, those cleans could have seriously hurt people. Not to mention Trench himself. Whatever he wanted during the attack, I don’t think he got it.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said.

  “That’s thanks to the sentry,” said Thomas, “and you know it.”

  “And thanks to you.” I reclined slightly and folded my arms. “You know that, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “It felt right to help. To be one of the good guys again.”

  “Is that how you felt when you served?” Elizabeth’s voice was soft. “Like a good person?”

  I remembered how she once told me her father had been in the military. Elizabeth rarely discussed her family, and I could tell at the time she and her father were not on good terms. She looked at her plate with a sigh.

  Thomas glanced at me. I unfolded my arms. The silence seemed absolute despite the other residents eating at neighboring places all around our table.

  I said, “Don’t rush into anything, Thomas. It’ll be dangerous out there.” Outside the window, snowflakes started to scatter from low, gray clouds.

  Thomas gave me a small smile. “I promise, I’ll tell you first if I decide to do something crazy.”

  “Do you hear yourself?” Elizabeth said softly. “Rogue stars. Memeotect soldiers. You’re going to get killed.”

  Thomas glared at her.

  I turned in her direction and stared. My mind raced with sudden inspiration. “Repeat that.”

  “Repeat what?” she said. “It’s true. Thomas is going to get killed if he tries to take on the threats to the city.”

  “Not that part.” I frowned as I dug into my mind, hindered by a lack of the ichor I used for research on weekdays. “You said memeotect soldiers. Is that what you think Trench and the others are?”

  Her eyes brightened with understanding. “Yeah, Jeth. Sounds like you agree.”

  “It makes sense, doesn’t it?” I said. “Memeotect skills are all about creating programs and relaying data. If that’s the basis of their control over the cleans, these renegades should be traceable through the cleans they’re manipulating.”

  She put her hand on the table beside her plate and spread her fingers so they tapped the plate on one side and the base of her glass on the other. “Sort of.” She pointed with her free index finger at the splayed hand. “To control their actions that way in real time they would need a sense link too, but the information relay could clue us in to the location of the controller. They’d have to be somewhere in the middle of all their cleans.” She withdrew her fingers and looked at me with a frown. “We should tell Ryan.”

  She was right, and only I had Ryan’s mental signature in my mind. I said, “Can I borrow a drop of ichor from one of you?”

  Thomas handed me a flask. “Use as much as you need.”

  “Just a drop,” I said with a smile. “This could really help catch those four.”

  I sipped the ichor, tasted it on my tongue, then dove straight into the network, ignoring the heightening of my senses from the initial dose. I found Ryan’s mind at the train station nearby. He must be inside, looking for clues. I hailed him, mind to mind.

  “I’ve got something that could blow your case open,” I said, and then delivered a sketch of the information we had just discussed.

  He accepted it instantly. “Thanks, Jeth.”

  “What are friends for?”

  “Time to start canvassing for cleans acting strangely.”

  Someone touched my shoulder, a firm hand, but small. A voice in the restaurant broke through my trance. “We met this morning, remember?”

  I opened my eyes and turned. The woman with dark hair wore a pink dress, the same as this morning.


  “Carol,” I said with a forced smile.

  “Where’s your friend?” she asked. “Rebecca, wasn’t that her name?”

  My eyes widened slightly.

  She smiled, slight, but charming. Except everyone at my table knew who she really was. I glanced at Thomas and Elizabeth. They were both watching Carol as she took her hand from my shoulder.

  “Yeah,” I said. “She’s named Rebecca.” I was certain I had not mentioned Rebecca to the three of them.

  “Thanks for welcoming the three of us to the city,” she said. “We’ve come a long way.” Her smile widened. “Can you introduce me to your friends?”

  I didn’t see much choice. I needed to buy time to secretly message Ryan, then keep Carol in one place. I motioned to Thomas. “This is Thomas. He runs a few small businesses out of the tower…”

  I introduced Elizabeth. Carol gave her a smile.

  “You must do pretty well for yourself, getting ready to start your own network.”

  Elizabeth responded with a shrug. “I do alright. Without our partners, Jeth and I would still have a long way to go.”

  “Well, it was a pleasure to meet you all.” Carol glance at me. “I’m meeting a prospective employer here. She was mine and my friends only real connection in the city until we met you.”

  She motioned to a table on the far side of the dining room, near the long rectangular table where Nageddia, the aeon who governed Lotdel Tower, sat with a group of other citizens.

  At first, I thought the smaller spot was unoccupied, and she meant Nageddia, but then realized the small table did in fact seat a solitary woman. In contrast to Nageddia and her well-dressed guests, this woman wore a high-collared but worn-looking shirt and jeans. The jacket draped over the back of her chair looked similarly used. Yet, her clothes were not the most unusual thing about her.

  With a fresh dose of ichor in me, I could sense the minds throughout the entire room, even if they weren’t actively connected to the network. The woman’s mind remained invisible, like only one other mind in the room. The other mind was Nageddia’s.

  The woman in the old clothes was an aeon.

  “Her?” I asked Carol, who was following my gaze.

  “Celsanoggi,” said Carol with a bright grin. “Between you and me, she is military secretary to a very powerful aeon, no matter how she appears. Maybe I’ll be able to find work through her.”

  Elizabeth raised her eyebrows.

  Thomas glanced at me. “It’s true. I’ve met her before.”

  I held Carol’s gaze. “Do you know who her master is?”

  “Well, she’s here in Lotdel Tower, which is on the edge of Sudhatho’s territory-and she’s mentioned him to me by message today.” Carol shrugged. “But I’m not sure. I don’t want to get my hopes up. So…” she nodded to our table. “Wish me luck!”

  “Good luck,” said Thomas.

  Carol left our table and walked toward Celsanoggi’s table. Thomas stared after her, watching her movement. Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

  “She’s a criminal,” Thomas said in a low voice, “I have to keep an eye on her.”

  “On her. Not her ass,” said Elizabeth with a shake of her head.

  Thomas glanced at me, but I couldn’t offer him any support. “Keep watching,” I said. “I’ll tell Ryan she’s here.”

  Elizabeth nodded, her lips set in a serious line. Thomas’ gaze simply roved back to the table where Carol took a seat across from the shabby-looking aeon, Celsanoggi.

  I reached into the network to contact Ryan again, moving stealthily through the brief channels to get to the train station. Rather than greeting him like before, I composed an encrypted memory of the last few minutes, wrapped in enigma patterns, then sent it with a hint to the pass thought—Rain’s real name.

  He did not reply except with a subtle pulse that let me know he had opened the file successfully. Now, we had to wait.

  I returned my conscious thoughts to where I sat in the restaurant. Funny, how I no longer felt like eating. My appetite apparently could not take the surprise of encountering one of the renegade soldiers so close to where I lived.

  Thomas nodded toward Carol and Celsanoggi. “They’re still talking.”

  “Good,” I said. “Hopefully nobody noticed my message.”

  Elizabeth looked over her shoulder, then her jaw dropped. “Jeth… look behind you.”

  “I’m already tired of surprises today,” I said, but I looked.

  Rebecca stood in the entryway of the restaurant wearing a blue dress. That dress—it hugged her in all the right places, accentuating her athletic frame and alluring curves from a modest neckline down to where a set of dark stockings began. A mane of dark hair haloed her face.

  She smiled at me—a very lucky, if conflicted me—and made her way toward the table.

  She sat beside me and I let Elizabeth and Thomas inform her of the situation. Ha. Let them. Right. I was a bit on the distracted side, given Rebecca’s glorious entrance. I watched Rebecca’s radiant smile transform into a frown. She did not look at the table where Carol sat, but let her eyes move from me to Thomas, to Elizabeth, and then back again.

  “Who is she talking to?” asked Rebecca.

  “An aeon,” I managed to say. “She called her Celsanoggi.”

  Rebecca’s eyes narrowed further. “Celsanoggi. You’re sure?”

  “Someone you know?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Someone I knew.” Rebecca inhaled deeply. “We need to be careful. Celsanoggi used to work with Sudhatho. She met Yashelia a few times when I was there.”

  “You never did say how you met Shelly,” I said.

  “I’ll tell you. When it matters,” said Rebecca. Her frown deepened to a full-on glare, which she directed straight at me, but I saw more fear than anger in those dark eyes. “How long before Ryan gets here?”

  “He was at the station. Minutes probably,” I said.

  “Uh oh,” said Thomas.

  Rebecca and I turned as mirrors toward Carol and Celsanoggi’s table. The two women were standing and shaking hands. Evidently they had not planned a dinner meeting. Carol picked up her purse and started toward the door. Celsanoggi remained standing and watched her go.

  Carol walked straight toward the table where I sat beside Rebecca. She met my gaze evenly, smiled, and then reached into her bag and removed a small vial of a golden liquid. Ichor. She drained the small vial as she approached, without breaking a stride.

  “Jethro,” she said, “looks like my business here is concluded.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “that didn’t take long.”

  “Faster than I expected.” Her gaze moved to Rebecca. “I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced. My name is Carol.”

  “I’m Rebecca.” She held out a hand clad in a glove the same color and material as her stockings. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Carol showed her teeth in a smile I thought of as predatory. She took Rebecca’s hand in hers. “Likewise.”

  Their hands were still locked together when Ryan’s message reached me and alerted my conscious mind. I networked quickly. He was downstairs and moving in. Keep her there, his message read.

  Carol released Rebecca, and the renegade soldier’s eyes clouded for a second as she accessed some communication. I couldn’t let my nerves show but doubted my poker face after too many losses to Thomas in cards. Carol returned from the network.

  “A pleasure to be sure, but I really must be going. That was my ride.” She turned and began to walk swiftly away.

  “We need to keep her here,” I said to the others, “Ryan is on his way.”

  “Right,” said Thomas. He pushed out his chair and started after Carol.

  “Wait a minute,” Elizabeth stood up fast and followed Thomas.

  Rebecca and I exchanged worried looks.

  “She’s too dangerous for us,” said Rebecca. She extended her arm toward me. “Take my wrist.”

  I did, appreciating the warm firmness of her skin.
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br />   “Reach out.” She began to sensocycle, allowing us to remotely view other locations through the net. “Check the lobby.”

  My mind raced through lines of light and data representations, through the floors and the crawlspaces between, down into the lobby. People waited unobtrusively in the armchairs and at the doorways, but something felt off. I figured it out quickly by the looks in every one of their vacant eyes. The lobby was full of cleans.

  I noticed one of them on the way in but didn’t realize the extent, Rebecca shared. They seem like they’re waiting for something.

  Or someone, I answered through our connection. Out loud, I said, “We have to stop her from getting downstairs.”

  Thomas almost caught up with Carol by the elevator as she hit the call button. Elizabeth was close behind them.

  I released Rebecca’s wrist. “Let’s go.”

  She nodded, and we went after the other three.

  The elevator arrived before Rebecca and I could catch up. Doors opened. Carol stepped inside, with a smile at Thomas and Elizabeth. They stepped into the car after her. The doors closed just as we arrived in the hall outside the restaurant.

  I grimaced and hit the call button. “Damn it, we’re going to fall behind.”

  “Hopefully your friend Carter will cut them off.”

  “She acted like she knew you.”

  “Perhaps she recognized me…from before.”

  “You mean from this morning, or before?”

  Rebecca leaned toward me. “I mean before I was cleaned, yes.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “I don’t think so, based on her looks. But a face can change in this day and age.”

  “That’s the truth.” I frowned impatiently at the elevator doors, still closed. “We need to get down there fast—”

  As I spoke, the bell in the shaft chimed, and the doors in front of me slid open. Rebecca and I rode it down to the lobby. All the short ride, I hoped we wouldn’t be too late. Then the doors opened. We stepped out, and all the cleans in the lobby turned to look at us in unison. Carol, Thomas, and Elizabeth, were not there.