by John Meaney
The rear entrance was of metal, rust-patched but solid enough.
Digging deep into his pocket, Viktor's hand came out with the set of hex keys that he always carried. A pale-blue phosphorescence washed across the keys.
The door was protected.
A chain of tiny glowing heptagons appeared around the threshold. They spread along the rust-covered lintel and down both sides. That was where Viktor got to work first, scratching tiny antipatterns to dissolve the geometric setup that stood against him. It was painstaking work. It could collapse in an instant if he made a mistake.
In that case, would he sense the final flare of light that accompanied his death? Or would his world already have blanked out forever?
Viktor let experience guide his hand, working around the edges of the doorway. Then he scratched a knot shape on the concrete threshold. His key flared blue and white, burning him, freezing him . . .
Bastard.
. . . as chain and anti-chain writhed together, grew brilliant . . .
Bloody bastard.
. . . and collapsed, fading from existence.
The first barrier was down.
There were three more barriers that Viktor could detect. There might be further shields inside. But Viktor was the best, and this was what he enjoyed.
Sushana. I'm coming.
He moved on to the second layer of defense and got to work.
Wilhelmina d'Alkarny, known as Mina to her few friends, walked the long stone passage that led to the underground labs. Deep below street level, they were arranged in two concentric heptagons around the central morgues.
Earlier, one of her most promising young employees, a junior Bone Listener called Padraigh, had mentioned that Feoragh Carryn was inquiring about one of the many bodies stacked up in morgue storage. They were held in nondecay stasis, awaiting the decision: postmortem or disposal.
Usually, any pressure came from none-too-subtle hints from the Energy Authority that their stockpile of bones was becoming depleted, and could they have some more as soon as possible? It was a request that Mina normally ignored.
Her distaste regarding the necrofusion piles was born of a deeper understanding than a normal person's. Mina knew how much suffering remained, intensified beyond anything a living person could withstand, inside the reactor piles filled with standing waves of necroflux that provided heat and power for every living citizen of Tristopolis.
It was a form of balance, of paying back for the luxuries of life once that life was over. It was not a form of fairness that appealed to Mina.
In this case, the strange inquiry had come on behalf of a Lieutenant Riordan, whom Feoragh had referred to as Donal (a familiarity unusual enough in its own right). When Padraigh had investigated, he found that the hands-off stasis order had originated in Commissioner Vilnar's office.
While that request was not totally unusual, it wasn't an everyday occurrence. What interested Mina was that one of Vilnar's own senior officers was questioning the ruling.
None of that would have necessarily caused Mina to undertake a personal investigation. She was chief here, with the whole OCML to worry about—not just the postmortems, but salaries and staff morale, whether they had enough cleaners and whether the plumbing worked, and the myriad other bureaucratic administrative tasks that came with being the boss.
But there was something else unusual here: the identity of the body in question.
The dead man's name was Malfax Cortindo. Until dying at the hands of one Lieutenant Donal Riordan, this Cortindo had been the unpleasant, manipulative City Director of the Energy Authority. He had supervised the Downtown Complex, where he kept his office amid the necrofusion piles that groaned with replayed agonies.
Why wasn't he reactor fuel himself?
Two uniformed officers stood at attention, shoulders pulled back and gaze straight ahead. Mina could taste the subliminal pheromones of their fear—to her, noradrenaline was bittersweet with a hint of almonds: a synesthetic illusion—but she did not smile. After all these years, Mina no longer cared what ordinary humans thought of her.
She was a forensic Bone Listener, the best of her generation.
That was enough.
“I need to go inside,” she said.
“Yes, ma'am.”
Behind them, the big circular steel door looked impenetrable and probably was. Wisely, no one had ever attempted to break the security in this place. Pale waves passed through Mina's tall, lanky form. The scanwraiths finished their check and approved her entry.
On the door, complex heptagonal wheels and cogs rotated in different directions—one of them appearing to circle through an impossible arc that existed outside of normal geometry—and a sudden draft tugged Mina's limp hair forward as the metal door swung inward, sucking air from the surrounding corridors into its cold low-pressure interior.
Mina hesitated a moment, reflecting for perhaps the ten-thousandth time that she was lucky to be here, in what others found a forbidding place. It was the ultimate calling for a Bone Listener.
She went inside, and the big door swung shut, generating a pulse of air pressure that propelled her steps. Mina walked through a thin sheet of shimmering coldfire—a second-layer defense that could turn nova-incandescent—and entered the outer chambers.
Two junior Bone Listeners, neither of them Padraigh, were at workbenches in the admin area, filing cards in the metal cases that would go into the vaults before scanning for Archive entry. Both Bone Listeners wore purple robes streaked here and there with black where some corpse had spilled its decay fluids as they cut into it.
It was the bonework that was important, not the cold flesh. In any case, Bone Listeners were almost impervious to normal infections: wearing stained robes in this place was business as usual.
“How goes it?” Mina asked the two young men.
“Well, ma'am,” said one, pale-faced with a dead expression. “We're just filing the results of yesterday's intake. Nineteen incomers.”
“Excellent,” said the other, a froglike grin distorting his bony face. “Picked up a resonant trace from a young girl who was flamewraithed. Thought they'd destroy her bones, but we”—he glanced at his companion—“managed to drag out the perceptions we needed.”
“Good enough to make a match?” asked Mina, meaning a visual ID of the killer.
“Done already, ma'am,” said the serious one.
But something in his voice told Mina that it was the enthusiastic guy who'd done the real work, not the plodder who was sharing the credit. These were two people she needed to keep an eye on.
“All right,” Mina said. “I'm going to make an inspection of storage. No need for you to help,” she added, seeing the enthusiastic Bone Listener starting to rise. “I like to wander 'round the place alone.”
His answering grin was immediate, and Mina realized that he did exactly the same thing: allowing the low vibrations of the bones' trapped memories to play at the edges of his awareness as he walked around the morgue labs and repositories. It was a way of getting a feel for the atmosphere of the place, of noting anything unusual in advance, of being prepared when the postmortem began.
“You're Lexar, right?” said Mina.
“Uh—yes, ma'am.”
“Keep up the good work.” Part of Mina laughed at herself for using the trite phrase. “I mean it.”
“Thank you.”
When Mina stepped through into the interior tunnel, she remembered that the other young man was called Brixhan and realized that he had scowled as she left. Did he think that Mina wouldn't notice?
Thanatos save her from such subordinates . . . but it was unwise to make enemies, even junior ones. Especially when you were planning to break the laws you were supposed to help enforce.
Mina entered the metallic space they called the Honeycomb. Heptagonal steel cells contained the bodies of the dead awaiting analysis. The ends of those cells were sealed with a mistlike wavering of the air: a side effect of the stasis hex that filled
each cell.
Stasis prevented degradation of the interference patterns laid down in bones, the same interference patterns that the most experienced of forensic Bone Listeners might deconstruct and reconstruct as they relived the final moments of the dead person's life.
Most often the interference patterns merely confirmed a medical diagnosis, at least within the normal parameters of a physician's ability. Down here, the Bone Listeners knew better than most how much guesswork filled medical science.
By definition, Mina and her colleagues only met the patients who had died.
The metal floors were gently sloping and suffered sudden reversing turns, so that they zigzagged deep down into the subterranean volume of the Honeycomb. Five levels down, Mina came to the section she wanted. She slowed down, checking the numbers on the labels that bore the deceased's details.
Here were some of the long-term stasis cells, where bodies were preserved for years or even decades, usually waiting for some judicial process to complete, so that a body's ownership could be established. There was one corpse, known affectionately as Fat Fredo, who had been in stasis for over 120 years while generations of lawyers argued with their counterparts in distant Zurinam.
Fredo had been some kind of junior diplomat killed in a bar brawl, but there were complications due to the Tristopolitan mayor's daughter, who had been the cause of the fray, and allegations that Fredo had used his position to illegally influence certain business deals. The battery of entwined legal cases dragged on with a life of their own, with the original participants long gone.
Then Mina found the cell she was looking for. The name was written in an ornate script that most Tristopolitans could no longer decipher.
It read: Malfax Cortindo.
Mina stared at the shimmering stasis field, thinking about what she was going to do. Most forensic Bone Listeners needed the fully resonant chambers that were the autopsy rooms in order to work.
But Mina was aware of her own capabilities, straightforwardly and without a sense of ego. With the right tools—a scalpel and a bone cutter, perhaps a platinum divining scope—she could analyze Cortindo's skull right here.
The question was whether the powers that be were going to insist on holding the corpse in stasis indefinitely—in which case Mina would be safe, because no one ever looked in on the bodies once the stasis field was plugged. Not until it was time for the autopsy.
But if the postmortem decision was made soon, then the interference would be obvious. So would the trail of blame.
“Shit.”
Mina's colleagues would have been surprised to hear her now. She was renowned for her equanimity in difficult circumstances and her insistence on clean language, even when there were only corpses to hear.
Mina placed a hand against the steel rim of the heptagonal cell, as though gaining strength from the metal. Then she pulled away and headed back up the long sloping floor, climbing toward the autopsy rooms, where she kept her own personal set of tools and devices.
Cats moved across the rooftops, searching, comfortable in the darkness, lithe and agile, enjoying their own abilities as they slipped through the night. They hunted tiny silvermoths that flickered in the air. As they spread out across the city, they were alert for any sign of the people that Laura Steele was tracking.
Sometimes the cats met others of their kind and spread the word in a manner undetectable to humans (though Laura might have sensed a little of the phenomenon, had she been present).
That was why one of their number, a scrawny little silver tabby called Spike by the humans who sometimes fed him, was perched on a damp brick wall near the docks, watching a big man in a leather jacket working on the ensorcelled rear door of a mostly deserted building.
Mostly deserted, but not entirely. Spike's feline senses revealed the rifle and the hidden sniper deep inside as sour tastes or bitter scents in the air. And he sensed a compressed violence barely kept in check by the need for discipline, along with the fear of punishment from someone more evil than the sniper himself.
Lights flared across the door, dissipated, and were gone, leaving no defenses behind. The leather-clad man, Viktor, drew the Grauser from beneath his left armpit, leaving his left hand free to push open the door. He held the weapon close to his chest, where no assailant could grab it.
As Viktor entered the building and was lost from sight, Spike hunched on the wall, a tiny ball of fur, and commenced a tiny buzzing purr.
* * *
Donal rolled awake off the bed, stumbled, then hauled himself vertical and stretched hard, vertebrae and tendons popping. Barefoot, he walked around the bedroom, looking for signs that Laura was there, knowing she was gone.
He padded out to the kitchen, which he still hadn't stocked, detecting no sounds in the apartment anywhere save the soft, ongoing sibilant hiss of the internal systems that kept Darksan Tower operational. He called out Laura's name, got nothing back except a micro-echo of his own voice.
Definitely gone.
Perhaps she had scarcely been here, for Donal remembered only that Laura had stood outside the bedroom as he fell onto the bed and into sleep. Perhaps she had left right away and gone back to HQ, having made Donal get the rest he needed.
“Shitfuckbugger,” Donal muttered. “Laura, for Thanatos's sake.”
Picking up his discarded suit jacket from the floor, Donal searched through the pockets until he found a scrap of notepaper he'd stuffed there earlier. It was a list of phone numbers, some of them home numbers, which he could use to contact members of the team at odd hours.
Donal squinted at the steel-handed clock on the wall: it was eleven minutes past two in the morning, but at times like this, normal standards failed to apply.
He took a guess, set the rotary wheels on the bedside phone to Alexa's number, and waited for the ring.
The tone sounded twice, and then there was a click and Alexa's voice said: “Hello?”
“Hey, it's Donal. I'm glad you're up.”
“Right.” Alexa sounded hoarse. “You going in to HQ now?”
“I would, but”—Donal looked at the tangled bedsheets where he'd slept alone—“I have a feeling no one's going to be there, not even Laura.”
“Why? Aren't you two—” Alexa coughed. “Sorry. Forget that. None of my business.”
“Maybe.” Donal's laugh came out easily, surprising him. “I am at her place. It's just that she isn't. I think she just wanted me to crash.”
“And then what? She went out on the streets?”
“Yeah, I guess. Where would she go?”
“Hang on a minute.”
Donal listened to coughing on the other end of the line, then some muted sounds followed by a faucet running, filling a glass. After a few moments Alexa came back, her voice clearer.
“Two possibilities,” she told Donal. “One, she went to Harald's location to join the surveillance team. Second . . .”
“What?”
“Something else. She followed up some lead of her own. She's...Well. She's like that.”
“Thanatos.”
“Yeah, precisely. You okay?”
“Not really. See you near the Illurian embassy?”
“Yeah. See you there.”
Donal put the phone down, found his Magnus, and checked it over, ejecting the magazine and snapping it back in before reholstering.
Time to go to work.
Viktor moved farther into darkness.
There was a stairwell, and he tested the narrow treads carefully. They were old and prone to creaking, but the edges seemed solid enough. Viktor began his ascent, feet parallel to the treads, using cross steps to climb. He moved carefully, slowing when he reached the first landing. Were there trip wires?
None. Not that he could detect.
With his left hand Viktor drew out his picklocks and continued to climb, knowing that the keys would fluoresce at any hint of a hex field. But there were other, equally dangerous traps. As the gloom intensified, he slowed the pace once mo
re.
The sniper was four more stories up. At this proximity, if Viktor tripped something and the trap itself wasn't fatal, the sniper's response would be. He would come out of hiding and fire down into the stairwell, and that would be it.
Slowly . . .
But there were tricks you could play with time. While part of Viktor's mind remained in the moment and alert to the smallest stimuli, other layers altered their time perception, slowing down to a leisurely pace, to a kind of moving meditation.
Viktor moved upward, farther and farther into the danger zone. Finally he was on the fourth landing, and everything clicked into place inside his skull. The night burned with a dark and silver life.
Where the stray moonlight was coming from was impossible to tell. It was enough to cause the hairs to rise on the back of Viktor's neck as he saw the sliver—Thanatos and Hades—like a single thread spun by a nocturnal spider. It stretched across the floor and touched, just touched, the material of his trouser leg.
Trip wire.
Another millimeter and he would have tripped the thing.
Viktor retreated three paces.
Beyond the wire was a shut door, which would open inward. As always, there were two choices: to creep in slow or charge in fast, hoping that momentum would take him beyond whatever trap waited inside. A third choice was to kick in the door and then retreat, ready for what would follow—but the man inside was a sniper, and the last thing Viktor wanted was the sound of a firefight.
On the other side of the street lay several acres of yard and buildings owned by Sally the Claw. While many of the people there were office workers, there would be a couple of dozen foot soldiers at least, all of them ready to shoot.
Viktor's keys remained dull, so there were no hex shields to contend with. Perhaps the elaborate hex alarm down below had seemed enough for the sniper.
With no time left for deliberation, Viktor moved. His foot crashed into the door just below the handle, smashing the lock apart. The door flew inward. Viktor leaped, clearing over ten feet as the prone sniper jerked himself upward.
