Flint had acquired yet another task.
Something had led to an eight-year-old case file with a flagged and missing perpetrator—and Flint wouldn’t say what that something was. All Flint would say was that he was buried in information, and Nyquist was the only person he could trust to investigate this new lead.
How marvelous for him. For all of them. As if Nyquist didn’t have enough to handle.
He towered over his desk and looked at the chair longingly. One little nap. And lunch. He might have had lunch, but he didn’t remember. Up until a few days ago, he was the guy who brought lunch to everyone in the Security Office. Plus he had taken care of DeRicci when she stumbled into his apartment for her four hours of sleep.
He had been worried about her for weeks. What would happen if he got just as overwhelmed?
Then he sighed. “Got” was the wrong word. He was just as overwhelmed. Like her, he had been unwilling to admit it to himself.
“Hey, partner.”
He looked up. Savita Romey had walked into the Detective Unit. She was smiling at him.
His heart was pounding. Until a week ago, he had thought her the most attractive woman he knew. She was still attractive, which irritated him. His heart shouldn’t have done that school-boy skip when he saw her—not because she had changed, but because he had.
Like everyone right now, she was a bit ragged. Her dark hair needed a trim, and she had shadows under her eyes. She wore an oversized t-shirt with the name of her son’s high school basketball team and the dates for the moon-wide championship they’d won just before Anniversary Day emblazoned across the front.
She had been wearing a variation on that outfit off and on since the attack.
But she hadn’t been wearing that outfit when she and two of her colleagues had kicked Torkild Zhu to death for representing the Peyti clones.
Nyquist swallowed back bile. He still found her attractive. But he was no longer attracted to her. Now he found her disgusting.
And he didn’t dare arrest her until he had the kind of evidence that would hold up in court.
“Savita,” he said, because he couldn’t bring himself to flirt with her any longer.
“Tired, partner?” She clearly recognized that his tone was off.
“We’re not partners on this one, Savita,” he said, mostly because he couldn’t stomach the conversation. They had partnered on two cases—the Whitford case, which had nearly cost Nyquist his life, and Arek Soseki’s murder on Anniversary Day, in the hours before everyone realized that the attack on the mayor hadn’t been an isolated event.
“Not for lack of trying,” Romey said. “I hear that the barriers to interviewing the Peyti clones might go away soon.”
It was an open door, one he could walk through and get her to confess. He was recording the conversation, and thought it odd that the very act of recording it felt like a betrayal.
“Where did you hear that?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Around. You haven’t heard?”
He didn’t respond to that. He couldn’t, really.
But she didn’t wait for him to say anything. Instead, a small, secretive grin touched her lips.
“The lawyers got a message to back off,” she said, and then she waited.
Her gaze challenged him. She raised her chin. He had worked with her long enough to recognize her tells.
She knew. She knew he was investigating that case. Investigating was one thing. But only Nyquist and Gumiela knew his mandate was to get the perpetrators into court.
“I had heard that,” Nyquist said. “I also heard that only baby lawyers were left at S3. They’re out of their league.”
“Thank God,” Romey said. “Now maybe we can interrogate those clones.”
Did she know he was already interrogating a clone? Did anyone here? He hadn’t told anyone, but that didn’t mean the prison staff hadn’t reported back into the Armstrong PD.
“We gotta figure out who is doing this,” Nyquist said, changing the topic slightly. “I still think another attack is coming.”
She made a dismissive sound. “If the damn lawyers had let us interrogate the clones the way we wanted to, we would know what the next attack is going to be.”
She was feeling him out, trying to see where his sympathies were. Every cop knew that a detective could run a real investigation or he could run an investigation to satisfy the brass.
She clearly wanted to know which kind of investigation Nyquist was running.
“That assumes those clones actually know what’s going to happen next,” Nyquist said. “I suspect that the clones are just tools. You generally don’t tell your tools how you plan to use them to build a wall.”
“Or how you plan to tear one down.” She walked around some chairs and stopped next to him. Too close, in fact. So close that had she done this before the Peyti Crisis, he might’ve leaned in to her.
Now, it took all of his strength to stand next to her without backing away.
“I get the sense you’re not into this investigation,” she said.
He wasn’t exactly sure which investigation she meant. The investigation of the Peyti Crisis? Anniversary Day? Or of her?
No sense in lying to her, whatever investigation she meant. “Honestly,” he said, “I’m way over my head.”
She raised her chin even more, so that her face was close to his. It was as if she were trying to see his thoughts.
“Yeah,” she said after a moment. “That’s why sometimes you have to ignore things in the name of justice.”
“What’s justice, Savita?” Nyquist asked.
“We serve and protect, Bartholomew,” she said. “That’s our job. Sometimes detectives forget that. They get so wrapped up in the investigating, they forget about the serving and the protecting. You’d remember if you had kids.”
That made him bristle. He hated it when people said things like to that to him, even when the circumstances weren’t charged.
“Are you saying I don’t care about the right things because I’m childless?” he asked.
She opened her mouth to answer, but he leaned in to her, so close that he could kiss her if he wanted to—which he most decidedly did not want to do.
“I love this city,” he said softly. “I love the Moon. I hate what’s happening here. All of it. And what it’s turning people into.”
She leaned in just a bit more. Maybe a centimeter separated their lips. “What’s it turning people into, Bartholomew?”
He could feel her breath on his face.
“Monsters,” he said softly. “Amoral monsters.”
The color left her skin. She pulled back. The flirting had ended.
“Is that what you think I am?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “That’s what I know you are.”
She took one step back and tilted her head as if he had slapped her. She bit her lower lip, then let it go.
“I’m not the enemy here,” she said. “There are people out there in the universe who want to kill us just for being here, on the Moon.”
“And before that,” he said, “there were people who wanted to kill us for being cops, and people who wanted to kill us for being human, and people who just want to kill. You think the fact that there have always been murderers in the universe justifies the taking of a life?”
She squared her shoulders. Two spots of color had returned to her cheeks.
“There are murderers,” she said. “Then there are mass murderers. And finally, there are those who look the other way when the mass murderers decide to take over. You don’t let any of them get away. Not the mass murderers or those who defend them.”
That was probably as close to a confession as he would get out of her.
“And you don’t let the murderers get away either,” he said. “You forgot that part.”
“I didn’t forget it,” she said. “Under Alliance law, some killings are justified. Disty Vengeance Killings come to mind.”
“We’re
not Disty,” Nyquist said.
“But we accept their vengeance,” she said.
“When they conduct it,” he said. “But I’ve investigated a lot of Disty Vengeance Killings, and you know what, Savita? They go after the perpetrator, not the perpetrator’s lawyer.”
Her eyes narrowed. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glistening. She seemed hurt that Nyquist didn’t agree with her.
“I just told you about that lawyer,” she said, then caught herself. “All the lawyers who represent those murderers. They’re as guilty as the murderers are.”
“No, they’re not,” Nyquist said softly. “Not even under Disty law.”
She pointed a finger right into his chest. Her fingertip was as hard as the muzzle of a gun.
“You’re taking the wrong side, Bartholomew,” she said.
“I’m doing my job,” he said.
“Like the damn lawyer,” she said.
“So what are you going to do, Savita? Kill me too?”
She froze for a half second, then shoved him backwards. The shove was so hard he nearly stumbled over his own chair. He caught himself.
“You’re a bastard,” she said, and walked away.
He watched her go. So much for being subtle. So much for manipulating her into a full confession.
Maybe he should go to Andrea Gumiela and ask to be taken off the Zhu case.
But he knew what Gumiela would say.
She would tell him she didn’t trust anyone else.
Because she had told him that before, when he tried to talk his way off the case after she had assigned it to him.
Someone had to investigate Zhu’s death.
And apparently, that someone was Bartholomew Nyquist.
THIRTY
PIPPA DIDN’T RECOGNIZE the woman she saw in the reflecting doors at the United Domes of the Moon Security Office. That woman had short, reddish hair and a careworn face with a frightened expression. Pippa recognized herself only by the distressed cotton shirt she wore over dark blue pants.
The inside of the building was shadowed so she couldn’t see where she was going, and that alone nearly made her turn around.
But now, the midwestern politeness, drilled into her when she married her husband, kept her going. She had contacted a woman inside this office, a Rudra Popova, who was expecting her. This Popova woman sounded a bit hesitant about meeting Pippa, but this Popova had said that Pippa should come to the building.
So Pippa had.
She stepped inside, her heart beating so hard she thought maybe she was having some kind of attack. She made herself breathe. She was shaking.
She almost felt like crouching and running, then recognized the feeling. She had spent more than a year ready to bolt at the wrong kind of glance, the wrong person standing in a corridor.
That had been when she was Takara Hamasaki. Takara was back, not the courageous woman who had rebuilt her life, but the terrified woman who had run from place to place until she finally felt safe.
Pippa half-cursed herself. She wanted the courageous part to show up, not the scared rabbit-woman.
She made herself focus on the lobby. It was empty—at least as far as she could see, and she knew she wasn’t seeing all of it.
The high ceiling felt fake, the lack of furniture was unnerving because she couldn’t blend in with it.
She was in the middle of the entrance and she knew everyone inside of the building could see her, and she couldn’t see them.
She almost bolted again, but common sense stopped her this time: They had seen her. She was on the security feed.
It wouldn’t take much work to figure out that she had been the woman who contacted this Popova person. And then the security office could track Pippa to her hotel and from her hotel to her shuttle, and from her shuttle to her home on Earth.
She was committed now.
She took one more step forward, and the wall shimmered in front of her. A gender-neutral avatar appeared and Pippa jumped.
She clenched her hands into fists, concentrating on the pressure in her fingers. She couldn’t will herself to be calm, but she could will herself to be calmer.
State your business, the avatar sent to her.
She bit her lower lip, glad she didn’t have to speak out loud. She wasn’t sure her voice would work.
My name is Pippa Landau. Rudra Popova is expecting me.
The avatar vanished. The wall in front of her disappeared entirely. The lobby extended before her—a real lobby, with furniture, and human guards, and corridors off to the side.
That should have calmed her more.
It didn’t.
The female guard approached her. The woman was taller than Pippa and muscled—real muscles, not enhancements (or, at least, it looked that way to her).
“Ms. Landau, Assistant Chief Popova will join us in a moment. In the meantime, please accompany me away from the door.”
A lump lodged in Pippa’s throat. She couldn’t speak if she wanted to, so she nodded instead. She followed the guard to the side of the room, where there was tall piece of furniture too wide to be a podium, but not really an actual desk. Some kind of guard station.
Pippa folded her hands together, because otherwise she would have to grab the guard station for support. She didn’t want to do that. DNA.
Then she closed her eyes for a brief second.
Transferring DNA didn’t matter at all. Here in the Earth Alliance, her DNA identified her as Pippa Landau. Outside of the Alliance, a deep search of the DNA (not a cursory search) would have identified her as Takara Hamasaki.
The caution she felt was deep in her bones. She had to remind herself that it didn’t matter, at least not today.
She was going to tell the people here—the strangers here—exactly who she was.
As she stood there, a shadow fell over the door. Apparently the security system had activated again.
“My God, what is this?” the female guard asked the male guard. “No one ever comes here.”
He shrugged, and seemed to be watching some kind of monitor. At that moment, a ding sounded behind Pippa.
The female guard put a hand on Pippa’s shoulder, and she stiffened at the touch, but didn’t move away. Then she silently cursed herself. Her reflexes had deteriorated. If something had startled Takara like that, she would have been halfway across the room in a nanosecond.
“Come with me,” the guard said. “Assistant Chief Popova will see you now.”
Pippa’s heart was pounding. She nodded again. She wasn’t just acting like a scared rabbit; she knew she looked like one.
The guard led her down one of the corridors. She passed a bank of elevators, one of which had doors that were just closing now. So that ding had been an elevator? Or a notification to the guard that Pippa could hear?
The guard opened a door not far from the elevators. A woman not much taller than Pippa stood inside. The woman had long, black hair, and looked so tired that Pippa wondered how she could even stand up.
“Ms. Landau?” the woman asked.
Pippa nodded. She still wasn’t sure she could talk.
“I’m Rudra Popova. I work for the Security Office here at the United Domes of the Moon. I understand that you have some information to share?”
Pippa nodded again. She tried to clear her throat, and found she couldn’t. She glanced at the guard, who was watching them.
“I can take this from here,” Popova said.
“Are you certain?” the guard asked. “Because—”
At that moment, Popova raised a hand, interrupting the guard. Popova’s eyes glazed. She was clearly communicating on her links.
Pippa swallowed hard.
Popova’s eyes focused again, but she was looking at the guard. “We have yet another visitor,” Popova said. “If she makes it through the secondary vetting, take her upstairs.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard said. “But don’t you want—?”
“I’ll be fine,” Popova said in a tone th
at was so dismissive, Pippa cringed.
The guard glared at Pippa then pulled the door closed.
Popova pivoted, her hair moving around her like a coat in the wind.
“As you can imagine,” she said in a much softer voice, “things have not been the same here for months.”
Pippa nodded, felt stupid, and made herself take a deep breath. She swallowed involuntarily, but her throat didn’t feel as constricted after that.
“I’m…um…sorry to bother you,” she said, then she almost smiled. Raymond would have appreciated that remark. Midwestern to the core. Begin with an apology, partly to break the ice.
Popova didn’t respond to the apology. She just looked expectantly at Pippa.
Pippa took a deep breath to say something she hadn’t said face-to-face in decades.
“Here, in the Earth Alliance, I’m Pippa Landau, but really, I’m a Disappeared. I’m not fleeing alien justice. I haven’t broken any laws. I’m in hiding.”
Popova’s expression remained impassive. Pippa rubbed her damp palms on her pants. She had always expected a more dramatic reaction when she revealed who she was—a gasp, maybe, or a look of suspicion, maybe even a sympathetic comment.
But she wasn’t getting anything, just a person she didn’t know at all, staring at her.
She said, “I worked on a starbase in the Frontier. The local name for the starbase was Starbase Human, because the place deliberately catered to humans. I mean, aliens could land there and all, but they weren’t really welcome….”
Pippa let her voice trail off. She was babbling. She’d never expected to babble when she told this. In her imagination, she would speak clearly and forcefully, telling the story of her escape as if it were a grand adventure and something terrifying all at the same time.
“Um, anyway,” she said, stumbling as she switched gears. “The base blew up decades ago. I mean, it was blown up by a bunch of PierLuigi Frémont clones.”
Popova’s mouth opened slightly. Finally, a reaction from her.
“I think I’m the only survivor,” Pippa said, “but I don’t know. I believe I was being pursued by some more of those clones, but I’m not sure. Anyway, um, I’m pretty sure that was a practice event for your bombing here. On the Moon. And I thought, maybe, you could use it to track stuff down…?”
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