“What? Where are they now?”
“We released them. We were satisfied with what they had to say.”
“You let all the witnesses go before we had a chance to question them?”
“We’re confident they had nothing to contribute.”
“You see, that’s the problem, ‘cause I’m not confident that you guys are smart enough to know your ass from a fuckin’ wall jack, much less make that call,” said Hoskin.
Corealis said nothing.
“You’re gonna give me a list of everyone who was here,” said Hoskin.
“That isn’t possible. I’m only authorized to tell you that Mr. Gilead was killed and died en route to the mansion’s hospital wing. His blackbox was removed by paramedics and transported immediately to our relife facility. The other guests are protected by non-disclosure agreements.”
“Was the box damaged?” said Hoskin.
Corealis did not answer.
“I’m betting it was damaged or you actually don’t have the box at all. I’m betting it’s gone.”
“I am not authorized—”
“Turn around. You’re under arrest for obstruction,” said Hoskin.
The other Dynasty Security raised their gun hands. Corealis held up his hand and they settled.
“I’ll remind you, Detective, you’re on sovereign ground up here. This mansion is the Corporate Republic of Gilead and Aberdeen. This is our investigation. We have jurisdiction and we are only honoring the Inter-Orbital--”
“Turn around.”
The other agents looked to Corealis for guidance. He shook his head, turned around and put his hands behind his back. They backed off.
“This is not a smart move. Not at all. I hope you know what you’re doing, Detective.”
“I usually just make it up as I go along. Seems to work.”
An hour later, the order came down to release Corealis. They never even got him out of the ballroom in cuffs. Hoskin expected that and he expected to get chewed out by the captain. He was right on both counts, but it would be worth it if he got what he wanted.
“Tell me you got something,” flashed Hoskin.
“Of course,” flashed Quinlin.
Hoskin smiled.
***
When they got back to The Farm, as the cops called One Police Plaza, it was surrounded by reporters and camera drones and bright lights that bathed it in a brilliant white. The media clustered tight around the building’s energy barrier and Hoskin knew they couldn’t land on the street because the crowd was packed so tight.
“This can’t be good,” said Hoskin.
“It never is,” said Quinlin.
They stealthed their cruiser, streamed down through the diaphanous mist, and landed on the roof, away from the crowd. When they got downstairs captain Clarenza Armitage was waiting for them. She was a mountain of a woman, dark skinned, with large, heavy, tired eyes that had seen too many things and six thick, calloused hands that tried to do too much with too little, too often.
“Both of you, over here, now. You seen this?” she said.
A holo flared over her hand like a divine flame. In the heart of the flame a newsstream started. The stunningly beautiful mediaface spoke in front of a moving river of images.
“In case you are just joining us, we now can confirm that Kimball Turnbull, the popular junior Senator from New Diamond City, has RDed.”
The stream cut to Turnbull’s chief of staff Emanuel Rolf. “It’s with great regret that I tell you that Senator Turnbull has faded and that his secure store was damaged, as were all offsite backups. He cannot be relifed. At this time we cannot confirm reports that his secure store was breached. Investigations are ongoing.”
Rolf left the podium without taking questions while reporters shouted.
The holo flickered away.
“Where are you guys on this?” said the Captain.
“We’re on it. We think it’s related to the Gilead homicide,” said Hoskin.
“Wonderful. That’s just what I need right now. You better pick up the pace on this one, ‘cause it just picked up on me. And I don’t want any shit on this case. Understand? I don’t want anything that gets someone off because you broke someone’s head or grabbed evidence by kicking in a door and oops you forget the damn search warrant. I don’t want anyone else on this case, Detective, but don’t make me sorry. Pay attention to the details. What was that stunt you pulled up there with Dynasty Security?”
“He was just making friends, Captain,” said Quinlin.
“Shut up, Quinlin. Don’t be a wise-ass and don’t fuck with me on this one. I’m gonna have upstairs breathing down my neck until this gets solved and I don’t need it. Get me some answers and fast.”
She turned without waiting for a response and went to face the media storm outside. When she was gone, Quinlin said with a smile, “You ready to watch some stolen evidence?”
The Scorpion Game
2400 Orthodox Western Calendar
5098 Universal Chinese Calendar, Year of the Horse
Edgelands Ghettos, Snowstorm Clan Roving Starship Settlement
A nine year old Venadrik sat, unable to move, his hands tied behind his back to the chair. His feet were going numb. He knew this was bad mommy and he was afraid. It was his fault, because he’d been a stupid, stupid idiot who’d taken something that didn’t belong to him even though it was just a tiny thing that nobody wanted.
“I’ve tried to talk to you, but you don’t ever listen,” said his mother. “And that’s why God has to punish you.”
“I’m sorry, momma.”
“I told you sorry wasn’t good enough any more.”
She had her back to him in the tiny kitchen. The buzzglobe flickered in the corner. The windows were sutured shut, choking off the any light from the outside.
“Please. Whatcha you doing over there? I’m sorry, momma. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. You don’t have to do nothing.”
“You never think. And that’s why I have to teach you a new lesson.”
He could see her working at the stove. He saw a pan and heard a soft sizzling. He struggled to get loose.
“Please momma. I’m sorry momma, I won’t never take nothing again.”
“You said that before, but I don’t believe little liars. I know all about liars. You can’t hide from me and you can’t hide from God.”
As she moved around he could see little glimpses of what she was doing. She put something in the pan. It was moving and had lots of legs. The pan sizzled with a sudden and shocking ferocity. Venadrik yanked desperately at his restraints, trying to rip his hands free, but they were too tight. He could barely feel his hands.
“I didn’t do nothing, momma.”
“Already? Already you start in with the lies? That didn’t take long, did it? I don’t know why you always hurt momma the way you do. They tried to get me. They used that sonic pressure. And now they got to you. That’s why. They infected you, like they did me. But I’m clean now. I’m free. And you’ve got to be burned clean.”
“I didn’t do nothing, though.”
“Another lie,” she hissed, wheeling on him. “Always the lies. Lies, lies, lies. Everywhere lies.”
Her eyes looked filled with fire. He couldn’t stand to see her when her eyes looked like that. Venadrik look down at the table. She pulled on thick blue gloves and snatched the nasty little thing out of the pan. She worked at something for a minute, looking over her shoulder and then came to the table, towering over him. She had a tray with three bowls on it. Venadrik could hear something moving around inside them.
“I’m going teach you a little game, called the scorpion game. Now you’ll learn what it means to make the wrong choices.”
“I don’t like this game.”
There was something else on the tray: a small energy cage. Inside it was a tiny monster, with sharp black claws and a terrifying tail ending in a vicious stinger.
She picked up the cage and brought it close to his face. He could hear the soft hum of the energy bars. He saw its spiked tail curl towards him.
“This is a scorpion. It’s filled with poison, like you. And it’s going in one of these bowls.”
She walked around behind him and tied a blindfold around his eyes. Venadrik struggled but it was no use.
He heard terrifying sounds: scratching; brushing; crunching. The plate clinked. Then it was quiet. He strained to hear, but heard nothing, not even breathing.
“Momma?”
Nothing. He turned his head, but still couldn’t hear.
“Momma?”
Then he heard her breath close to his ear. She ripped the blindfold off. It felt like all he could see was the three bowls.
She came around in front of him, yanked a fission knife from her belt and flicked it on. It buzzed to a glow. Venadrik could feel its warmth on his face.
“I’m gonna cut your hands free now,” she said. “Now you just put them on the table like you’re told.”
She cut the wires and blood rushed back into his hands. He rubbed them and then put them carefully on the table.
She pushed the bowls towards him.
“Now you pick one of those bowls. And don’t pick wrong. Inside the wrong one is the scorpion. And I cooked him a little. Not enough to kill him. Just enough to make him mad. You understand?”
“I don’t wanna play.”
“Then you shouldn’t go takin’ stuff that ain’t yours, right?”
“Please, momma.”
He could hear the tiny monster scratching at the bowl.
“Open one,” she screamed.
His hand shook.
“Open one.”
He looked at the one on the right. It didn’t sound like there was anything in there. Maybe she was trying to trick him? He grabbed the one on the left and turned it over. A sudden, short, sharp shock struck his hand. The little monster stabbed him again before he could yank his hand away. It dashed back, moving like a spider. He screamed. His mother crushed the monster with the protective glove, its green and black guts oozing out on the table.
He felt suddenly and violently sick and his head went wavy. He tried to catch his breath but couldn’t. His chest heaved, desperately trying to take in air.
“When you lie, God hurts you,” she said.
“I—I can’t…”
“Only God can save you, if you ask for his forgiveness. If he wants to save a poisonous little boy like you.”
Brilliant colors flashed in front of his eyes and his mother looked purple and black. It was hard to see. There was a bright spot over his eyes. His chest kept heaving and then everything went dark.
He woke up. His hands were tied again. The darkness swept through him and he passed out.
When he woke, he had no idea what time it was. The curtains were down and it was still dark. He couldn’t feel his feet at all. There was an old smart refrigerator that ticked and ticked and ticked. He saw a cascade of numbers: gold sevens, red twos, blue nines, green fifteens, white threes, black sixes. They moved all around him, hovering in the air. They were different sizes and shapes. They made sense to him somehow, though he wasn’t sure why.
The numbers evaporated and he saw something in the corner moving. Things flashed across his eyes. Something laughed at him. The laughter got louder and louder and he saw something with a thousand mouths and dagger teeth and a million eyes slither from the corner, getting bigger and bigger.
He threw up, the bile projecting out across the table. His mother was gone. He cried out to her, but she didn’t come.
He stayed tied to the chair for so long, hallucinating wildly, throwing up and crying out for help and water as the pain ripped through his body like electric shocks. His mouth dried up. His eyes burned. His hands turned blue. His mother came to pray over him, her words gibberish and far away, her eyes and mouth streaming bright red light.
He heard only one thing she said. She’d found his little Anima doll, Reese. She cut her up before his eyes while he wailed.
“Little boys don’t play with dolls.”
Then she was gone and it was just the hallucinations. He cried deeply for his little lost Reese as the visions swept over him.
He stared into the nightmares and he understood. It was like he could see everything and it was made of light. The light was so clear and brilliant. He understood the way things were, the way they always were.
A million fragmented little ideas flooded his mind. He saw white tongues of fire that fell together and fell apart. He saw the walls coming down, bricks cascading in a chaos pattern becoming the slaughtered angels of existence, shattered.
He looked at his hands and saw the scorpion stings had grown into mountains, pulsing red, a pain slice in time.
He looked around and it was raining inside and everything was full of numbers. Electric choir voices filled him and billions of bright winged, rainbow-colored horses poisoned by the power of eternity fell as rain from the ceiling. People came at him from the corners, wearing masks and he knew then that everyone wore masks and the masks hid everything. And finally one message was clear, so brilliant and brightly clear and crystalline:
Don’t ever get caught.
Slowly, slowly as the day slipped past, the pain died out and his senses returned to him, broken but new, brighter. He could see perfectly now. Everything looked luminous and filled with a bright light. He understood the light, understood what he had to do.
He knew God wanted him alive. And one day he’d show her how God really hurt people, but he had to be careful and quiet and not do anything yet. Just wait. I’ll show you momma.
He learned something else too, when she finally cut him loose. He managed to look in the garbage before she incinerated it. She’d thought she was so smart but she wasn’t. He knew things too. He wouldn’t always be so stupid. And when he looked in the trash it gave him a new idea. In the tube there were three smashed scorpions.
She’d put one under every bowl.
The Garden of Earthly Delights
2458 Orthodox Western Calendar
5156 Universal Chinese Calendar, Year of the Dragon
New Diamond City, Snowstorm Clan Roving Starship Settlement
Hoskin put the footage Quinlin had pulled from the orbital mansion on the mediawall. The office dimmed automatically, the windows darkening. Hoskin picked up a huge stack of papers from the only other chair in his office so Quinlin could sit. There was hardcopy everywhere and holobooks on everything from dental forensics to the history of the Pax Americana period to the various Living Art movements.
“What is this? What did you get?” said Hoskin.
“Don’t know yet. First I’m seeing it, just like you. I managed to find exploits on three of the cameras, got root and copied their memory.”
“Good. We can’t use any of it but at least we’ll know what the fuck we’re up against here.”
Hoskin waved his hand and the three vidstreams tiled across the mediawall. The second two froze while they watched the first.
“Let’s see what we got,” said Hoskin.
The first video was an embedded camera in a low-level cleaning servo. The footage stretched back a few days but all the little bot did was clean and change sheets in hundreds of untouched rooms, each one looking more like a museum than the last, filled with vases and sculptures and canopied beds and paintings. Half the day it was powered down in its charge cocoon, its video off. It didn’t catch any of the party. In other words, it was useless.
They got lucky with the second stream. It was a banquet hall wisp. It moved like a dragonfly through the banquet hall for days, watching the party preparations, hovering and watching. The undertaking was immense. A team of old fashioned Art Re-Deco brass servos in white gloves spent the two days before the party moving trees, bringing in thousands of chairs and couches, planting flowers, setting up bars and drinks, moving in sculptures, di
recting grass drones and hedge-sculpting smart balls, stringing up Arabian tents with swirling and shifting images on giant swathes of their fabric.
They forwarded through the rest of the prep footage, but shunted the skipped parts over to automated analysis smartware to make sure they didn’t miss anything.
Finally, they just time-shifted to the night before the party.
“Whoa, what is that?” asked Hoskin, pointing at the wall.
“I don’t…it looks like some kind of…building.”
The footage had resumed on a shot of what looked to be a piece of a larger superstructure in the center of the room, lightless and looming.
“Back up, in twenty minute chunks,” Hoskin told the wall.
The footage flowed backwards, in twenty minute slices.
“Stop. There. What is that?” said Hoskin.
“It’s...it looks like a temple. Right?” said Quinlin.
“Yeah. And that most definitely was not there when we got there.”
The image was frozen on a perfect shot of the superstructure, just as the wisp camera had brought it into deep focus. In the center of the room, a massive black temple stretched up through the ceiling of the mammoth hall. Its spires and points were uncountable. Intricate, ornate carvings covered almost every inch of it, many of them smaller copies of the larger carvings, sweeping around the spires in infinite regression. The whole building was built in layers, one on top of the other, giving the illusion that it swept up forever. It looked as if it was cut from solid chunks of onyx, and it gave off no light except from its windows. It was so dark it seemed to absorb all the light near it.
“All right roll back, four-X,” Hoskin told the mediawall. “There. Stop. Slow down.”
Construction drones seemed to be taking the temple apart, in huge pieces, as the footage reversed.
“Pull back two hours.”
The footage leapt backwards. They were nearly at the beginning of the temple’s construction.
“All right. Forward. Normal speed.”
Construction drones, bright yellow, with four steadying legs and six arms, brought in thick chunks of the temple. They had black eyes at strategic points on their body, so they could see in all directions, and they could swivel easily into almost any position. Often two of them would link together into larger drone constructs to reach higher or form platforms for the other drones to climb on.
The Scorpion Game Page 6
