Marked

by Alex Hughes

  “The Council isn’t going to interfere in quarantine even for one of their own, Kara. I’m not Guild. I’m not Enforcement.” I wanted to help, at least do something, for her. I’d asked her for many things in the last year; I should be able to step up and give her something in return. But this, well, I kept picturing being dragged in front of the Council. Having Enforcement showing up en masse and wiping all of my memories. Either way I’d be lucky to be thrown in a holding cell. “Enforcement takes their job very seriously,” I told her. “Especially for a Councilman. Why not let them handle it?”

  A short pause, and a shuddery breath. “Tobias Nelson looked Uncle Meyers straight in the eye on Tuesday in open committee and told him he’d bleed. Four days later, he’s found dead in his apartment.”

  “Who is Tobias Nelson?” I asked carefully, but with a sinking feeling I already knew the answer.

  “Tobias Nelson is the executive chair of Enforcement. Everyone in the branch reports to him. Uncle Meyers was pushing for a budget cut for his department.”

  Great. Just great. “And you want me to take on the head of Enforcement, a man with an established interest against your uncle and possibly your family as a whole?”

  She took a breath. “Tubbs—that’s my boss—told the finance committee that Nelson can’t be objective and that the job should be given to someone not associated with his chain of command. I’m pretty sure that your credentials with the police will translate into an answer the committee can accept. You’ll find out who killed my uncle and they’ll prosecute him.”

  “You’re pretty sure?” I asked. “You’re pretty sure! Tell me you’ve thought this through more than that, Kara.” Pretty sure could get me killed, damn it.

  Another shuddery breath. Another. Until she was crying, full out, deep sobs that wrenched at my heart. But there wasn’t anything I could do for her, not on the end of a phone line. And she was crying harder now.

  We’d been engaged once, and the Link was still there, too deep to lose. Like a hotel room with two locked doors, we’d closed it off. But it was still there. I found it, in the back of my mind, pulled the furniture from in front of it, and opened my side of the door. I knocked, gently. A Link was the only exception to the location-limited physics of telepathy; like two bound quantum particles, when two people were Linked they could contact each other halfway across the world.

  Her crying paused, and I could almost hear the locks slide. The door came open in small, rusty spurts. And then she was there, in my head.

  I was pulled headlong into hurricane-force grief and shock and anger and loss, so strong and deep and wide it shook the boundaries of reality. After a while, I pulled back enough, got enough distance to think about hanging up the phone, and decided against it.

  My eyes might have watered too, with hers. Then I was able to send waves of warmth and shared sorrow over Kara. Her tears tapered off, and over the phone she made the snuffly sound that was Kara, and only Kara.

  I pulled away then. She was married, I told myself. Married. I must have leaked it into Mindspace as well, because then the door was closing again.

  “Hold on, I need a tissue,” she said. The sound of someone riffling through papers and boxes came over the phone, then her cute little blowing-nose sound.

  I closed my own side of the Link, lighter this time. I’d help if I could, but there was a reason why I kept my distance. A good reason. For my health, my sanity, and the debt I had outstanding from an earlier agreement with the Guild. I did not need to go into their headquarters and cause trouble.

  “Will you help me?” Kara asked after a minute. “I don’t have—well, I don’t have anybody—”

  “I’ll help you if I can,” I said carefully. “I’m not going to storm the Guild to do it. I’m not going to end up mind-wiped over this or interfere in a real quarantine. I’m not crazy. But I’ll come and talk to you if you want me to. You need to make sure you jump through the right hoops and get me cleared. You know, so I don’t get shot when I walk in the door.”

  “If I can get you cleared with security for an hour or so from now, will you come?” Her voice was small, and still heavy with tears.

  She’d betrayed me once, long ago, when I’d been in the middle of my drug addiction. She’d reported me to Enforcement, the first domino in the chain that had sent me to the street. She’d betrayed me. But she was still Kara, still the woman I’d lived with and loved with for years. And this last year she’d moved mountains for me—and she hadn’t had to. I should be able to do the same for her. I should.

  But I hesitated. I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to face the Guild again.

  “If I can get you safe passage to the Guild this afternoon, will you show up?” she repeated, her voice more firm. “Soon?”

  I sighed. Looked like I was going to do this. “Can I bring Cherabino with me?” It seemed less likely I’d disappear with a normal cop in tow, somehow.

  “No, that won’t work. She’s not on file with security.” Her voice quavered. “Just say you’ll come.”

  I closed my eyes. For anybody but Kara . . . “I’ll be there in an hour and a half.” It would take me at least that long to take the bus to Buckhead.

  “Thank you!” she breathed.

  “This is not a promise about anything. I’ll listen. We’ll talk. You might invite Stone to be there, if you trust him.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said coldly. “I’ll get you cleared. Adam?”

  “What?”

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “I’m not promising you—”

  “Even so . . . ” She paused. “I appreciate it more than you know.”

  • • •

  One winter day some years ago, when I was still at the Guild and still living with Kara, her uncle Meyers stopped by the classroom where I was teaching just as the tone sounded for end-of-school.

  “I’m taking a walk in the gardens,” Meyers had said. “Care to join me?”

  I’d met him at a few of Kara’s family functions—she was part of several politically important family groups who met regularly—but I hadn’t ever spent much time with Meyers one-on-one. Still, if I was going to marry Kara, I was marrying the family, right?

  “Let me get my coat,” I’d said, curious but confident I could handle whatever he’d throw at me. Probably just another warning to treat Kara well; I’d gotten four of those already from various family members.

  Outside, Meyers led the way along a small path of white gravel, quiet in both voice and mind. His breath, like mine, steamed in the chilly air.

  I shivered but didn’t complain. If he could take the cold, so could I.

  I’ve never been in the gardens this late in the year, I said, mind-to-mind. It was true, the prickly green bushes and spare brown trunks of trees set in geometrical shapes looking very different without the blooming plants of the summer. It would be pretty in the snow, I thought, the one time a year we got snow in Atlanta.

  The silence got long, and I started to fidget mentally.

  Meyers noticed and finally spoke, oddly out loud. “You’re one of our highest-rated teachers of advanced students.”

  “That’s right,” I said, wondering where this was going. The voice-speech was a distancing method sometimes, and I wondered why he needed the distance.

  “You have Xavier’s gift,” he said.

  “Yes?” What did that have to do with anything? Just because I could teach several students mind-to-mind at a time . . . well, it had gotten me the job. I remembered Meyers worked for the employment and training division of the Guild. “Am I in trouble? I’m up to date on all of my continuing education units. I’ve taken all the tests on time. Do I need more supervision hours?”

  Be calm, he said. There’s nothing wrong.

  I subsided. A particularly cold burst of wind cut through my coat. “What’
s going on?”

  He turned to regard me directly. “You were scheduled for a career at a psychological hospital before—”

  I interrupted. “Before they caught me tutoring two kids at once, I know. What—”

  “Don’t interrupt me, please, Adam. I do have a point to this, and I’d like to make it in my own order.”

  I stuck my hands in my pockets. Go ahead.

  “You were scheduled for a very lucrative career in resetting structures of the mind. You were, by all test scores, extremely qualified, and your essays showed real passion for the subject.”

  So? A pang hit me then, but I pushed it away. I was a teacher, and my students would go out and do all of that for me.

  “Would you rather do that?” Meyers asked me.

  I took a step back. “What?” In two years, no one had ever . . . The decision was made, I said. It was made a while ago. Why bring this up now? My heart was beating now, beating far too fast. How could he . . . ?

  “I’m a senior fellow in Employment and Training, Adam. And my family—your family soon—has a lot of pull with the decision makers all over the Guild. You aren’t just a member anymore. If you’d rather go out and work at the hospital, I can make that happen for you.”

  “But I can teach . . .” I trailed off. They’d told me over and over that my gift for teaching a room was too precious to lose. “I’m worth more to the Guild as a teacher,” I said, but my voice was weak. “Why are you asking me to do something else?”

  “Very few people anymore have the opportunity to do what they love. They get stuck in what they can do, or what they ought to do. I’m giving you a chance to ask a bigger question. What will make you happy, Adam? What will help you and Kara be happiest together?”

  I doubted him, and didn’t make a secret of it, but he opened up the public side of his mind and I walked in.

  He was sincere. Utterly, unbelievably sincere. He wanted to give a gift, an opportunity, to someone who was joining his family.

  “Can . . . can I think about it?” I stuttered in shock.

  “Certainly,” Meyers said, and started walking again, around the dormant garden.

  My feet crunched on the gravel in time with the beating of my heart.

  Three days later, I went back to him with my decision: teaching stirred something inside me I couldn’t put into words. As much as I’d wanted to work in the hospital, I thought teaching would truly, truly make me happier.

  “As you wish,” Meyers said, and turned the talk to the latest political candidates for Council. I followed along, giving my own opinions, and the awkwardness was over.

  The next Sunday he came for dinner at our apartment and Kara cooked a roast. He never spoke of the offer again.

  But I never, never forgot.

  • • •

  I stared at the phone in the here and now, the receiver ringing with a dial tone from too long off the cradle. I set it back down with a click. I couldn’t believe Meyers was dead.

  I couldn’t believe I was going to the Guild on lockdown. But this was Kara. And this was Meyers. To not show up . . .

  I could at least try to talk Kara down. Be there for her. Figure out what was going on. Meyers deserved that much.

  I could work with Stone, I knew that already. He’d been my Watcher, in and out of my head while passing judgment on my intentions a few weeks ago. He’d decided I wasn’t a threat. I could spend the afternoon talking honestly, help Kara decide what to do, and then leave. Go in, go out, go home.

  So why did I feel like I was going into the lion’s den rubbed in steak sauce?

  I sighed, picked up the phone and called the department.

  “DeKalb County Police Department Headquarters Administration,” the brass’s receptionist answered, a young guy straight out of college with a smooth voice who could calm down a bleeding rabbit in the middle of the apocalypse.

  I said who I was and where I was. “Is Paulsen free?”

  “She’s in a budget meeting at the courthouse. It’s an all-day affair and she cannot be disturbed for any reason. I’ve been instructed to tell officers to consult their division and squad leaders, who are fully empowered to make decisions.”

  I could call Clark, who technically was the most senior of the interviewers these days, but he hated my guts. “Could you take a message?” I asked the guy.

  “One moment,” he said, and I heard the sound of shuffling papers. “Go ahead.”

  I repeated my name and job title. “I will not be back in the interview rooms this afternoon. You’ll need to contact Clark so he can make arrangements. Tell Paulsen that an emergency has come up and that I will be back in the office tomorrow morning. I’ll check in then.”

  The sound of a pen scratching paper. Then it stopped. “Anything else?” the guy said.

  “No, that’s it,” I said. I paused, wanting to tell them that like an idiot, I was going into the middle of the Guild headquarters during lockdown. A Guild that, because of the Koshna Accords, still had absolute authority over me if it wanted. “No, I guess that’s it.”

  “Thanks for calling,” the guy said, and hung up the phone.

  • • •

  Nervous as hell, I went to find Michael, who was observing the crime scene in the main living area. The ME’s tech was currently packing up the body, and everyone else swirled around that central task like a whirlpool, chaotic and focused both.

  “Did they ever find the missing pieces?” I asked, trying for a conversational starter.

  “Not yet, and we’ve looked everywhere. They didn’t by chance turn up under the bed in there, did they?” He looked almost hopeful.

  “Not that I saw,” I said, but I hadn’t looked under the bed. Honestly, if there were body parts hidden like some insane game of hide-and-seek, I’d rather someone else find them. That was just creepy.

  “Did you need something?”

  “Can I get you to drive me somewhere?”

  “I thought somebody else here in the department drove you around,” Michael said. He paused. “I’m kinda in the middle of something. Where do you need to go?”

  “Um, well.” Bellury, my usual babysitter, had died a few weeks ago, killed by a suspect we were tracking down. Because I was stupid. Because I’d pushed us to rush in. Because . . . “I need to run an errand in Buckhead and I’d rather not take the bus if I can help it,” I said. “Where’s Cherabino anyway?”

  “She’s calling Electronic Crimes and letting them know she won’t be able to help out this week. This is the fourth murder we’ve gotten since Tuesday.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I realized. “She needs a way to solve the crimes faster.”

  “Yes, that’s why we’re both here,” Michael said in the tone of voice you’d use to state the obvious while trying hard not to be insulting. “Um, can’t you drive yourself? I’ll loan you the keys to the cruiser. We can ride back in one of the vans.” His mind flashed to his dad, and some complex feelings; the man lived two streets away, apparently.

  I was very tempted to take the damn keys. “The department prefers that I not have control of any resources that might be construed as valuable.” It also wouldn’t let me handle my own money, but really, who was counting? “Look, it’s just Buckhead. If I take the bus I’ll spend three hours getting there and back.”

  Now I had his full attention. “You can’t drive the department’s cars? You lose your license?” His eyebrows pulled down. “DUI?”

  “No!” I said. I’d never owned a car, and never had access to one when I was in my life on the street. DUI hadn’t been an option for me, though I hoped I wouldn’t have done it anyway. In the heat of the addiction, though, probably I would have. There was no pride, no shame, no anything in the heat of that addiction. “No, it’s just they prefer me not to have a car unsupervised. You know what, never mind, I’ll take t
he bus.”

  Michael looked at me oddly, the feeling coming off him in Mindspace . . . unsettled. “Does Cherabino know you’re going?”

  “Would you tell her?” I asked, and started walking down the street. I thought I remembered where the bus stop was.

  • • •

  The North American Guild Headquarters complex had three large buildings, which were the only non-anti-grav-assisted glass-and-chrome old-style skyscrapers in the business district of Buckhead; they were dwarfed by the hundreds-of-stories-high monstrosities that had used antigravity during construction. The newer buildings looked like tall, thin fortresses, which is what they were; this entire area had been flattened during the Tech Wars by a bomb, and those who rebuilt it valued security and defense over looks.

  Except the Guild, of course. Their best security was the people inside, not only the ones who would see your attack coming and give warning, but the thousands of highly trained Abled who would defend the complex with their last breaths. The extra expense of three-foot-thick earthenworks seemed paltry in comparison, and the arrogant beauty of a mostly glass building stood on its own merits.

  The Guild had much to fear after the Tech Wars, but what they feared most wasn’t anything that a heavy building would protect them from.

  Was I really here? Was I really intending to tempt my fate?

  It was Kara asking, and I’d been here to see her at her office before. Either they’d turn me away or they wouldn’t.

  I walked into the relative heat of the main atrium, a huge circular place with marble columns and the Guild founders looking down on you, judging. On the right was a glass-and-chrome desk blocking the way, manned by a security guard. Today’s guard was the small black woman I’d seen there before; she looked like she’d blow over in a strong wind, but anyone who did guard duty for the Guild could handle four armed normals with no backup.

  “I’m here to see Kara Chenoa,” I told her, taking off my coat and folding it over my arm. I was very polite to guards.

  She looked me up and down in Mindspace, and I suppressed the sudden urge to check my fly.