Marked

by Alex Hughes

  “We’ll leave now,” I said cheerfully. Of course I was taking the cup with me.

  We settled in Cherabino’s space, across the narrow cubicle hall. I drank coffee. Michael held his cup. Cherabino wished she had coffee.

  I handed her mine; she sipped and handed it back. Neither one of us commented.

  “If he’s up to something large-scale and criminal, why isn’t he being tracked by the department already?” Michael asked.

  “That’s a good question,” Cherabino said. “That’s a very good question. If you get some extra time, go through the dispatch and case file records for the last year or so. I want to know if we just haven’t put two and two together.”

  “Before or after I get an interview scheduled for the Pubbly case?”

  “After. Oh, and see if you can find the car from the Kiershon case—it might be in a chop shop or something, but if we can find the bloodstain evidence, that’ll prove our theory.”

  “How many cases do you have going right now?” I asked, amazed.

  Cherabino sighed. “Too many. Far, far too many.”

  • • •

  Later that afternoon, exhausted and unwilling to go back to the interview rooms, I did paperwork. Until I had an idea.

  “Hi, Bob,” I said. It was a little disturbing how good I was getting sneaking into the high-security area.

  The balding overweight cop turned around in his chair. Bob was well over three hundred pounds, splotchy skin on his neck, and breathed hard when he got out of his chair. That didn’t matter; Bob could run rings around the fittest cop on the floor in his domain, the Wild West of the small remaining Internet. He was a cowboy, a rebel, and one of the youngest people I’d ever met with a legal implant in his brain. Most people were too scared the viruses would turn their brain to Jell-O—Bob took the risks with both hands and helped to shut down the electronic criminals every day. That didn’t mean he liked me.

  “What?” he asked me. He’d been staring at a computer monitor—a much bigger, much nicer, much more restricted-level technology than anything Cherabino had ever used—and now was staring at me. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “Hello,” I said in return, by now used to this little song and dance of ours. “But I am prepared to offer you a dozen cream-filled chocolate donuts, delivered every week until Christmas.”

  He sat a little straighter. “With holiday sprinkles?”

  “If you want sprinkles, you can have sprinkles,” I said, feeling generous. “I’ll even throw in a box of real coffee from the donut place you like. With holiday flavoring.”

  He wavered. “Zahir’s cracking down on unauthorized projects, you know.”

  “This will only take a few minutes. No FBI files, I promise. Nothing behind a firewall.”

  He thought about it. I could almost see the numbers and probabilities going past him. Almost see, because I couldn’t read him at all; Bob’s computer implant created an electric field that effectively made his mind feel like gibberish to me. Electromagnetic fields interacted with Mindspace and Mindspace fields with electronics—anyone who’s had a watch run down on their wrist from too much emotion knows this already.

  Most people were too afraid of the computer viruses that had destroyed the world in the Tech Wars to want an implant, much less to work in the tiny remaining Internet, walled away from anything important. Most normals lived in a world walled away from anything breakable, with information routinely Quarantined before it even left. Bob couldn’t be Quarantined; he was too deep, too often, swimming in the sea of information. That made him both dangerous and valuable, and for all his girth, he knew he was both.

  “Make it half a dozen twice a week, and make sure they have sprinkles,” Bob said firmly.

  I suppressed a smile. “You got it.”

  He leaned his chair forward. “What’s the puzzle?”

  “I want you to find me the information that Noah Wright released on the Internet a few months ago. His boss says it’s sensitive, and they’ve tried to erase it all. You told me once that nothing is ever really erased from the Internet.”

  “It isn’t. Who is ‘they’?”

  “Cardinal Laboratories.”

  “Ah.” He sat back. “This related to the soldier project?”

  I blinked. “The what?”

  “The government recently announced on secure channels that they’re working with Cardinal Laboratories to design a biologically enhanced soldier. There’s been a flurry of protest over it, but the military is emphasizing that the design is biologically based, and is on a different system from the hybrid Tech used before the war. The science groups are still up in arms. The laboratory has had protestors all over its New York office.”

  “Why haven’t I heard about this?” I asked.

  “It’s all over the Net, but the government’s suppressing the newspapers. There’s free speech protests about that too, but it’s starting to die down. Everybody with access already’s had their say.” He looked at me. “You really need to keep up with the news.”

  “Um, if you say so.”

  “What was the name of the guy again?” Bob asked me.

  “Noah Wright.”

  “Think I know the guy. Goes by ArkFree?”

  “I’d have no way of knowing. The lab’s not giving anything away.”

  He turned around to look at the screen again, making a gesture with his hand, and a flurry of pictures ran over the screen. He must have had a haircut; for the first time, I could see the circular exterior of the implant, where one faint green light pulsed.

  I forced myself to look away, disturbed, as I always was, by the thought of electronic technology actually fused to someone’s brain. It was dangerous as hell—after all, that’s how the computer viruses went blood-borne in the Tech Wars—but also a terrible idea. And I wasn’t just saying that because I was a telepath and an implant would likely shred my brain through competing fields. It just was.

  Now, a biology-based enhancement . . . maybe that might be worth looking into. The military project sounded legal, if extreme. But extreme was what the military did; half of my students back in the old days had been training for specialties in black ops and surveillance. Military paid very well for what it did.

  Nearly three minutes passed while Bob searched. Three minutes was an eternity in his world, in which he could sort through data faster than I could think. Finally he made a small noise.

  “What?” I asked.

  Bob turned back around in the chair. Behind him on the screen was a picture of a paper document, with a red stamp printed on it and everything.

  “They almost got it all,” Bob said. “I had to raid a newsgroup’s disaster recovery site.”

  “Um . . . thank you?”

  “No big deal,” he said. “It’s printing now on the main printer.”

  Usually he was more helpful with summaries. “What is it?” I asked.

  “A folder with several documents,” Bob said. I could almost see the data swimming behind his eyes. Then: “ArkFree signed his handle to it and everything and kept the original lab marks there, if you know what you’re looking for. The longest document seems to be an internal progress report on what they’re calling the Galen Project. You’ll have to read it for details; I’m getting an internal notification that there’s a meeting in five.”

  “Thanks for doing this,” I said.

  “Make sure the first six donuts are here tomorrow,” Bob said, and turned away. “Sprinkles. There’d better be sprinkles.”

  • • •

  I fetched the thick set of papers from the printer without getting stopped, staring out the frost-rimmed window at the parking lot below. Then I walked out past the guard with the confident step of someone who had somewhere to be. He even waved.

  Candy from a baby.

  Now, onto the really ha
rd part of the day: facing Clark. I had to do it, tired or no. I was here and the interview rooms were my real job. Even if I’d take a nap on nails.

  • • •

  Clark stopped in the middle of the basement hallway when he saw me.

  “Hi, Clark,” I said.

  He didn’t move. His anger bubbled up like a cloud of steam. “You—you—”

  “Paulsen says I owe you an apology,” I said. I was tired enough and stressed enough that the apology reference didn’t hurt. Well, no more than eating glass.

  Clark’s face moved to a shade of burgundy, like the color change of a chameleon. “You left. With no notice. You haven’t called in. In days. You can’t do that.” He spoke in a dangerously quiet voice.

  “Well, I can—”

  “You can’t. Other people have lives. Other people have to pick up the crap—”

  “Nobody asked you to be in charge!”

  He took one, long, deep breath, and I felt the anger crystallize into something dangerous. “If it was up to me, you’d have been fired a year ago.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I knew he didn’t like me, but what was I supposed to do? “What’s the schedule like tonight? I’ll take the shitty ones.”

  “I’m giving you the whole damn pile—with no explanation. It’s better than what you did to me. I’m getting my coat. I’m on vacation next week. With any luck, you’ll screw it up so bad you’ll be fired by the time I get back. Here’s to not seeing you.”

  Clark pushed past me, hard, bruising my shoulder, his contempt and disgust leaking through like acid.

  Then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 8

  Halfway through the third hour, I was finally starting to get caught up. Or at least not lose my mind. The current suspect was being difficult, but as that suited my current mood, I wasn’t complaining.

  Someone rapped on the door. I needed a break anyway, and the suspect needed to stew.

  “You just think about that,” I told him. “You just think long and hard about that.” Crap, I sounded like a bad Mafia movie. On a day when the director hadn’t shown up. Even the suspect looked a little green from the telling—well, maybe it would end up working in my favor. Confess to get away from the bad Mafia movie impressions. I’d play it up later.

  I closed the interview room door behind me. Frances, the file clerk, stood there with a small yellow square of paper. Or, more accurately, a pile of five identical yellow squares of paper.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but you have a stalker,” she said.

  Now I felt a little green. “Male or female? How dangerous? Have they been taken into custody or questioned?”

  She stared for a second, then laughed the hard-edged laugh of the startled and uneasy. “No, I’m sorry. It’s a saying. You had a guy call for you on the main switchboard five times in two hours. He was plenty polite—no breathing into the phone or anything. Don’t think he’s an issue unless you know about him already, but you’ll have to tell me.” She held out the paper. “Says his name is Stone.”

  “Ah. Now it makes sense.” I reached out to take the papers. “Frances?”

  “What?” she asked, turning around, halfway to the elevator.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I looked at the clock. I had twenty minutes before the Guild van was supposed to pick me up. I hated leaving a suspect but . . .

  I ducked into one of the sound rooms that wasn’t currently being used, and borrowed the phone, dialing the number on the message slip, labeled IMPORTANT, with a checked box next to it that said CALL RIGHT AWAY.

  It rang twice before Stone’s voice answered. I introduced myself.

  “You’re a hard man to get a hold of,” Stone asked.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be watching me anyway?” I asked.

  I felt a presence then, like a fist knocking politely on the outside of my mind. “That way was next, but it doesn’t hurt to be polite. Plus you’re surrounded by cops. I’m told they react badly if you freak out.”

  I strengthened my shields. “You took the tag off. I saw you take the tag off.”

  “I did,” he said.

  “So how do you find my mind so quickly?”

  A pause. “Let’s call it a trade secret. You listening or not?”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “Turner came and found me to make sure I knew what was going on. Rex is out of his mind if he thinks I’m going to let you back in a high-stakes quarantine situation on no sleep. You’re off for the evening. But—” And here his voice cracked like a whip. “If you are one minute late tomorrow, I will find you and Rex will be the least of your problems.”

  “Are threats really necessary? I do my job. Really.”

  “I’m still your Watcher,” he said. “Don’t push your luck. We need to meet up on neutral territory. If we’re going to be working together, I need to lay out some ground rules first.”

  I sighed. “How do I know Turner isn’t going to show up at the meeting point and cause trouble? Or Nelson? Thus far you Guild people haven’t done a bang-up job of communicating.”

  He sighed. “Just meet me tomorrow morning at Freedom Park, by the fountain memorial. Seven thirty a.m. sharp.”

  “You could just pick me up at my apartment instead,” I said. “You’ve proven you know where it is.”

  “Seven thirty. Don’t be late.”

  I looked at the receiver, now blaring a dial tone. If I wasn’t so tired, I’d be more concerned about all the dramatics. There was something going on at the Guild. Half a dozen somethings.

  But if I got to sleep in my own bed tonight, so much the better.

  I paged through the rest of the slips, found one from Kara, and balled up the whole stack and threw it away.

  Then I went back to the interview rooms to convince the suspect that yes, he really did want to talk to me. It took me half an hour. Then the next suspect was late, and I had a little time.

  • • •

  I pulled out the stack of paper I’d gotten from Bob and started to read. Without the active push-and-pull of a suspect, my exhaustion was starting to show. I had to read sentences two and three times.

  Finally I got out two more pieces of paper from the bottom and flipped them over to show the white side. I used the paper to block off the one line I was dealing with, took a breath, and read. Slowly. This was not a game of speed. This was a game of comprehension. I’d learned some work-arounds with my three-month-old brain injury, but it still wasn’t clear sailing.

  With the paper there, the words didn’t float as much, and I read.

  Ten minutes later, I sat back and rubbed my eyes. Take this in small bites.

  Wright’s controversial information was . . . well, less sensitive than expected, at least in the summary. That first section was a progress report on some kind of medical device, biologically based, that plugged into your nervous system to monitor your whole body’s health. They were having trouble with some kind of molecular something designed to identify pathogens and chemicals in the blood; it kept misidentifying compounds in the lab, which was a problem.

  One of the “desired features” was some kind of duct to release antibiotic, antiviral and/or pH-balancing chemicals when needed, but the report writer had doubts this could be accomplished anytime soon. “As long as the Galen continues to react to mutualist bacteria strains, any immune-booster response will be triggered near constantly. False positives are a large enough problem in monitoring without adding additional risks.”

  I had to read that sentence about ten times to understand. I opened my eyes and paged forward for pictures. No pictures. I had no idea what this device looked like.

  Maybe this thing was related to the soldier project Bob had talked about? It didn’t seem a big step to go from monitoring health a
nd handling antibiotics to, say, releasing adrenaline and keeping someone awake and alert when that person felt like I did right now.

  I sighed and looked at the clock. The suspect was very late. I tried to focus on the report, but I read slower and slower.

  Finally my eyes closed, and I thought, I’ll just rest for a minute.

  • • •

  “Adam!” Cherabino’s voice woke me up from a sound sleep.

  “Whaa?” I blinked. The world was having trouble focusing.

  “You’re drooling on your papers,” she said. “Shift’s over. I was supposed to drive you home, remember?”

  I sat up, bleary.

  She stood there, awkwardly. I could both feel her desire to ask a question and feel her reluctance.

  “Just ask,” I said, massaging my neck to try to get the crick out. “I’m not sure I can guess right now.”

  “Um.”

  I looked at her.

  “It’s weird.” She paused. “You have weird dreams. You were throwing out all your cooking knives, and most of the silverware. Plus a hunting knife. I didn’t think you owned knives. If you do, I should be there when you throw them out in case it comes up later.”

  “You saw my dream?” I asked, still fuzzy. I vaguely remembered something about knives, and being afraid. “You’re right, I don’t own anything like that.”

  She was uncomfortable. “I don’t like seeing your dreams. You told me the Link was fading.”

  “It’s fading!” I barked automatically. Then took a breath. “Listen, let’s walk upstairs and to the car. I’m exhausted. And if you’re getting the damn dreams, you’re getting the exhaustion too.” I stood. “Actually you should be. Why aren’t you sleepy too?”

  “Years and years of migraines teach you a lot about powering through.” She opened the door and walked. I followed her, heavy stack of papers I still hadn’t read in hand.

  The hallway was dimmed, nighttime lights only, no suspects in sight, all rooms dimmed. I wondered if the night shift of interrogators (already light) had been cut completely during the latest budget round. I wondered why I didn’t know already. I should know these things.