Marked

by Alex Hughes

  “Look, I have an appointment with a CI I need to get to,” Ruffins said. “Task force is at three, right?”

  “It is,” Cherabino agreed. She was frustrated with him; I could feel it. But he was important to the Fiske case somehow.

  As they walked out, the idea in the back of my head snuck back in and looked at me with wide eyes.

  • • •

  The idea coalesced.

  Captain Harris had barged into Paulsen’s office earlier about the arbitration emergency. He was trained as a go- between and was good at getting agreements.

  Second fact: the Guild had a long and distinguished history of using third-party arbitrators. The Koshna Accords were only the most famous example. If I’d paid my Guild dues long enough, I might have had access to one from inside the Guild. Unlike a lawyer, whose job it was to block as many runs from the other party as possible, a Guild arbitrator was assigned to find the best solution for the accused that the Council or accuser could live with. There was a lot more negotiation, and a lot less questioning of facts, since truth or falsehood was already established with a deep-read. A good arbitrator could get your sentence commuted, or paid slowly over time, or taken out of your salary and your community service and your creativity rather than your hide. Then he or she followed up to be certain both parties kept up their ends.

  Third fact: Harris had once been married to Jamie; they had been divorced long before I’d had her as my mentor, but as a senior student I knew who she was. According to the rumors of the day, he had stayed over at the Guild for some of that time, in addition to his residence off-site. While the Guild might not accept just any police captain as a neutral party, Harris had been cleared as a former spouse of a Guild member, and a sometime resident.

  So, unlike Bransen, Harris could actually walk in the doors of the Guild and speak for me. Furthermore, he was qualified to do it reasonably well.

  That is, if he would.

  • • •

  I bought sandwiches from Swartz’s favorite deli, fresh homemade bread like clouds cradling a bounty of beautiful soy-pepper loaf and vegetables, real roast beef, and fresh-made stone-ground mustard, with slices of fancy cheddar cheese cut so thin you could see the shadow of your finger through them. Best part? I bought them myself, with real money, in the regular line, without having to talk to a manager. The department had been handling my money for years, and now I had it myself. There was temptation there, sure, but here, now, it was freedom. Bittersweet to taste that freedom today. Today of all days.

  I took a taxi—a real, honest-to-goodness taxi with a grumpy taxi driver who wanted to talk sports—and paid him with real money.

  And then I was climbing Swartz’s front steps.

  Selah answered the door in a ridiculously flowered dress and wool socks, a scarf around her neck. She smiled when she saw me—and the deli sack I carried in my hands. “He’s awake,” she said. “And he’d love a visit.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She stopped me. “It’s not that high-sodium thing, is it?”

  “No, ma’am.” I smiled. I’d remembered. Low-sodium and healthy, all the way. I felt virtuous.

  She let me through.

  Swartz was seated on his faded old couch, fiddling with some kind of wire hook. Fishing gear, maybe. Clear line and oddly colored feathers littered the TV table in front of him like the leftover bits of a bird left by a messy cat’s lunch. He frowned at it through thick reading glasses. The frown turned into a smile when he saw me.

  “Come in, come in.” He pulled a pocketed envelope from the couch beside him and started tucking things away into it.

  “What are the feathers for?” I asked.

  “Ah, even pollution-resistant bioengineered fish like a fly with some shine to it. Makes them bite better. I don’t go much, anymore, but I like the flies. Plenty of call for them, and keeps me busy.” Subtext in Mindspace was that a little extra money was welcome while he was on teacher’s disability, and his doctor liked the activity. “Sit down. Tell me all about things. Did you ask her to dinner?”

  I looked for Selah.

  “Let’s get the food on the kitchen table, dear,” she said kindly. For all Swartz lived here, the house was hers.

  I unpacked my offering on the old wooden kitchen table while Selah got out the good plates.

  “So, did you?” he asked.

  I looked up. “You’re a meddler, you know that?”

  He sat, setting the cane against the wall next to him. “So what if I am?” He was breathing heavy, even from that little move across the room. I wondered if he was getting worse, somehow. “So, did you or not?”

  “I did,” I said, almost sheepish. For once in my life I didn’t really want to talk to him about it. Too new, too fragile, too uncertain. Too . . . improbable now, with what today meant. “Well, she said yes. It was, well, it was awkward. But okay. Really okay. I think she likes me.”

  He pulled the deli bag toward him. “I could have told you that years ago.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me to ask her out years ago?” I asked, a little forcefully.

  “You weren’t ready, kid.”

  I digested that for a moment. Still, regret burned at my stomach. Deep, full regret, of what might have been.

  He regarded me. “You had to learn to believe in the program. In God. In yourself. You’re not there yet, but you’re on your way now. That is, if you keep up praying.”

  I blinked. He thought I was on my way. Even with the qualifier, it was one of the best compliments I’d gotten in a long time. And from Swartz. Today of all days.

  Selah arrived, found the little red pepper salad I’d gotten for her, and pecked me on the cheek. She moved it to the dining room table, where she had some papers laid out for a project she was working on. So it was just me and Swartz. We ate, companionably, together.

  Swartz finished about half the sandwich, blotted at his mouth with a napkin, and pushed the plate away. He looked tired, but his mind was still razor-sharp. “You’re not here in the middle of the day to talk about Cherabino, are you?”

  I took another bite of sandwich, which was suddenly ash in my mouth.

  “What are you here to talk about?”

  I looked at my plate.

  Swartz sighed. “I have a cane now, you know.” A reference to how many times I’d told him to whap anyone who got in his way.

  “I . . .” I trailed off. Took a breath. “The Guild’s been making threats. Credible threats. They wanted me to investigate this thing for them.”

  “You told me. It was Kara who asked, right?”

  “She’s not in the picture anymore.” I forced myself to move on, no matter what it cost me. The words came out slowly, at first: “Now it’s the politicians. And I’ve stepped out of line, to their thinking, and gotten too ambitious, and gone after somebody too high up. I’ve caught somebody in wrongdoing, but it’s the wrong guy for the murder and they’re . . . well, they’re threatening to mind-wipe me, Swartz.”

  Surprise and concern came from him across Mindspace. “What . . . what exactly does that mean?”

  “In this case, they say they’ll erase the last ten years of my life.”

  He sat, grave. After a moment: “Can they?”

  “They can. Maybe they won’t. Cherabino has ideas. I have ideas. I am going to fight. But reality—”

  “The Koshna Accords,” Swartz said.

  “Yeah.”

  A long pause, in which he thought and I tried not to feel.

  “I’d . . . I’d rather they killed me, you know. Leaving me back there after they kicked me out of the Guild, without any of this.” I waved my hand around the kitchen, to him. “Without any of me.”

  “Ten years ago you were sliding toward the street. Addicted.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The habits are s
till in your brain.”

  “I know.”

  Odds were, I’d wake up in the middle of the worst Satin addiction I’d had, and if I wasn’t physically addicted at first, those desperate habits and cravings would send me right back into the throes of it. I didn’t know if I could get myself out a second time. Not without Cherabino and Swartz, and what were the odds of finding them again?

  “They might kill me anyway,” I said.

  Swartz leaned on the table and thought. And thought. I could see the thoughts, like a master cardplayer shuffling through cards, dealing and collecting and fanning them out one after the other.

  And I waited, an idea—and this hope—the only thing left.

  Finally he nodded. Then he looked up at me, and the pain in his eyes hurt me. Physically hurt me. “We can’t stop it?” he asked.

  “I’ll try, but . . . I can’t run. I’m marked. I’ll show up at the Guild or they will make me.”

  “That’s it?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll go with you,” he said, and grabbed the cane, half standing.

  “I don’t think you can,” I said. With all the Tech and various Mindspace devices at the Guild, even if they’d let him in the door, there could be issues. I didn’t know how stable his heart was right now, and the heart was controlled by tiny neurons linked into the rest of the body’s neural net. One of the scariest lessons in Deconstruction was learning how to manipulate that net in someone with a weak heart to cause worsening of symptoms and possibly death. Not that I think anyone would do anything deliberately . . . Well, maybe I did. They’d used his condition against me before. I took the plunge and lied: “They wouldn’t let you in anyway. It’s tomorrow. I’m getting Cherabino to take me.”

  Swartz nodded. “Isabella will know what to do.” He settled back in the chair, leaning on the cane. “What do you need?”

  “Not to think for a while. Cigarettes aren’t doing it, and I’m wanting the drug way, way too much.”

  He nodded. “Stay here today. Selah needs some help in the garden, and there’s plenty of flies to be made. You can talk if you need, and we can put our heads together.” But the feeling I got from him, for the very first time, was uncertainty. Huge, gaping uncertainty and worry. And sadness, over and through it all.

  And that scared me worse than anything so far. If Swartz didn’t have an answer . . . Maybe there wasn’t one.

  • • •

  I was covered in sweat and dirt in a borrowed oversized sweatshirt of Swartz’s, digging holes for fence posts in the semifrozen ground, when Cherabino’s police car pulled up, sirens flashing, in the front yard.

  Selah stood up, taking off her gardening gloves.

  I felt Cherabino before I saw her, strong emotions hitting me like a blow, layer after layer of panic and worry and anger and everything else, layer after layer poured out. Raw strength with no control—my strength, perhaps, and her lack of control, if the Link had anything to do with it. Maybe I was just attuned.

  She trotted to Selah, emotions so painfully loud, so painfully out of control. “I’m sorry. I need Boy Wonder.”

  “Will he be back?” Selah asked, eyebrows down. “My husband—”

  “I’ll call Swartz later.” Cherabino moved next to me. “Let’s go.”

  I set down the shovel. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, I’m just running in a hurry. You were hard to find, and my informant gets twitchy if I’m too late.” She’d closed two cases the last time he contacted her, and she didn’t want to miss the guy.

  “Okay . . .” I pulled off Swartz’s gardening gloves and dropped them on the ground. “You realize I’m covered in dirt. It will get in your cruiser.”

  “You realize I said out of time? We’ll clean up the dirt later.” She grabbed my arm and pulled.

  Selah watched us go.

  The siren sound turned on as we entered the car.

  CHAPTER 19

  “That was a stoplight,” I said. “Stop sign! Stop sign!”

  Cherabino brought the car to a screeching halt as a handicapped man cursed at us from the sidewalk, hands on his anti-grav scooter, which had barely stopped in time.

  She imagined slapping me; then I got a flash of her sensei’s face. Too violent, his face said. Nonviolence is the only way. Nonviolence and control. He’d made her run twenty miles the last time she hit me, and he’d been right to do it, even with her bad knees. She breathed out through her teeth. “I’m driving,” she said, in her “Take Charge, I’m a Cop” voice. Inside she was brittle, and irritated, and worried about being late.

  Besides, I was right. “Sorry,” she muttered, almost too low to hear. “I can be a little pushy when I’m in a hurry.”

  “No kidding,” I said. I hadn’t realized she’d talked to her sensei about me. But it made sense. Her sensei was her Swartz, her guy to help her figure out life.

  “I’ll work on it,” Cherabino said, not sure if she meant it.

  The man’s scooter made its ponderous way across the intersection at approximately five feet a minute as we waited, Cherabino impatiently. The car behind us honked, echoing that impatience.

  And then it happened. My precognition, my stubborn future sense, decided to work.

  The universe dissolved out from under me all at once, no warning. I was in an old barn, the smell of moldy hay and ancient horse droppings overwhelming. The world was fuzzy, the clouds of sunlight and dust making watercolor streaks in my vision so I couldn’t see clearly.

  I turned, trying to get a fix on my position, trying to understand where and when I was. The air was cold, the sunlight thin; midwinter, maybe? Soon? Not a year from now, not two.

  There: in the center of the barn in a cleared space, two figures. One in a chair, moving in a strange way that made me think, Tied up. I squinted. A boy? A boy about nine perhaps? I knew that boy.

  I was suddenly, unreasonably, afraid for that boy.

  The other figure looked up, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt despite the fuzziness of my vision that it was Sibley. The strangler for hire I’d put in jail just a few weeks ago. The man I knew worked for Fiske, doing his dirty work.

  I held a phone in my hand, the round receiver a weight I didn’t like. A voice sounded in my ear—a voice my future self knew was Garrett Fiske.

  “Sibley will kill him,” Fiske’s voice said slowly, with promise built into the words. “He will kill him and you will watch. You deserve to be put in your place.”

  “Kill me instead,” my future self said, voice shaking. “You can’t do this! He’s just a boy. Kill me instead. I won’t fight you.” I tried to move but couldn’t. “You can’t do this,” I said again.

  “No, you don’t get to be self-sacrificing today,” Fiske’s voice said. He was behind the paralysis, I knew, like he was behind all of this. “You deserve to suffer through the results of your actions.”

  Sibley pulled out a rope and the boy started screaming, high-pitched hysterical screaming. I screamed too, feeling his panic, feeling death approaching.

  I felt Cherabino in my head then, piggybacking on the vision. Jacob, she said. It’s Jacob. Fiske has got Jacob!

  Her panic combined with me ripped the vision apart, and we were back in the car. The man in the scooter ponderously moved onto the sidewalk.

  Cherabino gripped the steering wheel with white- knuckled hands while the car behind her honked again. The emotions bubbled up again, panic the strongest one, panic and anger and determination and a sense of wrongness, emotions so strong and roiling they were like two overly strong colognes stuck in the confines of the car with us.

  “That was one of your visions,” Cherabino said.

  “Yeah,” I coughed out, just now starting to breathe.

  “Fiske getting Sibley to kill Jacob. My sister’s kid.”

  “I—�
�

  “Over my dead body,” Cherabino spat out, and pulled the flyer away with a screech.

  I coughed again. “We don’t know—”

  “I know what I saw,” she said.

  The anti-grav engines whined as she took the car airborne in a highly illegal vertical lane change in the middle of a city street. When honks came all around, she turned the lights and sirens on. She had a goal, and a purpose, and no citizens were going to stand in her angry way.

  “We don’t know it’s going to happen,” I protested, but I didn’t believe it. The vision had been too inevitable, too real.

  Cherabino looked over at me, narrowly missing a floating lane marker. “Tell me your accuracy rate isn’t more than seventy-five percent. Tell me this one’s a fluke. Tell me, Adam!”

  “Look at the road,” I said instead. I was certain. Of all the visions in the world, this one had the weighty quality of certainty.

  The vision had happened in winter, in a time not far from now. And Cherabino was about to move on Fiske with her task force.

  “Tell me I’m wrong,” she spat.

  “I can’t,” I said, the bottom dropping out of my world.

  • • •

  She screeched down onto old asphalt and accelerated. We were in the richest section of the Atlanta, near the governor’s mansion, on one of the smallest streets in between trees, and she was treating it like a four-lane highway.

  Too fast, too fast, my brain yelled, still trying to process, still trying to catch up with her emotion, with my emotion, with the vision.

  “Fiske does not take Jacob,” she said, and threw the car into a sudden turn.

  She screeched into the open gate of an Italian-style mansion, white stone lions on either side. She swept around the circular drive and threw the car into park too fast, too fast. My heart pounded like a drum played by a teenager.

  She reached over me into the glove compartment, then grabbed the rifle from the rack behind us, pushing in a bright green electrically charged stun clip, her anger making her hands move faster than I could see. She’d more likely survive if she used nonlethal methods, her mind informed me.