by Therin Knite
“What are the two things?” Jin asks.
Dynara scowls at him. “Part of an ongoing investigation, I’m afraid. I can’t tell you more until you have clearance, which you won’t get until you finish signing the nondisclosure agreement.”
“What? Really? Come on.”
“Are you five years old?” She crosses her arms. “Adem, how do you deal with him?”
“I don’t. I slog through his embarrassing tantrums until he calms down enough for me to ply him with food and drink.”
“Hey, I’m your best friend, Adem. You should be pleading my case.”
“Honey,” Dynara huffs out, “you don’t have a case.”
“But really, Dynara,” I say, “what are the components we’re missing? One is the guy, right? The guy who ‘mentored’ Brennian?”
She points to Jin’s forgotten Ocom and makes a signing gesture before answering. “Yes. We’ve broken into Brennian’s profile and attempted to track his communications with the man he told you about, but there don’t appear to be any. Either this guy has gone to great lengths to hide his digital contact with Brennian, or there never was any. He may have relied on off-net tactics, so now we’re analyzing Brennian’s movements over the past several weeks, searching for potential meeting places and dead drop locations and the like. As of now though, we have nothing on this man. Or organization. Or whatever it is that’s been hiding outside EDPA’s radar. If it’s there, however, we’ll find it eventually.”
“Can I have some water?” I attempt to reach for the cup on my nightstand, but I can’t lift my arm higher than the bed railing. “Damn, what did they do to me?”
“You suffered massive heart damage.” Dynara grabs the cup and lowers it to my mouth, allowing me to take three sips at a time. “They lost you as the copter was landing on the roof. Had to revive you in the elevator on the way to the operating room. Med-four is a powerful tool and all, but it’s not magic. You’ll be feeling weak for another five or six hours, according to the doctors.”
After finishing my water, I watch Jin seek out the last few signature lines. Then I ask Dynara, “The other thing, what is it? The other detail we’re missing.”
“How Brennian became an echomaker.”
“He wasn’t always one, I’m guessing?”
“No, he wasn’t. He became one recently by receiving a large dose of Somnexolene. We found it during his autopsy. You never see that much in a person anymore because we haven’t given it to anyone since the Impala incident. What you see in people is mostly trace amounts filtered from the environment into mothers into developing fetuses. If Brennian had been one of the unlucky few with an adverse reaction, that much Somnexolene could’ve killed him.”
“So where’s the mystery?” I ask. “The man he was working with gave it to him.”
She shakes her head. “No, see, each batch of Somnexolene contains a special marker to differentiate it from all other batches. If our big bad was producing his own formulation, then it either wouldn’t contain a marker or it would have a different marker from any of the batches on record. Yet it did match. It matched the only batch we have left. The batch locked up inside a vault in the lowest level of the EDPA office that no one is allowed to touch under any circumstances.”
“So you have a mole?” Jin’s head snaps up in excitement. “This is playing out like a spy flick. Please continue.”
Dynara prepares to retort, but I cut her off. “How many people have access to the vault?”
“Sixteen, including myself and Murrough, who is not the mole.”
Jin rolls his eyes. “How can you be sure?”
“It’s not him, Jin. He’s too loyal and strait-laced to be a traitor,” I say, then turn to Dynara. “Who are the other fourteen?”
“Well, it’s not like you know many of them, but whatever.” She recites the list from memory. “Dr. Stapleton Creedy, Dr. Sasha Dupree, Dr. Morris Thompson, Dr. Lana Carter, Dr. Regis Foreman—”
“Wait.”
“What?” Jin and Dynara say together.
“Dynara, does Somnexolene have a medical abbreviation?” Various images from the past few days align themselves in my mind, and two of them bear a striking resemblance. An overworked clubber with orange face paint. An overworked doctor with an orange coat. Good gods. How did I miss that?
“Abbreviation?”
“Like one you would label a syringe with?”
“Yeah.”
“What is it?”
Some unidentifiable emotion crosses her face as she replies, “S-plus.”
Surgery suites usually hold an atmosphere of dread, but Lana’s outpatient room, which doubles as her lab, has been spruced up with bright orange knickknacks to give it an illusion of safety and welcome. Even so, when Dynara and Murrough burst through the double doors to find Lana standing calmly in the middle of the room, waiting for them, a heaviness settles in the air, as if a perilous surgical procedure is set to begin.
“I was watching the security feeds,” says the doctor. “I saw you come in and figured my time was up.” She twists her messy ponytail, gaze falling to the polished floor. A hazy reflection of herself stares back. “Was it you, Adem, who found me out?”
I hover in the entryway, one door propped against my shoulder, my heart rate beginning to slow after the exertion of walking briskly through the EDPA building. Five hours was too long to wait. I left at three and a half, refusing to let Dynara make an arrest without me.
“Yes,” I answer. “I saw you at Valkyrie the other night. You were watching Regina Williams, presumably under orders from your real employer. Then you spotted me. You knew who I was, so you ran off quickly, hoping I wouldn’t get a good look at your face.” I sigh deeply. “It worked. Momentarily. I didn’t recognize you when you performed surgery on me. I was preoccupied with other things and wasn’t paying enough attention to my surroundings. Not a mistake I’ll make again.”
A rattle jars us out of the conversation, and we both turn to watch Dynara wrench open the cabinet and withdraw the entire rack of syringes. The Somnexolene is sitting innocently in the back row. An addition no one would notice if they weren’t specifically looking for it. Dynara’s careful hand plucks it out, and she replaces the rack. She backtracks to her position beside Murrough and waves the syringe at Lana.
“Hiding it in plain sight. Clever,” she says. “How long ago did you take it?”
“About six months,” Lana replies. “I took two doses, of course, and replaced them with empty syringes. One dose went to—”
“Brennian,” I finish.
“Yes, and I kept the other here as per my orders. At some point, I suppose, I would’ve been told to give it to someone.”
Murrough raps his holstered gun with a calloused finger, a frown distorting his perpetual stubble. “You’re being very forthcoming.”
The friendly doctor smiles the smile of a lover left behind on a sidewalk in the rain. “As much as I can be. I like you all. You’re great people, and you do great things. I almost wish I’d been employed here of my own accord, but, alas, my path took this direction a bit too late.”
Dynara tosses the syringe in the air, and Murrough catches it, stuffing it into one of his belt pouches. “This guy you work for,” Dynara says, “give me his name.”
“I don’t know his name.” Lana stuffs her hands into her lab coat pockets, and Murrough tenses, prepared to show off his quick-draw skills if the occasion calls for it. “I know a name, but not his real one. Only his inner circle is blessed with that information. All I know is that during my time at med school, I was offered a spectacular deal by one of his many liaisons. Infiltrate EDPA, perform tasks as commanded, and get paid a hell of a lot more than any normal doctor could hope to make. What can I say? I was young and broke and stupid, and by the time I realized I was wrapped up in something nasty, it was too late to back out.”
“Lana, honey, this doesn’t need to be difficult.” Dynara’s voice is high and rich, the persuasive tone of
a negotiator. “Tell us everything you know over a nice cup of coffee in an interview room, and we’ll set you up with a good deal. Fair, right? I’m always fair.”
“I know, Dynara, but life isn’t. And he most certainly isn’t.”
She moves, yanking both hands out of her pockets. Murrough’s gun appears in an instant and blows her left hand off. She screams, crumpling to the floor, but she doesn’t even give her mangled hand a second look before pressing the backup syringe to her neck and injecting suicide.
Her eyes glaze over. Her muscles relax. Her head cracks against the tile as she goes limp. They empty syringe slips from her hand and rolls away, coming to rest against the leg of a nearby stool. She dies in the mere seconds it takes Dynara to cross the space between them.
Dynara stoops over Lana’s body, hand reaching out and flexing, aching to rewind time. A hushed moment passes, and then she shakes off the disappointment and grief. She nudges the remains of the syringe swimming in the blood and flesh of Lana’s left hand while eying the second, intact syringe. “Well, this sucks. Whoever is pulling the strings behind these people must be a fanatical figurehead. Training his soldiers to die rather than surrender. To destroy themselves rather than reveal him. Using fear to make his puppets dance about. He’s the most important thing in this whole operation. Him, or whatever radical notion he stands for.”
Something clicks behind me, and I crane my stiff neck to find a flock of EDPA security agents aiming their guns at my rear end. “Whoa, fellas!” I say. “Not the bad guy.”
The door is lifted off my shoulder, and when I face forward again, my view of the room is blocked by the close to seven feet of Murrough, who’s looking out into the hallway with a seething glare. “What the hell are you idiots doing? Get a medical team in here.”
The agents scatter, several of them babbling into their ear-coms as they move double time to get away from the angry Murrough.
“Did they receive training,” I ask, “or do you people just give everyone a gun?”
Murrough takes the question personally. “They receive plenty training.”
A vague murmur wafts through my memory. Dynara’s chipper voice mentioning that Murrough is head of EDPA’s security division as we talked over our lunch of delivery pizza shortly before I left the hospital.
“I didn’t mean that as an affront to you,” I say. “I swear.”
He looms over me, and I picture any attempt at running away being swiftly stopped by his free hand wrapping around my throat and squeezing until my eyes pop out of my skull. But he only grunts in response before clearing the way for me to enter the room, where Dynara is examining the unbroken syringe.
“Potent poison,” she says. “She died in, what, six or seven seconds?”
Murrough mutters, “There about.”
“I know sixteen nanochemical drivers off the top of my head that have similar kill times. All of them rare and incredibly expensive to produce. Not to mention highly illegal. This is beyond any average criminal organization, even the Columbian mob.”
“So,” I say, “we’re dealing with a super-rich, super-smart, and super-persuasive criminal mastermind with no known motives or goals. And we have zero leads on how to find him?”
“Looks that way.” Dynara sets the syringe on the counter and steps closer to Lana’s body, turning the friendly doctor’s head until her blank eyes hit the ceiling. The poison from the broken syringe and the blood from her injured hand have mingled to create a volatile orange fluid that clings to her cheek.
The image takes me back in time. A tired woman with orange face paint stares longingly at the dance floor. She wants to get away from her strenuous life. She wants someone to help her get away. She is not distressed, only fatigued, but she wants someone to rescue her nonetheless. And if no one comes to save her, she thinks, she may have to rescue herself in the one way she knows will end her suffering for good.
“I don’t know who this bastard is,” says Murrough, “but I hate him already.”
Chapter Eighteen
Briggs and I collide like a pair of trains running different directions on one track. We’re on opposite sides of the same door, him in his IBI dress uniform, me in a shabby set of street clothes I pulled from my cesspool of a closet this morning. Our escorts give each other confused looks: They didn’t know the other was bringing a visitor, and they don’t know why two federal agencies are interested in the same silly rich woman. Briggs’ clipped-on guest pass reads IBI Commander. Mine says Civilian Visitor approved by EDPA.
My old superior observes me coldly for several seconds, mulling over a mess of conflicting negative emotions. Anger. Confusion. Disappointment. Mistrust. “I received your resignation letter this morning, Adamend,” he says at last.
“Good. I was afraid it’d get lost in your inbox.”
“Don’t get smart with me. Just because I can’t formally reprimand you now doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways for me to get back at you if you piss me off.” The loss of respect practically fumes from his ears. He knows my original motive for joining the IBI, and he believes I cast it aside for the promise of better pay and benefits and a sense of adventure. For the promise of a new start away from an old sore once addressed as Director.
“You think pretty badly of me,” I say.
“Oh, did it take your special skills to figure that out?”
“Ouch.”
“You had promise, Adamend.”
“Still do. And now I have it where it needs to be.”
Briggs swallows his next insult, the pieces beginning to click together in his brain. The commander, like Jin and many others from the IBI half of the joint strike team at the airfield, was offered a nondisclosure agreement in exchange for obtaining certain key information about EDPA’s operations. Acute suspicion simmers in his face now, and he analyzes every inch of my shoddy appearance before allowing himself to come to some essence of a correct conclusion. “I see.” His voice carries the barest hint of despondency. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
His ambiguity is appreciated, but I’ll never tell him that.
Perplexed by our conversation, the guards escort us into the cellblock together. The women’s wing of Columbia’s lone medium security prison is a sight for sore eyes. It needs a new coat of paint, a good floor polish, and a strong odor absorber to rid the air of the stench of sweat and other things I’d rather not think about. But it serves its function. It houses the women convicted of class C and D crimes and prevents them from harming the general public any further.
Some of the inmates stare silently as we pass by, others swear at us, a few make lewd propositions, and one proclaims her innocence because she mistakes Briggs and me for a pair of lawyers. Somehow.
Cell 291 is our destination. Low sounds emerge from it as we stop in front of the bars. The woman inside is a shocking clash of colors while garbed in the dull yellow prison uniform. And the tangled two feet of pink hair obscuring her face creates the impression of a woman who lost her mind decades ago. She sits at a small table installed temporarily in the cell so she can discuss her case with those in need of answers.
The outcome for one charge was made clear when she pled guilty during her first court appearance: two years for withholding knowledge about a murderer from the authorities. The other charge—conspiracy to kill a federal agent—will likely carry a heftier punishment.
On one hand, I pity this woman. Her upbringing taught her that divorce was sacrilege to someone of her social class, so she stuck with that asshole Lionel Rampart until he cracked under the pressure of adultery and nearly killed her. But from the point of view of someone who was almost the warm, fleshy resting place of an assassin’s bullet, I can’t, with a clear conscience, excuse Regina Williams’ behavior.
Not only did she hire a shitty hitman to kill me, but she also spent months as Brennian’s lover, knowing full well he was in league with a shady character whose actions could result in disaster.
She fidgets in the ricke
ty fold-up chair and answers a question I arrived too late to hear. “Sometimes, Whitford would get calls from a restricted profile, but they wouldn’t show up in his history or anything. I don’t know how the man did it.”
The interrogator, an EDPA guy, nods and moves to the next question. “Did you ever see this man’s face?”
“No, only heard his voice. He never used video.” Williams’ position reminds me of her conduct on Brennian’s dream couch, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. She wants to curl in on herself until she fades away to nothing. Not out of remorse for her actions. But because she’s embarrassed. Her mistakes, in her eyes, were examples of uncouth behavior that will forever damage her reputation with her upper-class peers. Remorse isn’t anywhere on her radar.
With a sigh, she peeks out from her ball of humiliation and spots me standing not ten feet away. The shock sends her tumbling out of her chair, elbows smacking the hard stone floor. “By the old gods!”
Her interrogator gives me an inquisitive glance before returning to his list of questions.
Williams grips the excess yellow fabric on her chest and twists it, gaze seeking out every mundane thing in the hallway but me. “I…I’m so sorry,” she says. “For everything. Hiring Ingram. Covering for Whitford. I’m so, so sorry. And I owe you.” She manages to locate her seat again, but she looks ready to burrow through the cell walls if I take a step toward her. “Thank you. For saving me, I mean. I didn’t deserve it.”
“No, you didn’t,” I reply, earning a harsh glare from Briggs. “But it was the right thing to do. Not that you’d know much about that.”
She shrinks into her ball of hypermodded body parts again. “I thought you knew about Victor. When I saw you at Valkyrie, I remembered you—Whitford told me about you. Not your name or anything specific. But he showed me pictures of you. Said you were his protégé. Said you were a genius IBI agent. And then I saw you sitting there, watching me, and thought you’d found out everything. I thought you were after me.”
