Black Rain

by Matthew B. J. Delaney

  All at once the mirror slid open and his wife’s hand pulled him into the secret room. The mirror shut behind him and locked. There in the darkness, trying to control his breath, his heart continued to ripple painfully. He turned and looked out through the glass, back into the library.

  Empty.

  “Jesus, what happened?” Betsy hissed. “What’s wrong?”

  Reynolds shook his head. “Quiet. He’s coming.”

  He kept his eye on the library’s doorway. Watching. Watching. Then a figure appeared. The terribly long nose, the black eyes of the plague doctor. He stopped for a moment in the doorway, then turned and kept walking, disappearing from view. What was happening in Reynolds’s chest felt like a heart attack. But then the pain dropped so hard into his stomach he felt he was going to be sick.

  “Who was that?” Betsy asked, her eyes wide and scared.

  “Call the police.” Reynolds’s voice wavered and Betsy froze. “I dropped my sync. Call the police now!”

  She looked around, thoroughly frightened by the tone of his voice. Obediently she dialed the numbers. “Where’s yours?”

  Reynolds looked out and saw his sync on the library floor. He stared hard at it, attempting to somehow will it back into his possession. Betsy handed her sync to Reynolds. The operator’s voice picked up after the second ring, curt and impersonal.

  “911, what’s your emergency?”

  Forced to speak, Reynolds breathed deeply and tried to gather his words. “We need help, there’s someone here, there’s a man, trying to kill us. I’m at 578 Fifth Avenue, the townhouse, fifth floor.”

  “You need the police?”

  “Yes . . . please . . . right away . . .”

  “Stay on the line, sir,” the operator responded.

  Betsy pressed hard against Reynolds, her mouth very small and tight as she stared at something through the glass and into the room beyond.

  “What is it?” Reynolds asked.

  “He knows.”

  Reynolds knew they had come for him. They had found out about his work. He had done his best to keep it secret, but he had always known this moment would come. He had just hoped it wouldn’t be when he was with Betsy. Reynolds reached into his waistband. They had left him no choice.

  The 911 operator came back on the line. “Are you there, sir?”

  “Yes.” Reynolds whispered. “There’s been a murder. He’s here now. I’m looking at him.”

  “Where are you and your wife hiding?”

  Reynolds opened his mouth to respond, then a warning flashed in his mind. Something was not right. “What did you say?”

  “Where in the house are you and your wife hiding?”

  My wife. I never told the operator I was with my wife. His mind moved sluggishly. The voice on the sync. Someone who had seen him at the party with his wife. Someone who knew who he was. Someone who couldn’t be a 911 operator.

  “Why do you want to know where we’re hiding?” Reynolds asked.

  Pause.

  Click.

  Reynolds felt suddenly calm.

  There would be no more waiting. No more secrets.

  He lifted the old Glock 9mm handgun from the bureau. The weapon felt strange in his hands. Betsy stared at him, her eyes wide. “What are you doing with that?”

  “They found me out.”

  “Who found you out?”

  “Who do you think?” Reynolds tried to remember how to flick off the safety on the weapon.

  “Oh God. Where is it?”

  “Hidden,” Reynolds said. “Safe for now.”

  In the library, the masked figure stopped and stared down at Reynolds’s sync. Slowly he bent down, picked it up, and inspected the screen. He pressed the device with his thumb, then seemed to wait.

  Reynolds suddenly knew what the man was waiting for, but he was too slow to react. In his hand, Betsy’s sync came alive and a shrill ring filled the small space. The man’s head slowly swiveled toward the sound as Reynolds’s sync fell from his fingers.

  He approached the mirror and stared at it. Up close, Reynolds could see flecks of blood on the leather mask. Only feet from them, the man ran the point of the sickle over the glass. His wife pressed herself against Reynolds again. The little bells on her wings tinkled. The blade on the mirror screeched. Reynolds’s adrenaline surged as his focus narrowed to a single smudge on the unblemished glass. A fingerprint.

  His own that he had left behind.

  The man in the mask saw the mark at the same time. The movement of the blade stopped. Slowly, he lifted the sickle, then the blade hissed down. The glass shattered and the man stepped through the broken frame, gripping the blade in his hand.

  Reynolds closed his eyes, his finger tightening on the trigger, and fired.

  CHAPTER 2

  The black unmarked rolled up on the park side of Fifth Avenue, directly across from the Livingston townhouse crime scene. The front curb was still crowded with marked police cars, and uniformed cops milled around with their hats on, playing on their syncs and waiting for somebody to let them go home. Crime scene pulses sectioned off the townhouse, while on the far sidewalk a crowd of people in costume stood together, some of them crying.

  Detective Charles Arden sipped cherry meltwater. Arden was a big man, wide across the chest, but now growing soft, a former athlete past his prime. His body spread across the center line of the car, encroaching on the passenger seat where his partner, Detective Dwayne Sanders, sat. Sanders had a runner’s build, tall and slim, the kind of perfect mannequin frame that made even off-the-rack suits look perfectly tailored. He watched NY1 on his sync: the New York Braves had overrun Los Angeles in the invasion of Normandy, the crushers had expired three Synthate rebels in the Brooklyn conurb, and tomorrow’s rain would be six percent acidic.

  Arden studied the containment dome that covered the lower portion of Central Park, which had become a tangled mass of overgrown vegetation. Eight years had passed since the dome’s construction by the genetic conglomerate Genico, and the covered area was still too radioactive for habitation. Too expensive and dangerous to ever fully decon, the dome kept the contaminants in place and turned the most expensive real estate on the planet into an overgrown wilderness.

  Ahead of them, news trucks lined the block. Sanders flipped off his sync. “Ever get this much coverage in the Synthate Zone?”

  “Kidding me. Synthate gets expired, just roll the body up and call the crushers.”

  Sanders nodded toward a fat man in a musketeer outfit. “Recognize him?”

  “That would be Senator Livingston. Pulled him out of enough midtown pleasure parlors to know.” Arden pointed out another man dressed Gordon Gekko–style with slicked hair and suspenders. He stood away from the crowd, a massive security-model Synthate behind him. “And that’s Harold Lieberman. Number two guy at Genico.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Genico built half the Synthates in the Zone. You get to know who owns them. Doesn’t look like he was at the party, though,” Arden said. “Must have come after.”

  “Wonder why.”

  Senator Livingston’s residence took up the entire corner of the block. Two emergency service trucks had erected light towers at the edge of the park while crime scene units unpacked gear from the back of their vans.

  The interior foyer of the townhouse featured pink-and-white marbled floors and columns amid fluxglass 3Deeing Venetian carnival scenes. Detective Rojas, assigned to the Crime Scene Unit, waited for them in front of an oil painting, some sort of large castle with a lightning bolt overhead.

  “That painting would look great in your living room,” Arden said.

  “It would really complement my da Vinci.”

  “Someone’s been studying their art history.” Arden and Sanders both shook hands with Rojas. “What do we got?”

  “Three dead naturals.” Rojas led them toward a waiting elevator. “Two were a married couple, both hacked up, name of Reynolds. The third was security. Guy na
med Greeley.”

  “Sounds pleasant.”

  The elevator carried them upward. Arden’s sync chimed a reminder that it was time for his daughter to take her meds. He would call his nanny, Pisces Flyer, when he was done here.

  “Some sort of costume party going on at the time,” Rojas continued. “Like a hide-and-seek sort of thing. Around forty guests. Some security people. And maybe fifteen or so maids, chefs, etc., all Synthates. So far they’ve been a little hesitant to talk to us. But their bioprints are all pretty calm. Oceans. Rainbows. Shit like that. I think we can eliminate them as suspects.”

  “Maybe. Lot of Synthates learning to control their bioprints, though,” Arden said.

  “I say we just pin it on a Synthate and call it case closed.” Sanders looked bored. “Grab one of the usual suspects.”

  For many in the squad, that had been an easy way to close open cases. Grab a Synthate with a record and pin whatever had gone down on him or her. The department wanted homicides solved, and Synthates couldn’t defend themselves. You just had to pick one up, call the crushers, and throw some evidence around. Worked out for everyone. Except, of course, in high-profile cases. When the public inconveniently demanded the real killers be brought to justice.

  The elevator doors opened to a floor crowded with more uniforms. The trio walked down a long hallway that ended in a luxurious private library. The room had twenty-foot-high ceilings, a gilded fireplace on one wall, and a chandelier the size of Arden’s kitchen table. Windows looked down on Central Park, the abandoned zoo visible through the dome, rusting and overgrown.

  A gorgeous brunette natural in a tight calfskin dress with a feather in her hair sat crying in the corner of the room, being comforted by a man in a tricornered hat and breeches.

  “Who’s she?” Arden asked.

  Sanders snapped his fingers and pointed at the girl. “Pocahontas next to Napoleon.”

  Rojas shook his head. “No, no, no. You’re way off. It’s Sacagawea and Thomas Jefferson.”

  “No, I meant, who is she? What’s she doing here?”

  “Oh,” Rojas responded. “Synthate found the bodies initially. But these two were the first naturals afterward. She and Betty Boop were hiding in the study next door. Thomas Jefferson is—”

  “Napoleon,” Sanders interrupted.

  “Whoever.” Rojas looked annoyed. “That’s her husband. He was in the billiard room at the time.”

  “See anything?”

  “Aside from the two dead bodies? Nah, she didn’t see anything.”

  Arden studied the room. Opposite a wall with a grandfather clock, broken glass lined the floor. A smaller room was also visible, recessed from the library.

  “Looks like our two victims were in some sort of concealed back bedroom. Apparently there was a mirror with one-way glass on the bedroom side. It opened with a remote.” Rojas raised his eyebrows. “Whatever that was about. Anyway, the two victims were found inside there. Some shell casings. Looks like some shots were fired. No weapon recovered, though. Help yourself.”

  The Evidence Collection Team, or ECT, was already on scene. One of the officers crouched down as he placed a yellow marker over what appeared to be a shell casing on the floor.

  “I suggest it was Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the revolver,” Sanders said as they stepped over the broken glass and into the once-hidden bedroom. The bed’s comforter was pulled back and bloodied red. The body of a man in surgical scrubs lay sprawled facedown on the floor. On the bed was a woman dressed as an angel.

  “Detectives Arden and Sanders,” Rojas said. “Meet Dr. and Mrs. Reynolds.”

  “Doctor?”

  “Yeah, Dr. Reynolds. Had a Genico lab identification card in his pocket.”

  “What’d he do over there?”

  Rojas grimaced and looked at his shoes.

  “What?” Arden asked. “What’s with the glum look?”

  “Synthate design work. He was also in charge of the Black Rain program.”

  “Oh.” Arden exhaled, then scuffed the ground with his shoe. “Well, I guess this guy won’t be coming up with a cure anytime soon.”

  Inside he felt familiar disappointment take hold of his chest, like some predatory bird digging into his heart with talons. Arden looked away from the crime scene to compose himself. Finally, he turned back to the detectives and cleared his throat, flustered. “What . . . uh . . . did you get someone to come down for the ID?”

  “Yeah, we did.”

  Arden looked back at the bodies. “Good.”

  Arden bent down over the corpse of Dr. Reynolds. Outside the room, Sanders and Rojas both studied their syncs. The rest of the crime scene team was in the library. Nobody was paying attention to him. Arden slipped out a biomimicry hacker from his pocket and slid it over his hand. He then pressed the device against Dr. Reynolds’s right finger. The DNA hacker beeped, then glowed green. Arden slipped it back into his pocket, then stood.

  There were blood spatters on the inside of the mirror.

  “How many shell casings?” Arden asked.

  “Five,” Rojas said.

  “How many bullets did we recover?”

  “Only two. Buried near the bookshelf.”

  “So where are the other three?”

  Rojas shook his head. “Maybe we haven’t found them. Maybe they’re in our perp.”

  Arden turned his attention to the dead woman. “Broken fingernail here,” he said, then turned to one of the evidence collection guys. “Can we get a DNA read on this?”

  “Yeah, sure.” The evidence collection officer bent over the female vic’s broken nail. The DNA scanner hummed to life, and he inserted her finger into the machine. There was a whir, and a flash of blue light, then the machine beeped. The ECT officer pulled out the recorder chip and dropped it into a brown paper evidence bag.

  The scanner 3Deed a small, rotating DNA image in midair over the victim’s body. The machine had isolated two separate DNA components beneath the vic’s nail and was now sequencing the profile to construct a visible image of both.

  The image on the left quickly began to take form. First, a silhouetted figure appeared, then the figure was given long hair, the universal symbol for female. After a moment, the hair was colored in blond, and the skin turned from dark silhouette to white. Caucasian female. Blond hair. The machine continued to work, isolating and expressing each segment of the DNA. The female’s eyes turned blue, her facial features shaping, until Arden stared at a likeness of Mrs. Reynolds.

  If one set of DNA components belonged to the victim, then there was a good chance the other belonged to the perp. Arden watched patiently as the machine went to work deciphering the second set of DNA. The machine blinked once, and the words “Segment Unreadable” appeared and floated in midair.

  “Segment Unreadable. What happened?” Sanders asked.

  “It can’t sequence the DNA,” Arden said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because the DNA segments have been blocked off.”

  “By whom?”

  “By whichever company designed the Synthate that did this. All the major Synthate manufacturing companies block off their Synthates’ DNA. Protects against genetic pirating by other competitors.”

  “So it was a Synthate who did this?” Sanders asked.

  Arden stared at the late Dr. and Mrs. Reynolds. “Looks like. The Synthate who found them?”

  “Downstairs,” Rojas said. “One of the domestics. We’re holding her.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Domestic Class Synthates were generally genomed to be of average appearance. Of all the classes, they spent the most time living among the naturals, and companies found that no natural wife would want a beautiful Synthate around her husband every day.

  Rojas had detained the Livingston Synthate in the kitchen, where she practically stood at attention before an industrial-size stove, two crushers on either side of her.

  She was a flat-faced woman, with thick legs and arms and broad ha
nds. Her uniform was a light gray, the name “White Moonstone” stitched onto the front. She pulled down her uniform and exposed her shoulder bioprint, a sleeping cat curled up before a fire.

  Arden held out his Synth scanner. “White Moonstone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Touch here, please.”

  She reached out and touched the scanner. The device glowed green and 3Deed White Moonstone’s image and all her fabrication specs. She was a three-year-old Genico Domestic Class Synthate from the Roosevelt Island grow garden. No insub history or run-ins with the crushers.

  “Where’s your residential pod?”

  “Midtown Synthate Zone.”

  “And your employer?”

  “I’ve worked domestic service for Mr. Livingston since my harvest date.”

  “Do you like working here?”

  She looked uncomfortably at the crushers on either side of her. “It’s not my place to like or dislike it.”

  Arden sighed, then turned to one of the crushers. He was a burly natural in black body armor. A stun stick hung from his hip. “Can you give us a minute?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re making everyone uncomfortable. Take a walk.”

  The crusher sulked, but slowly he and his partner left the room. When they were gone, Arden put his hand on White Moonstone’s shoulder. “It’s very important that you be honest with us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re not the crushers.”

  “Yes, sir. You’re natural police.”

  “We are. Do you like working here?”

  White Moonstone hesitated, then said, “I don’t mind it. Mr. Livingston doesn’t mistreat us. We do our work. He visits the pleasure parlors so he doesn’t expect us to do anything more than clean his house.”

  “Fair enough. And you were working tonight?”