Vigilantes

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “Surely you can take footage of the scene,” Seng said. “Get him out of here. He needs medical attention.”

  Vigfusson stood. He put a hand gently on her arm, and shook his head. He had a compassionate look on his face.

  She looked at him, then at Zhu, and then at the attendants. No one was trying to revive Zhu. No one was touching him, not any more. His eyes were slitted, and what she could see of the eyeballs seemed abnormally glassy.

  “No,” she said. Her stomach turned. She needed this job. And then she felt ashamed that she had thought of herself before she thought of the man who had just hired her, kicked to death by police on the streets of Armstrong.

  “I’m sorry, Miss,” one of the attendants said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  He thought she was sad for Zhu. She should have been. He seemed nice enough. But she hadn’t known him.

  “You can get some authorities here, the coroner, or someone higher up in the police department,” she said. “I’m new to this city, but most police departments have an internal affairs division or a complaints department or something. Contact them. Now.”

  “Already have, ma’am,” said the other attendant. “Someone will be here shortly. The coroner if no one else.”

  They stood, then backed the three attorneys away from Zhu’s body, careful not to let them step in the river—which had to be blood. Seng was still shaking.

  “The attack was out here, right?” the first attendant asked, and then didn’t wait for an answer. “Can you go inside, please? Someone will want to talk with you.”

  On that last part, he sounded more hopeful than confident.

  “Can I have my medical kit?” Vigfusson said.

  “Sorry,” the second attendant said. “It’s part of the crime scene. The coroner will want to examine it.”

  Vigfusson opened his mouth as if he were going to argue, but this time, Seng stopped him. This time, she saw what was going on.

  “Let them take care of it,” she said. She almost added that she was certain S3 would reimburse him for the kit, but she wasn’t certain of anything.

  She led both men back into the building, then propped the door open so that she could watch.

  “We’re going to record this,” she said to the other two lawyers. “Got that? We need to document everything.”

  “Is that legal?” Rosen asked. He was as new to Armstrong as she was.

  “I have no idea,” she said. “But we’re going to do it anyway.”

  And then she settled in to watch.

  ELEVEN

  NYQUIST COULD FEEL the seconds ticking away. He did not look at his internal clock. He wasn’t certain if the systems inside the Reception Center had shut off even the simplest links, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.

  Instead, he took a deep breath to quell that moment of triumph he’d felt when Uzvaan told him how to track the masks.

  Nyquist still had more than twenty-five questions to ask Uzvaan, not counting the things that had come up in this interview.

  Nyquist did not look over his shoulder at the android guards. He didn’t want to tip them off in any way as to how he was feeling and, more importantly, he didn’t want to tip off their handlers that he thought he might be going over his allotted time.

  Uzvaan, sitting in the other environmental bubble, blinked at him, skin gray. Uzvaan would shift on that chair ever so slightly, as if the fact that his arms pointed downward hurt him.

  Nyquist knew no one in the prison cared what hurt the Peyti clones and what didn’t. Nyquist himself should have cared more than he did. After all, he was getting information from this one.

  If he could keep himself calm.

  “You said you were eighty-five of three hundred,” Nyquist said, “and that you weren’t exactly sure what that meant. No matter how we interpret your name, it means that there were more clones of Uzvekmt than were in your little team or unit. Do you know what happened to those clones?”

  “I do not assume,” Uzvaan said.

  Nyquist again felt that urge to grab Uzvaan by his little round head and slam it against the table. Nyquist had never felt quite this violent in an interrogation before.

  “Let me put it to you this way,” Nyquist said. “We thwarted hundreds of Peyti clones from bombing their domes all over the Moon. You only lived with two hundred of them, and by the time you went to law school, only fifty went with you.”

  “Forty-nine,” Uzvaan said. “I was the fiftieth.”

  Nyquist bit back his irritation. “You don’t want to assume, but I will, because law school is notoriously difficult. I’m going to assume that some of your pals failed to meet the grade in their schools—”

  “They were not my ‘pals,’” Uzvaan said, “and we were already trained against failure.”

  “I’ve met lawyers who went through the three best schools in the Alliance who claimed they had professors who flunked everyone the first time they took a class,” Nyquist said.

  “I avoided those professors,” Uzvaan said.

  “So you assume the other Uzvekmt clones did too.”

  The edges of Uzvaan’s eyes turned blue again. “I did not say that.”

  “You implied it,” Nyquist said.

  Uzvaan inclined his head.

  “For the sake of argument,” Nyquist said, “let’s take this out of the realm of law school. You worked in the Impossibles. I’m told that young defense attorneys always fail in the Impossibles.”

  “Unless they have a mentor,” Uzvaan said.

  That stopped Nyquist short. “A mentor?”

  “There are organized ways to avoid cases, sit second or third chair, or to work as a legal researcher, none of which mean losing in court,” Uzvaan said. “All of which count as a way of training in the Impossibles.”

  Nyquist hadn’t known that. He would have to check it. “I’m stuck on the mentor thing. Who was your mentor?”

  Uzvaan shook his head.

  “You promised you would cooperate with me,” Nyquist said. “Who was your mentor?”

  Uzvaan’s face was blue again. “My mentor is not important.”

  “Maybe not to you,” Nyquist said. “To me, however, that name is very important.”

  Uzvaan lowered his head, and muttered.

  Nyquist hoped to hell Uzvaan wasn’t speaking Peytin again. “Repeat that louder.”

  “Mavis Zorn,” Uzvaan said.

  “That’s a human name,” Nyquist said before he could stop himself.

  Uzvaan bobbed his head once—a single nod.

  “You’re telling me your mentor was human?” Nyquist asked.

  “Is that so strange, Detective?” Uzvaan asked, with a hint of his old attitude.

  “Yes,” Nyquist said. “Were humans running your teams on Peyla?”

  “No,” Uzvaan said.

  “But you accepted a human mentor at the Impossibles.”

  “You forget,” Uzvaan said. “I had graduated from law school. I had attended with humans and I had been taught by humans.”

  “So a human mentor wasn’t that unusual to you,” Nyquist said.

  “That is correct,” Uzvaan said.

  “How did this Mavis Zorn contact you?” Nyquist asked.

  “I was assigned to her unit,” Uzvaan said. “She always took one Peyti. It was considered an honor.”

  “And she protected you,” Nyquist said. “How do you know she was doing her best to keep you from failing?”

  “During our first meeting,” Uzvaan said, “she called me by my number.”

  “You were alone,” Nyquist said.

  “Yes,” Uzvaan said.

  “Did you ask her questions then?” Nyquist asked.

  “I did not,” Uzvaan said. “I was to follow her instructions, nothing more.”

  “And you didn’t think this strange?” Nyquist asked.

  “What part of it?” Uzvaan said.

  “That a human was running you around the Impossibles,” Nyquist said.
/>   “To question one’s mission is to fail,” Uzvaan said.

  Nyquist cursed. Those damn lessons were damn convenient. He stood up, fist clenched. The android guards came toward him. Their eyes were flashing yellow. Across the empty space where their mouths should have been, time clocks appeared.

  He had one minute to wrap this up, probably because they were monitoring his emotions.

  “Did you have other mentors inside the Alliance?” Nyquist asked.

  “At what time?” Uzvaan said.

  Damn him and his lawyerly twists of phrases. “Ever,” Nyquist said with too much emphasis.

  “I did,” Uzvaan said.

  “Were they all human?” Nyquist asked.

  “No,” Uzvaan said.

  The time clocks went off, and the android guards’ eyes turned red. Nyquist didn’t care what the design function for that was, he thought it creepy—creepier than the guards were themselves.

  He turned, preparing to shout out one more question at Uzvaan, but the bubbles were separating.

  He was done, whether he wanted to be or not.

  But he had learned a lot.

  He could get both Flint and DeRicci on some of this. He would be able to investigate some of this himself.

  He watched Uzvaan’s bubble recede into the blueness. Damn, if that Peyti bastard hadn’t helped.

  Nyquist was trying not to hope. He didn’t want to be disappointed.

  But for the first time in weeks, maybe months, he actually felt like they had a real chance of not just catching these so-called masterminds, but defeating them as well.

  TWELVE

  HER SECOND VISIT to this place, and she already hated it.

  Talia sat on the edge of the stupid blue couch, and looked at the two matching stupid blue chairs. The couch was too soft, but those chairs looked hard. Worse, they looked like no one had ever sat in them, like they wouldn’t give at all if someone put their weight on them.

  Comfort Center, my ass, she thought, and wondered what her dad would say about that.

  Probably nothing. She couldn’t imagine him liking this space either. It was too blue—cool colors, he would say—and it had real fake wood or fake real wood or actual real wood, which was just too expensive. Blond wood, like some kind of ash tree or something that she had learned about at the Aristotle Academy, in the botany class.

  The class had focused on the importance of different kinds of wood, and how different trees were galaxy-wide, how some trees were considered sentient and couldn’t be used for furniture and how some trees weren’t sentient at all. And also how certain public places that would cater to aliens from sentient tree planets couldn’t have any fake wood at all in them for fear of offending.

  Offending, yeah. Right. Offending. Because if they offended aliens, the aliens would fucking bomb the city.

  A tear leaked out of her left eye, and she rubbed at it furiously.

  The stupid therapist had told her not to shy away from thoughts that made her feel bad. He probably wanted to come into this room and find her sobbing on the couch so that he could feel useful.

  She wasn’t going to do that.

  She wasn’t going to sob for anyone, if she could help it.

  (She sure as hell hoped that she could help it.)

  She had decided that she would ask for a female counselor. Rudra Popova had told her to do that if she felt uncomfortable with Whatsisname Llewynn (“call me Evando,” which she absolutely refused to do).

  She didn’t want to be here. How come no one could figure that out? Her dad said it might be good for her, but she should trust her instincts. And then in the next breath, he said that she needed some kind of help, a kind he clearly couldn’t give, and she should give this place a try.

  Rudra said that maybe what Talia needed was a Comforter. But Talia remembered that doughy nondescript stupid Comforter lady on Callisto who never listened to her, and who wanted to envelope her in hugs all the time, which, Talia later learned was all about the stupid Comforter because the stupid Comforter had some kind of nano-enhancer that made her absorb emotions or something stupid like that.

  And if Talia used the word stupid one more time, even though she wasn’t saying it out loud, someone would probably call her on it.

  Then she shook her head. Too late. She was already calling herself on it.

  Critical, critical, critical. She rubbed her eyes again. She was being too critical. She couldn’t stop thinking about what a screw-up she was. If only she hadn’t started the fight with Kaleb. If only she had kept quiet about the Chinar twins.

  If only she hadn’t told anyone about how mean Kaleb could be, he wouldn’t have been in that room with that Peyti lawyer—that Peyti clone lawyer—and Kaleb, at least would have been okay.

  The school would have been okay, and she could be there this afternoon.

  She’d hated it there in some ways—Dad said it wasn’t challenging enough for her, but it was the best they could do—but she liked it, too. She actually felt like she belonged.

  She had felt like she belonged.

  Or at least, belonged more than she had belonged anywhere else since her mom died.

  Damn tear. Another one was creeping down her cheek. She wiped it, felt the chapped skin.

  This had to stop at some point. A human being (a clone, for godssake) didn’t have that many tears. She’d have to run out at some point, right?

  The door to the waiting room opened, and Whatsisname Llewynn (“call me Evando”) was standing there, looking down at her. She popped to her feet so that she was as tall as he was and could look him in the eyes. They had a bit of reflection, and she wondered if he had enhancements so that he seemed more empathetic than he really was.

  “Miss Flint,” he said.

  “Flint-Shindo,” she corrected. If he couldn’t even get her name right, then how could he understand what was going on with her?

  “I thought we’d finish our entry interview,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I want to make certain we pair you with the right team.”

  She glared at him. She could walk right now. The security team that Rudra had sent with her was just outside the building, probably bored and pacing, and they could all get coffee or something before going back up and explaining why Talia left.

  And that would be hard enough, because she wasn’t sure why she would have left. Because this was all stupid? (There was that word again.) Because she didn’t want the help? Because she didn’t need the help?

  Her eyes lined with tears.

  Dammit. She didn’t want the help and she couldn’t stop crying. Maybe some kind of enhancement would be better.

  “Talia?” Whatsisname Llewynn (“call me Evando”) said in a tone that sounded even more patronizing than the tone he had used a moment ago.

  “Talia Flint-Shindo,” she said, knowing she sounded bitchy, feeling bitchy, knowing she could get even more bitchy, feeling so very bitchy in fact that he had no idea what was coming at him. “That’s my name. And I didn’t give you permission to call me Talia.”

  He smiled at her, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I get the message,” he said. “Your father made you come here. That’s all right, Talia, we can work with—”

  “No,” she said, “‘we’ can’t do anything if you don’t respect me. I’m Talia Flint-Shindo, and you need to respect that.”

  “All right, Miss Flint-Shindo,” he said, and to his credit, he didn’t put any sarcastic emphasis on her name, “let’s go into the back and talk about what we can do to help you.”

  You can’t do anything, she wanted to say. You can’t do anything at all.

  But she didn’t say it. Instead, she followed him down the stupid corridor to his stupid office where they had had a stupid discussion just the day before.

  He’d get one more day of stupid discussions. One more. And then she was outta here. Because she had no idea how this could help anyone, let alone her.

  THIRTEEN

  THE POLICE NEVE
R arrived. The coroner did.

  Seng had the prime spot near the door so that she could see Zhu’s body. The ambulance attendants had set up a crime scene perimeter, the first time she’d seen one up close. It was made up of a red light beam that could actually burn if an unauthorized someone tried to cross it.

  The attendants reminded her of that as they placed the light in front of the door, warning her and Rosen and Vigfusson that they would have to leave via a different exit as long as the lights were there.

  She had nodded at that, and hadn’t moved. She was recording everything, just like Rosen and Vigfusson were.

  Two hours after the call and no police. One attendant had taken the ambulance and left on a new assignment, while the other waited impatiently. He contacted the authorities several times and made a disgruntled sound each time he let his hand fall from his ear.

  At one point, his gaze met Seng’s and he shook his head. He was angry, too.

  She made a note of the name emblazoned across his uniform, the ambulance number (when it was still there), and the licensing information. If this came to some kind of court case, she wanted him as a witness.

  Every now and then, she would make sure she recorded his face.

  Then she would look down at poor Zhu, his features slack, his skin growing paler and paler by the minute. It just wasn’t respectful to leave him there.

  Not that it had been respectful to kill him, either.

  “What do you think is going on?” Rosen had whispered to her about ten minutes in.

  She shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about anything, at least not aloud, and she didn’t want to have a discussion along links. One of the few motions she had won in the Impossibles had been a motion to download all of someone’s logged link contacts. She didn’t want any discussion that she had with Rosen or Vigfusson to show up on some court’s docket.

  The longer she waited, the more her fear decreased. Anger replaced it. She didn’t care what this was about. No one deserved this kind of treatment, particularly not from the authorities.