Vigilantes

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Flint was careful not to move.

  “She seems to believe that clones have some humanity. She even said that the clones were not as bad as PierLuigi Frémont.”

  “She did?” Flint asked, because he couldn’t believe it. Had Talia been talking about all clones while this man had been talking about the Frémont clones?

  “Yes,” Llewynn said. “She seemed to believe that clones were redeemable creatures, maybe even admirable creatures, and that they weren’t weapons at all.”

  “She knows that clones attacked the Moon twice,” Flint said carefully.

  “She knows that, and apparently thinks nothing of it.” Llewynn’s hands were still rubbing together. “I’ve seen this before, Mr. Flint. Sometimes victims of major trauma absorb the trauma in the wrong way, and it leads to violent acting out, maybe even repeating the trauma on someone less powerful. I’m terrified that your daughter might hurt a lot of people.”

  “Are you actually saying you think she might blow something up?” Flint asked.

  “I don’t know,” Llewynn said. “It’s a possibility. There are a lot of possibilities and none of them good.”

  Flint was shaking his head. He made himself stop.

  Llewynn leaned forward, his hands so tightly clasped now that his knuckles were turning white.

  “Under the law,” Llewynn said, “it’s my responsibility to tell you that she is a danger. If she weren’t underage, I would be going directly to the authorities. I’m duty bound to report any threats that I hear that might result in loss of life.”

  “My daughter threatened someone?” Flint asked, wondering if Talia’s temper made her threaten Llewynn.

  “No,” Llewynn said. “I’ll be honest: had she done so, I would have gone directly to the law. But I feel I have a bit of leeway here, since she is underage, and the threat I feel is indirect at the moment.”

  Flint willed himself to remain calm. This man was going to call the police on Flint’s daughter? Because she had defended clones in general?

  Then he realized he had no idea what exactly had transpired.

  “Perhaps you should tell me what she said,” he said calmly.

  “I can’t, Mr. Flint,” Llewynn said. “She didn’t sign off on that. You agreed that we wouldn’t have to share everything with you. So I would need her permission to tell you exactly what our conversation was.”

  Wonderful, Flint thought but didn’t say.

  “Trust me when I tell you that she was positively chilling. To make matters worse, she made it clear she would not return. I’m afraid she’s now angrier than she was before and she will harm someone sooner rather than later.”

  “I see,” Flint said. “So what will your next steps be?”

  “I am speaking to you. If I feel that you are not taking me seriously, then I will talk to law enforcement. I know they’re overburdened at the moment, but I’m sure they will listen about another attack.”

  “I am a former police detective, Mr. Llewynn,” Flint said. “I work closely with the Armstrong Police Department still. Right now, they’re understaffed and trying to deal with the attacks that happen on the Moon. I can guarantee that if you report Talia for some vague threat, they won’t respond.”

  “Are you threatening me, Mr. Flint?” Llewynn said.

  This man was impossible.

  “No,” Flint said in his placate-the-crazy-person voice. “I am telling you that from my experiences with the Armstrong PD, going to them right now will not help my daughter or alleviate the threat. Clearly, something happened in your session that chilled you. I take that very seriously. Since the police are overburdened and not an option at the moment, what options do you see that are available to us?”

  Llewynn leaned back slowly, unthreaded his hands, and wiped them on his knees. He was obviously trying to assess what Flint was telling him, and how sincere Flint was.

  “If you bring her back here, we can find her another counselor—”

  “I know my daughter,” Flint said. “If she walked out of here in anger, bringing her back will only make her angrier. Are there other therapists you recommend? Maybe a different Comfort Center or perhaps a personal tutor who can assist her?”

  Not that Flint would ever hire them, but he wanted Llewynn to believe he was cooperating.

  “I’m afraid not,” Llewynn said. “Every place in Armstrong is overburdened, to use your word, and there are no places that are as effective as ours.”

  Flint let out a small sigh. “I can’t bring her back here, and I can’t have her locked up. Maybe somewhere else on the Moon….?”

  “The trauma the Moon has suffered is so deep that some counselors are actually leaving the business right now. They’re not equipped for this kind of grief work,” Llewynn said. “Many of them believe that the crisis has affected their judgment, and are turning their companies over to guest therapists. Thank heavens Armstrong was untouched, so that we didn’t have to do something like that here. My people have been heavily monitored, and they’re doing just fine.”

  Like you? Flint thought but didn’t say. Clearly Llewynn wasn’t fine, and he was about to sacrifice Flint’s daughter on the altar of his post-traumatic stress disorder or whatever the crisis had unleashed inside him.

  “I can’t bring her back here,” Flint said. “I can keep her occupied twenty-four hours per day. I can make sure that someone is watching her. She knows I’m worried about security at the moment.”

  Llewynn nodded. “That’s good until she stops being watched. And then she’ll do some kind of harm.”

  “Perhaps there’s some place on Earth that I can send her? Surely, there has to be some other counseling center that you would recommend.” Flint kept his voice calm. He had separated himself from his emotions. He had to: otherwise, he might harm this asshole.

  “I can send you a list,” Llewynn said, sounding a little less agitated. “The therapeutic tradition began on Earth and continues to thrive there.”

  He frowned, then looked down at his hands, still clutching his knees.

  Flint waited. The man was still not thinking clearly.

  Then Llewynn lifted his head. “I think it’s wise to take your daughter from the Moon. A change of venue might calm her and it’ll certainly get rid of the daily reminders of her trauma. That, plus the assistance of one of the counselors I recommend, might help her heal.”

  If only that were true, Flint thought. He wished things could have been different. But he had gone for the traditional solution, even though his intuition had told him Talia was the wrong candidate for it.

  He was disappointed that this gamble hadn’t worked; he wanted to help his daughter. But if Llewynn hadn’t contacted Flint, things might have gotten a lot worse.

  If Llewynn believed that Flint wasn’t going to take his advice, things could still get a lot worse.

  Flint stood and extended his hand, even though he didn’t really want to touch Llewynn. “Thank you. I promise I will get this resolved.”

  Llewynn stood as well. He took Flint’s hand and shook it with some kind of weird emphasis.

  “I’m so relieved you’re listening to me on this,” Llewynn said. “Often I have to convince parents to go past their instincts.”

  “I’m a former police officer,” Flint said, removing his hand from the shake ever so gently. He resisted the urge to wipe his palm on his pants. “I’ve seen what happens when parents don’t listen to warnings.”

  “I’m sure you have,” Llewynn said. “I’ll send you a heavily notated list later this afternoon. Good luck, Mr. Flint.”

  “Thank you,” Flint said sincerely. He would need the luck. He had no idea how he could help his daughter. He did know that Llewynn was right about one thing: he had to keep trying.

  Or he might lose Talia forever.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  NYQUIST TOOK BRODEUR’S warning seriously. As Nyquist made his way to the crime scene, he thought about bringing on an investigator to shadow him.

 
And he couldn’t come up with any name at all.

  Everyone he knew and trusted on the Moon was already working on the bigger picture—solving the crimes that were destroying Nyquist’s home. He didn’t want to take anyone he knew away from that.

  He knew of others off-Moon, but no one he really trusted. Besides, if he had to share links—even encrypted ones—given what was happening on the Moon, he was afraid the investigation might become more compromised, not less.

  Gumiela trusted him to handle this.

  He would document everything, make fantastic backups, and keep them at the security office—and maybe even ask Flint to store some backups.

  That way, if things got too dicey or too corrupt, Nyquist had options besides his own department.

  A few years ago, he might have been as saddened as Brodeur over the corruption in the department. But Nyquist didn’t feel as idealistic as he once had. After all, he had barely avoided dying in a bomb blast instigated by a lawyer he had once recommended to people. He had investigated the assassination of the Mayor and seen more footage of destruction than he ever wanted to see again.

  He had also seen the good-hearted people he knew get crushed by exhaustion and emotional overload as they tried to cope with this crisis.

  Yes, he wished what was happening in the Armstrong Police Department wasn’t happening, but he would have been naïve if he expected the PD to go about its work unaffected.

  In some respects, it was a miracle that so few officers had gone off—at least in the short term.

  Even he didn’t want to investigate this crime. He felt it was not as important as anything else he had to do right now.

  Bartholomew Nyquist, the detective who occasionally made that fatuous speech, the one about each life being worth something. The detective who had done his best to avoid dealing with crimes involving aliens because he might have to make the kinds of choices that had driven Miles Flint from the department.

  That Nyquist had now actually evaluated a life and deemed it less worthy of investigation than other lives.

  He wondered if Torkild Zhu’s family would understand.

  Nyquist bet that families of the Peyti Crisis and Anniversary Day victims would understand.

  He also knew that Gumiela was right: S3 would be all over this. It was amazing they weren’t already.

  And he really wished that motivated him enough to do a good job on this investigation.

  In actuality, all he wanted to do was wrap up this case and return to the bombings. On the drive to S3’s offices, he considered resigning from the department so that he could help DeRicci full time.

  But the only access he had to Uzvaan and the prison had come through his police ties.

  And besides, he was a detective first. Before his world literally exploded, he had realized that working for the Armstrong PD was the center of his identity, something he did not want to give up.

  He wasn’t sure that was true any longer, but he had to factor in one other aspect of his life now: his identity as an Armstrong PD detective was one of the last things remaining from the old world. He wasn’t sure he wanted to give that up.

  Somehow he had talked himself into focusing on this investigation by the time he got to the area near S3’s offices.

  He parked several blocks from the crime scene. He had noted on the footage that Zhu had walked a few blocks to get to the S3 offices. Zhu was carrying a disposable coffee mug with the name of a deli on the side.

  The deli was open and doing a brisk business, but not as brisk as the deli next door. The scent of coffee and baked bread would have normally enticed Nyquist to enter one or the other place, but he wasn’t hungry at the moment.

  At some point, he would interview the staff of both delis to see if they witnessed anything. Right now, however, it was more important for him to retrace Zhu’s steps and make certain that everything on that footage Brodeur had given him seemed accurate. The last thing Nyquist wanted to do was interview people at the deli only to discover that Zhu had been using the same disposable cup for days.

  The walk to S3 was short. The street was empty, and the buildings had that neglected look much of Armstrong had these days. A check on his networks showed that there were a lot of low-level legal services available in this neighborhood, and quite a few law-related businesses.

  Almost every single law firm and law-related business had been shut down since the Peyti Crisis. In some cases, the firms were shut down because they’d lost staff. In others, they were shut down because one of their lawyers had tried to attack Armstrong.

  The entire Moon-based legal community was in complete disarray. Which made S3’s arrival a few days ago seem even more astounding.

  Nyquist hadn’t liked Zhu, and he had been offended that Zhu slapped injunctions on law enforcement. Zhu’s firm was, in its own way, guaranteeing that these massive crimes would not get solved.

  Anyone with half a brain would know that killing Zhu wouldn’t prevent the machinations of S3. If anything, S3 would probably become more determined in its war against law enforcement because of Zhu’s death.

  But thinking didn’t seem to be anyone’s strong suit this week. That meeting with all the detectives the day before had left Nyquist unsettled. Most of them hadn’t been interested in solving the Peyti Crisis; they’d been interested in getting revenge.

  And clearly, someone had taken revenge on Zhu.

  Nyquist sighed and looked down the long block that led to the brand new offices of S3 On The Moon. The building looked a little rundown. A human security guard stood at the door, arms crossed.

  He hadn’t been on the footage, at least that Nyquist had seen.

  And if he had been around, then Zhu’s attack made no sense.

  Nyquist ignored the guard for a moment, and scanned the rest of the area. There were no crime scene lasers, nothing to block off the sidewalk where Zhu died, even though Brodeur had set the lasers up.

  He had left everything in the best shape possible for the crime scene techs and he had waited until they arrived before leaving with Zhu’s body.

  That meant that the scene should have remained off-limits for at least 24-hours.

  Nyquist’s stomach turned.

  No one was following the rules here, and that would just make his job harder.

  He crossed the street, and approached the guard. The sidewalk still had a long, black stain running down it—Zhu’s blood mixed with coffee, as it flowed away from the building. There was even a bit of a body-shaped depression in the thin layer of Moon dust that every public place in Armstrong seemed to attract.

  The guard watched him approach. The guard was a tall, burly man with broad shoulders and large muscles straining against his clothing. The muscles looked real and not enhanced.

  He was cradling a laser rifle, which flashed its registration on a police link as Nyquist approached.

  The guard was with one of the biggest security firms on the Moon.

  Nyquist raised his right palm as if he were going to take an oath in court. He made the badge embedded into his skin flare so brightly that it would show up on security vids.

  The guard stopped cradling the rifle. He moved his hands along it, so that he could aim it at Nyquist if necessary.

  In all his years on the force, he’d never had this response to his approach before.

  He supposed it made sense, though, since it was clear that Zhu’s murderers were cops.

  “I’m no threat to you,” Nyquist said, keeping his hand up. “I’m investigating Torkild Zhu’s murder.”

  “Go back to your office,” the guard said. “The killer’s there.”

  “I know,” Nyquist said. “But I couldn’t see any faces on the security vid I had. So I know what type of person did the crime. I just don’t know who.”

  “So?” the guard asked.

  “So, I need to do a thorough and accurate investigation. I’m sure that S3 would want the killers to be punished, and that means I have to go by the book.”r />
  The guard grunted, and shifted his hands slightly. “What do you gotta do?”

  Nyquist came closer, palm still up. He felt a little ridiculous, but he also knew that he was on security vid. So he wanted to make sure that everything he did was correct.

  “My name is Bartholomew Nyquist,” he said. “I’m a detective with the Armstrong Police Department, and I had nothing to do with what happened here this morning. In fact, I wasn’t even inside the dome when it happened.”

  “Good for you,” the guard said in a tone that implied he didn’t care.

  “Were you here this morning?” Nyquist asked.

  “You’re kidding, right?” the guard asked.

  “No.” Nyquist kept his tone calm.

  “My firm got hired after this poor guy died. I came as quickly as I could. We’ll have more security here starting in a few hours.”

  So it was good that Nyquist arrived when he had.

  “I’d like to investigate the scene,” he said, “and then I’d like to talk with anyone who was here at the time of the death.”

  “You can’t pin this murder on S3.” That was a different voice. It was female, and it broadcast over the building’s security link.

  Nyquist couldn’t see the speaker. Obviously she was inside somewhere.

  He looked up, scanning for the camera. He knew roughly where it was, based on the footage he had seen, but he didn’t know exactly.

  “I’m not trying to pin it on anyone here,” he said to the woman, whoever she was. “It’s clear that Torkild Zhu died outside the building and no one from S3 had anything to do with his murder. As I told the guard here—”

  “I know,” the woman said. “You need to follow the book. Too bad your colleagues didn’t.”

  “Yes,” Nyquist said. “It is.”

  “It’s unusual that a cop shows up without a partner, isn’t it?” she asked.

  He wished he could see her. “I’ll tell you why face-to-face,” he said. “I’m not going to shout to the entire street.”

  “The entire empty street,” she said, and then went silent.