by Lyga, Barry
Somehow she managed to keep walking, managed to keep time with the DeeCees on either side of her. She’d never been so close to them before, having seen them only from a distance. They usually stayed out of sight, patrolling remotely via the drone army. Their body armor clicked as they walked, and she thought that if she had to listen to that clicking all day, she would go mad. She’d watched them quell the food riots two years ago from her window, occasionally catching a burning, throat-charring whiff of suppression gas. They’d used plastic bullets to stun, not kill, but the bullets sounded just as loud when fired and made a peculiar, thwacking sound when slamming into human flesh.
The room was nearly lightless. It had no windows, only dirty, cracked glass panels to view the factory floor. One of the DeeCees lowered the blinds to close off the room. The other guided her into a chair on one side of a table pitted and scarred from years of abuse. An old-fashioned electric light flickered from a table lamp. The DeeCees said nothing; they took up positions flanking the door.
Gradually, her body came back online, sensation returning first to her toes and fingers and the tips of her ears, then to her limbs and, finally, her chest and core. Her hearing fuzzed and sparked until she took deep breaths. When the rushing in her ears subsided, the silence in the room was loud.
Her vision came back last, resolving from pixels and bumps to the real world just as the door opened and a man in a suit walked in.
Other than Dr. Dimbali, Deedra had never been this close to someone wearing a suit in her life. The elbows shone with age, and the cuffs were frayed, but it was higher quality than anything she owned. The tie knotted around his neck looked extremely uncomfortable; she thought of Rose’s vine things encircling Jaron’s neck. And crushing.
She thought of the vine things around her. Thought of being slashed and thrown across the room. Had he? Had Rose killed Jaron?
“You okay?” the newcomer asked as he sat across from her.
Did he actually care? It seemed like a trick question: How would a guilty person answer? How would an innocent person answer? More important: Which was she?
She didn’t know.
“I’m scared,” she said quietly. There seemed to be no shame in admitting it and no point in denying it.
“I’m Top Inspector Jona Markard,” the man in the suit said, studying his tab and ignoring her answer. The back of the tab was scratched and dented. There were worn-in smudges where he held it. It was probably only ten years old. He pointed its camera at her, and she automatically turned and bared her shoulder to give it a shot at her brand. “Ah. And you are…” Flick. Flick. The tab snapped away, and Markard studied it for a moment.
He looked up at her. “Deedra, right?” He smiled, but there was no mirth there, no warmth. It was purely exercise for his facial muscles.
“Yes.” She didn’t intend to whisper, but that was how it came out.
“Deedra… Ward?” The smile went away. “Orphan, then?”
“Yes.” A little stronger this time. What did they do to conspirators? She usually didn’t pay attention to Territory crime reports. Too depressing. Didn’t matter in this case—this was the murder of the Magistrate’s only child. The usual laws and rules didn’t apply.
TI Markard nodded and put down his tab, then he leaned forward on his elbows. He had one blue eye and one green eye, and his hair was cut short, cropped almost to the scalp. So short that it could have been black or brown or gray, but it was impossible to tell. He had a tattoo of a complicated knot of arrows arrayed around his brand, picked out in shades of green and blue.
He had very long fingers, which he steepled as if building a tunnel between them, a tube to gaze through. Into her eyes. Through them, maybe, to her brain, to her mind, to her secrets. Once upon a time, she’d had no secrets. Now she did. Rose, out after curfew. Rose, who could do impossible things.
Rose, who had brought back her pendant from a corpse.
“You’re not under arrest, but I’m going to read you your rights anyway. Just so you know them.” He recited them from memory. Deedra barely heard. Right to speak in her own defense. Right to say what she wished and have it recorded. And so on.
“This is going to be very simple, Deedra.” Markard had a marvelously deep voice, unnaturally so. It was distracting. “Very simple. Do you know anything about the murder of Jaron Ludo?”
She tried to swallow, but her throat locked up; and even though her lips moved, nothing came out.
“There’s no reason to be anxious.” He said it without grace or charm. Just plain fact. “Let me explain the situation: If you know nothing, then that’s that. You know nothing. And you go home.”
Now he flattened his hands on the table. Nothing obstructing her view of him. Those mismatched eyes consumed her, threw her off balance.
“But if you do know something, well… we’ll figure it out. Even if you lie to us. Because that’s what we do. We learn things. So it’s better not to lie in the first place. Understand?”
He smiled again. It was the same smile. As though he had a pile of them and plucked one out and slapped it on when he needed it, then threw it away when he was done with it.
“I understand.”
“So I’ll ask you again: Do you know anything about the murder of Jaron Ludo?”
Did she? She couldn’t be sure. Was a bad image on a broken screen evidence? Had she really seen the tendrils?
And did she know Rose was involved? It made sense that he was, but he said he wasn’t. So it could go either way.
Any of them could be true, Caretaker Hullay had said. You have to decide which one you believe.
She straightened in her chair and looked Markard squarely in the blue eye. “I don’t believe so,” she said.
He nodded and consulted the tab again. It had shut down while they spoke, and he fiddled with it for a few moments, rebooting it and finding his documents again.
“Tell me, Ms. Ward: Where were you last night after curfew?”
Despite herself, she choked out a laugh. Where was she? Where was she? At that time? Where was everyone?
“Home. At home.”
He nodded, pleased. “Yes, you were. Your building system logged you in and you never left, obviously. Heat sig shows you at home all night.” He turned the tab’s screen to her. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at: a 3-D infrared heat map of her apartment, mostly bluish-cold, with a curled bundle of yellows, oranges, and reds off to one side.
Her. Sleeping.
She’d always known that the Magistrate had this capability, but seeing its fruits made her shiver, raised goose bumps along her arms. The heat pattern was blurry and indistinct, but it still felt like seeing herself naked in public.
“What I’m trying to say, Ms. Ward, is that we know you were not directly involved in the death of Mr. Ludo. No one is saying that.”
Heat map of her apartment… Did they have a similar map from earlier? When Rose was there? How much did they know?
“What we’re trying to determine is this: Do you know anything about it?”
“I don’t believe so,” she repeated.
He smiled his fungible smile. “Of course. We’ve established that. But you may know things that are relevant that you don’t realize are relevant. So.” He flicked and thumbed the tab a bit, then showed her the screen. It was a picture of Rose. The effect it had on her was instantaneous and shocking; she fought gamely to suppress the gasp that wanted to claw out of her throat, to resist the tears. Desperate, she faked a coughing fit.
“Could I get some water?” she asked.
“Do you know this boy?”
It was pointless to deny it. Half of L-Twelve had seen them together. “Yes.”
“How well do you know him?”
Bravery was a funny thing. Bravery and foolishness might not have been twins, but they were certainly siblings, siblings alike enough that oftentimes it was difficult to tell one from the other, even when viewing them up close, as now. Was it br
ave or foolish to say that Rose was one of her only friends, that he understood her, that they’d spent that day atop the abandoned building talking? That he’d been to her apartment and had been infuriatingly gentlemanly enough not to take advantage, even though she wanted him to? That he’d defended her from Jaron and that she’d done the same for him?
Jaron. That brought her back to the moment.
“He’s a friend of mine,” she said, “but you know that already.”
“We do, indeed. What do you know about him?”
I know he can scale walls with his tendrils and lift me up and spin me around, that he doesn’t eat food and he’s named for something beautiful, and he is beautiful, but you don’t care about any of that.
“Not much,” she said. She wondered if she should explain how Rose had come to Ludo, but she figured that story should go untold. “He works hard. Learns quickly. He’s still settling in.”
“Do you know where he’s from?”
“Sorry?” She could muster only the single word. Most of her energy went into trying to keep her face placid and unrevealing.
“We suspect he’s from another Territory. Now, it isn’t illegal to move among Territories, but most people don’t bother. Unless they have a compelling reason. Like, say, being wanted for a crime in their home Territory. Do you know where he’s from, perhaps?”
She resisted giggling. What would Markard say if she told him, Well, he’s from a graveyard nowhere near here.
“He never said.” She shrugged. “He’s quiet. He doesn’t talk a lot.”
“I understand that yesterday Mr. Ludo and his floor supervisors got into a fight with this Rose boy. Over an issue of clothing and line safety. Everyone saw.”
“Well, yes. Jaron started it.”
“Are you sure about that?”
She thought back. Yes, of course she was sure about that. Rose had even taken a punch to stop the fight. “Yes. Jaron started it. Him and the Bang—him and his friends.” She didn’t know if Markard would know that everyone called Jaron’s lieutenants the Bang Boys. Probably. He seemed to know everything. “They would have really beat him up if Rose hadn’t run away.”
“Sounds pretty bad.”
“It was. He had a bruise and everything.” Let Jaron’s brutality take a little of the heat off Rose.
“So the kind of thing someone might seek revenge for, then.” It wasn’t a question. Questions weren’t offered up with a tone of triumph and another interchangeable smile.
“No! That’s not what I—”
But Markard just stood up. “Please wait here.”
He left her there alone. Except for the DeeCees.
Which was really the same thing.
There was no clock in the small room, so Deedra had no idea how long Markard was gone. When he returned, there was something energized and excited about him, as though he’d learned a secret he just had to tell, damn the consequences.
“Well,” he said gleefully. Still, his smile didn’t change at all. Deedra wondered if there was something wrong with his face. “Well, well, well.” He sat down across from her again. “Given that you call him a friend, Deedra”—she was no longer Ms. Ward—“you don’t seem to know much about this Rose person. So let me tell you a little bit about him. A little information we’ve just picked up.”
What was he getting at?
“We scanned his brand. Brands are unique, Deedra. They look the same to you and me, but they have microscopic circuitry embedded in them.”
She knew that already. That was one reason why her brand couldn’t be overlaid on her scar—the scar tissue resisted the implantation.
“When we scanned Rose’s brand, guess what came up?”
She had an idea, but she couldn’t let on. “What?” she whispered, mouth dry, voice trembling slightly.
“Nothing.” He put a hand palm-down on the table between them. The motion was somehow threatening. “Nothing at all. Not nothing as in no data. Nothing as in no circuitry at all. It was like scanning a wall. His brand is fake, Deedra. Burned it into his own flesh himself. He duplicated a legitimate Ludo brand. That’s not just a crime, it’s supposed to be impossible.”
She said nothing. Markard nodded and went on.
“The branding equipment is kept under careful guard. There are technicians trained to use it. It produces a brand that is precise down to the micron. Do you know how Rose could have duplicated that?”
She didn’t. Or maybe she did. She imagined the water leaving the glass, the tendrils lifting her into the air. Who knew what else Rose could do?
“We suspect he’s working with Dalcord forces. That he was branded using stolen equipment and sent here as a spy. To observe our manufacturing capacity. To learn our strengths and weaknesses.”
No. Not true. She’d asked him, and he’d said it wasn’t true, and she believed Rose more than she believed TI Markard.
“This is what they do, Deedra,” he said gently. “They infiltrate. They’re trained for emotional warfare. I’ve seen it before. You know how they do it? They pretend to be weak.”
Deedra tried not to listen to him, turning away from him, but his words scored. She thought of the day by the river. Of Rose flailing. Needing help. But… but he’d never really needed her help, had he? Even with the river being toxic, with what he could do…
“They play on your compassion,” Markard went on. “On your insecurity. They find your weakness, and they tell you it doesn’t matter to them.”
Involuntarily, her hand crept to her scar.
They shouldn’t treat you like that, Rose said that time on the rooftop. And you shouldn’t believe them.
She closed her eyes. Gently. Too tight and tears would leak out, and she couldn’t let him see them. She breathed in deep, settling herself. She couldn’t show weakness. Not now.
“They become your friend. They tell you secrets, Deedra. You know why? Because then it seems like they trust you. And the way people think, the way we are, if someone trusts us, then we tend to trust them.
“Some of these spies,” Markard went on, “may even have been genetically manipulated. It’s illegal to do that, but do you think the Mad Magistrate cares about Citywide law? There have been rumors that he’s using DNA recombination on his soldiers, prepping them for war.”
And she thought of the tendrils, of Rose’s strength, of the way he feared his own body. The air fled Deedra’s lungs in a whoosh as physical as it was audible. She tried to inhale, tried to reclaim the air, but none would come. Gripping the edge of the table with both hands, she stared down at her knuckles as they gradually whitened. The tingling was coming back, the roar in her ears, the narrowing and pixelation of her vision.
He’d lied.
No. No, it couldn’t be.
But her body believed it. Her body rebelled against her mind. Shutting down.
A spy. He’d denied it to her, but then Jaron had been killed. He’d murdered Jaron.… Too much of a coincidence to believe otherwise.
The proof lay against her chest, under her shirt, nestled in the crook of her breasts, where it had been her whole life except for one night, except for the night it had been in Jaron’s possession until Rose brought it back to her, until Rose reclaimed it, and how did he do that? He never told her. How did he bring it back to her? How did he get it back if not by going to Jaron and shooting out his tendrils, the ones granted to him by Dalcord’s scientists, and folding them around Jaron the way he’d folded them around Deedra; but this time, this time he hadn’t even tried to be gentle. No, this time he’d been brutal, and he’d squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.…
No. Don’t believe it. If you don’t believe it, it’s not true. That’s what Caretaker Hullay said, right? Many truths. Decide which one you believe. Decide.
She couldn’t. She knew she didn’t want to believe Rose had killed Jaron, but there could be no other explanation. It was time to open her eyes to the truth.
Rose was the only person she knew who could
do the things he did. Maybe somewhere out there, there was another Rose, but the odds of both of them being in Ludo Territory? That was too absurd even to dignify with a thought.
“It seems as though your friend”—he came down hard on the word—“was involved in some sort of skullduggery. We think his identity was uncovered by Jaron. Or maybe he was blackmailing or extorting from Jaron to some effect. That’s damn close to an act of war—” Markard broke off, as if woken from an embarrassing daydream. “Never mind. Look, we know that Rose never applied for housing, so that means he would have been out after curfew last night. The only one in the Territory capable of killing Jaron Ludo. It’s cut and dried.”
Then why did you have to interrogate me? she thought, and then realized: Oh. Because they wanted to see if I was involved. If he had an accomplice.
“I think you can go now, Ms. Ward.” She had come to hate that smile. She wanted to put her fist through it. “You’re not planning on leaving the Territory anytime soon, are you?” He chuckled at the impossibility of it.
“No.”
“Very well, then. Please be careful on your way home.”
Deedra’s legs barely worked as she shuffled out of the room, past the DeeCees, and down the stairs to the factory floor. Dr. Dimbali was announcing that everyone who had not yet been interrogated should remain on the main floor. Everyone who had been interrogated should leave. L-Twelve would reopen in the morning.
She stumbled on the last step. It wasn’t numbness this time; it was weakness. She felt drained and picked over. Scavenged of all her vitality, as though a tiny Deedra had scrambled in and around the muscles of her body, stealing them and stashing them away for later. She felt a kinship with tiny Deedra; we do what we do to survive.
