Anniversary Day (30 page)

The exit room was like a giant locker room, the kind that existed in schools and around athletic stadiums. There were lockers and showers and decontamination units. The only difference here was that people didn’t come here regularly—or at least
most
people didn’t come here regularly. The various members of the Quarantine Squads did and, for all he knew, they had regular changes of clothing here. But most people did not.

Fortunately for Nyquist, he didn’t have to go through major decontamination. He just had to remove his suit and go through standard decontamination, the kind he would have to go through if he had traveled here on a sanctioned space liner from Earth.

Still, he was shaking. The squad leader had put a hand on Nyquist’s shoulder, felt the shaking, and grinned. “Adrenaline,” he’d said.

But Nyquist had felt adrenaline before. He’d felt it the day he saved Palmette’s life. This didn’t feel like an adrenaline reaction.

This was something else entirely, something he didn’t want to examine too closely.

He ran a hand over his face. Palmette was in custody. The Traffic Squad Quarantine Unit had taken her through major decontamination. They would run her through a dozen procedures before Nyquist saw her again.

He almost felt sympathy for her. He’d gone through major decontamination before. It was invasive and difficult, as personal as sexual assault, just not as violent. He doubted Palmette was in a frame of mind to handle it well.

He removed the lower half of the hazmat suit, then tossed it in the decontamination bag. He adjusted his own clothing and stepped into the nearby decontamination unit.

The unit was more like an airlock—a transition between the exit room and the outside of the terminal—just like it was when someone got off a ship from Earth.

The decontamination unit here was gentle and noninvasive. It felt almost like taking one step out of a room, pausing in a corridor, as if he were about to make a grand entrance into the next room. The light was a little bright, the air a little warm, a slight breeze caressing his skin. But that was it.

Then he stepped out, stopped at a nearby washbasin, and scrubbed his face. Most people didn’t even do that, but ever since his terrible major decontamination, he felt as if he could smell a chemical on his skin, something noxious and bitter.

He knew there was no chemical—they didn’t use chemicals in the decontamination units—but he had also learned there was no arguing with his own mind.

How many oddities had he built up from traumatic moments in his career? How many tics?

Maybe he wasn’t the person to interrogate Palmette after all. Maybe he should call in someone else.

But he knew better. He didn’t make the offer to anyone because he knew as well or better than they did that he had an in with Palmette. No one else did.

Or no one else that he could find.

This room was also a locker type room, with clothing for someone who needed a change. He didn’t. He did, however, look in a mirror to make sure his hair was smooth and his clothing wasn’t out of place.

His eyes looked tired. His entire face seemed careworn—even to him. He looked older than he ever had before.

Maybe there was a way to skip this day every year. Maybe he could sleep through Anniversary Day, pretend it never happened, hope that nothing else would go wrong ever again in his entire life.

As if that would happen.

He sighed. Before he left this area and headed to the interrogation section of Space Traffic, he needed to do a few things, not the least of which was eat. He had a hunch he would be with Palmette most of the evening, if not into the night.

He wasn’t sure if she would break—not after she had surrendered—and he wasn’t sure if he would be able to get her to tell him anything. He wanted to have the longest possible session, and to do that, he had to be well fueled ahead of time.

And prepared.

But before he started the preparation, he needed to update DeRicci.

He checked around the room and made certain he was alone. Then he stepped into a privacy booth. Every police/government/security locker area had one. It allowed cameras in the locker area, but if someone felt they needed to change clothes in private, they could do so. If they needed to have a private discussion, they could do that as well.

But the monitors—people like Murray—would know that the person had taken a private moment. Sometimes that private moment was incriminating.

Sometimes it saved an entire investigation because it allowed the investigator to explore a few hunches.

The privacy room was more unsettling than decontamination. The privacy room had a musty sweat odor for one thing, making Nyquist wonder when it had last been cleaned.

Because of that odor, he didn’t sit on the carpeted bench. Instead, he paced around the small area as his links pinged DeRicci on an encrypted channel.

She answered quickly.
Bartholomew. How did it go?

No visuals, which meant she wasn’t alone. And she didn’t speak out loud for probably the same reason.

He saw no reason to talk either.
We found the source of the material that killed Soseki
.
Noelle, it was Ursula Palmette
.

She knew the name. She had given Palmette her special assistant job. Or at least had recommended her. And she had listened to Nyquist’s story of that long ago rescue.

You’re sure?
she asked, displaying the same level of incredulousness that he had felt when he learned about Palmette.

Yes, unfortunately
, he said.
She almost blew up Terminal 81
.

Then, as quickly as he could, he told DeRicci what had happened.

I’m going to interrogate her when she gets out of decontamination
, he sent.
I have no idea if I’m going to get any information from her. But I figure I’m the one to try
.

Considering your history, you might be right
, DeRicci sent.
Are you sure you’re up for it?

The question sent a wave of anger through him. How many times had she asked him that question since Bixian assassins’ attack? Daily at first, weekly later, and now—

Then he realized she probably wasn’t discussing his physical well-being, but his mental one. She had known that he had partnered with Palmette and saved her life during the bombing. But DeRicci didn’t know how long the partnership had lasted—or, to be more accurate, how short the partnership had been.

She thought he had a relationship with Palmette, the kind DeRicci had with Flint, the kind that people who had once had each other’s backs seemed to have for the rest of their lives.

If Flint had tried to blow up Terminal 81 and DeRicci had caught him, she would have been devastated. And she was one of the toughest women Nyquist knew.

Still, Nyquist did not like the question. It felt out of bounds to him, something that shouldn’t be part of his relationship with DeRicci any longer.

I’ll be fine
, he sent.

If you need back-up
, she started, but he interrupted before she could finish.

Then I’ll send for it.

There was a momentary pause. She seemed to have caught his mood even though there were no visual or audio cues.

All right then,
she sent.
Update me as soon as you have something
.

I will
, he sent and ended the contact.

He stood still for a moment, letting that anger thread through him, willing it to go away. He had to stay calm when he talked to Palmette. He needed to remain in charge.

He also needed information.

It would take another hour, maybe more, for Palmette to go through all of the decontamination procedures. He needed to know as much of her history as he could before he went into that interrogation room. He couldn’t rely on his own memory. He needed to research.

He let himself out of the privacy room, crossed the locker room and stepped into the corridor. There were half a dozen food carts between this section and Space Traffic Headquarters, not to mention the restaurants and cafes. He’d find a comfortable place to sit down, download as much information on Palmette as he could find, and study it before he met up with her again.

He wondered if he could get copies of her failed psychological exams. Those might help most of all.

They wouldn’t come easily, however. Best to find a friendly judge and get a warrant, just in case.

Now he had to think like a detective as well as a man who had a limited amount of time to find some important answers. He had to both prepare a court case and get information on an existing threat.

He sent a message through his links to find out which judges were on duty.

He would do this part of the investigation by the book.

Fifty-four

For what seemed like an eternity, Flint sat rigidly, silently, uncertain what to say. He didn’t want to look at his daughter, although he could feel her tension. He hoped DeRicci thought it was all about the severity of the news she had just imparted to them.

They were still standing in the middle of DeRicci’s huge office, the images still frozen on the gigantic screen he hadn’t even known existed. DeRicci had quickly told them a tangled tale of attempted assassinations all over the Moon, but all that Flint heard was “clones.”

Clones. His mind jumped past the emergency, onto the aftermath. Clones were already hated in Armstrong—in most human communities, if truth be told. This would just make matters worse.

And he didn’t dare look at Talia, who was biologically his daughter
and
a clone. A clone no one knew about except two lawyers, a very reliable cop in Valhalla Basin on Callisto, and Talia. Talia knew. That had been the devastating discovery for her in addition to the realization that her mother had either inadvertently or intentionally committed genocide. And Talia had learned all of that on the day Rhonda died.

Talia’s clone mark was hidden, which wasn’t legal. Most clone marks were on the back of the neck, obvious, even though the clones grew hair over them or covered them with turtlenecks and scarves. They were supposed to be obvious so that people knew they were dealing with someone who had been manufactured, someone who had been created from someone else, someone who—in theory—was the duplicate of the person whose DNA they shared.

Flint had soon realized that Talia wasn’t anyone’s duplicate. Yes, there were five other girls out there as brilliant and as beautiful as his daughter, adopted by people he did not know, but those girls had different families, different upbringings, and through the glory of cloning, they were 29 months older than she was, raised on different planets, in different cities, in completely different ways.

He once told Talia it was as if her genetic material—not her, but the DNA that composed her—got five other chances at life, five other ways to be.

Those girls had hidden clone marks as well.

But these men, these assassins, they wore their clone marks proudly. They were taking action as a unit, dressing the same, and on the same mission in different parts of Armstrong.

“Miles,” DeRicci said, “I know this is a lot to absorb, but I need your help organizing information about these clones. We need to find out who made them.”

Flint nodded, still speechless, worried, not quite certain what to say. For the first time, he regretted not telling DeRicci about Talia’s origin. But at the same time, he was relieved no one knew. Because when this was over, clones would get persecuted throughout the Moon, maybe throughout the Earth Alliance, and he didn’t want that to happen to his daughter.

Whom he was overly protective of.

Whom he loved with a ferocity he hadn’t realized he was capable of.

“They were fast-grown?” Talia asked, and he could hear the hope in her voice. If the clones were fast-grown, they were nothing like her. They were created for one thing, and one thing only—to assassinate the leaders of the Moon.

“I don’t think so,” DeRicci said. “Fast-grow clones aren’t capable of independent thought. Depending on how long they’ve been alive, they’re little more than three-year-olds in adult bodies. These clones are too coordinated, too capable to be fast-grown. That’s the other reason I need you. Because if they were fast-grown, I could put someone in the Armstrong PD on the research and they could find these guys quickly. But these clones look like they’re what—twenty-five, thirty? They could’ve been created anywhere, raised anywhere, trained anywhere. And to track that back, I need someone who knows how to go through more information than I want to contemplate in a very short period of time.”

She was looking at Flint. She knew him well enough to understand that something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. And he couldn’t tell her, not now.