Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices (17 page)

“Ready for action, Crazy?” Tanis asked me, tilting her head toward mine. She was less than half my size, like a kid about to break into a candy store.

I winked. “I was born ready.”

She tapped her mask, viewing the electronic blueprints of the house. It let us know where everything should be located, and if there were any hot bodies inside. There was one lying in the bed that we could pick up, and none else, not even the housekeeper. Tanis must’ve also thought this was odd because she made a
hmph
sound.

“Things look quiet,” I said, trying to reassure her.

“Maybe a bit too quiet. Something doesn’t seem right,” she said, peering over her shoulder at the dark house. It could more accurately be described as a big square box with windows rather than a house.

“Did you program all the lights to be off?” I asked her. She shook her head. It was odd for all lights to be off in any house or apartment anywhere in the city. Someone always left lights on or had electronics that cast lights. It was a completely foreign concept to be lacking in neon. But there stood Deleviv’s house, a solid black object that was setting me and my partner on edge.

We were supposed to go in first. I checked the locations of the other members of our team, and they were all in position. Carver had set the timer at the top of the display. We had approximately eight minutes to get in, execute Deleviv, and get out. Plenty of time.

I nodded at Tanis and then rolled to the side, crouching low and stalking in the shadows as I crept toward the house. She followed me closely, not making any noise just as I didn’t. We moved quickly across the vacant alley, avoiding the overhead streetlights and surveillance cameras that were attached to the light posts. Still moving low, we came to the fence that surrounded the perimeter of his house.

Our intel told us there was a 71 percent chance that it was electric, but doubtful that the voltage was high enough to really harm someone. It was most likely used to send a small jolt into anyone who touched it, and just used as a warning. She scanned it with one of her handheld electromagnetic impulse readers; then after a small light flashed, she reached out and touched the fence. Nothing. We shared a look.

I swiftly boosted her up and over the metal fence, then climbed over myself. Once we were over, the back door was a few short strides ahead of us. Tanis and I peered in through the exposed windows and saw nothing but blackness. We moved to the door and planted ourselves in the appropriate positions, each with our bodies pressed against the wall of the house on opposite sides of the door. When I reached out to touch the door, it very slowly slid open.

“C, something isn’t right,” I said quietly into my microphone. “The back door was left open. Electric fence is off.”

Nothing but silence. Very strange.

When the door slid open wide enough for us to fit through, we slipped inside. The room was stark, much barer than I’d expected. I was positive I’d see a high-end screen or two, walls lined with tablets and electronics that I’d never even heard of, and likely at least one or two bots. But there was none of that. In the center of the room I could just barely see through the dark to notice a rug on the floor and a large, worn sofa. There were bookshelves lining the walls and each of them cluttered with books. A small, old fireplace was in the corner, and next to it was a small pile of blankets. I had no idea what kind of a man Roscora Deleviv was, but he’d never once struck me as someone who would keep paperbound books.

Everything in the room was modest, small, not at all what I’d have expected from someone running for office. I’d expected more expensive electronics, better security systems, antiques and collectibles worth more than most buildings. But there were none of those things. The entire situation stunned me.

“Look,” Tanis said quietly from next to me. She was pointing at a slightly askew mat on the floor and a few fallen papers scattered about. When I took a closer look, there was a fairly obvious trail of orderly chaos that led to the staircase.

Slowly my feet carried me to the stairs. I kept my back to the wall and trod the stairs as quietly as possible, watching out through the window on the small landing when I could. I didn’t know where Carver, Seno, or Ko were, but I was hopeful they were surrounding the perimeter. The small map on the side of my digital display wasn’t working, so I felt like I was going in blind.

At the top of the staircase, there was a hallway that housed three doors. Two of the doors were closed and one was open. I signaled to Tanis to come with me to check the first closed door. We opened it carefully, crouching low and holding our guns in front of our bodies. The first room we entered turned out to be an office; inside was a bare, wire-frame desk with an older model of flat-panel desktop. We separated and swiftly checked the room and the closet that was inside the room. Completely empty of any people, full of papers, books, and new, small, cheap electronics.

We moved to the next closed door down the hallway. We entered much the same way, finding the bathroom. The glass panels on the shower let us know that the room was empty.

Finally we approached the last room, the one with the door that was half-open. I looked at Tanis, and the expression on her face conveyed how I was feeling, perfectly.

“Should we go in without the others?” she whispered.

“They’re probably just surrounding the perimeter. We only have a little over two minutes left to get out of here before the next street patrol drives by. Let’s finish the job ourselves,” I whispered back. I wasn’t sure I even believed myself.

She nodded, and I slowly pressed my foot against the door, opening it wider. Someone was lying in the bed. We sneaked up quietly, Tanis on the side facing Deleviv’s back and me facing his front. His entire body, face included, was covered with a sheet. I held my gun out in front of me while I gently peeled back the sheet. We had to make sure it was Deleviv we were about to execute and not someone else sleeping in his bed.

I froze.

Dead eyes were staring directly at me. Dead eyes in a dead body with a wide, slack jaw and parted lips.

It wasn’t Deleviv.

I recognized this woman from television. I didn’t remember her name, but I’d seen her on the same programs that I’d seen Otk and Deleviv presenting their cases. She was likely another candidate running for office. Or she had been. Because at that point, her dead body was lying in Roscora Deleviv’s bed.

Her throat was slit, blood seeping out onto the sheets, and it was messy. It was hard to see the blood on the dark sheets, especially without any lights on, but it was definitely there. I could smell the familiar coppery scent of it. Her body still had some color in it, and the blood spilling from her throat was still trickling out of the cut, indicating she couldn’t have been dead very long.

I could barely see Tanis’s expression through her mask, but I knew she was just as surprised as I was. I looked back down at the naked woman lying in a pool of blood.

Then it all clicked.

“Fuck!” I shouted, quickly pulling my mask back over my face.

At the same moment, bright lights flashed outside, soon followed by the blaring sound of police sirens.

I reached out and pointed directly at Tanis. “Get to your safe house. Don’t talk to anyone but your confidante. Not even the others on our team.”

Realization struck her one second, and in the next she was gone. Out the bedroom door and down the hallway.

I had two options. I could follow Tanis and risk drawing more attention to us both, or I could break one of the windows in the bedroom and try to stick a landing from the second story.

I went to the window that seemed to have the fewest number of lights shining on it, stepped back slightly, and kicked the glass with the heel of my boot. It took two more strong kicks to shatter the industrially thick window, but it was enough. I slipped through the barely-wide-enough opening and grabbed the outside ledge. The fall wasn’t far, but I wanted to fall somewhere least likely to be seen. I aimed for a small cluster of shadows behind a cable box a few feet away.

The fall hardly shook me, and I stuck it perfectly, fully believing I hadn’t been seen. At the front of the building were at least half a dozen police vehicles with bright, twisting lights, accompanied by more officers and bots than I could see. They were yelling at someone who was on the ground, held down by three cops with guns to the person’s face. Ko. They had Ko. I swallowed hard.

On the other side of the alley, two cops had Vcue pressed against a car, frisking her. My heart felt like it was racing, yet trying to stop completely at the same time. This was bad. This was really bad. ENAD didn’t exist, technically, and we’d each been told enough horror stories of being caught by the police. The cops for the state were run by privately owned businesses and organizations. Corruption in the police force had never been higher, and if you had enough money or power, you could get out of practically any jam. No one said for sure, but it was rumored that if you were ever seen, ever caught by law enforcement, you were on your own. ENAD would cut all ties to you, leaving you to rot in the Bazaar. I couldn’t imagine ENAD wasting so much money that way, by investing in soldiers and then completely pulling away when they were arrested, but I didn’t want to take that chance.

I thought of Tanis. I thought of Carver.

I started moving; my legs were dragging me away from the house, still crouched as low to the ground as I possibly could while moving quickly. I made it across the alley and felt slightly more hidden in the shadows of the other houses. Patrols were still cruising the streets all around me; I could hear their vehicles slowly pushing forward as their drivers looked out for other people around the properties.

I pressed my back flat against a brick wall of a store, breathing hard and trying not to panic. Shadows were mostly covering my entire body, keeping me well hidden from onlookers. Before I knew what had happened, someone put a huge hand over my mouth and hushed me.

Seno. My first instinct was to throw his hand off me and punch him in the face. He was behind this. He had to be the one who had set the whole thing up. I had known something wasn’t right about him from the first moment I’d seen him. But somehow my rational thinking peeked through and I shut up, knowing that if we made a sound, someone would see us.

A cyborg patrol walked past us, peering down the alley briefly and then moving out of our line of sight to talk with another officer. They conversed for a few moments while my heart beat fast enough to burst through my chest. We were going to be caught. We were going to be caught and detained and thrown into the Bazaar.

“I’ll check down this alley,” the cyborg said in his robotic voice, shining the light from his helmet near the entrance of the alley, sweeping it back and forth against the concrete.

“Fuck,” Seno whispered. “You take off that way, and I’ll distract them. No use in both of us getting caught.” He pulled his hand off my mouth and stretched out his arm to point a few hundred feet away from us, shadowed by fences and cardboard boxes. It was a long shot, but it was a shot. It was probably the only shot either of us had.

I looked at him, shocked. Why would Seno ever want to help me? Was someone waiting for me over there? Was he going to shoot me in my back as I ran?

“Why would you let me go?” I asked him in a hushed voice. The cyborg was getting closer.

“I like Bruno. He’s a good person, and he’d want me to do this for you. I know you two were close. He told me some of the shit he was getting into. He didn’t deserve what Carver fed him, and he didn’t deserve to go to the Bazaar or be treated like a terrorist. Bruno wanted what was best for everyone; he wanted to try to help and make a difference for this fucked-up city.”

I blinked at him. “But Tanis told me about Zoey. Told me about—”

“Listen. I loved Zoey and Zoey loved me.”

“Why would Tanis lie to me about something like that? She seemed so sincere. I saw the necklace she wears.”

“That necklace that Tanis wears around her neck? I gave that to Zoey because of her name. Tanis had been obsessed with me since we were kids, and over the years it developed into something sick. I blame her for Zoey’s death because she did it on purpose. Tanis doesn’t make mistakes. I’ll never forgive her, and not a day goes by I don’t dream about wringing her neck for what she did to Zoey.”

He looked so serious and so honest in that moment, like he ripped his chest wide open and held out his heart for me to see. It was easy to see the pain in his eyes when he talked about Zoey.

How could I have been so wrong about him? How could I have let my judgment be clouded by hearsay and rumors from someone I barely knew? I’d manufactured a bias against Seno for no good reason, and I’d lost the opportunity of knowing someone who turned out to be a significant part of our team. Maybe even a friend.

“I know that Tanis probably said the same things about me—she likes to keep people away from me—but be wary of her. She’s smart, too smart, but she’s not all there,” Seno warned me.

I nodded, unsure what I was even agreeing to. Nothing felt true anymore.

“Without Zoey in my life, I’m not sure I give a fuck about living any longer, anyway,” Seno told me, staring at the ground. He sighed heavily, then rolled his shoulders. “Now get the fuck out of here, Jones, and don’t let Bruno’s dream die.”

He stood up and walked over to the cyborg with his hands held high above his head. I tried reaching for him while I was cloaked in shadow, to pull him back and tell him that there must be some way we could both escape, but he jarred out of my grip.

“Get the fuck down on the ground!” I heard the cyborg yell at him while he drew his gun. Seno silently complied, kneeling first, then laying his chest flat against the dirt and gravel.

With one last look at Seno, I pressed myself against the wall and inched away. When I was around the corner of the building, I began to sprint. I had to go to my safe house and wait out there for any news, and my body took me there even if my mind wasn’t functioning properly. I wove in and out of dark alleys, taking the least likely routes and circling around city blocks when I didn’t have to. I didn’t think anyone saw me, at least not anyone who got a good enough look at my face to identify me.