Continuance (26 page)

“Look,” Day said. “I don’t even
have access to Arkive anymore – not since you guys came and locked it down.
Only Dr. Fairchild does. And I haven’t seen anyone moving data out.”

Day could be telling the truth, but
something felt off. “Retreads are dangerous, Mr. Day. More dangerous than you
probably realize. Some in the Authority think they aren’t even human – just an
artificial approximation. Why put yourself at risk to protect a self-deluded
construct with a few stolen memories and a dead person’s DNA?”

Day was growing impatient,
looking at Lindsay like a panhandler who’d interrupted his Sunday stroll – one
he couldn’t wait to buy off with a few bucks so he could be on his way.

Annoyed, Lindsay decided it was
time to rattle the kid’s cage. “Maybe you don’t agree? Maybe you’re one of
those rubber lovers who thinks every biorecord in Arkive has the same rights as
you and me. Sounds good on paper, I guess. But I wonder what those bleeding
hearts would say if they knew about this.” Lindsay pointed at his bandage. “That
the one who did it was continued. What would they think if they knew a
hundred-pound girl with no weapons and bound with force restraints could kill
in a matter of seconds? I bet she didn’t seem that dangerous to you. Or to your
friend, Gallihugh.”

Confusion registered on Day’s
face. “You’re saying
I
know who did that to you?”

“Does the name Accardi ring a
bell? Ivory Accardi? Classmate of yours. You were with her at dinner last
night.”

“
Ivory?
She’s continued?
You have her?”

“In a manner of speaking.”
Lindsay steeled himself for what he had to say next, annoyed at the squeamish
feeling, however fleeting. This was what the Authority
did
. “She’s been
recovered and Arkived.”

That seemed to hit home with Day.
Realization crept across his face, like he’d been punched in slow motion.

“I take it you know what that
means,” Lindsay said.

Day’s jaw clenched. He shook his
head slowly, pinning Lindsay with a glare. “Damn you spiders,” he growled. “Are
every one of you this ignorant, or am I just unusually lucky?”

Lindsay took an involuntary
swallow that had nothing to do with his injury. He knew that look, felt it on
his own face every time he faced Darren. And he’d seen it in Accardi’s eyes
just before…

A seed of panic grew inside him.
He was an eyeclick away from sending Neal a call for backup when Day spoke
again.

“So that retread bitch was
playing us this whole time? And you let it get this far? What the hell have you
guys been doing around here? Does Stuart know about this?”

Anger still radiated from Day’s
eyes, but was it the same anger from a moment ago? Had Lindsay misinterpreted his
reaction as threatening, when it had been anger at Accardi? He steadied himself.
He needed to tread carefully here.

“He does now. I was next door
with Agent Neal when he was told. Needless to say, your friend isn’t too
happy.”

In truth, Gallihugh’s face had
crumpled in anguish when he’d learned the girl he thought he loved had been reinterred
inside Arkive. Witnessing that pain had been almost as bad as what he’d seen
from Accardi when she realized her fate.

“You think?” Day asked, his voice
a sneer. “The guy was in love with her. Aren’t you guys supposed to have all
kinds of spy stuff to keep this from happening? Photonic surveillance and all
that?”

Maybe the kid was truly ignorant.
Just a cocky punk who thought he could throw his weight around. Couldn’t he see
what the Authority had prevented here?

“We do,” Lindsay said with more
patience than he felt. “Which is why we caught Accardi in time to stop her from
using your friend – or you – to get at Arkive. That’s why you’re here. We need
to know if she influenced Gallihugh or anyone else to compromise Arkive in any
way.”

Day’s glare hardened. “I just
told you a friend of mine fell in love with a dead girl. Because
you
guys couldn’t find her before she conned him into thinking she was someone
else. She practically wrecked someone’s life, and all you care is if she might
have copied some stupid database? Since you don’t seem to care what she did to
him...” He looked at Lindsay’s throat again. “I guess I don’t really give a
damn what she did to
you
.”

Now it was Lindsay’s turn to feel
angry. Ignoring the pain in his throat, he forced the words out, picking up
steam as he went. “Look, kid. I don’t have to explain this to you, or to anybody.
But since you’re a student, let me give you a little education.”

He pulled up a listing of the
Arkive blocks Chariot had used so far. Rising from his chair, he leaned forward
with his hands on the table and nodded at the display as it hovered between
them.

“That
stupid database
is everything.
Believe me, kid – if it gets out there in the wild, we’ll have retreads like Accardi
everywhere, controlling everything. So you damn well better care.” He rounded
the table to stand beside Day, leaning in close. “Because when the manipulation
and subversion fail, they won’t hesitate to threaten lives to get what they
want. Now, if that sounds good to you, then go ahead and sign up , but
otherwise I’d suggest you calm the hell down and answer my questions. Think you
can do that?”

Day’s eyes shone like green
embers as he stared back at Lindsay, and his voice grew quiet. “What exactly,
would you like to know?”

 Relaxing, Lindsay paced around
the table at a stroll. “To the best of your knowledge, did Stuart Gallihugh
ever remove Arkive data from the premises?”

“No.”

“Provide any on-site facility
access to Ivory Accardi?”

“No.”

“And what about you? Did you, at
any time, provide Arkive data to…?”

Day slammed an open palm on the
table. “I already answered this. No! Now are you just going to keep asking me
the same questions or am I free to go? I assume I’m not under arrest?”

“You’re free to leave, Mr. Day,”
said a gravelly voice.

Lindsay hadn’t noticed Neal slip
into the room. From the way Day snapped his head to look at him, he hadn’t
either. Neal stood leaning against the doorframe, both hands in the pockets of
his chocolate-colored trousers. “We’ll just need a number to reach you in case
we have any further questions.”

Day looked from Lindsay to Neal,
suspicion plain on his face, then snatched his AP from the table. After a few
taps, he swiped a finger across the screen in Lindsay’s direction, like flicking
a bug. A voice number popped up in Lindsay’s smartglasses, and he nodded at
Neal, who held a hand toward the door. He waited until Day was almost past
before speaking again.

“I’m sorry if this will have a
negative impact on your transcripts. I’m sure another internship will come up.”
The smile on Neal’s face had the same predatory cast Lindsay remembered from
his earlier conversation with Darren.

Day stopped, and they stood
facing each other in the doorway like two opposing magnets, each repelling the other.
For a moment, Lindsay was afraid Day might do something rash, but then he brushed
past Neal and disappeared into the hallway.

Lindsay voiced the question he
knew must have been on Day’s mind. “What did you mean by that? And what’s with
the wolfish grin?”

Neal took the chair Day had just
vacated, propping his feet up on the table. “I just got word from Cavanaugh.
We’re pulling the plug on Arkive here.
And
the school’s pulling the plug
on the entire lab.” Something of the shock Lindsay felt must have shown, because
Neal nodded as if to say, “
Yes, you heard me right,
” before going on. “Officially,
they’ll say it’s because they can’t make their imager work without our data. But
the truth is, the dean doesn’t want retreads targeting their students like Accardi
did Gallihugh. Bad for the students, bad for PR.”

With the news, Lindsay understood
Neal’s earlier comment. “So Day’s out of an internship. Can’t say that breaks
my heart. That mouthy punk could use a kick in the ass. Something rubs me the
wrong way with him.”

“It should. He’s a retread.” From
the self-satisfied look on his face, Neal seemed to be enjoying this.

“Day?” When he’d seen that
dangerous look in the kid’s eyes, it had reminded him of Accardi, and he’d
thought maybe…But he’d written it off as paranoia, shell shock. “What makes you
so sure?”

Neal shrugged. “I recognized him
when I came in, something familiar about him. So I queried my SLIDe logs for
the last couple of weeks for matches – anywhere we’ve been out on a call. Remember
when I told you about the kid who showed up during the Richman bust?”

Lindsay nodded. Something Neal
had mentioned the day after the Java 101 raid. “That’s
him
? You think he
was the one meeting with Richman?”

Neal snapped his finger and
pointed at Lindsay, a game show host acknowledging a correct answer. Lindsay brought
a fist down on the table.
That bastard just played me
. Darren would have
been impressed. He jerked his head toward Neal. “If he’s a retread, why the
hell did you just let him walk out?”

“Don’t worry, Grieves. I don’t
believe for a second his hands are clean in the lab. But we don’t have enough
evidence on him yet. Nothing on the Oriole feeds or standard background checks.
I even asked Wright do the same hardcopy check you did for Accardi, but his
records show overseas schooling. We’ll need something better to ninety-five
him. But now that we know, we’ll get it. Just a matter of time.”

“Wait…” Grieves held up a finger,
beckoning Neal to his side of the table. Something from those Oriole video
feeds had tickled his memory. “I think I know how we can get it.”

He tapped a control, and a 3D
image replaced the Arkive listing above the table. It was a still shot from the
Oriole feed he’d used with Accardi, but later on in the segment. Much of the
feed he’d watched had either been blank or hadn’t clearly shown faces. This
shot framed Day at an angle, as if the camera were tilted, but clearly enough
for Lindsay to engage the lip recognition option before starting the playback.
Like subtitles in a foreign film, the software captioned as Day spoke.

I’ve got a race
this weekend, just something I do for a distraction. If you want to come, you
could be a spectator.

Now it was Lindsay’s turn to
offer Neal a wolfish grin. Day would pay for underestimating him. So would
Darren.

Panic. Sorrow. Rage. Relief.

Emotions flooded through Jason in
succession, like waves crashing again and again on the same battered stretch of
beach. He’d lost control in there with that spider. Insulting an agent like that
should have gotten him arrested on the spot. But then time had slowed in the
detached, familiar way he felt when the perks kicked in. This time was
different, though, something he hadn’t experienced before. He’d seen something
in Grieves during that frozen instant. The subtle tremble of a finger, the
slight constricting of the throat beneath that bandage. Fear. And Jason had
known he could go on the offensive, bluster his way out of his mistake.

Somehow he’d pulled it off, safe for
the moment, but he still felt overwhelmed with the urge to get away. Away from
the bastards who’d just ended Ivory’s life. Away from all the risks he’d taken,
the lies he’d told.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Shouldn’t a
second chance at life have been a gift? A blessing?

By the time he reached the
elevators leading back to the main level, he felt worn and tired. He jabbed the
call control hard enough to make his finger hurt, and when it didn’t come
immediately, jabbed even harder.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered.

A stocky-looking grad student stood
nearby, the faded brown of a sweat stain ringing the collar of his lab coat. He
offered a commiserating smile, a fellow victim sharing Jason’s plight. The
elevator chimed its arrival, saving Jason the need to formulate some kind of polite
response. As the two of them stepped inside, Jason’s smartglasses flashed an
alert.

SocialNet: New
message from Stuart Gallihugh.

He eyeclicked to open the
message. The body was empty, but the subject read
“We need to talk. I’m in
the IC.”
Jason squeezed his eyes shut, inhaling a steadying breath. As he
heard the door sliding shut, he thrust out an arm just in time to stop it. “All
yours,” he told the stocky guy, getting a puzzled look in return.

The roulette wheel of emotions
he’d felt a moment ago slowed as he headed down the hall toward the imaging
chamber, coming to rest on a feeling of dread. Right then, Stuart was the
person he needed to talk to most, but the one he wanted to talk to least.
The
sooner I get this over with, the better.

When he arrived, he found the
arc-shaped control room empty. He paused just inside, watching Stuart through
the curved aeroglass of the inner wall. Lying on his back atop the disc of the
imaging platform, Stuart stared up at the clusters of emitters and photonics on
the ceiling while his legs dangled over the edge. His hands – fingers
intertwined atop his stomach – rose and fell with the slow rhythm of his
breathing. On one side, the black retroweave suit hung suspended beside the
controls for Chariot’s support field. To Jason’s mind, it loomed over Stuart in
a sort of headless, deflated vigil, a phantom bearing mute witness to anger and
grief.