The Administration Series (183 page)

I&I gone. Or at least finished for him. It simply wasn't possible. He felt cut adrift, light-headed, although that was probably hunger. Warrick was cooking — he'd feel better once he'd eaten. He settled back into the sofa, burning his tongue with an incautious mouthful of coffee. Everything would be fine. He was where he'd so badly wanted to be when he was lying in the cell with Chevril. Funny that he hadn't consciously noticed at the time. He'd wanted to be here, in Warrick's flat. Almost, if not quite, home.

Things weren't entirely ordinary, of course, even here. There was a SimTech guard inside the flat, with others stationed elsewhere in the building. Guards belonging to the residential complex patrolled the corridors. Toreth was willing to concede that his earlier worries seemed unjustified. Here did look like being the safest place, for all of them.

Sara came in, her dark hair damp and disarrayed, wearing a borrowed dressing gown that looked ridiculously large on her. "What have you got there?" she asked him.

"Coffee, with a splash of brandy. It's all the alcohol Warrick's letting me have, until I've eaten." He smiled at her, and she returned it, a little wanly. "Ask him, if you want one."

"In a bit." She sat on the sofa beside him, folding her legs up under her. "How are you?"

"Okay, all things considered. You?"

"About the same. Tired, mostly."

"There's a spare room. I can — "

"No. I don't think I want to sleep — not on my own." She glanced down, fiddling with her belt. "Would it be all right if I had a nap here? With you? Just until the food's ready."

"Of course it would. Hang on." He shifted, making himself as comfortable as he could, then patted his thigh. "Come on, then."

"Thanks." She lay down, her head light in his lap, and he resisted an urge to run his fingers through her hair.

"Feel better for the shower?" he asked.

"Much. I
hate
being dirty. I don't think I'm going to feel properly clean for a week."

"I know exactly what you mean." He'd run the shower near scalding hot, but he could still smell the cell on his skin. "But we're out of there now. Dinner and a good night's sleep, and you'll be fine."

She shivered. "God, it was horrible."

"I know. You were all just admins. Why the fuck they couldn't have let you go before, I — "

"Not that. Well, yes, that was too. But I was thinking about Carnac."

"Oh. Yes." Scratch Carnac's charming surface and you'd find the bastard underneath. "I'm sorry about that. You remember when he was at I&I, doing his poxy report?"

She nodded.

"I pissed him off. Actually, I told him he was a lousy fuck, which he is. That was payback." Payback with interest.

"I know."

That was news. "How?"

"Oh. I — " She hesitated, then smiled. "I'm your admin. I know everything."

"Not any more."

"I don't know everything?"

"No, you're not my admin. I'm unemployed, remember?"

She smiled again, already drifting off to sleep. "Right. Of course you are."

Right. Of course he was.

He put his arm over Sara's shoulder, and thought about unemployment and Carnac.

'The offer of a job remains open'.

Never, was his first reaction. He never wanted to see the man again. The humiliation knotted his stomach. He'd nearly cried, for the first time since — fuck, the first time since he'd lived with his fucking parents. Never mind that it had been for Sara — that's not what Carnac would've thought.

He never wanted to see Carnac again. But that meant never having the chance to settle the score. The bastard
had
made Sara cry. On its own, that was enough to make him want to take the job and then make Carnac pay, and pay over again for what he'd done.

He took a sip of the cooling coffee. He shouldn't even want to think about that, after the last four days. However unreal it all felt, he'd have to get used to the idea that everything had changed. It would be stupid to go back to the I&I building when Warrick had taken so much trouble to get him out. And Warrick . . . Warrick would have a fit at the suggestion.

Leaning his head back against the sofa, he closed his eyes, just to rest them. He wasn't going to sleep yet. He'd wait until they'd eaten.

A firm touch on his hand startled Toreth out of a dreamless sleep. Opening his eyes, he found Warrick trying to remove the mug from his fingers.

"Sorry," Warrick said. "It looked somewhat hazardous, under the circumstances."

Sara still slept in his lap, and the mug in question balanced on the arm of the sofa above her, half full of the now-cold coffee. He surrendered the mug to Warrick, who took it and then touched Toreth's cheek briefly with his other hand.

"You shaved," Warrick said.

"And it felt great. I hate beards."

"I thought it looked rather good, as far as one could tell through the grime. A slight reddish tinge to the blond — very attractive."

"Yeah? Well, maybe I'll grow one for your birthday. I'll get Sara to remind me, or — " He stopped, the strange feeling of disconnection triggered again. Sara wouldn't necessarily be there to remind him. Warrick looked at him enquiringly, and he shook his head. "Nothing."

"I don't think I've ever seen you not finish a drink before," Warrick said after a moment. "Would you like something else?"

"Food. I'm fucking
starving
."

"Ready in a few minutes. That's why I came in." He sat down in the chair opposite.

"I thought you might've had it on the table for us when we got here," Toreth said.

It wasn't a serious complaint, and Warrick smiled. "I would have, except that I was at I&I since first thing this morning."

Toreth blinked. "All day?"

"Yes. Most of that was occupied with getting to see someone in the first place, or waiting while they said they were trying to find you. I didn't dare leave in case they wouldn't let me back in. In the morning there was some shooting inside the building — " He shook his head. "In the distance. I don't know what it was. But after that it seemed best to stay."

Another lot of interrogators experiencing mob justice. Or possibly Carnac's rabble being encouraged to go enjoy their freedom somewhere else. He could always hope.

"Thanks, anyway," Toreth said. "For getting us out. I knew you would."

Warrick raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Well, no. But I did know you'd try to."

There were a few seconds of silence, then Warrick said, "How's Sara doing? And what was that about Carnac?"

He shrugged, carefully. "She'll be fine. Carnac pulled something not at all funny to get at me. Sara got caught in the crossfire. Except . . . no, she didn't. The bastard did it deliberately, to her as well."

Warrick nodded. "I have to say, I worried it might be something like that. But he was all I could think of to try to get you out."

The idea of being grateful to Carnac stung him, and also reminded him of something else. "Carnac told me he helped us because he owed you. What for?"

Warrick closed his eyes briefly. "Oh, hell."

"Warrick, what was it?"

"If I said it was Carnac causing trouble, and that it was better that you didn't ask, would that work?"

'If you wish to ask him. I would advise against it, but I'm used to having my advice ignored'.

If Carnac didn't want him to know, then obviously Toreth had to. "No. I want to hear it."

"I thought as much. Let me get a drink."

Warrick took a long time about it. When he sat back down, he still didn't say anything.

"Well?" Toreth asked.

"Do you remember when Carnac came to SimTech? When he did the report?"

How could he fucking forget? "Yes."

"I spent some time alone with him. In the sim."

Oh God, no. Not like that.

Warrick looked up and shook his head at the unspoken question. "Nothing sexual. Although that might've been better, in the long run. He was having doubts about the Administration. About his role in it. He mentioned an interrogation you showed him. He wasn't sure if such things were justifiable simply to maintain the stranglehold of the Administration on Europe."

Toreth stared at him, open-mouthed. That was treason. Blatant, concrete, inarguable treason. From a socioanalyst at that, although it was ridiculous that he should be shocked when he'd seen the man at I&I, working with resisters.

"What did you
say
to him?" he asked eventually.

"I told him that I thought he was probably right." Warrick's gaze didn't waver. "And that whatever he wanted to do about it was up to his own conscience."

Treason again. "So he went away and started a fucking revolt?"

"It does look that way, yes."

"Because of what you said to him?"

"If you want an immediate cause, perhaps." Warrick ran his hand over the arm of the chair, then picked off a speck of fluff. "Or one could equally well say that it was because of what you showed him. I imagine that the situation is too complex for either of us to take the whole blame."

"Fucking hell." My fault, Toreth thought. In some small way, my fault. Carnac had come to I&I to check them for subversive tendencies and left with the seeds of his own subversion sown.

He laughed, once, the sound escaping before he could get his hand up to his mouth to stifle it. If he started laughing, he knew he wouldn't be able to stop, and he didn't want to wake Sara or aggravate his ribs. He bit his lip, fighting down the hysteria by thinking about Carnac, the fucking hypocrite. It proved highly effective.

"He offered me a job, you know. Back at I&I. Doing the unjustifiable."

Warrick sipped his drink and nodded. "He's nothing if not a pragmatist. He said the system couldn't simply be undone overnight. It would take time, even after the heart of the problem had been torn out. However, the offer was a formal condition for your release, as I understood it. He said you wouldn't have to accept it."

"Yes, I know." He thought of Carnac telling him he could walk away and leave it all behind. Fine, in theory. In practise it meant that Carnac had won. He had I&I and he could do whatever the hell he wanted with it — and from his tone of voice in the interrogation room, that was nothing good. What Warrick had told him only made him more certain of that.

He made a decision. "Warrick, I'm sorry about this, I really am, but I have to go back." If Carnac would let him, after Sara's excellent piece of footwork.

Long silence, then Warrick said, "Are you sure?"

"Yes. Whatever — " Whatever Carnac's plans are, I'm going to fuck them over as thoroughly as he fucked with me and make him eat every word he said. However, that sounded petty, or at least an inadequate reason for going back to I&I. Nor did he want to take the risk of voicing it out loud. Best not to take chances where Carnac was concerned.

What else could he say? He could call it loyalty, and that would, surprisingly, be partly true. As far as he'd ever belonged anywhere, it was there, and if I&I survived then he wanted to be a part of it. Warrick wouldn't understand that, though — he'd said so himself. He thought about I&I in the same way as the people who'd gone from room to room and killed admins, medics and interrogators without bothering to find out who was what: as something that ought to be eliminated.

Toreth fixed on something. Something that might do as an explanation, without getting into a discussion of the rights and wrongs of I&I. That was an argument they somehow managed to avoid having too often, and he was far too tired to have it now.

"Do you remember Don Chevril?"

Warrick nodded.

"He was in the cell with me. He's a mess. In fact, he might be dead by now if they've had another go at him, but if he's not I can get him out. If I take the job." And if Carnac meant what he said. "There are all the others too. I've worked with them for a long time. They're — "

"You don't have to justify it to me. If it's what you have to do, then do it."

Warrick delivered the statement so unemotionally that Toreth had to re-run it through his tired brain several times before he was sure he'd heard it right. "Really?"

Warrick smiled slightly. "Really."

"I thought you'd be pissed off about it."

"I knew you'd take it — or I guessed you would. I would've preferred it if you hadn't, of course. However, as I am occasionally required to remind people, I fuck you, not your job."

"Oh." Toreth felt peculiarly unbalanced, ready for a fight that hadn't materialised. "Well, thanks."

"Nothing to thank me for, in this instance."

Toreth slipped out from under Sara with the ease of long practice, laying her head down gently onto the sofa. Warrick watched him, sipping his drink.

"Are you thinking about going now?" Warrick asked. "Because the curfew — "

"No. But I'll call Carnac and tell him I'm accepting — he's probably just about able to stand up by now. That'll get things rolling. And then . . . "

"Then?"

"Then you can fuck me, not my job."

Warrick smiled. "I thought you might want dinner first."

It was a testament to how incredibly hungry he was that he actually agreed.

Sara woke up in a cold sweat, struggling against the clutch of the sheets, still hearing screaming and smelling the blood. Then the room came into sharp focus around her and she almost sobbed from sheer relief. However, the realisation that she was safe didn't banish the choking tightness in her throat. Sick. Oh, God, she was going to be —

She made it to the bathroom just in time to bring up the remains of her lovely, expensive dinner into the sink. She ran water into the bowl, trying to decide if that was it, or if the feeling was coming back. At least she hadn't thrown up all over Warrick's lovely, expensive carpets.

She heard a tap on the door and a male voice she didn't recognise said, "Excuse me? Are you all right in there?"

It had to be the security guard. She clutched the edge of the sink tightly and closed her eyes. "Fine," she said, trying to sound it.

"Okay. Sorry to disturb you."

She rinsed her mouth out and splashed water on her face. Much better. It had been the nightmare, that was all. Or maybe the fact that she'd eaten too much after three days living on coffee and biscuits.