The Last City (4 page)

‘You’ve searched her?’ the commander asked.

‘Yes, boss,’ Eli said quickly. ‘I put everything in her bag.’

He moved to the far wall and swiped his hand over a sensor. A hidden drawer shot out from the stone. He dragged out Keets’ bag, the weight of it almost pulling him to the ground. The commander took the strap from him and easily lifted the bag onto the table in the centre of the room.

‘No triggers?’ The commander eyed the zippers.

‘None,’ Eli confirmed.

‘That’s not like her either,’ Jude commented, crossing his metal arms over his chest. Keets was notorious, among many other things, for the violent traps and triggers that protected her belongings.

‘She’s playing,’ Diega echoed her previous thoughts. ‘Must be.’

The commander unzipped the bag. All Keets’ equipment was there, including her infamous knife – the Morsus Ictus. Copernicus pulled on the gloves from his weapon belt then picked up the black blade, examining it. He placed it back into the bag and lifted out a bottle of green potion. He swished it around, studying the contents.

‘Run a full analysis on this and all other liquids in here,’ he said to Eli.

‘Now, boss?’

The commander shook his head. ‘After we talk to her.’

‘You want me to talk to her?’ Eli squeaked and his heart thudded faster.

A smile stirred the darkness of the commander’s eyes. ‘No, Eli. I will talk. But I want you to observe.’

Eli nodded, relieved. Observing he could do. Interrogating a super-intelligent psycho like Ev’r Keets was more the commander’s realm of expertise.

The commander left the bag and started down the corridor towards the cells. He paused and turned back. ‘Eli.’

‘Yes, boss?’

‘Well done.’

‘Thank you, boss.’ Eli managed to keep a straight face, but on the inside he did a jump for joy. The commander’s praise was, to him, like a rare, rare gold.

The commander continued to walk, Diega at his side. Eli waited a moment to bask in his own newly acquired glory. He lifted up and down on the balls of his feet, feeling like bursting into flight. Jude chuckled beside him and Eli grinned at him, only then noticing another person in the room, standing in the shadows of a corner. The person was a lovely-looking girl with an impressive lump and mean bruise on one side of her head, making her no less lovely.

‘This is our new tracker,’ Jude told him. ‘Silho Brabel.’

Eli’s grin stretched wider. The new recruit they’d been expecting for several weeks returned a small and uncertain smile.

‘I’m Eli,’ he said and went towards her. His legs got tangled in each other and he fell at her feet.

‘Careful, buddy.’ Jude picked him up with embarrassing ease. ‘You’ll do yourself an injury.’

‘Sorry,’ Eli said to Silho. ‘I’m sorry. I’m clumsy. I . . . ah . . . have problems with walking sometimes.’ He cringed at what he had just said, and yet still found himself saying, ‘And with talking too . . . and with just about everything actually.’ Eli noticed, though she was obviously a human-breed, she also resembled a pixie with an uptilt to her eyes and long lashes. From this close he could see from the grey tinge to her skin that she was unwell.

‘We’d better catch up.’ Jude nodded towards the corridor where the commander and Diega had disappeared. ‘Silho, follow us.’

Eli entered the interrogation cell last. The cell’s walls, floor and ceiling were all made from reinforced grey-rock – the most effective substance for muffling screams. In the centre of the room a table and two chairs stood bolted to the ground. They were made of steel and slightly reflective so, as Diega said, prisoners could see a distorted twin of themselves – and kiss it goodbye. The tang of disinfectant, washed over urine and blood, tainted the air. Eli pushed his hands into his pockets and clung to Nelly's warm comfort. She slept on, oblivious to the fact that she was in the presence of one of the most feared criminals of all time.

The commander and Diega fearlessly moved within striking distance of where Keets stood facing the wall. Staying as far from Keets as possible, Eli studied her back. What he could see of it, between the wraps of chains binding her arms, was a collage of mismatched skin grafts stitched roughly together, forming jagged scars, crisscrossing over faded and broken tattoos and symbols. Ev’r’s head hung low; her white-blonde hair, shaved short at the back and left long at the front, fell in her eyes.

‘I knew you weren’t dead.’ Diega was the first to break the cold, dragging silence.

‘Good for you,’ Ev’r responded, her voice emotionless.

‘You know how I knew you weren’t dead?’ Diega asked. ‘Because only the good die young.’

‘Like Fen children – right, fairy-girl?’ Ev’r shot back.

Eli cringed. The rainbow colours of Diega’s skin flared vibrant.

‘Or like gypsy girls,
Zingara
,’ Diega said.

Ev’r’s back arched in a predatory way at the sound of her real scullion-gypsy name. She turned to face them. Her gaze flickered over Diega and locked onto Jude. Her eyebrows lifted and an unpleasant smile curled her lips. ‘You.’ She made the word sound simultaneously like a question and a threat.

Jude crossed his metal arms over his chest and met her stare from behind his tinted glasses. Eli felt a definite struggle of energy between the criminal and the tracker, and he noticed Copernicus looking from one to the other, studying their expressions.

‘Didn’t you die?’ Ev’r finally asked Jude.

Diega stepped across, blocking the fugitive’s view of the Ar Antarian. ‘You don’t get to ask questions,’ she spat.

Ev’r glared at Diega, but spoke to Copernicus. ‘Call off your yapping little girlfriend, Kane, before I break her trutting neck.’

Diega laughed. ‘It’s your neck you should be worried about, Zingara. The guilogutter that silenced Englan Chrisholm is still assembled. I’m sure the king would happily roll it out again for you.’

Ev’r cursed at Diega and the force of the dark-words stung Eli’s eyes and tugged at the protective amulet he wore on a chain around his neck.

‘Enough.’ The commander’s voice rose, echoing around the walls. ‘You won’t use the cursed magics in my presence.’ Lightning flashed in the darkness of his eyes.

Ev’r gave a derisive snort. ‘Why not, Kane? Hits too close to home, does it? Reminds you too much of Daddy? Well
too bad
!’ she yelled and Eli shrank back. ‘You can’t command me! I’m not your soldier or your servant or your whore-like fairy-girl here.’ She turned to Diega. ‘I know about you two. I know about what you did together – what he did to you.’ She gave a spiteful laugh. ‘Your family must be so disappointed. I bet they wish you had died – instead of your sister.’

Diega sprang forward and shoved Ev’r against the wall. The fugitive pushed off it with her bound body and knocked Diega back, landing on top of her on the ground. Diega flung her off and Ev’r rolled, her chains clanking, across the ground towards Eli and Silho. Eli dodged her with a flying leap, informed by the years of dance training his gran’ma had forced him to attend, but Silho stayed frozen where she was. Ev’r crashed into the wall beside the new recruit and leapt straight onto her feet, whipping around to face Silho. The others were all behind Ev’r, making Eli the only one to see the immediate, drastic and momentary shift of Ev’r’s features – from bloodthirsty hatred, to sheer shock, shadowed by sadness so extreme it could be mistaken for pain. As soon as it appeared, it passed into a neutral stare.

Jude launched himself at Ev’r. He grabbed her and, with the strength of his metal arms and legs, dragged her back to the table and slammed her into one of the chairs. She tried to rise to her feet, but Jude forced her back down. Diega came at the prisoner, her fists clenched, but Copernicus stepped between the two of them and said, ‘That’ll do.’

After a moment Diega shrank back, glaring hatred at Ev’r. Eli exhaled, his heart thudding fast. Despite years as a tracker, violence still appalled him to the same degree it had on his first day. He had only pursued a military career to follow Copernicus, his best friend for most of their younger life.

The commander spoke to Ev’r. ‘You know what you’ve done. You know why you’re here. You know what’s going to happen. You’ve been marked as a state traitor. You won’t get a trial – just death by whatever means the magistrate decides, and you know it won’t be quick. I can influence that decision if, and only if, you cooperate.’

Ev’r watched Copernicus with eyes that were dead calm. Their colour reminded Eli of the dangerous green of a storm rising.

‘What do you know about the recent murders and disappearances?’ the commander asked.

‘Nothing,’ Ev’r replied.

‘Is it gang-related? Is Christy Shawe involved?’

‘No idea.’

‘What can you tell me about this ring?’ The commander took a gold ring out of his pocket and held it up in front of Ev’r’s eyes.

‘Nothing.’

‘Why is your body-heat signature altered? What’s happened to you?’

The abrupt change in questioning made the corners of Ev’r’s mouth jerk and the skin beneath one eye twitch. Ev’r swallowed slowly and held the commander’s stare. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

The commander nodded. ‘You know, Keets, before they execute you, I can have your mind purged. I will see everything you know, everything you’ve seen, one way or another. I can hold you here for seven day-cycles with an Assistant to Investigation order, after which time, if you don’t give us anything to present to the courts, palace enforcers will come for you – and then it will be too late.’

‘It’s already too late.’ Ev’r finally spoke. ‘For everyone.’

She turned her face away from the commander and he said, ‘Think, Keets. You of all people should know there are bad ways to die and there are tolerable ways. Your crimes have brought you to this place where you have no control over the time, but you can choose the way. It could be painless. That’s more than most people get. Think about it. We’ll be back.’

Eli deactivated his security system and waved the others into his office laboratory. A vast organised jumble of machinery bits and pieces, computer parts and partially made inventions shared space with countless collections of odds and ends, anything Eli could lay his hands on. In one corner, behind glass, he kept his antique paper books, his written word – almost-extinct relics from an era long past. Each book was well used, well loved and holographically stored in his memory. Sensing she was back in her own territory, Nelly shot out of his pocket, up his body, and jumped onto one of his long workbenches. She raced up and down, dodging piles of objects, chiding Eli in a high chattering voice. The sound of her scurrying claws syncopated with the clicks, ticks and taps of his equipment and inventions. Eli noticed Nelly instinctively avoided the area where his latest weaponry advance sat in a transparent box. It was skunk bombs, made from the excretions of skunk-heritage human-breeds. His donors had been very happy that their socially offensive spray could now be put to a good use. Nelly bounded from the bench onto her table, where she snatched a pinkfin fish from her dish and, snapping it down, dived into her pool.

The commander offloaded Keets’ bag onto the table beside Eli. He noticed Copernicus was keeping his eyes down, not wanting to view the mess Eli called home. He didn’t feel offended. He held the belief
each to their own
. The boss liked extreme organisation; he liked productive chaos.

‘I’ll set the liquids to analyse now,’ Eli told him. He reached into Keets’ bag and withdrew the vial of green potion and anything else liquid he could find. The bottle and vials clanked in his hands as he hurried to the far end of his office and put them into his compound-assessor. He shut the glass door and pressed the setting he desired – stage 7, deep and thorough analysis. He knew it would take that level of analysis to ascertain the ingredients of Keets’ concoctions. She was known to use products sourced from places most people would never dare to tread in a billion years.

Opening the cooler beside the compound-assessor, Eli searched for some ice for Silho’s head. He thought it would be a nice gesture, but all he had was a bag of raw bones he was storing to give to the Headquarters’ guard dogs later that night. He abandoned the search and turned back to the others.

Diega was pacing, swearing about Ev’r Keets, while Jude sat on one of Eli’s patched and mismatched lounges. The chair creaked unhappily under his bulk. He sighed and massaged his neck and Eli sensed his friend’s unease. Silho stayed near the door, watching the ground.

The commander was talking on his communicator to the Custody Superior with instructions on how to house and contain Keets for the next week. Observing the commander reminded Eli that the upgraded communicator system he’d been working on was now complete and ready to go active. He trotted around the office, rounding up the various parts. As he worked, he heard Copernicus give a direct command to the Custody Superior that no information on Ev’r Keets was to be given to the media. He also wanted a blanket ban on any United Regiment personnel discussing the fugitive with anyone outside of the force. Eli thought this was a good move, but also knew without a doubt that tonight, with or without the ban, every single soldier would tell their family about the capture of Keets, and then their family members would tell their friends and their friends would tell their families and so on. He gave it a day and a night maximum for the streets in front of Headquarters to be overcrowded with people either protesting or supporting the death penalty, or just there for a good old look. Copernicus, obviously thinking the same thing, began giving the Custody Superior instructions to reinforce security at all entrances and exits of Headquarters.

As soon as he ended the conversation, Diega burst out, ‘She knows something for sure. She’s playing us. We have to go back and make her talk. We can drug her, mesmerise her – whatever. It’s not like we have to stick to protocol with her. She’s as good as dead.’

Copernicus shook his head. ‘Nothing will work on her. We’ll have to have her brain purged before her execution.’

‘There’s no guarantee the courts will allow that,’ Diega argued.