Vigilantes (13 page)

“I have some emergency medical training,” Vigfusson said, sounding defensive. She didn’t exactly blame him. “I thought he was gone too.”

“Yeah,” Brodeur said, his back to them. “There are things that a good bot can do, things a good program can do, while you’re waiting for actual medical help that they don’t train you in those beginner emergency response classes.”

Rosen looked away. Vigfusson leaned closer to the door. Seng unthreaded her fingers and wiped her hands on her skirt. She let out a small breath.

“You’re saying he was alive when I called for help?” Seng asked, very gently.

“Not alive, per se,” Brodeur said. “But revivable. With the right equipment and knowledgeable people.”

Vigfusson bowed his head. Rosen had moved even farther back. But Seng gripped her knees. No wonder this coroner wasn’t popular. He was one of the most blunt public employees she had ever encountered.

“So,” Seng asked, staring at Zhu’s body. “If he had gotten help, he would still be alive.”

“Real help,” Brodeur said.

Vigfusson winced.

“
Official
help,” Seng said.

Brodeur looked at her over his shoulder. He seemed to suddenly understand what she meant. She meant that the public services—the police, emergency responders—had failed Zhu.

Even if the police managed to write off his attack as something that occurred because of rogue cops, the authorities wouldn’t be able to get rid of their culpability easily. Someone or someones had blocked the emergency response.

“I didn’t say ‘official,’” Brodeur said a half minute too late.

This bluntness of his, his ability to put his foot in something, was probably why the police didn’t like him. But she was guessing.

“You meant it, though,” she said.

Rosen was watching her. Vigfusson had raised his head, the color leaving his cheeks.

“No,” Brodeur snapped. “I meant what I said. If he had gotten real help instead of some crappy designer chip, he’d be alive.”

“Or if the emergency services hadn’t been blocked,” Seng said.

“I don’t know that they were blocked,” Brodeur said, turning away from her. He focused on Zhu.

Brodeur was now covering his ass. She didn’t mind. He had given her important information.

It wouldn’t bring back Zhu, but it would guarantee a suit against the city.

Clearly, the authorities here already hated S
3
. So she had nothing to lose for pursuing them for this. And everything else.

Vigfusson, who had seemed so strong an hour ago, hadn’t noticed either movement. He seemed lost in his own reflections. He kept staring at his palm, which was probably where the bad chip resided.

She couldn’t rely on him. So she put a hand on Rosen’s back. He started, then glanced at her, clearly terrified.

Great. Two idiots. Still, she needed one of them, and she would take the seemingly more reliable one.

“Make sure you continue to record this,” she said very softly. “I’m going to be right back.”

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Personal,” she muttered, letting him think she needed a bathroom or something. What she was going to do wasn’t that kind of personal. It wasn’t really personal at all.

She was going to get in touch with her new bosses—the real ones, the ones who weren’t running a branch on the Moon, but who were running the whole company.

It was time they knew what was going on.

FOURTEEN

NYQUIST WAITED UNTIL he had arrived back inside Armstrong’s dome before he tried to contact Flint. In fact, Nyquist went all the way to his apartment first, just because he couldn’t shake the dirty feeling he always seemed to get when he talked to Uzvaan.

He showered, changed, and grabbed a Moon-grown apple from the fruit bowl in the kitchen. The apple was turning an alarming shade of dark purple, which meant that it would soon be too pulpy to eat. He didn’t care. He was hungry, and he wasn’t going to stop.

But he did need to track down Flint.

Nyquist sent a message along his links, hoping to find Flint. Then Nyquist took a bite from the apple, hit a brown part, and picked it out, tossing it away.

He was unbelievably paranoid these days, even for him.

He hadn’t wanted to contact Flint from anywhere close to the Reception Center. Nyquist was afraid he was being tracked. In fact, when the prison train transported him to the parking lot inside the dome, the first thing Nyquist did was run a systems diagnostic on all his links to make certain nothing had piggybacked on board from the prison system.

He’d repeated the diagnostic three times so far, each time using a different diagnostic tool and a different method, double-checking his double-checks. And this was just to contact Flint. He wasn’t going to share information—not this way, anyhow.

So far, no one at the prison had figured out that Nyquist didn’t belong there. They believed his cover story about Uzvaan being the lawyer for Ursula Palmette. Actually, Nyquist believed no one really thought about it.

They didn’t care what happened to clones, as long as no one in charge of the prison got in trouble for anything.

He let out a small breath, set the apple on the counter, and ran a hand over his face. He was tired and elated and upset and hopeful, all at the same time. If he took too much time to think about how he felt, he would blame it all on a lack of sleep.

But he knew it was more than that. He was doing his best to keep an emotional distance, and he wasn’t an emotionally distant man. At some point, he would have to deal with everything he was feeling.

He just hoped he could postpone it until the crisis—or whatever someone wanted to call all of this—had ended.

He activated his private links, then encoded everything.

Hey, Flint
, Nyquist sent.
Where the hell are you?

Where should I be?
The response seemed irritated, but Nyquist couldn’t tell. He would probably be irritated if someone contacted him that way, so he was projecting on Flint.

Somewhere that we can talk.
Nyquist was feeling so paranoid that he didn’t even want to say he had information. He’d gotten warrants on less.

I’m at my office. Is this important? Should we bring in Noelle?

Nyquist shook his head before he remembered that the visuals weren’t on. He would talk to DeRicci later. First, he wanted to talk with Flint.

This is just between us,
Nyquist sent, then realized how mysterious that sounded. Still, he was going to stick with it.

I’ll be waiting for you
, Flint sent, and signed off.

Nyquist grabbed the apple. He’d been up for hours, and the apple had shown him just how hungry he was. He would pick up some food on the way to see Flint. No one was eating well lately, and Nyquist was beginning to see it as his mission to make sure that everyone got fed.

He smiled for the first time that day. He never really thought of himself as nurturing, yet there he was, providing meals and worrying about everyone else.

Maybe that was why he had gotten into the protection business. Maybe it was his own gruff way of taking care of the world around him.

Or maybe he just liked police work.

When he was actually doing it, and not making deals with mass murderers in exchange for information.

He finished the apple, tossed the core in the recycler, and rubbed his face one last time. The shower had only helped so much. If only he could scrub the last few hours from his brain, and keep the good things he’d learned.

If only.

FIFTEEN

“SO,” MR. STUPID Llewynn (“call me Evando”) said as he sat in the captain’s chair in front of a fake window with a forest scene on it, “tell me why it’s so important to add the ‘Shindo’ to your name.”

As if it were a whim, as if it didn’t matter at all, as if Talia was insisting on something stupid.

She sat on the edge of the chair across from Mr. Stupid Llewynn. If she sat back, the chair would try to hug her or something. It had freaked her out yesterday; she wasn’t going to make the same mistake today.

Before she tried to answer him, she looked at his office. Browns and creams, warmer tones than the waiting room, but still not real comforting to her. She really didn’t like this place, and she wasn’t exactly sure why.

Or maybe she just didn’t like Mr. Stupid Llewynn. She hated fake people with fake emotions, and he seemed like one of those.

Plus, he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.

“I thought we were finishing the entry interview,” she said.

“We are,” he said. “But first, let’s talk about this insistence on your name. It’s different from your father’s.”

She glared at Mr. Stupid Llewynn. “My mother’s name was Rhonda Flint-Shindo. She raised me until she died. She lied to me about my father. She said he didn’t want me. Instead, he hadn’t even known about me. So I keep the name because it’s
mine
now. No one else has that name. Just me.”

“And to honor your mother?” he asked.

“My mother ‘accidentally’ committed a major crime while working for Aleyd Corporation before I was born. When she finally had to face the ones she harmed, she committed suicide rather than take responsibility. She’s not someone you honor.”

“But you loved her,” Mr. Stupid Llewynn said.

“Yeah. When I thought she was just a mom. Then it turns out she’s a murderer and a liar and a coward, and I don’t love her anymore.”

Another tear ran down Talia’s cheek. This time, she didn’t brush it because she hoped to hell he didn’t notice.

His voice was soft. “You found this out three years ago? When you were thirteen?”

“Yeah. So?”

“It’s a tough age to find out your mother isn’t who you think she is,” he said. “How did your dad find you?”

Her breath caught. Jeez. Just in her history alone, there were things she couldn’t say.

“He was on a case,” she said. “He found me. I can’t say more than that.”

“Because of his secrets?” Mr. Stupid Llewynn said.

Her dad had explained the conversation they’d had: that Mr. Stupid Llewynn had said that Talia could invoke her dad’s secrets for his job, and her own life-threatening secrets whenever she needed to. It was completely up to her.

“He didn’t have to take me in,” she said. “He did. And he’s put up with me.”

“Do you think he loves you?” Mr. Stupid Llewynn asked.

She let out a half-exasperated sound, glad it came out first before she called him some kind of name.

“What kind of question is that?” she asked. “I thought this was an entry interview.”

“I’m trying to figure out what exactly you will need from us,” Mr. Stupid Llewynn said.

And then he waited, as if she remembered the question (she did) and would eventually answer it.

“Me and my dad are a lot better suited than me and my mom ever were. He’s as smart as I am, and hardly anyone else is. He really tries, and yes,
God
, he loves me. I don’t know why, because I’m a real pain in the ass, particularly right now when I can’t even help him—

She burst into tears. She stood up and went to the door. She couldn’t pull it open, and she couldn’t stop crying. She was actually sobbing, unable to take a breath without big honking sounds, and it felt like her entire body was going to break in half, but she couldn’t stop.

She had separated into two people: inside her head, the Real Talia was watching all this drama and standing, arms crossed, urging the What-The-Fuck-Are-You-Doing? Talia to stop crying and to suck it up. Other people have it worse, and she knew that.

A box of tissue floated over to her on a server tray. She glared at it, wishing she had the power to make that tray and those tissues burst into flame, just to prove a point.

But she didn’t have that ability. No human did—no species did, as far as she knew.

Then she realized she had stopped sobbing. The anger at the tissues had made the tears stop.

She grabbed a handful of tissues, and wiped off her face.

“Thank you,” she said begrudgingly.

She felt like she was at a crossroads now. If she really wanted the high ground, she should leave. But he’d actually gotten her to stop crying.

The last few days, these crying jags would hit her unaware and hold her for about an hour. Her throat was raw from them, her chest ached, and she looked like a mess.

She turned around.

He was watching her. This time, the compassion on his face didn’t seem fake.

Or maybe she needed it not to be fake.

But he hadn’t gotten up to hug her or told her to stop or asked her what was wrong. And she actually appreciated that.