Parrino said nothing during the short hop from Bethnal Green to Chelsea. He was sure he’d closed at least part of the case after speaking to Foucan. Ducard had to be the one who killed Halferne and Galloway. Since then, Serah had seriously aimed a gun at him and pulled the trigger, then admitted she was at the murder scene- why? Because it came to her in a dream, attached to a massive data dump to her brain? Her story, while completely beyond the pale, didn’t contradict any of the facts he had or the theories he’d made. In fact, until Mak’s call, he was ready to file it away as just a freak coincidence. Now, he wasn’t sure about any of it.
The longer the silence went on, the tenser Serah seemed. He was reasonably certain she wasn’t involved – well, maybe not, but he supposed he did believe her when she said she didn’t think she was involved.
He would likely only get one shot, if he were lucky. He played dumb when he phoned in the incident, saying he’d simply killed an armed intruder in a woman’s apartment, not that he’d killed a Division 4 agent in self-defense. This bought him an hour before the case was transferred out of his hands again, officially this time.
He didn’t want to alarm Serah further by telling her he was keeping her close not just for her protection but because he hoped, if he kept her moving instead of where they expected her, whoever was running Ducard and Soranus would slip up and reveal themselves before he lost the case. It was the only real play he had left, at least until he figured out why someone would be so hell-bent on murdering a scientist thought dead for more than 20 years.
He set the aircar on the roof of an upscale residential tower, and the two took the lift to the 87th floor. One room toward the end of the hall was marked off with digital indicators tracing the floor lines, indicating an active crime scene and instructing civilians to stay back unless accompanied by an officer.
Parrino grabbed Serah gently by the elbow and motioned her inside the apartment. It was possibly one of the nicest he’d ever seen, especially under these circumstances—tastefully decorated, immaculately clean, and amazingly spacious for the metroplex. It was definitely expensive and very luxurious. He noted fresh-cut flowers in vases placed strategically throughout the room and a terrace outside where more seemed to be growing.
Parrino walked them through the rest of the first floor and then up a narrow flight of stairs to the second – a sharp contrast to what he saw below. This part of the apartment, clearly not meant for visitors, was more utilitarian. A common area was surrounded by shelves of equipment whose purpose he could not fathom. Trophies, awards, and diplomas in different disciplines were scattered around the room. He recognized a few unremarkable pieces of art and sculpture from various countries worldwide. They were genuine but not particularly valuable — the kinds of trinkets you would find in a duty-free shop or street market, not collector’s items like the furnishings below.
Serah paced around the room, taking in everything as a reporter would. She stopped in the far corner of the room, where various holophotos sat, and began studying them as he motioned a uniformed officer over and asked to see the case report in progress. He had only moments before facing Mak, who would not be pleased with his decision to bring Serah along. Now, he had minutes to figure out how this scene and its events fit into his theory before Mak learned about his run-in with Ducard. He skimmed the in-progress notes, followed a hunch, and dove into a quick cross-reference on one anomalous detail Mak had flagged to look at when he finished collecting primary evidence from the scene, silently praying he was wrong.
He wasn’t.
He closed the file and walked over to Serah. The blood had drained from her face. She was holding one of the holophotos in her hands.
“Sergeant?” she said shakily, turning the frame so he could see it. It was a holophoto of her holding some kind of award. “This was a year ago, for my piece on the Emir of Persia.” Her voice was weak and shaky.
He tried his best to be understanding. “Come on. I need you in the other room.”
“Whose apartment is this?!” Serah demanded. “Why do they have photos of me?!”
“Just come on,” Parrino said quietly, leading her into the next room.
The room was a bedroom, but instead of a bed, a large medical unit took up one wall. In it, a human form lay covered by a sheet. In the corner, a slac was docked at a charging station. Real-time telemetry displays and historical readouts hung in the air all over the room. Two officers set up scanning and recording equipment next to the bed while a familiar holo stood in the corner, arms crossed, studying everything with his unique vision. He grimaced angrily as the two entered. “What the hell is she doing here?”
Parrino held up a hand. “She’s a reporter, Mak; she’s doing her job.”
“Bullshit,” Mak spat. “She’s not even carrying a datapad or recording device.”
“I don’t think that’s necessarily a requirement to be a reporter, Mak.”
“Not to mention, you just shot a Division 4 agent. You should be on administrative leave pending an investigation, not absconding with a witness.”
“Mak, I shot Ducard because he was trying to murder Miss Wyles. Division 4 doesn’t try to murder witnesses or suspects. Something is going on inside that agency. We can’t trust them.”
“Then get her to the station and into protective custody, then turn yourself in pending investigation. I’m on a totally different case here.”
“Are you? Tell me you’re not going to want to question her. Tell me this case isn’t directly related to the Halferne and Galloway murders and the rogue Division 4 agents.” Parrino paused for a moment.
Mak stared at him expressionless, trying to determine if he was bluffing.
“What?” he continued, “You mean you haven’t figured it out yet? Maybe there’s a benefit to breaking procedure and poking your nose around in cases that aren’t yours after all,” Parrino said.
Mak kept his voice down and tried to defuse the situation. “Okay, what do you think you know?”
“Give us the room, please,” Parrino said to the other two officers, who looked at each other and made a hasty exit.
Parrino regarded Serah as if sizing up her mental state. She looked to be on the verge of a breakdown, but he had no choice. It could still be a remote coincidence, but she should be able to confirm his hunch instantly. “I’m sorry you had to see this, but it’s important.” He slowly pulled the sheet back from the corpse, revealing an elderly woman, easily well over a century old. She had a standard data jack plugged into the latest generation of Phrame interfaces. A series of wires and connectors hooked her other machinery all over the room, which had, until recently, been keeping her essential autonomic functions working. Her face twisted in surprise and horror. A kitchen knife protruded from her larynx.
“We’ve received an automated alarm from the home network along with a copy of the security logs. Someone sliced in a couple of hours ago and programmed her slac over in the corner to do this.” He pointed to the drone sitting on the charging station. “Do you recognize her?” Parrino asked, apparently already knowing the answer before Serah did.
Serah studied the woman for a moment before recognition dawned. “Flo!” she whispered, deflated.
That wasn’t the answer he expected. Parrino pulled up his hasty background check again and scanned it. “Flo Ridamann, you’re right,” he said, pointing to one entry in a list of aliases. “Real name: Wendi Sparks. AKA: Johnny Sunshine, Crystal Beaucephalis, Sun Chi Kwok, Tora Bennett, Indri Akhtar, and…” He paused, hoping to cushion the blow. “Erik Walker.”
“Erik!?” Serah gasped.
“Of the Neward and Provident News Agency,” Parrino explained to Mak. “I’m guessing he’s her friend who uncovered the identity of Abil Halferne and the only other person who knew as much as Miss Wyles here about what was going on.”
Serah, now weeping uncontrollably, nodded in confirmation.
Mak said nothing but studied the rest of the biographical information in silence.
“Sorry I skipped ahead on you, Mak, but something is going on, and we’re sorely behind. Ducard was working off the books. The jurisdictional transfer was faked. He was supposed to be in France. I’m guessing Nine Stones will have surveillance video of him planting the murder weapon on Miss Wyles to cover up the fact that he’s the one who killed Halferne and Galloway. We now have the weapon and should be able to pick his DNA off of it. He tried to kill Serah, but I stopped him. He was already dead when the slac killed Sparks here, and either way, Foucan says he doesn’t have the technical skills to fake a transfer order, so I’m confident he wasn’t the one who hacked a master slicer’s home network and reprogrammed her slac to kill her.”
Mak nodded. “All the more reason to take her back to HQ and close everything out?”
This was the part he was dreading. The ask that he hated to make of his partner. “Why, so Division can take custody of the case and eliminate her, because that’s what they’re already trying to do on our beat?”
Mak flinched for the first time.
Parrino continued. “Someone wants this woman dead, and everyone she comes in contact with is being systematically eliminated. Our job is to protect the innocent.”
“When and how did you make the leap to innocent?” Mak admonished. “When we first met her, we both agreed she was acting strangely. It was odd enough that she knew where the crime scene was, and it was obvious she knew Halferne. She’s somehow involved. When did you suddenly make the leap to innocent?”
Parrino took a deep breath. He had no good answer, and he dared not tell Mak about the gun incident or her story about dreams and data dumps. “It’s just a gut feeling, Mak.”
“No! You had a gut feeling, then you changed it based on a bunch of circumstantial evidence that you pieced together to make it point where you want it to point. You’ve gone against your gut, David. Now, please, do the right thing and let someone less personally involved take over.”
Parrino nodded and began pacing. Serah was still crying over Spark’s body… or Flo’s… or her friend Erik’s… the situation was getting stranger by the minute. He took a deep breath, trying one last time to salvage the situation. “Okay, Mak. One question, right here, right now: Based on all of this, and everything I’ve told you, forgetting about your first gut feeling, do you think I’m wrong?”
Mak stopped and appeared to think about it for a moment. He looked at Parrino, his eyes conveying his steadfast determination. “Your theory seems solid, based on what you’ve given me, but it’s not rock-solid, and there are other explanations.”
“But?”
Mak took a deep breath and paused. “No ‘but.’ I still believe you’re too involved in this case, and you aren’t thinking straight about the proper course of action right now. You shot a Division agent, David. Crooked or not, you have to stand down and do the right thing.”
Parrino deflated. “Don’t make me do this, Mak.”
Mak nodded, knowing exactly what Parrino meant. “Nobody’s making you do anything, kid. ‘Cept maybe your hormones. You think you can outwit me? Let’s go, hotshot. You think you can take me on in a fight? May the better cop win.”
Parrino smiled half-heartedly. “Game on, old friend.” He went to the portable control unit and began typing in a series of commands.
Instantly, all of the projected words and images around the room began to scramble. Mak’s holo flickered twice, and he shot a look of disingenuous bile at Parrino as he broke up and vanished. “You sonofa…bbr…plnt… cwp…”
“What did you do!?” Serah asked, wiping tears from her face.
“Forced the unit to run a full diagnostic, then ran a diagnostic on that diagnostic, and a third diagnostic on the previous two, just to see how they were coming along. To preserve data integrity, that cuts off all network access and puts Mak’s construct back in hard storage in his psytron matrix until the system has determined nothing is corrupted and everything is okay. This means we have about ten minutes to figure out what we’re going to do before the best detective I’ve ever worked with goes full transhuman and starts hunting us. I’m sorry, but despite my outward show of bravery, he really is the better cop.”
He grabbed her arm and ushered her out of the room, stopping briefly in front of the two uniformed constables that had vacated the room earlier. “You guys are gonna be here a while, right?”
Both men nodded in unison. “Great, listen, my receiver’s out,” Parrino said, tapping his bracer. “Any chance I can borrow one of yours? I need to get this person of interest back to HQ and don’t want to be out of communication.”
The men looked at each other. “Sure, no problem, Sergeant,” the shorter one said, removing his comm unit and handing it to Parrino.
“Thanks so much, Constable …” He checked the man’s badge. “Pierson. I’ll leave it with the quartermaster when we get there. Have a good night, guys.” Without waiting for a response, he led Serah down the stairs and out of the apartment. Once clear, both sprinted for the elevator.
Serah hit the button for the rooftop landing pad. “Nine minutes,” she said nervously, as Parrino swapped the constable’s comm unit with his on his bracer. Thirty seconds later they were airborne.
Parrino dove for street level and headed towards the center of London. “Okay, we have a working comm, one they’re going to be tracing soon, a car that we need to abandon in less than five minutes, and no idea where we’re going or what we’re doing.”
“Right,” Serah said, trying to put herself into a reporter’s mindset again to regain control of herself. “Well, the last lead we had was Ducard. He seemed to think I was part of some network and wanted me to tell him where they were. Maybe there really is a network that could help me.”
“Okay, but where? Did Halferne ever mention any places in your dreams? Did your dreams ever take place anywhere in London?”
“No,” she said, thinking, “There was the beach. That’s a preprogrammed location. Then, the weird pipe room, which turned out to be where he was killed. Then, the Phrame, which is unlikely; otherwise, Erik would have found a trace there. Then the last one was on a tube car.”
“Tube car? Where were you going?”
“Nowhere I recognized. The car was lacking detail. I think it was a metaphor. It was all a blur of tunnels and cityscapes.” She thought for a moment, remembering something. “No, wait, I remember now, when I looked out the exit doors, it was daylight, and we were somewhere else. A tunneled bridge? Over water!”
“The Thames line?”
“No, there was a lot of water. There were no buildings. I remember the sun was on the horizon over the water.”
“Dover? The levtrain bridge over the channel?”
“Calais,” Serah said. “France.”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that, but we know he had allies there Ducard never found.”
Serah nodded. “So, we make a beeline for France? I suppose I could use a romantic getaway.” Parrino wondered if the stress of the current situation brought on the attempt at flirting, or if she simply had the worst possible timing.
He set the car down at an intersection and began adjusting the autonav on the console. “Maybe you reporters find getting shot at while chasing bad guys romantic, but for me, it’s a pretty boring Tuesday.” He pointed to a transit terminal five meters ahead. “Do us a favor and hail a taxi, human driver, not automated.”
Serah got out, ran to the transit station, and hit the call button. A red air taxi arrived just as Parrino walked over to join her. Behind him, the squad car, now on autonav, lifted off and began flying east. Parrino opened the air taxi door and handed his commlink and a credslip to the driver. “Can you get this to the concierge desk at Waterloo Starport, please?” The driver shot him a quizzical look, then saluted and sped off when Parrino flashed his badge.
Serah shot him a quizzical look. “I assume this is part of a plan.”
Parrino gestured to an alley and began walking. “In four minutes, when Mak is back online, London Metro will start their dragnet. My squad car is currently on its way to Victoria Cross Transit Hub. They’ll probably seize control of it, but it will still take several minutes before they find out it’s empty. They won’t be able to stop the taxi heading to Waterloo Starport with my comm unit until it gets there in about ten minutes, but with luck, that will split their attention and give us a window out of here.”
“Great, so where are we going?”
“Croydon.”
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