Bitter Angels (44 page)

Siri slung the gun over her shoulder and stepped forward, into the light.

“Siri?” it said, and a good imitation of Vijay’s confusion creased its scarred face. “Siri, what’s going on?”

She didn’t answer. Shawn was right. She mustn’t talk to it.

“Come on, Siri, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

It still had one hand free and it grabbed for her as she approached, but she caught its arm. With one twist, its elbow popped. She dropped the arm, which flopped and dangled uselessly, as the construct gasped in pain.

She cocked her head, listening carefully. There. She heard a buzzing in its throat. Of course. In its throat, behind its ear. That was where the container would be.

She pulled out the knife she’d brought for the purpose.

“I’ll get you out, Vijay. Don’t worry, lover.”

She brought up the blade and the construct screamed.

“Siri!”

Siri jerked around. Another shadow emerged, from the other end of the tunnel. Siri crouched into a ready stance,
but she couldn’t get the gun up without dropping the knife. The shadow raised empty hands.

“It’s Terese!”

“Field Commander.” Siri straightened to attention, then suspicion hit her. “How did you know where I’d be?”

“I didn’t. I had to guess where you’d bring something you needed to keep safe, since you abandoned your post without notice.” Terese’s voice grew sharp. “You want to explain to me why I shouldn’t chew you out for going AWOL?”

Behind her, the construct panted through clenched teeth. Terese gave it a quick glance. “You’re right, I do,” she said. “But I do see how important this is.”

Siri sagged with relief. “You understand what’s really going on, then?”

“Most of it. Some of it’s not so clear.”

“That’s okay. I can explain the rest, just as soon as I get Vijay out.” She raised the knife again and turned toward the construct.

“Siri, wait. I want to get Dr. Gwin to take care of the surgery. It’s what we brought her for, after all. If we do this too quickly, we risk hurting Vijay.”

Siri froze. Her gaze darted from the knife to the construct. It cringed back.

“You’re right, you’re right. I should have thought.” Siri pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. “It’s been so hard these past few days. It’s been just me and Shawn.”

Terese laid a hand on Siri’s shoulder. “You’re lucky you have Shawn.”

“Yeah.” Siri looked up at her commander and smiled. “I shouldn’t complain, I guess. Sorry.”

Siri could not believe her ears. “You’ve got to get Vijay out of there now! I’m not sure how much longer he’ll last!”

“We’ve got to get him into a sterilized space for the surgery,” Terese reminded her. “We don’t know what kind of infection an organic container could transmit down here.”

“She has a point.”

“I know. Believe me.” Terese stepped into the spotlight. “We’re clear!” she called up the stairs.

Dr. Gwin was the first one down. The spiral skeleton of the stairway swayed under the force of her pounding footsteps. Two assistants followed, carrying a padded stretcher between them. Terese handed Gwin a set of release capsules, then she turned back to Siri.

“We’re going to find out what happened here, Siri. I swear we are.”

“We know what happened,” Siri answered. “At least most of it. Once we get Vijay out, there’s just one or two things I need to con…”

The drug finally hit, melting the world into a blur of color, and the last thing Siri saw was Terese leaning over her, the needle still in her hand and tears welling up in her eyes.

I waited for Liang to glance up. His gaze slid over me at first. Then he stopped and looked again, taking in the fact that I was in uniform, and alone. Beside him Orry Batumbe drew back, clearly far less certain about what he was seeing than his superior.

“If you’re looking for Field Commander Drajeske, she left a couple of hours ago,” said Liang. “I don’t know where.” He did not bother to disguise his anger at this fact.

I ignored that. “You’re the one I’d like to speak with, Seño Chen.”

Liang frowned but handed off the sheets to Batumbe. We walked down to his office. I followed, as silent as a Clerk, until he’d closed and latched his door behind us. I’d always wondered about that latch. It looked like it wouldn’t stop a determined child, but I had a distinct feeling it knew exactly who came and went from this place.

“Are you all right, Amerand?” Liang asked me, and I think he really wanted to know.

I nodded. “More or less. But I need a favor.”

He leaned back against his desk and folded his arms. “Now is not a good time. Things are kind of on the boil around here.”

“Liang,” I said softly. “This is important—and it’s personal.”

“Why aren’t you asking Terese?” His implication was clear. When I had sent my father to get a message to the saints, I’d sent him to Terese and not Liang, who had been helping me for years. In Liang’s eyes, I’d switched sides somehow.

The truth was, I had thought about just going to Terese, but in the end I’d hesitated. Terese did not trust Emiliya. Could I really bring her a request to help someone she didn’t trust?

“Terese hasn’t got a terminal into the Security net, and you do,” I said. “Please, Liang.”

Liang sighed. He glanced at me again, then at the door. “All right. Once.” He moved behind the desk.

“Thank you.”

Liang touched his fingertips to the desktop and looked at me from under his furrowed brow. “Amerand?”

“Yes?”

“I’m trusting you. You’ve always been as up-front as you can with me, but the commander’s brought you into whatever the Guardians are on. I’m not a Guardian. I’ve got no oath to keep, and I’ve got your people as well as mine depending on me.”

I nodded. “I told you the truth, Liang. This is personal.”

“Okay.” Liang lit up the desktop, opening a single active pane with a letter board underneath it. He touched the black area to one side and a new panel opened. His hand
moved across it, sketching some colored lines, then redirecting them. They all flashed green for a split second, and the pane was gone.

“You’ve got ten minutes.” Liang marched out of the room and slammed the door shut behind him.

The latch snicked back into place without me touching it.

I swallowed hard and walked around the desk. I couldn’t bring myself to sit in the comfortable chair. I laid my fingertips on the letters. They flashed blue as I touched them. I spelled out my commands and my passwords silently, without any tactile sensation but the smooth coolness of the desktop.

Liang’s desk was the one terminal that the Common Cause saints had been permitted to connect into our system. It was meant to be our way to spy on their conversations with our people. I’d installed the taps myself. Since then, there’d been a lot of debate about whether we were actually catching everything that went through it. Personally, I had never believed we were, but I’d never bothered to fix it either. It suited me just fine to give Liang some privacy.

My ears strained. A dull humming filled my mind under my thoughts, and I realized my imagination was supplying the sound of a cleaning drone somewhere behind me.

Slowly, I worked my way into the Security’s network, and from there through Fortress. From there, I leapt across to Hospital.

Sweat trickled down my brow even though my hands had gone ice-cold. They were watching me. They had to be watching me. They could see through walls. They could
hear thoughts. They were waiting in their silence for me to come out. When I did, it would finally be over.

But at least I’d know what had really happened to Emiliya’s family. I’d be able to help her, if only a little. It was this thought that kept me going. For once I’d be who I thought I was, who I wanted to be. One child of Oblivion being loyal to another.

The networks were not connected except by the thinnest of threads. Another way of keeping us apart from each other. But as I inched cautiously forward, the basic functions looked mostly the same. I called for a search. I entered the ID codes I had for Emiliya from carrying her as a passenger on my shuttle.

The screen cleared. It flashed yellow.

The droning was all my imagination. They couldn’t really see me, couldn’t really read my mind.

Numbers and code flashed past, stilled and cleared, and I could read:

Known living direct offspring: Child, Male, Amerand

Laos Jireu 571BG000912AB24

I stared at my name. I read it again to be sure. My throat swelled and constricted. Child, Male, Amerand Laos Jireu.

This report was about my mother. My mother. How did Emiliya’s codes get me to my mother? Why did they have a report about her on Hospital? She was out on a work detail. Had she been hurt? Was she sick? My mouth went completely dry. My vision twitched so violently, I could barely string the words together. Had I wasted all this time asking Liang to keep an ear out for word of my mother when I should have been asking Emiliya?

I read the data Emiliya had so carefully strung together for me. I read until I could not stand and I fell backward into Liang’s comfortable chair.

She was dead.

I had known, on some level, but I hadn’t believed. I’d been able to find my father and pull him out. I had believed I could do the same for my mother, someday, somehow. They had risked everything for me, how could I do anything less for them? I was all they had left.

But she was dead. Killed on Hospital.

We all suspected they used us in experiments. We whispered it to ourselves in the dark, but they’d denied it and we’d never seen it, because those sections of Hospital were off-limits to the likes of us. So it had remained on the level of other tunnel rumors, and we let it be.

Except Emiliya must have known. Emiliya had left this information for me.

My hands moved across the keys. I didn’t even bother to cover my tracks. I used my open ID. I used my real name. I was past caring. I already knew the answer anyway. I was just looking for confirmation. No one could possibly call me out for looking for confirmation of a friend’s death.

A friend who had died at 12:30:34:14:09, local date and time.

Of course not. After all, she didn’t belong to me. She belonged to them. She was theirs, like I was theirs, as my parents and Kapa were theirs, to be used up as required, and there was nothing any one of us could do. Oblivion’s children were born to be forgotten.

The whole desktop flashed bright red, then went black. My ten minutes must have been up. I got to my feet and walked out, closing the door behind me. Liang’s clever lock would surely take care of the rest. I walked out through the lobby. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Terese standing with a scarred, bald man beside the white clinic door. She didn’t see me and I didn’t stop. She and I were finished. There was nothing the saints could do for any of us anymore.

I was halfway across the courtyard when my father stepped out of the shadows.

Ever mindful of his role as my servant, my father bowed. “I thought you might require…something,” he said softly.

I closed my eyes briefly. My guts twisted hard. “No, nothing.” I couldn’t draw him into this. I didn’t want to tell him he was about to lose his last son.

“Amerand,” he whispered. “Please.”

My resistance shattered in an instant. I nodded, and we moved out into the middle of the yard, to where we were surrounded by voices. It was one of the paradoxes of an observed life. The place you had the most privacy was in the middle of a crowd.

I kept my gaze on the shifting mass of people, the tattered strangers who were as much my family as my blood kin had
ever been. We’d all walked from prison to a trap. We’d all tried to escape, or to free those dearest to us.

We’d all failed.