Broken Mirror (24 page)

Although, he
had
given Victor the data egg. Why wouldn’t it open?

An icy wave of sadness crashed over him. His granfa had never given up on him. Granfa Jeff tried to warn him and to prepare him for what was to come.

Victor shivered and tightened his grip on the radiation detector. He withdrew the rod from the corpse’s mouth.

“What now?” Tosh asked.

Victor’s limbs felt stiff and his mouth dry. He looked at the dirt and the stones. They had a long night ahead to rebuild the burial mound, but first they had to desecrate the corpse even more. “We need a sample. His tongue. Could you . . .” He couldn’t finish his sentence.

“Fine.” Tosh gestured at the coffin. “Choose your cut. Tongue, you said?”

Victor clenched his fists. “You don’t have to be an asshole about it,” he said.

The wind rustled through a stand of eucalyptus trees nearby.

“That was gallows humor,” Tosh said. “It helps. You have a container?”

Victor thought for a moment and then handed him the small mason jar he’d taken from the restaurant storeroom. “I guess robbing a grave isn’t the worst thing a Broken Mirror has ever done.”

“You said it,” Tosh agreed, then froze. “Look,” he whispered and pointed down the hill.

A car’s headlights shone through the bars of the entrance gate. They dimmed, and in the moon’s glow, Victor watched as two figures passed through the gatehouse and started running toward them.

You don’t understand. By the time Victor left home, it was already ten years too late. Nearly twenty, actually, since it all started in Carmichael.

 . . .

No, I don’t approve of the government’s response to our “return,” obviously.

 . . .

And what do you think would have happened if there hadn’t been a Carmichael event in the first place? Oh, you don’t know? How shocking.

 . . .

Would it have been worse? Oh, who the fuck can say?

—Inquest interview with Robbie Eastmore – redacted version (1998)

“Hurry,” Victor said.

Tosh reached in the corpse’s mouth, cut out Jefferson Eastmore’s tongue, and sealed it inside the mason jar. He handed the jar to Victor then tugged him by the elbow, leading him behind the grave mound’s surrounding wall and hissing in his ear, “I’m going to draw them away. I’ll catch up with you.” Tosh sprinted away.

Swaths of light played over the hillside. The figures climbed closer.

A tinkling of metal-on-stone rang out from the direction Tosh had gone, and the lights swiveled after him.

Victor crouched low and crept to a eucalyptus tree a few meters down the hill, favoring his injured foot and carrying the jar with Granfa Jeff’s tongue.

When Victor looked back, he froze.

Granfa Jeff’s body lay exposed to the air, defaced, a violation nearly as taboo as murder. Victor’s eyes watered. There was no way he alone could lift the coffin lid to replace it.

“Sorry, Granfa,” Victor said quietly.

Glancing back to make sure the figures were still following Tosh, Victor limped as quickly as he could down the hill and through the gatehouse. He jumped in his car and drove home, knowing it was risky: that was the first place anyone would look for him. But if he was leaving SeCa, he had to collect his things and hope that Tosh would lead his pursuers on a long, circuitous chase.

As he walked to his front door, he wondered if he should go through with Ozie’s plan. It was one thing to rob a graveyard at night, but there would be people working overnight at BioScan. Maybe he should pack a bag and leave SeCa now.

On his front step, Victor pinged Ozie, sending, “BioScan too risky. Let’s talk.”

Ozie replied with a text message. “Bring B.S. data to exchange for info about who killed J.E.”

That settled it. Victor believed Ozie hadn’t told him the full story yet. He would get the data from BioScan and then head to the mountains.

Besides, he really didn’t have much of a choice.

Victor opened the front door and reached for the light panel. Something moved in his living room.

His heart pumped adrenaline. He gripped the glass jar tightly. A figure jumped up from the couch.

The lightstrips popped on. Elena stood there, startled, wiggling her fingers in an embarrassed half wave.

Victor slammed the door behind him, setting the glass jar down on the entry table. “What are you doing here?”

Elena’s hair was pulled into a tight bun, which her hands smoothed repeatedly. “You wouldn’t respond to my messages.”

“So you broke into my house? Again?”

“I just want to help.”

“The more you keep saying that, the less I believe you.” He wiped sweat off his brow. “Sorry, it’s been the worst kind of day.”

Elena blinked at him, and the whites of her eyes glowed orange
—
a sign of anxiety.

He asked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

She gulped. “I have to tell you—”

“What?”

Elena sighed, seemed to stand taller, and then said, “Some people came to ask me some questions. A man and a woman. They’re watching you.”

Victor felt his gut convulse. The couple from Little Asia and the graveyard. “Why?”

“They said they want to keep you safe.”

And zebras are horses in formal attire. No way. Keeping me safe isn’t high on their priority list, whoever those people are.
He said, “They were lying. Must have been.”

“They left me a Mesh ID and told me to contact them when you got home.” Her hands fretted with the hem of her shirt. She looked nervous. Could she be lying?

“Don’t do it. If they come to you again,” Victor warned, “don’t tell them anything. They’re dangerous, Ellie. They kidnapped the herbalist.”

She flinched. “Kidnapped? Wait, what herbalist?”

“They had her tied up in a van.” Victor rushed to the kitchen and started collecting vials of tincture and bottles of alcohol and distilled water.

Elena followed him, gaping as he shoved everything into a backpack. “What is all that? Victor? Talk to me.”

“I have to get out of here.” He brushed past her into the living room, not sure whether he could trust anyone.

“Why?” Panic rode on her voice.

“Listen. Before I suspected his body was irradiated. Now I have proof.” He pointed to the glass jar holding a lump of tongue.

Her gaze fixed on it. “What is that?”

“A bit of his tongue. It was all I could get. His body belongs in a lab. Elena, I think his death is connected to my condition. To the way people like me are diagnosed.”

She took a deep breath. “Why would you think that?”

“The Health Board changed the diagnostic protocol for mirror resonance syndrome. There’s going to be a lot more people like me in the near future. Granfa Jeff stood in the way, and so someone took him out. I need to get out of here.”

Victor went to his bedroom closet and arranged pairs of underwear, pants, and socks in a backpack to cradle the glass vials. He took a small box from under his bed, where he’d been hiding the little jade figure that he had wanted to give Elena.

He retrieved the herbal book, his dreambook, and the glass jar, and swept into the bathroom to grab a few toiletries and the lightstick he’d picked up at Oak Knoll. He kept the data egg in his pocket, along with his MeshBit and wallet.

“I think that’s it,” he muttered to himself.

Elena asked, “Where are you going?”

“BioScan.”

“You packed all that to go to work? Nope, I don’t buy it.”

“I
am
going there.”

“Hey,” Elena said, rubbing his shoulder. “Let me help. What can I do?”

Could he trust her? She was so erratic in her attentions, so insistent about certain things, and absent when he needed her. As bad as a cat
—
he never knew when her moods would change.

But who was
he
to turn
her
away? He needed help, even if it meant simply accepting a few small gestures of friendship. If Elena was willing to help, he wanted her near. His doubts were simply paranoia. She deserved better than that.

The decision to let her come along lifted a weight off his shoulders. Victor smiled. “Okay. Come with me to the office.”

They walked outside to his car. He looked around, but there was no sign of anyone following them. Victor pulled open the driver side door and put his things in the backseat. Elena got in.

Victor drove to the BioScan campus. He left the keys with her and took his bag and the Bose-Drive. “I’ll be right back. If anyone comes . . .”

“I’ll think of something,” Elena said. “You have your MeshBit, right? So I can contact you?”

“Yeah.” He patted his pants pocket and felt the metal cylinder.

He lumbered to the entrance. His ankle throbbed every time he put weight on it. His MeshBit unlocked the front doors. His presence would be registered in the after-hours log, but he could see no alternative.

The analysts’ office was dark. He turned on the lights, found the input cable to his MeshTerminal, and wrapped the data leech around it. If Ozie was any good at hacking, preloaded spyware would keep the theft from being logged. He booted up his terminal and vidscreen and navigated BioScan’s systems until he reached the sequencing database. He put the Bose-Drive next to the spectrum relay and paired them.

Victor started transferring as many individual records as he could. Around fifteen thousand full genomes fit on the Bose-Drive, along with metadata indicating which were people with MRS. The recording process would take ten minutes.

As each second ticked by, Victor grew more anxious. Would he be able to get away? The strangers might show up any moment.

Ozie would figure everything out. Victor just had to make it to the Organized Western States in one piece.

The Bose-Drive reached 50 percent of its capacity. The office was quiet except for the whirring sounds of liquid heat sinks.

Victor tried to raise Ozie on his MeshBit again, but there was no answer. He looked up the address he’d received. The road outside of Truckee in the Sierra Nevada Mountains didn’t have a name, only a number: 22. Victor twitched. He didn’t trust himself to drive serpentine roads in the dark and would have to stop somewhere en route and spend the night.

What to do about Elena? She said she wanted to help him. By her own admission, there was nothing keeping her in SeCa. But wouldn’t he be putting her in danger by bringing her along?

The Bose-Drive completed copying the data, and Victor stuffed it in his bag. His MeshBit chimed. It was Auntie Circe. He activated the sonofeed only. “Auntie?”

“Victor, I’m on my way to the mansion. I convinced Mother to let you in again. If you went to Oak Knoll, I want to hear about it.”

Victor felt split in two. He wanted to see her, beg his family’s forgiveness, and return to his seminormal life. But he’d seen the evidence. He couldn’t let Granfa Jeff’s death go unresolved. And when his family learned what he’d done to the corpse, they’d probably send him to a Class One facility.

“Victor, are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here. I did go to Oak Knoll. There’s
—
there’s nothing left. What’s so special about the XSCT compound again? You said it might be related to a cure?”

There was a long pause. Victor felt the weight of the Bose-Drive in his arms. What would Auntie Circe do if she knew he was stealing? How much could he disappoint his family before they disowned him?

Auntie Circe cleared her throat. “XSCT was a gene therapy delivery system. We were running animal trials to measure whether XSCT-19900032 could suppress the MRS gene when we lost everything. At least a year of work is gone. If we had records or samples . . .” She sighed.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asked.

Jefferson Eastmore had perfected a technique using viruses to deliver self-destruct codes to cancer cells. But it depended on detailed understanding of cancer genes. As far as Victor knew, the mirror resonance syndrome gene wasn’t fully understood. If researchers had found a way to suppress the gene, that might mean a cure was possible.

She said, “I didn’t want to raise your expectations unnecessarily. You’ve seemed volatile lately. And the merger has been demanding my time. I’ll see you this evening?”

Victor gulped. “I don’t think so. Elena and I . . .”

“A date? How sweet! Victor, that’s wonderful. Of course, I’ll be around for the next few days. Come find me.”

A lump rose in Victor’s throat. It hurt to lie to her when she’d always believed in him. “I love you, Auntie.”

“I love you, Victor.”

He terminated the feed and limped down the hall. The prospect of a cure, whenever he thought of it, sent his pulse racing. Why had Granfa Jeff destroyed it? Victor rubbed the data egg in his pocket. The answer must be there. There must be a way to open it. Maybe Ozie could help with that too.

“Hey!” someone shouted. It came from a conference room where several employees sat amid remnants of an Italian takeout dinner.

Victor kept walking.

“Victor! What are you doing here?”

He recognized the voice as belonging to Sarita, the office administrator who always had a few nasty words to throw Victor’s way. He turned and said, “This is a late night for you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Balls! This merger is killing me. None of the systems are talking to each other, and Karine’s riding me to
—
well, you know how she is.” She winked at him.

Victor saw a chance to cover his tracks, at least temporarily. “That reminds me. I’ll be working remotely for the next few days. Would you remind Karine if you see her? She asked me to work on a special project, and I need to focus on it without distractions. I came by for one of these.” Victor held up the Bose-Drive.

“Oh, I get it. You got a fancy new title, and now you’re going to Bermuda to celebrate. Must be nice to be an Eastmore.”

He bit back a retort. As long as she passed on the lie for him, he would be grateful. “Thanks, Sarita. You’re the best.”

She snorted, rolled her eyes, and returned to the conference room.