Marked (17 page)

I activated the sleep center of the brain and pulled back.

Rex was saying, “—so-called evidence is clearly a plant to cast doubt on the Guild First party. To be honest, I didn't think the Cooperists had it in them.”

He looked to the side, reacted to Nelson's collapse.

“What did you do?” he said to me in a dangerous voice.

I said, “I found your killer.”

•   •   •

Rex pushed a button on his desk, and the air
popped
as teleporters displaced the air. I found myself staring into the barrels of two guns.

Stone grabbed my arm. I could suddenly
feel
his anger and shock and concern.
You knocked out the head of Enforcement. The head of Enforcement! They'll execute us. They'll do worse.
He added layer upon layer of his own conflicting loyalties and what I'd told Kara.

I wrenched my arm away.

“You just made a very serious accusation,” Rex said, in a cold voice. “Nelson appears to be breathing, so I'll give you the opportunity to explain yourself. Choose your next words carefully. They may be your last.”

I looked into the barrel of those guns and reality hit. I blinked, and talked for my life. “You're looking for the person who manipulated two leading people in the Guild into starting a madness epidemic, or at least the suggestion of one. With illegal Tech, a device with parts supplied by a man named Garrett Fiske. Fiske is arguably the most important man in the Southeast organized crime world, and he and Nelson have met. Repeatedly. Over the last several years.”

Rex took a step forward. “How do you know this?”

“I read it from his mind,” I said, turning my attention to him, though the back of my head screamed to look at the gun. He was the danger. He. Even if I could somehow disable both guards here and get away, he had promised to track me down, and I believed he would. “You hired me because I can get into and out of the deepest part of people's minds quickly and without them knowing. You recruited me because you wanted me to do this for you.”

“He's telling the truth,” Stone said.

I glanced over. He was pale, adrenaline moving all too quickly. He'd set his gun on the floor and had his hands in the air.

Rex regarded us. “You saw Nelson using the device you referenced to kill Meyers? Or, I suppose, force him to kill himself?”

“No,” Stone said, and stepped into my mind to take the information he wanted. I let him. “Adam saw him meeting with a man he knows as Fiske.”

I had to step in then. “Fiske is a very dangerous man, and he's had his hand in the underground Tech trade for a while. Furthermore, he's had a hand in Bradley's and in Tamika's criminal enterprises, which threatened to publically embarrass the Guild—maybe worse. Is it such a big leap to think he's involved here? An unstable Guild only benefits him. If the government and the Guild fight on a large scale, that only benefits him. It wouldn't surprise me if he's behind all of this.”

“And how does that benefit him?” Rex asked.

“Cherabino says he wants power. Instability gives him a vacuum to step into.” I took a breath. I'd been talking out of my ass . . . but I actually believed it. Now that I'd said it I thought maybe it was true Fiske was doing all of this for some bigger reason. “There's no way that Nelson could be helping the Guild by cooperating with Fiske,” I said. Then added, mind to mind on a private channel,
Unless those illegal shipments of yours that were getting hijacked are no longer in play.

Rex was very unhappy with having me in his mind, and shored up the beach that separated his public from his private thoughts.
The Guild deserves every advantage in the cold war with the normals. I will not apologize for seeing to those advantages. But no. Those parts were purchased from a custom-order depot in Canada and smuggled across the border. Most are experimental. All are numbered and tracked internally in high-security locations with official labs. Most of the technology is there simply to give us additional information and resources. None—I repeat, none—were purchased as a result of high-level deals with
criminals
. And while the majority of the Council would rather not know details, they know it is going on. The Council chair has approved all dealings.

He took yet another step forward, now only feet from me, barely out of the line of fire of the guns.

Stone took a step back.

I looked, again, at the barrels of the guns. The guards seemed positively unhuman in their stillness.

“You have made a very serious accusation, and it will be dealt with appropriately,” Rex said. “Moby—that is your name, is it not?”

“Yes,” the man on the right said, pointing his gun at the floor but continuing to watch me carefully. The other one, on the left, a short-shaved guy with a scar over his ear, continued to point the gun.

“Moby, I ask you to take Tobias Nelson into custody. Put him in the secure cells, and don't let any of his immediate reports see him. Assuming the remainder of the Council agrees, he will have a deep mind-scan beginning tonight. Under no circumstances are you to allow him to escape, do you understand? No one else in the cell, no access unless and until I authorize personally.”

Moby looked over. “Nelson, sir?”

“That's what I said. Please be quick. Your job will be much harder if he wakes up.”

“Understood, sir.”

He went over, picked Nelson up with some difficulty, and teleported out.

“And as for you,” Rex told me, “as I said, you have leveled a very serious accusation against a respected senior member of the Guild with voting status. If—and I mean if—your claims have some validity to them, you will be rewarded. I will consider this a significant step toward paying off your debt and fulfilling your charge. The truth is welcome at the Council. However, if, as I believe is more likely, your claims are spurious, I will personally see to it that your Ability is wiped and you are released on the street with the last ten years of your life erased and no resources whatsoever to put it back together. Have I made myself clear?”

I stood only from force of habit. He was talking about undoing all of my recovery, all of my learning, everything I was, to put me back in the horrible place I'd been right when they kicked me out the first time, no resources, no knowledge of the outside world. And to do it with no Ability . . .

“That's far worse than killing me,” I said, and immediately regretted saying it.

Rex smiled then, a cruel smile. “Davidson, take him into custody. Same rules as with Nelson. And be careful—this one's tricky, and he has no problem rummaging around in your mind without permission.”

“We going to do this the hard way or the easy way?” Davidson asked me.

Which was how I found myself in sticky cuffs in a bear hug from a sweaty male person who was about to teleport me God knows where.

“And now for you, Stone,” I heard Rex's voice say. “Don't think you're going to—”

And then the world scrambled into a kaleidoscope.

CHAPTER 16

I was
in
the same damn chilly cell for three hours, three echoing hours in which I had no one and nothing except my own thoughts. At least there was water this time. The floor, of course, was just as sticky and cold and uncomfortable. The sound to the other cells was turned off, though, so I didn't have to listen to the screaming.

So instead I listened to my own thoughts telling me I was going to die—or much worse, that I was going to be unmade, made something not me. I pulled out Swartz's voice over and over again to tell me not to overreact, to calm down. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes the panic seeped into my bones and took over.

Footsteps came down the hall, and I sat up like a startled rabbit. I went as close to the door as I could get without being shocked and looked down the hallway.

“Hello, Adam,” Jamie mouthed when she saw me. I couldn't hear anything, but I saw the words. She had a man in uniform with a gun with her, but his body language was more wary of the surroundings than hers. I was betting she'd called in a favor with a former student.

She stepped up to the cell and pushed something in that control panel on the side of the cell. A small beep came over the cell. She said, “It's good to see you.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked her.

“What are you?” she returned. “The student I trained would never have misstepped this badly.”

“I didn't . . .” I trailed off.

Her eyes focused on me, and I realized all at once how much deeper the wrinkles around those eyes were. She was older—I was older—than when she'd trained me. So much older.

“Things have changed. The whole world has changed, the Guild notwithstanding, and I'm supposed to keep up with everything all at once? I don't have a rabbit for you, Jamie. I don't have a rabbit for anyone, it seems. My hat's empty.”

Jamie looked at the man, who nodded and walked back to the end of the row, keeping an eye on the surroundings but giving her some privacy.

Her mind was strong enough that even through the insane shielding between us, I could feel an echo of it.

“I just finished giving my testimony to a roomful of Council members. They wanted to know if you were reliable.” She held up a hand to stave off my automatic objections. “They wanted to know if you were a reliable Cooperist all those years ago. I told them that you, like Cooper, believed in unbreakable ethics. That you believed the ethics and the rules mattered more than the cost you had to pay to keep them. And even your drug habit was induced by an experiment that you did not fully understand the consequences of. I told them you were reliable, once, and that if your experience with the normal police should prove anything, it's that you've learned to be reliable again.” She paused. “Did I tell them the truth?”

I stood, inches from a door that warped reality with an electrical field that might kill me if I touched it. I stood, an unthinkable distance from Jamie, in ways that had everything and nothing to do with that electrical field.

“Are you still a good person?” Jamie asked, her old wise eyes demanding me to tell her the truth.

“Yes,” I said, in a rush. “Yes, I'm a good person—I am now. I want to be. I want to stand up for something that matters. I want to do something that matters, again. The Guild is getting too arrogant, Jamie. They're doing things that could break the world. And what's worse is, I don't think all of you believe in those things. Do you realize what Guild First will cost you if some of their tactics come out into the world?”

“Do you realize what it will cost us if they don't?” Jamie asked sadly.

I was floored. Jamie was . . . she was a Cooperist. She'd always been. She'd taught me!

“I'm sorry, Adam. I can't stand for idealism anymore. The normals are arming themselves against us. Not just detection devices built into their very skin, as if that wasn't worrisome enough. No, their military is arming themselves with what they're calling bats, small devices they believe will immobilize anyone with Ability through repeated bursts of Mindspace waves, like a bat's call paralyzes its insect prey.”

I took a breath. That was terrifying. “Does it work?” I asked. I had no reason to doubt her; Jamie's family, like Kara's family, was an old Guild family heavily involved in the normal military under contract. If anyone in the Guild would have military information that was supposed to be secure, it would be one of these two old families.

She smiled, but it wasn't a happy smile. “It works somewhat. But not on all Abilities, and not nearly as well as they think. There's too much bleed-off into electromagnetic waves, and not enough into Mindspace directly. This will change, Adam. They will get better.”

“You're Guild First?” I asked, still in shock with all of this. “You're in favor of arming yourself against the normals?”

“I'm a pragmatist, not a proponent of podium-slapping and propaganda,” Jamie said. “You know me well enough to know I believe in discourse and freedom. I'd like to try every other conceivable tactic before we use anything irrevocable. But if you're asking whether I'll side with the Guild in a war against the normals . . .” She smiled that not-smile again. “Isn't the choice obvious? There's still a place for you here, Adam. There's always been a place for you here.”

“There hasn't been a place for me here since I got kicked out!” I spat. “And now you come here to gloat while they decide to do it again, only worse? That's nothing at all like the Jamie I used to know.”

“That's really what you think? That I'm here to gloat?”

“Isn't it?”

“I'm here to show you support. To visit you in your dark hour. The deep-scan has already begun. If you're certain of your course, you have nothing left to fear.” She took a breath. “Tobias Nelson is an incredibly powerful man. If he has done things to hurt the Guild, someone had to speak up against it. I'm proud of you for being that person. Whatever else you have become, you've become brave. And that much I recognize.” She turned, as if to walk away.

“Jamie?” I asked, more quietly.

“Yes?”

“The Council sided with me for the deep-scan?”

“They recognize your training”—and there was a real smile—“and the expertise you've built the last years. The vote was overwhelmingly in your favor.”

“They'll still wipe me if I'm wrong, though,” I said.

“I don't know. If they do, I'll sit with you while it happens,” she said, that gentle, grandmother's voice.

“You won't stand up for me?” I asked.

She took a step toward the door. “Adam, if you're lying, you're putting one of the most powerful men in the Guild through an incredible amount of pain and suffering because you were too lazy to do the job you were set to. Or, I suppose, too incompetent. I'll sit with you. I'll make your transition as easy as I can make it. You were my student. But at that point you will have earned your fate.”

“That's a hell of a vote of confidence,” I said.

“I'm reasonably certain you're telling the truth as you understand it,” Jamie returned gently. “I must go.”

“Wait. Don't—”

But she'd pushed the button already and couldn't hear me. I watched her walk away, and wondered all over again in the silence: Had I done the right thing? Fiske had to be behind this, but apparently the Guild First persons were far more concerned about their maneuvering against the normals than they were about the letter of the Koshna Accords. Would it even matter that Nelson had been making deals with the devil? Would the Council even care if people had to die as collateral damage? I realized all over again that the mind-scanners all worked directly for Nelson. They would have every reason to cover this up.

And then even Jamie wouldn't speak for me.

•   •   •

I was dragged out into the elevator again, then across the walkway to the main elevator for the professional building. Johanna was there when I was marched out, in cuffs.

“You're everywhere,” I said. “Why are you everywhere?”

She smiled a smile that felt a little empty. “This is a Health and Human Services crisis, which is demanding the full Council vote. My boss is out of town at the conference and has empowered me at this point to take her role on the Council. Plus there is a great deal to be done and I have the expertise to do it. Here, I'll show you where you're to go.”

Back to the top floor, where a central open area had plenty of flowering plants that set off my allergies immediately. I sneezed. The guard pulled me along anyway.

“How do we tell they're ready?” the guard asked her.

“There's a light. We'll go ahead and get queued up.”

We passed through two hallways, me sneezing like mad, finally settling in front of a closed double wooden door. No benches or anything stood in front of it, just the door and some empty carpet, no windows.

We waited there for maybe five minutes while we looked at the red light above the door. My tension kept ratcheting higher, and it was everything I could do to remain standing and not broadcast in Mindspace.

Johanna looked bored. It struck me as odd.

“Aren't you going to wish me good luck?” I finally asked her, more to keep my focus off what was to happen than anything else.

She glanced at me. “Luck has nothing to do with it.” She was certain, then, even in Mindspace, certain about something I didn't understand. The job promotion had been good for her, maybe. Or she was pretty sure I'd get exonerated. Only she didn't feel pretty sure. She felt certain.

“Do you know what the deep-scan found?” I asked her.

A green light turned on, and she smiled.

•   •   •

My first time in the Guild Council room opened as the doors did.

“I'll walk under my own power, thanks,” I told the guard, and did.

The room was a massive thing, raised desks in a row curving around a central open space while behind, ten-foot-high frost-free windows looked out over the city. Talk about perspective.

The raised desks meant the Council members looked down on me, literally. I was too worried about what was to come to feel anything but impatience.

Behind me, a line of chairs rimmed the outside of the wall nearest the door. Several of the chairs were filled, and it bothered me that I couldn't watch both them and the Council at once.

A woman beside me announced loudly in Mindspace,
Adam Ward, no status, removed from Guild for improper conduct, provisionally reacquired, under judgment for accusation against Tobias Nelson, Guild member First Class, voting rights, all privileges.

Don't you think that's prejudicing the room?
I broadcast back to her.

The prisoner will be silent until spoken to,
Rex's voice said with hard condemnation.

A feeling of movement, of mass discussions in Mindspace, then private thoughts flying back and forth, causing waves I could feel. I couldn't intercept the thoughts without a lot more time and the willingness to be terrifically obvious. So I started cataloging my surroundings instead.

Nelson sat in a small chair near the tall desks, almost literally overshadowed by them. He looked like he'd been awake for days. His presence in Mindspace flickered like a bad lightbulb. Next to him was a man in clothes so plain they were almost a uniform. He had the quiet intensity I associated with a bodyguard or a Minder.

“Can I speak?” Nelson asked the court, in a voice that sounded . . . pained.

If you must,
Diaz said.
Try to keep it to a minimum. Did you have something to say?

“No, just the question.” He looked at me, and it wasn't a pleasant look. It wouldn't be the first time someone had blamed me for the consequences of their own actions, but making an enemy so high up in the Guild was not something pleasant.

Is the scanner here?
the man sitting highest, in the middle, broadcast. The chatter in Mindspace eased off.

I assumed this was Julio Diaz, head of the Council, and by all accounts, neutral between the various factions. He looked ancient, wrinkles upon wrinkles, balding, gray, and possessed of a brittle strength in Mindspace, but he did not look familiar.

She's on her way,
the woman next to me said. An officer of the court, there to keep things moving. I returned my attention to the raised seats in front.

Of the ten seats, only six were currently filled, Thaddeus Rex, whom I recognized next to Diaz, a pale woman with a blue badge of an acting member next to him at Financial and Budgets, a woman I vaguely recognized from Research—was her name Chin, or was I making that up?—and Chris Tubbs, Kara's ultimate boss, behind Guild-World Relations. Charlie Walker, whom I'd gone to school with, was currently sitting behind Military. Had it been that long that one of my classmates had risen so high?

The Employment Guild chair was noticeably empty; with Meyers and his assistant both dead, and others at this conference I'd heard so much about, there was likely no one to fill it.

Johanna Wendell climbed the steps to take her seat at the second-to-smallest chair, her own blue badge clearly displayed. Where she'd gotten it in the last few minutes, I had no idea. She sat, of course, behind Health and Human Services, where her boss worked.

The last permanent Council member was Joe Green, my accuser of deep-thought theft from earlier. He sat behind Academics and Training, a decision bad enough to make me cringe internally; that man had no business leading teachers and students.

Ethics, the chair specifically set aside by Cooper to question the Council's actions, was noticeably empty. I hoped the member was at the conference. I hoped.

The door behind me opened, and I turned. A tired woman in scrubs entered. She reminded me of a younger Paulsen in looks, the shape of their faces and the way they held themselves similar, though this woman's complexion was a shade or two darker. She was also far more ordered, more precise in her presence in Mindspace, but then again she'd have to be, living among telepaths, working as a scanner. She'd had to learn to get along, not to lead, and her mind reflected that.