Marked (22 page)

Keep him talking,
she said.
We'll figure it out. I can handle myself.

Okay,
I said. I turned back to Fiske as Cherabino was pulled out of the room, angry. She was at least twenty feet away and moving even farther, judging by the noise between us on the Link. I was worried.

Another guard type, this one dark and short with whip-tight muscles and a vest only half-fastened, moved up to the room from the foyer.

“Peterson,” Fiske said.

“Yes, sir.” The guard was worried, intensely worried enough I could feel it in Mindspace.

“You are the head of my security team.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You let two cops stroll into my home.” Fiske pulled a gun out of the back of his khakis and shot the man twice, once in the gap of the vest, and once in the throat.

My ears rang with the gunshots. Peterson slumped to his knees, his throat making a horrible gurgling sound.

Shock and pain moved through Mindspace, and the guard behind me tightened the grip on the barrel of his gun so hard I felt it.

I stared, the reality of our situation suddenly all too clear.

Fiske looked to the other guard. “Congratulations, Rodriguez. You are now the head of my security team. I expect you to find how they got in and eliminate the issue when this is over.”

“Understood, sir,” Rodriguez said, mixed fear and determination coming off him. He kept looking at his buddy on the floor. This didn't do good things for his control of the gun, and I moved away a little.

In Mindspace, a huge hole opened up where Peterson's mind had been. He Fell In, dying in despair and agony I couldn't completely shield from. His body jerked with a last nerve pulse, and then I smelled the scent of urine being voided.

Fiske looked at me. “I should thank you for revealing a hole in my security. So I'll be generous. This time.”

Why kill him in front of me? Oh. Fiske knew about my felony drug charges. He knew I couldn't testify in court; I was a guaranteed unreliable witness. So he could do whatever the hell he wanted, and I could do nothing. Even if I told Cherabino, it would be a secondhand account.

Fiske accepted a handkerchief from his assistant, wiped off the gun, and put it back in the holster in the back of his khakis. “Now, now, Mr. Ward. You'll see your partner again in a moment. Come over here.
” I took a few steps toward Fiske, mindful of the guard. According to the clock on the wall, I had maybe ten minutes before I was up for another round of sleep-baby-sleep. Give it fifteen just to be safe, what with the work I'd just done and my recent brain injury. Time to talk my way out of this—if I could.

Well, today I didn't have anything to lose. I could ask anything, do anything, and be in no worse danger than I would have been tomorrow. The Guild's sentencing hung over my head like an anvil, so that there was no more room for fear.

I tried to remember how I had handled this kind of thing with Marge back in the day, back when I'd bought drugs from her organization and before I'd shut her down with the cops.

Finally I settled on “I'm sorry we intruded on your afternoon, Mr. Fiske.” I walked over farther in his direction, his assistant standing by with the gun on top of his notepad, sideways, ready at a moment's notice. “Honestly, I'm just here to talk a little and get your perspective.” I pitched my voice and my body language as slightly submissive; not enough to be a victim, but enough to be a beta, not an alpha, in the room. I would get nowhere through a battle for dominance anyway; I was better off talking and then disabling.

Besides, it had been a long time since I'd been anybody's alpha anything. You get out of practice.

Fiske settled a bit, reacting to my, to him, appropriate body language. He nodded at the assistant, who put a small syringe back in a box.

My heart skipped a beat, adrenaline hitting my system all over again. Needles carried by bad guys were never a good idea.

“Under what circumstances would you threaten a child? Given the information we have, it seems to be the logical question.” I asked, mind open enough to smell a lie if he told one.

“I like an intelligent opponent,” Fiske said, “and, as I said, I will be generous. This time. But don't push your luck. You have barged into my home and caused damage to my guards. Impertinent questions are hardly the way to walk away from this.”

“I understand,” I said, my standard answer to suspects for whom I had no answer. The conversation was getting away from me. I felt a distant sense of relief, relief flavored with Cherabino's mind through the Link. She had a connection with her sister, then.

“Do you know what this is?” Fiske asked. He was looking at one of the display cases. I was thinking about the needle.

I hadn't lived this long by being stupid around dangerous people. If he wanted to play games, I'd play games. You lived longer that way. “No, I'm afraid I don't know what that is. What is it?” I pitched my voice interested, casual. I didn't feel casual, not at all, but Nelson had been sure he was mind-deaf.

He smiled, and I knew he was. “This, Mr. Ward, is a pre–Tech Wars fully functional mental implant, in full working order. I've had it serviced. Its owner died from the Kappa virus during the third round of the Tech Wars. Very rare piece. The virus is still active, of course.”

I swallowed, and finally looked. It was a small cylinder, the size of your thumb, covered in withered biological circuits like octopus tentacles out of the water. But the core—the core was a round thing with layered quantum chips and a glowing red pulse.

“Still active?” I asked, nervous, trying to remember which virus the Kappa had been. The Guild hadn't been all that concerned with the details of the Tech Wars' tactics in its secondary education classes, because the virus had only affected normals with implants, not telepaths.

“Of course.” Fiske smiled again, the smile of a shark inspecting its prey. Delighted to find such a lovely morsel in front of him. “It overwrote the victim's brain with nonsense, with unreality, over and over again until the mind lost cohesion. Then it sent the body out to infect others. Any kind of biological interface to the body—a pacemaker, a Tech-controlled organ, an artificial limb—was fair game.”

“Modern limbs and such have virus protection,” I said. But I took a step back from the case.

“A convenient lie the manufacturers tell,” Fiske said.

There was a short pause, during which I absorbed this, and he walked farther along the row of cases. Weapons sat, some jury-rigged out of car-body aluminum and steel bars, some forged in happier times, all with blood still on them. Round donut-shaped magnets, connected to plastic tubing and copper wires, set in worn harnesses, for the day the normals figured out how to fight back against the machines. Not that it had done more than stem the tide. They'd still needed the telepaths to end it.

Small rare-earth magnets, exchanged as tokens among the resistance, now changing the shape of Mindspace in quiet ways, like a rock in a stream. Maps. Pieces of bombs. Pieces of what might have been.

I looked back at the clock. Maybe another six minutes. My interrogators' instincts said if I didn't take charge now, there were even odds that I would end up as cannon fodder or “victim” status in this guy's head. What to ask?

Well, if I was risking death anyway . . .

“I was admiring your work the other day,” I said. “The researcher. Noah Wright. The ax was telling. It almost kept us from finding the prototype in his head. Removing the arm for the control section was particularly genius.”

He blinked at me, unreadable. “You're not going to ask me about how much of my collection is still dangerous?”

“I think it's obvious that it's all dangerous,” I said. “That's why you collect it, isn't it?”

The corner of his mouth crooked, and a small, quiet burst of satisfaction came from him. “Excellent, Mr. Ward. You impress me.”

“The question in my mind is whether or not you've inoculated yourself against the Kappa virus, or whether you leave it there as a test.”

“Why can't it be both?” Fiske asked me. For the first time, I got a clear picture of the wily mind that had been part and parcel of every bad thing that had happened to me in the last months. He'd been behind Bradley, and Tamika, ultimately, hijackings and deaths and a specific threat against me. And he was honestly, truly, a no-holds-barred genius.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Just admiring your mind,” I said. “Observing. It's not often I get to meet someone who works on so many levels at once.”

“Flattery, Mr. Ward?” But he was disturbed.

“Truth,” I said, in the same sincere lying tone I used with suspects. “I did wonder, however, why you were working with Tobias Nelson. You know, from Guild Enforcement. He bought parts from you, personally. I thought you didn't handle parts sales personally.”

“Impertinent questions.” He retrieved a small device from the shelf, put it around his neck.

“An opportunity to show your genius,” I said. “What's that?”

He pushed a button.

An unthinkable pressure in Mindspace pushed at me. I held—and held—and held. I could stand upright. I could think, barely. Maybe. But there was not a chance in hell I'd be able to read or disable anyone with that thing on.

Fiske smiled and looked at his assistant.

The man spoke. “It is an infinity wave generator, the only prototype ever made. It was created the year after the Tech Wars by the US government and during the time of the signing of the Koshna Accords. The lab it was produced in was burned to the ground a week before signing. Everyone there was killed.”

Fiske took a step toward me while I struggled to pay attention. “The device resurfaced decades later in a private auction. Only one man in the world could get it back to working order. I killed him as well. This is the one defense no one can stand against, because no one's seen or dealt with it before.

“You see, Mr. Ward, I'm an old-fashioned man. I believe telepaths should be kept away from normal people, locked up in their little towers, and not allowed to influence the works of real men.”

“You sympathize with Guild First,” I said, overwhelmed but thinking. Thinking.

Fiske took another step toward me. “You're not paying attention.”

My head was starting to pulse pain. I guessed. “You're trying to get into Guild politics to get access to an army of telepaths to enforce your decisions. Or to have the Guild give you concessions. That's why you worked with Tobias. That's why you worked with Bradley.”

“Independent telepaths are an affront to society and a dangerous sign of our degenerate times,” Fiske said, looking straight at me. “They threaten the greater order. The Guild is bad enough, but systems can be dealt with. Independents—well, they are dealt with differently.”

“You said you would be generous this time,” the assistant said cautiously. “Do we kill them anyway?”

Fiske turned, to look at the assistant. “No, I did say that. Mr. Ward, I am giving you an opportunity. Either you remove yourself from my affairs—permanently—and control your police friend, or I will do it for you. I have three witnesses, and you have only the word of a drug addict.” He glanced at the assistant. “See that he leaves.”

“It will be done,” the assistant said.

“What about Noah Wright?” I asked. “The researcher killed with the ax? Why him?”

Fiske turned, with a cruel, cruel smile. He hit the button, and the pain stopped. “I'm told you can tell whether a man is lying or not.”

I nodded, suddenly afraid. There was something about his mind at that moment that was the most dangerous thing I'd looked into my whole life. Like walking from your tent into the darkness to take a leak only to find yourself face-to-face with a jackal.

“Then you'll know I'm telling the truth. Noah Wright isn't mine,” Fiske said.

“What?” It took me a moment to catch up with the sudden shift in conversation. “I thought he was selling you something.”

“The blueprints and project notes were useful, of course. Under other circumstances, I might have tried to recruit him. But he was so obviously double-crossing that TCO agent of his.”

“What? Who killed him?” I asked.

“Now, now, I'm not doing your work for you.” He paused. “Now, while you're paying attention—I do not now nor do I plan to take or in any way harm a member of your partner's family.” He was telling the truth.

“You didn't include her in that list,” I said.

“Very good, Mr. Ward. You'll notice I also did not include you. It's time for you to leave, or we'll find out how many bullets I have left in my gun today. You come back to my home, and I'll do worse.”

His mind leaked the knowledge that killing me, or Cherabino, would likely be more trouble than it was worth considering the little damage. He would do it if provoked, though; he did not tolerate disrespect, and he'd swallowed enough of it already to tolerate the trouble to kill us if needed.

And Fiske turned, as if I'd sunk beneath his notice.

I left quickly.

•   •   •

The assistant escorted me out into the cold, him with a gun, me with my mind ready to disable him before he could pull the trigger.

Cherabino had a black eye and a foul mood, but was both relieved and pissy enough despite large amounts of duct tape that I was certain nothing serious had happened. She did judo sparring all the time; a few bruises weren't going to do anything but piss her off.

She was surrounded by not one, not two, but four hulking guards in a niche in the garden surrounded by brick. None looked happy. The closest was weighing Fiske's exact wording on the Do Not Harm policy, whether broken bones would count as harm or not. If not, he had favorites.

“We're releasing them,” the assistant said in a carrying voice to the group.