Memory Zero (23 page)

“Thank you for your assistance.”

The woman nodded. “I will, of course, have to call Mr. Kazdan and inform him of your warrant and search.”

“And you will, of course, inform us when Kazdan enters the building.”

The blonde nodded a second time. Sam walked over to the elevators. Once the doors slid open, she stepped inside. Gabriel followed.

“I thought you didn’t want Jack to know we’re here,” she said, as the elevator began to rise.

He shrugged. “All we need is enough time to see what’s on those disks. I doubt whether Kazdan will actually turn up.”

“Don’t underestimate him,” she said softly. “He has a mind as fast as his temper. He’ll be ready for a move such as this.”

His eyes were a subtle green under the elevator’s soft light. Green and cold, she thought.

“I don’t underestimate anyone,” he said.

Including her, obviously. While his distrust rankled, she understood it. Hell, even she wasn’t certain where her loyalties should lie.

The elevator came to a smooth halt on the eighth floor. He looked out and then motioned her forward. The door to Jack’s apartment slid open as they neared. She hesitated in the doorway, her stomach churning as she stared down at the line where the hallway’s plush gray carpet met the rich burgundy carpet of Jack’s apartment. If she stepped past that line, what she discovered might forever alter her relationship with the one person she’d ever allowed closer than arm’s length.

“You intend to stand there forever?” While Gabriel’s voice had no inflection, his eyes held a hardness that suggested he understood her sudden reluctance to enter. “We only have half an hour.”

He touched a hand to her back, his fingers warm against her spine, but didn’t push. She licked her lips and stepped inside. The room was sparsely furnished. A large leather sofa faced the ceiling-high wall of glass running the length of the apartment. An entertainment center covered the wall to her left, and a black glass dining table sat in the middle of the room. The apartment had no kitchen or autocook. Maybe it was fully serviced—not that a vampire had any need for it. Two doors led off the main room, and both were closed.

She shoved her hands into her pockets and walked
across to the window. The faint strains of a jazz band drifted up from Federation Square. The whole place was ablaze with light and sound and people enjoying life. It was a feeling so different from the one she was getting from this apartment that it might as well have been another world.

She rubbed her arms and turned around. “The com-unit must be in one of the other rooms.”

Gabriel nodded and waved a hand toward the only two interior doors in the apartment. “Care to pick one?”

Both looked identical, but the carpet leading up to the one on the left had definitely seen more traffic. “Left door.”

She followed him across the room. The door slid open silently, revealing another large expanse of carpet and a big round bed draped in red silk. She walked over and lightly touched the sheets. Real silk, not fake. While it went with the feel of the apartment, it didn’t go with what she knew of Jack. So who was the genuine article? The man who owned this apartment, with its bed big enough to hold a party in and the million-dollar view, or the rough, friendly man who’d been her partner these past five years?

“Right door first time,” Gabriel murmured, as he walked across to the com-unit. “You sure you’ve never been here before?”

His hazel eyes were cold and cynical. He still wasn’t entirely convinced that she and Jack were only friends. On some level, he still thought they were involved—not as lovers, perhaps, but as conspirators. It was a belief she could at least live with, since time and evidence would prove her innocence.

She hoped.

She ignored his question, dug into her bag and got out the disks. “Let’s hope the computer’s not security coded.”

He accepted the disks as he sat down on the chair. The com-screen came to life, revealing a dusky-skinned, large-busted woman with the most amazing green eyes. Sam smiled. At least she was clothed. Most of the digital personalities she’d seen Jack use were of the wild-and-free variety.

“How may I help you?” a husky voice asked.

“Translate data disks.”

“Translation proceeding.”

She raised an eyebrow. No security code, not even voice-key security. Why? Was Jack so confident no one knew about this apartment that he just hadn’t bothered?

“Translation finished. Do you wish to view results?”

He glanced at her. “Wouldn’t have a spare disk in your bag, would you?”

She hesitated, then dug the wristcom out of her bag. “I have this. Almost as good.”

“I’m surprised State didn’t request this back when they suspended you.”

“They did. This is Jack’s.”

He gave her a half-smile as he attached the wristcom to the com-unit. “Obviously, they weren’t watching you closely enough. You should never have been able to get something like this out of the building after you were suspended.”

She shrugged. “But I didn’t leave right away. I went down for psych evaluations.”

“Same thing. If you ask me, your captain was giving you time.”

She remembered feeling surprised when she’d walked
out of the cap’s office to find no escort. Had the captain given her the only help he could, time alone to sort through Jack’s desk and maybe find some clue? If he had, it would suggest he’d believed her version of events, and that, at least, was good to know, even if he couldn’t actually do anything official to help her.

“Computer, display results, then download all three translations to wristcom …” Gabriel hesitated, glancing at her.

“1045,” she supplied.

“1045,” he repeated.

“Proceeding. Disk one currently on screen.”

She placed a hand on the back of the chair and leaned over Gabriel’s shoulder. Disk one was little more than a series of names, with monetary amounts next to them.

“There are a few government officials on this list.” She reached past him and placed a finger on the screen. “Isn’t Dan Wetherton the Minister for Social Services?”

He nodded. “He may also be very dead.”

“When did that happen? I didn’t hear anything on the news about it—not that I’ve had much chance to listen to updates recently.”

Amusement flitted briefly through his eyes. “That’s because, officially, the minister is alive and very well.”

She took a moment to absorb this. “Another clone.”

“Another clone,” he agreed.

“But which one is the clone? The dead one or the live one?”

“The body I discovered is still undergoing tests, so we’re not sure which is which yet.” His breath brushed warmth across her face. “It’s interesting to note that Wetherton’s donation is a lot larger than some of the others.”

“Paying for life? Or maybe a form of afterlife?”

“Maybe.” He paged down, stopping when he came to more well-known names. “Rob Garbott, the State Minister for Police and Emergencies. And David Flint, our newly elected Prime Minister.”

She frowned. “Isn’t Flint against cloning?”

He nodded. “Look, though. No donation amount. His name is highlighted instead.”

“And Garbott’s been ticked. Wonder what that means?”

“Maybe you could ask your partner when you see him tomorrow night.” Though the comment was made in the blandest of voices, she had a feeling he was being sarcastic.

“Maybe I will.” She leaned forward again. “General Lee Hagan. He’s also highlighted.”

“Hagan’s a very influential figure in the army. He’s also a key figure in the military’s investigations into cloning and gene manipulation.”

She began to get a very bad feeling about this list. “You don’t suppose they’re being set up for some type of hit?”

“It’s possible. Maybe if they can’t subvert them willingly, they just intend to kill them and replace them.” His gaze met hers, his expression grim. “If that’s the case, this is Sethanon’s doing, not Kazdan’s.”

She had to agree. Jack was never one to sit around and plan, especially to this degree. He was more your react-now-and-think-later type of guy. “If they intend to replace these men with clones, it would have to mean they’ve found a way to imitate the original’s behavior patterns.”

“And Wetherton might just be their first success story.”

“But surely a clone couldn’t simply step into someone’s life without anyone noticing. I mean, even if someone
had
found a way to transfer memories, surely there’d be personality differences.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know the how of it. I just know what I saw—and that was one very dead Minister for Social Services.”

“But they can’t transfer memories and personality, because it’s all controlled by the …” Her voice faded.
No
, she thought,
it couldn’t be that simple, surely
. “What?” Gabriel said immediately.

“What if they didn’t transplant memory?” she said slowly.

“What if they actually transplanted the entire
brain
?”

He frowned. “Brain transplants are certainly possible—”

“And the brain,” she cut in, “controls all body functions,
including
memory and personality.”

“Yes, but why would anyone go to the trouble of transplanting their brain into a body the same age as the original? That makes no sense.”

“
Unless
there was something wrong with the original.”

“It’s certainly a possibility.” His expression was bleak when he glanced at her. “Let’s see what’s on the other disks. Computer, display data from disk two.”

“Displaying,” intoned the sultry voice.

Another list came onto the screen. “More names and donations,” she muttered. “Surely they can’t all be paying money to be cloned.”

“They’re not.” Gabriel pointed to the right of the screen. “Wetherton had the number P1-c after his name. These are P4-v.”

“C for clone, v for vampire?”

“It may be as simple as that.”

“Why would anyone pay money to become a vampire?”

“Why not? Man spends billions of dollars every year trying to cheat death—something a vampire has already achieved. Given the choice, what would you choose?”

“Better death than life as a bloodsucker.”

“Not all vampires are evil. Not all vampires take sustenance from humans to survive.”

The edge in his voice suggested this was more than just an opinion. “And you? Given the choice, what would you do?”

He shrugged. “That would depend very much on what, or even who, I had to live for.”

She frowned. “So if you loved someone enough, you’d take the change? Isn’t that a little sick?”

“As I said, depends on your reasoning.”

“You’ve done it, haven’t you?” she said, unable to stop the hint of revulsion creeping into her voice. “You’ve performed the ceremony that will enable you to make the change when you die.”

His eyes showed a faint hint of surprise. “I haven’t, but a close friend has. Not for love, but for reasons I can well understand.”

“Stephan. You’re talking about Stephan.” Why she was so certain, she couldn’t say. But in the two days she’d known Gabriel, she’d seen him interact with many people, both work colleagues and friends. With Stephan, there had been something more than friendship. With him, there was a bond that went much, much deeper.

“I can see why you’re a good cop.” A brief smile
tugged the corners of his lips. “And yes, it is Stephan I was talking about.”

“What about Lyssa?”

A veil came down over his eyes. For some reason, Lyssa was not someone he wanted to talk about right now.

“Her, too,” he said, looking back to the screen. “Computer, display translation disk three.”

“Displayed.”

The third disk was not a list of names and donations. It was a series of pictures, and the subject was Lyssa.

“Looks like someone’s setting her up for a hit,” she said. “They’ve obviously been following her around.”

“Maybe.”

There was an edge to his voice that suggested anger, though it hadn’t yet reached his eyes. “What I want to know is how deeply Kazdan’s involved in all this,” he said.

She frowned. “I don’t understand why you’d think—”

He touched a finger to her lips, halting her question. “Listen,” he said softly.

For a moment, she could hear nothing beyond the sound of their breathing. Could feel nothing but the warmth of his finger against her lips. Then, slowly, she became aware of a faint hissing sound. It sounded for all the world like a snake had moved into one corner of the room.

Only no snake could get into a building like this.

And no snake she knew of smelled like overripe gym shoes.

“Fuck; gas.”

She glanced at him sharply. “What?”

“That noise—it’s some kind of gas being pumped
into the room.” He grabbed the wristcom and disks, and then scrambled to his feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

She didn’t argue. Gas leaking into a room was never good. Gas leaking at a time when they’d be using the com-unit and normally not notice could only be a trap. The bedroom door slid open. Vapor hissed into the main room, thicker and more noxious than in the bedroom. She held her breath and ran for the front door, only to see it slide shut. The locks clicked firmly into place, a sound that ricocheted across the hissing, as sharp as death.

Trapping them like rats in a prison.