Redlisted (22 page)

“I’m
serious. Anyway, at first, I mean, I was surprised, but... well, it
was easy work. There are a million New Age websites about this kind
of stuff out there. Shit about Atlantis and astral projecting with
dolphins. All I had to do was find some, report on it, fill a daily
quota. I could get a day’s worth of work done in about an hour
and a half.”

Conspiracy keeps
typing and offers no response.

“So I guess
I must have been doing a really fantastic job, because then I got
promoted. After that it was vampires only, no more of the New Age
stuff. Just finding websites about vampires. Not, like, fan pages for
novels or role playing games or anything—people discussing them
as if they were real. Vampire sightings, mostly.”

“I see.”

“Then they
asked me to create usernames on a bunch of vampire groups and forums.
They wanted me to collect personal information about the other
users.” I slump back into my chair. “That’s when I
started to feel like there was a real problem.”

“What did
you do about it?”

“I tried
telling my manager I wasn’t comfortable with the assignment. I
basically asked them to demote me so I wouldn’t have to do it.
He told me that wasn’t necessary, that I could keep my current
position and they wouldn’t ask me to do anything I found
ethically questionable ever again.”

“Can’t
imagine that lasted long.”

“Only about
a month. Then they moved me to another department full of other
transfers. We all had to go through a training session about the
assignment I’d refused to do. It was basically Fraud 101. I
pretended to be sick halfway through the session and went home.

“So then I
tried telling them I didn’t know what to do because I hadn’t
been to the entire session. Not that I couldn’t have figured it
out on my own, but whatever. That didn’t fly. That’s when
they sent me to remedial training.” I down the rest of my
cappuccino.

“What’s
‘remedial training’?”

“It’s
punitive. You have to stay after work. Late. Like really late. I was
there a few times until two A.M.” I place the empty cup down on
the table. “I had to go to eight sessions in total. If I tried
to skip a session, they’d send someone to my apartment. They
were not kidding around.

“Anyway, at
the first seven sessions, they had me watching a video of the
Overlord going on and on about all this irrelevant nonsense. Just
random stream-of-consciousness bullshit. The same video, over and
over again. It was only about forty-five minutes long. At some point
every night I’d fall asleep watching it.”

Conspiracy bites
her lower lip.

“At the last
session, I had to meet with the Overlord herself. We had a short
conversation. She didn’t bring up anything about the identity
fraud stuff. I think we talked about the weather or something.”

“I see. Do
you remember what else you talked about?”

“You’d
think I would, given she’s a multimillionaire and super
important. And this was only the second time we met. But I can’t.”

Conspiracy stops
typing for a moment. “Go on.”

“Well, after
that, the fraud assignment never came up again. But then I started
losing track of time.” I scratch my head. “Some days,
I’ll go in to work, and then I’ll come home, and while
I’m microwaving my dinner or whatever I’ll realize I
can’t remember anything I’ve done all day.

“At first it
didn’t happen all that often. Maybe once a month or so. But
then it started happening more, until it was happening, like, twice a
week. Sometimes even more than that. I saw a psychiatrist about it
for a while. They put me on medication, but it didn’t help.”

“So this is
still happening?”

“Yeah...”

“Are you
still on the medication, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“No, I took
myself off of it.”

“Why don’t
you just quit?”

“What? You
mean my job?”

“Yes, your
job!”

“I can’t,”
I argue. “I’m not done.”

“What do you
mean, ‘you’re not done’?”

“I’m
in this for the long haul. I’m going to take them down from the
inside.”

Her mouth hangs
open.

“You don’t
understand,” I tell her. “I’m not finished with my
story, either.”

“All right.
Please continue.”

“So the next
thing I realized is that my entire apartment is bugged. Audio and
video both.”

“Jesus,
Pageslave! You know—“

“I’m
going somewhere with this, all right? So at first I was really
creeped out—“

“’
At
first’?”

“Okay, well,
I’m still creeped out,” I admit. “But it gave me an
idea.

“I went to
the store and picked out the smallest video camera I could afford.
Bought it with cash. I put it in the front pocket of my backpack, and
I put a pinback button over a hole I cut out for the lens.”

She stops typing.

“Every day,
I sit with my back to the surveillance camera in my office while I
take my laptop out of the bag. I take the pin off and put the bag on
my desk so that my camera can tape me while I’m working. I
started off doing it every week or so. Now I do it every day.”
I shrug. “As far as I know, they have no idea what I’m
doing.”

Her eyes go wide.
“You can’t be serious.” She cackles.

I smile smugly and
show her the apparatus, removing a button on the front of my bag to
reveal the camera lens.

“Oh my God!
You’re a genius. Do you still have video of it all?”

“Yeah, I’ve
kept a lot of it, but...” My smile fades. “I mean, I know
this is going to sound crazy, but the tapes prove that they’re
using brainwashing techniques on us. On the days I lose track of, I’m
always off on some website getting some poor Goth kid’s home
address. I don’t want to think about what they’re doing
with all the data I’m collecting.”

We sit silently
for a few moments.

“You’re
not crazy, Pageslave,” Conspiracy says in a tone halfway
between anger and sympathy. “I don’t know. You could be
right. Maybe you will bring them down, somehow.”

I smile with all
the enthusiasm I can muster.

“Is there
anything else you want to tell me?”

I think about this
for a moment. “Well, there is, but it’s just a theory...”

“That’s
okay, I’d like to hear it anyway.”

“All right,
well...” I look at the door to the coffee shop, suddenly
self-aware and nervous. “The night I met with the Overlord to
finish my remedial training, I saw something really strange.”

Conspiracy nods
and begins typing again. The repetitive sound takes the edge off my
anxiety. I take a breath and continue.

“So I was
meeting with her in her office—which, I don’t know if you
know, but it’s on the top floor of the building. When I got out
of the meeting, I took the elevators down to the ground floor,”
I tell her. “Have you ever been to the building?”

She shakes her
head no.

“Well, there
are two sets of general use elevators. The upper set is in the center
of the building, and it runs from floors four to fifty. The lower
sets are on the sides of the building, and they go from the first
floor to the fourth. They have glass walls. The first three floors of
the building are basically a big atrium.

“I’m
only telling you all that to explain that I was in the lower
elevators that night, looking out at the atrium through the glass,
when I saw the Overlord walk in through the front doors of the
building with her coat on, like she’d just gotten out of her
town car.”

Conspiracy frowns.
“What did you take that to mean?”

I start stacking
my empty cups. “I don’t know for sure. My theory is that
she has a body double. I mean, don’t rich people sometimes hire
people like that?”

“Hmm.”
She nods. “Very interesting. Thank you for sharing that with
me.”

“No
problem.”

She closes her
laptop. “I should probably go soon if you’re finished,
but before I do, do you have any questions for me?”

I think for a few
seconds.

“So... you
just said that I’ve been able to find out more than any of
‘you’ have been able to. Who are ‘you’? If
you don’t mind me asking.”

She nibbles at a
cuticle. “Well, what I can tell you is that we investigate the
paranormal—and the Overlord, by the way, is
very
paranormal.”

I nod slowly. It
makes sense, what with the mind control.

“Can I ask
you another question?”

“It
depends,” she says. “I mean, you can ask, but I might not
answer.”

I quirk my mouth
to the side. It feels weird to even think about asking this, but I
probably won’t get another chance any time soon. “So...
vampires.”

“Yes?”

“Do they
really exist?”

///

Adam pulls his
wrist away from my mouth. “The bleeding’s stopped,”
he says.

Okay.

“I know
you’d probably rather be alone right now—“

No. I wouldn’t.

He smiles
slightly.

What now?

“We wait.
Tara... well, I assume she’ll drain Gabriel. Hopefully that
will give her enough strength to heal you.”

I nod.

“What is
this thing doing on your head?”

The shower cap.
The hair bleach. Fuck.

I
need to rinse out my hair
.

“You need to
lie still and rest.” He removes the cap from my head and tosses
it to the side.

Will they be
able to do anything for Haruko?

“Blood magic
doesn't work on her. She’s a Warden.”

Can’t you
do anything? Aren’t you a doctor or something?

“The best I
could do would be to wake her up with an epinephrine shot, and I
think that’d be pretty cruel, given her current state.”

Will she be
okay?

“She’ll
be fine, eventually. Her innate healing faculties will repair the
wound.” He gets a clean towel from the cabinet and starts
drying out my hair.

So that’s
the only thing she can do? Nullify magic powers? That sucks.

“It’s
not as simple as that. She can also seal revenants from using a power
indefinitely. And she can track revenants, ghouls, and dhampyrs...”

That still
sounds like it sucks.

He shrugs.

Are all Wardens
the same?

“Not exactly
the same, but similar in their capacities. Our abilities are
determined by our blood,” he says. “Every revenant has
three strains in their blood, and three corresponding abilities.”

What are yours?

“Telepathy.
That’s one strain. And I can read the memories of objects, and
memories written in blood—that’s the second,” he
says. “My third strain is a bit more difficult to explain. We
refer to it as Dream. I can alter states of consciousness. Create
visions. The combination of the latter two strains allows you to
drink my blood and relive visions of your memories.”

What about Aya?

“Aya is an
interesting case. She comes from a Line—a mixed lineage of
houses.”

How is that
possible?

“Up to three
revenants can provide their blood to a single initiate. In her case,
one of Mnemosyne’s children mixed their blood with a revenant
from another House, the House of Himeros. The result was Thalia, the
first revenant in her line. And from there the Line of Thalia. All
members of her line have the same three powers.”