Anniversary Day (16 page)

They?
Byler sent.

Clones
, DeRicci sent.
The image I sent you was of Mayor Julian’s attacker. The vid is of the man who attacked Arek
.

Byler’s breath caught.
Why would they make clones?

Why indeed?
DeRicci asked.
I’ve got people trying to figure that out. In the meantime, the governor-general hasn’t made some anti-clone statements I need to know about, has she?

Last summer, she spoke to a gathering of families who have adopted clones
, Byler sent.
She told them she supports a change in the Earth Alliance policy that has regulated clones to second-class status. But it has no teeth. She can’t do anything more than a private citizen can. She just has an opinion. She has no power over the Alliance
.

As you well know, she thought, but didn’t add. A burst of anger ran through her at DeRicci.
She
was head of security for the entire damn Moon. How come she hadn’t seen this coming?

That shouldn’t anger them
, DeRicci sent.
Thanks, Nelia. Let me know the moment she wakes up
.

If she wakes up
, Byler sent, but DeRicci had already broken the connection. Which was lucky. Byler didn’t want to seem that pessimistic, not on a semi-open link.

She rubbed a hand over her face. Somewhere along the way, she had stopped hugging herself.

A clone. A series of attacks. Planned, of course, for Anniversary Day.

If Celia were awake and able to listen, she would hear a bunch of I-told-you-sos from Byler. But Byler couldn’t say that to her, not now, maybe not ever.

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, and wished, wished hard, for this day to come to an end.

Twenty-six

Adriana Clief sat at her desk, her hand covering her mouth, her heart pounding. Her links were cluttered with messages from all sorts of people, wondering why Dmitri Tsepen hadn’t shown up for his speech yet. On the various screens in front of her, reporters repeated the news of Mayor Arek Soseki’s death, although no one knew what of.

Her head ached. She had just decided not to do anything to help Tsepen anymore, but she hadn’t expected to get inundated in contacts. People still expected her to be the competent one, even though she had decided not to be.

Besides, they couldn’t reach Tsepen—which was normal—so they were in the habit of contacting her.

She got up and watered a few of the flowering plants. Then she picked off a few dead buds. Deadheading. That was what it was called, and that was what she was doing, not just to the plants, but to Dmitri. She was deadheading him, picking him off because he had become useless.

She looked down the hall at his closed door. He was probably still passed out, not that he would be useful anyway. If she sent him to the speech, she would have to find something that would clear up his drunkenness, and most of the remedies, except the rather stringent nanobot cleaning, left him muzzy-headed or didn’t work at all.

He really had become a fall-down drunk, and like any codependent person, she hadn’t noticed.

A red line flashed across her right eye, followed by an urgent message.

Then the image of Noelle DeRicci, Head of Security for the United Domes, rose in Clief’s vision, making her headache worse.

“Let me put you on visual,” she said, trying to take the message out of her vision.

“No,” DeRicci said. “This is a coded transmission. Anything visual would break the code.”

Clief sighed, and moved away from the plants. She plopped down behind her desk again and wished she could close her eyes and lean her head back, ignoring everything.

“I suppose they’re all contacting you because he hasn’t shown up at his stupid speech,” she said. “I’m sorry for that. It won’t happen again.”

“What?” DeRicci said, and Clief swore she heard a tinge of panic in DeRicci’s tone. “Tsepen’s missing?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Clief said. “He’s passed out drunk in his office.”

DeRicci let out a sigh, and it seemed like a sigh of relief, which also surprised Clief.

“Look,” DeRicci said, “what I’m about to tell you is classified. You cannot tell anyone. Are we clear?”

“Clear,” Clief said, wondering what the hell was going on.

“A group of clones have targeted the leaders of various Moon communities. There’s been an attack on the governor-general and on Mayor Julian in Moscow Dome. I’m trying to reach the other mayors now.”

“And Arek Soseki?” Clief asked, her heart suddenly racing.

“Yes. They killed him.” DeRicci’s tone was flat. “And we’re not sure the governor-general is going to make it either. So it’s good that Dmitri didn’t make it to his speech.”

Clief shook her head. “He lives a charmed life.”

DeRicci frowned. “People are complaining that he’s not there?”

“Yes,” Clief said.

“So they’re still waiting for him?”

“Yes,” Clief said.

“Excellent. Close the hall where he’s supposed to speak. Don’t let anyone in or out. I’ll coordinate with law enforcement in Glenn Station. We’re going to search for one of those bastards.”

Clief shook her head again. If they caught one of those bastards, Tsepen was going to look like a prescient saint instead of a drunken screw-up.

“Can you work with me on this, Adriana?” DeRicci asked.

“I’d be happy to, sir,” Clief said. So much for her vow of non-involvement.

“All right,” DeRicci said. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

Twenty-seven

Nyquist commandeered a table near the back of the main part of the restaurant by the hallway that led to the room where Soseki made his final speech. Unbeknownst to Romey, Nyquist had done a quiet walk-through of the place, just to see if there was anything anyone had missed.

He couldn’t tell if there was. The large meeting room looked abandoned, as if the meeting had just ended. Garbage littered the floor, some glasses covered a nearby table, a half-empty bottle of water stood on the stage near the podium. He did send a message to the crime scene techs to make sure they picked up all the bottled water, labeled it properly, and then tested it, although he was pretty certain that the water hadn’t killed Soseki.

Nyquist had seen that needle that Tyr had isolated off the vids. There was, in Nyquist’s opinion, no defending against something like that. It went to something he always said to DeRicci when he was trying to calm her down:
Something will get through. A determined terrorist can get past all barriers. Your job is to make sure those barriers are sound, and what does get through is a fluke.

He wasn’t sure this was a fluke, but he did know that these people were determined.

He had watched a few minutes of the rest of the vid Tyr had prepared, the clone waiting for his moment to get close to Soseki. The fact that there were more of them made Nyquist extremely nervous. Something—some
one
—big had planned this attack for a long time.

After he had that realization, he commandeered his table. He set up a small command, a networked screen, a bit of crumpled up napkin so that it looked as if the table was in constant use.

Then he left again, slipping out front so that he could find out how Jacobs was doing.

She still crouched near Soseki’s body, a laser knife in her hand. A ring of uniforms stood around her, facing the street. Another group of uniforms was moving from building to building, as if they were searching for someone. Someone who had seen the clone?

He didn’t know, and at the moment, he didn’t care. The clone was Romey’s problem. Nyquist’s problem was pretty simple and extremely complex at the same time.

He tried to get to Jacobs, but one of the uniforms held him back. So Nyquist sent her a message. She nodded, then squinted, the way some people did when they were using their links.

Clearly she hadn’t sent a message to him. The message was going to the uniforms, telling them that Nyquist had clearance.

He slipped past and stopped near Jacobs.

“Come closer, Bartholomew,” she said, “and take a look at this.”

She beckoned him to crouch beside her. She had opened a tiny section of Soseki’s deltoid muscle. Or what should have been Soseki’s deltoid muscle.

Instead, it looked like she had carved into the sidewalk.

“Is that as thick as it looks?” Nyquist asked.

She handed him a small screen that magnified the image from the tip of the laser. He didn’t see muscle or skin or blood vessels. He saw only grayness so solid that it looked like part of a tube.

“I couldn’t cut into it with a regular knife,” she said. “I had to use the laser. This is his right side. The attack happened on his left. It’s even more solid over there.”

“What is this?” Nyquist asked.

“I have no idea,” Jacobs said. “But it’s both fast-acting and terrifying. I say we don’t ever let the cause of death out. I say we just tell people he was poisoned and leave it at that.”

“I’d love to order that,” Nyquist said, “but I’m not in charge of this investigation.”

She pursed her lips. She had already made her opinion known on that.

“So let me make sure I’m understanding this,” Nyquist said. “It turned his insides to sludge.”

She shook her head. “More like it filled in his skin with this new substance, destroying everything else it came into contact with. And I’m not even sure there’s any skin here either. This may just be the substance, using his body as some kind of mold, and working through it.”

Despite himself, Nyquist shuddered. It really had turned Soseki into some kind of statue.

“I can give you the chemical compound,” Jacobs said, “but this is post-reaction. I don’t know if the compound is the same before it comes in contact with the skin.”

Nyquist nodded.

She handed him a small disk, which surprised him.

“You could send this through my links,” he said.

She shook her head. “I’m telling you, Bartholomew, this stuff scares me. It’s quick, lethal, and effective. I don’t want any part of it out there. I don’t want anyone to know what it really is.”

He closed his fist around the disk. “Someone already knows what it is, Marigold,” he said softly. “And worse, they know how to use it.”

She bit her lower lip, then teared up.

“Sometimes I hate this job,” she said.

“I know,” Nyquist said. “Believe me. I know.”

Twenty-eight

DeRicci paced around her office. She hadn’t felt this alone in years. Alone and terrified. The news was awful. So far she was keeping it under wraps, but she wasn’t sure how long she would be able to do that. It was a miracle she had managed so far.

In some ways, the fact that Soseki’s aides had dithered about reporting his death to the authorities helped. It made Soseki’s death seem like less of a crisis, more like a death from natural causes.

Except for one or two people, no one had been in the room when the governor-general collapsed, and even then, fewer saw it. Deep Craters Hospital was good at keeping secrets, something that usually irritated DeRicci, but made her feel better at the moment.

She clasped her hands behind her back. She had asked Popova for coffee half an hour ago and hadn’t gotten it. Coffee and some food from somewhere. Neither had arrived.

DeRicci had learned, no matter how serious the crisis, she had to eat. She wouldn’t be getting enough sleep, so eating was extremely important.

She knew Popova was upset—abnormally upset—and figured that was just a sign of things to come. Assassinations coupled with Anniversary Day would be tougher than the heartiest soul could handle.

DeRicci wished she could contact Nyquist. But she didn’t dare, not since Romey had put him on the case. DeRicci didn’t want to be seen as influencing the Armstrong Police Department, particularly not where Nyquist was concerned.

It was strange to be thinking of the future right now, but she had to. She had to think about the current investigation, about preventing more attacks, about stopping whoever the hell this was, and about the way that journalists, historians, and conspiracy nuts would look at everything once the case ended.

Conspiracy nuts.

Clearly, they wouldn’t be nuts in this case. And that was the most disturbing thing of all.

She sent a curt message to Popova.
Coffee and food? Important for all of us.

And she didn’t wait for a response. Instead, she turned toward the gigantic screen that still dominated her office. The screen she had been trying to ignore. The screen she really, really, really didn’t want to think about.