Anniversary Day (32 page)

“That bitch,” Palmette muttered.

He almost nodded, not because he agreed about Gumiela (although he’d had his run-ins with her) but because Palmette’s reaction told him she was more comfortable with him than even she realized.

“Talk to me, Ursula,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do to help you.”

Her gaze met his, then hardened. “And do what? Make sure I didn’t get sent to some death hole? Make sure that people know how pitiful I am? You don’t have any power, Nyquist. You can’t help me.”

She was right. But he didn’t want her to think that.

“The whole day has been strange, Ursula,” he said. “Soseki’s murder, then you in Terminal 81. The fact that it’s Anniversary Day. I looked at all of your behavior over the past few weeks. It’s clear that you were trying to stay off the grid, and it’s also clear that someone was helping you. At least, that’s what the Quarantine Squad thinks. Me, I think someone was forcing you to act for them. What did they have on you? What were you afraid of?”

It was a gamble. He was giving her a defense. She could spin a web of lies here that would take days to unravel. But she was angry as well, and scared, and maybe even regretting her decision to let Nyquist bring her in.

“I’m capable,” she snapped. “I’m smart, Nyquist.”

“I never said you weren’t,” he said, sounding as defensive as possible. “But I don’t have the computer skills to do the things you did. Not many people do. That’s why I think you’re in trouble. Because someone was forcing you into this stuff.”

“I learned it,” she said. “I learned a lot of things this last year.”

He was about to answer her when his links pinged. Information had come in, but because of the nature of the Interrogation Room, he didn’t know if it was the psychological evaluations or something else.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I need to step out for a minute.”

“Yeah, of course you do,” she said. “Is Gumiela out there? Does she want input? Is that why you have to leave?”

“No one’s out there, Ursula,” he said gently. “It’s just you and me here. That’s how I’m able to talk to you. Everyone else is dealing with the death of the mayor.”

He didn’t add anything about the governor-general or the other assassination attempts. He wanted her to tell him about them.

“It’s a big deal today. Armstrong is in chaos.”

He was laying it on thick, but he wanted her to think she had succeeded. She had disrupted the city as much as the bombing had four years before.

“Then why were you free to come after me?” she asked.

“I wasn’t after you,” he said truthfully. “I came to the Port to talk to you about the quarantines. I found the zoodeh. I figured you could help me figure out how it got into the city. That’s when I figured out you weren’t at your desk. I had the guys in Space Traffic track you down. They think you’re a threat, Ursula.”

“They might not be wrong,” she said, but he was heartened to hear the “might not.” It meant she was thinking of cooperating.

He debated with himself for a moment, wondering if he should stay and press an advantage.

But he wasn’t sure it was an advantage. He needed those psych reports. He wanted to make sure he didn’t trigger something that would shut her down.

He needed her to talk.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, and let himself out of the room, closing the door behind him.

The hallway was blessedly warm. He hadn’t realized how cold he had gotten inside that room. He stepped just a few meters away from the door, away from the window, not wanting to turn his back on her—even if she couldn’t see him.

Then he examined the message that came through his links. It wasn’t the psych report that he wanted. It was information he actually wished he hadn’t had.

The device Palmette had attached to her body matched the one worn by Soseki’s assassin in most ways. This one differed in strength. She wasn’t going to use that lighter to set off the interior of the quarantined ship. The device would have magnified the laser blasts, making them even stronger, and sending them ricocheting outward, changing their frequency so that they would ignite the webs of protection, starting a chain reaction, not just with the webs of protection around that ship, but also around the nearby ship.

Murray’s hunch had been right: she would have exploded Terminal 81, but the devastation was so much more than anyone could have imagined. It would have taken out the port and possibly an entire section of the city before it got contained. Thousands would have died.

Thousands.

Nyquist felt a surge of anger run through him. Sane people didn’t do things like that. People with even a dollop of empathy wouldn’t let something like that happen.

She could have told him about the device. Him or the others. But she wanted them to shoot her.

Or maybe she had chickened out at the last minute. Maybe Nyquist had done that with his little speech about saving her life for nothing.

The thing was, four years ago he hadn’t saved her life for nothing. He had saved her life so that she could cause chaos throughout the Moon. So that she could help kill Soseki and maybe the governor-general and who knew how many others.

He put a hand to his face. If he hadn’t saved her none of this would have happened.

Soseki would still be alive.

The day would have been just fine.

Or would it? Wouldn’t whoever planned this have found someone else? Someone just as vulnerable as Palmette? Someone who wouldn’t have backed down when confronted by the Quarantine Squad?

He let out a shaky breath.

He did have to switch the focus of this interrogation. He had to move away from
why
and move to
who
.

And she had given him a clue how to do it. She wanted him to believe she was capable of planning this, that she was smart enough, strong enough.

So he would pretend to believe she could do it. He would go along with that delusion until it fell apart. He would find out who the hell was behind all of this.

And then he would stop it once and for all.

Fifty-six

Keptra rode with the would-be assassin in the ambulance. She wasn’t going to let him out of her sight. The medical personnel had already searched him for more weapons—particularly the small kind, the kind he had planned to use to murder the mayor.

They had found that weapon and one other thing that might be something and it might not. But they were cautious. They took all of his clothing, then swabbed him down before putting him in the ambulance. They also checked all his body cavities, and they ran a scanner over him to see if he had swallowed bomb-making components.

The only thing they didn’t do—they couldn’t do, really—was see if he had ingested a fast-acting virus or if he had put some kind of compound on his skin, something that would interact with standard medical procedures.

Keptra wore a medical protection suit the ambulance attendees gave her. It felt bulky and awkward. She told them she didn’t need it—she had already been close to him—but they insisted.

They were right.

The ambulance was boxy, roomier than she expected. It had flown to the Top of the Dome along with two others, preparing for casualties from the hostage situation.

She hadn’t realized there were ambulances this size, the kind that could take half a dozen injured—and tend to them all—to the nearest hospital. The would-be assassin looked small in his bolted-down bed in the center of the ambulance.

The attendants had all focused on him, stabilizing his neck, splinting his broken arm, and immobilizing his shattered leg. He had a head injury, although they weren’t certain how bad it was, and they had stopped the internal bleeding temporarily.

He would live, just like anyone else who dove out of a window in the Top of the Dome. He would live, but he would remember the pain.

The ambulance was returning to the hospital without its lights or sirens per her instructions. None of his injuries were life-threatening, so haste wasn’t an issue. And she didn’t want anyone to know he was alive.

Some of that was so that the hospital could work on him without problems from angry citizens. But part of it was so that his accomplices—if he had any—would think he was dead.

Keptra had made certain that she spoke to the press first; she told them that he had dived out of the restaurant at the Top of the Dome, and from the looks of him—she wasn’t willing to touch him (that part was true)—it looked like he hadn’t survived.

Only a few members of her team knew he had survived, and she had forbidden the ambulance attendants to talk to anyone outside of the hospital. They were usually good about that; the hospital could get sued for revealing a patient’s condition. She watched them mentally file this into that same category of information.

But while they had cooperated on not releasing information, they weren’t cooperating on one thing: She wanted them to wake this bastard up. She needed to talk to him before he got to the hospital and got threaded into the procedural maze.

The attendants claimed they didn’t have the authority to wake him, so she made them contact someone in authority. She needed to talk to him, and she needed to talk to him now.

She was half tempted to wake the bastard herself. She was sitting on a bench near his bed, and she wanted nothing more than to slam her fist onto the visible bruising on his splinted arm.

She wondered what they could do to her for hitting him like that. Particularly since she wasn’t strapped into her seat as the law required for anyone in a flying vehicle. She could claim that she lost her balance and put her hand out to protect herself.

Of course, there were probably cameras everywhere that would contradict her story.

She sighed as one of the attendants came over with a small syringe.

“You got your wish,” he said. “Make it quick, though. They’re taking him into the medical team the moment he arrives.”

The attendant used his triple-gloved hands to swab an area on the bastard’s good arm, then injected him with whatever the hell that was.

The bastard groaned and opened his eyes. Keptra was startled by their beautiful shade of blue.

It took them a moment to focus, then they settled on her.

“Oh, God,” he said softly. He closed his eyes again, not in exhaustion, but in a realization that he hadn’t died.

“The people that you work for,” she said, guessing on the relationship, “don’t know that you failed. They think you’re dead. We can keep it that way, if you talk to us.”

He opened his eyes again, a frown creasing his forehead. “They know that I failed,” he said. “The mayor is still alive.”

“So far as I can tell, you’re not the only one who failed at that part of the mission. But you are the only one who survived your suicide attempt.” She almost added,
which means that they will eventually kill you
, then stopped herself. If he was willing to die for the cause, then he would welcome someone trying to kill him.

He was watching her, beads of sweat on his forehead. The attendant sat slightly to the back, monitoring the bastard’s vital signs.

“I don’t know what you thought you would gain from the suicide attempt, whether it was a reward in heaven or whether it was some gift to protect a living person you love. I can’t help you with your religious beliefs, but if what you receive is something tangible, a gift to the loved one or something, I can help with that. No one has to know you survived. Ever.”

“What would happen?” he asked. “Would I Disappear?”

Many Disappearance Services did not work with clones, claiming they weren’t human, and Disappearance Services only catered to humans.

“Yes,” she lied. She really didn’t care what happened to him after he talked.

He closed his eyes, but not before a tear formed in the corner of one and rolled down his cheek. It surprised her. She didn’t want to see any emotions from him. She wanted him to remain a bastard.

“I can help you,” she repeated.

He shook his head slightly, then opened his eyes. His lashes were wet.

“I don’t know anything,” he whispered, then glanced at the attendant.

“Give us some privacy,” Keptra said.

The attendant frowned. He clearly couldn’t leave the beds, but the ambulance was so big he moved far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to hear anything.

“All right,” Keptra said, leaning toward the bastard. “What do you know?”

He looked up at her. He was younger than she thought—in his early twenties, maybe even in his teens. “All I know are the rules.”

“What are they?” she asked.

He glanced to one side, as if he expected someone to hurt him if he spoke. Then he took a deep, shaky breath. “Find the facilitator. Get to your location. Do the job. Wait until help arrives. Send the message. Die. Do not die alone.”