Broken Mirror (30 page)

“Yes.”

“Should you?”

The hair on his neck bristled. She was the one addicted to drugs, not him. “Yes. There’s no reason I can’t drink a little like everyone else.”

“I thought—”

“I’ll be fine. I go to bars all the time now. It’s how I practice being social.”

Elena’s eyebrows arched even higher, but she didn’t say another word.

While they waited for their food, Victor used the table’s interface to scan SeCa MeshNews articles. He couldn’t find any mention of his granfa’s grave being defiled, the theft at BioScan, a missing herbalist, nor an AWOL heir to the Eastmore fortune. It might be just a matter of time before those things became big stories, but somehow he doubted they would get covered at all. As that thought sunk in, it scared him. Just how powerful were the people behind his granfa’s death?

Nonetheless, as he scanned through global headlines of diplomatic gaffes and delays in mega-construction projects, it was comforting to know that the world continued on its mixed-up way.

“What are we doing here? What does this guy Ozie know?” Elena asked.

Victor leaned back in the booth. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

Elena’s attention seemed to wander. She looked around, eyeing their fellow diners and glancing toward the entrance. It made Victor uneasy. There was something else she wasn’t telling him. He watched her drum her fingers on the table.

She looked down and shrieked. Other diners turned to stare.

“What did you just do?” he asked.

Elena cackled and looked at him with tears in her eyes. “I accidentally ordered f-four plates of fries, two roast chickens, and a piece of chocolate cake. Where’s the cancel button?”

Victor squirmed, unamused. She seemed on edge, crazed, more volatile than normal. Or was this normal, and he was just now noticing it? He pressed a few fingers to the table to cancel the order.

“Wait!” she yelled. “I want the cake.”

He canceled everything else. “We can split it,” he said.

She frowned. “Maybe.”

Victor’s sandwich and chips and Elena’s plate of food arrived five minutes later on a platter held aloft by a robot with a tuxedo painted on its chassis and a top hat above its boxy metal camera-face. The robot deposited the plates precisely and gently and placed Victor’s beer on a cooling pad. A speaker mounted on the thing’s shoulder emitted a mechanical-sounding phrase, “Enjoy your meal.” It rolled away with a quiet whirr of motors.

Victor shook his head. “NEC-Automation can build robots a thousand times more advanced than that. But SeCa bans them, and here they show up as retro kitsch.”

Elena took one bite of the meatloaf, grimaced, and pressed an icon on the table for beer. She said, “Texas uses them to farm, but only on the best plots of land. They’re expensive. And targets for thieves.”

Victor took small bites of his sandwich. Bread and cheese, and lettuce for contrasting crunch. He heard her sigh, again, and then a third time. She was looking away from her food, eyeing his plate slyly.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“The meatloaf—it’s dry and mealy,” she said. “At least the mashed potatoes are buttery.”

Her beer arrived, and Victor watched the robot set it on the table without a word. Amazing how they knew not to interrupt conversations.

Elena took three big gulps and sighed. “What’s the deal with this guy again?” she asked, but her gaze wandered.

Victor shrugged. “Ozie’s a brainhacker.” Why bother going into detail if she wasn’t going to listen?

“Does he have implants?” She chewed the meatloaf, forked some potatoes into her mouth, and took a sip of beer.

“Just a headset, I think. The magnetic kind. He was always more into the scripts than wetware.”

“He must be crazy, though, messing with his own brain.”

Victor blinked at her. Noninvasive neuromodulation of the central nervous system, or brainhacking, used electromagnetism or ultrasound to affect brain functions. The technologies had only been available for the past two decades or so. Therapists were still arguing about how to measure their effectiveness and what treatments were appropriate for different conditions. But they weren’t at all dangerous.

Victor took a bite of his sandwich. “He’s like me with the herbs. Or like you with stims.”

She pushed her food to the edge of her plate. “Have you ever tried brainhacking?”

“Yes.”

She looked up at him. “Did it work?”

“Not really, maybe a little bit. My sleep got better. During the day I was calmer. Not by a lot. It was Dr. Tammet’s idea. She decided against it after a few weeks of no results.” No results that he’d told the doctor about. His dreams had been less horrific, but he hadn’t wanted to open that can of worms.

Elena looked skeptical. “Wasn’t that risky, though? I mean, especially for you?”

“I came to the conclusion that it was riskier
not
to try anything that might help.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine.”

They continued eating in silence.

As they finished their meal, a young man with dark skin and darker, close-buzzed hair walked to their booth and sat down. He stared at Victor through black, square-rimmed eyeglasses. “You made it. Good. Who the hell is she?” he asked.

“This is Elena.”

Elena nodded in Ozie’s direction.

He ignored her. “I told you not to bring anyone.”

“She’s helping me. Helping us, if you and I are going to be working together.” Victor kept his voice level, hoping Ozie wouldn’t make it a bigger deal than it was. “Look, Ozie, I’ve had enough running around in the dark. I want to know what you know.”

“Fine, but she can’t stay,” Ozie said.

Elena’s jaw dropped, and she put her hands around the edge of the table as if to overturn it.

“Ellie,” Victor pleaded. “Do you mind if—”

“Yeah, I got it.” She slid out of the booth with her beer. “I’ll be in the chill room, racking up a tab for you. Save the cake for me when it comes. All of it.” Her glare slipped off Ozie without any perceptible effect.

When she was gone, Ozie leaned forward and said, “Give me the Bose-Drive.”

“Tell me what’s going on first.”

Ozie smiled. “I heard from Pearl.”

Victor stiffened. Ozie had always liked to press Victor’s buttons by making up stories. Once he’d told Victor that Samuel Miller had broken out of a Class One facility. Victor had nearly fallen out of his chair in the university cafeteria, and Ozie had laughed and hooted until tears streamed down his black cheeks. Was Pearl okay, or was Ozie pulling his leg? Victor placed his hands on the table to keep them from shaking.

“Is she okay?” Victor asked.

“They let her go.”

That was a relief.

Ozie continued, “
After
she paid them 5,000 AUD. But we don’t think it’s safe for her in SeCa anymore. She’ll be here in a week.”

“The couple that took her—who are they?” Victor asked.

Ozie crossed his arms, always the type to resent a question he couldn’t answer. “I’m still figuring that out,” Ozie said, fidgeting in his seat.

Victor looked at Ozie more closely. He hadn’t changed much in five years. A little less hair at his temples. Fuller in the face, but just as slim around his waist. Though he looked anxious, eyes flicking around the cafe, Victor believed he could trust him. “Do you think they killed my granfa?”

Ozie stared at Victor and shook his head. “No. They’re thugs. Totally different problem.”

“How do you know?”

“Because 5,000 AUD is a ridiculously insignificant sum of money. They’re small time. Killing Jefferson Eastmore
—
that’s huge. Consider the stakes.”

Victor waited for him to elaborate.

“Our opponent is much craftier than those two.” Ozie leaned on his elbows. “Here’s what I know. Near as I can tell, the diagnostic protocols for mirror resonance syndrome will be standard throughout the American Union within five years. Throughout the civilized world within ten. Globally within twenty.”

“Why does that matter?”

“Motive,” Ozie said. “Jefferson was holding everything up. His pilot projects for Class Two ranches raised questions about the effectiveness of Personil. He advocated cognitive-behavioral therapies, herbalism, and brainhacking as alternatives. He wanted to do away with the Classification Commission’s system. His ideas weren’t popular
—
too radical, some would say. Once he was gone, no one else questioned the system.”

Victor sat back and crossed his arms. “You promised me information if I brought you the data. This is all just speculation.”

Ozie smiled, showing his canines. “Speculation is important. For example, what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln was killed that night in the theater instead of his wife?”

Victor rolled his eyes. Ozie was trying to push his buttons again. “What does this have to do with anything?”

Ozie sighed. Behind his black-rimmed glasses, his eyelids drooped; the lower slivers were deep red, like a hound dog’s. Even his plaid shirt, which billowed around his thin frame, looked tired and faded. “I’m trying to make a point. Humor me. What if Abe Lincoln was killed instead of Mary?”

Victor shrugged. “Probably the same stuff. The Union would have used that as an excuse to crush the South even more.”

Ozie held up a finger. “But maybe not. Abe went bat shit over Mary. It wasn’t politics that led him to destroy what was left of Southern culture. It was vendetta. He persecuted the Confederate’s leaders. He provided restitution to the slaves out of the lands confiscated from white elites. He gave Yankee politicians and companies free rein to remake the South.”

“This is irrelevant.”

“It’s not! It led directly to the Repartition, and without the Repartition, SeCa would be nothing, another neglected territory of the United States. You Eastmores would probably still be mucking around some Mississippi River tributary. It didn’t have to be this way.” Ozie leaned forward, his eyes wide. “Or take the archduke of Austria. The continental war that led to unified Europe started because of another failed assassination attempt. Do you think that’s a coincidence?”

Victor gulped his beer. Avoiding Ozie’s crazy eyes, he said, “You’re saying that the attempted assassinations of the archduke of Wherever, Europe in the 1910s and President Lincoln, which happened decades earlier, are related? That’s insane.”

Ozie puffed out his chest and lifted his chin. “I’m not saying they’re directly related, but they are part of a pattern. History is not just policies and demographics. Sure, those matter. After the War of the Atlantic, Europe demanded reparations, which drained the U.S. treasury and paved the way for the Repartition. We all know that. But sometimes it’s the individuals who can make a difference: Lincoln, the archduke. And now, here’s the really good stuff.”

Ozie paused. He looked around as if checking to see that they weren’t being watched. The lights of the café blinked all around them. Loud, clanging music filled the dining hall. Diners appeared preoccupied with conversations and playing with bits of tech lying around. Victor watched his old friend and wondered if he’d lost his grip on sanity.

Ozie continued, “Mía Barrias, after Carmichael—she made a difference. If Mía had died, if she hadn’t lived to tell everyone how horrible Samuel Miller’s acts were, spreading the word like gospel, maybe we wouldn’t have the Classification system. She wouldn’t have made it her life’s mission to get all of us locked up. We’d all be running free, and Samuel Miller would be an anomaly, the only person with MRS, not the first of many. Individuals make a difference. That’s my point. Jefferson Eastmore would have made a difference. That’s why he had to die, so he couldn’t stop whatever they had planned. I know it.”

I know it
—that single phrase activated all of Victor’s doubt. How many times had he said those same words himself while referring to a blatant fantasy?

Victor rubbed his face and sighed, saying, “You’re speculating. The feeling I had that he was murdered, your conspiracy, the people following me
—
we don’t know how they fit together.” Victor pushed back his shoulders. “We need facts to figure this out. Hard evidence.”

He took the mason jar holding a piece of his granfa’s tongue from his bag and put it on the table. “We need to get this to a lab. They need to run tests to find polonium and to sequence the DNA to prove it’s his.”

Ozie looked at the jar with wide eyes and licked his lips. “Can do. It’s safe with me.” He placed the mason jar on the seat next to him, and then he grinned. “I’m glad you’re here. You know how it is. You and I can stretch a line of reasoning to the breaking point, but together we can keep each other honest. Really, Vic, I know I can’t do this alone. I tried feeding information to the police, the SeCa attorney in chief, the governor-general’s office
—
none of them responded. They don’t take me seriously. The stuff I found on the Mesh isn’t court-admissible. I’m trying to feed them enough to start their own investigation, but there’s no sign of them taking the bait. We’re on our own. That’s where the Bose-Drive comes in.”

“How so?”

“Gene-Us was and now BioScan is the only company that can run the genetic part of the test for MRS. Why is that? What are they hiding? We’ve got to stop them.”

Victor leaned back. He didn’t want to hear any more of Ozie’s theories for now. He was tired and worried about where Elena had gotten to. He said, “BioScan isn’t hiding anything. For all I know, you’re trying to hurt my family’s company for no good reason.”

Ozie poked the table. “This is about ending the Classification Commission by finding out what we really are. Don’t you want that?”

Victor sighed. “You and me, people like us, maybe we
are
a threat. It doesn’t take much to get us talking conspiracies and making plans that we shouldn’t be making.”

Ozie’s face bunched up. “You’re wrong. We are the victims of medical malpractice. All those people taking Personil. The facilities. The ranches. It’s a twisted system.”

“I am not my diagnosis, Ozie. I’m broken, but I’m still a person. I wish I were normal
—
I do. But whether I’ve got a medical condition or I’m the victim of social stigma, it’s the same thing. I have to live the life I was born to. You do too.”