Broken Mirror (51 page)

Hector led Victor past the guards and inside the administrative building, a low-ceilinged, flimsy, unimpressive aluminum shell not much more solid than a trailer. A conference room was tucked into one corner. A polished wooden bar ran at waist level below the front windows. A sign said, “Hitch Your Puppies Here,” in loopy, hand-painted letters.

Drab brown curtains separated the entrance area from the remainder of the building. A female receptionist greeted them with a thick and happy drawl. Hector made introductions. The minutes stretched. She apparently didn’t know the complicated legal history of the kennel’s ownership
—
“I was wondering why those rough guys were hanging around,” she said
—
requiring Hector to provide explanation about Jefferson Eastmore, Mason Charter, and the Eastmore family foundation.

Victor’s feet itched, but he forced himself to stand still.

Hector excused himself to clock into his shift.

“It might be a minute,” the receptionist said, happily oblivious to Victor’s stomach flipping and twisting.

A smile remained frozen on his face. He would say nothing to jeopardize his search.

“You can wait in the conference room. We have a MeshLine.” Her eyes lit up with pride.

Victor went into the conference room and sat down, running his hands along the surface of a table to calm himself. The vidscreen on the wall pinged that it had a live MeshLink. Victor entered his MeshID to access his message queue and entered his parents’ IDs into the recipients field.

“Arrived in Amarillo day before yesterday,” he said
—
had it really only been that long? “I’m safe. I’ll be in touch soon.” The words displayed on the vidscreen as he spoke them. His parents would want to speak with him directly, and he wanted to hear their voices, but that could wait until later. He paused for a moment to appreciate the deep well of patience that had filled him recently.

Victor found a new message from Karine.
You’ve been reclassified in absentia. Class Two. We’ll work on the appeal.

She was backing out on that part of their agreement. Fine. He’d never really expected her to follow through, and he wasn’t going back to SeCa anyway.

He looked at the previous message, which she’d sent him last night.
The studies are not part of the official record. DON’T SHARE THEM!

Residual sleepiness and the lack of juices and tinctures clouded his thoughts. How much had he read before he fell asleep? The prospect of digging into the research was like hitting a mother lode of endorphins and oxytocin at the same time. His brain revved up. The memory of the man-beast chewing his neck bones sent a shiver up his spine. He ignored the sensation and focused on the Health Board’s research.

He skimmed the first paper’s abstract. Two years after Carmichael, a genetic study had identified a mutation in the Lee-Lambda chromosome pair. The mutation was a single nucleotide polymorphism, meaning it was one small difference in the sequence of nucleic acids that coded for a neurologically important protein. Complex conditions were usually the result of many genes’ interactions with the environment, but mirror resonance syndrome didn’t appear to follow that pattern, even though the symptoms were extremely varied.

Fine. They’d found a genetic fingerprint for mirror resonance syndrome. But
how
they found it was odd. They had made brain scans of study participants and compared them to a single unnamed reference case. The study’s subjects were “volunteers” from the unions in SeCa, some of whom were subsequently found to have MRS. This had been a sore point between Jefferson Eastmore and the unions for years. Why focus on that specific pattern of brain waves? What was the reference case?

It must have been a neural excitation wave from someone unequivocally diagnosed with mirror resonance syndrome.

Who?

Oh, of course!

Samuel Miller. It had to be.

The Health Board had studied Samuel: his genes, his brain. Through him, they’d found the first clues into mirror resonance syndrome.

Victor cursed. Everything seemed to trace back to Samuel Miller. He’d ruined so many people’s lives! It wasn’t just the Carmichael dead and their surviving loved ones. His crimes had also led to a draconian response: the Classification Commission. Samuel Miller was responsible for every misery suffered by every person with MRS. If Victor ever met the man, somehow he would avenge the life he
should
have been living.

Victor turned to the next document. Researchers had studied neural networks grown from stem cell cultures. The mirror resonance gene changed the way electrical impulses traveled through the brain, making the neurons easier to excite and harder to suppress
—
in effect, relaxing the brain’s natural brakes.

Okay, fine, so in the second study researchers found a link between genetics and MRS people’s neurological function. Good for them. As Victor had always thought, and as the SeCa Health Board maintained, mirror resonance syndrome was a real, serious condition, with a genetic basis.

There was one more study to review, but a visual hallucination of sparks erupting in time with dogs barking blocked Victor’s view of the vidscreen. He repeated the owl mantra ten times, which caused the tiny fireworks to fade.

He pulled up the third document, a longitudinal study of the disease’s progression. The conclusions in the abstract were all he needed to read. The mirror resonance gene created an unmodulated cognitive resonance, which manifested as symptoms of blankness, susceptibility to suggestion and heightened flight or fight response, among others. However, the syndrome’s effects were not deterministic vis-à-vis mania, aggression, and delusional thinking, and deterioration wasn’t assured. In other words, the paper explained, not everyone with mirror resonance syndrome was doomed to psychosis, violence, and catatonia.

People with MRS weren’t inherently dangerous.

Breath caught in Victor’s throat, choking him. The SeCa Health Board had exaggerated the threat. Perhaps they’d even
increased
the likelihood of MRS people becoming violent by treating them as dangerous.

It was a monstrous injustice. Thousands of people had their lives cut short, sequestered, diminished. Of course people with MRS ended up catatonic. When everything is taken away, what does a person have left?

Sparks flared all around Victor. The world turned white, burning. His entire life had veered off track long ago, and he was just now realizing how bad it had become.

The receptionist knocked on the glass conference room wall. Victor jumped in his chair.

“Sorry to spook you, hon!”

The blankness ebbed and left Victor numb. He terminated his connection to the Mesh and followed the receptionist to an area cluttered with desks. They navigated through the disarray and arrived at a desk where a young man sat.

He had slick hair, polished to a midnight black and pasted to his skull. All his clothes were black or near-black: jeans, a collared shirt, and a slim-fit jacket. He even wore a black pair of thick, square-rimmed glasses. Only his face, hands, and glinting silver jewelry hanging from his wrists, neck, and ears offset his dark clothing. The young man continued tapping, swiping, and clicking on various input devices while Victor and the receptionist hovered nearby.

Eventually, the woman interrupted gently. “Leroy, this is Victor Eastmore. He’s the grandson
—
”

“I know. Give me a minute, okay? I’m lost in something,” he said, continuing his frantic movements. “Victor, sit down. Chair’s back there. Thanks. One second. Okay. Done!” Leroy wiped a hand down his cheek and shivered. “What brings you here, Victor? Do you want a coffee? I’ve got a stash of the real stuff.”

Without waiting for an answer, he got up and headed deeper into the building. Victor followed a few steps behind and watched as Leroy pulled cups and an unlabeled canister from a cabinet in the kitchen, placing them in the maw of an autobrew machine. While Leroy waited for the cups to fill, his fist hammered a rhythm on the top of the machine. Victor watched him, unamused. Caffeine was a mild drug compared to whatever else Leroy was taking, judging by his motions. Stims probably.

“Sorry to hear about your grandfather,” Leroy said. “What brings you here?”

“I’m looking after a few of his investments.” Victor struggled to keep any sense of urgency out of his voice. If he showed too much interest, Leroy might get defensive.

Leroy nodded and then led Victor toward the back door, holding both cups in his hands, maneuvering the door open, and continuing into the yard.

Outside, a large fenced area with lush grass, trees, and manicured bushes extended to fill most of the property. A group of dogs were running and nipping at each other. Leroy chose a bench outside the fence and sat down with Victor. Only then did he relinquish Victor’s cup.

“Do you like dogs?” Leroy asked.

The thought of chitchat wore through Victor’s last nerve, but he tried to sound nonchalant. “Yes, of course.”

“Hey, no need for the heavy sarcasm. I’m not much of a fan either.”

Victor gulped the too-hot coffee and choked it down.

Leroy raised an eyebrow and then turned his attention to the three dogs running around the yard. “I used to like them. But now I
hear
them all the time
—
yapping, hysterical monsters. My tolerance for them is gone, gone, gone.”

After Victor coughed and got his voice back, he said, “Jefferson arranged a shipment in September last year. Supplies in cold storage from a hospital in Oakland & Bayshore. Can you help me find them?”

Leroy sipped his coffee. His gaze bounced quickly between the snarling animals. He hiccupped and then tapped his chest the same way he had tapped the coffee machine. “Excuse me.”

“Can you help me track down what happened to them?”

“We can look through the records, but if you know the category or a shipment date or the name of the sender, it will help.”

“I know the name of the compound. XSCT-19900032.”

“Let’s give it a shot.”

Leroy led Victor back to his desk and pulled up the warehouse records, quickly finding a log noting the supplies in question. He showed it to Victor. “See? Easy. The shipment arrived on the twenty-fifth of September last year. Nothing here to indicate what was done with it.” He tapped a few commands, and pages rose and sank in response. “Huh, that’s strange. It’s not tied to any other records. Usually we would have a receiving bill or something like that. No reference in the Mesh either. Chances are we put whatever it was in our chiller. Do you want to go see if it’s still there?”

Victor wanted to scream, “
Of course!
” Instead, he merely choked out a quiet, “Yes.”

Leroy took Victor past the kennel cells. Clouds of aerosolized dog dander, urine, and feces wafted through the space, despite the loud rumbling and churning of an air chiller and filtration system hanging from the ceiling. Shiny ductwork snaked out the windows. Vibrations in the room were visible to Victor as a shimmer in the air.

The dogs ate and slept on two floors of rooms lining the sides of the long and narrow building. Their barks and whines followed Victor and jangled his nerves so much that his legs grew wobbly. Even Leroy picked up his pace. The dogs sounded murderous.

“I hate when they get like that,” Leroy yelled over the noise. “It’s like they want to rip us apart. ‘Man’s best friend,’ right?”

“Maybe they don’t like being locked up,” Victor yelled back.

They exited the opposite end of the building. Victor breathed fresh air and listened with relief to the muffled cacophony of the kennel.

They took a footpath to a nearby warehouse. Inside, Leroy showed Victor two rooms holding chilled supplies, one freezing and one a few degrees colder than room temperature. They donned spare jackets and gloves when they entered the freezing one.

Leroy explained the contents, his breath emerging in frosted puffs. Specialty foods in large plastic tubs filled most of the shelves. These were for the high-end doggy guests with specific dietary requirements. Veterinary supplies sat in a chiller cube.

Victor picked up each bottle or package in turn, scanned the label, and moved on to the next, shifting them so he could reach the back of shelves, forming piles on the floor when necessary. He touched and examined every article in the room. His breath puffed out in clouds of frozen vapor.

He looked everywhere. Leroy followed his lead and reported finding nothing. Victor double-checked everything Leroy did anyway. They didn’t find anything labeled HHN, Oak Knoll, or XSCT.

In the other chilled room, Victor searched just as thoroughly, examining each vial and container and a small self-contained chiller, but he didn’t find anything labeled for humans.

“I guess it’s not here,” Leroy said.

“We keep looking. Everywhere.”

Leroy helped him search the rest of the warehouse. They looked through the records in the small warehouse management area. They looked inside boxes and plastic containers.

One question repeated over and over in Victor’s mind.
Where’s my cure?

They examined all the labels. Could the labels have been switched? It would take Victor days to check.

They found nothing. Nothing to indicate anything. A dead end.

Victor couldn’t move, couldn’t think. There was nothing to do. He had failed.

“I’m sorry, Victor,” Leroy said. “We clean out supplies every three months, so if we weren’t sure what it was, it would have been disposed of. I can ask the other employees if they remember anything, but it will take some time. I can contact you if I find anything.”

Victor looked carefully at Leroy’s face. There was no sign of the compound, nor what Jefferson Eastmore had done with it while he was here. But one thing was certain: Leroy was lying. He was keeping a secret and was nervous that Victor would discover it.

“Vic, you okay?” Leroy asked.

Thickly, through a congealing morass of anger, Victor gave Leroy his MeshID, and they walked to the administration building. Whatever was hidden in the kennel was hidden deep, and he’d need to return to uncover it. Victor was resolved but weary: with each step, his knees threatened to collapse and send him reeling to the ground.