Persona (19 page)

“When did you say these were taken?”

“Five, six days back,” Bo said. “Before I got assigned to recruitment duty.”

Daniel shot a grin over his shoulder. “I'm your best work of the week, then.”

Dev choked. Kate's eyes were wide as she rolled back to her station and pointedly turned the monitor away from him.

Bo said, “You have a lot of confidence for a guy who doesn't know who's putting his camera in.”

Shit. “Point. Sorry. Don't let me bleed to death, please.”

“No hard feelings,” Bo said after a moment. “Let's get your camera lined up, then. As soon as you're done we'll get going. There's work we need to do.”

Bo vanished behind one of the open doors like a film of smoke, and even when the light went on in the little exam room, it took Daniel a second to place where Bo was inside it. He needed to stop snapping at Bo. Bo was six inches taller than Daniel and could disappear in a room in which he was the only occupant. He'd have to learn how to be invisible. Bo was a good teacher.

This was what he wanted, Daniel reminded himself. This was what it took.

He'd handled his passage; he'd handled the theft of a camera worth half what his passage had been; he'd handled setup for his first assignment alone. He could handle this.

“Nice shot,” Dev said to his computer. “Kate, it's headed your way.”

A moment later, Kate said, “Oh, nice. Put it with the personals.”

“Can I see?” Daniel leaned over. Three figures were standing together in the narrow alley between a noodle place and a shabby, low-rent temple; there was a smear of neon filtering in from one corner, left over from the camera turning away too quickly from a sign. It was a good picture—it suggested a story about the people in it.

“What are they talking about?”

“Doesn't concern you,” said Kate.

“Well, I'll know when whoever's in this picture gets busted.” He peered closer, trying to figure out who exactly was in it.

Dev smiled. “That's the problem. Doesn't matter how it looks. You want confirmed IDs first, everything else second. Sometimes we get to pass on a great shot right to the papers, but most of the time . . .” He waved his left hand vaguely as he moused the photo back into the stream it had come from.

“So we don't try to make it look good?”

Dev looked at him a second. Then he said, “That's not really the job description.”

Daniel couldn't decide if it was better or worse not to have much say about which frames made it into the world. He knew how to take a picture, but that was a job for photographers; he was a just a walking camera now.

“Go ahead, Bo, I've keyed it,” said Kate. “He's 35178.”

In the other room, Bo was lifting a pill out of a metal canister.

“Oh no,” Daniel murmured.

“It hardly hurts,” said Dev.

His voice was kind. Daniel looked over. Dev smiled and tapped his temple, where there was a bump so small Daniel had missed it.

“I'm just feeling sorry for my poor handsome face,” Daniel said.

“Don't worry,” said Kate without looking up. “We'll still get to see it every time you look in a mirror.”

The hair on his neck stood up.

The idea of it filled his mind as he took the chair in the operating room, and Bo injected the anesthetic, and even in the moment before he fell into the twilight sleep and remembered where he'd seen the man in the photo, his dreams caught on the image of him looking into the mirror and seeing an empty face, save the little black mole and the camera's whirring eye.

Suyana dreamed of the forest.

It sat waterlogged, dark and green and teeming with life, filled with the screeches of birds and monkeys and the little clicks of insects and the falls like thunder, far away.

The forest was always a good dream.

She'd only seen it once, that first year when the IA was taking a picture for her official card. All the rest of her work had been listening to drunk Faces complaining at Terrain and handlers fighting in offices that were never as soundproof as you thought, and interns who were too busy to shred things for an hour after they were told to. Her environmental revolution was walking through
parfum
at the department store, talking to a woman she pretended wasn't a stranger.

She'd been working for years for a place she couldn't remember when her eyes were open. When she did, it was mixed up with the idea of Chordata being too fractured to hold on for long (a bureaucrat's worry), worries about Zenaida, worries about being caught, Hakan's face every time he looked at her like he was wondering whether to ask her and make her lie.

But now she stood at the edge of the canopy, ferns tickling her hand as she knelt to touch the ground. The wind in the trees, and the sound of water, and green things all around her growing and safe; it was a good dream.

×  ×  ×  ×  ×  ×  ×

She woke up not knowing where she was.

It was a hazard of the trade. Faces went where they were told. She was used to it; it hadn't panicked her for years. It helped remind you that you had to be careful, that you were playing a part from the moment you opened your eyes.

But just because it was helpful didn't make it a comfort, and Suyana fought the stomach-sinking moment of disorientation. She kept her eyes closed for a heartbeat, listening for anything that might ground her.

There was someone next to her, breathing quietly.

For a moment, her body flooded with panic. Then she remembered. By the time she opened her eyes, she knew it was Grace asleep beside her.

It was strange, impossibly strange; she felt as if the bed were sinking though she was perfectly still. Maybe this happened once you were in a relationship with someone, contract or not. Maybe one day you could look at someone in bed beside you and not be taken aback that they trusted you enough to just . . . sleep right in front of you.

But here it was. Her entire body felt prickly, suddenly; it had grown allergic to being this close to anyone. Maybe this was what everyone else felt, when they woke up next to partners they had chosen for themselves.

She understood now why handlers brought outsiders in for practice. The idea of Ethan being the first man to see her asleep like this made Suyana want to stab something.

(He wasn't, she realized—Daniel had been. That was worse. She set it aside.)

Suyana would have marked Grace as cold as Martine when it came to things like this; even if Grace's politics were in the right place, Suyana felt as if she'd cut herself on Grace's edges whenever they'd talked.

But Grace had changed her mind. Grace was asleep like a child, calm and untroubled. In the late-morning light, her skin was a warm contrast against the white sheets.

The sheets that smelled like hotel detergent.

Suyana shot up with a lurching stomach, remembering what she'd realized just before sleep overtook her.

Someone did the flat's laundry for Grace. Someone else, in the IA's employ, had access to the apartment.

Suyana knew the IA by now. The place was bugged.

She swung out of the bed and up, gingerly testing her right leg before she set weight on it. It held. Grace had rebandaged the wound, and few hours' rest had stopped most of the bleeding. She checked her arm; clean.

That Grace had knelt beside her, wiping blood and wrapping gauze, while she slept helplessly, was something she couldn't imagine. Suyana didn't know how to feel about being trusted. Her skin ached. The backs of her eyes were burning.

She pressed down on the gauze with a shaking hand, but everything held. At least the IA wouldn't have to worry about her bleeding to death before they could find her.

She wished she could take a shower, but she wouldn't be able to re-dress her wounds herself, and there wasn't time. She had to run.

First, there was someone she needed to talk to before she lost her mind doubting.

Her chest tight, she shoved herself into her clothes and approached the viewscreen as if it were a wild animal. If the place was bugged anyway, her secrecy was blown. At least she could get a couple of answers before she hit the streets again.

(There was something disheartening about running without knowing who you were even running from. She didn't mind fighting—she was ready to fight—but she liked knowing who her enemies were.)

Grace's glass of water was sitting on the kitchen counter, one fingerprint turned obligingly outward.

Suyana thought, between one breath and the next, about the wisdom of baiting the animal in its den. Then she picked up the glass by the lip, punched a number she knew by heart, and held the glass against the scanner.

There was a flicker of red light, and Suyana gritted her teeth and waited for the alarm to go off.

But the green light came on. She exhaled shakily as she angled the screen and punched in the keycode to encrypt. There was a beep as the call connected, and before Suyana could rethink bolting, Magnus's face appeared on the screen.

She blinked.

His shirt was rumpled, his tie was gone, his hair was a mess—he must have just run his hands through it to face the strange call ID. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week.

“Samuelsson,” he said without looking up, his hands busy with paperwork, his voice polite and disinterested.

She knew that trick; he used it when he wanted to get the upper hand at the start of a negotiation. It worked better when he shaved.

Strange, how much like home it felt to see him. He might be trying to kill her, but there was still something comforting about someone whose tells you knew.

She smiled grimly and faced the screen head-on, to fill the frame with her shoulders.

“Was it you?”

His head snapped up as if it were on a string. His glance went past her for a second—trying to place the location, checking for any shadows that looked like men with guns. To some people, diplomacy came naturally.

Then he was looking at her, frowning but trying not to look as if he'd been caught off balance. “Suyana.”

“Was it you?”

His mouth was a thin line. The decoy manuscript was forgotten now; the white curve of it buried the tops of his hands. The paper trembled.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I already have two bullet holes in me. No point in being coy now. Was it you.”

He flinched when she said “bullet holes.”

The papers sank back to the desk. He was distracted, though he'd hardly looked away from her—more like there were too many things he didn't dare say.

Finally he managed, “Are you all right?”

She wished she'd smoothed her hair where it had come out of place. Maybe then he'd stop looking at her like she was about to keel over. “Still breathing, so far.”

“The country's on the verge of real trouble, Suyana. The UARC is not happy with you, and the IA isn't happy with anyone. Do you know they've severed ties with you?”

“
You
severed ties.”

“The Committee—”

“Can only lean on those who are willing to break.” She was angry, in some vague and distant way. Maybe seeing Colin had reminded her what a handler could be like.

She lowered her head, looked at him through her eyebrows. “If you want me dead I understand, that's how some people leave this job, but don't pretend it was red tape—”

“Goddamn it, Suyana, I didn't want to!”

It stopped her sentence cold.

Magnus never lost his temper. He got cross—he was often frustrated, given how often she and her country stymied his dreams of success—but he simmered and maneuvered, never broke. This was the first time she'd heard real anger from him.

“So why did you?”

“Because I thought it was your best chance,” he said. His hands were fists on his desk now, nearly out of frame. “The Committee was extremely unhappy. If I'd held out to try to bring you in, there would have been unpleasantness.”

Suyana raised her eyebrows. “I was shot. We've already had unpleasantness.”

A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “I forget how good you are about single-minded conversation around the topic you'd like to discuss.”

“I forget how good you are at saying things that sound like compliments if you're not actually listening.”

He ran his tongue along his teeth. After a moment he said, “I had nothing to do with it. I swear.”

She believed him—not because of his promise, but because of his anger. “Do you know who did?”

“No.” He sounded wary again. “I'm certainly trying to find out. I was worried whoever it was finished you off after you disappeared from the hospital.”

It was an opening for her to tell him who had helped her break out, and explain where she had been. Instead she said, “Guess not.”

He bit back a smile.

The list was getting narrower: the Americans, or the IA. Somehow, she didn't see Ethan making that call, but she didn't know very much about his team, and the Americans had never been afraid to spill blood.

“Did you have to explain on the scene?”

Magnus shook his head. “By the time I had my head about me, the Peacekeepers were taking me in for questioning by committee. Just as well. I'll never be able to set foot in that hotel again.”

Suyana knew the feeling. “I don't suppose the Americans have been in touch.”

“After word first went out, Ethan sent a note expressing his concern and offering assistance. There was no note after the announcement you had been severed.”

He was able to say it as if it was a decision he'd never made, a press conference for which he'd never been present. That level of detachment was admirable, in its own way, but goose pimples crawled up her arms.

When he sat forward, the lamplight fell into the circles under his eyes. “Where are you, Suyana? Are you all right?”