Broken Mirror (49 page)

“You’ve really gone over the edge,” Karine said.

Elena added, “She’s a cold-blooded maniac.”

Karine stared blankly at Victor, ignoring Elena. Disdain hovered around her eyes, irrepressible, butting up against a sliver of black fear. She covered the truth well, though. He admired her composure.

Karine said, “It’s my fault, in a way. I shouldn’t have hired amateurs. They were young and cheap, and I liked them. Well, her anyway.” Karine glanced at Lucky’s mostly naked body. “Victor, you can still come back, you know.”

Elena leaned close to Karine. “You are one fat bitch.”

Karine spit in Elena’s face. Elena wiped it, then threw a punch that whipped Karine’s head around. Victor heard something crack. He didn’t know if it was Elena’s hand or Karine’s cheekbone. Karine sobbed and moaned, then stopped. She looked at Victor, her face the color of naked embers. Her rage flowed into him and met its twin.

He wanted to kill her.

A tickling sensation danced on the back of Victor’s neck, and it was a moment before he realized Bandit was calling his name. “Victor! She’s not going anywhere. How about you cut us free so we can put our pants back on?”

“No,” Victor growled.

“I never meant for them to hurt you,” Karine said. “They were only supposed to watch you.”

Victor felt himself twitching, rage crackling just under the surface of his skin. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? That they were only
watching
me?”

Karine’s tongue flicked against her lips. “To make sure you didn’t slip up. Circe was adamant.”

Breath caught in Victor’s throat. Auntie Circe had known?

Karine seemed to read his mind. “Of course she knew. She wanted you followed
—
for your own protection. Then you hacked our network and disappeared.”

“Why are you here?” Elena asked.

“These two called me when they saved you from the Puros,” Karine said.

“I wouldn’t call it ‘saving,’” Victor said.

Ignoring him, she shot a withering look at Lucky and Bandit. “Unfortunately, they got it in their heads to ask for a ransom. Rather than pay it, I hired the Corps to get you back.”

“Are those your Corps at the kennel?” Victor asked.

“Yes. Mason Charter filed a lawsuit, claiming it belonged to him rather than your family. The Corps are a hedge against the lawsuit’s outcome. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, after all. Why are you so interested in it?”

Bandit pleaded, “Look, this is all just a big misunderstanding.”

“You were going to
sell
me,” Victor said, swinging the cudgel into Bandit’s thigh. Bandit’s yell sounded more surprised than pained. Victor reached down, found the sock, and stuffed it in his mouth again.

“I know you’re upset.” Karine spoke in soft and measured tones.

Victor felt her voice burrowing into his skin like a tick. “Be quiet!” he snapped. He paced the room, watching Karine. He was going to smack the truth out of her one blow at a time.

Lucky said, “We got greedy. Just let us go, and we’ll disappear. We’ve got nothing against you.”

Victor’s ears were buzzing. It was too loud to think. Perhaps the universe had dark plans for him after all.

“Not one mistake,” he mumbled aloud. “A lifetime of them.” He put a hand on Karine’s shoulder and looked into her eyes, light blue like a clear SeCa sky. “You hired them to watch me?”

Karine nodded vigorously. “That’s the truth.”

“For what it’s worth, Victor,” Tosh said, “people only say that when they’re lying.”

“You can still get out of this,” Karine said. She looked at Victor intently. Her lips curved slightly, as if she enjoyed this stupid circus. She was certainly clever enough to poison his grandfather and get away with it.

“You were playing with my life!” Victor smacked her in the face. She was still. He paced in the small space between the beds, not sure what he would do next. Whom could he trust? Everyone seemed to have their own version of the truth. His uncertainty was tearing him apart. He fingered the Handy 1000 in his pocket, then gripped the gas bomb.

Karine said, “Untie me, and let them go. We’ll forget this happened. A little slip-up. Completely understandable, but if I have to press charges, they’ll put you in a Class One facility.”

She
was threatening
him
?

“Or I could kill you,” Victor said. The calm, measured tone of his own words surprised him.

Karine laughed. “You’d never do that,” she said.

Victor pulled Karine’s hair
—
hard
—
jerking her head back. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

Karine's laugh, a rusty, coughing cackle. “Are you trying to scare me? Look at you, playing at a rampage. You can’t kill us. You wouldn’t put your family through that.”

Victor looked at the two freelancers bound and gagged on the bed, at Karine sitting in the chair, trussed like a turkey. It wouldn’t take much. A blow or two to the head for each of them. They could drive the bodies to some remote piece of land and drop them off. It would be easy.

Elena stepped forward and said to Karine, “It’ll look like you got caught in a turf war. Victims of dickie violence in the R.O.T., simple as that. An investigation could take years.”

Elena shoved Karine’s head down. Her hair had lost its lift; red strands hung in her face like copper wire.

Victor remembered the incident in the juice shop. His hands had wanted to transform into claws and rip out that young woman’s heart. It was the same feeling he had now: a pounding thunderous anger. And why not feel that way? He had a right.

But he’d been wrong about the woman in the juice shop, hadn’t he? Ric had wondered if she had MRS too. Maybe she did. She could have just wanted to talk to Victor. Everyone had a different truth.

Lucky’s sobs grew louder. Bandit tried to say something through his gag.

“Victor?” Elena put her hand on his shoulder. “I think we have to get rid of them.”

“Agreed,” Tosh said, “Nothing personal, of course.”

“Everybody shut up!” Victor yelled. He felt his heart racing. In a lower voice directed at Tosh and Elena, he said, “I’m going to decide what’s next. No one else.”

Karine’s voice pierced the dim room. “Victor, don’t.”

Elena whispered in Victor’s ear. “She was going to lock you up and throw away the key! I’ll do it, so you don’t have to.” Elena nodded toward Tosh. “We’ll do it for you.”

Victor looked at the bodies writhing on the bed, at Karine’s hard, desperate face. They deserved to be punished. Tosh cocked his head to the side. He wore a know-it-all smirk under scheming eyes. Elena stood tall.

“Not yet,” Victor said. “I need to know if she murdered my
—
if she assassinated Jefferson Eastmore.”

“That fantasy again,” Karine said. “I don’t know anything about that.”

Victor peered at her face. “You knew him. You poisoned him. You took his place on the Health Board. You got your fingers in his company.”

She said, “You have a disturbing ability to ignore the facts when it suits you.”

Victor said, “Radiation killed him. That’s a fact. Tosh saw the evidence.”

Tosh nodded.

Karine pursed her lips. “That’s why the body was exhumed, wasn’t it? What makes you think it wasn’t an accident? Or suicide!”

Victor said, “He didn’t want to see any of this happen
—
what’s happened to people with MRS. Stims showing up everywhere
—
he would have hated that.”

“More conspiracy nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense. Stims mimic my condition.”

“Of course they do. That’s an open secret. You know about stims? Hooray for you. Pretty much anyone paying attention to the epidemic knows that. Why do you think we’ve been adjusting the diagnostic protocols?”

Elena sucked in her breath. “You want to treat addicts the same way you treat people with MRS?”

“Why not? The Classification System is comprehensive, humane. If Jefferson hadn’t closed Oak Knoll, we’d have better treatments by now.” She pulsed against her restraints. “The bigger problem is that we’re constantly being hacked. That’s what started this whole mess.”

Victor leaned forward and smelled her perfume: lavender and sandalwood, hints of the ocean. He heard waves on the shore and tasted salt spray. “What do you mean?”

“Apparently, stims are based on a first-generation XSCT compound that was stolen from the Holistic Healing Network. Mind you, I was told all this secondhand after the merger.” Karine’s voice took on the monotone she used when dispensing updates at company meetings. “It wasn’t just your family’s company that got hit. Last year, there was an intrusion at Gene-Us, too. The accessed data included the MRS gene sequence. Clearly, someone used the stolen information to design and manufacture stims.”

XSCT was the compound that had been shipped to the Lone Star Kennel. Victor had to find a way around the Corps guarding it. Maybe Karine wasn’t completely useless.

Victor said, “But even my hacker buddy couldn’t decrypt the sequence.”

“Maybe your buddy is lying. Maybe
he’s
the thief,” Karine said.

Victor narrowed his eyes.

Karine continued, “We assumed that the person who stole the sequence had a decryption key. There aren’t many, but every member of the Health Board has one. Victor, are you sure Jefferson wasn’t . . .”

“Wasn’t what?” he asked.

“Now, don’t get upset. But what if he was responsible for the stim epidemic? Maybe he meant for it to be an unsanctioned clinical trial. He could have manufactured the drugs at Oak Knoll and then hidden everything.”

“That’s . . . He wouldn’t . . .”

Karine said, “Perhaps Jefferson couldn’t live with what he’d done. You said he died of radiation poisoning? He certainly had the means to obtain polonium.”

Tosh stepped forward. His hands were balled into fists at his sides. “Jeff Eastmore was a great man. He would never kill himself. Never.”

Karine said, “I always thought so too, but how else do you explain this? The other Health Board members are all policy wonks. They don’t have the skills to pull this off.”

“How do we know it’s not you?” Elena asked.

Karine turned to Victor. Her eyes were large, open, hard. “I didn’t poison him. I hired these flackies to protect you and to protect your family’s company. Ask your aunt. Things didn’t go as planned, but it wasn’t my fault. If you’re looking for a culprit, you have to look further. Who benefits from stims?” Karine nodded at Elena. “Addicts get their fix. Drug pushers profit. The underworld wins. Not me.”

Victor looked from Karine to Elena and back again. “You know about her?”

“I arranged things with the clinic in New Venice, yes. As a favor to Circe. We were trying to help you.”

Elena squared her shoulders. “Your clinics profit off treating addicts.”

Karine said, “If I could wish away your addiction, I would. We tried to help you.”

Elena said, “They chipped me!”

“A precaution. Which paid off, I might add.” Karine smiled.

Elena got in Victor’s face. “Let me kill her. If you let her go, she’ll make sure you’re locked up. Victor, it’s the only option.”

Victor closed his eyes and pictured a solitary island. Waves crashing on a shore. Wind shaking palm trees. Sand shifting in the dunes. Chaotic sounds and motion, blissfully meaningless. Soothing.

He’d come all this way for nothing. He had only a rough idea of what was really behind the stim market. He had no proof that Karine killed Jefferson. He barely knew who he was or what he was capable of anymore.

Victor opened his eyes. They were all looking at him.

Elena crossed her arms. Victor felt numb. The one person he cared about more than himself wanted to turn him into a murderer, a monster.

“I need to think,” he said. The room buzzed and hissed.

Karine was either innocent or a crafty killer. Which was it?

Victor fingered the gas bomb in his pocket again.

Tosh strode to the bathroom door, saying, “Let’s talk in here. Fewer ears.”

“It’s okay,” Victor said. “Elena, will you
—
can I talk to you outside?”

Elena nodded, moved past Karine, and stepped around Victor. She opened the front door, cleared the threshold, and looked at him expectantly.

Victor slammed the door and flipped the dead bolt.

“Hey!” she yelled from the other side.

In a fluid motion, Victor triggered the gas bomb and threw it at Tosh’s feet. White smoke jetted into the room, billowing across the floor. Victor dove to the bed’s edge, grabbed the gas mask, and pulled it over his head. He curled into a ball, blocking the front door.

Tosh tried to pull him away to get outside. Victor tensed, his arms pinning the mask to his face. Tosh tried to pry it off, but his body was wracked by coughs. Victor squirmed, twisted, and kicked his foot up. It connected with Tosh’s belly, and the man sucked in a breath.

Smoke filled the room to the ceiling. The freelancers coughed. Karine screamed, perhaps not realizing it hastened her unconsciousness. She quieted, and her head drooped.

The two figures on the bed writhed. Then they, too, succumbed to the gas.

Tosh dropped to his knees. His hands latched onto Victor’s gas mask. He coughed and pulled more lungfuls of smoke through his mouth. Victor held onto the mask. Tosh cursed, slumped down, and passed out.

The room was quiet. Victor was on his own. It was time for murder. Or perhaps something else.

From the depths of my future, a dark breath returned and collapsed the lives I hadn’t yet lived into a single path.

Choices that weren’t mine propelled me forward.

Even now that I know the truth, no decision turns in the direction I expect.

—Victor Eastmore’s
Apology

Fog-white sleeping-gas particles filled the room’s air like Mesh static. The filter on Victor’s gas mask made it difficult to breathe. Like trying to suck a juicebulb through a too-thin straw.

Victor wondered how long he could hide in this room. Elena was banging on the door. He couldn’t just sit there indefinitely. He tried to open a vidfeed to Ozie and was surprised when the feed request was approved.