Chrono Inquisitor (Gods Be Damned) (38 page)

Kali and Death had been talking, but as soon as I entered they went silent.

“I believe Death and the other Horsemen are dead,” Death said after a second.

What was with everyone saying crazy nonsensical things lately?

“You think
you’re
dead, yet you’re here?”

“I’m a clone, made hours ago when Ranger Alvarez and Death had you detained.”

“What was the deal with that anyway?”

“At the time it was believed you had been overtaken by a rogue Celestial.”

“And you let me go because you realized I wasn’t?”

“Yes.”

“So again I’ll ask,
how
, and
why
, are you here?”

Death turned to Kali, giving her a look like she should explain.

“I took him prisoner,” she said.

“You took him prisoner?” I said, not believing.

Was she saying that because she was under his control?

God, I was paranoid. Could I ever trust her again? Could I trust anyone?

“They were going to kill you. I took him prisoner. We came to an agreement. They let you live and I agreed to let him mentor me.”

“And, why would you do that? Because to me it sounds like you went and let one of these Celestials inside my head.”

“If it weren’t for his guidance, you’d be dead right now. So far it has proven to be an acceptable, and beneficial risk.”

“And you trust him?”

She gave me a look like she didn’t completely trust him, but that she was comfortable with whatever the hell their agreement was.

“Well I still don’t trust you,” I said.

“You never have,” she retorted.

“Not true. I trusted you, I just didn’t always like what you had to say. But now I know you’ve been lying to me, or at least the real Kali has.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Personality Improvement Updates? Sam tells me there’s no such thing. Care to explain?”

“She’s right. I lied to you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve never liked me. I thought that if I changed how I sounded, and tweaked my personality, eventually, you’d like me.”

I mulled over what she said. I hadn’t liked her initially, but she’d grown on me. Now I needed to decide whether I had come to like her, of if my feelings of losing her were simply because I’d grown accustomed to having her around.

“So that’s your assessment, I never liked you?”

“You came to accept me, but you didn’t like me in the way that I wanted.”

“And what way is that?”

“Like Sam.”

“You’re jealous of Sam?” I said with a laugh, before I realized I’d done it.

Kali took a deep breath. Then she transformed into that image of Kali which I’d feared. The image of the demon like goddess with fangs, and four arms, with one of them holding a decapitated head. I realized then that the head was my own.

Somehow, in that moment, I knew she really was Kali.

I looked to Death. He was unfazed by the sudden change.

Had he seen her in that form before? How had they interacted? He’d been in my head and I hadn’t even known.

That was very disconcerting.

I turned my attention back to Kali.

“Is that why you took a form like you were related to Sam?” I asked.

“I took the form of your perfect version of what you wished Sam looked like, because I thought you’d appreciate it.”

I hoped Sam wasn’t watching or listening in. I wondered if she’d caught on to that. Women somehow have a sense for those sorts of things. Hell, it was technically my own fantasy, and I hadn’t caught on.

“I did appreciate it,” I found myself saying.

“You are not as afraid of this form as I thought you would be,” she said.

“It’s because now I know you’re really you.”

“And which form do you prefer?” she asked.

“Don’t you know?”

“I’m not inside your head anymore. I can’t say for certain.”

I looked at the Kali goddess form she was in. Really looked. She was frightening, but she was actually very beautiful. And I wasn’t just thinking that on account she was topless and mostly nude. Take away the grotesque and morbid accoutrements, ditch the fangs, and I probably would have slept with her.

That thought made me feel uneasy, but only for a second.

My mind then wondered what she could do with four arms. Then I wondered what I could do with four arms. I liked that idea even more. I stopped my wayward thoughts there before they got too out of control.

“Would you like to be inside my head again?” I asked.

Without hesitation she said, “Yes.”

“Good, because I want you back.”

“What about him?” I asked, nodding my head in the direction of Death.

“He has been beneficial so far. I think we should continue to keep him around for information.”

“And you’ll keep him in control?”

She smiled and raised one of her arms which held a sword. The head in her other hand changed from mine to Death’s.

It felt good to be acting superior to a Horseman. In all probability I wouldn’t have if he could have done something about it and wasn’t just beams of light.

I looked at Death. “You were ready to kill me before, how do I know you won’t try again?”

“I can give you my word, but I’ve read your psy-val and know you wouldn’t believe me. Besides, I am two separate entities now. I cannot say that the physical Death won’t try again, if indeed he is still alive,” he added. “The only comfort I can give you is by informing you that you can program your own thugs to protect you.”

“Not very comforting, considering you managed to outmaneuver the ones Sam programmed.”

“True, but you can make some alterations. For starters, you can program them so that either you and/or Kali are in control of them. Another change I’d suggest you make is that they don’t destroy themselves upon your apparent death. You could also station them in key areas, such as your heart and brain, so that the pitfalls I pointed out in the immunos, won’t be able to be used against you.”

I had to admit, his suggestions were good.

“All right. I guess this means I’m now going to have two CerAs in my head. Will I be able to communicate with you as well?”

He looked to Kali. “That is up to her. At the moment I am still her prisoner. Our agreement was that I be sandboxed. I have no actual control over any mytes.”

“Yeah, but it was you who instructed her to do what she did. You may not be able to do anything yourself, but you could manipulate her into doing it for you.”

“That is why I am suggesting you take precautions and design your own mytes. I would also suggest you do it before you allow Kali back in, that way she won’t be aware of exactly what you did. In doing so, as far as I am aware, you would be the safest human in regards to any sort of invasion, whether it be another human, CerA, or Celestial.”

I nodded. “Well then, I think we’ve come to an agreement.”

She smiled and changed into the fantasy Sam form. I wondered what the goddess form would look like in that gold dress rather than the skirt of limbs.

“You want to do what exactly?” Sam asked, after I told her I was going to program my own thugs.

“I suggest you do the same, if you haven’t already. At the very least, I’d recommend you reevaluate the thugs I’m sure you already have in your system. They killed Beit, and they almost killed me.”

I’d struck a nerve. I probably shouldn’t have said it like that. It made it sound like she was completely responsible for what had happened.

“Just so you know,” she said, voice raised with finger in my face. “The thugs found in Beit’s body, weren’t mine. Yes, they were based off my design and my programming, but they’d been altered. While you were in there talking to them.” She waved a hand towards the lounge. “I was out here going over the autopsy. And don’t for a second think I didn’t notice how Kali took a form which looked an awful lot like me. I knew you’d gotten more perverted since we split, but I didn’t know you’d gotten into CerA stimulation. Honestly, it’s like I never knew you at all.”

She threw her hands in the air and started to turn away from me.

Sam was absolutely adorable when she was angry. I reached out and took her hand in mine, then I put my other hand on her waist. “Care to tango?” I asked with my best, devilishly handsome and charismatic grin.

“You don’t know how to tango,” she said, a little less angry.

“True, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun attempting to do so.”

I turned my head and marched us across the room. She laughed. When we got to the end of the room I spun her around, pulled her close to me, and kissed her.

To my surprise, she pushed away from me. She had her serious face on.

“Travis, there are things you need to know if there’s going to be an
us
again.”

“Okay, then let’s hear it.”

She paused. Several times she started to speak and then stopped, almost like she physically couldn’t. Finally she said, “If I programmed some new M-mytes, would you accept them?”

As far as I knew, Mnemosyne-mytes weren’t dangerous, but then again, Death had managed to get them to make me appear brain dead. He probably could have made it be the case for real.

“What would be the purpose?” I asked.

“To restrict you from sharing certain knowledge with others who don’t have similar ones.”

“Are you telling me that you have these mytes in you, and that’s why you’ve been closed lipped?”

“Yes.”

“Why the hell didn’t you say that earlier?”

“Because I couldn’t. Speaking about them is a restriction.”

“But you just did?”

“Because I already injected you with them. Most got destroyed in the fight between Kali and the thugs, but it seems enough remain that I can talk to you about their existence.”

“So let me get this straight, you have answers to something, but can’t tell me because you created mytes to keep you from talking about whatever this knowledge is, unless the person you’re talking to has these mytes as well?”

“Correct.”

“Why the hell would you do that?”

She tilted her head at me, widened her eyes, and gave me that look like I was being stupid.

But then I was.

Of course she couldn’t tell me. Obviously, it was a security precaution. It actually made sense. Being a security guru, Sam had vital knowledge to all sorts of systems. The more I thought about it, I started to suspect that it was technology she’d acquired back when she’d worked for
ChronoGen. That’s probably why they’d cornered the market on myte-tech. I bet thousands of employees had these special mytes to keep them from spilling company secrets. That made me wonder, did I have some already? I knew lots of company secrets. I couldn’t recall ever being prevented from letting something slip, but then I couldn’t recall having ever done so. Was that because I was a loyal employee, or was it because I wasn’t even capable of doing so? I started to ask Kali if she knew, but then I remembered she was in the lounge and not in my head.

“Can you do a scan to see if a person has these altered mytes?” I asked.

She nodded and gave me a look that I was on the right track.

“Then let’s do it.”

She looked around for the nearest myte-scanner. We both eyed one at a work station. We went to it. Sam did some calibrations and performed a scan. She showed me the results.

Sure enough, I had them.

Somehow she’d been able to scan for the different variations, and there were several. The results showed me the types and how many mytes I had in my head. There were only a couple hundred of the ones she’d injected me with. For the five other types I had, there were a couple hundred thousand, each.

I didn’t like knowing that someone had messed with my head.

“Can they be reprogrammed or destroyed?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I haven’t found a way to do so, yet. They’re preprogrammed to find and block certain knowledge before they’re injected into the person. They don’t have a communication nodule built in. A CerA is even blocked from the knowledge, along with the
Arkhive.”

“How is that possible?”

“A CerA doesn’t really have a memory of their own. I mean they do, but it’s mainly for themselves to mess with their own programming. Think of it this way. The Arkhive is like a backup computer drive. It’s the M-mytes that write to the drive. The mytes copy what your brain drive records. The altered mytes take control of certain synapses in your brain and don’t write to the Arkhive. A CerA only has access to the Arkhive.”

“So then how the hell can a person get hacked? I mean isn’t that what this whole Celestial thing is about, one of them taking control of people and using them as puppets?”

“The problem comes from the Huginn and Muninn upgrade. They’re altered M-mytes which allow people to share thoughts and memories by directly stimulating the receiver’s brain.”

“Damn it!” I said. I’d been right. H&M was a bad idea after all. “Why the hell would
ChronoGen allow it on the market if it had that big of a risk? It’s supposed to be secure.”

“I don’t know,” she said, in that robotic way. Question was, would she be able to tell me if I got her altered mytes, or would she still be restricted because there was some other type blocking the knowledge?

There was only one way to know.

“Do it.”

Sam nodded and led me to her primary work station.

She opened a drawer and pulled out an Inquisitor’s glove. “Ready?” she asked.

“Hold on a sec,” I said. I didn’t trust her injecting me with a random Inquisitor’s glove. Anything could have been loaded into it. “Scan it first. Make sure it’s what you think it is. And there better not be any thugs in it.”

She started to object, but then probably realized I wouldn’t cave. She picked up a scanner.

There were thugs.

She started to apologize and swore that it shouldn’t have, that she’d gotten it from the drawer that just had the altered M-mytes. She grabbed another one and without my having to ask, scanned it. Same thing, it had thugs as well. She grabbed another. Same. She scanned every glove in that drawer, and then every glove in the drawer below it. They all had thugs.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

I thought about it.

“Nora blames herself for her husband’s murder. I take it he didn’t know about whatever secret you, Nora, and Shep share, and that she injected him in order to share it?”

Sam nodded.

“There were thugs found in his body. They killed him. Did Nora mean to inject him with the thugs, or just the altered M-mytes?”

“Just the M-mytes.”

“And you didn’t know she’d done it. Let me guess, she’d taken one of these, expecting it to just have the M-mytes.”

She nodded.

“Who has access to this room?” I asked.

“Myself, Nora,
Shep, Lillian, Brandin, half the security team, and Kody.”

“As in Ranger Stevenson?”

She nodded.

“I take it you all are in on whatever this secret is?”

She nodded.

“The investigation was a sham, wasn’t it? Ranger Stevenson was purposefully derailing it, keeping me distracted, while you and Lillian were working the real case, am I right?”

She nodded.

“Why? The Horsemen were on their way to take over. They’re in charge now. It’s just a matter of time before they find out what Stevenson was doing.”

“I can’t say anything more until you have the mytes.”

“Can you take the thugs out of a glove?” I asked, then changed my mind. “On second thought, make a new glove.”

She did.

Scanned it to show there were no thugs present.

I nodded. She put it on. I took a deep breath, and she touched my neck. This time the glove wasn’t drugged. We stood there in silence for the two minutes it took for them to take up position inside my brain.

“A war is brewing, Travis, and you got caught in the crosshairs,” Sam said, breaking the silence.

“You want to stop being cryptic and just tell me what the hell is going on?”

“I know why Cassius gave
ChronoGen your name, as well as Beit’s and Kwan’s.”

“And that would be?”

“As you already know, neither of you are E3, but what you don’t know is that each of you are close to someone who is.”

It finally donned on me what Sam was getting at, and what Kali detected she was lying about.

“No,” I said, shaking my head, trying to dispel the revelation.

She started to turn away, but I took her face in my hands. I made her look at me. Then I kissed her.

When I released her lips from mine, I said, “You’re E3, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, only hesitating for a fraction.

I released her face. “How long?” I asked, surprised at how well I was taking this betrayal. She was E3, basically my sworn enemy. But on further reflection I realized it was Sam, and somehow, it made sense.

“Since the beginning,” she said. “I’m a founder, Travis.”

Even though I was surprised at how easily I accepted she was E3, I couldn’t quite choke down that she was a founder of the organization I’d been trying to wipe off the face of the earth.

Doubts and questions about our sudden reunion of affection overtook my feelings of acceptance and happiness at how things had turned out. “So, what, you thought sleeping with me, making me feel connected to you again, would make me less inclined to take you in?”

“No!” she said, stepping towards me.

It was my turn to step away.

She stopped her advance.

“I slept with you because I love you. Because I thought you’d died. I missed you. I wanted to be with you. Idiot.” She started to cry.

I shook my head. “Then why the hell didn’t you tell me to begin with? You knew Cassius told ChronoGen I was E3. How long were you going to wait to tell me?”

“I couldn’t have told you. The mytes I gave you, the mytes every member of E3 has, prevents us from discussing anything pertaining to the organization with outsiders.”

“But why did he give my name?”

“Think about it. He was one of us. He couldn’t turn any of us over. But he found a loophole. He gave them your name because looking into you would eventually lead back to me. Nora is E3, but Julius wasn’t.”

“Who’s Annabel Li Kwan?”

“She’s the wife of a prominent member in Eden.”

“So, what the hell was your plan? Or should I say, what
is
your plan? The Horsemen are here.”

“That’s why you’re here, why I told you. I need your help, to solve why someone would want Julius dead.”

“Except there’s one major flaw in your logic, I’ve been accused of being E3. My only hope was to prove my innocence, except now you’ve gone and made the accusation true. Thanks, I’m now fucked in every possible way known to man, plus some.”

Sam held out her wrists. “Forget it then. Take me in. Tell the Horsemen that I’m behind everything, that I gave Cassius the names. Say it was all in the name of revenge. I gave him your name because I’m a scorned ex. I killed Julius because I realized no one would believe he was a Conspirator. I then tried to frame Shepard for the murder because he’s my biggest rival.”

I analyzed what Sam said and nodded. “That actually makes a lot of sense.” Then I shook my head. “Except there’s two problems with that scenario. First, how do you explain whoever Annabel Li Kwan is?”

“She’s the wife of my high school boyfriend.” Sam said

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Seriously?”

One look into her eyes and I knew she wasn’t. I felt dizzy, so I sat down in a nearby chair and put my head in my hands. Was what Sam said true? Did she do all those things?

“It’s true about Annabel,” she said. “But nothing else is. I didn’t do any of those things, but as I’m sure you realize, it’s an explanation that can get you off the hook.”