Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 (16 page)
Read Nexus: Ziva Payvan Book 2 Online
Authors: EJ Fisch
-37-
Ready to rip his hair out, Kade buried his face in his hands and let a growl escape his throat. Feeling the sudden urge to stand up, he did so, sending his chair skidding backward and drawing the attention of those working nearby. Only then did he realize how cramped his legs were. Upon pondering it for a moment, it struck him that he had not left his workstation since arriving at the Royal Guard office six hours earlier. After staring at his computer screen for what had seemed like an eternity, his eyes felt as though they were about to ooze out of their sockets, and he was jittery after skipping breakfast and subsequently missing out on his lunch break.
Clearing his throat and sending apologetic glances toward his coworkers, Kade lowered his head and slinked into the building’s main corridor, angling toward the lavatory. Upon entering, he wasted no time in going to the sink and splashing a generous amount of warm water over his face. Angry and at a loss, he lifted his eyes to meet the gaze of his reflection in the mirror and watched the drips of water as they trickled down over his chin.
What am I doing?
Since the previous evening he had been over the med center’s surveillance feeds dozens of times, scouring them for any signs of the mysterious visitors who had – he was sure of it – murdered Spence. He’d checked every cam, every angle, yet he was still empty handed. It was almost as if they were ghosts, as if he had only imagined seeing them there. That or they were good enough to recognize the placement of the cams and avoid them entirely. In a way, the less information he found, the more he was convinced someone was up to something shady.
Feeling mildly better, Kade dried his face and hair and returned to his desk. He wasn’t sure where to even pick up the search, having the sense that he had already depleted the possibilities. He had even checked footage from traffic cams surrounding the med center, still to no avail. He dared not go to his superiors and friends and say he’d given up – there had to be a clue
somewhere.
He would sooner go back and question every living soul in that hospital than admit he was done.
His communicator beeped and a text-based alert appeared, informing him that the coroner’s report had just been posted. A new spark of motivation ignited inside him and he immediately made himself comfortable in his chair. Spence may have been wounded critically, but at the time Kade had spoken to him, he’d been in no condition to just keel over unexpectedly. Surely a well-trained group of medical personnel would take that into consideration. He eagerly accessed the database and began reading over the newly-posted report.
Kade scanned through the beginning of the text, which was composed mainly of data regarding the surgery and a log of all wellness checks and administered medications. The anticipation was growing almost unbearable when his eyes finally fell upon the words he was looking for.
Cause of death was deemed cardiac arrest (with evidence of chemical induction), as determined after a thorough study by veteran medical examiner Eason Fromm.
Kade would have cried out if not for the fact that his heart had suddenly lodged itself in his throat. Dumbfounded, he read over the report again and then a third time, confirming he hadn’t missed something. Confident that he was sure of what he was seeing, he once again leapt from his seat.
“Special Agent Zona!” he exclaimed, startling those around him. He picked up his comm receiver, changed his mind, and shouted again – louder this time. “Zona!”
Without even realizing it, Kade was on the move. He couldn’t even tell he was running – it felt more like floating than anything else. All he could see was an image of the text in his mind as he stumbled blindly up the stairs. Aside from this discovery, nothing else mattered at the moment. “Zona!” he hollered once more.
The supervisor appeared at the top of the steps, looking as though he were responding to an emergency alarm. He caught Kade by the shoulders and held him firmly, smoky-gray eyes wide.
“
Huhren shouka souhn
…Shevin! Have you completely lost your mind?”
“Not at all, sir!” Kade replied, grinning as wide as his facial muscles and jawbone would allow. “Anything but, for that matter. I’ve got something you need to see.”
Zona shook his head and glanced around at the agents who were looking on in confusion. The corners of his mouth curled downward into a frown, but Kade was certain the information he had discovered would change that. “This had better be good, Shevin,” he growled.
Refraining from all-out dragging his superior officer down the stairs, Kade turned and descended quickly, ignoring the strange looks sent his way by the other RG agents. “I was never able to find any footage of our mysterious friends from the med center,” he explained, “but what I
did
find does a pretty damn good job of proving my theory correct.”
“I never said I didn’t believe your theory,” Zona said. “Is that what this is all about?”
Maybe part of it was. “Just read this, sir.”
With a sigh, Zona cleared his throat and took a seat in front of Kade’s screen. “What am I looking at?” he asked.
“The report from Agent Spence’s autopsy,” Kade replied. “If I could direct your attention to the third paragraph…”
Zona scanned to the place Kade had indicated and cleared his throat once more. “’Cause of death’,” he began, “’was deemed natural causes according to sustained injuries, as determined after a careful study’…I’m not sure if I understand what your point is, Shevin.”
Kade hardly heard him as he leaned down to re-examine the report for himself. Sure enough, the text was different than it had been only moments before, now displaying the exact words Zona had just read. Stammering, Kade reached over the man and scrolled up and down through the report, searching desperately for the one sentence that would have solved all of his problems. He saw this was indeed the correct report – Zona hadn’t accidentally opened a different one or some such thing – and yet it was far from correct. He stood back, one hand pressed against his sweaty forehead, heart pounding.
“Payvan must have hit him harder than we thought,” snickered the agent sitting at the next workstation.
“That was uncalled for!” Zona snapped, shutting the other man up. He stood up and faced Kade, locking eyes with him for a moment before putting an arm around his trembling shoulders and guiding him casually off the work floor. “If you have
any
reasonable explanation for what just happened, I’d really love to hear it,” he said with a grim tone.
“Sir, I can explain,” Kade said quietly, feeling as though he had taken one step forward and two steps back. No, it was more like he’d taken a giant leap forward and then he’d fallen on his face, pushed by some unseen hand that seemed bent on making sure the investigation went as miserably as possible for him. “You’ve got to believe me when I say that’s not what the report said when I read it. It was somehow changed in the time it took me to leave my desk and come find you.”
He’d never seen Zona’s face so cold and hard in all the time he’d known the man. “Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds?”
“I know!” Kade said, steadying himself against the wall as nausea began to set in. “But it’s true, and it would explain why I couldn’t find those agents in the med center. The coroner said Spence’s heart failure was chemically induced! He was murdered and Fromm figured it out!”
“So tell me how it got changed then.”
“Well, the people who killed him could have done it. That’s logical, right?”
“The people who don’t seem to exist,” Zona said. “I’ll admit you piqued my curiosity, Shevin. I contacted the med center myself, but nobody remembers seeing anything out of the ordinary. You’re the last logged visitor, so they know you were there near the time of death, regardless of how Spence’s heart failed. Unless you’re the one who killed him – and I’d like to think none of my people would be that stupid – you’re out of luck.”
Kade’s shoulders sagged. “You don’t think I’m crazy do you?”
“Here’s the thing, kid,” Zona said, softening a bit. “This case has been tough on all of us. I’ve been cutting you a lot of slack lately, more slack than I usually give a rookie.” He held up his hand for silence when Kade began to interject. “I like you, Shevin, and I’ve tried to look out for you, but you’ve gone way too far this time. Please don’t make me regret all the things I’ve done for you.”
Kade swallowed, suddenly stricken with fear. “Yes, sir.”
“Why don’t you take a couple days off and get some rest. The galaxy knows you could use it. Go home, spend some time with your family, get yourself calmed down, and I’ll contact you when I’m ready to have you back. And Shevin, it’s not a suggestion.”
“Yes, sir,” Kade said again, feeling incapable of formulating any other words.
“I’m doing you a favor here.” Zona clapped him hard on the back. “Say hello to the missus for me.”
-38-
Argall, Haphez – one of the only cities on the planet that wasn’t located in the lowlands along the Tranyi River. It was situated in an atypical valley deep within the mountains over forty degrees north of the Haphezian equator, nearly four thousand kilometers from the nearest metropolis. The settlement – home to a little under a thousand people – saw few visitors other than the freighter pilots who came through periodically, and it wasn’t often that the occupants went elsewhere. They didn’t mind the isolation, didn’t mind the quiet. They were a tight community with little concern about anything that was unrelated to their humble home and way of life.
The sun had already dropped behind the rocky hills, shrouding the valley and the little city in darkness. The mountains were nothing more than jagged silhouettes standing out against the fiery orange sky. Some stars were visible in the distance where the black night was encroaching. Evening insects squawked and chirped, unseen among the rocks, and the sounds of larger nocturnal animals could be heard as they emerged from their daytime hideouts.
Mag Reilly stood with closed eyes, taking all of it in until the fire cracked and his attention was drawn back to the funeral pyre before him. The heat stung his face and the smoke made his eyes water, but he could not bring himself to move away. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and stared into the fire, watching as the body of the woman gradually melted away. There was something mesmerizing about the flames that did a fair job of distracting him from the reason he was really standing there. This was the third gathering of this nature Mag had attended in the past two weeks, the fifth in the past month. The first had been for his neighbor, the second for the wife of his best friend. Now he stood in silence watching his own flesh and blood burn. His mother had been shot in the head two days earlier, executed at point blank range in the same manner as the other four.
These most recent killings hardly made him bat an eye however when compared to the massacre that had occurred three years earlier.
That
bloodbath had taken the lives of his father, his sister, and many others he was close to. He and his younger brother had helped form a militia to resist the mercenaries who had overrun the humble town of Argall, and they had seen moderate success until his brother had been fatally wounded and Mag himself had nearly been killed. He had resolved then to stop fighting and care for his grieving mother, but now here he stood watching the fire eat away at her body, feeling as though he had not only failed but had wasted his time as well. It was all mentally exhausting, and Mag wondered if he was even capable of feeling emotion anymore.
At thirty-six years old, he was the oldest child in his family, survived now only by his youngest sister who had been banished as an infant because of birth abnormalities. After a bit of calculating, he concluded that she would be around twenty-five now, if she was even still alive. He wondered if, wherever she was, she had any inkling of what was transpiring at her birthplace – or if she had ever even heard of Argall.
Mag lifted his head and took a few seconds to look around at the circle of people who had gathered to pay their respects to his mother. It was the same general group who had attended the other four memorials. He knew everyone there by name and could also name the loved one each of them had lost. It seemed that they were involuntarily drawn to one another, propelled by the pain, sadness and subconscious understanding that others were experiencing the same loss.
The silence around the bonfire was suddenly broken by the rumble of approaching cars. Several people began to rush away, snapped out of the trance the fire had put them into. Most stood fast, murmuring nervously among themselves as three groundcars came barreling up the hill in a cloud of dust. They pulled up just meters from the burning pyre, their spotlights waving wildly about. Six armed men jumped out, hollering and brandishing their weapons at the fleeing mourners.
Mag slid his hands out of his pockets and found that they had curled themselves into fists. He turned from the light of the fire and looked into the glaring light from the cars, squinting but refusing to blink. As emotionally spent as he was after the crazy hyperspace trip they had all been on over the past month, the grief had transformed itself into a thick shell of anger he’d learned to use as a defense mechanism. He was jaded, one hundred percent jaded.
A familiar laugh that made Mag’s stomach flop pierced the air. The beam of one of the spotlights swung his direction and settled over his face. Past the bright white glare, he could see a pair of boots approaching.
“This is quite the party,” the man said. “It looks like we’re missing out.”
“Nobody invited you,” Mag muttered, deadpan. He knew the man only as Loric, though the other mercenaries could sometimes be heard calling him “Sarge.”
Sergeant Loric
. Somehow Mag couldn’t picture the man actually being affiliated with any organization in which he would hold such a rank.
“Mag Reilly,” Loric chuckled, advancing toward him and blocking out some of the light. “Having fun out here?”
Mag didn’t answer. He had exhausted his supply of sarcastic remarks during the past few weeks and couldn’t muster up the energy to come up with anything new. It was probably for the best, since Loric took great delight in tearing up anything he had to say as it was. Mag was as weary of dealing with Loric as he imagined the mercenary was of dealing with him. He had come and gone from Argall in the past three years but had played a key role in all the turmoil, being personally responsible for most of the killings that had directly affected Mag.
“What do you want, Loric?” With no one and nothing to live for but himself, Mag considered killing the man then and there, though the idea of doing it at his mother’s funeral somehow seemed inappropriate.
“That seems like a silly question coming from such an intelligent man,” the mercenary said. “I want the same thing I’ve wanted since I first came to this
sheyss
hole.” He gestured toward the pyre. “You ever think it would be easier to just give it to me?”
Mag shifted his eyes away from the man and gazed out across the Argall valley. The memorial grounds where they currently stood were a few kilometers out of town, nestled into the foothills surrounding the basin. Past the glare of the spotlights and through the glow cast by the town’s lights, he could see the location of the mining operations almost directly across from them. Bright generator-powered lights illuminated the cave entrances, enabling workers to conduct business even at this hour.
According to geologists, the depression in which Argall sat was actually what remained of an ancient volcano that had blown its top centuries before. The surrounding area was predominantly volcanic, accounting for the elaborate system of caves and old lava tubes that ate through the mountains. The caves were home to the naturally-occurring niobi crystals, which ranged from white to pink to the rarest and most expensive form, a deep crimson red. They had been dubbed “blood crystals” due to their color, but the harmless nickname had taken on a whole new meaning in the past three years.
The crystals were the reason the mercenaries were there, the reason for all the killing. Mag knew it all had to do with power and greed. The growing and harvesting of the crystals was Argall’s primary industry, so with control of the mining operations came control over the city itself. None of it would have been so bad, Mag reasoned, if the mercs hadn’t started forcing the workers into what many considered blatant slave labor. The mining procedure had traditionally followed a strict schedule. One rotation – one trip around the valley harvesting all available crystals – had typically taken a little over four months, giving the mining specialists known as “farmers” ample time to grow fresh crystals to be harvested the next time around. The mercenaries had forcefully accelerated the process by demanding that more work be put in, effectively shortening one rotation to about ten weeks. As a result, farmers weren’t able to raise enough mature crystals to meet their quota in the allotted amount of time, and thus many had been executed, Mag’s father being one of them. The shortage of crystals had sent the whole city plunging into a financial depression, and any attempts by workers to stand up and defend themselves had only led to more killing.
The fact that this was all about some stupid shiny rocks made Mag sick. It wasn’t the crystals themselves that were causing all the hype; it was the ludicrous amount of money being gained by selling them on the black market. Through the years, Argall had sold a good portion of the harvest to the Haphezian military for use in weapons development. Occasionally some had been sent off to private companies for research – only after receiving special permissions from the government – but all the remnants were kept by the city to provide the fuel and power required for everyday life. Not wanting to draw attention to what they were doing, the mercenaries had allowed the contracted number of crystals to continue to be shipped to the military. The rest they had put out to the Fringe’s underground markets, retaining only enough to successfully keep the mining operations thriving. Consequently, many businesses that had previously relied on niobi power had been forced to shut down, resulting in lost jobs and torn families. Anyone who wasn’t in debt was barely able to afford essential supplies. Loric and his gang had the city by the throat and their grip was only getting tighter.
It didn’t take a genius to realize the mercs weren’t acting on their own. They were mere puppets, controlled by powerful hands from an armchair in a big office somewhere. Mag had no doubt that this unseen puppet master had some form of government standing – any attempts to call for help or reveal the situation in Argall had been summarily ignored, making him believe they had been intercepted and manipulated by someone powerful enough to do so. At the same time, any additional incoming or outgoing transmissions had been filtered by the mercenaries and jammed accordingly, and nobody had been allowed to leave the city in months. With Argall as secluded and independent as it was, the lack of communication was hardly noticeable in the rest of the Haphezian population’s eyes. No one had a clue what was really going on.
When Mag made no move to respond, Loric thoughtfully examined his weapon before pulling it up and aiming it teasingly at the bystanders. Most yelped and shied away; Mag stood fast, frozen in place by a combination of fear, sorrow, and again anger. He stared at the gun, wondering first if he would be able to grab it fast enough, and second what a plasma bolt coming head on looked like. He decided he was in no mood to find out.
“Here’s the thing, Reilly,” the man chuckled. “With the old lady gone, that leaves you the sole beneficiary of all her property. That includes the map to the vein of crystals your old man discovered. After three years of seeing what I’m willing to do to get a look at it, I hope you’ll be more cooperative than your mother was.”
Mag wanted to laugh out loud, but the knot in his throat prevented him from doing so. A thirty-year veteran farmer, his father had known the cave systems like the back of his hand. He’d stumbled upon a hidden room deep within the mountains about two years before the arrival of the mercenaries. Mag had never seen the room for himself, but the story was that it was rich with niobi growth and contained primarily crimson blood crystals. His father had insisted on keeping its location a secret, foreseeing that great conflict and tension would ensue should anyone find out where it was. He had, however, created a map that would allow him to find it again and preserve the crystals, which he’d managed to hide before his death. Not even Mag knew where it was. He imagined that was for the best, enabling him to maintain deniability whether Loric believed him or not.
“Tell you what,” Loric said, motioning toward the pyre and the people around it with a faux grin on his face. “I’m feeling generous tonight, and your mother’s funeral is hardly the place to kill you. You have one week to get me that map. Otherwise—”
The rifle was lifted, extended, and fired so fast that Mag hadn’t even realized it was happening. The white-hot bolt sliced through the darkness and struck a nearby woman squarely in the chest. She screamed, as did those around her, and crumpled into a heap on the ground.
In that instant, Mag was shouting, cursing, allowing sheer anger to take control of his mind. He wasn’t even sure what he was saying – only that it was pure hatred in the form of words and it was directed at Loric. Others behind him were shouting too, holding him back to keep him from rushing the mercenary and getting himself killed. They were all silenced when the butt of the plasma rifle swung around and struck Mag in the face, sending him stumbling back into the arms of his friends and neighbors.
“Listen!” Loric growled. “Do you want more people to die? Give me that map!”
Mag could feel his tongue bleeding as he struggled to sit up. “Those crystals are the last hope this town has,” he said. “I can’t let you win.”
“And you think
you
can win? Pay attention, Reilly! You surrender the map, people die. You don’t, people die. The only thing you have control over anymore is
when
and
where
.” Loric stared him down for another several seconds before turning to his own men and jerking his head toward the cars. “Let’s go,” he muttered.
For the first time in recent memory, Mag felt utterly defeated. Loric was right; there had to be another way out, but at the moment he was drawing a blank. Mind numb, he squinted into the darkness and watched as the mercenaries piled into their vehicles until he was once again blinded by one of the spotlights.
