The Administration Series (42 page)

Toreth looked at Warrick, busy with the control panel, speaking so calmly and matter-of-factly about interrogation. At any other time, the subject disgusted him. Now it had become an interesting technical problem and he was utterly caught up in it. He must have watched the interrogation through if he knew which instruments Toreth had used.

"What about the prisoner?" Toreth asked.

"Wait."

As Warrick worked, Toreth checked through the instruments and drugs. Then Marian Tanit appeared, seated in the chair, staring blankly ahead. Toreth moved over, reached out, then paused and looked across at Warrick. He nodded permission, and then went back to the screen.

She felt alive, warm and pliable. Toreth lifted his hand and touched her eyeball. The figure blinked and flinched very slightly away, then returned to her — its — former position. Not convincing. Not good.

"Will she react properly?" he asked.

"No, she won't. But I will."

"What?"

"I'm going to be inside."

"
Inside
?"

Warrick looked up and smiled tightly. "It's the only way to make it look real. I don't have time to train up an expert system to play the part realistically. Believe me, I'm not suggesting this for lack of trying to think of another option."

"Warrick, it's going to take eight hours. Eight hours recorded."

"Not at all. As I understand it, you require three interrogation sessions — the two already conducted and one tomorrow where Marian will die." No waver in his voice. "Is that correct?"

"Yes. And they all have to be in the system by Monday. After that it'll be too late to do anything. Once Tillotson sees the real interrogations we're both fucked."

"We should have everything completed in time to clean out the system before anyone gets here tomorrow. Even leaving a margin for any necessary processing, the recordings will be ready to install in the I&I systems by tomorrow afternoon."

Warrick stood up and began pacing — lecturing voice and illustrative gestures. "In the first interrogation, she says nothing dangerous until the last ten minutes. So we simply duplicate the tape up to that point. I've already prepared that. Then we have only to remove the section where she alleges that the sim is dangerous and that I hid the safety data. That leaves just ten minutes which need to be filled with new material."

That sounded almost reasonable, except for one thing. "And you'll play her part?"

Warrick paused and smiled. "I'm not a bad actor. You'll see. I suggest adding the ten minutes in bits and pieces near the beginning of the interrogation, when she isn't saying much anyway. Less likely to attract scrutiny there."

There was no point arguing now — he'd simply have to wait to see if Warrick could do it. "Okay, say that works. What next?"

He resumed pacing. "In the second interrogation, the damaging content is again at the end, where Marian names Psychoprogramming. It's only a few minutes long. Again, I've already duplicated the sections where she says nothing and we can pad the recording near the beginning."

"What about the interrogation for tomorrow?"

"You'll be in the interrogation room, and I'll feed the recording into the system as if it were coming through the cameras in the room. Even if anyone watches it live, they'll see our recording."

All very neatly planned. God, it was never going to work. "But there's nothing to edit that interrogation out of."

Warrick nodded and sat down at the screen. "That will be the most difficult part. How long does the recording need to be?"

Toreth thought about it, looking at the silent Marian. "Twenty minutes is the shortest — half an hour would be better. I need time to prep her and then get on to an accidental overdose." Traditional for an annex death. "That'll look most convincing. I can screw the calibration on one of the injectors while I'm in the interrogation room with her and you're running the recording."

No response to his words. When he looked round, he saw Warrick staring down at the controls, his hands still.

"There's no other way," Toreth said, guessing what was wrong.

"There must be."

"Jesus fucking Christ, how many times do I —" Toreth caught hold of himself. Trying to browbeat Warrick was an exercise in futility. "If you can think of something else, I'll happily give it a try. Fucking with I&I systems isn't my idea of fun, anyway. I don't think there's a chance in hell this is going to work."

Warrick looked up sharply. "Of course it will! There is absolutely no technical reason why —" He stopped, then smiled, lopsided. "Very good. However, you're right — there is no other way. Shall we proceed?"

Things did not go as smoothly as Warrick had predicted.

It took them nearly three hours to produce the material to pad out the first two interrogations — fifteen usable minutes of nothing more exciting than Marian saying nothing. Still, by the time they were done Toreth was willing to concede that Warrick was indeed a pretty good actor.

It took another hour for Warrick to splice the new pieces into the material from the original interrogation recordings.

Toreth watched the two doctored recordings. To his surprise, they looked pretty damn flawless. An I&I interrogation analysis programme might still pull out discrepancies in the prisoner's behaviour. However, as there was no reason for anyone to run one, he allowed himself to feel moderately confident about it.

Then they moved on to the final session — thirty minutes of original interrogation — and the real problems began.

Neither he nor Warrick were patient men at heart; his attempts to coach Warrick into responding correctly to the ineffective drugs and neural induction probe, on top of matching Marian's speech patterns, brought them virtually to blows. Eventually, after two hours had yielded no usable recording, Marian went limp in the chair and Warrick reappeared by the controls.

"Wait here," he said, then vanished again.

Toreth sat on the virtual chair and waited as patiently as he could. He wished — not for the first time — that he hadn't applied for the higher-level waiver. Ten years at I&I should have taught him about the dangers of ambition. If he started running, what were the odds that he could make it beyond the reach of the Administration?

For some reason he never trusted his watch to tell the right time in the sim. However, it said nearly an hour passed before Warrick reappeared.

"Where the hell have you been?"

"Recalibrating neural induction settings and tearing out safety overrides. I'll deal with the SimTech security footage tomorrow." He walked over to the array of equipment and picked up one of the neural induction probes. "This one is now fully functional up to about half power. That's as high as it'll go before it trips safety systems that I can't disable."

"What about the drugs?"

"The pharmacy is locked; unfortunate, since relaxants would appeal right now. I've set up a response filter to mimic the physical effects of the drugs." He looked at Toreth's expression and added, "That means —"

Lecturing again. "I'm not interested, as long as works."

"Very well." Warrick vanished and Marian lifted her head. "Let's try it."

Toreth shrugged, then moved over to where a ghostly outline of himself indicated the place the recording ended. A disorienting moment passed as the sim translated his body into the exact position, and they were ready. He picked up the live NI probe. Wishing to test the realism, he set the control to the right level, then activated the probe.

The prisoner arched back in the chair and screamed once, badly out of character. When Toreth switched the probe off there was a silence before she said, in Tanit's voice but with Warrick's inflection, "Christ, that
hurts
."

"That's pretty much the point. I don't think this — "

"No. I wasn't expecting it, that's all. How many times are you planning to use it?"

Toreth considered the fewest that would look passably convincing. "Maybe three or four."

"That I can handle. Start again."

This time he started with a question. "Who paid you to discredit the sim?"

"A corporate. I don't know who."

"I want a name and verifiable details."

"I can't tell you what I don't know."

Tanit writhed in the chair as the probe activated, and Toreth found it hard to remember it was really Warrick he was hurting.

"You're lying. Who paid you to discredit the sim?"

"I don't . . . please. I don't
know
."

"What do you know?"

"I've told you, I . . . please."

"Tell me again."

He listened with half an ear to the stumbling words, impressed by the performance, watching the mock monitors displaying their convincing results. Those readings too would be faked and fed into the I&I system. Could Warrick really do it all?

" — I don't know who he represented. I
don't
know
."

Toreth used the probe far more than four times, and he had to admit a grudging respect for Warrick's persistence. Or was Warrick enjoying it on some level? Toreth had never consciously focused on that element of the game they had played. However, Warrick was satisfyingly responsive to slaps and arm twisting. Perhaps he would appreciate a little more pain for its own sake, as well as a tool to emphasise control.

"I'd tell you if I knew. Please, I swear — I'd tell you if I knew."

On and on, like so many interrogations he'd conducted, except that from time to time they'd stop and repeat a section. Finally, Warrick called a halt and Toreth laid the nerve induction probe down on the instrument bench.

As he did so, Warrick stood up from the interrogation chair, his body separating from Tanit's, and strolled over to the table to check the console. A minute or so later Toreth realised that the restraints were still fastened.

The sim, and Warrick's control over it, didn't often disturb Toreth, but for some reason that did it. Warrick was fucking with sim reality, but also with something so familiar to Toreth's own reality, without even noticing he was doing it.

Maybe Tanit had a point after all.

"Toreth?"

He turned to find Warrick standing by the table, obviously impatient. Had Warrick said his name a couple of times already? "What?"

"Check this through. It's only a rough cut — I'll do it in detail later."

A few adjustments, and Toreth pronounced it acceptable, and then they reached the final hurdle.

Marian's death.

When the moment came, he thought Warrick would balk, but in fact it was almost the easiest thing they'd done. A convincing hiss from the fake injector, a few seconds for the drug to take effect with Marian growing still in the chair, and then a few more for it to stop her heart while he turned his back long enough not to notice. Turn round again, register the scene, fake a little shock for the record.

A classic annex death, if only Warrick had known it.

Toreth hit the comm, called for the medical techs, and was almost surprised to realise that meant the performance was over. They wouldn't come; there was no corridor outside the door, no I&I.

"Warrick?" He waited, seconds stretching out, then touched Marian's still face. "Warrick?"

"Over here."

He spun round to find Warrick sitting next to the control panel, checking the screen. He looked absolutely calm and composed, but then there was no reason he shouldn't. Toreth wondered what he looked like outside the sim, under the concealing mask.

"Did that do it?" Toreth asked.

"Have a look for yourself."

It was perfect, thank God, meaning that there was nothing left for him to do. He left the sim while Warrick was still splicing together bits of the recording. The technician had long gone, so he had to work his arms out of the restraints to free his legs and remove the visor.

Standing over Warrick's still body, he thought briefly about exactly how much trust he was placing in the other man to pull this off. Briefly was all he allowed himself.

Before today, if pressed, Toreth might have conceded to trusting Sara. Chevril was something like a friend, as were one or two of the other paras, but trust was a rare quality at I&I. The very idea of depending on an outsider unnerved him. An outsider, and a corporate at that, whom he'd known for only a few weeks.

Not merely trusting him, but trusting him with his career and — no denying it — his life. However unpleasant it felt, he could still see no alternative.

Unlike much of Int-Sec, I&I was a public building in the sense that it was possible for citizens to visit it. They simply rarely did so voluntarily.

However, as the respectable face of Administration internal security, I&I was equipped with a reception desk, publicly available contact numbers and, indeed, entire sections devoted to dealing directly with the people to whose protection it was dedicated. An appointment was usually advisable, but during the week, if a visitor had the name of someone they wished to see or some information they wished to give, even that could be bypassed.

On a Sunday, however, an appointment was mandatory, so Toreth was forced to book Warrick's visit in officially. When Toreth arrived at lunchtime, the office was reassuringly quiet. The fewer people around, the better. However, after consideration, he called Sara in. He didn't like to involve her, but he needed her to ensure Warrick wasn't disturbed.