Titanborn (5 page)

The USF security headquarters was buzzing by the time I arrived. Drunk, incarcerated civilians packed every waiting room from end to end, so many that it smelled like vomit once I was completely inside. Most of them had bloodied faces, and their lavish outfits were torn. It was hard to make out what anyone was saying with reporters on view-screens hanging from the ceilings chattering about the bombing…tireless talking heads debating what it meant for New London. I was wondering the same.

A lengthy line extended from the reception desk, which had an armed officer standing on either side to keep the peace. Beyond the glass divider keeping the rabble out of the headquarters' bullpen I could see that calls from all over the Euro-String were coming in at an alarming rate, likely from people worried about their missing family members. Every desk was staffed by an officer or secretary, and there were at least a hundred of them arranged within the seemingly endless open room. I'd been in the headquarters plenty, but I'd never seen it so frantic. You knew it was bad when a room filled with drunks seemed to be the calm one.

At least it was at first. I was halfway toward the receptionist when a commotion broke out a few meters away.

“Would you stop staring at me with that thing?” a civilian barked. Given how much he was slurring his words, he was obviously still intoxicated. “I said stop!”

I edged toward the voice and saw the drunken civilian swing at a man in black. He missed badly and was thrown backward. He would've bowled me over if I hadn't been paying enough attention to slide out of the way.

“You fuckin' offworlders!” he snarled. He charged forward, but this time the man in black deftly spun him around and put him in an arm-bar.

“It takes approximately twelve pounds of pressure to break the elbow of a human of your mass,” the man in black stated calmly, his voice as void of emotion as any I'd ever heard.

“Let go of me!”

“I am currently applying eleven pounds,” the man in black continued. “Please desist, or I will be forced to proceed.”

Security officers were shoving their way toward the scuffle to put an end to it, but they froze when they noticed who the man in black was. By that time I'd gotten close enough to notice as well. Apparently, I'd stumbled upon what could only be my new partner.

He wore a formfitting black boiler suit that appeared to have a nano-fiber inlay—something utilized more commonly beneath armor on offworld colonies. Whereas I kept mine concealed by my coat, a Pervenio badge was pinned proudly on his chest. His dark-brown hair was cut short, though his pale complexion contrasted it so much that it looked black. He wasn't as pasty as a Ringer, but he had the skin of someone who'd spent almost his entire life in an asteroid. What really caught my eye, however, was the piece of advanced-looking equipment strapped onto the right side of his head. It encapsulated a glowing yellow lens positioned over his right eye—a scanner of some sort. His other eye was bare, but it was entirely white and stagnant, a shallow scar running across it from his left temple to the bridge of his hooked nose.

“Just let go!” the drunken man squealed.

My partner did as requested. He pushed the drunkard away, leaving him to shuffle off in shame while clutching his injured arm. I took a step closer, but as soon as I did my partner spun around with soldierly precision. His eye-lens angled itself to observe me from head to toe, as if completely independent of his stationary head. When it was done he stood at attention and saluted.

“Greetings, Malcolm Graves,” he said. “I've been waiting for you.”

“Put that down,” I replied and extended my hand. I was trying my best not to stare at his blind eye. “They didn't give me your name.”

“Zhaff,” my new partner responded. His eye-lens tilted to view my hand, but he didn't grasp it. After a few awkward seconds I withdrew it.

“That's it? Zhaff?” He said nothing, his lips remaining in a straight line. I shrugged and said: “Whatever you say. C'mon, we're going to look over the surveillance footage from earlier.”

Zhaff nodded and followed close behind as I moved deeper into the headquarters. He walked with perfect posture and a level of rigor in each step that seemed as unnatural to me as his eye-lens was. I flashed my badge to the receptionist and she immediately opened up the sealed entrance of the bullpen so we could enter. My plan was to see what we could find out in the surveillance center monitoring all of New London before we made our first move. Pervenio paid good money to allow us first access.

While we walked I peeked at Zhaff out of the corner of my eye, trying to get a better sense of him. What I observed sent a shiver up my spine. He was taller than me and judging by his physique probably stronger, too, but he was too young to grow a proper beard. He looked like he was still in his late teens.

I'd heard of the Cogent Initiative, but it was a fairly recent and clandestine program so I'd never seen any of the people handpicked to partake in it. I had no idea they were started so early—years younger than even I was when I set out on the path to becoming a collector. From what I knew, Pervenio Corp was taking people with certain talents and training them to be as deadly and decisive as the androids of fictional stories. Rumor had it that they were even psychic, but people with some knowledge of the program claimed they were merely exceptionally attuned to reading people's faces.

“Most people I know come with two names. But you're not just anybody, are you? Where'd the corporation drag you out of?” I asked as we traversed the headquarters. It was bustling with activity. Countless officers were fielding calls and running back and forth to deal with situations resulting from either the blast or what had followed it.

“That is classified,” Zhaff replied.

“Look,” I said, struggling to keep my cool. “I've worked alone for most of my life. They saddled me with you, and I have a hard time trusting a man with my life if he won't even tell me where he's from.”

“My orders are to work under your direction for the remainder of this assignment. If that is not an adequate arrangement I can speak with the directors and request that they find another collector to replace you with.”

“To replace
me
with?” I stopped in front of the surveillance center, grabbed Zhaff by the collar, and drew him close. “You know how long I've been working for Pervenio, boy?”

“Exactly thirty years, two hundred and eleven days,” he said, not appearing fazed by my aggression in the slightest. “I have been fully briefed on your experience.”

I released him and backed away slowly. I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but everything about Zhaff made me uneasy. That response didn't help. It had me wondering who exactly was in control. I was well aware that the Cogent Initiative was valuable to Pervenio Corp, but I was beginning to grasp that I might've underestimated its importance. With so much at risk, I resolved to continue playing the good soldier for the time being.

“Just try to keep out of my way,” I bristled.

Zhaff fixed his collar. “I look forward to learning from your experience.”

“Great,” I grunted as I stepped by. “Have me running a damn daycare for their freaks,” I mumbled under my breath while we stepped into the surveillance center.

Inside, a curved array of view-screens displayed camera feeds from all over New London. There were views of the streets, inside buildings, outside buildings—everywhere. Those, plus all the scanners posted throughout the city, made it hard to believe someone had managed to sneak a handcrafted bomb into the heart of occupied Sol. It was a bold move, but I knew it was only a matter of time. Every time some new precautionary measure was rolled out, someone somewhere found a way around it. That was simply the way of things.

Three members of USF security sat in front of the screen array. The one in the center wheeled around in his chair as Zhaff and I approached. He was as hungover-looking as I would've been if my day hadn't been interrupted. Struggling not to stare at the peculiar-looking Cogent seemed to sober him up a bit, however.

“We're not seeing anything, Collector,” the security officer said jadedly. “Looked over the recordings a hundred times already. There are just too many people.”

“You try three-D heat-mapping yet?” I asked.

“Twice now. Too active. I can't pinpoint when anything out of the ordinary might've been set down.”

Zhaff stepped forward. His eye-lens panned across the screens. “There are numerous explosive devices that wouldn't show up on a thermal scan, Malcolm Graves,” he said. “Would you care for me to list them all?” Every word left his lips with immaculate enunciation, but his voice was completely flat. It was as if his speech were being dictated to him by someone at a computer far away before being fed out through his mouth.

I turned to him, expecting him to be kidding. Zhaff's face remained staid. “For all our sakes, please don't,” I said. “With enough time at the site, forensics will ID the type of bomb used. I was there and it looked like the work of something homemade. I don't give a damn about that, though. All I care about is who did it.”

“Again, there are too many people,” the security officer exhaled.

“Due to the explosion's proximity to the maglev rail station, I would estimate that between ten and fifteen thousand individuals passed nearby the general location throughout the day,” Zhaff posited. “It would take me roughly sixty-eight hours to track each of their paths, excluding time required for sleep.”

I thought about questioning whether a freak like him even needed sleep, but I took a measured breath instead before responding. “And what if the bomb was placed there days ago? I don't have that long.”

I moved over to a view-screen that showed an overhead view of the area before the blast. Once there I swiped my hand across the display and set it to play. Even at half speed it would've taken forever to trace anyone through the undulating tapestry of people and colors. Zhaff might've been able to do it without going insane, but there were thousands of people coming and going in the area, and I didn't feel like leaving anything in the hands of my peculiar new partner. I fast-forwarded the recording until the moment the blinding explosion went off.

“Who would do something like this on today of all days?” the security officer groaned.

“There are many religious factions that oppose humanity's expansion into the solar system,” Zhaff answered matter-of-factly.

“They can be fanatical all right, but they aren't crazy enough to do something so brazen on the surface of Earth,” I countered. “It goes against half of what they preach.”

“There are numerous other dissident factions on Earth. Or it is possible a corporation in direct competition with Pervenio could be attempting to spoil their Departure.”

I'd already considered all of what he said on my way over to the security headquarters. I couldn't place why, but none of it seemed right. “I doubt it,” I said. “We're all the people of Earth today.”

I set the feed to replay and leaned in close. A few minutes before the explosion a shadow quickly passed across the lower half of the screen. The surveillance camera was positioned somewhere above the rail line so there was no doubt the shadow belonged to a passing train.

“Are the trains usually running during the Departure?” I questioned the security officer. “All these years and I've never noticed.”

He took a break from nervously tapping his index finger against his desk to reply: “That Euro-String line hauls freight, so it never stops. The parting time you're seeing is one fifty-three p.m.”

“The explosion went off precisely two minutes later,” Zhaff said.

“Are there passenger cars attached to it?” I asked.

“A few at the front…” The security officer sighed. He was clearly tired of answering questions he thought were pointless. “Look, sir. I've already checked the few passengers who were registered as boarding that train. All of their IDs and retinal scans check out—all Earthborn citizens probably hurrying to beat the crowd after getting a glimpse of the Departure. Lucky bastards just made it out of there.”

He was lucky I was distracted by Zhaff; otherwise I would've reminded him he was talking to a collector. “I'm sure you have, but I'd like to see them,” I said evenly. “Do you have a camera on that platform?”

The security officer withheld another groan as he typed something into his console and sent the feed to the view-screen in front of me. I rotated the image to get the best possible view of both the retinal and body scanners located in front of the entrance to the passenger cars. Then I rewound to the moment before the doors were opened and set it to play.

A handful of pedestrians were leaving New London and making their way through the security checkpoint toward the departing train. None of them seemed out of the ordinary. All of the guards posted in the area were staring up at the sky, watching in awe as the Ark-Ship
Hermes
passed by.

“Malcolm Graves, there doesn't appear to be anything suspicious,” Zhaff said as he stepped up beside me. His lens was fixed on the screen, following every bit of motion.

I ignored him and continued to watch. It went on that way for a few boring minutes, but as I was beginning to grow frustrated one of the passengers finally stood out. It was a man, hunched over and walking with a cane. The angle was too high to see his face, but he was wearing a scarf covering his neck and mouth. The small part of his downturned face that was visible, however, had skin as white as paper.

I recognized the outfit minus the scarf, which must've been covering a sanitary mask. It belonged to the Ringer who had sat next to me earlier at the Molten Crater. Apparently he hadn't been killed by the hover-car that crashed into it. He was pretending to be an elderly Earther to hide his height as well as the fact that Earth g added a funny lurch to his strides, as if a heavy weight were hanging from his neck.