CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
NADIRA COULD BE as objective as she liked—even calm and self-possessed. She staked her reputation on these qualities. But she saw two things that had frightened her today.
The silence inside the Catacombs of Excellent Precision was a balm to her state of mind, but only temporarily. Despite her, her mind charged forward and stumbled over the implications of Trooper Devinez’s death and reanimation.
Endless iteration was beautiful in nature and art: fractals, Fibonacci patterns, concentric rings in cross-sections of tree trunks. However, for SeForTecs—who viewed each transfusion as a dutiful iteration—perpetuity was unnecessary, a waste of time and energy.
“We honour life,” she had learnt before her first transfusion, “because we honour those who prematurely reached the end of theirs.”
Trooper Iryna Devinez was an iteration carried out without her consent. Nadira had considered leaving the examination to another senior technician under her, but the problem was, all technicians were under her. Subject one to the abominable task and the rest would lose respect for her. She had to undertake this burden alone, for the sake of all SeForTecs.
A preliminary examination would normally take her an hour. She took two. She had to ensure there were no longer any signs of life.
Nadira had passed the imitation synthamber cube to the main lab for extraction. She hoped the results would be straightforward enough to offset her sense of imbalance. She sat on a spare bench and replayed the sparring footage several times.
Footsteps running down the corridor. No personnel ran at that clip without a very good reason, but for Dumortier, anything could be a good reason.
He burst into the chamber without greeting her. “Why wasn’t I informed?”
Nadira saw his face like a stormfront, all subtlety and refinement displaced by fury. “You could have compromised the situation.”
”Don’t give me that officious bullshit.” He put his hands on his waist. “Both of us are beyond that.”
“A Dogtooth was present, and he was killed in front of me.”
That took some of the fury from his expression. He stepped closer to Nadira with concern. “There’s blood on your face.”
Nadira touched a fingertip to her cheek. “Not my blood. Pleo Tanza did it. Killed the Dogtooth.”
“How…?”
Nadira wiped the blood off her cheek and pointed at the sparring footage onscreen.
“You saw it?” he asked. “The thoughtform?”
“I saw the actions of it. Pleo Tanza told me she didn’t kill Gia. She was telling the truth. Look at the footage again: there are two people in the piste and two more presences.”
Dumortier played the footage back. He paused at the fatal moment when Gia’s neck was yanked back too far. The shadow was behind her head, and when the head dipped, another shadow.
“Slow the frame rate, fifty times.”
The image segued from one frame into the next, but Dumortier paused it in time. Caught halfway, Pleo’s face emerged from the other shadow, elongated and blurred. The other presence had been trying to pull Gia out of the way of the incoming fan, against the action of Saurebaras’s thoughtform, which had been directing the fan at Gia.
“You saw that in Canal Mouth?”
“I told you; I saw what it did and these things should not be. And then she made it grab my throat.”
Overwhelmed, Dumortier held his hands up. “If you want to get off this case, I understand. I won’t hold it against you, and your decision won’t show up on your record.”
“No,” replied Nadria with a deep breath. “And that’s final.”
Dumortier pursed his lips and nodded. “How does someone evoke a thoughtform?”
“Trauma—induced or shared,” Nadira said. “Saurebaras and her reconditioning. With Pleo it’s her miner’s ancestry, possibly transgenerational. The exact mechanisms involved are still a mystery.”
“How do two separate people do it, within a short amount of time? Aren’t they rare?”
“My guess is, Saurebaras gave Pleo a dose of something unique, possibly self-manufactured.”
“I have results regarding the stars thrown at me in DryWare. They were made with a modified version of the biotech used for highlights.”
“And who came up with the highlights?”
“Two Polyteknical instructors, Nive and Mangolin. They have previously been cautioned by their institution for extra-curricular activities.”
Nadira killed the sparring footage onscreen. “The tech in the stars. Could they apply it to dead bodies?”
“Not unless they had outside assistance. No one in all three systems can.”
“Devinez is in the next chamber. You may view her,” Nadira added. “I’ve seen enough.”
Dumortier looked at the walls of the chamber as though his eyes could bore through them.
Nadira went out of the chamber. “Preliminary results regarding the cube are in. The cube contains a human embryo. DNA matching Gia Aront.”
Dumortier followed her. Suddenly he pounded a fist into the corridor wall.
“There are easier ways to kill your children, damn it. This is too much, even for Tier Dwellers. They fuck each other over for assets and inheritances, but this plotting is on another level.”
Nadira asked, “What do we do next?”
Dumortier massaged his hand and blinked at Gia’s black dress spread out in its translucent evidence sac, as if it had suddenly snapped into view.
Nadira caught on. “We call in the Aronts for an interview? Present it to them as voluntary.”
“Only the father,” replied Dumortier. “We’ll get more out of him.”
Nadira addressed the coloured lights: Send officers to Aront Tier.
He went to view Devinez. After a minute he returned, calmer than before.
“You offered to help me with Devinez’s case?”
“Yes,” Nadira recalled.
“Please help me now.”
“How?”
“Use your SeForTec clearance to haul in and grill Sisme Morin, the little shit in charge of Canal Police, now that Devinez’s body has turned up. You can do it while I’m with Patriarch Aront, since we don’t have the luxury of time. I’ve long suspected he had something to do with her disappearance, but I can’t grill him.”
“Because Katyal took you off the Devinez case?”
“No, because I don’t want to spill a dirty officer’s blood in the Sunlight Corridor.”
Send detainment officer to pick up Sergeant Morin.
AndNadira dismissed the coloured lights and walked out.