Thirty-five

 

The apartment was quiet. The only light streamed from Flint’s home office, but he didn’t sit in there. He sat on the uncomfortable couch in the living room, in the very center of the apartment, and held his breath.

He had learned the sounds of Talia sleeping, and he had learned that he could hear them from here. When she first arrived, he would peer into her room like the anxious parent he was, but then she would say, I’m not a baby, a phrase designed to both hurt and push him away.

Her original, Emmeline, had died as a baby. That day had broken Flint’s heart, changed his life, and, he thought at the time, destroyed his marriage. Only later, only after he found Talia, did he realize the marriage he thought he had might never have existed.

He still hadn’t dealt with his feelings about Rhonda. He set them aside, just like he set aside the fact that Talia was only one of several clones of Emmeline, clones—girls, children, his children who were growing up without him.

It disturbed him that Selah Rutledge, the Aristotle Academy headmistress, knew—or at least suspected—that Talia was a clone. Secrets had a way of coming out, no matter how closely held they were. And right now was not the time to expose Talia as anything other than Flint’s natural-born child.

He ran a hand over his face.

No sound came from Talia’s room. Not rustling, not shifting, not the creak of the floor. Try as she might, she always made noise when she was awake.

She had finally dropped off, and he had to repress the urge to check on her. He didn’t want her to know how worried that incident at the school made him. If anything, it made him even more determined to solve the entire Anniversary Day mystery.

If he could call it that.

He stood up and sighed. He was solving this for Talia, and because of Talia, he couldn’t work the way he wanted to. He wanted to work until he found out all the information he could, no sleep except for a cat nap here and there, meals caught on the fly.

But he didn’t dare do that. He needed to take care of his daughter as well, and he needed to remain alert. Plus he couldn’t investigate everything from his home computers. As sophisticated as they were, as many protections as he had placed on them, he would never do dicey work on them. He didn’t want to anger someone by accidentally (or intentionally) probing a dangerous organization, and then have that organization target him.

Finding where he lived was easy enough, but he didn’t want to invite someone here, particularly when he was doing an anonymous search.

So he couldn’t do a lot of the investigating he wanted to do.

He’d already tried to see which corporations worked on weapons systems for the Earth Alliance, figuring that the search was the kind a journalist or a school student might do.

He immediately ran into a wall. He got a list of corporations, but they were subcorporations of other subcorporations, and the farther he went down into them, the less information he got. He couldn’t even tell what some of their primary businesses were.

He had figured he would be able to see a corporation that specialized in cloning, for example, on that list, but he didn’t find any.

The corporations that specialized in cloning, like the one that created Talia, did most of their work with consumers or with scientific laboratories, not with the government.

At least that he could find.

He went into the kitchen, more as a force of habit than because he was hungry. Talia had helped him pick out this apartment. He had made a fortune after he left the Armstrong Police Department, and until he found Talia, he had spent almost none of it.

This apartment was the most expensive thing he had ever purchased in his life. It was a penthouse apartment, the most secure place in a brand-new building. Flint had watched the thing go up, and knew it had been built to the highest possible standards.

The building had top-notch security, and the penthouse apartment even more so. Plus he had added features of his own.

Initially he had planned on buying a house, but Talia didn’t want one. Her mother had been kidnapped out of their house in Valhalla Basin; Talia had been held prisoner in her own closet for hours until she figured out how to escape.

She felt that she could have gotten rescued sooner if she’d been in an apartment. Someone would have heard her pound on the floor or scream or something.

Flint didn’t have the heart to tell her that the floors in this very secure building had a secondary floor beneath, so that no one on the floors below could hear anything. The rest of the apartment—in fact, the entire building—was soundproofed, so that the residents couldn’t hear anything anyone else did. They couldn’t hear street noise, either.

It was as close to a self-contained environment that an apartment building could have.

The kitchen was large, with shiny cabinets and the most up-to-date appliances. Talia had chosen this place not for its size or its views of the city, but because of its kitchen and its unbelievably ornate bathrooms. Most apartments they’d looked at together had a great master bath, but the rest of the bathrooms were pedestrian.

Not here. Flint could have lived in one of the bathrooms, and probably had had apartments smaller than Talia’s bathroom suite.

He felt awkward showing his wealth like this, but Talia convinced him they needed the comfort. He believed they needed the security.

If anything, the arrival of Talia into his life had made him more paranoid, not less. And he had been pretty paranoid to begin with.

He touched the pantry/cooler door to see what kind of foods he had in here. He wasn’t that hungry, but he wasn’t tired either, and he needed something to distract himself from the investigation.

He pulled out some real beef—Talia had also convinced him to buy the best-tasting food, not the least expensive—and some freshly baked bread from the deli downstairs, and started to assemble a sandwich.

A notice pinged against his right eye. It was a subtle notice that he had a contact, as if the sender had not wanted to disturb him in case he was sleeping.

Flint tapped the secure link access on the pantry/cooler door, put the sound on low, and stepped back.

“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you’re awake?” Nyquist peered at him. If anything, the man looked even more rumpled than he had earlier, and the parts of his office visible behind him even messier. “Although I gotta say, that’s some fancy digs behind you.”

Flint made himself smile, even though he inwardly cringed. The expensive nature of this place was visible in the cabinet materials, the high-end tile, the countertops. He should have left Nyquist on a private link, but hadn’t thought it through.

“You got something?” Flint asked, not really willing to discuss his apartment.

“I got a lotta somethings,” Nyquist said. “None of them any good.”

He ran a hand over his face, a sign of exhaustion. He actually looked a bit gray. Flint wondered if Nyquist’s health was breaking down. The man had nearly died a few years ago, and even though his systems got rebuilt, rebuilt systems were never entirely the same.

“Designer criminal clones,” Nyquist said, “do not exist.”

“Um,” Flint said, about to argue. “But—”

“At least, as far as the Armstrong Police Department is concerned.” Nyquist sighed. “I can’t search for that phrase. I find myself catapulted out of our information systems when I even try. This is what happens when something is classified.”

When it was ostentatiously classified. Flint knew because he designed the system. If someone had to know that the inquiry was not allowed, the system spit the inquiry back. If the inquiry was quietly classified, the questioner would get sent to similar ideas or concepts and might never ever know that their original inquiry got bounced.

“Which you probably know,” Nyquist said. “Sorry. Tired. Forgot who I’m talking to.”

“It’s all right,” Flint said.

“So I just looked for multiple arrests of similar clones and yeah, there are a few on Armstrong, but it’s small stuff, not the kind of thing you’re talking about. Clones of criminals manufactured in large numbers never made it here. There are some older cases on Earth, of all places, but they’re political—someone cloned old historical figures and tried to have them speak on the current situation, stuff like that. Nothing like what we saw on Anniversary Day.”

Flint sighed. He should have expected that.

“But here’s the thing,” Nyquist said. “If I look outside the Earth Alliance, I find a lot of these cases, often involving Earth Alliance corporations. I can’t investigate far, mostly because some outside agency steps in and shuts down the inquiry or because the corporation decided to investigate in-house, but your rumor from your friend isn’t a rumor. It’s something the Earth Alliance knows about, has classified, and is really touchy about. Which I don’t like at all. Because that means, well, what it means is something I’m not going to say even on a secure link.”

“I know,” Flint said. “I found out more this evening, and you’re right to be cautious. Look up the term blowback.”

Nyquist cursed. “I know the term. And yeah, I was beginning to suspect as much.”

“I’ve been trying to figure out who made these weapons systems,” Flint said, “but I’m not working in a secure area at the moment.”

Nyquist’s eyebrows went up. “That’s your kitchen? Hell, man—”

“I keep getting stuck by the same things that are interfering with your investigation,” Flint said quickly, so that neither man would focus on Flint’s kitchen.

Nyquist gave him a small grin, clearly aware of what Flint had just done.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Nyquist said. “I’m thinking this all fits, even the blowback. Particularly the blowback. If you really consider it, what Ursula Palmette and all the others like her, the ones that opened doors for these cloned killers, as you call them, or provided them with weapons or whatever, what these folks did was a form of blowback. They used systems designed for one purpose against the designer. It’s like a signature of the entire attack.”

Flint felt lighter, the way he did when pieces he had seen came together into a realization. Then he shuddered. “This means whoever—whatever—is behind these attacks has a real solid knowledge of the way that systems within the Alliance work.”

“Which gives us a clue as to who they are,” Nyquist said.

“More a clue as to who they aren’t,” Flint said. “They aren’t outsiders.”

“Or if they are,” Nyquist said, “they were inside once.”

Flint nodded. He felt breathless. He felt like they had made more progress in one day than they had made since the attacks.

“It probably gives us a clue as to motive as well,” he said.

“Probably,” Nyquist said. “But we won’t figure that out until we have a name.”

“Or at least a suspect,” Flint said.

“Yeah.” Nyquist picked up a coffee cup that looked like the same cup he had used at dinner, hours ago. “It also means our investigation needs at least two prongs. We have to work within the system to back trace what they did, but we also need to go outside the system to find out what happened.”

“Because they know that we can’t research the clones,” Flint said.

“And they probably know lots of other things too.” Nyquist leaned back in his chair. The little squeak it made carried through the link. “But here’s the thing I realized as I was researching all of this stuff. If these clones were designed for use outside the Earth Alliance—not the PierLuigi Frémont clones that attacked us, but the weapons system—then there is no reason to use someone famous like PierLuigi Frémont as the original. You just find someone less famous, someone who was probably more efficient at whatever you believe he did, and then use the so-called inherent abilities of these clones as your basis for whatever was done. Or you use clones of someone famous in the place you were going to attack, not famous in the Earth Alliance.”

Flint had been looking at the fame as a clue to the reaction the orchestrators of the attack wanted, and he knew tracing the clones might bring him to the attacks, but he hadn’t thought of the fame being a clue in and of itself.

He let out a small whistle. “Brilliant.”

“Nah,” Nyquist said. “Just something to consider. It doesn’t make sense to have a famous original unless you want to make a point with that original. If you’re designing these things to infiltrate somewhere, you pick the best one for the job.”

“And the best ones for this job made us focus on Frémont,” Flint said, “not on what they actually did.”

“Precisely,” Nyquist said. “I mean, if you look at Frémont himself, he was more a cult guy who happened to commit mass murder rather than a mass murderer on some kind of rampage. If you wanted efficient killers, you wouldn’t recreate Frémont.”

Nyquist was right. Again, whoever was doing this understood the system, almost better than the investigators.

Although that wasn’t entirely true. Whoever designed these attacks knew how investigators worked, how fragmented the law enforcement system was, and how information didn’t come in large pieces. The designer also knew that a lot of information would get lost or never found and that everyone would focus on the most obvious connection—PierLuigi Frémont and the statement—not on actually tracking the designer.

Which meant that the attacks had another, larger purpose, one Flint hadn’t seen yet—no one could see—because they didn’t know how or what caused all of this mayhem.

Or what they got out of it.

Who benefitted from mayhem? And how would they benefit?

Flint felt an answer tantalizingly out of reach.

“So here’s the thing that I can’t investigate because it’s outside of my jurisdiction,” Nyquist said. “Who provided the DNA from PierLuigi Frémont? I checked the family. They had no access to his DNA and most of them wanted nothing to do with him. He was in a maximum security Earth Alliance prison until he died, and his DNA was closely monitored, just like all of those people’s DNA is, particularly the famous ones or the culty ones.”

“Did he distribute DNA before he got captured?” Flint asked. “Sperm, maybe, or something else?”

“All of it destroyed,” Nyquist said. “Or at least, that’s what the records tell us. The fires in Abbondiado destroyed his compound, then the arresting officers did a search, double-checked by Earth Alliance officials, to make sure no one was keeping anything—including DNA—for Frémont.”

“That would be hard to track,” Flint said.

“The Alliance has bots that can look at the smallest skin cell for its origin, and those bots get used in cases like this, cases where the Alliance believes the alleged criminal might become or already is a cult figure. No bit of that person’s actual DNA leaves an area. Theoretically.”

“You sound like you believe that,” Flint said.

“I do, actually.” Nyquist sounded surprised at himself. “I worked on one of those investigations once. It was scarily complete. You’d be amazed at how much DNA you shed, and how much can be collected and theoretically disposed of.”

“You keep using the word ‘theoretically,’” Flint said.

“Yeah,” Nyquist said. “I’m an old-fashioned, cautious kinda guy. I don’t believe anything happens unless I do it myself.”

Flint grinned in recognition. People often saw that as a can’t-play-well-with-others trait, but Flint liked that perfectionism. It actually made him more comfortable to work with someone like Nyquist, rather than less.

It also explained why, despite their prickly relationship, he liked the guy.

“So you’re thinking the DNA came from the prison,” Flint said.

“Yeah, and if so, there’s some coordinated activity going on. I would wager that someone is selling DNA or something,” Nyquist said.

Flint sighed. “Are there enough major criminals with the right reputations to do that? Or did someone get approached?”

“I don’t know the answer to that. You’re going to have to find out.”

Flint glanced out the kitchen door. He had no idea how he would find out. In the past, he would have gone to the prison himself.

“Can’t someone take care of the kid?” Nyquist asked, ever prescient.

“Theoretically,” Flint said.

Nyquist let out a small laugh. “Okay. Point made. We’ll have to see what we can come up with.”

“I have few ideas,” Flint said. “I’m not sure you’re going to want to know what they are.”

“If they violate Armstrong law, it’s better if I don’t,” Nyquist said. “No matter how committed I am to this cause.”

Flint nodded. “Let me know if you find anything else.”

“Oh, believe me, I will,” Nyquist said, and signed off.

Flint stared at the pantry/cooler door. Now all it showed were the foods inside along with their expiration dates and a request to see if he wanted recipe suggestions.

He shut down the door entirely and went back to building his sandwich.

It seemed to him there were three kinds of designer criminal clones: the ones designed by the Earth Alliance to infiltrate troublesome crime syndicates like the Black Fleet; the ones designed to help organizations like the Black Fleet pull off a particular kind of crime (usually theft); and the kind designed to both commit the crime and scare the non-victims into some kind of compliance.

The Moon had just experienced the third. He had no idea if any other place had. He wasn’t even sure there were enough famous criminals of the PierLuigi Frémont stripe to make this kind of designer criminal clone a viable business option.

He opened the cooler and got some Armstrong-grown lettuce, along with a chutney that Talia had made. He spread that on the bread, then assembled the sandwich, and put all the ingredients away.

He carried the sandwich across the stupidly large apartment, all the way to his office. He paused in the living room. He still didn’t hear Talia, which was a good thing.

He went to his desk. Even though he wouldn’t let himself search for things on this particular network, he liked sitting here. He did some of his best thinking in front of an active screen.

He couldn’t go to the prison. He couldn’t leave Talia here, even with a trusted friend. He simply wouldn’t be able to concentrate properly if he did that. He also couldn’t bring her to the prison.

He would have to find someone else who could get this information for him.

Maybe Goudkins and Ostaka could, but if they reported the wrong thing, it might filter its way through the Earth Alliance. He didn’t trust them enough.

He needed a reporter. He needed someone like Ki Bowles who gave up everything for the story. But he no longer knew anyone like that, now that Bowles was dead.

That left only one person, whom Flint shouldn’t trust at all. Luc Deshin. Deshin would be credible to whomever started this scheme. And Deshin would have the contacts that could get him to that prison fast.

But Flint couldn’t trust Deshin. No one could.

Yet the man had seemed sincere. Flint actually believed Deshin when he said he wanted to do something about preventing more Anniversary Day-type attacks.

Flint could either rely on a man he didn’t trust to find out this information, or he could get it himself while compromising a promise he’d made to himself to keep Talia safe.

Two terrible choices. And yet it felt like an easy decision.

He’d contact Deshin—and hope to God that Deshin really did want to do the right thing.