Forty-eight

 

Flint looked furious. DeRicci recognized the expression, although she had never seen it directed at her before. His features were flat, as if he were trying not to have any expression at all. She was a little offended that he was so angry. After all, she hadn’t intended to slow down the investigation. She had honestly believed the Earth Alliance would do its job.

She didn’t have the time to work things out with Flint, at least not more than the apology. She hoped that eventually he would forget his anger, or at least put it aside permanently.

Still, he followed her to her office, which she saw as a good sign.

She pushed open the door to find Popova standing in the center of the room, a deep frown on her face. Peyti faces with and without masks floated around her, and others appeared on various screens. Some had frozen. DeRicci recognized them as security images.

Her heart rate increased.

“I was just about to get you,” Popova said without turning around. “Are you sure our system works for the Peyti?”

Flint came up beside DeRicci.

“What is this?” he asked.

Popova whirled. She clearly hadn’t expected to find him in here. “Mr. Flint.”

“Rudra.” He bowed just a little. It almost felt mocking. Or maybe DeRicci was just being a bit too sensitive.

“This,” DeRicci said, “is what I was telling you about. An Earth Alliance official on Peyla sent me images of clones made of a Peyti mass murderer.”

“I didn’t know there was such a thing,” Flint said. But he didn’t seem to be as interested in that as he was in those faces. He walked around a few of the holographic ones. “The Peyti are a non-violent people.”

“Now.” DeRicci’s breathing had quickened. She was conducting the conversation with only one part of her brain. The rest of it was trying to absorb what she was seeing. “Where are these images from, Rudra?”

“I haven’t touched anything, Sir,” Popova said. “These are the settings you had me use.”

The Moon. The images were from the Moon.

Popova was saying, “That’s why I was wondering if the facial recognition works for Peyti. Because this just isn’t possible.”

This was dozens, maybe hundreds, of images, from all over the Moon. All Peyti faces, all of which looked the same to DeRicci.

“Okay,” DeRicci said, trying to make sense out of what she was seeing. “These images span how many months?”

“That’s just it,” Popova said. “They’re all from today.”

DeRicci looked away from the images and directly at Popova. Her face had gone gray. “What?”

“They’re from the past few hours. And if facial recognition does work on the Peyti, then something’s really wrong.”

“If you’re using the system here,” Flint said softly, “then yes, the facial recognition works on the Peyti, provided that you have images of them with and without the masks.”

DeRicci felt just a little dizzy. “We do.”

“Let me look at what you did,” Flint said. “Just as a double-check. These faces are supposed to be of the clones of that Peyti mass murderer, right?”

“Yes,” DeRicci said. She had already counted twenty images of clones, and she had just started.

Flint moved to DeRicci’s desk. “You trust your source? You believe these images are of the clones?”

DeRicci hadn’t thought of that. “I hadn’t double-checked, no.”

“What’s the name of the mass murderer?” Flint said.

DeRicci’s irritation rose. “I don’t know. All Peyti names are Uz-something, and impossible to remember.”

“Do you know when the murderer was active?” Flint asked.

DeRicci blinked. She made herself look away from the images for just a moment.

Flint’s blank expression had left. A light red color had suffused his pale skin. He didn’t look panicked—Flint rarely panicked—but he seemed alarmed.

“Um,” DeRicci said, “she said he was the last mass murderer on Peyti, and the most famous.”

“All right.” Flint tapped her desk. Somehow he was in her system. Had she given him access to her desk’s computer? She didn’t remember doing it, but that meant nothing. Flint knew more about computers than anyone else she had ever met.

An image rose in front of the desk. An older three-dimensional image, with the 3-D showing some wear, the kind that came from files that were translated from old non-human programs.

It looked like the Peyti clones, but DeRicci couldn’t tell. Not only could she not remember the damn Peyti names, but she couldn’t tell them apart by anything except height and weight.

“Can you run some kind of scan to see if it’s the same face?” Popova asked. Her voice shook.

“I just did.” Flint raised his head, his blue eyes clouded. “It’s the same face.”

DeRicci did not want to hear that. She squared her shoulders and looked at all the images. Amazing that the software had caught them, considering the masks were an updated version from the image that Rastigan had sent her.

Then DeRicci’s frown grew deeper. She had never seen that mask style before.

“I’m going to sort the images by location,” Flint said, “and I’m only going to use the ones from the last five minutes.”

He was tapping quickly. Popova watched him, as if staring at him would make the work go faster.

DeRicci kept track of him out of the corner of her eye. She was staring at the masks. They were all the same. A little fatter on the bottom. Not much fatter, though. An added piece about the size of a cupped human hand.

The images winked out, then reappeared. There were fewer images, but not many. Not many at all.

“That’s got to be a hundred clones,” Popova said.

“Two-hundred-and-fifty-seven,” Flint said, his voice remarkably steady. “And that doesn’t count the ones that weren’t near a security camera five minutes ago.”

“Two-hundred-and-fifty-seven?” Popova breathed. “We would have seen an influx on the Port security cameras, like those bombing clones, and I didn’t see anything like that.”

DeRicci now wished she had stayed for the program’s initial sort. She could have double-checked everything herself. Instead, she had walked the hall. That was when she had seen Flint. And while she was walking, she had gotten a short message from Rastigan.

Make sure your search parameters are for different ages.

Different ages.

And of course, DeRicci hadn’t done that since she got back. Flint had sidetracked her.

“We didn’t see it,” DeRicci said, “because they didn’t come in together. Some of them have been here for years.”

“You can’t know that for sure,” Popova said.

“No, I can’t,” DeRicci said. “But we can verify, right, Miles?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find.”

“And as you do, see if they’re always wearing these masks.” She pointed at one of the floating faces. “These masks look strange to me.”

“They’re different any I’ve seen before,” Popova said. “You want me to see if I can find out what that is?”

“No,” DeRicci said. “I have to talk with Jin Rastigan. She’s my source on Peyla. She’ll know.”

At least, DeRicci hoped she would know. Someone had to know. Because DeRicci didn’t like what she was seeing. She wanted reassurance that she was overreacting.

Even though she had a hunch she wasn’t.