Sixty-three

 

Bartholomew Nyquist wasn’t much of an actor, but he knew the importance of his role this afternoon. He had to remain calm and pretend like everything was normal, even though the links had gone down and he had to catch one of hundreds of mass murderers who had infiltrated the Moon.

He greeted Uzvaan, the Peyti lawyer who represented Ursula Palmette, Nyquist’s old partner and the woman who had tried to bomb Armstrong on Anniversary Day. He had told Uzvaan that Palmette had information, that they were bringing her to the precinct to question her again, and that Uzvaan probably wanted to be present.

Since Uzvaan worked in a law office nearby, it hadn’t taken him long to get here.

Most of the detectives in the First Detective Unit were gone, tracking down other Peyti clones. No one had said anything when the orders came through; they had all looked at each other with a resignation that he found familiar.

This was the new normal. They would constantly be under threat until they figured out who or what was behind the attacks. That they faced clones again didn’t surprise Nyquist. He felt weirdly unsurprised by it, maybe because of the discussions he’d had with Flint.

What had surprised Nyquist was the fact that the clones were Peyti. Somehow he had gotten it in his head that these attacks were human-based.

“They’re bringing her to Interrogation One,” he said to Uzvaan.

Uzvaan clutched a small pad in his long fingers. He always carried one. He was slender, even for a Peyti, and fussy about everything. Nyquist had known him for years now, and always thought of him as a competent lawyer, but not a great one. He sometimes seemed like he wasn’t paying attention, which Nyquist had always thought of as strange in a Peyti. Usually they had a fanatical attention to detail.

Uzvaan didn’t move. He tilted his head. Nyquist tried not to look at his mask. If he hadn’t been told about the difference, he might not even have noticed it. The mask looked a little thicker on the bottom. That was it.

“Are the links off here?” Uzvaan asked.

Nyquist had expected the question, but it still made his heart race to hear it. “Yeah. They went down a few minutes ago.”

“This does not worry you?”

“Everything worries me,” Nyquist said, “but we’ve had issues like this for weeks now. I think someone has been monkeying with our system.”

Uzvaan did not visibly react to that. Instead, he turned and headed toward the interrogation rooms.

Nyquist wasn’t sure what kind of reaction he wanted to see from Uzvaan, if any. He’d always found Uzvaan unreadable, even for a Peyti. And he used to think Uzvaan was nondescript, rather forgettable. He would have been hard-pressed to describe him at all. Privately, Nyquist used to think to himself that Uzvaan looked like every other Peyti, and then Nyquist would worry about that thought, thinking maybe it was bigoted.

Now he realized that Uzvaan did look like other Peyti that Nyquist had seen. He hoped that his colleagues were taking care of those Peyti. Because he had to take care of this one.

“I do not understand what she can tell you now that she has not already told you,” Uzvaan said as he pulled open the door to the interrogation rooms.

“We’ve gotten some fascinating information concerning the zoodeh,” Nyquist said truthfully. “I think some of our assumptions might be wrong. We can shorten her sentence if she can give us information of value.”

Uzvaan grunted, as if in acknowledgement. He headed toward Interrogation One. He certainly knew his way around here.

Nyquist’s heart was pounding.

“I do not know why you could not have talked with her in the prison,” Uzvaan said.

“I would’ve thought she’d be happy to have a day on the outside,” Nyquist said.

“Since when do you care about her happiness?” Uzvaan asked.

Nyquist smiled slightly to himself. That was the Uzvaan he knew.

“I don’t,” Nyquist said. “I have information here that I’m not taking near that prison.”

“You are afraid it will be compromised?” Uzvaan asked.

“I’m sure of it.”

They reached Interrogation One. The window was clear, showing no one in that white-on-white room.

“I’d find out where she is,” Nyquist said, “but my links are still down. Why don’t you just wait in there, while I check.”

Uzvaan shook his head, and for a moment, Nyquist thought they might have a problem. “You do realize that each minute I sit in there wastes my time. She is not a paying client. I will bill this to the city itself.”

“That’s not my concern,” Nyquist said. “But I’ll do what I can to get her here faster.”

Uzvaan went inside the room. He peered at the white table as if it were covered in filth.

Normal procedure meant that Nyquist left the door open. But there was nothing normal about this afternoon.

He slammed the door shut and locked it. Then he hit the control panel hidden in the wall and immediately changed the environment inside Interrogation One to Peyti Normal.

Uzvaan whirled. He grabbed his mask by the bottom and removed the bomb. Then he took off the mask itself.

Nyquist wasn’t sure he had ever seen a maskless Peyti before. Uzvaan looked less intimidating, not more. Blue flooded his face, and for a moment, Nyquist wondered if the environmental mix was wrong.

Uzvaan threw the mask on the table and squeezed the bomb.

Nyquist shook. He reached for his own weapon, not sure what would happen.

But the bomb did not go off.

Uzvaan’s skin continued to cycle through a variety of colors. Then he tossed the bomb across the room as if in fury.

Nyquist had never seen an angry Peyti before.

“You do not have the right to hold me here,” Uzvaan said through the open intercom.

“Oh, yeah, I do,” Nyquist said. “We just got a recording of that. You tried to bring down the entire station. And yes, I know what you were holding. You might want to think about your own defense, counselor. Because what’s going to happen to you in Earth Alliance courts won’t be very pretty.”

Then he shut off the intercom, and moved away from the window so that Uzvaan couldn’t see him.

Nyquist leaned against the wall and closed his eyes for a second. One down. Hundreds more to go.

He had no idea if the other takedowns were going well. He hated the silence on the links. But he now knew why that silence was mandatory.

He set up an automated message to go to DeRicci the moment the links returned:

I have one of the bastards in Interrogation Room One. He’s neutralized.

Nyquist took a deep breath and opened his eyes. His instructions were to remain in case something went wrong with the environment, the interrogation room, or the bomb.

He hoped to hell this thing would get resolved soon, because he felt like a potential victim just standing here.

And he hated that feeling more than anything else.