CHAPTER 4
Midforties, with dark carrot hair mixed with gray, the man was tall, with enough age and wrinkles to project authority without seeming old. His nose was a little more prominent than the average, almost hooked, and he had the posture of someone both highly educated and very used to being in charge. That, and the large Council patch on his jacket, told me I should pay very close attention. There were only twelve members of the Guild North American Ruling Council, and they made life-and-death decisions daily.
He moved to the side, his hand going up to press against the wall where I couldn’t see him, and Turner was revealed behind him.
My heart leaped, and I forced calm as much as I could. I should have been able to feel her coming. Her, at least, I should have felt coming. The fog in Mindspace, like suffocating cotton, filled all my senses.
The screaming stopped, abruptly, and silence filled the cell. My ears rang with it. Behind them, the woman huddled in the corner, her sides shaking soundlessly.
The man hit a button. The door opened with a low screech. I noticed Turner was carrying a water bottle.
I pulled myself to my feet, to better face my jailer.
“Adam Ward,” the man said, in an elderly statesman voice.
“Who are you?”
The man stood in the doorway, no farther, so that the field of the shielding still hid his mind from me. I couldn’t tell how strong he was. I couldn’t even tell what his Ability was.
Turner stood behind him, ready. We’d established she could handle me without backup, but this also seemed to establish that this man held her reins.
I forced myself to look away from the water bottle and back at the man in charge. “Who are you?” I asked again.
He took a breath, like a man preparing for a long speech. “My name is Thaddeus Rex, and I am the executive chair of the Council. I also lead the Guild First faction, which proposes to improve the lives of Guild members through better health, stronger safeguards, and innovative training and management techniques.”
“Good for you,” I said. “You realize that doesn’t say anything at all, right?”
He frowned at me.
I wondered if I’d be harder or easier to interrogate than your average Guild suspect. I knew all the verbal tricks, what could and couldn’t be said, and I’d spot the lies at ten paces, but I wasn’t used to someone who could read my mind, not anymore, and I couldn’t say for sure I could still lie mind-to-mind and not get caught. Still, if they left me in the shielding cell here, it might be a moot point. “I take it this is the part where you interrogate me?”
Rex shrugged, with a small smile. “You’ve been accused of a very serious privacy violation, and you owe the Guild Enforcement Division an astronomical debt. Technically, I don’t have to interrogate you. I can leave you down here until you rot. Of course, I’d have to turn on the water eventually, but it’s not very good water.”
I stood my ground, swallowing. “I work with the police. They will miss me eventually. They will send people looking for me.”
“Likely they will—you’re right. But I don’t have to let them in the door; the Koshna Accords are very clear. You’re still a telepath, Adam Ward. There’s not much they can do except file a protest.” He smiled that small smile again. “We receive a dozen protests a week on various topics.”
I swallowed. “Won’t Stone have something to say about that?” I’d mention Kara, but since she’d had them throw me in here, who knew her loyalties lay. With herself, probably—the way it had always been, I thought with a deep resentment.
“Stone reports to Tobias. Tobias reports, well, indirectly, to me,” Rex said quietly.
My face must have fallen, because Rex smiled outright in satisfaction. He gestured to Turner, who moved forward cautiously to hand me the water bottle.
I took it, numbly. Thought about not drinking it, in case they’d put anything in it. I didn’t need to be hooked on anything new. The Guild’s damn drugs had done it last time quick enough, when I’d participated in a study of Satin’s effects on the mind and gotten hooked on the second dose. Yeah, I wouldn’t put it past the Guild to put something in the water here just to see what would happen.
“It’s clean,” Turner said quietly, and moved to the side of the cell, still watching me. Rex was still at the door.
I looked at her, trying to decide. Rex I didn’t trust any farther than I could throw him, but Turner seemed like one of the pros I’d trained with and grown up around. She also had a small mallet-shaped pin, the Guild founder Cooper’s personal symbol, the symbol for a system of ethics I ascribed to. Didn’t mean she was trustworthy, though; the pins had been popular for years among the guards.
I held the water, deciding.
“I have a proposal for you,” Rex said smoothly. “Green says you managed to get through his defenses with real skill.” He held up a hand, waving away my protests. “Green isn’t one to exaggerate, much. It takes quite a skill to manage such a breach while under attack and in the presence of several witnesses who saw nothing. Not to mention a great deal of moral flexibility to break one of the Guild’s foremost ethical guidelines without so much as an accusation of wrongdoing.”
“Foremost ethical guidelines? Really?” I said. “Since when is a basic probe anything but tactics?” I was uncomfortable with the compliment, and even more uncomfortable with the ideals behind it. “I did what I had to do.”
“You did what you had to do,” Rex repeated, like he was testing out the words. “A very interesting approach, to be certain. I can be appreciative of your skills, as long as you understand those kinds of ethical breaches can’t be deployed on just anyone. Green, for example, was a very poor choice. He’s a Councilman, after all, though not a particularly impressive one.”
I barely repressed a snide comment about the Council and double standards. “No comment,” I said. In the non-Abled world this would be the point at which I should call a lawyer, but the Guild system didn’t work like that. And I hadn’t paid Guild fees recently enough to justify an advocate being called for me, even if I could somehow argue I had a right to one. I wasn’t a member, so technically I didn’t have access to an advocate. But if they were trying to claim jurisdiction . . . honestly, the whole thing made my head hurt.
“Don’t be modest. I have a use for someone with a high degree of skill and a weak sense of privacy. You’re in great debt to the Guild, Adam Ward. I propose you work for me to pay some of it off now.”
Great, the debt was coming back to bite me in the ass, just like I’d thought it would.
“Look, I showed up to talk to Kara. That’s it. I’m not getting involved in Guild politics, and I’m not working for you. Thanks anyway. I have a job.” But my doubt must have shown in my face, because he smiled.
“I can leave you in this cell on the debtor’s system instead if you prefer. Let’s give up the pretense. I have a highly political situation with a suspicious death. Kara’s uncle, as you may recall. You have a debt to pay. There’s no reason why we can’t both get what we want. My people tell me it’s very likely Meyers went mad and then concealed his illness from all of our watchdogs. I also can’t afford to ignore the issue, or not to investigate. He’s a fellow Council member, after all. We can’t let a killer go, if indeed it was anything but suicide, which I am assured it was not. But neither can I expose my people to a potential contagion of this magnitude. If there’s something there, it’s already proven itself deadly.”
I moved forward until Turner’s gesture stopped me.
I did not want to expose myself to madness if it was going around. I tried one last-ditch effort. “This is not the first Guild death under suspicious circumstances. Hell, even if it’s a suicide, it’s not the first suicide in the history of the world. He’s dead, and Enforcement is very capable. Why in hell bring me in?”
Rex’s right index finger tapped against his leg. “I have my reasons. Let’s just say, I’m better positioned to advance the causes of the Guild if you investigate. Plus I can argue we’re saving Guild lives if something goes wrong.”
“Let me get this straight. You want me to walk into a potential mental health death trap, to solve a case I’m not qualified to solve?”
“Exactly so, yes. You understand perfectly.”
I shook my head. “There’s no way in hell.”
Rex stood at the doorway, unperturbed. “It’s amusing to watch you protest. But you realize you don’t have any choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” I said.
He shrugged. “You can stay in the cell. The investigation into your privacy violation is already tending toward guilty. Between that and your debt, we’ll call it ten years. Should pass quickly, I’m sure.”
“I’ve agreed to work out the debt. And that’s a huge overkill on a privacy violation!” I protested. “When I left it was a slap on the wrist. Two weeks, tops, and a memory deletion of the offense—and that was for stalkers. How in hell do you get ten years?” Even combining that offense with the debt would be four years, tops, even if they’d thrown the book at me in the old days.
“Don’t be coy. We’ve changed a lot since you left the Guild, Ward.”
“I guess so,” I said with contempt.
He smiled, an almost obvious pride. “Privacy is sacred in the Guild now. Guild First has seen to that. We’ll give you some reading material. You’ll have plenty of time. Unless, of course, you take my offer.”
I swallowed. After the Guild got me hooked on drugs and tossed me on the street, after I cleaned myself up, wiped out everyone who’d ever sold me drugs, them and their lieutenants, I’d told myself I’d never—never—be used again. I wasn’t about to start now.
Rex smiled. “I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Mrs. Turner. I’ll expect a report every twenty-four hours.”
My fists clenched as he walked away.
I looked at Turner and she looked at me; her facial expressions were as deadpan as could be, and her body language was merely prepared. I might be able to get past her in the holding cell, with the shielding removed, do something physical to knock her out—but physical was Cherabino’s department. I smoked too much.
“How about I report you to the Council for using unethical tactics instead?” I said. “I’ve been away for years. What’s your excuse?”
The sound of footsteps stopped, then resumed back in our direction. The screaming started again.
Rex held up a hand when he came back in sight. The mask dropped. I saw the man within, the utterly, utterly ruthless man within. “Don’t threaten me, boy. I’ve been playing this game since before you took your Guild exams. You step out of line, I will discredit you and destroy you and then go after anyone who ever stood with you. That includes the lovely Kara Chenoa. You’ll do what I say, and you’ll do it with a good attitude. You report to Stone, for now. If he asks or anyone else asks, Enforcement as a whole has put their weight behind you. Naturally this will earn you enemies. That’s not my problem. See that you toe the line—I wouldn’t want to see a slip cost you everything.”
He held up a Guild Enforcement badge, a red card, and a key. “You’ll need these to do your job. I’ll expect a full report in forty-eight hours.”
He handed the items to Turner and then turned around.
“If I solve the case, I get my debt cleared,” I called out after him. “I get my debt cleared and I don’t get called up on any privacy violation.”
“We’ll see.” Rex resumed walking.
• • •
The water bottle in my hand felt suddenly very heavy.
“You sure this is clean?” I asked Turner.
“I didn’t get it myself,” she said, “but it came from the regular security refrigerator.”
I looked at it, my thirst and my sense of self-preservation warring, while in the background the woman screamed with a hoarse voice. “Give me the badge,” I said. “The key is to the main doors, I take it? What’s the card?”
She gave me the badge. “We’re on lockdown, so if you want access to the major portion of the Guild you’ll need clearance, which is the badge and the card together. They change the card every couple of days, so make sure you keep up to date. The key is for the elevators.”
I took a breath. “What time is it?”
“Six a.m. Friday,” she said.
I shook my head. I was due at work in less than two hours, and I’d gotten no actual sleep, just a few hours of forced unconsciousness from being knocked out. Plus I’d missed my regular meeting with my sponsor with no notice, which would trigger all sorts of worries.
Turner looked at me. “Restroom? I can get a male guard, but it takes a minute and I’d rather know now.” Her tone wasn’t exactly pleased.
I sighed. “I’ll wait.” I’d used the horrible little toilet once, and I’d rather have a clean washroom with a shower anyway, back at the department, even if she would let me take the trip. “I’d kill for a sink with running water and soap, though.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and moved out of the cell to a point where she could watch me. “You first.”
So I went first. The woman’s screaming got even more irrational when we passed, and the crying one inched away. Two more cells went past, empty.
But in the last cell, we passed a man with a long, long beard, who sat in a cell the size of my previous one and stared at the wall. Even through the shielding in the cells was heavier than I’d felt anywhere in the complex, I still felt leakage through it—a disturbing feel, like worms burrowing into the edges of my mind. I moved faster.
“What did he do?” I asked.
Turner glanced over. Poisoned five other members of his work group, one of which killed herself, before we shut him down. We tried to let him out, once. That will never happen again. She sent a subtext of grave violence and chaos they’d barely shut down in time.
How long has he been here? I asked, disturbed. I’d never been this far in the basement before.
Seven years, Turner replied. I was a rookie at the time. I’m told he’s currently on a hunger strike. He may die. No one’s willing to go in there to make him eat.
• • •
Turner took me to a small break room two floors above where we’d been. Small paper cuts of turkeys and pilgrims were taped onto the cabinets. How . . . festive.
I washed my hands—getting clean an almost obscene pleasure—and drank five cups of tap water from a soy-paper disposable cup. I’d chosen a cup at random from the middle of the stack to be safe.
She stood well enough back to give herself room and watched me very carefully. She could watch me drink water; I’d had people watch me do far more personal things with far more interest. I had a sixth cup of water, balled the cup up, and threw it in the garbage. Then I pushed the Guild stuff into a pocket.
“Okay,” I said. “Now you take me to the police station.”
She shook her head. “Now you talk to Meyers’s ex-wife. Then I take you to the police station. Assuming we get Rex’s permission.”
I sighed. “Look, I agreed to this. Sort of. I’ll do my part.” I didn’t see any other practical way, and Meyers had been a good guy, at least I could tell myself that. “But I’ve got a real job that got me the expertise Rex wants in the first place. I need that job.” I did, damn it. Routine and support kept you on the wagon, or so my sponsor said. That and getting plenty of sleep. I’d had no sleep at all and here I was already late to work. I was not falling off the wagon today. “You want me sane, you’ll take me to that job.”
Turner looked at me, no sense of humor.
“He didn’t say I couldn’t go back,” I said. “It’s Friday, right?”
She nodded.
“I’ll come back tonight. You can park me in a cell for a nap and then we can get to work,” I said.
“You still need to interview Cindy Ballon,” she said. But I had her.
“Meyers’s ex-wife?”
She nodded.
Time to give in on my end, cement this negotiation. “I’ll talk to her. Fifteen minutes, okay? If I can’t get the information from her in that amount of time, it’s going to take a few hours anyway. How far is this away?”
“She’s already waiting in the interrogation rooms down the hall,” Turner said.
“Obviously the guards haven’t slipped in expediency.”
“We try.”
I pinned on the badge. It felt weird, after all these years.
• • •
Cindy Ballon (formerly Meyers) was a square woman with a square jaw, plain with straw yellow hair and a body like a linebacker’s. Then she looked up and smiled, and my whole impression changed; the jaw, the nose that had seemed so harsh now just seemed striking. Her personality filled her up, the strength of character she carried with her into Mindspace and the mannerisms she displayed making it all work somehow, so that you forgot your first impression completely.
She was also sad, almost unbearably sad, and not hiding it.
“Hello,” I said, nodding the significant nod that was a greeting between telepaths. I introduced myself quickly mind-to-mind. Have we met? I asked, giving the contextual information about Kara’s and my engagement and the years in question.
She thought. No, I was stuck in D.C. with a government Minding job most of that time period. Del went on vacations by himself. Regret tinged her mental voice. “Hello to you too,” she said out loud, more out of habit than anything else I was betting. Minding—mental bodyguarding—usually required you to hold two conversations and/or two thoughts at once on a regular basis, so she’d be used to it.
I sat down at the plain table. Turner watched from a few feet behind me. If this was meant to intimidate me, she was out of luck.
“Let’s do this out loud,” I said. I glanced at the clock. Fourteen minutes would be . . . okay. I could do this.
“That’s fine,” she said. She took a breath, sadness leaking out. “Del and I divorced in August. It wasn’t—he didn’t want to end it. He begged me to stay. But . . . well, I’d met someone else.” In D.C., her mind echoed, along with a face and a subtle sexual overtone. “It didn’t seem fair to anyone to prolong the pain.”
“Do you think he killed himself?” With an iron? my own mental voice added. Might as well go straight to the heart of this.
Her public mind recoiled from the thought. “I . . .” She trailed off, looked at her hands, then back at me. “I honestly don’t know. He seemed okay, after a couple of months. I checked on him occasionally. I had friends check on him. I still cared.”
She should have thought of that before she cheated, my mind supplied.
Cindy winced like I’d slapped her.
I realized she’d read me, and rebuilt my shields. Amateur move. I had been interrogating normals far, far too long.
She pulled herself up, but some of that personality had dimmed. “I do know he was acting very strangely a few weeks before he died. One of my friends . . .” She trailed off again.
“What?” I asked.
“Well, mutual friends. He went over for dinner and they ate off paper plates with disposable silverware. He asked for a real knife when his broke in half trying to cut the meat—and Del said he didn’t have any. That he’d thrown them all out. He gave some stupid excuse.”
“He threw away the knives?” I asked.
Cindy looked away. “That’s what he said. I looked up his trash allowance. . . . He’d thrown away three times the amount of nonrecyclables his plan allowed. They actually fined him. And Del paid the fine—the first time, with no arguing. Del would argue about anything, and he’d walk through fire to save a buck on what he considered a ‘nonessential.’ The Del I knew . . .” She paused here, swallowing back tears and disgust. “The Del I knew would spread out the extra trash over several weeks just to avoid the fine. Even then he’d argue about it.” She looked at me. I was a horrible man for the cheating comment, her mind supplied.
I said nothing. In this case I agreed with her.
Behind me, Turner shifted. “He’s the best hope you have of getting real answers to Meyers’s death, Ms. Ballon. I’d answer his questions.”
She looked at me, vulnerable and unhappy. “What do you need to know?”
I racked my brain. “Did he seem sad? Depressed?”
“Not particularly. He called me up, out of the blue, on Sunday. He said he was tired of storing all of his stuff, and he wanted me to have his grandfather’s old Shaker cabinet. That was one of his most cherished possessions; it’s the master project from a carpenter in the nineteenth century, and it’s been in the family for centuries.” She took a breath. “I told him no, of course, but he wouldn’t let it go. I finally said if it meant so much to him, I’d take it. It should have gone to our children, if we’d had any, he’d said.” That had really hurt, her mind filled in. She’d thought that was maybe why he’d done it, knowing she wouldn’t be able to throw it away or give it away, looking at it every day and thinking she’d cost Meyers his chance at children. A fitting punishment perhaps. And so she’d taken it. Penance.
“Do you think he was crazy, at the end?” I asked her as gently as I could, not that it would matter at this point. I’d probably already offended her as much as it was possible for one human being to offend another. But giving away prized possessions was classic suicide behavior, though that was not in itself what the Guild deemed crazy.
“Crazy?” she asked, and shook her head slightly. “He seemed perfectly sane at the time. A little too sane. Sad, you know? But together. I’m told that it’s possible to carry madness for a long time without developing symptoms, though.” She shivered. “The professionals are putting me under house arrest for another week just in case. At least I should be able to catch up on my reading.” A slight twinge of fear entered the room.
That same fear, the fear of what I’d seen in that basement cell, what I’d felt trying to burrow into my brain, resonated with me. I was unlikely to develop madness from being in a room with her secondhand for fifteen minutes, I told myself. But the back of my head didn’t believe.
The clock said fifteen minutes had gone by. “Thank you for answering my questions, Ms. Ballon.”
I stood, but she didn’t, her mind saying she was waiting for me to leave. Now.
I left, Turner walking a little behind me so I didn’t attack passersby. Helpful of her.
• • •
A man was waiting for me in the hallway. He had a dark complexion, dark, short natural hair, and the overly smooth skin and too-bright eyes of expensive Guild age treatments, only really available to the political elite of the Council and its advisers. He had the movement of a long-distance runner, smooth and minimalist, but he watched his surroundings like a cop. Something about his mind and the way he shielded made me think he was older than Jamie, though how much I couldn’t tell with the treatments.
He was wearing a plain black jumpsuit that reminded me of Turner’s uniform without actually being a uniform. His Enforcement patch and rank insignia told me he was very highly ranked. And his stance when he saw me told me we were going to have trouble.
“Tobias Nelson, I presume,” I said, making the first move in the confrontation. This was the man who’d threatened Meyers in open Council, the one Kara thought had killed him. And his job meant he could cover it up with impunity.
I did the intense nod the Guild did instead of a handshake.
He returned the greeting with a small, sharp nod. “You’re interfering in my cases.”
“I’m looking into the suspicious death of a man who deserves the truth,” I said. As of the last half hour anyway. “You want me gone, I’d suggest you take it up with Rex.” I wasn’t given much choice, and I’ll try to stay out of your way, I told him, privately.
“I’d rather turn you over to a mind-scanner.”
I stared at him. Have someone ruffle haphazardly through my brain without my permission? For opposing his political position. Maybe he was corrupt as hell. “You’re certainly welcome to try,” I said. “But I will be missed, and I will object. Loudly, and often. Do you really want the scandal with the up-and-coming students?”
His eyes narrowed then, and an almost-respect leaked out into Mindspace. “I could kill you,” he said. “I have the jurisdiction.”
I sighed, and stepped forward. I was getting tired of people threatening me with death. I looked him straight in the eye. “You kill me without a reason and Rex will see to it that the Council takes your job,” I said, with the intense belief of a self-lie made truth. Then another mostly truth: “Then you’ll have the entire DeKalb County Police Department camped outside your headquarters. I am not that important to you. And I am not a threat. I just want to know what happened to Del Meyers. His family deserves the truth. Kara’s family is not going to go away.” I looked down briefly, then back at him, not an admission of weakness, but an acknowledgment of beta status. I hadn’t survived as long as I had on the street by trying to be alpha male, head of the pack; I’d rather talk my way out of a fight than take a punch any day. But neither could I back down. The weak got dead in that world. Time to talk my way to the right balance and do exactly what I wanted in the first place.
The moment sat on the edge, him taking offense or letting it go, having felt he’d won.
“I am not a threat to you,” I said again.
Someone cleared her throat. We turned to look at Turner.
In Mindspace, she was sending out vague waves of concern.
“What is it, Turner?” Nelson asked.
She was frowning. “Sir. It’s on the radio. . . . There’s . . .”
“Well, spit it out.”
“Another sixteen people checked themselves into Mental Health in the last hour.”
Impatience from Nelson, and the feeling that this wasn’t a new trend.
She stood a little straighter. “John Spirale has been reported dead. Looks like suicide.”
“Meyers’s assistant?”
Mental confirmation from Turner.
Nelson winced, a visible thing. “How many people did he come into contact with yesterday after we let him out of house arrest?”
“Unknown, sir. Several dozen.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, looking back and forth, not sure I was following all of this.
Nelson turned to me. “We have a contagious madness situation that has now escalated into a second death. Rex is out of his mind if he wants you involved. You’re no psychologist.”
I swallowed. “There’s still a chance this is a murder. Even in the normal world, you get copycat suicides. You get waves of the things. It hurts nothing to check it out.” But I was still worried, and still waiting for an opportunity not to do what I was being forced to do.
Nelson frowned at me.
“You’re a convicted felon,” he said. “You could infect my people with more than whatever Meyers had.”
I swallowed. Why did it always come down to that? “Trust me, it doesn’t matter. If I know the Guild, you’re cracking down on all nonessential movement right now. People are going to be largely locked in their rooms anyway. Who am I going to infect at this point? And anyway, I’d be exposed thirdhand. There’s no way I’m contagious.”
My brain caught up and I realized then that I was arguing to do what I’d just been threatened into. Blackmailed into. What was I thinking?
But I could get rid of my debt, of the power the Guild had against me, by investigating the death of a man who deserved the truth. Maybe I did believe in this. Maybe enough to risk madness, if Nelson was standing in front of me covering it up.
“What do you have to lose, Nelson?” I asked.
He sighed, and told Turner, “Take him back to his police friends. I’ll see you tonight,” he told me then. “I expect you to stay out of my way and not cause trouble. Or I will cash in that chip, and you will end up dead.”
“Understood,” I said. Oh, joy, I was caught in a power struggle of epic Guild proportions. For a dangerous cause I had nothing to do with. And, worse, I was late to work.