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Agent Adams didn't sound happy to receive my call. It wasn't like I'd worn out my welcome with her or anything. We had a standing policy: don't call her, she'd call me. And that suited me fine—until it didn't.
She preferred to be the one bossing me around, not answering the question I phrased so delicately:
"So, you're rounding up troublesome kids in Little Tokyo and sending them out into the Wastes?"
I kicked back in my desk chair and absently swiped at the screen of Junior's Slate, unsure what else to do with the thing. Okada had given me the passcode before he and Sanitoro took their leave, but with Wanda gone until morning, the device wasn't much more than a glowing toy in my hands. A pretty toy, don't get me wrong, with so many swishing colors—
"That information is classified, Madison," Adams said tersely.
"Yet I have it. Right in here." I tapped my temple, but the gesture was lost on her. One of the benefits of using the intercom on my desk: no face-to-face interaction. Also one of the pitfalls. But even if I'd been vidLinking on the Slate, Adams wouldn't have been able to see much of me, sitting there in the dark—showing that electric bill who's boss. "Maybe you should send a sweeper squad over, have them scramble my brains a bit. Make me forget the whole damn thing."
"What do you want?" She didn't sound amused. No surprise there. Her sense of humor was about as well-developed as a chicken wing.
"A tour of the place would be nice. You know, just so I can see how the inmates are being treated. Make sure they're receiving a quality education during their incarceration. Wouldn't want them to miss class just because of their little desert vacation. Our youth are the future, after all."
The intercom sat silently on my desk. Was it still working? The thing had been on the fritz lately, begging me to box it about the ears.
"From what I've been told, the subversives are being detained in a state-of-the-art facility. They are being well cared for, I assure you." She paused. "We are not their enemy."
"Subversives," I echoed. "That's what you're calling them now—these kids?"
"What would you prefer—rebellious youth? Or perhaps anarchists? Believe me, Madison, taking them away from that incendiary environment is the best thing for them. The majority of people in Little Tokyo want to live in peace. They're not interested in joining a revolution. By removing those young people who would threaten their way of life, we have restored peace to their community. No more riots and fires. No more unrest. Business is flourishing now that citizens can freely cross the border into Little Tokyo without fear for their lives or damage to their property. The Japanese residents are grateful for what our government has done. Trust me on this."
She spoke as one only vaguely acquainted with the situation, spinning recent events through a government-approved filter. Little Tokyo would never be a dream destination for tourists, no matter how peacefully things settled down across the border. Too much distrust festered beneath the surface.
Sure, your average residents of Little Tokyo wouldn't participate in Molotov cocktail parties, but that didn't mean they liked the way they were treated: poor second-cousins, made to live in a ghetto and expected to be happy about it. Grateful for it. Only because the alternative was so much worse: a homeland left in shambles by the Eastern Conglomerate.
"Doesn't matter how rowdy they were," I countered. "Those kids' parents aren't going to sit idly by while you imprison their children—"
"They're legal adults. They would be in universities if they were citizens of the Unified States."
"So that makes it all right."
"Their parents are wise enough to see the importance of stability in their community, a community that would not exist without the benevolence of the United World—"
"They should be thanking you? For kidnapping their offspring?"
"I had nothing to do with that," she snapped, revealing a chink in the ice-cold armor she wore so well. From the moment we first met, I could tell the woman had a temper straining on its short leash like a mad dog. "If your only purpose in calling was to badmouth our government, then you should know there are multiple opportunities on the Link to express yourself freely. All closely monitored by Federal agents." She paused. "Oh, that's right. You're something of a Luddite, aren't you? Doesn't your secretary take care of all your technological needs? Maybe she can post your negative comments for you."
Adams knew me too well for my liking. "Maybe you weren't involved personally with rounding up these subversive youth," I said, setting Junior's Slate on my desk, "but I'm sure you know somebody who was. And I'm equally sure you could arrange a tour of the facility."
"Why would I want to do that?"
"Because I'm your favorite private eye."
"You're the only one in town."
"Makes me special."
Ivan the Terrible had tightened his grip as of late, and folks were afraid to cross the Russian crime boss by seeking any kind of help. Going to the cops had been out of the question for years; too many of them had their own idea of law and order, and justice seldom entered the equation. But now even private investigators were experiencing the backlash: folks were willing to live with the status quo, such that it was.
"You're wasting my time, Madison." She sounded ready to hang up. I couldn't have that.
An image of a dangling carrot crossed my mind's eye. "There may be suprahumans involved." We both knew how much people with freakish abilities floated her boat. She was a collector of sorts, locating these individuals and making them disappear before the public at large learned who they were. What they were. Not terminating them, as far as I could tell. Detaining them. Studying them in some kind of zoo, probably.
Like science projects.
"If that were true," she said slowly, "then I would already know about it."
Good point. She was, after all, the Blackshirt running point on the Suprahuman Task Force—or whatever the hell it was called. Mindwiping anybody who came in contact with a suprahuman in order to keep the government's dirty little secret: that somehow, during the opening acts of the war, chemical weapons had dramatically changed some of our fellow Earthlings, turning them into something...unique.
I'd thought Wanda and I were the only common citizens who knew about these special people. But earlier tonight, Old Man Okada had mentioned gifted ones. Adams' people obviously hadn't gotten around to scrambling his brains yet. And what about Sanitoro? How much did he know? For some reason, the Feds hadn't seen fit to scrub our memories of anything suprahuman-related.
That made us a select few. But I had no idea why we'd been selected.
"Worth a shot." I shrugged, glancing at Junior's Slate. I would ask Wanda to take a look at the thing in the morning. It would have to serve as an overqualified paperweight until then. "Good night, Agent Adams. Sleep well. Sweet dreams of internment camps filled with sad, neglected youth starving for intellectual stimulation." I reached to turn off the intercom.
"You're giving up too easy."
Wasn't like her to play coy. "Got one last tip for your favorite detective?"
She hesitated before lowering her voice. "Leave this alone. The detention facility...based on what I've heard, it's not a final solution. Just a temporary deterrent. That's all I know. Politics, Madison—not something I usually wade into. But I can't tell you where this center is, because I honestly do not know. It's not in my jurisdiction. And if I were you, I would steer clear of the entire situation."
"Wish I could." But I'd promised Okada that I would find his nephew, and the first step was interviewing the kid's followers. In order to do that, I needed to find that facility where they were being kept, and I needed to get inside the place. Neither of which was likely to happen without someone in high places lending a hand.
As if she could read my mind, Adams said, "Don't go into the Wastes, Madison."
Then she hung up.