With this we step out of the darkness into a brighter dawn. We will not simply await the future, we now will change it.
~ Dr. Abdul Emir speaking at the inauguration the Future Command Force complex I1–2064
Saturday March 22, 2070
Florida District 8
Commonwealth of North America
Iteration 2
Ivy pulled her car to the side of the road and leaned her head against the steering wheel. If scientists had the common sense evolution gave a caterpillar, the geneticists who’d made her would have thought to give her a better-functioning body than the normal human one. Goodness and the great beyond knew the department worked her like she was a robot. In before seven in the morning, still chasing down leads at three the next morning, with one meal in between and a shot of an Extra Energy Lime drink that left her jittery for an hour and desperately in need of sleep now.
“Patroller?” the dispatcher’s voice floated through the car like a ghost.
“This is Officer Clemens. I’m in the armpit of nowhere following lead 391. Sending GPS coordinates now.”
“GPS coordinates received, Officer,” the dispatcher said. “Check-in scheduled for twenty minutes from now.”
“Check-in scheduled,” Ivy agreed. “Exiting the car now.” She slammed the door shut on the dispatcher’s response. A waxing gibbous moon hung low over the eastern horizon, not quite above the palmettos shivering near the bay. There was worse weather for a manhunt than 60 percent humidity and low seventies with a sea breeze.
The tipster had called dispatch to say he’d seen a man matching Devon Bradet’s description north of Ponce Inlet along A1A. And by matching they meant he looked about the right height and weight and might have been Caucasian, it was hard to say the in the dark, might have had a maroon shirt on, maybe purple.
All it meant to her was she was chasing a transient hitchhiker through Mosquito Central.
Grabbing a flashlight, Ivy started humming a billboard top-ten song to stay awake. Halfway through the chorus of “A clone would never love you like me” she was at the mile marker where the tip had been called in. She shined her flashlight on the ground, looking for any indication someone had been here an hour before. Gravel and dust looked like gravel and dust to her. No candy-bar wrappers, abandoned shoes, or cooling corpses to indicate that the tipster had been anything other than drunk.
Ivy checked her watch, an old plastic one she’d bought with her first paycheck because it was green and waterproofish. Seventeen minutes until check-in.
The beam from her flashlight arced across the water and to the foot of the bridge. There was an old road there. With a sigh, she plodded forward. There was half a chance someone might be sleeping under the bridge. She stopped and redid the math. Okay, no one smart was going to sleep in the sand with the fire ants and mosquitoes this close to the inlet, where there might be gators. But no one said she was looking for someone smart, and it wasn’t a bad place to stash a body. The ants would swarm it, then the crabs would come. A corpse might only last a day or two in a place like this.
She jumped over the guardrail and landed softly a few feet lower than the highway on the curve of the dirt road. A bat swooped low over the river and swept past her, clicking in a chiding tone. Ivy laughed. “Look at me, I’m a regular cartoon princess complete with animal sidekick.” The bat flew away. “Or not.”
The smell of rotten fish assaulted her as she walked under the bridge. Bycatch left to wash up onshore and rot under the sun, nothing more. She toed the muddy bank but saw neither signs of a freshly dug grave or a corpse. Leaving her with another dead end. Eleven minutes to check-in.
She shined her light across the road. It curved west behind a copse of fiddlewood shrubs to a broken wooden sign where the faded words SPRUCE CREEK were still legible. Her memory ticked over to, pulling up information from her early years on the force. Back in, what—Sixty-four? Sixty-five? Something like that—there’d been rumors of the Spruce Creek Cannibal. Ol’ Crazy Ivan, a shadow who had gone mad, run off to the twisting fens to eat raw fish and unwary tourists. Ivy rubbed her nose and choked down a cough.
Crazy Ivan.
Crazy Ivy was more like it.
Nine minutes to check-in. She shined the flashlight back at her patrol car. It was five hundred yards away, a quick sprint up loose gravel. She might skin her knee, but she was confident she’d make it to the car before any homeless clone got her. She stretched a tension knot out of her neck and slowly walked away from the main highway, flashlight beam dancing madly in front of her.
There was an old wooden bait shack, roof missing and one wall shattered, an old airboat tilted and rusting on the silty shore, and a quiet chorus of tree frogs excited by the light. A snake slithered across the road and rattled the grass still yellow from winter’s drought. The place looked forgotten but not threatening. She walked around the hut once, shined the light through the broken wall at the forgotten spiderwebs, and turned away. There was nothing here but the memories of bygone days paddling through the waterways taking pictures of blue heron.
Three minutes to check-in. She hurried up the gravel road, heartbeat rising as she exerted herself, and the caffeine wore off. There was a muffled thud. Ivy turned, frowning at the darkness. Nothing. Maybe a frog jumping onto the old boat, or her mind playing tricks on her. She ran to the car as the dispatch line lit up.
“Patroller?”
“This is Officer Clemens,” Ivy said. “I’ve checked under the bridge.”
“Nothing there?” dispatch asked.
“Nothing but bycatch.” She hesitated. “There’s an old shack around the bend. A bait shop. I’m going to walk down the road a bit to see if there are signs that anyone was here.” Maybe she’d get lucky and find a lost wallet with the phantom’s name in it.
“Check-in in twenty,” dispatch said.
“Check-in in twenty,” Ivy agreed. “But it shouldn’t take that long.” She glared at the darkness as she leaned against the car. There was a warm blanket in an air-conditioned apartment just waiting for her at home. She reached through the open window of her car and grabbed her water bottle. A quick swig, and she headed back for one last look at the shack.
Nothing stood out for her. Moonlight splintered on the quiet water. Mosquitoes swarmed overhead. Gnats chased her. Frogs croaked. Bats skimmed the water. A fish leapt out. It was a nature biopic only missing a sound track and a soothing voice to narrate the scene.
She closed her eyes.
Thud.
A faint echo of metal and boot meeting each other. She walked toward the broken bait shop. Nothing. She circled toward the boat.
Thud. Soft, faded . . .
Thud.
“I don’t think it’s frogs,” she muttered.
“Help!” The muffled cry was almost drowned out by the chorus of frogs.
Ivy ran to the boat and stood on tiptoe to look at the deck. She shined her light on the peeling deck. “Hello?”
Another thud, from the stern of the boat.
Tucking her flashlight into her utility belt, Ivy let her eyes adjust to the dark, then climbed the side of the listing vessel. There were holes in the transom. Probably spiders lurking under the boards, too. She tested her weight on the floor and said a small prayer to anything that might be listening that she wouldn’t fall through rotted boards as she let go of the side of the boat.
The boat rocked precariously in the wet sand.
“Hello?” Ivy said quietly. “Is someone there?”
Another muffled thud reverberated through the hull.
She sidled sideways, sliding her booted feet across the rotting boat, never quite trusting her weight to any one spot.
At the stern of the boat, there was a jerry-rigged lockbox that had either held catch or gear at one point. Now the lid was closed and latched over something. Ivy lifted the latch, edged three fingers under the lid, and threw it up and jumped back all in one motion.
An unpleasant cocktail of smells of urine and sweat overpowered the stench of rotting fish. Ivy grabbed her flashlight, switched it back on, and shined the beam into the wide eyes of a bedraggled man wearing a torn T-shirt.
“Hi.”
He held up duct-taped hands.
Ivy took his arms and pulled him out of the hole, then stripped the duct tape off his mouth. “Are you Devon Bradet?”
“Yeah. This is not funny.”
“You’re telling me,” Ivy said, as she cut the duct tape with her pocketknife.
Bradet looked down at her hands. “Is that Hello Kitty?”
“Don’t knock it. I’m not officially allowed to carry lethal weapons and no blades over two inches.” Officially was the key word. Her extra-heavy flashlight was technically not a weapon, but it could break skulls as well as any truncheon. The Caye Law, making things almost-kinda-sorta equal if you squinted and thought the Constitution of the Commonwealth only applied to people born through “natural forms of conception and birth.” Which technically made people conceived by in vitro unnatural, clone-like barbarians who couldn’t be trusted with weapons, but no one seemed to mention that when the legislation went through.
“I’m going to die,” Bradet groaned.
Ivy rolled her eyes. “Calm down. I’m a trained officer of the law. I don’t need a weapon to pull people out of boats.”
In the shadows away from her flashlight, someone chuckled. All the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
“We’re going to die,” Bradet whispered. “They told me. They want Henry, but I can’t find Henry. Henry is dead.”
Ivy patted his arm. Her hand came away sticky with blood. “Just . . . just be calm. I’m going to radio this in, we’ll have you to the ER in no time.”
The boat rocked. “Hello, little girl,” said a voice from the shadows.
Ivy’s jaw tightened. “Hello? You’re the big bad wolf, I presume. Is that how this story goes?” She tightened her grip on her flashlight. Powder guns with beanbag rounds and powdered mustard gas were standard issue in the department. Her badge hadn’t come with one. Instead, she had a five-pound flashlight, a one-inch Hello Kitty pocketknife, and a pair of steel-toed boots. She tucked the knife into Bradet’s hand and pushed him flat on the boat deck. “My name is Officer Ivy Clemens,” she said as she stood up. “Want to walk into the light and introduce yourself?”
A muscular man with buzz-cut hair and a wicked-looking fillet knife stepped up to the boat. “Name’s Donovan, and I like killing cops.”
“Wow. Great intro. You use that pickup line on all the girls?” Ivy smiled as her hand slipped to her radio. She turned the volume down and hit the distress button. “Nice knife. Compensating for something, Donovan? You come out here to Spruce Creek to do a little late-night fishing? Using my buddy Bradet here as gator bait maybe?” Cold sweat beaded her forehead. Come on, Dispatch. Get the hint. I’m not making check-in. Send backup.
Donovan chuckled. “Why don’t you come down here? Pretty girl like you, I’ll make it quick. Slit your throat. Quick burn, and it’s all over.”
Ivy licked her lips, her heartbeat rising a tick. “Your people skills need work.”
“Considering how much I dislike people, not so much.” Donovan walked toward the boat, pushed it so she rocked.
Ivy took two steps and jumped, rolling across the ground and coming to her feet behind Donovan. She hesitated, not sure if she should run for the car or stay to protect Bradet.
Donovan turned. He kicked something in the grass. Her radio. He stepped on it. “You weren’t hoping for backup, were you?”
“They’re already on their way. Let me arrest you. I’ll make it quick and easy.”
His first kick knocked her flat on her back. He followed up with his knife hand.
Ivy kicked back, arching her back and slamming both booted feet into his chest. Donovan staggered backward. She lunged at his legs, knocking him to the ground. With one swift motion, she slammed her flashlight into his nose. Jumping away, she ran for the boat.
“Bradet? Bradet you there?”
He sat up.
“Hurry up. Get off the boat. My patrol car is waiting up there. We can run.”
“Can’t . . . can’t run.” He swayed as he spoke.
Ivy grabbed his arm and pulled him to the side of the derelict boat. “I’ll carry you. We need to leave. Now. Before he gets up.” Donovan wasn’t unconscious, just stunned. In another minute, he’d have adrenaline enough to work through the broken nose and come after her.
Bradet fell down in front of her. Ivy picked him up by the armpits dragging him into a standing position. “Up the hill. It’s not much. My car is right there on the highway.” He was heavy, a good thirty pounds more than she weighed, and barely walking.
He turned to look at Donovan scrambling to get up. “He’s going to kill us.”
“If he tries, I’ll hit him again.” She brandished her flashlight like a sword, but her legs were trembling. As if to echo that sentiment, the beam of light quivered, blinked, and faded, leaving them alone in the moonlight.
“We’re going to die,” Bradet repeated in a quiet whisper.
“You’re in shock,” Ivy said. She glanced over her shoulder. Donovan was watching them, the shadows of night making his face a harsh mask, but he wasn’t following.
They reached the crest of the small hill and found the road empty.
“Car?” Bradet asked weakly as he sagged against her.
Ivy looked up and down the road. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand. I left it here.”
Headlights flared up ahead. For the briefest moment, she hoped it was backup; and then she saw the license plate. It was her car. Someone had stolen her car and was approaching at a reckless speed.
At the last second, she pulled Bradet to the relative safety of the guardrail. Nothing but a handspan of cement between them and the inky inlet below. Ivy looked down at the dark water and wondered if Bradet could swim in his condition. If they jumped, where exactly could they swim for safety but back to the bridge and Donovan?
The car’s tires squealed on the asphalt as the driver turned sharply. It rushed toward them, then stopped with the screeching tires and the smell of burning rubber. The window rolled down, and a man leaned forward. “Hello.”
Ivy’s jaw clenched in anger. “That’s. My. Car.”
The driver looked casually at the lit dashboard and the torn-out dispatch radio. “It needs repairs.”
“Get out. I’ll make sure you get the mechanic’s bill.” She stepped in front of Bradet.
“That’s not how I work.”
“You are under arrest.”
The driver shook his head.
Bradet screamed, and there was a sudden draft of chilly night air behind her where he had been. She turned in time to see Donovan’s knife flashing toward her. For a precarious second, she balanced on the edge of the cement railing; and then she fell.
When she resurfaced, she could hear her car peeling away. She smashed her hand down on the water, but only gave herself that moment of frustration before finding Bradet—floating facedown—nearby. She flipped him over and, feeling for a pulse, found a faint one. Then, with one arm looped under his arm and across his chest, she dragged the young man to shore. He lost consciousness as they climbed the hill.
Sitting on the wet sand and shivering, she waited for backup to arrive as Bradet’s body cooled beside her.
Sam walked into the morgue with a scowl for Mac. “You skipped breakfast and didn’t wake me up. I take it that means you found Bradet?” That was the only reason she could imagine that Mac would sneak away like an embarrassed one-night stand. As reluctant as she was to admit it, she was growing accustomed to seeing him every morning, even if it was just the view of him snoring shirtless on the couch as she left for a morning jog.
“Clemens did.” Mac nodded to the clone sitting in the corner. His face was tight with worry.
Ivy’s face was paler than usual. Dark bruises marred her body. “I’m sorry, Agent Rose.”
“What happened?” Sam asked, breakfast woes forgotten.
Clemens stared at the wall and shrugged. “I’ve had better days.”
“I can see that.” The officer looked like she’d had better years. Sam turned to Mac for an explanation.
“She had to get a pint of blood at the hospital because clones from her generation don’t clot well,” Mac said. “It’s a minor miracle she survived until the ambulance arrived. Bradet wasn’t so lucky.”
“It’s just scrapes and bruises,” Ivy argued.
“Scrapes, bruises, and a run-in with a knife-wielding maniac out in the swamps.” Mac gave Ivy a look of near-paternal disapproval.
“Start at the beginning,” Sam said.
Mac cleared his throat. “Devon Bradet of Cowansville in what used to be the Quebec Territory of old Canada. He’s twenty-seven with a mixed racial profile, brown eyes, recently shaved head—”
“It was for charity,” Ivy said in a weak voice. “He shaved it Thursday on air for child-cancer awareness or something like that.”
Mac nodded. “ . . . and a master’s in communication arts from Elon University in North Carolina. Moved here a couple years ago and took the job of radio intern. He’s been working his way up since then.”
“How’d he die?” Sam asked, watching Ivy. The clone shrank away from her gaze, but Sam couldn’t tell if the other woman was scared or suffering from loss of confidence. Worse, she didn’t know how to make Ivy better.
“Blood loss and internal hemorrhaging. There’s a graze mark along Bradet’s neck. Officer Clemens said he was bleeding when she found him. It looks like he was shot while running away from someone.”
“Like a home intruder?” Sam guessed as she silently berated herself. She should have gone looking for Bradet first and had someone else process the scene.
Mac nodded.
“Clemens?” Sam turned to the injured officer.
Ivy shook her head. “We had a tip-off that a man Bradet’s height was seen walking along A1A near Ponce Inlet. I went up there and found him duct taped and locked in a boat. I thought we were alone, but there were two men. One said his name was Donovan—he had the knife that killed Bradet and sliced me. The other didn’t give his name, but he snuck up and stole my patrol car.” She closed her eyes. “I’m an idiot.”
At least she wasn’t scared. “Could have happened to any of us,” Sam said.
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think the knife killed Bradet,” Mac said. “He had the bullet wound already, and the knife wound was shallow. Neither were fatal, but there was severe internal bleeding. They worked him over thoroughly before locking him up.”
Clemens looked up. “Bradet said they wanted Henry, but that Henry was dead. It didn’t make any sense to me.”
“Henry was his roommate. He died in a lab accident on Monday. There was no evidence of foul play.” At least not in the details they’d released to the public. His killer was almost certainly not running loose in the current timeline. Probably. The thought gave her headaches. If Henry had survived, Sam felt certain she would have strangled him for this nonsense.
“And now we have Donovan,” Mac said.
Sam nodded as the gears started turning. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Donovan, wouldn’t you, Mac? Ask him why he wanted to talk to our boy Henry?”
Mac nodded; so did Ivy. It was good to see the team working together.
“There were security cameras on the complex entrance and at the gas station across the street,” Sam said. “We have video of everyone going in or out of the complex. So we’re going to take those videos and talk to every single person who went in or out of the complex on Thursday.”
Clemens hunched her shoulders. “Sounds fun.”
“Most police work isn’t fun,” Sam said. “It’s chasing down every clue like a terrier, following leads, following hunches, and worrying about the safety of strangers every hour of the day.”
Ivy’s lips creased with a resigned smile. “The academy made it sound so much simpler.”
“Well, you have to lie to cadets,” Mac said. “No one would try to get through basic training if they knew about the paperwork that was waiting for them.”
Sam nodded agreement. Paperwork was the bane of her existence as a senior agent. A shadow of a thought begged for attention, and she frowned until the memory of Nealie Ro’s face surfaced in her mind. “New topic, where are we with the pirate?”
“Oh!” Ivy held up a datastick. “I almost forgot, I found this in our files. Nealie had a history of calling the police nonemergency line. He was the only one who called for months. I pulled the records yesterday afternoon before I was sent out looking for Bradet. His last one says he’ll meet with someone, said six in the morning, but didn’t give a date or place.”
“Wrong number?” guessed Sam.
“Maybe,” Ivy said. “But I’d like to see his phone records.” There was a pause, and her face turned bright red. “I mean, if it were my investigation. Which it’s not. So I’ll shut up now.”
“He didn’t have a phone,” Mac said.
“Right,” Sam said. “Edwin told us the pirates weren’t on the grid at all. No bank accounts or credit cards, and that would mean no cell phones either. Where was Nealie calling from?”
“Are there pay phones?” Mac asked.
Sam blinked in confusion.
Mac raised his eyebrows.
“Sometimes I forget how old you are!” Sam said. “Pay phones died with the dinosaurs. Are you really that ancient?”
Laughing, Mac shook his head. “Pay phones are a real thing in some countries!”
“Not since the 1950s,” Sam said.
“They were a little bit more recent than that,” Mac argued. “I think.”
“No,” Ivy broke in, “the city doesn’t have ancient technology or landlines. The last ones were phased out in 2048 as a health hazard. Telephone posts fall in high winds and can cause damage. Cell towers and wifi relays can be spaced away from property and fenced in so no one is near them if they do accidentally fall.”
Sam snapped her fingers. “What about those tire tracks? Have we figured out what they belonged to yet? If one of his friends had a car, he might have borrowed a cell phone.”
“The tire tracks belong to an older-model Alexian Essence,” Mac said. “The bureau database couldn’t narrow it down much more than that.”
“Then we have two leads to chase down,” Sam said. “Find out whose phone Nealie had so we can get the phone records and see who called him back. Can you chase it down, Clemens, or will the department get mad that the bureau stole you?”
Clemens smirked as she got up to leave. “They’ll never notice me missing. I’ll give you a call when I find out anything. And I’ll see if anyone’s reported an Essence lost or stolen.”
“Check the impound, too,” Mac suggested.
Sam sighed as Ivy walked out the door. “That means we’re stuck with no minions to read through Henry’s work folders.”
Mac looked over at her, his eyes filled with an emotion that was half hunger, half something she couldn’t quite define. It was a look that made her want to cross the room and lean in close. To touch him and reassure herself she wasn’t alone.
“Sorry I left without telling you,” Mac said quietly. “I won’t do it again.” He waited a beat. “Shoog.”
“Shoog?”
“Like sugar?” Mac smiled unrepentantly.
“No.” Sam shook her head. “And no more possessive-boyfriend routine with Petrilli. We aren’t in that kind of relationship.” She wasn’t sure she could label what they had between them if pressed.
“What are we then?”
Sam shot him an annoyed glare. “I don’t know. We’re . . . something. But boyfriend sounds too immature. You’re my Mac. I like eating breakfast with you in the morning and dragging you out for runs. It’s easy to fall into the habit of having you around.”
“That could be a dangerous habit.” His words were playful, but his smile was pure masculine pride.
“Especially since Chicago wants you back,” Sam said with a sigh. “I had a friendly inquiry in my in-box this morning asking if I was done with you yet. I think your district director is getting ready to send down an extraction team.”
He chuckled. “Did you tell them you’re done with me?”
“I told them I was petitioning my district director to have you transferred full-time.”
Mac froze, and she couldn’t tell if the expression on his face was one of shock or horror.
“Don’t worry about being forced to give up your penthouse overlooking the park,” she said quickly. “There’s no way to fit you into the budget.”
He rolled his eyes. “I live in a third-story walk-up apartment. It’s not as fancy as you think.”
“Whatever. You’re not in danger of having to pack and move a second time.” The moment stretched between them, full of unspoken possibilities. What-ifs and maybes crowded the silence. Until duty, ever sovereign, demanded Sam’s attention once again. “I’m going to go talk with the apartment manager about their security footage.”
Mac looked down at his desk. “I’ve . . .”
She cut him off before he could drag them back to dangerous territory. “You can stay. I don’t need backup on this.”
“Be careful?” His eyes were filled with emotions she didn’t want to acknowledge: yearning, fear, desire, love . . . Powerful emotions reined in by an inner strength Mac rarely acknowledged.
She smiled. For him, she’d be careful. “Always.”
Ivy sat cross-legged at the end of her bed, flipping through the dead-wood papers filled with phone numbers. The nonemergency police line kept a record of the time of the call, the phone number, a name if given, and the complaint. Some of the calls were marked with a small asterisk that indicated emergency assistance had been sent, usually an ambulance.
There was no pattern. Not at first. She tried marking all the same numbers in the same color, but there were few repeat calls, and those that existed were usually within a few minutes of each other, probably because a caller had another question. In one peculiar instance, the same man had called three times trying to order pizza.
She wiped dewing sweat from her face and leaned over to switch on the AC unit fitted into her window. Muggy, barely cool air came with a harsh buzzing sound and the scent of garbage from the alley on the other side of the fence. Another few months of saving up, and she’d be able to buy a new one during an end-of-season clearance sale.
She looked at the file. Patterns were the natural order of things. Waves, clouds, genes . . . all of them had set patterns. Even phone numbers had patterns eventually. If only I could see this one . . . Then, like watching a cloud take the shape of a pirate ship, she saw it. There were repeat numbers. The same number repeated a dozen times, but scrambled so the time, date, and phone number made the same repeating pattern. Twenty repeated digits, sixteen when she crossed out the four digits designating the year. She ordered a fresh printout from her computer and highlighted them.
Even with the times doctored, she saw the pattern. The person had called every day ending in a prime digit between the hours of eight in the evening and two in the morning. She got a drink of water from the tap and went to work untangling the phone number. Theoretically, there were scramblers on the market like this. High-end tech toys used by paranoid billionaires. It made sense that a pirate might have something like that . . . almost. Except Agent Edwin said the pirates weren’t tech users. They were off-the-grid ecoterrorists.
She stabbed her pen into the paper and willed the numbers to give up their secrets.
Two long hours later, she had ten digits in her hand that were, most likely, Nealie Rho’s private phone number. Logging into the limited-access police database she could use from home, Ivy ran the numbers.
Jamie Rex Nelson-Gardner.
Ivy rubbed her eyes. Gardner?
As in Sheriff Gardner?
She’d only met the man in passing, but he wasn’t the fatherly type. He didn’t have a spouse at any public events. Not that she was an expert on families. She’d been raised with thirteen other clones in a Shadow House, where the closest she had come to parents were men and women in lab coats monitoring their diets and making sure they had plenty of exercise and very little communication with the outside world. Speaking to non-shadows, aside from answering questions for the doctor, was discouraged although not actually punished. The keepers couldn’t risk scarring the precious, expensive skin of a shadow. But minds? Well, everyone knew a clone’s mind wound up in the trash. Eyes and tongues and teeth might be harvested for the Real Person, but the rest was waste. A shadow’s brain was its least valuable organ.
She smiled. Life after the Shadow House was proving her mind was her most valuable asset. Eat that, White Coats. I am more than a body for you to sell.
Ivy sighed and flopped back on her bright pink sheets. There weren’t difficult answers, only complicated questions. Living a double life, doing one thing and saying another, that led to complicated questions.
If you said murder was wrong but allowed yourself to get enraged and think about killing every day, then your life was complicated. If you knew killing was wrong and treated everyone with respect and admiration no matter what they did, life was simple.
As a police officer, it surprised her how often people chose the complicated life. How they were willing to break the law even though they knew the odds were stacked against them. She shook her head. It was a nonsensical gamble.
No one ever won betting against the house.
She sat back up and pulled her clunky laptop off her desk. It wasn’t a nice sleek datpad like Agent Rose had, but it was what she could afford on her salary. She typed in Jamie’s name and pulled up a picture of a wide-eyed boy staring mournfully at the camera. The headline read, LOCAL BOY REMANDED TO FOSTER CARE AFTER CAR WRECK KILLS MOTHER.
She clicked the link and read on. “Local boy Jamie Gardner has been placed in foster care following the accident that killed his mother, Dolores Nelson (46). The boy’s father is also a local resident but waived parental rights. Miss Nelson and Mr. Gardner divorced three years ago, after their son’s autism diagnosis.” The article went on for several more paragraphs about how the rise in neurally atypical children in foster care was draining national resources and listed several clinics that would test for genetic abnormalities.
Right—this nonsense.
It was before she was aware of the outside world, but for a few years the public had believed that there was a way to determine if a fetus would be neurally atypical—unable to act like a “normal” person—with the goal of either preparing the family for the “horrors” of a high-needs child or to persuade the parents to terminate the pregnancy. It was a shot of snake oil, but for a few years the abortion rate had skyrocketed as media outlets proclaimed it was the end of crime. No more sociopaths, no more narcissistic personalities conning people out of money, no more unusual children who didn’t quite fit into the standard models for schools. No more square pegs in round holes.
She tasted bile on her tongue and realized her blood pressure was rising.
Poor Jamie had been born into that mess. His mother was old enough that her pregnancy would have been considered high-risk even with gene therapy. Born less than ten years after the Yellow Plague had erased half of humanity, at the height of clone technology and the height of antihospital sentiment.
She’d bet a milkshake that Miss Nelson hadn’t even gone to the doctor for basic birth control. That was the old States back then, and very few birth-control measures were sold over the counter. Not when the whole world was rushing to repopulate. The poor woman had probably thought it was her patriotic duty to have a child, like some chilling remake of 1984.
According to the date on the article, Jamie had gone into foster care thirteen years ago. It wasn’t hard to imagine his never getting adopted. Being bounced between foster homes and crèches that weren’t much better than Shadow Houses without the constant threat of death. And then? Where would a boy with a dead mother and a hateful father wind up?
With Peter Pan in Neverland. In the swamps of Florida with the other lost boys.
Her lips twitched into a smile. There was a whole group of barely educated man-children playing at being pirates. It was so laughably obvious she wondered why no one had thought of it before. Checking her hunch would mean a late-night run to the precinct, but if she was right, she’d just found a way to track down the pirates and find Jamie’s killer.