“We need to find Yashmin Sardana before we do anything else,” Alice insists, though she knows Nikki won’t agree. She can tell Nikki is concerned about her friend and about this semi-catatonic woman who has been abducted, but she also knows every passing second takes that shuttle closer to Heinlein.
“Did you forget the part where I told you the scientist who dumped Amber on Zola worked for Neurosophy?” Nikki replies. “And his return to Earth was faked to cover the fact that he was almost certainly murdered? This is connected.”
“I appreciate that, but Yash has to be our priority. When was that message left?”
“Around eighteen hours ago,” Nikki admits.
“So it’s a little late to drop everything and run to Zola’s aid. Amber’s gone and as you say, Slovitz is most probably dead. Yash is our last lead. We’ve got to get to her before my doppelganger does.”
Nikki nods solemnly, conceding the point.
“Okay, but if we find her, you’d best let me do the talking. I figure she’s bound to be somewhat skittish around someone of your appearance.”
“You know where she might hang out?”
“Ordinarily, sure, but she won’t be in any of her usual haunts. After what happened at Habitek, she’s got to know there’s a target on her back.”
“Do you know where she lives?”
“No, but her apartment is the last place she’ll be.”
“Nonetheless, it’s still the only logical place to start, unless you’ve got a better suggestion.”
Alice runs a search for her name, as she has privileged access to residential listings. Yash’s apartment isn’t the only result that appears, however.
“Shoot.”
“What?”
“Her name just showed up on a Seguridad alert. She was found hanged in her apartment three hours ago. Suspected suicide.”
Nikki frowns, shaking her head.
“No way she committed suicide, and no way she went back to her apartment, at least not voluntarily. Your evil twin is having to disguise the deaths now that I’m not available to take the rap.”
Alice grips a table, knuckles whitening with frustration.
“End of the line,” she says.
“There’s still Bollo and Krug,” Nikki suggests, but her tone betrays that she holds out the same hope as Alice for finding either of them alive.
“No. Let’s go and speak to your friend. Where does she live?”
“Garneau.”
That’s where the Armstrong Hotel is, the last place Alice slept, whenever that was.
“I thought you said she was a nurse, and that she lost her contract? She stays in a very upmarket neighbourhood.”
“Oh, you have no idea.”
Alice has seen some astonishing sights since her arrival on CdC, but this is the one that most jolts her perception. Seeing the Earth from space, the moon at such close range, the rooftops on the far side of a wheel when looking up through the canopy: these could transfix anyone, gazing upon views that seem to rebuff a lifetime of expectations. The Catacombs, however, have her slack-jawed and speechless, not with awe but revulsion.
Her disgust is not at the sight itself, but the lie it represents. This place is the mirror’s backing, the squalid secret beneath CdC’s reflection of a perfect society.
She feels tears welling up. She wants to conceal this from Nikki, though she is not sure why. Shame, perhaps. There is no hiding it, though. Nikki has been looking for her reaction.
“They don’t show this shit in the brochures,” she says.
“You should have taken me here first,” Alice replies. “It would have saved a lot of time.”
“Took me this long to be convinced it would make a difference. I conned Hoffman into coming here once. Told him it was a tour of a new fungus-protein farm being developed beneath Garneau. Strangely, I don’t think he ever made reference to the Catacombs in any of his reports to the FNG.”
There is a choking smell of urine and other matter as they make their way down a narrow channel. Alice glances to her right and sees that they are passing a makeshift latrine block, a communal facility opposite a bank of improvised shower stalls. Up ahead, a woman crawls out of what Nikki referred to as a nook, bidding goodbye to whoever she was visiting.
“But try not to move it,” she is saying. “And have someone come get me when the dressing needs changed.”
She notices their approach and reacts with surprise and confusion upon turning her face fully towards them, revealing bruising down once side. It confirms Zola’s identity even before her name flashes in Alice’s lens.
“Nikki?” she asks, not daring to believe it. “I heard you were in custody awaiting transportation back to Earth.”
“Rumours of my deportation have been greatly exaggerated. And the rumours of my killing spree have been exaggerated too. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. This is Alice Blake, my boss. What happened to Amber?”
Zola touches her face tenderly in automatic response to the question.
“These men came for her. Four of them. Like police but not Seguridad. Soldiers.”
“Did they know you had her?” Nikki asks.
“No. They were searching for her and I think they ended up here. They were showing her picture around, asking if people had seen her. They were smashing their way into places, trashing people’s pods. Karyl here tried to object. They broke his arm. Compound fracture.”
“Ouch.”
“I heard the disturbance and I might have found a way to smuggle her out before they got to my nook, but Amber must have recognised their voices. She panicked and was trying to flee, but this place is a labyrinth. She pretty much ran straight into them, and she went crazy. For someone who had seemed so confused, she was suddenly very clear about the threat she was facing. She started screaming again, saying ‘Don’t let them take me, they’re going to kill me. They took my baby and they’re going to kill me.’”
“They zapped her unconscious and when I tried to intervene, one of them hit me. He could have zapped me unconscious too, but he punched me to the floor instead and hit me a few more times. A crowd had gathered, and this was for their benefit, I think.”
“Did they say anything to her, or to you?”
“Apart from asking people if they had seen Amber, they said nothing. The one who hit me barely looked me in the eye. He didn’t even seem angry. Merely calculating. Amber was so scared. I had seen her have her hysterics and her nightmares, but this was something else: this was a rational, specific fear.”
“You said before that you didn’t know what she meant when she talked about someone taking her baby,” Nikki reminds her. “Whether it was maybe something that happened on Earth before she came here. Is it possible she meant these people in particular?”
Zola’s face takes on a pallor.
“Amber never wanted to shower or change her clothes. That is, I persuaded her eventually, but I had to stand guard at the stall. She was reluctant to take anything off. I don’t know why. But it’s the reason I never saw it before.”
“Saw what?”
“After they zapped her and hit me, I was lying on the floor next to her. She had like three layers on but they rode up when they lifted her to carry her away. I saw her abdomen. She had a fresh caesarean scar. I saw enough of those on Earth to know this was only a few weeks old. She was confused and often incoherent but she wasn’t lying. She had a baby and she was damn sure these people took it.”
“Who were they?” Alice asks. “Had you ever seen them before?”
“No.”
“Where did you send the message from?” Nikki enquires.
“There’s a woman here who has a monitor terminal.”
“Take us to it.”
They negotiate the warren, Alice amazed that Zola can tell one lane from another, far less one pod. Zola crawls into one of the cluttered cubicles and emerges with the terminal. Alice sends the device some images taken from Dock Nine, showing Nikki’s would-be executioners lying unconscious on the floor.
Zola clasps a hand over her mouth, shaken by the pictures.
“That’s them, yes. Along with two others. Who are they?”
“We don’t know.”
“You have to find out. You have to get her back. She was so scared.”
Nikki and Alice share a look, acknowledging two things: that Amber may already be dead, and that even if she’s not, they are up against a clock they cannot see.
“We’ll do what we can,” Nikki says. Her tone is sincere but not optimistic. “Meantime, you gonna be okay?”
“I’m fine. Still tender, but it could have been a lot worse.”
“Oh yeah, your friend Karyl. Did you have to set his arm yourself?”
Alice wonders why this would be the case, given the standard of medical care available at the ERU. Then she realises that the ghosts of the Catacombs can’t show up to the enfermería because their presence would register on all kinds of systems. Proper medical attention would come at the risk of being sent back to Earth, which is presumably a worse prospect even than living here.
“I had some help. Lupe came down and treated him. Gave me some painkillers too. I still have some friends in the caring professions.”
Lupe: Dr. Guadaloupe Hermosillos. Alice recalls the name, as well as the condemnation she rained down upon the surgeon for her complicity in what went on at Klaws. She was a little hasty there, it seems. Lupe went where she was needed, asked no questions, told no tales.
Suddenly Alice makes the connection.
“Dr. Hermosillos told us she treated a man with a mangled foot who claimed he had no recollection of how it happened. She believed him because he ‘wasn’t the usual type for a mystery injury.’ She said he was a pilot.”
Nikki sees it too.
“According to Trick, Yash’s pet assholes said what they were doing was ‘more fun than with the pilot.’ Trick’s modification let them target people at random. Whatever they did to the pilot preceded that. He wasn’t targeted at random, he was targeted specifically. We need to find this guy.”
“Way ahead of you,” Alice announces.