Is this the first time you’ve been arrested? Lydia asks Madison as they wait on a bench in the police station.
Yes, replies Madison icily. Lydia briefly thought (hoped?) she might kick off in the lobby of NYNU, but she submitted to police custody with simmering resentment instead.
Me too, actually. But I’m sure they’ll let us go. Those security guys just wanted us out of there.
This will not stand. The ambassador has been informed. At the absolute minimum I want an apology and the arrest to be stricken from the record.
Apology from who?
The police of course, who else?
I thought you might want an apology from the university.
Madison thinks for a moment. Yes, that too. And I’ll be pressing charges against those security guards, and demanding changes— Then she looks up, because someone else is talking to her. Lydia turns to see Dion standing a few meters away, wearing a weird, timid expression—she must know how angry Madison will be.
They want to talk to me, Madison tells Lydia.
“Me too?” Lydia asks.
“Oh,” says Dion. “No, I don’t think so. Just her.”
Madison stands slowly, taking her time, letting Dion know this is happening on her terms, then follows her down the corridor. Lydia’s left waiting, tapping her foot.
“Back so soon?”
Lydia turns and sees the speaker is Rollo, approaching her with a quizzical grimace.
“Yeah, sorry,” says Lydia, “couldn’t resist going back for one last big score.”
Rollo stops as he reaches the bench she’s sitting on. He peers down at her. “I heard they picked up a Logi and her translator after an altercation at NYNU, I didn’t expect it to be you.”
“Yeah and I suppose arresting me’s a better use of police time than, you know, trying to solve my boss’s murder or finding that guy who stole his head?”
Rollo holds up his hands as if defending himself from attack. “Hey, I get that you’re angry but we’re doing our best—”
“They stole his fucking head out of this building and you didn’t see it; you couldn’t find Hari and now you can’t find this guy! I thought this was a total surveillance culture? Like proper Orwellian shit?”
“It’s not as simple as that. We can only work with the information we have.”
“You must have something showing him going in and out—”
“I haven’t been on that,” snaps Rollo, “because I’ve been busy looking into Jene Connor’s background.”
Lydia straightens up on her seat. “Oh?”
“Spoke to her parents. Had to tread lightly, they weren’t in the frame of mind to hear their daughter might’ve been a murderer.”
“Obviously, but what did they say?”
“I asked about your boss, and the Logi, and she never showed any interest in the subject at all. Had a history of mental health problems, but they thought she had it under control. Didn’t really have any friends, and—”
“Yeah but just because she never spoke to her parents about it, doesn’t mean—”
“And she never went to NYNU.”
Lydia looks at the floor and mutters, “Oh fuckery.”
“She moved to the city about eighteen months ago; we’ve got patterns of behavior that don’t match what you told us—she had a job as a PA at MJN, her last day at work was Friday, she killed herself Sunday morning. There’s nothing to suggest she had the skills to get past your security or wipe the records. It just doesn’t check out. Any of it.”
Lydia sighs. “That’s what I was afraid of. Look—a few days ago a professor at NYNU told me Jene was one of her students. I looked up Jene’s profile and there she was, ex-NYNU, and I tracked down some of her friends and talked to them and one of them had pictures of herself with Jene. But now her friends have vanished and the professor won’t see me and none of it was true and why is someone doing this to me?”
Rollo weighs up whether this is something he ought to take seriously. “Doing what to you?”
“Leading me up the garden path. Her friends—who weren’t even her real friends, fuck knows who they were—lied to me, and you should be looking for them, I’ve got images—”
“Why should we be looking for them?”
“Because they lied to me.”
“That isn’t illegal.”
“I think they were trying to stop me finding the real killer.”
“That’s only illegal if they do it to us—” A note pings in his glasses and he apologizes, saying there’s somewhere he needs to be, and Lydia is left alone to turn it over in her mind until Madison returns.
Well, they’ve apologized, she says. Apparently they ought to have given us the opportunity to leave the scene peacefully.
This has got to be about more than just setting Jene up as a plausible suspect for the murder, doesn’t it? says Lydia.
What?
It’s so much bigger than it needs to be. With the fake game and her fake friends and all the fake information about her online. Why not just paint her as a basic racist? Stick a load of stuff online of her saying she was going to kill an alien and backdate it? That would’ve been easier, no need for her to have uncovered this nefarious plot.… Lydia feels things clicking into place. Because that was the point.
What was the point?
This was all about leading me to the game, not Jene. They wanted me to find the game and think it was real.
Who’s “they”?
I don’t know yet, whoever set all this up—but they wanted me to go public with it, and I was just about to when you stopped me. And that’s why they made me think I was talking to Fitz’s ghost—it wasn’t just to feed me clues and get me to investigate, they wanted me to confront him about it so I’d think he’d admitted everything and it was definitely true.
But people tell lies about us every day. Why go to so much effort to convince you of this one? They could’ve fed this story to someone who’d believe it in a moment and wouldn’t question any of it.
Madison’s right about this. The infowar and paranoia feeds spread this stuff around like diarrhea in a Jacuzzi.
Then it hits her.
But all those lies, she tells Madison, get marked up as lies. Their truthiness rating is complete junk, like sub-forty. Only people who already want to believe it ever see it. But what if they could make someone with no connections to anti-Logi groups, who in fact would be one of the least likely people to take against you, came out with a story she absolutely believed about you guys rewiring our brains?
Madison takes a moment to consider this.
If I’d gone public with that, Lydia continues, stuck it on my stream, the truthiness rating would’ve been way higher. I’ve got a really credible background and a clean history and I’d have believed what I was saying, because I followed the breadcrumbs and felt like I’d worked it out for myself. Would’ve broken big. Got around everyone’s filters. People who usually never see stuff like that would’ve seen it.
Madison stares at Lydia for a moment. At the very least Madison must know that, whether she is right or wrong or deluded or whatever, she is sincere.
But you couldn’t prove it, says Madison. You said yourself, the story didn’t stand up to scrutiny.
But in the moment I said it, I’d believe it. By the time we found the holes in the story, even if I changed my mind about it later and retracted it all, it’d have already gone round the bloody world. A billion people would see the post, a thousand would see the correction. This is all about bypassing truth filters.
Lydia feels elated at having put this together, but the ramifications are crashing into her head. She wants it to be true because she needs to find answers, but on the other hand she doesn’t want it to be true because maybe this is much bigger than she can deal with.
OK, says Madison. What would happen next? In your opinion.
I suppose people would demand action be taken.
Against who?
Anyone who was involved.
But no one was involved. There wouldn’t be any evidence, so no action would be taken.
Which would only have made people angrier, Lydia goes on. They’d think there’d been a cover-up or a whitewash or whatever. Fitz wouldn’t be alive to defend himself. Everyone becomes more receptive to negative stories about you. What if this was just the start?
A gunshot sounds across the room, shattering a window and ruining Lydia’s concentration.
What in the world—says Madison, turning in the direction of the shot. It came from an interview room—the glass that shattered was the window in its door. A twitchy, middle-aged man in filthy clothes emerges from the room and brandishes the gun at everyone in sight. Some of them look at one another, considering how to address the situation; some of them duck down behind desks. Lydia, who has nothing to duck behind, envies them. Briefly she considers ducking behind Madison, who is a good deal larger than she is, but it becomes moot when the gunman marches over to her, grabs her by the arm and pulls her towards himself, pressing the gun into her neck.
“OK, listen up!” the gunman shouts. He smells rank. As his fingers dig into Lydia’s flesh she can feel them jittering, the kind of jitter she gets when she relies too hard on &. There’s a strong possibility this guy can’t be reasoned with. He’s loudly demanding the cops release his brother.
“Your brother’s … dead,” one of the cops tells him hesitantly, justifiably anxious he might literally shoot the messenger.
“Don’t buy it,” says the gunman, and underlines the point by pressing the gun harder into Lydia’s neck. The jitter is traveling through the gun. He may well shoot her whether he chooses to or not.
Help me, Lydia says to Madison. She can’t turn her head to see Madison but can sense she’s still nearby, on her left.
How? Madison replies.
I was hoping you might have some ideas.
The gunman is still loudly refusing to believe his brother is dead and is demanding someone fetch him, whether it’s from the cells or the morgue.
If I pretend to faint, says Lydia, can you take him out?
Is this wise?
I don’t bloody know but I don’t have time to workshop something better—look, he’s not going to get his brother back and I don’t think he’s going to let me go, so can you do it?
Yes.
OK, so I’m going to faint on the count of three, right?
Right.
One … two … three—
Lydia tries to collapse in the least alarming way she can—no loud noises, just a sigh and then she goes slack, leaning into the gunman rather than away from him. The gunman’s still gripping her arm tightly and she feels like he’s going to rip it off, but as she slumps to the floor and resists putting out a hand to steady herself, she focuses on the fact the gun hasn’t gone off yet which is something at least—
The gunman bends down to tell Lydia to get up, but gets only halfway through this instruction before he cries out in pain. Lydia’s eyes are half-closed and she can’t see what’s happening but hears a dull clunk as the gun hits the floor next to her, then a loud smack and another agonized exclamation from the gunman before he too hits the floor.
Lydia rolls over and opens her eyes to see the dazed gunman being seized by cops. Madison helps Lydia to her feet and everyone in the station applauds Madison for her actions.
What are they doing? Madison asks.
Lydia remembers Fitz telling her he never quite got used to hearing applause, despite all the live events he attended where it happened as a matter of course. He simply couldn’t comprehend why this banging together of limbs signified approval. Right now Lydia feels much the same, because although she can read this scene of relief and adulation, she does not trust a single person in this building—except, she’s startled to realize, Madison.
They’re saying thank you, she replies.
Acknowledge it for me, would you?
“She says it’s no trouble,” Lydia tells the room, who aren’t listening to her anyway, then she says to Madison: We need to leave.
Yes—but first there’s something we need to do. Madison heads in the opposite direction to the door.
We’re not safe here, says Lydia, even as she follows Madison deeper into the police station.
I’m conscious of that but there’s still something we need to do.
One of the cops dealing with the gunman sees them walking away and says, “Excuse me, miss—where are you—”
“Don’t fucking talk to me,” spits Lydia, unsure where this came from, aware it’s unwise to take this tone with an officer of the law. But she feels it deeply; it’s rooted in her fury at being dragged down here and put in this situation and her suspicions about what’s behind it, and above all it works. The cop hesitates, is distracted by the gunman’s shouts as he’s dragged away, and Lydia hurries to catch up with Madison.