Mel opened her eyes to a blue blur. Focusing, she saw she was looking at the weave of the fabric of the shirt she was wearing and realized she was sitting with her head flopped forward. It was an awkward position, resting her weight against her arms behind her which pressed into the bruise made by the shockdart in her back. She went to move them, but something was holding her wrists together. She tugged harder and the restraints cut into her skin.
Lifting her head, the wooziness of induced unconsciousness blurred her vision again. She took a moment to settle herself, with aches running up and down the muscles of her neck, until she could see a figure in front of her.
It steadily coalesced into Inspector Deverau.
With a start, she tried to stand, but with her hands cuffed behind her and still groggy, she barely lifted herself a centimeter before she fell back onto the chair.
“Good morning, Mel.”
Deverau’s voice had a sarcasm about it which suggested it was not, in fact, morning. What little she knew about the effects of shockdarts suggested it was still afternoon. Between five and twenty minutes since she’d been shot.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Like someone fired a shockdart into my back,” she said.
Her mouth was dry. She must have breathed through it while she was unconscious.
“You’ll have to forgive Sergeant Jones,” said Deverau. “He tends to be a shoot first, ask questions later kind of person.”
She wasn’t in an interrogation room. She wasn’t even in MSS offices, as far she could tell. The windowless walls, apart from a small gap at the door behind Deverau, were draped in heavy, black curtains. They deadened the sound and made the room feel dark, despite the bright lights from above.
She craned her aching neck to see behind her and caught a glimpse of a podium similar to the one Kaito used on her news briefings.
“Am I still in Hunter House?”
“We had a little crowd trouble,” admitted Deverau. “I’m waiting for the all clear to leave the building.”
“Where’s Kaito?”
“Kaito Tanaka isn’t here. She never was here. She moved all her operations to Noctis City more than a week ago. They have better security arrangements there and it’s where the Terraforming Committee is based, so it made sense. The scheduled news conference went ahead without interruption.”
Mel’s defeat was complete. She had risked her freedom on getting into, not only the wrong building, but the wrong city.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“I thought you and I could have a little talk.”
There was something sinister in the way he said it. She knew that inside MSS buildings, interviews were recorded and conducted under strict rules. In a room alone with him, things might happen which no one would know about. She shuddered at the fear of it. “You’re not going to beat a confession out of me?”
“Who do you think I am?” said Deverau, appearing to be genuinely offended.
“I don’t know anymore.” So many of her expectations had been undermined over the past weeks that nothing would surprise her.
“You have the right to say nothing, if that is what you prefer. All the same, I’m curious to know: why did you send me that footage of Ivan Volkov stealing from your lab?”
“I wanted to show you I’m not guilty.”
“Did you know he came into a sizable amount of money at around the same time?”
“No.” She studied Deverau’s face to try to understand why he was giving her that information. “Did Teractor pay him?”
“Good guess, but no,” said Deverau. “I don’t think a corporation would have been so brazen as to hire the leader of a street gang.”
“Why are you telling me this?” said Mel, still suspicious.
“I thought I could tell you a little bit about what I know in return for you telling me a little bit about what you know.”
Mel said nothing. She had no reason to trust him.
“Ivan tried to hide where the money came from, but that didn’t stop him splashing his new-found wealth around,” Deverau continued. “His downfall was buying a very expensive holographic simulation unit. There are few of them in private hands on Mars, so it was easy to find out where he bought it. We traced the payment to a secret account which included two large deposits made around six and seven months ago. The person who paid him tried to cover up the transaction, but they are an amateur, whereas the MSS has a team of specialists who uncover this sort of thing every day.”
He paused. Whether it was for dramatic effect or whether he wanted her to fill in the blanks, she wasn’t sure. But she had to know. “Who paid him?”
“Doctor Kaito Tanaka.”
With each syllable of Kaito’s name, Mel’s heart sank a little further. She leaned against the back of the chair as best she could with her arms secured behind her and stared up at the ceiling. So it was true. Kaito had been the one who betrayed her.
“You don’t seem that surprised,” he said, almost sounding disappointed.
She sighed. She no longer had a reason to hold back. “Kaito used to date Ivan’s father. A long time ago. She must have thought no one would connect them.”
Deverau smiled, indicating this information was new to him. He lifted his WristTab. “Sergeant Jones?”
Mel deflated. So that was it, despite evidence pointing towards Kaito, she was still going to be carted off to an MSS cell.
“Here, Dev,” came the answer from the WristTab.
“Find out where Doctor Kaito Tanaka is at the moment, will you?”
“She’ll be in Noctis City,” said Jones. “That’s where the news conference came from.”
“Just check,” said Deverau.
“No problem.”
Deverau lowered his WristTab and looked back at Mel.
She tried to see in his expression, whose side he was on, but he was giving nothing away. “You haven’t questioned Kaito about this?”
“She’s an important person now,” said Deverau. “Her office keeps giving me the runaround, I’m told I don’t have enough evidence to arrest her and even my own security has been told to prevent me getting access to her at the news briefings. This last piece of information about Ivan could be what I need.”
Jones came back on Deverau’s WristTab. “Doctor Tanaka’s left Noctis City over some report that a gang of people has broken into one of the farms.”
Mel shifted on her chair and winced at the renewed pressure on the bruise on her back. Pedro and Alex must have triggered the report, which meant they were about to be caught.
“I assumed they were stealing food,” Jones continued. “But it’s one of the farms that was being sterilized ahead of planting more crops. It’s completely empty.”
“Why would someone break into an empty farm?”
“The sergeant at Noctis assumed they didn’t know it was empty, but he said Doctor Tanaka rushed off when she heard.”
A shiver of realization passed through her. Kaito was probably the reason the Science Board refused permission for the scientists at Squyres to plant the potato crop.
“Is there a problem?” said Jones.
Deverau’s gaze alighted onto Mel. She stared back at him, trying to work out if telling him could help her friends or put them more in danger.
“Not yet. Meet me back here in five minutes.” Deverau terminated the call.
Mel glanced at the door – the only way out of the room – wondering if she dared try to push past Deverau to reach it, even with her hands secured behind her.
Deverau walked up close and bent over so their noses were almost touching. His intimidating breath brushed at her face. “You know what’s going on, don’t you?”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
He straightened up again, reached into his pocket and pulled out an electronic fob like the one she had used to release her handcuffs on the train. He tapped a series of keys and, with a click, the pressure on her wrists eased and the handcuffs clattered to the floor.
Mel brought her arms round to her front and a wave of relief spread across her shoulders.
“Well?” said Deverau.
Even if she said nothing, Pedro and Alex were already in trouble. She took a breath and decided to take the risk. “They’re planting a crop which we think will help end the food crisis. My guess is, Kaito’s gone to stop them.”
The door opened. Mel jolted at the interruption. It was Sergeant Jones.
“Was that really five minutes?” said Deverau.
“I thought you meant a generic five minutes, not an actual five minutes,” said Jones.
Deverau sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I need you to get Mel back to the station, then follow me out to the farm.”
“You can’t do that!” said Mel, fearing she was about to be locked away and unable to help anyone. “I need to stop her.”
“The MSS will prevent her from breaking the law.”
“But she’s making the law – that’s the point!” said Mel. “What are you going to do if she orders you to back away?”
Deverau tapped his fingers against the back of the electronic fob as he considered.
“Dev, you’re not seriously thinking of bringing the prisoner with us?” said Jones.
“Please,” said Mel. “I’ve known Kaito since she first came to Mars. If anyone can get the truth out of her, I can.”
“Stand up,” he ordered.
Mel, uncertain about what he was doing and unsteady on her legs, pulled herself to standing.
He regarded her doubtfully. “That uniform’s going to be a problem.”
She looked down at herself. She had forgotten she was still wearing the MSS uniform she had stolen from the unfortunate woman under the stairs.
“On second thoughts, it’ll be fine,” he said. “Do you have a sister?”
“No,” she stuttered. It was an odd question. “A brother.”
“From now on, you also have a sister and she is you. If anyone asks, you are Mel Erdan’s sister and it’s embarrassing that you keep being mistaken for her.”
He was actually trusting her. After all the time she had spent running from him, she didn’t know whether to be excited or terrified.
“Sergeant Jones,” said Deverau, standing aside so she faced his sergeant. “Meet Officer Walker.”
Jones regarded Mel suspiciously. Mel returned the look, remembering the paralyzing pain of the shockdart he had fired into her back.
“Dev, are you sure this is a good idea?” said Jones.
“No,” said Deverau. He turned back to Mel. “Understand, if you make me regret this, I will ensure you serve a significant amount of jail time. Even if you are innocent of causing the food crisis, there are plenty of things I can charge you with.”
Mel nodded. She had nothing to lose. “Understood.”