Phenja seemed to have shrunk overnight. Something about him twigged as familiar while Erin watched the oddities of his movements. From the way he flicked his hand out dismissively to when he thought no one was looking the imperious way he tugged at the restraints. She couldn’t put a finger on it, just knew that it twigged a memory of someone she’d met.
“David, something about Phenja is annoying me.”
He cast a sideways glance at her, and she grunted.
“Not like that. I just mean he’s got these mannerisms. I don’t know why, but I’m sure I know him from somewhere. It’s like I know him, but the person he is isn’t the person I’m thinking of.”
Defeat crashed down on her at the inability to call up her memory. They moved back into the room, settling at the table, and she took the lead as they’d agreed. “So, Phenja, we know that isn’t your name. It’s only a matter of time until we work out who you are, so you could make our job easier.”
He sneered, “But that’s not what I plan to do.”
“Fine. Let’s take a look, shall we? You underwent a brain transplant. Scary stuff that. What if it hadn’t worked? Everything you know would have been lost. That didn’t bother you?”
He shrugged, and she moved on, undeterred by his apparent disinterest.
“You have a history, no doubt. One you’re probably proud of. Likely in banking or some kind of high-ranking position, given the way Gantry deferred to you. I wonder what that was.”
He remained silent, and she decided to try a different tack.
“Okay, so they felt you were important enough to transplant your brain. Your body must have been breaking down or broken. Which was it? You must have been dying—knowing that the end was looming.” She leaned over the desk, seizing his attention with her eyes. “Death is such a final act. Were you reliant on a machine to survive? Had your body failed you that much? What was it like, knowing that your final breath was drawing near?”
Erin waited, watching for the blinking of his eyes, seeking any chink in the armor he drew around himself.
“Were there medical specialists and machines beeping incessantly?” She needled, seeking an opening, something to break his total self-absorption. “I’ll bet it was unpleasant, right? They were taking care of your bodily functions. Just think, someone else caring for your toileting, must have sucked. Did you have to wear a diaper?”
The sneering grew sharper, and this time he flinched, and while she wouldn’t inwardly rejoice, she knew she’d hit the nail on the head.
He’d likely been a proud man, but with a failure of his own abilities to care for himself, it would have galled him to consider having others take on his most intimate care, and perhaps he avoided thinking about it? That would make sense. Ignore it, refuse the truth, and it became nothing more than a figment of his imagination, she thought.
“Of course, then there would have been medications, shots, and sprays that you would have had to take. You probably still need anti-rejection medications monthly, right? I guess at least you’re still alive, even if the body they gave you isn’t agile. I’ve seen the way you struggle to move. It’s rather graceless.”
Phenja bared his teeth. “You know nothing.”
“Perhaps I don’t have to know everything. Yet. Even now, our team is searching through the records we seized.” When he jerked, she smiled. “Yes, we did collect everything we could when you were taken. We’ve already worked out they were using rooms in the bank as the operating theatre. I don’t know exactly what they found there, having been somewhat tied up.”
He growled at her light-hearted words, just as she’d planned for him to. The pressure was working, but she wasn’t sure how much longer this would take. They’d already been working with him for three hours. He’d grown paler the more she’d talked. David watched, moral support and interested bystander so far.
David touched a light finger to her hand, and she glanced at him, seeing the unspoken suggestion in his eyes. They rose without a word and headed for the door, but before she followed David from the room, she glanced back, unable to resist a final jibe. “But hey, now it’s your turn, right?”
She slipped from the room, and David grinned. “I just got a message from Sara. She thinks they’ve worked out who Phenja is. She needs us at the lab, but he’s—”
“Going to need a break. I don’t reckon we’ll get much out of him right now. Besides, I’ve given him a lot to think about. We’ll get the guards to escort him to his cell. If you want, the professor or Michael can check him over. He’s going to need a bathroom break anyway.”
He indicated to the guards, relayed her suggestion, and together they headed for the health center, knowing that whatever Sara had discovered might just give them an insight into who was behind the whole plot.
Knocking on the door, David ushered Erin into the tiny office where Daniella, Jonah, Michael, Clarissa, and Sara had clustered around a small comp-unit. “We got your message.”
“Excellent. Now that I have you all here, you’re going to want to see what I’ve found.”
They crowded around, and Sara brought up the files. “This is the file for Phenja. As you will clearly see, his degeneration was well advanced when he came to my attention. I would expect this was only weeks before the death of his body, which would be compromised in the long-term should it be allowed through to end of life.”
The room remained silent as everyone scanned the information on the screen.
“They would have moved him into an assigned facility, I think, within the bank. Like a clean room where we keep mainframe backups. They wouldn’t have wanted to compromise his physical health, although from my previous records, he’d been involved in an accident in early childhood, hence the gait. The parents of the donor body wanted cybe-therapy at the suggestion of his attending physician, Albert Larossa—a peer of Colvert from his medical student days.”
David knew the name. “No, Larossa was a financier who disappeared just over a year ago, about the time we found Clarissa...” His stomach curdled as something else occurred to him. “Is he Phenja?”
“Albert Larossa had a brother. Gilbert. Much younger, and yes, a financier.” Sara nodded in silence while the rest gasped in shocked silence.
“You’ve been able to prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt?” Jonah demanded.
Sara scrolled through the files. “I’ve found a range of information, including the operative notes, DNA sampling data, and even more importantly, video footage proving it all. Gilbert Larossa is Phenja—the man we have in custody.”
Nausea rolled in David’s belly as he considered what they’d done. When he turned to Jonah, his brother-in-law had a bright red face. “They’ve broken every rule, used people for their own ends. I want details. Everything on him. This can’t and won’t be disregarded.” Jonah’s voice vibrated with fury.
They left the building together, Erin trailing behind with David as he churned over what they’d learned. “If they can use bodies like this, then that tells me they have no compunction killing and using indiscriminately.”
He grunted as she stopped him, her hand soft on his arm. “David? Do you think that’s what they planned to do with Clarissa in the end? What about me, would they have used me like that if you hadn’t found me in time?”
The slow burn of anger that had been fanned with their findings burst to life. “I wouldn’t have let them, Erin. You mean too much to me.”
Her eyes carried a haunted shadow in their depths. “That’s all well and good, David, but we both know if you’d been much longer, it would have been too late for me. I was already hypothermic, according to Michael.”
He tugged her close, inhaling the scent of her and letting the warmth of her body settle the jittering panic that thrummed in his blood. Considering what could have been was too much to bear. He needed to focus on what they knew, what they’d achieved. Right now, it had to be enough.
“We’ll find these bastards, Erin. They will pay for what they’ve done, for all the manipulations and the transplants.”
He knew she’d continue to toss the consequences over in her head. It would play on her mind for a long time to come, but until they had the apex of the group who’d committed the atrocities, and the wound would continue to fester. He’d do everything in his power to stop them, but for now, she just needed his support to deal with the emotional injuries they’d wrought upon her.
Gathering her close, David didn’t care who saw them. His heart melted as she leaned into him, accepting the unspoken care he lavished on her.
“I was scared, David. I knew I’d done the right thing, but...” Her hiccup had his eyes closing as his heart squeezed.
Erin always exhibited a strong front, yet here she was lost and more uncertain than he’d ever seen her.
Even after the shooting, she’d bounced back full of fire and chutzpah, but this time seemed to have diminished her fire.
He dragged in an unsteady breath. “Erin, I’m not sure how much longer we can keep up this dance—”
She frowned at him and opened her mouth, but he raised his hand, stopping her before she could speak.
“I know now isn’t the time to talk about it, but I have to tell you, that to me, you are everything.”
Her eyes shimmered.
“Tonight, I want to talk to you. I mean...” Flustered now, David had to fight to hold onto his wits. This was much harder than he’d imagined. “Look, we’ll talk tonight, over dinner. Right now, we need to go see Sara. See what she’s found. Then I vote we go hit Phenja with everything we have.”
He reached for and grabbed her hand, propelling her toward Sara’s office.
He’d just clenched it when an alarm sounded. Anger and frustration welled. His communicator squarked, and he hammered the button. “What?”
“It’s Phenja, sir. He’s taken something and he’s...”
He and Erin turned and sprinted for the hallway even as he demanded a status update. Reaching Phenja’s cell took only a minute, but his heart thudded like a rock into his belly. There on the bed lay what was left of Phenja, foam gathering in the spittle around his mouth, eyes open but fixed in a death stare David knew all too well.
“God dammit!” David gave way to the rage at yet another loss.
“He died hard, David. Couldn’t face what he knew would come.” Erin’s words echoed in the silence after she shooed away the guards. They weren’t needed now. “He died and took the easy way out. That must have really pissed him off. He had gone to such lengths to avoid it, yet at the end of the day, he embraced death so he wouldn’t face justice.”
“We need to know what—”
Erin grunted and knelt by the narrow pallet. “It’ll be a capsule embedded in a tooth. Some kind of quick-acting poison, probably even if we’d known which, we wouldn’t have got an antidote to him in time.”
David sighed and pushed away from the wall. “Why do you say that?”
“Because he was still well when we left the interrogation room. If that’s the case, I think you’ll find he broke the capsule on the way to the cells. The guards wouldn’t be watching his face, simply focused on getting him back here and settled.” She rose. “We should call Michael to check the body though.”
Once more, he hailed his brother, carefully explained the situation, and waited for Michael to appear, shadowed by Jonah who scanned the room, then settled his gaze on David. It felt heavy.
“I want your report so we can find out what went wrong with our systems and surveillance.”
Obviously dismissed, he and Erin left the tiny room.