Ophir Chasma
Kacey Ezell
On my way home from work, a dead girl beckoned to me.
The partially dried red-brown stains all over the once-white sheet wrapped around her made it clear: she was dead. Carved up like the expensive real meat roasts they served over on Olympus Mons. Dumped in an alley in the light-poor slums of Ophir, with only one white hand falling free, fingers gracefully curving in a grotesque “come hither” gesture frozen in time.
Gods and Science, I can be morose sometimes.
Anyway, I was on my way home from a long sol in the security office. It was late enough that I seriously considered pretending I hadn’t seen her there . . . but there are kids that live in my neighborhood, trashy as it has become.
So I blinked open my HUD with a sigh and made the call back to work.
“Ares Group Security Ophir . . . Deselle, what in Terra’s name—? You’re off duty! I just watched your sorry ass walk out of here.”
“Checking me out, Brinz?” I asked the desk sergeant. Brinz was a good guy, if a bit more garrulous than I’d like.
“If you’re looking for a booty call, sorry, man. You’re not my type.”
“Likewise. Nope. Found a body. Female, young adult from what I can tell. Looks like it was dumped here.”
“Why you calling me? Call Sanitation. They’ll have someone come pick her up in a sol or two. Ain’t that some static? Two stinking sols! Them crews are overwhelmed with the damn refugees—”
“Brinz, this one’s a homicide.”
Brinz got real quiet, the tired annoyance in his eyes sharpening to something approaching interest. “You sure?”
“Pretty sure. She’s wrapped up in a sheet, but that amount of blood don’t get outside the body without some help, if you know what I mean. Can you put in a call to Dr. Kabeya?”
“Yeah, sure. You want a team?”
“Don’t think so. I’ll hang out here till Doc’s drones show, though. I don’t know how long she’s been out here, but at least I can keep anyone else from messing with her.”
“Take some pictures.”
“Got it.” Irritation bubbled up within me. I did know the protocol. I was a detective, after all.
“All right, Deselle. You sure you’re good?”
“Yep. Call the doc.” I cut the connection with a shake of my head before Brinz could get any further up my ass about how to do my job. Then I glanced around at the empty street and stepped into the shadows between the buildings.
✧ ✧ ✧
She’d been dumped most of the way in the alley, wedged between an ancient recycler that hadn’t worked in years and the pile of trash and debris that had accumulated next to it. I’d noticed her hand, because it had fallen out of the twisted sheet and into the rectangular slash of light shining down from the vehicle separation system out in the middle of the street. If not for that, she would have looked like just another piece of garbage.
Anger sparked deep in my gut at that thought. I shoved it away and squatted down to look closer.
Nothing remarkable about the sheet upon first glance, though I blinked several times to viewcap what I saw. The tiny blue file icon that appeared in my HUD told me that Brinz had quit worrying about my job long enough to do his, and opened a report. My neural transmitter would automatically send the viewcaps to the file stored in Security’s hardened evidence servers.
Other than whatever had soaked into and through the sheet, there wasn’t much blood. Not killed here then. I leaned closer to peer at the frayed edge of the sheet, even clicking my index fingernail to illuminate the potent, tiny LED embedded there. I also pulled my knife out of my boot and flipped it open. I liked my knife. It had a monomolecular blade that would cut through just about anything, given enough time. It had a perpetually sharp edge, and it worked well for touching things I didn’t want to contaminate. I used it to lift a corner of the sheet into my fingerlight’s glow.
It looked like a standard-issue bedding sheet. Corporate gave out thousands of these to the Terran refugees lucky enough to be assigned quarters here on Mars.
A refugee from Earth, then? Maybe. Too bad that didn’t narrow it down much. Refugees were everywhere in the Valles Marineris complex. Corporate discarded them here so they didn’t have to worry about them cluttering up the ritzier enclosures on the northern plains or on Olympus Mons.
A slow ache behind my ears built to a high, buzzing whine. I looked up to see a squad of retrieval drones winging down from the faintly shimmering barrier of the enclosure toward me. I straightened up from my crouch and looked at the lead drone, letting it scan my retina and use that to home in on my location. A flash in my HUD indicated an incoming call.
“Hey, Doc,” I said, pushing away the tiny thrill that always ran through me when Dr. Alisa Kabeya’s face appeared in my vision.
“Gav,” she said, her voice smoky and rough with sleep. “What have you got?”
“Female vic, age indeterminate, but at a glance I’d say younger than fifteen—thirty Terran. She’s wrapped up tight in a blood-soaked sheet. Standard corporate issue, by the way. Don’t know how much of the blood is hers, but there isn’t much on the ground around her.”
“Dumped?”
“Most likely. Maybe a domestic that got out of hand, something like that.”
“Hmmm.” Alisa didn’t look convinced, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Are you ready to turn over custody?”
“Yep,” I said, stepping to the side to allow her drones to fly over the body and position themselves to retrieve her. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen this procedure done, but it never ceased to amaze me how the drones would encase the body in a thick, impervious shell, and then use their magnetic tractors to lift the shell up past all of the inhabited parts of the enclosure and enter one of the three airlock levels above our heads. Once in airlock, they’d fly the body to the location of Alisa’s lab, and then reenter the enclosure at the nearest access point.
That was why the morgue was one of the top level-structures within the chasma . . . up there with the regional corporate headquarters, the executive living suites, and the odd luxury goods distribution center. It always struck me as funny that the morgue had one of the best views in the chasma, but there you have it.
“Thanks, Gav,” Alisa said, her eyes already looking down at something in front of her.
“Wait!” I said, not really sure why. “Before you go . . . keep me updated, will you?”
“Why?” Her eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement, but I refused to think about how cute that made her look. She was a brilliant woman, a selfless doctor who took care of a huge chunk of the chasma’s population with her intense competence. “Cute” didn’t do her justice.
“Because . . . well, I guess it’s my case. I called it in. I took viewcaps.” Gods and Science, I sounded like a moron.
“If it’s your case, you’ll have my report solmorrow or the next sol,” Alisa said. I couldn’t read anything into her tone. She sounded perfectly neutral. As usual.
“Yeah, well, thanks.”
“Get some rest, Gav,” she said, and cut the connection.
“Thanks,” I said again, speaking to my now empty HUD. With a sigh, I turned and started walking back along the street toward my quarters.
✧ ✧ ✧
I don’t remember most of the rest of the walk back home. My feet trod the red-veined streets by rote memory and climbed the narrow metal staircase to my door while my mind went back through the details of the dump scene. I almost went so far as to call up my viewcaps and study them, but I didn’t want to run smack into someone coming the other way just because I was staring at images of a dead girl.
“Hey, Deselle!”
My neighbor’s soft, cheery greeting pulled me from my reverie. I blinked away my HUD and turned to nod in her direction. Timea Vang lived with her adolescent son next door, even though she couldn’t have been much older than thirteen. Or in her mid-twenties, by the old Terran reckoning, since she was born there. I think her son—a Mars native, like me—was around six or so. Right in that sullen time of life when neighborhood kids either started getting in trouble, or started figuring out how to get out of the neighborhood. So far as I could tell, Dane seemed like a good kid, but it was an uphill road. Especially when your mom was a Joygirl.
“Hi, Timea,” I said, as soon as I recognized the beginnings of worry in her wide-set, green eyes. “Sorry, I’m a little out of it tonight. What’s going on?” I reached for the print-plate on my door, but then paused as a thought swept through me like a red dust storm.
Had the vic been a Joygirl?
I don’t know why I thought of it, but in my head, it fit. Joygirls and Joyboys were an accepted, almost ubiquitous part of life here in Ophir. They existed on every level of society, even gracing the arms of the corporate oligarchs who pulled the strings that bound our daily lives. Lots of refugees went that route, too. It was honest work, insofar as it went, though the licensing fees and annual exams were exorbitant. For poorer Joygirls like Timea, it meant they either found a rich patron, or they joined a pimp’s stable. I’d never yet met a pimp who treated their Joygirls or -boys well. But I suppose there could be one out there.
Somewhere.
“Headed out to an appointment?” I asked, keeping my voice casual. Timea, who had started to turn away to head toward the stairs, turned back and gave me a puzzled-looking smile.
“Not exactly. I mean, I don’t have anything on the books, but . . . ” She waved a hand, tilting her blonde head to the side as she studied me. I could almost hear her wondering if I wanted to engage her services. I wondered if she wanted me to.
“Dane inside?” I asked, jerking my head at her door. She nodded, and took a tentative step toward me.
“We could go to your place,” she said softly.
“Why don’t you just take the night off?”
“Excuse me?” She stepped toward me, letting her hips sway as she reached her hands for my chest. I had to give it to her, she was good. I’d bet if she didn’t have Dane to worry about, Timea could have been one of the big-time Joygirls with some fat-cat patron paying her way. But she was a good mom, and devoted to her son’s welfare and education. No client would ever come before Dane’s needs, and so Timea toiled away down here in the gutter with the less-skilled and more chemically altered segment of her colleagues.
I caught her hands and pulled them down, holding them between us as a barrier so she couldn’t press up against me.
“I’ll pay you for the night. I got a little cash. Just take the night off and hang out with Dane, willya? It would make me happy.”
She shook her head, smiling a little, as if she didn’t understand.
“I don’t— I’m not asking—”
“I know you’re not,” I said, my voice going a bit rough. The image of the dead girl’s hand, white in the light from the street, floated behind my eyes. “But if I’m the client, I get what I want, right? I want to know that you’re safe at home with your son tonight. Got it?”
Timea swallowed, and dropped her hands.
“All right.” She took one tentative step back away from me, and then another. I stood there, watching, until she held her hand over her print-plate and the door to her quarters slid open.
“Check your balance when you get inside,” I said. I blinked my HUD back into existence and started the process of transferring the appropriate amount of currency over. “You’ll get half now, half in the morning if you haven’t left. Goodnight, Timea.”
“Goodnight, Deselle.” Her voice got faint as her door slid shut.
I let out a sigh and waved my hand over my own print-plate, then walked into my excruciatingly empty apartment and let the door close behind me.
✧ ✧ ✧
For a few sols, I tried to forget about the dead girl and go on about my job.
Leadership assigned the case to someone else, which disappointed, but didn’t really surprise me. Our corporate overlords had metrics and algorithms and other such red dust they used to “maximize efficiency of output”. Theoretically, Ophir Security leadership used these “tools” to calculate the security officer with the best experience and least current workload for the job. In reality, assignments dropped completely randomly, with no rhyme or reason I could figure.
So when I didn’t hear anything more about it the next sol, I shrugged and went on about my business—which mostly consisted of shaking down pimps who were late on their licensing fees and tracking down unsanctioned pharma sellers. I was able to keep my head down and my nose firmly in my own lane until I overheard one of the other security officers say something about getting a report back from the morgue.
“Is that the Jane Doe from four sols ago?” I asked, unable to keep my head from snapping up in interest. My colleague—Dexlin Vomero, good detective, if a little short on people skills—stopped in her tracks and frowned at me.
“What’s it to ya, Gav?” she asked, jutting her chin upward as if to compensate for her lack of height. She’d been born on Terra, and Corporate had moved her family here when she was an adolescent. So she was shorter and denser than most of us natives.
“I called her in. Did Doc Kabeya come back with a report?”
“On a Jane Doe? How the fuck should I know? I’m working the thing with Security over in Melas. A former executive who went on the lam was spotted and killed, and Melas requested help tracking down his contacts.”
“Ah. Corporate cleanup, got it.”
“Better than stalking some dead Jane Doe. Why’s it interest you?”
“I found the body.”
“So?”
I shrugged. Truth was, I couldn’t really explain it myself. But something about seeing her dumped that way had unsettled me and triggered the part of my brain that always wanted to know more.
Dexlin returned my shrug. “Well,” she said as she started walking again. “Good luck, I guess.”
“You too.”
I turned my attention back to my terminal and tried to focus on the licensing records I was currently cross-referencing . . . but I couldn’t settle. With a blink, I called up one of my locally saved viewcaps of the dump scene and studied it, just as I had for the last several nights. I don’t know what I thought I’d find, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, and tapped out a command on my terminal. It had been a few sols. Surely Doc had finished her autopsy report by now. It should’ve been linked to the preliminary report I’d filed. As the initiating officer, I probably still had access . . .
No File Found.
Wait. That wasn’t right. I typed in the query again, making sure to correctly input the time and date stamp, as well as my identification key as the initiating officer.
No File Found.
I sat back in my chair, eyes locked on the terminal readout. I tried again to access the information through my HUD, but with no better results.
The report I’d filed was gone. I wasn’t just locked out of it because it had been assigned elsewhere . . . it didn’t exist.
“Deselle!”
My supervisor’s voice echoed through the narrow gallery that was our office. I pushed myself up to my feet as Vega approached, his long-fingered hands smoothing his sandy hair back into its perfectly coiffed place. Vega Rubilard was the son of a corporate executive and therefore one of the young darlings of the Security Service. He’d been a detective junior to me a year ago, and now supervised our whole department. In another year or two, he’d be gone, moving up to the district level or taking on some other higher-level post and some other hotshot kid with the right pedigree would be sitting in his place.
I just hoped that next hotshot had less of a tendency to whine than Vega did.
“Vega,” I said, deliberately not using his surname or title.
He stopped and frowned. “Desellle,” he said, and sure enough, he drew the word out like a toddler protesting the removal of their favorite toy. “You know you shouldn’t use my first name anymooore!”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just hard when we were such good buddies.” We weren’t, but that was Vega’s weak spot. He desperately wanted to be liked and accepted by the rank-and-file.
“I know,” he said, reaching out to pat my shoulder. His fingers felt warm and sweaty, even through the fabric of my shirt. “But rules are rules, hey? Just try to remember. Now listen, I’ve got a pile of license enforcements for you, with more where those came from if you don’t start working on your own cases and quit sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
I didn’t even pretend not to know what he was talking about.
“Sure,” I said. “I know, it’s not my case. I was just following up out of curiosity. But Vega, something is weird. The file is gone, my report and everything. Like it never existed.”
“The Jane Doe you found was handed over to another detective who closed the case,” Vega said, his voice climbing an octave and going from whiny to pleading. “We don’t leave closed cases lying around. They clutter up the databases.”
“But there should at least be a closure summary—”
“Deselle. I am your boss. I am telling you to drop it. She was just another dead whore.”
He wasn’t telling me, he was begging me to drop it. I swear I could see tears pooling in his eyes.
I took a deep breath and glanced over at my terminal, where the details of scores of pending license enforcement actions had begun to scroll across the readout.
“Sure, boss,” I said, and reached over to cut the power to my terminal display. “Consider it dropped.”
Sweaty-fingers Vega patted my shoulder again and smiled like a man granted a stay of execution. “Good man,” he said. “I’ll see if I can’t get you some help on those enforcements, okay?”
“You do that,” I said. “I’m taking lunch.”
✧ ✧ ✧
I did grab lunch—a fried street taco made with the best simbeef available in Ophir. Daniela and her mother Iriva sold them out of a cart dressed up to look like an old Terran land vehicle. They made good currency from us security guys, but we didn’t mind. A properly spiced taco was worth it. If I ever won a huge corporate bonus for saving some exec’s life or something, I would probably spend it on a real beef taco. I had to wonder if it would be as good as one of Daniela’s, though.
I blinked the appropriate amount of currency over to Daniela and walked away, basking in the warmth of her smile and the heat of the spicy simbeef as I bit into the taco. Iriva’s pepper sauce lit my palate up like an orbital landing pad, and I’m pretty sure I groaned in pleasure.
But even a sublime taco experience wasn’t enough to settle my brain. The minute I swallowed the last of the crunchy fried tortilla and licked my fingers clean of the juices, I heard Vega’s words echoing through my memory.
One more dead whore.
Maybe so, I conceded. I’d had the thought earlier that the Jane Doe might have been a refugee from the endless civil war on Terra. Her wrist and hand had looked compact and dense like those of a Terran-born woman.
I thought of Dane, and of Timea. Did Jane Doe have any family? Parents, a kid, a partner who mourned her?
“Fucking chaos,” I muttered, kicking at the red dust that littered the sidewalk of the plaza where I’d stopped to eat. I glanced up, and then up some more. I wish I could say I was surprised that my lunchtime wanderings had brought me to this particular plaza in the heart of Ophir’s enclosure, but I wasn’t. Soaring buildings stretched above me, their tops hazy in the dim sunlight. I could see delivery drones dropping here and there, and off to my left, a personal flyer took off from one balcony and spiraled out and away to the south.
Ahead of me, one particular building gleamed black and red as the sun struck it just right. It was one of those whose highest levels were lost in the haze. It didn’t matter, though. I knew what was up there.
With a sigh and another kick at the dust, I lowered my gaze, rubbed my neck, and walked forward toward the base of the tower that held Doctor Alisa Kabeya’s morgue.
✧ ✧ ✧
I’d always thought it weird that the morgue was such a light, airy place.
It shouldn’t have surprised me, given its primo location. As Arean-enclosed cities go, Ophir wasn’t bad. Time was, a fair number of corporate execs had kept apartments here, to use when they worked late doing whatever soul-sucking red-tapework they did. Ophir wasn’t as large as some of the other chasmas in the Valles Marineris, but it was one of the first enclosure settlements, and so it still hosted several important corporate functions—including human resources and immigration.
Which was why, when the Terran Civil War kicked off a generation ago, Ophir was the first place to get slammed with refugees. After a year or two of that, many of the corporate execs had seen the writing on the wall and fled Ophir for more exclusive locales, but their bureaucratic functions remained in place. So, they either worked remotely or built higher and higher levels, in order to rise above the unwashed rabble below . . . literally.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
I blinked as Alisa’s smoky, irritated voice pulled me from my unseeing stare out of her wide, carbonglass window. I turned and smiled at her.
“I thought you might have missed me,” I said, turning up the wattage on my smile. I knew it didn’t quite reach my eyes, but I did my best.
Alisa snorted. “How can I miss you when you’re always coming around?” She arched her eyebrows at me and folded her arms over her chest. “You’re like an endemic virus. I can’t get rid of you no matter what I try.”
“Ouch, Doc. You wound me.”
“And here I thought you were a tough guy. What do you need, Deselle? I’m busy.”
I swallowed hard and felt my smile drop away.
“You know that homicide I called in?” I said it softly, lest we be overheard. By whom, I had no idea, since the only other humans around were corpses . . . but I suppose nanodrones with microphones existed, even if I wasn’t sure why someone would want to bug the morgue.
Of course, I also wasn’t sure why someone would want to bury the murder of a Joygirl.
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Has anyone followed up?”
Alisa narrowed her eyes at me. “You mean other than you? Right now? No.”
“Would you mind giving me a rundown?”
“Didn’t you get my report?”
I fought not to shuffle my feet. Much as I loved sparring with her, I dropped her gaze. Alisa’s dark, vaguely almond-shaped eyes always saw too much.
“No.”
“Because you’re not the assigned officer, am I right?”
I said nothing. Alisa let out a gusty sigh. I glanced up at her to see her shoving one delicate-fingered hand through her hair, pushing it back from her face.
“Gav,” she said, her voice low. “You know I can’t—”
“They closed the case, Alisa. Without even investigating it. They didn’t just lock me out, they closed it. And Vega threatened me when I asked about it. Someone wants this girl erased. I just—what if she had a family, or someone who cared about her?”
Alisa pressed her lips together in a thin white line. Like most doctors I’d met, Alisa was almost as good as a cop at giving a blank face, but I could see that something was bothering her. She let out another sigh and turned, beckoning over her shoulder for me to follow.
She wound her way through the neat, ordered rows of the dead. One or two of the bodies had semi-sheer curtains pulled closed around their biers, and I could hear the whirring sound of Alisa’s med drones doing the grunt work of autopsy and examination coming from within. She led me to the back of the morgue, away from the huge picture windows, toward a tiny room with a heavy door that opened with a mechanical latch.
“We can talk in here,” she said, gesturing for me to go in. I shrugged and did so, suppressing a shiver as I crossed the threshold. My breath puffed out in front of my face like a cloud.
“The body cooler?” I asked, turning to face her as she closed the heavy outer door with a deep thunk.
“The drones don’t work so well in the cold,” she said with a half-smile. “It’s why I have to load each of the bodies in here myself. It’s a pain, but sometimes it’s worth it.”
“Why are you worried about the drones? Don’t you run their programming?”
“I’ll get to that,” she said. She let out another sigh that fogged the air between us, and I could see the deep fatigue in her face as she leaned against the nearest row of closed body drawers. “First, let me answer your questions. There was more in my report, but I’ll summarize. The vic you found was named Nicola Mariahn. Approximately ten local years old, or just under twenty by Terran reckoning. She was born on Terra, and had an active sex worker license. No family on register, no next of kin.”
“A Joygirl,” I said. “Like I thought. Vega confirmed it, too. Was this a domestic, you think?”
“If it was, it was particularly violent,” she said. “There wasn’t much left for me to autopsy. She’d been disemboweled, her uterus and ovaries partially removed, as well as her breasts and several of her other internal organs.”
My eyebrows went up. “A robbery, then? Organ harvesting?”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t fit. You’re the expert, of course, but Nicola came in with cash still in her boot and the latest high-end aural enhancer buds. A robber wouldn’t have left those, even if they were after her organs.”
I looked closely at Alisa. She was doing her best to give me a blank face, but I could still see that troubled shadow in her eyes.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked quietly.
She looked at me for a long moment, then opened her mouth to speak. But before she could say anything, a chime sounded through the frigid room, and Alisa spun away.
“Body incoming,” she said as she hauled on the heavy latch to open the cooler door. “I told you what you wanted to know. Now please get the hell out of my morgue and let me get on with my job.”
✧ ✧ ✧
I should have done what she asked. I’m sure Alisa would agree with that. But what can I say, I’m a detective. Being nosy is my job.
So I followed Alisa out of the cooler and over to the northernmost of her picture windows. Sure enough, a squad of four drones hovered there, carrying one of those impervious body cocoons suspended between them. Alisa hit a button and the window slid open. I grimaced and squinted as a frigid, dust-laden wind swirled in with the drones.
I hung back at first, and then slowly followed her over to an unoccupied bier. The drones flew ahead, hovering with their burden over the bier until Alisa arrived and spoke a low, verbal command I didn’t catch. As one, the drones lowered the cocoon with a soft bump, and then retracted their tethers and rose up to fly one by one out of the slowly closing window.
I watched them leave, and then turned back to see Alisa starting to pull the curtain closed around the bier. She stopped when she got to me, and scowled up into my face. I gave her my most charming lopsided smile and shrugged one shoulder. She rolled her eyes, shook her head, but she dragged the curtain around me, including me in the space within.
“Want a mask?” she asked as she returned back to the head of the cocoon. “It can help with the nausea.”
“Not my first corpse, Doc.”
“Suit yourself.”
With a shrug, she tapped out a command on the terminal beside the bier, and a drone descended out of the ceiling fixture above us. It hovered over the cocoon and extended a rotating saw blade from its belly. Alisa spoke another command—a word I didn’t recognize, did the drones have their own programming language?—and the drone lowered the saw to cut into the surface of the cocoon.
“I thought they were impermeable,” I said, pitching my voice to be heard over the racket of the saw.
“They are to most things.” Alisa didn’t look up as she spoke; her eyes stayed locked on the developing seam in the cocoon until the drone finished its cut. Then she met my eyes one more time. She looked like she was about to say something, but shook her head instead and tapped in another command on the console.
Arms came up out of the bier and pulled the cocoon apart. The remaining halves sank down into slots that I hadn’t noticed before on either side of the bier, leaving the body lying fully exposed.
My brain stuttered for a moment, trying to make sense of what I saw. I heard Alisa draw in a sharp breath. I looked up at her and something that was either fury or pain or both flickered across her features.
“What—” I started to say, but she snapped her gaze up to me and violently shook her head in the negative. The intensity in her eyes almost had me stepping back before I caught myself. I pressed my lips together and nodded, then flicked my gaze back toward the body cooler. She nodded slowly as well, and then set to work.
Honestly, it didn’t look like there was much left for her to do.
Ragged cuts ran from just under the sternum to the groin. At initial glance, it didn’t look like the edges had been cauterized at all, which meant that the cutting tool hadn’t been a modern laser scalpel. At some point, someone had opened the resulting wounds wide, so that the interior cavity of the body lay exposed.
Truth be told, it was a red, shredded mess, and I couldn’t make out much of anything.
“Unidentified female; approximate age: early teens in local years, possibly mid-twenties by Terran reckoning. Size and skeleto-musculature suggests Terran-born and initial development in Terran gravity. Longitudinal wounds . . . ”
I tore my eyes from the corpse and looked up at Alisa’s face as she continued making her report. Her dispassionate words carried no hint of intonation or emotion, but I could see the anger in her eyes as she cataloged the damage that had been done to the young woman on the bier. She paused and looked up, catching me watching her face.
“Here,” she said after a moment. She reached in to a drawer underneath the bier and pulled out a simple image-capture device. “If you’re going to hover in here, make yourself useful. Push that button there to take pictures.”
“Aren’t the drones recording this?”
“Yes, but I like to have stills as a backup and cross-reference.”
I shrugged and reached across the body to take the camera. Alisa pointed to the top of the crude, hacking incisions. “Start there,” she said, “and just shoot whatever I point to.”
I nodded and did as she said. Together we cataloged a staggering amount of damage. Basically, the girl’s entire suite of internal organs below the diaphragm had been removed. My untrained eyes didn’t see it, but Alisa found hacked fragments of both large and small intestines, as well as a quarter of her liver and most of one kidney.
There was no sign, however, of her reproductive organs. They were entirely gone, replaced by a gaping hole half filled with congealed blood.
“Look, here,” Alisa said when we got to her lower torso. “See how the blade marks have changed? Someone scraped this out, as if they were cleaning out a gourdfruit or something.”
“Organ harvester?”
“Maybe.” Alisa furrowed her brow and pursed her lips. “But I would have expected them to take the entirety of the kidneys if that were the case. Terran-born kidneys are in high demand on the black market right now.”
“I don’t want to know how you know that.”
“It’s my job to know that.” She flashed an angry look up at me, but I didn’t take offense. I knew I wasn’t the target of her ire. Whoever had butchered this girl had better hope they never encountered Dr. Alisa Kabeya in a dark alley—
I quickly shoved that thought away, lest it lead to unproductive imaginings. Instead, I snapped a picture of the corpse’s mutilated pubic area and waited to see what else Alisa wanted captured.
We moved steadily through the rest of the initial examination, cataloging the dead girl’s wounds and whatever other details Alisa pointed out. The girl’s face hadn’t been mutilated, so the drones came back relatively quickly with a biometric ID. When the name scrolled across the terminal display, I couldn’t help but stare at Alisa. Suddenly, her anger made a hell of a lot more sense.
The girl’s name was Katted Dowes. She was a registered sex worker.
✧ ✧ ✧
“What’s going on, Doc?” My voice sounded harder than I meant it to be, especially with an old friend like Alisa. I cleared my throat and mumbled a quick apology as she followed me back into the body cooler.
“Don’t worry about it,” Alisa said. “Sometimes they get to you, even when you’re trained to be clinical. This one . . . well. All three of them have been bad like that.”
“Wait— Three?”
Alisa lifted her eyes to mine, her face pale in the overhead light from the cooler. “That’s what I was going to tell you. This is the third butchered Terran-born Joygirl that’s come in. All of them scarily similar.”
“So the one I found in the alley . . . ”
“She was the second vic, as far as I can tell. The first one was stashed inside an old orbital dropshell. She came in about ten sols ago. I did the exam as usual, wrote it up as usual. Security tagged it as a domestic gone wildly out of control, which didn’t entirely sit right with me. Those wounds are vicious, yes, but they’re not random. It’s . . . it’s more like an anatomy class gone terribly wrong.”
“Gods and Science,” I breathed, trying to get my mind around what she was telling me. She nodded and went on.
“Then, the other sol when your vic came in and I saw the wound pattern, I immediately wrote up the correlation. Gav. I did everything but spell out ‘serial killer’ in my report . . . ” She trailed off, turning away as her eyes filled with tears. I’d known Alisa a long time. She was as tough as they came. She was empathetic, sure, but you don’t get to be the chief medical examiner for a settlement the size of Ophir if a few terribly mutilated corpses are going to make you cry.
Alisa wasn’t sad. She was pissed.
“What happened?” I asked. The sinking feeling in my gut said I already knew, but I had to hear it from her.
“Vega came to see me,” she said, swallowing hard and blinking her tears away. She let her usual cool professionalism drop, and I could hear the fury spitting through her words. “Him and some other corporate goons. He was cringing and practically licking their genuine Terran leather shoes. They threatened to yank my job and my license if I submitted the report as is—said I was trying to cause a panic. Threatened industrial subversion charges. I’m not kidding, Gav, they pulled out every big gun in the arsenal.”
“What the—? Why, Alisa? I mean . . . are they covering up for someone?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, but my gut says not. If that were the case, they would have just disappeared me and been done with it. They’re worried about something else.”
“The crowding,” I guessed. “With the influx of Terran refugees from the war, tensions are high. They’re afraid that if it gets out that there’s a predator preying on the refugee population, that the mob will get out of control.”
“Probably,” she said. “Thanks to the free clinics I run on my off sols, I’m a well enough known figure that my disappearance might cause problems, too. Thus the threats, rather than—”
“Blood and Red Dust, Alisa—” I stopped, unable to think of anything else to say. She looked up at me, her eyes still wet with rage, and gave me a tight, tiny, incredibly brave smile. I let my breath hiss out and gave in to the impulse I’d been holding back since I saw her open up the body cocoon. I stepped toward her and wrapped her up in an embrace. She held herself stiffly for a moment, and then she exhaled and melted against me, resting her head on my chest as she allowed herself to take the comfort I offered—
Just this once.
✧ ✧ ✧
The following sol, I set out as soon as the sun cleared the eastern cliffs. I didn’t have far to go, but I wanted to take my time getting there, make my route circuitous, make sure I wasn’t being tailed. I even knocked out a few of Vega’s extra enforcement actions before I headed to my real destination.
It took about an hour to get to Melas Chasma from Ophir’s main station. If I’d been a fat cat, I could have taken a flyer and gotten there in minutes, but the standard maglev train was good enough.
Melas was a newer settlement than Ophir, but it had the same basic structure: a natural chasm enclosed by several airlock, magnetic, and radiation-ablating layers. Unlike Ophir, Melas had been configured from the beginning as a sort of suburban living space for the rank-and-file who worked to make the corporate colonial ventures viable, whether it be through technological research and development, mineral and natural resource extraction and exploitation, or by supporting the self-sustaining perpetual motion machine that was corporate bureaucracy.
Such as the medic school.
True, university-trained medical doctors were rare here on Mars, because we didn’t have any “properly” accredited universities. Something about the corporate monopoly interfering with academic freedom or some other line of red dust kept any of our local centers of learning and teaching from being recognized. Corporate had tried repeatedly to set up our own system, but the Terran Educational-Industrial Complex held their own monopoly on necessary resources and records, and each such venture fizzled.
Eventually, an uneasy compromise had emerged. Corporate could hire as many university-trained doctors as they could entice, and those doctors would train their own nurses and medics here. If I was perfectly honest, I had to admire the long game that Corporate played with this one. Eventually, those medics and nurses would, of necessity, gain all of the knowledge they needed to provide adequate support to us Martians. Maybe they wouldn’t know how to run some of the advanced nanite diagnostic imagers they had back in some of the big urban centers of Terra . . . but they’d be able to keep Corporate’s population of workers and support staff healthy enough to keep the colonies going . . . and that would keep the profit margins up.
By the time the powers that be reached this compromise, Ophir was already crowded, so the first and largest center for medic training emerged in nearby Melas.
So that’s where I was headed. On basically a hunch.
It was something Alisa had said. She’d compared the bodies of the three victims to “an anatomy class gone wrong.” As a lead, it wasn’t much, but I figured it was a place to start. Alisa had called ahead to the director, whom she’d known for years, and had gotten me an appointment for an informal interview.
Informal, because this wasn’t my case. This wasn’t anyone’s case.
I held myself still against the rage that flowed under my skin and looked out the window at the red-brown terrain blurring by as we shot toward the East Plaza station in Melas. Maybe it wasn’t my case, but I was damn sure going to do something about it. Those dead Joygirls were past caring, but their living sisters deserved to be protected—even if Alisa and I were the only ones in Ophir who thought so.
A subtle shift reverberated through the floor of the train, and I realized we were slowing in preparation for arrival. I locked my dark thoughts away behind my best polite cop face and sat up straighter as I waited to disembark.
A ten-minute walk later, plus a short ride up a high-speed lift to the mid-level commercial district, and I entered the front doors of the medic school. It was a nice place, with lots of chrome and smoked glass in evidence. The double entrance doors led to a softly carpeted lobby, where wide windows looked out on the bustle of residents about their daily business. An auburn-haired woman with the willowy frame of a native sat behind a reception counter made of polished red stone and more glass.
“May I help you?” she asked without looking up as I approached.
“Yes,” I said, trying to sound friendly. “Hello. I’m Gavren Deselle, here to see Doctor Abunto.”
That got her attention. She lifted her head and curled her thin lips in something that was probably supposed to be a smile. I watched her eyes harden as she took in my appearance and wondered if she was going to wrinkle that skinny, pointy nose.
“Doctor Abunto is very busy.” Her voice took on a condescending sneer, like she was talking to a child. “He doesn’t see patients.”
“I’m not a patient. I have an appointment.”
“That’s impossible,” she said, her smile stretching wider. “I keep the doctor’s calendar, and it’s completely booked tosol. You’ll have to come back another time . . . after you call me and make a proper appointment.”
I let my own lips curve in a not-quite-nice smile and let her see some of the hardness in my own eyes.
“Listen, I’m here at the request of Doctor Kabeya over in Ophir. She asked me to come consult with Doctor Abunto about some observations she’s made lately. If you’d just call the doctor—”
“If Doctor Kabeya wanted to consult with Doctor Abunto, she would have come herself,” the woman said, her smile dropping and her voice edging up an octave. “I’ve told you that the doctor is unavailable. Do I need to call Security?”
Lady, I am Security. I wanted to say it, and to get in her nasty, power-tripping face about it, but without an official case, my hands were tied.
“No,” I said, lifting both of my hands and taking a step backward. “I’ll go. But it’s a long walk back to the plaza. Can I use your elimination facility?”
She did wrinkle that skinny nose then and rolled her eyes. But she extended a bony finger to the right, indicating a hallway that headed off behind her. Perfect.
“Thanks,” I said with more of a genuine smile. Then I winked at her and headed that way. The outraged huff behind me almost made me laugh. What a bitch.
I turned down the hallway and continued until I lost sight of Skinny Nose’s desk. Then I stopped and looked around, hoping to find an office directory listing or something useful.
Nothing. Of course, why would they have one when they had that oh-so-helpful receptionist out front?
I let out a sigh and heard a soft chuckle coming from behind a custodian’s cart further down the hallway.
“Hi,” I said. “Long sol.”
“So I heard.” A man straightened up from behind the cart. He was neither particularly young nor old looking—mid-teens, maybe? Or early thirties, in Terran reckoning, since he had the stocky musculature of an Earth native. The refugees had made it out here to Melas, it seemed. Or at least this one had.
“Yeah. She’s a real sweetheart.”
The custodian laughed and shook his head. “She’s always like that. Except when one of the docs or someone rich from Corporate walks in. Then she’s like honey . . . um . . . a natural sweetener we had back on Earth.”
“I’ve heard of honey,” I said. “Sweet, but sticky, right?”
He grinned and leaned his elbows onto his cart. “Exactly. Just like her . . . if she thinks you’re rich. Typical, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said. Typical of what, I didn’t ask. “Hey, listen, is there any chance you could give me a hand? I’m trying to see Dr. Abunto. Ol’ Honey Girl out at the desk didn’t want to let me in, but I really am expected. Is there any way you could tell me where to find him?”
“Of course, man,” the custodian said. “What do you want with the doc?”
“Hmm?”
“I can take you to his office, but what do you want with him? Doc Abunto is a good man. He got me this job, lets me sit in on his lectures when I’m not busy. I owe him. If he wants to see you, fine. But I’m not going to put him in a bad situation, see?”
“That’s fair. I’m here at the request of Dr. Alisa Kabeya over in Ophir. She’s correlating some data and wants to know about his class attendance over the last twenty sols or so.”
“Full. Totally.”
“What?”
“Doc’s classes have been totally full since the beginning of this season. Trust me, I haven’t been able to find a single seat. It’s the end of the cycle, see? The students are in the middle of their final exams. They can’t miss a class, or they get booted from the program.”
“Has anyone?”
“Gotten booted? No. I wish. These damn students are like children expecting me to clean up after them.” He grinned at me, so I chuckled.
“Well, maybe some of them will fail their exams and you’ll have less messes to clean up,” I said.
“Yeah, here’s hoping. Still wanna talk to Doc?”
“Yes, please.”
“Sure, man. Sure. Right this way. I’ll see if he’s busy.” The custodian jerked his head conspiratorially at me, and turned to continue further down the hallway. I shrugged and followed along.
I had the growing suspicion that this was going to be a waste of my time.
But leave no stone unturned, right?
✧ ✧ ✧
Dr. Abunto was nice, but I was right. It was a total waste of time. He confirmed what the custodian had said. He’d had completely full attendance since the beginning of the season. None of his students was missing or, apparently, doing anything but frantically studying for their final exams. He even showed me the datalogs that confirmed one hundred percent biometric login to the school’s virtual library.
That meant that every single one of his students had an airtight alibi . . . and I was back to square one.
While on the train back to Ophir, I put in a call to Alisa. I got her “unavailable” message inviting me to leave a chat for her. I disconnected instead and sat back in my seat. The setting sun slanted its rays over the rim of the chasm, turning the already rusty terrain the color of blood. It matched my mood.
Where to go from here? With the medic school angle a dead end, the Joygirls were my only other option. Problem was, there were literally thousands of earth-born Joygirls within the greater Valles Marineris system of enclosures. Even if I did have an official case, there was no way that I could talk to every single one of them . . . certainly not before this guy decided to kill again.
And he would kill again. The certainty of it reverberated through my bones. That kind of savagery doesn’t just stop. It must be stopped.
I let out a gusty sigh and closed my eyes. I tilted my head back against the headrest of my seat. Maybe I could use those damn sex worker registry enforcement actions as an opportunity to poke around a little bit. Maybe if I got enough of the Joygirls talking, I’d be able to find a pattern I could trace. There was something there. I just had to find it.
The rocking of the train lulled me into a half-slumber. I woke with a grimace when the train slowed, signaling our arrival back in Ophir. My muscles felt sluggish and stiff as I stood up.
Getting old sucks.
Not a very profound realization, perhaps, but that was all I had as I buttoned my jacket and headed out of the train station onto the walkways of Ophir. The nearest station to my neighborhood was still a good few klicks away, so I joined the press of workers commuting home from their service to our uncaring corporate overlords. I kept my head down so no one would speak to me. I wasn’t in the mood.
No one, that is, until I got close to home.
“Hey, Deselle!”
Timea’s cheerful greeting snapped my head up, and I forced some semblance of a smile as she held open the outer door of our building for me.
“Hi,” I said.
“Long sol?” she asked, her smile sympathetic. She was dressed up, I realized. Makeup accentuated her large, limpid eyes and lips. Her cutaway gown and leggings looked new, too. A simpler, more tailored cut than her usual getup. Less skin showing, more mystery. More class.
“Something like that,” I said. “You headed to an appointment?”
“Yep!” She almost chirped the word, her voice threaded through with happiness. “And I don’t want to be late. This guy is really great, Deselle. He could be . . . well. He could be really good for me and Dane. I think—I think he might be about to set me up. Permanently.”
“That’s great, Timea. He treats you well?”
“So well! He bought me this dress, and look!” She turned her head to the side, and I saw the glint of the latest model of aural enhancer in her ear.
“Nice. Well, congrats. You deserve it. Dane at home tonight?”
“He is.”
“I’ll look in on him if you want.”
Her smile, already wide and happy, grew. She leaned forward and pecked me on the cheek. Her lips felt warm and smooth.
“You’re the best neighbor. Thanks so much, Deselle. I have to run. Wish me luck!”
I waved and took the door as she grinned at me over her shoulder and headed off into the crowd. Despite everything, I felt the corners of my mouth lift. I shook my head and walked into the building, letting the door fall shut behind me.
✧ ✧ ✧
I took some time to put together a meal for myself—nothing fancy, just basic protein and carbs—and then sat down on my couch to figure out a plan of attack. My thought to use my punitive enforcement action assignment as a cover to canvass the Joygirl population was a good one, but I needed to figure out the right questions to ask. There had to be some way to narrow down who was at risk.
I knew our killer hunted Joygirls, specifically Earthborn ones. But other than that, I couldn’t see a connection between the victims. I pulled up the memory files of my conversations with Alisa and the pics I’d taken of vic number two. There had to be something here . . .
“A robbery, then? Organ harvesting?”
“Doesn’t fit. You’re the expert, of course, but Nicola came in with cash still in her boot and the latest high-end aural enhancer buds . . . ”
I shot upright, spilling the remains of my dinner onto the floor. I blinked open a call to Alisa and tagged it an emergency. For once, she picked up.
“Deselle, this better not be because you’re drunk and lonely again.”
“Alisa. What was the brand of the aural enhancers on the second vic?”
“What? Gav, what are you—”
“I need an answer! What was the brand?”
“They were from Corporate. Ares Group, like most everything else. Gav, what’s going on?”
“Maybe nothing, but maybe . . . I’ll call you later.”
“Gav—”
I cut the connection and grabbed my jacket and service weapon as I headed out the door. I had a kid to check on.
✧ ✧ ✧
I probably knocked on Timea’s door with a bit more force than I intended, judging by Dane’s scowl as the door slid open.
“Mr. Deselle,” he said. “Did my mom ask you to check on me? Gods and Science, I’m not a baby!”
“Dane,” I said, leaning in, letting him hear the intensity in my words. “Listen to me. You know your mom’s new presents that she got? Can you find the box or something for me?”
The scowl faded, replaced by puzzlement. “Why?” he asked.
“I just need it,” I said, fighting the urge to yell. “Please, kid, it’s important.”
“Sure, you wanna wait here? Mom said I can let you in if you came by. No one else, though,” he turned and held the door open with an upraised hand. I took the invitation and stepped inside, holding myself from fidgeting as the door slid shut behind me. I didn’t want to panic the kid, but I needed him to hurry up!
“When did she get these new presents, anyway?” I asked as a way of distracting myself while Dane disappeared into the alcove where his mom presumably slept.
“Earlier tosol.” His voice came from the room, slightly muffled, as if he were crouching down or bending over. “They were delivered in the regular mail. Mom said they came from a new client, a big one. She seemed really happy about it.”
He walked out of the alcove holding a crumpled polymer container. “You’re lucky, she was so excited she missed the recycler chute when she cleaned up. I found it on the floor.” He held the container out to me, and I felt a pit open up in my gut.
ARES GROUP unlimited presents our latest Aural Enhancing Earbuds! Hear in frequencies you’ve never experienced before . . . only available from ARES GROUP! When you want the bleeding edge of technology . . . accept no substitute! ARES!
“Dane, listen to me,” I said, keeping my voice calm and quiet by sheer force of will. “I don’t want to upset you, but I’m afraid your mom’s new client might not be what he seems. Can you tell me where they were going tonight?”
“What do you mean?” Fear jacked the kid’s voice up an octave, and it cracked on the last word. “Is my mom okay?”
“She will be if I can get to her quickly enough. Did she tell you what their plans were?”
“Um . . . yeah. She always does. Dinner at the Edge Plant. Do you know where that is?”
“I can find it. Thanks, kid.”
“Wait! You can’t leave me here alone like that!” Panic edged his voice, and his eyes had gone wide with fear. “I want to come with you!”
I stopped in my tracks. I couldn’t bring him, but he wasn’t entirely wrong. If this went bad, he needed to not be here alone.
“Listen,” I said. “I can’t let you come with me; it might not be safe and it could be more dangerous for your mom if you’re there. But I’m going to call a friend of mine, all right? Dr. Kabeya is a medical doctor. I’ll ask her to come over and stay with you. She can get in touch with me, okay?”
“I know Dr. Alisa. We go to her free clinic sometimes.”
“Perfect then. Don’t let anyone but her, me, or your mom in, okay? Not even Ophir Security. If they come, you hide and pretend you’re not home. Shut down any biometric interfaces you have and find a quiet spot. In a closet or something.”
He nodded, his face pale with worry. I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile and gripped his shoulder.
“All right, kid. I’m gonna go.” I waved a hand at the door plate and stepped through once it slid open.
“Keep my mom safe,” he whispered as the door slid shut behind me.
I’ll do my best.
✧ ✧ ✧
The restaurant was closed.
Had been for a long time, if the thick layer of grime on the windows was any indication. I peered inside, but couldn’t see past the red dust caked on the plasglass.
I reached for the door plate and waved a hand over it. Nothing. I glanced around, looking up for the telltale glowing LEDs of corporate security cameras. Nothing once again. This neighborhood was all industrial parks and failed businesses. No kind of security apparatus survived long down here.
I pushed away the unhelpful thought that I could technically be considered “security apparatus” and walked along the front of the building to turn the corner. There. Shadows gathered in an alcove about midway along the building. Another entrance?
Apparently so. Only this one didn’t have a scan-plate to open it, just a blank metal door set about half a meter into the wall. I ran my fingertips over it and realized that the edge of the door stuck out from the frame. Not much, maybe a centimeter or so.
I reached into my boot for my knife and flipped it open. I wouldn’t have tried this with a regular knife, but the thing about monomolecular bonds was that they were incredibly tough. So I worked the tip of the knife into the narrow seam between door and frame and slowly began to pry it open.
It took some doing, but eventually it gave way with a horrendous screech and popped open wide enough for me to get my thick fingers around the edge of the door. I pushed it further, ignoring the continuing scream of metal on metal. I flipped my knife closed, threw it in a pocket, and drew my weapon as I stepped inside.
Silence rang through the place. I clicked on my fingerlight and shined it over the upturned tables and stacked chairs. The floor lay covered in a thick coating of red dust that danced in my little beam of light.
This place had to have been shut up for several seasons, at least. I walked over toward the front door, playing my light along the walls and over the floor when something caught my attention.
A long scuff in the dust . . . then footprints. Someone had come in here recently. Maybe . . . dragging someone else along?
Adrenaline flashed into my system, sending my pulse into overdrive. I blinked a quick viewcap and sent it to Alisa’s address, and then proceeded to follow the trail.
It led through the room and back toward a stairwell. I followed, taking regular viewcaps and uploading them so someone would know where I’d gone.
As I descended, I could feel the air cooling. The pressure shifted too, and my ears popped as if I were in a vehicle gaining altitude, even though I was descending. I had to be getting close to the groundside enclosure barriers.
At the bottom of the stairs, the trail doubled back into a narrow basement, and then ended at a blank wall. For a moment, I just stared stupidly at the plascrete. This couldn’t be it. I stepped back and shined my light on the floor as a tiny seed of panic took root in my chest. There had to be more here.
I shined my light along the wall and circumnavigated the room. I crisscrossed the interior of that narrow space nearly twenty times, shining my little LED over every centimeter, but I couldn’t find a thing. Finally, I stopped one more time and leaned my forehead against the wall where the trail came to such an abrupt, mocking end.
Tension had me sweating despite the chill. A tiny breeze whistled by, ruffling the salt-stiff points of my short hair.
My head snapped up. Why is there a breeze? This basement was too far down to get any of the air circulation provided by the enclosure’s great wind generators, and I didn’t hear the telltale sounds of a private atmo scrubber . . . not that it would be on anyway. This place was dark and silent as a tomb.
So why was the air flowing like a river through it? Where was the pressure differential?
I clicked on my light again and examined the wall more closely. This time, I didn’t miss the almost subliminal whistle of air as it accelerated through a near-invisible seam about a half-meter to my left.
Once again, I pulled my trusty knife out and prepared to do some prying. But this time, I didn’t have to. The second I inserted the knife into the seam, a square section of the wall popped open, revealing an antiquated data terminal. A message scrolled across the screen, inviting me to enter the appropriate code to access Interbarrier Level One.
My eyes widened in the dark. These interbarrier maintenance access points existed all over the enclosure, but as far as I knew, this one wasn’t on any of our maps. Had it been forgotten? The age of the data terminal supported that theory.
Not that it mattered. I could figure out that piece later. Right now, I needed to get down there and make sure my friend and neighbor wasn’t being murdered in the cold lightness of native Martian space.
“Let’s hope this works,” I muttered, and punched in my Security override code.
The terminal blinked, and the door slid in and to the side. Smoothly, with none of the creaks or groans one would expect from a forgotten portal.
Someone had come this way recently.
✧ ✧ ✧
I followed the narrow passageway as it led down and out away from the restaurant. The temperature and pressure continued to drop, and I found myself starting to pant. I fought to breathe slowly and evenly, pulling the air deep into my lungs and holding it for a beat before letting it out . . . I had to remain calm, and hyperventilating wasn’t going to help.
“NO!”
A scream echoed through the space, disrupting the high ringing that had started in my ears. I forgot all about remaining calm and charged ahead, slipping on the dust that coated the passageway as I rounded a corner and careened into a scene from my nightmares.
The corridor dead-ended into a natural, native rock cavern. Someone had rigged primitive electric lights high on the walls, so the whole place had a ruddy, bloody glow. In the center of the room, Timea lay spread-eagled on the uneven stone floor, her wrists and ankles bound to metal rings that had been hammered into the rock.
A figure crouched above her, squatting over her pelvis. As I watched, he raised a knife in his right hand, the blade glinting in the red-tinged light.
I fired. The energy burst from my weapon sizzled in the dust-laden air and hit him square in the back. He let out a yell and fell forward onto Timea.
“Get the fuck away from her!” My words came out breathless, almost gasping in the thin remnant of atmosphere.
He laughed and straightened, unfolding himself as he turned to face me. I blinked, my eyes widening in recognition.
“I was wondering if you’d be good enough to put two and two together,” the custodian said, his eyes glinting like the blade had done. “Well done, jack. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Step away from the girl,” I said again. “No one has to get hurt, all right?”
“See, now that’s where you’re wrong.” He spoke normally; did the sparseness of the oxygen not bother him? “She knows who I am and so do you. If no one gets hurt, you’ll be talking, and then I’ll never be able to continue my studies.”
I fired again, hitting him in the chest. It knocked him back, sending him stumbling across the room. Unfortunately, corporate policy prevented us from carrying lethal weapons. So he recovered and smiled at me.
He actually had a rather sweet smile. I don’t know why I noticed that, but in that tiny split second, I did.
Then his smile twisted into a snarl and he launched himself at me, bringing his knife sweeping down toward my face. I got my hand up to block it, but he sliced down along my forearm. Fire erupted from elbow to wrist, and I felt my fingers go numb as we tumbled to the floor. I heard the clatter of my weapon hitting the stone. Somewhere beyond my feet, I could hear Timea weeping.
I brought my left fist up and hammered it against the side of his head once, twice. He rocked to the side, half releasing me. I scrambled to get out from under him, to get my weapon back, but before I could do that, he swung again and buried his blade into the soft tissue behind my knee.
My scream echoed through the cavern and I fell forward, barely getting my hands underneath me to protect my face. Agony wreathed my leg from my knee down, throbbing in counterpoint to the pain in my arm. I pushed forward, trying to get up again, but my right leg wouldn’t hold my weight and I collapsed onto my face again.
Blackness shredded the red at the edges of my vision. I felt a hand on my shoulder heaving me over so that I rolled to my back. My good left hand fell close to my pocket. Slowly, carefully, I reached inside.
“You know, I’ve never done a male before,” the custodian said. I watched him come closer, crouching over me, blocking out the ruddy glow from the lights. “I’m just not as interested in your anatomy, I’m afraid. But I suppose there are still lessons to be learned from comparing, no? Too bad you’re not Earthborn. That would be a better comparison. But who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth, hmm? Let me just get my knife—”
He turned to my injured leg and yanked on the handle of the knife. The black engulfed my vision in agony, but it didn’t matter. I’d seen my target. When he turned, the veins of his throat stood out, less than a meter from my face.
In one desperate movement, I flicked open my knife and stabbed upward toward the memory of that image. I heard a gasp and a cough, and then hot, thick liquid splashed down over my face. Had Timea screamed again?
I might have blacked out.
I’m not sure, but when I lifted the back of my free hand to swipe the liquid out of my eyes, it felt sticky.
“Timea?” I gasped. We had to get back inside the enclosure soon.
“Oh Gods and Science! You’re alive!” she cried. She sounded just as breathless as me. “I thought he’d killed you and I would die here and no one would ever find me!”
“No, I’m alive for the moment. But I’m not gonna be able to walk.”
“Can you cut me free?” she asked, her voice small. “I can carry you.”
“Too big,” I muttered as I shoved the cooling corpse of the custodian off of me. “Too heavy.”
She laughed. “I’m Earthborn, remember? I can handle it. Just cut me loose.”
“Good point,” I said. Pain rocked through me with every moment, but I dragged myself close enough to slice my trusty little knife through the tether restraining her wrist.
She let out a sob as I fell back down, gasping. The blackness crowded in from the edges of my vision again. The last thing I remember was the feeling of her fingers taking the knife from my hand.
✧ ✧ ✧
I wasn’t really expecting to wake up.
I definitely wasn’t expecting to wake up in the morgue.
“Hey!” Alisa sounded far too cheerful for me to be dead, so I reluctantly concluded that I’d survived, despite the pounding in my head. I blinked, squinted, and forced my eyes to focus on her face as she stood beside my head.
“Don’t cut me up.” My voice sounded terrible, all rough and weak.
She let out a tiny laugh. “Don’t worry, you took care of that on your own . . . or rather, the other guy did.”
“Is he dead?”
“Yep. A knife in the carotid will usually do that to you.”
“Good. Am I dead?”
“Not yet.” She reached up and brushed a hand over my forehead, pushing back my hair. “Not for lack of trying, though.”
“Is Timea okay?”
“She is,” Alisa said. “Thanks to you. Smart girl, that one. She didn’t call Security until after she’d called me and a client of hers who’s a reporter. She got the story out before Corporate could stomp on it. Now they’re backtracking and hailing her as an ‘undercover heroine protecting the refugee population.’ They don’t want anyone to know they were so afraid of unrest they squashed the case. But the publicity will be good for her, at least.”
“Deserves it.”
“She does. Her kid does, too. Smart as a whip, that one. I think I might see if he wants to take up medicine, if you don’t mind.”
“Why would I mind?” I asked.
“Well, I’m willing to teach him gratis, but it might make it hard for his mom to bring him to me, work, and still see you.”
“I see her all the time, we’re neighbors.”
“No, idiot,” she said, her voice fond. “I mean see her romantically.”
I laughed, or tried to, anyway. It came out as a grotesque croaking kind of sound.
“What’s wrong?”
“Not seeing Timea. She’s too young. Not what I’m into.”
“Oh.”
I turned my head and smiled up at Alisa’s carefully blank expression.
“Doc?”
“Yes?”
“Wanna go get some coffee sometime?” I lifted my left hand and brushed my fingertips against her cheekbone. She stared at me for a long moment.
Then, slowly, she smiled.