Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) (11 page)

“What doing?  Flatfoot?”

“Yeah.  Patrolling Maintenance for the most part.  Worked the gate a bit, too.”

“You uh…”  He sucked in another lungful of air.  “You ever do a stretch down in Link or in the slums?”

“No, I avoided that somehow.  They assigned me to the Reach barracks right from the start.”

“You didn’t see the worst of it, then.”

“Is it really that much worse down in the slums than it is here?” Zoe said.  “Everywhere is bad.”

Duran grimaced.  “You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d worked the slums.”

“That’s right, they put you there for a while, didn’t they?”

Duran stopped and turned to her.  “Exactly how much about me do you know?”

“Enough,” she said enigmatically.

“Do you know
why
they put me out there to patrol the slums?”

Her eyes betrayed no emotion.  “Yes.”

“You know about the Atrium.”

“Yes.  And I know it wasn’t your fault, Alec.”

Duran scoffed and began to shuffle forward again.

“I’m not so sure of that.”

“I’ve seen the files.  You weren’t treated well by Prazor, or by anyone else in the ranks.  It’s exactly the sort of thing that sickens me.  Yet another Enforcer failure.”

“I didn’t do my job.  I got what I deserved.”

Zoe ignored that remark, pointing to a hole in the wall up ahead.

“Through there.  Not far to go.”

Duran was breathing hard, like he’d just climbed a hundred floors of the Reach, but he didn’t stop.  The hole drew closer and closer as he shuffled and scraped along, until finally he was at the edge of it.  He looked inside.

It was another small chamber, much like the one in which he had awoken.  Three people were inside.  The first was seated at a large terminal, poring over close to ten different windows and video feeds at once.  He swivelled to greet them, his chair squeaking noisily, and then offered them both a smile.  He was a tubby man with dark red hair and a neatly trimmed moustache.

“Howdy.  Sleeping beauty’s up,” he said cheerily.

“Duran, this is Robson,” Zoe said.

Duran nodded to the man,
then looked over at the other two in the room.  A tall and wiry man with a gaunt face stood against the wall, idly slicing up an apple with a small knife, and a
muscular woman with short blonde hair sat in a chair with her legs crossed, drumming her fingers on her thigh as she regarded Duran coolly.

“This is de Villiers and Jovanovic,” Zoe said, pointing to each in turn.

De Villiers lifted the knife to his mouth and gripped a slice of apple between his teeth.

“You look like shit,” he remarked between bites.

“Nice to meet you too,” Duran said.

Jovanovic simply nodded at him with a slight grimace, then gave Zoe a little knowing smile, the nature of which Duran could not decipher.

“So this is it?” Duran said, underwhelmed.

“What were you expecting?” de Villiers said.  “A legion of men with a fully equipped barracks and sauna?”

“I don’t know what I was expecting, to be honest.”

“Well, this is it,” de Villiers said.  “This is all we need.”

“Take it easy, de Villiers,” Jovanovic said.  “The guy’s just woken up.  It can’t be easy.”

“Woken up?” de Villiers said, feigning shock.  “And how did that all happen, I wonder?”  He tapped his chin in mock thought.  “Oh yeah.  Captain Deathwish here went up against two armed Redmen after wandering into the Atrium, which happens to be forbidden territory for Enforcers.”

“Is that why you brought me here?” Duran said.  “To chew me out?”

“Just relax, Alec,” Zoe said.  She turned to de Villiers.  “And you, shut your spew hole.”

De Villiers eyes twinkled with delight at having gotten under her skin, and he slipped another slice of apple into his mouth with an innocent shrug.

“Don’t worry about him,” Robson said.  “He does this to all the new recruits.”

“Huh?” Duran said, looking at each of them in turn.  “What new recruit?  I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

“Goddamn, this guy better be a good shot,” de Villiers said.  “’Cos he doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together.”

“The choice is up to you, of course,” Zoe said to Duran, ignoring de Villiers’ barb.  “We hope you’ll at least consider our offer.”

Duran raised an eyebrow.  “So why are you trying to recruit me?”

De Villiers chewed his lip and looked across at Jovanovic, whose eyes did not leave Duran.

“We have an opening,” Jovanovic said.

“You lost someone?  One of your missions go bad?”

“Not really,” Jovanovic went on.  “Zoe’s had you in her sights for a while.  The plan was always to bring you in when the time was right.  But then there was the whole incident in the Atrium, and it looked as though you’d gotten in over your head up there.”

“You were following me?” Duran said, turning back to Zoe.

“Yeah.  I was.”

“If she hadn’t intervened,
you’d be a grease spot by now,” Jovanovic said.  “We don’t recruit grease spots.”

“So what’s the deal with you guys?  What do you call yourselves?” Duran said.  “Who’s in charge?”

“We call ourselves
Scimitar
,” Robson said, drawing out the ‘s’ sound theatrically.

“Actually, we don’t have a name,” de Villiers said, scowling at the other man.  “We don’t have a logo, or branding, or T-shirts.  We are who we are.”

“What’s wrong with Scimitar?” Robson said.

“It’s unnecessary,” de Villiers shot back.

“Says who?”

“Me.”

“No logo, no T-shirts, no
leader
.  Isn’t that how it works?” Robson said sourly.  “We’re all supposed to be autonomous, right?”

“We
are
autonomous,” de Villiers said.

Robson gave him a fake smile.  “Except when you’re calling the shots, right
, De?”

“If you had two brain cells to rub together I wouldn’t need to step in so often, Robson.”

“Do you actually have more than one cliché rattling around in your head, or do you just keep recycling the same saying over and–”

“Knock it off, you two,” Jovanovic said, and the two men glowered at each other but fell silent.  She looked at Duran again.  “These two might seem like knuckleheads, but they’re good at what they do.”

“Which is what?” Duran said.

“I’m the guy who opens the doors around here,” Robson said with a certain degree of pride.  He swept a hand toward the terminal.  “I’m the guy you call ‘Switch’.  I see and hear everything, and I can get you in and out of whatever you need.”

“How do you manage that?” Duran said.

“I used to work in Enforcer security.  Spent most of my time in the back of the data centre, pulling hard drives and resetting passwords.  All of that boring shit.”

“So you still have access to their system?  Why wasn’t your password revoked when you left the Enforcers?”

Robson shrugged.  “They thought they shut down my accounts, but I left myself a few back doors here and there.”

“So what can you access?”

Robson turned back to the terminal.  “We’ve tapped into most of the cameras around the Reach.  In fact, we own almost as many as the Enforcers do now.  Their techs think the hardware is breaking down.  Sure, that’s true in some places, but a lot of them have just been patched out of their system and into ours.”

Duran thought of the conversation he’d had with Parnell in the Enforcer security office, about how many cameras had gone offline, and it all began to make sense.  It wasn’t just natural attrition that was robbing the Enforcers of their systems.  They also had this Robson guy eating away at their insides like a parasite that was slowly consuming their most vital organs.

“What about the rest of you?” Duran said.

“I’m on data analysis,” Jovanovic said, “building dossiers on targets and figuring out their movements.”

“So you give the kill orders?”

“No one person gives the kill orders,” Zoe said.  “We work through the dossiers together.  We decide
as a group who to watch and what actions should be taken.”

Duran looked expectantly at de Villiers, who took another slice of apple in his mouth.

“I’m just a gun,” de Villiers said.  “Point and shoot.  I was a sniper while I was wearing the black.  Best one in the Reach.”

“He’s a field operative,” Zoe said.  “Just like me.”

Duran pulled himself up and straightened his back.

“Yeah, I get it.  You can stop explaining now.”

De Villiers sneered.  “A true mental gymnast in our midst, ladies and–”

“Shut up,” Zoe snapped.  “What do you mean, Alec?”

“I understand.  Let me tell it back to you, and you stop me when I’m wrong.”  He looked at each of them again.  “You guys sit in your little rat hole down here, watching through your little window on the world, picking and choosing the people you’d like to pop.  That would include those who piss you off, or who you find would be convenient to have out the way.  Execution by committee, right?”

“The system has failed, Alec,” Zoe said.  “We’ve created something that isn’t mired in the corruption and the failures of what came before.  We’re the only chance this place has for any kind of true justice.  Why wouldn’t you want to be a part of that?”

“Because when I joined the Enforcers I swore to do a job–”

“And that job is to serve justice,” Zoe said, rounding on him.  “Something the Enforcers themselves have forgotten.  If you can’t see that
,
then…”  She faltered.  “Maybe I was wrong about you.”

Duran pressed his lips together.  “Yeah.  Looks that way.”  He turned and began to push past her, back out into the corridor.

“So that’s it?” Zoe said, her voice thick with disappointment.  “You’re just going to walk away?”

“Thank you for your help.  I appreciate that.  But I can’t buy into what you’re selling.”

He shuffled a few more steps before he heard her follow him out into the corridor.

“Javier Deimona,” Zoe called after him bitterly.  “Know the name?”

Duran stopped and turned his head sharply, ignoring the pain in his shoulder.  He thought back to the chase in Juncture Nine the morning that Knile Oberend had returned to the Reach,
how he’d chased Deimona through the dark alleyways and then eventually taken him down on the rooftop.

“Of course.  What about him?”

Zoe stood defiantly, hands on her hips.  “Seen the autopsy report yet?”

Her eyes were hard and direct, like she was trying to nail him to the wall with her stare.

“No.”

“You be sure to look into that,” she said acidly.  “Take a real good look at it, Alec.”

He turned back to her.  “What are you on about?”

“You’re going to see something unexpected on that report.”  She smiled without humour.  “
You’ll see that it wasn’t a forty-calibre round that went through his chest on that rooftop.”

Duran’s eyes narrowed.  “What?”

“It wasn’t a bullet from your pistol that took down Deimona,” Zoe said.  “Did you really believe you made that shot?”

Duran thought of the moment he’d pulled the trigger on that rooftop, the amazement that he’d felt after he’d made
the shot.  A miracle shot.  He remembered Deimona falling, then a few minutes later seeing him lying on the dimly-lit street with a hole in his chest.

That moment had been Duran’s salvation.  It had restored his self-belief.  For Zoe to intimate that the victory had not really been his was incredibly galling.

Duran advanced on her, the coasters on the IV stand squeaking, his cheeks flushed.  He wasn’t sure if he was feeling embarrassment, anger, or a mixture of the two.

“Are you telling me that you took down Javier Deimona?”

“I told you I’d been watching you,” Zoe said.  “I’d been watching Deimona, too.  I couldn’t let him get away.  I had him in my scopes and I took the shot.”

“You shot Deimona,” Duran said, his voice full of disbelief, but at the same time a part of him knew that what she said could be true.  He’d been shocked
at the time
that he’d made the shot.  Disbelieving.  It made sense that a sniper had been involved.

“You can thank me later,” Zoe said, her tone
scathing.  “Just chalk it up as
another thing you owe me for.”

“Wait a minute–”

“But let’s not draw this out any longer than we have to,” she said, striding past him.  “I’ll take you to the entrance and you can go on your way.”

“Uh, guys?” Robson’s voice came from inside the room, his voice uncertain.  “You really need to see this.”

The two of them looked at each other for a moment, and then both headed for the entrance to the room.  When Duran arrived the others had already clustered around the terminal.  Robson had brought up a video feed that filled the entire screen with the face of Commissioner Prazor.