Masterminds (33 page)

The ones that led to the Moon bombing?
Flint asked.

No, experimental ones from something before Frémont died.
All Alliance stuff, which I don’t pretend to understand and can’t access in depth, but I know you have sources on it. Here’s what I know, though. This Jarvis? Besides the clones, he was active on the Moon for years. He knew how important the Moon is, and how to infiltrate systems.

Flint thought about that for a moment. Ike Jarvis. No wonder Zagrando had risked his life to come here.

You’re thinking that Jarvis helped mastermind the attacks on the Moon?
Flint sent.

Naw
, Nyquist sent, surprising Flint.
He’s not old enough
.

Flint blinked, realized that while he was putting some of the pieces together well, he wasn’t assembling others at all. Of course Jarvis hadn’t been old enough. Some of the planning started before Jarvis had been born.

I do think he helped facilitate it
, Nyquist sent.
And I think he used some of it to do some of his own dirty work—and to turn a blind eye to bad stuff his operatives were doing. Like Faulke, killing clones as a hobby.

Flint shuddered again. He wondered how often that happened all over the Alliance, and then decided he didn’t want to know.

Do you have information as to who Jarvis is tied to?
he sent.

That kind of crap is your job,
Nyquist said.
I found Jarvis, Koos, and an operation here, thanks to your little case number. What I find fascinating is that the case ties Jarvis, the Alliance, clones, and killers with one neat little bow. You got your connection, Flint.

Flint frowned. He wasn’t sure why this was “his” connection and not “their” connection.

What can you be working on that’s more important than this?
Flint sent.

I got to deal with some dirty cops, and it’s not fun on top of everything else.
I hope I can wrap it up in the next twenty-four hours or something
, Nyquist sent.
But for the moment, I’m the go-to-honest-cop on this assignment. I guess being a lonely asshole is perfect for this kind of work
.

And then he signed off without waiting for Flint’s response. Flint had never heard Nyquist be quite that bitter before, and he wondered what Nyquist had run into.

Flint thought of contacting him again to simply say thank you, but he knew that Nyquist would hate that. Besides, every minute counted here.

Flint moved to one of the screens running the Jarvis information, and started isolating the names of everyone that Jarvis had worked with in his long career. Flint was going to cross-reference those with names he’d run into in his investigation.

He glanced over at the screen showing the destruction of Hétique City, then shut it off. If Deshin were involved…

Then he shook his head. Of course, Deshin had been involved. The man might’ve cared about his family, and he might’ve cared about others, but he had just been part of a small army killing innocents.

Flint understood DeRicci’s antipathy. He’d let Deshin’s charm disarm some of his caution.

Of course, Flint and Deshin had been using each other. Deshin had gotten Flint enough information to move forward on this investigation. And, apparently, some of the information Deshin had received had benefitted him as well.

Flint swallowed back some bile and returned to his work, forcing himself to concentrate. He needed complete focus here. He needed—

Suddenly, alerts went off on every screen and in his emergency links. His heart rate spiked. He only had a few alerts set, and most of them concerned Talia.

The alerts informed him of a systems breach—a major systems breach, a devastating systems breach.

Flint shook his head slightly, shut down the warning bells and the bright blinking visuals and opened the alerts, reminding himself that if Talia were in trouble, the information wouldn’t come to him as a systems’ breach. This had to be old, from some system he had set up years ago—or from his system here.

He opened the alert, realized it wasn’t an old system or his system in his office, but something he had forgotten he had done.

He had set backdoor alerts inside the Security Office. He had boosted their systems when the building was built, and after DeRicci got hired, and then again, after Anniversary Day.

This was the old alert. It shouldn’t have been triggered first. The new alert was state-of-the-art. The old alert—

—had gotten missed by the person or persons who breached the system. They had shut down the other alerts.

Flint went through the alert, using the back door he had set up then, and hit a wall. At the same time, he tried to contact DeRicci through his links and got a notification that he was not authorized to contact her.

He had his own system search for a way into the Security Office, and he was told, repeatedly, no matter what contact he tried, that he was in a queue and it would take time to reach someone.

His palms were sweating. He tried to reach Popova directly, and was once again told he wasn’t authorized. He tried both DeRicci and Popova through private emergency links, and got nothing at all.

He contacted Nyquist,
Something’s going wrong at the Security Office. I just got an alert that their systems were breached. Notify someone at Armstrong PD. Send officers to the Security Office. I’m heading there now.

Got it
, Nyquist sent back.

Flint glanced at all his systems, thought again about the work he’d lose if he’d shut it all down, then realized he needed to take this particular hack as a sign of what could happen even in his well-protected office.

The Security Office had the best system security in the city, and someone had still gotten in.

Now Flint was going to have to figure out how to get into the building as well—and then figure out what to do.

He went into his back room and got two laser pistols. He put the small one in his ankle holster, which he hadn’t used since he left the force, and attached the holster to his right leg. Then he put the other pistol in another holster, which he attached to his hip.

His racing heart had slowed down. Somehow, he had reconnected with the man he had been when he worked for the Armstrong Police Department. He knew that working methodically was his best choice.

He let his own links continue to ping the Security Office, hoping someone else got there and solved this quickly. Then he shut down all the systems in his office and let himself out.

Once he had locked everything down, he ran to his car.

He needed to get to the Security Office—and he needed to do it fast.

FORTY-EIGHT

THAT WAS TWICE
. Rudra Popova felt a surge of anger at herself. Twice she had melted down in a crisis. The first time had been on Anniversary Day, when she had seen images of Arek Soseki’s body splayed on the sidewalk in front of O’Malley’s Diner. She had loved Soseki, hadn’t told him because they wanted to keep their relationship secret until after the election, and then he was gone—such a vibrant man, gone.

And now, a betrayal in their midst—and it was her fault. She had checked and double-checked and made sure the staff had checked Lawrence Ostaka’s credentials, but had anyone here ever thought to check for clone markers? Of course not.

She hurried down the hall, listening to her feet whisper against the carpet, thinking the overweight, rumpled asshole could hear her every move. He probably had the conference room booby-trapped or something, his stuff protected.

He had sat in that space for weeks and watched them scurry around, trying to protect the entire city during the Peyti Crisis, and he hadn’t lifted a finger to help. Why hadn’t any of them seen that as a red flag? Why had they accepted that as normal?

Because Goudkins had, and Goudkins was helping them. She knew everything they were doing.
Everything
.

Popova took a deep breath, knew she had to stop panicking, panicking would ruin everything. And she had to be stealthy.

For all she knew, the chief was just debriefing Ostaka or they were having a private conversation. Nothing bad was going on in there. It couldn’t be.

Just because everything had changed for Popova didn’t mean it had changed for Ostaka—if she didn’t reveal herself now. She had to be careful, and normal at the same time. She had to be innocent if he was already back in the conference room.

She stopped at her desk, got the little device the Security Office used to measure stranger DNA. Everyone on staff had gotten one of those back when the office opened, and Popova had never had to use it before. The systems downstairs and throughout the building—hell, the systems at the port, the systems on locked doors, the systems all over the city—always checked DNA, and confirmed someone was who they said they were.

She had laughed when she got this little device, back when Arek was alive, when Celia Alfreda thought this office was going to be her little police force, long before Anniversary Day.

I have no idea why I’m going to need this thing,
Popova had said, holding it.
It’s a waste of money
.

At least it was simple to use. She had tested it on herself that day, and sure enough, she had been who she said she was.

Now, she needed to use it on something Ostaka had touched—and only Ostaka.

She glanced both ways, saw no one else in the corridor, realized that the very movement alone—that glance—probably looked suspicious. Her face heated.

She was awful at this.

She snuck down the corridor, reached the conference room, and let out a small sigh of relief. He wasn’t in it.

Then her stomach clenched. He wasn’t in the conference room, which meant he was still with the chief.

Popova hoped the chief was all right.

Popova pushed open the door, hating the windows that opened the entire conference room to the corridor. She had initially put Ostaka and Goudkins in this room for the windows, so that Popova could monitor them if she had to, back when she’d been suspicious of both of them. Then she ended up trusting Goudkins (had that been a mistake?) and forgetting about Ostaka.

How stupid was she, anyway?

Popova was shaking. She was no hero, and she knew it. She could organize heroes; she couldn’t be one.

But she had to do this. She didn’t trust Berhane Magalhães to do it, and she didn’t like the man Ms. Magalhães had come with. Not that Popova didn’t trust him. She actually did. He was just an idiot, and she couldn’t give this job over to an idiot.

Well, not that she was much better.

She glanced into the corridor, saw she was still alone, and collected herself. She walked to one of the side counters, pretending to be looking for something, all the while scanning the room using her peripheral vision.

Networked machines—not networked to the Security Office, but, in theory, to the Alliance (Popova shuddered. The Alliance. They had known for a while that the Alliance was involved. Dammit). The tablet she had given Goudkins for work here in the Security Office, with most of the important systems blocked off. (Why didn’t Goudkins have it? Had Ostaka taken it from her?)

A mug, filled with some liquid. A plate covered with scaly leftovers.

And a jacket crumpled against the floor. A suit jacket, gray and undistinguished, like everything else Ostaka wore.

The jacket had fallen off the back of his chair.

Still, Popova picked the jacket up and shook it out, making sure it was big enough for Ostaka. It was.

If he saw her with it, she would simply say that it had fallen and she was replacing it. She ran the device along the lining of the jacket, and down its edges, watching the device record the sloughed off skin cells and tiny hairs it collected.

She had more than enough. She probably had too much.

But she made sure the device went all the way to the hem of the jacket before quitting.

Then she looked out the windows again, saw no one—where were the guards? Where was the rest of the staff?—and dropped the coat behind the chair.

She had to kick the coat’s edges so that it bunched up the way it had before. She slipped the device into the pocket of her pants, then went to the sideboard again, as if she were still looking for something.

If Ostaka was monitoring her from his links, he would be suspicious now. She should have put that coat on the back of his chair.

Or not. She had no idea. If he had seen that device, he would be suspicious anyway.

She swallowed hard, clenched her fists to hold back the panic, and then made herself walk to the door.

She half expected him to jump out at her from the corridor.

He didn’t.

She couldn’t see him at all.

She thought again about warning the chief, but knew if she had it wrong, the chief would be mad. Besides, Ms. Magalhães had been right; he’d been here for months. What could another few minutes matter?