The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (4 page)

But she wasn’t really curious.

She was too sick to be curious.

Too sick to be frightened too, and too sick to be having second or third or eighteenth thoughts. She was going to blame her sickness for her willingness to help Didier, if, of course, he got caught.

Wasn’t she going to turn him in?

She couldn’t remember her plan.

Just his, which sounded implausible, but she didn’t care. Right now, she needed air. Oxygen. Pure oxygen.

And she really needed to puke.

Not just because he said so.

Somehow she remembered to turn on the tracking in her links, helping her find the security post, past all of these blank black walls, behind which were some of the most vicious criminals in the sector. Vicious and impotent, that was what the warden told her when they hired her. Unable to get out, unable to escape, unable to harm anyone ever again.

How in the universe had Frémont managed to get his hands on poison? Or had someone poisoned him? Had someone killed him?

That did happen in here sometimes. In the cold and the low oxygen and the limited contact. Every month or two, someone died. Was murdered. Got stabbed or their head rammed into a wall. No one could prevent a beating death. Some of these human prisoners knew just the right way to do it, just the right way to kill someone.

Had Didier done that?

If so, how had he kept his hands clean?

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

She knew too much already.

Somehow, she reached the security area. From the inside, the entrance into the cell block looked like a gauntlet. Windows, android guards, obvious cameras everywhere. Her own features faced her in the security window. She looked gray and unfocused, barely human at all, her dark eyes sunken into her gaunt face.

She placed her palm against the scanner, then leaned in so that it could also take her retinal scan, as well as go over every single security chip she had.

The new position unbalanced her. The world grew black around her, and from a distance, she heard a voice in her own head—her voice, saying from very far away,
Don’t faint. Don’t faint. Don’t faint.

“Okay,” she whispered. She blinked, reminded herself that she was only a few meters away from real air, and looked up.

Two of the android guards were peering at her.

Are you ill?
That voice wasn’t hers. It belonged to the system. She recognized it. She heard it when the shuttle she took from home docked every morning, when her passes got approved as she tried to enter, when she had to look into the various scanners, sometimes even when she sat down at her desk.

No
, she sent.
Not ill
.
I mean, yes. Oxygen Deprivation Syndrome. I need air. I need to get out of here or I swear to God, I’m going to puke. (I might puke anyway.)

She wasn’t sure she added that last thought to her link or if she just felt it and didn’t send it.

Her stomach lurched.

You will have to go through decontamination
, the system told her.

The androids were still peering at her, as if they didn’t understand what she was doing.

Okay, fine
, she sent.
Just get me the hell out of here
.

It wasn’t until the first security door slid back with a clang that she worried she had just made the wrong choice. Would decontamination discover the evidence bags of DNA? Would it nullify them? Alter them?

Would that make Didier angry?

She took a deep breath. The air seemed richer here. Maybe it was. She felt a little less dizzy.

She stepped inside the decontamination chamber.

Screw Didier. She didn’t work for him. He was probably going to get her in trouble. She was the one who had carried the damn bags in, and she was the one carrying them out filled with stuff. The security monitors were off near the cell. All he had to say was that he had asked for the bags to follow protocol, and she had brought extra so that she could steal DNA.

She set the box on the ground, then braced her hands against the wall as the door to the decontamination chamber closed. She kept her chin up. If she let her head droop, she might pass out.

She closed her eyes anyway.

The first step of decontamination is to see if you have picked up any viruses or contaminates inside. If you are infected, then this system will move to the second step and begin the decontamination procedure. Do you understand?

Yes
, she sent back, and didn’t add,
Just like I understood the five hundred other times you asked, you damn machine
.

A light passed over her. It wasn’t as red as the light in the cell block, but it made her think of that light. She ran her tongue against her teeth. Would the stupid decontamination system pick up stench molecules? The odd smell? The scent of death?

Had Frémont’s corpse contaminated her somehow, by shutting off the environmental system? Had whatever poisoned him done so in such a way that she would bring the poison with her? Would the system shut it down?

Her stomach flipped again.
Oh, hurry,
she thought—or maybe she sent—
I’m going to be sick
.

You have no signs of illness,
the system told her.
Unless you are speaking colloquially…?

Yes, dammit,
she sent.
I have Oxygen Deprivation Syndrome. I’m going to puke.

Signs of Oxygen Deprivation Syndrome include elevated heartbeat, and nausea. You do not show signs of edema or nose bleed, nothing to indicate that you have severe symptoms that would require medical attention.

I am going to throw up,
she repeated.
You need to get me out of here.

The oxygen levels in this unit are increasing. It will ease your feeling of nausea, although rest is indicated. A medical technician will meet you on the other side.

After I puke,
she sent.

If they let her out of here.

You are free of contaminants
, the system sent,
and are free to go
.

Thank you
, she sent, and hoped to hell the sarcasm got through. She was halfway out the door when she remembered the damn box.

She turned around to get it, making herself dizzy all over again. Black spots formed, and she had to will herself to remain upright.

She crouched, using her knees, not bending over, and grabbed the box. She couldn’t leave it here. Not after everything.

She staggered out of the chamber. She was breathing better, and the dizziness was fading somewhat. And so was the nausea. The urge to puke wasn’t as extreme.

Still, if she clung to that story, she might get through all the protocols faster.

Another door, an android examining her with its yellow eyes, another watching her, a red sign appearing on its forehead.
You are being surveyed. Your actions may be used in legal proceedings. You have no rights to privacy in this part of the prison
.

She knew that too, but she couldn’t take her gaze off those words.

“Yeah, fine,” she said. “Got it.”

Just in case she had to speak to it. She took a few more steps forward. Through the five remaining layers of security doors and windows, she could see the corridor she needed. She could even see the bathroom.

She focused on it, as if it could save her, her fingers wrapped around the evidence box.

She concentrated on moving forward, on getting out.

She concentrated, until she was finally free.

SIX

MIDWAY THROUGH THE loss of her stomach contents, when Jhena remembered to wipe her hand on her shirt before pushing her hair from her face, she also realized she had forgotten to notify the system about Frémont’s death. She was still light-headed, still unable to wrap her mind around someone dying alone inside the cell block, and shutting down the system.

Not that she could think much.

She managed to send a message to her immediate supervisor before bending over to puke again.

The bathroom had been clean when she entered. Clean and so much warmer than the cell block. She usually found this bathroom cold and impersonal, with its black and gray non-reflective walls, the wide stalls (which she was so grateful for right now) and the sinks that emerged from beneath the mirrors whenever anyone approached.

She always felt watched here, even if she wasn’t, no matter how many times the staff reassured her. The
prisoners
had no privacy, they said, but the staff did. The staff always would.

She had barely made it inside the bathroom before throwing up the first time. She landed on her knees, (which she instantly regretted as they got wet). When she was done, she pulled herself up, and hoped she was done.

Then the cleaning bots detached themselves from the wall, little black rounded things scuttling toward her, long hose suction devices deploying toward the remains of the expensive tuna fish lunch she had bought herself before getting on the shuttle for work, and that thought sent her into the nearest stall.

At least she hadn’t made as much of a mess there.

All she kept hearing in her mind was Didier’s voice, telling her to puke. Well, she had done that. And somehow, she’d managed to keep a grip on the box with the evidence bags.

The notification she had sent her immediate supervisor was cryptic:
Frémont dead in cell. Security shut down. Need assistance
.

And the supervisor hadn’t responded—at least not in the few seconds it took Jhena to lose every meal she had ever eaten in her entire life.

She sat down on the cold floor, leaning against the toilet, which flushed automatically, and closed her eyes for just a moment.

Then the sirens went off.

They weren’t the escape sirens—those blared, with actual voices coming through the links, warning the staff that some prisoner had managed to slip out of the secure holdings. Since she’d been here, no one had managed to get outside of the cell blocks, to the staff area where she worked, but not for want of trying.

That was what was so impressive about maximum security: notifications started the moment the prisoner failed to follow routine, not the moment some human (or staff member) realized the prisoner had actually disappeared.

It wasn’t alert sirens either, the kind that every station had, that called for a total evacuation (of everyone who could evacuate: the prisoners couldn’t).

No, these sirens—loud, but not so loud that the dead would awaken—ran for a few minutes, followed by an order inside the links for authorized personnel to hurry to Frémont’s cellblock.

She wasn’t authorized, but she had been there.

Frémont was dead, and here she was, sitting on a cold bathroom floor, her clothes stained, her left arm still gripping the evidence box with all of the evidence bags containing Frémont’s DNA.

If she got caught….

At that moment, her supervisor’s image rose in front of her. Markita Duran was tiny, with a round face and rounder eyes, a turned-up nose, and a bow-shaped mouth. Outside of the prison, Jhena had actually heard a man call Duran pretty.

She wasn’t pretty. She had a sweet face that hid one of the meanest souls Jhena had ever encountered.

“You’re away from your post,” Duran’s floating head said. She looked awful, superimposed against the stall’s open door. The image reflected slightly in the wall of mirrors, but only as a square blocked-out shape, not as a person.

Here it was: Jhena had to think clearly when she was at her absolute worst. Plus she had to keep Duran from noticing the evidence box.

Or did she?

“Yes, I’m away from my post,” Jhena said. She wanted to add,
when you throw up, it’s better to do it away from your desk
, but this was her supervisor. She didn’t dare. “I just threw up. I’d like to take this off visual.”

“No,” Duran said. “You’re holding an evidence box. What’s that about?”

Jhena hoped her face didn’t show the spike of fear that just went through her. “Didier Comte contacted me through my private links. He couldn’t access the network inside the cellblock.”

“Then how could he reach you?” Duran asked.

“I don’t know,” Jhena said miserably. “Maybe because it was my private links—”

“Are you two seeing each other outside of work?” Duran asked. Jhena wanted to check regulations. She wasn’t sure if fraternization wasn’t allowed. She was convinced friendship was, because in the apartments where they all lived, she’d seen lots of employees talking with each other, and it didn’t look like work.

“We know each other.” Her voice rasped against her throat. The smell in here was clearing out, and the fresh air of the environmental system felt good on her face. “But we’re not dating, if that’s what you’re asking.”