The Peyti Crisis: A Retrieval Artist Novel: Book Five of the Anniversary Day Saga (Retrieval Artist series 12) (5 page)

“It was what I was asking,” Duran said. “He’ll give me the same response?”

“I hope so.” Jhena felt miserable, and beneath it, angry. She had just gotten sick, for godsake, and there was a dead man in the cell block and
this
was what Duran cared about?

“You were telling me about the evidence box,” Duran said.

“Didier requested it,” Jhena said, and leaned her head against the edge of the toilet seat. Not that it mattered. Nanobots had already cleaned that part of the room. They just hadn’t touched her, because they needed permission to do so.

She probably shouldn’t have used Didier’s first name in this conversation. Too late now, though.

“Why did he contact you?” Duran asked.

“Didn’t you get my message?” Jhena said. “Maybe I sent it wrong. PierLuigi Frémont is dead. The network was down near the cell, so Didier asked me to come in there. Maybe he tried other guards. I don’t know. He probably couldn’t reach them. He used my private links.”

She wasn’t sure how many times she’d have to repeat that last part.

“What has that to do with the evidence box?” Duran asked.

Oh, yeah. God, she was unfocused. It wasn’t fair to ask her to lie when her brain wasn’t working right.

“Didier asked for it. He was afraid that some of the evidence would get screwed up or something. I left a bunch of bags with him. You need to send someone to help him—”

“We’ve done that,” Duran asked. “Why did you leave him?”

Now she was going to get in trouble for leaving him? How unfair was that?

“It smelled. The environmental system was down too, and the smell was so bad I could taste it. I—” she held up a finger. Her stomach was rolling again. Just the memory of the smell made her feel ill.

She swallowed hard. Her mouth no longer tasted of death. It tasted of stomach acid and tuna fish, and somehow she found that thought comforting.

Her stomach settled.

“Sorry,” she said. She sounded as miserable as she felt. “He didn’t want me to puke in there. He thought it would contaminate the scene.”

To her surprise, Duran smiled. The smile wasn’t intimidating or fake. It seemed real and amused. “He was right. It looks like your stomach is sensitive, and we can’t have someone like that on the floor.”

For a moment, Jhena thought she meant on an actual floor—and she was, and she was going to protest—but then she realized that Duran meant inside the block.

“Forgive me for asking,” Jhena said, working hard at controlling her tongue, “but can I go now? I need to take care of myself before getting back to work.”

Not that she wanted to go back to work. She wanted Duran to give her the rest of the night off. Of course, Duran wouldn’t do that. Duran wasn’t that kind.

Besides, there was no one to take Jhena’s place. That was why she was working this shift in the first place.

“Use one of those remaining evidence bags for your clothes,” Duran said. “Leave it in the forensic units. There’s a shower in the guards locker area that you can use and coveralls if you don’t have a change of clothes.”

Now Jhena had to follow a script. She hoped she could remember all of it.

“Can’t the bots just clean off my clothes?” she asked, and she didn’t even have to work at making herself sound plaintive.

“No, this is too delicate,” Duran said as quickly as Didier had said she would. “The cleaning bots will destroy as much as they save.”

Jhena eyed them. Three of them had gathered in front of the stall door, as if they were sentient and wanted access to her.

She shuddered, even though the room wasn’t cold.

“You need to bag the clothes, and leave them here.”

“I threw up out here,” Jhena said. God, she was whining. “I don’t have many clothes, and if I leave any—can’t I just take them home?”

Duran frowned just a little. Then she turned away from the camera, her gaze downward a bit. She was doing exactly what Didier had said she would do: she was checking Jhena’s progress from the blacked-out security area to the bathroom. She would see that Jhena hadn’t thrown up yet. She would see that Jhena hadn’t lied—at least about the clothes.

“All right,” Duran said after a moment. “Bag them anyway, because I have to check this with my supervisor. But I have a hunch that he won’t have a problem.”

Jhena suddenly felt very tired. One more hurdle crossed. “Thank you,” she said.

“You did good work here, Andre,” Duran said. “Difficult situations often show our metal. Don’t worry about your sensitive stomach. You managed to get out of there, and that was good. Now, finish off your shift, and go home. And make sure you drink some fluids.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Jhena said. She actually felt grateful. It surprised her.

Duran’s image had vanished. (Before the thank-yous? Jhena wasn’t sure.) Jhena double-checked her links, made sure that she could block the visuals now. If Duran tried to contact her again, then Duran would believe that Jhena was cleaning herself off.

Which she would be.

She would also be taking care of the DNA, like she had promised Didier.

He hadn’t lied about the procedures.

She hoped he hadn’t lied about anything else.

SEVEN

THE COVERALLS MADE Jhena feel like a different person.

Or, more accurately, they made her feel like the person she’d left behind.

She sat on the bench between the lockers, finger-combing her now-dry hair. She had taken a quick shower because she didn’t want to leave the evidence bags alone for very long, even if they were in a guest locker, secured to the chips hidden under her skin. Even after the shower, she still felt like she smelled of vomit: she knew that came from the lining of her nose, and the back of her throat. She had used oral cleansers, and they had helped, just not quite enough.

Her hands were still shaking, and the coveralls weren’t helping.

They were blue and white, prison guard regulation clothing, for dirty jobs, and they were made of some scratchy material, as if the designers couldn’t find something soft that worked equally well.

The scratchiness, the bagginess, the unfamiliarity reminded her of that night her father had given her to the authorities, with the promise that her aunt would come for her. She had no idea what would happen; she thought he was gone for good, and that he had lied.

He was gone for good, but he hadn’t lied—at least not to her. Her aunt had shown up from Earth, a seven-day journey. By then, Jhena had given up all hope.

And the entire time, she’d been wearing regulation coveralls, because god forbid that any child would feel different from any other child in government care. The long-timers had no special clothing, so Jhena didn’t get to wear hers.

She had gotten it back, along with the toys her father had packed for her, but she hadn’t had any access to it during those seven days.

Those days had changed her, made her quieter, made her terrified, at least on some level. She certainly never trusted anyone.

Even though she was trusting Didier now.

Kinda. She was at least following his instructions.

Or she would the moment she opened the locker.

You’ll be surprised at how simple it will be,
Didier had said as he told her what to do after she left the cell block.
You take out the evidence bag, put your clothes in it, then put that bag wherever they want you to. Then you take the box back to storage, with all of the DNA bags inside it. No one will look at it, and I’ll clear everything out when I leave.

She stared at that closed locker door. Black, like everything else in this place; a bit reflective, unlike other parts, probably so someone can check to see if the clothes fit properly without moving to the mirrors; impossible to open without the right code, just like all the other staff areas in the entire prison block.

She swallowed. Her throat hurt. She had actually damaged it. The last time she’d been that sick had been the one and only time she had gotten drunk. Being drunk made her uncomfortable; the loss of control terrified her, instead of liberating her like her friends had promised. And then it had all ended like the last hour had ended, on a bathroom floor, staring down cleaning bots as if they had a mind of their own.

He was using her. That’s what her entire mind kept coming back to.

Didier was using her. He might have done so from the very beginning.

He hadn’t chatted her up because he found her attractive. When had any man found her attractive? He wasn’t needy—that had become clear in the cell block. He had used her, maybe not with Frémont’s death in mind, but somehow, with some random future event awaiting both of them. Saving her for just the right moment, which had happened today.

What she couldn’t quite figure out was if he would turn her in. She didn’t think he would because that would raise too many questions. But he wouldn’t be that accommodating either.

He’d spoken of millions. And now that her head cleared, she understood why. He was going to sell the DNA. Crazies always thought that criminal DNA had uses. And some people liked to buy it just because they had a fetish for horrible people like Frémont.

She didn’t doubt that there would be millions if Didier figured out a way to monetize Frémont’s DNA. She just doubted that there would be millions
for her
.

She would be taking half of the risk, and getting none of the reward.

She would spend the rest of her life in fear if she didn’t turn him in, and maybe even in fear if she did turn him in.

After all, she had no idea who Didier was actually working with.

From his calm attitude, he had done this before—and he knew that she hadn’t.

She ran her hands through her hair. She couldn’t sit here very long. She had no idea how long it would take Didier to get off shift. Probably a long time, considering the debrief.

The sirens had ended while she was in the shower, but the investigation was just beginning. She hadn’t been through this before, but she knew the drill. It was in all the procedure manuals.

Whenever something went wrong on a floor, there would be a full-scale investigation, one that could last weeks, maybe even years. The best thing to do, according to the guidelines, was to be honest.

And she doubted she was going to do that. Not unless she did it right now.

Because she needed to turn in Didier right now, or never.

She wished she knew what he was going to do next.

She let out a small sigh. She did know one thing: if he had partners, and they expected millions, and she screwed them of those millions, then they would come after her.

She hadn’t been a government orphan for long, but she’d been one long enough to learn how feral humans could be when threatened. It was a lesson she never forgot.

Her entire childhood was a lesson she would never forget.

That decided her. She leaned forward, and used the back of her left hand to unlock the locker. Then she blocked the bottom of the locker with her body as she pulled the door open.

She grabbed one clean evidence bag, put two of the full evidence bags she had carried out for Didier in that clean bag, and then sealed the clean bag. She then took another evidence bag, opened it, and stuffed her filthy pants into it, the stench of vomit making her gag.

She put the bag with the two bags on top of her pants, then stuffed her shirt on top of that, tucking in the sides so that none of it was visible with a single glance. All anyone could see would be her clothing, nothing more.

Her hands were shaking. Her brain stuttered. Her conscience spoke up—not for the first time today—and reminded her of something she already knew.

This was her last chance. Her last chance to be honest, to do the right thing.

Her father had done the right thing—and she had never seen him again.

She sealed the evidence bag, and watched it turn yellow, which meant the seal was active. Then she set it beside her, and took out the box with all those incriminating bags.

If she reported Didier now, the discrepancy between the bags he said he filled and the ones he actually filled might become a matter of record. She could only hope that he hadn’t counted the bags he used. And if he counted the bags left in the open box, she would tell him that she needed four bags for her clothes.

He might actually believe that.

Or he might expect her to steal a bag or two.

She sat up. Her hands weren’t shaking any more.

She had made her decision, and she was acting on it.

Next stop, the storage room to replace the bags, just like Didier had instructed.

Then she would finish her shift, go home with her evidence bag of soiled clothes, and leave it in the bottom of her own closet until she figured out what to do with it.

The lightheadedness had returned—not because she was still suffering from ODS, but because she had forgotten to breathe.

She could breathe now.