been close once. It was more than a friendship. I didn’t have any excuse for disappearing like I did.
Then there’d been the interview with Zoe Ott.
I wasn’t sure what I expected out of her, but it wasn’t what I got. I figured in a best- case scenario she might have some kind of tip for me, and when she first came in I stopped hoping for even that. In person she seemed disturbed, and from the smell of it, she’d been drinking. My first reaction was to send her home.
She did something, though. Somehow that pint-sized woman with the bony shoulders and shaky hands sat down across from an ex- military killer and started pulling information out of him that no one had been able to get him to give up. She’d managed that, as best I could tell, just by asking him. I couldn’t shake the way that strange little woman had controlled that situation.
Then either the guy killed himself, or the person that hired him did it remotely. That left me sitting in an interrogation room with a corpse, a camera I had shut off, and a civilian who probably had a substance abuse problem. The inevitable question as to why I let her in there in the first place, I didn’t have a good answer for. The meeting with Faye would make me scarce for an hour. That’s what I told myself.
“Nico?”
I looked across the room and saw her standing by the far wall, waving. She smiled, but her eyes looked nervous. The lower lids were red and she had dark circles under both of them. She looked tired, maybe even sick, but I smiled too in spite of myself.
The last time I saw her, we argued. I told myself it wasn’t as though I never expected to see her again, but when I saw her like that, I think I hadn’t. In some ways, she looked exactly the same, but the picture of her in my mind looked much younger. Had it really been that long?
Making my way over to her, I could see she wasn’t sure how this was going to play out. Neither was I, to be honest. When I got close enough, I offered my hand.
She shook it, her smile turning into a smirk that took me back. Gripping my hand, she pulled me closer, then got on her toes to hug me.
“I missed you,” she said in my ear, but she didn’t let the hug linger. I found myself a little disappointed when she pulled away. When she did, her eyes darted to the scar on the side of my neck. She didn’t ask about it; she just made a note of it.
“Come on,” she said. “I got us a table.”
We sat down, wedged between the window and two businessmen who were talking animatedly. She reached across and switched on the noise screen, tuning it until the chatter of the businessmen faded into the general din.
She ordered hot noodles that came with an egg sitting in another bowl next to it. I got some kind of spring ramen.
“Since when are you a vegetarian?” she asked, peering down at my bowl.
“I’m not.”
She picked up the egg and cracked it, dumping the contents raw onto the noodles. She stirred them with her chopsticks, letting the egg congeal as the steam rose in little clouds between us. When she looked back up at me, her eyes darted to the scar again.
“Ask,” I said.
“What happened?”
“I was injured,” I said. “It happened when I was in the service.”
“How far down does it go?”
“Pretty far.”
She looked back at my face.
“Were your eyes always that blue?”
“No. They’re replacements.”
“Oh.”
“It’s good to see you, Faye.”
She smiled, but her eyes were sad. She looked like she wanted to say something but was having trouble with it. I’m not sure if I did it to spare her or to spare myself, but I spoke first.
“You saw the fire from the train?” I asked.
She nodded. This was familiar ground. This was something we could talk about.
“Yes. The fire was fairly close to the train stop, so I got off at the next platform and followed the smoke.”
“It was hard to tell from the footage,” I said. “Did you approach the truck because you heard something inside?”
“Yes.”
“So the revivor was animate?”
“At first.”
“What made you help it?”
“I didn’t realize it was a revivor at first. I thought she was alive. Even so …”
She sighed, her eyes looking distant for a moment.
“I understand,” I said.
“I’ve seen plenty of bodies, but I can’t get her face out of my mind. She was burned so badly.”
“They don’t feel pain,” I told her, but she didn’t look so sure.
“They don’t,” I said.
“It just seemed like so many of those people there were glad to see her like that.”
“It wasn’t alive.”
“She was once.”
“Yes, but it was too late to do anything about that. What you saw in the truck, they weren’t hostages. I didn’t rescue them.”
“What were they, then?”
“Evidence,” I said, and I could see that it bothered her. This was one of the big reasons why the government didn’t want the general public exposed to revivors if they could help it. When they had to deploy them locally, they used them sparingly. They kept them in full uniform, with their faces mostly covered. People weren’t supposed to relate to them. They were supposed to fear them. It’s what they were for.
“I heard what you did,” she said. “You risked your life.”
“Not for them. Those women didn’t sign up or donate; they were kidnapped and murdered. All I could do with them was deactivate them, dissect them, and hope something in there would lead us to whoever did this to them. So we can stop them from doing it to anyone else.”
She smiled, but looked down.
“You’ve changed.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry; I’m running on fumes.”
“Stim wearing off?”
“Yes.”
“You want tea?”
“I want sleep.”
She stared into her noodles, stirring them.
“The girl, the revivor, it spoke to me,” she said.
“Before it died, or deactivated, it was trying to tell me something.”
“What did it say?”
“It said to hide behind whatever I could and keep my head down, but I think it was rambling at that point.”
I recognized the words as the last thing I’d said to the revivor, but didn’t point that out.
“Anything else?”
“Yes. It said, ‘Zhang knew the truth.’ ”
“Zhang?”
“Yes. It said I had to wake up, and then it said it again: ‘Zhang knew the truth.’ ”
Zhang. That name had not come up at any point in our investigation. Not on the client list or Tai’s contact