State of Decay

“What’s your name?” she asked.

I’d seen hypnosis before, but never anything like that. I knew his type, and he was ex-military. He was trained on how to behave if he was ever captured, and he could endure a lot of pain and interrogation. It didn’t make sense that a ninety-pound woman could walk in and make him give everything up in less than a minute, but that’s what it looked like he was about to do.

The kill switch implanted in his head seemed to believe so too.

The more I watched her, the more interesting the strange woman became. I needed to get her back, but I didn’t know if after what happened, I wanted to risk bringing her back in. Maybe I could set something up off the premises….

Backing up the recording, I watched as the man reversed out of his stupefied state and the smirk returned. The spit jumped in reverse through the space between his teeth and Zoe backed away; then the camera did as well as we both moved back down the hallway.

If I had known what was going to happen, I’d have watched her more closely, but as it was, I was focused initially on the suspect and, I had to admit, the message from Faye I had gotten earlier. The only other time we were alone was when Zoe first came in and I met her in the conference room. That had been a short introduction, but it was better than nothing. I kept backing up, looking for the moment when I first walked in and saw her.

The camera turned as we backed into the conference room and then sat at the table. For a while I focused on her face as she spoke, glancing down self-consciously; then I saw her pupils dilate. They dilated completely, just as they had in the interrogation room.

I stopped rewinding and let the footage play.

“…and take me to him. When we get there, do what I say and I’ll prove it to you,” she said.

My eyes had been fixed on hers, just staring, with her staring up at me.

“Do you understand?” she asked.

“Yes,” I heard myself say, and I froze the image.

As sure as I was of anything, that had not happened. I would have remembered it. Frantically, I searched my memory for any trace of that conversation, but it wasn’t there.

Stunned, I scanned back until her pupils returned to normal a few seconds prior.

“…can help you,” she said.

“How?”

That I remembered. I watched as she pushed the paper, her skill list, across to me. I remembered the exasperation and annoyance I had felt when I first realized what I was looking at.

“I’m serious.”

“You know, I can see that you are.”

Her face changed, and then her eyes.

“Wait,” she said.

“Okay.”

“You need to give me a chance,” she said in a low voice. “If you could know one thing right now that you don’t, what would it be?”

“Did she love me?” I heard myself ask. It was barely a whisper.

Zoe’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Something to do with your case,” she snipped.

“We have a suspect in custody,” I told her. “I need him to talk.”

“Good,” she said. “I can make him do that. Don’t think about it. Just trust your instincts and take me to him. When we get there, do what I say and I’ll prove it to you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

She stared at me as I paused the footage again. She looked at me exactly the way she had looked at the suspect. The nervousness, the shyness—they were gone, replaced by a confidence that seemed absolute. Was the awkwardness an act?

The JZI pinged. Wachalowski, it’s Noakes.

Yeah.

There was nothing left. The blast destroyed everything. Serial numbers, lot codes—it’s all slag.

What about organics?

A team is trying to track down a piece we can tie to the revivor, but the site is a mess.

I understand.

No radiation was detected, and no biological agents, but see Sean anyway and let him check you out.

I’m on my way down now. Sir, that bomb was strapped to a revivor, another combat model. It was fitted with a standard communications array. It was definitely military.

Did you make contact with it?

I had extended the connection roughly a minute before the bomb went off. It didn’t think it was going to accept it, but with less than five seconds on the timer, it had. I wasn’t facing it at that point; Faye had come out of the restaurant and I was moving her away when the revivor had suddenly picked up.

Time to wake up, Agent Wachalowski.

That was all it said. Before I could respond, it was gone.

Briefly. It knew who I was. It had to have come from Tai’s unknown contacts. They know we’re on to them.

What about the detective?

She gave me a name one of the revivors from the fire gave her. Also, she saw something I think might have been the attacker underneath an LW suit.

There was a pause before I got a response to that one.

Light-warping technology is top secret. Only a few countries even have access to it. Do you have any idea how expensive that would be?

Someone has money to burn.

What about the name?

A last name only: Zhang. No leads on it yet.

Could it be the name of one of Tai’s customers?

Maybe. I’m following up on the dock revivor now. I’ll let you know what I find.

I switched off the images and made my way to the subbasement, then into the dingy corridor that led to the morgue. The morgue was usually Judy’s domain, and she wasn’t used to sharing it. When the door opened, Sean was leaning over a body that was facedown on the tray while she hovered nearby, her arms crossed in front of her. She glanced at me when I came in. As I approached them, I caught a faint, bitter-tar smell.

“How’s it going?” I asked. The room was brightly lit, and Sean was still bent over the body, squinting into a magnifying lens that was strapped to his head.

“Getting there,” he said. He was peering into a square hole he had cut in the back of the revivor’s skull, teasing at something with his instruments. His white latex gloves were smeared with blackish blood.

“Find anything?”

“Your news jockey’s eyes were mostly intact,” he said, nodding toward a fluid- filled jar on the counter where they now stared out through the glass at me.

“They’re slightly different colors,” I observed.

“Only one is a fake; the other one’s natural. I was able to pull a little bit out of the buffer of the camera eye. I flagged it for you.”

I connected to the server and checked it out. The first clip was little more than a few frames strung together; it looked like the SWAT team escorting one of the revivors out of the building after the raid. The next was actually a shot of me, from when he had approached me in the lobby.