State of Decay

and the long blade that had been concealed up inside the forearm. Sean used his forceps to pick up a cluster of nodules webbed together that had been the revivor components fixed beneath the skull and along the spine, but they were ruined.

“What caused that?” Judy asked, leaning back in.

“I think I did,” I said. The text I’d managed to pull off before I’d triggered the gelatin’s release still sat in a window in the corner of my vision. I brought it to the forefront for a closer look. It was a portion of a list of names.

5. Mae Zhu

6. Rebecca Valle

7. Harold Craig

8. Doyle Shanks

I didn’t recognize any of them. There were four missing from the head of the list, and any number that might have followed.

“I’ll catalogue what’s left behind here and see what I can get off of it,” Sean said.

“You do that,” I said. “In the meantime, I think it’s time I poked my head in over at Heinlein Industries.”

“Yeah?”

“Their product is popping up where it doesn’t belong.”

I pushed through the doors to the lab, and Sean followed me out, glancing over his shoulder as Judy frowned at the cadaver tray.

“As a heads-up,” he said, keeping his voice low, “I sat on my findings regarding your suspect’s kill switch as long as I could, but Noakes knows. He’s going to want to know what you did to set a device like that off while you were alone with that guy in the interrogation room.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“What are you going to tell him?”

“The truth.”

Even as I said it, though, I was replaying the recording in my mind.

…don’t think about it. Just trust your instincts and take me to him. When we get there, do what I say …

He’d been coerced, but not by me. Before I talked to anyone else on our side, I needed to track down that woman again, and try to find out what the truth was.

Faye Dasalia—Alto Do Mundo

“Green light,” Shanks said from the passenger’s seat. It was snowing again, but the streets were filled with people, and even this far from the restaurant district, the unease was palpable. News of the bombing had saturated every form of media before authorities could even lock down the site. Every time a new report came in, the death toll went up. The carnage had been horrible.

A horn honked behind us, snapping me out of it.

“Faye, it’s green.”

I gunned the engine and pulled out and veered down the next ramp on my right. At the bottom, I edged out onto the main street, nosing past the stream of foot traffic. When the GPS stopped blinking, I pulled off. Hitting the blues, I flashed them a few times and tapped the siren as I crunched over a snowdrift and partially up onto the sidewalk as pedestrians grudgingly moved out of the way to allow access to the parking ramp.

“Look, Faye—”

“I told you I’m fine.”

I left the blues on steady, then sat there for a minute, watching the light flicker off the snow and concrete while the garage cameras scanned the car and people trudged past, rubbernecking as they went. They all wanted to know what was going on. Who had set off the bomb and why? Were more attacks coming?

I didn’t know the answers to those questions.

“You don’t look fine.”

I felt Shanks move his hand over my own around the steering wheel. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His hand was warm and dry.

“No one would think worse of you if you took five,” he said.

Shanks was a good guy. A good partner, and a good guy. He knew me as well as anyone did, I guessed, and he knew me just well enough to know I was fraying at the edges. He understood it. I felt like I knew where I stood with him, and it was tempting to give in to the stress and the fatigue and rest, but I couldn’t. If I did, I might never get back up.

He’s right. You’re not fine, but you can’t stop, the voice in my head whispered.

The mayor has placed the city on high alert. Every cop in the city has been deployed. We just had a terrorist attack in a major population center, and we don’t have any idea who was responsible. Shouldn’t we—

It doesn’t matter. The killer won’t stop.

We’ve got bigger fish to fry right now. They’ll pull me off this.

They won’t.

He won’t kill again while security is this high.

He will, and you’re going to find him. Don’t question the rest. Just shut up and do your job.

I shook my head. My heart skipped a beat.

“Faye?” Shanks prompted. He was starting to look at me like there might be something really wrong. I wondered if he wasn’t far off.

“Let’s just do this.”

Shanks had called in the middle of lunch to let me know the killer had struck again, this time taking not one but three victims right inside their own apartment in Alto Do Mundo: first tier and very rich, with lots of security. He had walked in and walked out again, and somehow no one had seen him.

All those people, I thought. I’d never seen anything like what I saw outside the restaurant. There were bodies everywhere. I saw a man’s head on the sidewalk.

There will be more, if you don’t stop it.

Me? I—

My phone rang, and Shanks removed his hand as I reached to answer it. I thought it might be Nico. At least, I hoped it was.

“Hello?”

“Detective Dasalia, I thought I told you to stop following me.”

Snapping my fingers, I signaled to Shanks to start scanning for the signal while I tried the trace again.

“You did.”

“That man sitting next to you is not your friend,” the killer said.

I scanned up and down the street, but didn’t expect to see him. He was close, though. He had to be; he could see us.

“Why did you kill them? What did these people do?”

“If I tell you, you’ll tell him,” the voice said. “You’ll tell him everything. You’re going to have to figure it out yourself, but to do that, you’ll have to wake up.”

You have to wake up…. The revivor had also said that to me.

“What does that mean?”

“Have you imagined being with him?”

An uneasy feeling grew in my stomach. I looked over at Shanks and remembered my dreams. The dream I had been having just before the first call woke me up that morning.