“No. We didn’t know about the facility, but there have been concerns that someplace like it might turn up.”
“Concerns?”
“A specific piece of technology was at the Concrete Falls center the day it was attacked.”
“What kind of technology?”
“I can’t disclose that—”
He stopped short as I stepped in and grabbed him by the shirt collar. His eyes went wide as I hauled him up onto his toes, and he dropped the umbrella.
Immediately, the two revivors at the jeep began to close in. I drew my gun, and Bhadra flinched as I fired a single shot. The pop echoed down the tarmac as the revivor on the left spun around, spraying an arc of black blood from the side of its neck.
“Stop!” Bhadra shouted, holding his hands near his face. The second revivor held its position while the one I’d shot collapsed face-first onto the ground, blood pooling around its head.
“There are eleven nukes somewhere in the city,” I said, putting my face close to Bhadra’s. “Eleven nukes. Don’t stonewall me, Bhadra. Do you understand?”
“What are you going to do?” he asked, his hands still near his face. “Shoot me?”
“I’ll place you in Federal custody, and before I’m done, I promise you, you’ll tell me what I want to know.”
“You’ll never get me to the perimeter, Agent.”
“Answer me. What was Heinser involved in?”
“We don’t know,” he said. “I would tell you if I could. He was involved in something, but we don’t know what. They’ve put him out of reach as a precaution. They don’t have any specifics.”
“I want to talk to him now.”
“You can’t, Agent. He’s gone. You won’t be able to reach him, not in time to help you. I’m sorry.”
A gust of wind blew mist against the side of my face, and made the umbrella roll in a circle.
“They’re monitoring us,” Bhadra said. “Security will be here soon. Let me go, please. You don’t have to do this.”
He met my eye when he said that last part. He was trying to tell me something.
“No?”
“They wouldn’t send someone out here that they thought knew any specifics about Heinser or Concrete Falls,” he said. “If there was information that would be useful to you, it couldn’t come from me.”
I put the gun away and let go of him. He straightened his shirt and picked up the umbrella.
“I found several revivors at Rescue Mission,” I said. “Their signatures were different. The components were different too.”
“Technology changes, Agent.”
“It was a new model of revivor, then?”
“I can’t say for sure.”
“Was that technology at the Concrete Falls facility for some reason? Was that their interest in it?”
“If it was,” he said evenly, “it didn’t turn up in the wreckage after the blast.”
It was the closest to a confirmation I was going to get. Something of Heinlein’s had been stolen, and the blast covered it up. It was taken to the Rescue Mission Clinic, and probably the others that had been raided as well.
“And Heinser?” I asked.
“If some new technology had been developed, it would be highly valuable. To obtain it, someone would need an inside contact.”
“Why not turn him over to us, then?”
“This is a highly sensitive situation, Agent. In the end, Heinlein Industries is a military contractor. This isn’t just a matter of industrial espionage. It’s a matter of national security, and it goes far over your head.”
“Then why see me at all?” I asked.
“To make an official statement. To stonewall you, as you said, and send you away.”
“Then why not do that?”
“Honestly? I’m afraid. I’ve heard you are a man to be trusted. You were very helpful in uncovering the breach into our company two years ago. Thanks to you, the Zhang’s Syndrome study has been designated classified, and we’ve been appropriately distanced from Samuel Fawkes.”
“I wouldn’t thank me for that.”
“You are also known, by us at any rate, to have had a government-issue revivor illegally transported and revived from stasis. Since then, that revivor is also known to have fallen into the hands of established terrorists.”
“Is that some kind of threat?”
“I’m just laying out the facts as I see them.” He closed the umbrella and wrapped the tie around it. “A security force will be here very shortly, Agent. I’d advise you to be on your way out when that happens.”
He held out his hand, and his eyes looked nervous.
“One last thing: I saw something at Rescue Mission I couldn’t explain,” I said. “You want to take a crack at it?”
“If I can.”
“The revivors were being monitored while a machine cycled them between active and inactive. Why would someone do that?”
“For the same reason we do it here,” he said. “To try to streamline the revival process.”
“Why?”
“A time may come when you need them in a hurry.”
He signaled to the remaining revivor, and it climbed back into the jeep. Behind it, two more vehicles were approaching.
He held out his hand again, and this time I shook it. When I did, I felt something against my palm. He looked me in the eye and held the handshake a few extra seconds.
“I’m sorry I’m not permitted to help you more,” he said.
“Thank you for seeing me,” I told him. “Sorry about the revivor.”
He let my hand go and I palmed the object, slipping it into my pocket.
I got back into my car and watched him walk back to the jeep. The look in his eye as he turned away said he wasn’t just worried about security breaches and law-suits. He was worried that the thing he had implied was stolen had ended up in the wrong hands, and that the consequences of that might turn out to be dire.
Zoe Ott—Alto Do Mundo
After I left the Federal Building, I kind of lost track of what happened. I stopped at a bar and had a few drinks; then at some point I remembered stopping at a convenience store and getting a bottle. I was wet now, and the bottle was almost empty. The paper bag it was in was almost soaked through, and the sky had gotten dark.
I stepped off the curb and into a puddle as tires squealed and the grill of a car rocked to a stop a few inches from me. A horn blared, and I stumbled back the way I came while someone cursed out the window. I sat back against a fire hydrant and took a swig from the bottle while people trudged by behind me.
I was still sitting there when a slick black car with tinted windows pulled up next to me. I thought maybe it was Nico, tracking me down after what happened with the interrogation, and it made me mad that I caught myself really hoping it was him. It wasn’t his car, though; it looked way too expensive. Its engine hummed, sounding like a jet plane over the rain.
The window on my side rolled down and I could hear music coming from inside, a loud, thumping bass. I started to walk away when I saw Penny lean across the passenger’s seat and wave.
“Yo!”
“What?”
“What’s up?” she asked.
I held out my hands, liquid sloshing in the bottle. “You’re looking at it.”
