“Jesus,” Jodi gasped. The IS man had pulled a gun on Tony, a junior senator and member of the Council, no less! “What the fuck is going on?” she murmured as she forced herself even lower behind the hedge.
The rest of the security troops wasted no time, pushing roughly past Tony on their way in to search the house, no doubt for Jodi. Tony had been trying to fend them off, she thought, because they probably did not have a warrant to search the house. But a gun against an unarmed man was quite persuasive, if not exactly legal.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Tony,” Jodi pleaded under her breath.
Braddock just stood there quietly, his arms raised, his face twisted in a mask of fiery anger as the IS man held his gun leveled at Tony’s chest.
Suddenly, Jodi heard a female voice from within the house, screaming angrily at the intruders in what could only be French.
But the biggest surprise was the sight of four IS men herding Nicole out the door, dressed only in her robe, then stuffing her into one of the skimmers. The leader nudged Tony along with the gun, pushing him roughly into the vehicle beside Nicole.
Then the IS people got into the skimmers and left, except for two men they left behind. After their comrades departed, they went into the house, closed the door, and turned off the lights. To wait for Jodi.
She felt her stomach drop away into infinity. Had she arrived a few minutes earlier, they would have caught her. Had she arrived a few minutes later, they would have caught her. Someone, presumably the God she had never really believed in, had been looking out for her. She could only hope that Nicole and Tony would be all right.
For now, she had to look out for herself, because she knew that if the security forces captured her, Borge’s secret would never see the light of day. She would silently, tragically, disappear. She looked at her watch. Twenty- three hundred. She had about six more hours of darkness.
Six hours to find help.
“What in the hell is going on, senator?” Tony Braddock demanded angrily. He and Nicole sat on the opposite side of a security shield, guarded by four IS agents with drawn weapons. Senator Borge sat on the other side, his face a mask of sorrow.
“Please, Councilman, captain,” he said solemnly, “this situation is not as I would like, but events have taken place that demand the most extreme action.” He looked at them gravely.
“And what is this ‘situation?’” Nicole asked coldly.
Borge nodded. “Earlier this evening, less than an hour ago, to be more precise, Reza Gard escaped from the detention facility at the hospital. Shortly thereafter, he murdered President Nathan.”
“That is not possible!” Nicole said incredulously, jumping to her feet. “Reza would never do such a thing!”
“I wish that were the case, but there is evidence to the contrary.” He nodded to his aid, who activated a holo recording showing Reza materializing in Nathan’s bedroom. Moving close to the bed, he withdrew a knife and, after only a moment’s hesitation, plunged it into the president’s chest. The alarm went off a few seconds later, and Reza disappeared from the room as mysteriously as he had come.
“I don’t believe it,” Tony said firmly. “This is some kind of a hoax or a frame-up. Reza gave his word to Nicole that he would not try to escape, and he would never have broken it. You’ve got the wrong man, senator. I don’t know how, but you’ve got the wrong man.”
“Besides,” Nicole asked, grudgingly retaking her seat, “what does this have to do with us? Are you implicating us as accomplices?”
Borge shook his head as if he were mortified at the thought. “You two? Heavens no. But Commander Mackenzie is another matter. She attempted to see Reza again tonight, even after her earlier little… tiff… with Colonel Thorella.” He looked at them significantly. “I would like to know why. Internal Security knew, of course, that she was staying with you, and that naturally was the first place to look.”
“This is ridiculous–” Nicole growled.
“Even if this is all true,” Tony interrupted hotly, “does that give you the right to hold us at gunpoint in our own home, without so much as a search warrant?”
“I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation, Councilman Braddock,” Borge said slowly. “In accordance with constitutional law, I legally inherited the powers of the president just as Nathan took his last breath. I will not allow his death – his murder – to go unpunished. I apologize for the zealotry shown by the IS agents at your home, but I am taking no chances, and I will spare no effort to get to the bottom of this. You two are friends of both Captain Gard and Commander Mackenzie, and are our only leads to them. I hope that you are able to put aside your personal feelings in this matter – and I realize that will be terribly difficult – and help Internal Security find Reza Gard and Commander Mackenzie.”
“And if we do not?” Nicole asked.
Borge looked at them with eyes glowing with barely concealed ferocity. “I will have you both cited with contempt and thrown in prison until you decide to cooperate.” He leaned forward, his hands spread before him. “Please,” he begged, “please do not make this any more difficult than it already is. The president was a good friend of mine for many years, and to me his loss is a very personal one. Captain Gard is implicated in his murder, and Commander Mackenzie was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If he is innocent, and she is not involved, fine. We will find who is. But I want answers, my friends. Quickly. And I will have them, one way or another.”
Nicole and Tony looked at each other helplessly. There was little they could do. And the image of Reza driving the knife into Nathan’s heart was more than convincing, at least to anyone who did not know him. He had powers that were arguably supernatural, and both of them knew that Reza could easily do what the video had shown.
Until Tony remembered what Reza had said about what had happened on Erlang with Thorella’s little holo act. Who was to say that they weren’t witnessing a repeat performance? But he kept that to himself. Right now, Borge held all the cards in this particular deadly game.
“What do you want us to do?” he asked quietly.
Jodi was running out of time. She had made her way as quickly as she could back into the subterranean complex that made up the city’s core. She realized that it would be more dangerous for her there, but she needed information, and that was the only place she could think of to get it.
The news, when she saw it broadcast on the holo banners in the main mall, stunned her. President Nathan was dead, murdered. Reza Gard, having escaped from the hospital, was the prime suspect, and Commander Jodi Mackenzie was believed to be involved. There was her picture, for all to see, on at least a dozen banners that were in her direct view.
The only thing that saved her was that the mall was so crowded with people seeking out the capitol’s nightlife. Most of the wanderers ignored the holo banners. They ignored the broadcast. They ignored her. For the moment, at least, it appeared as if she could still move about. But that was not going to last for long.
She moved quickly to a vid terminal, putting her back to the crowd and the gruesome images of the president’s death that were finally getting some attention: more and more people were stopping and staring.
“God,” she whispered, “what in the fuck’s going on? What am I going to do?” Her hands were shaking.
Something nagged at her memory. A name. Someone she knew, someone close by. For a while, it refused to come to her, instead fluttering just beyond her recollection, taunting her.
Tanya. Tanya Buchet.
The name sent a shiver up her spine. She closed her eyes and slumped against the wall of the booth. Of all the people in the world she would have to turn to, why did Tanya have to be the one? It just had to be someone who probably still hated her guts after all the years since they had last seen each other. Maybe even as much as Jodi hated her. They had not parted on the best of terms. But Tanya had everything that Jodi needed.
