The woman tapped the Surfboard.
“This is a still from a section of footage taken from a security camera outside a private residence. Date, April twenty-four, hour, three-oh-five. The residence was and remains under Council jurisdiction. The couple in question use a stolen high-security swipe card to disable the police barrier, then pick the penthouse locks with crude metal before entering and leaving approximately fifty minutes later. This evidence serves as a warrant for arrest and detention. Is this you, Mr Bai?”
“No,” he lied.
“I should also add that the evidence in question is sufficient to ensure jail without trial, should it be proven that you have a prior offence.” Her hand came towards his head with a test tube. She held it under his nose. He tried to turn his head away but the blood dripped in. She passed the test tube up to someone standing. “Your DNA will ascertain whether you have a record. Do you have any prior convictions, Mr Bai?”
“No.” He spat out blood. Not under that name. They would find it anyway. His skin began to crawl with fear. “Listen,” he croaked. “I need to speak to a lawyer. Call Linus Rechnov. He’ll vouch for me. I’m running the New Horizon Movement. I need to speak to people. I need a scarab, I need a lawyer-”
The officer stood up. “You can take him away.”
“Listen to me!”
Two of them hauled him to his feet, nose still streaming. His face throbbed. He could feel where the bone had split.
The skadi shunted him to the lift, wrestling and kicking. Black space rushed to fill his vision. He was aware of shouting, a terrible screaming, did not realize at first that it was his own voice making that sound. His heels dug trenches in the floor. Pairs of eyes peered curiously from behind their doors as the lift began to bear him inexorably down.
He saw the porthole looming, the cold unearthly cell. He realized that his noise was words.
“Not underwater,” he was screaming. The same words, over and over again. “Not underwater, not underwater, not underwater.”
The fist came towards his temple. There was a pin burst of pain and then nothing.
/ / /
The teeth chattered in his head. He heard their clicking, one against the other, as if from miles away. His mouth was sore. He could not feel the rest of his face and he could not see. He panicked that he was blind and crawled his hands bit by bit up to his face, expecting to feel the open sightless orbs but it was the skin of his eyelids, clogged and somehow immovable. He thought he heard a voice, then there was an eruption of pain, something cold and wet in the centre of his face. The voice faded. He was deaf as well as blind.
His eyelids peeled open, pulling away from their crusts. He blinked, breathed in cold air, blinked again. He was lying on a bunk in a cell. The light was glaucous. It smelled of salt and damp and slow corrosion.
The space seemed no larger, no smaller than the last time. The walls were concrete. It was empty except for a bucket and the bunk he was lying on. Thin mattress. No pillow. They had patched up his nose, but he could still taste old blood. He touched it with fingertips that withdrew quickly when he felt the tender flesh. Whatever they had done, it was not set properly. His fingers explored upward, over the bump on his right temple. At least they had missed his eye.
He sensed, somehow, that he was further underwater than before. The porthole was obscured by algae. Fish swimming by were no more than shadows in a murky well.
His mind jumped between terror and rationale. He lay very still and ordered himself not to scream.
“Adelaide Rechnov to see you.” The guard’s voice through the shutter was flat.
“I don’t want to see her.”
The guard opened the door. Adelaide came in. She was wearing a black trouser suit and tinted glasses and her hair was tied back in a tail. It gave her an androgynous look. Under the light of the cell, the pale peaks of her cheeks and the pointed chin took on a green tinge, watery and opaque. She reminded him of a mythical creature risen from the depths. A siren. An undine. He could smell scent on her, the sharp citrus one she wore sometimes. He had watched her apply that scent to hidden parts of her body.
“Thank you,” said Adelaide to the guard, a gesture that was also a dismissal. The guard glanced from Vikram to Adelaide and then left. The door clanged shut.
“Hello, Vikram,” she said.
He stayed as he was on the bunk, half sitting half crouched, arms balanced on knees and fingers interlocked. Adelaide’s eyes flitted about. They did not pause for long; there wasn’t much to see. The walls, the damp, the bunk. He saw her note the porthole and cursed himself for ever having mentioned it to her. With that weakness he had given her access to something deeply personal. He was a fool.
“Lovely place you’ve got here,” she said. The joke was absorbed into the stifling air. Adelaide’s handbag dangled at her side. The bag was awkward, out of place. She seemed to realize this, because her fingers clenched and unclenched on its strap. He let her squirm. Her eyes settled on his face and he saw them widen.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
He did not reply. A broken nose was obvious to anyone, and as they hadn’t fixed it properly it would always be crooked now. Adelaide ploughed on.
“I’m so sorry about this, Vikram. I’m doing everything I can to get you out.”
“Are you?”
“You can speak. For a minute there I thought they’d cut out your tongue.”
“Not yet,” he said.
There was a silence. Adelaide looked as though she might lean against the wall, but thought better of it. He did not suggest she could sit down.
“So,” she said. “I’ve managed to get you a lawyer, a really good one. She’s going to stop by this afternoon, go through all the technicalities with you, but I’d say you should only be in here a couple more days.”
“I don’t want your help.”
“What?”
Behind the glasses, confusion rippled across her face, before she regained possession.
“Sorry, didn’t catch that,” she said. A flash of the real Adelaide at last. The smell of citrus was overwhelming; making him think of lemons and limes, the tang, the jolt of biting into a lemon slice after voqua. He had to think of her and what she had done.
He leaned forward.
“I. Don’t. Want. Your. Help.”
Adelaide folded her arms across her chest. Even her lips were pale green.
“Noble as that sentiment may be, Vikram, it’s hardly in your interests, is it? Without me you’re stuck down here for all foreseeable eternity.” Her face softened. “Look. It’s not like you’re going to owe me anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. Think of it as me settling a debt.”
Her arrogance really was astounding, Vikram told himself. His fingers untangled and locked again. He struggled not to clench them. She had taken enough of him already, he was not going to show her anything.
“I don’t think you quite understand,” he said. “You’ve got me in enough shit. I don’t want you meddling in my affairs any more.”
“You were happy enough for me to meddle up until now,” she snapped. “What in hell’s tide’s got into you? I helped you get your schemes through, didn’t I? I put your name on the map.”
“And then you sent me right back where I belong, didn’t you?”
He was standing, moving towards her. He slammed his palm against the wall inches from her head. She flinched. His hand stayed there, trapping her. With his other hand he ripped the glasses from her face. They clattered on the floor behind him. Pinned, Adelaide looked him right in the eye. There was redness, swelling, and for a moment he thought she had been crying, but that was impossible. Adelaide never cried.
“I didn’t put you here, Vikram.”
They were head to head now, close enough to see the tiniest contractions of the irises. Close enough to kiss. He looked at her mouth. Her lips were suffering from a lack of care, colourless and chapped. Still he remembered their feel and wanted to kick the wall and her too.
“How do I know you didn’t set me up?”
