“I was hoping you did, Commander,” he said. “I’m uncertain why you asked to see Ms. Jackson. She is not exactly a…pleasant person.”
“We found evidence in that damn underground warehouse that potentially links her to the source of the toxin,” Roslyn told him. “I can’t tell you much more than that, I’m afraid. We’re operating within some strict classification instructions from Mars still.”
“You’ll forgive me if I find that almost as terrifying as the zombie plague,” Bolivar said quietly, using a word that Roslyn hadn’t let her brain use yet.
“The people are victims—and still alive. I’m not sure zombie is the right word,” Roslyn pointed out.
“Look up the origin of the term,” he suggested. “For now…” He sighed. “We’ve brought Ms. Jackson here for interrogation. We will want to record the interview.”
“Denied,” Roslyn said quietly. “My conversation with Ms. Jackson will be recorded, but I will not be certain if I can release those recordings to the Guardia until afterward.
“You have my word, Captain Bolivar, that anything of relevance to the Guardia will be provided to you,” she told him. “But there are reasons for the secrecy. You will have to trust me.”
She could argue need to know for the local police, except…the existence of a secret, Mage-run Republic lab was a political firestorm waiting to happen. Project Prometheus itself had come close to triggering atrocities on the part of the RMN, held back only by professionalism and Damien Montgomery.
From the flip side, Sorprendidas had been an UnArcana World and was still unreconciled to those rules being stripped away. While so far, everyone was assuming a technological source for the toxin, that was hardly guaranteed.
A lot of high-end Protectorate biotech work involved magic, after all. The presence of a fully qualified Mage-Surgeon like Ulla Lafrenz suggested all kinds of unpleasant possibilities to Roslyn. While it would still take a solid understanding of DNA and RNA to build an artificial virus with magic, that virus could be made to do things with magic that would be impossible with regular genecoding.
Roslyn could not tell the locals what she was looking for. The risk of chaos was too great, even if she trusted Bolivar.
So, she needed Bolivar to trust her.
Fortunately…so far, so good.
Even clad in a prisoner’s shapeless jumpsuit—a sight that brought back memories for Roslyn, few of them pleasant—Josephine Jackson was stunningly attractive. The jumpsuit did little to disguise the woman’s generous curves, drawing side glances from the male half of her prison-guard escort.
“Leave us,” Roslyn instructed the guards. “Only my team will be in the room. Disable all recorders.”
“Sir?” the security officer looked at Bolivar.
The Guardia Captain looked unhappy as he turned his gaze on Roslyn. He still sighed and nodded.
“This is the Protectorate’s interview, not ours,” he conceded. “Good luck, Mage-Commander.”
Roslyn concealed a mental snort at the promotion. The “Lieutenant” part of her rank was often dropped as a courtesy, but that usually came with dropping the Mage part. Bolivar was trying to intimidate Jackson.
As the last of the Guardia trooped out, leaving Roslyn and her escort alone with the prisoner, Roslyn figured Bolivar’s efforts hadn’t achieved much.
“Double-check the recorders are off,” she instructed Killough. “And check her bindings,” she told Mooren. “Let’s not have any surprises.”
The prisoner eyed them with curiosity as they worked. She was cuffed to the chair and her hands were cuffed together, though that gave her enough slack to run a hand over her short-cropped hair.
“They can’t even let me grow out my hair,” she complained. “I don’t suppose you can do anything about that, Mage-Commander?”
“Probably not,” Roslyn said genially. “If they’re shaving your head, you were doing something unwise with it. I kept my own hair in your place.”
That got her looks from both Mooren and Killough, but she figured the extra bit of connection couldn’t hurt.
“A Mage-Commander who’s been in jail? Mierda,” Jackson replied.
“Juvie. Long string of trouble as a kid,” Roslyn told her. “Not, you know, human trafficking. They let me out. I’m not sure they’re planning on letting you out.”
The woman rolled her eyes.
“Thirty-six years,” she told them. “Twenty until the first parole hearing, so I have limited interest in playing nice for at least another decade. Not sure what the point of all this is.”
“The point of all this is that I believe you were supplying human test subjects to a secret lab working on Project Prometheus,” Roslyn said flatly. “Which would be enough, Ms. Jackson, to get you a second trial…for war crimes.”
The prisoner lost some of her composure, staring directly at Roslyn.
“Mierda,” she repeated. “I did not… They were not… FUCK.”
The curse word echoed off the interrogation chamber walls until it faded to silence.
“Well, Ms. Jackson?” Roslyn asked. “You seem to know what I’m talking about, though it also seems like somewhat of a surprise.”
Jackson raised a hand.
“You want to know what I know,” she said. “I don’t have to tell you shit. You know what omertà is.”
“I know it doesn’t apply to third parties like this,” Roslyn pointed out. “Even the first Mafia helped fight the Nazis.”
The room was silent for several seconds.
“I want immunity for anything we talk about and ten years off my sentence,” Jackson said flatly. “Or I don’t say a fucking word.”
Roslyn hadn’t even sat down yet, and she smiled mirthlessly.
“I don’t think you have anything worth that,” she noted. “Shame to have wasted both of our time.”
She turned back to the door.
“Look,” Jackson said behind her. “You do not do what I did by asking questions or being squeamish. I’ve been convicted for enough that I won’t pretend otherwise. While I didn’t think about it then, I can guess which of my clients is most likely to be your problem.
“I can tell you names, rendezvous points, bank accounts. Stuff I won’t break for anything else,” she told Roslyn. “If they’re what you say they are, omertà doesn’t apply. If they aren’t and I betray them, I’m a dead woman.
“Either way, I’m
