maimed freaks and brains in jars that had been kept alive for centuries before the Unified Worlds made it illegal to forcibly keep somebody alive against their will. They showed me bodies so atrophied that they looked like skeletons with shrink-wrap skin. All three of those asshole shrinks put me through the same shit, picture after picture of nothing but desperate, drooling, diapered shells of former humans. And then, when they thought I'd had enough, they came at me with their neutral speaking tones and their phony feel-my-pain faces, asking me, “Now is that what you really want for Niki?”
But those pics they showed me, they weren't Niki. She was fixable. I'd already replaced everything but the spine. They were wrong about me. I wasn't one of those selfish monsters they'd showed me, like the mother who rejuved her stillborn baby and kept dressing him in cute little ducky PJs even when the brain-dead sap was thirty years old. I wasn't so afraid to let go of Niki that I'd imprison her. I'd never hurt her. That wasn't me. They were wrong, all three of them, and I used my enforcer talents to make them see the goddamned light.
Abdul's put his hand on my shoulder again. “You shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the psychiatrists.”
“She's not terminal, dammit. There won't be anything wrong with her when she gets her spine.”
“There won't?”
“Listen, Abdul, I know she's depressed, but that'll change when she gets patched up.”
“You sure about that?”
“You'd be depressed, too, if you couldn't move.”
“C'mon, Juno, you know better than that. You know she was depressed before she broke her neck. She's always been depressed.”
“Things will be different this time,” I said defiantly.
Abdul shook his head. “I'm not getting through, am I? How about this? Once she's got her new spine, what's to keep her from doing it again? You'd have to lock her up.”
“If that's what it takes.”
“You're not being realistic.”
I went back to pushing my noodles around.
Abdul took a few bites of his meal before talking again. “She begged me not to tell you, Juno. She just wanted me to come out and do it, but I thought you should know. I thought it was important for you to be onboard with this decision.”
“Well, I'm not onboard.”
“It's time for you to get onboard. Don't you want to say good-bye? Because one way or another, sooner or later, she's going to be gone.”
“What are you saying, Abdul? Are you saying you're going to go behind my back and pull the plug?”
“No. I'm not saying that, but I am saying that if you don't promise me you'll think about it, and I mean think about it seriously, I'll do exactly that.”
I pushed the noodles to the left then pushed them to the right, back and forth, back and forth.
“Promise me, Juno.”
“Don't force me, Abdul.”
“Promise.”
I couldn't meet his gaze. I set the fork down. I rubbed my eyes to clear away my suddenly cloudy vision. I don't want to lose her. I can't.
Abdul leaned in. “I'm not leaving until I get an answer.”
“I promise.”
“You'll think about it?”
“Yes, damn you. I'll think about it, okay?”
My thoughts weren't coherent. I was in that semiasleep stage where half-assed ideas skip through the brain so fast as to create a constant stream of pure gibberish. Ian, Niki, Liz, Abdul, Maggie, they were all there, in my mind, talking nonsense.
The sound of the zipper snapped me fully awake. Maggie came through the tent flaps and zippered them up behind her.
“What was on the chip?” I asked, knowing she'd gone to sit by the canal as she read through the latest set of case files.
Maggie dropped into her hammock and positioned herself on a diagonal so she could lay a little flatter instead of being folded into a banana like I was. “It may be the worst one yet.”
“Tell me.”
“The crime scene was old, at least a month, but they can't pin it down for sure. Some kids were exploring the barge when they found it and called it in.”
“Gene eaters?”
“Yeah. Same as the others. This guy is sick, Juno. He used vice grips this time.”
“How?”
“There were nine of them, all attached to a human-shaped table. There were two for the ankles, another two for the knees, and two more pairs for wrists and elbows. The ninth was for the head. He put a man, or maybe a very tall woman, in them so he or she would be suspended from the table, held by the vices.”
I didn't really want to hear any more, but Maggie continued. “He probably started with the ankles and worked his way up, tightening each vice until he crushed all the joints. Then he did the head.”
Sick is right. I imagined myself in the victim's position, my head being squeezed… I squirmed in my hammock. “Let's just hope Ian shoots me when he finds me instead of turning me over to that freak.”
“It may not go down like that…”
I waited for her to explain.
“What if another cop finds you first and hauls you in? Ian may not want to risk killing you while you're in custody. He'll just pin Raj Gupta's murder on you by planting the knife in your house. You could end up in the Zoo.”
“Shit, Maggie, I thought you were going to try to make me feel better.”
She laughed. “C'mon, Juno, the Zoo's not so bad. At least you'd be alive.”
“Right. An ex-cop in the Zoo. I'd kill myself first.” And I meant it.
Maggie's face turned serious in the lamplight.
“What is it?” I asked.
She started to say something but cut herself off and said, “Nothing.”
“Spit it out, Maggie.”
“I was just wondering what Niki would think if she heard you say that.”
“Christ.”
TWENTY-ONE
DECEMBER 3, 2788
I'd changed my mind. It was as simple as that. I knew it was going to delay our investigation, but I couldn't let Niki suffer any longer. As soon as I'd made the decision, Maggie and I hustled from our tent down to the canal and woke up a half dozen boat captains until we found one who was willing to take the overnight charter.
The sun wouldn't be up for a few hours yet. I couldn't see the shoreline, but I could make out the dark black outline of treetops against the almost-as-black sky. The boat captain gave his young daughter a nudge. She woke up and crawled over Maggie's sleeping body, making her way to the bow. She rubbed sleep out of her eyes then snatched up a floodlight and lay facedown with her head hanging over the bow, aiming the floodlight out into the water where patches of reeds were beginning to form. We were navigating one of the Koba's many tributaries, putt-putting our way to the Orzo plantation.
The girl kept sweeping the floodlight from side to side and slapped the hull when she wanted to turn. One slap for left, two for right. We made slow progress snaking our way through the reeds, occasionally catching one with the prop and chopping it apart with a gurgling rumble.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Couldn't. I tried putting my feet up. Didn't help. I pulled my flask out for
