Chapter #29Exiles by: Seuzz   Cox leans in the doorway. "Mimir says the system's totally fucked. Dey says to get down to elfland to help them move, we're relocating to Vulcan for the duration."
You cuss hard and slam shut your laptop, which you'd been fruitlessly trying to reboot on the internal battery. You toss your cell—the new one issued only last week—onto the desk as well; like the laptop, it does nothing but tootle a MIDI version of "The Marseillaise." The air has turned dank with the failure of the climate control systems, and you have to use flashlights in the inner hallways. Stairs are the only way to get from floor to floor.
There's no gear for you to take with you, so there's nothing you need to pack for the move, and when you meet the others you insist that they empty their pockets of anything electronic. Your warning against spreading the virus to Vulcan is redundant, though, for no one is packing anything that can be plugged into a computer.
They're doing triage down in the labs. It's grim. The Mavis units—the machines both portable and permanent that hold copies of forms and install them as tats—have to be abandoned as compromised, since they occasionally get plugged into the infected servers. That means you and your friends can keep the tats you've on you, but can't get any new ones until new Mavis units are manufactured. Luckily, the new shadow-mind unit had not been integrated into the system yet, so it will be clean; and Knotts has ordered the Patterning unit also be taken along. It may have been infected, but a quick check shows that it hasn't crashed along with the other electronics. "Knotts says we'll be using it once we're over at Vulcan," Cox says, and everyone exchanges nervous glances. "After that it goes to recycling."
The machines are big and delicate, and have to be loaded carefully into large trucks and strapped down tightly. Cox takes charge of that operation, working with Liu and Gallion. You and Patterson go down to the freezer, to hook up portable generators to the biffs to keep the tubes running while the power is out. But one sleeper you pull out and move onto a gurney. "Shit, it's Greystoke," Patterson exclaims.
"Uh huh."
"I thought we handed him over to Nerio."
"No, we played a little shell game, to throw the celebrities off his track."
Patterson looks back at the other tubes. "Do we need to take any of the others? Who are they?"
"Honestly, I don't know. Old biffs, but I don't keep a log, so I don't have any idea who might still be in here. Let's just get Greystoke out."
It's tough getting the gurney up the stairs without spilling its contents. Harder, for you keep a sharp eye on Patterson all the while, in case he isn't who he appears to be. You're pretty sure he's keeping a sharp eye on you too, but whether it's because he has a reciprocal suspicion, or because he's looking for a chance to get a drop on you, you can't tell.
* * * * *
Project Vulcan is housed in one of the biggest skyscrapers in London, a forty-story behemoth so broad and squat for its height that it looks like a glittering molar. Or like a polished and squared-off volcanic plug, for it somehow conveys an impression of hulking and ill-veiled power.
Despite the building's size, Vulcan gives Diana's exiles a very cramped welcome: the elves get one research bay to hold both the Patterning and shadow mind machines, and the six remaining Diana agents—you, Knotts, Cox, Liu, Gallion and Patterson— are squeezed into a single large office with four desks; pointedly, it seems, you're not given any electronics. Dey disappears with Jameson Hyde-White, the frightful old stick who heads up Vulcan. The rest of you are left staring at each other until Gallion breaks out a deck of cards and Patterson procures a box of paperclips from a neighboring office. Then you waste time in a desultory game of no-stakes poker until word comes that the Patterning machine won't be up and running until the morning, whereupon Knotts sends everyone home.
You and Patterson pick up some food before returning to your apartment, and you and your roommate eat silently. It's been mostly silence between you all day.
Finally, after washing up, Patterson confronts you. "What was the verdict about Muniz?"
He's standing in the archway to the kitchen; you're slouched on the sofa. After chewing over his question, you gesture him to sit, and he does, slowly, without relaxing into the chair. "There was no final verdict," you tell him. "It could have been an accident. There was a design flaw in the machinery. But it would be a one-in-ten-thousand accident, and it's very strange that it first happened when we were putting one of our guys in the freezer."
"Why did he even have to go in the freezer?"
You hesitate a very long time before answering. If Knotts was hoping to smoke out an imposter in your ranks, her strategy—whatever it was—seems to have failed catastrophically. Still, maybe you shouldn't breach the compartments she was setting up.
But Patterson breaches them for you. "She thought it was him, didn't she?" he says. "She thought Muniz was He Who Should Not Be Named."
"What makes you think that?"
"Oh, Christ!" He punches his own knee. "Cupcake knew Greystoke's code name, you pointed that out yourself, so of course we're all buzzing about who in Diana is the mole. It's all that Gallion and Liu can talk about!"
"They're talking?"
He sighs. "Not talking, not rattling on about it. But thinking it, and making veiled comments about it. Talking about full moons and half moons, asking each other or me where we keep the Polyjuice Potion." He sighs again. "You and Knotts and Cox were already thinking there's a mole inside Diana. Then we lose Muniz, and you call it a really rare and inconvenient accident, like it can't be." He pauses. "I was one of the guys who put him in the freezer, so what am I supposed to think you're thinking of me? What is Liu supposed to think you're thinking of him?"
"What are you thinking of Liu?" you retort. "Say there's a mole, and it's ten-thousand-to-one against Muniz's death being an accident. What are you thinking of Liu?"
Some of the color drains from his face. "I don't know," he stammers. "Except— Well, if it's not an accident, that means it was either him or me who did it. Right?"
"I didn't say that."
"But that's what you're asking me to think. That if it's either him or me, and I know it wasn't me—" He draws in a deep, shuddering breath.
"Everyone's getting Patterned first thing in the morning," you remind him. "That includes the elves, because we can't rule out them."
"What about Dey?"
Yeah. What about him? "Hard to ask the boss to go under the microscope."
"But it could be him."
"He doesn't believe in— In ghosts."
"That's a convenient theory for a ghost to have."
"And he's never in the office. It'll be someone in the thick of things. If He Who Should Not Be Named is—" You trail off.
"Do you want me to sleep someplace else?" Patterson bluntly asks.
"No. I'll be perfectly safe. If you are the Thing, you'd hardly make a move here against me. It would blow your cover with the others, there being only the two of us here. This mole, if he's here, needs a herd to hide in. Still, if you want to lock the bedroom door—"
Patterson stares at you, then gets up. "I don't agree. If our mole is safest in a crowd, so are we. I'll go crash with Cox and Liu."
"Even though you think Liu is—" But he's moving fast, and the door opens and closes before you finish the sentence.
"Spoiler--7" 
* * * * *
Knotts calls very early the next morning, to tell you not to come in until she calls back. "I already heard where Patterson crashed last night. But we're testing people in pairs, and you're still paired with him," she says. "The elves will get Patterened first. Then me and Gallion, then Cox and Liu. You and Patterson will bring up the rear."
It's like waiting for test results, but with no good result possible. If they come back negative for the others, then that increases the chance that you'll find you've been rooming with the one thing that truly gives you nightmares. If one of the early testees comes back positive, then you'll still find out you've been working with the creature. You spend the morning reading the newspaper, over and over.
A little after ten you get the call to come in. It makes you sick to see that Liu and Cox don't look relieved and relaxed at being cleared, but are instead giving you and Patterson the fish eye.
They put him in the chair first. They think it's either him or me, and I know it's not me. You try not to let the likely deduction show on your face as you watch him.
"A match, entirely within parameters," declares the Moustache at the end, and Plante concurs. You're startled, but deeply relieved to hear it. Yet you can't miss the opposite reaction in the others, who all become very frosty as you get strapped in, and you don't like to see the way they point their pistols at you.
But you only smile and relax. Maybe Dey is right, maybe there is no such person Scotty. Because surely if he exists, he is in this room; and you are now certain that he's not in this room. You close your eyes, and maybe you drift off, for—
"Now, this is curious," says Plante. Your eyes snap open. The machine has ceased its operation, but everyone is watchful and alert, and they still have their pieces trained on you.
"What's curious," Knotts demands. "He doesn't match?"
"Oh, he matches alright. But not the way I'd expect." You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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