“It did fucking happen to me!”
The shout ripped loose, floated away in the immensity of the vaulted space. She wondered if the RimSec CSI crew heard it. His hands were on her shoulders, fingers hooked into her flesh, head jutting close, eyes locked into hers. They hadn’t been this close since they fucked, and something deeply buried, some ancestor subroutine in her genes, picked up on the proximity and sent the old, confused signals pulsing out.
It was the part of herself she most hated.
She kept the locked stare. Reached up and jabbed the lit ember of the blunt into the back of his hand.
Something detonated in his eyes, inked out just as fast. He unhinged his fingers with a snap. Backed off a fraction at a time. She drove him back with her eyes.
“Keep your fucking hands off me,” she hissed.
“You think—”
His voice was hoarse. He stopped, swallowed and started again.
“You think I can’t empathize with someone out of the black labs, some gene experiment made flesh? I am them, Sevgi. I mean, what do you think Osprey was? I am a fucking experiment. I grew up in a controlled environment, managed and checklisted by men in fucking suits. I lost—”
He stopped again. This time, his eyes slid away from hers. A faint frown furrowed his brow. For a split second she thought he was going to weep, and something prickled at the base of her own throat in sympathy.
“Motherfucker,” he said softly.
She waited, finally had to prompt him. “What?”
Marsalis looked at her, and his eyes were washed clean of the rage. His voice stayed low.
“Bambarén,” he said. “Manco fucking Bambarén.”
“What about him?”
“He was fucking with me, back at Sacsayhuamán. He thought they took Marisol—my surrogate—away from me when I was fourteen. But that’s Lawman. In Osprey, they did it at eleven. Different psych theory.”
“So?”
“So he was too close to the detail. It wasn’t just the age, it was the other stuff. He was talking about men in uniforms, debriefing in a steel trailerfab. Osprey’s handlers all wore suits. And we never had any trailers, the whole place was purpose-built and permanent.”
She shrugged. “Maybe he’s read about it. Seen footage.”
“That’s not how it sounded, Sevgi. It sounded personal. As if he’d been involved.” He sighed. “I know. Thirteen paranoia, right?”
She hesitated. “It’s pretty thin.”
“Yeah.” He looked away from her. Seemed to make an effort: she saw his mouth clamp. He met her eyes again. “I’m sorry I grabbed you like that. Thought I had that shit locked down.”
“’sokay. Just don’t do it again. Ever.”
He took the blunt from her, very gently. It was down to the stub and smoldering unequally from where she’d stabbed his hand with it. He coaxed a little more from it, drew deep.
“So what’s going to happen now?” he asked, voice tight with holding down the smoke.
She grimaced. “Aftermath, like I said. We’re going to be chasing the detail for months, but they’ll start to fold the case priority away. Someone somewhere’s going to figure out how to knock off some major unlicensed Marstech again, and we’ll get switched to that. File Merrin for a rainy day.”
“Yeah. What I thought.”
“Look, let it go, Carl.” Impulsively, she reached out and took his hand, the same hand she’d scorched. “Just let go and walk away. You’re home free. We’ll look at the familia thing, who knows, maybe we’ll get somewhere with it.”
“You go down there without me, all you’ll get is killed.” But he was smiling as he said it. “You saw what happened last time.”
She flickered the smile back at him. “Well, maybe we’ll be a bit less full-frontal in our approach.”
He grunted. Held up the dying blunt, querying. She shook her head, and he just held it there between them for a moment or two. Then he shrugged, took one last toke, and pitched it out through the cradle forks, down the long slope to the water.
“You chase that aftermath,” he said.
“We will.”
But out beyond the vault of starboard loading, the waves were starting to pale, black to gunmetal, as the early light of a whole new day crept in.
CHAPTER 40
Back at the hotel, he opaqued the windows against the unwelcome dawn. Jet lag and fight ache stalked him through the darkened suite to the bed. He shed his clothes on the floor and stood staring down at them. s(t)igma, the back of the inmate jacket reminded him in cheery orange. Sevgi Ertekin stood in his thoughts and waved—she’d walked him up to the helipad on Bulgakov’s Cat and seen him off. Was still standing there with one arm raised as the Cat dropped away below and behind the autocopter, visible detail blurring out.
He grimaced, tried to shake the memory off.
He ripped the bed open irritably, crawled in, and tugged a sheet across his shoulder.
Sleep came and buried him.
The phone.
He rolled awake in the still-darkened room, convinced he’d only just closed his eyes. Steady blue glow digits at the bedside disputed the impression: 17:09. He’d slept through the day. He held up his wrist, peering stupidly at the watch he’d forgotten to take off, as if a hotel clock could somehow be wrong. The wrist ached from the fumbled blow he’d hit Merrin with. He turned it a little, flexing. Might even be—
Phone. Answer the fucking—
He groped for it, dragged the audio receiver up to his ear.
“Yeah, what?”
“Marsalis?” A voice he should know but, sleep-scrambled, didn’t. “Is that you?”
“Who the fuck is this?”
“Ah, so it is you.” The name came just ahead of his own belated recognition of the measured tones. “Gianfranco di Palma here. Brussels office.”
Carl sat up in bed, frowning.
“What do you want?”
“I have just been speaking to an agent Nicholson in New York.” Di Palma’s perfect, barely accented UN English floated urbanely down the line. “I understand that COLIN have no further use for your services, and that they have arranged that all charges against you in the Republic will be dropped forthwith. It seems you will be returning to Europe very shortly.”
“Yeah? News to me.”
“Well, I don’t think we need to wait around on formalities. I’ll have an UNGLA shuttle dispatched to SFO tonight. If you would care to be at the suborbital terminal around midnight—”
“No I wouldn’t.”
“I am sorry?”
South Florida State swirled up into his mind, like dirty water backing up from a blocked drain. A sudden decision gripped him, cheery as the lettering on his S(t)igma jacket.
“I said you can fuck off, di Palma. Write it down. Fuck. Right. Off. You let me sit in a Jesusland jail for four months and I’d still be there for all the fucking efforts you made to get me out. And you still owe me expenses from fucking January.” And just like that, out of nowhere he was furious, trembling with the sudden rage. “So don’t think for one fucking moment I’m going to jump into line just because you finally got your dick out of your own arse. I am not done here. I am very far from done here, and I’ll come home when I’m fucking good and ready.”
There was a stiff pause at the other end of the line.
“You understand, I assume,” said di Palma silkily, “that you are not authorized to operate without UNGLA jurisdiction. Of course, your time is your own to dispose of, but we cannot agree to you having any further professional contact with COLIN or the Rim States Security Corps. In the interests of—”
“What’s the matter with you, di Palma. Don’t you have a pen there? I told you to fuck off. Want me to spell it?”
“I strongly advise you not to take this attitude.”
“Yeah? Well, I strongly advise you to go and get a caustic soda enema. Let’s see which of us takes direction best, shall we.”