He turned around, resealing his pants, and started at the shape staring at him through the cell door.
It was tall, broad across the shoulders, with long arms that hung to the sides. A pale halo outlined a bald head but left the face in darkness. It wore a long overcoat that fell nearly to its ankles.
It. Derec could not consider it otherwise. His subconscious labeled it as kindred to what Coffee had witnessed in the cargo bin, even though it bore no overt resemblance.
Derec swallowed hard.
It walked away from the door. Derec rushed forward and pressed his face to the mesh. He saw it walking toward the far end, to the cell of the new inmate.
"Hey!" Derec shouted. "Somebody! Intruder!"
With startling speed, it spun around and returned to Derec's cell. Derec staggered back.
It placed a hand against the door, fingers splayed. The air suddenly smelled faintly of ozone. The door slid open with a sudden crack.
"Shit," Derec breathed.
It seemed to fill the cell, head nearly brushing the ceiling. Derec wanted to yell, to argue, deny it the right to do this. He imagined slipping past it, breaking into the corridor, and fleeing; he was smaller and it seemed to be moving so slowly. Coolness spread over his thighs, down his calves, then across his shoulders, up his neck and across his scalp. He felt the beginnings of quivering somewhere around his spine.
It raised one arm and opened a hand, took another step forward. Derec could make out details in its face now and he thought he recognized it. Human face, but wrong, damaged…
"Looking for me?" Masid suddenly called out.
It frowned, then whirled about and stepped toward the cell door.
A brilliant scalding flash erupted around it. It dropped to one knee, staggered, and started to rise. Another flash. Derec flinched and backed up against the wall. The ozone smell was gone, replaced now by burning. He heard a roar, deep-throated and grainy, as if sound were being forced through too small a larynx, and heard the crackle then of a blaster, saw the reddish glow through closed eyelids. Dark ness. Crackle, glow…and stillness.
"Derec."
He blinked furiously, trying to focus on the voice. Masid. Derec looked at the door of his cell. A man stood there now, the angled shape of a weapon in one hand.
"Are you all right?" Derec asked.
Masid snorted, amused. "I'm supposed to ask you that."
"Um…" Derec pushed away from the wall. His legs felt slightly disconnected from his hips, but he could walk. Glad I pissed first, he thought, and laughed at himself. "Sure. I'm…not hurt…"
He caught the edge of the cell door and gripped it tightly.
Masid smelled faintly of sweat. He nodded toward a shape on the corridor floor.
The cyborg lay crookedly sprawled, its coat spread out beneath it like a pool of blood in the half-light. Smoke wafted from its shoulders and chest.
"My apologies," Masid said. "I was asleep till you yelled." He frowned. "Was it coming for you?"
"No, it…" Derec swallowed again and gestured toward the far end of the block. "It was heading for the new inmate."
"That's not what was supposed to happen," Masid said grumpily. "We expected someone to come for me. "
The lights came full-on then.
The sound of running feet filled the corridor. Masid turned suddenly and hissed.
"Well, my cover's blown," he said sotto voce to Derec.
Derec pointed at the corpse. "They can see it now."
People flooded around them. Palen stopped at the foot of the dead thing. Harwol stared from a few steps back.
Derec managed to walk toward it. The quivering centered now in his chest, along his sides, and over his pelvis, but he could move reasonably well.
Masid had shot it four times. Each hit was clear by the ugly burn on left shoulder, sternum, right side of the neck, and scalp. Bloody red patches mingled with ashen black. Fibers curled out of the wounds. Cloth and skin were seared together and blue, gray, and worm-white veins shot through the bubbled centers of the patches. Derec felt acid at the back of his throat, but swallowed it back.
The eyes were open. They looked strangely perfect, like exquisite copies of real eyes. No moisture, no veins in the whites, and now the irises were slightly different sizes. But the radial patterns of the dull gray pupils seemed precisely symmetrical.
The skin showed irregularities, like acne scars or old injuries that still contained fragments of whatever had done damage.
"Is this like the thing we saw in the recovered memories?" Palen asked.
"I-" Derec had to swallow again. "I wouldn't be surprised. It opened my cell door by shorting out the lock. "
Reluctantly, he lifted the hand that had done the job and turned it over. Wires showed, spread over the palm. Derec pushed back the sleeve; the wiring ran up the arm.
"It shouldn't have been able to open it," Palen said.
"Was your Brethe dealer's door shorted?"
Palen nodded. "We reprogrammed them then to remain shut in the event of a short."
"What did you see on surveillance?"
"Nothing. Until your door opened. Then Masid came out of his cell. But this…" she gestured at the body between them. "Nothing."
"It would be interesting to know how…"
Derec pulled the coat back from its shoulder. A small control box was attached to the shirt.
"Damn," Agent Harwol said.
"What?" Palen asked.
"That," Harwol pointed at the box. "You said masking technology, Mr. Avery. That's it. Military spec, alternating wavelength…stolen."
"Black market?" Palen asked.
Harwol nodded solemnly.
"Stolen military tech isn't the worrisome part," Derec said. "Whoever supplied it is also dealing in cyborgs."
They all stared at him, expressions carefully neutral, the studied look of law enforcement unwilling to show worry when they were likely more than a little scared. Derec tasted acid once more and walked away, willing himself to not throw up in front of such pointless professionalism.
He stopped, staring at the cell at the far end. The man there sat on his cot, watching, face pale. After a few seconds, Derec went up to his cell door.
"So, who are you?" Derec asked. This close, he looked familiar.
"Who wants to know?" the man snapped back.
The voice, combined with that face…It took a few seconds for Derec to put it all together.
It was the dockworker from Petrabor. The one shown in the memories of the DW-12.
"Why was Gamelin coming to kill you?" he asked.
The man's face turned even paler. He stood abruptly and went to the back of his cell.
"What's going on?" Masid asked, coming up alongside him.
Derec gestured at the inmate. "This one worked the dock in Petrabor, middleman to those dead baleys. Who is he?"
"Yuri Pocivil," Palen said, joining them. "Coren sent me his records. He's been looking for him. We picked him up in the Settler section."
"You mean, " Masid said, with mock indignation, "that thing was coming to kill you and not me? All my careful planning and baiting went for nothing?"
Pocivil just glared back at them.
"We have to talk, " Masid said to him. "What did you do to piss these people off?"
"I'm not saying anything to you," Pocivil said.
"Then maybe we should just release you now," Palen said, "and let you take your chances."
Pocivil looked away. Suddenly, he lurched to his toilet and began heaving. The sound reminded Derec of his own urge. He walked quickly away.
He managed to suppress it, though he kept walking. No one called out or tried to stop him from leaving the cell block. He emerged into the security station. Everyone had gone into the corridor, leaving the consoles untended. Derec sat down before a bank of monitors, grateful to be off his feet.
Masid joined him.
"He'll talk," Masid predicted. "He's terrified. I think it will occur to him that his best chance to stay alive now is to cooperate with us."