Dulcie sat staring at her pad with a sour taste in her mouth. It was impossible to tell exactly what had been happening and it might take hours working with her enhancement gear before she'd even be able to guess. But whatever she was going to do, she should do it on her own time, on her own system. It was foolish sitting here with Dread's secrets exposed—better to copy everything, then deal with it on her own terms.
But she could not resist opening a few more files, just to see if everything Dread had stored so carefully was as ambiguous as what she had seen. She selected a few more, turning her attention first to one labeled "Nuba 8."
The images in Nuba 8 were much sharper, although they also seemed to have been downloaded from a security camera, this one on the stairwell of what looked like a large office or apartment building, also at night. The scene was lit by floodlights; the figure of a woman, when she emerged from the glass door with her purse under one arm and her keypad in her hand, was quite clear. She was young, perhaps Dulcie's age, dark-haired, slender. She paused on the bottom step and fumbled in her purse, withdrawing a cylinder that looked like some kind of chemical defense weapon, but even as she did so she looked up in startlement. A shadow moved in front of her, swift as a flitting bat; an instant later the stairwell was empty. The image jumped and changed, the footage now coming from a different camera in an underground parking lot, but the woman being shoved toward it by an indistinct figure in dark clothing was recognizably the same, even with her face disfigured by terror.
Disturbed as she was by this brief bit of horror flick—was this Dread's ugly, awful secret, that he collected snuff footage?—Dulcie was even more disgusted by herself than she was sickened by what she was watching.
It figures, she thought. The first guy I get interested in for months and he's into this kind of horrible shit. Thank God I didn't let him. . . .
The woman was shoved to the ground. There was no sound in this file, but Dulcie didn't need to hear it to know the woman was screaming. Then the man who had thrown her down onto the cement floor looked up to the camera—he had known it was there all along—and smiled as though he were sending a snapshot home to his family.
Dulcie didn't find out until later, but that was just what he was doing.
She gaped in unbelieving horror as John Dread, also known as John Wulgaru and Johnny Dark, elaborately bound the woman's wrists and gagged her with duct tape, then produced an extremely long knife. He arranged everything with care so that the security camera would have the best possible angle. Watching, Dulcie felt as though she were paralyzed and could not turn away, as though she too had been tied down, with nothing left in her control but her staring, horrified eyes.
It was only when a soft, sentimental piano melody began to play, joined alter a few bars by strings and an artificial choir, and Dulcie realized it had been added to the footage afterward, that something snapped inside her. She staggered to her feet, whimpering, then fell down twice before she could make it to the bathroom to vomit.
CHAPTER 38
Boy in Darkness
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"Stephen?" Renie scrambled along the ledge, searching desperately for some way to crawl down to the boy, but the path ended within a few meters, rejoining the wall of the pit like heat-fused glass. "Stephen! It's me, Renie!"
His head tilted up slowly, his shadowed eyes catching a glint of slow fire from the stars high above, but he gave no other sign of recognizing her. Could she be wrong? It was dark here in the pit despite the distorted, weirdly bright stars overhead, as dark as late evening, and he was many meters away.
Renie crawled back and forth at the end of the path like a leopard trapped on a branch. "Stephen, talk to me. Are you okay?"
He had stopped crying. As the echoes of her call died away she heard him sigh, a trembling exhalation that stabbed at her heart. He was so small! She had forgotten how small he was, how vulnerable to the world and its cruelties.
"Look." She struggled to keep the fear out of her voice. "I can't find a way down, but maybe you can find a way up to where I can reach you. Can you look, Stephen? Please?"
He sighed again. His head sagged. "There's no way up."
Renie felt something so powerful it was like a hard thump on her chest. It was his voice, unmistakably his. "Damn it, Stephen Sulaweyo, don't you tell me that without trying." She heard the anger in her voice, an anger born of exhaustion and terror, and tried to calm herself. "You don't know how long I've been looking for you, how many places I've been trying to find you. I didn't give up. You can't give up, either."
"No one was looking for me," he said dully. "No one came."
"That's not true! I tried! I've been trying." Tears were in her eyes, blurring the already strange scene into complete nonsense. "Oh, Stephen, I've been missing you so much."
"You're not my mother."
Renie froze, leaning out over the long fall down to the river. She wiped the tears from her face. Was his brain damaged? Did he think Mama was still alive? "No, I'm not. I'm your sister, Renie. You remember me, don't you?"
It took him long moments to answer. "I remember you. You're not my mother."
How much did he recall? Perhaps he had invented a protective fiction about their mother still being alive. Would she frighten him into some kind of catatonia if she disputed it? Could she afford the risk? "No, I'm not your mother. Mama isn't here, but I am. I've been trying to find you for . . . for a long time. Stephen, we have to get out of here. Is there someplace you can climb up?"
He shook his head. "No," he said bitterly. "No place. I can't climb. I hurt."
Slow down, she told her rabbiting heart. Slow down. You can't help him if you get in a panic. "What hurts, Stephen? Talk to me."
"Everything. I want to go home. I want my mother."
"I'm doing my best. . . ."
"Now!" he screamed. His arms thrashed—he was hitting himself on the head. "Now!"
"Stephen, don't!" she shouted. "It's okay. It's okay. I'm here now. You're not alone anymore."
"Always alone," he said bitterly. "Just voices. Tricks. Lies."
"Jesus Mercy." Renie felt like her swelling, aching heart would choke her. "Oh, Stephen. I'm not a trick. It's me, Renie."
He was silent for a long time, a tiny shape barely distinguishable from the nodules of stone along the bottom of the pit. The river murmured.
"You took me to the ocean," he said at last, his voice calmer now. "There were birds. I threw . . . threw something. They grabbed it in the air." There was a tone almost of wonderment in his voice, as though something had been given back to him.
"Bread. You threw pieces of bread. The seagulls were fighting over it—do you remember? It made you smile." Margate, she remembered. How old had he been? Six? Seven? "Do you remember that man playing music, with the dog? The dog that danced?"
"Funny." He said it as though he did not quite feel it. "Funny little dog. Wearing a dress. You laughed."
"You laughed too. Oh, Stephen, do you remember the other things? Your room? Our apartment? Papa?" She saw him stiffen and silently cursed herself.