Nemesis (15 page)

“Is this a normal situation for Ambassadors?” asked Amanda. “I’ve never even been offworld aside from holidays before. Only started at the Alliance two years ago.”

“It’s been ‘normal’ ever since I met this guy.” Raj jerked his head in my direction.

“Hey, I caught the bastard.” And got a clue about their plan. The Campbells… it meant bad news, all right.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Raj said, shaking his head, as we made our way across the city–on foot again–to the official gate back to the Passages. “I thought the officers were gonna arrest all of us.”

“I was thinking that I needed to catch the criminal. Also, the Campbells are involved somehow.”

“But they’re in jail,” said Raj, with a significant glance at Amanda, who wasn’t an Ambassador and technically shouldn’t have been involved. Then again, the usual rules had gone out the window lately.

And yet I still felt as out of my depth as though I was stuck in quicksand.

“Yeah,” I said wearily. “They are. God knows.” I reached in my pocket for my communicator and found it had stuck on the loading screen. “Really?” I hit the screen again, tried the reset button, and nothing happened. Must have hit the ground when I fell off the bike.

“What?” asked Raj. “How many times has that happened now?”

“What’s this?” asked Amanda. “Kay–hang on. I’ve seen you at the training complex. You’re the one who keeps putting the simulators to the highest setting, aren’t you?”

She was probably the first person at Central who hadn’t commented on my name before anything else, or else the attack on headquarters. I’d seen her at the training complex before, but she was usually instructing newcomers. There were quite a few at the moment, as so many guards had died in the attack. And she looked vaguely familiar, too, though I was pretty sure we hadn’t spoken before now.

“You work there, right?”

She nodded. “I help the novices who haven’t already been through training. I tested that new girl, Ada. She’s one of the best I’ve seen, took to it immediately. You know her?”

“Yeah.” I hadn’t even asked how training had gone. Really, I should have had the balls to talk to her face to face.
What did you think would happen?
It was clear being at Central wasn’t helping her deal with what the Campbells had done to her. I’d been stupid to assume otherwise. But seeing Ada at the Blind Wyvern had done away with my brief resolution to avoid getting involved with her any more than I had to. Maybe I should just leave her alone, like her asshole brother said. I’d been the one to wreck her life in the first place.

Luckily, we weren’t detained for long at the exit.

“I’d get that blood off your hands before you report to my sister,” said Amanda, as we approached Central.

“Your sister? Who…” I frowned at her. Why didn’t I see the resemblance before? “Ms Weston.”

Amanda nodded. “Yes, she’s my older sister. And won’t be happy about this.”

“I think that’s a given,” I muttered.

Amanda ended up dragging me downstairs to the medical division while Raj went to report to Ms Weston.

Saki, the nurse, sighed over the state of my hands. “What in the Multiverse did you do?” she asked, wrapping bandages around my knuckles. “Put your hands through a window?”

“Pretty close,” I said.

“He chased down a ravegen by hijacking the hover bike it stole,” said Amanda.

Saki sighed again. “You Academy graduates think you’re invincible.” She pulled the bandage tight with more force than necessary. For some reason that had to do with my father, she’d never liked me.

“What was it carrying, anyway?” Amanda asked of no one in particular.

“I’ve no idea,” I said. “Some kind of tech. Valeria’s Alliance has it now.”

“Hmm. I wonder who gave them the orders? They’d never dare trespass through a doorway on their own.”

“Someone with dealings with the Campbells.” I kept my expression neutral, but one eye on the others to see if anyone reacted to the name. Not that I thought the Alliance was involved this time, but old suspicions died hard.

“The Campbells?” Saki frowned. “Oh–that’s odd. There were complaints at West Office about something going missing. This bloodrock solution?”

“I’m sure that’s what they used to turn themselves invisible,” I said. “Who the hell stole that stuff, anyway? I thought security was up.”

“It is,” said Amanda. “I think they confiscated it, and someone else stole it before they could lock it away. But Central’s bloodrock supply’s safe as anything.”

Good.
Sure, nobody aside from me had seen the file containing information on that particular substance, which could function as an energy supply in a high-magic world, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous in the wrong hands. Interesting how she knew so much about it. I guessed it was inevitable, with her and Ms Weston being related.

“Good news for the tech team, then,” said Amanda.

“What do the tech team want with bloodrock?” I asked.

“New devices,” said Saki. “Based on the one we took from that girl. Ada.”

Of course.
The Chameleon, as she’d called it, could turn anyone invisible for up to ten minutes–a level of magi-tech considered impossible on Earth. Magic-powered technology was too expensive to be cost-effective in Earth’s atmosphere, and most simply didn’t work. Ada’s brother had somehow found a way around it. Using bloodrock.

“They’re going to use them in the field, then?” I asked. I’d heard it mentioned here and there. The idea of being able to get into places unseen was pretty radical, considering the risks Alliance Ambassadors put themselves under in high-magic worlds.

Wait a minute… being invisible might give us a way around the centaurs’ issue with humans investigating a murder in their territory.

“Possibly,” said Saki. “Can’t say I like it, though. Considering what it’s been used for in the past–keep still!”

My hand had twitched as my pulse started racing. Only Ms Weston knew the significance of the experiment. As far as Saki and the others were concerned, it was dead and buried with the other victims. Skyla, or Ellen. That other girl I’d killed. There’d been another, too, and I’d inferred that Ada had accidentally caused his death.

I was the only one left.

Teeth clenched, I willed my hand to stay steady as Saki applied another bandage.

“I heard about that,” said Amanda. “I know I shouldn’t be authorised to know, but the Westons have always been involved in med-tech even if Danica decided against it. She said it’s common offworld, human enhancement. She told me… she was an intern at the time. Thirteen years ago?”

Saki looked up. I hoped she’d put my shaking hand down to the pain I barely felt. My heartbeat kicked up another notch, and it was all I could do to keep my expression blank. I remembered every fucking second of that day, but I didn’t recall seeing Ms Weston. But it explained how she’d known.

“I don’t know their reasons,” said Saki. “I wasn’t in this department when it happened. I’d just transferred over from the Tokyo branch to the Law Division. Clearly, it was a political move, a downright stupid one, in my opinion.” She shook her head. “For the risks they took… it’s surprising that the Alliance would have allowed it to go so far.”

Yeah. It would be, to anyone who didn’t know what Lawrence Walker was capable of. Who hadn’t escaped by the skin of their teeth.

“It is.” Amanda nodded grimly.

It was pretty clear Ms Weston hadn’t mentioned my father’s involvement to anyone.
Why not tell everyone?
She had nothing to do with the Walker family. I’d know about it if she did. Maybe she just didn’t want to risk the backlash of challenging the most powerful name in Earth’s Alliance. There’d doubtless be a cover up if the truth came to light, even if Lawrence Walker was cut off from the Alliance, on a distant world beyond reach.

More to the point, she hadn’t mentioned
my
involvement, even though for all she’d known, I could have been as unhinged as the others and gone on a killing spree. But then, she was a master at reading people if I ever saw one. Even me. She’d inexplicably decided to trust me even after I’d majorly fucked up multiple times, letting me go after Ada and the Campbells instead of detaining me at Central once she had the file in her hand.

I’d never seen the contents of that file…

“You had the information from the experiment,” I said to Saki, “Did you see which magic-based substance worked?”

“Honestly, I don’t know a lot about magic-based substances,” said Saki, with a glance at Amanda. “The only reason our division knows about them at all is because they’re responsible for most magic-related injuries. Sounds like the old council hired Klathican scientists.”

“I was with the guards who searched that Skyla girl’s apartment,” said Amanda. “She listed three substances in her diary that they used in the experiment: bloodrock, obsidiate and lustre. She was trying to find out which one worked. Ada’s report said two of the teenagers could turn themselves invisible. It matches lustre’s properties when it comes into contact with another source.”

“Really?” I frowned. “You know about magic sources?” Ms Weston sure hadn’t mentioned it.

Amanda tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “My sister decided to put me through admin when I joined up two years ago and I spent a week updating the files on sources based on the most recent discoveries. I was the only person she trusted to do it. It’s not the kind of information we want getting into the wrong hands.”

Hmm.

“I meant non-Alliance members,” she clarified. “The general policy is not to tell people any more than they
need
to know, especially on Earth.”

“And bloodrock?” I said. “The file… I don’t know if your sister told you, but people got killed over it.”

“Yes, she told me.” Amanda shook her head. “That’s why I volunteered as part of the search team. That information’s normally reserved for higher-up Alliance members.”

“Including this… lustre? You said that one worked?”

No way.
I didn’t know what it was. Hell, I
couldn’t
have known.

“I asked around when I paid a visit to Valeria’s Alliance’s labs,” said Amanda. “It’s certainly not common knowledge even over there. Lustre… they must have got it from Klathica, that’s where it was discovered. But I can’t imagine–the dangers of injecting a pure source into a human are high enough that even there, it would be carefully monitored. This was… thirteen years ago? Before the rules changed?”

The rules changed?
I made a mental note to check up on that. Obviously, I’d figured the experiments weren’t a common occurrence. But it sounded like whoever my father had employed hadn’t much cared if the subjects had survived or not.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. But a chill crept across the back of my neck all the same.

“Klathica. I thought so,” said Saki. “They aren’t averse to ridiculous experiments. I’ve been there, and half their Alliance guards have weapons growing out of their
hands.”

Of course it had been Klathican scientists who’d done it. On Klathica itself, almost everyone was born with magic. The experiment would only have worked, if at all, on Earth. And there was only one person with the authority to allow something like that.

“Did anyone happen to mention whether those teenagers’ abilities had a limit?” I asked, casually.

“Eh?” Saki blinked, as though only just aware of who she was talking to. “I have no idea. You fought one of them, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Two of them. They didn’t turn themselves invisible, though. I’m not overly familiar with the properties of lustre.” Though I’d be researching it now.
Lustre.
I finally had the name.

“Most people aren’t,” said Amanda. “Half the difficulty with magic-based substances is that almost all of them
look
alike in their natural form.”

My eyebrows lifted. “They do?”

“It’s one of the reasons Earth’s so reluctant to incorporate magic-based substances into their technology,” said Amanda. “Obsidiate’s a volatile explosive, and it appears identical to adamantine, which is an absorbent. Only magic-wielders can tell the difference.”

They can?
That explained… a lot. Adamantine was what gave the guard uniform its magical protection, and was built into Central’s walls, too. And the daggers were made of the same thing.

“So… what
is
lustre?”

“Rare,” said Amanda. “It’s mined on Klathica, and they only properly classified it a few years ago because it looks so similar to other sources, no one realised it wasn’t the same. It’s an enhancer, and only works in conjunction with another source. It’s even rarer than bloodrock, and no one actually knows where Central got
that
from. I hadn’t even heard of it until a few weeks ago. It wasn’t filed with the other information on sources.”

Enzar
. I glanced over my shoulder, unable to help myself. This was exactly the kind of knowledge that turned worlds against one another, and started wars.

Saki was looking at me suspiciously. Hell. “What about obsidiate?” I asked, half to distract her, half out of genuine curiosity. “You said it’s an explosive?”