“Genevieve,” Indigo said, and her voice came out soft as stripped velvet.
“Call me Mak…” Darkness crossed Casey's face, and she stopped with a final syllable filling her mouth. She swallowed it and started again. “Jenny,” she said, dropping Indigo's hand and looking down. “Just call me Jenny.”
Indigo stuffed her hand into her pocket. Remembered the pistol when she touched it and her targeting scope flickered live. Shook her head as if shaking water out of her hair. So many questions, and only one she could find the words to go around. “Why did you do it?”
“Because,” Casey answered, too quickly, and then paused. She turned her head to watch an inbound train and the flood of plaid-skirted girls it disgorged, and then looked back and raked the metal hand through her hair.
Indigo counted breaths and waited, realizing she really did want to know.
“Because I thought I had to,” Casey said, a little while later. “I thought I had to. Stupid reason, but there it is.”
And it was all there, in the softness of her voice and the way she studied the floor when she spoke. Indigo cleared her throat. Oh. “He was a friend.”
“He was more than a friend, kid.”
The trains came and went, and so did the crowds. The ice crept up Indigo's throat from her belly, locked her teeth and tongue and jaw. She might have moaned a little around all the words that would never come out.
Casey coughed into her hand, and a couple of pedestrians wearing fashionable color-coordinated face masks edged away. People were more cautious about public displays of illness than they had been when antibiotics worked better. Anything could be the disease of the week.
Indigo didn't budge, and Casey looked her in the eye. “So Razorface tells me you want to save the world. You got a plan for that yet?”
3:30 PM
Tuesday 19 December, 2062
Allen-Shipman Research Facility
Toronto, Ontario
Valens started as Holmes rapped squarely on his doorframe and entered. He started to stand, didn't make it to his feet before her scowl knocked him back into his chair. “We're fucked.”
“Alberta?”
“Roundly fucked,” she said. “The board cut our funding. They found out about my indictment. That's it, we're out.”
He laid his hands flat on the desk, the texture of waxed wood barely registering. “No,” he said. The word felt heavy in his mouth.
“Yes. My lawyers are telling me they have paper, Fred. How did they get paper? There isn't supposed to be—” Beat. “Casey. Your pet sold us out.”
“No.”
“Christ, Fred, is that the only word you know?”
It came clear in front of him, like a banner unfurled. He nodded. “It links to Barbara. It's got to be. What are the charges?”
“Conspiracy to commit everything.”
“Are any of them false?” He strode around the desk, feeling control return. His hands shook. He shoved them in his pockets.
Holmes glanced up, at an angle. The way people do when they're formulating a lie.
“I see,” Valens answered. “You didn't do any of it, Alberta.”
“I don't—”
“No,” he said. “You didn't do it.” He swallowed, and it hurt. This is it. “I did.”
Holmes stared at him blankly.
“I did it. I hired Barbara Casey. And it seems that — without your knowledge, without Unitek's knowledge, without the army's involvement — I also paid her to carry out my own very illegal and unethical agenda.” He swallowed. Goddamn me to hell, but I would like to see this woman strung up by her toes.
“You wouldn't take a fall for me,” Holmes said, still blinking.
“Oh, don't you worry,” he answered. “I'd never take a fall for you. And Constance Riel still has more than enough to hang you for treason, Alberta. And I have no doubt at all that she will, unless you cooperate with her fully in keeping the space program moving forward, and the funding in place. Once I'm out of the way.” Somewhere, he found the gall to smile. “Now, if you don't mind. Be a dear, Alberta, and get Riel on the phone?”
1545 PM
Tuesday 19 December, 2062
Yonge-University-Spadina Subway Line
Toronto, Ontario
Indigo is over by the snack bar picking Swedish fish out of a plastic jar with tongs. I lean against the pillar, and Razorface looks at me with that look in his eyes. Like he knows something is about to go spectacularly wrong.
I'm suddenly sure, sure as I always used to be sure, that I'm going to die. Air hisses between my teeth. “She's a smart kid, Face. But she's too used to following orders.” I recognize the symptoms.
He turns away to cough; blood smears his lips when he pulls his hand away. “Shit.”
“Yeah, shit. Have you seen a doctor for that?”
He glares at me and frames a denial. I lay my steel hand on his shoulder and squeeze. “No,” he says.
“Do.”
“If the world don't end,” he says, and I have to be satisfied with that. “You want Indy and me to handle Holmes for you? I bet she'd be down with that.”
I bet she would, too. “I'll call you,” I say. “Don't do anything unless you hear—”
He grins, and I know I'm screwed. Razorface does whatever the hell he wants, whenever he wants to, and then he nods and smiles and pretends he told me all about it beforehand. “Hang tough, Maker.”
Oh, fuck it. I gotta get back to work. “You, too, Razorface. You hang tough, too.”
I don't even bother looking surprised when I get back to my office and Valens shows up thirty seconds after I sit down at my desk. “I went for a walk,” I say before he can ask.
“I don't care,” he says. “We've got a problem, Casey, and I bet you know something about it, but I haven't got time to discuss it now. You and Patty, Leah and Castaign leave for the Montreal tonight. Go home and pack.” The look he levels at me takes the resilience out of my knees. I couldn't get up if I wanted to.
“The Montreal isn't safe.”
“Unitek is cutting funding for the starflight program. Riel says she'll back you as far as it goes, but it happens now. We keep the four boys on Earth in reserve, in case something does happen to your group. Before Unitek gets into a pissing match with Canada over beanstalk access. Riel will commission the Calgary, and Koske and Leah will take her. We can have her drive on-line in a week.”
“—not ready—”
“Shut up. I don't have time to argue.” Spit-shined shoes scuff the floor. “You'll be prepared to leave for an extrasolar destination by the new year.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, thinking of Razorface. Something lasers through my gut when I do. HD whatever the hell it is. Sixty-nine light-years away. “What about Genie?”
I know the answer before he shakes his head. “She'll get medical care,” he says. “As long as Riel can keep the program going. Castaign and Dunsany have already been transferred to the Canadian Army; they're doing the paperwork now. But the CCP and Unitek Medical programs — Genie's out of those.”
I don't know where I find the strength to stand, to come around the desk. “She's a kid, Fred. You need to make Holmes understand—”