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CHAPTER 49
It felt strange, walking into the Human Cost Foundation’s offices for real. Memories of the v-format clashed with the actual architecture of the reception space and the corridors leading off it. There was no Sharleen sitting there, no one in the waiting area at all, and the walls were a paler, colder blue than he recalled. The artwork he remembered wasn’t there, and the prints and Earth First shout-out posters that had replaced it seemed grubby and tired. Jeff, when he came out to greet them, looked similarly worn.
“In the flesh,” he said, hugging Norton briefly at the shoulders. “Nice surprise.”
Norton hugged back. “Yeah, strictly business, I’m afraid. Come to pick your professional brains again. This is Carl Marsalis. Marsalis, my brother Jeff.”
Jeff shook the thirteen’s hand without a blink. “Of course. Should have recognized you from the feed photos. Do you want to come through?”
They took a different corridor from the one Norton remembered in the virtual offices, and of course it didn’t blur out the way it had in the format. They passed doors with cheaply lettered plastic signs that hinted at the foundation’s daily round: TRAUMA COUNSELING, COAST GUARD LIAISON, HARASSMENT RESPONSE, FUNDING… Through one open office door, Norton glimpsed a stout Asian woman looking sleepily into the middle distance and drinking from a Styrofoam coffee cup. She half raised a hand as they passed, but said nothing. Otherwise, the place seemed to be deserted.
“Quiet this morning,” Marsalis said.
Jeff glanced back across his shoulder. “Yeah, well, it’s early yet. We’ve just ridden out a major funding crisis, so I sent everyone home with instructions to celebrate and come in late. In here.”
He let them into the office marked with the simple word directorate, closed the door carefully behind them. Changes from the virtual here, too: the décor was a higher-powered blend of reds and grays; the sofa was the same but had been turned so its back was to the window and there was space to walk around behind it, a low coffee table in front. Ornaments had moved around, been replaced. The photo of Megan was gone from the desk, there was a smaller one of the kids instead. Jeff gestured at the sofa.
“Grab a seat, both of you. How are COLIN treating you, Mr. Marsalis?”
The thirteen shrugged. “Well, they got me out of jail in Jesusland.”
“Yeah, I guess that could count as a pretty good opening offer.” Jeff came around to the sofa and seated himself facing both of them. He put on a weary smile. “So what can I do for you guys?”
Norton shifted uncomfortably. “How much do you know about the Harbin black labs, Jeff?”
Raised brows. His brother blew out a long breath.
“Well, not a whole lot. They keep that end sewn up pretty tight. Long way north, a long way from the sea. Very high security, too. From what we can piece together, it’s where the high-end product comes out.”
“You ever meet a variant from the Harbin labs?” Marsalis asked. “Human Cost ever handle any?”
“Christ, no.” Jeff sat back and rested his head on one hand. He seemed to be giving it some thought. “Well, certainly not since we’ve been set up in our current form anyway. I mean, before we got state funding, back before my time, they might have, I could check the files. But I doubt it. Most of the escapees we get are failed variants from the experimental camps. They don’t quite let them go, but they don’t much care what happens to them, either, so it’s easier for them to slip out, grab a fishing boat or something, maybe stow away. Anyone coming out of Harbin, though, they’d be very highly valued, and probably very loyal as well. I doubt they’d be interested in ru
“I met one last night,” said Marsalis.
Jeff blinked. “A Harbin variant? Where?”
“Here. In the city.”
“Here? Jesus.” Jeff looked at Norton. “You see this as well?”
Norton shook his head.
“Well.” Jeff spread his hands. “I mean, this is fucking serious, Tom. If someone out of Harbin is here, chances are they work for Department Two.”
“No.” Marsalis got up and went to the window. “I had quite a long talk with her. She bailed out of Department Two awhile back.”
“So.” Jeff frowned. “Who’s she working for now?”
“She’s working for you, Jeff,” said the black man.
The moment hung in the room, creaked and turned like a corpse at the end of a rope. Norton was watching his brother’s eyes, and all he needed to see was there. Then Jeff jerked his eyes away, twisted about, stared up at Marsalis. The thirteen hadn’t turned from the window. Jeff looked at the broad back, the jacket lettered with s(t)igma, the lack of motion. He swung back to his brother.
“Tom?”
Norton reached into his pocket and produced the phone. He looked into Jeff’s face and thumb-touched the playback.
“Guava Diamond?”
“Still holding.”
“We are unable to assist, Guava Diamond. Repeat, we are unable to assist. Suggest—”
“You what? You bonobo-sucking piece of shit, you’d better tell me I misheard that.”
“There are control complications at this end. We ca
“You will be fucking sorry if we make it out of this in one piece.”
“I repeat, Guava Diamond, we ca
Pause.
“You’re a fucking dead man, Claw Control.”
Static hiss.
They all listened to the white-noise emptiness of it for a couple of moments, as if they’d just heard the last transmission of a plane going down into the ocean. Norton thumbed the phone to off.
“That’s you, Jeff,” he said quietly. “Tell me it’s not.”
“Tom, you know you can fake a voice like that as easily as—”
He jammed to a halt as the black man’s hands sank weightily onto his shoulders from behind. Marsalis leaned over him.
“Don’t,” he said.
Jeff stared across the sofa space at Norton. “Tom? Tom, I’m your fucking brother, for Christ’s sake.”
Norton nodded. “Yeah. You’d better tell us everything you know.”
“Tom, you can’t seriously—”
“Sevgi is dead!” Suddenly he was yelling, trembling, throat swollen with the force of it, memories of the hospital swirling. “She is fucking dead, Jeff, because you hid this from me, she is dead!”
Marsalis’s hands stayed where they were. Norton gritted his teeth, tried to master the shaking that would not stop. He clamped his mouth tight, breathing hard.
“Bonobo-sucking piece of shit,” he got out. “She called you right, didn’t she, Jeff. She knew you well.”
“Tom, you don’t understand.”
“Not yet, we don’t,” said Marsalis. He lifted one hand, slapped it down again on Jeff’s shoulder, encouraging. “But you are going to tell us.”
“I.” Jeff shook his head. “You don’t understand, I can’t.”
Marsalis lifted his head and looked directly at Norton. Norton felt something kick in his stomach, something that made him feel sick but was somehow a release as well. He nodded.
The black man hooked one hand into Jeff Norton’s throat, dragged him back against the sofa. His fingers dug in. His other arm wrapped around Jeff’s chest, pi
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” said Marsalis coldly. It was the same voice that Norton had heard him use, in Quechua, on Gutierrez. “Someone is going to bleed for Sevgi Ertekin. Someone’s going to die. Right now, we’ve got you. You don’t give us someone else, then you’re it. You try keeping what you know from me, RimSec are going to find you floating in the bay with every bone in your body broken and both your eyes put out.”