Lost Time: Part 1 [Second Skyn] Page 8

  He doesn’t claim to know what’s going on, but hints at his suspicions, and he’s got a sizeable following. Most of his output is blocked, but he’s tagged my accident with the TACvan as one of his proof-points. I’m able to view it through the restrictions because my name is associated. He believes someone or something has tampered with the data, but like everyone else, he has no idea who or why.

  If I want to dig any deeper, I’ll need a link ID that doesn’t carry my lifetime of government-sanctioned baggage, and a brand new identity with no rep history won’t get me any further than I can get now. Not that anything any of these whack-jobs has to offer is likely to be useful.

  I spend the rest of the day on and off with the Service AMP, switching between triple and quadruple-checking the case file and trying to find out everything I can about Woodrow Quirk, the one concrete lead I have. When I get frustrated with that I work on passing the Psychorithm Crime training program so I’ll at least be familiar with the new set of laws I'll be enforcing, starting first thing tomorrow.

  Later, after hours of getting nowhere with the investigation and more hours of studying that only remind me I’m about to start my new career as a political shill, I give up and decide it’s time to sleep. Once I figure out how to slide the bed out, I lay down and my brain shuts off before the mattress finishes customizing.

  StatUS-ID

  [fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]

  SysDate

  [21:14:49. Wednesday, January 15, 2059]

  I thought losing my wife, learning I've died, been restored and died again, then discovering I have the rep of a disaster victim and an inaccessible bank account was as bad as it would get.

  Not even close.

  I’m standing in the middle of my tiny apartment, a towel I found on the bathroom floor wrapped around my waist, trying to decide if I should start piecing my life back together or take the stairs up to the roof and fling myself off, when the building chimes up, announcing a visitor—Special Agent Galvan Wiser. From the Ministry of Human Standards Enforcement Agency.

  Standards. Shit.

  I want to decline but I’m still logged into my Finsbury Gage account and the IMP butts in to tell me Agent Wiser was my partner last time ‘round, when we were detectives in the Psychorithm Crime Unit. I didn’t even know I’d been transferred out of Homicide.

  He might be the only friend I have left. Maybe he came to fill me in on how I ended up here. I authorize him then hurry to find something from the heap of clothes at the bottom of the closet that aren’t too dirty or small.

  I’m struggling into a t-shirt, barefoot in pants that stop well before my ankles when my front door announces his arrival. I tell it to let him in while I finish pulling the shirt over my biceps.

  A man enters, compact, solid, assessing the room, showing no surprise that it looks like a micro-tornado burst through. He’s wearing an unzipped black flight jacket over a black shirt and black combat pants tucked into slate grey boots. His head is clean-shaven. A neat, dark beard stops at even lines above his ears. He looks like he stepped out of an army recruitment poster, except for the black prosthetics jutting from his sleeves.

  A woman follows him in, hands in the pockets of her heavy blue overcoat. Her hair is short and silver, swept across her broad forehead. Her face flares from her cheeks down to a masculine chin. She looks me up and down and her pursed lips flicker at the corners. It takes a second, but I recognize her. Karin…Yellowbird. We’d met way back in time at a murder scene. I wonder what she’s doing here?

  Wiser steps up, matte black hands coiled at his sides, flashes a neat row of perfect white teeth and without a hint of sincerity says, “Welcome back, Finsbury.”

  “Thanks,” I say, hesitant, but step forward to shake his hand. “Galvan Wiser, right? Am I glad—”

  “I figured I’d be seeing you again, sooner or later,” Wiser says, cutting me off. He glides past me, glances into the bathroom, continues. “You’re not the kind of guy to have the decency to stay dead.”

  The momentary blip of hope that someone could tell me what had happened withers in my chest. He isn’t here as a friend. Why would I expect any different? The last me seemed to shit on everything he touched. I’m probably going to have to get used to people treating me like this.

  “I was hoping you came to help,” I say.

  “Help?” Wiser says, borderline incredulous. “You? Not a fucking chance. Officer Yellowbird, would you scan Mr. Gibson for me? I’d like to know who’s really inside that skyn.”

  Yellowbird steps up to me and draws a tab from her pocket, gives me an apologetic shrug and shines the tip in my eyes. Wiser watches, his jaw tight, fists balled at his sides, waiting to pounce.

  Multi-coloured light oscillates across my vision and a moment later the tab chimes warmly and radiates green.

  “It’s him,” she says over her shoulder to Wiser. “Fully synced with the rithm on file at Standards.” She smiles up at me. “Good to see you, Finsbury,” sh says, then ducks her head and retreats back to where she’d been standing.

  Wiser growls in his throat, circles back into the kitchen and wrinkles his nose at the filth. “It seems we don’t know each other. That is to say, you don’t know me. Not yet anyway, but I’ll bet you’ve got your old memories stashed away somewhere, ready to cram back into your head and disappear forever. Too bad that plan didn’t work out for you, hey, Fin?”

  I don’t know what he thinks I’m up to. And after the day I’ve had I figured it couldn’t get any worse, but if my old partner couldn’t wait to rush over and tell me he preferred it when I was dead, I’d better prepare myself.

  “Galvan, I’m not—”

  “It’s Special Agent Wiser,” he says, snatches up an empty soup can and crumples it like paper between an ebony thumb and forefinger, drops it back to the counter, brushes his hand across the front of his jacket. “Acting head of Standards Enforcement. Care to guess why we’re here today?”

  “Dropping off a Welcome-Back-From-The-Dead floral bouquet?” I quip, trying to hide the anxiety that’s building inside me. Yellowbird snorts and rolls her eyes. Agent Wiser chides her with a sharp glance.

  “The Ministry of Standards received a restoration report at fifteen oh-three this afternoon, the pattern and bio/kin registered to one Gage Gibson. Nothing strange there, except two hours later a Service drone captured Gibson’s bio/kin in what appeared to be an attempted abduction. No complaint was filed, but the Service AMP investigated and flagged the incident for review.” He’s pacing in the kitchen, pants rustling over the hushed murmur of artificial knees. “A Constable followed up, dug into Gage Gibson’s history. Found the StatUS-ID was decades old and had only sporadic linktivity until a few months ago, when a burst of use and a flurry of shady karma mechanic tricks built the rep high enough to meet restoration requirements—glowing feedback from suspicious merchants, strong Social Faith scores from sprawling zombie communities, thousands of hi-rep connections bought and paid for—and alerted me. You can imagine my surprise when, expecting another criminal Reszo trying to evade the law, I discovered that Gage Gibson was the reincarnation of my old partner, Finsbury Gage.”

  He stops, looks at me as if expecting me to protest, and when I don’t, continues, “Back in the physic for less than an day and already getting yourself into trouble. Care to make a statement?”

  I don’t know what to say, so I go with the truth. “Someone assaulted me.”

  “Which maybe I’d be inclined to sympathise with if the assailant wasn’t a friend of yours. Did you two have a spat?”

  With all that’s happened, finding out I knew the guy who attacked me doesn’t hit as hard as it could have. I feel its weight but there’s no further left to fall. I’m already on my back, with every new revelation piling on top of me.

  “Which friend?” I ask. At this point, I’m running on basics: collect as much information as I can and figure out what to do with it later.

  “Ari Dubecki, A.K.A. ‘D
ub,’ a rising star in the New Gladiators. You sure have a knack for pissing the wrong people off.” Wiser smirks. He’s trying to goad a reaction. I can’t do much, but I can deny him that. “Have any idea why Mr. Dubecki—” Galvan says, his fingers flexing in and out of fists, “—might want to snatch you off the street?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “We’d like to, but he’s dropped off the grid. Not a single rep-hit since last night.”

  “He’s the one who assaulted me. You should be looking for him instead of here harassing me.”

  “Oh we are,” he says, the self-satisfied smirk spreading. He’s about to hit me with something.

  “That so?” I say, move over to the couch, straighten the cushion and settle down. Some of it’s for show, but mostly I’m exhausted. “Why don’t you tell me all about it.”

  “You think this is all one big joke, don’t you?” he says, voice ratcheted a notch tighter. “Well the joke’s on you. Whatever trick you thought you’d be able to pull, however you thought you’d be able to skirt the mess you made of your life, it’s over. Standards is on to you. You can’t hide now.”

  “I’m not hiding from anyone,” I say. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’m not hiding.”

  “You want to know what’s going on?” Wiser says, “I’ll tell you what’s going on. You fucked up your whole life. You threw it away.”

  I sit up, lean forward. This is what I want to know. “How? What did I do?”

  Galvan puts his hands on the kitchen countertop and flexes. I hear the laminate creak. “You got yourself dishonourably discharged from the Service, for starters.”

  “For what?” I ask, not wanting to believe him. How could I have possibly ruined my career? It isn’t easy to get kicked off the Service. Censure, sure. Suspension, maybe. I can’t even begin to imagine what I could have done to warrant a full dismissal.

  His smirk deepens as he recites the list of offences. “Insubordination. Misconduct. Tampering with evidence. Trafficking in thoughtmods.” He pauses, narrows his eyes. “Murder.”

  “That’s impossible,” I say, the bluster that was in me deflating. I don’t want to believe it, but it explains why my rep’s through the floor and my bank accounts are frozen.

  “Who am I supposed to have killed?” I say.

  He evades the question. “Tell me, you’re Gage Gibson now, have you read through his link history?”

  I look to Yellowbird. She’s observing, impassive, hands still in her pockets. Even if she were inclined, she’s not going to step in.

  “No,” I answer.

  “Hmm. Know anything about Darien Cole?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “How about xYvYx?”

  “Is that a word?”

  “It’s a StatUS-ID.”

  “Still no.”

  He stares a hole through me. “Darien Cole was a Rithmist, went by the handle xYvYx. Standards has reason to believe Cole was working with Xiao—the crime lord currently at the top of Standards Most Wanted List—until he was killed. A day before you hardlocked.”

  “And you think I killed this Cole guy?”

  “Someone using Gibson’s StatUS-ID contacted him several times in the weeks before his death. The last time only two hours before.”

  I can see where this is going. If he was trying to get a rise out of me, it worked. I get to my feet but don’t move closer. “You’re saying I was dirty? What? Doing hits for organized crime? That’s impossible.”

  Wiser stares a hole through me. His hands drop to his sides and his voice gets low. “You were in contact with Cole over the last weeks of your life,” he says, his body absolutely still. “We had been investigating Xiao. We’d done things. You’d done things. Made mistakes. People had died. People got hurt. But we were close. We had him cornered. And then you let him get away. You walked away from the Service. Then Cole died. And then a day later you were dead too, your Cortex obliterated in a ridiculously over the top explosion while attempting a one-man raid on an apartment complex. It fits. This was your plan. You’d been shyfting. Messed your pattern up so bad, you were a scan away from your entire charade of a life crashing down around you. You needed a way out. Xiao presented an opportunity and you took it. In exchange, he promised he’d bring you back and you could disappear under a new name. No one’s charging Finsbury Gage for anything if he’s in storage. Sure, you’d lose a bit of time, but you’d be free. You’d be Gibson Gage and no one the wiser. Not unless we came looking, and why would we?” He doesn’t move, revs his knees in place. “So we have Dub to thank for that. Whatever it was he wanted, he lead us right to you.”

  My whole body sags. I want to fling back a response but can’t. My mouth won’t work. My brain can’t think of anything to say.

  He seems convinced, but it can’t be true. None of it can be true. It isn’t possible I’d do any of those things. Out of all the absurd and horrifying details I’ve learned about myself since I woke up in that goddamn basement, the idea that I’d be working for a crime lord is the most ridiculous. I don’t buy it. Not for a second.

  Whatever happened, that wasn’t it. It couldn’t be.

  He can’t prove it. At least not yet, anyway. That's why he's here expounding on it instead of arresting me. He’s trying to get me to slip and give him something to hang me with. Which means it’s possible he’s wrong.

  “If you had any real evidence I’d already be in binders,” I say, lift my chin up, take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Twelve hours ago I was dead. Since then I’ve been resurrected a widower, beaten, had my life kicked out from under me and, to top it all off, accused of murdering someone I’ve never heard of at the request of a bad guy I’ve never heard of. That’s enough for one day.” I point to the door. “Interview’s over.”

  If even half of what Wiser told me is true, I’m in trouble. Even more trouble than I thought when it was just Dub after me. And years of policing have taught me the first rule of being in trouble is: don’t talk to the cops. I need to get them out of here.

  Then I need to figure out what I did.

  Who I became.

  “That’s right, Finsbury,” Agent Wiser says, politeness spread thin over bubbling anger. “You’re squeaky clean, haven’t done anything wrong in twelve hours. But give it time. This is you we’re talking about. Now we know you’re back, it’s only a matter of time before you screw someone else’s life up, and then we’ll be sure. We’ll all know exactly who you are.”

  I always thought of myself as a decent person. I wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but definitely more in the plus column than the negative. What had I turned into that Agent Wiser could despise me so thoroughly?

  It doesn’t matter right now, there’s no use protesting my innocence. At this point, he knows more about what happened with my life than I do.

  Yellowbird though, based on the looks she’s giving me, I don’t think she has the same hate on for me that Wiser does. If what Wiser all said was true, why doesn’t she despise me too?

  “Book me or get the fuck out,” I say. “Please.”

  Wiser laughs, a short angry bark devoid of humour. “I’ve been waiting for this, for you to come back and pretend you don’t remember what you were up to. No idea what you did. Who you became.”

  He knows I’m not pretending. The scan showed I hadn’t synced. He isn’t thinking straight, letting his emotions get the better of him. All this isn’t only about an ongoing investigation. This is personal. “What I did—to you?”

  “Yes,” he croaks, eyes suddenly moist.

  “What? What did I do?”

  “This,” he says, and drives his artificial fist through the laminate countertop. Then the other, back and forth, again and again, throwing up plastic splinters and chunks of synthetic wood. Probably visualising my face.

  “I wrecked your kitchen?” I say. It’s childish but I can’t help myself. Who the hell is this guy to show up here and start tossing off accusations? A
cting out his grief from behind his badge. It’s unprofessional. Another reason why his story doesn’t hold together. He’s clouded by whatever happened between us, blames me for whatever got him those prosthetics.

  The muscles in Agent Wiser’s neck spasm, like he’s fighting the urge to march over and put his fist through my skull next. Instead he says, “That’s all for now, Mr. Gibson. Let’s go Officer Yellowbird,” and starts out the door.

  “Agent Wiser,” I call to his back, suddenly remorseful. I’ve seen this behaviour before. He's hurting.

  He stops, cocks his head to the side.

  Whatever got him injured, bad enough he needed implants on both arms and both legs, must have been traumatic, and he believes it was my fault. I know firsthand the consequences of trauma, how it can manifest in a hundred different ways. He’s carrying a lot of anger. It wouldn’t hurt to show some sympathy.

  Plus, I could use his help.

  I take a step toward where he’s waiting, slowly. I don’t want to set him off. He still hasn’t turned around. “Look, I don’t know what happened between us. I don’t know what I did to make you hate me, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  His back rises and falls. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t leave either.

  “And if I had anyone else to ask, I would, but I need a favour.”

  This turns him. His forehead is wrinkled and his eyes wide. A sharp laugh escapes his mouth before he features settle back to dour. “You can’t be serious.”

  “When Dub attacked me, he threatened my parents.”

  “Your parents?” he asks and his brow furrows, the anger he’d been consumed with replaced by concern. “Why?”

  “Leverage. He wanted me to ack a shyft.”

  Wiser stares at me, factoring an equation. Adding this data to a long string of variables he’s carrying around in his head.

  “Why do you think he would want you to shyft?” he asks, all business now. The anger buried.

  “Beats the hell out of me, but he was insistent.”