Jack nodded. “She watched him do it. Booth was terrified.”
The pathways faded. Jack faced the prospect of losing himself in the fractured remnant. He withdrew his fingers.
“Excellent,” Burnfield said, smiling. “You’ve done a fantastic job.”
Something slotted into place. Jack remembered the man’s voice from the HALO conversation. How could he have forgotten? He’d only heard it yesterday. “He was talking to Adam, my handler.”
“What’s a handler doing talking to him?”
Jack looked at the body, focused on the clean contours around his eye sockets. “Booth had been a remnant keeper once, but there’s no implants. He’s gone through the reversal process.”
Jack looked around the room for somewhere to wash his hands. He hurried to the sink and scrubbed, using the lemon soap from the dispenser. The water almost scalded him but he didn’t much care, holding his hands under the taps for as long as he could bear.
“We need to find Indira,” said Burnfield.
Jack finished washing his hands and used the drier on the wall. “I don’t know how to break this, but she can do what Anna could.”
Anna Lovett, aka, Gwenith McKean was the country’s first positively identified telepath. The woman who’d orchestrated the death of his wife had powers far beyond what the traditional telepath scale measured.
Jack continued, “Anna could put thoughts into your head. Twist your perception. She made me think she’d been shot in the head.”
“I remember,” Burnfield said, “And you think that’s how Indira made Booth terrified of rats?”
“I don’t know what else to suggest.” Jack came to stand by the body, then not bearing to look into the dead man’s face anymore, he lifted the sheet and let it drop gently back over Booth’s features.
“It’s a big leap, Jack.”
“It makes sense.”
“And that’s what scares me to death,” Burnfield said, running his hand through his hair. “How are we meant to deal with people that can do this? What else did you see? Did she say anything to Booth at the pub that might help?”
Jack wished there had been. “The images weren’t that clear. Everything moved so fast.”
“And what about this lab? Was that where he worked?”
“I think so,” Jack replied.
“Where was it, were there any windows? Anything that could help us find the place.”
“I’m sorry. There wasn’t anything like that.”
Burnfield sighed and suddenly looked to the doors, as if he’d heard something.
“We still don’t know why she took his eyes,” Jack said. “This can’t be about her protecting her identity. Booth knew something she wanted.”
“If she’s that powerful a telepath, why couldn’t she just scan him to get the information she wanted?”
Jack had been thinking about this since he’d been inside the simulacrum of Booth’s home. “I think it’s to do with the conditioning. The adjusters have done something to Booth’s mind to make it difficult to read.”
“We need to find that lab,” Burnfield said. “Find out what Booth was doing there. I’m sending a car to pick up your handler. He knows the victim. But most importantly, we’re going to track down Indira.”
The morgue doors opened behind them. A woman strolled in. “There’s no need to track me down, gentlemen. I’m right here.”
Jack’s heart froze as he stared at the newcomer.
Indira.
3:12 PM
Burnfield was the first to react. He had a stun gun in his hand before Indira had taken another step into the morgue.
“You’re not going to need that,” she said.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Burnfield replied. “Where’s Oswald?”
“Taking a nap.”
Indira wasn’t alone. A man stepped from the corridor behind her into the light. It had been a couple of weeks since Jack had last seen Frazier Growden and the sight of him now made him want to run.
“I see you’ve been making progress with our friend Booth here.” Growden’s chiselled smile chilled Jack to the core.
“I’m arresting the pair of you for the murder of Booth Maguire—”
Growden brought out a stun gun and fired at the detective. Burnfield collapsed in a heap.
Indira glared in Jack’s direction and Jack knew he was in terrible trouble. They weren’t interested in Burnfield; they’d come for him.
Growden walked into the room. “All right, fella. I reckon you and I have unfinished business.” Jack edged his way behind the trolley with Booth’s corpse.
“I’m not going with you,” and there was the most incredible pain shooting across the back of his head. “Get out of my head!” He focused on his blocking patterns but felt her stronger mind, ripping them aside almost as fast as he could build new constructs.
<Time to sleep.>
Jack tried to fight her, but Indira was inside his head, pushing hard against his defences.
<Sleep, Jack.>
Darkness enveloped him as he slid to the floor, unconscious.
*
Voices.
Hushed.
A slap to the face.
“Wake up,” a man said.
Another slap. Something cold on his back, metallic and hard.
“You were too heavy with him. He’s out cold.” A man’s voice. Angry and growling. Something familiar. Jack knew the voice. Locked away in his thoughts. It came with a warning.
He’d been somewhere happy. The forest again. The tree had been there. This time he’d gotten close enough to smell the sap.
Eyes open. Light bright above him. He blinked furiously against the illumination, desperate to find out what kind of mess he was in. Growden and Indira were looking down at him. The first thought that came to mind— “Burnfield. You shot him.” His voice was rasping, dry. His tongue clinging to the inside of his mouth. What had they drugged him with? No, not drugs. Indira had done this.
He tried to move but he couldn’t. Straps had been fastened around his body.
“Told you he’d be all right,” Indira said.
Jack flexed his defences. Whatever Growden was paying her, it was enough for her to sacrifice the Code.
“He’s blocking,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Growden replied.
And then he realised where he was. What he was tied to. He was still in the morgue. The metal behind him was the autopsy table he’d seen earlier. Straps had been improvised and were holding him tight against the surface.
“Help me!” he yelled, then pulled against his restraints.
Growden laughed, and came closer, something glinted in his hand. His eyes tried to focus. It was brought closer, inches from his face. A scalpel. The overhead light lit the blade as it danced over his face, streaking across his vision.
Jack twisted his head away as Growden brought the metal blade down to his face, and it caught the edge of his cheek. A moment of pressure. Burning. A trickle of something warm ran down his face.
Growden laughed again. “I could do this all day,” he said, chuckling.
Jack tried to block out the man’s voice, focus on something else, then he turned his head and saw the detective on the next table along. Burnfield was out cold. They hadn’t bothered to strap him down. What if he was dead?
“Burnfield needs help.”
“He’s in a hospital. What more help does he need?” Indira replied.
“Don’t let him die.”
“He’s a policeman,” Growden replied. “You don’t think we can ever be friends.” He was smirking. He knew the power he held. A scent of cinnamon, a hint of his arrogance.
“I don’t expect you to kill people without thought. A dead policeman and they’ll never give up the hunt.”
“They’re after me now. They’ve been sending their little spies in after me for years. Thinking I wouldn’t notice. Not so, eh Indira? She sniffs them out.” Growden got low, close
to Jack. Too close. “I take my business very seriously. I don’t take chances.”
Jack winced as Growden grabbed his shoulder and pushed hard.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you.”
Jack took a deep breath and looked up at his captor.
“What do you want?”
“Information.”
“I don’t know anything.”
Growden chuckled. “You’re no good at being interrogated. I haven’t even told you what I need to know. ”
Is that what this was then, an interrogation? If so, perhaps he had a chance. If it was information Growden wanted, Jack had an opportunity to make a deal.
“There’s not going to be a deal.” The woman said. She smirked, and the corners of her mouth wavered dangerously into a pit bull’s snarl.
<You’re reading me,> Jack said directly into her mind.
<Your blocks are pathetic.>
<Whatever hold he has over you, you’ve got to break free of it. Don’t be his puppet. >
<I’m nobody’s puppet,> she replied.
“When you two are finished,” Growden spat. Irritation evident in his face. “Seriously. Telepaths. Never shut up.”
“How did you know we—”
“It’s what I would do. You’re no doubt trying to appeal to Indira’s better nature. Believe me, there isn’t one. I pay her too much to be interested in helping you get out of here.”
<So, there isn’t a way out. Growden’s planning to kill me.>
Indira smiled.
Jack refocused his blocking patterns, then tried to feel the rhythm of his heart beating. Relax. If he came up with a plan, he had to be spontaneous, act without thinking. Don’t give her the head’s up.
Indira raised a finger to the side of her head and nodded in agreement at Jack. His blocking patterns were doing a poor job with him in this weakened state.
“I’ve got a job for you,” Growden explained. He backed off a little although it wasn’t nearly enough distance to make Jack relax.
But, there was a flip side to this. “I’ve been looking for you," Jack said confidently.
A quizzical look. “You’ve been looking for me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m really not that hard to find.”
“OK, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to talk.”
“Well, let’s hear it.”
“First, you have to make sure that Burnfield gets the help he needs.”
Growden laughed. “Why should I do that?”
“You won’t hear why I’ve been looking for you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Listen. You’ve got this the wrong way round. I’m the one in charge.”
“The man you were beating up on stage. I know who he is.”
No reaction. Stillness in his expression. All the confirmation Jack needed to know he was on the right track.
Growden turned to Indira. “Go outside, check we’re not going to be disturbed.”
<What the hell are you playing at?> she said at Jack.
<You’ll find out. Run along little canary.>
Indira shot him a scathing look then withdrew. Jack heard the morgue doors open then closed.
Growden came closer, bent down so he filled Jack’s vision. They appraised each other for a moment.
“So tell,” Growden said.
After a moment, Jack felt he could speak again. "Why do you hate telepaths so much?"
Growden eyed him curiously as if the question had such an obvious answer it didn’t require the effort to answer, but answer it he did: "Telepaths are society’s greatest burden. A chain around all our necks that keeps getting tighter year after year. Where does it end? When privacy boils down to whether some teep chooses to follow an idealistic set of rules, how are we meant to feel safe? Secure in the knowledge that an elite organisation has stepped in to protect us? OsMiTech is a joke.”
“Without them, telepaths would be free to do as they pleased.”
“You’re deluded if you think they aren’t already. Hell, look at you. OsMiTech haven’t stopped you breaking into hospital morgues.”
“We were trying to catch a man’s killer.”
“Booth killed himself.”
“That’s not what we believe.”
“You’re going to have to produce some strong evidence to make a jury believe anything different.”
Jack tried a different tack. “Does it not bother you that you’re using a telepath to kill for you?”
Growden smiled. “I had nothing to do with Booth’s death.”
“Indira is not a regular telepath, but then I guess that you already knew that.”
Growden looked at Jack with a stony expression. Eventually, he pulled a chair away from the wall and sat down. “Indira is special. Yes, I know.”
“And you don’t see the irony in your using a telepath to further your cause?”
“The irony is the beautiful thing about it.”
"I trust her. I know she won’t be around for ever, but whilst our interests are aligned… ” Growden shook his head. “Enough about Indira.” He sighed and looked Jack in the eye.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Growden continued. “I just don’t. It takes away man’s responsibility for the choices he makes. But sometimes, things just happen. Planets line up. And you show up. You look different, but it’s you isn’t it? I’m not interested in the spooks sent in to spy on me. I can find those goons whenever I like.” Growden paused. He grunted and got out of his chair, back into the other side of the morgue where Jack couldn’t see clearly. Seconds passed, and then Growden strolled back, a long metal stake in hand. It flashed through the air, stabbing down into his arm, above the elbow.
Jack screamed. A howl fit to wake the dead from the fridges, it echoed around the tiled room. Fire burned from the wound.
Growden left the stake in place.
“Hurts?” he asked, a sickening smirk on his face.
The doors crashed open and Indira hurried in. “What the—” but she fell silent when she saw what her employer was doing.
Jack panted, trying to focus on his blocking pattern. Anything to ease the pain from the wound.
“What are you doing?” Indira said, approaching the table. “They’ll hear you.”
“You’ll have to take care of them then.”
Jack closed his eyes. He thought he had a handle on the pain now. Could direct it to the controlled part of his mind. Let it sit there, don’t think about it.
Then the pressure increased on the wound and he opened his eyes and saw Growden twisting and pushing with the blade, widening the hole he’d just made. “Oh, no, you don’t get to ignore me.”
Jack yelled.
“Good, good, more though. I think you can manage more.” And the pain jolted through his nerves. Jack twisted away as far as the straps would allow. Wrapping the pain up stopped being an option. He let it consume him. Feeling the delicious taste of darkness from Growden’s mind and using that to dampen the sensation.
Then Growden stopped.
“When we’ve finished here, that pain will not end. You will pay for what you did to Wesley.”
“Who the hell is Wesley?” Jack croaked.
Indira approached.
<Make him stop,> Jack thought at her.
<Why?>
<Because when he gets bored with me, it may be you on the table.>
“If we don’t do this now, we could lose our chance,” she said pointedly. “We’ve already been in here long enough.”
Growden snapped his head up and glared. For a moment, there was the possibility of him striking her, but his face softened. The chin lifted, and he nodded.
“Let’s get to work.”
Indira bent down from view, Jack thought she was in the bag Growden had entered the room with. When she reappeared, she was holding a small woode
n box. It had been weeks since Jack had seen a remnant box, a box carved from the Tree of the Dead, carved with the markings from the whispering forest, swirls and leaves across the surface. He heard the whispers already. He knew what was inside that box before Indira opened it. When she did, she held it at an angle for Jack to see. A single eye encased in a cushioning clear jelly.
“Booth fought to keep this in his head.”
“Please,” Jack said. “Whatever you think you want to do, don’t.”
“I’m not about to stop now. I’ve worked hard to get this man’s eye. Now tell me what he was hiding.”
“Why did you kill him?”
Indira smiled. “He wasn’t about to give up his secrets whilst still alive.”
“You could have taken them.”
A frown appeared. She spoke delicately, like she didn’t want to admit to any failings at all. “Booth had been… adjusted. I couldn’t scan him.”
The area around his shoulder felt soggy with blood, and Jack knew that if he didn’t get help soon, he would die from blood loss. A glance at the next table confirmed that Burnfield was still out cold.
“You were there when Booth died. The only thing in that remnant will be his version of that night. Why do you need to see that again?”
“We both know that’s not completely true. Another lie OsMiTech likes to spread. Remnant keepers—the good ones—can take far more than just the moments before death. You see however far back you can reach.”
Jack knew she was right. When he’d worked on his last case, he’d had a woman’s eye in his head for far longer than usual and he’d seen the days leading up to her death.
Growden took out an eye extraction tool from the holdall. He pressed the button on the side and the extraction filaments extended and danced around the edge, seeking an organ to latch on to. “Where did you get that from?”
“Ways and means,” he said simply, and held it against Jack’s cheek. The filaments tickled the skin and reached up to Jack’s right eye socket. His heart was beating quickly, thumping behind his ribs. He tried to control his emotions, but it wasn’t happening. The stress of the moment too great.
Then Growden pressed another button, and the filaments darted under and around his eye, reaching for the disconnect socket behind the eyeball.