Quantum Flare (Gunn Files Book 3) Page 2

  Exasperated, Gonzalez waved her hands around her. No, really, she did. I had to step back to keep from getting whacked in the cramped confines of my small office.

  “Don’t either of you have any kind of… of… journalistic ethic? Even if you’re right—which you’re not—and even if you did have proof—which you don’t—it’s irresponsible to spread these kinds of rumors. It erodes public confidence in the real investigators!”

  At that, Anna gave a frustrated chuckle. Then she said, “The piece didn’t accuse anyone of a crime. It just asked a simple question.”

  “And now everyone at the department is talking about it!” The muscles in Gonzalez’s jaw clenched. She put her hands on her hips, flaring back her somber gray suit jacket to glare at me this time.

  “They are?” Anna said, her eyes suddenly hopeful.

  “Not in a good way, Anna, trust me. And I don’t like having to lie to my colleagues.”

  “But they’re talking about it,” Anna insisted. The impish grin spreading on her face caused adorable dimples to form in her cheeks. “Maybe that explains the bump in traffic.”

  I couldn’t help but return her triumphant smile with a smirk of my own.

  Gonzalez, ever observant, rolled her eyes and pretended to gag as she pointed a finger into her mouth behind Anna’s back.

  I sighed. “Sheila, I’ve already read the article. Several times. Anna didn’t say anything that couldn’t be independently verified. All she’s saying is that the investigators may have missed something. Which I agree with, by the way. No way that explosion was a freaking coincidence. I was there.”

  Gonzalez went very quiet and clenched her jaw. Suddenly, I knew why she was really upset.

  “You think it’s dangerous to publish this piece, don’t you?”

  “Don’t you?” Gonzalez snapped. “I still find it hard to believe about this Harbor place being down there, but between what I’ve seen and what you two and Vinny have told me, the Gatekeeper and this Tetrad are dangerous enough without taunting them.”

  “The article doesn’t identify either of them by name,” Anna pointed out. “There’s no mention of Harbor, and no implication of offworlder involvement whatsoever. Vinny and Gunn both insisted on that.”

  “Still,” Gonzalez said.

  I grunted, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. I did see her point, but the article was innocuous enough by itself, and I had hounded Anna until she took out any reference to Harbor or anything at all being located beneath the Museum. No matter how cute she was, all excited about her new website, I couldn’t afford to let her give away the slim advantage we had over the Gatekeeper. She saw the sense in that. It hadn’t been hard to get her to agree.

  “Speaking of which,” Anna said. She held out a small digital recorder to me across the desk. “This came while you were out.”

  She didn’t mean the digital recorder itself, but the message stored on it, as indicated by the blinking red light. Hesitating, I took it, cranked up the volume and clicked play.

  “Greetings, Gunn.” The cyborg Peacekeeper’s whistle-chime voice came clearly through the tiny speaker. I’d met many Lodians since I first met Dyna, but none of them had as many augmentations as her. I flexed the joints of my own cybernetic hand while I listened to her message, careful not to turn my wrist outward and risk causing another cramp. “I hope this finds you and your friends well. I appreciate the extra detail you sent us. Our analysts agree that this Lodian who calls himself Tanamir is most likely ex-Defense Forces. The burn scar on his neck could have been caused by the kind of chemical weapons used in the Vortex Wars. However, he was smart enough to use a new name. We didn’t get a hit in the Federation databases on anyone named Tanamir. I have my guesses as to who he really is, based on your description of the events and his approach. As such, in the meantime, you and your friends would be wise not to do anything that might attract undue attention—”

  “Told you,” Detective Gonzalez muttered under her breath.

  “Shh,” Anna said.

  “—until I arrive,” Dyna’s recording continued. “By the time you receive this message, I will already be traveling back to Earth. Take care. I will see you all soon.”

  The recording ended and the three of us exchanged glances.

  Anna’s face reflected her sheer excitement and anticipation. She’d met Dyna once, but her memories of it had been wiped after the event. I had no doubt she was, at this moment, brainstorming ways to get a quote or a photo from Dyna for her blog.

  Gonzalez, however, frowned. Unlike Anna, the detective’s memories of the carnage Dyna had caused trying to stop an alien fugitive had not been erased.

  “Just her?” Gonzalez asked.

  “Her partner, Kilos, will probably come with her.”

  The detective’s frown deepened.

  Personally, I was glad to hear that Dyna was planning a return trip. I was out of my depth when it came to the Tetrad. How could I do anything meaningful to counteract what Tanamir was planning next when I didn’t know what he was trying to accomplish in the first place? Having Dyna back here would be a huge advantage. She should be able to provide some answers, or at least point us in the right direction. All we had to do in the meantime was sit tight and not screw it up.

  “Dyna told me before about how overtaxed the Federation forces are fighting this war,” I said, trying to reassure Gonzalez. “Peacekeepers are the scouts and field agents. She’s probably being sent back to see if she can handle the problem on her own. If she determines that it’s bigger than she can deal with, then maybe her boss will finally agree to send in the big guns.”

  “Why don’t I like the sound of that?” Gonzalez mused aloud. It was a question neither Anna nor I attempted to answer. “And how long do you think it’ll take her to travel here?”

  I shrugged. “The messages seem to take, what—a few days to get back and forth? Seems logical that it would take her at least that long, probably longer, to get here.”

  “Thirty-six hours is the shortest time we’ve waited between messages so far,” Anna said. “The longest is two weeks. We don’t necessarily respond right away, and I’m guessing she doesn’t either.”

  “How much do you trust this so-called Peacekeeper, Gunn?”

  “Do we have to go over this again?” I asked. “She’s helped us before. Her messages all seem to indicate that she’s trying to help us now.”

  Gonzalez sighed, pacing across the tiny office. I grabbed a glass and fetched some tap water from the bathroom down the hall. Then, I found a gym towel in the office and used it to dry my face.

  Gonzalez finally sat on the narrow windowsill, her back to the street below, and looked me straight in the eyes.

  “Meanwhile,” the detective said, “she makes a good point. We shouldn’t be attracting undue attention.” Gonzalez glared at Anna. “You should unpublish that article.”

  “No way, Jose. My readers would be furious.”

  I groaned, attracting the attention of both women. Averting my eyes, I reached out and set my finger on the digital recorder to play the message back a second time.

  I froze when a knock sounded at the door.

  2

  Gonzalez shifted her weight so that the gun in the shoulder holster under her suit jacket was easy to reach. She turned toward the office door and the sound of the knock.

  Anna tensed, pushing her chair back from the desk and pulling open the top drawer, where she knew I kept a Taser and a snub-nosed .38 special.

  “Careful,” I growled.

  Like the two of them, my whole body had shot through with tension. My bare toes gripped the thin carpet. The blurry figure of a woman was visible through the frosted glass, her head surrounded by a multi-colored halo. For a second, I had the impression of a mad clown.

  I couldn’t be sure how the others felt, but clowns freak me out.

  Reaching with my good hand, I beckoned with my fingers. Anna placed the Taser in my palm. Checking to make sure it was charge
d, I hid it at the small of my back and used the metal fingers of my other hand to twist the handle.

  The door swung open. In the hallway stood not a clown, but the woman with rainbow hair I’d seen outside. She was taller than she’d seemed at a distance, standing only an inch or two below my six-plus feet. The frizzy hair gave her a little extra height, but not much. Up close, tiny dots at the base of her hair follicles caught my eyes.

  Hair implants? On a woman this young?

  Apart from that oddity, her purple-and-blue rain boots clashed with her red coveralls, which had been cut off below the knees. Several delicate silver and bronze chains hung off her wrists, ankles and neck. They jingled with dozens of charms as she moved—cast figurines of everything from a moon to a wrench, plus many other strange swirly symbols in some language I didn’t know. Cyrillic or Arabic letters, maybe?

  Or perhaps an alien tongue. How could the thought not cross my mind?

  As I’d seen outside, the woman was agitated, her movements filled with nervous tics. Licking her lips compulsively, her eyes darted around the small office, taking in the three of us.

  The sight must have overwhelmed her. After the initial shock of the door opening, she shook her head vehemently, as if changing her mind, and turned to go.

  Contrary to what you may think, this was not a relief for me, but a cause for concern. If this woman had come to my office, it was likely she was here to offer me a job. Sick with tension from looking for a war that wouldn’t come, I was eager for a distraction. Plus, I needed the cash.

  “Wait a second,” I said. Reaching out, I grabbed her arm gently at the shoulder.

  She started as she spun around, smacking her arm into my hand and then the door frame. The whites of her eyes shot wide, but she didn’t clutch her arm in pain or even react to the impact. Her face hung on an expression of nervous fear.

  But that wasn’t the weird part. The flesh that I’d touched? It was about as firm and flesh-like as a bad boob job.

  “Don’t touch me,” she snapped. Her eyes darted around again.

  “Easy,” I said, dropping the Taser into my pocket and raising two empty hands. “Ma’am, I mean you no harm. I swear.”

  The cybernetic augmentation in my right hand drew her eyes, and for some reason, seemed to soothe her. She drew a ragged breath in. The nervous licking of her lips continued. It was weird, repetitive, almost as if…

  “You’re the man they call Gunn,” she said between excursions of her darting tongue.

  I inclined my head. “That’s right. And your name is…?”

  Anna and Gonzalez both watched the exchange warily, saying nothing. Each was rewarded with a glare from the newcomer.

  “May we speak in private?” Rainbow Hair asked.

  “Both the detective and my, er—” I glanced at Anna. “My assistant can be trusted.”

  Annabelle quirked an irritated eyebrow at me when I called her my assistant, but she didn’t voice any objection. She did, however, close the drawer of the desk and fold her hands in front of her. She watched Rainbow Hair with interest, her mouth twisting into a wry smirk at the next line that came out of the woman’s mouth.

  “This is not a matter I am interested in discussing with the police.”

  Gonzalez rose to her feet, her posture stiff. Her words, however, were gracious. She may show her teeth to her friends when it’s called for, but like any good Texan, and perhaps more than most, Sheila Gonzalez had been raised with manners. “Your clients have a right to their privacy. I’ve got to get back to work, anyway.” She shook her head, as if the thought was painful. “Let’s catch up about that thing later, yeah?”

  I nodded once without taking my eyes off Rainbow Hair’s nervous fidgeting.

  Gonzalez brushed past and disappeared down the stairwell. The nervous woman watched the detective depart, first with her eyes and then with her ears until the sound of the outside door closing drifted back up to us.

  I sipped more water while the woman stepped carefully into the room and took the liberty to latch the door behind her. I sat on the windowsill where Gonzalez had been seated a moment before. Three people was about all my tiny office fit.

  “What about her?” Rainbow Hair finally asked, pointing at Anna and talking about her as if she wasn’t there.

  “I told you, she’s my assistant. I need her help. So, if it’s okay with you, I’d prefer it if she stayed.”

  Anna smiled kindly, trying to show how non-threatening she was. Rainbow Hair hesitated. The nervous licking continued.

  “If I can help, I’ll tell you,” I said. “If I can’t, I’ll be honest about that, too. Telling me about the job is always free of charge, and what you say here will be kept confidential. If you want that in writing, I’ve got NDAs in the desk.”

  It had been necessary to make such promises to skittish clients in the past, so I was always prepared for the eventuality. Preparedness didn’t cost much, and it helped to secure new jobs from reasonably skeptical people. No matter how crazy things got with the offworlders and this Tetrad war, I still had a business to operate and bills to pay. Sometimes, reassuring folks was all it took. They saw the sincerity in my face. Other times, the client balked and ran. And that was also fine with me. It came with the territory.

  Rainbow Hair, however, didn’t turn tail and try to bolt for the second time like I half expected her to do. Instead, she said, “Very well.”

  Then, she reached up with both hands, touched a spot behind each ear with two fingers, and froze like a statue. The woman’s tongue got stuck in the middle of one of those nervous licks. She looked like a mannequin now—or like a model who stands in the window display at luxury clothing stores, impeccably still so that you’re suddenly not sure if she’s a mannequin or a real person.

  Or something in between.

  Steam hissed out from the spots she’d touched. Anna gasped, her hands shooting to her mouth. My eyebrows rose surprise. I’d known almost immediately that we were dealing with an offworlder—but this was a new trick.

  Not in a million years would I have predicted what happened next.

  The woman’s coveralls parted, the cavity of her chest folding open like a lotus flower. Inside, a metal-walled room filled with a soft blue light angled back and out of sight.

  I blinked dumbly.

  Despite her shock, Annabelle immediately grabbed her phone and began snapping photos of the… robot or android or whatever you’d call it. The frown that turned Anna’s lips down told me that none of the photos were turning out well. Leaning over, I saw that each photograph she took showed up as a woman-shaped glare where the offworlder should have been.

  That was by design, I felt sure. Her insides looked like an M.C. Escher painting. Gazing inside, at first I saw nothing except an expanse of metal flooring that extended several feet farther back than seemed possible. Staring at it gave me a dizzy sensation of vertigo, as if I was peering into a house of mirrors. Then, I realized there were more angles. It wasn’t a single cavity at all, but an entire apartment with rooms. There shouldn’t have been as much space in there as I saw. Was it a trick of the light or an illusion?

  I didn’t have long to contemplate it. From inside the cavity in Rainbow Hair’s chest, a set of stairs extended downward at a forty five degree angle until they lay flush with the carpet.

  After a few seconds, a small creature with pale green skin, leanly muscled arms and pointed ears dropped down a ladder and walked hesitantly down the stairs. She wore futuristic-looking gloves and a helmet, like a fighter pilot, but designed in miniature.

  Much like Rainbow Hair, this offworlder looked around nervously, distrust evident in her finely-featured face. But she, at least, didn’t twitch or lick her lips so much.

  “I would never normally do this,” said the small green alien in a high pitched voice. “But I have no choice but to present myself honestly to you if I want you to believe what I am about to tell you. Do I have your word you can be trusted?”

  I
nodded. “Of course.” I had to put in some effort to keep my mouth from lolling open in a look of stunned awe.

  She removed her helmet and cradled it with one hand against her hip, a very human-like action, I thought. Her face was fine-boned, with big eyes and a small nose. A ponytail of bright white hair—real hair, as far as I could tell—trailed down her back.

  “Don’t think I won’t have both your memories erased if you try any funny stuff.” She pointed a finger up at us. I suppose it was meant to be menacing, but on the pipsqueak, it felt a little slapstick.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am,” I said politely, fighting down a smile and trying to keep in mind that she was a potential client. Her ears were bat-like in their size and mobility. Fine veins wound through the cartilage. Though the robot she’d occupied was obviously not a living thing, she very much was.

  “Please, no more erased memories,” Anna said. Her face was very serious. “I’m still mad about the last time that happened.”

  The green offworlder’s ears twitched. “The first memory gap tends to be very memorable. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Anna said emphatically. “That’s so true. It took me a little while to piece together what had happened, but when I realized how much time I’d lost, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

  “They never think of those kinds of things. Callous of the Peacekeepers, really.”

  “I like her, Gunn.”

  “Is that right?” I drawled as I studied the offworlder, weighing this demonstration of vulnerability with my skeptical instincts.

  She was undeniably feminine, about three-and-a-half-feet tall, with boobs and hips in proportions that a pinup model would have been jealous of. Her clothing, a fitted tank top and cotton shorts, was scant. It must have been hot inside that robot.

  What was interesting about her helmet was that it bore curly symbols that glowed a soft blue. The symbols matched the charms on Rainbow Hair’s necklaces and bracelets, confirming my guess about it being some kind of alien lettering. The sleek cut of the headset and gloves made even the most cutting-edge jet fighter pilot’s headset look clunky and heavy by comparison. Whoever she was, she had access to tech like I’d only seen in the hands of the Peacekeepers. Maybe she knew someone who could help me fix my new Terminator hand.