“Tobias Werner. UED.” He tossed the cell back on the table.
“Wow, Tobias Werner, UED.” I repeated his name and rank. Maybe it would survive the brainwashing. “I thought government douche bags would be given numbers instead of names.”
Tobias stood up and strolled behind my chair. With a grunt, he lifted me up and turned me to face the table. Next, he moved the hologram closer to me. “What was your part in Pescal’s murder?”
The image shifted to a silhouette of a man pulling weeds and exposing… The hair on my neck rose. Holy Toledo! I remember this. “I remember this exactly.”
“That’s because it is your memory.” With a sigh, he leaned over the table and tapped the MP4 player’s faceplate. The hologram froze on the body. Tobias poked his fingers through the display before moving his hands apart. The dead man’s face filled the image. “This is Pescal.”
The blue lips, the unblinking eyes and the still, flat nostrils. “Oh my God! The body was real. But how did the log get there?”
Was that proof I’d been brainwashed before? No. Mr. Tall, Dark and Latino hadn’t seen it. But maybe he was part of the conspiracy. Maybe he was Konstantin. But they were on separate teams. Of course, Tobias Werner UED could have lied.
“I put the log there so you’d think you’d tripped over it.”
And I had. But his actions made no sense. I was alone with him in a deserted park. Why would he let me go only to come after me later? Frustration clawed at my control. Obviously, I was missing pieces to give me a clearer picture. “Why would you do such a thing?”
He shrugged. “At the time, I thought you were innocent.”
“I am innocent.” I jerked my head toward the hologram. “I could hardly have killed the man if I’d just discovered his body. Actually, you discovered the body. Where
is
the body?”
As expected he ignored my questions to lob one of his own. “What is Konstantin’s plan?”
“I don’t know any Konstantin.” But I might. Tobias just hadn’t given me anything to prove it one way or the other. I’d been damned if I’d hand over an innocent person for interrogation.
And if Mr. Tall, Dark and Latino wasn’t innocent?
Hush. That’s the brainwashing talking.
Tobias sighed while his fingers danced over the MP4 player’s screen. The hologram morphed into whirlwinds of color. It stopped with a lurch.
Mr. Tall, Dark and Latino’s face stared back at me. Well damn.
“Victor Konstantin is recorded in your memories. It will condemn you in any court.”
I snorted. Like Big Brother ever brought witnesses in to testify. “Then my memories will show he never introduced himself, that we have no relationship and that I only know him as Mr. Tall, Dark and Latino. Case dismissed.”
I raised my chin. Let Tobias Werner UED put that in his pipe and suffocate on the smoke.
His eyes narrowed for a moment. “Victor Konstantin is not Latino and I am taller.”
I wanted to kick him. The douche completely ignored the fact that I was innocent.
“And if you and Konstantin aren’t involved why have you staked out the park for the last week?”
Embarrassment added to the heat engulfing my body. Good heavens. He made it sound as if I stalked the man.
He smirked. No doubt the knucklehead had misinterpreted my blush. “UED records indicate that you’ve lived in the neighborhood for more than two years and have never visited the park before. Yet on the very day when UED’s latest WitSec steward is murdered, you appear and appropriate his CeeBees.”
All this for ham radios? Blackness circled the rainbows surrounding my vision. I didn’t let that stop me from glaring at him. Unfortunately, I think the shakes vibrating my body undermined the effect. Either the knock on the head or the brainwashing had made me sick. I wanted nothing more than my bed and warm blankets.
And I was willing to admit to being a total loser to get it.
“I wasn’t at the park to meet Mr. Tall, D… to meet Victor Konstantin. I was there to get exercise, but my stupid personal trainer never showed.”
Tobias’s forehead wrinkled and his lips compressed as if he had swallowed something nasty.
I shrugged. So my confession didn’t exactly earn me brownie points. All I wanted was to go home and sleep.
“I had nothing to do with any murder or stealing.” I shifted on the hard wooden chair and leaned toward him. “Search this place if you don’t believe me. I don’t have your precious Citizen’s Band radio.”
He smiled.
I doubted it was from humor. In fact, I’d bet the rest of my savings that Red Riding Hood’s grandmother had seen that smile right before the Big Bad Wolf ate her.
“Yes. You do.” With a tap of his fingers, the hologram burped an image of three blue lights.
A memory shimmered to the fore. Aw snap. The lightning bugs spazzing on pixie dust. Arching my back I glanced down at my chest where the first one had hit. Where I had a welt and Tobias had given me a gold dot as a stripper’s pasty.
He obligingly held out my shirt to give me a clear view.
Definitely a douche. “You mean these Cee-Bee things are inside me?” I inhaled then my nose started to tingle and itch. Oh no. “They’re making me sick.”
“The cerebral bots, or CeeBees, cause an infection-like response while they’re incorporating.” He flashed his pointy canine teeth. “Obviously the CeeBees were not part of Konstantin’s plan.”
Plan. Schman. I shifted on the seat while my manacled arms twitched. The light bands dug into my skin. I yanked harder. I needed a doctor, antibiotics, and a blood transfusion.
Tobias crossed his arms and smirked down at me.
That was real helpful. Not! I jerked my body up and twisted. The chair hopped on the tile with a loud click and angled toward him. “Get them out of me!”
He shrugged, uncrossed his arms and reached for the fake MP4 player. “Right now the CeeBees are merging with every cell in your body and integrating their operating code into your DNA.”
The hologram fell dark and he snapped the gold circle filled bottom to the back of the display.
He couldn’t be packing up and leaving. Not after casually announcing he had infected me.
“No.” The chair’s legs screeched against the tile as I hopped sideways toward him. My muscles jiggled and my joints creaked but I didn’t care. He wasn’t going to leave me like this. “No. I won’t allow it. You put them in me; you need to get them out. Out, out Spam dots!”
I flinched at my father’s favorite interpretation of Shakespeare.
His mouth turned down at the corners. And for a moment, his blond eyebrows met in a vee above his nose. Clearing his throat, he turned away and tucked the MP4 player in his back pocket. “Can’t.”
“Yes. You can.” I’d become his personal cheerleader if he’d change his mind. I really needed him to change his mind. I sniffed up the unmentionables tickling my nose. I’d had a cold like this only once before and I’d ended up in the hospital for three weeks. This time I didn’t have insurance. “You created the Spam dots. You get them out or turn them off. Surely the fancy pen or cell phone can do that.”
I jerked my head toward the brass pen. He hadn’t used that yet. Surely Big Brother had a cure for something they created. Unless… Oh God. I stopped moving my chair. Unless they sterilized the infected.
“UED didn’t create the CeeBees. We stumbled across them on our first contact.” Tobias set his cold hand on mine. “As far as we know, they created themselves and keep on making more of themselves, improving and adapting with each generation. Although we’ve used them for nearly a thousand years, we have yet to understand how the CeeBees work.”
He lifted his hand and wiped it on his jeans.
First contact. A thousand years. Had the Spam dots effected my hearing now? Was I beyond curing? Tears stung my eyes. My fever disappeared under a wave of chills. “I don’t understand.”
“I know,
obecht
.” He tucked the pen into his shirt pocket, right above the city logo. “And maybe we could have left you alone but now that you’ve become involved with Konstantin…”
“I’m not involved with him!” My voice became hoarse as a dozen frogs played
Cirque du Soliel
with my vocal cords. Geez, if Mr. Tall, Dark and Latino stood between me and the cure… “I’ll give him up, swear off men, join a convent or take a vow of celibacy. Just don’t let those things kill me.”
Silently, he picked up his cell. He tilted his head to the right while turning the Smartphone round and round in his hand. “I’ve never heard of the Cee-Bee’s killing anyone.”
I collapsed against the chair’s wooden slats.
Praise Buddha
. I was going to live. My internal celebration died a quick death. Tobias didn’t actually seem filled with warm and fuzzy thoughts at the news. What was he not telling me? “But?”
“Given your association with Konstantin, UED cannot allow you to carry the CeeBees.” The screen of his phone lit up. He glanced at the name and ran his fingers through his short hair.
I sniffed. And that got him upset? Seemed like a win-win situation to me. “So they’ll remove the Spam dots and I’ll be okay.”
“The CeeBees can’t be removed.” Using his thumb he accepted the call and raised the phone to his ear. “The only viable solution will be your immediate termination.”
“Killing me is not a viable solution.” I shouted at Tobias’s back. Despite the waves of fever crashing over me, I was clear-headed enough to know that I wanted to live a long and happy life. “Look it up in the dictionary. Viable is the opposite of death.”
Tobias Werner UED shrugged his broad shoulders. Instead of responding to my shouts, he spoke into his cell phone and faced away from me into the living room. “Werner.”
Pretentious douche bag! Answering with only his last name like everyone on God’s green Earth knew who he was. I jerked my wrists but the light bands holding me to the arms of the cane back chair didn’t budge. And just what was up with his name? Werner pronounced Verner. Aside from being a cold-blooded killer, he was also a letter bigot.
Oscar the grouchy cat stretched across the polished cherry dining room table. His orange body contrasted with the beige drapes covering the small room’s wall of windows. He closed his eyes as his head reached a patch of early morning sunlight. Shadows from the fichus on the patio danced against the semi-closed shades of the French door.
Stupid cat. The least he could do is try to gnaw through the funky light bonds. After all, I had fed his fuzzy butt for the last seven days. I tugged harder. My skin bunched around the bands but I couldn’t free myself. Crap on a cracker! I’d never get out of here, if I didn’t think of something quick.
“Being infected by Spam dots and having the hots for Mr. Tall, Dark and Latino is no reason to terminate me.” I shouted at his straight back. Not even a muscle twitched but I knew he heard me. He wasn’t deaf.
“And who actually speaks like that outside of horrible Sci-Fi movies? We’re going to terminate you.” I shuddered more from the implication than from my bad German accent. I did not want to start my day dead. “Who do you think you are? Arnold?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He wedged his fingers through his close-cropped hair and traced patterns into the open living room’s plush carpet with the toe of his boot. “I have the subject contained.”
Subject. Oh no. I wasn’t even a person to him just an obstacle. That wasn’t good. Objects and insects were easy to snuff out. I bounced in my chair. The wooden legs screeched against the tumbled marble tile of the dining room.
“Hey! My name is Rae. Rae Hemplewhite. I’m not a subject; I’m a human being. With family and friends.”
Tobias covered the mouth piece with his fingers and pivoted around to face me. “Shut. Up.”
A muscle throbbed in his jaw and he narrowed his green eyes.
Under other circumstances I might have been intimidated. Right now I felt like I’d touched a thousand volt wire. I bounced a few more times in my seat. The chair legs screeched in protest and hurt my ears but at least I’d gotten his attention.
“I’m on trial for my life. I should have the right to speak in my defense.”
He stiffened and his gaze cut from me to the curtains.
Hope tattooed a beat onto my heart. Had he seen something? Was someone there? Could the cops actually be about to breakin and rescue me?
In two strides, he crossed the short distance from the carpeted living area to the French door and depressed one of the metal slats of the blinds to peer out. “Yeah, she’s definitely involved with Konstantin. Fancies herself in love with the cretin.”
My leg jerked. Only my bonds saved the douche bag from an ass whooping.
“I never said I loved him.” Lust, definitely not love and if he was the cause of my predicament, I wasn’t even sure if I liked Mr. Tall, Dark and Latino as much as I did a mild case of the flu.
Tobias released the slat. Metal rattled before the blinds settled against the French door. “The CeeBees recorded the contact between the two.”
Heat blossomed over my skin and a low ache throbbed in my joints. And speaking of the flu, I’d almost forgotten his stupid little seeds of infection. The little tattle-tale thingies may have recorded me talking to Mr. Tall, Dark and Latino, but they got nothing else on me.
I was innocent.
Tobias sauntered across the tile into the living room. Turning slightly, he propped a hip against the back of a Queen Anne’s chair and stared at me.
I was done being intimidated.
“I’m not a spy.” I hopped my chair another inch across the tile. At this rate, I’d reach the carpeting in an hour or so. I needed another plan. I glanced up at my captor. No emotion flashed in his green eyes. They were dead. But what did I expect from an assassin?
“I’ll have to wait until the CeeBees are fully integrated to learn how she was involved in Pascel’s murder.”
“I’m not a killer either.” I hopped another two inches. Maybe if I could get close enough, I’d land on his toe. Somehow, I doubted he’d stay put for the week or so the journey would take. “And you can’t prove otherwise.”
Unless he made something up. I froze. Could he do that? Absolutely. Big Brother lied all the time. But would he?