The Pedestal (14 page)

“I know it’s hard,” he says. “We’re all going to miss him.”

I feel my cheeks flush, and though I’m trying to be on my best behavior, I involuntarily slap away his hand. I guess I’m a little more chafed than grossed out now. “Please don’t act as if you knew him,” I warn. I don’t mean to be hateful, but my indignation at this unnecessary false familiarity sets my nerves aflame.

His face opens up with bewilderment and he squeezes farther against his desk, putting a little more distance between us. “Don’t be like that, Wilson. I’ve known him as long as you have. We’re all shocked, and we’re all hurting just as much as you.”

What the heck is he talking about? As far as I know, Keith and Stewart have never knowingly shared breathing space on the same block. My incredulity must be blatant, because Keith slithers away and reverts to his comfort zone behind his desk, his eyes darkening by the moment.

“Listen, Wil, he left something for you.” He immerses a hand into his desk drawer and it emerges with an envelope. What in the universe would prompt Stewart to leave something for me through
Keith
of all people? Before I lose my temper—which is possibly closer than it’s ever been to completely escaping my grasp—I snatch the envelope and stomp into my office. I sit at my desk and seethe for a moment. When I’ve had a moment to cool off, I get back up and shut my door.

My eyes are brimming with tears. Poor Stewart. I can’t believe he’s dead, that someone killed him. I remember when he taught me to tie my shoes as a child, back when my parents were still around but were too busy to bother. He taught me so many things, things I can’t describe because their combined depth escapes words.

And though I still can’t claim to understand the mess I’ve gotten myself into, I’m beginning to believe that my uncle died because of me. Because I dragged him into something I should’ve been man enough to bear the brunt of alone.

I return to my desk and wipe at my face with the back of my hand. Before I can overthink things, I rip into the envelope, hoping for some explanation of how my beloved uncle came to be associated with my coworkers. Instead, I find something far more frightening. Inside the envelope, a single sheet of paper is sloppily folded into thirds. Stretched flat, its surface is void but for one word—a word that at once fills me with trepidation and steals my breath away.

Run.

You don’t have to tell me twice.

I rise to leave, but suddenly Keith is in my doorway. I’m not pleased with his lack of knocking etiquette—but I’m not about to waste a moment harping about it, either.

“Please tell me he left you the password,” he says, a sheepish frown splitting his wide face.

I look at him dumbly.

“Figures,” he growls. Leaving me confused, he walks out of my office and into the common corridor, yelling, “Does anyone know the password to the NanoRack?”

A mental tumbler clinks in my head.

Oh, no.

I blow past him into the rack room and find it empty. “Ryan? Tim?” No answer. I dart about the rack corridors like a mouse in a maze. I hear a sort of gagging sound—weird, but undoubtedly human—and follow my ears past the humming servers into the back, near the emergency exit.

Slumped against the wall with his butt on the floor is Tim, eyes gushing, nose dripping like a faucet. He’s trying for all he’s worth to contain a sob, and when it finally erupts, it does so with enough intensity to seize his entire body.

“Tim, you okay there, buddy?”

He looks at me and shakes his head.

“It’s my fault, man.”

“No, Tim. It isn’t. It isn’t anyone’s fault,” I tell him, though I know in my heart that, in fact, I am to blame.

Tim looks at me desperately, like he wants so much to believe me and is right on the precipice of doing so, if I can just push him over the edge.

“We should’ve left it alone, Wil,” he cries. I think I’m supposed to say
We were just doing our jobs, Tim
, or something—anything to grant him permission to put away the guilt. But I’m too self-absorbed, too confused and hungry for understanding to worry about mollifying him right now. “Left what alone?” I demand.

“The nexus, man.”

“What are you talking about, Tim?”

“Ryan did something he shouldn’t have—and now he’s dead.”

“You mean deleting that master record?”

Tim’s eyes bulge. Maybe I shouldn’t have tipped my hand—again: I suck at lying.

“C’mon, man,” I assure him. “I know it’s a big no-no, but people don’t die for causing data confusion, do they?” I try to smile as I say this, to give an impression of assurance—yet I’m shaking in my shoes, too.

“You don’t see it, do you?” he whispers, barely audible amidst the cacophony of fans. No, in fact I don’t see it. Whatever is going on here has escaped me since day one.

“Tell me what’s going on,” I beg him.

“He was just trying to help.”

“Help who?”

“Us, man! God, you’re so lowQ sometimes.”

“Noted. Pretend I’m a crank intern and spell it out, Tim.”

“Ryan didn’t want me getting my hands dirty with that whole Mitzy thing. He knew if I kept poking around, my queries were bound to get someone’s attention. So he figured he’d just get rid of the evidence altogether.”

“But what good does that do anyone? There’s a girl running around right now living under the assumed identity of Arthur’s ex-wife!”

“Exactly, Wil. That’s the way Arthur wanted it.”

“What?”

“I think we really screwed this up, crank. I don’t think Mitzy ran off with another man the way we all thought. I think she’s in hiding somewhere.”

“Hiding from what?”

“The same people who threw Ryan off his terrace last night, that’s who. The same crazy freaks who killed Arthur.”

I’d like to chew on this for a while, but Tim’s not finished yet.

“If you have any doubts, let me tell you something no one else seems to know yet.”

“What’s that?”

“Ryan’s NanoPrint? It’s gone. Just like Arthur’s.”

My head is about to explode. “I don’t understand this. If Arthur was so scared, why didn’t he go into hiding with Mitzy? Why stick around at all?”

“I have a theory.”

“Which is?”

Tim wipes his nose with his sleeve and gives me a sidelong glance. “You.”

On my way out, I pop my head into Keith’s office and say: “Nexusmaster.” His manicured eyebrows scrunch, and I’m gone. I don’t bother with a resignation or a request for time off. I just walk out the door. Mind ablaze, I plummet to the ground floor on an empty elevator, step through the swishing door—

—and literally into Inspector Rackley.

“Mr. Abby, just the man I’m here to see.”

“I’m a little busy right now, Inspector. Can this wait?”

He smiles at me like I’ve just proven a point he’s already made to himself and says, “Time waits for no man.”

A tram pulls to the curb and jettisons a few passengers; I step past the detective and toward the waiting tram. “Why don’t you make an appointment with my receptionist, Inspector?” I suggest with unveiled agitation.

To my back, he replies, “You don’t have a receptionist, Mr. Abby.”

I pause with one foot in the tram and offer an ironic smile over my shoulder. “Huh. Well, I guess that explains a few things.” I step inside and the door dismisses Rackley with a hydraulic
swoosh
.

It’s after one in the morning. I’m sitting up in bed with my heart trying to blast a hole through my chest. I don’t know what disturbed my sleep, but whatever it was didn’t exactly lull me awake like a kiss on the cheek. Probably my morbidly obese upstairs neighbor, who I have recently learned is a sumo wrestler in training.

I try to still myself to listen, yet the beating of my heart fills my ears like muddy lake water, and I suppose I know on some level that sumo footsteps aren’t to blame. I don’t want to disturb Adrian; I just lie there, trying to tell myself that everything’s fine. But I feel as though a wild animal is cornered in my flesh, moments from bursting free to escape something too sinister for my brain to grasp.

Then I hear it. It’s a knocking, so faint it might’ve been my neighbor coming or going. Only I can’t imagine Mrs. Grace doing anything at this hour. No, it’s definitely a knocking.

Leaving Adrian to sleep, I shut the bedroom door and creep through my condo, ill at ease in the captivity of my own home; every shadow is an assassin, poised to attack if I dare to look away. I reach the door no worse for the wear, save for my poor heart, which has taken quite a beating lately. My antiquated door monitor isn’t much help in the darkness; I see a figure on the screen, and that’s as much detail as I can discern. I shouldn’t answer the door, I know. If I were a smart man, I’d call the police right now.

Please, send someone right away! Someone just knocked on my door!

Okay, so maybe that’s not such a good idea. Still, considering all the craziness going on lately, I really shouldn’t open—

Knock-knock.

I flinch involuntarily. Man, I’m terribly spooked. “Who is it?” I whisper.

Staring at the monitor, I listen intently for a response, but I hear nothing. And then, just audible above the hum of inner city silence, I hear her speak.

“It’s me,” the voice says. “It’s Mitzy.”

I haven’t seen her in a couple of years, but I’m no less shocked at what I see when I open the door. This woman has no trace of the regal beauty that was Mitzy’s hallmark. Her eyes are hazel, where Mitzy’s were a soft blue. Her nose seems rounder, maybe a little shorter. Even her hair seems wrong, though I’m enough of a man that I can’t pinpoint how it’s different. Everything I see here tells me this woman isn’t Mitzy, yet when I look deep into her eyes, there’s no doubt.

“Hello, Wil,” she says. Despite her appearance, her voice is the same—and against all logic, it warms me. “It’s been a long time.”

I want to say something witty for some reason, something that artfully betrays my dissonance with what I’ve always believed to be her shameful parting with Art—something that lets her know that I know what the score is. I’m not sure why this feels so important to me, considering I don’t know the score at all. I’m a fly nabbed in a sticky web of deception. I search the directory of my mind for something to say, but I come up empty.

So I just step to the side and let her in.

It isn’t until she’s in my apartment, looking around with a wistful sadness—like everything’s familiar, yet completely changed—that our implants shake hands. Almost greedily, I sift through her xchange profile. What I find there doesn’t make sense to me, so I check again to be certain. There’s no mistake.

“Misty Edwards?” I ask, my wariness regaining a foothold.

The woman who is and isn’t Mitzy laughs. “I know, creepy, huh? I’m walking around with a dead woman’s implant. I keep waiting for somebody to call me out, but I doubt that’ll ever happen. Art did an excellent job.”

He had. I lead her to my couch—from behind, something about her is eerily familiar, though only slightly—and we both sit.

“So tell me about yourself, Miss Edwards.”

“Missus, actually. Well, let’s see. Fifty-nine, born and raised in Pittsburg, married for thirty years—no children—widowed at fifty-four.”

“Misty, huh?”

She sighs. “Just Arthur being funny; people were always calling me Misty,”—I can empathize; I still get an occasional post-introduction
William
—“plus, I’m not very good at subterfuge. I needed something close enough to my real name that I’d at least react when someone addressed me. You can’t imagine how strange it is, Wilson.”

She’s right; I can’t, and I admit as much. I scrutinize her face—no rudeness intended, of course. She looks remarkably different; I’m not sure I’d have picked her from a lineup before now.

“Strange, huh? It’s been two years and I still flinch every time I pass a mirror.”

At once, I find myself thinking about how bizarre—how horrible—this all must’ve been for her—to give up her home, her husband, her career. To become a stranger, to pretend that her memories never happened, and to collect someone else’s as her own.