Memories May Lie Page 2

  Tatiana froze. Her fists balled up. “No,” she said. “I’m done talking now.”

  3

  “What do you think?” Eli asked and rolled back the chair in his cubicle.

  Charlie stared out of the window, at the building opposite and the scrolling advert which ran across its steel and glass width.

  MemXor – the wonder drug which helps you preserve your memories for future generations. Speak to your doctor or Mem Store Technician today!

  It was after 6 p.m., and most of the other SSG operatives had clocked out for the night.

  Charlie and Eli sat in their cubicles, screens still on, and information from forensics about Shane Mitchell laid bare before them. It gave them nothing. Nothing but the knowledge they already possessed.

  He was a researcher. Exceptionally dedicated to Mem Store. Earmarked for promotion up until his death. He’d died from blunt force trauma, and the pill bottle had been rammed into his mouth postmortem, as Charlie had suspected.

  “Spade?” Eli nudged her.

  “I think we don’t have enough information. And I think that Tatiana Mitchell didn’t give us the information we need.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and blocked out the view of that scrolling advertisement.

  Man, she detested seeing them everywhere. Mem Store and the State were hand-in-hand. Lovers who ruled all, and she’d witnessed firsthand what happened to people who got in their way. Droggo Boersma was dead. Jones had gone crazy. And all the memories she needed were locked up. State controlled.

  What are they hiding? “Do you think she’s hiding her mother?” Eli asked.

  “Tatiana? I can’t say,” Charlie replied and dropped her arm. She focused on the image on the screen – Shane Mitchell’s employee identification photo from the Mem Store Research Facility.

  “You don’t think she’s a Black Mars agent, do you?” Eli asked.

  Irritation erupted in Charlie’s core. “A what now?”

  “Black Mars agent. You know, Jones was one, so maybe she is.”

  She held up a hand. “Jones wasn’t a Black Mars agent, Eli. That’s the bullshit line they fed the public to make it look like what they did to him was above board.”

  “What did they do to him?”

  It had to do with the expired drugs. With him taking them or documenting them. And the memories he had recorded and listed. She couldn’t be one hundred percent sure because she hadn’t been allowed into the cloud where all the memories are stored. Jones was on death row, now. She could still ask, but it felt wrong. Not after what they'd been through together.

  She had no inclination to see him again. Just the thought of it brought goosebumps to her skin. He was supposed to be my partner, and he betrayed me. I can’t speak to him. I can’t feel for him, even if the drugs were a part of what he did to Natalya.

  “What did they do to him?” Eli repeated. “See, you can’t tell me because it’s bullshit. Your conspiracy theory is delusional.”

  “Conspiracy theory! Dude, you were there with me for the whole ride. You saw the way the Councilors stuck their nose into that case. We’re supposed to be a separate body, and they practically regulated our investigation.”

  Eli shrugged. “She could be a Black Mars agent.”

  Charlie trembled. She couldn’t make Eli see sense, and she didn’t want to.

  His expression was unreadable. And the last time she’d had a lead he didn’t agree with, Ink had handed him her case, and he’d gone with it.

  How could she trust him, or anyone, with Black Mars agents – the real ones – warning her off, and evidence stacking against the State? Eli wouldn’t betray them. He practically suckled on their teat.

  “Spade, you’re all over the place. Talk to me.” Eli touched the back of her hand, stroked it. “You know, we have to consider every possibility. She could be Black Mars.”

  Charlie shut off her screen. “No. She’s a kid, and she’s just lost her parents. There’s no evidence she’s involved with a rebel group. None at all. Frankly, it’s shoddy police work that you’re even jumping to that conclusion.”

  “Relax. I’m trying to weigh all the options equally. If the last killer was Black Mars, then this one might be too.”

  Charlie rose from her seat. “I’m going home, Eli. You can stay and ply your Black Mars bullshit theories to thin air for all I care.”

  “Charlie,” he said and tugged her back by the hand. “I’m not trying to aggravate you. I want you to see that there are possibilities we need to consider.”

  His touch heated her skin but left her cold on the inside. She pulled herself from his grip, opened her mouth to answer him, but movement in her peripheral vision stalled her.

  A man, not in SSG uniform but wearing a suit, hovered near the exit, watching them. He wasn’t close enough to overhear, but he stared, and that look drained all the anger from her veins.

  His dark eyes tracked her every movement. His lips were thin enough to disappear.

  “Hey,” she said.

  The suited guy didn’t react, just watched.

  “Hey you,” Charlie repeated. “Do you have authorization to be in here?”

  “Who is that?” Eli asked and got up too.

  Charlie started toward the guy, but he sidled to the entrance and slipped out before she’d made it halfway across the room. “Shit,” she muttered and dashed after him.

  The hall was empty. A door slammed in the distance.

  “What was that about?” Eli asked, huffing a couple breaths beside her.

  “I don’t know.” But her skin crawled, regardless. Perhaps, her paranoid feeling about Mem Store hadn’t been too far from the truth. They were under watch, and that meant they were close to something dangerous.

  The truth.

  4

  This was the last place Charlie wanted to be, but it was necessary. If it worked for the investigation, she’d damn well put up with it. Finding answers was all that mattered to her, especially ones that weren’t eschewed by the State’s ulterior motives.

  Jordan Smith’s office was devoid of personality. The wall behind his plain steel desk held nothing but framed degrees and diplomas. No pictures of family. No motivational cat posters. The walls were painted cream, bland as paper, and his equally bare desk had but a single slab of a screen centered on it. The man himself sat behind it, rocking from side to side in his office chair.

  Those blue eyes scanned them both, Eli and Charlie, weighed them and dismissed them again. Or not quite. Perhaps, he wanted them to think that.

  Smith’s gaze returned to Charlie again and again.

  She shifted in the seat opposite his desk and tapped the camera at her temple.

  “I would prefer it if you didn’t record this meeting, Miss Spade,” Smith said and straightened his white lab coat. “This is strictly confidential information I’m about to impart to you. It would be a shame if such information fell into the wrong hands.”

  They’d come for more about Shane Mitchell, but Charlie hadn’t expected to wind up working with the newest Junior Researcher, and the same dude she’d encountered the last time she’d come to the Mem Store Research Facility in Corden Prime Central.

  The very same man who’d told her that Droggo Boersma hadn’t worked here. That he had never existed.

  He’d made Charlie out to be crazy, had her thrown out by security.

  Eli cleared his throat. “I think she’s checked out.”

  Smith’s lip quirked up at the corner.

  “I’m afraid I will be recording everything, Mr. Smith.” Irony in its finest form. His name smacked of anonymity. “It’s Stormshield Service Group policy.”

  Eli opened his mouth, no doubt to point out that it wasn’t strictly SSG policy but more of a precaution, until Charlie placed her heel on the toe of his standard issue boot. He shut his mouth again.

  “It’s either I record this session, or I report you to my superior for refusing to cooperate with a Stormshield investigation,” she said and matc
hed his arrogant smile with a shit-eating grin of her own.

  How do you like them apples, assface?

  Smith’s lips pursed as if he had, indeed, tasted a particularly sour apple. “Fine,” he said, “but I’ll need a copy of the video to give to Mem Store’s head.”

  “Absalon Shamood wants a copy of this meeting’s recording?” Charlie asked. He was the head of Mem Store, the man who had created the memory removal process and the machines that did it. Not to mention MemXor. His interest in this meeting sent up red flags.

  Smith paled. “No, I – that’s not who I meant.”

  “You’re aware of another head of Mem Store?” Charlie increased the pressure, widened her eyes.

  “No. That’s – you can keep recording. I won’t require a copy, after all.” He ran fingers through his short, brown hair, then touched his thumb to that hooked nose.

  “Good,” Charlie said and tilted her head to one side. “That’s good, Mr. Smith.”

  “Dr. Smith,” he corrected.

  “I wasn’t going to give you a copy anyway. That would be highly unethical.”

  Eli pinched her elbow and gave her the “go easy” look. He should’ve worn it out by now. “We came to find out more about Shane Mitchell,” Eli said.

  “We need all the information you can provide, Dr. Smith,” Charlie put in.

  Smith forced his expression to blankness. “I’ve been told as much,” he replied. “I believe I have what you’re looking for.” He opened one of his desk drawers and drew out a drive – an incorruptible drive. He held the thin sliver of black plastic aloft.

  “Memories,” Charlie said. “Shane Mitchell’s?”

  “Yes, these were Dr. Mitchell’s memories. Ones he removed using one of our state-of-the-art machines. The Mem Remover 9000. It’s the grade above those in current Mem Store facilities across Corden Prime.”

  “And the relevance of that is?” Charlie didn’t take the stick from Smith just yet.

  “The Mem Remover 9000 streamlines the process of removal. It uploads memories directly to the cloud, as it includes a screening and encryption process built in,” Smith continued. “They’re fantastic machines, earmarked for the homes of the wealthy.”

  “While the streeters stick to their craft, and people starve on the streets.”

  Smith laughed. “No one’s starving in Corden Prime. You know that. The State is good to us all.”

  Charlie looked over at her partner. “How much do you think they pay him to say that?”

  “I assure you, they pay me nothing to tell the truth,” Smith said.

  Ah, wasn’t that a double entendre? “So, Dr. Mitchell removed his memories.” Copied them, since removal was a misnomer. “When?”

  “Over the past months. He did it without consent and during off-peak hours at the facility,” Smith said. “As he was one of our Senior Researchers, Dr. Mitchell had access to all the machines whenever he pleased. It’s a security flaw we’re currently working on correcting.”

  Why had they picked Jordan Smith as an SSG liaison? Perhaps, it was to intimidate her after their last encounter.

  “So, not like Droggo Boersma, then. He was only a Junior Assistant, I believe. He couldn’t have accessed those machines back when he was alive,” she said. Totally unrelated to this case, but she had to gauge his reaction.

  If Smith would lie about Boersma again, how could she trust any information he gave her?

  “I have no idea who you’re talking about, Miss Spade,” he said, evenly.

  And there was her answer. He’d lied about it twice, now, and anger bubbled in her veins as a result. She kept it under wraps. She’d get nothing out of him during a screaming match.

  “Back to Shane Mitchell,” Eli said and shook his head at Charlie.

  Why wouldn’t he confront Smith about Boersma? Eli had met him too.

  “So, Dr. Mitchell didn’t get authorization to remove his memories?” Eli continued, ignoring Charlie staring at him.

  “No, and it took us hours to hack the encryption he placed on them. And more time to upload them to this drive. It’s yours. We have our own copies. Make of the information what you will,” Smith said and handed it over.

  Charlie’s fingers brushed his in the exchange, and she fought not to wipe her hands on her uniform. She placed the drive in her top pocket. “Do you know anything else? Any reason why Dr. Mitchell would’ve hoarded MemXor in his apartment?”

  Smith shook his head. “No. Though, we do have some researchers who take work home with them and work on it in their personal offices. But only with approval from Absalon himself.”

  First name basis, eh? Did Smith know her father too? God forbid.

  “If I may, Miss Spade,” he said. “Shouldn’t you focus on finding where Jana Mitchell may have run off to, rather than Dr. Mitchell’s private research?”

  Charlie grunted. “It’s Agent Spade,” she replied. “Shane Mitchell was found with a bottle of MemXor rammed into his mouth. I’d say the presence of those pills is damn relevant, wouldn’t you?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer but rose from her seat instead.

  They were done here. They had all the information they’d get from him. All that was left would be analyzing it and figuring out which bits they could believe.

  Charlie reached the door, placing her hand on the knob.

  “Agent Spade,” Smith said.

  She looked over her shoulder.

  “Good luck.” It wasn’t said kindly.

  5

  The midday rush in SSG HQ had started right before they arrived.

  Around here, folks didn’t take lunch breaks as much as two-minute meals at their desks. A cup of coffee tossed back, or a sandwich stuffed into their maws. There wasn’t time for idle chatter either. Conversations about cases sprouted between partners, whether they scuttled to the Vend-o-Eat machine in the corner of the office or the water cooler.

  Eli and Charlie were no different.

  They muttered to each other, bent over the screen of her tablet. Charlie ate a ham and cheese sandwich. Eli had taken egg salad, curse his fucking soul.

  “Wait a second,” he said, and a bit of goopy egg dripped onto his lap. “Aw shit, if this memory is going to contain something unsavory, should we really view it while we’re eating?”

  “It’s Shane Mitchell’s uploaded memories. Not surveillance from the crime scene. Relax. Your stomach is safe,” Charlie replied and took a bite of her sandwich. She hit play on the memory which had been paused on the screen, then turned up the sound.

  Chatter from the other operatives threatened to drown it out, but they both scooched to the edges of their seats.

  Jana Mitchell flickered into action on the screen, as seen from Shane Mitchell’s point of view. It was his memory, after all.

  “You can’t be serious,” Shane Mitchel said, and the viewpoint flickered.

  Charlie paused the video. “What was that?”

  “What?” Eli asked, mouth full of egg salad and bread.

  “That flicker. You can’t tell me you didn’t see it.”

  “Yeah, so? Maybe he was trembling or something.” Eli chewed enthusiastically.

  “No,” Charlie replied. “That’s not normal in a memory. These are supposed to be incorruptible drives, but that interference is highly irregular.”

  “I disagree. I’ve seen memories do this before. It might just be a coincidence. Why don’t we keep an open mind about it?”

  “Why don’t you kiss my ass? You can’t tell me you think that we just happened to get State-sanctioned memories that are untouched, not after what we saw in the last case,” Charlie said.

  “But, this isn’t the last case. This is now.”

  She grunted. He’d proven himself last week. He’d done what he had to do, and despite his new status as her partner, she couldn’t begrudge him the need to remain impartial.

  She hit the play button again. The flicker had gone. The memory continued.

  Jana Mitchell stood
facing her husband, her arms folded across her body.

  Blond hair, same as her daughter, generous lips, a thin nose, crooked as if it had been broken in the past, and eyes blue, fiery as hell. “I’m serious,” she said. “I’m serious as a memory removal operation.”

  “Jana, that’s not plausible,” flicker. “Black Mars is dangerous,” flicker. “You shouldn’t join this cause. The risk is too great.”

  Charlie paused the video again. “It has been tampered with,” she announced.

  Her partner rolled his eyes. “Here we go.”

  “Eli, there’s too much interference in the memory. It’s like the sentences have been cut and pasted together.” Which could only mean that, once again, Mem Store had something to hide. They were the ones who’d removed the memories from the cloud.

  “Wait, though,” Eli said and grabbed a napkin from the desktop. He dabbed at his pants, but the stain on the thigh of his uniform didn’t budge. “They said that the memories are uploaded directly to the cloud, right? The memory cloud? That might be the reason.”

  Theoretically, it was possible. Memories were supposed to have a week-long hold to ensure they weren’t corrupted.

  “No,” Charlie replied. “They wouldn’t allow the upload of corrupted memories no matter how money hungry they are. If one memory is corrupt, the rest are.”

  “Right, they corrupt each other,” Eli said and continued rubbing the stain.

  A pair of agents in the cubicles behind them stared at him and shook their heads.

  “Eli, would you stop rubbing your crotch for a second and listen?” Charlie said.

  He dropped the napkin and reddened.

  Charlie rewound the video and watched the footage again. “Look at this. It’s just the snippets of information, and then it cuts out. Why would he have uploaded such a short memory? This isn’t corrupted, not by the process, no. It’s been tampered with.”

  Her partner sighed. “Does my opinion really matter?”

  “No,” Charlie said and removed the drive from the tablet’s side. “So, here’s what we’re going to do.”