Guilt in Innocece Page 4

  "I don't need to get through to him, I just need to get information out of him." Hembadoon didn't add that he'd already gotten some.

  But he needed more. If only—

  Suddenly, his computer sent him an alarm. The scan detected a low-frequency connection between a microscopic regulator implanted in Kosoko's heart—which was in his medical records as something to settle an arrhythmia—and something in the refinery.

  "Mogbe," Hembadoon muttered, then subvocalized an instruction to the computer to have Ebun do a scan of the refinery, focusing on the other end of that connection.

  "Won't take me, won't take me, won't take me! You can't! I'll kill everything before I let you take me away, you buruku!"

  Whirling around, Hembadoon saw that Kosoko had risen from the bed. His bloodshot eyes were now wide, and his mouth was wide open and screaming.

  "I won't go! I'll do my job you'll see you stupid buruku you won't take me to Olokun or anywhere else!"

  The officer had her Bayo pistol out. "Sit down, Kosoko."

  But Kosoko kept advancing on the shockbars. "You can't make me even if you come out of nowhere I'm still gonna do it, you hear, I'm gonna do it!"

  Kosoko grabbed the bars, then screamed much louder, this time in pain, as electricity shot through his arms and body.

  He fell to the floor. The officer continued to point her Bayo at him. "That's right," she said, "now get up and sit back on the bunk."

  But Hembadoon noticed that Kosoko was now grabbing his chest with his left hand, his face contorted into a rictus of pain, his right hand extended stiffly. "He's having a heart attack!"

  While the officer called for medical help, Hembadoon had his robe computer scan Kosoko again. The current from the shockbars had caused the regulator to burn out. The stress of that plus going mad probably put him in defibrilation, Hembadoon thought.

  Just then, Ebun's computer informed him that there was a seventy-five percent possibility that the device in the refinery that was connected to the regulator was a disguised explosive.

  Hembadoon felt the blood drain from his face as he quickly put it all together. A dead man's switch. If he dies…

  Even as the Orisha thought it, Kosoko fell face first on the floor, unmoving.

  The explosion happened only a second later.

  THREE

  An unnamed ship

  You're five, and you watch as the governess is sent away. You told Daddy that she said something mean. The governess swears up and down that she never would say such a thing, but you heard it loud and clear.

  You're sixteen, and a new recruit joins training. His mother is Oba Isembi's cousin. You waste little time in correcting his misapprehension that his mother's being related to the Oba makes him in any way desirable.

  You're six, and your parents realize that one of your tutors is going to have to be a telepath in order to help you get your psionic abilities under control.

  You're eleven, with puberty blossoming, and you know what every single boy who stares at you is thinking. You're torn between revulsion and fascination.

  You're fifteen, and your first training exercise is a complete disaster. You've never been so scared in your life.

  You're four, and you don't know why it hurts so very, very much when your cat dies, why you didn't just see him die, but you felt him die and it was just the worst feeling in the universe...

  You're nineteen, and you go on your first mission as an Ori-Inu, weapons fire blasting all around you, and you master the fear with ease.

  You're twenty, and a shadowy figure comes at you from behind a processor at the refinery on Oshun, and suddenly it hurts in your mind even worse than when the cat died...

  Abeje woke up screaming.

  The images from her nightmares started to fade. She tried to mentally grab them, to recall what they were, but they were like quicksilver, slipping away.

  Those were memories. Those were my memories!

  She couldn't maintain a grasp on them, or on anything else. Even though she should have been wide awake—every time she awoke from a nightmare that she could recall, she was instantly alert, until now—her mind was still foggy.

  Fighting through the haze that covered her thoughts like a rough blanket, she endeavored to take in her surroundings.

  I'm lying down, I'm out of my armor. I had a governess? No, no, focus, worry about that later. Why am I out of my armor?

  The simple act of propping herself up on her elbows required a tremendous effort. The room was dark. Unable to see a thing with her eyes, she reached out psionically, which was, oddly, less of a struggle than sitting up had been.

  There were no other minds in the immediate vicinity. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

  Alone and naked in the dark.

  The latter was an exaggeration—she appeared to be in a gown of some kind—but without her armor and her Bayo pistol, she might as well have been naked. Abeje didn't feel complete without a HUD, instant access to a computer, and the weight of her rifle in her hands or on her holster.

  I'm actually from Oshun?

  Need to focus.

  Two sensations were wrong. She wasn't sure what they were, though.

  Mogbe, woman, focus!

  One was a small puncture in her right arm. It didn't actually hurt, but it felt odd. The other was an odd feeling in her shoulder—like something was pulling on her skin at the clavicle.

  Why can't I remember what happened? she wondered as she felt her right arm with her left.

  It wasn't just a puncture. There was an IV attached.

  Without a second thought, she yanked the tube out. Pain cut through her forearm as the IV ripped through flesh.

  Shouldn't have done that. It hurt. No, it's okay. Pain is good. Besides, whatever they're pumping into me can't be good.

  I had a cat?

  Next she felt her left shoulder with her fingers, only to find a sliver of plastic skin. Abeje knew the sensation of the artificial dermis well, from her many times being injured in the field. Was I hit in the shoulder?

  The gown over the shoulder was wet and sticky with what Abeje realized had to be her own blood.

  Then she remembered what was in that spot on her shoulder.

  The neural implant. You have got to be kidding me.

  Abeje's thoughts started to get ever-more-slowly coherent. Whatever was in that IV was apparently what kept her disoriented.

  Her eyes were also adjusting to the darkness. Now she could make out shapes: long, round cylinders against the walls; small metal tables near the pallet on which she lay.

  Again, she reached out with her mind. Again, she sensed nothing. But it was easier this time.

  Inhaling slowly through her nose, and exhaling through her mouth, Abeje finally managed to achieve focus.

  I was on Oshun. I was talking with that engineer, Kosoko.

  Then what?

  Closing her eyes, she concentrated, tried to remember. The blanket covering her mind started to fall away, and the memories started to return.

  She'd been moving covertly through the Kaduna refinery.

  Thom Kosoko had caught her attention.

  Abeje had been reading the people in the refinery—not too deep, just basic surface thoughts—and Kosoko's were all wrong. It wasn't just that they were bland, though they were definitely that. Still, if everyone with bland thoughts was an Oyo spy, Abeje would've had to assassinate half the population of Kaduna Township.

  No, it was more than that. His thoughts were too orderly. One thing Abeje had learned early on was that the human brain didn't move in a straight line. It was more like a maze: taking multiple digressions and going into various dead-ends before getting back on track.

  But Kosoko's mind didn't work like that.

  That made him a person of suspicion, which meant Abeje could justify probing deeper.

  When she did—she found nothing different. Kosoko's surface thoughts were all that there was.

  Part of Abeje's pre-
mission briefing including an intelligence report on a new psi-screen that the Oyo were developing for their covert agents, one that projected a preselected set of thoughts, so that Ori-Inu wouldn't notice them. Except, of course, the problem with preselected thoughts was that they stood out in their own way as much as totally blocking them would—to a properly trained agent, anyhow.

  Amused that the Oyo had put a flawed tool into the field, Abeje followed Kosoko to the bowels of the refinery.

  Processor C was one of five processors in the lower levels of the refinery. The centerpiece was a giant, forty-meter-high gray block of machinery, into which fed dozens of tubes and rolling platforms. Catwalks encircled the perimeter of all four walls at three different levels, with workstations at various points on those catwalks.

  It was at one of those workstations on the third level that Abeje found Kosoko, entering data. This was a scheduled maintenance check that was on Kosoko's official itinerary for the day, according to what Abeje had downloaded from the refinery computer, but Abeje no longer needed to catch him actually committing sabotage on behalf of the Oyo rebels. His psi-screen was evidence enough for her.

  Suddenly an alarm blared throughout the processor.

  Kosoko yelled, "Mogbe!" His fingers moved more quickly across the workstation even as steam came pouring out of one of the rolling platforms.

  After a moment, both the alarm and the steam stopped, though there was still a good deal of the latter hovering in the air.

  "This is Kosoko," the engineer said after activating an intercom. "We've got a jam in C, but I'm clearing it now."

  Someone acknowledged it on the other end.

  Abeje generously waited until he was finished before she confronted him.

  To her satisfaction, he jumped up about half a meter and yelped in shock when a woman in red and black body armor seemed to appear out of nowhere before him. She had used the steam to good effect, not allowing herself to be noticed until she wanted to be seen.

  Her intent was to raise her Bayo and shoot the spy in the head.

  But she couldn't lift her arm all of a sudden.

  "Sorry to interrupt, sweets, but you and me, we got business to take care of."

  Abeje whirled around, a moment's concentration being all she needed to break whatever hold was on her, and she tried to find the source of the voice that echoed off the heavy metal of the walls and the processor.

  Her eyes focused on a large figure standing on the catwalk above her. The steam obscured his features, but she could make out a couple of details. One was that the weapon he carried had the exact same shape as a Cavalry-issue Ayoka rifle. The other was that, while she couldn't make out exactly what kind of clothes he was wearing, it definitely wasn't a uniform from any branch of the Cavalry.

  Plus, whoever this person was, he was a telepath, if he was able to get inside her head long enough to keep her from shooting.

  Now that she was aware of him, though, he wouldn't be able to pull that trick again. She fired her Bayo right at him, but by the time the round reached where he'd been standing, he was gone.

  Where did he go? She reached out psionically, but she couldn't detect him.

  "Look," Kosoko said, "I don't know what the hell's going on, but—"

  "Shut up," Abeje said. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and threw herself and Kosoko down to the metal surface of the catwalk just as four Ayoka rounds flew overhead.

  Instinct made her protect Kosoko. Besides, he was her kill, not this other person's.

  Looking up, the mystery figure was gone.

  This time she closed her eyes and tried to focus, tried to find the man. She was Ori-Inu, she'd been trained how to—

  "How to find another telepath, right, sweets? Yeah, I learned that, too. Not gonna work on me, though."

  Abeje thought the voice was coming from below, and she shot downward with her Bayo—

  —at nothing. He wasn't there.

  "Who are you?"

  Her question had been more or less rhetorical, but she got an answer anyhow: "I'd tell you, Abeje, but you wouldn't remember me. Once upon a time, though, we were close as can be, back when we were both training. See that trick you're trying? I learned it from the same Orisha you did."

  Now Abeje thought the voice was coming from the other side of the catwalk, so she shot there, the report from the Bayo echoing off the walls even as it hit the far wall.

  The steam was starting to clear, finally, but still she saw no sign of the buruku.

  "Where are you?" she yelled. "And nice try, but you can't possibly remember whether or not we had the same Orisha. Ori-Inu are mindwiped when they finish training."

  "Never said I completed the training, sweets."

  This time, the voice was right behind her. Turning, Abeje saw the outline of a large figure. What frustrated her no end, though, was that she still couldn't read his mind, even though at this range she should've at least been able to get a fix on him. It wasn't that he was blocked—that was a different sensation. He wasn't wearing a screen, she just couldn't make a byte of sense out of what was in his head. It was the kind of not-quite-blank you got from an Eso—but she couldn't recall an unmodified human being like that.

  "Don't call me sweets," she said through clenched teeth.

  "You'll want to come with me quiet, and I won't hurt you."

  "Fimi sile!"

  "Maybe later."

  Then Abeje once again found herself frozen. This was even more intense than when she couldn't kill Kosoko. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't make herself move.

  She saw the large figure looking down at the catwalk floor behind her.

  From his position on the floor, Kosoko said, "Look, I don't know what's going on here, but I'm— Urk!"

  In her mind, Abeje could feel that the man had done...something to Kosoko, but she had no idea what.

  Then her mind went blank.

  The next thing she knew, she was inside a glass tube. That same large figure was outside the tube, saying something, but she couldn't make out the words. She felt as if she couldn't breathe, even though she felt her stomach rise and fall.

  Panic gripped her. She reached up and pushed against the glass that surrounded her, but to no avail. It would not budge.

  The large figure moved closer, but she still couldn't make out his features. Something tickled at the back of her mind, a familiarity. She'd never seen this person before, but something...

  Then he spoke again, but again she could not hear.

  And again, her mind went blank...

  Abeje shook her head. Being in that tube was the last thing that happened to her when she was conscious before waking up from her nightmares. Apparently, they removed the neural implant when she was in that tube.

  What else did they do to me?

  Blinking a few times, her night vision continued to improve. There were bloody surgical instruments on the tables near her.

  And the shapes against the wall were six tubes just like the one she briefly woke up in.

  Each of them but one had a body in it.

  She checked her surroundings a third time. If there were other people in here, she should damn well have sensed them.

  Unless someone was using a psi-screen. But no, the only things attached to her person were the gown and the IV, and she'd ripped the latter out.

  Could they have injected a psi-screen where the neural implant was?

  So this time she put everything she had into psionically reading the room. With her brain less foggy, she was able to take in the entire room.

  There it was. There were minds in this room, but they were all operating at an extremely low level. The people in those tubes were unconscious. Maybe in induced comas, or maybe just sedated so much that it reduced brain function.

  Just like she had been before and after she woke up in a tube just like those others.

  Are they telepaths, too? Are the Oyo taking Ori-Inu? No, that doesn't make sense, Kosoko was Oyo, and
he didn't know who that person was who captured me.

  Why is that buruku so familiar?

  Swinging around, she set her feet down on the floor. The vibration of the metal beneath her bare feet confirmed that she was travelling through space. Abeje had been in enough spaceships that she could instantly tell when she was on one in transit by the vibration of the deckplates. But she had no idea how long she was out, so she didn't know how far from Oshun they were, nor where they were going.

  Too many questions. Need answers.

  Suddenly, a light blinded her. Holding her hand up over her face, she blinked the spots out of her eyes, trying to get her vision to clear.

  Now she could clearly see the half-dozen tubes against the wall. One was empty, and she figured that was the one she'd been trapped in.

  The other five, though, had people inside them, all naked.

  To her shock, Abeje recognized one of them.

  "Akanke?"

  Abeje's stomach churned as she looked at the woman in the tube, recognizing the scar on the cheek as belonging to her fellow Ori-Inu. Akanke got the scar while fighting terrorists along with Abeje and three other Ori-Inu on Sasabonsam Station, and she'd refused to have the scar removed. "It's a good reminder of what can happen," she'd said.

  A month later, she had disappeared.

  Abeje had always assumed that Akanke was killed on a mission. It wasn't her place to ask for specifics.

  Abeje didn't recognize the others, but she had the feeling that they were all Ori-Inu—especially since they all had the exact same scar on their right clavicles that Abeje now had, including Akanke.

  "Yes," said a voice from behind her, "they all used to be Ori-Inu. But now, they're free."

  Whirling around, Abeje saw the buruku who'd captured her standing in the doorway. A dark, hard face was framed by long, coarse dreadlocks tied behind his head, and he had a dark goatee. He wore a shirt, pants, and vest that all appeared to be made of leather, with bone and bead necklaces, one of which had a red pendant at the end.

  How did I not sense him? Even making eye contact, she couldn't really feel his mind at all.