The Reburialists Page 3

  Great. I clutched my printout until the paper crinkled. “You said a lot of nice things before the meeting, but I could have used backup in there.”

  Dr. Thomas nodded. “You chose to argue existence, not nature. In that battle, you are on your own. Debate the driving force behind a corpse organism, and I’ll back you up. Discuss space folds and gravity distortion, and again, I will be your ally.”

  “So you are saying there are such things as spells? Magic?”

  “I’m saying, Ms. Roberts, that many phenomena were labeled magic before being understood. The proper role of a skeptic is to probe for the truth. Given a credible witness and evidence that some form of event occurred, I don’t waste time on ‘if.’ I do spend a great deal of thought on ‘how.’”

  All this talk of spells and spirits had me ready to spend time alone with the hieroglyphics. I let the fight drain out of my voice. “I have a report due in a few hours and a lot of work to do.” Was it possible that magic existed? Yes. There also might be a man in a red suit delivering gifts at Christmas and a giant rabbit crapping chocolate eggs at Easter.

  Dr. Thomas nodded and waved for me to follow him to a beige broom closet with barely enough room for a computer, and a white board the size of a pizza platter. “I trust you can make yourself at home here. Perhaps we could have lunch later. I’ll be in the labs this morning, once you are done with your presentation.”

  He wandered off without waiting for an answer. My BSI login worked, giving me access to Thule’s Encyclopedia Hieroglyphica, the definitive guide to both human- and co-org- influenced hieroglyphics, and my own notes, developed over years of learning what combinations of glyphs might indicate different concepts.

  And with that, I forced my mind to work on the text. More important, away from Brynner Carson, and the spell he seemed to cast on me without even trying.

  BRYNNER

  Once that infernal woman left, the tension in the room dropped a thousand percent. I’d grown up around Director Bismuth. Heard Mom and Dad call her “Maggie.” Even tried it myself. Once. Still, I didn’t want to have the discussion I knew was coming. “Mr. Carson. Brynner.” She waited for me to look at her.

  “What did it want?”

  “I can’t be sure.” I floated my best lie. One that was part true, because with the meat-skin once again dead, I couldn’t question it about which particular heart it wanted.

  “Hazard a guess.”

  She’d known me too long to be fooled. I probably read like an open playboy to her. “The heart.”

  “I grasp that. Ms. Roberts’s translation makes that clear.

  Which heart? What heart?”

  I bit my lip, trying to speak, not finding the words. At last, like chewing broken glass, I found something I could say. “The one Dad had.”

  Dale whistled, the air coming through his tracheal tube whining. He’d worked with Dad, before the emphysema reduced Dale to a shadow of a man. “Was it the one . . .”

  He wouldn’t dare say it.

  “Dad kept a lot of crap.”

  “Brynner, was it in the one in the Canopic jar?” Director Bismuth had no qualms about asking hard questions. Even about subjects she knew I didn’t talk about.

  I stood, ignoring the shooting pain in my chest where cracked ribs and stitched wounds hadn’t even begun to heal.

  “I don’t know. I’ll think about it. I’ve got to get my gear to the armory and file a suitcase’s worth of receipts. May I be excused?”

  Director Bismuth stood, appraising me over her bifocals.

  Probably thinking how much she wished Dad were still around.

  “I expect you at the eleven o’clock translation briefing. Young man, how are you holding up?”

  “Three cracked ribs. Twenty-seven stiches. I’ll heal.” “Your father would be proud.” She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.

  “If you really think that, you didn’t know my old man. I need to get my armor done, and then I can go pick up another assignment.”

  She turned her head, eyeing me. “I’m concerned about your psychological report. While your performance is unquestioned, your equipment manager and dispatcher both report that you behaved erratically in Greece. You won’t be going out on assignment until after I sign off on it.”

  “You can’t take me off active duty. I’ll chase the meat-skins by myself if I have to.” I expected her to yell at me about the embassy staff, not threaten the one good part of my life: the chance to slaughter dead things.

  “You’d arrive ten minutes too late every time. We’re connected with all first emergency responders. They call us directly, not you.”

  Like that mattered. “Dad always got there first. Dad was doing this before you were around to coax and guide. Dad put more of those things back in their graves before there was a BSI than after.”

  “You aren’t your father.” Her words stung like a whip. “My decision stands.”

  I grabbed my duffel bag from the floor beside me and marched out of the room, holding on to the anger inside me.

  Anger could be a shield. Could protect me from myself, from everything around me.

  I stomped down the hallways until I arrived at the armory, where the tech dumped my entire duffel bag onto the table. The tall East African man smiled at me with perfect white teeth and brown eyes. “So nice to have a visitor. What did you bring me?” “Didn’t have time for an equipment check between my last two operations.” I read the name stitched into his uniform, Lavel. “Two? You had six months and you went out in this?” He held up a piece of my Kevlar, white stress lines creasing it. I shook my head. “Three days. Two operations.” His forehead creased, like he thought I was joking. Then he picked up the scanner and ran it over my armor. The RFID tag beeped, and his eyes went wide. “Mr. Carson. Such an honor to see you here. I met your father once.”

  Of course he had. Everyone met my father, or knew my father, or wanted to know my father. Lavel dumped my crumpled underwear and clothes into the same bin as the Kevlar plates. “Most of these should have been replaced ages ago. Going out in this, you’re going to get killed.”

  “One way or another. You can swap anything but the chest plate.”

  Lavel turned the chest plate over and whistled. The Kevlar inserts had seen better days. The plate itself wasn’t laminate plastic, but pure silver, tarnished to a purple black. On the surface I’d engraved every religious symbol on earth, including the McDonald’s logo.

  “You need a full refit. Where are your weapons?” I opened a box in the bottom of my duffel and drew out two silver daggers, their edges inlaid with amber on one side and alabaster on the other. Dad’s weapons. The amber drained a meat-skin’s strength, the alabaster acted as a poison. One nick and even if the meat-skin got away, the breakdown process was irreversible.

  Lavel covered them reverently. “I’ll check these in under your name. You gonna stay with us for a while?”

  “No. I work Western Europe these days.” What I needed more than anything was to leave Seattle, leave the U.S., and get back to work.

  “A shame. I’ll replace what I can, but it will take me weeks to make a full set for you.”

  I gave him a pat on the back, ready to find a temp office and catch up on my sleep. Instead, the overhead intercom cut in. “Brynner Carson, please report to Medical.”

  I swore. “I don’t have time for this.”

  Lavel laughed. “Heard that from field operatives more times than I can count. How long has it been since your last med eval?” “Longer than my last refit.”

  “Med’s on the fourth floor. You’ll get a lollipop and a Band-Aid.” As I left, he chuckled to himself.

  I found my way through the halls up to Medical. An Indian nurse there met me at the door, her hair tucked back in a headband, her accent faintly English. “Mr. Carson, my name is Saiay Sanjay. I’ll be performing your tests this morning. Right this way.” “I don’t need this. I had an X-ray just the other day. Ouch—” She pinned my arm down, dra
wing blood from it without so much as a warning. “Well, we’ll take our own, just be sure.

  And we’ll check white blood count, cholesterol”—she eyed me with a knowing look—“diseases.”

  “I’m clean.”

  “I’m sure all the ladies in the city will rest easier when the test results come back.” She drew out the needle and stuck a bandage, yellow with hearts on it, on my arm.

  From there I suffered the usual indignities. X-rays. Dental checkup, blood pressure, which was definitely higher than normal. After three hours, she finally came back in. “I have good news, Mr. Carson. All your tests that should be positive are positive. All of the others are negative.”

  “So I can go?”

  “After your appointment, yes.”

  I quashed the annoyance, turning it into desire, or as close to it as I could come. “What do you say you interview me? We could go grab some food. I’d be happy to answer any question you have. I bet you work long hours. What do you say we go give each other a checkup?”

  She giggled. “You are so funny. They don’t say that about you. Dashing, yes. Charm, well, I can tell that’s no exaggeration.

  But your sense of humor. Dr. Nagashindra will see you now.”

  She pointed down the hall.

  I walked past the rows of exam rooms, to a large office. The nameplate read “Chandresh Nagishindra.” Below it, the words “Doctor of Psychiatry.”

  And I was done. I spun on my heel . . . to find the hallway blocked. Sanjay stood there, hands on her hips.

  Behind me, a deep voice boomed in an Indian accent, “Mr.

  Carson, this is the right office.”

  From the dimly lit room emerged a short Indian man, with wispy black hair where he wasn’t bald. He offered a firm hand and nearly dragged me into his lair. Four hours of sleep I could have had, four hours.

  He started with easy questions, meant to make me smile.

  Make me relax. What was my last assignment? What about the one before? What about Athena? What about Irena? It didn’t matter what I said, he must have written several pages for every answer.

  I could have said “Orange” and he’d have turned it into War and Peace. Worse yet, I couldn’t sense a pattern to his questions.

  A driving desire, or goal. Dad always said to ask, so I did. “What exactly are we doing here? When did the third degree become standard operating procedure?” I didn’t mean to let the hostility inside creep so far into my voice.

  After scrawling another phone book, he clicked his pen closed. “Two years ago. Three years after your last mandatory yearly interview.”

  “So you haul every field op in here once a year and drag them through this? No truth serum? No waterboarding?” He switched to a fresh pad and wasted another tree. “No. I’m concerned about you, Brynner. The Greek embassy mentioned demands for absolute silence in your hotel rooms. Your vital monitor reports that you haven’t been sleeping more than fortyfive minutes at a time. You are showing classic signs of severe burnout, mental and physical exhaustion, and possible posttraumatic stress disorder.”

  I willed my fingers to stop running along the blade sheaths on my belt. “I do a damn good job.”

  “You are more than a piece of equipment, a machine with a function. Mr. Carson, how are you?”

  “Fine.” I offered my only answer. Ever.

  He scribbled again, surprisingly short. “And if you could not answer ‘fine’? If your ability to continue this work rested on delivering an honest, complete answer?”

  I froze. While I might not play office politics, I grasped his threat. “I’d have to think about it.” My cell phone chirped, my fifteen-minute warning for the briefing. “I have to go.” He nodded. “I’ll wait to deliver my report until after you answer. Take your time, but you won’t be choosing any new assignments until after we’re done.”

  Four

  BRYNNER

  By that point, I didn’t care about the translation. I was pissed at the director over my psychiatric mugging. So when I slammed open the briefing room door and she wasn’t there, I admit to being slightly confused.

  Grace Roberts sat at the head of the table. A laptop’s glow lit her face, making her complexion bluish white. Again, I drank in her features, the petite nose and thin lips, her angular chin that lead to a tantalizing neckline, and from there, the shadow of her cleavage.

  She cleared her throat.

  Grace had used the remote to turn the lights on while I was otherwise occupied.

  I turned away, focusing on the cold, gray day outside rather than the woman who radiated such warmth. “Where is everyone else?” After a moment, I glanced back, now that I could keep myself in line.

  Grace crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re early. According to Dr. Thomas, everyone in this office shows up fourteen minutes late.”

  “I’m sorry.” What exactly I apologized for, I couldn’t quite say. My stare. My late colleagues. My total inability to conduct a normal conversation with her.

  She gave a bitter laugh. “Don’t be. I get paid by the hour, and I need all the hours I can get. Driving a desk does not pay well.”

  I nodded. “That’s because a desk won’t try to tear your arm off, and all you have to do is save the spreadsheet, not save someone from it.”

  Grace narrowed her eyes; her bottom lip curled under. “No one gets paid enough to go hand to hand against co-orgs.” She paused and then frowned, her fierce expression softening a degree or two. “Standard operating procedure is to drop them with incendiary rounds. You could get killed.”

  As far as I was concerned, using a gun was cheating. “Guns aren’t my style, and rules don’t account for when there’s a meatskin loose in an oil refinery, like last Christmas. Or a school. Like a week ago. If the meat-skin’s on a ship, the fuel will burn. Stick to your desk job; you’d do more harm than good in the real world.”

  She sat back in her chair, her eyes narrowed, lips pressed together, looking like steam would come out her ears any minute now.

  The quiet hiss of Dale’s oxygen tank broke the silence as he rolled in to take a seat. A moment later, Dr. Thomas joined him, and after that, Director Bismuth.

  I waited until Director Bismuth sat down, and took the seat across from her. “Ma’am, we need to talk about that doctor—”

  “If you don’t mind,” Grace cut in, her eyes tired, her voice strained, “this is my meeting. Let me deliver my report, get out of here, and you can talk all you want when I’m not around to hear it. I’ve got plenty of drama without borrowing yours.”

  Director Bismuth’s eyes narrowed at me. “If you don’t mind, Ms. Roberts, a quick question. Did my favorite field operative ask you to dinner?”

  Oh, please. I wasn’t that stupid, most days. I did have a couple of tattoos I’d love to let Grace interpret, but the director would kill me. Or even worse, fire me.

  The look of horror on Grace’s face hurt worse than any tongue lashing the director could hand out. “He most definitely did not. And if he knows what’s good for him, he won’t.”

  Director Bismuth gave her a weak smile. “My sentiments exactly. Proceed.”

  GRACE

  Ask me out to dinner? Not hardly. The things his eyes said he wanted to do with me didn’t include dinner or conversation. Not that he wasn’t attractive. If I was into the sort of man who spread himself thinner than butter, Brynner Carson would be quite the catch. Given his easy smile, the way he relaxed in front of the triad of BSI leaders, and spoke with confidence, no wonder women smiled back.

  I derailed that train of thought, focusing on the ideographs before me. “My translation is complete. Everything I can still make sense of doesn’t support it being any sort of spell.” I waited, shoulders hunched, for someone to challenge my statement, and breathed a sigh of relief when they let me continue.

  “The artifact is divided into phases, each of which seems to convey a thought pattern. The top two are mostly intact. The bottom two are”—I looked at B
rynner—“less intact.”

  I pointed to the northwest quadrant of the circle. “Here we have a repeating sequence of terms, some of which are welldefined; some required interpretation.”

  Director Bismuth held up a wrinkled palm. “How can you be sure of the meaning if you had to interpret?”

  “I can’t.” I waited for that to sink in. “Some words have definite meanings. Hieroglyphics are both ideographical and phonetical. Sometimes a symbol set means a word, and sometimes it spells out a word, and sometimes you have to put the two together.”

  I pointed to a set of figures on the laptop. “Let’s say you have this phrase, which means ‘diseased,’ followed by this bird. What do you think it means?”

  “Bird flu.” Dale’s electronic voice rang out, followed by laughter from everyone but Brynner.

  Brynner shook his head. “Shitty.”

  “Brynner Carson, you will apologize at once.” Director Bismuth shook her finger at him.

  He didn’t back down. “I didn’t say, ‘It’s a shitty translation.’ I said it means—”

  “He’s right.” The question, in my mind, was how he knew this. “The disease is clear. To put it together, you have to understand that ducks are nasty, filthy creatures. They smell, they crap everywhere. Think about how you’d feel being around one constantly.”

  Recognition gleamed in the director’s eyes. “So ‘duck disease’ becomes ‘foul.’” She raised her eyebrows to Brynner, probably trying to get him to notice her rephrasing of his choice in words.

  He wasn’t paying attention to her. No, his eyes never left me. Which made it harder to focus on what I was doing. For some reason, he focused on my face instead of my breasts, unlike like most men.

  I struggled to regain control of my meeting and keep the swarm of butterflies in my stomach from showing. “So we combine phrases, phonetic meanings, and contexts to interpret. This section I translated for you before. It means ‘heart.’”