Toronto, Year 38
Soph looked grumpily at her reflection in the mirror: the harsh light of the interview room certainly wasn’t doing her new hair any favours.
She’d had a severe buzzcut before leaving and now, a matter of hours later, a tiny amount of stubble was now beginning to poke back through. She leaned in close to peer into the mirror, running her hand over it for what was probably the fiftieth time in the last 24 hours. It would be weeks, if not months, before it got to a length she could do anything interesting with. Deputy Director Hill had insisted though, something about the importance of professional dress codes in inter-agency work.
The asshole had probably just been expecting her to get the straighteners out, but Soph had never been one to comply in the obvious fashion. And it wouldn’t be an EEE assignment if some part of it wasn’t arbitrary and annoying.
The knock startled her, along with the way her reflection distorted momentarily as it echoed around the room; she’d forgotten for a moment that the mirror she was examining herself in wasn’t just a mirror. Silly, really, considering how often she’d been the one on the other side in such situations.
Standing up again, she gave a sarcastic little wave to those watching — at least three that she was aware of, the Chief Superintendent, an out of his depth constable from the provincial police, and someone who Soph assumed was her counterpart.
She was in the room, though, while none of them were. That was a measure of the EEE’s leverage, sure, but the fact that Hill had chosen to apply that leverage to get her here was saying something too.
Someone on the other side knocked again. Soph took the hint and sat herself down in the plastic chair on the side of the desk opposite the door.
Moments later, the kid — Kevin Locke, 17, straight A student, a rising star of his high school basketball team until he picked up an injury nine months ago, high on the most wanted lists of the Chicago PD and at least three federal agencies — was bundled in by two Mounties and, with no malice but neither any particular concern for treating him gently, guided into the chair opposite.
She’d expected him to seem scared, and maybe he was underneath it all, but mostly he was defiant. “If this is how you treat people when they’re fully co-operating–“
“All yours,” said one of the officers who’d brought him in.
“Who’s she?” Locke asked. As they closed the door behind them, he turned round to Soph instead. “Who are you?”
“Good evening, Kevin,” Soph said evenly.
“I know my name,” he said. “What’s yours?’ Soph could see his brain catching up to what he’d just heard, the American accent, and his fight or flight response kicking in but turning instead into an anxious paralysis, given the consequences of either option.
Soph thought back to being stuck inside the chimney as the cops ripped the hut to pieces, unable to do anything to help Allie — not that she’d needed the help, as it turned out. That long, long moment replayed itself regularly in her mind, but usually in terms of wondering what might have happened if things had gone differently. That night remained the last time she’d seen Allie in person. But now, looking into this kid’s eyes, Soph was transported straight back to how scared she had been.
“You’re Triple-X.” It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
There was no point denying it. “We–“
“You don’t have jurisdiction here.” He raised his voice, addressing himself to the locked door and then to the one-way mirror. “I want a lawyer! I want a lawyer right the fuck now!”
“Calm down, kid,” Soph said, as gently as she could.
“I came here to get away from you guys,” he said sullenly after enough time had passed that he had realised no one was going to be ushering anyone from the legal profession in any time soon.
“Technically, it was the Chicago PD who were trying to arrest you.”
“It would have been you eventually,” Kevin said.
Soph looked him square in the eye and nodded slightly, acknowledging the reality. “And you didn’t think that when you gave yourself up here, to the Mounties?”
“I thought, maybe, you know, international jurisdiction and extradition treaties and all that …”
“So why give yourself up so soon? Life on the run didn’t turn out to be all it’s cracked up to be?”
No reply. Soph got out her notebook, clicked her pen, and began to write.
“Or you just miss your mom and dad? Or is it more that you’re worried that your sister’s probably already moved half her stuff into your room?”
A flicker of interest there, at the level of knowledge she had about his family, but he stayed tight-lipped. That had been the wrong approach — he’d as much as admitted that he’d been hoping to stay in Canada after turning himself in.
“The study groups here a bit too basic for you, is that it?” She stopped writing for a moment and tilted her head. “Or maybe too advanced?”
A definite reaction now; playing on his ego had clearly worked. Still, it was surprising when he muttered, “Too crazy, more like.”
Soph affected not to have heard. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” he said.
She leaned forward, almost conspiratorial. The effect of which was rather ruined by him shrinking away from her, practically squirming in his chair but apparently not prepared to go all out and get up. “Are they planning something, Kevin? Something you decided you didn’t want to be involved in?” She sat back again. “Something you thought the authorities needed to know about?” Maybe he was just a good citizen after all.
“It’s probably just talk,” he said after a long pause. “You know how people are, bragging, making out that they can do … whatever.”
“But you can’t be completely sure, can you? And you don’t want … what, deaths, on your conscience, right?”
“They–” He stopped himself. “I don’t know. Of course I don’t want anyone to die, but that’s what they say too, you know? I guess I’m just not convinced that they can pull off what they say they can without something going wrong.”
“And what’s that?”
“Nuh uh,” he said. “I’ve already said too much. Coming here was a mistake.” He started yelling to the outside world again, “I’d like to leave now please!”
Soph went back to writing in her pad while he got it all out of his system. Once he’d exhausted any optimism he might have had that anything resembling due process was being followed, she smiled at him and said, “Believe it or not you and I want the same thing: a peaceful resolution to all this.”
That provoked a laugh. “You do know who you’re working for, right?”
As far as the EEE were concerned, their own approach was generally peaceful; the problem was that their “local law enforcement partners” tended to be extremely trigger happy during operations, and when they had perfectly reasonable grounds to feel threatened by someone just looking at them, nothing ever even got as far as an internal disciplinary meeting. “I’m not talking about the agency, I’m talking about me and you, the two of us in this room right here and right now. If you help me, I genuinely believe that it’s entirely possible we can find a solution where no one gets hurt.”
“And why should I trust you?”
“You probably shouldn’t,” Soph said. “That would be an entirely rational position to take. But you were worried enough about … whatever’s going on that it brought you here, and I might be the best chance you’ve got to deal with it. Realistically, probably the only one.”
“It’s not me you’re really interested in, is it?” he said.
“We’re– I’m interested in saving lives. Yours, whoever it is you’re worried are going to be innocent victims of whatever’s going on, and yes, hers.” She didn’t want to say the name, but she didn’t need to either. “We know everything about how you got here, you must realise that.”
“Disappearing people into a black site isn’t really the type of life-saving I’m thinking about.”
Soph finished writing, corrected the sign on the cross-term — sloppy, but she had been at least half-engaged in the conversation — and then sat back. She waited until she was certain the effect had taken hold. “OK, Kevin, now we can really talk. But we haven’t got long.”
He peered over at her notes, saw that the pages and pages weren’t filled with transcriptions of what he’d said or observations of his demeanour, but careful equations. “Those are workings! Then you’re–” He stopped for a moment. “It’s true then. You can either be a Cognoscente at risk of being imprisoned, or imprison yourself voluntarily as a Cog in the machinery of oppression.”
“I never have been very good at doing it all in my head,” Soph said. “But yes, I do have some ability. This is a little technique I figured out myself. Right now, time is running faster in here. We can have our little chat and it will just be an eye-blink for anyone else. But even at a factor of several thousand, that still only gives us a few minutes. And I’m really not in the mood to push the safety envelope.”
“Huh,” Kevin said. “But I don’t see how this changes anything. All it means is you’re a traitor to the cause.”
“How was she?” Soph asked. “Allie, I mean. When you last saw her?”
“Er, throwing herself out the back of a taxi? So, you know, desperate and reckless and ready to risk herself to save some kid she barely knew.”
Sounds about right, Soph thought. “So you haven’t seen her since you arrived in Toronto?”
“If I had, do you think I would tell you?” There was something to the fact that he hadn’t said anything that wasn’t already available information, given the surveillance footage.
“Seriously, Kevin, what do you want to get out of this? A clean slate so you can come home? A genuine?”
“I want … I want to help people. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, actually. My folks raised me right, community before self, do as you would be done by, all that. But I know how I can help best. M good at math. Not just numeracy, math. In a sane world, the world of the twentieth century–” He practically spat the forbidden words out, punctuating them by jabbing his finger into the table. “I should be off to college and studying and helping the world. But the dumbass government you do the dirty work for doesn’t want people like me — people like us, like you for God’s sake — to help the way we know we can. That’s the only reason I’m a criminal, because I refuse to live in ignorance. And I absolutely definitely refuse to perpetuate a system of ignorance that’s holding back the entire world.” He sat back, glaring at her. “Do you remember what that’s like, wanting to help people?”
“Actually, I do,” Soph said. “You see it all in black and white, and fair enough, you’re still a teenager, you should have that fire inside you to make the world better, good for you. But when you get older, kid, you start to see the grey. Start to see that sometimes it isn’t helping anyone to stand in the middle of the raging torrent of a river in flood and hoping that it’ll divert around you, it’s doing what you can. Piling up sandbags and constructing levees and …”
“That was nearly a good speech.”
“Metaphor got away from me a bit, I guess.”
“Adults always say that kind of thing when they’re trying to justify why they sold out.”
Soph allowed herself a short snort of laughter. “And kids always say that kind of thing when they’re promising themselves they never will.”
“Not planning on it,” Kevin said. “Maybe you come find me again in twenty years, we’ll see if I did.”
“Kid, if you don’t help us out, a twenty year reunion is not on the table. Hell, I wouldn’t even bet on five.”
He was deathly quiet for a moment. “You’re serious. I mean, sure, all the stuff on the news, but I guess I figured–“
“I don’t know for sure what’s going to happen, but … something is. This new administration–” She could feel the timescales slipping back into alignment, the eigenvalue of the matrix that represented the pseudo-Lorentz factor decreasing rapidly back to one. “We don’t have much more time. Look, are you going to see her again? Allie? Do you have a way to contact her?”
“That’s really not how this works,” he said.
“I need you to get a message to her. Tell her that Soph says she needs to meet her.”
“And that will work because … why, exactly?”
“Because … Look, maybe it won’t. Probably it won’t. But just, just give her the message for me, OK? That’s all I’m asking.”
“Fine, whatever. If and when I see her–“
Soph could feel her mathematical work unwinding as they rejoined the regular flow of time. Without missing a beat, she cut across him, saying, “Here’s the thing,” Soph said. “You weren’t wrong with what you said earlier. Taking you back to the US would get very … entangled. Believe it or not, a fairly large amount of political capital was expended just to get you and me in the same room together alone.” She nodded in the direction of the big mirror. “Though not as alone as all that, if you know what I mean. But, yeah, if you could come up with some halfway decent reason to try to claim asylum–“
“I’m being persecuted for my beliefs!” he said indignantly. Good kid, he was picking it up.
“Sure you are,” Soph said. “Two plus two equals four is protected speech now.”
Kevin became animated. “You know that’s not– The government– governments, whatever, want to keep people intentionally dumb because they’re terrified of the democratisation of knowledge. Anyone who studies hard enough has a chance to change the world. We still have elders around who remember when that was supposed to be a good thing.”
“I can see we’re not getting anywhere,” Soph said. “If you have any actionable intelligence about imminent terrorist activity, I strongly suggest that you bring it to the local authorities. But your lack of co-operation has been noted, and I wouldn’t suggest trying to cross the border any time soon, legally or illegally.” She got up and banged on the door. “We’re done here!”
As the door opened and the Mounties came to take him back out, Soph checked the time on her watch against the clock hanging out in the corridor and, as subtly as she could, readjusted it.
It wasn’t long before the trio of observers emerged from the side room. The Chief Superintendent seemed anxious. “You will tell the Deputy Director that we complied with his request, won’t you?”
“Of course,” Soph said. “I recognise this was all very irregular and your co-operation is deeply appreciated. Any failure here today was on my part. Though–” She prodded the constable’s lapel, firmly but not too firmly. “I have a feeling if a friendly face like yours were to put in an appearance, he might be a lot more co-operative.”
The constable looked shocked, but the Chief Superintendent led him away.
That left Soph facing the thin man in the nondescript suit who hadn’t introduced himself earlier. “Good luck spinning that to your bosses. ‘Oh, yes, we were doing bad cop, good cop and I was the really, really bad cop.’ Amateur hour, that’s what it was. If I’d been let in there with him–“
“My bosses chose me for this. I didn’t volunteer to be sent here, that’s for damn sure.”
“Well, I hope you enjoy your stay, even if it is enforced.” He pushed back his sleeve, revealing a very heavy watch. “Say, I don’t suppose you have the time, do you? I think I might have lost a few minutes in there.”
Soph told him what her watch was now showing, keeping her tone light even as ice ran down her spine. Had he spotted her fiddling with her watch? Or, worse, had he had some way — innate or technological — of detecting what she’d really been up to?
“Thank you,” he said. Putting his fingertips to his forehead in an informal salute, he took his leave with a clipped “Be seeing you.”
Soph left the building with as little formality as she could manage, what with passes to be handed back and weapons to take back from where they had been held in safekeeping. As she walked slowly back to her hotel, she way already planning the exact order in which she was going to drink the minibar dry.