False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(22)

It’s almost like I’m an invisible ghost in the room with them. I can imagine what it looks like to walk around. The scientists who examined Tila and me said that was why we retained so much more—because we could visualize and fit things into patterns more easily than those who couldn’t control the recordings. Other people can learn to do it, but because of Mana-ma’s training we’ve been doing it since we were small, even if we didn’t realize it at the time.

The recording has been doctored, streamlined so the information can reach my brain efficiently. The man looming over the prisoner is yelling at him, and the prisoner glares back. They shout at each other, their staccato movements jerky. There’s a jump, as if something has been cut. The view switches from the standing man leaning toward the prisoner, screaming into his face, to him sitting on the other side of the room, appearing calmer. The prisoner now has a red mark on his cheek. I guess that they’ve fast-forwarded through the intimidation, which I didn’t want to see anyway.

The prisoner seems cowed. “This is how the Ratel works,” he says, his voice and eyes flat. They’ve drugged him, or broken through some other way. “The Ratel’s hierarchy is set up like a chess game. The Pawn is the lowest level. They run errands, stand guard, collect extortion money from businesses. Deliver drugs or guns. Drive cars. They do what they’re told and hope they make a name for themselves. If they do well, they might get promoted to Knight. Some people directly enter the Ratel at this level, but not many. To become a Knight, you have to prove yourself by committing a … worse crime than the ones you have already committed.” The man pauses, swallows. He seems haunted.

“What did you do?” the detective asks.

“I had to kill someone,” he rasps, and he shuts his eyes.

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter. They were invisible.”

The detective frowns. “What –?”

“Do you want to know how the Ratel works or not?” the prisoner interrupts, harsh.

“Go on. Do you want water?”

The prisoner shakes his head. He pauses again, staring down at the table, as if gathering strength. “After that, you can graduate to a Rook or a Bishop, each with subtly different roles in the organization. They’re all under the King, of course, but Pawns and Knights hardly ever see him.”

“Do you know who the King is?”

“I’m a Knight, so what do you think?”

“That’s not a yes or a no.”

“It’s a no, you dick.” The prisoner leans away from the table, the chains of his handcuffs clinking together. He lifts his head in a defiant tilt. “That’s all I’m telling you.”

The detective opens his mouth to respond, but the scene dissolves.

“Do you know who the King is?”

The question again, asked by a different voice. The faces of the two people in the room are blurred this time, to protect the identities.

“Ensi,” the other person whispers, and the word picks up, echoing around the room: Ensi, Ensi, Ensi.

“Who is the Queen?” the voice asks. The Queen is the right hand—and like the chess piece, she goes anywhere. Does anything. Including some of the worst crimes in the Ratel. Most of the time, if you’re invited to see the Queen alone, you don’t leave the room alive. All this information slots into place.

The other blurred face responds: “Malka.” It, too, reverberates around the room. That’s all they have on the King and Queen. Whispered names or aliases. How they truly function, who’s closest to them—the SFPD hasn’t cracked any of that. Even after two years, Nazarin has only seen Malka a few times, and has never seen Ensi.

More snippets of interrogations trickle into my mind. I learn names of prominent members of the Ratel, more details about the relationships between the various pieces on the chess board of San Francisco underground crime. The information changes, and I see tables of the same data, laid out logically, so that my brain will process and store it in a subtly different way. This includes maps of suspected Ratel hideouts, possible combination codes or passwords.

Still later, music floats through my brain, the wavelengths undulating through my mind. Here, my brain finally enters REM, and facts still trickle in through the music, deep into the subconscious. Certain nuggets of information will arise if and when I need them.

So many words, so many sounds, so many pieces of a puzzle that I try to fit together. Throughout it all, I wonder: how much of this does Tila already know?

*

“Wake up,” Nazarin says, his voice low and soothing.

I open my eyes, and his face is the first sight to greet me. His dark brows are knitted together, studying my face. “How are you feeling?” he asks. He takes off the electrodes and brings the Chair into a seated position.

I press a hand to my temple. “Like an overly damp sponge.”

He gives me a humorless half-smile. “I remember that feeling. I made some coffee. Do you want any?”

“Yeah, sounds good.” I rise to my feet, steadier than I expect to be.

I follow him into the kitchen, slumping into a chair. I clamp my teeth together to stop the endless litany of facts streaming through my brain from escaping my lips. Within a few hours, the information will settle, but right now, my brain feels like it’s in overdrive.