False Hearts (False Hearts #1)(55)

“She died. Not long before I went undercover. Right now, you’re the closest to a partner I have.” He looks away from me, but there’s a tension in his muscles that wasn’t there a moment before.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Were you two … close?”

He raises an eyebrow. “We weren’t f*cking, if that’s what you mean.”

I don’t react, though of course, his words make me think about him without his clothes. It’s a nice mental image.

“She was actually married to Dr. Mata,” he continues. “That’s how I met Kim. But yeah, we were close. And she was a damn good detective. We cracked a lot of cases together. Put a lot of bastards away. One got away and killed her.”

“Did you catch him?”

“Nah. Asshole got away with it. I ever find out who did it … they won’t make it to prison.” He works his jaw, hesitating, as if deciding whether or not to tell me what’s on his mind. “I’m pretty sure it was the Ratel.”

Was that why he went undercover? “If they hurt your partner, wouldn’t they then know who you were?”

“You’re not the only one wearing a false face and using a false name,” he says.

I wonder what he used to look like. What his real name is. I’m not sure he’d tell me, so instead I ask: “What was her name?”

He closes his eyes. “Juliane. Juliane Amello.”

“Pretty name.” I raise my coffee cup, and he taps his with mine. “In memory of Juliane.”

He smiles at my sentimentality, and drinks. “We’re toasting with the wrong stuff.”

“Can you stand the thought of more SynthGin or SynthTequila?”

He grimaces, and I laugh. I sober when he glances down at the tablet again. I don’t want to see a hollow re-creation of Mia. I don’t want to remember the way she was in the Vervescape. I don’t want to think about how she might have screwed Tila and me over. I want to preserve her in my mind as the woman she was when we were sixteen and scared, and she protected us.

“Did you find out anything about Mirage?” I ask, stalling further.

“Yeah. I think we’re OK. Another Knight told me Mirage was a bust for recording dreams, too, and that the King and Queen were annoyed. They’ve only managed to do it in small batches, with one or two people, and they want to do it with more people at once.”

“How many more?”

Nazarin sighs. “As many as possible. Get them hooked, get them buying straight from them. Money and information flows toward the Ratel. The Ratel becomes the true power in San Francisco.”

Hence why the government and Sudice have to squash them before they can’t any longer. What would San Francisco be like, if we were all under Ratel control? Even less privacy than now, if not even our dreams were our own.

“Still terrifying that the Ratel are using Zealots as experimental subjects. Have any died from Verve?”

“Plenty.”

“Why isn’t the government doing more? Surely they could do something to protect them?”

Nazarin’s face is impassive. “In this case, it means the government can watch what they’re doing. If the Ratel realizes the government knows, then they’ll do something more underground. Maybe take people to experiment on. Zealots are expendable.” His mouth tightens.

Expendable. Like Mia.

“They’re both as bad as each other in some ways, aren’t they?” I say, my stomach roiling. Am I really on the right side? Is there a right side in all of this?

“Be careful what you say,” Nazarin says, leaning close to me.

I rest my head in my hands. I want to leave all of this. I want to give up. Everything is too muddled, too confusing; but if I give up, then Tila goes into stasis.

“You ready?” he asks.

I nod, and he presses the button and the hologram pops up like a macabre children’s picture book.

It’s Mia, alone. She’s not connected to the machine, but she’s just come off it. The medical information scrolls to the right of her, listing all the physical ways the Zeal and Verve have messed her up. Malnutrition. Kidney disease. Skin abscesses near injection sites. Tooth decay. Jaundice. It’s reflected in the hologram—Mia is thin and unhealthy, just as she was the last time I saw her, strapped to the Chair, wires emerging from her arms as she dreamed her nightmares in the Zealot lounge of Mirage. But in this her eyes are open, moving from side to side as she staggers back to the hovel where she lives.

Lived.

I swallow, unable to look away. A dark, shadowy figure comes up behind her. A man, most likely, judging from his height. His face is covered in a dark fabric mask. He grabs Mia around the neck and pulls her to him, whispers something in her ear.

I pause it. “How do they know he whispered to her?” Mia’s face is also a lot more detailed and expressive than the re-creation of Tila murdering Vuk had been, and everything is shown from the same angle. I can answer my own question.

“It was caught on camera,” Nazarin says.

“Do you think it was the Ratel?”

“I honestly don’t know. I hope not. And this isn’t their usual MO. If they order a hit, they want you to know it.” His jaw works, and he must be thinking of his partner. He presses play again.