Shadow Unit 1 by Emma Bull & Elizabeth Bear

Author:Emma Bull & Elizabeth Bear [Bull, Emma & Bear, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: a.!.Favorites, a.!.read, a.Author.B
Publisher: Emma Bull
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Act III

As they sat in a cramped observation room in the first of three mental institutions on their schedule for today, Todd flipped his phone closed. “Well, if he’s trying to make gammas, he’s doing it wrong.”

“Small mercies,” Reyes answered, without moving his eyes from the one-way glass they sat behind. Beyond it, curled in an armchair in an interview room, sat Melanie Wosczyna.

She was a tall young woman, hunched now into a spasmed curve, her elbows cramped against her ribcage. She had a long neck and a long nose and a long jaw. The strong architecture of her face made her slack disaffected expression more terrible. Todd thought she should have been working on smile lines by thirty. Over her pallor, her complexion was olive. Fluffy-curly brown hair was matted flat on one side, and her right hand twitched convulsively, first two fingers and thumb pressed together and jerking like the beak of a hungry bird.

Todd would have touched Reyes’ elbow, but Reyes had already seen it. “Come on,” he said, standing, and Todd fell in behind him, making his sure his footsteps didn’t fall in the same rhythm. A whole different playbook with a victim than with a suspect. Here, they came as potential rescuers. As friends. Not to intimidate.

Melanie was medicated. She didn’t look up as they entered, but her hand jittered faster. Todd knew his part in the scenario; he was the supportive observer. ’Deferential, glad to be of use, politic, cautious, and meticulous.’ A battered couch stood against the wall, perpendicular to the desk and armchair. Todd assumed it, while Reyes moved across the small room silently to the knotted-up girl in the battered, burnt-orange chair.

Todd found himself wondering, as he often did, if institutions such as this one chose their furnishings with an eye towards repeat business. He had an uneasy Socialist inkling that when they reached the private institution where Hanson Cape was being cared for, they would find more appealing surroundings.

Reyes, with every appearance of unselfconsciousness, dropped a knee and crouched beside the victim’s chair. “Hey, Melanie,” he said, in conversational tones. “I’m Stephen. How are you?”

Not Agent Reyes. Not Doctor Reyes. No, softer and more oblique, an avuncular approach. This was the girl whose father was a likely-abusive binge drunk; Todd watched with respect as Reyes made himself seem small and soft and positioned himself so she had an escape, if she wanted it.

She didn’t acknowledge him overtly, but Todd saw the dip of her eyelashes as her gaze slipped sideways. The antipsychotics were having some effect, and so was the Reyes charisma.

Her right hand jittered faster.

“Melanie,” Reyes said, “do you understand me?”

Her mouth opened, and she made a sound that wasn’t quite a wordless complaint, and also wasn’t quite glossolalia. And then she said, with soft absolute clarity, “It’s the rats.”

“Melanie?”

“I can hear the rats underground. It smells like a ghost train. Can you smell it? And then there were cigarettes.”

Not exactly word salad, either. But when Reyes gave Todd a tight sharp glance over his shoulder, Todd nodded.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.