“Class four meaning murder or rape.” Jax had holo-vision to thank for knowing that classification. Although, with all the crime drama vids he’d seen involving murder or rape, no one ever mentioned ModPol. “What’s class five?”

Foster looked back at Jax. “Mr. Jackson,” he said, his voice wavering. “This is a class-five crime. Are you aware of that?”

Jax was dumbfounded. “But I didn’t do anything! The system malfunctioned, that’s the only explanation. The only reasonable explanation,” he corrected himself, fears of conspiracy creeping into the back of his mind.

“The crime being investigated is mass murder. There were thirty-one deaths—”

“But that’s ridiculous!” Jax could feel fear creeping into his voice, causing it to crack and waver. He heard himself get louder to try to compensate, nearly shouting. “Why would I kill all those people? Why would anyone intentionally kill thirty-one people that have no connection to each other? Other than living in the same block—”

“I’m not accusing you, Jack.” It was Foster’s turn to interrupt. The older man’s voice hardened. “Look – I don’t know what this is all about. Thirty-one people are dead, and if there’s a crime here, that’s a class-five multi-murder. The local authorities never see this kind of thing, so they called in ModPol. Once ModPol shows up, they … well.” He paused and made a motion with his right hand, as if tossing something away. “They tend to take over the whole thing. Investigation, proceedings, trial. All that.”

Jax slumped onto his bed. He took a deep breath and stared at the blue-green wall. “So what are we going to do?” He looked at Foster. “I mean, you’re my lawyer, right? You have to believe I’m innocent. What are we going to do?”

The other man cleared his throat. “They’re going to take you off-planet, Mr. Jackson.” The words seemed to crawl out of his mouth. “And there … there you will be assigned new legal representation.”

“What?” Again Jax had to work to focus and control his panic. “Wait, so you’re not my lawyer?”

“Well, I am right now,” Foster said. “But only for the next few days.” He stood up and walked around the desk, then leaned against it. “Look, Mr. Jackson. Jack. Quite frankly, I’m not the right man for this job. We don’t get these kinds of cases here. I haven’t even worked a class-four case since my early career, when gang violence was still a presence in some of the more remote domes.”

“This is just great,” Jax muttered. He felt helpless.

“Jack. Listen to me. You’re going to get a new lawyer when you get to the ModPol outpost. You’re going to get someone who knows what they’re doing.” Foster stepped forward and put a hand on Jax’s shoulder. “I do believe you’re innocent. This was an accident. They’re going to get testimony from all kinds of engineers and other experts, and the inevitable conclusion will be that it was a system problem. They’re not going to cook you for this. You’re just going to have to be strong and wait it out.”

Jax sighed wearily. He wanted to believe Foster. Whether it was true or not, he had to believe that he was going to be proven innocent. How else would he get through this? He looked up at the lawyer and nodded. “Thanks, Frank.”

Foster turned away and walked back over to the desk. He started sifting through some papers. “I’ve contacted your parents via d-mail.” He looked over at Jax. “They haven’t responded yet. But it’s only been a day. The message might still be in queue.”

Right, thought Jax. How many times had he heard someone blame lack of communication on the d-mail queue? He could only imagine what his father was thinking right now. The interrogation by the ModPol detectives came flooding back to him. It seemed like he was being reminded an awful lot about how he’d disappointed his father lately. He supposed after years of building walls, it was bound to catch up. “What did you tell him?” he asked. “Them, I mean.”

“Well, just what I was legally obligated to. That you were arrested. But not convicted. That there was an investigation and there could possibly be a trial.” Foster sat back down at the desk and concentrated on getting his papers in order. “I can send another, if you like. Normally we’d be asking your relatives to post bail. But in this case …” he said, then trailed off.

“Right,” Jax said. “No bail for the mass murderer.”

“Yes. Well, anyway,” Foster said. “If there’s anything you want to tell them, I can send another message.”

Jax sat silent. Would he give his father the satisfaction of an apology? “No,” he said.

Foster stood up, his folder in hand. “I have to go.” He pressed the button on the door, summoning the guard.

Jax was still thinking about his father. He imagined the man sitting at their home terminal, the one in the kitchen. Drinking his coffee and reading a long-distance d-mail from B-4, telling him that his son had been arrested. Jax resented his father, and he resented the woman that he married after his mother died. His father and another engineer. They took the settlement from his mother’s death and were off to greener pastures on B-3 before a year had passed.

But as much as he wanted to, he could not hate his father.

“Wait,” Jax said. “I do want to send another message.” He stopped and watched Foster turn his head. He swallowed, feeling a tightness in his throat. “Tell my father that I love him. And that I’m sorry.”

“I will.” The door opened. “I’ll be in to check on you tomorrow.”

Foster left and the door closed. Jax was left alone with his thoughts in the empty room.

Once again, he stared at the pale-blue walls. Maybe the room really did remind him of his work office. It was so bland, so devoid of any emotion or meaning. Just like everything else in the sub-domes. His mother’s office – his real mother, Irene – her office was actually interesting. He’d only visited it a few times when he was a kid, but the memory of the walls painted bright orange and dotted with comical posters always stayed with him. The furniture that should have been in a living room, plush and soft, but yet there it was in the middle of an office. And the windows. Windows that looked out at the planet’s surface. The real surface.

Some people will live their whole lives on this planet and never see its surface, his mother used to say. It’s dull, gray, and ugly. But without it, we would just be drifting through space.

The world was a smaller place without Irene Jackson. It was a world as small as the room Jax was locked in. It was a world without a surface.

CHAPTER 5

The next day, Stanford Runstom and George Halsey sat in the Blue Haven Police Department break room watching bombball highlights. Runstom fidgeted with his uniform’s snaps and Halsey sat stone-faced, staring at the holo-vid, not napping for once.

“And Sommerset breaks another trap …” announced the HV set in a thin but enthusiastic voice.

“He’s at the shot zone,” Halsey said in chorus with the announcer, his mocking voice dead and monotone in contrast to the energetic sportscaster. “He jogs left, dodging Caruso. He fires. He scores. Krakens take the lead at the half.”

“This is the fifth time they’ve played the same sports show with the same highlight sequence,” Runstom said with a groan. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “I can’t stand this anymore, George.”

“You’re the big bombball fan,” Halsey said without turning away from the holo-vision.

“No, I mean just sitting here doing nothing.”

“What else are we gonna do?” Halsey poked idly at the remote and hopped around a few channels, all of which were playing advertisements.

Runstom didn’t have an answer. He wanted to do some police work. They couldn’t go back to the scene of the crime; the cleaning staff were already all over block 23-D, scrubbing it down. He knew they might be able to talk their way back into the operator room outside the block, but what evidence they might find there, Runstom had no idea. If the whole crime was committed from the console, he wouldn’t even know what to look at. There was only one decent avenue of investigation he could think of at the moment.