“When this is over,” Jax said, “however it turns out, whether we catch the people that did this or not, I’m not going back to B-4. I can’t.”

The officer stood up and put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Someone out there is responsible for the deaths of thirty-two people. I’ve seen plenty of death in my job – mostly accidental, but sometimes by murder. But I’ve never seen anyone do something this foul.” He squeezed his grip. “I am going to find out who did this. And you’re going to help me. And when we’re done, you can go wherever you goddamn well please, Jax. As will I.”

Jax looked up at him, but was at a loss for words. Runstom said, “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

CHAPTER 11

Not everyone was interested in the Delirium-G offer, but the number of people that were surprised Runstom. Before long, they had a miniature army of investigators at their beck and call. They searched, they scoured, they dug deep into the room of every suspect. These workers knew all the hiding places; the corners of drawers and cupboards, the inconspicuous maintenance panels, the insides of furniture cushions. No stone was left unturned.

It was a few days later when there was a single knock at the door of their room. When Runstom opened it, he saw no one in the hallway. There was an envelope taped to the outside of the door. It contained a slip of paper with a number on it and a MagiKey card.

They cross-referenced the room number with their list of suspects. They didn’t know everyone’s room, but they had this one. It was Linda Parson, from the city-dome Yorkenshire on Barnard-3. She was a politician; head coordinator of a sub-dome of Yorkenshire called Jersey. Runstom looked over the other notes they had on her. She was only riding the superliner from a research colony in the asteroid field just outside B-4, back in to B-3. She’d made a visit to the colony to support efforts to find a cure for gravity-lag, a debilitating condition that many planet-hoppers experienced. She had coincidentally timed the end of the visit to align with the passing of Superliner #5, and had hopped aboard to rub elbows with some large pocketbooks that also happened to suffer the effects of gravity-lag every few years or so. It was rumored that she planned to run for mayor of Yorkenshire in the next cycle. However, this was a pretty unsurprising revelation since mayorship was the next rung up on the political ladder, making it a common goal for sub-dome coordinators.

Runstom’s favorite detail about Linda Parson was that she’d won the election for Jersey head coordinator against her closely matched opponent, Timothy Eagelson, when it was unexpectedly revealed that Eagelson’s wife had undergone controversial magnetic-flux therapy to treat her depression. Despite the Eagelsons’ denial of the whole ordeal, the press managed to get a hold of some damning documentation of the procedure, and many pundits questioned whether the Eagelsons might be part of a particularly small and unpopular cult whose beliefs centered around the power of magnets over the body and mind. Parson won the election in a landslide. A suspicious political victory; Runstom allowed himself to feel a lightness, a small amount of hope, because this put her high on his list.

Runstom and Jax put on their cleaning-crew uniforms and found the room. It was on the fourteenth deck, room number 1468. They knocked politely and waited a few minutes. After a silent exchange of anxious looks, Runstom stuck the MagiKey card in the door and they went in.

The place was a mess. Clothing was strewn about the room recklessly. There was a definite smell of something sour, something past its prime. There was even a hint of smoke, like something had burned at some point. Something plastic.

“Okay,” Runstom said. “Let’s hit the cupboards and the closets first. Then we’ll check the hatches and—”

“Uh,” Jax said, interrupting him. He was standing next to the desk in the room. He cautiously lifted a soiled towel (soiled with what, they chose not to investigate), and revealed a large, silver box.

Runstom came over and they inspected the box. It was about thirty centimeters tall, and thirty centimeters wide, but not a perfect cube; maybe forty or so centimeters long the other way. There was a small panel on the top that featured a handful of buttons and indicator lights. There were large red arrows painted down each of the long sides of the box. A black cable stuck out of the back of it, and coiled about two meters in length along the floor.

“What do these buttons do?” Runstom asked. “And the lights – what do they do?”

“Only one way to find out.” Jax grinned, giving Runstom a look the officer wasn’t sure how to read. “Plug it in. We either do it here, or take it back to our room and do it.”

“That’s the operator in you talking,” Runstom said, fingering some screws in the sides of the box. He looked Jax in the eyes. “An engineer would say, let’s pop it open.”

Jax’s mouth twisted in multiple directions, then he let it curl into a smile. “A playful jab from Officer Runstom. Someone’s in a good mood.” He looked around the room. “We could find something to stick under the towel. I wonder if she would even notice that it was gone.”

“Probably not.” Runstom nudged a thin, cardboard box on the floor with his toe. The box was lying on its side and documents were half-spilling out of it. “She doesn’t appear to be very organized.”

“I guess it’s a matter of whether she plans to use it again. We’ve already considered it might have been a one-shot thing.”

“Yes, but then she would have gotten rid of it,” was Runstom’s logical conclusion.

“That would make sense,” Jax said, rubbing his nose. “But then again, she hasn’t bothered to get rid of whatever is producing that nauseating odor.”

“Good point. So, to reiterate – if this is the device we’re looking for, we don’t know if it was used for a one-shot attack or if the owner is planning to use it again, say, when we get closer to Barnard-3.”

“So we’ll just borrow it for a night and then bring it back tomorrow,” Jax said. “Whether it was going to be used again or not, the owner won’t miss it for a while. We won’t be within range of B-3 for another week at least.”

“Alright. Let’s get moving.” Runstom made a move to pick the box up off the desk, but it was stuck there. He put a little more effort into the action, and it popped off after a moment of tugging. Something sticky was revealed on the desktop, and the pair looked at it disdainfully.

“Here’s a question,” Jax said. “If they have all these cleaning crews on this ship, why has this room not been cleaned in a month?”

“Because I told you motherfuckers to stay the fuck out of my room,” slurred a voice that followed the opening of the door. “Hey,” the woman said halfheartedly. “You should put that thing down. Actually, take it with you. Just get rid of it, it’s garbage.” She eyed the box, then looked up at Runstom, then over to Jax, then back to Runstom. “Yeah. Jettison it, okay? Or incinerate it. Whatever you guys do.”

The two men stood motionless and dumbfounded. Linda Parson, a middle-aged woman, wearing a platinum, formal-wear jumpsuit, stumbled about the room with purpose. From a cupboard she produced a small foil package. She tore the package open. “You boys hungry?” She leaned in toward Runstom, and he could smell the sweet tang of alcohol from several paces away.

He felt his face harden. The officer had seen this level of degradation before. Linda Parson was a successful woman. She was on a goddamn cruise. She wasn’t stressed about her life or her work. No – she was drinking herself stupid to escape something. The mark of a guilty conscience. Runstom shoved the box into Jax’s hands and walked over to the door, slapping the trigger to force it closed.