Chapter 21
"Come on, Margo," Connor said coaxingly, about half an hour later. "Just tell us where this 'Tin' is, and we can drop your charges to conspiracy. That's years off your sentence. We know you didn't do it yourself. It was all him, and he brought you in after the fact to cover his tracks."
"He didn't kill her," Margo responded as patiently as she could. "I've said that a dozen times by now. It was the boyfriend, Eberhard Goswin. He found out something about her work, figured he could profit by it, and then killed her to keep her from telling anyone else."
The interrogation had been somewhat abrupt, starting moments after Reisinger had left. Connor and the others had seemed surprised her 'lawyer' was leaving her alone with them, but they wasted no time seizing the opportunity. It wasn't Margo's first interrogation either, having been suspected of crimes she was investigating before. It was one of the reasons she knew Connor in fact. It was somewhat ironic that he was urging her to do the very same thing that an arch-criminal had asked of her just before.
"So you're saying this man hired you to find the boyfriend, and then just took it in stride when you said he was in WitPro? That he didn't object at all? That didn't strike you as suspicious in the least?"
Margo shook her head. "It should have been, but he seemed sincere. Just someone trying to find a little justice. He paid me for my work, and I thought that was it at first."
Then a realization hit her like a gut punch. It had been too easy back then, just like it had been back in that military base! "He was lying!"
"Yeah, I know. You have no reason to protect him, so just tell us where he is."
"No, I mean he was lying just a few hours ago! He told me what I wanted to hear, and I bought it. Again!"
Connor stared at her for a moment, while Margo felt her stomach roiling with rage and chagrin. Tin's motivations had been clear from day one. His devotion to Jia extended beyond just finding and punishing her killer. She wasn't sure exactly what he had planned, but it was nothing like what they'd discussed.
Now she had another choice, and she made it quickly. She no longer had the luxury of time. She had to tell Connor everything, and hope that he believed her enough to help. Hastily, she outlined everything that had happened since Tin had first hired her, including the cabin up in Michigan, the tour of the AFI building, and meeting Eddie. She left out the Community for now. There would be time enough to deal with them later.
His expression went from triumphant to suspicious to disbelieving, in one long, evolving stretch. Especially near the end when she described what the exciters could really do.
"Tin's on his way to the AFI headquarters right now," she finished breathlessly. She'd almost said 'Tin and Beb', but there was no point in implicating her at this point. They were only after him for now. "He's going to find one of the unlocked exciters and test it, and hopefully stop the announcement from ever being made. But Tin is there for revenge, too. If Goswin is there, one or both of them will die! You have to stop it!"
Connor leaned back, still looking incredulous. "This is insane. Are you even hearing yourself? A secret message from a dead woman that no one even knew was working on the exciters in the first place? The idea that exciters are far more powerful than anyone knew, despite them being all over the world for years now? A mysterious client who's been lying to you since day one, and yet you trusted anyway? What do you expect us to do—storm into AFI headquarters and arrest their head of security based on nothing more than your word?"
"All the proof you need is inside the building!" She responded urgently. "An unlocked exciter can prove everything I've been saying. That 'lawyer' out there was just for show. He put me in touch with Goswin, who confirmed everything I suspected! You have to stop Tin before he murders Goswin!" Actually they had to stop Tin before he did something far more disastrous, but the result would be the same.
Connor finally nodded. "I'll make my report to the Captain in person. We'll get a search warrant for AFI's offices, and if Tin is there, we'll stop him."
"That could take hours! He's probably already there!"
"I know. But this is how the law works; you know that. It takes time."
Margo growled under her breath, as Connor detached her cuffs from the table and took her out into the main lobby. He was a by-the-book detective, and had done well by cultivating that reputation. He wasn't about to go charging off to save the day. It was up to her alone for now.
They kept her in the drunk tank at first, along with the others they'd brought in tonight. It seemed like a slow night for female offenders. The male cage was pretty full up, though. Margo did a double take at one point. "Slick?"
About seven feet away, a heavyset man with thick black hair looked back at her. "Oh. Hey, Margo." He gave her an appraising glance. "Aren't you on the wrong side of the bars?"
Margo chuckled. "Long story. You?"
He shrugged. "Just moving product like usual."
The others in the cage glared at him when he said that. Most of them were black, and couldn't just shrug off a drug possession charge like he could. Slick had more than just his skin color protecting him, but they didn't know that.
His real name was Terry Benster, and he'd been a criminal lifer in Philly since day one. He was part of a big but somewhat poorly organized gang, which distributed drugs through a large swath of the city. About a year ago, Margo had been hired to look for one of them who'd gone missing—Slick's cousin, actually. It turned out he'd tried to kidnap and ransom the little sister of a rival gang's member.
Layla, the girl in question, had been no slouch. Like Beb, she carried a stun gun in her bag. After Slick's cousin had grabbed her, she fished it out of her bag and zapped him before he could even drive away from the scene. Then her older brother had held him instead. Margo had negotiated his release, on behalf of Slick's gang. She'd had occasional contact with them ever since.
It wasn't that surprising that she'd know people in a police station, both in and out of the cells, but it was a stroke of luck that Slick was here. She might have some leverage over him.
She lowered her voice. "How long since you were brought in?" She asked more seriously.
"An hour or so. Why?"
"That means you'll be in there for at least another two. I'm gonna need a distraction in a few minutes, when they come back for me. Can you make that happen when I give you a hand signal?"
He grinned. "Sure. What's in it for me?"
"Remember that trouble two months ago, when a bunch of money went missing from your boss' nest egg? He said it was taken in a police raid, but that's not true. It was gone before the police even showed up. And I know who took it."
Slick's eyebrows narrowed. "You're full of it. Byron wouldn't lie to us like that."
"He didn't know," she said truthfully. Byron was a lot of things, but he was true to his people. "I found out as part of another case. I figured I could call in a favor from him eventually, but I need one now instead. You help me, and I'll tell you who stole from your people. Byron marks the bills if they're big enough, and you can probably still find most of the cash in the thief's home."
Margo could see the gears turning in Slick's head. Any kind of distraction here in the police station would be a serious infraction. It could add a few months, maybe even a year, to his sentence. But the boost in rep and trust with his boss might be worth it, if Margo's name turned out to be the right one. Eventually he nodded. Margo had proven herself trustworthy before.
Now came the impasse. She'd probably be dead in a few hours, because of either Goswin or the police, so she'd be unable to visit him in jail and give him the name. She had to trust him as well. "It's Billy. Byron's brother. He knows all about your gang, and he stole it because he thought no one would suspect him." Billy was only fourteen, and Byron had gone out of his way to keep his criminal activities a secret from his little brother. He'd obviously failed at that.
Slick looked incredulous, and then his astonishment faded into anger. Lips flattened together tightly, he nodded at her. Connor was coming to take her away now. Margo gave Slick one last meaningful glance, and hoped that he was as good as his reputation.
Connor unlocked the female holding cell long enough to extract her, and then directed her towards the back area, where she would probably be held until the Captain came to talk with her. She moved deliberately down towards that door, and then made a gesture with her hand. It should have been shielded from Connor by her body, but visible to Slick.
He got the message all right. There was a roar of anger from the drunk tank, and Margo heard yelling and punching break out. She turned, like everyone else, to see Slick unleashing mayhem on the others in the drunk tank.
At first they seemed just as surprised as everyone else, but some of them were hard cases, too. They started fighting back, and in a few seconds it devolved into a spectacular brawl. Cops, both uniformed and otherwise, converged on the area, fumbling with the keys to get in there and subdue him. Even Connor was staring in that direction. Margo took the opportunity to get to work on her cuffs. She had a metal lining in most of her long-sleeved work shirts just for this eventuality. With difficulty, she worked it free of her garment and slipped the end into the lock at her wrists.
Slick wasn't just one of his gang's best bruisers. He'd also built a well-deserved reputation as a pyro. And one of the others in the drunk tank was a smoker. Slick took advantage of the chaos to snag the cigarette from his mouth, aim carefully, and flick it across the room. Right into a collection of bottles that was waiting to be taken into evidence.
Not all of the booze was flammable, but enough was. Chaos turned into flaming chaos, and Slick charged at the guards who'd just managed to open the cage. He bowled straight into them, knocking them out into the space between cages, and punching furiously.
Between Slick, the newfound fire, and the other angry drunks, the cops had their hands full. Margo's cuffs clicked open, and she grabbed Connor's gun from its holster. He spun, his face suddenly furious, but she kept it aimed steadily at him. "Don't move!" She said softly, but fiercely. "I'm making it easy for you. You know where I'm going, and why. I suggest you get as many people as you can on the manhunt—you'll need them all." Hefting the gun for emphasis, Margo backed away, along the wall towards the front door. Connor called out after her, but his voice got lost in all the confusion.
Escaping from a police station would normally be a tough job, but Margo had been here many times. She'd planned on stealing a car from the motor pool and burning rubber out of here, but it seemed that it wouldn't be necessary. One cop, apparently unaware of who she was, ran right past her into the building to help the others. He'd left his patrol car empty, with the keys still in the ignition.
Margo gave a tight grin. Police stations could track their patrol cars remotely. If she had to be a trailblazer and force the police to follow her, she couldn't have asked for a better torch.
-.-
So far the plan had gone smoothly. Beb and Tin had impersonated two employees who looked like them, and the only security they'd faced so far had been bypassable with the cards he'd faked up thanks to Beb's computer worm. He resisted the urge to shake his head as the elevator rose, because there were cameras inside the closed doors with them.
He'd secured countless hostile areas during his career. The mercs working for AFI were mostly ex-military as well, but they'd been dulled by civilian life. Keeping a large corporation like this one protected 24/7 required more than just being a crack shot or a ruthless killer. It needed security that recognized the employees as they came in. Security that also cared.
They hit their first real hurdle at the top floor. The maintenance hatch leading to the roof was locked, and their only lockpicker was currently in jail. It looked like the area was impassable, until Beb realized this lock wasn't connected to the rest of the swipe-card doors in the building. It was old-school: probably one of the last original features from when the building had first been constructed. That left it vulnerable, and Tin knew just how to exploit that weakness. Cutting through the metal latch securing the door would be impossible, even with his combat knife, but detaching the wooden seal next to it was a lot easier. It took him a few minutes, but apparently no one was watching this hallway.
Beb gave him a smile as she slipped through the jimmied door and climbed the stairs to the roof.
Once they were out on the top, Tin had a rush of dizziness. Thankfully Beb didn't seem to have noticed—she was already running up to the transmitter antenna and plugging her equipment into it. There was a reason Tin had gone for the Army and not the Air Force. This was a wide open roof, with guardrails and no real chance of falling, but even so he felt distinctly nauseous. "Are you good up here? Alone, I mean," he clarified, wincing at how nervous he'd sounded.
"I should be," she called back, not looking away from the transmitter. "Go get the exciter, if you can. And try not to get killed."
"Yes ma'am."
Down below, sirens started up without warning. Quite a lot of them, actually. On a whim, Tin looked over the edge, down at the square multiple stories below. It had been a bad idea, and got his vertigo going again, but there was definitely a commotion going on down there "A car chase?" Beb asked from her position near the middle of the roof.
"Yes, but not an ordinary one. Looks like the cops are after one of their own." He shook his head. Sometimes he didn't think he'd ever understand people from Philly. There wasn't much brotherly love here from what he'd seen.
Beb gave him a startled look. "Cops chasing cops? You don't think..."
"Margo?" He finished for her. "It could be. They look like they're headed this way."
Beb laughed. "That is so her style. Go on; I'll keep working here." Tin headed back down, shaking his head on the way. If that really was Margo down there, then she'd brought the cavalry in a big way.
The ride back down to the fortieth floor was uneventful, but the office and suite doors down there would be a challenge. Somehow he doubted that Goswin would be as careless with his own doors as his company had been with the roof. Fortunately, Tin was dressed for the part in an AFI security uniform, complete with company-issued hat. Stepping confidently up to the office door, he knocked on it. "Mr. Goswin," he said, careful to disguise his voice and keep his head down and face from the camera. "Sir, we've got a problem on ground level."
Tin planned on punching the man in his face the moment he opened the door, and then taking his time killing him once they were out of camera view. They didn't have a lot of time, though, so he couldn't exactly savor his revenge. He tensed as he heard footsteps move up to the door, and then the door's lock clicked. The door swung open, but instead of a man standing there, a black-and-brown blur smashed into him, shoving him backwards into the hallway's wall!
It was a Doberman, growling furiously and snapping at him. Tin barely got his arm up in time to stop it from sinking its fangs into his throat, and it got his arm instead. He yelled in pain, trying to dislodge it, as the large dog's weight forced him closer to the ground. His gun had been knocked out of its holster, and was out of his reach for now. Straining with effort, he tried to hit it on the nose where it was most sensitive, but the dog reared away and then darted in for his throat again.
"Hold."
The word wasn't shouted or even spoken loudly, but the Doberman reacted instantly, lowering its lips over its fangs again. It was still standing over Tin, partially pinning him to the ground, but it wasn't trying to kill him anymore. Hardly daring to breathe, he looked past it, up at the man approaching from behind. Eberhard Goswin's blurry figure came into more focus, and he reached down and patted the dog on the head. "Good boy, Richard."
Eberhard stood and eyed him from above in the hallway, giving Tin a sad look, incongruous with the suit and tie he was wearing. "You should know how much I regret this, Tin. I had hoped that we would work together someday, or at least be friends. I think Jia would have wanted that."
Tin grunted. "That's rich, given what you did to her." He struggled against the dog briefly, but it gave him a warning growl, and he knew it could tear his throat out in an instant. "Nice security system, by the way. I guess your guards don't know about the exciters, or you'd be using them instead. I take it the cameras in this hallway are conveniently offline right now?"
Eberhard nodded. "Secrecy has its limitations, to be sure, but I've come to like being a dog owner. When properly trained, they can be very effective in close quarters. But I don't need to tell you that."
"Obviously, you knew it was me at your door. How?"
The older man only shrugged. "I took my unlocked exciter to that military base you were using as a hideout, so I knew you were coming, and what you planned to do. I know your friend Beb is upstairs right now, trying to destroy every exciter in the world."
Tin gaped at him for a second. He'd known? "If that's true, why did you even let us into the building at all?" He managed.
"Because I want her to succeed!" Eberhard said scornfully. He flicked a finger against Tin's forehead. "Really, Tin, use your brain. My situation here is hardly sustainable. I can't just keep hitting the snooze button on Jia's message every year for the rest of my life. With Miss Rossi's plan, I won't have to."
Through all their speculation and planning, the thought that their enemy might actually benefit from destroying the exciters had never occurred to Tin. "You'd be giving up your power. If her signal goes out, every exciter in the world will start melting from the inside out."
"And in the process, destroying every shred of evidence against me," Eberhard nodded again. "Once I deal with anyone who knows the truth, I'll build another exciter and get back to work."
So he had planned for this as well. That had been Tin's last card to play. "And what work is that?" He taunted spitefully, now that he was out of options. "Blackmailing and bribing your way into power? Manipulating and cheating people so that your miserable little life is just a tad better than theirs?"
"Hardly. I'm building a dynasty here, Tin. A hierarchy that will stand the test of time, unlike those silly genetic power structures we used to have."
"With you on top."
Eberhard smiled slowly, shaking his head. "I'm not delusional. I know that I'm not fit to lead, but I am fit to choose someone else who is. Who will choose someone else when their time is up, and so on and so forth. With the exciters, we can put the world back on a proper path, but invisibly. Quietly. And permanently."
"Do I have to listen to your supervillain speech now?" Tin grated out, and the dog growled again at his tone.
"No, I won't bore you with all the details. I'm sorry it came to this, Tin," he leaned down next to him, "but this is where we say goodbye." Quick as thought, Tin reached up to grab Eberhard's tie and yanked on it, slamming his face into the wall. The dog yelped in surprise and concern for its master, but for an instant, its attention wasn't on its prey.
An instant was all he needed. Tin socked the animal on the side of its head, knocking it away and dazing it, and rolled to the side. As Eberhard scurried back away, the dog shook its head and snarled at him.
Eberhard wiped at his nose, and spat blood on the floor. "When my dog is finished, I'll have what's left of you mulched! Richard, kill!"
In an open space like a field or parking lot, dogs had a significant advantage over unarmed humans. Dobermans like this one typically circled their prey and jumped in and out. Death by a thousand bites and all that. In a narrow hallway like this one, it didn't have much chance of getting behind him, and his arms provided reach; bloodied though one of them was. Tin slammed into the dog, wrestling with it as it barked madly and growled, trying to bite him again. Its back legs clawed at him, but he twisted the animal until he was holding it from behind.
Dobermans were fast and deadly, but not nearly as strong as he was. Eberhard should have gone with a mastiff or husky. Tin grunted as he held onto 'Richard' here, cutting off the dog's airway until it ceased struggling. During those moments, he briefly lost track of Eberhard. Once the thrashing stopped, Tin let the dog slide to the floor. Then a gunshot rang out, and Tin flinched away from the open doorway. It was a handgun, and poorly aimed. Still, at this range even a hasty shot could be a deadly one.
Tin dove towards his own gun and scooped it up as he rolled. Two more shots rang out on the way, one of them grazing his leg. Finishing up his roll, he took aim and fired three times. All three caught Eberhard, center-mass. He looked down at the red stain spreading across his chest, almost unbelieving, and then collapsed.
It was anticlimactic, but then Tin hadn't exactly known what to expect here. He couldn't stick around to think about it, regardless. Despite the secrecy of the exciters, Eberhard might have called for help. Hurriedly, Tin moved over to the body and searched it. He would have kept the exciter on his person or near, at all times.
There it was. It looked no different than the standard exciter model, except for its age. The plastic paneling was yellowing slightly, and the grip was well worn. After turning it on, Tin could see that the display was different than normal. Feeling a surge of anticipation, he dialed back the timer on the display by about thirty seconds.
From the doorway, he witnessed the end of his confrontation with the dog. His past self let it go, and it slid to the ground, where it now lay. Then his past self dodged out of the way as a past Eberhard shot at him.
The exciter worked! She'd done it! All those sleepless nights she'd talked about—all the sacrifices she'd made had all been worth it. Flushed with pride, Tin turned the exciter off and ran back to the door. "Nice try, Richard," he complimented the unconscious dog on the way.
The sirens from outside were cut off by the hallway door as he closed it. Eberhard had probably left orders to keep the building secure regardless. His men would do just that, even without him around anymore. That gave Tin time to get back up to the roof.
Slightly breathless from the fight and from running up those last stairs, he made it back within sight of Beb. She'd apparently been pacing from the transmitter to the roof's edge and back, her bag and equipment forgotten next to the antenna. "There you are. Oh, God—your arm! Are you all right?"
"I will be," he said gratefully. Same old Beb, kind and caring as always. He hefted the aged exciter in his right hand and extended it to her. "It works, just like the recording said. She was right."
"I still can't quite believe it," Beb said reverently, taking the exciter and looking at its display. "This... might just be the most powerful device in the world right now."
"I know the feeling," he said, casually reaching into her bag as she stared at the exciter. He pocketed what he found inside, and she didn't seem to notice. "But it's about to be one of hundreds of millions just like it, unless you were able to wire in that self-destruct signal."
"Yeah, I was," she said, lowering the 'super-exciter' to her side and opening up her laptop. "Here, take a look. This is the signal set to broadcast in... let's see, about three minutes from now. It's the one that Goswin set up, to delay the message another year. I disabled it. Now I just have to start the program to replace Jia's message with the self destruct code, and we're golden." She looked over at him. "Do you want to do the honors? All you have to do is press enter, and then we just wait for the transmitter to send it out automatically."
"Sorry, Beb. That's not the plan." Tin pulled his hand from his pocket, carrying what he'd stolen before. Wincing, he pressed it to her neck. Wattage from her own stun-gun arced through her, and she spasmed briefly before passing out.
Tin gently caught her and lowered her to the ground.
