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The projector whirred and stuttered. Commander Anita Grey scowled at it just daring it to break down again.
“So this is our suspect – Adela Sheldern.”
An out of focus picture of a young girl came up on screen; long dark hair, dark eyes, small but full mouth. There was an intensity to her stare that those gathered found unsettling. It was as though she was looking straight through them even though she was nothing more than just a specific arrangement of pixels.
“She’s got the look of a D-lude alright,” someone commented.
“And that’s why we must find her,” replied Commander Grey.
Her voice was brittle from the strain of interviewing the girl’s father and brother these last nine hours. The old man and his son had proved frustratingly resistant.
“Ok. Here are the facts.”
She changed the slide to bring up a timeline of the last two days events.
“Thursday October nineteenth, Adela calls in sick for work – a severe headache or so she says. She works for her father, Jim Sheldern, a well known businessman in zone eight, so nobody bothers to request a doctors’ authorisation. She stays in her bed all day till her mother calls her down for food. She eats with the rest of the family, who find her quiet but well enough not to press her about it. At eight thirty two she goes back to bed. At seven thirty four the next morning her mother goes in to wake her and finds her missing. Having installed a tracker due to past walkabouts her father discovers she’s at the Keel – home of the first president. He calls her but no response, so he follows her there. When he gets there he realises he’s out of his depth and calls his son Carl. Carl agrees to come and help. While Jim waits our drones tag him on the front steps and send a unit to investigate. The unit and Carl arrive at the same time. The two men are apprehended. The first president’s house is searched from top to bottom and all we find is Adela’s tracker up on the roof – and this.”
The timeline disappeared and a different photograph took its place. It was a drawing etched onto a silvery surface. There were a few puzzled looks.
“We found it on the back of a ventilation unit up on the roof. It’s probably one of her delusions,” Anita explained. “Here you can see the dome at the bottom of the sea, exactly where it should be. But quite some distance away she’s drawn another, with some kind of multi armed creature above it.”
“Perhaps one was a first attempt and then she had another go at drawing the dome?” suggested an officer called Leon.
“I don’t think so. She purposefully drew two and they are both different. One has a sort of dimpled surface. The other’s smooth. Her father says she’s quite an accomplished artist. So it’s unlikely to be a mistake. This is the product of a damaged mind. A mind that needs to undergo extensive rehabilitation. A mind that almost certainly needs reset. She must be found quickly before she causes harm to herself or others. We need to think of her as a weapon not a person.”
No one said anything. They were thinking about Paulina White, the last mentally unstable person to surface from the heavily restricted gene pool. She had killed eleven, just through thought alone.
“You mentioned other walkabouts Ma’am. Have we any details on them?”
“The father was not very co-operative initially but he did say after some coercion that she had disappeared once before, only to turn up twenty six hours later in the General Register Office buildings. Fortunately for her the guard who discovered her trying to access the databanks had spent twelve years working for Jim Sheldern and seemed to feel that he owed him still. He managed to stun her and then he and the father set about covering up their tracks. His name is Brandon Palmer. I want him brought in for questioning. The second incident saw her wandering through Zed Zone for around three days. No one knows how she steered clear of the drones but after that her father approached a man called Mostyn Forteleza to see if they could road test his company’s latest tracking device. That was nine months ago. ”
There was a flurry of activity as they took notes on their gauntlets.
“And what about the other two? Will we be charging them?”
“They’ve concealed her mental illness for some time – at least eighteen months. But at this stage, I think it best that we release them. We’ll keep them under a close watch, just in case she attempts to make contact. Jennings and Rice, you can see to that. Probably best to assign a specific drone as well. In the meantime I want the rest of you out on the streets looking for her and making enquiries.”
There was quiet for a moment as everyone took stock of what they knew. The only sound was the scratching of styluses on gauntlet screens and the four fans in each corner of the room slicing through the air.
A young male officer sitting next to Jennings twirled his pen round between his fingers and lolled back in his chair “So where do you think we should start Ma’am?”
Anita fixed him with a clinical stare.
“Where do you think you should start Moretz?”
The twinkle in his eye disappeared.
“Um…where she vanished?” he suggested.
She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. Moretz looked to his colleagues for support but they maintained their eyes to the front position. They knew she was in a pissy mood.
“Do you know the proper definition of ‘vanished’ Moretz?” she said eventually.
“Yes. To disappear without a trace.”
“And has our suspect disappeared without a trace?”
“Um..no?”
“Then to be blunt you appear to have a poor command of the English vocabulary. No one is to use the word ‘vanish’ in any line of questioning or report connected to Adela Sheldern. It implies something that is simply not true. There is evidence of her presence in The Keel. We just have to figure out where she went to after that. She has to be somewhere. People do not just vanish. Not here. Not even D-ludes.”
On that note she dismissed them and watched them leave, her scarlet nails drumming on the antiquated desk. Each left a little tiny mark, a little calling card in the plastic that bore all the hallmarks of someone who had reached her limit. The desk was covered in them – twelve years worth which was an eternity in her chosen career. When she stopped and looked down at them she had a sudden urge to take her Shaler .36 and redecorate the officer’s lounge with her brains. But too many people would love that. They’d have to get their kicks some other way.
Crane was stressed too. He needed a drink. He held up a styrocal coffee cup “Want one?” She glowered at him, her eyes rimmed with jet black kohl.
“You know I don’t drink that crap.”
He shrugged and made his own leaving droplets of white and brown all over the worktop. When he was done he took a sip, blew on it then pressed a button beneath the counter coaxing the bacteria living within the plastic out of hibernation. Within seconds the stains were gone, devoured by the microscopic hordes. The kitchen was newly installed and the novelty of having a worktop that cleaned itself had not yet worn off so he observed the process in its entirety while Anita and Adela stared at each other from opposite ends of the room, arms folded across the divide of reality and a world captured by camera.
“You don’t think she is a D-lude do you?” he said when it had finished. He stirred his coffee with the synthawood stick then threw it towards the bin and missed.
She went to turn the projector off, her heels clicking on the seamless floor.
“No…I don’t. It’s been six years since we last had a case. They’re supposed to have been bred out of society.”
“What do you think she is then?”
“I don’t know. But she’s bloody dangerous. I can see it in her pretty little face.”
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