I’m in bed when the call comes.

The lights are down, and my Specs are resting comfortably on my side table. The irritating small light flashes blue until I surrender and plug the ear-receivers in.

“Zulfiq.”

“O’Neil.”

Silence.

“You’re still up?” Exhaustion is laid thick in his voice.

“I could say the same for you.”

“You could…will you?”

I fight the small smile. “No.” A heartbeat passes. Two. Three. I listen to his breathing over the line. “What did you need?”

“I managed to convince Precinct: Colden to send over their coroner’s report.” He lets the statement hang suspended for a second before continuing: “When was the last time you saw Tirete?”

I let my head drop down onto the mattress. When? Images raced through my mind. “Two? Maybe three weeks ago? Why?”

“He was burnt inside out – acid and salt ingestion.”

A coldness makes the hair on my neck stand. “How?”

O’Neil hesitates. “Seawater. According to dockside footage, his Optics information and witness reports, he was dragged out to the docks two weeks ago.”

“I thought he died today.”

“He did.”

Horror curdles in the pit of my stomach. I swallow bile. “He was…abducted –”

“He was abducted and tied face-down between two rowing boats. We sent out a team to confirm it and they found the boats floating not too far off from the dock. After they dragged him back onto land, they must have left the boats to free-float off into the distance, hoping the evidence would disappear.”

An affrighted sob builds in my throat. “O’Neil,” I whisper into the darkness of my room. “What’s going on? Who would do such a thing?”

Over the line and the crackles of static, in the darkness, I can almost picture the sad tilt of his lips as he fights a slow smile. “That’s what we’re here to find out… It seems a bit surreal, doesn’t it?”

“It does.” A moment passes. “That’s what Midhurst and I discussed this afternoon.”

He freezes up. I can tell because the steady sound of his breathing breaks erratically. “Now you want to talk about that? I thought you didn’t want me there.”

O’Neil’s voice is an octave lower; his words are rushed and the undertone of suppressed anger rears its head.

“I was struggling, O’Neil. Someone I knew since I was a child had just died. And now you’re telling me Lio did a lot more than just die. It…it was – is – hard for me.”

“I was there,” he pauses, “for you.”

My fists clench. I close my eyes and breathe past the heaviness in my throat. Guilt? “I know. I appreciate that.”

A deafening silence ensues. Have I ruined our friendship by not confiding in him when he knew I was upset? Had I ruined it by – in his mind – ‘choosing’ Midhurst over him? I couldn’t tell him the truth. I couldn’t tell anyone the truth. I couldn’t tell anyone how their voices and their screams and their thoughts still keep me up at night, long after I’ve forgotten who they are or ever were. I couldn’t tell them, because other Rereaders once did, and they weren’t working anymore. They weren’t anywhere anymore. They just disappeared, like an expired can of food off the shelf in a supermarket. Replaced by something shinier and newer; I’m not ready to be replaced. So, I lift off and scramble for something to say, but I don’t have to, because he continues – voice colder now, I can’t tell if it’s because of me or because he’s back to business:

“Nevertheless,” he says, all trace of softness gone, “that’s not why I called you. We’ve been ordered to work in conjunction with Colden on this one.”

I perk up. “Why? Isn’t the case theirs?”

“It is. But it links to one of our cases from a year ago – one we never solved.”

“What case didn’t we solve?” No homicide case would be left to rot on the shelf for a year – if the investigator on duty couldn’t cough up any leads or suspects, it would have been handed off to a Rereader. Old, unsolved murders just…aren’t anymore.

“The murder of Foreman Sinead Vui.”

Oh.

Oh.

Sinead Vui, Ita Ru’s predecessor, was likely one of the best Foreman this city had ever seen. Despite the fact that she trained him, it’s difficult to connect her philanthropies to his ideologies. The murder was kept ‘hush’ – as hush as you can keep the murder of a governing body in a society founded on the freedom of information. Ita Ru’s new reign was ushered in without fanfare, and surprisingly, Sinead Vui was the only trump card he never played to the masses. I suppose even he has his limits.

The case still hangs on a tangent – Ita Ru refusing to allow Vui to be Reread and the crime scene having been ruled useless…like Lio’s.

“What did happen to that case? Why was the crime scene filed as inapplicable to evidence?”

“Her body was found outside. Right before an acid shower. Sound familiar?”

A shiver runs down my spine. “Those seem to be becoming more and more frequent.”

“It was almost perfect timing, and it doesn’t end there. Preliminary investigations concluded that she wasn’t killed there, but her body was moved there.”

I don’t buy it. “So our killer is some kind of meteorologist? Even so, it’s awfully circumstantial. Anyone can look up the weather report. Before rain and moved body don’t constitute a firm relation.”

“No. It doesn’t,” he agrees. “Two’s a coincidence but this…do you remember the ‘V’? The one we found behind the building where Tirete was dumped?”

I close my eyes for a second and breathe slowly, willing the stink of Lysphil and the memories of the window being shut ­­– it was shut! – to leave. “Yes.” I don’t think I can forget it.

“The coroner sent over some photos. The same ‘letter’ was carved into his left cheek post-mortem.”

Coincidence never felt so coincidental. “Are you saying something similar was carved into Sinead Vui’s face?”

“An ‘E’.”

“A what now?”

“Sending it over to you now.”

I sigh but slip on my Specs. My eyes protest the bright blue light. It takes a few blinks before I adjust enough to open the message with a flickering ‘C. O’Neil’ over the envelope icon.

The first image is a grey concrete wall that is all too familiar. It’s littered with colourful streaks of paint; green and blue profanities and red and yellow pornographies. Lewd images are scattered throughout the frame and there, in the middle, where it’s all too easy to let your eyes brush over without much thought, is a dried red streak, in patches like a scabbing cut.

“That’s… awfully similar to the ‘V’, but…the projectile is wrong? This line is straight, the ‘V’ is diagonal.”

“Naturally. So just in case we struggled to see, the killer was kind enough to double take and leave us with another copy.”

I flip to the next image. Cold sweat breaks out over the back of my neck. Vui’s grey, dead face glares at me through the pixels. Her eyes are closed and narrow at the ends, courtesy of her Asian heritage. Her hair is thin and receding. She is as grey and as blank as concrete except for it. On her left cheek, crafted into the colourless, thick skin, is a fading red E. Old world script, not yet outdated, but getting there. I chastise myself for not recognising it sooner.

Nausea builds in the pit of my stomach. I rip the Specs from my eyes and focus on darkness of my bedroom. I try not to think of all the times I’d seen her on TV, giving speeches and attending the summits in Groenstad. I try not to see her with her trademark grin, in her office casual. Revulsion shivers through me. I take a moment to myself.