Kod was busy sorting some leftover papers at home. Calls to everyone he knew had resulted in nothing: Reez and Nolla had caught themselves in a shitstorm all day and were dead tired, Drekan and Fil had signed up for a two-week contract at the front, and Fredaris was occupied for an "undetermined amount of time", so had the secretary told him, because he was monitoring a large-scale operation that just couldn't end.
The bedroom door opened. Yowa stepped out, loosely clad in a black bathrobe. Kod turned around.
"I thought you were on a job. No wonder your cellphone wasn't on."
"I took a nap."
She went to the fridge and helped herself to a glass of water. She leaned against the counter for a while, staring at nothing in particular. Eventually, she raised her head and spoke.
"The team's been all broken off these past weeks. I hardly see you anymore now that you got promoted."
Kod looked away. "That's the job."
"I called. You're never there either. You always get home just late enough to catch me right after I've fallen asleep. You're obsessed with your duty..."
"Hey, hold on, I have work to do and I want to do it properly."
Yowa shook her head, gravely. "I came across some of your notes and papers. You left them here and there, as if you had forgotten I existed and lived here too. I know you're investigating something dangerous."
"And...?"
"And I won't stop you. I know you; you're too stubborn to listen to anybody... When you have an idea in your head, you want to carry it out 'till the end. But anyway, I'll try."
Kod stood up. "Are you trying to tell me what I'm doing is wrong? I've made a mistake somewhere, is that it?"
She shook her head again. "No, Kod, it isn't that. It's not a matter of ethics as you like to put it so often. In fact, if I was just a simple mercenary in some other team, I'd applaud your efforts... But there's something you keep forgetting to factor in." She stepped forward and hugged him, pressing her head against his chest. "It's that I love you. I care for you and I worry about you. Every time you're gone, I keep thinking whoever's out there will try to kill you the second he gets a chance. I keep thinking that from one day to the next, I'll be living alone, all by myself, and you'll be gone, and I'll realize there were so many things I wanted to tell you, but you'll never be there to hear them anymore..."
"Why not say them now?"
She chuckled. "It's not as simple as that. Kod, love isn't something with an on-off switch. It's not something you pick up whenever you need it and drop off when you don't. Love is far from the sex slaves you've been investigating. It's something that cultivates itself day by day. It's a complicity, a teamwork, an honesty, a trust..." She closed her eyes and hugged him tighter. "Don't go where you're going, please. Just do your best at what you do each day and enjoy life. I haven't seen you smile ever since you got your new work. I'd love to see a smile..."
Kod smiled...
"A sincere smile." Yowa added. "One that's brought on by true happiness - not something forced just to please whoever's standing in front of you... I don't know what goes through your head... Maybe you think I'm part of the conspiracy you're suspecting... I don't know... It sounds cheesy to say, but you've changed. They say that in every movie, every TV show, every soap opera, you name it... But it doesn't change the fact that you've changed, and that change scares me."
He simply nodded...
"Please stop what you're doing... I don't want to see you go. I know you'll be gone forever if you carry this on 'till the end."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because you can't win!!"
He tightened up as he heard that. His teeth clenched. Yowa sniffled and gently headbutted his chest.
"See? Every time I ask you to go easy, you treat it as an offense to your pride. You're trying to take down an entire political party by yourself! What can you hope to do alone? Kill them? Discredit them? I don't even want to think about what would happen next because I know it can't happen. I just want to see the Kod I used to know and end the story right here before it's too late!"
Kod sighed and relaxed. He really didn't want to let go of it, not so close. From what Yowa had read of his notes, she had blown the story out of proportions, when all he wanted to do was weed out corruption. In a sense, he understood her worries for him, and at the same time, she didn't fully understand what he was doing and why. To her, it was nothing but a curiosity and an impeccability gone too far - at least that's what he thought.
Still, they held their embrace for several minutes. Then, Yowa began unbuttoning his coat.
"What are you doing?"
Yowa pulled on the coat and tossed it aside. "Your uniform stinks... You've worn it for way too long lately."
The coat had lifted a cloud of dust as it had landed on the floor. The same thing happened with the pants. The imposing deep blue uniform was dirtier than Kod had thought. The dust had weakened the suit's color and matted the golden badge.
The two prepared and ate dinner in silence. It was a hour-long awkward moment, the only sound coming from the constant news feed on the TV. In this time of intense fighting, the producers were doing a bit too much for comfort: along with the reports about glorious victories and strategic retreats (Kod chuckled at that recently invented doublespeak term) the news cast had produced histograms about the number of Reli creatures killed and the number of soldiers lost, plus kill to death ratio, kills per hour, kills per day, number of Unionized Mercenaries involved in the effort, map with red and blue areas, and then everything all over again for neighboring countries and the rest of the world. Even the weather reports were tinted red and blue to show that the Relis were getting the hot and dry weather while the humans on the coast got the mellower end of things - which, by the way, did not change the fact that air conditioning units were almost always on in every respectable room and building of the city.
Yowa spent the rest of the evening clinging to him as he zapped through the channels. Eventually, after he went through the guide twice without finding anything interesting, he turned the volume down and wrapped his arms around her.
He spent the next morning at his Section Lead office. The little paperwork could be done in a hour, but he well took his time to take care of them, often pausing to get himself a glass of water or staring out the window, or browsing through the UM files to take a look at the results of the new recruits. He didn't have to do these kinds of introductions anymore, but some of the faces were entertaining. The younger trainees often made a face at the camera and the notes told they didn't take the whole thing seriously. There were also pictures of some of the better-looking trainees in action, in preparation for a promotional campaign. There was even a new message in his electronic mail box, titled "How's that look?" and which contained the picture of a smiling man and woman with bodies to die for, clad in a uniform perfect to the last atom despite the fact that the photo showed them merrily jumping into a dune battle.
Kod recalled the old saying: "Engage yourself, engage yourself, they said!"
A series of messages arrived into his mail box in the course of the next hour, mostly men going "I'd hit it!"
"Figures...!"
The door opened. Nathas Rosser stepped in with a grave look on his face.
"Mr. Naïnsev, I have bad news for you."
"What now?"
"I just got a message: your friend Yowa Kaidach was killed in a hit and run as she was crossing a street. Worse: we don't have a clear identification of the suspect's vehicle right now."
Kod froze. "I... Oh, shit..."
Mr. Rosser took his hand and shook it firmly. "I'm truly, truly sorry for what happened."
His tone seemed false and out of place. His eyes were bright. He was faking it.
"Just..."
"I'm truly sorry, Kod." Rosser interrupted as he quickly left and closed the door.
A person couldn't be run over without any eyewitnesses. There were bystanders, security cameras, cops, everything. Unless Yowa had ventured into the darkest and most unprotected street of the entire city - which was unlikely to be the case - there would have been witnesses.
He called the police. They told him that yes, Yowa had been run over and no, they didn't have a description of the vehicle, and would keep the case open for a week to let people time to call in and report about it.
The Unionized Mercenaries hadn't been informed yet. He left a message to the board of Division Leads and asked them to publish the news as usual. Throughout the day, the only replies he'd get would be from Reez, Nolla, Armi and Fred, all of them sending him their sympathies.
He did his work even more slowly during the afternoon. More often than not, he spent long minutes, looking outside, a bunch of disorganized thoughts flying about in his head, desperately trying to connect pieces together. Those he had been hunting had found him out, and had sent a warning shot. That was the only reasonable hypothesis. From now on, the game would change altogether, and he was at a disadvantage. With the little evidence he had, making a credible story would be barely doable at best.
He was in a strange predicament. With Yowa dead, there was no one to stop him from pushing his investigation further. On the other hand, he didn't feel the will to continue. The news had drained his energy.
He leaned on his desk and took a deep breath...
"...Those fuckers..."
"Who's a fucker?"
Quickly, he looked up. Mr. Karl was standing in the doorframe, for once his grin replaced by an interrogative look.
"Oh... Problems at home." Kod muttered.
"All righty then. Ya don't look so hot. Sure ya don't want to take the rest of the day off?"
"What for?"
"I passed by yer office a few times today. Ya keep on lookin' outside and yer desk is clean. What's holding ya? Ya waitin' for a call?"
"No, not really..."
Karl sat on the corner of the desk and looked outside. His face had taken an unusually stern and serious look.
"Ya know, man, sometimes, ya just gotta go along with the music and keep on livin' without lookin' back. Right now, you're busy with all sorts of watchamacallits in yer head and it ain't doin' ya any good. Just live, man! Enjoy life, unstiff yerself a little! You've got a chance to lay back and relax now, so why don't ya take it?"
To Kod, the translation was nothing short of "Quit fooling with us." He gave Karl a look of disbelief.
"Have you guys teamed up this morning to piss me off or what?"
Karl seemed dissatisfied with Kod's answer. He stood up and slowly walked towards the door.
"Ya know, Kod, we're short on stable Mercenaries. Don't ya overwork yerself, ya hear?"
And he was gone.
So Nathas Rosser knew and Mr. Karl knew. Mr. Calista was too stupid by appearances to complain to the Department about him - someone had noticed what he planned to do, period.
Who had done it? Was it a trap? Had someone suspected him and notified the Department and then the news spread like wildfire? Or was their screening process mugh tougher than it seemed?... Or maybe he was seeing bugs where they didn't exist?
He went to the UM building's lobby.
Yowa was mentioned nowhere. Not on the billboards, nor the database - nowhere at all. Whenever he asked, he got shocked replies and apologies. Not even Fred.
"Wait a minute!" Kod exclaimed. "You had sent me a message of condolences just a while ago!"
"That couldn't happen, I was on an op. I couldn't receive mail even if I wanted to."
"So..."
"Whoever replied wasn't me."
"Then... I... I sent a message to the secretary of the Division Leads and to Reez, Nolla and Armi. Plus you. I got a reply from everyone except the secretary."
Fred shook his head again. "Nolla was on the op too. She's been busy all day - couldn't have gotten a message. Here, tell you what, I'll check my mail right away."
He went to the nearest terminal and logged himself in.
His mail box was empty.
Kod stared at the screen for a moment, his eyes and mouth wide open.
Fred turned around.
"Kod, my man, you had better tell me what kind of shit you got yourself into, 'cause this is pretty damn far from normal."
Kod looked around, and then said "Ah screw it, what gives. I ran into a mutant a couple of days ago. First at the office, then at the home of some businessman I had taken a job for. So I snooped around and found out the bunch of the political party was buying artificially engineered mutants to fulfill their fantasies."
Fred whistled. "You really bit more than you could chew here."
"You doubt I could succeed."
"I don't say you couldn't succeed. I say no one could succeed." He put a hand on Kod's shoulder. "What were you thinking, Kod? You going alone against the whole government..."
Kod shook his head. "It's not the government... The source is the Department of Technology. They're the ones taking orders and manufacturing the mutants."
"Between you and me, are you really that surprised?"
"Well... Somewhat."
Fredaris shook his head. "I'll give it to you, Kod: you're pretty damn impeccable when you want to be. But the world doesn't follow along with you. You may be a man of principles all you want, ain't gonna stop idiots and fuckers from doing whatever the hell they want. Your problem is that you react. You see something wrong and you feel compelled to go against it. Remember drill camp? You hated the drill instructor because he had smacked you down in a challenge. The sergeants, the Division Leads, they all had something that annoyed you, so you wanted to stomp on top of 'em... Well, it's done now. They still hate your guts, but they obey your orders."
Kod sighed. "I'm getting nowhere with this..."
Fred patted his shoulder. "Kod, think about it. Your career is over. No, wait, that's not the word I wanna say... Rather... You're on top of everything you wanted to achieve. You're the one calling the shots and making the big money. Damn, I wish I had your job! I could get to the office in the morning, sign a paper or two and come back home and watch TV all day instead of sittin' on my ass and listening to people screaming and swearing over the comms frequencies 'cause they can't handle their own piss when they run into someone remotely scary."
Kod sighed again. "Somehow, I wish the old days were back." He smiled weakly. "That way, I'd have someone to yell at. Remember my roommates at drill camp? Savage, Animal and Tall Jack? I haven't heard from them since. Didn't even see them on the UM roster for New Colombus..."
"Whoa, whoa there, not the time to get nostalgic! That's what people always do when a friend of theirs dies." Fred stood up. "Come on. Give me a ride to your home. I'll talk to ya, decompress a little."
"Well... Okay. Fair enough."
They left the lobby. Behind them were the rapidly spreading news of Yowa's death.