11
Praha 5 Police Station, Prague, Czech Republic
November 28
Eva was trembling, tears in her eyes.
“This isn’t me. I didn’t… I don’t know anything about this!”
“Your history of criminal behaviour indicates otherwise,” said Sobotka. “So what did you do? Come home with a new brew ready to strike, found out your mother’d had a change of heart? Killed her to keep her quiet? Is that it?”
“Killed her? She’s dead?” she cried. “No, that’s not… What’s going on? Where is she?”
Crew chortled.
“You tell us.”
Sobotka slammed her fist down on the table, jolting Eva into silence.
“Ms Kolikov, you’re going to want to be a bit more forthcoming with us. The courts being what they are these days, it can take months to get you to trial. And honestly, a lot of prisoners come in with the sniffles—”
“Hold up,” Crew interrupted. “We don’t have time for—”
“Give me a minute,” Sobotka warned, then turned back to Eva. “I’m going to highly recommend you tell us what we want to know, or we’ll have no reason to keep you in isolation. Do you understand me?”
“Oh come on,” Crew vented. “Give me five minutes alone with her, that’s all we’ll—”
Sobotka held a calming hand out to her partner and he paused, looked away, barely keeping his frustration in check. Sobotka leaned close to Eva, squinting.
“I don’t think you’re going to tell us anything,” she said. “I think you’ll stonewall to the end. And every minute I spend in here with you is another minute I’m not out there, hunting the damn virus. So if you’re not going to come clean, tell me now so I can stop wasting my time.”
“But I honestly don’t know what this is all about… you have to believe me… please…”
Crew clenched his fists, looked like he was on the verge of boiling over with fury.
“Listen, you spoiled brat,” he seethed. “It may not look it to you, but this city ain’t dead yet. This is my home. Even if I have to boil and sterilize every drop of water I use in the shower, it’s still better than packing up and giving up. That’s what you and your kind don’t get, and it makes me sick. It’s no great loss if Prague is wiped off the map, right? Well you’re wrong!”
He got to his feet, shoving the chair against the wall. It toppled over behind him. Eva jerked back, but he caught her by the hair, held her tight, leaned in furiously.
“Tell us where the virus is!” he yelled. “We don’t have time to watch you play innocent here! Tell us where it is or I’m sending you to the most crowded cell I can find, I swear to god!”
Eva was crying, trying to get free of his grip, pleading.
“Please…” she sobbed. “please, I don’t know… I don’t know anything about it… please…”
“Crew, come on,” said Sobotka, stepping into the hall. “It’s not going to work. Leave it.”
“Fuck it!” Crew growled, and slammed her head down into the table with such force her nose started to tingle. She tasted blood in the back of her throat, her eyes swirled with light. Crew stormed to the door, put his head in his hands, trying to regain his composure.
“You’re going into lockup,” he growled. “and you’re not getting out.”
“Wait…” Eva sputtered, reaching out to him feebly.
“Too bad mama can’t help you now, hmm?” he smirked, and left the room, slammed the door so powerfully it sounded like cracking wood. A thin shaft of light beamed in along the bottom. Outside, shadows moved across the doorway, and she heard the inspectors talking again.
“Forgot my keys,” called Crew. “Lock it for me.”
Footsteps came closer, a jingling, a sorting of keys, and Eva tensed.
“How much do you think she knows?” asked Sobotka.
“Who gives a shit. We’ve got to keep working the angles. We got any leads yet?” Crew said, hushed.
“A few hits. It’ll take us a while to cover them all. You got time?”
“Apparently just a few days. Any ideas on where to start looking?”
“None, really. It’s complicated by her… you know…”
“Yeah.”
“So let’s print out a list and pick a place at random.”
Just then, Eva heard the faint ring of a cell phone, Crew answered, his voice quiet and more distant as he walked away from the door. Then a click as the phone shut, and he called to his partner: “We’ve gotta go. Something big in the west end. Captain says Sestak’s asking for us directly.”
Hurried footsteps disappeared into echoes, and Eva was left in awful silence, the wedge of light cutting straight across her ankles. She breathed slowly, shakily, waiting.
“Hello?” she asked the darkness. “Anyone coming to get me?”
She couldn’t hear a thing beyond her own breathing.
Carefully, quietly, she got out from her seat and edged towards the door. No sounds at all. She touched the doorknob tentatively, listened for a sound, a voice, anything to make her pause.
She turned the knob gently, and it clicked, popping the door open slightly. She creaked it out further and peeked outside.
The hallway was yellowing like old paper; filthy water streaked the floor, no people in sight. Eva leaned her head further out, checked both ways, and saw nothing. Nothing to stop her. She shivered.
“I’m leaving the room now…” she whispered.
Less than a metre from the room, Eva heard a scuffle up ahead, like a paper shifting. She froze, eyes wide. She heard a loud sigh, and a grunt. She searched the hallway for someplace to hide.
There, a few steps ahead, another door off to her right, half-closed, lights off. She waited, listened. The air filters in the ceiling hummed and hissed, and the fan somewhere nearby ground its gears with a grating rumble. Then, another scuffle, footsteps.
Eva held her breath and made a dash for the room, slipped inside and back behind the door, the darkness piercing after the light of the hallway. She let the breath out slowly, evenly, tried to hear outside again.
Footsteps now, closer, and she could see through the back of the door, black boots outside the room, paused. Breathing, she heard breathing. A long pause.
The boots slid back a bit, then turned, and she could hear muttering as the footsteps got further away. A calm, even pace. Eva exhaled again, her lungs loosening a bit. She leaned closer to the hinges now, saw into the hall, empty as before.
She turned round to leave when she noticed, back against the wall next to her, a computer workstation. The screen was off, but its power light was on, casting a pale green light across the room.
A police workstation.
She carefully and quietly slid over to the chair, sat down. It creaked a bit, and she strained not to move anymore. She turned the brightness on the screen all the way down with the dial on the front, and then powered it on. She could make out the words, but took a moment to take in all the information.
There was a search box in the corner, cursor flashing on and off, inviting input. Checking over her shoulder, Eva typed: ‘Kolikov’, and hit ‘enter’.
The screen refreshed in a second, showed two entries. Eva’s file, and Dasa Kolikov, her mother. She hovered the cursor over her mother’s name, then clicked her own, bringing up a file that included her passport photo and a few stills from the security cameras on the train. She skimmed the file quickly, pausing only to try and discern the meaning of ‘17-5’. No luck there, so she tore through the data, deleting and fabricating information as fast as possible. By the time she finished, they’d know nothing about her at all.
She smiled at a job well done and hit the ‘back’ button, diving into her mother’s file. What she found was worse than she’d expected:
Arrest Warrant #058833153
Conspiracy to commit murder
Bio-Weapons Act violations
Eva involuntarily put a hand to her mouth, gasped quietly.
“Oh, mama…” she said. “What happened?”
She heard a crackle in the room, but no time to react. A hand wrapped round Eva’s mouth, pushing down, and she couldn’t breathe. She flailed, cracking her wrist against a desk, and wasting the last of her breath on a scream no one could hear.