Prefect showed them four files: three men, and one woman. The woman and one of the men were a married couple. Two weeks ago, they’d visited a nice Russian girl named Maria together. It wasn’t their first meeting with her; they’d met earlier in September, and from Maria’s review of the encounter, it looked like it was going to be a regular thing. Maria mentioned no feelings of doubt or weirdness about the arrangement—they had not asked her to do anything that wasn’t previously outlined in their initial conversation, and had not tried to overstay their time or undercharge for fees. They paid on time and made new appointments the same day. In other words, perfect clients. Hwa screened them out.
The two profiles that were left looked eerily similar. Two white guys with programmer tans and the same deer-in-the-headlights expression that everyone wore while being issued an ID badge. Their names were Smith and Mueller. Mueller was a relatively new hire from Arizona. He’d written his dissertation on sustainable methods of extracting energy from experimental matter. Before that, he’d served in the JROTC. Technically, he was still a member of the National Guard, even if he was working in Canada on a visa. By contrast, Smith was Canadian. His doctorate came from Waterloo. He had been with the company for fifteen years.
His profile was covered in redactions.
Hwa pointed at the profile. “What are all those logos, at the top of the page? Above all the black parts, I mean.”
“Those are project logos. They’re so you can see at a glance what people have worked on. See, there’s the logo for Project Poseidon.” He pointed. Hwa recognized the image from the sign indicating the experimental reactor. But there were others: a single drop of blue on a white ground, a red dragon rampant, a circle of white dots on a green square. That last one reminded her of something, but she couldn’t remember what.
“Prefect, what other projects beside Poseidon has Smith worked on?”
“Project Clearwater, Project Blake, Project Changeling.”
Changeling. How did that image and that word match up? How were fairy babies switched with human ones at all reminiscent of a ring of white on grass green? She’d read the Irish folk tales in Mrs. Cavanaugh’s class, just like everyone else in New Arcadia. And changelings were switched in the cradle. They didn’t come from fairy rings.
And just like that, she knew. She knew exactly where she’d seen that image before.
“Hwa? Is something wrong?”
For a kid with an anti-feeling chip, he was still pretty damn good at reading her. She turned to Joel. She forced some sheepishness. Faked embarrassment. “Just realizing I forgot to report to Síofra,” she said.
Joel beamed. “I’ll bet you could ping him now. He doesn’t sleep very much.” Hwa didn’t ask how the boy knew that. “Do you think he’ll like our present?” Joel continued.
“Aye,” Hwa said. “I reckon he will.”
14
Metabolist/Subspace/LynchLabs/ Tower Three
The trip back to New Arcadia was smoother than the trip out. Joel slept most of the way. Hwa used the time to look at some more employee profiles. By the time they arrived, it was early afternoon and Joel was talking about meeting some friends from science club to discuss next steps.
“Do you have your outfit for Homecoming, yet?” Joel asked.
Hwa turned and gave him the finger. “Don’t ruin my day. I’m going home.”
“Don’t forget the Falstaff paper!” Joel yelled.
The train back was mostly empty, for a Sunday. Maybe people really were leaving. The crowds were a little thicker on the Demasduwit. It was one of those crisp autumn Sundays that made her happy to be out on the Atlantic, where the air was clean and the sky was clear. She let herself be overcharged for a big mess of dandelion greens, yams, and eggs, and she took the stairs up to her place without once encountering the tobacco dealers who made it their usual Sunday afternoon meeting place or the anti-reactor kids with their chittering ads and radiation spam.
The door to her apartment hung ajar. Plastic splintered and threaded away from the jamb. When she touched them, the locks fell through the door. She heard them clunk heavily on the square of carpet remnant she’d scavenged in lieu of a welcome mat. After all, she hadn’t planned to welcome anybody. Why was she focusing on that one detail? Why did her mind seem to get smaller, at moments like this?
Every time she told other women about this kind of moment, she told them to walk away.
Don’t even stop, she told the people in her self-defence classes. If there’s something wrong with your door, and you think there’s been a break-in, just keep walking. Don’t go in. Just go somewhere safe and call for help. You don’t know who’s in there, waiting for you. You don’t know what they’re on, or how crazy they are, or what they plan on doing to you. Don’t go in. Whatever you do, do not open that door.
Hwa put her groceries down. And her backpack. She rolled her neck. Flexed her feet. Cleared her wrists.
She kicked the door in so hard it bounced off the opposite wall.
No one came running out. No guns started blazing. There was only the echo of the door hitting the wall and the flutter of seagulls from the stairwell and the chaos that was her apartment. She could see it from here: shelves shoved over, display cracked on the floor, bed and pillows cut up with their stuffing spilling like guts in a combat drama.