The World Gives Way: A Novel Read online

  “Come in,” he heard Barnes grunt in the interior.

  Tobias crossed the threshold. There was the desk, with its precisely carved angles and beveled feet. Barnes was seated behind it, staring at the screen that had been retrofitted to its surface. He looked up.

  “Oh, Toby—come in.”

  Barnes was still allowed to call him Toby. When Tobias had first entered the bureau, there had been a lot of murmurs. Talk of his mother and father, talk of whether Tobias was fit for such a career. But more than anything there had been talk of nepotism on Barnes’s part, of the director playing favorites with his adopted son.

  But in these past two years Tobias had won them over. He took every brain-eroding office assignment, and he worked every late shift until the veins popped in his eyes. It gave him an immense sense of triumph to note that there were plenty of people in the bureau now who had forgotten his history, who were surprised to learn that he had any connection to the director at all. Now he was Bendel, but to Barnes he would always be Toby.

  Barnes gestured to a chair in front of the desk, and Tobias sat.

  “Simpson said you were looking for me?”

  Barnes grunted an affirmative. He began scrolling through his screen.

  “Just a minute,” he said. “Have to find the file heading—”

  Tobias waited patiently. They’d recently adjusted the filing system for accuracy, going by the victim ID number instead of the surname. But Tobias knew better than to speak up—Barnes wouldn’t appreciate the correction.

  Barnes’s skin reflected the blue of the screen. It was not a flattering light—its sharp brightness cast into relief every wrinkle and crease around his eyes and mouth. Papery folds echoing his many frowns and furrows of brow. It hit Tobias more and more frequently that this solid pillar of a man was aging. The white strands in his salt-and-pepper beard (much more fastidiously trimmed than Simpson’s mustache) glowed in the light of the screen.

  Tobias tried to crane his neck to see Barnes’s screen. For the past two years Tobias had basically served as a dignified file clerk, but nobody went to the director’s office to go over filing. Adrenaline coursed through him, he felt the familiar pricking under his skin. His hands shook. This could be a new case, his first case. He sat on his hands in an attempt to still his body.

  “Here it is,” Barnes said after a few minutes. “Early this morning, a disturbance was reported at Atlas Tower.”

  Barnes threw the screen up on the projector, and the wall of the office was engulfed in the image of a shattered body on cement. Tobias tightened his lips, taking great care to keep a stoic expression for Barnes’s benefit. This could simply be some sort of consultation, but if it wasn’t, Tobias wanted to embark on his first case with a heavy dose of worldliness and professionalism.

  The photograph was arresting. There was very little to discern in the shrapnel of white flesh, the shards of bone, and the gelatinous red viscera, but Tobias surmised a woman based on the delicate lacy fabric that was muddled in with the carnage.

  “Imogene Carlyle. Thirty-nine,” Barnes said, by way of explanation. “Mrs. Carlyle lived in the penthouse suite of Atlas Tower with her husband, Marcus Carlyle, forty-eight.” Barnes tapped a button on the screen, and the image changed to a pale man half-submerged in an antique claw-foot bathtub, the liquid inside a disturbingly deep red. One of his arms flopped haphazardly over the rim of the tub, and Tobias could see the slashes on the inside of his forearm where he’d opened his veins. His hand was severed at the wrist. Tobias concentrated on keeping his face serene and leaned closer. The amputation was clean. No blood. On second glance, he could see chips and cracks in the porcelain on the side of the tub, near Carlyle’s arm.

  “His hand was chopped off postmortem, against the side of the tub,” he said, and then looked to Barnes for confirmation. He nodded.

  “Were there prints on the hand?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Barnes tapped the button again, and the image changed to a registration portrait of some kind. The girl looked young.

  “Myrra Dal. Twenty-five.”

  Tobias surveyed the face now projected on the white wall. A dark, tangled billow of hair, dark complexion. Underfed. Her skin and face showed signs of fatigue and long labor, but her eyes were still very sharp and very black.

  “Myrra Dal is under contract with the Carlyles. Mrs. Carlyle’s body was discovered at five thirty this morning, and by that point Myrra Dal had already left. It’s likely she chopped off Mr. Carlyle’s hand to get access to the family safe. Jewelry and account cards were undisturbed, but it looks like she stole the Carlyles’ ID docs. If there was cash in the safe, she might have made off with that as well.”

  Smart. Account cards could be tracked. Some jewelry too. She’d probably try to get one of the IDs altered, sell off the others. Tobias cleared his throat and tried to avoid the black eyes of Myrra Dal, who seemed to be taking on a three-dimensional shape as she stared down from her photo.

  “The deaths seem like suicide, but—” Tobias said.

  “But she cut off a man’s hand,” Barnes finished for him. “And two suicides at the same time?”

  Tobias agreed it was suspicious, but privately he thought it almost seemed too simple an explanation, that Dal had killed her employers and made off with the money. There was something about the timing, the way the actions came together, that felt off. Why take the time to fake suicides but do something as obvious as cut off a hand? Why have the wife fall onto the sidewalk, where the body was sure to be found quickly? There was something more going on, but he didn’t yet know enough to try to argue the point.

  “We’re looking at suspicion of murder, theft for sure,” Barnes said. “And for breaking her contract, obviously. But also kidnapping—” Barnes tapped the button on-screen again, shifting the image from Myrra Dal to a posed family portrait of Mrs. Carlyle, reassembled, and Mr. Carlyle with clearer eyes and rosier cheeks. Between them was a smiling blonde baby.

  “The child, Charlotte Carlyle, is currently missing.”

  Tobias peered at the picture. It was always unnerving to see images of people alive after having seen pictures of the bodies. It seemed a rude defiance of entropy.

  Mrs. Carlyle’s expression seemed screwed tightly into place. She had matched her lipstick to her husband’s tie. Mr. Carlyle was smiling and holding his wife’s hand, but his grip on her fingers was a little too tense. Tobias could see the whites of Marcus Carlyle’s knuckles bulging against his skin. Even baby Charlotte’s eyes seemed puffed and bloodshot. This must have been the tenth or fifteenth take of this picture, of them holding this pose. These were the type of people who projected happiness and endured the burden of that projection.

  Barnes was talking again. Tobias refocused.

  “—and anyway, there’s still a heavy suspicion of foul play. They certainly look like suicides—but Dal had motive to kill them. It takes a certain something, to butcher a corpse. Someone who’s capable of cutting off a dead man’s hand is capable of having killed him in the first place.” Barnes leaned back in his chair and stared at the family portrait on the wall. Tobias stayed silent, watched him think.

  “Whereas, if they did kill themselves, why run? Her running doesn’t make sense. Why break contract? She’d likely get reassigned to someplace just as ritzy. Her work contract will end in her lifetime, why would she risk incarceration?”

  To Tobias this felt like an obtuse argument. There were plenty of reasons why someone would risk it, Barnes had to know this. Tobias eyed Barnes in his chair; he was staring up at Tobias, almost puckish. Barnes was testing him—he wanted to see Tobias think, to see him run.

  “That’s only if she’s thinking long term,” Tobias said. “There’s still another fifty years or so before we reach Telos. That’s a long time to wait.”

  Barnes was nodding along with him. “So Imogene and Marcus Carlyle kill themselves, and Myrra Dal takes the opportunity, runs off before they’re discovered.”
/>   “Yes.”

  “It’s shortsighted of her. It never takes long to catch up to them… It’s a small world. Only so many places to run.”

  “Sometimes people just snap,” Tobias countered. He glanced again at the family picture and at Mr. Carlyle’s protruding knuckles. “Especially in a heightened emotional state. I mean, imagine—she wakes up, finds both of her employers dead, she goes into panic mode. She’s not thinking logically.”

  Barnes let that sit for a moment, mulled it over in his chair.

  “Why steal the baby, then?” he asked. “Ransom?”

  “The ransom wouldn’t be worth the trouble,” Tobias said. He still hadn’t puzzled out why Myrra Dal would take Charlotte. There was no reason for it. Except maybe—he didn’t even want to think it, it seemed too sentimental, made him look too green.

  He said it anyway.

  “Maybe Dal just didn’t want to leave her behind.”

  Barnes looked down at the surface of his desk and gave a small smile.

  “That’s the reasoning of someone who wants to live in a kind world,” Barnes said. Tobias blushed. He felt stupid.

  Barnes turned to him and looked suddenly sad, more emotion than Tobias usually saw from him.

  “Let’s hope that’s the reason,” he said. Tobias wanted to respond, but was so surprised by Barnes’s sincerity that he couldn’t find anything to say. All at once he was filled with worry for the man who had raised him. Something in Barnes felt small and hollowed out.

  Barnes looked away and gave a cough, as if dislodging any further mawkishness that might be stuck in his throat. He pulled a small memory stick out of a drawer and handed it to Tobias. Tobias held it between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the charge of anticipation in the pads of his fingers. This was his shot, his case. He felt it.

  “That’ll have any other relevant details,” Barnes said, gesturing to the small piece of plastic and silicon in Tobias’s hand. For such a small object, it held weight.

  “Who should this go to?” Tobias ventured, weary of assumption. Barnes let out a short exhalation that could have been a laugh. His lips turned upward in a rare grin. Definitely a laugh.

  “Are you kidding?” he asked. “This one’s yours, kid.”

  Tobias felt a thrumming warmth rise through his body. “You sure?”

  Barnes waved a hand between them, swiping the air. “Ah, you’ve been ready to get out there for the past eight months. I just didn’t want to make it look like I did you any favors.”

  Tobias wanted to leap straight over that antique wood desk and hug Barnes around the neck. Instead he settled for a handshake. Barnes held his hand an extra second, warm and firm. He looked at Tobias with bright pride in his eyes.

  “You’re gonna do great,” he said. He paused for a moment. “And, Toby—”

  Tobias knew what was coming. It was their own private joke. His face opened up in a smile.

  “Your parents would be very disappointed in you.”

  7

  MYRRA

  Now that they were outside with the noises of traffic and people, Charlotte was unhappy, and Charlotte was crying. Myrra was trying to stick to the alleyways—the smell from the dumpsters didn’t make things better, but there were no traffic cameras, and fewer people to slow them down. It was rush hour now; the sidewalks were packed. They needed to cover as much distance as possible before Security agents could catch up.

  Charlotte let out another wail; she kept vacillating between screaming and occasionally needing to breathe. Myrra didn’t quite know why she was still holding Charlotte. The baby should have stayed back in the penthouse—no reason why Myrra should take her along. It was going to be next to impossible to stay ahead of Security if she was also carrying a baby. Myrra looked down at Charlotte, who let out another scream and beat her tiny fists against Myrra’s chest. Her face was contorting, turning deeper and deeper shades of red.

  She would let go of Charlotte. She would drop her off at the doors of a hospital; maybe that beautiful church on the corner of Grand Street and Samcheongdong, she could lay Charlotte at the feet of one of the statues. Borrow or steal a tablet, place a quick anonymous call, and Security would come. She could be gone before they got there. Surely the Security Bureau would find a family willing to take her in (they were bound to be swarming the penthouse by now; it wouldn’t have taken long for someone to discover Imogene’s mangled remains on the sidewalk). Probably a fairly well-to-do family, considering the status of the Carlyles. A new set of adoptive parents would crane their necks over her crib, babbling baby talk. And Charlotte could be happy like that for the next month or two. However long they had.

  Myrra still had plenty of options, even if she wanted to hold on to Charlotte for just a little longer. It was just too much change at once, to learn that her bosses were dead and her job was gone and her life would soon be gone and the world would soon be gone. She could hardly be blamed for holding on to the one good thing she had left, even if it was a terrifically inconvenient thing.

  “Please stop crying,” Myrra said to Charlotte’s shrieking tomato of a face. She bounced her as she walked, taking hairpin turns down narrower and narrower routes and alleys. Myrra’s cheeks felt wet, and she realized she was crying too, though she couldn’t pinpoint exactly why.

  Since leaving the penthouse, Myrra hadn’t thought much about where she would go, only that she needed to keep moving. No problem there. It felt impossible to stand still without her body shaking apart. It was hard to think straight, or think about anything past the next few minutes. She needed to leave the city; with this level of infrastructure and surveillance, they wouldn’t stay hidden for long. But she didn’t know much about places outside of New London.

  Just before ducking into the alleyways, she’d found a transit kiosk with a map of the ferry and train lines. There was no real way to gauge distance or landscape, just colored lines stretching out like strands in a spiderweb away from the large central dot marked “New London.” She traced one blue line left to right, a ferry line, leading away from the city. If this was to scale, the closest large city was Palmer—Myrra had heard about Palmer, knew that it was rich and big. That alone told her that Palmer would have just as much surveillance as New London, if not more. But there was another, smaller dot just before Palmer (a smaller dot meant a smaller town, Myrra guessed), a ferry stop labeled “Nabat.” Myrra barely knew anything about Nabat, had just heard the name once or twice, as if it were a ghost of a town rather than a place anyone actually visited. She took that as a good sign. Nabat would be her destination, just as soon as she dropped off Charlotte. It would be too dangerous to actually ride on the ferry, but she could follow the line on foot, camp if she needed to, stay off the grid. Whatever it took to keep agents away.

  Skyscrapers loomed over the street on both sides, casting the alleys in shadow. They were still in the finance district—finance had the tallest buildings, higher than Atlas Tower, rising so high that Myrra wondered if they actually did graze the sky above them. Elevated train tracks wove between the buildings, impossibly high above the ground. Today the sky was a cheerful blue, bright even in the early morning, due to the summer season. Myrra considered the sky, really considered it for the first time. Someone must program the seasons. Was it just atmosphere above them? Someone—who?—had designed that trick visual… the clouds, the blue, the sun, the stars. Where was the operating center? She wondered about the small moving parts, now that it was all breaking down. Don’t think about that.

  Maybe it wasn’t breaking down, maybe it was all just a terrible prank that Imogene and Marcus were playing on her. Maybe Marcus’s body was a dummy, maybe Imogene had jumped into a net hanging below the balcony, maybe they’d planted all those diagrams and schematics on Marcus’s computer, they’d planned it all just to be horrible; never in her life had Myrra wished so hard for their cruelty. Maybe she could go back and her life could continue with the tentative plans and machinations she’d kept hidden in her poc
ket. Maybe this was all a big hoax.

  Myrra’s gut told her different.

  Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about it. Think about how to keep moving.

  The back ways were quieter, but they still passed the occasional contract worker out on morning errands. New London was a city that liked to show a good face—polished metal, fresh paint, sidewalks pressure-washed so strenuously that they had to be resurfaced twice a year. Curated shop windows with charming lettered signs and matching brightly colored awnings. Myrra walked where the rats and the roaches and the trash cans were. This particular neighborhood was affluent enough; quite a few families employed maids and valets. Contract workers tended to take the alleys, knew how to get where they were going faster than the average commuter. They all rushed their way to the markets and shops, just as Myrra had done most days, their heads filled with shopping lists for dinners, tailoring and dry-cleaning orders, lists of supplies for the odd home repair. Myrra met their eyes, and on every face she saw death.

  Myrra laid out a map of the blocks in her head. If she remembered the layout of streets correctly, it was possible to get to the back entrance of McCann’s Grocers without ever hitting a major thoroughfare.

  Another gentleman passed by, probably a butler judging by his outfit. He tipped his black bowler hat at her and smiled at Charlotte. They wouldn’t be suspicious. The odd nanny carrying a baby wouldn’t look out of place, even if the baby was crying. Though agents would definitely be at the penthouse by now. They would know that she’d abandoned her post and run.

  When Myrra worked at the laundry, one of the workers broke contract. Myrra had worked next to her in an assembly line, pressing clothes. Cora. She was older, too old for the work they were doing. They should have placed her in a house or as a nanny, something less physical. Maybe she’d had bad behavior on her record prior to that point, Myrra didn’t know.

  The laundry was a massive establishment, one large cavernous space comprised of cement, metal, and machinery, full to the ceilings with hot air and steam. Myrra couldn’t breathe in there. She would go to bed each night in the adjoining dorms and lie down on her thin foam bed, her arms and hands streaked with red burns from the irons. She didn’t judge Cora for trying to break out. On the contrary, Myrra had predicted it; she would catch her staring blankly at the gray cement wall in front of them while folding clothes. She didn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular, but Myrra got the sense that in those moments Cora was staring down her whole life.