10
Praha 5 Police Station, Prague, Czech Republic
November 28
The end of the hall was shut off with misty plastic taped to the walls, ceiling and floor. A biohazard sticker was peeling off in the middle. Eva slowed her pace as she approached it, but the cops shoved her forward, then jerked her to a stop at a door to her right. A paper hung over the ‘Janitor’ sign.
“Interrogation Room B,” Eva muttered.
“Someone sneezed in A,” the female cop grunted, opening the door to a tiny room, a table improbably wedged inside a closet space. “Lucky you.”
Eva was thrown into the chair at the back of the table, landing with a whimper. The two cops sidled around to the far side, sat down casually, and leaned back in silence.
The woman was thickly built, with a strong jaw and short hair, cut in a five-year-too-late style. The man was gruff, large and balding, his brow deep; when he clenched his jaw, it almost changed the shape of his face as the bones clicked into a new arrangement.
“Ms Kolikov,” began the woman, not making eye contact. “My name is Inspector Sobotka. This is Inspector Crew.”
“You’re… you’re Foreign Police?” Eva ventured.
Crew chortled, stroked his stubbly chin.
“Why? Not an immigrant, are you?”
Eva met his eyes nervously.
“No…” she answered.
“Good thing. Shouldn’t be any immigrants any more, yeah?”
“No, Ms Kolikov,” smirked Sobotka. “We’re just your average cops, taking care of average business.”
Eva watched them watching her, said nothing.
“Of course,” mused Crew, “my papa was with the Foreign Police. Must have some of it in my blood, yeah? ‘Cause when I saw your file going by, I said to myself: that’s someone we ought to have a chat with.”
“I thought so too,” nodded Sobotka.
“Pff, maybe just common sense then,” smirked Crew, leaning forward on the table so it creaked under his immense weight. “We hear you had some trouble on the train.”
“It was a big misunderstanding,” Eva stammered. “I was just talking to this officer when someone came out of nowhere and beat him up, and…”
“Killed two guards?”
“Really, I had nothing to do with that. I swear.”
They stared at her seriously for a moment, then Crew yawned noisily.
“Let’s move on. Tell us about Paris.”
Eva blinked.
“I… uh… well, I went to school there. University.”
“Studying what?” Sobotka queried, clicking a pen open, and flipping through a few papers in a folder.
“Fine arts,” Eva replied.
“What about computer science? I have you enrolled in that, but nothing about fine arts. That’s pretty strange, now isn’t it?”
“I switched majors.”
“Interesting. What was your minor? Biology, maybe?”
Eva paused, swallowed slowly.
“No,” she said softly.
“I’m sorry, hearing’s going; what did you say?” Crew asked, cupping his hand to his ear.
“I didn’t study biology,” Eva said clearly, then sat up a bit straighter, squinted at them like she was preparing for a storm.
“How long have you been making viruses?” Sobotka asked.
Eva didn’t flinch.
“I don’t make viruses,” she replied. “I’m a painter. I make—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” interrupted Crew, waving his hand at her. “and the hitman’s not a hitman, he’s a plumber. You’re not the first to dream up a cover, kid.”
“It’s not a cover. I don’t make viruses. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Crew grunted, stood up roughly.
“I’ve gotta piss,” he said, slapping his partner on the shoulder. “Call me when she stops lying.”
Sobotka eyed Eva carefully as Crew strode out of the room. She folded her hands together, leaned forward slightly.
“What’s up with your mum?”
Eva looked up like she’d been run over by a car.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You two were close?”
“Y-yes.”
“All that time you were roaming around Europe, she found a way to get you care packages every month. Not many parents would do that kind of thing.”
“I… I guess.”
Eva exhaled deeply, sunk a bit lower in her chair. Sobotka leaned back, crossed her arms, stared at the wall past Eva.
“We heard you watching the news this morning. Did you happen to catch the story about the kid with the breakfast cereal?”
Eva’s eyes shifted left and right.
“Um. Yeah.”
“That was us. I mean, we found the kid. Used to be, we’d be chasing murderers and thugs and thieves and such. Now we call it a victory if we find a kid who kept himself alive without our help.”
“It’s good he’s alive.”
“He’s got Bonn-22. A week to live, tops.”
Eva said nothing.
“But you can see how, after living and breathing that shit for the last few years, when we see someone like you in our fair city, it brings a certain… liveliness to our day.”
A grunting from the hall signalled Crew’s return, and the door swung open as he lurched in, a large machine in tow. He lifted it with two hands, creaking its handle, and dropped it on the table in front of Eva. It was browned and burnt, cracked in places and looked to be barely functional. Its large, square screen was warped, and the clear glass canister in its core was growing mould at the edges. Still, it was clear to Eva what it was.
“An incubator?” she asked.
“Oh, so you do know about making viruses!”
“No, I—”
“What was your mum doing with a pack of refill capsules?” Sobotka asked, a smirk on her face. Crew dropped himself into his seat, put a foot on the table.
“I don’t know,” Eva said quietly.
“You don’t know?” Sobotka continued. “Okay, let me try this again. You mother was in possession of some highly illegal materials, as well as numerous documents relating to the manufacture of viruses. Why do you think that is?”
“She’s an expert at epidemiology. It’s probably part of her research.”
“Sure. I get it. Yeah. So… switching gears… let’s talk about travel. Where’ve you been since you left Paris?”
Eva shifted in her seat.
“A bunch of places,” Eva said, willing her face not to flush. “Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany. I passed through others on the way, but it’s tricky to get past borders because of the outbreaks.”
Sobotka nodded.
“Must have been hard,” she said, almost kindly. “But you seem to have made it through all right. Did you travel alone?”
Eva paused.
“No,” she said.
“Our records show you were with someone named, one second...” Sobotka flipped open a folder, skimmed a few pages. Crew leaned over, pointed down to a spot low on the page, and she nodded to him. “Right, Rhodri Tenant. British national. Is that right?”
Eva nodded: “Yes.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Was.”
“Bad break-up?”
Eva looked at her hands, fidgeted her thumbs.
“I’d rather not talk about him,” she said quietly.
Sobotka paused, nodded.
“Fair enough,” she said. “We’re here for you anyway.”
Crew grinned.
“So when did you start making viruses?” he asked.
“I told you, I don’t make viruses! I don’t know how!”
“But you’re pretty good at computers, right?”
“I don’t know. Just average, I guess.”
Crew scratched his cheek absentmindedly.
“You got into the University of Paris’ computer science graduate program. As a foreign student. At nineteen. That’s gotta say something about your skills, right?”
She didn’t reply. He put his other foot on the table, waved his muddy boots from side to side.
“See, my question is this: why wouldn’t you look at making viruses? Someone like you, having a doctor for a mum, and this computer science education, and that stint in prison—”
“Excuse me?” Eva gasped, her face turning bright red.
“The year in prison? What, you forgot?”
“I… how did you…”
“Oh, it’s all right here. Hacked a bank when you were fifteen, left behind enough crumbs that the cops up in Sweden found you, and spent a year in jail for it.”
Eva’s eyes were starting to water. Sobotka continued.
“And what’s shocking to me is that it says here that your father was the one that requested you be tried as an adult. Your own father! That must have stung.”
“Her dad’s a dick,” Crew nodded.
“Those files were supposed to be sealed,” Eva muttered.
“It’s funny,” Crew said, cracking his knuckles. “Things have a way of unsealing themselves, when they meet the right criteria.”
“What kind of criteria?” Eva asked.
“A pattern of using technology for criminal acts. Hacking banks, making viruses. It’s a bit of an evolution of technique, but it sounds the same to me.”
“I don’t make viruses!” Eva shouted, tears in her eyes.
“Let’s come back to that,” Sobotka said, leaning forward as Crew looked away. “See, looking at your travel history these last few years… what strikes me is that you seem to have been in a variety of cities around Europe just before they got shut down with major outbreaks.”
“We left when things were looking bad.”
“I’ll say.”
“A lot of people left when things were looking bad. Wouldn’t you?”
“I dunno,” mused Crew. “I think I’d stick it out and fight for my city. How ‘bout you, Sobotka?”
Sobotka nodded slowly.
“How’d your mother take being fired, Ms Kolikov?” she asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Your mother was fired from the World Health Organization three weeks ago. Dereliction of duty. After twenty years of service. She got chewed out pretty bad in public. That must have hurt her.”
“I… I didn’t know.”
“When did you talk to her last?”
“About two months ago. I haven’t been able to reach her since.”
“Not even last night?”
Eva blinked. The two inspectors were stone-faced, but their tone spoke volumes about their confidence. She was headed into a trap, and she had no idea what it was.
“What about last night?”
“You’re entitled to a lawyer, of course, but it’s not easy getting one here in person anymore. Especially to defend foreigners. Foreigners who just arrived.”
“I don’t understand —”
“Modena, Italy. Graz, Austria. Linz, Austria. Nuremberg, Germany. It seems pretty odd that every time you and your boyfriend leave a town, a massive outbreak hits and wipes out half the population. Doesn’t it?”
Eva said nothing, clasped her hands together.
“You can imagine how excited we are that you stopped by,” she said darkly. “Especially given the little warning you sent us.”
Eva looked back and forth to them, eyes wide.
“What warning?”
Crew snorted, flipped out his phone and tapped a few buttons. He handed it over to her, screen sideways, and she saw a video playing…
Time-lapse clouds rolled through grey skies, distorted at the edges by flickering compression. There was audio to it, faint on the tiny speaker, but she thought it might be German. Then, atop the clouds, letter in cold, stark black letters: “January 8: Modena-1”.
“That was sent to the Mayor’s office three weeks ago,” Sobotka said. “The voice is computer-generated, totally fake. Speaking German. Took us a while to translate, but this is the gist…”
“March 2: Graz-3,” the screen said now.
“Let’s see,” Sobotka said, flipping through her notes, then read dryly: “The greed and hypocrisy of society is a cancer on humanity which must be removed at all costs before the blah, blah, blah. You get the point.”
“I don’t… I don’t understand…” Eva said. “What does this have to do with me?”
“April 21: Linz-1,” said the text.
“The video arrived through a proxied mail server in Russia, but since the Russians have become so touchy about communications lately, they were able to tell us where it came from before it hit their borders. And you’ll never guess what we found.”
“July 6: Nuremberg-5,” said the text.
“The originating account was registered to your mother,” Sobotka said, leaning in. “But apparently, there was a secondary account on the file. Your account. And forensics is pretty sure it’s a match.”
Eva blinked, looked from Sobotka to Crew and back again, felt her stomach turn inside out. She looked down at the video, saw the words changing again, and gasped when she read them:
“December 1: Prague-1.”
She looked up at the inspectors, panic swelling over her.
“So tell me, Ms Kolikov,” said Crew. “How’re we gonna die on December 1?”