Jennifer Wells - Beyond the Stars - At Galaxy's Edge

Identification? Brook made a show of patting her pockets before coming up empty. She shrugged apologetically. “Must have left it somewhere, sorry‌—‌but I’m Abigail Igoru. Representative Divar’s office should have told you I was coming.”

The guard pulled a small personal screen out of his pocket. Brook clasped her hands behind her back, masking her uncertainty.

“Huh.” He regarded her again. “I guess you’re okay. Says you’re here to look at video records.”

“That’s right,” Brook said. “Can you help me with that? I need the security video of Representative Divar’s office starting 2:30 ST two days ago.”

The guard grabbed a transceiver from his belt. “Yeah, hey, this is Roth, I need someone to relieve me out here. Yes, really. No, I need to escort someone to the camera room.”

Roth led her down the hall‌—‌a bare concrete and metal affair that seemed far removed from the offices above‌—‌until they reached a dark doorway. Inside, three floor-to-ceiling screens dominated the wall space, each split into sections with views from various cameras and attended by a guard dressed similarly to Roth.

“Hey, Roth,” one of them said. “Who’s this?”

“Name’s Abigail Igoru,” Roth said. “One of the Reps sent her down to look at the record from two days ago at 2:30.”

“Office five twenty-four,” Brook said. “Also, if we do find something, is there any way we could pull the image off this system and send it over the network‌—‌or store it on a datacard?”

The next step, Brook figured, was to run facial recognition on whoever delivered the document. The Emergency Service had some powerful video analysis software they used on footage of terror attacks.

The wall screen officer gave her a funny look. “That’s an unusual request.”

This one wasn’t quite as gullible as the others.

“Is it?” Brook asked innocently. “Representative Divar wants to know for sure who was in his office at that time.”

“He does, does he?” the wall screen officer asked. “What did you say your name was?”

“Abigail Igoru,” Brook said.

She noticed too late that the security cameras monitoring the building tagged by name the government employees that walked in front of their view‌—‌and one camera was pointed directly at the reception desk.

The guard pointed at that camera view. “ That Abigail Igoru?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Brook saw Roth reach for the stun baton on his belt.

“Oh!” Brook said. “That’s my daughter, Abigail Igoru Jr.”

The age difference was a little too small, but Brook figured it was at least plausible.

“You don’t even resemble each other,” Roth said.

“She has her father’s hair,” Brook said.

The wall screen officer tapped the reception desk view and scrolled backward in time to when Brook approached the desk. “She doesn’t seem to recognize you.”

“My husband and I divorced when Abigail was two. She lives with her father now.”

By now every guard in the room was looking at them‌—‌and they all seemed to be losing patience. Brook’s pulse quickened. There was never a good time to be arrested, but now‌—‌with the future of the IES depending on her‌—‌was especially bad. “Look,” Brook said, “this is extremely important‌—‌I can explain it to you later, but right now‌—‌”

Roth laid a hand on her shoulder. “You can explain it to a judge.”

Not in time to save the IES, she couldn’t. Brook’s muscles tensed at Roth’s touch‌—‌working for the IES, even as its captain, tended to keep one fit, and she could probably evade these guards, but for what? Ironically, they would track her down with the very security systems she had hoped to exploit, and then she would be charged with evading arrest on top of impersonating a public official.

Brook felt a trickle of defeat seeping into her body. She took a slow breath in and expelled that insidious emotion with her exhalation. The fight wasn’t done until the Emergency Service signed off on that dismantlement order, or she stopped fighting, and neither of those was happening right now‌—‌this arrest just added a few more variables to the problem.

Brook raised her arms. “Well then, let’s go.”

Brook was pacing up and down the small holding cell when the door opened. As she turned, her stomach hoped she would see a police officer with her morning meal‌—‌instead, she found an even more agreeable sight.

“JP!” Brook’s initial enthusiasm was dampened by his stoic expression. “They wouldn’t let me contact you; what’s going on out there?”

“Let’s go, Captain,” JP said.

Brook leaned out of the holding cell. No police officer accompanied him. “JP, are you breaking me out?”

“No.” He tossed her a skeptical look as he led her out of the cell. “I used a clause of the Emergency Service’s boilerplate employment contract to ensure your maximum sentence was commuted to a token fine, which enabled me to settle the case out of court for a small sum.”

“Oh,” Brook said. “Thanks.”

JP did not answer. They reached the front of the detention center in which Brook had been held and strode out the door into the Meltian sunlight.

Brook frowned. JP always chose his words carefully, but he was never recalcitrant. “What’s going on? What happened to the dismantlement order? Did you find another legal route?”

“The committee has drafted the dismantlement order. Meltian law requires it to be delivered by a Legislature representative, a process which is undoubtedly underway.”

So they did not have much time left. Brook was concerned by JP’s apparent lack of urgency. “And did you find a way to stop them?”

JP stopped in the middle of the brick street in front of the detention center. The bright sunlight glinted off his bald, midnight blue head. “It is difficult to open doors in the legal system when the leader of the organization one represents is in jail.”

Oh. Right. “Sorry about that. I guess we need to come up with a new plan.”

“Your plan, I should hope,” JP said, “is to refrain from repeating the recklessness that resulted in your arrest. My plan is to find new employment.”

JP turned and began to walk away. The defeat that Brook had deflected before now flooded back. She did not care what Charles Griffin or Representative Divar or even Roth the elevator guard thought of her choices. They had their own agendas. But JP had dedicated himself to restoring the IES, even when she made his job difficult. He had come back to help her out, despite the fact that she blatantly violated his code of ethics.

Wait. By “help her out,” she meant that he had sprung her from jail‌—‌whether he liked that terminology or not‌—‌a feat that she would not have thought possible until he did it. A feat that would have been impossible for her, whether she followed the law in the traditional manner or cast it aside, and which was only possible for JP because of his ability to manipulate that law to his advantage.

“JP, wait!” Brook smiled bitterly‌—‌how ironic that JP was the one to walk away when he was the one with the gift they needed to fix this mess. A gift that she only now recognized the value of.

JP stopped, then turned slowly. “If you wish to involve me in another illegal scheme‌—‌”

“No. I was wrong not to listen to you the first time.” That got his attention. “You got me out of jail despite the fact that I actually committed the offense. Surely we can find an... opportunity to thwart an order based on a bunch of lies.”

“The two situations are not identical,” JP said.