A Strangled Cry of Fear. B.A. Chepaitis

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 2012 by B.A. Chepaitis.

      All rights reserved.

      Published by Wildside Press LLC.

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      Prologue

      “I didn’t do it,” Francis Durero said.

      Jaguar Addams sat on the other side of the interrogation table from him, her hands folded, her gaze fixed on his broad, dark face. If he was standing, he’d loom over her like a mountain. Even seated his form cast a shadow across her.

      “Did you kill the others?” she asked. “Mathias, and Lopez, and—”

      “Yeah,” he cut in, waving his large hand as if swatting an irritating insect. “I did those women. My brother told me to. But I didn’t do Diane.”

      Jaguar, an empath who was as expert at reading faces and voices as she was at reading minds, watched his expression, listened closely to his tone. His cheek had an intermittent tic, and his skin glistened with sweat, but not from anxiety. Both came from the meds he took to control his schizophrenia, just one consequence of his exposure to chembombs during the Killing Times. And if the courts had named him a murderer, the blue birthmark around his left eye named him something worse.

      Francis was a mutoid, his marred genetic code telling its tale in his many health problems.

      His family lived in Manhattan during the Killing Times, when the level of violence in North American cities reached critical mass and became, in essence, a domestic war. But he wasn’t injured by the killers who roamed the streets. His mother was pregnant when she belonged to a vigilante Safety Squad formed to kill the killers. They used homemade nerve gas and biochem bombs and grenades, whatever they could make or get their hands on. Her work, the work of others like her, left a legacy of genetic injury that still appeared in the children and grandchildren of those exposed, one that was written on Francis’s face.

      His condition and the murders he’d committed landed him on Prison Planetoid One, which specialized in rehab for mutoids and the criminally insane. He’d been there only a year when he was convicted of killing again—this time a Planetoid Teacher. Now Jaguar was one member of a committee reviewing the rare order of execution Planetoid One had requested. This was her last interview with him before confirming his death.

      “I didn’t do her,” Francis repeated, swinging his head in a wide arc back and forth. His shoulders, massive mountains on a massive frame, moved with his thick neck, with his words.

      “Why did you kill the others?” Jaguar asked. She knew what the files said, but she wanted to hear how he told the story.

      His glance moved over her. “The ones in green. Like you. My brother told me kill them.”

      The sage green of her dress was associated with those who practiced the empathic arts—telepathy, empathic contact, precognition and more. People like her and her supervisor, Alex Dzarny, who wasn’t too happy about her being on this assignment.

      “Does your brother want you to kill me?” Jaguar asked, keeping her voice neutral

      “No,” Francis said flatly, just stating a fact. “He don’t talk to me no more. Now I make things. That’s what I do.” He hugged a stuffed bear to his chest, made in his work program.

      “Do you like that?” Jaguar asked.

      He licked his lips as if tasting the question. It probably wasn’t one he heard often. Who would check into his likes and dislikes? “I like it,” he said, and the tic beat its rhythm in his cheek. “I like making things. I like it.”

      “Do you like Planetoid One?” Jaguar asked, pressing on.

      Francis shook his head hard.

      “You don’t like it?” she asked.

      His eyes went wide. “I like it,” he said loudly. “I like it.”

      “Okay,” Jaguar reassured him. “It’s okay, Francis. Everything’s okay.”

      The tic in his face danced, and Jaguar wondered why they couldn’t fix that. Planetoid One laid claim to the most advanced treatment for mutoids. Of course, Jaguar thought, they had to say something to maintain their funding.

      They were the first prison planetoid built, and they still used bubble-domes instead of mass generated atmospheres like Planetoids Two and Three. They had no VR system, no replica cities to create the kinds of programs Jaguar could use with her prisoners. Instead they staked their reputation on long-term programs for the criminally insane and mutoids. That made Francis about the worst PR they could get. Jaguar wasn’t surprised they wanted him dead.

      But she wasn’t sure why Board governor Paul Dinardo requested her for this committee. Neither was Alex, who knew the laundry list of reasons that made her a bad choice. She was an empath, just the kind of woman Francis once enjoyed killing. She was against the death penalty. She had history on Planetoid One, none of it good. And she had an ambivalent past with the Teacher Francis was convicted of killing. Diane Lasher, friend and enemy. Enemy and friend.

      “Tell me about Diane,” Jaguar requested. “Was she good to you?”

      “She was nice,” Francis said immediately. “Let me do things. The garden. The food.”

      Jaguar smiled, memory of Diane’s better side returning to her. She was kind to the prisoners, kind in general, her light blonde hair framing bright blue eyes full of energy and enthusiasm.

      She’d been both kind and enthusiastic in welcoming Jaguar, her reclusive and suspicious new Teacher, to Planetoid One. They became friends, Jaguar drawn to someone who was as much unlike her as possible. In looking back, she wondered if she’d used Diane, feeding off her light at a time when the world looked pretty damn dark to her. The Killing Times weren’t that far behind her, and she hadn’t come close to healing what they’d done.

      But Diane also seemed to get something from her. Maybe she needed shadows to mark her light. Or maybe she liked the way Jaguar saw her as something rare and wonderful, a person who hadn’t been damaged. If so, she’d outgrown it. They’d been friends only a year when Diane reported her for employee misconduct, a euphemism for using the empathic arts.

      “Everyone thinks you killed her,” Jaguar noted. “She had slash marks on her chest, like you made on the others.”

      Francis hugged his bear until its black button eyes bulged, then pushed a fist against the table. “I told you,” he hissed. “I liked her.”

      “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

      He receded into his chair, closed his eyes and hummed softly to himself. Jaguar sighed.

      Francis was a sorry case. A nasty mix of physical and mental illness, with the strength of a few football players. He’d murdered seven women, all empaths, after his brother was killed by a woman suspected to be an empath. And now an empath was to sign his death warrant. She wondered if this completed the circle of violence, prejudice, and vengeance.

      She rose to leave. “Thanks, Francis,” she said, and left him sitting in the white-washed room, hugging his bear.

      * * * *

      Supervisor Alex Dzarny waited for Jaguar in the hall outside the holding tank, pacing between office doors, ignoring the people who passed by on their daily rounds.

      “You look like someone who’s about to have a root canal,” Jaguar said as she walked to him.

      The tension dissolved from his face and he managed a rueful smile. “I didn’t like the set up,” he said. The other interviewers had guards and a laser fence, but Jaguar insisted on unprotected contact, calling it a moral prerogative. Though she used her red glass knife as needed and never regretted a necessary killing, she thought state sponsored execution was a bad idea, allowing all involved to deny personal responsibility. She preferred full contact, and the burden of full knowledge. If Francis died, she would