The Cassandra Complex - Brian Stableford [4]
The word was “Traitor.”
It made no sense at all. Professional spies didn’t pause in their work to spray insults on the walls of their victims. Even kids bent on pure vandalism rather than on profitable theft rarely used spray paint, because sprays were too promiscuous and carefully tagged; the contaminated clothing of the perpetrators would be ample evidence to secure conviction.
In any case, who on earth was she supposed to have betrayed? What awful secret did the burglars think she harbored, buried somewhere in her personal-data stores—and why did they think she had done them an injury by keeping it?
Lisa picked up the phone on the living-room table and was slightly surprised to find that it was still working, in spite of the comprehensive trashing of the bedroom systems. She punched out the number of Mike Grundy’s mobile.
“I’m okay, Mike,” she said as soon as he answered. “Four shots fired, but it’s mostly property damage. I’m bleeding where shrapnel cut my hand and scraped my arm, but they didn’t shoot to kill.”
“I’ll be there in two minutes,” Mike told her. “I was already on my way to pick you up. You’re not the only one to be targeted tonight—all hell is breaking loose. How bad’s the bleeding?”
“Not bad,” Lisa assured him, inspecting her hand while she said it. “It doesn’t need gelling—not if the hospital’s blacked out, at any rate. I’ll wrap it up.” She was still aware that it was hurting, as hand injuries always did, but it was still the fact of pain of which she was aware, coupled with a peculiar mental detachment. She told herself that it was hurting because of the density of the nerve endings, not because of the seriousness of the wound, and that it would heal easily enough. Then she told herself that she ought to be glad. If Judith Kenna had had her way, Lisa would have retired from the force without ever seeing action. Now she had been threatened and shot at, as well as embroiled in whatever kind of hell it was that was breaking out all over the western reaches of the cityplex.
“Do that,” Mike said tersely. “I’ll need you at the university. Firebomb in the labs. At least one person injured—one human, that is. Maybe half a million mice dead.”
Lisa felt a shiver run through her body, but told herself it was delayed shock caused by the fact that she’d just had a gun pointed at her, not to mention that the gun had gone off—four times.
“Is it Morgan?” she asked querulously. “How bad is he?”
“I don’t know yet,” Mike told her. “Do you have any reason to think it might be Morgan?”
Lisa was all too keenly aware, even as she issued a reflexive denial, that the gun-wielding burglar must have mentioned Morgan Miller’s name deliberately. Everything that had been said to her, in fact, must have been said for a reason, however perverse the reason might be. In a world whose walls were growing eyes and ears in ever-increasing quantities, only fools were incautious—and it was difficult to believe that anyone capable of opening her door could be a fool. They had painted TRAITOR on her door for a reason.
Lisa wanted time to think, but she didn’t want to hang up the phone before she’d told Mike Grundy the most obviously interesting and most evidently sinister of all the things the person who’d shot at her had taken care to let her know. “The one who was holding the gun recognized the number of your mobile when you called,” she said. “Whoever they are, they seem to know a hell of a lot more about us than we know about them.”
It wasn’t until after she’d said it that Lisa realized it might not be the cleverest thing for a person to put on the record when she’d just found the word TRAITOR sprayed on the door of her flat by someone