Page 11 of Coldwire
“I don’t know how many times I can say this.” I stay very still in my seat. “That’s not me in the footage.”
We stopped trusting sourceless video evidence about twenty years ago. Unless it comes straight from the recording, it’s too easy to doctor faces and people into evidence. Surely these two know that whatever video they have won’t stand up to scrutiny.
Perron leans back in her chair, then lowers a pair of glasses at the topof her head. They jump to life, lighting up before her eyes. Maybe she’s watching the footage again.
“Live deepfake doesn’t work that fast,” Mildenhall says. He remains standing.
“It’s definitely moving that fast in some labs.”
Maybe I’m supposed to keep quiet until NileCorp can get their lawyers here. I want to believe my employers will consider me too valuable an asset to neglect, but I have no one to plead my case within the company. Wright won’t be easy to reach while he’s recovering from injury. Teryn said nothing when I was being led away, which probably means she’s not contacting her uncle personally to ask for help. She’s always harping on about NileCorp greatness and our role as soldiers in maintaining it. Mint might have been willing to argue with federal and insist that I was framed, but Teryn turns her nose up at anyone damaging corporate reputation.
“Eirale Ward, if you took this as an assignment for Medaluo, now is the time to come clean.”
My head snaps up. “I’m not a spy.”
“Yeah, that’s what you people all say before you’re proven to be a spy.”
“You were alerted to the crime as it happened,” I say. “Then you were sent the video directly.” The kerfuffle at the nightclub confirmed it, but calculating from the timing alone, the federal agents arrived at the scene before the doctored video even made it online. “You don’t think that’s weird? You don’t find anything bizarre with the fact that someone has now posted the video to the feed?”
These are federal agents. Their education must have covered the incredible likelihood of tampered evidence. Most of the world spends their time in a computer-generated reality. No one takes video footage for the truth anymore. In court, prosecutions require eyewitnesses and undeniable human testimony. If they use video to prove anything, then there ought to be multiple angles from multiple sources.
Mildenhall puts his hands into his pockets. They sink in deep. Heeither has enormous pockets or freakishly small fists. “You seem to have the perfect answers, don’t you? Medan folk love little cryptic idioms.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
I haven’t seen the circulating footage yet. But I’d assume the lighting was poor. The crowds were persistently shifting. If the video was sent to agents labeledRE: NILECORP CONTRACTOR EIRALE WARD SHOT CHIP GRAHAM,I can imagine that it looks convincing at first glance.
Mildenhall leans toward Perron. He whispers something into her ear, making an effort to cover both sides of his mouth so I can’t read his lips. The lamp is too bright anyway.
“I didn’t kill him,” I say once more. My voice stays calm. “I have no ties to Medaluo and no reason to kill Secretary Graham.”
“I’m getting here,” Perron says, squinting into her glasses, “that you attended Nile Military Academy and finished a final posting in… Kunlun?”
My posture stiffens. “Yes.”
“Any reason your corporate record is redacted from us, Eirale?”
Because NileCorp promised to keep it private. All graduates of Nile Military Academy have a mandatory final exam posting performed in virtual reality. That was my chance to prove myself in an otherwise middling academic career. I had scored well enough to qualify for NileCorp’s academy in the first place, but I went under the radar once I was actually enrolled—no awards, no special projects, no friends. It was unlikely I was going to be assigned to NileCorp’s forces, which was the aspiration for most graduates. If I was lucky, maybe I’d land a security job at a smaller company, or I could leave the field entirely and live paycheck to paycheck downcountry while paying back the debt of military school. No one does that, of course: I’d need two lifetimes to erase my debt if I worked outside of corporate forces as a Medan, and since the schools lend the money, they also set the time limits before they can hand us off to the parent company for forfeiture. My life would be over the moment I missed a payment.
I hadn’t had a choice in this path. By law, wards of the state are yanked out of the foster system at age twelve and into whichever military school will take us. It creates the perfect cycle. The state doesn’t have to keep supporting its orphans, and while we pay back our education, Atahua gains soldiers.
“I’ve done confidential work,” I answer. “Ask your Federal Bureau of Defense. They’re the ones who took the information I retrieved.”
“And for that,” Mildenhall says, “you killed Secretary Graham?”
“What?No.”
Last year, the Atahuan media publicized claims that Medaluo was inventing technology at the cost of human rights up in Kunlun, and the feeds went wild. Kunlun is the only city in the world that exists upcountry without a downcountry equivalent. It’s the birthplace of virtual reality as we know it, a rendering created by the first servers testing this technology before StrangeLoom introduced the ability to mimic our real world. As a matter of historical preservation, Kunlun was allowed to stay as a part of Medaluo’s servers. Only citizens can enter, though—and citizenship to Kunlun can only be purchased for an astronomical price. Once a user is granted access, entry is possible exclusively through an additional, highly protected second password that a Pod or the Claw prompts upon selecting the open space north of Medaluo.
Like every other cadet in Atahua with a Medan face, I was put on assignment to Medaluo for my final exam. I don’t remember what my task was. I don’t remember why I finished in Kunlun, or how I even got there. I woke downcountry in the dorms, barely coherent and alive only because the school nurses received a warning that I was seizing in my Pod and pulled me out. After I stabilized in the hospital, NileCorp’s CEO showed up himself to debrief me. James Moore told me where I’d been, then asked me how much I could recall, whether there were any additional details outside of my recordings. I had nothing: the seizure had put giant holes in my memory. Moore thanked me anyway. Said my findings were a matter of nationalsecurity, and that I did a great job protecting Atahua. Once I was healed, I would be assigned a good posting on one of his teams.
I haven’t heard from him since. I haven’t regained any of my memories either, and NileCorp isn’t exactly jumping at the chance to sit me down and tap me back into the confidential material I dug up for them.
Agent Perron gets up. I scratch my wrists against the cuffs, turning my hands back and forth in my lap. After she leaves the room and the door slams shut behind her, Agent Mildenhall sniffs to fill the silence, mumbling something under his breath about late hours and a lack of cooperation. They’ll file the report that way, I expect. Eirale Ward refused to answer our questions. Eirale Ward made our jobs harder, because we couldn’t push her directly into the casket of guilt we’d opened, ready and waiting.
I don’t say anything more. I’ve learned, through my childhood, that no amount of cooperation is enough for someone unwilling to extend goodwill. My innumerable foster parents. The dorm mothers at the care centers. Before the academy, I survived by staying silent when left alone and staying calm when picked on. I can’t remember the names of my foster parents anymore—it wasn’t the seizure that wiped those memories, only the passage of time. I can’t picture their faces outside of a pale blur in my head. But I remember how I needed to handle their quick rise to anger, their inherent suspicion toward me because of who I was.
“People from NileCorp are on their way,” Agent Mildenhall announces, breaking the silence after several minutes.
