Chapter 16
Back in the office, Erik began to search for information on Amanda Solarin.
He noticed with dismay that many of the data appeared encrypted; evidently Hoffman was going on with his policy of data security, hoping not to give any more important information to the alleged mole. Every request of the information database now had to be approved by Hoffman himself, which of course slowed down the work and annoyed the other officers.
Janssen was particularly angry: Erik saw him several times furiously contacting Hoffman's office to demand explanations.
Ive been working here for ten years, what is this nonsense that I cant browse the archive data anymore?
Janssen was terrible when it came to on-field missions, but on the other hand he was great at finding all sorts of information online. Denying him access to database crosschecks was depriving him of the possibility to do his job.
Laurent and Meyer, however, had a more philosophical approach: He wants to pay us to fill out forms and wait around the hot drinks machine? All right, let him, they merely said with a shrug.
Erik wished he could be as indifferent as those two, but he couldnt. This was partly due to the fact that Hernandez seemed even more determined to find the two missing suspects. She was feverishly staring at the screen, which was flickering with the images of the surveillance cameras in the sixth ring. Deep dark circles appeared under her bloodshot eyes.
Zoe, did you go to bed at all last night? he asked.
Sure.
At what time?
She shrugged: Um, I dont remember. Maybe I stayed in the office a little longer than usual.
A little longer probably meant she had gone home around two a.m to catch a few short hours of sleep. Erik knew what it was like: once upon a time he would have done the same.
But now everything was more complicated, more restrictive: the family waiting for him at home, most of all, but also his body, his energy. When he happened to spend a sleepless night these days he paid its consequences for the rest of the week.
Even if he could not access the police records, Erik still did a search on Amanda Solarin on the internet, using the data accessible to everyone.
He discovered that twenty years earlier Solarin had published several studies and articles on viral diseases: some of them were still being used in specialized research.
Apparently she had been a highly-esteemed scientist. At some point, however, it seemed that her career had been cut short. After a few years of intense activity, she apparently stopped all academic work. After a long period of obscurity, she reappeared in the telephone directories, with her current medical centre, only a few years earlier.
Not being able to access the police database was really frustrating: it contained a lot of information about all citizens, including their place residence, all their activities and, if the researcher had the patience to dig deep (something in which Janssen would have been very good), even their diets per the food distribution credits.
As far as Erik could gauge, the measures passed by Hoffman were a stupid palliative that slowed down the work of the officers but would never do anything to stop the rebels.
The lizard men did have their means of access to information, even if no one knew what they were: Erik knew, though, that access to the archives had always been one of the rebels first priorities.
He remembered an episode from a few years earlier - it might have been the only time he felt he may not make it through alive.
They had caught the rebels, the infected, looking for something in the police archives, in the medical research section. It was a very special and restricted archive, whose data could be accessed only through certain strictly surveyed terminals.
No one knew how they managed not only to enter, but even to discover the existence of the archive and figure out how to access the information.
Erik had been part of the team that was sent to capture the rebels and arrest them.
It was a nightmare: the rebels did not only seem to know that the police were coming, but they had set them a trap. And the way they had escaped... Erik did not consider himself an emotional person, but memories of that incident still made him feel a jolt in his stomach.
They had a dragon with them: not one of the largest, he found out later, as they had managed to hide it in a big van, but still large enough to completely devastate the neighbourhood where the medical police headquarters were.
The rebels themselves were no less fierce and uncontrollable than the creature.
He saw one of them shoot in cold blood an officer who attempted to stop him. Lang, the mans name was.
Erik remembered him well: a good bloke, and a very experienced agent. Just a little too slow in pulling the trigger...
He remembered that moment like it was yesterday: how the infected made him believe that he was about to surrender and be ready to cooperate, and then pulled out another weapon and shot Lang straight through his forehead.
Many of those infected had an almost human form, apart from the scales, but not that one: Erik remembered his deformed body, the grotesque way in which he walked... but above all he remembered the look of perfect indifference with which he had ended Lang's life.
There was nothing human in that stare.
He would probably have killed Erik, too: at that time he was on the ground, with an injury to his leg, weak and vulnerable; but above all so shocked that he would hardly have been able to react in time.
At that moment, though, there was some diversion: an explosion perhaps, or maybe it was their dragon that set some house on fire... Erik didnt remember the details very well.
He only knew that one moment he was staring into the cold and merciless eyes of that monstrous being, and the next second he was being rescued by his colleagues.
Any doubts he might have had as to the necessity of exterminating all the infected ended that day.