EDGE OF DAY

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"Will Van de Berg is responsible for over six bombings. Twenty-one lives have been extinguished because of his activism. He has convinced you he's working to save the world, but he doesn't even believe in this world. He doesn't believe these lives he takes are worth anything."

Up popped Will in one of his education videos.

"It's all a mirror. Die before you die and set yourself free."

Day felt her infinite blue sky shrink. Rink was encroaching on the deep peace within her—it was like Will said, there was nothing inherently wrong with the world. It was the stories they each told about the past and the possible frightening futures that were wrong. It was the mind's constant speculation about what it needed to survive and what dangers lay around the corner.

Rink was twisting Will's words to prove the story he was trying to tell.

"How old will you be after fifty years in suspension? Seventy-one? Seventy-two by the time you've gone to trial? You'll be convicted for assisting him. But I can help you. Help us catch Will Van de Berg and a lawyer could have your sentence reduced to two or three years."

"You have nothing on me. Because I've done nothing wrong."

He pressed another button. A hologram of Alexia, the woman who carried out Day's implant at Janus, came up. She lay on a morgue table, the lower half of her body burned and black.

"She was found in some of the rubble cleared up after the shopping mall bombing. But she didn't die from the bomb. She was strangled to death and your DNA was found on her sweater."

Cool liquid fear ran through Day's veins.

"Cooperate," Rink continued. "Help us catch Will, and I'll make sure your lawyer receives the police records that show Will has been manipulating you for weeks. A signal has been entering your home through his videos—It's subliminal mind-control. He was encouraging you to get the implant. You're just a tool in his tool-box."

"But why murderer the woman from Janus? It doesn't make sense. There's no motive."

"Will used you. Maybe Alexia found out he was planning on bombing the shopping center. Maybe when she was implanting the new personality she saw something that showed your mind was already being tampered with from a distance."

Day shook her head. Rink placed a small metal tube the size of a bullet on the table. This was where he'd been driving the conversation all along.

"Give us Will and save yourself forty-five years of suspension. You'll be twenty-six when you get out. You would still have a life ahead of you. You could even have children.'

Day shook her head, but she couldn't tear her eyes from the metal tube.

"It's a nano-feeder," Rink said. "Place it anywhere on the skin, press the release and the feeder enters the blood with barely a pinprick. The feeder moves around the blood, until it reaches the iris, where it lodges, and sends everything the eye sees to an external recorder. We want you to use it on Mr Van de Berg. It will allow us to go everywhere he goes, and see everything he sees. If he's innocent, as you insist, then neither of you has anything to loose. You'll both be vindicated.'

Rink held out the capsule. Day knew he was feigning nonchalance—he really wanted her to take it. Maybe she shouldn't, but if it was what he said it was, and if it meant getting out of her cell today, she should at least consider it. She took the offered capsule. The cool metal was smooth against her fingertips.