The air in the interrogation chamber was chilled, recycled and unable to mask the scent of old violence and new fear. Dr. Deji Fadare sat opposite the construct, the real her facing the manufactured him.
"Hag, what do you want from me?" Abbasi questioned rudely.
Through the one-way glass, Bello shifted, his arms crossed. "See? A wall. Wasting time."
Deji leaned back unruffled, her voice soft, almost conversational, as she tugged her gloves free and placed them on the table. "I just want to know what the poison was made of."
The engram's smile was a bloodless slit in his face.
The Rig's fidelity was truly remarkable. "What poison, doctor?" he feigned. "It's all about one's point of view. In another context, it's a cleansing agent. A purifier."
"That purifier left two hundred people convulsing in their own fluids," Deji replied, looking right at him, tossing across a file that slid open to him filled with forensic info and images of canisters discarded in a corner.
"Your fingerprints are all over that nasty piece of work. But the residual compound is… unstable. Degrading. Messy. I didn't think a man of your reputation did sloppy work."
Abbasi's eye twitched. Pride. There.
Engram interviews weren't just about retrieving memories; they were about navigating the core personality, the ego that persisted beyond death. Abbasi was a craftsman, and his vanity was a key in the lock.
"My work is elegant," he hissed. "The instability you detected is a feature. It leaves no permanent trace for your kind to pick over like vultures."
"My kind?" Deji leaned back, feigning casual curiosity. "The living? Or the curious?"
"The paleopsychiatrist!" He fumed, the light-construct flaring "The defilers. You mind miners dig up bones and think you can understand the spirit that animated them." He gestured at his own chest, fingers stabbing. "This is defilement."
"Is it?" Deji gave him a slow once over.
She didn't waste words and opened another file, revealing not official police documents, but a scanned application dated seven years ago. "When your sister, Bimpe, passed, you petitioned the court for her Engram to be reanimated. By your own words, did you want her defiled, or did you want answers?"
Abbasi's smugness wavered.
The solid-light form seemed to lose a fraction of its density.
She pulled out another sheet, a set of chemical schematics. "Because the initial analysis missed it, I ran the spectra again. There's a chiral anomaly in the precursor. A specific left-handed isomer. Costly to isolate. Inefficient. Useless in a weapon... unless you had a reason."
He was watching her now, truly engaged and…somewhat fearful.
"It's the same marker we found in your first published paper from university," Deji continued, her tone shifting to one of academic appreciation. "The one on chiral catalysts in organic synthesis. The one you dedicated to Bimpe."
Abasi's fingers, which had been drumming a silent rhythm on the table, stilled.
"Your sister who went missing on her way back from the Corner-Shop Mart she managed."
The room went quiet. The only sound was the low hum of the Mnemonic Rig.
"Do not speak of her," he whispered finally, fists clenching and his voice laden with the ghost of old pain. The light of his form flickered, pixels of solid illumination scattering for a nanosecond before reforming.
In the observation room, Bello scoffed. "She's antagonizing him. She'll cause a cascade failure."
"Quiet," Aminu growled, his eyes fixed on the scene.
Deji pressed, her voice low and relentless. "Why that isomer, Abbasi? It served no functional purpose in the weapon. It was a signature. You wanted someone to see it. You wanted someone to know it was your work. It wasn't just a weapon, it was a statement.."
He was silent, his jaw clenched. The engram's emotional matrix was flooding with conflict, the light around him pulsing erratically.
"They promised you something, didn't they?" Deji leaned forward, now the confidante. "The people who gave you the materials, the new cell. They promised they could bring her back. Just like you're back. But they didn't. Instead, you were double-crossed, killed in that safehouse fire, your body burned to ash. It took me a week to piece your Somatic Engram together from the fragments left in the urn."
"Even if you hate us, don't you hate them more? Don't you want revenge?"
Abbasi raised his bowed head, his digital eyes aflame with fury.
"They said… they had her engram. That they needed a demonstration of faith. A show of power."
"A demonstration paid for with two hundred lives," Deji said, not with accusation, but fact. "And they never had her, did they? Her body was cremated by the state. There was nothing left to scan. No somatic residue. No ghost to resurrect."
The fight went out of him.
The sophisticated engram seemed to short-circuit, reduced to its core trauma. At the end of the day, he was just a brilliant, broken boy of just twenty-three years, who had lost his sister and had been tricked into a monstrous act.
"I want something," Abbasi finally said.
Deji's eye's narrowed, spooked. "I can't grant you personhood."
Abbasi chuckled at her reaction, "I very much doubt you would,"
"I want…" He continued, "To see my sister."
Deji peered into his eyes and he peered right back.
That in some form…can be arranged. I'm sure there are holograms of her still available on the web. We can grant you access."
Abbasi nodded.
"The solvent," he said, his voice flat, empty. "The left-handed isomer… it was a key. It's bio-reactive. It doesn't just degrade; it bonds with specific synthetic polymers. Check the ventilation systems of the OmniSoft bank subsidiary on Broad Street. The filters are made of a proprietary polymer. The compound would have crystallized there, creating a unique, traceable marker. That was the real target. The people… were just the delivery mechanism. Bloody courier's."
Deji didn't smile. She didn't triumph. She simply nodded, closed the file, and stood. Then, she slid a small, crystalline data drive across the table.
"Sometimes, your 'mind miner' known more about you than you do." Deji teased softly. "There's a public hologram from her university graduation in there. The only known recording. I figure you might ask for it."
Abbasi's gaze fell upon the drive, his form stilling into something akin to peace. Then he raised his head, the contempt gone, replaced by a profound, weary gratitude. "Thanks, doc."
"You're welcome," Deji said.
It wasn't forgiveness, and it wasn't absolution. It was a simple acknowledgment of a shared, profound suffering, passing between a restorer and the restored.
She left the room.
~
The silence in the observation room was absolute. Bello was had bead of sweat on his brow, his earlier bravado evaporated. Chidi was staring, his mouth slightly agape. Aminu simply wore a look of quiet satisfaction.
Deji entered without a word and handed a data pad to the detective. Aminu gave it a once over as she reported, "Jaja Emporium on Broad Street. The ventilation filters. That's your crime scene. And your link to the active cell."
Bello found his voice, a stammer. "How... how did you...? The chiral isomer wasn't in any of our reports."
Deji finally turned her full gaze upon him. It was calm, but it held the weight of the entire field he had dismissed. "Paleopsychiatry isn't about asking questions, Detective. It's about listening to the answers the dead have already given us. They are written in their choices, in the echoes of their loves and their losses. You just have to know how to read the script."
It was a verbal slap, delivered with such quiet precision it left no mark but on his ego. Bello looked away, thoroughly chastised and left the scene quietly.
Deji watched his go without a word or apology.
As the other detectives scrambled to action, a fourth figure detached from the shadows at the back of the room. He was impeccably dressed, dark skinned and with an aura of calm authority surrounding him. Eyes hidden behind large blue-tinted shades.
He approached Deji and extended his hand. When she took it, his grip was firm, cool.
"It was an honor to watch you work, Doctor Fadare," he said, his voice a smooth, cultured baritone as he reached into his pockets and presented a card. "My name is Inemesit. CEO of OmniSoft. And I have a job for you."
He smiled.
~