Mercy Strange

by Alisa Woods

  Mercy slipped it on, stowed her death-couture dress, which barely fit in the bag, then set about fixing her face. For a moment, she considered leaving it plain. That would shock everyone. Ultimately, she decided she needed some normalcy, so she went for a basic paint job—a thick wedge of cat eyeliner to cover up the fatigue, generous amounts of blue eyeshadow to draw attention away from the dark circles under her eyes, and sapphire lipstick to match. She looked passably like she hadn’t spent the night slaving in front of her screen and drooling on her keyboard.

  Even the ancient perfume perked her up a little.

  By the time she packed everything away and returned to her office, she had a fresh, fashion-powered wind. Which was good because Agent Zane Walker was waiting for her.

  “Good morning.” The dark shadows under his eyes said he’d been up all night as well.

  “Agent Walker.” She gave a nod and tucked the duffle behind a towering stack of Biomechanics and Magick. “I hear you’ve got another sample for me. Unfortunately.”

  “I left it with your lab tech.”

  “Thanks.” She took a seat, but he obviously had more he wanted to say. “Was there a note?”

  He scowled. “It said, When it absolutely, positively, has to be there overnight.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Isn’t that the slogan of that shipping company?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that mean something to you?”

  “No.” He was gritting his teeth. “I was hoping it might mean something to you.”

  “Me?” Her eyebrows lifted.

  He gestured to her screen. “I hear you’ve been here all night. Any progress?”

  “I’ve been completely stymied.” She sighed. “It’s practically in code. I’ve got my IT guy working on it. But I don’t know, Zane…” She peered up at him. He looked haggard. Like really haggard. Like he took all of this personally, and it was killing him to have these drugs out there, who knew where, the bad guys in the wind, another body, and this stupid wild-goose chase trying to stop it all. Why had she ever thought someone like that would be manipulating and using her sister? Just because he had powers didn’t mean he had to use them on everyone.

  She knew that all too well.

  Maybe it was because she understood the temptation.

  “I know it’s frustrating,” he said, snapping her attention back from where she’d stared off into space.

  Totally zoned out. Man, she was tired. “Do you have any idea what this thing is—the thing that’s supposed to happen today?”

  He shook his head. “The note had today’s date. Four o’clock. And the number 169. And today’s note is taunting about delivering something overnight.”

  “Sounds like a bomb.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Sounds like he wants us to think it’s a bomb.”

  She nodded. “Whoever it is, they’re just jerking the FBI around.”

  “Which is why I’m here, hoping you’ll have something real for us.”

  She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her chin, thinking. “I’m no FBI profiler, but if this guy is handing you a riddle, seems like he wants you to chase it. Like he’ll enjoy watching you run around like chickens. Maybe, even if it’s a ruse, he’ll be hanging out nearby to watch the show, and you can catch him that way?”

  “We’re on that—if we can just figure out where he wants us to be.” He leaned against the wall by the door. Sagged against it really. “Which is why we’ve got to follow the rabbit he wants us to chase. Or she. What’s your theory on Violet Thorn? Is she involved?”

  “Definitely possible.” Mercy scrunched up her face. “She and Tobin are quite the freaky pair.”

  Zane’s eyes pinched in. “They’re together?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Mercy held up her hands. “I don’t know if they’re doing the illegal drugs, but they’re definitely doing each other.”

  Zane snorted a laugh. “You know… I think maybe the drugs were just funneled through Raine Magitek. Maybe some low-level employee had access to the packing plant. Wouldn’t have to be the CEO and his researcher lover cooking up the drug recipe themselves. Besides, I didn’t figure Tobin as capable of that level of research. World-changing drugs, right? This guy comes from a low-magick family, nothing unusual, and his past is a graveyard of other companies—ones he’s set up, scammed some people, got out just before everything collapsed. He’s a con man more than anything else.”

  “Which makes him perfect for doing unethical human trial research,” Mercy countered. “If you don’t care about killing people, you wouldn’t have to be a genius to try a lot of things that are deadly and don’t work… until you find the one that does.”

  “Okay, maybe.” Zane frowned. “Doing illegal drug trials in the abandoned basement of a prison does take some criminal connections. And Raine’s been on the FBI’s radar for insider dealing, stock manipulation, a bunch of low-magick crimes… but he always manages to get away clean. This Violet Thorn person has no criminal record, though, as far as we can tell.”

  “Maybe he just uses Violet.” That would fit with their weird relationship thing. “She did pose as an oncology intern to get my dad to hunt down the artifact—she’s definitely involved.” Mercy glanced at the report still open on her screen. “There’s got to be some proof in all these reports they’ve written.”

  “I was looking at those…”

  Mercy arched an eyebrow.

  He gave her a look. “Not the genetics part. Just the mere fact that they were making reports. Reports to who? And why? They’re damn technical. It’s not an executive summary.”

  Mercy shrugged although admittedly she hadn’t found that odd. “I figured they were working reports—like a lab notebook.”

  “Or maybe this thing is bigger than we know.” Zane pulled in a breath. “Or maybe the killer is someone completely separate.”

  Mercy cringed. “A copycat?” That would make everything even more terrible.

  “It’s possible.” He grimaced.

  Mercy squeezed her eyes shut. Focus. She needed to bring it—they were running out of time, and Zane wouldn’t be parked in her office if the FBI hadn’t run out of ideas.

  She opened her eyes and leaned forward, brushing aside the lace-tails of her coat and propping her hands on her knees, just above her boots. She needed to thank Nia again for the clothes—they were comfortable. Let her think. “Okay, let’s work through this. If the bodies and drugs aren’t connected, then you’ve just got the riddle on its own—and that’s getting you nowhere. So let’s assume that they are connected. If the person who manufactured a crate full of gen-magick drugs and intended to trial them out on a bunch of prisoners in an underground prison is the same person who is taunting the FBI with bodies and notes… there has to be some purpose to it. I mean, why even bother? Why give clues? It’s weird. Not at all logical and strategic, like the work I’m seeing in these reports and in the development of the drugs themselves.”

  “So there’s some master plan at work.” Zane nodded his agreement.

  “Right? Otherwise, it makes no sense.” She tapped her finger against her lips, staring at the wall, trying to sort this out. “So if I’d planned to run a trial and it was busted by the FBI, well, I’d have a Plan B for that. A backup group of people to test the drugs on. But what kind of test?” She narrowed her eyes and looked at her screen—not at the report there, but the extensive lesson she’d given Swift the day before, walking him through all the gen-magick basics and then how the gene drives appeared to work. Her eyes went wide. “A switch.”

  “I’m sorry?” Zane said.

  She swung to face him. “The drugs don’t just destroy magick, like with my father. They’re installing a switch—a way to turn on and off Talents. Maybe all of them at once or one at a time, I don’t know. But the actual drugs, the ones that were intended for a trial at the prison—they’re designed to install a switch.”

  Now Zane’s eyes had gone wide too. “So they’ll w
ant to test the switch.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How?” Zane scowled. “In layman’s terms, Mercy—I’m not a genetics expert. How is our bad guy going to test a magick-destroying or magick-creating switch?”

  She bit her lip. “He’d have to get the switch installed first then trigger it. Could be a mechanical trigger, maybe a device? More likely a secondary drug. I don’t know. But either way, he needs people.” She peered up at Zane. “Maybe the bodies that keep showing up are the failures. The ones he’s tested the switch on, but it didn’t work. How many are still missing?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” he said. “Hard to tell how many disappeared in the original surge of overdoses.”

  She scowled again. “There were a lot of victims at the prison hospital. Thirty-two. But it appears the drugs are in final form. Functional, at least, judging by the results on my father. At this point, if I were running illegal drug trials, I’d want to test on a much larger population.” She sighed, frustrated. “Whatever this demonstration is, they’ll want the FBI to watch. Because they’re assholes.”

  Zane smirked. “I thought you weren’t an FBI profiler.”

  “I’ve met a lot of assholes in my life. I’m kind of an expert.”

  A soft knock sounded on her door. “I hope that doesn’t include me.”

  Mercy peered around Zane. Swift was standing in her doorway! She couldn’t help the surge of… what? Excitement? Attraction? Lust? The boy was unquestionably hot, bracing in her doorway in that custom-fitted leather he wore so well, but it was more than that. She was just glad to see him.

  “Well, you have been slacking off while the rest of us have been slaving all night.” But she said it with a smile—not that she was trying, it just kind of forced its way onto her face.

  “Sorry about that.” Swift eased his way into the room like she’d just given him permission to enter. “Was fighting a migraine all night.”

  Zane frowned like he didn’t believe Swift, which was uncool. Mercy had never had migraines, but she knew they were debilitating. And Swift did look tired, even if it only showed up on his model-gorgeous face and blood-shot eyes.

  “Well, come on in,” Mercy said, waving him closer, even though he was already in the door. “We’ve got a theory.”

  “Yeah?” Swift’s expression sharpened.

  “Our bad guy needs to test out his Talent-switch.” She hoped he’d remember all the things they’d covered before. Not that she would mind explaining it again. A vision of more tutorial sessions floated through her mind. What in the world? Was she that desperate to spend time with him?

  “Wait… today?” Swift’s eyebrows rose.

  Zane counted on his fingers. “We’ve got a time, date, a number that doesn’t mean anything… and now a slogan that’s taunting us with a delivery.”

  “We think he’s delivering a demonstration—one he wants the FBI to see.”

  “Because he’s showing it off,” Swift said. “Okay, I’m up to speed. When and where?”

  “When is this afternoon,” Zane said. “Where is…” He arched an eyebrow at Mercy.

  Like she had a clue. “I don’t know—what gets delivered in the afternoon?”

  “The mail? Lunch? Flowers?” Zane shook his head. “We’ve searched everything we could that correlated with that number. P.O. Boxes. Street addresses. Apartment numbers. U.S. Penal Code. Nothing.”

  Mercy leaned back in her chair again, thinking. “It’s got to involve a group of people.”

  Swift frowned. “Maybe it’s not delivering some thing. Maybe it’s delivering some one. Or lots of someones.”

  Zane and Mercy exchanged a fast look. “Train routes,” she said.

  “Airplanes? Bus schedules?” Zane whipped out his phone and tapped at it.

  Mercy took that moment to smile at Swift. “You just going to cruise in here after a good night’s sleep and solve the case?”

  He grinned. “I help where I can.”

  She shook her head, but Quill’s words were having a rumble inside her head. I’ve seen how you look at him. And how he looks at you. And right now Swift was looking at her like he was enjoying the view.

  “I like the blue.” His gaze lingered on the blue of her lips, not her eyes.

  She hoped like hell the makeup was covering her blush.

  “Yes!” Zane pumped his fist. “Bus route 169. Express from the state’s largest shipping depot just outside Chicago, traveling on an irregular schedule into the city, terminating at 69th and State Street. But because today’s Saturday, there’s only one trip—arriving in the city at 4:04pm.”

  “That’s the time on the note,” Mercy said, but Zane was already dialing his phone.

  “Okay, I’m on this,” he said as he held it to his ear. “You two stay here and keep working the data.” Then he turned and strode out of her office, already barking the details into his phone.

  Mercy looked to Swift, hoping he would take that suggestion to stay as an order.

  “You need to be careful,” he said, grabbing the other chair in her office and turning it backward to sit facing her.

  “Careful about what?” Was she the only one reading double entendres and flirtation into everything the man said?

  “If you keep solving cases, the FBI’s going to recruit you into the academy.”

  “That was all you.”

  “I doubt that very much.” The sparkle in his eye was not her imagination.

  “I just hope they get there in time.” The reality of the situation took hold of her again. “Whoever’s behind this thinks they’re smarter than all of us. And I’m afraid their endgame is very, very ugly.”

  “Because they can turn on Talents… even dangerous ones.” He was examining her reaction way too closely.

  Her heart lurched a little. “There’s a reason some magick is illegal.”

  “True.” He was still measuring her response. “Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe people with illegal Talents could have that changed. Erased. It might totally transform their lives.”

  Oh, shit. Did he know? How could he know? He couldn’t. He didn’t. Sweet magick, her heart was pounding. “Well, sure… but for every person out there it might help, there will be a ton of assholes who will abuse the magitek. Use it for their own purposes. Not to mention, the military will probably find some way to weaponize it. And that would be pretty fucking awful.”

  Swift frowned and leaned back. “Probably no avoiding that.”

  “No? Well, they can’t do anything with it if they don’t understand it.” She glanced at the open report still on her screen. “They need someone with expertise to figure it out for them.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think that will be you.”

  She whipped back to face him. Because the way he said that was… sweet. Like he just knew she was a good person. Someone who would never cross over any ethical lines and had a Grade A Moral Compass. It made something twitchy inside her. Twitchy and seriously uncomfortable. Because if he only knew—

  “Hey,” a voice said from the door.

  For the love of magick, her office was Grand Central Station.

  Quill stepped in, and Mercy did not imagine the cool disappointment on his face seeing Swift, in her office, cozying up to her with his chair. But he ignored Agent Payne completely and handed her a steaming paper cup that held some delicious-smelling latte that just might save her life. She inhaled the steam as he said, “Got that code running that you asked for.”

  “Excellent.” She cradled the cup but turned to face her screen—knowing Quill, it was already up on the server and had probably processed some of the reports.

  Quill brushed past Swift, who had to lean out of the way, and then tapped Mercy’s screen to bring up the interface. “There are hundreds of these reports—almost a thousand. Someone was super eager, or they’ve just been working on this for a while. Hard to tell because there are no dates. But you can almost build a timeline by looking at the progression of code name
s for their procedures. And I’ve pulled a bunch of the matches out, along with context information so you can sort out their meaning.”

  “You’re the best, Quill.” She blew on her coffee.

  He quirked a smile at her then pointed at the screen. “Here’s the abbreviated list with links to the sources. I’ll get working on some deep learning routines while you dig through it.”

  She peered up at him. “Seriously. The. Best. For the coffee, too.”

  “You’re welcome.” He grinned then retreated, ignoring Swift the whole way.

  The hot FBI agent scooted his chair closer again. “Well, that was interesting.”

  “Hm?” She was busy with the coffee and the list, blowing and scanning, all her focus now on devouring the scrolling code names and the software’s guesses at context.

  “That guy…”

  “His name’s Quill. He’s my IT guy.”

  “Okay.” A laugh in his voice yanked her attention away from the screen.

  She gave him a pinched look. “What?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re oblivious.” He was holding her gaze with those humor-filled brown eyes.

  The heat was back in her face. “Are you serious with that? Can we focus, please?”

  “Sure.” But he was still silently laughing at her as she turned back to the screen.

  She tried to ignore that Swift kept scooting forward to get a better look over her shoulder. That he had noticed, somehow, miraculously, that Quill had a bit of a crush on her. So Quill brought her some coffee! How did Swift get from that to giving her crap about being oblivious to obvious signs that Quill—

  Holy shit. Mercy paused her scanning and scrolling. “What in the…”

  “What?” Swift asked from behind her, but she was completely lasered in on the list.

  Code name: RODEO Suggested interpretation: GROUP GATHERING, TRIAL OR TEST

  She hurried to click through to the reference documents, the reports that had used RODEO in their text. There were a dozen. She quickly clicked the first and scanned so fast she had to go back twice to find the word—then she remembered she could search.

  “What is it?” Swift was even closer now, peering intently over her shoulder.