Franzee met him at the clinic door as he came through. “What’s going on out there?”
“It’s Nikki. She’s in bad shape. What’s the status on the iso rooms?”
Franzee shook her head. “Both occupied.” Then, still shaking her head, “Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.”
“Exam rooms?”
“Three and Five are empty right now, I think. I’ll check for sure.”
Cage nodded. “All right. Keep one of them open.”
He jogged down the hall to the staff room, grabbed a cot, a couple of blankets, and a pillow, then hurried back into the front room with them. He set them in front of the counter.
“Five?” he asked.
Franzee nodded. “It’s open.”
“Can you get that stuff set up in there? And I’ll bring her in.”
Franzee nodded again and dragged the cot down the hall. Cage put on a pair of gloves and pulled a medico-mask over his head, tugging it all the way down so it hung around his neck. He breathed deeply several times, trying to calm himself. Then he went out to get her.
Nikki hadn’t moved, and though a crowd had gathered around her, they still kept back. There was a lot of mumbling and muttering, jockeying to get a better view. He wanted to strangle them all.
As he got close to her, she glared at him and pointed. “Put the damn mask on,” she said.
“All right, all right.” He pulled the mask up over his mouth and nose, then knelt beside her. “Think you can walk?” he asked, knowing damn well what her answer would be.
“I’m not a cripple, for Christ’s sake. Of course I can walk.”
He took her arm with his gloved hands and helped her to her feet. She took a couple of steps, then stopped and doubled over, her free hand on her knees.
“Nikki?”
She shook her head, her eyes clamped shut. “It’s…it’s okay,” she got out, her voice croaking. Her hand was gripping his fingers so tightly his knuckles hurt. Then her grip eased, her eyes opened, she breathed in, and slowly straightened. “Okay,” she said.
They made their way the last few feet to the clinic entrance. Just as they approached, the door swung open, held wide by Franzee. Cage led Nikki through the doorway, the waiting room, then along the hall to Exam Five, which was the last room at the end of the corridor. There he guided her to the cot and had her sit on it. Then he pulled up a chair, sat in front of her, and gave her a thorough workup. Focused on the task, on the details.
Her temperature was high, well over a hundred and two. Lymph nodes in her neck and under her arms and down around her groin were all swollen. Blood pressure was okay, though, and her pulse was still strong. The red patch on her arm looked like a severe rash. There was another small patch on the back of her other arm, and a third on the side of her neck.
When he was done, he helped her get dressed. She seemed so tired and weak, and she said her muscles and joints ached.
“I’m really thirsty,” she said.
Cage filled a plastic cup with water and gave it to her. She drained it at once, and he gave her another, and finally a third.
“Have you taken anything for the fever?”
Nikki shook her head. “Not for a long time. I haven’t been thinking any too clearly.”
So he gave her some ibuprofen and a couple of acetaminophen, which she took with another cup of water. She dropped the cup onto the floor and slowly laid back and out on the cot, closing her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I shouldn’t have come here. You can’t do anything. I just panicked.”
“No,” Cage said. “You did right. I’ll figure out something for you.”
Nikki rolled her head from side to side. “There’s nothing. We both know that. I should just go home.”
“No,” he insisted. “Not nothing.”
She smiled, her eyes still closed. “What, then?”
“I don’t know yet. Something.”
Neither of them spoke for a while. Cage sat almost motionless and watched her, a terrible pain slowly eating at his gut. It was terror, he realized. He was terrified of losing her.
But her breathing had eased, and she seemed calmer. The tension had left her face.
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I’m going to die.”
Cage shook his head. “We’re all going to die, Nikki.”
Her eyes flashed and she glowered at him. “Don’t talk that kind of shit to me, Cage. I won’t have it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. Then, “But you’re not going to die.”
“Stinger and that other guy died.”
“They didn’t have any medical care.”
Nikki gave a brief, harsh laugh. “And what the hell kind of medical care am I going to get? You guys are all good doctors, but this isn’t a hospital, it’s not even close.”
“I’ll get you into a hospital, Nikki.”
She shook her head. “Yeah? Which one?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll work out something.”
Her expression softened as she watched him. “You will, won’t you?”
Cage just nodded. He didn’t know how he was going to arrange it, but he would figure out something. He was going to get her out of this goddamn place and into one of the top-flight hospitals where they would be able to keep her alive until they figured out what she had, or until it ran its course.
“I love you, Nikki.”
“I know you do, Cage. And I love you, too. I’m sorry it couldn’t ever be the way you wanted.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“Sure I do,” she said, smiling. Then she rolled onto her side and closed her eyes, “I’m going to sleep for a while now.”
“Okay. I’ll come back and check on you in a little bit.”
Out in the hall, he disposed of the gloves and mask, then wandered into the waiting room. He was surprised to see Caroline Carlucci looking up at him from one of the chairs. He’d completely forgotten about her. He crossed the room and sat next to her.
“Sorry about taking off like that.”
Caroline shook her head in dismissal. “How is she? Is it Nikki?”
“Yes, Nikki. I don’t know how she is. She’s sleeping. I don’t know.” He rubbed at his eyes with his palms, forcing the flash of brightly colored lights across his vision. He wished he could go to sleep himself.
“Has she got the same thing Stinger and Tito had?”
Cage nodded. He didn’t want to open his eyes, not for hours. But he finally did, and looked at her. “I can’t be sure, but I think so.” Then he explained what had happened with Stinger and the finger hooks.
“She got sick a couple of weeks later, but I thought it was just the flu, something like that. It had been a long time. I was a little worried, but then she started getting better. We both thought she was through the worst of it, we both thought…” He grimaced, grabbing the back of his neck with his hand and rubbing. “Christ, we both thought wrong.”
“What can you do for her?”
“I don’t know. Get her into a good hospital, somewhere. No one will want to take her, so I don’t know how I’m going to manage that, but I’ve got to. She’ll die if she stays here.” Then he looked at her again, a thought occurring to him. “Wait…maybe.” He dug around in his jeans until he found her father’s card. “I’m going to call your father,” he said. “We’ll see what kind of pull he’s got.”
“Cage?”
“Yeah?”
“When you talk to him, don’t tell him I’m here. Don’t even tell him you’ve seen me.”
For the first time since Nikki had appeared on the street, he remembered what he and Caroline had been talking about at Mika’s. He gazed silently at her for a few moments, feeling like he completely understood her. “I won’t.”
It took him several minutes to get through to Carlucci as a dispatcher tried tracking him down, but Cage finally heard his voice.
“I still haven’t managed to get an autopsy f
or Tito, yet,” Carlucci said.
“No, that’s not why I called. I’ve got a big favor to ask for. A huge favor.”
“Great,” Carlucci said. “That sounds hopeful.”
“I’ve got another one here. At the clinic.”
“Another dead person?”
“No. Just sick. But with the same thing.” He paused, trying to figure the best way to put it. Shit, just go straight with it. “Her name is Nikki, and she’s my closest friend. She got it from Stinger, the other dead guy, and she means the world to me. Understand?”
There was just the slightest pause. “I understand,” Carlucci eventually said. “What can I do?”
“I need to get her into a real hospital, or she’s going to die. We can’t do shit for her here.”
There was a long silence at the other end of the line. Cage glanced at Caroline, who was watching him.
“You there?” he asked.
“Yeah, Cage, I’m here. I’m just thinking. All right, let me talk to some people. I’ll call you back.”
“Okay. Thanks, Lieutenant.”
“Sure thing, ‘Doctor.’”
Cage smiled and hung up.
“Anything?” Caroline asked.
“Maybe. He’s going to talk to some people, then call back.” He breathed deeply once, feeling some sense of relief. He had the feeling that Carlucci would come through. But he wasn’t going to leave the phone until he heard something definite.
“Your closest friend,” Caroline said.
“What?” He was only half paying attention to her.
“Nikki. What you said to my father. That she means the world to you.”
“Yeah.” Nodding, and thinking about her lying on the cot back in the exam room. “I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but…she saved my life. Not in a metaphorical or symbolic sense. The real thing. She pulled my ass out of some deep, deep shit years ago, down in L.A. Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime.” He shook his head and looked back along the hallway, half expecting Nikki to walk out of Exam Five, smiling, arms out, saying she was just fine. “The least I can do now,” he said, “is return the favor.”
He wanted to go back and check on her, but he was afraid to leave the phone. It was irrational, he knew Franzee would answer it and come back to get him, but he just could not leave. He looked back at Caroline, trying to take his mind off Nikki.
“What happened over at Mika’s?” he asked. “After I hurricaned out of there.”
She smiled. “I took care of everything. A little bit of confusion. I tried to pay the wrong person, the girl. She was quite shocked.”
The phone rang and Cage answered it before the first ring had quite finished.
“Cage,” he said.
“An ambulance is on the way,” Carlucci said. “We have a couple of street access points into the Tenderloin for emergencies. It’ll pick her up and take her to St. Anthony’s—that’s the police and fire departments’ hospital.”
“Jesus. How did you manage that?”
“Sold my soul to the Devil.”
“Shit, he can have mine, too,” Cage said.
“It actually wasn’t that difficult,” Carlucci told him. “I just had to lie about a few things.”
“I owe you, Carlucci.”
“You sure do, Cage. I’ll cash in someday. Anything else?”
“Not a thing.”
“Then I’ll let you go. It shouldn’t be long, maybe fifteen, twenty minutes. And we’ll talk about all of this later.”
Cage said good-bye and hung up the receiver. He looked at Caroline. “Your father pulled it off. Ambulance is on the way. He’s arranged to have her admitted to St. Anthony’s.”
“That’s great.”
He nodded. Now he could go back and check on Nikki.
“Cage,” Caroline said. “One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Now will you help me get in touch with Cancer Cell?”
He didn’t have think about it this time. He nodded slowly. “Oh, yeah. As soon as possible.”
Isabel
THINGS WERE GETTING strange in the Core. People were dying.
Isabel sensed the changes, she could smell them—the people in here now smelled like fear.
One day, in the shadowy light below street level, she saw a man die violently, shaking and screaming while several other people watched him, afraid to get close. And when the man had died, the people left him. Only later did someone come back, pour liquid over him, and set him on fire. Isabel smelled the stench for days whenever she got near that passage.
Another time, she saw the woman who had been cutting up Henry, saw her die in much the same way as the man, only she was alone in a room, surrounded by paper lanterns and multicolored rocks. Isabel felt a certain satisfaction when the woman stopped moving at last, dead.
Two other times in her travels she saw dead people, bodies twisted, eyes open, teeth bared, lots of blood. And she knew something bad was happening here.
She began searching for a way out.
She wasn’t sure she actually wanted to leave the Core—she had the sense that outside the Core would be many more people, passages and rooms would be more crowded, there would be fewer places to hide, fewer places to be alone—but she felt a need to be prepared. If the Core continued to get stranger, crazier, and more out of control, she needed to have a way out.
She had a fairly good sense of the Core’s boundaries, and so she explored them, probing. Although she occasionally wandered up staircases into the building floors at street level and higher, she really spent no time there looking for a way out; there were many ways out onto the streets themselves, but she could see the high, brightly lit electrified barriers blocking the streets, could see all the doorways and windows of the buildings outside the Core itself completely blocked by brick and metal or firmly secured wooden planks. The only way out would be underground.
Isabel did see men and women leaving the Core through below-ground passages, concrete tunnels, but there were always locked doors or other barriers she would not be able to pass. She would have to find her own way out.
Dawn had arrived, gray and already hot. The Core was quiet, her regular passageways empty. Isabel moved carefully along the outer perimeter, one hand on the corridor wall, feeling her way, feeling for an opening. The wall was cool, almost smooth, though there were cracks and chips in it, and places where mosses grew. Colorful markings covered much of the concrete.
There was a break in the wall, a branching corridor, narrow, maybe three feet wide. Isabel entered it, took a few steps forward, but it ended abruptly. Mortared brick blocked the corridor, sealing it from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. There was no way through.
Isabel crouched in front of the brick and examined the walls on both sides. On her left, just above her head, was a small, square opening covered by a deteriorating mesh screen. She reached up, gripped the screen with both hands, and tugged. The screen came free, scattering bits of dirt and dust and broken bits of metal.
Isabel pulled herself up and into the opening. She scraped her hips on the rough edges of the opening, but worked herself all the way in. She was inside a metal duct of some kind, the walls cool and smooth. She couldn’t see anything, but she smelled damp earth from somewhere.
For several moments she didn’t move, listening, sniffing the air. Then she crawled forward. Progress was slow; she couldn’t move her limbs much. But she inched her way along through the dark.
She came to a T, the duct widening as it branched in both directions. Isabel took the right branch, figuring the left headed back into the Core. In the larger duct, the going was easier. She hadn’t gone far when the duct bent right, narrowing once again. After a slight hesitation, she squeezed into the narrow section and continue crawling forward.
The duct opened out into dark open space. Isabel remained at the opening for a minute or so, trying to make out the room. There was actually a little more light here, and eventually she could
see a narrow corridor. To her right, just barely visible, was the same brick wall, she realized; the other side.
She worked her way out of the duct and dropped to the floor. At the other end of the corridor from the brick wall was a dim rectangle of light. Isabel padded along the passage, then up several steps to a door with a glass window covered by cobwebs. She brushed away the cobwebs, then pressed her face against the glass.
On the other side of the door was a large room filled with boxes and crates, drums and large glass bottles, and all kinds of other miscellaneous junk scattered everywhere. Two men were sitting on chairs, smoking cigarettes and drinking from green bottles.
Isabel turned from the window and headed back down the steps. She would go back into the Core for now, but this was just what she needed—a way out.
PART THREE
Epidemiology: Tracking the Source
17
SOMETIMES CARLUCCI HATED this goddamn job. He sat at his desk, sweating in the heat and staring at the sketch artist picture of the woman who might have been Naomi Katsuda’s lover, the woman nobody could find. And after a week of negotiations with Yoshi Katsuda, who supposedly wanted to talk to him, an interview had finally been arranged, but it was still four days away. The case was going nowhere fast, and it pissed him off.
He tossed the picture onto his desk and leaned back in his chair. Santos and Weathers were doing everything they could, he knew that. But there had to be another way to go at this case. And the only other way he could think of was through Tito’s abduction and death. So far, though, not much had happened there, either. Cage hadn’t come up with anything; in fact, when they’d talked yesterday, Cage had said he now doubted he would ever be able to arrange for Carlucci to meet with anyone from Cancer Cell. Something about them being too wary of cops. Carlucci had the feeling Cage was being evasive, but he couldn’t do a damn thing about that.
So what else? He leaned forward, dug around through the stacks of files and notes on his desk until he found his file on Tito Moraleja. Then he leaned back again, opened the file, and leafed through it. There wasn’t much. Tran’s official report of their visit to Tito’s room. An addendum about the parrot, and several transcripts that had been made of the parrot’s useless utterances. CID had given up on the parrot in disgust, but Kelly had taken a liking to it, named it Horus, and brought it home with him. And finally there were his notes on his talks with Caroline and Cage. He glanced through them.
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