“What are they going to do? Kill everyone who resists?”
Eric didn’t answer. Cage stopped pacing a minute, trying to slow his breathing. He was getting worked up, and it wasn’t helping anything.
“I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you,” he said.
“I’m just…trying…to help you, Cage. I’m putting my ass on the line here. I called to give you a chance to get out before the quarantine goes into effect. I didn’t call to argue CDC and military policy.”
Cage stood by the window, slowly shaking his head and gazing out at the streets and buildings that were about to become a prison. Something was wrong with this whole thing. “You people are absolutely insane,” he said. “If this disease started in the Core, it’s already broken out of the Tenderloin. A quarantine is useless. And a quarantine of the Tenderloin won’t hold together anyway. The whole thing is insane.”
He waited a long time for Eric to respond. When he finally did, his voice sounded weary. “You have a better idea, St. Cage?”
Cage sat down, feeling weary himself. “Use your resources to help identify the virus, work on the development of a vaccine or treatments, public education to prevent its spread.”
Eric laughed. “That’s a joke, and you know it.”
“Something’s fishy about this whole thing, Eric.”
“Don’t push it, Cage.”
“This is going to be a disaster.”
Eric sighed heavily. “Get the hell out, Cage. Now.”
“I can’t do that, Eric.”
“You’re a crazy son of a bitch.”
“So are you. So’s the whole fucking CDC.”
“Cage. Just remember your promise. Not a fucking word.”
“Don’t worry.” His anger and frustration were almost gone, overtaken by exhaustion. There was going to be a disaster. “I guess I should thank you for calling me.”
“Yeah, well.” There was a long pause. “Cage?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry about Nikki.”
“Thanks.”
What the hell else was there to say, for either of them?
“I’ll call you,” Eric said.
“Do that.”
“Good-bye, Cage.”
“Good-bye, Eric.”
He hung up the receiver. Dawn. Less than twenty-four hours away.
Caroline. Jesus. She was in the Core. He had to try to get her out.
Another impossible task. There was no time. His only way to contact Cancer Cell was through Tiger, and Tiger didn’t even know who the hell they were. He’d have to contact Tiger, who’d have to contact Rashida, if that was possible, and then…and then, nothing. Shit.
The phone rang. Eric again? He picked it up and answered.
It wasn’t Eric. It was Dr. Sodhi.
Nikki was dead.
27
OUT OF DESPERATION, Carlucci requested a crash session with Monk, one of the department slugs. He was surprised when he got word that Monk agreed. That Monk wanted the session to begin at four o’clock in the morning was also a surprise, but a much smaller one. The slugs were strange creatures, to say the least.
He stood outside the slug’s quarters on the top floor, waiting for the entrance to unlock. The entrance panel chimed, then the door slid aside. Carlucci was hit by a wave of stunningly dry heat. He had forgotten about the heat, so dry he could feel a scratching at his throat with each breath. He stepped inside, and the door slid closed behind him.
The last time he had been here, the only time, Monk’ s quarters had been a maze of constantly rotating panels casting bands of shifting light and shadow, obscuring the room. This time, however, the main room was completely open, though dimly lit. He could see the kitchen in the back corner, with a table and chairs, and huge picture windows that formed most of the wall to his right. Padded armchairs were set in front of the windows. Another spectacular view, probably, like the one from Yoshi Katsuda’s office.
Monk came through a door and into the kitchen, half walking, half dragging himself with two arm-brace canes. His thick, bloated body was completely covered by a slick black material, like a thin, shiny wet suit, and his head was enclosed in a goggled, form-fitting flexible helmet studded with blinking lights. His lips were the only flesh visible.
“Come on back, Lieutenant.” Monk’s voice was deep, but normal. The other time Carlucci had been here, Monk had spoken to him much of the time through overhead speakers, his voice amplified and with a slight echo effect. “Have a seat.” Monk dropped heavily into one of the overly wide armchairs at the kitchen table.
Carlucci walked through the main room, his footsteps nearly silent on the carpeting, then sounding quite loud on the vinyl floor of the kitchen. He pulled out a chair across the table from Monk and sat.
“Do you want something to drink?” Monk asked. “You’ll have to get it yourself, my manservant doesn’t come on until six. The refrigerator is well stocked.”
Carlucci shook his head, remembering now—an aged, thin Asian man in a black suit who had served him coffee. “Why no Wizard of Oz effects this time?” he asked.
Monk made a hacking sound that Carlucci assumed was a laugh. “Not much point to it. It didn’t impress you last time, did it?”
“No.”
“No. I wasn’t going to waste your time or mine.” Monk laid his black-coated arms on the table, gloved fingers wriggling like short, fat snakes. “It’s been a long time since that session.”
Not long enough. He wondered what Monk’s face looked like under that strange helmet, what his eyes looked like behind the tinted goggles.
“You’re here about your daughter,” Monk said. “Caroline.”
Carlucci didn’t reply, too stunned. He shouldn’t have been. He tried to remind himself of what Brendan had said about the slugs, and Monk in particular, three years ago that they would regularly surprise you with the intuitive leaps they made, that they processed so much information so quickly from so many different sources, and were always well prepared for their sessions. Monk would have spent the past several hours trying to figure out why Carlucci had called for this crash session. He would know that word had gone out throughout the department about Caroline, that she was missing, that people were searching for her.
“You’re also here to ask me about what’s going on in the Tenderloin, about the possibility of a disease outbreak. Or you should be.”
Carlucci leaned back in the chair, a sharp headache beginning already. He should have known.
“Why don’t I just sit back and listen, then?” he said. “I don’t need to ask you any questions. I can just listen to your answers.”
“This is not a sideshow,” Monk said. “I’m not performing like some huckster, trying to impress the rubes. This is my job. This is what the city pays me for. This is why you’re here.”
“Of course it’s a sideshow,” Carlucci replied.
“Is this your way of trying to charm me so I’ll help you find your daughter?”
Carlucci slowly shook his head, sighing. He was being stupid. But it was hard, trying to talk to this thing across the table from him that looked like some mutant freak from a bad late-night movie.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was unfair. It’s four-thirty in the morning, I haven’t slept, and I’m worried about her.”
Monk nodded. He adjusted his position, making a strange squishing and slithering sound.
“You know she’s missing,” Carlucci said.
“She’s not missing,” Monk replied. “I know where she is.”
Carlucci could feel his heart start racing, but he tried to stay calm, tried not get excited, afraid this was some bizarre joke from Monk.
“Where?” he asked.
“In the Tenderloin. In the Core. With Cancer Cell.” Carlucci didn’t know what to say. Too many questions rose, all at once.
“Are you sure?”
Monk made a gesture that might have been a shrug. “I’m fairly confide
nt in my analysis, but of course I can’t be sure.”
“Why?”
Monk shook his head. “I don’t know.”
It was like the last time. Every time Monk had said “I don’t know,” Carlucci had been fairly certain that the slug did know, or at least could make a pretty good guess. He felt exactly that way right now, and the frustration ate at his stomach, because he knew there was nothing he could do to force Monk to come clean.
“How do you know?”
This time it was Monk who sighed. “You know I can’t answer that kind of question.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Can’t. I rarely know exactly what information leads me to what conclusions. I can only tell you with a fair degree of certainty that she has, somehow, contacted Cancer Cell, and that she is with them, in the Core.”
“Alive?”
That shruglike gesture again. “Presumably. You will just have to wait to find out.”
“Or go in and get her.”
Monk threw his head back and laughed, a hacking bray that grated on Carlucci. He wanted to strangle the freaky bastard. It was an absurd notion, going into the Core, he knew that, but what did Monk know? It wasn’t his daughter who was missing.
“What do you know about Cancer Cell?” Carlucci asked, keeping his anger in check.
Monk shook his head. “Nothing. I even requested a session with Kelly in CID, hoping he might know something, but he didn’t.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Information is my blood. I don’t like not knowing about something that may one day become important.”
There was something wrong about all this, too, Carlucci could smell it.
“You said I was here to ask about Caroline, which was right. And that I was here to ask about this disease thing, or should be. Why didn’t you say anything about the Naomi Katsuda murder investigation? That, too, is going nowhere. Shouldn’t I be asking you about that as well?”
“Yes, of course. That, it seemed to me, was a given. It didn’t seem worth mentioning. Besides, I have nothing to offer concerning that case.” He paused, glancing down at the table, then back up at Carlucci. “Her death is a complete mystery to me.”
A lie. Carlucci was certain. There was something, he believed, to be learned from Monk’s lies and omissions as well as from what he actually offered. The difficulty lay in deciphering them.
“How did you know I was interested in this ‘disease thing’?”
“Tito Moraleja’s body in the temporary morgue.” Monk snorted with a twisted grin. “There’s no connection between Moraleja’s death and Naomi Katsuda’s murder—your official rationale for holding the body with an autopsy request. So your interest had to lie elsewhere.”
“And?”
Monk’s expression, what little of it Carlucci could see, appeared to take on real gravity.
“You are right to be concerned. There is a very deadly disease that is preparing to break out of the Tenderloin. Caused by a virus, contagious, and with a mortality rate nearing one hundred percent. A disease with no preventative vaccine and no treatment. How’s that for a fucking nightmare, Lieutenant?”
Once again, Carlucci didn’t know how to respond. Monk seemed both so certain and so sincere. No fooling around, no deception, no showmanship. As if he knew.
He knew.
“What the hell is going on?” Carlucci finally asked.
“There’s even a name for the disease, now,” Monk said. “Core Fever.”
“Monk—”
“Let’s go over by the windows, and you’ll be able to see firsthand.”
“See what?”
Monk’s only response was to struggle upright with his canes. Breathing heavily, he dragged himself out of the kitchen, then across the carpet toward the large picture windows. Carlucci remained at the table, watching until he reached one of the armchairs and dropped into it. He laid the canes on the floor at his feet, then craned his neck around to look at him. “Come on, Lieutenant. The answer to your questions.”
Carlucci got up and walked over to the windows, keeping away from Monk. He remained standing, and looked out.
They had a fairly good view of the Tenderloin from here. Lights were going crazy all around it, bright floods and flares, spinning colored lights on emergency vehicles, blinking barrier lights. Looking down between two buildings, to the perimeter of the Tenderloin itself, he could see what appeared to be the beginning of a military cordon.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked again.
Suddenly a whole fleet of helicopters appeared, headed into the heart of the Tenderloin. They moved in quickly, and began landing on rooftops deep inside, and then he realized they were landing on buildings that roughly enclosed the Core. Where Caroline was.
He turned to look at Monk, who was actually grinning. He stared at the slug, waiting for an answer. Monk finally gave it to him.
“Quarantine.”
Isabel
IT HAD BEGUN.
Isabel didn’t know what was happening, but she knew it was time to go. Things were even crazier now, people running and screaming, loud bangs, the smell of smoke. There would be nothing for a time, almost dead silence, and then it would start up again, different, but somehow feeling all the same. It was too crazy, and she was afraid. Anything could happen.
She worked her way toward the opening she had found earlier, moving quickly and quietly along the passages, sinking back into shadows and alcoves whenever someone appeared.
A small fire burned within a circle of stones at one intersection of corridors. Isabel hung back, watching closely, waiting, but no one seemed to be near, and she quickly skirted the flames. A terrible smell came from within them.
There was a body, a dead fat man lying belly up, his throat cut and his eyes open.
Farther on, a woman squatted in front of a small pit dug out of the dirt floor, rocking on her haunches and humming, flanked by burning candles. Water glistened in the pit, and there was movement in the water. There was no other way, so Isabel slowly crept past, on the side of the pit opposite the woman. As she passed, the woman looked up and gazed at Isabel; the woman smiled, but continued humming and rocking, and made no other move. Isabel pushed on.
Finally she reached the short dead-end passage and entered it. The grate was still on the ground, the opening clear. She checked the main corridor once more to make sure there was no one nearby, then returned to the opening and pulled herself up and into it.
She squirmed forward as quickly as she could manage, afraid of being exposed. Her way was a little easier this time, since she knew what to expect. When she entered the wider duct, she took the right branch again, then right once more at the next chance, and before long she was emerging into the dark passage on the other side.
Isabel dropped to the floor. She stood unmoving for a long time, listening. Faint sounds came to her through the opening, but nothing from the passage around her. She moved forward to the rectangle of light at the far end, the window in the door. At the bottom of the steps she hesitated for a moment, then climbed them and put her face to the glass.
The room on the other side was the same, except that this time there were no people inside. Careful as always, she remained at the window for quite a while, watching. No one entered the room. Feeling safe, she took hold of the doorknob and tried to turn it.
The doorknob wouldn’t budge. She tightened her grip, and turned harder. Still nothing. The door was locked, or the knob rusted shut. Once more with both hands gripping the knob, but again it wouldn’t turn.
She was trapped.
PART FOUR
Quarantine
28
RASHIDA CAME INTO Caroline’s room, flushed and breathing hard. She was wearing a surgical mask and gloves, and carrying a flashlight and a small leather bag.
“Come on,” she said. “We have to go. You have to go.”
“Go where? What’s going on?”
“Quarantine.”
“The Tenderloin. The Core. There’s not much time. Let’s go.” Then she shook her head. “Don’t bring anything with you. I’ll give you the only thing you’ll take out of here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Later. Let’s go.”
She followed Rashida out of the room and down the corridor. Tension and a sense of urgency infected the air, extra bursts of it exploding whenever someone rushed by, or she saw frantic activity in one of the open rooms they passed. They stopped for a few moments when they ran into Dr. Mike, who passed a silent message to Rashida, his eyes saddened. Then Dr. Mike went one way, and they went another.
“What’s happening?” Caroline asked again.
They turned into an empty, narrow corridor, which ended at one of the Core gates. Rashida checked the security panel, unlocked the door, and pushed Caroline through. She stumbled forward in the dim light, then Rashida came through after her and sealed the door, bringing complete darkness.
Caroline didn’t move, waiting for Rashida. Rashida’s hand gripped her arm; the gloved fingers felt cold on her skin.
“Don’t lose me now,” Rashida said, her voice just above a whisper.
“Don’t lose me,” Caroline answered.
Rashida quietly laughed. Then, before they went any farther, she said, “The CDC and the military have quarantined the Tenderloin. They’ve announced the impending outbreak of a fatal disease whose source is the experimental laboratories of a medical terrorist group called Cancer Cell.”
“How can they say that?”
“Hell, they can say any damn thing they want to, can’t they? They’re calling it Core Fever. They’ve announced that Cancer Cell’s labs are in the Core, and they’ve sent in special troops and equipment to establish a second quarantine around the Core itself.”
“Is that possible?” Caroline asked.
“Not completely,” Rashida answered. “But they’ve done extremely well, far better than I would ever have imagined they could do.” She paused. “They have very good intelligence.” There was something about the way she’d said that last thing that implied betrayal. “They’re going to destroy us.”
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