When she put the Porsche keys into her pocket, she felt the carved wooden wolf between her fingers. All she needed right now. A reminder of the one moment when he’d seemed real. She fished around in her big overstuffed pockets for the key to her apartment and found it as she ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
She unlocked her door, and went in, reaching for the light—
A hand clamped her throat, stopping her breath. A damp cloth reeking of chemicals pressed down hard over her nose and mouth. Someone else caught her wrists, crushing them.
She fought, frantically. The huge hand holding her wrists tightened, until the small bones and tendons ground together, crushed tight, and oh God, that hurt . . .
Two shadows, in the gloom. One spoke, in a mocking tone, but she could hardly hear him over the roaring in her ears, her thumping heart.
“. . . Olund wants her, he can have her.”
Her lungs demanded air, forcing her to inhale the nasty stuff on the smothering cloth.
It plunged her right down into the dark.
Chapter 21
Noah couldn’t stop bellowing. He crashed against the wall, lurched away and thudded to his knees again. He blinked away streaming tears, his body’s desperate effort to wash the chemicals out of the blistered whites of his eyes.
No longer human. Not even close. Not in this red haze, combat program raging, so far from his right mind he didn’t even know where he’d left it. He could feel it back there, struggling, but it couldn’t reach the control panel.
Arrogant shithead, thinking he was so on top of himself.
He put his fist through the top of the glass coffee table.
He hunched beside it, head dangling, panting. Hannah’s sandwiches were scattered on the glass shards below the metal frame. Fat red drops of blood plopped down from his fingertips. He stared around the room, dripping, panting. Seeking with his burning, swimming eyes. Finding nothing else to break.
Blood trickled down his shins from his lacerated knees. The smell maddened him with ugly associations. His friends at Midlands, the ones that didn’t make it. Sprawling in an ocean of blood. So many of them.
He staggered in the direction of the kitchen. The sink. Yes. That was what a normal human would do. Wash the wound, stanch the blood. Logical. Sequential.
But as soon as he made it into the kitchen, some random association made AVP rage sweep over him again. He forgot the sink, the blood, the logical sequential plan, and swept his arm over the kitchen counter. A big glass blender sailed high into the air in a slow, lazy arc . . .
It hit the brick wall. Chunks of glass rained down over the kitchen. He was peppered with small, stinging darts.
He hardly noticed. His eyes stung, burned. Fucking hurt . . .
He flung containers, flour, pasta, sugar, garlic, contents scattering across the floor, the counter. He was possessed by a demon, programmed to someone else’s specs, and he had to play their game or pay an unspeakable price.
I found it. I paid for it. And the price was very high. Her words echoed in his mind.
He shoved his guilt aside. Sneaky bitch, flashing her tits at him, and he’d panted and wagged like a hopeful hound. Fury at his own stupidity made his arm sweep out at the knife block. The contact would have broken a normal man’s arm. Not his reinforced bones, not his super-toughened muscle fibers. The block hit the ceramic floor tiles, shattering a few into a spiderweb of cracks and fragments.
Knives slid out, skittering over the tiles, through glittering shards of glass and ceramic. Another sweep caught the big fruit bowl, piled high.
It crashed to the floor. Apples, oranges, grapefruits bounced and rolled.
His eyes streamed, his chest hitched. He hated this. Hated it. He groped again for a shred of rationality, stabbing out into the hot red darkness, searching for it.
His eyes, his eyes, his fucking eyes. Take care of the eyes. He should flush them with water. A soothing eye wash. Bathroom. Medicine cabinet. Yeah.
His head throbbed. Anger flared, hot and murderous, as he touched the lump on his scalp where she’d clocked him with one of his own fancy-ass candlesticks. Fucking brilliant. He had an extremely high pain threshold, and quick recovery to trauma was vectored into his genome, but the injury triggered memories that flooded out, full force.
They raged through him now as if it was all happening right now.
Twelve boys in the room. The first lucky punks to get Braxton’s Mr. Muscle and Bones of Steel gene cocktail. Flailing in their restraints as they burned with fever, choking on snot and vomit, leaking from every hole. Just a few of the side effects of the hollowed-out flu virus that carried improved genes right into the cell nucleus and into the genome itself. The first change that would make them a beacon of hope for goddamn humanity.
Five boys died that day alone. One right next to him. He still saw blood streaming out of the kid’s nose as he croaked. His cells overwhelmed with waste toxins.
He barely made it to the downstairs bathroom before he lost what was in his stomach. He watched it swirl down the toilet, disgusted. With all his optimized cerebral function, he still hadn’t come up with a better solution than this stupid shitstorm.
He held his streaming eyes open for a long squirt of eye wash, hissing as the stuff made contact with the blistered whites. His eyes looked like stoplights, but already his rapid healing was at work. The huge sickening whanga-whanga caused by the candlestick to the extra-hard bone tissue in his skull had subsided to a throbbing ache that synchronized with each heartbeat.
He put the eye wash back in the medicine cabinet, and saw the flash drive in there. Zade had left it for him, and flushed a plastic contact lens case instead.
He’d signaled for Zade to stage the scene, never thinking things would get so out of hand. No way in hell would any of them have destroyed that flash drive. They needed to study and analyze that footage.
But Caro hadn’t know that. He grabbed the flash drive. Shoved it in his pocket.
He was in control again, but the anger raged on, running on a separate track from his rational brain. It lit his mind with a hot red haze.
One thing was simple. Retrieve Caro. Stick to her like glue. Keep her safe, and keep his people safe from revenge on her part. Be smarter than he’d been so far.
The trick would consist of not morphing into a one-man barbarian invasion and scaring Caro out of her mind. Anger and sex were wound too closely in that knot in his head. Those hack neuroscientists had crossed his wires backwards and upside down, just to see what would happen. They’d already written him off, so why not just fuck around, get more useful data to crunch before they pulled the plug?
He’d learned to walk that tightrope using the analog dives, meditation. He’d fooled himself into thinking he was normal enough to get married, have kids, and live like a normal man. He’d been able to have great sex without being emotionally engaged in what he was doing, and he’d considered that to be a step in the right direction, a sign that he had a hope of being civilized. Sex was just a physiological need that he fulfilled, for pleasure, entertainment, and optimal health and function.
Guilty as charged. Brand him with a big red M for Man.
But he couldn’t cut himself off from Caro. And the red-tinged images writhing in his unhinged imagination were all of frenzied, conquering-warrior-style fucking.
Caro would not welcome that vibe from him in her present mood.
He touched the lump again. His fingers came away gummy with drying blood. His hair stuck up, blood-stiffened. He looked like shit, and he wasn’t going to be able to tolerate the shield lenses on his inflamed eyes for a while. He’d have to rely on shield specs alone, which was too much light exposure. The light that came in the sides would keep the AVP combat program revved to screaming, wild-sex-or- pitched battle levels. Just to keep things interesting.
The other option was to call his people, have them bring Caro in for him. Safer for everyone. Except that he would be likely to burst a blo
od vessel, if he were waiting at home like an asshole.
Caro would just have to deal with the problematic thing that he actually was. He staggered around, looking in vain for the Porsche keys until he remembered with a fresh surge of fury that Caro had taken them.
He dug out the keys for his Mercedes SUV. Stopped for a moment to plug the flash drive into his laptop to copy the video file for future study. It went back into his pocket, and he sped out the door.
Caro had awakened the beast. He’d bent over backwards to be a perfect gentleman for her, and it hadn’t worked out. He couldn’t keep the mask up any longer. He had nothing left to hide behind. And this naked, jacked up, deformed thing that he was, both more and less than human . . . here it was. In your face, girl. Good luck with it.
At this hour of the night, the road was his, which was a good thing at this speed. He had the reflexes of a race car driver, and the high speed mellowed him out a little.
Until he spotted his Porsche parked outside her building. In a fucking tow zone, no less.
The front door of her shitty tenement building was still unlocked. Weirdos skulked in the foyer, but they scuttled into the shadows when they saw him. He must look like something straight out of the crypt right now.
He leaped up the six flights, four steps at a time. Most of the wall lamps in the corridor were burned out, and the remaining one flickered fitfully, choked by a drift of dead bugs.
Freddie was stretched in front of his door again, snoring. Noah loped past him, alarm bells buzzing in his mind. The shadows on her door were the wrong depth. The door was tilted at a different angle with respect to the other doors in the corridor.
There was no way that a young woman alone in a run-down tenement would leave her door hanging open at night. For any reason on earth.
Panic threatened to drop-kick him off the AVP deep end. Stay cool. Breathe. You need your whole brain functioning for this. Wrongness thrummed as he approached the door, like the throb of an infrasound weapon. He wished he’d brought a gun, but he’d been too busy wallowing in agony to think of it.
Her door squeaked against the warped floor as he opened it. No one there.
Without light to activate it, the visual magic of the room was gone, and he saw it as it truly was. Cramped and shabby, without Caro’s transforming influence.
The duffel was there, and a battered hard-case wheelie, pawed through, contents flung upon the floor. A hot plate, a toothbrush, a snarl of cotton underwear, bags of instant oatmeal. A spoon. The keys to his Porsche lay on the floor. A single sneaker. The one she had been wearing.
He grabbed his Porsche keys, staring at that grayish, shabby kick, once white, very worn. From what he’d seen, in this place that had no drawers or closets, it was the only pair of shoes she had, and it had no mate. So Caro had gone out on a cold, rainy night, leaving everything she owned, with her door hanging open. Wearing one shoe.
The carved wolf he’d given her lay on the floor in two pieces. The tail and one of the hind legs had snapped off. He picked the pieces up and shoved them into his pocket.
For the sake of certainty, he peeled up the floor mat, and checked where she’d stowed the envelope he had given her. Still there. The entire wad of cash, intact.
He pulled up the program on his phone to monitor her tile, hoping desperately that she still had her coat on. A map appeared. An icon moved north on the Interstate, going too fast to be a bus, and she hadn’t had time to catch one. She’d still be moving through Seattle toward the station, if a bus were her plan. Not heading north into wintry mountains with no bags. And only one shoe.
He exploded out the door, then on impulse, skidded to a halt next to Freddie. He nudged the guy, none too gently. “Freddie! Wake up!”
“Huh?” Startled, Freddie peered up. He shrank back, eyes wide with alarm when he saw Noah. “What? I didn’t do nothing, man!”
Noah grabbed the guy’s sweatshirt under his chin and hauled him a foot or so off the ground. He leaned into the man’s rank body odor. “Who took Caro, Freddie?”
Freddie’s eyes rolled frantically. “Caro? Who’s Caro?”
“The chick in six-oh-eight. You slime her every time she walks by. Someone came and took her away. Did you see them?”
Freddie blinked, disoriented. “What? Are you talking about, like, her dealers?”
“Dealers? What dealers?” He shook the guy the way a terrier shook a rat.
“Uh . . . some guys,” Freddie sounded bewildered. “I saw her leave with them.”
“Left how? What condition was she in? Was she injured?”
Freddie plucked at Noah’s knuckles. “Dude, that hurts! Let go! She, uh, looked stoned out of her fuckin’ mind. They were dragging her. Musta been some really good shit. I asked if I could score a hit when they came by.” He rubbed his ribs. “Scumbag kicked me.”
“What did they look like?” Noah demanded.
“I don’t know!” Freddy whined. “Just a couple of guys. And one of ’em kicked me! Prolly cracked my ribs. I never saw either of them before.”
“White, black, Asian, Latino? Wearing what? Age? Weight? Anything!”
Freddie looked panicked. “One guy was bald,” he offered. “The shorter one. He had a goatee. The other one was big. And white. Yeah. Both of ’em were white.”
“What made you think they were her dealers? Their clothes?”
“Don’t remember their clothes,” Freddy said. “I thought that because of you.”
“Me?” Noah was bewildered. “What does that have to do with me?”
“Come on. Bitch needs to cop a buzz. She turns a trick, and calls her dealer. It’s so easy for bitches, especially ones like her. All they have to do is spread their legs.”
Noah smacked the guy before he could stop himself. Freddie burst out crying, cringing away from him.
He dropped Freddie on the floor, and ran.
* * *
Buried alive, under tons of earth. Head splitting. Can’t breathe. Mouth full of dirt. Her chest bucked and heaved. Couldn’t . . . get . . . any . . . air . . .
The line between her stifling dream and waking reality was blurry for a long time. She wavered, reaching toward consciousness, then collapsing back into nightmares again. Then the movement stilled. That buzzing hum had stopped.
She was in a car. It had stopped moving. Full consciousness forced itself upon her, and along with it came horrible images of whatever might be in store for her.
Someone dragged a smothering blanket off her head, and hit her face. She tried to cough, but couldn’t, with the gag in her mouth. The man’s face was slack and grotesque at that angle, his chubby cheeks and the bags under his eyes flushed and dangling. Metal glinted in his dental work. He had a black goatee. “Wake the fuck up!”
She was in the trunk of a car, arms fastened behind her. The upside-down man’s hands hooked her armpits. He dragged her out, flung her against the side of the car.
She would have slid to the ground, but he pinned her there, and swatted the back of her head. “On your feet, you lazy cunt.” He cut the ties on her arms. She cried out with pain when the numbness wore off and stumbled to her knees.
The bigger man kicked her in the buttock, the toe of his boot shooting a bolt of pain up her spine. “Get up, bitch,” he growled. “I ain’t carrying you this time.”
She tried, but her balance was shot. Whenever she was kicked or shoved forward, the dirt roadway tilted up and whacked her hard in the face.
They were on a deeply rutted, unpaved road carved through a thick evergreen forest. The tangled bottom branches were packed so tightly that the boughs seemed black and lifeless in the dim light of dawn.
The huge guy grabbed her arm. “Move it. Stupid whore.”
She was shoved and kicked all the way down the overgrown driveway until a building hidden in the woods slowly came into view. It was a shabby prefab box set on cinder blocks. No porch, just temporary aluminum steps in front of the door.
The bald man ra
pped on the door. “It’s us,” he said. “Open up.”
The door opened. Caro was heaved inside, cracking her shins against the bottom of the door frame before scrambling onto her hands and knees. Four pairs of jackboots were ranged around her on the dirty linoleum. She fought to control her terror.
One of the four men grabbed her under the armpits, heaved her to her feet, and shoved her before him through a dim corridor that stank of mold.
In the back was a room with a window showing a dark wall of trees. There was a wrought iron bed. The mattress was covered with a sheet of heavy plastic. She closed her eyes and hung onto her guts.
She was flung onto the bed. She’d lost her coat, at some point. The plastic covering the mattress felt damp and cold against the small of her back.
“Get out of here. Leave us alone,” the bald goateed man said to the man who had dragged her.
He waited for the big, thick-featured guy to leave, and then smiled wide, flashing metal in his eyeteeth. He pulled up a chair to the foot of the bed and straddled it backwards, facing her. “Good morning, Caroline.”
It took her several tries to get the words out. “You work for Mark Olund?”
The man’s close-set black eyes narrowed slightly. He didn’t reply.
Caro massaged her own wrists, and tried to flex her numb fingers. “I don’t have what he wants,” she said.
“Not my problem. I was paid to pick you up and keep you here until he comes for you, which will be soon,” he said.
“But—”
“Nothing you say will change that. Keep your trap shut and don’t annoy me. When he gets here, you’ll give him whatever he wants. You’ll give him everything you have. Count on it, bitch.”
She stared at the flat emptiness of his eyes. Her ears roared. That nightmare was coming due. She’d tried so hard to outrun it, but it was here.
She had no idea if she could open Lydia’s safe at all. Caro had urged the woman to change her training image sequence to something new and private. It was sloppy and dangerous to leave an interface coach with potential access to goods and secrets that others would kill to have. Changing the sequence protected everyone.
Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1) Page 23