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I picked up speed, jumped the last two feet and saw, in the middle of a pool of sun from a skylight…“Jonesey?”
It was John the Fact-less himself, the reverend Jim Jonesey, server of the Kool-Aid. Happy and about as self-aware as a clam, he was flipping through The New Yorker, yellow tag dangling from his wrist.
He picked his head up. “Hess, oh hey, hi. Glad you made it in. The room was a little cramped, so I thought I’d stretch the old legs. Spotted this cozy little corner, and said to myself when was the last time you took the time to sit down and read a magazine?”
I reared, flabbergasted. “Don’t you hear the alarm? Don’t you see the flashing lights?”
He looked around as if noticing for the first time. “Some kind of fire drill going on?”
I grabbed his arm and heaved him to standing. “I don’t care if you’re yanking my crank or rotting from the inside out. There’s something you’re going to see.”
I took him back toward the gurney. As we got closer, he heard the rasping and got a puzzled look on his face. The expression was kind of boyish, like maybe the surprise that was waiting would be delightful. I pushed him at Palmer Hudson’s remains. Knowing Jonesey saw it too somehow made it easier for me to look again.
“Meet Kyua. Here’s the hope you’ve been preaching. This is what they do to chakz here.”
The smile stayed, but I think that was shock, because his skin actually faded to a whiter shade of pale, like whatever there was of Jonesey had left the building. It wasn’t satisfying, like I’d hoped, or an argument I’d really wanted to win. When he went down to his knees, I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed, a vague effort at offering comfort.
Then he took out his cell phone and started snapping pictures. What the fuck?
While he talked, he kept clicking. “I want them all to see it. I want them all to know.”
I pulled at his arm, but all of a sudden his strength was back. He didn’t budge.
“What are you trying to do,” I said, “start another riot? Any chak that sees this will go wild, and then what? They’ll get cut down today instead of tomorrow.”
He whirled at me, eyes wide. “They have a right to know!”
I rattled my brain for a comeback, but didn’t have one. There wasn’t time to debate it anyway. A dull, steady tromping rose above the alarm.
“Jonesey, someone’s coming, we’ve got to get out of here.”
He snapped another picture. Humans, alive or dead, suck at locating audio, but I knew the sound was coming from the stairs, and it was loud enough to mean lots of company.
I shoved him to get his attention. “Let’s go. Now!”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t make any goddamn difference.” He folded the cell phone, then covered his face with his hands.
The footsteps were louder.
“Just leave me here…just leave me…maybe I can take more pictures…I’ve got to be more than this. I have to rise above.”
He reminded me of Misty, in shock after seeing Chester.
“Nothing living or dead is going to rise above that so fast….” I said.
“Then I can’t be living or dead. I’ve got to be something else, something not real. A dragon. I’ve got to be a dragon….”
He was babbling, which was only slightly better than moaning.
I tried to drag him along, but he shook me off. I didn’t want to leave him, but I didn’t want to stay just to hold his hand when the flamethrowers came.
Unlike me, Jonesey was a registered subject, allowed to be in the building. I doubted that would make much difference long term, given what he’d seen, but if I was ever going to figure out what was in the vials, I had to leave. Without that to keep me going, I might as well kneel next to him and babble myself.
I raced down the hall, calling for him to follow, but he ignored me, going on about being a dragon. I looked for another way out. There wasn’t any. I’d have to risk using the same hall Mistress Maruta and her friends had. If I could just get past the double doors. No. Fuck. More footsteps. That left hiding.
I loped toward the other gurneys, hitting two as I fell behind them, mussing the symmetry. As I hit the ground, a gray hand tumbled from beneath a sheet. As if the day hadn’t been bad enough, it was small, a child’s hand, a raggedy. The skin above the wrist was peeled open. The exposed muscle shivered.
“Penny?”
Had those bastards done this to her, too? Maybe Jonesey was right, there wasn’t any fucking point….
“Over here.”
A metal cabinet opened. In its darkness, Bad Penny’s eyes glowed. I looked back at the hand, then at her again.
“Christ, I thought you were…”
“Please. I ditched my tag and got myself out of that room. I think that alarm’s for me. Can you help me get out of here?”
Still not believing what I was seeing, I shook my head. “Not right now. They’re coming from both sides.”
The double doors at the end of the hall opened. I grabbed the metal cabinet door and tried to pull myself in next to Penny.
“Fuck off!” she squealed. “Find your own hiding space!”
“No time,” I said. She kicked, but let me fold myself in.
“This is ridic—”
“Shhh!”
Four black-shoed figures marched by. One wore brown pants, but the other three were in uniform. Not the black the security guards wore, striped dark blue. Cops. I struggled against an old instinct to feel relief. I reminded myself I was a chak, and worse, wanted for killing one of their own.
When all four men froze, I thought they’d spotted me, but then they rushed farther down the hall. It was Jonesey they’d seen. He was still standing in front of Hudson’s gurney, snapping pictures and raging.
“I’m a dragon, I’m a goddamn dragon.” His dry voice quivered like Hudson’s innards, not so the voice that interrupted. That one was wet, full of a more natural bile, and ridiculously familiar:
“Drop that fucking cell phone, before I shove it down your maggot-infested throat!”
The man in brown was Tom Booth. What the hell was he doing here? I hadn’t seen where the bus took us. Could we be in Fort Hammer?
I didn’t have time to wonder about Penny and Booth showing up at the same time, before a third coincidence happened. My cell phone rang. I’d forgotten I even had the damn thing.
Penny and I twisted round each other so I could get to it before it rang again. Booth was busy screaming at Jonesey, and the alarm was still on, but the phone was loud. It was in the middle of the second ring when I finally snagged it between two fingers and pulled it out.
Who the fuck? I looked at the CID.
Misty was calling.
Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.
19
Frantic, Bad Penny jutted her chin at the phone. She wanted to know why I hadn’t turned it off yet, why I hadn’t stopped the ringing that put us both in danger. But Misty was calling.
Outside, Jonesey resisted the police as best he could, yammering about civil rights and dragons. “It’s like you don’t even get that your own rage is destroying the system you think you’re protecting!”
Booth responded with increasingly colorful descriptions of what would happen to which of his orifices. “You don’t lie down in two seconds, I’m going to shove your arm so far up your ass, you can grab your own tongue.”
They were shouting loudly, they could miss the sound of a quiet conversation.
I looked at Penny and mouthed: I’ve got to get this…
Are you kidding? she mouthed back.
Realizing I wasn’t, she gave me a swift kick that rattled the cabinet door, then stretched both hands to grab the phone. Her elbows pinned in the cramped space, she was at a disadvantage. I was able to keep her little fingers back with the flat of my arm. As the phone rang a third time, I flipped it open.
“Misty,” I whispered.
Her
words were mixed with digital gaps: “…sound…away … you…out…blue…yet?”
I shifted, trying to improve the signal.
Jonesey was alternating quotes from the Bible with The Lord of the Rings, but Booth had gone quiet. Had he heard me?
“Mother of God.”
No, he’d spotted Hudson. Processing that would distract anyone. I got another bar.
“Misty, you all right? Where are you?”
“It’s damp, dark, and dirty and I’m sitting next to a stain that looks like two dancing rabbits. Well, one looks like it’s dancing, the other looks like it’s being dragged along. I nearly cracked the phone when I sat on it, pulled it out, saw your number, and thought it was one of those signs you don’t believe in. Like fate.”
She was talking fast, but the tone was dull. Her voice was hoarse. She was using.
“I thought you were with Mary.”
“She’s here. This was her idea.”
“Her idea?”
“After she found out her cancer’s stage four, she was dying for some cat’s pee. So, I said, fuck it. Fate. Like Chester dying, like me dialing you with my butt crack. And, speaking of crack…”
She made a sound she probably thought was laughter, but didn’t play that way.
Even if Misty had given up on saving herself, Penny hadn’t. When I’d shifted to improve the signal, I’d also given her some elbow room. She grabbed my wrist, brought her other hand up, and tried to take the phone. She was strong for a dead kid, or maybe I was weak for a dead man. Either way, I managed to bring the phone back to my ear.
“Misty, maybe you should turn yourself in.”
Penny bared her teeth like she was going to bite if I didn’t hang up.
“Ha! Do you have any idea how much more drugs cost in prison?”
Penny seethed. She pointed to her ears and mouthed, Listen, you idiot…
I thought she wanted me to listen to her, but she was pointing at the metal door in a deeply agitated way. It wasn’t just Booth who’d gone quiet. I couldn’t hear Jonesey either. What I did hear was the slap and thud of a body being punched and tossed around. Jonesey had lost the argument.
“Can’t talk now, Misty.”
She didn’t take it well. “Oh, is this a bad time? I’ll call back after I’ve OD’d. I have no idea what I expected from you. Do you even know what the blue shit is yet? The stuff that destroyed my life?”
Penny lunged for the phone again. I moved my foot to hold her in place.
“A little. It’s from ChemBet. Jonesey thought it was some kind of snake oil that could bring chakz back to life, until…urgh!”
The kid had grabbed my bad ankle and twisted like she meant to break it off. My back against the side of the cabinet, I pressed harder into the kid’s chest.
“Is it something we could use on Chester?”
“Misty, don’t even think that!”
“Shut up, asshole!” Penny said.
I didn’t realize how loud I’d been until the cabinet door opened.
Booth watched as one man dragged me along the floor. It took two to get Penny out. She was like a cornered pit bull, still kicking even when they got her on her feet.
Her eyes brimmed over with hatred, not for the police, for me. “Idiot! Fucking idiot!”
She cursed me so long and so hard even Booth was impressed. He let her go on for a good minute before saying, “Enough. Shut her up.”
A puffy-eyed rookie with straw-colored hair tried to shove a gag in her mouth. He nearly lost his finger. The poor guy’s face blanched when he saw it was bleeding from the bite.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “It’s not 28 Weeks Later. There’s no infection that’ll turn you into one of us. You might want to get a tetanus booster, though.”
With a grunt from Booth, another man moved in and held her mouth open as the straw man reluctantly wedged the gag in place, then followed up with a set of handcuffs. When she kicked again, Booth pushed her to the ground.
As if it would do any good, I said, “Easy, she’s just a kid.”
“All done with the dead strippers, Mann?” Booth said. He grabbed my phone. “Cradle-grave robbing now?”
As the alpha dog put the cell to his ear, I tried to look submissive. “It’s Misty. She’s all broken up about Chester. Maybe you could try to find out where she is, for his sake?”
Booth paused. His men looked at him expectantly. Chester was well liked, even if his taste in women made him suspect. With a grudging nod, Booth spoke in an ever-so-slightly softer tone.
“Hello?” He looked at the display. “She hung up.”
“Call her back. You know people are after us because of that stupid briefcase. If they find her before you do…”
Wrong move. Not humble enough. “I’m your social secretary now?”
I lowered my head so much I wasn’t sure I’d get it back up again.
He tossed the phone to the cop with the scarecrow hair. “Get the last number. See if it’s got a GPS.”
It was something at least. With the cops here, I thought all the running and hiding was over. As they cuffed me, a dozen questions came to mind, but I could ask only one at a time, and doubted I’d get answers for any.
“What brings you boys here? The lab next door complain about a noisy party?”
Booth’s eyes fixed on me. “You shamble into the damndest places, don’t you?” He waved a hand at Jonesey. Like Penny, he was bound and gagged on the floor. “And your coffin-buddy’s a regular Weegee, taking photos of proprietary work.”
“I didn’t realize torture was considered intellectual property,” I said.
He hesitated, unsure, then said, “You can’t torture the dead.”
“For pity’s sake, Tom, you don’t believe that.” I aimed my cuffed hands at Hudson’s body. “Hate me, hate chakz, but you can’t tell me you’re all right with that.”
He didn’t look, but when I did, I noticed something different about the gurney. “You had him covered with a sheet. What’s that? Respect for the not-quite-dead?”
Booth hissed. “I didn’t want anyone getting sick. You’ll see how much respect I have for you once we book you on murder charges.”
“You know I didn’t kill Chester…”
“Get them all back to the van.”
The scarecrow started dragging me away. “Booth, who’s yanking your chain? The mayor’s office? Some big donor? Don’t tell me you’re working for ChemBet, now?”
“You want a gag, too? Jensen…”
A new voice clipped his command. It was low for a woman’s, sweet in a practiced way, but dripping with something darker.
“I’m afraid the situation’s a little more complicated, Chief Detective. You and your men are trespassing. I happen to know you don’t have a warrant.”
Looking all comfy in the folds of her lab coat, Rebecca Maruta stood dead center in the open double doors. Have to hand it to her, her outfit coordinated nicely with the security guards behind her. Her rubber gloves matched their black, and the bit of yellow on their shirt epaulets was the same shade as her coat.
There were seven I could count, but there could have been more in the hall behind them, all hired, no doubt, based on their resemblance to professional linebackers. They also all carried MP5s. They’re 9mm submachine guns, German design, most widely used machine pistol in the world. Funny what I remember sometimes.
Despite the sudden show of firepower, Booth stayed calm. He probably couldn’t believe they’d actually threaten police officers. Still, rather than take his customary Neanderthal tone, he answered evenly, “Probable cause. What with all the alarms, we naturally assumed there was a crime in progress.”
Her lips briefly curled into an arrogant half smile, but she quickly dropped it for a fake look of sympathy. “No crime. One of our subjects got loose. Putting aside the fact that you’re out of your jurisdiction, it’s half a mile from the grounds entrance to the building. What were you doing here in the first place?”
He shrugged. “I had a few questions about some DNA samples I thought you or someone from your staff might help with.”
“I’d be delighted. But some other time perhaps? You can call my assistant for an appointment.”
Booth nodded. “Okay. We’ll take our perps and go, then.”
The second he moved, she inhaled sharply. “Oh, that is a problem. These are all volunteer subjects, under our auspices. What are the charges?”
“Resisting arrest.”
Funny how he didn’t mention I was wanted for murder. Was he hoping she didn’t realize who I was? Freaky to think it, but was Booth trying to save us?
If he was, the frigid glare that took Maruta’s face told me it wouldn’t be easy.
“Yes, yes, yes. Much as I enjoy the delightful tension that comes from suppressing resistance, as you said yourself a moment ago, our work is proprietary. I can’t allow anyone who’s seen the lab to simply leave. Especially Hessius Mann.”
I gave her a look.
“Don’t bother pretending to be shocked. It’s boring. I discovered him when he requested a transfer to the Chambers facility. Given the ridiculous disguise he wore until recently, I’m surprised you didn’t pick him up sooner for being an eyesore. Who knows what he’s discovered while he was wandering about?”
“Then why’d you let me in?” I said.
“Shut up, Mann,” Booth said.
It may have been a reflex, but I think he was warning me.
Regardless, Maruta talked to me directly, her tone like a mother admonishing her bad boy. “I think you know. You have something of mine. Something old, something new, something stolen, something blue. Maybe you don’t recall it, poor thing, and here I am being rude. A briefcase? A little beat up perhaps?” She made a rectangular shape in the air with her hands. “About yay by yo?”
Booth seemed fascinated by the exchange, but finally remembered he was there. “Mann’s wanted in a cop killing. The only place he’s headed is back to the station.”
I was starting to think that was the best place to be.
Like a lizard-man peeling away a human mask, Maruta’s sympathy vanished into that half smile. “You continue to misunderstand, Chief Detective. I can’t allow anyone who has seen our work here to simply leave. You really should have knocked before you came in.”
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