Agent Zero

by Lilith Saintcrow

  That was the first night he’d followed her home, and she’d walked with her head down all the way from the subway, wiping at her cheeks and sniffing quietly. He’d kept repeating to himself that he was just doing it as an exercise. Just practicing.

  He surfaced from memory and scanned the diner again. The rush was over; bubblegum brunette had a couple at a table all the way across the diner. Tattoo Girl had vanished. Holly finished filling a napkin container, grabbed the coffeepot and darted a glance in his direction.

  The closer she got, the more that maddening smell teased at him. It wasn’t fertility, it wasn’t danger, and it wasn’t interest. It was something else. Something good, and he inhaled as deeply as he could, stealing while it lasted.

  “Hey.” A tired smile. There were shadows under her eyes. Sleeplessness, or something else? “Need a refill?”

  He shook his head. The world swam for a moment, came back. He’d start cannibalizing reserves in a little while. Sleep was definitely best. This close, he was almost dizzy. Was he sniffing like a coke fiend? No, she’d probably be looking at him strangely if he was.

  “Okay.” She paused, examining him. “You look...a little tired. Maybe you should catch some rest, mister.”

  “Reese.” It surprised him. “It’s Reese. I think I should.” Very carefully, he pushed the chair back. She was only average height, just up to his shoulder. “Thank you. For letting me sit. It must seem pretty strange.”

  “We see strange in here all the time.” She took two steps back, not precisely nervous. Just like a doe on delicate legs, moving restlessly. Coffee sploshed inside the glass pot, and that fragrance spilled over him in a wave. “Want me to call you a cab? You really do not... I mean, you look a little pale.”

  The way she said it probably meant sick. “I’ll be fine.” He dug for the wallet, not breaking eye contact. Stay here. Just for a couple more seconds. Nothing good ever lasted, but if he could get just a few more seconds, it would help, right? “Just, you know. Jet lag.”

  He didn’t even look at the bill he laid on the table. Neither did she. Instead, she studied him, a faint line between her eyebrows. A tinge of lemon-yellow worry to that marvelous scent now, and he couldn’t think. She looked worried. About him, and he was a virtual stranger.

  Christ. What would it be like, to care that much about random passersby? It sounded exhausting. Maybe that was why she looked so haggard.

  She nodded, the worry a little sharper now. “Maybe you should drink some of that coffee. You know, keep you awake until you can go to bed. Jet lag’ll keep you turned around if it can.”

  “Thanks.” He forced himself to take a step to the side, another. She was still watching him, and the concern was full-blown, now.

  He wasn’t blending in. This was dangerous, it was flat-out unprofessional, and he could not for the life of him figure out why the hell he was doing it.

  “Thank you,” he said again, and turned about-face, as if he was on the parade ground. He could hear her heartbeat, murmuring along under the traffic, and even when he got outside in the stinging-cold rain his head didn’t clear.

  He made it back to the apartment, forcing himself to check and double-check everything, and fell onto the bed, into velvet blackness.

  That maddening smell followed him down.

  * * *

  “I don’t like it.” Holly frowned at the table, crossing her arms. Her back ached, a deep drilling pain.

  “It’s forty-eight bucks for nothing. Take it.” Barbara cracked her gum again. Doug hummed something in the kitchen, obviously over his morning snit.

  “Who leaves a fifty for a cup of coffee? He looked hungover, Barb. Or sick.” Probably a junkie, one who hasn’t gone down the drain yet. Bad news. He seemed too...with-it, though, to be on drugs.

  “So? He left it, it’s yours now. Pay your light bill. Donate it to charity—I’ve been looking at a pair of nice shoes lately.” Barbara’s nicotine-yellowed grin lit up her whole face. “I think he probably likes you.”

  Now she knew what a slug felt like when salt was poured on it. Everything in her curled up at the thought of someone else who might miss her when she finally disappeared. “Oh, God. You see them everywhere.”

  “Not my fault you’re terminally single. I keep trying, you know. When the fleet’s in there’s good pickings. Can’t be gun-shy forever, Holls.”

  Terminally single. If you only knew. “If I wanted to date, I would.” How ironic was it that she didn’t even want to right now? She was just too tired, and whatever time she had left was better spent elsewhere. Holly didn’t talk about the divorce, either, especially with inveterate gossipers. If Barbara wanted to draw conclusions, well, let her. The fifty lay there, bearded President Grant looking vaguely worried and disapproving. Just like her father. The temptation to take it was well-nigh irresistible, even though she had her arms firmly folded.

  She finally swept it up, and Barbara blew a vile pink bubble in triumph.

  Holly restrained the urge to roll her eyes. “I’ll put it in the envelope. I’ll talk to him about it if he comes back.”

  Barb’s grin probably wasn’t meant as predatory, just the glee of a congenital meddler. “Which he will. Seriously, Holl, I think he likes you. He’s always watching.”

  I noticed, thanks. “Creeptastic.” She sighed. “You want fills or spills?”

  “I’ll do both if you clean the board. When Ginny gets off break she can do the restrooms.”

  “Fine.” It wasn’t a fair division of labor, but it got them off the subject of Mr. Watch Her and Leave a Huge Tip. For now, because Barb would no doubt circle back to it. She was like a terrier: just couldn’t leave anything alone, and since she had no shortage of boyfriends, she apparently wanted to share the wealth. A woman wasn’t complete without something, apparently, and Barb felt it her sworn duty to help Holly realize her potential.

  Getting so tired she never even registered the lack of sex was an unexpected side benefit to being...sick. Always look on the bright side, Holly. Daddy would be proud.

  Now there was an unwelcome thought.

  The ancient cash register glittered under fluorescents as Holly wiped everything down, bleach water stinging her raw, much-washed hands. The next time she passed that slice of counter, she dug in the shelves underneath, pushing aside the mittens someone had left last week and stacks of fresh and leftover order pads. Register tape, fire extinguisher, a pair of rain boots that fit nobody employed here now—a real wonderland of the lost and just-in-case, most of it so familiar she didn’t even see it anymore.

  The envelope was right where she’d left it. She pulled it out, frowned at the numbers scribbled on the front, and tucked the fifty in. The twenty went into her tip pocket, a reassuring weight, and she rang the coffee through, sighing a little as another twinge went through her lumbar region. Even cushioned shoes didn’t help. It’s a symptom, Holly. Deal with it.

  She was about to put the envelope back when she stopped, grabbed a pen, and wrote Reese on the back flap. It went back into the dark, and she told herself it wasn’t anything. Just a name.

  Still, it was more than she’d known before. Maybe Barb wasn’t the only waitress at Crossroads who liked a mystery. And with so little time left on her clock, why couldn’t a girl think about what she pleased?

  “Goddamn it,” Ginny yelled from the other side of the diner, “why do I have to do restrooms again?”

  * * *

  A single file folder was all it took to finish destroying Jacob Heming’s career. He was the first to find out, and his reaction—to pour a nice stiff drink with shaking hands—was perhaps too cliché for his taste, but it went unwitnessed. No, here he was in a crappy little apartment instead of his house on the bay, because Connie had gotten the house and alimony, most of every paycheck from even this cushy position, and even the do
g, for God’s sake. The windows here didn’t look out on anything but Sixteenth Street and headlights, the rumble of traffic a constant reminder that he’d married that bitch and was now taking his lumps.

  He poured himself another two fingers of Glenfiddich. Might as well, what the hell. He turned around, a balding man with glasses in a pair of baggy boxers and his undershirt, the garters holding his socks up rubbing at his calves, a familiar, ignored irritation.

  You weren’t supposed to take charts home. Data breach, security issues, the whole nine. But you couldn’t keep up with the damn paperwork unless you spent hours in those cube offices, with Bronson breathing his halitosis over your shoulder and that ghostlike secretary of his moving silently in his wake, and the damn nurses skipping out on work to go do whatever it was they did—probably chase all the brawny military types.

  Just like Connie and that tennis coach. He actually listens to me, Jacob.

  Why anyone would listen to her cheese grater of a voice was beyond Hemings, despite the fact that he’d graduated summa cum laude. He’d left the university even though he was possibly about to get tenure, because the offer from the defense contractor had been too good to ignore...and now here he was.

  And there, on the bed, was a pile of innocent-looking file folders, all the tasteful mauve that said patient. It also said anonymized and safe, and while he might be reprimanded for taking those off the base to work on, he was sure some of the others had also taken one or two home to finish. They weren’t the problem. The problem was that thin thread of crimson in the middle.

  A red file, in the middle of the patient files. How the hell had it gotten in there? Red files were scan-counted at the end of the day. They would know one was missing. Good luck slipping it back in, too—they’d be on high alert. Donna at the front desk would begin checking IDs and passes again, like the officious little cocker spaniel she was. No, Dr. Heming, I’m afraid I can’t go with you Saturday. Thanks for the invite, though!

  He scratched under his belly, sipped at the scotch. God’s perfect drink, full of wonder. It never let you down, like a basketball scholarship gone because of one little hazing incident, or a tenure position because someone else had slept with a board member or two, or a blonde, bubbly trophy wife who forgot her proper place.

  There were all sorts of things that...bothered him. Something military—the men were all young, strapping and added sir to every sentence. The tolerance tests were thought provoking. Allergy tests, the higher-ups said. As if allergies were a threat big enough to warrant these kinds of resources thrown at them. Really, Heming was a glorified PA in this job; the research facility was in White Oaks. Or at least, that’s where the samples were sent for processing. All Heming did was take the vitals and ask the checkup questions and write the prissy little reports to Bronson’s exacting specifications.

  They were his patients, right? Six, Four, Seven, Eight, Twelve and Fourteen—where were all the other numbers? And those scratches and scrapes on them, healing up so nicely.

  So quickly.

  They were his patients, and he had a right to educate himself, didn’t he? It would make his treatment more effective.

  He turned back to the dresser, poured himself another scotch. The silver-framed picture next to the bottle was the wedding photo—oh, the cash he’d shelled out for Connie to have that white wedding she wanted—and their wide, fake smiles glared at him from under a few months’ worth of dust.

  “I’m a doctor, dammit.”

  Nobody spoke up to disagree.

  Jacob sighed, strode across the room and settled on the creaking bed. The folders slid around sloppily on the crocheted bedspread his own mother had given him. Brown and yellow and blue, and tacky as hell. But a man’s arthritic mother had made it — he couldn’t very well throw it out like Connie had wanted, could he?

  He pulled the red file out, lingeringly, from the middle of the pile. Classified stamped across its cover, the black ink faintly smeared. Maybe that weed-smoking, perpetually lazy bitch nurse Fleming had just grabbed a stack in a hurry. Who knew?

  What mattered was, it was here now. Why couldn’t a doctor take a look? There wasn’t any harm in it. Maybe tomorrow he could slip it somewhere, or even throw it away.

  You’re an idiot, Jacob. It was Connie’s voice, loud and nasal. She was so pretty, and had been so sweet in the beginning. A little two-bit horse doctor.

  Well, he’d graduated top of his class. He could find a way to get rid of some paper.

  He flipped the folder open and began scanning.

  A few minutes later, the glass of scotch tipped out of his hand and splashed onto the cheap carpet. His heart beat, a harsh thin tattoo in his ears and throat and wrists.

  Virology control, one sheet was titled. Tolerances, another. Infection vector, a third.

  He kept reading, mouth dry and heart pounding, while the stink of spilled alcohol simmered in his lonely apartment.

  * * *

  Same medical suite as last time, bare concrete walls and supplies locked down in neatly organized, color-coded bins. They took blood, swabbed his cheek, poked and prodded. Looked at the scrapes on his hands, already closed up. Crackle of the paper onesie they gave him, the disinfectant smell overpowering. The nurse was a lean-faced young tomboy, Dr. Heming the same sour-faced civilian douche bag he’d always been, his hair combed over his bald spot in strings and his lab coat indifferently laundered.

  Heming’s steel-rimmed glasses almost matched Bronson’s. He asked all the usual questions. Any headaches? Any ringing in the ears? Change in sleeping patterns? Change in digestion?

  No, no, no. Other than the fact that he’d been drinking water that would give a tourist dysentery, no.

  “You’re a little lighter than we like.” Heming peered over his glasses. “Been living rough?”

  “Yessir.” They said that with the little bastards swimming around in your blood you could even digest grass, but he hadn’t had to prove it yet. Not even on the BS scavenger hunt meant to test his survival capabilities in the wilderness.

  No, he’d eaten meat all through that. Catching it yourself was supposed to make it taste better.

  Heming nodded thoughtfully, paging through the mauve-jacketed file. He never slipped up and left the paperwork where Reese could get his hands on it. Maybe one day—hope sprang eternal and all that. “Well. You’re scheduled for psych after we’re done here. We have a couple tolerance tests this time, and an extra blood draw. Did you sign the consent form?”

  “Yessir.” Like I could refuse. It was just going to be uncomfortable, whatever they injected him with fighting with the...

  The virus. The happy little buggers who made him stronger, faster...and smarter. That was the main thing, right?

  “Good, good. Well, we’ll get those done, then you can go talk to the headshrinkers.” Heming grinned as though the thought pleased him. Maybe it did. But under that pleasure was a sour whiff of fear. The man was sweating, and Reese filed that away. It wasn’t usual, but what medical man wouldn’t get a little shaky around an agent? Especially if they were poking one with needles. Even an idiot might wonder why he was in such great shape. The disclosure agreements, the high pay, the security arrangements—

  An internal shrug. There were better things to think about. If he got out of here before 1600 he could get offbase and get in position for the walk home. It would be good practice.

  Sure. Just keep telling yourself it’s practice.

  “Yessir.” Reese caught the tomboy nurse’s frown. She didn’t think much of Heming either, and deliberately moved away from him every time he stepped close. Smart girl.

  He’d slipped up. Told Holly his name. Not a cover, not even a fiction. His name. What was he going to do about that? Make a confession? As if they’d put him in the stockade.

  Maybe they would. Maybe they had on
e especially for agents.

  Your head’s not a comfortable place these days, Reese. Besides, he shouldn’t be thinking about Holly. He should be paying attention to the here and now and giving them what they wanted so he could get offbase and see her again.

  Heming coughed a little. The sweatsmell intensified, a sourness of bad laundry and nervousness, the very antithesis of Holly’s clean, beautiful scent. Maybe the doc knew more about the program’s other side than was comfortable, too. Either way, not Reese’s problem. “All right. Marty here will be back with the doses in a few minutes. Pleasure seeing you again.”

  “Yessir,” Reese murmured. He watched Heming try to pinch the girl’s bottom as he crowded her out the door, and his jaw tightened. Officious little prick.

  * * *

  He made it offbase just in time, and when quitting hour rolled around he was in position. The employee door gave out onto an alley; his vantage point provided him a good clear field of vision. When she stepped out, laughing over her shoulder at something said inside, his throat went dry. He had to wait for the breeze to shift before he could get a whiff of her, and the jolt went through him high and hard. His arms itched from whatever they’d injected. He was due back for another blood draw in forty-eight, to see if the invaders had eaten whatever it was. Heming had ordered more than the usual vampire bites.

  Holly hitched her bag up higher on her shoulder, walked quickly with her head down against the fine misting rain. The crowd swallowed her; she headed upstreet for the Mierkele Street station.

  The subway was glare and noise; he got the car behind hers and watched through the glass, hanging on to a pole as she settled into a seat and opened a battered paperback with a red cover. It took a little while before he could figure out what it was. Raymond Chandler, a collection.

  Interesting. The cars weren’t packed, and every once in a while a man would glance her way. Those glances bounced off her obliviousness. She didn’t make eye contact, didn’t look up and the don’t come near me vibrated off her in waves.