Agent Zero

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Maybe she should change her mind. It was her day off, and she had better things to do. There were the dishes, for one thing, and laundry to haul up the block, and figuring out next month’s food budget. Although working at the Crossroads meant she’d never go hungry, there was only so much greasy spoon you could take, and if it was one of the days she couldn’t eat, she preferred to dry-heave at home.

  Of course, she had her plans to step neatly out of her life like a woman sliding out of her slippers as she got into bed, but all the planning in the world didn’t mean everything would go smoothly. Life had taught her that much, at least.

  Why was she so nervous? It was just coffee. It made sense that he was just shy...but still, there were things that bothered her. She couldn’t think of them just now, but she was sure there were things that bothered her.

  Maybe it was just that she couldn’t let anything good through the door after Phillip.

  God, are you even thinking about him now? You’re divorced. Let it go.

  What was the word for feeling sad even when someone who was nothing but a user was out of your life? Was there even a word for it? Maybe she was nervous because Reese might be...well, decent, and she wasn’t going to be around long enough to—

  A horn blared to her left, out in traffic, but she didn’t even glance back, shaking her head to get all the second-guessing out. I shouldn’t have agreed to this. I should turn around and go home.

  If she had, she would have seen the black van in the right-hand lane, slowing down as it reached the end of a line of parked cars. In half a block Montrose Street narrowed, the parking lane whittled away to nothing. It was the same black van that had been circling her route to the Starbucks on Montrose and Fifteenth, but then again, vans were as common as colds, in the city.

  Even black ones.

  Should have picked a place closer to home. Should actually go home. This is crazy. She sighed, jamming her hands deeper in the pockets of her gray hoodie. Picking a place closer to home wasn’t a good idea, though, if you were a woman alone in the big city. She could turn around right now; it was only a bus ride to—

  Someone bumped into her, hard, from behind. Holly glanced up, the curse on her lips dying as she realized the crowd wasn’t bad enough to warrant that sort of thing, and that it wasn’t a bump. More like someone was pushing her, and—

  “What the fu—” she began, but he’d already shoved her across the sidewalk. It was a black van, the paint job neither glossy nor dusty, and she was bundled in like a bag of laundry.

  She couldn’t even scream. A gloved hand popped over her mouth, her hands yanked back and a slight zipping sound—something bit her wrists, cruelly—and by the time Holly realized she was being kidnapped she had already been jabbed with a needle the size of the DeriCorp skyscraper downtown. Right through her jeans, too, and it stung. Her right buttcheek promptly went numb, but she found her wits and began to kick.

  She was still trying to scream when the chemical took effect, and everything went black.

  * * *

  She surfaced, groggy, blinking, the world smears of wet color on a glass plate. It felt like only a few seconds, but she was now sitting up, at least relatively. That was, if “sitting up” meant “slumped in something hard and uncomfortable,” and her mouth was cotton dry, too.

  What just... I was walking down the street, and then...

  Her head was stuffed with something dry and crackling, and all she could do was listen.

  She heard her own voice, slurred and slow as a sleepwalker’s. Questions being asked. It was important that she concentrate, if she didn’t concentrate bad things would happen.

  Sudden light searing her eyes. She whimpered, and remembered her name.

  Holly. I’m Holly.

  With that came other things. She’d been just walking down Montrose, about to go to a coffee date. With...who?

  A sharp, frustrated sound. “How much did they dose her with? She’s useless.” Male, a light tenor, each syllable precise and crisp. Very businesslike, and somehow...cruel.

  “Just let her metabolize.” Another male, this voice deeper, and somehow...anxious? Worried?

  What the hell? She was in a chair. The light was too bright, but her eyes wouldn’t close properly.

  “We may not have time. Whose bright idea was it to scoop her up?” Flipping paper. The precise tenor voice sounded distinctly underimpressed.

  “We’re thinking Six—”

  “Oh, yes. Tell me again how that happened?”

  “The civilian doctor went A-45. Pumped a nerve agent on the—”

  “That was rhetorical, Caldwell. Three, do we have anything?”

  “Nothing yet.” This was a new voice—contralto, female and weirdly uninflected. Sounded like a teacher Holly had once hated. “We had a ping on him near the site where we picked her up. A meet, maybe.”

  She concentrated on sitting up and blinking. It sounded almost doable.

  “There’s nothing here. No gray-side contact, nothing.” The tenor sounded disgusted. “It wasn’t necessary to pick her up, for God’s sake.”

  “Protocol, sir.” The woman sounded like a robot.

  More shuffling paper. “What a mess. Caldwell, can’t we give her something to wake her up?”

  “If we want a dead body on our hands, sure. They overdosed her, medics say, anything else and her heart might shut down. She’s lighter than she looks.”

  “Fine. Three?”

  A slight noise of shifting cloth, and the woman spoke again. “We either keep subject until she metabolizes, or we return her. We watch, and see if Six bites... I calculate ten percent odds he may.”

  “He’s probably not even in the city anymore. Give him another twenty-four and he’ll be out of the country.” It would be hard for the tenor to sound any more disgusted.

  “Then this subject is collateral damage. A forty percent chance of breach, given Six’s apparent interest in her and subsequent events.” The woman was very calm. Her voice...it just wasn’t right. Too flat, weirdly uninflected.

  The tenor sighed. “Fine, fine. But put her back, for God’s sake. I don’t want to sign the paperwork for a cremation.”

  This, Holly decided, is a dream. One she would wake up from in a little bit. Then she’d hop in the shower, check the clock and hurry to make her coffee date.

  That’s what I was doing, right?

  The light faded, receding down a long tunnel. That was nice, because it was giving her a pounding headache through the cotton filling her skull. Everything turned warm and gooey, and she slid down a long greased tunnel into velvet blackness.

  * * *

  Four calls logged on the desk, three on his phone, but he’d been busy, dammit. Bronson toggled the transmitter and was only halfway gratified when it immediately went through.

  Control must have been waiting.

  Yep. He had been. “What the hell is happening out there?” Control did not sound happy, even through the identity-protecting modifications.

  Bronson sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He finished settling in the chair, and was glad his hand would cover his expression. “Civilian doctor went A-45. Thought the operatives were contagious. Had himself convinced they were going to infect the whole population, that he was going to be a big damn American hero and stop it. He’s in interrogation now with Caldwell.”

  “Well.” Control paused. “This is...unfortunate.”

  He was used to the man’s habit of understatement, but this was a little much. Bronson pinched a little harder. Next Control was going to ask how the hell the doctor had cottoned on, and—

  “I’d hoped we had a little more time.” Control’s sigh was audible even through the filtering. “We’re looking at a mess, Dick.”

  The world rocked underneath him. Brons
on’s hand fell away from his face. Sweat began at the small of his back, his underarms prickling, and he was suddenly glad this office didn’t have any damn windows. As it was, he already felt horribly, nastily exposed. “You mean...oh, damn.”

  “There was always a chance,” Control said, pedantically.

  “Fifteen percent,” Three murmured. “Mutation, that is. Communicability chance is even lower, unless—”

  “Shut up.” Bronson didn’t need to hear that. He leaned back in the chair. “Jesus Christ.”

  “The Gibraltar virus mutated. The eggheads are calling the new virus version Gemini. Some of the operatives were finding nice, cozy little socks for their wieners and thinking they were in love. Apparently the girls they were boning started showing...signs, and turned up infected. Three so far, one liquidated with the operative responsible for infection, the other two...it’s a mess.”

  “Four percent,” Three said, softly. “Unless...” She stopped when Bronson glanced at her, but he wasn’t sure if it was obeying the unspoken order, or that something else had occurred in that computer she called a brain.

  Control kept going. “They’re going off the rez all over. I was hoping you had some good news.”

  “Huh. Well, we’re containing here. We have one off the rez, and are taking steps to regain contact. Eight’s back from Eastern Europe—”

  “Ukraine,” Three corrected, quietly.

  Bronson’s temper almost snapped. He couldn’t yell with Control on the line, but good God, he was about to demote the computer-brained bitch to a secretary and be done with it. “Will you shut up? As it is, the only one who isn’t causing problems is Three, here.” And she’s beginning to get on my nerves.

  “Well, that’s a silver lining. I’m sending resource allowances as we speak. Get yours in, by whatever means necessary. Prep them for transport. Mama’s calling the chickens home. They’ll be reeducated, or liquidated.”

  “What about the civvie doctor?”

  “Disappear any civilian noise you can, fox the rest.”

  Really? “They’re pulling the plug?” That loose, squirrely feeling in his guts couldn’t be fear. It had to be the mozzarella sticks. At least he’d given the right order when it came to Six’s little waitress.

  “Not quite. We want to salvage what we can, but we need time and a little bit of quiet.”

  Well, now, wasn’t that a relief. “Who’s on firewall?”

  “You don’t need to know. Suffice to say our investors are chagrined, but not angry.”

  “That’s...good. What about Three here?” Although he couldn’t care less. It was probably time to move the nest egg offshore, and start making plans. Serving one’s country was a fine and honorable thing, but getting cut loose and flushed wasn’t.

  Control paused. Three didn’t move. Ice-cold, a woman reduced to a terminal.

  “She’s the program’s greatest success so far. Keep her secured.”

  “Yes, sir.” That would be easy. Unlike the boys, she was never any trouble, except for when she started correcting him, for God’s sake.

  “You’re a good man, Dick. Clean your part of this up, and certain people will be very grateful.”

  “Ten-four.” My part of this? Already spreading the blame, you bastard.

  Control apparently thought that was that, because he disconnected. The screen went blank, Bronson sagged in his chair, and he suddenly wished for a bottle of vodka. A nip of something hard would go down really well right about now.

  “Lying.” Three’s soft, uninflected verdict. “He’s lying.”

  “Three?” He had to work not to shout. “Unless I ask you a question, you keep your damn mouth shut.”

  No response. He didn’t look at her, but if he had, he might have seen a very small, very satisfied smile on her doll-like face. It was there and gone in a moment, a flicker of emotion shocking on such a blank canvas.

  “Okay,” Bronson said. “Okay.” All he had to do was get Six back. Four and Twelve were already onbase; it would be easy to scoop them up. Eight could be called in and that civilian bitch he was seeing tied up, and all would be well. All Rich Bronson really had to worry about was Six—Reese, that was his name. The civilian girl he’d been stalking was already dead, no worries there.

  Another silver lining. They were few and far between in this messed-up situation.

  Bronson sighed again and reached for the desk phone. He’d already forgotten Three was in the room.

  * * *

  No sign of her. He waited as long as he dared, throttling the rabbit-run of panic under his skin, then hit the streets. The back of his neck itched, telling him he’d just avoided something—instinct or his perceptions picking up on something too small to be consciously noted. Maybe they were the same thing. Or maybe the itch was just the little helpers in his bloodstream dying off.

  Quit thinking like that.

  Maybe he was supposed to think she’d changed her mind, but he had both files tucked in his backpack. It was far likelier that she was screaming in a padded cell somewhere, doped on something meant to get her to babble about him. It wouldn’t do any good—she didn’t know anything, and he’d contaminated her just by going back to the diner once too often. Who knew they were watching so goddamn closely?

  He should get the hell out of town. That was the safest option, and the most unacceptable one.

  Because it left her behind, just like a discarded shirt, and that wasn’t...what?

  It just plain wasn’t acceptable. So he visited a drugstore, and an hour and a half later found him in a familiar, run-down neighborhood. He ducked into the little bodega she often stopped in and bought a black baseball cap, put it on. Just in case. There was also an emergency exit at the back of the store that might prove useful.

  The proprietor, a graying Sikh, barely glanced away from his flickering television to take Reese’s money. The street outside looked normal, no breath of surveillance, and that was bad. If they weren’t watching, did it mean they already had her? Or did it mean he was slipping, since he hadn’t thought they were watching him trail Holly?

  Don’t rabbit. Walking down the street as if he belonged, stepping through the sudden glare as the sun came out from behind scudding clouds. The wind freshened, holding a promise of rain later, and he could smell faint traces of her as soon as he stepped inside the apartment building. The front door wasn’t the greatest way in, but at least he’d scoped this place thoroughly.

  He spent a few moments at the emergency exit at the end of her hall, breathing in the stale fug of a dejected apartment building in the dead time of afternoon, when even babies were napping.

  With that done, he went back to her door—4D. Was now the time to admit he’d wondered just how easy the locks would be to coax? She had a dead bolt, thank God, but it wasn’t enough.

  Less than sixty seconds passed before he turned the knob and stepped over the threshold. The smell was there, wrapping all around him like a warm blanket. A rush of images—black hair, her smoky eyes, that little smile she sometimes wore. What would it be like to see her really happy? Baking bread, fresh strawberries, the tang of an adult woman...

  He shook his head, almost staggering. A small kitchen opened up immediately to his right, ruthlessly scrubbed and gleaming. She wasn’t looking for her security deposit back, it looked like, because she’d painted the cabinets a soft yellow, like sunshine.

  The bathroom was the size of a postage stamp, but also scrubbed, the fixtures all redone. Probably salvage, because they didn’t all match, but they were all brushed nickel, and he wondered how she was strong enough to turn a wrench, thin and tired-looking as she was.

  The more he saw, the more he liked her.

  She’d probably chosen this place for the light. The rest of the apartment was a single room, a futon with a cherrywood frame fold
ed neatly into a red-cushioned couch and a small bookcase painted crimson. A skylight overhead filled it to the brim with mellow afternoon sun, and even when the clouds came again it glowed like the inside of a pearl. Bare wood floors, polished until they shone—had she taken out carpeting to expose the original hardwood? Or had it been a reason to rent this place?

  Her smell was everywhere, drenching him. There was a battered leather recliner set near the large window, which looked down on Fifty-Eighth Street. He could see her curled up in it, watching the traffic go by. Probably with a book—and there was a small notebook with a pen clipped to its cover. Diary, probably—girls loved diaries.

  Her dresser was in the closet, painted a glowing pale white. She’d taken the closet doors off and hung a rippling curtain of red and gold there instead, a sunburst of color. It was a restrained, beautiful nest. The small table next to the futon was ruthlessly bare except for a lamp and an empty glass.

  The urge to lie down on the couch and work that wonderful smell all over him was incredible. He made another circuit of the room, checked the bathroom. The mirrored cabinet over the sink held toiletries and pill bottles, all over-the-counter remedies. Looked like she had trouble with her digestion, and also trouble sleeping.

  I could help with that.

  He stopped, staring at the antique cast-iron tub. What kind of thought was that? Why was he even here, instead of getting out of town?

  Because someone will come to clear this place, and they might know where she is.

  It was crazy. It was impossible. It was the riskiest possible maneuver.

  I don’t care. He let out a long, soft breath, and his ears perked. At least he wasn’t degrading just yet; his hearing was as acute as ever.

  Footsteps. Two men, moving with alien purpose. Coming down the hall, a wrong note in the regular symphony of a sleepy city afternoon.

  Great. He eased the knife free—time to be silent and quick. Kill one, and see if the other knew anything. There were ways to wring all sorts of information out of people, and he was aching to try a few.