Agent Zero

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Just like those big blue eyes of hers.

  “You kept changing the subject.” Her lips were chapped, even though she’d been pouring down the fluids. With her hair mussed and her pajamas incredibly disarranged, it could have been the morning after a completely different set of events.

  In a way, it was. “I had to,” he mumbled, numbly.

  “Let go of me.”

  He did. She rocked back on her bare heels, as if she hadn’t expected that, and a flash of something—was it resignation?—crossed her face so swiftly he almost missed it. The water shut off in the bathroom, and they were running out of any approximation of privacy.

  “It fixed the cancer,” she said, quietly, almost tonelessly. “I can feel it.”

  “There wasn’t any—”

  She shook her head, so quickly her hair made a whispering sound. “I feel it,” she repeated, the glint in her eyes daring him to object again.

  “Okay. You feel it. Good enough for me.” His hands ached to touch her; he had to concentrate to keep them at his sides, nice and easy. She must have been pretty far gone by the time I caught wind of her. Why wasn’t she in treatment? Why wasn’t it in her medsheets? How thin and tired she was, too, and her hair, lusterless not because of stress but because her entire body was starved of nutrients. How had she been able to walk, for God’s sake?

  Reese, you idiot. Maybe he was degrading. That would be painfully ironic.

  She still stared at him, as if he was a stranger. “Did you know it would do that?”

  “If there was anything wrong with you, the virus fixed it, Holly. You survived.”

  “Guess that makes me lucky. Ninety percent casualty rate, right?”

  “That was for me. Not you.”

  “Not...” Another quick shake of her head. “Reese, look. Did you know? That it would...infect...me?”

  He shook his head. Christ, even if I did I wouldn’t tell you now.

  Did she look disappointed? What was it? He couldn’t think, not with her standing so close and the last few days crowding the inside of his skull. Digesting that lump of information was going to take a little bit, maybe because he’d been so dumb to start out with.

  She’s going to end up smarter than me. Maybe Cal is, and that’s how he found me. He can’t be thinking I’m going to save him, for God’s sake.

  Except I have to, because it means saving her, too.

  “Reese.” Hugging herself now, the movement showing even more interesting slices of paleness through her tank top. “Did you know?”

  “Does it matter?” Harshly, because the lump in his throat wouldn’t retreat. “It’s happened. The weather’s turned—we have to get out of here.”

  She tilted her head. Even covered with sweat and sickness, she was still beautiful. “It’s all melting out there.”

  “Warming up. I, ah, I can smell it, too.”

  “Do I still smell good to you?”

  More than good. “Yeah.”

  “Are you...is this Cal guy...” She pursed her lips, maybe not knowing what she wanted to ask.

  Cal chose that moment to step out of the bathroom, the picture of sheepishness, slicking his hair back with damp fingers. “Sorry about that. I’ll, uh, just start the dishes.”

  Holly backed up a step. Two. As though she was waiting for him to say something.

  Maybe I’m sorry? He opened his mouth to try it, but she whirled and headed toward the couch. She handled the new suitcase carrying her clothes easily and vanished into the bathroom, slamming the door a little harder than necessary. He could probably chalk it up to her not understanding her new strength.

  Which brought up an interesting question: How strong was she likely to get? She felt just as soft as ever, without an agent’s leashed force. There hadn’t been much on the female subject in the files that wasn’t crossed out, but—

  “She okay?” Cal started stacking plates, and Reese wrestled down the urge to walk over and give the man a shot to the kidneys.

  “Don’t know. Rough time for her.” The bathroom door was a blank face, giving nothing away. Deathly silence before the shower gurgled into life. “Adjusting, I guess.”

  “That’s one word for it.” The other agent balanced a pile of sticky plates, and his back was broad under a flannel shirt. It had to be a deliberate movement—you just didn’t turn around like that, especially when you knew the other person was armed and twitchy. “She’s gonna bolt, man.”

  As soon as Cal said it, Reese knew he was right. “I know.” And I’ll bring her right back, goddamn it. There’s no way she’s getting rid of me.

  * * *

  The stuff was all over her. Crusts of sweat salt and various other effluvia fell away, melting like cotton candy. The water was warm enough, if mineral tasting, and the toiletries smelled kind of familiar—he even knew what soap she liked, for God’s sake.

  Standing under hot water, the coffee sinking in and her stomach feeling weirdly distended from the sheer amount of food she’d consumed, Holly had to admit she felt...pretty good.

  Which was troubling. She’d been really, really sick. Sick enough to die. And now she felt a little shaky, but clear and strong in a way she hadn’t since...well, ever. Maybe as a teenager, with her whole life ahead of her and the body and metabolism to meet it head-on. Funny, her memories of that were darkened, too. As if she’d been looking through smoked glass.

  She touched her belly, digging her fingertips in. She didn’t feel the same thrumming, heavy vitality as Reese’s muscles. No six-pack, no sinewy heaviness. Which brought up another interesting point.

  We didn’t use protection. It hadn’t seemed to matter, since she was terminal anyway and he...

  Was that what had...infected...her? After a lifetime of being careful. Kind of funny.

  You know what else is funny? You’re out here in the middle of nowhere with Reese and his buddy.

  Except the word for that was dangerous. A “fellow agent.” It didn’t make sense for the man to have found them unless he was somehow Reese’s friend.

  Now that he had a friend, would he still drag Holly along? Or would she wake up one morning to find him gone?

  “Time for me to start thinking,” she murmured, putting her face under the mineral-smelling water. She could taste traces of...copper? Other things, a whole palette of earth and stone, fluid seeping underground, filtering through layers and pipes. Individual water drops on her skin, her heart working steadily, the flashes between her nerves tiny lightning strikes, warming her, building chains of reaction in the dark.

  She surfaced with a jolt, shivering even though the water was still perfectly warm. Had she lost track of time?

  Mitochondrial DNA...other effects...you heal quicker, more flexible, greater endurance. She’d gotten more over breakfast with Cal than from however long traveling with Reese. You get smarter, too—damn near genius where you were smart before, but you get some blind spots.

  What were Reese’s blind spots?

  You run, I’ll hold them...the only time I feel human is when I look at you...it’s okay, baby, it’s all right.

  The fractured pieces inside her head weren’t helping. They swirled, refusing to coalesce into a reasonable picture. Or maybe she just didn’t like the painting she was seeing?

  It took her a while to get dressed. She kept stopping, staring into space, while different bits of memory and guesswork fell together. But finally, in jeans and a blue sweater that both reeked of newness, she had to leave the warm, humid little room with its indifferent linoleum and ancient fittings.

  They were both at the dinette, and there was a pile of paper on the newly cleared, rickety little table. Familiar-looking file folders, and her stomach fluttered uneasily.

  Whose are those? Other agents? Other “collateral”? The abductio
n was still a mess of jumbled pieces inside her head, refusing to settle even worse than the rest of the stuff.

  Cal pushed his sandy hair back from his forehead. With his broad back to her, he looked just like any other guy on a chair, and if she was waiting on the table she would have thought them both businessmen doing an informal meeting.

  A sudden realization shook her.

  I’m not ever going home again. And I’m not going to die.

  She stood there, a damp towel drooping from her left hand, and afterward she would wonder what she would have said or done if both of them hadn’t suddenly tilted their heads, as if hearing something.

  She strained, and heard it, too—a low mechanical buzz, very faint, but out of place in the snowbound quiet.

  “Damn,” Reese said, softly. “We’ve got incoming.”

  * * *

  “Weather eyes?” Falling snow dotted Cal’s hair, whirling down in heavy, wet clumps. Ice was falling from creaking branches, and there were spatters of melt pocking through the layer of freezing over everything.

  “Dunno.” Reese shook his head, cupping his hands behind his ears to focus the sound.

  “Where can we go?” Holly, under the porch roof, hugged herself. The blue of the sweater brought out her eyes, and her hair, even wet, looked more vital. She was still too heartbreakingly thin, but that would fix itself if Reese could get enough food in her. “We’re trapped up here.”

  “Not necessarily.” Reese took a deep breath. “It’s cold. Go back inside.”

  “Stare at the walls and wait for them to show up? Great.” She shivered, hugging herself even harder. “What are we going to do?”

  At least it was still we. “Right now you’re going to go inside. It’s freezing out here, Holly.”

  “I’m not going to catch cold and die.” Her chin set.

  Cal scanned what he could see of the sky, blue eyes narrowed. “I don’t like this.”

  You’re not the only one. Inside the cabin, the AM radio had weather reports ticking by, the storm’s last spasm moving westward and crashing against the mountains. The warming in its wake would make things sloppy. It could be anything—airlift for lost hikers, weather copter, even just normal air traffic.

  Still, there was a rasping tingle against his nerves. It was the same sensation that warned him about Cal.

  Could still be warning him about Cal.

  “It feels hinky,” the other agent said, his breath pluming in the cold. “Makes me itch.”

  Afterward, Reese was never sure if there had been a pause after the words. One moment he was turning over alternatives, the next he had tackled Holly back through the open door. They landed in a heap, her soft little cry mixing with the pop-zing of another bullet, and Cal swearing viciously behind him was a slow groan because Reese was moving fast. Cal kicked the door shut, glass shattering and another popping zing.

  Sniper. Probably gone by the time we get out the door. It was the follow-up that would dust them, and do it pretty handily. Which made it possible carelessness—if you were going to take two agents, warning them like this was a bad idea.

  There was no time to think. Holly was struggling against his hold, thrashing on the floor. Had he hurt her? Was she hit? He didn’t smell blood, but—

  “—off me!” she yelled, and he had a bare moment to be relieved before she heaved, almost tossing him sideways.

  Look at that. She is stronger. Rolling, staying low in case more lead came through, Cal was already heading for his backpack, settled against the chair he’d slept in. Reese dove for his and Holly’s as well as her parka, and by the time Holly had struggled to her feet—civilian, she doesn’t know—he was already barking “Get down!” and yanking at her arm, planning the next few moves.

  The copper scent of blood hit him, and he froze. God. Oh, God—

  “Hit!” Cal snarled. “Goddamn it. Got a kit?”

  Relief that it wasn’t Holly smashed through him as he dragged her along, an awkward duck scramble. “Back door. This way.”

  “What the hell?” Holly, tugging against his grasp. “Someone’s shooting!”

  No time to wonder why she wasn’t agent strong—did the virus dilute? As soon as they were behind enough cover he pulled her up to her feet, hooking down the first-aid bag—camo green, the Army still did some things best—and tossing it to Cal. If he was moving, it couldn’t be that bad. “Status?”

  “Fine!” The other agent was suddenly all business. So he shut up when he was under fire.

  Good to know.

  Snow had drifted high enough to touch the sloped-down roof outside the back door; the resultant tunnel was full of ice-filtered shadowy light. Adrenaline threatened to make his fingers clumsy; he twisted the lock too hard and metal pinged, breaking with a high sweet noise.

  “Christ,” Holly whispered, hitching her backpack up on her shoulder. “Shooting at us.”

  Be careful, Reese. Don’t give it away. The angle of the slope behind the house made it safer, unless another sniper had worked around during last night. The car could make it out, but instead, he swept the shed with a single glance and pointed at the canvas-shrouded hulk in the corner. “Holly, get Cal bandaged up. We’re leaving.”

  “But...my clothes, the—”

  “Everything you need’s in the backpack. I put it together while you were in the shower. Get him bandaged.”

  “You what?”

  “Clothes can be replaced, ma’am.” Cal stepped in to distract her. “Open this up. I’d like to stop bleeding.”

  “Oh, God.”

  A burst of high brassy fear in the middle of her scent—it almost rocked him back on his heels. But she was already ripping the kit open, and Cal had struggled half-out of his coat.

  The canvas fell aside, and the battered snowcat reared up in front of Reese, scratched and scored blotches of green and paleness meant to break up its outline and make it more difficult to see. Of course, the damn thing was as loud as two world wars rolled into one, but it could go places a sedan couldn’t.

  “Does it still work?” Cal winced as Holly’s shaking hands applied antiseptic to the wound—it was messy, but it had only creased him. It was already closing, and Reese hoped Holly wouldn’t notice.

  “Checked it when we got here.” The mice saw it, but they didn’t get anything critical. “Full tank, extras strapped on.”

  “A bit of cross-country?” Cal winced again, but Reese suspected it was only for show, to keep the nervous, trembling woman occupied.

  “Smart man.”

  “That car will wallow.”

  “Like a fat horse.”

  “Want me to take her?” He could have meant the car—or the woman.

  Holly’s head snapped up, her eyes wide.

  “Holly stays with me,” Reese answered, steadily. “You’re bait.”

  “Great. Rendezvous?”

  “Your second job in Mexico. Sixteen days from now.” Reese shouldered Holly aside; she was having trouble with the compression bandage. A few seconds had everything set right, the white gauze pad pinkening a little as he taped it down. The man still smelled right—peppery adrenaline, the blue sharpness of determination, still no off note. “North side.”

  “Got it.” Cal shrugged back into his coat. “Good luck.”

  “You, too.” It was safe enough to open the shed door, and within a few moments the roar of the ’cat began to seesaw as it slip-slid, gunning for a stand of pines that would provide the best cover.

  Holly, numbly pawing at the passenger-side door of the sedan, flinched when he caught her elbow.

  “It’s all right,” he managed around the rock in his throat. He held up her parka and began bundling her into it. “We don’t need the car. Come on.”

  * * *

  An iron lad
der, leading into darkness. Holly clung to the bars, following Reese’s steady movement down.

  “Guy who built this was a survivalist.” His voice echoed oddly—she could hear the dimensions of the slightly sloping shaft, the roughness of the rock walls. Instinct told her the ladder was safe and solid enough, but her breath came in little sips.

  It was so dark.

  “He was sure the government was going to come and take his guns,” Reese continued, calmly. “Or that his creditors would show up. It changed from day to day.” They had been climbing down for quite some time, and her arms should have been aching.

  They weren’t.

  Her own voice took her by surprise. “What happened to him?” Thin and reedy, as if she was having trouble breathing. Reese had led her behind the big humming thing—geothermals, he told her—and heaved up a well-hidden trapdoor. Now it was a climb down and his steady heartbeat, her own going much quicker, thumping in her ears.

  “He sold out and went to Peru. Something about a valley somewhere he could hole up in, fight off the rest of the world. He was obsessed with square-foot gardening and panning for gold.”

  Sounds like a real winner. He sounded, in fact, like Phillip, only without Phil’s determination to get through med school.

  Funny, but the thought of her ex-husband didn’t hurt anymore. “Is he still there?”

  “I don’t know. Never wanted to find him.”

  “But what do you think?”

  “I think he got there, but he probably found out it wasn’t the place he wanted.”

  “Oh.” More descending, her arms and legs moving like clockwork. I should be tired. I should be terrified.

  Well, she was plenty scared. The hollow thudding sounds of bullets, Cal’s arm soaked with blood, everything left behind again—if she was reasonable at all, she should be screaming. Instead, she was just following Reese. Tagging along, her body moving with dreamlike efficiency. No nausea, no weakness, no hot bar of pain buried in her back. She was still alive.

  “Anyway, when they put this in, he had them leave a shaft. For maintenance, but then he came down here over a couple years and did some work. Just in case.”