Artemis continued to point out unsettling details—a furtive man here, a too-casual person there. Eduard saw nothing compelling about any individual example, and he began to suspect the Phantom's overactive imagination.
Until he spotted Daragon.
He was wearing a sport jacket, muted plaid shirt, casual pants—but his facial features, his dark hair and almond eyes, remained the same. Daragon had disguised himself as a solitary businessman on lunch break, trying to be unobtrusive. Eduard gasped and drew back from the window.
Artemis patted his shoulder paternally. “Now do you see it? I saved you from a setup, a stakeout. You owe me, rabbit.”
Eduard walked unsteadily back into the food court. He wanted to get away, but he didn't dare go out into the streets. He had swapped bodies since the last time the Beetles had almost caught him, and he had lost his own identity on his ID patch—but Daragon had his uncanny ability to see someone's real persona. The Inspector needed only to get a glimpse of him. . . .
“Whoa, careful, careful,” the Phantom whispered, catching up to him in the food court. The smells of hot oil and condiments cluttered the air. “Don't call attention to yourself.”
Eduard skewered him with a stare. “How did you know?”
“Survival.” Artemis laughed. “You don't stay on the run for so many decades without being able to spot somethin' like that.”
They glided through the ever-shifting crowd, making no waves. A woman in a gray suit set down two wrapped sandwiches on an empty table, then headed toward a napkin dispenser. Without hesitation, Artemis casually snatched the sandwiches and walked with Eduard toward the lift tube.
“Come on, I know a safe place.” He held up the sandwiches. “Let's have lunch, and we can talk some more.”
One of the places where Artemis liked to stay was a forgotten back room in a former hotel. During the chaos of remodeling operations years ago (which Artemis claimed to remember), he had slipped in at night to wallseal a door here, disguise an opening there, and create a private chamber for himself.
The room was dim and stuffy with an unpleasant chemical odor, but Artemis assured him it was safe. A tiny, low-energy glowplate burned in the corner, not enough to make the room bright. The scattered darkness made the place seem hushed and secretive.
The Phantom flopped down on a narrow cot with well-worn fabric and a frayed blanket. He unwrapped the two sandwiches, peered under the bread, and chose the one he liked best. He handed the other to Eduard.
Eduard gobbled the food. He found it difficult to let down his guard, but he enjoyed the stolen lunch more than any food in recent memory. While he ate, he studied the other man huddled over his sandwich. Even here, Artemis still flicked his eyes from side to side.
“I used to idolize immortals like you,” Eduard said around a mouthful of mortadella and provolone sandwich. He picked out a pepperoncini. “I'd study the crowds, always wondering if I'd ever see a real Phantom.”
“You'd never know it, even if you did.” Artemis brushed a hand across his lips. “There's no way to tell.”
“I fantasized about what it would be like to outrun death.”
Artemis grinned, his mouth full of food. “It's exciting.”
Eduard glanced around the dim room, recalling how the Phantom had sneaked to this claustrophobic hiding place, how he had stolen an inexpensive sandwich. “I always thought a Phantom would accumulate a lot of wealth over so much time. I expected you to be living with a bit more . . . extravagance.”
Artemis finished his lunch and wadded the paper, tossing it into the corner where other old wrappers made a disarrayed pile. “Wealth means too much attention. To be a Phantom, you gotta learn to be invisible and to value other things—such as personal safety and anonymity.” He stretched out on the cot with an exaggerated yawn. “Sorry I don't have another cot, but you can curl up there on the floor. Get yourself a good night's sleep, a safe one. No worries.”
Eduard found a clean spot against the wall. He had slept in worse places. On the run, he'd grown accustomed to napping anywhere he could hide for a few hours. Artemis hit a switch, and the glowplate's weak illumination faded.
“Stick with me, rabbit, and you'll learn everythin' you need to know.”
Eduard settled back to sleep, but for a long time he was unable to feel safe, despite the other man's reassurances. Artemis snored, content with his place, but Eduard's disappointment deepened.
The Phantom might know how to survive, but he had forgotten how to live.
52
In the ranks of the Bureau, political scramblers fought to divide the pieces of Mordecai Ob's empire. In the past several years, after his meteoric rise up the chain of command, Daragon could have been one of the contenders himself, the Chief's heir apparent, his golden boy. But he would not give up the search for Eduard or delegate it to anyone else.
Back inside Headquarters, he sat in the Chief's office, which had remained unclaimed in the turmoil surrounding Ob's death. The newly appointed Acting Bureau Chief preferred his own offices on the mainland, and no one contested Daragon's right to be there. As he worked at the expansive desk in silence, looking at the cold fireplace, the place struck him as very uncomfortable. Too quiet, too empty . . . too haunted. It was difficult to concentrate.
But this workspace was just a spot for him to pile papers and collate the hints and threads that might eventually lead him to Eduard.
Daragon spent his days pounding the streets, continuing the relentless search. He joined tracking teams at random, then he went out for hours alone, walking the nights, studying the ocean of people and looking inside for one familiar identity, one recognizable persona. . . .
Daragon ran his hands through his dark hair, staring at the discolored fiberceramic logs in the fireplace. Weariness descended upon him like a lead blanket. This manhunt had gone on for so long already.
Against his better judgment, he had poked into the wild stories Garth and Teresa had told about Ob's alleged addiction to Rush-X. True, the Bureau Chief's previous trainers had been dismissed under curious circumstances, and through some sort of COM glitch could no longer be found. True, Ob could have used his authority to divert confiscated shipments of the illegal drug for his own use.
If Daragon hadn't known his mentor so well, he might have considered these possibilities, but he had no intention of tarnishing the memory of his martyred Chief. No one else in the Bureau was interested, either. It was an open-and-shut case, and Eduard had already been convicted in absentia. The sentence was set. If they ever caught him, the Bureau of Incarceration and Executions would terminate him.
Daragon brooded in front of the artificial fireplace, oblivious to the flickering shadows of fish overhead. He had once loved Eduard and now felt betrayed, more disappointed than he'd ever been. His friend had ruined everything, had even turned Garth and Teresa against him. Daragon was trapped, and only the Bureau could give him the strength and support he needed.
The private message signal on his COM screen startled him, and Daragon turned back toward Ob's desk, feeling a sudden wariness and perplexity. Very few people knew his direct code here.
He was utterly shocked to watch Eduard's familiar face appear in front of him. He grasped the edge of the desk until his knuckles turned white.
“Oh, Daragon, I need to see you,” Teresa said. “It's very important.”
With no place else to turn, all of her other search options careening to dead ends, Teresa had finally decided to contact the Bureau of Tracing and Locations. With his much-vaunted BTL resources, Daragon could help her in a way no one else could.
“Teresa . . . I didn't think you would ever speak to me again.” His formal composure seemed ready to crack.
“Can I meet with you in person, and in private?” She swallowed hard, trying to remain businesslike, but she found it difficult not to let her emotions seep through.
His face filled with boyish delight, and he jumped at the chance. “Stay right where you are—I'
ll have escorts there in a few minutes.” He reached forward to terminate the transmission, then paused. “It'll be good to see you, Teresa. You look . . . a lot better.”
After months, her body had grown gradually stronger. The awful Rush-X taste in her mouth had begun to fade . . . or maybe she'd just gotten used to it. During the first weeks, she had wondered if she would die from withdrawal. She woke up shivering, nauseated, dizzy. The body knew what it needed, but Teresa could not, would not get it. Each second stretched out, taut as a piano wire.
With surprising speed an official BTL hovercar dropped from the skylanes to land on the sidewalk. Pedestrians scattered out of the way as the door hissed open on pneumatic lifts, and a dark-clad officer gestured her inside. Shoppers and businessmen stared as she ducked her head and climbed into the back of the vehicle. From the pilot's compartment, the BTL officer looked back at her with suspicion, remembering Eduard's face from scores of emergency bulletins.
The dark vehicle shot through commuter traffic patterns in an override lane. She should have been nervous, should have been terrified, but she had already reached the point of desperation. She had to trust Daragon now.
COM authorized a crow's-flight path out of the city and low across the green-blue waves to the superstructure of Bureau Headquarters. The hovercar dropped precisely onto a painted target circle, and Daragon strode forward to meet her as she climbed out. Rigid and waiting, he remained silent for a long moment, as if the breezes had snatched his words away, then his lips formed a sad smile. He took her in a stiff embrace, which she returned. “Come on, we'll talk inside. I've got an office, of sorts.”
Daragon led her down yellow-lit halls and past aquarium windows. Bureau workers marched through database rooms while evidence technicians hunched over lab analysis equipment. Two junior Inspectors sat at a bare table in an empty room, comparing notes.
Inside Ob's plush office, Teresa primly took one of the fine leather chairs, across from the broad desk where Daragon stationed himself. Looking at her, he shuddered with déjà vu, recalling when he'd first brought Eduard here to audition as the Bureau Chief's personal caretaker. That had been the biggest mistake of his life. Daragon wished he had just let Eduard scrape by with his miserable body-selling practice. But he'd tried to do Eduard a favor, as a friend.
In the uneasy silence, he saw inside to the woman he had cared for so deeply. “Teresa, if you've come here to request clemency for Eduard, I can't do it. You know I have to track him down, even if it means . . . sacrificing our friendship.”
“Do you really think Eduard's a threat to anybody, even on the run?” Teresa shook her head. “No, I don't want to talk about that. I need to request your help in something else. I want to enlist the Bureau to find someone—to find me. I need to track down my home-body. It's . . . lost.”
Daragon was taken aback. “Right now our resources are mobilized on a manhunt. I'm not sure I can justify the time for a project like that.”
She wouldn't let him off so easily. “You always told me the Bureau did good and important work, more than just tracking down criminals. You were so proud of how the BTL helped to locate family members and find missing people.” She leaned forward in the chair. “Now I need you to help find me—the original me.” She looked intently at him, using every coin she had. “The one who held you and talked with you in the night.”
“Teresa . . . I can't—” He still refused to meet her eyes.
“Is it because I look like Eduard now?” She waited a beat. “This is important to me, Daragon.”
He looked at her, wishing he could see the real Teresa again, the woman he had touched and loved in a wistful younger way. This might partially heal the breach between them, though he realized nothing would make her forgive him. She had always been more devoted to Eduard. “All right. Give me whatever information you have, any leads I can use. I'll keep my eyes open.”
It might be as easy as running a simple COM trace, but he doubted he'd get an answer with so little effort. It could take a long time. Teresa would continue her quest, wandering the city, talking to people, retracing her footsteps.
In the meantime, Daragon had his own quarry to catch.
53
Having thrown in his lot with a Phantom, Eduard accompanied Artemis to the carefully hidden and well-provisioned bolt-holes he'd established throughout the metropolis. A Phantom always kept a wide range of hiding places.
“You'll need plenty of alternatives if you want to live forever, rabbit. Gotta be willin' to drop everything and run. Nothing matters as much as staying alive. No possessions, no home, no friends. Stay mobile and quiet.”
They climbed a metal staircase outside a rib-walled automated distribution facility. The buildings were occupied primarily by COM robotic systems that did the tedious, repetitive work of inventory and shipping.
“One of my favorite hideouts.” Artemis punched numbers on a recessed keypad. “In a week or two, I'll give you the code number. If I think you're worth keepin' around.” He flashed a humorless grin. “If not, I'll just let 'em catch you.”
Eduard followed, not surprised that the man still didn't trust him. Artemis had intercepted Eduard in some weird gratitude for killing Ob, supposedly to keep him from exposing other Phantoms. But at times, he realized that Artemis must have been lonely, too.
Closing the door behind them, Artemis used another code on an internal readerpad, paused until he heard a high-pitched buzz, then strode inside. “Safe now. I've added my own infiltrator to the security systems.”
Inside the cavernous building, conveyors and articulated arms stacked and sorted crates of materials, components, and consumer items. Machine-readable inventory codes marked the boxes with gibberish. Subdued lights dangled above like garish fireflies, and the ventilation system was set cold to protect the electronics and the mechanical devices. This place wasn't made to be inhabited—which was exactly why Artemis enjoyed living here.
They crossed a catwalk to a false wall where the Phantom had constructed an apartment for himself. He showed Eduard how to release the bottom latch so they could pull themselves up into the hiding place. Artemis had cobbled together furnishings, a stove, and food-prep equipment; entertainment disks lay piled around, mostly out-of-date classics.
Eduard was reminded of the small attic room in the Falling Leaves where he and Daragon had hidden when they were kids. Daragon.
The Phantom always remained on the alert for anyone watching him, hunting him. “What are you so afraid of all the time?” Eduard asked. “I'm the one who's on the run.”
Artemis flashed him a toothy grin. “Rabbit, you don't live two centuries on the fringe without bein' forced to break the law plenty often. It's safe to say I've done enough to get me uploaded to COM. More than you, I'll bet.”
Artemis seemed glad to have a confidant to whom he could tell tall tales. He told Eduard how he'd once impersonated a BTL Inspector during a stakeout for him, how he had avoided pursuit at a crowded fair by forcing a swap with a scheduled speaker and giving an impromptu lecture about politics in a changing world of hopscotches. He bragged about how he had left several wives and husbands, how he had fathered at least three children, all unknown to him now.
Eduard lounged on the threadbare sofa while the Phantom heated soup. He closed his eyes and drew a long breath, relieved to find a bit of peace. As he listened to Artemis recount decades' worth of adventures, he didn't know how much to believe. The other man had lived a long enough life to have experienced such perils—and he also had plenty of solitude in which to concoct preposterous stories.
Using their warehouse as a base of operations, they changed clothes frequently, wearing different guises every time they went out onto the streets. Artemis taught him to become invisible, and Eduard learned how to walk between people, avoid glances, and become inconsequential in the eyes of the masses. Like a lesson from a text—How to Be a Phantom.
They frequented crowded shops and storefronts, mingling with groups of no f
ewer than three. Artemis pointed out a few undercover Beetles dressed as common workers. Though Eduard didn't know for sure, he feared they were searching for him; similarly, Artemis believed he was their target.
“So we'll both have to be careful,” Eduard said.
“Whoa, not to worry. We're smarter than they are. The Beetles have a few tricks, but they're always the same ones. Once you know the routine, you can spot 'em, easy.”
Today they planned to spend unmarked credits stolen from a battered vending machine. Artemis reached over to touch Eduard's scrawny arm. “You've been in this body for ages, rabbit, and it's not worth much. I suggest you pick somebody new. Not good to keep the same appearance for too long.”
Eduard tried to remember all the shapes he'd worn during his long run, then he thought of Teresa, who had been stuck with his strung-out, drug-addicted home-body. “Right. But I don't have any money. No resources. Nothing I can offer someone to swap with me.”
Artemis gave him a scornful look. “Don't worry about it. That sort of thing is never a problem for a Phantom.”
Sitting at a central table, nestled among other diners in a crowded cafeteria, Artemis told Eduard about his many loves, the women and the men, depending on what gender he'd worn at the time, not that it mattered all that much. “Sure, I grew close to some of them, for a time, but in the end I always moved on.”
“So you dumped them. People you loved?”
Artemis shrugged. “It got old and boring. Nothin' ever lasts. Anyway, their lives are too short—normal lives, I mean.”
Eduard covered his disturbed expression by wiping his mouth with a napkin. “If you're immortal, what does a normal human life span matter? Why not just stay with someone who loves you? There's always time.”
“Time for them, or time for me? I've got other things to do.” He didn't say what, though.
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