She glanced at Skellar like he was contagious. “Are you sure we can trust this guy? Odds are he’s on the same payroll as Neville and all the other mugs—”
“Hey, sister, I ain’t on nobody’s payroll. Would my teeth look like this if I could afford somethin’ better than jive-sweet?” Skellar grinned wide, showed us yellow teeth stained brown on the edges. “And believe it or not, there’s some things I refuse to do. Kidnappin’ little girls is one of them.”
“I don’t like mugs any more than you do,” I admitted. “But we haven’t got a choice here. Those gutter punks knocked out everybody I trust. There isn’t anyone else.”
“Okay, okay.” She pulled her knees to her chest and her eyes turned the color of a stormy sky. “I don’t care who ends up with the key to immortality, not anymore, not as long as we can get Isabelle back…”
She kept talking but I didn’t hear what she was saying. I glanced at Skellar and I could tell he was having the same reaction I was. I felt like somebody had just rammed a steel pipe against my back.
“Are you tellin’ me somebody figured out how to make resurrection work more than nine times?” I asked. My mouth felt dry. What sick jerk would want to hang around here that long? “But the DNA breaks down after six times. On the ninth cycle, everything is—”
She met my gaze. “We weren’t using clones. This isn’t like technological resurrection. This is something else. One injection. That’s it.” She paused, a pained expression on her face, as if she just remembered something. When she spoke again her voice lowered, became almost inaudible. “One dose, and then every time you die, your body just repairs itself. You just get back up.”
“Like the dog,” Skellar said. He was leaning forward.
“Yeah.” A tear was running down her cheek. “Just like the friggin’ dog.”
I crossed my arms and settled back in my chair. Skeptical.
“You do the research?” Skellar asked.
“Me and Russ.” She was watching me. “And Pete.”
“You’re sayin’ Pete knew about this and he didn’t tell me?” I pushed myself out of my chair, stood over her. “I can see Russ pulling something like this, he always wanted to be a hero, wanted everybody to bow down and make him king, but Pete? I don’t believe it.”
“Pete did my jump. After Russ…after…” Her hands clenched the blanket, then released.
“You’re that Ellen they been lookin’ for.” Skellar connected the Domingue dots. “Russell killed you, didn’t he?”
I blinked. All of a sudden it felt like I was playing solo, but the notes were coming out all wrong.
Angelique looked away, didn’t answer his question. “Pete helped us with the research, you know he’s a computer whiz. But Neville must have got his hooks in him somehow, got him to turn in reports on what we were doing. I always knew there was somebody else working both sides.” She paused. “But there came a point when I just—I couldn’t do it anymore, so I destroyed all our files and let the dog go.”
“You destroyed the research?” Skellar looked at Angelique like she was nuts.
She ignored him, continued to talk to me like he wasn’t there. “Chaz, the mugs can’t help us. They’re in on it. The U.S. government is in on it too. This is bigger than Fresh Start, than any of us.”
“Thanks for that vote of reassurance, sister. I’m lookin’ forward to workin’ with you too.” Skellar glanced down into an empty paper cup, crumpled it, and then tossed it into a nearby waste can.
“You really don’t get it, do you?” she said, a puzzled expression on her face. “Russ never told you. About your father’s death, about your mom.”
I watched the light in her eyes change. “He never told me what?”
“This guy, he killed your father. And he infected your mother.”
I put the world on pause, began to pace the room, forced my lungs to keep working. The same guy who murdered my father had just kidnapped Isabelle. He killed Russ and Marguerite, tried to kill Angelique and Pete. And he gave my mother the life of a leper.
“Chaz?”
I could hear the music of my life turning sour, felt an emptiness in the pit of my stomach.
“Chaz.” Angelique stood before me, the blanket wrapped around her. “It’s going to be all right. I know how to get your niece back.”
I saw her mouth move, heard the words, but somehow the chord progression was still all wrong, every note off-key.
“I’ve got what Neville wants.” Eyes the color of summer rain, refreshing and pure, met mine, forced me to pay attention.
“But you said you destroyed the research.”
“Not the serum,” she said. “That’s where I was going when you found me in the elevator. I hid enough for one, maybe two doses. We can trade it for Isabelle.”
Suddenly I knew I was the only one who could hear it, the only one who had it all figured out. I laughed. It was a song of madness, a song of dark depression and despair, a song that had been playing throughout my life. But it didn’t matter anymore. We were going to win.
I sat in the chair and laughed until I started to cry.
I knew Angelique and Skellar thought that I was losing my mind, but I didn’t care.
We were going to get Isabelle back. All I had to do was give eternal life to the monster that had haunted my dreams since I was a kid.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Chaz:
He wasn’t going to make it. I had to go rescue my niece from a Nazi wannabe, I would have to hold eternal life in my hand for a nanosecond and then turn it over to some gutter punk sociopath. But right now my best friend was dying and I had to say good-bye. Even if he had betrayed me.
Pete would always be my best friend.
Long pauses divided each breath. It sounded like he had barbed wire tangled in his lungs and they were filling with blood, like his insides were being sliced up by a miniature army wielding tiny razor blades.
He coughed. Blood speckled his lips. One eye danced open.
I think he saw me, but I wasn’t sure.
“Pete, it’s Chaz.”
A whisper, hoarse and raw. “Where y’at, bruh.” A thin smile. His skin was too pale, the circles under his eyes even darker than usual. He looked at me, death clouding his gaze. “Hey, I wants…to keep it…all,” he said, each word wet and heavy like a shovelful of dirt on a grave. “Don’t erases nothin’.”
“I won’t.”
“And we never talks ’bout it, but yur gonna…”
I finished his sentence. “Be your ’sitter.” I forced a laugh. “You think I’d let anybody else mess with you? I’ll be right there, from Day One.”
He closed his eyes, still smiling. Pain twisted his grin, turned it into a grimace.
I should have let him go in peace, but I couldn’t.
“Pete, why didn’t you tell me? Did Neville threaten somebody in your family?”
His eyes opened halfway. “Yeah.” A look of torment flashed. “You.” He coughed. He was using his last bit of energy for this. “He was gonna…gives ya what he gave yur mom…he was gonna takes yur life away, bruh, and ya only gots the one, I couldn’t—”
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe that Pete had gone soft for his own kind, that he finally realized that the view from the gutter overshadowed anything else. But I know I didn’t expect this. That Pete had been standing in the gap for me, without my even knowing it.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” I said.
“Yeah.” His last grin. In this lifetime.
And then he jumped. My best friend died and within an hour he would be downloaded into a clone somewhere back at the factory. Already somebody was starting the process. I made a quick call, told them to let Pete keep everything, all his memories. Meanwhile, a Fresh Start attendant bustled into the room; he ran a few tests, then whisked the body away.
I stood up and straightened my shirt, glanced at the clock on the wall. Stopped in the bathroom to comb my hair. I had to look presentabl
e.
We were going live in twenty minutes. On the ten-o’clock news.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Chaz:
They dressed her in harlequin diamonds of black and white, painted her face and curled her hair. She drank something—some kiddie cocktail laced with drugs—and then she posed on a carousel horse amidst colored lights and calliope music. With a laugh and a giggle, her eyes half closed, she sang a song to a hidden camera.
And the bidding began.
I got the call one minute before Angelique and I went on the news.
“Yur little darlin, she gonna brings in a good price. She somethin’ special, oh yeah. Wish ya could sees her right now, the way she flirts with those bidders when they asks their questions.”
I put one hand over my ear, turned away from the makeup girl that was trying to take the shine off my nose. “You better end your auction,” I said. “Right now, Neville, or all deals are off.”
“What deals? You and me, we gots no deals.”
“Turn on the news, you monster, and if anybody touches my niece, I’ll send you to hell myself.” A light flashed and I switched off my Verse, then turned back toward the camera. The newscaster watched me with a puzzled expression, but as soon as the cameras came on, she was all liquid silver and sparkling teeth.
“Mr. Domingue,” she began. I think her name was Judy. Or Jane. Or Janet.
“Chaz, call me Chaz.” I flashed a smile of my own.
“Yes, Chaz, I understand you have some information about that miraculous dog we saw earlier today.” She gave a subtle cue and the City of the Dead video ran while we talked. I watched Omega on the monitor, saw him die and then get back up. “Is this some sort of experimental prototype? Some new form of resurrection?”
I laughed. “Not exactly. Ms. Baptiste, why don’t you explain, in layman’s terms, what we see here?”
Angelique nodded. “Of course. My team and I were working on a breakthrough medical discovery—similar to the technological resurrection we’re all familiar with—but actually—”
Judy-Jane interrupted. “You were trying to find an answer to the Nine-Timer dilemma, weren’t you?”
“Well, it’s like Chaz said, not exactly. We weren’t working with clones, so as you can see the dog didn’t need anyone to download him into a new body when he died. So it’s not exactly resurrection—”
It was my turn to deliver the punch line. “It’s immortality.”
The newscaster stared at both of us. Dead air.
I grinned at the camera, knew that Neville was watching.
“Immortality…” Judy-Jane finally found her voice again. “So that dog? He’s—he’s immortal?”
Angelique and I nodded.
“There’s just one problem,” Angelique said apologetically. “We had an accident in the lab and all of our research was destroyed. And of course, we never did get a chance to try it out on a human, so we don’t know for sure if it would have worked on people.”
“But…but…if you created this once, surely you can do it again.”
“I wish it were that simple.” I was really enjoying the tormented look on the newscaster’s face. Wished I could see Neville’s. “You see, we based everything on the research done by my grandfather. If we hadn’t had his research to begin with, we never would have gotten as far as we did. Unfortunately, his work was destroyed as well.”
“But whoever worked on this project should be able to remember some of it.”
“That would be my brother.” I stared into the camera, a level gaze. “But he just died, a few hours ago.”
Our interviewer glanced down at her notes, tried to figure out what to say next.
“There is one bright spot in all of this,” Angelique offered.
“What’s that?” Judy-Jane asked without lifting her head.
“We have one dose of the serum left.”
She was looking at us now, open-mouthed. “Just one?”
Again we both nodded.
“Do you mind if I ask, what—what do you plan to do with it?”
“We’re going to put it up for auction,” I said. “And sell it to the highest bidder.”
The offers started coming in before we even left the studio. We had a site set up on the Grid for a silent auction, any bid was allowed, and we made it clear that we would consider barter as an option. After all, we weren’t looking for money. I put a block on my Verse to shut out interruptions, and I saved the number from my most recent caller. Neville.
His gravel-edged voice had carved runes in my brain, like an ancient alphabet, spelling words I didn’t dare speak out loud.
Memories of sleepless nights. My father, dead on the ground.
The fear within me turning to something cold and hard over the years.
A part of me was dead because of that man. He didn’t know it yet, but I was the hunter now and he was the prey. Like a jackal, he ran over open fields, my niece in his iron jaws. But soon he would tire, his grip would loosen.
And that was when I would strike.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Chaz:
A VR video was waiting for us when we got back to Fresh Start, my headquarters for the auction. A beacon pulsed, red and orange, at the top of the list of bids. I glanced at Angelique and Skellar. This one was a live feed. I told Skellar to get out of sight. I waited until he walked around the corner, then I flicked the system on.
“Messages.”
The Grid sizzled and crackled, then with a jolt the live feed shot through.
Somebody was standing in front of Angelique and me, wearing an antique VR suit, face concealed. Clever. When the voice came through, it was impossible to tell whether it was male or female.
“Domingue.” He paused. I was convinced it was a man, even though I had no evidence to prove it. “I have what you want.”
“Really? You have two billion dollars?”
He laughed. “You don’t want money.” His transmission sputtered, like it was corrupting the system, like it might crash at any moment.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Money sounds pretty damn sweet right now. Lots of it. But since you’re the genius here, what do I want?”
For a second he held still, like a mountain lake on a midsummer eve.
“Revenge.”
This guy was smart. I nodded, glanced at Angelique, then shrugged. “Yeah, revenge sounds good too. Just exactly what kind of revenge are we talkin’ about here?”
“Revenge for your father’s death.”
“You tellin’ me you were responsible?”
“Not exactly,” the VR creature said. His voice went up in pitch, the transmission faded out, then snapped back in place. “But I can give you the guy that set it up.”
“We already know who that was,” Angelique said. “Neville Saturno.”
“But you don’t have any evidence. And you probably don’t know what he did to your mother.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I knew that would get your attention.” I couldn’t tell if our VR visitor was laughing or if the transmission was crackling. “He gave her that virus she has now. Made her live in quarantine, took her away from the rest of the family. I guess you could say he’s not a very nice man.”
“Or I could say that he does everything you tell him to.”
He shrugged. “Did you know that he was also the one that broke into your brother’s house the other night?” He shook his masked head as if mourning what had happened. “That beast killed all those kids with liquid light. I warned him, told him to use a lower dose, but he’s like a wild horse. Impossible to tame. You know there’s only one thing that can stop him.” There was a long pause. “He needs to be exterminated.”
We agreed on that point.
“Are you making me an offer for the immortality serum, or are you just wasting my time?” I asked. I wondered what Skellar was doing right now. He’d had plenty of time to run a trace on this transmission. As far as I knew, his men
might already have this VR monster’s house surrounded. But I kept up the facade. Besides, I still needed more information. “Because I have two hundred other bids clogging up my system and I need to—”
“You want to see your niece, alive and unharmed?”
“If you hurt Isabelle, you can forget about eternal life. You might not even live to see tomorrow.”
His transmission crackled and hissed again, this time I was sure he was laughing. Nice to know I amused him. I imagined Skellar giving me five minutes alone with this cockroach, thought about how much damage I could do in that amount of time.
Just then an image appeared beside him, the auction video of Isabelle, the one that was still running. I hadn’t seen it yet, we’d been too busy setting up our own auction. But as soon as I saw it, I wanted to erase it from my mind. I wanted to reach into the nether world of virtual reality and yank her out. She was tired, the rouge on her cheeks and lips had smeared, but she still sat on that painted pony. Superimposed on the bottom of the video was a list of questions that the bidders had asked, along with her answers; above her head, like a thorny crown, was the current high bid.
“Neville’s running that auction,” the human beast wearing the ancient VR suit said. “And he has your niece.”
I didn’t realize I was trembling until Angelique took my hand. Blood-hot rage coursed through my veins, forced its way into my chest. I felt like a pressure cooker ready to explode, ready to burst into metallic shrapnel. But I had to hold it in, I had to complete this deal.
All the way or not at all.
“Send me your evidence on Neville,” I said, a slight tremor in my voice. “Immediately.” I couldn’t let him know our plans, I had to ask for more. “And give me his coordinates, give me info on the layout of his hideout. Once you send that, we’ll make arrangements for you to get the serum.”
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