Talon of God

by Wesley Snipes

  Please, she whispered. Please, please, please.

  As prayers went, it was a pretty bad one. She wasn’t even really sure what she was saying “please” for—healing her patients, their own survival, or all of the above—but she just kept saying it, begging whoever was listening to help them, save them.

  To anyone else, it wouldn’t have been much, but for Lauryn, it was everything. She’d lived her whole life proving she could do things by herself. Whether it was at school or with her father, she never asked for help. Never begged. Even when she was neck-deep in more work than anyone could possibly do, she’d kept her nose down and worked through. Not because she thought she would make it, but because admitting she needed someone else’s work, someone else’s power to achieve her goals was a far greater failure than actually failing.

  That was how she’d lived her life, how she held her head up high. Everything she’d achieved—her grades, her place at the top of her class, her dream of being a doctor—she’d gotten on her own. But not this. This wasn’t a test or an interview or a double shift. This was a disaster completely beyond her ability to handle, and if she didn’t want her patients to die—if she didn’t want to die—she needed more than she could give. She needed help, and as her father always said, the only way to get that was to ask.

  She only hoped someone was listening.

  Please, she begged again, squeezing her eyes even tighter. Please.

  The words poured out of her, but when she held her breath to listen, there was no answer. She didn’t feel any different, definitely didn’t feel a miracle, but just as the despair began to wrap around her mind, Lauryn realized that the room had gone quiet.

  And, more importantly, she was still alive.

  That was enough of a miracle to make her eyes pop open, but it still took her several seconds to make sense of what they saw.

  She was on her knees in an inch of water in the middle of the destroyed ward, and she was not alone. All around them, fallen over in the water like they’d simply gone to sleep, were the people who, a few seconds ago, had been trying to kill them. But the real shocker was that they looked like people again. There were no more bloody eyes, no more strange blue-gray flesh. Just hundreds of normal people lying still and calm on the floor under the still-spraying water, their wet faces slack with the deep relief of someone finally freed from pain.

  It was so surreal, Lauryn had to look at Will to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, but he looked as shocked as she was. The only person who didn’t look surprised was Talon. He just looked proud, rising to his feet before holding out his hand to her.

  Lauryn took it with shaking fingers. “What just happened?”

  “A miracle,” Talon said, pulling her to her feet.

  Lauryn wasn’t sure what to make of that. Honestly, she wasn’t sure standing was such a good idea, either. Barely a second after Talon had lifted her up, she went right back down, her head swimming. In the back of her mind, the doctor part of her realized this was most likely a delayed reaction to shock, quite common given the fight or flight stress she’d just been under. But knowing what it was didn’t make the effect any less severe. All she wanted to do was lie back down and go to sleep, and before she could force herself not to, Lauryn did just that, collapsing into a heap beside her patients just as the first officers of the backup Will had requested came barging into the room.

  8

  Watchmen

  My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning.

  —Psalm 130

  Will stood in the middle of the wrecked burn ward clutching his Styrofoam cup of terrible hospital coffee. Truth be told, he didn’t even like coffee. He was just holding on to it because if he set the cup down, one of the crowd of nervous officers behind him would immediately try to get him another, and he had too much to deal with already.

  It was now eleven in the morning, over three hours since he, Lauryn, and Talon had escaped the pharmaceutical closet and the whole of Mercy Hospital had become a crime scene for the weirdest case he’d ever investigated. If it wasn’t for the fact that the whole thing had been caught on the hospital’s security cameras, Will wasn’t sure he’d have believed his own story.

  But the strangest twist of all was that, despite being one of the largest violent incidents in Chicago history, which was saying something, there’d been no casualties. Every single one of the patients and the hospital staff they’d attacked had survived.

  Normally, Will would have called that a miracle, but after Talon’s supernatural mumbo jumbo, that word had been stricken from his vocabulary. So far as he was concerned, what had happened here this morning was nothing but an extremely unlikely combination of very good and very bad luck. Unfortunately, “luck” wasn’t a story that went over well with the top brass, and as the witnessing officer, Will was in the hot seat to come up with a better explanation. He just wished he had one.

  “Tannenbaum.”

  Speak of the devil—

  Will turned around with a sigh to see Victor Korigan walking at top speed down the hospital hallway. The chief of police must not have gone to bed yet, because he was still wearing the same tux Will had seen him in last night. Yet somehow his dark eyes were alert and sharp as a hawk’s as he strode toward Will across the puddles the fire sprinklers had left on the floor. “You’d better have a damn good explanation for this.”

  Will crossed his arms over his chest. “If you read my report—”

  “If by report you mean the six sentences they gave me on my way over, I’ve read it,” Korigan said. “What I want to know is why you were here to write a report in the first place. I ordered you to go to bed.”

  “I went to bed,” Will said, which was technically the truth. “Then I got a call from a contact about a bunch of drug cases and came to investigate.”

  The chief’s scowl deepened. “Alone? With no backup?”

  “How was I supposed to know it would end like this?” Will said with a shrug. “I work Vice, not riot squad. And I did call for backup once the situation warranted it.”

  Korigan didn’t miss a beat. “So why didn’t you wait for it? We’ve got footage of you helping the doctor girl set off the sprinklers on three separate cameras. How do you explain that?”

  “That was her idea,” Will said quickly. “I only went along to keep her safe. You can’t let a civilian run into danger like that.”

  “So it was just common heroics? And the fact that she’s your former girlfriend has nothing to do with it?”

  Will clamped his mouth shut, and the police chief sighed. “What about the man who was with you?” he asked, changing the subject. “The one wearing a sword. What’s his story?”

  “I wish I knew,” Will said, and unlike everything else, that was the honest truth. Of all the things that had gone wrong this morning, Talon was the most frustrating. Will had fully intended to take him in for interrogation, but then Lauryn had fainted, and by the time he’d finished making sure she wasn’t dead, Talon had vanished. None of the cameras had caught a thing, either. It was like the crazy man had just poofed into thin air.

  Given how the police chief was looking at him, Will couldn’t help but think his career was about to do the same, but Korigan surprised him. Just as Will was bracing for the old “hand over your badge,” the police chief turned back to the crime scene with a resigned shake of his head.

  “Done is done,” he said bitterly. “The important thing now is that we get this situation under control, and that starts with a story people can understand.”

  Will frowned. “A story?” When Korigan nodded, he sneered. “We don’t need stories. We have the truth. On camera, no less.”

  “Why the hell do you think I want a story?” the chief said. “I’ve had the mayor, the governor, and every major news outlet in the country crawling up my ass by turns all morning over this. Unfortunately, your name got out before I was able to get things on lockdown. Everyone knows by now that you were the man on the scene, which m
eans I need you to make a new statement. Something that will make all of this make sense.”

  “But I already wrote my report,” Will reminded him. “That’s what happened. There’s nothing else to say.”

  “Isn’t there?” Korigan asked, flashing Will the same smooth smile he used for the cameras. “Traumatic events like this are famous for coloring how we remember them. I’m sure after you’ve rested a bit, you’ll see things differently. Put this whole tragic event in a . . . new perspective, shall we say?”

  “A new perspective,” Will repeated, the cold coffee rippling as his hands began to shake with suppressed rage. “Funny, that sounds a lot like you’re asking me to lie on my report. Sir.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the chief said. “That would be illegal, and I do not appreciate you making that accusation, Detective. I want the truth as much as you do, but the hallmark of a true story is that it makes sense. Now I’m sure you wrote that report to the best of your ability, but when memories—especially ones formed under traumatic circumstances—go up against facts, facts have to win out. Take this Dr. Lauryn Jefferson, for instance. She’s been interviewed about this morning’s events by several experts now, and every time, she claims her patients were under the effects of an unknown, extremely powerful hallucinogenic drug that is transferable through fluid contact, like rabies, and yet is also somehow dispersed by water. She’s stuck to this story despite all of our narcotics experts telling her that the sort of drug she’s describing is chemically impossible. Clearly, this otherwise excellent doctor is suffering under a great deal of stress, which has made her a highly unreliable witness. I’ve already talked to her superiors about it, and the hospital’s agreed with me that she should be placed on medical leave for her own safety. I’ve had her statement tossed out as unreliable for the same reason. We can’t be too careful with such a serious matter of public safety.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it?” Will asked. “Because to me, it sounds like you had Lauryn’s boss put her on psych leave so you’d have an excuse to throw out a witness story you didn’t like.”

  “No—it’s a witness story you shouldn’t like,” Korigan said calmly. “Perhaps it’s slipped your notice that I’m saving your ex-girlfriend’s career. I even convinced the hospital not to press charges against her for causing nearly a million dollars in water damage during her federally unlawful misuse of a fire-control system. That’s a whole lotta nice I don’t have to be. I’d think you’d be grateful.”

  “Grateful? For which part of this farce? Lauryn’s not crazy. She’s just reporting what she saw. What we all saw. It’s on the damn cameras!”

  “You’ve seen enough security footage to know cameras don’t tell the whole story,” the chief said, dropping his voice. “If you’d get off your high horse for one second, Tannenbaum, you’d see I’m doing you both a huge favor here. Your story makes just as little sense as hers, which is why I’m giving you a chance to rethink if that’s really what you saw before this craziness becomes an embarrassing mark on your record.”

  Will opened his mouth to argue, but the chief didn’t give him a chance. “People see a lot of crazy things when their lives are in danger. You’re a good cop, Tannenbaum, but if you can’t see that the report you wrote is some X-Files nonsense, then you need to go on medical leave even more than your doctor does. Now I’m going to make this as easy as possible for you. You can either rewrite your story of what happened here into something that actually makes sense, or you can stick to your guns and have your report thrown out as the ramblings of a deeply traumatized victim. Either way, your version of this—” he waved his hand at the soggy ward with its overturned beds “—is never getting out.”

  “You say that,” Will growled. “But this isn’t the kind of thing you can bury. There were hundreds of victims—”

  “Whose testimonies are all questionable,” Korigan finished. “Our experts are already calling this a mass delusion caused by the unusual potency of Chicago’s new street drugs. How else can you explain so many people experiencing what was clearly not possible?”

  “It’s not a delusion!” Will yelled. “I’m absolutely clean, and I saw it, too. These things did happen.”

  “Of course they did,” Korigan said, placing a sympathetic hand on Will’s shoulder, which only pissed him off more.

  “I’m not crazy!”

  “Maybe,” the chief replied. “Maybe not. But as of right now, you’re on personal leave for medical reasons. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go home, get some sleep, and put all this nastiness behind you. When you recover and realize how ridiculous you’re being, you can come back to doing the excellent police work I expect from my officers. Do we have an understanding?”

  Will understood perfectly. The police chief had a mess he couldn’t explain, so he was burying it, and since Will refused to help shovel, he was getting benched. But this was one of those times when Korigan’s slickness wouldn’t save him. He might think he had everything tied up by discrediting all the witnesses and feeding the press a fairy tale, but Will wasn’t a team player when it came to cover-ups. He didn’t give a damn about his department’s reputation. He’d become a cop because he wanted to protect and serve the people who actually needed it, which did not include his boss or the politicians who’d put him in power.

  But while Will was more than happy to bust Korigan’s cover-up wide open, he hadn’t survived a decade of police work by being stupid. Bucking the system when things were this tense was a good way to get put down hard, so he decided to save the fight for later. He couldn’t quite make himself pretend to be grateful that Korigan was “saving his career,” but he managed to accept his medical leave with something like dignity as he made a show of packing up to go home.

  He wasn’t sure if it worked entirely. Korigan looked deeply suspicious at Will’s sudden change of heart, but the seeming surrender was still enough to get the chief off his back and out of his crime scene. The moment Korigan went back upstairs, Will dropped the act, leaving the other cops to finish up as he went off in search of Lauryn.

  Tannenbaum was going to be a problem.

  All the other officers had been more than happy to let the chief deal with the crazy mess that was the last few hours. It actually helped that no one could make heads or tails of what the cameras had caught inside the Mercy burn ward. Footage that made no sense was easy to write off, because cops, like mercenaries, were practical creatures. They didn’t like things they couldn’t explain. Mysteries meant extra work for everyone, possibly even federal involvement, so when Korigan had offered extra hazard pay in exchange for sweeping this morning’s insanity under the rug, every officer had taken it no questions asked. Tannenbaum was the only outlier, an expected complication given his sterling reputation. But troublesome as that was, even he could be put down, especially since his ex was the other witness. All Korigan had to do was paint him as a desperate man going along with his former girlfriend’s crazy story in an attempt to get back into her good graces, and no one but the conspiracy theorists would believe a word he said.

  Unfortunately, setups like that took time, and time was exactly what Victor Korigan didn’t have this morning. His hands were already beyond full dealing with the army of reporters that had besieged Mercy Hospital.

  So far—thanks to a statement from Mercy Hospital’s CEO, who’d gone along with whatever Korigan told him in return for the police keeping the press off their property—the mass-delusion story was holding. But while the press ate up the sordid and sensational story of crazed junkies driven psycho by bad drugs, it also put pressure on Korigan to crack down, which ran directly against his promise to St. Luke to keep the Z3X flowing. He was strategizing about how to reconcile the two and keep control of both situations as he jogged down the steps toward the underground deck his officers had claimed for their vehicles during the Chicago PD’s occupation of the hospital’s main building. But when he opened the door to the armored SUV that served as his offic
ial public vehicle during situations like this, he realized someone was already sitting in his seat.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Korigan jumped a foot in the air, pulling his gun automatically as Lincoln Black turned languidly to look at him from his cozy spot in Korigan’s back seat, his sword beside him and his feet propped up between the front seats, where Korigan’s driver and guard should have been waiting.

  “Where are my people?” Korigan snapped.

  “Taking a break,” Black said, grinning. “Did you see my handiwork?”

  Korigan lowered his gun with a sneer. “If you mean your mess, then yes. I saw it, and I’ll be telling our mutual employer that you are actively jeopardizing his operation.”

  The threat only made Black’s grin go wider. “How do you figure that? You think St. Luke doesn’t know what his drug does?”

  “He does,” Korigan snapped. “But I don’t. You didn’t tell me Z3X turned druggies into zombies. Do you know how many fires I had to light under asses to keep this story from exploding all over us?”

  “Nope,” Black said, sitting up. “Don’t know, and don’t care. But you’ve got no cause to complain. Pulling off miracles like this cover-up is why you’re getting paid the big bucks, isn’t it? And speaking of.”

  He pulled a fat manila envelope out from under the white lab coat he was still wearing as he finished, wiggling it back and forth in front of Korigan like a bone in front of a dog before the mercenary snatched it out of his hands. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “Your invitation to the ball,” Black said, spreading his arms wide. “And I’m your fairy godfather.”

  Korigan ignored him. He ripped open the envelope to grab the thick stack of legal papers inside, reading through the papers as fast as his eyes could go. Sure enough, though, it was all there. Everything St. Luke had promised—control over his pharmaceutical empire and shell companies, all his wealth and property—it was all there in black and white, dated to be transferred to Korigan at the end of the week.