by Rachel Caine
“How exactly can we do that, when we have no idea where their doorstep might be?” Annie asked, as she put her food on the table and sat down beside Joe. “Other than Pharmadene, I mean. I’d rather not take the fight to them there again, please.”
“The FBI will take good care of Pharmadene; trust me, they’re probably not too happy that their people got subverted in the first place,” Bryn said. “But we do know something. We know who owned the old folks’ home that was our first introduction to the nanite harvesting.”
“The Fountain Group,” Patrick said. “Liam’s doing the research. Well, he was before we had to break off and run, but I suppose membership in this fortress comes with Wi-Fi access.”
“If you ask me nicely,” Pansy said sunnily. “The password is randomly generated, and it changes every day. I’ll let you know where to get the new codes.”
“Wow,” Bryn said. “Doesn’t it just make you tired? All the . . . security?”
“Sure,” Pansy answered, and spooned up soup. “But you end up surrendering things, little by little, when your partner needs more than you do. And Manny needs it. You get used to it. It’s not any different from living here when the Titan missile program was actually under way, only we have Blu-ray and surround sound.”
“That’s one way to look at it, I suppose. Liam?”
“I’ll continue the Fountain Group investigation immediately,” Liam nodded. “Of course, they will know we’re onto them once I begin to dig hard.”
“They can’t trace it here. We use a lot of anonymizers.”
“Of course you do, dear Pansy. But nevertheless, they will know someone is checking, and that will cause them to upgrade their alert status. I imagine that will make them move with a bit more speed. We should factor it in.”
Bryn controlled the sudden urge to tear into her steak with her bare hands, and forced herself to use the steak knife and fork she’d brought over with her. The first bloody, juicy bite of meat made her shiver in cell-deep relief, and she closed her eyes and let out a slow sigh of a breath.
When she opened her eyes, they were all looking at her.
“Good steak,” she said, and took another bite. They watched another few seconds, probably to be sure she wouldn’t turn ravenous zombie on them, and went back to their own meals.
Pansy, Bryn noticed, had strapped on a sidearm, and she’d been aiming the weapon at her under the table the whole time. Now Pansy slipped it back into its holster and gave Bryn a half-apologetic lift of her shoulders. Bryn didn’t really blame her. Being ready at all times to kill her, at least temporarily, was probably the bargain that Pansy had made with Manny to allow Bryn to stay—and it was good tactical sense. And for all her calm good humor, and seeming fragility, Pansy was perfectly capable of pulling the trigger when it counted. Much like Manny, although Manny was often a bit too eager on that score.
“Liam’s right,” she said, as she cut her third bite. “Once you start poking into the Fountain Group, they’ll react, and if we’re sending a team out of here, it needs to be away before they’re parked outside our front door. The point of having a fortress is to pin our enemies down in one place and leave a strike force mobile. I say we stay the night and head out in the morning—and then Liam starts his Internet stalking. He can send us info as he gets it.”
Nobody had any objections, except for Annie. She was glaring across the table at Bryn. “You’re going to leave me stuck here, aren’t you?” she asked. “Oh, come on, I know it’s coming. I’m the stupid kid sister liability.”
“No,” Riley Block said. She’d already finished half her steak, eating quickly and quietly, but she drew all their attention now. “You’re a liability for several reasons, Annie. You’re not combat trained, for one thing. For another, you still require the shot daily, and that means carrying supplies that can be destroyed or lost, putting you at risk.” She exchanged a glance with Bryn, and made a decision. “I didn’t say it earlier because I thought it might complicate matters, but . . . I don’t need the shots, either. I’m upgraded. Like Bryn.”
Silence around the table, and then Patrick said, tightly, “Why keep that from us?”
“Because when Manny found out one of us was upgraded, he shot Bryn in the head. I had good reason to think he’d take a more salt-the-earth approach if he thought it was some kind of epidemic.”
Joe thought it over, and he was the first to shrug. “Fine by me,” he said. “The way I see it, we’re going to need advantages if we intend to have any kind of a shot at winning.”
Annie licked her lips. “But—I could help, right? I could. I’m not helpless.”
“There is no but to it,” Riley said. “You’re a liability, and you stay here. Manny and Pansy have all the supplies necessary to make the serum for you, and you can help them defend this place if needed. Besides, I’m sure Bryn would feel better not having to worry about losing you, again. If you were my sister, I’d want you kept as much out of danger as possible, Annie, because you’re family. I’m pretty sure Bryn feels the same.”
Annalie fell silent, studying Riley; it was exactly what Bryn would have said, but somehow, it was going down much better coming from an impartial third party. And incredibly, Annie nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I admit, that makes sense. But I hate being the one who isn’t, you know, up to it.”
“The best people are the broken ones,” Pansy said, “because we heal stronger. Look at Manny and me. We’ve been shattered and glued back together, just like you. You’re not fragile, Annie. You’re still healing. There’s a difference.”
Annie took a deep breath, and nodded. She even ate some broccoli, which Bryn knew she loathed. Seemed like a good first step.
“So we rest,” said Joe Fideli, “and hit the road tomorrow. Pat, me, Riley, Bryn. Liam and Annie stay here with you, Pansy. Sound right?”
“It sounds perfect. Make me a list of what you want to take with you in terms of supplies and weapons, and I’ll get it together. How’s the chow?”
“You should open an underground fortress restaurant and day spa,” Joe said. “Maybe put in a massage therapy room, an aromatherapy pool . . .”
“You’re assuming we don’t already have one?”
“I’d never assume a damn thing about you, Pansy. Because I’d always be wrong.”
“You say the sweetest things, Mr. Fideli. Just for that, I’ll give you the half-off special on hot stone massage.”
“Before you two start making small talk about rolfing, let’s get serious for a moment,” Patrick said. “We’re going to need more than just the four of us. Does Manny have any contacts he can touch?”
“Don’t you?”
“Yes. But I’m almost certain they’ll all be tagged by now. Manny’s friends, on the other hand, will be much harder to identify, locate, and hopefully to sideline.”
“His friends like to be paid. They’re kind of, you know, mercenary.”
“We can do that,” Liam said. “For a short time, anyway. I’m presuming that this is not a long-term struggle.”
“If it is, we’ll lose,” Patrick said. “The Fountain Group is a very clear threat; they stepped in when Pharmadene folded, and they had enough influence and forward planning to infiltrate the FBI and take control of the research program—and make the upgrades. We don’t know what they’re planning, only that they have gone too far to stop, and they clearly don’t have any kind of moral limit. We’ll have the government backing us, at least the honest parts of it, for some of what we do. But if we can get to the people who run the Fountain Group, do it fast and surgically, we can break this down in a matter of days. That’s our goal. Days, not weeks.”
“Good, because I don’t want to have my wife and kids in hiding forever,” Joe said. Bryn felt a twinge of guilt for that, because it was her fault that his family had been drawn into all this, even tangentially; they were great kids, and Kylie was a lovely woman. Joe didn’t deserve to have his life destroyed, but now that they were all marked for
destruction, there wasn’t any choice. It was fight and win, or lose everything.
Patrick caught Bryn’s eye, and held it, as he said, “We’re not giving up. Nobody here is giving up. It’s not in our natures.”
After that, it seemed as if a dark shadow had passed. Bryn and Riley finished their steaks; everybody else ate their dinners; Joe and Annie and Pansy traded friendly, snarky banter. Liam added in the occasional dry bon mot. It was . . . comfortable.
Bryn glanced up in the corner, and realized that there was a small camera installed there. She’d subconsciously been aware of it, she realized—and aware that Manny was almost certainly watching them.
She picked up her plate and silverware, walked to the sink, and washed everything before loading it in the dishwasher. Let him observe that the ravening, unpredictable zombie was being domestic. Maybe he’d change his mind, a little, if she didn’t do anything to freak him out again. Pansy often referred to “talking Manny off the ledge,” and sometimes she meant it literally—but his mood was more focused on homicide than suicide, Bryn thought.
She got herself a glass of wine from the common bottle, and touched Patrick on the shoulder as she passed him. “I’m going to my room,” she said. “We need to talk. Come see me.”
He shot her a glance, clearly assessing, and then nodded. In all the chaos and fury of their escape from Pharmadene, she hadn’t had time to address the big five-hundred-pound gorilla standing between them, but tonight . . . tonight that had to change.
Tonight, they had to talk about her new status as what amounted to a full-on zombie, if mercifully free of the rotting flesh . . . and, although it might be something selfish, they also had to talk about something Patrick had chosen to hide from her.
One way or another, whatever else the conversation brought . . . they were going to talk about Jane.
* * *
Bryn waited in her room sitting at the table; she’d found a stack of books on a small shelf in the corner, and was thumbing through a pretty interesting account of an Amazon explorer when the knock came at the door.
Deep breath.
She opened it, nodded to Patrick, who nodded back, and shut the door behind him. She took the edge of the bed, and he didn’t try to sit beside her; one thing about Patrick, he’d never been colorblind to nuances. He took the office chair and rolled it close, sat, and put his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward. She didn’t think she’d seen him looking quite so lumberjack-casual before; the jeans and hiking boots suited him. So did the gray tee under the checked shirt. It made his late-day beard growth look comfortable and appropriate.
She had to admit it: she liked him scruffy. But she had to put that aside, in a mental closet, and lock the door on it, because this discussion wasn’t going there.
At all.
“So,” he said. “You’re . . . the new, improved model.”
“I’m still me, Pat. You know that I am. I’m just . . . tougher to hurt. Comes in handy, believe me.”
“I do,” he said. “But we didn’t even fully understand the fallout from the original version of the drug, Bryn. And now . . . now you’re carrying around something that’s first-trial experimental. You have to promise me that you’ll tell me if you feel something is . . . different. Anything.”
“Well,” she said, “I have this totally unsettling need to overeat. You know how when you’re pregnant, they say you’re eating for two? Well, I’m eating for about a hundred billion of these little bastards.” She tried to make it sound flippant, but it scared her, and she knew he saw it.
But it was okay. It was okay to be scared, with him.
“Don’t keep it from me if anything changes,” he said. “Promise me.”
“Yeah, speaking of that, you should have told me that your ex-wife was a psychopathic sadist killer for hire,” she said. “Or, failing that, you could have at least told me you’d been married before.”
“It was—” He stopped and shook his head, looking down at his boots for a moment before meeting her gaze again. “It was not something I want to look back on very much, Bryn. I was hoping you’d get that.”
“You must have loved her.”
“I did,” he said softly. “We were young and we shared the same ideals, the same goals. I met her in the military. It’s a hothouse environment, and it breeds obsessions . . . and we obsessed on each other. I admit that. But I truly thought we could make it work once we’d shipped home, and we did, for a while. But she had a dark side, darker than mine, and it just kept . . . growing. By the time she volunteered for the Pharmadene trial, when they were first testing the nanites . . . she was already a little unstable. I tried to stop her from signing up, but she just wouldn’t let me.”
“Jane was one of the first, then. One of the first Returné experiments.”
“Yes. And she was a success. A brilliant success. She adapted so well, so quickly to the nanites that it seemed to prove everything that they’d been hoping . . . until she turned violent. It was the dark side, the one I’d been worried about. She started . . . hurting people—small stuff, at first. Then, the second mission they sent her on, she killed someone. Not just . . . killed. She killed him unnecessarily hard.” He looked away. “You know what she’s like now—she wasn’t quite that bad then. They asked me to—to try to reach her. Bring her back from the edge. But she tried to kill me, too, Bryn. And I had to . . . I had to try to stop her. I thought she was dead—I really did. They told me she was dead. And the worst part of that was that I was really glad, because I knew she’d have only gotten worse.”
“And she did,” Bryn said. “A hell of a lot worse. I should know, Patrick. She had me strapped down at her mercy for hours. And she liked to hurt me. She enjoyed it as much as any serial killer ever did.”
He flinched, then. “I’m sorry.” He reached out for her hand, but she kept both in her lap, and he finally sat back. “You’re right. I should have told you about her, but—I really thought that she was dead. I thought she was the past. I was hoping—”
“When you met me, and I was newly Revived, you thought you’d try to keep me from becoming Jane. I get that. You transferred what you felt for her to me.” God, this hurt; it boiled in her guts like liquid nitrogen, achingly cold. “I can’t be Jane for you, Patrick.”
“You’re not. God, Bryn, you are not. I don’t know how to make you believe that, but—”
“You can’t,” she said. “Not right now. You should have told me. Maybe with that in the open between us, we could have found a way around it, but right now . . . right now I believe in my heart that I was a replacement, and I don’t want to be a replacement. Not for her. She tortured me, Pat, but finding out she was your wife . . . that really cut me, in ways I can’t even explain.”
He took in a sharp breath, and almost spoke, but then he stood up and rolled the office chair back to the desk. He held on to it with both hands, facing away from her, as he said, “Can you trust me enough to have your back when we leave here? Because right now, that’s the most important thing. Trust. Everything else . . . everything else will take time, but we need trust now.”
“I know you will do the right thing,” she said. “I’ve always trusted you for that. You’re my ally and my friend and my colleague. But that’s all right now. That’s all I can handle. There’s too much—too much chaos. Because the upgrade I was given—it’s what Jane had, too. It might take me down, just like it destroyed her from the inside.”
“Not you,” he said, and turned to face her. “I told you, Jane had a dark streak, something that the nanites just enhanced. You . . . you’re different, Bryn. You’re not cruel. And it won’t change you, not like it changed her. I believe that.”
Bryn wished she could believe it herself; she wished that with a passion that seemed all out of balance. But she understood the madness and malice in Jane in a way that she feared she’d see in herself, in the mirror; there was something about being so capable of violence that made it almost inevitable. When v
iolence was such an easy answer, so effortless . . . it quickly became the only answer.
“Thank you,” she said, and meant it. “I’m sorry. I wish I could—I wish I could be what you want right now. But I can’t.”
“You said you could still be yourself,” he said. “Prove it.”
“Sorry?”
“It’s killing me, Bryn. Because I love you, and I get that you believe I’m using you as some . . . stand-in for my ex. I’m not. You’re not her, and I’ve never for one moment confused the two of you. But I have to ask it straight out—do you still feel something for me? Anything?”
His directness took her breath away for a moment, and so did the steady, calm way he studied her. “I really hated you when I found out about Jane,” she said. “Apart from everything else, even the horrible things that have happened to me, it felt like the only person I could trust stuck the knife in.”
A shadow moved over him, and she saw his face tense, ready for the blow.
“But I still do love you,” she said then, quietly. “I almost wish I didn’t. I’d rather keep you at arm’s length, because . . . because I’m afraid I’ll hurt you, like Jane. Or lose you. And that would destroy me, too.”
He looked down for a moment, and without making eye contact again, said, “Would you let me kiss you? Because I need to do that right now.”
She was afraid to—not because she thought she’d hate it, but because she was afraid that it would unleash a torrent of feelings she couldn’t control. Things that might sweep them both again. Of the two of them, it was Patrick who had a bit of darkness in him, and she couldn’t let that carry him away, either.