He kicked the door open, sending a piercing dagger of pain through his right leg, Terin turned toward him. She was picking up a nasty looking assault rifle. It looked too big for her. It was certainly too big for the small bathroom. Terin couldn't sweep it to cover the door.
There was a bloody knife sitting on the sink. Something small and blood-covered was hanging in the shower—
"I'll give you the fucking Finger of God."
The first shot hit her in the chest, slamming the rat into the white tile wall.
The second got her in the face,
The third clicked on an empty chamber.
There was a weak sound from the shower "... way to go, Kit . . ."
CHAPTER 25
Angel's voice brought him back. The Beast didn't go back to its mental closet—the closet didn't seem to be there anymore—but it did let his rational mind take over. For the first time Nohar felt the full impact of what he had put his body through. Glass had been ground into his left foot. The falls and the leaping had strained his back. His knee couldn't hold his weight anymore. Any pressure on it was agonizing-He grabbed the sink and pulled himself into the bathroom. He looked into the shower. Angel's hands were tied to the showerhead. Her feet didn't touch the floor. She was still conscious, and her iace was recognizable. Terin had been working from the bottom up. Terin was experienced at shaving moreys—the process was supposed to be long, painful, and the victim was supposed to live up to and, hopefully, a little past the end.
Angel's legs had become strips of bleeding meat. "Kit, you look like hell . . ." Nohar gritted his teeth and knelt slowly to examine the damage. It was bad, Angel was probably in shock. He dropped the forty-four in the toilet and grabbed Term's knife. He stood on his left leg and circled his right arm around, under Angel's armpits, as he cut the bonds on her hands. Her weight nearly toppled him over. He pulled himself along, out of the bathroom, with
his left hand. The three rodents that had been covering the picture window didn't move. Every half-second the room was bathed in the searchlight glare 260
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of the cop's flashers. Nohar wondered where the cop was.
He laid Angel out on one of the twin beds. Her legs began to stain the white sheet. "I'm calling an ambulance— ''
Her head was cocked toward the front of the room. "Only one?"
Nohar went to this room's comm, it was intact. He called emergency. "I need a half-dozen ambulances, Woodstar Motel off route 322 in Chesterland, humans and moreys—cops, too, some of these people are dead-"
The dispatch cop nodded. "What's the problem there?"
Nohar spun the comm to face the carnage. "That's the problem."
He didn't bother to hang up. He turned to Angel. Somewhere along the way he had screwed up, badly. "Where's Stephie?" He almost didn't get the words out. He was too afraid of the answer.
"Back in our room, last in line. Talked about having a hostage. Left a Zip with her ... "
Oh, shit. If a ratboy was left with her, the bastard would probably kill her once he saw how the fight went. Nohar hobbled over to the picture window; still no sign of the cop. He reached and turned Bigboy over. The rat had been using an Uzi. Nohar grabbed the gun and crawled out the window. Once outside, he saw the cop. Fearless had got off one well placed shot. The cop was unconscious or dead.
Because of his knee, he had to advance on Stephie's room while leaning against the wall. His progress was agonizingly slow. He passed the wreck of the remote and the door he had busted in. He passed an unoccupied room. Slowly, he came upon the last in the line, the black GM Maduro parked in front.
He checked the clip on the Uzi. Good thing Bigboy wasn't spraying the cop. There were a few shots left. He hit the ground and scrambled under the picture FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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window—his right knee was beginning to make popping sounds every time he moved—and rolled in front of the door.
With the feeling this was going to be it for him, he shouldered the door open and covered the room with the Uzi.
And there was Mister Mad Bomber, looking like he was about to wet his pants. The rat's twenty-two thumped on the carpet.
Stephie was alive, and apparently unhurt. She had been stripped naked and tied to the bed. She turned her head toward the door when it burst open. She had never smelled so good to him.
The Beast wanted Nohar to shoot the rat. To Nohar's surprise, he still had control. Even though the mental door was no longer there.
"Kid, second chances are rare, use yours. Get out of here."
The rat carefully approached the door, where Nohar was still half-sitting, stepped over him, and ran into the night. Stephie's eyes were wide as she watched Nohar pull himself into the room and on to the bed. Nohar didn't waste time. He bit through the rope.
As soon as Stephie was free, Nohar found himself on the receiving end of an embrace that smeared her with blood. "God, what's happened to you—where's Angel?"
"Angel, I called an ambulance for her— and everyone else. They killed Manny—" Stephie broke off the hug. "Oh, Christ, I'm sorry—"
"Can you find me something to use as a cane?"
The curtain rod was stainless steel, and not as cheap as everything else in the motel. It made a halfway decent cane. Stephie found a robe and followed him out to the parking lot. He asked aloud the question that had gnawed at him ever since he had smelled Shaun-assy's blood—
"Damn it, why?"
He hobbled to the wreck of the remote. The power 262
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plant was still alive. The wheels were trying to drive it away despite the broken axle. He walked up to the vehicle. Green, just like Smith's van. Hell, it could be Smith's van. "The whole thing was blown. The Fed has everything." He slammed his left fist at one of the dangling pneumatic doors. There was a slow hiss, and the door slid aside with the smell of leaking hydraulic fluid. There were guns and a dozen white plastic crates in the back. Most of the crates had burst open. Little vials of red liquid rolled out the rear of the van. Hypo cartridges-flush, a few million dollars' worth.
The DEA would be happy.
Nohar leaned in and looked at the crates more closely. They were labeled. "NuFood Inc. dietary supplements—MirrorProtein(tm) *'
MLI was using NuFood as a drug lab.
There had to be another reason for NuFood. The Zips had only come on the scene recently. MLI had been dealing with NuFood ever since MLI's inception. MirrorProtein?
What was it Manny said about the chemical analyzer? They had been cataloging amino acids and the display was reversed. Nohar had thought the picture had been coming up backward.
What if it was the amino acids themselves that were coming up reversed? "Stephie, do you know any biochemistry?"
Stephie was already at the Zips' room checking on Angel. "What?"
Nohar hobbled after her. His thoughts were flying, trying to remember things, put them into place. "This is important. Really important. Biochemistry, proteins, amino acids, what do you know?"
"Next to nothing." She had her hand on Angel's neck. "She's still alive— What the hell are you talking about?"
"I need to remember if we're based on levo or dex-tro amino acids ..."
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"Derry was the chemistry major. Where the hell are you getting this from?" Stephie was looking worried, as if she thought he had gone over the edge.
Far from it. Things were making sense. "I don't know if you'll understand this." He was racing to get it all out. "I lived most of my childhood with Manny— a doctor and an expert on moreaus. I got a biology lesson every time I asked a question like, 'Why am I different from the other kids?' "
Even to him he sounded like he was rambling. He slowed down. "You can't live like that and not pick up on biological trivia. Like the fact our amino acids all have their mirror image versions." He finally remembered. "Almost all the life in this world is based on levo amino acids—
"
"So?"
Nohar shook his head. "Just tell the cops when they get here. You have to talk to an FBI agent—Isham. Tell her the franks aren't at MLI's office building. It's just a front, like everything else. If they're anywhere, they're at NuFood's R&D facility. Tell her the MLI franks are based on a dextro amino acid biology. Got that?"
"Yes, but-"
Nohar was hobbling back to the Maduro. He stopped at the remote. An Uzi wouldn't do much to one of the things Manny described. He looked in among the crates of flush and saw a pump shotgun. He'd take that, and hope.
He was beginning to hear sirens in the distance. Stephie ran after him. "Where are you going?"
"NuFood. This isn't over—"
He slumped up next to the car. "Did they wire the car?"
"No—"
"What's the combination?"
"Nohar, you can't! You're in no condition ..."
"The damn combination!"
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Stephie backed up a bit at Nohar's growled command. Nohar shook his head. "Please, God damn it."
Stephie heard the sirens now as well.
She stepped up and punched the combination on the driver's door. Nohar watched the numbers. She looked up at him afterward. She was crying. "You are not going to die on me."
Nohar hugged her with his good arm. "I don't intend to."
The Maduro had pulled out of the parking lot and was going down Mayfield by the time a convoy— Chesterland and Cleveland local cops, sheriffs from Cuyahoga and Geauga, six ambulances, two police wreckers, a fire rescue vehicle, and three Haviers— shot by going in the opposite direction.
Everything but the National Guard.
Nohar drove by them going a sedate sixty klicks an hour. He was squeezed in the sports car, but the gentle ride of the undamaged suspension made up for it.
Everything came together for him when he saw that NuFood label. He had been right along. Despite the hyped violence, the morey terrorism, the Johnson killing came down to one little piece of information in Binder's financial records.
The precognitive letter from Wilson Scott was only part of it. That only proved MLI had a hand in planning the Zipheads' terrorism. MLI was trying to hide something else.
Their origin.
Johnson used to be a chemistry major. It made sense he would figure this mess out.
It had all started thirteen years ago. Midwest Lapidary would have approached Young, Binder's new finance chairman. It would have been a very tempting offer. Young took the offer, and the bucks poured into the campaign.
And Binder's position became more and more reactionary.
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Over the next few years, other, similarly unpopular candidates had made some sort of deal with the shadowy diamond merchants working out of Cleveland-candidates that weren't supposed to win. Their positions would evolve as well.
Then, in 2042, morey communities across the country exploded into a week of riots and burning that took the National Guard to control. Led by the psychopathic rhetoric of a morey tiger named Datia Rajas-than.
The violence created a convenient wave of anti-moreau sentiment that catapulted most of MLI's candidates to office.
MLI had about seventy hard-core puppets in the House now, all incumbents. They only had a few men in the Senate, though, and a large percentage of their men, including Binder, wanted to be Senators.
The rogue agents in MLI, without Smith's knowledge, recruited the Zipheads to step in to create their own "Dark August." The Zipheads were happy to comply, considering the profits they made on flush on the street level.
Daryl Johnson knew or suspected all of this. At first he must have condoned it. You couldn't keep that kind of conspiracy secret from the campaign manager. The whole Binder inner circle must have known about the illegal financing. That's why it was so tight. Harrison, Thomson, Johnson, and Young stuck with Binder through his radical shift to the right. They all had been bought.
Johnson was the first to have second thoughts. Nohar suspected that it would probably have originated with the whole duplicitious situation with Stephie.
It must have grated badly. He stewed for years. Even tried to drug himself out of an untenable situation.
MLI must have thought they had him under control because he was hooked on flush that they supplied— though indirectly. If he did anything to break the silence, his supply would be cut.
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Three weeks before his death Johnson found a new supplier, Nugoya.
That wasn't what got him killed. The flush still came from MLI, they still controlled his supply even though Johnson didn't know that. What killed Johnson was why he was trying to get out from under the thumb of his supplier. Johnson's problem was curiosity. He thought too much.
He had thought too much about NuFood.
He thought too much about Kathy Tsoravitch's letter.
Johnson made the mistake of wondering, as I sham had just a few hours ago, why MU would be interested in preventing NuFood from succeeding. Tsorav-itch lobbied to prevent PDA approval. Denial of that approval bankrupted NuFood. Whereupon, MLI bought out the company, and the patents.
Why?
The question must have nagged at Johnson for years. Especially when MLI simply sat on the company. He might even have realized that MLI was using NuFood as its flush lab. A very expensive drug lab.
He finally figured out the real reason. When he did, he made his second, and last, mistake. He told Young. And Young had told the creatures running MLI— That's when the shit went ballistic. That's why Young was so scared, as well as guilty. He knew MLI's secret—they would have killed him once he had served his purpose, IDing the people in the campaign whom Johnson had talked to, those who read the letter.
But Young toasted himself, so MLI had to use their agents—Hassan and the Zipheads—to waste anyone who could have read that letter.
All from Kathy Tsoravitch's letter, and her pleading that the DA reject NuFood's application to mass market their dietary supplements. Supplements that were based on synthetic proteins derived from mirror image dextro amino acids. Proteins a creature based on a
levo amino acid biology—like the fat pinks at whom the food would be targeted—couldn't metabolize.
Johnson had looked too closely at MLI's agenda. He saw NuFood, moreys as a hot issue to be counted on to get MLI's people elected, and the budget. And the letters about government waste always mentioned NASA.
Johnson must have seen the creatures running MLI— the humanoid things that could only be franks. Otherwise, Nohar doubted Johnson would have come to the conclusion he must have. Because the truth was quite a leap.
Nohar's Maduro had glided into the suburbs again. He began watching the left side of Mayfield. NuFood's R&D complex was at 3700 Mayfield, near the minimum security prison he had passed earlier. NuFood's plot was cheap property, little-traveled.
The conclusion was simple, if hard to accept. Johnson must have asked himself the same question as Nohar did when Smith told him MLI supported Binder.
Why were a bunch of franks backing right-wingers like Binder?
They weren't franks.
Why the hell were they involved with something like NuFood?
Johnson must have inferred what Nohar had told Stephie. These things were based on a dextro amino acid biology. Manny had discovered that from Smith's remains. Manny had known, but he had never gotten the chance to double-check the results. He never got the chance to make sure the analyzer wasn't broken. That was what MLI had to cover up.
The prison came up on the left.
Nohar pulled the Maduro over and parked on the sidewalk across from it. NuFood was next to the prison's barbed wire topped chain link. It sat in the midst of a grove of trees and bushes that nearly hid the two lab buildings from sight. They couldn't let anyone know they were based on
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S. ANDREW SWANN a mirror image biology. It was because of that they needed NuFood. They literally couldn't live without it. Normal living things couldn't metabolize NuFood's products, but the converse was true. NuFood's production was the only thing they could eat.
No gene-tech, even as an experiment, would give their work such a bizarre handicap. Johnson would know that. It left one conclusion.
These things weren't bioengineered.
They had evolved naturally.
It was a fifty-fifty chance life on Earth ended up stabilizing around the one type of amino acid. Life elsewhere, if it evolved as it had on Earth, would end up stabilizing around one form or the other, dextro or levo. Same chance, fifty-fifty. Even odds. It was just bad luck, for everyone concerned, that these guys came from a planet that was based on the wrong type.
They were aliens.
Nohar hobbled across the street.
CHAPTER 26
The storm that had been threatening all night finally came as Nohar crossed Mayfield. It was a sudden deluge that washed some of the blood off of him. His makeshift cane was thumping an erratic counterpoint to the click of his claws. It was slow progress, but it was nearly three in the morning and there wasn't any traffic. The street was dead.
He made it across. To his right was the prison hiding behind its electrified chain link. Its yard was bathed in arc lights.
To his left was a line of shrubs and trees that almost hid an old, low slung, office complex from the street. Ahead of him, between the overgrown shrubs and the five-meter-tall electric chain link, was a dirty-gravel driveway. It looked like a landscaping afterthought.
He began worrying about the pink guards at the prison. They weren't involved in this, but it wouldn't be good if they noticed a morey with a shotgun skulking just outside their grounds.
He limped a dozen meters down the gravel path, all the while cursing his knee and wishing he could move faster. He made it to a point where the hedges got sickly. He turned away from the prison and pushed through a small gap between the bushes. He immediately tripped over a rusted "No Trespassing" sign. He managed to land on his left side, but the fall still hurt his knee.
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