Beth watched every muscle in Jack’s body ratchet as tense as piano wires. He looked the man square in the eye. “Answer her question.”
“What? Want to know if I killed your pooch?” He cracked and popped another nut. “Can’t say. All I know is, I shot it before it could give up our position. Then it scampered off, scared shitless. Probably to crawl into a hole and bleed out. Whatcha think of that, fuck-o?”
“What’s your name?” Jack asked. His voice was slow and even, but it burned like a dynamite fuse.
“Diamond. Larry Diamond. What’s it matter to you, fuck-o? Gonna write it in your diary? Draw a heart around it like I’m your boyfriend? Sorry, bud, I don’t swing that way.” He swiveled his head to leer at Beth. “Now, you, on the other hand, sweet cheeks. You I could—”
Jack lunged. He had both hands around the man’s throat before anyone could react, choking him so hard the veins in his forearms popped like tree roots. Diamond’s eyes had gone from smug and self-satisfied to looking like a pair of bloodshot golf balls.
The other agents leaped on Jack. It took all three of them to get him back into his seat and strapped into the five-point restraining harness. And all the while, Beth half-hoped that Jack had crushed the guy’s windpipe.
“Should put you on a leash,” Diamond squawked as he rubbed his throat. Friction burns ringed his neck. “Hope Kander has fun with you before it’s over. Hope he has a goddamn ball, fuck-o. Hope they’ve got to take you out of his lab in a fucking bucket.”
“Prepare for descent,” said the pilot, and the helicopter banked hard. Out of the window, Beth spotted a flat patch of brown dirt in the middle of a compound of trucks and support vehicles. She knew the area well. Could probably name the street, even. It was an abandoned lot in the Docklands, and it was less than half a mile from where she’d been born. And now it looked as if she was going to die here.
Déjà vu all over again.
• • •
Agent Ross was waiting for them, along with the same woman they’d seen on the top of the Castle Amusements fun house. Both were dressed in those impeccable trademark suits of theirs, their eyes hidden by black sunshades. Next to them stood a man in a white lab coat wearing wire-rimmed specs that magnified his rat-like eyes.
“Jack.” Ross held out his hand in welcome as they approached. “I’m glad you’ve finally decided to see reason.”
“We can talk about what my reasons are later.”
“Of course. Why rush this happy reunion? And I’m pleased to finally be able to introduce myself formally to your companion.” He offered his hand to Beth. “Miss Becker, my name is Agent Basil Ross.”
Beth let the hand hang there unreceived and unwelcome the same way Jack did. “I know who you are.”
If Ross was offended by the slight, he didn’t show it. He turned to the four agents who’d apprehended and delivered them. “You are dismissed, gentlemen. Take an early lunch.”
After they were alone, Jack stepped up to Ross, blocking him from Beth’s view. “You said you’d let her go.”
“And we will.” Ross craned his neck over Jack’s shoulder and caught her gaze. “We plan to release Miss Becker just as soon as you’ve fulfilled your end of the bargain.”
“That wasn’t part of the deal.”
Ross faced him. They were equal in stature and perhaps more than just that. “I keep my promises, Jack. You know that. I promised to find you, didn’t I? And here we are. I will also keep my promise regarding Miss Becker. You’ll just have to trust me.”
Jack said nothing.
“This is Dr. Willis Kander.” Ross gestured to the man in the mad-scientist getup. “He’s taken over the work that you helped Dr. Wilcox abandon so abruptly.”
“I’ll need a full battery of tests run on both of them immediately,” said Kander in the type of matter-of-fact whine usually reserved for telling dockworkers where to stock boxes.
“In due time,” Ross chided, again all smiles. “You’ll forgive the doctor’s bedside manner. We haven’t quite gotten him housebroken.” Kander’s face washed red, but he kept his tongue as Ross continued. “And I believe you’ve also both already met Agent Thorne.” Ross flicked a glance to the woman. She gave them a curt nod but said nothing. “Albeit under rather extreme circumstances. But fret not, Miss Becker, you and Agent Thorne will have more than ample time to get acquainted.”
Beth set her jaw. The helicopter blades had wound to a halt. The air was still and humid, infected with the dead stench of low tide. “What are you talking about?”
“You two will be working together, of course. I believe you have much to offer us.”
Beth held Ross in her gaze. His cold and murky eyes offered her nothing. “Jack might have said he’d give you what you want. But I’m not giving you a goddamn thing.”
Ross adjusted the stark white cuffs of his shirt. His gold-banded onyx cuff links gleamed in the morning sun. “I’m sure you’ll see reason soon enough, Miss Becker. Just as your mentor has. Let’s just hope it doesn’t also take you ten years. I fear we don’t have the luxury of waiting that long.” Ross smiled. “But we will if we have to. You’ll find we are very patient people.”
Ross turned on his heel and took two steps before stopping. Snapping his fingers theatrically, he whipped around and added, “I almost forgot. We have someone here who is quite anxious to see you.”
“What are you talking about?” Jack asked. And Beth found herself praying that they hadn’t rounded up one of the few friends she’d left behind in New Harbor, that Ross wasn’t planning on using one of her old coworkers as leverage.
“Agent Sands,” Ross called out.
From behind one of the box trailers emerged a petite woman who looked more like an accountant than a Division agent. In one hand, she held a leash. At the other end of it was Blood.
Beth was speechless. One look at Jack, and she knew he was, too. Sands unclipped the collar, and Blood limped over toward them.
“How? Where?” Jack asked, bending to receive the dog.
“Our Beta team found him circling a pier in Asbury Park, probably trailing a scent.”
The scent was hers and Jack’s, Beth thought as she, too, squatted down. And the pier was where they’d abandoned him. She gripped Blood’s coarse fur in relieved handfuls and silently asked him to forgive her. A nuzzle and a palm full of dog tongue told her that he did.
“We spared no expense making sure he’d survive.” Ross gestured to a shaved patch on the dog’s rear flank. The fur had just started to grow back, barely obscuring a brace of surgical staples. “He’d sustained an exorbitant amount of blood loss.”
“Thanks to your agent!” Beth spat.
“Yes,” Ross admitted. “We’re all Monday-morning quarterbacks in our own ways, I suppose. At any rate, while your dog is not one hundred percent ambulatory at the moment, I’ve been assured he’s expected to make a full recovery.”
“Thank you,” Jack said, and to Beth, his words sounded genuine.
“My pleasure,” Ross said. “Consider it a housewarming present. Agent Thorne will escort you to your quarters.” He turned to leave. “And welcome home, Jack.”
Ross had made it a few steps before Jack called back to him. “Ross.”
Ross halted and faced them, eyebrows raised. Jack stood firm. Clutched in one hand, Beth spotted the collar they’d put around Blood’s neck. “You can keep this.” Jack tossed the collar, and it landed between Ross’s splayed feet, the open buckle winking back the sun. “We won’t be needing it.”
Thirty-Seven
Jack relaxed his fist as Kander withdrew the needle. He rubbed the crook of his elbow, knowing he’d be looking at one wallop of a bruise come tomorrow. “Is that all you need?” he joked as he watched the doctor add this vial to the already crowded rack.
“For now.” Kander’s tone was about as jocular as that of a government bean counter wrestling through a thorny audit.
Kander’s lab was oddly devoid of the usual
medicinal smells. The only scent was the lingering coppery tang of his own freshly drawn blood. He stood up. His head swirled like an unplugged bath. It felt as if the doctor had just about drained him. “Do you have anything to eat?”
Kander flicked his fingers toward the stainless cabinets. “First drawer.”
Jack hopped from the table and lurched his way over. He was naked except for a pair of scrub pants. The tile was icy, and the overconditioned air had him shivering. He kept the nausea suppressed just long enough to make it to the drawer. At the bottom, he spotted a half eaten pack of Ding Dongs. He tried not to laugh, but a chuckle escaped nonetheless.
Kander shot him a narrow-eyed glance. “They’ll spike your blood sugar and help with the nausea,” he said, turning back to his work. “Or you can just suffer.”
“I’m good at that.” Jack stuffed two of the cakes into his mouth at once. Yes, he was good at suffering, but suffering for no reason was a waste of time. “I’m surprised you didn’t try altering someone else’s blood with the venom,” he said, mouth still full of chocolate, cream, and chemicals. “You had a captive creature, after all.”
“We did try,” Kander said. “Eleven times.”
“And what happened?”
Kander dropped a vial of Jack’s blood into a small centrifuge. “They all died.”
Jack changed the subject. “Were you able to find out anything about those scales we pulled out of Castle Amusements?” Jack had given them everything, including the chitin mask, when they’d landed in New Harbor. “The ones from that thing?”
“Our research in that area is outside the confines of what you and I need to accomplish here.”
“Not if that thing is connected to the creatures somehow.” Jack couldn’t shake the image of that enormous mound, the creatures entombed within, and the thing that had shed those scales. Jack hadn’t told them about how she’d reached into his mind or about the now-faded images she’d shown him. In addition, he hadn’t mentioned the handful of times he’d seen the creatures in their true form without the gas. And he planned to share neither of those facts unless absolutely necessary. “I didn’t come here just so you can take what you want. Quid pro quo.”
Kander turned, hands in his pockets, and leaned against the table as it rocked softly to the arrhythmic music of competing centrifuges. “I suppose I have a few moments to apprise you of the situation,” he said.
“Then shoot.”
“The scales, as you call them, have proven very resilient thus far. Very resilient. They’ve withstood extreme heat and cold, as well as rapid temperature fluctuations. Attempts to cut or drill through have done nothing except ruin every blade and bit we’ve used. Whatever substance they are made of is unlike anything we’ve ever encountered. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said that it appears to be nonorganic.”
“Nonorganic? Is that possible?”
“There is very little that isn’t possible, Mr. Jackson. As you well know. Now, if you don’t mind . . .” Kander returned to the centrifuges, pulling out the isolated vials and preparing new batches. “While we are extracting the necessary compound in your blood for eventual synthesis, I’ll need you to write down the rest of the formula for the gas.”
“My formula, you mean.”
“Dr. Wilcox created the formula that you stole.” Kander’s voice was basin-flat. “And as such, it is Division property. Please write it down. You’ll find a pad and pencil next to the Ding Dongs.”
Jack wasn’t having it. He’d give the Division what it wanted—what was killing him—but even here, he had his pride. “Dr. Wilcox and I developed the gas together, and that was only after he’d used me as a guinea pig for two straight years.”
“Is that why you killed him, I wonder? For revenge?”
“There is a lot of blood on my hands, Doctor. Trust me, none of it was spilt for anything as low as revenge. Not yet, anyway.”
Kander tried to hold Jack’s gaze and failed. He cleared his throat, turning once again to the safe haven of his machines. “I will need you to enumerate the process—ahem—your process.”
“No.”
Kander’s slender back hunched beneath his white coat. “Your cooperation was part of the deal you struck with Agent Ross in return for your safety. If you refuse to hand it over willingly, I’m sure he will be more than happy to consider alternative extraction methods.”
It might have been a bluff, but it didn’t matter. “The deal was that I would give you what you needed to make the snap-vial gas. And I will. But I will be the one to manufacture it.”
Kander slammed the workstation counter in a surprising display of petulance. “That is unacceptable.”
“I will be the one to decide what is acceptable. You seem to be a smart man, Dr. Kander. Put yourself in my shoes. What’s to stop Ross from simply killing me—and Beth—if I just hand over the formula?”
Kander finally turned. Jack didn’t see a trace of the pouting wrath he’d expected but rather something close to desperation. “I am simply acting on orders, Mr. Jackson,” he said, almost pleading. “As far as I am concerned, the concoction is crude and barely effective.”
“You think you can do better?”
“Yes. In fact, I’ve been focusing my efforts on a method of short-circuiting the creature’s illusions using neurostimulation.”
“Neurostimulation?”
“Yes,” he said, his tone giddy and excited. “Invasive and at the preliminary stages, but when perfected, it would provide a more stable and longer-lasting way to observe the creatures.”
“Observe and control, I’d assume.”
“Indeed. It’s a pity Agent Ross doesn’t see it the same way. We were months, if not weeks, away from developing a noninvasive extracranial prototype when you and your friend popped back up on our radar.”
“Sorry to ruin your plans,” Jack said, and he almost meant it.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t find much comfort in your words or your sarcasm, Mr. Jackson. But Agent Ross wants his formula. You’ve agreed to provide it. So let’s proceed, shall we?”
Jack nodded and headed over to the worktable. The Ding Dongs were helping, but he was still woozy from loss of blood. “Did you get the ingredients I requested?”
“We already had them,” Kander scoffed. “It’s not the ingredients we lacked. It was your blood and the preparation method that you stole from Dr. Wilcox.”
“I told you, Wilcox and I developed it together. I was a chemist, remember?”
“You were a chemistry teacher, if I’ve got my facts straight. You don’t usually expect a high school drama teacher to win an Academy Award, now, do you?”
“No. But there you have it.” Jack snagged his scrub shirt from the chair it was draped over and tugged it on. The fabric was stiff and course, and it barely cut the chill. “As it is, you can have as much of the gas as you want. It’s killing me anyway.”
“Killing you?”
“I’ve got stage-four lung cancer. I figured Agent Ross would have filled you in on that little detail.”
“He did not.”
Jack nodded, unsurprised. If there was one thing Ross liked as much as winning, it was keeping his gunpowder dry. “I suppose it doesn’t matter to him all that much. It’ll only be underlings breathing the gas anyway, right?”
Kander deflected the comment. “Cancer? Are you positive?”
“As sure as I can be going by veterinary office X-rays.”
Kander rubbed his jaw in thought. “Hmmm . . .”
“What?”
“Perhaps we ought to run a few more tests on you, Mr. Jackson. Maybe there is something I can do to help.”
Jack felt suspicion nibbling at the base of his mind. “Why would you want to help me?”
“Because if the gas turns out to be lethal, I can’t see how the Division wouldn’t prefer to proceed with my research instead.”
“But Agent Ross—”
Kander half smiled. “Agent Ross likes to
think he speaks for the Division, but I would imagine his superiors feel differently.”
Thirty-Eight
APPROXIMATELY FIVE THOUSAND FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL
Beth watched Thorne as she tapped away on a tablet. Her clothes were immaculate. Not a single strand of blond hair was loose from her glossy updo. Although they were about the same age, this woman radiated an aura of command not unlike her boss. Even the way she occupied the helicopter’s vinyl bench made it seem as if she were perched on a throne.
“Hope I can add these to my frequent-flyer miles,” Beth said over the thrum of the chopper’s rotor.
Thorne offered up a barely tolerant grimace and went back to her tapping.
At least it’s a change of scenery, Beth thought. Most of her time as a “guest” of the Division had been spent in her quarters—her and Jack’s quarters, to be exact, a Spartan two-room suite in one of the many identical trailers littering the Docklands compound.
The quarters were comfortable enough. They came complete with a double bed, a small kitchenette, a shower stall, a television, a blue corduroy dog bed for Blood with matching food and water bowls—and a door that locked from the outside, plus two guards armed with Tasers standing sentry just past the front steps. And, as Jack had whispered to her when Thorne first led them there, it was undoubtedly bugged and likely wired for video, too. Jack and Beth TV for the Division to enjoy, live, twenty-four seven.
Ostensibly, the suite was a space for them to share when not working on their assigned projects. Not that they’d spent much time there together. Only at night, when Beth would nuzzle against him in a thin sleep, pretending they were back in their tent. It wasn’t much, but it was all they had, and she cherished it. She’d tried to stay mad at him, and it had lasted all the way to the front door of their new—and possibly last—home.
During the day, Jack had been with Dr. Kander almost every waking moment. Beth had been left alone with Blood, practically climbing the walls with boredom, while the dog sat dejectedly waiting for Jack. Their twice-daily walks around the fenced-in compound were the only respite either of them got, until now.
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