The face on Nerva’s image twisted into something nearly resembling rage. “And I’m telling you this is not subject to debate,” he growled. “The entire fate of our race is tied up in that case. Detonate the bomb. Destroy the case—destroy everything. Now!”
Violet licked her lips and didn’t say anything.
Nerva’s image stared coldly at her, showing no emotion. “Good-bye, V.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out. She closed it again.
“V, I said good-bye.” He stared at her, hard and expecting. Unyielding. Here was a man used to having his underlings obey him, even if they weren’t sure why or if his orders made sense. Even if it meant their death.
She managed to swallow again, but it was really more of a spasm in her dust-dry throat. “Yeah,” she finally croaked. “Good . . . bye.”
She snapped off the telephone and slipped it back into its place, then reached inside her coat. The detonator was in there, ready and waiting. Like all of her “toys,” it was concealed inside a flat-space pocket where, until she removed it, it was as weightless and free of mass as air. All she had to do was pull it out and simply push the button. That little piece of plastic and machinery would then, supposedly, solve everything. The hotshot secret weapon would be history, the rebellion would be fueled, and the L.L.D.D. would be significantly hurt . . . although they would probably never be stopped. Was it worth it? Maybe. Her own waiting for the ultimate finality would also, finally, be over.
Just that one little push.
Push . . .
NINE
Violet was on the run again, bouncing through the crowds of people on the sidewalk outside like a pinball firing across the electronic surface in one of those late twentieth-century arcade games. She left a trail of muffled—and sometimes not—curses and sarcastic comments in her wake, but she didn’t care; by the time she made it out of the lobby of the building, the L.L.D.D. security forces were only about a quarter block behind her. Now the only thing keeping her out of their grasp was the pedestrians on the sidewalk—everyone trying to get where they were going as quickly as possible in the busiest part of the day.
Violet knew she wasn’t going to make it like this. There were too many soldiers and only one of her—she was outnumbered and while they didn’t have the same level of technology she did, they did have more of it—more guns, more power, more variety. The only chance she had of escape was blending in and walking away, literally, right under their noses.
There was a woman coming toward her, dressed in a classy pin-striped suit and carrying a light-colored briefcase. Her hair was about Violet’s length and strawberry-blond above dark, fashionable sunglasses, and she stepped confidently through the crowd, paying no mind to the other people—she was a woman with a purpose and a place to go, and she was exactly what Violet needed to be. Businesslike, brisk, and completely generic in her surroundings.
As she and the woman passed, Violet’s fiber-optic-coated hair shimmered to match the woman’s at the same time her mood coat did the same. Without saying a word, Violet did an about-face and fell into step at the woman’s side, moving as though there was nothing in the world out of place that she should suddenly look like this stranger’s twin sister.
Three seconds later, she and her new silent partner walked directly into the middle of the security forces.
The uniformed team streamed around her, not sparing a glance for the two women—they were far too focused on catching up with the dark-headed Violet. Not a single soldier registered the white briefcase that Violet swung loosely from her left hand as though it contained nothing more than a few office presentations. Maybe it was the light, maybe it was a trick of the mind, but when they saw what was in Violet’s hand, they saw what was in her mirror image’s. It was perfect.
When the last of the soldiers had stepped around them and moved on, the woman Violet was mimicking happened to glance to her right. She had only enough time to gasp, then Violet’s coat and hair reverted to their normal colors and she dodged across the woman’s path, then crossed the street and disappeared into yet another mass of daytime workers.
Down one block in the other direction, then one more, and Violet ducked into the doorway of a small DVD shop. As small as the shop was, it still managed to cram at least fifteen television screens inside its space, each one playing the latest and greatest of entertainment, all with the volume muffled to where together it combined to stay at a low, mind-numbing roar. Keeping her back to the street but making sure she could watch the reflection of the world outside of the alcove in the window, Violet pressed one shoulder to the glass and acted like she was browsing the most recently released of the selections, some flick about some little girl being transported to a fantasy land—a remake of The Wizard of Oz? Maybe. Violet’s heart was tripping along inside her chest, adrenaline and fear adding to her already super high metabolism. When she tried to draw in air her breath was more of a strained pant than anything else.
It took a precious quarter minute for Violet to calm her breathing enough so she thought she could be understood over the telephone. Finally, she pulled out her mic-phone and hit the redial code. Without realizing it, she’d left it in 3-D mode, and now Nerva’s darkly handsome form snapped into position in front of her without warning, his three-dimensional image so lifelike it was enough to make her heart stutter all over again. She had some explaining to do to her boss and it wasn’t going to be easy.
“V, what the fuck is going on?” The image of Nerva’s face was twisted with fury and frustration.
She swallowed. “I’m clear.”
“I told you to detonate!”
Violet ground her teeth at the rage in his voice. “I said I’m clear.” Her sense of propriety—she had disobeyed orders, after all—warred with a suddenly blossoming resentment. He was clearly furious that she was still alive. Had it really been so easy for him to order her to her death? Had he cared so little for her well-being?
Well, that figured. As long as it wasn’t himself, why should he care what was lost in his great and grand struggle?
The image in front of her spun and took a step, then came back—he was so enraged that he was pacing. Before Nerva spoke again, his overly long incisors worked at the soft flesh of his bottom lip. “You have the case?”
“Affirmative.” Her voice was crisp, back to that of a Hemophage soldier obeying orders. Inside, though . . . such indecision.
He paused and she tensed, waiting for his second round of orders for her to self-destruct. This time he surprised her when he finally nodded. “Bring it in.”
Violet’s breath hissed out between her teeth and she felt her shoulders relax a little. “What’s your status?”
The image regarded her from beneath half-closed, sleepy-looking lids, a deceptive expression that she had learned not to underestimate. The man was a wolf in disguise, a true predator. She shouldn’t have to be reminded again that he ultimately thought only of himself, no matter how grandiose and unselfish his words might seem. “The Needle,” he answered. “In the Chinois Gau.”
She gave a curt nod. “Ten minutes.”
If the Caucasian part of the city had been hectic, the Chine-Buddikhan sector was nothing short of true chaos. The people here were three times as numerous, most of them spoke at least two languages (and switched from one to another regularly within the same conversation), and children were as thick in the streets as the flies above the sidewalk vendors crammed along the outsides of the buildings. Saying it was noisy didn’t really cover it—it was more like an out-of-control industrial metal band with undertones of eclectic Asian music. Every now and then someone going by would catch a glimpse of what things could be if only the pace would slow down a bit . . . but that glimpse was immediately devoured by the way reality had actually manifested itself.
It was hard for Violet to tell whether she was in the midst of some kind of celebration or the masses of people were just out to browse the daily sales and look at the a
dvertisements. There were too many colors and banners and signs, too much yelling back and forth and hawking of street goods. It was a good thing Violet had left the motorcycle behind—she didn’t think she’d have been able to get the bike through all the people. The pièce de résistance was in the center of the street, one of those huge, three-headed dragons made of papier-mâché and wire; its body was segmented into at least twenty pieces that gyrated and hopped, propelled by the people hiding inside it who manipulated the wires. The whole thing wiggled and twisted in time to a cacophony of sound pouring from digital speakers set high on poles set at regular intervals along the sidewalk, and while the sound quality was excellent, Violet sure couldn’t find any kind of a rhythm to it.
Her goal, called the Needle by its builder, was the tallest skyscraper in this sector. Its appropriately named apex seemed to go up forever, or at least until it pierced the cloud cover that was, thankfully, blanketing Chicago—those clouds made things a whole lot easier on her oversensitive eyes. But even here, in the heart of the Asian community where the most independent—and dangerous—of the nationalities lived and worked, the L.L.D.D. had managed to make its presence widely known. Security teams were everywhere, their helmets and black visors swiveling from left to right as they patrolled the crowds and ignored the street hawkers who tried, outright sarcastically, to sell them a few useless gadgets and snacks. The resentment felt by the neighborhood residents toward the security forces was more than obvious—it permeated the air and carried on the belligerent voice tones, scissored from person to person on narrow-eyed glares. Still, the Asians, like Violet, suspected that ultimately there was no winning the war . . . just the little battles now and then.
Were the security teams looking for her? Violet didn’t know, but it was a good bet that if they hadn’t already received word of her theft via their microphones, it would happen at any second. Like most of the people passing the guards, she kept her gaze downward as though she needed to concentrate on exactly where her feet would land—it was easy to use the jagged curbs and the trash- and people-lined sidewalks as an excuse. But behind the ruse, her gaze constantly darted in every direction as she tried to keep her distance from the black-suited L.L.D.D. guards. The security people were even inside the Needle itself, which made things doubly tricky—she didn’t dare do something to attract their attention and, God forbid, invite them to follow her. This was the last place in the world she wanted to lead them.
For a change Violet managed a little kiss from Lady Luck and there was an elevator in the lobby waiting to begin its ascent. She shouldered her way through the office workers who were waiting for it and pushed inside ahead of several others, ignoring the barbed, angry glances. Her breath was shuddering as the doors finally closed—she’d become convinced that at any instant a couple members of the L.L.D.D. security force would charge onto the elevator and open fire. There was just no way to run—an elevator was way too much like a coffin built for a dozen people instead of one.
It was nerve-wracking to have to share the ride with several other people, but there was simply no avoiding it. Short of standing on her head on the counter in front of the security desk, Violet could think of no faster way to point to herself than to bodily remove her fellow passengers. Instead, she inched to the back wall as casually as she could, pressing her spine against a smooth, cold surface—fake marble—that matched the real stuff back in the lobby. Anxiety was making her flush and the chilly material against her back did nothing to help; she could feel nervous perspiration gather along her nose beneath the hard bridge of her sunglasses. To her own mind, she was glaringly noticeable—black hair, black coat, and sunglasses . . . how could she not be? Then again, maybe not. There were a lot of black-haired beauties in this Chinois community, and a lot of them favored the black outfits that made them look almost anorexic. To prove that her outfit gave her the desired measure of anonymity, her fellow passengers disembarked one by one, until only she remained, one lone woman headed to the upper floors.
Floor after floor ticked by on the digital display above the door, and now that she was alone in the elevator, Violet suddenly became aware—maybe too much so—of the white briefcase hanging from her left hand. Her fingers were still clenched around the handle so tightly that her knuckles were bloodless and stiff. Despite herself and the strict instructions from Nerva, she couldn’t help but wonder what was in it. Just what was this strange and magical, powerful weapon that was supposedly going to wipe out all the Hemophages but not harm the humans? Common sense dictated that it had to be something biological, a devastating agent designed specifically to target the mutated DNA structure of the Hemophages while bypassing that of humans.
Or . . . no. Maybe the uninfected would catch it, but their immune systems, being slower and more primitive, might be able to fashion an antibody to the agent before their likewise sluggish metabolisms ran the disease—assuming that’s what it was—throughout their system. It wasn’t hard to imagine if one likened the possibility to that of the now eradicated Ebola virus of the former African continent, the last of which had finally burned itself out in the bat-filled caves of the Republic of Congo after the global eradication effort. During its heyday, Ebola would often manifest and disappear again almost immediately, simply because it would kill its host—some sad and unlucky human or primate—far too quickly for its own reproductive cycle. Something modeled after that and intended for the Hemophages could be deadly, indeed.
Was that something like what Violet carried in this mysterious white briefcase? Surely not—if so, it didn’t make sense that Nerva would instruct her to detonate the bomb that had been affixed in her clothes since she’d left the meeting place this morning and started on her mission. An explosion was too risky, wasn’t it? After all, detonation had to mean taking a big chance of spreading the virus, or whatever was contained in this case, on the air currents afterward. It would mean every piece of debris left in the explosion’s wake might be contaminated, a potential avenue for mass dissemination of the virus.
Violet glanced down and saw that her forefinger had involuntarily moved to stroke the cool metal. She had risked her life for this briefcase, fought against and beaten down countless soldiers as she took the chance that she might be caught and tortured or killed at any second. She’d given so much and asked for so little in return . . . didn’t she have the right to know what was inside?
She was two floors away from her stop when she reached out and pushed the emergency stop button. The elevator stopped with a jerk, but unless she intentionally pushed it, the alarm wasn’t going to sound. It was just her, and the silence . . .
And the briefcase.
She looked down at it in indecision—
No, that simply wasn’t true.
There wasn’t any indecision about it.
With a senseless glance behind her, Violet knelt and swung the pizza-box-sized briefcase around until it was flat on the floor in front of her knees. Her heart was racing again, this time in anticipation and . . . oh, sure. That thrill, the one she sometimes got when she was about to do something she knew she wasn’t supposed to, like a kid in a toy store getting ready to filch something small but which still had the potential to get him prosecuted. Her personality had always been that of a rebel, a woman who took chances for sometimes nothing more than the fun of doing so.
Another glance, this time at the floor indicator to reassure herself that the elevator hadn’t moved, then Violet slid her thumbs down and broke both of the DNA lock-latches. It was strange that there was no secondary combination lock on the case, but there was no time to think about that now. She drew her breath in and instinctively held it, then quickly lifted the lid.
What she saw inside the case made her breath explode from her throat as she flung herself backward hard enough to slam against the back wall of the elevator.
She stood there for a long moment with her hands splayed at her sides, frozen in place, trying to process what she’d seen. No, it couldn’t be .
. . it simply wasn’t possible. This was the great and grand weapon? This was the object of all destruction for her and her fellow vampires?
A child?
Violet wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and registered vaguely that her lips were dry enough to crack, then she cautiously approached the briefcase again. No, she hadn’t been imagining it—there he was, a boy child no older than nine years, curled into a cramped, still fetal position in the flat space inside the case.
He was human (nowadays it wasn’t unheard of to come across human-primate mixes, creatures bred to work in hard labor situations), with huge, clear blue eyes that stared up at her beneath a crown of fine, close-cropped light brown hair. While he blinked at the sudden light in the elevator, there was no indication that he had the Hemophage virus inside him—his pupils reacted normally to the light and while his skin was pale, he still had a nice, healthy blush to his cheeks, the kind that fled a Hemophage’s body by the end of the third month of the disease. Violet’s extrasensitive hearing could easily pick up the boy’s heartbeat, and it was normal and steady—thrum thrum thrum—as though he had nothing in the world about which he need be concerned. When his gaze focused on her face, he opened his mouth to say something—
And Violet quickly slammed the briefcase shut again.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, trying to comprehend what she’d seen, attempting to subconsciously run through the hows and whys of it. Eventually the self-preservation node in her brain kicked in and reminded her that she’d held up this elevator for quite some time, and there was a damned good chance that pretty soon some kind of auto-alarm would go off. Finally, she stood and picked up the briefcase, then squared her shoulders and pressed the button to get the elevator going again. It started again with barely a hitch, the miracle of modern machinery.
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