Violet almost snorted. “Bullshit. You would have killed me long ago.”
Now it was Daxus’s turn to give her a calculating stare. “Are you quite sure about that, Violet?” he asked.
The ever-so-slight lift of one of his eyebrows portrayed enough smugness for Violet to realize he was, at least about this part, telling the truth. Her eyes narrowed dangerously and Daxus raised his hands to placate her when he caught her expression. When he spoke, his tone had gone matter-of-fact, as if he were doing nothing more than reading a set of statistics and rules. “Listen,” he said, “the child is of no use to you. He’s laboratory bred, vegetative.” Daxus tapped his head for emphasis and his dark eyes held hers. “He’s practically brain-dead. Just give him to me and you’re on your way.”
Violet gave a bitter chuckle. Did this stupid man really think she would ever believe him? Did he think anyone would? “Sure I will,” she said sarcastically. Her gaze flicked to the left, then the right, and she didn’t have to check the shards of glass that used to be the side mirrors to see she was surrounded. “Because you’re going to use him to kill me and everyone like me anyway.”
“It’s not like that,” Daxus said flatly. This time Violet thought he sounded impatient, as if he felt he was wasting his time. Of course he did—all the uninfected felt the Hemophages were a waste of time. “The boy’s not what you think.”
Violet raised an eyebrow. “No? Then what is he?”
Daxus opened his mouth, then hesitated. Finally he said, “He’s . . . my son.”
Her eyes widened, then her gaze cut to the boy’s face. If Daxus’s words had any meaning at all for him, the child certainly wasn’t showing it. But it wasn’t so far-fetched. In fact, Daxus probably was the boy’s biological father, but only in the most clinical sense. Anyone could see that it was inarguable that the second part of Daxus’s claims were also true—the child was laboratory bred, devoid of emotion, deprived of all the simple things that a child should have, like toys, fun, sunshine . . . love. To Violet, fathering a child but neglecting these other things negated any connection, biological or otherwise. He was no better than a normal human who’d abandoned his offspring and pretended the boy—or girl—never existed. After a certain length of time passed, he simply had no rights.
She caught movement out of her peripheral vision, and when Violet glanced at the rearview mirror—how amazing that it hadn’t been blown to hell—her suspicions were confirmed. This mouthy bastard was just killing time, while behind her more Deployment Commandos crept ever closer. Any possibility of escape was going to disappear way too fast, but it hadn’t yet—not too far behind the men was the luckiest break she could think of for her and the boy: a subway entrance.
She cleared her throat, then stared the older man straight in the eye. “Hey, Daxus,” she said in a falsely conversational voice. She put a perky, curious tone in her words, but in the meantime she never lost sight of what was going on around the car.
If he could have rubbed his hands together in anticipation, Violet thought he would have. His grin was toothy and sharp. It looked a lot like the mouth on a shark. “What?”
“You’re full of shit.” Miraculously, the car’s engine was still running, and she rammed her foot down on the accelerator at the same time she threw the transmission into reverse. The vehicle’s engine choked and almost died; for an overly long moment, her heart was in her throat, beating and beating and beating, and drowning out every other sound in the world. Then the engine caught, revved, and they shot backward; when the rear bumper plowed through the Commandos heading toward it, they scattered like pins in an old-fashioned game of bowling.
Without slowing the vehicle, Violet yanked a machine pistol out of a flat-space pocket, then screamed “Cover your ears!” at the boy. But he only looked at her, his wide, dull gaze obviously uncomprehending. Did he have a clue at all? About anything? With a growl of frustration, Violet slapped a hand over the side of his head that was closest to her, then pushed his head down and against the upholstery. A moment later, the back of the vehicle crashed hard into the dual stone banisters that marked the opening of the subway entrance she’d spotted a moment ago. They bounced off one and stopped, then Violet slammed open the door on her side and she and the boy were spilling out and dashing down the stairs into the crowded station.
They might as well have stumbled into another world, one full of people oblivious to all the danger and excitement of what had been happening above their heads. Office workers, maintenance people, blue collars—literally thousands of people going in every direction, and not one of them at anything less than breakneck speed. Down here it was damp and cool and noisy, so much so that none of the subway riders or vendors had even heard the shots or the shouting or the scream of the vehicle engines on the upper street level. These people had one purpose, and one only—to get where they were going. Whether it was work or home or somewhere in between, they hadn’t a clue about the problems at ground level. They weren’t concerned about it, and they certainly weren’t going to let anything as petty as the police or a criminal chase get in their way.
Yanking the boy along behind her, Violet ignored the startled look of the cashier and went over the turnstile rather than through it. She half expected some kind of an alarm to sound, but nothing happened—apparently the girl had gone back to inspecting her fingernails and being utterly bored. Violet kept heading down, practically dragging the child as she pushed to the side of the line of nonmoving people on the descending escalators—if these idiots were in such a hurry, why didn’t they move on the escalators and get where they were going twice as fast?
They passed the billboard ads along the walls so quickly that they were little more than colorful blurs spotlighted by different neon colors and blinking LED displays. Papers and discarded fast food containers not yet swept up by the auto-cleaners crunched beneath their feet. Now, as the areas closest to the trains became more crowded, people were starting to stare and grumble at Violet as she forced a path through.
The final set of escalators, and she and the boy had finally made it to the train platform proper, where an express train was readying itself to pull out of the station. Before its doors could close all the way, Violet raised her machine pistol and put one shot into the door mechanism, leaving it jammed open despite a good two-foot gap and the fact that it was already moving. Ignoring the startled screams of several passengers, the two of them leaped onto the car at the last second. Then the train was on its way, leaving the overly bright platform behind for the dark anonymity of the train tunnel.
Gasping for air, Violet turned around and grabbed the boy by the shoulders, examining his face and neck and ignoring the rest of the train riders. He seemed okay—no signs of blood or bruising—but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been injured somewhere that she couldn’t see. “Damaged,” she managed to get out. “Are you damaged?” But the child only gazed back at her and with sudden dismay, Violet suspected that not only could he not understand her, everyone else on the packed subway car was staring at them suspiciously, filing away their images in their memory banks for later identification whether they realized it or not. Swallowing past her uneasiness, Violet grasped the boy’s small hand and tugged him after her as she threaded her way through the people in the narrow center aisle until she could cross into another car.
This one was better, almost empty—like dumb cattle, the people had crowded through the door and stayed where they were rather than find more comfortable surroundings. With the boy at her side, Violet slumped onto one of the double seats, then her shoulders sagged and she put her head into her hands. Her heart was still pounding in her chest and adrenaline still washed the nerves in her body. She could feel her hands trembling against the skin of her face. “What the hell have I done?” she whispered out loud. For that question, she had no answer, only a thousand repercussions.
Something made her look up again, and Violet realized the boy was no longer next to her. For a second, she panicked
, almost unable to fathom that the object—living or not—that she’d thrown everything in her oh-so-limited life away for was gone. Then she saw him a little farther down in the car. He was wandering, looking left and right over his head and studying the bright paper and LED advertisements as if he’d never seen such things. There was one for a family counseling center, another for a medical center that “specialized in H.P.V. prevention”—as if such a thing were possible. Another, done in a child’s primary colors, touted the latest and greatest in robotic toys while the one directly across the aisle was an online university’s gloating missive about the famous people who had taken its courses. Yeah, he’d probably been missing this stuff all his limited life.
“Hey!” Violet snapped. Even though she’d spoken loud enough to be heard, the child ignored her. “Hey!” This time he turned and looked back at her. She caught his gaze and gestured sharply at the seat across the aisle from her. “Park it,” she ordered. “Right there.” But although he looked where her finger pointed, he made no move to obey. She scowled at him. “Don’t make me tell you twice,” she said ominously. “Sit!”
Still he paused, and Violet felt her irritation rising as she thought he wasn’t going to obey. Then he surprised her by moving slowly back and settling himself on the seat, looking at her without saying anything. “And don’t get any cute ideas, either,” she told him testily. “The only reason I saved your life is because what’s in your blood can save mine.” She grimaced and ran her tongue across her dry lips. “If they corner us, suffer no delusions—I’ll kill you.”
The boy didn’t move, just sat there with his hands folded in front of him like a good little robot in neutral gear.
Violet grimaced under his implacable scrutiny, realizing that what she said made no sense. If they were cornered, she wouldn’t kill the child—if she broke the surface of his skin, whatever was in his system would be instantly released. An airborne disease, especially if released outside, would be unstoppable. Her species would cease to exist in . . . what? A week? A month? They were nearly there now.
She looked at him again, but he still wasn’t speaking. Her hand waved in the air impatiently. “What am I doing?” She scrubbed at her face, wishing she could wipe away some of her tiredness. “It’s like talking to a bag of rocks.”
The hiss of the train’s hydraulic brakes made her jerk and look up as the train slowed and rolled into the next stop. Tired or not, it was time to go. Moving quickly, she stood and grabbed the boy’s arm, then pulled him out the door while it was still opening. Violet could see Command Security Teams streaming down the stairs at the far left of the platform, so she and the kid headed in the other direction until she found a different set of steps. Keeping her head down so no one could see her face, Violet pulled the kid up and out of the tunnel.
The street outside was packed with more people, hundreds, maybe thousands of worker bees. Didn’t these men and women have jobs to go back to after lunch? It never ceased to amaze Violet just how many people there were in the world. On the surface it seemed like a coldhearted thought, but why the heck was the ArchMinistry so concerned about the Hemophage virus anyway? Maybe it was God’s way—if she believed in God, that is—of controlling the population, thinning the herd before mankind completely overran this planet and sucked up all its fragile natural resources. Of course, when you became infected with the virus the point of view about that changed drastically. Now that she was on the receiving end and watching her life dwindle away to nothing way too soon, Violet could understand why they wanted the spread of the virus to stop.
But that didn’t make it all right to exterminate the poor bastards like herself who were already its victims.
Concentrating, she made the bright colors of her overcoat tone down so she could blend in more easily with the distinctively office-type crowds in this neighborhood, then headed toward the building directly in their path. Called Pearl Tower, it was massive and tall and beautiful, its outer surface covered in a simulated pearl-coated granite that reflected the light and made her Hemophage eyes ache nastily even behind her black sunglasses. Hauling the kid around was like tugging on a confused and unruly dog—he gawked at everything, twisting and turning, trying to step backward so he could see people and things that he’d clearly never thought existed. Finally Violet found the staircase she’d been looking for and hurried down it, by now practically dragging him. She could tell in an instant that it wasn’t safe to go right through the lobby. “We’re going to have to go around instead of straight through the middle, so stick close,” she told the boy in a low voice. “I know someone who might be able to help us.” She glanced over her shoulder, then jerked to a stop when her eyes focused on nothing but an empty space. Where the hell was he now?
Three long steps took her back up to street level. There—right smack in the middle of the sidewalk, staring up in awe at Pearl Tower while everyone who passed him on the sidewalk stared at him. Great. “Unbelievable,” she muttered. Then louder, she said, “Excuse me!” For the amount of attention he paid her, she might as well have been mute. “Hello?”
Nothing. She might as well have not even been there.
“Damn it,” she growled under her breath. She was going to have to go get him. Glancing nervously around, she marched over and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hi,” she said. “Remember me?”
He turned his head just quickly enough to see her, then went back to staring at Pearl Tower. “Look,” she said. “Do you have any clue how serious this is?” Still no response, and she’d had enough. This time she pulled him roughly around to face her. “These people will kill you—do you understand that? Without even thinking. In fact, they have thought about it, and that’s exactly what they intend to do.”
God, why was she even trying to talk to him like this? Because for some incomprehensible reason, she just couldn’t accept that this boy didn’t have enough brain cells to register what she was saying. She had to keep trying. “So I suggest you stop acting like a newborn fawn and straighten up before your actions start to affect my ability to survive.”
Okay, maybe that diatribe had been a little over his head, but what did it matter? He still only looked at her blankly, and suddenly all the wind went out of her. How the hell was she going to reach him? Even if he did understand her, she wasn’t even sure that they spoke the same language—it was entirely possible that he could hear her but not know how to talk. For all she knew, that monster Daxus had ordered the boy’s vocal cords surgically removed as a way of ensuring his silence, and it was highly doubtful he knew how to write. She knelt, then realized the boy still had biometers attached to his clothing; angrily, she started tearing them off. “Look,” she said, “all I’m trying to say is . . . you know, it’s for your own good. Do you . . . do you understand me?” She sighed and shook her head as she yanked off the last meter she could find. She felt like a dog too hungry—or dumb—not to keep braving the fire to get at the last possible morsel of food. “Just stick by me,” she finally told him in a tired voice. “Close, like glue. Nothing more complicated than that. Just stick by me. Okay?”
The kid still didn’t say anything, but he did surprise her by reaching out to curiously touch her face with his fingertips. She pulled back instinctively and she saw a slight frown cross his forehead, then he settled for brushing his hand across the surface of her LCD coat instead. Before she could think of what to say about this, over his shoulder she spotted a double security team pushing its way through the people on the sidewalk.
“Not good,” she said through gritted teeth. Without bothering to explain, she grabbed the boy by the hand and yanked him into the crowd in a different direction.
TWELVE
They were on the move again—when was she not?—and working their way quickly through another mass of people at yet another crowded mall. What a crowded planet it had become, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year—never an end to it. Part of Violet hated the hustle and bustle, the overpopul
ation, and the normalcy of life all around her; on the other hand, if it wasn’t for that very same environment, she and the boy would both be dead by now.
Without stopping, she pulled a new mic-phone out of one pocket and slipped it behind her ear, bringing the mic attachment around to her mouth. Her gaze darted in every direction, on high alert mode for the first signs of a Command Security Team as she pushed a code into her memory keypad.
“Garth, it’s me,” she said urgently. “I screwed up—I screwed up bad. The case had a freaking kid in it, and I . . . I crossed Nerva.”
Garth’s voice came back immediately, but it was scratchy, a bad connection getting worse with each passing second because of the reinforced bars crisscrossing the mall’s roof. “I know—he called. Don’t even think about bringing it here, V.”
She felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise in instant anger, almost like a wild dog’s. Was he really that easily swayed by Nerva? Or was he just scared? “Damn it, Garth—this kid might have the answer in him, but he’s got all the collaborative ability of a cow. I’ll be lucky just to get him out of here alive. I need your help!”
Nothing.
“Hello? Hello?” She tapped the mic frantically. “Garth? Hello?” Hissing with frustration, Violet snapped the phone closed. “Damn it! I can ride a motorcycle on the frickin’ ceiling, but I still can’t get a decent cell signal!”
Violet turned to the boy, and wouldn’t you know it—he was gone again. She spun but her panic was short-lived . . . at least as long as he hadn’t been noticed. He was only a few yards away, backed against the plate glass window of one of the stores and staring in openmouthed wonder at all the different people hurrying past. Right now, at least, no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. Violet was at his side in three seconds, her fingers digging firmly into his forearm. “Are you crazy?” she demanded. “What part of those bullets whizzing past your head didn’t you get?”
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