Chapter 3
Fiona put on her winningest smile for the young doorman. He looked uncertainly back down at his clipboard. "I still don't see your name on the fist." "Sure you do. Miriam Soto. " "Oh. That's funny, I thought you said a different name. Must've heard wrong. You can go in, then." "Thanks, handsome." She left him blushing at the door. She had plucked the name from his mind easily enough-along with the fact that he didn't know what this Soto looked like-but when the real Miriam showed up, that would make things sticky, so she had best hung. The Four Seasons ballroom was just starting to fill up, so it was still easy to pick people out at a distance. She spotted the tall, elegant figure of Holden Waters right away, surrounded by a small flock of pretty young things. Trying to sashay-not quite sure she knew how, and not at all happy in her strapless evening gown- she went to join the flock, waiting at the edge until she caught his eye. "Oh, my," he said, "I don't believe I've met you." "How soon they forget," she replied. "But don't tell me that we have! I couldn't forget such a face." "Well, perhaps it isn't my face you would remember," Fiona said, sweetly. This prompted huffs of outrage from the other women around Waters, and two of them drifted off. "Young lady " he began, more than a trace of irritation rising in his voice. "Yes-Daddy?" She raised her voice on the last. "Young lady, I don't know who you are-" 227 "That's okay, Daddy, the paternity test knows who you are, and-" "Could we have a word in private?" He glanced around the room. Like neutrons caroming through plutonium, the first girls to huff off had begun a chain reaction, and attention was shifting their way. She smiled and waved languidly as Waters led her off, gripping her arm gently but firmly. A few moments later, they were in a small lounge. "Now. Young lady. I don't know whether we've really met or not-" "Daddy, you might want to turn the camera off, if there is one in here." "Stop calling me that!" He said nothing about a monitor, and she understood from his surface reaction that there actually wasn't one---as far as he knew. So she smiled sweetly, pulled a molded plastic gun from her purse, and shot him. There was only a suspiration-the pistol used C02--and a little blood as the flechette pricked into his throat. His expression was just turning to horrified shock when his legs went. She caught him on the way down, eased him into a chair. "Here we go!" she said, removing her long-sleeved gloves. She placed her hands on his temples and scanned. When she had everything she needed, she planted a very fore, clear thought in his mind. When he awoke, he would know for certain that one of his factories was about to explode, which one, and when. He would have just enough time to evacuate his workers, and no more. She put her gloves on, reached back into her purse, and pulled out a black marker. She left him with LIVE FREE printed across his forehead. She didn't go back through the ballroom, but slipped out a back door she had been informed of-it could be exited, but not entered. She returned to her van-a late-model Cortez-drove a few blocks, parked, and shucked out of the dress, exchanging it for jeans, T-shirt, light chest armor, and a sweatshirt. Then she resumed driving. She pulled onto 1-5 and headed south toward Tacoma, past Boeing-Mitsubishi Field, and took an exit into the grey heart of an industrial park. She parked outside the outer fence, retrieved an assault rifle and wire cutters from a compartment under the seat, and got out. The outer fence was mostly symbol, there to keep kids out- the real security precautions were farther in, and were someone else's responsibility. She cut through the mesh in a few minutes, checked her watch, stepped through the gap, and waited, watching the blinking lights perched on the high vents of the Waters complex . She tried to remain collected, but the sight of the sleeper factory tightened angry cords in her chest. No one who had met one of the zombies the antitelepathy drug eventually produced could really imagine it was a legitimate option. Yet it was manufactured by the ton, wasn't it? Nortnals watched their neighbors take the injection twice a week, without blinking. After this, maybe they would blink. At 10:00, klaxons started wailing. Hopefully this meant only that Waters had awakened and done the right thing. Fifteen minutes later, she heard the sound of several people running toward her and raised her rifle to greet them, just in case they weren't who she expected. Matthew? It's us! At about that same moment, three small suns appeared in the Waters complex, and an instant later the shock of the explosion blew over her. Hard on its heels came Matthew, Stephen, Cinnamon , Adam, and Phoebe, and she threw herself into Matthew's arms, allowing herself the luxury of a quick embrace. "You did it!" "Perfect plan!" Stephen said, slapping her on the back. "Perfect , that is, if we don't get caught. Let's move, people!" They piled into the van and Stephen took the wheel. He gunned the engine, and they streaked out of the lot. "Any problems?" Matthew asked, squeezing her hand. "Only the walking-in-high-heels part." The van rattled from the shock of another, greater explosion. "That was the sleepers," Stephen remarked. "Had to clear the building away first in order to get maximum dispersal." "The weather is holding," Matthew observed. "The cloud should drift right through Seattle. Maybe after normals get a taste of the stuff, they won't be so eager to inject it into us." The evacuation rush-and the related panic that swept through the nearby areas-covered their escape nicely. They got back on I-5, exited again a few miles later, and made a quick stop at a friendly house in Renton. There Cinnamon, Adam, and Phoebe piled into a green Makarov Bogatyr utility and headed due south toward Portland. Fiona, Matthew, and Stephen continued in the van, driving for six hours on back roads, rounding the imposing Mount Rainier, out through the Yakima valley, until they at last reached a private airstrip belonging to Rentech Corporation. A dapper young man in a black three-piece suit met them at the gate. "You aren't looking for the wine country, are you?" he asked. "Yup," Stephen replied, "I'm lookin' for a bottle of '61 Chaldee." The fellow nodded in satisfaction. "Welcome, Mr. and Ms. Dexter, Mr. Walters. Your travel arrangements have been made. Your plane is boarding now. My name is Rinaldo D'Aguila, and it will be my pleasure to accompany you on your journey." "Pleased, I'm sure," Stephen replied. Fiona bounced twice on the bed, experimentally. "I think I've forgotten exactly what this is," she remarked, collapsing spreadeagle on the huge four-poster. "It gets better," Matthew said, peering into the next room. "A shower. Shall we get clean before we get dirty, Mrs. Dexter?" "Why compartmentalize?" she asked, arching an eyebrow. She took one more bounce on the bed to catapult her toward Matthew. Later, as they lay sweaty and gripped together, Fiona glanced sleepily around the room. "Y'know, I didn't even think about whether there might be a camera in here." "Too late to worry about that now." Do you trust these people? I'm naked in one of their suites, which doesn't say much about my intelligence, because no, I don't. But they've always played well by us. We would have had a hell of a time blowing the sleeper factory without their help, and even more trouble getting away. Now we're in a nice room, we've got a day or two to amble around the French Quarter while they get us ready for the next leg. It beats our usual travel arrangements. He smoothed his hand across her belly. (skepticism) 77tey helped us because Waters competes with them in pharmaceuticals, not because they care about teeps, Fiona replied. True enough. But if the underground ran exclusively on altruism , we'd be in pretty bad shape. Which she couldn't disagree with. Fiona slept restlessly. The bed was too comfortable, the room too nice. Some of her people were sleeping on the streets tonight, some in concentration camps. It didn't seem right that she should be surrounded by such luxury. But that wasn't all of it. She eased out of bed and went to the window, gazing out at the lights of New Orleans. The new French Quarter stretched out below, rebuilt after the terrible flood of 2092. It didn't look so new anymore. So much of the city had been destroyed in the flood that many had wanted to call it New New Orleans, but it hadn't been a very popular suggestion. Deep down, she wondered if she didn't need a New Fiona. She loved her cause, but she had changed a great deal in the fourteen years or so since she had taken Monkey's place. At first, she had believed she could somehow win, change the whole world. That had been a good feeling, the best. The little victories were good-when they snatched a kid from Psi Corps or blew up a sleeper f
actory-but in the old days those all had been garnishes to the main course, the dream of that last battle, after which everything would be okay. The years had gnawed at that dream, and without knowing exactly when or how, she one day had realized that winning small battles was all there was, because the war-the war could not be won. They were bailing water from a hulled lifeboat. Eventually she came to where she could admit this to herself, and even make a little peace with it. The problem was that she could not even begin to speak of it to others, not even Matthew. What recruited people and kept them going through everything was the very simple belief that one day it would be over, and they could all step into the sun. What kept them going was hope. And she and Matthew, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, had become the center of that hope, the axis of it. How would the rest feel if they knew she, Fiona, the mother of the revolution, had no real hope left in her own heart? Her musings were interrupted by a soft knock on the door. She found her jeans and pulled them on, tugged the sweatshirt over her head, and went to the peephole. It was D'Aguila. What could he want? She opened the door a crack. "Ms. Dexter?" "That's me." "I hope I didn't wake you, but a matter of some importance has come up, and we rather hoped we could request your services." "You need a scan done? Now?" "Please.,, She considered. This was one of the prices they paid, when they got corporate help. Rentech probably had a hundred teeps in their employ, but they were all Psi Corps, which meant they wouldn't do illegal scans. Already feeling dirty, she nodded. Matthew was still asleep, and she didn't wake him. The "matter of some importance" was a young man-perhaps twenty-five-with curly blond hair and a pleasant, round face. It would have been even more pleasant, she imagined, without the split lip and bleeding nose. She regarded him through a one-way mirror, beyond which he sat in a grey room with a small table and two chairs. "He's a teep," she told D' Aguila. "A strong one." "Strong enough to be a Psi Cop?" "Yes." D'Aguila made a sort of grating noise. "He started working in our technical support department about a year ago. We caught him trying to send files out to somewhere, but he was able to erase both the files and the intended destination before we caught him." "What do you want with me?" "I want you to tell me what he's doing here-whether he knows about our arrangements with the underground, and so on." "It won't be easy. He'll block." "Do what is necessary." "He may be stronger than I am." "We can only ask you to try." She nodded, feeling sick to her stomach. But she went inside. She felt his touch leap to her immediately. "You're one of us," he said, softly. "I doubt that very much," she replied. "I make you for a Psi Cop. What about it?" Yes, I'm Corps. I'm proud of it. What I meant was, you're one of us, a teep. In or out of the Corps, we are the same. Kith. "Speak aloud," she said. You don't want me to speak what I know aloud. You're with the underground, 1 guess. Good guess, she replied. You do a lot of business with these people. They're just using you, you know. And we use them. To fight you jackboots. What's the difference? That's what I'm wondering. (pause) They're going to kill me. That's not my concern, Fiona said. You dug your own grave. But if you cooperate, let me scan you, I might be able to get you out of here in one piece. I don't know what I'll do with you then, but I won't kill you. (laugh) If you find out what I know and tell them, they will most certainly kill me. And you, too. "Let me scan you." You want it? You got it. Her mind filled with images. How long, she could not say, but at the end of it she was trembling. Stay quiet, she told him, when it was done. I'm going to tell them I couldn't scan you. He nodded, and she left the room. "Well?" D'Aguila asked. "Too tough. For now. Keep him in there and don't let him sleep. I can get it in the morning." D'Aguila shifted uncomfortably. "I'm supposed to have the results by ten o'clock." "You will. I promise you. Matthew can help me." "Very well." She felt a touch of suspicion. Not, she hoped, too much. "I'll find my way back, if you don't mind. Having someone near me right now is-uncomfortable." She tapped her head. "I understand." On the way back to her room, she stopped and knocked on Stephen's door. After a few moments-and some muffled curses-he peered blearily out. "Hey. What's up?" "Come over to the room for some coffee." It's important. Bring your stuff. "Early day, eh? Okay. Be there momentarily. " They paced on the balcony, waiting for Stephen to finish. "Nothin' out here," he finally said, stashing the bug sweeper back in his bag. "I think we can talk." "Good. I've already told Matthew that they asked me to do an illegal scan on a Psi Cop." "Son of a bitch. Did you?" "Yep. Didn't have to try hard, though, he gave it up. I pretended I couldn't nail him, told 'em we'd all come back for another try in the morning." "Okay. I'll bite. Why the Japanese opera?" "Because the Psi Cop wasn't here to investigate the underground . He was here to investigate a slavery racket." "What?" She abruptly swung her fist into the wall, almost taking pleasure in the sudden sharp pain in her knuckles. "Jeez, Fee-" "For every three teeps Rentech moves for us, one vanishes. We thought Psi Corps was doing it. They weren't. We've been helping these bastards enslave telepaths." "Holy Joe." "You're certain about this?" Matthew asked. "You scan him." "No, no, of course I believe-damn. What now?" "This cop has all of the major locations for the trade in his head. We can track them down, one by one, get 'em back. But first we need the cop. I'm not leaving him here for these monsters." "He's a Psi Cop," Stephen rumbled. "He'll betray us first chance he gets." "I'm not going to adopt him," Fiona said, "just get him out of here." Matthew was nodding. "Fiona's right. This is our fault we sent those people to Rentech, and now they're slaves. Our problem . We get the cop." "I'm not arguing this one," Stephen said. "But we can get what the cop knows and then-" "Then what?" Matthew demanded. "Kill him in cold blood? I've killed Psi Cops when they were shooting at me, sure, but this? No." "Okay, okay. We get the cop." They took the guards with Fiona's flechettes. They never knew what hit them. D'Aguila-and the burly man standing beside him wielding a street sweeper-proved to be bigger problems. Opening the door must have triggered some sort of alarm; the big man already had the shotgun raised as they entered, and D'Aguila was pulling a Browning. Fiona hit the bodyguard with everything she had, fugueing him even as his finger tightened on the trigger. D' Aguila got a shot off, which hit Stephen square in the chest. Though the impact must have hurt considerably, even through his body armor, Stephen's charge did not slow. He slammed D'Aguila into the wall so hard that cracks spidered in the plaster. Matthew, meanwhile, calmly shot the frozen guard with the flechette. The Psi Cop was right where she had left him, though he had been beaten some more. "Knew you'd come around," he said, lisping on a freshly broken tooth. "Shut up. How well do you know this building?" "Well enough to get us out. But they have four teeps here, in the building, ready to transport." "And you know where." "Yeah, sort of. What we have to do is get to a link, call Psi Corps-" "No," Stephen grated, cocking D' Aguila's confiscated Browning. "No, you show us where they are. Letting Psi Corps have them is no better than leaving them here." "You don't believe that." "Shut up and do it." "Okay. You're the ones with guns." "Damn straight." "Wake D'Aguila up." That took a little doing. They finally had to reach into his mind and pull him out of it. "Wha ... T' he said groggily. "Here's what," Matthew said. "You have four teeps held in this building. You'll take us to them and then get us all out of here." "Impossible. The whole complex must be on alert by now." Stephen jerked him by the collar. "You'd better hope that isn't true, or if it is, that you can do something about it. Because if you are right, you're a dead man. And don't try to lie to us, either, or walk us into a trap, because you know you can't. Now be a good boy, okay?" D'Aguila's eyes flicked from one to the other, perhaps searching for some sign of mercy. If so, he found none. "There is a way, maybe," he allowed. "The esps are on D level. We might be able to get from there to the helipad by using the executive elevator. Might." "Might makes right," Stephen replied. "Can you access the system to set off some false alarms in another part of the building?" "Yes." "Do it." They avoided the guards in the halls by sensing them ahead of time, but motion detectors were harder to fool. By the time they reached D level, Fiona had a definite sense that the noose was tightening. As the elevato
r opened, her suspicions were confirmed by the bright, metallic smacking of bullets near her head. Stephen bellowed and opened up with the street sweeper, spraying lead pellets as if with a hose. Two men screamed and crumpled in bloody ruin. "End of the hall," D'Aguila said, staring and obviously trying not to vomit. "Fine. Matthew and I will go. Stephen, watch the elevator." "Roger." "You could give me a gun," the Psi Cop said. "I could help." "Very fat chance," Stephen replied. The doors were locked, of course, but D'Aguiia's card opened them. Two African-looking girls-twins, maybe twelve years old-a red-haired boy who might have been five, and a thin young woman in her early twenties turned listless eyes up at Fiona as the door slid open. She could feel their numbed minds and it almost made her retch. "Sleepers. Damn them to hell." "Come on. Come on all of you. We're getting out of here," Matthew said. More gunfire sounded from down the hall. "Damndamndamn," Stephen swore, as they approached. He was bleeding from a score on his arm. "Children?" "We have to get out. You, D'Aguila. Which way?" "The rest of this level is storage. The elevator is across the warehouses." "Lead." Suddenly the doors to the stairs banged open, and two egg- shaped objects bounced through, spinning near Matthew's feet. "Matthew!" Fiona shrieked as Stephen yanked her down to cover. But there was no explosion. An instant later, Matthew came hurtling by. "Gas! Go!" They wove in and out of what seemed a rabbit warren of small workstations and storage areas, Matthew running point with D' Aguila, Stephen bringing up the rear, she and the Psi Cop in between , encouraging the fleeing teeps to run faster. Stephen was fighting a rearguard action as they moved through a large warehouse area and at last reached a small elevator. D'Aguila's card and bioident got them in, and they had perhaps twenty seconds of breathing time before the doors opened again. Unbelievably, the rooftop was empty when they exited. A chopper stood empty on a large pad, but they had crossed only half the distance to it when bullets cracked the concrete around their feet. With no cover, Stephen threw himself flat and unloaded the street sweeper again. Matthew was right beside him, firing six shots and then changing clips. Three guards in heavy body armor were crouched behind a large antenna, firing Naga nine-millimeter submachine guns in controlled, professional bursts. They had a clear view of the fugitives all the way to the helicopter. Fiona made her decision. She knelt and took careful aim at the guard she could see best, squeezed off a round. Get 'em in the copter, Psi Cop. We'll be there when we can. You won't make it. None of us will make it without cover fire. Go! She fired again and didn't watch the Psi Cop and his charges as they broke for the flier. She was too busy. She counted slowly, estimating how long it would take them to make it. After thirty seconds, the guards found some nerve. Two started forward from cover, as the other two stood and fired almost nonstop. Matthew had to roll to avoid being cut in half, and sparks struck inches from Fiona's face. Desperately, she reached for their minds, but they were too far away to get a decent lock on amid all the commotion. Stephen roared, bounced up, and charged toward the nearest man. He'd dropped the empty street sweeper and was snapping off fast rounds from a pistol he'd picked up, probably back on D level. One guard pitched back, his teeth blown down into his neck. The elevator door opened. Fiona spun desperately, firing between her knees. She hit two of the five newcomers, but the bullets spanged from body armor. She pulled the trigger again, and the piston cracked on an empty chamber. She kicked back from the return fire, knowing as she did so that it was over. Then the elevator and everything near it ceased to exist. It was replaced by a flare of painfully white light and as quickly by an ugly black cloud. She had no idea what had happened, but she leapt up anyway , spinning just in time to see the Psi Cop turn the grenade launcher-sling mounted in the chopper-on the men at the antenna array. He grinned at her as she leapt aboard, followed closely by Stephen and Matthew. They ditched the chopper in the Atchafalaya basin, stole a battered Volkswagen truck from a used car lot, and drove west toward Mexico. Stephen and Matthew took the cab, while Fiona, the Psi Cop, and the rescued teeps piled into the back. Fiona checked them all for wounds. They seemed okay, but Fiona was by now certain that they had been given more than sleepers. They probably weren't even aware yet of what had happened. The Psi Cop grinned around broken teeth at her. "We make a good team," he said. "I make you to be a P12. You'd be a hell of a Psi Cop." "Say that again, and I'll open you another set of eyes," Fiona replied pleasantly. He shrugged resignedly. "What now, then?" "First, I thank you for saving our lives back there. After that, you tell us which other Rentech installations have teeps." "Most of them aren't at Rentech sites. They're rented out, sold to private citizens, to criminal syndicates, kula rings, you name it." "But you know how to get the records of those sales." "Yes 1 do." "I want them." "Why? So you can fight a war on two fronts? One against Psi Corps, the other against Rentech? 1 doubt you have the resources for that." "You have no idea what we have. We'll do it." "Worse, Rentech is one of your allies. Will you examine all of the `friends' of the underground more carefully now? Once you start turning over these rocks, you never know what you'll find. If you get too picky, the underground won't have any allies left at all." "Give me the locations." "I won't." Fiona snorted. "Oh, yes you will." "No. What kind of life can you offer these kids? Always on the run, at risk of this same thing happening again? Out here, among the normals, our people will never be anything but victims." "And with Psi Corps we'll never be anything but slaves." He shook his head. "I pity you if you really believe that. This is what we do-protect teeps. Normals hate us. They'll never see us as anything but something to use for their own ends. Psi Corps is the only place we can be safe, free. I won't give you the locations." "We'll tear them out of you." "You would do that to one of your own kind? Then everything they said about you fanatics is true." "Look-what's your name?" "Heckman. Claude Heckman." "Claude, I've been in the camps. I've seen what the sleepers do. I know what Psi Corps is, and I want no part of it. You can't see it because they brainwashed you. You're a good little soldier. But don't expect me to buy any of it, okay? You take away people's most basic human rights, and that opens the door to the kind of crap Rentech is doing. Nobody cares because teeps have no rights, and Psi Corps keeps it that way, makes it okay." "Psi Corps cares. I was almost killed proving that." He raised his chin toward the sleeping children. "You talk about freedom. Ask them which they want. The freedom to be abused-or to be protected, cared about, among their own kind?" "I'm not arguing this with you." "What will you do with me? After you fry my brain?" Fiona watched the thick-footed rows of cypress go by for a while without answering. "Here's the deal," she finally said. "You give us the locations for half and keep half. We hold on to you long enough to be sure you told us the truth, then we let you go be a good little soldier some more. Half for us, half for Psi Corps. If you don't like that, we tear it out of your head and finish you off with a bullet." Claude considered. "It's a mistake," he said, finally. "But yes." "Fine." One of the twins rubbed her eyes, sat up, and hesitantly approached. "Come here," Fiona said, opening her arm. The girl nestled under it and closed her eyes. Fiona closed her own, over a wave of tenderness that quickly became anger, both surprising in their intensity. The Psi Cop thought he had a family, but she knew what family was, and Psi Corps wasn't it. But neither was the resistance-it was just the hope of a family, someday. The prayer for one. And suddenly she understood where her own hope had gone, and maybe just maybe-how to get it back.
Babylon 5 10 - Psi Corps 01 - Dark Genesis - Birth Of Psi Corpus (Keyes, Gregory) Page 19