"And the cops were in on it?" Lilia didn't dare look at Montgomery. He had to know that she wasn't persuaded.
"Sure. Who better to plant evidence in Gotham and New Gotham without being monitored? Breisach and Turner was set up as a false company, with paper records—Lilia, who on earth still stores paper records? It was all a scam. There never was a Mr. Breisach or a Mr. Turner."
Montgomery was as impassive as only he could be.
"They must have thought they'd gotten away with it, then Gid showed up, asking questions. I guess he wasn't as circumspect as he should have been and they realized what he was doing. They got rid of him, but then you appeared. Nobody knew how much you knew. Didn't you think it was a coincidence that you got roughed up your first night here?"
Lilia removed the safety on Johanna's laze. "I didn't tell anybody about that."
"I saw. My room overlooks the street and I saw. I didn't realize it was you until later, Lilia, I'm sorry. I don't know if I could have gotten down there in time to help even if I had known it was you."
"It's the thought that counts, I guess."
"And what about the shade who was following you? She was registered to the Republic and assigned to NGPD."
"I didn't know that."
"I checked her records in our own databases. And now your cop escort is helping you run, to see where you'd go and who you'd contact, to see where else the information about Gid has leaked and to plug the holes. I tell you, Lilia, he almost got you. Let's take him down and get out of here before we take on too much radiation exposure. You've already seen too much this month. I owe it to Gid to take care of you."
Lilia lowered the weapon, letting Mike think she was persuaded. "At least no one dropped a chunk of building on me."
Mike reached for one laze. "Maybe they would have if you'd gone to Thirty-fourth and Third."
Lilia took a step back and feigned confusion, inviting him to fill the apparent gap in her knowledge.
"That's where Gid died," he said with easy confidence.
"How do you know where he died?"
"It's in the autopsy report."
"No, it's not," Montgomery said, then shrugged. "Sloppy."
Mike's eyes widened slightly as he realized his mistake. "Then it's in his file. That must have been where I saw it."
"No, it's not," Lilia said quietly. "I read it all."
Mike looked between the two of them. "I mean, I was just speculating as to where Gid might have gone ..." he began, then lunged for the laze in Lilia's left hand.
She fired once, just enough to stun him.
"Lilia!" His shout echoed off the old subway tunnels, but there was nothing he could say to stop what she was going to do.
She'd found Gid's killer, in the most unlikely of places.
"This is for Gid," Lilia said and gave Mike time to take one step back before she blew him away.
Mike didn't blow far, just fell back against the wall as the laze burned into his chest. Lilia fired until his pseu-doskin was disintegrated, until the flesh and muscle were burned away, until she could see the bright white of his sternum.
The smell of his burning skin made Lilia gag but she couldn't stop. She felt Montgomery step beside her, guessed he wouldn't approve, and still couldn't release the trigger.
It wasn't just for Gid.
It was for the receptionist.
It was for the hotel shade.
It was for Stevia.
For Montgomery.
For Delilah.
Bile rose in Lilia's throat just as Johanna's helm light flickered and died.
"I think his marrow is fried." Montgomery's hand fell over hers and he pushed Lilia's finger from the trigger.
She let him do it. When she lowered the laze, she was shaking. Montgomery claimed Mike's laze and tucked it into his belt.
The glow from the laze had already faded to nothing. It was dark, dark as pitch. Lilia thought about the weight of the city above them, thought of the convoluted course they had run. There was no way she could retrace her steps. There was no way she could get out of this labyrinth.
Lilia started to panic.
The weight of Montgomery's hand fell on her shoulder. "Remind me to never tick you off."
"Is that a joke?"
"Not a good one." She heard the smile in his voice. He must have felt her shaking, even through the pseudoskin. "Are you all right?"
"No. I don't do darkness."
Montgomery flicked on a light in his helm and gave her a crooked smile. "Better?"
"You could have done that sooner."
"I wanted you to appreciate it."
Lilia was thinking of some very earthy ways to show her appreciation when Mike's palm began to glow. The Society logo appeared on the small display, spinning just as it had on Dr. Malachy's palm.
Erasure was already 60 percent complete when it sent one message.
Montgomery swore as the palm faded to nothing.
"We've got to get out of here," he said.
"I don't know how ..."
"Good thing you didn't blow me away then." He stood and hefted Mike across his shoulders, bending a little beneath the other man's weight. Lilia deliberately did not look at whatever was dripping from Mike's chest. Montgomery grunted as he started to walk. "Pick it up, Lil. I can't carry both of you and I'm not coming back."
The man knew how to issue a compelling invitation.
XXII
To Montgomery's relief, it didn't take long to reach the recessed space where they'd started. A wolf howled from the top of the stairs as soon as they appeared.
"No sneaking out of this party," said Lilia with enough verve that he was reassured. She'd frightened him three times in short order: when she'd run after the shade, when she'd finished off the other Nuclear Darwinist, and when she'd admitted to her fear of the dark. Having her back in fighting form meant there was a better chance of them getting out of Gotham.
"Certainly not," said the woman waiting by the statue of Prometheus. Montgomery stopped cold. She was wearing a deluxe and pristine pseudoskin, and the filter on her helm was dark.
They had found Council member number three.
She had a laze trained on them.
"Really, Lilia, I must congratulate you on your unexpected resourcefulness. Mike has proven to be so efficient in the past, indispensable really. It's a shame to lose him." She gestured to the statue. "And what a choice of setting for our final interaction. You've chosen a fitting place to die."
"Doc Mina!" Lilia said in obvious shock.
"And who else did you expect? Ernest Sinclair?" The woman laughed at her own joke. "Even the Society for Nuclear Darwinists can't rouse the dead. Not yet anyway."
She was sparkling, hubris personified, so filled with confidence that it had to mean bad things were in store for somebody.
Montgomery had a favorite choice. He lowered Mike to the ground, knowing he needed to be agile.
"First of all, I must insist that you surrender your weapons," the woman commanded.
Both Lilia and Montgomery hesitated.
The woman was no idiot, although she was reckless. She fired at their hands to encourage cooperation, singing the back of each of their gloves. Montgomery jumped backward and she laughed.
He thought it would be a bad idea to say that he preferred negotiating with the sane.
He and Lilia put the safety on each weapon, slowly, then tossed them into the space.
As he bent, he opened a link on his palm to Tupper-man. He kept his hand turned toward his thigh so their captor couldn't see its activity. Tupperman wouldn't be able to intervene, but this Doc Mina might give enough evidence to incriminate the Society.
Once all three lazes were surrendered, the woman turned and fired at the canola tanks on all but one of the three bikes. The fuel splashed onto the stone and the wolves scattered, snarling.
Montgomery and Lilia moved closer together.
"I must say that I'm quite struck by how neatly this has a
ll turned out I can see the headline." Doc Mina raised the dark filter on her visor and Montgomery could see her features. She raised a hand as if running it across the headline. " 'A rogue Nuclear Darwinist and a crooked cop, executed by a valiant member of the Society's corps, who surrendered his own life for the sake of justice.' It's simply too perfect. We shall have to compose the scene, to maximize the impact."
Montgomery wasn't keen on arranging his death to suit the Society, but he doubted he had a choice.
Doc Mina considered them as a pert sparrow considers a choice bread crumb. "Of course, it might not make the headlines of the daily upload tomorrow, given other events."
Her import was obvious. "The Society is going to detonate a nuke," Lilia guessed.
"Tonight," Montgomery guessed.
"What better culmination of the annual conference for the Society of Nuclear Darwinists? It's simply too delicious. The piece de resistance, as they would say on the Frontier."
"Chicago," Lilia guessed. "It's the only major Republican city that didn't sustain an attack in this century."
"And on the trajectory of the president's return flight from China," Doc Mina said. "How clever you both are. Refueling in Estevan will prove to have been a bad strategic choice."
"You're going to hijack it," Montgomery guessed, wanting her to confirm the plan.
"No, it will be grounded and replaced by our own bomber in Estevan. Republic One is the only plane cleared to pass over the Republic without interception, after all." Doc Mina sighed in mock sympathy. "I can't tell you how complicated it's been to arrange for the planes to be confused by air traffic control. Fortunately, the functions are automated and computers tend to believe what they're told."
"Someone will figure it out," Lilia said.
Doc Mina laughed. "But that's why the president will be our guest on board. No one will command that he be shot down, will they?"
"It's wicked," Lilia said.
"He's insurance," Doc Mina said coldly. "And there's not a thing you can do about it now."
"I thought you were being ousted from the Institute," Lilia said.
Doc Mina laughed. "What better cover for The One than to appear to be on the periphery of influence? I'll tell you now that they never will manage to be rid of Doc Mina and her cultural studies program—but that will be attributed to my tenaciousness, not my power. It's a perfect scheme, as you can see."
Montgomery hoped that Tupperman was paying attention, and that his trust wasn't misplaced.
A faint pearly glow began to emanate from the statue of Prometheus. Montgomery straightened slightly.
Tupperman wasn't the only one paying attention.
Maybe there was a divine plan.
Doc Mina didn't notice the light. "It's so thankless to have secured the future of the Society so brilliantly and to have no one left with which to share the triumph. I was thinking, Lilia, that once your friend is eliminated, you and I could watch the detonation together."
"Watch from where?"
"On my palm, of course. We commandeered an old weather monitor and reconfigured it for our viewing pleasure. Poor Liam was quite looking forward to it, although of course, the tower will be destroyed at some point in the detonation. Even so, it's so seldom that one has the opportunity to witness the cloud formation at leisure."
"Perhaps there's something of interest we can show you first," Montgomery said.
"I think not," Doc Mina scoffed. "There is nothing of interest that you might offer in this forsaken place ..."
"How about an angel?" Lilia suggested as the light brightened still more. "I thought it was your one desire to see one."
Doc Mina's tone turned condescending. "Please, Lilia, how gullible do you imagine I am?"
"Look to your left and find out," Montgomery advised.
She looked, keeping the laze trained on them all the while. She couldn't have not looked and she couldn't have guessed that it would have been so dangerous to do so.
Because as soon as she turned, the angel revealed himself in his full glory.
Lilia squinted at the brilliance of the light, then Montgomery threw himself on top of her.
"Don't look!" He locked his gloved hand over her visor to be sure she had no choice. He forced down the dark filters on both of their visors.
Lilia could still see the white light. She would have sworn that she could see the bones in Montgomery's hand, the matrix in his pseudoskin, as that brilliant light shone. It was like finding herself in the middle of the sun.
Or being at ground zero of a nuclear detonation.
Lilia was starting to understand why people in the Bible always fell on their faces when they saw angels.
Then she smelled something burning, something a lot like flesh. Lilia gagged and Montgomery tucked her more tightly beneath him. It was hot and getting hotter, the stone heating beneath them. She wondered whether their pseudoskins would melt.
Then she heard Doc Mina screaming.
The light reached a crescendo and faded to that luminescent glow that Lilia knew from Armaros and Baraqiel. After what seemed an eternity, Montgomery released her. They stood and turned, able to watch as the angel let his light fade to a faint glow.
"Angels can control their radiance?" Lilia asked.
Montgomery nodded. "They not only choose to whom they reveal themselves, but can choose how brightly they appear."
The angel folded his wings behind his back again. He smiled, benign, elegant, and ethereal, then raised his fingertips to his lips and blew a kiss.
To Lilia?
To Montgomery?
She couldn't be sure.
He faded from sight then, as surely as if he had never been, and there was only the sound of Doc Mina's moans.
Montgomery knelt beside Doc Mina and datashared, patching the feed back to the precinct.
"Tupperman's been listening to the whole thing," he told Lilia grimly and she knew she had something to learn from this man about foresight.
She chose not to look at the dying professor and tried not to inhale. Even through her filters, the smell of cooked flesh was bad.
Doc Mina breathed her last just a few minutes later and Montgomery nodded as he got to his feet. "Got it. The others can take it from there." He considered the wolves at the top of the stairs. "We've got more immediate problems."
The bikes parked at the top of the stairs might as well have been a thousand miles away. Wolves milled around them, eyes shining in expectation, and time was of the essence. An alarm in Montgomery's palm was ringing with quiet persistence, reminding them both of their excessive exposure. Montgomery reclaimed his laze and handed Johanna's to Lilia.
"Maybe you could call up one of your angel pals again."
"It doesn't work like that, Lil."
"How does it work, then? Why did the angel come?"
"I don't know. They answer to a higher authority."
Lilia was confused. He'd been one of them, hadn't he? "How can you not know, Montgomery?"
"Part of the plan is that volunteers forget." Montgomery cleared his throat and looked down at Mike. "Right now, I'm thinking that there can only be a homicide investigation if there's evidence of a murder."
"I've heard that before." Lilia was dismissive. "Let's get out of Gotham and talk about the law later."
"Like a body," Montgomery continued. "A body is evidence of a homicide, especially a body of an individual who has lost his life due to the intervention of another individual. And of course, once you have a body, you have other evidence to gather, like the weapon and the location of the victim's demise and ..."
Lilia straightened, seeing the direction of his argument. "So you're going to charge me with murder for killing Mike?"
"You could probably get a lawyer to argue that it was manslaughter, but you might still sample the Republic's hospitality for a while."
"Thanks for the reminder."
"There can only be a homicide investigation," Montgomery said, "if there's evidence o
f a homicide."
Lilia was shocked by his implication. "You're going to leave him for the wolves."
"Officially, no."
"But..."
"Maybe we got separated in the tunnels," he mused. "Maybe you and I found our way out, but couldn't find your friend. Maybe my alarm went and we had to leave, lest we become overexposed."
"Careful, Montgomery, I'm falling hard for you."
He laughed, a rich sound that made her want to laugh with him. "Besides, I don't think we'll make it if we carry him." He gave Lilia a nod. "We'll take Doc Mina's bike."
"Because it's the one that will still run?"
"And lucky for you, it's not stolen."
"Because you can't have a theft investigation without evidence of stolen goods?"
Montgomery only smiled.
Lilia sighed, knowing she was completely lost. "What about the angel?"
He gave her a quizzical glance. "What angel?"
"What angel? How can you say that..."
Montgomery winked and flashed that killer smile, then claimed one of the burning torches that Johanna had lit on the steps. "C'mon Lil. Let's get out of here."
He swung the flame at that first wolf. The beast snarled and took a step back. Montgomery fired the laze he carried in his other hand, keeping them at bay on both sides. Lilia made to follow his lead, but first she paused to open Mike's visor.
Even though she knew he was already dead, Lilia liked the idea of him suffering a bit more.
It wouldn't take long for the wolves to get him anyway. Montgomery, bless his heart, pretended not to notice.
"Lil! Move it or lose it!" Two thirds of the way up the stairs, Montgomery tossed the burning torch into the pack of wolves and they barked in fear as they scrambled out of the way. Lilia was right behind him, flailing fire in every direction. It didn't take long for the wolves to decide that there were easier pickings.
Lilia looked back as the bike roared out of the plaza and saw their shadows slipping down the steps toward Mike and Doc Mina.
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