Fox In The Henhouse

by James Lawson

  She looked out from the doorway and saw the man had grown a foot in height, shifted into a hybrid state, and was holding Max up by the throat.

  “Stop!” Elizabeth yelled again. The hybrid looked at her, smiled, and dropped Max to the ground. Before she could react, the beast was running right at her, scaling up the wall as she fired. It leapt from the wall towards her, tackling her by the shoulders, and throwing her to the ground. The gun slipped from her hand and the wind was knocked from her lungs.

  The hybrid roared and brought its fist down. Elizabeth scurried to the side and the fist smashed into the brick where her head had been. She scrambled to her feet and was about to make a dash for her pistol, but the hybrid charged at her with its elbow raised as a battering ram. She ducked and the elbow went above her, smashing through a wooden door, but she was caught by the force of the hybrid’s body and went through the door with the beast.

  The hybrid, confused from smashing through the door, spun around looking for Elizabeth. Feeling as though her body was about to fall to pieces, she pushed herself up and ran down the hallway that extended out. She had no idea where was she going, only that she had to get out of there.

  But the hybrid leapt over her and blocked her path, and she had no choice but to dash up a staircase to her left. As she ran, she felt her fate sealed with every step. She wouldn’t be able to escape from the second floor.

  She came to the second floor, another long corridor, and ran as fast as she could, knowing she was trying to outrun the inevitable. The beast would catch her and slam her against the wall until she was dead. And as she seemed to move in slow motion, she heard the mad scramble of the hybrid up the stairs. It came out on the second floor, twenty metres behind her, and charged, roaring.

  She turned to watch the beast charge; there seemed to be no point in running now. Not wanting to see the bare savagery of the hybrid’s face, she closed her eyes and waited.

  But a sudden gunshot blasted out, and she opened her eyes to see the hybrid stumble and trip, still rocketing forward under its own momentum. She jumped to the side as the hybrid tumbled past her and landed with a heavy thud, blood spraying from its back.

  The beast attempted to get up, but there were another two gunshots; one slammed into the hybrid’s chest, the other through its right eye, painting the hallway behind it with blood. It slumped to the floor, immobile. She turned to her right. Max, leaning awkwardly, held her smoking gun, the ammunition spent.

  “Good shot,” she said, somewhat feebly.

  Max nodded. “Kind of you to say.” He gave her the spent gun and kneeled down next to the dead hybrid. Feeling as though she should arrest him, she merely watched Max rustle through the beast’s jacket. She was too dazed to do anything.

  He retrieved a folded piece of paper with Max’s photo – it was a copy of the first page of his Hive employee profile.

  “Do you think if I were the mole, I’d be distributing my photograph to hybrid assassins?” Max said. “Something is going on here, and we’re right in the middle of it. Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. The Hive will be crawling all over this place any time soon, and I don’t think we want to be here when that happens.”

  Elizabeth came to her senses, and instinctively slammed another magazine into the pistol. Max’s eyes widened in apprehension for a moment.

  “I can’t quite believe I’m saying this, but you may be correct,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  10

  Max and Elizabeth sped towards Lisbon along a desolate road in a hotwired baker’s van, with the dull drone of Hive wasps swooping over Elvas in the distance. The black machines hadn’t taken long to get there.

  Max drove, and he felt the unnerving weight of Elizabeth’s eyes on him, as well as the presence of the pistol which she held in her hand in her lap. He could tell she had not yet entirely made up her mind about him. She was still just reacting to the events that had happened, but she hadn’t yet entirely convinced herself that Max was innocent.

  “Look,” Max said. “I’m not the mole, alright? If I were the mole, why would a group of hybrids be trying to kill me?”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Maybe the hybrids thought you knew too much. If you were just an innocent Hive agent, why would they have been sent to kill you?”

  Max opened his mouth to respond, but hesitated. That, he couldn’t quite figure out himself.

  “I’ve got a question for you,” Max said. “I’m assuming it was your handiwork that got me out of that jail, right?”

  Elizabeth gave a non-committal shrug.

  “Why bother? If I got bagged up by the Hive, job done, right?”

  She turned to look out the window and thought for a moment. “I wasn’t sure.”

  “Wasn’t sure of what?”

  She sighed. “I wasn’t sure you were the mole. Like you said, why would the hybrids try to kill you in Illescas?”

  Max let a smile spread across his face. “I’m going to take the high road here and merely offer my thanks. By the way, now that we’re in this together, I think it’s only fair that I know your real name.”

  “That, and if you were the mole, you’d just end up being dealt with by the Portuguese Hive,” she went on, ignoring him. “I wanted to make sure you were who Morrison said you were, and I wanted you brought back to Madrid. And lo and behold, as soon as you were out of the jail you hitched a ride towards your meeting with the Sailor.”

  “Let’s just operate on the working assumption that I’m not the mole, alright? I was sent on a mission to find out information from the Sailor in Lisbon, to see if I could determine who the mole was. Meanwhile, you were sent on a mission to tail me, and when I made contact with the Sailor, I was to be arrested. Right?”

  “That’s your story,” Elizabeth said.

  “Well anyway, let’s continue with that train of thought. Duncan sent me on the mission because he wants a fall guy for the fact that people know there is a mole in Spain. He wanted me to be arrested as the mole. That was his method for dealing with the situation.”

  “But – and I’ll stress that I’m only going along with this as a thought exercise – the hybrids didn’t trust Duncan’s plan,” she said. “They wanted you dead, and they wanted to plant evidence on you.”

  Max tried not to hide his smile as Elizabeth said it. If he had her onside, he had some way to get out of this mess.

  “There’s just one thing I don’t fully buy, though,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Max asked.

  “That you’re not completely bullshitting me.”

  Max’s warm feeling faded. He thought for a moment. “Okay. The hybrids – stay with me – the hybrids were trying to kill me and plant evidence on me because they don’t fully trust Duncan. Safe to assume that Duncan doesn’t fully trust the hybrids, yes?”

  “In this hypothetical situation, yes.”

  “We know that the Sailor will be in Alfama for a few hours this evening. That’s straight from the intelligence. What if we pull at Duncan’s distrust?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He doesn’t fully trust the hybrids – what if he thinks they are going to roll him?”

  Elizabeth waited for him to continue.

  “Next town, you put a call into Duncan. Say that you were closing in on me in Elvas, but then the hybrids turned up. Before you shot the hybrid, he sounded off about how ‘soon the Ministry of Detection would be exposed for its corruption’, something about how it would crack open. But you shot him before you can hear anything else. Next, you pursued me out of town, there was a struggle, but you got the drop on me and now I’m six feet under.” Max paused and glanced to see her reaction.

  “And then we see what Duncan does?” she asked.

  “If he thinks the hybrids are going to roll on him after the election is over with, his allegiance to the hybrids will be in pieces.”

  Elizabeth thought about it for a moment. “What if he orders me back to Madrid? You’re willing to trust your
fate down to Duncan’s reaction?”

  As much as Max didn’t want to admit it, that was the risk. If Duncan didn’t panic, Max would look like the mole. It was only if Duncan freaked out that it would make Max look innocent. And if Duncan reacted the wrong way, what would Elizabeth do?

  “If I’m being totally honest,” Max said. “I’ve had enough close scrapes the past few days, why should this one be any different?”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “I’m guessing this is the first time in a while you’ve been out in the field.”

  “What gave it away?” Max asked. “And I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me your real name any time soon, are you?”

  “Nope,” Elizabeth said.

  *

  Half an hour later they came to a small village – Max didn’t even register the name. They made their way straight to a small hotel, and Elizabeth went to use the phone. She kept her pistol with her, and Max reasoned that if things didn’t go the way he thought they would, Elizabeth wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in him. But she must have believed him to some degree – otherwise she wouldn’t be going along with it.

  He went to the hotel bar and ordered a whiskey. His glass came with a coaster advertising a topless bar in Lisbon. He sipped the drink and ran the smooth flavour around his mouth, acutely aware that the drink could be his last for a very long time.

  *

  Elizabeth fed a few coins into the pay phone, and wondered what the hell she was doing. She was meant to follow orders. It wasn’t her job to believe half-baked conspiracy theories. She was meant to bring Max in to the Hive as soon as she had proof that he was the mole. Yet here she was, about to place an entirely fraudulent call to a senior officer of the Hive.

  The phone started ringing, and it occurred to her that if Duncan recalled her directly back to Madrid and didn’t otherwise react, she would have no choice but to make good on her story to him.

  She would have to get Max back outside, on the road, and then…

  “Madrid City Council,” a voice on the phone said. “How may I direct your call?”

  “Senor Basquiat, please,” Elizabeth said. “It’s regarding the wool.”

  She was put through, and the line cracked and buzzed – the sound of it being secured.

  She gave one last look to Max sitting at the bar.

  “This is Duncan Morrison, speaking,” came his voice.

  Here goes nothing…

  11

  Duncan took a deep breath before he spoke into the phone. Reports were coming in of a total shit storm. If Max had been shot – well, there were a million ways it could have gone wrong. But if he had been shot, the best Duncan could hope for was that Elizabeth was convinced that Max was the mole.

  And if that had been the case, he’d need to take some action in regards to these hybrids. Far, far too reckless. They had no trust in Duncan or his methods. No trust at all. They seemed to think the Hive could be fooled with a corpse and a forged confession note. Duncan understood that things were more nuanced. If Duncan got through this thing unscathed, he’d need to make some serious alternations to his relationship with these freaks. He was willing to betray the Crown for the right price and with the right risk – but if that risk tipped too far over there was no way he’d be willing to cooperate.

  “This is Duncan Morrison, speaking,” he said. He sounded professional, calm. The exact opposite of how he was feeling. “Tell me what happened in Elvas.”

  Elizabeth paused for a moment on the other end of the line. “I tracked Agent Green to Elvas from Campo Maior. He broke into an apartment to change clothes, or he might have been meeting someone there. An argument broke out, I heard something like a gun shot. I went to investigate, only Agent Green was fleeing from a shifted hybrid.”

  Goddamn Alejandro.

  “Agent Green shot the hybrid and made it out of town. I pursued Max, and when I confronted him he pulled his gun on me. Luckily, I was faster.”

  “You mean he’s dead? Max Green is dead?” He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or anxious.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Not far out of Elvas. He was clearly still rattled from the commotion in town.”

  Duncan was silent for a moment. Was the story plausible? He definitely believed that Alejandro’s men would have made another attempt on Max’s life – they were jittery enough to try anything except listen to reason. The argument or whatever Elizabeth had heard – there was no way that could have been a meeting, but it was entirely possible that the hybrids had sprung Max while he was in this apartment.

  “There’s one other thing, sir,” Elizabeth said, her voice shaky.

  “What now?”

  “Before Max shot the hybrid, the hybrid screamed out about the Hive coming down, the Ministry of Detection being brought to its knees.”

  Duncan’s gut tightened. “Go on.”

  “Just from the way he was talking, it made it seem like there might have been more than one mole in the Madrid office. You’ll understand this is just my interpretation, sir.”

  The words came like a punch in the face. “Agent, give me a number I can reach you on. I’ll call you back.”

  Elizabeth gave a number, and Duncan hung up. He sat back in his chair, thinking. He had the peculiar appearance of calm, but that was only because he seemed to have one option. Alejandro was going to betray him. It was as clear as day. He thought of the dossier of information sitting just a few feet away; the records he had kept on the key hybrids he had met through Alejandro. They had been an insurance policy, something to pull out if things went south.

  They had gone south, indeed. He could take care of those hybrids easily enough. Fake a canary call in, giving away their whereabouts. The Hive would swoop down and take them away. Alejandro might be harder to deal with. The more junior hybrids had no idea of who Duncan was or what he did, but Alejandro might suspect an attack. He must have, given that he was preparing his own.

  But there was one other thing… a little old lady in Lisbon. The Sailor.

  She had been the start of the whole thing.

  She would have to be taken care of.

  12

  “You gave him the phone number of the bar?” Max asked, eyes wide. “So when the Hive come storming in here and find us sharing a drink, you’ll be able to explain your way out of it.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Elizabeth said. “He was spooked. Seriously spooked.”

  “You think he bought it?”

  “I do,” she said. “I’ve never heard a captain sound so frightened. It sounded like he knew the axe was about to drop.”

  Max took a sip of his drink. “Good. That’s exactly how we want him to feel.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “I guess this means I was played for a fool,” she said, sipping her own drink. “Just like you.”

  Max gave a short laugh and shrugged. “I guess if it can happen to you, then I shouldn’t feel too bad about it.”

  There was silence for a few moments. “What now, then?” Elizabeth asked. “We can’t exactly stroll back to Madrid, give Duncan the wink and get on with our lives.”

  “No,” Max said. “My guess is the good captain is looking very carefully at his options at the moment. His list of options isn’t particularly long. If he thinks he’s about to be revealed, then we can bet something is about to happen.”

  And sure enough, the phone behind the bar rang. The bartender answered, and beckoned Elizabeth over.

  “Let’s hope,” Max said, slightly raising his glass in a toast as Elizabeth left the table. He sat and watched her as she spoke on the phone. What was Duncan going to tell her? That he had figured out the whole thing? That a group of Hive triggers were waiting outside and she better come out with her hands up if she wanted to live for another few minutes?

  Strangely, Max didn’t feel one way or another about it. Ever since he’d first met Elizabeth on the train, he’d been running from something. Something that would likely catch him in the end, or something that h
e’d at least have to face. For the past few hours, ever since he had seen Elizabeth pointing a gun at him in the apartment, he’d been taking things as they came.

  Elizabeth hung up the phone and returned to the table. She looked unsure, staring down at the table.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “I suppose he bought it,” Elizabeth said, and looked up at him. “He told me to proceed to Lisbon. I’m to meet a man named Keilor.”

  He winced at the name. “He’s the Captain of the local Lisbon Hive triggers. Fiercely loyal to the Crown. Rumour is he got into the Hive racket not because he gave a shit about protecting Europe against the Menace, but because he just wanted an excuse to scare people.”

  “Duncan said more or less the same thing,” she said. “Once I meet up with him, we locate the Sailor.”

  Max leaned back in his chair. “Doubtful those triggers will be looking for an arrest.”

  “No,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t like his chances.”

  “How does Duncan figure you’re going to be able to find the Sailor? When he briefed me, the intelligence was that the Sailor would be in Alfama. Nothing more specific.”

  She suppressed a laugh. “New intelligence has come to light, it seems. Just come in from the coast. Apparently, there’s going to be a trade-off of information where the original mole was going to be informed of where the Sailor would be precisely. The details are being patched through to Keilor.”

  Max thought for a moment in silence. “He’s going to get rid of the Sailor. Likely every other hybrid he’s in contact with in Madrid.”

  “I can’t really say I’m that sympathetic to them.”

  “No, but that leaves the issue of Duncan still being there,” Max said. “The man is a rat. If he’s sold out the Hive once, there’s no reason he wouldn’t do it again.”