by T. D. Fox
Jasper jumped when she spotted him. He jogged up to the group.
“You’re with me,” Patton said. “Control room is our first priority.”
Jasper fell in line with her as they headed for the stairs again. “What happened to Donowitz? And SWAT?”
“A two-ton gorilla on the second floor.”
“What?”
“I mean an oversized, freak mutant Changer broke a hole in a concrete wall and plowed straight through SWAT. It took a hundred bullets to bring him down.”
“You saw it?”
“Happened right after we split.” Patton took the stairs two at a time. Jasper followed. “What did you run into? You’ve got blood on your arm.”
Jasper shook his head. “Probably the smallest thing in this place.”
They fell quiet as they climbed, hearts beating faster than they could speak. They emerged on the sixth level. Patton made a silent signal for them to split up again. Jasper grabbed her shoulder.
“They’ll pick us off one by one,” he hissed.
“Donowitz showed me the floor plan,” she hissed back. “The hallways converge on the control room. If we come at it from four different angles, at least one of us will get there if the Changers reach it first. Another colossal gorilla will bulldoze six of us just as well as one. It’s our best shot.”
Jasper grimaced when she waved him on. The other five officers in the group split off. Two went right, one took the middle; Patton and another went for the third, leaving Jasper with the far left. He slunk forward.
His gun felt lighter. He’d only fired it once, but somehow he felt as if its whole makeup had changed. He’d never discharged it on the job before. Fingers wrapped tight around the grip, he tried to re-center his brain. But that simple, ridiculously slight difference in weight—that was what his mind curled itself around.
Fourteen rounds left.
Fourteen chances to not miss when he spotted the man in white again.
He could still hear the thud of that officer hitting the ground. If he hadn’t missed—if he’d put a bullet through Evan Grimes—would this all be over? Would the Changers back down? Were they animals inside, lost without a leader?
The hallway stretched in front of him. Lights flickered. He wasn’t sure how much further he had to go—or if he would know the control room when he found it. But the hallway turned. He checked the corner with his gun first. Clear. It branched off again. Clear.
He’d gotten so used to the pulse of the alarms he barely heard them. He didn’t hear footsteps, even his own. If anyone approached around that corner ahead, he’d have no warning.
He kept his gun high. Feet steady.
He rounded the next corner.
Not clear.
The group of Changers from before clustered against the far wall. They moved single file, creeping around the bend. The hallway folded backward again, blocking the rest of the Changers from view. Ten, fifteen, twenty of them. More than that.
Evan Grimes crouched in his lab coat. He motioned the other Changers forward, gun glinting in the red emergency lights. A whistle drifted off his lips, almost too faint to carry—a soft melody intended for the Changers' ears alone. They followed, subdued, entranced... rats after a Pied Piper.
He shifted.
Jasper had never seen a Changer shift before. This was something else, more than the rumors ever hinted. His face swam. Features rearranged. His body arced inward, growing taller. The ginger hair vanished. Dark replaced light, hard edges and angles trading out the youth.
Jasper stared.
The morph was seamless. No more than two seconds lost. Another man crouched beside the Changers. Wicked sharp cheekbones, dark hair, an extra foot in height.
He turned—and, for a half second, Jasper felt recognition slam into him—then the face was gone, weaving itself into something else. Noses traded, eyes swapped, hair thinned. The man shrank again. A different person wearing the White Coat. Crouching down, waving the others forward.
Jasper remembered, when he was a kid at the zoo with his father, pressing his face up against the glass of a terrarium. Straining his eyes through the tangle of leaves. His father pointed. Just beyond his finger, a dappled coat of scales changed shades.
“See that? Look close. Rare chance you get to see a chameleon’s real colors.”
This was it. The briefest flash, between the swap of masks, Jasper had seen the Whistler’s real skin.
His finger squeezed the trigger before he realized it was moving.
Blam. The Whistler jerked backwards—hit the wall. One hand flew out, scrabbled down the concrete as he sank. Blood smeared the cement behind.
A shriek. The Changers converged, shielding him from view. One of the human shapes in a gray jumpsuit whirled. Her eyes fixed on Jasper.
“Six o’clock!” she screamed.
Three Changers peeled off from the group and charged him. He stumbled back—fired off another shot. They were still coming. Changing midstride. A jaguar, oversized, paws thudding the ground, bared teeth ready to tear flesh—
Gunshots rang out ahead. More shouts. His team, coming up from behind. Had the hallways already joined up? Was this the control room?
Teeth.
Screams.
Echoes.
Alarms.
⬥◆⬥
Chaos blurred the rest of the memory. The story fell out disjointed, until Van de Graaf raised a hand to stop his recount.
“That’s the last you saw of him?” he asked. “Patton’s team didn’t recover him with the rest of the Changers?”
Jasper shook his head. “We didn’t get the rest of them. Patton’s group rejoined me in the hallway and took down the ones who charged. By the time we fought our way up to the bloodstain on the wall, the Whistler was gone.”
“Along with the rest of the Changers.” Van de Graaf leaned back in his chair, a low hum of concentration rumbling up his barrel chest. “So, Evan Grimes was not Evan Grimes.”
“No, sir.”
“I heard you had a theory about this Whistler Killer before.”
“Well... yes. But I didn’t carry it up this far. The other officers said it was insane.”
“Insane is irrelevant at this stage. I want all the information you’ve gathered on my desk by morning.”
24. FAVOR
BY SOME MIRACLE, Courtney managed to not to drop W on the way to the sofa. She dragged him from the doorway the remaining ten steps to her living room. Somehow she got him to the couch. For such a lanky individual, he weighed more than she could’ve imagined. She tried not to think of what wounds she might be tearing open as she hauled him along, one arm beneath his shoulders, gripping his wrist. He made no sound as she loosened her grip. He sank onto the couch. The puddles of scarlet on the front of his shirt made her head spin.
“You need a hospital.” She crouched down on one knee. “What are you doing here?”
“Can’t go to a hospital.” His eyes screwed shut. “Can’t go back to the Dugout either. You said you went to med school.”
“I said I dropped out of med school!”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re the only one I...” He choked on his voice. Rolling sideways, he coughed a horrible, wet cough. Blood trickled from the side of his mouth.
“Okay. Don’t talk.” Courtney yanked off her jacket. Balling it up, she tugged up his shirt. The blood flowed darkest from a spot just below his ribs, to the right of his stomach. She pressed the wad of fabric against it. A sharp breath hissed through his teeth.
“How long have you been bleeding?” she asked.
“You said not to talk.” Another gargling cough, maybe a chuckle. His diaphragm jerked under her hand and she narrowed her eyes. “An hour.”
“You should be dead. You should have bled out.”
He didn’t respond. She glanced up to see his head rolled back against the armrest of the couch. His lips matched the rest of his face. Paper white.
“Stay with me.” She pressed harder. “W?”
&n
bsp; For one choking second, it looked like he’d died right there in her living room. She scrambled for his wrist. A weak pulse fluttered against her fingertips.
A hospital. She had to get him to a hospital. But she didn’t dare let go of the pressure on his side. It was a miracle he’d remained standing as long as he did in her doorway. More of his blood covered his clothes, the couch, her, than pounded through his veins. He needed a transfusion. Multiple—and a whole team of surgeons.
But he’d come to her.
She could barely watch someone give stitches, let alone pull a bullet out of a man’s intestines.
No hospital, he’d said. Why? Because he was a Changer? A wanted mass murderer? Was he running from the police? Probably all of the above. Courtney’s arms trembled as she held the jacket in place, and she realized her eyes were blurring. She blinked, hard.
“Don’t you dare,” she gritted. “You don’t get to drop in on me like this and just leave. Not again.”
Minutes passed. Hours. She had no idea. She couldn’t feel her hands anymore by the time she lifted the jacket. It was black. It had once been blue. She dropped it to the carpet.
The horrendous flow had stopped. No longer gushing, the platelets clotted together in a black congealed mass, like the stopper on a drain. Courtney dared not clear it away to check the depth of the wound. Time for that later. For now, the nasty mess was the only thing stopping the bleeding. She reached for his hand to check his pulse again, and caught her breath. His skin was stone-cold.
She raced to the bedroom. Ripping every blanket off her bed, pillows, sheets, everything, she dashed back to the couch, almost tripping over her load. Her hands shook as she packed the pillows around his head, pressed the blankets in around his chest, arms, legs. She left the wound exposed, but only just. They couldn’t risk an infection. But he was going into shock. That could kill him before the wound itself did.
She cranked up the heater, pulled the shades on the windows, and returned to his side.
His chest dipped and rose. Too shallow, too fast. She checked his pulse again. Slow. Far too slow. That could indicate internal bleeding. Feeling sick, and not from the heady scent of copper, Courtney peeled back the torn shirt from his abdomen.
No distension. That was good. But a dark purple bruise was already forming. Not good. If this was a bullet wound, it could’ve clipped an intestine. Bullets tended to shatter. A knife was hardly better. It didn’t matter what had caused the damage; what mattered was getting someone who knew what they were doing, someone she could trust, to fix this as fast as possible.
There was only one person.
“Dina,” she gasped into the phone as soon as it clicked. “How do you patch a bullet wound?”
“What?”
“How do you patch a bullet wound?” she nearly screamed.
“Are you shot? What the hell? Get to a hospital! Where are you?”
“It’s not me, it’s—it’s someone else. I can’t go to a hospital.”
“What happened? Why can’t you call an ambulance?”
“I just can’t! Dina, trust me! Please, tell me how to patch this wound. He’s dying.”
A short pause. She could hear the wheels turning in her friend’s head. “Where is it?”
“Abdomen. Right side, just below the ribs.”
“Can you see intestines? Is anything spilling out?”
“No. Just blood, but it stopped.”
“Did you check for distension?”
“Yes, there’s none. But there’s bruising.”
“Mm.” Not a good sound. “What’s his pulse?”
Courtney held his wrist. “Very low.”
“Is there an exit wound? You need to check he’s not bleeding from both sides.”
This required lifting him. Loathe to damage his insides any further, Courtney tried as gingerly as possible to roll him to one side. She slid a hand beneath his coat and across his back. After a minute of searching, she responded, “I don’t feel one. There’s no fresh blood.”
“Okay. Keep him on his side to open the airway.” A long, taut hesitation lingered on the other end of the phone. “Court, you’re not going to like this.”
“I don’t like any of this.”
“He’s not going to make it. Not without a hospital. He needs an ex-lap, and you’re not qualified to perform one. You need a surgeon.”
Courtney’s eyes pricked. “Can you perform one?”
“Are you insane? I haven’t even completed my residency, and I’m a nurse, not a doctor.”
“I can’t...” She gripped his fading pulse, feeling her own speed up.
“Courtney, is this who I’m scared to ask it is?”
She closed her eyes. After all of it, the fear, the thrill, the pain, the spark of something beyond anything she’d found in her life up until now... it couldn’t end here. She wouldn’t let it.
“Courtney Spencer, if you don’t call the police right now, I will.”
“Dina, I’m begging you. You can’t.”
“Why the hell not? He can’t hurt you! There’s no threat, he’ll be a vegetable in half an hour! You can call the police, hand him off to professionals, and finally sleep at night. You want to be free, don’t you?”
Her voice came out ragged. “No.”
Silence on the other end.
“You’ve got to be joking,” Dina growled. “Are you hearing in your voice what I hear?”
“I don’t know. I just... I have to save him.”
“You’re insane.” A low, half-snarling moan. “We’re both insane. I’m coming over.”
⬥◆⬥
Dina knelt on the bloodstained carpet in Courtney’s apartment, frowning as she leaned over the couch. W hadn’t stirred since Courtney had stopped the bleeding. She stood holding her breath, watching Dina skim careful fingers over W’s torso.
“I only have about half of the instruments I’d need,” Dina muttered. She reached into the case she’d brought. “Forceps, sutures, needles, some scalpels, a few clamps, not enough gauze...”
Dina pulled out a stethoscope and listened to his heart. Her scowl deepened. She peeled open one of his eyelids and flashed a light inside. She listened to his shallow breathing, took his blood pressure. Then she let out a sharp breath. She ripped off the stethoscope.
“Screw it. I’m going to try.”
“Try what?”
“An exploratory laparotomy. I’ve watched Dr. Brenner do fifty or more. If this guy’s got a bullet sitting under his ribs, I need to see what kind of tunnel it made to get there. Stitching him up from the outside won’t do any good if he’s bleeding out internally.”
Courtney knelt beside the couch. Without a conscious order, her hand slid up to cover W’s, fingers curling around his cold ones. Dina’s eyes followed the movement.
“I’ll warn you,” she said. “If I find any damaged organs in the ex-lap, I couldn’t do the real surgery. All I could tell you is how slow he’s going to die. Besides, I don’t have anesthetics. If I go digging around that wound and he wakes up, things could go south real fast. He could jerk and eviscerate himself. He could attack one of us.”
“At this point I think he’s too far gone to feel much,” Courtney said. Her mind flashed back to that night in the alley, when she’d nailed him in the face with a jet of pepper spray. “But he has a shockingly high pain tolerance.”
Dina grunted. “We’ll see.”
Rolling up her sleeves, she pulled on a pair of gloves.
Courtney watched the light glance off the tools she drew from the case. “Thank you for doing this.”
“Don’t thank me. I might change my mind and turn you both in.”
Dina leaned forward, cleared the gore blocking the wound, and set to work. Courtney looked away as soon as the probe went in. She’d been better, once, with all the exposure at OSM, but two years of schooling hadn’t conquered the squeamishness that rose with blood. Dina used to tease her as she plowed on through her courses out of shee
r stubbornness to face her fear. Once she’d dropped out, any progress had vanished.
She watched Dina’s face instead. Her friend wore an unwavering scowl, eyebrows knit together in a blend of concentration and disapproval. Courtney knew she’d get the chewing out of her life later. But Dina was a woman of the moment. And her ethic on the job surpassed that of any nurse she’d ever known.
“There’s a very stupid, inconvenient Oath banging around in my head,” Dina grumbled. “You never let somebody die on your watch, not if you can stop it. No matter who they are. This man can rot in jail after I sew up his insides.”
The two of them knelt in silence. Dina’s frown betrayed her focus, deepening and shifting as she explored the damage beneath her probe. She took up a pair of forceps. Courtney smoothed her thumb along the inside of W’s wrist and counted out the faint tap of his pulse. His skin was icy.
“What the hell...” came the sudden breath. Dina tilted forward, voice paused to keep from breathing on the wound.
Courtney leaned closer. “What?”
“This should be way worse.” Courtney forced herself to look down at her friend’s work. Dina held a piece of... something aside with her forceps, angling the probe down to provide a clear view of the bullet’s path. “That laceration on his intestine looks like it’s a week old. He should be ripped open; he should be dead with where that hole is located. How long ago did you say this happened?”
“Less than two hours now.”
“Impossible. That’s not a fresh wound. It’s too neat. It’s half healed, closing already.”
“Can you sew it up?”
Dina hesitated. “I... just might be able to.” She looked around. “Put on a pair of gloves and help me.”
Stomach rolling, Courtney stood, jogged to the kitchen to scrub her hands in the sink, and returned. She pulled a pair of gloves from Dina’s case. She tried not to think about what she was doing, just did as Dina instructed. Hold this. Keep that there. Don’t let that move.
Her friend worked like an expert, fingers sure and steady. Dina had assisted in surgeries many times. But she’d never been trained to fill a real surgeon’s shoes. Courtney held the forceps as steady as she could. She wasn’t someone who prayed, but right now she felt a burning instinct to reach out and upward. Just like her crazy father. For the briefest moment, she closed her eyes.