“Rude? I don’t get it. Why rude?”
“Let’s move on, shall we? Body theft is a major crime, as you may imagine. And when it involves interfering with an alien species, especially a less advanced one like yours, it’s actually our most serious crime.”
“But the exterior identity—what we can track—that remains the same, am I right? So this guy has a human ID. A human past.”
“The process works like this. A person is kidnapped. Then the heart is stopped and the whole body transformed into stem cells, which are grown on a new template. The new body fits the purchaser’s soul, and he enters it. The new ‘person’ won’t look the same as the one who was used to construct him. He won’t have the same DNA signature, either.”
“You can do all that?”
“At home, by law your new body would need to be an exact replica of your old one. But here, well, you don’t have body switching yet. So no law and no local enforcement infrastructure. Which is why there’s a ring operating, selling my species human bodies so they can live on Earth.”
“That’s a motive?”
“For marginal types like would-be criminals, it is. They’re free here. The local authorities aren’t going to catch them on their own, and our police force is hamstrung, obviously.”
“So what can they do that’s so special?”
“As I said, live like gods. The last one we caught busted the bank at a casino in Vegas, then used predictive techniques you won’t discover for five generations to game your markets. Inside of a year, he was vastly rich.” He paused. His voice dropped an octave. “This guy wasn’t so interested in money, obviously.”
“When they’re finished, they can go home?”
“If they’re ever finished. The one in custody would probably have stayed here for a very long time, maybe across the span of more than one life. You can help us with him, Flynn.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
“If the body he’s in now were to die here on Earth without access to his dealer, he’d be in trouble. No new body, so his soul would be left to wander until it got drawn into a human fetus. He’d lose his memory of himself entirely. Become, in effect, human. Trapped forever in a primitive species.”
“Turn him over to our courts. Let us threaten him with the needle.”
“He was careful not to commit any of his crimes in death penalty states.”
“Drop him in a supermax.”
“He’ll escape. But he wouldn’t want to be tried in Texas.”
Flynn thought about that. Understood what Oltisis was driving at. “Okay,” he said, “let me spend some time with him. What’s his name?”
“Roger Ormond is what it says on his driver’s license.”
Diana said, “The identity’s perfect. It’s been built from deep within the system.”
“Take me to Roger Ormond. We’ll need to chat for a couple of minutes.”
They left Oltisis to his dark office and whatever thoughts a creature like that must have, and have to live with.
“We can disrobe,” the assistant said. “Roger isn’t allergic.”
“What’re you going to do?” Diana asked as she pulled off her jumpsuit.
“What Oltisis asked me to do.”
“He didn’t ask you anything.”
Flynn looked at her. “Oh, yeah, he did.”
They descended into a cellar that smelled of dust and heating oil. There was an ancient black velvet painting of JFK against one wall, beside it a rusting bicycle. There was also an old portable record player, and in one corner a dust-covered electric wheelchair, its seat well worn. Whoever had lived in that thing was probably damn glad to leave this life.
Across the room, a man sat in a cage made not of bars, but of a sort of shadowy haze that, as Flynn went closer, proved to be a mesh of fine wires. He was under a flood of glaring white light. His eyes were closed, his skin was flushed red, and he was covered with a sheen of sweat.
Flynn went into action immediately. “Mr. Ormond, I’m your attorney. We’re going to be getting you moving within the hour.”
“Excuse me.”
“You’ve been extradited to Texas.”
The face, which had been open and questioning, shut down tight. So he was scared. Good.
“I didn’t commit any crimes in Texas.”
Flynn remained affable. “Tell them that. I’ll stay with you as far as the airport, but after that you’re on your own. You’ll be assigned legal aid counsel at Huntsville.”
“A prison?”
“Guarded by cops like us. Who know the truth. You won’t escape. You’re gonna die in Texas, Mr. Ormond.”
He started to stand up. The cage around him glowed and sparked. He fell back into his seat. “I didn’t commit any crimes in Texas!”
“So, Michigan, Illinois, New York.”
“I avoided death penalty states.”
Bingo. There was the confession. He revealed nothing of the small triumph that he felt. “Well, take it up with your lawyer there. You’re moving in an hour.”
As he left, the man in the cage erupted, screaming and thrashing. The cage sparked and sizzled.
Oltisis was waiting, his face filling the screen of an iPad.
“Will that do it in your legal system?”
“Oh yes, he’s confessed. We’ll start processing him off planet immediately. He’ll take the full hit.”
“Which is?”
Oltisis broke the connection.
Diana said, “They take them out of the body and put them in a sort of trap, is the way I understand it. They don’t like to talk about it.”
“A trap?”
“It’s prison. In this one’s case, permanent prison. They’ll never let him out.”
Flynn thought about that. This plasma they were talking about was the soul. “Soul prison. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard of. To be dead, but still in jail.”
“I think their name for it says it all. They call their permanent prison ‘Dead Forever.’ ”
They left then, and Flynn could not remember ever feeling so happy to leave a place in his life. The world of Oltisis might be full of wonders, but it also sounded like a kind of hell. No mystery of life. No mystery of death. Imprisonment that could last for eternity. “What do you think of them, Diana?”
She was silent. “Let’s do our job, okay. Better to just put the whole thing out of your mind. Concentrate on the work.”
They got into the car. “I’ll tell you what I think.”
“No! I don’t want to hear it.”
“They’ve made themselves into monsters.”
She started the car and pulled away from the curb.
“Where are we going?”
“I got us a hotel. We’ll want to get cleaned up.”
“Then what?”
“Once they break it to Ormond that he’s been nailed, they’re expecting to get some more information for us about the perp. He’ll want to bargain, it’ll be his last hope. So we’ll get a call from Oltisis. There’ll be a second meet.”
“That’s good and bad. We need the information.”
“But you don’t want to go back there?”
“Nope.”
“Neither do I, Flynn. Neither do I.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
She’d gotten them a room at a hotel in the loop. They were traveling as man and wife, James and Diana Exeter. Flynn came out of the five minutes he’d actually allowed himself to wash off the oil and the itching that had come from being near the alien. He’d put on some fresh clothes in the bathroom. They were coworkers, not lovers.
He lay back on one of the beds, looking at the new identity pack he’d been given as they left the HQ. “This is well done.”
“We’re piggybacking on the Witness Protection Program.”
He gazed up at her long neck, her full lips, her sad, dark eyes.
“Don’t assume they’re from another planet,” she said. “Don’t assume anything about them at a
ll.”
“Where would they be from, then?”
She was silent for a long time.
“Hello?”
“Yeah, well, it’s damn mysterious, all of it.”
“How much does the government know? What about UFOs? Is any of that real? And alien abductions—I mean, the kind where the people get brought back? There’s websites, books, claims of millions of abductions.”
“We just don’t know.”
At that moment, he saw something on the ceiling. A light. It moved down the wall … toward Diana.
It trembled red on her forehead.
Leaping up, he threw her to the floor. As she screamed, recoiling from what she obviously assumed was an outburst of rage, he hauled the curtains closed. “We’re leaving.”
“What? Why?”
“You just got painted with a laser.”
She started to stuff her backpack.
“No time for that. We’re outa here.” He confirmed that the hallway was empty, and left the room. After a moment, she was with him.
“Hey,” she said as he passed the elevator bank. When he didn’t respond, she kept on behind him.
He entered the stairwell and started up.
She stood watching him.
He pointed downward. “Death.” He pointed upward. “Life. You choose.”
Seconds counted now, so he took the stairs three at a time. After a brief pause, he heard her behind him once again.
He pushed his way onto the roof through a stiffly hinged door, then stepped behind its enclosure, keeping close to the wall as he did so.
“As much as possible, keep something between you and the view. If you have to expose yourself, stay below the level of the parapet. One flicker of infrared return from up here, and our evening is over.”
Somewhere there was going to be access to the elevator bank, there had to be. He could see the elevator’s roof structure, but no outline of a door.
By moving directly toward the back of the building he could keep the door enclosure between himself and the view, and still get a look at the hidden wall of the elevator bank’s roof structure.
Crouching, he ran to it—and soon found the opening he needed. He turned to motion to her to follow.
Once again, there was a laser on her. “Drop!”
She stared. He pulled her down. “I need somebody with field skills!” For an instant, the laser touched the wall of the building behind the hotel, and then was gone.
“Sorry!”
“Always do what I tell you. Always!”
“Okay!”
He got the hatch open. “We’re going to wait for an elevator to come up, then ride it down. They’re on their way to the roof but they won’t find us here, so it’ll be a near thing.”
“I screw everything up!”
“Everybody screws everything up. It’s the nature of cop work.”
An elevator came up, stopped three floors down, then continued its cycle. “That’ll be them,” he said. “When the car stops, get on it.”
“Jesus!”
“Don’t look down.”
With a loud click from above, the car halted. Flynn hopped on. Leaping carefully, Diana followed him.
“Now we’re going to wait until it passes below fourteen, then drop down into the cab. When we’re there, don’t touch any buttons.”
From this side, the roof hatch was easy to pull up, and they were soon inside the car. He didn’t bother to try to replace the hatch. Their pursuers would know what they’d done. Probably already did. This wasn’t about deceiving them, it was about getting just far enough ahead of them to escape.
She leaned against the wall of the descending car. “Thank God.”
“If we don’t encounter them in the lobby, we need to grab a cab to the nearest El station. We’ve put them maybe three minutes behind us. If we’re lucky.”
“And if we’re not?”
“We’ll need to try another casino.”
“Who are they? How did they find us?”
“It’s the perp. He undoubtedly followed his client when he was captured. He’s probably been watching that house for a while, waiting to see who was going to turn up.”
“We have to warn them.”
“If we live.”
The doors opened onto the ornate lobby.
He could see a second car just passing twelve, on its way down. “Here they come,” he said. He wished that he could get a look at them, but there were too many ways to lose control of that situation. He drew her toward the main doors.
He’d tracked people across the plains of north Texas, he’d chased them through the streets and alleys of Menard, and he was reasonable at both things. He could not recall a time, though, when he’d been the runner. The truth was, he had to fall back on spy novel stuff, and he didn’t like spy novels. Hadn’t read one in years.
“Okay, quick—” He grabbed her wrist and jumped into a taxi. “Water Tower Place,” he told the driver. It was the only name that came to mind. He had no idea what it was or where it was. Just something he happened to remember.
“Why Water Tower Place?” she asked.
“Why not?”
“You don’t even know what it is, do you?”
“I do not.”
“You don’t know Chicago at all, then?”
“I don’t.”
“Water Tower Place is a shopping center in the Loop. That’s downtown.”
Flynn fell silent. The perp had gone after them first because they were sure to go to ground as soon as Oltisis was taken out. “We need to get to a pay phone.”
The mall was enormous and filled with shops. It took a surprising amount of time, but they finally found a public phone.
She made a call and told whoever answered what had happened.
“Let me talk.”
She handed him the phone. “You’re in immediate danger. You need to get out of there right now.”
Oltisis said, “I can’t move that quickly. Something has to be prepared, and transport is complex.”
“You don’t have a fallback prepared?”
There was a pause. “I do not.”
“I’d get out of there even if you have to be carried in a bag. There’s an immediate threat.”
“I’ll do my best. I assume we won’t be seeing you tonight.”
“Have you questioned your suspect?”
“I’ve just begun. I know that your perpetrator has human helpers. Ormond’s never seen him in person, so he says.”
“And you’re inclined to believe him?”
“He’s ready to open up.”
“Get out of there and take him with you. For God’s sake don’t lose him.” Flynn hung up the phone. “Meeting’s off, obviously.” He looked out along a long, empty corridor. The mall wasn’t closed but it was almost empty, and most of the stores were dark.
“We need to hunt up ATMs. We need all the cash we can get. And I assume you have a cell phone?”
“I do.”
“Throw it away. First, take out the battery.”
They ran the ATM cards until they each had around six thousand dollars in cash.
“Do they ever run out?”
“I don’t know. Not soon.”
“Too bad this is our last chance to use them.”
“Why?”
“The cards will be made.”
“Bank databases are well secured.”
“No they aren’t.”
It was now pushing eleven p.m., so there was no point in going to an airport. Like it or not—and he didn’t like it at all—they’d have to stay in Chicago overnight.
Outside the building, they found long rows of cabs, and more of them at the entrance to the Ritz Carlton that soared above Water Tower Place. Flynn hailed one, and they got in.
“Days Inn,” Flynn said.
“Uh, Lincoln Park?”
“That’s the one.”
“I’ll get a reservation ahead,” Diana said.
“
No cell phones.”
“They won’t see me.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a hacker. It’s what I do.”
“A hacker? You have some useful skills, then.”
“I like to think so.”
As the cab negotiated the sparse traffic, Flynn watched behind them, using what he could see of the rearview mirror. He thought he was dealing with a team of about four individuals with some very good equipment. They had a long-range rifle scope with a state-of-the-art laser sight. The way they had followed their targets, the rifle had to be on a chopper, which had been hovering out over Lake Michigan. Not great marksmanship, though. A good sniper would not have missed.
They also had that animal. Would they be able to make use of it in a city? He didn’t see how. They hadn’t tried yet, at least.
The Days Inn was in an older building in a neighborhood that was active even at twelve thirty at night. Which was fine. Activity was good.
The cab pulled up and stopped. Diana started to get out, but a gesture from Flynn stopped her. She didn’t speak, she didn’t turn to him. Good, she was getting the hang of it.
After he’d finished evaluating their surroundings, he said, “Let’s go.”
They exited into a driving wind. The air had grown noticeably colder. The storm that had paralyzed Montana was getting closer fast.
At the motel, Flynn paid cash. The clerk took the money and directed them to their room. He’d been doing this too long to bother to ask for ID and listen to the bullshit.
The room was stark but clean. Flynn was tired, too. Not a good time for it, though.
The bed was a double, too narrow to avoid the touch of bodies. Silently, she threw off her clothes. She kept nothing on. Her skin shimmered, her curves swept elegantly about as she moved. Steve Glass had been a lucky man.
They lay side by side, as still as two scared birds.
When he closed his eyes, he saw Oltisis, the thin face and deep, dead eyes.
Lights from outside glowed on the ceiling. The distant rumble of a great metropolis in its uneasy sleep lulled them.
Flynn slipped into one of those sleeps that comes so stealthily that they seem more like a state of altered awakening. Diana refocused as Abby, and the dreary hotel room became their old bedroom. The curtains swayed in the summer breeze, the leaves whispered, and Flynn became aware that they were not alone. He thought, oddly, that it was all right that the man was there, that he was slipping his arms under Abby’s legs and shoulders, that he was lifting her like a leaf.
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