Marked

by Alex Hughes

  “His men will be here any second.” The words flew out of her mouth. “Now’s the time to do your disable-their-brain thing.”

  She was out of the car before I finished processing that tidbit. Fiske’s house? Fiske’s? This was happening too fast—

  The first two guards arrived, in full combat gear, one with a napkin still tucked into the front of his tactical vest. They both had rifles with long sights, swiveling around to point at Cherabino.

  “DeKalb PD,” Cherabino yelled with her gun up.

  No hesitation; the front guard was aiming. Cherabino was in danger.

  My old battle training kicked in. I reached into his brain, found the right spot, and had him out cold before he let out his breath.

  Now the second rifle was swiveling toward me.

  A second mind, this one with poorer valence, our minds meshing less well in the fabric of Mindspace; his finger was squeezing the trigger before I finished.

  I dodged, and came back to his mind, hitting the right spot one more time with greater force. The asphalt where I had been standing exploded in a shower of debris. A piece hit my leg. Pain.

  Two sleeping bodies in tactical gear slumped to the ground.

  I cursed. “There’s more coming,” I said. I could see the minds. “We shouldn’t be here.”

  “How many?” Cherabino cut me off, her hands out in front of her, aiming the gun, sweeping the area in front of her. An intense focus came from her mind. She was moving, absolute commitment to the project going forward.

  “Three!” I limped after her, “Damn it, damn it, damn it,” repeating like a litany.

  “DeKalb PD,” her voice came again, and the sound of a shot.

  I was around the corner. Another guard was on the ground, jerking from the electrical shock. The green stun bullet stuck out from his shoulder. Cherabino kicked his gun away.

  A large residential door stood open behind him, a metal-grate mesh security door latched behind it. Three bushes to the left, and a long gravel pathway moving behind the house.

  Two more guards came from behind the house.

  “Left!” Cherabino screamed, and was aiming.

  I disabled the guy on the right, his body slumping down, into the nearest bush, strings cut like a marionette.

  Burst of pain in Mindspace from the guy on the left she’d stunned. I winced, feeling his pain as my own. I was years out of practice in battle training. Years. I didn’t have the pain tolerance or the focus I’d once had. This was a suicide mission.

  I pulled myself out of Mindspace by sheer will, tired already.

  But I couldn’t let her go in alone.

  She was in the middle of a side kick. Her back foot slammed into the mesh door, right by the lock, and it was open.

  A person on the other side; I got a grip on his mind, disabled. Stars swam across my vision lightly as I limped after Cherabino, who wasn’t slowing down.

  Tile entryway, looked like, with a curved open doorway beyond, warm compared to the weather outside. A woman slumped on the floor, unconscious. A small trail of blood came from her forehead where she’d hit it on the way down. Crap. My fault.

  Cherabino was through the doorway, moving quickly, and I followed, cursing. I was out of mental juice, without recharging for a few minutes. And it looked like she wasn’t nearly out of stupidity yet. I had no choice; I followed her.

  We were in a room with full-length glass display cases on three walls out of four, while heavy curtains covered the windows on the fourth. Bright lighting came from inside the cases, illuminating hundreds of objects each in turn, some large, some small. All had small tags beside them explaining what they were; the cases closest to me were dominated by smashed bricks, pieces of computers, and small, shriveled biologicals.

  A late-forties man with graying blond hair and a small scar under his left eye looked up. An assistant type behind him, skinny guy with office wear, brought out a gun.

  “Put the gun down, Detective Cherabino,” the late-forties man said. He had a quiet assurance about him, and a light trace of an educated Boston accent. I recognized the voice from the vision—this was Fiske. He was outfitted in a golf shirt and khakis by a rich man’s designer, hundreds of ROCs for just the shirt, and a small chain around his right wrist that looked like platinum.

  “Or what?” Cherabino said. For the first time, she had a twinge of doubt.

  I felt the mind only seconds before he moved, and I couldn’t get a grip on it fast enough to do anything.

  A large bruiser came up behind her, a large-bore handgun hitting her temple lightly. “Or I shoot you.” He was angry at the damage to his fellows, with a strong enough untapped Ability that I could read him like a book in Mindspace without trying. He’d also be harder to knock out, dangerous on more than one level, and not someone I’d be willing to tackle without another ten minutes to reset. He’d be a hell of an enemy to piss off.

  I felt Cherabino consider some judo move to flip him, and I got ready, rest or no rest. Then I sighed, backing down as she discarded the judo move as too risky with the gun in play and so close. On her mental query, I confirmed it was a gun and not another object of the same weight.

  Cherabino lowered her own firearm, and the assistant type came forward to take it from her.

  “You do not touch my family. My family’s off-limits, and if you cross that line I will cross lines you’ve never heard of,” she said, her voice like a whip. “Back off,” she said, gun to her head, and yet, in that moment, she was dangerous.

  Fiske frowned in displeasure. “I don’t normally target the families of police, Detective Cherabino. I certainly can, I suppose, if you’re going to invade my home. Mantel?”

  The bruiser behind her said, “Yes, boss?”

  Cherabino pulled away. “I have it on good authority you’re planning to kidnap my nephew. I’m here to give you fair warning. If you touch him, I will kill you.” A burst of anger and determination. “Don’t think I won’t.”

  The bruiser grabbed her arm again, forcing the gun uncomfortably into her temple. She was undeterred.

  Fiske looked thoughtful. “You know, I actually believe you. Your information is bad, Detective. I don’t have anything of the sort planned.” He waved vaguely at the door. “Take her outside, Mantel. Let her call her family to assure herself they’re fine, but monitor the conversation. Don’t hurt her unless she gives you trouble, but don’t let her go. If she shows any sign of trouble or she talks out of turn, kill her.”

  “Happy to, sir. What do you call trouble?” he asked, his brain thinking violence on many levels.

  Fiske smiled the self-satisfied smile again. “See that she throws the first punch. Oh, and send Peterson in while you’re out there.”

  Cherabino swallowed. “Adam . . .”

  Two more guards arrived and they took her away like a captive sheep, Mantel angry and scared of his boss, a combination that I thought made him all the more dangerous. I turned to follow, thinking I could calm him down. Maybe. Given enough time.

  “Stop,” Fiske said, the command of a well-practiced leader with the power of life and death. “Adam Ward. You stay with me, for now. Your police detective doesn’t have to stay intact.”

  A guard came behind me, just far enough away to use his gun, making his presence very clear.

  Cherabino was broadcasting low-level fear and anger and very intense attention. She thought she could probably overcome the one guy if she had to.

  You okay? I asked her.

  Think so, she said, trying to figure out if she believed Fiske. Trying to figure out if her warning had registered, and how she was going to get out of this.

  Do I need to fight? I asked, adding the fact that I probably couldn’t knock anyone out for a few minutes yet.

  Keep him talking, she said. We’ll figure it out. I can handle myself.

&nbs
p; Okay, I said. I turned back to Fiske as Cherabino was pulled out of the room, angry. She was at least twenty feet away and moving even farther, judging by the noise between us on the Link. I was worried.

  Another guard type, this one dark and short with whip-tight muscles and a vest only half-fastened, moved up to the room from the foyer.

  “Peterson,” Fiske said.

  “Yes, sir.” The guard was worried, intensely worried enough I could feel it in Mindspace.

  “You are the head of my security team.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You let two cops stroll into my home.” Fiske pulled a gun out of the back of his khakis and shot the man twice, once in the gap of the vest, and once in the throat.

  My ears rang with the gunshots. Peterson slumped to his knees, his throat making a horrible gurgling sound.

  Shock and pain moved through Mindspace, and the guard behind me tightened the grip on the barrel of his gun so hard I felt it.

  I stared, the reality of our situation suddenly all too clear.

  Fiske looked to the other guard. “Congratulations, Rodriguez. You are now the head of my security team. I expect you to find how they got in and eliminate the issue when this is over.”

  “Understood, sir,” Rodriguez said, mixed fear and determination coming off him. He kept looking at his buddy on the floor. This didn’t do good things for his control of the gun, and I moved away a little.

  In Mindspace, a huge hole opened up where Peterson’s mind had been. He Fell In, dying in despair and agony I couldn’t completely shield from. His body jerked with a last nerve pulse, and then I smelled the scent of urine being voided.

  Fiske looked at me. “I should thank you for revealing a hole in my security. So I’ll be generous. This time.”

  Why kill him in front of me? Oh. Fiske knew about my felony drug charges. He knew I couldn’t testify in court; I was a guaranteed unreliable witness. So he could do whatever the hell he wanted, and I could do nothing. Even if I told Cherabino, it would be a secondhand account.

  Fiske accepted a handkerchief from his assistant, wiped off the gun, and put it back in the holster in the back of his khakis. “Now, now, Mr. Ward. You’ll see your partner again in a moment. Come over here.” I took a few steps toward Fiske, mindful of the guard. According to the clock on the wall, I had maybe ten minutes before I was up for another round of sleep-baby-sleep. Give it fifteen just to be safe, what with the work I’d just done and my recent brain injury. Time to talk my way out of this—if I could.

  Well, today I didn’t have anything to lose. I could ask anything, do anything, and be in no worse danger than I would have been tomorrow. The Guild’s sentencing hung over my head like an anvil, so that there was no more room for fear.

  I tried to remember how I had handled this kind of thing with Marge back in the day, back when I’d bought drugs from her organization and before I’d shut her down with the cops.

  Finally I settled on “I’m sorry we intruded on your afternoon, Mr. Fiske.” I walked over farther in his direction, his assistant standing by with the gun on top of his notepad, sideways, ready at a moment’s notice. “Honestly, I’m just here to talk a little and get your perspective.” I pitched my voice and my body language as slightly submissive; not enough to be a victim, but enough to be a beta, not an alpha, in the room. I would get nowhere through a battle for dominance anyway; I was better off talking and then disabling.

  Besides, it had been a long time since I’d been anybody’s alpha anything. You get out of practice.

  Fiske settled a bit, reacting to my, to him, appropriate body language. He nodded at the assistant, who put a small syringe back in a box.

  My heart skipped a beat, adrenaline hitting my system all over again. Needles carried by bad guys were never a good idea.

  “Under what circumstances would you threaten a child? Given the information we have, it seems to be the logical question.” I asked, mind open enough to smell a lie if he told one.

  “I like an intelligent opponent,” Fiske said, “and, as I said, I will be generous. This time. But don’t push your luck. You have barged into my home and caused damage to my guards. Impertinent questions are hardly the way to walk away from this.”

  “I understand,” I said, my standard answer to suspects for whom I had no answer. The conversation was getting away from me. I felt a distant sense of relief, relief flavored with Cherabino’s mind through the Link. She had a connection with her sister, then.

  “Do you know what this is?” Fiske asked. He was looking at one of the display cases. I was thinking about the needle.

  I hadn’t lived this long by being stupid around dangerous people. If he wanted to play games, I’d play games. You lived longer that way. “No, I’m afraid I don’t know what that is. What is it?” I pitched my voice interested, casual. I didn’t feel casual, not at all, but Nelson had been sure he was mind-deaf.

  He smiled, and I knew he was. “This, Mr. Ward, is a pre–Tech Wars fully functional mental implant, in full working order. I’ve had it serviced. Its owner died from the Kappa virus during the third round of the Tech Wars. Very rare piece. The virus is still active, of course.”

  I swallowed, and finally looked. It was a small cylinder, the size of your thumb, covered in withered biological circuits like octopus tentacles out of the water. But the core—the core was a round thing with layered quantum chips and a glowing red pulse.

  “Still active?” I asked, nervous, trying to remember which virus the Kappa had been. The Guild hadn’t been all that concerned with the details of the Tech Wars’ tactics in its secondary education classes, because the virus had only affected normals with implants, not telepaths.

  “Of course.” Fiske smiled again, the smile of a shark inspecting its prey. Delighted to find such a lovely morsel in front of him. “It overwrote the victim’s brain with nonsense, with unreality, over and over again until the mind lost cohesion. Then it sent the body out to infect others. Any kind of biological interface to the body—a pacemaker, a Tech-controlled organ, an artificial limb—was fair game.”

  “Modern limbs and such have virus protection,” I said. But I took a step back from the case.

  “A convenient lie the manufacturers tell,” Fiske said.

  There was a short pause, during which I absorbed this, and he walked farther along the row of cases. Weapons sat, some jury-rigged out of car-body aluminum and steel bars, some forged in happier times, all with blood still on them. Round donut-shaped magnets, connected to plastic tubing and copper wires, set in worn harnesses, for the day the normals figured out how to fight back against the machines. Not that it had done more than stem the tide. They’d still needed the telepaths to end it.

  Small rare-earth magnets, exchanged as tokens among the resistance, now changing the shape of Mindspace in quiet ways, like a rock in a stream. Maps. Pieces of bombs. Pieces of what might have been.

  I looked back at the clock. Maybe another six minutes. My interrogators’ instincts said if I didn’t take charge now, there were even odds that I would end up as cannon fodder or “victim” status in this guy’s head. What to ask?

  Well, if I was risking death anyway . . .

  “I was admiring your work the other day,” I said. “The researcher. Noah Wright. The ax was telling. It almost kept us from finding the prototype in his head. Removing the arm for the control section was particularly genius.”

  He blinked at me, unreadable. “You’re not going to ask me about how much of my collection is still dangerous?”

  “I think it’s obvious that it’s all dangerous,” I said. “That’s why you collect it, isn’t it?”

  The corner of his mouth crooked, and a small, quiet burst of satisfaction came from him. “Excellent, Mr. Ward. You impress me.”

  “The question in my mind is whether or not you’ve inoculated yourself against the
Kappa virus, or whether you leave it there as a test.”

  “Why can’t it be both?” Fiske asked me. For the first time, I got a clear picture of the wily mind that had been part and parcel of every bad thing that had happened to me in the last months. He’d been behind Bradley, and Tamika, ultimately, hijackings and deaths and a specific threat against me. And he was honestly, truly, a no-holds-barred genius.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Just admiring your mind,” I said. “Observing. It’s not often I get to meet someone who works on so many levels at once.”

  “Flattery, Mr. Ward?” But he was disturbed.

  “Truth,” I said, in the same sincere lying tone I used with suspects. “I did wonder, however, why you were working with Tobias Nelson. You know, from Guild Enforcement. He bought parts from you, personally. I thought you didn’t handle parts sales personally.”

  “Impertinent questions.” He retrieved a small device from the shelf, put it around his neck.

  “An opportunity to show your genius,” I said. “What’s that?”

  He pushed a button.

  An unthinkable pressure in Mindspace pushed at me. I held—and held—and held. I could stand upright. I could think, barely. Maybe. But there was not a chance in hell I’d be able to read or disable anyone with that thing on.

  Fiske smiled and looked at his assistant.

  The man spoke. “It is an infinity wave generator, the only prototype ever made. It was created the year after the Tech Wars by the US government and during the time of the signing of the Koshna Accords. The lab it was produced in was burned to the ground a week before signing. Everyone there was killed.”

  Fiske took a step toward me while I struggled to pay attention. “The device resurfaced decades later in a private auction. Only one man in the world could get it back to working order. I killed him as well. This is the one defense no one can stand against, because no one’s seen or dealt with it before.