As that thought crossed his mind, Mason felt a sound. That was the best way to describe it. There was noise, but it didn’t quite reach his ears. At least not for a few moments.
Helicopter?
Mason hesitated, looked upward.
At that moment, the sky pierced him. Except it wasn’t the sky. It wasn’t the light from the chopper that tore through him.
It was unreasoning terror that collapsed him as surely as if he’d Tasered himself.
“Billy,” Theo said. He pointed upward at the dusk of the sky. “It’s the sound again.”
“What sound?” Impatience rarely bothered Billy. But they were on the run. Billy didn’t feel smart enough to judge whether the three of them were sufficiently clear to have the luxury to stop. Especially because Theo’s keen sense of hearing, combined with his usual nervousness and a vast imagination, meant the sound could have been anything.
“The night we went into the hospital. When everyone freaked out. You know, in the soovie camp.”
Just the memory of the overwhelming dread was enough to stop Billy cold. “You sure?”
“Not sure.” Theo cocked his head. “Now I’m sure. It’s closer.”
“What are you talking about?” Caitlyn asked.
“Can’t explain,” Theo said. “Just that all of a sudden it felt like a roomful of monsters were going to rip me apart and that they were backing me into a corner. I couldn’t move. The monsters weren’t like anything you could explain. More like roaring demons, smoke and fire. It’s the freakiest thing ever.”
“Where do we go?” Billy asked. “Where do we go?”
Billy wished he was better at thinking. With the shanties in all directions, there seemed like no clear path in any direction, especially with people in clusters along the paths. Until now, all the people around them had provided a perfect screen from any pursuers. Now the memory of that overwhelming dread already made him feel trapped.
“We keep walking,” Caitlyn said. “We don’t run. That’s what’s going to draw attention.”
Billy imagined he felt a breeze, then realized it wasn’t his imagination. The thump-thump sound followed. His first instinct was to pull Caitlyn close.
That’s how the spotlight pinned them.
Caitlyn in Billy’s arms. Theo, half turned, looking upward, shielding his eyes with his arms against the piercing white glare.
Something bounced off Billy’s shoulder. A small canister.
“Theo!” Billy shouted.
Theo saw it too. Theo dove on it.
It didn’t matter.
A split second later, panic overwhelmed Billy. He staggered in his desperation to pull Caitlyn out of the spotlight. But she was in a panic, flailing and screaming, and a part of his consciousness realized that to hold her, he’d have to apply so much force it would crush her.
Billy fell to his knees, dimly aware of the sounds of screams from the paths between the shanties beyond Caitlyn.
The spotlight that kept them in a circle didn’t move.
It was difficult for Billy to keep his thoughts coherent. Fear had buckled him, wrapped him so deep into himself that his leg muscles were cramping and his face hurt from the rictus of terror. Yet much as he wanted to close his eyes and wait to die, he was driven by a need to protect Caitlyn.
Too frozen to help, he kept her in his vision.
It seemed like a monster had descended from the sky, the black-masked figure swaying in midair, hanging from a shiny cable that glinted in the spotlight.
Then the figure dropped and knelt over Caitlyn, whose flailing had diminished to shuddering spasms.
Above the roaring of the machine above them and the roaring in his mind, Billy yelled in futile rage, on his side, curled in agony, unable to move.
Billy was incapable of pegging movement to time, and he swirled through a vortex of altered consciousness as he vainly tried to force his arm to reach out for Caitlyn.
The black-masked figure stood again. The cable seemed attached to Caitlyn’s body. The black figure sprang upward with distorted slow motion in Billy’s perception. It seemed like the black figure hung in the air again.
Until he was gone.
And, as if pulled by gravity, Caitlyn’s body rose upward in pursuit.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Caitlyn was on her back, on a table, hands bound. In a room, but she didn’t know where. A hood had been placed over her head.
She heard footsteps. Soft footsteps. Someone creeping up to where she was strapped helplessly to the table.
Caitlyn didn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe.
Worse than the sound of footsteps was the silence when the footsteps stopped.
Caitlyn knew someone was standing beside her. Examining her body. She tried to put herself in another world. She tried to remember the sensation of flying, tried, in her mind, to be soaring over a valley in Appalachia, wind in her face, a different kind of silence that came with that exquisite solitude. Not this tortured, silent prison.
But she couldn’t remove herself. Someone was beside her. Waiting. For what?
Then a feathery sensation on her face. Fingers on the hood over her head.
And slowly, the hood began to be lifted.
Razor stepped into the shanty with Billy and Theo. Pierce was on his feet, watching.
They looked at him with coldness.
Razor spoke with savage anger. “Tell him.”
“Gone,” Theo said. “She’s gone. They took her. Helicopter. Just like the time before when they came for me and Billy and took us to the hospital.”
Billy said nothing. Pierce noticed a trail of blood coming from a bandage on Billy’s right bicep.
“You mean like a panic attack?” Pierce asked.
“Panic?” Theo said. “I couldn’t think. Like a hundred lions were roaring at me from two feet away.”
“Fear pheromones,” Pierce said. “Something only the agency has. But that’s impossible. It wasn’t Wilson.”
Pierce directed his next words at Razor. “The leak is from your side.”
Razor pointed at Billy. “He was still in panic. It took seven guys to hold him down. We dug out a bug. Tracking device. From inside one of his injuries you guys had fixed at the hospital.”
“I didn’t know about it,” Pierce said. “Only the one in Theo’s glasses.”
Razor said. “I got some kid to swallow the bug. He’s headed back to the soovie camps. In case they’re still tracking.”
Pierce spoke again, more to himself. “I didn’t know about it.”
“Still trust Wilson with your life?” Razor asked. “Or want to check my account information for the money that never showed up?”
SEVENTY-EIGHT
When the hood was pulled away, Caitlyn saw a woman’s face. High cheekbones, green eyes. Auburn hair. She was midforties, maybe older. The light came from across her shoulders, softening her face with shadow. She wore a long, dark skirt and cashmere sweater that exhibited how trim she was. A waft of perfume hit Caitlyn.
Caitlyn lifted her cuffed wrists. “You have a key?”
The woman shook her head.
“I need to undress you,” the woman said. “Only briefly. If you fight, I’ll need help. If you don’t, we’ll have privacy. I’d rather we began our relationship with cooperation. It will be better for you. I promise.”
“Who are you?” Caitlyn asked in a monotone. She saw no sense in fighting something that was inevitable, as dictated by the cuffs. Even if she overcame that handicap to fight this woman, the men who had taken her into the chopper were probably in the other room nearby.
“Jessica Charmaine.”
“You’re government.”
The woman ignored her statement and moved behind her, unzipping the microfabric Jordan had given Caitlyn. In Appalachia. In another lifetime. When Caitlyn’s world was simple. She and a father whom she adored.
Caitlyn kept her back muscles tight and her wings furled.
“Amazing,” the woman whispered. “F
or a gene code sequence like this to work. Just amazing. The intertwining of muscle and bone and nerves and blood. It’s like adding extra arms to a body.”
“It’s like making someone a freak,” Caitlyn said. “Without their permission.”
“No one gives permission to be born,” the woman said. “You are a unique testament to survival. Tens of thousands of embryos didn’t make it past the sixteen-cell stage. The hundreds that did gestated less than a month. Barely a dozen made it to late term. You are the lottery winner. The only one to live. Can you open your wings for me?”
“Open the cuffs.”
“He wouldn’t let me.”
“Don’t tell him. Whoever he is.”
“Please don’t be difficult. Neither of us has a choice in this. We’re going to be together a long time. When you have babies, I’ll be the only one here for you.”
Caitlyn didn’t want to give herself any silence to think through the implications. Anger and pride, that’s what she needed to use as a shield.
“You’re a midwife,” Caitlyn said, scornfully. Still, she couldn’t escape a sensation of cold. Babies. Not baby. Babies. As in year after year. Her life as an experiment was going to continue. Suicide flashed through her mind. Not driven by hopelessness. But by the core of her anger. Suicide to thwart the experiment of people she hated.
“I’m a scientist. One of the best. Can you open your wings for me? I’d like to see the structure.”
“They are not like bird wings.” Caitlyn snapped out the words. “My arms work with the wings. I can soar, like a glider. If you want the wings open, I need my wrists free so I can support them with my arms.”
From behind, Charmaine didn’t reply. Instead, the woman scientist continued to remove all of Caitlyn’s microfabric. The folded letters fell on the ground. Charmaine ignored them.
Standing rigid, eyes shut in anger and humiliation, Caitlyn willed herself not to shed a single tear. She drew deep breaths, imagining each sucking in anger. She would not succumb to self-pity.
She felt the woman’s hand on different places of her body. Gentle poking. Squeezing.
Caitlyn remained a statue. There were men outside the room. If she fought now, they would enter and exponentially increase her humiliation.
I’m a zoo animal, Caitlyn thought. She’s my keeper.
When Charmaine had finished the examination and dressed her, she stepped in front of Caitlyn again. “You’ve begun your menstrual cycles?”
Caitlyn couldn’t help herself. She spat in Charmaine’s face.
Charmaine shook her head sadly and wiped her face with the sleeve of her cashmere sweater. “I have to ask these questions. Or would you prefer a complete exam? One way or another, the general is going to find out if you carry eggs.”
“You make me feel so much better about myself,” Caitlyn said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I don’t see any sense in euphemisms or dancing around issues. I find life is easier when you are realistic about any situation.”
“That’s not why I feel better,” Caitlyn said. “I’ve always believed it’s how you look that makes you a monster. But now that I’ve met you, I see it’s not true. Monsters don’t have to look like monsters.”
“You want me to react,” Charmaine answered. “But you’re not going to be able to manipulate me like that. I can see a bigger picture. You can’t. Have you begun your cycles?”
Caitlyn set her jaws tight. Until she found a way to escape or kill herself, she would not give any cooperation.
“I’ve seen that stubbornness before,” Charmaine said. “Jordan passed it on to you, didn’t he?”
Caitlyn felt herself flinch. She desperately wanted to ask what that meant, but then her sullen anger would be gone, and she’d be in a position of weakness.
“I really want to be your friend,” Charmaine said. “And we’ll have lots and lots of time to talk. Your father and I were very close once. But he couldn’t see the big picture. When he found out he had fertilized some of the eggs, including the one that developed into you…”
Caitlyn turned her head toward Charmaine. Staring. This was an admission of curiosity, and they both knew it.
“Don’t be so stubborn,” Charmaine said. Smiling. “We’ve shared him. At different times in our lives. We can start with that as a bond.”
Caitlyn blinked. Jordan was her biological father? Like she’d believed all her life until the last few months?
“Don’t look at me like I seduced him,” Charmaine said. “Believe me, I tried. He was speaking out in meetings, against some of the, um, advanced experiments. I thought if I could have him, he’d stop. Apparently he was more tempting to me than I was to him.”
She sighed theatrically. “I became a woman scorned. But also a woman with access to drugs to knock him out, and the knowledge of how to medically collect what I needed him to contribute to fertilizing eggs. For him, it was like falling asleep after a late meal at the lab. He didn’t discover I’d collected what I needed until long after, when he learned his paternity of some of the developing embryos. I thought it would be enough for him to finally go along with our experiments.”
“You were wrong about him,” Caitlyn said. She thought of the pieces of the story that she knew about Jordan’s defiance. How he and Swain had sabotaged the program beyond repair. How Jordan had fled with the surrogate mother who carried Caitlyn. How Jordan had taken Caitlyn into Appalachia to escape the agency. And she thought of the letter Jordan had given her.
… holding you in the first moments outside the womb, I was overwhelmed by protective love.
He was her father after all.
“But I was right about the new gene sequence techniques,” Charmaine said. “You are living proof. He was a whistle-blower, and we turned it on him. He became the fugitive, not us. It’s delayed everything twenty years, but in a month, with what I learn from your gene code, I’ll be on track again.”
Charmaine smiled again, wiping hair away from her own face. “What’s truly amazing about you is that your blood is going to give me that twenty years back. And then some.”
“Monster.”
“Come on,” Charmaine said, ignoring the venom in Caitlyn’s voice. “We’ll get you back in that tight fabric. Time to meet the man who made all of this possible. He’s not in the mood to wait.”
SEVENTY-NINE
To get back into the city core, Pierce had to show his NI identification to the guard at the outer wall checkpoint, knowing it was a gamble.
If Wilson was acting on behalf of the agency, Pierce would already be tagged on the computer system and be held for immediate arrest. If Wilson was acting alone, chances were Wilson wouldn’t want to alert the agency by taking overt steps against Pierce.
The guard, pimply faced and badly in need of extra testosterone to fill in his attempt at a goatee, handed back the identification with a bored expression but looked past Pierce at Razor, Billy, and Theo.
“With me. Custody,” Pierce said. Then, throwing in jargon he guessed the kid would like, “It’s a need-to-know basis.”
“No handcuffs?”
“Death chips,” Pierce answered. He leaned forward. “Keep it secret. Agency’s just come up with them. We inject the chips into the thigh. They try to escape, bam. Remote control activates the cyanide.”
“Cool,” the kid said, waving all of them through.
Pierce didn’t allow himself to relax, however, as they stepped onto the next train into the depths of the city.
Since Wilson had already lied, there was one other possibility. That Pierce had been tagged by the agency. Not for custody at a checkpoint, but to leave an alert in the agency system, to be tracked for another kill attempt as soon as logistics made it possible.
“Wow!” Theo chortled inside Razor’s suite at the Pavilion. “People actually live like this?”
He was twirling in a circle, arms spread, taking in the luxury of the hotel room.
“Pick up the phone,”
Razor told Theo. He’d already moved to the desk in the corner, racing his fingers over the touchscreen computer.
“Huh?”
The computer screen came to life.
“Pick up the phone,” Razor repeated. “Dial seven eight. Trust me.”
Theo tiptoed to the phone, as if afraid to wake himself up from a dream. He dialed and waited for an answer. Then he straightened and froze. He covered the mouthpiece and whispered to Razor. “They asked what I want to eat.”
“Tell them,” Razor said. “Anything you want.”
Theo looked to Billy, his hand still over the mouthpiece. “He’s kidding, right?”
Billy shook his head, negative.
“Milkshakes,” Theo said into the phone. “One of each flavor. Three cheeseburgers. Three fries. A pizza. No, two pizzas.”
Hand over the phone again, speaking to Billy. “Anything for you?”
“We’ll share,” Billy said. “Don’t want you to bust.”
“Couple of steaks, medium rare,” Pierce said, pulling up a chair beside Razor.
“Steaks?” Theo said. “Didn’t know we could have steaks.”
Back into the phone, Theo said. “Change the cheeseburgers to steaks. Add two more. Medium rare. One other thing. Do you bring up dessert with it, or should I order that later?”
Pause. “Okay. Chocolate cake.”
Another pause. “No. A chocolate cake. The whole thing.”
Theo hung up the phone. “Very nice.”
“Into the bathroom,” Razor said without looking back. “Shower. With soap. Stay in until the food arrives. You need it bad. Then Billy’s turn.”
Theo zipped into the bathroom. As he closed the door, his admiring voice drifted outward. “You have got to be kidding!”
Billy stood with his hands in his pockets. Unsure where to look.
“We’re going to find her,” Razor said.
Billy nodded, didn’t smile.
“Check this,” Pierce announced from the chair at his computer. “Check this out. Holly came through with a few requests.”
Flight of Shadows: A Novel Page 26