Flight of Shadows: A Novel

by Brouwer, Sigmund

  The screen had about a half dozen icons in a horizontal row, each a thumbnail of a photo.

  Pierce touched the first one, and it zoomed open, showing the head and shoulders shot of a woman with straight auburn hair.

  “Jessica Charmaine,” the computer announced in monotone.

  Pierce brought up the computer menu and silenced the speak-aloud feature. He could read much faster than listen.

  Jessica Charmaine. The file information was minimal. It reported that she had a PhD and was a scientist in the now-defunct Genesis Project. Personal information was brief too.

  Razor reached past Pierce, double-tapping the font with Charmaine’s address. It expanded to twenty-four-point size.

  “That’s where Swain told me to bring Caitlyn,” Razor said. “How much you want to bet that’s where Caitlyn is?”

  Pierce’s hands were fluid on the touchscreen, bringing up a map with a satellite view. “Not long to get there. We should have access to the neighborhood. But if they’re inside, I doubt we’re going to be able to just march in.”

  “Getting there is a start,” Razor said.

  Pierce leaned back, obviously in thought. His head brushed against Billy, who had moved in closer.

  “There’s the man I met once when I came into DC from Lynchburg,” Billy said pointing over Pierce’s shoulder at unlabeled photos of the scientists from the Genesis Project. “Swain.”

  “Don’t see him,” Razor said.

  “Can I touch?” Billy asked.

  “Knock yourself out.”

  Billy’s big hand reached out. He found an icon and gingerly pressed it. The photo opened.

  “There,” Billy said. “Swain.”

  Razor squinted. “That’s not the Swain I met.”

  Pierce looked at Billy. “Me neither,” he said.

  EIGHTY

  Wilson was standing at the glass wall that divided the large room in half. Behind him, it was set up like a combination of science lab and operating room. He gave that little thought. He was mesmerized by horrid fascination, staring at the two hybrids behind the glass. Like a pair of half-formed cave men.

  They were standing over a severely mangled human body.

  Both hybrids were turned toward Wilson, heads cocked at an angle that suggested, despite their obvious blindness, that they were aware of his presence.

  Wilson had seen a lot of violent death in his three decades at the agency. But he was having difficulty with the body on the other side of the glass. He was compelled to ask the obvious question.

  “Who was that?”

  “An actor.” As Dawkins spoke, the hybrids, in sync, lurched toward the glass. “Once we discovered that Jordan Brown had been living in Appalachia with the third embryo still alive, the real Swain was helpful in giving us all the information we needed. Let’s just say pain strongly motivated Swain. We removed Swain. Actually, gave him to the hybrids. Then we hired the actor to pose as Swain and live in Swain’s house to wait for Jordan or the girl. Gave him alot of background to be able to play the part. Where else would Jordan go for help? With good reason, as you can see, I couldn’t trust that the agency would find her. We pulled all the long-time Industrials from Swain’s household and replaced them with new ones who believed the actor was Swain. His job was to keep us informed if Caitlyn ever showed up. Now his job is no longer necessary, and we don’t want any leaks of any kind. So the phony Swain had a chance to spend time—short and brutal as it was—with the hybrids.”

  “But—”

  “Throwing him to the hybrids?” Dawkins anticipated. “He knew too much background. When they can eat human protein, it makes their blood more potent.”

  Wilson failed to keep the repugnant expression off his face.

  “Spare the moral outrage,” Dawkins said. “Those two are keeping your son alive.”

  The angle of the light gave a reflection of Dawkins’s face. Wilson didn’t have to turn his head much to glance at the man.

  Dawkins was shoulder high to Wilson. No word suited him better than dapper. Lightly graying, trim hair. Lightly graying, trim mustache. Trim, compact body in a trim, compact suit. Hands behind his back, surveying the hybrids too.

  “Charmaine says they’re deaf,” Dawkins said. “She thinks they can feel the vibration of sounds, which alerts them to us. My voice makes the glass wall move slightly, and they know it. They have an incredible sense of smell. She thinks they’re psychic too; you know, the way pets are waiting at the door when owners come home. I think she makes too much of it. She’s fonder of them than she should be. And she’s the only person they don’t attack. I think they think she’s their mother.” He laughed softly. “And given her role in producing them, it’s more true than not.”

  “Their blood…,” Wilson said.

  “These came from a pool of embryos with a gene change to overcome the limits of how many times a cell can divide without corrupting its DNA. The Hayflick Limit. That’s why we die, you know. Eventually our DNA just wears out. When these two made it to term, Charmaine quickly discovered a couple of things. First, their myostatin blockers were altered. There are no limits on their muscle growth.”

  Dawkins gestured over his shoulder. “Every six to eight weeks, we have to pare their muscles. These hybrids are strong beyond imagination. We have to send in a gas to paralyze them when we need to operate. If we don’t cut back the muscles, they literally begin to squeeze themselves to death. And second, and more importantly, the cell growth in their muscles is tied into the unique qualities of their blood.”

  Dawkins paused. “Look at me.”

  Wilson did.

  “A little over twenty years ago, doctors informed me about my death sentence. They gave me six months, tops. Leukemia. Just like your son. I get dosed by their blood once a week. Don’t ask me for the scientific details; Charmaine can tell you. But it knocks out the leukemia.”

  Thinking of how the blood vials kept his son alive, Wilson said with accusation, “Twenty years. Think of everyone you could have helped with this.”

  “How old do I look?” Dawkins asked.

  Wilson knew the man’s age. It was in the files. “You’re seventy-three.”

  “I didn’t ask how old I am,” Dawkins snapped. “How old do I look?”

  “Maybe fifty.”

  “Most people assume it’s plastic surgery,” Dawkins said. “It’s not. I don’t have an aging portrait hidden somewhere either.”

  Wilson was puzzled. It must have shown.

  “Dorian Gray.” Dawkins sighed.

  It still didn’t make sense to Wilson, but he had more important questions. “You’re saying…”

  “Their blood has basically stopped the aging process for me. Instead of suggesting I should share, tell me what would happen if that got out as public knowledge. Presidents and generals, the people with the most power, would demand to be given a lease on life. Then celebrities. Everyone would make a case for why they deserve it. And when they don’t get the blood, then what? War. Really. People are too afraid of death, too desperate to live. These two hybrids can only give a limited amount of their blood. And they are incapable of reproduction.”

  “Find funding to research what it takes to replicate this blood.”

  “Think it through.” Dawkins was exasperated. “That wouldn’t solve the first problem. Men with armies demanding vials of blood from the hybrids. The hybrids wouldn’t live long enough for the research to come up with answers.”

  “Make the research secret.”

  “Only three people know. Me. Charmaine. Now you. Think a lab with dozens of scientists would keep this secret? It would be hell again—the scientists themselves would be stealing blood. It’s a fountain of youth.”

  Dawkins smoothed his mustache. “Besides, I’ve been funding this research in secret. Charmaine has spent the last twenty years in this hidden lab trying to recover the data that was lost when Jordan Brown destroyed the Genesis Project. Now we’ve got the girl. Her eggs. We have a cr
eature that can reproduce. Once Charmaine maps her genetic code and once we harvest the eggs, we’ll be much closer to the secret.”

  Dawkins abruptly smiled. But it was a cold smile. “You tell me. Say we manage to replicate this. Make it widely available. Who gets to live longer and who doesn’t? People with money to buy it? Or people with special abilities, like top scientists or engineers? Or does everyone get it?”

  Wilson thought of the decision he’d made. Choosing his son, discarding Pierce.

  “What happens to the world’s population?” Dawkins asked. “What happens by doubling the human life span? This is something to keep under the lid of Pandora’s box. Do I need to explain that common literary allusion too?”

  Wilson didn’t answer.

  “I’ve only told you this,” Dawkins said, “because you have a gun pointed at my head.”

  Wilson held up his empty hands.

  “Your clever little password bomb.” Dawkins spoke with intellectual assurance that matched his dapper appearance, waving his hands in elegant, tight circles. “It makes you part of the team. We can’t get rid of you, but you depend on us too much to explode your bomb. You need your son to live. We need you.”

  Dawkins continued, and Wilson realized the man liked the center stage.

  “Charmaine and I have maintained this basement lab since before the Wars. Just the two of us. For her, it’s been a lonely life. I don’t pretend that our affair is anything but convenient for her. It will be nice to have someone in your position to lean on when we need more help. It’s a Faustian deal—hope you catch that one—and like me, you’ll learn to love it. Our will to live is so strong it overcomes most of what you once thought repugnant. Choose your metaphor when it comes to survival. The ends justify the means. Drowning men grasping at straws. Etcetera. Etcetera.”

  The outer door opened. Dawkins turned as Charmaine pushed Caitlyn into the room, almost shiny in the black microfabric that clothed her.

  “Here it is,” Dawkins told Wilson. “Our basket of eggs.”

  EIGHTY-ONE

  Tell me how you see the situation,” Pierce said to Razor. “Let’s strip this down to the simplest terms.”

  “I’m not in on this anymore,” Razor said. “Yeah, I want to help her, but not that badly.”

  Billy was in the shower. Room service food had arrived, and Theo had a milkshake in one hand and a steak in the other. Holding the steak like a sandwich, he bit into it. Razor and Pierce, sitting on chairs pushed away from the computer’s touchscreen, were ignoring the trays, which were on the bed in the hotel room.

  “Hypothetically then. You’re sharp. I could use your help.”

  “She’s at the house,” Razor said. “Charmaine’s house. That’s how we have to proceed. I was supposed to deliver her there. They could move her after that, but why take the risk? Once she’s hidden, she’s safe. Swain—the guy staying in Swain’s house to pretend he was Swain—has no idea I’m working with you. He’ll have no idea I told you where to look. Besides, what else do you have?”

  “Okay.”

  “So we need to decide who is going. And what to do once we’re there.”

  “What’s our goal?” Pierce asked.

  “To get Caitlyn.”

  “Why?”

  “Protecting her protects us,” Razor said. “You and I are loose ends otherwise. Only way for them to clean us up is to get rid of us. Unless we break this loose first.”

  “Who goes? And how do we get her?”

  “One determines the other.”

  “Yeah,” Pierce said. “Two options for who goes. Us. Or the agency. We go, it’s a longer shot that we get her out. Fewer resources.”

  “You’re not making a call to the agency,” Razor said.

  “You telling me not to call?”

  “Predicting. Otherwise you would have made the call already. You still don’t know who to trust.”

  “Wish it was different,” Pierce said. “But that’s true too.”

  “So it’s down to us,” Razor said. “Logistically, we’re close enough to get there fast. You’ve got identification to get us through any gates.”

  “And when we get there?” Pierce was grilling Razor the same way he grilled the agents on his team. Giving them a chance to come up with the solution. Giving them a vested interest in making the solution work.

  “House will have security cameras,” Razor said. “If she’s there, no way the house is unprotected.”

  “I can get around that,” Pierce said. “Computer geek. Owes me big-time. He won’t try to block the system. He can get into a residential system and reroute any alarms. People inside won’t know a thing.”

  Temporary silence. Then, from Razor. “They going to have anyone else with them? Soldiers? Agency enforcers?”

  “The more people they bring in, the tougher it is to keep everything secret. So, no.”

  “I’ve got a knife,” Razor said. “You’ve got an agency weapon, right?”

  “Doesn’t get us inside.”

  This time, the silence was longer, except for Theo’s determined slurping of his second milkshake.

  “Smoke them out?” Razor asked.

  “If you mean that literally, it’s going to bring in the fire department. Remember, we need Caitlyn. We can’t get anyone official involved here.”

  Theo burped. Then spoke four words. “I’ve got an idea.”

  He blurted it out. Razor and Pierce exchanged thoughtful glances.

  “Remember,” Razor said. “I was just in on the discussion on a theoretical level.”

  “Meaning?” Pierce asked.

  “You figure out how to do it from here,” Razor said. “I’m not a team person. Count me out.”

  “T. R. Zornenbach is a sick kid,” Holly said. “Has an ongoing prescription for HRT.”

  She’d just finished showering when Pierce knocked on her hotel room door. She’d cracked the door open and told him he had to wait in the hallway until she threw something on. Her hair was wet and she had a towel in her hand. Barefoot, she was in jeans and a loose blue sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. She sat on the small couch along the wall. No luxury suite for her.

  “HRT.” For obvious reasons, Pierce hadn’t given much thought to this thread of the investigation.

  “Hormone replacement therapy. In dosages that suggest without it he’d be like a woman; he’s injecting a mixture of testosterone and human chorionic gonadotropin.” Tight smile. “You should be impressed I can repeat that without referring to my notes.”

  “Very.”

  “That’s assuming I still care about impressing you.” Long pause, the significant type of pause that Pierce recognized as universal when a woman was about to skewer a man. “Want to tell me why I can’t upload that information or anything else to the op-site? It’s just gone.”

  “Things are shifting fast,” Pierce said.

  “So fast that lower-level ops who don’t know why we’re chasing Caitlyn now don’t get to know why the op-site is gone.”

  Keeping her eyes locked on Pierce, she began to dry her hair, using both hands on the towel, rubbing it back and forth with vigor. Shapely, muscular arms. And a glare on her face that was a clear indication for Pierce that this was not a good time to admire her arms or get caught admiring her arms, even if he’d been in a mood to let that distract him.

  “Things are shifting fast.”

  “Razor meet you on the train?” She stopped toweling her hair and threw the towel to the side of the room. Ice princess gone. Happy to let Pierce know she was more than irritated. “Perhaps you could have informed the low-level ops of that at some point during the day instead of disappearing?”

  “Things are shifting fast.” He was watching her face, trying to read whether she knew what had happened in the last few hours. He decided if she did, she was very capable of hiding it.

  “How fast?” Her hair was now spiky.

  “I know where Caitlyn is. A private residence in one of the Influenti
al quarters. I’ve called in a favor and had the home security rerouted. I’m going in to get her.”

  “With me, of course.”

  “No,” Pierce said. “This goes wrong, it’s a career killer to whoever goes to the house. The residence belongs to an Influential. I don’t have a warrant.”

  “You just told me home security will be down,” she said. “It goes right, it’s a career maker.”

  “It goes right, and I’m going to remember who had my back. I need you in a safe place to call in support.”

  Which was true. And false. If it went right, Holly would get the next pay grade. But the lie was that Pierce intended to call in support. He still couldn’t believe Wilson had turned and wasn’t going to do anything that would show up in a file until he’d resolved that.

  “How about giving Jeremy the backup role? I want in on this.” She ran her fingers through her hair. Pierce was human enough to want to be able to trust her. She looked good in the sweatshirt.

  “I’ve got him on something else,” Pierce said. “And now is about the time I mention we’re not think-tanking this. I’ve just given you an order.”

  While Pierce liked team members who weren’t afraid of challenging him or his ideas, to her credit, Holly blinked a few times and simply said, “Jessica Charmaine’s address?”

  Holly was sharp, and Pierce had anticipated it, so his reply was smooth and not a lie. “She was helpful in providing the true location.”

  Pierce had given a lot of thought to the woman assassin who’d followed him onto the train. She hadn’t been an NI agent. Chances were, she’d been reporting to Dawkins. But she couldn’t have gotten close to Pierce unless someone on Pierce’s team had been updating Pierce’s location. For someone outside the agency.

  Pierce gave Holly an address about four blocks away from the address he had for the scientist Charmaine. Close enough that if Holly was in on the betrayal, the chopper searchlights would tell him. Far enough away, he’d be safe from the distraction.

  “Just so I understand,” Holly said. “You’re going in. Alone.”