The Nowhere Man--An Orphan X Novel

by Gregg Hurwitz

  He coiled the piano wire back into a coaster-size loop. British secret-service agents used to hide Gigli surgical wire saws in their clothes during World War II, and Evan took a cue from them now. Yanking the padded insole out of his left boot, he slid the wire up toward the toe and then replaced the insole on top of it. As he laced up his boot again, he felt barely a bump beneath the ball of his foot.

  Next he removed the packet of Doritos from his waistband. By now they were mostly crushed, but he selected a few of the bigger pieces and arrayed them on the ground. One of the lesser-known benefits of Doritos is that they’re highly flammable.

  With a fingernail he scraped a gob of pine pitch from the nearest trunk and smeared it across the crushed chip fragments to increase the combustibility. Then he tore two strips from the bottom of his undershirt and braided them into a rope, which he tied to either end of a not-too-thin stick to form a bow. His fingers were growing numb; had he waited a few minutes more, he’d have been unable to form the knots.

  Now he sawed the rope back and forth rapidly across another stick held perpendicular, causing the stick to spin in the makeshift tinder. Before long he busted a coal, which he flicked into the bits of chips. A few steady breaths stoked it high enough to catch the humble heap of branches, and then a tiny fire flickered beneath his outheld hands, warming the palms.

  Normally he’d bring water to a rolling boil before drinking it, but he didn’t have anything to use as a pot, and besides, he trusted fresh-fallen snow. He warmed himself, chewed a bit of ice, then ate an apple. The whole time he kept his NVGs lowered, scanning the hillside and the valley below.

  Life crept back into his face and arms.

  Just a few minutes more and he’d be on his way.

  * * *

  The elevator doors opened on the blood-spattered basement. René emerged through the fog of his own disbelief, blinking to ensure that what he was seeing was in fact real.

  Spoiled blood dripping from tattered IV bags.

  Medical machinery reduced to wreckage.

  Dr. Franklin’s fragmented head resting on the sodden sheets of the gurney.

  The tangle of images knocked around inside him, sharp edges slicing beneath the skin, rising up his throat until he bellowed his rage at the ruined medical lab. It was a roar of rage, yes, but laced with pain.

  He sensed David and Manny shrinking away behind him, backpedaling to the walls, giving him space.

  René’s chest heaved as he caught his breath. He’d relocated many times before, and he would relocate again. But this time he’d have to rebuild from scratch. New equipment. New doctor. New blood.

  Amid the remnants of the once-glorious operation, the safe rose, gleaming and intact. René crossed to it, running a finger across a dimple in the chrome plating where a round had been repelled.

  He said, “Unlock it.”

  Manny stepped forward, fumbling at his key ring.

  “Are you sure?” David said. “You swore you’d never—”

  “Unlock it.”

  Manny rammed the key home and turned the weighty dial. The lugs inside released with a clang, and the door parted from the frame on well-greased hinges.

  Inside were several small glass vials and two filled syringes.

  René removed a syringe, and Manny took a quick step back, as if what it contained was contagious, airborne.

  It was not.

  But it was scary enough to deter proximity.

  René touched the pad of his thumb to the plunger. The power of the ages held in the span of his hand. He cleared the air from the syringe with a hint of pressure from his thumb.

  Manny’s radio crackled, one of the trackers calling in: “—recogimos sus huellas. Quizá hay una fogata delante y—”

  Footprints and a campfire. They were closing in.

  René snatched the radio from Manny’s trembling hand and held it to his mouth. He regarded the gleaming tip of the needle. “Bring him to me.”

  * * *

  Evan kicked snow over the ashes, stomping out the embers. Feeling had returned to his extremities, and he didn’t want to risk lingering over the tiny flames any longer. Lowering his NVGs, he gave another spin, searching the mountainside.

  A wink of reflected light caught his eye. Way up by the brink, ten or so klicks distant, a man lay prone on an outcropping of rock, angled slightly away.

  The south sniper.

  Evan’s last obstacle.

  The man swept the rifle slowly back and forth, scanning the hillside below.

  As the scope moved to turn full circle, Evan dropped to the cold earth behind a tree trunk and lay still. He exhaled down into the collar of his jacket so his clouding breath wouldn’t give him away.

  When he risked a look again, he saw that the sniper had directed his attention to another stretch of the rise. Dawn was leaking through the valley, sending a glare off the new-fallen white.

  If Evan could get across the swell of land beside him, he’d be out of sight, his path to the summit clear. Once he made it over the brink into the vast surrounding mountains, René’s men would never catch him.

  One more stretch of snow and he’d be free.

  He checked the sniper again, but the man was still facing away.

  All clear.

  Evan bolted.

  The uneven earth jarred his boots, the dense pines jolting back and forth, as much obstacle course as cover. He crested the rise and saw the ground slope away. He slid down on the soft-packed snow, dropping over the final swell, dipping from the south sniper’s vantage.

  He was beyond reach.

  He’d made it.

  He lay for a moment, catching his breath, enjoying the sight of the wide-open sky above. Then he shook snow from the cuffs of his pants and started to stand.

  He’d just pulled himself up to full height when a wedge of tree trunk exploded two yards from his face as if hammered free with an ax. Before he could process what had happened, he heard the big-caliber signature boom across the valley.

  For a moment his thoughts spun in freefall. It made no sense. The south sniper was lost to a fold of the mountain behind him. And the shot’s trajectory was wrong.

  He scrambled into motion, heading for the nearest tree line. A bullet kissed the top of his shoulder, fraying the thick coat and obliterating a branch. He juked left, a half-assed wide-receiver move, but already his legs were throbbing, his boots skidding on ice.

  Another shot whipped overhead, annihilating a pinecone. Splinters rained down across his shoulders.

  Any way he turned, he was in the crosshairs.

  The pinecone was a message, sent from the base of the valley. An incredible shot.

  With dawning dread Evan put it together.

  The north sniper had moved out of position, coming across the range to pin him down from an unexpected angle. This man who had taken a pinecone off Evan’s palm from five hundred meters.

  And Evan was in the middle of an open patch, fully exposed. One wrong step and he’d be missing a limb.

  He froze.

  He could feel his heartbeat in the hollow of his throat.

  He gritted his teeth.

  Bowed his head.

  Then he raised his arms, raised them high and wide so they’d be visible through a scope. He waited, his breaths jerking through his chest, steaming in the night air.

  After a time he heard footsteps crunching through the snow behind him. The sound of reckoning.

  The footsteps neared, but he didn’t dare turn around, didn’t dare move. Not until a kick to the kidneys knocked him to the ground. Dex stood over him, his head cocked with some sentiment that couldn’t quite make it to his eyes. Two narcos flanked him, their AKs pointed at Evan’s chest.

  Dex’s big hands swung at his sides, the tattoos flashing. Too-broad smile. Bloody scowl.

  One painted mouth dipped into a cargo pocket. The fingers came out gripping the hinged-open shock collar. Wearily, Evan lifted his head from the snow to see the big hand
s nearing. His vision clouded.

  Even so he could hear the collar clank shut around his neck.

  40

  People Who Deserve It

  Evan’s feet dragged lifelessly behind him, leaving ski tracks in the snow. The morning glare off the ground was piercing, forcing him to squint. His legs and arms throbbed from the cold. His head hung forward, hair latticing his eyes. A narco had him by either arm, Dex leading the merry little charge.

  They hauled him into the barn and threw him onto the wrestling mat. Shuddering, he curled on the blue rubber. Only now did he allow himself to register the state of his body. The chill crept into his bruises, stung the ring of raw flesh around his neck. His head swam from the cold, from the exertion, from more kicks and punches than he could keep track of. He could no longer feel his nose or his lips. His ankles ached. His thighs burned, his calves were on fire, his breath growing more ragged by the second.

  If he died here in this desolate valley, he’d be another in a long list of people who had failed Alison Siegler and the boy.

  And yet how could he rescue them when he was in need of rescuing himself?

  There was a lesson in that somewhere, of that he was sure, but he didn’t know what. If Jack were alive, he’d summarize it neatly into something pithy—part koan, part fortune cookie. He’d put the situation into context, salvage it by turning it around on Evan, transform impotence into insight.

  Evan stared at the circle of narcos penning him in and tried to convert his helplessness to rage, but the old tricks no longer worked. Not right now. He felt undressed, vulnerable.

  Defeated.

  He heard the barn door roll open. Footsteps.

  He caught a whiff of familiar cologne. It smelled like a country club.

  René’s voice settled over him. “Your plan didn’t work out very well.”

  “No,” Evan said. “Doesn’t seem to have.”

  Two of the men patted him down roughly. One of them yanked the RoamZone from his pocket and handed it to René. With amusement René regarded the smashed screen and the cracked casing, bubbled from the fire. He laughed at the seemingly useless phone and tossed it back at Evan. With numb fingers Evan fumbled it into his pocket, then curled into himself again to try to generate warmth. The collar scraped into the tender flesh at the contact points.

  René adjusted his eggplant-colored scarf. “You look cold.”

  Evan licked his cracked lips and tried not to shudder. Tried and failed. Finally he let his eyes roll up to take in the stout man once again. Manny stood behind him.

  Evan drummed up a smile. “The band’s getting back together.”

  “You’ll find that your humor is going to evaporate quickly,” René said.

  “I’ve seen what you do in that medical lab.” Evan’s fingers moved to the scab in his arm. “You stole my blood? When I was passed out?”

  “You’re too old,” René said. “You’re just the bank. The kids, they’re the feast.”

  Evan had to breathe a few times to get enough oxygen. “Why do you want their blood?”

  René took a moment to smooth down his hair. He adjusted the thick fabric of his suit, skimming his hands over the lush lapels. “Scientists at Cornell have been conducting the most fascinating research,” he said. “They took old rats and young rats and stitched them together at the flanks. Literally combined their circulatory systems. You wouldn’t believe what they discovered.”

  “Try me.”

  “The short version is that it reversed aging in the older rats. Turns out that bathing old stem cells in young blood has a rejuvenating effect. It enhances memory, strengthens skeletal muscle, hastens healing. Who would have thought that the fountain of youth was right there all along? A fountain inside our youth?” He paused, pleased, and studied Evan. “Let me guess. You object vehemently. I’ve committed a moral atrocity that flies in the face of nature.”

  “Antibiotics and skyscrapers fly in the face of nature,” Evan said. “I don’t give a shit about natural or unnatural. I care about who you’re doing this to.”

  “Oh, I just skim a little off the top. Like a mosquito. Besides, you’re hardly one to object to hurting people.”

  “I only hurt people who deserve it.”

  René showed off his glorious caps. “You are such a wonderfully pure thing. A self-made construct.”

  Evan pushed himself up to sit on the mat. He still felt weak from the exposure, but his arms were tingling, the blood flow picking up again. “The young rats. You didn’t say what happens to them.”

  “Well, that’s the unfortunate part,” René said. “They aged prematurely. Their muscles broke down, didn’t heal the same way. Every benefit has a cost.”

  “As long as you’re not paying it, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you get David to lure kids here? And you siphon off their blood? But it’s not a perfect science, is it? Sometimes it goes bad.”

  “Every advancement has its complications.”

  “There’s a difference between stealing and killing.”

  “Not really,” René said. “In one instance I steal blood. In the other I steal a different resource—the only resource not able to be replenished. Time. Killers are only thieves of a different stripe. They steal time—the time their victims would have had left to live. Ten years. Forty. They take it to enhance their own time. It’s a trade, and it favors the bold. Just like those who can afford better medications, safer cars, who had the birthright luck not to be born in a flea-bitten Third World shack. That the kids I”—here he searched for a word—“sip from generally emerge unharmed is a testament to my magnanimity. There’s nothing to stop me from taking everything every time.”

  “Except your kind heart.”

  “I don’t like to do harm, you see. I’m just willing to.” René set his hands on his knees and leaned over Evan, and for the first time Evan considered just what a large man he was. “However, given the mess you left in my basement? I’ll enjoy what I’m going to do to you.” He stood up, clasped his hands. “But we have so much to clean up first.”

  Dex was suddenly behind Manny, relieving him of his Kalashnikov. There was a slight delay as Manny seemed to realize what had happened, and then his mouth stretched into a rictus of dread, a twitching oval lined with gold teeth. No words emerged.

  “Xalbador, he speaks poor English, is that correct?” René asked, gesturing at one of the men who had dragged Evan through the snow.

  Manny stared into the middle distance.

  “Is that correct?” René repeated.

  Manny managed a nod.

  René flicked two fingers, and Xalbador stepped forward. A skinny kid in his early twenties, he hadn’t yet thickened into manhood. A wide belt cinched his jeans, holding them up. The Santa Muerte tattoo on his neck was inked but only half colored, a few scabs still showing from the needle. With his wispy mustache and lupine cheeks, he was young and mean and had a lot to prove.

  Manny would not look at him.

  René said to Manny, “Will you translate for me?”

  Another tiny nod.

  René cleared his throat. “Tell him that given your failure, he will be succeeding you in your position.”

  Manny’s lips wobbled, his mustache bristling. He palmed his mouth, trying to still it.

  “Tell him,” René said.

  Dex sidled a step closer, set a hand on the ledge of Manny’s shoulder.

  Manny said, “Dado mi fracaso, es posible que vas a tomar mi posición.”

  “Tell him that his primary—no, his only job—will be to watch our guest.” René stabbed a finger down at Evan on the mat.

  Manny cleared his throat. “Solamente … solamente tienes que echarle un ojo a nuestro huésped.”

  “Tell him you are hopeful for his success and wish him well.”

  Manny’s Adam’s apple twitched. He turned to René. “Por favor—”

  “You are hopeful for his success and wish him well.”
/>
  “Tengo la…”

  René nodded encouragingly.

  Manny licked his lips, his gold caps gleaming. His brow glistened with sweat. “Tengo la esperanza de … de tu éxito y … y … te deseo … deseo lo mejor.”

  René looked at Xalbador, who raised his AK-47 and put a tight grouping of bullets through Manny’s chest.

  Evan thought, Two dogs, five guards, two snipers, David, and Dex.

  Xalbador dragged Manny’s body out through the rear barn doors, leaving a path of blood across the concrete.

  “Nice show,” Evan said.

  “Don’t worry,” René said. “It’s not over yet.”

  Dex pushed open the door to the interior office and pulled Despi out by her hair.

  41

  No Ready Answer

  Despi kicked and tried to shove herself away from Dex, but she was seismically overpowered. He carried her across the barn like a squirming lab rat and set her gently on her feet before René. Dex kept one hand clamped on the back of her neck.

  Somehow Evan had managed to find his feet. Four guards ringed him. In case the Kalashnikovs weren’t sufficient, each was armed with a transmitter for the shock collar.

  Anyone could get in on the fun now.

  René regarded Despi. “Our guest used a car jack to aid in his non-escape,” he said. “Any idea where he got it?”

  Evan said, “I stole it from the barn when I snuck in here yesterday.”

  René kept his gaze steady on Despi. She writhed in Dex’s grip, and then the muscles of his arm corded and she gave a yelp and stopped struggling.

  “If you tell the truth,” René said, “I won’t hurt you.”

  “I’d never take anything from her,” Evan said. “I don’t trust her. She’s one of your employees.”

  “Despi,” René said gently, “I have cameras in the barn. Is this really a lie you want to stand behind?”

  Slowly, she raised her eyes to meet René’s. She gave the faintest shake of her head, the tips of her dark locks swaying.

  “Did you give him the car jack?” René asked.