by Sam Sisavath
“Or maybe the feds don’t want people to know they killed a kid,” Rick said. The big man stood next to the door behind Quinn, eating a sandwich stuffed with three baloney slices. He didn’t look nearly as intimidating as before, even with the submachine gun still dangling from his shoulder.
“Maybe,” Quinn said, even if the idea of Aaron being killed, then his death swept under the rug for PR reasons, made her physically ill.
This is the world you’re living in now. Get used to it.
“But you don’t buy it,” Sarah said, looking at her intensely.
Quinn shook her head. “I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened, what made Xiao and Trevor take the tunnel from the safe house. All I know is that they wouldn’t have unless they didn’t have any choice.”
“A last resort.”
“Yes. And if that were the case, they wouldn’t have just left Aaron behind.”
“Maybe they’re still alive,” Rick said. “All three of them. The news cameras didn’t have any pictures of the bodies. We’re just taking the feds’ word for it.”
“And the Houston SOPs who were at the scene, who saw HRT bringing two body bags out of the school,” Sarah said.
“These guys are mostly amateurs, Sarah. Most of them haven’t been at this long enough to know what the Rhim is really capable of.”
Sarah didn’t answer, but Quinn could tell from her expression that she wasn’t convinced.
“Bad guys lie, like how they lied about Porter all those years,” a woman with pink hair, Reiko, said. She sat in front of a row of thin LCD monitors and rocked back and forth in a squeaking chair. Quinn looked over at her, desperately wishing there was even a small chance she could be right but unable to fully convince herself even a little bit.
Let it all be lies. Please, let it all be Rhim lies.
Quinn leaned back against the wall and tried to process all the information she’d just received. She did her best to push away the emotions, to concentrate only on the facts, but it was like swimming against the tide.
I’m sorry, Xiao.
I’m sorry, Trevor.
And I’m sorry, Aaron, if you’re still out there…
She looked around at the new faces again.
They had brought her to a building somewhere on the outskirts of Los Angeles, one with a generator humming in the background to power the computers and TVs. The lights were energy-efficient squiggly yellow bulbs, just enough to allow her to see everyone’s faces even though the brightness coming from Reiko’s computer screens provided most of the illumination.
Besides Sarah, Rick, and Reiko, Quinn hadn’t met anyone else. She didn’t believe for a second the three of them were it—whatever “it” turned out to be. She had distinctively heard a man’s voice back in the parking lot shouting for someone to “Hit her a second time!” After being around Rick for the last hour, she was convinced he was one of the two men. So where was the second guy? And were there more of them? Maybe the better question was, who were these people?
They weren’t Rhim; she knew that much. If they were, she would still be in a small white room right now, strapped into a chair instead of standing inside a dimly lit room looking at previously recorded news footage from Houston. The Rhim had no reason to lie to her about Xiao and Trevor, or Aaron, not when they could have simply given her to Hofheinz and let him extract whatever information they wanted from her. She had seen the man’s grisly handiwork before.
“What do you think happened down there?” Sarah finally asked her.
“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “Xiao was supposed to be looking for Porter. The last time I made contact, she was meeting with a potential source.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what happened after that. They didn’t answer my phone calls, and I haven’t received any calls from them.”
Reiko picked up the candy bar-shaped phone Quinn had been carrying and swiveled around in her chair. “This little beaut?”
Quinn nodded.
“What, uh, decade is this from?” Reiko asked.
“It works,” Quinn said. “And it’s untraceable.”
“We use burner phones.”
“Burner phones can be triangulated.” Quinn took the phone from Reiko. She expected Sarah or Rick to protest, but neither one said anything. “The ones we use are invisible.”
“Nothing’s invisible anymore.”
“These are.”
“How’d you swing that?”
“You’ll have to ask Aaron.”
“The missing third person,” Sarah said.
“Yeah,” Quinn said.
“Try calling him again. Maybe he’s still out there.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Reiko said.
Quinn stared at the phone for a moment before finally punching in Aaron’s number and listening to a beep, then two more, before something that sounded like an old modem from the nineties dialing but only quieter.
She waited ten seconds, then twenty, but no one answered.
Come on, Aaron. Come on…
She lowered the phone. “He’s still not answering.” She punched in another number and waited through the same series of odd sounds.
Five seconds…
Ten…
“Nothing?” Sarah asked.
Quinn shook her head and dialed a third and final number. If Aaron and Xiao weren’t answering, what were the chances Trevor would?
When she put the phone away, Reiko said, “No one home.” It wasn’t a question.
“It was a long shot, anyway,” Sarah said. “They wouldn’t have officially claimed two bodies if they didn’t have something to show the media later tonight. That’s one thing I’ve learned about the Rhim: They rely heavily on the appearance of authority. Anything that pokes holes in that façade is avoided at all costs.”
“So does that mean the third guy’s really still out there?” Reiko asked. She sounded almost hopeful.
I wish I could sound that hopeful, Quinn thought.
“The other possible explanation is that he’s still alive, but the Rhim is holding him somewhere,” Sarah said.
“The tank,” Rick said. “Or the chair.”
Sarah nodded somberly, and Quinn thought, I guess I’m not the only one who’s been introduced to the chair.
“Or maybe he got out of the school somehow, and the Rhim is pretending he was never there,” Reiko said. Then, when Quinn and Sarah glanced over at her, the woman with pink hair shrugged. “It’s possible, isn’t it?”
“Anything’s possible,” Quinn said, unable to muster any real semblance of enthusiasm.
Was it possible Aaron had made it out when Xiao and Trevor didn’t? The teenager was resourceful, but if Quinn had to put money on anyone surviving such a confrontation, it would be Xiao. She’d seen the woman make it through some tough jams. Why not a school surrounded by cops and Rhim commandos?
Who are you trying to convince here? Because you’re doing a piss poor job of it.
“I’ll keep monitoring the situation out of Houston,” Reiko said, turning back around to her monitors. “Someone might know something more on the SOP boards. I’ll check our regular sources, maybe try some new ones, too.”
“Be careful,” Sarah said. “You know they’re watching those places.”
“Trust me, boss lady, if the Rhim can track me down, then they deserve to throw me in a white room dungeon.”
Don’t give them any ideas, Quinn thought.
“Rick, check the perimeter again just in case,” Sarah said.
The big man nodded and left the room.
“About Aaron,” Sarah said, turning to Quinn.
Quinn looked over at her. “What about him?”
“He would have the data that Porter stole with him, wouldn’t he?”
“It’s in his laptop. Besides Porter, he has the most experience sifting through Rhim data. That’s all he’s been doing while Xiao and I were looking for clues to Porter’s whereabouts,” Before I abandoned her, she thought, b
ut didn’t add. She said instead, “Aaron never goes anywhere without that laptop.”
“Does he have a backup?”
“No. That’s why either Trevor or Xiao never leaves his side.”
Sarah nodded, and Quinn could see her mind working through this new wrinkle. Finally, she said, “If there’s even a slim chance Aaron is still out there, it might be worth going back to Houston.”
“I was always going to go back,” Quinn said, and wanted to add, “With or without your permission,” but decided that last part was probably not going to benefit this burgeoning truce of theirs.
Sarah gave her a wry smile, as if she could read Quinn’s mind. “You’ll need a ride.”
“I already have a ride.”
“Not anymore. Owen said they took your car.”
“Owen?”
“He went back to the strip mall to see how they were cleaning up the shooting. He saw them dragging your car away. Did you have anything important inside?”
“My gun…”
“We can get you a new gun.”
“And my laptop, along with a disc.”
“The one you got from Patterson.” Then, when Quinn gave her a surprised look, “How did you think we found you?”
Good question.
“Show her,” Sarah said to Reiko.
Reiko typed on her keyboard, and one of the monitors switched from one of the Houston TV stations to show a familiar-looking den, along with an oddly shaped woman dusting some bookshelves.
“You have a hidden camera in Patterson’s den?” Quinn asked.
“It was a long shot, but he was the only link to your past,” Sarah said. “The only one still around to answer questions, anyway.”
“If you knew about Patterson…”
“Did the Rhim?” Sarah finished for her. “They know everything as long as it’s recorded somewhere. They had people watching him when you showed up. When they made their move in the parking lot, we had no choice but to get to you first.”
“What about the disc? The one Patterson gave me? It was in the car…”
“It’s not important.”
“How do you know that?”
“Your files aren’t on it.”
“You saw it,” Quinn said. It wasn’t a question.
Sarah nodded. “A week ago. We took a look at the disc and put it back. Your files aren’t on it. I’m sorry.”
“Did Patterson know that?”
“Not as far as we know.”
Quinn looked back at the monitor, at Patterson’s nurse as she finished up and walked off frame. “What about the nurse?”
“What about her?” Sarah asked.
“Is she one of you?”
“No. There are very few of us now.”
“Now?” Quinn thought, and remembered Mary. Not just Mary, but her daughter, the Laura that Quinn had never met.
You can add Xiao and Trevor to that list of casualties, too.
God, everyone dies around me…
“So what happens now?” she asked.
“The only move we have left is for you to go back to Houston,” Sarah said. “If Aaron is still out there, that means he has the Kobalcom data with him. If that’s the case, we need to find him before they do.”
“So where does that leave you?”
“We’re coming with you.”
“What makes you think I want you tagging along?”
“Whether you like it or not—whether you believe we’re on the up and up or not—there’s no avoiding the truth, Quinn. Porter’s still missing, and if Xiao and Trevor are truly dead, then that means Aaron’s out there alone. You’re going to need all the help you can get to find him and keep him alive.”
Quinn sighed. “I need that gun.”
Sarah was right about one thing: Quinn needed to go back to Houston, because there were no more reasons for her to stay in LA. A part of her was annoyed by that realization—she’d come all the way here, leaving Aaron and Xiao behind, and for what?
Nothing. A big fat nothing.
Now she was fifteen hundred miles from where she should have been, side by side with her friends, helping them deal with whatever the Rhim threw at them. The guilt gnawed at the pit of her stomach and refused to let up.
After the long conversation, Sarah took Quinn to their armory. Rick was outside somewhere standing guard while Reiko busied herself with trawling the Internet for news on Houston. The young Japanese woman reminded Quinn of Aaron, except female and prettier.
Please be out there, Aaron. Please be out there…
Quinn forced herself to focus on the here and now, on the things she could control—or as much as you could control something after allying yourself with a bunch of strangers that had kidnapped you.
No, not kidnap. They saved me.
She was sure of that now. She might not know these people—Sarah, the girl with the pink hair, or the big man with the Uzi—but Sarah was right when she said they had seen the same things that Quinn had. Except Sarah and her friends had been at this longer. Quinn could see it on their faces and hear it in their voices when they talked about the Rhim.
They know. No one who learns about the Rhim—what they are, what they’re capable of—ever forgets what’s out there.
“How long have you been running from them? The Rhim?” Quinn asked.
“Since I discovered they existed,” Sarah said. “It’s hard to go back to a regular life once you know what’s out there, who’s really pulling the strings. People don’t truly understand just how deep the Rhim has their fingers in things. Politics, businesses, almost every major global event that’s happened in the last six or so decades.”
“They’ve been around that long?”
“You don’t know?”
“Porter never got the chance to go into great details about them. We were usually too busy trying to stay alive. Aaron told me everything he knew, but most of it is secondhand. Porter…had a lot of secrets that he kept from them. Maybe too much, now that he’s gone.”
“That’s always the catch, isn’t it? You don’t know what you don’t know, until you find yourself realizing you don’t know it.”
Quinn smiled. “That’s…one way to put it.”
Sarah stopped at a metal door and pulled it open. She flicked on a light switch before leading Quinn down some concrete stairs. “Watch your step.”
“How long have you guys been using this place as a base?”
“A few months now. We try to keep moving. The longer you stay at one spot, the harder it is to stay hidden. As much as we know about them, how they operate, it’s best not to tempt fate.”
“Porter had benefactors. People who knew about the Rhim and supplied him with money and resources like safe houses.”
“We have some of those, too. Friends who lend a hand whenever they’re able. But there’s never enough of them.”
They reached the bottom of the stairs, and Sarah flicked another switch. Newly installed ceiling lights hummed to life, illuminating a large but mostly empty room with a lone wooden table in the center. Guns and boxes of ammo were piled high on top of it.
“What’s your poison?” Sarah asked.
Quinn walked over and picked up a Glock G43. There was another stack with holsters and extra ammo pouches. She grabbed one of each and slipped them on as Sarah watched in silence.
“What?” Quinn said after a while.
“It’s amazing you’ve survived this long,” Sarah said.
Quinn smirked. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
Sarah pursed a smile. “It is.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“I just meant, the things you’ve been through. Most people wouldn’t have survived half of that. Hell, a quarter of that. But you did. All of it, unscathed.”
“Not entirely unscathed.”
“You look like you’re still in one piece.”
“Looks can be deceiving.”
“Oh?”
I had a broken arm,
but it healed on its own within a week, which should have been impossible, she thought, but didn’t say it. She had a hard enough time believing it herself, so what were the chances Sarah would buy it without looking at her like she had a third eye? Knowing that the Rhim could rapidly regenerate cells and rise back up from bullet wounds was different than allying yourself with someone who seemed to have the same ability.
So what does that make me?
God help me, I still don’t know.
“Mostly, anyway,” Quinn said. Then, hoping to change the subject, “Are you coming along, too? To Houston?”
“If you don’t mind the company.”
“And your friends?”
“I think you’re going to need all the help you can get to find Aaron and Porter.”
“Porter?” She looked back at Sarah. “You sound like you believe he’s still alive.”
“Don’t you?”
Quinn shook her head. “I want to, but…”
“I think he is.”
Quinn picked up a couple of 9mm magazines and slipped them into the pouch. “Why? Do you know something I don’t?”
“How much did he tell you about himself?”
“Not nearly enough.”
Quinn holstered the Glock and turned around. She kept expecting the other woman to try to take the gun away, for all of this to be revealed as one big, elaborate façade. Sarah was watching her silently, almost amused. Maybe she even knew what Quinn was thinking.
“So what do you know about Porter?” Quinn asked.
“He’s not just an ex-Rhim operative.”
“What does that mean?”
“Think about it, Quinn. There’s a reason they took him alive not once, but twice now. They could have gotten rid of him the first time, but they chose to try to re-sequence him. Didn’t you ever wonder why they went through all that trouble after all the problems he’s caused them over the years?”
For some reason, Sarah knowing more about Porter didn’t surprise Quinn one bit. Sarah seemed to know a lot more than her about a lot of things, and the fact that only a few years separated them made it slightly irritating.
“They did try to kill him before he came back here,” Quinn said, “but they couldn’t find him.”
“They pursued him,” Sarah said. “There’s a difference.”