Shasta had said that the body found along with Agent Antonovich had been there for some time. The FBI hadn’t released the man’s name, and the holos gave grim testimony that it might have been because they hadn’t been able to identify him. A hideous close-up of the dead man’s head showed he had no face. There were shots of his hands that indicated some decomposition, but no loss of flesh. Either some animal had very precisely chewed only his face away down to the bone, or it had been surgically removed.
Scott heard someone coming, so he switched off the camera and set it down. He walked around the van and looked for Shasta. Powerful portable lights had been set up, cutting through the drifting fog. He spotted her talking with a group of four FBI agents. She split away to intercept him as he approached. One of the agents, a thin, balding man in an ill-fitting suit, trailed behind her.
“They want us in and out,” Shasta told Scott. “This is Agent Kolano. He’ll be escorting us.” She placed a faint sarcastic emphasis on the word ‘escorting.’
Agent Kolano handed Shasta a pair of purple rubber gloves and held some out for Scott, but Scott showed him his hands and said, “Got anything in an extra-large?”
Kolano snorted and tucked the gloves in his own jacket pocket. “Just don’t touch anything.”
He started walking, but Scott tapped Shasta on the arm and hung back, quickly and quietly telling her about the holos of the faceless corpse. Then they caught up to Kolano, who led them around the low concrete structure to its entrance.
He pointed to the yellow evidence markers and in a monotone began listing what was found. “Three distinct footprints, a handprint in the dirt, bullet was recovered there, plus four casings from two separate firearms.”
“All those casings and just one bullet?” Scott asked. That usually meant the bullets were inside a body or two. “Any blood?”
“Two drops.”
“Whose?” Shasta asked.
“Your guy. There’s a ricochet off the wall, so we’re still looking for bullets.” He indicated a figure in a CSI jacket running a metal detector over the ground some yards away.
The door to the silo had been propped partially open. A holoscanner was mounted next to the door. They went inside and Scott saw that a keypad locking device had been torn from the wall. He indicated the fluorescent fingerprint powder on the door.
“Whose prints?”
“Agent Antonovich’s on the outside, your guy on the inside.”
“Do we know what happened here?” Shasta asked.
Kolano shrugged. “We have a basic idea, just not sure exactly who did what yet.”
They followed him down a long, dimly lit tunnel to a metal door. A lone evidence marker sat nearby. “Another bullet there,” he said, before opening the door and leading them down one level of a spiral staircase.
They entered the safe house and Scott looked around at the debris littering the area. Most of it centered around the far door, which had been blown from its hinges. Holes peppered the walls, ceiling and furnishings.
“Frag grenade,” Kolano said. “Probable military issue. Up there is the escape hatch.”
“So someone was trying to get in,” Scott said. And didn’t care who they hurt in the process.
Kolano pressed his lips together. “Looks that way.”
Scott thought about Bryn, how scared she must have been, and wished for the hundredth time it had been him assigned to watch her. He knew Shasta had pulled him off that duty because she suspected they’d formed a mutual attachment - and she’d been right.
The agent rushed them through the rest of the safe house, pointing out that a bloodstained towel and a bloody, ruined t-shirt had been recovered from the bathroom. Again, when Shasta asked whose blood it was, he said, “Your guy.”
Both bedrooms were empty, but in one, the bed had been made up and looked rumpled, as if someone had been lying there. Scott bent close to the pillow. He made out the faint scent of Bryn’s special shampoo and saw that the smooth cotton fabric of the case was marred with tiny holes.
He looked at Shasta. “She was definitely here.”
Back in the stairwell, Kolano said, “The bodies were found on the bottom level.”
They began their descent, but he stopped on the next level down and pointed out another evidence marker resting on the concrete next to a huge round hole in the floor.
“Rifle casing,” he said. “Shooter took out our agent from here.”
Scott walked over and looked down through the hole. An experienced gunman wouldn’t have found it a tough shot from this angle and distance. He thought it odd that the shooter had murdered an FBI agent, but hadn’t bothered to retrieve his casing. It suggested the perp was either in a hurry or confident he wouldn’t get caught.
They continued down the stairs to the bottom, where someone had set up more of the portable lights. Kolano waited by the entranceway while Scott and Shasta walked a slow circuit around the evidence, but there wasn’t much to be learned from a pool of congealed blood with no telltale footprints.
Scott looked up through the holes in the floors to where the rifle casing had been found. With no light source on the lower levels other than that coming from the stairwell, the shooter must have used a night vision scope to see well enough to make the shot.
In a low voice he asked Shasta, “Is Alton a sniper by any chance?”
“He was his squad’s marksman in the fourth war,” she replied just as quietly. “You think he did it?”
Scott lifted his eyebrows and gave a slight nod. He walked over to Kolano. “Were there fingerprints on the outside of the escape hatch?”
Kolano hesitated, but nodded.
“Agent Antonovich’s?”
Reluctantly, Kolano said, “Yeah.”
Shasta had moved to stand next to Scott. She crossed her arms. “Was the FBI aware they had a rogue agent on their hands, or did Antonovich’s actions come as complete surprise?”
Chapter Sixteen
Jason took Bryn’s hand, lacing his fingers with hers. It was an intimate action that felt wrong to her, but he must have thought it would be in character. He pulled her along behind him as he followed Maddy to the curtained drainpipe. Bryn glanced back and saw that Dillo wasn’t coming. He gave her a thumbs-up and turned to deal with the xeno named Junk, who’d arrived with the dolly loaded with boxes from Jason’s truck.
The blond man in the red jacket rushed ahead of Maddy and pulled the curtain aside for her.
“Thank you, Munnu,” she murmured, before stepping over the concrete lip. Her hand curled around the railing of a short flight of metal steps and her heels clanged on the diamond plating as she climbed. Jason seemed confident enough, but Bryn didn’t particularly want to enter the dark chamber. She imagined Maddy’s inner sanctuary as something one might find in the seedier end of some red light district, with overstuffed pillows on the floor and brocade draperies concealing alcoves with torture devices straight out of some medieval castle.
The reality was far different.
Level flooring had been installed inside the pipe out of the same metal diamond plating as the steps. Like the entrance tunnel to Edgemere, shelves lined the curved walls, only instead of mushrooms, there were guns, grenades and ammunition clips everywhere. The lighting was the same green bioluminescence. The pipe looked to be around twenty feet long, and at the far end was a round table, with two men and a woman sitting equidistant from each other on office chairs. In the middle of the table, a large holo projector displayed a live feed that must have been compiled from thousands of cameras within Edgemere. Each of the three techs also had a smaller holo display directly in front of them. As Bryn watched, the nearest tech zoomed in on two xenos so close she could see their lips moving.
“This is the security center.” Maddy grinned at Bryn and opened her eyes wide so the whites showed all around. “I see all, hear all.” The grin disappeared. “And don’t you forget it.”
At the center of the pipe, scaled down doorways had
been cut on either side and ramps had been installed across the spaces between neighboring pipes. There was also a round hole cut in the ceiling. A chrome pole mounted in the floor disappeared up through it, just like in a fire station, and hanging from the edge was an aluminum triple extension ladder.
Maddy turned left and ducked through the doorway. The next pipe over was radically different from the security center. The flooring was natural stone tile and the space was furnished; if it weren’t for the curving biopolycrete walls, it would resemble a long, narrow Victorian era sitting room. They crossed straight through and entered the next pipe. More stone flooring, but this room was furnished at one end with a couch, chairs and bookshelves with real books on them, and at the other end with a formal dining room table.
“When Munnu notified me of your arrival, Dragila dear, I took the liberty of asking Cook to set another plate,” her eyes shifted to Bryn, “two plates, at the table. Are you hungry?”
“Famished,” Jason said, although Bryn knew he’d eaten less than an hour ago.
“Very good. Please be seated.”
Bryn and Jason set their bags behind their chairs and sat next to each other with Maddy and Munnu facing them.
Within moments of pulling their chairs in, a uniformed servant entered from the next pipe over. She set out bread and butter and poured a dark, foamy liquid in everyone’s glasses.
Bryn had been in some strange places under even stranger circumstances in the last year, but Edgemere and its queen topped them all. She almost looked to the far end of the table to see if the Mad Hatter was seated there.
Jason buttered a hunk of bread and set it on Bryn’s plate. “Eat,” he said softly.
The bread was delicious; soft and warm inside, with a crispy crust. Bryn chewed with enthusiasm, waiting for Maddy to begin the interrogation she knew was coming.
“Word is that your father is responsible for arranging your kidnapping,” Maddy said, right on cue.
Bryn inclined her head and swallowed her bite before saying, “That’s true.”
“Why would he do such a thing?”
Bryn thought about lying, but when Maddy had said she ‘saw all, heard all,’ Bryn interpreted it to mean that she already knew more than she let on. As the head of the Mad Eyes, the main rival gang to the XBestia, Maddy would know what motivated Dr. Fournier, who had been in league with Bryn’s father.
“He was hoping to influence public perception of xenofreaks.”
“Fathers are strange creatures, are they not?”
Bryn lifted her eyebrows in agreement and took another bite of the bread.
“My father also had me undergo a xeno transplant,” Maddy said. “You may have noticed one of my eyes is different.”
Bryn looked into Maddy’s face, focusing on the reddish eye. It suddenly occurred to her that the name ‘Maddy’ was similar to Mad Eye.
Maddy smiled. “No, not that eye. I was born with the red one. If you hadn’t noticed, my twin brother and I are albino.”
Bryn couldn’t help it; she glanced at Munnu. His eyes were both brown.
“Yes,” Maddy said. “Munnu’s eyes are normal. Even though our DNA is identical, albinism strikes in different ways. Mine was more extensive, affecting my eyes and making them photosensitive. The left one looks more normal because it was from a pig donor, but I can’t see out of it. My father had the world’s best surgeons attempt to fix me, but optic nerve transection between mammals has never been perfected.”
“Is that why you live underground? Because of your eyes?”
“Eye. Only the one I was born with works, and no, I live underground because I like it here. I’m perfectly capable of wearing sunglasses like anyone else who goes into the sun.”
Maddy’s scornful tone reminded Bryn of her intention not to speak. The queen of Edgemere was obviously touchy and the last thing Bryn wanted to do was to get on her bad side.
“I meant no disrespect,” she said.
Maddy made a ‘hmph’ sound. “Well, you’re polite anyway. Now convince me why I should let you live.”
Bryn choked a little on her bread. She coughed a few times, took a sip of what turned out to be beer and looked to Jason for assistance.
“Because she’s with me, and I have information,” he said.
“Ah.” Maddy stretched the word out. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What is this information?”
“For your ears only,” he replied.
“Munnu is an extension of myself,” Maddy declared. “We are practically interchangeable.”
In the low light, Jason’s face was unreadable. “You sure about that?”
Maddy sat as if immobilized and stared him down. Next to her, Munnu, too, sat unmoving and unblinking. Bryn sensed that Jason had crossed a line and in this moment they were in more danger than they’d been since they’d entered this bizarre place.
Still without moving, Maddy barked, “Leave us.”
Bryn wasn’t sure to whom she was speaking, but Munnu shoved his chair back abruptly and departed without a word.
“There,” Maddy said in a deceptively mild manner. “Now what is this all-important information?”
“That man?” Jason nodded at the door Munnu had just gone through. “He’s not who you think he is.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
Jason set his fork down and his eyes narrowed. “He killed your brother and took his place, and you just...let him?”
Maddy made a tent with her fingertips. The nails were long and painted with some dark polish. “It’s done. Even I can’t prevent something that has already happened. As for letting the imposter think he’s fooled me? You know the old saying, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’”
For once, Jason seemed to be at a loss for words.
Maddy laughed. “Don’t look so perplexed. I assure you I have the situation well in hand. Is that the extent of your information? And how, pray tell, did you discover it?”
Bryn felt the danger factor ratchet up a notch. Behind Maddy’s casually worded question, she sensed a keen, menacing interest. Jason couldn’t very well tell her the truth.
He was saved from having to lie, however, when Munnu stepped back through the door and cleared his throat.
“What is it?” Maddy snapped.
“There’s a problem.” He stepped aside to make room for Dillo, who waited for Maddy to invite him to cross the threshold.
She waved him in. “This had better be good.”
“I’m sorry for interrupting your supper,” Dillo said. “But the illness I reported yesterday has spread to seven others.”
She sighed in exasperation. “I really don’t care if a few people get the sniffles. Has Doc Munoz looked at them yet?”
“He’s one of the sick ones.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. You go now and do your job. If someone dies, come back and we’ll talk. Okay?”
Dillo didn’t leave; in fact, to Bryn, he seemed to deflate a bit as he waited.
Maddy stared at him for a long moment and then asked, “Who?”
“The Fisherman’s son.”
Maddy leaned forward in disbelief. “He’s what, fourteen? Healthy and strong. How could he die?”
Dillo shook his head slowly back and forth. “It’s bad, whatever it is. There’s two more don’t look like they’re gonna make it. Both kids.”
Maddy stood and tossed her napkin on the table. She looked at Jason. “Stay and finish your dinner. Bunk down in one of the empties. We’ll talk more in the morning.”
She marched out, all trace of swish gone. Munnu followed, but Dillo hesitated long enough to shoot Jason an enigmatic look before he, too, left.
Bryn opened her mouth to ask him if the real Munnu was the body at the bottom of the silo, but he gave a quick shake of his head that told her not to speak. She thought of the techs in the security center watching everything and everyone at Edgemere on the live holo feed. They most likely had earbugs that fed them an
ything anyone said, too. Even now, one of them could be zoomed in on Bryn’s face, waiting for her to say or do something that would give her away.
Chapter Seventeen
Scott had only gotten about four hours of sleep when his holophone rang. He was so groggy he almost rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with his cougar pads, something he hadn’t done in a long time, since it was guaranteed to get hair in them.
Shasta’s holo showed she was in her office, looking well groomed and refreshed.
“Rise and shine, Agent Harding.”
“Any word on Bryn?” he asked, settling on rubbing his eye with the bend of his wrist.
“Still in the wind,” she replied. “I need you here in an hour.”
He sat up a little straighter. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t be late.”
After she disconnected, Scott forced himself to get out of bed even though he desperately wanted to lie back down.
In the shower, his mind sluggishly began sifting through the facts. Last night, Agent Kolano hadn’t been willing to admit that the FBI had a rogue agent in their ranks. He’d blustered about not making assumptions until they had every possible piece of information. Shasta had lost patience right about then and demanded to speak to the Special Agent in Charge, something Kolano didn’t have the authority to make happen right then and there.
Now Scott stepped out of the shower, dried off and ran his electric lazor over the stubble on his chin. Bryn had commented once that she liked his face clean-shaven. He looked into his eyes in the partially fogged mirror, but saw her eyes; thinking, Where are you?
He dressed in a casual shirt and jeans and grabbed an energy bar from the kitchen.
Xenofreak Nation, Book Two: Mad Eye Page 8