“She’s sleeping with him.” She said it with a casual twitch of one shoulder, but her gaze was unflinching, like a hawk’s.
Scott blinked, trying not to react. After a moment, he asked, “How do you know?”
“Fournier has his spies. He’s creating an army - did you know?”
“An army of typhoid carriers?”
“He calls them his assassins.”
“How many does he have?”
“I don’t know. Lupus hasn’t confided the details to me.”
“Is Dundee still alive?”
“Very much so.”
“And his sight?”
“Restored. Bryn should take care to avoid him in future.”
Scott was going to ask her what she meant by ‘restored,’ but she asked, “Did you mean what you said last night?”
He almost asked, “What part?” but instead went with, “Every word.”
“Four months ago, when we were vacating Fournier’s facility, I had a backup copy of the nanoneuron program in my bag, but I...lost it.”
He remembered what Bryn told him - that Padme had thrown a gym bag at her to distract her, and then locked her in the control room. If Bryn hadn’t broken through the ceiling and escaped, she would have burned to death.
Scott pushed his true feelings aside and said sympathetically, “Fournier must have been furious.”
Her face went pale, as if just the memory of it pained her. “I recreated the program from scratch, but this time, I added a - well, let’s call it a subroutine to make it easier for you to understand. You know the program can stimulate the nanoneurons to produce fear or pleasure.”
“Uh, yeah, thanks. I do know that.”
She looked down at her feet. “I had to.”
“I know why you did it. But Bryn - she didn’t deserve that.”
“Didn’t she?”
“We’re not together.” Technically, it was true. Since the fire, he’d done as Shasta advised and kept their relationship to a warm friendship. Not that it had been easy.
A mildly calculating look passed over Padme’s face. “Next time I’ll send her pleasure, I promise.”
“No, don’t do -”
She cut him off. “Let me finish what I was saying. I do not have a lot of time.”
He nodded.
“In the previous version of the program, Fournier was the only one who had access to control the nanoneurons of his bioengineers, surgeons and lieutenants. Only he could activate their fear.”
Fournier’s most trusted lieutenant was Lupus, although ‘trust,’ as the rest of the world defined it, probably wasn’t in the criminally deranged doctor’s vocabulary. Lupus had been brainwashed - conditioned to obey him; punished with fear and rewarded with pleasure.
Padme continued. “Remember I told you the savant helped me write the program in the first place?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, after the fire, he never met up with us at the alternate location. He disappeared, so Fournier found another programmer to work with me. Not with me, but to oversee what I was doing. As luck would have it, this man was not as astute as the savant and I was able to create a back door to get to Lupus. I can activate the fear, but only once.”
“Why once?”
“Fournier hasn’t had to use it on him since he went through the loyalty conditioning. Lupus would definitely mention it to him and then they would become suspicious.”
“Can’t you just turn it on until it gives him a heart attack like with Abel?”
“There’s no guarantee that would happen. In many ways, the loyalty conditioning accustomed him to the sense of fear. He relishes seeing it in others because he has felt it so many times himself.”
Lupus had once been an undercover XIA agent just like Scott. What Fournier had done to him was horrible, and the things that Lupus had done to others since he’d been conditioned were just as horrible.
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
“I know where Lupus will be tonight. If you intercept him, and I activate the fear, it will disable him enough for you to kill him.”
Scott’s sense of fair play immediately rejected the idea, but he didn’t say so. He thought fast and decided to agree to the setup in the likely event Shasta would give the go-ahead to capture Lupus instead. It would be a huge betrayal to Padme, one that she would be unlikely to forgive him for, but the XIA would give a lot to get their hands on Lupus and the information he had.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-two
The crowd dispersed within two minutes. Jason put his shirt back on, picked up his bags and said to Bryn, “I’m starving. There was never any poison, so let’s eat.”
Instead of heading for the queen’s lair, he led her to one of the store areas; the one that was lit up with lanterns. Inside, a bar made from old barrels with wooden planks laid across them took up one wall, and mismatched tables and chairs lined the other. Someone had painted a mural that stretched around to all three concrete walls; a southwestern scene complete with mesas and cacti and a sunset. There were no customers.
A portly grey-haired man stood behind the bar, and within the circle of his arms he held a woman with short, dark hair. Neither of them had obvious xenografts, but most of their skin was covered up with the winter clothing they wore against the frigid Edgemere air. The man appeared to be comforting the woman, but as soon as she saw Jason and Bryn, she cleared her throat and stepped away.
“Hola, Dragila,” she said. “What can we get for you?”
“Is that tamales I smell?”
“Si. And for the lady?”
Bryn smiled and said in Spanish, “Tamales are my favorite.”
The woman turned and disappeared through a doorless opening in the wall. Jason pulled a rickety stool out for Bryn, set his bags on the floor, and sat next to her. The man behind the bar held up two clear glass mugs and Jason nodded. When the full mugs were set before them, she realized to her consternation that they contained beer.
She swallowed her protest and instead took a sip as if she drank alcohol all the time. The truth was: she’d tasted it a few times, but hadn’t liked it.
“May I please have a glass of water?” she asked.
“I am sorry, señorita, but we have no clean water to spare.”
“Porky is new to Edgemere’s ways, Carlos,” Jason said. He turned to her with the obscure explanation of, “Supply and demand.”
The woman came back out with two smallish plates, but they were heaped high with tamales and refried beans. Jason dug in immediately, but after a few bites he looked at the woman, who lingered near the back door.
“Where’s Antonio?” he asked.
Her lips turned down in a disconsolate frown and she spun around and left. Carlos answered for her, “He’s in the back. Sick.”
Jason stopped with his fork halfway to his mouth and then lowered it. “I’m sorry.”
Carlos nodded sadly, eyes glistening with unshed tears. He waved a hand vaguely and said, “I’m going to check on him.”
After he’d gone, Bryn asked, “Is Antonio their son?”
Jason nodded.
“Why don’t they take him to the hospital?”
He gave her a sidelong look. “I don’t know. But everyone here has something to hide. Do you think they’d live in these conditions otherwise?”
So Carlos and his family were hiding from the law or from immigration or both. It was unlikely they had health insurance if they were forced to live here.
“What did Junk say?” she asked. “He was infecting people - on purpose?”
He shoved a big bite in his mouth and nodded again.
She thought about the first time she’d visited her father in prison. It was the only time he’d been willing to talk about why he’d made a deal with Fournier, why he’d arranged to have her kidnapped and xenografted. He’d said Fournier had been looking for ways to capitalize on a mutated form of typhoid one of his xenos had
contracted. He’d justified what he’d done to her by claiming it was for her protection. A curious web of truth and lies.
“Xenos are immune to whatever is making everyone sick,” she said.
“That’s what the man said.” He took several swallows of beer.
“And he was sent here.”
“Yep. Eat.”
She cut one of her tamales with the side of her fork and began eating, thinking if Junk was sent here, it could only have been by Fournier. But if it was an intentional attack by the XBestia, what could Fournier gain by killing off non-xenos, most of whom were children?
The tamales were good, but every once in a while she encountered a bit of jalapeño that was too spicy for her liking. Her nose began to run, but there were no napkins on the bar. She reached into her jacket pocket for one of the napkins she’d put there from yesterday’s fast food meal. When her fingers closed on it, she felt the earbug Esmie had given her.
She pulled it and the napkin out of her pocket. A joke about crazy old ladies was on the tip of her tongue, but a cautionary internal voice stopped her. What if the earbug had been given to Esmie to pass along to Jason? What if the XIA knew they were here and were trying to contact him? Bryn decided to listen to the message before giving it to him, because she suspected if she didn’t, she’d never know what it said.
She lifted the napkin to her nose and bent over to blow into it. While her head was down, she snuck the earbug into her right ear, getting poked by a few of her shorter quills for her effort. With her fingernail, she flipped the ‘on’ switch. Immediately, a voice began to speak. It was a female voice, not Esmie, but not anyone else Bryn recognized either.
The message was short: “Stay the course.”
Bewildered, she took the earbug out again and went to put it back in her pocket, but it slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor.
Jason glanced down and frowned. “What’s that?”
Hastily, she got off the stool and bent to pick it up. Always conscious of the possibility that someone was watching and listening, she handed it to him rather than tell him what it was.
He bent down, turned his head and pretended to scratch his ear, but she knew he’d put it in. After several seconds, he ‘scratched’ again and took it out. Then he stood, and without looking down, let it roll out of his hand onto the floor. He casually stepped on it, crushing the fragile electronic device and kicking the pieces to scatter them.
Without a word, he sat back down and tucked into his meal.
Bryn put a bite in her mouth, pensive. If the message hadn’t meant anything, Jason would have given her a strange look, as if to say, ‘That was weird.’ But he hadn’t. He’d deliberately destroyed the earbug and was quite obviously avoiding the topic entirely.
Stay the course.
What did it mean? She decided it was a message sent by the XIA. They wanted Jason to keep doing what he was doing. But what was he doing?
The beer tasted awful, but she was thirsty and the spicy food didn’t help matters, so she drank most of it. The unaccustomed alcohol gave her a weird feeling in her chest and shoulders unlike anything she’d experienced before. It lingered after they finished their meal and Jason paid for it. As they were leaving Jason said to Carlos, “Let me know if you need anything.”
Carlos raised hopeless eyes and replied, “A miracle?”
Bryn put a hand to her chest and felt tears of sympathy start. She was supposed to be acting like a ‘tough xenofreak chick,’ but how could she pretend to be heartless when confronted with a parent’s worst nightmare?
To her surprise, Jason said, “You have my prayers.”
“Thank you, my friend.” Carlos turned away.
As they left the warm lighting in the makeshift restaurant for the weird fairy-like green of the main mall, Dillo arrived, flustered and breathless. “Dragila! There you are. Come.”
He turned and headed for the queen’s lair. Jason fell easily into step beside him, but Bryn, even with her long legs, was forced to trot to keep up.
“Interrogation over?” Jason asked him.
“Yes.”
“XBestia send him?”
“Who else?” Dillo’s massive shoulders rose and fell.
Jason stopped asking questions. Bryn still had a million of them.
The control room rang with the sound of boots clanging on the metal flooring as soldiers rushed to and fro.
Maddy was leaning over her three holo techs, Munnu by her side, as ever. She glanced over and said, “Dragila. Good.”
As they got closer, Bryn saw that the large holo in the center of the table was now displaying a schematic of Coney Island - XBestia territory. Maddy waved her hand and the 3D map rotated. She spread her fingers to zoom in.
“The Bungholes are here. We know one of his lieutenants has a presence there, but there are hundreds of units.”
Bryn recalled the day she and Scott had gone to Coney Island. The day they’d hauled that poor Panda to shore and gotten shot at by the ARA. The Bungholes were temporary housing units the government had set up after hurricane Poppy, which were then abandoned and taken over by the XBestia.
Her arm rose and she found herself pointing. “Number nine.”
“What about it?” Maddy snapped.
“That’s the unit where the lieutenant will be.”
“And just how,” Maddy said in her softest voice, “do you know this?”
Jason had tensed up by her side, but Bryn didn’t falter. “I was there. After I found out my father was the one who arranged for my kidnapping, I ran away. I got...involved with one of my kidnappers. My shrink said it was Stockholm syndrome. Anyway, he took me to Coney Island. The number nine bungalow was the one designated for the lieutenant.”
Maddy regarded her for a moment, her eyes narrowed. “What makes you think number nine is still being used for that purpose?”
“They call them the Bungholes because they’re disgusting. Number nine was the only one that was...clean.”
Munnu, who never spoke, said, “How convenient that you happened to be here today to give us this information.”
Bryn knew he wasn’t Maddy’s real twin, and yet strangely, he had her voice, accent and all. There were no visible scars to show where the real Munnu’s face ended and the imposter’s skin began; scars themselves were a thing of the past unless a person wanted them. Bryn noticed that the imposter had bags under his eyes and blotchy patches on his cheeks as if someone had slapped him.
“No, no, Munnu,” Maddy said, with a raise of her hand. “I would like to hear more about our guest’s visit to Coney Island. What else did you learn that could be of use to us?”
Bryn had no idea what the Mad Eyes were planning, but she didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell them about the tunnel that led from Bluto’s restaurant to the building behind it - the building that turned out to have been owned by Fournier himself.
“Nothing else, really. I was only there for a day. It’s not - it’s not like here. There weren’t any children, not that I saw anyway. It was a filthy, lawless place.”
“Hm. Yes, well, ‘bestia’ does mean beast, does it not?” Maddy clasped her hands and looked around her as if she’d come to a momentous decision.
“Prepare the fleet.” Her voice was laced with undisguised relish, as if she’d been waiting all her life to utter her next words: “We attack at dawn.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Scott had briefed Shasta by holophone on the way back to headquarters, but she quizzed him again when he got to her office.
Her focus wasn’t on what Padme said about Bryn being at Edgemere, or about Fournier building an army of ‘assassins.’ It wasn’t even about the trap Scott agreed to spring on Lupus. She was fixated on the details of Padme’s comment about the missing programmer.
“She said he disappeared? Like, he’d been killed, or he just didn’t show up?” Shasta was sitting in her desk chair with her legs crossed, the top foot bouncing in an agitate
d motion.
Scott tried to remember the specifics of the conversation. “She said, uh, he never met up with the rest of them after the fire.”
“But she didn’t tell you his name?”
“No. She always referred to him as ‘the savant.’”
Shasta looked down, her gaze darting around randomly, as if her eye movements represented each change in the direction of her thoughts.
“Prodigious savants are not common,” she said, almost to herself. Then she looked up. “Did you meet him?”
Scott thought about the tour he’d been given of Fournier’s underground facility right before it had been destroyed. All of the bioengineers and doctors he’d met had seemed odd, but there’d been one man who wouldn’t look him in the eye and refused to shake his hand, just like Mia. He tried to recall the man’s face, but it had been so long ago and he’d only seen him briefly.
“Maybe,” he said doubtfully.
“Scott, this is important.”
He lifted his hands. “There was one guy it could have been...wait a minute. I remember what she said now, before, at the Warehouse. She mentioned that one of the engineers I met invented grease, the cold fire, and another one - yeah, I met him. He had to be the guy who wouldn’t look at me. Savants have trouble making eye contact, right?”
“Assuming he’s on the autistic spectrum. Can you describe him to a sketch artist?”
He grimaced. “Shouldn’t I be prepping for the Lupus op?”
“We have plenty of time for that.” She reached for her holophone.
Twenty minutes later, he was sitting in a cubicle next to an agent named Marty, trying to remember details that hadn’t impressed him much at the time. Marty was an older Asian gentleman trained in the use of a specialized facial feature compositing program. He patiently prompted Scott to remember whatever he could, but Scott must have been making pained faces, because Marty finally said, “Relax. Here.”
He got up and crossed the cubicle to an electric teapot. He poured hot, amber liquid into a white china cup and handed it to Scott.
“I’m more of a coffee guy,” Scott said, but sipped the tea out of politeness. It was fragrant and sweet, but had a strange aftertaste.
Xenofreak Nation, Book Two: Mad Eye Page 11