by Sam Sisavath
“One week ago, I thought I was the man of your dreams,” Ringo said. “Too late to go back to that?”
“You killed Ben, you piece of shit.”
“Oh, that again.” He sighed. “He was an old man. I just helped him along to the great beyond.”
“He was my friend.”
“He was probably just trying to get into your pants. You should thank me—”
He didn’t get the chance to finish, because she lunged back at him and punched him in the face, and when his head snapped back and clanged! off the hard metal pipe and ricocheted forward, she hit him again.
She didn’t know how she managed to stop herself after the second time, but Quinn didn’t give in to her urges. She had also fully expected Porter to grab her from behind as soon as she threw the first punch, but when she looked back, she found that he hadn’t moved from the same spot. If anything, he looked slightly amused.
Quinn took another couple of steps back, too afraid of what she might do to this man, this piece of shit, if she let herself remain too close to him.
Ringo didn’t seem all that fazed by her assault even though he had left a blood splatter and clumps of hair on the pipes behind him. He moved his tongue around his mouth for a moment before spitting out a glob of thick blood onto the floor.
Then, looking at her, “Was it something I said?”
She turned to Porter. “Why isn’t he dead? Tell me, Porter, why the hell isn’t he dead, and don’t give me any goddamn bullshit about not being ready to hear the answer.”
Porter took something out of his pocket and tossed it to her.
She caught it: A folded knife with a three-inch blade.
“Cut him,” Porter said.
She stared at the knife in her hand, then at Porter. “What?”
“Cut him. Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.”
“Why?”
“Just a small incision. Enough to make him bleed. Don’t go too deep.”
“Tell me why first.”
“This is the first step to the truth.”
“Cutting him is the first step?”
Porter nodded. “Nothing I could say will be as effective—as believable—as what you do and see for yourself. It has to be done.”
“Did Xiao do something like this?”
“Yes.”
“Aaron?”
“Even Aaron.”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” Ringo said behind her.
Quinn turned back to him and narrowed her eyes. “You shouldn’t have said that.”
“What?” Ringo said, confused.
“You shouldn’t have said that, because I wasn’t going to do it before, but now…”
“Oh,” Ringo said. “Should have kept my mouth shut.”
“Yes, you should have.” She gripped the knife tighter. “I wouldn’t move, if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t want me to slip, do you?”
“Oh, hell.”
He sat perfectly still, almost defiantly, as she grabbed him by the wet hair and held him in place while she cut a line from the edge of his right eye all the way down to the corner of his mouth. She put just enough pressure to break skin, but not enough to go deep, just as Porter had instructed. He gritted his teeth and groaned as the blade did its work, and though he was clearly doing everything possible not to react, his legs couldn’t help but spasm involuntarily when she got halfway and continued until she was done.
Quinn stepped back and held the bloody knife at her side. “Now what?”
“Watch,” Porter said behind her.
“Watch what?”
“The cut you just made. Watch it carefully.”
“Why?”
“Watch it carefully,” Porter repeated.
She did, when the impossible happened:
The almost four-inch long incision she had put in Ringo’s cheek began to disappear a millimeter at a time, the lightly penetrated flesh seemingly reaching across the open space and touching, merging, until there was just a long faded scar where, mere seconds ago, he had been bleeding profusely. There was still very fresh blood on his face from the cut, but there was now no obvious point of origin that she could see.
Quinn whirled around to face Porter, a million questions racing through her mind, but the first one she managed to get out was, “What the hell is he?”
Chapter 23
“Boo!” Ringo shouted as he feigned lunging at her—not that he got very far—before leaning back and letting out a big laugh. “Was it as good for you as it was for me?”
Quinn didn’t know how much of his reaction was an exaggeration for her benefit, his attempt to convince her (whether true or not) that he wasn’t afraid. And maybe he had every right to feel as if he had the upper hand. If Quinn had a mirror, she would have been able to confirm the shock on her face; not that she tried to hide it.
How do you pretend like nothing had happened after what she had just seen? More than that, she was looking at a man who should be dead. She had shot him five times, four of those times at almost point-blank range.
And yet here he was, grinning at her like a maniac.
“They don’t have a name, and they don’t carry business cards on them,” Porter said behind her. “It was different when they were first formed, but that was a long time ago. But not having an official name didn’t stop guys like Ringo from giving them one anyway. They’re called the Rhim.”
She looked back at him. “Rim?”
“Rhim. R-h-i-m.”
“Is that Latin?”
“Not exactly.”
“Uh oh,” Ringo said. “Be careful what you say next, Porter. You might end up on a TV show being dissected by guys in lab coats on the FOX network.”
Quinn ignored Ringo and said to Porter, “You told me you were one of them.”
“I was,” Porter nodded.
“Danger, danger!” Ringo laughed.
“But not anymore,” Porter finished.
“So what happens if I cut you? Are you going to heal, too?”
“As long as the wound is superficial enough, the process kicks in without the need of any external help. Some injuries, though, take longer. Like gunshots, for instance.”
“How is that even possible?”
“The guys in white coats have names for it as long as your arm, and a manual explaining it in excruciating detail, but when you boil it down, it’s rapid cell regeneration.”
“In humans? Something like that doesn’t exist.”
“And yet here we are. But even that has its limitations. The damage can’t be too extensive, for one.”
“Like getting shot four times?”
“Yes. For that, you need a little extra help.”
“What about Xiao?”
“What about her?”
“She’s one of you, too?”
“No. She’s not.”
“But she healed. After the alley. She was driving a friggin’ car and having a shootout with Ringo and his boys at Mary’s just hours after getting a metal rod shoved so hard through her shoulder that it went into the brick wall behind her.”
Porter shook his head. “Xiao isn’t one of us.”
“So how the hell did she heal so fast?”
“She didn’t. She’s dealing with the pain. She’s just very good at hiding it. The pill I and then Mary gave her helped, and she’s still taking them.”
“So she’s not one of you?”
“No.”
Quinn turned back around to glare at Ringo. “He should be dead. A cut on the cheek is one thing, but four bullets…”
“As long as the brain remains intact, we can survive a lot of things,” Porter said. “Some scars just take longer to heal than others.”
“You said we. The Rhim.”
“They did things to us, made us more than men, but you can’t play with the brain the way you would a human body. Inflict enough damage to the head and we would go down just like any other man. Des
troy the brain and it’s permanent.”
“Don’t give her any ideas,” Ringo smirked.
Destroy the brain, Quinn thought before she realized just how much closer her right hand had reflexively inched toward her Glock without her knowing. She forced it away now—just enough not to be tempted.
“You’re talking about genetic engineering,” Quinn said. “Is that what you’re telling me? You and Ringo were born in labs?”
“No,” Porter said. “We were conceived and given birth to just like you and Xiao and Aaron. But we were perfected in labs.”
“That kind of science doesn’t exist.”
“And people who can heal from cuts in seconds don’t exist either, but you just saw that for yourself with your own eyes.”
Unless I’m going crazy.
God help me, Ben, am I going crazy?
“There are a lot of things that exist that you couldn’t possibly imagine,” Porter continued. “That’s what makes the Rhim so dangerous. That’s what makes them so lethal to their enemies.”
“Enemies?”
“You. Me. Anyone who doesn’t agree with their agenda. People think America is run by Democrats and Republicans. They couldn’t be more wrong.”
“What is their agenda?”
“That’s step two. Right now, we’re at the end of step one, and he’s of no use to us anymore moving forward. So go ahead. One round to the head and he won’t come back a second time. Even the Rhim doesn’t have science that can bring back the dead.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Ringo said. “Let’s stay calm and not do anything rash.”
Quinn stared at Ringo, trying to decide if he really was afraid or if this was more theatrics. But she could see it in his face, in his eyes—he wasn’t pretending. That, more than anything, made her believe everything Porter had just said.
A headshot and you’ll be avenged, Ben. That’s all it takes.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Guys like Ringo are expendable,” Porter said. “They do all the dirty work in the desperate hope of finding glory at the end of all the blood and guts. I was like him once upon a time, but I had my eyes opened. When he vanishes, someone will just take his place. Just like someone took mine when I left.”
Quinn drew her gun and thought, This is for you, Ben.
“Quinn,” Ringo said as he fidgeted on the floor and tugged unsuccessfully at his bound hands. “You don’t want to do this.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Porter’s wrong,” Ringo continued. “I can still be useful. I have valuable information. I know things.”
“Is that true?” Quinn asked, but kept her eyes on Ringo the entire time.
“No,” Porter said. “He’s just a foot soldier. He does what he’s told. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“You’re wrong,” Ringo said. “You think you know everything? You’re dead wrong, Johnny boy. Things have changed. Protocols were altered after your defection. Five years in the wind, knowing what you knew, why would we not change things up?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. You’ll always just be a grunt, like I was.”
Ringo looked away from Porter and zeroed in on her. “You really think you can trust him? Porter’s a traitor. Once a traitor, always a traitor. He’ll stab you in the back the first chance he gets. He’s a user. He uses people and throws them away. You really think he’s doing this for you? For the greater good? Porter wouldn’t know sacrifice if it bit him in the ass. He’s not loyal to anyone but himself. Who knows what his real goal is? Are you really going to put your life in the hands of someone who murders women and children?”
Quinn flexed her fingers around the grip of the Glock that Ben had bought her and continued to stare silently at Ringo.
“Say something,” Ringo said, narrowing his eyes at her. “Don’t just stand there, Quinn, say something—”
She raised the gun.
“Wait!” Ringo shouted.
She hesitated for just a moment, her finger rubbing anxiously at the trigger.
Shoot him. Shoot him in the head and end it now!
“Porter,” Ringo said.
“What?” Porter said behind her.
“I wasn’t lying, you know. About how we changed the protocols after you betrayed us.” He shifted his eyes back to her and that smugness returned, but it wasn’t nearly as confident as before. “How did you think they found me so fast at that abandoned building where you left me to die? Another hour, and even science might not have been able to save me. Thank God for trackers.”
“Trackers?” Porter said.
Ringo grinned. “Subdermal trackers.”
Quinn looked back at Porter. “What’s he talking about?”
“Shoot him,” Porter said.
“What?”
“Shoot him!”
Quinn spun around and took aim, thought, This won’t bring you back, Ben, but it’ll have to do, and her finger was tugging on the trigger when a massive BOOM! rocked the building and threw her to the floor. The walls around her shook violently and the floor underneath her threatened to open up and swallow her whole even as the ceiling cracked and rained debris down in thick white powder and heavy steel chunks.
Her last sight of Ringo was the man grinning back at her through sheets of falling plaster and Sheetrock just before he disappeared in a landslide of rusty metal and massive steel beams plummeting down from the second floor.
Die, you bastard, die, she thought even as a cloud of white powder erupted around her, trying to suffocate her.
A hand grabbed her from behind and Quinn struggled against it, trying to spin around to get a shot with the Glock still gripped in her hand, but the voice, belonging to the hand’s owner, stopped her from pulling the trigger just in time: “They found us! We have to get out of here!”
Porter, his voice barely above a whisper. It took her a moment to realize her ears were ringing, that her senses were completely frayed by the massive explosion that seemed to be collapsing the warehouse one piece at a time.
“Xiao!” she shouted.
“Aaron!” Porter shouted back. “She’ll be wherever Aaron is!”
Porter had just barely finished shouting when the clatter of automatic weapons fire pierced the haze, coming from outside the room. The fact that she could hear shooting was a good sign, because you didn’t shoot at dead people. At least not with the kind of ferocious back and forth she was listening to now even with her dulled senses.
Then Porter was gone (Jesus, where’d he go?) while she struggled to breathe through the cascading debris. She turned back to where she had last seen Ringo, but there was just rubble where he had been sitting against the pipes. Not only had large portions of the ceiling plummeted straight down, but pieces of the wall had tumbled loose, forming an almost jagged pyramid over his last known spot.
Survive that, you bastard.
Quinn turned and headed for the door—or what was left of it; the slab of wood was hanging by just the lowest hinge and large parts of the frame had been blasted free. She stumbled more than she walked while trying not to choke against the dust burrowing its way into her ears and eyes and nose. It was hard to breathe, but she found that focusing on the exit and the air on the other side kept her moving, and moving—
Oh, thank God! as she burst out of the back room.
Except maybe she should have waited a little longer to thank God, because the warehouse didn’t look any better than the room she had just escaped from. There was a gaping hole above her where the ceiling and the second floor used to be, and twisted steel beams and charred walls of metal blocked her path to the front. There were no signs of Xiao or Aaron or either one of the vehicles.
Quinn was trying to understand how the smaller back room had been spared the brunt of the impact when dark green figures appeared out of the lingering white and gray clouds in front of her.
Red lasers sliced through the swirl of chaos and smoke as Quinn threw herself to the floor just as one (then t
wo) beams raked across the spot where she had been standing mere heartbeats ago.
She nearly slammed face-first into the remains of the TV she had been watching earlier, along with pieces (some sharper than others) of the old desk it had been sitting on top of. Splinters and God knew what else stabbed against her palms and she flinched, but managed to push through the pain to roll over onto her back, then kept going until she had slid underneath a pile of heavy sheet metal and AC ducts.
It wasn’t much of a cover—there were big openings that anyone could spot her through if they took the time to actually glance down—but it was all she had against what she knew was coming.
Porter. Where the hell is Porter?
She hadn’t spotted him when she came out of the back room, which shouldn’t have been possible, because she swore he only had a few seconds head start on her. It had just been a few seconds, hadn’t it?
But damn him, Porter was nowhere to be found, and the burst of automatic weapons she had heard earlier had gone silent. Which was a very bad sign, especially with Xiao and Aaron out in the big room when the blast hit.
Jesus, was that a missile? Did they send an actual missile into this place?
Whatever it was had brought most of the building down, save for the walls. It was the very definition of a pinpoint strike, and it was a miracle she was even still alive, that the back room had somehow been spared. Had the people who sent the missile known where she and Porter were? Had they “missed” the back room on purpose?
Just barely…
Quinn lay still and held her breath as the figures stepped onto the pile she was lying underneath. Their olive drab uniforms stuck out like specters of death against the carnage and the large swaths of blinding morning sunlight that poured into the place from the holes in what used to be a large section of the ceiling.
She blinked at a sudden flurry of soot as a black combat boot stepped on one of the beams five inches from her face and the heavy metal teetered slightly, dangerously, before settling. The smell of burnt steel assaulted her nostrils, and there was wetness gathering at the creases of her eyes.
She stared up at the HRT operator above her. His face was covered by a gas mask that stuck out underneath the ballistic helmet. He moved cautiously but with purpose, his weight made heavier by the gear and bulletproof vest. The M4 with the pistol grip slid left and right and forward as if it were a part of him, and maybe it had become just that after all the training the Hostage Rescue Team guys did. She had once thought about joining them, but decided she didn’t need the extra bruises and time commitment. Besides, Ben had already offered her a gig in his unit.