by Rachel Caine
“Yeah, maybe we should sit down and have some coffee,” Manny said. “You’ll be good for about a week before you need another dose of the inhibitor.”
“Great,” she muttered. “More needles.”
McCallister gave her a look. “Would you rather lose your free will on command?”
“No. But I’d rather do it without puncturing any more veins.” She eyed Manny as he bent down, expertly slipping the needle out of her arm as he applied the cotton pad and bandage to stop the bleeding. He glanced up and gave her an awkward half smile. “Thank you, I guess.”
He shrugged. “I don’t get paid in thanks.” But there was a glow in his eyes; he was pleased. “You start feeling faint or strange, you yell for me or Pansy. Loudly. None of this hero crap.” He glanced aside at McCallister. “She stays put for a minimum of four hours before I let you walk out with her. Give me the syringe.”
“No,” McCallister said.
“She needs her shot.”
“And she’ll get it. From me.” McCallister met Bryn’s eyes briefly, then looked back at his friend. “It has to be that way. The syringes have sensors embedded all over the surface, and they’re coded to two users—a primary and a backup. For Bryn, that’s me and Joe Fideli. If anyone else, including Bryn, tries to administer them, the nanites inside self-destruct and become inert. Useless. It’s a security measure to prevent theft.”
Manny stared at him and slowly shook his head. “And here I thought I was the paranoid one.”
“You are,” McCallister said. “But you’re just one person. Multiply it by an incredibly greedy corporation and you get some idea what we’re up against.”
He reached in his coat pocket and pulled out the syringe container; it looked exactly like a silver cigar tube, and he unscrewed it and removed the contents. Great. Another stick. Bryn didn’t look at him as he walked over, took her bared arm, and punched the sharp chisel point into her skin. It was over in seconds, and it didn’t hurt too much, though the lingering afterburn of the injection was annoying.
The two men were watching her with great interest. She frowned at them and said, “What?”
“We’re waiting to see if there’s any kind of unplanned reaction,” Manny explained. “There’s an outside possibility that the nanites could try to resist the secondary agent. That would be … bad.”
“How bad?”
“Oh, you know. Decomposition.” He shrugged. “Probably won’t happen.”
Bryn decided she was going to hate Manny Glickman. Forever. She waited tensely, trying to be alert for any sensations that didn’t belong and trying not to overreact and invent them at the same time. Her two not very compassionate observers sat and waited as the minutes ticked by.
She got permission for a bathroom break at the two-hour mark, and on the way back ran into Pansy, who was coming out of the kitchen carrying a tray loaded down with sandwiches, tea, coffee, and a stack of magazines. “Here,” she said, and handed it to Bryn. “No sense in your being stuck in there without anything to do. There’s a sudoku uzzle book in there, too. And a pen.”
“Not a pencil?”
Pansy winked. “Around here, we do them in ink.”
“Of course you do. Um … thanks. For even thinking about it.”
“That’s why I’m here. To remind Manny to be human every once in a while. You’ve got your work cut out with Pat, though. I’m not sure someone didn’t replace his blood with antifreeze some time ago.”
“I don’t care what’s running through his veins. He’s not my boyfriend.”
“I know that,” Pansy said calmly. “I just meant as a colleague. Of course.”
She so very didn‘t, but Bryn let it go. She headed for the observation room, where McCallister silently rose from his chair and held the door open as she brought the tray in. “Pansy made us lunch,” she said.
“Of course,” McCallister said. “She’s always the practical one.”
“Ooh, peanut butter,” Manny said.
“I rest my case.” McCallister grabbed a sandwich from the tray—probably not peanut butter, Bryn guessed; he’d probably had enough of that at her apartment—and poured himself a cup of coffee. “You feeling all right?”
“You don’t think I’d tell you if I had any doubts? I’m scared to death!”
“Point taken. Coffee?”
“God, yes.” She grabbed a cup and held it while he poured, doctored it with sugar and cream to her satisfaction, and stood there with him downing caffeine. It almost felt … friendly. “I feel fine, just to make it clear.”
“I’m glad.”
“Yeah, I can tell you’re overwhelmed.” She blew on the surface of her coffee, watching him through half-closed eyes as he took a bite of sandwich. “You don’t really work for Pharmadene, do you?”
“Of course I do. Want to see my pay stubs?”
“That’s the most interesting pickup line I’ve heard this week, but no, I don’t think so. You may get paid by Pharmadene, but you don’t work for them. You’ve got another agenda. And maybe another boss.”
“No, no other boss,” he said. “But another agenda might be accurate.”
“Pat,” Manny said in a warning tone, but McCallister raised a hand to stop him “Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. You go around trusting people, you get a kick in the ribs every time. No matter how pretty they are.”
“Do you say that to Pansy?” McCallister asked.
“Oh, no. I’m not crazy. She might wise up and leave me.”
“If you’ve got something to tell me, say it,” Bryn broke in. “Honestly, I’m so sick of this cloak-and-dagger bullshit!”
McCallister, of course, took a moment to think about it. Just when she was about to throw her coffee at him and tell him to go to hell, he said, “I have a reason for being careful. There have been two other prospects I’ve worked with from Pharmadene’s program. They didn’t work out. That’s why we have the cloak-and-dagger bullshit; I came very close to being exposed by the last one I trusted. I thought that reviving you and being involved start to finish would give us the ability to guarantee you wouldn’t be used and discarded by the company. As you noticed, that wasn’t quite the case. The protocols were still in force, even though I specifically turned them off in your prere-vival profile.”
“You’re blown,” Manny said. “They’ve got to suspect you, if they countermanded that order.”
“Not necessarily. All of my decisions are subject to review by my superior. She might just have done it as a precaution, not out of any suspicion. I could easily say it was a clerical error.”
“Your superior’s Irene Harte,” Bryn said softly. The one who’d treated her like a walking, talking asset that had reached the end of its once-useful life. “Does she suspect you?”
“Irene suspects everyone. It’s her job.”
“You said you had an agenda.”
“I didn’t, at first,” McCallister said. “I took the job in good faith, and for the first year, it was fine. Normal corporate security issues, a few employees diddling the books or stealing from the supply rooms or cooking expenses. Then two scientists invented Returné, and everything changed overnight. It wasn’t a company anymore; it was an armed camp. The implications of what they have are staggering.”
“Department of Defense,” Bryn said.
“Oh, they’ll sell it to the government, but Pharmadene has bigger plans than a defense contract. Before they jump, they want to be sure what they have, and what they can do with it. Why make an official deal when they can sell it under the table as a black-market terrorist’s wet dream?” McCallister sounded grim, and certain. “I knew how it was going to play. Someone had to do something. I thought about blowing the whistle, but there’s nobody I can go to who won’t get sucked into the whirlpool. The government? It has to be destroyed from inside.”
“How’s that working out for you?” Manny asked. It sounded cynical, as if he already knew the answer.
“You know how
it’s working out. Pharmadene constantly monitors its own employees—computer activity, e-mails, phone calls, physical surveillance. I’m no exception to that. Harte will be suspicious today, after Bryn and I drop out of sight for a few hours and it’s clear that I’ve covered my trail.” Manny opened his mouth, but McCallister bulled straight ahead. “I planned for that, Manny. It won’t lead back to you.”
“The fuck it won’t!” Manny said, and stood up to pace around the room in agitation. “All right, that’s it. You’re my friend, and I owe you, but I’m not getting in over my head with Pharmadene. Not with them. You take her and you go. Don’t bother to come back. I’m moving the lab.”
“Manny.”
“No!” Manny swung around on him and pointed a shaking finger in his face. “No! You know how I feel about this. I do not take chances with my safety, or Pansy’s. Not anymore.” He left the room and slammed the door so hard the entire clear plastic structure of rooms rattled uneasily.
McCallister watched him go, and took another bite of his sandwich, which he chewed and swallowed before he said, “Pansy will calm him down.”
“Is he always like this? Or is this just a really bad day?”
“Actually, it’s a fairly good one.”
“God. And you trust this guy?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
McCallister glanced at her, then went back to watching Manny stalk around the lab, randomly touching things as if it were a calming ritual. “Manny had a very bad time a few years back. He worked with the FBI.”
“One of those profiler people?”
“No. He was a rock star in the lab. A genius, but a pure science geek. He never wanted to be out in the field, not for any reason.”
“But something happened.”
McCallister loosened his tie and sat back with a sigh. “He put a puzzle together, a serial killer’s messages to the agents who were hunting him That brought him to the killer’s attention. As soon as Manny identified him, the killer grabbed him at his apartment, gave him a paralyzing agent, and buried him alive in a graveyard, with one air tank.”
Bryn shivered. That was one of her nightmares now—being sealed in a body bag alive, being buried alive and conscious. That was all too possible a future for her, and she could well imagine the terror. “He got out.”
“No,” McCallister said. “He was found. The tank had run out.”
“You found him, didn’t you? That’s what he owes you for.”
McCallister looked away. “I helped find him. I provided information, and led the FBI to him.”
“God, that must have been … How long was he down?”
“Two hours. One hour breathing from the tank, one hour breathing the foul air in that coffin. He had to force himself to take slow, calm breaths, and he didn’t know whether anyone would find him.” He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know how he did it. I would have died before help arrived. But … he came out different from the way he went in—there’s no question about that. He was always OCD, but now he’s completely off the reservation about personal safety. He quit the FBI, took up private practice, and he moves around. A lot. He’s got patrons. I don’t even know how many, but enough to keep him funded.”
“That’s … kind of horrible.”
“It’s a reasonable reaction,” McCallister said, very quietly. “The coffin was already occupied. He was trapped in there with a body, in the dark, dying alone for two hours. It’s a miracle he’s sane at all.”
Manny had stormed off into some private sanctum with what looked like a panic room door. Pansy came back instead. She opened the door and looked in at them, eyebrows raised. “Should I even ask what brought that on?”
“He thinks Pharmadene will trace us here.”
“Does he have a point? Don’t bullshit me, Pat. Even paranoid people are right sometimes, and I’m not risking his life. Not again. Not even for you.” Pansy, Bryn realized, might look sweet and gentle and practical, but she had a core of steel that even McCallister might envy. “I will toss your ass out to the wolves before I let him go down. I’ve worked hard on this relationship.”
“I know,” McCallister said, and put all the warmth and conviction he could into the words. “I swear to you I will protect him. And you. They won’t get to you through me, or Bryn.”
She stared at him with such intensity that even Bryn felt the burn, and then slowly nodded. “All right. I’ll talk him off the ledge, but if anything happens, swear to God, I will go nuclear-option on you, McCallister. He may owe you his life, but I’m more interested in preserving it.” She swung the door all the way open. “Go. He won’t come out until you leave, and I can’t make him see reason until he’s calmer.”
“Pansy, I need him to keep making the inhibitor for her. It’s important.”
“I get it.” Pansy met Bryn’s eyes briefly. “And I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you. I wish we could help you more, but I’ll do what I can to keep that going, at least. Manny’s good at this. Very good. But he’s fragile, you understand? And this Pharmadene thing—it’s bad. You know that.”
“I do. I woke up dead. I understand … a little of how that feels.”
“Yes. Yes, I think you do. I’ll do what I can for you, I promise.”
That was the end of it. Bryn retrieved Mr. French from where he’d been snoozing in the corner of a very empty plastic-walled room, and five minutes later they’d negotiated the spy-quality security and were driving out into the sunlight. Mr. French wiggled into the front seat, onto Bryn’s lap, and gave a pointed whine as he put a paw on the door.
“Oh—ah, we need to stop somewhere,” she said. “Time for a walk.”
McCallister was frowning, very inside himself, but that startled him into an even deeper frown. He said, “Do you trust me?”
“I hate it when you ask me that, because it means you’re about to do something I won’t like.”
“Bryn.”
“It depends.”
“That’s … not what I was hoping for.”
“Look, could you please just stop the car?”
“Not yet. We have an alibi to establish.”
“Which is …?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
It took fifteen minutes for him to finish his drive and arrive at the destination, and he was entirely right: she didn’t like it.
“Seriously,” she said, as he parked.
“Take Mr. French for a walk. I’ll check us in.”
Bryn opened the door, and Mr. French hopped down and ran, loose skin flapping, for the small, straggly strip of brush and grass at the rear of the parking lot. “Wait!” she called, and hurried after him as McCallister headed in the opposite direction. “Stupid dog.”
Well, it wasn’t exactly his fault; he clearly had needs. So did she, as a matter of fact, and standing out here fidgeting from one foot to the other reminded her of it. Not that she was looking forward to exploring the bathroom facilities of the Hallmark Motor Court Inn, which looked like it had last seen any kind of upgrade in the 1970s. It was faded pink stucco, flat roofed, built in an L shape around a parking lot and a fenced-off, trash-filled dry pool that insurance issues had probably long ago rendered useless. There were six cars in the parking lot, mostly beaters, and it didn’t look like a place anyone stayed for more than a couple of hours unless they were seriously down on their luck.
She was starting to get a sense of what McCallister’s alibi would be, and no, she didn’t like it at all.
When she blinked, she had an image of utter darkness, of being trapped in a coffin, like Manny Glickman; of gasping for each trembling breath, knowing that each one was one closer to the end. That would happen to her, too, when she missed a shot. How long would it take for the invisible little machines that kept her breathing to slow, drift, shut down? How long would it take for the toxins to build up and poison her? God, how long would she be able to feel it?
Mr. French watered a few dry spo
ts on the ragged lawn, then wandered over to the edge of the building. The wilderness was thicker there, mostly knee-high grass and some very wild-looking shrubs, everything shrouded in shadow by the angle of the sun. Bryn patted her thigh. “Come on, boy. Let’s go.” He ignored her to sniff the concrete, intensely interested in some ghost of a prior dog or cat. “Oh, come on! Seriously?”
He waddled farther into the shadows, nosing out scents, peeing where he felt it might be necessary, and then squatting down at a modest distance.
Bryn was peripherally aware of a man coming out of a room a couple of doors down, but her attention was on the dog and her near-bursting bladder; when a shadow came into her peripheral vision she was sure it was McCallister, returning for her.
But it wasn’t.
The shove caught her unprepared, sending her stumbling after Mr. French, and as she twisted to get a look at the man who’d pushed her she realized that she was in deep and immediate trouble. He was big, and his eyes were dead in an immobile, expressionless face. “Cash,” he said. “Give it up, bitch.”
She didn’t have a purse, or anything in her pockets. “I don’t have—”
He hit her, hard, in the face, and the pain exploded into black waves and red stars. Mr. French came charging out of the grass. He latched on to the man’s pant leg, but was kicked away.
Bryn immediately went for her gun.
Too slow. Her attacker grabbed her by the shirt and punched her again, even harder, twice in the face, once with shattering force in the gut. She only managed to jerk her sidearm partway from the holster before he’d slammed her down on the ground, and then twisted, trying to throw him off to get leverage to draw it the rest of the way. No good. He grabbed the gun butt and pulled it free. She struggled with him for it, but the knee in her stomach was making her giddy and weak.
With a final wrench, he got control of the weapon.
She didn’t hesitate; she slammed her fist into his balls as hard as she could, and he flinched, off balance. That let her throw him off, but he held on to the gun.
She could hear Mr. French’s snarls, then a yelp, then more vicious snarling as he went back at her attacker.