Lethal Cargo

by Felix R. Savage

  I boosted myself into a standing position on the windowsill, grasped the trunk, and wedged one bare foot into the crevice between the ivy and the wall.

  The moment I put my weight on it, I felt the whole plant sagging. I glanced down. If I fell, I would land on Parsec’s marble patio. It would be curtains for sure.

  I climbed fast, racing the ineluctable force of gravity that wanted to drag me down to my death by tearing the ivy away from the wall. Overhead, the edge of the mansard roof stuck out parallel to the ground. I was hauling myself up hand over hand, and I could feel the lactic acid burn starting in my shoulder muscles. My forearms trembled. I willed strength into my hands, and seized the gutter at the edge of the roof with my left hand. At the same time I jammed my left foot on top of the ivy trunk, which wasn’t a trunk any more, which was hardly a branch.

  It gave way under my weight, with a ripping sound that sent leaves and shards of brick spinning down to the patio.

  I got both hands on the gutter—and hung there, my feet dangling in the air.

  You know those stories you hear about parents finding superhuman reserves of strength when their children are in danger?

  I’m here to tell you it’s true.

  With strength that was not mine, I lifted my entire body up, like doing a chin-up, and kicked my right foot as high as I could until I hooked my toes over the gutter.

  I rolled my body up onto the gutter and lay full-length, panting, my shoulders on fire. I looked down at the swimming pool, far below. The back garden ended at the double fence around Ville Verde’s perimeter. The force field above the inner fence made the jungle appear to shimmer, as if the outside world was a mere optical illusion. It might as well have been. I’d come this far. Turning back was not even a thought.

  The gutter was none too strong, judging by the way it creaked under me. I rose on my knees and grabbed hold of the dormer windowsill three feet above the edge of the roof.

  I peeked through the window. The sunlight reflected off the glass, so I had to get my face right up close to it before I could see what was inside.

  The window was one of those that open with a sash from the top. I hit the glass with my elbow. On the second blow it shattered. I reached inside, gashing my arm on the shards.

  Then Cecilia Parsec got up and let me in.

  47

  “Couldn’t have you bleeding to death out there,” Cecilia Parsec said. She stood back as I landed on the cool wooden floor in front of her. “Good climb.”

  I paid her no attention, frantically searching the room with my eyes. It was actually a kind of attic, with the walls sloping in on three sides. It must have taken up almost all of the top floor.

  Like the rooms downstairs, it was overfilled with furniture. Sofas, a daybed, side tables, and towering carousel shelves laden with bric-a-brac. More shelves lined the walls, crammed with, of all things, dolls. A space had been cleared for a small holovision, paused in the middle of a party scene, the fancy-dressed guests standing about like chessmen in the middle of a game …

  The dormer windows on the other side of the attic threw patches of lemon-colored sunlight on the floor, and in one of those squares, crosslegged, wearing an unfamiliar frilly dress, sat Lucy.

  She had something on her lap that she’d been working on. It fell to the floor as she erupted into motion.

  “Daaaaddy!!”

  I met her in the middle of the room. Her face shone brighter than the sun. I picked her up, and as tired as I was, she felt just as light as she had when she was a baby. She wrapped her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist, welding herself to me at every possible point. I laced my hands under her frilly bottom and kissed her hair. She was the one who’d been kidnapped, but I was the one crying.

  Behind me, Cecilia said sharply, “Tomas!”

  I swung around, still holding Lucy. Through my tears of joy, I saw Canuck appear in a doorway on the far side of the attic. He had an assault rifle identical to the one I’d left with Rex. He was pointing it at me and Lucy.

  Cecilia Parsec stepped in front of him. “Put that down!”

  Canuck sidestepped, but the door couldn’t open all the way because of some shelves, which prevented him from getting a clear line of fire past Cecilia.

  I dumped Lucy on the floor. “Get down, sweetie,” I said, stooping to push her head down on her arms. “Don’t look.” In the same movement, I drew my Machina from my vest pocket. Keeping it low at my side—it was almost small enough to hide in my hand—I walked up behind Cecilia.

  Canuck was swearing at her, using the worst words we have for normies, practically foaming at the mouth. I grasped Cecilia’s arm with my left hand—that was the fake-out, to draw his gaze. With my right hand, I snapped the Machina up and fired. I didn’t even have to aim—it was point blank range. A small black hole appeared in his forehead. He dropped his rifle. Then he fell over, dead.

  Swinging around, I met Lucy’s eyes. She had disobeyed my command not to look, and popped her head up in time to see Canuck die. That may have been the first time she saw what kind of person her daddy really was.

  But she said nothing about what I’d done. She may not even have understood exactly what happened. She got up off the floor and ran to me. I rested my arm around her shoulders, but kept the Machina in my other hand.

  “I never liked him, anyway,” Cecilia said, looking down at the corpse.

  Footsteps bounded up the stairs. I recognized Rex’s floor-shaking tread. He saw Lucy, and that distracted him from seeing Canuck until he actually tripped on him. He took a stumbling step and caught his balance on some shelves, which fell over, scattering knick-knacks everywhere.

  “Well, hello there, missy,” Rex said, grinning. He saw Canuck then, but his smile flickered for only a second. He had mastered the fatherly arts to a degree I was still studying for. “Ready to go home?”

  “Yes,” Lucy said. “Daddy, can we go home now?” But I saw her watching Cecilia.

  I took a deep breath. “In a minute.”

  “Hi there, Mrs. Parsec,” Rex said to Cecilia. He eyed her the same way I had, trying to figure out if she was dangerous.

  I said, “Rex, could you go down to the front door? Relieve Sep. Send him out to Robbie, tell them to bring the pickup up to the front and get it turned around. We’ll be there in a minute.”

  Rex hesitated, then nodded. “Get a bandage on that,” he said, nodding at my arm, and vanished back down the stairs.

  “You won’t be able to simply drive away,” Cecilia said. “I’ve alerted community security. They’re waiting outside. My husband is also on his way. In the meantime, I think he’s right: you need a bandage.”

  I looked down at my right arm. Blood was still running freely from the gash I’d gotten when I broke the window.

  “Does that hurt?” Lucy said fearfully.

  I felt like saying I hadn’t even noticed it, I was so relieved to see her, but she needed reassuring, so I said it only hurt a tiny bit. I let Cecilia spray it with antibacterial stuff and wrap a length of self-sealing gauze around my arm. She had a complete first-aid kit on one of the shelves near where Lucy had been sitting. I kept my gun in my other hand while she was getting it out. She used the scissors to cut the gauze, but then put them back in the box. While she was wrapping the gauze around my arm, I looked out of the dormer window.

  Two community patrol cars bookended our pickup in front of the house. Sep and Robbie stood between a pair of burly security guards, their heads hanging. Another patrol car was just turning onto the cul-de-sac.

  Cecilia was right. We were trapped. No wonder she was being so nice. All she had to do was wait it out until I realized that I was screwed.

  But if I was screwed, she was, too. She patted down the end of the gauze. I pulled my arm back and said aggressively, “What the hell?” I gestured to Lucy. “What the hell, Cecilia?”

  Cecilia closed the first aid kit. Then she turned to me, smoothing her hands down her bare arms. She wore a s
ummery top and those fashionable trousers that don’t even look good on young women—which Cecilia was not any longer. I hadn’t seen her for years, and although she remained a handsome woman, with strong features and a mane of chestnut curls, the sunlight revealed signs of age that the security camera footage had obscured: fine lines around her eyes, the beginnings of gravity-induced sag in her jawline and upper arms.

  She said, “I made it clear to Lucy that I’m not her mother. I said I was sorry for tricking her. Didn’t I, Lulu?”

  Lucy nodded, her hair tickling my bare stomach.

  “Did you also explain why you snatched her off the street?” I yelled. Then, because I was pretty sure I didn’t want Lucy to hear this, I immediately added, “Forget it. You can explain to the police.”

  Instead of answering directly, Cecilia pointed at my feet. “You’re standing on Lucy’s project.”

  There was some kind of a crumpled piece of cloth on the floor. Lucy cried, “Oh, that’s mine!” She let go of me to swoop it up, and immediately wrapped one arm around my waist again while she held up what now appeared to be a doll-sized skirt, partly sewed together. A needle dangled from it. “Cecilia showed me how to do sewing,” she said. “My first project was messy but now I’m getting good at it. Look. Daddy. Cecilia said my stitches are very neat.”

  “Very nice,” I said through locked teeth, wondering if Cecilia had chosen this pastime specifically to make me feel inadequate as a parent. Yes, there are men who sew. I am not one of them.

  “I showed her my Blobby,” Lucy said, pointing at the doll Pippa had made for her. It sat on a love-seat, dressed in a new frock. “I said I didn’t make it, but Cecilia said she could teach me how, but we decided to start with doll clothes because they’re easier.”

  “It’s more of an art than a craft,” Cecilia said, with a deprecating gesture at the shelves full of dolls. I realized she must have made them—and their fiddly, frilly clothes—herself. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Childless woman compensates with cloth babies. But my dolls are actually considered tactile sculptures. They’re sold in art galleries, for prices that I find quite embarrassing.”

  “Obviously, you need the money,” I said.

  “Buzz says there’s no such thing as having too much money, and I tend to agree with him.” Cecilia glanced at an old-fashioned clock on the wall. She was probably counting the seconds until Buzz himself got here. “But one thing money can’t buy, of course, is children.”

  “Ever considered adoption?” I said.

  Lucy put in, “But what if the baby wasn’t a Shifter? Or what if it was? It might get confused.”

  Instead of rebuking her, Cecilia laughed out loud. “Oh, Mike, it has been a real delight having her here.”

  I gritted my teeth. I was having more and more difficulty restraining my anger for Lucy’s sake. I felt that Cecilia knew it and was taking advantage of my compelled restraint to needle me.

  “It was for her own safety,” she said. “You must understand that.”

  “Oh, I understand that perfectly,” I said, irony escaping. “That’s why you abducted her and held her captive for two days. And when I came for her—Jesus, you must have known I’d come for her—that fucker started shooting! Tell me how that was supposed to keep her safe, because what I saw was a loaded gun pointed at my little girl!”

  “At you,” Cecilia said. It was her first and last defense of Canuck. She made it half-heartedly, and quickly moved on. “Listen, I don’t understand it, either—I don’t think even Buzz knows what it’s all about. He sometimes practises strategic avoidance of potentially incriminating details.” Mrs. Cecilia Parsec had a fine line in irony herself. “But the key instruction was very clear. Get her up high and keep her up high.” Cecilia gestured around at the room.

  At the attic.

  On top of the house.

  On top of Cape Agreste.

  800 meters above sea level, separated by distance and sea winds from the city.

  My blood ran cold. I suddenly felt weak and overwhelmed. Sophia had this whole thing planned out. And she must have thought I had no chance of stopping her.

  48

  Although I didn’t know it, twenty klicks away, on the 121st floor of Bonsucesso Tower, Dolph’s day had taken a turn for the worse.

  The shaped charge had worked like a charm. The converging shockwaves from the explosion had blown a hole 2 cm in diameter straight through the solid steel door. The walls on either side of the doors were also partially rubbled, and the mirrored ceiling had fallen down.

  The team knew that they now had only a few minutes before building security would arrive. While the wolves kicked the walls to see if they could break them down completely, MF lowered himself to the floor in front of the door. He extended a flexible robotic arm with a sensor array on the end. Dolph watched the robotic arm vanish into the hole in the door.

  “No infrared signatures,” MF said. “No movement.”

  Dolph’s heart sank.

  One of the wolves let out a howl of triumph. He had broken through the wall to the right of the door. Reassured by MF’s assessment, the wolves quickly smashed a hole in the wall large enough for a man. Dolph went first, gripping his Koiler in both hands. MF brought up the rear.

  The reception area was pitch black, except for the light from the hole. LED beams from weapon-mounted flashlights skittered over blank walls and the unoccupied reception desk.

  The employees were gone.

  The computers were gone.

  Even that ugly civic award trophy was gone.

  They rampaged through the entire 121st floor. It turned out that the garage was only half of Mujin Inc’s operations. There was a back office—that’s what Dolph and I had glimpsed when we were there. And then, hidden away behind thick doors, there was Sophia’s lab.

  Not a computer lab, after all.

  An honest-to-God chemistry lab.

  Dolph described it as “like a clean room.” Through double-strength windows, the team gazed at a miniature industrial chemistry facility. Robot arms hung frozen over empty vats and assembly tables. The wolves wanted to go in; they thought the bad guys might be hiding in there, since they weren’t anywhere else.

  Dolph held them back. “Hermetically sealed,” he said, looking at the air shower at the entrance to the lab, and the chemical bath where boots—or wheels—would be washed before entering. “Let’s keep it that way.”

  But MF said, “I am immune to biohazards.” He splashed through the chemical bath and headed into the air shower.

  Dolph took the team back through the garage. All the taxis were gone, too. Dolph had been hoping they’d still be there, so that the team could reprise our aerial escape, but it was not to be. He glanced at his watch—four minutes and ten seconds since the charge went off. “Time’s up,” he said. “We’re retreating.”

  “Who’s retreating?” Alec said, giving him a sharp look.

  “You are. When you get to the mall level, split up. I’m going back for that goddamn bot.”

  The wolves melted away. Dolph waited until he could no longer hear their footsteps. Then he waited a few seconds more. I can see him now, standing in front of one of those launch bays, with nothing but a shimmer between him and the almost 400-meter drop to the streets. Despite the force fields, he would have been able to hear a thin whistling. Up that high, the wind is so powerful that on stormy days, the tops of the towers sway. He was thinking, he said, about flying. He watched a ship take off from Space Island, spewing its contrail across the perfect blue sky, and wondered if he himself would ever fly again.

  Four minutes and fifty seconds.

  Dolph’s phone rang.

  “Positive,” MF said. “I repeat, positive. There are significant traces of interstellar variant kuru prions in the vats and on the assembly benches. The latter are in the same nanocapsule formulation discovered previously.”

  Dolph let out his breath. “OK, MF. Thanks.”

  He move
d closer to the launch bay until the toes of his shoes actually bumped into the force field. It gave like the surface of a fully inflated balloon. He leaned forward, so that he seemed to be leaning on the air, suspended above the drop, looking down at the curve of the tower’s base half a kilometer below. He may have smiled.

  Then he pushed off from the force field and propped himself against the wall next to the launch bay. He could now hear another sound: a faint klaxon, coming nearer, as if rising up through the building. He dialed.

  *

  “Well?” I said. I juggled my phone while switching my gaze between Cecilia and the window. “By the way, I found Lucy.” I couldn’t help grinning.

  “That’s something,” Dolph said. “That’s the biggest thing.”

  “Yeah.” My grin faded. “Only problem is, I’m looking out the window at the entire Ville Verde security department.”

  “That makes two of us,” Dolph said. “I’m about to get arrested by building security. I can hear them coming.”

  “Toss your weapon,” I said urgently.

  “Done.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “No Sophia, no toy fairies, no nothing. Place’s cleaned out. But MF found traces of kuru. I’m going to tell them—”

  A clatter and a staticky clunk interrupted Dolph’s voice.

  “Call Bones,” I yelled, forgetting my earlier reluctance to involve the police. I never knew if he heard me. The connection went dead.

  I gripped my phone so hard my knuckles went white.

  Cecilia smiled at me, with a trace of wistfulness and a trace of meanness. “Thinking about calling the cops? Don’t bother.”

  “There’s stuff going on here that you don’t know about,” I snapped. Then I realized how condescending that sounded. If I had any chance at all of getting her on our side, she needed to know everything. “That company your husband runs in Bonsucesso Tower? It’s a front for terrorism.”

  “What company?” Cecilia said, raising her eyebrows. “I don’t really have much to do with the business.”