Deciding not to slap the smirk off the young man's face, Logan asked, “Scotch, I suppose?”
“I been off Bosco for a while.”
What a charmer,
Logan thought, went to the kitchen and came back with a glass filled with ice and clear liquid. He handed Seth the glass.
“This is water,” the young man said, just looking at it.
“Can't get anything by you.”
“What are you… my daddy now? I'd like a goddamn Scotch.”
“Maybe ‘daddy' doesn't feel you need your judgment impaired any worse than it already is.”
Seth obviously knew immediately what Logan meant, and sipped the water, putting the glass— thoughtfully— on a coaster on the nearby coffee table.
The relationship between the two had been strained from the beginning— neither liked the other's style, or manner. But they needed each other (
codependents,
Logan thought), each offering abilities and knowledge the other didn't have. It had made for a rocky ride thus far, Seth with his gift for alienating almost anybody who came into his life— particularly anyone who got at all close— and Logan, always focused on the struggle, with little patience for those who did not share his passion.
The pair had been introduced less than a month ago by Ben Daly, a mousy middle-aged med tech who was a mutual acquaintance. Among Logan's Eyes Only efforts was a sort of Underground Railroad, and the cyber–freedom fighter had been working on securing safe passage to Canada for Daly, where the tech hoped with Cale's help to disappear into a new identity.
Daly was on the run from his former employer, a private corporation that had been taken over by U.S. government black ops. The med tech and his fellow employees had been experimenting in bio-enhancement technology, but the new covert project— Project Manticore— moved the experiment into using recombinant DNA to produce a superior combat soldier. When Manticore started using children as guinea pigs, Daly decided he'd had enough.
Another research scientist at the facility gave notice, and this encouraged Daly to make an appointment to see his boss, to tender his own resignation… and the next night, said research scientist was a hit-and-run fatality. The head of Manticore, the spookily soft-spoken Colonel Donald Lydecker, had said to Daly, “A dangerous world out there— what was it you wanted to talk to me about, Mr. Daly?”
So Ben Daly settled in, did his job, and waited for his chance. It wasn't until well after the Pulse that he'd gotten away— Manticore was the kind of job you couldn't quit… you had to
escape
from it, like the prison it was— and he'd stayed hidden for years, the last three in Seattle, working as a lowly (but alive) lab tech.
And then Daly had been tracked down by Seth. At first Daly thought the X5 had been sent by Manticore, but it quickly became apparent he was simply looking for a solution to the seizures that had afflicted him, and his siblings, since their youth. A runaway. Still, Seth's turning up gave Daly a sudden, desperate desire to leave Seattle, and find some new rock to crawl under. If Seth, a kid on the run, working by himself, could find Daly, it was only a matter of time until organization-man Lydecker came calling.
Though he hadn't been able to solve Seth's health problem, Daly had informed the renegade X5 that tryptophan— a homeopathic neurotransmitter— could help control the symptoms. In an effort to keep from getting his ass kicked by Seth for failing to end the seizures, Daly had introduced the volatile young man to Logan.
Daly, of course, was unaware that Logan was Eyes Only; but he did know that Logan was an anti-establishment journalist from a very wealthy family.
“Maybe you can track down some doctor or research scientist,” Daly had said, “who can address Seth's condition… maybe you can network with this Eyes Only character. Who knows?”
“Who knows,” Logan had said.
Logan suspected Daly didn't care if the X5 got help or not. Likely the med tech only hoped that Seth would latch onto Logan as a new target of his dark moods. If so, Daly's strategy had proved successful: the tech was in some little town on the edge of the Arctic Circle, and Seth was still in Seattle, playing a dangerous game with Logan Cale.
Sprawled on the couch, running shoes up on it, Seth might have been a patient in a psychiatrist's office. Referring to Ryan Devane— the corrupt sector chief who had been selling everything from under-the-table sector passes to minority teenagers into slavery overseas— Seth said, “Problem solved.”
Few in Seattle, no matter their political persuasion, had any doubt that Devane was a bad man… many would have called him evil; but his position had been so well insulated, he couldn't be touched… except by Eyes Only.
“Solved,” Logan echoed emptily.
“Did what you wanted,” Seth said.
“What I wanted, and more.”
“You wanted him stopped.” Seth smiled over innocently at Logan, who had settled into a chair. “I stopped him.”
“You killed him.”
Seth shrugged, folded his hands on his tummy, stared at the ceiling. “That's pretty much the most efficient way to stop somebody.”
Shaking his head, Logan said, “The most efficient way isn't always the best way.”
“I agree… but in this case, it was. You're not going to lecture me on that ends-don't-justify-the-means b.s. again, are you? They taught us ethics at fuckin' Manticore.”
“I'll just bet they did. They teach you anything about justice?”
The younger man thought about it for a long moment. “Justice was served… What's next?”
“Never mind what's next,” Logan said, rising, propelled by rage. “How the hell do you figure ‘justice' was served by murder?”
Seth glanced over with an expression of mock innocence. “Any children sold into slavery lately?”
“That doesn't justify—”
“Sure it does. Bastard got what he deserved.”
Logan began to pace, hands in the pockets of his slacks. “Seth— that's not justice, that's revenge.”
“Same difference,” Seth said, and swung into a sitting position, leaning back, arms outstretched on the back of the couch.
Logan said, “I wanted to stop him— expose him, entrap him—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa— isn't entrapment illegal? I thought the ends didn't justify the means?”
“When law enforcement itself is corrupt, certain extreme measures have to be taken. It's a matter of degree, Seth— some laws go beyond politics. These are laws that have to do with society, with civilization, even religion.”
“Oh, shit, you're not gonna go
religious
on my ass, now!”
“No… no. But ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill' is part of the social contract, Seth. You can't—”
“Bullshit! The social contract got ripped up when the Pulse went down— where was the social contract when Manticore was makin'
me,
like instant soup in a damn test tube?”
Logan stopped pacing. He sat down next to Seth. “Don't make me regret taking you into my confidence.”
Seth's grin was a terrible thing. “Thought you had a supersoldier to play with, didn'tcha? And now you're afraid all you got is a loose cannon… am I on to something, ‘Eyes Only'?”
“Seth… please… We have the opportunity to be a team. To make a difference… ”
“We're already making a difference!” Seth sprang to his feet; now he was the one pacing, but there was a raving and ranting quality to the words that accompanied it. “Logan, you were unhappy when a corrupt official was ruining lives and selling children into slavery… and now you're telling me you're
still
unhappy, even though we stopped the mofo!”
“I'm not unhappy he's been stopped—”
“But you
are
unhappy this blight on society is dead? Are you fuckin'
high?
”
Logan sighed. “You were ac
ting as my… agent. I feel responsible for that man's death. And I don't like it, not one little bit.”
Seth stopped in front of Logan and put his hands together in a prayerful gesture. “How touching… but your liberal guilt doesn't negate the fact that the mission was accomplished and we saved maybe hundreds, who knows, maybe even thousands of kids from being sold into slavery.”
Logan could see he wasn't going to prevail in this debate. And he feared the moral complexities would continue to elude this kid— the supersoldier genetic makeup perhaps had made Seth a literal killing machine.
Maybe over the long haul, Logan could convince Seth that justice didn't necessarily mean the summary execution of everyone they went after. He only hoped he could control and shape Colonel Lydecker's nasty lab rat into something positive for society.
Now Seth plopped down in a chair opposite the couch. A tiny, almost naughty smile formed on the sullenly handsome face. “I think it's time.”
“Time?”
“Time we went after Manticore.”
Logan sighed again. “It is
not
time.”
“Well,
I
think it is.”
That was the level of their discourse, Logan thought:
Is too,
is not,
is too,
is not…
Meeting the young man's unblinking gaze with his own, Logan said, “We don't know enough. Really, we don't know anything. We still don't know where their headquarters is, we don't know where you were raised, other than the Wyoming mountains somewhere… ”
Seth exploded out of the chair. “What have you been doing while I been risking my ass?” Seth gestured with both hands, his arms wide in frustration. “What are you doin' with those fancy-ass computers? Downloading porn? Hitting the cybercasinos?”
“These things take time.”
Bouncing on his heels, Seth said, “You've had what— three, four weeks? Enough time for me to take out Devane, and you haven't found out
anything?
”
Seething inside, Logan resisted the urge to tell Seth to use his abilities to take a spectacular flying fuck, and said, “I've started looking into old factories, abandoned prisons, military bases. But these people are smart, and they're dangerous, and they don't want to be found. If they did, you would have found them already.”
Seth seemed almost to pout, and said, somewhat childishly, “But you've had three weeks, man!”
“You've had how many years? And you haven't found them, have you, Seth?”
“I haven't been looking— I've been hiding. But now I got
you,
and your resources… we can take 'em on, Logan! We can take 'em down!”
“And we're going to. We
are.
And I do have a lead… ”
Seth's eyes widened, like a child anticipating Christmas. “What kind of a lead?”
“I take it you didn't see the bulletins on the LA Massacre— I ran it three times yesterday.”
“No… I was… busy.”
“I guess you were. Come with me.”
Logan walked Seth to the office-cum-broadcast-center, where the main monster computer was (as always) running and each monitor had several windows open. The cyberjournalist played the X5 a video CD of the bulletin that included the grisly footage of the Chinese Theatre slaughter. At the mention of the troops in black rumored to have supported the Brood in the massacre, Seth perked up.
“That's Manticore… that's
got
to be Manticore.”
Logan ran the VCD again, with the sound down. “What would draw Manticore into helping one side of a street gang war?”
“I'd like to know the answer to that.”
“Good.” Logan smiled at Seth, rather blandly. “Because that's where we're going to start… assuming you don't kill our target, before we find anything out.”
Seth smirked. “Who is he?”
“Well, it is a him… but it's
more
than a him. It's a ‘them.' ”
“The Brood?”
“The Brood is part of it. You heard the bulletin: they're expanding to Seattle.”
“Who did they send here?”
“They didn't ‘send' anybody— the top man himself came… Mikhail Kafelnikov.”
Logan brought up another picture: a muscular blond man who had the good looks of a pre-Pulse rock star, and the rap sheet of a serial killer. “He's rumored to have ordered or taken part in as many as one hundred murders in Los Angeles.”
The young man studied the picture. “You made a good point, Logan— Manticore and a street gang… it just doesn't compute.”
“Seth, back in the early part of the last century, street gangs of Italian kids evolved into the biggest, most successful organized crime syndicate in the history of man.”
“And this history lesson is because?… ”
“The Brood may evolve into something much bigger than a street gang… particularly with covert support from Manticore.”
“So what is this… Haselhoff guy
up
to, in our great city?”
“It's Kafelnikov… ”
“Whatever.”
“… and he's selling art and Americana to foreigners. Any precious remnant of our past that he can get his hands on, really, he'll sell to whoever offers the most.”
Seth arched an eyebrow. “And we care, because?… ”
“Because he's selling off priceless works of American art.”
Seth was not following this. “The point being… ”
Logan knew he could never make Seth understand how he felt, and why this battle was important.
No Americana would eventually mean… no America. He'd watched other countries sell the heritage that was their symbolic soul, during financial hardships since the Pulse. People needed that cultural bedrock to build their societies on, and when that bedrock was peddled to other nations, it took away a country's sense of permanence, a people's sense of home. Citizens began to feel like renters in their own land.
“I can't explain this easily,” Logan said. “You were Manticore's prisoner for how long?”
“Ten years. What's that got to do with it?”
“Even though you hated it, even though you eventually ran from it, Manticore was your home. When you escaped, didn't part of you miss it?”
“You
are
high!” Seth's eyes blazed. “No,
hell,
no!”
Logan put a hand on the boy's shoulder. “You mean to say you didn't… you don't… miss your siblings? The sense of belonging that comes from being with a group you know you can trust to take care of you? That sense of wholeness? You didn't miss any of that?”
Seth looked at him for a moment, then the young man's eyes fell away and he found something on the floor to study.
Logan said, “That's what I'm talking about, with these people selling off American art. It destroys, one piece at a time, who we are… how we feel about the American family… making it easier to divide us. We're all abused children, now, Seth— and this kind of abuse to our… national spirit… well, it's one thing we don't need.”
“Run for fuckin' office, why don't you? Look, this art scam— it's the first hustle the Brood's working on our turf?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Logan, why didn't you say so. We got to stop the bastards.”
Feeling a little embarrassed, and a bit like a pompous ass, Logan couldn't keep himself from smiling. “Kafelnikov isn't moving the stuff out of LA— somehow he's moving it out of the country through Seattle.”
“And you want to know how he's doing that?”
“Yes— who's working with him, and where the deals go down— maybe we can… rescue some Americana.”
“Groovy,” Seth said, still unimpressed by the cultural flag-waving. “Any clues at all?”
&nbs
p; Logan leaned in, used a mouse to open a window on one of the many glowing monitor screens. A picture popped up of a blond, trimly bearded man in his late twenties, next to a painting called
Death on the Ridge Road.
Pointing, Logan said, “That's Jared Sterling.”
“Looks like an upstanding citizen.”
“As upstanding as they come… major art collector, philanthropist, and billionaire computer magnate.”
“Sterling… Sterling— the Internet guy?”
“The Internet guy.”
Seth leaned in, taking a closer look at the Grant Wood painting. “Looks like he's into, what's-it, Americana, too.”
“Oh yes.” Using the mouse, Logan brought up pictures of various American art pieces. “These paintings—
American Gothic… Whistler's Mother…
Jackson Pollock's
Key,
works by Thomas Hart Benton, Winslow Homer, and several other major American painters— have come into Sterling's hands… legally… and then disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Perhaps that's overstating. He acquires these pieces— sometimes with great fanfare— seems to have them for a while, loans them for a museum showing or two… and then they vanish into his ‘collection.' As art pieces the public can appreciate, they drop out of sight, and are never seen again.”
“If he owns them, I guess he's got the right.”
“Well… I don't want to venture into ethical waters with you again, Seth. But you should know also that Jared Sterling is considered to be one of the most ruthless and, yes, unethical businessmen to emerge in the post-Pulse world.”
“Even if he's selling this stuff overseas, Logan, it's no crime— he owns the shit, right?”
“Yes he owns the ‘shit'— but it
is
a crime.” After the Cooperstown and Statue of Liberty debacles, there had been a backlash, and a number of bills had been passed to protect what remained of America's heritage. “The American Art Protection Act, of twenty-fifteen, makes it very illegal for any paintings on the protected list to be sold outside of our shores.”
Seth frowned. “There's a list of paintings like, what? Endangered species?”
“More like historic landmarks, important buildings that can't be torn down to make room for another detention center. Jared Sterling owns dozens of paintings on the Smithsonian American Masterpieces list.”
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