“Nothing I can think of,” Catherine admitted, returning her attention to Will’s question. “It’s a garden variety GameBoy cartridge. I’ve played it: it’s a simple nine-level shooter game. Nothing special. I honestly can’t think of any connection.”
“Is the word saved in the game?” Gaia asked, sipping her beer.
“No,” Catherine said, after thinking about it a moment. “There’s save game, but every GameBoy cartridge has that.”
“Well, Ms. Moore?” Will said, filling Gaia’s glass. “We need your remarkable intellect. Can’t you help us out with some Stanford University insights?”
Gaia affected a classic southern belle accent. “Why, I rightly don’t know, Mr. Taylor. Can’t you grace us with some simple southern wisdom?”
Will raised his eyebrows. He was crossing his arms, Catherine saw, in a way that he probably knew showed off his heavy forearm muscles. “I just might do that, Ms.—”
“Well, what do you think of that,” a male voice called out from the bar. “Two young hotties wasting their time drinking with faggots.”
Catherine looked over. It was one of bartender Jack’s friends—a man in a leather vest with a mustache and a shaved head. He had a U.S. Marines pin on his vest. The crowd in the bar seemed intent on not paying attention. A few people glanced over, but when Jack or his other friends returned their stares, the patrons turned quickly away, apparently intent on minding their own business.
“I see it, too,” another of Jack’s friends agreed sadly. He was tall and red faced, wearing a denim jacket over a flannel shirt and a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. He was staring at Gaia, his eyes roving up and down her body. “Shame is what it is—here’s a girl looks prettier than Britney Spears, and she’s wasting time with a boy wouldn’t know what to do with her if his life depended on it.”
Gaia didn’t move or turn. She didn’t seem to react at all, Catherine saw—she just slowly put her glass down.
“And that other one ain’t nothing to sneeze at,” the first man said, and now Catherine had that ants-crawling-on-me feeling that she always got when a man was blatantly eyeing her body. “Like the song says, ‘brown-eyed girl’.”
Brilliant observation, Catherine thought, keeping her mouth shut.
“Ignore them,” Will said quietly. “We don’t want to make a scene.”
“Right,” Catherine agreed, nodding. “No scenes.”
“I guess the faggots can’t hear me,” the first man said—the one in the leather vest. He began walking toward their table. It was obvious from his gait that he was drunk. “Or the girls neither. Hey, I’m talking to you, Britney! You want to dance with a man who knows he’s supposed to kiss girls, not boys?”
Now more people were watching what was going on. Heads were turning around the bar.
“Hey, Walter,” Kelly Ray said, stepping out of the crowd. She was more than a head shorter than the ex-marine in the leather vest, but she strode right up to him. “Walter, come on, pal. Let me buy you a drink.”
“Oh, I ain’t your pal, Kelly,” Walter sneered. He was weaving in place. Catherine could see Gaia’s eyes narrowing as she sat there, but she figured it was just the beer her roommate was reacting to—or maybe she didn’t like being compared to Britney Spears. “I ain’t your pal at all. Now, your old man, there was a pal—someone worthy of putting his name on the door of this place. But not you.”
“Fine, but what do you say you let the customers be,” Kelly said more firmly, reaching for Walter’s muscular arm. “Come on, Walter—let me get you a Coke or something.”
“You get your hands off me, you little whore,” Walter said, shoving Kelly away. The young woman stumbled backward, nearly falling over as she collided with the edge of a table. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
Gaia stood up.
All eyes were on her as she slowly turned around and faced Walter. On the side, Kelly was still getting her balance, leaning on the table as she righted herself. Gaia stood absolutely straight, Catherine saw, balanced on both her feet. It was particularly impressive since Catherine knew how many beers Gaia had had.
“Well, now,” Walter said, grinning broadly at Gaia. “You change your mind, missy? You want to dance with me?”
“Yeah,” Gaia said quietly, stepping forward. “Let’s dance.”
What happened next was so rapid, so blindingly quick that Catherine barely registered what she’d seen until moments after it was over. The noise hit her first: like Will, Kim, and the rest of the customers in Johnny Ray’s. She recoiled instinctively. But the funny thing was, she did see it—maybe her tipsiness had something to do with it, but through the blur of beer and surprise she found that she could play it back in her mind, move for move, and recall everything that had happened.
Walter stepped toward Gaia with his hand moving toward her waist as if to make good on his promise to dance with her, and Gaia just reached out like it was the simplest thing in the world and took his hand and flipped him on his back. There was a tremendous cracking noise as Walter landed on the floor-boards, his eyes wide, and then he howled like a dog—the pain made his face turn scarlet like a baby’s. The whole room gasped right then—Catherine realized that she’d heard that sound, too, right before she heard the squeak of Kim and Will’s chairs on the floor as the two men stood up, lightning quick. Walter’s friends were moving in on Gaia, and Jack was hoisting himself over the bar, and Catherine had a moment of fear as the man in the cowboy hat swung his fist, and then Gaia did something so amazing that Catherine thought at first she’d imagined it—she somehow ducked her head under the roundhouse blow, blond hair flying in the amber bar lights, and then threw herself up into the air so that her leg was spinning like a helicopter blade, smashing into the side of the cowboy-hat-wearing man’s head. There was another loud, wet smacking sound and then he, too, dropped to the ground with a dull thump.
She kicked him in the head, Catherine thought dazedly, rising to her feet and realizing in that moment just how tipsy she was. She kicked him in the head and landed in a perfect fighting stance.
That was exactly what Gaia had done. Kim and Will were arriving behind her, but they needn’t have bothered: Gaia launched herself back into the air gracefully, kicking with her other leg and knocking down both Jack and the third of Jack’s friends, a sunglasses-wearing obese man whom Catherine hadn’t even noticed. The lights were swimming in Catherine’s eyes. I’m drunk, she thought. I’m drunk, so Gaia must be, too—how is she doing this?
Sirens were blaring outside the bar—at least Catherine thought so. She wasn’t sure. Gaia had dropped back to the floor and was reaching down and grabbing the lapels of Walter’s leather vest. Walter’s head lolled, blood running freely from his nose and mouth. The entire population of the bar was on their feet, watching in disbelief—it had all happened so fast.
“Don’t you ever touch her again!” Gaia yelled in Walter’s face, shaking his weakened frame. “Do you hear me?”
“Uhhh—” Walter moaned.
There was suddenly a loud bang as the leather-covered front door opened and a blast of cool night air as three police officers strode into the room. “All right, stop! Stop this right now!” the lead cop yelled. He wore a beige short-sleeve police shirt and a wide-brimmed hat. “Young lady, let go of that man!”
Gaia lowered Walter to the floor. The music had stopped. Someone turned the overhead fluorescent lights on—everyone stood blinking in the glare. The entire crowd watched silently. The only sound was Walter and the other men whimpering, Gaia panting for breath, and the squawks of the police radios.
“Now, what’s this all about?” the lead cop yelled out. “I’m waiting.”
“They started it!” Jack yelled from where he lay sprawled on the floor. He was holding his hand to his bloody nose and pointing murderously at Gaia, Will, Kim, and Catherine. “Goddamned government trainees or whatever they are, coming into our town and causing trouble. Look at them, Gus,” he yelled at the cop insistently. One of th
e other men in the bar was helping him to his feet. “Damn uppity feds; they started it.”
“That’s a lie,” Kelly said. “Gus, you know better than to listen to Jack,” she told the cop, striding right up to him with her hands on her hips. “His damn goon squad came in here plastered and looking for trouble. They harassed these four for no reason at all.”
Gus, the cop, looked back and forth between Kelly and Jack. Everyone waited. The cop radio on Gus’s belt squawked again.
“Jack,” Gus said finally, “now, you go on home and cool yourself down.”
“Gus—”
“Get on out of here before I change my mind and take you all down to the station house,” Gus insisted tersely. “I mean it.”
“One more false move,” Kelly told Jack as his friends helped him toward the door, “and you’re out on your ear. I don’t care what promises my father made.”
Jack was still nursing his bleeding nose. He raised a finger toward Kelly and opened his mouth.
“Don’t,” Kelly said quickly.
Jack turned away. He and Walter and the others limped toward the door—the crowd shuffled apart, letting them go by. The witch’s ball in the ceiling kept glittering, as if the dancing was still going on. Gaia had moved gingerly back to their table and was carefully sitting down.
“All right, folks, the show’s over,” Gus the cop said loudly. The cool night air was still blowing in through the open door. They all heard a squeal of brakes as Jack’s red pickup truck sped away. “Kelly, I think you’d better close down for the night, don’t you? It’s late enough.”
Kelly sighed heavily. She shook her head. “You’re killing me, Gus. But you’re probably right.”
“You know I am.”
“All right, people,” Kelly said, turning to face the bar’s patrons. “You heard the man. Let’s move it on out—you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
The crowd started shuffling toward the door—and suddenly everyone was talking at once.
“Gaia?” Catherine said, looking over at where Gaia was sitting. “Are you all right?”
“Blacking out,” Gaia murmured distractedly. Her eyes looked dull and unfocused. “I’m blacking out—”
And Gaia slid forward out of her chair and onto the floor, unconscious—they all heard the thump as her head smacked against the hard wooden floor.
Will
That was a first. I’ve never seen anyone fight like that, let alone a girl.
Let alone a pretty girl.
Okay, I’m admitting it—she’s extremely cute.
Dealing with girls isn’t so hard. Particularly pretty girls, because they’re so predictable. They pretend otherwise, but the main thing on their mind at any given moment is how they look. Take it from me—I’ve been out on enough dates with them. And the prettier a girl is, the more “natural” and “carefree” she’s acting, the more it’s all a fraud. The reflections are what give it away. Most people hate mirrors, but pretty girls are addicted to them. They’re always admiring how they look in whatever cute outfit they’ve put together.
I learned that one long ago, before I even went away to college. After enough time with southern debutantes, the lesson sticks. I can still see all those shiny dresses and corsages and purses and pearl necklaces. It’s like some kind of lesson in reflexes: compliment their looks and they go all giggly and stop thinking. No, thanks.
What I’m dealing with here, on the other hand, is clearly an alien life-form. From the first time I really saw her, moving over those ropes, my eyes were bugging out of their sockets. Gaia moves like a gazelle—like a cheetah. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, and I’ve spent a lot of time among track stars.
Female athletes—the real thing, like Olympic athletes—are much more technically proficient. It was very hard for me to face the fact that I’d never reach that level of physical mastery, no matter how devoted to athletics I’ve been. That’s the equivalent of being a violin prodigy who’s playing Chopin concertos in Carnegie Hall at the age of eight.
No, Gaia’s not like that, and neither am I. But what Gaia has—and I really don’t think she realizes it—is poetry. Gaia’s not like a virtuoso violinist. She’s more like the best jazz trumpet player you ever heard, the one who never learned to read music but can make you weep with joy when you hear them play a solo.
I still can’t get over that kick. I don’t think Gaia even realized what she did, how technically difficult it would be to reproduce that flying roundhouse kick. But she did it without thinking. She’s that rare thing—a true natural athlete.
I keep thinking about watching her fight. And it was amazing … but I’m shying away from the real point.
The real point is that I’m confused. I’m not saying I like her or anything. There’s no reason to think she’s a girl I’d want to pursue romantically or anything like that. For one thing, it wouldn’t be professional … and for another …
I don’t remember what the other thing is.
I’m not interested. That’s not my point. I’m just confused. Because like I said, here’s an alien life-form—like a perfect fighting machine. Except that she’s trapped in the body of a debutante.
It’s an interesting phenomenon. I wonder what her life’s been like? What was she like as a little girl or in high school? Did the other kids hate her? Were they scared of her? I’d love to find out what it was like. I’m sure her life has been anything but boring.
But I can’t let that any of this distract me. We’re FBI trainees, and we have to push as hard as we can to succeed. It’s driving me nuts, the way she keeps winning—the way she keeps coming out on top. And then she just tosses off a casual, bratty remark and keeps going. It’s really maddening. I sincerely wish she wasn’t here at Quantico, on my trainee team. It’s just a headache I don’t need.
She really was something to behold, though. I could watch her do that all day—although I’ll never admit that to anyone.
But I’m not here to watch anyone else. I’m here to make my mark on the bureau, and I’m not about to let some girl get in the way.
WANTED TO SCREAM
“Gaia?” a soft male voice said. “Gaia? Can you hear me?” The voice was right there—less than two feet away. And she thought she recognized it.
Hello—?
It was someone she could trust—she felt that, without really knowing who it was. But something about the voice finally jogged her memory.
Quantico, I’m in Quantico, Virginia.
The FBI. I’m training with the FBI. This isn’t a dream at all.
Gaia experimentally began to open her eyes—just the narrowest of slits so she could barely peer out from between her eyelashes—and wanted to scream at the harshness of the light that shone above her. It was as if the sun itself was right there, suspended above her. She quickly shut them again. Her head was singing with pain. And it was spinning.
“Gaia?” the soft voice repeated. Gaia could feel cool hands on her forehead, brushing her hair back from her warm skin. “Relax—just relax. Shhh. Everything’s fine.”
“Light,” Gaia croaked. “Too bright.”
“What? Oh, the light. Hang on—”
There was a clicking sound, and then the most incredible, wonderful thing happened: the light was gone. Now there was just soothing darkness and the distant wind and the sound of crickets.
“How do you feel now?” the voice went on. The hands kept stroking her forehead.
“Head hurts,” she murmured.
“Hang on,” the male voice said, and now there was something soft and cool sliding beneath her head. It felt good. And she was sure she could figure out who the voice was—if she could just concentrate. She felt so weird, so dizzy and weak.
Gaia finally got her eyes open. She could dimly make out a cracked, painted ceiling overhead. She was in a small room, and a dark male silhouette was looming over her. There was a trace of an aroma that she recognized … some kind of aftershave.
“Hey,” the man said, with just a trace of a southern accent. “Still with us?”
“… Will?”
“Yeah.”
Gaia moved to sit up. It was a mistake to move so fast—her head began spinning, and for a second she thought she would black out again.
“Take it easy,” Will warned. “You’ve got a huge lump on your head.”
“I’m fine,” Gaia said. She was trying to sit up, but Will was in the way. She couldn’t move her feet onto the floor. “Watch out,” she told him impatiently.
“All right,” Will said agreeably. His shadow moved farther away, which was what she wanted. “Just take it easy. You’ve had a few too many.”
That’s not it, Gaia thought hopelessly. It was all coming back to her. I’ve been fighting. And I did my thing—I fainted.
It was a real setback. Had she really believed she was over this? That was a laugh. Recovering after gymnastics was different. Fighting, apparently, was another story altogether. It had been so long … when was her last fight, anyway? Her last real fight? Years ago?
It’s the adrenaline, she thought. Fighting is different from anything else. And I’d better remember that, too.
The room was coming into focus. It was small, with wooden floorboards that creaked as Will moved around and ghostly, gray shapes on either side that had to be windows.
“Where are we?” Gaia asked.
“Kelly’s house,” Will told her. He was still nearly whispering. “You remember Kelly Ray? From the bar where you—”
“Yeah.” Gaia remembered. She was sitting up, gingerly rubbing her head. She still felt dizzy, and the room was spinning still as if she hadn’t completely sobered up.
Kill Game Page 12
