“Open up,” Gaia yelled.
No answer.
With a surge of effort Gaia took a running leap and banged her body laterally against the door. There was a crunching, smashing sound and the door collapsed inward, its hinges giving way. Gaia regained her balance and rushed forward into the room. She could hear Will on the stairs behind her calling her name.
She was standing in a small, one-room apartment. Wind was blowing through it, thanks to the door she’d smashed open. The room’s two inhabitants were looking at her, their eyes wide with surprise and fear.
Kelly Ray was sitting on a footstool by the window. Her honey brown hair was pulled back into a characteristic ponytail.
Jack, the bartender, was standing over her. He was twisted in place, staring at Gaia as if she were mad. The object in his hand was a cordless telephone.
“Leave her alone,” Gaia yelled, running forward, grabbing Jack by the shirtfront and throwing him against the wall. “Leave her alone, asshole.”
“Gaia?” Kelly yelled in confusion, leaping to her feet. “Gaia, honey, what are you doing?”
“You son of a bitch,” Gaia told Jack, slamming him back against the wall. “You remember me, right? I beat the crap out of your friends and I’ll do the same thing to you.”
“Yeah, I remember you,” Jack said, squinting down at her. “Lady, you got this all wrong. Let go of me, will you? Or you’ll get hurt.”
“You’re the one who’s getting hurt,” Gaia insisted. She could hear Will coming into the room behind her. The light from the window was illuminating all the sawdust in the air from the smashed door. “How dare you threaten Kelly?”
“He wasn’t threatening me,” Kelly insisted, trying to get ahold of Gaia’s shoulder. “Please, Gaia—let him go!”
“I’m not letting anyone go,” Gaia insisted. She knew about battered women, how they walked around disguising their bruises behind sunglasses, always insisting that nothing had happened, that it was their fault—and how some of them kept insisting the same thing all their short lives, all the way into an early grave.
“You let go of me right now,” Jack said quietly, his scotchscented breath in Gaia’s face, “or I’m pressing charges. I’ll call that damn base of yours and have you all subpoenaed and worse. You’ll be buying me a new apartment door, and that’s just for starters.”
Gaia’s head was spinning. It was the adrenaline—suddenly she felt like she might faint again, as she had the night before. No, she thought weakly. Not now. Not until I figure this out.
“Gaia, we were just having an argument,” Kelly said angrily. “Jack wanted his two-week bonus early; that’s all.”
“Gaia,” Will said urgently. His hands were clamped powerfully on her shoulders from behind, and he was gently but firmly pulling her away from Jack. “Gaia, we have to go right now.”
“You got that right,” Jack muttered as Gaia’s hands finally slipped off him.
“Sir, ma’am,” Wü1 said, as smoothly as he could, “clearly this has been a terrible mistake. Let me apologize right now for my friend here. I’m sure we can straighten all this out amicably.”
What’s going on? Gaia thought miserably. She still felt light-headed, but she was riding it out—the moment when she was afraid she’d black out had passed. Oh, Jesus, what kind of mistake did I make now?
Jack was leaning on the wall, getting his breath back. He pointed furiously at his own broken apartment door. “Get out,” he said. “Get out as fast as you can, or you’ll be in even more trouble than you already are.”
Gaia couldn’t think of a thing to say. She darted her eyes back and forth between Kelly and Jack and then turned wordlessly and let Will lead her through the cloud of sawdust and out of the room.
My God, this is bad, Gaia thought weakly. It was just beginning to sink in what a catastrophe had been created. This is just so bad.
What have I done?
controlled artificial reality
A FREAKING MESS
It’s not signed, Gaia thought. They haven’t signed it yet.
She was standing at attention, facing Special Agent Malloy, who sat behind his big, bare oak desk. Jennifer Bishop was beside him at the edge of the desk, her legs crossed. Between them was a single sheet of paper. From where she stood, Gaia could see what it was, even reading upside down.
Trainee Expulsion Form, it said in bold type, below an FBI seal. There were open spaces at the bottom of the page, where Malloy’s secretary had typed the agents’ names.
Agent Bishop had a thick fountain pen in her right hand—she was fiddling with it as she looked over the form and then returned her gaze to the carpeted floor. She had avoided Gaia’s eyes completely.
She doesn’t want to look at me.
Out the window, behind Agent Malloy, the sky was thickly clouded and menacing. A rainstorm was on its way. In the far distance, beyond the gravel and concrete courts that bounded the back edge of Administration Wing A, the dark trees were tossing in the wind. The only sound in the room was the drone of the air-conditioning. Since she’d entered the room, nobody had spoken.
I’ve got to talk them out of this, Gaia thought insistently. She was having a hard time keeping herself still as the two agents sat there, maddeningly silent, looking at the expulsion form. I’ve got to make some kind of argument before they sign that form.
“Agent Bishop,” Gaia said.
Bishop slowly raised her eyes from the form and looked back at Gaia. She looked very upset. It was as if the woman’s most pessimistic view of human nature had been proven correct; that the innocent hopes she’d nurtured had been dashed to the ground.
“Agent Bishop-ma’am, I’d like a chance to explain this.”
Neither agent spoke. Finally Bishop put down her pen. It clicked against the desk.
“Go ahead.”
Bishop didn’t sound very enthusiastic. Gaia forced herself to return the woman’s ice-cold gaze. “Ma’am, I’m not—I’m not sure you understand the circumstances of what happened. See, we were—Will and I—”
Start over. Make sense. Talk like an agent—in straight lines.
Gaia took a breath. “Ma’am, Mr. Taylor and I believed we were following a clue in the game. We had good reason to believe that part of the game took place off the Quantico base. The test at Montano’s steak house, the speech you made about how the rules changed all the time—all of this led us to believe that the clay we saw—the red clay outside that building—was a clue in the Hogan’s Alley game.”
“Go on,” Bishop said.
“Ma’am, after staking out the building, I saw what I believed was the game’s next crime in progress. We saw what looked like an assault of some kind through the window. So then we—”
“A crime that didn’t in any way fit the profile of the killler you and your teammates were pursuing,” Bishop interrupted impatiently. “A crime that happened to be taking place right in front of you, involving a ‘weapon’ you couldn’t see and a tenuous line of evidentiary reasoning at best.”
“But—”
“No, go on,” Bishop snapped. Gaia began to realize just how angry she was. “I want to hear about what you did next. I want to hear about the ‘procedure’ you followed. How you didn’t call for backup, how you didn’t identify yourself, how you didn’t discuss your mode of entry with your partner or in any way coordinate your efforts to stop the ‘crime’ in progress.” Bishop pointed at the wall. “Back in my office, I’ve got Will Taylor’s report. He does his noble best to deflect blame away from you, but it’s quite clear what happened. Do you want to read his report, or would we be wasting our time?”
“Ma’am, I was convinced that every second counted,” Gaia insisted. She was looking at Bishop, but she could feel Malloy’s eyes boring into her like drills. “I thought that a woman was being attacked, and I didn’t like—”
“For an FBI agent that’s routine,” Bishop said angrily. “Moving fast is part of the job. But it never means you get to br
eak the rules. You broke into a private residence, unarmed, with no badge or shield, with no warrant, without identifying yourself, without questioning the suspects, without following FBI procedure in any way. And all this after a specific, direct warning about your behavior. All because you didn’t like what you thought an innocent man was doing to an innocent woman.”
All true, Gaia thought hopelessly.
Bishop sighed. Out the window behind her, as Gaia watched, the first few drops of rain hit the window. The air-conditioning was very cold.
“The game,” Bishop finished quietly, unscrewing the cap from her fountain pen, “is a controlled artificial reality—a simplified environment. If you can’t behave like an FBI agent in my game, how can you be expected to do it in the real world? In the real world your actions have real consequences—and with this unprovoked assault you’ve created a bureaucratic and legal mess that I and other members of the FBI will have to go to great pains to straighten out. The bureau could even be sued.”
There was nothing Gaia could say—nothing she could do except stand there and watch Jennifer Bishop sign her name on the expulsion form. The scratching of the fountain pen was very loud.
Please don’t, Gaia thought plaintively. Please don’t do this to me.
She remembered that day in Palo Alto—the crowd along the edge of the roof, applauding. Before she’d met any of these people, before Catherine and Will and Agent Malloy and Hogan’s Alley and Quantico. It seemed like so long ago.
Bishop finished signing her name. The second line—where Malloy would add his own signature—remained blank. Without looking at Gaia, Bishop slid the sheet of paper and the pen across the desk to Special Agent Malloy.
“Jenny,” Malloy said, looking down at the page, “this means continuing with only nineteen trainees. Would you want to keep the teams as they are?”
“I don’t see an alternative,” Bishop said quietly, looking at the floor. Once again she seemed unwilling to make eye contact with Gaia. “Lau, Sanders, and Taylor can continue as a team. I’d recommend staying with the current configuration until the game ends.”
Malloy nodded. Gaia was struck by his attitude. All the time she’d been waiting outside his office after the summons had come, she had expected Agent Malloy to be angry. But this was worse. He was quiet, resigned—almost sad.
“Thank you, Agent Bishop,” Malloy said. “That will be all.”
It took Gaia a moment to realize what Malloy meant—that he was asking Bishop to leave. Bishop didn’t seem to get it either: there was a pause while Malloy’s words sank in, and then she quickly rose to her feet. She looked at Gaia sharply and then looked away, as if she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Malloy waited while Bishop crossed the room, and they both heard her open the office door, walk out, and pull the door loudly shut. He was staring down at the expulsion form. Finally he looked up.
“I want to show you something,” Malloy said quietly.
In the window’s dim light the lines around his face seemed sharply drawn, as if carved in stone. As Gaia watched, he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a thick, heavy folder the size of a telephone book. He dropped it on the desk, where it thumped loudly. A red paper ribbon around the file said Quantico Code X—Director Only. On the folder’s front panel was a seal that Gaia recognized instantly, even upside down—an ornate shield with three letters across it.
CIA.
“Agent Bishop doesn’t know about this,” Malloy told Gaia, tapping the massive folder. “This is the result of extensive interbureau communication and cooperation—of two separate trips I took to Langley, Virginia, to visit CIA headquarters … of meetings with Martin Rodriguez and with a well-respected exagent named Thomas Moore.”
Dad, Gaia thought.
“You were never just another trainee,” Malloy went on. He had folded his hands on the desk. “Even on that rooftop in Palo Alto, we knew exactly who you were. The FBI can’t put together an operation like the Kevin Bender arrest without finding out everything about the suspect in question. When we fed your name into our computers, we got a lot of information back. Once you were on our list of potential trainees, we realized that we had a very special situation—with a very special trainee.”
Gaia was struggling to absorb what Malloy was telling her. Out the window the rain was spattering against the building, louder and louder as the storm began. Does that mean he knows all about me? she thought. Everything about me?
“The CIA and the FBI have agreed,” Malloy went on, “that a person with your capabilities and skills could be placed on what we call a ‘fast track’—an accelerated program that would lead to rapid deployment as a full agent. All you had to do”—Malloy sighed heavily rubbing his eyes—“was finish the training program.”
“Fast track to agent”—Gaia could barely believe what she was hearing. A special arrangement just for her, and as suddenly as she’d learned about it, it was gone.
“I didn’t—” Gaia took a deep breath. She was imagining her father and Agent Malloy talking about her. It had happened more than once. There had been meetings about her. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t know,” Malloy snapped. “You weren’t supposed to know. All you needed to know was that you were one of my trainees. I warned you—I told you exactly what the rules were. Now you’ve done exactly what you promised me in this office that you would never do. And now I have to get on the phone to Virginia and tell them that I played our hunch as far as it would go, and it was a bum steer.”
My God, Gaia thought weakly. I’ve made such a freaking mess. She stared back at Malloy, and she couldn’t stop a tear from running from her eye onto her cheek. I’ve got to say something, she thought. I’ve got to stop him from doing this.
But there was nothing to say.
“Crying won’t help,” Malloy said harshly. “Weakness isn’t the answer or appealing to others to save you. Nobody else can solve your problems—only you. I thought you knew that. I’m sorry to see that I’m wrong.”
As Gaia watched, Malloy unscrewed the cap of the fountain pen and wrote out his name on the blank line below Bishop’s signature. Gaia watched him write every letter.
I’m fine, Gaia tried to convince herself. I’ve handled worse than this. This is nothing. This is just a moment in my life. I’m fine.
But Gaia had no idea where she would go now. She would never go back to New York. She didn’t want to go back to California, not really. What she wanted, more than anything else, was just to stay in Quantico.
“You’re dismissed, Ms. Moore,” Malloy said formally. Gaia could hear thunder in the distance. He turned back to her, the lines in his face seeming more pronounced. “I’ll expect you off the Quantico campus by the end of the day.”
HER OLD LIFE
At four-thirty, an hour after her final meeting with Agents Bishop and Malloy, Gaia was sitting outside. She was down on the cement ground, crouched against the outer wall of the dorm building around the corner from the building’s main door. The rain was coming down all around, splashing in the gravel and making shallow pools across the concrete pavement, pools that reflected the threatening sky. Where she was sitting, her back against the rough, damp concrete wall of the building, she was sheltered from the rain by an overhanging metal eave—but just barely. Her hair was wet and tangled, and dark rainwater stains were spreading through the gray sweatpants she had on. She was also wearing her running shoes, although she didn’t quite remember when she’d put them on.
I came outside to go running, Gaia remembered dully. It didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t just sit in the dorm and let Catherine find me.
As it was, Catherine would find her bags. Gaia had packed very quickly, shoving everything into her suitcases and duffel bags. She had considered leaving a note for Catherine but hadn’t done it. What would she say? Good luck with the game? Hope you have a nice life in the FBI? She had no idea.
Lightning flickered in the sky, and Gaia found herself automatica
lly counting the seconds until the rumble of thunder. It was something she’d always done since she was a little girl. It was soothing somehow—a memory of earlier in her life. Maybe that was why she’d pulled on sweatpants and sneakers; she realized that in her misery, she was reliving old habits from her old life, years ago, in New York.
Gaia had looked at the train schedules, but she didn’t know where she wanted to go. The best thing was to head toward Ohio, at least initially. She’d gone ahead and made the reservation, putting it on her credit card, but she wasn’t sure where she’d end up.
“Here you are.” A familiar voice came through the rain. Male, with a southern accent.
Gaia looked up and saw Will moving across the courtyard toward her. He was wearing a Nautica windbreaker, which he had pulled up over his head to shield himself from the pouring rain. It wasn’t working—the rain had darkened his buzzed blond hair.
“None of us could find you,” Will said.
Go away, Gaia thought.
This time he wasn’t able to read her mind the way he had before. Will dropped down onto the ground beside her.
“Will,” Gaia began, “I don’t want to—”
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Will said angrily. “Are you crazy?”
“Yeah,” Gaia said dully. “I’m crazy. You nailed it.”
“I saw you doing it and I couldn’t believe it. Why would you throw all this away? Why, Gaia?”
Because I’m not whole, she thought helplessly. Because I’m incomplete—I always was. Because I’m not as strong as any of you. I thought I was, but I’m not.
“I don’t know,” she said finally.
The rain came down, harder than before.
“Look on the bright side, Will,” she told him. His face was dripping with rainwater, and she wanted to brush it away, but she didn’t move. “Now you’re the best. Nobody to compete with anymore.”
Kill Game Page 17
