Xenofreak Nation, Book Three: XIA

by Conway, Melissa

  “It’s me, Bryn. You’re having a bad dream.”

  The terror slowly faded from Mia’s face. She let out a shuddering breath and closed her eyes again. Bryn started to back away, but Mia said, “Where’s Scott?”

  “He had to work, but he sent you the info.”

  Mia pushed the blanket aside and sat up. The scrunchie holding her long black hair back had slipped down, so she pulled it off and redid the ponytail. Bryn felt a pang of envy when the silky strands fell into place without so much as a combing. Even before the quills, Bryn’s hair had looked like a bird’s nest in the morning.

  “He brought bagels and coffee, but it’s cold now,” she said. “I can wave it for you.”

  “Cold’s fine.” Mia reached for her purse and took her holophone out of a side pocket.

  Bryn brought her the bag of bagels and a cup of coffee and watched in silence as Mia wolfed down her breakfast while reading whatever Scott had sent her.

  She heard a low rumble coming from outside that increased in volume, like long, rolling thunder. She went to the window and peeked out the blinds. Below, a military tank was lumbering up the center of the street. In the light of day, she saw the building across from them had scorch marks trailing up the facade, and one corner of the second floor had been gutted.

  “The city’s locked down,” Mia muttered, shaking her head at her phone. “How am I supposed to come up with ten thousand dollars cash?”

  Bryn dropped the slat and suggested, “Leave the city?”

  Mia didn’t respond. She tapped at her holophone and set it on the cushion next to her while she pulled on her boots. The holo of an automaton dressed as a nurse appeared and said, “The patient you are attempting to reach is unavailable right now. Please leave a message-”

  Mia grabbed the phone and disconnected. “Have you heard anything about Jason?”

  Bryn shrugged. The last she’d heard, he was recovering from an arthroscopic operation to repair a broken rib that had collapsed his lung. “Not today.”

  A loud thud came from the hallway beyond the front door, followed by running footsteps. Whoever it was began to bang on something, presumably another door, calling out, “Craig! It’s me, open the door!”

  Bryn exchanged a glance with Mia and went to the door to look out the peephole.

  A guy in a black hoodie stood across the hall, his hands flat against the neighbor’s door.

  “Lemme in, man!” He looked down the hallway and even through the fisheye distortion of the peephole, she saw the panic on his face. He shot off in the opposite direction and a moment later she heard multiple footfalls. Several figures ran past. One of them held a baseball bat.

  Bryn backed away from the door. “They’re chasing him. Should we call 911?”

  “And tell them what?” Mia asked. “Probably get a busy signal anyways.”

  Bryn knew she was right, but the response seemed wrong coming from the woman who’d defiantly told Maddy Singh, “I’m a doctor; I can’t walk away from someone who needs help.”

  From the hallway, a man yelled, “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” The menacing glee in his voice gave Bryn the chills. She went to the closet to search for Scott’s backup gun, but he must have taken it with him.

  She was afraid to look through the peephole in case the men in the hallway could see her eye, but she also couldn’t just stand around doing nothing. With trepidation, she tiptoed back to the door just in time to see a large man slam his shoulder against the neighbor’s door. He was joined by another man and together they kicked and kicked until the doorframe splintered.

  Mia whispered, “What’s happening?”

  Bryn shot her a warning look and shook her head. The men rushed into the apartment and from the sound of it, began tossing things around. No one cried out for help, so she hoped whoever lived there wasn’t home.

  She relaxed a bit, thinking since the men didn’t find their quarry, they would move on, but then the big man came back out into the hallway and turned his determined gaze towards Scott’s door.

  “Oh, no,” she breathed, backing away.

  “I know you’re in there, xenoscum!” the man called.

  Bryn swallowed spasmodically. Scott had a sturdy bolt lock, but the neighbor’s doorframe had buckled with only a few kicks.

  Mia got off the couch and rushed over. She stood in front of the door and began coughing loudly, like she was hacking up a lung. In the current climate of paranoia, the implication was clear: this was a sick house.

  Then in a voice that shook querulously like an old woman, Mia asked, “Who is it?”

  Bryn heard the men arguing amongst themselves in furious whispers. She took a chance and peeked out. Two of the men were walking away, not willing to take the chance, but the big man and his friend with the baseball bat stood facing Scott’s door stubbornly.

  The first kick took her by surprise, and she sprang back from the door. Mia darted into the kitchen after the second kick and opened a drawer, pulling out a steak knife. Bryn ran to the couch as the men continued their assault on the door. She picked up Mia’s holophone and whispered, “What’s the passcode?” Mia told her, and she entered it before accessing the camera feature. When the doorframe finally buckled and the men shoved their way inside, Bryn held up the holophone in a desperate gambit and took their picture with a bright flash. She tapped at the screen and said, “There! Sent! You won’t get away with this!”

  The men were dressed alike in heavy plaid shirts, dirty jeans and scuffed work boots as if they’d come straight from a construction site. Even from ten feet away, Bryn smelled the stale alcohol wafting off them.

  The younger one pointed at Bryn with the baseball bat. “I know you.”

  “You know who I am, but you don’t know me,” she replied. “Now get out.”

  The older man swung his head around to look at Mia. “I knew you was fakin’ it. You ain’t no sick old lady.”

  “I’m also not a xeno,” Mia said.

  A spark of interest appeared in the man’s eyes. “Prove it.”

  Bryn knew what he meant. He might as well have said, “Strip.”

  While the men were distracted watching Mia to see how she would react, Bryn took a chance and dialed 911. To her chagrin, the holo of an automaton dressed in a police uniform popped up and said, “Emergency Services are overwhelmed with calls at the moment. Please leave a detailed message with your location and the nature of the emergency...”

  As the message feature activated with a beep, the younger man stomped over and lifted the bat. Bryn pressed ‘end’ before he could smash it out of her hands. He held the bat suspended over his shoulder, rotating it like he was debating whether to hit her anyway.

  “Why didn’t you get it taken off?” He looked at her quills, upper lip lifted in disgust.

  Bryn didn’t think there was anything she could say to save herself, but she tried honesty. “The surgeons couldn’t remove it because of the nanoneurons. They were afraid it would kill me.”

  He snorted. “So? I’d rather be dead.”

  For a moment, it looked like he was going to swing the bat and ‘solve’ Bryn’s problem for her, but Mia stopped him by saying, “The man you’re looking for is in the bedroom. He asked us to hide him, but we don’t want any trouble.”

  Mia may not have convinced the big man with her sick old lady routine, but this time he smiled and started for the bedroom door. “That’s more like it.”

  The last thing Bryn expected was for the man with the bat to follow his friend into the bedroom, but he did, leaving Bryn and Mia alone. They didn’t stand around waiting to see what would happen – Bryn grabbed Mia’s purse from the coffee table and they bolted out the front door.

  Chapter Four

  Scott found Tina Lo waiting for him at headquarters.

  “How you feeling?” she asked.

  “I’m good. You?”

  “Still sore, but the doc cleared me for duty, which doesn’t necessarily mean I’m f
it for duty.”

  Scott nodded in understanding. The XIA had been forced to test all of its employees to ensure none of them were carriers of the super typhoid. Calling in sick for anything else was not an option.

  They geared up and took Lo’s assigned car. She wanted to stake out the café where the messages from the jacker named ‘Savvy’ had come from, but Scott convinced her the proximity to the Warehouse was too much of a coincidence to be ignored.

  He hadn’t been to the neighborhood since the day the Warehouse burned to the ground. Whatever remained of the structure after the fire had been bulldozed into a big jagged pile, and the old chain link fence had been replaced. Despite the new fence and the off-putting heap of jagged refuse, it seemed the homeless had not been entirely discouraged from inhabiting the place. A few tents had been set up on the dirt-covered concrete slab, but it was apparent the bulk of the Warehouse’s formerly bustling xenofreak presence had moved on.

  Lo parked by an opening someone had cut in the fence and they got out of the sedan. It was another clear day, a bit warmer than yesterday, but still chilly.

  “What’s that smell?” she asked, putting a hand to her nose.

  He smiled, remembering when Bryn had asked him the same thing and he’d told her, “That’s just us xenofreaks.”

  “They used to manufacture chemicals here,” he said. Then he ducked through the opening in the fence and walked to where the front of the building had been, watching his step. The ground was littered with broken glass, chunks of crumbling cement and bits of rusty metal. “This was the entrance to the parking garage.” The bulldozer had been busy here, too, filling the underground tunnel with debris.

  “It’s completely blocked off,” Lo said.

  Cautiously, they approached the nearest tent. He called, “Hey there! Anyone home?”

  No one responded. The front flap was zipped closed, but it was a sheer screen, and a quick glance inside told them it was unoccupied. They went to the next tent, which was also empty, as was the next.

  “They must be out scavenging or panhandling or something,” Lo said.

  “Maybe, but the tents are exactly alike and there’s nothing inside them.” He touched the dark material of the third tent. He’d seen the same stuff strung between the rebar poles at Edgemere. “I think this is solar fabric.”

  “Not in the average homeless person’s budget.”

  He examined the ground around the tent. The concrete slab that made up the floor of the former Warehouse was covered with a layer of dirt a couple inches deep in some places. He nudged the dirt with the toe of his boot. “Look at that.”

  There was a wire attached to one corner of the tent. Someone had made an attempt to bury it, but he bent down, gave it a good tug and it popped out of the ground. That wire and the wires coming off the other tents were connected to a thicker wire. He pulled the thick wire out of the ground and followed it to the central pile of rubble, Lo trailing behind him. The wire disappeared into a seemingly impenetrable wall of debris. “Fournier’s facility was directly below us,” he said. “This pile is situated right over the elevator shaft.”

  At its center, the pile was twice as high as Scott was tall, and it covered maybe as much ground as an Olympic-sized swimming pool. He took out his holophone and walked all around it, getting a good holo to send to the techs back at headquarters. After he fired that off, he and Lo got closer, inspecting the rubble for any openings. Most of it was broken brick and concrete interspersed with battered panels of aluminum roofing, but he also recognized bits of tile from the showers and the tortured remains of the fence that had separated him from the crowd during grease fights.

  His holophone buzzed. It was one of the techs. Scott had never managed to remember their names, but the phone said this one was ‘Bob.’

  “That was fast,” Scott said.

  “Your op’s got priority. If you look up at the top of that heap, you’ll see there’s a satellite dish pointed in the direction of the café. Looks like the perp converted it into an antenna to extend his range and tap into the wifi holospot. It’s old school, but effective.”

  “Yeah, but where is he?” Lo asked. “No way he’s inside that mountain of concrete.”

  Scott said, “Not inside, but maybe under. There were four ways in and out. The parking garage and elevator shaft are out, but Fournier had two escape tunnels. Bob, can you check the report to see what happened to them?”

  “Yeah, hold on...it looks like the short tunnel collapsed on its own and the other was sealed off with an explosive charge,” the tech replied.

  When Fournier’s underground facility had been torched, Scott and the others escaped through the longer of the two tunnels, which had exited inside an office building about a quarter of a mile away.

  He stepped back from the mound to look across the empty lot towards the office building, then began to walk in that direction. “Just one charge? Can you confirm the tunnel was not only sealed off, but collapsed all along its length?”

  When he got about halfway to the chain link fence around the perimeter of the Warehouse property, he found a large panel of corrugated sheet metal lying on the ground.

  “Uh, that’s a negative on the confirmation,” Bob said. “They didn’t bother to collapse it.”

  “Alright. Thanks.” Scott disconnected and waved Lo over. “Look at this.”

  When she joined him, she frowned down at the oxidized sheet of metal. “Edges look sharp. Am I gonna need a tetanus booster after this?”

  “Maybe.”

  She started to bend down, but he said, “Hold on. Our guy is smart and probably paranoid. Let’s check for booby-traps first.”

  He took the flashlight off his belt and got down on the ground, lying on one side. “All right, lift up slowly.”

  Lo carefully curled her fingers around the edges and lifted the sheet with a little grunt, saying, “Ah, it’s kind of heavy, can you hurry this up?”

  Scott shone the light all around, but didn’t see any wires. He did see that his hunch paid off, though. The sheet metal concealed a hole in the ground.

  Chapter Five

  Bryn ran ahead of Mia down the hallway and yanked open the stairwell door. Just as it closed behind them, one of the men bellowed, “Git back here!”

  “Faster!” Bryn said. “We don’t have much of a lead.” With one hand on the rail, she took the steps two at a time, quickly outpacing the smaller woman. They were both wearing boots, but Mia’s heels were too high to be practical and Bryn had to slow down for her. They’d only made it to the bottom of one of the three flights they needed to descend before she heard the stairwell door crash open.

  Mia swung around to the top of the next flight, lifted one leg and hopped up onto the rail. With her arms held out for balance, she slid rapidly down, allowing Bryn to move at full speed again. They beat their pursuers to the bottom and burst out into the empty lobby.

  “How far away is your car?” Bryn asked as she opened the main door, one eye watching for the thugs on their tail.

  “Six blocks. We should split up. I’ll just slow you down.”

  “Shut up.” Bryn grabbed Mia’s hand and pulled her along.

  The street was deserted, but even if it weren’t, she doubted anyone would help them. They made it to the end of the second block when the men caught up to them.

  Bryn was scared and angry, but she felt the quills on her head lift defensively and knew she wasn’t helpless. Her quills had saved her before and she was ready and willing to use them again. Panting from exertion, she spun around to face the men. Her voice pitched high from fear, she yelled, “Leave us alone!”

  The younger man was closest. He skidded to a stop several feet away, while the larger, older man bent over and put his hands on his knees, clearly winded.

  The younger man grinned and set the tip of the bat on the ground, leaning on it casually. “I’m not afraid of you. Savvy says only one in a hundred xenofreaks are actually contagious.”

 
; Savvy. The jacker Scott was out looking for.

  Bryn doubted she could reason with these men, but her instinct was to stall. “Then why attack us? We never did anything to hurt you.”

  “Savvy says all xenofreaks are immune,” he said. “And once the contagious ones kill off the rest of us, the world will one big xenofreak show.”

  “Why don’t you get a graft to protect yourself then?” Mia asked.

  He burst out laughing and turned to his friend, who straightened up and stuck out a sausage-like finger. “One, because there’s a big-ass demand right now. Every xenosurgeon in town’s charging ten times what they usually do and we don’t got that kinda cash lying around. Two, because it’s a sin against nature. There’s a reason you’re called xenofreaks.”

  “I told you I’m not a xeno.” Mia’s tone conveyed both reasonableness and scorn. “In fact, I’m a doctor, and I’ve been working to determine the actual cause of this outbreak.”

  The smaller man chuckled. “Yeah, right. Nice try. Now why don’t we all head back to your apartment so we can talk some more?”

  “Here,” Mia took her purse from Bryn and reached inside. Bryn thought she was going to show him her identification, but instead, she pulled out a slim, clear bottle and sprayed him in the face with an antiseptic-smelling mist. Bryn didn’t wait to see what effect it had; she charged the larger man, slamming her head into his chin and neck before he could react.

  Both men cried out, but Mia’s victim was clearly in pain, while the man Bryn had stuck full of quills sounded infuriated. She tried to duck away, but his hand shot out and he clamped down on her upper arm. His grip was like a vise, but she struggled against it anyway, shouting, “Let go or I’ll poke your eyes out!”

  “I’m gonna kill you!” he shouted back.

  The man Mia sprayed had dropped the bat to cover his face with his hands. While he was busy gouging at his eyes with his thumbs, Mia grabbed the bat and whacked the man holding Bryn’s arm across his lower back. He ignored the hit, ignored the quills sticking out of his neck, too enraged to feel pain. He twisted Bryn’s arm until she thought it would break, while grabbing for Mia with his free hand. Bryn tried to knee him in the groin, but his grip forced her to bend nearly double.