“What was that?” Mia asked.
As if in answer, the creature let out another growl that escalated into an eerie, moaning yowl. The vocalizations reminded Bryn of two tom cats threatening each other in an alley. She strained her eyes, but in the low light, couldn’t see anything.
“Back away slowly and we’ll try to go around,” she whispered.
The animal continued making warning sounds as they retraced their steps through the underbrush. Whatever it was, it didn’t attack, which was good, because Bryn didn’t want to shoot it – not only because it didn’t deserve to die, but because a gunshot would attract attention.
Although her plan had been to circle around it, the terrain in that direction sloped sharply downward towards the river. Mia was in no shape to attempt the treacherous footing, especially not in her high-heeled boots. They were forced to walk parallel to the river, each step bringing them closer to where Maddy had gone. Bryn was about to suggest they stop and wait awhile, when she heard raised voices up ahead.
The last thing she wanted to do was involve herself in whatever scenario was playing out, so she grabbed Mia’s arm and pulled her down behind a bush to listen.
“Let her go.” It was Maddy.
Dundee, with his distinctive Australian accent, said, “Trade you. Him for the girl.”
Bryn didn’t need to see who he was talking about to know it was Padme. Dundee, despite the horrific-looking head wound, must have regained consciousness and somehow gotten to Maddy’s yacht. Probably, he’d planned to lie in wait for her, but instead he’d found Padme and taken her. That’s why Padme hadn’t answered her holophone the second time Maddy called.
“No,” Maddy said. “He dies today.”
“Then so does she.”
“I don’t think so.” Maddy sounded confident. “Ask him. The baby is too important.”
Bryn barely made out Fournier’s response. “Don’t kill her.”
“See?” Maddy said.
“He dies, she dies, no matter what he says.”
“Well, then,” Maddy said. “I guess we’re at an impasse.”
“For now,” Dundee replied, “but once it’s full dark, I’ll have the advantage.”
“How so?”
“I’ll still be able to see.”
Maddy said something Bryn couldn’t make out. The words were followed by a mocking chuckle from Dillo.
“Bryn,” Mia whispered, pointing towards the water. “Look.”
Through a break in the foliage, Bryn saw lights from the far shore reflecting off the water of the Hudson. Her gaze dropped to the near bank and she made out the silhouette of a dock. She couldn’t see Maddy’s outboard from this angle, but it had to be tied there.
They really didn’t have much of a choice; they had to try for the boat. Bryn was about to suggest it when Mia’s holophone rang.
“Oh, crap!” Mia fumbled in her purse to silence the phone, but it was too late.
“I recognize that ring-tone!” Maddy called. “Show yourselves, ladies.”
Chapter Thirty-four
“Come on…pick up.” Alton drummed his fingers on the arm of his seat, staring intently at Scott’s holophone.
They were on the water now, traveling north up the Hudson River towards the coordinates Mia had sent them. They’d started out on the highway, but ran into a traffic jam as people left the beleaguered city in droves. Lo had exited at the next available off-ramp and taken side roads to the river. At the first opportunity, she’d driven into the water and switched to amphibious mode. They were camouflaged and headed upstream at maximum speed, but to Scott, it felt like they were dogpaddling.
He fidgeted with the straps of his bullet-proof vest. Underneath it, his shirt was damp and his wounds itched like crazy, but he didn’t want to take it off in case things suddenly started happening. When Mia’s holophone went to message, he disconnected, irritated and apprehensive. It didn’t help that Alton kept drumming his fingers. Then he asked no one in particular, “Why didn’t she answer?” which got on Scott’s already frayed nerves. Before he could stop himself, he snapped, “What are you so worried about?”
“Huh?”
“You do know that whatever happened between you and Bryn wasn’t real, right? She couldn’t help it.”
Alton gave him a look filled with derision. “Back off, kid. I’m not into her.”
“Good.” Scott was relieved, but gave Alton a warning look anyway.
Lo expelled a loud sigh. “If you boys are done marking your territory, you should see this.”
Ever since they’d entered the water, she and Boardman had been flipping through news channels on the holoprojector embedded in the UAAV’s dash. The city was still under siege by its own residents. Despite the presence of the National Guard, day three of the riots showed no sign of abating. The violence, initially directed at xenofreaks, had inflamed existing antagonisms between inner city ethnic groups. Looting, assault and arson were rampant.
Lo turned up the volume. A male reporter was saying, “…and the backlash has flooded the interweb with government conspiracy messages. A spokesperson for the National Library of Medicine confirms the hack, but refutes the validity of the leaked information.”
The holo changed to a shot of a man in a business suit standing in front of a tall brick building. The words, “Alain Mehta, National Library of Medicine,” scrolled across the bottom of the holo.
“What the public needs to understand,” Mehta said in a thick Indian accent, “is that we only accept biomedical research that has been thoroughly investigated and evaluated by professional medical journals. We have stringent guidelines, and not all information submitted for inclusion in our database is acceptable for release to the public. From what I understand, the studies in question were all completed by rogue bioengineers and surgeons.”
Scott met Alton’s eyes. “Savvy,” they said in unison.
“What about him?” Boardman asked.
“He’s the one who hacked the Library of Medicine, on Fournier’s orders,” Scott said. “Whatever those studies were about, Fournier really wanted them out there.”
“You missed the first part,” Lo said. “The studies allegedly proved xenos are immune to stuff.”
Scott noticed she said ‘allegedly’ with some sarcasm. Among the xenofreak community, it was common knowledge they rarely got sick.
“You know, that’s why I got my graft.” Lo had never talked about it before, but he’d heard her graft was a simple porcine strip across her chest to cover the scars of a double mastectomy.
“I had breast cancer.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. “It was pretty aggressive and I wasn’t given much hope, but I fought it anyway. Then I met a woman in therapy who told me there were a whole bunch of survivors who swore their cancer didn’t come back because they’d gotten grafted. My doctor was furious when I asked him about it. Said there were a lot of unethical people out there who made a living preying on desperate cancer patients. But I did it anyway, a few weeks after the mastectomy.”
She lifted a hand. “And here I am, two years later, cancer free.”
Mia would call Lo’s story a ‘testimonial,’ something that didn’t hold a lot of weight with doctors. Just the other day, Mia had been scanning through research abstracts and told Scott she’d been unable to corroborate what he and Shasta told her about xeno immunity. She’d called him paranoid when he’d commented that the research she was looking at had all been funded by pharmaceutical companies that profited from the sale of drugs to sick people. When he’d asked her how many studies on xenos the government had funded, she’d replied, “Medical research funding isn’t allocated on a whim. What reason would the government have to study xenos?”
He’d been distracted from answering, but at the time, she wouldn’t have taken him seriously anyway. It wasn’t until she spent a night in vigil over the sickbeds of several people infected with the super typhoid – all of whom died, while not one xeno in the community even got
sick – that she’d accepted the truth.
Not that Scott had ever heard xenografts protected against cancer. He thought it was limited to things like the flu – human illnesses that didn’t occur in animals. He had a simplistic understanding of how xenografting worked, but knew it was more than just the merging of animal flesh with human. The donor animals were bioengineered so the human immune system wouldn’t recognize the implant or graft as foreign, but clearly something else had happened, something the bioengineers hadn’t intended. He flexed his cougar claws, thinking his donor had given him more than just the ability to blend in as an undercover officer.
As if she hadn’t just revealed something very personal about herself, Lo switched the holo to a topography map of the Hudson River. “This is our destination, but the bank is too steep for the UAAV to make land.” She switched the map to satellite view. “There’s a small dock, or was last year when these photos were taken. I think we should head for it.
“And look at this.” A wave of her hand and the UAAV’s radar holo was displayed. “That vessel up ahead appears to be anchored right off shore. Boardman thinks it’s Maddy Singh’s yacht.”
“If the yacht’s still there, Maddy’s not on it,” Scott said.
“No, she definitely wouldn’t stick around if she got the upper hand,” Lo agreed. “It might be a good idea to pay the yacht a little visit.”
“Disable it?” Scott grinned. “I like the way you think.”
Alton started drumming his fingers again. “How long ‘til we get there?”
Boardman made a fist and scratched his chin with the alligator hide covering his knuckles. “ETA ten minutes.”
Ten minutes.
Scott and Alton loaded their guns, restocked on ammunition, and inserted earbugs to stay in contact with Lo and Boardman. They wouldn’t have the same level of tech support for this op, but Lo pointed out the UAAV had some useful gizmos they hadn’t had a chance to use last time. They’d already discussed the possible scenarios that might greet them when they arrived. Scott fingered the smooth casing on his last grenade, thinking if Bryn was dead, he’d take great pleasure stuffing it in the mouth of her killer.
He sat back in his seat, and then leaned forward when his back started itching again. He saw her in his mind’s eye, standing in the doorway of the bathroom with the light behind her, wearing only a towel and a shy smile. She’d been so relaxed and content, a far cry from the girl who’d gotten her first good look at Nicola today. What a shock that must have been, to see her dead mother’s face.
He knew how she felt. The first time he’d seen Nicola, it had been obvious she’d been created from the same genetic material as his adopted sister May. Fournier had cloned them both, but Scott didn’t know how close in age they were. Fournier had made mistakes with May, though; mistakes that ultimately took her life at a young age.
A tone from the dash pulled him from his reverie. Lo brought up a holo of Shasta. She was in the surveillance van, gripping the steering wheel, a deep furrow between her brows.
With her customary brusqueness, she asked, “Where are you?”
“A few minutes out,” Lo said. “Where are you?”
Shasta shook her head, lips thin with anger or impatience or both. “I got hold of Deputy Director Unger. He decided to drive up from D.C. with Congressman Abbott instead of getting on his flight. He and the congressman are stuck in the Holland Tunnel. That whole area around Poppy’s Pier is overrun with rioters.”
“You want us there?” Boardman asked.
Scott’s breath caught in his throat until Shasta responded, “No, stay the course. I’m not going to be able monitor you, but you should know I checked local police scanners and there’ve been reports of exotic animals on the loose out there, so keep an eye out.”
“Exotic how?” Boardman asked.
“Large and dangerous.”
Lo flipped a switch and thrust the gearshift forward to slow the vehicle. “We’re here.”
“Good luck.”
As Shasta’s holo faded away, Lo said, “Pulling up to the dock’s going to be tricky. The UAAV doesn’t have bumpers and I don’t want to damage the camouflage panels, so I’m going to get close and you guys are going to have to jump.”
Chapter Thirty-five
Maddy had ordered them out of hiding, but Bryn had no intention of complying. It wasn’t as if Maddy could walk away from the standoff she’d gotten herself into. In fact, as long as neither Maddy nor Dundee took action to end the stalemate, Bryn and Mia should be able to get to the dock. They didn’t have keys to the outboard, but with any luck, they could untie it and simply float downstream until they’d gotten far enough away to call Scott back.
It was a theory that had a lot of potential holes in it, but it was all Bryn could come up with.
“We should try for the dock,” she whispered.
“Okay,” Mia whispered back.
They began to make their way towards the water. There was probably a path, but they definitely weren’t on it. Bryn went first and tried to protect Mia from branches and help her past the roughest footing. After several yards, she heard something behind them that made her stop and drop into a crouch again, pulling Mia down into a thicket and hissing, “Shhh!”
Another sound, like that of a boot scraping on rock, alerted her to the fact that someone was coming. She knew it wasn’t Maddy or Dundee, because they continued to threaten each other.
“There’s two of us and one of you,” Maddy said. “Shoot her, and I guarantee you’ll hit the ground before she does.”
“I won’t need to shoot her,” Dundee retorted. “You shoot him and she’s my shield as I take you and your man out.”
Bryn thought their verbal sparring would be almost comical if they weren’t deadly serious. As it was, their conversation drew the newcomers away from Bryn and Mia. She saw them through the branches of the thicket, three figures moving stealthily towards Maddy. The lead man held a large weapon, like a machinegun, only with what looked like an oxygen tank attached to it. They had to be Fournier’s men. Curtis would have told them his version of what happened, and Bryn’s best guess was that they were extremely pissed off and looking for vengeance.
There was nothing for her to do but keep moving. She tugged on Mia’s sleeve and headed down the slope toward the water again, probing the ground with each step to test her footing before shifting her weight. It was steep in places, and she was forced to walk sideways for traction, wincing each time a twig snapped or dried leaves crunched underfoot. Despite the cold, she felt a trickle of sweat work its way down the middle of her back.
When she and Mia were maybe twenty feet from the dock, she saw there were two boats moored there, one on either side of it. The first she recognized as Maddy’s outboard, but the second was a much-larger aluminum fishing boat that probably belonged to Fournier. Dundee wouldn’t have had keys to Maddy’s outboard either, so he must have used the fishing boat to get to the yacht. Maybe his goal had been to lie in wait for her. Instead, he’d found Padme.
Bryn paused behind the last of the bushes. The next stretch would bring them out in the open, where it was more than likely they’d be seen from the path. Dillo would still have a gun to Fournier’s head, while Dundee presumably had one to Padme’s. Maddy was the wildcard. If she saw Bryn and Mia about to take off in her outboard, there was a good chance she’d shoot.
Bryn tightened her cold fingers around the grip of Fournier’s gun. If Maddy fired at her, she would sure as hell fire back, but there was a good chance she wouldn’t need to – not with Fournier’s men closing in.
“Ready?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah,” Mia said, but then she gasped. “What’s that?”
Bryn saw it, too. A vertical line of light had appeared out of nowhere at the end of the dock. It started out tall and narrow, but widened rapidly, like some kind of science fiction portal opening into another world. Two figures jumped out onto the dock. Even with the light behind them, Bryn r
ecognized Scott and Jason. Of course it wasn’t a portal; they’d arrived in the same nearly invisible vehicle they’d used to capture Lupus.
Before the relief of seeing Scott could take root in her heart, the light disappeared and all hell broke loose.
Chapter Thirty-six
Of all the scenarios Scott and the others had anticipated, taking fire the instant they made land was the one he least expected, but here they were dodging bullets not three seconds after their boots hit the dock. They were exposed and vulnerable, but other than attempting to jump back into the moving UAAV or diving into the frigid river, their only choice was to drop flat against the rough wood planking of the dock. Scott’s instinct was to return fire, but Bryn might be close and he didn’t want to shoot indiscriminately. Behind him, he heard the nearly silent engine of the UAAV whine as Lo maneuvered it away from the dock.
If things had begun smoothly, the plan had been for Lo and Boardman to check out Maddy’s yacht while he and Alton scouted Fournier’s property. Now, however, Lo would be forced to reveal the UAAV’s presence in order to aid them.
Her voice sounded in his ear, “About to light the night.”
She’d warned them the high-intensity spotlight installed in the roof of the UAAV would temporarily blind them if they looked at it, so he resolutely faced forward. When the light clicked on, its white shaft illuminated the wispy mist rising from the river like a laser beam, and the spot lit up a wide section of the vegetation as if it were noon on a cloudless summer day. Now he could see there were two boats tied to the dock. He recognized Maddy’s outboard on one side, and on the other was a fishing boat like the one his grandfather used to have.
With the bright light, the shooting stopped, and he and Alton took advantage of their assailants’ momentary disorientation to scramble to their feet and thunder down the dock.
Xenofreak Nation, Book Three: XIA Page 14
