For a brief, panicked moment, Bryn thought he meant Scott. But Kareem scowled and said, “He had a wolf face.”
Lupus had been shot. Bryn met Carla’s eyes, pleading. “Scott wouldn’t take him to a hospital, right?”
“Right,” Carla said cautiously.
“What if Scott’s in danger?” Bryn asked. “What if Padme is setting him up for something?”
“Oh, no,” Carla said, throwing her hands in the air. “They’ll kill me if I tell you where the clinic is.”
Kareem had been so polite and mild thus far that it surprised Bryn when he pulled a gun from his waistband.
He said, “And I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
Chapter Forty-six
The force of Padme’s kiss pushed Scott’s head against the back of the office chair. Her cow ears swung forward and brushed his cheeks. He tried to stop her, but the nanoneuron program was doing one hell of a job stimulating his brain into thinking he really, really enjoyed what she was doing. She pulled away briefly to yank her shirt over her head then grabbed his hands and placed them on her back, saying in a thick voice, “Scratch me.”
Scott found himself obeying—his claws came out and he started to rake them down her exposed flesh—but an image intruded into his mind; that of Lupus hurting her that day on the couch.
He desperately did not want the pleasure to stop, but knew if it didn’t he’d be lost, so he did what he always did when a program was doing something he didn’t want—reached out and hit the escape button on the holo keypad. Immediately the intensity lessened.
“No!” Padme tried to get to the keypad, but he lifted her up, squirming and kicking, and set her down a few feet away. He blocked her way as she stood there with her small chest rising and falling under a plain white sports bra.
“You bastard,” she said, hands clenched in fury at her sides.
Scott did some very fast thinking. She was angry, but he could see that she was hurt, too. He took half a heartbeat’s time to flagellate himself for not having picked up on it before. She’d hidden her regard pretty well, though, so the blame wasn’t all on him. If he rejected her outright, there was no telling what the repercussions would be. All she had to do was lie and tell Lupus he’d attacked her, and Scott would join his predecessors in the river. He chose his line of attack carefully.
“I’m all for getting close to you, Padme, but do not mess with my brain.”
The fury evaporated, and he saw a look of tentative hope cross her face. She bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”
He picked up her shirt and handed it to her. She held it wadded up against her chest and said, “I guess I—I forgot how normal people do it.”
He knew she didn’t want his pity, but he had to keep her talking, get her mind off seducing him or he’d have to follow through. And he didn’t want to.
“What happened just then, was that my nanoneurons?” he asked.
She gave him a wan smile and pulled her shirt back on.
He looked at her monitor. “So the programming can make someone feel pleasure out of nowhere?”
“Or fear.”
“Is that what happened to Abel?” He was taking a chance bringing Abel’s death up. He had inside knowledge from Shasta that Abel died from an apparently natural death. If Fournier had activated Abel’s nanoneuron programming to flood him with fear, had that been what triggered the heart attack?
“Yes. Abel knew too much and since he hadn’t gone through Fournier’s loyalty conditioning, he was a liability.”
“Loyalty conditioning?”
She nodded. “Pavlov rang a bell every time he fed his dogs. Eventually they drooled at the sound of the bell alone. Fournier induces pleasure or fear in a subject in tandem with a stimulus. Eventually, the stimulus itself begins to produce the pleasure or fear.”
He thought about what she’d done to him and suddenly had no doubt that if he hadn’t stopped her, he’d be well on his way to drooling every time she wanted him to ring her bell.
“As mind control goes, it’s obviously not practical,” she said. “He chooses his subjects carefully because it takes some time to train them.”
Scott frowned. “Are you ‘trained?’”
“No. If I were, I’d be debilitated with fear just for telling you this.”
“Am I scheduled to undergo conditioning?”
Her face gave it away and he said, “So you tell all the subjects what’s going to happen before you brainwash them?”
A shuddering sigh escaped her. “You’re different. I care for you. I don’t want to see you become like Lupus. He was Fournier’s first subject. It took weeks to break him. He used to be a decent guy. Now his nanoneurons reward him every time he’s cruel.”
She’d once described Scott as a decent guy.
“And I’m the one responsible,” she continued, “not just because of the program I helped create, but because I have this.” She held her arms out to indicate the control room. “I can find out anything about anyone.”
“Yeah, I was pretty impressed with the stuff you dug up on the ARA.”
“I’m the one who exposed Lupus’ true identity. He did not choose to wear that wolf face. I protested and Fournier gave me to him. Made him enjoy hurting me.”
Lupus’ true identity? With blinding insight he realized there was only one thing she could mean by that. Lupus was one of the XIA agents who’d gone undercover and disappeared without a trace.
She had that look in her eye again and before she even said it, he knew what she’d been trying to tell him all along.
“I know who you are, Scott Harding.”
Chapter Forty-seven
For the second time in her life, and all within a few short months, Bryn had been kidnapped. After everything she’d been through, she found it strangely difficult to work up the proper amount of fear. She didn’t doubt that Kareem was deadly serious about getting Carla to tell him where Fournier’s secret facility was located. The weird thing was: he and Bryn had the same goal.
Kareem had taken them to a house not far from Carla’s apartment complex. It was a one-storey rambler with a stained shag carpet that smelled like dog. She knew because Kareem had taped her up; eyes, mouth, feet, and hands behind her back and left her lying on the rug facedown while he took Carla into a separate room to ‘have a little chat.’
After awhile, she heard footsteps and voices. Other people were arriving, and from the sound of it, there were quite a few of them. She caught snippets of conversation that told her the ARA was gearing up for some hard retribution. Then she heard the unmistakable sound of a woman’s muffled screams.
Suddenly the fear found her. She’d been convinced Kareem was incapable of hurting her or Carla, but she’d been wrong.
Footsteps again; someone approached and grabbed a handful of her new leather jacket, hauling her to a kneeling position. The tape over her eyes was ripped painfully away. The man in front of her wasn’t Kareem. This man was white, older, with thin lips and a piggish nose. He had purple surgical gloves on his hands, covered in blood. He held something small and red and floppy up in front of her face and said, “Recognize this?”
It was Carla’s xenograft, the mouse. Tears leaked out of Bryn’s eyes.
“I see that you do,” the man said. He yanked the bomber cap from her head and said, “You’re next if she doesn’t talk.”
He shoved her back down on the carpet and she saw him stalk through the dining area. With the tape gone, she could see the ARA soldiers now. They came in and out of a door that looked like it led to the garage. She couldn’t tell how many there were because from her vantage-point on the ground, they all looked alike. They wore mostly black, with black bullet-proof vests—just like the three who’d helped Kareem take the panda.
Occasionally, she heard raised voices from the back room. A man’s voice, deep and threatening, and Carla’s, shrill and scared. Bryn knew the chances of escape were nonexistent, but she tried to loosen the duct tape on her wrists
anyway. Kareem had taken her new holophone out of her pocket. He knew Bryn didn’t know where Fournier was, but once they decided Carla wasn’t going to tell, they’d start in on Bryn to see if that would induce Carla to talk. It was only a matter of time. Bryn had so desperately wanted her quills to be gone, but having them forcibly torn from her head was not the way she’d imagined it would happen.
She started rehearsing her pleas for mercy in her head. She’d talk about everything that had happened to her, reminding Kareem that she had never asked for the quills in the first place. She’d tell him all she’d learned about the Warehouse, about the people there. She’d tell him about Coney Island and Bluto’s and the tunnel…
The tunnel. A little while ago Carla had said Lupus wasn’t happy about the cops crawling all over the place, but they hadn’t been at Bluto’s. The crime scene tape had been on the building Nosferatu had been squatting in, the one at the other end of Bluto’s tunnel. But Carla had said Fournier put escape tunnels in all his buildings. Bryn tried to remember what else she’d said. First, she told Bryn her boyfriend Bluto owned the restaurant. Yes, she definitely said he’d put all his money into buying it, so when she’d mentioned Fournier’s tunnels, she had to have been talking about the building adjacent to Bluto’s. Did Fournier own it? If he did, the XIA, and Scott, would know about it. Unless he owned it under a different name or maybe a dummy corporation. And whatever name was on the deed of that building might also be on Fournier’s other buildings.
Kareem came into the room and knelt down next to her. His dark skin was ashen. Softly, he said, “My colleague is almost done in there. Your godmother’s not going to talk, but he thinks she’ll break once he starts in on you. To be honest, Bryn, this is turning my stomach. I’m sorry. If it weren’t so important…we’re not going to kill you, though, I promise.”
He started to get up, but she rolled to her back and tried to talk through the tape. For a second, she thought he was going to ignore her, but he stopped and bent down again. Once he gently peeled the tape away, she poured out her theory. He seemed relieved at being presented with an option other than torturing her.
He took her holophone from his pocket. “Alright. What’s the building’s address?”
Bryn had no idea. “Go to Holomaps.” It was a comprehensive national map service that showed every road and structure in the US, where a person could find out who owned almost anything, in addition to finding schematics for most existing buildings. “Check Bluto’s on Coney Island. It’s the abandoned building directly behind it.”
After a minute or so, he said, “This one?” He held the holophone out and she said, “Yes.”
“Says it’s owned by, huh, you may be onto something, ‘Best Medical Services, Corp.’ Like XBestia, only not as obvious.”
Bryn closed her eyes in relief. “Can you cross-reference it?”
“Yeah, it’s a link.” He tapped at her holophone and waited. If her hands weren’t duct-taped together, she would have crossed her fingers.
He let out short whistle. “The company owns real estate all over New York, but even if it is Fournier, there’s no way to tell which building might be the clinic.”
Tears started in her eyes. “Just—you can just—check each place out…”
He shook his head. “No, Bryn. If you haven’t noticed, we’re at war. I sent out a call to arms to every ARA member. We can’t go traipsing all over the city with the kind of firepower we’re bringing down on that son-of-a-bitch. We need to know exactly where he is, and before he butchers that poor panda. We should have gone public with it when we had the chance. This is our only opportunity to fix it. If we take Fournier down, we’ll be heroes.”
“Heroes don’t torture innocent women.”
“They do if there’s enough at stake. Sacrifice for the greater good.”
A hiccupping sob escaped her. “You sound like my father.”
“Your father’s a good man.”
“My father’s in jail.”
Kareem straightened up. The man in the surgical gloves came back into the room. He shook his head at Kareem and then his unfeeling eyes dropped to Bryn. Kareem lifted her and carried her into the room with Carla. The only furniture was two chairs and a folding tray table with a toolbox on it. Bryn expected Carla to be battered and bloody, but other than a tear-streaked face and messy hair, she looked fine. They must have cleaned her up, bandaged the wound left from removing her xenograft, been nice to her after the brutality. Bryn knew that strategy from reading up on Stockholm syndrome.
Kareem set Bryn down into a chair facing the chair Carla was sitting in. There was plenty of room between them for the torturer to get to Bryn and still give Carla a good view.
“Please, don’t,” Carla said, voice weak and cracking. “I told you everything I know.”
“At your apartment, you said you knew where Fournier was,” Kareem said.
“I lied. All I know is what Bluto told me. He did some work for Fournier—they converted an underground parking garage. That’s where the clinic is. It’s all I know. Punish me for lying, but please don’t hurt her.”
“Kareem, please,” Bryn said. “Look at the Best Medical Services building schematics on my holophone. Which ones have parking garages?”
Kareem hesitated. The man with the surgical gloves eyed her quills and pulled a pair of pliers out of the toolbox.
Bryn whispered, “Please.”
He was clearly reluctant, but he took her holophone out of his pocket and tapped at it. Long, drawn out minutes later, he said slowly, “There’s only one building with an underground parking structure. It’s a huge building, but the schematic shows the parking garage is—strangely small.” To Carla, he said, “This Bluto told you they converted it?”
Carla nodded. “Said it took a long time, years, and there was a lot of work involved. They were real careful, it was totally secret. They have a hacker that steals power and water from neighboring buildings somehow. Bluto said…it was right under everyone’s noses.”
“A hacker that could alter a Holomap schematic?” A vengeful smile stole over Kareem’s face. He held the holophone out for Bryn to see. “You know where this is?”
Bryn looked at the map and suddenly everything made sense. “The Warehouse,” she said. “Right under everyone’s noses.”
Chapter Forty-eight
Just in case Scott misunderstood what Padme meant when she said she knew who he was, he asked, “Who am I?”
“You’re the youngest ever XIA agent.”
“How long have you known?”
She laughed a little. “Not long.”
“What gave me away?”
“Besides the fact that you’re so damned nice? When we escaped from jail. The choreography was good: I was convinced when the guard came in and chose to taze Barney instead of you. Other than the fact that it was too easy, I wouldn’t have suspected anything, except I saw the handcuff key under the conference room table.
“Even then, I wasn’t sure,” she said. “It could have been a key to something else. Maybe you really did pick the lock with your claw. But then the photos in the media made me suspicious; the ones that vaguely resembled us. I thought, what better way to aid our escape than to switch the mug shots so we wouldn’t be hindered by public recognition? It seemed unlikely the XIA would be so inept.
“I’d already checked your background, but after the escape I dug deeper. I found out you had a sister who died. As soon as I saw her picture I recognized her. It was a simple matter to hack into the adoption database and verify where she’d come from.”
It was ironic that the reason he’d joined the XIA would be his downfall.
As far as the XIA knew, his sister May had been Fournier’s first, and only, successful attempt at cloning a human. When investigators busted him, they found more than just a grisly collection of body parts in his apartment. They found a baby girl with no birth records who was not Fournier’s biological child. After Fournier skipped bail and disappe
ared, they put her in the system for adoption by parents who would never know what she was. When May was five years old she was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Wilm’s tumor, stage three when they found it. On the night the XIA recruited Scott in that San Diego jail, they told him about gene imprinting errors and how the tumor was a direct result of Fournier’s carelessness during the cloning process.
Nicola, the girl in Fournier’s reception area, was obviously a clone made from the same genetic material that produced May. Nicholas Fournier had named the girl after himself, so it stood to reason he’d raised her as his daughter. Scott wondered how normal a life the girl had. Did she go to school, did she have friends, or had Fournier kept her here underground, on display for his amusement like all his other trophies?
“What’s Lupus’ real name?” he asked.
“Eduardo Quinones.”
The first agent to have gone in. “What happened to the other agent?”
“Lupus killed him.”
“Jesus. So I take it you haven’t told Lupus about me?”
“Obviously not. I tried to keep you from getting this far. I’m the one who tipped off the ARA about the panda. I figured if you botched that job, Lupus wouldn’t vouch for you, but then you went and saved his worthless life and recovered the panda. So now, the only way to keep you from becoming a monster like Lupus is to turn myself in.”
Scott hadn’t known where Padme’s string of confessions was going, but he didn’t expect her to sacrifice herself. She’d always seemed so self-sufficient, so standoffish. He’d suspected she didn’t like ‘belonging’ to Lupus, but he never guessed the truth. How could he?
As much as he didn’t want to encourage her affection for him, at this juncture it was the logical thing to do. She may have said she wanted to turn herself in, but they were still standing in the heart of Fournier’s territory. He needed to keep her believing he had feelings for her.
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