It was Alec’s opinion that these ordinaries could do with a little DNA tampering themselves.
“Jam Pony messenger. I’m looking for a Mr. Hampton. I believe he’s a janitor here.”
The woman nodded, making various chins collide, forced herself to her feet and trundled toward the counter. “I don’t see a package.”
“My partner has it outside.”
She looked unimpressed. “Employees are not allowed to receive personal items here at the school.”
“Ma’am, I don’t know anything about that. If you could just tell me where to find him—”
“You’ll need to sign in first, then sign back out when you leave.” She glanced toward a clipboard with a pen chained to it. “And Mr. Koopman will be informed about this.”
“No skin off mine,” he said, picking up the pen and looking down at the graphed paper. Beside Name he wrote “Reagan Ronald,” put down delivery as the purpose of his visit and “Janitorial” as his destination.
“Janitor’s room is down the main hall. Take a left up the first hall, then he’s the third door on the right. If Mr. Hampton is not there, I don’t know where he is.”
“Thanks for being so helpful,” he said, in a manner so faintly sarcastic, he hoped she’d be thinking about it for a long time.
Outside, Alec waved at Joshua and the big guy fell in step next to him.
“And I thought Manticore was bad,” Alec said, not liking the school experience much so far.
“School people tell you where Hampton is?”
“Where he probably is.” Alec didn’t bother to tell Joshua about the woman’s negative reaction to Hampton getting a personal delivery. Some things were better left unsaid.
Walking briskly, the duo turned left down the shorter hallway. Most of the doors were closed, so no teacher or pupil faces looked out to see them. The third door on the right stood ajar. They could see a man Alec’s size with dark hair and a tidy goatee—another X5.
Not surprising—pretty easy for X5s to pass.
The guy was bent over a sink, filling a bucket, completely engrossed in what he was doing.
The sink occupied the right wall of the tiny room; brooms, mops, buckets, and the like stood like a rack of rifles along the back wall. You could take the boy out of Manticore, but you couldn’t take Manticore out of the boy.
When Joshua said, “Hello, Hampton,” the guy nearly jumped out of his skin.
Joshua—now a step into the cramped janitor’s room—removed his helmet. “It’s okay, Hampton. It’s me—Joshua.”
The X5’s brown eyes were wide with shock and displeasure. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Hampton stepped past Joshua and tried to pull the door closed, but smacked it into Alec.
Nostrils flaring, Hampton demanded, “And who the hell is this asshole?”
Joshua said, “This asshole is Alec. He’s another friend. X5.”
Hampton’s anger gave hard edges to his sarcastic smile. “Great! Happy to see you, bro—come on in. Let’s have a party.”
“Thanks,” Alec said, and stepped in, pulling the door closed behind him.
Turning his attention back to Joshua, the janitor said, “You know I’m trying to pass. What the hell’s the idea—”
“That’s why we came,” Joshua said. “So no one would know.”
Hampton looked at Alec for help.
Alec said, “We figured you’d rather talk to us than the cops or maybe the feds.”
The janitor’s frown dug deep grooves into his handsome face. “What the hell’s this about?”
“Take it easy,” Alec said. “Just hear us out.”
Hampton let out a deep sigh, forcing himself to calm down. “Okay, fellas—just make it quick, okay?”
Joshua looked at Alec, prompting him to take the lead, and the janitor turned his attention toward Alec too.
“Here’s the deal, Hampton,” Alec said in a rush. He knew the guy didn’t want them there one second longer than necessary. “You’ve seen the tube—somebody’s killing people. And skinning them.”
The janitor nodded. “Couple of ’em cops. Sure. What the hell’s that got to do with us?”
“Could be Kelpy,” Joshua put in.
Hampton’s face turned long and pale and sad—as if Joshua had just told him his brother had died. “Oh, damn. . . . You sure?”
Alec shook his head. “No. But the cops think a transgenic’s responsible, and Joshua thinks this Kelpy might be . . . disturbed enough to be doing this weird shit.”
“Men in uniforms,” Joshua said, “were mean to Kelpy in the basement.”
“I bet,” Hampton said dryly.
“We need to find him,” Alec said. “And at least talk to him.”
Looking up at Joshua, Hampton said, “And you boys thought I’d know where to find him.”
Joshua said, “Yes.”
“Guys, I’m sorry. Haven’t seen him for a while.”
“How long?” Alec asked.
“A month, maybe two. And he was getting pretty bizarre at that.”
“Bizarre how?”
Hampton shook his head. “Being human was all he could talk about—the only thing that mattered to him anymore.”
“Passing for human?” Joshua asked.
“No—being human.”
“We are human,” Alec said.
“Not exactly,” Hampton said.
“Anyway,” Alec said, picking up the prior thread, “you say you have no idea where he is? Can’t you give us a lead, anyway?”
Shrugging, the janitor said, “Kelpy had an apartment over in Queen Anne.”
Alec said, “Isn’t that where you live, Hampton?”
“Yeah, on Sixth. Bobby’s place is on Crockett.”
“Bobby?”
“Yeah. He uses the name Bobby Kawasaki. Only a few of us know about Kelpy.”
“Bobby Kawasaki . . . you’re shitting me.”
“No,” Hampton said, frowning, “I’m not. Why?”
“Nothing,” Alec said.
But really it was something: Alec knew the name.
It belonged to a Jam Pony messenger. He’d heard Normal call out for the guy before; but for the life of him, Alec couldn’t put a face with the name.
“Can you give us Kelpy’s—Bobby’s—address?”
Hampton did.
“Thanks,” Alec said, and turned back to his towering companion. “Better put your helmet back on, Joshua.”
But before Joshua could take that advice, the door to the small room swung open.
Alec turned to see a skinny man in his late fifties, in shirt and tie, his hair short and gray, his brown eyes huge with fear as he stared up at Joshua’s helmetless head.
“Oh, my God,” the man squeaked. He tried to shut the door but Joshua came running out, knocking the visitor aside. Alec turned and immediately punched Hampton in the face, and the janitor crumpled to the floor in a heap. Joshua stood in the hall, aghast, as Alec slipped into the corridor as well.
The guy in the tie snatched a walkie-talkie off his belt and held it up to his mouth. “This is Vice Principal Koopman—they’re here! The freaks are here—they must be trying to grab the children!”
Alec ripped the radio out of the guy’s hands and threw it against the brick wall, smashing it into a thousand pieces. Then he and Joshua sprinted up the hall, into the main corridor and out of the building.
Once the car was a safe distance from the school, Joshua asked, “Why did you punch Hampton?”
“To protect his cover. They’ll think he was fighting us. He’ll be all right.”
Joshua nodded. “That went sideways.”
“Yes, it did.”
“FUBAR.”
“FUBAR, indeed,” Alec said.
The X5 knew that once this made the news, Max would be righteously pissed, and there would be hell to pay. The only way to make this better was for them to find Kelpy or Bobby, or whatever the hell he was calling himself now.
The odd couple climbed the stairs to the eighth floor, and found Kelpy’s door seventh down on the left. No light was visible under the door, but Alec was through taking chances for the day. Using the old Manticore hand signals, they came up with a plan. Alec slid to one side and pressed himself against the wall. Still wearing the helmet, Joshua stood in front of the door and knocked.
“Pizza,” he said.
There was no response from the other side.
Knocking a second time, louder this time, Joshua repeated, “Pizza.”
Still no one came to the door.
“Fine,” Alec said. “We do it the hard way.”
“Hard way?” asked Joshua.
Easing his friend aside, Alec used burglar tools—two picklocks—on the door. Soon the two were standing within a small studio apartment, as silent as it was dark.
Alec hit the light switch, but the dim forty-watter overhead did little to improve the gloom inside the tiny flat. “Not exactly living high, wide, and handsome, is he?”
Joshua said, “Not high, not wide,” clearly not knowing what he was saying.
Alec dispatched Joshua to start on the kitchen side, while he handled the other. They took their time, moving ahead slowly, hoping not to miss any bit of evidence that would either prove Kelpy was the killer or exonerate him. After checking the stove, Joshua opened the refrigerator door and stood, staring.
“What have you got?” Alec asked.
“Tryptophan in the fridge,” Joshua said, holding up a white bottle big enough for five hundred or so doses.
“Take it.”
“That’s stealing, Alec.”
“Take it!”
Joshua stuffed the bottle in his pocket. In the bathroom, in a cupboard under the sink, Alec found a canvas bag. Inside he found the wallets, pistols, stun rods, and badges of two sector cops and an NSA operative named Calvin D. Hankins.
“Not exactly the jackpot I was hoping to hit,” he said.
Ducking into the bathroom, Joshua looked at the items and frowned, and his voice quivered as he asked, “Kelpy . . . Kelpy is skinner, isn’t he?”
“Looks that way. . . . Sorry, big guy.” Alec loaded the evidence back in the bag. “We’ve got to get this stuff to Max, ASAP.”
“Okay. But Alec—she won’t be happy. We won’t be heroes.”
“No, but she’ll be pleased we found this before the cops or Ames White. Did you find anything?”
Joshua shook his head.
As they walked out into the main room, Alec noticed a door next to the one they’d busted in. A closet, had to be. “Did you look in there?” he asked.
Joshua shook his head. “Didn’t see it.”
Glancing from Joshua to the door, Alec turned the knob and opened it.
Inside they saw something even their Manticore hardened eyes were unprepared to process.
A dress mannequin stood on the floor, wearing a Frankenstein patchwork, an incomplete garment, whose sections were various tones, ranging from brown to off-white, depending in part upon their relative freshness.
The garment in progress consisted of the stitched-together flesh of Kelpy’s victims.
“Crazy bastard’s making a human suit,” Alec said.
“Why, Alec? Why?”
“To be human, I guess. Somewhere in his Manticore-fried brain, he came up with that hot one. . . . Wait . . . what the hell . . . ?”
Hating to touch the thing, Alec swiveled the mannequin slightly.
On the blank head of the thing, Kelpy had pasted a photo of a white face with spiky hair, wire frame glasses, and a serious save-the-world look.
Joshua said simply, “Logan’s picture. Alec—why is Logan’s picture on that statue?”
“Not good,” Alec said. “Not good.”
Walking down the eighth floor hall, Bobby Kawasaki knew something was wrong.
He could almost smell it. At his apartment he paused and saw the faint glow beneath the door.
Someone was inside!
Not wasting a moment, his fear spiking, Bobby stripped, tossed his clothes down the hall, and blended into the wall.
Not thirty seconds later, his head covered by a motorcycle helmet, Bobby’s old friend Joshua stepped into the hall. A young man who appeared to be an X5 followed, the canvas bag of goodies hanging from his arm.
They took a few steps in the opposite direction and Kelpy attacked.
Reaching into the bag, Kelpy pulled out a stun rod before the X5 could react. He touched the X5 with the rod, and the young man yelled as he shook violently.
Growling, Joshua spun toward Kelpy, but not in time. . . .
Snatching up the second stun rod, Kelpy hit Joshua in the chest even as the beast man lunged forward with a lionlike roar that turned into a shriek. Kelpy hit both of them again, and left them twitching but unconscious.
He dropped one of the stun rods, keeping the other with him. There was much to do now and very little time to do it. The cops would probably be on their way, if any neighbors had heard and reported the ruckus. That meant getting his project, and getting out of there, as fast as he could.
Kelpy would have to move his plan up now—he would need to work faster.
But that was all right: the sooner he finished, the sooner everything would go his way. He removed his project carefully from the mannequin and packed it in a suitcase. He dressed quickly, once again becoming Bobby Kawasaki, bike messenger. Slinging the suitcase’s strap over his shoulder, Bobby took one last look around the rathole. He wouldn’t miss it a bit.
Leaving the apartment—forgetting to collect his Tryptophan in the fridge—Bobby picked up the canvas bag, felt the weight of the pistols inside and thought about killing Joshua and his intrusive playmate, still lying helpless in the hallway.
Then he heard sirens, the elevator buzz, and decided discretion might well be the better part of valor. Turning, he walked to the stairs at the far end of the hall and disappeared . . . in that way that only Bobby/Kelpy could.
Chapter Eight
* * *
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
TERMINAL CITY, 10:59 P.M.
TUESDAY, MAY 11, 2021
Pacing, Max asked, “Where the hell are they?”
Dix shook his lumpy head. “Haven’t seen them since the meeting this morning . . . and I can’t find them on any of the video feeds.”
Lizard-man Mole offered, “Terminal City is a big place.”
She whirled at him. “You’re not in on this, are you?”
Mole’s cigar almost dropped out of his mouth. “No! Hell no—in on what?”
“I wish to hell I knew,” she growled.
The X5 had a sick feeling about this; as much as she valued Alec—as much as she secretly liked the guy—Max was well aware of his self-centered, guileful ways.
They were in the media center, waiting for the eleven o’clock news. Max prowled restlessly, while Dix and Mole sat here and there in the room, the crew watching the monitors hugging the screens.
“If they are up to something,” Mole said, “what pisses me off is they didn’t invite me.”
Max shot him a look. “Don’t whine—it’s not becoming.”
Mole shrugged, leaning back in a spring-sprung easy chair no self-respecting thrift shop would accept. “Hey, it’s not like it was my idea, them jumping the fence. I’m just sayin’—”
She raised an eyebrow and the big tough lizard man piped down, sucking his cigar like a pacifier.
“Anyway,” she said, flopping into another shabby easy chair, “we don’t know for sure that they’ve gone anywhere.” This was said without much conviction.
Mol
e started to open his mouth again, probably to ask where the hell she thought they were, but the ugly frown etched on her lovely features encouraged him to keep his questions to himself.
“All right,” she said, heaving a sigh. “We’ve got plenty of other things to worry about. Let’s get back to work.”
And she hauled herself out of the chair, without even having really settled in.
“Wait!” Dix said, “News is starting.” He turned the volume up some.
“Would it be asking too much,” Max said dryly, “that the lead story not be Alec and Joshua?”
The news anchor was a blonde woman with manicured hair, suspiciously energetic blue eyes, and a long, thin face. She looked as though she hadn’t had a cheeseburger since before the Pulse.
“In our top story tonight,” the blonde said, “transgenics invaded the Ichiro Suzuki Elementary School today . . .”
Mole spoke for all of them: “Holy freakin’ shit. . . .”
“We go now to our reporter on the scene, Ben Petty.”
Petty stood tall, straight, and wore a nearly identical suit to the one he’d worn the night before, when he’d bribed the drunks. “Thank you, Liz.”
“Hey, Max, isn’t that your pal?” Dix asked.
Max shushed him.
Petty was saying, “Today, two transgenics invaded Ichiro Elementary, apparently intending to kidnap children.”
“Kidnap children?” Mole asked, half out of the easy chair, dangling cigar stuck to the saliva of his lower lip. “Why in the hell would they do that?”
As if speaking directly to the lizard man, Petty said, “Local police have refused comment, but a high-ranking federal government source has speculated that the transgenics hoped to barter a deal to end the Terminal City siege by using school children as hostages.”
“Ames White,” Max said, spitting the name like an epithet.
The shot widened to show a man with a bandaged nose standing next to Petty. “Janitor Hampton Rhoades successfully fought off the transgenics, though one of them did, before fleeing, manage to break the janitor’s nose.”
One of the monitor crew sat up, a slender female, gesticulating, yelling, “Hey, I know him—he’s a second-gen X5!”
All of them turned toward the source of that comment, an X5 whose name Max didn’t know—typically pretty, with short brown hair, doe eyes, a pug nose, and a red-lipstick blossom of a mouth.
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