He hadn't taken three steps out of the building when he saw the familiar man coming toward him. If his shaved head and glasses didn't give him away, his stuffy gray coat and bad shoes would have. Stanley sighed. He had just suffered through the tedious process of being released on bail- he wasn't in the mood to deal with any more pricks.
"Good morning, Special Agent Pittman. Did you come here to shove the tracking device up my ass personally?"
The man frowned. "Watch it, Sharpe. You're lucky you even made bail, considering you committed treason and all."
Stanley continued to cross the facility's courtyard while Agent Pittman kept pace. He didn't bother correcting the man. They had accused him of sharing sensitive information with enemies of the state, and no amount of explanation would change the agent's mind. This was the struggle with trying to liberate the indoctrinated. "Nice move arresting me on a Friday, by the way. I had a really restful weekend waiting for the court to open. It's an old trick, but a good one."
"I didn't force you to break into government servers."
"Didn't you?"
The agent cocked an eyebrow. "Is that an admission of guilt?"
Stanley stopped and put a finger in the agent's face. "Let me explain something to you: you're the guilty ones. The public has the right to know about the criminals they elected."
"You act like a crusader, Sharpe, but you've never done anything for anyone except yourself."
Stanley scoffed. "Have you ever taken a dog to the vet, Agent Pittman? They cry to be let out of the car the whole way. They look at you like you're the bad guy, and you know why? Because you can't make them understand that you're doing it for their own good."
Agent Pittman shook his head. "Wow. I have to hand it to you, Sharpe- you've been lying so long, you're almost starting to believe your own bullshit." A forest green van with missing hubcaps pulled into the lot. It stopped at the curb and waited.
"It's amazing what a bit of denial can do for a man," Stanley said, shifting on his feet. "You, for instance. Eight-and-a-half years from retirement, ten years left on your mortgage. You'll do anything to protect your pension plan- not to mention that little nest egg you saved up."
Agent Pittman's face went red. It was the same expression they all had whenever Stanley made them realize they weren't safe behind their white picket fences. "They never should have let you out," the agent growled.
"Have a little faith in your system, agent," Stanley said with a grin. He approached the van and opened the door. Marco's round, bearded face nodded at him from behind the taped-up steering wheel. Stanley looked back at Agent Pittman. "The sad thing isn't that some day you'll see I was right- it's that I won't be there to rub it in your face."
Pittman walked to Stanley, his eyes dead serious. He looked like he was about to knock Stanley's eyes down to his lungs. Instead he leaned around him and addressed Marco. "Make sure he stays a hundred feet from a computer. It's a condition of his bail." He looked back at Stanley. "I would hate to see him screw up and land back in jail."
"Yes, sir," Marco replied nervously.
Stanley climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door in Pittman's face. As they pulled away, he looked at the tan concrete building in the rearview mirror. He had no intention of going back to it or any building like it.
"I don't think that guy likes you," Marco noted as he turned onto the street.
"Do you have it?"
Marco nodded over his shoulder. "Your van sucks, by the way."
"Yeah, I know." Stanley reached between the seats, pulled the heavy backpack onto his lap and unzipped it. The laptop's chrome case shone up at him in the soft morning light.
It was time to get to work.
-1-
April 18th, 2015
Downtown Washington D.C.
DAY 1
Will Sharpe dropped a quarter in the meter and spun the dial. Even though it was Saturday, and the posted signs promised he didn't need to, he wasn't a man who liked to take chances.
He tucked the pepper spray into his vest pocket as he looked across the street. It was just past noon, and the strip club's neon blue sign was still sleeping above the rounded awning. The street was unusually quiet for the time of day, but Will wasn't about to complain. Like all red-blooded Americans, he had a particular hatred reserved just for traffic. He checked that the door of his truck was locked in case someone decided to steal the pile of books in his backseat, looked both ways, and crossed the street.
"We open at one, buddy," the bartender said from the far end of the room. The place was longer than it was wide, with rows of tables on either side decorated in art deco tablecloths and glass candles. Even this early, the purple and pink lighting gave it an atmosphere of permanent nighttime.
Will passed the empty dance pole and crossed to the bar. "I'm looking for Crystal," he said.
"Everyone's looking for someone." The bartender was a young guy with bottle-black hair and a matching soul patch. He looked up from the martini glass he was cleaning. "Ah, shit, you're not gonna propose to her, are you?"
Will tapped the ring on his finger. "Not likely."
The guy chuckled. "Ninety percent of the guys I see in this place are married. Around here, wedding rings are more of a polite suggestion."
Will stared at the guy without saying a word. After a few seconds of staring back, the bartender's shoulders sagged. He put down the glass and the cloth and said, "I'll go get her."
"Thank you."
The bartender slipped through a door and out of sight. Will looked around at the club. He didn't fault guys for frequenting these kinds of establishments, but he never went in for it himself. Strip clubs always seemed like a poor solution to the problem, like being hungry for a steak, then going to a fast food place and asking them to rub a burger on your face.
"What can I do for you, sugar?" Will turned to see the girl addressing him. She had the dark eyes and widow's peak of an Eastern European girl, and wore little more than a few strips of pink lace over her impeccably pale skin. Around her shoulders was a cover-up in the loosest sense of the word. "You're kinda cute. Are you a cop or something?"
"Or something. I'm a Bail Enforcement Agent." He pulled the chain around his neck and showed her the badge. It wasn't necessary to show, and most states didn't even require having one, but he found it helped establish legitimacy.
"What's that, like a bounty hunter?"
"That's a somewhat derogatory term. It's not the Wild West anymore."
"I don't know, you might change your mind if you saw my cowgirl impression." She pretended to wave a rope over her head, letting out a soft giggle.
"I'll take your word for it. Have you seen Theo recently?"
"Who?"
"Theodore Weaver."
She chewed her lip. "Hmm. It doesn't ring a bell."
People often pretended not to know the person Will was looking for. Concerned friends, protective family members, or just folks who didn't trust anyone with a badge often played dumb to his questions. In the case of strippers, he was more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. They operated in a fake world. Fake people with fake bodies doing fake things with fake names.
"He's a skinny guy. Tall. With a scar on his lip."
"Oh, Teddy. He usually comes in Sunday nights."
Now he was getting somewhere. "Not in the last two weeks, though."
"Wow, you really are a bounty hunter," Crystal said excitedly. "So what did he do?"
"Didn't show up for court."
"I mean what did he get busted for, silly? It wasn't any sexual-predator-type stuff, was it?" She frowned, and for a split second she dropped the naughty girl act. It was all Will needed to know she wasn't as ditzy as the image she put across. In her line of work, that image was the same as his badge- it had as much power as people gave it.
"Nothing like that. You're safe." Theo had been arrested for drug possession, like so many of them were, but Will didn't like to share details with people in case t
hey made the mistake of empathizing.
"I bet I am, as long as you're here to protect me."
He handed her his card. "If he comes in, call me at this number. I'll make it worth your while." He caught himself. "With money, I mean."
"Darn." She smiled at him as he turned to leave. "Hey, why don't you come back later when we're open? I'll give you a dance, on me. Or, you know- on you."
"Just make sure you call me if he shows. Discretely."
"Don't worry, cutie- discretion is my middle name."
He glanced down at her pink and see-through outfit. "Clearly," he said.
Washington D.C.
Brentwood
The apartment had no phone and no TV. A court summons hung on the dying refrigerator. Black blankets covered the windows in the tiny living room, blocking out most of the light, but they did nothing for the police sirens crying in the distance.
The glow of the laptop lit up Stanley's gaunt features. He looked like he'd been staring at the screen for hours, and for good reason. It had been a long few weeks, and it was starting to take its toll on his eyes. He was accustomed to computer screens, but he was only human.
It had been almost a week since Stanley ventured out of his apartment. Aside from getting lost in the work, he found he was getting more nervous around other people as the court date got closer. Twice he felt he was being followed. One was on the way to the dry cleaners. A guy in a hoodie walked about twenty feet behind him for three blocks, talking quietly into a cell phone. Stanley turned and went back the way he came, and the guy didn't follow. The second incident was a black Chrysler that trailed his van for three whole minutes, including two left turns and one right, before Stanley lost him by blowing a red light.
He was used to being in trouble, but this time he was in over his head.
The problem had started more or less innocently. Once every year or so he took a shot at figuring out what the hell happened to his grandfather. PFC William Junko, along with his entire platoon of thirty some-odd men, just vanished into the jungles of Vietnam without so much as a body to show for it. The families had been fed a line of bullshit at the time about the men dying as heroes in a classified mission. Every soldier received a posthumous Bronze Star and a letter of recognition, and everyone was supposed to dry their eyes and get on with their lives.
What he and a few others in his circle of associates had long uncovered was it had something to do with an experimental drug called VX-99. There were all kinds of rumors in the conspiracy scene circling VX-99. Some said it was a more potent version of the Fluoride that government groups had pumped into the water supply since the days of Truman, to reduce the people's power to resist domination. Others claimed it was actually VX-99, not LSD, that was used in MKUltra, the CIA's infamous experiment that involved everything from mind control to astral projection.
Stanley had a different theory. He believed VX-99 was more akin to quinuclidinyl benzilate- BZ for short- an incapacitating agent with psychotomimetic properties. Test studies involving BZ had backfired gloriously. In short, it turned its subjects into maniacal, cold-blooded killers who couldn't be stopped let alone controlled. For the longest time BZ had been dismissed as movie bunk, until declassified documents revealed it had been the source of human experiments for close to twenty years at Edgewood Arsenal, located in Aberdeen, Maryland.
BZ had induced stupor, confusion, distorted memories and violent hallucinations in many of the people who were unlucky enough to ingest it, and more than a few subjects had either overdosed on the stuff or killed themselves trying.
If Stanley was right, VX-99 was like BZ cranked up to a hundred.
How he searched for information on VX-99 was simple- he would crack into government servers and sniff around for specific keywords. His grandfather's name, the name of every man in his platoon. Operation Burn Bright, the top secret mission his grandfather had taken part in. And of course, VX-99.
Two months ago, on his yearly hunt, he'd gotten a new hit on VX-99.
Someone high up on the military food chain had gotten their hands on the last few remaining samples of the drug. It seemed to be an effort to relaunch the study. The trail ran cold after that, but whatever Stanley had stumbled across was big enough- and bad enough- that someone tried to take him out. They'd made him out to be a terrorist. They villainized him and slapped him with the threat of a very long, very hard sentence. He'd been trying for the last six weeks to figure out who it was that was after him, but he couldn't nail down a name. Every turn he made kept coming back to the same, two words.
Something called Building 8.
-2-
Washington D.C.
Lincoln Heights
Day 2
Tanya woke with a start.
Moonlight from the window lit the bedroom in strange blues and grays that reminded her of her parents' house, that sense of cold detachment she woke up to every morning as a little girl. She had sworn to never let that feeling bleed into her own home when she grew up, and she was happy to note it never had. On that thought, she rolled over to face her husband and give him a kiss.
The bed next to her was empty. Her stomach tightened at the unexpected sight. The bathroom door across the room was open and the light inside was off.
"Will?"
There was no answer. Her husband sometimes kept odd hours for his job, but it was rare for him to be out at this time. Even if he had left the house for work already, he wouldn't have done it without waking her up to tell her. She reached out to run her hand over the sheets and was relieved to find they were still warm to the touch. He was probably just in the kitchen, getting a drink of water.
She got out of bed and drowsily made her way to the bathroom. She peed, still half-asleep, and washed her hands at the sink, splashing some cold water on her face. In the mirror she caught sight of a gray hair peeking out of her short, dirty blonde hair. She plucked it out and held it up to the light. "I shall name you Ryan," she said.
Tanya slipped on her favorite robe and stepped into the hallway, looking up to the top of the stairs. Ryan's door was still shut. If she knew her son, he'd only fallen asleep two or three hours earlier after staying up all night watching movies. He wouldn't be up for at least another two hours on a school day. On a Sunday she wouldn't see his face earlier than eleven, even if she was vacuuming. Even if she banged pots over his head he wouldn't wake up. The kid slept like the dead.
She padded into the kitchen, feeling the cool tiles on her naked feet as she crossed to the coffee machine. Will had already made coffee. She smiled.
A rustling to her left caught her attention. Will sat at the dining room table with his back to her. He was going through a pile of bills that had mounted up on the table, so absorbed in what he was doing he hadn't noticed her. Even without seeing his face, she knew that look. Shoulders tensed, rubbing the side of his head.
They were having money trouble.
"You know they have computer programs for that stuff," she said, coming around to his side. He didn't startle. He never did. The papers were jumbled and spread out across the table. One of them was stamped with a big, red SECOND NOTICE.
"We have an understanding," he said, "I don't tell you how to run your campaigns, you don't tell me how to pay the bills."
"Oh, are we paying them now? That's an interesting twist." She kissed him on the cheek.
"I thought I would give it a try."
She sat in the chair next to him. "Don't stress about it. We always find a way."
He rubbed the side of his head again. "They're talking about changing the bail laws again."
"It's D.C., people talk about changing laws like they talk about the weather."
"They would love it if one day they could do away with us altogether. They have no idea how much money we save the taxpayers."
"Who are you telling, me or you?" He didn't answer. She could see how worried he was about the pile of papers in front of him. "Did you reapply for the civil service test? Someon
e at the office said the police are lifting their hiring freeze."
"Nobody wants a guy who couldn't cut it in the army."
"That's crap and you know it."
"It's-" He stopped mid-sentence. "I don't want to talk about it right now, if that's alright."
She stood from the chair and put her hands on her hips. "Okay, then let's talk about something a little more serious." He looked up at her earnestly, those deep eyes she'd fallen in love with a hundred times over. She pointed to the kitchen. "We have these eggs in our fridge that absolutely refuse to cook themselves."
For the first time that morning, he smiled. "I prefer what's cooking under that robe."
"Ahh. Well the good news is I figured out the best thing about our shower."
"What's that?"
"It fits two."
She smiled and slipped the robe down off her shoulder as she headed to the bedroom. He followed close behind her.
Will glanced up at the store's sign as he pushed open the glass door. The logo had a crested lion at the center, beneath it Donegan's motto: "Your Shining Knight!"
He still chuckled at that one. People in the business had a habit of trying to sound like royalty; everyone was the king of bail bonds, the queen of underwriting. Donegan especially had no place making that claim. He was more like a dirty Irish Viking, looting his way across the land.
Will had to step aside to let a middle-aged woman storm out of the shop, cursing as she went. A scrawny guy with long hair ran after her looking like a wet mop come to life.
Extinction Cycle (Kindle Worlds): Extinction [Isolation] Page 2
