Jordan grinned.
“They don’t make many of them. That steering wheel has a direct mechanical link to the front wheels, too. No electronics involved.”
“Nice,” I said. “But it’s still got a brain, right?”
His grin widened, and leaned back against the door.
“Nope. This thing is one hundred percent manual.”
Dad pulled into the lot then. He parked across from us, leaned out of the car and told me to come on. I held up one hand and turned back to Jordan.
“All manual,” I said. “So that means . . .”
Jordan’s grin widened. He leaned toward me then, put one hand on my arm, and lowered his voice to a whisper.
“That’s right, Hannah. Velociraptor is completely, totally, and fully untraceable.”
That’s when Dad started yelling. I was turning to glare at him when Jordan brought his mouth almost to my ear and said, “Let me know if you ever need to be sneaky.”
14. In which Jordan realizes that shit may in fact be getting real.
I was just home from practice, sitting on my couch, waiting for Micah to let me know he was done in the weight room and on his way over, when my phone pinged.
Jordasaurus: Marta?
Jordasaurus: Honestly? At this point, I’m not totally sure.
Jordasaurus: What about the snipers?
Jordasaurus: . . .
The front door banged open, then slammed closed. A few seconds later, Micah clomped into the room.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said. “No heads-up?”
He shrugged.
“Didn’t think about it. What’s for eats?”
I folded my arms across my chest as he dropped onto the couch beside me.
“Well, if you’d pinged me when you were leaving Briarwood, there’d be a pizza here.”
He pulled out his phone.
“Not too late, right?” He tapped, tapped, said, “Pepperoni,” tapped once more, and tossed the phone onto the coffee table. “There,” he said. “Done.”
“Wow,” I said. “You’re buying tonight?”
He grinned.
“Wonder of wonders, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Right. Completely unrelated—you remember Marta?”
The grin disappeared.
“Yes, Jordan. I remember Marta.”
“Yeah, well . . . she’s on her way over here. She’ll probably get here about the same time the pizza does.”
Micah leaned back, and narrowed his eyes.
“You’re not going breeder on me, are you, Jordan?”
I rolled my eyes.
“No, Micah. I am not going breeder—and if I were, trust me, it wouldn’t be with Marta Longstreth. She’s kind of creepy, honestly.”
“Okay. So tell me again why you’re spending so much time hanging out with her?”
“Well,” I said. “At first, I was just humoring my dad. You know that. Now, though . . .”
“Now what?”
I sighed.
“You remember what we were talking about last weekend, after the party?”
“You mean about you hiding out in my basement?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, no, not exactly. You were talking about Hannah’s family keeping things on the down-low, and you learning how to handle a rifle, and then Marta—it sounds like she lives in a fortress, you know? An actual, factual, towers-and-snipers fortress. I guess I’m starting to wonder if everyone else knows something that I don’t.”
“Okay,” Micah said. “I get that. Things are scary. How do we get from there to Marta Longstreth coming over here to eat my pizza?”
I thumbed open my phone and handed it to him. He stared at it for a minute, then handed it back.
“Huh,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Huh.”
“Hey,” Marta said. “Don’t look so happy to see me.”
She was standing at the bottom of the marble steps that led up to our portico, arms folded, hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, wearing a hoodie and track pants and what looked like beat-to-hell hiking boots. She did not look like the wealthiest sixteen-year-old in North America. She looked like a homeless person.
“Uh,” I said.
She frowned.
“That was sarcasm,” Marta said. “I was actually hoping that you would be happy to see me.”
“Oh, he is,” Micah said as he came up behind me. “He’s just worried that we might start fighting over him. Jordan has no stomach for violence.”
I elbowed him, hard. He didn’t seem to notice. Marta’s frown relaxed, and she nodded.
“Right. You’re the boyfriend, huh?”
Micah grinned and gave her a sweeping bow.
“Well don’t worry,” Marta said. “I’m not going to steal him. I’m mostly just looking for a place to crash right now.
“Excellent,” Micah said. “You can imagine my relief.”
Marta’s face twisted back into a frown. I stepped between them.
“Right,” I said. “I’m glad we’re all having fun here, but do you mind telling me what’s going on?”
Marta shrugged.
“I told you. Things were getting weird around the Longstreth compound.”
“Weird how?” Micah asked. “Are things going all Island of Doctor Moreau over there? Daddy turning all the servants into rat-men and whatnot?”
Marta turned to me, one eyebrow raised.
“Rat-men?” I said.
“Well,” Micah said. “I’m sure they prefer to be called Rodent-Americans.”
I snickered. Marta was decidedly not amused.
“So,” Marta said. “Hypothetically speaking, which do you think is most important—loyalty to family, or loyalty to society?”
We were sitting across from each other at the wrought-iron table on my back deck. I looked over at Micah, who was perched on a filigree-encrusted chair that didn’t look like it ought to be able to support half his weight. He shrugged, and crammed most of a slice of pizza into his mouth.
“I’m not sure where you’re going with this,” I said. “Can you give me an example? Hypothetically speaking, I mean.”
Marta looked over my shoulder, to where a half dozen geese had just landed in the reflecting pool.
“Well,” she said. “Imagine you found out, without snooping and entirely through no fault of your own, that your . . . uncle . . . was kind of a . . . I don’t know . . . super villain? Like, imagine you found out he was building a death ray in the basement or something. Would you call in the Justice League, or whatever? Or would you feel like family comes first?”
I looked at Micah again. He was dialed in on his pizza, and wouldn’t meet my eye.
“Huh,” I said. “That would be quite a conundrum.”
“Spill it,” Micah said around a mouthful of cheese. “What’d he do?”
Marta turned to look at him.
“What did who do? We’re talking hypotheticals here, remember?”
“Right,” Micah said, swallowed what was in his mouth, and washed it down with half a glass of lemonade. “Your dad really is making rat-men, isn’t he? Gonna breed himself an army, maybe refight the Stupid War?”
I laughed, but Marta just looked uncomfortable.
“Wait,” I said. “Rat-men? Really?”
Marta shot Micah a look, then turned to glare at me.
“No, you idiot, my father is not creating an army of rat-men. He’s got more money than God, remember? If he wanted an army, he’d just buy one, like all the other trillionaires do
.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s good. So what are we talking about?”
She shook her head.
“You haven’t answered my question yet.”
“It’s a matter of numbers,” Micah said, and stuffed another slice into his mouth.
We both turned to stare at him while he chewed and swallowed. I sometimes had to remind myself that Micah was not actually stupid. With that chest and those shoulders and that face, he definitely looked the part of the mimbo, and he liked to play to the stereotype, but his average at Briarwood was higher than mine.
“Well,” he said, “that and DNA.”
“What are you talking about?” Marta asked. “I told you—no rat-men.”
“Yeah,” Micah said. “I heard you. I didn’t mean rat-man DNA. I meant yours.”
Marta leaned back and folded her arms across her chest.
“Mine?”
“Right,” Micah said. “We just talked about this in Gen Anth. From a genetic standpoint, all you need to know is how much DNA you share with whoever you’re planning to snitch on. Then you compare that to how much you share with all the folks he’s planning on killing, and pick whichever one is bigger. Your dad’s got half your DNA. So do your siblings.”
“I don’t have any siblings,” Marta said.
Micah waved her off.
“Just go with me on this, okay? Your dad’s got half your DNA. So do your siblings. So, if your dad is planning on killing two of your siblings, you should turn him in.”
“Wait,” I said. “What if he’s only planning to kill one of her siblings?”
“Flip a coin. Anyway, aunts and uncles have a quarter of your DNA, and first cousins have an eighth. So, if your dad is planning on wiping out his sister and her family, you need to know how many kids she’s got. One? Tell him to go for it. Three? Turn him in.”
I glanced over at Marta. The look on her face said that she was starting to wonder if coming here might have been a big, big mistake.
“Ah,” she said. “Okay. This is what they’re teaching you guys at Briarwood?”
“Well,” Micah said. “The context was a little different. Dr. Merrick was actually talking about the evolution of altruism, and when it would make reproductive sense to sacrifice your life to save someone else. I’m kind of extrapolating here.”
Micah leaned forward to take the last slice of pepperoni. Marta’s first slice was still sitting on her plate. She looked like she was about to be sick.
“What about strangers?” I asked. “Using this model, it’s open season on them, right?”
Micah had to think about that for a minute.
“Well,” he said finally. “We’re all related at some level, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s true. So? How many randos would Marta’s dad have to be plotting to kill for it to make sense for her to turn him in?”
“Hard to say,” Micah said. “A lot, I guess. How about it, Marta? How many randos is your dad planning to kill?”
He was grinning, but that faded as Marta stared down at her pizza without answering.
“Marta?” I said.
She looked up at me.
“I think we need to call the Justice League.”
15. In which Drew realizes that he’s in waaaaaay over his head.
Few things in this life are crappier than an early-morning airport security line. The lights are too bright, the PA is too loud, and everyone’s either grumpy or half asleep or both. You shuffle forward in baby steps, staring at your phone or staring at your feet, wishing you were back in bed and trying not to step on the luggage of the schmuck in front of you. Then, when you finally get to the front of the line, it’s show your retina, strip down like you’re going to prison, shuffle through the deep scanner that’s probably sterilizing you, and hope the security drones don’t find anything they like in your bags.
The morning that I set out to visit Meghan was even worse than usual. I’d spent the night on the couch, which meant that my back was killing me and I hadn’t actually slept very much. I also hadn’t spoken to Kara since she’d walked out of the house the day before, and worse, I’d figured out by then that what had happened between us was pretty much entirely my fault. So, that was hanging over my head like a thick, black cloud. The security line stretched from the checkpoint halfway down the concourse, and when I finally made it to the scanners, they pinged on some change I’d forgotten to take out of my pocket. That got me pushed back through, and the eye roll I gave to the security goon when he called me on it got my bag pulled from the conveyor, emptied, and searched and tested for chemicals and biohazards and who the hell knows what else. By the time they were done harassing me, I was five minutes from missing my shuttle.
I’m happy to admit that I’m a lousy traveler. I don’t even like air-breathers, and they’d booked me on a suborbital. Advantage? Forty-five minutes to LA. Disadvantage? Twenty of those minutes were spent weightless, and I’m the sort of person who needs Dramamine to ride a roller coaster. I meant to take something before takeoff, but with the mess at security and the running to the gate and all, it pretty much slipped my mind until I was strapped into my seat and we were pushing back and it was clearly much too late.
The shuttle was a standard econo job—no crew, no amenities, no windows, and thirty passengers crammed into a space that looked like it ought to hold about ten. I had a seat against the back bulkhead, with a youngish-looking guy wearing black dreadlocks, khaki shorts and a compression shirt on one side of me, and a sweet-looking older woman in an ankle-length skirt and floral top on the other. We were moving out onto the runway when she tapped me on the arm.
“Hey,” she said. “You’re going to barf, aren’t you?”
I looked at her. Her mouth was smiling, but her eyes were not amused.
“That obvious?”
She laughed, and ran a finger down my forearm.
“Look at yourself. You’re already sweating.”
She reached into her purse then, palmed something, and slapped her hand down onto my arm. I felt a pinch, and then a sharp tingling running all the way up to my shoulder.
“Hey,” I said, and pulled my arm back across my chest. “What the hell?”
She held her hand up, and showed me the injector. I stared at her. A warm numbness was spreading out from the center of my chest. I reached for her hand, but she just waggled one finger at me and slipped the med tab back into her bag.
“Hey,” I said again. “Hey . . . you . . .”
“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” she said. “Nothing worse than sitting next to a puker in zero gee. That ought to hold you until we touch down.”
I knew I ought to be angry, probably ought to be yelling at her, or yelling for help, or . . . something . . . but I just . . . wasn’t. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out, and after a few seconds of that I closed it again. I looked down. There was a tiny red dot of blood on my arm. She gave my knee a friendly pat.
“There you go, Drew. Take a nap. You’ll feel much better when we get where we’re going.”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t think to ask how she knew my name.
I woke up to find a long line of drool hanging from my chin, and a khaki-clad crotch three inches from my nose. I looked up. Mr. Dreadlocks was straddling me while he tried to wrestle his bag out of the storage bin.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you mind?”
He looked down.
“Sorry, dude. Thought you were dead.”
He gave a yank, and his bag came squirting out into his hands. I leaned back as he pulled his leg over me and stepped out into the aisle. We were the last two passengers on the shuttle.
“I’m not dead,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said over his shoulder. “I get that.”
“Did you see . . .”
He wasn’t listening. I unbuckled, rubbed my face with both hands, and got to my feet. My bag was all alone in the bin. I pulled it out, slung it over my shoulder, and followed Mr. Dreadl
ocks out onto the tarmac.
I’ve never been a big fan of Los Angeles. If there’s one thing the last fifty years have demonstrated, it’s that Southern California is not designed to support 40 million humans. I guess the water thing wasn’t so bad back when the mountains actually built up a snow pack in the winter, but those days are long gone, and they aren’t showing any signs of coming back. The desalination plants keep the sprinklers running, of course, but they also eat up every joule that comes out of the Death Valley solar farm, and then some. My opinion has always been that everyone would be better off if 90 percent of the LA–San Diego corridor just packed up and relocated to Manitoba.
Of course, Manitoba doesn’t have drive-through Reiki centers, so I guess that’s not about to happen anytime soon.
So yeah, Los Angeles was not my favorite city, and LAX was definitely not my favorite part of Los Angeles. It took me twenty minutes of slidewalks and trams and escalators to get from the shuttle gate to the taxi stand. It was seven in the morning, and already it was ninety degrees outside and probably eighty-eight inside, and the air was dry enough that I could feel my sinuses desiccating.
On top of the heat and the early-morning glare and the fact that I’d slept probably four hours in the last thirty-six, I was still feeling the after-effects of whatever that smiley sociopath had injected me with on the shuttle. There was a weird tingling running up and down my arms, and a buzzing in my ears that came and went. As I waited in line for a cab, I kept asking myself what kind of a nutjob goes around sticking needles into random strangers.
Then I remembered that I wasn’t a random stranger. She’d said my name.
How the hell did she know my name?
For some reason, none of this bothered me as much as it should have.
I got to the front of the line. A cab rolled up, and the attendant waved me in. I tossed my bag in ahead of me, dropped into the backseat, pulled out my phone, and tapped the reader to start payment. The door slid closed, and I rolled away.
I spent the entire ride downtown worrying about what I was going to say to Meghan when I found her. I’d only met her face-to-face once before, about a year and a half earlier. She was ten years younger than I was, a freshly minted Ph.D. from UCLA, brilliant and beautiful and scary as hell. One of the reasons that I’d let things get so far out of hand with her was that I’d always found her simultaneously incredibly compelling and incredibly intimidating. The last time I’d had any sort of conflict with her was right at the outset of DragonCorn, when we were fixing the project schedule. I told her I expected a full test cycle on a monthly basis throughout. She told me that was stupid, and that she’d set up a schedule when she had something to test. I shrugged, and smiled, and thanked her for her input.
The End of Ordinary Page 10
