okay
Sam says bring anything you have about nemesis
I shove my phone back in my pocket as the light turns green. That could have waited after all, as it turns out. All I have on the nemesis is some vague thoughts and the texts I got. Those are on my phone, which I obviously have, or I couldn't have gotten the text telling me to bring it.
Also: Sam? Regina's on a first-name basis with Peterson already? Dude still calls me “Mr. Everton” 95% of the time, and I've known him for a year now. Maybe he lets his guard down more around women.
Or maybe it's just that she's not regularly damaging his city. Could be that, I suppose.
If it is, though, then that's deeply unfair. She flooded the whole place last year with that month-long storm. If he's forgiven her for that but is holding it against me, that's – sexist? Maybe just revisionist? Some -ist that's unfair to me, in any case.
It's not like it was her fault, since the nanos twisted her mind and made her do it, but it's not like it's my fault, either. I don't cause these problems. I'm just inextricably bound up in them. I'm the real victim here. Well, a real victim, at least. I hope Peterson appreciates that.
I'm still feeling indignant and slightly sorry for myself when I pull up to the temporary police station at City Hall. I'm about to walk in when I realize that I don't know where Peterson is, and I don't really want to just go ask whoever's at the desk. As I said earlier, I'm kind of persona non grata for a lot of the cops since Tanger's nanos told them what a horrible person I am, so I'd just as soon stay off of their radar.
I should probably just bite the bullet and go inside, but I chicken out and call Peterson.
“Peterson.”
“Hey, I'm here.”
There's a pause. “Then come see me.”
“Yeah, um. Can you come get me? I'm, uh, not sure how popular I am here yet. Does the, uh, desk sergeant, um, like me?”
I swear, I sound like a middle school girl about half the time when I'm talking to Peterson.
There's another pause, then, “Come to the front. I'll come get you.”
I think this probably means that I was right, and whoever's on duty was going to have a problem with me. Then again, maybe it just means that Peterson doesn't want to deal with my neurosis, and has decided that it's easier to escort me back.
“And maybe he'll ask you to the dance,” I mock myself as I head to the front doors. I still don't go inside until I can see Peterson through the glass, though.
Peterson walks me back to a cubicle-office where Regina is waiting. She looks pretty composed, but when she sees me, she gives me a hug that's longer and tighter than normal. I return it, feeling slightly awkward but hoping it helps.
We sit down and I ask, “So I'm guessing you haven't found anything concrete?”
“Nothing yet, although we're checking for other properties owned by Rossum, to see if we can get a lead on his lab. It would help if we knew this doctor's actual name, of course, but we're working without that.”
“Oh! I have that now. A last name, anyway. It's Dr. Amun.”
“Interesting. How did you get that name, Mr. Everton?”
“I, um, talked to a guy that works for him. I told him that he was in trouble for, um, medical malpractice, and he, uh, helped me out.”
Peterson's stare could bore a hole through a sheet of iron, but all he says is, “I see.”
I have got to get better at lying. None of that was even untrue, but I'm still sweating like Peterson's busted me for drug-smuggling. Thankfully, he moves on without pressing the issue.
“We'll see if Amun shows up anywhere interesting. In the mean time, I'd like to hear your speculation on the current nemesis. What you know, what you think you know, and why you think you know it.”
“Okay, well: we know he's got the same powers I do, molecular disintegration, because half of the stuff in Brian's apartment was vaporized. And he's got to be someone who knows me or has been watching me, 'cause he knew to go after Brian to get to me. Probably not a bad guy? I mean, without the nanos. Everyone else has just tried to kill me, or ruin me. No offense, Regina.”
Regina shrugs uncomfortably.
I stumble on. “I mean, I'm not saying you're a bad person. Just that this guy found a solution that – I mean, where you –”
There's no good way out of this particular hole, so I just stop. Neither Regina nor Peterson seem inclined to take over the conversation, though, so after a moment, I start again.
“Anyway, he wants this to stop, which I can agree with him on. But we can't leave Brian with him and hope for the best, because nanos make people crazy. No offe– no, screw it. Regina, I'm sorry and I'm gonna say stupid stuff here, but the nanos suck and they screw with your mind and none of this is an attack on you, so can I issue a blanket apology for anything that sounds like it might be related to you here and move on?”
Regina surprises me with a genuine laugh. “Dan, you say stupid stuff pretty much constantly. It's okay.”
“Fine, I'll take it. Anyway, that's basically it. He's a crazy person; the nanos pretty much guarantee that. He's trying to do the right thing, though, so he's not a criminal or a politician. And I'm gonna guess that he's somewhere semi-remote, because this particular power is a little out of control even for me, and I don't have homicidal thoughts raging in my head. So if he's looking to protect people – and I'm guessing he is, since he didn't even come after me – he'll be away from them.”
Peterson nods. “Thank you. Can I see your phone? I'd like to read the texts from the kidnapper, to see if there are any clues in the style of speaking.”
“Sure thing,” I say, but as I'm getting my phone out to hand to Peterson, it buzzes with an incoming call from Doctor Simmons. “Hang on, it's the doc. Let me get this. Hello?”
“Dan! Did you read my email?”
“No, sorry, I was driving. What's up?”
“Well, it's not that important, but his name almost certainly isn't Amun, either.”
“What? Why not?” Regina and Peterson are looking at me quizzically, so I put the phone on speaker and place it on Peterson's desk.
“Amun was chief of the gods in ancient Egypt. It fits his pattern of fake names.”
“Shoot. I thought I had actual information there. Well, he's got a bank account in that name, at least, so it's still something. What made you think to look the name up, anyway?”
“I didn't look it up; I just happened to know who Amun is.”
“You just happen to know the names of ancient gods?”
“I had a lot of hobbies growing up, Dan. I didn't always want to be a doctor.”
“So, what, for a while you wanted to be a mummy?”
Doc Simmons sighs. “Look, the reason I'm calling is that I was looking over the skin and blood samples I took from Brian when he met Dr. A in the cafeteria. And I found nanos in the blood sample.”
“Okay, so the dude was carrying them. We knew that, though, right?”
“No, Dan. Not in the skin sample. In the blood sample. Brian's blood has nanos.”
Regina's hands fly to her face in an almost comical expression of shock, and Peterson frowns. “You're saying that he's been infected?” he asks.
“Probably that day in the hospital, yes,” says the doc. “I think there's a good chance that Brian's the nemesis.”
“No way,” I say, shaking my head. “No way.”
“Can I see those texts, please?” asks Peterson.
I hang up with the doc and open the text thread with Brian. “Hang on,” I tell Peterson. “Let me scroll back. The last hundred or so were just 'filth' over and over.”
I'm scrolling back through when suddenly I freeze. I never actually read these texts past the first few, and while most of them do just say “filth,” several have an extra word. The part that's arrested my attention looks like this:
Filth
Filth
Filth
Filth sand
Filth
I
t's the exact same trouble Brian was having with getting the speech-to-text to understand that he wanted it to send.
I swallow hard as I pass the phone over to Peterson. “Um. So. Yeah, I think the doc's right. And that sort of puts a new spin on things.”
Peterson scans quickly through the texts. “All right. I have two men I can put on patrol tonight, and should be able to devote four more tomorrow during the day. We'll start checking likely locations –”
“You can just pull people off of what they're working on?” I ask. I don't mean to interrupt, but it slips out. “I mean, obviously I'm grateful, but I didn't think you had that kind of clout.”
Peterson fixes me with a stare that I can't interpret. “Yes, I can. Lately, it seems I'm the head of the special force in charge of keeping you out of the trouble and out of the news.”
“That hasn't –” I start to say, but Regina elbows me hard. “Ow! Ow,” I add, looking at her reproachfully as I rub my side.
“Thank you for your help,” she says, looking at Peterson. “I really appreciate it.”
“No, obviously thank you, but,” I say, “I'm not sure this is a good idea.”
Regina glares at me. “How can you say that?” she hisses. “He's hiding to protect you, and you don't want to even go find him?”
“Obviously I want to find him!” I'm saying “obviously” a lot in this conversation, which I think means I'm not getting my points across very well. I take a deep breath and attempt to explain myself better.
“Okay, look. There are two reasons why I think sending random dudes out to look for Brian isn't a great idea. One: they're probably not going to find him. Two guys at night with the instructions to 'look where people aren't'? That's not a recipe for success.
“Two: if they do find him, then what? He's mentally unstable and unbelievably dangerous. If they startle him, if he gets the drop on them, if he doesn't understand that they're trying to help him...if any of a thousand things go wrong, they die horribly. While also vanishing completely, so we don't even learn anything from their deaths, in case either of you were about to try to justify that bloody math.”
“You think he would kill them?” asks Peterson.
“Not on purpose, maybe, but yeah, absolutely. This one's ugly, and there aren't any takebacks on it. Look, give me that piece of paper there. You don't need this for anything, right?”
Peterson shakes his head, and I ball up the paper and place it on his desk. Then, focusing my loathing, I tap it with the tip of my finger. As if caught in an invisible fire, the edges curl and vanish, and within seconds the entire thing has been reduced down to the now-familiar pile of dust.
“So that's the base form of this power,” I say. “You touch something, and the nanos eat it completely. All of its constituent parts, as fast as they can chew through them. It's possible that he's gotten more control of the power, in which case it only eats holes through anything he touches, instead of devouring the entire thing. But when it comes to people, that's really not much of a reassurance.”
“Hm,” says Peterson. “I don't suppose that body armor would be of any help?”
“No, the type of material doesn't seem to matter, just the quantity of it. I suppose dressing in layers might work. I don't know if he'd have to affect them one at a time, but at least if you saw your outer jacket dissolving, you could try to pull it off before the nanos spread to the layer underneath.”
I think again about the shrieking rat and about how the spattered blood was the only thing left, and feel nauseated again.
To my left, Regina has gone quiet. I glance over to see tears quietly slipping out of her eyes as she stares fixedly at the ceiling.
“Hey, it's gonna be all right,” I say, uncertain what to do. “We're gonna find him, and fix this.”
“How?” she asks. “Like you fixed it with me?”
I wince. When Regina had active nanos in her, our interaction culminated in a knock-down, drag-out fight which left the atrium of a museum destroyed, both of us in the hospital, and her so magnetized that she couldn't get within a foot of any electronics without breaking them. She lost her job, lost her house and ended up living in her car, which was just old enough that none of its computerized parts were vital to its basic functions.
It was months before she was able to track me down and beg me to reverse what I'd done. Fortunately, I was able to, but that was a significantly less destructive power. With matter-destroying nanos, anything I do to Brian is likely to be far less reversible.
“No, hey, he's gonna be fine,” I say. “We've just gotta figure out how to get to him. I'm not saying we're going to leave him out there. I just don't think sending unknown guys with guns at night is the right idea. We'll get him back.”
“How?” Regina asks again, and I stop to consider before replying.
“Okay. I think we stick with the original plan with the police – if that's okay by you?” I ask, glancing at Peterson. He nods, and I continue. “So you guys are going to run searches on Rossum Medical Supply, Dr. Amun and whatever other proper nouns we've got tied to this guy. See if we can find some more property, a money trail to follow, anything. I'll give you the phone number that Dupont gave me, too, in case that goes anywhere.”
“Some of the records are going to have to wait until tomorrow when people are in the offices again, but a lot of it is digitized these days, so we'll get started on that tonight,” says Peterson. “However, I can't help but notice that your plan seems to leave you free to go cause problems.”
“To go solve problems,” I protest. “Regina and I will go look for Brian, which is an extremely reasonable and legal thing for friends to do. And is less likely to result in death or property damage than any other method of finding him. Unless you have a better idea?”
Peterson's lips tighten, but I can't tell if he's holding back a scowl or a smile. “I will make only one request, Mr. Everton. Please do not make my job any harder than it already is.”
“You say that like I usually mean to make your life difficult.”
“No, Mr. Everton. I say it like you usually don't mean to, and do it anyway.”
I spread my hands in an apologetic gesture. “I'll...try not to?”
Peterson shrugs. “Thank you.”
Regina and I walk out of the temporary police headquarters together in silence. In the parking lot, she finally speaks.
“So where do we go from here?”
“Well,” I say, “I'm not totally sure. I was hoping you might have some idea of where he is.”
She shakes her head miserably, and I hasten to reassure her. “That's fine! We'll come up with some possibilities. In the mean time, I want to go to the hospital. The doc's still there, and I have an idea she can help us out with.”
- - -
“Absolutely not,” says Doc Simmons.
“What? Why not?” I demand. The doc laughs in surprise.
“Why won't I just give you some sedatives? It's against the rules, it's against my judgment, and it's against common sense,” says the doc, ticking the reasons off on her fingers.
“But we need them to get Brian back!”
“Even granting the validity of that statement, which I do not, what exactly is your plan for using them?”
“Well, um,” I say, having not actually gotten that far in the process, “I figured I'd just inject him. But I guess maybe if he saw the needle coming, he could dissolve it. Do you have, like, a trank gun?”
Simmons laughs again. “Yes, Dan. I have a tranquilizer gun in my laboratory, for all of those times that an experiment gets loose and I have to hunt it down in the air ducts.”
“Fine, but can you –”
“No. The hospital does not have a trank gun. It is not the sort of thing we would ever need or use.”
“Okay, okay. Um, how big are syringes? In diameter, I mean?”
“Dan. I will give you the sedatives you want right now –” my excitement must be evident on my face, because the doc lifts
an admonishing finger “– if you can tell me, honestly, that you are not currently thinking of making a blowgun.”
“I, ah. Might have been,” I admit.
“This is why my answer is no,” says Simmons. “If you give chemicals to untrained idiots, you end up with untrained idiots full of chemicals. And you have no one to blame but yourself.”
“How much training can it possibly take to stick a syringe in someone?” I protest. The doc's cold stare stops me in my tracks.
“You don't even know how much you don't know. No. I will under no circumstances send you out with a load of sedatives, a lack of a plan and a deathwish,” says the doc, unlocking a cabinet and removing several boxes and bottles.
“Then what are you doing?” I ask in confusion, as she begins placing supplies into a messenger bag.
“I happen to like Brian. He's a good worker, he's intelligent, and I'd like to see him back unharmed. So I'm coming with you.”
“But we don't even know where we're going yet!”
“Actually,” says Regina, “I think I have an idea. I thought of someplace.”
The doc and I turn to look at Regina expectantly, and she continues. “Brian's into urban exploration. You know, poking around abandoned places? He's always showing me pictures of forgotten amusement parks and empty factories and things like that.
“Anyway, there's a place near here – remember Stonefield Mall?”
“Sure, the big place that opened up on the east end of town like a decade ago,” I say.
“Opened up and then closed down all within about a year, yeah. It was supposed to be this big revitalization project, only none of the stores ever really moved in and the whole thing folded almost as soon as it started.”
“Well, the supporting infrastructure wasn't there,” I say. “You can't just drop a mall in and expect it to thrive if it's totally removed from its clientele's businesses and homes. Not to mention that the roads out that way aren't built to handle to volume of traffic that the mall could have produced, if it had been successful.”
Everything Falls Apart Page 8
