The White List

by Nina D'Aleo

  “What are you doing?” she shrieked at me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I thought you were on holidays.”

  She spotted the state of my partner’s apartment behind me and I think her gasp was louder than when she’d thought some random psycho had a gun to her head. I quickly explained what had happened to Dark and that placated her somewhat.

  “Don’t you worry.” She patted my arm. “I’ll get this place spotless and then I’ll take him some soup—my mother’s recipe—magic.”

  “They’re not letting him have visitors,” I told her. “But you can still try.”

  I’d rung a few more times since I’d been there and been told the same thing—he’s doing well and sleeping. Speaking of calling, my folks were hounding me, filling up my inbox with messages. I knew they were worried so I’d sent Dad a text: At work, am totally fine. Relax. Be home soon.

  I took the address and left as the Smithy Cleaning Frenzy began. The elevator opened while I was still halfway down the hall. I rushed as fast as I could on my leg and caught it. Two people already stood inside, a nondescript guy in a suit with a briefcase, and a girl. She had short dyed-red hair, leather pants, a ring through her lower lip and steel-capped boots. She smelled metallic like a welder and had an angular, hungry look to her face. She turned to me and I thought she was about to say something, but then seemed to change her mind. She must have seen me coming out of Dark’s place and was going to ask after him. All the girls loved him.

  I headed out to Dark’s car, which I’d parked out front of the apartment block. The sun was dipping low in the sky and my stomach snarled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten all day, but I wanted to get to this walt’s address and question her before it got too late. I could eat after that. I entered her address into the GPS on my cell phone. Dark didn’t have a car navigation system. He didn’t believe in them.

  In rush-hour traffic, it took me a good hour to reach the destination. I parked under a streetlight and stepped out to look around. I’d ended up at an abandoned warehouse close to the waterfront shipping sector of the city. There weren’t any houses in sight. I checked the address on my phone and it appeared to match what I’d written down—but it didn’t even seem like the right suburb. Strange.

  Night had now taken over from the light and heavy shadows stretched across the concrete square leading to the darkened warehouse. I shivered in the evening breeze. The air carried a tinge of smoke and the murmur of a storm. I stared at the warehouse. Smashed windows, graffiti marked, creepy and isolated—everything about the place said stay away. And I wasn’t about to argue. I started to get back into the car, but then thought maybe Dark had an old street directory in the trunk that I could check. So I went around and opened it up, rummaging through Dark’s duffle bag of tools. Footsteps sounded close by. I looked around the side of the car. A person, a woman, was approaching. I recognized her as the girl from the elevator at Dark’s apartment building.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  I stepped out from behind the car, not sure what she meant, confused at seeing her again, and by her saying but not sounding sorry.

  She closed the distance between us fast and punched me in the face. A terrible debilitating pain crashed me to the ground and my eyesight blanked out then flashed back in. I rolled away as her boot rushed toward my head. I scrambled to my feet and grabbed for my gun. It was gone. The girl gave a nasty smile and opened her jacket. She was wearing my duty belt. I stared, shocked: how had she gotten it off me without my knowing? She took my gun out of the holster and held it up as if to say, Looking for this?

  I struck fast, slamming my hand into her throat. She reeled and I bolted. There was only so long fists could hold up against bullets. Shots rang out and I lunged behind the side of the warehouse. The girl came after me, pulling on night-vision headgear as she ran. I crashed blindly beside the building, dragging my hand along the wall and stumbling over unseen rubble. I turned the corner into a lamp-lit area and saw a wall blocking my path. It was too tall to climb. I looked left and right searching for a way out and spotted an open window up about twice my height. I could hear the girl’s running steps closing in behind me.

  I darted forward and grabbed a discarded cardboard box. I shoved it up against the side of the warehouse and climbed on. It collapsed, dumping me onto the ground. I swore and grabbed another box. I leaped up and reached for the window, grasping at the ledge. I stretched up, every part of my body straining. My fingertips closed over the windowsill. A hand darted down from the window and closed over my wrist. It wrenched me off my feet and dragged me upward.

  16

  I landed on my back with a knee pressed down on my chest and a gloved hand covering my mouth. The shadow form of a man crouched over me. He whispered, ‘Shhhh.’

  I attacked, hitting him in the groin while arching my body up, sharp and fast to throw him. He gave a stifled grunt and shifted. I scrambled out from beneath him, but he was on me again straight away. He grabbed my arms, trying to pin me, while I thrashed wildly, kicking him.

  “Stop!” the stranger whispered. “I’m here to help you!”

  “Get off me!” I hissed. “And then I’ll stop.”

  After a second more of struggle, he relented and released me. I flipped over and crawled away from him fast until I hit something solid and then I put my back to it and faced him.

  My heart thudded heavily in the silence as I eyed the stranger. Though darkness hid his face, I could sense his eyes watching. A scuffling sound came from outside, and, keeping focused on the man, I edged over to dart a glance out the window.

  I saw the girl who attacked me arriving at the end of the alley just below. She turned one way and then the other, searching. With the headgear she wore, she should have been able to see our heat, even through the wall. She should have been able to see the window with no headgear at all, but she didn’t seem to notice either. She just kept turning and turning and turning, then she yelled a curse and ran back the way she’d come.

  I exhaled slowly and turned my full attention back to the man. “I’m going to leave,” I told him keeping my voice as even as I could. “And you’re not going to stop me.” I started to move with caution.

  “Don’t you want to know who she is?” The man spoke with equal control.

  “I can find out for myself,” I said, continuing to maneuver into a position where I could jump out the window.

  “I doubt that,” the stranger replied. “She’s an Undertaker—Annrais Pope.”

  My nerves scattered. We’d all heard the Project Undertaker rumors. The story went that in the early nineties the Research and Development Department of the Chapter had procured a number of individuals matching pre-set personality and genetic requirements and, basically, had used a variety of inhuman, experimental methods to mold them into killing machines. After a series of failed tests and subject meltdowns, the agency had pulled the plug on the project and terminated all the assassins, except for a handful who had escaped and never been found. However, there had been no evidence to suggest this was anything other than an exaggerated, fear-mongering story. There were a lot of those floating around Headquarters.

  “How do you know who she is?” I asked him.

  “I make it my business to know things,” he replied ambiguously. “Pope hacked your navigation and led you here to collect the bounty on your head.”

  I laughed involuntarily. “I have a bounty on my head?”

  The shadowy figure said nothing, and I felt the truth of his words.

  “I have a bounty on my head,” I repeated. Obviously I’d crossed that line the General had been trying to warn me about and now the Chapter was trying to “relocate” me. I wondered if Twentyman had been the one to sign the order.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but then I remembered something I’d learned during basic training about assassination protocol. If an assassin failed to engage a primary target on the first, direct attempt, standard procedure was to proceed to a secondar
y path, to use emotional bait to draw the target out. Which, in my case meant …

  “My family,” I breathed.

  I grabbed for my cell phone, but then remembered I’d left it in the car. My body moved on instinct. I leaped out the open window and dropped down to the alley below, crushing the cardboard box flat. I raced back along the side of the warehouse and rounded the corner. The space below the streetlight was empty. The assassin had stolen Dark’s car. I ran out into the concrete square, turning everywhere, searching for another car, a person, a public phone, anything. The place was completely deserted and I heard only very distant sounds of civilization. I didn’t even know which way to run.

  The stranger spoke behind me, “By the time you make it anywhere, it will be too late. She led you out this far for a reason.”

  I spun around and faced the man. He was dressed in black, tall and strongly built with dark steely eyes. I blinked and it came to me that I’d seen him before—this was the man who had been watching us outside the club and again at the gardens.

  “She’ll take your family and you’ll never see them again,” he said. “Your best hope for them would be a quick end and even then you’ll have no guarantees. Pope is crazy, blood-hungry. Her favorite trick is burying people alive.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I yelled at him, my chest so tight I could barely breathe.

  “Because I can help you.”

  I ran to him. “How? Do you have a phone?”

  “Yes. But it’s useless. Your parents’ line is already dead. She doesn’t work alone. She has a crew and she always has a Plan B.”

  “How can you help me then?” I demanded.

  “My people will keep your family safe—if you come with me to—”

  “Fine,” I cut him off. “Whatever. Anything. Just help them.”

  He gave me a measuring look, then took a phone out of his pocket and pressed the screen. He held it up to his mouth and said, “Stop Pope’s crew. Watch the family.”

  I unclenched my trembling fists. I had no idea who this person was. He could be lying. He could be working with the assassin, or even be her competition, but I had no choice but to agree to his terms. It was a rock and hard place to be. A freezing wind shrieked in the dark night. Rain started falling, sounding like bullets on the corrugated metal of the warehouse. I shivered, blinking to keep the drops out of my eyes.

  The man slid the phone back into his jacket pocket. He turned toward a shipping container left on one side of the concrete yard. He pointed at it. The lamplights lining the street faltered. One bulb blew out in an explosion of glass. Before my eyes, the whole massive container lifted into the air, revealing a black four-wheel-drive vehicle underneath. The man lowered his hand, bringing the container silently down beside the vehicle.

  It felt like my heart stopped beating for a second. Had I just seen what I thought I just saw? Did he shift something with his mind? The thought immediately took me back to the attack at Bank Terrace. Someone had destroyed the street—apparently just with his thoughts. A mutated walt.

  I turned my stare on him and said, “Was it you? Did you try to kill us?”

  “No,” he replied firmly.

  “Then who?” I demanded.

  “Not here,” he said. “Get in.” He moved fast for the vehicle, and as he glanced back to see if I was following, his eyes shimmered silver blue, like the eyes of a nocturnal creature. “Come on!” he called. “Do you want to save your family or not?”

  I ran to catch up with him. There was no choice in it.

  The walt drove faster than I’d ever gone before. Dark had a lead foot, but this was a whole new level of speeding. Buildings literally blurred beside us. Every light we approached turned green so suddenly, so unnaturally, that cars coming in the opposite direction had to screech to a stop. All I could do was sit tight and hang on. The man drove in silence, his control never slipping, while my mind spun, trying to process everything that was happening. My thoughts jumped to Dark. If my family was covered, he would be the next person the assassins would target.

  “My partner,” I said to the walt.

  “We’ve got people on him,” he told me.

  “What sort of people?”

  “My people,” was all he’d give me and it really wasn’t enough when Dark and my family were concerned. I had to get control of the situation. I had to get my hands on this walt’s phone and get behind the wheel, which meant somehow getting rid of him, but I had already seen what he was capable of. I’d have to take him by surprise. My eyes roamed around the interior of the car searching for something I could use, but the space was completely clear. So it would need to be a bare-knuckle blow to the side of his head, hard enough to knock him out.

  I shot a glance at him, then looked away and back again, my eyes drawn to his face. He had combat scars and the signs of physical torture cut deeply into his skin. He had fingertips missing and long-healed rope and cigarette burns on his arms. Muscles cut taut lines across the scar tissue. He glanced my way with dark eyes both detached and scary sharp, which only comes from cheating death while others fall around you.

  I knew a specialist soldier when I saw one.

  Which, added to his being a walt, pretty much canceled out any hope of knocking him unconscious, but I still had to try. I clenched my fist.

  The walt’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly and he took one hand off the wheel and rested his arm on the console between us. It felt like he was letting me know he was ready should I try anything. I looked down at his hand, trying to anticipate what he was going to do and spotted something that made the breath catch in my throat. On one of his wrists was a black sun split in half, identical to the tattoo of Omen, and to the victims.

  “What is that?” I asked him. “What does it mean?”

  “You’ll see soon enough,” he told me.

  “I have to get to my family,” I said, trying to keep control of my voice.

  “This is their best chance, trust me,” he said, the headlights of oncoming cars reflecting across his face, giving it an unnatural glow. Before I could say anything else, the stranger began to slow the vehicle and I looked out the passenger window, recognizing an outer-city suburb full of pre-war cottages and industrial estates. We pulled up outside a motel that had a distinct Norman Bates feel to it, a place that clearly did most of its business by the hour.

  The man stopped the car and got out. I took a deep breath and followed. Lightning ripped the sky above and the rain pelted harder as we dashed across the parking lot to the motel building. The walt started climbing a set of stairs and I followed him up and along a walkway to room number thirteen. He unlocked the door, but I didn’t see a key in his hand. I followed him in, down a corridor that smelled of mildew and stale shower water, and into a room.

  A group of about thirty people, men and women, sat around the cleared-out space. All eyes turned our way. A girl stepped out of the crowd to meet the stranger, and I heard her say his name—Rocco. She put a hand on his arm and shot a wary look my way, but my attention was focused elsewhere—on the front of the room, on a man. He was standing with his back to the group, typing on a laptop computer. Eventually he straightened and turned to face us. I stared into the black, inescapable eyes of the rogue agent, Omen.

  “Silver,” he said. “Won’t you take a seat?”

  17

  Minus the disastrously unflattering uniform, the tragic eighties fringe and crippling teenage angst, I felt like the new kid at school all over again, shuffling awkwardly past cliques of people staring at me with anything from open hostility to unsettling fascination. I managed to edge onto the chair Omen was pointing to, which was positioned at the front of the group. The rogue agent crossed his arms and stood watching me. He stared for so long that it went from unnerving to disturbing and I went from shaken to angry.

  “Agent DeLeon,” I finally said.

  The former agent flinched as if I’d slapped him awake. He stalked forward until he was standing righ
t over me, and then he leaned closer still and said in a dangerous whisper, “My name is Omen.”

  He had two full sleeves of tattoos, and as he spoke their colors swirled and shifted and the pictures changed from relatively ordinary images to frightening ghoulish faces gnashing their teeth at me from his skin. I thought about arguing back, but that little voice inside my head that sometimes steps in and stops me from doing incredibly stupid things said, “Probably not the best time.”

  “Omen,” I repeated to placate him, realizing I definitely needed to defuse the situation as quickly as possible. It didn’t take a behavioral expert to see he was fractured and on edge. He was unshaven, bloodstained and stinking of sweat—and yet he had an alpha-dog magnetism to him that was undeniable. I’d noticed it when he was an agent, but now I felt it even more. I couldn’t hold his stare.

  I focused past him on the gathering of others and was struck then by the fact that although everyone there had such different features, they all seemed similar in a way I couldn’t pinpoint—until I spotted the split-sun tattoo on one guy’s wrist. I ran my eyes along the rest of the group. All the wrists I could see had the same mark. Among the faces I recognized the guy from the Bushel pantry. He was the youngest there, maybe even still a teenager, and he was sitting in the front row typing rapidly on a laptop balanced on his knees. He stopped and looked at me with the troubled eyes of someone who has grown up with trauma. His uncertainty turned to fear under my stare and that look unlocked my memory. I saw him running away from us. I saw the car pull up and Omen and Rocco step out. It was Omen who had lifted his hand and brought destruction down on our heads. Everything was starting to make sense.