Relics

Relics Page 7

by Jon Ray

The executive elevators were filled to capacity and beyond. The young operator had been forced into the lobby, his tight blue uniform tangled behind him like a straitjacket.

  “Please sirs! Please, if you’ll allow me…”

  Marion and Allison skirted the stampede, moving around the edge of the lobby, trying to remain inconspicuous. As they passed the newsstand, Allison saw her face staring out from three of the five mediascreens, all various-sized reproductions of the same hideous photo.

  Where do they get these things? She crept closer to Marion, trying to squeeze herself between his beanpole body and the wall. Sure, she looked different now, but not nearly enough. All it took was a single look. One hard look, and everyone would know.

  “Do you think he’s all right?”

  “Who?”

  “Ian.” Marion stared back at the huge double doors, splitting the black glass lobby wide open against the rain. “Jeez, did you see his hair fly?”

  “Yeah.” She took a deep breath, keeping herself calm. “You know, I thought he wore a piece.”

  There was the comforting chime of an elevator, ringing faintly over the clash of loud voices. Marion skirted the dark wedge of the crowd, circling toward the bank of lifts. After a few minutes fighting the human flood, he finally managed to maneuver them onto an elevator, trying to protect Allison by sandwiching her against the glossy, maple-paneled wall.

  Inside, the elevator was crammed to overflowing with dripping, frenetic young men, like some sort of frat stunt gone horribly wrong. The agitated bankers were packed tight, their sopping-wet jackets squeezed together until water ran from them like sponges. Allison felt a growing sense of panic as she glanced around, thinking Christ, I’m the only woman here.

  “Imwealth! Forty seven!” The ragged voice blasted out of the crush, setting off an insistent chorus of numbers and names from all sides. The doors rolled halfway closed, and then slid back, rebounding from someone’s protruding arm.

  “Do your job! Get this bucket moving!” Marion looked around, confused, trying to figure out who they were yelling at. Then, beneath that sea of withering stares, he finally realized that they were yelling at him. Swallowing hard, he raised his hand in calm acknowledgement, flashing the deep blue cuff of his windbreaker, trying his best to act like a professional operator.

  The doors finally made it closed, the white tips of someone’s nails withdrawing angrily into the lobby. Again, the voice exploded from the midst of the crowd. “Forty-freakin’-seven!”

  Allison wedged herself behind Marion, trying to keep her face hidden. For the moment, the mob didn’t seem to notice she was there, their eyes directed instead toward the elevator’s brass controls.

  Marion turned toward the board, and was immediately confronted with an intricate, flashing nightmare. There seemed to be well over a hundred small buttons, lined up in neat rows like brass tacks stuck into the elevator wall. A tiny digital display flashed either a company or department name next to each button, but the floor numbers — which were elegantly embossed into the polished brass — were all but unreadable in the harsh light. Marion leaned closer, squinting at the gleaming metal, feeling his heart sink.

  Roman numerals. Marion felt the icy stares targeting him as he dredged up his childhood math lessons, trying to recall the correct sequence of numbers.

  V is five, he thought. V is five and X is ten and you subtract the smaller sum from the one before. He knew that was wrong, somewhere, but he didn’t have time to figure it out: the passengers behind him were starting to rumble like a volcano, their anger pushing toward the surface in a bubbling roar. He put his finger randomly on the nearest button, hoping that he would somehow get it right.

  L. The letter blazed beneath the glowing diode, sparking Marion’s dim memory. L was fifty! He quickly counted three buttons up and punched the button so hard that his thumb knuckle audibly popped. The elevator creaked like a schooner as it rose, loaded way beyond its legal limit, threatening every second to snap its cables and plummet back to the crowded lobby.

  “And thirty. There’s a satellite link on thirty!”

  “Bolante Associates!”

  Marion found as many as possible, trying to keep Allison hidden behind him as he stabbed frantically at the tiny buttons. No one even looked her way, as if it were completely natural for the elevator operator to work with a girl peering over his shoulder like a pet monkey.

  As the elevator accelerated, the crowd gradually quieted down, lapsing into a hushed silence, all eyes focused on the floor counter as it ticked up one glowing green number at a time. Only a couple of people got off at the first few stops, but at forty-seven the mob surged forward, pressing senselessly against the polished brass doors long before they were due to open.

  Finally, the arrival chime rang out like a starter pistol, and the crush of humanity burst through the widening crack, descending on the trading room like a howling tribe of Brightlanders. Marion caught a brief glimpse of the room beyond, stretching away in an endless maze of office chairs and gray cubicle walls. All across the floor, long lines of traders looked up suddenly, faces lit bluish-green by their mediascreens, mouths popped into little circles of terror and surprise.

  “Gimme a Pacific line!”

  “Who’s got Shanghai? I need a futures confirmation now!”

  The doors drifted shut, gradually muting the chaos outside. Relieved, Marion turned back to the elevator, mentally counting the half-dozen passengers left on board. Allison straightened up behind him, finally relaxing her deathgrip on the back of his jacket.

  “Where to, sirs?” Marion gave an unctuous smile, straightening his jacket collar against his neck. One of the old men pursed his lips, as if inviting a kiss.

  “One Fifty-three.” He waited for Marion to find the right button, and then slowly appraised him, his hands clasped behind his back. “You don’t work here.”

  Marion smiled tightly, feeling Allison’s clenched fist press against his back.

  “No, I don’t,” he answered carefully, trying to keep his voice steady. “I just got jammed in here, and people were shouting at me, so I started pressing buttons. I think it was my jacket that did it, actually.”

  The man looked him carefully up and down, obviously suspicious. “It is the same color, more or less, but it is not our livery. So if you do not work for us, then why, pray tell, are you in this elevator?”

  Pray tell. What kind of person said that? Marion tried not to panic, but his brain was unable to come up with a single reasonable reply.

  “He’s here with me. He’s my fiancé.”

  The man’s gaze shifted immediately, finding Allison for the first time. He studied her, his eyes narrowing behind a pair of octagonal frames.

  “You look familiar. Who do you work for?”

  Marion could tell by Allison’s grinding fist that she had nothing. He glanced frantically toward the floor buttons, scanning the displays for a random name.

  “She doesn’t work here,” he said matter-of-factly, meeting the man’s interrogating gaze head-on, “her father does. This is Loretta Sherman — we’re here to meet about the wedding.”

  To help bolster his lie, Marion reached out and firmly pressed the button for Sherman Capital Management, LLC.

  “Sherman?” The old man clear his throat, and his fellow passengers glanced nervously toward Allison. “You mean Forrest Sherman?”

  “Of course,” Marion replied, his voice growing increasingly confident. “She’s his daughter. And as you can tell, she’s been through quite an ordeal.”

  The old man took a step backward, swallowing apprehensively.

  “What happened?”

  Marion straightening his back, glowering with indignation. “She was attacked, sir. In the lobby. By that, that…” he shook his head, disgusted. “By that mob of so-called financial professionals.”

  The old man looked around the elevator for support, but his fellow bankers all averted their eyes, as if he had suddenly developed bo
ils. “Has he, uh, been notified?”

  “Yes sir. He told me to bring her right to his office.” Marion glared at the men reproachfully. “To be honest, I shouldn’t really be stopping at all.”

  The elevator rang suddenly, the floor coasting to a smooth halt beneath their feet. Marion nodded solemnly, hearing the doors slide open behind him. “One fifty-three, sir. Bolante Associates.”

  The men scuttled into the carpeted hallway in a matter of seconds, vacating the cab as if it were in flames. The doors slid back into place, cutting them off, leaving the elevator empty and blissfully silent.

  “Oh my god.” Allison threw her arms around Marion and kissed his cheek, half-catching the surprised corner of his mouth with the salty smear of her lips. She pulled back and smiled, her eyes flashing viridian green.

  “Who the hell is Loretta?”

  Marion shrugged sheepishly. “She was a stray cat I used to feed at the Center.”

  “Oh, thanks a lot. I guess I should be thankful she wasn’t named Tiger or something.”

  Marion started to stammer an apology, but Allison shushed him with her fingertips, still grinning. “You can make it up to me later, Prince Charming. Right now we should figure out where the hell we’re going next.”

  Marion followed her worried gaze, already knowing what he would find: The elevator’s oversized front panel, which was lit up like a Christmas tree, and counting relentlessly toward the next scheduled stop.

  The elevator rang through two more floors as Marion tried to figure out exactly what to do. Each time the doors slid open he expected to see a crowd of policemen waiting patiently to bring them down. But both bays remained improbably vacant, although they could hear distant shouting and bleating phones leaking through the hallway walls.

  “Two for two,” Allison said, watching the doors ease closed for the second time. Marion frowned, quickly counting at least twenty more stops lit up ahead of them.

  They can’t all be empty, he thought, his eyes jumping from floor to floor. Somewhere along the way, they would find passengers who wouldn’t be so easily fooled. Marion glanced at the door, the digital counter flashing only ten floors from the next stop.

  “Look,” Allison said, pointing at the indicator light. “It’s Sherman.”

  Marion leaned forward, dismayed. The label screen for the next scheduled floor was, indeed, Sherman Capital Management.

  Now why did I press that again? Marion scanned the board one more time, even though he already knew the layout by heart. The problem was, unlike most elevators he’d seen, there wasn’t a key switch for Fire Mode, which would have presumably cleared all of the existing stops. There was an emergency stop switch and an operator call button, but Marion had quickly decided that he’d rather take his chances on the random floor lottery than risk setting off an alarm or alerting a complete stranger to their presence.

  “What’s behind this panel, do you think?” Allison indicated the other side of the elevator doors, where a nearly invisible square of mahogany was cut into the polished wall. Marion crossed the floor in an instant, pulling the sturdiest flathead screwdriver he could find from the jangle of tools in his jacket pocket.

  The small door was set tight and flush, with no discernible hinges or keyhole. Even as Marion attempted to wedge his screwdriver into the incredibly narrow seam, he knew that it was no use. He simply didn’t have enough leverage to pry it open, and nowhere near enough time to chip an access path through the hardwood paneling.

  And then, as if reaching the end of a game-show challenge, the elevator’s perky floor alarm rang out, and the car bumped rudely to a stop.

  As both Marion and Allison watched apprehensively, the wooden doors creaked slowly back into the wall, revealing the withered, angry face of a well-dressed ogre. The man was about a meter and a half tall, wide as a dumpster, and obviously surprised to see them. He was holding a glinting metal key of some sort in his right hand, and as he stared at them his forehead furrowed in confusion, knotting over his sunken eyes like a leather visor. He finally opened his mouth to speak, but Allison beat him to it.

  “Hi daddy!” she exclaimed cheerfully, waving.

  And then, just as the doors were rolling back into place, she reached through the narrowing gap and snatched the troll’s keyring from his outstretched hand.

  “Yoink!”

  Marion couldn’t believe what he had just seen. And judging from the fat man’s face, neither could he. As the thinning aperture finally closed with a solid, mechanical thump, Marion could clearly hear a dull pounding against the outside doors.

  “Watch out,” Allison suggested, backing away from the rattling doors. “He might actually be strong enough to break through.”

  Marion turned toward her, a look of wonder on his face. “Did you actually say ‘yoink’ when you did that?”

  “Yeah, I guess I did.” Allison flashed a wicked smile and held up the pale gold key. “Do you think this is worth anything?”

  “I dunno,” Marion replied dubiously. “I mean, it did seem like he was getting ready to use it, but I don’t see any place in here where a key would fit.”

  Then, as he took the cold hunk of metal into his hand, he noticed that it was attached to a surprisingly heavy, granite-gray Lucite fob. “Unless…”

  On a hunch, he swung the fob up into his palm and waved it slowly over the mahogany panel. After a few seconds of random movement, he finally heard a muffled electronic click, and the door sprang open to reveal a small recessed cabinet. At the back of the shallow space was a shiny gold plate, bolted over a plaque that read “Executive Access.” And in the middle of that plate sat a lone key switch, elegantly engraved with a single destination:

  THE MALL.

  Marion looked over at Allison, and she gave him an exaggerated eye roll.

  “Great,” she said. “We’re going to a mall.”

  As soon as Marion inserted the key and snapped it into the “on” position, the entire front panel flashed once and went blank. Then, as the car gradually picked up speed, the floor indicator began scrolling the same message over and over again.

  Executive transport. All stops disabled.

  “Going up.”

  Allison nodded, still staring at the display. “Again.”

  “What do you think is up there?” Marion peered into the cabinet again, searching for clues.

  “I dunno. Some sort of luxury shopping district? You know, big manly steakhouses and jewelry stores, stuff like that.”

  “Could be. Maybe we should have asked Forrest before you stole his key.”

  “Yeah, right. He probably would have given us a map.”

  Marion stood quietly for a moment, listening to the smooth whir of the elevator. He finally spoke up, mostly just to break the uncomfortable silence. “That was sort of weird, don’t you think?”

  “Which part?”

  “The way he just stood there staring at us, instead of trying to force his way on. It almost seemed like he recognized you.”

  Allison shrugged. “He probably did.”

  “What?” Marion searched her face, trying to figure out if she was kidding. “How?”

  She slid one hand into her front pocket and fished out a folded, soggy square of newsprint. “This is how.”

  Marion cocked his head, trying to read the headline. “What’s that?”

  “The New York Post, unfortunately.” Allison reached over and smoothed the crumpled page against the wall. The picture was faded and water-damaged, but the likeness was still unmistakable. Marion’s eyes widened.

  “Is that you?”

  “Yeah. In my glory days.” Allison leaned back so that Marion could read the first few paragraphs of the article.

  “Oh my god. Where’d you get this?”

  “From the recycling bin.”

  Marion stared at the photo, wondering how anyone could think that such an innocent-looking art student could possibly be a killer. The article made no sense, he thought — it was
complete fiction. He re-read the opening lines, attempting to fill in the gaping holes. Where was his name? How could they possibly blame Allison for the murder?

  “What about me?”

  Allison laughed. “What are you, jealous?”

  “I mean, they have to know,” Marion said, completely mystified. “There’s no way Ian didn’t report both of us — why wouldn’t they print it?”

  “Maybe the government didn’t want them to,” Allison said, folding the paper again and stuffed it into her pocket.

  “You think?”

  “It could be. I mean, none of it makes any sense. Why put my face all over the news, and pretend like you barely exist? It’s like they want to catch us, but don’t want anyone to know who you are — or where you came from.”

  Marion thought about it, realizing that she was probably right. It was surprising, for him. Marion had never thought of himself as being very important — had never seen himself as anything more than invisible, unwanted.

  The floor chime rang suddenly, making them both jump. Then, with a slight shudder, the elevator coasted to a stop and the doors split into a blinding shaft of sunlight, revealing the lush and crowded Mall beyond.

  Matsumoto couldn’t stop obsessing about the boy. He was alone for the first time since dawn, sitting on the edge of his massive teak desk, gazing at the latest available polling.

  The data had been compiled over the previous week, mostly from outer Queens and Shinnecock City. The numbers were wretched across the board, reflecting just how damaging the ongoing crisis really was. His approval ratings had continued to drop amongst all age groups and socioeconomic strata, with a staggering eighteen percent overall decrease for the week. His already meager presidential primary hypotheticals were halved, and the right track/wrong track numbers were completely in the toilet.

  Where the hell were they? Matsumoto dropped the glossy sheaf of paper, watching the columns and graphs fan out across his desk. The briefing had done nothing to assuage his fears. If anything, his level of anxiety had risen steadily as each new fact came to light.

  Marion. The name alone had been enough, after all these years, to make him clench his jaw so hard his porcelain caps nearly shattered. He felt indignant and cheated — saddled with a problem he had no hand in creating. That particular football had been fumbled while he was still practicing law in Boston, dreaming of a circuit court justiceship. They had made the decision, not him. One administration had chosen to keep the boy alive, another had fed and clothed him, and a third had turned him loose.

  But who was going to pay for it? The slant-eyed mayor, that’s who. Matsumoto pushed a few stray pages from his desk, watching them drift to the floor. He had come to hate the Clinic, hate it with a passion. It was a political disaster zone, and he had been dropped into the middle of it with a blindfold on. What did these people want, anyway? Technology? Longevity? Morality? How could anyone possibly know?

  Matsumoto picked up a stray questionnaire, scanning the useless information. An effective treatment for Alzheimer’s? They were all for it. Abortion on demand? The polls showed an even split. Reimbursement for tissue? A complete political fiasco. Matsumoto had followed the opinion polls with nearly religious devotion, and yet here he was — caught in the crossfire, ferocious waves of criticism coming from every side.

  Marion. Again, it all came back to him. The boy’s name was legendary, in certain circles, as the city government’s biggest political blunder, and its single largest ongoing liability. A grotesquely premature infant, delivered alive in a state-funded clinic, the unfortunate by-product of a medical program hungry for success. He was now sixteen or seventeen, depending on the source, and by all accounts a quiet and unassuming young man. His mother was long dead of a heroin overdose, his father officially listed as unknown, and the boy himself a semi-homeless street urchin who had, until recently, seemed perfectly content to tinker with watches in the park during the day and sleep on a variety of benches at night.

  Until now, that is.

  Matsumoto began to pace, a pastime that seemed to be taking up more and more of his time these days. His spacious office provided a convenient track, from the front corner of his giant black desk to the bust of La Guardia in the corner, then past the white marble fireplace and wall-size mediascreen, behind the overstuffed Victorian couch, in front of the picture window, and finally back to his desk again. If you looked closely, you could see a faint white path worn into the royal blue carpet that traced this obstacle course, circling the edges of his office like the residue from a dirty bath.

  Where was he? Matsumoto began to move faster, rounding the edge of his desk like a racehorse taking a tight turn. He knew that he had more immediate problems to deal with right now — like, say, a two-level riot and an out-of-control climate simulator — but this one just wouldn’t stop nagging at him. Matsumoto stared fixedly at Fiorello’s stony face as he paced, barely noticing when his hip clipped a small coffee table, jostling the cold remains of his morning decaf. And who is that girl?

  That question was the most troublesome of all, because she was nobody. Allison Rayel was a big, fat zero. Before her recent public nuisance arrest she had no police record, no known criminal connections… hell, even her credit record was squeaky clean. She shared an apartment with someone named Joanne Phillips, who was listed as a minor radical and environmental activist. But the Phillips woman was useless, too. She swore that she had never heard of Marion before in her life.

  The only other lead they had was Allison’s mother, an unmarried casino worker who apparently lived in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, the woman’s current address information was woefully out of date, and she had yet to be located and interviewed.

  Something was desperately wrong. Something that he just wasn’t seeing. Matsumoto stopped in front of the mediascreen, staring at the oily black surface for a full minute before starting his rounds again. She worked for Paradigmatic Solutions. She did phone polling work for a government contractor, which meant that she spent at least twenty hours a week asking questions about his administration. That couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, could it? She had tried to access the Biosystem. At this, Matsumoto nearly started jogging, his worn shoes scuffing against the increasingly threadbare carpet.

  She hadn’t gotten anywhere, of course. But how in the world did she know about the backdoor data retrieval system in the first place? The questions were tearing him apart. Why would she launch some half-assed wireline hacking attempt from prison, of all places? It just defied common sense.

  Matsumoto finally stopped, leaning against his desk, his thoughts a muddled stew. He checked his pulse against his wristwatch, finding it dangerously high. I’ve got to rest, he thought, dropping into his office chair. He leaned back and closed his eyes, feeling the full rush of his fatigue. A few seconds later, his enforced calm was interrupted by the grating squawk of the intercom.

  “Mayor Matsumoto? Vance Devereaux is here.”

  “Good!” He straightened up, trying not to sound overly pleased. “Push him through.”

  The magnetic lock buzzed, allowing the solid metal door to swing open. Vance entered with his customary long stride, reports and briefs gathered under one arm, a Mets cap screwed down over the rat’s nest of his hair.

  “Morning, Chuck!” Matsumoto winced, noticing that Vance was barefoot again. His toes were stunted and hairy, his feet the unpleasant color of day-old steak. Matsumoto was appalled at the man’s lack of etiquette. And the audacity. Head of security or no, there was a certain level of professionalism and decorum that should be observed.

  “Got a call from Ian Moody, Chuck. Not five minutes old. We got ‘em pinned down!”

  Matsumoto fell back, his chest tightening into a narrow band. He found himself suddenly unable to speak, all thoughts of reprimand driven from his mind. Got ‘em pinned down! What was that supposed to mean? For a second Matsumoto indulged himself, imagining the best. They were caught. They were in custody, or perhaps dead.
The problem was solved.

  “Where?”

  Vance leaned over the desk, his grimy nails clicking against the polished wood. He bared his nicotine-stained teeth, a madman’s smile, and pointed over Matsumoto’s shoulder.

  “Right there.” Matsumoto spun around, half-expecting to find them crouched behind his desk. After a confused moment, he realized that Vance was actually pointing out the office window. They were outside. Through the window, acres of manicured lawn fell from the mayoral mansion, a broad, grassy strip that flowed through the security gate, under the blast barriers and on toward the pedestrian mall.

  “We have them?” Matsumoto’s voice cracked with excitement, his eyes scanning the distant streets for signs of a police van.

  Vance laughed, for no apparent reason, jerking his baseball cap over one eye. “No, Chuck, not yet. But we might as well.”

  The mayor slumped, wilting back into his warm leather chair. He felt useless, robbed of his power, completely at the mercy of the incompetent people around him. He spun slowly back toward his glossy desk.

  “Jesus, Vance, how the hell did we get blindsided like this? This boy, Marion, goes to ground for five years, not a peep — doesn’t seem to care about anything except fixing radios. And suddenly he’s riding a riot onto our front lawn? Why didn’t we see this coming?”

  Vance shrugged, looking amused. “Look, fifty years ago we had polar ice caps that weren’t just glorified yarmulkes. Twenty-five years ago the idea that the French could win a war was a joke. Fifteen years ago Lady Liberty was still staring down the Brooklyn waterfront. Ten years ago Robert Knox was a Chicago city alderman. Five years ago this stupid kid was still under our control, and yesterday I didn’t have a case of angina the size of the Houston Dome. Things change.”

  Matsumoto grimaced, angry and unsatisfied. “So where are they?”

  “Believe it or not, they’re on their way here.” Vance pushed the polling data out of the way with one free hand, taking a second to study the gray-streaked tangle of his beard in the buffed black surface.

  “Where?” Matsumoto asked impatiently, heaving himself out of the office chair. “When do we get them?”

  Vance dropped his reports on the desk, sending more loose papers spiraling to the floor. “Patience, Chuck. They’re riding the mall elevator up from the Pit, and I’ve already sent a team. They’ve got nowhere else to go.”

  Matsumoto leaned against the desk, fuming. Chuck. No one besides Vance used his first name, let alone Chuck. Everyone else was fawning and discreet, calling him Mr. Mayor, doing their best to win his favor. At least, that’s how they acted when he was around. He suspected that, when he was out of earshot, they use a much less complimentary form of address.

  The Chink. It was a nickname he abhorred, yet one Matsumoto seemed stuck with. It was racist, inaccurate, and unforgivable — and completely, embarrassingly self-inflicted. That was worse than the insult itself, really — the knowledge that it was born of his own mistakes.

  It had happened late in the campaign, when he was running eighteen hours a day, watching the polls bounce back and forth like a tennis match. He had been tired, distracted, nursing a peptic ulcer and a three-day migraine. His handlers had pleaded with him to keep his schedule light, but for once Matsumoto, the hungry lion, had ruled against them. He knew how important this coverage was — how pivotal every single word could be. And he was right; a few simple words nearly destroyed his campaign.

  The ironic thing was, it should have been a walk-through. Some no-name reporter, young enough to be his daughter, reading from cards supplied by his own media team. What could possibly be sweeter? The visuals were great, too — a recently shuttered city health clinic, a protesting mass of wretched old folks, and there, above it all, the stalwart good-government crusader Charles Matsumoto, slamming softball questions over the heads of the adoring crowd.

  But then, somehow, things fell apart; the struggling young reporter broke from her script, decided to attempt some real journalism, probably to impress the satellite news folks on site — who knows? Regardless, she asked the question, her voice breathy and nervous with anticipation.

  “So, uh, Mr. Matsumoto… there’s been an awful lot of discussion about your, uh, ethnic heritage, and how it might possibly affect your administration’s immigration policies. Do you perceive the, uh, race issue as being an, uh, you know, chink in your armor?”

  And, oh god, the number of times Matsumoto had relived this moment, watched that pixilated clip, cursed his abject stupidity. He had been dumbfounded, angry, his head pounding and his stomach gurgling fire. It probably wouldn’t have gotten to him like it did, except for the fact that he had seen polling that very morning showing that 37.8% of eligible voters still thought that he was Chinese.

  There had been one brief second of hesitation — and you could see the contempt, floating behind those dark, imperious eyes. At that moment, he had looked as though he might just pull out a ceremonial sword and smite the poor girl dead.

  “I’m sorry. . .” the furrowed brow, the sneering nostrils — he was ruining himself, even then, he knew, “are you insulting me on purpose, or are you just unforgivably stupid?”

  Well, the girl had just crumbled. Of course, she had no idea what she had said, and everyone in the crowd knew it. But it was too late — all Matsumoto could do was stare at that quivering chin, those moist eyes, and think to himself you ass, you moronic ass.

  The media men had tried to impound the footage, tried damn hard — but the station hacks knew what they had. It was everywhere in a matter of hours: terrestrial, satellite, dedicated tabloid feeds, and, most galling of all, his opponent’s commercials. And while, yes, Matsumoto had ultimately won, that single word could not be erased. Never mind that he was a fifth generation Japanese-American born and raised in New Jersey, or that his mother was whiter than a Wedgwood plate; he was now universally known for his poor judgment, which was a much larger liability than his pinched eyes and sallow skin. This was his bumbling legacy — a constantly whispered slur, a disrespectful badge of derision earned for gross political stupidity.

  That was why, he supposed, he allowed Vance to so completely violate the protocols and normal procedures of his office. The man was eccentric, if not slightly deranged, but Matsumoto trusted him utterly, and was reasonably sure that he had never used that offensive appellation. Vance called him Chuck, or even Matt Sumo (a joke Matsumoto didn’t quite get, since he was thin as a rail), but never The Chink. For that, at least, the mayor was eternally grateful.

  “I sent some men to pick up Moody,” Vance continued, breaking Matsumoto’s reverie. “He apparently needs medical treatment. Says he was attacked.”

  “Who?”

  “Moody,” Vance repeated. “Ian Moody, the VIGIL guy?”

  “VIGIL?” Matsumoto was completely lost.

  “That stupid trading system that’s killing the markets right now? It’s one of those idiotic acronyms these geeks love so much — Virtual Integrated Global Interconnected Link, or some crap like that.”

  “Aren’t Integrated and Interconnected pretty much the same thing?”

  “Whatever. One of ‘em might be Institutional. Point is, he’s got solid information regarding our current problem.”

  “Can we trust him?”

  “Sure, he’s good people — he maxed out to the campaign last year. And he turned those damn kids in.”

  Matsumoto leaned against his desk, shaking his head wearily. “Jesus, Vance. How did they manage to get so far?”

  “I’ll tell you one thing, Chuck; they are two lucky little snots.” Matsumoto started pacing again, with Vance following a few steps behind. “They started a fire in the recycling plant, and the local suppression system failed to deploy. We lost the paper warehouse, a pulping facility, and half of the maintenance wing.”

  Matsumoto stopped, so quickly that Vance had to swerve to avoid him. “How’d they stop it?”

  “The main sprinkler system kicked in
, eventually. Flooded the whole goddamn level, including the Pit. The bureaus are going completely berserk.”

  Matsumoto waved his hand, starting back toward his desk. “That’s Knox’s problem, right now. I’ve got a riot in progress.” He leaned over his desk, making a note to call facilities and get some sort of damage report from the recycling plant. “So how do you know they’re coming here?”

  “Forrest Sherman saw them in the elevator, going up. Apparently they made a pit stop at his office and stole his executive pass.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Less than ten minutes.” Vance looked at his wrist, even though he wasn’t wearing a watch. “He says she called him daddy.”

  Matsumoto sat in shocked silence, wondering if things could get any more absurd. Daddy? What the hell was that all about?

  “Why didn’t he stop them?”

  Vance shrugged, flicking an invisible crumb from the front of his T-shirt. Matsumoto noticed with disgust that it read Shoot To Thrill. “They caught him by surprise, I guess.”

  “They caught Forrest Sherman by surprise?”

  “So he claims.” Vance flashed an evil grin. “Besides, the girl’s a known killer.”

  “Yeah, right.” Matsumoto paced to the window, frowning at the distant mall. Overhead, the skies had darkened considerably, the sun obscured behind a matted stretch of gray. It wasn’t supposed to rain today. Matsumoto gazed at the clouds, distracted and unhappy. I should have never let them randomize the weather patterns.

  “Remember,” Vance said, “Knox is doing another Oval at noon.”

  Matsumoto glanced back the mediascreen, annoyed.

  “Already? What’s he going to talk about this time?”

  “Nothing, I suppose.”

  Matsumoto allowed himself a thin smile. “As usual.”

  “Still, it’d be a good idea to watch. I’m sure you’ll get at least one question about it at the afternoon presser.”

  Matsumoto nodded, trying to read Vance’s inscrutable expression. As always when the President’s name came up, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. Vance had actually started his career working for Knox, and by some accounts was largely responsible for the man’s initial political success. But after Knox won his senate seat, Vance had abruptly left Chicago and moved to New York, for reasons that Matsumoto never quite understood. He assumed that Vance and Knox had had some sort of falling out, but it wasn’t exactly clear. And the fact that Vance still maintained contact with the White House, and even helped supervise the occasional issue poll for Knox’s message shop, made things murkier still.

  Oh well, Matsumoto thought, Knox’s loss is my gain. He walked over to the glassy black mediascreen and pressed the power plate, feeling the thing crackle and hum beneath his finger. The remote sat propped against the wall, sleek and useless, broken from years of abuse.

  “How long before we know?”

  “What, about the boy? I’ll get a call the second they get him.”

  “Well, it better be soon. We can’t afford any more of this.”

  Vance nodded, drilling a finger into his right ear. “I’ll tell you, if they had listened to me, he wouldn’t even be around. I saw the little cockroach when he was still in the incubator, and I knew he was trouble even then.”

  Matsumoto was reminded, yet again, of why he kept Vance around. The man was practical, through and through, and never allowed the cheap weight of emotion to get in the way. Even though his official title was Counselor to the Mayor, Matsumoto knew that he was so much more than that. He had been the better part of the last three administrations, and Matsumoto — after a rocky start — had come to trust him implicitly. In fact, Vance had proven so competent and invaluable that, when Matsumoto’s idiot Senior Advisor had gotten himself arrested for soliciting a transvestite prostitute on the West Side Highway, the mayor had elected not to replace him, simply transferring his duties to Vance instead.

  And through it all, despite his peculiarities, the man had repeatedly proved himself to be the most reliable man on staff, and Matsumoto knew that only a fool would refuse his council.

  “Do you think he remembers you?”

  “Marion? I sometimes wonder.” Vance began to smile, looking positively demonic in the pale glow of the mediascreen. “Maybe I’ll finally get a chance to find out.”

  The barrage of hailstones hit without warning, shattering the window next to the mayor’s desk and spraying the carpet with gleaming pebbles of safety glass. Matsumoto threw himself to the floor, cracking his cheekbone against a chair leg, sure that they were under attack.

  “Vance! Get down!”

  Vance was backed up against the wall, his beard blowing in the sudden sweep of wind and freezing rain. Plum-size hailstones sliced through the broken window, bouncing wildly off the carpet and gouging splintered divots of teak from the desktop. Outside, he could see a half-dozen bodies racing across the lawn, searching for cover against the battering deluge of ice.

  “Son of a bitch!” Vance took a tentative step closer, wondering if the whole world had somehow lost its mind. “Son of a bitch!”

  The hail hit barely five minutes after Marion and Allison arrived, welcoming them with a fusillade of ice that pounded the outdoor mall like frozen artillery, punching through awnings and umbrellas, turning the colorful assortment of restaurants and shops into a shredded, chaotic battlefield.

  Before the cataclysm began, they had been hiding at one end of the mall’s wide lawn, trying to remain inconspicuous as they studied their new surroundings. The elevator had opened onto a glass-enclosed patio, with a buffed Spanish tile floor and a pair of gleaming, brass-handled doors. On the other side of the glass a long, lush green runway stretched into the distance, dotted along its length with white bistro tables and bordered on both sides by long rows of restaurants and fancy shops. Incredibly, the grass appeared to be completely natural — either that, or the best fibregrass Marion had ever seen.

  Most of the tables were occupied by smart-suited business types, and Marion immediately noted that the crowd was almost entirely white and male. Weirder still, even though the picnic-like setting seemed perfectly casual, this lunch crowd was anything but: the suits were uniformly dark, the hair buzzcut short, and the vast majority of eyes hidden behind tinted glasses.

  Unfortunately, they didn’t have much time to figure out a plan of attack. Even as Allison snuck forward to peek out of the patio door, Marion could see the sky thickening overhead, a raft of black clouds condensing around the edges of the sunlit lawn. As he took a tentative step toward the open door, he was hit with a powerful sense of déjà vu: the air was humid and compact, filled with crackling static, and the cheerful hum of conversation outside was fading like a weak radio signal beneath the gathering storm.

  It’s just like the city. Marion flashed back to Friday’s freak snowstorm — the one that had started all of this craziness. For the first time he began to wonder if it might be something more than a series of random glitches. After all, what were the chances of so many things going haywire at once? Maybe a gang of anarchist Brightlanders had infiltrated the Biosystem. Or perhaps the Sixth Republic, or some other lunatic terrorist group, had hacked the weather core. Studying the sky nervously, Marion reached out and gently pulled Allison back from the half-open door.

  Up until the very last second, people continued to eat and make small talk, trying to ignore the swelling clouds above them. As the fast-approaching storm became impossible to ignore, people finally began to close up their newsreaders and concentrate on their food, trying to inhale lunch in a mad rush before the rain blew in.

  The first hailstone smashed into one of the wrought-iron tables with explosive force, instantly vaporizing into a cloud of sooty black snow. At least half a dozen men sprang to their feet around it, hands slipping instinctively inside of suit jackets. But their bravado proved short-lived, as the opening shot was followed almost immediately by a staggering downpour of ice and rain. At first peopl
e tried to cower under the canvas bistro umbrellas, but it soon became painfully obvious that they were strictly decorative. As the hail increased in both frequency and force, people began to bolt across the lawn, running with jackets and arms wrapped over their heads, their hunched shoulders relentlessly beaten and bruised every step of the way.

  “What the hell?” Allison backed quickly toward the elevator doors, her eyes wildly tracking the mall crowd as it scattered and cleared. A fist-sized chunk of ice crashed suddenly against the patio door, cracking the safety glass into a spiraling, jagged web. She shouted something else, but her words were buried beneath the shooting-gallery rattle of hail against the metal roof.

  Marion took a tentative step toward the shattered door, watching the last of the diners as they limped painfully across the lawn. He noticed that one unlucky soul hadn’t made it through the pounding onslaught, and his unconscious body was now sprawled out on the close-cut grass as if napping.

  As he turned back toward Allison, Marion suddenly saw the shifting lights over her head, and immediately starting sprinting toward her still-startled gaze. As he reached the elevator, he could clearly hear the descending whir, a low hum fading beneath the crash and rattle of the storm.

  “Dammit!”

  “What?”

  “The elevator!” Marion began machine-gunning the call button beneath his index finger, knowing that it was too late. “It’s going down.”

  Allison looked up at the digital display, floor numbers counting off like seconds. Marion scowled, giving the doors an angry kick.

  “We should have propped the doors open. Or at least taken the key.” He sighed, watching the counter fall from fifty to forty-five. Outside, the hailstorm was still raging; a solid, deafening downpour that felt like an earthquake underfoot. The ice was beginning to mix with snow and dark rain, a wintry soup running in dirty trails down the patio glass.

  As they watched, the elevator counter dropped from two to one and then stopped, the number flashing in a single red stroke of light. Allison looked apprehensively at Marion, and then out at the distant rows of shops and restaurants, trying to measure the distance through the drifting curtains of snow.

  “I think we’d better go.”

  Marion stood frozen for a moment, watching the floor counter jump from floor to floor at an annoying and constant pace. Finally he nodded, following Allison back toward the battered front door. As she carefully pried it open, he yanked off his windbreaker and stretched it like a tarp over their heads. Allison put one arm firmly behind his back, and they stood there for a moment, halfway through the open door, huddled beneath their makeshift umbrella. The hail continued to pummel the ground, turning the well-groomed lawn into a muddy swamp. Marion took a deep breath.

  “Are we ready?” He felt Allison squeeze him once, for luck.

  “Banzai,” she whispered in his ear, diving into the deluge. Marion ran with her, feeling the sudden sting of hail, the numbing avalanche of ice against his skin.

  Behind them, the elevator door rang faintly, the solid doors sliding open onto the empty patio.

  “Why should that be a problem?” Matsumoto pressed the flimsy phone hard against his ear, nearly screaming. “Listen, I don’t care about the algorithms — I just want this infernal malfunctioning stopped!”

  They had relocated into a windowless conference room, hidden deep in the mansion’s sub-basement. Matsumoto was perched rigidly on top of a wooden stool, a physician hovering over his scraped and bloody cheek. A small mediascreen was playing in the corner, without sound, showing a bird-eye view of the riot squads as they charged Macy’s.

  “Look, screw the city, all right? We are being pounded here, do you hear me? Pounded!” He slammed the table with his fist to emphasize the point. Matsumoto had been arguing with the same weather programmer for the past ten minutes, with little or no discernible effect. “I know it’s the same system! That’s not the point.”

  A door slammed open behind him, and Matsumoto nearly fell off his wooden stool. The physician’s hand bumped his moving cheek, making him yelp in pain.

  “Watch it!” Matsumoto spun on his seat, knocking the doctor’s hand away. Vance was bustling through the side door, wearing a bulky military overcoat, motioning for Matsumoto to hang up. His feet were covered now, stuck inside a pair of concrete-splattered worker’s boots, his rumpled green jacket spitting cotton through chewed-up fabric.

  “Matt, I’ve got to go,” he said, waving Vance over to the table. “No. Listen to me — this is priority one. You got that?” The doctor held Matsumoto’s face, smoothing a bandage carefully across his skin. “Well then, do it.”

  Matsumoto quickly dropped the receiver, pressing one hand against his bandaged cheek.

  “Tell me you have them.”

  Vance shook his head. “Two things. One, the team got hit pretty hard, and they had to leave the open transports. They’re moving in from the north lawn now, with the riot truck, toward the Molecular Genetics Lab blockade.”

  “The Genetics Lab?”

  Vance ignored the question. “Two, Ian Moody is missing. I sent some paramedics down for him, but he apparently took the executive elevator after Marion and the girl.”

  “After them? What for?”

  “I can’t imagine,” Vance replied. “But I’m going out to intercept him before he catches up. We don’t need the trouble.”

  Matsumoto groaned, still rubbing his face. Behind him, the physician headed quietly for the door, swinging his valise. Vance called out to him without turning around.

  “Yo, doc, hold up.” The doctor paused with one hand on the doorknob, looking surprised. “Could you wait for me outside, just a minute?”

  Matsumoto was equally perplexed, looking back and forth between Vance and his physician. The doctor blinked, holding his leather bag like a football. “Sir?”

  “I need to talk to you. Won’t take a second.”

  The doctor smiled uncertainly, glancing at the mayor for a sign. Matsumoto nodded, gesturing toward the door.

  “It’s fine, Nathan. We won’t be long.”

  “Yes, Mr. Mayor. I’ll wait outside.”

  Matsumoto waited for the door to close before he exploded. “Vance, what the hell is going on? We can’t be playing these games.”

  Vance stood up, his boots adding an extra five centimeters to his almost two-meter frame. His hair and beard framed his face in a wild fray; a stiff, tangled mess that seemed to sprout equally from both ends of his round head.

  “Well, tell me Chuck,” he said calmly. “How much do you want to be involved?”

  Matsumoto tried to appraise the question’s import. It was not a matter of Vance’s integrity, for that was unassailable. It was, instead, a matter of Vance’s intent — and, more importantly, a matter of the political repercussions were his actions discovered.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Just this, Chuck. Marion is still at large, along with his new girlfriend. As of this moment, we know exactly where they are, and are currently managing their position.”

  “Well then, catch them, for god’s sake!”

  “Listen. If you want me to…”

  “You listen.” Matsumoto stabbed his finger against the table with every hard syllable. “I want you to.”

  Vance leaned against the wall, seeming slightly amused as he watched the mayor fume. “Okay then, Chuck — it’s your funeral.”

  Matsumoto paused, his finger throbbing. He felt defeated, yet again — absolutely, infuriatingly unable to enforce his own demands.

  Vance saved him the humiliation of answering, amiably breaking the silence. “I’m just worried about the politics, Chuck. If they were to be caught, either Marion or the girl, the press would tear them apart. And then, as you well know, they would tear you apart.” He paused, watching the mayor closely. “We’ve got too much riding on this to let the media swoop in and pull it apart. You think they’re going to believe that Allison Rayel killed Ray Tompkins? Or
that either of them had anything to do with that riot?”

  Matsumoto began to walk, starting a long lap around the conference table. “But what about the fact that she works at Paradigmatic? And that prison phone call? She’s obviously some sort of cyberfreak — she might even be the one who hacked the weather core! And the warehouse fire? I mean, good god, Vance, they’re not innocent.”

  “Listen to yourself, Chuck. A phone call? Arson? That’s not going to save your career. Or your ass, for that matter.”

  Matsumoto winced, even more infuriated because he knew that Vance was right. I’m the mayor, he thought, pacing toward the mediascreen. I’m the mayor of New York, and I’m a slave in my own mansion. Onscreen, he glimpsed a shot of the south portico of the White House, the American flag fluttering perfectly in the artificial breeze.

  “All right,” he said quietly, turning to stare at Vance. “What can we do?”

  Vance’s smile erupted, a gruesome pink and white gash curving through the tangled forest of his beard. “Well, Matt Sumo, here’s how I see it.” He actually rubbed his hands together, caught up in the spirit of the game. “Our old friend Marion and his friend are, at this juncture, moving of their own volition, under their own power. We are not responsible for their safety, as long as they continue to exercise free will.”

  Matsumoto slumped forward, staring vacantly at the colorful strobe of the mediascreen. It was a dolly shot of the oval office, he realized, the camera gliding from the flag stand to the stately polished desk. That was going to be my office, he thought bitterly. There was a time when I truly believed that.

  “That’s enough,” Matsumoto sighed, waving his hand. “Please leave.”

  Vance obeyed readily, heading toward the exit. He halted halfway out, sticking the furry globe of his head back around the door.

  “I’ll talk to you soon, Mr. Mayor.” Coming from his mouth, the title sounded like a punch line, delivered without the benefit of a joke. He pulled the door shut behind him, and Matsumoto could hear the muffled beginnings of another conversation — presumably with his physician.

  Too many problems, Matsumoto thought, crossing to the mediascreen. Onscreen, President Knox was beaming into the camera, the gray fringe of his hair groomed in a distinguished line above his ears, his strong hands moving expressively through the air.

  There were too many problems, with limited solutions.

  Matsumoto reluctantly turned up the volume, hearing the deep, magnificent echo of Knox’s voice, overwhelming even in miniature. In the empty room, Matsumoto drew himself up and solemnly intoned “hello, my fellow Americans.” The tinny treble of his voice dissolved immediately into the heavy basement air, a pathetically thin imitation of Knox’s own.

  Matsumoto, once again, tried to place the familiar ring of the president’s voice, and once again he failed miserably. Every time he listened to the man, Matsumoto thought he heard someone he knew, someone close enough to be family.

  But he’s no relative of mine, Matsumoto thought sadly. He’s an entirely different breed of man. Outside the door, the muttering escalated, voices becoming clearer and more emphatic. Vance’s forceful speaking voice was rising almost to a shout, his indistinct words sounding like military commands. The doctor was obviously losing ground, his bedside manner giving way to a shrill and pleading whine.

  “But we can’t just do that!”

  Matsumoto reached out and turned the volume all the way up, drowning out the clamor in the hallway. He settled back in a molded plastic chair, staring at that glowing screen, losing himself in the rich, mesmerizing beauty of the president’s voice.

 

  The sidewalk was packed solid, every inch of concrete covered by a shivering mass of bodies. People were pressed as close to the shops as possible, taking refuge beneath metal overhangs and torn canvas awnings. Out in the open, the hail had finally abated somewhat, the jagged chunks of ice now reduced to scattered shot the size of frozen peas, falling steadily inside a slicing rain.

  Allison had the windbreaker swaddled around her head like a turban, her green eyes peeking out through a slit in the blue fabric. Marion guided her along the cramped walkway, sticking close to the storefronts, assuming the air of a paramedic shepherding a patient to the emergency room.

  “Excuse me. Coming through, please. Excuse me.” Bodies shifted and jostled around them, giving as little ground as possible.

  Who had taken the elevator after them? Marion could only assume that it was Ian, and that he was somewhere directly behind them, searching the crowd even as they plowed their way through it. Marion turned nervously to look behind him, and found himself gazing unexpectedly at a tantalizing lunch buffet, artfully laid out behind a deli window less than a yard away. It wasn’t until a rush of saliva threatened to spill from his mouth that he realized just how hungry he really was. He glanced over at Allison, and found her equally transfixed — her eyes greedily poring over the spread of vegetables, thick-crusted bread, and linguini piled in huge ceramic bowls, still beading water from the boiling pots.

  Unfortunately, there was no way to get inside. In fact, as they approached the door, the sidewalk became so jammed that forward movement was impossible. Marion tried to navigate through the wedge of bodies, feeling the weight of the crowd as if they were stacked on top of him. The deli owner was shouting over the din, waving a greasy spatula above his head.

  “We’re all full here! I’ve got no more room!” He tried to block the stream of people with his body, holding fast onto the door frame. Someone ducked beneath his right arm, and he tried to grab them, opening the dam for a dozen more.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Marion whispered. Ian could be right behind them by now — every person was a potential enemy. Allison nodded, her covered head bobbing like a balloon in the crowd, and they began pushing their way out of the crush.

  Their progress was painfully slow, every step a fight against the milling herd. As they finally neared the street, the air was suddenly filled with the sound of breaking glass, immediately followed by a prolonged, agonized scream. Marion felt the crowd shift into high gear around him, the angry grumbling rising into an agitated, chaotic hum. Allison lunged quickly forward, out of harm’s way, her blue head floating through the fringes of the mob. As she turned around to find him, Marion thought that she looked like an Arabian princess, her piercing, half-hidden emerald eyes struggling to make sense of this strange and violent culture.

  “Here we go again.”

  Marion smiled wearily, gripping her extended hand as she yanked him free of the crowd. “The fun never ends.”

  Out in the open air, the rain felt unexpectedly warm against their cold skin, melting the leftover hail and draining in dirty little rivers through the sewer grates.

  “Where do you think we are?” Marion caught up to Allison, both of them moving at a brisk trot away from the masses. It was weird, being so completely unfamiliar with his surroundings. He had never really thought about how far the Build extended — had always assumed that it couldn’t be more than four or five levels high. But now they were at six and counting, with no end in sight. How many more could there possibly be?

  “I don’t know,” Allison answered, sounding frustrated and indignant. “Which is totally ridiculous. I mean, this is where we live, right?”

  Behind them, the rabble let out a happy roar, punctured by a passionate string of curses. Marion glanced back just in time to see the deli owner being tossed wildly into the streets, his apron knotted around his bull neck.

  “Get outta my store! I’m a kill you all!”

  He turned back and scanned the mall, looking for a place to hide. The central lawn was laid out in huge, even blocks, edged on both sides with paved roads that were wide enough to drive on. A collection of low buildings and office complexes ran along both streets, a pair of tasteful and nondescript commercial strips facing each other across that extravagant carpet of live grass.

  He raised his head, following the
lawn as it gradually rose away from them. Ahead of them the buildings seemed to get more industrial and imposing, like a row of factories or furniture outlets. Farther up, on the far side of the lawn, he could just make out a scattered collection of expensive-looking townhouses, the blurry outlines of tall dormer windows barely visible through the rain.

  Then, suddenly, he found it — a distant jewel perfectly placed atop a well-guarded hill. He shielded his brow with one hand, like a sea captain, and pulled Allison quickly to a halt.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Marion blinked water from his eyes, nodding toward the lawn’s distant crest. “Look.”

  At first Allison saw only an indistinct outline through the drifting gray fog, but then the rain lightened for a moment and it came into focus: a boxy, buttery yellow edifice, its delicate white balustrades and red chimneys trapped behind an imposing iron fence and a staggered series of blast barriers.

  “What is that?”

  Marion felt the warm rain like sweat on his face, running from the corners of his gaping mouth. He stared up the hill, watching the building as if afraid it might pounce.

  “It’s Gracie Mansion.”

  “What?” Allison squinted her eyes, refusing to believe it. “It can’t be. It just looks like it, is all.”

  “No, it is.” Marion tried not to panic, walking with calm determination away from the increasingly angry horde behind them. He didn’t know what to do, exactly. He kept moving on autopilot, knowing that they were losing the cover of the crowd, but unwilling to risk going back. “When I was younger — you know, still in the Center — one of the guys who took care of me had a big picture of it in his office. I stared at that thing for hours, waiting for him. I used to pretend that I lived there, if you want to know the truth. It seemed so nice… so pretty and perfect.”

  Allison blanched, slowly grasping the gravity of the situation. “Jesus, Marion. What are we going to do?”

  Marion couldn’t think of a thing to say. In the distance, the mansion sat like an oversize wedding cake, the white-frosting front porch propped up with toothpick colonnades. It seemed, to Marion, both totally familiar and completely alien, a strange combination of memory and reality.

  “I don’t know.” Inside his head, Marion had but one bitter thought: There’s nowhere left to go. They had painted themselves into a corner. The whole trip had been a dream, a stupid series of mistakes that had landed them right back where they started.

  “It doesn’t make any sense!” Allison stomped in her boots like a toddler, glaring at the horizon. “How can it be here? It’s not supposed to be here!”

  It was ludicrous. There sat the mayor’s residence, which everyone knew was hidden behind multiple sets of concrete walls on the Upper East Side, perched far atop the city like a roosting hen. Somehow, they had taken the entire city government and hidden it, like some sort of cheap magic trick.

  Marion rubbed his hand over Allison’s back, and then slid it up to her neck, feeling her chilly flesh warm beneath his palm. They continued to meander along the wet asphalt, away from the crowd, drifting with no direction at all.

  Where could they hide? It seemed pointless to try, Marion thought. He stared at the mayor’s mansion, fully expecting to be apprehended at any moment.

  “We need to get out of the open,” Allison said firmly. The no-nonsense tone of her voice snapped Marion out of his stupor. The fact that she was unwilling to give up shamed him — and made him even more determined to find a way out.

  As he looked around, Marion could see that they were passing the last shop on the mall — a small bodega firmly shuttered behind a rolling metal gate. Beyond it, a narrow alleyway was blocked by barricades, thick wooden planks painted with orange and white stripes.

  “Construction, maybe?” Allison sounded hopeful, despite it all.

  “Maybe,” Marion replied, unconvinced. They gradually picked up the pace, hurrying along the empty street. The next building looked like a bank, its rich green awning punched with ragged holes from the storm.

  “Maybe they’re open?” Allison paused beneath the entryway, reaching out toward the curled silver door handle.

  Marion shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not on Easter.”

  Allison yanked once, just to make sure, pulling at the handle with both hands. The door wouldn’t budge. She sighed and tore the jacket from her head, sick of breathing the same stuffy air. Marion stopped, watching the strawberry tumble of her hair fall in damp lines against her cheeks. He took his jacket back and shrugged it on, staring at Allison, feeling as if he was seeing her face for the first time.

  “Well?” She asked impatiently.

  “I dunno,” he said, averting his eyes. “I guess we keep going.”

  There were barricades across the next alley, too — weathered sawhorses guarding nothing but a vacant street. Marion’s apprehension grew, his anxious mind telling him that something was wrong. The mansion had grown a little clearer ahead of them, the pale yellow façade and olive-drab shutters shining beneath the waning storm.

  Marion considered jumping the barriers — after all, what could possibly be waiting on the other side? But the empty darkness of the alley stopped him, the feeling that something was hidden there, beneath the shadows and the rain.

  By the time they passed the third and forth blockades, it seemed almost like a form of mental torture. Yet another infuriating stretch of painted wood, rainwater beading on the reflective tape, forcing them into the open road. Allison tried every door they passed, giving each one a quick tug that snapped her arm back as she ran, all to no avail.

  “Listen,” she said suddenly, half out of breath, slowing to a trot. “Something’s coming.”

  Marion didn’t even have to look to recognize the familiar rumble echoing across the vast mall. It’s a car, he thought, hearing a sound that he knew only from old movies. Even as he raced forward, his mind racing with sudden panic, he couldn’t help but feel a certain boyish excitement. They’re bringing a real car.

  He searched for it through the shifting streaks of rain, following Allison toward the next building. She clasped his hand tightly, gripping so hard that his bones creaked.

  There was really nowhere left for them to go, he thought dismally — no place to hide where they wouldn’t easily be discovered. Marion stared at his sneakers as he ran, feeling the overwhelming weight of their luck turning against them.

  “There!” Allison pointed excitedly, angling toward the huge white building ahead. “There! There!”

  Marion wiped his forehead with one dripping arm, trying desperately to focus. In the distance, rolling out of the mist like a runaway train, Marion finally caught sight of the speeding truck, the first real automobile that he had ever seen in person.

  “Come on!” Allison nearly pulled his shoulder out of its socket, sprinting toward the closest building at a furious pace. Marion followed her sluggishly, his eyes still locked on the approaching riot truck. It was still a good distance away, but closing fast — a blunt, gas-powered brick slicing toward them through the rain. The knobby wheels spun over the road in a slick shower of mist, and the wet black frame gleamed oily and sleek as a gun barrel.

  “Marion!” He whirled around, chasing his own center of gravity as Allison dragged him toward the looming white building. Behind them, the truck’s roaring engine seemed louder than anything Marion had ever heard.

  As Allison dragged his body through the open door, Marion tried to find some sort of identifying sign along the building’s front façade, but couldn’t see a thing. Outside, the riot truck squealed frantically to a stop, the driver shouting incoherent orders over the sputtering growl of the engine.

  “Close the door!” Allison shouted, her voice echoing in the tiled hall. Marion spun back to the open door, expecting to slam it closed with one hand. Instead, he nearly shattered his wrist, smashing it painfully against a thick slab of tempered steel.

  “Ow!” Marion winced, shaking his hand
in pain. He ended up shouldering the door closed, grunting as he leaned into it. It was really more like a bank vault than a normal door, Marion thought, watching as Allison leapt forward and slid a massive bolt lock into place, anchoring the metal hatch firmly in its frame. Outside, they could hear the muffled pounding of boots — the sound of at least a half-dozen men performing an organized military scramble.

  Marion backed away from the commotion, feeling uneasy. There’s no handle, he noted, scanning both ends of the room. The unadorned door sat at the end of a long hall, and it seemed to be the only outside entrance available. The metal plate was hulking, seamless and monolithic, its smooth surface broken only by those two steel locking strips. Between that pair of heavy bolts someone had affixed a laminated sign that read, simply, NO EXIT.

  Marion backed slowly down the hall, listening to the tattoo of fists hammering the outside door. Allison hissed at him, already a dozen steps ahead. “Hurry up — they’re coming!”

  Marion stumbled after her, all of his senses telling him that something was off. The tiled passageway, like the street outside, seemed just a little too vacant. The pounding fists behind them seemed excessively frantic, filling the hallway with the insistent drumbeat of pursuit.

  He moved cautiously forward, catching up to Allison just as the passage widened out into a large rectangular space. The first thing Marion noticed was the wheeled cart, parked at a crazy angle in the middle of the room, as if to deliberately obstruct them.

  It’s a hospital meal cart. Marion had a sudden, pleasant memory of himself as a child, perched on the very same kind of cart; the stainless steel cool beneath his butt, the plastic wheels swiveling across the worn carpet of the nurses’ lounge as they pushed him playfully around.

  “Should we try the doors?”

  Marion blinked, seeing the double row of metal doors for the first time. They lined each side of the long room, like tenement apartments or prison cells, each one a perfect facsimile of the one before. He walked slowly between them, toward the abandoned cart, his mind churning for some sort of explanation. Each door had its own number, stenciled in black across the plate steel, and each had a clear acrylic cardholder mounted next to it.

  That doesn’t seem right. Marion leaned closer, staring at the closest plastic casing. It held a plain white index card, with three words inked in a looping, feminine script: Artificial Chromosome B15-816.2. His sense of unease escalated into anxious fear, every new discovery giving him new cause for concern. Allison watched him closely, sensing his alarm.

  “What’s wrong?”

  In the distance, the soldiers’ frenzied attack subsided, the angry voices and pounding fists fading abruptly, as if the troops had simply given up and wandered off. The corridor was now completely silent, and the sound of Marion’s voice echoed loud as a thunderclap.

  “How did you open that door?”

  “I…” Allison hesitated, unsure. “I didn’t. It was open.”

  Everything happened quickly, then, events rushing by with swift and awful certainty. Marion jerked his head back toward the cart, his eye finally focusing on the crumpled nurse’s cap lying on the concrete floor. She dropped her hat. The nurse had been in such a hurry that she abandoned the cart and dropped her hat.

  “Marion, what is it?” Allison’s voice was starting to sound as scared as Marion felt.

  And then they both heard it, low and terrible behind the tiled walls: a growing inhuman growl, the deep rumble of a hundred snarling muzzles, jaws and snouts. Marion reached out and pulled the meal cart toward them, and immediately saw that it was piled with raw ground beef on square serving trays, the hard plastic scraped and gnawed by hungry teeth.

  “Oh crap.”

  As he spun the cart around, a warning buzzer suddenly blasted like a fog horn through the dead air. And then, as if on cue, the bright fluorescents overhead went black, leaving nothing but the dim glow of the emergency lights. Marion flailed one arm through the semi-darkness, searching for Allison, and hit one of the meal trays instead. It flew off the cart and onto the ground, the meat smacking against the concrete in a greasy smear, the plastic tray stuck on top of it like a hat.

  “Marion!” Allison was screaming now, though she didn’t realize she was doing it. Marion could barely hear her, because his attention was focused intently on the small metal sign attached to the side of the serving cart.

  PROPERTY OF EXPERIMENTAL CYTOGENETICS & MUTAGENIC HYBRIDIZATION. DO NOT REMOVE.

  Around them, the door locks fired simultaneously, snapping back with the oily crack of a gun bolt. The room was filled with the quiet hiss of hydraulics, and the steel doors fanned open in a neat, synchronized line. Rising out of that clamor, they could clearly hear the slowly awakening hunger of the beasts, crawling from the depths of their dank and stinking cells.

  Stupid freakin’ Twinkie. Vance jacked the wheel of his customized Rover hard left, feeling the van’s body slide against the icy remains of the hail. The rear wheels bounced off a low curb, sending the car back into the road with an angry jolt.

  The mayor. What a joke, Vance thought, flipping his wipers to high speed. Charles Matsumoto was mayor of nothing but his own press releases. Vance found it amusing that everyone called him the Chink, as if there were anything truly Asian about him. He was, as Vance’s Korean stepmother would say, a complete and total Twinkie. Yellow on the outside, but lily white at his core.

  Outside, the hail seemed to be slacking, with the constant, bucket-of-marbles clattering fading into a sporadic tapping against the roof of Vance’s car. It finally ceased altogether as Vance made another quick turn, cutting though the rain toward the mall.

  He’d better be there. There was something wrong with Ian Moody, Vance thought — something very wrong indeed. The man had sounded completely unbalanced on the phone, his speech rendered almost unintelligible by a wet, whistling lisp. He kept mumbling about them and those killers, as if Marion and his new girlfriend were actually superhuman agents of pure evil.

  Only he didn’t say Marion. That was the most reassuring thing, for Vance. Ian had obviously bought the media smokescreen, rambling on for a good five minutes without even mentioning the boy by name. Instead, he had focused on Allison, ranting about that girl, and that bitch, and that whore. It seemed, to Vance, as if the guy was pouring a lifetime of hatred into the poor girl’s lap.

  He yanked the wheel and screeched into the underground lot at a dangerous clip, blowing by the attendant booth and almost taking out the automatic arm as it rose to admit him. By the time he had double parked, the young security guard was running toward him, his yellow raincoat flapping behind him.

  “Hey, dude! You can’t park there!”

  Vance shoved his government security badge into the kid’s face, not bothering to break stride. “Hey, junior! Piss off!”

  The rent-a-cop was still sputtering as Vance pushed through the emergency exit, setting off a high-pitched alarm.

  The rain felt great, he thought, jogging through the melting puddles of hail. The drops were surprisingly warm against his face, gradually washing the goosebumps from his cold flesh.

  Vance was just beginning to limber up, his mind on full alert as he headed for the mall elevator. As he rounded the outside corner of the garage, he began shuffling possibilities inside his head, preparing for the worst. The most important thing was to find Ian, and fast. He dodged into the alley between the Brooks Brothers and the Ray’s Original Pizza, glimpsing a sliver of the sprawling lawn at the far end, the grass trampled and littered with garbage and melting chunks of ice.

  Vance grinned, sidestepping a row of trashcans that had blown over, their putrid contents now spread across the alleyway. Chuck’s gonna love this, he thought happily. In the distance he could hear a growing, agitated rumble — the tell-tale bass note of an angry crowd.

  Even here? Vance shook his shaggy head in amazement, thinking am I the only rational person left in this entire goddamn city?

  As he approached t
he alley’s mouth, Vance found a pressing mass of people huddled under a canvas awning, grown men fighting each other for possession of a sidewalk square. He exited the alley and glanced around, finding a broken wooden bench, a trampled tablecloth, and a half-lowered security gate with one side yanked completely out of its track.

  They don’t even realize that the hail’s stopped, Vance marveled, trying to avoid the growing scuffle. He shoved his way through the thinnest part of the mob, his eyes trained on the distant elevator pavilion. He heard someone pushing up behind him, grunting, careening recklessly through the crowd. Without looking, Vance sliced his arm straight back, shattering the man’s nose with a clean snap of his elbow.

  As he finally reached the edge of the mall, Vance surveyed the damage. The lawn was a pockmarked mess, with dozens of bistro tables scattered about as if they had just been dropped from the sky. The bright imported parasols, which Matsumoto had picked out himself, lay shredded and upended across the grass, their wire skeletons bent like metal spiders pinned to the ground by long poles.

  I wonder what the Twinkie is going to think about this? Vance fairly cackled, imagining Matsumoto’s pinched, bewildered face. The figures would be devastating. Vance wouldn’t be surprised if Matsumoto’s precious approval rating hit single digits, with all of his obsequious pollsters massacred in the process.

  Well, Vance figured, live by the sword, die by the sword. Matsumoto loved his polling data like a religious fanatic loves his holy book, refusing to make a move without the full weight of public opinion behind him. And look where it got him. In truth, the Twinkie’s time in office had been one unforced error after another, starting with Marion’s release and ending with the city in flames.

  Vance dug his steel-tipped boots into the wet lawn as he began to jog again, scanning the front of the pavilion, hoping that he wasn’t too late. Behind him he heard someone break a window, followed by a sudden, rising shriek of pain.

  What is wrong with these people? It was like the laws of evolution had been repealed while he wasn’t looking, leaving a screaming pack of primates in place of humanity.

  Vance began sprinting toward the elevator, his boots tearing into the grass, warm rain stinging his face. He could see that the pavilion was vacant from fifty meters away, but he kept running toward the glass enclosure, hoping that Ian was still on his way up. As he approached, he noticed that the front door was spiderwebbed with cracks, and spattered with what looked very much like drying blood. Moving closer, he determined that not only was the brownish-red smear blood, but it contained a decent-size chunk of scalp and matted hair at its pulpy center.

  Somebody’s been hurt, Vance realized, measuring the height of the stain. It was just under two meters above the tile floor, more or less, marking the center of the left glass door like a crimson peephole. Was Marion that tall? Vance doubted it, somehow.

  Would I even recognize him? He wasn’t sure, after all this time. In truth, he hadn’t seen Marion in anything but grainy security camera footage for almost five years. But it didn’t really matter — he’d have more than enough time to study the brat’s insufferable little face when he unzipped the body bag.

  Vance squinted through the rain, peering across the mall to see if the blockades were all in place. As far as he could tell, they were — from the commercial strip to the genetics lab, every open space was covered by a long and solid line of bright orange barricades. Vance was fairly certain that this would be enough. After all, if he knew one thing about Marion, it was this: the boy avoided trouble at all costs, and preferred to hide in the smallest space available.

  Vance turned to survey the genetics lab, sitting angular and squat at the end of that gauntlet of barricades. Then he swung his gaze up toward Gracie Mansion — a melting sugarcube perched atop a glistening green hill —and listened for the deep growl of the riot truck.

  Marion, I hope I’m right about you. Vance smiled grimly, lacing his fingers together and giving the knuckles a machine-gun crack. And you had better pray to god that I’m wrong.

  The storm took Ian completely by surprise. When he finally exited the mall elevator he was in such a blind fury, enraged beyond all rational thought, that he didn’t notice the cracked glass door or boiling black sky until it was far too late.

  The entire elevator ride up had been torture. It was like waiting inside a pressure cooker: head pounding, blood oozing from his mangled lips, hot breath whistling painfully over broken teeth, the polished doors seeming to bulge outward with the rising force of his anger.

  It was bad enough that those little terrorists had attacked him, Ian fumed, but what was truly inexcusable was the government’s response. When he had finally gotten through to the security chief — wasting precious minutes — the man’s calm, patronizing manner was almost more than Ian could take. It was obvious that Matsumoto’s staff was more interested in protecting the Mayor’s image than punishing the guilty. Well, Ian thought, he was willing to take that responsibility; he was willing to do what had to be done.

  I will kill them. At that moment, as he waited to reach his destination, Ian truly believed that he could do it. In his life, he had bullied, threatened, cheated and fought his way to the top, but he had never been as furious as he was right now. I will find them, and I will make them pay.

  The floor chime finally rang, and Ian charged forward as if it was a starter’s pistol. He forced his body through the slowly opening doors and sprinted toward the pavilion exit at full speed. He registered the raging sky, but barely — he was far more focused on the pavilion door, which was slowly swinging closed, as if someone had left mere seconds before. And then, from the corner of one swollen eye, he glimpsed the briefest flick of motion, a disappearing snap of blue outside the pavilion walls.

  There! Ian redoubled his efforts, pounding his runner’s legs across the tile floor, propelling himself onto the lawn with a raw burst of power.

  The baseball-size hailstone slammed directly into his temple, exploding in a shower of ice shards against his forehead. He spun away from the unexpected blow, his legs still churning, and smashed blindly into a solid wall of glass. The hail had pulverized his bony skull, and his head-first collision with the pavilion released a thick spray of blood and left a small chunk of his scalp, along with his dangling hairpiece, stuck to the glass door.

  He collapsed drunkenly, for the second time in half an hour, sprawling backwards onto the wet grass. A shrieking spike of pain split his forehead, instantly replacing the throbbing agony of his mouth. Somehow he managed to drag himself out of the storm, pressing his broken body up against the side of the pavilion, where a metal overhang afforded him a modicum of protection.

  He stayed like that for quite some time, listening to the steady rattle of hail against the roof, feeling a single greasy pearl of blood roll down his cheek. He felt like he had surpassed all normal human tolerance levels, and was now in the stupefied state of a tortured prisoner.

  Somehow, woozily, he got up on all fours, his head lowered like a beaten dog. He watched the floor fade in and out of focus beneath him, gripped by nausea, an occasional drop of blood slipping from his forehead to the damp tile. Overhead, the hail was finally slackening, the barrage reduced to an infrequent rap of ice on metal.

  Ian got to his feet through sheer force of will, dragging himself up the pavilion’s steel frame. He found himself walking like Frankenstein’s monster, keeping his legs rigid to make sure they didn’t collapse.

  His head felt like a pummeled melon, soft and ripe from constant abuse, but Ian ignored the pain. He concentrated instead on moving his stiff legs onto the lawn, one foot following the other in a stilted dance. Overhead, a freakishly warm rain had now supplanted the storm of ice. Ian tipped his head back, wincing as the stinging shower washed the blood from his face.

  At the mall’s western edge, the scene was utter mayhem — a panicked crowd crushed against the commercial storefronts, pushing each other wildly back and forth. Ian watched with d
isbelief, wiping pinkish rivulets of watery blood from his eyes.

  Even here, among these politicians and peers, people had lost every trace of civilized behavior. It was as if Allison Rayel and her scumbag boyfriend were some sort of plague carriers, breeding chaos and disease wherever they went.

  “Stop this!” Ian plunged into the crowd, and people immediately recoiled from his bloody, disfigured face. He realized that, with his swollen lips and missing teeth, they probably couldn’t understand a word he was saying. But he yelled anyway, flailing his way toward the storefronts. “Shtop thith now!”

  Ian searched the crowd for a glimpse of Allison’s strawberry hair, but all he saw were pale and panicked adults, their faces grimacing with effort as they pushed incoherently away from the rain. Up ahead, rising over the grunting of the crowd, Ian could hear a man screaming at people to leave his store.

  Ian increased his thrashing advance, clawing people out of his way.

  “You shtupid bathtads! Look at yershelves!” Each word sent a spray of bloody saliva into the air, and his mouth burned with the effort, but Ian didn’t care. He continued to force a route through the packed plaza, searching all the while. He finally reached the sidewalk and pivoted, moving instinctively toward the service road.

  He stopped scanning the crowd and turned instead to the line of shops, glaring through the window of the closest restaurant to see if they were inside. Behind the glass, a woman sat timidly at her table, her eyes sweeping back and forth across the crowd as if watching a tennis match. When she saw Ian, she scooted back in her chair, almost tipping over in horrified surprise.

  It was only then that Ian refocused his eyes on the window’s mirrored surface, and saw exactly what he looked like.

  Dear mother of god. Ian brought one hand slowly to his repulsive flesh, touching the shredded remains of his once-handsome face. His mouth was a swollen and blistered mess, jutting from his face like a rabid pug’s muzzle. His upper lip was pulled back in a permanent sneer, revealing white shards of his front incisors jutting from his gums like broken glass.

  What have they done to me? Ian squinted into the window, and the crusted wound of his forehead beginning to split and weep, sending congealed blood oozing toward his nose. And atop it all, sitting like a throw rug on his head, Ian found the tangled remains of his toupee clamped sideways across his balding scalp.

  This I will not take. Ian began to shake, taking in every small detail, the hideous portrait supplying raw fuel to the vast inferno of his rage. I will not let her get away, he vowed, boiling with anger. I will not!

  Ian’s arm cleared a solid punch through the window, fragmenting the ghostly image of his face. He yanked his arm back and spun away, a single fluid motion that somehow, miraculously, left his hand without a single laceration. By the time the shattered glass hit the floor, Ian was already shoving his way through the frightened crowd, a furious grin twisted across his scarred and bloody face. Behind him, a woman started shrieking in pain, her voice rising and falling like an ambulance siren. Ian’s smile widened, even though it hurt like hell to do it. His eyes began to gleam, filled with the vision of those screams, terrified and pleading, coming from Allison Rayel’s trembling mouth.

  Vance caught him in the midst of the mini-riot, less than ten meters away from Marion and Allison. He immediately knew that it was Ian, without even having to see his face; the expensive suit, the Italian shoes, the powerful and arrogant stride, they all reeked of high finance. But even more than that, Vance could feel the man’s explosive fury, could see the coiled intensity in his broad shoulders as he plowed through the crowd.

  He’s worse than I thought. Vance edged in from the street, closing in on Ian from behind. Ahead, skirting the edge of the horde, he could still see the blue swatch of Allison’s head, floating like a buoy through the swirling mob.

  They’re so obvious, Vance thought, hoping to god that no one tried to stop them. They were practically begging to be captured, really — a couple of babies wandering the mall, one of them a malnourished long-hair, the other with her head wrapped in plastic. The only positive was that they were still on a direct trajectory toward the laboratory.

  Ian was still submerged in the mass of people, for the moment, the back of his square head rotating like a periscope above the crowd. He’s too tall, Vance realized, increasing his pace. It was only a matter of time before his eyes finally stumbled onto his prey.

  Vance had been surprised at how tall Marion had grown, as well. The boy’s development was startling — a reminder of just how much time had passed. Seeing him struggle out of the crowd had been like opening a musty old photo album, filling Vance with a father’s sense of pride. He wasn’t much for nostalgia, but he couldn’t help but indulge in a wistful smile as he watched Marion sneak through the crowd. The girl he was with seemed pretty enough, too, even with her head covered. Vance examined her lithe body through the wet contours of her dress, wondering how Marion had managed to hook up with such a specimen.

  Must be her passion for social justice, Vance decided. Looked like urban guilt could get a young homeless boy a lot more than a free meal these days.

  Up ahead, Ian began angling toward the street, still searching, his view of Marion obstructed by nothing but a single raised umbrella. Vance tensed his back and neck, getting ready to make a move.

  The cheering was hearty and unexpected, sounding like someone had organized a pep rally in the midst of the riot. Ian snapped around eagerly, fists raised, and Vance got a sudden, horrifying look at his face.

  Holy Christ. Vance took a quick step back, amazed and slightly disgusted. He paused, taking a closer look at the damage, trying to find the essence of Ian’s features in that broken and swollen mass. The man’s mouth was smashed nearly beyond recognition, while his forehead bore a bloody, protruding lump the size of a golf ball. And above it all, like a matted bird’s nest stuck to the dome of his skull, sat the tangled remains of a high-dollar toupee. It was the kind of heavyweight damage that the doctors at the center used to call face soup.

  Well well — who knew the boy had it in him? Vance suppressed a smile, just in case Ian caught sight of him. Maybe I taught the boy a little more than I thought.

  The crowd expanded suddenly outward, roaring with excitement. Above their heads, passed on a conveyer belt of waving hands, was a plump fellow in a grease-stained apron, thrashing his limbs in futile resistance. The crowd threw him bodily into the street, jeering as if he were a deposed dictator.

  Thankful for the distraction, Vance moved quickly to intercept Ian, trying not to stare too hard at his seeping wounds.

  “Mr. Moody?” He kept his voice calm and conversational, as if meeting the man at a cocktail party. Ian jerked around, his body seeming to move without any conscious direction from his head.

  “What?” He seemed genuinely confused, as if surprised by the sound of his own name.

  “Ian Moody? I’m Vance Devereaux.” Ian ignored Vance’s outstretched hand, his eyes focused instead on an imaginary target. Vance stepped back into his line of sight, deciding to get right to the point. “We talked on the phone about Allison Rayel.”

  The name had its desired effect. Ian finally locked eyes with Vance, his eyebrows clenched beneath the bleeding welt of his forehead, his gaping, pitted mouth cracking into an angry smile.

  “Oh, you.” The words came out as two meaningless syllables: Oo, ew. Directly behind him, Vance watched as Marion and Allison halted at the edge of the lawn, their eyes fixed on the mayor’s distant mansion.

  Move, you idiots. They were right on the cusp of Ian’s peripheral vision, as if waiting for him to turn around. Marion a tall beggar in a threadbare blue jacket, Allison a shortish redhead wearing a dirty dress and a pair of blood-red construction boots. They could not have been more out of place.

  “We desperately need to talk.” Vance began to duck and weave like a boxer, trying to pin down Ian’s wandering eyes.

  “About what?” Abow whu? Va
nce reached out and clamped his hand on Ian’s shoulder, commanding his attention. Marion was still staring at Gracie Mansion, as if he had never seen the goddamn thing before in his life.

  They didn’t know, Vance realized. They came all this way, and they didn’t even know that we were here. In that instant, any question of Marion’s political motives became moot. They were just running, Vance realized. For reasons that he couldn’t begin to fathom, they were actually risking their lives just to get out.

  “Ian!” Vance raised his voice, realizing that only the most dire pronouncement would freeze this maniac’s wandering gaze. “Allison’s dead.”

  The news seemed, for a second, to have no effect whatsoever. Ian’s wretched face remained utterly placid — although his milky, bloodshot eyes finally stopped their slow crawl over the crowd. Vance took one last surreptitious glance over Ian’s shoulder, watching as Marion and Allison began to move again, their pace quickening as they left the pack behind.

  “Dead?”

  Vance flicked his eyes back, afraid that Ian might have spotted them, as well. But instead of anger, or pleasure, or even a hint of sadness, Vance found nothing but a look of profound disappointment.

  He’s upset. Vance slowly began to understand, finally comprehending the scope of Ian Moody’s madness. He’s upset, because he wanted to kill her himself.

  The realization made Vance want to laugh. Here he had been expecting John Q. Citizen, trying to meddle in government affairs, when what he really had was a hired assassin. I should have let him go. Vance searched Ian’s vacant eyes, mentally berating himself for being so cautious.

  “Come with me,” Vance instructed, dragging Ian away from the crowd. The mangled monstrosity followed his lead, trailing after him as he created a path through a series of shoves and kidney punches.

  I can’t offload him yet, Vance decided. Not until I know for sure that we’re okay.

  And then, finally, Vance heard the rising roar of the riot truck, speeding like a swarm of bees toward the mall.

  They’ve got it under control. He glanced back at Ian, his ace in the hole, finding more of a blank-eyed monster than a human being. The sight filled Vance’s heart with joy, bringing a satisfied smirk to his lips.

  Everything was under control. There was absolutely no way they could fail.

  For all that they had been through, Marion had never truly experienced the stark fear of death. Until now.

  They had been trapped, he realized — cornered like two insignificant pests in a devious trap. They had been disposed of with pathetic ease, the machine of government rolling over them without even pausing to slow down.

  “Christ, Marion, it stinks.” Marion felt Allison’s body press against him, but couldn’t think of a way to comfort her. All around them, he could hear the creatures slowly stirring in the darkness — a rustle of coarse hair and callused flesh edging over the concrete floor.

  He reached behind them and grabbed the meal cart, holding onto the cold metal frame like a life-saving anchor. As absurd as it was, he couldn’t help but think of it as a makeshift childhood toy — an unstable go-kart built for riding at high speeds down endless hospital corridors.

  But he wouldn’t be riding out of here — that much seemed certain. It made a horrible sense, somehow. For his life to end here, in these sterile surroundings, seemed almost preordained.

  Allison spotted them first — sucking in a single panicked breath as they emerged from their fetid cells on stumbling, powerful legs, quickly blocking the only path to the door. The beasts were crouched low, heads lowered to sniff the unfamiliar floor, their ragged breath broken by dripping, ravenous grunts as they lumbered into the hall.

  You’ve got to look. Marion forced his eyes open, seeing the creeping shadows of the animals against the far wall, hearing their rabid growls. And then, just before he looked down, Marion heard a sudden, angry bark behind them, echoing incongruously across the corridor.

  A dog? Marion snapped his head around, feeling queasy and confused. There, about three meters away, he discovered two muscular, sleek-bodied curs — dark-hued Doberman mutts, pumped up to twice their normal size.

  Beside him, Allison took a shaky step back, her boot landing in a greasy pile of hamburger. She looked down, surprised, finding fat and gristle smeared in a sticky paste all over her right heel.

  The dogs suddenly began to bark in earnest — a synchronized racket that seemed to come from everywhere at once. The commotion roused the other unseen creatures roaming the hall, setting off a symphony of yelps and snarls and howls. Marion shuddered, watching the two hulking hounds advance, still crouched shoulder to shoulder. They moved with an awkward, lopsided gait, as if fighting for control, their gleaming black eyes trained on their prey — two delicious human morsels protected by nothing but a flimsy hospital cart.

  Marion stared back at them, petrified, watching the drooling brutes toss their angular black heads against each other, bluish tongues lolling over sharp white teeth. At first Marion thought they might be yoked together for some reason, like a pair of oxen. But then, as they surged out of the shadows, it suddenly became clear what was wrong.

  It was a single creature. Marion gaped in wonder, even in the midst of his numb despair, watching as loops of saliva and mucus flew from those snapping jaws. Sweet Lord, look what they have made.

  The rear half of the dog’s body looked almost normal, with fully formed legs and a wildly shaking stump of a tail. But the massive black torso started to split at the ribcage, widening first into a muscled fan over branching spines, and finally into a pair of completely separate dogs, their bodies peeling apart as if cut with an ax. The reason for its halting movement, Marion realized, was because the two halves shared a single middle leg — a twisted, sinewy column that bound them from shoulder to foot, pushing forward from their two outside paws like the third leg of a poorly assembled stool. This grotesque configuration made the beast struggle against itself for every step, lunging forward in a series of clumsy, frustrated leaps.

  We’re not dead yet. The thought startled Marion, as if he had just woken up inside a mausoleum. But then, just as quickly, the echoing shriek of a jungle fight erupted behind him, and he was terrified once more. The two unseen monsters rolled across the floor, screaming and slashing tooth and claw until, in an instant, one thunderous roar was replaced with the gurgling wheeze of a torn throat, and the other by the satisfied slurping of a feeding carnivore.

  Marion spun around again, becoming so dizzy that he stumbled into the dinner cart, sending it to the ground in a clattering shower of metal, plastic and raw meat. He almost tumbled over it, pinwheeling his arms to keep his balance as he looked frantically around. The dog was less than a meter away now, both heads thrashing in violent anticipation of the kill. It reared up on its powerful back legs, like a horse, the jagged pearls of its teeth snapping together, its three front legs pawing the air.

  Marion watched it land with a grunt, and noticed something that made his stomach turn with disgust. Jutting from the dog’s chest, where the two bodies fused into one, was a third, malformed snout, complete with incisors, gnawing furiously beneath a pair of milky, sightless eyes. It’s their brother, Marion realized, watching the hideous beast advance. Only he never really made it out. The third face worked continually, gnawing on its own dark gums, its blind eyes rolling in their sockets.

  The dog crawled closer, now just centimeters away, black lips dripping. Which head is going to attack first? Marion followed them both, the tapered snouts sniffing their way toward him. He got ready to grab Allison and run for the door, even though he knew it meant certain death. What else could they do?

  Across the fallen cart, the deformed Doberman crouched for one final leap, tensing its powerful back haunches, teeth bared for the kill.

  The hamburger hit the side of the dog’s right head with a wet smack, making it yelp and snarl angrily. Marion looked over, astonished, and found Allison with another handful of meat at t
he ready. Although it was hard to tell in the dim light, he could have sworn that she was actually smiling.

  She cocked her arm back and threw again, ducking out from behind the meal cart to get a better angle. This time it was a direct hit, exploding against the dog’s snout in a spray of ground beef and blood. The right head snapped at the air with a confused and angry bark, chasing the meat. He pulled the left half sideways, and both animals stumbled, their middle leg collapsing beneath them.

  “Marion! Help me!” Allison was yanking at the top of the hospital cart, struggling to get it upright. Marion grabbed the other side and helped pull it up, quickly positioning it between themselves and the angry dog.

  The Doberman was torn now, the right head licking blood from the concrete floor, the left head still swinging his muzzle through the air, black nose twitching suspiciously. And then, finally, righty discovered the fresh meat, dragging his twin unwillingly toward it. Lefty strained in the other direction for a second, trying to tear them apart, but then stopped, his ears perking toward his brother’s contented munching.

  “Quick,” Allison reached down and scooped up a gelatinous mound of hamburger, shoveling it back onto the meal cart. “We need to save as much as we can.” Marion swiftly followed suit, grabbing giant handfuls of ground beef, feeling it ooze through his fingers as he heaped it back on the cart, keeping one wary eye on the Doberman.

  The dog’s left snout was beginning to sniff and lick at the raw meat, as well, nuzzling the other head out of the way. The right side pushed back, and both begin to snarl and nip, the froth of their saliva mixing as they fought for the pile of hamburger. Between them, pressed between those heaving chests, the stunted set of jaws continued to churn angrily, as if it were feeding itself.

  Behind their backs, drawn by the sounds of feeding and the smell of blood, Marion could hear the other animals converging on the meal cart, hunting for flesh.

  “We have to move,” Allison hissed, chucking one last pile of beef to the fighting dogs. The two heads almost knocked together as they both dove for the food, their teeth clattering together like dishware. Then she turned around and threw three more handfuls deep into the darkness. The ferocious fighting and sounds of barbaric chewing were instantaneous.

  “I know,” Marion said, tossing the last of the ground chuck on the cart. “But where?”

  “Back toward the door.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was so firm, Marion had to assume that she had a plan. “Trust me. Just head for the door, and throw hamburger at anything that moves.”

  “Okay,” Marion answered, still dubious. “But you have to get on the cart.”

  “What?”

  “You need to stop punishing that ankle. You ride on the cart and throw hamburger, I’ll push us through.”

  “All right, fine.” Allison shoved piles of meat out of the way and clambered up on the cart, settling herself into the front, her legs hanging awkwardly over the front.

  “Ready?”

  Allison nodded, piling trays of hamburger along one arm, trying not to blanch as she saw the disgusting horde of creatures slithering and crawling around that narrow room.

  “Okay, here we go!” Marion leaned his meager weight into the wheeled cart and took off, pushing the thing as straight and as fast as he possibly could.

  Allison threw the first barrage toward the right wall, catapulting red meat into the thick of a large group of creepy crawlies, grimacing as dozens of damp, scuffling limbs fought their way across the concrete floor. She heaved yet another load into the midst of the fray, the flesh spraying a bloody shower across the tile wall.

  “Go! Go!” She was shouting like a drill sergeant, intent on feeding anything that got too close.

  Marion kept his eyes focused straight ahead, peering through the waving copper curtain of her hair, knowing that he had to avoid the monsters, but not wanting to know what they looked like. All around him he could hear the guttural feeding frenzy, saw a blurred nightmare writhing around the edges of his vision.

  Some things are better left unseen. He picked up his pace, zeroing in on the front door as he ran.

  And then, not ten meters from the exit, it happened. He swung his right foot forward, and it connected with something oily and soft. The collision elicited a painful squeal, and Marion saw a small, flesh-colored object arc through the air like a football. He followed its trajectory with horror, his mind already screaming at him to look away. But it was too late — now that he was tracking a single creature, he saw everything. The floor of the corridor before them was a churning, volatile mass, a carpet of staring eyes and pink flesh, rodent-like creatures who had never seen the light of day. Marion jerked his gaze away, but that only brought the larger beasts into focus: a bent and hairless bear, wrinkled, scowling, swinging its arms to harvest the huddled vermin like trout between its claws. Further back loomed something even larger, its misshapen head crushed flat against the ceiling, its roaring mouth red and weeping like an open wound.

  Marion tore his eyes away, listening to the firm slap of his shoes against concrete, trying to ignore the hellish menagerie around him. But then, just before he reached the front door, he caught sight of the fat, glistening worm that he had inadvertently kicked. It was coiled against the floor, its plump body pulsing like an intestine spilled out on the concrete. As Marion stared in horror, the thing spasmed onto its back, its segmented body contracting and expanding like an accordion. And there, blinking beseechingly on the end of that fat, fleshy stump, Marion saw the wailing face of a newborn child.

  He screamed, despite himself, throwing his body forward in a final desperate push for safety. Allison leaped from the cart before it even reached the wall, spinning around to press her back against the steel door, still lobbing globs of hamburger deep into the darkness.

  “Hurry!” He could barely hear her over the raging animals, who were screeching and clawing so wildly that it hurt to listen. He finally reached her and whipped around, swinging the cart so that it stood between them and the bloody fracas beyond. She reached over and put one greasy hand on his cheek, almost tenderly, pulling his head close so she could yell into his ear.

  “I’m going to try something.”

  Marion couldn’t take his eyes off the hallway. “Anything.”

  “We’ve got to move away from the door, just a little. And then we’ve got to scream, Marion. I mean, really scream, like we’re dying.”

  Marion didn’t need any encouragement. He took two shaky steps toward the chaos, pushing the cart before him, and then began to bellow and shriek, as if those shredding claws and teeth were already flaying his skin. Allison joined in, high and terrified, their voices rising above the feral racket, creating a truly spectacular cacophony.

  And then, without warning, Allison drew her fist back and punched Marion hard in his upper stomach, right below his bandaged ribs. His breath was suddenly throttled down to a dying wheeze, his shrieks of agony ending in a sudden screech. He doubled over, his already weak body crumpling to the ground with the force of the blow. Allison dropped next to him, grabbing him around the waist, caressing his hair with quick, gentle strokes.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, holding him as close as possible. “Marion, I’m so sorry.” In the distance, he could hear the hungry animals moving closer, seeking the source of all that fresh meat. Marion tried to speak, but Allison pressed a single finger to his lips, her eyes flicking toward the giant metal door.

  And then he heard it: a faint, clock-like ticking, followed by the scrape of metal against metal as the bolt lock began to slide back. Marion stared at door, one hand wrapped around his throbbing stomach, then looked back at Allison, trying to comprehend her plan.

  At first, he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Allison had struggled to her knees, and was now holding twin piles of hamburger in her outstretched hands, making quick kissing noises as if calling her favorite pets to dinner. Marion glanced fearfully down th
e corridor, watching the beasts as they gradually picked up speed, a storm of greedy growls and snarls rumbling through the hallway like an approaching train.

  They’re too close. Marion sank behind the flimsy cart and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the rapacious panting and relentless scrape of razor-sharp nails hurtling toward them across the concrete floor.

  The massive door slammed open with surprising force, the metal slab swinging into the hall with a reverberating squeal. Marion jerked his legs back, his eyes snapping open just in time to watch the thick steel slab fly by. As bright sunlight blasted in, he glanced up and saw a line of uniformed soldiers filling the doorframe, rifles hiked against their shoulders, boots spread in neat formation.

  “Captain?”

  It was the only word the lead soldier got out before the chaos began. As the scout squinted uncertainly into the gloom, Allison swung her amazing arm and sent a greasy hamburger bomb rocketing toward his face. It smashed into the soldier’s right cheek with an oily splat, knocking him backwards and sending his camouflage cap tumbling to the ground.

  Before his fellow infantrymen could begin to react, the first wave of gruesome beasts had vaulted over the meal cart and cleared the door, pursing the food with voracious fury. Marion scooted sideways as fast as he could, pushing himself into the corner, watching as the soldiers stumbled back, horrified, collapsing beneath the onslaught.

  The exodus seemed endless, hundreds of hideous creatures galloping into the artificial light. Many of the creatures seemed blind, their blackened orbs glistening like buttons sewn into their scarred flesh. But they joined the parade nevertheless, crawling and jumping, their reptilian features seeming even more repulsive as they discovered the light of day.

  There was a random shot from the overwhelmed troops outside. Undeterred, the creatures began spreading out across the lawn, each moving to the best of its ability, frolicking in the warm sunlight.

  Marion watched in awe as the beasts poured forth, unable to believe what he was seeing. He turned gleefully back toward Allison, wanting to share their triumph. But then, in an instant, his smile melted like candle wax.

  Allison was trapped, her body pinned between the bullet-shaped heads of that hulking Doberman and the filthy tile wall. The mutant dog was pushing erratically forward, one head extended toward her face, the other sniffing at the open door.

  Marion lunged toward her, but Allison waved him back, her hand rising right under the dog’s twitching nose. Marion stopped just a half-meter short, holding his breath, the dog’s second head swiveling to watch him with bored curiosity.

  After an interminable pause, the dog crouched down and began to lick Allison’s hand, slobbering over the hamburger juice and salty skin. With the delicate skill of a surgeon, Allison reached out her other hand and ruffled the dog’s grimy fur.

  “There you go, buddy.” She smiled, edging toward the door. “That’s a good boy.” As Marion watched with an overwhelming sense of awe, both of the dog’s heads nuzzled her arm, taking turns licking her flesh and lolling back with pleasure as she scratched their heavily muscled chests. Allison glanced over at him and grinned, raising her cheeks toward the fresh air, reaching out to grab his hand as she lead them into the light.

  They were halfway across the mall, running at a sharp angle away from the screaming chaos surrounding the genetics lab, when Allison was shot. As first she thought it was just a cramp, twisting her right thigh muscle into a painful knot, but then she looked down and saw the feathery dart pinning her dress to her upper leg, its fluffy red end bouncing as she ran.

  “Crap!”

  “What’s wrong?” Marion glanced back, still angling toward the shadowy sanctuary of shops and alleys directly ahead of them. He felt completely unprotected and alone — the Doberman had followed them for a surprisingly long time, barking and slobbering with the sudden joy of freedom, but eventually he had peeled off toward the braying pack of mutants, leaving them completely unprotected as they raced across the grass.

  Allison tried to tell him, but it was too late. She could already feel the tranquilizer spreading, stiffening her right leg into a lead weight. She opened her mouth, and then closed it, stumbling to a stop as she threw her arm loosely over Marion’s shoulder.

  “I can’t.” It was all she could manage to say, and it took all of her energy to say it. With the last of her strength, she reached down and yanked the dart from her thigh, holding it out like a fluffy baby bird for Marion’s inspection. He stared down at the bright tuft, uncomprehending, his attention still fixed on the uniformed men running toward them across the lawn. Then he heard another faint shot, like someone popping a balloon, and saw the colorful flash of a dart as it buzzed by his head.

  Suddenly, manically aware, Marion grabbed Allison and tried to pull her to safety, but her groggy footsteps seemed to be dragging them in the wrong direction. Frantic, he looked over his shoulder, attempting to judge the distance between them and the distant sidewalk.

  The van roared out of nowhere, its wheels tearing wet clods of dirt from the lawn as it barreled toward them. Marion watched it approach without even trying to get out of the way, his body momentarily frozen. The thing was a battered, black-and-silver museum piece, its rusting front grill spotted with dead insects, its cracked windshield shedding silver streaks of rain.

  Marion yanked his eyes away and spun around, grabbing Allison around her slender waist and hefting her over one shoulder as he searched desperately for shelter.

  “Marion, stop. I’m tired.” Allison’s voice was slurred, her head lolling against his neck. From the corner of his eye, Marion could see a small battalion of soldiers sprinting toward them, rifles held at the ready. Behind him, he heard the van slide to a stop, brakes squealing, wheels plowing through wet earth.

  Marion struggled to keep Allison upright, her body a lifeless doll in his arms, her fragrant hair falling across his face. He turned one last time, exhausted, watching as a large man jumped out of the van’s front seat and began running toward them through the grass.

  “Marion!”

  In an instant, Marion felt Allison slip from his arms, her body sprawling across the lawn in a dead faint. He stood, slack-jawed, the startling force of memory sweeping over him, dissolving the last five years of his life.

  “Poppy.”

  The man smiled inside the tangled cloud of his beard, older and yet still the same, his eyes filled with affection and concern.

  “Please, call me Vance.”

  There was another shot, closer this time, the feathered dart ricocheting off the side of the van.

  “Hurry, help me get her up!” Before Marion could begin to process this surreal turn of events, the guardian he hadn’t seen in years scooped Allison up by her armpits and began dragging her toward his waiting vehicle. Marion jumped forward and grabbed her legs, helping to shuttle her toward the back of the van. He stared at Vance’s grimacing face, finding every stern nuance that he remembered, each weathered line that filled his fitful dreams.

  “They’re after us, Poppy. I don’t know why, but they’re after us.” Vance nodded gravely, opening the rear doors of the van with one hand as he hefted Allison inside.

  “I know.”

  Marion pushed forward, rolling Allison into the dark cargo space, his mind whirring. “Why are you here? How did you find us?”

  “Marion, there’s no time.” Vance prodded him into the van, glancing nervously over one shoulder. “I’ve got to get you two somewhere safe. I’ll explain everything later.”

  Marion jumped into the back of the van, almost landing on Allison in the process. The door slammed, sealing them in sudden darkness. Marion reached down and found Allison’s hand, squeezing her fingers softly as the floor began to shake, pitching and rolling as the car quickly picked up speed.

  Maybe I’m dreaming. Marion sat on the vibrating metal floor, smelling mildew and gasoline, trying to fathom what had just happened. Maybe I was the one who got shot, he thought. M
aybe Allison was out walking around, while he lay in a drugged stupor. He tightened his grip on Allison’s hand, feeling the reassuring warmth of her skin against his.

  Well, if I’m dreaming, Marion decided, so what? It was far better to accept this fantasy, he figured, than deal with the wretched nightmare outside. In fact, with all they had been through, he would be happy to stay inside of this imaginary moment — safe and secure in the back of Poppy’s van, speeding toward a distant sanctuary — until nothing but the dream remained.

  Gazing down, he suddenly realized that Allison’s head was beating a light tattoo against the metal floor, with nothing to protect it from the van’s swerves and lurches. Alarmed, he quickly peeled off his windbreaker and rolled it into a makeshift pillow, pulling her head up just far enough to slide the jacket beneath. Then, realizing just how exhausted he really was, he lay down with his head facing hers, feeling her slow breath tickle his nose. He smiled, allowing his sleepy eyes to drift closed, his hand gradually disentangling from the silky web of her fingers, his thoughts smothered beneath the gray veil of sleep.

  And then, just before he passed out, Marion heard a familiar, muffled laugh drift back from the van’s front cab. He stiffened involuntarily, struggling in his sleep, caught on the paralyzing edge of a nightmare.

  Seven: Control

 

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