After the Dark

Chapter six As the crow flies

Max whirled to face a handsome blond man of about six feet and 180 pounds; he wore a black blazer over a white shirt with no tie, though his gray trousers had a disturbingly crisp crease for this time of night.

“Max... Guevera, isn’t it?” he asked. His voice was a baritone that somehow managed to be both smooth and husky.

“Do I know you?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips, raising her chin, sending out confident body language that didn’t truly reflect her current state of mind.

Even in the half-light provided by the television screen, the thirtyish man had piercing blue eyes — icy eyes; his pretty-boy looks were slightly undercut by a pug, piggish nose. His thin lips created a straight line that turned up maybe a tenth of an inch at each corner in what was, technically at least, a smile.

“We’ve not met,” he admitted. “But I recognize you.”

“From the TV,” she said flatly.

“Yes... and I make it a business to know who’s a friend of the Cale family, and who isn’t.”

“Then you know I’m a friend.”

“A friend of Logan Cale’s.”

“Yes.”

That assertion drew a leering appraisal, and the smile broadened into something uglier. “Logan always had an eye for the ladies.”

“I am so flattered,” she said dryly. “You know who I am. Be a good host — who the hell are you?”

He raised a scolding finger. “Be a good guest... I’m an old family friend — Franklin Bostock. Logan and I went to private school together, as boys. Ask him about me, sometime. I’d be amused to see if he recalls me fondly or not.”

“I’ll do that. Why is a family friend in Lyman Cale’s bedroom at this hour?”

“A better question might be, why is a friend of Logan Cale’s in Lyman Cale’s bedroom at this hour?... My position right now is as Mr. Cale’s private secretary.”

Max gestured to the array of machines — one to help the patient breathe, a monitor that showed a stable heartbeat, reasonable blood pressure, and a barely perceptible nudge in the line that indicated brain activity. “What’s wrong with Mr. Cale?”

Bostock made a clicking sound and shook his head. “I’m afraid Mr. Cale’s had a series of debilitating strokes.”

She frowned, wondering how Cale could have degenerated to this degree in so short a time. “Recently?”

“Fairly recently. He’s been in a vegetative state for most of the last year and a half.”

Eyes narrowing, she shook her head. “That’s impossible. I just saw a video of him addressing Congress, what? Barely two months ago?”

The private secretary’s smile returned, showing her another shade of self-satisfaction. “Video technology has come quite a long way, hasn’t it? Feed some actual footage into CGI generating programs, and a person can live forever.”

Max stepped near the bed, looked at the small pitiful form there, barely discernible as a human being. Quickly, she did the math on this situation, and strode over to Bostock, standing just a foot from him.

“Mr. Bostock, I came for Logan’s uncle’s help. But it looks like it’s your help I need.”

He bowed his head slightly. “As one family friend to another, I assure you I’ll do what I can to be of assistance... Shall we go to my office?”

She followed Bostock out of the bedroom, leaving the frail old comatose figure to his unknowing privacy, and down the stairs to what must have been Lyman Cale’s book-lined study until his private secretary had moved in and arrayed the massive mahogany desk with computer equipment. She was shown to a dark dimpled leather couch, and Bostock pulled a heavy chair around and sat, ready to listen attentively.

It took her less than five minutes to lay out the whole story for him. When she was finished, Bostock made that clicking sound again.

“I see,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Obviously you believe Mr. Cale could put up that ransom.”

She nodded slowly. “It would be a big help. It will probably be the thing that saves Logan’s life, and I promise my first priority after recovering Mr. Cale’s nephew will be to get that money back for you.”

“From what I understand about your abilities,” he said, “I believe you could return the ransom.”

“Then...?”

“I only wish we could provide it.”

She gestured to the lavish surroundings. “Why can’t you, Mr. Bostock?”

He arched an eyebrow, shrugged. “For the simple reason that we don’t have the money. Or at least I can’t access it.”

She sat forward, almost climbing onto the man. “What’s the problem here, Mr. Bostock? Surely you know that Logan is your employer’s favorite nephew... and this is a family matter, an urgent, life-or-death—”

“Ms. Guevera — please. Your indignation is misplaced. Please keep in mind, I would have every right to call the police and have you taken out of here, bodily — for breaking and entering?”

Max did not back down. “What’s going on in this house, Bostock? What the hell are you up to?”

“Nothing nefarious, I assure you. There is no money to access.”

She pointed a finger ceilingward. “He may be in a coma, but Lyman Cale is wealthy as sin.”

“He’s sick as sin, too, Ms. Guevera. And his money is tied up in a conservatorship overseen by the trust department of the First National Bank of Seattle. The attorney in charge of the estate’s fund would never agree to provide that ransom... and even if he did, I’m fairly certain the estate’s full worth is well below your ransom figure of four million, at this point.”

“But this mansion...”

“The mansion would find a fair price, even in today’s market, yes. But do you really think a trust officer would allow this house to be quickly sold, or loaned against, to meet a kidnapper’s demands?”

“Where’s the money gone?”

“Being in a coma is an expensive hobby, Ms. Guevera — drugs, the nurses, the machines, the doctors, well... you get the drift.”

“Dying costs as much as living.”

His smile grew tight. “In Mr. Cale’s case, much more.”

Max could see that this guy was smooth and he was convincing, but bottom line? Bostock was nothing but a damned bureaucrat, and she could see that he wasn’t going to try to help her. Her radar was tingling — she felt something was amiss here, and Bostock himself might well be behind it.

But she had no time to follow the trail of that instinct, not with the clock on Logan’s life ticking...

And there was no talking to Lyman Cale. The uncle who would instantly have helped his beloved nephew had so many IVs and tubes running into him, no telling whether he was alive or dead...

A knock at the study door secured a “Come!” from Bostock, and two goons stepped in, both reacting to Max’s black-clad presence with a lurch that Bostock froze with a raised hand.

“She’s my guest,” he told them.

These were the blond- and the brown-haired guards in TAC fatigues, the two who’d looked like pros. Closer up, they might have been twins; it was as if they’d been spawned from the same test tube, much like Max and her sibs. Both had Cro-Magnon foreheads, deep-set blue eyes, and tiny, nearly lipless mouths. What neither of them had was anything resembling a neck, their skulls seeming to simply swivel atop their shoulders, their attention on her even as they listened to Bostock.

“However,” their superior was saying, “I think Ms. Guevera’s visit is at an end, since I don’t see any way of helping her at the moment.”

She said nothing — just looked hard at him, letting the private secretary know she sensed something was not right.

All this inspired in Bostock was another smile — he had displayed perhaps a dozen variations, all of which she was learning to despise. “Otto? Franz? Would you escort Ms. Guevera off the property, please?... I’m sure she’ll be glad to show you where she left her means of transportation.”

The two goons followed her all the way down to where she’d beached the raft. She dragged the raft to the edge of the water, then glanced up at them. “How long has the old man been sick?”

No reaction — the heads didn’t even swivel on the no-necks.

“What’s Bostock like to work for?”

No response. They just looked at her like two more Dobermans contemplating an attack; and her all out of hamburger...

“You two just don’t have any lines in this little melodrama, do you?”

Contradicting her, Otto (or was it Franz?) said, “Just get the hell out of here.”

“You made us look stupid,” Franz said (or was it Otto?).

“I had help,” she said, and eased the raft in.

She rolled in over the side and picked up her oar. She slid the oar into the water and gently turned the raft toward Puget Sound proper and the speedboat that waited for her a mile out.

As she rowed into the darkness, Otto (Franz?) yelled, “Next time you’ll look stupid!”

Thinking that Franz (Otto?) might well be right, Max kept rowing. The darkness out here was complete. The moon hid behind a cloud and the stars seemed to have run for cover as well.

Her spirits were low, as the thought occurred to her that she might have seen Logan for the last time. Twenty-four hours ago she’d never wanted to see him again, and was willing for the last words he ever heard from her to be words of anger, even hatred.

And at that moment, she had hated him. Or thought she did.

Logan, of all people, knew that everyone she had ever known had lied to her from the day she was born. He was supposed to be different, better than the rest of the world. But was that fair? Or even possible? Did Logan have to be perfect?

She shook her head as she rowed, getting angry all over again. Not perfect, she thought, just honest.

The waters remained as smooth as the emotional whirlpool within her was not. From a flash of yesterday’s anger to the overwhelming desire to see Logan again, to hold him, to forgive him, to give him a new start to make new promises that he damn well better—

She shivered at her own inner turmoil. As she stroked with the oar, she listened to the gentle lapping and she forced the emotions down. She had been trained to be a soldier, and goddamnit, she would be a solider.

She would fight for the man she loved.

And God help anyone who had hurt him, and if someone had killed Logan, that person would be beyond even God’s help... because she would bring hell down on the killer.

Looking uncharacteristically disheveled, Alec sat in the Terminal City control room while Luke hovered over him like an onion-headed mother hen. The core crew of transgenics worked the monitors — Mole (absent momentarily on a bathroom break), Luke, and Dix, the latter occupying his commander’s chair. Right now, however, Luke was stitching up a wound in Alec’s hand.

“You’re exaggerating,” Luke said, but there was awe in his voice.

“No, I’m tellin’ ya,” Alec said. “That tree was five feet from the roof, and twenty feet down.” And he wasn’t overselling the length of his jump from the roof of the Volunteer Park water tower, either. He’d had plenty of time to gain velocity as the tree rushed up to meet him.

“I thought pine was supposed to be a soft wood,” Alec said. “Well, I’m exhibit A — that theory’s BS. Owww!”

“Sorry,” Luke said.

Luke had already wrapped two cracked ribs, applied some smelly homemade salve on half a dozen bruises, and stitched up a cut on Alec’s arm. The black eye, he’d told Alec, would have to heal on its own.

“They used to put a piece of raw steak on ’em,” Alec said, gesturing to the shiner.

From his high command seat, Dix growled, “I’ll get right on that.”

Despite his sprained ankle, Alec had managed to make it back to his motorcycle before Badar Tremaine’s orders for his boys to search the woods had gotten under way.

“I’ll wrap the ankle next,” Luke said, “then we’re done.”

Mole strode in then and looked Alec over from top to bottom. “You look like shit,” he announced.

“So do you, buddy, but I’m gonna heal.”

Grinning as he chomped on his cigar, Mole bumped fists with Alec. “Glad that five-hundred-foot fall didn’t break your funny bone.”

“Broke pretty much everything else, though.”

Mole pulled up a kitchen chair; the seats were salvaged from here and there, this and that — Alec was in a frayed stuffing-spouting easy chair, and Luke was up and down out of an office swivel job.

“What,” Mole asked, “are we going to do if Max comes back without the money?”

Alec shared what he’d overheard at the tower.

Then Mole said, “Any suggestions?”

“We know where the money drop is — why don’t just get there first?”

The ransom note, delivered to Logan’s apartment, said the drop would be at sunup at Gas Works Park, near the old plant.

Completing Alec’s thread, Mole said, “And hit ’em when they show up?”

Nodding, Alec said, “What better time? Hit ’em before they even get set up. You know damn well they’re planning some sort of trap or double cross.”

The lizard face wrinkled further. “We do?”

“I been thinking — this could be about Max.”

“Max. But it’s Logan they kidnapped.”

“Right, Mole... and they left a ransom note at Logan’s apartment. And who was that ransom note intended for?”

Mole shrugged. “Those dipshits didn’t ‘intend’ it for anybody special — they just knew Logan was a rich guy and figured his rich family would pay the ticket, or his people, or... whoever.”

“It was addressed to Max.”

“A four-million-dollar ransom note... addressed to Max. Alec, look at where you are — who sends a ransom note to Terminal City, expecting four million bucks to be layin’ around?”

“My point exactly. More precisely, who knows about Logan’s apartment?”

“Nobody,” Mole shrugged.

“Somebody knows about it — or otherwise a bunch of nobodies called the Furies wouldn’ta snatched Logan.”

Mole’s cigar traveled from the corner of one side of his mouth to the other one. “So... what does it mean?”

Alec shrugged. “I’m smart enough to come up with the questions. I was hoping somebody else’d be smart enough to come up with the answers... They called Logan ‘the troll’... What could that be about?”

“The troll,” Mole said. “You’re sure they called him that?”

“Well... no. I’m not sure what the hell they meant.”

“Could be a place.”

Alec made a face. “A place called the Troll?”

“The Fremont Troll?” Mole offered.

Alec shook his head. “No clue. Try English.”

Mole shook his head. “You don’t know about the Fremont Troll? How long have you lived in Seattle, man?”

“Fremont Troll,” Alec echoed.

“Yeah. You know the Aurora Avenue bridge?”

“Been over it a few times.”

“Ever been under it?”

Alec gave him a look. “Maybe that’s where you take your dates, but I’m a little classier kind of guy.”

“No, shit-for-brains,” Mole said, and the cigar butt traveled again, “it’s this giant sculpture under the bridge. Looks like a big bearded dude on his belly.”

“What have you been smoking?”

“He’s got this car in one hand, like a bug he snatched up.”

“What have you been drinking?”

“Thing is freakin’ huge, man. I can’t believe you’ve never seen it.”

“A bearded guy with a car in his hand? You expect me to buy that.”

Mole slapped himself on the forehead and uttered a string of four letter words, in the process chewing the end of his cigar to pulp.

“What idiot thing did he say now?” Max asked, striding into the center and looking down at the seated Alec, still being mothered by Luke.

“Dude never heard of the Fremont Troll,” Mole said, trying to relight what was left of the butt.

Max looked at Alec’s pitiful-looking black eye and said, “No way.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Alec said. “You’re all just jerkin’ my chain.”

Crossing her arms, Max eyed the handsome, bandaged-up X5 suspiciously. “And who did you lose a fight with?”

“A tree,” was all he said. “How did it go with Logan’s uncle?”

She told them. “Any ideas?”

Alec filled her in about his expedition, and he and Mole described their plan for a two-pronged invasion before the scheduled sunup drop-off of the “supposed” ransom — one team going to Gas Works Park, the other to the under-the-bridge troll statue.

“It’s a plan,” Max said, nodding.

The Furies were a large, powerful gang, but they were ordinaries, which meant that Max and her crew of transgenics had a big advantage. What the Terminal City team lacked in numbers, they made up for in genetics and training.

“I don’t want Clemente down on us for this,” Max said, referring to Detective Ramon Clemente, the Seattle cop who had collaborated with her to keep both the Jam Pony hostage crisis and the siege at Terminal City from turning into bloodbaths.

“Don’t give it a thought,” Alec said. “We’ll be in and out before the cops even know what happened.”

Mole nodded. “They won’t know what hit them.”

“Two groups, then,” Max said.

Another nod from Mole. “I’ll go with Alec — you round up Joshua.”

“All right,” she said. “In one hour, we’re in position.”

“Better make it an hour and a half,” Alec said. “Luke hasn’t finished taping up my ankle yet.”

Mole glowered at him. “Pass for an ordinary long enough, you get to be a wuss like one.”

Alec gave him a sarcastically beaming look. “And yet still you choose me to team up with.”

Starting up a new stogie, the lizard man said, “Somebody’s got to keep you from getting your ass beat by another tree.”

Max raised her hands, palms out, calling a halt to the floor show. “An hour and a half it is,” she said. “Be ready, and don’t tell anybody. The quieter we keep this, the better off we’ll all be.”

Alec said, “You don’t know how right you are.”

She frowned at him. “Meaning?”

“Somebody had to tip the Furies off about where Logan lived, right? And who knows that besides our fellow Terminal City residents?”

Mole said, “That cop Clemente — a few others that were around the night Kelpy bought it.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Max said. “Are you suggesting we have a traitor in our midst?”

“I’m suggesting just what I suggested: somebody tipped the Furies off about Logan’s private pad. I mean, you didn’t tell ’em, did you, Max?”

“No, Alec. It would have to be somebody terminally untrustworthy — anybody come to mind?”

His eyes widened. “Hey — I don’t deserve that.”

Max’s expression softened. “Actually, you don’t. And you raise a good point — someone tipped the Furies about Logan. But we don’t have time to find out who. Saving Logan’s ass is our top, our only, priority.”

Alec nodded. So did Mole, and Dix in his command chair, even though he wasn’t supposed to be listening in, and Luke as he taped the bandage around Alec’s ankle.

“What we’re up to,” Max said again, “stays among us, and Joshua — just the core group... Now, let’s jet.”

Ninety minutes later Alec finally met the Fremont Troll.

Under the north end of the Aurora Avenue bridge, the reclining stone troll rose eighteen feet, nearly bumping its head on the underside of the bridge. The troll looked just as Mole had described him — long-haired with one shiny metal eye, crawling on its belly, the fingers of his right hand spread, its left fist closed around a gray hulk of a car.

Alec and Mole climbed up behind the troll peeking out from the darkness under the bridge. Rolling his head on the column of his neck to ease the stiffness, Alec settled in for a wait.

No telling how long it would take the Furies to get there with Logan, but a glance at his watch told him it could be up to two hours till the scheduled hostage/ransom exchange.

“Mole,” he said. “I’m beat.”

“Sleep, then,” he said. “I got it covered.”

“I’m just gonna shut my eyes. Rest a little.”

“Go ahead.”

When his phone trilled and he bolted upright, Alec had no idea how long he’d been out. The tiny ring echoed like a church bell beneath the bridge.

“You answer it,” Mole growled, “or I break it.” The lizard man still had a lit cigar clamped between his teeth and had apparently managed to stay awake through Alec’s nap.

Quickly, Alec fished the phone out of his pocket and punched the button on the start of the second ring. “What?” he asked.

“Anything?”

Max’s hushed voice. She’d be at Gas Works Park, with the others.

“No,” he said, but looked to Mole for confirmation. With a derisive snort, the lizard man nodded — nothing had happened. “How about you?”

“Nobody,” she said. “And they’re overdue.”

“Well, they’d stop here first, surely — to deposit their hostage.”

“You’d think. But Joshua’s stood ground while I’ve roved the area — nobody sniffin’, nothing.”

“What’s your read, Max?”

“Either something’s gone wrong, or the Furies are playing some new game.”

“Hate when that happens... Maybe they’re just waiting for you to leave.”

“Nope,” she said. “I got an A-plus in recon. Trust me, they’re not here. And that bag’s just sittin’ there — even the bugs aren’t goin’ near it.”

“Not good, Max.”

“Almost two hours after sunup and nothing — something has definitely gone wrong.”

The bag she referred to was a leather valise they had packed with a cake of bricks and newspaper, under a frosting of smaller bills. If anybody picked the thing up, it’d weigh enough to pass for four million dollars, and a casual opening would reveal money on top. Only a more aggressive search would reveal the ploy.

But from what Max was saying, no one seemed interested enough to even look and see if they were being ripped off.

“We need to make a move,” Alec said, surprised that Mole had let him sleep this long without kicking him. “Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Any ideas, Max?”

“... I think we should visit the Furies’ home.”

“The four of us... just drop by?”

“That’s the plan, Alec.”

“And you say my plans suck.”

“You up for it?”

“Yeah. No problem.”

“Sit tight. Fill Mole in, and Joshua and me, we’ll be right over — then we’ll blaze.”

Gunning her Ninja, Max flew through the open gate of Lakeview Cemetery, Joshua clinging on behind her, hanging on with just his left hand, the valise full of bricks, newspapers, and a few dollars swinging from his right hand.

On Alec’s motorcycle, the handsome X5 and a lizard-faced passenger were trailing a bike length behind. The engines roared throatily as they cut across the lawn away from the paved road. Though the road sliced through the cemetery and ended near the Furies’ HQ, Max didn’t want to take the direct approach. The Furies would have numbers, so that meant it was important that the transgenics have surprise on their side.

Immediately, as arranged, the speed on both bikes was cut and their engine roar settled into a humming purr.

Max made a quick hand signal and Alec peeled off to the right, his bike gliding across the grass, in and around gravestones, Mole looking vaguely disgusted having to hang onto the X5. Max and Joshua took off to the left, also keeping the speed and engine sound minimal. The idea was to come at the Furies’ HQ from two sides.

The HQ had at one time been a mausoleum constructed after the Pulse, not far from the graves of Bruce and Brandon Lee. Max had actually visited the graves before, not long after she’d come to Seattle. The graves had reminded her of the old days, back at Mann’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, living with the Clan, with her mentor Moody and the young man named Fresca. Back then, Moody would run movies in the theater from time to time. One had been this really cool kung fu flick called Enter the Dragon, and had starred Bruce Lee.

She had seen the late kung fu star’s son Brandon in a movie called The Crow, but that had been on a cheesy video player with a bad tape. Before the Furies took over, the mausoleum HQ had been that of an Asian street gang called the Crows, so-called in honor of the late Brandon; but Badar Tremaine’s forces had wiped them out, six or seven years ago.

The mausoleum stood maybe fifteen feet tall and was at least twenty-five yards long and almost as wide — suitable to house the remains of a small town.

And even that had not been big enough for the Furies, the cement wall at one end serving as a brace for a lean-to extension that had been cobbled on. The doors at either end were wooden now, the weathered coffins that had formerly been stored inside now stacked outside like so much cord wood.

Within seconds of each other the two motorcycles arrived on either side of the mausoleum. Max kicked her cycle to loud, throbbing life and Alec followed suit. Their timing synchronized, the two motorcycles broke down the doors at either end of the mausoleum as they crashed splinteringly through.

Barely inside, both Max and Alec braked, burning rubber, screeching to a halt; they laid their bikes down, the four of them rolling off and coming up in combat stances, ready for action, expecting anything...

Just about anything.

They froze.

All around them, Furies lay dead.

Blood painted the walls in vivid splashes, recent enough to still be a dripping red; the floor, the meager furnishings, dribbled gore. Tables and chairs were overturned, TVs smashed, and a long wood bar that ran along one wall was pocked with bullet marks.

Max and her transgenic brothers had come prepared for a fight; what they found instead was a massacre.

Bodies lay everywhere, sprawled in various postures of surprised violent death — shot, stabbed, slashed. Whoever or whatever had done this had accomplished it with great speed and no mercy. Easily a hundred of the Furies, probably every member, had been slaughtered, and from the looks of things, they hadn’t had time to put up much of a fight.

This was not the aftermath of a battle. Some spent cartridges lay scattered around, but any sign of casualties the Furies might have inflicted on their opponents were gone, if there ever had been any.

“God,” Mole said.

“Damn,” Alec said.

“Logan,” Max said, the word spoken with the reverence of a prayer, edged with the sort of sorrow that had been present so often at graveside services nearby.

Without being told, Alec and Mole went back to the doors on either end, standing guard in case whoever committed this carnage was nearby or planned a return. Max and Joshua crept through the roomful of bodies, walking gingerly, as if to not wake them, and searched for Logan.

Max recognized members of the kidnap team among the corpses. The night of Logan’s kidnapping, they had presented little trouble to her, until the Tazer came out of nowhere; but whoever did this was working with heavier artillery. It was plain to see that not only had the bangers been shot to death, someone had obviously walked along strafing the bodies with automatic weapons fire, just making sure. Others had been sliced and diced — machetes, she thought — like so much meat being prepared for a giant cannibal’s stew.

Amid all of this Max walked, terrified that she would find Logan among the dead...

... though if she found him, at least, she would know. How terrible not to find him, and never to know what happened to him...

From the other side of the room, Joshua said, “Logan not here, Little Fella.”

Though he kept his voice low, it boomed off the mausoleum walls and seemed to echo in her skull. She thought that gunfire in here, this much gunfire, would have sounded like the end of the world — reports rocketing around the walls, bouncing this way and that.

“Sad,” Joshua was saying. “So sad.”

They had come to fight these Furies, to kill if necessary; but to see this massacre was to pity the victims in death, whoever, whatever, they might have been in life.

Her half of the room revealed no sign of Logan either, but there was the cutout in the far wall that led to the wooden add-on they had seen from the outside. As she approached the shadowy hole, Max’s heart pounded and she wondered if the others could hear it, echoing off the blood-spattered walls. Beads of sweat pearled her forehead, even though it was still cold both outside and in this unheated mausoleum.

There was light beyond the opening, but she couldn’t make anything out yet, and no one had called out to them; of course, Logan might have been tied up, and gagged... But if so, the marauders who’d committed this atrocity would hardly have spared him.

Still, this was the last possible place — if Logan was here, he would be in that add-on room. Willing herself to move forward, she took a few steps, her feet feeling impossibly heavy, as if she were turning into a stone gargoyle to adorn this cemetery.

And as she slipped through the hole cut in the wall, she could see one person sitting at a table, a man, his back to her.

She felt a snake of revulsion slither in her gut as she realized that the body was headless.

The room was small, barely ten feet across, with a square table in the center, one wooden chair drawn up to it, holding the seated body — not Logan, apparently, as the corpse wore the black T-shirt and jeans of a Fury — three matching chairs scattered on the floor. In the corner, a small TV had been smashed.

Moving forward, she looked over the shoulder of the body at the table and saw what was presumably the body’s former head on a plate in front of it, the face recognizable as that of Badar Tremaine, leader of the Furies.

Despite herself, she let out a sigh of relief as she confirmed that Logan was nowhere in the room. If he wasn’t here, he might still be alive somewhere.

Taking another look at Tremaine’s head on the plate, she noticed an object sticking out from his mouth. Though not squeamish, Max shivered, and buried the impulse to turn and flee, instead going over to the detached head for a closer look at the protruding object.

Whatever it was, it was metallic and not very large, the cylindrical end sticking out like a stiff, silver tongue.

Slowly, as the gang leader’s dead eyes stared at her, she withdrew the metal object from the slack mouth...

... a minicassette recorder.

The other three entered the small room, Mole first, saying, “Doesn’t look like anyone’s coming back. When you already killed everything that moves, a return trip’s kinda pointless.”

“Fubar,” Joshua breathed, looking at the body.

It was a word Alec had taught him and Max didn’t care for.

Alec was at Max’s side. He said, “Badar Tremaine — well, he was the head man.”

Max shot him a glare.

“Sorry,” he said. “Couldn’t help myself... I mean, he is sitting at the head of the table.”

Joshua grabbed Alec’s arm. “No jokes. That headless man... what if it was Logan?”

“But it isn’t,” Alec said, glancing over at the object in Max’s hand. “What have you got there?”

On Badar’s T-shirt, she wiped saliva and blood from the little machine. “Tape recorder.”

“Press ‘play’ yet?”

Alec, Joshua, and Mole were gathered around her, near the table with their headless host. She looked from face to face among her three friends.

“Go on,” Mole said. “Maybe it’s a message.”

She let out some air, and pushed the Play button.

“Hello, 452.”

They all recognized the voice instantly.

“I knew,” Ames White’s vaguely processed voice said from the tiny machine in her palm, “you would never just deliver the ransom and pay to get your friend back. You’re not built like that. You can never play by the rules, can you, 452? I can relate.”

The urge to throw the recorder off the wall was nearly overwhelming.

“That’s why I employed the Furies, to acquire my hostage. I knew you would track them down. And, of course, they couldn’t be left alive to talk to anyone about certain arrangements I made with them... So as you can see, I made new arrangements with them, this evening.”

She glanced down at the unseeing eyes of Badar Tremaine.

“The media might even get the story that vengeful transgenics killed the whole gang. I’m fairly sure some good citizen will pass that information along. After all, the raid on Logan Cale’s apartment was close to Terminal City, and the victim was... is... a friend of yours.”

Joshua growled low and deep in the back of his throat.

“Now that we know the lengths you’ll go to in order to get your friend back — and now that your friend is in my personal custody — it’s important that we talk about the real ransom.”

“Bastard’s been playin’ us since jump,” Alec said.

“You know what I want, 452. Think.”

As if answering the voice, Max shook her head. This had gone from bad to much, much worse...

“This is your karma... You New Age Terminal City trolls believe in that nonsense, right? You see, you took my son from me. So I took Logan Cale from you.”

“Damnit,” Max said, her voice hard and cold.

“You want your friend back,” White’s voice said. “Well, I want Ray back... Getting the idea?”

“Yes, you son of a bitch,” she said. “Yes.”

“Stay by your cell phone, 452. I’ll be in touch. You have three days to comply, or your friend dies. Oh, and, uh... Merry Christmas.”