Before the Dawn

Chapter four Blast from the past

When Max strode across the cracked cement patio and into the former Mann’s Chinese Theatre, a pacing Moody was waiting for her just inside the doors. She would have liked to think his anxiety was for her, but knew better: the Heart of the Ocean was the root of his worry.

The lobby still possessed the glass concession counters from the old days, but now, instead of food, they served up sleeping quarters for some of the younger kids. The carpeting had at one time been red but now was worn to a threadbare pink. Severely cracked by the Quake, the high ceiling had held for seven years now, and no reason to think it wouldn’t last seven more, anyway. The walls were decorated not with posters but graffiti, some — like old cave drawings — representing Clan history, others just obscene.

“Are you all right, child?” Moody asked, his voice soft and smooth, but with a tinge of excitement in it.

His long silver hair was tied back in its customary ponytail and he wore a black sweatshirt, black slacks, black socks, and running shoes.

“You mean, did I get you your bauble?”

“Do you think so poorly of me, child?... Well — did you?”

“That’s why you sent me, isn’t it?”

A wide wolfish smile opened his face to reveal large white teeth (his grooming, by post-Pulse standards, was remarkable).

Before the conversation could progress, Fresca popped through the double doors that led to the old theater’s main auditorium.

Thirteen or so, Fresca was tall and skinny for his age, with long, straight red hair and pale flesh swarming with freckles. He bounced over to them in his ancient WEEZER T-shirt (no kid in the Clan had any idea what the word represented, but it amused Fresca), and tattered jeans that were more white than blue.

“Whassup, Max?” Fresca asked, ever chipper.

The boy had enough energy zapping around in that gangly body to light a small city. Stillness took him only when he slept, and only then because he had the upper bunk, the top of the concession stand, a precarious perch: if he moved at all in his slumber, he’d end up on the floor.

“Gotta check in with the Moodman here,” she said easily, “then I’m gonna chill, Fresca — maybe get something to eat.”

“Great! Can I come? Can I?”

The kid wasn’t even on drugs.

“Who said I was going anywhere?” Max said, trying not to smile, and failing.

Fresca grinned in response, and dug the toe of his tattered sneaker into the carpeting. She was well aware he was in love with her, and probably had been the moment he met her, when he joined the Clan a year ago.

Having been with Moody for most of the last six years, Max was an old-timer, the Moodman’s chief lieutenant and the best thief in the Clan (“A master of the forgotten art of cat burglary,” Moody would say), which was no small feat, considering all twenty-eight members were street-savvy thieves themselves.

“Why, Fres,” Max asked, “you wanna go out?”

Fresca lighted up a ciggie and started to jitter. “Max, that would be great... that would be perfect. Been up all night waitin’ for you to get back!”

She nodded. “Moody and me, we gotta go take care of a couple of things... Then we can blaze, okay?”

“I’ll wait right here,” the redhead promised.

Moody — standing patiently through all of this (Fresca was one of his favorites, too) — led the way. Just before he got to the double entryway of the auditorium, he opened a side door at left and ducked up the stairs, obviously heading to Max’s crib, in what had once been the grand old theater’s projection booth.

Max wondered why they were going there. Moody usually conducted business in his own quarters, the former manager’s office; not that he hadn’t dropped by Max’s crib before... but this just seemed unusual.

Then again, the Heart of the Ocean was an unusual prize.

The tall man in black turned the knob and entered as if this were his room, not hers. Max’s door was always unlocked — living with a building full of thieves made locks unnecessary if not outright absurd — and, anyway, Max knew of no one who might enter that she couldn’t handle.

The young woman followed her mentor into the modest chamber and he closed the door behind them. Other than Moody’s office/living quarters, this cracked-plaster-walled room was the biggest private room in the place. The dead projector had been shoved into a corner, a decaying museum piece unworthy of the institution Max had just looted. This provided Max a window into the auditorium where most of the Chinese Clan slept.

Down there, the rows of seats — except for the first half a dozen rows — had long since been removed and replaced with items better suited to the needs of the Clan: cots, jury-rigged walls, small camp cookstoves, and other paraphernalia, scattered around the huge room in little living-quarter pockets. The movie screen — with CHINESE CLAN! emblazoned in huge orange spray-paint graffiti — still dominated the wall behind the stage, and Moody used this platform when he addressed his shabby but proficient troops.

The projection booth itself was the biggest room Max had had to herself in her entire life. Her earliest memories were of the Manticore barracks; then she’d shared a room with Lucy, after which she lived in a hole in the ground barely big enough for one, back in Griffith Park.

Ten by sixteen, with its own bathroom, the booth seemed huge to Max, a suite all to herself. Of course, the bathroom would have been a greater luxury if the plumbing worked on a more regular basis. The theater had been abandoned because of the quake cracks in the ceiling, and had even been scheduled for demolition by the city, except someone had stolen the work order and — with all the other troubles in the city — Mann’s seemed to have been lost in the shuffle.

The plumbing, which only worked some of the time in Hollywood anyway, worked even more infrequently within the theater — usually only after Moody had laid some green on local power and water reps.

Max’s bed — rescued from the rubble of the old Roosevelt Hotel across the street — was a luxurious queen-sized box spring on the floor, mattress on top. A Coleman camp lantern, a prize from her days of living in Griffith Park, sat at the head of the bed near a short pile of books, mostly nonfiction (subjects Moody wanted her to study), and a dog-eared paperback copy of Gulliver’s Travels, the one novel she owned, also provided by Moody. Her new motorcycle, a Kawasaki Ninja 250, leaned against one wall, and a padded armchair, also lifted from the Roosevelt ruins, squatted near the projection window. Her only other possession, a small black-and-white TV, sat on a tiny table to the left of the chair.

Moody gazed down at the books. “Traveling to Lilliput again, Maxine?”

Moody knew full well that Maxine wasn’t her name: it was just an affectionate nickname.

She smiled. “Can’t help it — I like the guy.”

Her mentor chuckled. “You and Gulliver — your lives are not that dissimilar, you know.”

“Yeah, I’d noticed that.”

Moody eased his lanky frame into the chair; Max remained standing.

“So, Maxine... the score — was it difficult?”

Max recounted the evening, draining it of any excess melodrama; still, Moody seemed impressed.

Shaking his head, he said, “Mr. Kafelnikov will be... displeased with you.”

“I hope he doesn’t know who borrowed his security plan. That poor traitor would die slow, I bet.”

“Very slow... but our Russian adversary may well have made you, you know.”

“How could he I.D. me? I never met the guy before.”

“You underestimate your renown within certain circles.”

Max frowned. “What circles? I don’t know any ‘circles.’ ”

Arms draped on either side of the chair, as if it were a throne and he a king (the latter was true, in a way), Moody arched an eyebrow. “You think the other clans don’t talk to each other? You think these... superhuman feats of yours have gone unnoticed?”

“I don’t care,” she said with a shrug.

“Perhaps you should. You’ve given them all one sort of trouble or another over the years, haven’t you?”

A slow smile crossed Max’s full lips. “Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

Moody’s eyes seemed to look inward. “That security plan meant a great deal to the Brood. They meant to obtain the bauble in your pocket — and they won’t take this defeat lightly. Kafelnikov will search long and hard to find out who wronged him.”

Finally, casually, she withdrew the necklace from her pocket. “This old thing?”

Moody’s eyes went as wide as the stone. “My God, Maxine... It’s even more breathtaking up close.”

Max held the stone to the dim light and studied it for a long moment. “It’s pretty cool, I guess.” With another shrug, she handed it over.

“Pretty cool,” Moody said, taking the stone. “If they connect you to us... and they will... we’ll have a real enemy.”

“They try to storm this place, we’ll hand their asses back, with change.”

Turning the stone over and over in his hands, Moody seemed not to have heard her. “The necklace alone would feed the Clan for a year.”

“That was a good plan you had — ’cept for those dogs. For rumors, they had some teeth on ’em.”

He shook his head, ponytail swinging. “My apologies... Anyway, a plan is worthless without proper execution. That was key... and the only one in this city who could have executed it was you... Which, my dear, you did.”

“No biggie,” she said, with yet another shrug.

Rising, he tucked the stone into a pocket as he moved to her. Putting an arm around Max, Moody kissed the girl’s cheek, as he had many times before... only now, his lips perhaps lingered a moment too long. “You did well, my dear... you did very well.”

“Thanks,” Max said, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. Oddly, the image of Mr. Barrett entering the bedroom after midnight, to fetch Lucy, flashed through her mind. “I... I better get Fresca — he’s probably wet his pants by now. I promised to get something to eat with him, y’know.”

Moody didn’t move, his arm still around Max’s shoulders. “If they come... if the Brood dares breach our stronghold... God help them when you reveal your powers of battle.”

“Thanks.” Sliding away, not wanting to anger him, but still feeling that something wasn’t quite right, she made another mumbled excuse and slipped out of the room and down the stairs. She could hear Moody on the steps behind her, but didn’t turn to see where he was.

Fresca was sitting like a gargoyle on the edge of the concession counter, already wearing his rumpled Dodgers jacket. His prize possession, the jacket was Fresca’s only tie with his old life... whatever that had been. The clothes he’d been wearing when he joined the Clan had been burned, his old name forgotten, his new name adopted from the menu behind the concession stand. Only that faded blue Dodgers jacket remained.

The Clan rule — instituted by Moody and embraced by them all — was that the past didn’t matter, didn’t exist; time began the day you joined the Clan.

“Let’s bounce,” Max said as she walked past him.

Fresca jumped down and, following her suggestion, bounced along next to her, a puppy excited to be in his master’s... mistress’s?... presence.

They swept out of the theater across the remnants of old-time movie star handprints and cement signatures and onto Hollywood Boulevard, to be greeted by the rising sun. Max had never been near Hollywood Boulevard before the Quake, but some of the area’s denizens she’d spoken to over the years told her that the Boulevard was the one part of the city that the Quake hadn’t changed all that much.

“Where we goin’?” Fresca asked.

“Where do you want to go?”

“How about that waffle place over on La Brea?”

“Sure. Waffles are good. I got nothing against waffles.”

Fresca giggled at that, as if Max were the soul of wit; she smiled to herself and they walked along.

The Belgian Waffle House was on the corner of La Brea and Hawthorn, a healthy but doable walk from Mann’s. The place had once been all windows, but the Quake had destroyed them, and the plywood hung to replace them temporarily had become permanent. Littered with graffiti, the plywood was now the waffle house’s trademark, and customers were provided with markers to add to the decoration while they waited for their food. The booths were still vinyl-covered, but wear and tear had taken them beyond funky into junky. Sparse early-morning traffic meant that only nine or ten other patrons were in the place when Fresca and Max strolled in.

They took two seats at the counter so Fresca could watch the wall-mounted TV adjacent to the food service window from the dingy kitchen.

The Satellite News Network, with headline stories in half-hour cycles, was at this hour about the only choice in a TV market that had gone from a pre-Pulse high of over two hundred cable channels to the current half dozen, all of which were under the federal government’s thumb. The SNN and two local channels were all that was left out east, and in the Midwest, they got SNN and scattered local channels; so the West Coast remained, by default, the center of the television world... it was just a much smaller world.

“I’m gonna make a leap here,” Max said, “and have a waffle.”

Fresca grinned. “You buyin’?”

Max favored him with a wide smile. “What have you done lately, to deserve me buying you breakfast?”

“Uh... I just figured... you were on some big score, and wanted to, I don’t know, celebrate. Maybe share the wealth.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

Fresca seemed hurt by her kidding. “I don’t know... I just... kinda hoped... you know...”

She reached over and patted his hand. “Relax, mongrel. You know I won’t let you starve.”

He brightened and, as if keeping up Fresca’s end of the conversation, his stomach growled.

A waitress came up to them with all the urgency of a stroke victim using a walker. She was in her late forties, early fifties, skinny as a straw, with a tight, narrow face. She was not thrilled to see them. “Save me a trip — tell me you don’t need a menu.”

Fresca shook his head. “I don’t need one! I’ll have two waffles and a large chocolate milk. Oh, and some bacon too.”

“We been out of bacon for a week now.”

“You got sausage?”

“Link.”

“Okay! Double order.”

Max looked sideways at him. “How big a score you think I pulled off?”

His face fell. “Uh, Max, I’m sorry, I, uh...”

“Kidding. I’m kidding.”

“Chitchat on your own time, honey,” the waitress said, and she wasn’t kidding. “You need a menu?”

“Waffle, sausage, coffee with milk,” Max said.

The waitress sighed, as if this burden were nearly too much to bear, turned and left. Max and Fresca settled in to watch the news. Max was not particularly interested — Moody had made it clear to her that the news was controlled, and not to be believed — but Fresca enjoyed the clips of fires and shootings and other mayhem.

While Fresca sat riveted to the screen, waiting for the next disaster, Max reconsidered her meeting with Moody. He seemed to be pushing her to take a step she wasn’t ready to take... a step into a personal relationship. Seemed the king of the Clan was in the market for a queen...

Oh, he’d been subtle about it — no direct mention; but she could read the man... she could feel the pressure.

Over and above that, she knew he was right about Kafelnikov, the Brood, and some of the other gangs she’d ripped off over the years: she was building a reputation, attracting attention, and this made her uneasy. Maybe it was time to move on...

Although the Clan had become her family, she would get over it. She’d lost family before; sometimes, it seemed losing families, and moving on, was the only thing she did with any regularity... that the only thing permanent about her life was its impermanence.

She glanced at Fresca. Her leaving would break that redheaded, oversized ragamuffin’s heart; but eventually he would get over it and find someone his own age to fall in love with. And besides, if her being gone took some heat off the Chinese Clan, that probably wouldn’t be a bad thing, either.

The waitress showed up with their food, glancing at them as if disgusted by their need to eat, and Fresca immediately drowned his two waffles in syrup and butter, and dug in, scarfing the stuff like he hadn’t had food for weeks. Maybe the waitress is right, Max thought; Fresca eating is a little disgusting...

Max sipped her coffee and picked at her food; she was never very hungry after a big score. Fresca chugged his chocolate milk and asked the waitress for seconds. On the TV, a series of commercials ended and a news cycle started. The doe-eyed Hispanic woman reading the headlines had straight black hair, high cheekbones, and wore a sharply cut charcoal business suit.

“And in Los Angeles, with the sector turf war between the Crips and the Bloods escalating, Mayor Timberlake assured residents that he would double the number of police officers on the street by the end of the year.”

Max glanced up to see video of the curly-haired mayor speaking to a gathering of citizens in front of City Hall, delivering the same old b.s. Max, like every other resident of southern California, knew he was talking through his ass. The clans and gangs had the police outnumbered nearly three to one and the city’s only hope was to declare martial law and call in the National Guard.

And maybe that would finally happen... which was just one more reason to hit the road, she thought.

The Hispanic woman started a new story. “Police in Seattle are stepping up their efforts in the search for the dissident cyberjournalist known as ‘Eyes Only.’ Well-known for breaking into broadcasts with his pirate ‘news’ bulletins, ‘Eyes Only’ is wanted by police on local, state, and national levels.”

Max watched idly; politics bored her.

“This amateur video shot in Seattle just last night,” the newswoman continued, “shows a suspected Eyes Only accomplice, doing battle with officers. The police are searching for this young rebel as well.”

Courtesy of amateur video, Max watched as a brown-haired young man in jeans and a denim jacket — surrounded by Seattle police officers — suddenly sprang to life.

A straight kick to the groin dropped the cop in front of him and, even before that one fell, the young man did a back flip that took him easily eight feet into the air before nailing a landing behind the officer who a moment before had been facing him. When the officer turned with nightstick raised, the young man hit him with a straight right to the throat that dropped him.

One of the remaining three rushed at the rebel with a Tazer, and the young man leapt out of the way at the last second, so that the cop shot one of his fellow officers. As the officer who had fired the Tazer stood in astonishment, the young man spun and kicked him twice in the face before the officer fell.

The remaining cop drew his service pistol and emptied the clip at the young man, whose response was to cartwheel, spin, and dodge until the officer’s pistol was empty. When the last round missed him, the young man stepped forward and hit the cop with half a dozen alternating lefts and rights, before he mercifully let the public servant drop to the ground unconscious.

Max sat as wide-eyed and amazed as the boy’s victims.

Even though she’d only eaten a tiny amount of her breakfast, the food began to roil in her stomach. She had just witnessed superhuman feats that few on the planet could have accomplished: and the only humans she knew of capable of such things had been bred and trained at Manticore...

The video was grainy, shot from a distance, and she was reasonably sure it wasn’t Zack; but the young man who took out the five cops could definitely have been one of her sibs. He looked vaguely like Seth, but Seth hadn’t made it out that night... had he? The picture was so lousy, even with her enhanced vision, she couldn’t tell much of anything, for sure.

This gifted guy just had to be one of her sibs... didn’t he? Who else could do what they could do? Or were there other places like Manticore, turning out supersoldiers?

“Max. Max!”

She turned to look numbly at Fresca. “What?”

“Why... why are you crying, Max?”

She blinked. She didn’t know she had been, but those were tears, all right, running down her cheeks; the streaks of moisture felt warm. “It’s nothing, Fres,” she said. “How you doing with your chow?”

“I’m gonna blow up soon.”

“Then why don’t you stop eating?”

“After you treated me to this feast? I would never insult you that way, Max!”

She couldn’t help but smile through the tears. As she sat watching the boy shovel in the food, she knew her course was clear: a girl had to do what a girl had to do.

But she knew when she left, she’d miss Fresca most of all. “You ready to go then, waffle boy?”

He slurped down the last of his second chocolate milk. “Yeah, yeah, I’m ready to blaze... And thanks, Max. I haven’t eaten like this in days... You sure you’re okay?”

“Just somethin’ in my eye,” she said. “I’m great, now.”

“You’re always great, Max.”

The waitress came over as they rose and Max paid their bill, including tip.

“Be sure to come back,” the waitress said; it seemed vaguely a threat.

As they walked back to the theater, with considerably less urgency, Max’s mind was nonetheless racing.

She’d always wondered how she’d go about finding her siblings, and now, at breakfast, one of them had practically dropped into her lap. How long would it take her to get to Seattle, and how would she get past all the checkpoints? What would Moody think about her leaving? He had all but suggested it before, hadn’t he?

Or had Moody wanted her to stay with him?

The bike’s gas tank was full, more or less; but would she be able to get fuel on the road? Even if she could, the price of the stuff would eat through her bankroll. The questions engulfed her like swarming insects.

As they neared the theater, Fresca again asked, “You sure you’re okay, Max?”

She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek, taking her good sweet time, the smack of her lips like a sweet slap. When she let him go, Fresca flushed red, his thousands of freckles merging into one big glowing blotch. She knew instantly that he was thinking the same thoughts about her that she’d been thinking after Moody’s lingering kiss on the cheek... only Fres didn’t seem weirded out like she had been: he seemed pleased, even... excited.

Uh oh...

Her motivations had been purely innocent, which made her wonder if maybe Moody’s had been, too...

Mann’s was slowly coming awake, Clan members stirring and lining up to use the bathrooms, the smell of breakfasts cooking on hot plates wafting pleasantly. Max deposited the still-beet-faced Fresca next to his concession-stand berth and headed into the auditorium in search of Moody.

The sloping floor was scattered with sleeping bags and beds appropriated from the Roosevelt wreckage, while blanket “walls” were draped from clotheslines. Despite the breakfast odors, the smell of stale sweat and unwashed souls hung in the air; and yet very faintly lingered the olfactory memory of buttered popcorn.

It was a motley crew Moody lorded over, but they were a family — Max already was viewing them with a sort of nostalgia — and they loved the old man.

Moody’s second-in-command, Gabriel — an African American in his late twenties — was rousing the kids when she came in.

“Moodman in his office?” she asked.

Gabriel had a shadow’s worth of black hair, brown eyes, and an ostrich neck. He cocked his head toward the movie screen. “Yeah, and he’s happy as a clam. What the hell you pull off last night, Maxie?”

“Little score. Same-o same-so... save-the-day kinda thing.”

He harrumphed, but grinned. “Ain’t it the truth. Don’t know what we’d do without you ’round here, girl.”

Max felt a twinge of guilt.

Gabriel was looking down at Niner, a sixteen-year-old newbie girl who’d been with the Clan for about a month.

“Get your scrawny ass outa the sack,” Gabriel growled. “There’s work to be done in the real world.”

Continuing on toward the looming screen, Max thought about Niner. Nice kid; reminded her a little of Lucy. Max hoped that once she was gone, maybe Fresca and Niner could hook up. Might be good for both of them.

Max took a doorway to the left of the screen, into an area where a single guard, Tippett, blocked the hallway that led to Moody’s quarters. Six-four, maybe 240 pounds of tattoos and piercings, Tippett had been a linebacker back in the pre-Pulse days. Now, nearly fifty, he still had a black belt in karate and was the only person in the Clan who could hold his own with Max. When they’d sparred once, he’d lasted eight seconds, easily the record for a match with her. Only now that Max knew the man’s moves, he’d go down in five.

“Hey,” Max said.

Tippett smiled, showing a thin line of tobacco-browned teeth. Big and pale with an incongruous Afro, he scared the shit out of everybody... except Max and Moody. Even Gabriel gave Tippett more than the average amount of space.

“Cutie pie,” he said. “Wanna go a few rounds?”

“No. You?”

“Hell no. You must wanna see the man.”

“I need to see the man.”

“Girl whips my ass don’t have to ask me twice.” The guard stepped aside.

The hallway had an incense odor, always pleasant to Max after the fetid sweat smell of the auditorium. Moody’s office was the second door on the left of the pale-blue cracked plaster walls, an unmarked one just after another labeled MOODY — OFFICE. The latter led into a tiny empty room; but the important part of that “OFFICE” door was the four ounces of C4 wired to it.

She knocked on the second door, said firmly, “Max!”

The door replied with a muffled, “Come!”

She found Moody seated behind his desk, on his cell phone; he waved for her to enter and take a chair across from him, which she did.

The wall to her left, the one that abutted the booby trap room, was loaded floor to ceiling with sandbags to protect Moody’s office should the trap be sprung. The desk was an old metal one accompanied by three unmatching metal-frame chairs, one for Moody and two on the other side. The wall to the right had a doorway carved into it, and a curtain of purple beads separated Moody’s private quarters from the office. A few of the ancient movie posters — Sean Connery in Goldfinger, Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry (both meaningless to Max) — salvaged from somewhere in the theater, were tacked here and there.

“Don’t insult me,” he snapped into the phone, but his face revealed calm at odds with his tone. He glanced at Max, rolled his eyes, made a mouth with his fingers and thumb, and opened it and closed it rapidly: blah, blah, blah.

Perhaps fifteen seconds later, Moody told the phone, “I know it’s a bloody depression, but this is a diamond bigger than that one good eyeball of yours, you ignorant, cycloptic son of a bitch.” He hit the END button. “That’s what I’ve always hated about these damn cells,” he said, his voice as blasé as if he were ordering tea, “you can’t slam a receiver into a hook, and put a nice period on a sentence.”

Max’s head was cocked. “Was that?...”

“That was someone who, if I’ve done my job correctly, will be calling right back.” Five seconds later the cell phone rang and Moody smiled. “Got him.”

Max had watched Moody negotiate before and knew he usually got what he wanted. The man had charm and cajones and a tactical sense second to none.

“Yes,” Moody said into the phone.

He listened for a few seconds.

“Well, that may indeed be true about my mother,” Moody said, “but then we’ll never know, will we, since she passed away some years ago... but one thing is certain: my price is a fair price.”

He listened again, tossing a twinkling-eyed smile at his protégée.

“Splendid,” he said finally. “Where and when?” Moody jotted something on a pad. “A pleasure, as always. I like nothing more than a smooth transaction.” He hit END again.

Max’s eyebrows went up. “How much is fair?”

That white smile of his could have lighted up a much larger room than this. “Don’t concern yourself with details, Maxine. Suffice to say the Clan can move somewhere where we don’t have to worry about the ceiling falling in on us... though it will be hard to leave here. However shabby, it has come to be home, after all.”

That she understood.

“My dear... you’re not smiling. Is something wrong? Is the notion of leaving this palace a sad one to you?”

Suddenly, Max seemed unable to speak. All the way back from the restaurant she had rehearsed the speech, and now came time to let it out, and she couldn’t find a damn word.

“Do you believe you’ve earned a bigger share? Perhaps you’re contemplating heading up your own subclan?”

Max took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, just as she had in Manticore training. This felt a lot like defusing a bomb, though she would much rather be doing that. Centering herself, she started again. “Moody, I have to take off.”

He rocked back in his chair, tented his fingers, smiled gently. “For where, my dear, and for how long?”

Looking at the frayed carpeting on the floor, Max said, “I think for good.”

Moody’s smile disappeared. “Please don’t tease me, Maxine. Things are just about to turn around for us. You can be a queen here.”

She lifted her eyes to his. “I’m sorry. I’m grateful to you — you’ve taught me so much, but... I just never wanted to be a queen. I only wanted to be...”

“What?” he asked, his voice edged with irritation and something else... disappointment? “You just wanted to be what?”

This was getting hard again, emotions surging through her, stress gnawing at her guts.

“Free,” she finally managed.

His displeasure accelerated with the volume of his voice. “You’re not... free, here?”

She shook her head. “Of course I’m free here. That’s not it... this isn’t about you or the Clan. It’s about me. Moody...” She touched the back of her neck, indicating her barcode. “... you know I’m not the only one like me.”

“Yes,” he admitted, quieter now.

Max sat forward. “I came upon information this morning, about where one of my brothers may be. I’m not positive. But I need to find out for myself.”

Moody’s sigh was endless. “I always feared this day would come. I always... dreaded it.”

“You do understand, then?”

His dark eyes were sad as he gave her a little shrug. “You don’t have enough... family here?”

“I have a large family here. The Clan will always be my family, but...”

“But?”

Max looked at the floor, then up at Moody again, their eyes locking. “They were my family first. Yours was the family I adopted.”

“And that adopted you.”

“That’s right. And you’ve been good to me. And I’ve done well by you.”

He nodded slowly.

She shook her head, dark hair bouncing. “We’ve talked about this, Moody. You know all I’ve ever wanted is to find my sibs.”

He looked at her for a long time. Then, wearily, he said, “I know I’m being unfair, Maxine... but I don’t want to lose you.”

“I’ll be back someday. If not to stay, to visit. Visit my family.”

That made him smile, but it was a melancholy thing, nonetheless. “The Clan has been strengthened by having you in it, Max.”

“Thank you,” she said, standing. “But with the payday you’ll get for the Heart of the Ocean, everything should be fine.”

Rising, he said, “That’s probably true... nonetheless, your absence will be felt.” He came around the desk and stood facing her. “Can you wait until after the exchange? I could use the backup.”

She shook her head regretfully. “I think he’s in trouble, my brother, and I need to find him as soon as possible.”

“Where is it you’re going?”

“I’m just going, Moody. Where I’m going means nothing, except to me.”

Moody accepted that with a nod. “You have enough money?”

“I have a stash. It won’t last forever, but it’ll get me where I’m going... Moody, I’m sorry.”

“Maxine, don’t apologize for following your heart... not ever. Such instincts are the only pure thing left in this polluted world.”

Her smile was warm, her gaze fond. “You have been a hell of a teacher.”

“Have I?” He reached for something on his desk: a photo. “Know this?”

She took it in with a glance, answered matter-of-factly, “Trafalgar Square by Mondrian. Piet Mondrian.”

His smile was admiring — and she could tell the admiration was not just for her good looks.

Gesturing with the photo, her mentor said, “Most of the cretins who inhabit this city believe the Mondrian to be a hotel from the pre-Pulse days and nothing more. But you know his paintings, all of them...”

“... Most of them...”

“... all of them, and what they’re worth, and what they can be fenced for, and where to find them.”

“You taught me how to be a good thief.”

“I refined you, my dear. You were a good thief when you joined the Clan... Now, you are the best.”

He went back around the desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a wad of bills with a rubber band around it. He tossed it to her, she caught it, looked at it — damn, at least five grand! — and tossed the packet back.

“Moody, I told you — I got a stash.”

An embarrassed smile crossed Moody’s face. “You have some money, I’m sure; but I’ve always kept back part of your share... just in case this day ever came. To tell you the truth, I do it for all of you.”

“You don’t,” she said simply.

“Ah... no. But it sounded good.” He lobbed the bundle back to her. “In your case, however, I did... because I was grooming you to sit beside me.”

More than just sit, she thought; but said, “I don’t want this, Moody. Use it for the kids.”

He shook his head. “You’ll need it more than we will: you said it yourself, we’re about to have the biggest payday ever. We’ll be more than fine.”

Hefting the bills, she said, “No hard feelings, then?”

His eyes and nostrils flared. “Of course there are hard feelings, my dear, that’s what life largely is, hard feelings... but there’s no anger, and not a little love. You go, Maxine, you find your brother, and if you want, bring him back here with you. Then you will both have a family.”

This time Max was aware of the tears trickling down her cheeks. She rounded the desk and hugged Moody. They embraced for a long time.

When she finally pulled back, Max asked, “You’ll tell the... rest of the gang?” She gestured toward the theater. “I hate fucking good-byes.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to?”

She shook her head. “God no! I’m crying just telling you... how do you think I’d do with them?”

He laughed gently. “Ah, Maxine, my Maxine... for a genetically enhanced killing machine, you don’t seem very tough.”

“Well then help me preserve my image. You tell the kids good-bye for me.”

A smirk dug a hole in one of Moody’s cheeks. “I guess this is one negotiation I’m destined to lose.”

They hugged one last time.

Before she left, Max called Fresca up into the projection booth and asked him to watch it for her until she got back from “a little trip” she had to take.

“Can’t I come with you?” he moaned; even his freckles seemed to droop.

“No, I need you here. You’re my guy, aren’t you?”

“I am? I mean... I am!”

She shrugged with her shoulders and her mouth. “Well, then, kid — watch my shit for me. All I’m takin’ is my bike.”

“No prob!”

She put an arm around him conspiratorially. “And I want you to do one more thing for me.”

“Anything.”

“Keep an eye on Niner. She seems like a good kid, but she’s green... she needs a man to look out for her.”

Fresca seemed to pump up a little at the thought Max considered him a man. “Count on it!”

“And here, Fres — take this.” She handed him a wad of bills, about half what Moody had given her.

His eyes were like fried eggs. “Max, you’re kidding, right?”

“Put that in your pocket, and don’t tell anybody that you have it, or where you got it.”

“Why?”

“Because everybody needs a secret stash o’ cash... and that’s yours.”

“Rad,” he said breathlessly, thumb riffling the thickness of bills.

“And always remember, Fres — you’re my brother, too.”

He frowned in confusion. “‘Too’? You got another brother?”

“Maybe,” she said. “I’ll let you know.”

They hugged, then she said, “Gotta blaze.”

“Better blaze then,” he said.

And she walked her bike out, and was gone.