Skin Game

Chapter eight Pledge of allegiance

Pacing, Max asked, “Where the hell are they?”

Dix shook his lumpy head. “Haven’t seen them since the meeting this morning... and I can’t find them on any of the video feeds.”

Lizard-man Mole offered, “Terminal City is a big place.”

She whirled at him. “You’re not in on this, are you?”

Mole’s cigar almost dropped out of his mouth. “No! Hell no — in on what?”

“I wish to hell I knew,” she growled.

The X5 had a sick feeling about this; as much as she valued Alec — as much as she secretly liked the guy — Max was well aware of his self-centered, guileful ways.

They were in the media center, waiting for the eleven o’clock news. Max prowled restlessly, while Dix and Mole sat here and there in the room, the crew watching the monitors hugging the screens.

“If they are up to something,” Mole said, “what pisses me off is they didn’t invite me.”

Max shot him a look. “Don’t whine — it’s not becoming.”

Mole shrugged, leaning back in a spring-sprung easy chair no self-respecting thrift shop would accept. “Hey, it’s not like it was my idea, them jumping the fence. I’m just sayin’—”

She raised an eyebrow and the big tough lizard man piped down, sucking his cigar like a pacifier.

“Anyway,” she said, flopping into another shabby easy chair, “we don’t know for sure that they’ve gone anywhere.” This was said without much conviction.

Mole started to open his mouth again, probably to ask where the hell she thought they were, but the ugly frown etched on her lovely features encouraged him to keep his questions to himself.

“All right,” she said, heaving a sigh. “We’ve got plenty of other things to worry about. Let’s get back to work.”

And she hauled herself out of the chair, without even having really settled in.

“Wait!” Dix said, “News is starting.” He turned the volume up some.

“Would it be asking too much,” Max said dryly, “that the lead story not be Alec and Joshua?”

The news anchor was a blonde woman with manicured hair, suspiciously energetic blue eyes, and a long, thin face. She looked as though she hadn’t had a cheeseburger since before the Pulse.

“In our top story tonight,” the blonde said, “transgenics invaded the Ichiro Suzuki Elementary School today...”

Mole spoke for all of them: “Holy freakin’ shit...”

“We go now to our reporter on the scene, Ben Petty.”

Petty stood tall, straight, and wore a nearly identical suit to the one he’d worn the night before, when he’d bribed the drunks. “Thank you, Liz.”

“Hey, Max, isn’t that your pal?” Dix asked.

Max shushed him.

Petty was saying, “Today, two transgenics invaded Ichiro Elementary, apparently intending to kidnap children.”

“Kidnap children?” Mole asked, half out of the easy chair, dangling cigar stuck to the saliva of his lower lip. “Why in the hell would they do that?”

As if speaking directly to the lizard man, Petty said, “Local police have refused comment, but a high-ranking federal government source has speculated that the transgenics hoped to barter a deal to end the Terminal City siege by using school children as hostages.”

“Ames White,” Max said, spitting the name like an epithet.

The shot widened to show a man with a bandaged nose standing next to Petty. “Janitor Hampton Rhoades successfully fought off the transgenics, though one of them did, before fleeing, manage to break the janitor’s nose.”

One of the monitor crew sat up, a slender female, gesticulating, yelling, “Hey, I know him — he’s a second-gen X5!”

All of them turned toward the source of that comment, an X5 whose name Max didn’t know — typically pretty, with short brown hair, doe eyes, a pug nose, and a red-lipstick blossom of a mouth.

Dix asked, “Where d’ya know him from, Kade?”

“Not the streets — Manticore. His name was Stoop. He was a squad leader. If he got his nose broken, it’s ’cause he let somebody do it.”

They all traded looks, obviously wondering why these “transgenics” would invade the school... and, beyond that, why one of their own would fight them.

Were the two Alec and Joshua?

On the tube, the janitor was being interviewed by Petty.

Rhoades was saying, “I don’t think they wanted trouble.”

“Then how do you explain them breaking your nose?”

Shrugging, Rhoades said, “They were scared. I discovered them in my supply room — probably just looking for stuff, you know.”

“You’re being heralded as a hero,” Petty said, “for saving these children.”

“I don’t think—”

Petty turned toward the camera. “There you have it — a pair of transgenics, chased off in fright by a grade school janitor.”

Max shook her head. This just kept getting better and better, didn’t it?

“Keep a tape of that garbage,” she told the monitoring crew. “But for now, I’ve seen enough.”

She was on her way out of the room when the phone rang. She answered with her standard, “Go for Max.”

“It’s me,” Logan said in her ear, and just the sound of his voice soothed her.

“Hi. Anything?”

“I may be making some progress. Can you stop by?”

“New place?”

“Yeah. Now would be good.”

“I’m on my way.”

She hung up, relieved at the thought of being in Logan’s presence. This leadership gig was the pits...

Walking toward the back fence of Terminal City, she watched as the community settled in for another night. A helicopter thrummed overhead, its searchlight probing their home like a prison beam searching for escaping prisoners; but at least it kept moving, stopping to hover for only a moment, at various points. The tension level in their toxic little town was high enough already, without choppers and firebombs, and she had to wonder if Clemente’s control outside the fence was any less tenuous than her own, inside.

Here and there she saw transgenics bedding down. Some, she knew, like Dix, had real beds and real rooms, however shabby they might be; many, though, had only whatever scraps they could make into a bed, with a hollowed-out building to serve as shelter. Sooner or later this situation had to break. Other than Clemente, though, no one on the outside seemed interested in talking. She could only guess the authorities — and this included Ames White, but also more responsible types, without snake-cult hidden agendas — were patiently waiting to starve the transgenics out.

That was a plus, since the outside world was unaware of their Medtronics tunnel supply line.

On the minus side, her slender grip on the Terminal City reins seemed to be slipping. If she couldn’t even get her closest comrades — Alec and Joshua — to follow her orders, how did she expect to get any of the others to?

Arriving at Medtronics, she slipped through the door, down the stairs, and into the tunnel. She trotted easily to the other end, went upstairs and found Logan bent over his computer, hard at work.

The office looked only slightly neater than the last time she’d been here, and a third desk had already been added to the cluttered two. Three different monitors displayed images, and Logan seemed to be tasking between all three.

“Hey, you,” she said.

“Hey,” he answered, his attention still on the computer stuff, but just enough warmth in that one word to make her feel better. The disappointment of Joshua and Alec’s betrayal might have degenerated into self-pity, had she not known that Logan was still there, steadfast.

She tried to look over his shoulder without getting too close. If she leaned in to read, and even a stray virus-infected hair touched him... well, she didn’t want to think about that. “Progress, you said?”

Logan nodded but kept working. After a few seconds of punching keys, the image on the middle monitor changed. “No kidding,” he said to the monitor.

“What?”

He glanced at her. “That tape you gave me of you and Clemente?”

“Yeah?”

“Clemente talked about prints in the computer coming up as a shoe salesman on the skinner’s first victim.”

“That’s what he told me,” Max confirmed with a nod, “but also that something was hinky with the ID.”

“Hinky is right,” Logan said, tapping some more keys.

“Don’t tease — what do you have?”

“The victim’s name, according to the fingerprints, is Henry Calvin.”

“Okay.”

“Only, the shoe store where Henry supposedly worked went out of business six months ago.”

“Making the late Henry an unemployed shoe salesman.”

“Well, his being out of work might explain why he lived on a vacant lot — ’cause that’s what his address checks out as.”

“Sure about this?”

He gave her the “puh-leese” look.

“How’d you do that?”

Small shrug. “It was easy, really. The file was designed to stand up to a cursory viewing. The government, as usual, never thinks that anyone will dig any further.”

Max took a step closer, still careful to not get too near. “So the guy’s ID is fake.”

“And if he’s a fake shoe salesman, in a government file — what is he in real life?”

“Someone who works for a government agency — a covert one, maybe?”

Logan swung around in the chair. “I think that’s a reasonable assumption.”

Excited, Max said, “The NSA, then — White!”

He favored her with a grin. “Interesting thing, though. I hacked into the NSA files and there’s no file for Henry Calvin.”

“Why, does that surprise you?”

“Not really — so I kept digging, and it turns out that on the same day that Henry Calvin died, an NSA agent named Calvin Hankins retired.”

“Retired?”

“Yeah... and another odd thing is that his partner, only twenty-seven years old, left the NSA the same day, on full disability.”

“You mean, he retired at age twenty-seven? Disability for what?”

“Good questions, and maybe we should ask the agent himself.” Logan swung back around and tapped the keys some more.

A picture popped up on the screen. The man was young, slender, good-looking in a nondescript way, with dark hair swept straight back and brown eyes that made him look wiser than his years.

“Sage Thompson,” Logan said by way of introduction. “Hankins’ partner.”

“It would seem,” Max said, “a reasonable assumption that his leaving the NSA had something to do with his partner’s death.”

“Maybe he had a full-bore mental breakdown over his partner being murdered and skinned... maybe this all went down when the two were out in the field together.”

“Meaning Thompson knows something about that first murder.”

“Again — a reasonable assumption.”

“Any idea where we can find him?”

“He’s in the phone book,” Logan said.

Max smirked darkly. “That’s encouraging. With White involved, the guy could be on the bottom of Puget Sound.”

“I called his house and got no answer. Then I got Asha to do a drive-by, and she said the place was vacant... and there’s a For Sale sign in the yard.”

Asha Barlow, a friend of Logan’s, ran with the revolutionary S1W, an underground cell almost as wrapped up in saving the world as Eyes Only. Despite her initial jealousy of Asha, Max had learned to trust the woman and knew that if Asha said Thompson was a ghost, a ghost he was.

“You’ll find him for me, Logan? You know, my hands are tied here. I promised Clemente I’d stay put.”

“I’m looking,” he assured her. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Track him down, get whatever you can — using Asha’s a good idea, with me on the sidelines. We’re under enough pressure here without Ames White making a transgenic poster child out of a serial killer.”

“What if that serial killer really is a transgenic?” Logan asked.

“Then we’re going to need all the media magic Eyes Only can muster.”

Her cell phone rang again.

“You’re a popular girl,” Logan said.

“I shouldn’ta listed myself with that dating agency.” After the second ring, she punched the Send button. “Go for Max.”

Dix’s voice blurted, “The cop’s back at the fence! You better get up here. He doesn’t look happy.”

Shaking her head, she said, “On my way.”

“What?” Logan asked.

“Clemente’s dropped by — seen the news lately?”

Logan nodded. “I figured that was just typical Ames White disinformation.”

“I hope to God it is — Alec and Joshua went over the fence this morning.”

“Oh hell...”

Max let out a sigh that started at her toes. “No one knows why. And we’ve heard nothing from them. Can you beat that, Logan? I ask this band of outcasts for one thing — stay put till this is negotiated — and two of my closest confederates ignore my request.”

Pushing away from the computer, Logan said, “Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do — to achieve what they want to achieve.”

“Who said that?”

“Tom Landry.”

Max just looked at him.

“Football coach — Dallas Cowboys.”

“If you say so. But by that yardstick, I failed.”

“No — they probably failed you. But you also haven’t heard their side of it yet. And you owe them that much, right?”

She said nothing at first, but as his eyes unrelentingly bore in on her, she finally said, “Right... How do you stay so positive?”

“Because the alternative is despair. And when that happens — the Ames Whites of the world win.”

Max looked at him long and hard, knowing that her love for this man had blossomed from an admiration that somehow still grew.

“Thanks,” she said. “I needed that... Now I’ve really gotta go.”

She didn’t want to leave Logan’s side, but she turned away and headed for the tunnel back to Terminal City.

Clemente was waiting at the main gate when she got there and, what a shock! He looked pissed off...

... not that she could really blame him, after the day’s fiascoes.

“You took your sweet time,” he said, his voice edgy and cold.

Max ran a hand over her face. “Ramon, I’d love to tell you that you’re my only problem right now... but you’re not.”

He sucked in a breath, then nodded. “All right — I can accept that.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Come with me for a while,” he said.

She smirked. “Yeah — right.”

Clemente’s eyes locked with hers. “Trust is a two-way street, Max... and right now yours is looking like a dead end.”

“Well, that’s cute, Ramon, but—”

“I need to talk to you in a secure location. Can you appreciate that?”

“Yes.”

“Should I trust you?”

“Yes.”

“Then are you willing to come with me, on the assurance that I’ll allow you to return to Terminal City?”

“Yes,” she said, thinking that Clemente was living up to that Tom Landry definition of leadership damn well.

Turning toward one of the security cameras, Max made several hand motions.

“What was that about?” Clemente asked.

“Just telling the gang what to do if I don’t come back.”

The transgenic sentries, at her bidding, opened the gate for her.

Clemente led Max through the blockade of squad cars, around the officers who glared at her, unmasked hatred in their eyes, and past the National Guard trucks, the troops scattered along the perimeter. Moments later she was following the detective into a seven-story office building.

The first floor had an atrium lobby with a bank of three elevators to the left and, at the right, the restaurant that was their destination. Sitting in a booth next to a huge plate-glass window, Max could see the Terminal City main gate and the large military presence on this side of it.

She wondered if part of the exercise was for her to see just what she and her people were up against.

The restaurant itself was more like a lunch counter with a dozen booths lined around two outside walls. Back in the pre-Pulse days the place probably did great breakfast business as all the medtech people stopped in on their way to work. The back wall of the counter area was mostly a huge mirror surrounded by shelves that held coffee cups, water glasses, malt glasses, and sundae bowls. The red Formica counter held stainless steel napkin holders and sat in front of silver stools with red tops.

It felt strange — comforting and a little surreal — to be out in the real world again.

The booths were still comfy, the tan Naugahyde worn but clean. Usually open until eight or nine, the place had been commandeered — Clemente explained — as the officers’ mess during the siege. At the moment, other than one anxious-looking middle-age waitress, the place seemed vacant.

Arriving with coffee, the waitress poured two cups, set one in front of each of them, then set the pot on the table too.

When the waitress left quickly — too quickly — Max’s smile disappeared. “Secure location, huh?” she said, her voice cold. “Get ’em out.”

“What?” Clemente seemed confused.

“You get them out or I’ll do it for you.”

“What are you—”

“Cut the crap, Ramon. Show of trust? You’ve got three SWAT guys playing hide-and-seek behind the counter. I can see them in the damn mirror.”

Reluctantly, he turned and saw what she meant. “All right — you heard her. Up and out.”

The three SWAT team members stood, sweat beading their faces. Max wondered how long they’d been crammed down back there. For the first time today, she wanted to smile; but didn’t. The SWAT officers looked as irritated as they did embarrassed, and she saw no reason to antagonize them further.

“The two in the men’s room, too.”

The detective’s eyes were wide with amazement. “How did you—”

“I didn’t,” she said. “You just told me.”

He sat back in the booth, rubbed a hand over his face and let an exhausted smile leak out. “Johnson, Carlesimo,” he yelled, not bothering with the walkie. “Come on out!”

Two more SWAT officers emerged from the men’s room, weapons in their hands, confusion on their faces.

Clemente thumbed toward the door. “Go ahead — it’s okay. Everybody out.”

The entire SWAT contingent trooped out, the waitress, too.

“How the hell did you figure that?” the detective asked, his face betraying no trace of embarrassment at being caught with his pants around his ankles.

“With only three behind the counter, you’d want backup. The only place out of sight was the bathrooms. You wouldn’t want me stumbling into your guys in the Women’s, so that meant they had to be in the Men’s.”

“And you knew there’d be two because...?”

“SWAT guys can’t pee by themselves. You breed it into them. They’re like pigeons — they mate for life.”

Clemente nodded. He seemed chagrined. “Neither one of us has been very trustworthy, have we?”

“I’ve at least tried. I didn’t hide shooters behind a lunch counter. And that waitress is a policewoman, right?”

His face turned stony. “Maybe — but you just helped two transgenics leave Terminal City.”

“Not true.”

“What about that elementary school? I know you’re monitoring the news — you saw it.”

“I told you before, Ramon, not all the transgenics in this city are inside our—”

He cut her off. “But these two were. I got detailed descriptions from the school staff. These two I saw with you that first night, saw them myself.”

“You could be wrong,” she tried feebly.

“I might have believed that if we hadn’t taken them into custody earlier.”

Detective Clemente tossed two photos on the table in front of her, and Max felt her stomach do a back flip — and land badly.

She looked down at the pictures of Joshua and Alec — they were on a floor, their eyes closed, their faces peaceful.

Trying not to betray the emotion she felt, she asked, “Are they dead?”

Shaking his head, the detective said, “No — but they had a hell of a close call.”

“What happened to them?”

“They were attacked by someone who almost electrocuted them.”

“What?”

“With stun rods.”

“Where did this happen? When?”

“An apartment house of squatters in Queen Anne — over on Crockett.”

Max tried to make sense of it, but couldn’t add anything up. “What were they doing there?”

Clemente studied her. “You’re asking me?”

“Yes I’m asking you!”

“You really don’t know?”

“They were gone for hours before I even found out they were on the outside.”

“Are you saying they’d already gone over the fence when you told your people to stay put?”

She drew a deep breath, let it out. “I wish I could tell you that... No. They knew about my order.”

Max stopped short of telling the cop that these were two of her closest comrades.

“Shit,” Clemente was saying. “I was hoping you’d know something.”

She glanced around. “Is this location really secure?”

“Yes. Swept it for bugs this morning. And there’s been no sign of White or his people.”

“Ramon — why were you hoping I would know something? You’re the one on the outside. What’s your problem?”

The detective reached beside him, into a briefcase, and pulled out more pictures, arraying them around the table. Max looked them over as he spoke. “The stun rod you see in these photos...”

“Yeah?”

“It belongs to one of the murdered officers who was skinned.”

Max rocked back in the booth as if she’d been punched.

Clemente bore down on her. “Any idea why they went to the school?”

She shook her head. “None. I’m telling you, I don’t even know why they left Terminal City.” She sat forward, almost pleading. “Could you take me to them? Could I see them?”

“No. Anyway, they’re still unconscious. They’re in a hospital — safe... and they’re going to be all right.”

“You have to let me look into this,” Max pleaded.

“No way. No way! If you can help us from inside, fine. Otherwise this is a police matter and we’ll take care of it.”

“My guys did not kill those officers.”

Clemente put a hand out and touched hers — a shockingly intimate move meant to reassure her. Which it did.

“I know that,” Clemente said. “In fact, my guess is, somehow they either found... or stumbled into the killer. Whoever it is, he’s the dangerous one. I mean, Max — this guy got the drop on... and nearly killed... two transgenics.”

“Which is why you should let me hit the streets and find out what is up with this!”

“No — Max, the bottom line here is, this is a police matter. You have to go back inside and be the leader those people need right now.”

She sighed. “Yeah... Yeah, I know. People I trust keep telling me that.”

“And I’m one of them?”

“You’re one.”

“Then I hope you’ll take this the right when I say... I’ve got more bad news to share with you.”

Max again locked eyes with him, wondering if she could take any more.

“Someone,” Clemente said, “has pulled some strings.”

“What now?”

“A clock has started ticking. We’ve got till Friday. The feds say, if we locals can’t settle this within a week, they’ll come in and take over.”

“Ames White,” Max said.

Nodding, Clemente said, “My best guess, too. But who pulled the strings doesn’t matter — all that matters is, if this standoff isn’t settled by Friday, the Army will move in on Terminal City — tanks’ll come rolling right through those fences.”

Max said nothing.

“So how do we settle this thing, you and I?” Clemente asked.

“We find that killer.”

“I’ll find him — but I see your point. As long as the media is filled with a transgenic Jack the Ripper, negotiating with Terminal City gets lost in the alarmist shuffle.”

“Well put. Where are you with the investigation?”

With a shrug, Clemente said, “We’ve searched the apartment where your friends were found. It’s been cleared out. It’s a squatter’s flat, like I said, so we have no name, and the neighbors didn’t ever remember seeing the guy. We got some skin cells from the shower drain, could be the killer, could be skin from one of the victims. We won’t know for a while.”

“What about the DNA evidence White gave you?”

Clemente started to say something, then seemed to change his mind. “I won’t bullshit you. How did you figure that White shared DNA evidence with us?”

“It wasn’t exactly the Enigma code, Ramon. You guys wouldn’t have put the word out that this was a transgenic killer if you didn’t have something... and White would be eager to provide that, I’m sure.”

Nodding, Clemente said, “White’s team got skin cells off this piece of top secret equipment that the killer took from his first victim.”

“Oh, you mean the shoe salesman?”

Clemente took the bait. “Yeah — the shoe salesman... who really worked for the NSA, only I never told you that.”

So, Logan had been right: the first victim was one of White’s people.

Max asked, “Why didn’t White give you this key piece of evidence immediately?”

Clemente gazed at her with respect. “You’d have made a good cop, Max. That was my first question too.”

“And the answer?”

The cop shrugged. “White said the killer stole the piece of equipment, and it had only been retrieved recently.”

“Retrieved?”

“White was a little vague on that part,” Clemente admitted.

“You believe him?”

“Don’t really have a choice. Anyway, under a press-blackout restriction, he did give me possession of that gizmo for twenty-four hours. It was smashed up, and covered in blood — the victim’s blood — and it matched up perfectly. The lab also found more skin cells from the killer, and we ran our own DNA tests and the killer is definitely transgenic.”

“According to evidence provided by Ames White,” she said.

He shook his head. “If this evidence is faked, it’s head and shoulders above anything I’ve ever come across. I’ve seen the government try to cover shit up before and they suck at it. Your little community across the street comes to mind as an example.”

“Point taken,” she said. “What about fingerprints?”

“None anywhere. Not at the scenes of the crimes, none on that piece of equipment, none on the stun rods, and none in the apartment.”

Frowning, she asked, “How is that even possible?”

Clemente sat back in the booth. “I have no idea.”

Max decided that the best way to show her sincerity would be to level with Clemente. “Suppose I told you I already knew that the first victim worked for White?”

“How?”

“By putting the pieces together from what you told me, and the computer work of a friend. And I also know that our dead NSA ‘shoe salesman’ had a young partner who left the agency at the same time — with full disability.”

Clemente was sitting forward, scribbling this in a small notebook. “What’s the partner’s name?”

“You’re not going to find him. He’s gone to ground.”

“Tell me anyway, Max. I have my sources, my ways to find people. This guy’s a material witness in a homicide.”

“I’ll tell you his name, Ramon, because I want to build trust. And in the days ahead we’ll need that. If we’re going to get this fixed before the tanks roll in, we have to promise to tell each other the truth from now on.”

The detective studied her, his face serious. “You have my word.”

“Mine too. But here’s the thing. If you do a big high-profile manhunt, then Ames White will get to your witness first, and then neither of us will ever get to talk to him.”

“I can protect him.”

“The police can’t protect him from White.”

Clemente’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t say the police. I said, ‘I can protect him.’ ”

She considered that; then she took the leap of faith, of trust. “His name’s Sage Thompson.”

She gave him the agent’s last known address as well.

Clemente scribbled the information in his notebook. “If you’ve been inside Terminal City, how do you know he’s not home?”

A half smile played at the corner of her mouth. “Well, I have my sources, too — including a nontransgenic friend, who visited the house and said it’s vacant and for sale.”

“I’ll find Thompson,” Clemente said. “Now, we better get you back inside. Here’s my cell number.” He handed her a slip of paper. “You find out anything, you let me know.”

“You’ll do the same?”

“I’ll do the same.”

They walked slowly back to the gate in silence. The night had turned chilly again and Max saw no stars. By tomorrow it would be raining again. Sometimes she wondered why she’d left L.A. in the first place, earthquakes or not. She was tired of being cold and wet. When this was over, she promised herself, she and Logan were going somewhere warm for a while.

In spite of herself, she smiled.

“What?” Clemente asked as she stepped through the gate.

Turning back, she asked, “You ever been to Florida, Ramon?”

He nodded. “In my Army days.”

“Warm there?”

Now he smiled too. “Most of the time.”

“Be nice to see the sun again,” Max said, then she trotted away.

Otto Gottlieb sat in his car and stared out at Puget Sound in the darkness.

Discovery Park was vacant at this hour, the West Point Lighthouse poking holes in the blackness as it swept back and forth. Agent White and the detective, Clemente, were in the middle of some kind of pissing contest, which White of course was determined to win. Toward that end, White had talked Otto into being evasive with the police about how, when, and where the NSA had come back into possession of the imager.

The deceit had gone so deep that a fed-up Otto had finally come to believe that White had gone rogue. There didn’t seem to be any other viable explanation, and Agent White’s perfidy had now broadened in scope to include Otto Gottlieb as well.

Otto pounded the steering wheel. He’d gotten so caught up in trying to save his ass, he’d forgotten to cover it... and now he was about to be hung out to dry. Sooner or later the truth, whatever that was, about White’s clandestine activities would come out... and who was going to be there to take the blame?

Otto.

Shit.

There had to be someone he could talk to, someone he could go to... but who? White was well insulated. Otto knew that his partner had friends in Congress, if not higher. His own predicament was simple — could he trust anyone in the NSA?

The answer, of course, was no; not his peers, not his superiors... no one.

Otto considered other agencies at the federal level, but who? The FBI? Probably not. CIA? Ditto. Though he knew people in both, he had no idea who might be tied to White. The state authorities were out of the question, as well — White had the governor in his pocket, and God knew who else.

Only Detective Clemente had stood up to White, and Otto wondered if a local cop could accomplish anything more with White than providing a source of minor irritation. Still, it seemed like the most viable of the not wonderful options available.

The problem was, what would he say to Clemente? What proof did he have that White had gone rogue?

Taking a deep breath, Otto sat back, listened to the mournful cry of the foghorn, and tried to build his case. White had used that transgenic, X5-494, to chase down other transgenics. That had seemed like a bad idea to Otto to begin with, but White overruled him, and in the end they lost 494 as well.

When that operation went south, Otto had been forced to help in its cover-up, and he had no remaining proof that White had used 494. The few other agents who’d been there, who might corroborate his story, all seemed firmly in White’s pocket.

Of course, they probably thought the same thing about him...

White had bred both trust and distrust among his own team all along. Though the agents all appeared to be loyal, to Otto’s eye that loyalty seemed more aimed at White than at the NSA, and he didn’t feel comfortable trying to win over any of the others to his side. Odds were, even if he mentioned his suspicions to one of them, that agent would turn around and tell White.

The fiasco at Jam Pony and the deliberate obstruction of Detective Clemente’s homicide investigation had only intensified Otto’s suspicions. And the conversation with White this evening had been the final straw.

Otto had been driving White home at the end of the day, his boss pissed off because once again Washington had ordered White’s NSA unit not to get involved with the siege at Terminal City. When White received that word, he’d gone ballistic; but by the time he got in the car with Otto, White had simmered down to mere anger. Driving as fast as he could without looking obvious, Otto sped toward White’s house, anxious to get the man out of his car.

“They don’t trust me, Otto,” White said, turning his gaze out the passenger window at the houses they passed.

“I’m sure they do, sir. They just have a plan for Terminal City that doesn’t include us.”

“The transgenics are our job,” White said, his voice rising. “We should be allowed to do our job.”

Otto didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing; he was well-practiced at providing eloquent silences.

“They’re going to screw it up, and she’s going to get away.”

“‘She,’ sir?”

“452 — the one they call Max. She’s the key, Otto. They all band around her. Kill the head and the body will fall.”

“Maybe that’s the plan.”

“What?” White seemed surprised Otto had contributed a thought.

“The plan — to capture her, and bring the alliance of transgenics down. If she is the leader.”

“She’s more than the leader, Otto. And if she’s captured...”

“Sir?”

White turned from the houses to look at Otto. Glancing over, Otto caught his boss’s gaze and recognized the fiery glow that always preceded one of White’s odd choices.

“You should go on vacation, Otto. Take the next week off, starting tomorrow.”

“I’ve used my vacation for the year, sir.”

“I’ll clear it with Washington.”

“But, sir—”

White’s gaze turned hot. “Do what I tell you, Otto. You’re not cleared for what’s going to go down here.”

“Like at Jam Pony, sir?” Though no overt sarcasm tinged the words, Otto instantly regretted saying them.

Rubbing a hand over his face, White was clearly attempting to hold in his temper. When he spoke, his voice sounded icy and robotic. “Yes, like Jam Pony. Drop me off, go home, don’t come to the office for a week. Do you understand?”

Otto looked over at his boss and saw the face of a madman. Worried that White’s next step might be a bullet to the back of his head, Otto said, “Week’s vacation sounds good, sir.”

Five minutes later, Otto had dropped White in his driveway and sped away. He’d driven aimlessly for a couple of hours before winding up here, at Discovery Park. Now he wondered if he dared go home. And if he didn’t go home, where could he go?

Suddenly, Otto Gottlieb realized he was a man without a country. He needed to tell someone something. He just didn’t know who to talk to or what the hell he would say that wouldn’t make him sound like a lunatic.

Clemente suddenly seemed like too small a fish to do battle with a shark like White. Then Otto thought of the one thing that White seemed to hate as much as the transgenics: Eyes Only!

Otto needed to get to Eyes Only. They’d tried to track the hacker down for months, and though they’d narrowly missed him once, that was the only time they’d gotten even a sniff of the guy. Now that he needed help immediately, Otto wondered how exactly one contacted an underground cyber journalist. Smoke signals, maybe?

Maybe he should just let White do whatever it was he was going to do at Terminal City and stay out of it. They were only transgenics, after all...

Only transgenics.

The phrase chilled Otto. He remembered seeing historical videos where one racist after another had used the same defense to cover his own stupidity and rage. “They’re only Negroes.” “They’re only Jews.” “They’re only Mexicans.”

And now words had formed in his own brain: They’re only transgenics.

Otto stared out at the sound and thought about his life, why he’d chosen government service in the first place, and as he made up his mind about what he would do, he heard himself saying, “With liberty and justice for all.”

And as he thought that for the first time in his adult life, he actually knew what those words meant.

He put the gun that had been in his lap back in its shoulder holster and drove home, with a reason to live.