Skin Game

Chapter six Land of the free

Sitting in Dix’s room to one side of his work station, finally getting some time to herself, Max sorted through mental files filled with the things she and Joshua had talked about. Even though it had been just this morning, that conversation in the tunnel seemed so long ago — perhaps because these facts, new to her, summoned old memories... of Manticore.

Even as Max had dealt with the daily task of just trying to hold the fragile truce together, what Joshua had shared with her weighed heavily. She sifted through everything again and again, over and over... and the conclusion never seemed to change.

These grotesque, terrible killings were — partially, at least — her fault.

After all, wasn’t she the one who had turned the transgenics loose in the world in the first place?

She would have preferred not to feel responsible for the killings, to be able to rationalize them away; but the guilt, the responsibility, was hers. It had been her decision not to leave anyone behind at Manticore. Now, while hundreds, maybe thousands, of transgenics lived free and happy, a few failed living experiments were loose who would have been better off in captivity — better off for themselves, better off for the populace.

Max wanted to think White was behind these killings, and she knew him to be heartless enough to do such deeds, or have them done in the pursuit of the conclave’s twisted agenda; but something deep in her gut told her that the evidence he’d presented to Clemente just might be real...

A quick knock was followed by handsome, hazel-eyed Alec — in a blue T-shirt, Levi’s and running shoes — filling the frame of the doorway. “You might want to take a look at what’s going on outside,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the hallway.

So much for some time to herself.

“What now?” she asked, not bothering to hide her weariness.

“Hey, I’m sorry to bother you — I know you’re carrying the weight... But you better come look.”

With a deep sigh, Max rose and moved out to the media center. “Something good on?”

Luke, Mole, Dix, and the various monitor monitors all seemed tense.

“Not my favorite show,” Dix said, and pointed at one of the security camera screens. “Some drunks on the west side are lobbing Molotov cocktails over the fence.”

Max knew the nearest building was a good thirty yards in from the fence on that side, but as she moved to the monitor, she saw that the drunks were getting closer with each shot. And the building was a wooden structure, a two-story glorified shed that would not resist flames well at all.

Pointing at another monitor, Luke said, “And it looks like a TV crew’s trying to get in, around the corner from the drunks.”

Smirking, Alec said, “Is that the gentle whiff of a conspiracy I detect?”

“Where’s the damn National Guard?” Mole asked, half a cigar bobbing in one corner of his reptile mouth. “They got the whole goddamn place locked down... and a buncha street-rabble drunks make their way through?”

Looking at Alec, Max said, “You take care of the incendiary substance abusers, and I’ll take care of the media.”

“Publicity hound.”

“Why not? I’m almost as pretty as you are.”

“Ouch,” Alec said, joining her as she headed outside.

Soon they were behind the building that was serving as a target for the drunks and their firebombs.

“Stop them,” Max said firmly, “but don’t mess them up.”

“Would I do that? Gentle soul like me.”

“I’m serious, Alec. There’s enough of the public against us already.”

He shook his head as if he could hardly believe he was hearing this. “That’s not John Q. Public out there, Max — that’s some lowlife drunks who were probably paid to cause a distraction for that media crew.”

“We don’t know that. The news crew might just be taking advantage of—”

“Even so, do you really think I’m going to convert a bunch of drunks by talking to them?”

“Just don’t mess them up, okay? That media crew would love to see you going transgenic on a bunch of ordinary asses.”

“Fine!” Disgustedly, he took off into the shadows between two buildings.

Max waited two beats, then took off herself, in the other direction, to cut off the television team.

From twenty feet away, she watched the television crew fumbling on the other side of the fence. A short pudgy guy in a T-shirt and jeans hefted the camera while the obvious “talent,” a too-tanned himbo in an off-the-rack suit, tried to look like a network anchor. In the meantime, a skinny guy in a windbreaker with the station’s call letters and channel number emblazoned on the back tried to keep the wires from tangling.

Max eased forward, stopping at the corner of the building, staying in the shadows as she peeked around to see if Alec was talking to the drunks yet. As she watched, Alec sauntered out from between the buildings and approached the four inebriated men throwing firebombs. There still didn’t seem to be any sign of the National Guard or the cops moving in from their barricade position.

“Gonna have to ask you fellas to stop doing that,” Alec said to their guests.

The biggest of the drunks — a scruffy-bearded guy in frayed jeans and a MUTANTS GO HOME T-shirt, which included a bad, monster-movie-type image of dog-boy Joshua — stepped forward and yelled through the mesh: “Get stuffed, freak!”

The potbellied guy then heaved another bottle with a burning rag stuffed in its neck, this one in Alec’s general direction. But the guy was so drunk though that Alec never moved and the thing still missed him by ten feet, shattering to spread a pool of fire that threw orange shadows on the blandly handsome planes of Alec’s face, revealing a hood-eyed sinister quality that few ever had noticed.

“Look, guys,” he said, his voice reasonable but with an edge, “you’re half in the bag. Stop playing with fire before you get burned.”

One of the drunks lit bottles for the other three and they all heaved them at once. Two landed on either side of Alec while the third sailed far over his head. Max watched as it crashed into the building and a splash of fire erupted on the wall.

This was going to get ugly...

Alec turned his face toward where Max was hidden in the shadows — she guessed she shouldn’t have been surprised that his transgenic-attuned senses would have betrayed her position — and he said softly, “Hey — I tried.”

Then Alec jumped the eight-foot fence in a Superman single bound, landed in the midst of the four drunks and dispatched them with a blur of martial arts moves — assorted chops and kicks — before any of them even realized he was on their side of the fence. As the last one fell, Alec hopped back up the fence, pausing at the top to smile down at his arrayed victims, sprawled in bloody unconsciousness; then the X5 alighted to the transgenics’ side.

Watching from the shadows, Max shook her head — so much for not messing them up; but in Alec’s defense, he hadn’t killed or even maimed them — a few missing teeth and a broken bone or two was about it.

On the other hand, the drunks had managed to spread their hatred in a literal manner, prior to Alec spanking them: the fire, courtesy of the one Molotov cocktail that had reached its target, made its way quickly up the wall, and soon the entire building was endangered.

Transgenics showed up, seemingly from nowhere, to fight the blaze with extinguishers and an old-fashioned bucket brigade — losing precious water — and in less than five minutes, the fire was under control at least, which was good news.

Only, news of another kind had also been made: Max had looked helplessly on as the TV crew captured Alec’s attack on the drunks; but the camera also caught the fire, and the teamwork of the transgenics.

As the TV crew was recording the firefighting efforts of her brothers and sisters, Max had a moment of elation at the notion of the media showing something positive about the transgenics; then she noticed how the flames and smoke-streaked air played on those animal-tinged faces: her brothers and sisters, so many of them already condemned by appearances considered freakish by mainstream America, looked distorted, even more monstrous in the eerie lighting provided by the fire.

Max made her decision — she ran toward the fence, alighted atop it, then hopped over and landed in front of the cameraman, who nearly toppled backward when she filled his eyepiece. Stepping forward, she steadied him and in one swift motion ejected the tape and removed it from the camera.

“Hey!” the cameraman yelled.

“It’s her!” somebody said.

Max gave the cameraman a stony stare, and he backed up a few steps.

The reporter with the smoothed-back hair, power tie, and too much cologne stepped forward. “This is why people hate you transgenics.”

She spun toward him. “Why?”

“You can’t interfere with freedom of the press.”

“Actually,” she said, “this is why people hate us transgenics.”

And she grabbed him by the front of his cheap suit and, like she was plucking a flower, hauled him five feet off the ground. He looked down at her with terrified eyes in that tanned face, and was whimpering when she set him down again.

“You... you may not look like some of them,” he said, trembling, “but you’re a monster, too...”

“We’re monsters because you make us monsters.” Wheeling around, talking to all of them, she said, “It’s not freedom of the press when you set up a bunch of drunk dipshits to try to firebomb us.”

“How dare you!” the would-be anchorman blurted. “Are you accusing me of manufacturing a story? I never—”

“Save it for the morning news,” Max said. “You’ll need the blather, ’cause you won’t have the footage — I’m taking your tape. And you’re lucky that’s all I’m taking.”

“You can’t—”

“I already did.” She turned and saw that the pudgy cameraman had plopped in a fresh tape and gone back to work, grabbing the tail end of this confrontation. “What’s your name, bud?”

“Bud,” the cameraman said, astonished by her apparent psychic abilities.

“Bud, tell me the truth. Did Wannabe Anchorman here bribe those drunks?”

The cameraman stood stock-still, the lens settled on Max’s face. Finally, he asked, “Do I keep my tape?”

Through his teeth, the anchorman said, “Bud, I will fucking fire your ass.”

“Thanks, Ben,” the cameraman said, “for saying that on camera. The union will love you for it.”

Max smiled. “I think you’ve answered my question, Bud — glad to see there’s some integrity left, in certain corners of the modern media. Thanks.”

She gave them a little one-fingered salute, and jumped back over the fence — like Alec, in one bound — and alighted in her catlike manner. Then she walked slowly toward where the wooden-frame building still burned. In the cool of the predawn morning, the heat of the flames on her face almost felt good, like a blush of pride. She knew Bud was still filming her, but she didn’t give a damn.

Stepping forward, she tossed the tape into the flames.

Other camera crews emerged from the darkness to catch the dying fire on tape too, and she was sure that the anchorman would be spreading lies to his colleagues; but there was nothing she could do about that. Sooner or later she would talk to Clemente and try to explain it to him.

She hoped the detective would not consider her brief excursion over the fence — to defend Terminal City from flames and lies — as a violation of their agreement that she and the other transgenics remain within the boundaries of the toxic nightmare they called home.

Finally, trailing even the newspaper photographers, the police and the Guardsmen came rolling up. They talked to the anchorman with the attitude, and they interviewed Bud as well, and some of them helped up the drunks, who seemed to be coming around, one or two spitting a tooth like a watermelon seed. Glancing over at Alec, Max saw him working at suppressing a smile.

Watching the building burn, Max found memories swirling to the surface of her mind, dark remembrances of that terrible, wonderful night last year when Manticore had burned.

She wanted to think she’d done the right thing that night, freeing her brothers and sisters, even the failed experiments in the basement; but all this trouble — the deaths, from CeCe to the skinning victims — and with so many lost souls to worry about now, she could only wonder if she had done right.

The X5 also wondered if she would ever really know if she had done the world good or ill, or if she would always be haunted by the mantle of leadership and responsibility she had taken on herself.

Max was not alone among the transgenics who were haunted by memories of Manticore. Elsewhere — sleepless in Seattle — Bobby Kawasaki lay in his bed, remembering Max and how they had met and how she had liberated him...

Kelpy had heard the commotion before it got anywhere near him.

The disturbance had started upstairs, and even through the floors and walls he could hear the yelling, the stamping of feet, and — scariest of all — the gunfire. His anxiety level rose, but inside his Plexiglas box, in the middle of the cell, there was nothing to blend in with...

And so he’d stood there, petrified, rocking from one foot to the other. Lately, the doctors kept him in a straitjacket as well, over his clothes, which prevented him from stripping off those garments and trying to blend in on those few occasions they actually let him out of the box.

Joshua — the only one of them down here with anything resembling freedom at all — appeared in the small window in the door.

“It’s going to be okay, Kelpy,” the dog man’s soft, reassuring voice had soothed. “Max is coming... Then we blaze.”

Before Kelpy could respond or ask who this “Max” was, Joshua was gone on to the next door.

Upstairs, the firefight seemed to grow in intensity, and Kelpy — just as he had countless times before — examined the lock mechanism of his Plexiglas prison in hopes of finding a way out. And just like those countless times he’d previously looked at it, he saw a device as cruelly indecipherable to him as the mystery of life.

Kelpy knew he couldn’t have overcome that lock, even if his arms hadn’t been pinned to his sides by the straitjacket.

When he heard the tumult break through the door at the end of the hall, Kelpy gave up and simply sat down, waiting to die, and not really minding the opportunity. Almost within seconds of the basement door bursting open, he could smell smoke. Realizing the building was on fire, Kelpy now actively hoped that one of the guards would step in and shoot him. The quick mercy of that seemed preferable to burning to death, or for that matter, surviving at all.

The sounds of the others screaming — whether from pain or fear, he couldn’t tell — invaded the privacy of his skull. When it came to blending in with people, one of the secrets to success was empathy — and Kelpy had it; now he just wished he could turn it off.

The wails from the other cells felt like an army of demons inside his body trying to rip his soul to shreds. He curled into a fetal ball, trying to make himself as small as possible, and covered his ears with his body as best he could... but the screams still pierced, and the pain became unbearable.

Kelpy was about to start beating his skull on the plastic floor of his cage when the heavy metal door to his cell swung slowly open.

Sitting up, Kelpy searched for the sight of a guard or Joshua or someone... but no one came, and the screams suddenly shifted in volume. The door was only open a few inches, less than a foot — a smidgen provided by the release of the magnetic lock — but through that slit, Kelpy could make out motion.

He hoped someone was coming for him, either to kill him or release him. He really didn’t care which, and was afraid to admit to himself which was his real preference.

No one stopped, though, the motion through the slit almost continuous now, and finally Kelpy realized that the others were free. They were running down the hall to freedom while he was still locked in the Plexiglas cage within his cell.

Suddenly it struck him that he really didn’t want to die.

Struggling to his feet, Kelpy yelled; but he had a small voice, one that didn’t stand out or draw attention, one that most certainly couldn’t be heard above the cacophony in the hall. He shouted over and over, but he knew they didn’t hear, couldn’t hear. They were all running for their lives and didn’t have time for him.

Tears ran hot down his cheeks and Kelpy resigned himself to burning to death, alone, his oven... and then his tomb... to be a plastic one, and eventually his remains would blend in with the mound of melted goo.

Then she came through the door!

Kelpy was so overcome, he simply stood still as she swept in.

How beautiful she was! Long black hair, luminous dark eyes, bee-stung red lips, and skin the color of the sugary caramels he was given at Christmas, all wrapped up in the black package of her attire.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Everybody’s getting out.”

He watched silently as she ripped a leg off the steel bunk against the wall.

Stepping up to the cage, she said, “Stand back.”

Kelpy backed up against the rear wall.

Raising the busted-off bunk leg, she crashed it down on the lock, and the plastic around the metal mechanism seemed to vaporize.

The door opened, she reached in and helped him out onto the floor of the cell. She spun him and — from behind — he heard a rip as she tore the straitjacket to shreds, as if he too were a present and she was unwrapping him.

For the first time in days, Kelpy’s arms swung free.

“Down the hall to the right,” she said, her voice calm. “Follow the crowd, stay close to someone, and we’ll all get out of here.”

He nodded, struck dumb by her dazzling beauty, her commanding presence.

“Can you talk?”

He managed to say, “Yes.”

“Good — you can help. Keep people moving, follow the crowd. Got it?”

He nodded again.

She smiled at him, and, for the first time in his very strange life, Kelpy was in love.

Before he could say anything else to her, she turned and sprinted out the door, off to help anyone who needed it.

Stripping off the remnants of the straitjacket, Kelpy in his prison gray immediately blended in with the gray walls of the cell. He knew that if anyone came in now — though he wouldn’t be invisible exactly — he would be nearly impossible to see. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest... whether this physiological response derived from fear or the appearance of the black-haired goddess, he didn’t know, and he didn’t care. Either way, his adrenaline level was high enough that he blended in easily. He stripped out of his gray prisoner’s uniform...

Stepping out into the hall, the naked Kelpy kept to the sides, out of the way, and moved slowly among fleeing transgenics. While the rest ran pell-mell for their lives, Kelpy calmly searched for the dark-haired woman.

Of course, like the others, he did continue to move toward the exit; but he glanced into every cell, knowing she would be rescuing others, knowing too that — just as no one noticed him — his goddess would stick out in any crowd... let alone this one, where she was the only one who didn’t resemble some sort of animal and the only one not dressed in gray.

Four cells from his, he found her, helping someone else; and he fell in behind her. She never knew he was right there, but he was close enough to smell her sweat and he knew no perfume would ever match her own scent. As she continued toward the exit, shooing some, cajoling others, checking cells for stragglers, Kelpy stayed as near to her as he could.

Finally — with nearly everyone out and the fire encroaching rapidly — Joshua shouted, “Max, come on! We’ve got to go!”

Max — so the goddess had a name, and her name was Max.

She took off running, practically dragging two transgenics as she went. He stayed right on her, her unseen shadow, protecting her without her even knowing he was there. She got the other transgenics outside, then headed back inside, Kelpy on her tail, hugging the wall. She sprinted down the hall and entered the control room... with Kelpy trailing.

The guard standing immediately inside the door caught a foot in the face from Max and went down in a heap. Amazed by her prowess, Kelpy watched from a corner as Max came up silently behind the seated blonde woman in a lab coat; the woman seemed to be in charge.

“Where’s 452?” the woman, positioned before banks of monitors, demanded into a mike. “I’m not leaving without her!”

Grabbing the woman from behind, by the hair, Max said, “Good — ’cause I’m not leaving without you, Sunshine.”

Hammerlocking the woman, Max led her down the hall. All around them the fire greedily consumed the Manticore facility; but Max didn’t seem to care — she apparently had something else on her mind.

Following the two women, Kelpy looked on, his curiosity growing as he watched Max ignoring the danger of the burning building and leading the other woman down the hall, then through some doors into some kind of lab.

“Where’s the antigen?” Max demanded.

“I don’t know,” the blonde shrieked. “We’ve got to get out of here now, 452!”

Standing off to one side, Kelpy looked at the walls full of vials and small bottles of various colored liquids. Remaining against the one solid wall in the room, he blended in and remained virtually invisible.

Swinging the blonde by the arm, Max slung her into the steel door. The woman landed with a metallic thump, then Max spun her around and slammed her into the door once more. “My name is Max! Now... where is it?”

Max dragged the blonde around the room, bumping into this and that, until finally the woman began screaming, “Okay, okay, okay!”

The pair of females came to a stop, and the blonde jerked a small bottle of amber liquid off a glass shelf.

Max wrenched it from her hand.

A guard in black beret and fatigues burst into the room and raised his M-16 in the goddess’ direction.

Kelpy took one step, but was too late.

The guard fired, but — amazingly! — the blonde swept Max out of the way and two slugs ripped into the woman as she went down.

Max came up fast, kicked a cart full of bottles, which struck the guard, knocking the gun out of his hands. As the cart caught the guard, Kelpy blended back into the wall, but was ready to strike, should the guard make another move.

Hanging onto the cart, the guard looked stricken at having shot his boss.

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Max said to him, and the aghast guard beat a hasty retreat out the door.

Kelpy watched as Max leaned down over the bleeding blonde woman — was she dying?

“This virus thing you put in me,” Max said, “how do I get rid of it?”

The woman managed, “You can’t,” and coughed blood.

“You just ate bullets for me — mind telling me why?”

Reaching up and stroking Max’s face, the blonde said, “You’re the one... the one we’ve been looking for.”

Max gazed at the woman, astounded, uncomprehending.

“Sandeman,” the woman said, her voice barely above a whisper now, Kelpy straining to hear her. “Find Sandeman.”

The woman’s hand fell away and she died.

Max wasted no time — how bold she was! How forceful!

Rising, she ran from the burning building, over fences, up the hill, with Kelpy behind her, out of sight. At the top of the hill she paused, grinning with obvious self-satisfaction as she watched the conflagration that was the Manticore facility.

Then she ran off into the woods.

Kelpy kept her in sight as he followed her through the brush and trees. When she piled into a van with some of the other transgenics, he had grabbed the bumper and jumped on the back.

He rode like that all the way back to Seattle.

Once in the city, Kelpy kept following Max, until he figured out that she worked at the bike messenger service, Jam Pony. Taking a cue from her, Kelpy knew he would need a new name. He heard a passing woman call her child Bobby and that gave him a first name. Looking around, he read the first word he saw. It was painted on the gas tank of a motorcycle: KAWASAKI. And now he had a last name.

Knowing it would take something extraordinary for him to find the nerve even to talk to her — let alone try to tell her of his love for her — the newly christened Bobby Kawasaki did the only thing he could, to stay close to his true love: he got a job at Jam Pony, as a bike messenger.

Though many months had passed, Max had still not recognized Kelpy — or rather, Bobby — even though she’d looked right at him the night she’d helped him escape. Nor had he forged a new relationship with her, as Bobby, not a friendship, not even an acquaintance.

The closest Bobby had come was about six months ago when Max had run into him, literally, coming out of the bathroom. They bumped and she grabbed his arm to keep him from falling down.

She looked him dead in the eye and said, “Watch it, bro.”

He said nothing.

Max started to walk away, then paused and turned back. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“That’s right, you do,” Normal interrupted, handing Max a package. “His name’s Bobby, he’s worked here for six months, and you’re both part of the great big wonderful Jam Pony family... Now get this package over to Sector Nine, Missy. Bip bip bip.”

“I thought I’d seen him before,” she said, rather absently, then turned and followed Normal, giving her boss some shit — typical of her, what spirit she had!

Bobby was thrilled, but also — disturbed. She’d seen him, and he got so excited he blended into the lockers and didn’t dare come out until everyone had gone home... only by then Normal had locked him in.

It had been both the best and worst day of his life. She’d noticed him... but, typically, he’d made no impression.

That day was the catalyst, the day Bobby’s vision of what he wanted his life to be had crystallized. He wanted to be loved by Max and now, more than ever, he wanted to be human — ordinary, like that Logan Cale person she seemed so close to. Logan — she liked him; did she love him?

Bobby had already been using Tryptophan at that point, buying, in fact, from the same Asian woman that Max bought from. But if he was going to be really human, he’d have to up the dosage; and in order to make ends meet he’d have to find a new source.

It had taken a while to find someone affordable, but finally Bobby found a new dealer at Harbor Lights Hospital. She was a nurse and she seemed more than willing to give him all the Tryptophan he wanted — and for next to nothing!

A tall, thin woman, Nurse Betty had short auburn hair that barely covered her ears, big brown eyes, and thin lips that were like a razor cut in an otherwise pleasant face.

“Why are you helping me?” he’d asked her.

The dealer smiled at him and said, “You look like you could use the help... and I get the pills for nothing. So I’m helping you, and I’m making a little money to supplement my income. Win win situation.”

He thanked her, but he didn’t understand how she got the pills for nothing. If she was stealing them — from the hospital dispensary, maybe — sooner or later she would get caught; and if she wasn’t stealing them, where was she getting them?

In February his question seemed to be answered. She hadn’t shown for a scheduled meeting and his subsequent phone calls had gone unreturned. Anticipating that she’d get caught sooner or later, Bobby had another dealer lined up, through his old street connections; but before he could call the guy, his own phone rang.

“Hello.” Bobby rarely received phone calls from anyone, so his voice was tentative.

“Bobby?”

A male voice.

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“I’m a friend of a friend.”

Bobby had no friends, so he asked, “Are you sure you have the right Bobby?”

“I’m talking about Nurse Betty.”

Instantly suspicious, Bobby considered hanging up — the guy kind of sounded like a cop — but decided to see what this was about. “That so?”

“I know about your problem.”

“Betty said I had a problem?”

“Yeah... and that if anything happened to her, you’d need a new supplier.”

“I’ve gotta go now.”

“Wait,” the voice on the other end said. “You don’t want to do that. I’m taking over Betty’s customers. And I can make you the same good deal she did.”

“We didn’t have a deal,” Bobby said, his voice rising in fright. “I’m hanging up.”

“I’ll give you the first hundred for free.”

“... Free?”

“Call it a good faith offer.”

That easily, Bobby had a new Tryptophan supplier. After the first couple of transactions, he never saw or even talked to the guy again. They had a prearranged drop site. Bobby went there, collected his pills, left payment in an envelope, and went about his business.

Having already gotten his goals clear, he now needed a plan. The first shopping trip had been an accident. Bobby had been on his way home from a bar. Too many drinks mixed with the Tryptophan had him feeling no pain and had dulled his senses enough that he could barely walk a straight line.

Two blocks from the bar, a guy fell in behind Bobby and — when Bobby turned down a particularly dark street — the would-be assailant made his move, up fast from behind, arm outstretched, knife waving frantically in a shaking hand.

Even completely stoned, Bobby had heard the guy coming. Too wasted to blend, however, he simply turned when the attacker got close, broke the man’s hand, twisted away the knife, knocked the guy to the pavement, and then rammed the blade into the man’s carotid artery.

Wrecked as he was, Bobby still managed to see his plan coming together. It seemed so clear he wondered why he hadn’t seen it before. Although the mugger was smaller than him, he still liked the idea and did his best with his new project.

The mugger had even supplied a knife.

Looking back, that first shopping excursion had been a complete botch. By the time he was done, the material had been so tattered that it was worthless. He’d left the body in an old warehouse near his place. It was like the guy simply disappeared. No news reports of a missing man on either the TV or the radio. No one seemed to be looking for him and no one seemed to care if the guy ever turned up.

That had really got Bobby to thinking.

The first thing he did was stop drinking. For this plan to work, he needed to focus, to be strong. From now on the targets would have to be men who were larger than him — he’d learned that much from the first job.

A medium-sized guy couldn’t wear a small-size T-shirt, right? Same principle. And he would have to work quickly, which with his transgenic abilities would be no problem.

When he started thinking of how to find bigger men, Bobby remembered that the Manticore guards were all bigger than him — that’s why they’d had such an easy time of it picking on him.

Now, though — getting off the heavy dosage of Tryptophan on the weekend and letting Kelpy come out to shop — Bobby started thinking that he should be hunting men in uniform.

After everything the men like that had done to him at Manticore, they owed him...

... and, he knew just how to collect.