Working Stiff

Chapter 10

She just didn’t have the energy, after the awful night, to deal with Annalie’s questions—valid though they might have been. Bryn abandoned the field, showered, dressed, and stormed off to work with new (if adrenaline-fueled) energy. That lasted through the first consultation with a newly bereaved husband; his wife had celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday and passed away two weeks later of a stroke. He was stoic, but fragile, and Bryn guided him through it with the sad knowledge that he’d probably be a client soon; she could see the resignation in his eyes. He’d lost everything, and he was giving up. Maybe he’d come out of it, but at his age, she doubted it.

After he was gone, and she had time to think, she realized that her head was throbbing and her throat was dry. A visit to the coffee machine helped. Lucy tried to tell her about Joe’s shooting, but Bryn was too tired to keep up a pretense of surprise. Besides, with Lucy’s connections, she’d find out soon enough that Bryn had been there on the scene.

“I was with him,” Bryn said, sipping her coffee. Lucy stopped typing on her computer keyboard and looked up with widened eyes. “He was helping me out, and he got shot for his trouble. I need to go see his wife and kids.”

“I think they’re all at the hospital,” Lucy said. “I was told so, anyway. The nurses say he’s not in any danger, thank the Lord. Shot. My God. And you were right there?”

“Yes,” Bryn said. “I was right there.”

“But what were you—” Lucy checked herself and firmly closed her mouth. “You know what? That’s none of my business, none at all. I’m just happy you’re all right.”

She wasn’t all right, on so many levels, but Bryn just nodded and went back to her office. She could feel Lucy’s curious stare on her back. By the end of the day, everybody—including Riley Block, in her prep room inner sanctum—was going to have the unshakable opinion that she’d been screwing Joe Fideli.

God.

When her phone rang, it was almost a relief. It wasn’t her private line, just the main switchboard, so she answered with the standard greeting—or tried to.

Annalie interrupted her. “We need to talk about what happened, Bryn!”

“No, trust me. We really don’t.”

“You were arrested! You don’t think Mom’s going to hear about that?”

“Only if you tell her.”

“I wouldn’t!” Annie sounded less than convincing, though. “Look, clearly this is not a good time for you to have me hanging around whatever … stuff … you’re into….”

“God, Annie, do you think I’m a drug dealer?” Because that would be gruesomely ironic, all things considered.

Annie chose her words carefully. “I think you may have some kind of a problem you don’t want to acknowledge,” she said. “I mean, damn, you’re working with dead people; it’s no wonder you’d want … some kind of—”

“Oh, so I’m not a drug dealer, just a junkie.”

“I’m not saying that!” Annie took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m taking the next flight back home,” she said. “I’ll leave your key with the apartment manager. And I shredded and flushed your apartment codes. Anything else you want me to do?”

“Walk Mr. French before you go running home to tell Mom what a loser I am,” Bryn said.

“Bryn, c‘mon, you were arrested. Many people would consider that a wake-up call!”

“I was innocent.”

“You were off skulking around in the dark with a married man and you almost got shot. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Bryn, but whatever it is, it’s nuts. You’re nuts. I always said you were when you went running off to join the army, but now—”

“Says the girl who can’t add well enough to avoid overdrafts,” Bryn snapped. “Don’t hit me up for money anymore. Go crying to Mom; tell her I’m not her golden girl anymore. Maybe you’ll get the job.”

“Maybe I will!”

“Do it!” Bryn slammed the phone down and concentrated on controlling her breathing. Damn, no one could push buttons like family, especially bratty little sisters. How dared Annie get holier-than-thou with her, especially when the holier-than had to be bailed out of trouble six months out of twelve?

The downside is that I have to make my own dinner, Bryn thought, and almost laughed, but she was afraid it would sound too much like a sob. She felt sick and feverish, and was deathly afraid there was something wrong with her. Nanite wrong. You have another shot coming up, she reminded herself. Don’t get panicky.

She drank three glasses of water, signed papers, wrote checks, and finally it was twelve thirty. She told Lucy where she was going, and headed for La Scala Ristorante.

“You know,” Bryn said as the needle pushed into her arm, “my sister thinks I’m a junkie, and she’d really think it if she could see me now. Shooting up in a bathroom. A men’s bathroom, at that.” She closed her eyes and focused on the warm strength of McCallister’s fingers where his left hand gripped her, holding her shoulder still. The hot surge of the shot almost took her focus away, but she held on and didn’t flinch.

McCallister put the used syringe back in the tube and pocketed it. “You’re done,” he said, as she pulled her shirtsleeve down. “Have a nice lunch.”

“Wait—”

“I can‘t, Bryn.” But he hesitated, with one hand on the latch of the cramped bathroom stall. There was barely room for the two of them and the discolored curve of the toilet seat. “What?”

“I just wanted to ask …” She fell silent as the hinges on the bathroom door creaked. They stared at each other, pressed intimately close, as the unknown man outside unzipped his pants, grunted, and started splashing the urinal cake. Bryn covered her mouth with her hand, afraid that for some insane reason she was about to laugh. Even McCallister couldn’t suppress a smile.

Especially when the man started to sing off-key along with the Italian music piped in over the bathroom speakers. Dear God, he was awful.

McCallister put his lips very close to her ear and whispered, “I think he’s got a future on American Idol. The wrong kind.”

She shook with the silent force of her laughter, and bit her lip until tears threatened. Part of it was the sheer craziness of being so tired and emotionally stretched. The man finally flushed, washed, and the door thumped shut behind him.

Bryn found herself leaning against McCallister, eyes closed. She’d relaxed sometime in the last few seconds. I trust him, she thought, and hated herself for it.

“What did you want?” he asked, still in that very soft whisper.

“He’s gone. You don’t have to whisper now.”

“I know.” There were volumes of meaning in that, too much for her tired brain to decipher. “You’re wondering about Joe. He’s fine. Kylie’s at the hospital with him. He’ll be home in a few days to recuperate.”

“She probably hates me.”

“She hates me a whole lot more. I’m the one who’s responsible for all this.” McCallister’s slightly beard-rough cheek rubbed along hers, waking all kinds of shivers down her skin. “I have to go. You’ll be all right, Bryn. I’ll see you for dinner on Thursday.”

Thursday was after Irene Harte’s deadline, and he knew that. He was trying to give her some kind of hope for a future.

She appreciated it, but she no longer really believed it.

Bryn stepped back, and he unlocked the stall door and stepped out, then gestured for her to go ahead. She moved fast, and heard him locking the stall back again as she reached for the door handle.

A man pushed it open, and she scrambled away, feeling a surge of panic that heated her face. “Oh, God,” she said. “Wrong room. Sorry.” She hurried past him and directly into the women’s room, opposite, where she lingered for a few minutes checking her hair, makeup, washing her hands, and wishing she’d put on more concealer to blot out the dark circles under her eyes. Sleep. I need sleep.

First, she needed food.

As lunches went, it was unremarkable right up until the front entrance bell jingled, and two men in business suits walked up to her table to loom over her. She looked up, frowning, and one of them produced a Pharmadene ID in a fancy flip wallet, like a police detective would carry. “You’ve got an appointment,” he said. “We’re your drivers.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. It was a busy restaurant—waiters everywhere, diners, cooks, and a maître d’ who was currently smiling at a large group of women who’d entered together. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Ma’am, Ms. Harte wants to see you. Right now. Let’s not make this a scene.”

“If I scream—”

“If you scream,” he interrupted her, and bent closer, “we will turn around and walk away, and you will be cut off, do you understand? Completely cut off. No one will be able to help you. It’ll take a long time before you stop feeling what you’ll be feeling, Bryn.”

“Screw you!”

The look in his eyes turned even colder. “Do you want us to walk away? Because we can certainly do that. Ain’t nothing to me, lady.”

Ah, that closed, choking feeling was her leash being yanked. Bryn stared him down for another few seconds, then reached for her wallet.

The Pharmadene man smiled and said, “Oh, it’s on me.” He dropped a twenty on the table. “Let’s go.”

They took her gun as soon as they had gotten her outside. It happened without a fight only because the larger of the two pulled his own weapon first and held it steady on her as his partner searched her. Bryn fumed, but there didn’t seem to be any point in trying to go hand-to-hand with men who were obviously very serious about their jobs.

The Town Car they put her in was a duplicate of the one McCallister normally drove, but there was no sign of him. Once they were on the road, Bryn said, “This isn’t right. I’m a Pharmadene employee, and I work for McCallister. Call him.”

Silence. Neither of them even turned to look at her. “Hey!” she said sharply. “Either you call him, or I do. Your choice.”

“Try it,” one of them said. He sounded smug, and as she checked her phone, she found it dead. “You’ll get service back when we want you to have it. Now shut up. You’re not a person. You’re a proprietary lab rat.”

A plastic barrier went up between her and the two in front. Bryn tried the door handles, but without much hope, and she was right: they controlled the locks. Kicking out the window was an option, but she didn’t know whether she was desperate enough to try it. Besides, they were right: where was she going to run? It wasn’t like she had a lot of choices.

The ride to Pharmadene left her time to think about what she’d do, what she’d say, but in truth, she had very few plays to make. The goons in the front seat were right: she wasn’t a person, not once she was in their custody.

“I’d like to call Ms. Harte,” she finally said, leaning up against the clear barrier that separated her from the men in front.

“No need for that,” the one who did all the talking said. “You’re on your way to see her.”

“I need to tell her—”

“Doesn’t matter what you want to tell her. Paperwork’s been signed. You’re done, sweetheart.”

An ice-cold panic formed in the pit of Bryn’s stomach. She was going to disappear and never be seen again. Like Sharon. She didn’t want to vanish like her sister, without a word; she didn’t want her last minutes with Annalie to be angry. She didn’t want her mother to spend her last years agonizing over what had happened to yet another daughter.

She’d given Annie the perfect explanation. Bryn got involved with drugs. That’s probably what happened to her.

They’d be sad, and they’d be sorry, but she’d be gone. Completely, utterly gone.

I have to get out of here. Better to be on the run than be hauled in there, to die trapped. Maybe Manny Glickman could help her. Maybe Joe Fideli. Running was her only hope.

Bryn twisted and kicked. Her heel connected solidly with the window next to her on the first try, with an impact that rattled all the way up to and through her brain, but she got nothing to show for it, not even a hairline crack in the surface. She kicked again, and again, until the barrier between her and the two thugs in front rolled down, and one of them pointed a gun at her.

“Easy,” he said. “You’re going to break something, but it won’t be that window. Bullet-resistant glass, all the way around. This is our VIP car.”

“I’m honored,” she said in utter disgust, tugged her skirt down to a ladylike angle, and sat in silence until they’d passed the gates of Pharmadene.

Until all hope was gone.

Damn you, McCallister, what is going on? Where are you? She was starting to think that Joe Fideli wasn’t the only casualty of the last twenty-four hours—or the last.

Irene Harte had an office approximately eight times the size of Bryn’s; it was so large that there were two conference tables at different points, a sofa-and-chair grouping, a full bar…. It was bigger than most apartments, kitchen included, and as Bryn was frog-marched across the expensive Persian carpet toward the desk, there was no sign of the woman herself. Just an extremely impressive desk—clutter-free, save for two thin folders in a letter tray and a Montblanc pen lying at an angle. The empty leather chair behind the desk could easily have doubled for a throne in a movie about Queen Elizabeth the First. The view from the gigantic panorama windows behind it was breathtaking, and mostly green and unspoiled.

“Sit,” Bryn’s guard said, and pushed her down in one of the two angled visitor chairs. He stood behind and a little off to the side, ready to counter if she did anything stupid.

Which she was considering, but it would probably be fairly difficult to stab someone fatally with a Montblanc. The pen’s shape was a little too rounded.

A concealed door opened to the side, and Irene Harte emerged, trailed by another movie-star-beautiful woman who carried a steaming cup in one hand and a notepad in the other. The cup went on the desk, on a crystal coaster. The pad, and the woman, left the room without even a glance at Bryn or her escort.

Harte nodded to the guard and said, “You may wait outside.”

“Ma’am, I don’t think it’s advisable. She’s—”

“I know exactly what Ms. Davis is capable of doing,” Harte interrupted, her gaze fixed on Bryn’s face. “Go. If I need you, I’ll ring Mareen’s desk. You may wait there.”

“Ma’am.” He touched an invisible hat and left. It seemed to take forever for him to cross the office, even at a brisk walk, but Harte didn’t move or speak until the door had clicked its latch behind him.

Then she sat back, smiled, and said, “How are you, Bryn? Doing well?”

That was not what Bryn had expected. She didn’t answer. Harte glanced at the steaming cup on her desk, and her fine eyebrows twitched, then pulled down. She pressed a button on her phone. “Mareen, bring Ms. Davis a cup of coffee….” She paused, looking at Bryn. “Milk? Sugar?”

“Yes,” Bryn said. If she was going to die, she might as well have coffee. The whole thing—already surreal—was turning into a French farce. “Are you going to offer me a blindfold and a cigarette, too, or just a last meal?”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Harte said. “Mareen, milk and sugar in that, please. Thank you.” She let go of the intercom button and sat back. She tapped her index finger on the desk’s surface, slowly. It was the only sound in the hushed room.

Bryn said, “You abducted me for coffee and to ask how I was. You know, most people just phone.”

“I’m not most people.”

Obviously. “What do you want?”

“I want you to tell me everything you know about Patrick McCallister.”

That was a very odd request, coming from a woman who had access, surely, to every scrap of information on record about the man. “I don’t know anything, really. He likes to be mysterious. Don’t you know him better? You’re his boss.”

“Boss,” Harte repeated softly, with an odd smile. “Yes, I am. But as you say, he’s mysterious. You’ve been working with him quite closely.”

Bryn shrugged. “If by closely you mean he tells me what to do, yes.” Calm, she told herself. Be calm.

“It’s come to my attention that Mr. McCallister may be involved in … questionable activities. Do you have any knowledge of these things?”

“No.” That was still the truth. She had no idea what Harte would consider questionable, considering what was being sanctioned by her at Pharmadene.

Harte’s eyes went flat and cold, like a shark’s. “I want you to listen to me very closely,” she said. “Condition Sapphire, Bryn. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” Bryn said. She felt nothing. The inhibitor was working, she hoped; if it wasn’t, it was going to be a panic-stricken interview on her side, and a very informative one on Harte’s.

“You and McCallister have become close, haven’t you? Tell me the truth.”

“Yes,” Bryn said. Nice to know I can still lie. Patrick McCallister definitely wasn’t close to her; they had an emotional barrier between them the size of the Great Wall of China. She was honest enough to admit that it was partly her own issue.

Harte was moving on. “You’ve stayed at his family home.”

“Yes, while security was upgraded on my apartment.”

“And quite recently, you and McCallister took a trip out of town together—quite an elaborate little trip, apparently, one on which he took great pains to evade surveillance. Where did you go?”

Bryn didn’t dare hesitate, not for a second; she remembered how it had felt when she’d lost control in the bar. Hesitation would be fatal, and it would betray her completely. “To a motel,” she said. “The Hallmark Motor Court Inn. I don’t really know what town it was in.”

Harte opened a folder, took up the Montblanc, and marked something down without really looking at her. “And what did you do all that time at the motel, Bryn?”

Even with the inhibitors, Bryn felt a little stirring of impulse to blurt it out—the lab, Manny Glickman, the IV, Pansy, the mugging, McCallister’s gentle touch on her forehead. She gulped it down and squeezed the arms of the chair as she said, “We made love. Three times. Once on the bed—”

Harte glanced up, eyebrows arched, and then held up a hand. “I don’t need the details. Well … not yet. Not until I have Patrick McCallister’s story to match it against.” Her smile was cold, and thin enough to cut. “You went all that way, to a motel, to indulge your apparently ravenous sexual appetites for each other. You do know he has a house.”

“He said we were being watched. And there was something else he wanted there, at the motel.”

“Did he say what it was?”

“No,” Bryn said.

Harte waited a beat before she said, “Did you do anything else while you were on this little pleasure trip?”

“No.” Again, Bryn felt that stirring inside, like something hammering hard against a closed door, struggling to get free. Tell her. Tell her everything. She shuddered and held on. How long had Manny said the inhibitors would last? Was she getting close to the time they’d wear off? What if he’d been wrong about the effective dose?

“Did McCallister pay you?”

Bryn blinked. That was the last thing she’d expected. “Pay me?”

“Did McCallister give you money in return for sex? Or your silence about such activities?”

“No.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be the first, although you’re certainly his most … unusual choice.” Harte lifted her shoulders in a graceful shrug. “I suppose he has somewhat perverse taste, considering your … condition.” She paused and cocked her head, staring hard at Bryn for a moment. “Do you understand what’s happening to you, Bryn? Why you can’t stop yourself from telling me these very personal things?”

“No.” Bryn tried to remember the panic she’d felt before, the internal struggle. Harte needed to see those things. She expected to see them.

Mareen entered the room from that same side door she’d used before, set a second cup of coffee pale with milk on the side table beside Bryn, and departed without a word.

“Drink your coffee, Bryn; I wouldn’t want it to get cold.”

Bryn obediently reached for it and sipped. It was delicious, and the hot liquid made her feel sharper, but more jittery, too. The cup rattled lightly against the saucer as she put it down. Look at us, so civilized, sipping our coffee from expensive cups while she mind-rapes me. Or tries to.

“I knew from the moment I saw your revival profile that McCallister had some use for you beyond his stated objectives; he tried to opt you out of certain control features built into Returné for the safety of the company. I countermanded that, in the hopes you’d tell me something more about McCallister’s business. It’s not your fault, Bryn. You may feel you’re betraying him, but I assure you, you’re not. You’re simply a recording device I put next to him.” Harte tapped her fingernails again, thinking, then continued. “Have you seen him meet anyone not associated directly with Pharmadene?”

“Liam,” Bryn said.

“The estate administrator. No, not counting Liam. Anyone else?”

“No. Just Joe Fideli and his other security people. No one else.”

“Hmm.” Harte’s eyes lowered to half-mast, making her look deceptively relaxed. “And have you overheard him discuss anything that did not relate to Pharmadene business?”

“No.”

“That’s deeply unfortunate. I was really hoping you would be more … enlightening.” Harte sat back and drank her coffee in silence for a moment, and Bryn was just starting to relax a bit when she said, “Are you in love with Patrick McCallister?”

“No!” Bryn said. Too quickly. Too much force. It was an instinctive denial, not a reasoned answer, and Harte speared her with a cold, level gaze. Bryn swallowed and tried again. “I have no feelings for him.”

“That, Ms. Davis, means that when he took you to the motel, he did so without your consent. I assume that he coerced you by use of the same command I just engaged. Is that correct? You had no feelings for him, yet you participated in a full day of illicit sex with him, under duress?”

“I …” She was caught, dead caught; either she admitted she had just lied, and proved she wasn’t conditioned the way Harte wanted, or she dropped McCallister in what was, at the very least, a charge of rape. “It wasn’t about love. It was about needing something.” That was the best middle ground she could walk, but she could see, with a sinking feeling, that Harte wasn’t buying it for a second.

“You should have just admitted it,” the other woman said. She straightened and put her cup down, pressed the intercom button, and said, “Mareen, please send Ms. Davis’s escort in. I have what I need to know.” She went back to her coffee, sipping in ladylike composure. “I have not ended Condition Sapphire, Bryn. You should not be able to lie to me. And the fact that you have tells me that something is very, very wrong here. With you. With McCallister. If you’d simply told me that he’d used the protocols on you, I would have believed you; he’s a ruthless son of a bitch, which is why he’s valuable to me. If you’d told me you loved him, I’d have believed that, too; he’s got that effect on women. But something in the middle … no. Not with him.”

“I—”

“Don’t waste your time. The point is that you’ve lied to me, he’s lied to me, and there’s something deeper. Something that threatens me, and the company. And I will find out what that is. Now.”

Bryn’s guts went tight and cold. The look in Harte’s eyes was that of a hawk zeroing in on a rabbit: no mercy, no feeling at all. This wasn’t about jealousy, which was somehow what Bryn had expected; this was pure, cold calculation, and she had fallen for it.

The guard who’d brought her in entered the room. “Ma’am?”

“Please take Ms. Davis to level three,” Harte said. “Check her in. I’ll call down orders in a moment.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And find Patrick McCallister. Now. You don’t have to be gentle about it if he resists.”

He nodded and started to hustle Bryn out.

“Wait,” Harte said. “Let her finish her coffee.”

It was time for the false civility to end. Bryn picked up the coffee cup and threw it hard at Harte’s face. She missed, but the coffee didn’t, drenching the woman in a milky brown, sticky wave from hair to neckline, ruining the teal silk suit.

Harte jumped up, shocked, wiping coffee from her eyes. Too bad it wasn’t hot enough to leave scars, Bryn thought; that would have been something. She’d have to settle for the look on Harte’s face—comically horrified.

But then it turned into a stiff mask of spite. “So we know where we stand,” Harte said. “You’re his little spy, aren’t you? His slave. He turned you.”

“You turned me. You made me this. I’m not dead; I’m not alive; what am I supposed to do? Thank you?” Bryn was shaking all over with the fury she’d held in for so long, ever since that first raw, primal scream of waking. “I’ve seen how this ends. Have you?”

“Not yet,” Harte said. She’d regained her composure; she’d taken a hand towel from a drawer and was blotting the worst of the coffee from her hair and face. The expensive suit was a total ruin. “But I’ll be sure to have them record every moment of your deterioration for my home viewing later. Good-bye, Ms. Davis. I hope you enjoy your … retirement. I’ll give Patrick your farewells. You won’t be seeing him again.”

Bryn kicked and fought, but the guard had all the leverage and muscle, and he was used to restraining angry people; she got in a couple of off-balance shots, but he took them stoically without granting her any chance of escape. After the second elbow to the ribs, he swept her feet out from under her, took her facedown to the carpet, and yanked her arms tight behind her back. She felt zip-cuffs being yanked in place, too tightly, and then he grabbed her by the collar and hauled her back to a standing position. “March,” he said. “You give me trouble, and I’ll give you a beating you’re not going to forget.”

“I’ll heal,” she said. She wasn’t aware, until she saw herself reflected in a pane of glass, that she was smiling. It was an unhinged sort of smile, half a snarl. She felt like an animal backed into a corner, and that was how she looked.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You would.”

And without any warning he hit her with a rock-hard hammer of an uppercut, and she was out like a switched-off light.

Waking up was painful. Her head, first; it throbbed in queasy red flashes. Next, her jaw; she knew that awful grinding feeling. It was dislocated. Bryn worked it gingerly until it snapped back into place with a mind-numbing zap of agony. It, like the headache, lasted only a few minutes, and then the pain faded. Busy little nanites, burning up energy I can’t afford.

Bryn sat up.

She was in an empty white room. No furniture, not even a cot—just a clean, white, shiny room, like a box made of dry-erase whiteboards.

One entire wall of the room was thick, tempered glass. Outside the window, a portable camera had been set up, and a red light showed it was recording. I’ll be sure to have them record every moment of your deterioration for my home viewing later, Harte had said. She was living up to her commitments.

The only other things of interest about the room were the spray nozzles and pipes across the ceiling, and the drain in the floor. Bryn considered that, and the shiny, slick walls.

This place was designed for easy cleanup.

Stay calm, she told herself. They’d taken her clothes. She was in a baggy, thin coverall, snaps up the front, that rustled uncomfortably with every movement. It, like she, was disposable. There was a number printed on the breast of the coverall: 00061.

Bryn’s legs suddenly folded as the reality of it overwhelmed her.

They were leaving her in here to dissolve, under the merciless stare of that camera. Nobody was coming to help her. Nobody would care. She was 00061, not a person. She was a dying lab rat. Once life left her rotted remains, they’d flush the room, disinfect, and throw her bones in some incinerator somewhere.

She’d just vanish without a trace.

Get up, she told herself. Get up and fight.

But there wasn’t anything or anyone to fight. She couldn’t fight for her life. She didn’t have one. Without the shots, she had no chance at all.

McCallister—

She couldn’t count on him, not anymore. Fideli was out of the picture; McCallister was missing, maybe on the run. She had no allies here, no help, and no hope.

They didn’t put you in here just to kill you. Harte wants to know what McCallister is up to. They’ll question you. When they do, there will be an opportunity.

She didn’t really care. The bleakness of the situation was overwhelming.

Get up!

She did, just because it was something to do besides lie down and die.

A careful inspection of the room didn’t make her feel any better. There was a door, but it opened only from the outside; there wasn’t even a hint of a handle or hinges in here. Bryn tried the drain, but it wasn’t nearly big enough to fit her head through, which meant it was useless for escape purposes, even if it didn’t narrow below the floor. Plus, a nightmare crawl through a drain full of the decomposing tissues of numbers 1 through 60 … No. That was definitely a last resort.

The glass was ballistic quality, and she had nothing to use to break it in any case. Battering her fist against it would only snap her own bones.

As she stared out, she realized that she did have a view, after all—of another room, identical to this one, except that it contained a fixed metal table with thick restraint straps. I guess I didn’t fight hard enough to rate that, she thought. Bryn wasn’t sure whether she should feel happy about that, or disappointed, but all that fell away as a briskly walking figure suddenly crossed her field of vision outside.

“Hey!” Bryn yelled, and slapped the glass. “Hey!”

It wasn’t one person, but three—two blue-jacketed security men, and a third person being escorted in. He looked nervous. Very nervous. Tall, good-looking in that bland GQ way; he was wearing suit pants and a crisply ironed white shirt, a snazzy tie, suspenders, but no jacket. She couldn’t hear him, but he was talking to his guards, trying vainly to pull away. He had a Pharmadene ID hanging from his belt, one with a green stripe; one of the guards took it, ran it through a scanner, and put the ID in his pocket.

Then they unlocked the room across the hall and hauled the unfortunate man inside.

He screamed and fought when he saw the table, but it wasn’t any use, and he wasn’t very good at it anyway. He was yelling so loudly now that a faint whisper traveled to her through the glass. When she pressed her ear to it, she could make out some of what he said.

“—can’t do this! I’m not some nobody you can make vanish; I’m an important man. Do you hear me? I’m a vice president, damn it! Take your hands off of me!”

The guards nodded to each other, and in one smooth move had him down on the table. They were a well-coordinated team, locking down his arms and legs in fast, sure motions. He kept on yelling, but Bryn wasn’t listening anymore, because a new person had entered the picture.

Irene Harte.

She’d changed into a different suit, and her hair and makeup looked fully restored. Not even a spot showed to prove that Bryn had marked her—and she didn’t so much as glance Bryn’s way. Her full attention was on the man strapped to the table across the hall.

Bryn didn’t need to hear him to know what he said next; his lips were easy to read. You bitch! The rest was probably threats, not that it would do him any good; maybe next he’d try to bribe her, if intimidation didn’t work. The last thing would be begging.

It didn’t get that far.

Bryn had been expecting this to be some sort of interrogation; maybe Mr. Vice President had made a serious security error, or was even the leak they’d been looking for … but instead of pulling out interrogation drugs, or even a decent torture tray, one of the guards pulled out …

A clear plastic bag.

Bryn gasped and stepped back from the window. “No …”

The bag slipped neatly over the man’s head, and was cinched in place with a deft twist of the guard’s wrist.

“No …”

She saw it from two angles, like some nightmare … from where she stood, watching the man’s panicked eyes widen under the film of plastic before his breath clouded the bag, and from inside the bag at the same time. Déjà vu. Panic roared up inside her, flattening her defenses. She pressed both hands against the glass, trying desperately to help him, help him, because she knew how it felt; she knew the agonized terror that drove him to suck in all the available air and compress the plastic around his skin.

She knew the taste of that toxic panic, and how it felt to gasp for the last tiny bit of oxygen. To watch the diffused light go out.

It hurt—oh, God, it hurt—and it seemed to go on forever as the man struggled, twitched, thrashed, and fought against death.

No one helped him.

When he finally relaxed, Harte looked at her watch. The guards didn’t move as the minutes ticked by, waiting for her word. When she finally nodded, the bag came off, leaving the dead man’s damp, stark face, eyes wide and bloodshot, lips blue. A trickle of blood came from the corner of his mouth. He’d probably bitten his tongue in his panic.

The guards left, taking the bag with them, and took up posts outside the room. Now a medical team came in, three gowned and masked people who hooked up monitors and oxygen and all the things necessary to saving a life.

Not that there was a life to be saved. Not anymore.

Not until they gave him the shot of Returné.

The scream of his revival penetrated even the solid barrier of the glass to Bryn’s death cell. She watched him come back, full of horror and pity and anger, and then, then, Irene Harte finally turned and looked at her.

She triggered some kind of intercom outside of Bryn’s room.

“You seem to have something to say.”

“You have a funny way of retraining people around here.”

Irene Harte laughed—a real laugh, full of amusement and little bit of admiration. “I’m consolidating my position, that’s all. One thing we cannot have, from this moment on, is any hint of disloyalty. We can’t take any risk of harboring traitors and whistle-blowers. Like, I suspect, Patrick McCallister.”

“You’re killing your own people!”

“I’m ensuring they’ll never betray us,” Harte said. “From the moment our researchers discovered that this drug could revive and maintain dead tissues, there was no going back. It isn’t about a market share; it’s about power. Someone’s going to have it. Someone will control how this drug is manufactured and used. It will change the entire world. Wars will be fought. Whole civilizations will be destroyed, because right here, in these rooms, we have stopped the one thing that man never conquered: death.”

There was a glow in her face now, an almost religious ecstasy that Bryn found scarier by far than the corporate bullshit she’d seen before.

“As long as Pharmadene controls how this gets out, we have a chance to make this change rational. To dispense revival to the people who can make a difference. And that’s what we’re going to do. Choose who lives on, and ensure their loyalty.”

God. Harte made an eerie kind of sense, from a megalomaniac’s point of view. If one power—say, Pharmadene—controlled the release of the drug, they could pick and choose the movers and shakers in all areas: politicians, bankers, technologists, the capitalist and political royalty of the entire world. They could manipulate markets, topple—or simply puppet—governments, rig the entire game of life and death in their favor.

And she was right about something else: if Returné got out uncontrolled into the world, it would cause chaos— every grieving parent screaming for his or her children to come back, every husband, father, wife, sister, daughter. Politicians would tilt revivals in their political favor. Armies would become indestructible.

It was a vision of a future in which everybody died, and everyone lived, and nobody really survived. No matter how it played out.

“Pharmadene can still control all this,” Harte said. Her voice had gone soft now, and very sure. “We will control it. First in our own house; then we broaden our goals to include political and financial leaders immediately after. We’re starting with our top ranks today. We’ll work our way down through the corporate structure and have everyone on board in the next few days.”

The man across the hall had finally stopped screaming, but he was weeping, a desolate and lonely sound. Irene Harte moved to shut off the intercom.

“I’m not dying in here,” Bryn said. Harte hesitated, smiled, and shook her head as she flipped the switch. Bryn hit the glass. “Hey! I’m not dying in here! I’m going to stop you!”

Harte turned to watch as the newly reborn vice president was led away, and another executive-level victim arrived to take his place.

For two days, the room across the hall saw a steady parade of people, and it was always the same—the indignation, the don’t you know who I am, the fear, the terror, the death, the scream. Bryn stopped watching. Stopped listening, except to note the scream and keep count of how many had been … processed. It went on twenty-four-seven, and after a while she fell asleep. It felt obscene to sleep while people were dying, but all the self-loathing in the world couldn’t keep her awake.

She got thirsty first, then hungry.

No one came. She received nothing at all.

On the morning of the second day, she noticed that her skin was starting to get dry. It might have been the lack of humidity in the room, but she didn’t think so. The nanites couldn’t manufacture water or energy for her muscles; dehydration would render her helpless first.

But what scared her much, much more than the dryness and her cracked lips and parched mouth were the ominous dark bruises that formed under her skin. She woke up from a restless nap on the afternoon of the second day and noticed discoloration on the side of her palm, where it had been resting against the floor. She rubbed at it, and it gradually faded; when she unsnapped the coverall and checked the hip she’d been lying on, it, too, had a bruise.

Lividity.

“No.” She massaged the bruise away with trembling fingers. “No, no, this isn’t going to happen. It’s not.” He promised.

She couldn’t count on him anymore. McCallister was on the run, a fugitive at best. She was inside Pharmadene, in a fortress, and they were killing everyone here, systematically. McCallister would be an insane fool to set foot in this place ever again. He had to cut his losses and run, get help from the government or the military or the FBI or the fucking SEC. Anyone, to shut this down before it was too late.

Harte’s plan was moving along nicely; someone had posted an org chart printout on the wall that Bryn could just barely make out, and it looked like they’d gotten through the executive ranks. Now there were two rooms in use, one just visible at an acute angle down the hall—two that Bryn could see, constantly processing live people in, revived people out. She couldn’t afford to care, not even when one of the women—only a little older than Bryn, pretty—broke free and ran screaming and ended up banging uselessly on Bryn’s glass, staring into Bryn’s face. In her struggles, she hit the intercom, and for a deadly thirty seconds Bryn had to listen to the woman plead for help, for mercy, for her children.

Then, pathetically, scream for her mom, like a terrified child.

After that, Bryn didn’t stand at the window anymore. She huddled in the corner, back to the view, head down.

Waiting.

By day three—as best she could count it—her muscles were starting to shake, and her skin wasn’t dry any longer. It was moist, but not in a healthy way. And it hurt. Her nerves caught fire and burned, a low boil at first but growing worse with every breath, every minute.

She had two more days of this, maybe three. Maybe even four.

I am not dying here, she told herself. I’m not.

But she was, with every second, dying a little bit more.

And the expected interrogation didn’t come.

Bryn lost count. It wasn’t sleep so much as unconsciousness that took her the next time; she woke up with livid red marks on her blotched skin where her weight had rested, and the torment of her nerves was like a blowtorch being applied all over her body, without respite or mercy. She couldn’t stop crying.

Walking was better than sitting. She was starting to lose the ability to do it smoothly; it was more of a stumble now, and she trailed her violently shaking fingers over the wall to keep herself upright as she moved around the room, around the room, around the room. People dying and screaming and dying and screaming and she was going insane, she knew she was, and oh, God, it hurt. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Patrick had promised. Promised.

She was halfway through her tenth methodical circuit of the room when something … changed. A shift in the room’s pressure, a breeze. Fresh, cool air moving against her skin, stirring her hair.

She sighed and wavered on her feet, then clumsily turned to look.

The door was open, and three masked medical personnel stood there. Maybe Harte was going to show a little mercy. Maybe she was going to end this, after all. Better being cut apart like a chicken than another three or four days of this, and worse.

Bryn tried to walk to them, but her legs gave out, and she fell. Two guards stepped around the medicos and stoically picked her up, dragging her out of the room and down a pristine white hallway. Bryn’s head sagged backward. She watched the lights flicker overhead without any real idea about what was happening, until she was lowered into a chair, her damp, filthy jumpsuit stripped off and replaced with a clean one, and a gowned, masked, and gloved woman gave her a shot.

The needle didn’t feel like a little stick; it felt like impalement on a red-hot iron, and Bryn screamed and cried and tried to pull away. They held her in place. Another shot followed. Then another.

The woman sighed and stripped her mask down. “That’ll do it,” she said. “It’ll take time for her to come back, though. I’m not sure she’s really rational at this point. You’ll have to wait for her cognition to return.”

Bryn hadn’t seen her come in, but there was another woman in the room now, without the mask or gown. She was wearing a suit. Her name was … was …

Harte.

“Keep her strapped in, just in case,” Irene Harte said. “I’m going to go check progress on the org charts. I’ll be back to question her in an hour. Be sure not to give her too much; there’s no need to drag this out for another entire week. I need a few hours of lucid interrogation, and then you can put her back in the room until she’s finished.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The woman nodded. She was a pretty lady, with shiny black hair bobbed around her jawline and a mobile, kind face.

And she was familiar. Bryn studied her, blinking, trying to force her sluggish brain back to action. The woman started fastening big Velcro restraint straps around her arms and legs, watching Irene Harte as the woman pulled out a cell phone and dialed on her way out of the room.

As soon as the door clicked shut, the woman ripped the restraints open again with furious strength. “Bryn? Bryn, are you with us? Can you understand me?”

Oh. She knew her. Flower, some kind of flower. She was Manny’s girlfriend….

“Pansy,” Bryn murmured. “Pansy Taylor. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Nobody should be here. I know it hurts.” From the appalled look on Pansy’s face, Bryn gathered that she wasn’t looking very good. “You’re going to be all right. I gave you boosters. You’ll feel better soon.”

“We can’t wait,” the other man said, looking toward the door. He also lowered his mask. His face was pale and set, and she knew him, too. Joe. Joe Fideli.

“You were shot,” Bryn said.

Joe laughed, but it sounded all wrong. He glanced at her, then quickly away, and she saw muscles jumping in his tight jawline. “I checked myself out once Pat told me you’d gone missing.” He moved his shoulder a little, and winced. “I’m not supposed to be getting in any wrestling matches. Doctor’s orders, so don’t go kicking my ass like you usually do.” He sounded like the old Joe, but his eyes were haunted and worried. Not for himself, Bryn realized. For her. God, how bad was she?

Worse than she’d thought. The blowtorch of pain was dialing down a little, but when she glanced down at her hands, she saw how discolored they were, how … inhuman.

“We have to move,” Pansy said. “We don’t have much time left.” She nodded to the two security men still in the room with them, and Bryn’s sluggish brain woke up enough to wonder why Joe wasn’t worried about their overhearing. Pansy said, “Gentlemen: this is a Condition Diamond situation, and I’m invoking your protocols. Protect our escape at all costs; do you understand? Acknowledge these orders. You first.”

“Yes, ma’am, acknowledging Condition Diamond. I will protect your escape at all costs,” said the first man. He was familiar, too; he was the one who’d taken Bryn to Harte’s office, and then to the white room. His partner echoed the same words; then they moved as a team out into the hallway as Pansy took Bryn’s arm and got her on her feet.

“Hold on to me,” she said. “I know it’s not easy for you to move fast. Do your best, okay?”

“Gun,” Bryn said, and licked her dry, desiccated lips. “I need a gun.” Her voice was hoarse and faint, but steady. Joe reached under his surgical gown and came out with two weapons. He chambered a round in one and handed it to her.

“Point and shoot,” he said. “Try not to get me or Pansy. We’re the ones around here now who don’t get up again so easy.”

The guards. Bryn’s brain kept chewing away at the question, and finally, she understood. The guards had been killed and revived, probably under Irene Harte’s new corporate loyalty program; that left them open to protocol orders, if you knew the keys.

Which Joe and Pansy did. Condition Sapphire made you follow orders, even to confessing to everything you knew. “What’s Condition Diamond?” she asked.

“Not really the time, Bryn.”

“I want to know.”

“All right.” Joe exchanged a quick glance with Pansy, who was now holding a gun of her own. “Condition Diamond is a lockout command. Once it’s triggered, it can’t be countermanded, and the revived will follow that last order to the end, no matter what happens. We programmed it into a few of the security guys along the way, just in case we needed a back door; it’s supposed to be reserved for military use only. You haven’t got it, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t,” she said. That was a lie. She’d been worried.

Just then, a Pharmadene security man out in the hall noticed their little party, and the two guarding it. “Charlie, I thought you were supposed to keep her in the room—” he said.

That was as far as he got, because Charlie—one of their two guards—immediately fired point-blank into the man’s face, and not just once; Bryn counted three shots in quick succession, and then Charlie nodded to his partner and they began taking down anyone and everyone in the hallway with cool, cruel, methodical precision.

Condition Diamond. Whatever their past loyalties might have been, they were owned by Pansy now.

Joe took point, moving as fast as possible to sweep the area ahead of them. He took down three guards who came swarming out of a hallway, checked the corners, and motioned Bryn and Pansy forward. Behind them, gunfire continued to rattle as their rear guard held on. From the sound of it, they were getting shot to pieces.

Bryn said, “You … you used them … like weapons—”

“I know. I had to.” Pansy gasped, staggering under Bryn’s almost deadweight. “Believe me, I’d rather not have done it. Harte has the cancel protocols for everything except Condition Diamond; if we expected to get anywhere, we needed to cause some chaos any way we could, and that meant making them into suicide troops. Come on, Bryn—we have to keep moving!”

“Hurts,” Bryn whispered. That was an understatement. Her whole body felt as if she were being boiled alive.

“In here,” Joe called, and kicked in a door. It was some kind of laboratory, and there were two scientists inside; they both held up their hands and backed off to the walls as he pointed the gun at them. “Condition Sapphire! Down. Down on the ground and stay there!”

They hugged the floor. Joe edged past them to another door, one with a swipe card lock. He looked back at Pansy. “Did you get it?”

“Here.” She reached under her gown and handed over a Pharmadene ID, one with a gold stripe. Bryn got a blurred glimpse of it in passing, and she was almost sure it was Irene Harte’s. “Hurry. They’ll lock it down as soon as she realizes I lifted it.”

He dragged it through the reader. The light turned green, and Fideli slammed open the door.

Bullets rang on the metal next to his head, and he ducked.

Bryn pulled free of Pansy, braced both hands on her gun, and aimed over her body to put three rounds in the guard standing at the end of the room. All head shots.

He went down. So did Bryn, in a helpless gasping heap, from the agony of the recoil.

“Damn,” Fideli said, and helped her up again. “Nice shooting.”

“He’s moving,” Pansy said. She sounded like she was about to be sick. “His brain’s exposed, but he’s still moving.”

“It’ll take him a couple of hours to heal up. He’s out of the fight, for now.” Fideli kicked the man’s gun away, just to be sure, and rolled him out of the way of the door that he’d been guarding.

It was a small loading-dock door.

This time, when Fideli swiped his card, the light flashed red, and a siren began to sound. “She realized we had it,” Pansy said. “Unless we can get this door open, we’re stuck. We need out. Now.” She stripped off the surgical smock, cap, and mask, and pulled out a gun of her own. “Any ideas?”

Fideli shot the card reader into junk, but the door stayed firmly down. He tossed the ID back to Pansy, who stuck it in her pocket. “Not so much,” he said. “Retreat?”

“They’re coming,” Bryn said. She limped off to the side and braced her arms on a lab table. She’d need the support. The shooting she’d already done had taken a lot out of her, and she felt as weak as a little girl. Water. I need water.

No time for that now.

Her searching gaze fell on neatly ranked and labeled jars, beakers, and canisters against the wall on racks. “Pansy,” she said. “Acid.” There was a whole row of it, in a multitude of flavors and packaging. Pansy let out a surprised gasp and ran over to inspect the labels. She grabbed two large bottles, a safety face shield, and thick protective gloves that came up to her armpits.

“Back off,” she ordered Joe. “Don’t breathe it in.” She opened up the first bottle and splashed it in a golden arc over the corrugated metal door that refused to open for them, and kept splashing as it began to hiss and eat through the thick surface. The first bottle emptied. She used the second. A noxious, thick, burning fog filled the room, and Joe and Pansy were coughing and choking on it.

Bryn was, too, but it didn’t matter. Like the man she’d shot in the head, everything was temporary. She could burn black holes all over her lungs and it would all be okay in the morning.

She grabbed the gloves from Pansy, who had sunk to the floor to gasp in cleaner air, and began punching at the weakened metal. It sagged and melted, and her blows bent it outward.

Bryn made a hole, then dragged Pansy over and pushed her through it, then went back for Joe, who was staggering blindly through the corrosive air. “Don’t breathe it! Keep your eyes shut!” she yelled at him, and he nodded, eyes tightly shut. She shoved him through the narrow opening and dived through after.

There were guards swarming from both sides, but their little escape party was lucky in one small way…. A Pharmadene van sat at the dock, back doors open. The driver ran when she pointed the gun at him, and left the keys in the ignition. “Get in!” Bryn yelled. She climbed into the driver’s seat and heard the other two clamber aboard; she checked through the wire mesh to be sure as Joe swung the back doors shut and slapped his hand on the van’s side.

“Move it!” he yelled back.

She put it in drive and punched it.

Driving straight at the guards was the only way to go. Some got out of the way; two stood their ground, firing right through the windshield. She took two bullets, one in the shoulder, one in the throat, and the pain washed over her in a blinding, crippling wave.

Not going to die. Not here. Not now. I can‘t.

She held on, kept her foot down, and hit the gates at full speed. The crash almost bounced her out of the seat, but the gates gave way first.

“Tire shredders!” Joe rasped, crawling past her into the passenger seat. “Go off-road; go around!”

She saw the pavement lifting up ahead in a line of black spikes. Automated defenses, designed to stop any cars that made it this far through the gates. Automatic weapons fire was peppering the back of the van, and in the cracked rearview mirror, Bryn saw that three Pharmadene sedans were headed out in pursuit.

She turned the wheel at the last minute and went off the road. There were low stone walls designed to keep her on the path, but she didn’t care about the damage to the van, and the walls hadn’t been reinforced; they smashed apart under the van’s momentum, and she squeezed by the tire shredders with about an inch to spare.

The first pursuing sedan hit them head-on. All four tires blew, and the driver lost control. The car flipped, shedding glass and one rag-doll passenger.

The others managed to avoid the wreckage, and crawled around the edges before accelerating again in pursuit.

“Still with us!” Joe said. “Punch it! Go right at the intersection!”

She took the turn, barely slowing, and fought to keep the top-heavy vehicle from tipping. In the back, Pansy threw open one of the back doors, opened a box marked with hazardous materials symbols, and began throwing the contents onto the closest pursuing sedan. It must have been more acid, because the hood began to smoke and melt, and the mist pitted and clouded the windshield.

The car veered off and smashed full-speed into a pole, which tilted and crashed, downing power lines in blue-white sparks.

The third car stopped, tangled in the high voltage.

Bryn didn’t slow down. Joe kept dictating turns, and finally Bryn eased off the gas as they reached a busier area. “God,” she whispered. “It actually worked.”

“No, it didn’t,” Joe said. “They’re tracking us.” He looked over at her with a strange kind of sadness. “They’re tracking you. And we’re going to have to take care of that right now.”

Bryn took in a deep breath. “It’s not going to be painless, is it?”

“No,” Joe said, and turned to look at the road. “I’m afraid it’s not going to be painless at all.”