Dark Angel: Skin Game (25 page)

The agent hit the wall again and slid back down into his dazed sitting position, his gun clattering to the floor.

Sweeping out with his foot, White caught the backs of Alec's legs and sent him sprawling, as two more men in black stormed in, guns drawn. They hesitated for a moment, taking in the sight of their fallen leader. Rolling back under the bed, Alec came up and out on the other side, the bed now between him and his thoughtful visitors.

"Kill the bastard!" White bellowed.

The two swung their guns toward Alec, but the X5 was ready for them: he picked up his side of the bed and lifted, the whole thing coming up in front of him like a shield.

Barreling forward, he felt bullets punch through the bed and exit, slowed, on either side of him. He heard the pistols' further reports just as he slammed the thing into the two agents and knocked them to the ground.

White was rising now, but Alec dove, and they reached the pistol at the same instant.

As they wrestled for control, the two agents under the bed started moving and Alec heard shouts in the hall.

Only seconds remained.

Head-butting White, Alec knocked the agent senseless, grabbed the gun, and found the cuff keys in White's jacket pocket. As he spun, the two agents were clawing, climbing out from under the bed, both searching for their lost pistols.

Alec kicked the first one in the head, sending him promptly to dreamland, then spun and caught the second one under the chin with the butt of the pistol. He too went down for a long nap.

Stepping into the hall, Alec saw agents coming from both directions. He fired at both groups—aiming high, wanting to scare and back them off—and they scampered back around the corner, leaving the hall, for the moment, to Alec.

He sprinted to the door to the right of his room, opened it ... and saw an empty bed.

That made sense—White would keep the room next door vacant for security purposes.

Then he quickly ran to the door on the other side of his, on the left, and ducked inside.

White had referred to Joshua being "next door"—Alec hoped that was literally true.

The room was dark, the curtains drawn, no one in here but the patient in the bed.

If this wasn't Joshua's room, he knew he'd never get his friend out. He could hardly search the building, and would hate to have to abandon the naive dog man.

He looked quickly toward the big figure under the sheet. "Is that you, Joshua?"

"... Is that you, Alec?"

Now, he—they—had a chance.

Sticking his head back out into the hall—still no men in black—Alec fired a couple more rounds in either direction, just to encourage the suckers to keep their distance.

Moving

to the bed, he uncuffed Joshua's right hand and gave him the keys.

"You all right?" Alec asked.

"I feel good—why are we in the hospital, Alec?"

"Okay, uncuff yourself, big guy. We gotta go. Ames White and his bozos are after us."

Scooting back to the door, Alec peeked out. The agents were making their move, hugging the walls and pushing tall stainless steel carts that held the food trays in front of them, as mobile shields.

Alec emptied the clip at them, bullets whanging off metal, and turned back to Joshua.

"You ready?"

Joshua jumped off the bed. He too wore only a hospital gown, looking not a little absurd in it. "Let's blaze."

"Through the window," Alec said.

But when Alec went to it, the thing was firmly locked.

"Alec needs to stand back," Joshua advised.

And, in two steps, Joshua was standing in front of the wall-mounted television.

Wrenching the box free, he pitched it, the glass of the window shattering as it flew through, the curtains jerking off the wall and going along for the ride. A few seconds later they heard the TV crash onto the concrete in a glass-shattering explosion.

Joshua looked out the now open window. "We're up high, Alec."

"There's a ledge. Move it! Go!"

Joshua climbed through the broken window, skillfully avoiding the teeth of glass waiting to bite him; soon he was out onto the ledge, and Alec quickly followed.

They were a good six or seven floors up, with a concrete expanse of parking lot beneath them. His back to the building, Alec could see something down in the parking lot, off to his right—a dumpster maybe?

Already sliding along the ledge, Joshua headed toward the window of Alec's room.

Looking in that direction, Alec

realized that White had opened the window in hopes they'd come that way.

"No!" Alec yelled.

But it was too late.

As Joshua neared it, Ames White leaned out, pistol in his hand.

Reacting instantly, Joshua grabbed White's gun arm and pulled. White came flying through the window. He squeezed the trigger, the shot going wild, into the sky.

Sunlight off the window blinded Alec for a second. Then he heard White's yell of rage—not fear—as he fell.

Regaining his vision, Alec looked down to see White sprawled like he was making a snow angel in a dumpster full of garbage bags.

Turning to Joshua, Alec yelled, "Jump!"

"Jump?"

"Now!"

Gunshots exploded from the rooms on either side of them, and they both leapt into the afternoon air.

When they hit, even though the bags were soft, it felt like concrete. It took Alec only a few seconds to gather himself, and as he rose, he caught a whiff of the dumpster—

medical waste disposal was pretty casual, in these post-Pulse times—and felt the sudden urge to vomit. From above, he heard no more gunfire—the agents were probably coming down after them—and he knew they had to shake it.

"Joshua!"

His large friend rose from the muck with Ames White tucked under his arm in a headlock.

"We've got to go," Alec said. "Kill him or drop him, I really don't give a shit."

Yanking White's face up by the hair, Joshua thrust his leonine countenance into the agent's barely conscious, slack features.

"You should die for the things you've done," Joshua said.

"But if I kill you, Max says you win—you make us look like monsters. But you're the monster."

White's upper lip curled back in an awful grin. "Freak."

Joshua punched the agent once, knocking him out.

"Soon," he said to the slumbering agent. "Soon you'll pay for Annie."

"We've got to blaze," Alec urged, "gotta jet," using the Max idioms that would get Joshua moving his hairy ass.

The two friends in hospital gowns climbed out of the dumpster and took off at a run, their bare feet slapping against the pavement as they went.

Alec knew how much Joshua wanted to destroy White for killing Annie Fisher, Joshua's one friend among the ordinaries, a blind girl who hadn't cared what the dog man looked like, and who could "see" past Joshua's stunted social and intellectual growth to the sensitive, intelligent being just starting to blossom after a lifetime of Manticore abuse.

But Alec knew Joshua had no desire to disappoint Max, and she'd kept him from killing White once before. The big fella wouldn't go against Max's wishes.

And if Joshua knew how Alec had manipulated him into leaving Terminal City—very much against Max's wishes— Joshua would be angry as hell... though Alec knew his friend would forgive him. He always did.

As they made their way through the streets, their gowns flapping in the breeze, Alec realized they had to get back to Tenninal City, and fast—and they had to tell Max they now knew the identity of the killer.

The problem was, they were miles away, with no transportation, and—in broad daylight—the normal-looking Alec was running along next to a seminude six-foot-six-inch 240-pound dog boy. And, of course, both were wearing hospital gowns, not exactly a current fashion trend.

Alec almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Of all the con-

tingencies that Manticore had trained their test-tube soldiers for, this particular one had never come up.

His arms didn't hurt, but the now-dried stripes of blood on his arms might draw attention as fast as them running with their asses hanging out of the gowns. They had to get off the damn street, toot sweet.

The neighborhood they were sprinting through looked vaguely familiar to Alec, and he realized suddenly—when Joshua made a right past a grocery store—that the big guy knew right where they were and where he was going. They had been held at County General less than two miles from Joshua's old pad—"Father's" house.

So they should be able to easily make their way to the large Gothic home that had belonged to Sandeman, their Manticore creator—about whom they knew little—before the man—the only benign presence at the project—had disappeared. Better to be lucky than smart, Alec thought. They both had clothes on hand from when they'd lived there together, and the phone had been reconnected once Logan had taken over. Should still be working....

Cars were sparse in the neighborhood in mid-afternoon, and the sidewalks were all but empty. Then, in the distance, Alec spotted a car coming toward them, a dark model that just might be government issue.

"Joshua," he said. "Car!"

But Joshua seemed to be ahead of him. The car, stopping in the middle of the next intersection, was a little over two blocks away when Joshua pulled off a manhole cover and climbed down out of sight. The vehicle now only a block away, Alec followed Joshua down and pulled the manhole cover back in place only seconds before he heard wheels rolling over it.

The aroma down here wasn't any more pleasing than the dumpster back at the hospital.

Standing in dirty brown water that came almost to his knees, Alec shivered in the foul, frigid stuff; but Joshua didn't seem to mind or even notice. Alec took off walking after his towering friend, who knew these tunnels as well as anyone in the city.

In the months since Max freed Joshua from Manticore, the sewers had served as a mini-underground railroad for the big guy, allowing him to move around the city without detection. Alec figured the sewer system was how Joshua had managed to stay in touch with the janitor, Hampton, without anyone knowing that he was ever gone.

Twenty minutes later, they dried off and changed into their own clothes in the rundown house, the interior of which had been taken over by Logan after the trashing of his penthouse; no sign of Logan right now, though.

Joshua's wardrobe ran exclusively to T-shirts—size XXXL—and jeans, while Alec had left little more than that behind himself. While Joshua never made inconspicuous company, getting the big lug out of that hospital gown was, Alec knew, a good start....

Picking up the phone, Alec dialed Max's cell. In the silence before the ring, his transgenic hearing picked up a low frequency hum, and he knew someone—the NSA?

the National Guard?—was trying to trace the call.

He slammed down the receiver.

Should have thought of that. He'd seen how many times Max had used her cell, so of course the government would have the number and be tracing all incoming and outgoing calls. Another reason to get back to Terminal City, to tell her to ditch the phone.

But how to get back?

It was miles away and would take them hours, even if they did use the sewers to avoid being seen.

He needed someone on the outside, and neither Original Cindy nor Sketchy had wheels; still, they were the only two people he knew that he could trust, so he started dialing.

Original Cindy's cell went unanswered; Alec didn't know

what to make of that. He had no time to spare to ponder it, though, and he dialed Sketch.

"A car?" Sketchy asked when the greetings were out of the way. "I guess I could borrow a car."

"We need you to pick us up at Joshua's house," Alec told him.

"What are you doin' on this side of the fence?"

"Not now, Sketch. Just get the car and haul ass over here. I'll explain everything on the way back to Terminal City."

"Fifteen minutes," Sketchy said. "Half hour, tops."

Forty-five minutes later, they were still watching out the window when a beat-up van pulled to a stop in front of the house.

"I gotta get myself a better support system," Alec said.

"Yeah," Joshua added. "We gotta blaze."

They climbed in the old van and Sketchy hit the gas. But soon they were lumbering through heavy traffic, and Alec explained what had happened, and who the killer was.

"Bobby Kawasaki?" Sketch said, suddenly very white. "From Jam Pony, you mean?"

"Yeah—he's a transgenic, passing.... You okay, Sketch?"

But Sketchy's eyes were wide and woeful. "Christ! I think I saw him this morning, with Original Cindy. I'm pretty sure they left together. Then I didn't see either one of them the rest of the day. Never reported back from their first deliveries—Normal was really pissed."

Alec looked at Sketch and the van went dead quiet.

"Sketch—you better step on it."

Bobby Kawasaki sat in the worn wing chair and watched the crappy signal on a TV

produced in some third-world shithole back before Pulse. The cheap motel room was dusty and dingy and had seen few customers on more than an hourly basis for most of the last ten years; but the desk clerk,

a tiny Asian man with thick glasses and thinning hair, asked only one question: "You got cash?"

Bobby's project hung safe in the closet on a hanger—he'd had to leave the mannequin behind—and Original Cindy lay on the sagging bed with a compress on the nasty bump on her head. He had meant to scare her, but when she'd taken that tumble off her bike, the woman took a much nastier spill than he'd anticipated. Glancing over at her now, he wondered if she would ever wake up.

After her crash, he'd left her bike lying in the street, loaded her onto his own bike and pedaled straight back to the motel, with her riding in his lap, her legs tossed up over the handle bars. From a distance she would have looked like she was having a joy ride, her face pressed into the cheek of her boyfriend. It wasn't the greatest ruse, but people minded their own business in Seattle, and it had gotten them back here to safety and seclusion.

Taking her to a hospital was out of the question. He'd lose control of her there, and be right back where he started. That was also the risk of keeping her here. If she died, she would be of no help to him, which would be a pity, after all the trouble he'd gone to.