Hybrid (23 page)

Greg didn’t react. “Actually, I already knew that. I wanted to see you today so I could share with you what I know about this virus.”

“I suspected you knew more than you indicated. It is somewhat unusual for a police detective to query a pathologist about general autopsy findings without some specific concerns.”

“My daughter-in-law Amanda was infected with a virus seven years ago in Honduras. Everyone except Amanda died, but only a handful actually died from the virus. She said that the majority of the deaths were from suicide or murder. The federal government knows about this. They held Amanda for weeks after she was returned to the States, and they’ve been covering it up ever since.” Greg paused, but Phil’s neutral expression never wavered.

“When you say the federal government, do you mean the Centers for Disease Control?”

Greg nodded. “I have a name: Nathan Martin. He’s one of the department heads at the CDC. He tried to have Amanda killed.” Phil finally reacted by leaning forward in his chair ever so slightly.

“That’s a strange reaction to a patient,” Phil said slowly. “Why would Dr. Martin try to have Amanda killed?”

“Do you know Martin?” Greg asked suspiciously.

“I know of him, but I have never met him. His office contacted us this morning, asking for more information on this patient.” Phil tapped the notes on his desk. “We had sent them samples a month ago, and apparently they want to do some follow-up tests. It is somewhat of an unusual request.”

“So he knew already,” Greg said with disappointment. “Amanda exposed herself for nothing,” he added to himself.

“You still haven’t explained why Martin would want your daughter-in-law killed.”

“Perhaps I wasn’t being completely accurate or fair. The truth of the matter is that I don’t think he ever wanted her dead, but he did initiate a series of actions that spun out of control. Now she is wanted for the deaths of two people.” Greg’s voice communicated both regret and anger.

“So, did Dr. Martin believe that her violent behavior was a result of her infection?” Phil asked.

For a moment, Greg looked at him blankly. “No, you’ve got it all wrong. Amanda has never been violent, or even sick.”

“So she survived the infection without any ill effects. That would make her very interesting to Dr. Martin. If there’s a connection between her infection and this case, she’s even more interesting today. Do you know where she is?”

Greg Flynn stared at the inscrutable Phillip Rucker and didn’t answer.

“I can assure you, Detective, that you can trust me.”

“That may be the problem; I do trust you to do the very thing that you’re supposed to do, which would mean calling the FBI and the CDC. So, for now, let’s just say that I haven’t seen her in over a year.”

“At some point, it may be necessary to see her.”

“Perhaps under the right circumstances,” Greg said.

Neither said a word for a moment, both comfortable that all that needed to be said had been said.

“Was there anything else, Detective?” Phil asked after a reasonable pause.

“Actually, I was hoping you had a theory as to how this virus caused so many people to go mad.”

“I don’t have enough information yet to make any definitive statements, but it is possible. There are a number of infections, viral, bacterial, even parasitic, that are characterized by personality changes. The most obvious is tertiary syphilis, but even the ubiquitous herpes simplex virus has the ability to destroy the medial temporal lobes of the brain, causing any number of bizarre behaviors.” Phil felt a little uncomfortable discussing bizarre behavior, but the small voice inside his own mind stayed quiet and didn’t offer any rebuttal statements.

“I see.” Greg shifted uncomfortably in the state-issued straight-backed chair that faced Phil’s desk. “So the virus destroys a part of the brain, and the person suddenly becomes unstable. That makes sense.” Greg shifted again. “How about the opposite? Are there places in the brain that if destroyed, or even damaged, would make the person more stable, or perhaps smarter?” he asked casually.

“There are certain neurologic conditions that respond to extremely well-placed lesions in the brain, but these are only used to control abnormal symptoms, not to improve a normal person beyond their baseline.” Curiosity began to creep back into Phil’s mind. “That’s a very unusual question, Detective, and somewhat leading.”

“I know a man, a priest, actually, who I think got sick, I’m guessing with this virus, and then he got better. I don’t mean he recovered from the infection—he actually got physically better. His heart became stronger, his body became stronger, and so did his mind. Do you think there might be a connection?”

Before Rucker could answer, his pager began to beep loudly. Greg jumped, but Phil didn’t react. “No,” Phil said simply, but he studied Greg very closely. The detective was obviously holding something back, and he didn’t think it involved a priest. “I don’t know of any infection that has the ability to improve the mind or the body.” Phil didn’t check his pager, since he knew who it was and what it was about. Instead, he scrutinized the detective a little longer. The pause stretched to several seconds, and Phil waited for Greg to say something more, or for his own Monsters to demand that he check his pager.

Greg abruptly stood, and Phil followed suit. “Thank you, Dr. Rucker. I know you are very busy, especially with all that’s happened. I’m sorry for your loss.” Greg didn’t offer his hand; Phillip Rucker didn’t shake anyone’s hand.

“Thank you,” Phil said awkwardly, not entirely certain of the appropriate response. “If your daughter-in-law does contact you, I would like to have the opportunity to meet with her.”

“I would have to ask her,” Greg said almost defensively.

Phil held Greg’s gaze as the curiosity that had been tickling his mind grew into an imperative. “May I ask you a question, Detective?”

Greg’s face became suspicious. “Go on,” he finally said.

“Did she do it?”

“She was responsible,” Greg said, staring directly into Rucker’s eyes.

“That left you with a conflict of interest, didn’t it?” Phil had no clear idea why he was indulging his curiosity like this, but suddenly the fact that Amanda was a murderer and Greg a police detective fascinated him. He was in uncharted territory, pursuing an answer to a question that had no impact on him personally, merely because he found it curious.

“You don’t know the whole story,” Greg said so definitively that even the notoriously dense Phillip Rucker picked up on the social cue. “Thank you again, Doctor, but we both must be going.”

Phil watched as Greg Flynn left, wondering more about his own sudden burst of inquisitiveness than Greg’s obvious discomfort. He finally checked his pager and wasn’t surprised to find that Peter Bilsky’s body had at long last arrived. He was surprised by the unnatural silence of his ever-present Monsters.

They shot him! The thought kept revolving through Reisch’s head. The audacity of it! The indignity of being treated like a common criminal. He was more insulted than hurt, although his right shoulder had bled a fair amount before repairing itself. The only good thing to come out of the last two hours was a clarity of thought. Reisch tried never to lie to himself, and a critical appraisal of his behavior the last few weeks was not flattering. Up until now, there had not been a single trace of him in any file or database, but now they had a witness who could identify him. After they searched his hotel room, they would likely have his DNA; and after they found the car he had stolen, they would have a sample of his very special blood. On top of all of that, he was two weeks late for his extraction and still hadn’t finished his assignment.

“All because of a girl,” Vladimir Pushkin mocked from the safety of a plastic couch that faced the office desk where Reisch brooded.

The garage had been the only stroke of luck he had had all day. He drove the BMW south, trying to get out of the city, but then thought better of using a stolen car on nearly empty streets, especially after attacking a police officer. It took him five minutes to find the closed auto repair shop, and even with his damaged mind and body, he was able to break into the empty office with ease. The garage door proved to be a bit trickier. The release mechanism was designed to be used by the uneducated, but all he saw were the constituent parts, not the mechanism as a whole. He randomly pulled and pushed at the fasteners and handles, and after ten frustrating minutes, he finally hit upon the correct combination. The door was weighted well, it rolled up easily, and the stolen BMW disappeared from the street.

“You know better than that,” Klaus answered sullenly.

“Why are you even here?” Pushkin asked.

Reisch finally looked up at his mentor. The Russian rarely asked banal questions, and he never asked metaphysical questions, his mind was stuck somewhere in between. “There’s no sense in having this discussion.”

“I think there is; I think it has a direct bearing on what you should do next. For reasons that you have failed to fully realize you accepted a mission you were never meant to perform. In fact, you didn’t just accept it; you demanded it as the price for your cooperation. It’s clear why; it was clear to the others— that’s why they refused to help you find her. They couldn’t have you distracted, and that is exactly what happened.”

Reisch knew that Pushkin was right; he had been distracted when he should have been focused on the simple task at hand. He just didn’t have the energy to admit it. Still, the conviction that he had to be the one to find Amanda remained strong, even after the debacle of the day. “I accepted the mission and have completed the most important part. The virus has been released.”

“In one small city. You were to spread it across the entire state, simultaneously; instead you created a single hot spot. A place for them to concentrate their resources, to cover it up. You were warned about this very thing, and more importantly, I trained you better than this.” A faint shade of red colored Pushkin’s nearly translucent face. He had died ten years earlier; twenty-five years after first saving Reisch’s life. He was an inconstant visitor now: a product of Reisch’s evolution.

“It will achieve the same result.”

“So you still trust what Avanti told you, despite the fact that you know that at this very minute he is betraying you to the Americans?”

“We all have our own agendas.” Reisch answered.

“Which leads us back to the question of why you are here. What is your agenda?”

Instead of answering, Reisch wondered for an untold time if Pushkin was simply an extension of his own consciousness, or something more. The Russian refused to discuss it, and if pushed would disappear for weeks. “I am compelled to be here,” Reisch finally said.

“Who or what compels you?”

“Do you really think that this is the time or the place for this discussion?”

Pushkin began to float just above the sofa. “I think that this is precisely the time, although I would prefer a more sanitary place.”

“You’ve never agreed or understood before; what makes you think now would be any different?”

“Because now this irrational need has put you at risk; I’m hoping that it is you who will understand.”

“It is only irrational to you,” Reisch answered angrily.

“Because the voices don’t talk to me?” Pushkin mocked.

If this had been anyone else, Reisch would have responded differently; instead he controlled the rage. “There is an underlying natural order to the universe; something in your current state you should be aware of; I am simply trying to live in harmony with it.”

“I never took you for a religious man.”

Pushkin kept pushing Reisch to the edge. “Religion is a human construct, and one of the very things I am trying to destroy,” he said through clenched teeth. “In time we will establish a civilization that has eliminated the need for religion.”

“I liked you better when you were a common sociopath.”

Reisch’s response was cut off by the sound of car wheels crunching through snow and ice. He sensed two minds, as well as two vehicles. A minute passed, and pair of keys and a note were pushed through a slot in the door. Reisch waited for the couple to leave and then collected the keys to a Mercedes SUV that needed an oil change and tire rotation. “This is what I was talking about,” Reisch said triumphantly to Pushkin. “This is the natural order,” he said holding up the keys.

“This is what I call luck,” the Russian answered while fading into the wallpaper.

Twenty minutes later, Reisch was driving west on Highway 24; the GPS told him he was sixteen miles away from a small town called Manitou Springs, where he would turn south. He still had one more task to perform, and then he would drop off everyone’s radar, including the men who had hired him. He would disappear into the jungles of Costa Rica while the mighty United States of America imploded, but hopefully not explosively. The virus he had spread these past six weeks was just a taste of things to come; just enough to get the worlds attention and have them close their collective doors to the U.S., before the real attack began.

No collateral damage
, Reisch thought,
at least not yet
. He smiled, and then with a start quickly searched for the small black satchel that he had kept close for the last two months. It was still in the passenger seat where he had placed it earlier; inside was all he needed to restore balance. Over the course of the seven years that Pushkin had started appearing, Reisch had tried to explain the concept of universal balance to the Russian, but all he saw was religion in another guise. Even in his corporeal life he had limited vision, interested only in his comfort and the pursuit of pleasure. At the beginning, Reisch could relate to and reveled in such an existence, but over time as Pushkin became more extreme in his pursuits, Reisch became more repulsed by them. Neither of them chose to live within the constraints of society, but to Reisch’s thinking, that didn’t require you to deconstruct your personal identity. To be true to yourself, to follow the path that had been written in your soul was the only way order could be derived from chaos, the only way to peace and contentment. Reisch had followed that path from the moment of his inception in Honnecker’s dark dungeon. Along the way he had occasionally strayed, as he had while sampling Pushkin’s life of excess, or the time of instability after his infection; but in the end he found his way back to the straight path that lead to the universal constant of balance.