Prodigal (Maelstrom Chronicles) (25 page)

“You can’t ride with him.” Dixie inserted herself between Claire and the Humvee. “If he goes crazy and takes you hostage, we can’t afford to lose you.”

“Give me a break, Dixie,” Adam said, his voice rich with disgust.

“He’s not going to do that,” Claire said at the same time.

“I’ll ride with him.” Will climbed up next to Adam but stuck to the door. Adam rested his head on the seat back. “I don’t have kids. I don’t even have a girlfriend.”

“I’m not going to touch anyone,” Adam repeated. “Look, I’m as shocked as all of you about what happened. I thought I was having nightmares, but I was remembering reality. When they woke me in the middle of it, I figured out what I was doing. Whenever I go to sleep, maybe whenever I get close to shades, the urge to kill them possesses me.”

“We’re supposed to believe you’re possessed instead of an entity-eating freak?” Kravitz said harshly. “We all know the entities have been evolving. Daemons and shades both—probably begetter drones, too, the ones that sit on their asses and make force fields and shade babies. The entities swallowed you when you jumped into that hellhole, and now they’ve spit you out. You’re here to pull a Trojan horse. It’s as plain as the receding hairline on my damn head.”

“I haven’t hurt any humans, and I don’t intend to,” Adam pointed out, his expression hardening. “I kill shades.”

“Lulling us into a false sense of security,” Kravitz argued. “I know what I’m talking about. Infiltrator. It’s my fucking job with the warlords.”

“Whine all you want.” Adam slumped into the seat, wiping a yawn with his shoulder. Whatever he’d done, it had sapped his vitality. “It won’t change the facts. Now you’re wasting time.”

“I don’t like this anymore than you do, Claire.” Dixie prodded her toward the snowmobiles. She’d been so flummoxed by this situation that she’d let Kravitz, of all people, seize control.

She’d let Kravitz take Adam.

“Kravitz.” Claire spun on her heel and marched over to him. “If anything happens to Adam between here and Chanute, you’re a dead man. The scientists want him. Also, you’re coming with me. We need a driver for Will’s snowmobile since he’s the only one with the balls to sit beside the dreaded Shade Eater.”

“I’m not riding a snowmobile. It’s too cold.” Kravitz glared at her. Her previous experiences with him had taught her that he hated to be bossed around, most of all in front of his team. Which was why she always did it. Good thing she’d jolted out of her shock or she’d have missed an opportunity.

“Don’t make me go over your head,” she said. “You owe me. Well, you owe the entire world. So put on a fucking hat, old man, and drive Will’s snowmobile.”

“Bitch.” He bared his teeth. “Fine.”

Claire didn’t give a rat’s ass how often she played the “you nearly destroyed the world” card to inspire Kravitz to do what she wanted. She could have harassed him onto the snowmobile without it, but she didn’t feel like working that hard. Not tonight.

“We’re following the vehicles,” she told Dixie when they revved up the snowmobiles. “If any of them so much as twitch off the road, take out the tires…and then the driver.”

…

The sixth night in jail, Adam woke in the middle of his cell, tugging at the thin, tactanium cord that secured him to his bolted down bedframe. Paired with the internal endo-organic alarm Sarah had installed, he’d been able to control his sleepwalking—before he bent his bedframe in half—though his sleep had been disrupted as a result.

The compulsion that drove him to eat shades hadn’t waned, and he’d been right about when it hit him. He couldn’t even nap without the urge seizing him, and sometimes he felt a whisper of it while he was conscious. Hence the security measures. When he went to the scientists’ compound daily for tests, they’d concluded he remained in control as long as he didn’t fall asleep.

But tonight, the alarm and the chain weren’t the only things that had roused him. Male voices grumbled at the far reach of his hearing.

“Parks promised me he’d get me out,” a man was saying. Quentin, three cells down. “Now you’re telling me he’s not going to do it?”

So Quentin was definitely in league with the warlords, and Parks in specific. Interesting. He held his breath, eavesdropping for other information he could share with Claire.

“They’ve got too many entity complications to hit Chanute,” someone replied. “Shades popping up all through the territory. The warlords don’t truck with Shipborn, so they don’t have monitors. We’re practically sitting ducks. We keep losing garrisons.”

If the person making excuses to Quentin was telling the truth, sounded like the shades were converging on Chicago, too—that, and the warlords had spies in Chanute.

Did Claire and the others know?

Would they care? Well, they’d care about the spies, but probably not that the shades were amassing to eat the warlords. From what he understood, that would do everyone a favor, provided the warlords’ captives could escape.

“Then we’ll steal the monitors and bring them when we come.” Boots scuffed against the tile floor. Quentin pacing? The other guy? “Parks’s got to get me out of here. That fucking entity fucker Chosen One is the sheriff’s fuck boy. The next time she lets him out, he’ll suck the life out of me. I just know it. Aren’t we supposed to take him out, anyway?”

Adam flinched. He’d gone from being the most popular amnesiac Hollywood star on the planet to the most reviled.

“They’re pacifist communists. They’re not gonna let him kill you,” the voice reassured Quentin.

“Claire Lawson ain’t no pacifist,” Quentin spat. “Parks is wrong about that. You of all people should know.”

Probably not a good idea to alert the night guard yet, not if he wanted to keep gathering intel. Hopefully when the mystery guy left, Adam could identify him. With his strength decreasing—a phenomenon the scientists attributed to his lack of access to shade energy—it would be less of a sure thing to defend himself.

“Doesn’t matter,” the guy told Quentin. “Parks needs you to get on their good side, and he needs all of us here for when he decides to take Chanute. Now he wants Kravitz so he can find the guy’s informants. The evidence about the convergences wasn’t supposed to get out.”

“There’s no way I can get in with those commies.” Quentin’s voice rose. Bars rattled angrily. “Why do I need to? You already are.”

As far as Adam knew, only he, Quentin, and Quentin’s mascots were in the cells, but there would be a guard in the front of the building. Claire couldn’t spare more than one jail attendant because the entity attacks had multiplied off the charts.

Nobody had suggested letting Adam out to deal with them—besides Adam. And Cullin, who was campaigning to see him in action. If it got bad enough, he’d break out and do what was needed, but his waning strength complicated matters.

He’d behaved so far because it seemed like the safest thing for Chanute. Many Terrans had been highly disturbed by the revelations about him. The GUN and the U.S. government had only agreed to let him stay because Niko insisted, and the Shipborn scientists had a better chance of figuring him out than Sieders. Right now, it would do more harm than good for him to be out of jail. Soon, the convergence would hit, and he’d break out and kill shades even if it meant he lost Claire’s trust—provided he still had it.

“Keep it down, Jay.” The intruder’s voice was raspy, as if he didn’t talk much. “If anyone hears you, they’ll figure out who I am.”

“After all I’ve done for Parks, he’s going to ignore me? He owes me. He needs to get me out.” Quentin didn’t cooperate with his would-be rescuer. Who was it? Someone male and “in good” with Claire.

One of Quentin’s buddies grumbled sleepily. “Whozat? Who you talking to, Quent?”

The unidentified man cursed. “See what you did?”

“What are you doing here?” That sounded like Pete, the biggest, dumbest of Quentin’s friends. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Go back to sleep,” Quentin growled. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“Hey, could you get a message to Parks?” Pete continued. “He needs to know they got us locked up.”

“Shut. Up,” Quentin hissed.

“Sorry, Pete. You’re not part of this deal,” said the other guy. Adam heard the soft buzz of a laser before Pete groaned and something heavy thudded to the floor.

“Ah, hell,” Quentin said—much more quietly. “You didn’t have to kill him.”

“He recognized me. Could blow my cover. He had to go.”

Shit, the spy had a Shipborn weapon. Adam tiptoed to his bed, which meant he was no longer able to hear the whispers. He climbed silently onto the narrow bunk, face toward the door, and tugged the covers over his body.

Obviously the visitor felt confident that he could get away with killing Pete. Not a good sign. If Adam alerted the guard to the murder—provided the guard was alive—he’d be putting everyone in danger.

“How are you going to explain that?” Quentin demanded, at the very edge of Adam’s hearing. “If you’re so hot to kill people, kill the movie star.”

Unfortunately the only part of the reply he could make out was a threatening
shhhhhh
.

Adam tensed. If the intruder came for him, he wouldn’t go down without a fight.

He held his breath, listening for footsteps. He wasn’t sure who knew what specific details about him, just that he could suck down shades like a smoothie. The Shipborn hadn’t been able to determine if he could strip the essence from sentients. When Cullin had tried to talk him into testing the power on him, Adam had refused. He hadn’t wanted to take the chance of hurting the guy.

Claire had joked about trying it out on a prisoner—if it had been a joke—and the scientists hadn’t so much as chuckled.

If the intruder did come after him, would he be willing to try it on a fellow human?

Or was Adam even human? The scientists called him a chimera, a meld of human and shade, giving him the ability to feed on life essence. They believed the journey through the nexus had fused him. Unlike shades, he also needed fuel for his human half, and there was significant evidence that daemons had begun to consume food as well. His existence, as well as the pods, had ended the debate of whether or not there was another dimension instead of chaos on the other side of the rifts.

Unfortunately, they had no way of learning about it beyond examining whatever got tossed onto this side. Adam’s sleepwalking memories had returned, but the time before his arrival was still a blank.

He waited in bed, drowsy but straining to listen. The main exit was past the cells and out the front. They kept the rear fire exit locked down, so when the guy left, Adam could sneak a peek. If the visitor was in good with Claire, that made it doubly important to find out who he was.

But before he knew it, it was morning, and the guards were reporting a dead body in cell three.

“The shade eater got him,” Quentin raged. “It’s obvious.”

“As obvious as the laser burns on his chest,” answered a sarcastic voice.

Claire.

Adam practically tumbled out of bed. One benefit to abandoning his midnight shade snacks was that he woke bright eyed and bushy-tailed, with zero muzziness. Consuming shades seemed to be the thing that affected his short-term memories.

“That’s what it looks like when the shade eater kills a person,” Quentin claimed. “I saw it happen. Put his hand on Pete’s chest and sucked his soul right out. He’s a monster in human skin.”

“Bullshit,” she said before turning to her guards. “You want to tell me how someone with a laser got into the prisoner section of the jail?”

Tonya answered. “I was up front until the shift change when we found the body. Nobody came and nobody went. Well, people came to the weapons room, like they do every night, but I sure as heck didn’t let anybody unauthorized inside.”

“I need a list of everyone who came and went.”

Adam grabbed his barred door. Several guards, one of Newcome’s people, and Claire stood outside the cells at the end of the hall. She looked tired, and she was wearing the same clothes from yesterday. They hadn’t talked much since he’d been locked up, but she did keep him abreast of what was going on.

It wasn’t good. Adam’s nightly forays had curtailed the shade attacks, explaining the discrepancy in the predictive modeling. Now Camp Chanute was under siege.

“Were you awake all night?” Claire asked Tonya.

The woman, middle-aged and even-tempered, sighed. “Of course I was. I may not be out there with the rest of the deputies, but I’m doing my job.”

“Any signs of forced entry?” she asked another person, who was wearing a sensor array.

That guy shook his head. “If somebody came in that way, they had a key.”

“Why don’t you have cameras? That’s fucking shoddy,” Quentin demanded.

“We hardly ever use our jail. Until you and your boys showed up,” Claire snarked.

“Let us go and you won’t have to,” Quentin said.

“Fuck, no. You’d cause trouble, and your kind of trouble is the last thing we need right now.” She met Adam’s eyes briefly as he hung on his cell door, but didn’t really acknowledge him. “Dammit. Do any of you know how this happened?”

“You’re supposed to keep us safe when we’re in custody,” another prisoner accused. “We’re not supposed to have to guard ourselves.”

The others agreed noisily, accusing Claire of negligence.

Adam considered speaking up, but if he revealed what he knew in front of Quentin, he’d be next on the hit list. If Claire couldn’t figure out how the murderer had gotten in, she might not be able to stop his next attack. He should tell her in private.

Claire sighed. “Search the prisoners. See if anyone has a gun.”

“I have rights, bitch,” a guy protested. “You can’t just barge in here and—hey, what are you doing?”

A laser buzzed, and the guy fell silent.

“Sure I can,” Claire said. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I stunned him. I’ll stun any of you who interfere.”

While they did find contraband, none of it could have been used to kill Pete. Two of Claire’s deputies glared at Adam as if they believed what Quentin had pulled out of his ass about Pete’s burn marks. It was several more minutes before he could get Claire’s attention while nobody could overhear.