Shadow Unit 15 (8 page)

*

"It was just another day," Brady says. "We thought we had a missing girl, but she'd just gone for a nap outside. Happy ending. So I decided that I would bring home dinner and get some boyfriend points. I didn't know that anything was wrong."

"Sno-ore," Saito says. "So worn out. Gates has gone rogue, hasn't she? She's put on a pretty face and everyone's fooled except you."

Brady doesn't cross his arms. He wants to. "It really didn't hit me until I realized that he didn't have a scalpel in his hand. That's what I thought it was."

"You're the only one who can tell that the monster's loose, and no one will believe you if you try to say anything. I know what you're hiding, Agent Brady."

"But when it did... I trusted Andre. I remembered how many nights I'd just sleep next to him, let him touch me with hands that could do that."

"You let her touch everyone on the team. You have to. You are supposed to believe in her. But she's doing things, isn't she? She's going backward, not forward, and she's going to catch everyone by surprise."

"He could cut. He could stitch it back up. And he didn't use it to help people. He used it to torture. It didn't matter that he believed that he was doing justice."

"You're the one who sees her doing what she thinks is justice. You can see her failing. And you're going to have to kill her. Just like you had to kill Andre."

"If I could go back to that day I'd talk him down. If I'd known about the ACTF, I could have saved him."

"You can't save her. You can't save anyone."

The room went dark, and Brady hit the floor rolling, right and backwards, came up in a crouch. Pure instinct

"Oh..." Saito purrs in the dark. "Oh, Agent Brady. This. Oh yes, this. Perfect. All these years you've been stringing me along, and all we had to do was turn the lights out."

The lights go out and everyone looks up. The generator will kick in. They'll have to wait for the computers running the cash register to reboot. Hafs sighs. That burger she wants rests in its own grease on top of a cooling grill, and right at the minute she's hungry. In another minute she'll be irritable. In another minute after that she'll have trouble remembering that the people around her don't deserve what she'll dish out. A hungry gamma ain't nobody's friend.

The lights still aren't on. Hafidha reaches out, probing for working computers, smartphones, tablets. All she finds are mobile devices, struggling on the shitty data network that passes for coverage. She reaches for the programmable controls on the emergency generators and finds nothing—just a black hole.

And that should not be happening.

"FBI," Hafidha says in a carrying voice. "Please remain calm. Look around, and find someone who could use your help, and use that emergency exit." She spots one guy headed toward the door to the corridor: the wrong way. Toward the monsters. The other monsters.
I am the evil that exists to oppose other evils.
"Please don't leave this room, sir. Everybody needs to go outside, get away from the building, and take cover."

She reaches out into the wide world, surfing the two and a half bars Sprint offers. A text message to Falkner, a text message to Chaz.
Bad things at Arkham. Power out. Evacuating staff such as I can.
She is doing okay. Doing okay. She opens the pastry case for the last four brownies, peels the plastic off of one, and starts eating. Between bites: "Everyone, it's very important that you remain calm and leave. Who's in the kitchen?"

She gets people assigned to each other and sends them out the cafeteria emergency exits. No alarms greet the opening doors. She sweeps the kitchen to be sure everyone is out, and finishes the second brownie.

She needs more milk, and the bottles in the fridge aren't doing anything but going bad. She takes one and washes the gooey chocolate treat down, eats her third, and tucks the fourth away with the rest.

The civilians are leaving. Orderly evacuation. She thinks about school shootings, workplace violence. All the things it could be that aren't the monster zoo with its cages wide open. She touches her hip, where her Glock isn't.
The only thing that stops a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun.

She thinks,
Well now, there's a simplistic morality for you.

She steps out through the hall door she shooed everyone away from, staying low, moving quick. It's even darker in the hall, just the red glow of the battery-operated emergency exit signs to guide her. She steps out of her boots, snaps the heels off with bare hands. Gamma-strong. She feels a pang when she does it that's not just a shallow attachment to material goods.

The boots go back on her feet. The heels go in her pocket. She knows a cobbler who might be able to fix them, later. Now she walks softer.

She doesn't get very far before she hears fear.

She doesn't get much farther than that before she finds blood.

*

Jason Saito is a shadow among shadows. He rustles faintly as he stands. "Finally," he says, in a tone that makes Brady imagine a stretching, satisfied cat. "It's my big break. Let's go."

Brady hears his heart in his ears. He forces himself to relax, to feel nonchalant. His best weapon against Jason Saito is never to show fear, which means never feeling fear. "You think I'm going somewhere with you, Saito?"

"I think you are," Saito comes closer, offering Brady his wrist shackles. Brady has a flashlight on his keychain, but he's not about to let Saito know that. Saito says, "I'm your best weapon right now. You got enough bullets for every gamma in Arkham? That's what Hafidha calls it."

"You know I don't have a key for those," Brady says. "I don't have a key for the door, either. We're just going to have to wait it out until the lights come back on."

And there's Saito, looming over him. Danny fights the urge to jump. He was, of course, expecting something like this. Saito coos, "Ooh, Danny. That felt good. Come on now. It'll be worth it just for the expression in your amygdala. You don't have a key, but there's somebody on the outside who does. Who's just waiting for you to ask to be released."

"What makes you think I'm going to let you be my backup?"

"I could make wild threats, you know. Say something like, 'On account of I will kill you right now and then you won't get to save anyone. I'll join the scrum.'" Then Saito sighs, as if he's even bored himself. "You forget, Danny-boy. I know what scares you most. It's your friends getting hurt when you can't help them—or worse, having to hurt them yourself. And your pet monster is out there in the dark, isn't she? Who
knows
what she's getting up to, in all those miles and miles of twisty corridors. Being in here is boring. I need a
change,
Dann-O. A catalyst. This is a sign. I'll help you if you help me."

This is a bad idea,
Brady thinks, and to himself he answers,
No shit, Sherlock.

He stands himself. Saito moves back, gives only a little room. He's still crowding Brady's personal space. Brady looms over him, but he doesn't feel in control.

"The cuffs stay on," he says.

"Talk rough to me, Danny," Saito purrs.

*

Hafidha crouches in blood, hoping her texts got through. The shoes are really one hundred percent ruined now: she can feel the sticky sliding wetness soaking in through their seams.

The woman lies sprawled on her back, her wild hair spread out all around her and stuck to the floor. She's fallen out of her own towering open-toed shoes.
Can't run in those,
Hafidha thinks.
Shouldn't have had to.

Oh God. Oh, Kat.

Hafidha reaches out a hand in the red-lit dark and touches Katharine Allison's arm. It's warm, and she's breathing—more than breathing, gasping. Because her blood volume is low, and her body wants oxygen.

"Thirsty," Kat whispers.

Hafidha strokes her sticky hair. She says, "It's me, Kat. It's Hafidha."

"Hakes," Kat says.

Hafidha knows. She knew as soon as she stepped into the corridor and caught the thick ocean scent of all that warm, wet blood.

"I'll get him for you, Doc."

"No...."
No don't leave you can't leave you can't leave me

Hafidha reaches to the tasseled bead bracelet on her right wrist, yanks it, and lets the elastic snap. "Zap," she whispers, and the heat that prickled across her scalp irons itself out.

Or did Kat mean,
No, don't risk yourself—

Hafidha knows she'll never know.

She wheezes. So much blood. Warm, so warm. Chuck Palahniuk always was full of shit. Kat says, "Henry... ran."

Aw, hell. Doc was with Henry Clark. Henry... who isn't well. And he's out there now in the dark alone. At least it's May in Virginia, Hafidha reminds herself. At least it's a sunny day, and the Idlewood climate control is as dead as the generators.

At least Henry's not going to get cold.

Hafidha still feels sick. She's still watching a friend die, and there's nothing she can do.

Except kneel in Dr. Allison's blood, except grab her doctor's hand, slick with her own life coating the tidy nails, the dainty watch on her wrist, except to try and get through to whatever hadn't drained out with the four pints on the floor.

"Fuck professional distance. I'm here, Doc. I'm right here. You're not alone."

Dr. Allison's hand trembles, squeezes once.
Yes
. But then she lets go, and Hafidha feels through the already thickening blood for a pulse.

Don't be an idiot, you're kneeling in her blood.

Reyes and Todd had taken Hakes down in a funhouse. Reyes nearly died anyway. She didn't have a funhouse. She didn't have Solomon Todd and his peculiar luck. But Brady is—

Shit.

Brady's with Saito.

Hafidha needs to fetch him. With any luck, Saito will want to take his time.

She can drop Hakes if she can get the shot before he sees her. She doesn't miss. She might even be able to drop him if he does see her, as long as she does it fast enough that she can still aim.

She needs a weapon, first of all. Fortunately, the cafeteria's near the front desk.

She pats Katharine Allison's warm cheek, checks the pockets of her bloodstained lab coat, finds keys, a keycard, a runner's can of pepper spray. She stands up. Weapon. Brady. Hakes. Whoever the hell started this. In that order, and spaced out neatly, please.

Hafidha Gates slips through the crimson shadows, keeping her head low, clearing each corridor before she steps into it. Leaving a trail of blood.

*

Hafidha knocks on the locked door of the video room and makes sure to stand in plain sight of the reinforced window. She sighs in relief when the door opens and she sees who's on duty.

"Leon," Hafidha says, tone low, hands open. "I know you know me. You know I'm one of them. But I have to ask you to believe me right now."

He doesn't have a weapon out. But he's halfway to reaching for it. He says, very calmly, "Whose blood is that, Agent Gates?"

"Larry's out," she answers. "This—" Her voice catches. She scrubs her hands down the sides of her suit coat. "Kat," she says, miserably, because one syllable is all she can squeeze out through her tightening throat.

"Jesus fucking Christmas," Leon says. "Anyone else hurt? Loose?"

"Clark," she says, getting herself back. "Kat was taking him for a walk when... I don't know if he'll be a threat. Maybe more in danger himself. But Leon, somebody turned off the power, and somebody sprang Bloody Larry, and that somebody is still a threat."

"Right," he said.

"Lend me your tablet and your sidearm, and I will go in there and hunt the monsters. I promise I will tell people I took the gun from you and you couldn't stop me."

"Why the tablet?" But he's already handing it over, Bloody Larry's name like a passkey. He slides his gun along the surface of the desk, and he's trying the bottom right drawer with the toe of his boot.

"Sometimes it helps to have a focus even if you don't need it," Hafs says. She passes her fingers over it, frowning, and then hands it back. "That's a chat window. You can type to me and I can type to you."

"This is the only extra clip," Leon says, and Hafs tucks it up her sleeve for want of a better place.

He pauses. "Wait, those shoes—"

"It is what it is," she says, hearing Brady and Falkner in her own tones. The Army mantra.

"Partridge keeps a pair of Chucks in her locker. They might be big on you, but they have rubber soles." He produces a pair of dikes from his desk drawer and snips the master lock—Hafidha has to help, both of them leaning on the handles to cut the tempered steel. They clear the lock and yank the locker open.

"Shit," Hafidha says.

There are the Chuck Taylors, front and center, on the little top shelf. They're bright green and look nearly new. But other than that, the locker is full of cloth shopping bags, hanging on the hooks where you'd keep your purse, and your coat and scarf in wintertime. And those bags are full of cheap candy: Easter markdowns, the Russell Stover shit.

"You don't know she let Hakes out," Leon said.

"I don't know she didn't, either." Hafidha plunges both hands into a bag and fills a pocket of her bloody velvet suit jacket with Creme Eggs and Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs. Every little bit counts. "Lock the door behind me. Bar it with a chair. Cover the damned window with anything you've got.

"Duct tape."

The shoes aren't half bad. She wishes she had socks; Chucks give you blisters without them, and she's only wearing stockings. "Perfect. Don't let him see you."

Leon smiles. "I'll watch your purse."

Hafs pulls the extinction-threatened brownies out before she hands it over. "And the video if it comes back on. But Leon. I took your gun. Stay in this room. Stay on comm. Don't move. I need you. And keep calling those ACTF numbers. The landlines might come back first. You need to get my team. Don't let anybody in here."

"Except the—"

"No." Hafs bit out. "No one. Do you hear me? Bloody Larry didn't pick the lock with a hangnail. We don't know who let him out, and you are going home today. You are going home today. So don't you let anybody in here. Not even me."

"But—"

"Whoever let him out might be a monster, too." Hafs jerks her thumb at the open locker. She puts her hand on the knob.

"Wait," Leon says. "You're gonna be working hard out there." He slides the box of strudels over, still three left. "Take those. And my Gatorade."

"Leon, you know how to take care of a lady. Get under cover and hide."

*

"What's happening?" Natalie asks. "Did the power go out?"

"The emergency lights should have kicked in," Susanna says. "They'll kick in any minute, right?"

"One moment." That's Dr. Ramachandran, and he walks over to the wall-mounted Bakelite phone. He picks it up, listen, and puts it back on the hook. "The internal telephone system is down. This is a full power outage. The phone system should work if the generators are operating."

"Doc? Do you have a cell phone?" Dice asks.

Dr. Ramachandran shakes his head. "Phones demand attention. I left it in the office when I came in here to talk to you."

Dice holds up his Nokia. "Mine's not smart." He powers it on anyway. "I have signal."

"Do me a favor, Mr. Cieslewicz, and turn your phone to silent," Dr. Ramachandran says.

Dice was already cycling through the menu to do just that.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Eddie says. "Real bad, Doc."

"I'm worried, too," Dr. Ramachandran says. "What will help you, Eddie?"

"If everyone would get under cover, I mean out of line of sight from the door, and away from the windows," Eddie says. "On this side of the door, at least, so the room looks empty—"

"Shh," Dice says, straining to hear. "That's screaming."