The Silent Army (7 page)

“Can those be changed?” I asked her. “If I can pass or fail, can the percents be changed? Can I change them?”

She wasn’t listening, though. She moved away, back toward the table, and flipped the switch back down. The lights over Nico and the other one went dark.

“You said I die in a tower. Can that be changed?”

“You die in a tall tower.”

With the lights out, I saw something flickering through the glass window in the room’s door. I got on my toes and looked out into a dimly lit hallway, where a bunch of people were sitting, leaning against the walls. They were all looking at the floor, their clothes and skin burned black. Orange and red spots glowed under the ash on their coats and boots. One, a woman, looked up, her face covered in soot. Her skin was cracked and raw. She mouthed something, but I couldn’t hear her.

“What do you want from me?” I asked the dead woman. Three men in uniform stepped into view down the hall and started tromping past them, toward the door, dragging a scrawny, dirty man in handcuffs between them.

“It’s too late for us,” the dead woman said, “but not for you.”

I turned, forgetting about the people in the hallway.

“What?”

“He still needs you. He will call to you again,” she said.

“What do you mean, ‘It’s too late for us’?” I asked.

“Should he fail, it will fall to you.”

“Wait!”

The metal door opened, and dust swirled in from the hallway. The uniformed men shoved the one in handcuffs toward the far wall where the three lights were.

“This is a mistake . . .” I heard him whisper.

Behind them, I caught a glimpse of a woman, a skinny woman about my height, with her hair in a bun, but she was in shadow.

“Who are—”

She turned her head to look back over her shoulder, and when she did, I could just make out some kind of tattoo that circled her scrawny neck.There was a ring-shaped scar there, where her jugular stuck out. Against the dim light behind her, her profile had a big, beaklike nose....

I woke with a start and my eyes opened. The green room and everyone in it were gone. Something was beeping.

“Damn it,” I whispered.

I was on the monorail, leaning against the window. The car was packed, and there were bodies all around me, damp from the rain and murmuring on cell phones or getting work in during the commute. A fat man in an overcoat formed a barrier to my left, leaving me in my own little world as I watched rain streak across the plastic and the city sprawl by outside. In the distance, the CMC Tower rose like a giant needle out of the fog.

The beeping sound came again, and I realized it was my phone reminding me to take my medication. The fat man glanced at me as I fished out my cell and shut off the alarm.

Mornings were when I still got the strongest urge. I thought it would be at night, but it wasn’t. It was when I first woke up, then for the rest of the morning. I held my hand out of view of the guy next to me and watched it for a minute. The fingers shook, just a little, not like before. I still missed it, though. I kept waiting for the day to come when I stopped missing it, but it never seemed to come.

I reached into my coat pocket and found one of the pill tabs. I pushed the chewable tablet through the foil and into my palm, and then popped it in my mouth. They were minty, but had a real bitter aftertaste. When I swallowed, it left a medicine taste on my tongue. That was one. I was supposed to take them three times a day.

The medication helped, that was for sure. Nico got me on a program, which I pretty much agreed to try only because he said I couldn’t come back to the FBI until I did. I didn’t think it would work, but whatever was in the tablets, it took the edge right off. When I woke up in the morning, I didn’t feel sick until I could get a drink. My hands stopped shaking so much, and I could go longer and longer without needing one. I still wanted it, but that sick feeling, and all the shaking and sweating and heart pounding, stopped. I hadn’t thrown up in almost six months.

I snorted. There was something to be proud of; a whole six months without ending up facedown in the toilet. In return, all I had to put up with was no appetite and hideous cramps.

The city is going to burn.

I hadn’t had that particular vision in a while, and I didn’t miss it. In general, the visions hadn’t been nearly as vivid since I stopped drinking, so there was that too in the plus column.

The problem was that the chemicals took only the physical edge off. They couldn’t change the fact that being sober was horrible.

My phone vibrated in my hand—a text from Karen, my downstairs neighbor. I opened the chat portal and read her message:

Missed you this morning.

I typed back a response:
Sorry, had to run. Work needed me early.

That was partly true. I was supposed to meet Nico and he did have something he wanted me to do, but I didn’t even know what that was yet. I could have stopped by, but I’d kind of been avoiding her in the morning because I knew Ted was back. Her eyes had that look they got whenever her on-again, off-again asshole boyfriend was back on again. She didn’t want to say it because she knew I’d be pissed, and she was right.

Want to meet for lunch?
She asked.

Sure.

We made a point of getting together to do that at least once a week, but that had tapered off a little too. Ted didn’t like me, and so he didn’t like her hanging around with me.

Sorry I’ve been MIA
, she said.

I sighed, and decided to cut to the chase.
I know he’s back.

She went idle for a long time.

You don’t have to say anything. I know.

He’s a complete jerk.

You don’t understand.

She had that right. Whatever she saw in that guy, I totally did not understand. Whatever it was, though, she was really stuck on him. She actually got mad when I insulted him.

It’s none of my business
, I said. There wasn’t anything I could do, not really. From the sound of it down there, at least she was seeing some action, which was more than I could say for myself.

Let’s not talk about that
, she said.

Fine.

Meet in Federal Square at noon?

Noon.

She signed off. I put my phone away and looked back out the window.

Ted is bad news. I should just make her dump him.
I’d thought about that, but honestly, I was a little afraid of what he might do if she did. I could make him dump her instead, but then she might know I had something to do with that, and she’d never forgive me for it.

I could make her forget, though. . . .

I’d thought that before too, but I wasn’t ready to do that. Not yet.

The train stopped at the Federal Square station and I followed the rest of the bodies out into the rain, then down off the platform. It was a cold, windy walk to the Federal Building, and by the time I got there, my jacket was soaked. In the smoked glass at the entrance, I saw my hair had frizzed.

When I went through the guard post, I was surprised to see Nico across the lobby. He stepped out of the elevator and started crossing the big seal imprinted in the marble floor, heading for the front entrance. I was supposed to be meeting him there, but he had his coat on. He was leaving.

He almost blew right past me before he saw me, and I didn’t need any special ability to know he’d already forgotten our meeting.

“Zoe,” he said. I sensed something from him, something that came off him like a high-pitched whine.

I focused on him, and the room grew brighter as a swirl of colors phased in over the crowd of heads moving through the lobby. I concentrated, letting the rest fade into the background while bringing Nico’s forward. There were red and orange there, arcing and spiking under a shell of calm. Something was wrong.

I couldn’t control Nico anymore. . . . Two years back something happened to him, and I never found out what, but it left a sort of hole in him. When I focused on him, I could still see his colors and I could still read them, but that was all. When I tried to push him or change those colors, it didn’t work. He tricked me a couple times when he knew it was coming, but he couldn’t hide everything, at least not from me. When I really burrowed down, it was like behind the moving lights there was a dark hole, and if I pushed too hard, I would push through into nothing but darkness. No matter what I tried or how gently I approached him, I always ended up in that dark spot where I couldn’t change anything.

It didn’t work on him anymore, but he could tell when I was trying to do it. He raised his eyebrows and I backed off, letting the colors disappear and the light go back to normal. I got a good look at his face for the first time, then. He looked like he’d been in a fight.

“What happened?” I asked.

“It’s a long story, Zoe, and I’m sorry, but I’ve got to run. I need you to do me a favor while I’m gone.”

Whenever Nico said “favor” he really meant he wanted me to use my ability on someone. He usually wanted to keep that quiet. I was getting annoyed.

“Yeah, I kept it ‘under my hat,’ just like you said. What kind of favor?”

“We uncovered something in a raid last night,” he said. “Something big.”

“What favor?” I asked again, raising my voice a little.

“There were two surviving witnesses,” he said. “I need you to talk to both of them—”

“Two?” There went my lunch date with Karen.

“The first one is happening now,” he said. “You’ll need to get up there. We’ve got a suspect shot in a raid who’s about to be questioned. He could know something vital to—”

“Now?”

“Yes. Vesco and the others know you might be coming, so just go in—”

“You’re not going to be there?” The whole thing was starting to stress me out. Vesco hated me; he thought I was a joke. They all thought I was a joke. Nico always kept the rest of them off me, and even then sometimes I was so nervous I could barely do anything. Working for him at the FBI was his idea in the first place. Now he was just ditching me?

“Zoe, please,” he said, pulling me aside. “This is very important. I had meant to be with you, but I think a friend of mine is in trouble and I have to check it out. Please do this for me.”

I could tell something was really bothering him. He didn’t say who the friend was or what kind of trouble he was in, but something was really bothering him.

“Fine,” I said.

“Thank you. They’re upstairs now. Here.”

He handed me a folded piece of paper with a series of questions on it. He usually did that, so I could include them in my “notes” and it didn’t look like he was telling me what to ask once we got inside. To me, though, they had started to look like grocery lists, things I was supposed to pick up for him and bring back.

I didn’t say that. I just folded the paper in my hands.

“The second part might be trickier,” he said, “but get it if you can.”

“Fine.”

“I have to go.”

“Fine.”

I watched his mind shift gears as he walked past me and out through the glass door. He shielded himself from the rain as a gust of wind made his overcoat flap around him.

I checked the paper he’d given me and got the name of the interrogation room, then took the elevator up.

It was true; they were expecting me, sort of. I could hear Vesco talking as I approached the doorway, and a couple other people inside with him.

“. . . that creepy redhead,” I heard him say. Someone chuckled.

“I don’t know why Noakes allows this shit,” someone else said. “There’s more to that story, I’ll bet.”

“You think Wachalowski hits that?” Vesco asked, and two men laughed. My face got hot.

“Can it, you two,” I heard a woman’s voice say. And then I was through the door, and everyone shut up.

There were three people in the room, and through a one-way glass panel I could see a fourth sitting in the interrogation room. Vesco was there, a smirk still on his obnoxious face, and some other guy I’d never seen who had to be the one who laughed.

The third person was a round-faced Asian woman with short, straight hair. Like the two men, she wore a dark suit and even wore a tie that somehow looked right on her. Before the other two could say anything, she stepped forward and offered her hand.

“My name is Alice Hsieh,” she said, as I shook the offered hand briefly. “Agent Wachalowski said you might be joining us. This is Agent Ves—”

“I know who he is.” Heat was coming up from under my collar. I knew my face was totally red. I felt completely humiliated.

“Then if you’ll join us in the—”

“I’ll talk to him alone,” I said. I’d just interrupted her twice, but I didn’t care. Vesco got ready to say something, and I swore—right then I swore—that if he started in on me, I’d make him shut up, no matter who saw.

I didn’t have to, though. The woman, Alice, made him shut up instead.

“That will be fine,” she said.

“Like hell,” Vesco said. Alice didn’t raise her voice, but her eyes turned serious.

“Are you contradicting me?” she asked. The look on Vesco’s face, and his friend’s face, left no question as to who in the room was in charge. He was angry, but he pressed his lips together.

“No, ma’am,” he said. Alice turned back to me.

“You’re on.”

I walked past Vesco, and took some satisfaction in the anger I could sense coming off him. The interrogation room was cold, like they usually kept it, and a man sat in a wheelchair across the table from me, almost shivering. I took out my notebook, and smoothed the paper Nico had given me over the open page, keeping it out of view.

“Who are you?” the man asked. His face was sweaty, in spite of his slight shiver. He had a tube under his nose, and a few more stuck out from inside his robe. According to Nico’s notes, his name was Franco Reese, and he’d been shot in the side not even twenty-four hours earlier.

“Never mind who I am,” I said. “I’m going to ask you some questions.”

“I’m not saying anything without my—”