The Unseen (23 page)

There was something . . . other . . . entering his room, and his whole body was telling him to get out.

He took a deep breath, surprised at the panic that was coursing through his body, and forced himself to relax. After a few beats, he held up his flashlight and thumbed it on.

A tall, thin figure, its face bathed in light, stared back at him. Lucas recognized the face immediately and wished he hadn't turned on the flashlight; he had to get away, as far away as possible.
Now
.

Flashlight and backpack clutched in his hands, Lucas turned and scrambled to the rear part of the office, then slid out the window onto the fire escape, stumbling to his knees as he landed on the steel steps.

But the . . . thing following him would expect him to run down the stairs, wouldn't it? Perhaps he could take advantage of those expectations.

Instead he raced up the iron stairs to the fifth floor, and then up a final flight to the roof of the building, dropping over the edge and pressing himself into the dark crease of the wall around the building.

A few seconds later, the main door to the fourth-floor fire escape slammed open below. The thing hadn't followed him out the window but had chosen to go out the emergency exit in the hallway. Odd. He paused for a few seconds, heard the labored breathing. A few exchanged words he couldn't make out (so the thing wasn't alone), and then the iron rungs of the fire escape began clanking: his pursuers were making their way down to the street.

Several seconds later the stairs stopped shaking, and Lucas dared a peek over the top of the building. In the glow of a single weak streetlamp down the alley, he saw two figures moving away at a brisk pace, guns drawn and held ahead of them. At this distance, they were blobs, so he couldn't see their features. But they had to be his pursuers. They hadn't shot him in his room, even though they'd had the chance. And now they were running down the alley as if they were still following him. Something didn't add up.

Lucas let out a small sigh, letting himself sink back to the surface of the roof. He waited, making his body go into its deep trancelike state. After half an hour without moving, and without hearing any other sounds, he removed himself from the dark corner, slipped over the edge of the building, and made his way carefully down the fire escape. The iron framework tried to quake with each of his steps, but he moved lightly, making sure it swayed only a bit. As he made his way to the alley level, he kept a careful watch on his surroundings, looking for danger.

Finally, on the relative stability of the paved alley, Lucas felt the fear amplifying in the back of his throat again. This was the Dark Vibration at work, yes, but in this guise, the vibration wasn't a hunger, a need.

It was innate, naked fear.

Because Lucas had looked at the first figure who had broken into his secret hiding place, and he had seen something that terrified him more than anything he could imagine.

His own face.

TWENTY-ONE

SWARM STOOD IN THE RETREATING SHADOWS AND WATCHED THE CITY around him awaken. Cars and buses belching exhaust on the street. People on foot, holding their arms close in the morning chill as they hurried to their destinations. Chain-link fences rolling away from storefronts with a dull chatter.

Even the cloud of wasps, his constant companion, showed more activity. He felt their incessant buzz in his own bones as their numbers grew from a few dozen to a few hundred in a matter of minutes. That number would stay constant until nightfall; some wasps would die, torn apart by others, while others would fall away listlessly. Even so, those left behind would be replaced by others as new wasps joined the cloud, pulled by some elemental magnetism.

Swarm felt one of the wasps alight on his forehead and begin to crawl across his skin. He smiled.

The End Game was beginning, and the person who would set that End Game in motion had left the building in front of him no more than an hour ago—just after he'd sent in his Dark Fear recruits.

He hadn't really wanted to send them into the building, but it had been necessary; this young man—this Lucas—had to be prepared. Watchful. And so Swarm needed to make sure he kept his edge.

He looked at the dark windows of the fourth floor, put his hand against the iron fire escape Lucas had used not so very long before.

Iron. Like steel. Like the room he could still feel, still smell and taste, all these years later.

Lucas had locked himself inside rooms as well, hadn't he? Kept himself isolated. And now it was time to throw open the doors, expose Lucas to the Great Wide World beyond.

He had big plans, very big plans, for this Lucas.

Swarm felt the wasp working its way down his face, across his cheek. He opened his mouth, stood unmoving as he felt the thin legs of the wasp make their way onto his lips and across his teeth.

When he felt the wasp on his tongue, he closed his mouth over it, feeling its panic as it desperately injected its stinger into the soft pink flesh of his tongue again and again.

He savored the wet taste of its fear before beginning to chew, crushing it between his molars.

And as he chewed, overhead, he already felt another wasp join the endless cloud that followed him.

TWENTY-TWO

UNDER THE HAZY TWILIGHT OF EARLY MORNING, LUCAS WALKED INTO A homeless shelter on the north side of DC.

He needed new clothes. But more than that, he needed new everything. Someone had found him
(it was me, I found myself)
, and he was sure he knew both who and how.

The who was Saul. The how was something he currently carried. Maybe his clothes, maybe something in his backpack, maybe the backpack itself. Surely a bug had been planted somewhere on him during his meeting with Saul. It made perfect sense. Which meant it was time to be reborn. Time to change every article he was wearing, donate every item he was carrying, and replace it all.

The clothing was easy; he was happy to pick out donated items from the shelter, and he regularly carried an extra set of clothes with him in his backpack.

The backpack and its contents would be more difficult. He had several stashes of cash all across the city, so money wouldn't be a problem.

At least, not an immediate problem; sometime soon, he'd have to start working again. Or panhandling.

He would have to make several stops, though: a sporting goods store for rope, utility knife, and flashlight; a hardware store for duct tape, drill, and other tools . . .

He sighed. No choice.

At least he could donate all his current items, make sure they went to someone else.

Before turning in the backpack, Lucas went through it and retrieved a few items he had to take with him. First, tapes of everything he'd recorded from Donavan's files, as well as Dilbert's footage. He'd buy new DVDs and make copies at The LiveWire café, then ditch the tapes in an alley trash can somewhere. Second, the remaining two geopatches he'd lifted from Donavan's; they might come in handy again.

He put the tapes and geopatches aside, and thought of what he'd been forced to leave behind. The mementos—the photos, scraps of clothing, and knickknacks that kept the Dark Vibration inside under control—were gone now. Certainly for the foreseeable future. Maybe forever. He'd have to leave them where they were, forever entombed above Dandy Don's Donuts.

He shook the last few items out of his backpack and noticed a small piece of paper flutter to the table where he stood. He picked it up, recognizing it as Sarea's phone number.

He hadn't talked to her for—well, it had only been a matter of days, but already it felt like several lifetimes. He felt an overwhelming urge to hear her voice. Something warm and comforting and familiar. Especially now that he had given up his totems.

He clenched the slip of paper in his hand and went to get a couple fresh changes of clothing. It would take a couple of hours to replace everything, and then he would call Sarea.

“HELLO?”

Her voice sounded warm, comfortable, familiar, and just the sound of her saying one word made tears well in his eyes.

What kind of reaction was this? Certainly nothing he'd expected. He sucked in a breath, switched the new TracFone to his other ear. “Hey, Sarea.”

“Lucas.” She spoke his name as if she'd been expecting his call.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I'm on shift,” she said. “Pretty light right now, though. I'm gonna walk into the back so I can talk.”

“Okay.” He waited a few seconds, listening to her breathe as she walked, kitchen sounds filtering by. Then, abruptly, he spoke again without thinking. “It's good to hear your voice,” he said. “Really good.”

She laughed. “You act like it's been years since we talked,” she said. “It's been—what?—three days maybe.”

“Let's just say it's been a long three days,” he answered.

“Okay,” she said. “I'm back here by the old Hobart now. We both know it'll be quiet—Briggs is on.”

“Piling 'em up for the next shift, huh?”

“Yeah. And the new kid can barely make it to the bathroom by himself.”

“Sorry.”

“Don't be. It's like you got . . . I don't know. A get-out-of-jail-free card or something. Some of us, we been here for years. So when someone goes on to a better place, that's good.”

“What makes you think I'm in a better place?”

“Just an expression. You in trouble? You need help?”

“I don't know what I'm in,” he said. “But I already feel better talking to you.”

He heard a quick breath from her on the other end of the line. “Good to hear your voice too. I'm glad you didn't decide to just disappear on me.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn't you I was trying to disappear from.”

“You sure you're okay?”

“I am now.”

“Listen,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “There's been guys coming in here. Looking for you. Not just that first guy.”

Probably not a surprise. “What do they look like?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Different guys. Three or four of 'em.”

“Anyone . . . look like me?”

“What? No. No, not at all.”

Lucas breathed a sigh of relief. He half expected to hear that the . . . thing . . . chasing him, the thing wearing his face, was out there. Wandering the streets. Living his life.

After all, he hadn't done a very good job of living it, had he?

“What can you remember about them?”

“Well, I've seen four of them, now that I think about it. Two were white, and they came in alone. But two came together, and they were Asian, I guess.”

He held his breath. “Asian? Like maybe Chinese?”

“Chinese? Yeah, sure, I suppose.”

Lucas nodded to himself. Guoanbu. Sending agents after him. Evidently Saul was pulling in reinforcements.

“How many people do you have after you, Lucas?” she asked.

“I'm losing count.”

“So let me help.”

“That would be a bad idea. A very bad idea.”

“Why?”

“All these people after me, for one. And you haven't even met the most charming ones.”

“Well, Lucas, there's a problem with guys who try to solve everything alone.”

“What's that?”

“They die alone.”

LUCAS NEEDED TO STAY HIDDEN, AWAY FROM THE PUBLIC EYE AS MUCH as possible. So late that afternoon he went back to a server room he'd found several months before. In older buildings, especially, Internet companies rented large rooms, filled with servers hooked to the Web via high-speed backbones. Techs would regularly come to the server rooms to do some maintenance, but 90 percent of the time, the servers were alone.

Which meant Lucas could be alone with them.

He popped open the door marked AUTHORIZED FASTECH EMPLOYEES ONLY using the master key he'd swiped from the management office on the first floor long ago. Inside, the mechanical hum of a hundred computer hard disks flowed over him. He smiled, feeling at home here; in many ways, the hum of these servers mirrored the Dark Vibration he always felt inside.

A built-in desk on the west wall held an older computer the techs used as a workstation when they were here; he'd watched them, carefully logged their actions in this room, on two or three occasions. He knew he could use the workstation to do some searching; his actions might be logged on FasTech's network somewhere, but the thought didn't bother him. He'd be long gone before anyone came around to investigate.

He did a news search for the name Kleiderman Delgado and came up with a couple hits in local newspapers. Kleiderman, a diplomat on staff at the Venezuelan embassy, had been released from the hospital with a leg injury following an apparent robbery attempt in his suburban DC home. His wife, Leila Delgado, had been unharmed during the break-in.

Kleiderman Delgado was a diplomat. Did that mean diplomatic immunity? Was that why the whole story was apparently being swept under the rug? And what had happened to Leila?

Again, the whole diplomat connection seemed a bit uncomfortable to Lucas; it was part of a bigger picture, he knew, that hadn't yet fully focused for him.

Troubled, he backed out of the search and went to Donavan's geopatch site. It was still operational, but the two patches he'd planted—on Saul and Dilbert—had been inactive during the last twenty-four hours. That meant the patches had probably been discovered and destroyed, or perhaps simply fallen off; they were, after all, only meant to be temporary tracking devices.

On a whim, he went to the Creep Club home page. Instead of the familiar log-in screen, he saw a new one: “All messages are now being routed through the Blackboard.”

The Blackboard? Lucas scanned his inventory of conversations with Donavan; there had been one previous mention, but no details. He did a quick Google search and found a piece of communication software called Blackboard. Was that it? If so, he had no way of finding it right now.