Working Stiff (37 page)

“Yeah, I gave you an elephant load,” he said. “Here we go.”

He lifted her right knee up. She felt it distantly, like something in a dream, and then he rolled her over on her side. That felt good, too. She smiled and tried to tell him how it felt but her lips wouldn’t make words, just bright bubbles of sounds.

His knife cut a slash in the back of her thigh.

Bryn made a wordless sound of surprise, betrayal, and pain; even with the numbness and happy, drugged warmth, she felt the invasion, and kept feeling it as the knife cut deeper, separating muscle, digging, probing. She tried to wiggle away from it. Joe’s hand clamped down hard, holding her in place. “Steady,” he said. He sounded weirdly out of tune. “Almost there. It’s in deep, and I’m going to have to pry it off the bone.” She felt another small, bright star of a shot. Another cascade of warmth. This time, it didn’t crest quite as high, and it receded much faster, leaving her cold and horribly aware that the knife was in her, moving,
prying
. She whimpered and panted and tried not to scream, and then something happened with a white-hot stab of pure agony and she screamed into Joe’s muffling hand and couldn’t stop until it began to subside.

“Good,” he said. His voice was low and soothing. “You did good, Bryn. It’s out. The wound’s already closing. Relax now; relax.”

She kept on shuddering and whimpering, and a heavy warmth dropped over her—a blanket, smelling of cigars and wet dog. She didn’t care what it smelled like. Anything helped.

Pansy came back about ten minutes later. She froze, silhouetted in the opening for a second, then climbed in and slammed the door fast. “God, it looks like a slaughterhouse in here,” she said. “Is she all right?”

“She will be. Here.” Joe handed her something wrapped in a piece of tissue. “Take that; throw it in the back of a truck that’s getting ready to pull out. Go.”

She handed him her purse and bailed out again without any questions. Joe took the scanner out and looked at the stored results.

“Hey,” Bryn whispered. “Did it work?”

“The scanner? Yeah. I’ve got six cards I can work with here. It’ll get us what we need.”

“Can’t they trace them?”

“Sure. But we don’t use them. We make the clones and sell them on, and use the cash we get paid for it. That’s untraceable.” He glanced back at her. “You doing all right?”

“Yeah.” She swallowed and tried not to think about the mess of her leg. “It still hurts.”

“No doubt. I had to take out a pretty good chunk of bone. It’ll heal, but it’ll hurt while it does. Best thing for you to do is stay horizontal.” He uncapped another bottle of water and handed it to her, and helped her sit up to sip. She almost threw it back up, but the nausea passed quickly.

She
was
healing. Another half an hour, maybe, and she’d be almost normal again. McCallister would be impressed with the speed of—

McCallister. Bryn remembered in a horrified rush that she hadn’t told Fideli about Harte’s orders … and McCallister wasn’t with them. “Joe? Where is he?” Her voice trembled.

“Pat’s on the run, like us. I’ll get in touch with him and let him know you’re okay.”

“But he’s alive?”

“Yeah. She sent a team to get him. Didn’t work out so well for them, I understand. Harte sent one of her revived men after him, and Pat sent him back in boxes.” He slid a credit card blank into the machine and pressed buttons. “He’ll join us when it’s safe.”

“It’s never going to be safe. Do you know what they were doing in there?”

“Ramping up the program.” Joe sounded grim. “Harte was getting pressure from the CEO to go to the military with the drug, and he was going to get his way. She had to move if she wanted to keep control. She did, I guess. That place is a death factory. She addicts everybody, and then nobody can cross her.”

“It’s worse than that,” Bryn said. “They’re going after politicians. Bankers. Leaders of all kinds. She’s out to take over, Joe.
Really
take over. And she has to be stopped.”

“Nice idea, babe, but we had a hell of a time shooting our own way out. I don’t think waging a three-person crusade is going to get us anywhere. Four, if we can hook up with Pat. Five, if you count Manny, which I don’t.” He shook his head. “Best we can do is blow the whistle loud and hard, now that we have you.”

“Have … me?”

“Without you, we’re paranoid schizophrenics babbling about the zombie apocalypse. With you, maybe we’ve got a fighting chance to have someone believe us.”

“Is that why you—”

“No,” Joe said. “McCallister was going to come get you himself. He said he promised. It would have been a disaster; no way could he have gotten in without being caught, much less gotten you out. Me and Pansy, we’re not really on their radar. Well, weren’t, until then. I gotta tell you, Pat and I don’t come to blows real often, but we did over this thing. He was damn sure going to get himself killed for you.” He gave her a long, assessing look. “You do know why, right?” She shook her head, but it was a pro forma lie, and he smiled. “Hey, I’m the last one to point fingers about getting personally involved. I met a girl on a job once. Look how that turned out.”

“You mean Kylie?”

“Exactly. Being professional will only get you so far, and then you’ve got to be human.”

Horror flooded her, on the heels of that warm moment. “Joe—your family—”

“They’re safe,” he said. “Pat saw them moved out to a secure location, as soon as he knew this was going south. Nobody’s going to touch my kids, or Kylie.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well, it’s going to take a bouquet of roses the size of the frigging Rose Parade to make this up to her, but my wife knew what she was getting when she married me. And the kids think it’s a cool adventure.” Fideli shrugged. “Which it is, right?”

Unbelievable.
“You got
shot
.”

“Eh, I’ve been shot for worse causes. And we just rescued you, shot our way out, had a car chase. Plus, there’s this whole coming-back-from-the-dead thing. My kids would be
very
impressed.”

“I’m very impressed, too.”

“Well, it wasn’t a clockwork operation, but it’ll do. At least you’re on the mend.”

For now
. Bryn swallowed again, miserably aware of her own vulnerability. “Joe … I’m going to need another shot,” she said. “And one tomorrow. And one the day after. What exactly are we going to do about that?”

Fideli kept his eyes on the credit card machine. “You want me to lie to you and tell you I’ve got a brilliant plan on that?”

“Would you?”

“Probably not. I’m hoping McCallister does.”

Pansy slid the door back, jumped in, and slammed it shut, panting from her run. “Done. I put the thing in the bed of a truck with Texas plates. As far as I know, they’ll chase him all the way back to San Antonio,” she said, and took a moment to lay her hand gently on Bryn’s head. “You doing okay?”

“Peachy,” Bryn murmured. “I have a giant hole in my leg, and we were just talking about how much Returné we don’t have.”

Pansy gave her a slow, delighted smile and said, “You two don’t think I’d let you down, do you?” Even Fideli turned to look at her when she said that, eyebrows raised. Pansy picked up a small box from the floorboard. “
Et
voilà.” She opened it.

Inside were vials filled with clear liquid. Seven of them.

“How …” Bryn’s voice failed her.

“Where do you think I got the shot to give you? I made sure I was the one Harte tapped to pull it from the supply. They had two boxes out on the cart, since they were assembly-lining the staff. I grabbed one. We’ll need to pick up syringes—that’s all. Oh, and just in case …” Pansy handed her a gold-edged Pharmadene ID. “Irene Harte’s. It probably won’t work, but just in case you ever wanted a souvenir, that’s probably the best you can get. Manny won’t let me keep it. He’ll assume it’s bugged.”

“Is it?”

“Not anymore.” Pansy gave her a cheery smile.

“I’d kiss you if I could get up,” Bryn said. “God, thank you.”

“No charge. Well, no
extra
charge. Joe’s already paying me.”

“Paying you …”

“I don’t come cheap, sweetie,” Pansy said. “Manny doesn’t like it when I leave him all alone. He’s got another batch of inhibitor ready, by the way, so when you take me home, you can get your booster on that, too.”

A week. A whole luxurious
week
of life, guaranteed right there.

And what about after that?
But for the first time, Bryn felt the tight fist of anxiety in her chest ease, just a little, and as Fideli and Pansy spoke in low, quiet tones, and Fideli pulled the van out to drive on, she finally surrendered to her need to rest.

When they finally arrived at Manny Glickman’s lab, hours later, it was chaos. Even Pansy seemed shocked when, as she helped Bryn in the big fire door, she ran into a giant pallet of neatly stacked boxes. “Great,” she said, staring at them. “Just great.”

“What’s going on?” Fideli asked, from behind them.

“Get in and stay right here,” Pansy said. “Whatever happens, don’t go all Rambo on me, all right?”

That didn’t sound good. Neither did the tension in Pansy’s voice. Edging around the boxes, Bryn saw why; the place was crowded with boxes stacked everywhere. No more lab equipment; it was all packed. Big machines were crated and secured, ready for transport. The curtains at the back of the big room were open, and more pallets of boxes were stacked there.

“Freeze!” a magnified voice said from overhead, and Bryn looked up sharply to see a figure above them on a narrow catwalk. It was almost obscured by the lights, and she squinted and just barely made out Manny Glickman’s form up there.

He worked the action on a pump shotgun, and the crisp
chunk-chunk
sound made them all obey. Even Fideli. Bryn raised her hands in surrender.

“Jesus, Manny, it’s me.” Pansy sighed. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Moving,” he said. “You were supposed to be back four hours ago.”

“I told you it wasn’t guaranteed, baby.”

“You didn’t pack all this in the last four hours.”

Manny was silent for a few seconds, then said, “Are you vouching for them, Pansy?”

“Of course I am, or I wouldn’t have brought them up here, would I?” Her voice was gentle, but as Bryn glanced at her, she saw that Pansy was worried. “It’s all right. Trust me. Her tracker’s gone, and we weren’t followed.”

“I thought about blowing up the van,” Manny said. “You know that, don’t you? You didn’t come in the right car. You said you’d be in a red sedan.”

“Pansy, what the hell …?” Fideli murmured. She shushed him.

“We had to improvise. Things were crazy. But we got out, and everything’s fine, and I brought you a present.” She held up a single vial of Returné. “Enough to run tests on for months.”

It was a shiny treat, but Manny failed to take the bait. “Make them sit down on the floor, right now. Hands behind their heads.”

“Manny—”

“Now!”
His shout rattled the rafters. Pansy sighed and turned to Bryn and Joe.

“Please,” she said. “I need to back him off the ledge.”

Kneeling down with her stiff and still-healing leg hurt, but it was better than risking Manny going all hair-trigger on them; Bryn was more concerned about Joe, who’d had a very full day for a man with a recently collapsed lung. He shrugged off her silent concern, though, and sat down a lot more easily than she did. By unspoken agreement, they kept their hands in the air.

“Okay, they’re down,” Pansy said. “Can I
please
come talk to you?”

“If they move—”

“They’re not going to move. Can
I
?”

He hesitated for a long moment, and then said, “I’m coming down. Stay there.”

His heavy footsteps clanked overhead and down a staircase somewhere in the shadows to the right. When Manny finally came back into the glow of the overheads, he was dressed in black—black turtleneck, black pants, a black tactical vest with pockets bulging with ammunition. He carried the shotgun at a neutral but ready position.

And his eyes were more than a little crazy. He didn’t take his gaze away from Bryn and Fideli, except for a very fast glance at Pansy.

He handed her a syringe.

“What’s this for?”

“Blood sample,” he said.

“She’s okay, I told you—”

“Not from her. From you.”

“Jesus, Manny!”

This time, the glance he sent her lingered, and was half-apologetic. But still half-crazy. “I need to know that you’re still you. They could have revived you. You could be acting under protocols.”

She didn’t try to talk him out of it, and Bryn thought it was sad that Manny’s paranoia was actually quite practical now; she wouldn’t have believed that kind of thing two weeks ago, but now, it was surprisingly rational. Pansy just walked over to the nearest flat surface, drew a sample of her own blood (not something Bryn thought she could have accomplished with nearly as much aplomb), and handed back the full syringe. Manny backed up, keeping his eyes fixed on all of them, opened up a box nearby, and took out what looked like a sheet of paper. He squirted a small amount of the blood onto the surface. It soaked in quickly, and a blue ring spread out from the crimson blot.

Manny’s body language visibly relaxed. “You’re okay,” he said. He sounded shaken. “You’re really okay.”

“Of course I’m okay, idiot.” Pansy took the shotgun from him, broke open the stock, and set it aside. Then she hugged him, hard, and kissed him. “Thanks for worrying.”

“I always worry.”

“Okay, worrying more than normal.”

Manny looked over his shoulder, first at Bryn, then Fideli. “I know about her. What about him?”

“He’s all right.”

“Test him. Prove it.”