Xenofreak Nation, Book Three: XIA (22 page)

Scott stared at the water as the trail of bubbles got closer and then ended directly below him.

“How many divers were there?” he asked.

“Four,” Lo said. “Why?”

“I think one of them swam under me. Under the pier.”

“Makes sense. Bodies would get caught under there.”

Something about the divers bothered him, but he didn’t reply because Singh and his men had almost made it to the pier and he didn’t want them to hear him. Of the other two men, the ones who’d been forced to leap overboard, one was maybe twenty feet out, but the other was floundering. Scott didn’t want to watch him drown, but there was nothing he could do to help. The UAAV was nearby, but still in stealth mode, waiting to assist if Singh and his men resisted. It occurred to him that the divers might assist the men, but it was dark and the water no doubt murky. He didn’t know if they were even aware of what was going on at the surface.

He got to his feet as Singh reached the dock and struggled to climb out about ten feet to the left of him. Scott couldn’t see Maddy, but knew she was watching. Having been in the water himself, he didn’t think Singh’s men would give him any trouble, but he didn’t relax his grip on the submachine gun as he approached them.

All three lay gasping on the dock like fish out of water. One of them caught sight of Scott and fumbled at his life vest.

“Don’t,” Scott said.

The man hesitated only briefly before holding his hands up in surrender. He couldn’t sustain the pose, however, as cold-induced muscle spasms forced his fingers to curl into his palms and his forearms shook uncontrollably. It was clear he was no threat in his condition, so Scott bent to unfasten his vest and frisk him. He found a shoulder holster under the man’s left arm and removed the pistol.

The man in the water closest to the pier called out a garbled, “Help!”

Scott yanked the life vest off the man he’d disarmed and hurled it out over the water before getting back to the business of securing the prisoners. The second man’s holster was tucked into the back of his pants. Singh wasn’t carrying.

Scott stepped back and waited impatiently for the last man to reach him; the one who’d been floundering was nowhere to be seen. The straggler had reached the life vest he’d tossed him and was kicking listlessly towards the pier.

Maddy tromped out onto the dock, followed by four of her men.

“Hello, Father,” she said. “Have a nice swim?”

Between the heavy accent and the chattering of Singh’s teeth, it was hard to understand his response, but Scott picked out a profanity or two. Maddy sighed and looked at Scott. “What are we waiting for?”

Scott lifted his chin towards the last man in the water.

“If you’re not planning on shooting him, just leave him with the others,” Maddy said. “He’ll either make it or he won’t.”

“Just want to see if he’s armed.”

“Oh, right. Heaven forbid one of my people might get hold of a gun.”

“Would you feel the same if one of Fournier’s people got hold of it?”

She crossed her arms and made a ‘
humph’
sound.

The man did make it a few minutes later. One of Maddy’s men hauled him out of the water and Scott checked him for weapons.

“All clear,” he said, and then for Lo’s benefit, “Targets secured.”

“Roger that. We’re coming in.”

Maddy directed two of her men to lift her father.

“Where are we going to do this?” she asked.

Scott considered it for a moment. “Someplace warm and private.”

They left Singh’s men to fend for themselves and headed straight for the bus. Scott wasn’t sure the guardsmen would even let them back in, but Bastida cautiously opened the door.

“Just you three,” he said, indicating Scott, Maddy and Singh. Maddy’s men deposited Singh in a seat and left, grumbling a bit among themselves as they exited the warm bus.

The first thing Scott noticed was the guardsmen had moved Malone’s body to the back seat. They didn’t have anything to mop the blood up with, however, and gravity had spread it in a long, thin rivulet to the front of the bus.

“Saw the supply drop,” Bastida said. “Don’t suppose you brought us anything to eat?”

“Nah, brought something better.” Scott gestured to the pathetically shivering Singh. “Meet the man who tried to kill us.”

Shasta gestured for the other guard to come farther inside and ordered him to strip.

With obvious reluctance, the man took off his jacket. Esmie moved in and patted him down, finding a shiv made out of a rusty nail attached to a stick that she tucked into her pocket.

“Shirt,” Shasta said.

The man pulled his shirt off and Unger yanked it out of his hand before tearing it into strips that they used to tie him up with.

“There are a lot of xenos out there,” Bryn said. “We can’t tie them up one by one.”

Unger knelt next to the congressman. “And we can’t leave without him. He needs medical attention.”

Shasta lifted Mia’s holophone. “Let’s hope my agents are free.”

Lo answered on the first ring. “Shasta! Thank goodness. Where are you?”

“Cornered in the Northwest section of the pier. Did you get Singh?”

“Uh, yeah. That okay?”

“What’s done is done, but don’t interrogate him. And for God’s sake, don’t release him, whatever you do.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lo said. “You should know we were forced to make some unusual alliances. Maddy Singh and Nicolas Fournier were in our custody, but at the moment, we’re all sort of…working together.”

Shasta sighed, but said, “I hear you. It’s desperate times. I’ll debrief you later. Right now, I’m sending our exact coordinates. We could really use an extraction here.”

“On our way, but it’ll take at least ten minutes.”

“Bring a stretcher, a sturdy one.”

“Roger that.”

Shasta disconnected. From the darkness, Nicola asked, “What are you going to do with Mr. Singh?”

“That’s XIA business,” Shasta replied shortly.

“No. It’s everyone’s business.”

“She’s actually got a point.” Unger’s voice was harsh. “Singh won’t talk, and since our only witness is practically comatose, we won’t be able to hold him. He’ll crucify the entire Agency. We can’t keep what we know close to the vest anymore.”

“You mean go public?” Shasta sounded resigned.

“Daddy did,” Nicola said. “He said it was the only way.”

Shasta frowned. “Your father’s a psychopath.”

“He is
not
! Stop saying that!”

Bryn put a hand on Shasta’s arm. “Did you get Mia’s message?”

“No. They took my phone. Why?”

“Fournier…you know how my father told us he wanted xeno regulation enacted to pave the way for human cloning? Well, there’s more to it than that. A lot more.”

“You can’t believe anything he told you,” Unger said. “The man’s got a pathological God complex.”

Bryn nodded. “Yes, he does. And I didn’t say I believed him, just that he told me some stuff you need to hear.”

“Go on.”

She told them what Fournier had said about one man owning not only all of the government mandated bioengineering labs, but the donor waste disposal company, too. When she got to the part about how that company was selling the leftover parts on the black market instead of incinerating them, Unger snorted.

“We don’t care that he’s got competition.”

“That’s what Mia – I mean Doctor Padilla – said. Then he told her this man’s bioengineers figured out how xeno immunity works, and they fixed it so it doesn’t anymore.”

Shasta’s chin lifted in understanding. “Is that man Philip Singh?”

“I think so.”

“Of course it’s Mr. Singh,” Nicola said. “You think my
dad’s
crazy? At least he doesn’t keep people sick so he can make money off them.”

“But he does kill innocent people,” Shasta snapped.

A voice came from the doorway. “Not deliberately.”

Shasta swung around with the gun, but Dundee’s hands were already in the air. “I’m not armed.”

“Stay where you are.”

He kept his hands where Shasta could see them. “I want you to know Fournier didn’t order any of it. He had nothing to do with those people I infected at the bank. We didn’t know the typhoid would kill anyone at that point. He never asked me to infect anyone except other xenos, and he only did that because he wanted to figure out who would become carriers.”

“What about Robert Cruise?” Shasta asked. “He infected all those people at the courthouse.”

“Who?”

“Junk,” Bryn said.

Dundee shrugged. “Junk was a moron. He was pissed because he got a traffic ticket. Went there on his own for some payback.”

“He didn’t go to Edgemere on his own,” Shasta said.

“No. Fournier sent him, but he didn’t know there were kids there.”

Bryn laughed in disbelief. “He didn’t
care
. He said something horrible about killing the children of his enemies before they grew up to become enemies themselves. Why are you trying to make him sound so…innocent?”

He didn’t answer right away, just stood there as if he was searching for the right words. “He isn’t innocent. None of us are. But he saved me, in more ways than one. I was blind, literally and figuratively.”

Bryn opened her mouth to point out he’d attacked her first, but he said, “I know. I deserved it and I don’t blame you. I’m not the man I was. I don’t expect you to take my word for it, but I
see
things differently, and not just with my eyes.”

She knew he was trying to tell her something profound, but his confession only creeped her out. She did
not
want to bond with him, whether he thought he’d changed in any intrinsic way or not.

“Who ordered the attack on the congressman?” Unger asked.

Dundee glanced at Abbott, but said, “I don’t know anything about any congressman.”

“Then how’d you get in here?” Shasta asked. From the sound of it, the xenos in the outer chamber were still enjoying the fight.

“I go where I want.”

“These aren’t your men?”

“No. I’m just here for the girl.”

Bryn knew he meant Nicola. Fournier must have sent him to follow her.

“She’s in my custody.” Shasta didn’t look away from him, nor did she relax her stance. “Sir, this man is patient zero. Does Abbott have a graft?”

“I doubt it,” Unger replied.

“I’ll keep my distance,” Dundee said, “but if you want to find out who’s behind that,” he nodded towards the congressman, “then why don’t you ask them?” he nodded down at the guards.

“We don’t have time to interrogate anyone,” Shasta said.

The corners of Dundee’s mouth turned down in a thoughtful frown as he contemplated the trussed guards. “Gimme thirty seconds.”

Shasta looked from Dundee to Unger and back again, then stepped back. “Do it.”

Singh needed something dry to wear, but this time, none of the guardsmen were willing to volunteer their garments. Scott went to the back of the bus, where Malone’s body was laid out on the seat. Singh was responsible for his death, and it would be an ironic penance to force him to wear the dead man’s bloody clothes, but Scott instantly discarded the idea. Malone deserved better than that.

Scott’s own clothes were draped over the back of the seat where he’d left them. He changed back into them even though they were still damp. Then he gingerly patted Malone down, finding the holophone he’d lent him in the pocket of Dillo’s jacket.

When he brought the suit back to Maddy, her father was curled up in one of the seats holding his hands out over a heating vent, still wearing his life vest. His first intelligible words were, “We have to get off the pier.”

“Yes, well, tell that to the army,” Maddy said.

He looked up at her. “I will. Take me to them and I’ll get us all out of here.”

She took a breath and let it out slowly. “I believe you could do just that. But you won’t. If we took you, you’d have us arrested at the very least. You’re nothing if not predictable.”

“Then why not kill me?”

“Because my friends would like to talk to you.”

“And who are these friends?”

“The ones who blew your sorry ass out of the water,” Scott said.

Singh’s bleary eyes took in the submachine gun before sliding back to Maddy. “I have nothing to say, except if you don’t get off this pier, you’ll die.”

“You might be in danger, but I’m not.” Maddy pointed to her one brown eye. “I’ve got this, remember?”

“I’m not referring to the typhoid. You think I don’t have a graft?”

Maddy’s face didn’t betray her confusion, but her words did. “You’re utterly against them.”

Singh’s lips twisted in scorn. “Only because I saw what it did to you.”

“What does that mean? What did it do to me?”

“You were a young
man
before he put that bloody pig eye in your head. From a
female
pig.”

Maddy laughed. “Are you serious? Oh, my dear father. All you had to do was ask and I would have told you I was born this way. I’ve always known.”

Singh turned away, his face frozen in a look of abhorrence.

“But if you must know,” Maddy continued, “the surgery did change me. You forced it on me not because you were concerned about my eyesight, but because you were ashamed of my albinism. You wanted me to
look
normal, as if that would help me
be
normal. It was then I realized you would never accept me. In a way, it gave me the confidence I lacked – the strength to defy you and be myself.”

She straightened her spine and held the suit out. “Now take off those wet clothes.”

“No! Haven’t you been listening to me? We have less than two hours to get off this pier!”

Scott stepped closer, leaning over Singh menacingly. “Why?”

Singh clamped his lips shut, leaning forward to remove his life vest. “You have to take me to Colonel Carter. I give you my word I won’t mention any of what happened before.”

“You mean the part where you attacked us? Tried to kill me?” Maddy asked disdainfully. “You’re such a hypocrite. Your word doesn’t hold much weight here.”

Singh took off his shirt and reached for the suit in Maddy’s hand, but she just stared openmouthed at the xenograft on his upper arm. It was in the shape of a rearing lion, but wasn’t made out of fur.

Scott took one look at it and turned to Bastida. “Keep your men back.”

“What?” Singh snatched the suit out of Maddy’s hand. “I told you I had one.”

“A lion.” Her tone held mild admiration. “It’s beautiful. My compliments to your surgeon.”

He thrust his arms through the sleeves of the jacket. “He was an artisan. The lion is from our family crest, not that you would care to recall.”

“And the donor?” she asked with a lift of her eyebrows. “Crocodile, is it?”