Xenofreak Nation, Book Three: XIA (24 page)

Bryn wanted to agree with Mia that the army wouldn’t do something so heinous, but Mia had a history of denying things that later turned out to be true. She also wanted to believe that the army was here to protect them and that even a ‘small faction’ wouldn’t be so corrupt as to follow such a horrendous order. It was terrifying to think that any minute the ground beneath her feet might crumble into the Hudson River.

The crowd surrounding them had moved subtly closer. A fresh buzz of interest seemed to have sprouted up out of nowhere as more and more faces turned towards the group around the UAAV. Bryn caught a glimpse of the thin man walking among the detainees, which was puzzling, since he seemed so averse to making eye contact she’d assumed he was autistic or something.

Fournier looked as if he was about to continue his rant, but Scott shifted the gun so it was pointed in his direction and said, “Shut it.”

“What are you going to do? Shoot him?” Nicola cried. “Maybe he’s just saying what you won’t admit – that we’re screwed!”

She burst out crying, and Fournier put his good arm around her. Then it seemed like everyone began talking at once.

Bryn stood next to Scott in a bubble of silence. She snuck a hand into his damp back pocket, noticing for the first time that he’d put his own clothes back on. It seemed like this might be a good opportunity, if not her last opportunity, to tell him how she felt. She shifted her weight until their hips were touching and said, “I heard you last night.”

He looked down at her, eyebrows raised. “You did?”

She nodded.

“Oh. Why didn’t you say anything?”

She lifted a shoulder. “I just figured if you wanted me to hear it, you would have told me when I was awake.”

He let out a little laugh. “It
was
kinda chickenshit, wasn’t it?”

“Kinda.”

“I meant it, though.”

She smiled. “Good.”

He put a hand to her cheek and bent his head. The instant their lips touched, her quills went flat to her head and she leaned in, desperate to make it last. When he pulled away, he murmured, “We’ll get out of this.”

“I know we will,” she whispered.

Behind him, the door to the UAAV opened. Shasta ducked out, but stood on the running board looking down at them. “We need ideas and we need them fast. Singh says we’ve got a little over an hour.”

“I say we fight our way out,” Scott said. “Attack the barricade.”

Several people raised their voices in support.

“There’re only six of us,” Shasta replied.

“Excuse me,” Maddy said, “but we number in the thousands.”

Shasta glanced down at Scott’s submachine gun. “They’ve got all the firepower.”

Scott pulled two guns out of the back of his jeans and handed one to Shasta. Then he deliberately turned to Maddy and gave her the second one. She accepted it with a dignified lift of her chin. “Thank you. For your trust.”

Scott turned back to Shasta. “There’s more where that came from in the bus, and the UAAV’s stocked up, too.”

“We’ve got the zook,” Jason said.

“And they’ve got tear gas,” Shasta replied. “Couple of canisters and it’s game over.”

“We’ve got four gas masks on board,” Lo said.

Jason put a hand on Shasta’s shoulder. “All we need is to create a hole big enough for one of us to get out. Tell the world what’s going on here.”

Shasta looked torn, but only briefly. “It really is the only way, isn’t it? And at least this way, the Army can’t keep ignoring us.”

Everything happened quickly after that. The XIA agents mobilized in a matter of minutes, deciding where to hit the barrier, and distributing the weapons and what protective gear they had among the Mad Eye and XBestia. Scott ran off with Maddy and a group of men to the bus. Instead of impeding their progress, the crowd parted to let them through, cheering them on. The field swelled with detainees as the ones who’d been hanging out near the barricade vacated the area.

Jason came out of the UAAV with what looked like a portable rocket launcher slung across his back. He and the others were waiting for Scott to reach the bus, get the guns, and then give the signal from the ramp. Bryn stood with him and Mia, chewing nervously on a fingernail.

“So, Doc,” he said casually. “You never did say what kind of graft you got.”

“No, I didn’t,” Mia responded.

The disappointment that crossed Jason’s face came and went so swiftly Bryn almost thought she imagined it. It occurred to her that he really liked Mia, who was as cool and distant as ever. Bryn didn’t really know her that well; maybe she had a boyfriend – but then again, she couldn’t imagine the germophobic doctor ever kissing Jason the way Bryn had just kissed Scott.

With a flash of comprehension, she turned to her. “
That’s
why you got it!”

Bryn couldn’t see Mia’s expression behind the mask, but her eyes widened. “I’d rather not discuss it.”

“Oh, really?” Bryn said. “What if you die without ever knowing what it’s like?”

“What what’s like?” Jason asked.

Bryn knew it wasn’t her place to expose Mia’s secret, but she couldn’t let it go. “Tell him.”

Mia closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she seemed resigned. “It’s a Gila monster.”

“What?” Jason exclaimed. “Why would you do that? Don’t you know what it’ll do to you?”

Mia’s head went back. “I was
hoping
it would…help me.”

He frowned and started to respond, but then the confusion cleared from his face as understanding dawned. “Ohhh,” he breathed. “Yeah. Yeah, it’ll definitely help with the—the germ thing.”

“I just want to enjoy being touched,” Mia’s thick voice gave away her emotional state, and Bryn suddenly wished she were anywhere but witnessing this.

Someone shouted, “There they are!” and they all looked up at the ramp, where Scott and the others were holding the guns up in triumph.

Jason started backing away, but he pointed at Mia, eyebrows raised. “We’ll discuss this later.” Then he flashed an unabashed grin and joined Shasta and the ragtag team of xenos as they headed across the field.

Scott had only been a Marine for a day, but basic training had pounded home several fundamental rules, the most obvious being ‘know your enemy.’ As he approached the barricade and the soldiers patrolling it, he had to reconcile himself to the fact that he was about to turn on his own. The soldiers were only following orders, but it was the orders that made them the enemy.

The barricade was constructed mainly out of sand bags and barbed wire, built across the main entrance to the pier. Scott and the men and women with him on the ramp stopped just outside the tunnel entrance, while Jason and the others waited in the interior corridor. Shasta strode unarmed into the open and approached the nearest soldier.

“Stay back!” he called.

She stopped. “My name is Shasta Fox. I’m a senior agent with the XIA. Are you aware that this pier is going to be blown up in a little over an hour?”

“We have orders not to talk to any of you. Please back away from the barricade.”

“There are thousands of innocent people here. I have reason to believe your commanding officer has been compromised.”

The soldier’s lips tightened. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Shasta said. “And I’d be happy to say that to his face.”

The plan was for her to goad one of them into calling command, but Scott didn’t think it would work. The detainees had no doubt spent the entire day unsuccessfully appealing to these same soldiers.

“Go on,
get
!” The soldier lifted his rifle and looked through his scope at her. It was meant to be a threat, but she didn’t even blink. Then a lone shot rang out. For a moment, Scott thought the soldier jerked back from recoil when he’d fired at Shasta, but then he saw one of the xenos with Jason standing with arm outstretched, holding a smoking gun. He’d fired the first shot, hitting the soldier in the shoulder.

The other three soldiers raised their weapons as Shasta turned and ran, yelling, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”

The undisciplined Mad Eye and XBestia gang members ignored her. The soldiers took cover behind the barricade as bullets flew. Scott swore. They only had a limited amount of ammunition, and at this rate, the fight would be over before it began. When Shasta rounded the corner into the shelter of the corridor, Jason stepped out and knelt down, the zook resting on his shoulder. Their only chance was to blow the barricade and overwhelm the soldiers with sheer numbers.

“Fire in the hole!” Jason shouted.

Bryn stood by the UAAV with Mia, hands shoved deep in her pockets, fingers clenched so tightly her nails dug painfully into her palms. Word of the breakout attempt had spread. The detainees who’d camped out inside the structure abandoned their sites and wandered out onto the field. She’d never seen so many people in one place.

A huge contingent of men in orange jumpsuits had gathered outside the corridor leading to the barricade. For some reason, the prisoners had nominated themselves as the second wave, behind the agents and armed xenos. She didn’t know why they were willing to risk their lives on what amounted to a rumor, but maybe their choice wasn’t about the possibility of the pier blowing up. Maybe they just saw this as an opportunity to
really
break out of jail instead of just being ‘free’ on the pier. Either way, she was grateful for them – their jumpsuits would make bright targets. As soon as the thought occurred to her, she was ashamed of herself, but in her desperation, she couldn’t help it; anything that might attract a bullet otherwise intended for Scott got her approval.

She wasn’t able to see much of the action to begin with, but after the explosion sent a cloud of dust rolling out onto the field, all she could do was listen in fear and dread.

Gunfire and screams.

Somehow she knew those sounds would occupy her dreams for weeks – assuming she survived this.

Mia was staring at her holophone, obsessively watching the clock tick down. The cloud of dust cleared, only to be replaced by another cloud, a greenish one. Just as Shasta predicted, the army used tear gas grenades that sent hundreds of xenos running away from the action. In no time at all it became obvious the agents’ gambit had failed. The question remained whether anyone had managed to escape.

The injured began trickling back onto the field, and the detainees once again turned towards the UAAV looking for answers.

Bryn noticed the thin man talking to Fournier moments before he approached her. He raised his eyes to her face briefly before looking back at the ground. “Tell them who you are.”

“What?”

She flinched away when he reached out, but all he did was push the hood of her coat off her quills. As if he’d flipped some kind of switch, people began murmuring and crowding even closer.

“It
is
her!” Someone said.

“Savvy was right! Bryn’s here!”

Bryn knew that pretty much everyone had heard of her, but their reaction was odd, especially under the circumstances. What did it matter if she were here? On the pier, she was just another xeno. And Savvy? What did they mean when they said he was right? Then with a flash of insight, she realized who the thin man must be. She looked around, but he’d ducked his head inside the UAAV and was talking with Lo. Then, somewhat to Bryn’s surprise, Lo invited him inside.

Bryn didn’t want to turn back around; she practically felt the crowd staring at the back of her head in expectation. But expectation of what?

A few minutes later, Lo scrambled out of the UAAV, face tense with excitement. Above her, the holosphere had appeared like a huge blue bubble over the vehicle.

“We’ve got a plan. See that building?” She pointed to a nearby skyscraper, one of the few in Lower Manhattan with lights shining out of some of its windows. “It’s obviously got a backup generator, right? Savvy located their wifi signal and rigged the UAAV’s antenna to piggyback on it. We can send a live stream!”

“Will anyone see it?” Bryn asked.

“Right now, Savvy’s jacking into a broadcast channel with millions of viewers.”

Bryn and Mia exchanged a hopeful look. When Bryn turned back to Lo, the older woman was holding a holophone out. “Here. You’re on, kiddo.”

“What? No! Have Savvy do it.”

“We need to appeal for help, and he spent the last two days riling everyone up against xenos. They’re not going to listen to him if he does an about-face. Besides, he’s autistic, he
can’t
do it.”

“But why me?”

“Who else?” Lo said earnestly. “They
know
you. Talk to them, Bryn!”

They’d never even had a chance. If the soldiers hadn’t for the most part been avoiding kill shots, it would have been a massacre.

Scott staggered back onto the field, one arm around Shasta and other around Alton. He wasn’t sure who was helping whom; they’d all been hit. Both Scott and Alton had taken rounds in the chest – stopped by their vests – but Shasta had been hit in the lower leg.

The zook shell had taken out the sand bag barricade as planned, but before any of them had a chance to test the breach, tanks had moved in, forming a barrier of their own. The soldiers hadn’t bothered to fire the big guns, though – didn’t need to. Just as Shasta predicted, they’d simply launched a tear gas canister or two and began picking off the coughing, gagging xenos at their leisure. Scott had fit his gas mask over his face in time, but it hadn’t made any difference.

He’d like to think things might have gone differently if the xenos hadn’t panicked and started shooting, but the truth was: the army had swatted them like flies. It was a miracle they were still alive. The aftermath left the tunnel and corridor in chaos. Men in orange jumpsuits lay everywhere. He’d only found Alton and Shasta by talking to them through the earbugs. He hadn’t seen Maddy fall, but had no idea where she’d gone.

He expected to see the detainees on the field running around like someone had stuck a firecracker in their anthill, but most of them were standing still, gazing towards the center of the pier. When Scott saw what they were looking at, he stumbled and nearly fell, pulling Alton and Shasta to an abrupt stop with him. Lo had activated the holosphere again and Bryn’s face stared out at the crowd. She looked terrified, but then she swallowed visibly and began to talk.

“Hi. Um, I’m Bryn Vega, and I don’t have a lot of time.
We
don’t have a lot of time. They tell me this broadcast is streaming live on the interweb, and it’s pretty much our last hope, so that’s who I’m talking to now. The people out there who aren’t stuck here on Poppy’s Pier with me and just about every other xeno in New York City. If you saw the news helicopter footage, then you know the army rounded us up and dumped us here. Anyway, I need to tell you two things. First off, and I know this is gonna sound crazy, but,” she stopped and took a deep breath, “they’re going to blow up the pier and kill everyone on it in about an hour. Um, I guess we have a—a clip that’ll prove how we know it’s true.”

Bryn’s face disappeared, to be replaced by Unger in the UAAV.

“This is Deputy Director Mark Unger of the XIA. With me is Senior Agent Shasta Fox. Behind me is the body of Congressman Darrell Abbott, who was kidnapped along with me from his car in the Holland Tunnel and brought to Poppy’s Pier, where we are recording this message. Unknown conspirators allowed our attackers to bring us onto the pier, and Congressman Abbott was subsequently beaten to death. This holo is date and time stamped and what follows is the taped statement of Philip Singh.”

The holo changed to Singh’s face. He was sitting in the UAAV, still dressed in Maddy’s ridiculous suit.

“State your name and occupation, and acknowledge that you’ve been read your rights,” Unger said.

“My name is Philip Singh, CEO of Novusimha International. I’ve been read my rights, but I’m offering this statement under extreme duress,” he looked off camera insolently. “It’s not a confession.”

“Duress?” Unger sounded incensed. “Of your own creation. Go on.”

“I happen to be privy to a plan to destroy the infrastructure of the pier where the xenos are being detained.”

Scott noticed he worded his statement very carefully. He’d only admitted to knowing about the plan, when it was very likely he’d had a lot more to do with it than that. He also made it sound like he wasn’t even on the pier.

“What kind of explosives and detonation?” Unger asked.

“I wasn’t informed about the explosives, but they’re on timers. Can’t be stopped now. Key supporting pylons will be destroyed and the pier is expected to collapse into the river in a little over an hour.”

Scott had to give it to Fournier, he’d predicted the method exactly.

“Who gave the order?” Unger asked.

Singh lifted his head, but refused to answer.

“Why is the pier being targeted?” It was Shasta’s voice.

Again, Singh didn’t respond.

Bryn’s face reappeared and she looked startled for a moment before composing herself.

“The second thing you need to know is about the super typhoid. It’s true it’s spread through the air by xenos, but only those with—” she turned and Mia’s face appeared in the background. Mia said quietly, “Crocodilian, which includes alligator, but that’s unsubstantiated.”

“Right,” Bryn continued. “We’ve been told that any xeno with a crocodile or alligator graft might be a carrier. It doesn’t mean they are, just that they might be if they were exposed. Xenos with other grafts don’t appear to spread it. So please…stop the violence.”

Scott urged Shasta and Alton to keep walking. He thought Bryn would end the transmission now that she’d delivered the message, but she seemed to have gathered her courage, and kept on talking.

“I think a lot of you know who I am. The girl whose own father…well…” she gestured to her head and a sprinkling of xenos in the crowd laughed. “But knowing my story doesn’t mean you know
me
. And seeing someone with a xenograft doesn’t mean you know what kind of person they are. I’m not going to lecture you on tolerance. You either have it, or you don’t. I grew up with the most intolerant parent ever, and yet, somehow I—I try not to judge. Maybe I never would have chosen this life, and for sure my donor didn’t give its life willingly or knowingly, but my graft has given me a—a gift.

“Xenografts aren’t just an extreme form of body art. That’s how it started out; as a fad or a statement, but it turns out there’s more to it, and us being immune to the typhoid is only the beginning.

“Thing is…there are people who didn’t want me to know that. People I should have been able to trust. But I’m no scientist – I have to rely on experts to explain the complicated stuff. And I have no way of knowing if they’re keeping information from me or lying for their own benefit. The only thing I can do to protect myself from misinformation is to question what I’m told and keep an open mind. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I have to find my own truth.”

The crowd nearest Bryn was thick, but they’d left a big open space around her. Scott, Shasta and Alton pushed their way through to the front. Bryn saw him and her eyes shone with unshed tears.

“Anyway,” she said. “In case we don’t get out of this, at least you know what really happened here. Thanks for listening...”

The holosphere disappeared, the crowd burst into applause, and Bryn ran into Scott’s arms.