CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

PREDAWN LEACHED ACROSS the eastern horizon, a milky violet, while the town continued to sleep. Marisol had refused the hospital, saying it’d be too risky, and besides there was still work to be done. She had taken me up on a handful of OTC pain meds.

We spent the first few minutes of the cross-town drive in silence, an indulgence compared to the urgency and deadliness of the game we’d been playing. I spent the time wondering if Adel was really with the THS and if Evie would ever forgive me. I couldn’t afford to speculate whether she would get the chance to or not.

I kept to the bottom of the split-level interstate at the heart of Austin, grateful for the light Saturday morning traffic. Meanwhile, I slipped back and forth between my conscious thoughts and background mind, like a child dangling his legs in a pool.

The rigid separation between the two had given way to a sort of oil-in-water relationship. Still distinct, the two flowed around each other rather than wrestling for dominance. The change allowed me to feel my anxiety over Evie without surrendering to it.

“I doubt we’ll find Ms. Love at home, but it might lead us to her, or give us something we can use.” Marisol broke the silence.

“Agreed.” We fell easily back into our professional relationship. From the beginning we’d worked well together due to a perfect balance of mutual arrogance and respect. I’d thought all along sex would spoil the functionality, but it didn’t feel that way under the current conditions. We needed each other as accomplices in crime. “Although,” a thought occurred to me, “what if she wants to be found?”

“It’s a stretch.”

“She’s contacted me repeatedly, setting up new meeting places, almost eagerly at times.”

“They’ve got Evie. They want you.”

“But why? All she’s mentioned is trying to keep things from getting worse. She called my work the problem.”

“She used those exact words, ‘the problem’?”

I played the conversation in my mind. “Yes. She said my work was the problem and that her job was to keep things from getting worse, that if anyone had listened to her years ago my work would be heralded. But no one had listened to her. Her repeating of that last phrase was what stood out to me. Evie’s claimed I never listen to her several times this school year.”

Marisol shifted in her seat, trying to find a more comfortable position for her splinted arm. “If the THS wanted to stop your research, we just did that for them.”

“There’s still this.” I tapped my head, the gesture triggering a memory of Marisol at the lab. “That reminds me. Earlier, when I mentioned the backup—”

“About that,” she sighed. “Well, I didn’t think I’d still be sitting here. I suppose both our noggins are valuable for the same reason.”

“The backup?”

“Wetware. Always been right here. Part of the job I suppose. The eye implant came first, that was to repair a…mistake, from my last assignment. While I was recovering they offered me this job. I thought it was a demotion, one I deserved. I agreed to the hard drive implant, grateful to be getting a second chance.”

“But the EM?”

“Shielded.” She thumped her head.

I nodded, remembering her steady response to the twitchers the first time we encountered them. “Against the hybrids.”

“I and a handful of others were the early solution. It’s what I’ve been designed for.” As I rolled to a stop at an abandoned red light, she shifted to look at me. “Granted, nothing as effective as you. People are going to want that mind of yours now more than ever.”

I turned the Camaro, heading westbound. “With or without me, it’s only a matter of time before the admin or Oleg picks up the trail and unlocks the lost gene.”

“You don’t get it. There’s a war coming, Buck. Been coming for a long while. Not over natural resources using conventional weapons and combustion engines. This one will be over the human mind itself. With your new abilities, how hard would it be to run a power plant?”

“Dear Lord.”

She nodded. “Forget oil. Who needs it? But even with endless clean energy, there’s still gotta be a war.” She sighed. “The parties prescient enough to see the war coming have been racing for the perfect weapon—an old fashioned arms race, with a new twist. From where I’m sitting, Buck, you’re that weapon.”

I shivered. How could I be a weapon? Yet, Oleg had preached about me reaching my full potential, about coming with him, about joining him.

“It could be you the THS is after, not your research.” Marisol reached beneath the seat, pulling out a wad of plastic grocery sacks.

“Or we could be dealing with someone else altogether.”

“I’d had that thought myself.” She sloughed the sacks onto the floorboard, revealing a curious handgun.

“What’s that?”

“Tri-star. Don’t make ‘em anymore. It was my grandfather’s, an emblem of loyalty to the state. Ironic given the circumstances.” She tested the action. “The address should be just ahead on the left. Pull over here.”

I did so, and we strolled casually down the block, like a morning jogger who’d happened across an old acquaintance. Except instead of college memories, we chatted jovially about how we’d split up and enter the house. With my newly developing abilities, Marisol reckoned I didn’t need a firearm. I had to agree.