Walker had been in worse situations—which, looking back over his life, told him it might be time to take stock of his choices—but he’d hardly ever been in those situations alone. Now he hustled through the woods following a trio of young women, one of whom could kill them all if the urge swept over her again.
So you’re not alone, Walker thought, grimly amused. He would have been far better off by himself, or if he only had to worry about Maeve Sinclair.
He watched the three women, saw the way Priya held her left arm against her body, and wondered how much more exertion she could take, how much blood she had lost.
Maeve had taken point, with Priya and Rose following about ten feet behind her. They might love her, but neither of them were foolish enough to want Maeve in a blind spot. She seemed aware of her surroundings, able to carry on a conversation, but her gaze shifted constantly, twitchy as a junkie, and when Walker had tried to talk to her, she had kept glancing at shadowy spots among the trees as if she saw something there none of them noticed. She had dark bags beneath her eyes and splotches on her neck and arms, but her energy never flagged. The rest of them were tired, but Maeve forged ahead with a steady stride, blazing a trail for them.
Walker never let his right hand stray too far from his weapon. It wasn’t at all safe for Rose and Priya to be so close to Maeve, but the younger Sinclair had made it clear she would not abandon her sister, and Priya refused to go anywhere without Rose.
He picked up his pace, catching up with them. The time had come for decisions to be made. Rose and Priya heard his heavy boots and turned, both wearing fearful expressions.
“What’s wrong?” Priya asked. “Are they coming?”
“Not yet. But they will. We need to talk about that.”
Walker passed them, carefully approaching Maeve. He called her name twice before she seemed to notice. When she turned toward him, he saw something strange in her eyes. Not sickness or malice, and not the hunger he’d seen in them in the clearing by the ranger station. This was something else—cunning and old—something sizing him up.
Then she blinked and sighed in relief, and she was simply Maeve.
“We need a plan,” he told her.
“I agree.”
While Rose and Priya caught up to them, Walker kept his focus on Maeve’s hands and saw the others doing the same thing. She noticed.
“I’m okay,” she said, standing in the rain. She looked at her sister. “I won’t be. It hurts, and I’ve been hallucinating. The sicker I feel, the stronger the urge to … touch someone. I’ve done that a couple of times, both in self-defense. But I won’t lie—I didn’t care when I did it that it was self-defense. Afterward, I feel better for a little while, but the urge is still there.”
They stood in the rain, watching each other for a reaction.
“Should we be afraid?” Rose asked gently.
Even in the rain, Walker could see that Maeve had tears in her eyes. And why not? That morning she had killed her mother and brother with just a touch, and now her sister wanted to know if Maeve might kill her, too.
“Of course you should,” Maeve said, voice quavering.
Another few seconds passed wordlessly, and then Walker moved over to Priya and started working to expose her wound. Rose had been wearing an open, pink-and-black linen shirt over a black tank top, and she volunteered it now, for Walker to staunch and bind Priya’s wound.
“Let’s start with this,” Walker said to Priya, tearing the shirt into strips. “Who shot you?”
Priya and Rose told him the tale of a diminutive silver-haired killer named Agatha. Priya thought she must be an assassin, while Rose thought she worked for a rival government who didn’t want the United States to be able to use Maeve’s affliction in combat or espionage.
Walker thought about the parachutist he’d seen and wondered if that might have been “Agatha.” Both theories about this killer seemed reasonable, but in the end, it didn’t matter who had sent her or if she had arrived in hopes of getting Red Hands for herself. All he knew was that she didn’t work for whoever employed White Oak Security’s Blackcoats and she didn’t work for Garland Mountain Labs or the SRC. For a moment he considered backtracking and trying to stop this Agatha person himself, but he’d broken the TAGI goggles when he’d smashed to the ground back there in the clearing at the ranger station. Even if he’d still had them, they might not have been entirely useful in this rain.
No, he had to stay with Maeve. She’d been his assignment.
Walker examined the wound and bound Priya’s shoulder. The bullet remained lodged in the wound, which had to be causing Priya a hell of a lot of pain. She needed a doctor—a hospital—but the wound had started to clot and scab, so she would survive as long as no infection developed.
There were a lot of other ways Priya might die before tomorrow, but that bullet wouldn’t do it.
“Your turn,” Priya said. “Tell us what you know.”
Walker didn’t hesitate. Alena Boudreau had needed to work fast and had been uncertain whom she could trust. Walker had been given a very long time-out, so he had been perfect for the job. He understood that much. What he had not expected was to be dropped off in Jericho Falls and essentially left to his own devices. Garland Mountain was working for someone with a hell of a lot of sway in the federal government, or they wouldn’t have been able to get away with this quarantine.
He laid it out for Maeve and the rest as best he could. Garland Mountain. DARPA. White Oak. Agatha. But he left out his concern that Alena Boudreau and her new agency had sent him no backup, no satellite surveillance. It worried the hell out of him. What had the old woman gotten him into?
“Beyond this Agatha and the Blackcoats, there are some people in a small Jeep, according to my contact,” Walker said. “We have to assume they’re after Maeve as well. And apparently people on dirt bikes—”
“Two,” Maeve said, dropping her gaze to watch the rain pelt her shoes. “There were two of them. Both are dead.”
Nobody seemed in a hurry to ask for explanations, so Walker finished wrapping and padding Priya’s wound as best he could.
“You three—you’re family, or near enough,” he said. “I’m nothing to you. I know that. You don’t have to trust me, and you don’t have to do what I say. That’s all up to you. But I meant what I said before. Of all the people out here trying to find Maeve, I’m the only one I can guarantee isn’t willing to let her die or get cut open for some scientist to study.”
The wind picked up. They all seemed to shiver, but Walker thought it might not have been the wind or the rain that gave them a chill.
Rose cocked her head. “So this is like a Terminator moment? ‘Come with me if you want to live’?”
“Basically,” Walker replied.
“That’s great and all,” Priya said, “but how are you planning to get us out of here? If there’s some kind of rescue team on the way, now would be the time to tell us.”
Walker kept his eyes on Maeve. Her gaze kept shifting from open and anguished to cold and dispassionate, as if she couldn’t decide how she felt about any of it. He told himself it was shock and confusion, but he made sure he could always see her hands, just in case.
“Nobody’s coming. Not yet, anyway. I’m going to get in touch with my people and see what they can do. I believe Garland Mountain Labs is working for the Department of Defense, and honestly, ending up in DoD hands may be our best option, but with my employers overseeing your treatment.”
Priya laughed derisively. “Please. You want us to just hand Maeve over to the people trying to kill her?”
Maeve shook her head. “The people in black are here to capture me. I think it may be a dead-or-alive situation. All Walker’s saying is that he wants them to guarantee the ‘alive’ part.” She looked at him. “That right?”
He nodded. “There’s no way for you to sneak off the mountain. And even if you can hide, you won’t be able to hide forever.” Again he glanced around at their faces, saw the fear and pain and anger there. “What we need is time for me to try to work it out, to get a guarantee of your safety, and try to get you put into the custody of the SRC instead of letting White Oak hand you over to Garland Mountain.”
They all looked at Maeve, but her gaze had drifted. Her fists opened and closed. Raindrops ran down her forehead. Walker and Priya turned instead to Rose.
“What the hell are you looking at me for?” Rose demanded.
Maeve laughed softly. She rubbed her hands together as if warming them, and everyone took half a step away, ready to fight or run.
“There you go,” Maeve said, taking note of the reaction. “They’re looking at you because nobody’s in the mood to let me make decisions for myself. I can’t be trusted.” Maeve shot a hard look at Walker. “They’re right not to trust me. So are you. But if the goal is to hide until you can get some guardian angel to make them promise not to kill me, then the only place we have any real chance is the gorge. I was trying to make it there before, but I got … turned around.”
“All right,” Walker said. “Let’s go.”
Rose pointed through the trees. “Maeve’s already leading us in that direction.”
They started off again, with Maeve in the lead and Walker bringing up the rear. He felt the gun clipped to his belt. As long as he had Maeve in view, he could end this at any moment. He only hoped she didn’t make it necessary.
He heard the distant buzz of a helicopter, but after he’d listened for a couple of minutes, he felt sure the pilot was flying a search pattern, not headed directly for them. Carefully, keeping Maeve in sight, he dropped back farther and tapped at his earwig. It beeped quietly, waiting for someone to pick up the signal on the other end. Long seconds passed before the beeping ceased.
Static and then a voice. “Hello, Dr. Walker. Update?”
Not David Boudreau. Not Alena.
“Who is this?”
“I’m sorry,” said the voice. “My name is Joel Sutherland. I’m Director Boudreau’s assistant at the SRC. I’m the one fast-tracking your new salary and benefits package. I will not, however, get you coffee when you come to the office.”
Dead serious. Dry.
Walker blinked, his boot skidding in a bit of rain-soaked mud. “Joel, are you being funny?”
“Apparently not,” Joel replied, even more drily. “I understand if you’re not in the mood. People with guns, strange diseases, bad weather, dead people.”
This guy, Walker thought, unable to decide if he wanted to murder Joel or be his new best friend.
“Do you have an update, Dr. Walker?” Joel asked.
“For Alena, yes. Put her on,” Walker replied.
“I’m afraid she’s not available. Before you protest, she’s in a high-level meeting at the moment that I believe relates to your current assignment.”
“Okay, Joel. Then listen. I’ve contacted the Sinclair woman. Her mental state is in question, but she has not threatened me or the other civilians with us.”
“Other civilians?”
From his tone, it seemed the apparently unflappable Joel was flappable after all.
“We’re searching for cover. Time for Alena to show me what a good choice I made, taking this job. Whoever’s backing Garland Mountain and their storm troopers, she needs to get them to back off so the SRC can take charge. Maeve will voluntarily place herself into the SRC’s custody, but only SRC.”
Joel whistled. “Nicely done. You must have an honest face.”
“Do you maybe not understand the urgency here?” Walker said, the words clipped, angry.
“I do,” Joel replied evenly. “There’s a tug-of-war going on. Director Boudreau was briefly given the authority to do precisely what you’re asking. Less than an hour after she was given that authority, it was revoked.”
Something snagged on Walker’s arm, but he plunged onward. A few scratches were the least of his concerns. Maeve might be the most dangerous person on the mountain, but there were other dangers. Bureaucracy could end up the one that got them killed.
“Elaborate,” Walker said.
“Her authority was overridden by the undersecretary at the request of General Henry Wagner at DARPA. It seems General Wagner is presently on-site at Garland Mountain.”
“Wagner.” Of course it is, Walker thought.
Inside DARPA, the focus was always on science. The human race seemed to have developed a consensus that everything that could be learned about the world had already been learned, but science disproved that thought every day. Archaeologists dug up history that could be understood differently by modern minds. Biologists discovered new biospheres. Virologists encountered mutated bacteria. Astronomers learned more about the universe every time they opened their eyes.
Every waking moment, the world’s governments and corporations were in a race to make the next breakthrough, and that competition heightened when the breakthrough in question might be used to kill people. DARPA wanted to make sure they were the first to get their hands on new dangers facing the world and the first to weaponize those discoveries. Of equal importance, their job was to anticipate the ways in which enemies might use such developments against the United States and create ways to counter those aggressions.
There were ethical, honorable ways to go about this work.
And then there was General Henry Wagner, who seemed like a benevolent enough creature until you dared to question his motivations or his definition of acceptable losses. Walker could remember sitting in a meeting with Wagner and several other DARPA officials, discussing the deaths of three researchers. They had been researching the use of the gene-editing tool CRISPR to create cheaper, more effective, and more precise biological weapons and had accidentally been exposed.
General Wagner had sighed and sipped his coffee. “You want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs,” he’d said as he reached for a cinnamon danish.
“Fucking Wagner,” he said now. “Joel, can you get me on the phone with him?”
“Right now?” Joel asked.
Walker wiped rain from his face, pushed his hands through his soaking hair. “Yes, right now.”
General Wagner felt at home in the sublevels of Garland Mountain Labs. He’d spent the lion’s share of his career in secure facilities at the Department of Defense and within DARPA, dealing with the dichotomy between their public and private faces. The upper levels at Garland Mountain—the public face of the lab—weren’t precisely a façade. Accounting, human resources, security, and conference rooms were all housed on those levels, along with dozens of corporate research projects that might involve sensitive or proprietary information but did not require government security clearance. Those levels looked like a thousand different office buildings General Wagner had been inside, a hundred pharmaceutical companies. Glass offices, low-walled cubicles, computer screens, freshly polished conference tables.
No matter how ordinary those upper levels seemed, however, the whole place felt like a mask. People milled about on their ordinary errands, and perhaps they were fully intent upon those tasks, but General Wagner believed they must think, even on their most mundane days, about the work going on beneath their feet.
The real work, he thought, glancing around sublevel 2.
Garland Mountain’s lower levels were designed as a hexagon. Each level hosted six separate laboratories, inside each of which was a fully self-contained research operation. The main elevator bank thrust up from the hexagon’s center. Circling this axis was a wide common space throughout which the designer had placed chairs and sofas, coffee tables, workstations, and other spots where the research teams from each of that level’s six labs could socialize for either business or pleasure. They were encouraged to take breaks, to consult other teams whose members shared the same security clearance, to share excitement and frustration. The first CEO of Garland Mountain Laboratories, Arun Lahiri, had believed that such an environment would be good for both morale and progress, and the results had seemed to confirm that belief.
Hank Wagner didn’t go for that happy bullshit.
Too many chances for people to share classified data.
In Garland SL2-Alpha, researchers were instructed not to socialize with staff from other labs. They worked, General Wagner was sure to make clear, for the Department of Defense. They had been vetted and achieved the top clearance level available to those civilians below the level of project director. As such, they were ordered to steer clear of other Garland Labs employees both on the premises and off. SL2-Alpha staff were to treat everyone else as if they were invisible. The researchers on other projects in the complex thought SL2-Alpha put “asshole” as the top requirement when hiring. General Wagner knew some of the staff working on Project: Red Hands had been bothered by this reputation, but he didn’t give a damn. If they wanted to whine about it, they could be replaced, and they all knew it.
Now, more than ever, he needed them all to keep their mouths shut. There were well over one hundred hired guns from White Oak out there searching for a civilian, with orders to bring her in dead or alive, as if this were the Wild West. The parade video had racked up tens of millions of hits, and the media were on the story like a pack of rabid dogs. Homeland Security was doing its best to spin the whole thing, dropping hints about a possible terrorist release of a fatal bioweapon. That was enough to keep people away, but not to keep drones out of the sky.
And it wouldn’t last.
The faster they found Maeve Sinclair and locked her into a sterile room at the back of SL2-Alpha, the sooner he could get to cleaning up the whole mess.
General Wagner sat at a desk in a glass-walled office on the upper levels of the complex, far above the secure lab where Project: Red Hands had been painstakingly researched and crafted, and where it had gotten out of control, all thanks to a biologist named Oscar Hecht, who’d started hearing voices and lost his marbles.
“Sir?”
Wagner narrowed his eyes to stare at Cristina Vargas, not willing to acknowledge that he had stopped paying attention.
“I’m listening, Dr. Vargas.”
Vargas nodded. “I’m not sure what else to tell you at this point. We’ve got an autopsy room prepared, the surgery suite is ready if it becomes necessary, and the staff is confined to Alpha until further notice. If you can deliver Sinclair to us, we will learn whatever we can from her, no matter what condition she’s in.”
“And then?” General Wagner asked.
“That will be up to you, sir,” Vargas replied. “Project: Red Hands has produced results—”
“Results you don’t even understand,” General Wagner sniffed. “All the brilliant minds on your team, and you can’t explain why Hecht became infected.”
“He infected himself, General,” she said, brows knitting.
“I’ve traded bullshit with presidents, Dr. Vargas. Don’t test me. You have a lot of data, a lot of research, and you have dozens of different plague cocktails in your fridge. What you don’t have is a clue about what triggered the thing to work on Hecht. Yes, he purposely injected himself with something that killed every lab subject you’ve tried it on—”
“We’d never tried it on a human subject.”
General Wagner held up a hand. “Until Hecht did it to himself. But until you can explain to me why it worked on Hecht and not on the animal subjects, and certainly not on Cheng—”
“You ordered that test, General.”
Wagner shot to his feet, pounded his hand on the desk hard enough that the papers spread across it jumped. Vargas barely blinked, and it irritated him that he couldn’t make her flinch.
“Enough!” he barked. “I’m not here to argue with you. That’s not how this works, Dr. Vargas.”
“Obviously,” she muttered, sitting back in the chair.
Half an hour ago, White Oak Security had brought in one of their Blackcoats after the woman had been badly injured during the hunt for Maeve Sinclair. General Wagner had known nothing about her except her name—Vivian Cheng—and that to be employed by White Oak she had signed all the waivers necessary for them to run their test and claim they’d been trying to save her life.
Instead, the injection had killed her.
If they couldn’t replicate what Hecht had done to himself, the whole project rested on getting Maeve Sinclair into this lab. Vargas insisted that they could learn much more if she were alive, but General Wagner knew that was a preference, not a requirement.
A knock on the glass door.
His aide, Sergeant Hannah Loring, shot him an apologetic look through the glass. She held a slender silver phone in her hand. General Wagner rolled his eyes but waved for her to enter. He had told her that he didn’t want a call from anyone unless they were high enough up the chain to give him orders.
“What is it, Sergeant?”
Vargas vacated her seat to make room for Sergeant Loring in the small office. For her part, Loring ignored the empty seat and stood not quite at attention. She held the phone down by her hip and spoke quietly.
“It’s Director Boudreau’s office, General,” Sergeant Loring said.
“Didn’t I say—”
“You did, sir. But I’m told Director Boudreau is prepared to abandon any claims or protests, with a single condition that she will only share with you directly.”
General Wagner rolled his eyes. He’d known Alena Boudreau for more than twenty years and knew this had to be part of one scheme or another. The woman had a moral compass that had made her a pain in his ass dozens of times, but she was a hell of a scientist and she got results. More than likely, she wanted to get some kind of guarantee from him about the Sinclair woman or score some promise from him about future cooperation.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Give me the phone.”
Sergeant Loring handed it over. General Wagner sighed as he put the phone to his ear.
“Alena, listen—” he began.
“Pardon me, General,” said a male voice. “Please hold for Director Boudreau.”
The office boy put him on hold. He wanted to throttle the prick. Alena making him wait like this was just like her. Wagner glared at Sergeant Loring, irritated that she hadn’t made sure Alena was on the line already before putting him on.
He heard a click, the call being transferred, but it wasn’t Alena Boudreau’s voice that came on.
“Hello, Hank.”
General Wagner stiffened. “Who the hell is this?”
“You did this, General. Your people got sloppy and let this malicious little bug slip out, and a lot of people died because of it. Because of you. They’re still dying. Now you’re gonna kill this woman or get her killed for something you did, for your mistake.”
The general swore softly. He recognized the voice. “This isn’t your business, Walker. You’re on paid leave until I tell you differently. I don’t know who the hell you think—”
“I don’t work for you anymore. I work for the SRC now.”
Fucking Alena, General Wagner thought. He wanted to spit.
“I’m on the mountain,” Walker continued. “I’m going to get Maeve Sinclair, and I’m going to bring her down. I want your guarantee that no harm will come to her and that you will withdraw all searchers until this skirmish between you and Director Boudreau has reached a conclusion.”
Wagner stared at Loring and Vargas. Neither of them could hear a word, and curiosity blazed in their eyes. He smiled thinly and turned his back to them. They would still be able to hear, but it felt more private this way, more personal.
“Maybe my team shares some blame,” General Wagner said, “but so do you, Dr. Walker. You remember your assignment in Greenland. You and Hector Montez got all kinds of praise for your work there and for the germs you dug out of the permafrost. But you two assholes weren’t as careful as you thought.”
“What are you—”
“Heard from Montez lately, Walker?” Silence on the line. General Wagner sneered. “That’s what I thought. Montez came back with a little infection. Nothing contagious, at least at first, but enough to panic us. Enough to start us down a line of research that’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. I’ll tell you this much, the idea of weaponizing sickness is a hell of a lot older than any of us imagined.”
“Is Montez alive?”
“You must be a great friend to have,” General Wagner said, twisting the knife. “Montez went off duty while you were in Iraq, almost a year ago. He’s been dead seven months. And as far as your guarantees, you can fuck yourself. I’ve no interest in making her suffer any more than she already has, but if it comes down to her safety or the security of the nation, that’s an easy choice to make. Bring her in, Walker. If she behaves, she’ll be safe. If not, I make no promises. As for you, you’re done. You and Alena Boudreau both.”
He waited for a reply, but this time there was none. Walker had ended the call.
General Wagner dropped the phone onto the desk and smiled.
“Sergeant, pass the word along. We’re not just looking for Maeve Sinclair up on that mountain. We’re also looking for Dr. Benjamin Walker. The woman I’d like alive if possible. But if anyone feels like shooting Walker, I’ll throw them a goddamn parade.”