Evi woke up in a hospital. They kept her drugged and at the fringes of consciousness for days. By the time she was conscious enough to take full stock of her surroundings, she had been there for at least a week.
The place was an Agency hole. Evi could tell. Her room was private, windowless, and—when she managed to get out of bed once—locked. No comm. Her only contact with other people were with the doctors and nurses, none of whom talked to her.
Go from the frying pan to the fire, Evi thought. Where do you go from the fire?
No answers.
She had started off in bad shape, but they gave her a lot of time to recover. One thing about an Agency hospital, they knew more about her engineered metabolism than any civilian medics—even though they pretended not to know English.
Or Spanish . . .
Or Arabic . . .
Or any other language she came up with.
At least it gave her a chance to think. And those thoughts brought a whole raft of mixed feelings. On the one hand, she’d been willing to give her life to see those aliens go down, and somehow she’d managed to see that happen and live through it. On the other hand, it was the Agency who’d done it, and that was uncomfortably familiar—not to mention that she was a de facto traitor.
She was also their prisoner.
Evi wondered why they even bothered with fixing her up if they were going to just disappear her.
The more she thought about it over her days of recuperation, the more she wondered about the Agency showing up. It was so convenient, even if it had saved her life. Evi had the uncomfortable feeling that she’d been used, again.
When the bones had knitted together, and she’d become ambulatory, she had a visitor who confirmed some of her worst suspicions.
Evi was in the midst of a hundred push-ups—she knew if she tried anything medically objectionable, the silent doctors would come in and stop her. She’d long ago determined that even the bathroom was under constant surveillance—when the door opened. Instead of a doctor or nurse, the door let in Sukiota.
She wanted to ask why she was still alive.
Evi stopped her push-ups, stood up with the help of a crutch, and said to Sukiota, “Someone had to have gotten to me within five minutes, or I would have bled to death.”
Sukiota shook her head. She was dressed in an anonymous androgynous suit; the only sign of authority was a ramcard clipped to her lapel. “We got to you in less than thirty seconds, if you’re counting from that explosion.”
Evi shook her head, somewhat gratified to have someone here respond to her. She’d half expected Sukiota to pull the same mute act that the doctors did. “Now what? Am I under arrest? Now that I’m almost healed, am I about to disappear down some Agency hole?”
Sukiota smiled. “Actually, I’m here to thank you.”
“What?”
Sukiota’s smile was surreal, as if Evi was looking into a distorted mirror. Physically they were so much alike. Evi didn’t like the fact that Sukiota’s smile looked so much like her own. “You gave my operation a chance to crack Nyogi. I’ve been trying to get approval to take them down since I started investigating the Afghanis.”
Evi shook her head. She didn’t like the way Sukiota’s talk was drifting. “Last time you were throwing words like ‘traitor’ at me.”
Sukiota’s smile never wavered. She took an opaque evidence bag from her pocket and began to toss it from hand to hand. “I suppose so. If it weren’t for certain expediencies on my part, the Agency would have considered you part and parcel of that extra-Agency conspiracy. The Domestic Crisis Think Tank you called it. We finished mopping it up weeks ago.”
Evi realized that she had been here a long time.
“Everybody?”
“We’re checking the records, but I believe we have all but one accounted for. Of the people you fingered, Frey, Gabriel, and Davidson are on slabs, Fitzgerald is so much carbon, Hofstadter was dumped at a critical care unit in upper Manhattan in the late stages of a stroke and is vegetating two floors below us . . .”
“Price?”
“He’s the unaccounted one.”
Sukiota was still smiling, and it was getting on Evi’s nerves. “Did you set me up?”
Sukiota tossed the white evidence bag up, following it with her eyes. “I was pissed with you.” She caught the bag and tossed it to her other hand. “But I needed you. You served your purpose.”
“That whole scene in the subway—”
Sukiota shrugged and caught the bag.
“You bastards set me up!”
“You didn’t do anything that you weren’t about to do anyway. I saw a good chance you’d go straight to our target—”
“Damn it,” Evi yelled. “You knew about Nyogi all along. You could have stormed the place any time you wanted too.”
“You know better than that, Isham. The Feds give the Agency major latitude in domestic covert ops, but Nyogi is a major corporation with major congressional and Executive support. I couldn’t get approval to go in.”
“But you went in.”
“After you.”
“What?”
Sukiota laughed. “I told you I carried out certain expediencies on your behalf. Before we let you escape, I resurrected your Agency file.”
Evi just stared.
“Different rules apply to hot pursuit, especially when an active duty agent is involved.”
“You used me as an excuse?”
Sukiota nodded. “And after we did that, we couldn’t very well let you die. That would have been embarrassing.”
All of a sudden she had just come full circle. She was right back where she had started, an Agency creature. And, again, as always, she had no choice in the matter.
Evi sighed. It might have been fatigue, but she felt that she had used up all of her anger. Her emotions were one vast plain of resignation. “What about the aliens?” she asked.
“I’d say that’s on a need to know basis, but that’d be a fraud. Rest assured, the Feds are sifting through the UABT complex, the buildings at Columbia, and underneath the Nyogi tower. We’ve captured a number of aliens—” Sukiota seemed uncomfortable with the word—“and enough people and agencies are involved this time that no one is going to bottle this up.” Sukiota shook her head. “Everyone from the Biological Regulatory Commission and NASA to Defense Intel and the Department of the Interior . . . The Agency handed the alien problem off to everyone else. We’ve got other problems.”
“Like what?” As if the aliens weren’t enough. What the hell could take precedence over that in the Agency’s agenda?
“You should know. We had a tracking device on you all that time. RF, audio, limited video . . .”
It began to sink in, exactly what that meant.
The Bronx.
The entire military setup. Evi had waltzed through all of it, handed it all to the Agency.
It must have shown in her expression because Sukiota nodded. “I see you do know what I’m talking about. That’s why I’m here, really. I resurrected your file, and I have to release you, but I’m retiring you. You’re not going to interfere with any future operations.”
“I’m not—”
“No, you’re not, even though I think you have an inclination otherwise; it would be embarrassing. And since it would be inconvenient to threaten you—” Sukiota tossed the evidence bag at Evi. It sprung open on the foot of the bed.
Evi leaned over on her crutch, grabbed the end of the bag and upended it. Out fell a pair of velvet-lined handcuffs. The same ones she had liberated from Diana’s bedstand. They still had a splattering of blood on them from the veep.
“It would be very nice for Diana Murphy if you led a nice quiet life as Eve Herman from now on.”
Sukiota left her.
Evi stared at the cuffs.
• • •
When Evi hobbled through the threshold of Diana’s loft, she was the recipient of a shocked expression, then of some very tall hugs. The reunion was so teary that it took nearly ten minutes before either of them was close to being coherent.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” Diana said, wiping her eyes.
“I never thought I’d see anyone again,” Evi said. “Can I sit? The leg’s still kind of bad.”
Diana helped her over to the couch, peppering Evi with questions. How was she? What happened?
Evi shushed her. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed Diana until then, how she had worried. She finally told Diana everything.
Diana’s reaction was unexpected. “Damn, until now I thought the whole thing was some kind of silly hoax.”
“What was a hoax?” Evi asked. She hadn’t expected to be believed so readily.
“The broadcast—”
“What broadcast?”
“That’s right, you’ve been incommunicado. I recorded it. I’ll try and find the ramcard . . .”
Diana moved up and switched on her comm. She sifted through the pile of ramcards as the thing warmed up. Then she inserted the card and fell back next to Evi on the couch.
“I really missed you,” Diana whispered.
Evi stroked Diana’s hair, for the first time with her left hand, and watched the comm. There, centered in a frame that was obviously shot from a hand-held camera was David Price.
Behind him was a familiar-looking cargo hauler, and lined up by the end of the trailer behind Price, were four blubbery-white aliens. Evi watched as David got very chummy with Corporal Gurgueia. The Jaguar was holding an AK-47.
“They hijacked the damn truck,” Evi whispered.
Diana whispered into Evi’s ear. “What?” Evi could feel the warmth of her breath.
“They hijacked the damn truck!” Evi shouted, smiling from ear to ear. They had done it. By everything that was holy, they’d completed the objective . . .
She realized that she was being unreasonably happy. Sukiota had told her, almost point blank, that the shit was about to hit the fan.
Even so, Evi couldn’t help grinning. It was a small battle, but she had won it.
They had won it.
A battle, but the war was still out there.
Evi hit the mute on the remote sitting on the table in front of her. Then she hugged Diana back. She was free. Sukiota had retired her, and now she owed her allegiance to no one.
Evi looked up into Diana’s human eyes and realized that that wasn’t quite true. She also realized that she hadn’t worn sunglasses or contacts for nearly two weeks.
“Diana.”
“Mmm?”
Right now Evi was holding Diana about as close as she could while staying a separate person. She finally had choices. If she wanted, she could divorce herself from everything the Bronx would bring.
“You know,” Evi told Diana, “I’ve become unreasonably close to you in a short time.”
“Feeling’s mutual.”
Evi had choices, but Sukiota had pressed the point home that, if she chose not to remain aloof, she would drag along someone she loved. “I have a decision to make.” Evi whispered. “One I can’t make without you.”
“Later,” Diana said, kissing her.
SPECTERS OF THE DAWN
Dedication:
This book is dedicated to the Cajun Sushi Hamsters, who saw the first one.
Acknowledgments:
I would like to thank the members of the Cleveland SF Writer’s workshop who looked over this: John; Jerry; Geoff; Maureen; Charlie; Becky; Mary. I would like to stress that nothing in this book is their fault.