TWELVE

Mom was disappointed that Rex didn’t stay for dinner, confused that he came all the way out there for such a short visit, and suspicious about our jog, as well. With all of it combined, I think she knew something was up. But I didn’t let on, and she didn’t press it.

The window for taking a nap had closed, and instead I stuck it out, yawning through dinner then going to bed early. I had nightmares about the bombing.

The next day was Saturday, but Mom had to go into work. I woke up at six as she was getting ready and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I stayed in bed reading. At eight thirty the phone rang.

Mom had already left for work, so I rolled out of bed and hurried downstairs in case it was Rex.

“Hey,” he said when I picked up. “Found him.”

“Ogden?”

“Yup. He’s staying at a squat in South Jersey.”

“That was fast.” Not to slight Rex’s investigatory skills, but if he had found Ogden that quickly, I wondered how far behind us the FBI would be.

“He can meet with us if you want. This afternoon.”

The squat was in what was left of a tiny town called Pedricktown, just across the Delaware River. Jerry had kind of given Rex his old truck, a long-term loan. I still didn’t have my license, and after being caught driving without it—even though I had very good reasons—I now had to wait another few months before I could get it.

We took the Commodore Barry Bridge into New Jersey. To get to the bridge, you had to take the Smartway around the city, meaning your car had to be in Smartdrive on the way. But the bridge itself had a lane for manual drivers. Some old federal law mandated that interstate crossings couldn’t be restricted to Smartdrive, even though all the roads leading up to them were. Rex enjoyed driving manually, so we were in the manual lane doing seventy as the cars in the Smartdrive lanes zipped past us at the legal Smartdrive speed limit of ninety-five.

At the midpoint of the bridge, I looked out at the drones crisscrossing the river. I glanced north, toward the city skyline, the cluster of towers shooting up over the older skyscrapers—Wells Tower the tallest of them. I tried to find the Seaport Museum, but it was too far away.

Twice I thought I noticed vehicles following us, hanging behind us even as we crawled along—a beat-up gray van when we were still in Philadelphia and a newer sedan while crossing into New Jersey.

But before I mentioned either sighting to Rex, they faded into the traffic and disappeared. I told myself I was probably just being paranoid, but I’d been paranoid before, and I’d been followed before, too. I kept an eye on the rearview but didn’t see anyone else.

I turned my thoughts to Ogden. I was anxious about meeting someone who might have been involved in the bombing, who might have played a part in killing all those people. Thinking about it, I got so upset that I wondered if I’d even be able to speak to him. As impossible as it seemed, I knew I’d have to put my anger out of my mind, at least while I was there. If I couldn’t, it wasn’t going to be a very productive conversation.

The bridge let us off in the middle of the zurbs. The zurbs in Jersey tended to be in better shape than the ones outside of Philly. Or rather, the ones still on dry land were. A lot of the others were simply gone, sunk into the swamps or reclaimed by the river to the west or the ocean to the east. But where we were driving, things seemed pretty intact at first.

We made good time up until the last mile or so, which took longer than the rest of the trip. Like a lot of towns in that part of Jersey, much of Pedricktown had been flooded or washed out entirely by the river years earlier, so we had to try several different approaches before we found a road piled high enough with gravel and crushed shells to form a passable causeway. All the false starts and turnarounds left me confident that even if someone had been following us earlier, they weren’t any longer.

On either side of us, abandoned houses and businesses were sinking into the muck, but when we finally turned onto the street leading to Ogden’s squat, it was high and dry, or at least dry. The land was flat, lined with brown grasses and low, scrubby trees.

At the end of the block, a narrow three-story wooden house overlooked a broad swath of swamp. Several rows of portable solar panels stretched off to the left of it, their wheels sunk several inches into the soil.

Ogden was standing on the porch, chewing on a toothpick. As we got out of the car, he flicked it into the swamp. The sun was hot, and the buzz of insects was loud.

Ogden looked just like his picture, but lankier than I expected. He put his hands in his pockets and came halfway down the steps as we approached. He didn’t look like a terrorist.

“Rex,” he said, tipping his head in greeting.

“Ogden,” Rex replied.

Ogden looked at me and said, “Nonk.” It was a bit of a slur, short for “nonchimera,” but he said it in the same tone he’d said “Rex,” seemingly without malice.

“Really?” Rex said, annoyed and disappointed.

Ogden shrugged without taking his hands out of his pockets.

“My name’s Jimi,” I said, stepping forward and putting out my hand.

He looked at it for a second, then took two slow steps down and shook it. “Ogden,” he said.

“Nice to meet you,” I said with exaggerated politeness.

He snorted as he turned and went back up the steps. “Come on in,” he said, over his shoulder.

We followed him up onto the porch and into the house. It was dark and faintly musty, but not too bad. That close to the swamp, it could have been a mess.

Ogden led us into the kitchen, which was worn but also bright and clean. At the far end there was a metal table with chipped white enamel paint surrounded by four mismatched metal chairs and windows on three sides looking out over the swamp.

Ogden sat in one of the chairs and gestured toward the others.

“So, what do you want to talk about?” he asked as we sat.

“You’re with CLAD now,” Rex said.

Ogden was quiet for two seconds, one to stare at Rex and one to stare at me. “I might be,” he said. “Why?”

Rex turned to me and I leaned forward in my seat.

Why did you kill all those people? I thought, but that’s not what I said. “My full name is Jimi Corcoran.”

“I know who you are.”

“Right, well, apparently a lot of people in CLAD know who I am. I want to know why.”

He shrugged. “You’ve been on the news, you’re active with E4E, et cetera. I’m sure a lot of people know who you are.”

“In the last four months, the FBI has been to my house. Twice.” He stiffened when I said it, and I felt somehow gratified. “First they wanted to know what I knew about CLAD, saying that CLAD members had been talking about me. More recently, members of CLAD abducted me off the street while I was on my way to that lunch meeting that was bombed.”

He tilted his head as he stared at me, a hint of a sneer on his lips. “You were going to the meeting? With all the H4Hers?”

“And E4E, yes.” I looked into his eyes, trying to see if they matched any of the eyes that had peered at me through their masks in the van. I was pretty sure he hadn’t been there.

“Well, I wasn’t part of that,” he said, looking down. “But I’m sorry about your friends.”

I didn’t say anything.

“So, someone intercepted you on your way there?” he continued. “How do you know they were with CLAD?”

“Do you know someone named Cronos?”

His face froze for an instant, then he started laughing.

“What?” I asked.

“You met Cronos?”

“That’s what he said his name was.”

The smile fell away from his face. He glanced at Rex, then back at me. “You’re serious.”

“So why would they care about me?” I asked. “The FBI keeps asking, and I want to know before they do.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Like I said, you’re known. A minor celebrity for the cause and all that. Which could be handy. Cronos keeps a pretty low profile, but you’ve also seen some action, and seen firsthand what we’re up against. We need people; maybe he’s hoping you’ll join us.”

“So I can blow up buildings and kill people? Not a chance.”

“No, so you can help take down Wells, take down the Wellplant network and with it, H4H. And we’re not just ‘killing people.’ We’re taking down the enemies of chimeras. Before they can kill us.”

“‘Enemies of chimeras’? Are you serious? There were people from E4E in that blast. They were not all enemies of chimeras.”

“Maybe they were collaborators, then. I don’t know. Like I said, I wasn’t in on that. But don’t be so sure you know all about E4E, or Chimerica even.”

Rex sat up straighter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Ogden laughed. “Come on, you know as well as I do that getting them to actually do anything is damn near impossible. Why do you think that is?”

“Because they don’t blow people up for trying to have a dialogue?” I demanded.

“No,” Ogden shot back. “Because they don’t do anything. Not a damn thing. And you know it yourself. I heard about Omnicare, about how you told people at Chimerica what was going on at that hospital and they refused to help. Why do you think that is?”

He had a point, although I wasn’t going to concede it.

“What are you getting at?” Rex asked, his voice tight.

Ogden leaned forward and lowered his voice. “We know Wells and his people are funding some chimera groups, to infiltrate and undermine the fight. We think E4E and Chimerica are among them.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Rex shot back, losing the fight to keep his voice under control.

“Is it?” Ogden asked. “What are they doing then?” He shot me a look. “Other than having lunch with the enemy?”

Before either of us could say anything, he continued. “Look, Nonk, you’ve seen some pretty bad stuff that Wells’s friends have done to chimeras. That Jasper guy at Pitman you all took down, and the doctor at Omnicare, the one who killed all those people—”

“Charlesford,” I whispered.

“Exactly. But that’s not all of it. There’s more stuff like that going on. And this time Wells’s involvement isn’t indirect or tangential. It’s not just people Wells is connected to. This time it’s Wells himself who’s responsible.”

“What are you talking about?” Rex replied.

“I’m talking about Wells Life Sciences. One of their facilities in Delaware. People are saying chimeras are being imprisoned there, held against their will. Maybe getting hurt and killed.”

“How do you know about it?” I asked.

“People talk,” he said. “Friends of friends have gone in there and never come out. I told my connections at Chimerica about it earlier this year, and they told me not to do anything. They said they would take care of it. And then they did nothing. So I left.” He laughed bitterly. “Sometimes I wonder if maybe Chimerica is make-believe after all.”

What he was describing sounded chillingly similar to both Pitman and Omnicare. Deep down, I felt scared. People had died in both those places, and in both places, I had almost been one of them. I cleared my throat, making sure my voice was steady. “You said people might be hurt and killed. How?”

Ogden took a deep breath, staring at me, then at Rex. “To be honest, I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. And CLAD is going to help. They took my information seriously, and said they’d help me find out more. And if it’s as bad as it seems, if it’s like Pitman or Omnicare, they’ll do what it takes to stop it. That’s what CLAD is about.” He looked at each of us, then said, “We’re going to take a look at the place soon, see what we can see, do a little LIDAR mapping. You know what that is?”

We both nodded. LIDAR was a laser-based radar system that could take quick, superaccurate measurements.

“Why don’t you come with us?” he said. “You can see for yourself what’s going on, what Chimerica and E4E are allowing to go on, and if you still think they’re doing everything they need to be doing, then that’s fine. And even if you decide we’re wrong, I’ll still see if I can find out why CLAD’s head honchos are so concerned with Jimi Corcoran. But you might decide you want to help us as we try to put these bastards out of action permanently.”

Rex stayed quiet. I knew he probably had a clear idea of what he thought we should or shouldn’t do next, but he was leaving it up to me. Probably because I was the one getting visits from the FBI, the one who’d been abducted off the street and almost blown up. I snuck a glance in his direction, but his face was blank. He didn’t want to lead me one way or another. I loved how he respected that this was my decision, but frankly, I wouldn’t have minded his input on this, even if I ended up disregarding it.

I was struck by what Ogden was saying about Chimerica and E4E. I couldn’t imagine they were in cahoots with Wells. Even though I barely remembered her and didn’t even know her anymore, I couldn’t imagine my aunt Dymphna being a part of that. But while both groups had been serious defenders of chimeras, Ogden wasn’t wrong; their refusal to act in the face of clear threats to chimeras had at times been exasperating. And I was curious about what he wanted to show us. If it was anything like Pitman or Omnicare, it needed to be stopped right away.

I was about to say as much, but then stopped. I’d been asked more than once why I needed to be the one to get in the middle of every fight. Those other fights had been unavoidable, in my mind. I hadn’t injected myself into them, I simply hadn’t run away. Maybe this one was someone else’s fight. Then I pictured Reverend Calkin falling down those steps and I knew I never wanted to be a part of CLAD. However right they might be about anything else, their methods were clearly wrong.

I shook my head. Rex and Ogden both sighed, one in relief, the other frustration.

“No,” I said. “The FBI is already breathing down my neck, thinking I’m somehow involved. Plus, I can’t condone the bombings, the killings. I can’t be a part of that.”

Ogden didn’t argue, he just silently nodded. When we left, he watched from the porch as we walked to the car. Rex and I didn’t speak. We waved as we got in and Ogden waved back.

He watched us drive away, and as the road curved and the house disappeared, I said, “Did I do the right thing?”

“I have no idea,” Rex said with a low, rumbling laugh. “For what it’s worth, you did what I would have done.”

The road sloped gently down in front of us. The puddles of standing water on either side of the road grew wider and deeper as we drove.

“I wonder what we would have found there, at the place in Delaware,” I said as we turned back onto the same causeway of gravel and shells that we had driven in on.

Rex didn’t reply, concentrating on keeping the truck on the road, which somehow seemed even more narrow and precarious than on the way in. When we reached relatively solid land, Rex let out a deep breath I didn’t realize he’d been holding. As we turned onto the road leading back toward the Smartway, I spotted a beat-up gray van partially blocking the road ahead of us.

“Uh-oh,” I said, putting my hand on Rex’s arm.

“Who is it?” he said, glancing at me then back at the van.

“I don’t know, but I think I saw them following us earlier, back in Philly.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“They disappeared. I thought I was just being paranoid. I thought a car was following us, as well, but it disappeared, too.”

Rex slowed and as we drew closer, the driver climbed out. Dark shades partially obscured his face, but I could make out the angle of his jaw, the pointy nose that seemed to separate the rust-colored fur above from the white of his throat and chin.

Rex’s foot slipped off the accelerator and we both leaned forward.

“No way,” I said, grinning. “Is that Sly?”