Chapter 16

“We need to meet, hermano.”

Hernandez had screened as I was wrapping up a long day of helping Danielle and the others take care of the sick. It had been a torturous process coupling hard, unpleasant labor with an emotional wringer that left me exhausted. I’d found a new respect for the work nurses and CNAs did. All I wanted to do was sleep.

“About what?” I half-snapped. Then I remembered where Hernandez was, and why. “Shit. Sorry, Hernandez. It’s been a long day. What’s up?”

She let my outburst pass, which worried me. “I’ve got a couple of candidates. But I want you to meet with them.”

Something in her voice set me on edge. “Who are they?” I asked.

“I’ll explain when you get here. I’ll text you the address.” And she hung up. Just like that. My phone chimed a moment later, but I didn’t bother looking at the address, instead trying to think my way through the problem.

Back when I’d first gone underground, Hernandez and I had established some screen protocols, to allow us to keep in contact and keep us both safe. We’d abandoned a lot of them when Silas had set her up with her very own secret-squirrel burner phone, but I still remembered the protocols and I was certain she did as well. She hadn’t slipped the duress phrase into the conversation. So, she probably hadn’t been found out and detained, and then forced to try to set me up. Probably.

Then why the secrecy? I trusted her enough that if she thought some of our brothers in blue were ready to be brought into the fold, then so be it. I glanced at the address on the screen. It wasn’t far. Just off Floattown. A distance I could easily walk, and through a place I knew well enough to avoid the prying eyes. Hernandez had visibility into what the cops were doing, which meant it should also be a place without any extra security.

I thought about going to Silas, or Al, or Tia. Letting any of them know what I was about to do. But they’d just want to discuss it, or come with me. If it was somehow a trap, it would catch two as easily as one. And whatever Hernandez was up to, I knew I was going to go. Talking about it wouldn’t change that. I owed her a lot more than the trust to go to a meeting with some possible recruits.

I made my way back to my room and geared up as best I could. My wardrobe was still intensely lacking. I was half-convinced that it was the result of some widescale joke the others were playing on me. But I’d managed to scrounge together a pair of half-serviceable jeans and a zip-up hoodie. Not the most stylish, but it would serve, and the hood would help keep my face hidden from watching eyes.

I still had the nine-millimeter and somewhere along the line, Al had managed to find me a couple of spare magazines. I missed my forty-five, but I was starting to warm to the blocky peashooter. It had served well enough at Larkin’s house. I still didn’t have a holster, so I tucked it into the back of my pants.

I made my way through the Ballasts, moving toward the surface. I passed only a few synthetics along the way, but no one gave me so much as a second glance. I did not run into Tia or Al. Those two wouldn’t have let me pass so easily, and I was grateful that I’d managed to slip out of the occupied levels without running into either of them. I’d pay for it later, and I felt a slight pang at the thought that the long, narrow Well, not dishonesty, but certainly avoidance…would do some damage to my burgeoning relationship with Tia. I’d rather risk that damage than put her in danger.

Floattown was quiet as I emerged once more into a sheltered alleyway between some of the pre-fabbed buildings. The sun had slipped below the horizon an hour or two ago, and the moon had yet to rise. The winter darkness always added a sense of stillness to the evening. Not quite peace, not in New Lyons. But something more akin to a sense of waiting. What the city was expecting, I didn’t know.

I drew a deep breath, tasting the Gulf in the air, and let it out in a steadying sigh. Then slipped into the shadows. My hood was up, head down, hands stuffed deep into the central pocket of the hoodie. Hopefully, I looked like every other BSL-er walking aimlessly around the streets at night. My steps weren’t aimless, though, and they took me through the buildings, past the edge of the commercial zone and to one of the narrow bridges that connected Floattown with the mainland.

The area on the landward side of the Floattown bridge was mostly industrial, with a few commercial enterprises scattered about. The standard workday was over, but given the number of warehouses, transport companies, and other ventures that didn’t keep regular hours, there were a fair amount of people walking around. No riots or crowds, though, not here.

I moved among the crowds, keeping my eyes downcast and the hood low, avoiding the cameras as I could, and relying on my “disguise” to spoof the ones I couldn’t. Hernandez had chosen a meeting spot in a narrow alley that ran between a truck mechanic’s shop and a long, narrow brick building that might have been a small-scale factory at some point. It didn’t have any signage to indicate what it was now, though there weren’t any broken windows and I saw at least one light burning in the interior, so it probably wasn’t abandoned.

As I slipped into the alley, Hernandez stepped out from a doorway on the maybe-abandoned mystery building. “This way, Campbell,” she said, waving me over.

“Why the mystery, Hernandez?” I asked. I could tell from the set of her shoulders and the slight frown on her face that she was uneasy. It wasn’t worry about the location—if so, she’d be looking around more, instead of meeting my eyes.

“Better if you hear it from him. You trust me, right, Campbell?”

There was actual worry in her eyes, but, for some reason, I felt some tension ease. It wasn’t the look of impending betrayal that I saw there. At least, not the kind that would end with me in bracelets. “With my life. Let’s do this.”

We stepped through the door into a large, mostly empty room. There were a few scattered stacks of pallets. A couple of plastic fifty-gallon drums. Piles of what looked like broken-down cardboard boxes. And a giant of a man standing near the pallets. I recognized him at once. And felt a surge of guilt.

“Shit,” I muttered. “Thompson.” Hernandez didn’t say anything, which I thought was strange. But she led me over to the big rookie. Well, maybe not a rookie, anymore. Given the current situation, he’d probably seen more action in his couple of months on the force than I’d seen in my first couple of years. He looked much the same as I remembered—big, chiseled features, recruiting poster haircut. Okay, so maybe his nose was a little off-center—that was probably my fault.

“Campbell,” he said, his voice a smooth baritone. “I’d say it was good to see you but…”

“But last time I put a few bullets into you?” I asked.

He rubbed at his chest. “That really hurt, you know.”

“Look, kid, I knew you were wearing Kevlar, all right? I wasn’t trying to kill you, but you were in my way. If Hernandez brought you here, then you know why.”

He surprised me with a grin. “Shit, Campbell. I don’t care that you shot me, not really. I care that you cheated. I still owe you for our sparring session. I was winning, dammit.”

“No such thing as cheating when it’s life and death,” I replied. “Thought you would have figured that out by now.”

That sobered him a bit. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.” Then he grinned again, a grin that had an almost vindictive edge to it. “But it’s cool. Because I get to see your face for the next part.”

Hernandez had been suspiciously quiet during all of this. And I realized that despite Thompson having been sent against me and Al’awwal as part of a special response team at the Walton Biogenics lab, there was no way Hernandez would have looked as worried as she did over bringing the rookie into the fold. Which meant there was another shoe to drop.

It dropped. Hard.

“Campbell.”

I recognized that voice. That smarmy, greasy voice. Francois Fortier, NLPD Detective, head of the fucking team looking for yours truly, and someone who loved to share the details of the depravities he visited on his own personal Toys. The one cop in all New Lyons I’d happily put a bullet into. He stepped out from behind the stack of pallets, all oily hair and sloppy, seam-straining suit, and I damn near pulled my gun. I could sense Hernandez at my shoulder, ready to tackle me if I did, and I could see the slight shift in the set of Thompson’s shoulders, also ready to throw himself into the fray.

* * * *

“What the fuck is going on here, Hernandez?” I growled. Fortier opened his mouth to answer, and I shot him a glare that said all the things I wasn’t saying out loud. Damn, but that bastard made my fists itch.

“He wanted to help,” she began.

“To help, or some help?” I snapped before she could say more. “I didn’t think you’d be the one to help him find me.” She winced at that, and I felt shitty. Deep down, I really didn’t believe that Hernandez had betrayed me, but Fortier brought out something ugly in me.

“Just listen to him, hermano,” she said.

Fortier hadn’t said anything. Five minutes ago, I wouldn’t think you could put him in a room with me and have him shut up for that long. Even being wrong about that irritated me. “Fine. Talk.”

He shrugged, and I swear to God, somehow managed to look…bashful. “Look,” he began. “The thing is… Shit.” He trailed off. Looked down at his shoes. Back at me. I was vaguely aware of Hernandez giving him a supportive nod—which sent another little stab of betrayal into my guts. “Look, I can admit when I’m wrong. When this shit started, I wanted nothing more than to put you away. God above,” he said with a gritted-teeth smile, “I fucking hate the sight of you, Campbell. Always have. Probably always will. Your holier-than-thou, too-good-for-this-fucking-world attitude. Do you have any idea how fantastic it was to watch you fall from your own little mountaintop and have to live in the shit with the rest of us?”

Thompson and Hernandez both looked a little worried now that Fortier was unloading. But this, at least, was a Fortier I could understand. And to think that he hated me every bit as much as I hated him, even if I thought the reasons were bullshit, made me feel a little better.

“And yeah,” he continued. “I liked Toys. Liked having beautiful women at my beck and call.” He snorted. “Look at me. I wasn’t getting them any other way.” Some of the anger drained from his voice. “But I hand-to-God thought they were things.” He winced as he said it. “Jesus, even saying it now…” He shook his head, and a look of nausea swept across his face. In that moment, I hated him just a little bit less. A little bit.

“So yeah, call me stupid. Call me naïve. Call me whatever the fuck you want. I don’t care. I bought into the line I was sold. I tried to ignore the evidence. Wrote off the pregnancy as a fluke. You ever hear of a liger? And having dirt on politicians. Who the fuck doesn’t, and who the fuck cares? Politics is an older and dirtier game than prostitution. Everyone knows it. But then you had to turn yourself in, and you had to do it with a shitload of scientific mumbo jumbo tucked in your back pocket.” He shook his head, spat on the ground. Drew an angry breath. “At first I was just happy to put your ass behind bars. But then I got to wondering why you did it. We weren’t any closer to finding you. So why do it?”

“To make people listen,” I said quietly. “And to make sure Walton couldn’t suppress the evidence we’d found.”

“Make people listen,” he snorted. “Well, it fucking worked, damn you. I wanted to ignore it, Campbell. I really fucking did. But I’m a cop. I’ve never seen a guilty man turn himself in unless he was bucking for a lesser sentence. I waited to hear about you cutting a deal.”

“No deals,” I said.

“No deals,” he agreed. “Just you, in a cell. In general fucking population. And I got to thinking about that, too. About how fucked up that was. I don’t like you, Campbell, but cops don’t belong in general pop. And I figured, if you’re half as smart as you get credit for, you had to know there was a chance you’d end up right where you did. A good chance some scumbag convict would try to shank you.”

I unconsciously rubbed at the knife wound on my arm. “So, you reviewed the evidence. The ‘scientific mumbo jumbo.’”

“Yeah. Most of it might as well have been written in Sanskrit. But Kaphiri’s journal entries, his explanations. Maybe most of all, him documenting the efforts Walton took to keep him quiet. You don’t go to that kind of effort to silence someone if you’re not doing anything wrong. So yeah, I started believing.” He shifted his weight, dropped his gaze once more. “I… I couldn’t just turn my Toys…my… Shit. Whatever. I couldn’t turn them out. Just, kick them to the street. They’re still at my place, Campbell. I haven’t touched them. But they’re there. Looking at me. Waiting for me to tell them what to do. Watching and waiting.”

“That’s pretty much all they’re allowed to do,” I agreed. “That, and suffer.”

The words landed harder than I’d expected, and Fortier winced. The color fled his face, and for a moment, I thought he was going to vomit. He got himself under control with a visible effort. “Yeah. So, they’re there, at my house. And it got to the point where I was almost afraid to go home. I had to do something. I’ve been… Well, sabotaging some of the efforts to find you. A little bit. But it’s…it’s not enough.”

His admission of trying to undermine the search efforts shocked the hell out of me. In a thousand years, I never would have expected it. I could buy the guilt, the realization, the understanding. I’d seen it in other faces. I’d seen it in Hernandez. But aiding and abetting was a far cry from assuaging your guilt, and if you’d asked me yesterday if Fortier had the courage to act, I would have laughed in your face. “And then Hernandez showed up,” I said.

“Yeah,” Fortier agreed. “You may think I’m an asshole, Campbell, but I’m not half as stupid as you think. I’ve been watching her. And while she was smart enough”—this with an acknowledging nod toward Hernandez—“to avoid anything that I could actively pursue, there was an awful lot of sick days and family emergencies accruing over the past couple of months. Not enough to go to the brass, even if I’d wanted to. But enough to make me suspicious. So, when she started pulling people aside and asking questions…” He trailed off.

“He sought me out, hermano,” Hernandez said. “Cornered me, really. I didn’t want to let him in, but he told me the same thing he just told you. And I believe him. Besides”—she shrugged—“other than Thompson here, no one else was taking the bait. Figured another shooter can only help.” She threw Fortier a smile that was half-hate and half-tease. “Maybe he’ll catch a bullet for us.”

“You’re all heart, Detective,” Fortier replied, the snide tone creeping back into his voice just a bit. “But I’m not just a target. Me and Thompson, we brought gifts.” With that, he reached behind the stack of pallets and began pulling out gear bags. My heart skipped a beat at the thought of having an honest-to-God holster once more.

“Fine, Fortier. You and Thompson are in. Has Hernandez briefed you?”

“Just that it’s incredibly dangerous, we’ll all probably die, and if we don’t do it, the world is doomed,” Thompson said. Then he grinned. “Who could say no to that?”

“She didn’t even mention Idaho?” I asked. “That’s the best part.”