Before the Dawn (5 page)

Three long, flat cases were arranged in a triangle in the center of the room. One held silverware, another a model of a ship, and the third one was an arrangement of still pictures from the motion picture.

At the far end of the room, encased in a Plexiglas box, under a narrow spotlight, her prize caught her eyes: a gigantic blue diamond on a silver chain encrusted with smaller diamonds.

Max knew little of the film, which apparently was famous. Television was limited and very controlled in the post-Pulse era, and, anyway, she didn't care for fiction . . . what was the point? Few people in made-up stories lived more interesting lives than she did.

But she did know—thanks to Moody—that although everyone back in pre-Pulse days had thought the great blue diamond, the “Heart of the Ocean,” was merely a film prop, it had indeed been real, a ten-thousand-dollar necklace commissioned by the director who later donated it to the Hollywood Heritage Museum.

“Its true value,” Moody had told her, “is known to few—why attract thieves . . . like us? And to the public . . . those who still care about silly ancient celluloid . . . the magic of the prop is enough to make it stand on its own as a tourist attraction.”

Funny,
Max thought.
In this town where dreams once were manufactured, one of the most famous artifacts was a fraud of sorts . . .
because
it was real.

Now the famed Heart of the Ocean lay only twenty-five feet across the room from her.

And if she could retrieve it, and get out of here with her skin, the Chinese Clan could fence it for enough money to set them up for years to come.

Her breathing slowed as she prepared for the final assault on her prize. She popped a huge wad of gum into her mouth and started chewing slowly, methodically. Withdrawing from fatigue pouches two good-sized suction cups with pressure-release handles, Max attached one to each hand with inch-wide nylon straps and looked up at the ceiling. She had less than two feet of open air between it and the topmost infrared beam.

The young woman leapt straight up, arms outstretched, suction cups sticking to the ceiling with a sucking kiss. Taking in a deep breath, then letting it out, Max pulled herself up until her neck was bent to one side and she held herself up with her arms akimbo.

Even for a soldier with her unique talents, the strain was severe.

Next she slowly pulled up her legs and stretched them out in front of her, as if in a ballet exercise. She now sat, head cocked to one side, hanging from the ceiling above the beams by no more than six or maybe seven inches. Moving across the room folded up like this would be no small feat.

Glancing down at the necklace, she formed half a smile.
No guts, no glory,
she thought, and that blue rock was serious, serious glory not only for her, but for her whole clan.

Releasing one suction cup, she held herself up, eased it forward as far as she dared, and attached it again with its tiny puff of a kiss. She repeated the action with the second cup and found herself a foot nearer the prize. The muscles of her shoulders bunched and burned, but with her breathing, she compartmentalized the pain, putting it out of her mind.

Few on earth could have done this. Max had had this ability since childhood.

Sweat trickled down her face, dripping onto her shirt front as she single-mindedly made her way across the room, still casually chewing the gum as she went. She had completed her action with the cups nine times now and not only did her shoulders burn, but her biceps, triceps, quads, hamstrings, and glutes were each in the middle of a three-alarm blaze of their own.

A voice in her head that sounded uncomfortably like Colonel Lydecker's reminded her that pain was the price of achievement.

Shut up,
she mentally replied, and kept moving the cups forward.

Finally, after what seemed like forever but had only been six minutes, she found herself directly above—if barely able to cock her head enough to see—the Heart of the Ocean.

She had maybe a foot and a half of clearance on each side of the Plexiglas box. As if the trip over here hadn't been enough, now the job would get
really
tricky. In that tight space, she would have to remove the cubic foot of plastic, snatch the necklace without setting off the alarm, then suction-cup her way back to the door.

No problem.

Taking one hand out of a suction cup, Max snugged her knees up, then slowly rolled backward, letting her feet come up toward the ceiling as her head lowered toward the box. About halfway home, her body tucked into a sphere only slightly larger than a beach ball, she slipped her shoe into the empty strap of one of the suction cups.

Satisfied the strap had her securely, she let go with her other hand and swung her other leg up and into that strap. She now hung upside down, her head barely a foot above the necklace with its glimmering stone.

Working quickly, Max picked the locks on each side of the case, lifted the Plexi box straight up, withdrew the gum from her mouth and affixed it to the top of the lid. Then she rotated the thing so its top was down . . . and eased it toward the floor.

This was the part that worried her most.

Her arms were not long enough to reach the floor. She would have to drop the box the last couple of feet or so, and hope to hell the wad of gum held it in place and kept it from bouncing into one of the infrared beams.

Letting out her breath, Max released the box with as light a touch as possible. It dropped to the carpeting with a dull, barely audible
thud,
then rocked toward the beam . . .

. . . but righted itself, and stopped.

Step one accomplished.

Pulling a utility knife from a pocket, Max leaned in close to the displayed jewelry. Only one wire connected the necklace to the alarm, but she would have to work gently not to set it off.

Blood was rushing to her head, and she could feel her face growing hot, like a flush of terrible embarrassment . . . just a little longer and everything would be fine . . . fine. . . .

Hanging there upside down, Max wished absently that a dash of bat DNA had been added to her genetic cocktail—then maybe this stunt wouldn't make her so dizzy. Carefully scraping back the plastic coating on the wire, she exposed about two inches of gleaming brass strands, put the knife away, and pulled out a wire of her own with alligator clips at either end. Attaching the clips at both ends of the section she'd cleared, Max took out her wire cutters, slowed her breathing again, and clipped the alarm wire in the middle of the cleared section.

She held her breath for a few seconds . . . but no alarm sounded, no lasers blasted at her, and the mines didn't go off.

Releasing the wire from the necklace, Max gazed fondly at the huge blue stone, and for the first time all evening, a true, wide smile creased her face. She lifted the necklace—feeling a real reverence for its value, if not its history—and gave it a quick kiss . . .

. . . then, as if her lips had done it, the alarm sounded.

And all hell broke loose.

“Shit,”
Max whispered, her vocabulary of “forbidden” words far greater now than she'd ever heard from Colonel Lydecker.

The thief suddenly realized the necklace had also been resting on a pressure alarm—a security measure that had somehow not made its way into the Brood's stolen plans. The alarm siren squawked like a gaggle of angry geese, a grating, obnoxious sound Max decided she would have hated even under innocent circumstances.

As opposed to these guilty ones. . . .

The first laser drilled the stand the necklace had been on, and exploded it in a shower of wood and velvet, just as Max pulled herself up out of the way. Despite the mines in the floor, which were presumably now activated, choosing the lesser of bad options, she kicked her feet out of the suction cups, and dropped to the carpeting as lasers blasted holes in the room all around her.

At least where she'd alighted, there hadn't been a mine. . . .

Grabbing the Plexiglas shell of the exhibit, tucking it to her like a big square football, Max did a forward roll and popped to her feet just as a laser fired a blast at her face.

She dodged left, reacting with the lightning inhuman speed bred into her, though she nonetheless felt the heat of the blast as it shot past her right cheek, and she could hear her hair sizzle as her nostrils filled with the burned smell of it.

Leaping with all her considerable might, she flung herself onto one of the exhibit cases in the middle of the room just as another laser blast chewed the floor not far from where she'd been standing, setting off the small blast of one of the mines. They obviously weren't meant to kill, only to maim.

That was a relief . . . she guessed. . . .

She only had a few seconds now until the lasers would target her again. Hefting the Plexiglas box, she threw it halfway across the remaining distance toward the door. It hit, but the sound of its impact was swallowed by the explosion of another mine, and the box disintegrated, making shattering music in a cloud of black smoke.

Leaping to the safety of the crater she'd created, Max knew all planning, any strategy, had disintegrated along with that box . . . from here on out, she'd just have to stay smart and get lucky. She ran to the door, dodging and cutting all the way. To her great surprise, she wasn't reduced to a bloody mess by another explosion—the number of mines must have been minimal, to keep the building damage down.

She twisted the knob and found that the door had autolocked when the alarm went off—another tidbit absent from the security plan.

The lasers were getting closer now, their aim improving as she stood motionless in front of the door, heat and/or motion sensors probably leading them to her. Another blast shot toward her and she sidestepped just enough for it to miss her, and blast the lock off the door, skittering halfway down the hall.

Max yanked what was left of the door open and leapt into the hallway, then ducked around the edge of the door as stray laser beams shot wildly down the corridor.

The two guards came running toward her, and Max realized they must have disarmed the mines in the hallway thinking she would be trapped in the exhibit room. Each carried a nightstick and a Tazer.

The nearest one was a muscular guy in his midtwenties, his face an angry mask. The farther one was the plump guy she'd seen testing doors, and he was older by at least twenty years and heavier by nearly a hundred pounds, and looked scared.

The muscular one aimed his Tazer and fired, but Max ducked under the dart, rolled forward, and came up, her right fist catching the guard under the chin, lifting him off the floor, and sending him sprawling across the hall, no doubt to wake up later and wonder how so small a “girl” had coldcocked him like that.

The plump one tried to look determined but the gesture failed when his chins started quivering. He fired the Tazer without aiming, then stood in bewildered fear as Max came up to him. A voice in his head probably told him to draw his nightstick, but another may have reminded him how little he was being paid, so he just stood there motionless, shivering like gelatin.

Max patted his cheek, and smiled sweetly.

Then she scurried off down the hall.

The thief could hear sirens in the distance when she threw open the museum's front door, but by the time the cops got here, she'd be long gone . . .

. . . and the Heart of the Ocean was tucked safely inside her fatigues. Max couldn't wait to get back to the theater to show the prize to Moody.

She would have felt like a king of thieves, if she hadn't been . . . “a girl.”

Chapter Three

A HOME FOR MAX

THE ROAD
CASPER, WYOMING, 2009

As she watched from the corner, the nine-year-old Max—a foreign figure in this residential neighborhood, her thin blue-gray Manticore smock flapping in winter wind, her bare feet planted on the cold concrete of a sidewalk—tried to comprehend what the young child was up to. . . .

But the genetically bred soldier-in-the-making simply had no idea what the female child was doing, rolling a ball of snow across the white yard, making a bigger ball of it with her every step.

Focusing in, Max looked closely at the child across the street—a girl whose long black hair peeked out from beneath a red stocking cap. A little older than Max, at least a year or two, the girl had full lips, a short nose, and wide-set blue eyes beneath long, butterfly lashes.

Mesmerized, as if witnessing a dream, Max watched as the girl rolled the ball of snow back the other way. The round white thing came up almost to the girl's waist now, and Max still couldn't figure out what this kid thought she was doing.

After backing up to the corner and ducking behind a car, Max watched the girl for a moment, then slipped across the street, a blue-gray shadow. Now on the same side of the block as the girl, Max edged behind the corner house without being seen, and took off across the backyards, heading for the third house, in the front yard of which the girl was playing. This snow-rolling behavior Max had never seen before—what sort of strategy was this?—and she needed a closer look.

When Max rounded the third house and crept up to a spot behind a large evergreen to watch, the girl was still at work in the snow. To Max, her nightshirt and bare feet seemed suddenly inconsequential, compared to the wild-colored clothes of the other girl: red stocking cap, green mittens, pink parka, blue jeans, and canary yellow boots.

Max stared in rapt fascination as the girl in the red stocking cap decided this ball was big enough, abandoned it in the middle of the yard, and moved down near the sidewalk to start another. The girl packed snow onto the new ball until it was too big to hold, then she rolled it as she had the last one.

When the child was finished, the second sphere of snow was only slightly smaller than the one next to it, and it too came nearly to her waist. The girl tried to lift it up to set it on top of the first ball, but couldn't quite get it off the ground.

Knowing she should retreat and avoid any contact, well aware she needed shelter, food, and warmer apparel, wanting to keep moving, Max nonetheless remained frozen with something other than the cold: something about this girl kept her here, kept Max watching. . . .

No matter how hard the girl in the red cap tried, it seemed, she couldn't raise the second ball on top of the first. Without really realizing what she was doing, Max stepped out from behind the evergreen and moved in to assist the other child.

One of the few human instincts that remained strong in her, despite Manticore's best efforts, was the need to help her “brothers and sisters” . . . and this girl, so close to her own age, touched that sibling cord within the X5-unit.

When Max appeared, the girl in the red cap stood up straight and her mouth fell open in obvious surprise. Max didn't say a word, just moved to the other side of the ball and put her hands underneath it. The snow felt cold against her hands, yet it was oddly bracing, not unpleasant at all, and the bare skin on her arms, where the sleeves of the nightshirt rode up, began goose-pimpling.

The girl in the red cap grasped the plan immediately and moved to help. Together, the two little girls—for Max was, for all her training, despite the genetic tampering, a little girl, too—lifted the new globe of snow up on top of the first one.

“Hold it there for a minute,” the girl in the red cap asked, panting, not able to keep up with Max, “willya?”

Max nodded dutifully, keeping her hands on the ball to keep it from rolling off.

Catching her breath, the girl in the cap said, “I've . . . I've got to . . . pack some snow around it . . . to keep it from falling off. Y'know?”

Max nodded again, even though she had no idea what was going on. Finally, she asked, “What is the object?”

The girl in the cap looked at Max curiously. “Huh?”

“What are you doing here? What purpose is served?”

“Purpose? . . . We're building a snowman, silly.”

“Oh. A kind of . . . decoy?”

The little girl frowned. “Does Frosty here look like a duck to you?”

“No! . . . Is this is a statue?”

The other little girl obviously had never thought of it that way. “Well . . . yeah. Sort of.”

“But the statue will melt. It is impermanent.”

“Of course he'll melt, someday. But not while it's this cold.”

“If the statue will melt, what's the purpose?”

“It's fun!”

This word had been heard before by Max, but represented a foreign concept; such was the nature of much Manticore training.

“Aren't you having fun, helping?” the girl in the cap asked, her breath pluming. “What's your name, anyway?”

“Max.”

“Max? Isn't that a boy's name?”

“No. I'm a girl.”

“Duh! I can see that. . . . I'm Lucy. Lucy Barrett.” The girl kept packing snow as they conversed, smoothing and securing the snow orbs. Max, a quick learner, imitated the action.

“Lucy is your name. Hello, Lucy.”

“Hello, Max. Aren't you cold?”

Max shrugged again. “A little.”

The girl in the cap explained that “Frosty” now needed a head; Max pitched in and they fashioned a smaller ball.

“Are you sick, Max?”

“Sick?”

“You look like you walked out of a hospital or somethin'.”

“Oh. No. I am well.”

“Good,” Lucy said, putting finishing touches on the third ball. “You live around here?”

Max shook her head, helping lift the “head” onto the snow statue.

“Are you staying with relatives, too, Max?”

“Relatives?”

“Where's your mom?
My
mom would be really mad if I came outside without my coat, my boots, my mittens, or my stocking cap.”

“Mom?” Max braced the final ball as Lucy patted it into place, until it felt more solid, like it wouldn't move if she were to let go. Max didn't let go, though.

“You do have a mom don't you? Or do you live with your dad?”

“Dad?”

Lucy removed a carrot from one pocket of her winter coat and two lumps of coal from another; she made a face out of them—Max understood that instantly—and then they stood and looked at their work of art, considering it carefully.

The older girl looked carefully at Max, too, and seemed only to be half kidding when she asked, “You aren't a refugee from a loony bin, are you?”

“Loony bin?”

The girl in the cap frowned. “Listen, are you from another country?”

“I'm an American.” Max knew that much.

“Well, don't you have a mom?”

“I never had a mom.”

“How can that be?”

“Lucy . . . I don't even know what a mom is.”

The girl in the cap began to laugh.

“Did I say something funny?” Max asked, a little irritated, but not knowing why.

Lucy's laughter caught in her throat. “You're . . . you're serious? You don't know what moms are?”

Suddenly feeling very ignorant, Max said, “Uh, no.”

“Well . . . how do you think you got here?”

Max wanted to say,
I escaped from Manticore, stowed away on a truck, then . . .

But she didn't say that; she might be unschooled in the ways of the outside world, but Max nonetheless knew that this wasn't what Lucy meant.

Lucy had another question, faintly mocking: “You were
born,
weren't you?”

Another question Max had no answer for.

Now Lucy stepped forward, patting the snow, smoothing the statue. “Is that why you're dressed like that? 'Cause you got nobody to take care of you?”

Max wondered how she could have received so much training in the last nine years, learned so much, studied so hard, and yet still this girl in the red cap could come up with all these questions, the answers to which Max had no idea.

They moved to the shoveled cement front steps of the house and sat down. Lucy asked, “You aren't from around here, are you?”

Finally, a question she knew the answer to. “No.”

“Me neither. My mom's inside visiting with my aunt. We've been here since yesterday. I like it here, 'cause Dad isn't along. . . . But we'll be leaving for home soon.”

Max said, “An ant is an insect.”

Lucy laughed. “Not that kind of ant! Are you kidding? . . . Aunt Vicki is my mom's sister.” Again the laughter was replaced by a look of concerned curiosity. “Max—did you run away?”

“Uh . . . yeah. I ran away.” The questions seemed to be getting easier now.

Lucy pulled off her mittens. “Here—you take these.”

Gratefully, Max tugged on the mittens. They were wet from the snow, but they still were better than nothing, and she appreciated the warmth of Lucy's gesture, even more. “Thanks.”

“So, Max . . . you don't have a home.” It was a statement, not a question.

“No, Lucy.”

“And I don't have a sister.”

“I have sisters. And brothers.”

“Really? Where?”

“We . . . we're all split up.”

“Broken home, huh . . . I know a lotta kids in your situation.”

Somehow Max doubted that.

Lucy was looking toward the house, a split-level with a large picture window in the living room upstairs; then her eyes returned to Max, and a new excitement was glittering there. “You don't have any clothes, or anywhere to stay, or anything to eat, right?”

Again Max found herself at a loss for words. But now that her hands were warmer, she started to realize how cold the rest of her had become. She started shivering and had to work to keep her teeth from chattering.

“Max, my mom is a real softie. She wanted me to have a sister, but she and Dad couldn't.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. But I do know one thing: my mom could help you.”

Frustrated, Max said, “Lucy, I still don't know what a ‘mom'
is
,” shaking her head, not liking where this seemed to be going.

Looking confused now herself, Lucy pondered that for a moment. Absently, she rose from the steps and went back to work on the snowman, smoothing it as she considered the problem. Max joined her, standing as silent as Frosty.

Finally, still filling in gaps in the snowman, Lucy said, “Mom is the person who gave birth to me, and you, too.”

“Yours mom gave birth to me?”

Lucy laughed again, stopped herself, shook her head. “No, not my mom. . . .
Your
mom, whoever she is, or maybe . . .
was
. . . gave birth to you. You have a belly button, don't you?”

“I don't know.”

“A navel?”

“Of course I have a navel.”

“Well, that's where you used to be connected to your mom, when you were born. That proves it. Whether you know her or not, you had a mom, all right.” Lucy shrugged. “Everybody does.”

“So . . . moms are always girls?”

“Women,” Lucy said seriously, seeming to take this teacherly responsibility to heart. “When we're older, we'll be women, and moms, too.”

Max didn't like the sound of that much. “Do we have to?”

“Well . . . why do you have to ask such hard questions, Max?”

That there were things Lucy
didn't
know seemed oddly comforting to Max; made her feel less ignorant.

“Anyway,” Lucy was saying, as she appraised Frosty one last time, “my mom can help. She can give you food and maybe Aunt Vicki's got some old
clothes. . . .”

More people—that was bad . . . wasn't it? Suddenly, Max feared she never should have stopped, never should have spoken to this little girl.

“No,” Max said. “That's okay. I fend for myself. I adapt and survive.”

“Huh?”

“Don't tell anyone you saw me, okay?”

Lucy seemed perplexed.

“Lucy, please. Don't make me . . .”

“Make you what?”

Kill you,
Max thought.

Lucy's eyes brightened with realization. “It's 'cause you ran away, isn't it? You're afraid Mom would send you back!”

Slowly, Max nodded. She touched the girl's arm; held it firmly. “Promise me, Lucy?”

Lucy's bare hand touched Max's mittened one. “Max—were they mean to you? I mean, where you ran away from . . . were they strict?”

In her mind's eye, Max saw Eva fall dead from Lydecker's bullet.

“They were strict,” Max said.

“They were mean to you there?”

“Very mean.”

Lucy forgot about her mom as she became captivated with the notion of Max's dilemma. “Gee—what did they do?”

“They took me away from my mother,” Max said, stating her own sudden realization, “and then told me she never existed.”

“They really did that?”

A car, one block over, rolled by, Max looked up, saw the car, and ducked back behind the evergreen, Lucy hot on her heels.

“They really did that?” Lucy repeated.

“Oh yes,” Max said. “And they're chasing me now. You could be in danger, too, just being with me. . . . That's why no one can know that I'm here.”

Lucy seemed to understand, yet the danger Max had mentioned only seemed to excite the child. “Listen, Max . . . I've got an idea. We can hide you. You can go with us. We live far away,
really
far away. . . . Whoever's looking for you would never think to look there.”

A warm feeling came into Max's chest, something she'd never felt before: hope. “But if we do that, won't you have to tell your mom?”

“Trust me—she'll want to help you.”

Max shook her head vigorously; she had trusted Lydecker. . . .

“Mom likes kids, she'll help you and keep away the people chasing you. Look, she tried to adopt a sister for me and they turned her down.”

“Adopt?”

“Take in a kid whose mom was dead or something. But my dad . . . they said he wasn't ‘suitable,' or . . . anyway, she'd give anything for me to have a sister.”

Unconvinced, Max said, “Thank you, but I better get going.” She tugged off the mittens and handed them back to Lucy.