Brooding City: Brooding City Series Book 1 (12 page)

The morning sun
was a welcome relief in the valley.

Warm light dried the caked mud of their footprints and helped turn much of the marshes back into grasslands. Unfortunately for Jeremy and his father, Uncle Rick insisted on starting their trek two hours before sunrise, and today’s hike hardly fared better than yesterday’s.

Still, the chill in the air following the storm had dissipated, and the skies were clear for as far as the eye could see. It seemed that fortune was finally favoring them. They made good progress without having to break camp and carry the tent, and the journey to the lake that Uncle Rick had spotted was an easy one. They passed through open fields broken here and there by small forest glades. The grasses grew as high as Jeremy’s waist, and he heard small creatures scurrying about in the underbrush near his feet. This was an untamed wilderness that was unaccustomed to humans; they had never learned to fear them. Maybe that was how Ellie had gained such easy control over them, both in reality and in her dreams.

They crested one final hill before the lake was in sight. It reflected the morning sun and stretched for at least a mile before them. A forest of tall pines surrounded the lake, and its shimmering surface was spotted with a smattering of tiny islands. A flock of birds flew over the water as the three men looked on from the hilltop.

“It’s beautiful,” Jeremy said in awe.

“That it is,” Nathaniel agreed. “I bet we’ll be getting visits all year ‘round just to see a view like this.” The lake glittered like a diamond under the rising sun.

Uncle Rick cupped his hands into fleshy binoculars and peered about. “There,” he said, pointing to an adjacent hill. “That’s where we should build. It’ll have a perfect view of the lake during the day and still be able to see the sunset from indoors. Imagine a seasonal hotel with swimming in the summer and ice skating in the winter.”

Nathaniel nodded. “We should go check it out, though, and make sure that it’s solid enough for building.”

Uncle Rick nodded. “Get the lay of the land.”

“Exactly.”

Jeremy took off before his father had finished the word. He was getting hungry, and the sooner they arrived at the other hill, the sooner they could break for lunch.

He grievously misjudged the distance. It was a solid hour of hiking through tall grass and thick brambles, and the three men were sweating heavily by the end of it, even Uncle Rick. The heat of the summer sun was returning, and it didn’t do them any favors.

“Let’s stop here,” his uncle suggested. Jeremy and Nathaniel both fell onto their knees without protest. Uncle Rick leaned against a boulder and took out a water bottle. “You two should be drinking, too,” he said firmly. “You need to stay hydrated, or you’ll collapse before you even realize there’s a problem.”

Jeremy nodded tiredly and retrieved a bottle each for himself and his father.

“Look at this view, Nate,” his uncle continued. He breathed deeply, his barrel chest expanding to an impressive size. He clambered on top of the boulder and sighed in contentment. “This is definitely the spot. Smell that fresh air! When that lake freezes over in winter, you’re going to have yourself a fantastic place for ice skating.”

“Uncle Rick,” Jeremy said, “can you finish your story from yesterday? The one where you were lost in Brazil?”

He looked down at his nephew in surprise. “That’s right, I never completed it, did I? All right, well, I’ve forgotten where I was in the story…”

“You were disguised as local militia,” Jeremy supplied immediately. “And there was a drug lord.”

Uncle Rick gazed at him with a peculiar look in his eye. “Yes, of course. You have the memory of an elephant,” he praised.

You don’t know the half of it,
Jeremy thought. His father moved in closer to hear the story as well. Uncle Rick positioned himself so his feet dangled off the boulder and he cleared his throat.

“Right, well. My buddy Jimmy and I were deep in hostile territory now,
deep
in the shit. We couldn’t drink a lick of the water; breathing the air was bad enough, humid as it was.”

“Why couldn’t you drink the water?” Jeremy asked.

“It was poisoned,” his uncle said matter-of-factly. Nathaniel sat up a little straighter upon hearing that. “That was our mission, you see? We couldn’t stop their drug smuggling; there were just too many shipments on the ground and coming by sea for that kind of approach. And if we dropped in and snuffed
el jefe
, the next man in line would just take charge.”

“I think they speak Portuguese in Brazil,” Jeremy said.

“Would you stop interrupting?” His words were plaintive, but Uncle Rick’s smile betrayed his natural amusement. “As I was saying, there was no stopping the shipments and no headhunting. So we poisoned the water supply. Hell of a drug, it was; knocks out the immune system in hours and carries pheromones at the same time. We lowered their ability to fight infection, then the pheromones attracted mosquitoes and other nasty things.” He scratched at a phantom itch in his neck. “I think that’s what attracted so many of the blighters to us, actually. We must’ve breathed in enough of the water vapor to make us attractive, but without the lowered immune response.”

Nathaniel held up a hand. “Hang on,” he said. “That was a lot of unfamiliar mumbo jumbo bio-talk coming from my big brother, the harmless world traveler. And since when did you start
killing
people?”

“They were bad guys, Dad,” Jeremy said in his uncle’s defense. He turned to look into Uncle Rick’s face. “You only killed the drug lord and his cartel, right?”

“Of course! Nobody else got hurt,” he reassured them.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Nathaniel said. He stood and stretched, and a few places in his spine popped in response. He took a long stride away toward a copse of trees. “Back in a minute. Nature calls.”

“I’ll alert the media,” Uncle Rick yelled after him. He jumped down from the top of the boulder and landed heavily beside Jeremy, who could have sworn the ground quivered slightly.

“Woah, watch it there!” Jeremy cried, sidestepping his uncle’s landing. The two of them leaned against the enormous rock and admired the beautiful vista. “Was that story true? Did all of that really happen?”

Uncle Rick chuckled and tugged his beard scruff absently. “Every word of it,” he replied, his voice deep and rich and jolly again. “I really enjoyed my time down south, though, apart from the work. Nice people, great food.”

Something still nagged at the edge of Jeremy’s thoughts, and he had to concentrate to realize what it was. “Growing up, I always thought that you were a world traveler.”

“I am! All seven continents, many times,” he boasted.

Jeremy sighed. “No, I mean, as a
peaceful
traveler. Like, sightseeing, getting your picture in front of the Louvre and the Pyramids. Something more along the lines of Peace Corps, or the Foreign Legion.”

“You have to be French to do that.”

“The way you tell it, it sounds like you were a mercenary.”

“I prefer to think of myself as a sort of secret agent,” he said, puffing out his chest.

“I don’t think secret agents are supposed to announce that they’re secret agents,” Jeremy said with a laugh.

“I’m retired.” Uncle Rick peered out into the distance. “What’s that?”

Nathaniel came crashing through the trees, screaming incoherently. His pants were unfastened, and he held them up with one hand as he sprinted toward the two of them. He waved with his free arm as he shouted.

“Bear!” he yelled. “Run, move, NOW!”

Behind him, a roar rose up from within the trees.

Nathaniel tripped and fell as he secured his pants, and Uncle Rick moved to pick him up even as he pushed Jeremy forward with one arm. They moved with speed that only hysteria could inspire, the mania that pushed bodies past their breaking point and gave mothers the strength of ten bodybuilders. Jeremy had never pumped his legs so fast or so hard in his life, and he heard his heart pounding against his skull.

Running was awkward in his too-large boots, and more than once he threatened to twist an ankle on an unlucky step. It was only Uncle Rick’s constant speed and strength that kept them moving, and they reached the hill from which they’d first spotted the lake in under twenty minutes. The last part of the run was the uphill climb, and Jeremy collapsed on the ground when they reached the top.

His father was in no better shape. He wheezed and clutched at his chest, which his sweat-soaked shirt was clinging to tightly. Uncle Rick breathed loudly beside him, winded but without any other obvious discomfort. Jeremy felt his aching feet covered in a thin film of fluid; most or all of his blisters must have broken during the sprint.

“Did you get a good look at it?” Uncle Rick finally asked.

Nathaniel shook his head. “It was…big. Really big.” He looked him up and down for a moment. “Maybe even bigger than you.”

“At least you have the energy to make jokes,” Uncle Rick said grimly.

Nathaniel sobered quickly. “Right. It was enormous—”

“You’ve already said that.”

“—and it had black fur all over.”

“A black bear in these parts…during summer? Are you certain?” Uncle Rick earned a level look from his brother. “All right,” he said, hands up. “Then the best thing for us to do—”

Another roar sounded, not too far away from where they stood. They could hear something large scraping the bark from trees as it lumbered through the nearby forest. Uncle Rick squarely faced the two of them.

“You need to go. Now!”

“What about you?” Jeremy asked.

His uncle gripped him by the hand to hoist him up, and Jeremy’s vision blurred and magnified at the same time.

It was a wholly unnerving experience, and it took Jeremy a moment to realize what had happened. In all their time together, he and his uncle had never made skin-to-skin contact. The firm grip was like a vise on his arm, one he couldn’t escape. Memories flooded his waking mind without warning, sudden recollections of a past that wasn’t his—only now they were. Experiences filled his brain to bursting, every recounted story from his childhood suddenly reinforced with visceral knowledge, the memory of every adventure. He was drowning in it.

“Jeremy, pick up those feet and run,” came his uncle’s urgent voice.

There was something else in there, too. It was engrained in his voice, burning with its own dancing fire of life. It was something deep and rich. Why hadn’t he noticed that before?

“Take your father and go! Don’t stop until you get home!” commanded the fathomless voice.

Jeremy felt his legs moving without his brain telling them to. But it was a good idea, wasn’t it? He was supposed to run. His clumsy steps lengthened into a loping run, and he felt his father’s presence beside him. But that was the only presence. Jeremy glanced over his shoulder in alarm.

Behind them, armed with only a small knife, his uncle stayed to confront the bear.

Brennan’s apartment once
more became a den for two.

He didn’t think that leaving Greg alone last night would be a good thing, so the two of them had returned to his apartment after leaving the hospital. He let his nephew take the bed while he slept on the couch, but Greg’s soft sobs could be heard through the wall, and neither one of them got much rest until Greg finally cried himself to sleep. It was an exhausting thing, being miserable, and Brennan sympathized for the kid. He had made his peace with losing Maddy a long time ago; it was just hitting his nephew fresh that she was gone.

Brennan made the executive decision to stay home that day. The two of them needed a personal day, and he cracked open two bottles of Coke just as Greg emerged from the bedroom. He didn’t say anything, and Brennan didn’t want to overstep his bounds. It had occurred to him sometime in the early morning that Greg would need someone to watch over him. He was eighteen, but his age mattered little with no job and no aspirations for college. He was an addict, and Brennan was the only family he had left.

“Good morning,” Brennan said, offering a Coke.

Greg turned it down. “It’s afternoon,” he replied. He sat on the couch, which protested with a whoosh of air as he sunk into the cushion. “And that stuff rots your teeth, you know.”

Brennan grunted. “More for me. Do you want to watch something?”

“Yeah, sure,” Greg said. He picked up the remote and turned the television on, but didn’t so much as glance at the screen. Brennan sighed and joined him on the couch, placing the second bottle of Coke on the end table.

His nephew looked at the floor. There were a few shards of glass that Brennan had missed in his hasty clean-up last night. Greg raised an eyebrow. “Should I ask?”

“Best if you don’t.”

“That wasn’t really an open question,” he countered. “What happened?”

Brennan chewed at the inside of his mouth. Greg was a good kid, and he was hurting for some kind of connection right now. Brennan had become accustomed to shutting away his thoughts and feelings, compartmentalizing everything, and he had never been the best at opening up to people. Now he had been asked to do it twice in less than twenty-four hours.

He had never been forthright about his past as a Sleeper; in fact, every Sleeper to date had served until death, and Brennan’s situation was unique as far as he knew. Nobody had bothered with the details of
retirement
. Which, he supposed, meant that there were no restrictions against revealing his past. Still, Sleepers were feared by many, regardless of their status as fact or fiction. He wasn’t sure how his nephew would react to the news.

“It’s complicated,” he hedged.

Greg looked at him and sighed. “Look, if you just went on a bender and lost it, I’m old enough to understand.”

“What? No! It wasn’t anything like that.” Brennan wished it were so simple. He took a deep breath and turned to face his nephew. “Okay, what I’m about to tell you, you can’t repeat to anyone. Understand? Absolutely nobody.”

“Got it.”

“I’m serious,” he said gravely. “If anybody were to find out that—”

Greg met his eyes. “Uncle Arty, you can trust me.”

True
.

Brennan didn’t need any further proof. He pursed his lips, choosing his words carefully. “A couple of nights ago, a Sleeper visited me in one of my dreams.” Greg arched a skeptical eyebrow, but said nothing. “I was dreaming about your Aunt Mara, she was—I was visiting her by her bedside. It wasn’t a dream, really, so much as a memory. Every detail was exactly the same, right down to the doctor pronouncing her dead while her heart was still beating. I was just about to try the impossible when the Sleeper appeared. I didn’t even notice him until it was almost too late.”

“But it was just a dream, right? Sleepers aren’t real, and even if—”

“No,” Brennan said, cutting him off. “It’s never just a dream, not when Sleepers are involved. They are very real, Greg.” He hesitated, but remembered what his power had told him. Greg could be trusted. “I used to be one of them.”

“You were…no. You’re a cop, a detective.”

“I am now,” he said simply.

Greg gaped at him for a long moment, then reached over Brennan and grabbed the second Coke from the end table. He took a long drink from it, several swallows, before sitting back and staring into empty space. “Okay,” he said finally.

“Okay?” Brennan looked at his nephew incredulously. “That’s all?”

He shrugged. “It’s in the past, right? Sleepers are the boogeymen and whatever, but that’s not you.” He looked at Brennan with mature eyes. “Now you’re a cop.”

They exchanged that stare for a moment, and it was Brennan who looked away first. His eyes burned with unfamiliar tears—not of sorrow, but of pride. His nephew was growing up.

“Thank you for understanding,” Brennan said, his voice heavy. He took a long sip that finished his Coke, and he reached forward to put the empty bottle on the glass tabletop—the one that had been shattered. He checked the motion and instead replaced it on the end table.

“So you still didn’t explain that,” Greg said with a smile, gesturing to the empty space before them. A sliver of glass gleamed against the wood in the afternoon sun, and Brennan picked it up tenderly.

“I woke up,” he said, grinning like a wolf. “I’ve always known the day would come when a Sleeper would appear in my dreams. I slept with a thumb tack curled in my palm, in case I ever needed to wake up in a pinch.” He walked over to the kitchen and tossed the glass shard into the trash.

“Slept. Past tense,” Greg noted. “You aren’t still using it?”

Brennan shrugged. “The last time we met, it didn’t end well for him. I figure I have some breathing room for the time being. As long as I keep quiet, they have no reason to come for me.”

“Keep quiet about what?”

He looked at his nephew, and his tone was very solemn. “Sleepers
are
the boogeymen.” His pocket vibrated then, and he took out his phone. “Sam,” he said. “What’ve you got for me?”

“Arty, I have good news and bad news. Which would you like first?”

“Surprise me.”

“Bad news is that there were a surprising number of places that either produce or store Chamalla, and it was a pain and a half tracking them all down. I’m charging double for all of this legwork.”

Brennan remembered that Sam was still technically on retainer for Bishop. “Done,” he promised. “What’s the good news?”

“Being the trusty and thorough friend that I am, I found all of these places for you
and
managed to narrow down the list of likely suspects to two locations.”

“Excellent!” Brennan said. “Sam, I could kiss you.”

“Please don’t.”

“All right, what are the addresses?” He wrote them down as Sam read them to him.

“But there’s a catch,” Sam added. “These spots are across town from each other, too far apart for you to visit one and then the other.”

Brennan followed his logic. “Leviathan could be watching both of them, and have enough of a warning to move shop if we don’t hit the right one first.”

“Exactly. So what are you going to do?”

“I’ll call Bishop and organize strike teams on both locations. We’ll converge simultaneously and mop them up before they have a chance to react.”

“Sounds good, partner. Need anything else on my end?”

“No need,” Brennan said. “Thanks for your help. I’ll see to it that you get your money when this is all over.”
I don’t know how the hell I’m going to break that news to Bishop,
he thought, ending the call. He motioned for Greg to join him. “I’m taking you back to your place,” he said. “Something came up at work, and I have to go.”

“Can’t I stay here?”

He hesitated. He rarely had guests over, except for Bishop yesterday and Sam’s occasional visits. With Maddy’s passing, would Greg have to live with him now? It was probably safer for him—mentally, at least—not to go back to his place just yet.

“I, um…sure,” Brennan finally said. “Teeth-rotting fluid is in the fridge, and you know how to work the television. Just watch your feet. There could still be glass lying about.”

Greg grinned. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

Brennan smiled back, but then he noticed something. His nephew’s eyes were sunken, and the skin around them was sallow. The rest of his face had a grayish tinge to it. He had chalked it up to poor sleep, or maybe he had just been too tired himself to recognize the symptoms, but now he saw that Greg was still suffering from Chamalla withdrawal.

He forced cheer into his smile and said his farewell, then descended the stairs to the street while dialing Bishop’s number. She answered on the second ring.

“Brennan, how is Maddy?” He broke the news to her. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know what it’s like to lose somebody you love.”

“It’s never easy,” he said. His voice was suddenly hoarse, and he forced the sudden surge of emotion away. It was time to work. “That isn’t why I called, though.”

“Oh? Did Sam find something?”

Brennan ignored the tone she used when saying Sam’s name and told her what he had found out. “You and I will be leading the strike teams,” he said. “I’m heading into the station now to round up everyone I can. There’s no time for you to come here, so I’ll send the team to rendezvous with you uptown.”

“Understood,” she said. Her voice turned mournful for a moment. “And Arthur? If you need someone to talk to—about Maddy, or anything—I’m here to listen.”

His heart thudded heavily in his chest. “Thanks,” he said, and then he hung up.

It took less than an hour to organize the uniforms they needed and divide them into two strike teams. One was sent uptown to assist Bishop while the other remained with Brennan to move in on a warehouse on the eastern fringe of the city. They took the shuttle and arrived just as the sun was starting to touch the skyline to the west. It was a large industrial park, full of different buildings ranging from old, square cinderblock monstrosities to newer, prefabricated modular units. An abandoned smelting workshop sat beside a dilapidated lumber mill, the kind that had cut and stored thousands of logs per day over a century ago. They were now silent relics in an industrial graveyard.

Brennan and his men took up positions outside of a long warehouse made of steel and stone. They all wore bulletproof vests and carried semiautomatic rifles slung over their shoulders. Despite all of the added weight, they moved like ghosts alongside the building. Brennan wore a simple band of black glass on his wrist. He tapped it twice, and an acknowledgement light winked twice in response. He just hoped that nothing gave away their position until he received the signal. A quiet breeze drifted through the air, stirring up dust around their feet and causing rusted metal to creak somewhere in the park.

This was the hardest part of any mission—the waiting. Being on guard and prepared for anything was fine for a few minutes at most, after which point the tedium could set in with little effort. Snipers were trained to maintain alertness for hours or days at a time, and Sleepers were similarly conditioned, but it was not something typical of uniformed police.

Lights flashed on his wrist, a single dot of light in a rapid three-burst pulse. That was the signal that Bishop was ready at her position uptown. Brennan sent a confirmation back and silently signaled his squad into action.

They entered in a burst of sound and light that brought the warehouse to life. Brennan slid open the sheet-metal door that separated his squad from the interior, and thick boots made heavy footfalls as they stormed the building. They flicked on the flashlights mounted to their rifles, and beams of light swept corners and catwalks as they entered. Empty wooden pallets lined the walls on either side, with only a few still bearing large, wooden crates. Steel beams crisscrossed overhead, the lights hanging from them having long since burned out. It was a large warehouse, but seemingly empty; their footsteps echoed off the cavernous walls.

No cries of protest rang out; no gunfire, no fanfare. Two men entered the back office and yelled, “Clear!” Similar shouts were called from the upper walkways. Whatever this place had been, it wasn’t Leviathan’s source of Chamalla. Brennan swore and swept a hand across his sweat-beaded brow.

“Sir,” one of the officers called. “You’ll want to take a look at this.”

He moved to join the officer, who had his rifle trained on one of the crates. It was labeled ‘FRAGILE’ on the outside, and one of the sides had already been cracked open and left that way before they entered. There was a single square package laying inside, no thicker than a travel brochure. One solitary patch.

“Discarded NicoClean, sir,” the officer said upon seeing what was inside. “Sorry, thought it was important.” He moved to replace the missing side of the box.

“Hold on,” Brennan said, moving to pick up the patch. He looked it over on the outside and didn’t find any tear in the wrapping. It definitely wasn’t the refuse of some random person quitting smoking. Tentatively, he ripped a small tear in the top of the wrapper and gently wafted the scent toward his nose. The hairs on his neck stood on end. He felt the room spin slightly beneath his feet, and he quickly sealed up the patch again. It was definitely saturated with Chamalla—a fully converted patch.