Changeling (20 page)

She was on hands and knees, crawling away from him, but there was nowhere for her to go. He caught up to her and grabbed hold of her collar again, heaving her to her feet. She fought, but he was ready this time. He lashed out with one foot, jamming it into the side of her knee. Cartilage and tendons popped and her leg buckled, leaving her without the leverage to resist. She howled in agony, and this time it was no act. He slammed her to the floor and planted one knee in her back, silencing her cries.

“Enough!” he shouted.

In the silence that followed, he could hear blood rushing though his veins, pounding in his head. The bottle of primal fury he had uncorked for this burst of energy was spent, a shot of nitrous oxide that had redlined his engine and left him dangerously overheated. If Eve’s confederates were lurking outside, he would be helpless to resist. No one came in though, and as the seconds ticked away and the head rush gradually subsided, he realized that no one would.

He took a deep breath, then another. When he was able to speak in a steady voice, he leaned close to Eve. “I suppose you would rather die than tell me anything, right?”

A low groan was the only reply.

“That’s what I thought. Happy to oblige you.”

“You won’t,” she rasped. “I know you. You’re not a killer.”

Professor did not miss the note of desperation in her tone. “You don’t know anything about me.” He put his hands around her neck.

“Wait—”

The rest of her plea was choked off, but after a couple seconds, he relented. “Something else you wanted to say?”

She managed a hoarse laugh. “See. I knew it. As long as there’s a chance that I can help you save the people on that plane, you won’t do it.”

There was a measure of truth in what she said, but he did not miss the subtext. “They’re already dead though, aren’t they?”

“You can threaten all you want, but it’s too late to save them. If you kill me, it’s cold-blooded—”

He tightened his grip again, held it until she started thrashing. Her arms curled back, fingers clawing at the floor.

“I can live with that,” he whispered in her ear. “It’s not like your face will haunt me. I don’t even know what you really look like.”

Her struggles continued, growing more frantic with each passing second and then she abruptly went limp. Professor waited a moment longer then let go and flipped her onto her side, into the recovery position. He massaged her neck for a moment to stimulate the flow of blood in the arteries and then felt for a pulse. Her heart was still beating out a rabbit-fast rhythm. He shook her until she drew a single gasping breath, then rolled her over, face down again. Before she could even begin to recover her wits, he drew her tactical vest down halfway, pulling her elbows together behind her back, and then cinched the straps to form a makeshift restraint system.

While it had never been his intention to actually kill her, his rationale had nothing to do with pity, weakness or even an antiquated notion of chivalry. He did not doubt that it was already too late for the passengers of Flight 815. Even if they were still alive aboard the plane—something he seriously doubted—he was out of options for calling the aircraft back. The only thing he could hope to accomplish now was to expose the Changelings, find out just how deep their conspiracy went, and maybe prevent a similar catastrophe. To do that, he needed a live prisoner, not a corpse.

He did a quick pat down, searching Eve’s pockets for useful gear or anything she might be able to use as a weapon if she got free. The magazines held only blanks but he removed them from their pouches and tossed them aside, along with the grenades which were almost certainly duds but had enough heft to be dangerous if thrown or used as a bludgeon. There was a capped syringe in one of her pockets, probably containing a dose of the tranquilizer the Changelings were so fond of using. He slipped it into his own pocket and then moved over to check on the commando. The man was truly dead this time; there was no way to fake a crushed skull. Professor did not bother with the phony combat load, but searched the man’s pockets for anything that might shed light on his identity. There was nothing, save for another syringe which Professor added to his inventory.

Eve was semi-conscious, staring at him through heavily lidded eyes, but she neither moved nor spoke as he scooped her into his arms and then heaved her onto one of his shoulders. The effects of the narcotic seemed to be easing, which meant that either it was nearly out of his system or his body was developing a tolerance for it, but he moved cautiously, as wary of a relapse as he was running into more Changelings. As he approached the door however, he was filled with a new sense of urgency. Waves of heat were radiating off the door, and the smell of wood smoke was creeping into the cabin.

Eve’s accomplice had not been speaking figuratively when he had warned her that things were about to heat up.
They’re burning it all down
.

Professor pushed the
door open, careful to avoid the blast of super-heated air that rushed in, and was met by a wall of fire. The entire north end of the camp was in flames, the orange radiance so bright that he was unsure whether it was day or night. The conflagration had already reached the row of cabins directly in front of him. Nevertheless, he edged out and skirted along the front of his cabin and rounded the corner. There were a few isolated fires to the south, but for the most part the route was clear. He surmised that the Changelings had set the fire as soon as the plane was in the air, or more probably, just before taking off. Eve’s accomplice hadn’t been exaggerating about the need to hurry.

He wondered if they had actually intended to put him on the aircraft at all. That seemed unlikely since it had not waited around, but it also meant that they had arranged some other means of escaping the fires, which had probably been set to erase all traces of the Changeling camp. Judging by the height of the towering flames, the fire was not merely consuming the ramshackle cabins, but also the forest beyond, and maybe even the town on the far side of the hill—a literal scorched earth retreat.

He quickened his step to a steady jog, running down the narrow alley between the cabins and away from the approaching firestorm, until he reached the southern edge of the camp. There, just fifty yards from where he emerged, he saw something that had not been there during his earlier explorations. A parked SUV.

With some distance between himself and the fire, he saw that it was nighttime, and while the orange glow of the flames provided more than enough light by which to see, the cabins cast nearly impenetrable shadows over the vehicle. He observed it for a few seconds to make sure there was no one lurking nearby and then crossed to it. It was unlocked and the key was in the ignition, so he dumped Eve into the passenger seat, checking to make sure that her bonds were still tight, then turned the key.

The headlights revealed a pattern of parallel grooves in the earth, the tire imprints from a small convoy of off-road vehicles, which converged into a trail that led away to the south. The tire tracks were fresh. Trace evidence of a recent evacuation. He followed the tracks, keeping the SUV moving at a crawl through the rough unfamiliar terrain.

He glanced over at Eve and was surprised to find her staring back at him with eyes full of hate. There was something that looked like a flap of skin—still streaked with camouflage paint—hanging from her face, and under it, another layer of smooth unmarked skin. He considered tearing away the latex simulacrum of Jade’s face to reveal Eve’s true countenance, but decided the unmasking could wait until they were in a more secure environment. Besides, the Changeling’s true face was the least of her secrets that he wanted to know.

“Feeling talkative yet?”

She continued glowering.

“That’s okay. I’ve figured some of this out for myself already. You know how you observe your targets, learning all the little details in order to create a perfect duplicate?” He laughed. “Well, maybe not perfect. But it’s a little like being an FBI profiler. Studying behavior, reading the clues, and putting it all together. While you were observing me, I was observing you. Here’s what I came up with.

“You’ve been at this for a while. Decades. Maybe longer.” He noticed a slight eye-twitch.
Okay, definitely longer
, he thought.
I’ll come back to that
. “You’re skilled at the art of illusion. Not just masks and imitating people, but creating elaborate scenarios to manipulate us. Like that fake rescue scene. You could have doped me up with truth serum and asked me anything, but instead you tried to con me into giving up the information. Playacting is like a compulsion for you. A pathological need.”

Eve maintained her stony silence. Professor looked away, allowing the accusation to sink in for a few seconds while he negotiated the narrow trail that wound through the trees.

“I guess it only makes sense. If you’ve got a particular talent or ability, naturally you’d see everything as a problem to be solved in those terms. Like that old saying, when you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. That’s how I can tell that you aren’t working for a national intelligence service.”

She looked up suddenly, evincing surprise at the statement, and inadvertently confirming his statement.

Professor grinned. “A trained spy uses the best methods available to complete a mission. A confidence artist only knows how to run a scam. Now, you’re probably wondering why I’m going on about this. Here’s the thing. Spies are also trained in how to resist interrogation methods. And they know that, no matter how tough they are, if captured, they will eventually break. I’m telling you this so that you know what’s in store for you. You’ve probably heard about ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques? Those are fun, though they aren’t much good against trained assets. You on the other hand…” He shook his head gravely.

Eve sneered. “It doesn’t matter. Even if I told you everything, you would not live long enough to share it. We are everywhere. We don’t work for some pitiful government agency. We
are
the governments. We are everywhere. You think we’ve been doing this for a few years? Try a few millennia. We’re everywhere. We’ve always been everywhere.”

Professor listened carefully to her rant and decided that she was telling the truth, or at least what she believed to be the truth, but he shook his head. “Nice try. I hope you can come up with something better than that when I’m pouring a gallon of water down your throat.”

She gave a disdainful snort and turned her head to avoid his gaze. “You wanted the truth. The truth is that there is not a soul on this earth you can trust.”

“Then indulge me. Answer my questions. Why take the plane? Why kill Roche? If you’re as powerful as all that, what difference does one crazy guy make?” When she did not respond, he asked one more question. “Why go after Jade?”

Even as he uttered the words, he realized that he had been looking at everything wrong. He thought back to the meeting with Roche, moments before his life had been snuffed out. He had asked the conspiracy theorist a similar question.

Why bring this to Jade
?

And Jade had said,
You think I can find proof that Phantom Time is real
?

Roche had died before answering the question.

“You think Jade is going to find something.” He watched for a reaction, but this time, the Changeling woman maintained a steady poker face. “What? Something to do with Phantom Time?”

He thought he saw a faint glimmer of amusement in her eyes.
Okay, not Phantom Time. What then
? “Well, you’re right to be worried. Jade can be a regular bulldog when she puts her mind to something, but I guess you’re already figuring that out.”

“It’s not for you.”

Eve spoke so softly that it took him a moment to comprehend what she had said.

“What? What’s not for me?”

She did not answer and he had to turn his full attention back to the matter of driving as the trees thinned and the trail dipped down into a drainage ditch before rising back up to a dirt road. He down-shifted and engaged the four-wheel drive low range, then eased down the embankment. The vehicle nosed down so steeply that he had to make a conscious effort not to take his foot off the accelerator and brace himself to keep from falling. The SUV’s front bumper scraped the bottom of the ditch for a moment, then the vehicle tilted up and it was all he could do to keep his foot on the gas pedal.

When the vehicle was finally level again he turned to Eve. “Will you at least tell me which way to go?”

“That depends on where you’re going.”

“How about we go join the rest of your friends? I’m game if you are.”

She looked forward again, refusing to answer.

Professor shook his head and stared out the windshield at the deeply rutted road. From what he could tell, it ran north-south, leaving him with a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right on the first try. He could always backtrack if he hit a dead-end, but such a mistake might cost valuable time, or possibly exhaust his fuel supply, leaving him stranded. The ruddy glow of the distant fire was brightest to the north. Depending on how the road meandered, it might take them right into the heart of the blaze.

“Two roads diverged in a wood,” he muttered. “So I flipped a coin.”

He cranked the wheel to the right, turning the SUV away from the fire, but Eve stopped him. “Go the other way.”

He corrected immediately, veering to the left and, as soon as the wheels were all pointing forward, shifted the four-wheel drive back into high-range. “Why the change of heart?”

“Because I don’t know how far that road goes, but I do know that if you run out of gas out in the middle of nowhere, I’m screwed. Since you dislocated my knee, I won’t be walking out, and I doubt you’ll be able to carry me very far. It’s pretty simple math, really. Oh, and I don’t think that’s how the poem goes.”

“Poem?”

“Robert Frost.
The Road Not Taken
. ‘Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.’”

“Ah. I didn’t think you were familiar with Frost.”

“You’re thinking of Jeanne Carrera.”

He looked at her again, wondering about the woman under the mask. “Is it worth it?”

“What?”

“Whatever it is you get from playing this game. Wearing a mask all the time. Living other people’s lives instead of your own.”

She turned away and looked straight ahead. “You don’t know anything about me.”

He shrugged and did the same, pushing the SUV as fast as conditions would permit. The headlight beams picked up the smoke in the air, but after about two miles, the road began to veer away from the fire. Not long after that, the road came to a T-junction with a paved highway.

“Left,” Eve said without looking.

He followed this guidance, but remained wary. Her pragmatic explanation for helping him earlier did not carry as much weight now that they had reached a road more traveled. “So where are we anyway? New Zealand?”

She gave a short, humorless laugh. “I figured you would have worked that out already.”

“I’m in the ballpark, right?”

“Tasmania.”

“Ah, of course.” The island of Tasmania, located a hundred and fifty miles off the south-eastern tip of Australia, shared the same latitude as parts of New Zealand, but was about eight hundred miles further west. “Well that’s a little embarrassing.”

Tasmania was fairly large for an island, about the same size as Ireland, but with only one-eighth the population, half of which was concentrated in the capital city of Hobart, with the rest mostly occupying settlements on the coast. Nearly half of the island had been set aside for parks or nature preserves, most of which were not easily accessible by vehicle, making it the perfect place to hide from the rest of the world.

“I take it that wasn’t your permanent headquarters.”

“We don’t have ‘headquarters.’ I told you. We are everywhere.”

“Well, it won’t be too hard to root you out.” He reached over and tugged the dangling flap of latex, revealing a little more of her true face.

She looked away again, staring absently out the side window. “Not everyone wears a mask.”

That thought was chilling. If the Changelings had truly been infiltrating the halls of power for several generations, then there would be no need for them to replace world leaders. They could simply leverage their preferred candidates into the limelight, and let democracy take care of the rest.

“I don’t believe you,” he lied. “But it doesn’t matter. You’re afraid. Afraid that Jade will find something that will utterly destroy you, and that tells me that you’re a lot weaker than you want me to believe.”

She continued giving him the silent treatment, which seemed proof enough that he was right.
I have to contact Jade
, he thought.
Let her know that she’s on the right track. But how
?

How indeed, if even the omniscient Changelings could not find her?

A light appeared further down the road, the headlights of an approaching car, the first he had seen.
Probably someone coming to investigate the fire,
he thought
. But what if it’s not? What if it’s more Changelings coming to see why Eve was taking so long
?

There was something strange about the lights too, but with them shining directly in his eyes, he couldn’t quite put his finger on what was bothering him. When the lights were only about a hundred yards away, Eve broke her silence, speaking in a calm detached manner. “They drive on the left here.”

Professor hauled the steering wheel to the side, veering into the left lane, even as the sound of the oncoming car’s horn reached his ears. The SUV shuddered as he fought to regain control, and for a moment, he thought it might go tumbling down the highway. Instead, the vehicle spun around sideways, the rear end clipping a white guard post, and then rebounded away, spinning across both lanes, just missing the passing car, and hit another guard post on the right side of the road.