Dark Angel: Skin Game (8 page)

and he's not in the print media. You could be a big help."

Standing just close enough to hear, Max watched as Sketchy's head seemed about to explode with pride and possibilities.

"I could do that," Sketch said. "I was born to do that!" "You think your editor will go along?" Logan asked. "Why wouldn't he? Transgenics make great copy!" "That paper's been feeding the fear, Sketch. The paranoia. We need to get the real story out."

Sketchy considered that, then said, "You want positive stories about transgenics, right?" "Yes. Otherwise, you're part of the problem." "I'm not part of the problem! ...

Can I get pictures?" Logan shot a glance at Max, who nodded. "We'll get whatever we can," Logan said.

"With exclusive pics," Sketch said, "I think my editor'll go along, and be happy to! I mean, if we're the only protrans-genic newspaper in the city, that's got to sell some copies, right?"

Logan nodded, put a hand on the skinny guy's shoulder. "Now you're thinking like a newspaperman." Sketchy beamed. "I could get a byline and everything...." "If this fool can be a help out there," Original Cindy said, "Original Cindy can do some real shit.

What you got in mind?"

Max turned her attention back to her best friend. "You can help get us supplies in, for one thing. And you can get us information, and we may even need you to deal with some hot-property fences and stuff, should we be forced to make our living by ... well, less honorable methods than bike mes-sengering." "If you mean takin' down some more dope dealers,"

Original Cindy said, "they ain't nothin' more honorable than that___Hell yes, I could do all that, girl."

Max knocked fists with her friend, and felt like one of the weights had at least shifted, if not totally lifted off her shoulders.

That night, she, Logan, and Joshua led Original Cindy and Sketchy to the Medtronics building, down the stairs and into the tunnel. They spoke as they walked, voices echoing a little.

"How we gonna stay hooked up, girl?" Original Cindy asked Max. "You got your cell?"

Max shook her head. "Cell phones are no good. The police will be monitoring all signals coming in or going out of Terminal City."

"For some messages," Logan said, "we can use Eyes Only bulletins."

"Busting in on TV transmissions," Sketchy said. "Sweet— but you think he'll help?"

Logan nodded. "I know Eyes Only, and he's always been on the transgenics' side."

"Cool dude," Sketchy said.

"Yeah, I'd say Eyes Only is a pretty cool dude," Max said, glancing at Logan and giving him a secret smile.

"So what else we going to do to stay connected?" Original Cindy asked.

Logan asked Max, "You think Cindy and Sketch'll be watched by the police or White's people?"

Max shook her head. "I don't think either White or the cops know that these guys helped us—" She turned toward Cindy and Sketchy. "—so there's no reason for them to sur-veil you. But watch your backs."

"Always," Original Cindy said.

"Then," Logan went on, "how about using Joshua's house as a drop site?"

The house was a condemned, abandoned one, where the mysterious Sandeman—a key figure at Manticore, and by some accounts the "father" of all the transgenics—had once lived. Joshua had squatted there, and then Logan, and its appearance as a rundown derelict structure kept it useful.

"I like that," Max said with a short nod.

Not missing a beat, Logan kept going. "If the blinds are up, there will be a message inside; if the blinds are down, nothing."

"Rad," Original Cindy said.

Sketchy said, "Not rad—what are you talking about? Joshua's house ... ?"

"Original Cindy will show you where it is," Max said.

"Where exactly will the message be?" Sketch asked.

Logan and Max traded looks.

Then Max said, "There's a desk in the living room. We'll put any messages in the top center drawer."

Sketchy looked perplexed. "Life and death riding on this, and the secret hiding place is a desk drawer?"

Max explained: "There's no reason to hide anything any more than that. The house looks abandoned, and anyone who's coming poking around has run into Joshua ... and those people usually don't come back."

"So," Sketch said, nodding, concentrating, "best not to overthink it."

"Truer words," Max said.

Original Cindy said, "Yeah, Sketch—don't pop a vein over it, 'kay?"

"As Max would put it," Logan said, "we better jet—it's dark, but those cops are going to start getting restless ... and we don't want to get caught on the street."

Max and Logan had worked out the escape plan during the day. Logan had sent an e-mail message to Bling, his physical therapist and occasional Eyes Only associate, to bring Logan's car to the end of the second tunnel at precisely nine o'clock. By then Logan would be there with Sketchy and Original Cindy and the three of them would pile into the car and disappear into the night.

Just in case, Max would pick that moment to call the cops and suggest the beginning of negotiations. They figured the police would get so wrapped up in that, they wouldn't give a civilian car driving out of the neighborhood beyond Terminal City a second glance.

Sketchy gave Max a quick hug. "I'm sorry for all the times I let you down ... I didn't mean to—"

"Forget it," Max interrupted. "When it mattered, you came through."

Nodding feebly, Sketchy said, "Thanks. I'll make it up to you—I'll do the best I can to help."

She grinned. "Always knew you would. You may be a lard-ass bike messenger, but you got a good heart, Sketch. You should remember that more often."

The goofus was starting to tear up.

"Don't even," she said, raising a single digit. "Get the hell out of here and get back to work. You'll be lucky if Normal doesn't fire your lazy ass."

Grinning again, Sketchy slipped through the door.

Original Cindy put her arms around Max. "You watch behind you, Boo, 'cause I ain't got your back."

"You too."

Original Cindy's smirk dug a dimple. "You think Normal's holding a job for a bitchin'

Nubian princess who just happens to be playin' for the home team?"

Max grinned. "In a lot of ways I think you scare him more than I do.... Oh yeah, he'll have a job for you."

The hug went on a few seconds longer, neither of them wanting to let go. Then Sketchy ducked back in and said, "Group hug! Can I join in?"

"In your skinny-ass dreams, maybe!" Original Cindy said.

He disappeared back through the door, Original Cindy

sprinting behind him, yelling something about kicking his ass until his ears bled.

With her friends this close to safety, Max couldn't help but smile.

Logan hung back and said, "So .. . I'll see you soon."

"Yeah. Take care out there."

"I will," he said, his eyes boring into hers, their feelings burning back and forth, riding the connection. "And you too."

She gave him a little nod. "I will. You better get going before Cindy kills Sketchy's skinny ass. Of course, if she does, we won't need my diversion."

Still refusing to take his eyes from hers, he said, "Seeya."

"Yeah, seeya."

This is where they would have kissed—if hers wasn't a literal kiss of death.

Then Logan Cale edged through the door, paused for one last look at her, and shut the door. Joshua stepped forward, gave her a quick hug.

"Gonna be okay, Little Fella," he said.

"Yeah, I know."

He said, "We better go."

She took a last glance at the door and said, "Yeah, we better."

As they walked back down the tunnel, Joshua's face turned somber again, just as it had that morning.

"You still worried about our brothers and sisters outside?" Max asked.

"They don't have family out there. Even Freak Nation has freak family. But out there,"

he said, and pointed vaguely toward the ceiling, "out there, they're alone. Might get scared by things they don't understand."

"What?" Max asked.

"Like Isaac. Afraid."

Isaac had been Joshua's test-tube twin brother, a gentle soul. But abuse from the guards at Manticore had snapped

the young transgenic's mind, and when Max had set them all free, she'd turned loose a serial killer who preyed on men in uniform.

But she couldn't figure how Isaac tied in with whatever was bothering Joshua.

"What are you talking about?" she asked him.

"What Mole said this morning."

That only served to confuse Max more. "What did Mole say this morning?"

"When we saw the news story about the murdered policeman."

"Yeah?"

"Mole said, 'And they're worried about us?' "

"Go on."

"What if the one who killed the cop is one of us?"

"Joshua, don't pay any attention to what they said on TV—they're going to blame us for every bad thing that happens in the city, for a while."

He turned those soulful, sorrowful eyes on her. "What if—we deserve the blame?"

"Why would you even think that?"

The dog man gazed toward the city. "Our brothers, our sisters ... they could be out there now, alone. Scared, like Isaac."

All of a sudden, Max saw where he was going. "You think a transgenic really may have killed that cop?"

Joshua shrugged. "People are afraid of what they don't understand. We are people too.... Could be."

"But it could just as easily be one of them too."

He shrugged again. "Could be."

"You ... you think it's one of the basement people?"

She was referring to the animal DNA experiments— like Joshua himself—who'd literally been caged up in Manticore's basement.

"A lot down there had it bad, Max ... real bad. Isaac, Dill, Oshi, Kelpy, Gabriel. Many bad things done to our brothers. Guards were afraid of what they didn't understand and they did bad things."

Joshua didn't have a theory—he had nothing to go on but his experience, and in his life, if someone was killing men in uniform, it was a transgenic. Like Issac. Max tried to rid herself of the thought...

... but it didn't go away easily.

Hustling back to the media center, Max laid out her orders, then, with Joshua and Alec accompanying her, she walked up to the blockade at the main gate at exactly nine P.M.

Half a dozen officers pointed guns at them from behind cars. Illuminated only by the light bars, Max could nonetheless see the hatred in their eyes. She knew that each now fought the impulse to pull the trigger and kill the three trans-genics without hearing a single word.

In her earphone came Dix's voice: "Jesus, Max, you really set them off. Security cameras show them hunkering down at every post. They're getting ready for a fight."

Not changing her passive expression, she yelled, "Where's Detective Clemente?"

A very white man in a camouflage uniform and Kevlar helmet inched up so his head and neck were visible above the roof of a police car. "I'm Colonel Nickerson, National Guard! ... I'm in charge here."

"You may be in charge of them, Colonel, but you're not in charge of me .,. and I only talk to Clemente."

"He's not part of this anymore," Nickerson said. He was practically yelling, and Max didn't know if it was because he wanted to be heard ... or just because he was scared.

"They're on the street," Dix said in her ear, meaning Logan, Cindy, and Sketch.

"Everything's go so far."

"Colonel Nickerson," she said, her voice emotionless and almost bland, "do you want to see a peaceful end to this little situation?"

"Yes, I do. The question is ... do you?"

Max nodded and took a couple of steps toward the fence. She heard guns being cocked as she moved—deadly little echoey clicks in the night.

Nickerson came out from behind his car and faced her.

"I've never wanted anything but to live peacefully," Max said.

In her ear Dix said, "They're in the car—it's started and they 're moving off No one seems to have even noticed their asses!"

"Then why the hostage situation at Jam Pony?" Nickerson asked, with some edge in his voice. "And why all this?"

"Do you know an NSA agent named Ames White?"

The question seemed to catch Nickerson off guard. "No— never heard of him."

Max could buy that—-just as White had excluded the local PD from carrying out his dark agenda at Jam Pony, the National Guard colonel might well be out of the Ames White loop here at Terminal City. "That's why I need to talk to Detective Clemente."

Nickerson looked confused.

"By the time I get you up to speed, this mess may have blown up in all our faces....

The clock's ticking, Colonel, and there's nothing you or I can do to slow it down. The only thing we can do is work with it, and if you really want a peaceful ending to this, then you'll do what expedites that. And that would start with finding Detective Clemente and getting his ass down here ... now."

"I don't know ..."

"Otherwise, you're lying about not knowing Ames White ... and I'll know where I stand with you." Max looked at him hard. "Bip bip bip, Colonel."

Then she, Alec, and Joshua turned and walked into the welcoming gloom that was their Terminal City home.

SECTOR ELEVEN. 9:58 PM

SUNDAY, MAY 9, 2021

Bobby Kawasaki could feel the inner him—the real him—coming out. He had more energy now, though he still had not been off the sofa all day. The drug was finally winding down, and he could feel his true strength returning.

On a normal weekend Bobby would have already been out; but even before it started, this weekend had been screwed up. He felt lucky that he'd gone out Thursday and gotten a jump on the weekend's shopping. If he hadn't done that, he'd be further behind—further from his goal—and he would have felt even more lethargic than he did now.

The hostage situation at Jam Pony had almost screwed up everything. Bobby was a transgenic passing as an ordinary, and not even Max or Alec had known; not CeCe, either. Max and Alec he admired for helping other transgenics; but he'd been unable to find the courage to join in.

Maybe he would find that courage, one day soon—after he reached his goal.