Fear (8 page)

“Good morning,” said Gaia's irritatingly happy roommate. Unlike Gaia, Tatiana was neatly dressed in a green sweater, jeans, and a light jacket. She had a canvas book bag slung across one shoulder, and her thick hair was held back with an elastic that matched the color of her sweater. Just looking at her made Gaia wonder how the two of them could have managed to live together this long without killing each other. The girl was just way too neat.

“I've been looking everywhere,” said Tatiana. “It took me a long time to find you.”

That was the general idea.
“Just getting in a quick game,” Gaia replied.

“Yeah, I see. That's nice.” Though her smile didn't slip, her tone carried a good note of “why are you wasting time playing chess when all this stuff is going on?” Tatiana shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Um, can I talk to you?”

“Right now?”

Tatiana nodded. “It's important.”

Gaia was about to ask for a delay, but she was actually a little glad for the interruption. Tatiana might be breaking into her
all-too-short vacation
from herself, but at least this would be a chance to get away from Mr. Haq and his glacier-speed version of chess.

She stood up and held out her hand across the board. “Okay. Looks like I have to hop. Thanks for the game.”

Mr. Haq reached for her hand. “This will mean of course that you are resigning.”

“Resign?” Gaia jerked back her hand.

“If you leave the game in the middle, then you must resign.”

Gaia dropped back into her seat. “I'm not going to resign a game that I've already won.”

“You have not won,” said Mr. Haq. A hint of anger crept into his normally cheerful voice.

Tatiana leaned over the board and looked down at the pieces. “Who is winning?”

“I am,” said Gaia.

“It is even,” said Mr. Haq.

Gaia shook her head. “We're even on pieces, but I'm ahead on position. I'll have him in checkmate after six moves.”

“You cannot know that,” said Mr. Haq. He moved his hand toward a knight as if he was finally going to make his next move, then pulled back and resumed his contemplation of the board.

“Can't you just call it a tie?” suggested Tatiana.

“No,” said Mr. Haq. “If she leaves, she loses. This is the rule.”

“But it does look like Gaia has a better position.”

“I do not see this.”

Tatiana dragged over a chair and sat down at the side of the table. “If Gaia stays, she'll probably win.”

“That is what she says.” Mr. Haq continued to stare at the board. “I prefer to play the game to the end.”

Tatiana's smiled faded, and some of the tension that had tightened her face over the last few days came back. Then, just as quickly as it had gone, the smile came back. “If you don't agree to a draw, Gaia won't play you again.”

The cabdriver looked up sharply. “What?” He turned his attention from Tatiana to Gaia. “Is this true?”

“There are plenty of people here to play,” said Gaia. “We can both find somebody else.”

“But. . . but. . .” The idea of losing a potential opponent seemed to upset Mr. Haq a lot more than the idea of simply losing a game. “It is all right. In the interest of time, I will agree to this draw.”

“Wonderful,” said Tatiana. She pushed back her chair and stood.

Gaia studied the pieces. “I don't know. Maybe I should stay. We can wrap this up in—”

“Gaia!” Tatiana folded her arms across her chest. “I really need to talk to you.”

“All right. Draw.” Gaia stood, nodded to Mr. Haq, then followed Tatiana to an empty space under the bare winter limbs of a hickory. “So, what's so important?”

“I have an idea,” said Tatiana. “An idea how we can find out something about my mother. And your father, too.”

“What's the idea?”

“Yes, well.” Tatiana slipped the book bag from her shoulder and began to dig through the contents. “You know that you are being followed by spies for this Loki.”

“I know that's what George told me.”

Tatiana stopped for a moment and looked at her. “You don't believe this is true?”

Gaia shook her head. “Actually, I do believe it. I think the spies are out there right now.”

“Good,” said Tatiana. “Because that's my idea. We will capture one of these spies.”

Gaia leaned back against the rough bark of the tree. “I hate to tell you this, but I've already had that idea. I've been watching for days, and I haven't seen one sign of these guys. If they're out there, they're good. I'm not going to spot them.”

“That's because you are working by yourself.” Tatiana finally produced a folded page of notebook paper and held it out to Gaia. “Here, take a look at this.”

Gaia unfolded the paper. “What's this?”

“It's a route.” Tatiana came closer and stood at Gaia's shoulder so she could look down at the paper. “These are directions for you to follow.” She reached down and traced a finger along the page. “See, this says you are to go west on Sixty-sixth Street to Central Park, wait five minutes, then go along the path to the north.”

Gaia read through some of the list. It was clear enough. A lot of it was walking instructions, but there were also a couple of subway trips on the page. “Okay, so it's a route. I still don't see how this is going to help me find the people watching me.”

“It will help,” said Tatiana. “Because I made two.” She pulled another sheet of paper from the bag, unfolded it, and placed it over the first. The list of directions was exactly the same.

Maybe it was the early hour, but it took Gaia a few moments to see where Tatiana was going. “You're going to follow me.”

She nodded. “Exactly. You follow these directions, and I will follow along five minutes behind you.” She fished in her book bag again. This time she came out with a pair of jet black sunglasses and light-teal-colored silk scarf. Tatiana settled the sunglasses on her nose and started tying the scarf around her head. “I will watch the people that are behind you to find our spy. If I see people following you, I will take notes about who I see.”

“If you're looking for them with those glasses on, you're going to need a guide dog,” said Gaia. “What is all that stuff?”

Tatiana lowered her voice to a whisper. “It's a disguise,” she said as she finished tying the scarf. “If this person has been watching you, he might have seen me before.”

“Yeah, well, if he's watching me right now, then he's also seeing you put on your disguise.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Tatiana frowned for a moment. “All right, so. Once I have seen a person twice, we will know that he is after you.”

“Make it three times.”

“Why three?”

Gaia shrugged. “Once is happenstance, two times is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

“What?”

“Something I read. Okay. So, we see some bozo behind me three times. Then what? What are we going to do if we catch one of these guys?”

“We make him talk. We get him to tell us where our parents are.”

“That would be great,” said Gaia. “But what makes you think this theoretical spy guy is going to talk to us? You think he's going to put his hands in the air and confess?”

Tatiana's shoulders slumped. “No. I guess not.”

“What if he won't talk? What if he will talk, but he doesn't know a thing about where they've taken your mom?”

“But. . .” The excitement drained from Tatiana's face. “You're right. It's a bad idea.”

The truth was, Gaia didn't think much of the plan. Odds were, they would never catch a glimpse of the person Loki had sent to watch Gaia—
if this person even existed.

“Absolutely,” said Gaia. “It's the stupidest plan I ever heard. But it's also the only plan in town.”

“So you'll do it?”

“Yeah, whenever you're ready.”

Tatiana looked up and smiled again, but this time her smile was small and
more than a little sad.
“Do you think there's any chance this will help find my mother?”

“We won't know till we try,” said Gaia. She looked at her list of instructions, then folded the sheet and crammed it into the single pocket of her sweatshirt. “Come on, let's catch a spy.”

THE HALLWAY LEADING TO THE
lab was always long, but this time it seemed to go on forever. Three times Josh stopped and nearly turned back, but each time he forced himself to start walking again.

This was a bad idea. A really bad idea. A get yourself sliced, diced, and served up on a platter idea. Heather was nothing. She was only some high school girl that Loki had picked to test his serum. Gaia was the important one, the girl who was fearless. There was nothing special about Heather at all. Loki had only picked her because she was close to Gaia and he thought it would be interesting to see how the two of them faced off.

So Heather was cute. Pretty. Beautiful, even. So she was nice. Kind of fun. Kind of exciting. She was an experiment. A lab rat.

How stupid did you have to be to fall in love with a lab rat?

When he was first sent out to recruit Heather, Josh had treated the thing as a job. He did his best to charm the girl, feeding back to her everything she wanted to see in a man. Josh had played that game before with several women.

It had been easy to charm Heather. She thought of herself as fairly sophisticated, but really she had
absolutely zero protection on her heart.
Her feelings, her love, were right there on the surface, ready to be picked up. Josh had grabbed those love lines and pulled Heather along. Pulled her right to Loki and his needle full of phobosan.

Only somewhere along the way, Josh had started letting Heather pull back. He wasn't sure of when it had happened or even how it had happened, but somewhere along the line, he had begun to genuinely care what happened to Heather. Josh had stopped thinking about her as just another one of the animals they ruined to test Loki's theories and started to think of her as a woman. A woman that he cared about. A woman that he loved enough to risk his own life to save hers.

If Gaia knew that Josh had fallen in love with Heather, she would probably laugh until she cried. But she would still try to kill him.

Finally Josh reached the door at the end of the long hall. He braced himself, typed his access code, and plunged inside. Josh passed two technicians that he knew in the outer room, but he gave them a nod and made a show of being in a big hurry. The last thing he wanted to do was explain to someone why he was down here without authorization.

Moving as quickly as he could without running, Josh crossed to the lab entrance. He typed his code again, and the metal door slid to the side with a soft whoosh of air. The lab was empty. He let out a breath he didn't even know he had been holding. So far, luck was on his side. If he could get in and get out without being seen, he might even live through this
bout of idiocy.

The lab was a lot quieter than it had been on his last visit. The screaming monkey was long gone. In fact, most of the transparent cages at the back of the room had been cleaned out. Only a handful of the animals that had received the first treatment with phobosan were still holding on. Josh had to get the cure to Heather before she became another statistic.

He crossed the room to the cabinet where both the latest batch of phobosan and the counteragent were stored. Through the glass front of the cabinet, Josh could see a dozen or more tubes containing the amber liquid that could save Heather's life. There was another keypad at the front of the cabinet and a tiny red light announcing that it was locked. Josh typed his access code again, grabbed the cabinet door, and pulled. It didn't open.

All at once his heartbeat doubled. He reached out to the keypad and typed his code a second time, moving carefully to avoid mistakes. The little light on the cabinet door stayed red.

Josh's access code should have opened this cabinet. It had always worked before. That meant someone had changed his access level. Which meant they already knew he was up to something.
Which meant he was dead.

Josh looked frantically around the room. There was a metal IV stand in the corner. He ran over, grabbed the stand, and carried it back to the cabinet. To hell with access codes. One good swing against the glass top and he could get all the counteragent he wanted. Josh took a good grip on the metal stand and picked it up.

There was a soft breath of air as the door across the room came open and Dr. Glenn stepped in. He was carrying a clipboard clutched against his chest, as if he was on his way to check the feeding schedule for the animals, but there was something weird about the way he was moving, and he didn't seem surprised to see Josh. Not surprised at all.

“What are you doing down here?” Glenn asked.

Josh relaxed his grip on the IV stand and set it down slowly. “I just came to check on the animals,” he said. He waved toward the empty cages. “Looks like you're losing them quickly.”

“The mortality rate isn't as high as it seems,” said the doctor. “I've taken a few of the specimens off for dissection while still alive. It should give us a better understanding of how the phobosan is operating in their systems.”

“Ah, um, good,” said Josh. “I guess. But it still looks like the first batch was a failure.”

“I wouldn't say that.” Dr. Glenn took another step into the room. He still held the clipboard against his chest, and Josh noticed that the man kept his right hand hidden behind the board. What did Glenn have in his right hand? A gun?
A syringe full of something nasty?
Whatever he was holding, it was something he didn't want Josh to see.

“We've learned a great deal from this first round of experiments,” continued the doctor. “We've already made significant changes in the formulation that are sure to eliminate many of the problems.”