Subject Seven (5 page)

Again. The thought made him want to scream, but he'd learned a lot about self-control over the last few years. A lot.

He willed himself to focus on the tape. After the idiot had completed a long list of whining complaints about how horrible his life was, he finally got to the point. “Who are you? What the hell do you want from me? What did you do to my family? I need to know that they're safe. And who . . . who am I?”

The anger disappeared for a moment and he roared with laughter, pounding the bed with his hands and his feet alike. “Who am I?” He repeated the phrase several times. Oh, this was rich. This almost made up for the changes in his plans.

The Other was alive. That meant a change in plans. If his meeting went well, he might even be able to get that help, too.

He'd done all he could without help, all he could without backup. Now he needed to handle the next level of the game. And really, it was a game. It was best if he thought of it that way because games were different from life. Games could be won definitively.

He intended to win. It was what he did.

A moment later he left the room. He was hungry, but that could wait. There was a man waiting to meet with him who had information that could be bought.

Once outside the hotel room, he picked up the pistol he'd stowed under a decorative rock at the edge of the parking lot and fished the bundle of hundred-dollar bills from where he'd taped them to the underside of the closest manhole cover and stuffed them in a duffel bag. Not the best bank in the world, but no one asked questions. If no one asked stupid questions, he didn't have to kill anyone else. Hiding the bodies was inconvenient on such short notice.

Loaded with cash and weapons, he headed for the meeting place.

Clarkson was late. Seven wasn't happy about it, but there was nothing he could do. He flipped open his cell phone again to double-check, but there were no messages.

He dialed the number his contact had given him, but Clarkson didn't answer.

No. Wait. Just before the damned phone kicked over to voice mail, something changed.

He looked around the bowling alley and studied the people around him. The Kingpin Bowl was a dive, the sort that reputable people didn't go to. The only people around him were losers, slinking around in the bar area looking to score other losers, and a few teens who were playing in the arcade or actually trying to bowl a few games on the miserable alleys that needed more than a layer of polish to make them halfway decent. It was much too late at night for family fun.

He concentrated and listened carefully to the people around him. Ears that could hear a heartbeat from thirty yards away strained and he sorted the busy noises until he could distinguish the background sounds from what he wanted. Regular humans were damned near deaf in comparison to him, a concept that almost always left him amused. He sniffed. The sad lot stank of beer, cigarettes and failed deodorant.

He hit the redial button and listened. The phone made its purring sound in his ear, and on the other side of what the owners called “the Lounge,” where only people old enough to drink alcoholic beverages were supposed to sit, a phone rang at the same time. He looked in that direction and saw a man sitting at a small table. Even from across the room, he could almost smell the fear coming off the guy.

He studied the stranger as the phone rang in his ear. Sure enough, the man watched his phone ring four times and then as soon as the voice started asking him to leave a message, the man set the phone down on the table next to a drained beer mug.

Seven was big, especially for a fifteen-year-old, and while he could pass as an adult from size alone, no one was going to mistake him for being old enough to drink. That didn't stop him from entering the Lounge. He had business to take care of, and he wasn't planning on buying a beer anyway.

He took the long way around the collection of tables, deliberately checking out the women around him instead of eyeballing Clarkson. The man was sweating and looking all over the place.

A grizzled man with tattoos covering his beefy arms looked him over as he stared at the woman draped on the man's arm.

“What are you staring at, kid?” The man's voice was a challenge, primal and simple. It said,
Don't try to take my woman from me or I'll beat you down
.

Seven grinned and leaned in closer as he let himself slow down. The man looking at him blinked, shocked that his question was being answered with words instead of with fear. “I'm not looking at much. Just trash.” His eyes slid from the man to the woman with him. She was older, easily five to six years out of his normal range, but still attractive. She wore too much makeup and stank of perfume that was sweet enough to kill a diabetic. “And more trash.”

The response was what he expected. The man stood up fast, muscles tensed, and prepared to swing. The woman with him, realizing she'd been insulted, despite the alcohol blurring her reasoning skills, opened her mouth and started to stand up as well. Her man wanted to be chivalrous, and she wasn't used to that.

Seven grinned, baring his teeth, and readied himself.

The man did as he expected and took a swing. He blocked the blow easily and drove his clenched fist into the man's stomach hard enough to knock all the air from the fool's lungs. As his opponent started to double up, he caught the man's throat in his hand and lifted him back into a standing position.

There was no reason for the conflict except that he could use the distraction to keep Clarkson off guard. He didn't want the man to know he was being stalked. Not yet. “Stop while you're ahead, loser. Don't make me break your stupid face.” Oh, the thrill! He liked the look of understanding on the man's face. His fingers gripped the man's trachea. One squeeze, a few extra ounces of pressure, really, and the man wouldn't be able to breathe again without major surgery. He doubted anyone in the place knew how to save a loser with a ruined airway.

The man started fidgeting. He leaned in closer and whispered in his ear. “Sit down, or I'll kill you here and now.” In the distance a ball struck pins with a resounding crash and a couple of kids made victory noises. He looked at the woman watching them both and his grin grew another notch wider. “Trust me, she isn't worth dying over.”

The woman with him looked furious, but the man wised up and backed down. Seven dropped the man, nodded and began to move on.

And then the woman got dumber. She charged him from behind. He could hear her footsteps, the sound of several people taking in a shocked breath and her voice starting into a scream.

Before she could finish the five steps to reach him, he'd turned around and taken in the situation. She was holding a beer bottle in her hand and had it back behind her and ready to bash in his skull. Her arm was already in motion, but it seemed to take forever for her to get her arm around.

He had plenty of time to grab her wrist before the bottle could swing into his skull. She let out a startled squeak as his fingers closed over her arm and he flexed, pushing her backward.

“Sit down.” His eyes looked into hers and he saw it, the fear that grew as she studied his face. It was a lovely thing.

“I. You. What you said . . .” Her voice faded down as she spoke, no longer certain.

“Was rude of me. Get over it.” He let go of her arm. It paid to know how people's minds worked. He'd been studying people ever since he first woke up.

Clarkson hadn't moved. Seven opened his phone and hit the redial button again, watching his target.

Clarkson picked up the phone when it started ringing and checked the caller ID.

He reached out and caught Clarkson's hand in his grip, squeezing the fingers hard enough to pin the hand around the cell.

“Hey, what the hell?” Clarkson's voice was nervous, shaky.

He leaned down and looked at the man. His other hand held his phone up and he killed the attempted call. The cell in the man's hand stopped ringing at the same time, and he grinned as he watched Clarkson realize exactly who he was dealing with.

“Daniel Clarkson.” His voice was a purr as he leaned in closer still. “Have I mentioned how much it pisses me off to be left hanging?”

“I didn't know you were here.” The man licked his lips, and the worried expression on his face was enough to wrinkle his brow below the wide bald spot at the top of his head. He looked like an accountant, which was what he had been once upon a time.

“You would have if you answered the phone.”

“I could get in a lot of trouble if the wrong people found out about this.”

“I don't care. That's why I agreed to pay you fifty thousand dollars.”

“You can keep the money. I don't need it that badly. I can't take this chance.”

Seven kept his cool despite the rage that rushed through him. This was a matter that had to be handled the right way if he wished to avoid losing the information he needed. “Here's the deal, Daniel. I give you the money in this bag, and you tell me what I need to know.” He squeezed harder on the captured fingers and saw Clarkson wince. “Or I beat the information out of you. Like I did with Marty Hanson. You remember Marty, don't you? He was tough to convince. I had to break four fingers before he started talking to me.”

Clarkson's eyes flew wide and he opened his mouth, ready to say something before he closed it again, the words apparently forgotten. Before the man could try to speak a second time, Seven leaned in closer, so close that he could smell the sweat and aftershave that tainted the man's shirt.

“Think it over carefully. You have two minutes. If you try to scream or fight me, Daniel, I promise you I'll make you wish you were never born. Do you believe me? Or do you want to test it?”

Daniel believed him. They left the bar together and walked across the street to a diner that looked just as seedy. Seven was calm; he waited until they'd both ordered food before he started the interrogation. Daniel Clarkson was fidgeting and looking all too ready to rabbit. Seven set a hand on the man's wrist and watched him flinch.

“Why are you so nervous, Daniel?”

The sweating man barely dared to look at him. “Because I know who you are.”

“Really? Who am I?” He smiled, watching the nervous wreck in front of him.

“Subject Seven.”

The smile actually grew larger. “Now how did you know that?”

“I remember you. I saw you a few times.”

“I thought you just did paperwork, Daniel.” His smile faded. He'd never thought that the people providing him with information might have been among those who tortured him. That changed the equation.

Daniel looked like a dog that'd been whipped too many times. Seven guessed that if he screamed boo too loudly, the man would likely bolt from the diner. He was granted a few seconds' respite when the short, round waitress brought them their food. He held his answer until after she'd left. “All I do now is paperwork. That's all I did then, too, but now and then I saw things.”

“When did you see me?” Seven took a bite of his burger. It was half rare and heavily salted and he loved it.

“I saw all of you. All ten. I mean, not all at once, but I saw all of you. I saw you when they found out what made you special.”

“What made me special, Daniel?” He kept his voice calm. He wanted answers, and he would have them, but not if he lost his cool.

Clarkson looked a little surprised by the question. “You, you were an Alpha.”

“Want to explain that to me?”

“Alphas, that's like with a pack of wolves, okay? Alphas are the leaders.”

“Daniel, let's pretend that I don't know all the lingo, okay?” He set down his burger and put his hands on the table where Clarkson could see them. His voice was low, but he knew the man was hearing every word. “Let's pretend that back in the day, no one told me much of anything. They just did what they wanted. Start at the beginning and tell me what an Alpha is and what makes it special.”

Daniel nodded and inhaled half his burger, chewing fast and hard while he tried to figure out exactly what to say to avoid getting himself murdered. When he'd finished his eating frenzy, he started talking. “Okay, so, the idea was always to make soldiers. And what do you need to have good soldiers? You need a leader. You need to have someone in charge who can make split-second decisions. That's you. That's an Alpha.”

Seven nodded. He didn't care about the reasons. He just wanted to know the results.

“Listen. You, all of you, were failures. They thought they'd screwed it up again, okay? Nothing they did, none of the tests, showed any measure of noticeable change. None of you were performing up to expectations at first, so you were all going to be discarded. So, they were almost ready to scrap everything and start from scratch, but somebody got the idea to watch all of you together to see how you reacted to one another. Remember, you were all . . . part of the same batch. They put you all in a room where they could observe you by video camera, but then there was an accident. I think it involved Three if that matters to you.”