Working Stiff (41 page)

... And then she realized that she was hearing it full-strength, somewhere a few feet away.

Bryn blinked and rolled over. The agony in her head was like spikes of steel driven deep, and she thought,
That is bone digging into my brain
. No, it couldn’t be. The back of her skull felt soft, but not shattered.

Busy little nanites. She
knew
it had been smashed.

She was lying on a blood-smeared kitchen floor, all alone, and there was a woman in a fluffy pink bathrobe standing in the doorway, shrieking like a banshee.

Get up
, she told herself.
You have to get up.

She managed to drag herself to her knees, then up to her feet. The woman stopped screaming and ran. Next stop, 911. Time was running out.

Annie.
Mercer had taken Freddy with him; he must have taken Annie as well.
God, Annie killed me.
Or had tried, anyway. Not her fault; she’d been controlled. She wouldn’t have done it on her own, not even out of fear.

Bryn had to cling to that. There was very little left to cling to.

Oh, God, McCallister
. He was walking into a trap, and—on her insistence—probably taking Joe Fideli with him. She had to stop it. Stop him.

She had to find Annie.

Bryn gasped and lurched for the living room, past the sofa and the toys. She tripped, hit the door, and bounced off. Locked. Nice that Mercer had been so considerate of the family that he locked up as he left—only he hadn’t bothered to move the dead woman on the kitchen floor. The woman in the bathrobe was on the phone, shrieking out the address.

Bryn twisted the dead bolt and made it outside, staggered down the steps, and broke into an off-balance run once she hit the sidewalk. The neighborhood was still quiet, but lights were coming on all over now, responding to the screams.

She had to get out of here,
fast
. At the very least, she’d be arrested for breaking and entering; even if no charges were filed, she’d be held long enough that McCallister …

She had to run faster. Somehow, she had to try.

It was ironic that the sun was rising, and it was a beautiful morning; birds were singing in lyrical melodies from the treetops. Morning glories bloomed on the fences. She left fat drops of blood behind her on the sidewalk, but fewer and fewer with each step as the injury’s last bleeder sealed itself. Her head ached unbearably, but she ignored that, concentrating on the pounding rhythm of her feet.

How long had she been lying there? How much time had it taken for the nanites to repair her broken skull?

Two blocks up was the convenience store. She dug for the keys and threw herself into the van, fired up the engine and sped away, not caring about traffic cameras or anything else. If she led a parade of cops to the Civic Theatre, fine. The more, the better.

The clock on the dashboard said she was already too late to get to McCallister to warn him,
hours
too late, but she had to try.

She had Joe’s burner phone with her, and used it to dial McCallister’s number.
Pick up, pick up
….

She got an answer. “Patrick! Patrick, listen—”

“It’s Joe,” said the voice on the other end. “Bryn?”

“If you’re at the theater, get the hell out of there!” she yelled. “Mercer sold us out, understand? Harte knows! She knows you’re coming; get out!”

“Too late for that; we’re in—” His voice was covered by gunfire, shockingly close. “Got to get Harte and shut this down or all this is for nothing. Stay away, Bryn. Just stay away.”

“No! I’m coming!” She hung up and tossed the phone, and drove faster.

There was an eerie sense of quiet at the Civic Theatre, but the entrance to the parking area was manned by men and women in suits and sunglasses, scanning the area with merciless intensity. Bryn took a right turn and drove by, knowing they were tracking the van as it came close to the perimeter.
I’ll never get inside. Not against Pharmadene robots.
They were definitely company people; she could see that at a glance. Not all of them were trained security, but they were on alert, and she had no doubt that every single one of them had orders to hold the perimeter against any and all comers. They’d do it. For one thing, they were all revived. Hard to kill.

Like her.

What happened to the other security?
The Secret Service should have been here; there should have been other government bodies in place. It was entirely possible that Pharmadene had already overwhelmed the Secret Service, then. And the FBI. And anyone else who posed a threat.

You’d never know guns were being fired inside the building; it looked cool and calm. No emergencies reported at all, or there would have been some sign of police, of ambulances.
Something
.

Bryn moved on, looking for some way onto the grounds. Her panic was mounting; out here, she was useless, and she couldn’t help them. If Harte got to McCallister and turned him … she could order McCallister to do anything. And he was capable; Bryn knew that. Capable of anything. If someone as essentially peaceful and harmless as Annie could be turned into her sister’s killer, just like that, McCallister would be a deadly weapon. No wonder Harte had wanted him so badly.

And Joe. He was already separated from his family, but he was risking something much, much worse, something that would take him away forever, dig a gulf that even love couldn’t breach.
If
he was revived. Harte might not even bother.

Bryn had to get in. If nothing else,
she
could kill Harte. She wanted to. She needed to, after that white room, after seeing the horror of that hallway at Pharmadene.

Harte had to be stopped, and like the Pharmadene staff, Bryn would be very, very hard to kill.

I could call the cops, report shots fired.
If she did that, though, there was a very good chance that she’d be signing the death warrants of anyone who responded. They could be killed, revived, made to report that nothing was wrong.

But I don’t know how to do this alone
, she thought in utter despair.
I’m not a spy. I’m not some special ops expert, like McCallister. I’m just
…

Just a funeral director. What did funeral directors have that would be of any use at all …

It was crazy, it was insane … and it just might work.

Bryn turned the van at the next light and headed at high speed out to Fairview Mortuary.

She tried to call Fideli again, but got nothing except a bland computer voice asking her to leave a message. Either the phone was dead, they were too busy to talk, or McCallister and Fideli had been taken already.

Time was not just running out; it was
gone
. She had no options left. Nothing except this one last, desperate try.

The only car already in the Fairview Mortuary lot belonged to Riley Block. That was fine; Bryn planned to avoid her. This wouldn’t take long.

She went in, raced to her locker, and took out the extra set of clothes she kept there—a nice business suit, discreet and dark. Sensible but attractive shoes. She changed fast, rinsed the blood out of her hair, and slicked it back in a severe ponytail. No time for makeup. She made do with pale lipstick.

Then she clipped on Irene Harte’s gold-edged Pharmadene badge and went out to the parked Fairview limousine; like all their family transport cars, it was unmarked. She tossed a body bag in the back, and was preparing to pull out when a knock came on the window.

Riley Block was standing there, still in her spotlessly white Fairview lab coat.

Bryn hit the button and rolled down the window. “Riley, I have an urgent pickup to—”

Riley silently held up a black leather wallet and flipped it open. Inside were a gold badge and an ID card.

FBI.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d been hoping to break it to you gently.” She raised her other hand, and in it was a gun, which she pointed at Bryn’s head. “I know it won’t kill you, but it’ll slow you down. Don’t try to drive away. Hands off the wheel, please.”

Bryn slowly raised her arms. Riley said, “Keep them up,” and walked around the long, gleaming hood to the passenger side, where she got in, never taking her gaze off of Bryn as she fastened her seat belt. “You’re going to the Civic Theatre.”

Bryn couldn’t control her surprise. “How did you—”

“Believe it or not, the FBI’s been aware that Pharmadene had something to hide for some time. We traced McCallister’s activities and connected him to Fairview, although he hid it very well; we still weren’t sure it was a way into their organization, but I was tapped to go undercover and check it out. I’ve had mortuary experience.”

“Joe brought you in,” Bryn murmured.
Oh, Joe. God, no
. She couldn’t believe it—didn’t want to believe it.

“McCallister passed my name along to him,” Riley said. “And I was recommended by a former FBI agent whom I worked with in the past, a mutual friend of McCallister’s.”

“Manny Glickman.” Bryn felt the missing piece click into place, and saw the flare of recognition in Riley’s dark eyes. “McCallister trusted him.”

“And Manny had to follow his own conscience about all this. He knew it was going to go wrong; he tried to tell Patrick McCallister that from the start. He was simply hedging his bets. But of course, it’s
Manny
, so nobody believed him. Not at first.” Riley shook her head slowly. “I’m not sure whether to be impressed or nauseated by what they’ve done. What you
are
. It’s an incredible achievement, but … so very wrong.”

“I’m not one of Pharmadene’s robots,” Bryn said.

“I know enough about the capabilities of the drug they’ve given you to know I can’t trust your word about that. Or about anything.”

“But you know about what they’re planning to do at the Civic Theatre, don’t you?”

Riley nodded. “The secretary of state is not coming, obviously. Neither are any government officials. We headed them off.”

“You should have stopped it as soon as you knew. You could have locked down Pharmadene.”

“Oh, we have,” Riley said. “The building’s empty, although we’ve got our own people in place to return calls and give the appearance that things are proceeding normally. Harte made that easier by pulling most of the staff out to man her Civic Theatre plan. And now all of their most important people are in a vulnerable place.”

Bryn’s lips parted in horror, and then she blurted it out. “You’re going to take them out. All of them.”

“Most of them in one go,” Riley agreed. She had a sad glint in her eyes, but in the next blink it was gone. “We have to stop it. You’d say the same. And it’s more merciful to do it this way, one surgical strike, take out everyone at once.”

“How many?”

“What?”

“How many people at the theater?”

“We estimate about three hundred of Pharmadene’s employees,” Riley said. “Technically, they’re bodies, not living people.”

“That’s not true. They’re like me. They think. They feel. They
are
alive. They
don’t deserve this
.” Bryn swallowed hard. “Riley, I heard them dying. I heard them screaming. Most didn’t want to do this. They didn’t sign up for it—they’re
victims
. You have to help me stop it. If we get Irene Harte, all of it
can
stop. It can be controlled.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “And that’s what I argued for. But it’s too late now, and it’s out of my hands. In about thirty minutes, that building will suffer a catastrophic event, and everyone in it will die.”

“Patrick McCallister is in there. So is Joe Fideli.”

Riley didn’t blink. “Let’s take a drive,” she said.

“Where?”

“Where you were going in the first place. The theater.”

“But—”

“Bryn,” she said patiently. “You understand, this is a cleanup. And you’re a loose end. I’m very sorry—really I am—but this is a national security situation, and we have to take drastic measures. I don’t like it, but I have to do what’s right.”

“You mean that you’re going to kill me, too.”

Riley didn’t try to argue the point. She actually seemed a little sad, Bryn thought. “For what it’s worth, I like you. I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry you got caught up in it. It wasn’t your fault, but sometimes things just happen.”

Bryn shut her mouth and didn’t argue. There was no doubt in Riley’s face, and no mercy, either. Like Irene Harte, she was a true believer … just on the other side. Broken eggs and omelets, and the greater good.

Bryn wasn’t entirely sure she was wrong, and besides, at least it was where she wanted to go.

Where she
had
to go. Because if it had to end this way, at least she’d be with McCallister, where she knew—finally—that she belonged.

The Civic Theatre perimeter was deserted when they arrived. There were buses parked in the lot that hadn’t been there on Bryn’s previous drive-by, and as she pulled into the parking area close by she saw that the buses were full of people sitting in unnatural stillness.

Pharmadene employees. The ones who’d been on the perimeter.

“How did you do that?” Bryn asked. It was incredibly creepy, as if all of them were already dead.

“The bioengineered protocols,” Riley said. “Manny told us all about them.” She looked a little pale now, but still very controlled. “You can’t blame him for that, Bryn. He was doing the right thing. This was never something that a few independents could handle, no matter how well-meaning they might be.”

“McCallister was more worried about Mercer’s operation; that was a rogue element.”

“He wasn’t wrong about that. Mercer’s a sociopath. He never had any doubts about what he was doing, because the only thing that mattered was his own profit. We tried to reach out to him and bring him in on our side. He refused.”