Skin Game Read online

  Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000.

  Based on the television series created by

  James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee

  BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Copyright Page

  For BJ Elsner—

  Looney lady,

  angel of light

  MAC & MVC

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Once again, my frequent collaborator Matthew V. Clemens—with whom I’ve written numerous published short stories—helped me here immeasurably. A knowledgeable Dark Angel fan, Matt coplotted this tale and created a detailed story treatment from which I could develop Skin Game.

  My editor Steve Saffel again provided consistently strong support, which included not just rounding up materials, but adding his own creative input.

  Both Matt and Steve pitched in to solve numerous problems created when the original concept of this novel—intended to take place early within the second season, as a continuity implant—needed reshaping into a sequel to the final episode of the series.

  I would like to thank the creators of Dark Angel, James Cameron and Charles Eglee, who provided the story for that episode—“Freak Nation,” teleplay by Ira Steven Behn and Rene Echevarria, who also deserve thanks and recognition. Also particularly helpful was Moira Kirland Dekker, the writer of “Designate This,” an episode we draw heavily upon here, as well. Thanks too to Debbie Olshan of 20th Century Fox; Wendy Cheseborough of Lightstorm, and, at Ballantine Books, Gillian Berman, Crystal Velasquez, and Colleen Lindsay.

  Matt, Steve, and I hope that Dark Angel fans will appreciate this continuation of an innovative series that ended too soon.

  “We’ll start with a reign of terror.

  A few murders here and there.”

  —DR. JACK GRIFFIN (CLAUDE RAINS)

  The Invisible Man (1933)

  Chapter One

  * * *

  IMAGER IS EVERYTHING

  SECTOR THREE, 11:00 P.M.

  TUESDAY, MARCH 2, 2021

  Like a relentless boxer, rain beat down on the city, first jabbing with sharp needles, then smacking Seattle with huge fat drops that hit like haymakers, the barrage punctuated by the ominous rumble of thunder and the eerie flash of lightning.

  An unmarked black car drew to a stop in a rat-infested Sector Three alley, the rain rattling the metal roof like machine-gun fire. Two men in dark suits climbed out, to be instantly drenched, though neither seemed to notice. Each wore a radio earplug with a short microphone bent toward his mouth.

  Sage Thompson—the man who’d emerged from the passenger’s side—was relieved that the headsets, at least, seemed to be waterproof. In their coat pockets, each man carried one of the new portable thermal imagers that, just this week, had become standard equipment. Thompson—barely six feet, almost skinny at 180 pounds—wondered if water-tightness was among the gizmo’s various high-tech bells and whistles.

  Water sluiced down the alley in a torrent that seemed to express the sky’s anger, eventually bubbling over the edge of a rusty grate maybe ten yards in front of them. Thompson was forced to jump the stream and his feet nearly slid out from under him as he landed and bumped into a triangle of garbage cans, sending them crashing into each other, creating a din that rivaled the storm’s, his hands flying wide to help maintain his balance. Then his hands dropped back to his sides, the one holding his flashlight clanging off the imager in his coat pocket, the other moving to make sure his pistol was still secure in its holster on his belt.

  The hefty man who’d been driving—Cal Hankins—shone his flashlight in Thompson’s face, huffed once, and eased around a dumpster that looked like it hadn’t been emptied since before the Pulse. Moving slowly ahead, their flashlights sweeping back and forth over the brick hulk in front of them, the two men finally halted in front of what had once been a mullioned window.

  The interior of the six-story brick building—an abandoned warehouse, Thompson surmised—seemed a black hole waiting to devour them without so much as a belch. Next to Thompson, his partner Hankins swept a flashlight through one of the broken panes, painting the rainy night with slow, even strokes. Darkness surrendered only brief glimpses of the huge first-floor room as it swallowed up the light.

  “You sure this is the right place?” Hankins asked gruffly.

  There was no fear in the man’s voice—Thompson sensed only that his partner didn’t want his time wasted. At forty, bucket-headed Hankins—the senior partner of the duo—wore his blondish hair in a short brush cut that revealed only a wisp or two of gray. His head rested squarely on his shoulders, without apparent benefit of a neck, and he stood nearly six-three, weighing in (Thompson estimated) at over 230. But the man wasn’t merely fat—there was enough gristle and muscle and bone in there to make Hankins formidable.

  Still, Thompson knew their boss—that nasty company man, Ames White, a conscienceless yuppie prick if there ever was one—had been all over Hankins about his weight and rode the older guy mercilessly about it. Though he knew better than to ever say it out loud, Thompson considered White the worst boss in his experience—which was saying something.

  White was smart, no doubting that, but he had a sarcastic tongue and a whiplash temper that Thompson had witnessed enough times to know he should keep his mouth shut and his head low.

  “This is the right place, all right,” Thompson said, raising his voice over the battering rain. “Dispatch said the thermal imager team picked up a transgenic in the market in Sector Four.”

  “This is Sector Three.”

  “Yeah—they followed him here before they lost him.”

  Hankins shook his head in disgust. “Then why the fuck ain’t they lookin’ for him, then? What makes us the clean-up crew for their sorry asses?”

  These questions were rhetorical, Thompson knew, though they did have answers, the same answer in fact: Ames White.

  And Hankins spent much of his time bitching about White, behind the boss’s back, of course. But they both knew it was only a matter of time before White found a way to get rid of Hankins . . .

  . . . and then Thompson would have to break in a new partner, possibly one even younger than himself. Then he would be the old-timer. The thought made him cringe.

  Not exactly a kid at twenty-seven, Thompson was the antithesis of Hankins: the younger man seemed like a long-neck bottle standing next to the pop-top beer can that was his partner. Married to his college sweetheart, Melanie, and with a new baby daughter, Thompson was the antithesis of Hankins in terms of home life, as well: the gristled bulldog had been divorced twice and had three or four kids he never saw and didn’t really seem to give a damn about.

  This was a partnership made not in Heaven but in Ames White’s twisted idea of the right thing to do; and Thompson still hadn’t figured out if being partnered with Hankins was a reward—setting him up to step into the older man’s shoes—or a punishment—White saddling him with a complainer.

  Thompson—in keeping a low profile and, frankly, kissing White’s ass—sometimes wondered if their sick, slick boss didn’t see through his obsequiousness into the contempt he truly felt.

  Hankins t
ook a few steps to the right, Thompson on his heels. Withdrawing the imager from his pocket, Hankins squeezed the trigger and methodically scanned the area around them for the transgenic—nothing.

  The new thermal imagers looked like smaller versions of the pre-Pulse radar guns that Thompson had read about in his online history studies. The biggest difference was that instead of having red LED numbers that showed speed, the ass-end readout area of the imagers contained a tiny monitor that showed infrared pictures of any heat source the front end was pointed at. The two men were looking for something with a core temperature of 101.6, the average temperature of transgenics—three degrees higher than humans.

  “Fuck it,” Hankins sighed, rain streaking down his face like heat-wave perspiration. “Looks like we’re going to have to go inside.”

  “Looks like,” Thompson said with a nod.

  “We’ll split up,” Hankins announced.

  “Makes us both more vulnerable.”

  Hankins kissed the air obnoxiously. “You’re so sensitive, so vulnerable, even with papa bear around.”

  “Cut it out, man.”

  Hankins grunted another, deeper sigh. “Sooner we get done with this thankless-ass job, sooner we can get away from this fuckin’ monsoon.”

  “You’re right,” Thompson admitted, his voice calm even though his guts now seemed to be swimming upstream toward his mouth.

  It wasn’t that Thompson was a coward. He’d seen action before, plenty of it—even for the post-Pulse world, Seattle was a tough town, and for cops and anybody working security, it was a higher risk job than steeplejack—and he handled the fear and stress just fine. What bothered him was, he didn’t think either he or even the rugged Hankins could handle a pissed-off transgenic alone. They weren’t human, those transgenics—they were monsters, really.

  And Sage Thompson had seen monster movies before—he knew what happened when people split up in such circumstances.

  He could tell himself that this was reality, not fantasy; but Seattle in the last few years had turned into a place more ghastly than the imagination of any mere writer or filmmaker could conjure.

  Hankins said, “When we find the stairs, I’ll head up and start down. You begin down here and work your way up. We’ll meet in the middle, agree we didn’t find anything, and haul our soggy asses out of here.”

  “It’s a plan,” Thompson said with a shrug.

  Thompson slipped the imager back into his coat pocket, wiped the rain from his face—a fruitless gesture—and took a couple more steps forward.

  The city was the reluctant home to a ton of these shabby old buildings, and they were all around the Emerald City, the structural equivalent of the homeless. Back when the buildings had been constructed in the 1940s and 1950s, they mostly housed factories that built things from scratch, packed them up and shipped them off to the four corners of the world.

  But as time went on and the economy eroded around the turn of the century—only to take the devastating hit of the Pulse—many of the buildings stood abandoned, with some then used as warehouse space for other businesses. Each crumbling structure was different, depending on how it had been cannibalized. Thompson knew he might find a floor that was still all offices or one where all the office walls had been demolished to allow for the stacking of larger objects—there was just no way of knowing what lay ahead.

  With half a head-turn, Hankins asked, “Ready?”

  “Ready,” Thompson said, trying to keep a note of confidence in his voice.

  Hankins turned all the way now, shined the light in his face yet again. “You okay, kiddo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure?”

  “Just get the damn light out of my face.”

  Grinning, Hankins aimed the flash back into the building. “Yeah, you’re okay.”

  They were stopped outside a broken door, a heavy number that would have made quite a barrier if it had been locked rather than half hanging off its hinges. Both men pulled out their Glock nines and Thompson chambered a round. Hankins, Thompson knew, already had one in the pipe . . . and most likely already had the safety off as well.

  Hankins stepped through the door and Thompson watched the older man swing his weapon from side to side, the hand holding the flashlight following suit.

  Thompson stepped through the door behind his partner, his arms locked together in the same fashion, his pistol and flashlight simultaneously sweeping the room. Struggling to keep his breathing under control, he was thankful to at least be out of the rain. He could hear it banging on the roof far above him and on the remaining windows on this floor. Carefully, he tuned that out and listened closely for other sounds.

  Moving off to the right now, putting himself out in front, Thompson heard Hankins’ raspy breathing and suddenly knew that, for all his bluster, his partner fought the same nervousness that wanted to paralyze him. To their left something metallic rattled, and they both swung around, their lights stopping briefly on a rattling soda can, then moving on, both beams settling on a huge brown rat. The rodent froze, but its black eyes were not the least bit intimidated by the lights.

  “S’pose that sucker’s transgenic?” asked Hankins archly.

  Thompson might have laughed—out of nervousness—but his throat felt too dry to pull it off. Letting out a long breath, he went back to checking out the room.

  He moved slowly forward, allowing the distance between himself and Hankins to grow, but stayed close enough to cover his partner should the need arise. Halfway across the room, they found a stairwell leading to the second floor. Hankins’ flashlight shone up the stairs, his gun still balanced atop his wrist.

  Turning his head halfway toward Thompson, he said, “I’m going up.”

  “Okay. I’ll keep at it down here.”

  “You find anything, let me know immediately.”

  “Same back at ya,” Thompson said. Again he thought about the soggy headset plugged into his ear and hoped the thing had signal enough to get up six flights of stairs.

  Hankins headed up the dark stairwell, the steps groaning for a while, but the sound soon getting swallowed by the hammering of rain, which was slanting toward the building, moisture working its way through the loose slats of boarded-up windows.

  Thompson watched as Hankins and the light disappeared up the stairs. Shining his flashlight in that direction, he saw scant evidence that Hankins had even been in the building—merely a few wet footprints on the wooden stairs.

  Thompson suddenly felt very alone.

  Something scrabbled across the floor, just behind him, and he spun around, the flashlight and gun following in a wobbly arc, rainwater spraying off him like he was a wet hound. The beam of light and Glock settled on what appeared to be the same rat again, only this time the rodent stood on its haunches, and seemed to smile—showing its sharp yellow teeth—and almost appeared to be flipping Thompson off with its raised front paws.

  Thompson suppressed the urge to squeeze off a round and end the little bastard, and it took no small amount of will to keep him from pulling the trigger—not just because the creature was a handy surrogate for both Hankins and Ames White, but because it might be helpful to end the distraction of the noise the thing was making.

  Only, if the flashlights hadn’t alerted the transgenic to their positions, a gunshot most assuredly would . . . and God only knew what Hankins would think if he heard Thompson shooting, moments after the older man headed up the stairs.

  Commuting the rat’s death sentence to life, Thompson resumed his search of the first floor. He moved carefully, doing his best to stay silent, a couple of times holding the flashlight under an arm as he probed especially shadowy corners with the thermal imager.

  “Hankins,” he half whispered into the microphone.

  No response.

  Thompson felt a bead of sweat roll down his cheek, to mingle with the streaks of rain, and he unconsciously found a corner to press himself into as he spoke again, this time louder. “Hankins.”
<
br />   This time the response was immediate. “Thompson, would you please shut the hell up? Transgenics from here to Portland can hear you. If you’re not in trouble—and it doesn’t sound like you are—zip it.”

  The younger man’s face burned as he felt himself blush in the darkness. Seemed that with every shift he spent with Hankins, he found a new reason to hate him. Thompson vowed that once they were out of this building, he would speak up for himself, and finally ask White for a new partner . . . and, failing that, he would simply transfer out of White’s unit altogether.

  This whole transgenic affair troubled him. He’d been with the program long enough to know that although these human experiments were considered a threat to national security, the transgenics had been engineered to defend this country, after all. So on some level, Thompson felt like his job was to track down and dispose of what might be considered soldiers of his country. He tried not to see it that way, but sometimes it felt exactly like that—particularly when he let himself think a little too much, or on long sleepless nights during which the hypocrisy of his life crawled into his mind like a waking nightmare.

  Angrily wiping the sweat from his eyes, Thompson moved deeper into the blackness, punctuating it with sweeps of the flash. At the back of the cavernous space, he found three offices stretching across the rear wall. Two of the doors were completely gone, and the third—its window long gone—hung from one hinge like a stubborn loose rotted tooth, refusing to fall out of a gaping mouth. Of the six panes of glass that had been the top half of the facing walls of the offices, only one remained, a nasty crack running across it diagonally.

  Thompson pulled out the thermal imager and slow-scanned the offices without success. Telling himself he was just being careful, he spun in a steady circle, covering the whole first floor again to make sure nothing had skulked in behind him. Except for a few more rats—and what was either the biggest rat he’d ever seen or a small stray cat—the monitor showed nothing.