Skin Game Read online

  Hammerlocking the woman, Max led her down the hall. All around them the fire greedily consumed the Manticore facility; but Max didn’t seem to care—she apparently had something else on her mind.

  Following the two women, Kelpy looked on, his curiosity growing as he watched Max ignoring the danger of the burning building and leading the other woman down the hall, then through some doors into some kind of lab.

  “Where’s the antigen?” Max demanded.

  “I don’t know,” the blonde shrieked. “We’ve got to get out of here now, 452!”

  Standing off to one side, Kelpy looked at the walls full of vials and small bottles of various colored liquids. Remaining against the one solid wall in the room, he blended in and remained virtually invisible.

  Swinging the blonde by the arm, Max slung her into the steel door. The woman landed with a metallic thump, then Max spun her around and slammed her into the door once more. “My name is Max! Now . . . where is it?”

  Max dragged the blonde around the room, bumping into this and that, until finally the woman began screaming, “Okay, okay, okay!”

  The pair of females came to a stop, and the blonde jerked a small bottle of amber liquid off a glass shelf.

  Max wrenched it from her hand.

  A guard in black beret and fatigues burst into the room and raised his M-16 in the goddess’ direction.

  Kelpy took one step, but was too late.

  The guard fired, but—amazingly!—the blonde swept Max out of the way and two slugs ripped into the woman as she went down.

  Max came up fast, kicked a cart full of bottles, which struck the guard, knocking the gun out of his hands. As the cart caught the guard, Kelpy blended back into the wall, but was ready to strike, should the guard make another move.

  Hanging onto the cart, the guard looked stricken at having shot his boss.

  “I won’t tell if you don’t,” Max said to him, and the aghast guard beat a hasty retreat out the door.

  Kelpy watched as Max leaned down over the bleeding blonde woman—was she dying?

  “This virus thing you put in me,” Max said, “how do I get rid of it?”

  The woman managed, “You can’t,” and coughed blood.

  “You just ate bullets for me—mind telling me why?”

  Reaching up and stroking Max’s face, the blonde said, “You’re the one . . . the one we’ve been looking for.”

  Max gazed at the woman, astounded, uncomprehending.

  “Sandeman,” the woman said, her voice barely above a whisper now, Kelpy straining to hear her. “Find Sandeman.”

  The woman’s hand fell away and she died.

  Max wasted no time—how bold she was! How forceful!

  Rising, she ran from the burning building, over fences, up the hill, with Kelpy behind her, out of sight. At the top of the hill she paused, grinning with obvious self-satisfaction as she watched the conflagration that was the Manticore facility.

  Then she ran off into the woods.

  Kelpy kept her in sight as he followed her through the brush and trees. When she piled into a van with some of the other transgenics, he had grabbed the bumper and jumped on the back.

  He rode like that all the way back to Seattle.

  Once in the city, Kelpy kept following Max, until he figured out that she worked at the bike messenger service, Jam Pony. Taking a cue from her, Kelpy knew he would need a new name. He heard a passing woman call her child Bobby and that gave him a first name. Looking around, he read the first word he saw. It was painted on the gas tank of a motorcycle: KAWASAKI. And now he had a last name.

  Knowing it would take something extraordinary for him to find the nerve even to talk to her—let alone try to tell her of his love for her—the newly christened Bobby Kawasaki did the only thing he could, to stay close to his true love: he got a job at Jam Pony, as a bike messenger.

  Though many months had passed, Max had still not recognized Kelpy—or rather, Bobby—even though she’d looked right at him the night she’d helped him escape. Nor had he forged a new relationship with her, as Bobby, not a friendship, not even an acquaintance.

  The closest Bobby had come was about six months ago when Max had run into him, literally, coming out of the bathroom. They bumped and she grabbed his arm to keep him from falling down.

  She looked him dead in the eye and said, “Watch it, bro.”

  He said nothing.

  Max started to walk away, then paused and turned back. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

  “That’s right, you do,” Normal interrupted, handing Max a package. “His name’s Bobby, he’s worked here for six months, and you’re both part of the great big wonderful Jam Pony family. . . . Now get this package over to Sector Nine, Missy. Bip bip bip.”

  “I thought I’d seen him before,” she said, rather absently, then turned and followed Normal, giving her boss some shit—typical of her, what spirit she had!

  Bobby was thrilled, but also—disturbed. She’d seen him, and he got so excited he blended into the lockers and didn’t dare come out until everyone had gone home . . . only by then Normal had locked him in.

  It had been both the best and worst day of his life. She’d noticed him . . . but, typically, he’d made no impression.

  That day was the catalyst, the day Bobby’s vision of what he wanted his life to be had crystallized. He wanted to be loved by Max and now, more than ever, he wanted to be human—ordinary, like that Logan Cale person she seemed so close to. Logan—she liked him; did she love him?

  Bobby had already been using Tryptophan at that point, buying, in fact, from the same Asian woman that Max bought from. But if he was going to be really human, he’d have to up the dosage; and in order to make ends meet he’d have to find a new source.

  It had taken a while to find someone affordable, but finally Bobby found a new dealer at Harbor Lights Hospital. She was a nurse and she seemed more than willing to give him all the Tryptophan he wanted—and for next to nothing!

  A tall, thin woman, Nurse Betty had short auburn hair that barely covered her ears, big brown eyes, and thin lips that were like a razor cut in an otherwise pleasant face.

  “Why are you helping me?” he’d asked her.

  The dealer smiled at him and said, “You look like you could use the help . . . and I get the pills for nothing. So I’m helping you, and I’m making a little money to supplement my income. Win win situation.”

  He thanked her, but he didn’t understand how she got the pills for nothing. If she was stealing them—from the hospital dispensary, maybe—sooner or later she would get caught; and if she wasn’t stealing them, where was she getting them?

  In February his question seemed to be answered. She hadn’t shown for a scheduled meeting and his subsequent phone calls had gone unreturned. Anticipating that she’d get caught sooner or later, Bobby had another dealer lined up, through his old street connections; but before he could call the guy, his own phone rang.

  “Hello.” Bobby rarely received phone calls from anyone, so his voice was tentative.

  “Bobby?”

  A male voice.

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “I’m a friend of a friend.”

  Bobby had no friends, so he asked, “Are you sure you have the right Bobby?”

  “I’m talking about Nurse Betty.”

  Instantly suspicious, Bobby considered hanging up—the guy kind of sounded like a cop—but decided to see what this was about. “That so?”

  “I know about your problem.”

  “Betty said I had a problem?”

  “Yeah . . . and that if anything happened to her, you’d need a new supplier.”

  “I’ve gotta go now.”

  “Wait,” the voice on the other end said. “You don’t want to do that. I’m taking over Betty’s customers. And I can make you the same good deal she did.”

  “We didn’t have a deal,” Bobby said, his voice rising in fright. “I’m hanging up.”

  “I
’ll give you the first hundred for free.”

  “. . . Free?”

  “Call it a good faith offer.”

  That easily, Bobby had a new Tryptophan supplier. After the first couple of transactions, he never saw or even talked to the guy again. They had a prearranged drop site. Bobby went there, collected his pills, left payment in an envelope, and went about his business.

  Having already gotten his goals clear, he now needed a plan. The first shopping trip had been an accident. Bobby had been on his way home from a bar. Too many drinks mixed with the Tryptophan had him feeling no pain and had dulled his senses enough that he could barely walk a straight line.

  Two blocks from the bar, a guy fell in behind Bobby and—when Bobby turned down a particularly dark street—the would-be assailant made his move, up fast from behind, arm outstretched, knife waving frantically in a shaking hand.

  Even completely stoned, Bobby had heard the guy coming. Too wasted to blend, however, he simply turned when the attacker got close, broke the man’s hand, twisted away the knife, knocked the guy to the pavement, and then rammed the blade into the man’s carotid artery.

  Wrecked as he was, Bobby still managed to see his plan coming together. It seemed so clear he wondered why he hadn’t seen it before. Although the mugger was smaller than him, he still liked the idea and did his best with his new project.

  The mugger had even supplied a knife.

  Looking back, that first shopping excursion had been a complete botch. By the time he was done, the material had been so tattered that it was worthless. He’d left the body in an old warehouse near his place. It was like the guy simply disappeared. No news reports of a missing man on either the TV or the radio. No one seemed to be looking for him and no one seemed to care if the guy ever turned up.

  That had really got Bobby to thinking.

  The first thing he did was stop drinking. For this plan to work, he needed to focus, to be strong. From now on the targets would have to be men who were larger than him—he’d learned that much from the first job.

  A medium-sized guy couldn’t wear a small-size T-shirt, right? Same principle. And he would have to work quickly, which with his transgenic abilities would be no problem.

  When he started thinking of how to find bigger men, Bobby remembered that the Manticore guards were all bigger than him—that’s why they’d had such an easy time of it picking on him.

  Now, though—getting off the heavy dosage of Tryptophan on the weekend and letting Kelpy come out to shop—Bobby started thinking that he should be hunting men in uniform.

  After everything the men like that had done to him at Manticore, they owed him . . .

  . . . and, he knew just how to collect.

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  PASSING IN SCHOOL

  TERMINAL CITY, 7:15 A.M.

  TUESDAY, MAY 11, 2021

  Empty of vehicles, the lower floor of the parking ramp—the building where the siege had begun—swelled with the ragtag citizens of Terminal City.

  Except for the handful on guard duty, the entire outlandish contingent of transgenics showed up for the town-hall-style meeting Max had called. Though the sun was rising, the parking garage remained mostly dark and still rather cold. May in Seattle—especially this close to the water—was rarely warm. Though the morning chill had no particular effect on the transgenics, on the other side of the fence the cops were certainly huddled in their cars sipping coffee and slugging doughnuts.

  With Joshua, Alec, Mole, Dix, and Luke in her wake, Max swept into the middle of the crowd, and the din of conversation died away. Dressed in her customary black, Max stood out from the disheveled if distinctive mess that was the throng. Most had shown up here with little more than shabby, scavenged clothes on their backs, and living in the hovels of Terminal City did little to improve their appearance.

  They may have resembled a Halloween ball for the homeless, but their Manticore-bred military discipline still held and, to Max, they looked wonderful. The community was coming together, the rivalries and prejudices of the varying transgenics types—from ND X-Series, “beautiful” people like Max and Alec, to the ND Transhumans like Dix (a Nomlie), Mole (a second-generation model DAC), and Luke (a Mule)—forgotten, or at least put aside for the greater good. The unique populace of Terminal City did not want to spend their lives in a toxic ghost town any more than they wanted to spend them running; but this biohazard village was starting to look like a suitable alternative, at least for the short run.

  Jumping onto a box so she could be seen as well as heard, Max called out, “I’m proud of all of you—we’ve taken a stand. We’ve shown we can live and work together, and that provides hope for the future—if we can get along with each other, winning over the ordinaries oughta be no big trick.”

  Her good-natured sarcasm went over well, grins flashing all around in every unusual face.

  “But it’s time for a reality check—time to stop patting ourselves on the back, and start dealing with the hand we been dealt, here.”

  The crowd stayed riveted on her every word.

  “First, although we still have running water, it probably won’t be long before they cut it off. We can smuggle in bottled water, but that’s not going to serve the needs of a community this size. Ideas?”

  Lightbulb-domed Luke stepped out of the crowd. “When we moved in here, we built our own generator. We’re close enough to Lake Washington that we can build our own water system too.”

  With a quick nod, Max said, “Good—how close are you to completion?”

  Luke frowned. “Well . . . we started on design when we moved in, but—” He shrugged. “—execution could take weeks.”

  Gazing out into the crowd, Max asked, “Any of you X2s and X3s got any engineering and construction skills we can tap into?”

  A dozen or so hands were raised.

  “Can you guys get with Luke and pitch in with the water problem?”

  Some nodded, and started shuffling through the crowd toward Luke, to fall in alongside him.

  Somewhere in the middle a voice shouted, “What about the cops? What about the soldiers?”

  Voices erupted throughout the assembly, echoing off the cement walls of the parking ramp:

  “We should attack!”

  “We should go to ground!”

  “Wait for them to come in—and slaughter their asses!”

  The cries came fast and loud, and Max let them get it out of their systems for a while; then, finally, she raised her hands for silence.

  “If we fight with these armies of the ordinaries,” she said, “we will never win them over.”

  Someone cried, “Who cares?” Then followed shouts of “Fight!” and “Kill ’em!” For several frightening moments it looked as though the tightly packed throng of transgenics might turn into an angry mob.

  Max held up her hands for silence again, and reluctantly the crowd quieted. Now, she had to shout to be heard over the rumblings of the crush of people. “This is exactly why they want to sweep us under the rug.”

  The grumbling subsided slightly.

  “They think we are animals—monsters trained to kill. That all we want to do is kill. Is that true?”

  The garage went tomblike silent now.

  “Don’t you have dreams? Desires? Am I the only one who wants a normal life?”

  Heads started to nod in the crowd, accompanied by a murmuring of assent.

  “What happens here . . . what happens now . . . is up to us. If we want to be a part of this society—”

  “Why would we want to be part of that?” a voice yelled.

  “Because that’s the only real option,” Max said. “We are soldiers, and we are special people, more special than those we call ordinary . . . but we are as small in number as our hearts are large. We are barely a city—not enough of us to form our own outcast nation.”

  The truth of that hung over the chamber, an awful cloud portending an inevitable storm.

  �
��Like it or not, we are part of this land . . . a land that pretends, anyway, to be a haven for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, the wretched refuse. . . . That’s from a song they used to sing in America. Admittedly, you don’t hear it much anymore; but those are the kind of words—words of freedom—that this country was built on.”

  Faces frowned in thought as emotion fought reason in these outcasts.

  “You don’t want to be part of that society out there, because the people are hateful . . . because they’re afraid of us, and want to kill us without even knowing us. . . .”

  Voices called out, “That’s right,” and other cries of agreement with this all too obvious notion.

  Max continued, her tone doggedly rational. “Well, the only way they’re going to get to know us, out there, is if we give them the chance.”

  Again the crowd quieted.

  “And the only way for them to not be afraid of us is to get to understand us. That we are people, with hopes and dreams and families.”

  Heads again began to nod.

  Max wheeled as she spoke, connecting with them all. “The only way to get the ordinaries to stop hating is to educate them in our shared humanity . . . but they think we only want to kill. Is that true? Are we bloodthirsty monsters?”

  Someone yelled, “No,” but the one voice seemed very small in the parking ramp.

  Max’s face tightened with determination, and she racheted up the volume: “I said . . . is that true?”

  This time about half the crowd shouted, “No!” and “Hell, no!”

  She raised both fists, high. “Is . . . that . . . true?”

  “No!” they all yelled—many voices, one voice.

  Relief flooded through her—Max had won them over again. Now, while she had them, she needed to get them involved in solving their problems. She lowered her arms, and her voice to a firm, resonable level: “We have some issues we need to deal with.”

  They all watched her attentively.

  “In order to keep the police and National Guard from attacking,” she said, “I had to promise one of their representatives that none of us would leave Terminal City until this is negotiated.”

  She saw several of them trading looks, and she knew what they were thinking: had they gone from being a nation to a gaggle of prisoners? But the reality was, many of them—most of them, in fact—had nowhere beyond the metal-mesh borders of Terminal City to go, anyway.