Skin Game Page 3

  “No. They’re the monsters—and you’re fired. Get him out of here, Otto.”

  Gottlieb hauled him away.

  Alone but for the body, White slammed his fist into a concrete wall, leaving a fist-sized dent.

  To the glistening scarlet corpse, White said, “I can’t believe you let a goddamn transgenic get hold of a thermal imager.”

  But Hankins said nothing—he just grinned stupidly back at his boss, his teeth huge in the raw red pop-eyed mask of his face.

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  FREAK NATION

  JAM PONY MESSENGER SERVICE, 11:50 P.M.

  FRIDAY, MAY 7, 2021

  Her heart jackhammering, the transgenic the public knew only as 452 prepared to step out of Jam Pony into a cool night smeared red and blue by the lights of police cars. She and a group of her closest friends—her brothers and sisters in the fight to be free—appeared to be in custody, about to be escorted by what seemed to be a cadre of SWAT officers.

  Her long black hair hung loose and her black shirt and snug slacks were smudged with dirt—the aftermath of a vicious round of hand-to-hand combat with a hit squad attached to Ames White. But 452—Max to her friends—was still unbowed, and not even bloodied.

  Nonetheless, blood could still flow—and some already had.

  The hostage situation at Jam Pony had started by accident—literally. Earlier, before sundown, the lizardish transgenic Mole—brave but impulsive—and her towering friend Joshua—who the tabloids had termed a “dog boy”—had just picked up two transgenics headed for Terminal City, the ten square blocks of biochemical wasteland where the societal outcasts spawned by the gene-manipulating Manticore project had taken up residence. The transgenic squatters could survive behind the fences, despite chemical and biotech spills, where everyday humans would get sick and die; the transgenics—whether beautiful physical specimens like Max or Alec, or genetic “freaks” like the lizard man and dog boy—had been immunized against such poisons . . . one nice thing Manticore had done for them, anyway.

  Accompanied by a teenage boy named Dalton, the young woman, Gem—an X5—was pregnant and about to pop, so Mole was in a hurry to get her to the shabby sanctuary that was Terminal City. They had made it less than two blocks when a junk-piled truck backed into their path and what should have been a minor, bumper-bumping accident turned into a disaster.

  Forced to make a run for it when a mutant-hating mob gathered, Mole, Joshua, and the two new arrivals had sought refuge at the bike messenger service where Max and two other transgenics, Alec and CeCe, worked. But the cops were already on their heels, and a full-scale hostage crisis quickly developed. Alec and CeCe had posed as hostages along with the ordinaries who became prisoners, though the handsome, usually self-centered Alec eventually outted himself as a transgenic, by coming to Max’s aid.

  At first Max had not been on the scene, and lizard-man Mole had terrified her friends; when she arrived, Max took over and before long the hostages realized that they and their “captors” were faced with the same challenge—staying alive.

  Not so long ago, Max and the police department negotiator, Detective Ramon Clemente, had reached an accord that provided for trading half the hostages for a getaway van. Clemente’s rooftop SWAT team had backed off, as promised, but Ames White—that CIA agent with an antitransgenic agenda—had unleashed his own hidden snipers.

  Max and company did not make it to the van. If Logan Cale hadn’t jumped in on their side, blasting away with his own weapon, driving the snipers back, Max and her group might never have made it into the building again. But they did, hustling back into Jam Pony, after taking a casualty in the cross fire—CeCe—who within moments had become a fatality.

  Even with such a terrible loss, they had survived much in this single day . . . but they still had a long way to go before they would be anything like safe. If just one cop out there noticed that the escorts in SWAT gear were not who they were supposed to be, the bloodbath would begin again.

  If so, if she and Logan Cale died, at least they’d die together.

  She loved this man, who once again was laying his life on the line for her and her cause—to protect him, she had told him she no longer loved him, and even tried to convince herself she could live without Logan Cale. But in the glare of the bright lights—courtesy of the cops and the media—she knew that wasn’t true.

  Logan Cale—tall, blue-eyed, with that spiky blond-brown hair and shy smile . . . how she had longed to kiss him and tell him how she truly felt. But that was impossible now—that bitch Renfro, at Manticore, had made certain of that.

  Even with Manticore burned to the ground, the mad scientists who had created her and Alec and Joshua and so many other troubled souls were still fucking with her life—that oh so specific virus that the late unlamented Renfro had infected Max with still had no known cure, and if she touched Logan, if their flesh met in any way, well, she knew she would be the death of him.

  Yet despite all the trouble she had caused him, the heartache she’d brought him, Logan had come to her aid again, hadn’t he? Firing up at the snipers, helping Mole to keep the killers at bay while the others hightailed it back into the building. He even stayed by her side, providing cover fire as she dragged CeCe back inside as well.

  The standoff had gone on from there, lasting until well into the evening, when White had finally brought in his SWAT-geared hit team. Max smiled at the thought. The hit team had been tough, really tough; but she and her brothers and sisters—and even some of the hostages, who were on the transgenics side by now—had taken the suckers down.

  Max had worked hard not to take any lives. Joshua, face-to-face with Ames White—a man who had murdered someone dear to the normally gentle giant—had nearly broken the bastard in two. But Max knew how important it was not to kill—not to feed the media frenzy, fueled by White and others, that had convinced so much of the public that the transgenics were monsters, inhuman beasts worthy only of slaughter.

  Now they had the opportunity to escape into the night and maybe, for a while anyway, be safe. Just this one last gauntlet to pass through. . . .

  Hiding within the bulky uniform of one of White’s SWAT team members, his head covered by a Kevlar helmet, his face behind tinted goggles, Logan shoved the front door open and shouted, “Weapons down! Hold your fire. Team coming out.”

  Then Logan led the way out into the cool night air. The crowd behind the barricades pushed forward for a better look, their hatred a hot, oppressive slap riding the wind of their angry shouts: “Death to the freaks!” “Kill ’em all!”

  Max wondered if they would ever be able to make people, those people, understand that all the transgenics desired was a peaceful, quiet life. The “freaks” just wanted to fit in like everybody else, and not be feared for—or judged by—their appearance.

  Wasn’t that what America was supposed to be about? She and her transgenic clan had been born in the USA, even if it was in a test tube, where they’d been genetically designed to defend this country—the very one that now seemed to want only their extinction—from the rabble on the street to the suits in high places.

  With Logan and the others moving into the street, the cops suddenly seemed more interested in containing the crowd than dealing with the federal SWAT team. They backed out of the way as Logan led the parade toward the rear of a waiting police van.

  Also dressed for SWAT team duty, complete with the helmet and goggles, Alec held a handcuffed Max by the arm while that lanky goofball, Sketchy—a really unlikely SWAT team member—escorted the cuffed Mole and Joshua. The lizardish Mole still puffed defiantly on his ever-present cigar, while Joshua, with his long brown hair and soulful canine-tinged features, looked more like a beaten puppy as Sketchy led him to the van.

  “Federal agents,” Logan announced, his voice cool and authoritative. “I need you to move back. Step away. We may have a biohazard here, people. . . . Make a hole!”

  All of the cops—except Clemente, t
he intelligent, no-nonsense detective who’d served as negotiator during most of the siege, only to be usurped by Ames White—stepped back.

  Clemente, a slender, well-chiseled African-American in his forties, looked like he probably felt much older now; but his brown eyes were still alert, and he obviously wanted to know what was happening. He wore a rumpled gray sport coat over a Kevlar vest, blue tie, and white shirt, his gold shield dangling from a necklace. As they passed, he said nothing, his pistol still in his hands, the barrel pointed toward the ground.

  Logan turned to him. “Agent White wants your people in there to secure the crime scene, ASAP.”

  Clemente made no move, standing with wide eyes and perhaps just a hint of skepticism as Logan yanked open the van’s rear doors. Alec loaded Max in, then Sketchy shoved Mole and Joshua up and in. Alec climbed into the van with the prisoners while Logan, businesslike, said, “We’re going to have to commandeer this ambulance.”

  Sketchy peeled off to help ease Gem—the X5 who’d given birth during the siege—and her new baby into the ambulance parked next to the van. Dalton, the short blond male X5 who’d been traveling with Gem, climbed aboard as well. Original Cindy—the beautiful African-American bike messenger who was Max’s best friend in Seattle—followed suit.

  Logan turned back to Clemente and said, with the faintest hint of sarcasm in his voice, “Agent White is not a man who likes to be kept waiting.”

  The driver of the ambulance slowly climbed down from his seat, and Sketchy stepped into the man’s space. “We’ll take over from here,” Sketch said, playing his macho SWAT role to the hilt. “Unless you wanna buy yourself a six-hour decontamination hose-down.”

  The driver wanted none of that, and backed off, while Sketchy climbed behind the wheel of the ambulance. Not waiting for Clemente to move, Logan slammed the door of the police van and jumped into the driver’s seat.

  Inside, Max and the others slipped the unfastened cuffs off as Logan started the vehicle.

  “Move the barricades,” he shouted through the windshield, waving for the officers in front of the van to clear the long sawhorses that kept the crowd back. The headlights of the van and the ambulance painted the mob a ghostly white.

  With the crowd still screaming, “Kill the freaks,” Logan shifted into gear and let the vehicle roll gently forward.

  Behind him, Max encouraged this approach, saying, “Nice and easy.”

  The van moved through the crowd to screams of “Monsters!” and “Kill ’em now!”

  Looking out the back window, Max watched Clemente melt into the crowd, then the crowd melt into the night, as the two vehicles rolled off into the darkness. Tension seemed to palpably dissipate—the crisis was over.

  Finally, when Max saw no one following them except the ambulance with the others, she let out a long sigh of relief. “We’re clear.”

  The van filled with whoops and cheers as Joshua and Mole knocked fists.

  “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Mole yelled.

  “It’s all good,” said Alec, a wide smile breaking his normally laid-back demeanor.

  Grinning into the rearview mirror, Logan said, “Just for the record, that girl was kickin’ your ass.”

  Logan was referring to a particularly bulked-up female fighter on Ames White’s hit squad, back at Jam Pony.

  Alec’s smile tightened a fraction. “I had her. I was just settin’ her up.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Keeping her voice low and even, knowing they weren’t really in the clear yet, Max said, “All right, head for Terminal City.”

  Something nagged at Clemente—this just didn’t feel right—and when he entered Jam Pony it was with gun drawn and both arms extended, his flashlight in his left hand, his pistol in his right.

  Behind him, four members of the SWAT team—the PD’s men, not White’s—fell into a loose line and then spread out once they were inside the door. The power was still out and the place was bathed in eerie shadows, strangely quiet after the tension of the day. It was almost as if the building needed a rest too. . . .

  Coming around a corner, Clemente saw three people sitting on a bench, apparently just waiting for the police to enter. Nearest him sat a young woman of perhaps twenty, her short brown hair tied into two tiny pigtails. She wore a tan hooded pullover and khakis.

  Next to her sat a taller, muscular, nerdy guy with black-rimmed glasses, a blond flattop, wearing a blue pullover short-sleeve shirt and jeans. Beyond him, a tiny bald guy, also in his early twenties, wore a plaid flannel shirt and jeans. They all seemed calm.

  Very damn calm, for just-released hostages.

  “Anyone hurt?” Clemente asked, shining his flashlight toward them, but not into their eyes.

  “No,” the young woman said. “We’re okay . . . but you better go look upstairs.”

  Was there something . . . mocking in her voice?

  Slowly, all his attention focused on the doorway ahead, Clemente led the way up the stairs. On the landing, he hesitated for only a second before swinging through the door with his pistol outstretched. Behind him, the SWAT team fanned out into the room.

  It was immediately obvious that a ferocious battle had taken place up here. Nearly every pane of glass in the windows and in the top half of the wall that separated the warehouse space from the office space lay in shards on the dusty floor. Shelves had been tipped over, furniture broken—the place was a shambles.

  Playing his light around the room, Clemente settled his beam first on a muscular redheaded woman lashed to a cement support. She had been gagged and taped to the pillar with packaging tape, as if waiting delivery, perhaps by one of the bike messengers.

  Swinging farther around, Clemente’s light fell on a trio in their underwear—they’d been stripped of their uniforms and lashed to another pillar. They too had been trussed up and gagged with packing tape.

  Clemente realized at once that this meant the SWAT team members who’d seemingly hauled off 452 and the rest were impostors, wearing the uniforms of the SWAT team they’d defeated. And he knew he should spring into action, but . . .

  He couldn’t keep a wide smile from spreading across his face.

  “Special Agent in Charge White,” Clemente said, in mock good humor.

  The normally smug and very trussed-up government man, Ames White, growled something that came out garbled because of the packing-tape gag. He had not been stripped of his clothes—just his dignity.

  “What was that?” Clemente asked, as if actually understanding the agent’s muffled outraged words from beneath the packing tape. “The transgenics tied you up and took your uniforms?”

  Another growl erupted from the agent as he fought against the tape that bound him.

  The detective chuckled and his grin grew even wider. “No way!”

  White’s eyes went wide with anger and he yelled something—probably obscene—that was again swallowed by the tape.

  As if making sure he was understanding White correctly, Clemente asked, “And you want me to go after them?”

  The NSA agent’s cold stare carried every ounce of anger and hatred that the tape wouldn’t allow him to utter.

  “Now that’s a good idea,” Clemente said as he rose. He went to the door with his men on his tail, none of them making any move to untie White or his cronies.

  As he stepped into the hall, the detective heard another muffled scream from White. It sounded quite a bit like, “Son of a bitch,” even with the tape over the man’s mouth. Clemente allowed himself to enjoy the moment, then took off at a run for his car.

  White wasn’t the only one who’d been fooled by the transgenics, and Clemente—the pleasure of seeing the arrogant White hung out to dry receding in his mind as his duty kicked in—wasn’t going to let this slide. Now he would catch the transgenics, and succeed where White had screwed up.

  And let Ames White stare into Clemente’s smug smile, for a change.

  The crew had lapsed into silence; the tension of th
e long day finally seemed to be leaking out of them, and they all looked beat. Max was proud of her family, her friends. This day could have ended as the bloodbath Ames White had sought, and the transgenics’ cause irrevocably hurt, had anyone besides CeCe—one of their own—been killed or injured.

  Not that Max and the others didn’t hurt because of the loss of their sister; but had any of the “ordinaries” died, well, that would have been the end of her hope of getting the humans to accept them as equals. She was just settling down to rest herself, in the back of the van, when she heard the first siren.

  She looked out the rear window at the same moment Logan spotted the flashing lights in his mirror.

  “We’ve got company,” he announced.

  Clemente’s voice came to them over a loudspeaker from the lead car. “Stop your vehicles now or you will be fired upon!”

  Logan ignored him and kept driving.

  Again Clemente’s voice came over the loudspeaker: “Pull over now or we will use deadly force to stop you.”

  Looking out the windshield, Max said, “Don’t stop—keep moving.”

  Not slowing, Logan kept the van going straight down the middle of the street, Sketchy at the wheel of the ambulance behind him, following Logan’s lead, the police cars close behind, but none of them moving forward to try and block their path.

  To Max, the trip to Terminal City seemed as though it took hours, not minutes. But finally they approached the locked gate of the no-man’s-land the transgenics had claimed for themselves, signs proclaiming, NO TRESPASSING. IT IS A FELONY TO PASS THIS POINT, and BIOHAZARD. UNSAFE FOR HUMAN OCCUPANCY.

  “Go straight through,” Max said, almost casually.

  Logan didn’t hesitate in following her instructions—he pressed down steadily on the accelerator and slowly the van gained momentum as it neared the gate.

  “Hold on,” he advised, and everyone in the van tried to burrow in for the impact.

  They slammed crunchingly through, the ambulance roaring in after them, right on their back bumper, police cars in a long line behind them. Inside the van, they rocked with the impact, then settled as they sped into the makeshift compound.