Skin Game Read online

  With no preamble, Joshua, a couple of X5s, and an X3 raised a makeshift steel flagpole into a base they had built. As Max and the others watched, the quartet hoisted the pole, with the transgenics’ flag—recently painted by Joshua, whose considerable artistic abilities were known to all of them—attached to the top.

  Once the pole was in place, they all stepped back and looked up at the banner waving gently in the morning breeze, the sun seeming to make it glow.

  Not fighting the swell of emotion, Max stared at the flapping flag, remembering Joshua’s description of the banner’s design.

  “This is where we come from,” Joshua had said, “where they tried to keep us.” And he’d pointed to the banner’s bottom third, a broad black band bisected by a red bar code.

  “In the dark,” Max had said.

  Joshua nodded. “A secret.”

  Pointing to the middle band—a wide crimson stretch with a white dove rising from the bar code beneath—Joshua said, “Where we are now . . . because our blood is being spilled.”

  She nodded her acceptance of the appropriateness of that.

  Finally, the dogfaced man pointed to the topmost third, a white band. “And this . . . is where we want to go.”

  Max had gotten it immediately. “Into the light,” she said, her voice betraying a gentleness few saw in her.

  Now, looking up at Joshua’s design riding the breeze, Max seemed about to burst—partly from pride for what they had accomplished, partly from apprehension for what was to come. Still, for the most part, it was a good feeling.

  More important, she thought, how right it felt to be standing here with their own flag.

  Max glanced over at Gem and the baby, and another feeling settled on her—as if a great weight were now resting on her shoulders. After all, she was the one who had destroyed Manticore, who had unleashed the transgenics—from beauties like Alec and the late CeCe to beasts like Joshua and Mole; and, free or not, none of them would be under siege in Terminal City if not for her.

  But she had carried weight before and survived. Hell, she’d even flourished. She vowed to herself that she would carry this weight too. Logan had said it best, hadn’t he? Freedom wasn’t free.

  Alec seemed moved by the moment, and Mole lit up a big cigar and puffed it with pride. They all appeared in better spirits this morning, with the sun shining and their flag flying. They actually had something of their own, and not just a flag: forsaken by God and man, Terminal City was, for good or ill, their own little chunk of the Seattle landscape.

  Logan’s hand encased in a white surgical glove, hers in a black leather one, she felt the man she loved take her hand and give it a gentle squeeze. Without looking away from the flag, he said, gently mocking, “Now look what you’ve done.”

  It felt so good to be at his side, hand in hand; but she could never let her guard down: if their flesh touched, even if all she did was absently wipe a stray hair from his eyes, even if she accidentally brushed her hand against an exposed section above the surgical gloves, Logan Cale would be seized by that Manticore-implanted virus—specific to his DNA—and he would in all likelihood die.

  A tiny smirk dug into her cheek. Most men were allergic to commitment; her man was allergic to her.

  They all stayed there for a long time after that, just watching the flag flutter. After a while, Logan finally said, “We need to talk.”

  Max looked at him, and he glanced meaningfully toward the door.

  She nodded.

  Joshua ambled over to them, a shy smile on his snout-mouth. He was proud of himself, but obviously embarrassed by the feeling.

  “Nice job,” Logan said. “It looks good, Joshua. You have a real touch.”

  The one who had been the first of the transgenics—an unfortunate failed experiment who was in some ways the best of them all—shook his wooly mane. “Thanks, Logan.” He turned to Max, who enveloped him in a hug.

  “You did good, Big Fella,” she said.

  “Thanks, Little Fella,” he said, returning the hug hugely.

  The silly nicknames were a small indication of the big brother and sisterly affection these two shared.

  The rest of the transgenics broke up and headed back downstairs, their conversation light and hopeful. Taking one last look at the flag, Max allowed herself a little smile, then followed.

  Logan and Joshua stood at the bottom of the stairwell, waiting for her to join them, which she did.

  “I just want to check the monitors one more time,” Max said. “Before we talk?”

  Logan shrugged; he always deferred to her—almost always. “Sure.”

  The two men followed her into the media center, where Dix, Luke, and their merry misfit band were back to watching all twenty-five monitors at once.

  “Any movement?” Max asked.

  Luke shook his head, which more or less resembled a soft-white lightbulb. “The cops seem happy just to keep us in here for now.”

  Reverting to his cynical activist mode, Mole asked, “And how long do you think that’ll last?”

  No one said anything.

  On one of the media monitors a superimposed announcement of a special bulletin flashed across the screen.

  “What’s this now?” Dix asked.

  The picture abandoned the police barricades beyond the Terminal City fence in favor of an area just outside a checkpoint in another sector, where three police cars and an ambulance sat parked, their lights flashing.

  A female voice-over intoned somberly, “A sector officer was found murdered this morning, when his replacement reported for duty.”

  The video cut to a pair of EMTs pushing a gurney up to the back doors of the ambulance. Whatever was underneath the sheet on the stretcher, it seemed to be bleeding through everywhere, damp crimson splotches making terrible polka dots.

  The female newscaster continued: “Police refuse to comment on the rumor that the officer had been skinned.”

  “Skinned?” Luke asked with a touch of disgust, wincing at the thought.

  As the ambulance doors closed, the voice-over continued, “If this officer was skinned, it would mark the second such murder in the Seattle metroplex in the last four months.”

  Mole harrumphed. “And they’re worried about us?”

  “The previous victim, Henry Calvin, a shoe salesman, turned up last March in a part of Sector Three known to be heavily frequented by transgenics.”

  “Didn’t take ’em long to try to pin this shit on us,” Dix said.

  “One of White’s men?” Logan wondered aloud.

  Mole said, “They’re reachin’—any way to blame this damn thing on us, they’ll find.”

  But that was the end of the coverage of the sector cop’s murder, and the news broadcast returned to the studio for other local news. There was a perverse sense of disappointment among the transgenics monitoring the coverage now that the focus was no longer on them.

  Turning to Dix and Luke, Max said, “Logan and I have some things to talk over. We’ll be back in twenty.” She glanced at Logan for confirmation and he nodded.

  Walking out next to each other, they barely noticed Joshua hanging back far enough to give them privacy, but close enough that—should anything bad happen—he could get to them to protect Max. Girl’s best friend. . . .

  Even though she could more than take care of herself, Max didn’t mind the idea of Joshua staying close. Now that Ames White knew where she was, it would only be a matter of time before he and his next squad of muscle bitches came calling again.

  They left the building that housed the media center and walked down the rubble-strewn middle of the twenty square blocks that made up Terminal City. Mostly biotech companies back in their day, several had lost containment when the Pulse hit, and the area had long ago been declared off limits to the citizens.

  Though the transgenics had been treated against biowarfare agents, the ordinaries couldn’t last for extended periods within the restricted area. No one had any sense of the specific
s of that, just the inevitable danger of prolonged toxic exposure. Sooner or later some biological agent or other would take nontransgenics down—which meant Logan, Sketchy, and Original Cindy would have to move on, before long.

  Most of the buildings within the walls not only were crumbling, but had long since been ransacked for any valuables. Occasionally the transgenics would find a piece of equipment they could use or cannibalize, but mostly what Terminal City was—before the transgenic squatters moved in, anyway—was a ghost town.

  The couple let the first few blocks pass in silence, Max waiting for Logan to get around to telling her whatever it was he had to say. Behind them Joshua—the world’s biggest puppy tagging along—seemed fine about keeping his own company while watching them.

  At last Max’s patience reached its limit. “You gonna tell me where we’re goin’?”

  Logan, with a tiny smirk, checked his watch. “I wondered how long you could go.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a five-dollar bill and held it up. “You were right, Joshua. Eight-fourteen. She couldn’t go ten minutes without asking.”

  The big fella came forward, accepted the bill, turned to Max and said, “Thanks, Little Fella.”

  She stopped, looked from one to the other, then shook her head, not nearly as amused as they were. As she and Logan started forward again, Joshua again hung back, letting the distance widen.

  “Okay,” she said, a tiny edge in her voice. “We’ve demonstrated I’m not the most patient person in the world. Granted. I do like to know what’s going on, and where I’m headed.”

  “You’re a control freak. Admit it.”

  She whispered, “Is Eyes Only calling somebody else a control freak?”

  He gave her that sideways, amused, look of his. “We’re all freaks here, right?”

  Now she smiled. “Yes we are. . . . Now, are you gonna tell me why we’ve marched all the way back to the ass end of Terminal City?”

  Logan pointed at a low-slung concrete building in front of them.

  “Medtronics,” Max said, reading the faded sign with the bold blue letters. “Yeah. So?”

  “You know what’s behind this building?” Logan asked, something impish in his tone.

  What was up with him? She shrugged elaborately. “Let me guess, since you seem to want me to—a parking lot?”

  “And beyond that?”

  Another shrug. “The back fence and, oh, maybe a bunch of pissed-off cops and National Guardsmen.”

  He smiled enigmatically and started walking again, this time toward the front entryway of Medtronics. When they got to the metal door, Logan produced a key that he slipped into the lock, then turned and opened the door. He waved for her to enter.

  “Neat trick,” she admitted. “And where did you get the key?”

  Yet another shrug—a matter-of-fact one this time. “I own the building.”

  Stepping inside, she took a quick glance at the dust-covered receptionist’s desk and pitiful little waiting room. “You owned Medtronics?”

  “Not exactly. My uncle Jonas did. After the Pulse, naturally, he couldn’t give it away. When I offered him a pittance for it, a while back, he sold it to me without even a question. Glad to be rid of any real estate attached to Terminal City.”

  “I hear that.”

  Moving to a door to the right, Logan said, “Come on, Max—you too, Joshua.”

  Logan produced a small flashlight, as the building was windowless and dark. His penlight’s small beam was the only illumination as they walked down a long, narrow flight of stairs.

  In the basement, he gave the flash to Max. “Hold this a minute, will you?”

  She pointed the light at a stack of heavy boxes against the wall where Logan had moved.

  “Give me a hand, Joshua?”

  The two of them moved the stack out of the way and, to Max’s surprise, their efforts revealed a door with a lock, but no knob.

  Inserting another key, Logan pushed the door open, flipped a light switch, and Max found herself at one end of a long tunnel with fluorescent lights strung from the ceiling every thirty feet or so. Still, it seemed dim. The concrete walls had been painted a very pale green, and the tile floor was about the same color. Unlike Medtronics, this area was free of dust, even clean. With the lighting, the effect was of a hospital, or worse, Max thought, a morgue.

  “Where does this lead?” she asked. “If I’m right about my directions, we’re at the back of the building.”

  Logan nodded. “Tunnel goes under the parking lot.”

  “We’re beyond the fence?”

  “Yes. This passage leads under the street—and the police barricade and National Guard—and comes up in a building in the next block.”

  She struggled to see Logan’s face in the dim light. “A building outside Terminal City?”

  “That’s right,” he said with a small self-satisfied smile. “Outside Terminal City.”

  “How did Logan know about the tunnel?” Joshua asked him, eyes tight with the desire for knowledge.

  Another matter-of-fact shrug. “My uncle built it. There are things like this in a lot of buildings he’s owned. He’d always been a little paranoid, and after the Pulse, he felt vindicated. I knew the tunnel was here when I bought the building, even though my uncle left it off the blueprints and any other documents filed with the city.”

  “You knew this tunnel was here,” Max said, the significance slowly dawning on her, “when you bought Medtronics.”

  “It’s why I bought Medtronics—the building this leads to is part of Medtronics too, actually. The borders of Terminal City weren’t established until the containment fences went up.”

  “Are you telling me you anticipated this siege and—”

  “Of course not. But with the influx of transgenics into Terminal City, I thought it might be an advantage to have some real estate nearby. Plus, it was only a matter of time until Eyes Only was going to need a new home anyway.”

  “A point Ames White drove home,” Max said, referring to the discovery and destruction of Logan’s penthouse Eyes Only headquarters. Logan had been squatting himself, lately, in Joshua’s old digs, an abandoned house.

  “I started looking for new quarters a while ago,” Logan said.

  “So you own both these buildings.”

  “Yeah. The remains of Medtronics.”

  She frowned. “In your name?”

  He shook his head. “Dummy corporation. Called Sowley Opticals.”

  Now it was her turn to smirk. “That’s a little cute, isn’t it? Nobody’ll ever figure that one out!”

  Joshua was frowning. “Figure what, Max?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Logan said, “Eyes Only has a friend in the Records department at City Hall. The records show that Sowley Opticals owned this building from the day before the Pulse. Maybe it is too cute, but in an area of medtech companies, it will actually look legit.” He stepped into the tunnel. “Come on, take a walk with me, Max—and take this, you’ll need it. I’ve got my own.” He handed her the key to unlock the knob-less door.

  “Thanks,” she said, but she was having trouble processing this. She knew she should be grateful that Logan had done such shrewd planning, but she felt somehow . . . betrayed. No, that was too strong. He hadn’t taken her into his confidence—he was up to his old, Eyes Only, secret ways again.

  As before, Joshua let the distance grow so the two of them could have some privacy. Their feet barely made a sound as they strode down the tile floor.

  “Something wrong, Max?” Logan said, the smirk gone.

  “No.”

  “Max, I can read you better than that.”

  “. . . You did all this without telling me?”

  “Some things are on a need-to-know basis, Max . . . and you didn’t need to know this yet. I’m sure you have secrets you’re keeping, to protect me better.”

  That was true.

  Logan kept his voice low. “You’re going to have to talk to them,
you know.”

  “Who?”

  “The cops, the National Guard . . . probably even someone from the feds.”

  Max shook her head slowly. “All I want is for us to be left alone.”

  “Terminal City is a toxic island, Max. The time for speeches is over. Brass tacks now.”

  “Okay. Say it.”

  “If you initiate negotiations, Eyes Only can get that word out to the world. If you do nothing, sooner or later, they’re going to come in . . . and you know what that means.”

  Genocide.

  “Like it or not,” Logan was saying, “we’re about to enter a media war . . . and we need all the good press we can get.”

  She winced in confusion as they walked along. “A media war? How is this—”

  “Why do you think White tried to turn Jam Pony into a bloodbath?”

  “To kill me.”

  “That’s one reason . . . but he was going to kill everyone in the place. Ordinaries like me and Cindy and Sketchy too.”

  “Yeah, I know—that’s why I stopped Joshua from snapping White’s spine. Carnage makes us look like the monsters everybody thinks we are.”

  “Bingo. Now you’re gettin’ media savvy.”

  She grunted something like a laugh and it echoed in the tunnel. “Don’t you ever get tired of being right?”

  “I’m always tired of being right, Max. . . . Ames White is going to fight you—not just you, Max, all of you—and not inside the gates of Terminal City, not right away. But in the media.”

  “It won’t be hard,” she said. “You saw those crazy assholes outside Jam Pony, and on TV. Everybody in Seattle already thinks we’re monsters.”

  Logan stopped for a moment; he seemed about to touch her, but he didn’t. Instead, his eyes held her.

  “Not everybody,” he said. “Not me, not Original Cindy, not Sketchy . . . and now not even Normal.”

  “And you think we can convince everyone?”