Chapter 51
FIFTY-ONE
The place was huge, full of concrete tunnels either badly lit or glaring bright, and it smelled awful.
The woman—Trinity, she’d said, her mouth pulling into a bitter line, you might as well call me that—walked ahead, halting and cocking her blonde head whenever she heard someone approaching.
Holly did her best to move silently in Trinity’s wake, stepping with exaggerated care so her new boots didn’t squeak. At least her feet were dry.
Well, dry-ish.
She was surprised she wasn’t stumbling, but her body seemed to know what to do. She was even further surprised when the woman began to talk, in that flat mechanical tone. “Odds are they’ve been transported already, which will increase our chances of escape. Do you have any ID?”
What? “No, it’s back in my…” She was babbling, Holly realized. “No. Why?”
“Because I need to know what to do with you,” was the crisp, flat answer.
Trinity’s back was ballet-straight under her blazer, and those sensible flats had thick soles that didn’t dare squeak.
Cold and contained, her expression hadn’t changed when she slammed the man’s head down onto the tabletop, breaking his nose and spreading blood everywhere.
The man with the fried-food smell might even be dead, that’s how hard his skull had hit, and Holly’s stomach was queasy just thinking about the sound of cracking bone.
She waited, but Trinity said nothing more. God, she’s just like Reese. “Are you... you’re one of them. An agent.”
“Infected. Like you. And yes, I’ve been trained.”
“For liquidations?” I’m getting the hang of the lingo. Great for me.
“Planning, not execution. They think a woman can’t kill.” Trinity chose lefts and rights seemingly at random, but one thing remained constant: they were going down.
Oh, God. “Can you?”
“I believe so.” She was so calm, it was eerie. Of course, everything about this was. “If I have to. How do you think I got here?”
Do I really want to know? Holly apparently had to play a guessing game now. “You’re working with Cal?”
“Cal? Oh, Eight.” A slight shake of Trinity’s sleek head. “No, they lost him in Boulder until we got another ping on Six, cross-checking one of his old jobs.”
And here Holly had thought Reese was cryptic. She was playing catch-up in the big leagues now, apparently. “Six?”
“Your infector.”
That’s one way of putting it. “He didn’t mean to.”
“Probably not.” Trinity didn’t turn around, but Holly felt her attention sharpening. “It doesn’t matter. He’s high value, they’ll see if they can make him play.”
Uh-oh. “How?”
“Six was their poster boy. Physically gifted, amped mission fidelity, low emotional noise, everything. If it wasn’t for a civilian doctor going insane and trying to kill him, he’d still be working, probably hunting down the agents who went off the rez.”
“Off the rez?”
“AWOL. Native. Off the grid.” A quick barrage of terminology.
“Okay.” What is it with these people and the euphemisms? Holly had to speed up, hurrying after the other woman’s steady glide. “He said they might be shutting the program down.”
“I do not think it likely. Too useful, even with infection vectors. The infected die out, except for the Geminas.”
“Geminas?” There’s a new one.
“The complementary ones. Agents lock on, infect the Geminas and have a complete break. They vanish.” The blonde sniffed, a queerly animal movement. Any second now she was going to freeze like a cat, one paw in the air, then go bounding off chasing a ball of yarn.
She even smelled like a cat—dry, healthy, with a tang of oil to make the fur stay sleek. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t nearly as nice as Reese. As a matter of fact, it reminded her of Cal even more strongly. “Vanish. Okay. Look, why are you even—”
“You’re a civilian.” Disdainful, as if that explained everything. Maybe for her, it did.
Yes, if she was still waiting tables, Holly would definitely peg this lady as a businesswoman, expecting prompt service and leaving that tiny, calculated tip.
No please or thank you, just that slight judgmental eyebrow lift.
She smelled like she worked out, too, an undertone of supple muscles and a faint whiff of habitual exertion.
Along with another tang, shifting and elusive. It was distracting to get all this information through the nose. How did Reese handle it?
You smell... good.
The intense color at the bottom of Trinity’s scent was odd. Holly finally realized what it had to be. “Why are you sad?”
“I’m not.” Trinity kept marching straight ahead. “Not happy, either. I don’t feel anything since the induction. Instead, I calculate.”
That’s so not comforting. Induction? “So what equation am I part of?”
Trinity stopped at a metal door painted with red stripes. Looked like a stairwell entry, and it had the same funny little number pad as all the other ones in this hall. There was no sound as she pressed the keys—3-7-5-2-8—with little taps, but a chuk sound broke the hush.
“You’re not.” Trinity pushed the door open with a quick glance and a sniff to make sure it was safe.
“I’ve simply decided. I saw how they were willing to have you suffocated in your own bedroom because someone didn’t want to sign extra paperwork.
” A slight pause as they stepped into a dimly lit stairwell reeking of cigarette smoke.
A toilet flushed in the distance, and Holly almost flinched guiltily.
“I started calculating chances,” Trinity continued, “of them liquidating me the same way sooner or later. That is why I’m bothering to pursue this course. Please be quiet, Ms. Candless. I have to concentrate.”
* * *
Holly’s internal clock had taken a bit of a beating lately, but it felt like almost an hour later when Trinity stopped dead, holding up her left hand just in case Holly didn’t get the message.
Her right hand reached across her body, quick as a snake, and she drew a very nasty-looking dull-black gun.
Trinity pointed, and Holly obligingly flattened herself against the wall at the precise spot indicated.
The other woman stood very still, listening so intently Holly held her breath as if to help. The hallway was full of echoes—stealthy faraway footsteps, a sudden impalpable charge of urgent electricity.
“Damn,” Trinity breathed. Even that word didn’t have any inflection; it was just as dry and precise as the rest of her. “Bad news.”
You know, I think I’m beginning to dread those two little words, but who doesn’t? “Which is?” The concrete wall behind her was cold, repainted so many times the gray-green was slick under her fingertips, an institutional carapace.
“Bronson must have a very thick skull.”
Who? “Bronson? Oh, the man you—”
“I should have snapped his neck, but I thought Caldwell... it doesn’t matter.” A small, precise shake of her head. “Next time I’ll calculate better.”
There might not be a next time, if what I’m hearing is them discovering we’re roaming around. “So now what?” A sudden realization hit. Wait a second. Six and Eight. “You’re Three. All those numbers. Not names.”
Trinity turned her head very slowly, and now she had an expression. Dull, flushed rage stained her cheeks; Holly watched, fascinated, as the color faded and the face became a doll’s mask again.
“I was Three,” she said. “Now I’m Trinity. Please don’t call me the former.”
God. “I’m sorry.” Holly swallowed, dryly. “I won’t.”
“Good.” Trinity set off down the hall again. “Come on.”
They rounded another corner, and Holly stopped so quickly she swayed, her nostrils flaring. Wait. Is that... “Reese. I smell him.”
Trinity didn’t argue, instead taking a deep whiff. “Interesting. Why would they be held here? It doesn’t compute. Unless...”
“Unless what?”
“It’s more bad news.”
For God’s sake. “Just tell me.”
“Generally hostiles are held here, until they’re interrogated, or...”
“Or?” Holly strained for patience—not like she had any alternative, but still. I hate pulling this crap out of people, come on!
“Restructured through induction, but that liquidates the males. Perhaps they wish to test the process on Gemini males?” Another headshake, somehow thoughtful instead of dismissive. “Not enough data. The only other reason would be simple liquidation.”
“You mean killing. We can’t let them—”
“Not our problem at this point,” Trinity muttered, but another expression crossed her face. This one was odd, as if she were straining to recall the lyrics to a long-ago song. “Odd. There’s two agent tracks. I wonder...”
“Reese and Cal? It’s got to be. They are our problem.” Holly’s heart leaped at the thought. “We have to rescue them.”
“Rescue two fully trained liquidation agents, seventy percent chance of them drugged into insensibility? Oh, that’s a marvelous idea.
” A faint tinge of sarcasm, probably unconscious.
“They’re probably beyond any aid by now, and the chances of getting away ourselves would go down.
” Still, Trinity hesitated, her face changing by another millimeter or two.
A faint, rhythmic stamping began. It grew in volume—booted feet, Holly realized.
Men. At least a half-dozen, heading straight for them from a corridor to the left. “They’re coming.”
“The best exit is this way. If we find the agents along the way, that will alter the calculations. But—”
Holly lost her temper; she felt it give with a snap like a wineglass’s stem.
“Look, I don’t care about the calculations.
It’s Reese and Cal, we have to help them.
If you won’t, I’ll do it myself.” Even though I have no idea where I am—but you know what?
I can follow my nose, maybe I can move as fast as Reese, and. .. I’ll figure something out.
My smart girl, her father whispered inside her head.
Trinity shrugged. “They’re probably in the A5 cellblock. A dead end. The timescale is—”
“Which way?”
“What?”
“Which way? To this cellblock.”
Trinity pointed. Holly set her chin, squared her shoulders, and set off.