Alter ego, p.13
Alter Ego, page 13
“You disabled my sense of humor, so yes.”
“Oh fine, pick up.” Mary returned to her surgery on the purse clasp. Maybe she should cover the thing in metallic cloth and forgo the snap altogether.
“Did the dictator lift her moratorium on calls to me?” Mary asked when Agnes’s face popped up on the screen. She was in a car, the phone catching her at a strange angle as she held it in her lap and looked down. Behind her, spots of tinted window bounced in and out of view, but no clues about her location. Just bits of sky.
“Not exactly,” Agnes said.
“Then don’t get into trouble. Purgatory might look romantic, but you do not want to join me here.”
“Mary,” Agnes said, “we’re in L.A. All of us.”
Mary set the gadget down and walked around the table to get closer to the screen. “What?”
“I’m not supposed to call you,” Agnes said. “We tried to convince Eloise, but Her Majesty is still forbidding it.”
Whoa. Snark from Agnes? Eloise must have really pissed her off. “What happened?”
“We found Mange. He’s here, and… well, have you seen the news?”
“I’ve been preoccupied,” Mary said.
She had a feeling she was about to regret her lack of sleep. Agnes was wearing her mission suit, an outfit specifically designed to go invisible when she did. Its shimmery white fabric should have been instantly recognizable. Mary was more fatigued than she’d thought. “He broke into the California Laboratory for Enhanced Abilities Research about half an hour ago,” Agnes said. “He’s holding hostages. We’re on our way from LAX.”
Mary knew CLEAR. It was one of the top research centers for enhanced abilities in the country. Agnes had worked there for a time, before Eloise poached her away, but she always said she’d grown frustrated with their research focus. It took so much red tape to get the go ahead to create anything with real-world implications, Agnes always said, that she’d practically danced a jig when Eloise had appeared with her offer.
For Mange to show up at the CLEAR lab, just forty-five minutes away, in Santa Monica, seemed like a pretty significant coincidence. Especially given Nathan’s presence in the area.
What was Mange up to? What did he know?
Mary went to the wardrobe in the back corner of the room and started to change. “How’d you get here so fast?”
“We didn’t. The team found security feed of him shopping for hats on Rodeo Drive several hours ago and Eloise piled us all onto the plane.”
A twinge of annoyance sparked in Mary’s chest. She could have neutralized Mange hours ago. Eloise’s stubbornness might be about to cost innocent lives. “And Ire’s OK with illicit phone calls, too?”
Agnes paused. “Eloise attacked Jenna with the Knife earlier to make a point.”
Mary whistled. She couldn’t picture that going over well with Ire, who was tough but always fair. He wouldn’t support scare tactics. What the hell was going on with Eloise? “Great management technique.”
“Are you far?”
“No, but you’ll beat me there.”
“Hurry.”
Mary slipped her mask on and flipped her hair into a bun. “System, tell Hal to meet me at CLEAR,” she said. “We may find ourselves in need of transport.”
“And you’ll get there how?” the System asked.
“I’m taking the Honda.”
With the limited bodywork of a racing bike and the power of a standard motorcycle, the Honda was Mary’s fastest route to anywhere in L.A. She might not be able to get to CLEAR ahead of her friends, but she could sure as hell try.
17 Nathan
The Windpipe Lounge looked so much like one of Nathan’s regular pubs in Boston that they might as well have called the place Callahan’s or McCloud’s. The sports paraphernalia was all Dodgers and Lakers, and there was a wall dedicated to celebrity visitors—comedians mostly; he didn’t see any supermodels up there—but the bar was made of dark wood, the booths were shadowy and cramped, and the whole place smelled like whiskey and hot wings.
Just like home.
Nathan’s friend from the police academy hadn’t asked why Nathan was heading to L.A. on such short notice or why he was calling everyone he knew to get a connection or two in the LAPD. Instead, he’d given Nathan the phone number for John Ramirez and told Nathan if he complained about how Steve always ran too fast, he’d be golden.
Ramirez was a fortyish Hispanic man with speckles of salt beginning to creep into both his pepper-colored hair and the single eyebrow that stretched across his forehead. Nathan was nursing a Heineken while the veteran cop tucked in an impressive mound of cheese fries, and while Nathan itched to get moving and go after Coral as quickly as possible, he wasn’t about to deny a fellow officer a chance to enjoy a meal. Especially when the man was doing him a favor over his lunch break.
Still, he couldn’t help wondering where Coral was right this moment. When she’d appeared on his balcony last night, less than twenty-four hours ago, he’d been so shocked he’d almost let her leave, again, without asking for what he wanted.
And when he finally managed to ask, she’d said no.
But could he blame her? Nathan hadn’t exactly proved himself a worthy ally when he’d botched her enhanced-criminal arrest, and now he was chasing after her with all the grace of an elephant. Besides, if she had the resources to hack into traffic cameras, what else did she know about him? About his family? If Coral were to discover who his mother had been—or worse, what Nathan had been—she’d never change her mind.
“So I told the guy, I said, you can’t sneak into your neighbor’s house to ‘borrow’ his TV, especially if that guy is Andrew Thomas freaking James. Right? Right?” Ramirez laughed and slapped the table in amusement, though Nathan got the sense he’d told that story a hundred times. “You’d never believe the people you run into out here, you’d never believe it.”
“I’m not sure who Andrew Thomas James is,” Nathan said, trying to feign interest in Ramirez’s story and wondering how in the world it could relate to Coral and IOs. “Is he the one with the mohawk?”
Ramirez pulled a rolled-up magazine out of his back pocket and tossed it on the table. The Daily Evening. The headline on the page said ‘A Classy Affair.’ Ramirez pointed to a blurry head sticking out of a pool.
“Him,” Ramirez said, as if that solved it. “I like the evening rags, ya know? They get stuff almost as fast as the internet. This party was last night, and already we know Andrew Thomas James jumped in a pool with his clothes on. Wonder what’s making him high on life, eh?”
In another photo, presumably from the same party, a blond woman was smiling and leaning toward the one guy on the page Nathan could actually name. “Who’s the woman with Jeff Hayes?”
Ramirez squinted at the picture. “That’s Mary O'Sullivan.”
“Celestine’s daughter?” Nathan said. He should have known the daughter’s name; he’d been obsessing about the plane crash, and the positive public opinion IOs had maintained ever since then, almost as long as he’d been reliving his own past.
“Sure. Must have some major therapy bill, after all that.”
Nathan frowned. How had he never thought to look into the one crash survivor? “What was she in?”
“She isn’t in anything, man. She just is.”
Nathan picked up the magazine and studied the photo more closely. It was her chin. Even from the side, it was her chin that kept catching his attention. She looked like the girl in McGinty’s. She looked like Coral.
He had Coral stuck in his brain.
This woman in the cocktail dress with Jeff Hayes couldn’t be the same person. “I’ve seen her before,” he said.
Ramirez shook his head. “Of course you have. Mary O'Sullivan is everywhere. I didn’t know she was dating Jeff Hayes, though. That must be new.”
Nathan raised an eyebrow. “Celebrity gossip?”
“Pays to be in the know, Pearce.” Ramirez gulped at his beer and slammed the glass on the table so it rocked precariously before settling, the liquid in the bottom more foam now than beverage. “So, tell me. Why’re you out here chasing after IOs, anyway?”
Nathan wanted to ask why it mattered, but he couldn’t deny he’d have asked the same question. “She’s after a criminal named Mange,” he said. “He killed a friend of mine in Boston.”
Truth. Not the whole truth, but enough.
Ramirez wiped his hands on his pants. “Take my advice, man. This is not the kind of thing to involve yourself in. If an IO’s looking for him, it’s gotta mean he’s real dangerous.”
“I need to find her,” Nathan said.
Ramirez’s mobile phone buzzed and he excused himself to take the call. Nathan watched him walk a few steps toward the bar, the phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear, before leaning over to examine the woman in the photo again. Coral, smiling like that? Trading in her black and silver for a tight cocktail dress?
It couldn’t be her.
Ramirez returned and tossed a bill on the table, frowning in a way Nathan could only interpret as renewed curiosity. “Your guy, he a fire starter?”
“Yeah,” Nathan said, his heart kicking into gear.
Ramirez sighed. “Guess you’re onto something, then. He’s holding hostages at a research lab in Santa Monica. About ten minutes from here.”
“They’re calling in units?”
“All they can get. You know something about the guy. Could be useful. Willing to come along, help us out?”
The California Laboratory for Enhanced Abilities Research was located in a colorless box of a building with a belt of bushes planted beneath the windows and drab signs pointing the way toward departments with names like Molecular-Level Enhancements, Artifact Analysis, and Elemental Abilities: Earth-Fire-Wind-Water (All Forms).
Cops swarmed in a ring around the building, with units stationed at every entrance. They’d set up a van outside the main doors with two loudspeakers, but so far it didn’t look as though Mange intended to negotiate.
Across the street and behind the cop cars, a row of media vans hovered, each capped with satellite dishes and accompanied by cameras and blinding lights. Reporters spoke excitedly into microphones, making wild guesses about a situation that no one had a handle on yet. Mange was searching for plutonium. Mange was creating an army of enhanced criminals out of the hostages. Mange, Mange, Mange. They’d certainly learned his name quickly enough.
“No sign of IOs,” Ramirez said, clapping Nathan on the shoulder. “But whoever’s heading up this operation will want to hear what you’ve got on Mange. Follow me.”
Ramirez started toward the loudspeakers, still talking as though Nathan were beside him.
Time to make a decision. Follow Ramirez, stay a cop. Melt into the crowd, become something more.
For a long second, the weight of the choice locked Nathan’s feet to the pavement. Could he really trust Coral, leave his life behind? It suddenly seemed childish, laughable, that a decision like this—to become an independent operative, a vigilante—would finally absolve him in Chloe’s eyes.
He had to try.
Nathan forced himself to move. He backed to the periphery of the scene and ducked behind the nearest news van, startling a plastic-haired reporter into dropping her microphone. Heart pounding, he skirted past her and walked quickly around the side of the building, staying on the other side of the street.
When he was far enough from Ramirez to escape notice, Nathan crouched behind a hedge and took a moment to scan his surroundings.
Notice what you’d usually ignore, she’d said on the balcony. He couldn’t pick out any obvious traffic cameras, though a place like this would have security measures at each entrance. On the second floor and around the corner, light beamed from the windows, illuminating three squares of patchy grass. A lab, he guessed. The lab.
No movement.
Though darkness was beginning to blanket the scene, the streetlights shining a bluish LED light onto the pavement would ensure there was no way into the building. At least, not without the cops catching sight.
The streetlight directly above him snapped off.
Right. No way in for normal people.
Nathan waited. Several seconds later another light went out, this one accompanied by the soft chink of breaking glass. He wouldn’t have heard it if he hadn’t been listening. A third light vanished, lengthening the shadows into a bridge of darkness across the street.
She was here.
A breath, then a figure emerged from the yard beside his. She glided over the hedge and ran for the nearest set of darkened windows.
Nathan followed.
Coral was crouched behind one of the scrawny bushes with her back to the wall. She didn’t seem surprised to see him.
“I’m seriously starting to get tired of you,” she said, glaring at him from behind her mask. “What the hell are you doing here? Do you have a death wish?” She removed her belt buckle and started folding it into some kind of a grapple hook, then looked up at him. “Well?”
For a moment, they stared at each other. And Nathan was sure, positive, that she was the woman in the magazine. Even minus that radiant smile, it was obvious. Celestine’s daughter, the little girl who’d survived the plane crash. Incredible. He thought back to that night in McGinty’s, where he’d seen more of her face. It had to be her.
The knowledge should have made him more tongue-tied than before, especially after they’d almost kissed last night—though she had decided to leap from a balcony rather than going through with it. But somehow instead of making him nervous, knowing her identity was like confirmation that she was human after all.
“Are you going in there alone?” he said.
“I have backup. You saw what happened in the alley, what he can do. Get out of here, before you get fried.”
Nathan glanced around. “I don’t see anyone.”
“They’re here.”
Who, he wondered, backed up Coral?
“I can back you up,” he said.
“I don’t have time to teach kindergarten.”
Nathan took a risk and grabbed her arm. She gave him a dangerous look, her eyes glittering from behind the fabric. Like she could take him down in two hits. He had no doubt of it. “Let me help you,” he said. “If I botch it, I’ll leave you alone for good.”
One chance to prove himself was better than no chance at all.
She studied him, assessing, as though she could figure him out by looking. Maybe she could.
“Did you mean it?” she said finally.
He shook his head, confused. “What?”
“What you said. About being an independent operative,” she said impatiently. “Did you?”
He thought of the photo, and how it looked like she’d been leaning in to kiss Jeff Hayes. He’d never liked Jeff Hayes. Too smug. If Ramirez was right about the Daily Evening, that party had been last night. Before she’d come to see Nathan.
“Of course I meant it.”
She aimed her grapple gun at the window. “You’ve got one shot, Officer Pearce. Don’t screw it up.”
18 Mary
The glass shattered in a jagged hole around the grapple hook. Mary sincerely hoped she wasn’t about to regret her decision to let Nathan participate in this showdown. Normally she’d knock a civilian out, dose them with a tranquilizer, but it didn’t seem fair to leave Nathan passed out under a bush, and she didn’t want to repeat Eloise’s mistakes.
She didn’t want to go in alone.
She secured the hook on the inside of the window and braced one foot on the wall while she kicked out the rest of the glass.
“Subtle,” Nathan said.
Mary swung over the sill and into the building. Shards crunched as her boots hit the floor, and she popped her head out the window. “Coming?”
While Nathan climbed, Mary inventoried her arsenal one more time. She hadn’t bothered weighing down her pockets with the useless dart or stun guns, but she had knives in each boot, the BB gun she’d used to shoot the streetlights under her arm, and three shockdisks the size of bottle caps rattling around in her hip pouch along with their trigger. One of Will’s favorite inventions, the disks could be activated from a distance to send a vibration violent enough to knock even Ire off his feet for a few seconds. Non-lethal. Effective.
Nathan hit the floor, then retracted the wire and handed her the grapple hook. She replaced it on her belt. “Do you have any weapons?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
“A utility knife,” he said, touching his pocket.
Great. She was walking into a hostage situation with a Boy Scout. At least he had some hand-to-hand skills, based on what she’d seen in Boston. Enough to make him more of a help than a hindrance. As long as Eloise was already there with Agnes and Ire, and maybe Jenna, they should be able to make short work of Mange.
Then she’d figure out how to deal with Nathan Pearce.
The last time she’d stalked Mange, she’d had to poke her way through a dirty alley. Now she was in a clean, drab hallway with drinking fountains and posters that showed stick figures getting zapped by lightning above captions like Safety Comes First! Accidental Abilities May Sound Cool…But They Can Lead to Injury or Death.
Lights beckoned them down the hall from a pair of double glass doors, sending wiggly lines down the strangely reflective paint on the walls. It was the kind of paint Mary associated with schools, shiny lacquer globbed on over the bricks. Easy to wash in case of vomit or other messy accidents. How many messy accidents happened here? In the hallways?
When they reached the doors, Mary flattened herself against the wall on the right side, taking a moment to get the scope of the room. Nathan followed her lead on the left.
From her position, Mary could see half the room without betraying her presence. Eloise stood in the opposite corner, unmoving, her attention apparently locked on something in the middle of the lab. It was hard to tell with her face covered in the Pearl Knife’s signature fencing mask.
