Dark Angel: Skin Game (29 page)

When they had gone over the plan for the umpteenth time, Max stretched and said,

"All right, break time."

Mole sat back and rolled his head on the column of his neck. "You know, this shit just might work," he said.

She nodded. "Oughta give 'em a hell of goose, anyway.... Look, I'm supposed to go meet Logan—he should be back by now."

"Cool," Mole said, and blew a cigar smoke ring. "Young love inspires us all."

"Bite me."

"Have you had your shots?"

"I hang with Joshua, don't I?"

They both laughed—and the levity was a good sign after all the doom and gloom of recent days.

"Go on," Mole said. "We'll hold down the fort."

Then, as she started to walk out, he added, "And see if he got my damn cigars! He forgot last time."

She grinned. "Will do."

Despite Mole's good humor, the atmosphere around the compound remained tense.

Max hadn't expected any less.

They were all getting ready for combat now. Her desire to check on Logan—and his efforts to find Sage Thompson— made her want to run; but she forced herself to walk.

Behind the broken windows and cracked doors, citizens of Terminal City were watching her.

If she looked cool, maybe they would stay cool, too.

When the National Guard had cut the power to Terminal City, they'd gotten this end of the tunnel too. Dix didn't have it hooked into the grid yet, but it was on the to-do list.

In the meantime, she didn't care. Feline DNA made the lights optional anyway.

Max actually enjoyed the darkness—it felt peaceful to her. But the silence that usually accompanied the blanket of blackness was disturbed—somewhere from farther up the tunnel, she could hear something.

Voices?

Trotting ahead, staying silent, she heard Alec's voice from Logan's apartment. "Can't we talk about this, Bobby?"

Then other voices, including Joshua's; but she couldn't make out the words.

Something was wrong. Very wrong....

In seconds she was at the end of the tunnel and silently started up the stairs as she heard another voice.

"Don't follow me___"

This one too was familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.

"I see one of you down in that tunnel," the voice was saying, "I slit Logan's throat, then and there."

At the top of the stairs, she saw someone who looked vaguely like Logan, with an arm around Logan's chest and his other hand out of sight. Without seeing it, she knew the other hand held a knife to Logan's throat.

She still had five steps between her and them.

Normally, taking a guy like this would be no biggie: he had his back to her and all his attention was focused on those in front of him....

Four steps.

The fly in this ointment, though, was Logan. If, in tearing the attacker from him, she somehow accidentally touched Logan, even just brushed her flesh against his in the smallest way, the virus—which Manticore had infected her with, to make her touch deadly to Logan—would kick in, and instead of getting his throat cut, Logan would die at her own fingertips.

Three steps.

The timing had to be perfect, and nothing could go wrong.

Two steps.

One shot, that's all she'd have. Her hand snaked toward the right elbow of the attacker.

Just as she was about to grab him, a bright light—a flashbulb—went off in there.

The attacker yowled, and his right hand—the one with the knife—drew away from Logan's neck as the attacker tried to turn away from the strobe. The action of turning had tipped the pair off balance—captor and hostage alike—and they teetered on the brink of tumbling down the stairs on top of Max.

In less than a second she visualized the whole thing: the three of them tumbling down the stairs, all tangled together, piling up at the bottom, her lying in the one place she longed to be more than any other—in Logan's arms—Logan locked in her deadly embrace, any hope of a life together obliterated by a silly flash of light.

Then—just as Max clutched the attacker's arm, his skin hot against hers—Alec launched himself at the pair and wrenched Logan from the grasp of the attacker. As Logan and Alec fell back into the apartment, she jerked the attacker's knife arm ...

... and the two of them rolled ass-over-teakettle down the stairs into the black tunnel!

They were both on their feet instantly, he still holding the knife, she circling, looking for an opening. In the apartment,

someone hit the switch and the lights in the tunnel came on. The attacker winced at the brightness and gave Max the moment she needed.

She kicked the blade from his grasp, then swiveled and in one fluid motion kicked again, hitting him in the stomach, sending him flying into the stairs, hitting hard.

Max moved in, ready for her opponent to respond; and she got her first good look at him....

He looked almost exactly like Logan!

But an alarming change was in effect: the Logan look-alike was sweating profusely, red sores breaking out on his arms and on his face in a terrible sick blossoming, and he looked at her with shock and confusion in his blue eyes.

"Max," he rasped, slumped against the stairs, a pitiful pile of hive-ridden flesh.

"What's happening to me?"

Her hand went to her mouth.

She knew she was witnessing the virus taking full-blown effect—whoever this would-be Logan was, he had taken on much more than just Logan Cale's appearance.

LOGAN’S APARMENT, 7:00 PM

WEDNESDAY MAY 12 2021

Soon everyone was standing around the table in Logan's new quarters, the would-be killer splayed across the table like a ghastly meal. Original Cindy, Otto, and Asha—

unbound now—were joined by a revived Thompson, Joshua, and Sketchy, who held an ice pack to his chest where the stun rod had bruised him.

"Fill the bathtub with cold water and ice," Max said, directing the order to no one specifically.

It was Alec and Logan who took off to comply with her command.

"Who is he?" Otto Gottlieb asked.

On the table, shivering, flesh bursting with red sores, this was no longer a fearsome figure—eerily, the resemblance to Logan made this seem like a long-lost Cale brother, in the throes of infirmity.

Joshua said, "Kelpy is his name. He's one of us."

Alec emerged from the bathroom with a plastic bucket in hand, heading to the refrigerator.

Gottlieb eyed Joshua's canine features suspiciously. "You mean... transgenic."

"Yes."

Max was wrapping a blanket around the shivering creature, who gazed at her with a sickly, frankly adoring smile.

"Well, his being 'one of us' is not good news," Alec said, at the fridge freezer, filling the bucket with ice. "Bobby or Kelpy or whoever he is, he's our serial killer.... So nobody get too teary-eyed."

Then Alec went off toward the bathroom with his load of ice.

"The skinner?" Thompson asked, his eyes wide above the dark beard. "This is the son of a bitch who killed my partner?"

Max stepped between Thompson and the prone, blanket-wrapped Kelpy. "And now he's going to die—isn't that enough for you?"

"No."

Turning back to her patient, Max tucked the blanket tighter around Kelpy and, in the process, something fell out of his pocket, rolled off the table, and clunked to the floor, lid popping off, pills bouncing crazily for a second.

"His Tryptophan," Original Cindy said.

Max bent down, picked up a few of the pills. "I don't think so...."

"No, Boo, that's his meds! I saw him at Jam Pony."

Max rose. "Maybe so, but these are the wrong color for Tryptophan." She held one up to her nose. "They don't smell right either." She called: "Logan!"

He emerged from the bathroom, from which the rush of water filling the tub could be heard; Alec trailed after, the empty bucket in hand.

"We're about there," Logan said, jerking a thumb toward the bathroom. Frowning at the sight of her grave expression, he asked, "Something else you need, Max?"

She held up one of the pills. "Do you have the equipment to do a chemical breakdown on these?"

He shook his head. "Don't have that gear in yet—soon."

"Soon won't cut it."

At the freezer, Alec paused in filling his bucket and turned to say, "Dix has got his Frankenstein lab going—unless he's just brewing moonshine."

Joshua corrected his friend: "Dix is doing chemical breakdowns on the biohazard materials in Terminal City, Max. Looking for antigens."

"That could be a break," she said. "I need somebody to take Dix these pills—and tell him we need to know what's in 'em, ASAP."

Stepping forward, Alec handed Logan the ice bucket and took the bottle of meds from Max. "Back in a flash."

Max turned to Joshua. "Put Kelpy in the tub, Big Fella. We need to get his body temperature down."

"Let him fucking suffer," Thompson said.

Stepping over to him, Max said, "Thompson, isn't it? Sage Thompson?"

"I know who you are too," he said, his face edged with contempt.

"Since you love us so much, why exactly are you here?"

Logan said, "He just happens to hate Ames White more than he does transgenics—

every alliance starts with a common enemy, Max."

While Joshua lifted his old friend Kelpy into his arms, gentle as a baby, and conveyed the diseased transgenic into the tub of ice and water, Logan gave Max a quick but thorough rundown on Thompson's situation, from his fear of White wanting him dead to the family he'd sent underground.

"Mr. Thompson," Max said, "here's what I want from you, right now—sit down, and shut up. Can you handle that?"

He started to say something but Max's glare silenced him.

"Asha," she said to the blonde freedom fighter, "didn't some members of your S1W

group wind up in British Columbia?"

"That's so."

"Will they help us?"

The blonde nodded. "No prob—I'll get 'em headed there right away."

"Thanks," Max said, bestowing her sometime rival a smile.

Thompson—seated at the kitchen table now—shook his head, obviously bewildered.

"You're ... helping me?"

"Mr. Thompson, you may be a uniformed, bigoted asshole, fresh from service with a government agency devoted to making my life miserable ... but you are also the victim of Ames White ... which means you and I desire the same damn thing."

"Stopping White," he said softly.

"Stopping White ... and whatever it takes to make that happen, and soon, is fine by me.

If that means helping a transgenic-hating scumbag like you, so be it."

Logan leaned over to Sketchy. "Hey, Jimmy Olsen—you taking notes on this?"

Sketchy's eyes widenend and brightened with something very much like thought.

"Pictures too, right?"

Max spun in Sketch's direction. "But no shots with Original Cindy ... and we need to protect Thompson, and Otto, here."

Gottlieb, who'd stayed quiet on the sidelines, just taking it all in, smirked humorlessly and said, "Hell—go ahead and take my picture. My career's over, anyway."

"Me too," Thompson said. "Fire away, kid—maybe by going public we can keep ourselves alive. Killing us only validates our position."

"Hell of a way to make a point," Gottlieb said wryly.

Sketchy needed no more encouragement, and the flashbulbs started popping.

"Can we get Otto and Thompson on tape telling their stories?" Max asked Logan.

He nodded, and fetched a small minirecorder from his nearby office area, calling back to her, "You talked to Clemente lately? You making any progress?"

"No," she admitted. "Somebody—White maybe—has frozen Clemente out. The feds're jamming all the signals in and out of Terminal City."

"Well, you're outside now," he said. "And if Alec's right, you've got the skinner serial killer in custody."

Original Cindy stepped forward, her complexion pale, sweat running down her face.

For a moment Max thought her friend might have caught the virus, too.

"You know, come to think of it," Cindy said. "I think I saw the evidence ... and I know where Bobby left it."

That surprised Max. "You do?"

And Cindy described the patchwork garment. Joshua, returning from the bathroom, reported that he'd also seen it— on a mannequin at Kelpy's apartment, with a picture of Logan attached to the face.

"I think he wanted to have human skin," Joshua said.

The seated Thompson said, "And he would've cut off your boyfriend's face, if he hadn't been stopped."

Max frowned at him and pointed a threatening finger. "Didn't I tell you to shut up?

That's your only job. Work hard at it."

"It's not my only job," Thompson said, lower lip trembling, as he summoned some courage and indignation. "You want me to tell my story, and I'm ready to tell it—but don't lie to yourselves. That's a transgenic beast taking that soak in there ... a monster capable of skinning people and putting their skin on like a suit. Explain that away!"

Original Cindy said, "The dude is right, to a point—and I ain't goin' back for that thing alone. I ain't touchin' the motherfucker, you dig?"

Gottlieb stepped forward. "I'll go with her, and collect the evidence."

Max signaled her assent by tilting her head toward the door, and the pair left.

Thompson stood and Max shot him a look; but the agent was just getting his cell phone out, to hand her. "They won't be able to trace this one," he said. "You need to talk to your police contact? Make your call."

She nodded a curt thanks and dialed Clemente's cell number, catching him in the car.

She explained the situation in broad strokes.

"You have the skinner," he said. "And the evidence?"

"It's being secured."

"Where do you have this Bobby Kawasaki?"

"Ready for the address?"

"Born ready."

She gave it to him. "Come alone."

"That's outside Terminal City, Max—what happened to our deal?"

"Our deal went on the back burner when the feds took your ass off the front line. You want to wrap this case up and be a hero to both sides? Then you'll just have to trust me