Invasive Procedures (20 page)

Before Riggs could fire again, Stone was on him, wrenching the gun from his hand and picking him up, using his wounded arm as much as the healthy one.

Frank aimed to fire, but Stone was faster. Inhumanly fast. He threw
Riggs’s body directly at Frank with such force that when they collided, Frank fell back into the hall, the wind knocked out of him. Riggs rolled to the side, unconscious, his helmet visor cracked.

Turner grabbed Kimberly and hovered over her, protecting her.

Frank struggled to his feet, found his gun, and saw Stone lift Turner off Kimberly and toss him aside. Turner crashed into a framed mirror on the wall and fell to the floor, not moving.

Kimberly screamed.

“Don’t move,” said Frank.

Grabbing Kimberly, Stone lifted her in front of him, using her as a human shield. She kicked and cried and winced with fright.

Stone said, “Why must you interfere? What I give this girl will make her whole again.”

“Put her down!” said Frank. He knew he couldn’t fire. Even though Kimberly only covered a portion of Stone, Frank didn’t trust his aim. He might hit the girl.

Again with lightning speed, the Healer moved, grabbed the syringe off the bed, and stuck the needle into the meat of Kimberly’s arm. Again, she screamed, this time from pain.

“Catch,” said Stone, then pitched Kimberly into the air toward Frank.

Instinctively, Frank dropped his weapon and held out his arms. It was an awkward catch and Kimberly was heavier than he had expected, but when they fell to the floor, she seemed unhurt.

Stone, still clutching the syringe, spun around, pushed through the plastic, and jumped through the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. The door exploded outward, raining shards of glass down onto the alley three stories below.

The agents on the ground immediately opened fire, some hitting Stone, but most hitting the building. Stone was too fast. He jumped off the balcony and fell directly toward his attackers. The shooting and sounds of a struggle continued as Frank opened his pouch and produced the countervirus. At the sight of another syringe, Kimberly wailed louder.

“Kimberly, I need you to listen to me. My name is Dr. Hartman. I have to give you this medicine.”

She recoiled from him, looking afraid.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I want to help. This medicine will help you.”

She wouldn’t stop crying. She was too distraught. Nothing he could say would calm her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, then took her arm and, despite her pulling and panicking, gave her the shot. She screamed again, tears streaming out of her eyes.

Frank spoke into his comlink. “Target deactivated. I need a bag in here.”

Carter shook his head, brushed away the debris that had fallen on him from the closet, and got to his feet. “Where is he?”

Frank pointed to the gaping hole where the sliding glass door had been. Carter ran
to
it and looked over the side, just in time
to
see Stone clear the back fence and sprint up the alley.

Peeps’s voice sounded in their helmets. “He’s running. Suspect is headed north toward Santa Monica Boulevard. And we have agents down. Repeat, agents down.”

Carter ran out the door, yelling to Frank as he passed him, “I’m going after him.” He disappeared down the hall just as Agent Hernandez arrived with the containment gear.

She knelt beside Kimberly and waved a contaminant rod around her. The rod glowed red. “She’s hot.”

“She will be for a few hours,” said Frank. “It takes a while for the countervirus to take effect.

Hernandez pulled a clear plastic bag from her pack and shook it open. It looked like a long clear trash bag with arms, legs, and a breathing apparatus at the head. “Kimberly, my name is Agent Hernandez. You’re not going to like this, but you need to put this on.”

“Carter needs backup,” Peeps said. “Repeat, Agent Carter is in solo pursuit.”

Frank looked at Riggs, who lay unconscious on the floor.

“Go!” Hernandez said.

Frank took off at a run, maneuvering through the apartment and down the stairs, taking two, three steps at a time. “Peeps, I need a wider visual.”

“Roger that.”

The schematic of the building inside Frank’s visor disappeared, and a satellite map of a four-block radius took its place. Carter’s blinking red dot was superimposed over the image, showing his position moving fast toward Santa Monica Boulevard.

Peeps said, “They jumped a fence behind the building and are now moving north up an alley.”

Frank ran outside and around the building. The agents who had held a position here below the balcony now lay on the ground, spread over the parking lot. One of them was slowly getting to his feet, but the others were deathly still.

Frank didn’t stop. He jumped the fence behind the Dumpster and took off up the alley. “Give me Carter’s visual.”

“Roger.”

Carter’s video feed appeared as a thumbnail on Frank’s visor. As if looking through Carter’s eyes, Frank could see Stone in front of him, running. Carter was apparently moving fast as well; the video image jostled violently.

Frank reached behind him as he ran and opened the valve further on his air tank, giving himself more oxygen. He was breathing heavily and needed a greater supply. Plus, the visor was fogging, making it difficult to see. Cool air poured in, and the visor cleared.

He killed them, Frank thought. The Healer had killed members of the team: Shaha, Mayo, Kim, and the others. They all lay dead back in the parking lot. Or if they weren’t dead, they were at least hurt very badly. Even Riggs, whom Frank considered indestructible, was down.

And the Healer had done it with his bare hands. No weapon. Just his hands.

Frank heard the screeching of tires ahead as Stone left the alleyway and ran out onto Santa Monica Boulevard, turning west toward the ocean and sprinting down the middle of the road into oncoming traffic. Cars swerved to avoid him.

Carter was right behind him, moving fast. More tires screeched. Horns blared.

Frank’s chest felt like it might burst, he was so out of breath. The problem wasn’t the air valve now. The problem was Frank. Even after several rigorous days of training, he still wasn’t ready for a run like this.

“Peeps,” he heard Carter say, “my visor’s fogging, losing visibility. I’m removing my helmet.”

“Negative,” said Peeps. “Negative. Suspect could still be hot, over.”

Carter’s video feed suddenly went to static, and the red dot representing Carter on Frank’s map became stationary.

“Peeps,” said Frank, between heavy breaths, “what’s happening?”

“I lost him. He took off his helmet. I got no visual, nothing to track.”

Frank reached Santa Monica Boulevard and turned west on the sidewalk. Cars were stopped in the road. A half a dozen of them had collided. Drivers were out of their vehicles, yelling at each other, and people were coming out of restaurants and stores to see the source of the commotion.

Frank hit the speaker on his comlink. “Out of the way,” he said.

The crowd on the sidewalk in front of him dispersed as people scurried to the side to let him pass. A woman screamed with fright at the sight of him in his suit.

Frank ran three blocks before he found Carter’s helmet on the roadside. He picked it up and continued running. The pain in his chest was now so intense that he wanted to vomit. No matter how wide he opened his mouth, he couldn’t get enough oxygen. He felt completely drained of energy. His legs were wood.

He heard ambulance sirens behind him in the distance and hoped they were going to the apartment building and not the crash scene. No one he ran by on Santa Monica Boulevard looked hurt, but he couldn’t say the same about the apartment.

He turned the corner, and there was Carter, hunched over with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. Alone. Frank stopped running, ripped off his helmet, and threw up into a garbage can.

A young couple out for a late-night stroll saw him heaving and hurried away in the opposite direction.

Frank felt a hand hitting him softly on the back. “You, okay?” said Carter.

Frank dry heaved a final time before calming and standing erect, the bitter taste of vomit still in his mouth. “What happened?”

“Car was waiting. But even if there hadn’t been, I never would have caught him. He never slowed down, only got faster.”

“You get a license plate?”

“It was too far away. I couldn’t even tell what color it was in the dark.” Frank spoke into his comlink. “Peeps, we need a ride.”

A fleet of ambulances surrounded the apartment building when Frank and Carter returned. Medics with BHA insignia on their backs were lifting team members onto stretchers. There were no body bags as far as Frank could see, which was a relief.

Riggs was awake but badly shaken, walking to and from the wounded, assessing their damage. A doctor tried to examine him, but Riggs brushed him off. Police were setting up a barricade to keep back the neighbors who were gathering around the building and craning their necks to see the scene.

Frank found Kimberly and Agent Hernandez in the back of an ambulance. Kimberly was inside the containment bag with the breathing apparatus near her mouth. She glanced at Frank and abruptly looked away.

The medics arrived with Roland Turner on a stretcher and pushed him into the ambulance. Kimberly brightened at the sight of her father, but then grew still when she saw the blood-soaked bandages around his arm.

“I’m okay, princess,” Turner said. “It’s just a scratch. Come here and let me look at you.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Mr. Turner,” said Hernandez. “Kimberly needs to remain sitting here. She can’t have any contact until she’s been fully tested and treated.”

Turner’s face grew ugly. “Who do you people think you are, huh? First you come into my home, pointing guns at us, putting my daughter and me in danger.”

“Mr. Turner,” said Frank, “the man you let into your home was carrying a virus that—”

“You think I don’t know that?” said Turner. “Do you think I’m such a fool that I would let a man into my home without knowing full well what he was bringing with him? My daughter is sick, you hear me? Sick. And hurting. Pain you can’t imagine. And she’s my daughter, not yours. I know what’s best for her. And now you’ve gone and ruined everything. If she isn’t healed because you interfered, so help me you’ll pay for it. I swear to you.”

Frank felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Carter beckoning him to step away from the vehicle. When the doors of the ambulance closed, Turner was still shouting.

“You can’t reason with them, Frank. Don’t even try.”

Carter left him alone after that, and Frank stood there, staring up at the apartment building. Agents he didn’t recognize marched inside with contaminant rods. They would scan for the virus and quarantine the building. Other agents were escorting the building’s other bleary-eyed tenants outside to a table, where they would be tested for possible infection.

News helicopters flew overhead, their bright searchlights sweeping the entire city block.

Sirens blared as more police vehicles arrived, and neighbors and news crews jockeyed for position at the police barricade. If the world didn’t know about Healers before now, they were about to find out.

“You okay?” said Peeps.

Frank faced him. “Yeah. You?”

“I feel like I
skould
be hurt, but I’m not.” He shook his head. “We had four men on the ground out here, Frank. All armed. That Healer was
unarmed
. One guy. Unarmed. And these guys . . .” he motioned to the agents being loaded into ambulances, “. . . they didn’t stand a chance. That Healer could’ve killed them, I think, if he wanted to. With his bare hands. Just his hands. And did you see how fast he was running? He had four rounds in him and he was running like the Six Millon Dollar Man. His body was doing things it shouldn’t have been able to do.”

“Yeah, I saw.”

“You know what I think?” said Peeps, adopting a conspiratorial tone. “The guy’s got CIPA.”

“What?”

“CIPA. Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis. It’s a genetic disease. Rare as hell. People who have it don’t feel pain. They can fall off a roof and not know they’re hurt until they find their arm in the bushes.”

“A genetic disorder?”

“CIPA. Look it up, if you don’t believe me.”

“And you think this Healer may have this condition? You think he’s incapable of pain?”

Peeps shrugged. “What’s to say they don’t
all
have that disease?
Think about it. These guys produce a virus that fiddles with your genes, right? Heals you of some disease? But who’s to say they can’t do the opposite? Who’s to say they can’t take a healthy person and
give
them a genetic disease?”

Frank considered that. He remembered
The Book of Becoming
. Galen wasn’t averse to manipulating healthy DNA. He had embraced the idea, in fact.

Riggs approached, holding a long-range communicator. “Peeps, we’re going to need that van. Tell the ground crew we’re borrowing it for a while. The whole setup. If they give you any lip, tell them I gave the order.”

“What’s wrong?” said Frank.

“I just got off with headquarters. The sheriff up in Agoura Hills called in. An ambulance crashed up there. Three dead bodies.”

“What’s that got to do with us?” said Peeps.

“Sheriff said it looks like something melted their faces off.”

“Melted their faces?” said Frank.

“His words. Not mine.”

The photograph of the dead police officer that Frank had been shown on the plane came to mind.

Riggs said, “The helicopter’s flying some of our boys out there now. We’ll catch up with them. Get your gear.”

He walked off, and Frank closed his eyes. His head was pounding. His biosuit was heavy with sweat. His muscles ached from overexertion. And from the sound of things, the night was only going to get worse.

The incessant ringing of the doorbell woke Director Eugene Irving from an otherwise peaceful slumber. He rolled over, looked at his wife, who continued to sleep undisturbed, and realized that she wasn’t getting up to answer it. Cursing under his breath, he threw back the covers and got out of bed. He found his slippers and his bathrobe and shuffled down the hall.