Terminated (18 page)

S
an Francisco was about an hour away, but they only skirted it; in Oakland, they found a long-term parking garage thanks to Google, which was exactly what they needed. The place was staffed, but with lackluster, disinterested employees who were just holding space until it was time to clock out. No problem to shop the available selection and choose the best without anyone noticing, especially since Patrick spotted and disabled the cameras first.

Then it was just a matter of waiting until the attendant went for a restroom break, then picking the lock on the booth to retrieve the key, conveniently labeled by space number. Patrick even logged the car out on the computer, since the attendant had left it running without password protection, and they’d started it and driven off the lot before he ever made it back.

Patrick even put the cameras back into working order on the way out. With even average luck, they had a clean car, one the police wouldn’t flag for days, maybe even months.

Plus, it was a pretty sweet ride . . . some kind of BMW, one of the luxury models with all the bells and whistles. Patrick tried to take the first shift driving, but Bryn sensibly pointed out that he was still healing, and she wasn’t, so a nap would do him good. In true military fashion, he took about two minutes to sack out in the embrace of the butter-soft leather upholstery. Driving in Cali wasn’t exactly a hardship, and Bryn enjoyed feeling in control, for once—even in a minor way, by controlling speed and direction of her forward motion. And this time, there
was
forward motion. A Fountain Group member, on their radar. Finally.

The miles passed fast and effortlessly; the BMW was a gas sipper, not a gulper, so she had to pull in to fill up only once along the way. At the stop, Patrick woke up, visited the men’s room, and demanded to take a turn at the wheel. Despite the cups of coffee that Bryn bought, and the fact that she drank all of hers, she was asleep in minutes once they were on the road again, seduced by the faint, low rumble of the road beneath their wheels.

But she woke up instantly when she felt the speed of the car change, and opened her eyes to see that they were taking an exit from the freeway . . . toward Chico. Paradise, according to the map, was just a few miles from that medium-sized metropolis . . . a sparse community, looked like, scraping out a living in tough country. “We’re close,” he said. “We’re going to need to do some reconnaissance.”

“How about a blatant drive-by?” she asked. “Nobody’s looking for us. Not here.”

“You hope,” he said, but it was an absent-minded, reflexive sort of pessimism—well earned, these days. “Keep your hat on.”

She slid on sunglasses as well—the car’s owner was female, and had helpfully included some sweet designer frames. “How’s that?”

“Spyworthy,” he said. “Keep watch. You see anything suspicious, we abort and go at this another way.”

But they didn’t spot anything. Chico was a nice town, nobody looked at them twice, and by the time they were out heading for Paradise, they were almost alone on the road, except for the ever-present truckers. The hills were rugged, but the BMW handled them with style, and they made good time.

The built-in satnav led them through the small downtown of Paradise—pretty, neat, perched up above the coast’s fog and away from the hot zones. It looked, Bryn thought, like the kind of place she’d enjoy staying—something that might actually live up to the name, if you enjoyed the rustic comforts.

They didn’t stop. The navigation system led them outside of town, up into the hills, and indicated a dirt-road turnoff that looked isolated and private.

“Drive-by isn’t going to work,” she said, and Patrick nodded. “So, this is a job for the infantry. Want to let me out?”

“I’m not letting you go on your own,” he said, and went another mile or two before pulling the BMW into a scenic overlook spot. It had some deserted picnic tables, so it probably got some traffic; the car wouldn’t attract too much attention, provided it didn’t stay for long. “One sec.” He pulled the chip out of the navigation system and pocketed it. “Just in case.”

They locked the car, and Bryn hoped they’d see it again; she’d miss her backpack, badly. The meat had no doubt gone rancid by now, and even though she could almost certainly still eat it—with nauseating pleasure—her conscious mind had enough decency left to object unless there was no other choice. She needed to find something less perishable—maybe beef jerky, by the pound. That thought made her stomach growl, again.
Oh, relax,
she told the nanites, annoyed.
You’re not exactly working hard.

The hike was a little strenuous but it felt good, stretching those muscles, and it had been too long since Bryn had been in the trees, enjoying the fresh breezes and the dappled sun. Patrick spotted animals better than she did, and pointed out a deer watching them from a thicket, motionless and wary; as soon as she looked, it bounded away with hardly a rustle of brush.

Within half a mile, they came upon the fence. It was, at first glance, not much of a thing . . . more an annoyance than a barrier. But they both paused and took a closer look. It was for show, of course; the real security came from proximity sensors that would feed directly into the house’s security. There were probably motion-activated cameras, too.

Patrick took her hand in a very natural sort of motion, and they strolled a little ways down the fence line to a clearing, where he pressed her against a tree and kissed her. That was nice. More than nice, actually. She had a sudden fantasy of sex in the soft grass, but she knew what he was doing . . . creating a plausible show for the cameras. “So,” he said, as he kissed her neck. She didn’t have any difficulty showing enthusiasm for that move. “Recon is probably a bust, unless you want to spend a couple of days camping out and watching the comings and goings.”

“That’s a no. It just gives them more time to trace us.”

“Then we just go?”

“We just go,” she said.

“Now?”

“Dark won’t help.” These days, the serious security had night vision cameras, and motion sensors never slept. Without tech help, they wouldn’t be able to overcome it anyway.

What they had left was pure ferocity and nerve. Unknown odds, unknown conditions, and they didn’t even know if their target was on-site.

“I love you,” he murmured, and kissed her again, with real heat. “Let’s go.”

She felt her adrenaline surge, and a smile form without any direction from her conscious brain. And then, without more than a breath to prepare, they both turned, leaped the fence, and began running for their target.

There was no outcry, no barking dogs or sirens to give alarm. The two of them were fast, and Bryn faster than Patrick, although he worked hard to catch up when he could. The uphill course crossed a couple of small streams flowing the other way, and she leaped them easily without much of a pause. It felt good, this run. This
hunt.
It felt like she’d been born for it. Engineered for it, at the very least.

When she flushed a rabbit out of her path, the urge to chase it down and feast was strong, insanely so, and she had to struggle to tamp it down. The distraction allowed Patrick to catch and pass her, and she took a deep breath to center herself again.

Then they both reached the top of the ridge together, shaded and concealed by the tree line, and looked down on a steep slope that led to a pasture. A large one, marked by a genuinely serious fence that marked this as an estate, and maybe a compound. The pasture was a glass-smooth expanse of lush green, no cover, no protection. The wall was eight feet high and reinforced with razor wire at the top.

“Shit,” Patrick said, which pretty much summed it up. “We can’t wait. They’ll know we’re coming.”

Maybe they did, but if so, there wasn’t the response that Bryn would have expected to see—no boiling-up of security personnel, no vehicles, no dogs. Nothing. She didn’t see a thing moving, anywhere.

“You getting a bad feeling?” she asked him. Patrick didn’t take his eyes off the scene lying before them.

“Yeah. Either this guy is supremely confident his fence will keep us out, he’s got something in place we can’t see that he knows will kill us, or . . .”

“. . . or there’s something very wrong here,” Bryn finished. He nodded. “Well. Only one way to find out. You stay behind me, no matter what.”

He drew his sidearm and nodded; no macho arguments, which was a relief. He knew she could take the abuse.

She jumped out onto the downslope and ran down, hearing a tumble of rocks and soil behind her. As soon as she cleared the tree line she felt exposed and cold, despite the warm morning sun. Any second, she expected to feel bullets striking, followed by the time-delayed chatter of a machine pistol . . . but she reached the fence easily, without any kind of attack or alarm.

Patrick said, “Bryn! On your nine!” She turned left, expecting to see an enemy, but there was nothing but fence, and . . . and a gate.

And the gate was a whole lot easier to scale than the wall itself.

Bryn climbed, slipped down the other side, and unlocked it to swing it open for Patrick, who eased in with his eyes darting from one side of the interior pasture area to the other. Nothing to see, not even a dog or a gardener. Eerily quiet.

“Maybe he’s gone,” she said. “This may not be his full-time home.”

“You know us rich people with our vagabond ways,” Patrick said, but he wasn’t disagreeing. “Go. I’ll cover you.”

There wasn’t any need. There were no booby traps, no ambushes, no hidden deadly enemies. They simply ran—and then walked—right up to the front door.

The mansion was big, and conventionally built for this part of the country. . . . It was what the well-to-do thought of as “rustic” despite being completely modern, just with rougher log finish. All the lights were on inside. Bryn thought about opening the door, but then, on a whim, decided to just . . . knock.

The door was answered by a boy.

Bryn blinked. Yes, that was a boy, all right, about ten years old, brown hair, a coffee-and-cream skin tone, eyes so darkly colored it was hard to tell iris from pupil. He stared at her for a second, then turned and yelled at ear-piercing volume, “Dad! They’re here!”

Bryn looked over her shoulder at Patrick, who seemed just as stunned. He quietly holstered his gun. So did she. Bryn had time to mouth,
what the fuck?
and then the boy moved aside, and a man stepped up into the doorway in his place.

He was medium height, a little plump and straining the buttons on his button-down shirt. Well-worn jeans and battered work boots.

“Ah,” he said. “Come in. I’ve been expecting you; I don’t think there’s anything I can add to what you already know, but I’ll certainly try. Can I offer you a drink? Iced tea, maybe?”

“Sure,” Bryn said. She wasn’t at all sure what the hell was going on, and from his expression, neither was Patrick. “That’d be fine. Excuse me, but you
are
Martin Reynolds?”

“All day long,” the man said. “And you’re here about the Fountain Group. Aaron, go play with your sister. Stay out of here until I call you—understand?”

The boy looked up at his father and frowned. “Why can’t I stay?”

“Boring stuff,” Reynolds said. “Go. Scoot.” As his son ran off through the large, comfortable living room and turned to the right, Reynolds watched him with a soft, loving smile. “Good kid.” He turned and met Bryn’s gaze with surprising directness. “Come on. Let’s get you that tea and sort all this out.”

B
ryn had to wonder whether Patrick found this as surreal as she did—sitting at the breakfast table in the big granite-countered kitchen while the man they’d been dead set on capturing made them iced tea. With freshly sliced lemons. “I saw you on the security cameras,” he said. “I’d have gone out to let you in, but I was afraid you’d think that was confrontational.”

He set Bryn’s iced tea in front of her, then Patrick’s. She gave Patrick a little shake of her head to tell him not to drink yet, and took a deep mouthful. Cold, tangy, and good. She waited for any ill effects, but nothing came.

“So—you’re on the board of the Fountain Group.”

“Yes.” He put his glass down, and his easy expression shifted to something serious. “At least I was, until very recently. Until I discovered exactly what they were doing in their . . . processing centers. I’ve resigned now, and I can assure you, I had absolutely no idea of the cost overruns associated with the research. If I’d known, I’d have taken aggressive action to rein in that kind of reckless behavior.”

The stunning
cluelessness
of it made Bryn sit there, staring at him, unable to think how to even begin. Finally she said, “You were concerned about the
costs
,” she repeated. “What about the—ethics of what you were doing?”

“Ethics?” He said it as if the word were untranslatable. Maybe it was, in his world. “Look, this is about budgets, isn’t it? I told you, when the true costs were uncovered, I just found it all unacceptable, and I simply could not sign off on the expense of turning it into the expanded program. That’s all. I know you’re here from the auditors, but—”

“Auditors,” Patrick said, and pulled his sidearm. He put it on the table between them with a heavy
thunk
on the wood. “You really think we’re auditors.”

Bryn watched his eyes go blank and wide, and his knuckles whiten around his glass. He didn’t make a move. Finally, he licked his lips and said, “What is this?”

“It’s a gun,” Bryn said. “I can give you make and model, if that’s what you’re asking. But I think we need to rewind this conversation again. Why
exactly
did you quit?”

“I—I told you! I found out there were significant costs that weren’t being accounted for, and it was bound to come out. I wanted to be on record as having nothing to do with it. . . . What’s going on? Why are you carrying a gun?”

“More than one,” Bryn said, and showed him hers, concealed under the jacket. “You’re talking about numbers. We’re talking about
lives
. The Fountain Group is killing people, Mr. Reynolds.”

“Dr. Reynolds,” he said, in an automatic sort of way as if he corrected people all the time. He did strike her as an academic more than a businessman, she thought. Someone with his head in the ivory-tower clouds. “I have no idea why you would say a thing like that, Miss Davis.”

“Bryn,” she said. “Since we’re all friendly, Dr. Reynolds. And I say that because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the experiments. I’ve seen the damage. I’ve seen the death. And you were part of it.” His clueless confusion was making anger knot tight inside her guts. How could he—how
dare
he sit there with his iced tea in his smug little mountain getaway and tell her that
he had no idea
? She had a sudden, unsettling impulse to grab him by the throat and squeeze, out of blind fury.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, and slowly rose to his feet. “I think you’d better leave.”

“I think you’d better sit your ass down,” Bryn snapped. “Anyone else in the house besides your kids?”

“No. My wife is traveling. She’s—” He sank back in the chair, even though she hadn’t made a move for the gun. “Are you going to kill me? Please, not my kids, please—”

“We’re not here to kill anybody,” Patrick broke in.
Speak for yourself,
Bryn thought. “Dr. Reynolds, you must have been aware of the pharmaceutical research being conducted under the Fountain Group’s direction.”

“Of course I was. The research is vital to national defense. But I didn’t know the
cost
. . . .”

“You mean, in helpless dementia patients being used as human petri dishes to grow nanites?” Bryn said. “The entire staff of Pharmadene killed and revived to ensure corporate loyalty?
That
cost?”

She expected him to get more upset, but oddly enough, he relaxed. He sat back in the chair, sighed, looked down, and shook his head. “I only learned about Pharmadene after the fact, and that had nothing to do with us, nothing at all. We were merely investors in the project. Once Pharmadene imploded, we took over the intellectual property, and it immediately became clear the potential was vast, so we made arrangements with the military to continue the technology in a very tightly controlled manner. There’s nothing wrong with what we did.”

They all sat in silence for a moment. Bryn couldn’t come up with a reply, not one that didn’t involve physical force. It took Patrick to say, in a tight but calm voice, “You mean you see nothing wrong with conducting illegal experiments on nonconsenting patients. Or destroying them when you’re done.”

“You fail to see the bigger picture.” Dr. Reynolds leaned forward now, earnest and eager. “Those people were dying in a horribly useless way; I know, my own father suffered from Alzheimer’s. But this drug, our drug—it gave them a chance to be useful.”

“Useful,” Bryn repeated. Her throat was so tight it hurt. “They were
incubators
. I was there. When you were finished with them, you
dumped them in incinerators
. Don’t you get it?”

He flinched and looked away. “You just don’t understand the potential,” he said, but his voice was fainter now. Less certain. “We can
cure everything
with this, ultimately. We can stop the suffering of billions. Wipe out disease completely in our lifetimes.”

“You can create a sterilized crop of controllable creatures who aren’t human any longer. Want to see what you’ve accomplished, doctor?” Bryn’s hand blurred to the side, and she picked up the gun and aimed it at Reynolds before Patrick could stop her. “Want to
really
see what you’ve made? Because I can show you. I can show you, your kids, and any other living thing in this house. And you will
not
enjoy it.”

“Bryn.”

She knew Patrick had said her name, but it only registered as a blip, a vague shadow. Her focus was a needle-sharp arrow pointed right at Reynolds. He seemed to be the only thing she
could
focus on.

A predator’s instinct.

“
Bryn.
Enough.” This time, Patrick’s voice, and his hand on her wrist, broke through. She blinked and sat back, but she didn’t give up the weapon. “Take a good look, Doctor. This woman was murdered by people associated with Pharmadene; she was brought back. Doesn’t she seem grateful?”

“But hasn’t it made you better?” Reynolds asked urgently. “You won’t get sick. You can’t be injured badly, or for long. You can’t be killed except by . . . extreme measures. It’s what humanity has always wanted—health and survival, a guarantee in a hostile world.”

“You have kids,” Bryn said. “Two kids.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I won’t,” she said. “Ever. I always wanted kids—two, maybe three. I always wanted a daughter, especially. And you know what I have now?
Nothing.
A future of survival. Of being twisted into some shape that isn’t human anymore, because you wanted to
play God
. You want that for them? Don’t you want them to have a life, not a . . . a living
death
?”

“I want them to be safe,” he said. “That’s what any parent wants for their children. They should become adults first, of course; they have to reach full maturity or the nanites will simply repair them to a permanent childhood. But yes, that’s what I want for them. A future without disease and decay and death. And you know what? Ask any parent who’s watched a child suffer, and they will agree with me.”

How in the hell could a man look so reasonable, so compassionate, and be so
wrong
? He was endorsing torture and murder, and he didn’t seem to
get it
.

She wanted to force him to face it, in all the wrong, bloody ways that the nanites seemed to foster. It was all she could do not to pull the trigger and shatter his skull all over the nice, clean kitchen.

And then eat his brain,
some part of her whispered, and she gagged on that image.

“You’re going to help us stop it,” Patrick said.

“I won’t.”

“You don’t have a fucking choice, Doctor.” He took the gun from Bryn’s hand and stood up. “Thanks for the tea. Now you’re going to show us to your office, where you’ll give us all the information you have on the Fountain Group, who’s involved, where they are, and anything else you can think of mentioning.”

“Or what?” Reynolds actually
crossed his legs
and settled back in his chair, and sipped his tea. As if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Or you’ll kill me?”

“Yes,” he said, very calmly. “I’ll kill you quietly, and bury you somewhere your kids won’t see. You’ll just . . . vanish. Maybe the cops will find your rotting corpse, maybe not, but either way, your big, fancy dream ends here, today. You can end with it, or live to see your kids grow up. Your choice.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Patrick gave him a long, still very calm look, and Reynolds flinched and set down his tea. No longer looking all that confident. “Let’s go to your office,” he said. “I really don’t want your kids to be involved, and neither do you. Right?”

When Reynolds didn’t get up immediately, Bryn helped him with a hand under his arm. His muscles tensed, and for half a second he must have thought about trying to yank free, but then good sense prevailed. She walked him—with his tea—out to the wide living room that had a breathtaking view through the windows of a tree-filled valley and river.

“It’s upstairs,” he said. The three of them went up as a tight group, and just before they made the turn Bryn saw the kids’ door open up, and a small face peer out in worry.

“Everything’s okay,” she told the boy, and smiled. “Your dad’s just helping us for a minute. You just stay in there, okay?”

He nodded and shut the door. She hoped he wasn’t—as she would have been at that age—curious enough to try to sneak up and observe what was going on.
Better keep an eye out,
she thought.

Reynolds kept his study locked up, which was probably wise, and it required a key code to get in. No way to know if what he punched in was the real number, or a secret alert code that would sound alarms yet stay silent in the house . . . probably the latter. She knew Patrick would think of it, too, so she didn’t bother to say it.

“You go with him,” she told Patrick. “I’ll stay out here and keep watch.”

He nodded, probably also understanding that Reynolds’ smug, brazen attitude made her want to rip his throat out—and that was something she was more than capable of doing, even at the best of times now. Reynolds wasn’t inspiring her better angels, not at all. Better if she worked off her tension by watching for unwelcome visitors, and keeping the kids from snooping.

At least we’re remote out here,
Bryn thought. She took a moment to look around the house, and something struck her as odd. It was . . . perfect. Movie-set perfect. In fact, even the books seemed artificial, like the sort of things bought by the yard by a set designer, not things people chose for their own reasons. Normally, looking at someone’s bookshelf could give you a sense of who they were, what they believed in . . . even if the person was widely read, there was still some sort of a core to it.

But this . . . It was random books, shelved for appearance and not content.

Bryn left the hallway and went into the first upstairs bedroom. It held a bed, all the normal furniture one would expect, and even a bathrobe draped over the bedpost . . . but when she checked the closet, the clothes were the same as the books—mismatched and not even the same sizes.

The drawers in the bathroom were all empty.

It
was
a movie set. There were only things set out in plain view.

And these people . . . these people were
actors
.

Bryn caught her breath on a gasp, whirled, and ran to the kids’ room. She tried the knob. It was locked. She shattered that with a kick.

No kids. There was a room that looked like a department-store illustration of a room a kid would like, with two twin beds.

The window was open. The kids were gone.

Jane stepped out from behind the closet door, smiling. She looked great, in her serial-killer-crazy kind of way. . . . Her smile was lovely, but her eyes were almost totally blank. “If you’re looking for the Stock Theater Kids, we’ve taken them offstage,” she said. “Welcome to the show, Bryn. You’re a natural. You played your part perfectly.”

She was holding a military-quality MP5, a Heckler & Koch machine pistol that Bryn knew would cut her in half at this distance. Wouldn’t kill her, most likely, but it would damn sure put her down for the fight. Jane wasn’t pointing it, but it was an easy swing up and left on the strap, and boom.

So she stayed very still. “Using kids,” she said. “That’s low, Jane. Even for you.”

Jane shrugged. “They’re Revived,” she said. “Not really much risk for them, even if you went Cannibal Queen on them.”

That shook Bryn, deep down, the idea that someone, somewhere, had decided to Revive
children
. But then, of all the situations where desperate, bereaved people would have paid to have their loved ones brought back, children were the most probable.

And the most awful, because those children would never progress beyond that age. Ten years old, forever. Their brains and bodies were developmentally stalled, and before too long, the child inside would stagnate, twist, become something else, like fruit left too long canned on a shelf. Her revulsion must have shown, because Jane laughed. A hollow kind of a sound, one without any real humor. “Weird that we agree,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done it, either. And we both know there’s not much I won’t do, right? But even for me, there are limits. I might kill a kid, but I wouldn’t be that cruel to one.” Bryn must have twitched, or looked as if she was thinking about killing Jane bare-handed, because Jane’s right hand moved and brought the machine pistol up to a dead aim. “Ah, ah, let’s not fight, sweetheart. I’m enjoying the moment.”