Z. Raptor (2 page)

Adam loosened his scarf about his neck; it was starting to feel like a noose against the flesh. Sure, in the nightmare struggles that followed, he and his dad had eventually broken free, and Geneflow had suffered a major setback to whatever plan it was hatching. But the hidden heads of that organization were still active. Still plotting . . .

He was doing a good job of spooking himself. But then, it wasn't as though his imagination had nothing to go on. He knew firsthand the stark terror and helplessness of being alone and trapped a million miles from the everyday world. He never, never wanted to go through that again.

He ducked into a clothing store that wasn't so crowded. The guys' section was on the ground floor, so he positioned himself behind a mannequin and kept a careful eye on the entrance, watching for anyone suspicious. He jumped as a woman passed him, saw the tartan scarf draped around the collar of her winter coat and felt a homesick pang for his native Scotland.

The irony was that coming to New York had been supposed to make him feel safer. He'd struggled through a term at school in Edinburgh, doing his best to adjust to normality again after the horrors and wonders he'd lived through. But it was hard. Especially when his dad accepted a short-term contract with a Manhattan research firm, leaving Adam to crash at friends' houses till he returned.

He had no choice,
Adam reminded himself. To stay sharp, cutting-edge video game architects needed to operate at the forefront of new technology. And his dad had explained that Mindcorp's pet project was pushing at the boundaries of modern science in all kinds of ways.

At first he'd only stayed away during the week and flown back for weekends, but the commute was a killer. So for the last few weeks of his contract, Mr. Adlar had taken Adam out of school and moved him into his hotel suite on West Fifty-fourth Street, just a few blocks from Central Park. The park was Adam's favorite spot, with rocks and rivers and meadows and hills. But always he saw the tops of the skyscrapers looming over the trees, guardians of the city's bustle, determined to keep this green space in its place. And after several long days spent alone, Adam was beginning to feel a prisoner of the city himself. He was feeling lonely, vulnerable and—

Paranoid,
he decided, having studied the sidewalk traffic for several minutes and seen nothing suspicious.
You're imagining the whole thing. Just get yourself over to Dad's office and drag him out to the restaurant.

“Somewhere warm, with pepperoni pizza and a stack of garlic bread.” Adam smiled to himself. “Sounds good to me, and it'll taste even better.”

He strode purposefully outside. As he did, he thought he glimpsed a gaunt man in a dark coat with a gray cap stepping back into a shop front. Annoyed with himself for reading menace into everything, Adam pressed on with the dodge and dance through the thronging crowds.

At least Midtown was hard to get lost in, a gigantic grid that was sensibly numbered and divided into east and west. Adam had studied his guide map long and hard in his hotel room so he wouldn't need to bring one out on the street and advertise to everyone that he didn't belong here. He turned right onto West Forty-sixth Street, hoping for some brief respite from the thicker crowds of tourists. He wasn't far from the neon cacophony of Times Square, with its glowing electric billboards and acres of animated signage. To Adam, it was one of the coolest places on Earth, a million miles away from the stately, soot-blackened sandstone of Edinburgh.

As he reached the crosswalk on Sixth Avenue, again he caught movement from the corner of his eye. There was the gaunt man in the dark coat and the gray cap, leaning into the driver's window of a silver Lexus parked at the side of the road.

It means nothing,
Adam told himself.
It means . . .
Slowly, the man in the cap turned his chiseled features straight at Adam and pointed him out to the driver. Headlights flicked on, dazzlingly bright, as the car started toward him.

O
h, no
. Adam felt his guts lock. He turned away, kept his gaze dead ahead as he ran across the road.
Sometimes, people are paranoid with good reason.
Struggling to think clearly, he stayed on West Forty-sixth Street because the traffic could only flow east—the Lexus at least couldn't follow him. But that still left the other guy on foot.

Why didn't I spend Dad's money and let the hotel call me a cab? What do I do now?
As his heart began to pound, half-formed ideas began to snap through Adam's mind.
Find a cop. Put on a lost little boy act and say you need a ride home.
But he knew that home here meant an empty room in an impersonal hotel. Anyone could get to him there. No, he needed to reach his dad. A taxi.

Doing his best to dodge people, he ran down Seventh Avenue and found himself in Times Square. Strange, alien light bathed the world from house-sized plasma screens and floodlit billboards. The sidewalks were insanely crowded, a slowly flowing river of people, and yet he'd never felt so alone. He saw tons of cabs, but none for hire. Across the sea of people, there was a huge police dispatch area. Would anyone really be crazy enough to try anything here?

But Geneflow had turned the police against him once before in New Mexico. Turned him into a fugitive. He realized how easily he could be taken in this neonsoaked throng. Whose word would the police believe, anyway? “The boy's overtired, Officer, we're taking him home. . . .”

Adam felt panic rising inside him. He stepped off the sidewalk and into the blare of the rush-hour traffic where Seventh Avenue met Broadway, looking frantically all around. A gridlock was fast forming; even if he could find a cab, he wouldn't make much of a getaway traveling at five miles per hour. He scanned the crowds. No sign of Gray Cap. But what if there were other watchers, walking toward him? Or right next to him already?

Desperate to put some space and traffic between him and any pursuers, Adam again broke into a run, apologizing under his breath as he half collided with an endless stream of indignant shoppers. He picked up speed, turned right onto West Fortieth Street, his cheeks burning and his breath beginning to rasp in his throat. No sign of the Lexus or Gray Cap.

Then he saw the Lexus, making a right turn at the far end of the block, coming toward him.

Adam turned frantically to a young couple walking along behind him. “Help me,” he panted. “Please, someone is after me. . . .”

But the couple just hurried past, acting as though he wasn't there.

“Please!” he yelled after them. The Lexus was getting closer. Adam darted across the street and fled through a litter-strewn side alley. It ended abruptly in a high chainlink fence, beyond which was a small private lot full of Christmas trees for sale. Looking back, Adam saw the nose of the Lexus pressing into sight from one direction as Gray Cap ran into the alley from the other.

Adam threw himself at the fence. It rattled and bucked as he scaled it, his feet slipping, the wire links biting into his hands. He wanted to scream—
This can't be happening to me again
—as he heard a car door open and slam behind him.

“Adam Adlar!” His name was thrown down the alley in a low American accent. “Wait. We need to talk with you.”

“Stay away!” Adam yelled back as he swung himself over the top of the fence. He hung on precariously for a few moments. Then the echo of footfalls running hard and close pushed him over the edge like a physical force. He dropped down into a ragged pile of broken tree branches and foliage. The needled branches scratched and bit. Adam fell hard, but his ankles held out. The Christmas tree vendor, a short, stocky guy, jumped up from his chair, started shouting. “Hey! What d'you think you're doing?”

“Stop him!” Gray Cap shouted. “He hit my wife and stole my billfold!”

“I never!” Adam stumbled toward the tree vendor. “Please. These guys are after me—”

“And they'll get you too, you thieving punk.” The man lunged at him, doughy fingers splayed, clutching for his coat. Frantic now, Adam dodged aside and sprinted for the exit to the lot. “Thief!” the vendor yelled after him. “Someone stop that kid!”

No heroes stepped forward from the small crowd gathering to gawp nearby, and Adam knew he couldn't hope for help from a cop now. As he burst out onto West Thirty-ninth Street, he pelted onward, bypassing the heaving sidewalk for the side of the road, ignoring the blaring horns and shouts from cyclists. Adam was oblivious to anything but the need to get away. He hit Seventh Avenue and realized that in his confusion he'd headed east again, doubling back on himself.
Just keep going.
Blocks became a blur. Crowded yellow cabs, neon menorahs, police-car lights and store displays spun in Adam's sight as he forced himself to run on and on....

He came to Penn Station and stopped running, doubled over, catching his breath. It was like a vision—the place was heaving with cabs, picking up passengers for the rail service as fast as they could drop them off.

Hope surged through him. He ran out onto the crosswalk despite the glaring red hand warning him not to and slipped and dodged through a moving maze of bumpers and hoods and blaring horns to reach the station entrance where the taxis gathered. “I need a cab,” he snapped, pressing his face against the driver's side window. But the taxi just pulled away, almost knocking Adam back out into the road. He turned to the next cab in line as it trundled forward to fill the space and collect the next huddled group of travelers. “Please,” he said to its driver, ignoring the angry babble from the people who'd been waiting. “I'm sorry to cut in—”

Then, with a sudden squeal of brakes, another taxi jerked to a halt close by, double parking. “Hey!” A man with black, unkempt hair leaned out and smiled at Adam. “Need a ride?”

The first cabbie stared in outrage. “The line starts at the back, jerk.”

The man's voice hardened. “But this kid's not in line, is he? Sooner I take him off your hands, the better, right?”

A barrage of horns went off, but Adam barely noticed the filthy looks hurled his way as he threw open the passenger door and slid onto the backseat. “Thank you,” he panted, shaking. “You saved my life.”

“Then you'd better give a good tip,” quipped his driver, through the thick glass partition. There was an Asian look about his features, and maybe a Texan drawl to his accent. “You look beat, man. Where are you headed?”

Adam searched his jumbled mind for the address his father had given him that morning. “Uh . . . can you drop me at the corner of Bleecker and Jones? I've got to meet my dad, as quickly as possible.”

“I just came that way.” The driver clicked his tongue. “Trust me, you don't want to go to the Village.” He smiled into the rearview mirror. “Not when we've got your dad over on the East Side.”

Adam felt fingers of ice run down his spine. “No,” he breathed. “No, no, no . . .” He yanked hard on the door handle, but the safety locks were on. Then he noticed that the windows were tinted so no one could see inside. He hammered at the windows, tried to tug them down so he could shout for help, but they wouldn't budge. Wildly, he twisted in his seat to try the rear windshield.

Through it he saw Gray Cap and two other men in the Lexus, following them steadily through the thickening traffic.

W
ho are you?” Adam demanded, trying to keep the tremor from his voice. “What do you want?”

“We only want to talk.” The driver opened up a small wallet, reached back, and slapped it against the glass partition. “If you'd taken a cab from your hotel—which would've been
my
cab, of course—none of this would've been necessary.”

With a shock, Adam saw that the wallet showed an ID card that could barely contain its bold, blue capitals: FBI.

“Special Agent John Chen,” the driver said.

“So . . . you and the guy with the gray cap, you're the good guys?”

“Depends what TV shows you watch,” Chen said wryly. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation has several investigative priorities, including to protect and defend the United States from terrorist threats and high-technology crimes. We believe you and your dad can help us with our inquiries into the organization Geneflow Solutions.”

Adam felt a surge of hope. “You know about Geneflow?”

“Not nearly enough.”

“And so that's why you want me and my dad?” Adam wanted more than anything to believe Chen, but found his rush of relief was quickly dammed. “Why didn't you just call us at the hotel, ask us over? Why go to all this trouble?”

Chen's voice betrayed weariness as he turned onto Forty-second Street. “This is no ordinary investigation, Adam.”

“Where are you holding my dad? FBI headquarters or something?”

“It's kind of a long drive to Washington, DC, don't you think?” Chen shook his head. “I told you, East Side—he's been taken to the United Nations Plaza. There's a UN watchdog group involved now. They've requested this interrogation take place on neutral, international territory.” He sighed. “It's not the way I'd have liked this to play out, but we've all got to live with it, you know? Because you see, Adam, this goes beyond just American national security. It concerns the whole world.”

Tell me something I don't know,
thought Adam.

The rest of the journey passed in silence.