special sunglasses. Then I’d sprint out the door and try to disappear again. Several things gave me pause. One, it was near noon, the worst time for me to be outside. Two, Kay had found me. I wanted to know how. Three, it had been a long time since I’d spoken to someone from my old life other than the few phone calls to Cloud.
I tried to thumb the safety. The handle of my gun now showed the imprints of my squeezing fingers from a few seconds ago. With a grunt, I forced the safety with my thumb, and it clicked into place. I’d need a new gun soon, but I wasn’t going to worry about it this instant. I slid the Browning between the bands of my shorts so the gun was cold against my skin. Three steps brought me to the wet bar where I checked the bottles. Smirnoff on the rocks minus the cubes, I remembered.
With a tentative smile, Kay accepted the glass. Her hand shook as she sipped. “I know you’re surprised to see me,” she said. “I debated a long time before coming here. Just to let you know and to put you at ease, I don’t work for the Shop anymore.”
“You’re on the run like me?” I asked, surprised. If they had discovered she’d let me out of their cage, I’d assumed they would put a bullet between her eyes. I remember urging her to come away with me that night.
“I left,” Kay said. “I walked away from the Shop.”
“Do you know how many people have wished they could do that?” I asked. “Now tell me something true.”
“It is the truth,” she said. “There was a change in policy three years ago. It came from the highest levels. Doctor Cheng, Doctor Harris and the others, they were released. So were those who… who tested them.”
“There’s a nice word,” I said. “
“Those were bad times,” she said, looking down as if ashamed.
“Kay, why are you here? This doesn’t make sense. If you don’t start answering quickly, I’m going to assume you’re stalling and the Chief’s men are on the way. In case you’re wondering, I’ll do anything to keep out of their hands. I’m never going back.”
She grew pale as I talked. “It was a bad time, and they did evil things. They did the worst experiments on you.”
“Why? Why did they pick on me?”
She stared at me.
“Kay,” I said.
She gave a little start. Was she drugged? “You…you were a soldier. The others were scientists.”
“Try again,” I said. “It’s harder to find people who could do what I once did than finding more scientists.”
“You weren’t always this cocky,” Kay said.
“Quit evading the question,” I said.
Her gaze slid away from mine. “The Chief,” she said quietly, “he feared you more than the others and therefore he considered you expendable.”
That sounded about right.
“Gavin,” she said, speaking louder, “I don’t have much time.”
“Before we go into that, I want to know how you found me. Who else knows I’m here?”
“It wasn’t the Shop,” she said. “So you don’t have to worry about them.”
“Just spit it out,” I said.
“Doctor Harris, he found you.”
“What? How? And why would Harris be looking for me?”
Kay uncrossed her legs and set the glass beside her purse on the box. With her hands folded, she leaned toward me. She gave me an earnest look, and it might have been genuine.
“About a year after you escaped, there was a change of policy at the highest level. The Chief had done something to anger very important people. I think there was a review concerning Cheng, Harris and the others, and there was pressure from the American State Department.”
“You expect me to believe that?” I asked.
“The Americans put new safeguards in place,” Kay said. “It was a political thing. Cheng went to work for Polarity Magnetics soon after.”
“What’s that?”
“The name of a research company linked to the Pentagon.”
“What does Polarity Magnetics have to do with me?”
“Will you let me finish? Quit being so paranoid.”
I glanced at the door. “You talk about a change in policy, but I’ve been hunted on three different continents. There’s never been any change in that. Shop commandos almost got me the last time.”
“There was a change. It happened just as I said. But you know the Chief. He worked overtime and regained much of his lost authority.”
My neck burned hearing that. It felt as if a sniper’s crosshairs were targeting me.
“And you killed people,” Kay said. “You were supposed to slip away from the Reservation, not shove a knive into them.”
“The Reservation” was the Shop name for the laboratory facility near Milan.
“They used big spotlights on me,” I said, “and they fired these blue beams. I had to take them out before they recaptured me.”
“Those guards were Shop personnel, and you know what that means. If it’s any consolation, I’ve heard the Chief wants everyone back on the Reservation. But first he has to—”
“Time’s up,” I said, standing. The heat on the back of my neck had become too hot. I could
“This is about Dave,” Kay said in a rush. “I need your help because I think I can save him.”
That stopped me. “Dave is alive?”
“…if you can call it that.”
“He’s the same?”
Kay nodded somberly.
Once, when everyone had been normal, Kay had been in charge of certain tests at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. People used to think those tests would end the world by accidentally creating a black hole or opening a way into a different dimension, with Stephen King monsters waiting on the other side. There had been an accident all right—one that nobody could have foreseen—but the world was still here. Dave had taken the brunt of the exposure, and it had changed him more than it had changed the rest of us.
“I’ve been trying to bring him back,” Kay said.
“How is that even possible?”
“The few times Dave phases in he moans as if he’s trying to speak, trying to wake up. Doctor Cheng believes he’s been communing with others and now he’s trying to warn us of the things he’s learned.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I work for Polarity Magnetics,” Kay said. “The State Department managed to finagle Dave off of the Reservation and bring him to Long Beach where Doctor Cheng heads the division. I’ve been working on the project to…to bring him back. I’ve made incredible discoveries this last six months. Cheng and the others—” Kay frowned. “I can’t let them have this,” she said, tapping the box.
“What’s in it?”
“Insurance.”
“Meaning what exactly?”
“I discovered the fundamentals that allowed this thing’s construction. If they had asked my permission, I would never have agreed. The thing in the box, it’s a prototype, and you could say I stole it. The people at Polarity Magnetics are going to want it back.”
“Why did you bring it here?” I asked. “And you still haven’t told me how Harris found me.”
“Harris knows nothing about this,” she said, tapping the box.
“You can’t just walk into a top-secret installation and steal a prototype to some fantastic new weapon,” I said.
“Like you, I’ve gained…
