and it tasted terrible, but it soothed my throat a little. I put the glass on the nightstand next to the bottle. I really needed to brush my teeth.
“I know,” I said out loud.
The thing was, though, she was wrong. He hadn’t gotten better since I started interfering; that was just wishful thinking. Sometimes I wondered if he had gotten worse. Maybe I could calm him down, but I couldn’t change who he was and I could feel him getting worse, struggling to fill the gaps I’d created.
I made my way into the bathroom and grabbed my toothbrush out of the sink, dunking it in the mouthwash before scrubbing my teeth halfheartedly. That’s when I noticed the needle-head.
She was sitting on the toilet with her elbows on her knees and her head bowed. As usual, the skin had been peeled away in two big flaps right down the back of her skull and neck, where the white dome of her skull poked out. A big hole had been cut through the bone and a bunch of long, thin probes were sticking out of her brain. She rolled one eye up at me, watching as I chewed on the toothbrush bristles. Under the eye were three little star tattoos.
“It’s about time,” she said. The needle- heads never responded, so I didn’t say anything; I just kept brushing.
“He will lead you to us,” she said, “and you …you will end my pain.”
There was no way to know who they were, if they were even anyone at all, but one thing they all had in common was they always called for help. They never said where they might be. Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe I was just crazy. I kind of hoped I was.
When I was done brushing my teeth, I spit in the sink and then left her in there.
“Go to him when he calls,” she said, as I walked away and slammed the door on her. I plodded back into the bedroom and crawled under the covers.
The first time I saw something like that, I thought I’d gone nuts. It freaked me out so badly I didn’t sleep for two whole days, and that just made it worse. When I got my first period, I thought it was a hallucination. When my father came to me one night in a dream and began to flatten to bloody pulp from his toes up, I told myself that’s all it was …a dream.
I pulled the covers over my head, leaving just my nose sticking out so I could breathe. The problem was there was a lot of daylight left and nothing to do to fill it. I didn’t want to see or hear anything anymore, I didn’t want to talk to the woman from downstairs, and I wasn’t tired enough to sleep. I just wanted to shut my mind off. Just for a few days, or even just a few hours.
When I got up to puke an hour later, the woman was gone from the toilet. I sat there, my forehead on the back of one hand and my face hanging over the cloudy water, and promised my reflection that I would go to him when he called, whoever he was, if they would leave me alone. If they would do that, then even if he was the devil himself, I would go to him.
Nico Wachalowski—East Concord Yard
The fire was out by the time I got there, and the local police had cordoned off the scene. Even so, the whole area was mobbed, with people pushing up against the perimeter and trying to get images. I had to flash my blues just to get them to grudgingly move out of the way enough for me to park on the sidewalk, but they crowded me on my way out. I held up my badge, pushing through.
“Federal agent; stand aside.”
Bodies were clustered at the edge of the scene, shoulder to shoulder and leaning forward to get a better view. Handheld cameras, phone cameras, and tons of others fitted into palm tablets, pens, and anywhere else they could be squeezed stood out under the electronics scan. At least five people within spitting distance had them implanted behind the eyes, like the kid who got gunned down on the dock, and a helicopter was passing by overhead. Every move was being watched and recorded from every angle.
“Agent?”
One of the police officers was approaching from the direction of the burnt-out truck. He waved me over.
“Agent Wachalowski?”
I nodded.
“The fire’s completely out and the remains of the vehicle have been screened for radiation and tox,” he said. “It’s safe to go inside, when you’re ready.”
“Thanks.”
There was a body at my feet. Its pretty face was burnt and most of its hair had been singed away, but I could tell it was the revivor from the bathroom. Its bare legs were sprawled in the light dusting of snow, black toes pointed up at the sky. A trail, two heel marks, snaked from where the body lay back to the truck. It had been dragged there.
“Put a blanket on her,” I said.
The officer nodded and hustled off.
Kneeling down for a closer look, I could see that whatever burnt her had come from in front of her; the left arm and shoulder got it the worst, along with the tops of the thighs. She had been partially behind something, or more likely someone, when the flames hit.
The left hand had been burnt down to the bone, the two smallest fingers gone completely. The body hadn’t been on fire when it came out, and unlike the others, it was pulled away from the flames. This wasn’t a bomb or a grenade, then. There were no shrapnel marks, and no sign of gelatinized gas or other propellant. It had been hit with a sustained blast of something hot enough to carbonize muscle and bone. A directed blast. Not the type of weapon you normally saw on the street.
The fire department had managed to put out the truck, and it sat in the middle of the parking lot, leaning to one side where the tires had blown out. The crowd had left behind chaotic trails of many footprints, but as I mapped them, one set in particular stood out; a pair of shoe prints that were near the body. Unlike the others, they didn’t move much, and they’d gotten there early, because a lot of them had been walked over. The soles were large, definitely a man’s. They stuck near the truck before moving closer to the body than any of the others. Whoever made them would have been standing very close to where Faye had knelt. He would have been right next to her.
A call forced its way in. It was Noakes.
Bringing up the various feeds that had made their way onto the wire, I filtered through them, watching Faye in a blur of overlapped images as she knelt by the revivor. In none of the shots was there anyone standing in the spot where the footprints were.
When I picked up the message, the last voice I ever expected to hear was hers. All I wanted to do was put the case behind me, but when I heard her voice …I don’t know. I changed my mind.
In a little window, framed in my field of vision next to the burned body, someone had zoomed right in on Faye’s face. She wore no makeup and a masculine suit, but Faye Dasalia would never be mistaken for a man. I froze the image of her face, noting how her blond hair was shorter and her cheeks were more drawn, but how good it still was to see her. She looked tired, but her eyes were sharp. Her full lips were turned down at the corners, like they did when she was troubled.
I caught myself lingering, and closed the image. She had held the revivor in her arms like it was a human. She held it like a child. When she looked at it, there were almost tears in her eyes.
