she’d disappeared. That wouldn’t look good.
Alice took a seat next to me and leaned close. She stared into my eyes, and I watched that dark blind spot drift across her face.
“Don’t wait for me to try it,” she said in a low voice. “I know it won’t work.”
“Cards right on the table, huh?”
“Look,” she said. “Sean is dead. I know you’d learned his little secret, and I know that, in spite of that, you still trusted him, and even liked him. I’m taking over his responsibilities, and you’re going to be working with me now. How that goes is going to be partly up to you.”
“Sean had my back. He wasn’t my shadow.”
“He watched out for you,” she said. “That’s all he ever tried to do. I can do the same thing.”
“I don’t need a chaperone.” She smiled.
“Think of me as your wingman,” she said. “The partner you’re inevitably going to get assigned? Think of him as your shadow.”
“I won’t partner with someone I know is reporting on me.”
“Then you’re free to quit,” she said. “Leave the bureau. But I’ll promise you this—certain people think you’re significant, and we’ll be keeping an eye on you, if we have to lock you away somewhere to do it.”
I stared at the screen and the image of Faye with her lips on mine. Alice was serious. I had no doubts about that.
“This is bigger than you,” she continued. “You can’t hide from us. We already know what you eat for breakfast, so it’s a safe bet we know about your old girlfriend, and that secret deal Fawkes tried to make with you.”
“I never considered that offer.”
“The way I see it, you’ve got three options: you can trust that we know what we’re doing and that stopping Fawkes is the right thing, you can trust that Fawkes is right and team up with him, or you can try to just check out—leave the bureau and walk away. Only one of those options is going to result in you walking around a free man.”
She wasn’t bluffing. If she wanted to, she could have me detained and held indefinitely. But I didn’t think that was her plan.
“What’s it going to be?” she asked. “You know how Fawkes wanted this to play out. If you won’t trust us, can we at least agree that his way can’t happen?”
“We can agree on that, yes.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded.
“We didn’t stop him,” I said.
“I know.”
“The rest of the nukes and his army might have been destroyed along with that ship, but he still has one card left to play.”
“Project Huma,” she said. “I know.”
When I’d used the device MacReady had Bhadra smuggle to me, I’d picked up hundreds of nodes. They hadn’t been activated yet, but for them to be useful to Fawkes, he must have some way to kill them and bring them back quickly.
“The attack on Concrete Falls was two months ago, and already he’s injected close to six hundred people,” I said. “If it works the way it’s supposed to, that’s six hundred revivors he could have inside the city, under his command, at any time.”
She nodded.
“He won’t use Second Chance as a front again, but he’ll set up his operation somewhere else,” I said. “Every day that goes by, he’ll add more to his ranks.”
“You’re with us, then?”
“Yes.”
She tossed the remote down on the table between us, then sat on the edge. She looked down at me.
“This footage is going to go away,” she said. “It’s going away, because if it doesn’t, you could have fresh charges brought against you and be placed under an internal investigation. We need you free to act.”
She looked a little bit relieved. They needed me, or thought they did. I saw it on Ai’s face in the restaurant when she tried to control me and couldn’t. Even before she told me she’d seen me kill Fawkes, there was something in her eye. I didn’t get what it was at the time, but now I thought maybe it was hope.
“I’m an agent of the FBI,” I said. “I work for them, not her.”
“Agreed,” she said, “but we’re pulling out the stops on this one. You’ll get everything you need to help track them, and Fawkes, down. We have a long reach, Agent, and we plan to use it. That means control of the city, including local law enforcement and the media. We’ll bring on Stillwell Corps to help cover the ground we need to cover.”
She was expecting an argument, but she didn’t get one. The truth was that even with those steps, finding the people who’d been injected was going to be difficult at best. They were third-tier citizens, and most of them were homeless, transient, or undocumented. Even for those who had a valid identification or address, the clinics that processed them had been destroyed along with their records. They were scattered over a huge area, and six hundred, even six thousand, was a drop in a very big bucket.
“I’ll help you,” I said. “You find the carriers, and I’ll track down Fawkes. This won’t end until he’s stopped.”
Alice nodded. I stood up, and she stood to face me. She held out her hand, and there was a look in her eye, a blind certainty that bothered me. Fanaticism was dangerous. With Fawkes creating new soldiers at a rate of six hundred a month, though, things could get out of hand quickly. There were literally millions of third-tier citizens scattered throughout the city. If he was allowed the resources and the time to make all of those millions rise, there would be no way for anyone to stop them.
I shook her hand, and she smiled faintly.
“You’re doing the right thing,” she said, and all I could think of was the way Motoko had looked at me from across the table the night we met. I remembered how sure she was when she said I would join them, like it was beyond anyone’s control.
Even mine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Knapp grew up in New England and currently lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Kim. He is at work on the next revivors novel. Visit him at www.zombie0.com.
