Alpha

“You have paid for a service,” the Uzbek said, looking up at him. “You will have your result.”

“I damn well better have it.”

Taking the last word, the older man began edging his way along the row to the aisle. The Uzbek watched until he was descending the stairs, then stole a glance at his watch before turning his eyes back to the match. If traffic was with him, he could stay until the half before catching his flight to Anaheim.

Chapter Nine

Gabriel Fuller ducks through a FRIENDS ONLY door on the northwest side of Town Square at six minutes past ten o’clock, out of sight and traffic and into a small, ten-by-ten-foot courtyard, walled by buildings on all sides. The sun isn’t quite high enough to beat the angle, and there’s shade here, and he puts his back to the wall to his right, to stay out of the way of the Friends moving back and forth.

He wrestles his hands free from his paws before pulling Pooch from his head. The end of his second shift already, and as the headpiece comes off and he tastes fresh air, he can feel his heart pounding and the sweat running down his back. It’s hot today, already hot, but that’s not why he’s perspiring, that’s not what’s making his heart race.

He cuts between a Royal Flashman and a Smooch the Baby Elephant emerging from the doorway opposite, makes his way down the stairs into the Gordo Tunnel. There are more Friends here, some in character, but mostly just custodial staff and service personnel. He nearly runs over a guy in a Star System Alliance maintenance uniform, mutters an apology to him, turns into one of the common areas, and then into the Gordo South changing area. Most of the characters are already out in the park, and the room is empty but for a single Betsy. She’s an Asian woman, and her unmasked head looks absurdly small as it pokes up from Betsy’s cartoon-width shoulders. He’s guessing she’s in her early twenties, and she’s just sitting there on one of the benches, holding the headpiece to her costume, staring into Betsy’s eyes.

“Fucking awful out there today,” she says, and Gabriel wonders if she’s talking to Betsy or to him.

“Tell me about it.” Gabriel drops Pooch’s head and the paws on the bench, begins to unfasten the buckles and tabs at his waist.

The woman sighs, rises with a supreme effort. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…” she says, and her head is disappearing into Betsy’s, and her last words come out muffled, but distinct. “And close up this park with the bodies of these privileged dead…”

Gabriel Fuller, half out of his Pooch costume, stares after her, feeling an absurd flare of panic. Can she know? How can she possibly know?

But she can’t know, no one knows, he tells himself. Another out-of- work actor, that’s all, every other damn person working here is an out-of-work actor, calm down.…

The clock on the wall here is reading eighteen minutes past ten, WilsonVille Standard Time. He’s still on schedule, still on the timetable. He sits, pulls off the boots, then kicks his way out of the leggings. Then it’s the chest piece, and now he’s standing there in his sneakers and a body stocking that’s drenched with sweat. Dana once told him that she’d heard someone else say that some of the characters go naked inside their costumes, but she didn’t believe it, because if that went wrong could you imagine how quickly you’d get fired? The next day, Gabriel had taken her down to this same changing area and showed her one of the Pooch costumes in all its component glory, including letting her take a whiff of it. It had been freshly laundered, too, and it still smelled ripe.

No way would I ever want to be naked in that, he’d told her.

No way would I ever want you to be, she’d said, laughing.

He moves to the locker where he’s stowed his clothes, works the combination with quick presses of the keypad, listening to the chirp as each digit is acknowledged. He peels himself out of his bodysuit, glancing around once more. He’s on duty for another three hours today, and if a manager comes by and recognizes him, he doesn’t want to explain why he’s changing clothes or, worse, why it is he’s committed the near-?capital crime of leaving Pooch in pieces on the floor.

But nobody comes by, nobody interrupts him, and the clock is now reading twenty-one minutes past ten, WilsonVille Standard Time, as he straightens from tying his boots. He gives Pooch a shove with one foot, knocking the costume further under a bench, then moves back into the hallway, turning north, along the Gordo Tunnel. Walking like he knows where he’s going and like he belongs here, both of which are true, he steps to the side of the hallway as two custodians come rushing toward him, past him, paying no mind. One wheels a mop bucket, the other a garbage can, and he knows they’re racing to clean up a “protein spill,” and from the way they’re hustling, whoever blew chunks topside chose to do it at an inopportune moment or in an inopportune place or, conceivably, both.

The tunnel hits a T intersection about thirty meters further along, where it’s bisected by the Flashman Tunnel, and Gabriel makes a right, heading east. Overhead, in the park, he’s approaching Flower Sister country, and the traffic in the tunnel reflects that. He passes two Lavenders in whispered conversation, another Friend in a navy blazer escorting a forty-something woman who is weeping openly, and since she’s too old to be lost, Gabriel figures she’s about to be arrested for something. It occurs to him that what’s going to happen in the next seventeen or so minutes may, possibly, be seen as a favor to her of sorts.

But probably not.

The Flashman Tunnel, like the Gordo Tunnel, has maintenance hallways branching off it, their designations painted on the walls at each juncture. He turns south, opens the door on his right, and steps into the Flashman E-5 compressor room. The lighting in here is even dimmer than in the tunnels, and he gives himself a couple of seconds for his eyes to adjust. Then he moves forward, skirting around the main ductwork that juts from the center of the floor and the hissing, thrumming machinery that closes in on three sides. The noise is enough that he doesn’t trust his ears to warn him, and so he takes another look over his shoulder, just to be certain he’s alone, before dropping to his belly and reaching beneath a snarl of machinery for the duffel bag. There is a moment-just a moment-with his arm extended and his fingers closing on nothing when he thinks it isn’t there, that it’s been discovered. Then his fingertips are stroking ripstop nylon, and he’s pulling the bag free, unzipping it.

He assembles the pistol, then loads and chambers his first round. Next, he takes out the radio, switches it on. He has to hold it to his ear when he keys the transmit button twice in rapid succession, saying nothing, listening for the slight squelch that tells him it’s working, even if, below ground, sending or receiving any radio transmission is hopeless. He gets to his feet, tucking the pistol into his waistband, smoothing his shirt down. The radio he leaves on, but, returning to the duffel, exchanges it for the cell phone.

He sees the knife then, closed, where he left it, and takes it out, turning it in his hand. In the light here, he can’t be sure, but he thinks he sees the dried blood from the man he had to kill. The man who made it necessary to move this cache.

The man had fought like a lion. The man had fought for his life.

He clips the knife in his pocket, zips the duffel closed, pulls the straps up his left arm, onto his shoulder. With purpose, he leaves the compressor room, turns back into the Flashman Tunnel, retracing his steps. He passes other employees, then a clock, and it’s now thirty-nine minutes past ten, WilsonVille Standard Time. He’ll be cutting it close, he knows it.

He reaches the T intersection again, turns south once more onto Gordo, walking back in the direction he came as quickly as he dares. Friends, custodians, safety officers bustle about, moving in all directions, the energy and crowd above reflected in the motion and purpose around him. Voices seem louder, though he thinks that might be adrenaline. He reaches one of the ramps up to the surface, emerges into the courtyard behind the Dawg Days Theatre, on the north side of Town Square. There’s a blue-blazer Friend here, his job to make certain nobody wanders around backstage who shouldn’t, and he gives Gabriel a nod of greeting, and Gabriel returns it. Through the walls, he can hear the sound effects of one of the Pooch cartoons playing in the theater, a ripple of delighted laughter from the audience.

He steps outside, into sunlight that’s shocking in its brightness and that renders him blind for an instant. A rush of noise accompanies it, the sound of the crowd and the clatter of cars racing along the wooden slats of Pooch