The Blonde

She wanted to cry. He’d fought hard to force his air into lungs she couldn ‘t feel. His lips mashed against hers, and she couldn ‘t feel those, either. Maybe she was already crying. She wouldn ‘t have been able to feel the drops on her cheeks.

She couldn’t feel anything, but she could see and hear and think. That was the worst part.

She knew exactly what had happened.

Back in the lab, she’d overheard them speculating.

Partial engagement.

When the self-replicating supramolecular assemblies—oh, how the Operator hated the nickname Mary Kates, even from the beginning— were faced with a choice, they reset to zero. That’s what must have happened to her. The doors of the elevator may have opened a full second, or a fraction of a millisecond, in time; that didn’t matter to the Mary Kates. They reset to zero.

Leaving her brain-damaged in this oh-so-creative way.

This was not how she’d imagined it. She thought it would have been quick and efficient. And she hoped she’d live long enough for a bit of revenge.

Not to look up into the eyes of another man she’d doomed to the grave.

Her Diet Coke-loving savior.

Pressing his lips to hers, genuine concern in his blue eyes.

And then the other one showed up. The one the Operator sent.

“What’s your name?”

“Brian.”

“Brian, did you give her mouth-to-mouth?”

Yeah, this guy knew the score. But he wasn ‘t a complete dick. Here, he was warning Brian—her savior had a name—to wash up, rinse out his mouth, like that would help. At least it was a gesture of humanity.

And then the Operator’s man looked into her eyes, and somehow sensed she was still in there, because he touched her chin with his index finger and spoke to her.

“Now that wasn’t very smart.”

3:05  a.m.

Sheraton Lobby Eighteenth Street

The security guy, Charles Lee Vincent, had locked the front doors, much to the displeasure of a curly-haired guy in a tuxedo, who was missing his tie and had his cummerbund slung rakishly over his shoulder. Vincent didn’t seem to give a shit. He pressed the master key into the desk clerk’s hands and said, “Only for the cops and EMT guys. Got it?” He got it. And for the next nine minutes—Jack watched them tick by on the clock mounted above a shimmering koi pool in the middle of the lobby—they stayed locked. The curly-haired guy threatened all kinds of violence, both physical and legal. The desk clerk didn’t seem to give a shit, either.

Now the cops had finally arrived. Showtime. Red and blue lights danced across the walls of the lobby. If the lobby lights had been dimmed, it would have looked like Disco Night at the Sheraton.

Jack got ready. All he needed was a cab to be outside those doors. This was a hotel. And sure, it was three o’clock in the morning, but cabs flocked to hotels like iron fillings to a magnet, right? Once he was in a cab, he could get to the airport. There were a lot of people in airports, no matter what time of day. He could feign an illness, get a security escort. Hang with that person the whole time. Buy a flight to D.C. He could use the home-equity credit card. They’d always kept that for emergencies, and Theresa hadn’t closed out the account yet. If this didn’t qualify for emergency, he didn’t know what would.

In D.C., he’d go to the FBI. The CIA. Homeland Security. Whoever. Someone who would listen to his story, then dispatch somebody to the Westin Horton Plaza in San Diego and verify everything.

Somebody in the government had to be around at this time of the morning.

All he had to do was get into a cab, and he would have a chance to breathe again, and think this through a bit more. But D.C. still seemed like the right move.

There. A flash of dark yellow and black in a checkerboard pattern.

Go, go, go.

Slip past the bustle. Pray no one paid him any mind. Quick glance at Charles Lee Vincent: busy with an EMT chick. Laughing about something, probably a dumb joke to break the tension. Yeah, laugh it up. You’re not the ones whose brains could explode at any given moment. Out the door, from the air-conditioned cool into the damp summer night. The cab, dead ahead.

Jack reached around to pat his butt cheek; his wallet was still there.

Funny if he didn’t have that, huh? He could go back and tell Charles Lee Vincent all about it: You’re never going to believe what I forgot up in my room. Har har har …

The cab rocketed away.

Fuck almighty. Was there even a passenger in the backseat? No, not that Jack could tell. Did he get a sudden call? Or had someone called ahead and said, “Hey, let’s screw with Jack Eisley’s life a little more”?

Jack found himself standing alone on the sidewalk as the seconds ticked away.

He scanned the sidewalk to his right, along the side of the hotel and up the length of Rittenhouse Square: no one. Then to his left. There. A couple, walking away from him, arms intertwined.

Go back inside, or race forward?

Forward.

Jack jogged, then power-walked, then tried to feign a normal pace. It didn’t work. The taller one of the two, a woman, looked behind nervously. Jack blew air through his mouth, then offered a sheepish grin. The woman turned back and hurried the pace a bit. That grin wasn’t fooling anybody. Jack now saw that her companion, the shorter one, curly brunette hair, was also female. Both were young. They must be walking home together after a night out clubbing, he figured, or whatever it is young women do in Philadelphia late on a Thursday night.

Ten feet. How far was ten feet?

So damned tough to judge. How long was a car? About ten feet? Did he need to keep a car length’s pace behind these girls?

His head throbbed.

The women looked at each other; one whispered and the other nodded. The curly-haired girl appeared to be rooting around in her purse for something. Christ, they think Fm a mugger. Then again, why wouldn’t they think that?

Down the street, rushing toward them beneath the mercury vapor lights, was salvation: another cab.

The taller nudged her companion to the right, shot her hand high in the air. High beams flashed and the cab swerved to the left, increasing speed. Jack ran forward, almost pushing the women aside. The cab must have thought he was going to race right into its path, because it braked hard.

The throbbing in his head worsened.

Fingers hooked under the door handle. It was greasy.

“Hey! Fucking asshole!”

“Medical emergency,” Jack muttered, and yanked open the door.

“Sir, those girls hailed me first.”

“I don’t care. Just drive.”

Jack slid across the seat and slammed the door shut. Then he autolocked the back door. The taller girl, whose eye shadow was eerily dark, and lipstick unearthly white, pounded on the window, shouted, “Asshole!”

The cabbie turned around and regarded him carefully. “Wait. I know you. You’re the guy who puked in my cab before.”

“Could you please just drive? I have plenty of money.”

“You’re not feeling sick again, are you?”

Another pound, one that shook the cab. “Motherfucker!”