wonderful? The nurses there love me.”
“What do you want?” Michelle asked.
Alicia snapped her fingers, and two guards appeared with a chair. “I don’t know. Why are you here?”
“Sightseeing,” Michelle said. She was furious at herself for leaving Joey behind. It was an amateur move.
“In Kisangani?”
“We got a little lost.”
Alicia laughed. “My dear, you are amusing. And quite pretty. Has anyone ever told you you’re very pretty?”
Michelle just stared. She wanted to say, Seriously? I’ve been a model my whole goddamn life. Yeah, you could say I’ve been told that. Instead she said, dryly, “Thank you, what a nice thing to say.” And she tried not to notice the way Alicia was eyeing her.
“I like you,” Alicia said. “Perhaps you and I can come to an arrangement. We have doctors here. They can help your little friend.” She snapped her fingers again, and the guards carried Joey off to one of the pretty little buildings. “If you give me any trouble, I will have her killed. We don’t want that, do we? You’ll come and have dinner with me. We will talk.” She got up from her chair and started walking away. The leopards followed her.
So did Michelle.
Southwest of Bunia, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
“Geez,” said Wally. “What kind of kid doesn’t like peanut butter?”
Rain drizzled through the canopy of old-growth trees, pattering softly on Wally’s poncho. Off in the distance, far to the east, across a wide valley, the rain merged with the grey mist shrouding the craggy foothills of the Ruwenzori Mountains. The sickly sweet odor of mud and decaying vegetation, combined with the pall of charcoal smoke from upwind villages, threatened to put Wally off his lunch. Not that he smelled much better; he knew that when he finally removed his poncho, it would carry the musk scent of sweaty iron.
He held a jar of peanut butter in one hand, a banana in the other, both extended toward Ghost. He sat just inside the tree line at the edge of a grassy plain, getting a little shelter from the downpour. The trees also hid him from the helicopters; he’d been hearing those more and more frequently the past few days. The girl floated silently at the center of the meadow, where the rain fell hardest.
But the raindrops never fell on her; never touched her. Just as her feet never quite touched the ground.
She’d been drawing closer. He caught glimpses of her all day long now. No longer did she only come out at night, when he went to sleep. She floated after him through the forest without making a sound.
Wally said, “I bet you’ve never had peanut butter before. It’s real good, I promise. I practically grew up on this stuff.”
If Ghost understood his offer, she showed no sign of it. All she did was stare at him: motionless, unblinking, broken knife in hand. Unaffected by the drizzle that passed through her insubstantial body.
“Suit yourself,” he sighed. “But you don’t know what you’re missing.” He tossed the food in his pack, zipped it, pulled the straps over his shoulders, and limped off across the misty meadow. Ghost followed, always trailing at a discreet distance.
Even when he’d run to catch the tail end of a passing train. She kept up with the train, floating through the jungle just off the tracks. They’d covered a lot of ground that way.
Talking seemed to help. He acted like she was a normal little girl, like she wasn’t a child soldier sent to kill him. He talked about Jerusha, his home in Minnesota, Jerusha, his family, his friends, Jerusha, places he’d visited, Jerusha… He didn’t mention Lucien, or what had happened to him.
It was a one-sided conversation, of course. For all he knew, she couldn’t understand a word of it. But that wasn’t the point. He was friendly. Un-threatening. An adult that wouldn’t hurt her.
But the more he talked, the more she hesitated before backing away. And sometimes, if he pretended not to watch, he could see from the corners of his eyes how she’d cock her head, turning an ear toward him as he spoke.
Ghost was listening.
A guy didn’t have to be John Fortune to figure out that she was a product of the Nshombos’ secret laboratories. She was one in a hundred, one of the lucky few who drew an ace rather than a joker or the black queen. If lucky was the right word. Because the way Wally figured it, once her card turned, that’s when the worst part started. He wondered how much time had been spent brainwashing her, desensitizing her to violence, teaching her to kill, forcing her to practice. Just as they would have done to Lucien, back in Nyunzu.
Wally didn’t know a ton about kids, but he refused to believe the damage was permanent. He refused to believe that such a little girl could be forever broken, like Humpty Dumpty.
So he talked to Ghost. He figured that was as good a start as anything.
He kept to the meadow; good cover was getting hard to find in this part of the PPA, which was largely open grassland. But the mist and rain meant a helicopter would have to get pretty low to see him. Low enough that he’d hear it long before it saw him. And walking across open ground was something of a relief, after days and days thrashing through the jungle. His leg still hurt, where a bullet had grazed through the rust and where Ghost had tried to pry out a rivet; it wasn’t healing. The bandages came away stained with greyish yellow seepage when he cleaned the wound every evening.
As long as he got to Bunia while he could still do some damage. He had to find somebody to care for Ghost, too.
Kongoville, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Noel drove the rattling old tow truck through the darkened streets while Mollie sat nervously beside him. They both wore black balaclavas to cover their faces. He was in his Lilith form, and dressed in Lilith’s trademark black-slacks, boots, silk shirt, and a light jacket to cover his shoulder rig. It was hotter than hell but he wanted to be well armed, and didn’t necessarily want his compatriots to know just how well armed. One boot had a small built-in holster for a tiny ankle gun. The other had two sheaths for knives. He had another gun in a holster clipped onto the waistband of her pants.
He took the final turn without braking. The bank was directly ahead of them. The goal was the ATM that had been retrofitted onto the white marble exterior. It had all the beauty of a wart on a beauty queen.
Noel swung the truck around and backed in close to the ATM. Mollie jumped out, and using her power thrust a chain and a hook through the marble and hooked them around the ATM.
She jumped back into the cab, and he gunned the engine. The ATM tore out of the wall with a sound like a bridge collapsing. They drove down the street with the ATM box bouncing along behind them like a hog-tied calf. It threw up sparks each time it hit the pavement.
A glance in the rearview mirror showed security guards boiling through the front doors of the bank. Noel laughed and was briefly disconcerted by Lilith’s icy, lilting tones. He was once again losing track of who he was at any given moment.
“What now?” Mollie asked through lips narrowed by tension.
“We pull out the last guard.”
“How-” Mollie broke off when Noel suddenly stopped the truck. “What?”
“Out,” Noel ordered.
As he jumped out Noel reached beneath the seat and extracted the final element of his plan-a big bag of money. Once in the street he threw it hard. It hit the pavement and burst open, sending dollar bills flying in every direction.
The guards who were pelting down the street like hounds after a fox checked at the sight of the money.
The other cars on the street jerked to a stop. People jumped out and began grabbing up money. More people emerged from the apartments over the shops. The guards joined in the melee, trying to grab money, keeping people from grabbing money. A final guard came barreling through the front doors of the bank.
Noel grabbed Mollie around the waist and teleported them both into Mathias’s hotel room in the Hilton. He then pulled out his phone and called Jaako, waiting in Cumming’s apartment. “Go,” he ordered.
He snatched up a small mountaineering rifle. It had been retrofitted with powerful magnets rather than
