Two Weeks' Notice

of horror that only sliced when she looked at the bodies straight on. So she focused on the walls. Safe enough, until she saw the big, framed formal portrait photo. Lynnette and her husband, sitting with hands clasped. The two little girls in their laps.

A simple, adorable family, glowing with happiness.

The breath went out of her in a rush, and she felt her knees start to give. Patrick’s hand was right there when she needed it, bracing her elbow, giving her an anchor to cling to as the world began to drift dizzily away.

“I was on the phone with her,” Bryn said softly. “When this happened. She was begging him not to…Why? Why would he do this?”

She thought it was a rhetorical question, but Riley answered it. “He wrote a note on his laptop, time-stamped about thirty minutes ago. According to him, this was the only way. He thought some kind of demon had taken over his wife,” Riley said. “He didn’t want it to get into him and his girls. He was so scared he thought death was better.”

For a long moment, nobody spoke, and then Patrick said, “She’s going to come around soon. It shouldn’t be here, looking at her kids.”

Bryn moved in to help. She was politely but firmly pushed back. Riley and the nameless FBI agent picked Lynnette up by the shoulders and feet and carried her off to another room—the bedroom, hopefully.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Pat said, and Bryn looked up at him, startled. “You should go. The FBI can handle this.”

“No,” she said. “Pat, I was talking to her. And he killed her. He killed himself. He killed their kids.”

“And there was nothing you could have done to stop it,” he said, and took her in his arms. She hadn’t even known she was shaking until she felt the warmth of his body against hers, and his hand cupping the back of her head. She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in the soft material of his suit jacket. “Lynnette was supposed to tell him, but she didn’t. You tried to help her, Bryn. Some people—some people just won’t listen.”

She nodded, and after that precious moment of letting herself feel safe, she pushed back. She didn’t feel like crying, oddly enough; there were no tears in her, not for this. Just…silence. And a heavy feeling of inevitability.

“She’s going to come back any minute now,” Bryn said. He was watching her with a complicated mixture of worry and exasperation.

“You don’t have to be the one to tell her they’re gone,” he said. “Let Riley.”

“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just that Riley doesn’t understand how it feels to wake up…like this. It’s not the same.”

She walked into the bedroom, and Pat didn’t try to stop her, even though she could tell he was tempted. Riley was sitting on the side of the bed, sponging blood from Lynnette’s face with a damp cloth; her eyes looked darker now, and the lines around her mouth deeper. The other agent had backed away to lean against the wall next to a dresser. A clumsy papier-mâché plaque behind him had two sets of small handprints, with names doodled on them in awkwardly shaped letters. That hurt so much that Bryn felt short of breath.

She waited with Riley as the seconds ticked by, and suddenly, Lynnette’s bloody body convulsed, thrashed, and she took in a breath so deep it seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the room.

And then she shrieked.

It was a familiar scream; Bryn heard it in her head every day, that waking-nightmare sound they all made when they woke from death. Like the cry of a newborn, but filled with horror none of them could explain.

It faded, and Lynnette opened her eyes. Riley put the cloth aside. There was still a wound in Lynnette’s head, but it was closing fast now, and Bryn could almost see the silvery flash of the nanites weaving together tissue and bone.

Lynnette asked, “Ted? Where’s Teddy?”

Bryn said, “He’s in the other room, Lynn.” She kept her voice low, warm, soothing. “Give it time. Try to stay calm.”

“Teddy had a gun,” Lynnette said. “Is he okay? Is everything okay?” She reached out and grabbed Bryn’s hand with sudden strength. “Please tell me everything’s okay. I promise, I’ll talk to him. I’ll tell him everything. …”

It was too late for that, and Bryn suddenly, horribly wanted to blurt that out. She was angry, she realized. Angry with Lynnette for bungling this, and angry at Teddy for descending into this hellish cauldron of lunacy. Maybe he’d been on to something about the demon possession, because she wanted so badly to lash out at those who couldn’t defend themselves.

She fought back those cruel impulses, but it was tough, really tough, and she had to clear her throat before she said, “Lynn, just take a deep breath. Please. Just let the nanites work. You’ll be all right in a few minutes. Stay still. Riley’s going to give you a shot now to help you.”

Riley already had the syringe lying out on the bed, uncapped, and now she picked it up and administered the dose of Returné with an expert flick of her wrist. It took only a second.

Then she picked up a second syringe and injected Lynnette with that, too. Lynnette’s eyelashes fluttered, and her eyes rolled up to show the whites, and she stopped breathing.

Dead, again.

Riley nodded to her subordinate. “Get her stripped and in the shower. I’ll get some clothes for her. We have about ten minutes before she comes around again, and I want her clean, dressed, and in the car by then.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Bryn blurted. The other agent pushed her out of the way, scooped Lynnette up, and took her into the bathroom. “Riley!”

“She can’t stay here,” Riley said. “She’s going back to Pharmadene, where she can get the treatment she needs.”

“And the bodies? You called off the cops, didn’t you?”

“This will all be handled, Bryn. Now, you both need to go. I don’t have to tell you that this is a national security matter, do I?”

“You can’t just cover this up and make her disappear! You can’t—”

“I can,” Riley interrupted her, “and I have. This entire neighborhood is being evacuated right now for a gas leak. In twenty minutes, this house is going to blow sky-high. The only casualties will be the Renfer family.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Patrick said, from the doorway, “You mean, including Lynnette. Right, Agent Block?” He had that flat, cold look in his eyes Bryn knew meant trouble. “She’s an inconvenient survivor, and you can’t depend on her to keep her mouth shut. What’s her future—quick decapitation? Fast-burning furnace? Or just let her decompose in the white room so you can chart her process?”

If he was planning to ruffle her calm, he was disappointed. “She goes back to Pharmadene,” Riley said, without much emotion. “And you’re right. She can’t leave there again; she’s too high a risk. If she decides she wants to end her drug regimen, or chooses another method of…termination, that is entirely her choice; it’s one we give all the addicts. Frankly, if it was me in this situation, I wouldn’t want to go on.” She looked up then, but not at Pat—at Bryn, who felt a chill ladder up her spine. “Would you?”

Bryn didn’t reply, but she knew if she’d been forced to do so, she would have had to confess that dying, however horrible, might have been better than living the rest of an immortal life with the burden of this on her conscience.

The shower cut off in the bathroom. Riley went to the closet and combed through clothes (How do you choose an outfit for a time like this? Bryn wondered) and handed underwear, pants, and a shirt off to her colleague. “You should leave,” Riley said to the rest of them. “The clock’s ticking. You should be able to go without any questions being asked, but if you’re stopped at the cordon, give them my name.”

Bryn said, “You can’t just—”

“Can’t just what?” Riley snapped, and for a moment her shell of calm cracked through to white, furious rage. “Can’t clean up this mess? That’s all I do, Bryn. It’s my fucking job. Day after day. Night after night. I see the wreckage that Pharmadene left us with, and I get to sweep up the broken glass. So either get out of the way or grab a broom.” She paused for a second, shut her eyes, and then looked at Pat. “McCallister, get her the hell out of here. Now.”

He stood still for so long that Bryn was convinced he’d do something, stop what was happening, try, but instead when he did move, he only crossed to Bryn and took her hand. “We need to go,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do.”