Two Weeks' Notice

without a fight.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked breathlessly. “What the hell broke you this bad?”

She surprised Jane, for once; the woman glanced down at her, and there was a momentary gleam in her eyes that wasn’t driven by madness, chaos, or bloodlust. It almost looked…human. “It’s never just one thing,” Jane said. “It’s like falling out of love. You look back and suddenly you don’t know who that person was that fell in love with him, because it isn’t you. You know what I’m talking about, Bryn. A year ago, who were you? Not who you are right now. And you’ll keep changing, because out here on the fringes, there’s no gravity left to hold you down.”

One of the nurses was dead, and two were wounded; she saw the sheeted body, and one on a gurney while the other was being bandaged. The survivors glared. Not in the Revival club, Bryn thought. Not important enough to whatever this bizarre cause might be.

Jane kept pushing her right through the door at the end of the hallway, out into the night air. There was a thin, tentative blush of dawn on the horizon. “I found the old man’s cell phone, by the way,” Jane said. “In the drawer. Still on.”

“Good for you.”

“If you think they’re going to come running to find you, they won’t,” she said. “I had a guy drive it south of the border. Ought to be deep in Cartel Land by now. With any luck, your white knights will go riding into a bunch of machetes and get mailed back in wet little pieces.”

“Don’t pretend like you’re not fucked,” Bryn said, very pleasantly. “The signal got out, and they will have traced it, because those phones like that? The ones for old people? They make them very easy to locate. In case someone falls and can’t get up.”

Jane looked pinched around the mouth this time, and pushed the bed faster. “You think they’ll come rushing into some old folks’ home, guns blazing? Don’t be stupid. By this time, there’s no trace of you in the main building to find. They’ll think it was a decoy.”

“It’s hard to cover up the damage back there. All those bullet holes. All that blood.”

“That’s why, in fifteen minutes, a fire is going to gut the inside,” Jane said. “Terrible tragedy, all those innocent people caught like that. Three of our staff are going to die trying to save them.”

“Three? I only killed one.”

“Well, you wounded two, and I don’t want to explain it to the cops. Much easier if they die selfless heroes. Do you know what the word verisimilitude means?”

“You’re hard on your minions.”

“Oh, baby, you watch too many bad movies, and I don’t have minions. I have coworkers. Being paid by the same company doesn’t make us family, and they’d shiv me in the back for an extra dollar an hour. Just like in any other business.”

Bryn realized they weren’t heading for the main building—or for any building, come to that. They were heading for the square, blocky shape of an ambulance that sat flashing its lights in the parking lot—probably a very common sight here. No one would remark on it at all, even if anyone noticed. A uniformed paramedic in a ball cap was standing at the rear of the vehicle, and as Jane wheeled her gurney up, he nodded and took control to load Bryn inside. He locked her wheels down into braces on the floor, then jumped down to talk with Jane in a low voice.

Jane climbed inside and leaned over to look into Bryn’s face. “This is where we say our sad little good-bye. It’s been fun, Bryn. Don’t blame yourself for how this turned out; sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes, you’re the bug.” She squeezed Bryn’s shoulder and winked. “I just got my new assignment. I’ll be paying a visit to the Fideli family. Just in case little Jeffy remembers something he shouldn’t.”

Bryn lunged against her straps. “You fucking bitch!”

“Oh, sure, look who’s talking. If you ask me nicely, I’ll go easy with the kids. They won’t feel a thing. Can’t promise the same thing for the parents, though, since I owe you one. Here’s something on account.”

She tapped Bryn on the forehead, hard, and gave her that eerily warm smile again, then reached over to a gurney lying across from Bryn’s and tugged the sheet loose as she climbed out of the ambulance.

Bryn hadn’t really registered the fact that there was someone lying across from her until that moment when the sheet pulled off the body.

It was Carl. And Carl was really, sincerely dead. His head had been severed, not very neatly, and the gurney was soaked in fresh red blood. The ambulance reeked with it, Bryn realized. The loose head had been tucked beneath his left arm to keep it from rolling free, and Jane had positioned it for maximum effect, facing directly toward Bryn. Gravity had opened his mouth and made it seem as if he’d never stopped screaming.

My fault, she thought. She’d thought it unlikely she could feel shock again, but it swept over her in a cold, numbing wave. This one’s my fault. She’d left Jane out there alive and free to go after innocents. Carl had died horribly. A whole hallway full of confused old people would burn to cover up her disappearance.

Now maybe the whole Fideli family was going to pay for her mistake, too.

God, she had to kill that bitch forever.

But she couldn’t get out of the goddamn restraints.

The ambulance took off and drove for about five minutes before slowing down, and Bryn thought, They’re not bothering to dismember us very far from the crime scene; it showed a kind of stunning, unsettling arrogance that made her worry that Jane not only could keep her promises but might outdo them. Carl had gone down screaming, but Bryn decided she wouldn’t; if anything, when her head came off, she’d go down biting. Maybe she could take a piece off her killer, at least.

The ambulance came to a stop, and for a moment she thought Carl’s head would roll off the gurney, but it stayed in place. That was a strange relief that evaporated as she heard the engine shut off, the driver’s door open, and footsteps move around to the doors.

Get ready, she told herself. But how did you get ready for this final moment when all hope was gone? It seemed crazy and absurd, that she’d survived Jane only to die like this, for no good purpose.

The doors opened, and the paramedic climbed in. He pulled off his cap and crouched down next to Bryn, and she was treated to a big, toothy smile…

From Fast Freddy Watson. The man she’d shot at the marina. The one who’d killed, and then kidnapped, her sister, Annalie.

Her own original murderer.

“Hey, Bryn,” he said. “What’s shakin’, bacon?” He flipped open a long-bladed knife, hesitated for a few seconds with his gaze on her face, and then neatly began slitting open her Velcro restraints. “Welcome to your rescue party.”

She sat up fast as he methodically finished with the last of the straps, ready to defend herself if he decided to go psycho on her…but after Jane, Freddy weirdly seemed quite normal. Her scale of crazy had definitely undergone some vast expansion.

He cast a look at Carl and said, “Guess we’ll be leaving him.” He patted Carl’s bloodless cheek. “Sorry, buddy. Sucks for you, I know.”

With that, Freddy folded his knife and jumped down from the back, and Bryn followed, feeling shaky with a toxic mix of adrenaline, relief, uncertainty, and decaying nanites. The ambulance was parked on a small side road off the main one leading down the hill; they were surrounded on three sides by swelling dark hills.

And they weren’t alone. A blue sedan idled nearby, and Freddy walked over to it and opened the back door. When she hesitated, he said, “The ambulance is stolen. If you go joyriding around for long, especially with your headless friend in the back, you’ll be having some fun with the local yokels real soon. C’mon, Bryn. Could have hurt you already if I was going to do it—oh, and if I leave you here, Jane’ll find you soon. You don’t want that. Trust me.”

She really didn’t. After another second or two, she slid into the backseat of the sedan. Freddy shut the door and got into the passenger seat.

The man in the front seat said, “Hello, Bryn,” and she realized that it was no surprise, really.

Jonathan Mercer was driving the car. Fast Freddy’s boss…

And the inventor of Returné.

“I came to save your life,” he said. “How am I doing so far?”