Fear (16 page)

“I'm afraid so,” said Loki. “But don't worry, you'll be seeing her soon.”

Gaia gritted her teeth. “You sadistic son of a bitch.” She jumped up and planted another high kick on the window. More plaster dust fell, a little more this time. “Come in here and I'll kill you.”

Loki turned his attention back to Gaia. He raised his head and tilted his chin in the air. “I don't think so,” he said. “You overestimate yourself, little girl.”

“Try me.”

Loki snorted. “I have tried you. I have tested you and bested you on every occasion.”

“Let's go again,” said Gaia. “Come on. Just you and me.”

“It's too late for that now. You had your chance. Dozens of chances, actually.” He put his hand against the glass. “You've had every opportunity to see the truth. To see that what I want is not only best for you, but best for everyone.”

“Best for everyone?” Gaia slammed a fist against the window. “How is killing people best for everyone?” Behind her she could hear Tatiana gasping as if all the air had been sucked from the room.

“I only did what was necessary. You still think you are an important piece in this game, but you're only a pawn.” Loki's smile grew brighter. “Tell me, do you still believe that it was genetic manipulation that took away your fear?”

“I haven't found any conclusive evidence to substantiate or dismiss the possibility. All I know is that it's one of many theories you've tried to feed me,” said Gaia.

Loki shrugged. “A convenient lie to secure your cooperation for the moment.” His smile turned into a sneer. “The truth is, you are what you always suspected.”

“What's that?”

“A freak.” He drew back from the glass and shook his head. “A fluke. An aberration.”

Gaia pounded her fists against the window. “How do I know you're not lying? Everything you've told me has been a lie!”

“Believe what you want. But I'm speaking the truth. You want the rest of the truth?” Loki's smile returned. “Well, now the truth is that you're no longer needed.”

“Needed for what?” asked Gaia.

Loki reached into his suit coat and produced a vial of some clear fluid. “Your problem is that you're not just fearless, you're senseless. You don't plan ahead. With this. . .” He held the vial up to the light. “I'll reproduce everything that made you special, without all of your flaws.”

Before Gaia could respond, Loki turned away from the glass. He walked across the room, paused at a wall panel, and quickly typed in a numeric code. The big man cast one last cold look over his shoulder, then stepped through a door on the other side of the room and disappeared.

“She's dead,” said Tatiana.

Gaia went to her and took hold of her arm. “We don't know that.”

Tatiana looked at her through blue eyes that were swimming in tears. “Why would he say it if she wasn't really dead?”

“Because he lies,” said Gaia. “Because he wouldn't know the truth if it bit him in the ass. Because he knew it would hurt you.”

A muffled thump came from the room that held the animal cages. Gaia looked up and saw that the space behind the glass was rapidly filling with thick, dirty smoke. Another thump came.
Tongues of fire
reached up along the window.

“Come on!” Gaia shouted. “We've got to get out of here.” She grabbed the handle on the door they had come through and pulled. It didn't open. “No!”

She delivered a straight kick to the door. A roundhouse kick. Another straight kick. Wood began to crack. On the fourth kick the door sagged on its hinges. With the fifth it went flying out into the hallway beyond.

Greasy smoke rolled into the room. The air was hot and weighed down with thick, chemical odors.

Tatiana stared at the open door with a blank expression. “She's dead.”

“We don't know that,” Gaia said again, “but if you don't start moving, we will be.” She grabbed the other girl by the hand and pulled her out the door.

ED POUNDED THE DOOR WITH
the heel of his hand. “Heather? Heather, are you in there?”
He grabbed the knob again and gave it a useless shake.
Locked.

From the way Heather had sounded on the phone, she needed help and she needed it fast.
I should have called 911 on the way over here,
Ed thought. Heather said she had been taking drugs, and she might end up in jail if Ed turned her in, but jail was still a hundred times better than dead. He gave the door another thump. “Heather!”

A door opened, but not the one to Heather's apartment. This door was on the other side of the hall. A woman with wavy black hair and heavy eye shadow leaned out into the hall. “Stop that shouting!” she shouted.

“I think someone's in trouble over here,” said Ed.

“Yeah?” The woman glared at Ed. “You keep shouting out there, you're going to be in trouble.” She pulled back into her apartment and slammed the door.

Ed walked back and forth along the hallway, looking for another way into Heather's apartment. At the end of the hall was a window guarded by a large potted fern. He squeezed past the plant and looked outside.
A narrow ledge,
no more than eight inches wide, ran along the side of the building. The ledge ran right past Heather's apartment.

It took some work, but Ed managed to pry open the lock at the top of the window. He gave a good shove, and the window flew open. Cold air poured down the hallway. Ed stuck his head out and looked down. Fifty feet. Maybe more like sixty. One good thing: if he fell from here, he wouldn't have to worry about the damn wheelchair.

“Hey!” screamed a voice from the hall. Ed looked around and saw that eye shadow woman was staring at him again. “I'm calling the police right now,” she said.

“You do that, babe,” replied Ed. “And make sure they bring an ambulance.” Then he put his right foot on the windowsill and climbed onto the ledge.

It was a short trip to Heather's window, but Ed's legs began to tremble before he had gone ten feet. Years of being on his butt had turned muscle into nothing, and weeks of walking on the crutches hadn't exactly been a Thigh Master workout. He had skated and walked and run on his underused legs and they were letting him know they'd had enough.

Ten more steps. That's all I ask. Then you can go Jell-O.

He made it to the window, held his breath, and pushed. It opened with silent ease. Ed tumbled into the apartment, his legs aching from ankle to waist. “Heather!” he shouted. “Where are you?”

A soft moan came from the next room. Ed went that way as fast as his worn-out legs would carry him.

She was on the floor, facedown, and for a moment
he had a terrible, cold feeling that it might already be too late,
but then Heather took a deep breath and her right hand twitched.

“Heather!” Ed sat down beside her, turned her over, and cradled her head in his lap. “What did you do? What did you take?”

Her blue eyes fluttered open. “There were mice,” she said.

“Mice?”

“And cats. Cats and mice. And I didn't want to be the mouse, Ed. I was so tired of being the mouse.” Her arms suddenly rose straight up, then slapped down against the hardwood floor. “Gaia is a cat. Now I'm a cat, too.”

Ed brushed her hair back from her face. “Heather, I need to go call a doctor.”

“No!” Her hand latched onto his arm with painful strength. “Josh was going to go get help, but he didn't come back.”

“Who's Josh?”

Heather's eyes closed, and her mouth curled up in a dreamy smile. “My boyfriend,” she said. “You should see him. He's so beautiful. So beautiful.”

“Yeah,” said Ed. “I'm sure he's gorgeous. Did he give you the drugs?”

“Mmmm.” Heather opened her eyes. “He showed me the mice.”

Back to the mice again.
“Heather, what kind of drugs did you take?”

“The doctor gave me the drugs, the cat drugs.”

“A doctor? At the hospital?”

“No, at the mouse house.” Heather's face tightened into a grimace. “Followed Gaia cat to her house and saw all the blood. So much blood, Ed. But I wasn't scared. Nope, never.”

Ed craned his neck and looked around. There had to be a phone nearby. “Heather, I'm going to go and—”

She came alive in an explosion of flailing arms.
“No! No!” Heather pushed Ed over on his back and pinned him against the floor. “You can't go anywhere,” she said. “You can't leave me.”

Once Ed had seen a guy so tanked on PCP that he picked up a four-hundred-pound motorcycle. That guy had nothing on Heather. Ed tried to push her arms away, but Heather's muscles were as hard and tight as metal cables. Her eyes opened, revealing whites that were streaked with bloody red. “Josh left me,” she said.

“I won't,” Ed replied.

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Heather smiled at him. “Okay.” She released her grip and dropped onto Ed, her brown hair spilling in his face. “You know what, Ed?”

“What?”

“I can't see,” she said. “I can't see a thing.” She patted his arm. “But I'm not afraid.”

Ed reached for the phone to call an ambulance. “Hang on,” he whispered. “Just hang on.”

This second-generation drug had not been tried anywhere. Not on animals. Certainly not on a human. But it was about to be.

THE CAR SLID DOWN SEVENTY-SECOND
Street in the
predawn silence.
From his place in the leather-cushioned backseat, Loki was comfortable. He was even calm. But he was not happy.

He held up the messaging phone and looked at the small display.

Only a day before, things had been going so well. Glenn had started experimenting with the second generation of the phobosan. His test animals and the human subject, this girl Heather, had been providing invaluable data. He had his lab. His assistants. Most of all, he had his witless brother just where he wanted him.

Now all of that was gone. Tom and his Russian whore had escaped. Loki had no doubt that the two of them would soon be back in the city, causing him endless trouble. The lab, which could have performed so many more important experiments, was ruined, thanks to his little brat, Gaia. The animals were dead, the test subject no longer under his control.

It was going to take drastic measures to put the pieces back together.
Extreme tactics.
But Loki, who never shied away from his duty, was willing to go the distance.

He held up the vial of serum and watched as the streetlight glistened on the small glass container.
This second-generation drug had not been tried anywhere. Not on animals. Certainly not on a human. But it was about to be.

Loki pulled out a syringe and rolled up his sleeve. By the time his brother arrived in New York, he would be ready.

Normally
I'd be waxing philosophical right now. I'd be going off on some tangent about my childhood or some epiphany I had at Gray's Papaya about how pit-filled orange juice and raw hot dogs were somehow a metaphor for my tragic life.

But really, I'd just be stalling. Mentally stalling. Letting my mind get clouded up with dime-store self-analysis, self-pity, and a bunch of half-baked theories instead of using all that mental energy in a constructive way. Who knows, maybe even coming up with some kind of plan.

I know. This is something I should have figured out months ago. But it was the look on Tatiana's face tonight that finally woke me up. That numb, defeated expression drooping off her profile as our cab bumped and lurched its way over the potholes on Eighth Avenue, taking our exhausted remains back to the Seventy-second Street apartment. It was a look I've probably had on my own face a thousand times before. The look of total helplessness and futility that only
he
could induce.

Loki. The man who may very well be my father. He threatened Tatiana and me with every conceivable fate. He told her that her mother was dead. I could only infer that my father (at least the man I'd always thought was my father) was supposed to be dead, too. Loki told me he didn't “need?” me anymore, whatever that was supposed to mean, and then he left
us
for dead, setting his own medical lab—and probably his own entire building—on fire, all the time keeping that same maniacally calm glint in his crystal blue eyes. And what was our response? The only response we could have—to run away. To sulk in a filthy cab and make it back home to lick our wounds, grateful just to be alive.

But I could see it in Tatiana's eyes in the cab. I could see her doing exactly what I would have been doing, what I probably
was
doing at that moment. What I've done just about every time Loki punctured another gaping hole in my way too tattered life. . .

Nothing.
Nothing but sulking and pitying and hypothesizing and speculating, which are all a bunch of euphemisms for
nothing.

And for the first time, I was able to see someone else respond to getting the life sucked out of her inch by inch, to having everyone she loves get shot down like little tin figures in a cheap carnival shooting gallery.

And it woke me up. Because let's face it, I never understand anything when it's happening to me. I never understand all the sadomasochistic stuff I do to myself. But seeing someone else doing it to herself. . . it all becomes so damn
obvious,
doesn't it? Suddenly I can't understand how anyone in her right mind could miss it.

Now I can see it so clearly.
That
is what Loki does to people. That depressive devastation in Tatiana's eyes. That's how he wins. He
talks
people into submission. He buries people with plausible threats until they're almost six feet under.