That Nietzsche Thing (12 page)

“No,” I had to admit. “But neither do I want
to be remembered by history as one of its great monsters. We
started this project, General, to protect this country. How can
you, in good conscience, say that Lot 300 is anything but a
plague?”

“The decision has been made, Albert. MJ-12
has spoken.” The General let the finality of his statement hang in
the air between us.

“I don’t accept that. I can’t accept that,” I
said.

“You will have to,” the General said and
climbed from his seat.

Chapter 16

So, there you have it: Dark’s big secret. The
reason he’d encrypted his journal. He was complicit in Geneings
inception, during a clandestine government project to weaponize the
blood of a vampire.

Crazy stuff. Fantastic, even. But the
evidence was all there. The very existence of Geneing to begin
with. And the lot and batch number of Dark’s experiment encoded in
the genetic marker still being used as the litmus test for Gene
Genies a century later. That I was even reading Dark’s book at all
was proof that what it contained was accurate. Encoding it in the
way Dark had done served as its own verification.

This was what Vivian Montavez had died trying
to uncover.

Dark’s Journal goes on to detail his attempts
to derail Groves through official channels. He even asks for and
receives an audience with the Vice President of the United States,
only to discover that Barkley is chairing the MJ-12 committee
himself.

Of course, Dark is characteristically unable
to let the situation lie. More than anything else, Dark is totally
convinced of his own moral certitude. He soon takes it upon himself
to sabotage the whole of the Cain Project, including the results of
batch 300, fearing that the technology in the hands of America’s
enemies would be too great a risk for the country to bear.

Dark was humble like that.

He goes full-on commando. Sneaking into the
labs at night and destroying all the samples of 300. He then
absconds with Cain himself, boxing up the corpse and, with the
assistance of the solders assigned to guard the test subject, loads
the coffin into a waiting truck and driving off the base.

So little did anyone expect Dark’s betrayal,
that he was able to totally blindside them.

But they managed to blindside him, too.

With the blood-drained corpse of its single
subject gone, the Cain Project comes to an end. But years later,
the continued existence of 300 is proven to Dark’s satisfaction
when he notes in newspaper report strikingly familiar symptoms
manifesting amongst North Korean rear echelon officers. MJ-12 had
finally weaponized 300 and used it on the battlefields of
Korea.

Oddly, military or government officials made
no move to punish Dark for his disloyalty. Perhaps his rapid
success as a science fiction author quickly made he too high a
profile a subject to move against. The journal contains nothing
about the rest of Dark’s life.

How exactly Dark disposed of Cain’s body or
his involvement with the Rosicrucians, is left undetailed in the
journal. But he does hint in the last entry of the journal that he
did not destroy the vampire. In fact, quite the opposite. Dark begs
the reader from the future – so wise and adroit that he was able to
decode
Dark’s Last Novel
– to use all his advanced
understanding of genetics to find Cain’s body and discover an
antidote to 300.

Somehow, I think Dark expected someone more
impressive than Detective Sasha Fonseca to be the first to decode
his journal.

But I’d found what I needed to know. Find PFC
Michael Elton, and I would find Cain. And finding Cain would mean
the end to the Geneing epidemic.

Cain was the source.

Cain was Q.

The blood of Q, the person, unlocked Q, the
book, which in turned gave the name of Q, the person.

Dark had a wicked sense of humor like
that.

Vivian Montavez had been looking for Q. The
search had gotten her killed. I was no closer to finding the
identity of Vivian’s killer. But did it matter anymore? With an
opportunity before me to end the whole Geneing epidemic, did one
single murder still matter?

But it was all so absurd. A vampire, alive in
2050? Dark must have kept Cain in his state of torpidity...a grave,
perhaps? Was I looking for the headstone of Michael Elton, PFC?

The second I finished the final page of
Dark’s Last Novel
, I reached for my phone. Of course, I got
nothing but voice mail downtown. If there was anyone left employed
in the records department, they’d be out on the streets, throwing
rocks at Constantine’s Tac-30.

I put down my phone and drummed my fingers on
the carapace of the iBook, trying to remember the URL for the
county death records. Then I realized there was no reason to
believe that Michael Elton was in the King County area, other than
Montavez’s presence here. I’d need to take my query federal...

I was never able to run my search. I slowly
became aware of a cool breeze on my face, blowing in from the
Vivian’s bedroom. A window was open, but I’d been in the apartment
almost the whole evening, reading Dark’s journal, and it was the
first time I had noticed the air stirring.

I climbed to my feet and slipped my Rhino out
of the holster beside the ereader. I throated the little, plastic
gun in my fist as I moved cautiously toward the bedroom door. The
window in the bedroom hadn’t been open ten minutes before, I was
certain. But we were four stories off the road, with no fire
escape.

A shadow moved in the darkened bedroom. I
raised my pistol before me.

“Don’t move!” I called out. “Seattle
Police!”

“Don’t shoot, copper,” a female voice echoed
out of the bedroom. “You got me,” it said as a sultry shadow, hands
raised stepped out before the door.

“Move closer – slowly,” I ordered, not
lowering my snub-nosed revolver. “Into the light.”

“I’m unarmed,” the woman said, stepping
through the bedroom doorway into the dancing light of the single
lamp. She was small and beautiful, dark-haired and made up for the
evening. Her dress was low cut and long, a tiny handbag swung from
her left hand. She looked like she was on her way home from a
cocktail party. Perhaps, in 1953.

“What are you doing here?” I barked, lowering
my pistol. Whoever she was she was certainly not a threat. “How’d
you get in?”

“What am I doing here?” the woman asked,
flipping her hair back to fix me with her large, auburn eyes. “What
are
you
doing here? You’re in my apartment.”

“I’ve been here all evening. You’ve been
hiding in there all night?”

The girl smirked. “No, sweetie. Can I put my
hands down now?” She was still standing with her long, thin arms up
beside her dark hair. I nodded and picked up the Rhino’s holster
off the table.

Then her comment hit me, “What did you say?
This is your apartment?”

“That right,” she said, moving slowly forward
on high heels. She pointed at my pack of Kools on the coffee table.
“Mind if I bum one?” She didn’t wait for a reply, taking a
cigarette out of the pack.

“You lived here with Vivian Montavez?” I
asked. There’d never been mention of a roommate. There was only one
bed.

“Something like that,” she said, putting the
cigarette to her lips. “Got a light?”

I fished out my Zippo, flicking it open. As I
watched the beautiful girl light the tip of her smoke, the
resemblance dawned on me. The self-portrait by the front
door...

“Ugh,” she spat in distaste. “Menthol.”

“But you’re...” I said, still holding the
burning lighter out before me.

“As I said, copper, you’re the one in
my
apartment.”

“But, but,” I stammered, realizing the Zippo
was still lit and flipping it closed. “You’re dead. Dead, and no
fooling.”

“Looks good on me, huh?” Vivian smiled.

“No, I mean, I pulled you out of a dumpster.
You were dead. You
are
dead.”

“Don’t burst a nut worrying about it, honey.
There isn’t time.” Vivian reached down and picked the e-reader up
off the coffee table. She tapped the
previous
button a few
times and fixed me with a smoldering stare. “You decoded it. Q. It
was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I acknowledged. “Well, my friend with
the computers. I followed the trail you left. Found the decryption
key in your DNA.”

Her smoldering stare wavered for a
millisecond. A look of confusion momentarily crossed her big,
beautiful eyes, then vanished as quickly as it had appeared. She
returned the e-reader to the table. “It’s already all over the
Internet. It’s a firestorm. There isn’t much time.”

“You never decoded it, did you?” I guess I’d
already figured that out. All this time, I’d assumed I was playing
catch up with Vivian. But perhaps I’d done her one better. “What is
this? Some kind of ruse? Whose body was that in the dumpster? Did
you switch the DNA samples or something?”

“No honey,” Vivian said, taking a draw of her
cigarette. “It’s no trick. That was me in the dumpster. If you’ve
read this…” She pointed at the e-reader. “…I’m sure you’re close to
piecing together what happened. You look like a smart fella.”

She had been truly dead. I was sure of that.
But now, here she stood. Then that would mean...

I reached for my Rhino. Her hand moved faster
that I could see. She caught my wrist before I could grab hold of
my gun. We arm-wrestled like that for a second, but she was
inhumanly strong.

She squeezed. My wrist began to crack.

“Let go!” I screamed. “Fuck!”

She forced me down to my knees. With one hand
she had me bested. Beaten.

“You know that Nietzsche thing?” she asked,
looking down on me with menace. She could snapped my arm with the
slightest flick of her wrist and she was savoring the power. “About
what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Well, he had that all
turned around...”

She twisted my arm a last few degrees, and I
howled in pain. Then she let me go, pushing me to the ground.

Fuck. It felt like she’d broken my arm. But
she’d made her point.

“You can’t be alive,” I panted. “It’s just
not possible.”

“I’ve got no time to explain,” she said,
finishing the last of her cigarette and snuffing it out in the
ashtray. “They’ll be here any second.”

“Who?” I pulled myself painfully back up onto
the futon, holding my arm. “Who will be here any second?”

“Your FBI buddies,” Vivian said, smiling a
vindictive smile. “They already have your friend. O’Day? Now
they’re coming for you. Despite the unrest downtown, I guess they
could spare their SWAT team to deal with you. You’ve made a whole
lot of big, powerful enemies today, honey. Decoding that book and
then just releasing it on the Internet like that.”

“I didn’t release anything,” I said.

“No, but your friend did. And he ratted you
out. They’re outside, right now. The whole fucking FBI. Any second
now they’re going to burst in here and throw a bag over your head.
I can’t even imagine what sort of hole-in-the-ground they have in
Guantanamo for an enemy of the state like you, but you can tell me
one last thing before you vanish: Where’s Q?”

“Who?” I feigned stupidity.

“Don’t get smart,” she said, stepping toward
me. “Or I’ll break the other arm.”

I flinched in terror. “Read the book!” I
hollered.

“If I could wait that long, I wouldn’t be
asking!” she screamed at me. “Tell me, Fonseca, where is Cain?”

“Go to hell!” I screamed back.

She didn’t get a chance to respond. On cue,
the door to Vivian’s apartment blew in. Constantine’s Tac-30 unit
came storming in, centimeter guns raised. One second, Vivian was
standing over me, the next she had vanished. Back out through the
window in the bedroom, I could only assume. Four stories off the
ground.

I didn’t resist. The tactical guys rolled me
over and quickly slipped my wrists into a zip tie. My arm throbbed,
but it would do no good complaining. A second later, the lights
went out, as a black bag came down over my head.

After that it was just bumping and jostling.
Radios crackling and feet stomping. There was a car, or maybe a
van, then the cold of a steel floor through the fabric of the
hood.

Then just the sound of road noise.

And the sound of screaming voices. And the
chants of a protest.

Chapter 17

When the hood came off, I was looking at four
walls of concrete.

I was intimately familiar of the Town Hall’s
interview rooms, though this was the first time I’d been handcuffed
to one their tables.

Constantine sat across from me, flanked by
two dark suited cohorts. He idly tapped an unopened pack of Kools
on the table before him, twisting them in his fingers. I looked at
them, then at Constantine, then back at the cigarettes.

“You’ve been busy this evening, Detective
Fonseca,” Constantine started, speaking slowly and in a low
tone.

Shit! Was he going to give me a cigarette or
not? Ten seconds into the interrogation, and already it had
escalated to the level of cruel and unusual punishment.

“I don’t know what you think you’ve got on
me,” I replied, watching the Kools circle, hypnotically. “But I’ve
had a quiet night in, reading a book.”

“How about interception and distribution of
Top Secret documents, to begin with?” Constantine smiled.

“That’s crazy,” I snorted.

“And activities pursuant to the undermining
of and interference with, the security of the United States of
America?”

“Now I’m a terrorist?” I exclaimed.

“You said it, Fonseca, not me.”

“This is bullshit!”