The Immortality Virus (3 page)

Somehow, Matt’s assurances didn’t make her feel any better.

“Come on, Grace, it’s an adventure,” Sam said through his dimpled smile. “Do you remember back in school when I tried to convince you to take up chemistry?”

“Yeah,” Grace muttered, not quite looking at him.

“You told me there was no romance, no excitement. I believe your exact words were, ‘Who would want to live forever?’ Do you remember saying that?”

“So you think finding some antiqued killer is an adventure?” Grace asked. But she knew what the adventure was–it was in the potential knowledge. She had never been active in natural life (and certainly not in pro-death) but only because there was nothing she
could
do. But this was her chance to do something, or at least to learn something.

“We hope he’s alive and locatable,” Matt said. “Ultimately, of course, we’re looking for a cure.”

Grace looked around the room, half expecting people to melt out of the walls.

“You’ll be well compensated whether you find him alive or dead,” Matt continued. “But if you find him alive and bring him back here, you’ll get double.”

Matt slid a piece of paper over to Grace. She picked it up, scanned it, and then read it more closely. She tried not to show any emotion, though she was certain she had given something away with her initial reaction.

“Double if I get him alive?” Grace said, trying to sound casual about the exorbitant sum. It was even more than she had imagined when Matt had first contacted her that morning. It was enough to make her suspect he had no intention of letting her refuse the offer. One way or another.

“I want to make sure you focus on this case,” Matt said. “There should be no need to have other clients for a while.”

“I need double,” Grace said, pushing the paper back and trying to sound nonchalant. It was an insane amount of money, of course, more than she would make in twenty good years, but she needed to test her theory.

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Yes, it is.” Grace met his gaze levelly.

“All right, then, the offer is doubled.”

That was too fast, especially for such an outrageous sum of money. Matt either wanted to make absolutely certain she took the job or he had a reasonable suspicion that she would not survive it. Or both.

He would have her killed if she refused the offer, of course. She really should not have come. Her mother was right about the curiosity.

“I need half up front,” Grace said.

Matt raised an eyebrow. “How do I know you won’t just run off with it?”

“For the same reason you knew I’d take the job,” Grace said.

Matt nodded and opened a desk drawer. He pulled out a bank draft, filled it out, and handed it to Grace–half up front.

All she wanted to do after the meeting ended was get out of there without running into Sam. She had enough to think about without rehashing old memories of long lost love. It had taken a couple of decades to get over him, and while she didn’t think she still loved him, she couldn’t quite keep her heart still in her chest.

He caught up with her as she waited for the elevator.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” Sam asked. “It’s got to be, what, sixty years? How are you doing?”

“Great,” Grace said, glancing impatiently at the elevator and avoiding eye contact.

“When I last saw you, you were living in that one room apartment with the public toilet down the hall. I hear you’re established now.”

“I’ve got my own toilet,” Grace said.

“But you never had children,” Sam said.

Grace cringed. She would not start this with him again, not today, not ever again. She had made her choices clear up front. He was the one who had spent fifty years hoping she would change her mind.

“Sorry,” Sam said. “I know it’s too late, but you would have made a great mother.”

Grace bit her tongue. She would not have made a great mother, or even a good one. The mere act of bringing a child into this godforsaken world would have made her bad. This was no world for children, and she wasn’t fond of hypocrites.

“What are you doing working here?” Grace asked by way of changing the subject. “I thought you loved academia.”

“It didn’t love me,” Sam said. “I proposed a controversial study of new nutrition alternatives in conjunction with someone in the sociology department. The next day we both had pink slips.”

Grace tried not to show her anger at The Establishment for forbidding such research. They were not interested in improving the world for humanity, only for themselves. Some even espoused the theory that if the food supplies ran short, it would serve as a means of controlling the population.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Grace said, carefully controlling her tone. Years ago, she would have asked for more details about the research, engaged him in conversation and commiseration, but today she needed to get out of his presence.

“Matt asked me to come work for him when he took over the company. I’m really doing it, Grace. I’m looking for a cure.”

Grace looked around, afraid someone might have heard him, but not even Lucas was there to listen. “Keep your voice down.”

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “We’ve got a team, handpicked by Matt.”

“They don’t know about me, do they?” Grace asked. She had a sudden vision of a dozen people–any of whom might betray them–knowing she was participating in a search for a cure. The vision ended with a scene of Grace, imprisoned in shackles, being tortured for more information.

“Of course not. I didn’t tell anyone who didn’t need to know.” Sam looked more hurt than she’d thought he would. Perhaps she had forgotten quite a bit about his character, or perhaps she was being rationally cautious about a man she had not known for so long. Sixty years could more than change a person. She wondered at his easy trust of her. What made him think she hadn’t decided she liked being alive at one hundred and thirty, as so many others did? Naturalism was for the young, she’d often heard people say.

“Listen, Sam, I need to get started. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.”

Sam opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something else, but in the end he must have decided better of it because he just smiled and walked away.

Once in the relative privacy of the elevator, Grace closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. A long time ago she would have wanted nothing more than to get reacquainted with Sam and maybe try for another shot at forever. She knew better now.

Grace shook off her thoughts long enough to put on her thermal coat, designed to protect her from the cold January winds. It was big enough to cover her small backpack, keeping it from questing fingers. A slit in the front made sure her sidearm remained readily accessible–just in case. She pressed a button in the inside cuff to turn on the thermal lining.

Medicorp security did not care who left the building–only who came in. Their location in the heart of downtown Kansas City made them a temptation for the vagrants living in the park across the street. Thousands of people without work, food, or hope would love their chance at even an hour inside the warm building with free, clean water pouring out of spouts in the bathrooms.

It was a testament to how good Medicorp’s security really was that most of the vagrants kept their distance. It was a testament to the vagrants’ desperation when one of them rushed the door as Grace walked out and felt the first blast of January air on her face.

The man in the tattered coat was heading straight for her. Grace jumped out of the way, not because she thought the man would hurt her but because she thought Medicorp’s security would shoot through her to keep the man at bay. Sure enough, an instant later, he was back on the sidewalk, blood staining the pathetic garment he had used to block the cold.

Grace glanced over her shoulder in time to see a security guard holster his disruptor. She shuddered, but not from the cold. She tried not to think about the man who had lost his life in such a foolish manner, telling herself he had deserved death for being stupid enough to rush a well-guarded building. Yes, his coat was ragged, but there were enough warm bodies around to keep him from freezing to death.

As Grace walked away, the vultures began rushing in, swooping down on the dead man’s body. One man with an even thinner and more ragged coat than the dead one thought he had found a treasure. He nearly knocked Grace over as he ran with it, followed by a small crowd that seemed intent on taking the filthy, bloodstained rag from him.

How had someone broken in last month?
Grace found herself wondering. It wasn’t her business or her job, but it had to have been an inside job. No one would have gotten through those front doors unless they had been invited.

Even with lethal force at their disposal and no compunction against using it, the security guards at Medicorp only managed to clear a twenty-foot area in front of the entranceway. Soon, Grace was pushing against the crowd in the streets, using her elbows, arms, knees, and feet to push, pull, or kick people out of the way. There was a rhythm to the movement, if she could find the right wave to ride, but it took a lot of jostling to find that wave. Finally, she found a stream of people moving towards the rail stop she needed. Once she wriggled her way in, she no longer needed to exert any of her own effort. She just rode the wave, letting their movement pull her along.

As always, insanity reigned downtown. Even knowing how to ride the waves, Grace could do little to keep people from touching or groping. She kept them from picking her pockets by not having anything in her pockets and by keeping her bag under her coat, but personal space did not exist in the wave. As if to remind her, someone beside her brushed a hand against her breasts. Whether on accident or on purpose, she would never know and she frankly did not care. Within seconds the groper drifted away, and they would likely never meet again.

Grace moved one arm to the bulge at her side where she kept her disruptor. It would be difficult to get to it in this crowd, perhaps impossible to get to it in time. On the other hand, if someone started shooting the crowd at random, the sheer number of people surrounding her would give her some protection. If someone set off a bomb...well, very few lived forever. Matthew Stanton Sr. had been in the running, but even he had lost in the end.

As Grace neared the rail station, she once again began to use feet, knees, and elbows to make her way through the crowd. Kindness was not an option. If she were nice, she would end up walking with the crowd all the way to State Line Road, where it finally started to thin out.

A jab to a thin man’s chest, a stomp on a man’s bare foot (What was he thinking?), and a knee wedged between two dull-eyed women to coax them aside. She was nearly to the slower moving edges of the crowd when a man with an elbow spike tried to break her nose in his attempt to get into the center of the rushing street. He had his spiked elbows extended upward in a jabbing manner, making him a danger to himself and everyone around him. He didn’t care if they came in contact with chest, arm, or face. Grace saw it just in time to sidle behind the man.

As she stepped behind him, she made a lightning-fast decision. She took advantage of the element of surprise to grab his wrists from behind and pull them up towards his face. It helped that he was almost as short as she was, though Grace knew she could have taken on a taller man. She brought up her knee behind his, causing him to buckle, and just as the force of the crowd started moving in on them, pinning her to his back, she guided his elbow spike down on his thigh.

The man gasped in pain and fell partway over, but the crowd caught him up and carried him away even as Grace moved over to the side.

Elbow spikes were illegal–whatever that meant. At least Grace’s police training had been able to help today. It hadn’t helped much while she had been on the force.

She shook free of the crowd and ducked into a tunnel. The rail that had been servicing the Kansas City area for over two hundred years still sped along at two hundred miles per hour, trying to service too many people with too few trains. It made Grace nervous. Most terrorist attacks happened on the trains. Anyone who thought that killing a lot of people would make a statement loved public transportation–The Rebellion, Pro-Death, and even The Establishment, though they never took credit. The Establishment often blamed The Rebellion, but everyone knew The Rebellion did not have nearly enough funding to account for the number of attacks attributed to them. They lived in the sewers and ate the rats, earning them the name Sewer Rats.

There were other terrorist causes, too–too many to count, but it did not matter. Public transportation was the only way to travel except for those wealthy enough to own a hovercar and a landing pad.

A train pulled out of the station as Grace stepped onto the platform, pushing her way to the front of the long line of people waiting to get on. A second train pulled up thirty seconds later, but a fat man pushed Grace and several other passengers out of the way in order to get on. He knocked one man so hard that his cowboy hat went flying, and he had to run after it. The fat man was the only one who made the train at their door–and he kept several people from getting off.

“Why don’t you share some of your food with someone else?” the man in the cowboy hat shouted just before the door to the train slammed home. A murmur of agreement rippled through those nearby, but Grace did not join in. The fat man would probably develop heart disease and die sooner than he would have, thus balancing the amount of food he ate now. Grace only despised him for making her wait for the next train.