Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (15 page)

Glancing at Gantry, I felt my mouth twist into a frown.

Then I grabbed the lumpy armrest of the couch and hauled myself to my feet.

Before I even got inside, I had a feeling I already knew who I would see.

Sure enough, the first thing I saw when I rounded the corner into Irene’s sitting room, and glimpsed the concave surface of Irene’s old-fashioned, cathode-ray-tube television set that sat hunched in one corner of the room like an angry gorilla...was Razmun.

Yeah, that Razmun.

The guy who pretended to be human, and who pretended to be Nik’s only friend among the humans of Palarine. The guy who pretended to be keeping us safe from terrorist attacks while he organized and perpetrated them himself.

The guy who blew up a bunch of mostly-innocent people during Nik’s trial to gain ownership of me and Nik from the Palarine military. The guy who later kidnapped us, threatened to kill me, and proceeded to tell Nik how he would be conscripted into Razmun’s terrorist army as Razmun’s personal, on-call gate-shifter.

All of this was in the name of
viva la revolution
and death to the human scum and yadda yadda yadda. The usual terrorist crap.

While Razmun might have some pretty legitimate reasons for feeling the way he did (centuries of slavery for his people, forcible conscription into the human military, morph being required to breed with humans to solve human infertility problems, being coerced into taking human owners as lock-mates and on and on), it didn’t really balance the scales, in my eyes. It also didn’t make him significantly less crazy than the crazies on Earth who strapped bombs to their chests and stepped into crowds of innocent people, thinking that was the answer.

Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled to see Razmun again.

This happened to be Razmun’s human form, the one I once knew as Ledi, General Advisor to the Palarine Military Council.

Watching Ledi speak into a microphone that a Seattle news reporter had thrust into his face was a pretty surreal experience, all in all.

It took a few seconds more before I could get a handle on his words.

“...Several of us saw it happen,” Razmun said seriously, answering a question posed by the reporter standing beside him.

Razmun’s hazel eyes looked weirdly dramatic in the lights of the camera...but he looked, indisputably, human. He motioned towards a smoking building in the background, which I recognized as one on Yesler Street, in downtown Seattle.

“...At least two of us saw a woman there,” Razmun said. “She left the building wearing a black backpack. She ran out right after the blast, along with two men wearing what looked like combat armor...”

The reported looked at the camera, her face and mouth grim as she held a hand to her earpiece, speaking into her microphone. “For those of you just joining us, I’m here with our newest Council member candidate, Lars Falk, who happened to be inside the building working when the bomb went off. He is one of several claiming to see several persons of interest leave the scene wearing suspicious clothing, just prior to the blast going off...”

“Councilman,” Gantry muttered next to me.

My mind spun around the information, too. I shoved it aside a second later as the reporter turned back towards Razmun.

Her mouth still set in a grim line, she said, “Can you tell us anything else, sir? Did any of the alleged suspects say or do anything when you saw them?”

She thrust the microphone back under his mouth even as Razmun shook his head, his expression showing just the right mix of concerned citizen and shock.
 

“No,” he said, as if thinking, staring past her into the burning building. “No...not that I can recall. They were running...and their clothing was strange, like I said. Especially for that time of night. I was between meetings and so in the hallway, or I may not have seen them at all. But I remember the woman’s face...” he said, trailing briefly. Shaking himself, as if still fighting shock, he added, “We’re hoping building security can retrieve the footage of the event. There is surveillance all throughout that building, since it it government owned, so it’s reasonable to believe that images of the perpetrator exist...”

From the couch, I saw Nik stiffen.
 

Or maybe I felt it.

Giving him a questioning look, I glanced back at the screen when he didn’t return my gaze.

Razmun was still talking, telling the reporter about how those of them who survived got out of the building, helping one another and carrying the injured to the fire exits. I have to admit, he was pretty compelling to listen to...and to watch...just as he had been on Palarine. The guy was a born politician, and his human form seemed to affecting the female reporter, even now, with the remnants of a bomb burning the building behind her.

Meaning he was hot, yeah. He knew how to carry it with a quiet confidence that somehow made it all the more compelling.

That time, Nik gave me a hard stare.
 

I shrugged, unapologetic.

It was true. Didn’t mean I wanted the guy or anything...far from it. But I couldn’t help noticing it. More than anything, I found it disturbing because I knew how far he might get with a combination of that and being a morph and having zero scruples.

“...I’m just glad most of us got out all right,” Razmun was saying, even as I thought it. His eyes brightened then, right before he shook his head. “Not all of us did, of course. But I’d rather not talk about that now, if you don’t mind. I know some of their families...”

The reporter nodded seriously, her face tense.

He’d gotten to her, though. I could see it in her eyes, and on her face. The emotion wasn’t all feigned for the camera, or even in the vein of that false sympathy thing people did when confronted by someone else’s grief. If I didn’t know it was an act, that Razmun cared as little for human life as someone else might about crushing cockroaches, it might have gotten to me, too. He was damned convincing, for a mass murderer.

I knew it only made him that much more dangerous.

Behind them, another blast ricocheted between the buildings, causing everyone to flinch and duck. I saw police in SWAT uniforms scatter backwards from the scene, illuminated by spotlights in the dying sunlight. Firemen and a line of cops stood there, too, huddled behind their parked cars, almost as if they had the building under siege. Another, smaller explosion rocked the street a few seconds later, as if something inside had ignited. The line of civilians I could see on the other side of the police ring flinched and ducked as a mass again.

Then they all looked up, as if seeing something on one of the higher floors.

The reporter turned to face the camera, her expression even more tense as she touched her earpiece, presumably so she could hear better.

“...We are now being told that a gas heater in the basement has ignited from the initial blast,” she said. “Police and emergency personnel are still trying to get everyone out of the building...”

From next to me, I heard Gantry swear.

I caught another glimpse of Nik’s face from where he watched the flickering screen from the lime green trundle bed that we slept on every night. The bed had been flipped back into a couch, but he still sank in it almost to the carpeted floor.

From his expression, Nik was even less happy about seeing his childhood friend than I was.

“They set off a bomb?” I said, when no one was talking. “The morph, I mean?”

Nik looked up at me.

His eyes were the same pale hazel as Razmun’s.

“Yes,” he said simply.

“Why?” I said. “Why would they do that? Do they want the humans to know they’re here?”

Nik didn’t answer me, but Irene did, looking up from where she sat next to Nik. She held her hands clasped between her knees, creating a fold in the faded, print dress she wore over bare legs and feet.

“Nik thinks it’s a threat,” she said.

I frowned. I couldn’t help it, seeing the two of them sitting so close together.
 

“He does, does he?” I said.

“Yeah,” Irene said, not seeing my frown from where she trained her eyes on the television. “An implied one. At the two of you.” She looked at Nik. “Right?”

Nik’s eyes were focused on me when I turned to look at him again.

“He will describe you to the police as the woman who left the building,” Nik said simply. “He will describe you...and possibly me, and anyone else connected to you that he has uncovered. He very likely will produce visual proof to back up his story, since some of his morph will undoubtedly have transformed into likenesses of us to lend credence to his story.” Nik might have felt something off me at that, because he looked away from the television once more, meeting my gaze, his expression serious. “He will also likely say that you and those near you...and me...were the people who accompanied you into the building. If he has no other human witnesses, or the evidence from surveillance equipment is not adequate for some reason, he will get other morph to testify the same, as if they are humans who were scattered in different parts of the building. I am quite sure he will be convincing. This is not a difficult thing to do...given that the humans here have no awareness of morph.”

I let out a disbelieving snort.

“That’s ridiculous. Why would he do that, Nik?”

When Nik didn’t answer, I sharpened my voice.
 

“Nik?” I said. “Why would they take such a stupid risk? If you got picked up by the cops, they could ID you as an alien. Your blood is different, right? Well, they would probably take a sample...they definitely would if they locked you up for real.” I glanced at Gantry to confirm this, and he nodded, once. I looked back at Nik then, folding my arms in front of my chest. “Why the hell would Razmun want the human authorities of Earth to know that
any
of you existed?”

“He doesn’t care about the human authorities here at all,” Nik said, shrugging. “He likely sees them as wholly irrelevant...right now, anyway. His opinion may change later, but right now, they are not a part of his calculations at all, I imagine.”

“What?” I let out another disbelieving snort. “Why not?”

“He thinks I can get him off Earth,” Nik said simply, looking up at me again.

I stared at Nik blankly for a moment, briefly stumped.
 

“So?” I said finally. “How the hell does bombing the Yesler Building help with any of that?”

“He will keep killing people until I agree to help him, Dakota,” Nik said, his voice patient that time. “Or he will try to get us arrested, then break us out, once he knows exactly where we are. He has likely been unable to locate us through the channels he has attempted thus far, and is growing impatient. He is trying this now.”

Nik said it all matter-of-factly, his voice a near-monotone.

I could feel his anger now.

I watched him look back at the television, his expression unmoving.
 

I glanced at Irene, who sat utterly still, staring intently at the screen, her face pale in the flickering blue light from the old television. I looked at Gantry last, who was texting something into his phone with quick jabs of his fingers. He alone met my gaze, glancing up from the text once he’d sent it, his expression foreboding.

“You have people down there?” I asked him.

“I will in a few minutes,” Gantry said. “Does he want us to try and pick this guy up?”

I realized he meant Nik.