Dark Angel: Skin Game (13 page)

"Go on, Max. What do you know about White? Is he ... dirty, somehow?"

"That hardly covers it."

"You have to tell me more."

Hell, she could barely believe the true agenda of Ames White herself... and she'd seen the agents of the cult firsthand. How could she hope to convince Clemente without the risk of losing his confidence completely?

"You just... need to take a good hard look into him," she managed.

"I can only look so hard."

"You're a detective, aren't you? Fucking detect!"

He gestured with open hands. "Max—if there are bad things to be found out about Ames White, what makes you think that either White or the government will let a local cop find them?"

"I found out, didn't I?"

"Then take the load off my shoulders—share wHat you know."

She sighed and sat back down, heavily; she wished the darkness of the room would just swallow her. "Look, you're not going to believe me ... so I want you to check it out on your own. Seeing is believing, you heard of that?"

Intrigued, Clemente rubbed a hand over his chin. "What makes you think I won't believe you?" Max rolled her eyes, shook her head. "It's too whack to be true___It just is."

A tiny, teasing grin appeared. "Like the government making genetically engineered killing machines without the public's knowledge?"

She smirked at him. "Yeah, like that—only a whole lot weirder."

The detective's smile disappeared. He looked confused, and she could hardly blame him. At last he said, "You said you trusted me. Well, that goes both ways. Trust me with this, Max—trust me that I'll take you seriously."

And, so—taking a deep breath, and a leap of faith—she launched into the story of the ancient breeding cult whose snake-worshiping conclave of leaders manipulated events and people, and had for centuries; she pressed on, telling the detective how these crazies had been trying to breed genetically superior humans for the last thousand years or so, an objective that had eventually led to the modern-day creation ofManticore.

To some degree, they had succeeded in their attempt to build a "better" human. She had seen Ames White, who did the bidding of the conclave, perform acts of strength and daring that rivaled anything any transgenic could accomplish ... with the added detail that White and the others like him could feel no pain. When she had finished what even she knew sounded like

the most absurd of tall tales, Clemente looked even more confused, and a little bit like she'd punched him out.

But at least he wasn't eyeballing her as if she were a madwoman. In fact, her gut instinct told her he believed her, or at least believed in her sincerity.

"Can you prove any of this?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Not really—anytime I've gotten anything, they've covered up, sort of a scorched earth policy. But that team that came into Jam Pony—you saw those pumped-up uber-humans—they didn't work for any government agency.... They worked for the conclave of the snake cult."

He said nothing for a long time. They just sat there in the darkness, with his eyes moving in thought, and Max studying him to see if she had outright lost him.

Finally, quietly, Clemente said, "You're right, Max—it does sound crazy."

Max's heart sank.

"But," he said, getting up, shaking his head and grinning wryly, "in this job, it doesn't pay to not look into things, just because they sound crazy."

A warmth for this man filled her, and she stood and extended her hand; they shook, and she said, "Thanks, Ramon."

He checked his watch. "I've got to split... but I'll dig into this weird shit, as much as I can. Snakes, huh?"

"Snakes."

"Those I may not dig into."

She smiled a little. "Don't blame you."

"Why is White's agenda—the snake cult's agenda—anti-transgenic? Shouldn't all you genetic wonders hang together?"

"I don't understand it myself, Ramon. Still putting pieces together. The point is, White wants to wipe us out... and blaming murders on transgenics is a good way to win that PR war we were talking about."

"People don't usually die in PR wars."

"I don't mean anything light by that, Ramon. I'm sorry that the cop got killed, no matter who did it."

"Thanks, but getting killed wasn't the worst of it, not for him or your PR war—he was another skinning victim."

Max let out a long breath. "Skinned—how many does that make?"

"Three. One we found two nights ago ... it was all over the news, you saw that, right?

... Now this one tonight, and there was another a few months ago."

"All cops?" Max asked.

Clemente shook his head. "The first guy's prints came up on the computer that he was a shoe salesman, but there was something hinky about that one."

"Hinky how?"

Another head shake. "I've already told you way too much, Max. Now I'm outta here."

She walked along with him. "We'll talk again?"

"I don't know," Clemente said with a shrug. "This cop killing will be a priority, and if we are looking for a trans-genic, well... you might not want to invite me back in."

"Ramon, this changes nothing about what we discussed; in fact, it shows we were on the right track—Ames White and others like him will try to use this to further inflame the public."

"Yeah, and it'll work."

"So find the real killer, why don't you?"

"Even if it's a transgenic?"

"It certainly won't be a transgenic from inside Terminal City."

"Are you saying it would be impossible for one of you to sneak out of here?"

That made her uncomfortable. "We are penned up, but... it would be possible, yes. So I tell you what-—we'll look into this from this end too. After all, if the killer is a transgenic, we want him caught as much as you do."

The cop stopped to look at her. "You do?"

Max stopped and nodded. "Ramon, if we want to be part of this society, we have to prove to people that we're not monsters. If one of us is doing this, he needs to be stopped."

"Now that would be good PR," Clemente said.

"It's more than just PR—it's the right thing."

She escorted the detective to the gate, where the two trans-genic sentries awaited. As he walked through, he turned back to face her.

"No one in, no one out—right?"

"Right."

Clemente started to turn away, but turned back. "And, Max..."

"Yeah?"

"We will talk again."

Her smile tight and sober, she said, "Good."

Clemente walked off into the early morning darkness, his two uniformed bodyguards falling in alongside him, heading for the National Guard barricade.

Her back to the gate now, Max asked, "Dix, did you get all that?"

"Oh yeah," came the voice in her earpiece.

"Call Logan, and transmit that tape to him. And, Dix?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell Joshua I need to talk to him right away."

"I'll get on it. Where are you gonna be?"

She started walking. "Coming to you."

Already waiting when she arrived, Joshua looked up when Max entered the media center. Dix, Luke, and several other transgenics manned the monitors, most of them concentrating either on the security screens or watching the TV news coverage. Dix sat up on his raised platform in front of his computer monitor.

"You get Logan?" she asked.

Dix nodded. "Got him online right now. You wanna talk to the boy?"

"Yeah." She climbed the two stairs up to Dix's work station. He slid aside so she could ease in front of the camera mounted on top of his monitor.

"Hey, you," Logan's face on the screen said.

"Hi—need your help."

"When did I ever say no?"

"Did Dix send you the conversation he taped?"

"I've got it."

"Good. When you check it out, you'll hear Clemente refer to a killing a while back. It was mentioned in passing on the news coverage of the cop who was skinned two nights ago."

"Rings a faint bell."

"It'll ring clearer when you listen to that conversation. What I need you to do is find out all you can about that first murder."

"Okay—get right on it. Are we trying to solve a murder? Do we have some sort of serial killer out there, skinning his—or her—victims?"

"All of the above and more. But mostly, know this: White's involved with this somehow. One of White's minions, Otto Gottlieb, called Clemente while he and I were confabbing."

"Does White suspect a transgenic? The TV newscast indicated that, remember. Or is this just antitransgenic media games?"

"I don't know," Max said. "But there's definitely something going on—typical Ames White manipulation and disinformation—and we need to know exactly what that is."

Logan said, "All right, Max. I'll find out what I can."

Relief flowed through her.

Somehow, having Logan working on this made her feel that it would all come out all right in the end. The other

problems they'd met together had turned out all right, hadn't they?

Then she thought about where she was and the situation they were in and felt like laughing. Even surrounded by police and the National Guard, not knowing when an all-out genocidal attack might be launched on Terminal City, she felt everything was all right simply because Logan was on her side.

Max allowed that perhaps Original Cindy had been right in saying, "Boo, you are so whipped."

She couldn't help but smile; maybe she was.

"Something funny?" Logan asked.

She shook her head. "Just nice to know you're working with us."

"Nice to be appreciated.... I'll let you know when I have anything."

"Thanks," she said, wanting to say, I love you, instead saying, "I'll seeya."

"Yeah," he said, pausing, as if fighting his own urge to say something significant, but saying only, "Seeya."

And the screen went blank.

Max climbed down from Dix's perch and put a hand on Joshua's shoulder. "Can we go talk?"

"Sure, Little Fella."

They went for a walk, ending up again in the tunnel below the far end of Terminal City. Though it gave them privacy, the claustrophobic space also reminded Max of the basement at Manticore; and she found herself feeling uneasy about being down here, especially when she considered what she wanted to talk to Joshua about.

Finally, she just dove in. "You remember us talking about the others—the ones like Isaac."

"Yes, Max."

"I want to talk about them again."

"Okay." His canine brow wrinkled. "Something wrong?"

They took a few steps, the tunnel dark, their footfalls echoing very softly off the walls.

Neither of them really needed the lights to see, and without Logan along, they didn't bother to turn them on.

"There ... may be."

Joshua said nothing.

"You see ... another policeman died tonight."

"And now Max thinks it was one of us too."

Max shook her head quickly. "No—it's just that Detective Clemente thinks there might be evidence that it was a trans-genic."

"Not good. Not good."

"Joshua, that doesn't mean it was someone from the Manticore basement, or even that the evidence is real... considering the source."

"Source?"

"Ames White."

A low growl escaped from Joshua and his eyes burned with hatred.

Though, like Max, Joshua sought only a peaceful life and a chance to fit in, a part of him longed to tear White into tiny pieces and watch him die very slowly. White had murdered his friend Annie—sweet Annie Fisher, a blind girl who had never hurt anyone.

Gentle giant or not, Joshua still wanted to exact a full measure of revenge for this heinous crime. Max had kept Joshua from killing White that night at Jam Pony; but they both knew that if he ever caught up with White again, she would be wasting her breath, trying to stop the beastlike man that was Joshua from killing the manlike beast that was Ames White.

Max eased down the wall and took a seat on the tile floor. Though she was someone who needed to sleep only every few days, she felt like she could just curl up on the cool tiles. Joshua slid down and sat facing her, his back propped against the opposite wall.

because it's White," she said, "I've got to find out what really happened... and the more I know about our brothers and sisters on the outside, the easier it will be to deal with whatever 'evidence' White supplies."

Joshua considered this for a few moments, then said, "Father made many of us, but the others—the ones after Father—they didn't care about us. They hated us, the ones in the basement."

Nodding, Max asked, "What can you tell me about them, individually?"

The question seemed to perplex Joshua.

Taking a deep breath, Max asked, "You remember how you taught me about Isaac?"

"Isaac was easy to tell Max about—he was my brother, he was gentle. But they changed him."

"The others down there, you told me some of their names before ..."

"Dill."

"Yes!"

Joshua looked surprised and a little scared.

"Sorry," she said, "I don't mean to startle you—it's just that that was one of the names you mentioned before. I want to know about them. Start with Dill."

Leaning back and closing his eyes, Joshua seemed to drift off for a moment. "He came after Isaac and me. Him and his brother, Oshi. After Father tried dogs, he moved to cats next."

"Dill and Oshi have feline DNA?"

"Uh-huh."

Of all the things in her genetic cocktail, the feline DNA had provided some of her most inconvenient if not biggest problems. She still battled going into heat twice a year—just one example of the kind of humiliating shit being a genetic test-tube baby could bring a girl.

"Any idea what kind of cats?" she asked him.

"Not sure for Dill. Oshi—a Siamese, I think. They hated being kept in cages, but because of the way they could run and jump, they were kept in the smallest cells. That was mean."

"Very mean, Joshua. And when they got out?"

Joshua shrugged. "Don't know."

"Didn't you mention a Gabriel?"

The snoutlike mouth smiled. "Joshua likes Gabriel. He comes from an ant."

"An ant?" Max asked, stretching her legs out in front of her. "No kidding—insect DNA?"