Dark Angel: Skin Game (4 page)

Logan turned to him. "Agent White wants your people in there to secure the crime scene, ASAP."

Clemente made no move, standing with wide eyes and perhaps just a hint of skepticism as Logan yanked open the van's rear doors. Alec loaded Max in, then Sketchy shoved

Mole and Joshua up and in. Alec climbed into the van with the prisoners while Logan, businesslike, said, "We're going to have to commandeer this ambulance."

Sketchy peeled off to help ease Gem—the X5 who'd given birth during the siege—and her new baby into the ambulance parked next to the van. Dalton, the short blond male X5 who'd been traveling with Gem, climbed aboard as well. Original Cindy—the beautiful African-American bike messenger who was Max's best friend in Seattle—

followed suit.

Logan turned back to Clemente and said, with the faintest hint of sarcasm in his voice,

"Agent White is not a man who likes to be kept waiting."

The driver of the ambulance slowly climbed down from his seat, and Sketchy stepped into the man's space. "We'll take over from here," Sketch said, playing his macho SWAT role to the hilt. "Unless you wanna buy yourself a six-hour decontamination hose-down."

The driver wanted none of that, and backed off, while Sketchy climbed behind the wheel of the ambulance. Not waiting for Clemente to move, Logan slammed the door of the police van and jumped into the driver's seat.

Inside, Max and the others slipped the unfastened cuffs off as Logan started the vehicle.

"Move the barricades," he shouted through the windshield, waving for the officers in front of the van to clear the long sawhorses that kept the crowd back. The headlights of the van and the ambulance painted the mob a ghostly white.

With the crowd still screaming, "Kill the freaks," Logan shifted into gear and let the vehicle roll gently forward.

Behind him, Max encouraged this approach, saying, "Nice and easy."

The van moved through the crowd to screams of "Monsters!" and "Kill 'em now!"

Looking out the back window, Max watched Clemente melt into the crowd, then the crowd melt into the night, as

the two vehicles rolled off into the darkness. Tension seemed to palpably dissipate—

the crisis was over.

Finally, when Max saw no one following them except the ambulance with the others, she let out a long sigh of relief. "We're clear."

The van filled with whoops and cheers as Joshua and Mole knocked fists.

"Now that's what I'm talkin' about!" Mole yelled.

"It's all good," said Alec, a wide smile breaking his normally laid-back demeanor.

Grinning into the rearview mirror, Logan said, "Just for the record, that girl was kickin'

your ass."

Logan was referring to a particularly bulked-up female fighter on Ames White's hit squad, back at Jam Pony.

Alec's smile tightened a fraction. "I had her. I was just set-tin' her up."

Everyone laughed.

Keeping her voice low and even, knowing they weren't really in the clear yet, Max said, "All right, head for Terminal City."

Something nagged at Clemente—this just didn't feel right—and when he entered Jam Pony it was with gun drawn and both arms extended, his flashlight in his left hand, his pistol in his right.

Behind him, four members of the SWAT team—the PD's men, not White's—fell into a loose line and then spread out once they were inside the door. The power was still out and the place was bathed in eerie shadows, strangely quiet after the tension of the day.

It was almost as if the building needed a rest too....

Coming around a corner, Clemente saw three people sitting on a bench, apparently just waiting for the police to enter. Nearest him sat a young woman of perhaps twenty, her short brown hair tied into two tiny pigtails. She wore a tan hooded pullover and khakis.

Next to her sat a taller, muscular, nerdy guy with black-rimmed glasses, a blond flattop, wearing a blue pullover short-sleeve shirt and jeans. Beyond him, a tiny bald guy, also in his early twenties, wore a plaid flannel shirt and jeans. They all seemed calm.

Very damn calm, for just-released hostages.

"Anyone hurt?" Clemente asked, shining his flashlight toward them, but not into their eyes.

"No," the young woman said. "We're okay ... but you better go look upstairs."

Was there something ... mocking in her voice?

Slowly, all his attention focused on the doorway ahead, Clemente led the way up the stairs. On the landing, he hesitated for only a second before swinging through the door with his pistol outstretched. Behind him, the SWAT team fanned out into the room.

It was immediately obvious that a ferocious battle had taken place up here. Nearly every pane of glass in the windows and in the top half of the wall that separated the warehouse space from the office space lay in shards on the dusty floor. Shelves had been tipped over, furniture broken—the place was a shambles.

Playing his light around the room, Clemente settled his beam first on a muscular redheaded woman lashed to a cement support. She had been gagged and taped to the pillar with packaging tape, as if waiting delivery, perhaps by one of the bike messengers.

Swinging farther around, Clemente's light fell on a trio in their underwear—they'd been stripped of their uniforms and lashed to another pillar. They too had been trussed up and gagged with packing tape.

Clemente realized at once that this meant the SWAT team members who'd seemingly hauled off 452 and the rest were

impostors, wearing the uniforms of the SWAT team they'd defeated. And he knew he should spring into action, but...

He couldn't keep a wide smile from spreading across his face.

"Special Agent in Charge White," Clemente said, in mock good humor.

The normally smug and very trussed-up government man, Ames White, growled something that came out garbled because of the packing-tape gag. He had not been stripped of his clothes—-just his dignity.

"What was that?" Clemente asked, as if actually understanding the agent's muffled outraged words from beneath the packing tape. "The transgenics tied you up and took your uniforms?"

Another growl erupted from the agent as he fought against the tape that bound him.

The detective chuckled and his grin grew even wider. "No way!"

White's eyes went wide with anger and he yelled something—probably obscene—that was again swallowed by the tape.

As if making sure he was understanding White correctly, Clemente asked, "And you want me to go after them?"

The NSA agent's cold stare carried every ounce of anger and hatred that the tape wouldn't allow him to utter.

"Now that's a good idea," Clemente said as he rose. He went to the door with his men on his tail, none of them making any move to untie White or his cronies.

As he stepped into the hall, the detective heard another muffled scream from White. It sounded quite a bit like, "Son of a bitch," even with the tape over the man's mouth.

Clemente allowed himself to enjoy the moment, then took off at a run for his car.

White wasn't the only one who'd been fooled by the transgenics, and Clemente—the pleasure of seeing the arrogant

White hung out to dry receding in his mind as his duty kicked in—wasn't going to let this slide. Now he would catch the transgenics, and succeed where White had screwed up.

And let Ames White stare into Clemente's smug smile, for a change.

The crew had lapsed into silence; the tension of the long day finally seemed to be leaking out of them, and they all looked beat. Max was proud of her family, her friends. This day could have ended as the bloodbath Ames White had sought, and the transgenics' cause irrevocably hurt, had anyone besides CeCe—one of their own—

been killed or injured.

Not that Max and the others didn't hurt because of the loss of their sister; but had any of the "ordinaries" died, well, that would have been the end of her hope of getting the humans to accept them as equals. She was just settling down to rest herself, in the back of the van, when she heard the first siren.

She looked out the rear window at the same moment Logan spotted the flashing lights in his mirror.

"We've got company," he announced.

Clemente's voice came to them over a loudspeaker from the lead car. "Stop your vehicles now or you will be fired upon!"

Logan ignored him and kept driving.

Again Clemente's voice came over the loudspeaker: "Pull over now or we will use deadly force to stop you."

Looking out the windshield, Max said, "Don't stop—keep moving."

Not slowing, Logan kept the van going straight down the middle of the street, Sketchy at the wheel of the ambulance behind him, following Logan's lead, the police cars close behind, but none of them moving forward to try and block their path.

To Max, the trip to Terminal City seemed as though it took

hours, not minutes. But finally they approached the locked gate of the no-man's-land the transgenics had claimed for themselves, signs proclaiming, NO TRESPASSING, IT IS A

FELONY TO PASS THIS POINT, and BIOHAZARD. UNSAFE FOR HUMAN

OCCUPANCY.

"Go straight through," Max said, almost casually.

Logan didn't hesitate in following her instructions—he pressed down steadily on the accelerator and slowly the van gained momentum as it neared the gate.

"Hold on," he advised, and everyone in the van tried to burrow in for the impact.

They slammed crunchingly through, the ambulance roaring in after them, right on their back bumper, police cars in a long line behind them. Inside the van, they rocked with the impact, then settled as they sped into the makeshift compound.

"Right, left, then straight up the ramp," Max said.

Driving like a lifelong racer, Logan followed her orders.

As they accelerated up the incline, Max said, "Straight through the building."

Again Logan complied, steering through the maze of concrete pillars as fast as was possible in the unwieldy van. Finally, they reached a barricade of junk that not only prevented them from moving forward, but cut them off to the left and right as well.

"End of the line," Logan declared as he braked the van to a stop.

Sketchy stopped the ambulance next to the van, and the police cars quickly formed a semicircle behind them to keep Max and crew from turning around and making a break for it. The light bars atop the police cars painted the scene red, blue, and shades of purple where the two colors met. Pouring out of their cars, twenty or so officers drew their guns, and Clemente's voice once again came over a

loudspeaker: "Throw down your weapons and let me see your hands. Now!"

Mole spun angrily toward Max. "What's your plan now?"

"Show me your hands" Clemente said over the speaker.

Looking a little panicked, and sounding like a small boy and not a massive dog of a man, Joshua asked plaintively, "Max ... ?"

"Throw your weapons out now!"

Max looked from face to face, seeing defeat, even despair, but she was unwilling to accept either.

She made her decision. "You heard the man."

"Well," Mole said, "this sucks."

Logan dropped his pistol through the open driver's side window and it hit the concrete floor with a dull smack.

"I fought the law and the law won," Alec said, wry resignation in his voice.

Moving to the back door and opening it a crack, Max dropped out Alec's weapon and it clattered to the concrete.

"Step out of the van with your hands up."

Grumbling the whole time, Mole followed suit, handing his gun to Max, who tossed it outside.

Clemente's voice came over the speaker again. "Do it-step away from the van, and keep your hands up!"

Original Cindy, in her SWAT team drag, dropped her gun and Sketchy's gun out the back of the ambulance as well.

Max came out first, followed by Mole; then came Cindy, without her helmet and goggles; Gem and her new baby; Sketchy—also without his SWAT headgear—and finally young Dalton exited the ambulance.

As Clemente and his men kept their guns trained on the transgenics, Max kicked a couple of the rifles even farmer away so the cops wouldn't think they were up to something. Joshua helped Alec down, Alec's shoulder still giving him trouble from a bullet he'd taken early in the siege. Logan

came out the driver's side and marched to the back of the van to join the others.

"Step away from the vehicles!" Clemente commanded. "On your knees—hands on top of your heads!"

Sketchy dropped first, as if suddenly taken by the urge to pray, his hands shooting to the top of his head. Slowly, the others fell in line as well—Mole, then Alec, Logan, Original Cindy, Dalton, and Gem—all on their knees in defeat, all of them putting their hands on their heads, except Gem, who held her baby.

All but Max.

Max remained standing, her hands dangling at her sides. She kept her face calm, passive, showing neither anger nor deception. And yet her very failure to follow orders made her a pillar of defiance.

"On your knees," Clemente yelled, no longer on the loudspeaker.

Instead, Max took two tentative steps forward.

"Do it, now!"

Ignoring the instruction, Max walked forward a few more steps, then stopped just a few feet from the police, their headlights bathing her and her friends in bright white light.

"452?" Clemente asked, frowning. That was what she had told the cop to call her when they'd been negotiating the hostage crisis.

But why hide any longer?

She said, "You can call me Max."

He drew a breath. Then he said, "I think you should get on the ground."

Max's face remained placid. "I think you should probably

go"

Now Clemente's expression hardened. "I'm not going to tell you again."

She gave him the tiniest of shrugs. "I'm not going to tell you again."

Luke and Dix—two of the transgenics that had started the settlement within the fences of the dead industrial park that was now Terminal City—stepped out of the shadows, pumping shotguns.

In front of Max, the officers cocked their own guns and drew beads on the transgenics.

Then, from the darkness, other armed transgenics emerged on nearby rooftops and on either flank of the policemen. The eerie, half-lit forms of these feared freaks could only give the police pause ... and there were more and more of the figures....