Dead Matter (12 page)

“Jane’s missing because we were trying to help
you
,” I said, trying to reason with him.

“I didn’t ask you for that,” Connor said, all accusatory. “I didn’t ask anyone to put themselves at risk for me.” Connor shrugged, despite my grip on him. “If Jane had been following Departmental protocol, she wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“What the hell has gotten into you?” I said. My arms were burning from keeping up the pressure on him. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold on. “There are things out there more important than our day job!”

“Like family?” Connor said, his teeth grinding.

“Look, I’m sorry we never found your brother,” I said, pushing him away from me. I fell back on the couch and Connor rolled across the floor until he hit the back of one of his movie chairs. I stood up. “But Jane is practically my family. She’s all I have, the only truly good thing to come out of having this ‘gift’ of mine. Aidan’s in the past, the long past. We can’t do anything about him now, but we
can
help Jane. I’m not asking you as your partner in Other Division; I’m asking you as a friend.”

Connor stood, taking his time to rise. I hated beating on him in this condition, but nothing else seemed to be getting through to him. He rolled his shoulders back, giving off an audible popping sound.

“Jesus, kid, I take a little time off and you go and grow a pair …” He rubbed his jaw, pausing his hand as if he really felt the scruff of his beard for the first time. Favoring his right leg and limping with his left, Connor crossed to a mirror hanging on the wall and stared into it for a good long time as if he didn’t recognize the man looking back at him. When he finally turned away from it, he lowered his eyes and said, “All right. Let’s go.”

He turned and headed for his front door.

“Dude,” I said, stopping him with a single word.

Connor looked back at me. “What?”

“You can’t go out like that,” I said. “You stink. You’re covered in bits of grass and mud from the graveyard, and there’s still dried blood caked in your hair and beard. I think you might want to clean yourself up a bit before we attempt to infiltrate the Gibson-Case Center.”

Connor went back to the mirror and looked again. “Heh,” he said. “You know, I was so surprised to see the beard I didn’t really notice anything else.”

“Feel free to take a quick shower,” I said. “I don’t want us getting kicked out because they think you’re there begging for change.”

Connor nodded and headed off to his bathroom in a slow shuffle. I hated seeing him this disheveled. I needed him as sheveled as possible.

While he showered, I fought the urge to pace nervously by busying myself cleaning up his apartment a little. I was glad I had my gloves on, not to keep my powers from triggering but to keep whatever new life-forms that were growing in here from harming me. Most of the pizza boxes had odds and ends of pizza left in them, some of which I dubbed former pizza, as it seemed to have developed into a new phase of life. The contents of just that filled two giant trash bags and I left them tied off by Connor’s front door, next to one singular floor-to-ceiling tower of now-empty pizza boxes. After a nose-centric hunt around the theater area, I discovered several bowls of milk that looked well on their way to being cottage cheese and brought them into his kitchen. I gave them a quick rinse as I breathed through my sleeve in an attempt not to gag, and then loaded them into the dishwasher.

I was throwing two of his windows open to air the place out when he came back down his hall. I turned to him. Connor looked much better than he had. For one thing, his sandy blond hair was neat, his beard gone, and he was dressed.

“You look almost human,” I said, “and you shaved.”

Connor rubbed his chin again. “Feels weird now,” he said, “but I have to say, I feel strangely liberated.”

“You look good. With your face shaved and no more blood in your hair, there’s only the slight swelling around the eyes that make you look a little Stay Puft.”

Connor spied his trench coat where I had hung it neatly over the back of one of the chairs. His eyes looked up from it and took in the rest of the room. He whistled.

“Jesus, kid. I feel like I should tip you or something.”

“Yeah, well, I left my biohazard suit at home or I would have done more,” I said, motioning toward the front door. Connor headed for it, much more prepared for the outside world than before. “You want to give me a real tip? Help me figure out what happened to Jane.”

Connor nodded. “I’ve got a few things I’d like to figure out as well.”

We hurried back to the Gibson-Case Center, entering the atrium by the same main doors that Jane and I had used. I started across the lobby, but stopped when I noticed Connor was not at my side. I turned to find him standing near the glass doors leading into the place, leaning against one of the panes next to them. I walked back to him. His skin had a slick sheen of sweat to it and his complexion was sickly.

“You okay?”

Connor nodded between heavy breaths. “It’s amazing how the body atrophies when you’re out of the game for a month, kid.”

“Funny,” I said. “I thought it might have been the beating you took in the graveyard.”

Connor laughed out loud, a nervous, unsteady sound coming from him. He may have been cleaned up, but there was still something manic and off with him that I found disturbing. “Did that really happen? I thought I dreamt all that.”

I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not. Right now wasn’t the best time to test his mental stability. I needed him focused.

“Let’s take it easy, then,” I said, although every bit of my being was screaming to go find Jane and help her as quickly as I could. I put my shoulder under his right arm and helped him across the crowded garden and shopping area of the atrium until I found the kiosk where Jane had disappeared.

“This the spot?” he asked, circling it in long, slow steps.

I nodded.

Connor looked at the directory menu on the display. He rapped his knuckles on the glass. Bending over, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted into the touchscreen area. “Hello? Anybody in there?”

I watched him with a creeping sense of horror coming over me. Maybe he wasn’t in the best state of mind to help me with this.

“I don’t think she can hear you,” I said, looking around. A few of the people passing by were staring at us.

“You sure about that, kid?” He stood up, his face serious and looking a bit more like the Connor I knew.

“Well, no,” I said. My face turned red, the blood rushing to it. I felt like an idiot. “I’m not sure about anything right now.”

Connor shrugged and stuffed his hands into his trench coat pockets. “Then as far as I’m concerned, anything goes.” He studied the directory. “Doesn’t seem like there’s a store called Jane.”

“I noticed that, too,” I said, humoring him. Exasperated, I pulled out my phone and flipped it open. “Let’s just call this in to the Department. Wesker’ll be pissed I lost one of his Greater and Lesser Arcana people, but at least he might have a way of dealing with this. He had been working with Jane on her technomancy, after all.”

Connor grabbed my hands and closed my phone. All humor fell away from his face. “Do
not
call Wesker, kid. You want to fill out all the paperwork explaining this? Having him stop you from investigating because he doesn’t like you being on his turf? Remember, I’m still technically on my vacation, so you’ll be pulling double duty filling it out for leading Jane into this
and
involving me.”

“Fair point,” I said.

“You said she texted you before?” Connor asked. I nodded.

“Let me try it again,” I said and typed in: JANE?

After waiting several minutes of nothing, I shook my head at Connor, took my phone, and slid it back into my jacket pocket.

“Now, then,” Connor said, cracking his fingers by bridging them, “let’s take a look at our options.”

He typed away at the directory, looking a bit like Jack Nicholson when he was all crazed and writing in
The Shining
. “Looks like there’s an assload of shops in this place, but there also seems to be a fairly residential contingent as well.”

“So it’s basically a mall/hotel,” I said.

“Pretty much,” he said, pointing to the screen, “but look. This isn’t really a hotel setup. This looks like it’s mostly residences, as in, people live here permanently.”

“Let me try something,” I said. I stripped off my gloves and entered the residential directory. I typed in: CLAYTON-FORRESTER.

“Kid, I doubt Jane’s been apartment hunting here,” Connor said.

“She may not be apartment hunting,” I said, my stomach clenching in anticipation, “but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been taking up residence one way or another.”

I hit “enter.”

A long list of names scrolled by, starting with the
A
’s.

When the directory got into the
C
territory, it slowed as it came to one name, like the Wheel of Fortune coming to a stop.

 

 

“There’s no apartment number listed for her,” I said, looking over the entry. I pointed at the screen where there should have been more information. “The rest of these have tower names and apartment numbers, but hers is blank.”

I pressed my psychometric power into the machine, hoping for a result of some kind. My mind’s eye opened and I flashed on Connor from a minute earlier when he had been messing with the directory. I went to push myself further back in time, but was met with a strange sensation I had never felt before. Some other power was tugging at me, as if it wanted to pull me into it. Fearing Jane’s fate, I pushed myself back into the present, which snapped me out of my vision with an instant case of disorientation.

“You okay?” Connor asked.

I started to respond but he had already turned from me and was staring down at the directory again, his eyes widening. I looked down. The machine was going nuts. Bright flashes of color and countless screens flashed by before our eyes.

“I think we might have found Jane, kid.”

The machine’s screen blinked with pop-up window after pop-up window. Images for various store listings filled up the screen. I tried to follow them, hoping to notice some sort of pattern in it all, but it was no use. It was all moving beyond my ability to follow it.

“What the hell’s she doing?” Connor asked.

I shook my head. “I have no idea. It’s all too fast …”

Electronic flyers for dozens of the stores popped up on the screen, one of them coming to rest on a page full of designer camping equipment at one of the high-end boutiques here. A highlighted box appeared around one of the items.

“A flashlight?” Connor asked as he looked over my shoulder. “Does that mean anything special to you?”

“Not that I can think of,” I said.

“Well, think harder,” he said, snapping a little. I looked at him. The beard might be gone, but there was still a hint of wildness about him. “Sorry, kid. It’s just that of all the things she could have shown us from this mall, a flashlight seems kind of trivial.”

“Maybe it’s dark where she is and she’s scared,” I offered.

“Maybe,” Connor said, considering it.

“I don’t know,” I said after a few minutes of staring at it in frustration. I turned away from the machine to look at Connor, but he was staring down one of the corridors, ignoring me.

“Connor?”

He looked at me for a second, then pointed off into the distance. I followed his hand and stared, not noticing anything at first. Then I saw it. A lit-up sign for one of the boutiques was blinking on and off.

“It’s flickering,” he said. “Maybe that’s what she meant by flashlight?”

Without another word, we headed off toward the store, but as I went to step into it, the sign went dead.

“Hold on, kid,” Connor said. “It stopped.”

“I see that,” I said. “Let me check inside the store.”

“Just hold on a second,” he said, looking around. The corridor continued on in a blinding array of shops and restaurants. I joined Connor as he looked off toward an area where the corridor turned to the right up ahead. Then I spied it.

“There,” I said, pointing up at an overhead light flickering in its socket. “Good eye.”

The two of us raced off down the hall. Now that we knew what we were looking for, it was easy to follow the string of flickering lights as they led us deeper and deeper into the shopping complex. The place was sprawling, full of more shops and restaurants than entire parts of the city. As we ran to follow, much of the crowd thinned as the lights led on. When we rounded one final corner, the hallway ran on for about thirty feet and dead-ended in an art installation that was a mix of frosted glass, enormous metal gears, and large hunks of dark wood that were surrounded on all sides by television monitors running an endless loop of static. Standing almost twenty feet tall were two carved figures on pedestals on either side of the eyesore.

“Ick,” I said. “Modern art. And hideous modern art at that.”

“You want to interpret that for me?” Connor asked. “My brain is still playing catch-up.”

“Well, outside of the dead end, I’m thinking that this must be where building staff stores all their out-of-use art pieces. Look at all that. No wonder no one comes down this end of the place. That gear and block thing, those winged statues …”

Connor continued looking down at the end of the hall, his nose wrinkled as he took it all in. He gave an uncharacteristic nervous laugh and rubbed his eyes.

“Kid, I’m not sure if this is sleep deprivation or the crazy talking still, but those ain’t statues.”

I looked once again at the figures on either side of the frosted glass and wooden wall hanging. While I was thankful Connor wasn’t crazy, I felt my heart sink a little as I took in the sight before us. The statues were bulks of solid mass that each rose fifteen feet above the five-foot pedestals they were set upon. Their features were minimalist, as if the artist fashioned them with only a slight attempt to make them look vaguely human. In truth, the statues could have been the offspring of a mating between a human and The Blob.