Recovering (11 page)

 That’s when
it finally clicks. “You’re the one Tarren saved,” I say to Chainy. Technically,
Maya dragged his ass out of a burning house, but Tarren CPR’d the hell out of
him until he had no choice but to start breathing again. Tarren has that effect
on people.

 It’s like I
flipped some kind of switch in Chainy and all his feelings come rushing back
into him. He literally jumps up from the floor, belt clanging. His eyes are
intense. “You know him? The man with the scar?”

 Oops,
probably shouldn’t have dropped Tarren’s name like that. He’s really big into
not telling complete amateurs our true identities.

 “I know
him,” I hedge. “We were all there that day. Me, Tarren, and M-Buffy. We took
care of those angels and called the authorities to rescue you.” And maybe some
of that psychedelic cult stuff was my fault, but it wasn’t exactly easy to
throw together a good cover story in the midst of that horror show.

I hear a
groan and look over at Bird Brain who seems to either be experiencing serious
gas pains or partaking in an unpleasant realization. “She was…there to rescue
us?” he finally manages.

I stare at
him. “Yep.”  

 Bear is staring
at me, and I have the feeling he would like to unscrew the top of my head, stab
a straw through my brain, and suck out every ounce of information I have about
the angels. But he keeps himself in check.

 “Chain and
Penguin wanted to join our cause,” he continues. “Their information was
substantive. We believe these creatures feed from the life force of humans
through a mechanism in their hands. They possess great strength and speed and
the ability to create fire.”

 Not too
shabby. When Tarren and I rained down bullets on the group of angels in
Poughkeepsie, one of the wings started spouting fire. Chainy and Bird Brain
were in the room at the time. Makes sense that they would jump to this
conclusion.

 “Angels have
different abilities,” I tell them. “Fire is one we see a lot.”

 The rest is
history. The team came together. Course, they sat around for a couple of months
trying and failing to flush out any angels and making that adorably wretched
video in a bid to warn the world of its impending doom. But, it turns out, Bird
Brain isn’t as dumb as he seems. Apparently he hit on the same realization that
I did – angels would need to continuously move to avoid detection, and vulnerable
areas would offer the safest human buffet option. They wound up here, in Peoria
Fucking Illinois.

 This is when
Bear blows my world and forever cements my bro-crush. Bird Brain noticed that
when the angels in Poughkeepsie touched him their hands were cold. Bear
extrapolated (his word) that angels might have a lower core body temperature
than humans. He put his theory to the test by setting up small heat sensing
cameras all over Peoria.

 He beckons
me over to a desk where I see a laptop monitor split into eight tiles. Each
shows a different darkened outdoor view. One camera broadcasts a parking lot. I
watch bundled humans jog from their cars, each lit in bright whites.

 Ho-Ly Shit! Did
amateur hour just get serious? Distinguishing angels from humans was one of the
most challenging parts of the job before Maya came along with her weird spidey
sense for angels. If we could have been using heat sensor goggles the entire
time, or, better yet, done Bear’s camera trick, we could have saved ourselves
boatloads…no aircraft carrier loads of time and effort and probably saved a few
extra lives in the bargain.

 I give Bear
a curt nod of approval as I stare at his laptop and try not to drool. No need
to give him a big head about an idea I’m totally going to steal.

 The rest of
the story I already know from Bird Brain. Bear made several sightings of possible
angels around the city, but his team was unable to converge quickly enough
until they discovered an angel feeding on a cop in the alley. By the time the
team was in place, the original angel had taken off, but Maya was kind enough
to show up and give them a second chance at angel nabbing.

 “We shouldn’t
have treated her the way we did,” Bear says apologetically. “She didn’t kill
the police officer. When I reviewed the footage, it’s clear that she was going
after the first creature. When we spoke, she was…different from the other
experience that I had.”

I ignore his
apology so I’m not tempted to kick my new friend in the balls. “The other angel
you captured, you think she’s trying to use him to find their home base?”

 Bear nods.
“She took possession of one of our tranq guns.  She could have easily tranqed
him and brought him to a different location for questioning.”

Or she
could have gone angel undercover like in Texas.
That was the mission right before
Grand took Tarren…before I almost ended up on a permanent sabbatical six feet
under. My heart pounds in my chest. Maya knew Tarren would institute full Styx
protocol as soon as she was taken by Animal Farm over here.

I lean over,
elbows planted on my knees. Maya is all alone out there, tip-toeing into a pit
of vipers. I need to find her. Fast. Doesn’t matter that my bones feel heavy as
lead coated in more lead. I can rest the next time I die.

 
Montage time. Sir Hopsalot scurries
around the plush hotel room, while I set up my laptop and let my fingers fly. I’ve
got an enemy. An iPhone. Not exactly a Cylon or Dalek, but it’ll have to do.

This is the
phone The Totem took off the angel they captured. Somewhere in its circuits I
might be able to dig out information on Maya’s whereabouts. Look at that – bulging
muscles need not apply. Good old hacking is what I need to get all day-saving
up in here.

You wanna
go?
I think to the
phone as it leers at me with its password screen. I find a compatible USB port in
my bag o’ tricks and hook it to Starbuck. My girl zaps the hell out of the
phone with a couple handy software bugs before its password window dissolves
with a whimper. The welcome screen greets me like a happy puppy. Call me Gabe
“Phone Whisperer” Fox.

Now the hard
part. I chew the inside of my mouth. I’ve never put a trace on a call before.
Give me a few days and an unlimited supply of Monster energy drinks, and I can
teach myself just about anything techy, but the bad guys aren’t exactly going
to play nice while I get my advanced hackers degree from the Black Hat
University of Phoenix.

 
If Maya
gets caught. If they discover who she really is….

 
So not helping right now, brain. I
need to put cement flippers on those thoughts and throw them into the Hudson. I
take a deep, cleansing breath, like the kind they teach in yoga. On my right, Bear
sits uncomfortably in one of the plush chairs, monitoring his video feeds. Bird
Brain is on the couch now, watching me dick around with the phone. And Chainy,
I definitely need to keep my eye on him. I find him scrunched in the corner
scribbling in some kind of journal, probably writing the world’s worst angst
poetry.

I interlace
my fingers, stretch them, and feel the pleasant pops that always drive Maya
insane. Okay, desperate times…desperate measures. Time to eat shit.

I jump online
through Tor and quickly dive past the legit part of the internet into the
darkness where the depraved, the misunderstood, and the true baddies lurk. Tor cloaks
my IP as I swim among the sharks. Hackers. They may have been outcasts in high
school, but as the world shifts more of its treasures into ones and zeroes,
these ghosts in the machine are demi-gods.  

I visit some
old stomping grounds – an exclusive hacker message board that I cracked into a
few years ago. LuvDragon is online. I take another cleansing breath.
Here we
go.
As soon as I message her, Starbuck freezes. I don’t even want to know
how LuvDragon got another back door into my computer. After I found the last
one I amped up virus protection and sweeps with the equivalent of computer
steroids, but LuvDragon still found a way in. I can only imagine what she’s
doing right now, combing through Starbuck’s entire memory, reviewing every single
site I’ve accessed, all my files.

On a normal
day, LuvDragon is so paranoid I bet she owns a pet monkey who tastes her food.
All hackers are twitchy like that. Long absences do not make her heart grow
fonder. If there’s even a whiff you got picked up and turned by the Feds, MI6,
or any other agency, these guys will fry you. In the opinion of yours truly,
keyboards are way scarier than nuclear bombs.

For 30 long,
long minutes my screen stays frozen. I hunch over my laptop, slurp down another
can of Monster, and try to look busy. I type in nonsense, staring intently at
the screen as if I’m actually doing something so my team doesn’t realize that a
girl living in a basement in South Korea has me totally by the balls.

I wonder what
LuvDragon will make of the Google maps I’ve put together and labeled with
meaningless numerals or my Google Alerts set up to comb through obits across
the country. She’ll also see the Pirate Bay files of my fav music and shows.
And the porn. She’ll see that too, but it’s probably tame compared to what she
dabbles in.

She won’t get
much more than that from Starbuck. I keep all the important stuff on an
external hard drive at home protected with every single encryption invented by
man. Starbuck doesn’t hold anything personal, nothing about the mission, no
pics, not even my chats with Amanda.

Just as I
wonder if LuvDragon has sucked everything out of my computer and decided she
doesn’t want to come out and play, my screen resets. New wallpaper of Lizbeth
Salander. Cute. There’s LuvDragon on Skype, her leather-clad avatar berating me
for going dark for the past four months. “Cocksucker” is the closest she gets
to a term of endearment. I let her go on and on and on, impressed by the
vividness and variety of her threats. Then it’s time to lay on the charm. I go
hard. My fingers tap out roses and sunsets into the chat box. Then I go to
places that are darker and wetter and sting in a good way.

I can tell
I’m softening her up when she stops listing my own body parts that will soon be
up my ass if I disappear again. You don’t ask favors of these people, so I
present what I need from her like a challenge. I start by casually asking if
she’s still the hottest hacker chick on the net. She’s got a complex about
that, and I rile her up good.

The idea of
hacking a phone company to triangulate a call definitely appeals to her deviant
side. LuvDragon is half noble in her quest to punish the wicked and half
anarchist, thrilling in her ability to tear the shit out of the people and
companies she doesn’t like. This girl can get into places you wouldn’t believe
– banks, hospitals, senior government email accounts. I’ve also seen her rip
people to shreds even within our group. If she finds out someone’s gotten
turned, she’ll unmask them, post their social security numbers, their
addresses, and their credit card number. Hell, she might even post their first
grade report card or the secret poem about bed wetting they wrote and deleted
twenty years ago. 

In other
words, she’s a stick of dynamite. I know that if I don’t dance just right, I
won’t just get burned, I’ll get exploded into a thousand, thousand pieces. And
then she’ll probably piss on all the meat confetti.

 LuvDragon
wants more details of the mission. Who am I tracking and why? This is
dangerous. I want her off the scent. In the past, I’ve actually considered
cluing her into the whole evil angels taking over America thing. I bet she
could be a helluva crime fighter even within the confines of her dungeon, but
she’s too unstable. I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned tail, got herself
angelfied, and cackled madly while she started amassing a body count.

After copious
amounts of flattering, teasing, and lying, LuvDragon is on board. She makes me
promise to help with some crazy scheme to post sweatshop videos on Nike’s
YouTube channel, and I agree to all of it. Three hours she tells me and she’ll
have the phone company bent over her knee begging for more. I give her the
number on my burner to text when she’s ready and then place the phone in Bird
Brain’s care.

 As soon as I
switch Starbuck’s wallpaper back to this smokin’ hot pic of Kiera Knightley, I realize
that I’m in bad, bad shape. I can barely hold my head up, and my entire body
just wants to crumble into dust. I can practically feel my atoms groaning under
the strain of having to hold themselves together.

 I know that
The Totem has a thousand and one questions for me, especially Bear with his
sharp beady eyes, but I think I just lost my grasp of the English language. I
mumble some excuse about needing to meditate or something like that. Let them
think I’m a higher level being or whatever.

 I drag
myself to the bedroom and close the door behind me. I couldn’t tell you what
color the comforter is, but this is the most wonderful, gorgeous bed I have
ever seen in my life. I stumble toward it and then my eyes fall on a small hump
under the covers.

 Someone is
in the bed; someone small, almost drowning under the covers. I walk to the side
of the bed where she curls right on the edge. Shiny black eyes stare at me from
beneath puffy lids. Long black hair frames her bronze face.

 “You’re
Finch,” I say, remembering how everyone’s gaze flicked to the bedroom when Bear
said her name. The girl doesn’t respond. I know the look on her face, the
hollow pits of her eyes.

Against my
will I’m flashing back four years ago to that grungy alley in Madison,
Wisconsin, to the black Ford, to Tarren slumped against the wheel, dried blood
flaking off his neck. He’d called me from a payphone – that’s how I found him –
and whispered a single word.
Styx.
I want to bury that word, drown it in
acid, burn it until even the ashes disintegrate.

I didn’t
realize at first how bad it was, how many ribbons Grand cut through Tarren. But
when I got him out of the driver’s seat and saw all the blood soaked into the
leather…And his face. It wasn’t just the cut slicing open his skin from ear to
chin, but his empty eyes. A light gone, forever gone.

He didn’t
even have to tell me. I knew Tammy was dead.

I push those
images away like they were diseased. It’s been four years since that day, but the
memories are so fresh I can almost smell the blood. Tarren’s eyes still hold
that hollow space where Tammy once lived.

 I find
myself still looking into the girl’s round face, that utter emptiness. What am
I going to do if Maya gets hurt, if she dies, if she’s already dead? I can’t
lose anyone else. If anything happened to Maya or Tarren, I think I’d walk off
a cliff or grab a bottle and never let go.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

The
exhaustion helps the fear drift way.

 “Do you mind
if I take a nap on the other side of the bed?” I ask the girl. She blinks but
says nothing. Sounds like permission to me. I crawl onto the other side of the
bed. I should stay on top of the covers, but the thick comforter feels so warm,
and I’m shivering worse than the ancient rust bucket I pulled up in. It dawns
on me as I slip under the covers that I should have taken off my shoes. Too
late now.

 I lay down.
Ohhhhhh
,
Heaven
. So much hangs in the balance, but I need the world to be still
for just an hour. Maya is strong and smart and has made crazy progress in all
her training. She also has a knack for thinking like Tarren.

Just hang
on for another few hours. I’m coming, I promise,
I think, hoping some mystical force
in the universe will send my thoughts to her.

 Something
comes over me. Maybe I’ve lost all my senses to exhaustion, but I scooch over,
crossing the invisible line between my side of the bed and the girl’s side. I
feel her sadness, like a magnet, drawing me closer, kindling my memories of
Tammy and my fear for what might happen to Maya.

 After Tammy
died, I worked so hard to make Tarren smile while he was recovering. I told him
every joke I knew and wrote a thousand new ones at night. I wove wild stories, each
one funnier than the last. I went down on my knees, bawling, begging him to
smile even if it wasn’t real. I hate those memories. Hate remembering him
wrapped in all those bandages. Eyes like ice.

 Without even
asking permission, I draw the girl in my arms. Her body is limp and small and warm.

 “I’m sorry,”
I tell her. “I lost my mom and my sister.”

 I kind of
expect her to scream or kick me in the balls, but she turns her head, resting
it against my chest. “You can hit me if I snore,” I say, hoping that she’ll
laugh. No laugh, but she snuggles closer, and it feels good. I fall asleep with
her soft hair on my cheek.