The Next Chronicle (Book 2): Damage (15 page)

The next morning Ray made his way to the main office as usual. He spotted Kovacs catching up on paperwork, and was about to move toward his desk when someone tugged on his elbow. He stiffened, unused to the contact since most people were terrified of him—and the hand let go.

“Sorry,” Graysen Ross said as he turned toward her. “I didn't mean to startle you.”

Ray waved away the apology. “No problem,” he said lightly. “I'm always a little jumpy before my first cup of coffee. What can I do for you?”

While it was still too early for her classes to have begun, it was still odd to see the trainee here. The office was generally avoided by them, an unspoken agreement between agents who didn't want to be bothered and trainees who desperately wanted to avoid rocking the boat.

“I need to see Director Singh,” she said nervously. Ray took a moment to really look at her, and found himself concerned. Had it been any other trainee he would have assumed they were looking for favor or trying to ingratiate themselves to the boss. Graysen had no need, of course, having saved Kit's life. This young woman had the dark circles and nervous tics of someone who had missed sleep and was being shredded by anxiety.

“Why don't you just make an appointment with her receptionist?” Ray asked.

Graysen shook her head. “I tried, but the secretary said she took the day off.”

Alarm bells went off in Ray's head. Kit had called off again? Or had Archer covered for her? Ice water ran through his veins at the thought something might have happened to her on last night's mission.

“Why are you asking me?” Ray asked, mostly to give himself a few seconds to think.

“Because people say you spend time with her. You two are friends. If you're not comfortable, it's okay. I just...it's really important. For her.”

Ray heard no lie in those words. If anything, the raw desperation in Graysen's voice made him suspect she was downplaying how scared she was.

“Okay,” Ray said. “I'll make sure she gets the message.”

“Thank you,” the trainee said, grasping Ray's hand with both of hers. “I promised myself I wouldn't embarrass either of us by hugging you, but just know it's really hard not to right now.”

Ray gave her a crooked smile, only half-forced. “Appreciated.”

He didn't have a chance to work out an excuse to run to Archer, because ten seconds later a voice spoke over the intercom asking Agent Cassidy to please report to the director's office. Ray wasted no time getting up the steps, and didn't slow down a bit when Nicki, the receptionist, looked up from her computer at his arrival. He went into the office and closed the door.

Archer was not alone.

“Lock the door behind you,” Archer said.

Ray did so, then moved forward to stand between the two men sitting in front of the desk. Waid looked tired, with heavy bags under his eyes, while James Shane seemed no worse for the wear. The latter wore the bland grays of a prisoner, still festooned with silver inhibitor cuffs on hands, ankles, and neck.

Archer nodded to Waid, who gave a thumbs-up. Then the big man raised an eyebrow at Ray, who got the message. He quickly scanned the room for anyone watching through the Surge.

“Clear,” Ray said. “Now, what's going on? Is Kit okay?”

“She's not hurt,” Archer said carefully. “Or taken prisoner. She's just taking an extra day.”

There was enough left unsaid in that statement to fill a book, Ray judged. “What aren't you telling me?”

To Ray's surprise, it was James who answered. “We found more than we expected. I managed to move a bunch of files back to Kit's place, and she's still looking through them.”

“I assume you've already heard all this,” Ray said to Archer.

“Yeah,” Archer replied. “I had to sneak James back into his cell early this morning, and he gave me a full report.”

There was still a heavy tension in the room, the sort you feel when you're waiting at the hospital for a loved one to pass away but can't bring yourself to talk about it. There was something almost funny about it. Ray couldn't help taking in the body language of the other three men, the lines around their mouths and furrowed brows, without imagining Kit at home, doubtlessly angry and trying to solve whatever problem had shaken these men so deeply.

“First thing we found was that Robinson knew about Fairmont, just like Archer thought,” Waid said. “He was the one to file away the reports about whatever was done to you, Ray.”

A cold waved seemed to wash over him, though Ray's heart felt like it was on fire. Habit and training took over, his brain forcing him toward calm. For the first time since the day he had destroyed an entire community, Ray didn't'
want
to be calm. Sure, they had suspected Robinson for a long time, but having it confirmed was different, more real. Schrodinger's cat was out of the box, no longer a field of vague possibility.

“You're sure?” Ray asked.

Archer nodded. “First thing they found was a box of notes and reports chronicling the properties of whatever you were treated with. None of us has the education to fully grasp it, but from what we can gather it was designed to push your powers to uncontrollable levels and keep them there. They made you into a bomb, Ray. Before they came back here, James and Waid stayed with Kit long enough to confirm that they planned this to happen at Fairmont during the bourbon festival. This was intentional from start to finish.”

Ray stumbled, the world washing out at the edges of his vision. The guilt he carried was still there, but now dwarfed by a rage suffusing his entire being.

He found himself sitting in a chair, James Shane standing next to him. The man must have guided him there, though Ray couldn't remember it. He'd almost passed out.

“What's our next move?” Ray asked, his voice shaky with anger. “Is there any way we can go after Robinson?”

Archer met his gaze and held it. “Legally? I don't think so. People in power obviously knew about this, but if I'm being honest I think the only thing that would happen if we showed our hand to anyone would be our arrest and quiet exile into a cell so deep we'd never see daylight again.”

“But we are going after him, right?” Ray growled. “There's no way we're just going to give up.”

Archer put up his hands in a calming gesture. “We're not giving up,” he said. “Though we can't risk you losing control. Kit is going to handle this part, Ray.”

“What?” Ray said through gritted teeth. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? This man ruined my life, Archer! He turned me into a mass murderer. You can't sideline me on this.”

“I can, and I am,” Archer said, his voice steel with authority. “I know how much you must hate me for this, Ray, and I don't blame you. I can't risk putting you in a position with that much emotional baggage. Kit is going to confront Robinson, while you and I stay here and act nice and normal.”

Ray tried to find words, desperate for the perfect explanation that would change his boss's mind. The finality of Archer's orders was clear, however. There would be no reasoning with him.

After a long and uncomfortable silence, Archer leaned forward. “I do think it would be good for you to see what the others brought back first-hand, so today your assignment will officially be helping Director Singh as she works from home. I'll send the order out to Kovacs after you leave.”

“What's he going to be doing while I'm helping Kit?” Ray asked. “It's not like we can risk him taking a look at what's in those files.”

Archer smiled. “You think a lot like me, you know,” he said. “Kovacs is under the impression that Kit is staying home because a threat has been made against her, and while she isn't worried for herself, she wants to protect my niece and her building from becoming collateral damage.”

Despite his anger, Ray laughed. “Kovacs will sit at a table, eat free food, and get paid for it. Smart.”

Archer gave a little bow. “It's glorified guard duty, but he'll be fine with it. The guy isn't a stranger to sitting and waiting for something bad to happen. He did a couple tours in the middle east, after all.”

Ray did as he was told, though a small part of him continued to burn with anger and hate, a portion of which now included a space for Archer. Reasonable or not, Ray couldn't help feeling betrayed. Robinson
would
pay. Somehow.

The Bean was busy when they arrived, mostly filled with neighborhood locals coming in for daily favorites before the larger lunch crowd showed up. Ray introduced Kovacs to Peep, who was acting as hostess. It was a position most cafes and diners didn't bother with, but it was difficult not to be charmed by the sunny warmth of the attentive and beautiful woman buzzing around like a honeybee.

“I suggest the BLT,” Ray said to Kovacs as he prepared to join Kit in her apartment. “Text me if you need me.”

Kovacs settled back in his booth, already getting comfortable, and raised the steaming cup of coffee that had been put in his hand almost before he'd been seated. “Same to you. I'm just a floor away.”

Ray let Peep guide him through the kitchen and unlocked the door leading to the apartment. He thanked her and stepped inside, the low rumble of conversation and rhythmic chime of utensils on stoneware suddenly cut off by the muffled clang of the closing door.

It was replaced by music. Ray made his way up the stairs to the melancholy notes of a familiar voice, a band called The Frames he had listened to growing up. The song was new, doubtless something recorded during his coma years, but the sound was unmistakable.

The slow, melodic song could not have been a more stark contrast to the scene beyond the open door of the apartment. Boxes, at least a dozen he could see, lay strewn about. Their tops had been piled in a corner, and not neatly. The floor was covered in papers like drifts of snow. There were neat stacks in places, ordered sets laying flat in others, and the madness even crept up the furniture and across the walls, pages taped in some cryptic pattern to the aging drywall.

In the middle of the paper maelstrom sat Kit, legs curled beneath her as she held pages in each hand, eyes scanning the words.

“Holy crap,” Ray said.

“Yeah, it's a lot to take in,” Kit said, not looking up.

Ray stepped inside, careful to avoid ruining any pages. “What is all this?”

“It's a time line,” Kit said, her voice liquid with the slightly-too-fast cadence she used when working at super speed. “Most of what we could find was stuff about the facility. These files are more specific. Government research on the Next from years before Fairmont, threat assessments, and of course the weird cocktail they hit you with to make you go critical.”

He bent down and snagged a piece of paper from the floor. It was the top page in one of the neat piles, a summary page about a biological delivery system for a chemical agent. Ray scanned over it quickly, but with enough care to be certain it was about him.

“Jesus,” he said breathed. “They really didn't take any chances, did they? Designer chemical to force my powers to overload, designer germs to carry it. I can't imagine what their endgame was. More power? Putting people in a state of fear to give them more control?”

Kit set her pages down and turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were rimmed in red, her cheeks ruddy. He had seen her in weaker moments after the death of Thomas Maggard, when her defenses were low. She looked more haunted now. Strange as it was, Ray understood. Maybe others didn't get Kit, but he did. Poor Thomas never had a chance; a child that age with that sort of power simply didn't have the ability to cope with the horrific actions he had taken. His death was one life to save many.

But this was truly monstrous. The deliberate and careful planning of it smacked of a callousness toward human life scarcely believable outside of mustache-twirling movie villains.

“Thing is,” Kit said, her voice slowing back to normal, “I'm not convinced this was some big government conspiracy.”

Ray eyed her disbelievingly. “Didn't you guys get all this stuff from, you know, a big secret government vault?”

Kit waved a hand. “The cover-up, sure, that was definitely handled at least by the NSA and a couple other agencies. What I mean is that everything leading up to Fairmont seems to have been handled by a very small group.”

“How do you figure?” Ray asked. “Seems like a lot of effort.”

She stood, waving a hand across the field of paperwork. “Almost all of the documentation about what they did to you is written in a consistent style. Most of the handwritten parts were penned by the same person. It's weird, and doesn't make sense.”

Ray let that linger in the air for a moment. “I guess you're gonna ask Robinson about that, huh?” he asked.

“You're goddamned right,” Kit said. “Pointedly.”

The car dropped him off at home, and not for the first time Robinson wondered what the driver thought about the odd comings and goings of his frequent passenger. Though he worked primarily in Virginia and D.C., sometimes even being caught on television cameras, most nights he returned to his home in North Carolina. In the early days, the driver had commented on how he had seen a live news feed of Robinson at the White House, only to pick him up from the usual spot near a favored local diner a quarter hour later.

Even if he wanted to explain the daily duties of Wes Christjansen, Robinson couldn't. His own rules prevented him from doing so. And though he would never admit it, part of him enjoyed the air of mystery people had created around him.

“Good night, Chuck,” Robinson said as he handed the driver a tip. Chuck was a good man, one who had learned the importance of not asking too many questions after Robinson answered that first—and only—question with the dead stare he had once used on raw recruits.

“Have a good evening, sir,” Chuck said, then waved a goodbye.

“Unlikely,” Robinson muttered to himself as the car sped away.

He entered through the front door, a slab of ancient wood oiled and polished by four generations of his family. The house itself was like the thousand acres it sat on; old and cultured but well cared for. In its halcyon days the ancestral home had been a farmhouse, large enough for the posse of children every traditional Catholic family was bound to possess. In the years since it had been repaired and added to, remodeled and refined.

Now it was his, and for all the appearance of the grand old lady it was, the house hid many interesting new features. The inner face of the door, for example, was covered with an experimental alloy to prevent anyone from cutting through it. The locks were state of the art biometrics, and every floor and wall was laced with micro-sensors to detect intruders. There were even several countermeasures he had never been brave enough to test, though the thick instruction manual he had been given explained them in detail.

It was an expensive retrofit, one many might consider overkill since the old man was the only occupant. The justification was that of all the people in Cabinet-level positions, he was the one the country was least able to lose. Whether that reasoning was true was a matter for debate, though it could not be argued that Robinson had come up with solutions where others had failed in regard to the Next.

Indeed, the ten million dollars spent upgrading his home into a fair impression of a fortress was not money wasted. That it failed was not its fault. There was no deficit of imagination or design, but the simple fact that no engineer or programmer alive was capable of defending against this particular sort of assault.

The system did what it was supposed to do, letting Robinson in and reacting automatically to his presence. There was nothing in the familiar set of beeps and whirring noises as the locks engaged on their own to give him pause. He ascended the creaking stairs tiredly, but without fear. The long day weighed on him, and if he still had the physique of a younger man, his age showed in just how hard these long days were getting, to say nothing of the stress.

Call it a combination of exhaustion and complacence, but Robinson thought nothing of the door to his study being open just a crack. He entered the room, lights flicking on to predetermined levels automatically, and moved toward the large desk. Two fingers of the vodka he'd acquired a taste for in Saigon would do nicely.

At nearly the same moment his briefcase rattled onto the smooth top of the desk, the door slammed shut behind him.

Robinson spun, instinct forcing him to reach for a sidearm he no longer carried. He stared at the form standing in front of the scarred bookcases running from floor to ceiling, only broken by the door. For a few seconds he was confused, unable to grasp how anyone else could have gotten in without tripping the alarms.

“What the hell are you doing in my house?” Robinson asked.

Kitra Singh gave him a death's head smile, the dark grin of a soldier about to do something reckless. “We need to have a talk, Mr. Secretary.”

She lurched forward. Robinson tried to fight back, futile as the gesture was. In the end, he was an old man. Had he been thirty years younger, it likely wouldn't have made a difference. She was what he made her to be, after all, and men with abilities far beyond his own had proven no challenge to her.

In less than a second she had his arms twisted behind his back.

“We're going to take a trip,” she said.

There was a flash of light, and they were gone.