Max Collins - Skin Game

The hug went on a few seconds longer, neither of them wanting to let go. Then Sketchy ducked back in and said, “Group hug! Can I join in?”

“In your skinny-ass dreams, maybe!” Original Cindy said.

He disappeared back through the door, Original Cindy sprinting behind him, yelling something about kicking his ass until his ears bled.

With her friends this close to safety, Max couldn’t help but smile.

Logan hung back and said, “So... I’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah. Take care out there.”

“I will,” he said, his eyes boring into hers, their feelings burning back and forth, riding the connection. “And you too.”

She gave him a little nod. “I will. You better get going before Cindy kills Sketchy’s skinny ass. Of course, if she does, we won’t need my diversion.”

Still refusing to take his eyes from hers, he said, “Seeya.”

“Yeah, seeya.”

This is where they would have kissed — if hers wasn’t a literal kiss of death.

Then Logan Cale edged through the door, paused for one last look at her, and shut the door. Joshua stepped forward, gave her a quick hug.

“Gonna be okay, Little Fella,” he said.

“Yeah, I know.”

He said, “We better go.”

She took a last glance at the door and said, “Yeah, we better.”

As they walked back down the tunnel, Joshua’s face turned somber again, just as it had that morning.

“You still worried about our brothers and sisters outside?” Max asked.

“They don’t have family out there. Even Freak Nation has freak family. But out there,” he said, and pointed vaguely toward the ceiling, “out there, they’re alone. Might get scared by things they don’t understand.”

“What?” Max asked.

“Like Isaac. Afraid.”

Isaac had been Joshua’s test-tube twin brother, a gentle soul. But abuse from the guards at Manticore had snapped the young transgenic’s mind, and when Max had set them all free, she’d turned loose a serial killer who preyed on men in uniform.

But she couldn’t figure how Isaac tied in with whatever was bothering Joshua.

“What are you talking about?” she asked him.

“What Mole said this morning.”

That only served to confuse Max more. “What did Mole say this morning?”

“When we saw the news story about the murdered policeman.”

“Yeah?”

“Mole said, ‘And they’re worried about us?’ ”

“Go on.”

“What if the one who killed the cop is one of us?”

“Joshua, don’t pay any attention to what they said on TV — they’re going to blame us for every bad thing that happens in the city, for a while.”

He turned those soulful, sorrowful eyes on her. “What if — we deserve the blame?”

“Why would you even think that?”

The dog man gazed toward the city. “Our brothers, our sisters... they could be out there now, alone. Scared, like Isaac.”

All of a sudden, Max saw where he was going. “You think a transgenic really may have killed that cop?”

Joshua shrugged. “People are afraid of what they don’t understand. We are people too... Could be.”

“But it could just as easily be one of them too.”

He shrugged again. “Could be.”

“You... you think it’s one of the basement people?”

She was referring to the animal DNA experiments — like Joshua himself — who’d literally been caged up in Manticore’s basement.

“A lot down there had it bad, Max... real bad. Isaac, Dill, Oshi, Kelpy, Gabriel. Many bad things done to our brothers. Guards were afraid of what they didn’t understand and they did bad things.”

Joshua didn’t have a theory — he had nothing to go on but his experience, and in his life, if someone was killing men in uniform, it was a transgenic. Like Issac. Max tried to rid herself of the thought...

... but it didn’t go away easily.

Hustling back to the media center, Max laid out her orders, then, with Joshua and Alec accompanying her, she walked up to the blockade at the main gate at exactly nine P.M.

Half a dozen officers pointed guns at them from behind cars. Illuminated only by the light bars, Max could nonetheless see the hatred in their eyes. She knew that each now fought the impulse to pull the trigger and kill the three transgenics without hearing a single word.

In her earphone came Dix’s voice: “ Jesus, Max, you really set them off. Security cameras show them hunkering down at every post. They’re getting ready for a fight.”

Not changing her passive expression, she yelled, “Where’s Detective Clemente?”

A very white man in a camouflage uniform and Kevlar helmet inched up so his head and neck were visible above the roof of a police car. “I’m Colonel Nickerson, National Guard!... I’m in charge here.”

“You may be in charge of them, Colonel, but you’re not in charge of me... and I only talk to Clemente.”

“He’s not part of this anymore,” Nickerson said. He was practically yelling, and Max didn’t know if it was because he wanted to be heard... or just because he was scared.

“ They’re on the street,” Dix said in her ear, meaning Logan, Cindy, and Sketch. “ Everything’s go so far. ”

“Colonel Nickerson,” she said, her voice emotionless and almost bland, “do you want to see a peaceful end to this little situation?”

“Yes, I do. The question is... do you?”

Max nodded and took a couple of steps toward the fence. She heard guns being cocked as she moved — deadly little echoey clicks in the night.

Nickerson came out from behind his car and faced her.

“I’ve never wanted anything but to live peacefully,” Max said.

In her ear Dix said, “ They’re in the car — it’s started and they’re moving off. No one seems to have even noticed their asses!”

“Then why the hostage situation at Jam Pony?” Nickerson asked, with some edge in his voice. “And why all this?”

“Do you know an NSA agent named Ames White?”

The question seemed to catch Nickerson off guard. “No — never heard of him.”

Max could buy that — just as White had excluded the local PD from carrying out his dark agenda at Jam Pony, the National Guard colonel might well be out of the Ames White loop here at Terminal City. “That’s why I need to talk to Detective Clemente.”

Nickerson looked confused.

“By the time I get you up to speed, this mess may have blown up in all our faces... The clock’s ticking, Colonel, and there’s nothing you or I can do to slow it down. The only thing we can do is work with it, and if you really want a peaceful ending to this, then you’ll do what expedites that. And that would start with finding Detective Clemente and getting his ass down here... now.”

“I don’t know...”

“Otherwise, you’re lying about not knowing Ames White... and I’ll know where I stand with you.” Max looked at him hard. “Bip bip bip, Colonel.”

Then she, Alec, and Joshua turned and walked into the welcoming gloom that was their Terminal City home.

Bobby Kawasaki could feel the inner him — the real him — coming out. He had more energy now, though he still had not been off the sofa all day. The drug was finally winding down, and he could feel his true strength returning.

On a normal weekend Bobby would have already been out; but even before it started, this weekend had been screwed up. He felt lucky that he’d gone out Thursday and gotten a jump on the weekend’s shopping. If he hadn’t done that, he’d be further behind — further from his goal — and he would have felt even more lethargic than he did now.