Max Collins - Skin Game

He dropped one of the stun rods, keeping the other with him. There was much to do now and very little time to do it. The cops would probably be on their way, if any neighbors had heard and reported the ruckus. That meant getting his project, and getting out of there, as fast as he could.

Kelpy would have to move his plan up now — he would need to work faster.

But that was all right: the sooner he finished, the sooner everything would go his way. He removed his project carefully from the mannequin and packed it in a suitcase. He dressed quickly, once again becoming Bobby Kawasaki, bike messenger. Slinging the suitcase’s strap over his shoulder, Bobby took one last look around the rathole. He wouldn’t miss it a bit.

Leaving the apartment — forgetting to collect his Tryptophan in the fridge — Bobby picked up the canvas bag, felt the weight of the pistols inside and thought about killing Joshua and his intrusive playmate, still lying helpless in the hallway.

Then he heard sirens, the elevator buzz, and decided discretion might well be the better part of valor. Turning, he walked to the stairs at the far end of the hall and disappeared... in that way that only Bobby/Kelpy could.

Pacing, Max asked, “Where the hell are they?”

Dix shook his lumpy head. “Haven’t seen them since the meeting this morning... and I can’t find them on any of the video feeds.”

Lizard-man Mole offered, “Terminal City is a big place.”

She whirled at him. “You’re not in on this, are you?”

Mole’s cigar almost dropped out of his mouth. “No! Hell no — in on what?”

“I wish to hell I knew,” she growled.

The X5 had a sick feeling about this; as much as she valued Alec — as much as she secretly liked the guy — Max was well aware of his self-centered, guileful ways.

They were in the media center, waiting for the eleven o’clock news. Max prowled restlessly, while Dix and Mole sat here and there in the room, the crew watching the monitors hugging the screens.

“If they are up to something,” Mole said, “what pisses me off is they didn’t invite me.”

Max shot him a look. “Don’t whine — it’s not becoming.”

Mole shrugged, leaning back in a spring-sprung easy chair no self-respecting thrift shop would accept. “Hey, it’s not like it was my idea, them jumping the fence. I’m just sayin’—”

She raised an eyebrow and the big tough lizard man piped down, sucking his cigar like a pacifier.

“Anyway,” she said, flopping into another shabby easy chair, “we don’t know for sure that they’ve gone anywhere.” This was said without much conviction.

Mole started to open his mouth again, probably to ask where the hell she thought they were, but the ugly frown etched on her lovely features encouraged him to keep his questions to himself.

“All right,” she said, heaving a sigh. “We’ve got plenty of other things to worry about. Let’s get back to work.”

And she hauled herself out of the chair, without even having really settled in.

“Wait!” Dix said, “News is starting.” He turned the volume up some.

“Would it be asking too much,” Max said dryly, “that the lead story not be Alec and Joshua?”

The news anchor was a blonde woman with manicured hair, suspiciously energetic blue eyes, and a long, thin face. She looked as though she hadn’t had a cheeseburger since before the Pulse.

“In our top story tonight,” the blonde said, “transgenics invaded the Ichiro Suzuki Elementary School today...”

Mole spoke for all of them: “Holy freakin’ shit...”

“We go now to our reporter on the scene, Ben Petty.”

Petty stood tall, straight, and wore a nearly identical suit to the one he’d worn the night before, when he’d bribed the drunks. “Thank you, Liz.”

“Hey, Max, isn’t that your pal?” Dix asked.

Max shushed him.

Petty was saying, “Today, two transgenics invaded Ichiro Elementary, apparently intending to kidnap children.”

“Kidnap children?” Mole asked, half out of the easy chair, dangling cigar stuck to the saliva of his lower lip. “Why in the hell would they do that?”

As if speaking directly to the lizard man, Petty said, “Local police have refused comment, but a high-ranking federal government source has speculated that the transgenics hoped to barter a deal to end the Terminal City siege by using school children as hostages.”

“Ames White,” Max said, spitting the name like an epithet.

The shot widened to show a man with a bandaged nose standing next to Petty. “Janitor Hampton Rhoades successfully fought off the transgenics, though one of them did, before fleeing, manage to break the janitor’s nose.”

One of the monitor crew sat up, a slender female, gesticulating, yelling, “Hey, I know him — he’s a second-gen X5!”

All of them turned toward the source of that comment, an X5 whose name Max didn’t know — typically pretty, with short brown hair, doe eyes, a pug nose, and a red-lipstick blossom of a mouth.

Dix asked, “Where d’ya know him from, Kade?”

“Not the streets — Manticore. His name was Stoop. He was a squad leader. If he got his nose broken, it’s ’cause he let somebody do it.”

They all traded looks, obviously wondering why these “transgenics” would invade the school... and, beyond that, why one of their own would fight them.

Were the two Alec and Joshua?

On the tube, the janitor was being interviewed by Petty.

Rhoades was saying, “I don’t think they wanted trouble.”

“Then how do you explain them breaking your nose?”

Shrugging, Rhoades said, “They were scared. I discovered them in my supply room — probably just looking for stuff, you know.”

“You’re being heralded as a hero,” Petty said, “for saving these children.”

“I don’t think—”

Petty turned toward the camera. “There you have it — a pair of transgenics, chased off in fright by a grade school janitor.”

Max shook her head. This just kept getting better and better, didn’t it?

“Keep a tape of that garbage,” she told the monitoring crew. “But for now, I’ve seen enough.”

She was on her way out of the room when the phone rang. She answered with her standard, “Go for Max.”

“It’s me,” Logan said in her ear, and just the sound of his voice soothed her.

“Hi. Anything?”

“I may be making some progress. Can you stop by?”

“New place?”

“Yeah. Now would be good.”

“I’m on my way.”

She hung up, relieved at the thought of being in Logan’s presence. This leadership gig was the pits...

Walking toward the back fence of Terminal City, she watched as the community settled in for another night. A helicopter thrummed overhead, its searchlight probing their home like a prison beam searching for escaping prisoners; but at least it kept moving, stopping to hover for only a moment, at various points. The tension level in their toxic little town was high enough already, without choppers and firebombs, and she had to wonder if Clemente’s control outside the fence was any less tenuous than her own, inside.

Here and there she saw transgenics bedding down. Some, she knew, like Dix, had real beds and real rooms, however shabby they might be; many, though, had only whatever scraps they could make into a bed, with a hollowed-out building to serve as shelter. Sooner or later this situation had to break. Other than Clemente, though, no one on the outside seemed interested in talking. She could only guess the authorities — and this included Ames White, but also more responsible types, without snake-cult hidden agendas — were patiently waiting to starve the transgenics out.