Max Collins - Skin Game

“Can’t we talk about this, Bobby?” Alec asked. “We should all be friends — you’re our brother...”

His back to the door now, Bobby held Logan tighter, a tiny ribbon of red oozing out from where the point of the large knife touched his throat.

Original Cindy could see Bobby’s face clearly now, and to her astonishment, the guy she’d thought had Afro blood in him now looked whiter than Hitler, and his hair seemed sort of spiky and blond.

Shit, if he didn’t look something like Logan now!

Joshua had finally roused. “Kelpy — don’t do this! Max wouldn’t want you to—”

“Max will love me,” Bobby said, at the doorway now. “You’ll see.”

“Kelpy—” Joshua said, moving forward.

“Don’t follow me — I see one of you down in that tunnel, I slit Logan’s throat, then and there.”

Damn, Cindy thought. Once he’s outta here, who’s gonna save Logan?

A few minutes prior to the confrontation in Logan’s apartment, a small council of war was under way.

For what seemed like hours, Max and Mole had been going over contingencies that they hoped would turn their defensive position into an offensive one.

The idea was to turn the disadvantage of being surrounded into an advantage. Their strategy was strikingly simple in nature. When the Army piled through the gates and started going building to building, Max, Mole, and a few others would remain behind to distract them as the rest of the inhabitants took to the tunnels and sewers. As the Army and National Guard came in, they would go out, then come up behind the invaders. Once the tables were turned and it was the Army that was surrounded, maybe they could talk.

When they had gone over the plan for the umpteenth time, Max stretched and said, “All right, break time.”

Mole sat back and rolled his head on the column of his neck. “You know, this shit just might work,” he said.

She nodded. “Oughta give ’em a hell of goose, anyway... Look, I’m supposed to go meet Logan — he should be back by now.”

“Cool,” Mole said, and blew a cigar smoke ring. “Young love inspires us all.”

“Bite me.”

“Have you had your shots?”

“I hang with Joshua, don’t I?”

They both laughed — and the levity was a good sign after all the doom and gloom of recent days.

“Go on,” Mole said. “We’ll hold down the fort.”

Then, as she started to walk out, he added, “And see if he got my damn cigars! He forgot last time.”

She grinned. “Will do.”

Despite Mole’s good humor, the atmosphere around the compound remained tense. Max hadn’t expected any less. They were all getting ready for combat now. Her desire to check on Logan — and his efforts to find Sage Thompson — made her want to run; but she forced herself to walk. Behind the broken windows and cracked doors, citizens of Terminal City were watching her.

If she looked cool, maybe they would stay cool, too.

When the National Guard had cut the power to Terminal City, they’d gotten this end of the tunnel too. Dix didn’t have it hooked into the grid yet, but it was on the to-do list. In the meantime, she didn’t care. Feline DNA made the lights optional anyway.

Max actually enjoyed the darkness — it felt peaceful to her. But the silence that usually accompanied the blanket of blackness was disturbed — somewhere from farther up the tunnel, she could hear something.

Voices?

Trotting ahead, staying silent, she heard Alec’s voice from Logan’s apartment. “Can’t we talk about this, Bobby?”

Then other voices, including Joshua’s; but she couldn’t make out the words.

Something was wrong. Very wrong...

In seconds she was at the end of the tunnel and silently started up the stairs as she heard another voice.

“Don’t follow me...”

This one too was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.

“I see one of you down in that tunnel,” the voice was saying, “I slit Logan’s throat, then and there.”

At the top of the stairs, she saw someone who looked vaguely like Logan, with an arm around Logan’s chest and his other hand out of sight. Without seeing it, she knew the other hand held a knife to Logan’s throat.

She still had five steps between her and them.

Normally, taking a guy like this would be no biggie: he had his back to her and all his attention was focused on those in front of him...

Four steps .

The fly in this ointment, though, was Logan. If, in tearing the attacker from him, she somehow accidentally touched Logan, even just brushed her flesh against his in the smallest way, the virus — which Manticore had infected her with, to make her touch deadly to Logan — would kick in, and instead of getting his throat cut, Logan would die at her own fingertips.

Three steps .

The timing had to be perfect, and nothing could go wrong.

Two steps .

One shot, that’s all she’d have. Her hand snaked toward the right elbow of the attacker. Just as she was about to grab him, a bright light — a flashbulb — went off in there.

The attacker yowled, and his right hand — the one with the knife — drew away from Logan’s neck as the attacker tried to turn away from the strobe. The action of turning had tipped the pair off balance — captor and hostage alike — and they teetered on the brink of tumbling down the stairs on top of Max.

In less than a second she visualized the whole thing: the three of them tumbling down the stairs, all tangled together, piling up at the bottom, her lying in the one place she longed to be more than any other — in Logan’s arms — Logan locked in her deadly embrace, any hope of a life together obliterated by a silly flash of light.

Then — just as Max clutched the attacker’s arm, his skin hot against hers — Alec launched himself at the pair and wrenched Logan from the grasp of the attacker. As Logan and Alec fell back into the apartment, she jerked the attacker’s knife arm...

... and the two of them rolled ass-over-teakettle down the stairs into the black tunnel!

They were both on their feet instantly, he still holding the knife, she circling, looking for an opening. In the apartment, someone hit the switch and the lights in the tunnel came on. The attacker winced at the brightness and gave Max the moment she needed.

She kicked the blade from his grasp, then swiveled and in one fluid motion kicked again, hitting him in the stomach, sending him flying into the stairs, hitting hard.

Max moved in, ready for her opponent to respond; and she got her first good look at him...

He looked almost exactly like Logan!

But an alarming change was in effect: the Logan look-alike was sweating profusely, red sores breaking out on his arms and on his face in a terrible sick blossoming, and he looked at her with shock and confusion in his blue eyes.

“Max,” he rasped, slumped against the stairs, a pitiful pile of hive-ridden flesh. “What’s happening to me?”

Her hand went to her mouth.

She knew she was witnessing the virus taking full-blown effect — whoever this would-be Logan was, he had taken on much more than just Logan Cale’s appearance.

Soon everyone was standing around the table in Logan’s new quarters, the would-be killer splayed across the table like a ghastly meal. Original Cindy, Otto, and Asha — unbound now — were joined by a revived Thompson, Joshua, and Sketchy, who held an ice pack to his chest where the stun rod had bruised him.

“Fill the bathtub with cold water and ice,” Max said, directing the order to no one specifically.