Max Collins - Skin Game

“Damn little,” Gottlieb admitted.

From the doorway, the other former NSA agent, Thompson, joined in. “I know my imager didn’t work, and Ames White did hand each of us our imagers, personally.”

Clemente walked briskly out into the living room, Max and the others following him; Joshua took over the vigil in the bathroom with his old friend Kelpy.

The detective sat down heavily into a chair. “Do we have enough to make a case against White?”

Max realized Logan was at her side; she looked up at him, but his attention was on the detective.

Then she turned to Clemente and said, “The Army will be making their move soon, and it’ll be too late.”

Clemente pounded his fist into a hand. “We need to get the word out — we can’t move through the system in time to stop the slaughter. Shit... where the hell is that Eyes Only guy when you need him?”

Several pairs of eyes turned to Logan.

Picking up on it, Clemente turned to him too.

“Something I should know?” the detective asked.

“Well,” Logan said, almost shyly, “I sort of have a... uh, ‘in’ with Eyes Only.”

“Hell, man!” Clemente said. “Can you reach him? Can he help us?”

“See what I can do. Max — come with me a second, would you?”

Away from the others, they talked quickly, then Max gathered Alec and Sketchy into an impromptu camera crew.

Soon a video camera was set up on a tripod in the bedroom, to be manned by an enthusiastic Sketchy; here were sequestered Clemente, Gottlieb, Thompson, and everyone but Alec and Kelpy... in the bathroom with Alec manning another camera on a tripod... and Max and Logan, in the latter’s computer-and-monitor-arrayed office area.

As far as Clemente, Gottlieb, and Thompson were concerned, Alec was relaying all of this to a secure remote location, where Eyes Only was making broadcast magic. The trio of law enforcement veterans were unaware — or, anyway, so Logan and Max hoped — that the real broadcasting was being done a room away, by the real Eyes Only.

And thus came to pass the first broadcast of Freak Nation TV.

All around the city, TV screens went to static.

The static transformed into a logo depicting a pair of light-colored eyes on a blue background, with the words STREAMING FREEDOM VIDEO rolling by above and below, white letters standing out on a red background.

Then the familiar voice said: “ Do not attempt to adjust your set. This is a Streaming Freedom Video bulletin. This cable hack could last more than sixty seconds. It still cannot be traced, it still cannot be stopped, and it remains the only free voice left in this city...”

In homes, bars, police stations, fire stations, anywhere there was a television, people’s attention turned to the box; it had been months since they had heard from Seattle’s renegade cyber journalist, and the excitement around the city was palpable.

“ The information you’ve been given about the transgenic crisis in Terminal City is tainted and false. Likewise, the news you’ve heard about a serial killer skinning police officers has been only part of the story. Tonight, we’ll give you the facts.”

In the family room of the suburban home where he lived without his family, Ames White went ballistic. It apparently hadn’t done any good, shooting up that asshole Eyes Only’s apartment; right now, Ames White’s best efforts seemed only to have spurred the bastard on...

As the Eyes Only bulletin continued, White dialed the number of his government office.

“Norton,” a voice said.

“The prick’s at it again. Start a trace, now!”

“Which prick is at what again, sir?”

“Eyes Only, Eyes Only — turn on the goddamned TV!”

“Trace started, sir,” Norton reported.

“Let me know when you get something.”

The staticky logo image disappeared and the screen was filled with a ghostly white man with spiky hair in a bathtub, red sores pocking his body, floating in water bobbing with ice cubes. The male form was drenched in sweat and it was obvious whoever-this-was wasn’t going to live out the night.

Was this grotesque crap the best Eyes Only could muster? White was about to laugh, when the spectral figure spoke.

“ My name is Bobby Kawasaki,” the voice said, and it was strangely similar to that of Eyes Only himself. “ I’m a transgenic. I killed three people. It was a bad and terrible thing — I know that now. What I did was wrong. But I want you to know I did these bad things under the unknowing influence of a powerful drug.”

The picture changed to a still of Ames White...

... who sat up sharply in his chair in his family room.

Bobby was saying, “ And this is a photo of the man who gave me the tainted drugs. This is the man who turned me into a monster.”

Ames White sat frozen, as if he were the one in icy water, something frigid running through his veins — and in his belly, a million snakes seemed to coil and uncoil.

The picture was now live again, but no longer on the red-splotched ghost in the bathtub. Now the screen showed a room, possibly a bedroom... and the face on camera belonged to that fool Otto Gottlieb!

As Otto began telling his part of the sordid tale, Ames White put a hand to his temple.

He was ruined in the NSA. Right now, in front of all Seattle, and no doubt soon, all across the country, he was being outed — all that work to save his cover after the fiasco at Jam Pony, and now it was gone.

White’s phone rang and he picked it up on the third ring. “White.”

“Norton.”

“The trace—”

“I’ve been instructed to tell you to report to the office immediately.”

White hung up the phone.

That idiot Thompson — the guy White had been searching for every spare minute of the last three months — came on next, spewing his self-pitying garbage.

Rising, White picked up his pistol, went upstairs and quickly filled a suitcase. The conclave would of course see this, and he doubted they would take it lightly either — this could be viewed as nothing but the failure it was. Even he knew that...

The phone rang.

This time he let it ring.

Detective Ramon Clemente was next on screen. “ I would like to personally thank the transgenics of Terminal City, especially Max...”

“ Guevera,” an off-camera voice prompted.

“ Max Guevera,” Clemente said, “ who personally, and at great risk to herself, broke this case wide open, and in so doing saved many lives. And when the killer was found, and was a transgenic, Ms. Guevera did not seek to cover it up... rather came to me, the police.”

White, gathering some things from his family-room desk, managed not to throw a bookend through the screen.

“ As the Seattle police officer assigned to the so-called siege at Terminal City, I make this public plea to the Army: I urge you to reconsider your plans to invade Terminal City. These people — some call them freaks — have done nothing except defend themselves against false accusations, and yet... even when overwhelmed by problems of their own... still managed to help the police capture a serial killer. In addition, they have helped identify and expose the person manipulating the confessed killer, in an effort to stereotype transgenics as monsters, in a crass and heartless exploitation of the media and the public.”

What the fuck office was that detective running for, all of a sudden? God, how White hated that pompous petty nonentity. He picked up the remote and fired it at the picture tube. A minute later he was riding away from the suburban house, leaving the lie of that life behind as quickly as possible, and heading into a precarious future.