Max Collins - After the Dark

Father’s house had once belonged to Sandeman, the enigmatic and benign figure behind the transgenics program that Manticore had corrupted; Joshua had lived there for a while, and Logan had been a frequent visitor who’d often crashed there, after his apartment was trashed by White and the NSA.

Joshua nodded eagerly, happy to be part of the effort.

“What about you?” Alec asked.

“I’ve got a plan of my own,” she said.

Alec gave her a wicked little smile. “Hope it doesn’t suck.”

She traded him smirk for smirk. “Me, too... We’ll meet back at Terminal City in two hours. Use the cell phones to keep in touch — if you find something, don’t save it up for later. Call me right now. ”

They all nodded.

She let out a huge sigh and slid off the booth. Outside on the street, she said, “Okay — let’s go find that kid.”

“Why don’t we?” Alec said. His black eye had healed already — those good transgenic genes.

Fists were bumped, and they went their separate ways. Joshua — understandably shy about being seen in public — opted to return to his old house via the sewer system. Max would pit Joshua’s knowledge of the sewer system against anyone’s, even the engineers who designed it. When it came to underground travel, Joshua was king.

It was agreed that Mole would drop Alec at Matt Sung’s precinct, after which Mole would continue on with the X5’s cycle in search of Bling. For her part, Max was off to some old stomping grounds.

Might have been yesterday that she last leaned on the bar in Crash; but in reality, she hadn’t set foot in the place in six months, not since that day everything went sideways at Jam Pony.

The converted warehouse was separated into three rooms by its rounded brick archways. Video monitors attached to the walls and the big screen TV in the middle room all still showed footage of violent collisions between cars, trains, buses, motorcycles, anything mechanical, providing the crashes that were the bar’s namesake. Manhole cover tables were scattered around, each surrounded by four or five chairs. The far room held pool and foosball tables. The entire wall behind the bar was a backlit Plexiglas sculpture constructed of bicycle frames.

Max sat at the bar nursing a diet cola. The scene at the Furies’ mausoleum had put her in the mood for something harder, but she needed to keep her wits about her. For now, all she could do was cool her jets and hope she wouldn’t have to wait too long.

She didn’t.

In less than ten minutes a woman opened the door and stood in silhouette against the bright sunshine. The door closed slowly and Max’s eyes readjusted to the dim light as the woman came down the stairs, spotted Max, and came over to take a seat next to her at the bar.

A slim blonde with her short hair tucked neatly up under a stocking cap, the woman was mannequin thin with alabaster skin, standing slightly taller than Max, with large dark eyes. When the blonde sat down, Max got a glimpse of the tattoo on the woman’s back, just about waist level.

“Asha,” Max said, by way of hello.

The blonde’s smile showed some teeth, but seemed forced. She and Max had never been friends, exactly, even if they had been allies much of the time. Max knew Asha had a thing for Logan, and she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if the blonde still resented Logan picking her.

“Max,” Asha said, with a curt nod.

That was the extent of their chitchat.

After Asha ordered a coffee for herself, Max laid out the situation — Asha’s only reaction to hearing of Logan’s kidnapping was a tightening between her eyebrows, but that spoke volumes — then Max told Asha what she needed.

Asha’s eyes tightened, and her mouth did, too. “You really think I’m gonna betray Logan’s trust?”

Max shrugged. “Only if you want to save his life.”

The blonde took a sip of her coffee and carefully set the cup on the bar in front of her. Her eyes never left the cup as she said nothing for a very long minute.

Then her eyes rose and she said, quietly, “If I tell you anything, Logan will never speak to me again.”

“If he’s dead,” Max pointed out, “he’ll never speak to anyone again.”

She shook her head, and the blonde hair shimmered with barroom neon. “He’ll never be able to trust me.”

Max let out a breath. “Asha, he’ll never know I got it from you. You have my word.”

Asha studied Max for a good thirty seconds — it seemed an endless time to Max, but she let the blonde make up her own mind.

Finally Asha spoke. “I believe you, I really do. Despite our... differences, you’ve been honest with me. And I would help you if I could.”

“But?”

“I really don’t think I know anything.”

“Sounds to me like you’re not sure... Any little thing you could share would be more than I have right now.”

Again Asha shook her head. “You’re asking me to betray a trust. Do you know what it does, between two people, when trust is shattered? When one betrays the other?”

Max looked away.

“What?” Asha said.

“Nothing.” Max shook her head, smiled a bitter little smile, and said, “We don’t have the luxury of social niceties right now, Asha. I’m afraid ‘betraying’ Logan’s trust is the only way of saving Logan’s life .”

Looking back into her coffee, Asha kept her voice low, barely above a whisper. “All right... all right. But I don’t remember the woman’s name — the aunt?”

Max nodded slightly, one eye going to the bartender to make sure he wasn’t watching them.

“And I didn’t have all that much to do with it,” Asha continued. “I tracked the woman down, introduced her to Logan. The rest was Eyes Only.”

Like most of Logan’s operatives, Asha did not know that Logan was Eyes Only.

“I understand,” Max said.

“All I can tell you is, the aunt lived in Fremont. Once Logan reunited her with her nephew, he gave her the money and the new papers to make the move. I did hear him mention Appleton.”

“Appleton... about an hour and a half from here? Upstate?”

“I don’t know. Could be some other Appleton in Arkansas or Maine, who the hell knows. Would Logan salt somebody away so close to home?”

“Actually, he might. It’s unexpected enough... Asha, think —”

She shook her head, hair shimmering with neon again. “Max, honestly — that’s all I know. Really.”

“Thanks, Asha.” And she touched the woman’s hand on the bar. “I appreciate it.”

Asha gripped Max’s hand; the squeeze they exchanged was the most personal, warmest moment they’d ever shared. “You save his fine ass, girl — understood?”

“Understood.”

“And you didn’t hear any of this from me.”

“Also understood.”

Appleton.

It wasn’t much.

But it was more than she had when she came in to Crash, wasn’t it? Tossing some money on the bar, Max retreated up the stairs and out into the bright sunlit day. As she rode back to Terminal City on her Ninja, she wondered if the others were having any luck. Her pickings were pretty damn slim.

Alec was already there, in the control room, when Max strode in.

“How’d you do?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Zip, zally, zero. Sung didn’t sing — he doesn’t know anything about the White kid.”

“ Says he doesn’t know, or doesn’t know?”

“I didn’t hook him up to a lie detector, Max, but I know a lot about lying... and I don’t think he was. Besides, you know how highly Logan regards Sung.”

She wondered if Alec had run into another Eyes Only loyalist who was refusing to share info out of respect to Logan.

“How did you do?” he asked.