John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

“How did you know he’d be there?”

“I didn’t know he would. I knew it would be possible.”

“And the other guys didn’t spot him?”

“He probably got here after they did. Dan’s inside, probably with Leslie, which is where you have to be to guard someone that close, so Dan hasn’t seen blanket man. Roger’s going to be a damned fine agent in about five years, but he’s got no instincts right now; he’s watching for Arnie because Arnie’s the only thing he’s been told to watch for.” The slim woman squatted beside him. “If I have to move fast, I will. If it comes to a fight, don’t get all fussy and worry about catching them alive. It’ll be more than enough if we just stop them.” She stretched, as if preparing to sprint. “Once I’m in striking range of Arnie I’m going to follow him and his little shadow from a distance, and see how much I can hear and see before I have to move, but when it’s time to move, I’ll move, and you catch up then. Till then, hang two blocks back, try to stay in the shadows, and make no noise. Now let’s—there.”

James didn’t see what she saw, but he saw where she went, and sprinted after her along the shadowed side of a high wall, through an alley, and through an overgrown public park along the brick pathways. The next ten minutes were an obstacle course of alleys, schoolyards, passages between boarded houses, and underpasses, between rows of abandoned cars and around piles of junk, until, as they squeezed between Dumpsters and garbage piles toward the mouth of an alley, Debbie pointed at the ground. He hoped that meant “wait here” and that her pointing down the street meant “watch me go this way,” because that was what he did. He peeked around the corner.

Debbie ran silently, at top speed, seemingly touching nothing. As she passed a point he judged to be two blocks away, James ran after, trying to breathe quietly enough, trying not to think about having old, less-flexible ankles, making occasional scuffing noises but not many and not close together.

At a recessed storefront, Debbie caught him by the shoulder, and told James, “Look ahead. See Arnie? See where his little shadow went into that doorway?”

“The guy that just slipped into the bushes by that house?”

“You got talent. Get ready, any sec now—”

As they watched, Arnie slowed, dragged his feet, as if some invisible cord were pulling him backward. “Okay, James, throw your distraction, and make it loud.”

James emerged from the alley, waving his pistol, and yelled “Yang, you son of a bitch, your fucking Daybreak hippie friend killed Leslie!” Keeping his gun leveled ( I hope it’s too far away for him to see I haven’t cocked it ), he walked slowly toward Arnie, who stood paralyzed in the street, the gun leveled at him. “He killed Leslie!” he repeated. “I’m gonna shoot your worthless ass!” He kept walking toward the slender figure of Arnie Yang. Oh, man, let him just have those knives he carries, this would be totally the worst time ever to get shot, he thought, and tried not to smile at his mental imitation of Leslie.

Debbie said, “It’s done,” firmly and loudly.

The corpse of Arnie’s watcher plunged out from the bushes and lay still. Arnie made a strange noise and pelted away as if his feet had a will of their own; Debbie shouted “Shit!” and ran after.

Not sure what to do, and having run about as much as he could already, James walked after. He paused to look at the corpse. Debbie’s wire garrote was sunk deep into the flesh of the thin young man’s neck, and his eyes bulged and tongue protruded. His hands were at his throat, where he’d made a futile try, probably, to dig the wire out. He wore several layers of shabby old clothing, a full beard, and long curly hair.

James looked up to see Deb returning, with Arnie in a hammerlock-and-nelson, bent backward brutally.

“Well,” James said, “I guess one of us needs to go get Heather, and she’ll want to bring along—”

“One meal ticket,” a voice said, behind him. He turned and saw Patrick, who was grinning. “For one meal ticket I will go find anybody you like and send them here.”

“How the hell—”

“Hey, Mister Hendrix, it is not my fault if you’re way more interesting when you’re not teaching us to read Great Expectations .” Patrick was bursting with pride. “I saw you guys following Doctor Yang and followed you here, ’cause I knew you’d both got those special messages.”

Debbie winked at James, and said, “See what happens when you don’t look for things? How’s this guy doing with Dickens?”

“Top of the class.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “Any agent I’m going to train can’t have enough Dickens.”

Between them, James and Debbie figured out who Patrick needed to bring, and he went on his way with “a slightly swollen wallet and a slightly swollen head,” James said. “And hey, why does a spy need Dickens?”

“Because you’re making me read it in the adult class, and if I have to, so does any poor bastard I train. Same principle as fraternity hazing, if I went through it, so does everyone.”

The sun descended slowly, the shadows lengthened, and it was the better part of two hours before everything was sorted out, but at the end of it, people were where they belonged: Aaron was on his way to the morgue, Arnie was in Leslie’s cell (and the guards had been carefully coached by James about the four different ways someone could get in, and fixed them), and everyone else, including Leo, was at James’s house. “Even Wonder,” Leslie said, her face buried in the big dog’s fur.

“Well, he’s been living here.”

“I can tell,” she said, thumping the big dog’s sides. “Too much good food and not enough exercise, you lazy old goof, you’re gonna be running your ass off for a couple months. And you too, Wonder.”

“That was an evening,” Heather said. “I guess I’ve never been happier to miss out on meat lumps and noodles.”

Leslie looked up from Wonder, and said, “James, it’s Monday night, still,” and pausing only to consider that he had enough in the larder, James said, “There’re three big jugs of wine in the lower drawer in the living room hutch, and glasses on the top two shelves. Everybody grab a glass and fill it, and then sit down and stay out of the way—I’m about to cook.”

“I’m really not totally cool with this,” Izzy said. “He might be able to send me into a seizure, and even though Beth has never had one, she’s pregnant. I don’t like doing this at all.”

“Me either,” James said, “but it’s all I can come up with.”

Since five o’clock that morning, James, Izzy, and Beth had been practicing the “mutual correction” protocol that he had evolved to keep Leslie from slipping into Daybreak. It had begun as a pure desperation measure, with James adapting tricks from a twenty-year-old pamphlet, Interrogation Tips: Avoiding Implanting False Memories . But it seemed to have kept Leslie out of Daybreak, and even to help her develop some immunity—whatever it was that immunity might mean in this case. It was as good a protection as they knew how to do against the version of Daybreak in Arnie.

According to the guards, Arnie had been sitting upright on the bench-bed ever since his arrest. He had risen to stretch twice, and to use the chamber pot once. Mostly he sat and stared into space.

Arnie looked up and said, “Hello,” tonelessly, when they came in.

James said, “Sit up and look at me.” It wasn’t a sharp command, or a harsh order, but it was clear he expected to be obeyed.