Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

Even from this distance, even from behind, Evan could see him wiggle his fingers.

A noise pitter-pattered in the darkness ahead. Thousands of tiny parts coaxed to life by the movements of Molleken’s digits. It sounded like countless insect legs drumming the earth in eager anticipation.

Evan felt a tightness in his chest, a constriction in his throat. This whole time he’d been out of signal range, which meant that none of the images he’d recorded had been sent to Joey yet. No one knew where he was.

He was underground in an unknown location at the mercy of a mad scientist.

“You’ve seen what a bee can do.…” Molleken intensified the movement of his fingers, and all at once Evan heard the terrible humming of a multitude of wings. “But you haven’t met my prize pets yet.”

Now at last Molleken turned. He clenched his hands into fists, the clear gloves turning his flesh shiny, and a thousand tiny yellow-green lights illuminated in the darkness beyond him. The pinpricks were arranged in tight groupings of two, which—Evan realized with an irrational spike of fear—mimicked the compound eyes of an actual dragonfly. And they rose in neat rows from floor to ceiling, a wall of unseen microdrones.

The tiny eyes rose and fell a few centimeters, mirroring the undulation of Molleken’s fingers. The humming waxed and waned with their movement, the unseen metallic legs scratching horribly each time they found their perch.

A noise broke above the thrum of white noise—a bugle giving a three-note salute. It sounded once more, and Evan noticed the vibration of the Laser Warning Receiver on his shirt. The sound was coming from him.

He was lit up.

Molleken said, “Should we try this again?”

Evan stared at the robotic eyes staring back at him from the darkness, ready to launch. All those laser target designators locked on him. He wouldn’t get two steps before they’d fill the air around him. For now they stayed in place, hovering in the darkness.

He held up his hands. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

Molleken lowered his hands. Taps stopped emanating from Evan’s clip. The dragonflies settled back down. An instant later the lights of their eyes clicked off, and now it was just Evan and Molleken staring at each other in a cube of light.

“I’m an airman.” Evan tried to exhale some of the tension that had knotted his shoulders into rock. “A friend of Jake Hargreave’s.”

“Who’s Jake Hargreave?” Molleken asked.

Evan stared into his four pupils. No tell. “A drone pilot who was killed a few weeks ago.”

“And he is relevant to me how?”

“He tested some of your technology. At Creech North. And then was killed.”

Molleken mused on this for a moment. “I recall something about this. Unspecified training accident in Area 6. That’s what I was told. I know nothing more about this Hargreaves incident—”

“Hargreave.”

“—though I was informed that people die in training all the time.”

“Not like this.”

“Maybe not. But that’s the official record. What are you going to do?” Molleken’s lips twitched with amusement. “Take down the military-industrial complex?”

“I’d be happy just taking down the people who killed Hargreave.”

Molleken stared at him for a long time, his face devoid of human emotion.

“Okay.” He peeled off his gloves, stuffed them into his pockets. “Good luck.” He started off at a different trajectory, piercing the waiting darkness to their side. “I have a party to get back to.”

46And They Laughed

The elevator rose to the ground floor and opened. Molleken pressed his hand to the bumper. “You get out here.”

Evan stepped out.

He turned around, but the doors were already closing, wiping Molleken from view.

Behind him he could hear the party in full swing, awed voices at the periphery.

“Was that him in the elevator?”

“I just saw him. Dude, that was him .”

A blinking green light in Evan’s visual field indicated that the video he’d recorded in the battle lab had been sent to Joey. He exhaled. Time to split.

As he cut through the crowd, various gazes adhered to him: the man who had ridden a private elevator with Molleken. Beneath the hoodie his shirt constricted his ribs, stuck to him with dried sweat. He was eager to get outside into the fresh air, to get back to Joey at the hotel and see if she could make any sense from the live stream he’d initiated in the battle lab.

He shoved into the foyer, the scent of poinsettias riding the thin breeze from the porch, and then he spotted her.

Cammy, the girl in the ripped jeans.

Standing alone on the second-to-lowest step of the stairs, gripping an elbow with her opposite hand, a dazed look in her eyes. One cheek splotched red, maybe from being slapped. Her blouse ripped at the side seam, showing a bulge of tanned flesh. She was chewing her lip, looking at nothing.

After losing at hide-and-seek with a robotic bee, confronting a swarm of glowing eyes in the darkness, and standing down a genius who’d batted him through a subterranean lab like a cat toying with a mouse, this was not a complication Evan welcomed right now. The Seventh Commandment: One mission at a time .

He turned his back to the girl and started out. He neared the threshold, the December air cool and welcoming across his face, freedom just a few steps away.

Then he paused.

He thought about the bearded man—Rishi—tugging Cammy’s breast. Ordering her to kiss the other girl. They know what they’re looking for .

He gritted his teeth.

This wasn’t really another mission.

More like a sub-mission.

He turned back around. A pair of drunken revelers stumbled down the stairs, knocking Cammy in the shoulder, shuddering her frame. She barely seemed to register them.

Evan walked back to her. She clung to the newel post. Her blouse hung low in the front as if it had been yanked and stretched out, her ribs visible above her breasts. She shifted, and the neckline tugged over, exposing a nipple.

Evan paused five feet from her, a safe distance back. “Excuse me?”

It took a moment for her eyes to settle on him.

“May I walk closer to you?”

Her hands gripped the newel post, thin arms trembling. She jerked her head up, down.

He walked near her. “Your shirt is out of place.”

She looked down. She moved to reach for her collar but seemed to collapse forward; she needed the post to hold herself upright.

Evan said, “May I adjust your shirt back into place?”

She nodded.

He reached out slowly and tugged the fabric up to cover her. He pulled his hoodie off and held it out. She nodded.

He drew it across her shoulders. She smelled clean and sweet, deodorant and perfume. He imagined her getting ready earlier—preparing for a fun night ahead, checking her lipstick in the mirror, maybe a bit of music on—and had to tamp down the simmering in his chest.

She said, “Will you get me out of here?”

Evan shouldered her weight and helped her off the stairs. He pushed through the people in the foyer with purpose, and they seemed to sense his mood and move aside.

On the porch one of the bouncers said, “Hope you had a good evening.”

Evan caught his eye. “I have a feeling,” he said, “that I’ll be coming back.”

As Evan moved Cammy toward the gates, someone crooned after them from the photo area. “Yeaaah, boy. Go get some!”

They walked in silence, Evan bearing her weight. Cammy kept her eyes down to check her footing and make sure she didn’t stumble on her wedge heels. The air smelled of eucalyptus, the sidewalks littered with shed peels of bark. Slowly the noise of the party faded behind them, and then it was just the sound of her shoes ticktocking the concrete and her hoarse breathing.