Indelible Ink (9 page)

23

The room was quiet except for the occasional typing on keyboards. Garrett looked over at Pel, who he assumed was doing some high-level analysis of the data regarding Deena’s whereabouts, or using the city’s camera system for surveillance of ATMs or traffic lights. Or updating her Facebook status to read “Available”. It was hard to tell.

Rivers and Rice were off doing God knows what - they’d left in a hurry. They’d talked about a breakthrough with something but refused to elaborate as apparently Pel and Garrett didn’t need to know about whatever it was yet.

“Lot of government double talk,” Garrett said.

The furious typing slowed long enough for Pel to mumble her agreement and then the tapping ramped up again.

“If they don’t want us to know shit, why did they ask us to be here? Why did they even bother to find out if we wanted to come aboard?”

Pel looked up and her hands went still. She looked flustered and confused for the moment. “
Did
they ask us? Were we invited?”

“Sure we were.”

“They said ‘Would you like to come and work for our division?’ at some point?” Pel asked.

“I…” Garrett stopped to think about it. Somewhere. The first conversation in the car, maybe? “Sure they did.” Only the more he said sure, the less he was of it.

“Huh,” Pel said and went back to focusing her attention to the screen.

There was a folder in front of Garrett with a map of possible sightings of Deena and her crew, which now apparently included one of their star witnesses in the eventual trial against Marsh, Stanley Yuko. The map was available on the server, but Garrett made Pel print him out a hard copy, even though the data online was updated in real time.

“You think we’re doing the right thing, joining them?” Pel whispered.

Garrett looked up from his maps. He’d been contemplating that as well, mostly when he saw what had happened to the others like Deena. “I think everyone here certainly has the best interest of the public at heart.”

“That doesn’t really answer the question, does it?”

“I understand your concerns, I think. I have them too,” Garrett said. “I’m worried about what’s going to happen once we get Deena behind bars, if we ever catch up with her. Truth be told, I don’t know if we can affect a change here and I don’t know if I like being that out of control. And I’m not sure I like the way they treat these Incubators. They say ‘Ink’ with such, distain.” It was the best answer he could give. His head hurt from thinking about it. So far, they were hunting criminals that happened to have a very special ability. What would happen when they just started rounding them up, no matter what their rap sheet looked like?

“We can always go back to our old jobs at the Bureau,” Pel already looked a little defeated.

“And forget this is going on? No.” Garrett said. “Besides, we just got here. With your tech skills and my good looks, we’ll be running this place in a week.”

“I think we—” Pel shut up when Rivers walked through the door.

“You both should come have a look at this,” Rivers said. Rice followed him into the office.

“What is it?” Pel asked.

Rice looked extremely happy with something. Garrett guessed the man was pleased with himself more than anything, but Rice was hard to read.

“The Department of Justice has released a prisoner to us. It’s an Ink we’ve been trying to get for a while.” Rivers led the way through the hall into areas that Pel and Garrett hadn’t been before. They passed offices with nameplates but no titles, bare white walls and smooth grey floors. In this section of the office, there were more people, most of them in white lab coats and shiny black shoes. It smelled more and more like a hospital, with a chemical stench that made him flinch at first.

Garrett looked at Pel and stood. “Is this guy beneficial to the investigation?”

“Beneficial to the whole department.”

They walked further, twisting and turning, so that Garrett was eventually sure he couldn’t find his way back. Twice, Rice took out his identification badge and placed it by the door before it would open. “What? No retinal scans? No fingerprint ID? I was starting to think this was a high-tech operation.” Garrett said.

“You’ve seen way too many movies,” Rivers said.

Going through the last door, they came to a hallway where one wall was all glass. Rivers and Rice stepped up and Pel and Garrett followed. The wall looked down on what appeared to be a hospital surgery room with a single bed in the center and equipment surrounding it. A large, muscular man was restrained on the table, straps holding him down at the waist, wrists and forehead. “This is Leonard Franco. Arrested a year ago in a murder-for-hire racket in Trenton, New Jersey. The feds have been holding him since his capture. He’d been making grocery money by killing scumbag husbands for harried wives and breaking kneecaps for a loan shark.”

Garrett looked at Leonard. With the man’s size and implied strength, it wasn’t hard to see why he got into that line of work. Anyone saw him coming, they’d likely cough up what they owed. “How’s he going to help us, exactly?”

“He has the same thing inside him the rest of our subjects do. Same thing Deena Riordan has,” Rice said. “It’s a good opportunity. He’s the first Ink we’ve grabbed in a long time.”

The man on the table hadn’t moved since Garrett started watching. “Is he still all right?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course he’s all right,” Rivers snapped.

“With the track record of keeping these people alive, I thought it might be smart to ask,” Garrett said.

“He’s fine.” Rice pulled out his phone and started tapping away on it.

“What’s going to happen to him?” Garrett asked.

The clean white room was cold, quiet and smelled of antiseptic. None of the noises from the other room bled through, though there was a speaker on the wall that allowed everything to be heard if the switch was flipped into the on position.

“Same thing that’s happened to the rest, I suppose. They’ll study him to figure out what makes him tick, where his power comes from,” Rivers said. He was staring into the other room with his arms folded. Rice stood next to him, doing the same.

“They’ll dissect him like the ones you showed us?” Pel asked.

Rice looked annoyed. “I doubt it. That didn’t work the last several times. Highly unlikely they’ll do it again. We need Inks to use as long-term study subjects.”

“Gets hard to explain to the superiors,” Rivers said.

It was difficult for Garrett to believe that the only thing holding them back from cutting a man open and doing something that would surely end his life was the fact that someone would ask questions. Garrett knew the letter of the law as an agent of the federal government and was well versed in the rules of how prisoners needed to be treated. It made him wonder again what exactly he had stumbled into with Rivers’ group. “Ain’t that a bitch?”

“Look,” Rivers added. “We’ve learned from our mistakes. The doctors will try any number of things before going to the extreme of removing that thing. Nope. Leonard here will be with us for a long time to come, if all goes well.”

“And the girl? What about Deena? What if we get our hands on her?” Pel asked.

Rice put his phone back in his suit jacket. “We’ll use what we learned from this guy and try to apply it to her.”

“So you’ll
try
not to kill her as well?” Garrett looked at the huge man on the table again. He could see a dark band around the man’s arm and assumed it was the same thing Deena had on her.

Rivers turned and walked back toward the door.

“We always try,” Rice said.

Men and women wearing alabaster clean-suits began to surround Leonard in the room below, checking the machines that surrounded him, and taping tubes to him that jutted out at all angles. More men came in with tablets and notebooks, collecting data and checking readings.

Rivers grunted and turned for the door. “We’ve got some time; let’s check in with Stanley to see where we stand. I really hate to leave this guy, though. I think we could learn a lot from an Ink as active as this one.”

“Yeah. Hate to take a break long enough to possibly save Harper’s life.”

“Marsh isn’t going to do anything to Harper before Deena gets there. He wouldn’t want to lose his bargaining chip.” Rice said.

“You’ve got this guy to play with, why are you still so hot to get her? Maybe you should study him first.” Garrett couldn’t help but wonder aloud. After all, he didn’t want two of these people hanging around. It sounded like more trouble than they needed. He was all for bringing criminals to justice, but why not go after her when they were better equipped with information from the man they already had?

“We’re prepared to get these things off the street.
All
of these things. Would you rather have them roaming free?” Rivers asked. “If you have a gang that robs a bank, do you stop once you catch one? Is the job done? This is what we do here; we track these… creatures down. If getting a few Inks off the street helps us understand what makes them tick, maybe we can find a cure or a means of making them normal again.”

“What if they don’t want to be normal?” Pel whispered quietly, as if she were concerned the man in the next room could hear her.

“It’s obvious some of them don’t want to be normal. If they can use this power to create the kind of mayhem we’ve seen, why would they? They can do whatever they want and most of what they seem to want isn’t good,” Rice opened the door and held it for the others.

“We don’t know if all of them want to use it for criminal purposes,” Garrett said.

Rice nodded as Garrett walked past. “You’re not talking about the girl, right? You took a look at that file on her and her sister, right? You saw what they’ve done.”

“I didn’t say anything about her. I’m just saying that we’re lumping all of these people in based on just a few…”

“Just a few? How many do we know that aren’t criminals? How many good Inks have we met so far? Exactly none.” Rivers pushed the button for the elevator and sighed.

Rice handed Garrett a folded piece of paper.

“Go shake Marsh up a bit, just to let him know we’re keeping him in our sights,” Rivers said.

“Is that a warrant?” Pel asked.

“No. We haven’t been able to obtain a warrant with the evidence we have right now. We know how your partner hates technology, so we wrote down Marsh’s address for him on that piece of paper,” Rivers said.

Pel laughed, though it was obvious she didn’t want to give Rivers’ joke any credit.

“Why do you want me to work here?” Garrett asked as he crumbled the paper and shoved it in his pocket. “We don’t exactly mesh.”

“I like you,” Rivers smiled and stepped into the elevator.

“That’s news. You’re not exactly my favorite person right now.”

Rice laughed. “He’ll grow on you. He grew on me.”

“Like a fungus, I’m sure,” Garrett stepped to the back of the elevator with Pel.

24

Deena was keenly aware of the other passengers in the train car who had absolutely nothing to do with her life and the wrong turns it had taken. “Look. Let’s stop this. Walk away.”

“Or what?”

Deena knew they weren’t giving up that easily, but wanted to stall them until she could find a way to move their conflict to a new location. That most likely meant waiting for the train to stop. Her arm was beginning to hurt—the skin felt like it was melting off her wrist and forearm. “I don’t know what’s going to happen here, guys. But it’s been a pleasure working with you.”

“What?”

Deena stood. “Well, I’m not getting off this train willingly. And I’m not waiting for us to get to the station where more thugs can gang up on me.” She stepped into the aisle and walked toward the door. “I’m just asking that we take this somewhere farther away from these people.” She nodded to the next train car.

The men looked at each other for a moment, clearly uncomfortable with engaging Deena or moving to another area. She felt a little better about the situation then. They were only there to stall her. For all their bravado, they were the delaying tactic. “Are you coming?” Deena put her hand on the handle to the door that led to the next car. She could see through the little window that the next car was more crowded. She wondered if the pain in her arm meant that she still could use the power she’d come to rely on so much. If she did, would it consume her again?

“Look, let’s just sit down and talk about this,” Ramirez said. “We don’t have to get physical or anything. Just talk.” His partner nodded in agreement.

“Afraid I’ll make the good side of your face look like the other half? Nah. I think we should get it over with. I mean, we’re not far from the next station, it’s apt to get crowded in here.” She moved herself back toward the men, feigning shock that they didn’t want to follow her. She stepped closer, but her body was still angled towards the door. Ever since the plane, she’d felt clouded and hazy, but here, as the adrenaline built within her, she felt the veil lift.

The men were standing then, Limb held his hands out in a placating posture. “You should know Marsh has been clear that he doesn’t much care if you come back alive or not.”

“I figured as much.”

“Just so we know where this is going,” Ramirez said. He raised his hands and took a fighting stance in the aisle. The other men looked at him with widened eyes. Deena had been correct, none of the men really wanted to fight her except Ramirez.

He came on quickly, swinging a left hook and a follow-up right that she avoided easily. She responded by stepping closer and landing a punch to his ribs that left him gasping for air. A shout alerted Deena that one of the other men was coming up behind her. The scream had come from one of the other passengers. They were all on their feet now and moving toward the exits to change cars. She was happy that they were getting out of harm’s way–a little dismayed that not one of them wanted to stay and help the girl being attacked by a bunch of large men, but oh well. She had no idea how the fight was going to go and would rather not see a Good Samaritan get hurt for no good reason.

The confines of the aisle limited what Deena could do in response to the thug that approached her from behind, so she swung back and kicked him in the jaw, then the chest, sending him sprawling into his companion. Ramirez attacked again, this time plowing into her like a tackling dummy. Much like the first time they’d fought, he had no style, just brute force. Fists over finesse. He got her in the shoulder with a solid punch then he was on top of her, forcing her to the ground with his weight. He continued to push her, though he was hampered from hitting her due to the seats on either side of them. She could see his crew was becoming bolder with the success he was having, and they moved in to help.

Her arm felt heavy, like it was tied to a cinderblock. Since she couldn’t punch, Deena reached up and grabbed Ramirez’s neck and noticed her hand was slowly turning black. She began to mumble words to control the Shadow Energy as it welled up within her. She didn’t know what would happen this time if she let it loose.

“That crazy voodoo shit ain’t going to help you this time,” Ramirez said, and he swung his arm over his head to punch her just above the temple. He managed a second in the same manner. Deena could feel a trickle of blood start on her forehead.

“All right. That’s enough.” Deena could hear Avi’s voice from behind Ramirez. “Let her up,” he said.

Ramirez looked over his shoulder. “What are
you
doing? You’re supposed to be driving this bitch back to the office right now.”

“Let her up.”

“What? Did she sweet-talk you or something? All you had to do was get her in the car and get back to the L.A.” He looked down at Deena. “And yet, here you are.”

Deena heard the hammer being pulled back on a gun.

“You gonna shoot me?” Ramirez asked.

Deena took the opportunity while Ramirez was distracted to bring her knee up into his groin, forcing him to crumple and giving her the chance to slide out from under him. One of the other men took out a gun and Avi shot him quickly. Everyone else ducked for cover behind seats and Deena was sure she heard more guns being drawn and wished she’d been carrying one of her own.

Ramirez and one of the other men she didn’t know were closer to Avi, so Deena moved to the other end of the car, where Limb and the man Avi shot were. She moved quickly from row to row, using the seats as cover. The men fired a few shots as she got closer. She heard Avi and Ramirez fighting behind her. After she heard another barrage of shots, Deena ran toward Limb and leapt over the last row of seats to land on him, knocking the gun out of his hand in the process. She landed blow after blow quickly, not giving him a chance to recover. Limb tried to get up, but she got on top of his chest and planted one knee on his throat, choking off his air supply. He flailed with his arms, trying to knock her off, but he’d already begun to panic. His attacks were weak and she parried them easily. Limb’s eyes were getting wide as he realized he was close to losing consciousness.

There was a shot then and Deena felt like someone had hit her with a hammer. She turned and saw the man Avi shot earlier was lying on the ground, but had a gun pointed at her. A wisp of smoke hung in the air in front of his face. She looked down to see a hole torn in her shirt near the center of her chest. Her lungs suddenly burned with each breath and she could see blood begin to seep out from between her fingers. Limb began coughing, as Deena’s pressure on his windpipe eased, and he pushed her off. She sank against the side of the car, not sure what to do next or if there was anything she actually could do.

At the other end of the car, she could see Ramirez and Avi still fighting. The punches landed in slow motion until she saw the knife in Ramirez’s hand. It swung in a wide arc, slashing across Avi’s chest once, then twice. As Avi reeled backward into the train’s doorframe, he lost his balance, and Ramirez took the opportunity to plunge the blade into Avi’s stomach.

Deena couldn’t scream. Her chest hurt when she tried. She looked down at the wound, and found that the blood that had been pouring from the hole had turned to black, like the tentacles that she’d hoped were gone from her life. It poured from the hole until the blackness caught up with, and enveloped, the blood.

She thought she might pass out as her chest became hot.