Redwood keyed the talk button on his communicator. “Fred. Send the Hill C and Murphy F tracker patterns to my handset.”
Fred cleared his throat into the mike. “Uh . . . the tracker patterns?”
Redwood ground his teeth. “Dammit, Fred, is Bruce there? Put Bruce on.”
“Bruce got called out for a little situation in D Block. I’m all on my lonesome here.”
“Okay, Fred. Listen to me carefully. Punch up Cosmo and Ziplock on the tracker file, then e-mail their patterns to my handset. Use the e-mail icon. My number is right there under Personnel. All you have to do is drag and drop the folders. Got it?”
Fred wiped his sweating brow. Over the radio it sounded like sandpaper on soft wood. “I got it. Drag the folders. No problem. Here it comes.”
“It had better be coming. Or I’m coming for you.”
It was Redwood’s habit to turn statements into threats. In sim-coffee shops he was known to say, “It had better be hot, or I’ll make it hot for you.” Redwood thought this was extremely clever.
Five seconds later, two moving icons appeared on the small screen on Redwood’s communicator, placing the fugitives on a fire escape outside the building. Going up, too, the idiots. What were they going to do? Fly off the roof?
Redwood grinned, the action bringing tears of pain to his eyes. Fly off the roof. That wasn’t such a bad idea.
In Satellite City, raindrops could take a person’s eye out if he were foolish enough to look up during a storm. Reaction with certain toxic fumes caused the water molecules to bond more efficiently until they fell to earth like missiles. Traditional umbrellas were no longer sufficient, and new rigid-plastic models were becoming popular in the Big Pig.
Ziplock and Cosmo did not have the luxury of umbrellas to help them through the current downpour, and had to make do with keeping their eyes down and shoulders hunched. Raindrops battered their necks and backs, but the boys were so cold that they barely felt any pain.
Ziplock was thrown against the fire escape bars by a flurry of drops. “I can see the city. I always wanted to see the city without shackles on my wrist. Maybe we can do that soon, Cosmo. Just walk around without shackles.”
Cosmo saved his energy for flight. The roof was still one floor up. After that they were banking on good fortune. Maybe they could make the jump to the next building. Maybe not.
They hugged the wall, avoiding the brunt of the rainstorm. Below, in the streets, car alarms were activated by the mutant drops. Security firms never responded to car call-outs during a rainstorm. They were always set off by weather conditions or very foolish car jackers.
Cosmo rounded the final corner onto the roof, a flat expanse of slick, tar-coated felt, punctuated by a stairwell box, like a submarine’s conning tower. The box’s corrugated roof was buckling under the rain’s onslaught. And, suddenly, the downpour stopped, as though God had turned off the water. Another characteristic of Satellite City’s freakish weather.
“Someone up there likes us,” said Ziplock.
“It’s a bit late for that,” commented Cosmo, shaking the water from his hair. “Let’s go.”
They padded across the saturated felt. With every step the roof sagged alarmingly, and in several spots the support girders were visible through sparse strands of felt. The connecting building was one story down. As a landing pad, it left a lot to be desired. The rooftop was littered with the remains of a squatter camp. Breeze blocks lay like discarded dominos, and sparks spluttered from the cracked casing of a rooftop generator.
Cosmo hooked his toes over the edge, trying not to think about the drop. “You think we can make it?” he asked.
Ziplock’s reply was to rear back from the brink.
Cosmo was undeterred. “I think we can make it. I really think we can.”
“I don’t think you will. Either of you,” said someone in nasal tones. Anybody who spoke like that either had a bad cold, or a broken nose.
* * *
Cosmo and Ziplock turned slowly. Marshal Redwood stood in the rooftop doorway, lips stretched in a huge grin. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. “I took the elevator,” he explained. “You two are dumber than recycled sewage. What did you think? Going up would fool me?”
Cosmo didn’t answer. It wasn’t really a question. Water was dripping from his hair, down between his shoulder blades. Perhaps that was what made him shiver.
“We surrender, Marshal. Don’t we, Ziplock?”
Ziplock was too petrified to answer.
“Too late for surrender. You’re armed fugitives now. I can’t take any chances. You gotta be wrapped.” Redwood took the throw-down from his vest, dropping it at their feet.
Cosmo’s breath came in short gasps. “Please, Marshal. We’re on a rooftop. It could be hours before they get us in the vat.”
The vat contained an acidic compound used to dissolve the cellophane.
“I know,” said Redwood, the craziness in his eyes shining through the tears.
Redwood marched over to Ziplock, gathering a bunch of his lapel in his fist. He leaned the terrified boy over the lip of the roof. “This is the last lesson, Francis. You’d better learn from this one.”
Ziplock began to giggle, hysterical laughter that had nothing to do with happiness.
Redwood placed the rod against his forehead. “I’d advise you to shut your mouth, Francis. You don’t want any plastic going in there.”
“Do your worst, Redwood,” shouted Ziplock, eyes wide. “I can’t get any more scared than I am right now.”
Redwood laughed, causing a fresh spurt from his tear ducts. “Oh, I don’t know about—”
Then Ziplock’s jumpsuit ripped. One too many cleanings had left it with the strength of wet cardboard. Redwood was left holding a rose-shaped bunch of material, and Ziplock was left at an angle he couldn’t correct.
His final word was to Cosmo. “Sorry,” he said, and slipped over the edge.
It wasn’t a long way down. Schoolchildren have jumped from higher trees and escaped without so much as a twisted ankle. But when Ziplock went over, he went over backward, dragging Cosmo with him.
There was no time for prayer, or screams. Cosmo’s life did not flash before his eyes. One moment he was pleading with Marshal Redwood; the next, land and sky flipped, and he was facedown in the next building’s rooftop generator.
Alive, though. Definitely. In some considerable pain, but alive. Pain was proof of that. Cosmo’s vision was filled with multicolored wires, sparks, ancient transformers, and rust chips that fluttered around his head like bloody snowflakes.
His arm jiggled. Ziplock was moving.
“No,” Cosmo whispered, no air for shouting. “Don’t move.”
Ziplock moved again. Maybe he had heard, maybe he hadn’t. Cosmo would never know. His partner’s movement dragged the metal cuff across two exposed wires, diverting ten thousand volts from the supply wires and into the two boys.
The charge catapulted the boys from the generator, spinning them across the roof puddles like stones across a pond. They came to rest against a guardrail. On their backs. Looking up.
Redwood peered down from above. Both boys’ patterns had disappeared from his tracker. The generator could have shorted out the electronegative halogen microbeads in their pores. But most likely they were dead.
It was obvious what could have happened. The fugitives had been knocked from the roof by the rainstorm. It was a simple lie, and believable, so long as he did not stick around here to get photographed by some snoop satellite. The marshal hurried to the stairwell. Better to let someone else find the bodies. He would be in the restaurant helping the injured when it happened.
Cosmo did not have the energy to speak. His entire body felt bleached by the electric shock. All he could hear was his own heartbeat, slowing with every breath. Missing beats. Shutting down.
His eyes played tricks on him. Hallucinations, he supposed. Strange inhuman creatures appeared on the walls of the surrounding buildings, crawling at amazing speeds with no regard for gravity. They hurtled over the lip of the building, veering sharply downward toward the crash site. Two split from the group, swerving toward the injured boys. One settled on Cosmo’s chest. Weightless. Watching him with large, expressionless eyes. The creature was the size of an infant, with smooth, blue, translucent skin, four slender limbs, and an oval head. Its features were delicate and impassive. Hairless and smooth. Sparks rolled in its veins instead of blood.
The second creature flickered in the corner of his eye, settling beside Ziplock, cradling his smoking head. Cosmo felt his heart skip another beat. Maybe two. What were these creatures? Fear sent a shiver through his chest, like another blast from the generator.
His spine arched in shock and panic, bucking the creature on his chest, but it held on effortlessly. It reached out a blue hand. Four fingers, thought Cosmo, only four. The hand settled on his heart and sucked. Somehow the hand was pulling the pain from his body. The agony dipped, faded, and was gone. The more the creature sucked, the brighter its light became, until its blue glow morphed to sunset gold. Cosmo used the last of his energy to look down. Something was flowing from him in a starry stream. He knew what it was. Life. Cosmo felt his days and months slips from his body like water through a fractured dam. The creature was killing him. The panic rose in him again. He wanted to struggle—he tried to grab the creature, but his muscles had turned to jelly.
Then things happened very quickly. Three kids appeared on the rooftop. Two boys and a girl. They weren’t medics of any kind—that much was clear from their clothing and their ages—but at least they were human.
“Two here,” said the first, a tall older boy clothed from head to foot in black. “I’ll take them. You check below.”
His comrades scurried to the roof’s edge, peering down to the street.
“They’re looking, but they’re not landing,” said the second newcomer. A Latina girl, maybe fifteen, with a gang tattoo over one eyebrow. “Too much water. The fire brigade are hosing the truck.”
The first youth drew what looked like a torch from his shoulder holster, twisting a ring on its base. White sparks flickered at the business end. He fired the device on the move: two blasts of pure electricity erupted from the barrel of his strange weapon. The effect was spectacular. The white bolts sank into the ghostly creatures’ skin, branching into a million tendrils. Each one traced a vein, fusing with the sparks already in there. The creatures shuddered and convulsed, their skin swelling to bursting point. And past it. They both exploded into a dozen perfect spheres of light, which drifted away on the breeze.
“Wow,” croaked Cosmo, wasting his last gasp of air.
“A live one!” said the group’s third member, who seemed about six years old. Blond, with a child’s disproportionately large head, he knelt beside Cosmo, checking his heartbeat and shining a light into one pupil. “No dilation and irregular heartbeat. He needs a defibrillator, Stefan. We need to kick-start his heart.”
Hallucination. It must be an hallucination.
The tall youth, Stefan, loomed in Cosmo’s fading vision. “What about the other one, Ditto?”
Ditto placed a hand on Ziplock’s chest. For a second Cosmo thought he saw lifestream playing around his fingers. Then . . .
“The other one? No. He’s gone. Not a peep.”
Stefan adjusted his weapon. “Well, I don’t have a defibrillator.”
Ditto stepped away hurriedly. “You sure? This roof is wet.”
Stefan pointed the weapon at Cosmo’s chest. “No,” he said, and fired.
Cosmo felt the charge going in like a sledgehammer through his ribs. Surely it must have broken every bone in his chest. Surely this was the last straw. His body could take no more. He felt his hair straightening, tugging at the pores in his scalp. His jumpsuit caught fire, dropping from his skin in burning clumps. Ditto doused him with the contents of a nearby fire bucket, but Cosmo did not feel the cold. Something else was happening.
Ba-doom . . .
His heart. Beating again. And again.
Ba-doom. Ba-doom.
“We got him!” crowed Ditto. “This guy’s got the will to live of a hungry dog. But he needs serious medical attention. His head is cracked open like an egg.”
Stefan sighed, relieved that his gamble had paid off. He holstered the lightning rod. “Okay. The lawyers will find him. I don’t want them to find us too.”
Cosmo drew his first breath in over a minute. “Please.”
They couldn’t just leave him here. Not after all this. “Take me.”
Stefan did not look back. “Sorry. We have enough trouble looking after ourselves.”
Cosmo knew that Redwood would never allow him to reach the institute alive. “Please.”
The girl leaned over him. “You know, Stefan? Maybe he could make the sim-coffee or something.”
Stefan sighed, holding the door open for his team. “Mona, we go through this every night.”
Mona sighed. “Tough break, kid.”
Cosmo’s heart beat steadily now, sending blood pulsing to his brain. “If you leave me,” he rasped, “they’ll come back.”
And suddenly Stefan was half interested. “Who’ll come back?” he said, striding across the roof.
Cosmo struggled to stay conscious. “The creatures.”
Ditto clapped his hands. “Did you hear that? The creatures, Stefan. He’s a Spotter. Wrap me if he isn’t.”
Stefan shrugged. “It could be nothing. Maybe one of us mentioned the creatures. Maybe it was an hallucination.”
Cosmo coughed up some smoke. “The blue creatures, with electricity in their veins. They were sucking the life out of me.”
“Pretty accurate hallucination,” noted Mona.
Stefan nodded at Ditto. “Okay, we take him. He’s a Spotter.”
The Spanish girl examined the cuffs. “Okay, Stefan. Gimme a minute.”
“A second, Mona. We can spare a second.”
Mona picked a clip from her hair, jiggling it expertly in the cuff’s lock. In slightly more than a second, Ziplock’s wrist was free, not that it was any good to him now.
Stefan hoisted Cosmo onto his shoulder. “Let’s go. We can open the other cuff at the warehouse.”
Cosmo hung there like a side of meat. He could have spoken then, asked a few more questions. But he didn’t, afraid that if he pestered this tall young man, they would decide not to take him wherever it was that they were going. And anywhere was better than the Clarissa Frayne Institute for the Parentally Challenged.