“Why don’t you come and meet the rest of the band? How about if we talk about everything after the show? Maybe we could take you to breakfast?” Lex said, trusting Kate to realize she meant to find someplace more private to talk later.
“Sure,” Kate said, now smiling broadly. She turned to Victor, who had finally finished the transaction with the bartender and was bringing two beers over. “You remember Lex, don’t you?” she asked.
Victor gave them an intense look of surprise, and Lex saw that he almost dropped the bottles he carried in his shock. After a breath, he looked over at Kate and, after reading her relaxed, happy expression, chuckled once.
“Yeah, I remember her,” he said, handing Kate a beer and taking a sip of his own. “I take it we’re going to be hanging out with the band tonight?”
“I always wanted to be a groupie,” Kate responded, following Lex in the direction of the merchandise table.
Several hours later, the bunch of friends had found an all-night diner and been seated at a quiet corner table.
“So,” Lex said as she sipped some tea, “I think you owe me a story, Kate.”
Kate raised her eyebrow as she put a forkful of pancakes in her mouth, then appeared to remember something as she nodded, then swallowed. “That’s right, I did say I’d tell you what was going on if we ever met again. I’m going to have to tell as much as I remember, though. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some things, since it happened a while ago now.”
Sighing, Kate took a sip of water before beginning. “It all started when I met up with one of the private investigators that I’d asked to look into Neil’s disappearance.” She looked up at the rest of the table for a beat. “Neil was my boyfriend, and he vanished around the time I’d been working for the Alpha team for about a year and a half,” Kate explained. Riss and Casey both nodded as Kate continued.
“I’d had a couple of others look into it, but no one had turned up anything. I finally turned to the last detective I used out of desperation; I’d heard a few recommendations that Randy Cole specialized in missing persons, so I decided to give him a try. He didn’t find anything much at first, but then he started asking me questions about the identities of some of my co-workers and whether I was still working with them. I didn’t want to answer because of all of that secrecy paperwork they made us sign when we joined up, but he assured me that he needed it for the investigation and would otherwise keep it completely confidential, so I told him names of some of the people I worked with then and some of those who’d left.
“I didn’t hear from him for a while, then I got this strange call. He sounded really nervous and asked me to meet him at Union Station. When I got there, Randy said he only had about an hour before his train left. When I asked about it, he shook his head.
“‘I dug too deep,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get out of here and find somewhere to lay low for a while.’
“I figured he was joking at first, but then he started telling me what he’d found out. When all of the normal leads had run dry, he’d researched some of the people I’d told him about and tried to find anyone they’d been dating.
“‘It was a long shot,’ he said, ‘but after I looked at your squeaky clean guy and couldn’t find anyone who wanted him gone or any sign he’d been wanting to leave you, I decided to check it out, since you mentioned you had a co-worker with a similar story, and I wanted to see if there was a connection.’
“The strange thing, he told me, was that most all of them had one, for any that he could manage to talk to. Sometime after coming to work for the organization, all of them he’d talked to had partner break ups if they’d been dating anyone. Most of them were quite early on; my case was the longest one, he said.
“When Randy went to talk to the boyfriends and girlfriends, he said he nearly hit a stone wall. The majority of them slammed their doors in his face when he explained what he wanted to know. A few of them even ran away. But, he finally found a couple willing to talk to him.
“One man had split up with an acquaintance of mine who’d left Alpha about six months after I’d arrived. I didn’t get a chance to know her well, since she was gone so quickly, but Jill seemed attractive, kind, and smart. Apparently, the man pretty much broke down when Randy asked him about Jill. He was anxious to talk to Randy, giving him a photograph of her and asking that if the detective found her during the investigation that he pass along whatever information he got. Randy seemed embarrassed about the whole thing, but he mentioned the man cried when he talked about some shadowy people who showed up a number of times to offer to pay him off to leave Jill. Finally, when they began to threaten his life he broke things off, but he told Randy that he’d really only done it hoping that he and Jill could get back together later. The man said that it wasn’t long after that, however, that he stopped being able to get in touch with her.
“Randy recounted how frantic the man seemed and how he’d showed the copy of the missing persons report he’d filed. The police had called him a couple of days later, though, saying how they’d checked with her employer and had been told everything was fine; she just didn’t want to speak to him. According to Randy, the man just went on and on, explaining how he knew something had happened to her, that she hadn’t been angry, just sad when they broke up, and that they’d continued to talk until her disappearance. Finally, Randy had to leave, but it looked to me like he still felt sorry for the guy.
“He went on to say that he’d been able to find one other person who’d talk to him, the ex-girlfriend of another old co-worker of mine. The woman hadn’t wanted to talk to him at first, but when he questioned her whether anyone had approached her, offering to pay her off to leave her partner, she stopped.
“‘I’ll tell you this,’ she said, and Randy said he’d never forget that sad look she gave him. ‘I never wanted to leave her, but they told me I wouldn’t be breathing now if I hadn’t taken that money. Maybe I shouldn’t have, though. I still miss her.’
“‘It was about a week later that some shady people showed up to see me,’ he said. ‘They wore trench coats, hats, and sunglasses like the other two had described and explained in detail how unhealthy it was that I’d developed an interest in their business. They suggested I take a permanent holiday somewhere else so that I didn’t catch a cold or something that would be the death of me. I’ve seen them ever since, everywhere I go,’ he said, jerking his head in the direction of one of the nearby food stalls, where I just spotted the shadow of a man in a trench coat, almost concealed behind a support beam.
“‘Another thing I found out about your co-workers that maybe you didn’t know—most of them are alone. Some are estranged from their families, are orphans, are only children with dead parents, or have elderly parents who probably aren’t much longer for this world, like you. I also haven’t been able to find out anything about these co-workers that you say are gone. They don’t seem to be anywhere, like they’ve dropped off the face of the earth. That usually means one of two things: they’re dead, or they’ve been kidnapped and are still being held somewhere. Look, I don’t have the whole picture here, because I didn’t have enough time. I don’t know what you do, and I don’t know what these creeps want from you, but if I was a young man, I’d get you out of this situation you’re in even if it killed me. You don’t try to isolate someone from everyone they’re close to unless you’re trying to do something bad to them. I worry for you, young lady,’ he said as he got up and put his hat and coat on.
“I thanked him as he got up to leave for his train and gave him an envelope with his pay in it. He accepted it, but took about half of it out and gave me the rest back. When I gave him a look of surprise, he just shook his head.
“‘Trust me, you’re going to need it more than I do,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It looks like you have some powerful people lined up against you, Kate. Good luck, you’ll need it.’
“I stopped him just before he left, though, realizing he hadn’t said anything more about Neil, and he just sighed. ‘I don’t know anything for certain because I couldn’t find out anything as to his whereabouts. From what I heard from those two who talked to me, though… He trailed off and pinched the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger before he looked at me again. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t help or find more out for you, but if these people are involved and he hasn’t been found yet, well, I don’t think he ever will be. I’m really sorry.’
“I just kind of stared after him as he left. I think I knew by then that Neil was dead, because I always knew he would have contacted me otherwise, but I’d tried not to think about that. I sat there for a while before I could collect myself enough to leave, and then I noticed that the shady people he’d been talking about followed me when I left.”
Kate paused to have a bite to eat, and Lex watched as Casey and Lou glanced at each other, Casey’s face distorted with worry. Lou smiled at her and took her hand, and as Lex watched, the worry on her friend’s face eased as she smiled back at Lou. Kate looked at Lou and Casey before she continued.
“Glad you two managed it, somehow,” she said, a little grin on her face. “Anyway, I started getting paranoid, especially since the weirdos in the trench coats followed me whenever I left Alpha headquarters. I tried to get as much information as I could, but I couldn’t find out much. Finally, I managed to get a look at my file one day when they had me in for a physical and the doctor got called out of the room and forgot to log out. I figured something funny had to be going on when I got to the notes about some drug I was supposed to be taking, when nothing had been prescribed to me.”
Lex and Riss looked at each other with tight, angry expressions, Lex remembering how it felt to find out about that. Kate nodded.
“I see you guys figured that one out, too. Anyway, I was wishing I had Riss along when I went to the library to look up some of the drugs I’d scribbled on my hand from my medical file. MSI came up on the web search, but before I had time to read anything, even more goons showed up. I cleared out of there fast, but I’m sure they knew who was looking, since some of them followed me there in the first place.
“I got the sense that I’d be next to disappear, since they knew I was looking. The day George mouthed about how I wouldn’t be around much longer, I decided I’d better go,” Kate concluded with a nod. “I had to make sure Victor knew, though.”
Victor looked up then, smiling. “Since we spent so much time idled because of George, Kate and I ended up doing lots of things to practice our skills and amuse ourselves. We’d already found secret places to leave each other messages, so she let me know what she planned and why. My ambitions in life didn’t include being a lab rat, so I left as well.”
Lex turned to him. “How did you get away from DC?” she asked.
Victor shrugged. “We took Greyhound. It was Kate’s idea, and I think it turned out well. No one seemed to pay attention to us when we traveled that way.”
Lex smiled and nodded along with everyone else, and Casey said, “Well done,” looking at Kate and Victor in turn.
Kate laughed while Victor gave a grin before turning back to his coffee. “OK, everyone, now it’s your turn,” Kate said with a big smile.
Lex outlined what happened and how they’d responded, and her other friends chimed in with details she’d forgotten or hadn’t heard. Kate and Victor listened intently through the account of the escape from the M Agency facility, Kate nodding when Riss spoke about the human experimentation evidence she’d uncovered.
When Casey and Riss talked about what they did to take care of Lex once they’d gotten away from MSI, Kate’s expression turned stony and Victor frowned, drawing his brows together. Finally, Kate broke in as Casey spoke about resuscitating Lex, halting as she went through the story.
“So you weren’t kidding about almost having died twice,” she said, looking from Casey to Lex and back. After a moment of silence, Lex’s nod the only reply, Kate added, “I’m glad you’re still with us.”
Lex reached over to squeeze Casey’s shoulder and the larger woman smiled, but it didn’t seem to reach her eyes. “Yeah, I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for Casey,” Lex replied. “I’m not physically the same in a number of ways, like why I started dyeing my hair—because now its natural color is white—and my odd new eye color, but I’m alive, so all the rest isn’t much in comparison.”
Kate shook her head, looking amazed at everything that had happened. Lex shrugged and continued. “I know I’m lucky. From what Riss found out, most of the people MSI experiments on don’t make it.”
When the four of them went on to describe their break-in to the MSI lab where they’d been holding Lou, even Victor looked incredulous.
“Wait,” Kate interrupted, waving her hand in front of her. “You mean you took the whole facility down, walked in there, grabbed Lou, and left?”
“Pretty much,” Lex said, elbowing Riss, who actually grinned at Lex before finishing another bite of her waffles.
When they’d finished the account, explaining how they’d escaped from where Lou was being held and drove west, the whole table fell silent for a moment before Kate threw her head back and laughed. “You guys take the fucking cake, that’s what!”
Victor smiled as he glanced at her but kept his own thoughts on the matter. The group’s conversation continued onto other topics, mostly about how everyone had settled into their new lives. Kate and Victor both seemed interested in stories about the band and how their recording and touring had been going. When Kate started talking about how she and Victor had been settling in, however, Lex watched her friend sigh and run a rough hand through her hair.
“Unfortunately, the only IDs we could find weren’t very good. Victor opened a repair shop, so he’s doing well, but I’ve had a tough time finding work at all, never mind anything I might actually want to do.”
Casey gave her a questioning look. “What did you do before you got onto the Alpha team?”
Kate snorted a laugh, but Lex thought she didn’t sound like she found the topic amusing. “That’s the fucked up part. I wanted to go into law enforcement, if you can believe that.” She looked at the ceiling for a moment, and Lex felt a wave of sadness wash over her as she watched her friend blink fast a few times, then bring her face level again to fix all of them with a grim smile. “I wouldn’t touch that profession with a ten-foot pole now, but I think it was my FBI application that got the Alpha team interested in me.