AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I should think the reasons would be obvious. ”
And of course, he was right. Annie, the early-morning panic of Patrick’s injury, the events at Graydon. It had been a very full twenty-four hours already. Calling in sick would have been more than logical.
But it wasn’t only that. She sensed it in him, as she had in Patrick: concern. She supposed she ought to be pleased they were so worried, but they were assuming she had some residual trauma from the day, and she didn’t.
She felt great, actually. The nanites had done their work, flesh and bones were strong and knitted, and there was no trace at all of the damage she’d sustained.
Nothing to be traumatized about.
Bryn changed into a business suit and higher heels, fixed her hair and makeup, and was out the door in record time. She descended the stairs faster than usual and found that she’d left her sedan conveniently parked just around the curve. …She didn’t remember parking at all, somehow, or driving home. Opening the door of the sedan, she smelled smoke, and a faint, rusty tang of blood. Hers. There was an old sweatshirt discarded on the backseat, and she used it to wipe down the seat. It came away smeared and dirty, and for a second something in her wobbled unsteadily until she forced it to stand still.
Then she got in the car and drove away, windows open to clear out the smell.
Manny’s new laboratory was located across town; as usual, he’d chosen a warehouse, but this one looked new and very secure indeed. The chain link was ten feet high around the property, and there were dozens of security cameras; the whole area was posted against trespassing, a legal nicety that meant it’d be much easier
to shoot intruders, or arrest them. She found the one entrance, pushed the red button, and stayed still for the security cameras until the gates rumbled open. A sign she passed said PLEASE TUNE RADIO TO AM CHANNEL 720. She pushed buttons until she got the frequency, and heard a cool, professional voice saying, “This property is strictly monitored for security purposes. Do not deviate from the approved route or police will be immediately notified. Have your identification ready to present at the next station. No weapons of any kind may be brought into the facility. Be prepared to undergo standard security sweeps of your person and any belongings you may bring with—”
The voice cut off, and Pansy’s cheerful voice said, “Hey, Bryn? Keep coming straight. You’ll see a metal garage door ahead—it’ll come up for you. Park inside. Oh, and get out with your hands raised, okay? Follow the signs. ”
That would have seemed strange anywhere else but here, Bryn thought. The broadcast returned to the droning, severe voice telling her that all security measures were strictly enforced to the limit of the law.
She took that to mean death.
As the door slammed down (faster than was strictly comfortable) behind her car, Bryn parked in the warehouse and slowly exited the vehicle, hands up. There was an eye-in-the-sky camera on the ceiling. The downstairs was one big, empty room that could easily have held twenty or thirty large trucks. It was spotlessly clean, and mercilessly bright from rows and rows of overhead lights.
Bryn stared up at the camera and waited until the automated voice said, “Please lower your arms. You are now cleared to proceed to the elevator. Place your palm flat on the scanner for access. ”
The elevator was in a thick concrete block about fifty feet away, and there was a separate, shiny built-in scanner on the wall big enough to accommodate a palm twice her size. She watched the light skim down on the other side of the glass, and a tone sounded from the speakers as the doors opened. She stepped in and looked for buttons. There were none. It was a nondescript metal box without any controls at all, but when the doors slid closed, it moved smoothly upward.
It opened on a plain concrete room with a door at the far end. It had no handle, no lock, and no visible hinges, and Bryn waited, tapping her heel impatiently, until it swung open.
“Hey,” Pansy Taylor said, and gave her a huge, delighted smile that lit up her round face. She’d changed her hair a bit, and it swung longer around her shoulders; she was trying out new eye shadow, too, but other than that, she was the same woman Bryn remembered. Fondly. “Get your ass inside before Manny hits some kind of countermeasure button and kills us all. ”
“When are you going to admit he’s not boyfriend material?” Bryn asked her. Pansy winked and let the door swing closed with a boom behind her as she entered.
“When he stops being amazing. The crazy is just part of the attraction. …Come on, this way. ”
The layout of this warehouse lab was eerily similar to the one she’d been in before, and it had been hours from here. Manny had a network of locations, most funded by his not-legitimate clients around the world, and he regularly hopped between them. In emergencies, he could pack up the contents of this place in crates kept in constant readiness and be out in a few hours. She’d seen it happen.
There was no sign of Manny around the rows of machinery, the testing tables, or in the clustered array of computers. No sign of him anywhere, in fact.
Until she heard his voice overhead and looked up to see him on a railing above. “Did you check her ID?” Manny asked Pansy. He had a rifle in one hand, held casually, but you never knew with him.
“I don’t need her ID. We both know her. ”
“Check it anyway. ”
Pansy rolled her eyes and held out her hand; Bryn pulled her wallet out of her purse, and Pansy gave it a glance before handing it back. “Bryn Davis,” she said. “Which you know, so please put the gun away and go back to what you were doing, sweetheart. ”
He hesitated for a long moment, then said, “How are the side effects of the latest batch?” Manny, even foreshortened by the distance, was a big man, burly, with a truly impressive explosion of curly dark hair and eyes that had a Rasputin-quality crazy to them, at the worst of times. This luckily wasn’t one of them. It was more a garden-variety paranoid schizophrenic.
“It hurts,” she said. “I don’t know that it’s better or worse. Thanks. ”
“For what?”
“For doing what you’re doing. Refining the drug. ”
He shrugged. “I get paid. ” With that, he turned and walked away down the metal gantry, and disappeared in a network of pipes beyond. Going to his man-cave, she assumed; she’d never seen it, but she was sure he had one, and it was probably booby-trapped six ways from Sunday.
