But Alec knew Joshua had no desire to disappoint Max, and she’d kept him from killing White once before. The big fella wouldn’t go against Max’s wishes.
And if Joshua knew how Alec had manipulated him into leaving Terminal City — very much against Max’s wishes — Joshua would be angry as hell... though Alec knew his friend would forgive him. He always did.
As they made their way through the streets, their gowns flapping in the breeze, Alec realized they had to get back to Terminal City, and fast — and they had to tell Max they now knew the identity of the killer.
The problem was, they were miles away, with no transportation, and — in broad daylight — the normal-looking Alec was running along next to a seminude six-foot-six-inch 240-pound dog boy. And, of course, both were wearing hospital gowns, not exactly a current fashion trend.
Alec almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Of all the contingencies that Manticore had trained their test-tube soldiers for, this particular one had never come up.
His arms didn’t hurt, but the now-dried stripes of blood on his arms might draw attention as fast as them running with their asses hanging out of the gowns. They had to get off the damn street, toot sweet.
The neighborhood they were sprinting through looked vaguely familiar to Alec, and he realized suddenly — when Joshua made a right past a grocery store — that the big guy knew right where they were and where he was going. They had been held at County General less than two miles from Joshua’s old pad — “Father’s” house.
So they should be able to easily make their way to the large Gothic home that had belonged to Sandeman, their Manticore creator — about whom they knew little — before the man — the only benign presence at the project — had disappeared. Better to be lucky than smart, Alec thought. They both had clothes on hand from when they’d lived there together, and the phone had been reconnected once Logan had taken over. Should still be working...
Cars were sparse in the neighborhood in mid-afternoon, and the sidewalks were all but empty. Then, in the distance, Alec spotted a car coming toward them, a dark model that just might be government issue.
“Joshua,” he said. “Car!”
But Joshua seemed to be ahead of him. The car, stopping in the middle of the next intersection, was a little over two blocks away when Joshua pulled off a manhole cover and climbed down out of sight. The vehicle now only a block away, Alec followed Joshua down and pulled the manhole cover back in place only seconds before he heard wheels rolling over it.
The aroma down here wasn’t any more pleasing than the dumpster back at the hospital. Standing in dirty brown water that came almost to his knees, Alec shivered in the foul, frigid stuff; but Joshua didn’t seem to mind or even notice. Alec took off walking after his towering friend, who knew these tunnels as well as anyone in the city.
In the months since Max freed Joshua from Manticore, the sewers had served as a mini-underground railroad for the big guy, allowing him to move around the city without detection. Alec figured the sewer system was how Joshua had managed to stay in touch with the janitor, Hampton, without anyone knowing that he was ever gone.
Twenty minutes later, they dried off and changed into their own clothes in the run-down house, the interior of which had been taken over by Logan after the trashing of his penthouse; no sign of Logan right now, though.
Joshua’s wardrobe ran exclusively to T-shirts — size XXXL — and jeans, while Alec had left little more than that behind himself. While Joshua never made inconspicuous company, getting the big lug out of that hospital gown was, Alec knew, a good start...
Picking up the phone, Alec dialed Max’s cell. In the silence before the ring, his transgenic hearing picked up a low frequency hum, and he knew someone — the NSA? the National Guard? — was trying to trace the call.
He slammed down the receiver.
Should have thought of that. He’d seen how many times Max had used her cell, so of course the government would have the number and be tracing all incoming and outgoing calls. Another reason to get back to Terminal City, to tell her to ditch the phone.
But how to get back?
It was miles away and would take them hours, even if they did use the sewers to avoid being seen.
He needed someone on the outside, and neither Original Cindy nor Sketchy had wheels; still, they were the only two people he knew that he could trust, so he started dialing.
Original Cindy’s cell went unanswered; Alec didn’t know what to make of that. He had no time to spare to ponder it, though, and he dialed Sketch.
“A car?” Sketchy asked when the greetings were out of the way. “I guess I could borrow a car.”
“We need you to pick us up at Joshua’s house,” Alec told him.
“What are you doin’ on this side of the fence?”
“Not now, Sketch. Just get the car and haul ass over here. I’ll explain everything on the way back to Terminal City.”
“Fifteen minutes,” Sketchy said. “Half hour, tops.”
Forty-five minutes later, they were still watching out the window when a beat-up van pulled to a stop in front of the house.
“I gotta get myself a better support system,” Alec said.
“Yeah,” Joshua added. “We gotta blaze.”
They climbed in the old van and Sketchy hit the gas. But soon they were lumbering through heavy traffic, and Alec explained what had happened, and who the killer was.
“Bobby Kawasaki?” Sketch said, suddenly very white. “From Jam Pony, you mean?”
“Yeah — he’s a transgenic, passing... You okay, Sketch?”
But Sketchy’s eyes were wide and woeful. “Christ! I think I saw him this morning, with Original Cindy. I’m pretty sure they left together. Then I didn’t see either one of them the rest of the day. Never reported back from their first deliveries — Normal was really pissed.”
Alec looked at Sketch and the van went dead quiet.
“Sketch — you better step on it.”
Bobby Kawasaki sat in the worn wing chair and watched the crappy signal on a TV produced in some third-world shithole back before Pulse. The cheap motel room was dusty and dingy and had seen few customers on more than an hourly basis for most of the last ten years; but the desk clerk, a tiny Asian man with thick glasses and thinning hair, asked only one question: “You got cash?”
Bobby’s project hung safe in the closet on a hanger — he’d had to leave the mannequin behind — and Original Cindy lay on the sagging bed with a compress on the nasty bump on her head. He had meant to scare her, but when she’d taken that tumble off her bike, the woman took a much nastier spill than he’d anticipated. Glancing over at her now, he wondered if she would ever wake up.
After her crash, he’d left her bike lying in the street, loaded her onto his own bike and pedaled straight back to the motel, with her riding in his lap, her legs tossed up over the handle bars. From a distance she would have looked like she was having a joy ride, her face pressed into the cheek of her boyfriend. It wasn’t the greatest ruse, but people minded their own business in Seattle, and it had gotten them back here to safety and seclusion.
Taking her to a hospital was out of the question. He’d lose control of her there, and be right back where he started. That was also the risk of keeping her here. If she died, she would be of no help to him, which would be a pity, after all the trouble he’d gone to. The trap he’d laid for her this morning — letting her see him take the Tryptophan — had worked like a charm.
Well, at first it did, anyway. Bobby had gotten the woman talking, and she seemed about to help him of her own volition, when something he’d said seemed to make her wary. Though he’d run the conversation over and over in his head, he still didn’t know where he’d made the mistake.