Clemente was nodding. “I’d have to agree, Agent Gottlieb.”
“I hope you don’t mind my interrupting this love fest,” Max said, stepping between them, directing her attention to the NSA agent. “But what did you mean by calling that drug ‘classified information’?”
Gottlieb spoke softly, as if reluctant to even hear the words he spoke himself. “Cullinasec is a psychotropic drug being developed by the NSA for espionage purposes.”
Clemente asked, “And no one outside the NSA is supposed to be able to get their hands on this junk?”
Max said, “Maybe no one outside the NSA did.”
“... White?”
Moments later, Max was seated on the edge of the tub. She said to Kelpy, “Where did you get the drugs?”
“A... nurse named Betty... at Harbor Lights Hospital.”
“But then one day she disappeared,” Max said.
“How... how did you know?”
“It’s a long story,” Max said.
“And... and you don’t have time to tell me?”
“No.” Max turned to Logan, standing just behind her. “Can you get me a picture of Ames White?”
“Right on it,” he said, and was gone.
To Kelpy, Max said, “After the nurse disappeared, where did you get the drugs? Who was your connection?”
“Just... some guy. Some guy taking over... taking over Betty’s clients.”
Logan came in with the photo, fresh off the printer, and handed it to Max. She showed it to Kelpy.
“Would this happen to be your dealer?”
“Yes,” Kelpy said. “That’s... that’s him.”
In the doorway, Clemente said, “Wait, wait. What’s going on here?”
Max showed him the picture. “I think you recognize this face.”
“Special Agent Ames White. Are you saying...?”
“I’m not saying anything — Kelpy is. Your dying confessed murderer has just identified NSA Agent Ames White as the man who provided him with the drugs that turned him psychotic.”
“And why would he...?” And then Clemente answered his own question: “The media war — providing the public with a transgenic boogie man.”
“That’d be a big bingo,” Max said.
From the hallway, where he’d been listening in, former NSA Agent Otto Gottlieb squeezed into the little room, joining the confab to offer his own informed analysis.
“This whole crisis,” Gottlieb said, “has been stage-managed by Agent White. He set Thompson and Hankins up in that warehouse with the bum imagers, providing a psychotic transgenic with two possible victims.”
Clemente was frowning. “How could White know what Kelpy would do?”
“He couldn’t and he didn’t,” Gottlieb said. “White just knew it wouldn’t be good. That whole human suit routine came from Kelpy’s own tortured imagination... where it would have remained, if Ames White hadn’t turned an already unstable transgenic completely psychotic and set him loose on the city.”
“All for a media war,” Clemente said, still struggling with the madness of it.
“It’s much more than that, Detective,” Gottlieb said. “Ames White hates the transgenics — especially her.” He nodded to Max. “He wants 452 dead.”
“Why?” Clemente asked, eyes like marbles.
“You’d have to ask White. But I do know his desire for her death is why he brought in the snipers to start the shootout at Jam Pony.”
Frowning now, Clemente asked, “That pumped-up SWAT team was government agents?”
Gottlieb shook his head. “I don’t know where White got them — they’re sure as hell not feds. I can’t find any orders, any requests on file... I can’t even find any records of phone calls on White’s cell phone, other than the one to the governor.”
Still frowning, Clemente asked, “How much can you prove?”
“Damn little,” Gottlieb admitted.
From the doorway, the other former NSA agent, Thompson, joined in. “I know my imager didn’t work, and Ames White did hand each of us our imagers, personally.”
Clemente walked briskly out into the living room, Max and the others following him; Joshua took over the vigil in the bathroom with his old friend Kelpy.
The detective sat down heavily into a chair. “Do we have enough to make a case against White?”
Max realized Logan was at her side; she looked up at him, but his attention was on the detective.
Then she turned to Clemente and said, “The Army will be making their move soon, and it’ll be too late.”
Clemente pounded his fist into a hand. “We need to get the word out — we can’t move through the system in time to stop the slaughter. Shit... where the hell is that Eyes Only guy when you need him?”
Several pairs of eyes turned to Logan.
Picking up on it, Clemente turned to him too.
“Something I should know?” the detective asked.
“Well,” Logan said, almost shyly, “I sort of have a... uh, ‘in’ with Eyes Only.”
“Hell, man!” Clemente said. “Can you reach him? Can he help us?”
“See what I can do. Max — come with me a second, would you?”
Away from the others, they talked quickly, then Max gathered Alec and Sketchy into an impromptu camera crew.
Soon a video camera was set up on a tripod in the bedroom, to be manned by an enthusiastic Sketchy; here were sequestered Clemente, Gottlieb, Thompson, and everyone but Alec and Kelpy... in the bathroom with Alec manning another camera on a tripod... and Max and Logan, in the latter’s computer-and-monitor-arrayed office area.
As far as Clemente, Gottlieb, and Thompson were concerned, Alec was relaying all of this to a secure remote location, where Eyes Only was making broadcast magic. The trio of law enforcement veterans were unaware — or, anyway, so Logan and Max hoped — that the real broadcasting was being done a room away, by the real Eyes Only.
And thus came to pass the first broadcast of Freak Nation TV.
All around the city, TV screens went to static.
The static transformed into a logo depicting a pair of light-colored eyes on a blue background, with the words STREAMING FREEDOM VIDEO rolling by above and below, white letters standing out on a red background.
Then the familiar voice said: “Do not attempt to adjust your set. This is a Streaming Freedom Video bulletin. This cable hack could last more than sixty seconds. It still cannot be traced, it still cannot be stopped, and it remains the only free voice left in this city...”
In homes, bars, police stations, fire stations, anywhere there was a television, people’s attention turned to the box; it had been months since they had heard from Seattle’s renegade cyber journalist, and the excitement around the city was palpable.
“The information you’ve been given about the transgenic crisis in Terminal City is tainted and false. Likewise, the news you’ve heard about a serial killer skinning police officers has been only part of the story. Tonight, we’ll give you the facts.”
In the family room of the suburban home where he lived without his family, Ames White went ballistic. It apparently hadn’t done any good, shooting up that asshole Eyes Only’s apartment; right now, Ames White’s best efforts seemed only to have spurred the bastard on...
As the Eyes Only bulletin continued, White dialed the number of his government office.
“Norton,” a voice said.
“The prick’s at it again. Start a trace, now!”
“Which prick is at what again, sir?”
“Eyes Only, Eyes Only — turn on the goddamned TV!”
“Trace started, sir,” Norton reported.
“Let me know when you get something.”
The staticky logo image disappeared and the screen was filled with a ghostly white man with spiky hair in a bathtub, red sores pocking his body, floating in water bobbing with ice cubes. The male form was drenched in sweat and it was obvious whoever-this-was wasn’t going to live out the night.