He'd driven like a madman down Route 17 before reaching the city. The old road was narrower and more twisting than the Thruway but was also darker, had less traffic, and was rarely patrolled by the state troopers. And rocketing along the road like a meteor on wheels, he needed a quiet, unpoliced road.
He fought to keep his attention on driving. His mind kept wandering back nearly sixteen years to a situation that was achingly similar to this one.
It was back in Nam. Brennan and his men had captured documents that contained enough evidence to connect General Kien solidly with all his various criminal activities, from prostitution to drug running to consorting with the North Vietnamese. But they never reached base with the evidence. Brennan and his men were ambushed while waiting for their pickup. It had all been a setup by Kien. In fact, the general personally put a bullet through the head of Sergeant Gulgowski and taken the briefcase with the incriminating documents. Brennan, momentarily paralyzed by a bullet-creased forehead, was lying in the jungle surrounding the landing zone. He'd witnessed the slaughter of all his men but had been unable to do anything about it.
It had taken Brennan nearly a week to walk out of the jungle. Once he reached base, exhausted and more than a little delirious from wounds, infection, and fever, he made the mistake of denouncing Kien to his commanding officer. For his trouble Brennan was nearly thrown in the stockade. Somehow he managed to control himself, and rather than a court-martial he was let off with a warning to leave General Kien alone.
That night he'd returned to Ann-Marie, his FrenchVietnamese wife. She'd thought he was dead. Pregnant with their first child, she cried in his arms with relief, then they made love, careful of their son swelling her usually lithe form. As they slept, Kien's assassins crept into their bedroom to silence Brennan permanently. They missed their prime target, but Ann-Marie had died in her husband's arms, and their son had died with her.
"There's the entrance," Brutus said, yanking Brennan back into the present.
He pulled into the curb before the Blythe van Rensselaer Memorial Clinic, threw the door open, and limped around the front of the van before the sound of screeching brakes had died on the still night air. A fine snow fell like a freezing mist, the tiny flakes clinging momentarily to Brennan's face before melting in his body warmth.
He went through the double glass doors that whooshed open automatically as he approached and looked around the lobby. It was deserted except for an old joker who seemed to be sleeping in one of the uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs and a tired-looking nurse who was scanning a sheaf of papers behind the registration counter. He went up to her.
"Is Tachyon in? There's an emergency-"
The nurse sighed and looked at Brennan with weary eyes old beyond her years. He wondered briefly how many people had said these very words to her, how many desperate life-and-death situations she'd had to deal with.
"Dr. Tachyon is busy now. Dr. Havero is on call."
"I need Tachyon's expertise=" Brennan began, then stopped.
From somewhere came the faint whiff of salt and fish and briny water. From somewhere came the unmistakable tang of the sea.
Brennan whirled around. A cluster of vending machines was set off in the corner of the receiving area, offering soft drinks, soda, and candy. Standing before one of them was a huge figure in priestly robes, humming softly to himself as he made his selection.
"Father Squid!" Brennan cried.
The priest turned his head toward the reception desk, the nictitating membranes covering his eyes blinking rapidly in surprise. "Daniel?"
Father Squid was a stout joker, huge in his priestly cassock. A few inches taller than Brennan, he weighed about a hundred pounds more. He looked solid, not blubbery, with broad shoulders, a thick chest, and a comfortably padded stomach. His hands were large, with long, sinuous-looking fingers and lines of vestigial suckers on their palms. He had a fall of tentacles instead of a nose, and he always smelled faintly, not unpleasantly, of the sea.
He was Brennan's friend and confidant. They'd known each other since Nam, where the priest had been a sergeant in the joker Brigade and Brennan a recondo captain. "What's the matter?" he asked.
"Jennifer's been shot," Brennan said tersely, "and she's fading. I need Tachyon."
Father Squid moved quickly for a man his size. He rolled up to the desk with a smooth, fluid gait and said to the nurse, "Call Tachyon, now"
She looked from the priest, a well-known figure about Jokertown, to the mysterious stranger who'd just come barging in. "He's resting," she protested. "Dr. Havero-"
"Get Tachyon!" Father Squid barked in the voice he'd used to chivvy know-nothing joker kids when they hit the jungle for the first time, and the nurse jumped and reached for the phone. The priest turned to Brennan. "Bring Jennifer in. I'll get a gurney."
Brennan nodded and limped back to the van. "What's up, boss?" Brutus piped.
"We're going in," Brennan said shortly. He gathered together the blanket wrapped about Jennifer and carefully lifted her from the van. She felt no heavier than a child in Brennan's arms. She was fading away, unconsciously using her ace power to turn insubstantial to the world.
"Put her here," Father Squid said, suddenly materializing behind him with a gurney. Brennan laid her down carefully. Brutus leapt onto the cart and clung to her blanket as Brennan and Father Squid wheeled her into the clinic's receiving area.
Tachyon was standing at the desk, knuckling sleep from his lilac eyes. The diminutive alien was still wearing a wrinkled white lab coat that looked like it'd been slept in. "What's this all about? I told you-" He turned toward the doors when they whooshed open. He stared for a moment, frowning, then his eyes went wide in astonishment. "Daniel!"
He took a quick step forward, arms wide as if to embrace Brennan, then stopped short as he saw the look on Brennan's face and remembered the circumstances of their last parting. "It's… good to see you," he finished somewhat lamely.
Brennan only nodded. The two men had been through a lot together, from battling the Swarm to fighting Kien and the Shadow Fists, but Brennan still found himself unable to forget what had happened the last time they'd seen each other.
It had been over a year ago. Brennan and Jennifer had tracked down Chrysalis's murderer, Hiram Worchester, to a hotel in Atlanta. Tachyon, who had also been on the scene, made a fine little speech about how things should be handled in strict accordance with the law. Tachyon, of course, got his way since he backed up his speech by mind-controlling Brennan. Worchester, had later turned himself in to the police and copped a pea bargain that kept him out of prison. Chrysalis was dead, and Worchester had a suspended sentence. True, equitable justice.
Still, Brennan couldn't let himself brood on the past. He had another life to worry about now. Jennifer's.
For the first time, Tachyon looked down from Brennan to the gurney. "What happened?" he asked.
"Three men hit our home this morning," Brennan said shortly.
Tachyon leaned over and peeled the layers of blankets away from Jennifer. She was translucently pale, the only color about her the crimson-soaked bandage that Brennan had wrapped around her forehead.
As the ace known as Wraith, Jennifer Maloy could turn insubstantial to the physical world. She could walk through walls, sink through floors, and pass through locked doors as quietly as a ghost. But now, wounded and unconscious, her mind adrift in the uncharted depths of a black coma, there was nothing to anchor her body to the physical world. She would fade until nothing was left.
Tachyon looked up at Brennan. "We'll take her to a security room on the top floor," Tachyon said in a low voice. "I'll examine her thoroughly there."