“Mostly, but a few dance clubs and ultra-lounges as well.” Expression distant, he bit his lip. “The Palladium alone had three attacks in one hour.”
“Jesus,” Riddick said, sitting up straight in his chair. “They’re everywhere.”
“But they’re not. Gregor wasn’t able to pick up the scent of even one Shadow. Whatever they’re doing, they’re doing by remote, and they’ve been planning it for a long time.”
This time Warren did look at me, and it was I who averted my eyes. A told you so looked like it would have killed him.
“So how are they attacking?” Riddick said, stroking his goatee. We all looked back at Warren.
“That’s what we have to find out. How are the victims being approached? How can they catch so many people off guard, couples especially, without one of them getting away, or fighting, or at least one victim left alive to report it to the police?”
“And no one’s seen a thing?” asked Chandra, tucking a chunk of hair behind her ear. It sprang back out immediately.
Warren shook his head. “That’s the strange thing. Nobody’s reached for a phone, called out to their neighbors for help, nothing.”
“Maybe they didn’t have time.”
Warren inclined his head in Jewell’s direction. “Except the victims show signs of dying silently and slowly, and by that I mean hours, painful ones at that. It’s like when the exterminator comes to your house. The next day there are roaches belly up on your floor. That’s how these people are being found. All over the city.”
“Cause of death?” Vanessa asked, grimly.
“Also unknown. Gregor’s still monitoring the ETS scanners, but the only thing they’re reporting openly are the location of the victims and that they all seem to be burn victims.”
“Like in a fire?”
“A fire with no flame, no smoke, and no ash,” Tekla said from her corner, her voice taking on the lyrical cadence of prophecy and prediction she was so famous for. We all turned to her. “A flash fire. People incinerating for no reason.”
I winced, the visual coming unbidden.
Micah turned back to Warren. “Sounds like a chemical fire.”
Warren shrugged to show he just didn’t know.
“Definitely Shadows,” said Chandra.
“Duh,” I said, earning a glare from her but getting to the point. “So what do we do?”
“We are going out there to investigate, find the cause, and see if we can’t head off any further fatalities. You are going to stay here.”
Stunned, it took a moment for my eyes to narrow. “Wha-?”
“Uh-uh.” He held up a hand, silencing me with a stiff shake of his head. “This isn’t open for discussion. Chandra will go in your place, and you’ll-”
“Bullshit! I’m the star sign!” And I’d find a link to Regan, I knew it, if only I were allowed out.
“But Chandra can help Micah determine whether this is indeed a chemical attack,” Tekla said reasonably. “And this may be the onset of the second sign.”
A cursed battlefield.
My fist found the steel table, and everyone around me jumped. I wasn’t in the mood for reasonable. “Even more reason for me to go. You need me out there!”
“She’s right,” Felix said, leaning forward as he turned back to Warren. “We don’t know what this is. We need all the manpower we can get.”
This earned him a stare so hard, he dropped back in his seat, face burning. When nobody else spoke up in my defense, Warren turned that same steely gaze on me. “Olivia, we’ve done a search since your discovery of the lab in Valhalla. A genetic scientist and an evolutionary biologist have both gone missing in the past five months. Now that the Tulpa’s mole”-he couldn’t even speak her name, his lips screwing up on the word-“has been banished from inside the sanctuary, he needs another way to get to you.”
So that’s what they hadn’t been telling me. I looked at Gregor, who averted his gaze, then to Micah. They thought the Tulpa intended to inject me with the makeup of his genetic template, thus linking himself to me. And why not? The same ploy had almost wiped out the agents of Light just months earlier. What better way to keep track of me too-to draw me in closer, and know what I was thinking and feeling at all times-than to bind me to himself.
The Tulpa’s found a way to wipe you all out in one fell swoop.
Binding himself to the Kairos could do just that. No wonder they didn’t want me leaving the sanctuary.
And yet I didn’t think so. What about what Regan had said? We’re already in. And what about her claims that the Tulpa needed me to come to him willingly? I decided to try again. “Tekla…?”
She frowned and gave me a small shake of her head. “Warren’s right. The Tulpa will do anything to get to you. It may be that these attacks are really just a smokescreen to draw you to him. But if we think you can help after we’ve assessed the situation-”
I stood up, my chair toppling behind me. “But I’m the one who told you about the lab!”
“Which is how we know to take this precaution.” Warren stared at me, brows drawn, face pinched, and I stifled my next comment. That look said he’d lock me up if he had to. The others saw it, too, and were glancing around uncomfortably. Vanessa put an hand on my arm. “Olivia,” she said softly.
Slowly I lowered myself to my seat, and when I finally broke eye contact, Warren’s shoulders dropped, and he exhaled loudly. The rest of the troop relaxed as well. “So, for the rest of you, I’ve designed a plan that will put us in all corners of the city, working inward.” He pulled down a projection screen, while Tekla got the lights, and the others settled in to retrieve their assignments. Felix sent me an apologetic smile, and Vanessa patted my hand lightly before turning her attention to the front of the room, and I sank back into my seat, forgotten from that moment on.
They discussed and debated strategy right until the approach of dawn. I wasn’t consulted, or even acknowledged, but they didn’t kick me out either-at least Warren had enough decency not to do that-so I listened, observed, and learned with the others. I also put together what I knew from each of the times Regan and I had spoken, letting her cryptic remarks tumble in my mind like an ongoing craps game until I finally had enough information. After the meeting was adjourned, and the others began to prepare for dawn, I sulkily left the briefing room, making sure Warren saw me returning to the barracks.
But once back in my room, I began to make plans of my own.
Dusk’s arrival found six superheroes-and Chandra-lined up on the launchpad, preparing to hurtle up the chute one by one from the steel womb of the sanctuary and into the cool hours of a predawn boneyard. They were dressed in the clothes needed to play their roles as mortals on the outside, as they’d begin this reconnaissance mission by scouring the sites most familiar to them.
Warren would crawl along the underbelly of the inner city under the soiled rags of his vagrant persona. Gregor would continue to drive his cab, Chandra masquerading as his fare. Micah would scour the hospitals as a physician, and Felix’s long run as a college student would allow him into the clubs and parties where this thing had really taken off. Vanessa, meanwhile, would join the drove of reporters trying to get a bead on the sudden spike in apparent homicides, and if all that failed, they’d each work their way into the city’s center, and less familiar environs.
Tekla and I were there to see them off, both of us dressed as well. She’d be heading directly to the astrolab to cast lots or run charts or whatever she thought the situation called for, so she was in her work robes, and I was wearing old jeans and a tee, a bandana covering my blond locks in that white-bread gangsta way. After the others had disappeared, the airy hiss of the tunnel swallowing them up, I turned to her in the ensuing silence.