Once the door had closed, Yar: "Well, ask me she's got what it takes. Wants to jam Daddy's knife into a freak's chest? She's on her way to BAMF." Yarborough tossed out what was left of his apple."Easy on the eyes too. No, sir, she don't hurt a bit. Maybe I should make sure she gets out okay."
"Yar…"
Without slowing down on his way out: "She's got my vote."
Vin to Soledad: "So where do you fall?"
"She's no good for MTac. Maybe one day, but—"
Vin's laughter cut Soledad off."You interest me to no end," he said."What's under there?"
"My clothes?"
"Your skin. You had it in for the girl the second she sat down. You swing at her trying to draw blood, and the second you did you guilted off."
"I'm doing her a favor. Let her get a little dirt under her nails."
"Listen to the old man talking."
"Screw off. The girl is cocky, hardheaded, she thinks she's God's gift in blue."
"Okay."
"Okay what?"
"Okay, I get it. I get your problem. She reminds you of you, and that's what you've got against her. She reminds you of the mistakes you made, of what could've happened and how bad things could've been."
"Should I be taking notes?"
"Things worked out with your gun, but real easy they could've worked out another way. You were lucky."
"Luck doesn't keep you alive where muties are concerned."
Vin got with a smirk."You are like her."
Soledad ducked the jab, came back with: "Tell me, Vin: What is it you don't like about me? You really take me blowing you off that bad?"
"Who said I don't like you? You and me going back and forth like we do, that's what the movies call attraction."
Soledad stalled. Wit, she wasn't ready for.
Vin picked up the slack: "Aoki's cocky, yeah, but her marks are solid. Sooner or later the girl's going to make MTac, and when she does, she's going to get herself killed and maybe take a few people with her. Instead of waiting for that to happen, we put her on our element."
"To what? To give the freaks a fighting chance?"
"To teach her. To help keep her humble without dulling her edge. Most important: to keep her alive."
"Fine. You want her, vote her on."
"It's unanimous, or it's not at all. Especially in this case. You learned a lot in a little time, and Aoki's going to have to do the same. She could be a hell of a freak hunter. One day. But she's not going to get there without you."
Soledad read between the lines of Vin's" without you" capper. He was feeding her ego. The unspoken challenge: You think you're something, then show the girl how it's done.
Only, Soledad was too sharp to fall for psychology. She had too many other things to think about, worry about, besides some hotshot, high-on-herself little girl.
Little girl.
Soledad felt at her throat and the scars that were given to her, months ago, and would be with her forever. She'd come into things thinking she was special. Only thing speciaclass="underline" She had been more lucky than good. She was alive and still an MTac only by the grace of God and the sacrifice of others. Truth: At the end of the day she owed it to Bo, she owed it to Reese to do the same for the next hotshot who came along as they'd done for her.
A pause for thought, to be sure of things.
To Vin: "Okay. We put her on the element."
A strategy's what they needed. Usually, for MTacs, their strategy was built on a simple frame: Some freak somewhere would raise up its head, MTac would go pound it down.
This time was different. This time a little thought was required. Thought. Refinement. That's what Rysher, Bo—Sergeant of MTac Operations Bo—Yarborough, SLOs from the four other MTac units, some officers, including Soledad, were trying to hash out in the Em Ops of Parker Center.
Em Ops—Emergency Operations—was the crisis command of the PD: dedicated voice and data lines, feed from surveillance cameras around the city, maps, blueprints, schematics computer indexed and ready to be displayed on the high-res monitors in the room. When there were riots or earthquakes, when the city was going crazy with itself, Em Ops was where cops went to deal with the situation. At the minute it's where the cops went to figure what to do about a telepath who'd started offing their own. Ostrander was going to lead the figuring.
Ostrander was from DMI. He was a suit, like Tashjian; an investigator. Unlike Tashjian, Ostrander investigated freaks not cops. And where Tashjian was merely creepy, Ostrander was downright Gestapo-like. Maybe he was a jackbooted thug at heart, or maybe it was just his look that made him seem that way.
It was a frightening look.
Actually he had a good look to him. Just about handsome. A dark-hair, blue-eye combination set around angular features. Sinatra in his early days. Really, quite handsome.
The left side of his face was.
The right side was the fright. The right side featured three long scars that ran from Ostrander's hairline—what was left of his hairline—crossed where an eye once was, now replaced by a white orb that spun free as it pleased in its socket, over his mouth, and ended along his Adam's apple.
The scars were bad, both the scars from the maiming and the scars from the reconstructive surgery that preserved what was left of his eye and lips and throat.
Maybe Ostrander had just gotten himself messed up in a car wreck or something.
Maybe.
But around MTac, scars meant muties. And when the person with the scars was alive to display them, it usually meant the freak had ended up with the bad end of the deal.
Soledad fingered her throat. It was becoming her absentminded habit.
Ostrander stood, moved with a shuffle to the middle of the Em Ops.
He said: "His name is Herbert Lewis."
Everybody in the room looked at a surveillance photo on a monitor at center wall. The guy in the photo: middle-aged, white, trim. Very trim. Other than that, he was just a guy. He could've been the neighborhood pharmacist. Could've been the coach of the Pop Warner team. He was so normal-looking he could've been just about anything.
"What Mr. Lewis is," Ostrander explained to the group,"is a freak. He is in possession of hyperkinetic abilities. In other words, my dears, he is a speed freak able to move with a swiftness several dozen times that of a normal human. Under surveillance, he has shown bursts of speed clocked at more than three hundred ten miles an hour. Calculated time of zero to sixty for Mr. Lewis is about two-point-some seconds. He is fast."
DMI made a practice of letting some freaks go unhunted but carefully watched. Freaks they considered to be a less-than-extreme threat; troublesome but not particularly dangerous. Not dangerous like a firestarter, a mass enlarger. A telepath.
Ostrander: "We believe he is a messenger. His abilities, his speed allows him to avoid police surveillance as he travels among other metanormals. So he thinks. If we are fortunate, he has, at some point, had contact with the telepath. If not, it is more than likely he knows of a metanormal who has. Of course, we have to apprehend him before we can determine what kind of information there is to be extracted."
Soledad noticed that Ostrander was real dry, real clinical. Detached from the words he spoke. She made a bet with herself there was nothing he'd rather do than get a freak alone in his basement and get to dissecting.
Fine with her. Not much Soledad would rather do than bring one in for surgery.
One of the other MTac SOLs said: "Nothing easy about serving a warrant on a speed freak."
"No," Ostrander agreed."And the least desirable thing would be a protracted manhunt. For our activities to be made known would allow the telepath to either escape capture or become aware of our plans and therefore alter his. This speed freak, if you will pardon the turn of phrase, must be apprehended quickly."