"I'm serious, Vin. How do you take this? It'd be different if you were-"
"If I were what? I were really messed up?"
"Yeah." Not backing down. If anything, sobering some. "A hundred years ago… I'll even give you thirty years ago, missing a leg meant something. What you've got lying around here somewhere is almost better than human, and you mope like you were paralyzed from the teeth down."
"I love it when people like you show up telling me about me."
"People who are trying to get you back on your…»
Feet? She was drunk.
But Vin laughed at the near pun. Made the flesh of his face tight. And for a second, under the bit of flab, behind a growth of beard, Eddi could reconstruct Vin's good looks. Could see in her head again the senior officer who'd given her the nod for MTac. And the guy she'd accidentally shot in the chest. "Sorry."
"It's just a rum of phrase."
"I mean for shooting you."
From his expression it seemed he actually had to recall the event. It was more that he was confused as to why Eddi would even bring it up.
"I know I probably blurted it a thousand times in the moment," Eddi said. "But I don't know if I ever really looked you in the eye and told you that."
"I'm pretty sure you did."
And then the two of them were quiet for a moment.
And then the two of them were quiet for too
long.
"You want to ask me something," Vin said. Then prompted: "Ask," And when Eddi said nothing, he prompted again. "It's all right. Ask. Whatever it is, it can't be worse than that foot crack you were-"
"Do you like me?"
The feeling when Eddi's bullets hit him. The unexpected lack from a hundred mules. The rush of air from his lungs. Vin had that feeling again.
"Do I like you as a person? Do I-" "You know what I mean,"
"Do I…"
"Simple question."
"The hell It Is."
"Simple answer, then. One word. Two choices. Yes or no."
"Let me ask you a question."
"This is going to go on forever, isn't It?"
"Just one question, then I'll answer yours."
"Remind me what my question was, because I don't even-"
"You're putting on a dodge, Eddi. You asked the question, are you afraid of the answer?"
It was weird to Eddi how perspicacious Vin could be. Always had been. But now that he was still, as in a variation of nearly motionless in life, he seemed even more astute. The one-legged man in the chair was really a sage on the mountain. Maybe he wasn't wasting himself. Maybe the disregard he displayed for every other aspect of his outward being allowed Him to focus-and, yeah, this sounded a little ethereal to Eddi's own ears-on his inner self. Or maybe drinking just took away whatever filter he had
left.
It was really repugnant to Eddi that she found herself continually cruising by the conclusion that booze elevated rather than deflated.
"Ask your question," she said to Vin.
"If I said I liked you, would it make you feel good personally, or would it make you feel as though you'd outdone Soledad?"
Eddi's answer was quick and honest. "I don't know."
And Vin didn't need to rejoin the statement, as it was obvious Eddi knew the significance of her answer. He did, however, compliment her candor.
To which Eddi said: "Thank you."
"You're welcome. I like you," Vin said.
Eddi didn't, know how to take that since, as Vin had pointed out, she didn't know what she wanted from his answer. She really wished she owned Odin's eye the way Vin seemed to. She didn't. Probably never would. Settled instead on having a drink. Another couple of drinks.
And it got late. Vin slid to sleep right where he sat. Eddi began to drift as well. As she departed, light before her she saw the answer to her original vexation. She'd said as much to Vin, who was beyond response.
Eddi knew what she was hunting.
“Know what a No-Contact jacket is?"
Raddatz felt like it was a trick question. He was starting to learn that Eddi seemed tricky by nature. When they were done with "all this," she could do worse than stay with DMI.
"I don't know."
"It's a jacket, actually pretty stylish. Its major accessory is that it can surge an 80,000-kV pulse to anyone who tries to attack the wearer. The attacker gets fried, the person wearing doesn't feel a thing. Know what a Power-Assist suit is?"
"What you wear when your No-Contact jacket's at the cleaners?"
Not that the crack wasn't mildly amusing, but Eddi was on her way to something. "It's a digitally controlled exoskeleton that uses air pressure to enhance the wearer's strength by a factor of six. It's got a level detect to counterbalance the additi-"
"Where's this going?"
"The theory coining In was freaks were being targeted for murder from inside DMI. Made sense. DMI maintains surveillance on freaks, DMI would have the intel to take them out. Except the freaks seemed to have been killed by something with superhuman abilities. So your theory: A freak was going after other freaks. That it happens is a historical fact. But that left motive. That left your freak buddies not knowing what was going on. So, maybe, both theories are wrong. And both are kind of right."
Raddatz and Eddi were in a booth in Raddatz's sports bar. Good a place as any to do some talking away from any curious ears. Between sips of nothing stronger than coffee Raddatz was piecing together what Eddi "was handing him. Trying to. Was too anxious to do the work himself. "Explain."
"Metas are like gods on earth. What do normal people do every day, except try to imitate God? Fly in a plane. Cure the common cold. Prenatal transplant surgery…»
"We're not after a metanormal? A normal's doing this?"
"A normal who's geared himself up to be more than normal."
"I never heard of this stuff before. Where the hell does a guy get hold of a no-touch-"
"No-Contact jacket. A Power-Assist-"
"Where does he get 'em?"
A cocktail waitress making her rounds. The drinks she was hauling looked reeeeeal tasty to
Eddi.
Eddi said: "Might have gotten some prototypes, modified them. Probably, he just cooked up his own version of them."
"By himself, basement workshop, he comes up with stuff the rest of the world's never heard
of."
"They've heard of it if they've crawled on the internet. So, yeah, by himself, basement workshop or garage he docs it up. Same as the guys who invented the airplane, the better home computer, the intermittent wiper… Same as Soledad did with her O'Dwyer. Look, Raddatz, you know how it works with HIT: Everything goes through committee, gets bid out. the development cost gets jacked up so everybody can get their kickbacks, long ass approval process… By the time anything gets done there are new administrators who don't want anything in development from the old regime. So cops like you and me get shoved out onto the street with hardly better than our bare hands. Meanwhile, Soledad's gun is up, running, and evening the score."
"If you're right-"
"I am. That surveillance picture you had of the perp. That sweat suit? Just enough to hide the Power Assist under it. Add some Kevlar to that… Think about how your cadre got it. Beaten, ripped apart, burned. Soledad's head snapped nearly clean off. Multiple abilities aren't a trademark of freaks. It's the work of man. I'm right."
Raddatz appreciated the confidence, didn't fight it. "How'd you come up with all this?"
I was getting drunk with the ex-lover of the dead woman I'm in postmortem conflict with when I had a boozy thought about the superhuman/man-made leg he has but won't use? Was easier for Eddi to say: "Just did."
"That doesn't give us who."
"It points us in the right direction. The killer's still got to know his vies. If he killed Fernandez, that was an obvious target. But how did he know about other freaks living in hiding? Where would he get that kind of intel? Who's got the hardest ax to grind, then swing at freaks?"