Xenofreak Nation, Book Three: XIA Read online

  Xenofreak Nation

  Book Three: XIA

  by Melissa Conway

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2014 by Melissa Conway

  www.melissaconway.net

  Cover background photo courtesy of CG Textures.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, with the exception of brief quotations for use in articles and reviews.

  Chapter One

  Wailing sirens and mysterious booming, banging and popping noises woke Bryn throughout the night, but only briefly. The frightening sounds of unrest spreading across New York City were too far away to fully jolt her from her much-needed slumber.

  Until a woman screamed.

  Bryn bolted upright in Scott’s bed and looked to the window as shrieks echoed up from the street. The blinds were closed, but a faint orange glow flickered along the wall between the top of the window and the ceiling.

  She reached for Scott, but he was gone. It was still dark, but something told her morning was near. After struggling from under the tangled bedcovers, she went to the window, pinching one of the slats and lifting it to peer into the night. Outside Scott’s fourth-floor apartment, across the gap provided by a narrow two-lane road, was the beige brick façade of another apartment building. It would have been an unremarkable view if it weren’t for the black smoke pouring from two shattered windows on the second floor, and the flames that boiled out in great rolling waves.

  The screaming had stopped and Bryn listened for sirens that didn’t come. It was chilly by the window, and there were droplets on the glass. She looked down at the wet black street and saw a group of people gathered near the intersection under a streetlamp. Someone had climbed one of the bare-branched old trees lining the sidewalk and was straddling the thickest branch. At first, she thought they were merely bystanders watching the conflagration grow, but then, quite inexplicably, one of them rose up into the air directly beneath the tree, his legs kicking out spasmodically.

  The screaming began again, accompanied by shouts. Horrified, Bryn’s breath caught in her throat. She could see them now, six men hauling on the length of rope strung over the tree branch, like tug of war contestants at a picnic. A woman, probably the one doing the screaming, was punching and kicking at them ineffectually. The crowd was an old-fashioned lynch mob, and the man whose neck was in the noose was slowly strangling to death.

  With no warning, a shot rang out, and the hanging man dropped to the ground, somehow landing on his feet. Bryn couldn’t see well enough from her vantage point to tell whether the rope had been severed by the bullet or if the men had released it. The woman shoved her way through the crowd and no one stopped her. Bryn realized why when Scott appeared from the shadows, bearing down on the crowd, gun arm extended out in front of him.

  “Oh, no...” she murmured.

  There were at least twenty riled up people out there, all facing one man with a gun. Bryn heard raised voices, but couldn’t make out what anyone was saying.

  Her attention was briefly pulled back to the fire as a dull concussive blast rained glass onto the empty street below. The flames had spread to another apartment and several more windows had blown out from the explosion.

  Was that a siren? She hoped so. Maybe the mob would disperse if they thought reinforcements were coming.

  But they didn’t look like they were leaving, and in a flash, it occurred to her why. The man they’d tried to hang was a xenofreak - but so was Scott. He would tell them he was a cop, but they would see his xenoalterations and wouldn’t believe him. They were functioning under the influence of a powerful cocktail of fear and anger, and as Scott continued to hold them off without firing, they were gaining confidence. He couldn’t possibly shoot them all.

  Bryn stepped back from the window and looked desperately around the room. Her holophone was long gone, and Scott’s was missing from the bedside table. She ran into the living room, switched on the overhead light, and went straight for the closet by the door. Earlier, he’d removed his bulletproof vest and hung it there, and she’d watched while he emptied his pockets of bullet clips and miscellaneous gear. He’d hung his gun in its holster on a hook. That was no longer there, but she’d also seen him unfasten an ankle holster and place it on the top shelf.

  She stood on her tiptoes and felt around for it, encountering an object with her fingers. She nudged it off the shelf and caught it as it fell. It was a small caliber pistol, much like the one Carla had owned and Bryn had never learned to shoot. She knew enough to tell that the little gun was loaded, though, and she took a few precious seconds to hold the gun up to the light to check that the safety wasn’t on.

  Without pausing to look for a jacket, she left the apartment and ran barefoot to the stairwell, wearing only sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt. Her feet were nearly numb from contact with the cold concrete steps by the time she reached the bottom. She opened the door and ran through the lobby; but she was neither frightened nor foolish enough to burst out onto the street brandishing the gun. Instead, she slipped outside and walked quickly towards the commotion.

  The crowd had swelled as people evacuated the burning building. It looked to Bryn like some of the lynch mob were trying to blend in with the newcomers in an attempt to disassociate themselves. But there were still several trying to intimidate Scott into backing down.

  The man Scott had saved was standing next to him in the middle of the street, holding the rope coiled in one hand. The woman who’d been screaming clung to the man’s arm, trying to pull him away. But whoever he was, he apparently wasn’t going to abandon Scott, who spoke to the crowd in a calm tone.

  As Bryn got closer, she made out his words. “There are cameras everywhere these days,” he said. “You may think you can get away with committing a crime when everyone around you is doing the same, but you will eventually be identified and prosecuted.”

  The closest person, a tall bearded man whose hair looked red in the light from the fire, spat on the ground at Scott’s feet. “My cousin died from the disease scum like you are spreading!”

  Another man stepped forward, gesticulating wildly. “My sister’s family had to abandon their home to the xenofreaks on Coney Island. They burned it to the ground! Just like that!” He pointed to the burning building, which radiated warmth that kept Bryn from freezing in the cold air.

  “We had nothing to do with any of that!” the woman yelled. The man who’d been hanged looked like he wanted to say something, too, but he held a hand to his throat as if he couldn’t talk.

  Several people from the crowd began shouting, trying to talk over each other. Bryn stayed back, standing on a discarded piece of cardboard to protect her feet from the frozen sidewalk. She concealed the gun under the front of her t-shirt, deciding if she was going to shoot anyone, it would be the bearded man, who seemed to be lynch mob’s ringleader. Without their leader inciting them, maybe Scott would get out of this alive.

  Just when she thought the entire block might break out into violence, red and white flashing lights from down the street heralded a police vehicle. The bearded man sneered and turned, quickly disappearing into the crowd. Bryn exhaled in relief as several more men decided retreat would be prudent. She expected the man who’d been attacked to welcome the police, but he, too, made a h
asty retreat, dragging the woman along with him.

  Scott tucked his weapon into the pocket of his leather jacket and walked back across the street. He was still wearing the eye patch and almost passed by without seeing her.

  “Hey,” she said.

  His head jerked around. “What are you doing out here?” He looked her up and down and shrugged out of his jacket to lay it over her shoulders. “It’s dangerous.”

  “No kidding,” she replied, falling into step next to him. The police car pulled over to let a fire truck through, and two firemen immediately began unrolling a hose from the side of the truck.

  “Are you barefoot?” Scott asked. Without waiting for her response, he swept her up into his arms.

  “I can walk.” It was a weak protest because she was secretly glad to get her frozen feet off the ground.

  When he saw the little gun in her hand, he rolled his eyes and muttered, “What am I going to do with you?”

  He carried her all the way to the entrance of his building before she convinced him to let her walk the rest of the way. When they left the stairwell and entered the fourth floor hallway, he held out an arm to stop her. Beyond his shoulder, she saw a dark-clothed figure sitting cross-legged in front of his door.

  Bryn squinted in the dim light of the hallway. “Is that...Mia?”

  Hearing her name, Mia turned towards them, and then scrambled to her feet as they approached.

  Scott looked into her pale face. “Is it Alton?”

  She closed her eyes briefly. “No. Can I come in?”

  Scott shrugged and glanced at Bryn. “Sure.”

  When they were all inside, Mia said, “I apologize for showing up here like this, but I didn’t really know what else to do.” Her voice cracked on the last few words, as if she was fighting back tears.

  Mia was petite, but Bryn knew she was tough as nails. Even though her erratic behavior seemed to be fueled by something more than exhaustion, Bryn asked, “Have you slept at all?”

  “No. I’ve been running back and forth between the hospital, the morgue and the lab.”

  “You want something to drink?” Scott made a move for the kitchen, but she grabbed his arm, another unusual move for the germophobic doctor.

  “I need your help. And I need it fast.”

  “Yeah, okay. What is it?”

  Then she said quite possibly the last thing Bryn expected. “I need to get a xenograft.”

  Chapter Two

  Scott tried to enter his apartment quietly, but he’d overloaded himself. In order to balance the cardboard drink carrier and open the door, he had to set the paper bag of bagels on the ground, which made the backpack he’d slung over his shoulder swing forward and bang into the doorknob. The keys rattled and he sucked air through his teeth as the weight of the backpack stretched the wounds on his back.

  The door creaked open and Bryn appeared with her finger to her lips. She snatched up the paper bag and took the backpack from him, whispering, “What are you doing? You should have made two trips or called me to help you.”

  He had no logical excuse other than not wanting to bother her. “I picked up some clothes and shoes for you from Carla’s and got breakfast from the corner deli.”

  “They’re open?” she asked, shooting a glance over at the couch, where Mia still slept.

  He set the drinks on the kitchen counter. “Yeah, I was surprised, too. They didn’t have very many customers, but some of these small business owners can’t afford to shut down for even one day.”

  She looked inside the paper bag and helped herself to a bagel. “Real food! Thank you. How is it out there? And how come you don’t have a holovision?”

  He leaned a hip against the cupboard and sipped from one of the coffee cups, relishing the hot liquid even as it burned his tongue. “I’m not home often enough to watch anything. And it’s quiet so far today. Rioters gotta sleep, too, I guess. If you want to look at the news, you can use my holophone.”

  He handed it to her. It was a replacement phone just issued to him last night when they’d stopped by headquarters to pick up his motorcycle. The supply clerk had been snippy with him, as if the cost of all the phones Scott had gone through lately had come out of the clerk’s own pocket. The munitions clerk, though, had been cool about assigning him a new gun. She’d only said, “You must be pretty special to get authorization without having to do the screenwork.”

  “I only dodged that bullet temporarily,” he’d replied. Once the riots were over and things settled down, he expected to be buried in reports.

  Bryn took the phone from him, but didn’t turn it on. She looked over at Mia, an unmoving lump under Scott’s one and only spare blanket. “Did you find a place?”

  He shrugged and then winced at the resulting twinge of pain. “Of course.” If anyone could find a clean, safe place for a person to get a xenograft, it was an XIA agent. He’d simply used his new holophone to access the agency’s database of all known xenosurgeons in the New York area.

  She put a hand to his face and gently adjusted his eye patch. “So, did you have to make an appointment, or..?”

  “Oh, yeah, the receptionist was very nice.”

  “You’re mocking me, aren’t you?”

  He grinned. “A little.”

  “Well, what do I tell her when she wakes up? You’ve got to go to work, right? I mean, this isn’t exactly XIA business and she’s going to need someone to help her.”

  “I already sent the location of the xenograft den to her new phone.” Mia’s phone had been confiscated when Maddy Singh kidnapped her, but she’d managed to replace it. “Let her sleep ‘til ten or so. The place doesn’t open until eleven anyway. She can get a small graft with a local anesthetic and be out of there in a couple hours. You are going to stay in this apartment where it’s safe, got that?”

  Bryn’s eyebrows lifted. “Uh, care to rephrase that?”

  He sighed and grabbed her around the waist, careful not to prick her with his claws. “Bryn...babycakes...”

  Her face lit up and she giggled, but sobered all too quickly. “Don’t worry. The last thing I want to do is go anywhere.”

  He felt a pang of guilt when the light in her eyes dimmed. She been through hell the last few days and he wished he could hole up in the apartment with her for a week and make her feel safe again.

  The holophone in her hand buzzed, startling them both. She passed it back to him and he wasn’t surprised to see Shasta’s stern face.

  “Good morning, Agent Harding. I trust you slept well?”

  He laughed a little, thinking of the many times he’d been jolted awake the night before. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”

  “Silicon earplugs,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Like the kind you wear for target practice. Blocks out the sirens.”

  “Oh, right. Well, if I’d been wearing them, I wouldn’t have noticed the building across the street burning down or that attempted lynching on the corner.”

  Shasta frowned. “Unfortunately, that’s par for the course for the five boroughs at the moment, not to mention several other major cities – and not just in the US.”

  “It seems to have calmed down some,” he said.

  “They’ll get their second wind. In the meantime, I’ve partnered you with Lo while Alton and Boardman are recuperating.” Her eyes narrowed as she studied his holo from her end. “Are you up to it? Field work, I mean.”

  Scott had gone AWOL from the hospital and she knew it, so he figured her display of concern was a formality. His doctor had advised him to take two weeks off, but the XIA needed him now, even if he wasn’t exactly hale and hearty. The hospital had given him a bottle of a strong enough painkiller to take the edge off his injuries without making him loopy, though, so he said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. The riots are being fueled by interweb speculation and our analysts detected a disturbing pattern in the socialnet – someone named ‘Savvy’ has been jacking Orbweaver accounts and se
nding inflammatory messages to everyone in the victims’ contact lists. Now, that wouldn’t tend to get our guys’ attention except the content of the messages suggest they’re originating from someone with specific inside knowledge of Fournier’s involvement.”

  “Padme?” he asked.

  “Not likely. Maddy Singh won’t want to aggravate Fournier at this point. We do have the jacker’s general location – he’s using a public wifi holospot, so it shouldn’t be too hard to identify him. I sent you the info. You and Lo go check it out.”

  “Got it.”

  “I’m with Unger all day, we just landed in DC. I won’t be able to answer my holophone, but I expect you to text me any updates.”

  “Is he still testifying?” A congressional subcommittee had been formed not long after Bryn’s father had her kidnapped and xenografted by Dr. Nicolas Fournier. Ironically, the reason her father had colluded with Fournier in the first place was to force the government to regulate the practice of xenoalteration. Unger, the Deputy Director of the XIA, had been testifying at a policy hearing for days.

  “Yes, and it’s not going well.” Shasta didn’t elaborate. “Be careful out there, Agent Harding.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Shasta disconnected, and Scott accessed his messages, clicking on the holomap link she’d sent him. When the map popped up, he and Bryn looked at each other in surprise.

  The holospot was located in a café on the first floor of an office building two blocks north of where the Warehouse once stood.

  Chapter Three

  “Hey, wake up.”

  Bryn gently shook Mia’s shoulder. It was nine o’clock in the morning, but even though Scott wanted Bryn to let her sleep in, Mia had cried out in her sleep and was clearly having a nightmare.

  Mia’s eyelids opened and when her unfocused gaze took in Bryn’s form hovering over her, she recoiled against the cushions in fear, no recognition in her dark brown eyes.