The Man Who Walked in Darkness (Miles Franco #2) (Miles Franco Urban Fantasy) (29 page)

Wait a minute. No, it can’t be
. I flipped the photo back over and studied the woman. She was skinnier then, and she’d changed her glasses, but the shape of her cheekbones was the same. But the name was different. I closed my eyes and pictured a wedding ring.
Crap.
She had the same eyes.

No.

I spun, nearly toppling over, and pointed the woman out to Kowalski. “Her? You’re saying she did it?”

He swallowed. “She didn’t give me a choice.”

“No,” said a soft, kindly voice from the door. “I didn’t.”

I didn’t even have to turn to recognize the voice. “Christ,” I said, the last of my strength draining from me. “I fucked up again, didn’t I?”

Doc McCaffrey stood in the doorway, a guard to either side of her, machine pistols trained on me. Her soft features betrayed no fear, no malice. A stethoscope still hung around her neck. Behind her oversized glasses, she smiled sadly.

“Yes, Miles. You fucked up.”

TWENTY-SIX

I dropped my gun without being asked. There’s a special kind of non-verbal communication that only burly guys with machine pistols can manage.

Doc McCaffrey ushered her men into the room. I recognized one of them. Sean Beekman, the team leader on the Tartarus expedition. “So, I hear you’re the bastard who took my goggles off,” I said to him.

Sean shrugged. “I did what had to be done.”

“Noble. I hope my death at least paid well.” I backed away behind the desk, putting myself near the window. The Moon was bright. Hell of a night to die. My hands hung limply at my side, all the fight drained out of me. My heart tried to hammer at the sight of the guns and my own impending doom, but it couldn’t manage more than a feeble lurch.

“Get Jozef out of here,” the doc said. “We need to start tying things up.” Sean stalked over, grabbed Kowalski by the scruff of his neck, and roughly shoved him back across the room. Kowalski whimpered and shuffled away.

“Sorry about the threatening to kill you thing,” I said to Kowalski. I was getting good at being an asshole. First Zhi, and now Kowalski. And I was getting worse. I would’ve pulled that trigger, and it would’ve been so damn easy. Something had taken me, some blind rage. It was amazing what you thought you could live with when you didn’t have to live with it very long.

Sean shoved Kowalski out into the hallway, and they disappeared from view. Now it was just me, McCaffrey, and one more armed goon. There was no way I could rush the guy with the gun. Hell, I didn’t even think I could win a fistfight against the fifty-year-old doctor right now.

I pointed at Kowalski’s empty chair. “You don’t mind if I…?”

Doc McCaffrey shook her head. “Please.”

I dropped into the chair and slumped down. Christ, it was comfortable. It even managed to take some of the pain out of my lower back. Why hadn’t I ever got one of these before?

“I must say,” she said, “you’re taking this rather well.”

I shrugged. I was too tired to even be surprised. I’d been so sure it was Kowalski. But then I’d been sure about a lot of things. I’d been sure Zhi was betraying me like Caterina had last winter. I’d been sure I could do this all on my own. Miles, the big fucking martyr, trying to redeem himself. And what a great job I’d done. Claudia would be so proud.

“You killed a lot of people,” I said. “Cops. The goddamn mayor. That’s not something you decide to do when you wake up one day. So, just tell me one thing.”

“You want to know why?”

I nodded. “I’m guessing you were part of Kowalski’s little group. Bohr’s pretty pissed at you, you know?”

I bent over and had another coughing fit. The doc waited in silence. While my insides were trying to fight their way out of my throat, I slipped my hand into my pocket.

The spasms faded again. I kept talking. “Were you a physicist before you were a doctor? Or was it the other way round? Never mind. Irrelevant. You and Kowalski finally got to Tartarus. You got your fluid. But it didn’t work like you wanted at the start, did it? All those bodies for nothing. How’d you get Kowalski to go along with it? Threaten his family?”

She shook her head. “Nothing so crude. I know secrets that would crush him if they were ever made public.”

She was enjoying this. She was like a lonely old lady, desperate for someone to talk to. Fine, I’d play. I didn’t have anywhere better to be. The bottle of Kemia in my pocket felt cold against my palm.

“You had everyone wrapped around your finger from the start didn’t you?” I said. “All these years, Kowalski’s been dancing to your tune. And then you came after me. You killed my friend just to get my attention. Played Zhi so she’d bring me in. How’d you know it would work?”

“I studied you, Miles. You’ve been all over the news for the last six months. And if you’ll excuse me, you’re not the most complicated individual I’ve ever come across. You seem to practically throw yourself into trouble at the slightest provocation. It was easy to see where you’d end up.”

I grunted. I wasn’t really that transparent, was I? “You went to a lot of effort for little ol’ me and your crystals. Your friend Bohr did too. Did I tell you he kidnapped me with a giant bat-creature? I mean, who does that? But what’s so special about the crystals, Doc? Just tell me what they do.”

“No,” she said simply. She smiled at me and waved to her goon. “Take him. We’ll escort him downstairs. It won’t be long now.”

The suit-wearing goon nodded and took a step toward me, machine pistol in his hands.

“Yeah,” I said, pulling the bottle of Kemia from my pocket and uncorking it. “I don’t think that’s gonna work out.”

The goon paused and glanced back at the doc. She just smiled in her kind, motherly way. “Oh, Miles. We both know you’re not strong enough to open a Pin Hole right now. Those crystals are tearing you up inside. Just come along. I can make your last few hours peaceful.”

I shook my head and held up a coin between my index and middle fingers. “That’d be like lying to myself. I intend to die the way I lived my life. Stupidly and without purpose.” I grinned. “And you’re half right. I can’t open a working Pin Hole right now. Hell, I don’t even think I can stand up. But this here…” I wiggled the coin in my fingers. “…is not a working Pin Hole. It’s about as far from one as you can get. You know all those warnings about the dangers of Tunneling without proper training? How if you screw up the Pin Hole, you could turn yourself inside out or liquefy your own brain?”

Her smile stayed, but her eyes betrayed her. “You wouldn’t.”

“Yes, I would,” I said. “I don’t have enough energy to open a Pin Hole. But I think I’ve got just enough strength to screw one up. I wonder if your precious crystals will survive if I splatter myself across these nice, pretty walls.”

The goon looked from me to his boss and raised his gun a little, but he didn’t fire. Doc McCaffrey was silent. Interesting. I’d been half-expecting them to put a few rounds in my head and get the crystals afterwards. But maybe it didn’t work like that. Maybe they actually needed to extract the crystals when I was still alive or freshly dead, like the Collective wanted to with their grinder. That bought me a few more seconds of bargaining time.

“If this was anyone else, I’d ask if you were bluffing,” Doc McCaffrey said. “But maybe you’re stupid enough to actually do this.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Doc. So if you want the crystals, you better start talking. What do they do?”

She adjusted her glasses on her nose and frowned at me. “What does it matter? Either way, you’ll be dead.”

“People keep asking me that. Why does it matter? Because all my goddamn life I’ve been a screw-up. The only thing that makes me worthwhile in the eyes of anyone anymore is the way I burned a gang to the ground, and now I can’t escape the dreams and the waking nightmares. I was a loser. I never wanted to be a mass murderer as well. And now all I’ve got is this.” I shook the Pin Hole coin and the bottle of Kemia. “I’ve let too many people down. And before I end up as a pile of goo on the floor, I wanna know why the hell so many people had to die.”

There was silence for a moment. I tried to focus on McCaffrey, but my vision was starting to get dark, narrow. I couldn’t keep this up forever. I wasn’t bluffing. The Pin Hole was a modified version of the one I used to turn myself into the Incredible Hulk, which had been based on my Chroma-enhanced bug-out last winter. If I’d worked it out right, the Pin Hole was screwed up enough to change the position and orientation of every organ in my body. Skin, guts, bones, everything. And maybe, if I was lucky, there’d be some nice splatter as well, like someone had implanted a grenade in my stomach.

“Answers,” I said. “Three seconds, or I’m gonna blow this popsicle stand.”

She smiled again. “Such a flair for the dramatic. Very well. Leslie, it’s all right.” She gestured to the goon. He scowled and lowered his gun, moving aside.

“Leslie?” I said. “Your thug’s name is Leslie? No wonder he looks so angry.”

Leslie scowled, but McCaffrey ignored the comment. “Have you ever really considered the power you wield, Miles? You play with it like it’s a toy, but inside you you have the ability to reshape reality as you see fit. And you’re good at it too. I’ve studied dozens of Tunnelers. Most use the same few Pin Holes to help with menial tasks, but they depend mostly on the reliability of full Tunnels as a way to ply their trade. You aren’t content to stick with the basics. You improvise. You do things that would kill other Tunnelers, and you make it work. You have a brilliant, instinctual command of your craft. And that’s only increased since the incident with the Chroma.”

“What did I say about flattery?”

I struggled to put it together in my brain. She’d used me because I’d taken Chroma. But why? I didn’t know. I wasn’t smart enough to work this thing out. My gaze went to the phone. I had to tell Vivian that McCaffrey was behind this. Could I use my life as a bargaining chip long enough to make the call?

I met McCaffrey’s eyes. Even now, she looked kinder than most of the foster mothers I’d had. She wasn’t power-mad like Caterina or tweaked out like Bohr. She looked almost sad. What had driven her to do all this? Somewhere deep inside, the fire that had been driving me, the burn of guilt and revenge, dimmed a little.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Doc McCaffrey said. “He doesn’t need to know. I think he’s bluffing after all. Take him.”

So much for the sympathy.

Leslie came for me. I lurched up, every inch of me on fire, and kicked the chair toward him. He deflected the pathetic attack easily and kept coming. I stumbled backward, put my back against the window, and held the Kemia up to the moonlight.

Nowhere to run now. No clever escapes. I was ready. Hell, I was way past ready. I glanced at the doc and saw Claudia standing behind her. She smiled at me. I’d found the person who’d killed her. Not that she would be caught, but that was all right. It was someone else’s problem now. I couldn’t wait to finally rest, free of hallucinations and fear and pain and those goddamn dreams. It was time.

Leslie lunged at me. I could barely feel my limbs. Somehow I lifted the bottle of Kemia and tilted it. The silvery liquid shimmered, just waiting to hit the broken Pin Hole and turn me into a living bomb. Time seemed to stand there forever.

And then the bottle slipped from my fingers. I watched it fall, my heart giving one last, pathetic throb.
No
. I grabbed for the bottle, but my knees went next. They couldn’t take my weight anymore. I fell at the same speed as the bottle, liquid sloshing inside both of us.

The bottle hit the ground. It shattered.

The silvery liquid hissed and dissolved as it came into contact with the carpet. I watched, unable to even utter a groan, as my last act of defiance petered out in the most humiliating way possible.

I couldn’t see Claudia anymore. I knew she was disappointed.

I lay on the ground, slumped and broken. The goon’s shoes came into view and kicked my hand. I didn’t even feel it. The sabotaged Pin Hole fell out of my grasp and rolled away under the desk. My mouth hung open, blood and spit drooling into the carpet. I could barely even blink.

“You made this harder than it needed to be,” McCaffrey said. “But I always knew you would.” She moved to my side and slowly crouched, her joints cracking with age. I could make out the darkened, spotted skin of her ankles, and a varicose vein that disappeared under the hem of her trousers. Her fingers touched the artery in my neck. Her skin was clammy. Or maybe it was me that was clammy. I tried to pull back from her touch, but her other hand wrapped around the back of my head and easily held me in place. I wheezed, trying to keep from slipping into unconsciousness.

Her touch left me. “He’s nearly at the end,” she said. “I need to sample his blood before he dies. Get him downstairs—”

A boom ripped through the night. The floor vibrated beneath me. I thought I heard shouts somewhere far away, but I couldn’t be sure. My broken mind was having trouble piecing everything together.
Was that a bomb?

I rolled to the side, my muscles groaning, and realized McCaffrey and Leslie weren’t next to me anymore. They were at the window, staring down toward the street. Their faces were lit from below by flickering orange light.

Footsteps crashed into the room. I forced my neck back the other way to look at the door. Another goon rushed into the room, his eyes the size of pizza dishes, his gun trembling in his hands like he was going to start loosing shots at any second.

“It’s the Collective,” the goon said, his voice rapid. “They’re coming in the main entrance. Dozens of them.”

My head rolled a little more to the side, and my gaze fell on the gun that I’d dropped. Zhi’s revolver. Within my reach. I saw McCaffrey’s face, and for the millionth time I pictured Claudia lying on that slab. With my muscles trembling, I reached for the gun.

“Get him up,” McCaffrey ordered. “Take him to the basement via the service elevator and get him prepped. I need to clear out Jozef’s office. Go.”

My fingers brushed the butt of the revolver. It was almost as cold as I was. Then two pairs of arms grabbed me under the armpits and hauled me up. The revolver was a million miles away now.