Chapter 26
Five weeks later, a hundred kilometers outside Kunming, Yunan Province, Southwest China.
"Cross blew up your house, Marta. Doesn't that bother you? I remember all the big plans you had. How you loved that spiral staircase. That freakshow was obsessed with you. He was Googling information about your private life and breaking into your Sterisyn files for at least a year and a half before he invaded your house." Peter sat across from Marta, probably in the only leather chair on the whole Kunming Candent business campus, certainly the only one in the behavioral sciences building. He looked relaxed, sure of himself. But he wasn't. He was jealous, at least that's how she interpreted his mix of anger stink and muscle tension. Peter was jealous of Aaron, he was jealous of a dead man.
He leaned forward. "The Outcome agents were very persuasive, Marta. You remember how they were in the lab. You had to be on your guard all the time. Cross came to your house and shot everything up and made you go on the run with him. You were so scared you never stopped to find out the truth. They were after him, not you! You could have left him at any time and been safe."
Over the last month Marta had gotten very good at analyzing human emotions with her nose and eyes. It helped her resist Peter's constant attempts to erode her feelings for Aaron Cross. The first few days after she'd arrived here, when she'd still been under lockdown, the prick had even thought he could climb back into her bed, until she'd stabbed him with the disposable chopsticks she'd cadged from her dinner tray. Unfortunately, the chopsticks broke and she'd barely drawn blood.
After that she'd been allowed only sporks and paper dinnerware until she'd gone on a two day hunger strike and Ziang, Peter's Candent supervisor, came with him to her cell. She'd complained about Peter's badgering, her prisoner status, and most importantly Aaron's murder. "No way to welcome back a loyal employee," she'd told Ziang. Peter had just stood in the background, arms folded in front of him, his expression completely neutral but his heartbeat and breathing elevated. He was angry, she figured.
"Agent Five wasn't murdered, Doctor Shearing. My people were defending themselves." Ziang showed her a file on a tablet PC signed with Peter's self-important flourish. "Doctor Boyd feels you are a danger to yourself and others right now. If you drop your vendetta about Agent Five, perhaps we can work something out."
She'd given him her best cold stare, well-practiced over the years on many a test subject.
"He called us you know, Agent Five. Told us where to find you both. Security Chief Goldberg thinks he was going to surrender himself but panicked."
"I don't believe you." Aaron never panicked. He wasn't afraid of anything.
Ziang gestured at Peter who fished out his smartphone, fiddled with it a moment and played a recording.
"Boyd here," it started. She could hear the faint whine of a jet engine in the background.
"Jed Robinson says you're Candent," Aaron's familiar voice came on next. She suddenly had to sit down on the built-in shelf that held her sleeping pallet.
"Aaron Cross! What can I do for you?" Peter's voice in his professionally friendly mode.
"Marta Shearing is waiting for you at the Gilded Palace Casino penthouse. She needs asylum from …" Peter abruptly ended the playback.
Aaron had arranged this. He'd known that Candent agents were on their way to the penthouse and stayed with her anyway. She'd been so involved with herself and the pregnancy test she hadn't noticed what he needed and then she asked him that stupid question about June Monroe and he'd stayed to tell her. Not trusting herself to look at anything but the floor she said in a choked voice, "Show me where to sign." After they left, she'd cried until two of the black clad guards came and escorted her to the tiny, utilitarian apartment she lived in now. She hadn't cried since.
Things improved. At least she now had the run of Candent's facilities here, a one hectare business campus complete with cafeteria, laundry and sleeping quarters. In theory she could leave at any time. In reality guards followed her whenever she left her apartment. Not that she had anywhere to go in the heart of China, thousands of miles from the coast, with no local language skills and no cash of any kind. On the bright side, Peter Boyd's badgering had been curtailed but not eliminated. She still had to endure these "counseling" sessions at his whim. At least he no longer assumed he could f*ck her.
He did, however, offer her a vodka tonic at every session and even though she always left it untouched, another one was offered again at the next session. Somehow she didn't think that was good psychiatric practice, since alcohol had once been her weakness and Peter knew it, having driven her home and poured her into bed on more than one occasion. She remembered Aaron in Hong Kong when she'd begged him to "just kill me now" and how patient he'd been. So patient, her hand stole to her belly and she smiled. Maybe if the baby was a girl, she'd call her Patience. Definitely Aaron if it was a boy.
Ziang also gave her 24/7 lab and database access. Except for Aaron Cross and Outcome Five files. When she tried to find out what they'd done with his body or even find his picture to print out she'd been completely and utterly blocked. All the other agent histories in the database were available to her, even some for another program called LARX, but not his. Not Aaron's. And sometimes it left gaping, awkward holes in her Outcome data analyses. It was almost like a vendetta and she suspected Peter's hand in it. He couldn't seem to mention Aaron without sneering.
She'd tried to persuade her lab assistants, Chang and Lee, to look Aaron up for her. First they'd pretended not to understand. Then after they'd been forced to reveal that they spoke and read perfectly good English, they'd just ignored her demands.
She was making progress on the baby tests. It was too early for ultrasound, but all the DNA testing came back within normal ranges, at least Outcome normal. No obvious abnormalities, and her own body had settled into both motherhood and enhancement comfortably. She slept more than Aaron had, usually two hours a night, but a lot less than she had before. And she never, ever missed a meal. Her appetite was legendary. The baby seemed to be growing at maybe 105 to 110 percent of normal. Her waist had already started to thicken a little and her breasts enlarge. Fortunately she'd arrived with almost no suitable clothes, since the hooker hand-me-downs from the Ranch weren't really suitable lab wear. So she'd been able to acquire new things that were loose enough to hide at least some of the changes. She wore the wedding ring from the Rainbow Seas all the time now. She'd caught Peter staring at it but he hadn't questioned her about it … yet.
It was hard to do the baby testing in secret and keep up with Candent's ambitious program of selecting and inoculating twenty new Outcome participants. Ziang wanted to hop over the blue and green chem administration level and go straight to viraling out. She had argued they'd end up killing half the participants, not the mention the mental instability issues and personnel management. Ziang had nodded and looked thoughtful, but his follow-up questions had been about how to select the most viable participant candidates, not about alternative programs and schedules.
"Boyd's trying to confuse you," she imagined Aaron advising her. "Hold on to who you are."
"I burned the house down, Peter, because it reminded me of you. Hollow and empty. A stupid investment I should never have made." She did her best to insult Peter every time they met for one of these psycho sessions, which seemed to be when he felt like tormenting her. He'd come into the lab where she did the Outcome candidate evaluations, he'd gesture toward the exit and she'd be expected to drop whatever she was doing and ride with him on one of the little golf carts all the way across the campus to this, the behavioral sciences building. Interestingly, although Marta's guard did not ride with them, he always reappeared after she left Boyd's office. Marta had a guard wherever she went these days.
"I'm glad you're admitting that now," Peter said. "Last time we met, you said a CIA team tried to kill you."
Marta smiled. She and Peter had danced this dance for weeks and he must know what she'd say. "They did. Then we blew up the house." She imagined Aaron snickering. God, she missed him. The things that had upset her - the drug dealing, the violence, the stealing - she saw now as a man determined to survive at any cost. Just like she was determined now.
She decided to throw Peter a bone. Aaron wouldn't have liked it, but she'd noticed early on that a session with Peter went until he had some new piece of information about Aaron.
"Aaron only saved me because he thought I might have Outcome chems at home. He was desperate or he would have realized I couldn't get them through lab security. He'd been to the red lab about a dozen times. He knew how tight it was."
For once Peter didn't comment, just waited like a psychiatrist was supposed to. She looked down at her hands. She imagined Aaron hugging her and telling her that it was alright. That she needed to take care of herself and their baby first. "I didn't know the Outcome agents were being killed too until he told me. I don't know how he knew. He told me about a drone trying to kill him and Participant Three in Alaska, but the others … I don't know." That was the new piece of information. She looked back up at Peter. "That's all you're going to get out of me. I'm not very touchy-feely today." She stood up and headed for the door.
It was the first time she'd left on her own, without waiting for Peter's dismissal, but he didn't move to stop her. "Until next time, Marta," he murmured, busily tapping on his tablet computer.
Out in the corridor by herself she leaned against the wall for a moment, emptied. Waiting for her guard to show up, if she was honest with herself.
A flock of children ran screaming and laughing past her, on their way to the animal pens from the looks of it. She'd seen them before. They always charmed a smile out of her. One of the younger girls, a little Caucasian blonde and blue eyed doll, stopped and gaped at Marta. Grabbing a boy by the arm, she said something in Cantonese. Marta had picked up quite a bit of Mandarin in the past few weeks, but Cantonese with its myriad tonals and inflections still escaped her. It flowed out of this child's mouth like a song.
The kids came up to Marta and bowed. The little blonde said in perfect American English, "Please, ma'am, are you Marta Shearing?" With the "ma'am" she sounded almost Southern.
The little girl's large blue eyes riveted Marta. They reminded her so much of Aaron's. The same serious stare, the same calm alertness. She could imagine her baby growing up with those eyes. "Yes, I am." She stuck out a hand and said like she would have to an adult, "You have the advantage of me, Miss …?"
The little girl seemed confused until the boy, a slender Chinese a few years older, said, "She wants to know your name, Kathy." His American English was also perfect.
Kathy put her hand in Marta's, shook it and bowed again. "I'm Kathy X-2," she said.
"Kathy Eggs-Du?" Marta asked, confused.
"No, X-2, letter X, number 2." She drew herself up. "I'm the second model of the Kathy series. Kathy X-1 died at three months. I'm five years old and I'm expected to live until I'm twelve." She smiled. "I'm going to do better than that. I'm going to live until I'm fifteen, at least." She was big for a five year old. Very big.
While Marta was trying to recover from this matter of fact explanation, the boy said, "I'm just Alan. No model. Teacher says I'm five too." You could hear the capital letters he put on the name "Teacher."
Some of the children down the hall were calling and gesturing for the kids to hurry up and join them. "Betsy has a new litter of puppies!" a tall brown skinned boy called. Betsy, a black lab breeding bitch that spent most of its time in a kennel, was part of Peter's animal behavior studies. Marta was glad at least one Candent prisoner had plenty of love and companionship.
Kathy and Alan bowed their apologies and took off. Despite their Western names, they had all the mannerisms and attitudes of the traditional Chinese.
"Something you should look into," she imagined Aaron telling her. "A mystery." Model 2 of the Kathy series. That sounded like a breeding experiment … or cloning. She had a particular interest in cloning. She stared after the kids, now visible through the windows at the animal pens.
As if it wasn't enough to work on Candent's Outcome program revision, track her baby's health, fend off Peter Boyd's endless meetings and try to decide whether to escape or divulge her pregnancy, a decision she had to make in the next week or two before she started showing.
"I will," she murmured. "We will." Not until the children had been chased away by Peter's lab staff and were completely out of sight did it occur to her to wonder how Kathy X-2 had known her name.
A few yards down the hall one of the black clad campus guards stood patiently ready to follow her back to the lab or wherever else she decided to go. Time to get moving.