New Orleans
Dr. Sahara Shaw was met by two burly men in black who ushered her to the waiting van, after glancing at her UNIT pass. Sahara was somewhat relieved they didn't comment on the dried bits of cabbage that she hadn't managed to scrape off the badge. Once inside, the van sped off into the thickening dusky night, deep into the city.
They wouldn't answer her questions.
They
handed her a clipboard with a name on it. Below the name was a
description and a biog, and a little tracking machine that bleeped as
she moved it.
Then Sahara watched the alleys, whores, and lights
flash by the tinted windows. The streets were hot and smelled of
sweat, and much worse. She found him on a corner, a joyboy decked out
for a night as the town.
She double checked her notebook and repeated her question in Spanish.
He looked too old to be in his early twenties. His black hair was thick and long, his thin body was wrapped in a tight fitting denim jacket and torn jeans.
As she had traveled the streets, the others had thrown insults and garbage, others had called to her mockingly. But he remained silent, merely staring ahead.
"Antonio?"
Silence.
"Excuse me, you are Antonio Contonte, aren't you? This says you speak English, I know you can understand me." Sahara waited a moment more, and with a sigh, waved to the lugs who were waiting in the van.
They grabbed him and bustled him into the back.
Sahara sat with him as they drove, asking him again and again, but he remained silent.
She saw a bistro flash by out of the corner of her eye and shouted for them to stop. Minutes later, she and Antonio were seated at a table, the thugs sulking outside in the van.
She ordered two soups and two glasses of wine. While they waited, she studied his face, and inched hers closer to him. "This is not good-cop bad-cop. I'm not like that." She chewed thoughtfully on a tortilla chip. "Think of it more as Confused-Scientist-Who-Is-Trying-To-Work-Out-What-The-Hell-Is-Going-On."
"Fuck off."
Sahara swallowed. "Suit yourself. However," she added as she leaned back in her chair, "they're going to slice you up to see why you're so special."
"Good-Scientist, Bad-Scientist?" he asked. "Been there, done that."
Sahara raised her eyebrows, just a little.
He unzipped his shirt and revealed the scar tissue and burn marks.
"Christ," muttered Sahara softly. "Who did that?"
"You did."
"I," said Sahara defensively, "am a toxicologist, who dabbles in gardening and calls out bingo numbers every Friday night at the Mary Mead Retirement home."
"The collective you," he thrust his finger at the badge on her lapel. "Omogene. They do this, to us."
Sahara uncrossed her arms. She leant forward again, closer. His breath smelt of latex and semen.
"Tell me."
They smashed their way in.
The front of the van was lodged against the concrete of the far wall, the surviving headlight glaring off the lime green paint, while the remains of the radiator hissed violently.
Sahara took out the first guard through the passenger window, leveling the air pistol on the sill, framing the man's surprised face in the sights. The man, Tonio read his badge, spun backwards, clutching his neck as the dart splurted into the flesh. He let out a silent, gasping scream as his fingers clawed at the concrete floor.
Sahara's father had taken her to the range when she was just twelve. Her arm had jerked back with the first round, the heel of the gun had carved out a chunk of her forehead.
She still had the scar.
Her round impacted off the far wall and ricocheted into the rafters, missing the paper target by twenty feet.
She ejected the casing of the spent round as she leapt out of the door and rolled by the first body, loading the next dart with a sharp jerk of her other hand. UNIT troops filled the hallways beside her, but she kept to the front, leading the way down the halls of the company she had worked in, undercover until a few days ago.
Every time she broke up with a boyfriend, she would go back to the range to take out her anger.
She felled the next guard before he could even shout.
Sahara was thirty-two now; she had been through a lot of boyfriends.
"They come at night," as he began, Sahara watched the slow trickle of broth drip down his stubbly chin, wandering left and right, before suddenly darting for his lap.
"They come in vans, like yours. They find us asleep, take us, tie us to stretchers. Noone sleeps in the parks anymore. It took a while for anyone to notice, don't have family, friends, just what they got with'em. No one gives a shit about trash like us. But we noticed. Got Xavier the week before me. I woke up in a van. I just wanted to go back to sleep, but I couldn't- they wouldn't let me..."
A sergeant shouldered in the door. Not dramatic or quick: they had to kick at the restraining bolt several times before it splintered free of the wood. They headed down the corridor at a run. Blue doors flashed past on either side, the window panels in each door were dark black panes.
Sahara took out the receptionist before the poor woman could even stand up from behind her desk. When she hit the floor, her head bounced with a wet melon thud.
Sahara felt a little bad about that.
Sahara had watched all the B movies and always felt pity for the poor guards who always bought it first. Nameless faces that died left and right, extras that could never shoot straight. Then she had thought about the twenty-six years she had spent in school, working for her degree that the guards, who probably made twelve dollars an hour more than her, could barely even pronounce and yet still probably made thirty grand more than her a year.
She felt a little better as she blasted the next tranquilizer dart into the guard by the outer office.
Just a little.
The trail of broth had hardened and dried, a broken trail within a forest of stubble.
"We were locked up in a room, side by side, one by one. Could hear each other, couldn't see. Left us like that for a while. They left the lights on and pumped us full a something so we couldn't sleep." He took a drag from his glass.
"Then they brought in this guy, made him stand in the center of the room. Then they all left. Was weird-usually they just take us lows for organs, eyes, whatever. Not this time. The guy, they shot him, the guy standing there. They left the room and shot him."
"Then this gas came out of the entry wound. Filled the room and everyone started screaming. It hurt to breathe." Antonio chewed at the lip of a Styrofoam cup, his teeth rubbing against the material with rubbery squeaks. "After a while, the screaming stopped."
Sahara searched through the desk and fumbled through the drawers, papers. Manila folders spilled out in fractal patterns on the floor around the desk.
She saw something glint nestled among the rubber bands. She grabbed the key and slotted it into the mail bolt of the big double doors. She twisted the key, heard the tumblers slide.
She looked at Antonio and the troops who stood by her side, guns held ready.
"When they saw I was still alive, they seemed surprised. Everyone else was dead. Good for them. Bad for me." A red rivulet of Merlot paralleled the path of the desiccated yellow broth down his chin.
"They poked and jabbed, took..." he paused, flushing red slightly, "took samples. Took out bits." He rubbed the area between his jaw and his throat, and Sahara could see the scars where his lymph nodes had been surgically removed.
Sahara closed her mouth and rolled her dry tongue around to regain some moisture. The entire time she'd worked at Omogene, she hadn't seen anything, not like this. Months and she'd never even gotten close. "And?" she prompted, barely containing the revulsion and anger that flooded through her.
He paused. "And I fell asleep," he looked back down at the table cloth, setting down his empty glass. "And I woke up back on the street."
Sahara snapped out of her daze. "Right. Come on."
"Where?" He looked up at her as she rose to leave. "What's daddy's little girl gonna do?" He sneered.
"Daddy's little girl," she said slowly, "is going to get her little German-made semi-automatic weapon and friendly neighborhood paramilitary taskforce and is going to find out what the hell is going on. Coming?"
They stormed into the office and Sahara drew a tiny red bead on the squirming forehead of her ex-boss.
"All right. I'm asking nicely," said Sahara quietly. "Just this once."