Uptown Art Gallery

4.40 p.m.

The moment his name had been cleared in regards to Annie's murder, Rita had begun spreading the word that the artist Joshua and the Transgenic from that day in the sewers were one and the same. The violent minds of those who continued to hate Transgenics had forced her to raise security in the gallery, and it had taken all her self-control not to attack Reverend Terry Caldwell with a heavy marble carving of a scene from La Traviata when he showed up outside with crowds of protesters. In the end, however, the majority of the response was positive, with the gallery being more crowded than she had ever imagined it would be.

Two days ago, she'd received a wonderful surprise; a courier truck arriving at the delivery entrance with Joshua No. Two in tow, along with two new paintings. Neither new piece was much like his previous work, though Rita instantly adored both. What made them different was less need for interpretation – the subject matter was clear at first glance.

The first was a storm of black, pale yellow and brilliant green around a rendering of a Manticore bar code, which Rita instantly identified with the girl calling herself Max Guevara, the apparent leader of the Transgenics in Terminal City. The second showed a horde of misty, half-formed people, some of them bizarrely shaped, standing below the flag flying above Terminal City, a great barrier of fog separating them from people seen around the edges of the scene. Unlike the figures forming in the mist, these people were more solid, and themselves formed another barrier; a wall of people holding the misty shapes prisoner, keeping them from taking full physical form.

Since the return of Joshua No. 2 and now No.s 3 and 4 – the other two pieces previously brought by Joshua's 'agent' Alec, completely lacking the vibrancy of his first two, had been dismissed as a bad day for the artist and sold for a pittance – the gallery had featured at least once on almost every news channel in Seattle. Swiftly taking advantage of the spotlight, Rita had set up a donations box at the gallery's entrance, with plans for the proceeds to procure food and other essentials for Terminal City. Of course, she would have to figure out a way to get such supplies into Terminal City unnoticed.

At this moment there a line of people around the block trying to make their way inside the gallery. It had gotten to the point where Rita and a member of staff had begun ousting people who had been sticking around a long time in order to make room for others.

"Excuse me, sir?" Rita approached a well-built blonde man she guessed to be in his early forties who had been there well over an hour and tapped him on the shoulder. "We're trying to make room for other patrons, and I know this is terribly rude of me, but…"

"I'm actually meeting a friend of mine, here, though she seems to be running a little late," he responded, with the bashful smile of a man who was starting to realise he'd been stood up. Rita looked him over, noting his clothes; faded blue jeans, a black silk shirt and black leather jacket. Rita prided herself on her ability to sum people up in a single glance, and instantly pegged him as an aging urban professional trying to con himself into thinking he was much younger than he was – likely waiting on some bimbo young enough to be his daughter. "Maybe just another few minutes?" he asked sweetly.

"Of course," Rita told him, taking pity on him. "But I'm afraid if your friend hasn't arrived in ten minutes time, you'll have to wait for her outside."

"Thank you."

Lydecker scanned the gallery again as the owner walked away. He'd been here since half past three, and had taken the time to study each of Joshua's paintings. Despite having no real interest in art and certainly no real knowledge of the subject, he had to admit it was pretty fascinating work, especially for a simple-minded experiment who had spent half his life hiding in the Manticore basement. The first two, though quite beautiful, Lydecker had to admit to himself he couldn't really understand, but he liked the new ones, especially Joshua's interpretation of the Terminal City situation.

Now it was long past the time he'd specified for the meeting with Max, and there was still no sign of her. He wondered briefly what his 'sponsor' would suggest next, and decided he'd call Cale first to try and find out it Max had given any response other than 'bite me'.

He was just about to leave when he heard a phone ringing. It was coming from his jacket pocket, but it wasn't his phone. Ignoring the scathing looks from all around him, he flipped the phone open. "Lydecker."

"Coffee shop across the street," Cale ordered, and hung up.

It was on the way across the road that he realised just how nervous Max was about his resurfacing. She'd always despised him, but he hadn't thought her afraid of him since she was a child. He instantly spotted a pair of male X-4s in the line outside the gallery, and felt their gaze follow him across the street. He did a minor double-take when he saw who was sitting at one of the tables outside, and had to remind himself that Brin was dead – this must be X5-735, her twin.

Once inside, he spotted Max easily, despite the lengths she'd gone to in order to avoid notice. Her long, dark hair was twisted into pigtails, which, along with a dark green beret, and a pair of thin-framed glasses, went some way to making the overall shape of her face seem somewhat different. An over-sized sweater and long, velvet skirt, both shades of green close to that of the beret, obscured her remarkable figure, and she sat in the back corner of the coffee-shop, one hand obscuring her face further as she leaned on her elbow, pretending to focus on the book in front of her – a random collection of artworks from a variety of periods and styles.

"Any good?" he asked as he sat across from her.

"Not really my thing," Max muttered with disinterest as closed the book and pushed it aside. "I picked it up for Joshua."

"How are you feeling?"

"Bumped around some. Dislocated my shoulder, but it's fine already. Alec was hurt pretty bad," she told him, even though she figured he probably didn't really care about Alec, "but he's bouncing back now too."

"And how is the maestro?" Lydecker asked, glancing over his shoulder to make sure nobody was close enough to hear.

"Didn't realise you knew him."

"He wasn't confined to the basement when I joined the program," he informed her. "When I first arrived in Manticore he was pretty much Sandeman's favourite – him and his brother. Is Isaac in Terminal City, too?"

"He's dead."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Max looked at him in the eyes for the first time since he'd walked in, and Lydecker felt his throat go dry at the venom in her stare. "Wasn't it you who gave the order to cut Isaac's tongue out?" she hissed.

"No. Between Sandeman's running away and my tenure as commander of the facility, Manticore was in a sort of Limbo. We had an interim director – a young congressman who seemed to have the favour of many of his betters." Clearly, Lydecker had strong feelings about what this congressman must have done to have achieved such power. "He was there two months, and very nearly managed to have the place shut down. Wanted all of you taken out back and shot.

"When he ordered Isaac's tongue be cut out, he made a tape of it, and showed it to the X-3s. Your escape," he told her, "wasn't the first attempt, though it was the first successful one. When a pair of sick X-3s tried to bust out of the infirmary, he had them both executed, dropped the bodies in front of their squad members, then played the tape of Isaac having his tongue cut out, as a lesson to anyone who might consider setting so much as one toe out of line from there on."

"Sounds like a real charmer," Max muttered as a waitress approached with a pair of lattés she'd ordered for them both before Lydecker arrived. She took a sip of hers as the girl departed. It was probably the best coffee she'd tasted in years, she noted as she looked around. The place itself was probably one of the few buildings in Seattle that was testament to the times before the Pulse; spotlessly clean and well-decorated, with all the employees in their uniforms and matching aprons. It had once been part of an old chain of stores, a sort of small-time Starbucks, but now it was owned by the same type of people who owned the gallery and most of the surrounding area – the filthy-rich who had managed to stay rich despite the Pulse, and who now liked to live in constant denial that it had ever happened.

"Is he still around?" she asked idly. "I think Joshua would appreciate a chance to air his grievances face-to-face."

"You've actually seen quite a lot of him lately," Lydecker told her, "though not face-to-face. That meeting probably wouldn't have gone very well for either side." He left Max to wonder who he was talking about for a moment while took some of his own coffee. "James McKinley," he announced at last, as Max was starting to look like she might jab her fingers in his eyes if he didn't spit it out.

Max thought about everything she'd heard from McKinley over the past few months. Ever since the checkpoint shooting with the Nomlie, he'd been the loudest voice in favour of wiping out her kind. "Figures," she muttered. "No wonder he and White got along so well at all those hearings. Logan checked McKinley out, but never found anything weird."

"The gaps in his history were filled in well," Lydecker admitted. "Even better than I could have done it. During the couple of months he was in Wyoming, he's documented as having been at a United Nations summit, then a troop inspection in Iraq, along with talks with Iranian diplomats about their nuclear policy. They got minutes from meetings that never happened, photos of him in Baghdad with the Marines - all of which were taken in front of green screens by the DOD - and quotes of things he never said at a U.N. summit he didn't attend."

"Must've been a pretty expensive magic trick, arranging all of that."

"I'd imagine so. And the downside is, you'll never be able to prove he'd heard word one about Manticore before the rest of the world did. As far as I remember, the only time any Transgenics saw him was when he made that little appearance in front of the X-3s. Ask a couple of the main X-3 squadron, if any are in Terminal City. Fifteen years and fifty pounds leaves a mark on a man's appearance, and I don't think they ever heard his name, but I bet they'll remember."

Both were silent for a moment as Lydecker allowed Max to process this. It wasn't exactly a shock that a guy like McKinley had known about Manticore, but the nature of his involvement was a lot to stomach. As Max considered it, even Lydecker seemed like a saint by comparison.

"There's more," he told when the quiet started to become uncomfortable. "I take it Logan got wind of what happened to me after we last spoke?"

"Yeah. A friend of his sent copies of the photos in your car. I've been to the grave site. Found out a lot more than I care to know about Manticore's origins."

"Then you know how the guy who started it all got his start; that he was part of this cult."

"So is Ames White – Sandeman's son, by the way."

Lydecker's eyes widened a little at this. "That I didn't know," he confessed. "I knew Sandeman had kids, but I'd never met either of them back when I knew him. I guess White was still using the family name back then. But I got one for you. McKinley. He's one of them too."

"How'd you find that out?"

"That's for another time. What's important now is that the good Senator is the most public face of the Familiars we know about. I don't have the resources to have him checked out, but maybe you do. Like I said, his past is one great lie after another, but maybe if you scrape off a few layers of crap, you'll find something you can use."

Knowing there was little point trying to make him talk – even if she could get him out of here quietly and drag him some place quiet, Deck had proven once before that torture wasn't the way to go with him. She didn't press the question of how he knew so much all of a sudden. "Do you know what happened to him?" she asked instead. "Sandeman. I got some questions, and he's probably the only guy who can answer them."

"Until recently I figured him for dead. I always thought it was our employers who forced him out of Manticore and killed him, but now it looks like maybe it was his own people. This cult."

"They call themselves Familiars."

"I tried to find out more about him when I started looking into his… unusual family. What little I found suggests that he was alive as recently as six years ago."

"More recently than that," Max told him slowly. "I think Renfro was in contact with him." She ignored the expression on Lydecker's face, though she did briefly wondered if she should be telling him this at all. "She was shot the night Manticore burned. Jumped in front of a rifle to save my life. She told me I needed to find Sandeman. Something about me being 'the one'. I don't know what that means, but whatever it is, the Familiars are pretty scared. Like I'm the spanner in the works for whatever they have planned."

"Well, maybe letting Joshua loose on McKinley might be an idea worth considering if you can't turn anything up another way," Lydecker suggested. At that moment, he felt his own phone vibrate in his pocket, but ignored it.

"I'll hold that idea in reserve." She glanced at the clock on the wall. "I gotta take off. Keep the phone; I'll call if I need to get in touch. You can find me through Logan."

"There is one more thing," Lydecker told her hesitantly. "People like me aren't supposed to get second chances. But it seems I've gotten one anyway. A chance to repair some of the damage I caused, if not make up for it. I don't expect you to trust me." He nodded in 735's direction. "And clearly you don't, or you wouldn't have brought so much heavy security. But I'm here if you need anything."

"Don't expect much," she told him. "Second chances are one thing, but you've got a helluva lot of damage to repair." She glanced out at 735 and the others. "They'll stick around for ten minutes. You'll have to wait until they're gone before you leave." She picked up her book and stood up, then paused for a moment as if to say something else, but in the end lowered her eyes and turned away, leaving without another word.

Once she was gone, Lydecker reached for the phone that had been placed in his pocket in the gallery, and took it apart. He examined it thoroughly for tracers, however minute, and smiled a little to himself as 735 watched him do this through the window. Finding nothing, he pulled a small, factory-wrapped chip from inside his jacket, and attached it to the SIM card – a scrambler, in case of any signal surveillance Cale might employ to track him instead of physical tracers.

By the time he was done, Brin's twin and those across the street had left, and he noticed an X-6 female departing from another direction, too. Once he was sure there was nobody else watching, he took his other phone from his pocket, and checked the text he'd received while talking with Max.

Two words appeared onscreen. 'It's done.'