Rise and Run Read online

  I wasn’t even sure if it was a legitimate fear. Who would come looking? Not the CIA. Not the DoD. Those agencies no longer existed. But there was still a fear, almost inherent, that someone would come. And I didn’t want to take that chance, not really.

  I paced, trying to burn off the unease. Yes, I trusted Rian. But Kaitlyn? What did I really know about her anymore? What if her loyalty was to GDI?

  The unease was turning to anger. I stopped pacing. It was only making things worse.

  “Shaina, would you mind giving us the room?” Rian said.

  She patted my arm as she walked past me to the door.

  “How are you, Felix?”

  Rian held his hand out for me to take a seat again. Suddenly exhausted, I obliged. I ran my hands over my face, images from recent dreams, old memories, flashing behind my eyelids. Give me a job, any job, but not this.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “You’re not,” Rian said, leaning against the desk again.

  “I don’t really know how to answer that question,” I said.

  “How about truthfully, then?” he suggested, talking to me as a father now, not as an employer. There was always a change in his voice when he did that. The father was softer, more open. The businessman was cold. It was a switch Rian could throw with ease.

  “Worried about being found out,” I admitted. “And this assignment is … bringing up memories. I really thought that after all this time, logic wouldn’t be drowned out by those same emotional responses I had after it happened.”

  And that was it, wasn’t it? Suspended in a moment over which I had no control. A moment of which I could only see the before and after. Maybe it was the emptiness between the two that made it all the heavier. Being around Kaitlyn made me feel the way I had when I’d woken up next to her dead father. And so here I was again, drowning in guilt.

  Rian put a hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s okay to feel sometimes, boyo.”

  “I don’t want to feel this.”

  6

  27 October 2042, Belfast, United Irish Republic

  Damp pillow, comforter in a pile on the floor, sheets in a mangled mess at the foot of the bed.

  But the nightmare wasn’t what woke me. I’d gotten used to sleeping through whatever terrors my hippocampus was giving my neocortex in order to assimilate new memories in horribly vivid Munchian dreams brought on by this particular assignment. That, and the old memories.

  It was the pinging of my mobile that had woken me at two in the morning. Unknown number.

  “Yes?” I said, sitting up, letting my feet find the floor.

  “Felix?”

  Her voice around my name—my real name—was unsettling.

  “Kaitlyn.”

  “Can you meet me?”

  “Now? Are you all right?”

  “Fine. Working overnight in the lab. I ran your blood work. I think we should talk.”

  She sounded fine too. Calm, alert, not much fazed by my results. But she’d called.

  “Can you meet?” she asked again, impatience leaking into her voice.

  I reached over to the nightstand and grabbed my silver case, pulled out a hand-rolled, lit up.

  “You realize I’m nearly two hours away,” I said.

  A pause. The sound of typing. “That’s fine. I should be out of here by then. I have a few more things to take care of.”

  The mobile beeped as she disconnected. I sat for a moment, unmoving. Not turning me in then. But could I give her the answers she wanted?

  I got up, walked across the cold floor to the bathroom, tossed the dead feg in the toilet. Dressed in a pair of dark jeans, dual-gun shoulder holster over a gray shirt, black leather jacket over the holster.

  I pulled the gun safe out from under the bed. Two Ruger SR9s, old and well used, but properly maintained and reliable. I tucked them into the holster.

  Out the door and to the roller at the end of the drive, the one that Shaina had brought us back in the previous evening. The drive to Dublin was long, quiet. Rian didn’t call, but I had no doubt that he’d heard me leave.

  *****

  27 October 2042, Dublin, United Irish Republic

  At just after four in the morning, I parked the roller a block from the GDI building. I walked by the building, slowing enough for Kaitlyn to join me.

  Her hair was loose now, the wind pulling the tight red curls in different directions. No lab coat over the smart outfit from yesterday. Her shoulders hung forward a little, her posture wrecked by long hours hunched over lab equipment.

  So maybe she had covered for me.

  “You know, I wasn’t sure you’d recognize me after seventeen years,” I said.

  “Eighteen.”

  I counted back in my head. It had been eighteen.

  “I was wondering if you could explain why your blood sample shows a chemical cocktail I don’t recognize,” she said. “One that doesn’t even make sense.”

  She sounded tired but not worried.

  We passed an alley that smelled like death. Could have been some rats. Could have been a person. Such is life in the city. Bits of old newspaper and rotting War propaganda—no one having bothered to pick up the trash after a certain point—danced around our feet with the wind, blowing the smell across our path in nauseating waves of green.

  “Mix-up in the lab?” I suggested.

  She let out a huff of breath that could have been a laugh but could just as likely have been a dry heave.

  “I don’t make mistakes, Felix.”

  “With an attitude like that, it’s rather easy to see how you could though.”

  She pulled me to a stop with a hand around my elbow. Wiped a strand of hair from her face. Waited. We’d stopped in front of a gray brick storefront, boarded-up windows like hooded eyes.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  She waited.

  “I’m a chimera.”

  And waited.

  “It’s a fecking long story, Kait. I’m really not sure what you’re looking for here.”

  “An answer,” she said. “The truth.”

  “I told you.”

  “Chimera. I don’t even … Explain.”

  “Jesus, all right. I have two types of DNA. I—”

  “I know what a chimera is, Felix. That doesn’t explain the blood work.”

  “Not out here,” I said, suddenly feeling nervous about prying eyes and ears. “I’ve already said more than I should.”

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  “Yeah, well. Rian might be able to explain it better.”

  “Why are you trying to get into GDI? And under someone else’s name?” Kaitlyn asked, switching tactics.

  “Because I need in. Not as Felix, not as anyone associated with Rian.” I followed her as she started walking again. “Someone high up has taken an interest in you. A very dangerous interest. I need to find out why.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Someone wants you dead.”

  “Nonsense. Why would anyone want me dead? I’m no one.”

  The statement caught me off guard.

  “We don’t know why yet,” I said. “Rian got a tip about a threat to the research division at the Dublin base. Think, Kait. What do you know? What have you found out recently that could be damaging for the agency? For any one person inside the agency?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I … I don’t know.”

  But she was thinking. There was doubt.

  “What have you been researching lately? Or maybe not even lately. Has anyone been asking you questions out of the ordinary? Have any agents you don’t normally talk to been sniffing about?”

  She stopped, turned back the way we’d come, took two steps away from me. She stood like that, with her back to me, for a few moments. When she finally turned to me again, she shook her head.

  “There were … There were two men who came in from GDI’s headquarters a few weeks back, asking about an assignment I receive
d a year or so ago: Kazic. They had asked if I’d reopened it. I told them no, but …”

  She pursed her lips and shook her head again.

  “You had.”

  She didn’t answer right away, instead searching for something she couldn’t seem to find.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “How long until your next shift?”

  “About three hours. I go in at seven.”

  “When will we know if I’ve been accepted into the agency?”

  “I don’t know. Several weeks? That’s not really my area, but I’m sure it would help if Rian could pull some strings. We’ve lost several agents recently and they’re scrambling to fill the positions. There’s a waitlist, but you’re more than qualified and I’m well aware of Rian’s connections.” She gave me an odd look as she said the last.

  “I’ll make the call to Rian, bed down here for the night. No point leaving, now we know they’re messing with your memories.”

  “Are they?” she asked.

  “You can’t remember whether you’ve recently reopened a project or not. That seems like a red flag. So here I’ll stay and here I’ll wait.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a bit inconvenient for me to try to help you from Belfast, so,” I said.

  “No.” She closed her eyes, her small hands balled into fists. When she breathed out she relaxed her hands, opened her eyes. “Why are you helping me?”

  “You’re Rian’s family.”

  “An estranged niece.”

  I killed your father. Best not to say that part. Not really why I was helping … I don’t think.

  “I’m not the one to be asking, Kait,” I said. “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

  “Why?”

  “Jesus, but you’re a broken record,” I muttered. “Because my flat is right under yours.”

  *****

  27 October 2042, Dublin, United Irish Republic

  I walked into O’Cairn’s after leaving Kait off. It was just before five. The place was empty except for Sully, who sat in one of the booths, feg in one hand, a glass of amber liquid in the other.

  “All right, Sully?” I said.

  He looked up, a little startled, like maybe he’d forgotten that he’d never closed up for the night. He stubbed out the feg and took his position behind the bar.

  “I need to start getting used to visits at ungodly hours?” he asked, sounding more tired than angry.

  “I hope not,” I said. “But I’ve got some time right now, so.”

  He nodded, poured two fingers of whiskey into a new glass. Then into his.

  “On the house,” he said, pushing mine across the bar.

  I caught it, made no move to drink.

  “Sun’s not up yet,” he said. “Means it’s still night.”

  And why not? I sipped a little. “Is this bourbon?” I asked, a bit surprised.

  “Only got a couple’a bottles left,” he said, dipping his head in a nod.

  I took another sip, retrieved the silver case from my pocket, lit up a hand-rolled.

  “All right, Sully. Tell me about it, then.”

  He looked at me for a while, then up to the ceiling—his go-to deity for answers.

  “I got bad sick this one time when I was real young. Went to the hospital. I don’t remember a lot about it, y’know? Mostly only what I was told after the fact. Anyway, before I was better, I was taken away, moved to a different hospital … one away from my folks, from my home, from the whole fuckin’ state.”

  He paused, scratched his chin scruff.

  “I found out some time later that my father had sent me away, staged my death, the whole nine. He was … He thought maybe someone would use me to get to him, hurt me to hurt him. I went back though, when I was—fuck, I don’t know, fourteen? So there I was in Southie with a new name and no one knew me from Jack, y’know? I never saw my mother again, but I reconnected with my father, kinda in secretlike. He was getting into pretty deep shit.”

  Sully gave me one of his hard looks. Like I should know something, like what he was saying should ring some bells.

  “He had to bail,” he continued once it was obvious that no bells had been rung. “So I bailed too. He stayed with me in Ireland for a few years, but had to move around, y’know? And then one day, moving around wasn’t an option anymore. I went back home, shacked up with an old lady-friend for a few months while I attended to … some business.”

  “Let me stop you there,” I said, hand raised to ward off the next bit of his exposition. “I’ve learned more about you in the past half hour than the past—what, eight, nine years? But I’m not really seeing the big picture, so. How does this help me help you?”

  “You want to let me finish?” Rhetorical question, that. “My father made a lot of enemies. That was the whole point of sending me away as a kid. When I went back home that last time, some people found out who I really was. Word spread. Let’s just say it was made known to me—loud and clear and not a little painfully—that I wasn’t welcome anymore. The sins of the father and all.

  “So when Jean’s mother called to tell me she was pregnant, I couldn’t do nothing. I’d get pictures and stuff, letters, report cards, whatever. Even talked to Jeanie on the phone a few times.”

  Sully stopped to collect himself. He didn’t tear up, didn’t have any sort of hitch in his voice, but the look that crossed his face was new to me. He cleared his throat, shook his head.

  “Then the War hit. The letters stopped. The last piece of mail I got was Jean’s mother’s obituary. Didn’t list any survivors, so I figured Jean passed too.”

  He threw back the rest of his bourbon.

  “You have anything to go on? Leads, contacts, locations?”

  “I told you, kid, I haven’t been back in a long time. I got some ideas, but whether they lead anywhere …” Sully shrugged. “Once we’re there I should be able to find a starting point.”

  “If that’s the best you’ve got, we’ll work with it,” I said. “Just have to figure out when I can squeeze you in.”

  “Your current job comes first, I get it. Hell, I’m afraid to wait too long though. If I can do anything to speed things along for you, you just let me know.”

  “I might do,” I said.

  *****

  27 October 2042, Dublin, United Irish Republic

  I set my jacket down on the arm of the couch, then sat. The flat was pretty bare—the couch, a bed in each room, two stools nestled under the bar separating the kitchen from the main room. I couldn’t tell if the sour smell was mold, the air leaking in around the window unit, or remnants of my offerings to the bog.

  Sad thing was, this was one of the nicer buildings still left in the area.

  Nothing to do now except check in with Rian. He picked up on the second ring. I decided to start with the most important topic.

  “Kazic,” I said by way of greeting. “What do you know about it?”

  The quiet spread out long enough that I wondered if the call had dropped.

  “Not much,” he said, finally, a tension in his voice I wasn’t fully familiar with. “It’s highly classified. Started a year ago and laid to rest almost immediately.”

  I told Rian what Kaitlyn had said, about the suits coming to visit, what sounded like a memory wipe, her fixing my blood work.

  Telling her I’m a chimera.

  “Did you have to tell her?”

  “You weren’t looking at her,” I said. Those goddamn inquisitive eyes like a doe wondering about a sound in the forest. He said nothing to this, so I continued. “Can you make some calls, then? Get me in sooner?”

  “I have done,” he said.

  I pulled at a stray thread winding up out of the couch. A few of the threads around it unraveled. “She asked why we’re helping.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “What could I? Because she’s your niece.”

  “If it’s feeling guilty you are, then stop it, boyo, or something is bound to com
e to light.”

  I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t have told her about her father. Couldn’t have. The guilt … shouldn’t have been mine. Should’ve have been Conor’s. Not that I thought the bastard could feel anything like guilt.

  Maybe he knew I was thinking about him, because I could feel him stirring, feel the change, the pain starting to rattle me. A burning in my blood. I could hear his voice starting to seep through.

  I needed my medication.

  “Get settled, Felix. I’ll send Shaina and Seth down with supplies. You should be in GDI by the end of the week.”

  “One more thing.” I told him about my meeting with Sully.

  “We can work with that,” he said, and left it at that.

  7

  27 October 2042, Dublin, United Irish Republic

  Just before 6:30. The world’s longest morning, this. If I couldn’t get into GDI yet, then Kaitlyn was going to have to step up. We knew someone high up in GDI wanted her dead, but not why. Nor when. Why hadn’t it happened already?

  I waited outside Kaitlyn’s flat. Heard the chain slide off the door, the deadbolt unlock. She sighed when she saw me. Her hair was pulled back again, a little more disheveled today. Purple sweater over black slacks.

  The purple made her skin look paler.

  “Now what?” she said.

  I grabbed her elbow, turned her to face me. I let go of her as soon as I was satisfied that I had her full attention.

  “Until I get into GDI, I’m going to need you to be my eyes in there. You need to dig up all the information you can on this Kazic project. Without being detected.”

  “And what’s your game plan for that? I’m in a lab almost all day. The only reason they even let me interview you yesterday is because we’re short-staffed.”

  “I’m not asking you to rebuild the Taj Mahal, Kait. That information has to be there somewhere. And if it isn’t, someone will know where it is.”

  “Should I just go around asking?”

  “Don’t be snide,” I said. “Just find it. And try to stick close to someone. Is there anyone there you trust?”