Until It's You, page 11
“What?” He moved himself up violently until he was nearly sitting upright. “I...yeah. Just tired.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “What happened? I told Anna to tell you to walk around and come back in an hour.”
Tom rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, but I was really tired. So after I’d walked around for a bit I decided to just come back and lay down here to wait for you.”
“Didn’t you realize why I asked you to not just hang around here?”
“Not really.”
"You ran away from something, totally disappeared, and yet you have no idea why I would ask you not to stick to one spot?"
"I was really tired, Kristina. Plus I have a disguise."
She stared at him for a moment, then slowly shook her head. If growing up with Kevin hadn't managed to get through to him, she wasn't about to.
“Whatever," she said, her heart still pounding. "I’m glad you’re safe. What happened?”
“I had to run, Kris. I’m sorry. There’s some weird shit going on.”
“Yeah, I know. That's why I asked you to—” She stopped herself. There was no point in dwelling on it. "Were you chased?”
Tom looked up at her with a blank expression, totally unfazed by her outburst. He'd been getting yelled at for this kind of thing his whole life.
“I don’t know," he said. "I was working late at the station and someone came in the building. He just looked off, you know. And my tablet had just gotten shut down. So I got the hell out of there.”
A cold feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. “Did you get a good look at the guy?”
“I mean, I saw the surveillance camera, but I don’t remember it that well.”
“But you could do a Recall.”
“Yeah. I guess. Or maybe we could pull the surveillance stream.”
“Maybe.” She made a mental note to compare this against the guy who Landon had seen. They would both have to do Recalls, but it was doable if they could describe anything at all. “What were you doing working late?”
He shook his head, as if shaking out the last of the sleep he had just been enjoying. “Oh, right. Jesus.”
Her breath caught in her chest. “What?”
“The pharm in your system,” he said, licking his lips. “It’s not Agent Smith.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“It looks like Agent Smith, but it isn’t.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know. Something happened with the computers at the CPD lab. Someone hacked them to make it look like Agent Smith, but you got hit with something else. Maybe from Atlas.”
Her stomach turned. This was an old wound she thought was closed up. “Holy shit,” she said automatically.
“Yeah.”
“So, its effects—”
“The hallucination is definitely the same, but the delivery method is a two-part system as opposed to the singular system for Agent Smith.”
“Which means?”
“Which means the mechanism is probably designed to elicit reactions one after another, rather than all at once. But I wasn’t able to figure out just what those reactions were.”
She nodded, thinking quickly. She’d been attributing most of what she was feeling—about Landon, about everything—to the pharm she’d been hit with, after reading the description of what it was supposed to do. But now that could be wrong. It could be something else. Something...natural.
Suddenly, the whole world—all of it. Everything was both in her perception and acting on its own, totally absent her presence. The kids playing in the grass, the squirrels running around and amongst the trees, the trees themselves, and their branches, their leaves. She could be sure how she felt about those things, at least relatively, but then the more she thought about it the more she realized that being sure of how she felt seemed so...what did that even mean?
She needed Tom to talk to Landon about what the hell was happening to her. Fighting the adrenaline that had started to rush through her, she pulled at his shoulder. “Get up,” she said automatically, still thinking. “We need to get a cab.”
“Where are we going? I really need to sleep soon, Kris. I’ve been up since yesterday.”
She nodded. “Okay. But I have someone I want you to meet first.”
***
Roy sprinted the short distance back to his car. He’d been watching Kristina and that little shit brother of hers from a distance ever since he’d seen the brother and that friend of Kristina’s walk out of the Dunn-Brantley building together.
This couldn’t be much easier. And now it looked like they were hailing a cab, and by Roy’s best guess they were going to go wherever they’d be hiding out. Once he knew that location, he could strike.
He reached his car door in seconds, swiped the key fob, opened it and started the engine. It hummed quietly to life as the car’s dashboard lit up. An electronic woman’s voice asked him if there was somewhere he wanted to navigate to.
He turned off the auto-navigate and craned his neck to see Kristina and her brother. They were just barely visible, and he couldn’t risk getting any closer or else they would be able to see him too easily. Either one of them might recognize him by this point. No idea how much they knew.
So he sat and waited, watching eagle-eyed and hoping they wouldn't get out of sight. This was his moment. If he messed this up, it was time to bolt from the city. He'd really rather not do that.
A tap came at his window. His heart jumped into his throat and his hand went immediately for his gun as he turned his head.
Cop? Was he about to get into a shootout?
It was a kid. Well, not a kid. Floppy black hair, pale white skin, high cheek bones. His guess was Russian. Early twenties at most and he looked harmless. Relatively.
He pointed down for Roy to lower his window. Roy shook his head, so the kid raised his voice.
“Come on, man,” the kid whined, his voice muffled by the glass. “If you’re going to go, go. This street is all parked up and you’re taking up a spot.” He pointed vaguely behind Roy’s car. “My friend’s right there.”
Roy seethed, and craned his neck again to get a glimpse of the Andersens. He caught the top of the brother’s ridiculous hat.
“Hey man, you some kind of creep? What are you looking at?”
Roy clenched his fist and turned to the kid again, committing the face to memory. If he ever got a chance, he’d put a beating on him. But he couldn’t make a scene here. Not now, not more than he already had.
With one final look, he put the car in gear, checked his blind spot, and sped out of the spot.
He looked out the corner of his eye at the Andersens as he passed them. Kristina seemed to watch him as the car flew by, but he hoped it wasn’t with special interest. He couldn’t be sure, but he’d have to risk it.
There was a No Parking spot intended for buses just after the intersection with Walton. He pulled in, threw his blinkers on, and looked in his rearview mirror.
It was a good place to watch them. They were actually slightly more visible from here than they had been in his previous spot. Just had to hope a bus didn’t come.
He looked in the mirror again and his heart sank. There, hovering over the smaller cars, were the digital letters of a CTA bus. It was coming up Dearborn, one stop away.
Shit. He swiveled his head around to either side to see if he could find a place to keep an eye on them on Walton. But there was nothing.
He looked back to the Andersens. They were gone.
His heart thumped. What the hell? Where?
A yellow auto cab passed him up Dearborn. The bus approached in the rearview mirror. Neither the brother’s hat nor Kristina’s gray hair were visible.
Roy popped the car into gear and drove. They had to be in that cab.
CHAPTER 11
Kristina looked over her shoulder to see if she was being followed yet again. If she was, the follower was keeping his or her distance, because she saw nothing. Still, the clenching feeling in her stomach told her something was off. She'd learned that she ignored those feelings at her own risk.
Part of it might be from what her brother had just told her. Her brother, who was using this cab ride as a chance for another quick nap. He’d always been able to sleep anywhere.
Cars glided by silently out the window as she thought over what he’d said. What did this dual-dispersal thing really mean? Was she now feeling something different than she’d been feeling earlier, with the hallucinations? Had those feelings been more real than what she had now? She didn’t even really feel like there were any pharms acting on her, outside of the light soothers the cab was running.
So what the hell was going on in her head?
She watched buildings give way to Lake Michigan as the cab turned onto Lakeshore Drive and got them going north toward the apartment Landon had gotten them situated in. The water blurred by, the deep blue water bright from the overhead sun. Soon they were back amongst the buildings, as they rumbled down Foster. Kristina looked over her shoulder again.
Still nothing. Maybe the pit in her stomach was just a reaction to everything with Tom, or even the whole situation. You never knew with those feelings.
They approached the intersection with Damen. She hit the round, green button in front of her to have the automatically-navigated cab drop them off at the nearest corner. It obliged immediately.
They would walk the rest of the way. She shook Tom awake, paid for the cab using some of the value stored on her pre-paid comm—she'd have to remember to reload it—and got the two of them out of there, watching the cars that passed them closely for anything familiar. She couldn’t be sure, but nothing and no one jumped out at her.
With her fingers latched firmly around her still-drowsy brother’s fat upper-arm, she walked the two of them up and into the neighborhood.
Five uneventful minutes later, they were at the apartment door. She messaged Landon that she was outside and waited for him to buzz her in, hoping all the while he wasn’t deep in another Recall. As they waited, she looked around at the block, with its towering trees over predictably uneven sidewalks. She wondered if these trees had been hooked up for aero dispersal, or if the city would bother with that in a neighborhood like this.
“So where are we?” Tom asked sleepily, bringing her back. “Is this your new apartment or something? Because I could really use a nap.”
“You just had a nap.” Kristina looked over at him. “But no, this apartment belongs to the guy I want you to meet.”
“Who’s that?” Tom asked.
The buzzer on the door sounded. Kristina smiled as she stepped forward and opened the door. “You’re about to find out. Come on.”
They walked up the carpeted stairs and up to the apartment door, which was unlocked. Kristina turned the handle and walked in with a curious Tom following close behind.
“Hello?” Kristina called out.
A light switch clicked in the bathroom, and Landon came out wrapped in a towel. The skin of his v-shaped torso glistened, still wet from the shower he’d just taken.
“You got back faster than I thought you would,” he said, his dark eyes mischievous under his short, dark hair.
His newly olive skin suited him, she thought, though it would take a lot to mess up a facial structure that gorgeous. Or those muscles.
“Why did you need a second shower?” she asked, unable to take her eyes from his body.
“Quick work out,” he said. He looked over her shoulder. “Helps me think. Who’s this?”
Oh no.
Kristina shook her head rapidly, shocked she had forgotten about her brother so easily. “Oh, this is why I came back. This is Tom. Tom, this is—”
“You’re Landon Tatum,” Tom said, awe struck. “She found you.”
“Well, he kind of found me,” Kristina said mildly. “But yes.”
Tom stepped forward and held his hand out for Landon to shake. Landon gripped the loose, plush white towel with his left hand and shook Tom’s hand with his right. He looked between Kristina and Tom. “I’m glad you’re safe, Tom. Your sister and I were very worried.”
“I’ve read all the papers you wrote as a student,” Tom spat out, words tumbling from his mouth like ice out of an ice maker. “Your thesis on Dual Pronged Intracellular Delivery Systems was brilliant. I couldn’t believe how elegant—”
“Tom,” Kristina interrupted, seeing one of his monologues coming. “Let him get dressed.”
He blinked and looked down at Landon’s chest, back to his sister, then up at Landon. “Sorry Mr. Tatum,” he said automatically.
Landon smiled easily. “It’s Landon. I’ll be right back.”
He walked out of the room and into the apartment’s bedroom. Kristina couldn’t help but check out bulging straps of his back muscles as they trailed down below his towel. Pharms or not, that was a hell of a body.
Tom turned to Kristina. “How did you find him? Or did he find you, or whatever?” he asked.
She took a deep breath. This wasn’t really the time she felt like getting into the specifics of the last twenty-four hours.
“It turned out he was looking for me,” she said simply. “And that’s a good thing, because whoever’s after him is also after me.”
Tom narrowed his eyes. “After you? Why?”
“Same reason someone came after you. They really want to get to Landon.”
Again, Tom gaped at her, his sleepy eyes trying to process the words she was saying. Eventually, he shook his head slowly. “What the hell?" he muttered.
She stifled a laugh. “That’s one way to put it.”
The door to the bedroom opened and Landon came out, wearing a crisp black shirt and slim, gray cotton slacks.
“Am I interrupting something?” Landon asked
Kristina looked up at his eyes and saw him staring right at her. She turned to Tom, whose beady eyes were oblivious to what was going on.
“No,” she said quickly, turning back to face Landon. She bit the inside of her lip and took a breath, steadying herself. “Tom has something that will probably make more sense to you than to me.”
“Oh?”
“It’s about that pharm they stuck Kristina with,” Tom said. His voice quavered. “It’s...not Agent Smith like I thought.”
Landon blinked and shook his head rapidly, bewildered. He took a moment to compose himself before he spoke next, and when he did so he spoke slowly and clearly. “I thought Kristina said you tested it.”
“I did" Tom said, nodding frantically. "Someone went into the CPD computer and crossed something from Atlas Pharm with Agent Smith. Doubled the record.”
She watched Landon to see what he would think of this. He was perfectly still, listening and evaluating. It did not seem he was particularly surprised by Tom's explanation.
“So you don’t know what it is,” he said.
“It’s classified," Tom answered. "I don’t know anything more than that.”
Landon nodded. He turned to Kristina. “But you were hallucinating, correct?”
She returned his gesture. “Yes.”
He turned back to Tom. “Tell me what you found.”
Tom wrung his hands. “So I was investigating the delivery system, which is supposed to be a Class IV Nanosponge deal on Agent Smith, when I saw the evidence for a dual impact discrete setup that was more in line with what you’d expect for nanotech pharms.”
Landon nodded. “Go on.”
Kristina shuffled back and forth on her feet before clearing her throat. “I’m going to do some work while you guys talk about this. Give me the less science-y version when you’re done, okay?”
Landon gave her a single nod. “Will you be working in the bedroom or the kitchen?”
She shrugged. “Bedroom, I guess. Easier to concentrate.”
“Fair enough," he said. His dark eyes trained on her, and she felt in her heart that he was trying to send her a message that she did not understand. It only lasted a second, and then it was gone. "Good luck. I want an update on what you found out whenever you get a chance. In layman’s terms, of course.”
He flashed her a smile then turned to Tom. “Do you want to take this to the couch? I’m going to need you to draw some diagrams for me and there’s pen and paper there.”
Tom nodded dumbly and followed Landon to the couch. Kristina, still trying to get a read on what the consequences of what Landon and Tom were talking about might be, gathered up her bag and walked to the bedroom.
As soon as she got into the room, she plopped down onto the bed, crisscrossed her legs under her butt, got out her tablet and got to work. She made a note to ask Landon about his knowledge of the investigation Carter had said she was conducting, especially regarding this delayed shipment. She had a hunch it would be the same pharm he’d talked about earlier. Almost had to be.
That done, she began to cross-reference the material she’d pulled up on Fordelli with fresh material she dug through regarding Brantley. It was a haphazard process, selecting data points to throw into the program that cross-referenced all the data she’d already catalogued, but it was better than waiting eons for the tablet to get through all the data out there and make sense of it. Unless they literally showed up in the same piece of content—which she’d checked—that would be useless. Google's facial recognition engine didn’t even show them having a picture taken together.
But she continued to dig through as much material as she could. If there was something, it could be such a good lead.
After an hour, she had nothing. If they had a connection, it was deep. She brought up a view of everything she had on Fordelli and sifted it for travel he’d done in the last six months. Crossed it against everything she had for Brantley.
Just the one conference in D.C. for the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America. Which had a pretty solid cover, since Landon had been with him. Technically they could have conspired there, but it was pretty weak.
She looked at the door. It was a little surprising Landon and Tom were still out there talking about this pharm. Maybe she should go out there and give Landon a change of pace. Tom could really get talking. She stood up and headed for the door.
