The Hallowed Cure, page 19
“Riven’s one lucky shiite.”
“Thank you,” I offered.
Mia elbowed me lightly. “You look smashing, by the way.”
“He’d look better with some dirt on him,” Caley said.
Caitlyn glanced past me toward the kitchen. “Ready?”
“Coming!” Lincoln said from behind me. “This is the last of it, I promise!”
I glanced over my shoulder to find Lincoln carefully balancing two big plates of steaming meat slices that smelled absolutely mouthwatering, like salt and pepper and smoke ... but in a good way.
The meaty strips had just a touch of red in the center and a small
layer of char on the outsides, which I knew from experience made it extra delicious. It glistened with spices.
Lincoln set down two platters of meat strips and walked around the table. “This is my new fajita recipe. It’s technically Latamerica, though I put my own spin on it. There’s also plenty of guacamole, sour cream, some grilled peppers I bought from this lovely little store down in Rocham, and some sweet corn to round things off. That’s in the brown bowl. I added a squeeze of lemon to the marinade as well, which hopefully turned out better than it did last time.”
“Holy shit,” I said appreciatively. “Can we just start eating now?”
Naturally, I tossed everything available into my tortillas without being picky, though I did glance at Mia’s to make sure I wasn’t going overboard on anything. I doubted Lincoln would have put it out if it wasn’t good, but I knew portions were important. I didn’t want to drown my meat.
Once I had one wrapped up, I lifted the fajita to my mouth and took a big bite. The meat was juicy and a bit smoky, just like I’d expected, but everything else made it even better. I couldn’t even identify half of what I was tasting. I just knew it was really fucking good.
“How is it?” Lincoln asked. The fact that he actually sounded worried was ridiculous.
I barely preventing myself from taking another bite so I could actually talk without my mouth full. “Dude, it’s fucking awesome.”
Lincoln grinned with relief. “Oh good. I was worried.”
“Don’t know why you would be,” I muttered, and took another big bite.
As dinner continued, I had a strong internal debate between stuffing myself so full I couldn’t move and not eating so much I’d be too full for sex later. I really wanted to have sex with my gorgeous fiancée, but I also wanted to eat fajitas. My life was so hard these days. I really did have problems.
Eventually, I settled on trusting my hearty metabolism and enjoyed every last bite. It helped that everyone else did too. Once we’d eaten everything, there was no possibility for me to overeat.
Like Doctor Sharpe had said once long ago, after my first examination, I’d grown up hungry.
The food was spicy enough that I drank a good bit of water too, but the water in Cloud Nine was the best in the city. It was clear and cool and almost entirely without an aftertaste, which was different from the rancid water I choked down every day on the streets.
After the last of the meat was devoured—a group effort—I wiped my mouth with a napkin and leaned back in the chair. I was fully sated, and I appreciated that Mia had eaten quite a bit too. We could probably both use a couple of hours to digest before we hopped into bed together.
“That was delicious,” Caitlyn told Lincoln, speaking for all of us.
“Thank you for cooking.”
Lincoln, big goof that he was, visibly blushed at Caitlyn’s praise.
“It was my pleasure! You have a really nice kitchen, and I don’t always get to work with such nice ingredients.”
Caley thumped the table so hard, the silverware bounced. “Don’t be so bloody modest. If Cam didn’t have you wrapped up, I’d marry you myself. I may be shit at cooking, but I fuck like a dream.”
Lincoln turned so red I couldn’t help but snicker. Silence fell until Mia cleared her throat. Caitlyn actually looked a bit scandalized, which was impressive. I’d have to high five Caley later, in private.
“Anyway,” I said, ignoring Caley’s now absolutely demonic grin.
“Dinner was great, but I know you didn’t call us here just so Caley could propose. What’s the problem you need us to solve?”
“There’s nothing wrong with being proud of your talents,” Caley insisted.
Caitlyn sighed in her seat. “I suppose it is that time. I wish we’d been able to do this under better circumstances, but I really am in a bind right now. I hate to ask more of all of you after you’ve all risked so much already, but there’s no one else I can trust to get this done.”
Caley waved dismissively. “No need to shine us on. Who are we killing?”
“With luck, no one,” Caitlyn said. “Yet I’ve exhausted all options for resolving this through diplomacy, so I fear conflict is now
inevitable. You see, I recently received a message from Hahna Sato.”
I sat up straight. “How’s she doing?”
“Fine, I hope.” Caitlyn didn’t look like she thought Hahna was fine.
“Are you telling me you’re actually worried about her?”
If Captain Sato had come up against something that could actually worry Caitlyn, that worried me. Had Hahna gone and murdered the president of some mainland country? I knew she could handle a whole bunch of problems, but even she might have problems tackling a whole mainland army on her own.
Caitlyn looked around at all of us she spoke. “First, I need to share some intelligence I’ve kept to myself for the last six months.
Please understand I didn’t keep this from you because I don’t trust you. There was simply no action to be taken until now, and I didn’t want you worrying about problems we had no way to fix. That’s my job and my burden.”
“It shouldn’t be,” Mia said firmly. “But please, just get on with it.
You’re making me nervous.”
“Right. After I officially took over as Cloud Nine’s CEO, it started my new job by breaking the encryption Jack and Lindsay had left on their private files. I needed to track down all the off-the-books operations they’d had going. Once I regained full access to the system, I learned my mother’s body was no longer at Cloud Nine.
Not missing, but transferred.”
My brain did a few loops as I mentally worked through the ramifications of what Caitlyn had just said, based on what she’d shared with me previously.
Eve Alexander, Caitlyn’s mother, had been one of the founders of Cloud Nine Engineering. She was the primary scientist researching panacea after Caitlyn discovered it in a northern crater. After Eve developed an incurable cancer, Jack Griffyn used his connections to discredit Eve, force her out of leadership, and take Cloud Nine for himself.
Also, eventually, Eve Alexander died from cancer.
Yet before that, according to Caitlyn, Eve also developed the same strange powers Caitlyn had, the ability to communicate with panacea cells using “organic wireless” ... which basically allowed them to tell those panacea cells what to do. That ability hadn’t kept Eve from dying, but it had allowed her to make some big strides in panacea research, which Doctor Sharpe, Ethan Gambleswitch, and even Caitlyn herself all used as the basis for their own research into the alien goop that gave me superpowers.
“I didn’t know your mother’s body was even here,” I said cautiously.
“She donated her body for medical and panacea research,”
Caitlyn said calmly, like that was a perfectly normal thing to say.
“Given how unique her particular mutation was, she considered being buried or cremated a scientific tragedy.”
I’d never considered donating my body for medical research. I’d never thought it’d do anyone any good. But I supposed, in this case, it made sense.
“Mom left full authorization for Cloud Nine to use her body for whatever experiments they deemed necessary after her death, but after I went to prison and lost my access to Cloud Nine, I lost track of her. Dad did his best to keep tabs on her, of course, but he had the war to manage, and the entire time he was trying to keep Dios from going under, he was also busy working to hold off Jack.”
Caitlyn’s father—or stepfather, technically—was Miguel Perez, the former CEO of Cloud Nine Engineering. Center Screen. He’d been an ally of both Eve Alexander and Caitlyn Alexander before Eve died. Caitlyn went to prison for trying to warn Dios that panacea would mutate people, and Jack Griffyn forced Miguel out by trading Caitlyn’s freedom for a promotion to CEO.
Jack Griffyn, I’d learned eight months ago, had actually been Caitlyn’s biological father, while Miguel was the father of Caitlyn’s younger sister, Reese. Caitlyn being Jack’s daughter was why he’d had her imprisoned for trying to warn Dios about panacea instead of simply having her killed, and also, as she’d told me, Jack had been proud to have a daughter who’d developed the same rare mutation
as her mother, Eve. All of which was further evidence Jack had been a colossal bag of dicks.
“So your mother’s body was in Cloud Nine’s lab,” I said. “And some time after you went to prison, Jack had her transferred off the island?”
“At the request of Doctor Sharpe,” Caitlyn agreed. “Who, you’ll remember, Jack sent away from Dios, along with a number of our top scientists, to pursue a top-secret panacea research project.
Unearthing the details of that project was one of the most grueling undertakings I’ve had since I got access to Cloud Nine’s system and archives. Yet my mother’s body wasn’t the only body transferred.”
Mia suddenly gripped my hand under the table. “They sent other Hallowed?” she asked. “People who died in the war?”
“They sent Jack Griffyn,” Caitlyn said. “Lindsay sent him right after his death.”
I squeezed Mia’s hand back. “What would they want with Jack’s body?”
“I don’t know,” Caitlyn said. “I do know, however, that Jack had massively advanced panacea poisoning at the time he died. Had Hahna not tossed him off the building, he’d have died in another year unless someone discovered a cure.”
“So they wanted his body for medical research too?”
“Possibly, but I also believe his condition is why Jack sent Doctor Sharpe and the other top scientists away. He tasked them with finding a cure for panacea poisoning.”
“Selfish to the end,” I agreed. “Yet even after he tasked all the resources here to curing himself, Hahna chucked him off a building before anyone found a cure.”
As I thought about the night Hahna sent Jack skydiving with a parachute, I also unwittingly remembered my decision to unleash a Class Zero Mute on Dios. Skye Taylor. That decision nearly got everyone I loved killed and set into motion the events that led to my job today. Keeping the peace between intelligent, friendly Mutes and a bunch of angry humans who wanted them all dead.
“So why scrape that asshole off the sidewalk?” I asked, almost of myself. “Is there research value in a corpse riddled with panacea
poisoning?”
Mia squeezed my hand hard enough I almost winced. I hadn’t considered donating my body for research until now, but doing so immediately made sense to me. It wasn’t like I’d need my body after I died, and Mia wouldn’t fight me on it. She’d never let sentimentality get in the way of helping others.
“Unfortunately,” Caitlyn said, “I can’t speculate yet as to why Lindsay ordered Jack’s body sent to Doctor Sharpe. Yet I did, with Hahna’s help, finally find out where the bodies are.”
“So Hahna’s working with you now?” I asked.
The last time I’d seen Hahna Sato, she’d been standing on Mia’s balcony waiting for me to return her sword. She’d told me she was going out to see the world at large, to find challenges and, most likely, people to kill on the mainland. Yet now ... I suspected Hahna lied to me.
“Did you send Hahna abroad?” I asked. “Was the whole reason she left Dios because you sent her on a mission to find out what Doctor Sharpe was doing on the mainland?”
Instead of answering, Caitlyn simply smiled.
“Hahna would never give up protecting Dios unless she had a more important objective,” I continued in the sudden silence at the table. “Her goal in leaving ... both of your goals ... was to stop Doctor Sharpe from repeating Jack’s experiments on the mainland. And now she’s discovered where Sharpe ended up, and the operation is big enough even Hahna can’t bust it up alone. Which is why you called us all here. We’re Hahna’s reinforcements.”
Lincoln stared at me with wide eyes. “When did you get psychic?”
Caitlyn’s smile only grew. “It’s good to see you’re as sharp as ever, Detective Riven.”
Caley scoffed and kicked my boot under the table. “Lucky guess.”
“So where is she?” I asked. “Doctor Sharpe, and your mother’s body, and Jack’s?”
“Singapore,” Caitlyn said. “Or rather, in the Republic of Singapore, on one of its many surviving islands.” Caitlyn looked to the ceiling. “Nine, dim the lights and bring up an AR projection of the Republic of Singapore.”
The lights in the penthouse suite immediately dropped low, and a glowing yellow map displayed in the space directly above the table. It showed a big, irregular-shaped island surrounded by a bunch of little ones spread across a sea. There was also a big land mass above the island, but since that mass wasn’t glowing yellow like the islands, I knew it wasn’t part of Singapore itself. Or ... the Republic.
While the islands all faced directly toward me, presenting a view similar to a map, I also knew this projection was also facing toward everyone else. All of us saw our own version of it through the AR
devices embedded in our eyes.
Oddly enough, seeing another nation on an island made me feel a bit better about going there. Dios was an island as well, and I’d never once left it. First time for everything.
Caley whistled loudly. “That’s a big island. How’d Hahna find a wee base in all that?”
“Cloud Nine’s original headquarters were located in Singapore, the capital city.” Caitlyn had explained all this to me eight months ago, but I suspected the others didn’t know. “We moved operations to Dios after signing a deal with the Dios City Council to allow us to research panacea without our research being seized by any of the mainland governments. I thought it unlikely Doctor Sharpe would set up base in our old laboratories, but it was where I sent Hahna to investigate first.”
“So why are we still looking there?” I asked.
“All our old laboratories and headquarters were, indeed, abandoned,” Caitlyn said. “Yet even before we moved to Dios, Jack Griffyn was involved in additional operations neither my mother nor my father knew about. These are the operations and resources Doctor Sharpe restarted when she returned to the Republic. In retrospect, it’s tragic we started so close and then moved away.”
A bright dot lit up on one of the smaller islands off the mainland.
That, I knew, was where Doctor Sharpe and her techs had set up their new operation. Where the bodies of Eve Alexander and Jack Griffyn had been sent. Where Hahna Sato was likely slicing people in half right now.
I shook my head. “So Hahna started almost on top of the whole operation, then spent all her time investigating other leads. That must have pissed her off.”
“I got an earful,” Caitlyn agreed.
“So what led her back to Singapore? The Republic, I mean?” I was a bit confused that both the capital and the nation were named Singapore, but I’d dealt with more confusing stuff. Like how Caitlyn could make panacea do things with her mind using “organic wireless.”
“I finally traced resupply and research shipments out to the islands,” Caitlyn continued calmly. “The shipments were well hidden, handled entirely outside of Cloud Nine’s systems by an independent contractor. That’s why I missed them for so long. I might not have found them at all it not for Ethan.”
“He find it looking for porn?” Caley asked.
I frowned at Caley. What would porn have to do with anything?
“He found it, quite by accident, while attempting to set up his own off-the-books scientific supply route. He claims he was doing me a favor by not telling me, but I’m certain he simply didn’t want me vetoing his research again. In this case, he was attempting to recruit Mutagens.”
“You need to keep that kid on a short leash,” Mia said darkly.
“Oh, trust me, I am,” Caitlyn agreed. “I suspended his license to do research for a full week, so I believe he learned his lesson about attempting to go behind my back.”
Caley chortled loudly. “You grounded him! That’s hilarious.”
I grimaced as I considered Ethan’s plan. “Mutagen” was slang for a bunch of weird-ass folks in Dios who were now absolutely determined to get themselves turned into Mutes, and would pay almost anything for now illegal panacea products. Now that Mutes were friendly and no longer trying to eat everyone, way too many people in Dios were excited by the idea of being super strong, having a third arm, and gaining the ability to regenerate.
I’d thought all the people who wanted to fuck a Mute after the war were weird enough, but it was even weirder to know a bunch of folks in Dios now wanted to become one. Many Mutagens even
speculated Mutes might be immortal, since their cells could regenerate at such an impressive rate, though there was no scientific evidence of that. The Mutes still living in Dios had only been around a few years, so for all we knew, they could all die in six years like me.
I’d never admit it aloud, but I was a bit annoyed the idea of becoming a Mute was now even more popular than becoming Hallowed. I supposed it was because going full Mute was easy, while becoming Hallowed was rare. Also, Mutes were far better at regenerating than we were.
“Regardless,” Caitlyn continued, “Ethan’s investigation into black market supply routes serving Cloud Nine led him to discover that a black market supply route was already serving Cloud Nine. That is how I traced the shipments heading from here to that small island six months after Hahna and I concluded Singapore, the capital, was a dead end. The small island you see highlighted is where Doctor Sharpe is now, or rather ... where Hahna last reported her.”
