Crimson City Part 24

Chapter Twenty-nine.

Dain sat in what he had once jokingly called, "the dentist's chair." He wasn't laughing anymore. Anytime you found yourself in one of the interrogation rooms on the wrong side of the questioning, you definitely weren't laughing.

The dentist's chair had several uses, from the harmless and mundane to the downright horrifying. Once he'd sneaked into the room on a slow night, and he and Cyd had used the Virtual Reality screen to project a minichip movie onto the wall. After he'd seen a double agent die while strapped down there, he'd saved his movie viewing for bona fide theaters.

JB questioned him for hours, pleading with him to say the right things that would give him an excuse to unlock the ankle restraints that kept Dain tied down. But Dain wouldn't say the right things. He wouldn't talk to anyone but Kipp.

"... are you sure, Dain?" JB was saying. Kippen-ham had finally come. JB looked at Dain again and shook his head. "He won't talk about the Dumonts."

Kippenham c.o.c.ked his head and looked down at Dain. "Why don't you leave us alone, JB."

JB nodded and left the room. Dain noticed that he didn't make eye contact-another bad sign. He took a deep breath and released it slowly, trying to calm himself as he watched Kippenham pull up a chair and flip it around to seat himself with his forearms crossed over the top of its back. "Okay. Let's try something else," Kipp said.

"Like what? Like telling me what the h.e.l.l is going on here? I don't know what you've got JB thinking, but the kid is going down a path I've never even been on."

"Shut up and listen carefully," Kippenham said, all traces of warmth exorcised from his face. Dain wondered if his boss was working hard to avoid showing emotion, or if treating him as if they'd never had a friendship, as if they'd never showed each other tears, was easy.

"Over the years, you've told me time and again that your memories are fuzzy. Why do you think that is?" Kipp asked.

"I was in an accident. It screwed me up." Dain turned his hands over to reveal the scars on his forearms.

Kippenham didn't even look down. "And how do you think you got burned?"

Dain was starting to feel panicked, and he wasn't sure why. "It was a chemical-based weapon. The substance spattered me in the explosion."

"That's pretty vague, don't you think? What else do you know about your 'accident?'"

"Nothing. I suffered memory loss." Dain swal-lowed hard but never dropped his gaze. "Why don't you just say what you want to say?"

Kippenham ignored him. If he hadn't looked so d.a.m.ned cold, Dain would have thought his boss was enjoying toying with him. "Ever looked up the account in your files?" Kipp asked.

"Of course." Dain tried to shift his body in the chair, but the restraints stopped him. "It's in there."

"Not very detailed, I suspect. Probably not as detailed as you would like. Your entire file is like that."

"I work on rough stuff," Dain said. "They keep our files trim for a reason-look, could I please have some water?"

Kipp studied his face, then got up and left the room, closing the door behind him. He returned in a moment with a bottled water from the break room, but kept the bottle in one hand. Dain knew that if he reached out, he'd not be able to reach across the table. It was all he could do not to lick his dry lips as condensation slid down the plastic container. Kipp was trying to humiliate him in order to break him. And in that moment, Dain knew for certain that Kipp meant for him to die.

Tapping softly on the side of the water bottle, Kippenham released a sigh. "Now, where were we? 'They keep the files trim for a reason.' Yeah, they certainly do." He unscrewed the bottle top, took a swig and swallowed. He leaned across the table, his mouth still wet from the water. In a voice so gentle it sent fear into Dain's soul, Kippenham asked, "Now, where do you think the mechs come from?"

Dain sat in silence, letting the shock of Kippen-ham's question sink in. He wanted a drink of water so badly he was almost willing to beg for it. Finally, he forced himself to answer. "The mechs are genetically engineered humans designed to accommodate a variety of mechanical enhancements. They-"

"Says the brochure," Kipp interrupted. "Says the brochure. The nicely packaged PR answer aside, let's be frank. Some of the mechs are criminals. We erase their memories, implant the mechanicals, and voila. A useless member of society is reengineered for the benefit of society."

Dain laughed, but the sound was tinny in his ears. "This is your way of saying that I'm a criminal who was-let me get this straight-converted to a mech and then reconverted to a human?"

"I'm not suggesting it. It is a fact."

Dain wanted out of the chair. Badly. He lunged up out of the seat, fighting against the restraints until he couldn't stand the pain and flung himself back. "Give me some water, Kipp!"

The man stared at him blankly.

"Give me some f.u.c.king water!"

And his boss did. Just like that, Kipp slid the bottle across the table. Dain put it to his lips and chugged it down.

"Look at your arms, Dain, and think about that mech we sent to Dumont Towers."

"No." Dain shook his head. He wouldn't believe it.

"Yes. Those burn scars cover the incisions we had to make to remove your mechanicals. You were a mech. You were a beta mech. The conversion didn't go as well as we'd hoped, so we decided to use you in another way. But it all turned out a happy accident. Until recently, you've been an excellent operative."

Dain crushed the plastic bottle in his hands as Kippenham watched with an amused expression. "A happy accident? That's how you see me?"

Without warning, Kipp's face clouded over. "We gave you a good life and a good job. You made good friends. Think about just how bad you had to be for us to justify taking you into the program."

Dain set his jaw. It was all he could do not to backhand Kipp out of his chair and start whaling on him with both fists. "I don't know what kind of bulls.h.i.t psychology you've got going here, but I am not a criminal. I am not a murderer."

"Not anymore. Because of us, you are an entirely productive member of the human race. Your original instincts, the evil with which you conducted yourself in the first part of your life... that's all gone." Kippenham waved his hand to indicate Dain's body. "And the mechanical implants have been removed. So you see, you've come out ahead. Way ahead."

Dain reared back. "If what you say is true, you lied to me. Everything you've ever said, everything I've ever done for or with this department, it's all a lie."

"Not precisely. We gave you a new reality. And don't insult either of us with any 'at least when I was a murderer, I was still me,' bulls.h.i.t." Kippenham studied the careful buff job on the nails of his left hand. "Your life was a nightmare. You were rotten at your very core. It's something we've worked very hard to help you overcome. Without us, you'd be nothing. Worse than nothing. There's a darkness in you, Dain-ever stopped to think about where it came from?"

Every single day of my life.

Soaked with sweat, now, and clenching the arms of his chair so hard he was disfiguring the hard plas-tic, Dain shivered with fear. "Show me something with my wife. Show me something with me and Serena," he said almost desperately.

Kipp didn't answer, which was almost answer enough, but Dain had to know. He had to be sure. "Where's my wife?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely.

"I think you've already guessed."

"I haven't guessed anything," Dain ground out between clenched teeth, watching Kippenham's fingers curl around the arms of his own chair, watching those well-tended fingernails dig into the armrest.

"You never had a wife," Kippenham growled.

Dain shook his head. "Serena was my wife."

Kippenham lunged across the table, grabbing him by the collar, clutching the shirt so tightly it began to cut off Dain's airflow. "Serena was my wife!" Kippenham bellowed. "You miserable son of a b.i.t.c.h. She was my wife!"

Dain struggled for oxygen, gagging as Kippenham tightened his grip. The look in the man's eyes was otherworldly; Dain had never seen such anger there. Or perhaps he'd just never noticed it, but all the pieces started to fit: Kippenham crying with Dain at his apartment, so willing to relive those stories, those anecdotes about Serena over and over, all to help Dain remember. But the hero in those stories wasn't Dain; it was Kipp. He'd been remembering his own wife in those moments. He'd been seeking solace for the death of his own wife. He was crying over his own wife. And he was craving revenge for her.

Why Dain could never cry enough, smile enough, remember loving enough-this was his answer. How ironic, that he should find peace of mind while in the grip of death.

Two seconds from blacking out, Dain felt Kippen-ham let go, and he struggled to gulp air in giant wheezing inhales. The boss understood. It was as if he'd been waiting for years to set the record straight. As much as Dain had wanted to understand, Kip-penham had probably wanted to tell him. To tell Dain what Dain really was. What he'd made him. What was owed.

Kippenham leaned over the chair with his hands on the armrests, trapping Dain and forcing him to listen. Unburdening himself, the words just flowed. "I gave you the privilege of her. That you ever saw Serena in your mind's eye was a privilege. You were nothing. You were sc.u.m. You were a mercenary, a killer looking at a death sentence. I won't even begin to tell you what you've done. And I took everything that could have haunted you all these years and erased it. I gave you peace. I gave you the memories of a most precious, innocent life. I saved you, Dain Reston. I saved you from h.e.l.l. And you should be thanking me. You should be thanking me." Overcome with emotion, he tore himself away and moved to the window.

Dain struggled to wrap his mind around the information. Maybe Kippenham was telling the truth-that they'd taken him, erased his sins, and created a machine. Then they'd wiped his actions and mind clean once more, and two times removed they'd acquired a better man. Except for one thing. They hadn't been able to recalibrate his impulses and, somewhere in the depths of his mind, his subconscious held on to elements of his past life. The darkness Kipp spoke of could never be erased. That was why he was so drawn to Fleur.

But then it hit him. "The vampires never did anything to me, then. They never did anything to anyone I ever loved," Dain said numbly. "That was yours, too."

"The fangs killed Serena, all right. She went to the corner market to get me aspirin." Kippenham laughed hollowly. "She never came back. They killed her, Reston. The vampires killed someone so beautiful, so innocent, for no reason at all. You've lived with her in your mind for years. You know what she was. Can you deny that to murder her was a work of pure evil? Can you deny that whatever took her life lacked humanity?"

"No," Dain said. "I don't deny it."

Kippenham seemed surprised by the answer, but Dain meant it. Every word. A rogue. Serena must have been killed by a rogue. There was no one in Fleur's sphere who would kill an innocent. Vampires weren't evil by nature, they simply had the same balance of good and evil as a human-except with more power came more responsibility. The a.s.sembly had been designed to protect vampires from themselves, as well as from other species. This he now knew without a doubt.

Looking at Kippenham, Dain thought of Fleur and the love he felt for her. What would a man do for a love like that? What kind of love was it that you would keep your memories alive in the mind of another, just to fuel revenge against an entire species? What kind of love was so strong it made you think all of what had just happened was right, that such an end justified the means.

"What happens now?" Dain asked.

"Knowing what you know, can you deny that the vampires must be stopped at all costs? That to allow them to continue to multiply will mean an end of the humanity still in Crimson City? Yours is a debt of honor, Dain. See all of this for what it really is and do not let yourself be manipulated by Fleur Dumont."

And so it had come back to Fleur. "What exactly do you expect from me?" he rasped out.

"You don't want to follow the darkness. You know that. You don't want to become what you once were."

"No," Dain agreed weakly. What else was there to do?

"We've got a major initiative running tonight, and I would love to have you there. We're putting on a show of power, starting to shut down vampire airs.p.a.ce. The question is, can I trust you? If I were to place you at the scene, whose side would you take? We're expecting some real action, and I wonder, if we sent you out there, who would you fight for, Dain? Your own kind? Or the kind responsible for soiling this city? The kind who gave you up when you went to her for help. The kind who's been using you all along. Is the answer something I want to find out?

"There are so many questions," Kipp continued. "Would it be better for both of us if I erased you again? Recrafted you into a better machine? What do you think of the idea of not remembering that you fell in love with a vampire?"

Dain flinched. "I'm not in love with a vampire," he said coldly. "And I'd prefer not to have my brain screwed with again, if it's all the same to you."

"Oh, it's not all the same to me," Kipp said. "And it's not all the same to you. You have nowhere to go. No one left who still believes in you. You've burned every bridge you had, you made us doubt your loyalty and commitment. Your old teams don't trust you. Your vampire girlfriend abandoned you. You don't have a lot of options. And just remember, Res-ton, wherever you go and whatever you do, we'll be right behind you. So, do the right thing. Prove you're worthy of being kept as you are."

"With everything you've just said, how am I supposed to prove myself?" Dain asked bitterly.

Kippenham looked him right in the eye, a killer stare. "Deleting Fleur Dumont would be an ideal start." He leaned over and punched a security code into Dain's restraints. They fell away and Dain stood up, nearly falling over as his sore muscles bunched up.

Chapter Thirty.

Fleur stood with her cousins on the tip of a gargoyle looking out on the city below. The four of them stared in silence at the spotlights beaming out from the Hollywood Hills. The benign white rays normally a.s.sociated with celebrity central were now a violet-pink-the violet-pink of UV. The human military was flexing its muscles; soldiers swarmed below, around the base of each of the lights, the drone of their copters in the distance almost melding into the rest of the city sounds. They hadn't attacked, but they were there.

Fleur understood now that this was all staged to make her people pull back. But where could they pull back to? And what had spurred this? Everything they'd done had been in response to the a.s.sa.s.sinations, which had come from the humans in the first place. It had all led to one escalation after the next. Weary in body and mind, Fleur fought her longing to talk to Dain. To try to understand his kind.

"Throughout history we can pinpoint specific moments where, if people had just stood up and said 'We won't accept this,' much evil could have been avoided," Marius said beside her.

Fleur gazed down at the city below, where the cars looked like mere matchboxes and the people like specks of dust blown through the streets. Everything always looked so harmless from way up high. "Dain said his bosses had plans. This would be just the tip of the iceberg, really. You're right. We cannot sit here and do nothing." She gestured to the night sky, to the violet streaks moving from side to side and the beams crossing over one another in a mechanized rhythm. "They intend to reduce our viable airs.p.a.ce. It's started. At their whim, we will not be able to fly."

"An attack disguised as a defensive act," Warrick said, nodding his head. "What's your call, Fleur? What do we do?"

"I won't wait any longer," she said firmly. "We must act. But we must act carefully. We can't give the humans any reason to hate us more than they already do. We will attack and destroy those UV lights-but no killing. We must prove the humans wrong, and that we only want to live in peace." She triggered her comm pack and put in a call back to Dumont Towers. Within moments, the safe perimeter beyond the UV lights would be swarming with her Warriors. She looked at Marius for several seconds of calm. He smiled in rea.s.surance, and Ian placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

And so it went. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of vampires filled the sky, landing at the base of lights to engage in battle with the guards.

Sirens and light alarms that hadn't been used in years went wild, ramping up with a wail and adding red strobes to the colors slashing the sky. Warrick and Ian turned away from Fleur with a last goodbye glance and leaped away to join the action.

The human fleet of helicopters was quickly overrun. Vampires clung from the skids, acrobatically flipping themselves up into the vehicles to engage the fresh-faced pilots who'd still been swapping bag lunches during the last war. There was no contest. Fleur could see that. One of the copters plunged from the sky toward the streets below, recovering course at the last minute. She winced as it tore through a beam of UV. Then another copter flew through on purpose.

"We have to get those lights." Fleur moved to fly, but Marius held her back.

"We can't afford to lose you. Let your Warriors do the work."

"I'm just going down to the base," she said, shaking off his hand. "It will be fine. Go do what you're here to do."

"I thought I was," Marius said quietly. But he stepped back and let her go.

She smiled at him. "I'll see you at the next a.s.sembly," she said. And then Fleur stepped off the building into the air.

She landed on the metal casing of one of the tall UV spotlights as it lazily moved left and right. Several human soldiers noticed her immediately, and she watched as they marshaled a team, pointing at her and beginning to rappel up the support structure toward her. Above, a pair of helicopters changed course and moved into position. She recognized the vampire standing on the skids of one, and held her breath-he leaped away just before the copter flew into the light.

The heat from the generators went straight up through the soles of her boots, making her sweat. Almost mesmerized by the nearby UV light, she knew that if she lost her balance, she'd fry. Simple as that.

She concentrated on the pattern of crisscrossing strobes. If she tried to fly, it would be a matter of timing. Rather like trying to step over the red streaks of a laser alarm-except if she botched the timing, it didn't mean an alarm; it meant her death.

The lights bucked and weaved, undulated in a rhythmic motion. Fleur dug into the tool kit at her waist and started in on removing the casing to get to the bulbs. They hadn't yet mounted all of the security devices they should have if the humans really meant to keep her people away. Of course, there was always the possibility that these lights had only been meant to lure her people into a battle in the first place.

But the whys and wherefores weren't relevant at the moment; she'd made her decision. Fleur focused on the task at hand, her fingers shaking and sweating in the uncomfortable heat. If she removed too many of the protective panels or did this too quickly, it could very well send a wide, uncontrolled sweep of light over everyone in the sky. The humans wouldn't mind, but it would be a veritable death sentence for her Warriors.

A moving beam of light swept by so close she felt her shoulder singe and her skin pull. Even such an indirect exposure was painful and she jolted back from it, losing her focus and concentration. She slipped and tumbled between two light casings, but the swooping rays parted just in time. Fleur caught herself in midair and hovered, quickly evaluating her next move. With the UV rays swooping to and fro above her, and helicopters on all other sides, she was running out of time, but she wasn't going down without a fight.

She dodged away just as the helicopters closed in, but her left leg was kicked by a propeller. A huge gash in her thigh started bleeding. The wound began to heal, of course, but any loss of blood put her at a huge disadvantage. Of course, the smell of it also made her adrenaline ramp up.

As if they'd rehea.r.s.ed this maneuver a million times, each helicopter lowered a pair of soldiers, each attached to a cable clipped to the pack on his back. One man to defend against any other vampires, one to concentrate on the target--her. Each combatant also carried high-grade grenade launchers, possibly with those UV cartridges that used to be so rare.

From behind the soldier who was coming for her, a grinning brunette cutout from a hanging advert toasted Fleur with a champagne c.o.c.ktail. A stiff breeze had cleared out the lower layer of smog and the neon lights of Los Angeles twinkled all around. It was a gorgeous night.

The soldier raised his weapon. Behind her, Fleur felt the wind pick up as other copters moved in even closer. Her best chance was to use them against each other. But she didn't have the angle, the leverage, or the strength to last with the wound she'd incurred. She contemplated surrender, knowing that they'd prefer to capture her alive.

But meek surrender just wasn't in her vocabulary anymore. She hadn't completed her mission. She was the Durmont heir.