Accelerated (18 page)

“Yeah, why is that?”

“Kay and I were a team.”

“You two worked together against Polarity Magnetics?” I asked.

“That puts the wrong spin on the matter. Kay wished to awaken Dave, to free him from his ghostly existence. For a time, Cheng dabbled with the idea. Then she became frightened.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You must ask Doctor Cheng for the specifics. Kay and I helped each other quid pro quo. She desired extended knowledge, hoping for a breakthrough. I…” Harris smiled. “Professional interest precludes me from telling you what I desired from her. It is enough to say that I sufficiently helped her that she finally decided to pay off her debts with the cube.”

“What does it do?” I asked.

Harris smiled insincerely. “I dearly wish I knew. I will know in time. I have a small laboratory, not here, mind you. It is in another country. Gavin,” he said, moving nearer on his side of the bar and putting a hand on top of my mine.

I wretched my hand free, whirled around and brought out my Browning. I expected a biker to be at the door, holding a machine gun or one of the light flashers. But no one stood there.

“You have a right to be suspicious,” Harris said. “If it was anyone else but you, I’d have already signaled my men. Please, put away the gun. There is no need for it. I am here to exchange information with you.”

Before I’d boarded the yacht, he had been getting ready to leave. What was Harris up to? I holstered the Browning, and shifted so I could keep my eye on the door.

“Excellent,” Harris said. “Before we begin, I feel you should know that Doctor Cheng has overreached herself and taken Polarity Magnetics into esoteric areas. Since you’ve put away the gun in good faith, I will now tell you that the cube was their great achievement. Kay knew what it did, but she kept that knowledge to herself. She considered it her guarantee. She did leave notes, however. I have the first page. There is enough that I realize I desperately need the rest of her notes. The Chief has learned of them and he desires the notes, too, as does Doctor Cheng, naturally, although for different reasons. In this instance, you’re an afterthought with everyone.”

Truth was a lion that roared. Harris sounded like a hissing snake.

“Kay wanted to be like us,” Harris said. “She yearned to rise above the common muck of humanity. But there can never be another acceleration, at least not according to the formulas I’ve studied. Cheng has attempted this new route.”

“The nanoparticles?” I asked.

“Eh?” Harris asked.

“You said they injected nanoparticles into test subjects.”

“Ah, yes, right, right,” said Harris. “Your term ‘nanoparticles’ threw me for a moment.”

“It was your term, one you told me last night.”

He laughed immoderately. “I’ve had a lot on my mind since we had to cut our conversation so abruptly. Yes, you’re quite right, nanoparticles.”

“When you were leaving Neil’s last night,” I said, “why didn’t you warn me the Chief was coming?”

After a half-second hesitation, Harris nodded. “It was a bad case of nerves, I’m afraid. That little reptile has always repelled me. But there will be a day of reckoning between us. Oh, indeed there shall be.”

Harris came around the bar and sat on a stool beside me. “You were fond of Kay. I know that. We all knew, even your friend Dave. It was charming in a way. Now Stone or someone at Polarity Magnetics has slain her. I’d like to help you catch these culprits. Frankly, I owe you for springing that dreadful cabinet bomb. It’s true I planned searching Kay’s apartment. I had done it once already. But I had reason to suspect I’d missed something.”

I was sure he was speaking about the tiny chip in my pants pocket. “What reason?” I asked.

Harris chuckled. “Please don’t seek to strip me of all my secrets.”

“I don’t think I’ve learned any of them.”

“That’s completely inaccurate. I’ve told you about Kay’s secret notes. I’ve told you how we can call each other through speaking a person’s name in earnest and in shadow.”

“Then this latest factoid shouldn’t stretch you,” I said.

Harris became thoughtful. “Yes, very well. It was a note I discovered. More accurately, it was Kay’s diary.”

“I’d like to read it.”

“Oh…well, I’m afraid I’ve already burned it.”

“Wise,” I said. Harris was giving me bagfuls of manure and he’d just tried to poison me. The red drink had obviously been an antidote to the oily brown liquid he’d downed in order to calm my suspicions. What it did was confirm my belief that Harris was getting desperate. Maybe that’s why he’d let Eric attack me.

“Truly,” Harris asked, “why do you need the cube?”

“It’s obviously valuable.”

“Oh, quite, but it isn’t your style to deal in such devices. You like to dirty your hands in the field, as a soldier, a guard or a detective.”

“Dirty?”

“Forgive me my theoretical bias. I’m foremost a scientist. I’ve spent my life in the classroom, as either a student or a professor. Later, I entered the arena of pure research. Switzerland…it was my dream come true. The particle accelerator was the avant-garde, the new frontier. We broke old theories and were on the verge of entering—” Harris shook his head as he gave me a deprecating grin. “You’re not interested in that.”

“On the contrary,” I said, for the first time hearing unadulterated truth in his voice. I heard his passion. I heard a bit of the inner man.

He made a wry face. “The accident stole everything from me so I became the particle.”

“Excuse me?”

“At the Reservation,” Harris said, “I was the test subject. Shop technicians poked and prodded me. I ran on treadmills and swam a thousand laps. They injected me with a hundred drugs. I loathed the experience.”

“Same,” I said. It sounded, however, as if his time there had been much easier than mine had.

“And yet,” he said, “I had become something I’d always longed for. I became strong, the closest thing to invincible humans could achieve. I waited and I played cricket with them. Finally, Shop policy changed. I was free to reenter the seething mass of humanity. I’m sure my warning was the same you were given.”

I nodded.

“I won’t bore you with more biographical details,” Harris said. “Let us say I refused to let fate or the Shop dictate my place in society. I was and am a scientist. I thirst for the avant-garde, if you will, the cutting edge. Doctor Cheng refused me entry into Polarity Magnetics. I pleaded, but she was adamant. I happened to run into Kay, however. We had drinks that evening, and that’s when I learned of her dissatisfaction. It would perhaps be tasteless of me to say that Kay found me irresistible.”

I must have looked surprised.

“It was my acceleration,” Harris said, trying for English understatement, but clearly boasting to me about taking what he thought of as Dave’s girl. “My acceleration had made me what she longed to be. She drank too much that night and said too many things about what they did at Polarity Magnetics. I became curious. More than curious. At first, it was a desire for revenge. Then the work there began to engage my scientific curiosity. I longed to see this cube, and I worked out with Kay the way to steal it. Oh, it was a complicated piece of thuggery. And we used some of my grubby creatures from the underworld. They proved their worth as a distraction. Kay lifted the cube and then through a piece of luck, slipped it past Security’s grasp.”

“What happened to your thugs?” I asked.

“They died.”

“Killed by Mike Stone?”

Harris frowned as he stared out a porthole. “I killed them. I did it with my bare hands. I hadn’t planned it, but they drew guns and made these ugly threats. I didn’t have a choice really.”

“Why did Kay die?”

“Eh?” Harris turned toward me.

“Why did Mike Stone kill Kay?”

“…yes. That’s an interesting question.” Harris gave me another of his insincere smiles. “She planned another theft—”

“She was thrown into traffic on Center Street,” I said. “How would Mike Stone have been able to—?”

Harris laughed. “Do you think she died there? No. Security killed her at Polarity Magnetics, then brought her to the middle of Long Beach. Threw her body into traffic to make it look like an accident.”

“Why?” I asked, knowing he was lying. Lois Cage the paramedic had talked to Kay on the ride to the hospital.

“You would have to ask the killers,” Harris said, “as I have no idea.”

I shook my head.

“Did I say something wrong?” Harris asked, sounding annoyed.

“You’ve finally learned to mix enough truth into your lies to sound convincing. But your story is a crock of steaming shit.”

Something dark swirled in Harris’s eyes, and the smile departed. “I do not appreciate the likes of you calling me a liar.”

“So start telling the truth then. That would be better than trying to poison me. Or did you think I failed to notice?”

For a moment, Harris was still. Then, with a furious shout, he grabbed the nearest shot glass and threw it at me. I dodged, and it shattered against a wall. He cursed and swung at me. Harris didn’t know how to swing like a boxer or a martial artist. It was clumsy, using arm-strength alone. I caught his wrist, and was astonished at his strength. He nearly threw me down. With another shout, he yanked his wrist free.

“You’re gutter-scum, and you have dared lay hands upon me!” Harris shouted. “For that, I demand satisfaction.” He snatched his umbrella off the bar. He twisted the handle. There was a click, and he drew his sword.

I pulled out my Browning.

Harris moved, and unlike a moment ago, this time he was graceful. He slashed, and the tip of the sword went through the Browning’s steel as if it was made of cheese. Part of the gun clunked onto the carpet, leaving me holding the other, useless half. A second later, Harris had the sword-tip at my throat.

“Fisticuffs are for louts,” Harris said, grinning triumphantly. “Fencing is a gentleman’s art, one I’ve practiced since my days at Oxford.”

Many years ago, I’d had a friend in high school, a big, clumsy fellow. He’d had big feet and had always been tripping over them. His parents had bought him a trampoline when he’d been in junior high. My friend had jumped every day for years. So when he’d climbed onto the trampoline and begun to do flips and spins, he’d moved gracefully. It had made me laugh with delight, my clumsy friend turning into a swan. Harris’s swordplay just now was like that, honed no doubt from years of dedicated practice. It was uncanny, and it meant he was an inch of thrust away from piercing my throat.

“The blade is made of a special alloy,” Harris boasted, “one of my own devising. We accelerated are denser, our bodies more difficult to cut. Normal clippers cannot cut my fingernails, for instance. Thus, I am forced to trim them with wire cutters. This blade, however, will slice through you with ease.”

With part of my Browning lying on the carpet, I believed him. “Let’s start over,” I suggested. “You want the cube and I want information.”

He stared at me, and I saw the swirl in his eyes again. It made me realize he’d been outside before without wearing any sunglasses. Was that one of his abilities? As his lips quivered, maybe as a laugh bubbled, he put a little more pressure against my throat so his special sword began to dig into my flesh.

“There was a horrific accident at Polarity Magnetics,” he said. “It coincided with a cyber-attack. Critical files were deleted from the systems and the backups destroyed. Kay had the only copy left and she had the only prototype. I speak of the cube, of course. Taking it was a clever idea. And it should have guaranteed her safety.” Harris exhaled through his nose. “I think she became overconfident. Can you conceive of how dearly Doctor Cheng desires her cube back?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Yes, it must be obvious even to a guttersnipe like you.” His twitching lips broke into a smile. “You are beholden to me. Do you realize that? If I place a call and explain to Doctor Cheng the facts…you will become the priority.”

“Who killed Kay?”

“I hold the advantage,” Harris said. “I will ask the questions. Now, I know the cube lies in the ocean. You know its precise location—the coordinates, if you will.”

The coordinates…? Something clicked in my mind. Harris must have spoken to Blake. He must have forced the answers from my friend. I backed away then, and Harris followed, with mockery in his eyes. With each step backward, I concentrated harder, and I masked the room’s single bulb. It left the sunlight from the porthole and that coming through the door to provide the room’s illumination. There was a short corridor there, however, and thus less light than otherwise. It meant shadows in the room. I backed into the deepest shadow, and I took a longer step back then, much longer than Harris could.

He blinked, and he scowled. “How did you do that?”

I stood several feet away from him, several feet away from the sword. I could move faster and farther in darkness and in deep shadows—it was one of my few tricks, my accelerated abilities. I also pointed the drug dealer’s gun at Harris, the one I’d had in my jacket pocket.

“Surprise,” I said.

He was on the balls of his feet, obviously longing to lunge at me, to use his sword.