The Falling Away (22 page)

“Your sister? Joni?” she asked.

He felt himself involuntarily clench. He regularly talked to Joni inside his head, yes, but it was still a shock to hear anyone in the real world mention her.

Inside, Joni started to say something, but he sent her to the kill box immediately.

“That's something we'll never talk about, Elise.”

She backpedaled. “Okay, okay. Sorry, I just thought—”

“Don't worry about it,” he said, not wanting to stay on the subject any longer than he had to. Especially after snapping at her for helping him. “I just. I can't do that. I'm sorry.”

She nodded slowly. “Don't be sorry.” She smiled, tried to shift the subject. “So . . . you're good down there? You need anything?”

“Webb was kind of hoping for HBO.”

“Sorry, just basic satellite. Don't want you to get too comfy.”

“Other than that, I suppose we're okay. Just wondering when we'll get out of here.”

“When you don't feel trapped any more, it will be time to come out.”

“How very catch-22: I can come out whenever I don't want to come out.”

“Not really a catch at all. It's kind of a basic truth in human nature: we always want what's worst for us. And that blinds us to what we really need. But when we finally get what we need, we don't want what's worst for us anymore.”

“Nice. Get that off a fortune cookie?”

“If by fortune cookie you mean Li.”

“Yeah, I guess that is what I mean. Since we're on the subject, why haven't I seen the Chief Fortune Cookie on your Big Brother screens, or had a nice little visit, or anything like that? Kind of been expecting the full-court press, the whole Amway pitch to join up.”

“Maybe he's leaving that to me.”

Dylan paused. “Is he?”

“No. But I don't think you're ready. You'll take a few days to get the drugs out of your system, for one. But you're still trying to exert your will on everything. You want to know these things because they give you the illusion of control. When you realize that so much of life is out of your control, you've taken the first step.”

“Like the alcoholic admitting he has a problem.”

“Yeah. This is your intervention.” She smiled.

“Don't talk to me about interventions. Webb made me watch a marathon on A&E.”

“I love that show. It's kind of like driving past a car wreck: I don't want to look, because I'm afraid of what I'll see. But then, part of me wants to see it.”

Dylan sighed. “Biiluke.”

She parroted the word back to him slowly: “Bee-lookey?”

“Close enough. It's what the Apsáalooke people—what you would call the Crow tribe—it's what we were called before we became Apsáalooke.”

“Why?”

“Well, according to our origin stories, all the first people lived in harmony. But when they wanted to start fighting each other, the First Creator asked them to jump off a cliff into a giant pool of water to prove that they were brave enough. That meant immediate death, because the First Creator put a man with a bow and arrow at the bottom of the cliff. But one man jumped anyway.”

“What happened?”

“Got hit by an arrow, and he fell and died at the bottom of the cliff. The First Creator smiled, called him
Biiluke
, promised not too make too many of him because he was reckless.”

“What does that word mean? Bee-lookey?”

Dylan offered a grim smile. “It means ‘on our side.' That's me: I'm always on my own side.”

36

Quinn sat inside Andrew's small apartment, listening to the wind slip through the cracks around the windows; even though the windows were shut and sealed, she could see the curtains over the kitchen window ruffling softly. It was past nightfall now, and Andrew still wasn't home.

Something was definitely wrong.

She'd been here for three hours, sitting in this chair, waiting for Andrew's return. At first she'd welcomed the downtime, the chance to simply sit and pray. Being immobile, completely motionless, had a calming effect on her. Not like cutting. Not like embedding. But calming in its own small way.

Being immobile helped equalize the pressure, if only temporarily. You could see it, if you were quiet enough. Still enough. The pressure outside was painted in brighter colors, scented in floral aromas, announced by soft, gentle chimes. The air around you was more like the water surrounding those deep-sea divers she thought of often, filled with soft, amorphous shapes that floated gently. You could feel the emptiness caress your skin, if you were quiet enough.

She knew it all sounded crazy: the physical manifestations of calmness and stillness, the cutting, the embedding. What therapists might refer to as coping mechanisms, hard-wired in her psyche by her four years on the cold streets of Portland.

But after finding Paul and the Falling Away, she also understood that those were the very things that made her uniquely able to do what she'd been called to do: the madness inside her inoculated her against the madness of the world outside. Her compulsive tendencies let her be immune to the purgings she had to do on HIVE members. As she knelt over them, prayed for them, felt the sickness inside them being drawn out, the thoughts of her own compulsions helped block the illness from taking root inside her own mind.

Earlier, she'd spent a few hours on the fence line of the HIVE compound, watching the snowmobiles in the distance, seeing the helmeted figures do security checks of buildings and turbines. She'd listened on the open channel as an employee of the company that built HIVE's turbines—a company called DermaGen—was escorted to one of the turbines for a systems check. She'd captured that whole conversation on her scanner's digital recorder so she could study it later. She'd listened on secure channels—frequencies she'd often scanned while monitoring the HIVE—and recorded those transmissions for decoding as well.

After a morning in the field, she'd spent the afternoon cracking the coded transmissions, transcribing the conversations; in that data, she'd seen the beginnings of a plan. One that just might get her inside the HIVE for a quick smash and grab of Dylan.

First, though, she'd need to find out exactly where they were hiding him. So far none of the transmissions—even the encrypted ones—had mentioned Dylan or Webb.

But they would. She knew it. And once she'd pinpointed Dylan's location, she could set her plan in motion with a little bit of help.

Which was where Andrew came in.

Not that
help
and
Andrew
were two words she'd use together very often. Andrew wasn't exactly the type you'd entrust with secret information, the type you'd rely on to keep you out of tough situations.

But she didn't need a confidant; she needed a tool, and Andrew could be that.

The only problem was, Andrew was missing. She'd known it as soon as she broke into his apartment. His large Dodge Ram pickup, which he treated like some kind of trophy, was parked outside. She'd assumed he was home; Andrew was never far from his prized vehicle. When she'd found the apartment empty, she let herself think he'd hiked down to one of the local bars for a drink or two. For Andrew, drinks were the lubricant that kept his information machine oiled and running. Given a few hours at a bar, Andrew could massage secrets from just about anyone. That was part of what made him so valuable to her as an informant. And he knew it. Andrew was one of those rare people who always knew what was happening under the ground, behind the scenes.

She'd combed the bars where he liked to hang out, asked about him, found out no one had seen him since the day before. She'd called him several times, left messages on his cell phone. Something odd in itself, because Andrew rarely let phone calls go to his voice mail; talking was his drug, his juice, and he always wanted to talk to anyone who would listen.

Now it was time to face the facts. Andrew was gone. Her mind, almost on its own, began replaying the news crawler on CNN. A dead highway patrolman, and two other men. Three in all.

She searched Andrew's living room for a television remote control. After a few minutes, she gave up and went to the TV, flipped it on, cycled through the channels, then came to a stop on
Headline News
. She watched a stock market report and a fluff piece about an actor in a new television drama before the promised “top headlines” at eight after the hour.

The news anchor, a woman with impossibly perfect cocoa-colored skin and impossibly perfect white teeth, said there were new details on a breaking story in Montana.

Quinn's stomach clenched.

Photos of two men filled the screen as the anchor's voice explained that authorities had recovered the bodies of two men connected with the murder of two Canadian citizens and a Montana highway patrolman.

She recognized both photos. One was Andrew. The other was Krunk, Dylan's drug contact in Billings.

The news anchor told her that authorities speculated that the two men, identified as Andrew Falling Bird and Terrance Hayes, had ended their lives in a bizarre murder/suicide pact. A news conference was planned at—

Quinn shut off the television and moved toward the door. She needed to get back to the HIVE. Now.

37

“Hello, Dylan.”

Dylan awoke with a start at the sound of the voice, took a few seconds to orient himself. He was on the couch in the living room of the apartment, the TV muted in front of him. He realized, with a start, that he now had an IV in his arm, a semitransparent liquid working its way into his veins.

Li sat in the large chair in the corner. “You were having withdrawals,” Li said. “Probably even some hallucinations, brought on by the physical symptoms. Do you remember anything?”

Yes
, Joni said inside.
You remember it all, don't you
?

“No,” Dylan lied.

“Good. Doctors tell me you've stabilized. You're getting through the worst of it. You might have more hallucinations, but detox can be rough—”

“So you're detoxing me by pumping me full of drugs. Makes sense.”

Li held up his hands in a surrendering gesture. “To help you with the physical symptoms only.”

“So you just lock people away and give them drugs until they join your little party here? Is that the general plan?”

“Only for a very special few.”

“Wow, we're special.”

“Actually, I'm just here to see you. Webb's taking care of some other things right now.”

“Like what?”

“Like his shoulder. Looks like it's healing well, but we thought it would be best if he had it looked at by one of our doctors.”

“Who's we?”

Li smiled. “Webb and I. Who else?”

“Tell you the truth, sounds like a strong-arm tactic. Separate the prisoners, get them in rooms one-on-one.”

“I think you have the wrong idea about us.”

Dylan took a deep breath. It was hard to shake the ominous feelings he had about HIVE, even as he found himself drawn to it. Like a moth to the flame, he was fascinated by the light, but some part of him instinctively knew that getting too close would fry him.

He wanted to believe HIVE was an answer for him, a salvation of some kind. He wanted to believe they had his best interests at heart. He needed help, that much was true. He was the guy haunted by the voice of a sister, haunted by the death of a friend in Iraq, haunted by an abandoned heritage, haunted by delusions and drugs and a thousand other things. That was all true, and he wanted so much to believe that what he was seeing around him was being warped by those haunted filters; he wanted to believe he was like those people on the
Intervention
marathon, misinterpreting the people around him as foes rather than friends.

Trouble was, wanting to believe something didn't make it true. And now, more than ever, the equations weren't balancing.

Li held up the empty bag of powdered antibiotic the vet had given to Webb. Seemed like years ago now.

“We don't stock pig antibiotics, of course. Wait, I take that back: we do stock pig antibiotics, but we only give them to pigs.”

“I need some coffee. Or is that spiked too?”

Li laughed. “I'll make it. You've got the IV, although it looks like it's almost done.”

Dylan looked at the reddish-brown liquid seeping into his vein. It was almost like being at the VA hospital, waking up, looking at the various medical equipment surrounding him, asking for painkillers, returning to his slumber.

That was before they pushed him out of the bed and into physical therapy. The memories of physical therapy went into the kill box of his brain immediately.

Li was in the kitchen now, his attention focused on the coffee–maker. Dylan pulled the IV out of his arm, let the needle drop to the floor, where it began spilling the dark liquid onto the carpet.

“Don't you have a hard time selling that?” he said to Li. “Communism and socialism and whatnot? The great evils we all grew up with, you know.”

Li laughed again. “Yeah, after the collapse of the stock market, the banking system, the mortgage industry, and the auto industry, it's really difficult to get people interested in another way.”

In the kitchen, Li began frothing milk.

Dylan scratched at the IV wound on his arm, now leaking blood. He put pressure on the wound with the thumb of his left hand, waited. Right now, that was about all he could do.

A few minutes later Li approached with two foamy cups. “Hope you don't mind, it's not your basic cowboy coffee. It's one of those automatic latté machines.” He caught sight of the IV, now emptying its contents onto the clean carpet, paused only momentarily.

He smiled. “Always the rebel, eh, Dylan? No matter; the IV's already done its work.” He set a mug down in front of Dylan, retreated, and sat on the chair again.

“It's not communism, anyway. It's just a sustainable community. Everyone has a vote in what happens in the community as well.”