a gun when the big guy tried to strangle me. I reacted."
The interrogation lasted ten minutes in the parking lot, the car ride to the police station, and then another three hours. He recounted every detail, exactly, a dozen times, and had to explain eidetic memory to three separate detectives, even demonstrating it with parlor tricks before they let it go.
He only left out letting Smarmy—Brendan Coleman based on his ID and fingerprints—fire a shot to justify his deadly response. They released him without charges at two p.m. and gave him a ride back to the parking lot. He called Sakura on the way to the hospital.
"Yes?"
"Hey. Where are you?"
"Hotel. This after-report on Atlanta is troublesome. I don't know who will believe it."
"Don't spin it," Matt said. "Just report what happened and let the powers that be worry about what's true. That girl those guys found, the one from the boat, she wake up yet?"
"Yes. She's resting still, but vitals are back to normal, no sign of lasting damage. Her parents are there. Quarantine is lifted."
"Good. How's Kazuko?"
"Resting. Why?"
He filled her in, emphasizing what Brute—Joe Klippelt—had said about "demon-spawn." "The only other person I know that fits that bill is Kazuko."
"Probably others. Many Augs have children, but Adam is the only one post-augmentation. ICAP kept excellent records."
"Do we trust these guys to know the difference?" Humans for Humanity ran the gamut from neo-Nazi to fundamentalist Christian to hard-left anti-GMO conspiracy theorists. Only a hatred for Augs united them.
"No," Sakura said. "But I've seen many strangers around the ward and hotel today. I think I'll go to the hospital, sleep on a cot tonight."
"Want backup?"
"I wouldn't turn it down."
"All right. Let me tie things down here, get Monica some protection, and I'll be up."
He booked a flight two hours later, just in time to miss the storm.
* * *
Sakura walked through the hotel lobby, scanning the unfamiliar faces for anyone paying too much attention. Two men and one woman, all Caucasian, sat at a corner booth and paid too little, looking at anything and everything other than her. They'd stopped talking when the elevator had opened, though, and resumed their murmurs with too much haste.
Rowley couldn't get here fast enough. She stopped ten feet from their booth and looked at her phone, and not one of them looked up at her, even after she coughed.
The front door slid open in a blast of frigid air. Sakura had never felt Minnesota cold, except on high-altitude jumps, and the locals assured her the worst had yet to come. She slid across the ice-slicked parking lot, already bathed in orange streetlights despite the time. Visiting hours on the oncology ward ended at six p.m., but the night nurses had made her a permanent exception.
She shivered in the cold until the bus arrived, paid the fare, and sat in the back behind a small man eating pungent green shrimp curry which reeked of grass, citrus, and coriander. A silver Cadillac SUV followed the bus four blocks, then split off west toward the hospital. She ground her teeth through the ride, got off in front of the main entrance, noted the silver Cadillac in guest parking, and stalked into the eighteen-story building.
The lobby smelled of astringent shit, antiseptic and unchanged diaper.
Forty seconds later she walked out of a side entrance, took a picture of the license plate, and uploaded it to Janet LaLonde. Sakura took the stairs. Her phone blipped as she reached the eighth floor.
The Cadillac belonged to Rocky Sweetman, whose daughter Onnoleigh had poured tens of thousands of dollars of her trust fund into Humans for Humanity on her eighteenth birthday two months prior. Onnoleigh's face matched the girl in the lobby, cute and blonde with too much makeup. A quick scroll through "Ona's" Facebook found the other two: David Gerrold, retired policeman, black hair and round face, and Samuel Burns, a bald, surly-looking
The interrogation lasted ten minutes in the parking lot, the car ride to the police station, and then another three hours. He recounted every detail, exactly, a dozen times, and had to explain eidetic memory to three separate detectives, even demonstrating it with parlor tricks before they let it go.
He only left out letting Smarmy—Brendan Coleman based on his ID and fingerprints—fire a shot to justify his deadly response. They released him without charges at two p.m. and gave him a ride back to the parking lot. He called Sakura on the way to the hospital.
"Yes?"
"Hey. Where are you?"
"Hotel. This after-report on Atlanta is troublesome. I don't know who will believe it."
"Don't spin it," Matt said. "Just report what happened and let the powers that be worry about what's true. That girl those guys found, the one from the boat, she wake up yet?"
"Yes. She's resting still, but vitals are back to normal, no sign of lasting damage. Her parents are there. Quarantine is lifted."
"Good. How's Kazuko?"
"Resting. Why?"
He filled her in, emphasizing what Brute—Joe Klippelt—had said about "demon-spawn." "The only other person I know that fits that bill is Kazuko."
"Probably others. Many Augs have children, but Adam is the only one post-augmentation. ICAP kept excellent records."
"Do we trust these guys to know the difference?" Humans for Humanity ran the gamut from neo-Nazi to fundamentalist Christian to hard-left anti-GMO conspiracy theorists. Only a hatred for Augs united them.
"No," Sakura said. "But I've seen many strangers around the ward and hotel today. I think I'll go to the hospital, sleep on a cot tonight."
"Want backup?"
"I wouldn't turn it down."
"All right. Let me tie things down here, get Monica some protection, and I'll be up."
He booked a flight two hours later, just in time to miss the storm.
* * *
Sakura walked through the hotel lobby, scanning the unfamiliar faces for anyone paying too much attention. Two men and one woman, all Caucasian, sat at a corner booth and paid too little, looking at anything and everything other than her. They'd stopped talking when the elevator had opened, though, and resumed their murmurs with too much haste.
Rowley couldn't get here fast enough. She stopped ten feet from their booth and looked at her phone, and not one of them looked up at her, even after she coughed.
The front door slid open in a blast of frigid air. Sakura had never felt Minnesota cold, except on high-altitude jumps, and the locals assured her the worst had yet to come. She slid across the ice-slicked parking lot, already bathed in orange streetlights despite the time. Visiting hours on the oncology ward ended at six p.m., but the night nurses had made her a permanent exception.
She shivered in the cold until the bus arrived, paid the fare, and sat in the back behind a small man eating pungent green shrimp curry which reeked of grass, citrus, and coriander. A silver Cadillac SUV followed the bus four blocks, then split off west toward the hospital. She ground her teeth through the ride, got off in front of the main entrance, noted the silver Cadillac in guest parking, and stalked into the eighteen-story building.
The lobby smelled of astringent shit, antiseptic and unchanged diaper.
Forty seconds later she walked out of a side entrance, took a picture of the license plate, and uploaded it to Janet LaLonde. Sakura took the stairs. Her phone blipped as she reached the eighth floor.
The Cadillac belonged to Rocky Sweetman, whose daughter Onnoleigh had poured tens of thousands of dollars of her trust fund into Humans for Humanity on her eighteenth birthday two months prior. Onnoleigh's face matched the girl in the lobby, cute and blonde with too much makeup. A quick scroll through "Ona's" Facebook found the other two: David Gerrold, retired policeman, black hair and round face, and Samuel Burns, a bald, surly-looking
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