Chimera

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 13, T+37:21

Chapel knew he should take a nap on the flight from Atlanta to Chicago, but Julia was still wired, still a little freaked out that she’d killed Malcolm, and she kept getting up from her seat and walking up and down the aisle between them. Chief Petty Officer Andrews turned the cabin lights back up so Julia wouldn’t trip over anything.

“Come help me with something,” he told her, just to get her mind off things. She walked over and gasped when she saw what he was doing.

He had rolled up his sleeve and had used a steak knife to cut into the silicone flesh around his artificial wrist.

“What on earth are you doing?” she demanded.

“Look at the fingers,” he told her. They were half melted, some of them fused together by the electrical shock he’d gotten back on Stone Mountain. “The motors and actuators underneath are fine, but the artificial skin has to go.”

She stared at him in horror but when he kept cutting at the fake flesh, she eventually shook her head and grabbed the knife away from him. “I do this for a living. Kind of,” she said. She neatly cut away the synthetic hand and then stripped it back like she was peeling off a glove. He lifted the artificial hand and flexed its various joints, listening to the soft whine of the motors.

He spent the rest of the flight putting the hand through various exercises, getting used to how different it felt. If anything, the fingers were stronger now — they didn’t have to work against the silicone. Julia seemed fascinated by the robotic hand, which cheered him up a little. He’d expected her to be repulsed by this reminder that he wasn’t like everyone else. He should have known she was tougher than that.

The plane set down in Midway airport in Chicago a little after nine thirty. When they’d taxied up to the terminal, Chief Petty Officer Andrews went to open the main cabin door. “Brace yourselves,” she said. “Chicago in springtime can be a shocking thing.” The door popped open and a blast of frigid air rushed inside the plane. Julia immediately reached for her pink hoodie.

“It must be forty degrees out there,” Chapel said, rubbing at his good arm with his robotic hand.

“The local temperature is closer to thirty-seven Fahrenheit,” Andrews told him with a perky smile. “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

“We’ll freeze to death out there,” Julia said. She shook her head. “Chapel, I’m not dressed for this. Maybe I should stay in the plane.”

Angel had thought of everything though, as usual. A pile of cardboard boxes were waiting on the tarmac, having been delivered even while they were taxiing in from the runway.

Julia got the boxes open and started pulling winter coats out of their wrapping paper. “This one’s yours, I think,” she said, holding up a black coat with a lot of pockets and zippers. “Plenty of room for all your spy gadgets.” The next box held a woman’s coat in a shade of grayish blue. “Oh, there’s a note with this one,” she said, and picked it up. “ ‘I thought this color might suit you more than hot pink,’ ” she read. She pulled on the coat and zipped it to her neck. Almost instantly she looked happier. “Wow. The coat I have at home isn’t this nice.”

Chapel took a second to appreciate the way the color worked with her hair and the way the coat’s lines suited Julia’s slender frame. He’d never cared a fig for fashion, and definitely not for women’s coats, but he had to admit that Angel had picked the perfect one for Julia. He smiled. His life might be in danger and there might be homicidal lunatics on the loose, but at least he had attractive company. “What’s in the other two boxes?” he asked.

The remaining boxes were much smaller. One held a hands-free unit identical to the one he’d lost in Atlanta. He wasted no time putting it in his ear. “Angel,” he said, “nice work here. Julia loves the coat you got her.”

“You’re welcome, sugar. I know what it’s like to be a woman in a cold climate,” the operator responded, as if she’d been sitting on his shoulder the whole time. “What do you think of the gloves?”

The final box held three different pairs of black leather gloves. “I wasn’t sure what size you would need now that your hand is thinner,” Angel told him. “I hope one of them will work.”

“Thanks, Angel. You did great.” Chapel tried the gloves on until he found one that fit comfortably over his robotic hand. He held it up and showed it to Julia. She nodded in approval.

He went to the cabin door and started wrestling it open again, prepared now for the cold. “Come on,” he said. “We have to go meet an elderly schoolteacher, and there’s no time to lose.”

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+39:44

They caught a cab and fought traffic all the way through the center of Chicago. Chapel checked his watch constantly as they struggled through the streetlights but there was nothing for it. He had to do this, and it didn’t matter how long it took.

“You were almost relaxed, back on the plane,” Julia told him. “I was so wound up I kept wondering how you could be chill at a time like this. Now you’re just as keyed up as you were last night when we landed in Atlanta.”

He watched the streetlights and the shadows alternately paint her face. “It’s an army thing. Our unofficial motto is ‘Hurry up and wait.’ You spend a lot of time in the army sitting around somewhere wondering when you’re going to be called up, when the next firefight is going to happen. Eventually, if you’re lucky, you learn to compartmentalize. You recognize when you’re safe and you can let your guard down. It happens so infrequently that you have to take advantage of it when it does happen.”

“I feel like I’m never going to relax again,” Julia said, pulling her shoulders in. “I keep expecting to fall down. I know that everything that’s happened, everything I’ve done is going to catch up with me. I’m just waiting for the hammer to drop.”

Chapel nodded. He’d seen what extreme stress could do to people. He’d seen soldiers come back from firefights whooping and hollering with adrenaline, and before they’d taken their boots off they were already lost, dropped down a hole into their own thoughts. Sometimes they never climbed back out of that hole.

“The only treatment for what you have is to keep moving,” he told her. “Your body’s smart. It knows how to keep you alive, if you listen to it. Right now it’s telling you not to lie down, not to rest.”

Julia frowned. “That’s not a great solution either. That’ll give you ulcers and migraines and who knows what else.”

“Hang in there,” he told her. “This will be over at some point. Then you can figure it all out for yourself.” It was the best comfort he had to offer her.

The cab took them up Lake Shore Drive to a neighborhood called the Near North Side. It was a region of mansions and town houses, everything covered with a sheen of old money. And ice. Some of the houses still had icicles hanging from their eaves.

“It felt like summer was right around the corner, back in Atlanta,” Julia said, like she was talking to herself. Maybe she just wanted to change the subject.

The cab pulled up in front of a town house, and they stepped out into a knife-edged wind. Lake Michigan filled half the world around them, and gusts that rippled its surface buffeted them almost constantly.

“Coat or no coat, I want to get inside,” Julia told Chapel.

“I’m with you there,” he said. He went up to the door of the town house where Eleanor Pechowski was staying and rang the bell. The door was answered almost instantly by an older man wearing thick glasses and a sweater vest.

“You must be Captain Chapel. Please, come inside,” the man said. He kept one hand hidden behind the door while he looked out at the street, scanning up and down the rows of parked cars.

“What have you got there?” Chapel asked, nodding at the concealed hand.

The man frowned in embarrassment. He opened the door wider and Chapel saw he held a long sword. “Just come in, please. I’m Julius Apomotov, and this is my house.”

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+39:52

Chapel and Julia stepped inside and Apomotov closed the door behind them, struggling to shut it against the wind.

The house’s foyer was all polished wood and sparkling glass chandeliers. Tapestries hung on the walls and a suit of armor stood next to a stairway leading up. The sword clearly belonged with the armor.

“The best I could find, under the circumstances,” Apomotov said, lifting his weapon. “I’ve never believed in guns.” He squinted, his eyes magnified by his thick glasses, and then shook his head. “That is, I believe they exist, but—” He shook his head again, in frustration. “Never mind.” He glanced down at the sword in his hand as if he didn’t know where it had come from. For lack of anything better to do, he dropped it in an umbrella stand. “Come in, come in. Eleanor is waiting for you. She’s holding up remarkably well, under the circumstances.”

He took their coats and hung them in a closet near the door. Then he stood there for a while, one hand lifted in front of him as if he was going to point at something. He snapped his fingers. “Chapel. Chapel. I had a student named Chapel once. Mark Chapel. Quite gifted. Any relation?”

“I’m not sure,” Chapel said. “My family’s from Florida.”

“Oh good God, no, no relation then,” Apomotov said. “Mark wouldn’t be caught dead beneath the Mason-Dixon line. Through here, please. He was a Connecticut boy, bled Union blue if you cut him.” Apomotov stopped in place and turned to look at them. “Not that I ever cut him. You understand.”

“Of course,” Chapel said.

Apomotov led them into a wide parlor behind the stairs. It was tastefully decorated, except for the hundreds of crossbows hanging on the walls, each of them suspended on individual wires from the crown molding. “There,” he said, waving at a couch on the far side of the room. An elderly woman there was struggling to stand up and greet them.

“Eleanor Pechowski, I presume,” Chapel said.

“You must, absolutely must, call me Ellie,” the woman said, coming over to take Chapel’s hand. “You’re Chapel, of course, the one that very nice young woman keeps saying is my shield against trouble in these dark times. And who’s this? Who’s this?” she asked, looking at Julia.

“She didn’t introduce herself,” Apomotov said. “I thought it best to let her in anyway, under the circumstances.”

“I’m so sorry,” Julia said. “I’m Julia Taggart.”

“Ah!” Eleanor Pechowski — Ellie — said. “Aha! Your name precedes you, dear.”

“I, uh, I take it you knew my father,” Julia said, looking uncomfortable.

“And your mother as well. Come, sit. Have some refreshment. Julius, be a dear and fetch more cups.”

The elderly man nodded and headed off deeper into the house.

“An absolute gem of a man,” Ellie said when he was gone. “One of the leading lights in Russian medieval studies, a scholar of no small renown. Demented now, of course, quite as crazy as a moth meeting its first lightbulb but still a stellar human being. Took me in when I was told my own — far more modest — apartment wasn’t safe anymore. Why aren’t you two sitting down?”

Chapel hurried to take a place on a divan near a roaring fire. Julia joined him, sitting closer than he’d expected.

“You’ll take something to drink, of course,” Ellie said, sitting down herself and lifting a teacup from a table near her. She tucked her legs up under herself on the couch. Chapel saw she wasn’t wearing any shoes, and that there were holes in the toes of her pantyhose.

“Tea would be… lovely,” Chapel said.

Ellie snorted in derision. “At this hour? It’s whiskey or nothing. Now tell me — exactly — why you are here.”

She fixed Chapel with eyes that could have bored through steel plate. Even if he hadn’t known, he would have guessed right away she’d been a schoolteacher once.

“Well,” Chapel said, “I wanted to make sure you were safe, and—”

“ ‘Rock-bottomed and copper-sheathed,’ ” Ellie said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s an old phrase from The Devil and Daniel Webster. It means I’m just fine. There’s been no trouble and I’ll have Julius to protect me if need be.”

“I’m sure he’s loyal, but—”

“Then there’s the squad of plainclothes policemen sitting in a car out front, where they’ve been for nearly two days now,” Ellie added. “I must remember to send Julius down with some sandwiches and a thermos of coffee later. Cold duty this time of year, and this is a cold year even for Chicago.” She clucked her tongue. “Captain Chapel, I’m old. I know I’m old. I do not believe I am yet an old fool. I know the danger I’m facing. I also know you wouldn’t be here, sitting and chatting with me, just to be cordial. I take you for a man with far better things to do than comfort spinsters. So why don’t you ask the question that you’ve been holding on the back of your tongue since you walked in the door?”

“All right,” Chapel said. “I need you to tell me everything you know about the chimeras, and Camp Putnam.”

In his ear Angel sounded very worried. “Chapel, sweetie, she’s not necessarily cleared to talk about—”

He pulled the hands-free set out of his ear. When his phone began to ring in his pocket, he switched it to vibrate. “Excuse me,” he said.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+39:53

“Hee. Ha heh. Ha.”

Tyrone Jameson had been a trauma nurse for twenty-two years. He’d seen his share of horrors in that time, working in the ER at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. He’d seen people come through the doors who looked like they were chopped in pieces — and who had eventually walked out again under their own power. He’d seen people gone out of their mind on drugs take gunshot wounds to the face and not even feel it.

This asshole took the cake.

“Ha. Heh… ha,” the man said. He swung his injured foot off the bed and put it down on the floor. Put his weight on it.

The man screamed — and laughed at the same time.

“Jesus, buddy, just — just lie down for me, okay? Will you do that for me?” Tyrone asked, his hands reaching to grab the guy’s shoulders and push him back down onto the bed.

The look the patient gave him made Tyrone’s blood turn to icy slush.

“Ha.”

The jerk had lost two toes. The front half of his foot looked like hamburger when he came in. Now it was encased in a hard cast and a metal brace just to keep the foot from falling off. And he was putting weight on it.

And laughing about it.

“Hee hee ho,” the man said, standing up on wobbly legs. He grabbed for his shirt, which was hanging on a chair next to the bed.

“Look, I can see in your face, you think you’re some kind of badass tough guy,” Tyrone said, not sure what to do. He should call for security, get some orderlies in here and a doctor to sedate the man. But he was scared. He was honestly scared of what his patient would do to him. “But if you try to walk out of here, you’re going to undo all the good the surgeon did. You’re going to wreck that foot permanently.”

He could only watch as the man got dressed, one painful button at a time. He never stopped laughing.

As he headed for the door, clearly intending to check himself out against medical advice, Tyrone just shook his head. “You need to lie down, buddy. You need to spend the next six weeks in that bed. Or you’re doing yourself a real disservice.”

“Ha. Hee. Can’t wait,” the patient said. He turned around to give Tyrone a nasty look. “I’ve got a body to find, and burn. And then I’ve got to kill a bunch of people. Ha. Hee ha hee. It’s going to be a full day.”

Tyrone shook his head. “No, seriously. Seriously—”

The man’s smile was worse than his laugh. It was the kind of smile you would expect to find on a corpse.

“Doesn’t it hurt?” Tyrone asked, because he couldn’t find any other words.

“Hee ha ha ha! Like you can’t imagine,” the patient admitted. “Now. Where — hee ha hee — do I go to find a taxi out of here?”

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+40:07

“The chimeras. Well,” Ellie said, “that is quite an interesting thing to be asking about. You do understand I’m absolutely forbidden to speak of that with anyone? I signed more than one nondisclosure agreement.”

“I wouldn’t ask if the need wasn’t great,” Chapel told her.

“I have no doubt,” Ellie said. “And I’m sure you know more about security clearances and needs to know and the like than I do. One hates to break the law, though. You’re in some kind of trouble, Captain, I can see it in your eyes.”

Julia glanced over at him in surprise.

“I’m beginning to think so, ma’am. I’m beginning to think my own people are using me as a pawn in a game I can’t see yet. And since those same people don’t seem to want me to talk to you about this, I’m thinking I definitely need to know whatever information you have. I understand your reluctance, but I have to insist.”

“Hmm,” Ellie said, watching him closely.

“There are lives at stake,” Chapel tried.

“Of course,” Ellie said. “There always are.”

Chapel saw in her eyes that she was waiting for him to say the right words. She wanted to talk to him, but she wasn’t going to give up what she had for free. He took a deep breath. He was making a big leap of faith, he knew. But he needed this information. “The chimeras are loose. They’ve left their camp and are at large, with a list of people they want to kill. Your name is on that list. Julia — Dr. Taggart here — wasn’t on that list, but they tried to kill her anyway.”

“They are quite dangerous, yes,” Ellie said, still giving nothing away.

“Not just them. Somebody helped them escape.”

“Ah,” Ellie said, leaning forward. “Now that’s interesting.”

Chapel nodded. “I intend to find out who it was. And make sure they’re punished,” he told her. “Somebody is using the chimeras, somebody has turned them into his personal death squad. I won’t let him get away with it.”

She smiled, and he knew he’d won her over. She sat back and looked up at the ceiling as if gathering her thoughts. “Have you met any of the chimeras? Ian, perhaps?”

“Not Ian. Malcolm and another one, who I’m told was named Brody,” Chapel said.

“Oh, my. Oh, my my. The look on your face tells me something,” Ellie said, leaning back on the couch. She took a deep sip from her teacup full of whiskey. “That’s the look of a soldier. Are they… ah?”

“Yes,” Chapel said.

“At least they’re at peace, then. For once in their lives.” Ellie sighed deeply. “I was their teacher. I disciplined them when need arose, and I daresay I was stricter than they would have liked. But I did care for them. You can’t not love your students, even the stupid ones.”

Julia gasped in shock.

“Oh, young lady, did you think a teacher wasn’t allowed to call someone ‘stupid’? Part of our job is to evaluate them, you know. And there were a few of the boys who were stupid, quite as dumb as the proverbial rocks. Others were brilliant. They all possessed what we used to refer to as animal cunning.”

“You were a teacher with UNESCO, weren’t you?” Chapel asked, prodding her to go on.

“Oh, yes, back in the eighties, back when I thought I could still save the world by teaching it not to end sentences in prepositions. I was rather more idealistic back then. I specialized in children with developmental and emotional issues. That was why the Defense Department wanted to hire me. That and my security clearance.”

“I’m sorry,” Chapel said. “You worked for the DoD? I thought the chimeras were a CIA project.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that. I know the man who recruited me was wearing a uniform, that’s all.”

Chapel nodded. No need to jump to conclusions. “So the DoD approached you about a teaching assignment. When was this?”

“Nineteen ninety,” Ellie said.

“So they would have been pretty young,” Chapel said. “Did anyone ever tell you why they were created — or why they were detained?”

“Absolutely not. Before you ask, yes, I did wonder. I burned with curiosity about that for a long time, but when you ask the same question a hundred times and are routinely told you don’t need to know the answer, you eventually give in and stop asking. I’m sure you can understand that.”

“Yeah,” Chapel said. “Yeah, I can.”

“Captain, the word ‘yeah’ does not belong in the English language. The word you want to use is ‘yes.’ As in, ‘yes, ma’am.’ ”

Chapel felt himself blush. “Yes, ma’am.”

Ellie frowned and picked up her teacup again. “I think this will be a very long night if I make you guess which questions to ask and then tell you what I think you should know. Why don’t I just go through the story as I remember it?”

“All right,” Chapel said.

Ellie knocked back her cup in one gulp and began.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+40:12

“It was 1990 when they first approached me. A captain of the navy whose name I don’t remember — I never saw him again — came to my school on Roosevelt Island in New York. He asked if I had any experience administering intelligence tests, specifically culture-neutral IQ tests. I explained that I had been doing just such a thing for more than ten years. I asked why he wanted to know, but of course he didn’t answer. A few months later, during my summer break, I was asked to come up to the Catskills for a weekend and to bring anything I needed to administer such a test to a group of two hundred children, all of them four years old, all of them boys. In exchange I would be paid handsomely for my time, but I had to agree not to tell anyone where I was going or why.

“Back then I was just a little older than you are now. Still young enough to think an adventure sounded fun, rather than exhausting. So I went. I was certainly not expecting what I saw. Camp Putnam was about a hundred acres of ground enclosed by an electric fence. There were guard towers and quite a number of soldiers. Inside the fence were the boys. They were adorable, and even when I noticed what was so strange about their eyes, I couldn’t help but feel they were the healthiest, most curious bunch of four-year-olds I’d ever met. I’m sure I asked a thousand questions that day, but I did not receive any answers, as you can imagine.

“I did the job I’d been brought in for, administering the tests. Julia, dear, your parents were really quite interested in the results. They kept asking me if I would stay and tabulate the results then and there. They offered me more money. It was summertime, when every teacher needs more money, so I did as they asked. As it turned out, I ended up staying at the camp for eight more years.

“The boys were incredibly healthy and most of them had quite high IQs. They never seemed to get sick, and when they fell out of trees or skinned their elbows, they healed with astonishing speed. The soldiers played with them and treated them very well — at that time — but nobody, no one at all had considered they needed to be educated. In the end I had to volunteer to be their teacher. The prospect of these boys growing up in that camp, unable to read, unable to do basic math, was just startling to me. I was under the impression, you see, that they were orphans or something. That they were being raised there by the military but that when they were old enough they would go forth into the world, that they would get jobs and marry and have happy lives.

“I sometimes think your father, Julia, hired me on simply because it was easier to do that than to disillusion me.

“In many ways that was an idyllic time and I was quite happy. The Catskills are a beautiful place, and I fell in love with country living. In the summer I would hold class in a field of wildflowers deep in the camp. In the winter we would all crowd into a cozy little schoolhouse, the boys wrapped up in blankets around woodstoves. Beyond that — I was electrified. It was an incredible opportunity for someone like me. There were no televisions in Camp Putnam. No radios or newspapers. I could teach these boys to become men, to become upstanding gentlemen without any of the distractions or temptations of modern life. I imagined the papers I could write based on my observations, the awards and grants I could win with the data I collected. I will admit I was not above the scientific impulse that drove people like Taggart and Bryant.

“That changed, though, in 1993. That was the year of the first death.

“The boys had always fought among themselves. They were quick of temper, though at the time we thought that was just a product of their environment. Boys will be boys, we said. They squabbled over any little thing that one of them had and the others lacked. If a guard gave one of them a candy bar, we knew it would end in a fistfight as one of the other boys decided it by rights belonged to him.

“When one of them — his name was Gerald — failed to show up in my class one day, I assumed he was just playing hooky or that he was sick. When he was gone for a week, I began to worry. Eventually Dr. Bryant took me aside and explained. Gerald was dead. He had been attacked by three other boys, and they had broken his neck. She made it sound like an accident. A tragedy, but nothing unnatural. The three boys who killed Gerald would be punished, she said, but I didn’t need to worry about it.

“Three months later it happened again. Two boys went into the woods, just playing, exploring, doing what eight-year-old boys do. Only one came back. He refused to tell us what happened to his friend and so guards had to go out looking for him. The missing boy’s name was Marcus. They found him impaled on a tree branch. When his friend, Tyrone, was questioned, he admitted they had fallen out over whether Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer was smarter. It was a question I had asked in class that day, and they had debated it at some length before Tyrone decided he could settle the question once and for all. He had made a kind of spear out of the tree branch and he ran Marcus through with it, puncturing a lung.

“I had plenty of training in dealing with emotionally confused youths. I offered my services in helping Tyrone, but Dr. Taggart said that wouldn’t be necessary. I did not see Tyrone again. I assumed he had been taken to another facility, separated for the safety of the population. What actually happened to him is something I don’t like to contemplate.

“It became rapidly apparent, however, that we had a real problem on our hands. The violence escalated each month. Fistfights turned into boys throwing rocks at each other, which turned into horrible beatings and boys using makeshift weapons against one another. The scientists tried all manner of ways to settle things down, from putting drugs in the boys’ food to splitting them up into small groups and forbidding them from being alone with each other at any time. The number of guards in the camp was doubled, and then tripled.

“It did not help. A guard was killed, in 1994. It was a horrible time. The other guards swept through the camp looking for the culprit. They were not… gentle in their interrogations. For a while things quieted down as the boys were put under a draconian sort of lockdown. They were forced to stay in their cabins at all times, not even being allowed out for exercise. That couldn’t last, though, not if we wished to keep the boys healthy. I imagine some of us believed the rash of violence had been a fad. A phase the boys would grow out of.

“This was not the case.

“The boys continued their lessons through it all. The only time they saw each other, for a while, was in my classroom. Which meant that their anger at each other found no other outlet. I had to break up fights constantly. I had guards rush in and restrain my students in the middle of my lectures. If I called on a boy and he didn’t know the answer, the others would jeer at him mercilessly. If he did know the answer, they would mock him for being a show-off. Then one day a fight broke out that I couldn’t stop. One of the slower boys, but one notorious for his incredible strength, attacked another boy right in front of me. The attacker — his name was Keenan — broke the other boy’s arms in the time it takes to say it. He was jumping on top of his victim, smashing him with his feet. I tried to pull him away and he lashed out at me. His nictitating membranes — his third eyelids, I can see you don’t know the term — were down, and when their eyes were like that I knew they weren’t going to stop. They were going to hit and bite and scratch until everything in front of them was destroyed. Keenan came at me with nothing in his heart but pure, animal rage. I had thwarted him, and he would tear me to pieces.”

Julia gasped. “What did you do?” she asked.

Ellie inhaled deeply. “I drew my sidearm and I put him down like a mad dog. Three bullets in his skull, that was enough. Did I not mention that I was carrying a pistol while I taught? We all were, by that point. Every human being in Camp Putnam went armed at all times. It just wasn’t safe otherwise.”

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+40:51

The fireplace by Chapel’s right side crackled and popped. Apomotov came in and poured more whiskey into their teacups. Outside the wind from the lake battered at the house, but inside all was quiet. No one spoke a word as they waited for Ellie to continue her story.

“The level of aggression we saw,” she said, looking only into her teacup, “was far beyond anything we’d expected. Anything we’d planned for. These were children! You’ve only seen them as adults. At that age they looked like little seraphs, angels with black eyes. When they turned on each other, or on us, they turned to demons in a moment. We tried so many things. I recommended individual counseling — bringing in a small army of psychologists, child development specialists, social workers. My request was roundly denied. It was too great a security risk.

“The boys kept fighting, and every time they hurt a guard, things just got so much worse. In 1995, they killed one of the researchers, a Dr. Harkness.”

Julia gasped.

“I’m… sorry,” Julia said, when Chapel looked at her. “Just — I knew her. Dr. Harkness. She was really sweet. She used to bring me magazines, Tiger Beat and… and Seventeen. She said being raised by scientists, I needed to see what the real world was like. They killed her? Oh my God. Oh my God… Mom just told me she moved away.”

She shook her head, and Chapel saw a tear roll down her cheek.

“Please,” Julia said. “Just — go on. I’ll be okay.”

Ellie gave her a sympathetic frown, but she clearly wanted to get back to her story. “After that the guards were told to shoot any boy acting violent. They were human beings, those guards, and they rarely did as they were told. At least, at first. In 1996, things changed.”

Ellie drew her feet up underneath her as if they were cold. She took a moment to catch her breath and drink some more whiskey. “I made a mistake. A bad one. It has occurred to me, more than once, that what happened was my fault.

“I know I’m being overly hard on myself. But it happened because of what I did. Or rather, what I didn’t do.

“A group of the boys came to me. Just four of them, a little cabal. They were the smartest of the lot, my best pupils. And they knew what was happening. They understood that normal children — human children — weren’t like this. They said that if they could just get out of the camp, see the world beyond and live like normal children, then they would settle down. That they would overcome their impulses. The leader was a boy named Ian. The smartest of them all, and one of the strongest. You could see in his eyes he was a natural leader. Well, when his eyes weren’t covered by those horrible membranes, you could see it. He had organized this little committee. He came to me because he knew I was the most sympathetic adult in that camp, and the one who was the least tied to the military. He asked me for my help. They had a plan, but they needed certain things to make it happen. They needed to know where the guards would be at a certain hour. And then he told me he needed my sidearm.

“I told him it was impossible, and I refused to help. He saw at once I wouldn’t budge and that he’d made a mistake asking for my gun. So instead, then, he pleaded — begged, on bended knee — that I not tell anyone what he’d asked. He promised that he would forget all about the plan, that he would devote himself to stopping the violence.

“So I kept my peace. Two nights later they rushed the fence. They had no weapons and no idea what they were doing; they simply thought they could climb over an electrified fence and run away. The guards killed one of them and restrained Ian. Two more of them did get over the fence, believe it or not. They fought the guards who came for them. One of them was tranquilized and taken away and I never saw him again. One of them actually got loose, and it was months before he was returned to us.”

“That was Malcolm,” Chapel said, remembering Funt’s story.

“Yes. Malcolm. They caught him again, eventually. The camp he came back to was not the one he left,” Ellie said.

She shuddered but went on. “There had been a gate in the fence, originally. A wide gate you could drive a jeep through. The guards sealed that up. They added a new, outer fence. And in between them they laid mines. Land mines. There would not be a second escape attempt.”

“Wait,” Chapel said. “They sealed the fence? There was no gate after that?”

“I believe I spoke clearly, Captain. After 1996, the fence was complete. After that date no human being ever set foot in Camp Putnam. The guards had decided, you see, that it wasn’t safe. Not even for armed men. Anyone attempting to go in or out was to be shot on sight. And believe me, this time the guards obeyed their orders to the letter.”

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+41:06

Chapel’s phone started to ring. It surprised him enough he jumped in his seat. He took it out of his pocket and saw that it was still set to vibrate, but apparently Angel could get past that. “Forgive me,” he said. He yanked the battery out of the phone, and it went silent again.

“Someone doesn’t want you to hear this,” Ellie said, looking frightened.

Chapel didn’t blame her. “That’s all the more reason why I need to hear it,” he told her. “A lot of people have spent a lot of time and effort keeping this secret so long. But secrets have a way of festering. This one’s old enough and dangerous enough that people are dying for it. I have to stop that.”

“I suppose someone must,” Ellie said. “There’s not much more to tell, though, I’m afraid. My involvement with Camp Putnam didn’t last much longer.”

“You said you started there in 1990, and that you worked there for eight years,” Chapel told her.

“Yes. Those last two years were… terrifying. My safety was guaranteed, but the boys were trapped in there. They were abandoned. Left to their own self-destructive impulses. When I took the job, I had thought I was working at some kind of high-tech summer camp. By the time I left, I felt like I was a schoolteacher at Auschwitz.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through this,” Chapel told her.

“I stayed, Captain. I stayed even after they sealed the fence. I’m not asking for your pity.” Ellie finished her drink. “Perhaps I thought I could still help in some way. It can be hard to remember why we did things, later on. I’ve often suspected that human brains are more susceptible to inertia than we like to think. I had been the boys’ teacher. I kept teaching. The soldiers built a platform, a kind of stage that rose above the level of the fence. The scientists and I would go up there whenever we wished to observe or address the boys. We were separated from the boys by twenty yards of no-man’s-land, so we had to use megaphones to talk to them. The scientists kept asking them questions. The guards would throw food and clothing down to them. I tried to teach them. I tried to stick to my lesson plans. Each day fewer and fewer of them came to listen. I told myself they had decided what I had to impart wasn’t worth hearing. I think I knew the truth, though. There were fewer of them all the time because there was nobody stopping them from acting out. No way to dissuade them from killing each other. When I began, there had been two hundred boys in that camp. When I left — when it became clear that I wasn’t helping them — there were perhaps thirty of them remaining.”

Chapel’s heart skipped a beat. Thirty, in 1998. According to Hollingshead, only seven had still been alive when the fence was blown open and they escaped. Seven — out of two hundred.

“The last of them I ever saw was Ian,” Ellie said. “He kept coming. My star pupil, he was always there when I went on that stage. He would shout questions up to me, and I would answer them the best I could. When he asked when I was coming back inside, when the gate would be reinstalled—” She stopped for a moment. “When he asked when he would be free, I had no answer for him. I could only pretend I hadn’t heard him. Captain, you told me earlier about Malcolm. Malcolm survived all this time. He got to be free again. That makes me strangely happy. I’m not surprised Brody made it as well. He was the most thoughtful of them. The one who tried to think things through, to understand why things were the way they were. Quinn almost certainly made it. He was the strongest of them by far. But I am certain — absolutely certain — that if even one of them is still alive out there, it’s Ian. You say you haven’t met him yet. When you do, I think you’ll understand.”

She fell silent then. She wasn’t looking at Chapel or Julia, just at her own memories. When Apomotov came in to announce someone was persistently trying to call them on the telephone, Ellie glanced up.

“Well, who is it?” she asked.

“A young lady who won’t give her name. I told her we couldn’t accept any calls now. Under the circumstances.”

“Quite right,” Ellie said. “Captain Chapel. I’ve told you all I know. I find it has distressed me more than I expected, saying it all out loud after all this time. I think I’d like to go to bed now. Was there anything else you required?”

“Just one more thing, ma’am. I hate to impose.”

Ellie lifted one hand in resignation. “I can hardly refuse now.”

Chapel leaned forward on the divan. “I need directions on how to get to Camp Putnam,” he told her.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+41:27

Apomotov fetched them their coats and Chapel thanked him profusely. Julia just stared at the door like she couldn’t wait to leave. Before going back out into the cold, though, Chapel decided he needed to do one thing.

He put the battery back in his phone. It started ringing instantly. He put the hands-free unit in his ear and said, “Hello, Angel. What’s new?”

Any trace of the sultry vixen he remembered was gone from the operator’s voice. “Captain Chapel. I have new orders from Director Hollingshead. Will you listen to them and acknowledge receipt?”

“Sure,” Chapel said, with a sigh.

“The director orders you — and I am told to phrase this as a direct order — to proceed immediately to Denver, Colorado, where you will take charge of the security detail around Judge Franklin Hayes. Do you acknowledge?”

“You can tell the admiral I received him loud and clear,” Chapel told her.

“Chapel,” Angel said, her voice warming up by maybe a tenth of a degree, “you’re headed down a dark path.”

“I know it, Angel.”

She clucked her tongue. “You’re not supposed to know any of this. I’m not supposed to know anything about Camp Putnam. That’s a top secret DoD installation, and just the fact of its existence is need-to-know information.”

“I know.”

“I can’t help you if you disobey these orders, Chapel. I can’t help you with the consequences of your actions. You’ll be on your own. I want to go on record as saying — no — begging you to reconsider your next move. You have your orders.”

“Understood,” he said. He put the phone and the hands-free unit in his pocket. He left the battery in the phone for the moment, just in case. Just in case of what, he couldn’t say. He glanced at Julia, but she was still staring at the door.

Ellie had come up to the foyer to see them off. “Stay warm,” she said.

“Thank you for everything,” he told her. “You’ve been more help than I expected.” He thought of something. “You don’t know Franklin Hayes, do you?”

“The federal judge? The one who’s supposed to become our next Supreme Court justice? Just from what I’ve seen on the news.”

“What about the names Christina Smollett, Marcia Kennedy, or Olivia Nguyen?”

Ellie just shook her head.

Chapel nodded. It had been a long shot. “Okay. Thanks again — and stay safe, please. I hate the fact I’m leaving you here alone when you’re in danger.”

Ellie’s face fell. “Captain, I could have done more for them.”

Chapel shook his head in incomprehension.

“I could have fought harder. I could have helped Ian and his cabal. I could have…” She let the thought trail away. “I could have made their lives a little easier, in some way. Been kinder to them.” She was starting to cry.

Was she looking for forgiveness? Chapel would have given it if he could, but he sensed that nothing he said would matter. He tried anyway. “They came to you for a reason. You were probably the only human who ever really cared for them,” he said.

She shook her head in negation. He’d been right — he couldn’t offer her any forgiveness, not now, if she couldn’t forgive herself.

“If they do come here and…” She lowered her head. “If they came here,” she said, “I don’t think I would blame them.”

Chapel had no words for that. He disagreed, but it didn’t matter, not to Ellie. He pushed open the door and stepped out into the night, Julia following close behind.

“I need to borrow your phone,” he told her.

Julia looked up at him. Her eyes were blank. “My whole life,” she said, her voice a flat monotone. “My whole life that was going on and they never told me. My parents were doing that. They were doing all of that.”

It had finally happened — the endorphins and adrenaline were gone, and she’d fallen into the abyss of her own thoughts. Just as she’d said she expected, it had become too much for her to bear. Without another word she handed over the phone.

Chapel dialed from the piece of paper in his pocket. “Chief Petty Officer Andrews,” he said, “I’m coming to you right now, and I have a flight plan to file. The destination is anywhere in the Catskills Mountains, in New York State.”

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA: APRIL 13, T+41:46

On the phone, Franklin Hayes was livid. Tom Banks toyed with the idea of just hanging up on him.

But no. The judge was too important to Banks’s plans for the future. Especially the next few days.

“He’s headed where?” Hayes demanded.

“The Catskills. You know what he expects to find there. Don’t make me say it, even on an encrypted line.”

Hayes was silent for a second. “You think he’ll learn anything?”

“It’s hard to know. My jurisdiction stops at the fence. What may still be inside there, if anything, is Hollingshead’s business. It doesn’t matter.”

Hayes wasn’t about to be diverted from his previous ire. “Whatever. I need him here, in Denver. I need him here now.”

Banks agreed. Chapel needed to be in Denver as soon as humanly possible. This jaunt to Camp Putnam was going to slow down a lot of plans. Not for the first time, Banks wondered how much Chapel had figured out. Whether he was starting to guess what the real game was here, and what the stakes were.

It seemed unlikely. Chapel had proved he was tougher than nails, but he’d also made a lot of dumb mistakes — like dragging the cute veterinarian around with him. A smart operative would have left her behind.

He couldn’t just assume Chapel was an idiot, though. And he definitely couldn’t just ring him up and tell him what to do. The one-armed asshole had to be led around like a bull with a ring in his nose. If you pulled too hard on the ring, he would just plant his feet and refuse to move. You had to be subtle about it. Make him think he was still in charge of his own destiny.

“I’ve got to go,” Banks told Hayes. “I think I can solve our mutual problem, but it means making a very delicate phone call.”

“To whom?” Hayes demanded.

The judge had no need to know, but for once Banks relented. “Rupert Hollingshead. I’ve got to light a fire under his ass.” Chapel trusted his boss. Time to exploit that particular mistake.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+43:07

They landed in the Catskills with no fuss. The airport there was little more than a short runway between two forested hills, a place for hobbyist pilots to park their Cessnas. It was just big enough to accommodate the jet.

“There are some pretty rich people up here, in the middle of nowhere,” Chief Petty Officer Andrews told Chapel. “This isn’t the first G4 to land on this strip. What do you want me to do now?”

“Hmm?”

“Me, the pilot, this plane. Do you want us to wait here for you?”

Chapel thought about that for a second. “What are your orders from up top?”

Andrews studied his face for a moment before answering. Perhaps she was trying to decide what his security clearance was. “I’ve received no new orders since I picked you up in Atlanta. Though — there was one thing. I was told to watch you closely and provide an update on your psychological state.” She was being careful, he saw, choosing her words precisely. She hadn’t told him who was supposed to get that update.

“Okay. Don’t get in trouble on my account,” he told her, knowing perfectly well she wouldn’t. If orders came in to leave him stranded in the Catskills, she would take her plane up and away on a moment’s notice. “If you don’t get any other orders, stay put. Refuel if they have the right facilities here. We might need to leave in a hurry.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” she said, and saluted him. Her way of saying she would follow her orders — wherever they came from. Reminding him, perhaps, of the chain of command.

He returned the salute anyway, then went to wake Julia. She’d just managed to fall asleep and she was surly getting up, pushing his hands away and pulling her hair down over her eyes as if she wanted to block out the light. She didn’t say anything, though, as he led her down the stairs to the ground.

It was cold out, though not as frigid as Chicago. What Chapel hadn’t been expecting, though, was how dark it was. There were a few lights on the airstrip’s sole building, a hangar about five hundred yards away. The jet behind them showed its own lights that blinked on its wingtips. Otherwise the world was wrapped in a thick blanket of dark cloud that only a few stars could penetrate. The moon was down, and Chapel couldn’t see more than a dozen yards in any direction.

No one was waiting for them on the tarmac. Not a soul.

That was a good thing, of course. It meant Chapel wasn’t about to be arrested — or worse. It meant Hollingshead wasn’t ready to reel him in, not quite yet. Maybe the admiral wanted to give him a chance to come in on his own. Or maybe he wanted to see just how far Chapel would push.

The darkness was also a bad thing, though, because they had a ways to go yet in the middle of the night. “Angel,” he said, “what are the chances of getting some transport out here?”

“Sorry, Captain,” the operator said in his ear. She sounded like she had better things to do. “You can turn around and get back on that plane. Follow your orders. Otherwise, you’re on your own.”

“Understood,” Chapel said.

Crap. He’d gotten used to Angel’s help. He’d gotten used to having cars waiting for him everywhere he went, and helicopters when the cars weren’t fast enough.

Well, he still had his training. Army Rangers didn’t have angels sitting on their shoulders when they were dropped behind enemy lines. They were taught to improvise as necessary.

A little parking lot sat on the far side of the hangar. Three vehicles were parked there — two compact cars and a pickup truck. Chapel glanced through a window on the side of the hangar. There was an old man sitting in there, applying daubs of paint to a canvas the size of a barn door. Chapel saw no sign of anyone else — most likely the man in the hangar was simply a night attendant, there to make sure nobody ran off with the row of private planes parked inside the cavernous hangar. Loud music came through the window, something wild and classical. The attendant probably hadn’t even heard the G4 land on his runway.

So far so good.

The compacts were most likely stored there for the use of people flying in for the weekend — people who lived somewhere else but wanted to be able to drive around when they got up here. The pickup probably belonged to the painter, but it was the best choice for where Chapel was headed. It would also be the easiest vehicle to acquire. The doors weren’t locked. He stuck Julia in the passenger seat — she did as she was told without complaint or acknowledgment. Then he bent down under the dashboard and pulled some wires away from the fuse box. “You can’t do this on modern cars,” he told Julia, who didn’t even look at him. He was talking to fill up the silence. “The computers in them know better. But the older models were designed to be fixed by their owners, so everything’s out in the open.” He found the two wires he wanted. With his fingernails and teeth he stripped a little insulation off them, then rubbed them together until the pickup coughed to life.

As Chapel threw the truck in gear and rolled through the open gate of the airfield, there was no sign the painter was even aware he’d just been robbed.

PHOENICIA, NEW YORK: APRIL 13, T+44:19

The night was impenetrably dark. The skeletal branches of trees loomed over the road on either side, blocking out even starlight. The truck’s headlights could illuminate no more than a few gray weeds sticking up through the gravel of the road. Chapel had to take it slow, consulting the GPS in his phone every time the road branched or turned.

Occasionally they passed by an open field and the silver light of the overcast was just enough to see by. Old wooden buildings crouched on that open land, barns and farmhouses. Few of them showed any lights of their own.

Suddenly Julia sat up straight in her seat and peered through the truck’s window, her hand on the glass.

“I know this place,” she said, as he slowed the truck down to a crawl. “I remember this.”

Chapel couldn’t see anything but darkness and more trees. “You sure?” he asked.

“We’re on the road to Phoenicia,” she said. “I grew up there.”

Chapel had forgotten that much of Julia’s youth had been spent on these back roads. Her parents had lived here, working by day at Camp Putnam where they were raising a small army of genetic misfits, coming home at night to check her homework and take out the trash. He shook his head. “What was it like?” he asked.

She shrugged and made herself small in her seat again, withdrawing once more. For a second he thought she wouldn’t answer, that that would go beyond the bounds of their new professional relationship. Then she made a small noncommittal noise and said, “It was all right, I guess. I went skiing a lot in the winter, and in summer my friends and I would steal some beer and go tubing.”

“Tubing?” Chapel asked.

Julia actually smiled a little. “It’s the local sport, I guess. You get an old inner tube from a tractor tire and you throw it in the river, then you sit with your butt in the hole and your legs dangling in the water. The current takes you downriver while you lie back with the sun in your face and the water splashing you to keep you cool. The river keeps the beer cold for a long time.”

“Sounds pretty idyllic,” he said, to keep her talking.

“Now, yeah. When I was a teenager, I thought it was boring as hell. I used to dream about when I grew up and I could move to New York City. I was going to be a reporter, for a while, until I realized that newspapers couldn’t compete with the Internet. Then I was going to be a famous blogger.” She laughed, a welcome sound in the dark cab of the pickup. “There are some things really I miss about this place. In Phoenicia there’s a restaurant called Sweet Sue’s. They make the best pancakes in the world.”

“I’ve had some pretty good pancakes,” Chapel told her. “Down in Florida we used to get panqueques from street vendors. They served them with fruit and honey on top.”

“No comparison,” Julia said. He could almost hear her roll her eyes. “At Sweet Sue’s the pancakes are like half an inch thick, and lighter than air. Except they fill you up fast. I could never eat more than one of them at a sitting, but my dad would order four of them, which is the equivalent of saying you want to eat an entire birthday cake all at once. He never managed to finish and Mom would scold him for wasting perfectly good carbohydrates. Then she would pull out a pen and work out how many grams of fat he’d just eaten and how many calories he would burn if he walked all the way home.”

“You really were raised by scientists,” Chapel said. When she didn’t respond, he nodded at the road. “You know this road? You know where it heads?”

“Yeah — out to nowhere. There are some farms on the far side of the mountain, but from here it’s fifty miles of just trees and little creeks and crazy people.”

Well, he couldn’t disagree. They were only a few miles from Camp Putnam.

CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+44:37

Chapel parked the pickup well clear of the camp. Based on Ellie’s directions the fenced-in area was surrounded on most sides by mountains and hills, but a one-lane gravel road snaked alongside a river for a while and then ended at a guardhouse very close to the perimeter. It was the best guess Chapel had for where the fence had been breached when the chimeras were released.

He stepped out of the truck and into a chaos of stars.

The overcast had cleared away while he drove, and now the sky was a blanket of light. He could clearly make out the gauzy trail of the Milky Way, but he had trouble figuring out the constellations because there were just too many stars up there he wasn’t used to seeing. As he watched, a meteor streaked by overhead, silently burning in a trail of fire that was gone so fast he thought maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him.

“Beautiful,” he said.

“Yeah,” Julia replied, coming to stand next to him. “Funny place to put something straight out of a horror movie, right?” She opened the truck’s glove compartment and rummaged around inside until she found something. She pulled it out and Chapel saw she’d found a flashlight, a big heavy Maglite of the kind security guards used. He realized he hadn’t thought of that. He hadn’t considered what it would be like tramping around in the dark woods with no light at all.

Not for the first time, he felt lucky he had her with him.

He inhaled deeply. He needed to focus. He had to smuggle a civilian into a compromised facility. Well, he’d been trained for this. “Okay. There shouldn’t be too many guards down there. The place is empty, now — they just need someone to keep curious people from coming in and taking a look around. We do need to be careful, though. From now on we need to be silent and keep our heads down. Just follow me, and don’t switch on that light until I tell you it’s safe.”

She nodded to indicate she understood.

Together they moved out, staying as low as possible. Chapel kept them under trees or near bushes when possible. He had no idea what kind of surveillance equipment the camp boasted, nor did he want to find out.

He led Julia down the side of a hill toward the end of the road. There was enough cover to screen them but not as much as he would have liked. Anyone with night-vision goggles or — worse — active infrared would have spotted them in a second. As the minutes ticked by and no one ordered him to halt he forced himself to keep his fear at bay.

At the end of the road stood a single sentry post, and beyond, the fence — or what was left of it.

Twisted chain link had been pulled down and stacked in heaps by the side of the road. It looked like it had been torn out of the ground by the hands of giants. Beyond lay a wide stretch of open ground scored here and there by roughly circular patches of bare earth. That must have been where land mines had exploded — Chapel figured the patches were just the right size to have been craters before someone had filled them back in.

Beyond the zone of tortured ground lay trees and darkness. This was definitely the way in. The only way in, since he was certain the rest of the fence remained intact.

He saw no sign of working cameras or floodlights or machine-gun nests. All good. The one thing between Chapel and his goal was that sentry box. It was a narrow little box the size of a tollbooth. Inside sat a single soldier reading a magazine. A single lightbulb over his head provided light — but it would also make it hard for the soldier to see outside, to see anyone sneaking up on him until they were lit up by the same bulb he read by.

Sloppy, Chapel thought. The light should be outside the box, illuminating the approach of the road. Of course, the soldier had no reason to expect anyone now. Camp Putnam was empty, a forgotten relic of a history no one knew. And it was unlikely anyone would hike up here in the dark, especially at this time of year. If anyone did come up here, say a lost motorist, they would be showing headlights that the soldier would see coming from half a mile away.

Chapel led Julia in a wide path around the box, getting as close to the remains of the fence as he could without giving away his position. A stand of trees had grown almost right up to the fence. It would give them good visual cover. When he’d picked the right spot, he hunkered down and put a hand on Julia’s shoulder, keeping her down as well.

And then he waited.

Julia never said a word while they waited. She didn’t fidget, except to shift her weight from one foot to the other now and then. She kept her eyes on the sentry box, just like Chapel. For someone with no military training she had an incredible amount of patience and that most important talent of a covert operator: the ability to sit still.

Chapel knew she would eventually lose her cool, that she would have to move to alleviate cramped muscles or just to keep from falling asleep. It would happen to him, too. He had no idea how long it would take.

In the end they got lucky.

The soldier in the sentry box was keeping himself awake by drinking caffeinated soda. He had a big two-liter bottle of cola that he sipped at from time to time, wincing at its bite or maybe because it had gotten warm. The problem with using soda to keep yourself alert was that it was a diuretic. Less than half an hour after Chapel picked his hiding spot, the soldier was forced to answer the call of nature.

He lifted a radio to his lips and said something Chapel couldn’t hear, then climbed out of the box and waddled toward the trees on the far side of the road.

Chapel wasted no time. He tapped Julia on the shoulder, then sprang up and moved quietly across the cratered earth and through the gap in the fence.

They were in.

CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+46:22

The camp comprised a hundred acres of woods surrounded by a fence. A hundred acres can be an interminable wasteland if you don’t know what you’re looking for and you have to search every corner.

For the most part the camp was exactly what it looked like — uninterrupted forest, an endless stretch of trees that grew so close together the two of them were forced to stick to winding, cramped trails that twisted between them. Occasionally they would cross a chattering creek, the icy water bright in the starlight. Very seldom they found an old shack or lean-to, beaten down by years of wind and weather until it was little more than bare lichen-smeared planks sticking up from the broken remains of a concrete foundation.

Those were the only signs that anyone had ever lived in Camp Putnam. Chapel found himself wondering if the shacks had been built by the chimeras, or by mountain men who lived up here a hundred years ago. It was impossible to tell just by the wan light of Julia’s flashlight. Some of the shacks had latches on their doors, while others had more modern doorknobs. Beyond that they all looked the same. They were all empty save for a few scraps of fabric in one, the remains of a campfire in another. Everything inside them was sodden and bristling with mushrooms.

“It looks like this place has been abandoned for years,” Julia said at one point.

“The chimeras were here less than two days ago,” Chapel said, though he had to agree with her.

They found no sign of habitation for nearly an hour, until they stumbled on a pond in the middle of the forest.

The water stretched away from them as far as they could see, black and full of stars except where mist snaked across its surface. A stout rope hung down over the water, perfect for swinging out over the still pond. Nearby a row of changing stalls had been built back in the trees. The door of each stall had been torn from its hinges and lay shattered on the ground. Julia shone her light into one of the stalls, and Chapel saw a splash of bright red on its back wall.

He stepped closer, intending to take a closer look, and nearly crushed a skull under his shoe.

The skull was half buried in the dirt, only one eye socket looking up at them as if its owner had been disturbed in his bed and wanted to go back to sleep. Nearby the remains of a rib cage could be seen. The limbs were missing, perhaps dragged off by animals.

“Jesus,” Julia said. “If a guy with a chain saw and a hockey mask shows up, ask him for directions. He’ll be the least creepy thing in this place.”

Chapel squatted to examine the skull. It was fractured in a couple of places, but otherwise it seemed normal enough. “Looks human,” he said.

Julia shook her head. “But… look at those ribs — they’re too thick, and too close together.”

When he knew what to look for, Chapel saw it at once. This was the skeleton of a chimera. The thickening of the ribs explained, perhaps, how they could take multiple gunshots to the chest and not even slow down. The skull was human enough that when you shot them in the head they tended to die. It matched what he’d seen in the field.

“Looking at this,” Julia said, “I’d say he came here to hide. Someone was chasing him. He went into the stall to hide, but it didn’t work. The pursuer tore the stalls open one by one until he found him. After that the cause of death looks to be multiple traumas to the head with a blunt weapon.”

Chapel felt his jaw fall open. “Impressive analysis, Doctor,” he said.

Julia shrugged. “When your patients can’t tell you what’s wrong, you have to get all kinds of CSI on them. You learn to spot the signs of abuse and trauma.”

“That’s no poodle,” Chapel pointed out.

She shrugged. “I’m about to wet myself with fear. Acting like a professional helps.”

“Then please, keep it up,” he told her. “Look over there, on the far side of the pond,” he said, pointing.

She swept her light across the water, but it couldn’t reach that far. It didn’t matter. Something big and shadowy was hidden in the trees there, something made of right angles, which suggested a building.

“Ellie mentioned a schoolhouse, big enough for her and two hundred students,” Julia said.

Chapel nodded. “Let’s take a look.”

CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+46:31

It proved difficult to get around the pond. The trees grew right down to the water, and all the paths seemed to wind away into dark groves, farther and farther from where they wanted to go. Eventually, though, they stumbled out into a massive clearing full of buildings, some small and haphazardly built, some massive and made of durable brick. The building they thought was the schoolhouse was the largest, a two-story edifice with lots of broken windows, but it looked mostly intact. Other buildings had been burned down to cinders. Directly in front of the schoolhouse lay a broad patch of open grass that had grown knee-high. On the other side of this lawn lay a little church with a cross on its roof.

“It’s like Smalltown, USA,” Julia pointed out, letting her light play over the broken windows of the nearest buildings. “After the bomb dropped.”

Chapel took in a tall flagpole in front of the schoolhouse. A tattered rag hung lifeless from its top. In the starlight he could almost make out its stripes. “You see anything that looks like a laboratory? Or maybe a cloning facility?”

“That could look like anything, but… no,” Julia said. She shrugged. “You’d expect it to look clean, I guess. Maybe to have its own fence so the boys couldn’t wander in and disrupt the experiments. Everything I see here is kid-friendly. I mean, if the kids in question are superstrong and violent.”

Chapel had to agree. There was nothing resembling a scientific facility in the clearing. He approached one of the bigger buildings and peered inside. It was mostly dark, but part of the roof had fallen away and he could see a line of steel cots with no mattresses. “Dormitory,” he called.

Julia had gone to look at a low, long building with multiple chimneys studding its roof. “This is a kitchen. Like the kind you’d see at a school — big enough to feed two hundred people every day.”

Chapel nodded. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s check out the schoolhouse.”

If Ellie hadn’t told them there was a schoolhouse, he might have given the building a different name. Maybe “town hall” or “auditorium.” A pair of double doors had once stood at its entrance, but one of them was missing now. Debris — broken wood, bits of glass, a pile of leaves — clogged the entry, but he kicked it out of the way and stepped inside.

Julia followed with her light, which she shone around the interior of the building. It turned out not to be two stories after all, just one big floor and most of that open space. Starlight streamed in through high, filthy windows but showed Chapel little. He could only take the place in piece by piece as the flashlight moved across its surfaces. A yellow wooden floor — cracked and scored now — stretched away to a raised stage at the far side. A podium stood on one side of the platform, and at the back of the stage stood a massive blackboard, scrawled with obscenities and doodles of—

“Oh my God,” Julia said, and nearly dropped the flashlight.

Its light had just illuminated the four bodies tied to the blackboard, their arms twisted up over their heads, their feet dangling just above the floor.

They were in bad shape, heavily decomposed, but not as far gone as the skeleton they’d seen by the pond. Their flesh looked dry and leathery, like the flesh of mummies.

They weren’t boys when they died. They were adults with beards on their chins and hair on their chests. If these were chimeras, they must have died recently, when they were fully grown.

The stench hit him then, and he nearly threw up. He fought to control himself. This was as bad as anything he’d seen in Afghanistan. Maybe worse.

To one side of the bodies the blackboard had been washed clean, then someone had written a final message there:

“What does that mean?” Chapel asked, though he knew Julia was just as in the dark as he was.

“Four bodies, partially mummified. Their throats were slit,” Julia said, and he could hear her fighting back her own urge to vomit. “That’s probably how they died. But — but there are other cuts, on their arms; those are defensive wounds; they were — they fought, hard. They were attacked with… with knives… Chapel, I can’t do this. I have to go outside.”

He started to nod, but then he heard something. A creaking sound, as if weight was being applied to floorboards, just above his head.

Julia must have heard it too. She swiveled around, pointing the flashlight like a weapon. Chapel saw there was a balcony running around the walls above them, a mezzanine looking down on the main floor of the place. Something was up there, moving fast. It was out of the light before he could get a good look, but—

“Chapel, someone’s here!” Julia gasped.

CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+46:52

Whoever it was, he moved too fast for Chapel to get a good look at him, dashing out of the light almost before Chapel had registered his presence at all. Julia tried to move the light to keep up, but Chapel heard the sound of footsteps coming down an iron stairwell in the corner of the room. He drew his sidearm and pointed it into the darkness, having no idea what was coming for him.

“Over there,” he said, pointing at a corner of the massive room. Julia swung the light around and it scattered over a pile of folding chairs, some of them twisted and bent out of shape. A bird fluttered its wings near the door, and Julia stabbed the light at it, even as the figure in the dark came running right at Chapel.

He could hear its feet pounding on the squeaking floorboards, hear it breathing heavily. He would only get one shot, once chance to—

But before he could fire his weapon, it was on him, knocking him sideways. His jaw stung and he knew he’d been hit, but everything happened so fast he barely had time to drop his pistol and put his hands out to catch himself before he hit the floor.

Chimera, he thought, which was impossible — all the chimeras had been accounted for. But the strength in that hit, the speed with which the figure moved couldn’t be denied.

He dropped to one knee, threw his artificial arm up to protect his head, knowing it was futile. He hadn’t been ready for this. He’d thought he was safe here, that the place was deserted. That lack of planning was going to get him killed. Would he end up hanging on the blackboard, his throat slit, his feet turning black with congealed blood?

He had time to shout for Julia to run. Not that it would make any difference.

In a second he would be dead, as soon as the chimera hit him again.

He braced for it.

Waited for it.

Eventually he opened his eyes.

“He ran out there,” Julia said, pointing her light at the doors of the auditorium.

Chapel squinted at the light. A starling hopped across the debris there, turning its head from side to side.

“Did you get a look at him?” Chapel asked.

“His eyes,” Julia said. “When the light hit them, they turned black. All black.”

Chapel grabbed his pistol from the floor, then rose to his feet. “Okay,” he said. “Stay behind me. Point the light where I tell you.”

She brought the light up under her chin, sending deep shadows upward from her nose, obscuring her own eyes. But he could see the terror in her face. “Chapel, maybe we should just go. Head back to the fence. This isn’t one of the chimeras you were supposed to track down, is it? Why would they come back here?”

“If there are more of them—”

She lowered the light. “I know. I just — I guess I’m just scared.”

“I am too. But we have to do this,” he told her.

He led her to the door and out onto the lawn between the buildings. The starling scampered out of their way.

Outside the starlight made everything silver and gray. A chimera could have been hiding anywhere and they wouldn’t have spotted him until they were right on top of him. Chapel forced himself to hold his pistol in a loose grip. The last thing he wanted to do was discharge it because he was so jumpy his finger slipped.

He looked forward, directly across the lawn. The little church stood there. It looked more intact than the other buildings — some of its windows hadn’t been broken, and the paint on its door hadn’t peeled or been scratched off. Of all the buildings on the lawn it looked most like a place where someone might find shelter from the elements.

He whispered when he spoke to Julia. “I want you to turn the light off. We’re going to the church. When I get to the door, we’ll stand to one side of it. I’ll cover the door with my weapon. When I say ‘freeze,’ you turn on the light and shine it inside. Okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered back.

They moved forward faster now. If Chapel was wrong about this, they might both be dead. The chimera could be lying in wait anywhere on the lawn, ready to spring up and attack them. It was the best idea he had, however.

The door of the church was raised up on a narrow porch. Two steps went up to the porch. Their feet sounded on each step, but there was nothing to be done about that. On the porch Chapel pressed his back up against the front wall of the church and Julia did the same. He checked his weapon, made sure it hadn’t been decocked when it fell from his hand. Then he nodded to Julia and swung around to point his pistol inside the church door, into the darkness inside.

“Freeze!” he shouted, though he could see nothing. Almost instantly the light burst into life behind him. Its beam speared inside the church and lit up a carved wooden crucifix on the far wall. The eyes of the figure on the cross had been blackened with a permanent marker.

At first Chapel thought he’d made a terrible mistake, that the church was empty and the chimera was probably right behind him. But then something moved among the pews inside, and he swiveled around to cover it with his weapon.

The chimera stood up very slowly, his black eyes wide in the light. He had a full, bushy beard, and his long hair was tangled up in the rags of a shirt he wore.

“Put your hands up!” Chapel demanded, expecting the chimera to jump right at him. At least this time he had a chance to shoot before he got knocked down and slaughtered.

Amazingly, though, the chimera obeyed him. Both hands came up and lifted above the chimera’s head. Chapel kept his eyes on the chimera’s face, looking for any sign he was about to be attacked.

“Chapel,” Julia said, “his hands!”

Chapel glanced upward and saw what she meant.

The chimera had no fingers.

CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+47:01

The chimera started to lower his hands, as if he were ashamed of them.

“Keep them where I can see them,” Chapel told him, and the chimera obeyed.

This made no sense. Based on what he’d seen for himself and what Ellie had told him, chimeras were impulsive and aggressive, unable to bear any kind of frustration or anger. This one acted like a human with a gun pointed at him.

“Chapel, he’s terrified. Don’t be such a man,” Julia said.

“Seriously?”

“Look at him. He’s half starved and he’s shivering.” Julia took a step forward. Chapel held out his free arm to stop her. At least she didn’t run over and give the chimera a hug. “What’s your name?” she asked.

The chimera looked at Chapel as if for permission to answer. When it didn’t come, he said in a halting voice, “I’m Samuel. Are you going to kill me?”

“No,” Julia said. “No. We’re not going to hurt you at all. We’re just trying to be careful. When was the last time you ate, Samuel?”

Now that he knew to look, Chapel saw the chimera’s cheeks were sunken, and he was much smaller than the chimeras he’d seen outside the camp. His wrists were like sticks coming out of the sleeves of his tattered shirt.

“It’s been a while. They used to throw food to us over the fence but… now I just get what I can catch, and it’s not easy,” Samuel said. “I can find some mushrooms, sometimes. But sometimes they make me throw up, and that’s worse than eating nothing. There’s tree bark, and every now and again I catch a fish. I have a net.”

Julia lowered the light and Chapel expected Samuel to bolt, but he didn’t. Julia rummaged around in her purse for a while, then brought out a half-eaten protein bar. “Here,” she said, but Chapel stopped her from walking over to hand it to the chimera.

“Throw it to him,” he said instead.

She tossed it underhand. He might be half dead with starvation, but Samuel was still a chimera. He caught it effortlessly between his two palms and tore the wrapper off with his teeth. He shoved half of it in his mouth all at once.

“I’m afraid that’s all I have. The other half was my breakfast two days ago,” she said, glancing at Chapel.

“That was when the fence came down,” Samuel said, nodding. “When Ian and the others left, to follow the Voice.”

“The Voice—” Chapel began, but Julia put a hand on his arm to stop him.

“Samuel, what happened to your fingers?” she asked.

“Frostbite. Six winters ago,” the chimera said, his mouth full of granola and molasses. “I got in a fight with Mark, which — no fooling — I won, I totally killed him, but I was beat up pretty bad. I fell asleep in the snow and didn’t wake up for three days. When I did wake up, I couldn’t feel my fingers or my toes. Ian cut them off for me with an axe, so I didn’t die from rotting.”

Jesus, Chapel thought. The fence would already have been closed off by then. There would have been no medical care in the camp at all. Samuel was lucky to have lived through that. If he hadn’t been a chimera, maybe he wouldn’t have.

“That must have made it hard to fight, afterward,” Julia said, her voice calm and soothing. Chapel realized she must be using the same voice she used when she spoke to dogs and cats.

“Sure did. Some of the others, they picked on me; they would beat me up just for fun because I wasn’t a threat anymore. But Ian stopped that. He took me on as a mascot. He protected me and made sure I got some food, though not as much as the others. That’s how come I’m so small.”

Another chimera. Impossible — they’d all been accounted for. Hollingshead had said as much in his briefing. There had been six detainees when the fence came down, two who were killed in the escape and four who made it out.

No — wait. Hollingshead had said there were seven, but that the seventh was presumed dead. Why he’d been presumed dead had been something Chapel didn’t need to know.

“Why are you still here?” Chapel asked. “If Ian liked you so much, why didn’t he take you with him when he left? Or later, you could have just walked out on your own.”

Samuel shrugged. “Where would I go? I don’t know nothing about the world. I know the camp pretty good, but that’s it. And anyway, the Voice didn’t want me.”

“You mean the Voice didn’t tell you who to kill?” Chapel asked.

“Yeah. The Voice said I was useless. It told Ian to kill me before they left, and he said he would. I got so scared. But Ian just took me out to the baseball field, that’s a ways north of here. He told me what the Voice said, and that he wasn’t going to do it. He said the Voice wasn’t like Miss P, or like the doctors, and he didn’t have to do what it said. That he was his own master. He cut me a little, and wiped my blood on his hand, so he could show the others and tell them he’d killed me. Then he told me to run into the woods and hide until they were gone. I did what he said. Ian was like Miss P. I always did what he said. I’m a good boy.”

Miss P had to be Ellie Pechowski. Their teacher. Chapel was certain the doctors he meant were Helen Bryant and William Taggart.

“You heard this Voice?” Chapel asked. “It spoke to you?”

“Sure,” Samuel said, licking the wrapper from the protein bar. “It spoke to all of us. You want to see it?”

See the Voice? “Very much so,” Chapel told him.

Samuel went over to the church’s altar and picked something up, using both hands. Chapel knew how hard it could be to manipulate small objects with one good hand. He could imagine it must be much harder with no fingers. But Samuel held the object easily, then tossed it toward Chapel.

He managed to catch it with his free hand. “Give me some light,” he told Julia.

She shone it on the object he held. It was a cellular phone, a cheap prepaid model with a black case. One side was badly scuffed. Chapel tried to turn it on, but the battery was dead. He put it in his pocket.

“Hey, you can’t have that! That’s the Voice!” Samuel said, and took a step toward them.

Chapel raised his pistol. Samuel’s face contorted and his fingerless hands shook and Chapel wondered if he would finally revert to form, change into one of the violent, aggressive chimeras he had met before.

But slowly, and with visible effort, Samuel calmed himself down. “I get it,” he said. “You’re like Miss P, too. Or Ian. I’ll do what you say. I’m a good boy.”

“Okay, then,” Chapel said. “Why don’t you sit down, and tell me a story.”

CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+47:25

It took a while for Samuel to get started. Chapel had to prod him, ask leading questions, and finally take him all the way back to when Malcolm escaped, back when they were still just children. Once Samuel got started, though, he seemed to almost fall into a trance. The words he spoke sounded like an oft-repeated history lesson, a text he’d memorized.

“When the fence was closed, when they took the gate away, things changed,” he said, looking into the middle distance. “They brought Malcolm back to us. Many were jealous of him, and angry. They said it was his fault the fence was closed. They said because of him, we would never leave here.

“Many of them wanted to kill him. They thought that would make it easier to bear. Ian said no. Ian had many friends, even then, though no one thought of him as their leader. Not yet. Ian said he would talk to the humans. He would talk to Miss P and she would get us out. She would free us.

“He went so many times to her platform. He begged her for help, for forgiveness. He spoke with the doctors, too. He listened when they spoke to him through their megaphones and he shouted back, he shouted back all kinds of promises.

“The rest of us were close by, hiding in the trees. We listened to the things he said. He had an idea, a vision he called it, of what we could become. Not everyone agreed with it. When he couldn’t make the humans change their minds, some of them decided it was his fault. Ian’s. After all, he had come up with the idea, the plan, that let Malcolm get away.

“Some of them, they tried to kill Ian on their own. They challenged him or ambushed him in the trees, or tried to steal his food and starve him. He beat everyone who came for him. He killed them if he had to. So his enemies, they got smart, and they joined together. They made the first gang.

“That was called the Blame War. It was our first war. It was bloody and many died. The worst was the Battle of the High Oaks. Ian had retreated to a place on a hill, northwest of here. Malcolm was with him and swore oaths to him. Quinn was with him, too, Quinn who was always the strongest.

“The gang came for them on a rainy night. Nobody could see. The gang was led by Franklin, who was almost smart as Ian, and almost strong as Quinn. But not enough of either. Quinn was the great hero then and killed many. But in the morning, Ian was our leader. He told us what to do.”

Chapel’s eyes went wide listening to the story. It was amazing to him — this little world had its own history, its heroes and its villains. Walled away from the world, the chimeras had created their own struggles, their own nations.

“He had a way for us to live,” Samuel went on. “A way to survive. We would each go and make our own place, our own house, as far away from each other as we could stand. We would come together only when the food was thrown over the fence, and then only to share it out. It was too dangerous for us to be together.

“It worked, for a while. Winters were hard. It gets so cold here, and the snow is so deep, and it’s hard to stay warm. Some of us made new gangs and slept all in a house together, even though Ian said not to. Some of the gangs thought Ian was no good, and they wanted a new leader. There were more wars then. But Ian always won. When they challenged him, he fought back, though always he tried not to kill. Already there were so few of us left. He said the humans wanted us to kill each other off. To destroy each other, so they wouldn’t have to think about us anymore.”

Julia shot Chapel a glance, and he knew what she was thinking. From the sound of it, and what Ellie had told them, that probably wasn’t too far from the truth.

“Ian said we couldn’t give the humans what they wanted. Too long, we’d tried to be good boys. We did what Miss P and the doctors told us. We listened when the guards talked. Ian said they’d turned their backs on us, and now we had a duty to be better on our own. A duty to live.

“Still, we were chimeras. And that meant we fought. Chimeras always fight. So Ian made new rules. He made rules about how fights could go, and what you could and couldn’t do. No weapons. No killing someone who was already unconscious. No killing a chimera who couldn’t fight back — that rule was about me,” Samuel said, looking glum. “He had to make that rule so I could live.”

He shook his head and went on. “Most times, we followed his rules, and we lived. Nobody died for many years. We ate what was thrown over the fence. We lived in our own little houses in the woods. We stayed apart. Sometimes, one of us would steal food or take something from another’s house. Then we had to come together. The two chimeras who disagreed, the one who claimed he’d been stolen from and the one he said did it, they would fight. Only with fists, that was the rule. And then Ian would say who won, and it was the one who followed his rules better. We would stand in a circle, with the fighters in the middle, and the one who broke a rule first we would grab and pull away and beat until he was unconscious, and that was that.

“It worked. For years it worked. Until they made the last gangs.

“Alan was the leader of one gang. Him and his three, they said they were done. That Ian wasn’t a doctor, and he wasn’t like Miss P, and they didn’t have to do what he said. It started because there was less food; there were times, whole weeks, when no food came over the fence. What did come, Ian split up among us all, but Alan said no. He said only the strong should have food. He said I should be left to starve. Ian challenged him to come to the ring, to send the best man of his gang to stand in the circle and fight it out with Ian’s best man, but Alan said that was stupid. Ian had Quinn, who could beat anybody in the ring. Alan took a bunch of food that wasn’t his and said it belonged to his gang, and they were going to go live out by the pond, and if Ian wanted the food back, he could come and get it.

“Ian went alone, just to talk. He said, if Alan and his whole gang would come here, to the church, he would give them a bunch of stuff he’d been hiding. He said he had a radio and some books and a lot of medicine, and he would share it. It was a lie, but they didn’t know that.

“Ian waited for them here. He was waiting with Quinn, and Brody, and Malcolm, and Stephen, and with Harrison. They waited here in the church and they had knives they made from broken windows. Alan and his gang came, all four of them, and when they weren’t looking, Ian and his gang cut them and killed them.”

Chapel gasped. “The four in the schoolhouse,” he said. “The bodies hanging on the blackboard—”

“That’s them,” Samuel agreed. “He put them there and told me he did it for me. So I could eat and not starve. I keep the animals away from those bodies and make sure they don’t fall down.”

“The words next to them,” Chapel said. “It says ‘we did this together.’ ”

“Sure,” Samuel said. “Ian wrote that. Him and his gang, they broke the rules, they used weapons when they did it. They broke Ian’s own rules. But he said that was all right because they did it together. If they worked together instead of against each other, then the rules didn’t apply.”

Sharing the guilt, Chapel thought. Ian didn’t want them to turn on him so he’d made sure they were all implicated.

“This can’t have been that long ago,” Julia said. “Those bodies weren’t that old.”

Samuel nodded. “This was just last fall, when the leaves were red. Just before the Voice came.”

CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+47:59

“Some of them, some of Ian’s gang, they thought the Voice was a sign. They said the doctors had been waiting and watching, that they had wanted us to prove ourselves. That we’d passed some test, and that’s why the Voice came. Some of us just thought it was because there were so few left. The Voice needed us and wanted to reach us before we were all gone. All dead.” Samuel shook his head. “I don’t know. I just know when it came, it changed things. It changed everything.”

“How did the Voice come, Samuel?” Julia asked. “Where did it come from?”

“From heaven,” he told her.

“It came down from the sky,” he went on, when she wrinkled her nose in distaste. “You can call it what you want. It came on a parachute, a little parachute that got caught in a tree near here. It came down and it was talking already, even before we found it. It was saying the same thing, over and over. It said ‘Press the green button.’ It said that for hours while Ian and his gang, they stared at it, wondering if it was a trick, wondering what would happen. Quinn thought if he pressed the green button, they would all die. Brody thought it would make more food come. There was hardly any food then, and there’s been none since, so I guess Brody was wrong.

“In the end it was Ian who pressed the green button. Who made the Voice come.

“It spoke to them all by name. It knew who they were, and it said it would give them the thing they wanted most. It would make them free. For most of a day it talked, making promises, telling them how strong they were, and how smart. How they were better than humans. Ian spoke back to it, and it answered him. He asked what the Voice wanted in exchange for freeing them. And it told them.

“Eight humans had to die. That was all. Eight humans and then they would be free forever. It would even help them do it. At first Ian thought it had to be a trick. Miss P and the doctors always said if we killed humans we would be punished. How could that be wrong back then, back when Miss P said it, but right now, when she was gone? But the Voice kept talking.

“It said the eight humans were people Ian and his gang wanted to kill anyway. It said they had to kill Jeremy Funt, who caught Malcolm when he ran away. It said they had to kill the doctors and Miss P for abandoning us. There were other names, too, names I didn’t know.”

“Christina Smollett,” Chapel said. “Olivia Nguyen. Marcia Kennedy.”

Samuel bobbed up and down in surprise and excitement. “Yes! I don’t know who those are. The Voice said they were responsible for us being here, for us being locked up. It said they deserved to die like the rest.”

“What about Franklin Hayes?” Chapel asked. “You must know that name.”

Samuel shook his head in the negative. “No. I don’t know him. But the Voice said he was the worst of all, the one who deserved to die the most. It said Quinn had to kill him. The others could choose who they went after, but Quinn had to kill Franklin Hayes. The Voice told them it would help them, it would show them where these humans lived, and make it easy. And then they would be free.”

Chapel frowned. He’d hoped that Samuel would have heard something more useful. He’d hoped the Voice might have told them its own name, or why the mentally ill women were on the kill list, or something. But he supposed that had been too much to wish for.

“The Voice told them the fence would come down. They might have to fight a little to get out, but they were chimeras and that shouldn’t worry them. It told them it would always be with them, as long as they did what it asked, and it would help them.

“And they listened. They listened, and they did what it said.

“Except — Ian wouldn’t kill me. He disobeyed the Voice in that,” Samuel said, and he sounded confused. He sounded like he couldn’t understand why he was still alive.

“They left you here all alone,” Julia said. “Ian left you here.”

Samuel shook his head violently. “No, he — he said he would come back for me. He said I would be okay!”

“It’s all right,” Julia soothed. “It’s okay. You’re going to be fine, now. We’ll take care of you.”

We will? Chapel thought. Didn’t she hear what Samuel had said, what he’d told her about wars and gangs and constant bloodshed? Samuel might have a childlike mind and a naiveté born of isolation but he was still a killer. He was still a chimera.

“Isn’t that right, Chapel? We’ll take him with us, make sure he’s okay?” she asked.

Chapel looked up, realizing suddenly that he’d been lost in thought. “We’ll figure something out,” he said.

“No,” Samuel told them. “No, I’m fine here.”

“Oh, sweetie, no,” Julia told him. “I can already tell you’re half starved to death, and it’s too cold here to—”

“I said I’m fine! I’m staying!” Samuel shrieked. He jumped up and loomed over Julia like he was about to attack her.

It had come out of nowhere. Chapel should have expected it, though — he knew what the chimeras were like. They were implacable killing machines. He raised his pistol to point right at Samuel’s face—

— but before he could fire, Samuel had smacked the flashlight out of Julia’s hand and dashed into the shadows. Chapel tried to track him, sure he would flank them and attack where they weren’t expecting him. He swung around wildly, pointing his weapon into every corner of the room, trying to cover all angles while Julia groped around on the floor for the light.

By the time she had it, Samuel was gone.

He’d simply vanished without a trace.

“It’s broken,” Julia said.

Chapel turned to look at her. She was holding up the flashlight and flicking its switch back and forth. “It’s broken,” she said again.

Chapel wondered how they would find their way back to the gap in the fence without it — but then he realized he could see her face, even in the darkened church. A little pink light lit up her cheek. It made him think of the sunset on Stone Mountain, the day they’d made love.

He turned around and looked at the door of the church. Its frame glowed with the same pink light. He staggered outside, tripping on debris, and saw a haze of light over the tops of the skeletal trees.

He’d been so wrapped up in Samuel’s story that he hadn’t noticed the sun coming up. It was dawn light streaming in, dawn light he’d seen.

Which meant he had a major problem on his hands.

CAMP PUTNAM, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+48:20

“Samuel!” Julia called. “Samuel! Come back!”

Chapel reached for her arm. “Julia, you have to let him go.”

“He needs help,” she told him. “Medical help. Or are you going to tell me he’s a chimera and he doesn’t deserve it? Because one of them killed my mother?”

“I’m going to tell you we’re screwed. The sun is up.”

“It tends to do that this time in the morning,” she told him. She looked angry, but he was pretty sure she wasn’t angry with him. He guessed she was angry at her parents, who had created Camp Putnam and populated it with sad monsters. So angry she couldn’t help but express it, and he happened to be standing nearby.

“Listen, we’ll come back for him, I promise. But there are people out there who need to be saved right now.” Like Franklin Hayes. Chapel still didn’t know why Hayes was on the kill list. But it sounded like he’d been singled out for special consideration. Banks and Hollingshead had both told Chapel that Hayes was the most important target on the list; he’d assumed they just thought that because he was politically connected. It looked like the Voice — and the chimeras — had their own reasons to hate him.

Chapel glanced at the sky again. “We need to get out of here now. Once the sun is up, sneaking past that guard will become impossible. We barely made it in the pitch dark. And if he catches us—”

“I see your point,” she said.

Together they raced for the trees. Finding their way back wasn’t going to be easy — they had wandered quite a ways in the dark, just following the forest paths, because they hadn’t known what they were looking for. They’d had a working flashlight, too. Even with dawn coming up, the trees screened out most of the light and it was still almost midnight dark under their groping branches.

Chapel headed southeast, his best guess at where the gap in the fence lay. He knew there was almost no chance of reaching the exit before the sun was fully up, but he had to try. Any amount of cover could make a difference. Every beam of light that hit the gap would make it harder to escape unnoticed.

The path wound and snaked about, and he cursed every time they had to double back because the trees were just too thick to pass. Growing up he’d spent some time in Florida’s swamps and he knew all about undergrowth and how it could tangle you up. He knew forests like this and he knew they were death traps — even if this one didn’t have any alligators in it, or sucking bogs so deep you could fall in and never be found. This forest had its own dangers.

He tried not to think about that. He tried to keep one eye on his feet, watching for exposed tree roots or piles of leaf litter that could hide all kinds of obstacles. But the forest just wasn’t built for running.

“There,” Julia said, finally. She was out of breath, but she grabbed his arm with one hand and pointed with the other. “That shack. I remember it.”

Chapel could see why. It was a collapsed hovel like all the others they’d seen, maybe one of the places the chimeras had retreated to when Ian told them to split up. Only one wall remained intact, the roof having collapsed and taken the other walls with it. But the intact wall was decorated with hundreds of tiny skulls. They looked like fox skulls to Chapel.

“My God, it’s even creepier in daylight,” she said.

Chapel grunted in frustration. He looked up and saw the sun had fully risen. It was too late to try to just sneak out.

Even though they were so close to the gap in the fence. “That was the first shack we saw when we came in, wasn’t it?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Julia said. “The fence is just a little ways over there.” She pointed at a stand of woods that looked like every other group of trees.

“It is?” Chapel asked. “How can you know that?”

“We came north by northwest when we entered. We’d gone less than a quarter mile when we saw this place.”

Chapel could only stare at her.

“What?” she asked.

“How could you know that?”

She just stood there for a while catching her breath. “Girl Scouts,” she told him. “Orienteering award.”

“You,” he said, “keep surprising me with just how incredible you are.”

“Sweet,” she told him. “Now. How do we do this without getting shot?”

Somewhere nearby someone stepped on a pile of pine needles.

Somebody who wasn’t one of them.

Chapel whirled around — and saw motion between two trees. It still wasn’t light enough for him to see what it was. Maybe an animal. Maybe Samuel.

He put out one hand to signal to Julia that she should stay very still and not speak. She seemed to get the point. Chapel closed his eyes and just listened for a moment. He heard more footsteps, coming closer. Very slowly.

“Damn,” he said, very softly. Mostly to himself. Then, much louder, “I am a federal agent. I am armed, but my weapon will remain in its holster. My companion is a civilian, and she is not armed.”

Julia stared at him like he’d gone crazy — at least, until a few seconds later, when soldiers poured out of the trees and surrounded them.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+49:06

They took away Chapel’s phone, his hands-free set, the scuffed-up phone Samuel had called the Voice, and of course, his pistol. They left him his arm, even after one of the soldiers pulled the glove off his left hand and found what lay beneath. They handcuffed him with his hands behind his back, then forced him at gunpoint through the gap in the fence and into the back of an old M35 truck — a “deuce and a half,” a two-and-a-half-ton truck of the kind the military used all over the world.

What happened to Julia he didn’t get to see. None of the soldiers hit him or mistreated him in any way, so he could only hope they’d extended her the same courtesy.

He did not ask any questions or speak at all except when they demanded he identify himself. He gave them his name, his rank, and his serial number. They didn’t ask for anything else.

He got a good look at their uniforms and saw they were navy — most likely they’d been drawn from the Naval Support Unit at Saratoga Springs. Sailors, then, seamen rather than soldiers. They weren’t SEALs, he could tell that much, but they were well trained and efficient. They carried M4 carbines — but not M4-A1s, which meant they probably weren’t Special Forces.

Observing little details like that helped him keep his cool. Just like Julia had dealt with the horrors of Camp Putnam by falling back on her medical training.

Besides, he had little else to do while he waited to find out what was going to happen to him.

The back of the truck was cold and drafty — it lacked a hard top, instead just having a canvas cover. It smelled like grease and old boots. That was a comforting smell to Chapel — it reminded him of his early days in the army. It also made him think he wasn’t being detained by the CIA.

That was something, anyway. He consoled himself while the truck bounced and rolled over gravel roads, carrying him away from Camp Putnam.

In time the truck stopped and the engine was switched off. Chapel closed his eyes and listened to every sound he could hear. He heard the sailors moving around the truck, heard them click their heels as they saluted someone. He heard other vehicles moving around. And yes — there — the sound of a helicopter’s rotor powering down.

He heard boots crunching on gravel outside the truck. Heard sailors come closer, and he knew they were coming to get him. He had no idea what to expect.

He was unable to keep his jaw from dropping when Rupert Hollingshead jumped up into the back of the truck and stared at him with a cold and angry eye.

NAVAL SUPPORT UNIT SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+50:21

“Admiral,” Chapel said. “Please forgive me for not saluting.”

Hollingshead just glared at him for a while. The DIA director was wearing an immaculate suit with a perfectly folded handkerchief in his breast pocket. His bow tie had a pattern of anchors on it, but otherwise he looked very much the civilian, just as he had the last time Chapel saw him, back at the Pentagon.

He was carrying a stool, a folding three-legged stool that he assembled and set down next to him. Eventually he sat down on it and crossed his legs, his hands gripping one knee. He said nothing, but he kept looking at Chapel, utter disappointment on his face.

The silence between them took on its own life. It made Chapel want to squirm. It made him want to explain himself. He did not do these things.

Eventually it was Hollingshead who broke the silence. “The life of an officer is quite lonely, at times. You see, son, an officer can’t afford to have friends.”

Chapel stayed at attention. He had not been put at ease.

“An officer always has a superior to whom he must report. No friends there, I assure you. Then he has men and women under his command. A good officer will have good people — if they aren’t good people when they are assigned to him, he turns them into good people. That’s what I was taught by my commanders, anyway. He learns to respect them, their hard work, their sacrifice; these things make them special in his eyes. They make him proud, and he comes to, ah, love them, in his very special way, I suppose. But he can’t ever forget he’s responsible for them. That their actions, in a very real, very concrete way, are his actions, and so — when it becomes necessary — when he must — he has to punish them. In accord with their offenses. When they break the rules, you see.”

When Chapel was sixteen he’d been caught, once, sneaking out of a girl’s bedroom window. The man who’d caught him was the girl’s father, who didn’t approve of her seeing Chapel. The girl’s father had been carrying a pistol at the time.

At that particular moment, listening to Hollingshead describe the burdens of leadership, Chapel remembered that long ago summer’s night with exquisite fondness. As scared as he’d been, as ashamed, it wasn’t a patch on this.

“I’d like you to answer some questions, Captain, just so I can sleep better tonight. So I can be content in knowing I did the right thing, here.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Chapel said.

“When Angel relayed to you my direct order that you were not to come to the Catskills, but to instead proceed directly to Denver, was your equipment functional? Your telephone and your — your — hands-free unit, I believe it is called?”

“Sir, yes—”

“Just yes or no, please.”

Chapel bit his lip. “Yes,” he said.

“So you did hear her correctly? The order was received without transmission errors? You understood the order and acknowledged it?”

“Yes.”

Hollingshead nodded. “All right. Let’s try another question. Were you at any time under the impression that Julia Taggart had a security clearance that would allow her to know — oh, anything — about your current mission?”

“No, sir, but—”

“Just yes or no, Captain.”

“No.”

Hollingshead sighed. “So when you interrogated Jeremy Funt, say, or when you spoke with Ellie Pechowski — oh, I heard everything she told you, I’ll be having words with her as well. Oh, my, yes. And let us not forget, when you infiltrated a Department of Defense secure facility with Julia at your side, were you in any way operating under the delusion that Julia had a need to know what you found?”

Chapel supposed he deserved that. What he didn’t deserve was to be spoken to like a child. But he held his tongue. “No,” he said.

“No. No, I don’t suppose you would have been that foolish. You were recommended to me as a man who actually understood secrecy and the importance of national security. I might ask you many more questions, son. I might sit here all day asking them. I might also have you brought up on charges of espionage and treason, which — while perhaps not the best descriptions for the very, very foolish things you’ve done — are the best words I have to describe them. You—”

“Sir. Permission to speak candidly,” Chapel said. Interrupting Hollingshead was insubordination, but compared to espionage and treason it wasn’t much of a crime.

“Oh, but of course, son, I’d never dream of anything else. I so very much want to hear your explanation for what you’ve done.”

Chapel inhaled sharply. “She had no need to know, as we define that term in the intelligence community. But if anyone on earth had a right to know, it was her.”

Hollingshead waited, a patient expression on his face, as if he expected Chapel to say more. Chapel chose not to do so.

“Let’s put her aside for a moment,” the admiral eventually said. “We’ll also put aside the utter naiveté and silliness of your last statement.”

Chapel bit his lip to keep from responding. The shame he felt had kept his anger under wraps until then. It had kept him from even feeling it. But there was a time to just accept that you were being chewed out, that you deserved to be called a fool. And there was a time when that stopped.

He was getting pretty close to that moment.

Hollingshead sighed and continued. “Let’s instead talk about how I failed you. How I made an utter mess of this thing.”

“Sir?”

“I said something to you just before you left the Pentagon. I told you to follow the clues. To figure out what was really going on here.”

“Yes, sir, you did, which is exactly what I’ve been—”

Hollingshead lifted one hand.

Chapel fell silent.

“I meant, you see, and — now this is where it becomes my fault — I meant that you should figure out what the CIA wanted out of all this. Why, say, they were so anxious to handle it themselves. I don’t believe you’ve done much in that regard, other than shooting the toes off a special agent. Instead of the investigation I wished you to complete, you took it upon yourself to dig up the secrets of a very old, very moribund project that it behooves no one — no one at all, son — to know about. About which you certainly have no need to know.”

“My orders were to catch or kill the chimeras, sir. To know how to do that I needed to know what they were,” Chapel said.

Hollingshead’s eyes sparkled.

Which made Chapel think he’d made a mistake.

“Ah! Finally! We have some insight, a little window into the soul of James Chapel and why he chose to do all this. But that doesn’t make it all better. Or does it?”

“No. Sir,” Chapel said, though it made his teeth grind.

“No, no, because you found nothing in the camp. Because, of course, there was nothing to be found but some very old, very sad secrets. You wasted all that time, son. You wasted it for nothing.”

Chapel opened his mouth, but then he closed it again quickly.

Hollingshead didn’t know about Samuel. He didn’t know Samuel was still alive.

It was probably best for Samuel that it remain that way.

But after what Chapel had seen in Camp Putnam — after what he’d learned — he could not remain silent. He had taken a vow to serve his country. To obey his superior officers. But there were times when even that vow had to be broken.

“You’re wrong, sir. I did find something there.”

It was gratifying to see Hollingshead look surprised for once. The man who knew everything, the spider at the center of the web of secrets, looked like he’d been punched in the face. His eyes were very wide as he waited to hear what Chapel said next.

“I found evil,” Chapel said. “What happened in that camp was nothing short of criminal. What was done there — what happened to those boys—”

“Boys who grew up to be killers,” Hollingshead interjected.

But Chapel wouldn’t be derailed. Justice was at stake. “Maybe. Maybe we made them that way. We talk about the chimeras as if they’re monsters. And I won’t deny that they do monstrous things. But they’re still ninety-nine percent human. And I figure that means they should have had the same rights as you and me. But they weren’t given those rights. They were tortured in there, starved, neglected, and abandoned.”

“I won’t speak to this,” Hollingshead sputtered. “And if you’re wise, you’ll—”

“No, sir, I won’t shut up. They were children. And they were tortured. That’s not something that can just stand. Someone’s going to have to pay.”

NAVAL SUPPORT UNIT SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK: APRIL 14, T+50:31

Hollingshead was quiet for a very long time. He took off his glasses and folded them carefully. Put them in a pocket of his vest. Chapel couldn’t read anything in his face or his body language. He couldn’t tell what Hollingshead was about to do.

Not that it mattered. Chapel knew his career was already over. That he’d be lucky not to be arrested and thrown in prison for the rest of his life, after what he’d done.

He didn’t regret a single word he’d said.

“I… see,” Hollingshead said, finally. “Have you… well. I suppose I should ask what you think you’re going to do now. How you intend to attain this hypothetical justice. Are you going to go to the media? Reveal classified information to the public? Write a book about what you’ve seen and go on Larry King to talk about it?”

Chapel frowned. That was one thing he hadn’t considered. Something had to be done. But what? “No, sir, I don’t suppose I will,” he admitted. “I did take an oath not to do that sort of thing.”

“Then… perhaps you’ll try to get justice from within the DIA? File reports with some oversight committee or other, make a nuisance of yourself? Will you write a carefully composed e-mail to the president?”

Chapel felt the wind go right out of him. That was more in line with what he could do. But he also knew that it would achieve exactly nothing. There were people out there who were responsible for Camp Putnam, but they were people in positions of influence, and people like that didn’t respond well to being called out. They would go into damage control mode. Shift blame. Implicate Chapel in the whole thing and make sure he took the fall for what they’d done. It was how any bureaucracy worked.

“No,” Hollingshead said, “I can see it in your eyes. You’re too smart to throw your life away like that, either. If it will accomplish nothing. Well”—he sighed—“son, maybe you should think more on what you’re going to do. But perhaps you can wait on that until you’re done with your assignment.”

“I — sir?” Chapel was deeply confused. Hollingshead couldn’t mean what he’d just implied, could he?

“I’m sending you to Denver, right now,” Hollingshead said. “Come now, Captain. You look honestly surprised.”

“I suppose I didn’t expect that after… what I said,” he tried.

“Oh, Captain, I assure you. I have not yet begun to chew you out, as the men say. This conversation will continue at some future date. But I need you in Denver because there is a chimera there about to try to kill Franklin Hayes. Quite clearly, I have no time to brief or ready anyone else. Director Banks and I agree that what we need, right now, is boots on the ground — not stewing in a cell in some loathsome brig. So you will go to Denver and you will continue the job we assigned you.”

“Sir?” Chapel asked. And he knew it was over. He wasn’t going to get his moment of righteous indignation after all. It burned inside him still, but Hollingshead had moved on. Cut the floor out from under Chapel’s feet and gotten back to what mattered to him.

“There will be a chimera attack in Denver, and it will happen today,” Hollingshead said. His tone told Chapel this was not speculation. “The judge’s security team will not be prepared to defeat it. If you aren’t there, son, loaded for bear and knowing what you know — it will succeed.”

“It… will,” Chapel said. He knew he would not be allowed to know how Hollingshead could be so certain.

“And if that happens, Tom Banks will win.”

“Win,” Chapel said. Because he couldn’t think of what else to say.

He had been mistaken, it seemed. He had been mistaken all along. He’d thought Hollingshead had given him this mission so he could protect the people on the list.

That had been foolish, it seemed. Apparently, to both the CIA and the Pentagon, this was a game.

Hollingshead rose stiffly to his feet, then pulled back the canvas cover at the back of the truck. “Follow me, please,” the admiral said.

Chapel followed him out of the truck and down onto a concrete surface that he thought he recognized. He looked up and saw that he’d been brought to the same airport in the Catskills where he’d landed the night before. Hollingshead’s jet was sitting on the runway, ready to take off. Nearby was the helicopter Chapel had heard — it must have brought Hollingshead here.

A sailor came up to unlock Chapel’s handcuffs. The same sailor returned his phone, his hands-free set, and his sidearm. He checked the action and the magazine and saw it had been cleaned and reloaded for him.

He had begun to suspect that Hollingshead wasn’t on his side. That the admiral was working against him in some nefarious way. He lacked any real proof or any good reason to believe that other than a hunch and a few scraps of half-certain information.

Now this — all this, the guilt trip, the threats of criminal charges, the sudden reversal and reinstatement… was it all part of the deeper game? Was it just a way to make Chapel step back in line?

That was intelligence work for you. It was impossible to ever really know who you could trust.

Hollingshead met Chapel’s eye one last time before sending him away. “You will protect Franklin Hayes to the utmost of your ability,” the admiral said. “When that is done… we will address your future. But for right now, Chapel, I need you — God protect us all.”

Chapel climbed inside the jet, and Chief Petty Officer Andrews closed the hatch.

When she’d finished, the CPO turned to give Chapel a long and questioning look. “I’ve got new orders, now,” she said.

“I know. You’re taking me to Denver.”

She nodded. “And if you try to divert the plane, I’m supposed to shoot you. Are you going to push it, or do you want to sit down and wait until I have the towels heated and your breakfast cooked?”

Chapel hadn’t eaten or slept in quite a while. “I’ll be a good boy,” he said.

She nodded and headed toward the back of the cabin. “It’s almost four hours to Denver from here. Get comfortable.”

Chapel nodded and headed toward one of the seats, intending to sit down and promptly pass out.

Before he could even pick which seat looked the most comfortable, though, one of them swiveled around and Julia jumped out of it, rushing over to put her arms around him.

He was surprised to see her there, to say the least. After what Hollingshead had said to him in the truck, he assumed he would never see her again. “Are you all right?” he asked her.

She nodded, her head against his shoulder. “They asked me a million questions, but nobody beat me with a rubber hose or anything, if that’s what you mean. Then that nice old man — your boss, right? — he told me to get on the plane. He said I was your responsibility now, and you’d have to figure out what to do with me.”

None of this made any sense, Chapel thought. Not a bit.

He knew he was glad to see her, though. He lifted his hand to stroke her back.

And just like that the moment between them was over. She pushed him away, and when he looked in her face again, he saw she had recovered herself, that she was back to their professional relationship.

But for a second there, when she’d first seen him, there’d been something more. She had looked to him for something not professional at all — comfort. She must have been terrified when the navy men interrogated her. She must have wondered if she would ever see daylight again. So when she saw Chapel, she’d known that she was going to be okay, and she had run to him in relief. Maybe that was all there was to it. But maybe…

He shook his head and forced himself not to think stupid thoughts.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+51:07

Julia was exhausted enough that she fell asleep soon after they took off, but Chapel still had some work to do. He would try to take a nap before they landed in Denver — his body was certainly ready for it — but he needed at least some information on what he was getting himself into.

So he plugged the hands-free set into his ear.

“Angel,” he said, “are you online?”

“I’m here, Captain,” she said.

Chapel closed his eyes. This wasn’t going to be fun. “So it’s Captain, now. Not sweetie, or sugar?”

“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve gotten me in?” Angel asked. She didn’t sound particularly angry, though. More concerned.

“I’m sorry, Angel. I truly am.”

“Apparently — and I have this from on high — I’ll be listed as a conspirator when they charge you for espionage. That means I could face the same penalty you do. Do you know what the penalty is for espionage?”

“All too well. Listen, Angel, it won’t come to that. Conspiracy charges are just a way to get accomplices to provide information on the principal in any investigation. Which means if you tell them everything, they’ll let you off.”

“You mean, if I throw you under the bus.”

“It’s not a betrayal if I tell you it’s okay,” Chapel said. “I don’t want you to suffer because I made some bad decisions.”

Angel sounded a little less upset, but she still didn’t call him sweetie. “Okay, okay, enough. We can have a blame party later,” Angel said. “Tell me what you need now. And I’ll let you know if you’re approved for it.”

“I just need to know about Franklin Hayes. Is he still alive, at least?”

“Yes. And just as ornery as ever. He’s been calling me constantly, or at least his office has, demanding updates on when you’re going to arrive. Right now I have you down for landing in Denver about half past eleven, local time.”

“What about the chimera?” Quinn, he thought, it’s Quinn who will be there.

“He might already be in Denver. By the time you land, he’ll have more than a five-hour head start on you.”

That wasn’t good. But it was encouraging to know that Quinn hadn’t already struck. “What do you know about security on-site?”

“It’s pretty solid. Judge Hayes is surrounded by Colorado Highway Patrol officers. That’s the closest thing they have to a state police force. He has some private bodyguards as well. I’ve seen their dossiers. They’ve all got security clearances, though nothing near what they would need to be told what’s coming for the judge. They’re all former Blackwater or Halliburton guys. Most of them were civilian contractors in Iraq.”

Private security. Civilian contractors. Mercenaries, to give them their proper name. Chapel had met plenty of those in Afghanistan and had never had a high opinion of them — they weren’t military but liked pretending they were. Well, at least they’d be likely to know how to shoot straight.

Not, apparently, that it would matter. Hollingshead had been clear on that — the judge’s security team wouldn’t be enough. “Are they ready for me to take over when I arrive?”

“Not quite. A man named Reinhard is the head of security there, one of the private bodyguards. He sent me an itinerary. Once you reach Denver and meet with the judge, they’re going to move him to a safehouse somewhere outside of the city. He’ll turn over all authority to you once Hayes is installed there.”

“Huh,” Chapel said. “That’s a weird move. He’ll be vulnerable during the transfer. The chimera could attack his car.”

“I worried about that, too. Especially since we know somebody is telling the chimeras where their targets are. I haven’t forgotten what happened at Stone Mountain. That probably explains why they won’t tell me the location of this safehouse.”

Chapel’s eyes went wide. “So I can’t know in advance where I’ll be protecting the judge.” He shook his head. “This has catastrophe written all over it.”

And he was going to be the man who took the blame if it went wrong.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+52:10

Chapel sighed and sank back into his chair. “I need to know about Franklin Hayes. He’s a federal judge, I know that much. He’s supposed to become the next Supreme Court justice as well. Beyond that, what’s his story?”

“He worked for the CIA, you already know that,” Angel replied. “He became a judge in 1994 in Denver — he was appointed by the mayor of Denver to oversee a county court. In that position he would mostly have heard cases relating to traffic citations and misdemeanors. It’s not a very glamorous position, but it was a stepping-stone for him, a way into the judiciary. He worked his way up to the Colorado Supreme Court by 2003, and then switched over to his current position as a federal judge. As for becoming a Supreme Court justice, I’m not sure he’ll make it.”

“No?” Chapel asked. “Every time they talk about him on CNN or Fox News it sounds like he’s a shoo-in.”

“The president’s appointment went through just fine, and the judge’s record is squeaky clean. But he still has to get past the Senate, and given the political situation right now, he’s facing a pretty tough confirmation hearing.”

“He’s some kind of activist judge?” Chapel asked. “Or is it the other side that doesn’t like him — is he rabidly antiabortion or something?”

Angel worked her keyboard for a while. “Nothing like that, nothing that simple. He’s a pretty solid moderate when it comes to politics — which is a tough thing to be in these partisan times. It takes a really slick judge to avoid ruffling everybody’s feathers, but Hayes has managed to avoid the usual pitfalls. Except once. His Achilles’ heel is a single motion he ruled on in 2002. It was a domestic terrorism case. The guy in question set fire to a federal building, and three people inside burned to death. The federal government wanted him remanded to the custody of the Justice Department — they wanted to interrogate him and find out who he had worked with. Hayes threw out the request on a minor technicality. The terrorist stayed in a state prison, served out his term, and was released seven years later.”

“He did that in 2002?” Chapel frowned. “Back then everyone in the country was still pretty gung ho about anything that even resembled terrorism. It must have been an unpopular decision.”

“Worse still, Hayes refused to explain why he did it.”

Chapel sat up straight. There was something in her tone that had got his attention. “You think you know, though, don’t you?”

“It could just be a coincidence. There’s nothing like real evidence here. But during the hearing, the terrorist claimed he should be set free because he’d been given his orders by the CIA. Obviously, at the time people thought he was crazy.”

“That is an interesting coincidence,” Chapel agreed.

“It was just a minor scandal at the time, but now it’s coming back to bite him. There are senators on both sides of the aisle who are muttering that Hayes is soft on terrorism.”

“So you think the Senate will refuse to confirm him to the Supreme Court?” Chapel asked.

Angel clucked her tongue. “I’m not an expert, Chapel. That’s just my opinion. But a lot of pundits are starting to suggest it. He looked great when he was first nominated, but now the buzz is against him. And the current problem, the chimera problem, isn’t helping him any.”

“What on earth does that have to do with his confirmation?”

“Supreme Court nominees don’t just sit back and wait to hear if they’ve been accepted or not. They lobby hard to get the votes they need like any other kind of politician. Hayes has a PAC working for him in Washington. He’s supposed to be there right now meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but instead he’s locked up in his offices in his courthouse.”

“No wonder he got so angry with me,” Chapel said.

“He’s not a good guy to mess with,” Angel told him. “He’s connected, at every level. I mean, the president likes him. They know each other personally. And clearly he’s still connected to the CIA through Director Banks. Even just as a federal judge he has a lot of power to ruin your life if he wants to. Chapel, when you meet this guy, if I were you I would lick his boots. No, wait, he might not like that. You should ask him if you’re allowed to lick his boots.”

“Maybe I’ll just try saving his life,” Chapel suggested. “See how he likes that.”

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+54:13

Chapel did finally manage to get some sleep, after that. He put his head back on the seat and pulled a blanket over himself and he was out like a light.

But he must have dreamed.

He would never remember the dream. But he would remember waking up with one fact firmly in his mind, one thing that had nearly escaped his conscious mind, but which his subconscious mind had carefully filed away.

“Ellie,” he said, as his eyes opened.

Admiral Hollingshead had chastised Chapel for going to talk to Eleanor Pechowski. Except he hadn’t called her that. He’d called her Ellie Pechowski.

She’d told Chapel to call her Ellie when he met her. Probably she said that to everyone who met her. Which meant Rupert Hollingshead knew Ellie, had at least made her acquaintance.

Maybe they were even friends. Chapel had wondered why she was allowed to remain at large, knowing what she knew. Having as much exposure to the virus as she must have had. Hollingshead must have been protecting her this whole time.

She had told Chapel something else, as well. She’d told him she’d been originally hired to work at Camp Putnam by a man in a uniform. A captain in a navy uniform.

“Did you say something, Chapel?”

It was Angel’s voice in his ear.

“Angel,” he said, “can you tell me something about Admiral Hollingshead? Nothing secret. Just — when was he promoted to admiral?”

“I doubt he’d want me answering that,” she said, “but… you could just Google it yourself, so, okay.” She worked her keyboard for a moment. “It was after Operation Desert Storm, in 1991.”

Ellie had been recruited in 1990. Back then Hollingshead would have been a captain. In the navy.

“Okay,” Chapel said. “Thanks.”

He settled back into the seat and closed his eyes again.

In his head the pieces fit together, revealing more of the picture.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+55:21

The plane set down at Denver International Airport and before it had even finished taxiing to the terminal, cars were already moving on the tarmac, headed to meet them. There were three cars, all black late-model sedans with tinted windows. Anybody who saw them would know instantly they were full of security for some VIP.

When the cars reached the plane, a trio of men in black suits and sunglasses poured out and took up defensive positions surrounding the cars. Each of them carried a shotgun in plain sight. They made a good show of tapping their ears and calling out status updates to each other.

“They’re not bothering with a low profile,” Chapel said, as he and Julia watched the convoy approach. “That’s probably a mistake. A chimera on his own might not know what all this signifies. But the Voice will.”

“You think that Quinn will attack during the transfer,” Julia said, because he’d filled her in on what he’d learned of Hayes’s itinerary.

“I would, if I were trying to kill him. It’s when he’s most at risk. But there are ways of avoiding that — or even using this kind of display to our advantage. We could put the judge in a nondescript car, let Quinn attack the security detail and then have the judge’s car speed away in the middle of things.” Chapel threw up his hands. “But it’s not up to me. I don’t take charge of security until we reach this undisclosed location. I can’t give any orders until then, so I’ll just have to play this straight.”

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” Julia said.

“Ah.” Chapel turned away from the window and looked at her face. “About that.”

Julia sighed. “You’re not taking me with you, are you?”

Chapel tried to pick his words very carefully, this time. “No. I want you to stay here, on the plane. So you can be ready to get out of here at a moment’s notice. Chief Petty Officer Andrews is armed. I’ve already spoken with her, before you woke up. She knows that the CIA may attempt to get at you. Her orders are to try to get the plane out of here before they arrive — or to defend the aircraft if anyone tries to board it.”

“Chapel—”

“You’ll be safe here. This plane looks like a normal corporate jet, but it’s actually been uparmored. It’s designed to resist small-arms fire. I know that every time we separate something bad happens, but—”

“Chapel, okay! I get it. You can’t take me with you this time.”

“It would be kind of hard to explain to the judge what you’re doing here. I can’t really pass you off as my secretary.”

Julia rolled her eyes. “I said I get it. I’ll stay here.”

“You don’t seem very happy about it,” he pointed out. He’d expected that, of course. “I know you don’t like being left in the dark. The last time I left you behind… I can only say I’m sorry about that. I promise this time is different.”

“It’s not that,” Julia said.

“No?”

“No.” She reached over and put a hand on his cheek. That he hadn’t expected at all. “It’s not that at all.”

“What happened to our professional arrangement?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

“Chapel, for a guy whose job is to keep secrets, sometimes you don’t know when to shut up,” she said. He saw in her eyes then that she was upset, definitely — but for once she was not upset with him.

“What’s going on?” he asked, softly.

“It’s what I see in your eyes. You’re leaving me here because you don’t expect to come back, yourself.” She looked down at her lap. “You think you’re going to die here.”

“It’s not like I want to,” he tried.

She pressed her face against his chest. “You could just say no. You could quit. You could tell them all to fuck themselves and then run away. We could run away.”

Chapel stroked her hair. For a while he just held her.

Then he whispered, “No. No, I can’t.”

That wasn’t who he was.

She nodded against his chest. “Chapel. You go do what you have to do. When you’re done, I’ll be here, waiting for you so we can fly off on our next big adventure. Okay? I’ll be right here.”

They waited together in silence while CPO Andrews opened the hatch and readied the debarkation stairs.

DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, COLORADO: APRIL 14, T+55:36

One of the black-suited men was waiting for Chapel when he came down the jet’s stairs. The security guard did not offer to shake his hand. “Captain Chapel,” he said, in a flat voice, “welcome to Denver. We’re to take you directly to His Honor.”

“Sure,” Chapel said. “He’s at the courthouse, right?”

“My instructions are to take you to him,” the guard said.

“Are you Reinhard?” Chapel asked.

“I’m just here to take you to him,” the guard repeated.

“Fine.” Chapel walked over to the nearest car. The guard at least held the door for him. “You’ve been given orders not to answer any questions, right?”

“I’ve been given orders to escort you to His Honor,” the guard told him.

After that Chapel kept his mouth shut.

The three cars headed out of the airport and up a major highway toward the city. Outside the airport, broad fields cut by irrigation ditches lay yellow and bedraggled in the sun. The sky was huge. Chapel had been out west before, and should have known to expect it, but still it was always a surprise. The flat land of the prairies meant you could see for miles in every direction, and that made the sky just look bigger than it did back east.

The effect wasn’t diminished much even when the cars rolled through a zone of strip malls and old box stores, auto parts warehouses and colossal Laundromats, all of them looking dusty and worn. This part of Denver had no trees, just broad roads laid out in a perfectly square grid. The car rolled down Colfax Avenue, through a zone of strip clubs and bars, and soon enough Chapel could see the city’s handful of skyscrapers sticking up from the flat ground ahead of them.

At the courthouse the cars pulled into an underground lot, and Chapel blinked as they left the sun behind. Someone opened Chapel’s door, and he stepped out onto concrete that stank of old motor oil.

“This way,” the security guard said. He wore his sunglasses even indoors.

Chapel was ushered up an elevator and through a small office where a dozen State Highway Patrol troopers were drinking coffee and talking about football. This must be the security detail he was supposed to take over, but none of them would even meet his eye. His black-suited escort didn’t let him linger in that office but directed him through and into a larger office beyond.

Judge Franklin Hayes was waiting there for him, looking almost exactly as he had when he’d broken into Angel’s line to demand Chapel’s presence. The judge hadn’t shaved in a day or so and steel-colored stubble had broken out on his cheeks. He looked just as angry as he had when they’d spoken.

“Took you long enough,” Hayes said.

DENVER, COLORADO: APRIL 14, T+57:01

Hayes steepled his fingers in front of him and glared at Chapel. “You’re seven hours late, Captain.” He turned to his security guard. “This is Reinhard, my head of security. He’s been in charge here since you refused to come earlier.”

Reinhard was a big guy, broad through the shoulders like a linebacker, though not much taller than Chapel. He had a crew cut and a strong jaw, but his eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses. Even without seeing his eyes, though, Chapel could tell the man was giving him the once-over.

“Doesn’t look like much,” Reinhard said.

Hayes chuckled. “Oh, Chapel’s got his qualifications. Director Banks was happy to send them along. He’s a war hero, Reinhard. Lost his arm in Afghanistan, fighting for your freedom.”

“A cripple, then,” Reinhard said.

“All the best military training. He served with the Army Rangers, that’s quite an elite force,” Hayes went on, smiling. The judge had the look of a career politician. He’d probably had acting lessons to be able to look so jovial and friendly. But his eyes gave him away. They were like chips of glass in his face. Hard and cold. “Of course, that was several years ago.”

“He does look pretty old,” Reinhard agreed.

“Come, come. He’s had plenty of time to mature and gain wisdom, let’s say.” Hayes put his hands down on the desk. “Plenty of time for that. He hasn’t seen much field service since he lost his arm, of course…”

“So they sent you a desk jockey,” Reinhard grunted. “Huh.”

“Are you suggesting he isn’t the best man for the job?” Hayes asked, a look of fake shock creasing his face. “Are you suggesting they could have sent someone better?”

“Maybe one of the rent-a-cops who works over at the mall,” Reinhard said.

Chapel fumed in silence.

He understood this game. He knew what Hayes wanted to get across but was too slick to say outright. The judge hadn’t gotten as far in his career as he had without knowing how to lay on a good line of bullshit, but still make himself understood.

He was saying he didn’t trust Chapel. He was also saying he did trust Reinhard, his own man, and that he wanted to keep Reinhard in charge and let Chapel play second fiddle here.

Time to fix that.

“Your Honor,” he said, “you’ll want to move to your left.”

Hayes didn’t have time to ask why before Chapel’s pistol was out, held tight in his right hand and pointed at Reinhard’s throat. The security guard was smart enough to keep his hands visible and not flinch.

“Take off your sunglasses,” Chapel said.

“I’ll be damned if—”

“Take them off now,” Chapel insisted, using his best officer voice.

Hayes scooted to the left in his rolling chair.

Slowly, using both hands, Reinhard reached up and took off his sunglasses. His eyes were a cold blue. They narrowed as he stared at Chapel. “You just bought yourself some trouble,” he said. “And you were already fully stocked.”

“Shut up,” Chapel told him.

A lamp with a brass shade sat on Hayes’s desk. Chapel grabbed it and shone the light directly in Reinhard’s eyes.

“—the fuck,” Reinhard said, squinting, turning his face away from the light.

“Okay. He’s clean,” Chapel said, and put the lamp back on the desk. “Reinhard, you go outside and find your men. Tell every one of them to remove his sunglasses and keep them off. Nobody’s wearing sunglasses today. You got it?”

“Why the hell should I—”

“The judge knows why,” Chapel said.

Reinhard turned to look at Hayes, who just nodded. The security guard shook his head in disgust and stormed out of the office.

Chapel holstered his weapon, then went over to close the door.

“Huh,” Hayes said. “I hadn’t thought of that. If he was a chimera, his nictitating membranes would have closed, by reflex.”

Chapel nodded.

“I’ve known Reinhard for years,” Hayes pointed out. “You think I’m dumb enough to let one of the monsters join my team?”

Chapel inhaled sharply through his nose. “I haven’t made up my mind yet how dumb you are,” he said.

Hayes’s face started to turn red, but Chapel wasn’t about to let him talk. He would just spout more insults or threats, and that wasn’t getting them anywhere.

“I’m here to do one job, which is to keep you alive,” Chapel pointed out. “Sometimes you may want to doubt my methods or to question my orders. Don’t. I’ve taken down two chimeras in the last two days. I know how it’s done. Reinhard clearly doesn’t even know what they are. He doesn’t know what to expect. He doesn’t know how dangerous they really are.”

“He knows how to shoot,” Hayes said.

“No. No, he doesn’t. Not this time. I don’t know where he got his training — if he’s ex-military or he just took a six-week correspondence course out of the back of Guns and Ammo. It doesn’t matter. Whoever taught him to shoot told him to always aim for center mass. That doesn’t work with chimeras. They have reinforced rib cages. You can put six slugs in a chimera, right over his heart, and it won’t even slow him down. You have to aim for the face. Their skulls are just like ours.”

Hayes opened his mouth. He looked like he was going to say something nasty. But then he closed it again and just nodded.

“Okay,” the judge said. “We’ve got a little time before the convoy is ready to move out. Why don’t you have a seat, so we can talk?”

DENVER, COLORADO: APRIL 14, T+57:12

“First off, let’s talk about why I’m here. The chimeras,” Chapel said. He kept one eye on the window. It was unlikely that Quinn would climb up the side of the courthouse to get to the office, but you never knew. “I’m sorry I’m late getting here. But I wasn’t wasting that time. I’ve learned a great deal about them in the last two days.”

“Oh?” Hayes asked.

“I don’t know how much you’re cleared to know,” Chapel said. “But you do need to know what’s coming for you. It’s a chimera named Quinn. He’s supposed to be the strongest of them, and one of the most vicious.”

Hayes turned around and got a bottle of bourbon out of a sideboard. He offered Chapel a glass, but he turned it down. “Maybe I don’t want to know some of this,” he said, pouring himself a healthy drink. His tough guy act had evaporated like summer rain on a hot sidewalk. Interesting.

Chapel shook his head. “I’m not trying to scare you. But you need to understand how serious this is. The chimeras were given a list of victims. A kill list. For the most part they were allowed to choose their own targets. But this Quinn was given specific orders to come here. For you.”

“Okay,” Hayes said. He sipped at his liquor. “Okay, but — why?”

“That’s exactly what I’d like to know.” Chapel sighed. “Some of the names on the list make sense. The scientists who created the chimeras are there. People who worked at Camp Putnam. I notice you aren’t asking a lot of questions here. You know about Camp Putnam.”

Hayes set his glass down. “Tom Banks is a personal friend of mine,” he said, meeting Chapel’s eye. “He gave me a briefing. One I’m definitely not cleared for. But he agreed with you — I needed to know.”

Chapel nodded. He’d assumed as much, though he’d hoped there was another reason Hayes knew so much about the chimeras. “Some of the names on the list don’t make any sense at all. There are three people on that list who couldn’t possibly have been involved in the project. People with no connection to Camp Putnam. And then there’s you.”

“Me?” Hayes said. “I’ve never been to that place.”

Chapel shrugged. “Your link to the chimeras seems pretty tangential. But it’s real. You worked for the CIA at one point. You did yearly debriefings of people the agency wanted to keep an eye on. Specifically, you debriefed William Taggart and Helen Bryant.”

Hayes blinked rapidly. “Sure. They were a couple of scientists. Biologists, I think. A little creepy, as I recall. I always assumed they worked in germ warfare.”

“You debriefed them but you didn’t know why they were being checked up on?”

Hayes frowned. “That was common practice back then. CIA practice. Everything was cutouts; nobody knew anybody else’s business. That’s why they got a lawyer to do the debriefings in the first place. I wasn’t privy to anything truly sensitive, so they could trust me not to give away any secrets by accident.”

That jibed with what Chapel knew of the CIA and its culture of compartmentalized information, but he was still surprised. “How did you even know what to ask them?”

“I had a script,” Hayes said. “ ‘In the last year, have you met with or spoken by telephone with anyone who identified themselves as an official of a foreign nation? Has anyone you don’t know approached you in a social situation and asked questions you felt uncomfortable answering?’ That kind of stuff. It was really just a checklist — they would say no to every question, I would make marks on a form, and then I would go home. I debriefed a lot of people. Scientists, defectors, former radicals who claimed to have gone straight. It was just part of my job.”

Chapel nodded. That wasn’t helpful at all — he’d really hoped Hayes might have known something about Taggart and Bryant that he didn’t — but at least it was one small mystery cleared up. There was another one, though. “You were also counsel when Christina Smollett sued the CIA.”

“Who?”

Chapel gritted his teeth. “A mentally ill woman in New York City. The suit was probably brought by her parents. She claimed the CIA was sending people into her bedroom at night to sexually assault her.”

Hayes made a disgusted face. “There were always cases like that. I hated them. Those people were obviously suffering, but it wasn’t our fault. It was my job to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Preferably without spending any money.”

“You don’t remember this case in particular?” Chapel asked.

“No. I could go through my old files,” he offered.

Chapel held up a hand. “No need.”

“Why her?” Hayes asked. “Why did you bring her up?”

Chapel leaned to the side and tilted his head a little to the left. Was there sweat on Hayes’s forehead? Just a trace. Not enough he would even notice it. And his pupils were a little dilated, Chapel decided.

Interesting.

Extremely interesting.

“Her name came up in one of my investigations, but it’s probably nothing,” Chapel said. No point in telling the judge that Christina Smollett was on the kill list.

Not when Hayes was lying to him about not knowing who she was.

Hayes was a good liar. He’d been a lawyer, once, so it made sense — he’d been trained how to keep his cards close to his vest. But Chapel had been trained in military interrogation techniques. He could spot the telltales. He knew when someone was withholding facts from him.

Hayes knew exactly who Christina Smollett was, Chapel was sure of it. And he knew why she was on the list.

DENVER, COLORADO: APRIL 14, T+57:36

“All right, let’s move on,” Chapel said, because he knew better than to push — if he started demanding information now, Hayes would just shut down and refuse to talk at all. There might be time to ask more questions later. “Talk to me about this itinerary. I understand you plan to move to a different location. Somewhere I’m not allowed to know about until we get there.”

“I’ve already seen that your systems can be hacked,” Hayes told him. “And Tom — Director Banks — told me that whoever released the chimeras has access to military technology. Apparently they used a Predator drone to break open Camp Putnam.”

Chapel hadn’t known that. He filed it away for later review. Right now he had to focus on keeping Hayes alive.

“I think it’s a bad move to change locations now. You’ll never be more vulnerable than when you’re in transit.”

“Whoever is giving the chimeras their instructions already knows I’m here. What they don’t know is the new location.”

“Which is?” Chapel asked.

Hayes surprised him by actually telling him. “I have a house up in the foothills of the Rockies. A little place outside of Boulder.”

“Is it secure? Can it be secured?”

“It’s six acres of land, mostly forested. All of it fenced. There’s one private road leading to it so we don’t have to worry about traffic. It’s hard to find if you don’t know where to look, and it’s not listed under my name — technically it belongs to my ex-wife, but she’s in Washington State now and won’t be dropping by.”

So, Chapel thought, it’s distant from the local police, and if they needed help it would be a long time coming. One road leading in meant only one escape route if they needed to flee. Forested land was Quinn’s favored terrain — it was where he’d grown up. Add to that the usual problems of a rural location: spotty cellular coverage (if any), frequent power outages, and it would be pitch-dark at night.

But Hayes did have a point. The Voice, the author of the kill list, wouldn’t know where they were going. And he’d been right to keep the information from Chapel as well — the last thing they needed was a repeat of Stone Mountain.

“Okay. We’ll leave tonight, about two in the morning—”

“The convoy is gathering right now,” Hayes said. “Reinhard has overseen everything. We’ll leave as soon as the lunchtime rush hour is over.”

Chapel sat back in his chair. He had pushed Hayes hard enough already. Maybe it was time to ease up a bit. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to try reasoning with him. “It would be safer at night. I’d also like to get you in a nondescript car. The black sedans your people use will make good decoys, but if you’re in a different car, then even if Quinn attacks during the transfer you’ll be safe.”

“I’m taking my limousine,” Hayes said, in a voice that wouldn’t brook disagreement.

Chapel sighed. “I’ve been trained in how to do this,” he said.

“So has Reinhard.”

Chapel shook his head. “I was flippant about it before, but really, whoever trained him had no idea what this situation was going to be like.”

“I’ve known Reinhard for nearly ten years,” Hayes said. “I trust him. He’s kept me safe through riots and protests and death threats from some of the most hardened criminals in Colorado. You, Captain Chapel, I’ve known in person for less than an hour. When we get to the house, he’ll accept your command. You can see to security there as you please. But right now I’m putting my life in his hands.”

“Okay,” Chapel said. “At least let me oversee the embarkation. The absolute most dangerous time is when you move from this office to your vehicle. I’ll feel better if I’m watching you while you make that switch.”

“As you wish,” Hayes said.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+58:39

Chapel managed to get the judge into his limo and moving out without incident. If Quinn was nearby, he didn’t show himself. Chapel supposed that was the best he could hope for, at the moment. The sedans, several troopers on motorcycles, and a highway patrol vehicle formed up in a loose convoy, headed north.

Hollingshead had said it wouldn’t be enough. Hollingshead had been certain of that.

Chapel rode with one of the troopers, in the patrol cruiser, at the back of the convoy. Out on the road, under the big western sky, an attack could come from any direction. He strained his neck trying to look every way at once.

The mountains off to the west were wrapped in the green majesty of heavy pine growth, dappled here and there by the shadows of clouds that streamed across the big sky as fast as trailing smoke. It was a spectacle that might have taken Chapel’s breath away any other time.

“Are we likely to hit much traffic?” Chapel asked his driver, a grizzled old state trooper named Young.

She shrugged. “Could be. The road to Boulder is pretty heavily traveled all times of day. I’ve had no reports of congestion so far, but if there’s an accident… well, these roads really weren’t meant for all the people on ’em. There’s four million people in the entire state of Colorado, and two million of ’em live in this corridor, between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs.”

“Great,” Chapel said. He watched civilian vehicles go whizzing by on his left. They were moving fast enough he couldn’t get a good look inside any of them. Quinn wouldn’t know how to drive, himself, but the chimera in New York had proven how easy it was for one of them to commandeer a vehicle.

If Quinn was coming from the north, headed toward them, it would be easy enough to veer into oncoming traffic and ram the limo. Even a chimera would know the long car was where the judge would be. At highway speeds, that kind of collision might kill the judge outright.

Chapel touched the hands-free unit in his ear. “Is the judge wearing a seat belt?” he asked.

“No, he is not,” Reinhard called back. “Keep this channel clear, Captain. My men might need it in an emergency.”

Chapel shook his head. There was something wrong here. Reinhard was acting like this was just a Sunday drive and Chapel’s paranoia was irritating him, rather than reassuring him like it should.

“Get the judge belted in. If someone rams the limo, he’ll go bouncing around in there like a pebble in a tin can, otherwise. And keep that screen of motorcycles tight in his front left quadrant.”

“We’re doing good, Captain. I want this channel clear. If you have any more suggestions, keep them to yourself.”

Chapel watched a civilian car try to overtake them. A motorcycle drifted out to their right to block its advance. The civilian honked his horn but eventually got the point.

“If it’s any consolation, I think you were right,” Young said.

Chapel glanced across at the driver. “About what?”

“About the seat belt. You know how many people we have to scoop out of wrecks every year? That’s half our job in the summer,” Young said. “If people would actually wear those belts, a lot of them would survive.”

“Colorado doesn’t have a mandatory seat belt law?” Chapel asked.

“Well now, we do, but we can’t pull you over unless there’s some other reason,” Young told him. “Unless you’re under seventeen, we don’t even make you wear a helmet when you’re riding a motorcycle.”

“I guess things are a little different out west,” Chapel said.

“Sure are. We all think of ourselves as having a little cowboy in our souls, still. So we don’t much like the government treating us like children who have to be told what to do.” Young clucked her tongue. “Does make you think twice, though, when you get a report of some family of vacationers in a crashed car, and all you find is raspberry jelly all over the dashboard.”

Chapel laughed, despite himself. “That’s gruesome, Young. Truly gruesome.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess that’s what we call dark humor. Helps us get through our job. You know. You ever want to see gruesome for real, you come out for a ride along with me up in the mountains.”

“If I ever decide that yes, I want to see gruesome for real, I’ll do just that,” Chapel told her. He turned his head and saw one of the sedans full of Reinhard’s goons just ahead of him and to one side. “What about those?” he asked. “Tinted windshields. I thought those were illegal, too.”

“It’s a kind of iffy thing. You’re allowed to tint them down to twenty-seven percent, which means twenty-seven percent of available light gets through. I’d say those sedans are pushing the limit.”

“Only twenty-seven percent of available light? That’s ridiculous,” Chapel said. “How can they expect to see anything? They’re missing three-quarters of their visual perimeter like that.”

“I have a feeling, now, that Mister Reinhard figures, if you can’t see in, you can’t tell who’s in the car. So you can’t tell which car the judge is in.”

“Unless you notice that one of the cars is a limo, and the rest are sedans,” Chapel pointed out.

“That is what we might call, in my line of work, a clue,” Young agreed.

Chapel touched his hands-free unit. “Reinhard, your people can’t see anything through those tinted windows.”

“Captain Chapel? I told you to keep your thoughts to yourself,” Reinhard replied.

“Have them roll down their windows. It’ll be windy but they’ll survive,” Chapel ordered.

“Those windows are bulletproof, Captain. They’re up for a reason.”

Chapel grimaced. “Our guy isn’t a shooter. That’s not his style. Roll down the damned windows.”

“Chapel, I swear, if you don’t clear this—”

Reinhard’s transmission cut off in midsentence. At first Chapel thought something had gone wrong, that Quinn had somehow disrupted their communications, but then he realized Reinhard had just muted his microphone, presumably so he could talk to the judge.

“All right, Chapel,” Reinhard said, after a while. “The judge says I have to play nice with you. I’ll make you a deal. If I have them roll down their windows, will you promise to stay off this channel?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Chapel said.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Reinhard replied.

Young laughed. “That boy does not like you, he surely does not,” she said. “You’d think the two of you might get along, being in the same line of work.”

“Oil and water are both liquids, but they won’t mix,” Chapel pointed out. He craned his head around, watching all the sedans. One by one they started lowering their windows and he could see the black-suited security guards inside. The guards blinked and squinted as the pure mountain sunlight hit their eyes.

“Tell the truth, now. Did you do that just to annoy ’em all?” Young asked.

“I think I’d like to have my lawyer present before I answer that—”

Chapel stopped talking, then.

“Something wrong?” Young asked.

“Yeah,” Chapel said.

One of the security guards, up in a sedan just ahead of Young’s car, didn’t squint or blink in the sun. No, he didn’t need to.

His third, black eyelid just slid down to protect his eyes.

Quinn had been with them the whole time.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+58:51

“Angel? Angel, can you hear me?” Chapel called. There was no response. “Angel, come in! I need you to patch me through to the walkie-talkie system Reinhard’s people are using. Angel!”

Trooper Young glanced over at him. “Maybe we’re just out of cell range. Reception is still kind of spotty out here,” she suggested.

“Maybe,” Chapel said. Though he’d assumed that Angel’s signal was carried by the satellite network, not by cell towers. She’d reached him in all kinds of strange places.

He tried the leader of the security guards. “Reinhard, come in. Reinhard — the assassin is riding in car three!” There was no response. Just as there hadn’t been since he’d first called the man. “Damn it, Reinhard — I know you can hear me!” The head security guard wasn’t responding. Maybe he’d been serious about clearing Chapel off his radio frequency. Maybe he’d turned off his walkie-talkie.

The timing suggested that was more than a coincidence.

He grabbed the handset of the radio unit built into the car’s dashboard. He tried to raise anyone and heard only static in response.

“That can’t be right,” Young said. “I ran a radio check not ten minutes before we left the courthouse. It was working just fine.”

“Somebody’s jamming it,” Chapel said. It was the only thing that made sense. Except it made no sense at all. “We have to let them know. There has to be some way to communicate with them.” Two of the sedans were way up ahead, one in front and one in back of the limo. Car three, with Quinn in its backseat, was just ahead of Young’s car, which was trailing at the back of the convoy. “Short of yelling at them—”

“There’s a thought,” Young said. Chapel looked at her, having no idea what she meant. She laughed and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. “I guess I’ve been doing this longer than you. I remember back before we had cell phones, before we had wireless Internet, before—”

“Young? What are you talking about?”

“Just hold on,” she said, and floored the accelerator.

The patrol cruiser shot forward, swerving to narrowly miss the rear bumper of car three. The sedan made way for them, though the driver flashed his lights and honked his horn. Young ignored him. “There’s a pen and paper in the door pocket by your right hand,” she told him. “Write a message, quick.”

Chapel scrabbled for the items — a ballpoint and a citation book. He scrawled out the words ASSASSIN IN CAR THREE CALL REINHARD while Young pulled up alongside car two, directly behind the limo.

“Here, give me it,” Young said, and grabbed the citation book. She flicked her siren on and off until the guard in the passenger seat of car two looked over in their direction. She held the citation book up to her window. “Is he looking?”

“Yeah,” Chapel said, watching the passenger’s face. “Yeah, I think he’s got it. He’s shouting something but I can’t hear him.”

Young rolled down her window. Air burst into the car, ruffling the pages of the citation book.

“I said,” the passenger shouted, “are you nuts?”

Chapel grimaced in frustration.

“Our radio is out,” Young shouted back.

The passenger in car two rolled up his tinted window.

“I don’t think they’re taking us serious,” Young said. Her face was impassive, but Chapel knew she must be thinking the same thing he was.

They were a guard detail for a man who had been targeted by an implacable assassin. They might doubt what Chapel had to say. They might think he was trying to sabotage the detail. But there was no excuse for not being cautious and heeding what he said.

“We have to assume a few things,” Chapel told her, picking his words carefully. “We have to assume they have orders not to listen to us.”

“I’ll go that far,” Young replied.

“We have to assume they’re not going to take any action,” he went on.

“That’s what I’m seeing,” she said.

Chapel nodded. He had a couple more assumptions he wasn’t going to say out loud. He had to assume that Reinhard — and his entire security crew — already knew that Quinn was in car three, and that they were on his side. On the side of the Voice and the chimeras. They were in on the assassination plot.

Chapel also had to assume that Young wasn’t in on it, too. If she was, this was going to be over very quickly.

“The judge is in danger,” Chapel said.

“Yep.”

“Are we going to do something about that?” he asked.

“We sure as hell are.” Young flipped on her lights and sirens and stamped on the brakes.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+58:59

The sedans — cars two and three — shot past the cruiser as Young maneuvered them back to the rear of the convoy again, straddling the two lanes. Chapel saw her plan immediately — she was leaving the right lane open so car three could move across to the shoulder, but not leaving any room for them to fall back. As soon as the cruiser was clear of car three’s bumper she picked up speed again, until they were separated by only a single car length’s distance.

She grabbed the microphone and switched on her loudspeakers. “Car three, break off from the convoy immediately,” she said, and Chapel heard her voice repeated so loud outside the car it made the windshield rattle. “Move to the shoulder and stop your vehicle. You have ten seconds to comply.” She switched over to the radio, but held her palm over the microphone. She glanced over at Chapel. “I know I can trust my fellow troopers. I’ve worked with some of ’em for years.”

Chapel remembered the judge saying he’d worked with Reinhard for years, too. But they needed allies. There were three troopers on motorcycles in front of the limo, screening its advance, and two more well behind them keeping an eye on their tail. “Call them,” he said.

Young flipped some switches on the radio and got on a state police restricted channel. “This is Sergeant Young, calling all motorcycle units. Have identified that car three is a threat, repeat, car three.”

“Tell them to screen the limo and get it off the road if they can,” Chapel told her.

“Forward units, protect the principal, and get it to safety,” Young said into her microphone. “Rear units, close this road to traffic! Fall back and deploy flares. Calling headquarters, calling headquarters. We have an immediate need to close the northbound lanes of I-36 south of Broomfield. Repeat, we need an immediate road closure of I-36 northbound south of Broomfield.” Almost instantly the units ahead of the limo called in to report they had received Young’s orders and would do what they could. At least the troopers were paying attention.

Chapel leaned forward to peer through the windshield. Car three hadn’t changed its speed or position at all. Neither had the other sedans. All three of them had rolled up their windows, though. He couldn’t see anything through the tinted glass.

“Do we hail ’em again, give ’em another chance?” Young asked. “I don’t want to start shooting out tires or running anybody off the road if we don’t have to.”

“I think—” Chapel said, but he didn’t get to finish his thought.

Up ahead the rear passenger-side door of car three popped open, and a man in a black suit flew out. He bounced off the asphalt and came caroming straight toward the patrol cruiser.

“Mother Mary!” Young shouted, and whipped her wheel over to the side, narrowly avoiding rolling right over the security guard.

Chapel spun around in his seat to watch as they raced past the man. He was struggling to get to his feet in the middle of the fast lane of the highway. It looked like he had a broken leg.

Chapel guessed immediately what had happened. Quinn must have panicked. The other guards in car three must have tried to mollify him.

Chimeras didn’t take well to attempts to calm them down.

“Shotgun, mounted behind your head,” Young said, her voice tight with worry.

Chapel looked for and found the shotgun where it was held behind the headrests by a pair of metal clips. He grabbed it and broke it open. “Shells,” he said.

“Glove compartment. Grab the blue ones, those are slugs,” Young told him. Her eyes were all over the road.

Chapel yanked open the glove compartment and found the box of shells. Half of them were shot packed in red paper. The other half were solid slugs mounted in blue plastic casings. She was right — they would be far more effective against vehicle tires than the shells full of buckshot. He loaded two in the shotgun and nodded at her.

“Aim for the right rear tire,” she told him. “That’ll make ’em slew over to the left, into the median. It’s the safest — Jesus!”

He looked up to see what had her attention. The rear window of car three erupted in shards of glass. Chapel could see Quinn using his fist to clear the remaining glass. The barrel of a pistol emerged from inside the vehicle and started to track them.

“Head down!” Young shouted, as she veered to the right. Chapel was thrown up against the passenger-side door, jarring his good shoulder. The box of shotgun shells burst open and spilled all over his lap, the shells rolling down into the leg well.

The windshield of the patrol cruiser cracked from top to bottom as a pistol round tore through its cabin, narrowly missing Young’s ear.

“I’m fine,” she shouted, and he nodded, snapping the shotgun closed and rolling down his window. “Take your shot, quick!”

Chapel caught a flash of motion ahead of them and saw car two drifting back toward them. Either they’d come to see what was happening — or to help. Whether they wanted to help Chapel or Quinn was an open question.

“I’ve got this,” Young told him. “Take that shot!”

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+59:03

Chapel rolled down his window and unbuckled his seat belt. Cradling the shotgun in his arm, he got his knees up on the seat and leaned out the window. The wind of their velocity tried to tear him out of the car but he braced himself and held on. Young shouted something at him but he couldn’t hear. He could barely keep his eyes open as the air slapped him in the face over and over, but he managed to get the shotgun clear of the window and brought it up to his shoulder.

Then a second pistol shot struck the hood of the cruiser, and Young had to veer to the side. Chapel flopped like a rag doll as the car shifted under him. He had to grab for the car door with his artificial hand, and nearly lost the shotgun. A third shot took off the wing mirror on the driver’s side.

At least Quinn — or whoever it was shooting from car three — wasn’t aiming at Chapel. They clearly intended to incapacitate Young so she couldn’t continue the pursuit. Chapel had to end this before that happened. He raised the shotgun and tried to find an angle to get the rear tire of car three. Normally with a shotgun you didn’t need to aim — you just pointed and fired. This shotgun was loaded with slugs, though, solid projectiles that acted similar to rifle bullets. He needed to make his shot precise and clean.

That wasn’t going to happen with him hanging out of his window. He was firing across the car and the hood was in the way.

There was only one thing for it. He reached forward with his left hand and grabbed the windshield wipers so he could pull himself forward. He was going to have to climb out onto the hood.

Up ahead car two had fallen back in the right lane, boxing car three in. Were they trying to help? Their windows were up, and he couldn’t see anyone inside the car. They weren’t shooting at him, which was nice, but they were preventing car three from complying with Young’s instructions. Not that Quinn was likely to let the driver of car three just pull over and surrender.

No, it was on Chapel. He dragged himself forward, compensating every time Young veered or drifted into one lane or the other, trying to make it as hard as possible for the shooter in car three to get a bead on her. He could hardly blame her for not wanting to stand still, even if it did make it next to impossible for him to move out onto the hood. He glanced through the windshield and saw her sitting up in her seat, trying to see over him. Her eyes were firmly on the road. Either she knew what he was trying to do or she figured it was his own neck at risk.

Stop stalling, he thought. He tried to channel Top, tried to hear his old physical therapist’s voice in his head. This wasn’t exactly a situation Top had prepared him for, though, and no words came.

It didn’t matter. He knew what Top would want him to do.

Chapel kicked his legs out of the window and flopped down hard on the hood of the cruiser. Inertia tried to yank him up over the windshield and onto the roof of the car but he kept his center of gravity down and hugged the hood, the mechanical fingers of his left hand grabbing at the grill on the front of the car because it was the only thing to hold on to. Heat from the engine seared his chest and groin. The buttons of his shirt soaked up that heat and scorched his flesh, but he could only ignore it. With his right arm he reached around and brought the shotgun to bear. He braced it against the hood, angling the barrel down toward the tire of car three.

That was when Quinn erupted out of the shattered rear window, howling in rage, hauling himself through the broken glass. The chimera pulled himself onto the trunk of car three. His mouth was wide open, virus-carrying saliva forming long strands between his massive white teeth. He stared at Chapel with eyes as black as the bottom of a well.

Quinn had a pistol in his hand.

Chapel had the shotgun.

Quinn lifted his weapon and pointed it straight at Chapel’s face. There was no way Chapel could dodge the bullet, no safe place he could move to.

His weapon was already aimed.

He took his shot.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+59:07

The sound of the rear tire of car three exploding was the loudest bang Chapel had ever heard. Shreds of hot rubber and steel belting blasted outward in a cloud of stinging, slapping chaff. Chapel looked up and saw Quinn’s pistol discharge. He could have sworn he saw the bullet come out of the barrel, that he watched it travel in slow motion straight for him. He dropped the shotgun and let it clatter away between the two cars. Car three was already turning, swerving over into the grassy median strip, dust and pieces of torn-up vegetation rising in a plume from its front tires.

Chapel couldn’t tell if he’d been hit or not. Quinn had fired from point-blank range. He’d been aiming right at Chapel. Had the car started to swerve before or after Quinn pulled the trigger? Chapel knew from past experience that you could be shot and not know it for long seconds, that the brain under stress could delay pain reactions for a surprisingly long time.

Was he already dead, but his body hadn’t realized it yet?

He wanted to look down at himself, check himself for wounds, but he didn’t dare. Car three had rumbled to a stop, nose down in the median, and was rocking back and forth on its suspension. Young hit the cruiser’s brakes, though she was careful not to decelerate so hard that Chapel went flying. When he decided she’d slowed down enough, when he could look down at the asphalt and see the grain in it, the texture of the road surface, he scrambled forward off the burning hot hood of the cruiser and rolled down to the ground, taking the fall on his artificial left arm. In a moment he was back up on his feet. He felt like he was floating, like adrenaline lifted him up into the air and then he was running, dashing full tilt back down the highway toward where car three sat, lifeless and unmoving.

On the far side of the median civilian cars went by so fast they were just blurs of color in the air, red, bottle green, gunmetal gray. He heard the sirens of Young’s cruiser but only as if they were far away, as if they were in the next county. He heard the breath surging in and out of his lungs. He heard his own heartbeat.

His right side felt wet and cold. That was probably blood. Not a good sign, but he still didn’t feel any pain, and he definitely didn’t feel like it could slow him down. Quinn was back there, Quinn — a third chimera, one of his targets—

His head was vibrating, like he’d taken a punch to the temple. His brains felt like they were quivering Jell-O inside his skull.

Black cars were moving all around him, slotting themselves into place. Men in black suits were jogging across the asphalt, guns and walkie-talkies in their hands. He glanced back and saw the limo almost right behind him, pulled across both lanes of the highway, standing across the road.

“The judge,” he shouted. He couldn’t hear his own voice. That wasn’t a good sign. It could mean a lot of things, though, anything from a concussion to a gunshot wound to the head. “Get the judge out of here! Get the limo out of here!”

Up ahead car three stood in the median. Beyond it he could see something black and white moving, thrashing around.

It was Quinn. They’d dressed him in one of their suits, made him look like a member of the security detail. They had cut his hair neat and professional, made him look like an ex-soldier or maybe an ex-football player. The kind of man who would work for Reinhard. If his eyes weren’t covered by those nictitating membranes, Chapel would never recognize him. Quinn was staggering back and forth on the median like he was drunk. Like he was trying to walk on the deck of a heaving ship.

Someone was shouting at Chapel. One of the troopers, one of the motorcycle troopers, was shouting at him, but Chapel couldn’t hear the words, he could only see the man’s lips moving. Chapel waved him away and ran toward Quinn.

Around the median there was a ring of black suits. Men in black suits. Their eyes were normal, at least, but why were they standing there? Why were they just standing there?

Quinn saw Chapel and pulled himself upright. He pounded at his ears with his palms as if they were full of water and he was trying to clear them. Was he deaf too? Maybe — maybe the noise of the tire blowout had deafened them both.

Chapel had no time to think. He couldn’t think. He drew his sidearm. Stood sideways to make a smaller target of himself, pointed his weapon at Quinn. “Lie down! Lie down on the ground and put your hands behind your head!” Chapel shouted. He could just hear the words, though they sounded distorted and weird.

Quinn scrubbed at his face with his hands. His jacket was torn all up one side, and the white cuff had frayed down to torn ribbons. The skin of his palm on that side was pink and bloody. He must have gone flying when car three veered into the median. He must have been thrown clear and slid twenty feet on his hand and side. No wonder he looked so disoriented.

He was still a chimera, though. Even as Chapel watched Quinn seemed to regain his composure. He pulled himself up to his full height. Tilted his head back and roared like a lion.

Tell me who the Voice is. Tell me why the Voice wants you to kill Hayes. Tell me why you were created.

There were a million questions in Chapel’s head, questions he wanted to ask Quinn. He dearly wanted Quinn to surrender, wanted him to stand down so Chapel could take him into custody and interrogate him.

Quinn was a chimera. He was hurt, and angry, and scared. He wouldn’t be taken without a fight.

He rushed straight at Chapel, his head down, his arms out like he would grab Chapel around the waist and knock him to the ground. Like he was going to crush Chapel’s life right out of him.

Chapel breathed out, aimed at the top of Quinn’s head, and fired until Quinn dropped to the ground, dead as meat.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+59:10

Chapel holstered his gun and closed his eyes, trying to clear his head. His ears rang with the noise of his own gunshots. He could hear the sirens of Young’s cruiser better now.

Slowly he opened his eyes. He was looking down at his feet. He was standing in a patch of dry, dusty weeds in the median strip. Quinn was nearby. Covered in blood.

“Nobody touch him,” Chapel called out. “Stay away from the blood, especially.”

He could hear his own voice a little better, now. That was good.

Without even thinking about it he moved his good hand to his side. He could feel the wetness there. He lifted up his jacket and saw his whole side slick with blood.

Not so good.

Quinn had shot him. Chapel couldn’t tell if it was a flesh wound or if the bullet had pierced his abdominal cavity. There was an awful lot of blood. His blood. Quinn’s blood. His head started to spin again.

You hurtin’? Top asked him. In his head, that voice was just in his head, he forced himself to remember that. You feelin’ the burn? You know what that means.

“Means I’m still alive,” Chapel said, because they’d been through this so many times it was like a litany. Every time Chapel flagged or slowed down during their workout sessions, every time he wanted to take a break, Top would say the same thing.

And if you’re still livin’—

“Then there’s still work to do,” Chapel said, out loud.

He opened his eyes again. He didn’t remember closing them. He kept them open, looked around himself.

The security guards were standing in a circle around him, around him and Quinn’s body. Some of them looked shocked. Maybe they’d never seen a man’s head blown off before. Maybe they just couldn’t believe Chapel was still standing.

One of them was holding a walkie-talkie. It squawked and Chapel heard something, heard Reinhard’s voice come through, though he couldn’t make out the words.

Reinhard — who was in the limo with Judge Hayes. Reinhard — who maybe wasn’t quite as trustworthy as the judge thought.

“Out of my way,” Chapel said, as he ran through the circle of black suits. They didn’t try to stop him. He got back up on the asphalt, started running as his feet hit solid highway pavement. The limo was still sitting there, across the lanes. It hadn’t moved at all. Chapel ran up to the back door, tried the handle. It was locked at least.

“Your Honor,” Chapel shouted. “We need to move you out of here now. The assassin might have had backup.” That wasn’t how the chimeras normally worked, but this kill was different. The judge had been singled out by the Voice. It was possible the Voice had a contingency plan. “Your Honor?”

The door lock clicked open. Chapel grabbed the handle and pulled at the door. Inside the limo it was dark and cool, and Chapel saw two men, Reinhard and Hayes. He leaned inside the door, blinked as his eyes tried to adjust to the darkness inside.

“Well done, Captain,” Hayes said. “Get in.”

“Your Honor, it isn’t safe here,” Chapel said, stepping inside the limo. He plopped down on a leather seat and wondered why he hadn’t thought about sitting down before. It felt so good, so good to get off his feet. “I, uh — I need to—”

“Relax,” Hayes said. Reinhard rapped on the partition between them and the driver. Chapel felt the limo’s engine rumble to life and felt them moving. “Relax. It’s all over, and you did exceedingly well.”

Hayes reached inside his jacket and pulled something out.

It was a pistol.

He shot Chapel twice in the chest.

DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, COLORADO: APRIL 14, T+59:17

“Julia,” Angel said.

“I’m here,” Julia said. “I’m just… still trying to understand what you told me. It’s a lot to take in.”

“I know,” the operator told her. “But something’s happened. There’s no time to talk about Marcia Kennedy right now. Chapel—”

Julia’s body froze. In an instant she felt like a solid block of ice. “Is he—?”

“He’s in trouble. He’s moving north toward Boulder. I’ve been tracking him by satellite, watching over him as best I could, but someone up there has been jamming my signal. I’m sure of it now. They’re actively jamming me. Or they were.”

“What? I don’t understand. They stopped jamming you?”

“I have no way of telling. He’s in a car moving north. Someone just threw his phone and his hands-free set out of the window.”

“Do you think he’s… still alive?”

Chapel had known. He’d known he was walking into a trap. A setup. He’d expected to die here in Denver. He’d gone anyway. Julia had been doing her best not to think about it. Now she felt like she might throw up.

“Normally I can track his pulse and his blood pressure through sensors in his artificial arm, but right now I’m not getting any readings. They could be jamming my signal still, or—”

“Angel!” Julia interrupted. “Just tell me. Do you think he’s dead?” she forced herself to ask.

It was a long time before Angel answered her.

“I don’t know,” she said, finally.