Cutting Edge

40

DeBolt had no idea how long he’d been running. Fifteen minutes? Twenty? He kept moving in the same general direction, twisting through a labyrinth of neighborhood streets until he reached a dated commercial district. His pace was slowing, his body beginning to protest. Still, he couldn’t stop looking over his shoulder.

His left arm was covered in blood, and as adrenaline wore off the pain sank in. His arm, a battered shin, his ribs on one side — all had taken a beating somewhere in the melee. His lungs were straining, heaving, magnifying the ache in his rib cage. DeBolt at least took solace in the fact that he’d been here before, at the limits of physical endurance: in both training and real-world ops, he had pushed himself to the edge countless times. He knew his body and its signals. That being the case, when one leg began cramping, he knew it was time to let up.

He stopped in the shadow of a high wall, slumping against the stone and feeling the cold on his back. He closed his eyes, allowing his mind the same chance to reset. He had to think, had to recover. After a few minutes, with the world coming right, he opened his eyes. DeBolt took one cautious scan all around. He saw no sign of Delta.

Even better, he saw exactly what he needed a hundred yards up the street.

It was a typical convenience store, an older building with broad plate-glass windows across the front, crass advertisements for beer and lottery tickets displayed in every one. Best of all, a sign above the entrance attested that the store was OPEN ALL NIGHT.

DeBolt approached slowly, trying to time his arrival. Through the windows he saw the restroom sign, and he waited outside until the clerk had a line at the register. He wanted a straight shot down an aisle where there were no other customers. DeBolt wasn’t going to do anything illegal, but his appearance was bound to draw attention, and he didn’t want anyone calling the police.

When he saw three people in line, he made his move, keeping his back to the checkout stand and cradling his injured arm close to his chest as he made his way to the men’s room. Once inside, he locked the door and leaned over the washbasin. He paused there, once again allowing shock to run its course.

In the harsh fluorescent light he saw the wound, a deep gash on his left forearm. There was no way around it this time — he was going to need stitches. Was there a 24/7 clinic nearby? A place that wouldn’t ask questions? Possibly, if he paid in cash up front and created a plausible excuse. A broken window, he thought. When Freeman had returned his burner phone, he’d also given back the wad of cash they’d confiscated — done it without so much as a questioning look. DeBolt decided the colonel and his team were probably accustomed to working with rolls of cash. Or had been. Five experienced operators, all dispatched by Delta. DeBolt pushed that thought away, discomforting as it was. He tried to be glad for his foresight — since leaving the Calais Lodge he’d made a point of keeping cash in his pockets.

The lessons I’m learning.

He cleaned the wound at the sink using water and paper towels. When he was done, he looked into a blood-soaked trash bin and fleetingly wondered how much of it was Shannon Lund’s. He scrubbed his shirtsleeve until it was no longer red, but simply wet, and finally took stock: a few other cuts and abrasions, but nothing worrisome. He tested his injured arm, flexing and grimacing, but knowing it would heal.

DeBolt leaned into the basin and splashed cold water on his face. For the first time he looked in the scratched mirror. He looked haggard and stressed, which wasn’t altogether unfamiliar — it was how he usually looked after a long helo mission. The difference, of course, was that helo ops were finite, limited on any given day by fuel supply. The duration of his new assignment was measured in a far more fundamental way — how long could he stay alive? DeBolt recalled friends kidding him about being an adrenaline junkie. Backcountry skiing, rescue missions, big wave surfing. That all seemed laughable now, child’s play compared to being hunted.

He dried his face, finger-combed his choppy postoperative haircut as best he could. DeBolt then input a command: Emergency clinic nearby.

The answer came quickly, mercifully, and Delta’s unsettling three-word response was finally supplanted by something useful. An address and a map came into view. Six blocks east.

He unlocked the bathroom door and walked outside into a deepening night.

DeBolt was right about the walk-in clinic. He gave them a name but didn’t have ID. He admitted to a few beers before he’d broken the damned window. He got questions and hard stares, but the spirit of Hippocrates carried the day, and they stitched him up and took his cash, and half an hour later he was back on the street with his arm properly bandaged.

His next stop was an all-night chain pharmacy where he purchased extra gauze and tape, along with a pullover hoodie to cover his filthy shirt. That done, he looked presentable, and he diverted to the Starbucks next door because he wanted to think and get out of the cold. And because a shot of caffeine never hurt. He found himself wondering loosely how that might interact with META. Would a double shot of espresso send his mind into hyperdrive?

He settled at a table with a simple cup of hot coffee. It felt warm between his hands, and the aroma was soothing. DeBolt tried to design a plan, tried to think forward. He always ended up in the same cul-de-sac. The META Project. There was a peculiar comfort in knowing he was not alone: Delta too had survived the surgery. If the kitchen hadn’t been so dark, DeBolt knew he would have seen the telltale scars on the man’s bald head. A vicious killer, no doubt with a military background, who had the same abilities he possessed.

Were there others? he wondered. Alpha and Charlie? Zulu, for God’s sake? Was there an army of men like Delta roaming the world? DeBolt saw countless divergences between Delta and himself. He was trained to rescue, Delta to kill. There was but one overriding commonality: META. A project whose creators were seemingly being eliminated en masse, the only residue being its product — at least two highly altered individuals.

He considered the manner in which Delta had communicated with him, some direct, inter-META link that DeBolt knew nothing about. He might be able to figure it out, but did he want to? And what else didn’t he know? Did his requests for information compromise his position? Could he be tracked like a cell phone, his position triangulated? He looked around the coffeehouse, then out into the darkness beyond. How much more did Delta know? Where was he now? The uncertainty was demoralizing, dark, and confining. Like a box closing in from all sides.

There was only one place to get answers. If any of META’s designers remained alive, DeBolt had to find them. He tried to consolidate his thoughts into one desperate request. After considerable deliberation, he settled on: Need information on META. Are there any surviving creators?

He waited for a reply.

Nothing came.

The first threads of despair began to envelop him. DeBolt was accustomed to physical challenges. He knew how to recover a lost line in the sea. How to stay warm in subzero temperatures. How to bring back a human heartbeat. But this — the interminable waiting, relying on the whims of some unseen computer before taking action. It was counter to everything he had ever done. Everything he had ever been. He needed META more than ever, and he hated it for that reason.

He finished his coffee, and still nothing came. DeBolt went back to the counter for a refill, this time adding a pastry. He should have been hungry, yet his appetite was nonexistent, quelled by the trauma and fatigue of the last days. He was wiping a blob of sugar from his lip when, quite literally out of thin air, an answer struck into view: