Marked Cards

"Which way?" he whispered to Clara.

"Turn left at the end of the hall. That'll take us to reception. It's about twenty feet to the front doors."

From behind one of the closed doors which lined the hall Finn heard a low, hopeless, terrified sobbing. He didn't investigate. Joan headed out down the hall, Clara following. She looked back when she didn't hear the clop of his hooves on the linoleum floor.

Finn stepped to her, gripped her shoulders, turned her around, laid a hand between her shoulder blades, and pushed. "You and Joan go on. Call the cops. I gotta get Faneuil."

"What?"

"He killed thousands of people. He made me an unwitting killer. He's got to pay for that."

"We don't have the luxury," Clara said.

"This is a necessity. Does he have a lab? Where does he work?"

"You'll never reach him alone," Clara said. She turned to Joan. "Go on, Mother." Joan hesitated, regret and fear showing on her face. Then she went. Clara darted past Finn back into the stairwell. He followed.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

They made it to the third floor without incident. Clara was right about him needing her help. Access to all the labs was through negative pressure clean rooms, and an access card and voice print were required. Clara's got them through. Faneuil wasn't in his office, or in the lab with its detailed maps of world cities. The only one Finn recognized in the brief seconds allowed to him was New York.

"He's not here. Come on! Let's go!" Tension thrummed in Clara's voice.

"How big is this building?" Finn asked as he pulled open another door. Closet. Faneuil wasn't in it.

"Too big for us to search. Maman's toxin will only last so long."

Finn pulled open a final door, and discovered a bathroom, and Faneuil seated on the shitter. His pants were down around his ankles, the bowl filled with his diarrhea. The paralysis induced by Joan's venom had finally hit, but it was too weak a dose to completely freeze him. He was struggling, moving like a man under water. Finn reached in, grabbed the man by the shoulders, and yanked him out of the john. With Clara's help they got him tossed over Finn's back.

Out of the lab. Back into the hall. Racing for the stairwell. People were starting to recover from the effects of the venom. Sensation returning to their limbs, rational thought to their brains. A couple of them clung to door jambs, and called garbled questions to Clara.

Through the door, and down the stairs. It was a bitch going down. Finn's hooves kept slipping on the metal stair nosings, and Faneuil was an awkward weight on his back. The French doctor's struggles were becoming more violent.

"Punch him!" Finn ordered.

Clara pulled back her arm, and drove her fist into Faneuil's temple. He quieted down substantially.

Suddenly a voice from below called out. "You joker-fucking bitch."

Finn risked a glance over the railing. A burst of automatic weapons fire came back in reply. The sound was terrifying in the enclosed space, and bullets were whining and spanging off the metal banisters. One of the ricochets gouged a line of fire across the top of Finn's haunches. Clara hunkered down, her arms protectively covering her head. "It's Johnson Security. We're fucked."

The situation had clearly become desperate. Retreat was impossible. Walking down the stairs into that withering fire was equally impossible, and standing still was also impossible. There was only one thing to do - punt.

Finn reared slightly, sending Faneiul sliding off his back. He then gathered his hindquarters beneath him, tensed the muscles, and leaped. The man's mouth was a dark, stretched "O" as he watched four hundred pounds of palomino centaur descending from heaven on top of him. His gun was pointed straight into Finn's gut, but fortunately the sight of a flying joker made him hesitate, and in hesitating he was lost.

Finn came down on the man, heard bones cracking, a pathetic wheezing sound as the air went out of the guard. There was another gun-shot loud crack, and fire washed up Finn's right front leg. He went down in a welter of legs and arms. He craned up to see his foreleg. From the middle of the cannon bone it was flopping. He struggled onto three legs. Rambo was out cold on the stairs. Pieces of him were bent in funny directions, too. Finn looked up to see Clara, hands tangled in the lapels of Faneuil's coat, dragging him down the stairs. His head bumped on each step, and his trousers and shorts were pulled almost completely off his legs.

Thanking God they were at the first floor (Finn could not have done stairs on three legs), he hobbled to the door, pulled it open. Clara dragged Faneuil through. Down the hall. Finn wished he could help Clara with Faneuil, but knew he couldn't. With each limping step he could hear the bones in his leg grinding across each other.

"Do you know if they still shoot horses?" Finn asked hysterically. Clara grunted, kept pulling.

They reached reception, hobbled and lurched past the gaping secretary, a phone up to her ear, and into the street. In the distance were the sounds of approaching sirens. Joan slithered over to Clara, and rearing up, embraced her. Faneuil lay forgotten on the pavement. The first fire truck arrived.

Joan was a clever woman. Knowing a call of "jokers in distress" would arouse nothing but apathy, she had literally yelled fire!

Clara pulled free of her mother's embrace. Walked over to Finn. "I didn't get it all. They removed some of it." Finn just stared at her. "But it's a weaker strain. It falls dormant after three transmissions." The words emerged in a desperate rush.

"Yeah, that's great. I'm sure that'll really comfort the three deaders who get hit before dormancy is achieved."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

An ambulance - a real one - took Bradley to the hospital. Meanwhile, a nearby cop loaded Clara and Joan into a patrol car. Hartmann was long gone.

Clara slouched against the door handle and looked out at the streets of Manhattan. It was twilight. Sodium, neon, and mercury fluorescents illuminated the many thousands of people spewing from the buildings and crowding the sidewalks of midtown. Traffic crept down Lexington. Horns blared and engines roared. The air smelled of ozone. Clara glanced over and saw Joan nervously eyeing the cop beyond the thick mesh. He was listening to the police radio, which spat police codes and static. At Clara's questioning glance, Joan leaned toward her and spoke in a low voice.

"Darling, do you still have your scrapbook - the one I gave you when you were little?"

"Yes. Why?"

Joan was wringing her hands - and her coils of snake flesh were wringing themselves. "This will seem rather an odd question, but - is there a picture of your father with a man of Mediterranean descent?"

Clara frowned at her. "What on earth is this about?"

"There is something I left out when I told you how I contracted the wild card," Joan said. "Something important."

"Oh?"

Joan nodded, looking miserable and flustered. "It's about your father, and, well, if I don't tell you now I may not have a chance later, and ... I don't want you to think I deceived you in any way...."

"Of course not."

"I would have told you when you came to see me, but that didn't seem to be the right time. But after all, I told that lovely young lady arson investigator, and I'm sure she told Senator Hartmann; I can't imagine why he didn't investigate further, but perhaps it's for the best, in a sense."

Clara frowned. Joan's flutterings were starting to grate. "Would you please just tell me, Maman?"

Joan looked at the cop again and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Back in 1968, Pan Rudo arranged to have Bobby Kennedy assassinated. And Brand paid off Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin. Brand was the - what do they call it? - the bag man."

Clara stared at her, a sinking feeling in her stomach. She wanted to say that Papa would never do such a thing, but she couldn't bring herself to say it.

"He was having an affair at the time," Joan went on. "With Marilyn Monroe. I hired a private investigator to follow him, and the investigator captured the exchange on film. The photo later disappeared, and I wondered if it might somehow have ended up in your scrapbook."

Clara thought about the very clear, close-up photo of her father handing an envelope to a dark-complected young man, whose identity Clara had occasionally wondered about. She merely shrugged and shook her head at her mother's gaze, and let Joan assume she meant no.

The first thing she did on reaching the police station was to request a phone call. She used a pay phone in the foyer and called her father at home. He came on the line immediately.

"Are you all right? Is the line clear?"

"I'm fine. The line's OK, I think. I'm on a pay phone at the police precinct. Pan was holding me - "

"- at the UN lab. I know. His man Johnson sealed off the UN lab to my people. I didn't even know he knew which ones they were, the bastard. We were about to stage and assult. And now they tell me the police have taken you in. What's going on?"

Clara took a deep breath. Here goes, she thought. "Papa, I'm about to turn State's evidence against Pan - "

"You're what?"

"- and the whole Card Shark organization. I'm calling you now to let you know you'd better get out of the country, because I'm not going to hold anything back."

Silence greeted her. After a minute Brandon found his voice. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You never told me Maman was still alive."

"Oh. Oh, honey. I should have told you a long time ago - "

"Yes. You should have."

"- but that's no reason to go off half-cocked like this."

"It's not half-cocked. Pan has the Black Trump - or a version of it - and he has to be stopped. And I've had enough of the lies. You said it yourself. It's not worth it." Tears started rolling down her face. "I know that you've been wanting out. At least a little bit. I'm giving you your chance. Early retirement. Transfer all your funds to an international bank right now and get a plane ticket. Don't delay."

More silence.

"You're sentencing yourself to a lifetime of prison," he said. "Or at best, a lifetime of hiding. Don't do this."

"I don't think so. I think they'll let me cut a deal. I can give them Pan Rudo, and they want him badly. So." She cleared her throat. "Know a good lawyer?"

"Clara, don't do this."

"I love you, Papa."

She slid the phone into the cradle and turned. Several police officers stood near the precinct captain's office, where Joan was speaking to the officer in charge. She drew a breath, squared her shoulders, and walked over.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

She cut the photo of her father with Sirhan Sirhan out of her scrapbook, cut it into tiny bits and burned it, and flushed the ashes down the toilet. Then she went into the bedroom.

The mattress was still on the floor. She buried her face in the pillow, breathing his scent. She rolled onto her side and sensations returned: the taste of his kiss; the feel of his arms enfolding her, hand cupping a breast; his horse's fur warm against her bare buttocks.

Clara rolled onto her back and covered her eyes with the back of an arm, trying to summon the tender look in his eyes when they'a made love, to recall his laughter over shared, cold Chinese food. But all she saw was that look on his face when they'd been torturing him, when he'd realized what she'd done.

What the world thought of her meant nothing. Bradley's opinion meant everything, and there was no way to make him understand. She'd lost him before she'd ever really had him.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Maggie had started into labor. Finn had been checking her progress, and emerged from her room intent on ordering the incubation unit to the delivery room. Cody was lying in wait.

"Oh, please," said Finn, and tried to dodge her. He wasn't real successful with a cast on his leg and a cane in his hand.

Cody caught him by the tail. He wasn't wearing his rubber shoes, so his hooves were scrabbling for purchase on the slick linoleum floor. He decided neither his dignity nor his tail could survive much more of this, so he craned around to look at her.

"Call her," Cody said. It was the sixth time she'd said it in the past four hours.

"No."

"Stop thinking about yourself, and start thinking about your patient ... patients. That baby needs Clara's attention."

"She left notes," Finn caviled.

"Not the same. Clara knows this case better than either of us."

"I can't face her."

"Finn, I know how hard this is - "

"No, you don't! You can't! You're not one of us. As much as you care, as much as you've given, you're not a wild card, and you're not living under a death sentence." His voice was rising. A couple of passing patients gave him an odd look. Finn dropped to a whisper. "I'm a doctor. I see death all the time. And I'm scared. I don't want to die."

She laid a hand on his hindquarters. Stroked softly. "You've given the warning. It's in the hands of others now. All we can do is live, work, and not give in to despair." She paused, walked around to face Finn, grabbed him by the front of his Hawaiian shirt, and pulled him in close. "And save this baby."

He took the elevator up to Tachyon's old office, his old office, now his office again with Clara's departure. Picked up the phone. Dialed her number. She answered on the first ring.

"Hello, hello.... Oh, it is you."

"Maggie's in labor. We need you."

He hung up the phone before he could hear any more of the pain or the joy in her voice.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

At three and a half pounds, Mary Louise was frighteningly small. And she looked so helpless with her eyes squeezed shut, with green tubes in her nose, electrodes on her chest and back, an IV taped to her leg. The heart monitor next to her incubator showed a strong, steady little beat, though. And the transfusions had stabilized her condition. She had an excellent chance.

Clara lifted the incubator's lid, took the infant in her hands, and - careful not to dislodge electrodes, oxygen, or IV - lowered herself into the rocker by the incubator. She unbuttoned the top buttons of her blouse, laid Mary Louise on her bare skin, and rocked her. She was so small Clara could hold her in one hand.

Mary Louise whimpered. Clara moved Mary Louise's head into the crook of her neck, and planted a gentle kiss on her forehead.

"Poor little thing," she whispered. "You've had a rough beginning, haven't you?"

Joan was at the door, watching her.

"Maman."

"Hi."

Both kept their voices low. Joan slithered over and reared next to the rocker. Clara laid a hand on her mother's arm.

"I remember the first time I held you," Joan said. "I've never known such complete joy."

Clara gave her a smile.

"Have you heard anything about your case?"

"Mitchell says negotiations are going well." Clara shrugged. "We'll have to see."

After a pause Joan asked, "Have you spoken to Bradley?"

Clara shook her head. "He's avoiding me. He doesn't want to see me." She glanced over; Joan was looking at her. She shook her head again.

"I can't face him, Maman. I couldn't bear the look on his face. I couldn't bear his rejection."

Joan sighed. "Clara, darling, for twenty-five years I suffered, for not going to you, for not braving the look on your face."

Clara nuzzled the baby-soft hair and skin of Mary Louise's head and said nothing.

"Don't make the same mistake I did."

Still Clara said nothing.

"Do you love him?" Joan demanded.

Clara gasped. "Of course!"

Joan squeezed her hand. "Then go to him. He's in his office. Go now. I'll take over with the baby.

"Just try. This once," Joan said, and gave her a smile. "You can handle it. All he can say is no, right?"

Clara gazed at her mother, nodded with a sigh.

"You're right."

She handed the infant over and kissed her mother on the cool, dry, glittering scales of her cheek.

"Maman, I am so glad I found you."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Gazing out over the skyline of Manhattan, the dirt, despair and poverty veiled by a spectacular smog-generated sunset, Finn felt again the weight of that newborn child resting in his hands. He had delivered plenty of babies. The birth of this one, however, raised a visceral reaction - fierce joy that she had survived, and despair that he would never hold one of his own.

He didn't want to think about Clara, but she was an insidious presence in any thought pertaining to babies. She had lost weight in the past days. Since Finn hadn't seen her, the gauntness seemed all the more severe, the shadow of sadness all the darker in her gray eyes. Until she had accepted young Mary Louise from his hands, and her eyes had shone with the same fire of achievement he had felt. Clara had vanished with the baby, carrying her away to the neo-natal unit to begin blood replacement treatments. Finn was avoiding the neo-natal unit. He checked his watch. He'd give it another twenty minutes. By then Clara should be safely gone. Because if he saw her he wasn't sure what he'd do - kiss her or kill her. Probably kiss her.

"Bradley?"

He whirled too fast, got tangled in his own legs, the cane and the cast, and went down on his hindquarters. Clara reached out, took a step toward him, then folded back in on herself like a frightened touch-me-not. Finn got his feet under him, and limped behind the desk, placing it like a buffer between him and her disturbing presence.

"Hi," Finn finally said.

"Hi."

Long pause. Finn had to fill the silence. "How's the baby?"

"Doing wonderfully."

"We did it," Finn heard himself say, and then he smiled at her.

Tears clouded Clara's eyes. "You looked at me. This is the first time since ... since ... that you've really looked at me." Finn couldn't think of anything to say. "What do you see, Bradley, when you look at me? Monstrous killer? The woman you made love with? Which?"

"I don't know, Clara. You tell me which one you are. Explain to me how you could plan genocide when you'd been trained as a healer."

She half turned, gave him her profile. In a soft voice she began. "For years I'd had nightmares about my mother's death. The wild card had killed her. There was something monstrous about the way it killed her. That's what they told me. Papa hated wild cards. Pan hated them, but with a scientist's objectivity - they would destroy the human race. I was a motherless child being raised by men whose strongest emotion was hate. For years as I studied and worked I lied to myself, told myself I was doing this for the sake of humanity, freeing those poor souls from terrible suffering." She paused, drew a shaky breath.

"It was a lie. I was doing it as a way to take vengeance against the disease that had stolen my mother." She turned to him. "And then you, a wild card, a joker, destroyed my beliefs. You weren't suffering, horrifying, praying for death. You were living and loving, and you showed me I was the one with no life, no joy. And then you gave me back my mother."

"Yeah, I'm swell, but that doesn't tell me what you want from me, Clara. Forgiveness? Okay, I forgive you. I don't think it matters a damn because you have to decide if you can forgive yourself - "

"No."

The single word interrupted his diatribe. Finn gaped at her. "No? No, what?"

"I don't want your forgiveness."

"Then what the hell do you want?"

"I want to know if you still love me."

They had both lost that stiff, on their dignity pose, had stopped talking like characters in a soap.

"Don't the two sort of go hand in hand?" Finn asked.

"I don't know, do they?" She paused for an instant. "Do you love me?"

Finn hesitated, hedged. "Do you love me?"

That dimple was starting to appear. "You have to go first."

"That's not fair. I have more to lose."

"How do you figure that?" she demanded.

"I get rejected more," Finn said.

"You can't know that. I was terribly unpopular in school."

"Goddamn it, Clara, if I can survive you driving me crazy I'll probably love you 'til I'm old and gray."

And then she was in his arms, laughing and crying. Her tears dampened his shoulder, her cheek warm to his touch as he stroked back her hair. They kissed, and it took a few moments for evil reality to intrude.

Gently he took her by the shoulders, held her at arms length. "Clara, I don't know how long we've got together.... His voice failed for an instant. He coughed to clear the sudden tightness. "The virus ... But however long I've got, I want to spend it with you."

"I'm working on a vaccine," she said, her voice a thin thread of sound.

"And you keep working on it, but you can't work too late at night, and you gotta work here because I want to be with you," Finn said.

Clara sighed, and snuggled in close. "What else can we do, Bradley?" she asked after a few moments of silent communion.

"Live and hope."

And he found reasons for both in the taste of her lips.

The Color of His Skin

Part 8

"The Sharks got away with three vials before van Renssaeler could destroy them," Hannah was telling them. "Pan Rudo escaped too, with this General MacArthur Johnson."

Father Squid's voice was calm and soothing. "The police have assured us that every possible step is being taken to find and apprehend them. Dr. van Renssaeler has come forward and is willing to testify. The authorities - "

"- will do nothing," Gregg interrupted. "Every last person infected by the wild card virus is now under a sentence of death."

The voice, coming from high above them, caused everyone gathered in the room to peer up into the shadowed, distant ceiling, where the hulks of the Turtle's old shells loomed, dark ghosts of a painful past. Gregg could see the fuzzy image of the people in the room below: Dutton's skeletal face, Hotair in the midst of his flames, Oddity standing silently against the wall, Father Squid, Troll, Jo Ann and her husband, maybe a dozen or more others.

And Hannah. She peered up to where Gregg was hiding, but his myopic sight could tell nothing about her expression. Still, seeing her again sent the air rushing out of his lungs. For a moment he couldn't breathe, making eye contact with her in the darkness. Somewhere down below, Gregg heard the click of an automatic weapon being taken off safety. The scent of the crowd was bitter and fragile.

"Oh, Leo Barnett will say he's very concerned," Gregg went on from his perch on the shell. "He may even put together a task force to study the problem, but nothing will happen until it's too late. When you're all dead, maybe they'll build you a nice wall with all your names on it."

"Who are you?" Hannah called.

"You won't believe me. No one believes me."

"Try us."

Gregg wriggled out the blackened, ruined interior of the Turtle's shell, which still smelled faintly of smoke, sweat, beer, and old food. Someone hit a switch, and Gregg blinked as the tracklights around the ceiling illuminated him. "It's Battle ..." he heard someone say as he made the short leap from the shell to the wall alongside. The pads on his multiple legs gripped the wall; headfirst, he wriggled down to the ground. He could smell the stench of Hotair's Sterno flames, the sharp tang of oil from the weapon he knew was tracking him, and the floral scent of Hannah's hair.

He started toward her, but as he passed Troll, the joker grabbed a handful of loose skin just behind his head and lifted him like a kitten in the grasp of a mother cat. Gregg's legs began to pump in an automatic frenzy, but the grip was tight and unbreakable and his limbs pumped uselessly in the air. Troll turned him, and Gregg saw the man's grim face.

"Battle, you son of a bitch," Troll said. "This is for all the jokers who died on the Rox. This is for all of us the Sharks killed." His other huge hand drew back, fisted. Hotair chuckled in the background.

"No!" Gregg shrilled, his voice piercing. "I'm not Battle, damn it."

"Like hell," Troll said. "Which is where we're sending you right now."

"It's true. Please. You have to listen to me." Gregg wriggled at the end of Troll's grasp like a hook-speared worm.

"Troll!" Hannah said. "Let's hear him out."

"He's Battle, Hannah. We all know what he's been saying, but - "

"Troll ..."

"If I put him down, he'll be gone," Troll persisted. "He's fast, remember? Look at how quick those little feet are going."

"I can stop ..." Gregg muttered. He forced himself to cease running; it took several seconds, but at last he hung still in Troll's grasp. Troll lowered him carefully to the ground, and Gregg went over to Hannah, rising up with his first two segments as he looked at her.

"Hannah ..." he began. His body shuddered from the effort of standing up after all the running in place he'd just done; he dropped back to all sixes, peering up at her. "Hannah," he said when he could speak again. "Do you believe me?"

Grief and hope mingled on Hannah's face, but she pressed her lips together. She glanced at Father Squid and Dutton. "Give me a few minutes with him, Okay?"

"Hannah," Father Squid began, "I know what Dr. Finn said, but ..."

"I'm the one who'd know best, aren't I? Just ..." She blinked hard. "A few minutes, that's all." She looked down at Gregg, and he could see nothing in the blur of her face. "Come on," she said, and walked from the gallery into the next room.

On one side, Jetboy struggled with Dr. Tod in the gondola of the careening dirigible while in the background the bright red pieces of the JB-1 began their long fall to the city Delow. On the other wall, a frozen, tragic scene from the WHO Aces tour: Kahina stood over a bleeding Nur; Hiram Worchester fisted his hand as Sayyid crumpled in agony; Jack Braun gleamed golden while bullets ricocheted from his chest; Tachyon lay crumpled and unconscious. Gregg was there too, his shoulder bloody as Sarah Morgenstern tended to him and Peregrine flew overhead to attack the Nur's guards.

"Not one of my favorite moments," Gregg said softly.

"What?"

"Nothing." Gregg sighed - it sounded like a tea kettle boiling over. She was staring at him, but when their gazes met, she quickly looked away. "Hannah ... I don't know where to start. My God, I've missed you - "

"Shut UP!" The words were torn from her throat, harsh and shrill. Hannah closed her eyes for a second, biting her upper lip. "Just shut up," she said more calmly, her eyes still closed. When they opened again, she was looking at Gregg's waxen image in the Syrian diorama. He could see her reflection in the glass. "I ... I've never finished grieving for Gregg. The last few days of his life were so strange. He wouldn't see me, wouldn't talk to me or Father Squid. The press conference almost killed me; I felt betrayed and violated and used, and then ..." She stopped. She leaned her forehead against the glass, her hands pressed against it. "When he was murdered, the pain was worse than I thought anything could be. I've never stopped grieving. Not yet."

She looked at him, and her eyes were as cold and sharp as blue ice. "And then you came around. People told me that you were saying you were Gregg, but ..." Hannah stopped. She looked again at the Syrian exhibit before turning back to him. "Finn said you were there, in the lab. Is that what you came to tell us?"

"Yes, but it seems you already know it," Gregg said. "But you can't just wait for Barnett to save you. You can't count on the police or the feds or anyone else taking care of the Black Trump. You have to do it."

"Not me," Hannah said. She was staring at him.

"What do you mean?"

Hannah crouched in front of him, close enough that he could see her face clearly. Her breath was mint touched with a lingering trace of coffee. "Let me ask you again. Who are you?"

"I'm Gregg," he said, and saw her visibly wince with the words. Her smell changed at the same time, subtly. "Hannah, no one wants to believe it, but I was jumped - before that damn press conference, before my body was killed. The Sharks did it: in fact, that was probably Battle who was in my body during that last meeting. Hannah - " His body wriggled; he guessed it was his new equivalent of a shrug. "I remember the first time we made love - in your room at Father Squid's parsonage, after we'd gone to Aces High. Father was gone, Quasiman was sitting downstairs in one of his fugues.... Would Battle know that?"

Hannah breathed, a hoarse exhalation. Still crouching, she let her head drop. Her long hair hid her face. "I don't believe you. This is a trick."

Gregg took a breath, cursing his new body and the puny voice it gave him. There was no power to it, no Puppetman, no Gift: it was only a voice and the words had to convince by themselves. It wasn't fair. "The second time we spent the night at my apartment. You said you hadn't figured me for a reader. You asked me if I'd actually read all of the books in my office."

"No ..."

"You'd forgotten your toothbrush. I gave you one from the closet in the bathroom: red, I think. We made love again that morning and that - " Gregg stopped and took a breath. "That was the first time you said that you loved me," he finished.

"Gregg." A whisper. Her head came up. She was staring at him, her hands clenched into tight fists on her knees. Light from the diorama painted harsh shadows under her eyes. "It's really you." It was no longer a question.

"Yes. I'm Gregg," he said, and the knowledge that she believed him set blood pounding in his temples. Relief flooded through him, its depth surprising him. He hadn't known how important it was that someone - anyone - believe him.

Hannah sobbed once, a choking gasp that she muffled with her hands. Her eyes were wide and frightened. "I wanted to think it was real," she said. "When I heard from Oddity, Jube, and Jo Ann, I wanted so badly to believe you were still alive. Then when Dr. Finn said it might be true ... Oh God, Gregg ..."

Her hands came toward him, trembling. They smelled of soap. The first touch was feather light, but it burned deliciously on his skin. Her fingers caressed him, withdrew, then returned, until she cupped his head in her hands.

He realized that it was the first time anyone had touched him in some way other than violence in months.

"I'm so sorry," she told him. Tears drew glistening trails down her cheeks. "Gregg ..." On her knees, she pulled him to her. She hugged his joker body to herself, and Gregg marveled. Her warmth was an aching fire, her smell jasmine.

She still cares - without the Gift, without anything. Yet if it had been Hannah instead of me, if she had been twisted into this mockery, I couldn't... "How can you?" he husked, wonderingly, and a deeper guilt ran through him like a blade.

Her arms tightened around him. Her voice sounded deep, resonating through him. "How could I not?" she asked him. "I loved what you were, what your are: your mind, your compassion, your leadership. The body ..." She pulled away from him. Her eyes searched his face, unashamed of the tears. "I wasn't your friend for that, Gregg. Please don't hate yourself, because I don't. You're alive - that's what matters. Nothing else."

If you knew ... Some of that self-loathing spilled out. "That's goddamn easy for you to say," he retorted, the words out before he could stop them, but she only nodded into his rage.

"I know," she said, and there was no anger in her voice at all, only sympathy. "I still believe it's true."

"Hannah, they took away everything. Everything I was and everything I had. And I can't... I can't get it back." His body spasmed. "I hate them," he said, and the truth of it rang like cold iron.

"Then use your hate," she told him. "You say we don't know what we face or how important it is. Then you have to tell them." She nodded her head toward the other room.

He was suddenly frightened. "No. I've already told you. I - "

"You don't understand, Gregg. That's what I was starting to say before. I can't lead these people, not any more. I'm a nat, and no matter how much they know that I care, no matter how much I've done, I'm still a nat and the bottom line is that this Black Trump virus doesn't threaten me. I'll do everything I can to help them, but they need a symbol, a focus. That can't be me, not any more; besides, you'd already taken over that spot, ever since I gave you my information. The truth is that it couldn't have been you, either, not as a nat. Father Squid and the others have danced around it politely and they'll deny that anything's changed, but the truth is that this is a joker problem; it demands a joker leader." She paused. He knew what her next word would be.

"You," she said.

Gregg shook his head, half-waiting for the voice inside him to return. This is justice, Greggie, it might have crowed. This is fate. He wanted to run, but Hannah's eyes had snared him. "Anyone can do what needs to be done. Father Squid - let him speak for the jokers," Gregg said.

"Father Squid will help, but he'd be the first to tell you that he's not the one to head the opposition. Gregg, we need someone who knows people, someone with a knowledge of government, with international contacts, someone used to organizing."

"No," Gregg responded "What you have to do is destroy the vials. You have to find them before Rudo digs in somewhere where he can't be pulled out, before they culture enough of the virus to start a global infection."

"Gregg - " Hannah's hand stroked his head and fell away again. "Why did you come here?"

"To - " Gregg stopped. "I didn't have a plan," he said. "No agenda. I felt I needed to tell you all that I knew. I ... I wanted to see you again. I wanted you to know I was alive before - "

"Before you left."

"Yes," he admitted.

"Where were you going to run, Gregg? Where could you go that would change what you are now? What other place could you find where you belonged, where you were more needed?"

She smiled at him, softly. She bent down, and her lips brushed against his skin. Sparks of delicious heat radiated out from the kiss as she rose, brushing her hair aside as she looked down at him. "I'm going back in now," she said. "Come with me."

Hannah turned and left the room without looking to see if he followed. Gregg stared at the Syrian diorama, at the image of his old self. The focus of his weak eyes shifted involuntarily, and for a moment he saw instead the faint reflection of the yellow creature looking in the glass.

He turned away. He walked back toward the gallery where the Turtle's shells hung. As he entered, they were all watching him: faces and bodies that had once - before the virus - been as normal as his had been. Faces now forever altered. Lives forever changed.

"I'm Gregg Hartmann," he told them. "I'm one of you."

Table of Contents

WILD CARDS

The Color of His Skin

Part 1

Two of a Kind

The Color of His Skin

Part 2

My Sweet Lord

The Color of His Skin

Part 3

Paths of Silence and of Night

The Color of His Skin

Part 4

Feeding Frenzy

1

The Color of His Skin

Part 5

Feeding Frenzy

2

The Color of His Skin

Part 6

A Breath of Life

The Color of His Skin

Part 7

A Dose of Reality

The Color of His Skin

Part 8