Predator One

1

The world didn’t burn down.

Not completely.

But the country will never be the same.

The Golden Gate Bridge has become a symbol of how impervious we’re not. It’s the new Twin Towers, equally potent, terribly painful.

Maybe there’s a philosophical or political discussion to be had about whether we dropped our guard in the years following 9/11, that we became complacent. That we forgot the lesson the planes taught us on that September morning.

I don’t know.

My part of the world never forgot. The people I work with never forgot. We never lost a step getting to first base. We were ready; we were fighting that fight alongside soldiers, cops, and spies. And ordinary citizens.

Maybe it was just that the Seven Kings — or whatever the hell you want to call what that organization had become — had wanted us to doubt ourselves. Probably. Their whole agenda, built on misdirection, misinformation, and screwing with minds, was the kind of thing they did so damn well.

Eleven warships had been destroyed. Sixty-three aircraft. Ninety-one tanks.

The death toll kept rising.

Rising.

Rising.

But we all knew that it was going to slow, to stop.

The password was real. It was “Matthew” in binary.

01001101 01100001 01110100 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110111.

Crazy, right?

It stopped Regis. It stopped Solomon. It ended the terror.

The world didn’t burn.

But damn if we didn’t nearly choke on the smoke.

2

Over the next few days, I spent way too much time in hospitals.

My knife wound was tricky, but it was blood loss more than damage that nearly took me. They pumped me full of high-test, and the trauma surgeon more or less told me to stop whining about what amounted to a sissy injury. Nice guy.

Everyone else I know seemed to be in worse trouble.

Aunt Sallie lost one kidney, but she would live. The doctors were trying to tell her that she should retire. I hoped the doctors had good health coverage of their own.

Sam Imura took a bullet in the stomach and lost four inches of his large intestine. He was expected to recover. His parents flew out from California and brought Sam’s infant brother, Tommy. They stayed with him until he was released.

Toys had 119 stitches.

I sat vigil with Ghost while surgeons picked thirty-one glass splinters out of the woman I loved. Junie’s back looks like it’s covered in red lace. I tried to explain to her that I thought the scars would be sexy. She doesn’t believe me. She should. Scars to me were proof of life. Or a life lived. She was not a killer, not like me; but Junie was born in the storm lands. She is a warrior, too.

I love that woman with all my heart. More every day. More than I thought was possible.

“You ever planning to put a ring on that?” Top asked while Junie was in surgery. He expected me to make a snappy comeback. I didn’t. He stared at me for a while, and then he went off to find us some coffee.

He was smiling.

3

I walked — very carefully, out of respect for my stitches — with Church down the long hallway of the hospital. Not the same floor, of course. That was an ongoing crime scene, and it was a charnel house. No, we were two floors up and in another wing, one untouched by the violence of that day. Church still wore cotton gloves over the damaged skin of his hands. The frostbite had been bad. One of the doctors had wanted to amputate most of his fingers. Another doctor, a top specialist from Switzerland, thought they could be saved. They were using radical treatments. It was a work in progress.

Church had to be in great pain, but he wouldn’t show it to me. I’ve wondered many times before if his stoicism is a sign of great power and therefore something to be admired or a sign of a tragic disconnect from a normal life. I felt sorry for him, but that’s something I would never show to him.

I also respected him. Maybe even loved him like a second father.

Yeah, that’s another conversation we’d never have.

Church had me go over what happened on Tanglewood Island. I told him as much as I cared to share. Maybe he guessed the rest. Our people managed to save the life of Doctor Michael Pharos, and he was medevac’d to a hospital in Seattle. And then he vanished into the big, dark system of the DMS. It is unlikely he will ever see the light of day again.

“Doctor Pharos is doing his best to be useful,” said Church. “He has been remarkably forthcoming.”

“Lucky for him.”

“No,” said Church, “not really.”

Down the hall, a figure sat on a chair outside a patient’s room. She stood as we approached. Tall, slender as a knife blade, beautiful. Alien.

“Hello, Joseph,” she said.

“Hello, Violin.”

She craned her head forward to kiss Mr. Church’s cheek. Then she took his gloved hands and kissed them. He spoke to her very briefly in the ancient language used by Arklight. They don’t know that I’ve picked up some words and phrases. Languages have always been easy for me. I caught two words that I probably misheard, and certainly misinterpreted. I thought Mr. Church said, “… my daughter.”

But I’m sure I’m wrong.

Maybe Church was referring to Circe. Thanking Violin for helping protect her. Sure, that was probably it.

Even so, there was a strange look in her eye. And in his.

“Thanks for bringing that dog,” I said. “I heard stories about what she did.”

Violin nodded. “Still, I wish I’d been there when they attacked. I’m sorry.”

“No need to be. Soldiers can’t be on every battlefield.”

She nodded and stepped back. Church and I entered the patient’s room.

The bed was empty, and the patient was getting dressed with great care and slowness. Much of his body was wrapped in bandages and surgical dressings. When he heard us enter, he turned, and I could see that his face was bruised and lacerated. He had stitches in his lip, through his eyebrow, and across the bridge of his nose. Only his eyes were untouched, and they were filled with a bleak acceptance, as if such physical injury was right and proper and in no way unjust.

“I did not hear that you’d been discharged,” said Church.

Toys tried not to wince as he pulled on a lemon-colored dress shirt. “They’ve already done a patch job. There’s nothing else they can do for me here that I can’t do for myself at home.”

I expected Church to object, but he merely nodded. “Brick will drive you.”

“No need. I called a cab.”

“Brick will drive you,” repeated Church, and Toys shrugged. That did make him wince.

As he began buttoning his shirt, Toys looked up at the ceiling, and maybe through it into the center of his own thoughts. “Sebastian,” he murmured.

“You had no idea?” I asked.

“God, no.”

“He never tried to get in touch?”

Toys shook his head. “Why would he? We hardly parted on the best of terms. The last time we saw each other, we tried to commit mutual murder.”

“Shame you didn’t try harder,” I said.

Toys didn’t meet my eyes. “Something else I need to work out.”

He sounded really sad, genuinely remorseful, and I felt like an ass for having said anything.

“Toys,” I said, “look … I wanted to—”

The young Brit shook his head. “Don’t.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going say.”

“I don’t care what it is. Whatever you have to say, whatever you think you have to say, say it to someone else. Not to me.”

“Why not?” I asked.

He raised his eyes and looked into mine. “Because I don’t want to hear it. Not from you or anyone else. Not ever.”

He made to leave, but I shifted into his path.

“No,” I said, “I think you will hear me out, because I need to say it. Church, can you give us the room?”

“Captain—” began Church, but I shook my head.

“Close the door, too.”

He left and shut the door.

Toys stopped and stood there, bracing against it, jaw set, eyes glassy with dread at whatever I was going to say.

“Listen to me,” I said. “We both know what you’ve done. We both know that it’s going to take a lot more than good works to make you feel better about who you are. If you’re expecting me to forgive you, that’s not what I wanted to say. If you expect me to thank you, I’m pretty sure that’s not what you want me to say.”

“No,” he said hoarsely. “Please don’t.”

“Don’t worry … I won’t. But I will say this. Call it a confessional moment, one sinner to another.”

His gaze sharpened on mine.

“I’ve wanted you dead for a lot of years now. If it wasn’t for Mr. Church and Junie, I’d have killed you already. Probably wouldn’t have used a gun or knife. Might have used my hands, because it would have felt good. What you did while you were with Gault and Vox is unforgivable. I don’t give a pint of cold piss if it was because you had a rough childhood. Believe me, so did I. There’s nature, there’s nurture, and then there’s choice, you dig what I’m saying?”

He nodded.

“If you’re on some kind of road to redemption, that’s between you and Church or maybe between you and God. I wouldn’t even hazard a guess as to how many good works it takes to undo the death of one innocent person. And you know what? I don’t care. I’m not in the forgiveness business. I’m a hunter and I’m a killer, and none of that trains me to be compassionate to my enemies.”

Toys said nothing.

“What I want to say to you is this. I don’t forgive you. I don’t like you. I don’t ever want to be friends with you. But … After what happened? After the other day? You and I are no longer enemies. We’re not even, but we aren’t at war. Not anymore.”

Toys said nothing.

I stepped back, took a breath, let it out, and turned toward the door.

“What,” he said quietly, “no kiss?”

I cracked up. When I turned, he was smiling, too. A sad smile, but a real one.

“Fuck you,” I said.

And I left.

4

The ashes of the political fires are still falling.

No one thinks the president will do well in the next election. The bin Laden video, however unfairly, stained his presidency. So did the rise of the Seven Kings organization. It didn’t matter that ultimately it was one diseased mind, one money-hungry bureaucrat, and a self-sustaining infrastructure that nearly ended things. Someone has to take the bullet, and the president was captain of the ship. Mixed metaphor. Fuck it.

Either way, I don’t much care. The more I become aware of the way politics works, the less invested I become in politicians. I don’t fight for them anyway. I have my own agenda.

In the wake of Regis and Solomon, the drone thing became the center of the national conversation. Everyone can see the benefits; everyone is aware of the dangers. Like most things, it’s all about the gray areas. We’ll have to wait to see what fills our sky tomorrow. For today, the skies are clear and quiet.

5

On a bright and sunny Sunday morning, Junie and I dressed in our very best clothes. I wore a suit that made me look like a million bucks, and a tie that brought out the blue of my eyes. Junie wore a gorgeous dress that fit every delicious curve while still hiding the scars that were now healing nicely. She had a pair of shoes that it took her two weeks to find. I thought they looked great, but they also looked like six other pairs of shoes she already owned. I am not brave enough to say that to her.

We drove in a limousine provided for the occasion. All of the guests were being chauffeured. As we stepped out of the car, I saw Bunny standing on the steps, he on a lower one and Lydia on a higher one. She was adjusting his tie. They kept smiling at each other.

Everyone was smiling. Top, Montana, and Brian. Violin — who appeared in one of those outrageous European hats that straddle the line between high fashion and comedy. Even Lilith was there, though she was not smiling. I don’t know if she understands how that process works. I have never before seen her in civilian clothes. She sat next to Mr. Church. And, weird thing, she looked kind of hot. Most of the guys in the place couldn’t take their eyes off of her. But then they’d see Church looking back at them, and they’d turn away so fast you could hear their necks creak.

Bug was there, and it was the first time I’d seen him since his mother’s funeral. I hugged him. So did Junie. I think he liked Junie’s hug better, which is fair enough.

Bug even managed to smile. Maybe his first in a long time. Was there less innocence in that smile? Less optimism? Less of that rare and precious quality that defined him, that made him — far more than his computer savvy — the heart of our dysfunctional little DMS community?

God, I hope not.

He was coming back to work soon and seemed eager to begin playing with Davidovich’s science. We’d recovered all of his design notes. Everything. It was a good bet that MindReader was about to take a quantum leap forward. Pun intended. We’d need it. We needed an edge. With enemies like we have, we needed any edge we could get.

But that was tomorrow’s concern.

Today wasn’t about the war. It wasn’t about weapons or damage or loss.

For once, it wasn’t about any of that.

We all walked up the steps and into the big Catholic church. Doctor Hu and Jerry Spencer were seated together. They stopped smiling when they saw me. But Aunt Sallie, still in a wheelchair, was parked up front and she actually gave me a smile. Or maybe it was a wince. Hard to say.

The organist was playing something pretty. There were flowers everywhere.

Mr. Church sat near the front. His official presence was as a friend of the family. A few of us knew different. He now wore black gloves in place of the white cotton ones. I would never see him without those gloves again.

The organist changed his tune to something more formal and official. We all took our seats. Then they came in.

The three of them.

So beautiful.

So happy.

They walked down the aisle together. Past all of us. Past friends and coworkers. Past people who, even then, wore guns in concealed holsters. Even in that place. Even on a day like this.

Rudy leaned on his new cane. Another hawthorn stick, another silver handle. I was with him when he bought it. The silver is as pure as it gets. He didn’t tell me why that mattered to him.

Rudy’s suit was gorgeous. It had been impeccably cut and tailored for him by someone Mr. Church knew. A friend in the industry.

Circe looked radiant. I use that word in a literal sense. She seemed to glow. She walked straight and proud. There were cornflowers in her hair that matched her dress. Every woman there wanted her shoes. Every man there probably fell a little bit in love with her.

But the brightest light in that place, the glow that drew us all there, was the tiny form that Circe held in her arms. Dressed in white, with intensely black hair and eyes that were as blue as the cornflowers. Circe and Rudy brought their child to the front of the church. And then the priest called for the godparents to join them.

Junie and I held hands all the way up the aisle.

I’m not Catholic, nor were more than half the people there. Some of them were from different religions; some belonged to none. Some of the people didn’t believe that there was anything beyond this world. No spirits, no angels. No devils or demons.

That was okay. People should be allowed to believe what they want to believe. If some of us have seen things that make us question the limits of the world and the possibilities of a larger world, then that’s on us. It’s ours to consider. To fear or not to fear as we each choose.

Rudy has less fear in him than he’s had for years, even though he knows there is more to be afraid of. It happens that way sometimes. He’s more like his old self, and I’m glad to have him back. He is the best person I know, and — let’s face it — he keeps me sane.

Ish.

So, on that morning, we all stood there and watched a priest dribble water on the head of Albert Joseph Rudolfo O’Tree-Sanchez.

The water was cold.

The baby cried.

We all smiled. We all wept.

And the world did not burn down.