The Unification Chronicles

20: Call It Off

Jack tow­eled off his hair, the hotel bathrobe scratchy against his skin. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it would do. He still wasn’t sure what he saw the night before. Two nights, now, really, he’d seen Hen­driks do things that couldn’t have been real. Seen things right out of a Hol­ly­wood block­buster. And yet, they hap­pened. Right in front of him. Right.

He sat down on the edge of the bed just as the phone rang. He checked the time before he answered. It was six AM. Who was work­ing in the Hoover build­ing this early?

“Har­ris,” he said.

“Agent Har­ris, I have some news,” Dante said. “The lab guys have made a break­through on those par­ti­cles in Hendriks’s blood.”

That got his atten­tion. “Shoot.”

“Sir, have you ever heard of nanotechnology?”

“I’ve seen a cou­ple sto­ries on the news. Tiny lit­tle machines, right?”

“In gen­eral. Nan­otech is about machines built from the indi­vid­ual atoms up rather than carv­ing down. So far, all we’ve been able to do with it has been in mate­ri­als sci­ence, tiny tubes or balls made of car­bon atoms.”

“So the par­ti­cles in Hendriks’s blood are these tubes?”

“No sir, they’re not.”

“So why did you bring it up?”

“Sir, the par­ti­cles in the blood are nanites, or nanoma­chines, but they’re far more advanced than any­thing ever doc­u­mented. Who­ever built them, they’re not shar­ing, sir.”

“So, the Chi­nese, maybe?”

“No sir. Agent Har­ris, these machines are decades, maybe cen­turies, ahead of what our best sci­en­tists can do. I have no idea where they came from.”

“What do they do?”

“The lab Is still test­ing, but they seem to be involved in cel­lu­lar maintenance.”

“In Eng­lish, Dante.”

“Sorry, sir. They mon­i­tor for and repair dam­age and aging at a cel­lu­lar level.”

“Mean­ing what, exactly?”

“Sir, these are immor­tal­ity machines. They kill viruses imme­di­ately, as well as invad­ing bac­te­ria. They repair the effects of age on the blood cells.”

Immor­tal­ity. “Dante, what would the effects of these machines look like in a person?”

He heard Dante gulp, even over the phone. “Just what we’ve seen in Richardson’s videos, sir. Wounds would heal almost instantly. The sub­ject would never age, since the cel­lu­lar dam­age that causes aging would be fixed as soon as it hap­pened. A human with these infused in his blood would be almost impos­si­ble to kill.”

“Almost impos­si­ble?”

“Well, I’ve been think­ing about that, sir. If this is why Hen­driks can do what he does, there are ways around it.”

“Like what?”

“Over­load the sys­tem, do more dam­age too fast for the nanites to han­dle. A grenade might work, some­thing to make him explode and burn the pieces. We’re still test­ing for other ways. How­ever the nanites work, we haven’t fig­ured out yet how they com­mu­ni­cate with each other to coör­di­nate their efforts. If you could block that…”

“I see, Dante. Thanks for the tip.”

“There’s more, sir.”

“What?”

“The nanites don’t seem to be trans­fer­able. We dumped some of them in a con­trol blood sam­ple, and they didn’t acti­vate. They only work for Hen­driks. We think there might be a marker some­where in his DNA that the nanites key on, but until we sequence it…”

“Gotcha.”

“Sir, this means Cho was telling the truth all along. That Hen­driks really did walk away from that accident.”

“I know, Dante. But I still have to catch him. If for no other rea­son, than to pro­tect him. Keep me informed.”

#

“Hold still, you big baby,” Susan said.

“I said I’m okay, Susie!” Jeff pulled away from her, try­ing to dodge the hydro­gen per­ox­ide she was using to clean the gash on his lip from the stock of the shot­gun the night before. Daniel lounged in an arm­chair across the dingy motel room from them, wait­ing for the painkillers to kick in and make him not want to just cut off his left arm.

They’d gone north again after the fight with Batarel, ulti­mately end­ing up here in Newark, New Jer­sey. Out the motel room win­dow he could see just a piece of the famous Man­hat­tan sky­line across the river, behind Jer­sey City. The sun was com­ing up over the Atlantic, throw­ing the city into sil­hou­ette. They were now in a met­ro­pol­i­tan area con­tain­ing over twenty mil­lion peo­ple, and this time they were hop­ing that Batarel wouldn’t be able to find them. At least, not today. They cer­tainly weren’t look­ing for him.

“There!” Susan said. “Done!” Daniel saw that Jeff had a lit­tle but­ter­fly suture hold­ing the cut on his lip shut. Susan turned to him. “Daniel? You okay?”

“I’ll be fine, Susan.”

“Not if you take another beat­ing like that, you won’t.” He fussed over him for a few sec­onds, mak­ing sure there really wasn’t any­thing she could do before she sat down on the other bed and fired up her lap­top. She plugged the cam­era into the side of the lap­top and started doing her thing.

“So,” Jeff said, “what’s our next step?”

“As far as I’m con­cerned,” Daniel said, “there isn’t one. I’m done.”

“Done?” Jeff and Susan said in uni­son. In stereo, where avail­able, Daniel thought. He might need some stronger painkillers.

“Yeah,” Daniel said. “Done. We can’t beat him. We can’t kill him. It’s time to cut our losses.”

“And how do you think that’s gonna work, Danny?” Jeff said. “He still wants you dead. He’s going to keep coming.”

“In a city this big, he can try to find me. I’ve dropped every­thing and started over before. I can do it again. It’s like the Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion Program.”

“Daniel,” Susan said. “I don’t want to start over. I make my liv­ing being vis­i­ble, talk­ing to peo­ple. I’ve spent years build­ing a name in this business — “

“Susan, you’re a blog­ger. Change your name and write about cats. He’ll never find you.”

“That was mean,” Susan said.

“Don’t you peo­ple get it?” Daniel said. “He’s immor­tal. He’s going to kill us if we keep fight­ing him. He almost did kill you last night, Susan. If that FBI agent hadn’t shown up when he did, you’d be a red smear under a Philadel­phia power sta­tion, and then how would you have reached your read­ers? Séances?”

“But he did show up, Daniel. We are still alive.”

“For now,” Daniel said. “And that’s con­tin­gent on mak­ing sure Batarel never finds us. The next time you see him, it will be very haz­ardous to your health. Con­sider that my pro­fes­sional med­ical opin­ion.” Yeah, def­i­nitely time for some stronger painkillers. Or just a hell of a lot more of the ones he had. He wished he still had a pre­scrip­tion pad.

“Daniel, I want you to think about some­thing,” Jeff said. “Do you think Batarel’s act­ing alone? Do you think he’s the only one of his kind? We’ve got another day, two at the out­side, to bring him down before this gets strung out too far for him to con­tain it.”

“What the hell are you talk­ing about?”

“He’s a demon, Daniel.” Daniel noticed Jeff was call­ing him by his given name, not “Dan” or “Danny.” Prob­a­bly thought that would make Daniel take him more seri­ously. All the while talk­ing sui­ci­dal non­sense. That was a good try, though.

“Yeah? We know that, Jeff.”

“There are thou­sands of demons. Hun­dreds of thou­sands, if not mil­lions, of their human min­ions. Are you going to avoid all of them, every day, for the rest of your life? Because that’s what you’re talk­ing about.

“And even if you can, and I can, what about Susan? After all she’s done for you, are you just going to give up on her? Throw her career away?”

Daniel jumped up out of the chair. “You don’t fuck­ing get it! The next time we see Batarel, we are dead! Do you under­stand dead?” He stormed out of the hotel room and slammed the door behind him.

#

[In revi­sions, estab­lish before this scene that they can track Jack by GPS via his cell phone, not the car. The FBI was going to put in-​​dash GPS into the cars, but due to bud­get cuts they just got GPS-​​enabled phones and dash­board mounts.]

Jack was packed and just tying his shoe when his phone rang again. He picked it up and answered with­out looking.

“What’s up, Dante?”

“I’m very dis­ap­pointed in you, Jack,” Lou said. Aw, shit…

“I’m sorry, Lou. I know it’s tak­ing longer than — “

“Jack, you haven’t been online yet this morn­ing, have you?”

Uh oh. “No sir, I haven’t. Last night didn’t go very well, and — let’s be frank, yes­ter­day as a whole didn’t go very well, and I thought a good night’s sleep — “

“Richard­son posted another one of her videos this morn­ing, Jack. You’re in it. In kind of a star­ring role.”

Come to think of it, Richard­son did have one of those lit­tle dig­i­tal cam­eras. “Sir, I can explain — “

“My phone has been ring­ing off the hook this morn­ing Jack. I finally had to tell Stacey to hold all my calls.”

You mean the calls you were mak­ing her take to begin with? You never answer your own phone, you old wind­bag. “I’m sure that’s an incon­ve­nience, sir — “

“Do you know who’s been call­ing me, Jack?”

“I wouldn’t haz­ard a guess, si — “

“I’ve got­ten calls from the Hill, of course, but they were already mad at you. I’ve got­ten calls from all the cable net­works. They’re rebroad­cast­ing Richardson’s video now, so it’s not just the geeks on the inter­net who can see this. I’ve got­ten calls from Direc­tor Mueller, Direc­tor of Home­land Secu­rity Janet Napolitano — “

I know who the god­damn direc­tor of DHS is, you idiot, you don’t have to say her full name…

“ — White House Media Chief Robert Gibbs, pretty much every­one but the pres­i­dent him­self. And do you know what they all want to know?”

“Sir, I — “

“They want to know what the hell is going on, Jack. Only I can’t tell them. Because I don’t know. I don’t know what one of my most dec­o­rated agents is doing in Philadel­phia ter­ror­iz­ing some poor civilian’s dog. I don’t know how said agent ended up on a video­tape recorded by a sus­pected ter­ror­ist, and yet hasn’t reported an arrest of the same ter­ror­ist. I don’t know why I’m even pay­ing you at this point!”

Jack said noth­ing. Frankly, any­thing he said would only make the sit­u­a­tion worse.

“So here’s what we’re going to do, Jack,” Lou con­tin­ued. “You are going to return to Wash­ing­ton imme­di­ately. We are going to mobi­lize a DHS task force to track down and appre­hend Cho and his com­pan­ions, and you are going to explain to Direc­tor Mueller why this has been fucked up so terribly.”

“Sir, I have infor­ma­tion from Ana­lyst Hicks — “

“Ana­lyst Hicks,” Lou sneered. “You’re sup­posed to be a fed­eral agent, Jack. The ana­lysts sup­port you, not the other way around.”

“But these new findings — “

“Oh, I’m well aware of Hick’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the lab rats. I’ve had him report­ing to me on the hour, try­ing to see just what it was you were so inter­ested in. And frankly, Jack, it’s bull­shit. All this talk about nano-​​whatsits and immor­tal­ity, it’s all stuff for those losers who put on pointy ears and go to con­ven­tions when they’re not in their mother’s base­ments. It’s a mis­take, and I’m sure the lab will cor­rect their ini­tial analy­sis shortly.”

“But what Hen­driks did, last night — “

“Agent Har­ris, when did you get the impres­sion this was a con­ver­sa­tion? I know any­one can do Hollywood-​​style spe­cial effects with a lap­top. I don’t believe the video any more than I believe the lab results. And frankly, Agent Har­ris, any more than I believe you. Now get back to Wash­ing­ton on the dou­ble! That’s an order!”

Lou hung up before Jack got a chance to tell him to go fuck him­self. Instead, Jack just stared at the phone. Of course Lou didn’t under­stand. He’d been a desk jockey his whole career, a polit­i­cal ani­mal. And polit­i­cal ani­mals sur­vived by main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo.

A quote came to him from yet another inter­net video. The sta­tus was not quo. He knew it, but he would never be able to con­vince Lou. There was noth­ing more he could do to get the FBI involved in this.

He tossed the phone down on the bed. It would be found by house­keep­ing, and hope­fully returned to the FBI. But it wouldn’t relay his GPS posi­tion back to head­quar­ters. Once he walked out that door, he was on his own.

He walked out the door.

#

Daniel walked down the street away from the motel, pass­ing gas sta­tions, con­ve­nience stores and pawn shops. They just didn’t get it. They couldn’t fight a demon, and they had been stu­pid to try. Now all they’d man­aged to do was piss him off, and get the FBI on their col­lec­tive asses.

And that’s the other thing. He’d just wanted Susan to tell his story, then get on with her life. And Jeff, he’d never even asked to help. And yet now, here he was again, with other people’s lives in his hands. Exactly what he didn’t want. Never wanted again.

They were going to die. That was almost a given. Their only hope at all was to dis­ap­pear, to give up every­thing about their lives, to start over, stay off the radar and never, ever attract atten­tion. Jeff may be a kook, Daniel thought, but he’s been right about the demons. So he’s prob­a­bly just as right about their net­work of “minions.”

As he walked, Daniel stud­ied the peo­ple around him, shuf­fling about their daily lives. How many of them secretly wor­shipped immor­tals? How many of them did so openly, but called them angels rather than demons. Jeff hadn’t gone into that part of the secret soci­ety, but Daniel fig­ured if one really existed, so must the other. Were they out there? Watch­ing him? Had he ever met an angel and just didn’t know it? After all the demons didn’t have horns or smell of brim­stone. They just never died.

No, it wasn’t fair, espe­cially to Susan. He felt like shit drag­ging her into this. But how was he sup­posed to know? How was he sup­posed to know that the only way for her to sur­vive being sucked into his prob­lem was aban­don­ing every­thing she’d ever worked for and hid­ing like a mouse for the rest of her life? All he’d wanted was the truth about what hap­pened at that crash on M street, and that’s sup­posed to be what reporters are all about, right? Find­ing the truth?

Daniel was a smart guy, or at least thought of him­self that way. He’d breezed through col­lege and med school. He was sup­posed to be able to fig­ure out a way out of this. A way to give Jeff and Susan their lives back. A way to avoid liv­ing every day in fear for the rest of his life. But he just couldn’t see it. What did you do if some­one who wants you dead also turns out to be unstop­pable and unkillable?

You ran, that’s that you did. You ran like a rab­bit. You ran like Daniel ran from Oak­land, like he was still running.

Daniel checked his watch. It was just a quar­ter after nine in the morn­ing. Screw it, he thought. It’s New Jer­sey. They’ve got to be serv­ing alco­hol somewhere.

19: Elec­tro­cu­tion in Philadelphia

[scene with Jack try­ing to con­vince the Philly PD that no, really, he’s chas­ing a ter­ror­ist, not just assault­ing neigh­bor­hood dogs; cops leave Jack to his own devices]

#

Daniel stood next to the power sta­tion. It was fully night, now, and they had no idea where Batarel was. He should have found them by now.

“Any sign of him,” he said into the walkie talkie.

“Noth­ing here,” Jeff said.

“Noth­ing here either,” Susan said.

Daniel was start­ing to think this was a dumb idea. What made them think they could make an immor­tal walk into a tra—

“Cho.”

He knew that voice by now and it stopped him cold. He was here. But still, Daniel couldn’t see him. He had to be just beyond the edge of the lights.

“Batarel.”

The demon didn’t reply, so Daniel couldn’t deter­mine the loca­tion from the sound.

“He’s here!” Daniel said into the walkie talkie. As soon as he spoke, a knife flew at his head from the dark.

“Shit!” he said, drop­ping and rolling away. He heard Jeff and Susan run­ning towards him just as he saw Batarel step out of the dark­ness. Some­how he wasn’t sur­prised to see that the demon was walk­ing into a fight with them while wear­ing another designer suit.

He heard a bang as he was get­ting up, and saw a bright red hole appear in Batarel’s shirt. The demon didn’t even slow down.

“This is even more pathetic than the last attempt,” Batarel said. “I take it this is an elab­o­rate ruse to elec­tro­cute me? Let me get that out of the way.” He walked over to one of the tow­ers, hopped up to the low­est run, a good ten feet off the ground, and climbed until get to a live wire. Look­ing back down to make sure they were still watch­ing, he reached out and grabbed the wire in his hand.

Sparks shot a hun­dred feet in the air and Daniel heard thun­der­ing bangs from the capac­i­tors behind him. The lights went out, and Daniel could see that all the house­lights were out in all the nearby houses.

Batarel dropped back to the ground, charred and still smok­ing. What was left of his hair was stick­ing straight out, and his suit was in tat­ters. But in spite of that, he was smiling.

“My turn,” he said. He snapped a leg out and caught Daniel in the mid­sec­tion, knock­ing the wind out of him and throw­ing him back­wards a dozen feet.

Jeff brought up a shot­gun and unloaded in the demon’s chest. “Susie, get in the car!” he said. Susan was stand­ing just off to the side, get­ting it all on camera.

The demon grabbed the shot­gun out of Jeff’s hand and hit him across the jaw with the stock. “There’s no need for that,” Batarel said. “You’re not get­ting away this time.”

Daniel rushed him, and fell to the ground again as the demon eas­ily side­stepped him. “We’re not doing this again,” Batarel said. “But I’m not about to make it quick and easy, either. Not after the trou­ble you’ve caused me.”

The demon turned the shot­gun around and aimed it at Susan. Daniel was just ris­ing to his feet when he heard the shot.

#

Jack looked down the bar­rel of his pis­tol, cordite pun­gent in the night air. Instead of drop­ping from the ten mil­lime­ter slug in his back, Hen­driks turned around, almost casually.

“A new face!” he said. “Or, wait, I know you. Didn’t I kill you last night?”

“Drop the weapon freak!”

“Or what, offi­cer? All you’ve done is ensure you share their fate.”

Jack fired again, this time a head shot. The back of Hendriks’s skull exploded in a red mist, and Jack could clearly see through the hole as the man raised his shot­gun in return.

“Oh shit,” Jack said as he dove for the ground. He actu­ally felt the pel­lets pass by over his back.

“Hey, Batarel.” Cho said. Jack looked up to see Cho swing­ing a fuck­ing Samu­rai sword with one hand at the demon, chop­ping off the arm hold­ing the shot­gun just below the shoulder.

“Oh,” Hen­driks said. “You’re going to pay extra for that.”

Jack got back up and shouted at Cho. “Stand back!” As Cho hopped away, he emp­tied a clip into Hendriks’s cen­ter mass. With the man’s back turned, to him, he could actu­ally see the hole in the back of his head seal­ing up. The brain expand­ing to refill the cranium.

What in the holy fuck is this? Jack thought. He’d seen perps on PCP or meth shake off what should have been dis­abling wounds. He’d seen men in Iraq crawl to safety miss­ing limbs. But he’d never seen any­one who could do—

“Head’s up, Agent Har­ris!” Cho said as he swung the sword again, aim­ing to sever the head from the neck. This time Hen­driks ducked, and the sword only caught his hair, skim­ming across the scalp. Hell, Jack thought, even that should have hurt enough to put him down.

From his lower stance, Hen­driks lashed out with a kick that caught Cho squarely in the cast. Cho went down screaming.

The old man had got­ten back up, and lev­eled an auto­matic at Hen­driks. “Susie, I ain’t telling you again. Get in the damn car!” He emp­tied a clip in Hen­driks, which knocked him back just enough for Frankel to get Cho’s arm over his shoul­der. “We’re bug­ging out, girl! Get!”

Richard­son ran past Jack. “Sorry, Agent Har­ris!” she said.

Jack slapped another clip into his pis­tol and started fir­ing at Hen­driks again, just try­ing to keep him off bal­ance. He wasn’t aim­ing for cen­ter mass now, but try­ing to take out kneecaps, hit the shoul­der and spin him around, any­thing to buy time.

Frankel and Cho limped past him. “Much obliged, sir,” Frankel said.

This is, with­out a doubt, Jack thought, the weird­est night I’ve ever had.

He could hear sirens in the dis­tance, faint red and blue lights vis­i­ble in the black­out. “You can’t leave me here with him!” he said. He heard Richard­son fire up the Crown Vic he’d seen com­ing in.

“Sorry, Agent, but we don’t have much choice!” Frankel said, eas­ing Cho into the back seat. “Sounds like help’s on the way, though!”

The door shut, Jack popped another cou­ple rounds into Hen­driks, and the Crown Vic pulled away, lights off and nearly invis­i­ble in the black­out. They were using him, and his gun­fire, as a dis­trac­tion to slip past the police. He had to give them credit, they were resou—

Hen­driks leapt at him and Jack fired another shot as he dodged. But Hen­driks wasn’t attack­ing him. He was just vault­ing over him and try­ing to chase down the Crown Vic on foot. And until they shifted into third, he had a shot at it.

The sirens were much closer now, and Jack didn’t want to try to explain this. He slunk off into the night him­self, going the oppo­site way he’d seen Hen­driks run. No sense tempt­ing fate.

18: Mother and Invention

“Have you seen this man?” Jack asked. He was in a diner just off Inter­state 95, the four­teenth such diner he’d stopped at that after­noon. On the the­ory that they had gone north on 95 from DC to Bal­ti­more, he just kept going north, stick­ing to cities big enough for Richard­son to mask her sig­nal if she tried to upload another video. He was stopped in south Philly and start­ing to think he was work­ing a dead end. Maybe they headed west instead.

“That guy?” the host­ess said.

“Yes, ma’am, the man in this pic­ture.” Who else would I be talk­ing about? Jack thought.

“Yeah, now that you men­tion it, I seen him,” she said. “He was in here with some geezer and a brunette for lunch. Took up a cor­ner booth for two hours, thought we’d never turn that over.”

“He was here?” Great, now it was his turn to ask stu­pid ques­tions. He hadn’t got­ten much sleep.

“Yeah. They took off after the chick started mak­ing a scene, yelling at the geezer. Thought I’d have to sep­a­rate them, but they left just after.”

“Did you see which way they went?”

“Nah, once they went out­side Bert dropped a tray of orders and we had to clean stuff up.”

“Thank you,” Jack said.

“So,” she said. “Is there some kinda reward for information?”

He flashed her his ID. “Just the thanks of a grate­ful nation, ma’am.”

“Yeah, that and a buck fifty’ll get me a cup of coffee.”

Jack walked out the door and was about to call Dante just as his phone rang. It was Dante.

#

“Daniel! Oh my God, son, where are you?”

“I can’t tell you that, Mom. I just wanted you to know I’m okay.”

“Daniel, there were FBI men here yes­ter­day.” Daniel imag­ined her stand­ing in the stock­room of the store she and his father ran in Oak­land. It was just a neigh­bor­hood gro­cery store, lit­tle more than a con­ve­nience store with pro­duce, really, but it had been his home grow­ing up. His fam­ily lived above the store and Daniel and his sis­ters had all spent as much time there as they had in school. That was where his par­ents had drilled into him the unlim­ited promise of Amer­ica, the drive to excel and the work ethic that got him through med­ical school and work­ing as an ER surgeon.

For all the good that did him.

“I know, Mom.”

“Daniel, they said you were a ter­ror­ist.” She nearly hissed the word, pro­nounc­ing it with vehe­mence she usu­ally reserved for Kim Jong Il.

“I’m inno­cent, Mom.”

“Then why don’t you turn your­self in?”

“It’s com­pli­cated, Mom.”

“Pah!” she said. “It’s not so com­pli­cated. You did noth­ing wrong, you turn your­self in. Your father, he wor­ried about you.”

Wow, Daniel thought. Her gram­mar didn’t start to slip unless she was really upset. His mother took great pride in becom­ing flu­ent in Eng­lish, and worked very hard to speak it with­out much of an accent.

“I can’t tell you what’s going on,” Daniel said. “Not yet.”

“Why, Daniel? Why can’t you tell me?”

Because the FBI is almost cer­tainly record­ing this con­ver­sa­tion, Daniel thought. “I wish I could, but it’s going to have to wait until the next time I see you.”

“If you keep run­ning, they arrest you? When do I get to see you then?”

“I’m inno­cent, Mom,” Daniel repeated. “But there’s more to it than that.”

Daniel heard his mother sob, and instantly, his eyes began to well up. Shit, he thought.

“Daniel, please turn your­self in, so you can come home. It wasn’t your fault, that night at the hos­pi­tal. No one blames you. You don’t have to run so far.”

He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t tell her that he was being chased by more than just the FBI. He couldn’t tell her that an immor­tal mon­ster was try­ing to kill him. He def­i­nitely couldn’t tell his mother, a devout Chris­t­ian, that he was being hunted by a demon from the Book of Enoch. So what could he do?

“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” Daniel said. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Daniel.”

He hung up.

#

“Talk to me, Dante,” Jack said.

“The tap on his parents’s phone paid off,” Dante said. “He called them.”

“Num­ber?” Jack asked.

“Didn’t tell us any­thing,” Dante said. “It’s a pre-​​paid disposable.”

“Dammit!” Jack said. How many of those did Cho have?

“But we were able to locate it.”

“And you didn’t start with that bit of infor­ma­tion why?”

“He’s in north Philade­phia,” Dante said. “In a res­i­den­tial neighborhood.”

“Any known con­tacts in the area?”

“None, but I’m not sure how much that means. If he was stay­ing with some­one, he could have used a land line.”

“Unless he knew we had a tap on his fam­ily line.”

“He’s a smart guy, sir. He prob­a­bly fig­ured that out. I’m think­ing that’s why he used a disposable.”

“So he’s not still talk­ing to them?” Jack asked.

“No sir, it was a short call. After he hung up he turned off the phone and we lost the lock on his loca­tion. I’m send­ing a tran­script of the call to you by email, and I’ve got the lab going over the record­ing to see if we can pull out any back­ground sounds that could give away what he’s up to”

“Good,” Jack said. “Let me know if he turns on the phone again.”

“Will do, sir.”

Jack hung up the phone and got in his car. He was close, and he was right about them com­ing up to Philly. He could get them today, tonight at the latest.

Only, some­thing had been nag­ging at him all day. What if Cho was right? Jack knew Cho had been right about some of it. He’d seen Hen­driks with his own eyes. Some­thing was going on that he didn’t under­stand. What was Hen­driks? Why was he try­ing to kill Cho? Was Cho right that he, Richard­son and Frankel wouldn’t be safe in fed­eral cus­tody? And how would Jack pos­si­bly explain what they needed to be pro­tected from?

He shook his head. None of that mat­tered right now. First, he had to cap­ture them. What hap­pened after that was for some­one else to decide.

He started the car and pulled into traffic.

#

Batarel checked his face one more time in the hotel bath­room mir­ror. The wound had healed, of course. It had healed before he even left Bal­ti­more. Some­thing still felt… off… some­how. Maybe it was just that that the annoy­ing lit­tle speck of a human had pushed him recently, forced him to regen­er­ate more than he had in a thou­sand years. Well, nearly a thou­sand years. That sec­ond Cru­sade was a bitch.

He ran his hand through gin­ger hair and sighed. Cho had no chance to kill him, but last night had almost been worse. To be cap­tured, and cap­tured with proof of his true nature stick­ing out of his God damn head, that was just too much to risk. It was worse than his death, because it threat­ened the cause. For­tu­nately, no one other than Cho and his com­pa­tri­ots sur­vived to tell the tale, and they’d be dealt with soon enough.

They’d bet­ter be. This was drag­ging on too long, and he wasn’t going to be able to dodge Zagiel much longer.

He strode into the liv­ing room and looked out the wide glass doors at the cityscape of Philadel­phia laid out in front of him. He was in a four star hotel, using one of his spare iden­ti­ties. It felt good to get out of the muck for a while, to treat him­self to a lit­tle lux­ury. He damned well deserved it.

He walked out on the bal­cony, let the sum­mer evening breeze brush past him. He couldn’t quite fig­ure why Cho was giv­ing him so much trou­ble. He’d learned some valu­able lessons from the expe­ri­ence, true. He knew he had to get bet­ter with firearms. He hadn’t really prac­ticed with a hand weapon since the cross­bow. And he needed to get bet­ter at online track­ing. He’d had absolutely no luck thus far in track­ing down Richard­son online, not in any way that would lead to her, and thus Cho’s, phys­i­cal loca­tion. And now he’d been thwarted in Bal­ti­more, he didn’t want to use his con­tacts in the Church here in Philadel­phia. It would not do for him to look weak, and no one talked like priests talked.

He knew they were here. He felt it. They’d stayed in major metro areas so far, never stop­ping for more than sup­plies in small towns or rural areas. They were stick­ing to I-​​95, head­ing relent­lessly north, like they were look­ing for some­thing. He wasn’t sure what that could be, and he was half tempted to let them find it.

But no. This had to end, and it had to be tonight.

#

“Penny for your thoughts,” Susan said.

Daniel was sit­ting on the hood of the car, watch­ing the sun set over west Philadel­phia. The sky was a beau­ti­ful mix of orange, red and indigo above. He turned and looked at her. “Peo­ple always say that,” he said. “But then you have to put your two cents in. Somebody’s mak­ing a penny.”

“Steven Wright,” Susan said. She’d heard that joke before.

“Yeah. Weird how stuff like that stays with us, even in times like this, huh?”

Susan hopped up on the hood next to him. “I’m sorry about the diner this morn­ing. I don’t know why I snapped like that — “

“You snapped because you were exhausted and ter­ri­fied. We all were. Still are, really. It’s okay, I prob­a­bly over reacted.”

“You didn’t. I could have got­ten us caught.”

“Well, you didn’t. And hope­fully, after tonight, it won’t mat­ter.” He reached down beside him and grabbed a pis­tol, one of the ones Jeff bought in Bal­ti­more. He pulled the top part back and it jerked for­ward with a “chickt” sound. He started mess­ing with some­thing on the side of it.

“Do you know how to use one of those?” Susan asked.

“I had a friend in col­lege who was a gun nut. He took me to the shoot­ing range a few times. I know how to fire a pis­tol, but my accuracy’s noth­ing to write home about.” He put the pis­tol down on the side away from her, and then picked up the sword he’d used in D.C. “Speak­ing of writ­ing, how’s that going?”

“I have a draft writ­ten about today and what we’re plan­ning to do. And I’ve got the cam­era ready for tonight, all the space freed up for new footage.”

“Good,” he said, inspect­ing the blade of the sword. “We need this doc­u­mented in as much detail as pos­si­ble. If Batarel isn’t the only one of his kind, the way Jeff says, then we need to know every­thing we can about how to destroy them.”

“Do you really expect to use that?” she said, point­ing to the sword.

“God, I hope not,” Daniel said. “It’s really not designed to be used one-​​handed, and I can’t hold it with my left hand [make sure the break and cast is on Daniel’s left arm]. But it was effec­tive in slow­ing him down a cou­ple nights ago — “

“Oh my God,” Susan said.

“What?” Daniel said. He put the sword down and grabbed the gun again.

“No, nothing’s wrong,” she said. “I just can’t believe that was only two nights ago. Four nights ago I was in my own bed, try­ing to fig­ure out how to track you down for an inter­view. It seems like a lot longer.”

Daniel put the gun down and laughed. “Yeah, and less than a week ago, I was just some nobody para­medic try­ing to dis­ap­pear. Now I’m a nobody para­medic try­ing not to get killed by an immor­tal demon. It’s been a rough week.”

Susan started laugh­ing, and she found she couldn’t stop. Once she started snort­ing, Daniel broke out laugh­ing too, and before long they were both dou­bled over on the hood of the car, try­ing to catch their breath.

Jeff walked up from behind the car, where he’d being going over their sup­plies in the trunk. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

This got Susan and Daniel going again in a whole new bout of laughter.

It was a nice moment. It would be quite a while until they laughed again.

#

“We’ve got him, Agent Harris.”

Jack strug­gled to fit the ear­bud in his ear so he could talk with­out hold­ing the phone up to his ear as he drove. “Where?”

“Feed­ing the GPS coor­di­nates to your car now. He just turned on the phone, but he hasn’t placed a call yet. He’s not mov­ing either. It’s another res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood, not far from the other one,” Dante said.

“So they’ve set up a base of oper­a­tions here, but he moved away from it to call his par­ents? Why would he turn it on now and stay still?”

“I don’t know, sir. Looks like you’re about three miles away.”

Jack accel­er­ated and hoped for the best. If he was lucky, he’d catch them unawares. “Talk me in, Dante.”

Dante relayed instruc­tions to him, which matched the lit­tle arrow on the GPS screen in his dash­board. He still wasn’t used to fol­low­ing those and keep­ing his eyes on the road at the same time. The depart­ment just got them six months ago. Finally, Dante directed him onto a res­i­den­tial street.

“He’s four houses up, sir, but that’s about all we can tell. It looks like he’s on the left side of the house, but that’s well within the mar­gin for error in the GPS triangulation — “

“Got it Dante, thanks. Can you get a posi­tion off my phone?”

“How do you think I’ve been direct­ing you, sir?”

“Right. Okay, I’m parking.”

“You’re right in front of the house. My best guess is that he’s in the back yard on the left, but again — “

“Mar­gin of error. Right. Okay, I’m going in.”

Jack got out of the car, strapped on his bul­let­proof vest read­ing “FBI” in huge yel­low let­ters, and then started in. “You’ve got backup vec­tored in on my posi­tion?” he whis­pered into the phone.

“Com­ing in silent, but yes, local PD is on the way. They’ve been briefed on the situation.”

“Who’s the homeowner?”

“Leroy Jenk­ins, no pri­ors. No evi­dence he’s ever even heard of Cho.”

Jack saw that around the left side of the house, there was a six foot wooden fence. The gate was pad­locked. “Pad­lock on the gate, but you say the cell phone is on the other side, right?” he hissed.

“Yes sir.”

“That’s prob­a­ble cause in my book.”

He looked for some­thing to help him climb. The next door neigh­bor had some steel garbage cans on the side of his house. That’ll do, Jack said. He pulled one of the cans over to the fence as qui­etly as he could. He stepped up on to it, then peeked into the back yard.

“Noth­ing there,” he told Dante.

“We’re still get­ting the sig­nal,” Dante said.

“Fine, I’ll get a closer look. How far off is that backup?”

“Five min­utes, maybe.”

Jack really didn’t want to risk los­ing them. “Going in alone. Radio silence until I say.”

He held on to the top of the fence with his left hand, and while hold­ing his pis­tol in his right hand, vaulted a leg up to the top of the fence. He rolled over the top and dropped to the grass on the other side. Care­fully, he stepped around the cor­ner of the house.

Simul­ta­ne­ously, he saw two things. One, he saw the phone, lying alone in the mid­dle of the yard, clearly tossed there. And two, he saw the two Rot­tweil­ers growl­ing at him from the patio.

And of course, Jack thought, they’re not on chains. Thanks, Cho.

#

[Some­how, they lure Batarel to the power sta­tion. Yes, I’m skip­ping a whole scene. I can do that, because this is a rough draft. And rough drafts be slip­pery, pre­cious, slip­pery indeed…]

17: Rep­ri­mands

“So this is your con­tin­gency,” Daniel said. “Not bad.”

“I had a buddy pick it up for me at auc­tion,” Jeff said, walk­ing around the retired police cruiser. It was ten year old Ford Crown Vic, and Daniel fig­ured it would be plenty to get them along for a while.

Even bet­ter, it even looked like a cop car still. It had the search­light on the driver’s pylon, no hub­caps over the black rims and a cou­ple of tall wire anten­nas mounted to the trunk. “What’re those?” Daniel asked.

“CB anten­nas,” Jeff said. “Serve two pur­poses. One, they allow us to talk to other mem­bers of the net­work, scout out poten­tial trou­ble on the road. And two, com­plete the illu­sion that this is an unmarked police car. At first glance, we’ll be two plain­clothes cops dri­ving a sus­pect around. Most cops won’t give us a sec­ond look. Once you show peo­ple what they expect to see, they almost never look any closer. That’s how aliens and immor­tals walk around every day with­out being noticed.”

Daniel smiled, and flicked his eyes to Susan. The guy had a point right up until that last sen­tence. But so far, it was work­ing, so no need to ques­tion it now.

“Everything’s in the trunk,” Jeff said. “I think it’s most con­vinc­ing if you and Susie take turns dri­ving, with me in the back. I’m too old to look like much of a detec­tive, but I’m sure I’m still young enough to cause trouble.”

“Agreed,” Daniel said. “So what’s our next step?”

“Hard to say,” Jeff said. “We still don’t know if drown­ing an immor­tal would work. But we do know that we can’t over­power one hand to hand. He’s just been toy­ing with us so far. I knew they were strong, but what Batarel did to those cops…”

“How about elec­tro­cu­tion?” Daniel asked. “We’re not far from Philly, home town of Ben Franklin himself.”

“Not a bad idea,” Jeff said, get­ting into the back seat. “Let’s find some wifi. I need to research what we know about immor­tals and lightning.”

#

Susan posted her video and a nearly two thou­sand word post about their adven­ture the night before. She’d slept in the car on the way to Philade­phia, where they were stopped at a diner just inside the city. She couldn’t remem­ber the last time she got a full night’s sleep, and she was so tired that Jeff’s rav­ings were start­ing to sound rea­son­able to her. Of course, being chased and nearly killed sev­eral times by an immor­tal demon had a way of expand­ing one’s horizons.

She’d come to accept that Batarel was a demon, or at least what passed for one. She didn’t under­stand why God allowed such a thing, but bad things had been hap­pen­ing to good peo­ple for nearly two thou­sand years since Jesus died on the cross. It wasn’t her place to ques­tion it now.

Before while the video had uploaded, she’d cached all the com­ments from the pre­vi­ous day’s story and all her email to her hard drive, so she could read it all when they weren’t actu­ally online. The reac­tion was amaz­ing. Some were the typ­i­cal inter­net crack­pot responses, of course, who she had come to con­sider “Jeff’s peo­ple.” But the traf­fic to the story itself had become a story, with Stan fight­ing under the first amend­ment to keep the story up in spite of efforts by Home­land Secu­rity to squash it. Tech­ni­cal experts were weigh­ing in on both sides, claim­ing simul­ta­ne­ously that they could prove it was a hoax and they could prove the video was undoc­tored. They were start­ing to get real national atten­tion, which she was sure had Stan blind from all the dol­lar signs in his eyes.

Susan was amazed to dis­cover that she didn’t care about the money. If this made a ton of dough for Stan, she didn’t really care. What she did care about was that the story got out and that it had peo­ple talking.

Peo­ple were talk­ing about her report­ing. Real, hon­est to God reporting.

“How’s it look, Susan?” Daniel said over what had to have been his fourth cup of cof­fee. The lines in his face were deep­en­ing and he had aged years in just a few days. She thought she saw the begin­nings of gray hairs, too.

“These responses are amaz­ing,” she said. “The story’s gone national, hell, international.”

“Any word about Agent Harris?”

“Noth­ing in any of the Bal­ti­more media. There was one arti­cle about a gun­fight between Bal­ti­more PD and drug run­ners in the har­bor, but there was no men­tion of the FBI.”

“We’re drug run­ners now? My,” Daniel said, “we’re diversifying.”

“It’s a cover story,” Jeff said. “They had to put some­thing out there to explain the shots fired and destroyed gov­ern­ment prop­erty. They sure as hell weren’t going to tell the truth. They do this all the time.”

“Who does this all this all the time?” Susan asked.

“The media.”

“Jeff, I’m the media.”

“No you’re not, Susie,” Jeff said over his lap­top screen. “You’re a blog­ger, just like I am. I’m talk­ing about the main­stream media. They’re in on it just like the gov­ern­ment is.”

“Jeff, there is no main­stream media con­spir­acy,” Susan said.

“Susan — ” Daniel said.

“Susie, you don’t know about it because you’re not a part of it. I’ve seen it for myself. Trust me.”

“We’ve done noth­ing but trust you, you crazy old coot!” Susan said. “And you keep almost get­ting us killed!”

“Susie, I don’t — ”

“My name is Susan!” she shouted. “Not Susie! Susan Richard­son! Say it!”

Daniel reached out and shut both their lap­tops. “We’re going,” he said. “Now.”

“I had no idea you felt this way,” Jeff started, but Daniel put a hand on his arm. “Pay the tab, Jeff, and meet us out in the car. Please.”

“You got it Danny.” Jeff looked like he’d been slapped.

Daniel hauled her out of the booth and rushed out of the diner.

“Daniel, I — ”

“Not yet,” he said, his eyes dead ahead, locked on the car. “Wait until we’re in the car.”

He opened the pas­sen­ger door for her and helped her inside in an oddly gen­teel ges­ture. He was per­fectly calm, almost devoid of emo­tion. Susan, mean­while, didn’t know whether to scream or cry.

He got in the driver’s side, locked the door, care­fully put on his seat belt, and then finally turned to her. “What in the hell was that?” he asked, his voice still cold and neu­tral, only the words them­selves betray­ing any emotion.

“Daniel, I’m sorry — ”

“Were you just not pay­ing atten­tion last night?” he asked. “Did you not, maybe, notice the fed­eral agent that almost arrested us? The one we kid­napped? He wasn’t kid­ding, Susan. Tying him up like that was a felony, and we’re all guilty.”

Susan started to cry, in spite of her­self. She was so tired. “Daniel, I — ”

“I would pre­fer,” he said, “that we not get arrested, at least until we’re sure Batarel is dead. And I know he’s not dead. Do you know he’s not dead, Susan?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Then why,” he said, still not rais­ing his voice, “are you try­ing to get us arrested?”

“I’m not, I’m just — ”

“We’re all exhausted, Susan. Except Batarel. I doubt he’s even winded. He’s look­ing for us, right now, and if he can find us, he’s going to try to kill us. Again. How many times do you think we can dodge that bul­let, Susan?”

Susan sat and sobbed. Jeff opened the car door behind her and slid in.

“I didn’t see any­one reach­ing for a phone, so they might not have made the con­nec­tion,” he said. “We need to high tail it out of this neigh­bor­hood, though.”

“Agreed,” Daniel said, start­ing the car and putting it in gear. “How’d your research go?”

“Noth­ing con­firmed about an immor­tal sur­viv­ing a light­ning strike,” Jeff said. “It’s worth a shot.”

“Okay,” Daniel said. “Let’s start scout­ing loca­tions. And Susan, try to get some sleep.”

They drove away.

#

“Talk to me, Jack,” Lou said.

Jack had been dread­ing this call all morn­ing. He put it off as long as he could, but if he kept dodg­ing his boss, it would only make things worse.

“We’ve had a set­back, sir,” Jack said.

“That’s putting it mildly, Jack. The way hear it, the Bal­ti­more police found you hogtied on a pier after Cho some­how man­aged to destroy two patrol boats. How do you explain that?”

That’s an excel­lent ques­tion, Jack thought. How do I explain that? That Richard Hen­driks turned out to be some mon­ster that can rip men apart with his bare hands while a ten inch hunt­ing knife is stick­ing through his head? Some­how Jack thought that expla­na­tion might not pla­cate his boss. At best, it would only get him taken off the case. At worst, he could be up on charges him­self or talk­ing to the depart­ment shrink. And nei­ther of those out­comes okay with Jack until he knew what the hell was really going on here.

“Jack?”

“It’s hard to say what really hap­pened out there, sir,” Jack said. “I’m not sure I know what hap­pened. It was dark, there was a lot of confusion — “

“Agent Har­ris,” Lou said. “You don’t hon­estly expect me to tell the Direc­tor and the folks on the Hill that you just don’t know what went wrong. You’re no stranger to the fog of war, Jack. Your record in Iraq is well-​​documented. Why don’t you try again.”

Shit, Jack thought. Didn’t think that would work. “Sir…”

“Why don’t we start with how you got tied up? That was Cho’s doing, wasn’t it?”

While embar­rass­ing, this was some­thing Jack could be truth­ful about. “Yes, sir, he did. I was thrown off the patrol boat in the fight, and was adrift in the har­bor. I’d been tread­ing water, and it was hard to deter­mine which way to swim in the dark. Cho fished me out of the water, and they tied me up before I could gather myself.”

“And who would ‘they’ be, Jack?”

“Richard­son and Frankel, sir.”

“So you can con­firm that Richard­son and Frankel are work­ing with Cho voluntarily?”

Jack’s shoul­ders dropped. “Yes, sir, I can.”

“Good, we’re mak­ing progress. I can put a freeze on all of their assets as well, maybe slow them down.”

“I doubt it, sir. Frankel’s already cashed out his account, and — “

“Well, Jack, it’s all we have to go on at this point, isn’t it? I have to give them some­thing, and you’re not help­ing me out here. We don’t even know where they’ve gone, do we?”

“No sir.”

“This is very, very bad, Jack. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep the fire off of you. The Hill wants results on this. Ter­ror­ism is a seri­ous business.”

Right, Jack thought. You’re keep­ing the fire off me. For just as long as you think tak­ing credit for my inves­ti­ga­tion ben­e­fits you. As soon as it comes time to take any blame, you’ll be nowhere to be seen.

“Yes, it is, sir. I’ve got Hicks — “

“And frankly, Agent Har­ris, I think you might be rely­ing too much on young Mis­ter Hicks and his dig­i­tal tricks. I think maybe some good old fash­ioned detec­tive work might be called for at this point. Spend a lit­tle shoe leather, Agent Harris.”

“Yes sir.”

“And Agent Harris?”

“Yes sir?”

“Try not to get tied up this time.”

#

Daniel stood across the street from a power sta­tion, one of the small, res­i­den­tial sta­tions. He and Jeff had scoped out sev­eral through­out the after­noon, and this one seemed to have the best loca­tion for their pur­poses. It was sand­wiched between a res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood and indus­trial zon­ing„ well away from any retail busi­nesses that might draw traf­fic or security.

Jeff and Susan were both asleep in the car. Daniel hadn’t slept yet, and he wasn’t sure how much time he’d have to squeeze in a nap before they had to start set­ting the trap. He hoped this would go bet­ter than last night.

He looked down at the pre-​​paid phone in his hand. He’d been putting this off all day. But Batarel was get­ting too close. He had to make the call.

He got back in the car and drove for about fif­teen min­utes. Once he was far enough away from the power sta­tion, he looked at the phone again, then Susan and Jeff’s sleep­ing forms. Susan was snor­ing softly. He felt like shit for com­ing down on her like that. They were all under hor­ri­ble stress, but they couldn’t afford to draw atten­tion to them­selves. They were lucky they’d been able to get away from Agent Har­ris the night before, and even­tu­ally their luck would run out. They didn’t need to do any­thing them­selves to reduce their odds.

He parked and got out of the car. Even though he knew the pre-​​paid phone in his hand couldn’t be tapped yet, he fig­ured by this point the peo­ple he would be call­ing would be. He had no idea how fast the FBI could trace the call back to his loca­tion, but he’d have to make this quick. He didn’t want to place the call. But after last night, he might not get another chance. He dialed.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mom,” Daniel said.