I cleared my throat. “You... you said the Nest wasn’t working?”
His eyes came away from the mirror. “What?” He squinted his left eye a few times, making the Nest unit shift on his temple. “Naw, this thing’s crap. It was keepin’ the brain warm, that’s it. Kinda gives me a headache, too.” He lifted his chin to his chest and let his eyes roam around the room. “So what is this place? You still trying to make everybody be all they can be and that shit?”
“Yes. And trying to return some of the exes like you to a semi-cogitative state.”
“Not like me,” he said. His eyes focused past me and flitted back and forth. It was as if he was speed-reading an invisible book. Or in REM sleep. “Three fences,” he said. “And you’re low on guards.” He squinted. “Fuck me, is that Colonel Shelly? I hated that fucker.”
“How did you...”
“I’m everywhere, doc.” He looked at one of the other test subjects. “So, what, you need to get ‘em all under control? That’s what your thing’s supposed to do?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Well look at this. Put your left foot in and shake it all about, eh?”
The five other exes all swung their left feet side to side.
“Or what about this. Drumroll, mi amigos.”
One of the exes was missing a hand, but nine sets of fingers tapped against the padded gurneys. They were in perfect unison, already like a military unit. They stopped and their fingers went straight to the sides of their legs.
The dead man grinned again. “I’m gonna make a deal with you, doc,” he said. “You need a bunch of exes doing what you say. I need somewhere to lay low while I figure out what I’m doing. You see where I’m goin’ with this?”
I didn’t.
The grin spread even wider. It pulled at the flesh around the hole in his cheek, forming an oval crater in his face. “Congrats, doc,” he said. “Your gizmo works.”
Now I did.
“Why?”
“Because I can,” he said. “Maybe I owe you one and I don’t like owing people nothing. You made me into death incarnate.”
“I didn’t do anything but run some tests.”
“You said they could let me go. That’s enough for me. I’m tryin’ to do you a favor.”
“It wouldn’t be that simple,” I said. “If he thinks it works, Colonel Shelly will expect me to have dozens of exes outfitted with the Nest. Maybe hundreds. You can’t—”
The ex’s grin faded. “Don’t you tell me what I can’t do. If I wanted, every dead thing for three miles would pick up a rock and beat their own skulls in. Or anyone else’s.” He glared at me with his dusty, scratched eyes.
“I don’t want any—”
“I can find them for you.”
He spoke with such certainty it made me shake. “What?”
“The soldiers at the fence,” said the ex, “they’re talking about you and your kid. You think your girl and your old lady got away, right? That’s what they’re saying.”
“Colonel Shelly is—”
“He’s fucking stringing you along’s what he’s doing. You really think he’s going to send his people out to look for corpses?”
“They’re not dead!”
“Sure they’re not, doc,” he said with a smile. “And I’ll help find them. I got a thousand eyes here in the desert. If I see them, I’ll let you know where they are.”
“You... you’d do that?”
“Hey, doc, familia is everything, you know?”
I knew it was wrong and I didn’t care. I could tell he was as mad as me in his own way—in a dangerous way—and I didn’t care. I just wanted to know Eva and Madelyn were safe and be done with the Nest project so they would all leave me alone and I wouldn’t have to think.
I looked the dead man in the eyes. “What do you want?”
“Just tell them the thing works. Tell ‘em I’m still kinda slow, so they won’t expect much. Then I’ll be free to move around.”
“That’s all?”
“We may need to iron out some details later,” he said, “but that’s all for now. Deal?”
His right hand bent up under the strap, ready to shake on it. A gentlemen’s agreement.
I reached down and unfastened the strap.
Chapter 23
NOW
“So,” growled the ex, “we meet again and all that shit, eh, dragon man? Bet you weren’t expecting this.”
St. George pushed Sorensen behind him. “How the hell did you survive?” he asked the dead man. “Cerberus killed you. We burned your body with a few hundred other corpses.”
“And I got better.” The ex laughed. It was a dry sound. “I’m Peasy, esse. Patient zero. D’you think I’d go down that easy?”
“You’re not patient zero,” said St. George. “You’re patient zero’s first victim, a street punk and a murderer who lucked out and got superpowers.”