“Excellent.” The doctor beamed at him a moment, and then reached for the thick manila file folder that waited on the corner of the desk, one out of a stack of others just like it. It landed on the blotter with a slap. “Have a seat, Major Treadwell.”
He didn’t want to – he wanted to get out of this room as fast as possible – but he did so, settling on the edge of a dusty leather wingback that looked as if it had been dragged down from the upstairs part of the house.
“Major,” Talbot said, “I’d like to introduce you to Special Agent West.” He gestured to the suit, and dread began to gather in the pit of Jake’s gut, a stone gaining momentum as it rolled downhill, heavier and heavier.
One side of Agent West’s mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. “Dr. Talbot’s been telling me all about you, Major,” he said. He had the sort of unremarkable, unobtrusive voice that nevertheless raised goosebumps down your arms. Or at least did on Jake’s. “He says the serum trial has worked better than the doctors could even hope. And that you have a spotless record to justify its use.”
“Had,” Jake said. “I was discharged.”
Agent West’s mouth stretched a little wider. “A minor hurdle.”
His pulse kicked up a notch, and he knew it wasn’t the result of the adrenaline rush that usually followed an injection. “Hurdle to what?”
“Perhaps I should explain,” Dr. Talbot said with a little sigh, and a falling-away of his bright and open smile. He looked older, then, small and tired. He adopted a serious expression, more in keeping with his status as a doctor, and somehow it eased some of the mounting dread in Jake’s gut.
“Here at the Institute,” the doctor said, “we’ve been working for decades on medical technology that is only just now enabling us to make incredible breakthroughs in the healing of combat trauma – as you of course know.” Yes, he knew. “For me, personally, I’d like to see this technology integrated into civilian medicine, but the work has attracted many curious eyes – including those at the Pentagon. They have a valid interest. It’s our belief that, with prompt and proper application of our VT-1431 serum, the men and women of the armed forces could not only be saved and healed, but allowed to return to combat.”
Return…
Return to…
Combat.
Oh.
Jake opened his mouth to speak, and made a tiny, undignified gasping sound instead. “Are…are you serious?”
“Quite,” the doctor said, hint of a warm smile returning.
“In the future,” Agent West interjected, “there would be no reason for an officer in your position to be discharged. But seeing as how that’s already happened, there will of course be all sorts of red tape to cut through.”
“There’s no precedent for this sort of thing, you understand,” Dr. Talbot said. “It will take time.”
“In the meantime,” West said. “We think a show of tactical and physical competence could really help your case.”
“Yeah.” Jake’s voice came out a strangled, hope-choked whisper. “I mean, yes, sir, absolutely.”
Dr. Talbot brought out the beaming smile again. “It just so happens,” he said, “that we’ve got a mission in need of a man like you.”
6
Evanston City, Wyoming
Rooster leaned a shoulder against a stack of folding chairs at the tent’s exit, and to the casual observer, he might have looked bored with the proceedings. The casual observer might not have seen that the fingertips of his right hand rested on the butt of a Colt M1911 in his waistband. They for sure wouldn’t have seen the shoulder holster he wore under his battered denim jacket, nor the Beretta M9 within it. There was no way they could have guessed that the shaft of one boot contained a slender, wicked boning knife inside a sheath, and that the other housed a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38. The casual observer wouldn’t know that Rooster Palmer carried an entire arsenal in the back of his pickup truck. Right now, he was just a grungy guy with too-long hair who didn’t seem properly enthralled with the spectacle taking place in the center of the tent.
That was the way he wanted to be seen.
Right now, all eyes were on Red.
She stood on a little stage made of pallets and plywood, wearing the flowy white dress with the long, fluttery sleeves they’d bought in a thrift store in Pasadena to serve as her costume. Red had ripped and re-stitched it over and over so that it had a pieced-together, but pleasing look, like something a Bohemian princess would wear. Her mane of red hair fell in waves and curls down her back, gleaming beneath the Christmas lights strung up on poles around the tent. She had her back to Rooster, and he watched her hair shift and glow like superheated copper as she moved. She held both hands up above her head, tilted back at the wrists, fingers splayed in an elegant gesture. And in each palm, she cupped fire.
The Wyoming families who filled the tent watched with open-mouthed, rapt attention as the two points of flame swelled, crackling audibly. Rooster knew they were searching for matches, for oiled cloths, for propane gas lines snaking up Red’s arms, madly wondering how she was doing it, and delighting in it anyway.
Red held her pose a moment, the fire getting larger, brighter, and then she swept her arms out and down, the flames streaking around her in a circle.
Gasps. Exclamations. A few scattered claps.
Red executed a tight spin, fire twining in ribbons around her, grinning with her whole pixie face, wild and exuberant.
A casual observer would have thought she liked performing.
Rooster knew that, for thirty minutes at a time, in a grubby carnival tent, Red got to feel exactly like herself, and not a science experiment.
They’d seen the flyer for this particular carnival – one of those nameless, knockoff brand fairs with Ferris wheels that got stuck and especially sketchy corndogs that usually set up in empty parking lots for a day or two without much warning – two towns over yesterday, a bit of blue paper tacked to a corkboard outside a diner. They’d just spent their last five bucks on two Cokes and a piece of cherry pie, and Red had sent him one of her pretty please, Roo looks. And. Well. Here they were. The manager had promised them cash if they could pull in a crowd, and people were still coming into the tent, one after the next; Rooster could hear a swelling chatter of voices on the other side of the dirty plastic walls. The fire girl was real – or at least looked it – and everyone wanted to see her with their own eyes.
On her makeshift stage, Red danced with a dreamy, fairy garden sort of slowness, artful movements of her arms, deep spins that fanned her hair around her shoulders. The audience didn’t watch her – they watched the fire, twisting and writhing and leaping from hand to hand, spinning into elaborate streamers and bursting like overripe tomatoes – but Rooster did. One of those rare moments when he didn’t have to play the guardian. The protector, the chauffer, the decision-maker. The one with the burden of living, and running, and hiding. For the half hour that she danced, he could just watch her use her gift, marveling at the way she’d somehow, right under his nose, grown into a woman.
Red dropped her hands low, and began the grand finale, a circle of fire springing to life around her on the stage, leaping up waist-high. Women in the audience shouted in mixed delight and fear. Red shot both arms up, straight overhead, and the fire soared to meet around her, enclosing her in a column of flame so powerful Rooster felt its heat against his face. The crowd felt it, too, shrinking back, shielding their eyes with upraised hands.
And then the fire began to lift up from the floor. There was a gap now; first Red’s bare feet, then her shins, then her knees visible. The fire lifted, impossibly, shrank down, rushed to land in her palms. Down, down, down, until it was nothing more than two handfuls again.
Red closed her hands into fists, and the flames went out.
Total silence reigned for the span of a heartbeat.
And then the applause.