SEVENTY-TWO

I was sent into Appalachia not long ago,” Pierce told Razor. He was going to play this cautiously, give out as little as he could. If it turned out the agency had nothing to do with the assassin on the outbound, he still had his duty. On the other hand, if the agency had cut him loose, he couldn’t afford to give up all his knowledge on this. It was becoming obvious that secrets were leverage and that Razor had more than a few himself.

“Our government worked out a deal with the Appalachians,” Pierce continued. “My job was to bring back a scientist who’d fled there before the Wars.”

“Jordan Brown,” Razor said. “Destroyed the genetic research, took a surrogate mother with him, the woman pregnant with Caitlyn. Jordan left Swain behind to play the straight man. You missed catching him, and Jordan sent Caitlyn Outside to go to Swain.”

“You know so much, why bother asking me about it? Or you just like showing off?”

“Letting you understand that if you start lying to me, chances are I’ll figure it out. Then you and me are done. I’ll just deliver her to Swain without you.”

“Or I make sure you don’t leave this train unless you’re in custody.”

“You already told me you want a place to hide. That doesn’t sound like someone who can take me in and expect either of us to survive. I love games, but here’s the time and place it makes sense to come at you straight.”

Razor leaned back and lifted his shirt. “See this scar? Guy named Melvin cut me good. I know you know that. You saw it on tape.”

Pierce raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Razor said. “That surprises you too. But I had a good talk with Leo. You’ll remember him from security. Not so skinny. Not so smart. Smells bad.”

“I’m on board,” Pierce said quietly. “No games.”

“What’s significant here,” Razor said, “is that you’re looking at a scar. Not a day-old cut that’s barely had time to scab.”

Razor dropped his shirt.

Pierce leaned forward. “Show me that again.”

Earlobes. That was it. Jimmy’s ear. There had not been much of a scab.

Razor obliged. Pierce looked closely. Razor had the flat belly of youth. The scar wasn’t even pink anymore. Pierce couldn’t think of any way that Razor had faked this. It had been clear on the video review that Melvin had hit Razor with the knife. Pierce had seen blood splatters on the floor.

“He slashed Caitlyn too,” Pierce said.

“She stopped bleeding by the time we were in the penthouse suite. Something like that shouldn’t happen. You’re telling me you didn’t know about this?”

“My job was to find Jordan and Caitlyn. I’d been briefed on why he was a fugitive and likely places to find him. Later, what they told me about the girl was the genetic altering. We knew it was wings. We’d seen copies of the x-rays.”

“You had no idea about the blood?”

“Here’s me coming at you straight,” Pierce said. “I knew it involved genetics. That’s all, not the specifics. Our goal was simple. Bring her in. Best case, we wanted her alive. Worst case, we were told that her body had enough genetic information to meet the agency objectives.”

“That’s cold.”

“I had to stop thinking about what was cold and what wasn’t a long time ago. I don’t make moral decisions.”

“What happened was her fingers were smeared with her blood,” Razor said. “I touched my cut after my fingers were smeared with her blood, and a couple minutes later my belly is warm and I look down and the bleeding’s stopped. Two hours later, it’s a fresh scar. Today, looks like I’ve had this scar all my life. Is that as scary to you as it is to me?”

“Yeah,” Pierce said. Blood. Pierce thought of the vials he’d seen in the woman’s purse.

“I don’t make moral decisions either,” Razor said. “Chances are I’m colder than you’ve ever been. Selling her to the highest bidder is going to be what keeps me alive. Whoever gets her can do what they want with the miracle properties of her blood. Help the human race or sell it for a million dollars an ounce. Doesn’t matter to me. Reason I’m coming at you straight is because it’s going to be helpful to both of us to understand how much is at stake here.”

“You know all I know so far,” Pierce said. “I wasn’t able to get either of them in Appalachia. Agency mounted a priority hunt for her Outside.”

“Including a search for Billy and Theo.”

“Want to tell me how you got the glasses with the tracking device?”

“So far,” Razor said. “I’ve told you a lot more than I’ve heard. I’d like to listen.”

“They weren’t difficult to find. Appalachian refugees are given work permits, allowed a chance to integrate. We had them followed, kept close surveillance on them, hoping they’d make contact with the girl. I got all the reports. Agency was watching them close and had to rescue them from a soovie camp. We decided at that point it would be easier to track them by GPS and we let them go. About the same time, our computers tracked that she’d been picked up by Enforcers. You know the timeline from there. Video from Melvin’s wheelchair gave us enough of a face profile that we found you when you made a visit to Swain. Caitlyn sent you to him, right? Why?”

“You don’t get that information yet. Let me ask you again. Who tried killing you?”

“Don’t know,” Pierce said. “Someone in New York—someone I can trust—is going to find out from her. That’s why I dumped her where she could be found when the train gets there.”

“The assassin’s worth more to you alive than dead. Cold. I like that.”

“There’s more,” Pierce said. “I turned over the operation files to someone inside the agency. It means nobody’s going to give up hunting you just because I’m out of it. My guys know I went on the train to meet with you. Whether or not the agency set up the kill attempt, with me missing, they’re going to throw ten times the manpower at this to find you.”

“I appreciate the warning.”

“Isn’t you I’m worried about,” Pierce said. “The longer you stay alive, the longer I stay alive. So make sure you’re just as good against them as you were against me.”

Pierce gave Razor a tight smile. “Like you said. Cold.”