The Operator

“That’s Michael,” she said, and Jack pushed her behind him, not knowing why except it was habit. Protect your partner, and she will protect you.

“You’re out of your cuffs, yes?” Michael said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. Peri needs your help. Will you do something for her? Yes or no. Right now.”

Peri is alive? It shocked through Jack, a slurry of emotion rising up too fast to realize.

“Yes!” Harmony shouted, and Jack jumped when she elbowed him. “Say yes,” she demanded.

But his first rush of relief had vanished, drowned out by three bitter years of lies and hidden resentment. “Let me think about it,” Jack muttered, then gasped when Harmony shoved him into the side of the van. He hit with a thump, his shoulder taking most of the force.

“I’m not dying in the back of a van for you,” Harmony said. Head high, she strode to the van’s back door. “We’ll do what she wants.” Angry, she looked at Jack. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Jack pulled himself upright, tugging his suit straight and missing his Glock. This didn’t sound like one of Bill’s games, and the thought that Michael was running his own task was chilling. Bill liked his pieces, cherished them and lavished a manipulative love on them like favorite toys. Michael sacrificed with no thought of tomorrow.

He knew his face still showed his thoughts as the door swung open. Michael was there alone with a bug-out bag in his hand, his lanky, tall outline fuzzy against a black background of light commerce at the edge of an interstate. There was no light in the sky, the stars washed out in the noon glare of the security lights. Here, though, on the weedy, cracked-pavement outskirts, it was dark.

Jack pulled the chill air deep into him, wary upon seeing Michael’s sour expression. The man was tired, angry, and pushed to the edge, where chancy decisions were made with snap judgments. Dangerous.

“This is as far as I take you,” he said, and Harmony pushed past Jack, sliding out of the van with a hasty rush. Her bare feet hit the ground hard, stumbling on the pebbles until she caught her balance. Michael watched in cool disinterest, never taking his focus off Jack as he slowly levered himself out.

“I want to talk to Peri,” Harmony said, her confidence thin and misplaced.

“There’s a bus leaving for Detroit in twenty minutes.” Michael tossed the bag to Jack. “Be on it. Peri says you know where that vial of accelerator she stole is. You’re going to get it for me.”

Is that so. The bag was comfortably heavy in Jack’s hands, but not heavy enough to hold any firepower, and so he let Harmony take it. “Bill told you to kill us,” he said as Harmony began looking through it. “What are you doing, Michael?”

Michael shifted slightly sideways, the tell screaming volumes to Jack. “Actually, his words were to relocate you to a more permanent situation.”

Jack laughed, and Harmony looked up from the bag of water and food bars. “You’re going rogue,” he said, knowing he was right when Michael frowned. “Why?”

“He’s leaving Opti?” Harmony asked.

“No, just Bill,” Jack guessed, head cocked. “Has Peri turned? Is that why you want the accelerator?”

Harmony went still, all interest in the bag gone. “She wouldn’t.” But there was doubt, and it fed Jack’s indecision.

Michael’s jaw clenched. “I’m taking what I was promised. That’s all.”

Jack turned to Harmony, and the woman blanched under their joined attentions. He could almost see her thoughts calculating to a probable end. Lie? Tell the truth? Play along for more information? Had Peri really turned? Without me? he wondered, his own feelings of self-doubt growing. Maybe someone had scrubbed her.

“Do you know where it is or not?” Michael shouted, and Harmony jumped, catching the bag when it slipped from her.

“I . . . Yes. I know where it was when I left. There’s no reason for it to have been moved.” Harmony held the bag close. “I want to talk to Peri,” she said, but it was a cautious demand. “I have only your word she’s alive. We don’t do anything until I know she’s alive.”

Clearly satisfied, Michael watched a woman in a red sports car pull up at the nearby gas station, her car vivid under the full-spectrum light slicing the night into jagged sections. “Making demands?” he asked mockingly.

Jack’s tension slammed back into him as Michael shifted his coat to show the holstered handgun. “Don’t speak for me,” Jack said, hands up in placation. “She doesn’t speak for me.”

“You are a prick, you know that?” Harmony said to him darkly. “Am I going to have to babysit you the entire time? Michael, shoot him, will you? Save me the trouble. I’ll get the accelerator by myself.”

Michael chuckled, seeming to like that Jack was making an impossible task harder. “No. Jack is going to do exactly what I tell him. He knows he’s less useful than a second-hand condom without Peri. He’ll do just about anything to keep her alive,” he mocked, and Jack’s face warmed. “Isn’t that right, Jack.” Michael’s eyes tracked the woman in her holographic miniskirt as she left her car at the pump to go into the service station. “I have one dose of Evocane left,” he added, throwing the keys to the van at Harmony. “So if you don’t want Peri to suffer, be wise with your time. I’ll let you talk to Peri then so she can tell you where to leave it. You can have the van. I’ve got another ride.”