"The FDA's mandate is food and drug safety. The ORI deals with safety and ethics during scientific research and development."

"The process, not the product," said Armitage.

"Exactly."

Armitage pushed a pack of real Marlboros across the table. Roy Rogers grinned at me from its side. I shook one out. "Elise told me that she was investigating a biotech company committing gross research violations. Said the scandal was big enough to lead the nightly news."

Everyone hid a smile. It pissed me off. "What?"

"There hasn't been a 'nightly news' in thirty years," said Jonathan gently.

I lit a cigarette and inhaled, clinging to the smoke like a lifeline. "Okay, here's the crazy part. I have a memory of Nicole, a memory from the day Elise told me about the scandal. I passed Nicole in the hall. She was the company rep, going to see my wife. Which means the company was Surazal."

That earned me a robust chorus of disbelief.

"How old was she?" Max asked.

"Early thirties."

"That'd make her over seventy years old now," Jonathan said.

"Look, Nicole confirmed it. She told me that Elise gave her three days to go public on her own and lessen the charges. That's when Nicole had us killed."

"You're saying Nicole Struldbrug, sister of the man who runs the twelfth largest economy in the world, murdered you and your wife forty years ago to cover up illegal scientific research. That since then, she hasn't aged a day. And that after you revived, she hired you to find her missing scientist," said Armitage.

"And then dusted you again when you did," added Max.

An animal noise came from my throat. "Kill me once, shame on you. Kill me twice, shame on me."

There was a moment of empty sound.

"Why hire you?" asked Tippit. "Not very prudent."

"She's a classic sociopath. In terms of behavior, they're the hardest to predict because they don't play by a set of rules and they don't think they'll be caught."

"So it's all a game to her? A high wire act?" They looked dubious.

"I know how it sounds," I said.

"Crandall did recognize Donner's name," said Maggie. "I heard it." Maggie described Crandall's professing that he'd had nothing to do with Donner's murder.

"Christ," Armitage muttered.

"Is she a reborn?" said Jonathan.

"She's not," I said.

"And you know this how?" said Armitage.

"I've, uh, been close enough to tell." That earned me some snickers. I coughed.

"He's right," said Maggie. "I scanned her DNA. She's a norm."

"The Retrozine-A, then?" said Max. "Could she have used youthed herself back to her thirties?"

Armitage rubbed the stubble on his jaw. "According to you, the drug was unstable until very recently. Melted people into a puddle of cells."

The memory of that room blew dread across my neck. The stuff on the floor that smelled like rotting cheese. How many people had been swept down that drain to satisfy her agenda?

Armitage sucked on his cold pipe, thoughtful.

"You ever gonna light that thing?" I said.

He ignored me, turning to Max and Tippit. "I want background on Surazal. The works."

Max looked pained. "What am I, a librarian?"

"If Nicole's been around since the last century, there's a record."

"I have a link in my quarters," offered Jonathan.

"No, do it from a Conch cafe, or a library," Armitage said. "Somewhere public, in case you're traced."

I ground out my cigarette. "So what's the plan?"

"I'll contact my superiors," he said. "The decision's theirs, but I'll advise them not to go public about Retrozine."

"What?!" said Maggie, her mouth a perfect circle.

"Not until we have hard evidence."

"What do you call Donner? And the formulas?"

"That's not proof of anything illegal, Maggie."

"They killed people testing it!"

"Says you. Look. We have one chance at this. We throw wild accusations we can't prove, we're finished. Adam Struldbrug is the high pillow. His influence is global. In the public's mind, Surazal is the only thing between them and chaos. They're gonna hate hearing that their savior is really a monster. Now, the Cadre has a sympathetic ear in Congress. But this person will not make a stand against Surazal unless we can hand him undeniable proof."

"A smoking gun, you mean," said Maggie, looking at me.

"What makes you think this congressman's going to throw down when the time comes?" I said. "Even with proof, it's David against Goliath."

Armitage applied flame to his pipe. The room filled with the fragrance of his tobacco. "He's a good man, and he's chairman of the right committees. If we give him solid goods, he'll break the story on the floor of the goddamned Senate the same time we flood the Conch with it. There's no way they could avoid an investigation. Once the facts came out, the administration will have to distance itself from Surazal. It would be the first step in getting the public to rethink what's been done here."

I looked at the floor. There was a sticky trap in the corner, full of dead insects. A fresh line of ants was heading for it, lockstep to their doom. "The public watched for a century as multinationals bought governments, cowed the media and chewed up the third world to run their machines. We didn't care what happened as long as we had our SUVs and TV shows and an easy enemy to hate. What makes you think we're going to do the right thing now?"

"Did being a cop made you this cynical?" Armitage asked.

"Being murdered a couple times."

Armitage waved this all away. "The Blister Joining Ceremony is in two weeks. The President will be in Necropolis for the first time. The whole world will be watching Times Square for the ribbon-cutting."

"Great time to go public," I said.

He grinned sideways at me. "Just what I was thinking."

Maggie gaped. "Two weeks?"

"My monks are at your disposal," said Jonathan.

"I appreciate that," said Armitage. He turned to me. "About that smoking gun. Think you can handle that, soldier?"

"Why me?"

"You're dead. Off their radar."

Dead. And expendable. "We're talking penetrating Surazal's deepest defenses. "

"You got in once," said Armitage. "The lab, remember?"

"Yeah, that went real well."

Max let out a surprised laugh.

"We need evidence they've been snatching people, testing this drug on them, killing them." He stood. "Two weeks."

They all stood. Meeting over.

I waited until they left and it was just Maggie and me.

"Nicole's no fool," I said. "There may be no incriminating evidence. Eight thousand people go missing in this city every year. It'll be next to impossible to identify the ones Surazal kidnapped."

"So what do we do?"

I drummed my fingers thoughtfully. An idea had come to me. There was another way. But it was incredibly high-risk. Armitage would never go for it.

I pushed back from the table. "Any clothes in this place?"

"Why?" said Maggie. "You going some place?"

"Yeah," I said. "The morgue."

I pulled out my Beretta and checked the mag.

It was time to play hard.

35.

BRIAN.

Previously labeled a pussy, Brian now regularly waded into battle with the deadliest kids on campus. He never won, having no size or skill. But his innate fury and refusal to stay down earned grudging admiration from the school badasses. Security now searched him for kinetic knives and such, unaware that his most potent weapon was his hopelessness.

On this day, La-Ron Zellers and Dell Broggorico, the worst J.D.s in school, blocked his way. The flow of kids instantly diverted to avoid the throw-down. Brian still wore the scratches and bite marks from his last encounter. But he fixed the larger boys with dead eyes and the muscles of his forearms knotted into bands. "Well?" he sighed.

The insult that was the cursory precipitant to school fighting (e.g., "outta my way, you punk ass bitch") was surprisingly not flung. Instead, La-Ron, who had a cruel brow and cubic zirconium teeth, grinned. Dell looked like a hyena who'd stumbled across a broke-back hare.

"You fought Bill Markem," La-Ron said.

"So you want to try me, now?" Brian asked in monotone.

La-Ron and Dell exchanged an amused look. "I outweigh you two-to-one."

Brian sighed. "I gotta go."

La-Ron was fidgeting now. This irritated Dell. "You hear of the Devil's Fist?"

There it was. Forget the Crips and Bloods, the Devil's Fist were hardcore gangbangers that redefined hardcore. Their rank-and-file were mostly ex-cons with too much hate and too little future. They were a reeb hunt pack. Over sixty local murders had been attributed to them. They'd get pulled in for questioning once in a while, but the Anti-Gang Task Force mostly turned a blind eye. Reborn rights groups screamed that this amounted to state-sanctioned "reborn cleansing," but the public was apathetic. After all, they only attacked freaks.

An East Side councilman had run on an "anti-hunt pack" platform last year. He was found unconscious in a dumpster on C Street with some fingers missing. He'd dropped from the race, citing family issues.

"Meet us outside Tally's Gym tomorrow at six and we'll show you how to really have fun."

Almost despite himself, Brian's lips curled into a grin, as the hatred awoke and uncoiled in his belly.

36.

MANUEL /.