Hammer of Angels: A Novel of Shadowstorm Read online

  —nobody notices them—

  “Morning, Alix.”

  —but me.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. When I open them, my partner is quietly watching me.

  “Hi, Brando.” I try to keep my voice steady. “What’s up?”

  I don’t call him Patrick. He looks and sounds exactly like my old partner, so greeting him by the same name is more than I can bear. His middle name is Brandon and his favorite movie is The Godfather, so I call him Brando, or sometimes El Brando when we’re joking around. He seems to appreciate his nickname, like he’s been accepted into an Indian tribe or something.

  But my tribe isn’t all jokes and nicknames. People die young here, although they can hang around even after they’re dead. For example, my late partner Trick still visits me despite getting killed three months ago. We talk and catch up, but I have to be careful. One time I forgot other people were around. The looks they gave me could have turned sunflowers into dog shit.

  This is why I check Brando with my vision Mods. If he shows in infrared, he’s Brando. If not, he’s Trick. Either way, my gut clenches up and my palms get sweaty. It occurs to me I should’ve used my infrared on the subway slag last night. Next time for sure.

  Brando jabs the elevator’s up button. He pushes a lock of straight brown hair off his high forehead and says, “The Front Desk wants to see us. I thought we’d catch a minute beforehand.”

  All ExOps Levels and Info Operators, like me and Brando, have commphones implanted in our heads so we can talk during missions without making any sound. They’re also handy for private conversations at work.

  Brando comms, “Is everything all right? You look pale.”

  I comm back, “I’m fine.”

  He continues to scrutinize me but doesn’t say anything. I narrow my eyes and comm, “I’m fine! What does Cyrus want to see us about?”

  “This.” He holds up his newspaper. A big picture sits under “Shootout Leaves One Dead” and over “The Scene of Last Night’s Shocking Gunfight.” The image looks like a modern art masterpiece sloshed all around the inside of a train car.

  The elevator arrives, and we get on together. Since it’s midmorning, all the nine-to-fivers are safely ensconced in meetings, which leaves us to ride up alone. I read the article and hmph at the part about me vanishing into thin air. If only. There’s no point trying to fool Brando, or anyone else at ExOps for that matter. They always know when it was me, so I’ve learned to ignore the wrist slaps and bask in the attention.

  I give the paper back. “Not bad. They got my fucking gender right this time.”

  He takes his glasses off, wipes the lenses on his shirt, and calls me by my field handle. “Scarlet, I wish you’d brought me on this little field trip of yours. I could’ve helped you maintain a lower profile.”

  “I know, but it was late. I didn’t wanna roust everybody outta their test tubes.”

  “Jesus, Scarlet,” my partner barks, “I don’t sleep in a tube! Plus, you know damn well I only have one more brother and he’s back in Tokyo.”

  He’s right, of course, but sometimes I can’t resist teasing him about being a clone.

  Brando has the same good looks as my first partner, Trick. But he isn’t quite as impervious to my cruel jibes as Trick was, especially about being a clone. El Brando is sensitive about that.

  Patrick Brandon Owens is a product of the Reproduction Using Asexual Cloning Heuristics program. RUACH replaced America’s original cloning program, the Asexual Reproduction Initiative, because the blockheads running ARI were spectacularly irresponsible about how they acquired cell samples from their Originals. All the ARI cell samples were destroyed, but the Patrick clones had already been incubated, so they were transferred to RUACH. Destroying incubated embryos was not an option. RUACH’s charter grants lab specimens the same rights as naturally conceived citizens. Basically, clones are people too.

  This is all fine and dandy if you don’t fall in love with someone, witness their corporal dismemberment, and then meet their clone. Seeing Brando makes my throat freeze shut, my hands clench, and the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I try to play it cool, but I still get uptight and say stupid shit I don’t mean.

  When I fucked up with Trick, holding his hand was usually enough to cool him down. The first time I tried holding hands with Brando, he stared at me like I had two heads. It wasn’t that he minded it, but he didn’t know it’s my way of saying “Hey, I’m sorry for whatever stupid dumb-ass thing I said or did.”

  Brando has received the same Mods as Trick, and he knows everything about my missions. When he volunteered to be my new partner, the Med-Techs infused Brando with Trick’s backed-up memories of all the Job Numbers we’d pulled together.

  The hypnotic transfer process isn’t supposed to include personal experiences. This is part of ExOps’s privacy policy. The Meddies discard their subjects’ personal memories. Except Trick’s memories aren’t so clearly segregated. He and I were much more than field partners, which means Brando “remembers” sleeping with me.

  The strangest part is my new partner looks exactly like Trick did, which is why I almost had a heart attack when he picked me up at the airport last November.

  It can’t be. Trick is dead.

  Brando told me that Cyrus, our Front Desk, had planned to personally introduce the two of us. As they were leaving to meet my flight, an urgent summons came in from the White House. Cyrus had his secretary say he’d get back to them and went down to the ExOps garage.

  They’d barely gotten Cyrus’s car started when a big black van blocked their exit. A gang of Secret Service agents escorted Cyrus out of his car and into their vehicle. President Jackson doesn’t take no for an answer. Brando knew my flight was arriving soon, so he came to get me by himself.

  While Brando was remotely guiding me through our mission in Riyadh, I noticed his comm voice sounded like Trick’s. That was our first time working together, and I only knew him by his field name, Darwin. I thought all Info Operators picked up the same comm accent from their training, or maybe it was just my head fucking with me. It never occurred to me my new partner comms like Trick because he basically is Trick.

  While Brando drove me back to ExOps headquarters, I shakily asked him who he was. He told me the CIA transferred him from the U.S. embassy in Berlin to ExOps’s German Section to replace Trick.

  “No, that’s where you came from,” I said. “Trick, er, I mean Solomon, didn’t have any family. Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m his brother,” Brando answered. “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  He hesitated. “I’m sorry, Alix. Cyrus wanted to tell you all this. Your former partner Solomon and I were incubated from the same genetic material.”

  “What?”

  “His full name was Patrick Allan Owens. He was selected to be your partner at ExOps. I went to Berlin as a diplomatic liaison. My other brother—Patrick Charles—works in Japan as a strategic analyst.”

  “There are three of you?”

  “Yes … well, no.” He took a long, shaky breath. “There’s only me and Charles now.” We rode in silence while my brain staged a no-holds-barred neurological demolition derby. My reactions, emotions, and thoughts all crunched into each other until one idea remained, echoing through my head.

  Trick was a clone.

  I stampeded through anger, barreled straight to confusion, made a quick stop at grief, and then charged back to anger. I gripped the car’s armrest so hard I accidentally tore it off the door. I looked at the car part in my biotic right hand as tears boiled out of my eyes and sizzled into my lips.

  All that time together and he never told me. Cyrus must have known, and he never told me, either.

  I turned to this new Patrick and snapped, “You and I are gonna be partners?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, partner,” I snarled, “you don’t ever fucking lie to me! You tell me everything, no matter what fucking Cyrus says.” I jabbed my finger int
o his shoulder. “Got it?”

  “I got it.”

  “Where did you and your … brothers come from?”

  My new partner’s answer was not concise but was definitely worth sitting through. The short version is the three clones produced by the American cloning program in 1960 grew up and became the three Patricks.

  The original Patrick was born to Marty and Nancy Owens, a married couple from Lawrence, Kansas. Original Patrick inherited his braininess from his parents, both of whom taught graduate-level science classes at the University of Kansas.

  They were invited to be potential cell donors for ARI, the fledgling American cloning program. Original Patrick, who was fourteen at the time, watched fascinated as the medical personnel took cell samples from his parents. He begged his parents to let him donate his DNA too. The ARI technicians humored the boy and took his samples after promising his parents they wouldn’t include their underage son’s cells in the selection process.

  A few years later, ARI knocked the world on its butt when they produced a trio of cloned human embryos. ARI then set the Olympic speed record for spectacular collapses when they inadvertently revealed that their clones were grown not from any of their legitimate donors but from cells of the distinctly off-limits Patrick Owens.

  When this story broke, ARI went from “Top of the World, Ma” to “Public Enemy Number One” in nothing flat. Religious leaders decried their God-playing, and human rights activists protested their theft of genetic material. Even the science community had to admit ARI had fucked up royally, although they didn’t quite say it that way. Congress shut ARI down, formed RUACH to manage ARI’s assets, and left the remaining decisions about clones to future generations of Capitol Hill whoremongers.

  The three embryonic clones were given their Original’s first and last names with unique middle names to tell them apart. Original Patrick’s parents couldn’t bring themselves to raise three copies of the son they already had, so RUACH quietly found a foster family. RUACH’s psychologists, rightly fearing the boys would be social outcasts if their unique origin was known, created a cover story and issued each of them a revised birth certificate. The boys grew up as orphaned triplets adopted by a childless couple from the Treasury Department.

  The foster parents, working closely with RUACH, eventually told the boys their true origin. As planned, when the brothers reached high school, Patrick Allan, Patrick Brandon, and Patrick Charles were presented with opportunities to work in the prestigious American intelligence community. But there was a catch: they couldn’t work at the same agency.

  Hiding their unnatural births from regular civilians was one thing, but keeping it from a building full of spies was another. If triplets of the correct age walked into the same agency together, everybody would figure out who they were and the boys’ mental well-being could be jeopardized. Thus, Charles took their Original’s brains to the CIA’s Tokyo office, Brandon took his people skills to the American embassy in Berlin, and Allan, my Trick, brought his sense of humor to Extreme Operations. All three of their files were altered to state they had no siblings. Contact between the brothers was permitted, but it had to be done secretly.

  If my experience is any indicator, clones don’t come out to be exact copies of each other. Brando is more serious than Trick. I’d say this is a result of their environments. Embassy employees work in a world of grace and poise unknown to us Wild West covert operatives. There’s also a certain swagger you get from being biotically enhanced, and Brando is still getting used to his Info Operator Mods. But it’s mostly because—unlike Trick—Brando is grieving for his dead brother.

  I got an earful about this the day Brando fetched me from the airport. When he told me my late partner’s true nature, I blew my stack and launched an epic bitchfest. When it became clear I wasn’t going to shut up, Brando finally let me have it.

  “Godammit Alix, enough! I know this is a shock and that you’ve lost your partner. But I lost my fucking brother! So cool it.”

  I folded my arms across my chest and spent the rest of our drive silently trapped in a bog of resentment, sadness, and guilt. The next day we started working together, and we haven’t talked about it again. But I still catch him biting his lower lip if a mission Trick and I pulled comes up in conversation.

  When we aren’t wigging each other out, I’m teaching my new partner the in-jokes I had with Trick. Brando “remembers” some of them but not all. It was surreal to explain Freaking Unstoppable Cranium Krusher to the person who came up with F.U.C.K. in the first place.

  The elevator doors open. We step out and walk across the German Section’s busy office. Phones ring, computer terminals beep and blink. It’s a modern beehive of earnest activity. Across the floor, in the Front Desk’s office, Cyrus sits in his chair and glowers at the world outside his window. His brows are jammed tightly together. He’s pissed. Again.

  I breeze past Cyrus’s secretary. Brando follows and shuts the door behind us. We stand at attention. I blurt, “Sir, I know we’re supposed to minimize our actions in front of civilians, but quickly eliminating that female competitor last night was the only way to make sure nobody else got hurt. I’m convinced it was the right thing, and I’ll say so in a review.”

  My heart pounds. My nostrils flare. Cyrus silently regards me, then Brando, then me again. He stands up from his chair. “Agreed. Zero civilian casualties, apart from emotional stress, is acceptable given where you are in your Development Cycle.”

  I briefly close my eyes and exhale twelve pounds of anxiety.

  Cyrus leans forward and plants his fists on his desk. “But I want to know why the hell you’re following Jakob Fredericks!”

  CORE (Catalogue of Records: ExOps) PER-A59–1460

  From the desk of Dr. Thomas Herodotus, ExOps Medical Director

  Cyrus,

  Scarlet has made steady, if painful, progress with her recovery from the trauma endured while assigned to investigate Winter’s Blades of Persia and their Darius Covenant. Her fiercely self-motivated personality, inherited no doubt from her father, has helped her greatly during this process.

  She has found solid support from our grief therapy group, although her first partner’s violent death still haunts her terribly. Scarlet continues to suffer debilitating nightmares and hallucinations, especially when unoccupied with work.

  To answer your original question, yes, your star Level will be ready for ANGEL, but please CC: me on Scarlet’s reports so I can track her status.

  Respectfully yours,

  -Tom

  04

  Same morning, 10:10 A.M. EST

  ExOps Headquarters, Hotel Bethesda, Washington, D.C., USA

  Cyrus repeats, “Scarlet, why are you following Fredericks?”

  How does Cyrus always know?

  “Ahh, I … uhh.” I grope for words, freshly reminded of how smart my boss is. “Sir, may I sit?”

  Cyrus sits in his chair and steeples his hands in front of his face. He takes a long time before answering. “Yes, sit. You too, Darwin.”

  We flop into Cyrus’s guest chairs. “Sir, I’m following Director Fredericks to practice tailing an experienced target.” I gesture to my partner. “Darwin doesn’t know I’ve been doing it.”

  Cyrus scowls at me. He inhales slowly and deeply. “I should have known you weren’t going to any damned hardware store.” He shuts his eyes and rubs his temples. “Scarlet, Extreme Operations Division prohibits freelancing.”

  “Yes, sir,” I say.

  “I prohibit freelancing.”

  “Yes, sir,” I repeat.

  “Do you know why?”

  Actually, I don’t. I think it’s a push-everyone-around control thing, but I have no idea what the official reason is. “Do you mean yourself or Extreme Operations?”

  “Either one is fine.” When I remain silent, he realizes I honestly don’t know, so he tells me. “Freelancing is prohibited by Extreme Operations because the brass hats upstairs think that agent is probably moonlig
hting for a competitor. Freelancing is prohibited by me because sooner or later the brass hats upstairs order me to interrogate—and typically eliminate—that agent.”

  Jesus H. Christ. Those twelve pounds of anxiety rush back into me.

  “Imagine my thrill, Scarlet,” my boss rumbles, “when I got a call at four o’clock this morning to inform me one of my Levels had pulled a mission I knew nothing about. After I heard about the gunfight on the Metro, my first thoughts were of you.” He catches my expression. “That was not a compliment! Wipe that smile off your face!”

  I force my mouth to stop smiling.

  He continues, “I back-traced your No-Jack data and saw the first thing you did with that agency car was drive it to Fredericks’s office. Then you spent a week using it to track him to his house up in North Bethesda, where he’s lived for five years!”

  Like a complete doofus, I ask, “You know his real address?”

  Cyrus uncoils to his full height of 6'2" and booms, “Alixandra, I’m Front Desk of the German Section at Extreme Operations—”

  Uh oh …

  “—I’ve known the man for almost twenty years—”

  … this is gonna to be a loud one.

  “—he’s brilliant, he’s dangerous—”

  Here it comes!

  “—and he tries to KILL my agents! Of course I know where the FUCKER lives!”

  The chatter and clatter outside Cyrus’s office stops. His eyes bore into me like drill bits. “Now, why are you following him? And cut the ‘practice’ bullshit or I’ll stick you behind a desk in Dubuque!”

  “Sir,” Brando pipes up, “if I may interject.”

  The eyebrows swing toward my partner. “What is it, Darwin?”

  “Well, sir, it doesn’t strike me as reasonable to expect a fully trained Level to wait for someone else to go after the man who betrayed her own father.”

  “It doesn’t strike you,” Cyrus says very quietly, “as reasonable?”

  Oh, crap.

  “Darwin, when I want to know what strikes you as reasonable—”