A Perfect Machine(61)

Marcton thought about it. “Yeah, maybe I just ask if he can put me in touch with someone who can get inside. That way, he won’t have to find out through some dumbass cop.”

“There ya go,” Melvin said. “Thinkin’ with your noodle now.”

Marcton smirked. “OK, I’ll make the call. You guys keep quiet in the background. Gonna be hard enough to hear over this wind as it is.”

After calling the warehouse to get Kendul’s cell number (not the quickest task, since the Runners and the Hunters didn’t exactly make a habit of gabbing to each other), he stepped a few feet back from them, dialed, waited. Kendul picked up on the fourth ring.

“Kendul.”

Christ, now that he had him on the line, what would he say? How would he tiptoe around this?

“Yeah, hi, Kendul, it’s Marcton. Listen,” he said, deciding to dispense with pleasantries. “I need access to a building where some crazy shit has gone down. Cops are swarming it, though, so I can’t get inside. I need to find out if one of ours is down. Do you have any connections, anyone you could put me in touch with?”

“Got one guy you can use: Anton Eckel.” Kendul rattled off his number.

“OK, thanks. I’ll–”

The line went dead.

Marcton pulled the phone away from his head, stared at the screen. “Well, shit. Didn’t have to worry about prying questions from that guy.”

One phone call to Eckel and ten minutes later he arrived, flashed his badge around, and strolled into the building. Marcton and his guys watched him go in from a safe vantage point a hundred feet away. Then they walked back to the Hummer through the ever-thickening snow, got in, headed back to the warehouse.

The sun would be coming up in a couple of hours, and Marcton was itching for word so he could proceed accordingly. If Palermo was dead inside, he was going to launch the biggest manhunt the Runners had ever been part of – and they’d been part of plenty over the years.

Well, machinehunt in this case, I guess. Or whatever the hell that thing was.

And he saw exactly where the thing went. He thought he would probably have to bring all the Runners together to explain the situation, though. This was not business as usual; this was beyond business as usual in every respect. They’d need to know exactly what they were up against.

Time was wasting, though – sure, the creature had lumbered into the old tunnels, but it could probably move fast if it wanted to, and could be anywhere by now. But the same way he’d felt Palermo was dead – deep in his gut – he sensed that the thing had retreated to the tunnels because they were a good hiding spot, tough to maneuver, tough to track through. You don’t go into a nice dark hiding spot just to pop out again into the bright sunlight and keep running – not unless you’re a complete idiot (especially not if you’re as tall as a streetlamp), and Marcton knew the creature was anything but that. He sensed a great intelligence in those eyes, in those mannerisms.

He’d told Eckel to call him ASAP with whatever he discovered, but he hadn’t heard a thing and they were almost back to the warehouse. What the fuck was the holdup? Just go in, poke around, see if any of the bodies inside matched the pictures of Palermo that Marcton had asked dispatch at the warehouse to email, then confirm or deny. No reason it should be taking this long. No reason for–

They were just pulling into the driveway of the warehouse when Marcton’s phone rang; he picked it up before it even finished the first ring.

“Yeah.”

“Bodies inside, but none of them Palermo’s.”

Marcton closed his eyes. Relief flooded through him. But then–

“However…”

“However? However what?”

“I did a quick sweep of the surrounding streets, too, and found Palermo’s body next to a tree. Back broken, head pulped.”

“If his head was pulped, how do you know–”

“We go way back, kid. Tattoos matched.”

Silence on Marcton’s end, then:

“Thanks,” he said. Hung up.

Marcton steered the Hummer around the back of the warehouse, cut the lights, cut the engine, said one word: “Dead.”

No one said anything. Just listened to the engine tick as it cooled.



* * *



There were about thirty steps leading down into the subway tunnels. Water-stained, crumbling, and slippery, every one of them.

Milo picked Faye up off the concrete at the mouth of the entrance, started down those steps, twice nearly losing his tentative grasp of how gravity worked. But each time he righted himself before tumbling down the steep steps – a trip which likely would have resulted in them both breaking their necks, or at least an arm or two.

As he got closer to the bottom, his mind wandered momentarily and he found himself wondering why such a clearly dangerous area wouldn’t be cut off from the public. But when he reached the final step, he saw that, sure, you could maybe get drunk and fall down some wet stairs, but that’s as far as you’d roll: a gate with thick bars ran across the actual entrance to the tunnels themselves. Or, rather, used to run across the entrance; nearly every bar had been bent out of shape, as though something massive and incredibly strong had passed straight through this spot – which, of course, it had.

And, he noticed now, as his eyes adjusted, that the stairs had been boarded up at street level, but someone had kicked – or otherwise split – the board in half and thrown it down here.