Hummingbird Salamander(50)



And I knew, as an analyst, that you could sometimes make the data show more than one outcome or intent. But there was a clarity—a damning clarity—to the supporting documents. Showing how Silvina’s purpose shifted from habitat stewardship and land purchases to recruitment of underground biotech experts and geneticists. From acquiring wildflower seed and funding research into experimental wetlands restoration into the kinds of things that kill people.

“Execution of mass-elimination plan as clear end-game, given the scope of the knowledge base and the amount of matériel,” someone had written in the analysis part of the report. Parts of which were also heavily redacted.

Conclusion: she’d been trying to amass or even build biological weapons, with the goal of broad use against civilians. But no solid evidence that she was able to make the contacts and acquire everything needed. No direct links. Ghosts and more ghosts. Hauntings.

Still, I would have bet the government had been about to black-site her anyway. Except she’d died in a car crash. Was it my delusion that I didn’t believe it at first or was the report the delusion?

You could fake a death. I knew you could. If Hellbender wasn’t Langer, then what if Hellbender worked for Silvina? I didn’t know how paranoid to be. Had not been paranoid enough as an analyst sometimes, but also too willing to go down rabbit holes. The truth? Almost anything was possible when you dealt with humans, not systems.

I knew Alex was coming into the office. Alex wanted more of us to work remotely. I didn’t want to see Alex. I didn’t want to believe Silvina was an aspiring bioterrorist. I did and didn’t want another text from Hellbender. I didn’t know how to get out of these loops.

I left, even though I could feel eyes on me, a kind of communal judgment from those who had come into the office. How I wished I was small and anonymous-looking. But I wasn’t, so I stomped my way to the exit, head high.

No one jumped me in the parking garage. No one tailed me. But, then, I had Hellbender in the front seat with me, trapped or trapping me on my phone.

Like some lucky talisman.





[56]


Unitopia. Allie’s report had described the artists’ commune as an artificial island in the wilderness. Unlike the bare bones of the blueprint, the finished structure, floating on stilts and pontoons, had a weirdly wilder, yet more elegant, feel. From the photos, it had looked clean, sleek, with glistening blue solar panels on roofs amid a snaking swath of bushes and trees and wooden walkways.

As for the wilderness, urban sprawl had caught up. The “lake” was an enormous converted holding pond, abandoned when another subdivision had been gouged out of the forest and a new holding pond created elsewhere. I was surprised to drive past chain stores and countless housing divisions labeled almost the same as the ones in our neighborhood.

Behind a half-built mall guarded by rusting earthmoving equipment, a potholed asphalt-dirt road led to a row of narrow fir trees and a parking lot. Five cars, other than mine, four electric, and a flatbed, along with an ugly-looking garbage compacter that didn’t look up to the task of recycling. I already had the sense you get from a business park that never quite made it.

The smell when I got out of my car had a sourness to it, the breeze coming at me from the glorified pond they called a lake. It wasn’t garbage, but it wasn’t nice. Through the trees I could see the walkway led over water to a ramshackle “island” buttressed by large, repurposed faded-red buoys and a wall of reeds through which one-and two-story buildings stuck out at odd geometric angles.

A faded-green wooden sign by the walkway read “Unitopia.” With “Once we were wiser” smaller below that. This was the land of fading promise I was about to enter.

But, in the end, it wasn’t as sad as it appeared, just empty, deserted. Like a hippie version of a tech bro “university,” with a closed organic coffee shop and lunch place. A shared common space composed of spliced-together dodecahedrons made of glass in the center. More raised pathways and more signs for businesses that either had failed or never taken root. Piles of tires supporting pylons made me wonder if flooding had been a problem. The geodesic dome of 1970s science fiction movies here felt cutting-edge, but also oddly comfortable.

But the smell hadn’t gotten better, although I never found the source, and there was a creaking sway to the walkways that felt like being on a boat lashed to a dock.

Someone poked their head out of a bright orange door, then tried to pull it back in again before I could gesture to them.

Too late, and the man teetered there in the doorway like one day politeness was going to kill him.

“Where do I find the organic mechanic?” I asked.

The man winced. He had sleepy eyes and, despite the chill, wore the shorts, T-shirt, and flip-flops of a surfer.

“They don’t do that anymore.”

“But they’re still here?” I asked. Assuming we both meant the same “they.”

He winced again, and I realized it was just a tic in his face.

“Yeah, I think so.” I noticed a joint behind his right ear. Which didn’t inspire confidence.

“So … which way?”

Because it was a maze, and the arrows all seemed pointing different directions.

A shrug. “Any which way. Just keep going and you’ll find it. It’s at the end … You from the bank?”

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