Page 81 of Agent Zero
“Infected.Like you.And yes, I’ve been trained.”
“For liquidations?”I’m getting the hang of the lingo.Great for me.
“Planning, not execution.They think a woman can’t kill.”Trinity chose lefts and rights seemingly at random, but one thing remained constant: they were going down.
Oh, God.“Can you?”
“I believe so.”She was socalm, it was eerie.Of course, everything about this was.“If I have to.How do you think I got here?”
Do I really want to know?Holly apparently had to play a guessing game now.“You’re working with Cal?”
“Cal?Oh, Eight.”A slight shake of Trinity’s sleek head.“No, they lost him in Boulder until we got another ping on Six, cross-checking one of his old jobs.”
And here Holly had thought Reese was cryptic.She was playing catch-up in the big leagues now, apparently.“Six?”
“Your infector.”
That’s one way of putting it.“He didn’t mean to.”
“Probably not.”Trinity didn’t turn around, but Holly felt her attention sharpening.“It doesn’t matter.He’s high value, they’ll see if they can make him play.”
Uh-oh.“How?”
“Six was their poster boy.Physically gifted, amped mission fidelity, low emotional noise, everything.If it wasn’t for a civilian doctor going insane and trying to kill him, he’d still be working, probably hunting down the agents who went off the rez.”
“Off the rez?”
“AWOL.Native.Off the grid.”A quick barrage of terminology.
“Okay.”What is it with these people and the euphemisms?Holly had to speed up, hurrying after the other woman’s steady glide.“He said they might be shutting the program down.”
“I do not think it likely.Too useful, even with infection vectors.The infected die out, except for the Geminas.”
“Geminas?”There’s a new one.
“The complementary ones.Agents lock on, infect the Geminas and have a complete break.They vanish.”The blonde sniffed, a queerly animal movement.Any second now she was going to freeze like a cat, one paw in the air, then go bounding off chasing a ball of yarn.
She evensmelledlike a cat—dry, healthy, with a tang of oil to make the fur stay sleek.It wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t nearly as nice as Reese.As a matter of fact, it reminded her of Cal even more strongly.“Vanish.Okay.Look, why are you even?—”
“You’re acivilian.”Disdainful, as if that explained everything.Maybe for her, it did.
Yes, if she was still waiting tables, Holly would definitely peg this lady as a businesswoman, expecting prompt service and leaving that tiny, calculated tip.Nopleaseorthank you, just that slight judgmental eyebrow lift.She smelled like she worked out, too, an undertone of supple muscles and a faint whiff of habitual exertion.
Along with another tang, shifting and elusive.It was distracting to get all this information through the nose.How did Reese handle it?
You smell...good.
The intense color at the bottom of Trinity’s scent was odd.Holly finally realized what it had to be.“Why are you sad?”
“I’m not.”Trinity kept marching straight ahead.“Not happy, either.I don’t feel anything since the induction.Instead, I calculate.”
That’s so not comforting.Induction?“So what equation am I part of?”
Trinity stopped at a metal door painted with red stripes.Looked like a stairwell entry, and it had the same funny little number pad as all the other ones in this hall.There was no sound as she pressed the keys—3-7-5-2-8—with little taps, but achuksound broke the hush.
“You’re not.”Trinity pushed the door open with a quick glance and a sniff to make sure it was safe.“I’ve simply decided.I saw how they were willing to have you suffocated in your own bedroom because someone didn’t want to sign extra paperwork.”A slight pause as they stepped into a dimly lit stairwell reeking of cigarette smoke.A toilet flushed in the distance, and Holly almost flinched guiltily.
“I started calculating chances,” Trinity continued, “of them liquidating me the same way sooner or later.Thatis why I’m bothering to pursue this course.Please be quiet, Ms.Candless.I have to concentrate.”
