Winter Halo (Outcast 2)

“We don’t. Which is why she’s been placed on sensory lockdown. She can’t even contact Nuri telepathically, let alone anyone else. It can’t be her.”

“Then who else could it be?”

“Did Sal know about the entrance?”

“No. He wasn’t even in the base when the Draccid was fed into the ventilation system.” I paused and briefly closed my eyes, battling the memories that always hit whenever I thought about that day. Cat’s energy pressed closer, offering me comfort. In some ways, the little ones were lucky—they might have died a horrible death, but they’d at least died relatively quickly. And because most of them had been so young when it happened, they really hadn’t retained much memory of the event. But it was not something I could ever forget. I might have been designed to be immune to all manner of poisons and toxins, but that didn’t mean I didn’t suffer the effects of them. I’d lain on the cold nursery floor, surrounded by the bloody remnants of the children, as my body first disintegrated and then rebuilt itself. It had taken weeks to regain enough muscle and strength to drag myself into one of the mediscan beds. It was only the presence of the ghosts that had kept me strong and sane during that period.

“Tiger?” Jonas said softly.

I blinked and refocused on him. “If they were trying to stop me exiting the bunker, why didn’t they blow the ventilation system?”

“Because vent systems generally aren’t strong enough to support human weight.”

“Yes, but they know I can become vampire.”

“Because of Sal, or because they’ve seen you do it?”

“I’m not sure if he remembered I could do that, but the vampires have witnessed it.” Several times, in fact.

I walked around him and headed up the hill, needing to see how bad the cave-in was from up top.

“But would they have mentioned it to those now working with them?” He fell in step beside me, his shoulder close enough to mine that I could feel the heat radiating off him. “And what if the purpose of the explosions was not to keep you in, but to keep you out?”

I frowned. “Why would they want that? If they had trapped me inside the bunker, they’d have successfully nullified me.”

“Yes, but thanks to Sal and the scan Nadel Keller took of your RFID chip, they know what identity you’re using in Central and where you’re supposedly living.”

The RFID chips—or radio frequency identifier, to give it its full name—were inserted into the wrist of every newborn these days, and held not only your ID papers but work, credit, and medical history. I had one thanks to Nuri and her crew, and the history within it was nothing but fabrication—but it was a fabrication that was fully checkable. According to Nuri, the mercenary network worked on a quid-pro-quo basis, and they backed each other’s reinvented histories as and where necessary.

“That’s presuming Keller is involved with whatever is going on. I got the impression from Sal he was nothing more than Winter Halo’s recruitment officer.”

“Even if that’s true, your information would now be on their files. It would be easy enough to access.”

“Which would only help them if I became one of the new security recruits at Winter Halo. Given that Sal arranged the interview with Keller, I’m thinking we need to find another method of getting in there.”

Winter Halo was the company responsible for running the initial drug tests on the families of the missing children. Though the government had cleared the company of any involvement in their disappearance, Nuri still believed there was a connection—but it was one they couldn’t directly investigate because they were too well-known within the city. Which was why I’d asked Sal if he could use his influence and get me a job there. Winter Halo apparently had a high turnover rate of night security guards, and getting such a position would have enabled me to investigate without being overly obvious.

“In your current configuration, I agree it wouldn’t be wise. But the information on your chip can be changed easily enough.” He paused. “Was Sal aware of your ability to body-shift?”

“Yes. And it’s a skill he’d also possessed, so it’s probable his companions inherited it when the rift mashed their DNA together.”

He grunted. “Which won’t make it any easier to track them down.”

Especially since the names Sal had given me—Samuel Cohern and Ciara Dream—were not the ones they were currently using. And that meant they could be absolutely anyone, either in Winter Halo or in the government itself. Because there was a government connection somewhere along the line—the crates bearing government IDs being stored in the military bunker I’d rescued Jonas from were evidence enough of that.

The ground above the exit had fully collapsed inward, and the line of destruction snaked all the way up the hill. Thankfully, there was little external evidence that this was anything more than a landslip, or that the ground had actually fallen in on an old military tunnel. I turned and swept my gaze across Central’s rusting silvery walls. If I wanted to find those missing kids, then I had to not only get back into the city but find another way to get into Winter Halo. Until we found out more about Sal’s partners, it was still our best chance of finding out what was going on.

But until I found a way of doing that, perhaps my next point of attack should be Nadel Keller. He’d be under scrutiny, of that I had no doubt, but he could still be a very useful source of information. I just had to be careful about how I extracted it—perhaps use the portion of my seeker skills that could access information through touch rather than sex. While the latter was undoubtedly easier, Sal had been well aware of what I’d been bred for, and I had no doubt Keller’s movements would be under close scrutiny. A suddenly gained new lover would raise alarms in all the wrong places.

“Did you get very far following those tracks last night?” I asked eventually.

“They circled back around to Carleen and went into a rift.”

“A false rift?”

“I presume so. I can’t actually see them, remember, but given he simply vanished, it was either a false rift or magic.” His gaze was a weight I could feel deep inside, but I kept my own securely locked on Central as he added, “What do you plan to do next?”

“I don’t know.” I actually did, but I really didn’t want him tailing me when I went after Keller. His presence would be far too distracting. “But I do need to find another way into Winter Halo.”