The Infected 3: Cast Iron Page 8

  Bridget for some reason didn’t pout or complain. Instead she stopped moving, which was incredibly obvious since she had a tendency to be in motion all the time, almost fluttering in anxious movement. It was tied to her power, since the girl was just that much faster than everyone else. Argos and Rachel both did something similar and so did Tweek from Team two. It was a super speed thing that they largely couldn’t help. After about ten seconds the girl spoke, her voice eerily calm again.

  “Alright. What level of danger are we looking at here? Do I need to be on alert all the time… like for real, or is this about making sure I keep a watcher with me?” She didn’t sound put out by it even. It was impressive. Insightful too.

  Marcia looked around for a second, wondering at it all, then realized that twice now the girl had obviously controlled her first mode directly, even when it was probably hard for her. Almost impossibly hard. Most girls her age would have been more emotional about the whole thing, but she was holding it together. Like an adult would have.

  Plus, like it or not, the girl was a full IPB operative. True, on Team one, which meant being part of the public face, but this part of things seemed to actually count for that, didn’t it? The whole thing came together after a few seconds and she made up her mind to stop treating the kid like a child, even if she did look like one.

  “Both to an extent, though it seems like you don’t need a watcher right now as much as I thought. I’d say we should be on orange alert level for the duration of our stay, unless something happens, then we go to red. Now, before we go to the beach, we should sweep the room for bugs and search for cameras. In all the rooms. For once this may not even just be me being too cautious. We have actual celebrities with us and are at an event that people knew was going to take place. If the rooms aren’t covered with cameras I’ll buy dinner for everyone tonight.” She had the money, so it wasn’t a huge thing if they didn’t find anything.

  They did though. A lot of them. They pulled at least one button cam from each room, and found more than one in several. No one knew who was going to be in what space, of course, unless they had a precog working for them, whoever they were, so it was probably the whole floor being covered, not just their rooms. There were several listening devices too. Unfortunately it was all good quality stuff. If it had been bad quality or clumsily placed, she might have thought amateurs had done it, but this was clearly decent level work. Pro’s, or at least people with a lot of experience spying on others.

  She sighed when she finished searching Brian and Karen’s room.

  “What the heck, right? We need to get with the network people and check all their rooms I suppose. At least the ones that don’t want unauthorized sex tapes showing up on the internet. This is why I didn’t want to come in the first place. We have no clue who planted these. It could literally be anyone.” It was actually a bit frustrating for her, since she hadn’t had time to even read the note in her pocket. That was important, but if someone was watching her, she didn’t want to waive the thing around in front of a camera.

  When she got back to her room, she checked it again, in case anyone had come in while she was gone. Bridget and Warren stood holding towels and had swimsuits on already, though neither looked impatient yet. He had a pair of blue Speedo’s on and a body that, while a little thin, kind of let him pull the look off. Bridget was wearing something that actually covered more flesh than Marcia thought she’d go for, a black one piece that hugged her body. It didn’t leave a lot to the imagination, but there wasn’t a whole lot to see, so it kind of worked.

  Speaking in a normal tone, Penny’s voice entered her right ear.

  “Get changed then. We can play security agents for everyone else when we get back in. Most of the rooms don’t even have anyone in them yet. They’ll have to let us in to check them out. The hotel might do it, because we can pull rank, but I don’t think we should, if we can help it. Best to just make the offer and let people take it if they want or not. Some people might want the cameras watching them. I can’t think of why that would be, but then I’m not famous either.” There was a push that came from behind, it wasn’t hard, but it sent Marcia rocking forward anyway.

  It was like the world had bucked under her feet or something. A kind of movement that just shouldn’t have happened, the force vector not existing until she was in motion. The hand on her back wasn’t recognizable to her, even though that was probably what had happened. It was one of the reasons Penny creeped her out. The girl was there, but even knowing that, Marcia couldn’t keep the idea in her head most of the time. She had to though, since they were teammates for the week.

  “On that. I think I packed a bathing suit at least.” She knew she had. If there was beach work to be done, she needed it as potential camouflage. It was a blood red bikini that didn’t take up a lot of space in the luggage. It showed almost everything, but she didn’t need to hide a weapon on her, so that worked well enough. Besides, changing meant she could go into the bathroom alone for a few minutes which would give her a chance to read what was on the paper in her pocket.

  She changed first, and then pulled the message, if that’s what it was, to find that it wasn’t a full length letter at all, but just three words with the code phrase written under it. Blue Boat: midnight.

  It was a basic set up for a meeting. Now she just had to find the blue boat. It probably wouldn’t be something hard to find. Not given the fact that she didn’t know the area. A lot of people seemed to think that spy work involved a bunch of cryptic puzzles to solve, but that was almost never the case. When you passed a message to someone, the point was to be understood. Almost always. The cryptic part came into things only occasionally, when you knew someone well, had similar training, or time to plan, you could arrange things in a way that meant the individual getting the message would understand what was being said when no one else would. That made it seem like a special code and really could be hard to crack, but it was more about shorthand between colleagues than ciphers.

  In this case though it was probably simpler than that even. Morris wanted to meet with her and the secrecy was probably just habit, so it was most likely going to be something easy to find. An actual blue boat on the beach or something. Grabbing a towel from the rack to lie out on, she moved to go with the others. They had more than one mission after all and getting a vacation for Brian was pretty important. It might be the last one he ever got after all. That meant doing things that might be considered fun while keeping up with the other stuff. Marcia put a smile on her face before anyone could see her, just in case she seemed worried.

  With a bunch of potentially missing friends, even old ones, she was. Who wouldn’t be though? Of course she also had to worry about it being a trick or trap, but that was the business, not just her. She was out of that part of things, but not totally. You never really could be, once you got in deep enough to the secret world. The world of spies and assassins. Sometimes you were just the person that had the information that other people needed, even if you hadn’t been in the game for a long time. Not everything was written down and even if it was, not everything would be accessible to the people that needed it. Plus, as far as the government was concerned, an ex-agent was a current asset, if they could use them.

  Unless, like her, they were Infected.

  That was a game changer for almost all areas of the government. If you popped Infected you were out and that meant cut off, more or less. Most of the time that made sense. The idea of using people with super powers was a great one, but the fact was that most Infected were too unreliable for intelligence work thanks to their first modes. It was a solid argument. One she could even see made sense. It would have been better to take it on a case by case basis, since it couldn’t come up all that often, but the governments of the world didn’t want to take the risk or time. Instead almost everyplace just dumped the Infected. The U.S. was one of only a handful of countries that still had something like the IPB. Russia, China and France being the others. Of course Fr
ance was a mess right now, run by Infected from around the world. It would eventually be a problem, but for the moment it was a good place for Infected people to run off too, if they couldn’t take the persecution where they lived. They had to go somewhere.

  Warren looked down her body appraisingly.

  “Pretty hot. You should put on a bit of make-up though. People will be taking your picture. A pain in the sun and sand though.” The man grinned but didn’t move out of her way at all.

  She stuck out her tongue then, trying to seem the age she looked, not the one she felt at the moment, which was ancient.

  “Screw that. I’m going swimming and that would just be wasted effort. Let’s go and get the others. I don’t know how long a wait were going to have, but we should all go, even if everyone else has other plans.” When in unfamiliar territory, it paid to stick together most of the time. It wasn’t always possible, but it made sense to do when you could.

  They didn’t, as it turned out, have to wait at all. Everyone was ready to go with them, except Peggy, who seemed to be feeling shy about wearing a bathing suit in public.

  “Besides, I… Well, I might stand out a bit.” She waved at her face, which got Tobin to walk over to her, and look into her eyes for a few seconds, pushing himself to interact.

  “No… we need to be willing to let people see us. Even if they call us names and give us dirty looks. If they can’t see some Infected people like us, ones that look funny, but who are just living their lives, they won’t ever learn that we’re just like they are.” He looked back and smiled. “Except, you know, not as dumb.”

  Peggy huffed, looked at everyone else and started walking. She had on shorts which showed off her smooth and slightly tan legs, which were muscular and lean, as well as a t-shirt that hugged her body closely enough to show abs and just a hint of breast. She didn’t look very girly, Marcia realized, but that was just who she was. Hiding it wouldn’t make her feel better about herself. Besides, some guys liked that look.

  There was a back entrance to the hotel, which had a small bar next to it just inside the heavy doors that led to the beach. The Blue Boat. So that one was solved already. She noticed Lancaster and Reyes both look at the sign as well, so they apparently had the same meeting spot. In a way that was a good sign. If Morris was going to be that open, he probably wasn’t planning to attack them. If he did have plans like that he shouldn’t have invited her along. Of course the times could be different, set up so they each had individual meetings, but she couldn’t afford to ask. Not yet. There just wasn’t enough information to risk advertising everything.

  They needed to get together before the meet though, that was for sure. Hopefully the others had time for that and weren’t due for a separate meeting in the next hour or two.

  The beach was a brilliant white in the distance, well groomed, probably by the hotel staff. Footprints in the sand, but very little trash could be seen. Some, because people were pigs and left garbage everywhere they went, but someone had clearly made an attempt to keep things tidy. It was crowded, with thousands of people visible in front of her and to the sides, a riot of color and a lot of exposed flesh. She realized that her skimpy bikini wasn’t out of place at all, since it actually covered most of her behind. About a third of the women she saw and a small percentage of the men had a single string up their cracks instead. Her friends all looked like they were practically Amish compared to most of the people around them, covered as they were. Well, that was fine; they didn’t want to show off too much anyway.

  Scott walked alongside Charlot, close, but not holding hands and Karen was with Brian, who wasn’t wearing his body armor, but had long t-shirt on with shorts. His legs had scars in places, but no fresh wounds. She hadn’t really thought about that part of things. At the base he almost always dressed in the clothing she’d gotten for him, not brightly colored red vacation clothes. His power meant that he could have to fight at almost any time. He was free of that for a bit, supposedly, hence the lack of his nano armor, but he wasn’t used to showing off his scars. That it might have been an issue for him wasn’t something she’d taken into consideration. At the base no one would have thought twice about it, because they knew what he did. Here he could almost just pass as a regular guy for a while.

  The others just looked good. Except Level, who looked incredibly out of place. She was a giant black and brown armored form and that didn’t change just because she was on a beach. People had turned to stare at them as they made their way closer to the water, most of the attention going first to Lauren, then Tobin. After that each person was watched for a long while and at least a few people snapped pictures of them, most trying to be covert about it. It took a while, and some walking, to find a space big enough for them all to put towels out and still be together. Once they did Bridget wanted to run into the water directly, but waited for everyone else to settle first. Finally, with enough energy that Marcia felt a little envious, she jumped to her feet and grabbed Marcia by the hand, pulling her off her towel into a standing position, laughing.

  “Come on! Let’s at least splash in the surf. These others can watch Warren for a bit. Please?” She wheedled and sounded a bit like a little kid for a second, but something around her eyes gave away the fact the girl had something else in mind. To Marcia at least. Looking over at Chris for confirmation the blond woman looked up, her skin freshly oiled and wearing a golden yellow suit that was probably see through in the water.

  She nodded. Something was up with the girl for real then? Marcia smiled.

  “Sure kiddo. We shouldn’t go alone though. Brian, why don’t you, Mark, Denis and Penny come along to? Brian can buddy up with the invisible girl there, so we don’t lose her. Chris, you should come too.” It shouldn’t have worked, but either the other people in the group didn’t want to go swimming, or they all got the idea that there was about to be a secret meeting.

  One that involved Bridget. That… really didn’t seem likely. Marcia realized suddenly that most of them probably thought she’d selected people randomly. Only Karen was looking at her funny. She didn’t know about Alpha Squad at all though, did she? It wasn’t that the woman couldn’t know, just that as a group the people in on it hadn’t wanted to worry everyone yet. Nothing could be done about Braid and the rest of her people really, so why bother?

  It was a point, wasn’t it? The idea of keeping things a secret didn’t make sense for the most part, not with their friends. It was an old habit for her, but just not needed in this case. The enemy literally knew what they did. If they wanted to at least. They couldn’t hide anything from them at all. That was mainly because of Trivia, one of the original super government agents. She literally knew what everyone else on the planet had in their memories. That didn’t mean she’d think to check it all, luckily, but if she did the information was hers. Nothing they had would stop that. Not at all. If she wasn’t checking them daily… Marcia couldn’t see that happening at all. The woman simply would be. It only made sense.

  So the enemy had all their plans and information, but their friends didn’t? Well, maybe it was time to start changing that? The only people that couldn’t really know the whole deal was the rest of the government and the press. The IPB was safe and it was getting to be a pain to protect the information anyway.

  “Karen? Would you come along too?” She sighed and looked at everyone else.

  Why the hell not?

  “Everyone should come, I guess. We… should stick together.” They could watch their things from the water after all. No one sane would bother it.

  Christian gave her a funny look, but didn’t say anything about it at all, just standing, stretching back, arms over her head, which got looks from half the men on the beach, including Scott, though oddly not Brian. Denis noticed, but looked away so smoothly Marcia felt slightly impressed. A year ago he would have flat out asked Chris if she wanted to fuck in front of everyone, even with a teenager and the woman’s boyfriend standing right there. Now he was being a g
entleman.

  Prison had been good for him.

  Bridget got everyone playing as they moved toward the water, tossing handfuls of sand and getting people to chase her a bit. No one there could catch her, unless she wanted them to, but she didn’t put on a display of power, letting them dump sand on her head, then letting Warren brush her short hair until it was all gone, laughing the whole time.

  “OK, no more sand, I think I have some in my suit. That’s not going to be comfortable later.” Bridget pulled at the bottom of her one piece as if to prove her point. If anything fell out, Marcia couldn’t tell.

  The water was surprisingly warm for the ocean. At least Marcia didn’t feel the slight coolness that would indicate anything from about sixty degrees down for her. It felt almost body temperature to her, but was probably cooler than that. No one else shivered though and Prime walked out into the waves quickly, swimming after just a few seconds, but coming back as everyone else moved out just a bit.

  Before she could formulate an actual plan, or come up with a way to explain anything, Bridget bobbed over to her with a splash and help on to her shoulder tightly. The water came to her chest, which meant the girl was already swimming.

  “So, are you going to tell us about what’s going on?” The eyes that looked at Marcia were almost red, holding just enough brown that they didn’t look too out of place to be on a human. A nictitating membrane covered her eyes from the side just a bit as she spoke, then all the way as a wave caught her gently in the face.