Free Dark Angel: Skin Game by Max Allan Collins Page B

to the media center, Max laid out her orders, then, with Joshua and Alec accompanying her, she walked up to the blockade at the main gate at exactly nine P.M.
    Half a dozen officers pointed guns at them from behind cars. Illuminated only by the light bars, Max could nonetheless see the hatred in their eyes. She knew that each now fought the impulse to pull the trigger and kill the three trans-genics without hearing a single word.
    In her earphone came Dix's voice: "Jesus, Max, you really set them off. Security cameras show them hunkering down at every post. They're getting ready for a fight."
    Not changing her passive expression, she yelled, "Where's Detective Clemente?"
    A very white man in a camouflage uniform and Kevlar helmet inched up so his head and neck were visible above the roof of a police car. "I'm Colonel Nickerson, National Guard! ... I'm in charge here."
    "You may be in charge of them, Colonel, but you're not in charge of me .,. and I only talk to Clemente."
    "He's not part of this anymore," Nickerson said. He was practically yelling, and Max didn't know if it was because he wanted to be heard ... or just because he was scared.
    "They're on the street," Dix said in her ear, meaning Logan, Cindy, and Sketch.
    "Everything's go so far."
    "Colonel Nickerson," she said, her voice emotionless and almost bland, "do you want to see a peaceful end to this little situation?"

    "Yes, I do. The question is ... do you?"
    Max nodded and took a couple of steps toward the fence. She heard guns being cocked as she moved—deadly little echoey clicks in the night.
    Nickerson came out from behind his car and faced her.
    "I've never wanted anything but to live peacefully," Max said.
    In her ear Dix said, "They're in the car—it's started and they 're moving off No one seems to have even noticed their asses!"
    "Then why the hostage situation at Jam Pony?" Nickerson asked, with some edge in his voice. "And why all this?"
    "Do you know an NSA agent named Ames White?"
    The question seemed to catch Nickerson off guard. "No— never heard of him."
    Max could buy that—-just as White had excluded the local PD from carrying out his dark agenda at Jam Pony, the National Guard colonel might well be out of the Ames White loop here at Terminal City. "That's why I need to talk to Detective Clemente."
    Nickerson looked confused.
    "By the time I get you up to speed, this mess may have blown up in all our faces....
    The clock's ticking, Colonel, and there's nothing you or I can do to slow it down. The only thing we can do is work with it, and if you really want a peaceful ending to this, then you'll do what expedites that. And that would start with finding Detective Clemente and getting his ass down here ... now."
    "I don't know ..."
    "Otherwise, you're lying about not knowing Ames White ... and I'll know where I stand with you." Max looked at him hard. "Bip bip bip, Colonel."
    Then she, Alec, and Joshua turned and walked into the welcoming gloom that was their Terminal City home.

Chapter Four
OTTO BODY EXPERIENCE
    SECTOR ELEVEN. 9:58 PM
    SUNDAY, MAY 9, 2021

    Bobby Kawasaki could feel the inner him—the real him—coming out. He had more energy now, though he still had not been off the sofa all day. The drug was finally winding down, and he could feel his true strength returning.
    On a normal weekend Bobby would have already been out; but even before it started, this weekend had been screwed up. He felt lucky that he'd gone out Thursday and gotten a jump on the weekend's shopping. If he hadn't done that, he'd be further behind—further from his goal—and he would have felt even more lethargic than he did now.
    The hostage situation at Jam Pony had almost screwed up everything. Bobby was a transgenic passing as an ordinary, and not even Max or Alec had known; not CeCe, either. Max and Alec he admired for helping other transgenics; but he'd been unable to find the courage to join in.
    Maybe he would find that courage, one day soon—after he