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Mockingbird spun in his desk chair, shoved off with both feet, and sailed across the room to check the status of an operative in Guatemala. His operations center would make anyone think he was nuts, based on the sheer number of computers and the far wall totally covered in reports of bizarre incidents all over the world. The map with red circles and multicolored tacks added a nice touch, too, but he was in far too deep for doubts. When he’d discovered the truth about himself, he’d gone looking for those like him. Freaks. Weirdos. It took years of sifting through the dregs, separating the real from the psychotic, although sometimes in his world, the two weren’t mutually exclusive.
Then he learned these abilities weren’t just popping up randomly. It wasn’t natural selection, not a shift due to evolution. No, the blame lay squarely with the Foundation. He’d dug deeper into their records than anyone before. Anyone still living, that was, and the shit went all the way back to the forties.
The first experiments had, in fact, taken place in Nuremberg. The Foundation trail led from there to Poland, until the fifties, when it bled onward to Russia, and then in the sixties, it made the leap to the United States. And no doubt there were countless tangents he hadn’t been able to track because all records had been destroyed—and everyone involved, killed. When they blew up his parents’ house in retaliation for his digging, he realized it wasn’t merely an adversarial relationship. It was war.
For a while, he’d formed an extremely satisfying partnership with Shrike. They’d wreaked a lot of havoc. When Shrike went after somebody, he did it scorched-earth style. But Shrike had handed in his resignation, something about settling down. Man, he’d never thought that guy would get tired of the life. He’d secretly suspected they’d run out of bodies before the other man lost his taste for vengeance. But what the hell—love did crazy things to a dude. He’d married an accountant for Christ’s sake, not that she was crunching numbers anymore. They’d set up some kind of agency, offering redress and justice for those whose problems fell outside the jurisdiction of local law enforcement.
But now the Foundation hunted people like them. Aggressively. Before the destruction of the Virginia facility, it had been quiet. Folks dropped off the grid all the time, usually the homeless or transient population. For a while, the Foundation had been culling their old test subjects, the crazy ones who failed to control their ability and couldn’t function in society anyway. Therefore, nobody cared. But now, they were taking people out of their homes: goon squads in black masks, hauling middle-class citizens off in their black SUVs, shit right out of The X-Files. The cops were asking questions, particularly in DC.
He made a habit of monitoring the chatter, and the feds thought Mexican or Latin American kidnapping rings were spreading their wings and pushing into the U.S. Mockingbird snorted with laughter. Dumb fucks. They’d never figure this out. He sometimes wondered what it would be like to go out into the field to give them a hand, but he was realistic. His strengths lay in recruitment, coordination, and the gathering of intel. So he’d crouch like a spider, spinning webs.
Then he actually read the screen he was staring at.
MOCKINGBIRD, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? MISSION COMPROMISED. THEY SET KESTREL ON ME. NEED EXIT NOW.
He tried typing, but the terminal connection was dead. Smart. Finch was on the move. That only left the cell, if his agent still had it with him. They swapped them often, prepaid ones only, to make them more difficult to track. Not that it mattered so much anymore. But still, the Foundation didn’t accomplish all their bloodhound work through paranormal means, just the most surprising hits.
“Shit. Shit!” He scrambled for the headset, hit the voice-scrambling software, and dialed, routing the call through four different servers. He was piggybacked on an Internet calling service, not that they’d ever find him. “You still there?”
His man in Guatemala wasn’t as good as Shrike had been. But then, who the hell was? Finch got the job done, though, and he’d just made contact with an expat with a most interesting ability. In a few days, a nudge from Mockingbird would bring the new guy on board, provided the Foundation bounty hunters didn’t find him first. It was harder than it used to be.
“I’m about to ditch this phone.”
“How close are they?” He typed furiously.
Dammit. If only those bastards hadn’t gotten a hold of Kestrel. She was going to be the death of them. Literally.
“Ten minutes behind me. Maybe less. I already bugged out of the hostel.”
With a sigh of relief, he finished the hack and confirmed the booking arrangements. “Here’s your extra strategy: there will be a driver waiting for you at Avenida de la Reforma. He’ll take you north to Mexico. Can you make it to the Obelisk on your own?”
“I think so. I’m not far.”
“Use the crowds to lose them if they get within vis-ID range. And whatever you do, don’t use your power or Kestrel will have an even easier time tracking you.”
“I know,” Finch said. “But the show-and-tell portion of the entertainment is built into the recruitment package, you know?”
It was. Which sucked. But there was no other way to get potential freedom fighters on board. They used code names and voice scramblers and encrypted software during fieldwork, so the Foundation couldn’t use the mind-fucker from their experimental dungeons and take down their whole network in one strike. He knew the names of his agents, of course, but he never used them; he didn’t even think them. The agents never met Mockingbird in the flesh. Nobody knew what he looked like.
“Yeah. Get in touch when you can.”
He hated waiting. Damn if he didn’t want to be out there, doing what he helped others do. But he’d long since made peace with his limitations and his power. There were better uses for his time, and so he went back to reviewing the files of those who had escaped from the Virginia facility. If he could close down four more holes like that one, then he’d feel like he was getting somewhere.
He’d crossed Zeke Noble off his list of potential recruits because the man had returned home and started looking to put down roots, almost as soon as he got his life back. That kind didn’t seek after violence or vengeance. Plus, his ability would offer limited use to the operation. Better to scrub his records and keep the Foundation off his back. That much, Mockingbird could do.
He keyed up a file and studied the photos he’d downloaded from a traffic cam. Silas Gamble. Hm. Maybe. His travel patterns had been erratic, as if he suspected he might be hunted. Wise man. He had a family, but he hadn’t tried to contact them. Another plus—it meant he wouldn’t balk at some of the things he might be asked to do. But he came with a handicap. No power, at least as far as the Foundation knew, but if captured, Mockingbird himself would try to hide his ability to prevent them from using it. Maybe Gamble had done the same. In Mockingbird’s mind, Silas remained a question mark. He shuffled Silas’s photos to the back of the screen with a click.
Olivia Swift. Dreamwalker. Oh man, he’d love to get his hands on her. It would rock so hard to have a nocturnal mind-fucker working for him. Finch could alter memories and implant suggestions, but he had no power if he wasn’t physically in contact with his target. That limited his usefulness. Getting Olivia on his team would make this a whole new ballgame.
But first, he had to find her. She had done better than Gamble about staying off camera. He hadn’t found a trace of her from any of his contacts. Unusual. He supposed it was possible she’d offed herself. Her profile pegged her as the least stable psychologically.
T-89. He’d be an asset, too. Mega-power there. Mockingbird had made contact with him, and su
rprisingly, he was still with Gillie Flynn. When his agent had gotten in touch, T had told him to fuck off. Politely. He’d said he “didn’t have time for this shit,” whatever that meant. Gillie would come in less handy. Who needs a healer when you work alone? It was a shitty setup in some regards, but it was the best way.
For now.
Very rarely, he permitted limited partnerships, but the redhead didn’t seem like she wanted an eye for an eye, and he knew healing hurt her. At this point, he chose not to get in touch with her.
